‘Neither.’ Her hands gripped the rails of the ship. ‘We make land here, Prince Ruin. Go across country. Honoured guests disembark from their ships at Toreth Harbour and ride the golden road to Malth Salene. Murderers and outcasts and dead men take the lich way, come in through the back gates where the middens are piled.’
The old roads. Older than Malth Salene. Older than the Relasts, or the Altrersyr. Nothing more than a thin line in the earth, leading from the tumbled rocks below Calen Mon in winding paths over the moors towards the fortress three days’ walk away. Ended as they began, nowhere anyone went to, nowhere anyone needed to go. Such roads ran all across the island, leading from nowhere to nowhere, ending blank and pointless at the cliff edge and the sea. Roads one could walk to kill oneself, pockets filled with yellow stones. Roads the dead might walk, if they cared to walk in the wild places. He’d ridden them with Carin, trying to understand them. Found only that there was nothing to understand. Landra was such a romantic, to think of it.
Couldn’t have anyone recognizing him, either, Marith thought. That was the real reason why, of course: you could hardly take the heir to the kingdom into a major port town and not have someone notice. People would recognize him, in Toreth. Predominantly tavern keepers, hatha merchants and the men employed to sweep the gutters, in point of fact, but still, people who would recognize him.
They came ashore in another rowing boat, splashing out into the shallows, cold waves breaking around their legs. Gods, it was sweet. The sound of the water breaking on pebbles was perfect music. Gulls again, wilder than most in this wild place, angry at being disturbed. The seals looked at them with eyes as dark and smooth and uncomprehending as the shingle. A rough scramble up into the woods behind the beach, Landra’s eyes fierce and laughing as Thalia struggled and stared, haunted by the sea and the stone and the earth and the sky, cold and frightened, seeing this land only as something terrible, cruel and empty as the desert had been. The old gods must lie heavy on her, she who was sworn to another god. And her eyes widened, when they came to the lich road. She felt it, Marith saw. Felt it as he had done, once.
Marith and Thalia walked bound, led on long ropes. Landra strode ahead, Mandle beside her grim-faced, holding the ropes like leading reins. Just the four of them: Landra’s women, all Landra’s things, had been left on the ship. It was madness, to do this. Landra would be punishing herself more than she could possibly humiliate him.
He’d promised Carin he’d marry Landra, once. The closest he could come to giving Carin his crown. Carin had wanted it. Or rather, Carin’s father had wanted it. Made Carin ask him. Marry my sister, Marith. Marry her and make her queen. Their fingers curled round each other. Carin’s plain face smiling down at him. Everything fractured and bright behind his eyes. You have to marry her, you know. Anyone else will be jealous. But she loves me almost as much as she loathes you. Neither of them cared, really. But it had been good, to give something Carin could give to his father without pain.
They walked on, into the wind. Cold. He could still hear the sea behind them, pounding on the stones of the shore.
After a short while, Thalia was shaking, seemed ready to collapse. Her hair whipped around her face in tendrils that blocked her vision, her lips and face and hands looked blue and dead. Marith stopped walking as she stumbled and gasped, her ankle catching in a hole and making her trip awkwardly.
‘She needs help. She can’t walk.’ He turned to Landra, striding angrily back to him. ‘Please. Please, Landra.’
Pale blue eyes flicked between his face and Thalia’s. ‘Help her, then.’ The voice cold and bitter. You’re jealous, Marith thought. Jealous for Carin, that I love her. That I could love anyone other than Carin. He came over to Thalia and she fell into him, gasping. Her body shook with cold.
‘Untie me,’ he said slowly to Landra. ‘Please, Landra. I …’ He paused, licked his lips, steeled himself. ‘I swear I won’t try to run. I swear I won’t try to fight. On my name and my blood, I swear it.’
‘The Altrersyr lie,’ Landra said.
Of course we do. You don’t hold a kingdom and a legend as the vilest family in Irlast without lying occasionally. ‘Yes,’ he said wearily, ‘we lie. My father lied to you. I’ve lied to you. I’ve lied to Carin. I’m a worthless lying drunk and a murderer. But in Amrath’s name, I swear. I—’ He went down carefully on his knees. ‘Just let me help her, Landra. Please. Please.’
Landra snorted. She looked confused, to see him at her feet. A long pause; he could see her thinking, weighing up everything in her mind, her anger at his love for Thalia, her anger at his humility to her, the danger of him running, balancing them with the suffering of this poor woman whom she was killing as surely as he’d killed Carin. ‘Untie his hands. He can hold her.’
Mandle twisted uncomfortably. ‘My Lady—’
‘Untie him. We won’t get much further, if the girl can’t walk.’ Landra raised her hand impatiently at the man’s muttering. ‘Place the rope around his neck. If he tries to run, tighten it.’
Mandle grinned as he changed over the bindings, making a lengthy show of knotting the rope so that it hung heavily at the point on Marith’s throat where the pulse beat between his collarbones. The man had carried him drunk and sobbing out of a tavern somewhere in Toreth, once. Seemed a nice enough bloke then, a good steady shoulder to lean on.
They walked on, Thalia clutched in Marith’s arms, shaking with cold and exhaustion. He almost felt the pain in her, the weight of this land pressing on her, like shouting in the head or the roar of water in the ears. So much walking. All he ever seemed to have done was walk, through desert and wasteland and heat and cold, thinking and changing and feeling and trying to hide from things. Towards it. Always and forever, he had been walking towards it.
‘I love you,’ he whispered to Thalia. For you, he thought. All for you. You’ll see what I’ll give you, soon enough. The rope jerked tighter at his neck and Mandle laughed. Landra laughed too, but too harshly, as though she was trying to find some comfort in what she knew was only pointless and cruel. They walked on, over the lich road, in the cold wind, across the moor.