‘Send in the boy!’ he shouted.
There was the rasp of blades being uncrossed, then a dark-haired young man stumbled into the room. He was skinny as a rake, so much so that his garments hung from him like a ship’s sails on a windless day. His eyes were sunken, and he was tanned a deep, dark brown, as if he had been working in the sun all his life.
‘Freshly escaped from an orc internment camp,’ Zacharias said, dragging the boy into the torchlight. ‘Fourteen when he joined up, fifteen when captured and sixteen now. For two years he’s been one of their slaves, carrying their firewood, catching their fish, building their monuments, making their weapons.’
The boy avoided the watchers’ eyes, instead looking at his feet.
‘Like a gremlin, but bigger, weren’t you?’ Zacharias barked, making the boy jump. ‘Go on, speak up.’
The boy opened his mouth, but all that came out was a nonsensical stammer. Zacharias slapped him on the back of his head, and the boy cringed.
‘To think you were once a Forsyth Fury. Snivelling wretch! Speak or I’ll beat it out of you!’
He raised his hand threateningly and the boy spoke, the words tripping over his tongue in his rush to get them out, his accent as thick and common as Fletcher had ever heard.
‘There were ten of us, doin’ the ’eavy liftin’ when the gremlins couldn’t manage it, sire. Me and nine other lads. But there was another. A woman. Noble, I reckoned. Older too. Ain’t never got a good look at ’er – the orcs kept us away from ’er cage mostly. ’Alf starved, she was. Never said a dicky, not even when I snuck ’er some food. Gone mad, bein’ alone so long. But ’er clothes. Officer’s uniform, from the old days. That’s ’ow I knew she was one of your lot.’
There were whispers from the nobles, then the red-haired noblewoman stood and spoke in a soft, lilting voice.
‘Elizabeth Cavendish. It must be her. She and her demon, a Peryton, went down behind enemy lines twelve years ago. Ophelia, could it be?’
Lady Faversham looked up, for she had been in deep thought.
‘You are right, Boudica. I never saw Elizabeth killed; it was the Peryton that was struck by the javelin. She could be alive, though she fell from a great height. I only wish I had been able to fly to her aid, but the Wyvern riders were in full pursuit. Perhaps they kept her. Tortured her. To discover our secrets.’
‘Rufus’s mother,’ Othello whispered.
Fletcher remembered the small, mousy-haired boy from Vocans who had followed Tarquin Forsyth around like a lost puppy. His mother, a noblewoman, was thought dead, while his father was a commoner.
‘We cannot allow her to remain in orc hands. It would be unseemly, to leave one of our own out there. She was popular among commoners and nobles alike, thanks to her marriage to that common servant.’ Disdain dripped from Ophelia Faversham’s words and she curled her lip. ‘It would do well for morale, and her two sons, if we were to rescue her.’
‘Exactly,’ Harold agreed. ‘Well said, Ophelia.’
An elven woman stood. She was powerfully built, with a strong jaw and hair so finely braided that the strands hung in dreadlocks around her head.
‘This noblewoman is no concern of ours. Save this for your own council meeting.’
Her voice was heavily accented, but clear enough.
‘Please, Chief Cerva,’ Harold implored. ‘A victory for Hominum is a victory for all. Are we not in this together?’
Cerva stared back, unimpressed.
‘We will not risk elven lives on a foolhardy rescue mission, if that is what you ask of us,’ she stated simply.
‘It is nothing like that, I assure you. Please, allow us to present our plan, and if afterwards you are dissatisfied, we shall assuage your doubts.’
Cerva returned to her seat, but kept her arms crossed.
Harold paused then, allowing silence to settle over the room.
‘Our next problem is perhaps the most shocking. Something new. Something that could spell doom for us all, allied or not. Lord Raleigh, would you be so kind as to remove the cloth from the container there?’
It took a few moments for Fletcher to realise Harold was speaking to him. Lord Raleigh. Was he ever going to get used to that? He stared at the object for a moment then, realising he had no other option, climbed on to the table.
The wood creaked underfoot and there was a mutter of annoyance from one of the elves, but he eventually reached the cloth-covered cylinder. He gripped the sheet and tugged it away, hearing the slosh of water from within as the cylinder rocked on its base. He did not know what he had expected to see, but the cries of disgust from the room echoed his own.
A creature lay within.
16
It hung there, suspended in a greenish liquid that continued to slosh back and forth. It had been pickled to preserve the flesh, and a ragged hole could be seen in the centre of its scrawny chest.