Lyrna handed the mirror back to her. “Thank you.”

“What happened in the hold?” Orena asked, a slim woman with dark brown hair and eyes, the abuse she had suffered evident in the bruises on her neck, but less traumatised by her ordeal than Murel. However, she was smart enough to be afraid.

“I killed a Volarian,” Lyrna said, seeing little point in deceit.

“Why?”

“To secure our place on this ship.”

“And where is this ship headed exactly?”

“The Meldenean Isles. From there we can make our way back to the Realm.”

“In return for what?”

Lyrna lifted the book from the bed where she had placed it, thumbing through the middle pages. “A small service. Don’t worry, the captain has agreed none of us will be touched provided I perform adequately.”

“Not so sure about that,” the woman muttered, pacing the cabin, arms crossed. “These pirates . . . I don’t like how they look at us. The slavers were bad enough. Never thought I’d miss my husband, the fat fool.”

Murel slumped onto the bed. “If he was fat and foolish, why did you marry him?” she asked.

Orena gave her a quizzical look. “He was rich.”

Lyrna concentrated on the book as they chattered. For the most part it was the dull minutiae of military correspondence, lists of supplies, expected lines of advance. She took note of the fact that the Volarians had extensive plans for the occupation of all the fiefs save Renfael, recalling Darnel’s final words at their last meeting. Faith help me, I had to try.

Has the steel-clad fool finally given me reason to hang him? she wondered, deciding it was a question for another time. The Ship Lords sent their best men for this. There has to be a reason.

Whoever had written the text was clever enough not to rely exclusively on the code. Certain place names had been substituted. She was able to identify The Eerie as Varinshold due to the description of the street plan, and Crow’s Nest was obviously Alltor; what other city sat on an island? Others were less obvious. Gull’s Perch was barely described as was Raven’s Loft, though mention of mines led her to suspect it as the Northern Reaches. I pity whoever they send to take them, she thought. However, the longest description was afforded to Serpent’s Den, a complicated place of numerous ports and sea channels. The description was also followed by an extensive plan of attack.

It is imperative, she read, that as many ships as possible be gathered for the assault on the Serpent’s Den following the successful investment and pacification of The Eerie. The assault must take place before the onset of the winter storms. Admiral Karlev will take command of the strike squadrons, primary importance being afforded to denying the enemy use of their ports . . .

She rose from the bed and went to the door, hauling it open, the guard outside stepping forward with his hand on his sabre hilt. He had been the one guarding the dead Volarian and seemed keen not to get too close. “I need to see him,” she said.

? ? ?

“I’m trusting you to keep our agreement,” she told the captain in his cabin. “But I think you’ll agree it’s best if I share this now.”

He had needed little persuasion; if anything, she seemed to be confirming a long-held suspicion. He ordered all excess weight cast overboard, even the gold bars captured from the Volarians, and every sail raised. Due to the prevailing currents they had to tack south before striking east, the captain hounding every inch of efficiency from his crew.

“What’s happening?” Iltis asked as the escapees clustered around Lyrna in the hold.

“The Volarians move against the Meldenean Isles,” she said. “We hasten there with warning.”

“And our fate when we arrive?” Harvin enquired.

“The captain has given his word we’ll be released. I have reason to trust it.”

“Why?” the outlaw pressed.

“He’ll need me to convince the Ship Lords.”

Foul weather descended two days later, the captain trimming as little sail as possible as the sea rose in great angry swells and the wind threatened to rip the crew from the rigging. The ceaseless pitching of the ship sent most of her compatriots heaving, only she and Benten remaining immune.

“Sailed before, my lady?” the young fisherman asked during a slight lull in the storm as the others bent over the rail, Harvin raising his head between retches to voice the most colourful curses she was yet to hear.

“Pig-fucking sons of whores!” he ranted, much to the amusement of the crew.

“I’m not a lady,” she told Benten. “And before this my sailing experience consisted of a few barge trips up the Brinewash.” The last with my niece and nephew, before I travelled north. Janus spotted an otter climbing onto the riverbank with a freshly caught trout flapping in its mouth, clapping his hands and jumping in delight . . .

“My lady?” Benten said, a note of concern in his voice.

Lyrna touched a hand to her eyes and found them wet. “Mistress,” she corrected. “Just a simple merchant’s daughter.”

“No.” He gave a slow but emphatic shake of his head. “You certainly are not.”

? ? ?

The storm abated after six full days of fury, all sails hauled into place to catch the westerly winds as the sun dried the deck. Lyrna took to wearing a scarf over her mottled scalp, finding the sun’s heat painful on her scars. It was to lead to a near-disastrous incident when one of the crew offered her a mocking bow, presenting her with a larger scarf. “For your face, Mistress,” he explained.

Iltis had laughed, issuing great hearty peals of mirth as he strode across the deck, proffering an appreciative hand to the Meldenean, who proved fool enough to take it.

“How’s he supposed to work the rigging with both arms broken?” the captain demanded a short while later. The fight had been brief but brutal, the crewman Iltis had crippled resembling a recently landed fish as he flopped about on the deck whilst the brother, Harvin and Benten exchanged punches with his mates. The captain barked out a restraining order when one of the crew drew his sabre.

“One of our number is a sailor,” Lyrna replied. “He can take his place.”

She sensed there was something forced about the captain’s ire, his curt treatment of the injured crewmen evidence of an already scant regard. “He’d better,” he growled but said no more, stomping off to berate the helmsman for letting the bow wander too far from the compass.

She found Iltis being nursed by Murel in the hold, the girl’s slender hands dabbing a reddened cloth to his bruises. Lyrna said nothing but pressed a kiss onto his stubbled head. It was gone in an instant, but she fancied she saw a smile twitch on his lips before he growled and turned away.

? ? ?

It became her habit to linger above as night fell. Orena and Murel had a tendency to jabber away for hours until sleep claimed them, usually about matters of the meanest consequence. Lyrna suspected there was a deliberate shallowness to their conversation, an avoidance of recent trauma in talk of past loves and girlhood escapades, a trauma she hadn’t fully shared thanks to her burns. She didn’t begrudge them their distractions but found she needed the comparative quiet of the foredeck to continue the ceaseless examination of evidence.

At first all contemplation had been coloured by the events in the throne room, a central horror that commanded her every thought, birthing uncomfortable conclusions. A plan years in the making, she decided. To prepare such a perfect assassin. And who would have thought Al Telnar would die a hero? She experienced a momentary shame at her many clipped dismissals of the lord’s approaches over the years. Clearly he had been a better man than she judged him, braving Dark fire to save her without care for his own life. But, hero or not, she couldn’t help but conclude he would still have made a terrible husband.

She began to realise concentration on a single event was obstructing the consideration of other evidence. She recalled a phrase from The Wisdoms of Reltak: “Beware the seduction of the quick conclusion. Do not indulge in the answer you desire until you know all you need to know.”

Subduing a city the size of Varinshold would require an army of thousands, she reasoned. Even with Realm Guard absent . . . The Realm Guard, marching forth with the invasion only days away. A case of remarkable ill fortune brought about by the attack on the Tower Lord of the Southern Shore . . . She strove to recover every scrap of detail she had learned about the attempt on the Tower Lord’s life. Two assassins, Cumbraelin fanatics . . . Two assassins.

She should call it merely a suspicion in the absence of other evidence, but allowed herself a certainty. Brother Frentis and the Volarian woman. They’ve been busy. Incredibly she felt a sense of regret at Frentis’s death. How much more evidence could I have wrung from him if he’d lived? But she lives, no doubt killing ever more as her countrymen rape my lands.

She looked down at her hands, finding her fists clenched, as they had been when she stabbed the Volarian. She recalled the twitch of the dagger in her hand as his heart had given a final convulsive beat after the blade pierced it. She can kill, she mused. But now so can I.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Frentis

The Free Sword held the blade up to the moonlight, running an admiring eye over the edge, smiling a little as he picked out the grey flames trapped in the metal. Truly a valuable prize to take home.