* * *

“I didn’t know there were so many of our people in Ive,” Torcaill said, after they had retired to a table in one corner of the barracks’ main hall. Many of those who had gathered to witness the taking of the oath had dispersed. A few remained, scattered around nearby tables, taking grateful advantage of the food provided by the town’s Guard. “So many?” Orisian said. “Less than a hundred, if you leave out our warriors. A handful, no more.” “True enough,” Torcaill persisted, through a mouthful of dry bread, “but they’ve come a long way to reach here. There could have been fewer. Far fewer.” “I suppose so,” Orisian murmured. Taim watched him as Orisian absently scratched at the scar across his cheek. He looked tired, but there was a certain stillness to him now, a settled quality that seemed new. Perhaps the boy—Tollen—had not been the only one offered an anchor by the taking of his oath. “Those who’ve come so far already will have to move on again now,” Orisian said quietly. “We should spread the word that their flight’s not finished yet. It’s not safe for any of us to remain here.” “No,” Taim agreed. He kept his voice low too, recognising Orisian’s instinct to keep such conversation from uninvited ears. Yvane and Eshenna, he noticed, were maintaining a studious, and somewhat contrived, inattention. The two na’kyrim, though they sat at Orisian’s side, paid no heed to his words. It might well be that these na’kyrim already knew more of his Thane’s thoughts than Taim did himself. He had the sense that Orisian had deliberately excluded him, and Torcaill, and all the other warriors, from much of what passed between the three of them. He neither regretted nor resented that fact. A Thane could take such counsel as he saw fit, and Taim was in any case all but certain that their discussions concerned matters he understood—and desired to understand—nothing of. “Ive is lost—and so are all who remain here—as soon as the Black Road chooses to make it so,” Orisian said. “It is,” Taim confirmed. “Tomorrow or the day after. Soon, in any case. Erval tells me the fighting men are already slipping away; fleeing with their families. The only thing that’s delayed the end so far is that the Black Road seem to be losing discipline just as we are. But with or without leadership, they’ll overrun us.” Orisian nodded. “I mean to take K’rina north.” A horrified expression instantly appeared on Torcaill’s face. “North?” the younger warrior gasped. Taim hissed at him, and extended a monitory finger. Out of the corner of his eye, he could already see heads turning at some of the other tables. Torcaill spoke more softly when he went on, but he did not disguise the disbelief, the disapproval, in his voice. “We’d be stepping from storm into fire if we go north. What safety could we possibly find there?” “How much can we find anywhere?” Orisian quietly countered. “There’re Black Road armies to the south and the west; too many for us to cut our way through. Nothing to the east but mountains, hunger and cold. Miserable as it is, that’s the best chance for most of these people, but it’s not for us. You want your Thane wandering off to starve in the wilderness? Chased off by the Black Road?” “But what’s to the north?” Torcaill muttered. “There’s Highfast,” Orisian said quietly. “We don’t even know if it’s still standing,” Torcaill said. “It could have a thousand Black Road swords inside it.” “No,” Orisian replied. He remained entirely calm in the face of Torcaill’s hostile tone. “There were some captives taken in the fighting. Most were killed by the townsfolk, but Erval’s men got one or two into their cellars. I had him… I had him find out what they knew of Highfast.” Orisian failed to suppress the grimace of discomfort—or guilt, perhaps—the words cost him. He looked not at Torcaill but at Taim. “I thought I… I thought we needed to know.” “Such things must be done sometimes,” Taim said in response to the anguish he saw in those young eyes. It seemed the kindest service he could offer his Thane at that moment. But he wondered where within him Orisian was finding the will to issue such commands. The youth he had once known would never have done so, he thought. “And you trust their word?” Torcaill muttered. “If they lied, they took the truth with them to the Sleeping Dark. But those who questioned them didn’t think they were lying.” “So Highfast has not fallen?” Taim asked. Orisian shook his head. “They all say not. And whatever rumours have been brought by the Kilkry folk who’ve sought refuge here say the same thing. It makes sense. Why would the Black Road spend any effort on it? It has no great garrison; it guards no road, or harbour, or farms. They know—everybody knows—it’s all but impossible to take by siege, no matter how feebly defended.” “I thought…” Taim murmured, glancing towards the two na’kyrim, “I thought its defences had already been breached.” “It was breached by something no walls could keep out,” said Yvane flatly without looking up. “And by something that would leave those walls intact once it departed.” “What if it didn’t depart?” Torcaill demanded, that provocative edge still sharpening his voice. Yvane turned slowly, twisting not just her neck but her shoulders round to fix the warrior with a hard, cold stare. “There were… we felt deaths—na’kyrim dying—on that one day, but not since. We don’t think everyone died. Not every light was snuffed out. Whatever disaster befell Highfast, it was not done to capture a fortress, or win a battle. It may not even have had anything to do with your bitter little war. There are other kinds of struggle. Hard to believe, I’m sure, but true nonetheless.” Torcaill narrowed his eyes, but lapsed into angry silence. “Still,” Taim said to Orisian, “Highfast… Once there, we might find there’s no way out.” And he saw, in Orisian’s eyes, a moment of distraction, of concealment. Of shutters being closed, locking away words that might have been spoken. Anything he says is only part of what’s in his mind, Taim thought. There is more to this, perhaps, than Highfast. “I see no safety whatever way we turn,” was what Orisian did say. “We’ve already almost lost Yvane and Eshenna and K’rina. Can we keep them safe, or the Kyrinin, even amongst those who are supposed to be our friends? I don’t think so.” “But your people need their Thane, sire,” Torcaill said. “They need to know that he’s —” “I have no people!” Orisian snapped. The sudden anger was transitory, but it startled Torcaill. He winced. “A few dozen homeless wanderers?” Orisian went on, his composure reasserting itself. “That’s no Blood. And our handful of swords can make no difference when Gyre and Haig are throwing thousands against one another. I can make no difference. I’m no warlord, no hero. Croesan, or Naradin, or Fariel even; any one of them might have been fit to lead armies in the field, and fight great battles alongside their men. Not me.” He did not sound apologetic or ashamed; he merely spoke a truth he believed. “You have Captains to do that for you,” Taim said quietly. “Yes, I do. Great ones. But I don’t have the armies for them to lead. Our Blood is broken, Taim. Our people are dead, enslaved or scattered; our castles are overthrown. We are exiled from our lands.” “Sooner or later, Haig’s strength will tell.” “Will it? I don’t know. The war against the armies of the Black Road: perhaps it’s not the one that really matters. Or not the only one, at least.” “Aeglyss, you mean?” “The world’s changing around us. You feel it, don’t you?” Orisian looked questioningly at Taim, and at Torcaill. “Can’t you feel the twisting of things in your heart, your mind? I don’t sleep, so dark are my dreams. If I walk in Ive’s streets, in every eye I see tinder, waiting only for some spark to turn it into a raging fire. I killed—and you did, Torcaill—Kilkry men who had no thought save to shed blood. They’re supposed to be our allies. It’s all slipping away into chaos.” He had been leaning forward in his chair, tightened by an urgency, a fierce desire to convey what he saw and felt. Now he slumped back. “It may be that when we seized K’rina, we broke a thread in a pattern that was being woven. It may have been a mistake. I need to see if it can be undone. Anyway, Torcaill, I’ll only ask you to come as far as Ive Bridge. Once we’re sure the way to Highfast is clear, there’s something else I’ll want of you.” “You need ask nothing of me, sire,” the warrior said sharply. “Only command. Your will governs us in all of this.” He clearly meant what he said, despite his earlier truculence. Orisian only nodded, and Taim thought he saw a hint of sadness in the set of the Thane’s mouth. There were burdens there still, in the making of choices on behalf of others and the exercise of authority. However hard he tries, Taim thought, whatever cruelty he might permit in his name, this one will never have quite the cold instinct for it. He will never sit easy on a throne. But then perhaps Orisian did not, after all, truly believe there was any throne left for him to sit upon. They each went their own way from that table: Orisian to speak with Ess’yr and Varryn, Taim to see what supplies he might buy or otherwise acquire without arousing alarm or suspicion amongst their Kilkry hosts, Torcaill to ready the warriors. Taim got no further than the outer yard of the barracks before he became aware of soft footsteps trailing him. He turned to find Yvane drawing near, stern-faced. “Your Thane folds in on himself,” she said. “Withdraws. He feels himself alone and adrift, and in response makes himself so. There are shadows, calling him into themselves.” “He has been roughly treated by the world of late.” “For many years, I think. I don’t condemn him. All I say is, these are dangerous times for those with flaws in their armour. The houses with cracked foundations are the first to fall in a storm.” “I didn’t know you were a master builder,” Taim muttered. “Or an armourer, for that matter.” The na’kyrim’s manner irritated him, though he recognised her intent. She did, he believed, feel a certain sincere concern for Orisian. As far as Taim could tell, the young Thane was uniquely honoured in that regard, since no one else save other na’kyrim seemed to merit it. “He needs friends,” said Yvane, “and may need them still more before long. Your hothead of a swordsman was part right: we are stepping from storm into fire, but this storm isn’t one we can leave behind. It goes with us. Inside us.” “Have you advised Orisian against it, then? If you think this leads us into…” “Ha. You can be certain there’s none less eager than me to revisit whatever’s left of Highfast. But Orisian follows his instincts. And he may be right. Perhaps the only way to calm this storm, quench this fire, is from the inside.” “Well, then. I’ll walk at his side, wherever he goes.” “I know. You seem to have the calmest head around here, the least open to the poison that’s leaking into so many others. That’s good. I don’t know what it is that anchors you, but whatever it is, I hope it’s stubborn enough to last. Stay close by Orisian, if you care for him, and watch him. If his sight becomes clouded, he’ll need those whose eyes remain clear.” “There’s nothing wrong with his sight,” Taim said, bristling at the implied lack of faith in Orisian’s resilience, or his judgement. “Anyway, you’ve never seemed shy of making your opinion known. Don’t you plan on being there, to polish his eyes for him?” And the sudden sadness in her pale face—harbinger, it seemed to him, of a desolate despair that the na’kyrim barely held at bay—startled him into shame at his bitter tone. “As I said,” Yvane sighed, “these are dangerous times for those with flaws in their armour. But we na’kyrim, we have no armour at all against this. We’re all flaw, our heads wide open to it. Believe me, I fear for your beloved Thane, but I like my own chances a good deal less than his. There may come a time when the very last people he should be listening to will be those who’ve woken to the Shared.” She hung her head, as if momentarily defeated by the darkness of possible futures. Taim had never seen her give such an unguarded impression of vulnerability. He felt an urge to reach out and put a comforting hand on her arm, but he did not. He suspected there was enough prickly pride left in there to make any such gesture inadvisable. “Just watch him,” she murmured. “Help him if he needs it, and if you can. That’s all I’m saying.” “It doesn’t need saying,” Taim said gently. “I’d never do otherwise.” Yvane nodded once and turned away, disappearing into the barracks. Taim looked after her, filled for a moment or two with an impotent sense of foreboding, not just for Yvane or Orisian, but all of them. Everyone caught in this churning maelstrom.