Aewult nan Haig rode to within a few paces of Lheanor and Ilessa. He towered over the old couple, his horse still unsettled. It was almost as if he expected the Thane of the Kilkry-Haig Blood to take hold of the animal’s bridle so that he might dismount. Lheanor gazed silently up at the Bloodheir, his expression placid and empty.

“See who comes now,” Taim Narran murmured to Orisian.

Looking back to the gate, Orisian witnessed an altogether more subdued entry. Riding a quiet bay horse, this newcomer had none of Aewult’s crude energy or ostentation. He was poised, handsome and wore not armour but a luxuriant woollen cape decorated in red and gold. Instead of warriors he brought with him a band of well-dressed officials and attendants.

“Who is it?” Orisian asked, and guessed the answer in the same moment.

“The Shadowhand,” Roaric said, his voice laden with contempt. “I didn’t know we were to be cursed with his presence as well.”

Mordyn Jerain, Chancellor to Gryvan oc Haig: Orisian knew of him only by rumour, and all those rumours said that he, more than any other, kept the Haig Blood secure in its mastery of all the others. Amongst those who resented Gryvan’s rule, Mordyn Jerain was the man most often blamed for the worst of its excesses.

Seeing the famous Shadowhand for the first time, Orisian was struck by how unobtrusively he came riding up in Aewult’s wake. There was no sign of arrogance; just a quiet man who looked around with a calm smile. His gaze met Orisian’s and held it. Orisian could not imagine that the mighty Chancellor would know who he was by sight, yet there was a slight widening of that smile, a fractional inclination of the head. Orisian looked down at his feet.

“He’s marked you already,” Taim whispered. “He guesses who you are, by my presence at your side.”

The notion that the Shadowhand should take an interest in him left Orisian craving nothing but anonymity and the insignificance that the last few weeks had stolen away from him.

Slightly too late, grooms had hurried to soothe Aewult’s horse. The Bloodheir dismounted with a flourish. He hauled off his long leather gauntlets and took Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig’s hand in his own.

“How long do you suppose we have to stay?” Orisian wondered aloud. “Before we can leave without causing offence, I mean.”

By the time the greetings and hollow pleasantries were done, and the Haig Bloodheir had been ushered into the Tower of Thrones, Orisian had slipped away with Rothe. He left Taim Narran to attend upon Lheanor oc Kilkry-Haig. Taim, Orisian knew, could represent the Lannis Blood amongst the great and the powerful more ably than he could himself. Neither Lheanor nor any of his family would be offended; if others felt differently, Orisian was not in the mood to care. At this moment, the mere thought of making the closer acquaintance of either Aewult or his father’s Chancellor was almost horrifying to him. There were places he would much prefer to be.

One of them was the small house attached to the town garrison’s barracks, just beyond the wall that ringed the Tower of Thrones and its gardens. Orisian approached it with a hurried, almost eager stride, a grumbling Rothe close behind him.

“They’re not going anywhere,” the shieldman muttered. “Do we have to rush so?”

“You confess you’re too weary to keep up with me, then?” Orisian asked over his shoulder.

“No. It’s my arm’s a bit sorry for itself, not my legs.”

There were Lannis guards posted outside the house. They snapped into alert postures as their young Thane drew near. Taim Narran had set them here at Orisian’s request: two of his best men, survivors of the campaign against Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig and the carnage at An Caman fort.

“Any problems?” Orisian asked the guards.

“No, sire,” replied one. “They’ve been quiet as the dead, and no one’s tried to get in.”

Orisian climbed the stairs quickly. He was aware of his own eagerness, and half of him thought it a touch childish, unworthy of a Thane. The other half of him savoured the pleasure of anticipation: it was something he felt little and seldom these days.

Ess’yr and Varryn were in the bedchamber at the top of the stairs. To Orisian’s surprise, his sister Anyara was there as well.

“I heard the serving girls complaining that all the food they brought here was getting turned away,” she explained, her brow bunched into a knot of irritation. She nodded in Varryn’s direction. “He won’t eat. It’s like trying to deal with some sulking child.”

Orisian glanced at the Kyrinin warrior. A sulking child was not the first image that sprang to mind. Varryn was seated cross-legged on the floor, where he and his sister, contemptuous of the soft beds, had slept since their confinement here. Even from that lowly position, Varryn’s fierce presence was impressive. His long back was stiffly erect, his uniformly grey eyes staring at Orisian in that confidently passive way only Kyrinin could manage.

“The food’s not to your liking?” Orisian asked.

“No,” was all Varryn said.

His anger had been constant and consistent from the first moment they had all clambered aboard the Tal Dyreen ship that bore them away from Koldihrve. Its causes were many, Orisian suspected, but it had certainly not been blunted by the rigours of the voyage. Both Varryn and Ess’yr had suffered throughout from violent seasickness. Aboard the rocking deck of Edryn Delyne’s vessel, Orisian had felt something new and unexpected towards them: pity. On land they’d seldom appeared anything other than capable – often intimidatingly so – but it had soon become clear that Kyrinin did not make good seafarers.

Turning to Ess’yr now, the sight of her still filled him with a kind of wonder. The pale delicacy of her features, the astonishing grace in her lean limbs, were there as they had always been; what was lacking, or at least diminished, was the utter ease with her surroundings that she had displayed in the forests of the Car Criagar and the Vale of Tears. Here, enclosed in a rather gloomy panelled bedchamber full of bulky furniture and embroidered bedding, she had the look of someone who knew she was out of place. For all that, she remained beautiful in Orisian’s eyes. The blue, swirling tattoo on her face – far less intricate and detailed than the one that Varryn sported, but nevertheless striking – only served to accentuate the elegance of her lips, the clarity of her eyes.

“Have you refused the food as well?” Orisian asked her.

“Not all. But it is too wet, too lifeless. Too human.” She said it without rancour, a mere statement of fact.

“Tell us what you would prefer and it will be provided,” Orisian said.

“When do we leave?” Varryn demanded.

Orisian looked back to the warrior, determined to keep all sign of the weariness he felt out of his voice. This had been, from the instant his foot touched Kolkyre’s quayside, the only thing Varryn would willingly talk about.

“You know you can leave whenever you want, and you know why it’s difficult,” he said. “We’ve offered you a boat and crew. Lheanor has, anyway.”

An almost undetectable flick of Varryn’s head and wrinkling of his nose betrayed his opinion of another seaborne venture.

“We will walk,” the Kyrinin said in a tone that allowed no argument.

Orisian shrugged. “As you wish, but you know, too, what the chances of you reaching your lands are if you go alone. Lheanor can’t even guarantee your safety on the street outside this house. If you thought you could do it, you’d have gone already.”

Varryn sank into silence, glaring at the floorboards, and Orisian could see then what Anyara meant; perhaps more a truculent child than a sulking one, though. It pained him to see the steadfast warrior so disturbed. It made him feel guilty. He owed a great debt to these two Kyrinin, and so far had been unable to repay it as he should. Even so, since he had no easy answer to the constant complaints, they became tiring.