Articles of Faith

Some of the nobles started to rise, panic flushing their plump features.

The duke raised a thick eyebrow and tweaked his pointed beard. ‘Then where are the alarms, Chel of Barva? Where are the palace guard? Where is my commander to tell me of this emergency?’

Chel looked around. The commander of the palace guard was entirely absent. This did not reassure him.

Count Esen leaned forward, handsome features locked in a sneer. ‘Have this dog beaten, Father. He’s clearly drunk, and likely lost a wager to send him here. These provincial irregulars are notorious for it.’

Chel locked eyes with the young count. The noble’s eyes glittered with mocking challenge. Fuck you, Chel thought back. I’m trying to save your life, you abject halfwit.

He said nothing.

‘I can smell burning!’ a noble shouted. She looked young and earnest. ‘And there’s a bell! In the distance!’

Chel looked back to the duke, ignoring his son. ‘Please, your grace. I saw not a guard between here and the city gate – I’ve just run straight in here unchallenged. I can’t tell you where everybody is, only that soldiers are inside the palace right now. We must take refuge!’

The duke looked at him through narrowed eyes, then around the room, gauging the rising panic in the hall. Several of the nobles had begun to chatter among themselves, despite the duke calling for quiet, and members of one family, including the girl who had noticed the smell of smoke, were already making for one of the doors out of the hall.

‘Remain in your seats!’ the duke bellowed. They ignored him, and a moment later had disappeared down one of the narrow hallways that led toward the main wing of the palace. Others were rising, the servants already making for the kitchen exit, the minstrels in hot pursuit. The duke remained seated, glowering at Chel, and growled for his own men to stay put.

Chel looked to the prince, who was likewise unmoved. ‘Please, your highness, we need to—’

Screams silenced the hall. From the first passageway, a bloodied noble came stumbling back into the room, slick hands clutching at a savage rent in his midriff. ‘Norts!’ he shrieked, then collapsed. He did not move again.

At last the duke was on his feet. ‘Bar the doors! Bar every fucking door in this hall!’

***

The duke’s guards moved quickly, rushing to the doorways and slamming them shut, then dragging festival tables in front. Screams and hammering came from beyond more than one. Then they moved to the storm-shutters, hauling closed the wide windows that had offered such a charming view out over lower terraces and the western sea beyond. Few nobles remained in the hall, besides Chel and guards: the duke himself, his son Esen and nephew Morara, and Prince Tarfel. Wherever the others had fled to, Chel hoped they were safe. Somehow, he doubted it.

The duke was breathing hard, his face flushed and gleaming. ‘Norts in the palace. Shepherd’s eye, we’re doomed.’

‘Charge them, Father!’ Count Esen was at his father’s side. An ornate, slim-bladed dagger had appeared in his hand. ‘Drive these dogs back into the sea!’

The duke waved him away. ‘You, prince’s man. How many did you see?’

Chel swallowed. His side was beginning to throb. ‘At least twenty, your grace. But they weren’t coming from the sea, they came up the hill path from the city gates.’ He shot Count Esen a look of challenge. ‘And they’re not Norts at all. They’re in disguise.’

The duke shook his head. ‘Norts, partisans, it’s piss in a gale. Assassins are in my palace, murdering my guests. We’ll either have to fight our way out, or dig in here until reinforcements arrive.’

The eyes of the hall fell on the wide archway beyond Chel. There was no door, only a long hallway to the eventual doorway between them and the water gardens.

Chel turned to the duke, one hand still clasped to his side. ‘Keep yourself, the prince and your family safe. I’ll do my best to hold them off or draw them away.’

The duke stared at him, thick brows lowered. ‘You’ll need luck indeed to see off a score, Chel of Barva.’ He turned to the prince, who was cowering behind the table. ‘Quite the sworn man you have here, Merimonsun.’

The prince whimpered something. Chel met his helpless gaze, nodded, and set off.

He hurried down the hallway, trying not to limp; already his side felt like it was seizing up. The garden doors were bigger and heavier than he’d realized. His breath coming in serrated gasps, his side burning, Chel drove the one door closed, then the other. From down the hallway came the crash of silverware and the groan of wood on stone as the duke’s guards upended tables to barricade the archway.

Chel slid his edgeless half-sword between the overlarge handles, then, when the sword wobbled and flapped in its setting, he braced his body against the doors and gripped the handles tight. A slim gap remained between the solid wooden panels, and he peered through it, anxious to catch a glimpse of the column’s progress. He had the most narrowly angled of views across the area beyond the doors, a vaguely circular courtyard ringed by colonnaded walkways. He could see the edges of the flickering light of their coming attackers, hear their clanking footsteps on the smooth stone beyond.

Someone screamed. He pressed his eye to the gap, but the doors’ thickness blocked his angle. He saw blurs of dark arrows flash through the sliver of night, before a swirl of what looked like orange briar shot past his narrow viewport. The torchlight jumped and swung, the shadows on the surrounding walls flailing in concert. Further shouts and cries followed, along with the clatter of metal and whump of fearsome impact.

Chel considered opening the doors a crack. He needed reinforcements.

The doors smashed inward, hurling him backward onto the flagstones, jarring his bones and knocking the back of his head against the stone. Reeling and cursing, Chel looked back at the doors. His edgeless sword lay bent on the dark stone. Over it, framed in the doorway by torchlight and the flames that licked from the opposite windows, stood a towering silhouette, its outline blurred as its loose robes swayed around it.

Chel squinted.

His eyes fell on the long staff in the figure’s hand. His eyes widened.

‘The pig-fucker!’

The man before him was tall and broad, his former hunched shuffle discarded. Grey, lank hair hung from his head, his features indistinct in the flickering torchlight. He swung the staff around his body, thumping it into a meaty palm.

‘Come again, little man?’ His voice was deep and clear, its accent mild but vaguely northern.

He scrabbled forward, snatching the half-sword from the floor. ‘You’re the pig-fucking beggar. You have caused me nothing but trouble since you tripped me.’

The beggar shook his head. ‘Get out of my way.’ He started to move forward.

Chel pushed himself to his feet. ‘No.’

The beggar paused. Chel stood half a head shorter than him, holding the bent, blunt blade before him like a religious artefact. ‘What?’

‘I won’t get out of your way.’

The beggar looked past him to the hallway’s end, where oil lamps glimmered behind upturned tables. Irritation darkened his shadowed features. Behind him, the noise was peaking, the sounds of metal on metal and metal on flesh reaching a crescendo. Flames licked higher from the palace buildings.

The long staff swung before Chel was ready, sweeping his legs out from under him. Again he thumped back against the stones, the staff’s other end bouncing savagely from his wounded abdomen. He hissed and spat, curled double on the cold stone floor.

Muttering, the beggar set off past his prone form, tapping the staff as he went.

Chel’s hand gripped the man’s ankle, and he stumbled. He whirled around, grimy robes sending up a cloud of ash, and kicked Chel’s hand away from his foot. Chel felt his fingers bend too much.

‘Just fuck off, will you, boy?’

The beggar made it almost to the barricade when Chel landed on his back, bloodied and screaming, flailing one-handed at the beggar’s head.

‘I won’t let you hurt the prince!’

The pair stumbled forward into the piled furniture, colliding with one end of a badly balanced long table and crashing in a tumble of blood, ash and wood-splinters.

In the shuttered darkness of the hall, Chel staggered to his feet, blood streaming from a new gash in his forehead. He gripped a broken chair leg, ignoring the splinters in his palm, and swung at the beggar’s head as he rose. He missed, thumping the wood against the man’s shoulder and earning an enraged bellow in return.

The beggar scrabbled for his staff but Chel was faster, even with blood in his eyes. He landed one foot on the long wooden pole before the beggar could lift it and took another swing at the man’s reaching form. The beggar swivelled, dodging the blow then driving a fist into Chel’s midriff. A second hit followed, connecting with his slackened jaw and sending him sideways.

Chel pushed himself to his knees as the beggar snatched up his staff. ‘Stay down, boy,’ the man snarled.

Chel lunged forward, planting his shoulder into the man and driving him backward against the polished stone of the wall. The beggar’s surprise was short-lived. Thick arms wrapped around Chel’s neck and shoulders, and a moment later the beggar twisted and Chel found himself slammed into the stonework himself, his cheek grated like cheese. His right arm was jammed back against him, the joint screaming against its limits as he struggled.

‘Nine hells, boy, why won’t you lie down?’ The rough voice in his ear mixed rage with bafflement.

‘I won’t … let you … hurt the prince,’ he managed.

‘God’s dancing balls, boy!’ The arms that pinned him swung him from the wall, out to face the ruin of the feast. ‘I’m no danger to your fucking prince!’

He strained, gasping in the beggar’s relentless hold, before his eyes made sense of the scene before him. The men of the duke’s guard lay face-down at the foot of the steps to the high table, their throats cut, swords still in their scabbards. Grand Duke Reysel himself lay sprawled over the high table, his ample belly slashed and stabbed with dozens of gory wounds. Behind the table, blood-streaked knife in hand, stood Count Esen Basar. He was grinning. Around his neck hung a makeshift Nort mask.

‘We started without you, couldn’t risk …’ The count’s grin froze as he registered the beggar gripping Chel. ‘You’re not one of mine,’ he said, eyes widening. Something was rattling at one of the shutters. ‘Morara! Now! Do it now!’

‘The prince—’ Chel began, when an upturned table clattered sideways across the hall. The count’s hairy cousin Morara kicked another chair aside as he closed on a cringing royal shape in a darkened corner. Chel writhed in the beggar’s grip, struggling to free himself, before kicking at the man’s shin.

The beggar bellowed and snarled. ‘Fuck this!’ He wrenched Chel’s arm around, grinding the bone from its socket, then flung his stricken form against the wall. Chel’s battered forehead clunked against the stone and he slumped sideways, his vision blurring.

From his new vantage point on the hall floor, events took on a certain fuzzy, dreamlike quality. He saw the beggar move away from him with what seemed leisurely ease, although part of his brain was still registering the sickening damage to his shoulder and the latest blow to his head. He watched as the beggar slammed his staff against the closest storm shutter, sending it arcing open to the night beyond. Something flew in from the wide window, a man-shaped darkness, and piled straight into Count Morara. The count went from standing to screaming in a heap of bloody pain as gleaming blades rose and fell in the dancing amber light.

Chel watched this as numbness flooded from his ruined shoulder across his body. He watched Count Esen back away from the beggar, then throw his knife at him. The beggar caught it and threw it back. The flying blade carved the handsome count’s cheek wide open, and screeching, he ran. He fled like a panicked doe, fast and fleet, around the room’s edge, over Chel’s slumped form and out through the collapsed barricade before anyone could grab him.

‘Now that’s a fucking shame,’ Chel tried to say, then the blackness overcame him.

PART II

SIX

Every part of Chel’s body hurt, from the scrapes to his face through to his burning side and battered middle, down to the sour and aching muscles of his legs. His right arm was strapped across his body, bound tight, and its shoulder throbbed with menace. Hot blood pounded against his temples like a three-day hangover. He was very thirsty.

He reeked of smoke, sweat and mule, and vague memories from the previous night floated through his wobbling mind. Flames, mostly, and blood. Firm hands, rough on his battered body, dragging him. Harsh voices and pain. The counts. The grand duke. The prince. Faces and shapes, unfamiliar, large and small. A mule. Bells.

He opened his eyes.

He was in a cramped store-room of sorts, piled with sacks and crates, with odd-pitching wooden walls. The only dim light came from a grille somewhere above, along with muted shouts and the occasional distant bell. The building around them seemed unsteady, as if it were shiftly slightly in a strong breeze. Someone beside him was snoring.

It was Tarfel, nestled beside him on a bed of lumpy sacks, still in the remains of his evening finery, soot-streaked and ragged. The prince stirred and whimpered in his sleep. He had a graze on his cheek, a nascent bruise beneath it, but looked otherwise unharmed. Chel guessed that the dark spatters on the prince’s silken shirt were from elsewhere. Chel wondered if he should let the prince sleep. He looked so pale and feeble, his mousy hair flopped over his scrawny features, his fringe puffed up on every out-breath.

Chel pushed himself to his feet and looked down at his own ruined clothes. The voluminous outer layers had been ripped away, leaving him in a dark snug tunic and trousers. He lifted his shirt to find the gash at his side bandaged, the skin around the dressing clear of crusted blood. Someone had cleaned his wounds and bound them, then left him here with the prince. That had to be a good omen. He tried to wring recollections from his brain. A woman’s voice, perhaps?

He glanced around, ignoring the complaints of his grumbling neck and shoulder. A glimmer of light along the base of one wall revealed a door. Chel tried the handle with his good hand. It was resolutely locked. With a sinking feeling, he returned to the prince.

‘Your highness? Prince Tarfel?’

Tarfel stirred, then rolled over. ‘I won’t!’ the prince said with remarkable clarity, and Chel blinked. ‘I won’t go! I don’t need lessons from those horrid old men.’

He mumbled on with decreasing coherence, before finishing with a half-garbled demand for the servants to bring fresh pillows. Chel blew the hair out of his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with his good hand. ‘Prince Tarfel!’

A rolling snore echoed around the store-room. Chel prodded the prince with a foot. He got no response.

Shouts echoed overhead, followed by thumps and clunks in the structure around them, then the whole building lurched into motion, rocking gently as it went. After a moment of unsteadiness, Chel collapsed onto a sack beside the prince. Of course it was a bloody boat. No smell of brine, no great lurching waves. They weren’t at sea. They must be on the river, and that had to mean Sebemir. The only questions were: where were they going, and who were they with?

Tarfel at last lifted his head, blinking in the gloom.

‘Whatever is going on?’ the prince said after a moment of dark, creaking quiet.

‘We’re on a boat, highness,’ Chel replied. ‘I think we’ve been kidnapped.’

‘Oh,’ the prince said. Then, after a moment, ‘What?’

‘Do you remember, highness? Someone tried to kill you last night, and someone else tried to kill me. Heali …’ Chel shook his head, numb at the memory. ‘The guards were gone, the Watch Commander with them, and those people in the palace weren’t Norts. Esen Basar killed his father, and I think he was trying to kill both of us. He had … he had a Nort mask, a pretend one. And … that pig-fucking beggar saved us.’ His shoulder pulsed at the memory. ‘But he ripped my arm out, and dragged us over the hills to what must be Sebemir, and now we’re locked in a cupboard on a riverboat. So I think it’s safe to assume that we’re still in trouble.’

‘Oh,’ the prince said. Then, after a moment, ‘What?’

***

For a time, Chel slept. He woke to the sound of raised voices beyond the door. The sky visible through the grille still offered the crimson streaks of sunset. It could not have been long. The prince was snoring again beside him, and Chel nudged him with his good arm.

‘Voices.’

Tarfel stirred and sat up. His bruise had darkened.

‘Who do you think they are?’ Chel said. ‘Those that took us.’

‘Oh, they’ll be mercenaries,’ the prince said with a grimace.

‘Not Rau Rel?’

‘Of course not, partisans would have murdered me immediately. You know, “death to tyrants” and all that nonsense.’ The prince shifted uncomfortably. ‘I imagine I’m to be ransomed. Question is, who would have the gall to order my abduction?’

‘Well, considering we’ve just seen Grand Duke Reysel murdered by his own son, perhaps the usual rules don’t apply right now, highness?’

The prince put one hand on his weak chin. ‘A little patricide isn’t uncommon, especially among northern Names. Notoriously emotional bunch, prone to hysteria.’

‘Morara and Esen meant to kill you, too, highness, and make it look like the Norts were responsible. Unless … Unless …’ Chel had told no one of the confessors beneath the Nort masks, but he had announced in front of Count Esen that he knew that the Norts were false. Had he doomed all those present in doing so? Was this his fault?

Tarfel ignored him. ‘Exactly, and now I’m kidnapped! Who would dare hold the kingdom to ransom?’

‘I’m not convinced that our kidnappers and your would-be assassins were working toward the same ends, highness.’ Seeing as one lot seem to have murdered the other.

‘Since Father’s Wars of Unity ended – the first time, at least – a few outposts of resistance to his rule have lingered: the southern territories, of course, the so-called free cities of the North, that grubby lot in the south-west … But none of them would risk bringing down the fury of the crown by stealing a prince.’

‘Are you sure it wasn’t the Rau Rel?’

‘Don’t be absurd. A gaggle of mud-farmers have no coin for mercenaries, even barely competent ones. Mud-farmers, dissidents, disgraced minor nobility, barely a name to their, er, name.’ He rubbed at his elbow, bruised from impact on a vegetable sack. ‘This was one of our continental rivals. They were imperial colonies when the Taneru ruled, and now witness their impudence. They shall pay for this, the moment I am freed. I shall not forget this insult.’

Chel nodded, turning away and rolling his eyes. ‘Of course, highness.’

Tarfel’s pout froze, gradually replaced by a faraway, fearful look. ‘Our bargain stands, doesn’t it? Chel? See me to safety, I’ll see you released.’

‘On my oath, highness. And if it’s really mercenaries on the other side of the door, maybe we can make them a better offer.’

Chel crept forward, feeling every ache of the damage the previous twenty-four hours had wrought on him, and pressed his ear to the door.

***

‘… cutting it fine, boss. Any finer we’d have been wafers.’ A rumbling, gentle voice. Peeved.

‘Not my choice. We had a run-in with some of our friends of the cloth.’ Chel remembered that voice: the beggar’s growl. He rubbed his good hand over his strapped shoulder and bared his teeth. So that was his kidnapper after all.

‘Ah, hells. I thought we’d be rid of the pricks at least.’

‘They had freelancers. Half a dozen horse-archers. Mawn if I’m any judge – and I am. They butchered some local militia they must have taken to be us.’

‘Twelve hells, boss, Mawn this far east?’

‘Forget it. We’re alive, and back on track. Despite enough cock-ups to leave a convent smiling.’

‘Ah, don’t be blaming me again, man!’ A reedy voice with a strong accent. Somewhere over the southern waters, Clyden most likely. ‘Told you before, friend Spider was covering while I took care of business. It’s not my fault I get tummy trouble, I’m delicate downstairs. You know, come to think it, could be a waterborne parasite from that last crossing. You ask me, it’s a wonder that we’re not laid low more frequently, given how often—’

‘Stop eating half-pickled fucking fish for breakfast, Lemon!’

‘I wasn’t the only one dropping bollocks out there, man! If Loveless could hold back on fucken every pretty thing she lays eyes on, we’d—’

Chel heard the creak and thump of the outer door.

‘We were just talking about you,’ the beggar said.

‘Nothing good, I hope,’ came the reply. ‘She’s aboard, by the way. In case you were worried.’

‘Not for a moment.’

‘No doubt. She wants a word. Or equivalent.’ The newcomer chuckled at that, for no clear reason.

Chel heard the beggar growl at the others and stomp away, then the groan of the door in his wake. All seemed quiet. He shifted, trying to catch something, when the bolt thunked and the door flew open. He pitched forward into an aching heap on the boards of the hold.

A sinewy, shaven-headed man with an aquiline nose and an abundance of earrings stood over him, a nasty grin on his face. He wore a tight, sleeveless tunic, exposing arms marked with a fearsome quantity of company tattoos. ‘Hello there, fuck-nuts. Having a good snoop, were we? Hear anything good?’ He rolled him over with the toe of his boot.

Chel said nothing for a moment, feeling his body throb beneath the pressure of the boot. Two other figures were in the low room, but he was struggling to make them out from where he was pinned. ‘Only,’ he said after a moment, his voice cracked, ‘that the little one should eat less fish.’

The bald man bellowed a laugh at that, as did the woman behind him.

‘Little one? Little? I’d wear your balls for earrings if you had any, chum,’ came the Clydish voice. ‘I’ve got a fucken name.’

Chel spread his good hand, still prone. The bald man’s foot hadn’t moved. ‘We’ve not been introduced.’

The man laughed again and removed his boot, then reached down with a muscular hand and dragged Chel upward until he was sitting against the wall. ‘Fair’s fair, now. Tell the sand-crab your names, boys and girls.’ He added under his breath, ‘Not like it’ll make much difference in the long run.’

A woman stepped forward from the gloom. She was the most striking woman Chel had ever seen: maybe a hand shorter than him, with a short shock of hair, alchemical blue, and a jawline so strong it could have been sculpted from marble. She kept one loose hand on the hilt of a short sword that hung from her hip. He had to wrench his gaze away from her, worried she’d think him simple.

‘Well, you’ve met the Spider here,’ she nodded at the bald man. Spider leered at him. Her accent was soft but distinct, something foreign but eroded to little more than uncommon vowels. ‘And the large and amiable gentleman back there is Foss.’

Behind her, a shape shifted against the wall, something Chel had at first glance taken to be a pile of sacks. He was enormous: big hands, big face, wide around the middle. He looked like a small hill. His hair was tied back in a thick bundle of dark braids, and his curly black beard boasted two streaks of grey at the corners of his chin. He offered Chel an awkward smile.

‘I go by Loveless,’ the blue-haired woman went on, ‘and this fine specimen of Clydish stock is Lemon.’

The final figure bowed her head in acknowledgement. She was small and wiry, her pale skin splashed copper with freckles. A mountain of orange hair bounced above a face that was round-eyed and squarish. She still looked irked.