To Ride Hell’s Chasm

Mykkael flipped the plain cloak across his muscled shoulders. The hem trailed on the ground. As though his slighter frame and desert colouring made no mockery of pretence, or the gimp of his knee could be masked, he gestured towards the lamplight avenue, its refined marble pavement gleaming past the shadow of the Highgate. ‘After you, my lord herald.’

No streetwise eye was going to miss the precedent, that the Captain of the Garrison came on urgent, covert business to the palace.

‘By every bright power of daylight, Captain! Try not to draw undue attention to yourself.’ Through a tight, embarrassed pause, the herald gamely finished. ‘The royal household doesn’t need a sensation with Devall’s heir apparent here to contract for his bride.’

‘His Majesty commands my oath-bound duty to the crown,’ Mykkael acknowledged. ‘But isn’t that golden egg already broken? To my understanding, we’re one piece short for promising the man a royal wedding.’

Served a censuring glance from the ranking guardsman, the herald gasped, appalled. ‘On my honour, I didn’t breathe a word!’ To Mykkael, he added, urgent, ‘You’d better save what you know for the ears of the king and his seneschal.’ He waved his charge along, taken aback a second time as he had to push his stride to stay abreast.

For Mykkael, the discomfort wore a different guise: beyond Highgate’s granite arch, with its massive, grilled gates, he shouldered no citizen’s rights, and no authority. Above the jurisdiction of the Lowergate garrison, he became a king’s officer, pledged to bear arms in crown service. His claim to autonomy fell under the iron hand of Commander Taskin of the Royal Guard. That paragon was the son of an elite uplands family, handpicked to claim his title at his predecessor’s death. His prowess with the sword was a barracks legend, and his temperament suffered no fool gladly.

A man groomed to stand at the king’s right hand, on equal footing with the realm’s seneschal, would have small cause to welcome an outsider and ex-mercenary, obliged to prove his fitness in a yearly public tourney until he scrounged the means to fund retirement.

‘I hope your sword’s kept campaign-sharp, and without a speck of rust,’ the palace guardsman ventured in snide warning. ‘If not, the commander will tear you to ribbons, in the royal presence, or out of it.’

Captain Mykkael raised his eyebrows, his sudden laughter ringing off the fluted columns that fronted the thoroughfare. ‘Well, thank the world’s bright powers, I’m a garrison soldier. If I wore a blade in his Majesty’s presence, rust or not, I’d be tried and hung for treason.’

Stars wheeled above the snow-capped rims of the ranges, their shining undimmed as the face of disaster shrouded the palace in quiet. On the wide, flagstone terrace, still laid for the princess’s feast, a chill breeze riffled the tablecloths. It whispered through the urns of potted flowers, persistent as the stifled conversations of the guests who, even now, refused to retire. Of the thousand gay lanterns, half had gone out, with no servants at hand to trim wicks. Silver cutlery and fine porcelain lay in forlorn disarray, where distraught lady courtiers had purloined linen napkins to stem their silenced onslaught of tears.

The staunch among them gathered to comfort Lady Shai, whose diamond hair combs and strings of pearls shimmered to her trembling. No one’s calm assurance would assuage her distress, no matter how kindly presented.

Prince Kailen’s suggestion of practical jokes had roused her gentle nature to fiercely outspoken contradiction. ‘Not Anja. Not this time! Since the very first hour the Prince of Devall started courting her, she has spoken of nothing else! Merciful powers protect her, I know! Never mind her heart, the kingdom’s weal is her lifeblood. She once told me she would have married a monster to acquire seaport access for the tradesmen. She said—oh, bright powers! How fortune had blessed her beyond measure, that the prince was so comely and considerate.’

A wrenching pause, while Shai sipped the glass of wine thrust upon her by the elderly Duchess of Phail. The ladies surrounding her collapse glanced up, hopeful, as Commander Taskin ghosted past on his purposeful course for the audience hall.

‘Any news?’ asked Lady Phail, her refined cheeks too pale, and her grip on her cane frail with worry.

Taskin shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

Lady Shai tipped up her face, her violet eyes inflamed and swollen. ‘Commander! I beg you, don’t listen to the crown prince and dismiss my cousin’s absence as a folly. Upon my heart and soul, something awful has befallen. Her Grace would have to be dead to have dealt the man she loves such an insult.’

The commander paused, his own handkerchief offered to replace the sodden table linen wrung between Shai’s damp fingers. ‘Rest assured, the matter has my undivided attention.’

He nodded to the others, found a chair for Lady Phail, then proceeded on his way. Ahead, a determined crowd of men accosted the arched entry that led to the grand hall of state. The stout chamberlain sighted the commander’s brisk approach and raised his gold baton. ‘Make way!’ His hoarse shout scarcely carried through the turmoil.

Commander Taskin lost patience. ‘Stand down!’

The knot cleared for that voice, fast as any green batch of recruits. The chamberlain pawed at his waist for his keying. ‘You’ve come at last. Thank blazes. The king is with the seneschal.’ Still too rattled to turn the lock quickly, the fat official gabbled to forestall the commander’s impatience. ‘His Majesty sent a herald to the lower keep and summoned that sand-whelped upstart—’

Taskin interrupted, sharp. ‘The Captain of the Garrison? I already know. He’s a fighter, no matter what she-creature bore him. His record of field warfare deserves your respect.’

As the double doors parted, Taskin did not immediately walk through. He pivoted instead, catching the petitioners short of their eager surge forward. ‘Go home! All of you. My guardsmen are capable. If your services are needed, I’d have you respond to the crown’s better interests well rested.’

Through a stirring of brocades, past the craning of necks in pleated collars, a persistent voice arose. ‘Is there crisis?’

Another chimed in, ‘Have you news?’

‘No news!’ Taskin’s bark cut off the rising hysteria. ‘Once the princess is found, the palace guard will send criers. Until then, collect your wives and retire!’

‘But Commander, you don’t understand,’ ventured the fox-haired merchant whose dissenting word rose the loudest. ‘Some of us wish to offer our house guards, even lend coin from our personal coffers to further the search for her Grace.’

Taskin raised his eyebrows. His drilling survey swept the gathering, no man dismissed, even the foreign ambassador from the east, with his bullion brocade and his pleated silk hat, hung with a star sapphire and tassel. ‘Very well. I’ll send out the seneschal. He’ll take down the list of names and offered services.’

Prepared for the ripple of dismayed consternation, Taskin’s lean mouth turned, perhaps in amusement. The rest of his bearing stayed glass-hard with irony. Now, no man dared to leave, lest he be the first to expose his underlying insincerity. Once each pledge of interest was committed to ink, the commander could winnow the truly loyal from the hypocrites at leisure.

Beyond the broad doors, the throne and gallery loomed empty. The bronze chandeliers hung dark on their chains, the only light burning in the small sconce by the privy chamber. Outside its thin radiance, the room’s rich appointments sank into gloom, the lion-foot chairs reduced to a whispered gleam of gold leaf, and the crystalline flares off the glass-beaded tassels a glimmer of ice on the curtain pulls.

Taskin’s brisk footsteps raised scarcely a sound as he passed, a fast-moving shadow against lead-paned windows, faintly burnished by starlight. By contrast, the clash of voices beyond the closed door raised echoes like muffled thunder.

Taskin acknowledged the six guardsmen, standing motionless duty, then wrenched the panel open without knocking. He sized up the tableau of three men beyond as he would have viewed the pieces on a chessboard.

In the company of the King of Sessalie and the seneschal, the High Prince of Devall claimed the eye first. He was a young man of striking good looks. The hair firmly tied at his nape with silk ribbon hung dishevelled now, honey strands tugged loose at the temples. Though he sat with his chin propped on laced hands, his presence yet reflected the lively intelligence that exhaustion had thrown into eclipse. He still wore banquet finery: a doublet of azure velvet edged in bronze, and studded with diamonds at the collar. His white shirt with its pearl-buttoned cuffs set off his shapely hands. The signet of Devall, worn by the heir apparent, flashed ruby fire as he straightened to the movement at the doorway.

Taskin bowed, but as usual, never lowered his head. While the seneschal’s ranting trailed into stiff silence, and the king’s prating quaver sawed on, Devall’s prince appraised the commander’s rapid entry with amber eyes, dark-printed with strain. ‘Lord Taskin, I trust you bring news?’

‘None, Highness. Every man I have in the guard is assigned. They are diligent.’

The seneschal shot the commander a scathing glance for such bluntness. ‘If you’ve heard about the herald dispatched to the lower keep, can I rely on your better sense to restore the realm’s decorum? We scarcely need to raise the garrison to track down an errant girl!’

Taskin disregarded both the glare and the sarcasm. He would have honesty above empty words and false assurances. Nor would he speak out of turn before his king, whose maundering trailed off in confusion.

‘Your Majesty,’ Taskin cracked, striking just the right tone. ‘I have no word as yet on your daughter.’

A blink from the King of Sessalie, whose gnarled hands tightened on his chair. His gaunt frame sagged beneath the massive state mantle with its marten fur edging, and the circlet of his rank that seemed too weighty for his eggshell head. Nonetheless, the trace of magnificence remained in the craggy architecture of his face; a reduced shadow of the vigorous man who had begotten two bright and comely children, and raised them to perpetuate a dynasty that had lasted for three thousand years.

An authoritative spark rekindled his glazed eyes. ‘Taskin. I’ve sent for Captain Mysh kael.’ Brief words, short sentences; the king’s speech of late had become wrenchingly laboured, a sorrow to those whose love was constant. ‘You’ll see soon enough. My seneschal objects.’

‘I find the choice commendable, your Majesty.’ Taskin kept tight watch on the foreign prince from Devall, and recorded the masked start of surprise. ‘Until we know what’s happened, we are well advised to call out every resource we can muster.’

The high prince slapped his flattened hands upon the tabletop, but snatched short of shoving to his feet. ‘Then you don’t feel her Grace has played a prank for my embarrassment?’

‘I don’t know, Highness. Her women don’t think so.’ Taskin’s shoulders lifted in the barest, sketched shrug. ‘But Princess Anja being something of a law unto herself, her ladies have been wrong as much as right when the girl played truant as a child.’

The seneschal thrust out his bony, hawk nose, his stick frame bristling with outrage. ‘Well, we don’t need a scandal buzzing through the lower citadel! Find the herald, do. Pull rank at the Highgate, and turn the captain back to mind his garrison.’

‘Too late.’ Already alerted by the sound of inbound footsteps, Taskin’s icy gaze fixed on the seneschal as he let fly his own sly dart. ‘In fact, your service is the one that’s needed elsewhere.’ Two crisp sentences explained the gist behind the courtiers held under the chamberlain’s watchful eye.

‘Your Majesty, have I leave?’ The seneschal bowed, shrewd enough to forgo his sour rivalry for opportunity. He thrust to his feet, his supple, scribe’s hands all but twitching for the chance to wring advantage from the merchants’ pledge of loyalty.

A short delay ensued, while King Isendon of Sessalie raised a palsied forearm and excused the gaunt official from his presence. As the seneschal stalked away, he peered in vague distress at the straight, stilled figure of his ranking guardsman, who now claimed the place left vacant at his right hand. ‘Commander. Do you honestly think we might be facing war?’

‘Your Majesty, that’s unlikely’ Taskin’s candour was forthright. What did Sessalie possess, that could be worth a vicious siege, a campaign supplier’s nightmare, destined to be broken by the early winter storms that howled, unforgiving, through the ranges? Only Anja posed the key to disarm such defences. Threat to her could unlock all three of the citadel’s moated gates without a fight.

Within the royal palace, her loss might break King Isendon’s fragile wits within a week, or a day, or an hour. Prince Kailen lacked the hardened maturity to rein in the fractious council nobles. The seneschal was clever with accounting, but too set in his ways to keep the young blood factions close at heel.

Sessalie needed the sea trade to sweeten the merchants and bolster a cash-poor council through the uncertainty of the coming succession.

Yet the petty slights and tangles spun by court dissension were not for Devall’s ears. Anja’s offered hand must not imply a bleeding weakness, or invite the licence to be annexed as a province.

Lest the pause give the opening to tread dangerous ground, the Commander of the Guard tossed a bone to divert the high prince’s agile perception. ‘The crown needs its eyes and ears in the sewers under Highgate. Captain Mysh kael may be a misbegotten southern mongrel, but he keeps the city garrison trimmed into fighting shape. Knows his job; I checked his background. We want him keen and watchful, and not hackled like a man who’s been insulted.’

The High Prince of Devall drummed irritable fingers, his ruby seal glaring like spilled blood. ‘I don’t give a rice grain if the man’s low born, or the get of a pox-ridden harlot! Let him find Princess Anja, I’ll give him a villa on the river, a lord’s parcel of mature vineyards, and a tax-free stamp to run a winery’

Commander Taskin had no words. His arid glance pricked to a wicked spark of irony, he had eyes only for the man in the plain cloak just ushered through the privy chamber door. The hood he tossed back unmasked his dark skin, the honesty a tactical embarrassment. Yet his brazen pride was not invulnerable. The soft, limping step—worse than Taskin remembered—was strategically eclipsed behind the taller bulk of Collain Herald.

That court worthy trundled to an awkward stop. Scarlet-faced, he delivered the requisite bows to honour vested sovereign and heir apparent. Blindingly resplendent in his formal tabard with its border of gold ribbons, and Sessalie’s falcon blazon stitched in jewelled wire, Collain announced the person the king’s word had summoned.

‘Attend! In his Majesty’s name, I present Mysh kael, Captain of the Garrison.’

II. Audience

AS THE COURT HERALD STRAIGHTENED FROM HIS BOW AND STEPPED ASIDE, MYKKAEL RECEIVED HIS FIRST CLEAR VIEW OF THE COURT FIGURES seated on the dais. They, in turn, measured him, while his tactician’s survey noted the Prince of Devall’s suppressed flinch. Apparently the princess’s suitor had not expected dark colouring, a commonplace reaction in the north. Mykkael gathered his own cursory impression: of smouldering good looks and tasteful, rich clothing, marred by a fine-drawn impatience. The proposed bridegroom seemed genuinely upset by her Grace’s disappearance. His statesman’s bearing showed signs of chafed poise as he paid deference to the reigning king of Sessalie.

As Mykkael must, also, though his war-trained awareness rankled for the fact Commander Taskin slipped away from his post and took position a half-step from his back. Mykkael had witnessed politics and intrigues aplenty, and court appointments far richer than Sessalie’s. Yet where the close proximity of wealth and power seldom ruffled his nerves, the senior guardsman’s presence raised his hackles. He felt newborn naked to be bladeless. Few kings, and fewer statesmen could size up his attributes with that trained killer’s astute eye.

A pinned mouse beneath the commander’s aggressive scrutiny, the garrison captain bowed. Foreigner though he was, his manners were accomplished enough to honour the crowned presence of royalty. Even when that worthy seemed a shrunken, dry armature, clothed over in marten and velvet. Sessalie’s failing monarch might appear weak, might seem as though his jewelled circlet bound the skull of a man with one foot in the grave. Yet tonight, the palsied jut of his chin suggested an aware determination. The eyes Mykkael recalled from his oath-taking were dulled with age, but not blank.

The garrison captain met the king’s wakened wits with the sharp respect he once granted to his war-bond employers. He assumed a patient, listening quiet, prepared to field the caprice of crown authority. Past experience left him wary. A ruler’s bidding could cast his lot on the wrong side of fate, and get every man in his company killed.

The king drew a laboured breath, too infirm to waste time with state language. ‘Captain. You are aware? My daughter, Princess Anja, is nowhere to be found.’

Mykkael inclined his head. ‘Your Majesty,’ he opened, his diction without accent, ‘until now, I had heard only rumours.’

‘You might wish to speak louder,’ the High Prince of Devall suggested with hushed compassion. ‘Of course, you would have tracked down the source of such talk.’

Mykkael paused. The king’s alert posture suggested he had heard very well. Rather than break protocol, the captain settled for a polite nod as acknowledgement that Devall’s heir apparent had addressed him.

Taskin smoothed the awkward moment. ‘This is Sessalie, where the commons have been content for generations. If Captain Mysh kael pursued every snippet of gossip, half the city matrons would be found guilty of treasonous words. His sleep might be broken five times a night, quelling false declarations that King Isendon was laid out on his death bier.’

The old monarch smiled and patted the prince’s elegant wrist. ‘My herald was forbidden from forthright speech.’ A sly, white eyebrow cocked up, while the clouded gaze regarded the officer summoned in for audience. ‘Even if Collain had broken faith, the crown’s bidding left no opening to launch an investigation. Is this so, Captain? You may answer.’

Not deaf, or a fool, King Isendon, despite the clack of public opinion; Mykkael chose honesty. ‘No need to investigate. I witnessed the source of the rumour myself in the course of a routine patrol.’ At the king’s insistence, he elaborated. ‘One of the flower girls is in love with the driver of a slop cart. She went to have her fortune told, hoping for a forecast, or a simple to bind her affection. The mad seer who lives in the alley by the Falls Gate mutters nonsense when she’s drunk. Her cant tonight said the princess was missing, but then, her talk is often inflammatory. Few people take her seriously’

Taskin stirred sharply, and received the king’s nod of leave. ‘You think her words carry weight?’

‘Sometimes her malice takes a purposeful bent.’ Mykkael hesitated, misliking the prompt of his instinct. Yet Taskin’s steely competence warned against trying to shade his explanation with avoidance. ‘I’ve seen her prick holes in folks’ overblown ambitions, or cause ill-suited lovers to quarrel. Occasionally, she’ll expose the shady dealings of a craftsman. Mostly, her ranting is groundless rubbish. But one watches the flotsam cast up by the tide.’

‘You will question this woman,’ commanded the king.

Mykkael raised his eyebrows, moved to tacit chagrin. ‘Majesty I’ll try. Until morning, the old dame will be senseless on gin. Cold sober, she can’t remember the names of her family. I’ll find the slop taker’s sweetheart, if I can, and see whether she recalls something useful.’

The king regarded him, probing for insolence, perhaps. Mykkael thought as much, until some quality to the trembling, lifted chin made him revise that presumption. Those fogged eyes were measuring him with shrewd intellect. Mykkael keenly sensed the authority in that regard, and more keenly still, that of Devall’s heir apparent, edged and growing jagged with concern.

Then Isendon mustered his meagre strength and spoke. ‘Captain, you are the arm of crown law below the Highgate. My daughter has vanished. By my orders, you will do all in your power. Find her. Secure her safety.’

Mykkael bowed, arms crossed at his chest in the eastern style, that gesture of respect an intuitive statement more binding than any verbal promise. He straightened, bristled by a sudden movement at his shoulder.

The Commander of the Guard now flanked his stance at close quarters, no doubt mistaking such silence, perhaps even questioning his professional sincerity. Taskin’s whisper was direct. ‘You will answer to me, on your findings.’

The garrison captain inclined his head, not smiling. He waited until the King of Sessalie granted leave with the gesture of a skeletal hand. The dismissal closed the audience. Yet the gaze of the lowcountry prince did not shift, or soften from burning intensity.

Mykkael had time to notice that the man’s hands were no longer clasped, but tucked out of sight beneath the tabletop. No chance was given to pursue deeper insight, or gauge the Prince of Devall’s altered mood.

Taskin demanded his attention forthwith. ‘We need to talk, Captain.’

Mykkael paid his respects to crowned royalty. As he turned from the dais, his words came fast and low, and without thought. ‘Don’t leave him alone.’

The commander stiffened. Only Mykkael stood near enough to catch that slight recoil. Taskin’s hooded eyes glinted, hard as polished steel rivets. Clearly, he required no foreigner’s advice. ‘We have to talk,’ he repeated, never asking which of the two royals had prompted the spontaneous warning.

That moment, the carved doors of the chamber burst open. A flurry among the guards bespoke someone’s imperious entry. Then a female voice cut like edged glass through the upset. ‘Her Grace isn’t hiding. Not in any bolt hole she used as a child, I already checked. Taskin! You can call your oafish officers to heel. They won’t find anything useful tossing through everyone’s closets.’

Belatedly Collain Herald announced, ‘Court worthies, your Majesty, the Lady Bertarra.’

‘The late queen’s niece,’ Taskin murmured, for the garrison captain’s benefit. ‘A shrew, and intelligent. She’s worth a spy’s insights and ten berserk soldiers, and the guards I have posted at the king’s doorway are loyal as mountain bedrock.’

Mykkael regarded the paragon in question, a plump, beringed matron who bore down upon the royal dais, her intrepid form hung with jewellery and a self-righteous billow of ribbon and saffron taffeta.

‘Best we beat a tactical retreat,’ Taskin suggested.

Mykkael almost smiled. ‘Her flaying tongue’s a menace?’

Taskin returned the barest shrug of straitlaced shoulders. ‘I’d have the report on the closets from my duty sergeant without the shrill opinion and abuse.’

But withdrawal came too late. The matron surged abreast, and rocked to a glittering stop in a scented cloud of mint. Mykkael received the close-up impression of a round suet face, coils of pale hair pinned with jade combs, and blue eyes sharp and bright as the point on an awl.

No spirit to honey her opinions, Bertarra attacked the obvious target, first. ‘You’re a darkling southerner,’ she accused. ‘Some say you’re good. I don’t believe them. Or what would you be doing here, standing empty-handed?’ Her glance shifted, undaunted, to rake over the immaculate commander of the palace guard. A plump hand arose, tinkling with bracelets, and deployed a jabbing finger. ‘Our Anja’s no hoyden, to be sneaking into wardrobes! Shame on you, for acting as though she’s no more than a girl, and a simpleton!’