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  ‘To do your own service, most like!’

  There was a great chuckle at this piece of wit, and then the conversation moved on to the more specific uses of women and how best to worship the Goddess with their aid. Erno frowned, trying to make sense of the nuggets of information he had gleaned. Then he drained the dregs from the flagon and swiftly and silently threaded his way through the revellers and out into the chilly street beyond.

  He went first to the market, before he was tempted to spend his remaining coin on anything other than food, and bought two cheap loaves of heavy rye bread, a bag of rice and a piece of smoked ham. He’d passed a field of trees still bearing their crop of apples on the path from the coast; and he’d check the crab-pot he set that morning on his return: and that should last the two of them a few days, if they eked out the meat with the rice. At the last minute, he counted his coin and realised he had just enough to buy a second piece of ham, which would keep for a week or more – but then he passed a stall where a man was crying his wares and found that he had exactly the price of a single hen, which seemed remarkably fortuitous; but when he opened his mouth to say so, the stallholder took the money straight off his palm, grabbed up a chicken from the coop and throttled it so quickly and expertly that Erno did not have a chance to ask him to leave it alive and merely tie its feet together for him and he found he had drunk just a little too much to be able to argue coherently in Istrian with him. Now they’d have to cook it that night, whether the crab-pot contained a catch or not.

  Erno took a path westwards along the cliffs, and once he was out of sight of the town shook his cowl loose and walked with his head high and the cold onshore breeze in his hair. The path cut through fields that prior to the harvest would have contained a great sea of barley and rye, but now were filled with muddy stubble. Great sheaves and stacks marked the cornfields further inland: he could see for miles, for the countryside here was rolling and open. And everywhere he looked, the soil was fertile and the crops plentiful. All this, Erno thought, his jaw tight, had once been Eyran land, all the way to the Golden Mountains, or so the old folk said. He had felt a powerful, instinctive hatred against the Istrians when he’d learned what had happened to Katla; but now that he saw this fine lost land stretching away on all sides and compared its lush contours with his memories of the storm-lashed, barren, rocky wastes of the Northern Isles, he could feel that anger refining itself, burning deeper, burning brighter. He began to understand the angry things Tor and Fent said about the southerners being their ancient enemy, words that at the time had seemed cruel and stupid. And yet here he was, on Istrian soil, in Istrian disguise, walking back to feed and care for an Istrian woman, when all around him the Southern Empire prepared itself for war against his own people.

  He shook his head. Tor would have something to say about this. If he ever saw him again.

  In the next valley down a plume of smoke marked the position of a farm. He skirted a small wood until he was close enough to see washing flapping on a line outside; chickens running hither and thither across the yard. Something stirred in his head.

  A few moments later he was loping quickly towards the coast, his sack bulging with its new addition. The bark of an outraged dog echoed in the smoky air.

  By the time he had checked the crab-pot, found it empty and made his way back to the beach, the sun had dipped below the horizon and night was setting in. The woman was sitting on a log of driftwood in front of a little fire and poking with a stick at the two mackerel he had caught and cleaned that morning and left in a rockpool to keep fresh for dinner. The fish lay in the embers, their patterned skin bubbling and crisping. The light of the flames illuminated her face in the darkening air. Had she been any other woman he would have said she looked beautiful, but he hardened his heart against her and dug in his sack.

  ‘Put this on!’

  He flung the dark fabric at her and watched as her face changed.

  ‘Why have you given me this?’ Selen Issian shook out the plain black robe with its integral veil, slit to reveal only the mouth: the traditional dress of an Istrian woman, and this a particularly poor quality example. She stared at the Eyran in bewilderment. ‘I thought we had agreed after the last time that it was best I was not seen with you.’

  ‘I’m not taking you into the town: I’m taking you to your father. He is in Forent with Lord Rui Finco at the moment. It is not far: three or four days at most, less if we can avail ourselves of a ride.’

  Even in the rosy light, the woman’s face blanched. ‘You can’t – you promised you would take care of me. You promised I would not have to go back to him—’

  ‘The man you thought you had killed is not dead, so circumstances have changed.’

  ‘Tanto – Tanto Vingo lives?’ How could any man survive the loss of so much blood? When she had stabbed him – three, four times? she had lost count in the terror of the moment – it had gushed out everywhere: over her hands, the knife, the floor. She could not believe it.

  ‘There was a man at the inn who was visiting the family house when Tanto Vingo revived from his long sleep.’ He did not add that the Vingo boy had ‘howled like a dog’ on his return to consciousness. ‘And that he is now rallying. So it seems that at the worst your father need only pay the family the price of a wounding, rather than confer you to the flames. You can go back in safety and in honour.’

  Selen searched his face for any sign of untruth, and failed to find it there. He watched, expecting an outburst; but she set her jaw and stared into the cook-fire with such intensity that it appeared as if she had rather cast herself upon it than do as he suggested. Then, quite matter-of-factly, she retrieved the fish carefully from the embers and stoked the fire with the discarded sabatka, and when he gave a shout of protest and bent as if to grab it up, she waved the stick she had been using to tend to the mackerel and flourished it at him in warning.

  ‘I tell you now,’ she said and her voice was low and determined, ‘and I swear to all that is holy in the world that I shall never wear one of these monstrous robes again. Why should I cover my face as if I am ashamed for the world to see me? Why should I allow myself to be hidden away as if I am less than a man, less than human? We are confined in these things as surely as if we were behind bars, disallowed any identity except our husband’s or our father’s. Well, I have had enough of being treated so, by my father, by you or by anyone else on Elda.’

  The flames billowed and roared as they consumed the sabatka, lighting the beach with a hellish effulgence.

  ‘I refuse to be bought and sold to satisfy any other’s desires than my own. I will no longer be regarded as a chattel, or bartered away as part of a marriage settlement that serves no more purpose than to swell my father’s coffers and extend his estates. I utterly refuse to go back to my father: I renounce him, my family, my country and—’ she drew a deep breath ‘—and the Goddess!’

  Erno dropped to his haunches beside her and his face was grim. ‘For your own good, Selen, go back to your family. What good is this ranting? The world is the way it is, and you and I cannot change it. Whatever we do, it all comes to ashes in the end.’ He took the stick from her and prodded at the charred rag at the heart of the fire. Little flakes of burned fabric eddied upwards in the hot draughts of air, winking with red light like tiny fireflies, then drifted away all dead and dark.

  The woman started to cry.

  ‘I cannot go back, Erno. I have no place in Istria now.’

  ‘Your father will care for you.’

  Selen gave a bitter little laugh. ‘My father cares for no one but himself. I am of no use to him now, for I am spoiled goods. Even if I would countenance it, no man will want me for his wife. My father will have no choice but to give me over to the Sisters and they will find me out, for I have no belief in their Goddess or her goodness any longer. So it will be the fires for me one way or another, you see.’

  Erno rubbed a hand across his face. He had rehearsed the scene over and over in his head on the lon
g walk back to the beach and it had all seemed perfectly simple then: the boy was not dead; there was no crime to answer to: she could go home and he—

  —well, he had not got that far.

  ‘Are both those fish yours?’ he said quietly.

  Sensing that something had gone out of him, Selen wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. Her wet cheeks gleamed in the firelight. She risked a glance at the northerner, but his eyes had gone hooded and dark and she could not guess his thoughts. Instead, she took a breath and met his enquiry direct. ‘I— No. Take one if you wish to. I thought you would have eaten something in the town.’

  Erno removed one of the loaves from the sack and hacked a large piece off it with his belt-knife. ‘Here.’ He handed it over, his eyes averted.

  It was a peace offering, of a sort. He could not think of anything else to say in the face of her distress. Why did everything always turn out to be so much harder and more complicated than you’d imagined it would be?

  Selen took the bread from Erno and felt him blench when the tips of her fingers brushed his palm. Even so, he still would not look at her; indeed, was making a very great effort to stare fixedly at the ground, the fire, the fish: anything that did not involve making eye-contact. I have to save myself, she thought. But I do not know how with a man like this. She gazed at him wordlessly, taking in the anxious lines furrowed deep into his brow, the bunch of hard muscle at the jawline. Conflicting emotions warred inside him: that much she could tell. He did not want to be responsible for her, but innate decency was making it hard for him to carry through an abandonment. He cannot even look at me, she thought. Does he hate me so much? Perhaps I should tell him— She felt her self-pity rise up again, the tears pricking at her eyes, and her mind flew wide. Now was not the time: in his volatile state he might panic and simply leave her anyway, knowing she would have no choice other than to go home and throw herself on the mercy of her father. To distract herself as much as him from this line of thought, she blinked hard and then, gesturing at the provisions sack, said in as steady a voice as she could muster: ‘Is that a chicken I can see?’

  Erno forced a laugh. ‘It is, but it will stay fresh enough till tomorrow if I leave it in the tideline.’

  ‘Leave it in the tideline and the crabs will have it.’

  ‘That would be a waste.’

  ‘Give it to me and I will roast it now.’

  ‘If I give it to you, you will simply fling it on the fire, gizzards and all and we shall have a hen that’s black on the outside, red on the inside and painful bellies for a week!’

  She shrugged. ‘They do not teach us the way of these things in my country.’

  ‘You have seen me prepare a bird a dozen times and more, and have learned nothing. It’s as if you would have me be your slave!’

  He spoke more angrily than he had meant to, but he saw her draw herself up to meet his attack.

  ‘It is not my fault that I was born into the nobility and have not acquired these skills. I am doing my best to learn, but it is hard when you are always so impatient.’

  Clenching his jaw in case he said something more he would regret, Erno took the chicken from the sack and went down to the water’s edge to clean it. When he came back, he found that she had eaten both fish and the rest of the loaf and was looking up at him with huge round eyes.

  ‘If you want a mackerel, I can go back and cast the line again,’ she said guiltily.

  Erno looked skyward and mastered his temper with difficulty.

  ‘Why don’t you boil some rice?’ he suggested at last, and when she looked helpless he sighed and retraced his steps to the sea with the cook-pot in his hand. He would speak to her again in the morning. Things would seem less hopeless after food and a good sleep. In the light of day, she would surely see the impossibility of the situation she placed him in, now that there was no need for his protection any more, no need for all this dangerous, mad subterfuge.

  Tomorrow would be better.

  Later, bedded down inside the shelter with his back to her and the sound of her soft breathing filling the dark space around him, he found he could not sleep a wink.

  Seven

  Illusions

  There was definitely something wrong with it. Virelai had thought it was the case the night before, but candlelight was fitful at the best of times and it had been difficult to be sure. Now, in the unforgiving light of a chilly Istrian dawn, there really could be no mistake. The skin between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand was starting to dry and flake off just as it had on his right hand a week or two ago, revealing an unpleasantly dull, chalky texture underneath. Unguents and emollient creams had ameliorated the damage on the other hand for a while, but eventually he had had to resort to an obscure renewing spell, dragged forcibly out of the cat, which had seemed to be rather too much enjoying his plight and had played very hard to get. Now the skin to which he had applied the spellcraft was just a half-shade too pink, too ‘alive’ where the rest of him was so pale; though it was unlikely anyone else would notice while the affected areas remained small. But if this kept happening, he would look like a patchwork quilt before long.

  Was it his diet that was causing this curious effect, he wondered; or perhaps the stress of using too much magic? It might just be that such a long exposure to Istrian life was proving too rich for his palate, for the Master had never bothered to teach him the use of spices or those combinations of herbs with which the southerners flavoured their food when he had taught him the basics of the culinary arts. His fare on Sanctuary had been dull indeed: he could make unleavened bread, boil roots and turnips and those rather scrawny chickens that Rahe had conjured out of the air and tasted barely more substantial. The Master had never been very interested in food: indeed, he had seemed rather uninterested in most things by the time Virelai had left the island, letting things go to wrack and ruin, or even smashing them quite deliberately to pieces. Most things: but not the Rosa Eldi, a creature Virelai had come to hate in these past few months. They had enjoyed a complex and difficult relationship whilst they travelled together, though if he had been unable to profit directly from her charms, he had certainly ensured that others had paid over the odds for them. But now she was free and he was labouring under the yoke of a cruel new master, driven to produce ever more demanding sorceries in the name of the man’s unswerving obsession . . .

  He sighed, and turned to look for the cat. He would need to speak a few words over his flaking hand if he were to stop the progression of this new disorder.

  But of Bëte, the beast in which Rahe had stored a large number of his most important spells, there was no sign.

  ‘By Falla’s fiery quim!’

  It was the worst curse he knew. If Tycho Issian heard him utter it, he would be punished most severely. But the Lord of Cantara was still closeted with the girl Virelai had provided for him the previous night: he would not be abroad for an hour or more yet. Life here in the castle at Forent under Rui Finco’s regime was one of discreet debauchery, for the lords, at least. Even the cat seemed to get up to no good; for although it was not allowed to stray beyond the tower, still it managed to discover and murder a remarkable number and variety of smaller beasts. So far, Virelai had been gifted with – or perhaps tormented with was a more accurate term – several families of mice, laid out in neat rows; a pair of lark’s feet, complete with hooked spurs (but no lark: that had obviously proved too tempting a morsel); three fat rats; a pigeon bearing a message coiled around one grey-pink leg; and once, rather alarmingly, a half-dead rabbit, which had sprung disconcertingly to life when Virelai had reached a hand to it. Where the cat had come by these new acquaintances, he had no idea. Mice and rats infested every keep; and the pigeon must foolishly have landed on the sill of the window. But a lark? A rabbit? These were creatures of open farmland, of which there was precious little in the vicinity of Forent Castle.

  The message had been interesting, though.

  Consisting of an unhelpful length
of thin twine tied into a combination of knots and twists and strange little curlicues, it had taken him several days to decipher and appeared to have something to do with the fact that a plan had gone awry and that a shipman named Dan, or something approximate, had disappeared.

  Virelai had no idea why this Dan was so important that his absence had to be reported by messenger-pigeon, but perhaps he should try to find out. One thing he had learned in these long months out in the world of Elda was that information could be as valuable as silver, women, ships; or any other tradable object.

  He went to the window and leaned out over the dizzying precipice beneath. They liked to build high in Istria, it seemed: the tower-room he had occupied in the great castle at Cera had also been lofty. But where the view from the window at Cera had been one most pleasing to the eye – parklands, woods and formal gardens all dappled with sunlight and caressed by gentle breezes; milling streets and markets ablaze with colour and buzzing with the noise of all the folk running around below him just like little ants ferrying their supplies to and fro – the prospect here at Forent was quite another matter. All he could see from this north-facing window was rock and sea. And a lot of sky. And all of these were grey. A thick mist had, as was quite common in this goddess-forsaken place – rolled in off the Northern Ocean, melding all three elements – solid, watery and ethereal – into a single monotonous blur. He hated this view; had hated it from the first day he had been incarcerated here. It reminded him too much of Sanctuary, with its grim ice cliffs and frozen gardens, a landscape rendered in a thousand shades of grey. A more poetic man – or one who had travelled more widely and had a greater ability to make comparisons – might have discerned an extraordinarily subtle palette of blues and greens and purples in that scene: but until he had fled the place, Virelai had never seen anything beyond the Master’s icy hell and loathed that too heartily to be bothered to find any poetry in it.