In the Ruins

“Henry believed it,” said Adelheid. “He spoke of it often. He bragged of it. How could he have loved that one more than the others? Well. Maybe it’s true, but we must still try. And what of his wife? The sorcerer, Liathano? Isn’t she dangerous?”

“Liathano!” Alexandros nodded vigorously. “The prince’s concubine. She who is named after the Horse woman who cannot die.”

“How comes it you have heard of her?” asked Antonia.

He smiled, taking his time, and answered. “We are allies for a time with King Geza of Ungria. He took Princess Sapientia as his wife.”

“She was married to Geza’s brother, Prince Bayan,” cried Adelheid. “Henry would not have liked that! A naked grab for power!”

Alexandros chuckled. “We are all naked, Your Majesty,” he said in a way that made Antonia wonder if she ought to trust him less, or trust him more.

The words made Adelheid laugh. She drank her wine.

“This one, called Liathano,” continued Alexandros. “At her we strike, if the man stands beyond our reach.”

“Tempting,” mused Antonia. “She is powerful. It isn’t likely we can harm her.”

“What harm to try?” demanded Adelheid. “Strike there, and you weaken Sanglant. It is only a few galla.”

“What harm except to the men whose blood must be spilled to call the creatures out of the Pit,” said Antonia with a frown, not liking the empress’ levity. “If we kill heedlessly, our own people may turn against us.”

“There are guilty aplenty who have earned death,” said Adelheid.

“And many innocent who deserve life,” said Alexandros, “but are dead.”

The fool believed in innocence, no doubt because he must believe his wife and children stainless although every Arethousan was stained by their heretical beliefs. It was only remarkable that God had waited so long to castigate them.

“Your Majesty. Lord General. I am willing to act against the one called Liathano. But what does it benefit us to kill her, beyond the satisfaction of revenge?”

Adelheid shook her head. “Revenge is satisfaction enough! Reason enough! If Sanglant cannot be killed, then kill what he loves best. Send galla. Send spies. Send what you will. But if she is dead, then he will suffer as I have suffered. That is good enough for me.”

EPILOGUE

FROM Gent, the king and his retinue rode to the northern sea. Just as the young guardsman had reported, the shoreline was substantially altered. The river had lost its path to the sea and now spilled into a vast expanse of marsh where once it had pushed through in a double channel emptying into the wide northern waters. The shoreline, according to a pair of locals who guided them, had actually receded, leaving the seabed exposed and sandy flats scoured by the winter winds, casting sand inland in great stinging storms.

“After the tempest,” said the spry crone whose commentary Sanglant found most reliable, “the river ran backward, and eddied, for a fortnight. There was flooding upstream. Yet water will flow north out of the southern hills. Now, you see,” she pointed at the expanse of flat ground cut by ribbons of trickling water, “how it is clawing a hundred finger tracks to the sea.”

They stood on a bluff overlooking what had once been the deeper, western channel. Its exposed troughs had only a trickle of water pushing through them. The rest of the ground was slick with rocks and water weed, and littered with the skeletons of a half dozen sunken, battered ships. Here and there he glimpsed what might be bones tumbled every which way. A vast, rusted chain snaked across the old channel.

Liath was exploring through the muck below with Sibold and Lewenhardt in attendance. They were laughing at something Sibold had pried up from a muddy hole, but he couldn’t see what it was. Liath straightened and looked up toward him, lifted a hand to acknowledge him, and went back to her excavations.

Sanglant wandered along the bluff, marking where unknown folk had built and later abandoned two ballistae.

“I wonder,” said Hathui, who remained always at his side, “if these are the catapults used by Count Lavastine to break the Eika fleet as it escaped out to sea.”

“Lavastine? This is not his county.”

“He was with King Henry, Your Majesty, when the king brought an army to retake Gent.”

“Of course. I recall it now. His heir …”

He paused, remembering with unexpected clarity that awful moment at the feast held to celebrate King Henry’s victory at Gent over the Eika chieftain, Bloodheart. After gorging on food laid out before him, he had had to bolt into the darkness to empty his stomach. He had been, in those days, little better than a prince among dogs, half wild, barely conscious of his human mind. Lavastine’s son had come to him at the edge of camp, and Lord Alain had treated him gently, with respect and kindness, so that he did not feel shame at his condition. He touched the gold torque at his neck, where once an iron collar had chafed him. “As long as you wear the collar at your neck, then surely you will not be free of Bloodheart’s hand on you,” the young man had said to him.