Chapter 52

Chapter 52

By the end of the first day, Angharad would have been willing to fight another gray mirror for the prize of never again having to ride a coach.

It was no reflection on the coachman, a grizzled old woman who knew the country roads like the back of her hand and drove to Chalcia – the town nearest to the Eirenos estate – at least twice a week. It was the roads themselves that were devil’s work, the quality having wildly dropped a mere two hours out of Tratheke and never daring another swing upwards from there. It was as if someone had built a trail entirely out potholes and loose stones, occasionally throwing in some rain damage just to keep the coachman sharp.

Angharad, damned by deception to remain inside the coach instead of sitting on the bench outside with the driver, spent the day being treated like the insides of a saltshaker.

They stopped for the night at an inn within a roadside village, for though a large Glare lantern hung at the front of the coach it was meant for use only if they were caught out in the dark. Angharad felt at once tired and restless, so she decided on stretching her legs through a small walk around the nameless village while Mistress Katina secured their rooms and meal.

She limped around for a quarter-hour, contemplating mud streets and a surfeit of cabbage fields. Was cabbage so profitable as to warrant entire fields being sown? She’d had no idea. By the time she returned a warm meal was ready and she sat with her coachman, making idle conversation over profoundly average cabbage soup.

Admittedly, she should have seen the latter coming.

Mistress Katina had done business with the Eirenos for decades, she learned, having been known to Lord Cleon’s father the Lord Artemon. While not overly familiar with the Eirenos themselves, she had from a distance seen Cleon grow from a child to a young man and seemed fond of him in an abstract sort of way. As one who had regularly passed through Chalcia during decades, she was also a font of gossip about the noble house.

“His mother, Lady Penelope, she was from a fine family out east and she liked horses,” Mistress Katina said, lowering her voice as if confiding. “The good lord Artemon bought a herd after they wed, said they’d breed and sell them, but the land’s poor for it and half the horses died of sick on the second winter. They say belts tightened at the Eirenos manor after that.”

Horse breeding could be a lucrative trade, Angharad knew – some noble houses in southern Malan made a fortune off supplying the royal army and izinduna with warhorses – but it was not something that could be attempted lightly or half-heartedly. Buying several breeding pairs would have been a heavy expense for a small noble house. The finances of her own House Tredegar would not have been able to bear such a burden even though Mother’s foreign ventures had made them wealthier than most their neighbors.

“Lord Cleon seems to have led the house to recovery,” Angharad tried.

He had been finely dressed on every occasion they met and not treated like a beggar lord by his fellows.

“He’s a steady one,” Mistress Katina approved. “After Lord Artemon passed, they say Lady Penelope fell deep into grief and her young one had to handle the servants and rents on his own. By the time the Lord Rector recognized him as Lord Eirenos he’d been doing the work for two years already.”

Titles were formally inherited at sixteen, here in Asphodel, which meant Cleon Eirenos had begun running his house at the tender age of four and ten. It was impressive of him, Angharad thought. No wonder he had attracted a spirit’s interest enough for a contract to be offered. Song and Maryam clearly believed this Odyssean to be sinister, but Angharad disagreed. It was a spirit as spirits had been since the Old Night, harsh and bloody and never to be trusted too closely.

The notion that some spirits were trustworthy was what Angharad took exception to.

Fed plenty gossip and soup best complimented as being of the appropriate temperature, Angharad retired for the night in the rented room. It was clean, if cramped, but exhausted as she was the Pereduri would have fallen asleep on stone. The innkeeper woke her an hour before daylight began, providing an offering freshly baked bread deplorably accompanied by further cabbage soup. Simmering overnight had not improved its taste or texture.

A surprise came when she was told that the mail rider come overnight had left a package for her, however, paid for by sender. She opened it and found that a certain ‘Lord Allazi’ was allegedly returning her hat to her. His lordship’s handwriting was remarkably similar to Song’s, which had her retiring to her room to put the hat away in her traveling chest while Mistress Katina finished feeding the horses. Door closed, Angharad discovered that inside the round-crowned, short-brimmed gray felt piece there was a discreet black lining with a folded paper tucked inside.

She teased it out, learning after opening that that Song believed the Eirenos might be in possession of ancient royal property that could shed light on the nature of the spirit contained in the empty layer. Angharad was requested to find out if such property was truly in Eirenos hands, and to obtain it if she could. Both requests were suborned to the necessity of maintaining her cover, which Song stressed was more important than any short-term gain. She was then bid to burn the paper as soon as feasible.

The noblewoman promptly fed it to her room lantern and joined Mistress Katina in the coach, keeping her thoughts off her face.

None of her assignments ran, strictly speaking, contrary to the duties of a guest. To find out if he had any knowledge of the shipyard entrance – however indirectly – and tease out any involvement with the cult of the Golden Ram were no breaches of guest right. Neither, arguably, would be inquiring after old family history and treasures. Yet it could not be denied that Angharad had been invited in good faith and would repay this with petty sneakery.

No, she reminded herself. Not so petty, save what she committed on her own behalf. To learn about the roots of a rampant spirit, to investigate the good name of one who might be a cultist, these were not unworthy things. They only felt so because Angharad was used to attending as a guest, not a watchwoman. For a noble guest to spy would have been dishonorable, but for a rook it was only her duty.

Save, of course, for one part: the dishonor she had brought with her, the liar’s deal taken. It was tempting to tell herself that looking into Eirenos knowledge of the shipyard would also aid the Thirteenth’s investigation, but it would have been half a lie. Even if there had been no use at all for the test she would have asked. Was it dishonor, to pursue a private task while undertaking oathsworn service? Some scholars of honor would say so, that to dilute service was to destroy it, but Angharad was not so sure.

If getting her answers did not war with the higher duty...

The coach shook her out of her thoughts, quite literally, as it hit a pothole and Mistress Katina cursed most uncouthly. Angharad groaned, stretching out her aching back and resisted the urge to lean forward and bury her face into her bag. It would crease her only traveling dress and it would be a tedious chore to straighten it out when they stopped for the night. How long had it been since they left the town, a few hours? Let it be at least that, the day was stretching on most intolerably.

When the coach kept on inching forward at a crawl after that bump Angharad swallowed a second groan, for that seemed to her the herald of a wheel in need of changing – or, ancestors forbid, a whole axle – but the coachman did not stop outright. Frowning, Angharad reached for her traveling bag and prudently grabbed her pistol and a hunting knife borrowed from the Black House armory. The former was already loaded, and with it in hand she drew back the carriage drapes and peeked out.

Ahead of them were hilly woodlands with the dirt road slithering through a dip in the heights, tall fig trees casting shade on white bindweed flowers. Just before the road went into the hills, though, was a crashed carriage – it must have had at least four horses, by the looks of the harness, though there was no trace of them. Two wheels had come off, snapped, and it lay tipped over on the ground with a wall caved in and merchandise spilling out. Barrels and crates, bundles of cloth with glinting contents.

Two men in hunting coats stood by the wreck, one rummaging through a crate while the other kept watch. And at the latter’s feet Angharad saw a corpse – not that of a man but a beast, a thick-furred lupine felled by a hunting spear still lodged in its side.

“Mistress Katina?” Angharad quietly called out. “Why do you hesitate?”

The old woman leaned past the edge of her bench, her grimacing face cast in shadow from the lit lantern at the front of the carriage. Lit for the forest crossing, Angharad idly guessed.

“We’re still too close to Tratheke, my lady,” she said. “These are the Lord Rector’s woods, which means these are no hunters.”

“Poachers,” Angharad immediately grasped.

A plague on any noblewoman’s forests. Llanw Hall had been thin on trees, and thus such troubles, but she had sat at her mother’s table while some of their highborn neighbors complained of such lawbreaking on their own lands. And while Angharad was not sure of the punishment for poaching on Asphodel, even less so when poaching in royal land, it was sure to be unpleasant. These men might well see them as witnesses to silence.

“Is there another way to Chalcia?” she asked.

“Not without risking the gullies, which is treacherous traveling,” the coachman said. “It is too late, besides. They’ve seen us.”

Mistress Katina spoke true, for the poacher who had been keeping watch now walked away from his confederate and towards them, down the dirt road. He had in hand a musket loosely held – no, not a musket but a fowler. Slender, of smaller bore, but quicker on the shot as was needed to clip a bird’s wings.

“Ho there, on the road,” the dark-haired man called out. “Who goes here?”

“We may have to pay them off, my lady,” Mistress Katina murmured. “Let me do the talking.”

Reluctantly, Angharad nodded and withdrew. She mostly closed the drape, leaving herself just wide enough an opening to be able to see through and aim.

“Katina of Teon’s Hill,” the coachman called back. “I am headed for Chalcia, down the road, with a guest but no goods. I want no trouble.”

The man laughed.

“Neither do we, good woman,” he replied. “We were only passing through when we saw the fallen carriage and came to look for survivors. All hands lost, it seems.”

“That lupine your work, then?”

“It was,” the poacher agreed. “Waiting there, though there was no corpse to feed on and hardly any traces of blood. A passing strange accident, this.”

“No business of ours,” Mistress Katina said. “We are headed north and have no time for distractions.”

“Then by all means,” the poacher said, “be on your way.”

Through the slice of room she had left, Angharad saw the other poacher had abandoned his inspection and ripped his spear out of the lemure’s corpse. Precaution or preparation? Her fingers tightened around the pistol. Keeping it at the ready, she leaned to the side and blindly began digging under the bench. There the saber Uncle Osian had gifted her lay hidden. She set it over her traveling bag, in easy reach, as the coach began to advance again.

Five feet, ten, twenty – the poacher kept pace with them on the side of the road, the dark-haired man with poor teeth smiling all the while. It was the movement from the other one that told Angharad everything she needed to know. The second poacher, with his spear and knife, moved to get in the way of the horses with his spear at the ready. Horses, unless trained otherwise, did not charge into spears. Mistress Katina’s aging plodders did not strike Angharad as having been raised such.

The coachman had a musket of her own, and Angharad heard it getting cocked, but then the smiling poacher was flanking her with his fowler. Smaller bore or not, that gun would kill.

“Might be you’ll get me, but I’ll bring one of you along onto the Sculler’s boat,” Mistress Katina harshly said. “And then who will help the survivor carry the loot? Let’s settle this with coin, boys, parts ways bloodless.”

“There’s no need for blood,” the smiler agreed. “My oath to Oduromai King, you will leave with horses and coach and traveler.”

The other one laughed, as if there was some sort of private jest.

“We’ll only take everything else,” the first poacher continued. “Don’t make this ugly, old-timer.”

Angharad breathed out, closed her eyes.

(Angharad Tredegar grabbed her saber and pushed open the door on the smiling man’s side, jolting him in surprise. The pistol shoot took him in the head, pulping red, as the coachman leveled her musket and unloaded in the other’s belly. He fell screaming. A shot from the edge of the woods, the hill to the left, and a furious red-haired woman charged out with a smoking fowler as the coachman slumped dead on the bench and the horses went wild.)

“It will be an evil eye on all of us, if you push this,” Mistress Katina insisted, “it’ll only-”

Angharad grabbed her saber, tucked it under her arm and pushed open the door on the smiling man’s side.

“I’m not your handmaid, girl,” the old woman grunted. “You’ll wait until I’m good and-”

“There’s a satyrian in the woods,” Angharad hissed. “Get on the carriage now and get those horses running.”

Angharad had killed a satyrian before.

Only she had done it down in the Acallar, when hale and with three other Skiritai with her. She’d also watched one tear through a triad of young Skiritai like they were made of paper, and that one hadn’t dominated other lemures into following it. It all made sense suddenly, the lack of bodies and the lupine that had stayed there even though there was nothing to eat. Strange behavior for such a beast, unless it was made to by something it feared.

They were clever, satyrians. Clever enough to use a wrecked carriage as bait for further travelers.

The coachman was no fool, immediately scrambling for the bench, and Angharad went with her. She would not wait in that cabin to die while the lemure picked off the horses and driver. The horses were still harnessed, thank the Sleeping God, and Katina whipped them to a gallop the moment she had her seat. Angharad, nestled next to her on the cushioned bench, bent back to look at lemures with her pistol in hand.

The satyrian had seen them move, felt their fear. It followed merrily, sending the lupines howling ahead like they were trained hounds. They weren’t, Angharad knew. She had made study of these beasts, learned that they often beat and spared lesser lemures to use them as chaff and bait – that the lemure they faced in the Acallar was less dangerous than those in the wild, for it stood alone. But those lesser beasts would only follow the satyrian as long as it was stronger, and turn on it the moment it was not.

Which helped nothing when the lupines shot towards them like arrows and their master followed behind with a leisurely, leaping gait.

The coach barreled down the forest road, Katina tanning their backs so they did not flag in the gallop, but the lupines were catching up – that damn road was kicking their wheels back and forth, and Angharad saw on the coachman’s face the terror that a wheel would come off and leave them to the mercy of the lemure. She turned, spun a glimpse, and leaned past the edge of the bench.

A little to the left, she adjusted after missing in the glimpse, and caught the leading lupine in the chest. It dropped, falling in the undergrowth, and the other ducked out of sight with a howl. More howls came from the distance. Ancestors, how many were there? Still, nailing one should have – the shallow glow of satisfaction winked out when she saw the satyrian bounding forward, leaping over a fallen tree, and she realized she had been baited again.

It had been waiting for her to shoot.

And now it was closing the distance, Angharad fumbling to reload her pistol – only the powder charge she’d brought spilled out of her fingers when the carriage hit a bump and she cursed, because that was her only reload.

“Mine, girl, take mine,” Katina hissed, pressing the musket on her one-handed.

In her eagerness to take it she dropped the pistol, which fell into the undergrowth, but the satyrian was so close now she could not spare a moment to –

(She aimed, holding the musket as she had seen Song do a dozen times, and fired. It ducked to the left, its leaps almost mocking.)

(Ducked down.)

(Ducked to the right.)

(Left, coming so close that-)

It was following the angle of the muzzle, she realized, it understood what the gun was. It was too clever. Fear rising, Angharad looked back at the bench for anything she could use – and slipping past a blanket her eyes fell on the lit lantern hanging there. The Glare oil lantern.

(Angharad snatched the lantern and tossed it at the satyrian. It exploded in a burst of pale light, bright and blinding, and)

And ancestors damn her, she was just as blinded in the glimpse as the satyrian. Looking through her own eyes, how could she not be? The lantern wouldn’t help, it wouldn’t –

“Oh,” Angharad Tredegar breathed out, fingers closing around the lantern and ripping it off the hook.

In a glimpse, she saw through her own eyes. But not in a vision, where saw outside of herself as if a third party.

Her eyes fluttered, the sound of panicked horses and the smell of burning oil replaced by salt and the quiet lapping of the tides, and she saw. Saw how it moved, where it moved, and remembered it perfectly because when she used her contract she was gifted such recall for a day.

The lantern hit the ground, Katina shouting in dismay, and Angharad did not open her eyes as she aimed the musket and pulled the trigger. The kickback struck her shoulder, hard enough for a grunt to slip past her lips, and she felt the tongue of fire spit out a bullet into the blinding light-

She opened her eyes, spots still flecking her vision, and with a swell of triumph saw the satyrian stumble.

Angharad had wanted the knee, but she would settle for the leg she had it. It opened its torso-maw, revealing rows of jagged teeth like curved goat horns, and screamed in hatred as it tried to hop and found the shot lodged in its leg something of a hindrance. Ichor dripped down its fur.

“Choke on it,” Angharad shouted back. “And let us find out how loyal those lupines are, now that you are bleeding.”

Howls filled the woods again, but this time no shiver went down her back. Why would it?

Of the two limpers in these woods, she was the one moving the fastest.

--

It was the better part of an hour before they were out of the woods, far enough out on open ground they were sure they would see an ambush coming.

Only then did the coachman let the horses rest, Angharad stepping down from the bench and not faking in the least when she collapsed. The older woman hurried to help her back up, and the Pereduri noted with faint amusement that she was now ‘my lady’ again instead of ‘girl’. Well, she would return Mistress Katina’s courtesy in kind. After that race, it would feel petty not to.

As she sat on the coach’s steeple, drinking from a waterskin, it occurred to Angharad that she owed her life to Maryam Khaimov. To the other woman’s curiosity, to be precise. Had the signifier not so thoroughly explored the boundaries of what glimpses could do before beginning the same work with the vision, Angharad would have never thought of the difference. Not in a hundred years, with that fear in her nose and her blood running cold.

“Another debt for the pile,” she murmured.

One she had little idea how to repay. It seemed to her that even when Maryam claimed to be taking payment, it was Angharad who benefitted most from it. She got back in the carriage, Mistress Katina informing her they would press on another quarter-hour at a quiet pace then rest the horses by a stream where they could drink their fill. Angharad returned to sit on the bench outside while the coachman settled her mounts, murmuring comforts.

“A satyrian, this far out?” Mistress Katina deplored. “It is the bad luck of a decade, my lady. I’d heard the rumors, but I would never have thought it truly got this bad. Not even out of crown land yet!”

“The rumors?” Angharad asked.

“Some sort of petty god is said to be making a mess in the hills up north,” the coachman said. “Driving lemures out of their usual hunting grounds. It is making the roads unsafe, and the lictors are doing dust to take care of it.”

Oh? That sounded to her like the trail of the Eleventh’s exorcism contract. It had not occurred to Angharad that strange rituals and apparitions would ripple out in such a dangerous manner, but thinking back now it should have. Their instructors in Teratology all insisted that nature was as a chain, that no link could be taken out of it without changing the whole.

“I thought the lictors patrolled the valley often,” she said.

“The last three years maybe,” Mistress Katina shrugged. “Not that it’s helped any – the clever beasts don’t get caught by twenty armored men making a racket. And no one wanders the deep hills, my lady, there are graves there best left undisturbed. Word is some fool stepped on the wrong stone out there and now the whole valley is paying for it.”

The last few years, Angharad thought. How long had it taken for House Palliades to refurbish the shipyard? It must have been years. Had it been the labor of Evander Palliades’ reign to do so, or begun when his father still reigned? Surely the Lord Rector’s regent would not have done it, for if the shipyard bloomed it might well doom Apollonia Floros’ cause. Still, only three years? That seemed a small time for such a grand achievement as restoring the work of the Antediluvians.

Perhaps it had begun earlier but more quietly, enough that the patrols hiding the supplies being brought in were not easily noticed.

“-ike that.”

Angharad blinked.

“Pardon,” she said. “I was lost in thought. What did you say?”

“That I understand why they say Lord Cleon took to you now,” Mistress Katina said. “I haven’t met many who could make a shot like that, much less off the back of a rolling coach. You must be a fine huntress.”

“Fortunately, the lantern blinded it,” Angharad demurred.

The older woman looked skeptical.

“As you say, my lady,” she finally replied. “Still, you must have been a regular terror before whatever wasted your leg.”

The noblewoman looked away, pressing down on her grimace. She should be pleased that the deception was holding, not aggrieved at how closely it still hewed to the truth. They departed again soon after, at a sedate pace so the horses could gain back their strength. They arrived slightly late to Chalcia for it, after night fell, and the last stretch was treacherous: the only lantern they had to replace the one Angharad had thrown was smaller, and not Glare oil.

It barely cast light ahead of the horses, leading the wheels to seemingly seek out every hole on that accursed road. Would that Song was truly the Lord Rector’s mistress, for surely she would not tolerate such abominable traveling conditions.

The innkeeper waiting for them began to chew them out for arriving past dinner, but Mistress Katina whispered a few things and suddenly the man was all commiseration and reverence. Angharad grimaced again, for the last thing she needed was a reputation in these parts. She was to slip in and out with as little notice as possible, a simple disgraced foreign noblewoman from the Isles who would decide she was not fit to be courted by Lord Cleon.

Not to worry, Angharad thought. When a coach was sent from the Eirenos manor tomorrow, she would depart far ahead of any rumor spreading.