XIX. Cipher
BY MIDDAY, WORD OF THE DESERT-BRED’S BUTCHERY HAD SPREAD FROM THE FALLS GATE TO THE SALONS ABOVE HIGHGATE. MYKKAEL HAD always aroused stirring controversy. Sown in the wake of his discredited character, new rumours sprouted apace. Opinions were bandied about in the market, or across idle glasses shared in the wine shops. Conjecture turned vicious, until Sergeant Cade was forced to rein back heated talk in the garrison. For the handful who maintained that Mykkael might be innocent, others insisted his hand lay behind the abduction of Princess Anja. Men-at-arms voiced their outrage by chafing to join the Prince of Devall’s rabid man hunt.
The belief Mykkael practised dark sorcery was widespread, since the uncanny construct made of stakes and singed string had been found on the blood-soaked tourney field. Such lines had too likely been some fell snare, drawing men like live prey to their doom.
Above Lowergate, servants returned from their shopping agreed: the uncanny foreigner had surely been a paid conspirator all along. The misfortunate princess’s fate, at his hands, ranged the gamut, from a captive held for extortionate ransom, to a victim earmarked for torture to feed the dire evils of spellcraft.
The litters seen bearing up wounded and dead had quashed the last whisper of uncertainty. Through bloodshed and poison, one ditch-bred savage had just butchered a company of lancers. The Middlegate merchants who shipped goods to the southern coast aired their entrenched distrust of the Scoraign Wastes’ scattered tribesmen. Such creatures lived rootless as wandering beasts, with their singing shamans and queer fetishes and their clannish, uncivilized ways. As wealthy matrons gathered for their morning teas, the old tales resurged: yet no desert warrior in their husbands’ experience ever slaughtered as wantonly as this one.
Above Highgate, where discussion of lurid detail was considered unseemly manners, the privileged court ladies were compelled to react with constraint and circumspection. Taskin’s house staff was notoriously close-mouthed. With his stately wife departed for the season to the duchy’s lavish estate, social callers were firmly discouraged. Lady Lindya’s retirement to attend her father forestalled direct questions after the noon vigil held at the Sanctuary. Inquiries were pursued with gloved velvet discretion, until a court lady with a relative in the guard at last confirmed the sad news.
‘Yes, the vile rumours are true. The low-caste Captain of the Garrison has struck down a brave company of the king’s men-at-arms.’
Closest to the palace, Lady Shai affirmed, ‘Lord Taskin lies gravely wounded, and there were deaths among the guard. Since Lady Phail deemed the trouble too distressing for the king’s ear, the seneschal was forced to press charges for treason through the council, then call for the precedent of having Prince Kailen sign the death warrant on behalf of the crown.’
‘Four more companies of lancers have been commandeered from Captain Bennent,’ the guardsman’s relation ran on. ‘They are scouring the countryside for the fugitive, with assistance from Devall’s elite honour guard.’
Since the sorry affray was now public knowledge, the wife of a prominent high chancellor added in lisping sorrow. ‘Oh, yes, we have harboured the minion of a sorcerer, or his accomplice, all along. A dreadful tragedy, that Princess Anja should be taken by such evil on the eve of her formal betrothal.’
Her veiled face turned sideways to acknowledge Bertarra’s insistent question. ‘Indeed, Lord Taskin is far gone. Sadly, he may not survive.’ Commiseration followed for young Lindya, who had already lost her gallant husband to last year’s fever.
Moral duty demanded the charitable response. Of one mind, the court ladies gathered, bearing baskets of food. They assembled clean linen, helping hands, and cut flowers to ease the burden set on the afflicted.
Taskin’s house staff intercepted their offerings at the door, then dispatched volunteers to assist in the sickroom. The refined manners of Highgate did not condone uselessness. With cheerful good grace, the court ladies shouldered the unpleasant chore of cleansing and feeding the bedridden convalescents.
The Fane Street physician patted their ringed hands, and gave calm reassurance that the infirmity they witnessed would pass. One man had already started to stir, and required diligent oversight to keep him from mindless thrashing.
Lady Shai knelt at the tormented man’s bedside. ‘Here, let me,’ she murmured. Her violet eyes unflinching in kindness, she took over the physician’s place on the stool.
‘Bless your care,’ he said, grateful, and moved on his way to mix remedies.
Shai graciously nodded. She soothed the sick man’s flushed forehead with lavender water and made no complaint for the stains on her embroidered sleeves. Sessalie’s security had ever allowed such selfless charity to flourish. Wakened to threat by the loss of their princess, and now shown the first ugly casualties, the ladies of Highgate fought for their graceful lifestyle the only way that they could. They made themselves useful tending the helpless, and eased cruel infirmity and suffering.
Except for Bertarra, whose kin ties to royalty would bow to no living impediment. She brushed aside the importunate servants. Arms clasped to a gargantuan vase of fresh flowers, she barged up the stairs like a siege ram. There, she all but cannoned into the young guardsman posted outside Taskin’s bedchamber.
Her attempt to plough him aside met blunt force, and a farmhand’s uncivilized accent. ‘Woman, I don’t care blazing powers if you’re cousin to ten royal donkeys. You could be born marked with the trinity’s blessing, and not pass this doorway without Jussoud’s word, and Lady Lindya’s approval.’
‘Take your hand off my wrist!’ Bertarra bristled. She tipped her powdered face past the flame blooms of the lilies, and bestowed a withering glare. ‘Wrap a pig in a crown guard’s surcoat, he still stinks of the sty.’
Vensic returned his best imitation of Mykkael’s razor-toothed smile. ‘Dress a milch cow in jewellery, she’s still a cow. What’s your name, Bessie? Who shall I say’s come ploughing the gate?’
Bertarra blinked, stonewalled. ‘You insolent sprig! Move aside! Apologize at once, or I’ll see you publicly gelded.’
‘In a crown guard’s surcoat? Now wouldn’t that show set a farmyard precedent on the elegant lawns above Highgate!’ Vensic tucked her plump wrist back over the flower vase to forestall its alarming tilt. ‘Since I won’t apologize, and you can’t shove past, you need not threaten my bollocks, madam cow. Looking at you would dismast any bull who ever had the healthy urge to rut.’
Flustered to outrage, Bertarra flounced. The vase disgorged a dollop of chilled water, which slopped down her bulging cleavage. Her furious shriek all but cracked the ceiling’s antique plaster.
Brisk footsteps approached from behind the shut door. Then the panel snatched open, and Jussoud appeared, black eyebrows snarled into a frown like a stormfront. ‘You’ll be quiet, or I’ll come out with a gag. Choose which, lady. Quickly! My patience is spent.’
‘Jussoud, leave be,’ interjected a female voice from the top of the stairway. ‘Everyone at court knows it’s useless to thwart Lady Bertarra’s curiosity.’
The Duchess of Phail had slipped up from behind, discreetly dressed in robin’s-egg blue, with peacock feathers tucked through her netted white hair, and her leaning hands crossed on her cane. ‘Bertarra, please! Your noise is a trial to Lindya, whose child has awakened. One wailing infant cutting new teeth is quite enough to upset the peace.’
Bertarra flushed pink. While she shed her vase on a side table and routed the spill from her bosom with a handkerchief, Lady Phail tipped up her diminutive chin and cast her inquisitive glance over Vensic. ‘Stand aside, soldier. I promise to keep Lord Taskin undisturbed, and to answer to Jussoud’s instructions.’ Then, in polite expectation the young guardsman would yield, she called past the nomad’s obstructive form into the curtained chamber. ‘Lindya, let me spell you. Take your time, dear. Go on and wash up, and visit your son in the nursery’
Jussoud stepped aside, and Vensic backed down, clearing the doorway as Taskin’s daughter emerged, looking wan and transparently grateful. ‘My Lady Phail, you’re sent by divinity itself. I’ve left a bowl and a rag on the tray. Could you try and drip broth into Father’s mouth? He’s lost blood, and needs to take fluids.’
‘Out, Lindya, I’ll see to him.’ Without looking aside as Taskin’s daughter departed, Lady Phail added, acerbic, ‘Bertarra, the lilies look lovely right there where they are. Downstairs, the ladies are serving cake to the neighbours who have come asking for news. Your help would be greatly appreciated.’ With no further ado, the Duchess of Phail hefted her cane and pattered into the commander’s sickroom.
Bertarra craned her neck this way and that, to peer past Jussoud’s thwarting bulk.
‘Do you wish to follow?’ the nomad said, deadpan. ‘I could use assistance emptying the slop jar.’
Yet the late queen’s niece gleaned little from the dimmed room, beyond an uncouth reek of cedar smoke, and a pale and motionless form masked in tucked sheets to the chin. No bloodied bandages showed; no bustle of life-and-death drama. In fact, Bertarra found the astringent quiet of Jussoud’s management dull.
‘I’ve mopped up enough water already, thank you.’ After one scathing, last glower at Vensic, Bertarra beat a mollified course back downstairs.
Jussoud granted his Lowergate sentry a broad grin for diligence, then gently closed the chamber door to restore Taskin’s dignified privacy.
Lady Phail, in her inimitable way, could put Bertarra’s brash nature to shame. Her first, shocked assessment of the commander’s low state caused no hitched breath, and no outcry of feminine sympathy. She simply stood by the bed with closed eyes, perhaps recalling the exuberance of today’s stricken man, when she had doctored his skinned knees during boyhood. Then, in upright resignation, the duchess marshalled her poise. She checked the comfort of Taskin’s blankets and pillow, and assumed the lapsed duty with broth bowl and rag that Lindya had left in her charge.
Before the nomad could regroup and sit down, she demanded, ‘What can you tell me that might grant an opening to settle the seneschal’s hysterics?’
Jussoud blinked, clasped the palms he had scoured shiny from strong liniments, and tempered his chafing distress. ‘Nothing Lord Shaillon would regard as substantial. He’s not much inclined towards a foreigner’s opinion concerning Mykkael’s sterling character.’
‘The bright stars of your ancestry aren’t going to impress him,’ Lady Phail agreed with acute honesty. ‘Not that you would waste such an oath on the cause of this morning’s debacle.’
‘In fact, I do swear, and my oath is not wasted,’ Jussoud said, his scarce buried rage the surprise of a whipcrack unleashed across silence.
Rings sparkled to the bounding start of old hands as the duchess dropped the linen in the broth bowl. ‘Blinding glory, Jussoud! How can you demean the honour of your family name for the sake of a renegade savage?’
The nomad laced his strong fingers in taut effort to stay his explosive frustration. ‘Mykkael,’ he said, firmly, ‘is the most civilized man I have the privilege to know. He was to have married my sister, who is royalty. Before a misfortune ended the match, my clan viewed his suit favourably. By my word, as a legitimate blood son of Sanouk, your Taskin lies here through the fault of the council, and the impetuosity of the High Prince of Devall. They led the factions that forced your commander to undertake Mykkael’s arrest.’
Yet the duchess showed that strong endorsement short shrift. ‘Someone had to drag in that misbegotten desertman.’ The disturbed bowl resettled, and rag back in hand, she gently began to administer broth to the comatose man on the bed. ‘If Lord Taskin realized the degree of his peril, he was a rash fool not to delegate. The risks should have fallen to others who bear Sessalie less critical responsibilities.’
‘You don’t understand.’ Jussoud’s grey eyes shone fierce in the dimness as he, also, reclaimed the solace of work, and took up mortar and pestle to grind herbs for a poultice paste. ‘Captain Mykkael is the one grievously wronged. The sealed accusation for treason set a bind on the desertman’s honour. He had to choose between a lawful detainment that would assuredly see him condemned, and the freedom to act he dared not set at risk, to defend the life of Princess Anja.’
‘And her Grace perchance is still alive?’ cracked the duchess, no room in her grief for vain hope.
Jussoud spared her astute mind no grace of ambiguity. ‘Mykkael struck down Taskin upon that belief.’
The granddame who had succeeded Queen Anjoulie as mistress in the king’s bed weighed that startling viewpoint in silence, while the scent of crushed tansy wafted through the pungent smell of cedar burning in the brazier. Her voice was steel, when finally she spoke. ‘You’re suggesting I made a mistake to shield Isendon from the unpleasantness?’
‘Lady Phail,’ said Jussoud, his threadbare anguish revealed, ‘how could I presume? My word does not offer one shred of proof to appease the High Prince of Devall, or to sway the unsettled fears of the council.’
The duchess sopped more broth from the bowl. Her profile still recalled the sweetness of youth, as with tender patience, she nursed her unconscious charge through another lifesaving swallow. ‘The seneschal would not bend now for hard proof. Nor will the council risk the advantage to trade by leaving the high prince dishonoured and slighted.’ Her head turned. Blue eyes held the sorrow of hard wisdom as she said, ‘Time passes. The day must arrive when Sessalie’s welfare is no longer our burden, but our legacy. Would you leave Crown Prince Kailen the role of a child? Force him to back down from his first test of sovereign authority, and I tell you, the strength of his spirit will stay stunted.’
Yet Jussoud remained adamant. ‘His Highness can’t blood his sword on this peril. Do you know what we face? Have you words for the concept? Mykkael is the only weapon we have to stave off a cold-cast invasion by sorcery.’
Lady Phail sighed. Her aquamarine earrings flashed like iced fire as she raised her chin in staunch resignation. ‘If the tiresome strivings of politics matter, the king never came lucid this morning. I pretended otherwise. The implied threat, that his Majesty might intervene, was the only tactic I had to restrain the irate tenor of the council. If the High Prince of Devall and the seneschal had prevailed as they wished, Crown Prince Kailen might have received council endorsement to stand as legal regent of Sessalie.’
The duchess let that bald-faced effort to placate work through the widening pause. Ever tactful in aggression, she reached for a napkin and blotted an undignified dribble from Taskin’s slack lips.
Yet the nomad’s scorching rage failed to abate, a departure of shattering precedence.
Though mystified by his doomed loyalty to a murderer, the Duchess of Phail could not abandon her backbone of moral compassion. ‘If the king wakens tonight, I can ask his Majesty whether he’s willing to hear your appeal for the cause of Mykkael’s good character. Oh dear, Jussoud, no! This affray is too cruel to allow for such hope. I’ve known his Majesty since we were children together. He is not going to rule on this matter quietly. With eight guardsmen down, and one of them Taskin, I can already say that your desertman stands little chance of receiving a royal reprieve.’
‘Someone must try,’ Jussoud insisted. He broke off as a heavy tread approached from the corridor outside.
Captain Bennent’s bass tones carried through the closed door as he broke the morning’s ill news to young Vensic. ‘I’m sorry, soldier. I did all I could, but Jedrey’s been reinstated. Command of the garrison now lies in his hands, unless King Isendon reviews the case and countermands council edict. You haven’t eaten? By all means, go on down to the kitchen. My sword will guard Taskin throughout your absence.’
When the expected sharp rap demanded an entry, the nomad arose, wraith-silent, and lifted the latch.
Captain Bennent strode in armed in chainmail and sword, the immaculate gleam of his spired helm catching the slice of light through the curtain. His surcoat brushed the waxed shine of his boots, a sure sign he had come straight from the council hall.
The fresh pungence of horse wafted from him, regardless, ingrained in the stained saddle blanket draped in the crook of his forearm. ‘I need you to look at this,’ he announced point blank, and offered the item for Jussoud’s inspection. ‘The physician downstairs could translate the lettering. But the language as written was strange to him.’
Never one to be hurried, the nomad set aside his mortar and pestle. He flattened the horsecloth against his crossed knee, his eyes running down the fuzzed strings of characters under the glow from his brazier. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘The trapping came off the lance captain’s mount, recaptured at large in the countryside. The groom found the marks when he stripped off the saddle. As you see, the message was scrawled on the underside, where no casual observer would find it.’
‘Mykkael’s?’ Jussoud’s inquiry was sharp as he moved to the window, and widened the curtain to let in more light.
‘The physician thinks so.’ Armour flashed, blinding silver, as Bennent nodded to acknowledge the duchess. Then he settled with laced hands on the brocade chair, away from the rippling blaze on the hearth. ‘It doesn’t carry worked sorcery, so he said, since the talisman we wear doesn’t warm to it.’
‘This is no sorcerer’s line,’ Jussoud affirmed.
Bennent turned his harried glance towards the figure swathed in the bed. The face, with its imperious hawk nose and wide brow, remained still as a carved marble effigy. ‘How’s Taskin? No change?’
‘His pulse has strengthened, an encouraging sign.’ Jussoud stated without looking up. ‘The progress is slow, but we’ve managed to lessen some of the shock caused by blood loss.’
Bennent shifted his boots, distinctly ashamed for the haste that deferred the propriety of house stockings. ‘No wound fever?’
‘Too soon to tell.’ The daylight limned the nomad’s absorbed profile, and nicked leaden highlights through his jet braid. He shifted the horsecloth, and spoke at last, his heartsore regret leashed behind an unshakable dignity. ‘The message is Mykkael’s, and yes, I can translate.’
The desert-bred warrior he had embraced as a brother might lack birthright knowledge of the Sanouk royal ideographs, yet he spoke all three castes of Serphaidian dialect with native nuance and fluency. The words written here had been framed in that tongue, but marked in the phonetic characters used by merchants for trade correspondence.
Lady Phail broke through the conflicted pause. ‘Did Mysh kael send an appeal for a stay of clemency?’
‘He did not.’ Jussoud’s gaze stayed fixed on the cloth, as though the sight burned. Or else he still agonized over the script, stained into fabric with an ink mixed at need from blood and crushed charcoal. The eastern-bred nomad roused himself finally, shook his head, then resumed his lagged explanation. ‘By Mykkael’s strict code, he has not broken faith with King Isendon.’
‘Three slain lancers, and five others wounded would give that specious statement an argument.’ Captain Bennent jerked off his helm, worn ragged from battling unsubtle intrigue and the outcries of shaken chancellors.
The Duchess of Phail pressed the anxious question. ‘Presuming we aren’t being duped by a liar, what did the desert-bred send?’
‘Instructions. In depth.’ Jussoud gentled his wounding delivery as hope died on the old woman’s face: that the renegade captain had not, after all, delivered first news of the princess.
‘Just share what he says,’ Bennent barked, out of patience.
Silk shimmered in the draught through the casement as Jussoud closed his eyes and recited. ‘Mykkael warns that the balk of his capture will cause the sorcerers against us to unmask. We must prepare ourselves for attack. Devall’s enemies will most likely seek to unseat Sessalie’s crown at one strike. The common folk should remain unmolested, at first. Chosen targets will be King Isendon and his trusted circle of warded supporters, for the plot as it stands is spearheaded to unseat the crown quietly. According to Mykkael, the realm’s best chance, and ours, to bid for survival, is to withdraw to the tallest, most fortified stone tower, and to lay down drastic measures in warding. The particulars brought to our attention are precise, and clearly listed.’
The nomad smoothed the horsecloth beneath disturbed hands. When he steeled himself to confront Captain Bennent, his affable features showed fear. ‘Guardsman,’ he ventured in sober entreaty, ‘I beg you to take this advice seriously’
For the closing, scrawled line, now decently masked beneath the damp clasp of his hand, had used desperate words, couched in the most sacred privacy of the Serphaidian idiom. ‘Jussoud, as you read this, my breath as word, sworn under the sure vengeance invoked by the fires of Sanouk royal dragons: had Prince Al-Syn-Efandi done these few things, as advised by his vizier Perincar, he may have held out with his life. Willing servant, under the stars of your ancestry, consider my sword your right arm. After Isendon’s charge to safeguard Princess Anja, expect I will try to send help.’
‘Isn’t that nesting the good eggs in one basket?’ said the Duchess of Phail, smashing through tensioned silence. ‘Quite a risk, to place the king’s life at the bidding of a foreigner we have no firm proof we can trust.’
Jussoud strangled his rushed protest. Denied Taskin’s cool intellect, he must rest his appeal on the palace guard’s ranking captain. Yet hope crashed headlong. Through the experienced eyes of a healer, Jussoud watched Bennent weigh Mykkael’s warning, not as information dispatched at great risk by the hand of a hard-pressed ally, but coloured by the prevailing suspicion of outside blood cast as adversary.
‘Bad tactics,’ said Taskin’s second in command with the flint of a fixed decision. ‘We dare not hole up with the king in a tower. We’d just become sitting targets. What better way for a sorcerer to destroy Sessalie’s crown, than to mew up the royal defenders? If we didn’t die in the pre-emptive first strike, we’d be pinned down to starve in confinement.’
‘We’d stay alive,’ Jussoud stated in clashing reproof.
‘I will not see King Isendon held hostage on my watch!’ Bennent arose, resolved, and offered his arm to the Duchess of Phail. ‘Lady you’ll have my escort back to the palace. Please stay with his Majesty, as Taskin directed. I’ll be rearranging the guard and bolstering the noon watch.’ As he eased the old woman’s frail step towards the door, the guard captain issued his last order. ‘Jussoud? You are to burn that horsecloth, forthwith. Best not to take foolish chances.’
Left alone to guard Taskin behind the shut door, and bearing the distress of a loyal man’s earnest message, the nomad wrestled his shocked disbelief. The saving grace of this hard-won knowledge, wrested out of the ruin of a shattering past failure, had been repudiated at one stroke. The rejection begged a repeat of the tragedy that had once destroyed Mykkael’s life. Jussoud could have wept for the terrible irony. The desert-bred’s effort to settle in obscurity as a garrison captain in Sessalie had not brought him the respite of peace.
Lamed and alone, he would shoulder bad odds and strive under his oath of protection to another doomed king. And if he survived, and again he won through, his sacrifice would be wasted. He would live to see another royal family slaughtered, and a second proud princess reduced to a lifetime of purposeless foreign exile.
Jussoud stared straight forward, stunned beyond thought. First-hand, he had witnessed the horrific damage a sorcerer could inflict on the living. With the sight of a healer, he had looked into Orannia’s eyes. There he had sounded a madness of such scope, the dark depths would have shredded and drowned him. He masked his bleak fury, that he had renounced the way of the Sanouk warrior. Taskin’s helpless trust stung his heart like reproach, set alongside the lesser betrayals that galled like stuck thorns in the flesh: that Vensic had not been allotted due time to finish his meal in the kitchen, nor Lindya, to return from her promised leave to visit her child in the nursery.
Jussoud flung the horsecloth aside as though scorched, his anguished entreaty a whisper bent towards the commander laid out on the bed. ‘Taskin, my friend, you must waken and fight. More than ever, your king’s people need you.’
For the sorcerer who stalked Sessalie had been freed to step through the breach of a sheltered courtier’s rank ignorance.
The palace guard captain appointed for his staunch reliability under pressure now danced with a peril outside the scope of imagined precedence. Faced by the unknown, Bennent lacked the courage to grapple the shadows, where precepts of honour became entangled with the mercy of human integrity. So often, the still, quiet doubts of the heart became strangled as the rigid assumptions of law struck them mute.
In all of Sessalie, only Taskin had the tenacious perception to question appearances with unbiased strategy. His anxiety became a springboard for deeper thought. He mined fears for their hidden advantage. In daring to see past tried ground and experience, he accepted the pitfalls only as they became proven as facts. The flexibility left at play between mistrust and honesty had let him discern Mykkael’s unassailable character.
Jussoud took up the condemned square of horsecloth, and hissed a scalding oath through his teeth. Moved by the hammering force of his grief, he shoved to his feet, ripped open his satchel, and dug out his notebook of remedies. Then he took up stylus and ink. Before he enacted Bennent’s rash order, he committed the words of Mykkael’s scribed warning into Serphaidian ideographs. Empty-handed at last, while the flames in the hearth performed their voracious office, he busied himself with Taskin’s welfare, and took up the broth bowl and rag.
‘It’s tragic how the lack of imagination so often shapes our defeat,’ he confided, though the friend who languished near death on the bed was in no state to respond with his usual insightful rebuttal.