They sat in a simple room at odds with the elaborate decoration in the church beyond. Here were only whitewashed bricks but no mosaic work. A pair of couches, covered with wine-colored fabric and stitched with gold thread, faced each other in the middle of the room. An unexceptional table was pushed up against one wall; it held a burning lamp, a vase filled with dried stalks of lavender and a single red rose, a pair of lectionaries, and a forgotten goose quill caught in that slight groove between the curved edge of the table and the wall. Not one tapestry adorned the walls. These walls were as blameless as an unblemished calf being led to the slaughter. A lamp molded in the shape of a griffin hung from a hook sunk into a dark beam overhead. A brass lamp molded in the shape of a dragon remained unlit. A lamp burned over the door, flame twisting behind glass like the soul of a daimone bound into the body of a mortal man. Just so had Henry lived and died.
Hugh and Anne had both used her, of course. They had sought to manipulate her to do their dirty work for them without teaching her the sorcery they themselves knew. With knowledge comes power. But she had outlived them both—as long, that is, as Hugh was really dead. Anne’s demise she rarely doubted, but she still wondered about Hugh. They had never found the thirteenth skull.
Sanglant had escaped death at the hands of the galla. That meant it was possible to survive where the galla stalked.
“He is dead,” she murmured, trying the word on her tongue, savoring it but finding it bitter and unreliable.
Alexandros’ good eye studied her, then examined the chamber, the servants, the walls, and the lamps, each in turn, as if marking the position of his enemy before battle is joined. His gaze halted on the empress. The taut line of his mouth softened. Adelheid’s crown gleamed under lamp light. The gauzy glamour of the light made her look young again, particularly handsome this night, a gentle, pretty woman in need of a strong arm to hold her upright in stormy weather.
Like Henry, Alexandros was a fool. So were all men.
All but Hugh, now that she thought on it. Hugh had never desired Adelheid. Yet Hugh had been a fool like all the others; he had only fixed on other prey.
As she must.
Alexandros spoke. “Who is most dangerous to us, in the north? It must be Sanglant, the king. If Wendar is strong, then Wendar threatens us. If Wendar is weak, they will not attack us. Already we must guard on our south against the Cursed Ones. On our east, against the Jinna. I say: kill Sanglant, and we are safe a while from Wendar.”
“It’s said he can’t be killed,” said Antonia, “although I’ve never believed it.”
“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.