The Wheel of Osheim (The Red Queen's War 3)

“I’m going to get drunk tonight.” Darin stood. “We never saw the best of that man. Maybe our sons will never see the best of us. I’ll say a prayer for him, then drink a drink.”

“I’ll join you.” Martus got to his feet. “I’ll drink to Uncle Hertet taking the forever nap before the Red Queen quits the throne. Christ, I’d see Cousin Serah take the crown before that old bastard.” He slapped his hands to his upper arms. “You’ll join us, Jalan. You’re good at drinking at least.” And with that he set off down the steps.

“Steward.” Darin bowed to the palanquin, put a hand to my shoulder, then followed Martus.

• • •

“How stand our defences?” Garyus’s voice emerged from behind the curtains. “The west wall is crumbling. Sections need to be underpinned. The suburbs need to be burned and razed. Martus’s men are bored and picking fights with the guard. We’re short a hundred crossbows and half our scorpions are in want of maintenance if they’re to fire more than twice before breaking. Grain reserves are a third of what they should be. Apart from that we’re fine. Why?”

“You’ve looked at the figures?”

“Some of them, certainly.”

“Ghoul sightings inside the city walls in the past four days?” He’d picked one I actually noticed when Renprow pushed it across my desk. “Uh, three, then seven, twelve yesterday, another dozen or so came in this morning before I left after lunch.”

“They’re scouting us,” Garyus said.

“What?” I leaned forward and pulled his curtain aside. He looked like a monster in his shadowed den, an unwell monster, pale and beaded with sweat. “They’re scavengers, half-dead corpse-eaters following the riverbanks. There have been dead floating downstream for weeks—some army of Orlanth laying waste in Rhone.” I wondered if Grandmother would be clogging rivers with dead Slovs before the month was out.

“Have you mapped out the captures and the sightings?” Garyus asked.

“Well, no, but there’s no pattern to it. Except more by the river than anywhere else. But they’re everywhere.” I tried to see it in my mind. Something about the picture I came up with worried me.

“All over. Never the same area twice?” Garyus looked grim.

“Well, occasionally. But not often, no. Once the guard see them off they don’t come back. That’s a good thing . . . isn’t it?”

“It’s what scouts do. Checking for weakness, gathering information to plan with.”

“I should go,” I said. “Had reports of corpse attacks in the outer city.” It was the ones within the protection of the city walls that worried me most, but the recent messages spoke of a rash of attacks coming quite suddenly.

I made to turn away but something glinting on the palanquin’s floor caught my eye. “What’s that?” I leaned forward and answered my own question. “Pieces of mirror.”

Garyus inclined his head. “The Lady is trying to open new eyes in Vermillion. She knows my sisters are coming for her—perhaps she’s desperate. I hope so. In any event, I advise against using any mirrors. A handsome fellow like you shouldn’t need to check his reflection—that’s a pastime for us ugly people in case we forget our appearance and get to thinking that the world will look well upon us.”

“I gave up mirrors a while back.” A shudder ran through me: too many glimpses of movement that shouldn’t be there, too many flickers that might have been blue. “Your sisters have left us to find the damn woman but what’s to stop her stepping out of someone’s looking-glass and murdering the lot of us while they’re gone? Not to mention that the ghoulproblem hasn’t gone away. Grandmother said that was a distraction to keep her here. Well she’s gone now . . . but we’re still finding bodies missing—dead ones and live ones. I don’t like it. Any of it.”

Garyus pursed his lips. “I don’t like it either, Marshal, but it’s what we have. I’m sure my twin has left enchantments in place to close this city to the Lady Blue—at least from physical intrusion. She learned that lesson at a very young age. The rest of it is for us to take care of.”

I sighed. I would have rather heard a comforting lie than the frightening truth. “Duty calls.” I glanced down at the Black Courtyard, preparing to go. The yard stood clear now of all but a few mourners, the clerics set to watch the pyre burn down, and of course Garyus’s guard. The air above the embers rippled, reminding me of how Hell rippled when too many died at once and their souls came flooding through. I stared at the hot orange mound and through the heat shimmer I caught sight of a figure approaching. I watched, uncertain of what it was until it rounded the fire and I saw clear.