The Red Knight

‘Hetty, Crank, Larkin, with me. Hetty, if you don’t want the duty, don’t be so obvious about sneaking to the jakes.’ Bent glared at the youngest man in the tower room and then turned back to the captain. ‘That sufficient, m’lord?’

The captain didn’t know Bent very well – he was Ser Jehannes’ man – but he was impressed that his most senior archer would take the trick on the wall himself. ‘Carry on,’ he said coldly, and walked across the room surveying the piles of coins on the tables, and the dice and cards, as he did. He was pretty sure Ser Hugo would never have allowed such overt gambling. So he scratched his beard and beckoned to Bent.

The archer came up like a dog expecting a kick.

The captain pointed at the money on the main table. He didn’t say a thing.

Bent raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth.

‘Save it,’ the captain said. ‘Remind me of the company rule on gambling.’

Bent made a face. ‘Total value of the game not to exceed a day’s pay for the lowest man,’ he recited.

Two rose nobles gleamed up at the captain, with more than a dozen silver leopards and a pile of copper cats by them. The captain put his hand over the pile. ‘Must be mine then,’ he said, ‘I’m the only man in the company who makes this kind of money every day.’

Bent swallowed but his eyes narrowed in anger.

The captain lifted his hand, leaving the pile untouched. He locked eyes with the archer and smiled. ‘You get me, Bent?’

The archer all but sighed with relief. ‘Aye, Captain.’

The captain nodded. ‘Good night, Bent,’ he said, and touched the man’s shoulder, to say, And over is over, unless you dick up. He’d learned from experts, and he wanted to believe he was doing the captain thing well.

He walked out onto the wall, and there it was again – not the fear, but the feeling he was being watched. Scrutinized. He was ready for it this time, and he reached into the round room, and-

– there was Prudentia.

‘He is looking for you,’ she said. ‘His name is Thorn. A Power of the Wild. Do you remember how to avoid being found?’

He stopped to kiss her hand.

‘How do you know it is this Thorn?’ he asked.

‘He has a signature, and he has cast many times tonight, gathering allies. If you would pay attention to the Aethereal, instead of dabbling-’

He smiled. ‘I’m not interested. Too much like hard work.’

The door was open a crack. He often left it that way to give himself fast access to power, and tonight he could feel that searching presence through the crack in the door – more powerfully, if anything, than he had felt it on the wall.

Of course.

He continued past Prudentia and pushed the door firmly shut. The heavy iron latch fell into place with a comforting click.

North-west of Lissen Carak – Thorn

– the dark sun went out like a torch thrown into a pool.

He was disoriented, at first. The dark sun had dimmed and strengthened, dimmed and strengthened, and years of patient growth of power had taught him not to read too much into the fluctuations in power wrought by distance, weather, old phantasms that lingered like ghosts of their former powers, or animals who used power the way bats used sound. There were thousands of natural factors that occluded power the way other factors might affect sound.

In fact, he thought that the use of power and the movement of sound might usefully be studied together. The thought pleased him, and he spun off a part of himself to contemplate the movement of sound over distance as an allegory – or even as a direct expression – of power. Meanwhile, he sat and breathed in the night air and maintained, almost without effort, the chains of power that bound the trolls, and a third part of him looked for the dark sun with increasing frustration.

A fourth aspect considered his next move.