“That so?” asked the Great Wolf, considering her with his bright, wet eyes.
“Her name’s Seff.”
Calder sat up, looking sharply over. “Huh,” grunted Stour. “That was my mother’s name.”
“Good sign, I guess,” said Greenway.
“It’s just a fucking name, fool. I’ve heard tell you can see things, Seff from up near Yaws.”
She glanced around the hard faces in the room. No one could’ve looked more terrified, and Clover didn’t blame her. “Well… sometimes I do… I reckon…”
Calder sank back with another great snort of contempt, made his son bare his teeth in frustration. “What do you see?”
“One time, I saw the village burning,” said Seff from up near Yaws, “and the next day men came, and… well, they burned the village.”
“Saved everyone, then?”
She swallowed. “Well, no, ’cause no one believed me.”
“Guess that’s their fault, eh?”
“I reckon…”
Stour sat forward. “You heard there’s a witch down in Uffrith?”
“The Dogman’s daughter?” Seff from up near Yaws nervously licked her lips. “I heard she’s got the Long Eye. Got it real and true, like back in the Old Time. Heard she can see what a man’s thinking. Heard she can stay dry in the rain ’cause she knows where all the drops’ll fall. Heard she’s got everything that’ll happen written in a golden book and all she has to do is look it up so—”
“That’s all shit!” barked Stour, straining forward with the veins bulging from his neck, making everyone in the hall jump. “But she can see things. She saw where my sword would be. Only reason I lost that duel.” He got up, pulling that fine wolfskin cloak about him, the point of his sword scraping on the old stones as he stepped down from the dais. “If she can see things… I need to see things, you understand? So tell me…” Stour stopped in front of Seff, the hall all quiet. “What do you see?”
“Nothing,” she whispered, shifting from one bare foot to the other, staring down at them all the while like she was hoping if she couldn’t see Stour he wasn’t actually there. “I mean… you can’t force the Long Eye to open.”
“You can’t?” hissed Stour, leaning close and making her shrink away. “Or you won’t?”
“I’d help if I could, but I don’t know how.” Her face crushed up and her voice got higher and higher. “It comes when it comes. I just want… to go back to my children.” She closed her eyes and squeezed tears down her cheeks, and Clover winced and turned his face away. “Please don’t kill me.”
Stour frowned then, and he put a finger under the woman’s chin and tipped her face up, so she had no choice but to look into his eyes. “Is that what you think o’ me?”
She stared at him, gooseflesh on her arms and her shuddering breath echoing around the hall.
“Look, I’ll confess I kill folk,” and Stour nudged at the bloody straw on the floor like he was trying to hide the stain. “But only when there’s something to gain by it. I kill folk who wrong me. Who stand against me, like that shit in the cage over there and his fool of a chief. I don’t kill folk who do what they’re told. I’m not the Bloody-Nine!” And he gave that great hungry grin of his, which was anything but a reassurance. “Greenway?”
“My king?”
“Give this girl a coin and send her back to her children, eh?” Stour patted her face and wiped some of the tears away with his thumb. “You tried, didn’t you? That’s all I can ask. You see anything, you let me know, eh?”
She closed her eyes, and wiped her runny nose, and nodded, and Greenway led her shuffling out, and all the way, Clover was wincing, half-expecting Stour to run up and stab her in the back out of pure meanness. Maybe he would’ve, too, if someone coming in hadn’t caught his eye.
They called him Dancer on account of his slick way of moving, but there was naught graceful about him then, edging around the doorway, trying and failing to be one with the shadows. There was a certain look messengers got when they had news the Great Wolf wouldn’t want to hear.
“Dancer!” called Stour. “You’re back, then.”
“Aye… just got here…”
“And? What did Oxel say?”
Dancer crept out to that bloody spot on the floor of Skarling’s Hall, no more eager than Seff from Yaws had been. “Oxel’s dead.”
There was a silence. Clover heard his own breath as he sucked it in. The wind sighed cold through the high windows. The river whispered at the base of the cliff beyond. Then the Great Wolf showed his teeth, and caught a fistful of Dancer’s shirt, and dragged him close.
“He’s fucking what?”
“Caul Shivers killed him! Cut his head off in the Circle!”
“How’d that old idiot get himself in the Circle with Caul fucking Shivers?”
“Rikke tricked him into it!” squealed Dancer. Before Clover saw her with the runes on her face, he would’ve laughed at that. But he wasn’t laughing now. No one was. Specially not Dancer. “Well, she tricked him and Red Hat into it, then Oxel killed Red Hat, then Shivers killed—”
“Red Hat’s dead as well?”
“She’s took her father’s hall. She’s took her father’s land. She’s said Uffrith’s going its own way—”
“She’s fucking what?” snarled Stour.
And Black Calder burst out laughing. Started with a snort on his ale, then became a giggle, then a chuckle, and soon enough was a full head-back belly laugh. Wasn’t a sound you heard too often in Skarling’s Hall these days. Unless it was Stour laughing at something dead.
“What’s funny?” he snapped at his father.
“Far as the Long Eye goes, I’ve got my doubts,” said Calder, sighing as he stood. “But that girl’s got a sharp mind and a hard heart.” He waved over his shoulder as he headed for the door. “Let me know when you’re bored of ruining things. I’ll do my best to stitch ’em back together.”
Half-Treason
“I have been so looking forward to seeing you again!” said Isold.
Savine leaned close to touch the back of her hand. “I have been ticking off the moments.”
“I feel, since we were married together… we have a special bond.”
“Like the sister I never had.” The bland, talentless, uninspiring sister she never had and did not particularly want.
Isold gave Savine a shy smile, all freckly blush and eyelash. “Fedor was desperate to visit Ostenhorm. He thinks of you and Leo as our closest friends.”
Snakes have no friends. It made Savine wonder what Isher was really up to. Most of Angland’s serious business was done here in the Lady’s Chamber these days, between Savine and a few chosen people, on its carefully curated furniture in the light of its new, thoroughly modern windows. But just this once she would much rather have been on the other side of the connecting door, in the panelled gloom of the Lord’s Chamber, puzzling out how exactly Isold’s husband meant to take advantage of hers. She had never seen Leo so agitated as he had been waiting for Isher to arrive, limping up and down the lawn like a caged lion indeed. It had made Savine feel oddly excited herself, wondering if a splash of real politics was about to upset the placid little pond of Angland.