A Lady’s Shield Part Eleven

There was, for a brief time, a renaissance of hope. Even in a land blighted by civil war, people still found occasion for laughter, and in the days after the Phoenix declared for Iceblood, a certain giddiness filled their followers.

After all, what could go wrong? They had magic and legends among them. Common men marched beside names they’d only heard in tales: the Shang Fox married a village girl who crowned him with bluebells. The Eagle and the Grasshopper moved from place to place, teaching rudimentary strategy and whatever weaponcraft could be passed on easily and quickly.

But there were others. The Adder grimaced at the rough huts he had to sleep in, and slapped an old wisewoman who smeared a poultice on his silks. For all her sweet face, the Kitten would not touch anyone who was not scrupulously clean. Others, too, bridled at the careless familiarity of allies, some of whom had been their servants – or were still their families’ retainers.

A tinge of dissent, of disgruntlement, was woven under the laughter and the hope. Insidious, it spread like a shadow.

In love and dizzied by it, the Phoenix did not notice. And if Iceblood thought the nobles cold, then they were not the first such he had encountered. Nor did he possess the familiarity and knowledge to sift the complex politics of the Shang.

They had become legends so easily. But they were still human in so many ways: a girl in the flush of first love. A man better-suited to weapons of war than double-edged words and the clever games of courtiers.

No surprise then, that they did not note the absence of their detractors. Shang were prone to wander, after all, born to it: to feel the rough cast of everchanging ground and sleep beneath a different sky each night, whether their pillow was feather-down or grass.

It never occurred to anyone that their loyalties might travel as far as their feet.

Dissent spread like a shadow: and was subsumed by the king of shadows, poised upon his dark throne.

~*~

“Where are we going?” the princess asked between gasps as Ryan dragged her at a near-run through the city.

The streets were narrower here, the houses leant upon one another like drunken men. High walls kept the sun at bay, and if she could not hear the effluvium sloshing in the street, the reeking air certainly gave it away.

“Somewhere real,” he answered curtly.

“What do you mean, ‘real’?”

He stopped and faced her. Even in the gloom, there was no denying the clear light of her eyes, the steady gaze of someone who had never truly known fear or despair, who had never sunk to the basest level of themselves in order to survive.

“Somewhere where your face an’ your name won’t save you,” he said quietly. “Where it ain’t like a game, where you’re not just a princess slummin’ it for a day. This city was built on blood an’ grief, paved with it stone by stone. Until you see what that means, you ain’t fit to rule a country.”

“I don’t think you’re in any position to tell me what I am or am not fit to do,” she said frostily, drawing her coldness up around herself as if it were armour. Possibly it was. But it was no match for his anger.

“I’m in exactly the position!” He stepped close to her, taller, intending to intimidate her. “People like me – the lowest o’ the lowest, the vermin in the gutters – we’re the ones who need you most. We need the good rulers an’ the strong ones, because we ain’t got no one else to fight for us.”

“You?” Her voice vibrated with incredulity. “You don’t need anyone to fight for you!”

She really believed it. It was her innocence that shocked him, absurd beside that hardness that she had cultivated in herself until she was brittle and glassy as a lady’s trinket. Under all those barbed remarks, she was just a girl who’d been sheltered from a world she wasn’t meant to see.

But she needed to see it nonetheless.

Gentler, Ryan turned his arms again, reminding her of the scars there. “I don’t now. But I was lucky. I had someone who dragged me out o’ the gutter. She wouldn’t let me die there. I would’a, though, if she hadn’t come. I were a broken thing – barely human some days, when the hunger were chewin’ me up from the inside out, an’ my fingers were too cold to thieve.”

He didn’t like to think of those days. They seemed little more than sour smoke, clinging to him only in scraps. Faces became one endless blur – all he could recall clearly, too clearly, were their eyes, which were unchanging, like a glimpse into the same ravenous abyss.

He’d done things he wasn’t proud of. Some he’d been forced to. Some, he’d gone to because it was money or shelter or a few minutes warmth.

Then Hana had come. Something in his hunched, scabbed form had stirred her, and she’d taken him away. Salvation had been her red hair, scandalously bright in a world of shadows, and her scoldings as she scrubbed him clean of mud and lice, and bawdy songs when he couldn’t sleep.

He still hummed those songs in restless nights. But even they sometimes failed to drive away the memories.

“You don’t know what you’ll do to live,” he told her, his eyes distant, old, bedevilled. “You don’t know how low you can go. You weep ‘cause you have to marry a man you don’t know. But I bet he’ll touch you soft an’ speak you sweet, an’ he’ll treat you like a person.”

“Yes,” she whispered, fixed upon him as if in awe or horror or some brew of the two.

“Then you mark me good,” he said. “Because where we’re goin’, there ain’t much human left.” His smile was crooked. “An’ I called it home once.”

She reached out, and her fingers clasped his briefly. The touch startled him, and maybe it startled her as well, because Kalasin drew back suddenly, flushed.

“I’m frightened,” she said.

“Then you’re learnin’,” he answered, but when he led her down to the slick, stinking docks, he kept close by, because her confession had touched him. And perhaps because everything in her eyes was opposite to what waited for them there, what he had seen in every face all the squalid days of his childhood.

~*~

The stairs creaked as they climbed them. The smell of mildew hung all about the place, a dark festering hovel that hunkered on the very edge of the river as if waiting to topple in. The first three people they had asked for La Bruja had scuttled away without a word. The fourth had let out a little cry and would have followed suit if Davir hadn’t grabbed her so quickly that her heels skidded on the cobbles.

And so they had come here.

Andrea stared at Davir’s broad back and hoped he knew what he was doing. This part of the city was new to her – entirely different from the poor but lively haunts that Ryan had shown her. No one here smiled or jested: even the sunlight seemed to shy from the grey-green slosh of the river, the decrepit houses, the thin shadows of people who flinched back from them.

She’d thought the docks were full of trade: and so they were, but it was the trade of life for anything offered, bargains struck in desperation and pathos.

No one had tried to rob them. No one had tried to sell them anything. All seemed shrouded in despair, and it struck a cold terror in Andrea that she had never thought she would feel again.

It reminded her too much of the life she had left behind, of those last days in the village waiting for the whisper of the noose.

At the top of the stairs, the door was open. And from it, a low, husky voice said, “You’d best come in, my fine lad, and be sure to scrape the mud from your boots.”

Behind them, the splintered door slammed shut, pitching them into darkness. She could not stop her gasp.

Silently Andrea begged Davir to refuse, to go, to be wise.

“Tell that little golden girl she’ll be safer inside than out,” the same smoky voice said. “The shadows have teeth here.”

“Davir...” she whispered.

“I must see her,” he said quietly. “Although...I could wish I hadn’t dragged you into this.”

She wished it too. She wished Ryan were here, to crack jokes and draw his knives so that she would feel safe. But he wasn’t – and wasn’t she one of Mithros’s chosen, wasn’t she supposed to be a warrior in her own way, feeble as that might be?

Andrea tried to swallow her fear. But as she followed him up, her hands fumbling blindly along the walls, she could not stop shaking.

~*~

The nameless wanderer drifted through the streets, his movements grace and hunger combined. His eyes were dazzled by the colour and sound and texture of this place, so different from the still, silent dark where he lay for aeons. Every breath was flavoured with the city, every movement hindered by this bustling, thrumming crowd of creatures who had no idea that death slid through them like a viper.

When a hand touched him, that small, careless gesture made him stop and gasp, intoxicated by the feel of skin on skin. Until he was nudged on by muttering people, too busy to stop and look at him as more than an annoyance.

Their heartbeats sounded in his ears. Their blood sang to him.

He was so hungry.

But none of them were what he sought. That flame burned in the distance, and he followed it, his mouth dry with anticipation.

Innocence, slick in his throat, soft between his teeth. He thirsted to possess it in every way possible, to be subsumed by it until he was no longer dark and empty and ravenous.

The nameless wanderer drifted towards the docks, ready to kill.

~*~

“Justinian,” mused Raoul. Hooves clattered on the ground, mingled with the silvery jingle of armour and weapons. They were making good time: Greendell had been within a day’s ride from Corus, and even their detour to fight those strange creatures had not taken them far from the main road. The wounded had been left in the village with enough men and mages to protect them while the rest of them rode for the capital.

The Shang Stormwing would have been left behind – indeed, should have been left behind – if not for her cool insistence that she was not theirs to command. She had gone so far as to purchase a horse from the villagers, who had undoubtedly charged her a massively inflated price from the scowls and surly comments they muttered at her back. Thus provisioned, Raoul had not been able to convince her to remain.

“But if there is so much as a whisper of trouble,” he warned her flatly, “I will not risk my men for you.”

Her smile had been cool. “You will not need to. I am quite capable of handling any trouble.”

The remark might have had more effect if Kel hadn’t seen her tiny grimace of pain as they set out. Her wounds must have hurt, even atop that placid mount, but the woman kept her face fixed in a blank mask. None of the men spoke to her after the first was rebuffed with a flat stare, and so she journeyed alone even in a mass of people, her isolation surrounding her like a cloud.

“Can it be true?” Raoul continued. “It sounds like a child’s tale.”

“True or not, it means trouble,” remarked Buri. “We have invaders in our lands – does it matter whose name they march under?”

“Not really,” the big knight admitted. “But it’s a puzzle, and I’d rather think about that than what His Majesty will say when I tell him he has yet another battle on his hands.”

“Hmm. Well, I’ve never heard the name.”

“I have, but only in a history lesson.” Raoul frowned. “And that was a long time ago. But we have younger minds among us. Kel?”

She dug into her memories for the pieces of those lessons, which seemed ages away: out here, under the sky, the walls of a classroom seemed incongruous. “He was known as the Shadow King and his reign was one of the bloodiest in our history. He was intensely paranoid – he won the throne in a civil war that divided the country, and he won it despite the fact he despised mages and the Gift, but ever after, if he so much as suspected rebellion, he would scourge that area of the land. He used torture freely: he burned men and women and children alike because he claimed the flames would purify them.”

“Sounds charming,” Buri muttered grimly.

“But even though he hated magic,” she said slowly, recalling the teacher’s slow, placid speech which had made even such a lurid period of history dull, “he used Immortals in the civil war. He caught them in traps and then broke them so they would be obedient. He turned them on his enemies – tame, mad things that could withstand magic. His reign lasted for over fifty years and then he vanished one day. People literally woke up and he was gone. Some people thought the gods had taken him away to punish him. Others thought he’d fled because a genuine, strong rebellion had begun to form against him and all his burning couldn’t destroy it. But no one really knows. So...I suppose he could be alive,” she said doubtfully.

It didn’t seem likely though. Only gods and Immortals could live so long. Men had no such privilege, and she wasn’t sure that was a bad thing.

“You suppose?” The Shang Stormwing’s voice cut across them like a blunt axe. “Has your land forgotten the truth of him? Justinian dealt with demons. Every soul he burnt was a tribute to them and his reward was a deathless existence.” She spat on the ground. “Such is the price of ambition.”

“Demons,” Buri said with raised eyebrows. “Stories, nothing more. Our understanding is that this man, this monster hated magic.”

Her laugh was husky and contemptuous. “Stories have their birth in truth. He might have hated it, but that doesn’t mean he would hesitate to use it. There is power in blood and death and pain, and our tales say that he craved power more than anything.”

Before the debate could become an argument, Raoul cut in. “Either way, if someone is raising a banner in his name, we can be sure they won’t have much in the way of mercy. The sooner we get back, the better.”

Buri nodded at the horizon, and Kel was relieved to see the bulk of Corus rise the distance, faint and grey at this distance, but at last within sight. Her spirits rose and as the rest of the company saw, their pace picked up, their news driving them onwards like a fey breeze.

The Shadow King. That dry history seemed far too relevant now: she shuddered, and prayed it was not so.

~*~

La Bruja, they called her, and this was her den: a cramped, reeking little room lit only scantily by candles and thin threads of daylight that trickled through the gaps in the thatch. Strange paraphernalia littered the room: stones, string, a snakeskin flung over the back of a rickety chair, what appeared to be a browned bone. Only the woman herself was invisible-

No, there she was - a curving shape in the shadows. Andrea strained to make out the face of Nina Burridge who had made Hana weep so pitifully, who had made so many tremble at her name.

Then she slithered forward, and Andrea saw that she was a woman of no more than forty, but one hard-lived; her smile was all gum and blackened teeth, her skin pocked with marks. “Hello handsome,” she purred in a voice that was shockingly young and vibrant.

Davir smiled at her as easily as if she were a beauty in the Court. “Nina Burridge, I presume.”

“Presume a little more than my name, boy and I’ll settle a future on you to match your face.” Her gaze was avid. “I haven’t had a man like you in years.”

“And I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a little longer,” he said smoothly. “I’ve come to discuss the future.”

But her gaze had slipped past him, and Andrea almost cowered from the shrewdness and the coldness in her pale eyes. “Well now,” she breathed. “What a lovely bit you are. So much power there...what I’d give you for a taste of it.”

Unable to speak, she only stared back, prey. Then Davir stepped in front of her, and his protectiveness made her glad.

“Give her peace, that will be enough,” he said with his familiar acerbic tone. “I am the one who has come to deal with you.”

La Bruja chuckled, a sweet sound, but oddly sinister. “You have nothing I want.”

“I need my future told,” he said firmly.

“Aye, boy, that’s what you want. But this is about what I want, and what I want is her.”

She felt a chill go through her. There had been a brief, savage hunger to Nina Burridge’s face in that moment.

“I will pay you handsomely,” he persisted. “Whatever you want-”

“Her.”

“I have coin-”

“Her,” she repeated and there was a dangerous flatness to her voice. “That is the price of the future. Nothing else will satisfy me.”

For the first time, Andrea heard desperation in his voice. “I am not here on a whim. Our most powerful prophet sent me-”

“How thoughtful of him.” Her voice was mocking. “But I care nothing for your prophet – only for my profit, boy.”

He turned to her. His eyes were bright, vulnerable in a way she had not imagined he could be. “Andrea, I would not ask this unless I had to...”

She shook her head, terror welling up in her throat, pricking at her eyes. “No, not her.”

How young he seemed then – indeed, he wasn’t so much older than her, and he was afraid. It gentled that scornful mouth, took the poise from his stance. He reminded her sharply of Ryan, all edges and pride, wrapped up in finery that didn’t quite suit who he truly was.

“I must have her help,” he said softly. “I was not sent only to guard that infuriating, selfish princess, though that’s work enough for a lifetime. I was sent because our seers saw that there was something I had to do – something which might help avert disaster in Tortall.”

Her head whirled. “Does your Emperor care so much about what happens to us?” she said. After all, mere years ago, Carthak had been at war with them, and though everyone said that the new ruler was different, the dizzying change of politics seemed strange, unbelievable to her.

“Oh yes,” he said. “My cousin would have Tortall for his ally – though I’d rather he didn’t have that shrew for a wife.”

His disrespect made her wince. “What did they send you to do?”

He eyed as if he wasn’t sure of her – and then heaved a huge sigh, raking his hands through his hair. “I stole a nail from the Chamber of the Ordeal.”

Maybe she’d been around Ryan too long but that didn’t exactly seem the height of criminal activity to her. “Is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“And what’s that supposed to do?”

He shrugged. “That’s why I am here. To find out what I must do next.”

She licked her lips. “What…what is this disaster you’re supposed to stop?”

His breath brushed her ear as he leaned in. It would have intimidated her earlier, such nearness: now, she felt oddly comforted for he seemed real, solid, human in this strange place.

“War is coming. An army of monsters and the dead, roused by a man who should have vanished from this world long ago. If he succeeds, he will rule a land of shadows and endless cruelty – he will have screams for his music and brutality for his laws and no throne bar that built on the bodies of your people. His power is such that ordinary weapons will not harm him – but there is an entirely extraordinary power which is equal and opposite to his. That was the first step in waking it. It didn’t please the gods to show the seer any more.” He paused and said bleakly, “Or it pleased Chaos to keep us blind.”

With each word, her panic seemed to recede. She'd had a small taste of a place like that – and she had been lucky enough to be rescued from it. Knowing what lay at stake, even with terror cold in her heart, how could she refuse him?

Quivering, she stepped forward. Her voice was thin. “What do you want?”

Nina Burridge gave her ghastly, broken smile. “Oh, nothing too terrible, golden girl. Come here.”

She crooked a finger and Andrea could do nothing but obey. She tried not to recoil when the woman stroked her hair, murmuring, “Like sunlight, aye.” That grimy hand crept to her throat, and slid around it as if she might strangle her. “So much power.”

And then a knife was flashing towards her – Davir shouted, the sound a whipcrack, time slowing to a crawl as she stood frozen, unable to do anything-

Andrea shrieked at a hot, sharp pain in her arm. Stunned, she stared as blood dripped from the gash there into a bowl that the woman held out.

“You mad old hag!” the Carthaki snarled.

He wrenched her from that cold grip, stripping off his cloak to clamp it over the wound. Andrea let him tend to her, woozy. It wasn’t a deep cut, but she knew the shock of it was making its way through her body.

Nina Burridge was swilling the blood gently, peering at it as if it were gold. She glanced up almost absently at his harsh words. “I’d be careful of my words, boy. Mad old hags such as me have our ways of commanding respect.” Her eyes glittered. “Especially when I have such powerful tools at my fingertips.”

He was rigid with fury. “You have what you wanted,” he bit out. “Your price is paid.”

“A future, you wanted,” she said. “For yourself? I need some token of yours.”

He dug into his clothes: Andrea was unsurprised to see him pull out a nail. “Here.”

Her eyes narrowed. “An...unusual choice.”

“I am an unusual man. Get to it.”

“Don’t provoke her,” mumbled Andrea softly. “It didn’t help last time.”

Some of his tension vanished when he looked at her. “No,” he said ruefully, “it didn’t, did it? I am sorry, Andrea. I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

“Was that an apology?”

“Indeed.” He smiled wanly. “Keep it to yourself. I’m not known for them.”

“What have you brought me?”

Nina Burridge’s gasp interrupted them. Her face was beaded with sweat, her eyes glazed. She rocked back and forth, fingers clenched tight about the nail.

“You fool,” she breathed. “Do you know what you have unleashed? Centuries it lay in the dark, held only by the will of a broken man – and you have let it out again to devour us all! It must be stopped.”

“How?” he demanded, brusque, urgent.

A vast, shuddering breath wracked her. “I do not...I cannot...” Her back arched. “She must rise from the ashes, rise and burn again, or all is lost. Wake the phoenix, boy, call her back down the fiery path and make the old bargain, or we are all lost.”

She gave a cry and the nail clattered to the floor. Through strings of greasy hair, Nina Burridge stared out at them. Her face was terrible, twisted with fury, her eyes white and wild.

“You dare bring this to me,” she breathed. “Get out! Get out of my sight, you dog! You have brought death here, and I only hope that it will take you first and you linger long in its jaws.”

Power crackled in the air – deep red fire crackled about her, casting a ghoulish light on her. Her hands rose, threatening, and Andrea knew she did not have the strength to try and fight her.

“Go,” snarled la Bruja, monstrous – but under it all, afraid. No, terrified.

With no further talk, they obeyed, her words chasing after them like a riddle, a geas, a curse.

Wake the phoenix or we are all lost.

~*~

Kalasin was silent as he took her to the heart of the docks. When they came to a house with a red lantern flickering in its window, she made some sound of protest and he turned to her with his face grim and aged.

“You need to see,” he said quietly. “You got to learn.”

The proprietor licked her lips at the sight of their faces, and suggested the likes of them wanted the King’s Lay or the Pleasure Gardens. But his coin stifled her protests, and Kalasin shuddered as he took her into the heart of the house with its rotten floorboards and faint cries echoing from the rooms.

“How do you know this place?” she whispered as he led her through the narrow corridors.

He didn’t look back. “I used to live here.”

He felt her silence, shocked, repulsed, he imagined. But then her hand coiled around his, gentle, and she said, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry,” he said softly. The word was ashes to him, bitter, too late. “You want to see sorry, you open your eyes and look about you.”

As they entered the room, she gasped and her grip tightened.

The girl who lay in the bed was a wreck. There was no other word for it. The mattress was stained, the small window coated with dead insects. Her hair was tangled and begrimed, and if she’d had beauty, the pox had eaten it away to leave only hollows and scars. From the waist down, she was naked, her thin, bruised legs apart as if in offering, her lips slack and open in ghastly echo.

Her eyes were dead. No spark moved there: nothing but a void lay inside her.

“I knew her once,” he said. “She were a right beauty. Susie Starshine, they called her, an’ said she’d be the one to make it out’a here. Her hair were red like fire, an’ she had this laugh – all soft an’ smoky, it sent shivers down ye. She charged in silver, not in coppers, an’ each man swore she were the Goddess come to earth to lay with mortals so’s they could taste heaven afore they died.”

“What happened to her?” she whispered, gazing at that vacant face.

“She hated the work. She drank away her profit to make it all a mist, an’ then a day came when the drink weren’t enough, so she took powders instead until she were bright an’ addled an’ lively as lightnin’. But they weren’t enough either, so she took more an’ more until all her mind was eaten away by herbs an’ black magic. This is what’s left, an’ now they say she’s the Crone come to earth to lay with men an’ warn ‘em of hell before they die.”

He fell silent, remembering too keenly that girl he’d known, who’d radiated such hope, such joy.

“I still remember her laugh,” he said softly.

Kalasin shivered beside him. “I didn’t know.”

“No,” he agreed. “But this is what ye’d be if you were born here. An’ ye’d auction your beauty for silver like she did, ye’d try to forget like she did. This is what it means to be poor, my fine noble lady.” His voice was more hostile than he had intended, and she flinched from him. “This is what it means to be forgotten, to have nothin’ because ye’ve sold all you had to hungry strangers. She needed you when she were Susie Starshine, blazin’ in the dark, but you left her here, an’ she faded, same as any star.”

To her surprise, he went over to the girl and drew the ragged sheet up over her. She did not twitch; only the lift of her chest even indicated she lived. Ryan bent down and pressed a kiss to her sallow forehead.

“She were kind to me,” he said quietly. “She didn’t have to be. Even when she were drunk as a sailor, she knew how to be kind.”

He could not bear to remain any longer, and so he strode out with the princess trailing in his wake like a scented dream, a piece of the life that Susie Starshine had reached for so desperately.

When at last he was calm enough to look at Kalasin again, tears gleamed in her eyes. It roused him from the torpor he’d been sunk in, from the despair that had clung to him.

“Don’t cry,” he said gruffly. “Ye angered me. I...shouldn’t’a taken you there.”

Her face was pale, but resolute. “You should have. I didn’t know... That can’t continue. I won’t let it.”

He wanted to laugh at her naivete, but he found himself touched by it. “It will, but if ye can save even one person from that life, then it’ll be worth it.”

He didn’t look back: but as they left, he thought for a moment he heard a careless, merry laugh, glimpsed a flare of red hair. But Susie Starshine was nothing more than a husk, a memory withered into dirt and silence.

~*~

The nameless wanderer breathed in the scent: blood mingled with magic. Close, so close. The hunger rose until it was immense, sharp as a blade twisting in his gut.

The other was nearby too: he was torn by the thought of devouring them both, glutting himself on their sweet, bright power. He hesitated, but only briefly, then went back to his original quarry, her scent thick with blood, and luring him with the force of an enchantment.

Beautiful, deadly, he closed in.

~*~

They crashed out onto the street, Andrea clutching her arm and hauled along by Davir.

“Did you understand any of that?” she asked, letting him guide her along the waterfront. She still felt sick and dizzy, but the worst of the pain had subsided to a dull ache.

“No, but I have high hopes that your scholars will,” he said grimly. “Are you all right?”

She glanced at her swaddled arm ruefully. “I will be. I hope that knife was clean.”

“I very much doubt it,” he said sourly. “Let’s get back to your palace. I’ve seen enough of this fair city for one day-”

He ground to a halt, and she nearly stumbled over him in the process.

“What kind of mad mummer’s farce is this?” he breathed, and there was only blistering fury in his eyes.

Bemused, Andrea followed his gaze – and saw a figure she knew far too well. But why would Ryan provoke such anger-

Then she glimpsed the face of the girl with him: and there was no mistaking her, not when Andrea had seen her gliding across the Court every day. Even wrapped in simpler clothes, Princess Kalasin was striking.

Why on earth had Ryan brought her here?

She was left foundering as Davir strode over to them with such force she half-expected the ground to crack under his feet. His hand clapped onto the princess’s shoulders: she squeaked, Ryan drew a knife, and it was getting messy-

“Ryan, don’t!” hissed Andrea, scurrying over to join them. “He’s a friend.”

Davir didn’t look particularly friendly at that moment: the glare he turned on Kalasin was ferocious. “Have you lost whatever remains of your minuscule mind?”

She tried to shrug off his grip, to no avail. “Have you lost your sense of propriety? I am a princess.”

Out of her view, Ryan rolled his eyes.

“And I am your bodyguard!” he snapped back.

“Is he?” mouthed Ryan. Andrea nodded a quick confirmation, and he edged away from the pair of them. Whatever madness he’d suffered in bringing the princess – gods, the Crown Princess, who was second-in-line to the throne – clearly didn’t extend to wrestling fuming Carthakis.

“You are a nuisance foisted on me by a man who clearly has so little confidence that he must treat me like a pet dog!” Princess Kalasin spat, and wrenched one of his hands away by dint of digging her nails straight into the back of it.

Davir’s eyes were dark and cold. “Such caution is clearly justified. What on earth are you doing in the middle of the slums?”

Her cheeks were scarlet, she almost incandescent with wrath; her voice was contemptuous. “Visiting a brothel.”

That shut him up.

“You didn’t!” Andrea hissed at Ryan.

He looked guilty. Clearly, he had.

“A brothel.” Davir’s words were level and far too calm. “Princess Kalasin was in the lower city visiting a brothel. An idea as foolish as it is redundant.”

The Princess went white with rage. “Barbarian!”

“If that is your idea of civilization, I’ll accept the insult gladly,” he retorted. “Look about you! This place is dangerous. To go strolling about it is pure lunacy!”

“Oh, but it’s perfectly suitable for you to come here?” she fired back at him.

“I am not the second-in-line to the throne,” he said through gritted teeth. “I have neither fame nor fortune.”

Ryan snorted. “Aye, well, no one’d know that with them fine clothes. Ye think you’re any safer?”

“I am capable of defending myself,” Davir said mildly.

“An’ I’m capable of defendin’ her,” pointed out the street-rat. “I got blades. I got magic. Now, d’you want to tell me why you’re bringin’ Andi into such a damn dangerous place?”

For the first time, the harsh glaze in Davir’s expression faded to regret. “Because I was thoughtless,” he said, and there was a rueful note in his voice. With breathtaking speed, a knife glittered in his fingers then vanished again. “I had no magic to protect her. Today I needed it. You must be her partner in crime.”

Ryan eyed him warily, then he glanced at Andrea. “He all right?”

“I think so,” she said wryly. “He doesn’t put up with any nonsense.”

The thief nodded, then stuck out a hand. “Ryan Talver,” he said. “And I’ve never seen a noble use a knife like that. You got the scent of the streets about you.”

“Davir sin Porphyros.” He paused. “These days. When I was a child, I went by Davy One-Cut.”

The princess was staring at him in disbelief. “But you’re...you’re royal.”

“A very dangerous thing to be when Ozorne ruled,” he murmured. “It did me no favours. I lived in greater comfort on the streets than I would ever have done in the palace.” He surveyed her and said coolly, “And I know their ways well. Maybe next time you want to go roaming around the backstreets you’ll have the common courtesy to inform me.”

“You’d never let me.”

A smile hooked up his mouth. “Are you so sure?”

She stayed silent.

“I’ll strike you a deal, princess. I will keep my silence about this little trip, and I will even accompany you on further – expeditions.”

“What do you want from me?” Kalasin said suspiciously.

Davir’s smile widened until it curved like a crescent moon. “No more screeching. No more insulting the emperor until you’ve had the chance to meet him and can aim your barbs with a little more accuracy. No more sneaking off. I won’t even ask for courtesy.”

It wasn’t as though she had much choice in the matter, Andrea thought. But Kalasin was shrewd enough not to show it. “Very well.” She tossed her head. “Then I demand you escort me back to the palace. There is a grand masquerade being thrown tonight for some utter non-entity and I have no desire to miss it.”

“Oh,” Davir said mildly. “And no demanding, except in emergencies.”

She didn’t answer: instead, she stalked back towards the palace, trusting that they would follow her. Davir muttered something distinctly unflattering and followed in her wake like a stealthy, patient panther.

“Lass, your arm,” Ryan said, seeing it for the first time.

Now they were alone, Andrea had other things to consider. “Never mind that, Ryan, a brothel?”

“It weren’t like that,” he protested. “I wanted her to see...to see...” He faltered, and she glimpsed something new, and terrible in his eyes. Shame.

In all the time she had known him, Ryan Talver had been a maelstrom of emotion – bold and reckless and angry and anguished – but never that.

“I wanted her to understand that it ain’t no joke, bein’ poor,” he said quietly.

She didn’t pry. She was afraid of what she might unleash. “And did she?”

“I think so.” He swallowed. “Lass, let’s go. I don’t want to stay here any more. The longer I stay here, the more it seems like I never left, like all that other life ain’t nothin’ more than a dream.”

He was trembling, she saw.

“Come on then,” she said gently. She didn’t know what comfort to offer for his demons, which danced in his eyes with fervid glee, which fed on his fear and his shame and his horror. She had never seen Ryan with his defences stripped away – and such intimacy frightened her. So she stayed silent and followed out Daivr and the princess out of the shadows.

~*~

It hovered in their wake, drifting from darkness to darkness. Too much power protecting them now: it should have been quicker, but fear had made it slow. It remembered the last innocent, who had struggled so long in its jaws, who had so nearly overthrown it.

It would be cautious. For such a glut, it could wait.

Their words haunted it, filtering into sense as it slowly recalled language, which it had used once. Words were chains. Words were spells and vows and punishment.

And words were knowledge.

In its slow, predatory mind, a plan formulated.

Grand masquerade...the palace...princess...tonight

Words were knowledge. Words were secrets. Words were the way to its prey.

The young man smiled.

~*~

Very few people had unquestioned access to the King’s rooms. Roald, however, had the good fortune and the genetics to be one of them. So it was that he sauntered in, hastily brushing aside greetings and answers to the riddle he and Kally had posed, all mercifully wrong.

There were a few sideways looks as Neal accompanied him, but no one noticed Iceblood, who had slipped into invisibility with an ease that Roald knew he could never match. The signs were there for someone looking: a curious patch of space that drifted behind the pair of them, a crowd that parted without seeming to know what for. Not many among the court’s flock were so observant; its finer minds had better things to do.

Unsurprising then that his father’s first words were, “Roald, is there a reason why an invisible mage came in with you?”

“Er, yes,” Roald said, wondering where to begin.

Luckily, he was saved the job when Neal issued a sweeping bow and said, “Your Majesty, not only is he an invisible mage, he’s also five hundred years old.”

There was a hallowed silence, and then King Jonathan said carefully, “Please explain, Squire Nealan, and do so in a way that makes you sound slightly less demented.”

With barely a ripple in the air, Iceblood appeared. There was no trace of deference in those strange orange eyes, nothing but cool assessment as the man who might have been king and the man who was gazed at another.

“My name was once Faeleon,” he said. “And I threw away my kingdom for love.”

His father’s mouth quirked fractionally, though there was little mirth in his voice. “I very nearly made the same mistake.”

“It was no mistake,” the mage breathed. “I would have given the world to Justinian if only he had let me have her!”

“Her?”

Neal bowed, sounding nervous for once. “This, sire, is where it becomes a long story.”

King Jonathan nodded. His eyes were cool, ice to Faeleon’s fire. “Then I think we had better get started, squire.”

It was a good hour later before his father sat back, thoughts moving behind what Roald had always called his regal mask. That calm expression, offering no suggestion of his opinion, open to everything, trusting nothing.

“And you think this monster wants my daughter?”

“I think it likely. Her or the other – Andrea, is it?” Iceblood paused. “There is one sure way to capture it, if one of them will agree.”

“Bait.” His father’s voice was flat.

“Yes.”

“No. Not Kalasin. You may ask Andrea Kirisra if she is willing to help you, but I will not risk Kalasin’s life on a whim.” King Jonathan paused, and his eyes flicked to Roald briefly. He saw in them a certain amount of weariness, all his father would allow to slip past his guard. “In the meantime, I offer you the hospitality of the palace. You have guarded my kingdom well while you controlled the Chamber, and now you are willing to protect us once again.”

Iceblood inclined his head stiffly. “Thank you. It will suffice.”

In a swish of ragged cloak, he was gone. The doors slammed behind him.

“An extraordinary man,” King Jonathan remarked. Roald had the feeling it was not entirely a compliment. “I would dearly like to know who took that nail from the Chamber. No friend of ours, surely.”

Roald could only shrug.

“Is there anyone else who knows of this?” the King said quietly, his fingers drumming on the throne.

“No-”

“Yes,” Roald cut in quickly, shooting Neal an apologetic glance. “Pip knows.”

His father’s eyebrows raised. “Phillippa ha Minch? Why am I not surprised?” He sighed. “A sniff of excitement and that girl’s charging through the crowds to be part of it. If her father wasn’t so important, I’d have made sure she was married off long ago. As it is, her tie to the throne and that infernally large dowry are too valuable to squander just to keep her out of trouble.”

Pip was one of a horde of distant cousins: few noble families in Tortall weren’t related to one another, and the ha Minchi had numerous links to the Contés. A distant aunt of hers had been a queen long ago; her father owned vast tracts of land and was loyal to the throne, and one of her uncles was a key strategist and commander.

“It wasn’t like that,” he protested. “She was just there – she came to help me...” He clamped his lips shut. He hadn’t meant to reveal so much – that he had needed help, that he had been waging silent war upon the Chamber and all its fearful images.

“Very well,” his father said. Maybe he remembered his own experience with the Chamber:; either way, he didn’t pry. “Make sure she understands the importance of discretion.” A faint smile touched his face. “Perhaps the cover of a dance. That should keep anyone from wondering who our mysterious visitor is. I will ensure the right people know – and you, son, you can keep the wrong ones from knowing.”

Yes, he recognized his father the consummate politician. There was a definite expression of awe on Neal’s face, touched with respect.

He was careful not to show his own emotion, which was strange and wild at the thought of dancing with Phillippa ha Minch. At first he had been intrigued because her dreams were so fierce: not of men and kisses and moonlit walks, but of fighting and freedom and traveling. And even though he was a prince, and she was in no way suitable, he found himself wondering...

Part of him shrank back from those dreams, because a girl who was so intensely independent could no longer settle for something as ordinary as a kiss.

But a dance - he thought she might settle for that. It would be enough. It had to be.

A Lady’s Shield Part Twelve

Their names were a triad, never whispered in isolation once that war began.

The Phoenix. Iceblood. Justinian.

The first two were legends. But Justinian...his past was a maze, splitting in myriad rumours that turned and twisted and ended abruptly. Whatever truth lay in his core, it was well-guarded, shapeless, secret.

He loved fire, they said. When darkness fell, he was always found beside one, hands cupped above the heat. Its orange hues reflected in the strange, dark depths of his eyes; his fascination and his tool. When they brought prisoners to him, it was to the flames that he turned first: laying heat gently on their flesh, flicking the fire onto their hair, their skin, their lips, listening to the screams and the pleas with something close to ecstasy.

Under his half-closed eyes, his curling smile, his strips of cherry-red metal and his embers, men and women broke alike. So branded, they became his as surely as cattle. In the flickering light, he unmade them; when the flames were ash and only the acrid scent of smoke remained, he led them into the gloom and reforged them.

They came out changed. Shadows, men called them, not understanding how close they came to the truth. There was little pity for those shambling puppets who had no will left but his: such was war. And they were, after all, the perfect soldiers. In unison they would march, turn, stab, parry until the sound of their movements was the monstrous beat of an army.

If his followers took care not to look too long or too hard at those blank eyes, nor did they protest. The shadows would take the place of their own – it would not be their families who toppled in battle.

All of them saw what they might become if they raised their voice to Justinian. The fires always burned, his fascination and his tool.

It was war. It was necessary. It was us or them. These lies they told themselves so often that they believed.

And they clustered about him, drawn by his peculiar magnetism, later held by their own fear. He spoke softly of a better world, and let them create their own images of it. He spoke of the treachery of magic, and people forgot that treachery had existed before magic was ever born. He spoke of power, of glory, of a kingdom, and all of them assumed he meant to share these things with them.

How wrong they were.

~*~

Pip dressed slowly, grimacing at the feel of fabric on her bruises. Even silk rested too heavily on her aching body.

Outside her rooms, the palace was restless and excited. Feet clattered on the tiles as girls ran from room to room, comparing masks and dresses and hair. Men came to call – fathers admonishing care, brothers scandalized, remarking you’re not wearing that! and don’t think that just because everyone’s got masks on I’m won’t be able to find out who you’ve been trysting with, admirers declaiming poetry and lavish compliments.

Her clothes were picked for practicality as much as style. The ivory shift covered her bruises and flared over her feet in a frothy sea. If its square neckline was low, it might draw attention from the stiffness of her movements. Over it went a short-sleeved chocolate robe, Yamani-style, gleaming in the candlelight. A pair of long ivory gloves hid the bruises climbing up her arms, and she closed the robe with a thick gold ribbon that dangled at her side.

With reluctance, she pulled on court shoes the same brown as the robe. Boots would have been better, but these would force her to stand straight and if she limped, people would assume it was the fit of the shoes and not several hours of being pounded by a pair of Shang.

As a last touch, she slipped gold pins into her piled-up hair. Decorative as they were, they had been a sly gift from Uline, who was engaged to her older brother. Pip sometimes thought Uline understood her far better than Kieran, because the ends of those pins were sharp enough to serve as a blade in an emergency.

It made her feel better, too. The glamour of the court was not for her, but if she had to pretend, at least some piece of her remained defiant, fierce, prepared. After all, in the constricted dress, she could hardly kick or punch.

She took a final look at her reflection in the looking glass. A courtier stared back, trapped in the mirror like a premonition of the future that she was trying so hard to escape. Her eyes were frightened. Pip didn’t know herself in that moment.

Then she prodded a bruise, and the flare of pain recalled her. No matter how she looked, she wasn’t a biddable child. She was going to be Shang, and run free of all these trappings.

A knock startled her. Slowly, she became aware that the noise outside had stopped.

She opened the door onto Davir sin Porphyros, lounging like a tiger against the opposite wall. His smile was devilish, a match for his clothing: top to toe in black, except for the lurid scarlet embroidery that was bright as blood on his coat arms. He looked deadly and exotic and feral.

A glance at the corridor confirmed that the nobles were watching him as if he was some sort of lunatic. Not, perhaps, an unwise assumption given that she could see the tips of curved Carthaki swords protruding from his

“I’m not sure if you’re planning to escort me or kill me,” she remarked.

“An easy choice,” he observed with wry gallantry. “If only because you would make killing such damnably hard work.”

She suppressed a smile. “Are the swords just for decoration?”

He took a step forward, closing out the eavesdropping courtiers. “In truth, I feel naked without a weapon. And I need to carry them tonight.” A brief frown marred him. “If it deters conversation with fools, so much the better.”

She collected her mask from the table, an ivory confection of lace and feathers, dusted with gold embroidery. “Can I borrow one?”

“You have far crueller weapons in your arsenal.” He took her in with a sweeping glance. “I don’t doubt you’re capable of being as devastating as you look.”

She laughed. For all his husky, intimate tone, she found Davir unthreatening. It was as much an act as hers. “Tell me you know how to hold a conversation without flirting.”

“I know. I just find it dull - unlike you. Now, shall we go and enliven this tedious affair?”

The Carthaki and the troublemaker. If she had to be the black sheep of the court, she supposed they were due some fresh gossip. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”

He put on his own mask, a scarlet domino that was lurid against his dark skin. His voice was a purr. “How unimaginative.”

With a roll of her eyes, she took his arm and let him lead her away. “Save it for the princess. She appreciates that kind of thing.”

For a moment, she caught a glimpse of the solemnity she had seen on the practice yard. “Forgive me. You looked so like a little court siren I forgot you weren’t one. I’ll behave.”

She snorted. “No, you won’t. But don’t worry, I’m practiced at ignoring obnoxious men.”

His low chuckle accompanied them all the way to the ball.

~*~

“What is that?” Roald yelped as his sister crashed into his rooms without knocking.

She paused and smoothed a hand over her stomach. “Do you like it, brother dear?”

“No,” he said flatly. “When Father sees you-”

She held a glittering blue mask over her face. Unlike most, it was full-face, hiding her identity completely. “He won’t even recognise me.”

What was wrong with her? All evening she had been out of sorts, edgy and electric, like a bird battering against the bars of its cage. He was used to her anger, but this was something more.

“It’s not about recognising you,” Roald said patiently. “You can’t wear that.”

She glanced down, a satisfied smile playing about her mouth. But she was oddly pale. “I can.”

“You look like...like...Kally, you look like a whore, by all the gods!”

The dress – if it could be called that – was gold and so thin it was close to translucent. He averted his eyes, embarrassed for her. The shape of her body was clear, hints of too-intimate detail showing – the juncture of her thighs, the ridges of her ribs, not enough hidden by the unleashed black tumble of her hair. It was madness.

Her smile froze in place. “And isn’t that what I am?” she demanded angrily. “Father has sold me to the emperor. And maybe Kaddar paid in peace and not coin, but I am sold as surely as if he filled our coffers!”

Roald put his fingers to his temples and prayed to any god listening for aid. “Is that really what you think?” he said wearily. “Because if it is, you might as well spread your legs on a street corner. At least someone will get some pleasure from your company, because gods know Kaddar and Carthak won’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she hissed.

“You don’t have any idea, do you?” he snapped back. “Don’t you realise how fragile we are? The Scanrans are pressing on the border in the North. Tusaine smiles while it slides a knife into our back. The Copper Isles are still a hotbed for rebels and they possess some of the strongest mages there are. Mother and Father have fought for years to hold the K’mir and the Bahzir and the North to them, but it could all slide into chaos if we aren’t careful. Carthak can be our greatest ally – or our worst enemy. And if you won’t even try to make this marriage work, Kally, you’ll destroy two countries with a sweep of your hand.”

Her shoulders sagged. He was surprised to see her blinking back tears. “I never wanted this.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “But that’s the price. We’ve lived our whole lives in privilege. Now we have to face up to our responsibilities. Do you think I like any more than you do?”

“And what about the people who need us here?” she said, her voice so thin and pitiful. “What about the poor and the destitute and ones that Mother and Father don’t see? I could make a difference, Roald. There’s so much to do here.”

He blinked. This wasn’t a side of his sister he had ever seen. And then he remembered what a healer she was, the battles she had seen even as a child. “What about the poor and the destitute in Carthak?” he said softly. “What about the slaves?”

Her lips twisted. He knew the idea repulsed her. “What can I do?”

“Now, nothing. As the Empress of Carthak? A lot. Maybe everything.”

Comprehension gleamed in her eyes – and something else, a longing so fierce that he saw her for a moment not as his spoiled sister, but as a young woman, afraid, on the brink of adulthood and clinging to her adolescence to try and keep her future from overwhelming her.

“I wanted to be a page,” she said softly. “I wanted to be a hero and do great deeds.”

“You still can,” he answered. “Not all the great deeds are done in battle, Kally.”

She sniffed, and flicked away a few escaped tears irritably. “I doubt many are done in a marriage bed.”

“Tell Mother that,” he pointed out with a crooked smile.

“Urgh. I’d rather not think about it.” She shuddered. “I still don’t want to do it, Roald. If Kaddar is anything like that awful bodyguard he’s sent...”

Roald hadn’t had enough contact with Davir sin Porphyros yet to decide if he liked him, but he had to admire his style. “Then he’ll be the only man you’ve ever met who can shut you up,” he said.

She glared at him.

“Take off that appalling dress,” he pleaded.

Stubbornness seeped into her face. The brat was back, and Roald knew there would be no moving her now. She gave a little twirl. “If Daddy’s going to marry me off, I want my fun before I go.”

“You’ll get caught.”

She gave a sudden, wicked giggle. “No I won’t.”

That didn’t bode well. “What do you mean?”

Her eyes glittered, hard blue chips. “Wait and see, brother dear. Wait and see.”

~*~

The herald looked a little nervous at the sight of Davir, but he swung open the doors. There were no announcements of their names – it was, after all, a masked ball, and the revelation would not come until the end of the evening.

Still, she didn’t doubt almost everyone guessed who he was with that prowling walk, and she glimpsed Kieran under his sober grey mask, looking disapproving. He at least recognised her.

Once at the foot of the stairs, they went to the throne to make their obeisance. She saw the surprise in Davir’s eyes as she executed an elaborate curtsey. As if in competition, he swept the blades off his back and laid them at the king’s feet in a dramatic gesture.

“I trust you will have no need of swords here,” the king remarked. Quietly, he added, “Some might take it as an insult, Kyrios.”

“Others would take it as fealty,” Davir said in a voice just as low. “From one ally to another.”

“Be glad that I am one such,” King Jonathan said and dismissed them with a flick of his fingers. Davir sheathed the swords, ignoring those who edged back from him.

“How prettily you submit,” he murmured as they walked away.

“You don’t have to sound so shocked,” she remarked sourly, accepting his outstretched hand with proper, if perfunctory, grace. “You make quite a gilded lily yourself.”

“Perhaps. But I’m hard pressed to know whether there’s more of the flower or the metal about you this evening.”

The music struck up. As he swung her into the steps of the first dance, she trod on his foot.

“I take that back,” he muttered. “Definitely the metal.”

She gave him her best courtier’s smile, all secrets and dazzle. “And don’t you forget it.”

His eyes narrowed. “Why? Are you afraid of what will happen?”

Suddenly he was closer, his proximity a challenge. Unable to conjure an answer, she found herself retreating; but she was held within the formal cage of the dance, his hand on her waist a manacle. So intimate, the steps had taken on more meaning than mere motion.

Forward, his hips brushing hers. Sideways, she leaning back in the too-small space that he dictated. She could not help but be aware of his smouldering gaze intent on her, his grip, of the insubstantiality of the air and etiquette which divided them. Back, she forced to trust him to guide her into space, safety, silence.

Forward, sideways, back. The whole world was enclosed by three steps and his arms. Panic struck her.

Quick as he was, Davir did not miss that.

“Yes,” he said with a gentleness she would not have expected, and suddenly the distance between them was stale and staid once again. “You are afraid, aren’t you?”

She didn’t want to tell him. Pip wasn’t even sure it was something she could vocalize. And yet...and yet he had seen her vulnerability and stepped back, and such compassion was more than she had expected. If she could trust anyone, she felt it was this strange Carthaki, who saw so keenly, who kept his secrets so well.

“Yes,” she admitted. “You can’t really understand what it means to be a noblewoman. The expectation that you will marry and have children is immense. Any title I hold will belong to my husband – it will be his land, his people, his reputation which affects mine.”

“Even in Tortall?” he said softly. “Your women are as notorious as your men. The Lioness, your lady Queen, the Wildmage, even the young girl who thinks to become the second lady knight. None of them ride upon the reputation of men.”

“They are the exceptions, not the rule,” she answered grimly. “And I’m sure you’ve heard the nastier pieces of gossip that accompany their names.”

“Of course. But only fools take gossip for truth.”

“Then fools aplenty fill the land.” They spoke in low voices, soft enough, she supposed, that some would take it for lovers’ chat. “Their Majesties are trying to change things – but if you think that’s a swift or an easy process, you are much mistaken, Davir.”

“I have seen the opposition my Emperor faces,” he replied. “I know it is neither. But I didn’t realize that things were as difficult here.” He gave a soft chuckle. “Even I have been beguiled by the dream of Tortall, free and mighty and just.”

“So yes,” she said quietly, quickly, “I am afraid. As long as I dress in men’s clothes and tussle with Shang, I keep myself free. But when I wear silks and make pretty conversation and dance away the night, I become what I have no desire to be – and if I do it too often, word will reach my father and he will think it’s time I was wed. I have no wish for a husband.”

“But what if you should lose your heart and find one?” he enquired dryly.

“What man would want me?” she demanded. “I have no skills in running a household. My reputation is hardly savoury - most of my friends are young men in the King’s service. Who’d want a wife like me?”

His teeth gleamed. “I suspect you might be surprised. There are men who want a woman with more arts to her than those of house and bed.”

She flushed, and he laughed, a soft, low sound that made heads turn.

“Don’t tell me I’ve shocked you,” Davir teased. “Or is it just that you don’t think of such things here?”

“Generally not in the middle of a crowded room,” she said tartly, which only made him laugh harder.

“I wouldn’t fear too much if I were you,” he told her when he had breath enough to speak. “That reputation you have created so painstakingly makes an excellent shield, and I doubt that I have harmed your cause.”

She snorted. “You’re even less popular than I am.”

“Then we can be a pair of glittering pariahs,” he declared, and swung her into a spin that was no part of the dance. “Well, I can glitter. You can be a pariah.”

She aimed a heel at his foot, but he slid aside. Then she realised the music had stopped, and people were starting to stare. She let Davir lead her off the floor, and for good measure, gave him a simpering smile. If people thought she was infatuated, so much the better.

He caught her doing it, and gave her an amused look. “Coward.”

“It’s good sense, not cowardice,” she hissed back.

“Only up to a point. Be who you are, and let that be your shield if you will, but don’t pretend to be something you’re not. And if you had the slightest attraction to me – not that I’d blame you, who wouldn’t? – you wouldn’t be nearly so forthright with me.”

His words stung. “I have to play the game, Davir. As long as I pretend to fit in now and again they let me have my strange little ways. They think I’ll grow out of it.”

“And instead you are growing into something else entirely.” His gaze was pensive. “Hard to say what yet. Something dangerous, I think. I knew another girl who wanted a warrior’s life. It devoured her. She is nothing more than that now.”

A brief sadness touched his eyes. She remembered what he had said on the practice court. “The Stormwing?”

“The same. Forgive me if I am a little wary of such ambition.” He picked up a glass from a serving page with a quiet thank you. “I happen to like Phillippa ha Minch as she is. I hope she will become a good friend, and not merely a good killer.”

He drained the wine, oblivious to the censorious stares. She could not help but see the rough pain in his face. Before she could say anything, he had given her his roguish smile, as good a mask as the one shielding his eyes.

“As the guest of honour, I should make my presence felt. Thank you for the dance, Pip.”

With that, he was gone. But the pain in his voice lingered with her, harsh, vivid. For the first time, she glimpsed him as a young man alone in a strange country, unsure of anything but the need for disguise. For tonight, he was one actor among many. Come morning, he would be exposed once more – and then, she thought he would need all the friends he could find.

She hoped to be one of them. That much she could do for him.

~*~

Roald headed straight for his friends when he entered the hall. Masks or not, there was no mistaking Neal rhapsodising wildly over a beautiful woman dressed top to toe in scarlet, or Merric’s bright hair.

For a moment he stopped: over by the throne, his sister was stood, demure as could be in a purple dress nothing like the gauzy confection she’d shown off to him earlier. Her mocking smile was unmistakable under a half-mask as she chatted to their father. It even looked like a passably civil conversation.

Thanks the gods. She had come to her senses. It wouldn’t last, but maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about her doing something stupid tonight.

With relief, he joined his friends.

“That’s not Lady Maria,” he informed Neal just as the squire ended a particularly involved analogy.

Neal ground to a halt. “It isn’t?” His eyes narrowed. “Is that you, Roald?”

He gave a small nod. His mask hid his entire face, a plain midnight blue with rudimentary holes for eyes and mouth. Not, in other words, something a prince would be expected to wear. There were enough tall men with black hair for him to have a shred of anonymity – indeed, he realised with glee, he could see several men of that type being harried by some of his less bright admirers. “Keep your voice down. I’m aiming to be bothered as little as possible. And no, that definitely isn’t Lady Maria.”

Neal squinted at the woman. “I’m sure...”

“No. That’s her cousin,” Roald subtly gestured at the woman locked into an embrace in a dim corner. “That’s Lady Maria.”

“With Garvey?” sputtered Neal. “That...that...oaf?”

“That oaf,” Roald agreed solemnly. “What did you think all those noises coming from his room were?”

Neal grimaced. His dun green mask bared his cheeks but covered his long nose, making him look like a rather odd dragon. “A slightly more...individual activity. I had no idea there was a woman with such terrible taste.”

Roald, who was fed a constant stream of court gossip by Kally when she wasn’t caught up in a fury, snorted. “There’s a reason the other ladies call Lady Maria the good time girl.”

After all, the other court ladies made promises. Lady Maria kept them.

“I...thought that was because she knew how to have a good time,” Neal said weakly.

“More because a lot of other people know how to have her,” Roald said delicately.

He paid attention to the room for the first time. The court was a glorious riot of colour. Glass clinked, conversation hummed and couples swept the dance floor in graceful patterns. His gaze moved from person to person, and he told himself that he was looking for Pip because she needed to know about Iceblood: that was all, nothing more-

And then he caught a glimpse of diaphanous gold. Inwardly, Roald groaned.

Kally was gone from the throne. Suddenly he saw the shape of her plan. It was madness though – eventually someone would realise that the girl in the golden dress was-

Gold gleamed on the other side of the room. What…?

And again – it seemed gold was everywhere in the crowd, and Roald blinked as he saw not one but six girls slithering through bodies in those sheer, slight dresses. Gasps rose, murmurs of appreciation and condemnation mingling. All of them, he saw, had dyed their hair black.

Clever, he had to admit. Very clever. The dresses were barely on the side of acceptance. And while his father would never have allowed Kalasin to wear such garments, there were other parents in the court who would – ambitious parents, who understand what drove young men. In a gaggle, it was impossible to tell who the girls were, and doubtless Kalasin would reappear from time to time in her respectable dress. Their father merely looked irritated, but said nothing.

“Mithros bright,” breathed Neal. “What have we done to deserve this?”

“I don’t know,” Seaver muttered. “But it must have been good.”

The girls split, drifting like sylphs – and one approached them. Roald tensed, hoping his disguise hadn’t been punctured.

“Have you seen the prince, squires?” she asked coyly. “I wanted to try his riddle.”

Behind her, Roald glared at them all pointedly.

“Not yet,” Seaver piped up, flushing, his eyes flicking about her as if he wasn’t sure where to look. “But why don’t you wait with us?”

“That’s a very unusual dress,” Merric put in. “Very, um...”

She giggled. “Well-made?” she said slyly.

“Yes,” the redhead said hastily. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

Roald quietly slipped away. No one, he was amazed to see, took the slightest bit of notice of him. For the first time in his life, he felt truly ordinary. And it was a dizzying feeling – he could go anywhere, be anything, do whatever he wanted. There were no politics, no princesses, no duty, no expectations underneath the mask.

He was just a boy in a crowd. And he was free.

Then he saw her. Pip, watching the masses. He was sure it was her: something in the way she stood, the tilt of her head. In her ivory and gold, she was subtle, soft, ethereal, and he knew that he didn’t want to see her because of Iceblood or duty – he wanted to hold her close-

And just for a few moments, just for a dance, why couldn’t he?

~*~

The nameless wanderer slid into the palace easily as an eel. He took face after face; servants, guards, men, women. Haste made him merciful – most he didn’t even need to dispose of. But the last was crucial, and so he hid the noble’s body in a dark garden, thrusting him among the thornbushes.

In the stolen clothes and the stolen face, he was safe. A signet ring would prove his identity, as would the few crucial facts he had extracted from the man before he killed him.

He. The nameless wanderer licked the last specks of blood from his lips. Old memories crept back to him, of other times when had worn a human face. Speech was rusty in his throat, but he recalled enough of it to mimic his victim’s voice should any be able to recognise him beneath the mask.

Attired and equipped, he made his way back into the palace and followed the feel of that bright, young spark until he came to the hall and the cluttered gathering.

The herald didn’t give him more than a glance. Top to toe, his disguise was impeccable, and the nameless wanderer stepped into the hall, hungry for Princess Kalasin. In that, he was not alone.

~*~

Neal was making his way over the tables stacked with food when a hand closed on his arm. Startled, he turned to see a tall, thin figure that he only recognised by virtue of the eyes burning out from the mask.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he said weakly.

Iceblood stared back. “I am not here for enjoyment.”

Numair Salmalin came hustling through the crowds, unmistakable as he had neglected to wear a mask. Perhaps he didn’t consider it important. “That invisibility spell is remarkable,” he said, enthusiasm bright in his face. “An Old Thak variant, surely?”

Iceblood turned and stared at him. If Numair noticed the hostility pouring from him, he ignored it. “Not remarkable enough as you followed me.”

Not ignoring it, Neal realised as he saw the tension in Numair’s hands. Treading carefully about it. “I find your magic extremely intriguing. It’s so...raw. You seem to perform your magic by reflex rather than following any kind of pattern or structure.”

“Magic was new in my time,” the man said stiffly. It was clear he had little interest in the conversation. “We had no books to teach us.”

“Indeed,” agreed Numair. Neal recognised the same concentration the mage had when he was in the midst of particularly complex problem. “I have wondered if by confining the Gift to such regimes we weaken it. Some of the most powerful magic I have seen has been done by what we would consider untrained mages.”

At another time, Neal would have joined in the discussion with gusto. It was a common debate among healers and his father was a leading proponent of new methods. Right now, though, he had the feeling Iceblood was considering putting some of his untrained magic to use.

“How is it that you execute your magic, precisely?” Numair enquired, guileless.

Iceblood’s voice was cool. “I think very hard about the problem and I find a way to make it disappear.”

“Not very subtle,” the mage commented, and Neal had to hide a grin. “Do you use marks, gestures, tools?”

“Whatever is to hand. And I prefer silence.” He bared a mirthless smile. “Otherwise I can react quite...violently.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t recommend that here,” Numair said quite cheerfully. “There are all kinds of spells against hostile magic woven into the palace.”

“I am aware of it. I was one of them.”

“Oh yes! We must discuss the working you performed to achieve that,” the mage said with such boyish excitement that the years were stripped from him. “Wonderful, I was trying to think how I’d manage it myself-”

Iceblood’s patience snapped. He leaned forward, and his voice was a growl. “Then think about it elsewhere. I am not in the mood to make small chat about magic.”

Numair fell silent. In those calm eyes, Neal could see that vast intelligence, assessing, measuring, deciding, and he knew that if Numair thought Iceblood was a threat to the kingdom, Tortall would not hesitate to deal with him.

But he wouldn’t want to see the fallout. No matter that Iceblood’s magic was of an older and cruder kind than theirs – power billowed out from him like steam, and no mage could miss it.

“Of course,” he said finally, and whatever his decision, Neal could not determine it. “I’m sure you’re still recuperating. It is a grim task you have ahead of you, but you’ll find it easier with our aid.”

“I will ask for your aid when I need it.”

Neal wondered if now was the time to mention that the last man who had treated Numair Salmalin with copious disrespect had found himself taking root.

“I look forward to it,” Numair replied, and left them to it.

“A dangerous man,” Iceblood murmured, and Neal realised that he was not as great a fool as he seemed. “I hope he does not put himself in my way.”

“I wouldn’t put yourself in his,” Neal offered, a touch timidly.

Those extraordinary eyes turned on him, the deep orange of sunset. “I will not suffer anyone to stop me recapturing that monster.”

He finally voiced the thought that had been bothering him about the whole story. “But it was only being what it was made to be. They’re mindless beasts, aren’t they?”

His mouth twisted under the dark grey mask. “Not as mindless as you seem to think. And regardless of their nature, if a beast is rabid, you don’t suffer it to live. Now. Tell me about that girl.”

Neal was startled to find the mage gesturing at Pip, who was quietly talking to her brother. “Pip?”

“Is that her name?”

“Phillippa ha Minch,” Neal said, confused. Whatever the mage wanted with her, it made him uneasy. “Why are you asking?”

“An intriguing young woman.”

“Have...you met her?”

The mage fell silent. And then he said quite softly, “Once. Briefly. I knew someone much like her. They are very alike in certain ways. In certain wants.”

Neal had no doubt he was talking about the Phoenix, but...but Pip and the Shang Phoenix? They were nothing alike from what fragments of the tales he remembered. And...wait, certain wants?

“Pip wants to be Shang?” he hissed. “That’s impossible!”

“Dreams often are.”

Things clicked into place. The long hours she spent with the Wildcat and the Horse. Her adeptness with weapons, her ability to put him in a headlock that was as unbreakable as it was embarrassing – those odd bruises that she sometimes sported...

A wave of compassion swept him.

Oh, Pip, he thought. Surely you know that they’ll never take you. You’re too old and you’re a noble to boot. Is that why you spend so much time with them, hoping that they’ll take you despite it all? If they teach you, it’s from pity or because they think any training is good for you, not because they honestly believe you’ll be Shang.

He had often heard her scorn a noble lady’s life. He hadn’t realised it was more than words. He hadn’t understood how trapped she must feel.

He was her friend, her sparring partner: he owed it to her to tell her what madness it was.

But as he saw her laughing there, bright, charming, he couldn’t bear to do it that night.

Tomorrow, Neal promised himself. Tomorrow I’ll talk to her.

“She isn’t the Phoenix,” he ventured cautiously.

“I am aware of it.” His voice was flat, harsh.

“Then...what do you want with her?”

He thought it might have been a question too far as the mage’s eyes bored into him. Then his mouth twisted, as if he’d tasted something sour, and Iceblood said, “I have seen the hearts of everyone who dared pass into the chamber, who touched its doors, who dreamed of it. Countless hearts, countless fears. Not one of them ever wondered what I was or where I came from. But she did. She saw me, she called me forth. And she was not afraid.”

“That sounds like Pip,” Neal said glumly.

“She wasn’t afraid,” Iceblood murmured, and there was wonder in his voice. And as those inhuman eyes rested on Pip, Neal couldn’t help but fear for her.

Someone had to: she didn’t have the sense to do it herself.

~*~

Andrea had long ago given up trying to talk Ryan out of whatever melancholy had gripped him. While he morosely did card tricks over and over, she sat on the floor in his room and puzzled her way through one of the scrolls Master Salmalin had given them. The string in front of her was hopelessly tangled: it was her job to untangle it.

Ryan shuffled the cards again. Inch by inch, as she gritted her teeth and forced her magic to obey, the third knot loosened-

A knock distracted her; the string flopped onto the table.

“Rats,” she muttered.

“Rats?” Ryan said dourly as he got up to answer it. “I taught ye better words than that, lass.”

“And the situation doesn’t need them,” she said stubbornly. “Who-”

She was cut of by Ryan’s wild whoop. “Kel!”

Andrea smiled shyly at the stocky girl who limped in. As usual, Kel’s face bore the hallmarks of a life on the road; grime on her cheek, a fading bruise on her forehead. Her hazel eyes were steady and friendly, and she gave Andrea a brief grin before turning most of her attention back to Ryan. “Surprise.”

“I thought ye weren’t back for days yet!”

For the first time, Ryan looked like himself. His smile was full of joy, and as soon as the door closed, he pulled Kel into a hug.

Quietly, Andrea gathered up the scrolls and the string. She was one of the few people who knew that Keladry of Mindelan and Ryan Talver were more than friends – were tentatively mapping out a shy, clumsy and unexpectedly sweet relationship. It was a close secret. It would have tarnished Kel’s reputation beyond repair if people had known: they could just about accept that the unconventional knight would become friends with the mage she’d met on an adventure. Any more was unthinkable.

“We weren’t supposed to be,” confessed Kel. “You won’t believe what’s happened. I can’t tell you yet – not until my lord of Goldenlake’s let the king know, but...but...”

“But you feel an adventure coming on?” Ryan prompted.

She grimaced. “Maybe.”

“Well, until it gets here, ye can sit down an’ tell me how much you missed me,” ordered Ryan.

“Who says I did?” Kel said slyly.

“Still a terrible liar, lass.”

That was the last Andrea heard: she left them to it. She could read her scroll in the library, after all. She ignored the little pang of loneliness – the one that said she had no one to hug, to kiss, to argue with. She had her magic. She had her life. That was more than she expected six months ago.

And grimly, she tried not to listen to the little voice that whispered those things were no longer enough.

~*~

Pip thanked the man as he led them away from the dancers, and leaned back against the wall with a sigh that was equal parts fatigue and relief. She’d danced with half a dozen men already. Some had no idea who she was; others knew but felt safe in their anonymity; still others probably knew and didn’t care.

Under the dim lights and the multitude of masks, the court had become strangers to one another. She could recognise a few people – their majesties, of course, Numair Salmalin, Neal by his height and his voice, Merric, her brother and Uline, a few other notables or people with mannerisms too unique or innate to hide. But most of them were a mystery.

“Hello Pip.”

She stared at the man in front of her. She knew that voice, she did. “You’re going to have to tell me who you are.”

His laugh was soft, a little husky. “Am I? I thought the whole point of the ball was that you don’t know.”

“Yes, apparently it’s supposed to be romantic,” she said.

“Apparently?”

She shrugged. “It’s easy to find romance in a stranger. Finding it in someone you know is much harder.”

Even the most basic of his features were hidden behind that mask. Black hair: that was all. Dozens of men had black hair. “What makes you think you know me?”

“Your voice,” she said with certainty. “I recognise it. I know it. But don’t worry, I’m not looking for romance with you.”

“Then how about a dance instead?” he said.

She blinked. Most people would have left. “My feet are hurting.”

“Then take off your shoes,” he suggested dryly. “Since when did you start being so impractical?”

Not just someone she knew, then: someone who knew her. Someone whose style she liked. For the first time since she’d come in, Pip smiled. “Only if you will.”

“Done.”

She stared at him. Surely he wouldn’t do it. She kicked off a shoe, as much as challenge as a gauntlet thrown on the ground. With something that sounded like smothered laughter, the man took off his own boots – he held out his hand, the pair of them in their finery with feet bare on the cold flagstones, and he a stranger that might not prove to be so.

There didn’t seem much else to do except take his hand and hope.

~*~

“Isn’t that your friend?” Kalasin remarked breezily to Merric. She had danced with all of Roald’s friends at least once. No matter what that Carthaki thought, she wasn’t a pet to be tamed or trained. And while she still had the power to choose, she would. She’d choose every last one of the men in here if it would make people understand that she wasn’t just a puppet.

Her thoughts couldn’t help but return to Ryan Talver and the scorn in his face when he spoke to her.

Not a puppet. Not just a spoilt little rich girl. No matter what he thought, what any of them thought.

I don’t want to go to Carthak, but I don’t have any choice. What choices have I ever had? I did what father wanted, what mother wanted, and I suppose I’ll be expected to do what my husband wants too.

And no one seems to care what I want.

So she danced and she chattered and she didn’t refuse anyone who asked for her hand or for her time. No one had been bold enough to ask for a kiss yet, but if they did, she’d offered up her mouth like cherries to them to be devoured; ultimately, she supposed, to spit out the stone of her, the hard core that knew she would have face her duty eventually.

Just not yet. Not yet.

And so when the tall stranger asked her to dance, and she saw the flashing signet ring on his finger and recognised the young lord of Vale Runstead, one of the most eligible bachelors at the court, why would she refuse?

And why, when he asked for a moment in the shadows, a promise of a kiss, would she do anything but let him guide her outside and away from the gathering?

~*~

Pip and the man danced for three songs without stopping, and talked as ceaselessly as they moved. They argued over philosophers and strategists, over the merits of current songs and old stories, and the cadence of his voice nagged at her maddeningly.

I know you.

“Tell me who you are?” she demanded.

“No.”

“Why not?”

She liked his quiet laugh, liked the way he drew her just a little closer with each dance. “Because it’s fun.”

And she couldn’t deny that. It was fun. It was the most fun she had had in a long time. When at last the music stopped, they drifted back to the courtiers stood around the hall.

The king moved into the space: his charisma was such that he could fill such a vast space, and unmasked, his blue eyes seemed to see each of them, bright as lightning.

“Most of you have met Kyrios Davir sin Porphyros,” he said, his voice carrying easily. “For those of you who have not, he is a trusted confidante of Emperor Kaddar in Carthak and it is my hope that he will become as true and steadfast an ally to us as he is to the Emperor, who shares our ideals and our goals. I trust him with my life, and more importantly, with that of my daughter Kalasin, who he has come to guard.”

He gestured. Princess Kalasin curtsied in her purple gown but did not take off her mask.

Beside her. Pip heard the man make a noise: soft, puzzled.

“I bid you make him welcome to our court. Although we are two very different countries, it is my hope that we can embrace our differences and use them to strengthen one another, not to divide us. And in token of this truth – that not all that is strange is fearful - Kyrios Davir has kindly agreed to show us an ancient art of his people: Carthaki sword dancing.”

Suddenly Pip understood just why Davir was wearing those monstrous swords – and what a clever coup this was. What better way for the king to show he trusted Davir, letting him walk in armed: what better way for Davir to show how lethal he was as a bodyguard before the whole court?

“Clever,” she breathed. “Very clever.”

“Have you ever seen this?” the man beside her said softly.

“No. You?”

“Never. I’ve heard of it, though. Not many of the nobility are trained to it anymore, but they knife-dance in the streets, and it’s supposed to be the highest skill any warrior there can attain.”

Davir strolled into the middle of the room with a bow to the king on his way. There was silence, then the Carthaki gave the musicians a little nod. One raised a violin – a long harsh note sounded-

And a woman strode onto the empty floor. “Dancing again, Davy? I thought you’d forgotten how.”

Pip had never seen anyone quite like her. Her face was fierce and hawkish, her eyes bold, black, fathomless. Her hair was so pale that Pip thought it was blond at first, but then she saw that it was grey – that something had stolen the colour from her hair, left age on her like a stain. Her clothes were worn, but like Davir, two swords showed above her back.

She glimpsed Raoul of Goldenlake striding over to the king, taking him aside and whispering quietly. But it seemed irrelevant compared to the woman, who stood there as if she owned the palace and everyone in it.

Davir’s grin was savage, surprise fading quickly from him. “Some things are not so easily forgotten, Eve.”

“Like names?” she said coldly. Her arm was bandaged and there was a slight unevenness to her stance, as if she favoured her left leg. A split in her lip was dark with blood, dark as her eyes. “I have another now.”

“The Stormwing,” he said. “Very fitting. You too leave carrion in your wake.”

“Such is justice. It too dances with swords.”

His voice was glacial. “Such is murder.”

A susurrus of excitement filled the air. All attention was riveted on the pair of them now.

The Shang Stormwing, Pip thought, drinking her in. She isn’t so much older than me, but she looks so grim.

“You were always outspoken, Davy. Can you back up those words? Dance with me again and let’s find out who is better.”

He gazed at her, his face unreadable. And then he glanced at the musicians, his voice sharp as broken glass as he said, “Play.”

The silence was absolute – and then that note rose up on the air again, harsh, quivering, poised. Then the violins launched into a lashing, fierce tune full of minors and swooning notes, all overridden by the fast, tapping beat.

Swords flashed: they circled one another, moving in ever-diminishing spirals like a pair of predators. Pip found she was holding her breath – close, closer they moved, and suddenly the swords clashed – sparks flew, blue, glittering, and the pair of them were dancing in and out of a cage of metal.

It truly was a dance she saw, not a fight – sometimes they stepped into one another, bodies meeting, brushing, darting away to be replaced by steel. The steps were formalised, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, always precise and sharp. The passion in it took her breath away – no mistaking the ferocity in both faces, parted lips, blazing eyes, sparks and metal raining down upon them.

Faster and faster it moved – until they were a blur, until she was clutching the hand of them an beside her, wrapped up in their savagery, their beauty. Steel rang in time with the music, their feet stamped and slid, the clash of swords drowned out the music-

And with a clatter, Davir’s swords were torn from his hands, skidding across the floor as her blades crossed at his throat.

People cried out – as the music crashed to a halt, Pip found herself gasping for air, astonished.

The Shang Stormwing smiled. “Still me, Davy.”

“The better swordsman, perhaps,” he said. “But that’s all, Eve.”

She said nothing – Pip thought for a hideous moment that she would sweep her blades outwards and sever his head, but the woman stepped back abruptly. The room breathed again: hubbub rose instantly, frantic, excited, bewildered.

“That was terrifying,” the man beside her said.

“That was amazing,” she breathed, her eyes aglow. “I’ve never seen anyone fight like that.”

That is what I want to be. That creature - making every move a step to a dance, being beautiful by vritue of skill, not because of the masks I wear or the lies I indulge. Look at her - she doesn't need anyone. The world is at her feet.

The man sighed. “Trust you.”

That voice! She nearly had it for a moment, but it slipped away for, her and she glared at his masked face in frustration. “Do you?”

He paused, then took her hand and said quite quietly. “Yes. Of course. And I’d like to think you can trust me.”

And suddenly she did know that voice – quiet, intense, subtle. Easy to mistake, because Prince Roald wasn’t flamboyant or blatant, didn’t feel the need to force his presence onto a room. People mistook that for weakness or shyness: she thought it was merely different qualities that mattered to him. Trust. Fairness. Deliberation.

He had seen her deepest desire, her secret, and kept it.

She smiled. “I do.”

“Enough to come with me?”

“Where?”

“Somewhere,” he said innocently, and she heard the amusement in his voice. She felt oddly unreal, as if this was someone else’s life, someone else’s night.

In a room of strangers, he was familiar and safe, and yet neither of those things. When they had danced, she had felt wild, free, and that he had understood both of those feelings. That wasn’t the Roald she knew – who kicked off his shoes and danced barefoot in the court, who defended his opinions as passionately as if life and death depended on them.

And she remembered what she had seen in the Chamber of the Ordeal: the mage whispering softly you don’t even know your own heart.

Maybe you do know. Maybe it’s the rest of us who don’t know.

Suddenly she was tired of masks, tried of the court and all its games. She wanted to be herself again, and with him, she could be.

“All right,” she conceded. “But it had better be good.”

“I think I can manage that,” he said, and she followed him out into the moonlight and the darkness, neither knowing what else waited there; had waited there for hundreds of years, the nameless wanderer, ready to reclaim its power.