Colm laughed.‘Whatever time you didn’t spend drunk and retching into the sea.’
Fola cleared her throat.‘Unfortunately for Abal’s line, while the living might be convinced of a lie, the dead have only their memories.This plague of ghosts seeks revenge against King Abal and those who serve him—and, unable to mete out punishment to their fellow dead, have settled for their descendants.What do you say, My Lord?How close am I to the truth?’
‘But—!’Damon whined, clenching his fists in exasperation.
Harwick placed a heavy hand on his shoulder.‘Enough, lad.Let Fola speak with the count.We’ll have time for our own questions later.’
The count’s posture had relaxed—no longer a fox with his hackles up and teeth bared, but cautiously curious.‘An interesting theory.How did you come by it?’
‘Other than by reading?’Fola grinned, clearly pleased with herself.‘The clearest clue came from the festival grounds,’ she explained.‘Only one in four people touched by the haunting was killed.Others suffered plenty of terror, but the ghosts passed us by.’She tilted her head to one side and shrugged, showing a faintly mottled handprint on her collarbone through the neck of her shirt.‘But not before testing us.The mechanics ofthatI’m unable to fully explain, but there were two noticeable patterns.First, no outlanders—folk like Colm and me—were killed.Second, the only victims possessed common morphologies.Two legs, two arms, two eyes.Potentially indicative of many things, but, if I may be so bold, particularly overlapping here in Parwys with the ruling class.The only unusual bodies I saw in the court were Colm and the captain of the prince’s housecarls.’
‘I’ll admit that this is one of the stranger assemblages of limbs to grace my courtyard, yes,’ Ifan said.‘Though not the strangest.’
Llewyn tried to relax, but kept a ready grip on his ghostwood blade.He did not like discussion of the festival grounds.There were things Fola knew that it would dangerous to speak aloud.The fae were feared in Parwys, and particularly in Glascoed, where the borders of the Grey Lady’s domain lay close.Fola was an outsider, and little knew what might turn the count against them.
‘Beyond that…’ Fola shrugged.‘I have only my intuitions and deductions.Which is why I sought you out, My Lord.’
‘And what makes you think I know any history beyond what the kingdom’s chroniclers have written down?’Ifan pushed back.‘You and I have never spoken before now.Have I a reputation as a keeper of forgotten secrets?If so, it is unearned.’
‘The rebellion,’ Fola said.‘Which, I suspect, you lead.’
A dart of fear pierced Llewyn, so sharp and sudden that his ghostwood blade flattened to an edge.This was a turn he had not expected, but one as dangerous as blurting outright the truths of Siwan’s nature.The amusement was gone from the count’s wry smile.Now it was only the peeling back of lips to show ready teeth.
‘First a theory, now an accusation,’ Ifan said, his voice lowered.‘One I might take your head for.’
‘But you won’t.’Fola stepped forward, her hands folded on her oaken staff.A picture of reasonableness, without thorn or claw.‘You were friends, once, with Prince Owyn.The queen told me.But since your father’s death there has been a rift between the two of you.And your late arrival at court in the Count of Afondir’s company certainly caught my attention.
‘I suspect that he was waiting for the arrival of the anakriarch and his agents, sent as soon as word of King Elbrech’s death reached Alberon.While you were not “hunting bandits”, but—again, I suspect—ensuring that a delivery reached its intended destination.A delivery planned long before your summons to court for the king’s funeral, but one of high stakes and danger.Enough to necessitate your direct involvement.Any attempt at rebellion against a king with a magical arsenal—to say nothing of druids in his service—will depend on raw iron’s magic-deadening effect.I suppose you and Afondir happened upon each other on the road and, not unlike how the rulers of this kingdom have agreed to promulgate a false history, you covered your respective schemes with a mutually beneficial story.’She tapped her cheek, searching the count’s stolid expression.‘Now is your turn to give an answer, My Lord, so I ask again—how far off am I?’
Tension held in the courtyard like the gathering of clouds before a thunderstorm.Spil muttered under his breath and took a step behind Harwick’s broad shoulders.The desire to flee threatened to seize Llewyn.That, or to rush forward and cut the count down before he could order his men to attack.Only Fola’s calm kept him rooted.She reminded him of Afanan standing against the tide of the world.The sorceress had been stalwart in her compassion, despite the storm of cruelty that swirled in Nyth Fran.Just so, the winds of political turmoil, the lightning and thunder of clashing ambitions, could not faze the woman Fola.
Ifan turned back to the aleph.
‘If it is a simulacrum of the world, as my ancestor believed, it is a poor one,’ he mused.‘The layers are too clear.Nothing is hidden, should you look for it long enough.Not like the real world at all.A true representation would be clouded glass.’
‘Perhaps it reflects not the world as it is,’ Fola said, ‘but as its makers wished for it to be.As it should be.’
Llewyn tried to pry some sign from the young count’s face, some indication of what he intended.If what Fola had said about the rebellion was true, Ifan could little afford to allow strangers to bear his secrets throughout the kingdom freely.At best, they would be kept in Castle Glascoed: guests in name but not allowed to leave.
Ifan’s hand left his sword and ran through the tangled curls of his hair.‘I fear I may have spies in my midst.’He shot a furtive glance at the towers that rose from the curtain wall.‘I wonder that you came to me with this knowledge, rather than bringing it to the prince and the queen regent.What do you stand to gain from a civil war here, Fola of the Starlit Tower, that you would discover such a plot and allow it to proceed?’
‘Nothing,’ Fola said.‘I only wish to see the haunting ended.I think you want the same, and know something of how it might be done, and that your rebellion is a part of that solution.’
‘Oh?’Ifan’s mouth quirked into another smile—this one darker, tinged with anger.‘You don’t think I would attempt a coup purely from my own ambition, with the haunting as my excuse and rallying cry?Are there no noblemen where you come from?’
‘To find that sort of person, I need look no further than Afondir, I think,’ Fola said.‘You…’ She shook her head.‘We have no noble men in my City, My Lord, but there are plenty with ambition.Myself among them.I do not see it in you.Only the strength required to meet an unwanted, unsavoury duty.’
‘Deposing the king?’Ifan snapped.‘A duty?’
‘To put things right—to spare the kingdom’s people, yes, perhaps,’ Fola answered.
Ifan’s laugh was half an anguished cry.‘The world is all twisted into knots,’ he said.‘I would say it has been since my father died, but that is only how long I have known.The first tangles date to the founding of this kingdom.There can be no justice built on lies, no matter how compassionate and righteous the king.’
‘It’s what the wraiths want, isn’t it?’Fola said.‘The key to ending a haunting is to find the injustice that anchors the dead and their wrath to the world, and resolve it.’
Ifan nodded, fighting against a tremor in his own body.Llewyn recognised it—had felt something like it himself in the clearing while Siwan lay on the altar, the raven fiend loomed above, and the Grey Lady screamed within his mind, demanding death.
‘It is a hard thing to betray what you have known and trusted,’ Llewyn murmured.‘Even after it has betrayed your trust in turn.’
