He starts to write, heavy-handed and unsteady:
To Kinghammer and all in the Republic,
To those illustrious in the shadow of the mountain, to that which has risen from the ashes of empire, greetings from the city by the sea. The last great jewel of the West. The Grey Towers. Hear me, Lord Declan Fallon, Lord of Hesper, named and proud.
The quill stops. He writes, scores through, blots, sands. Too fucking flowery by half.
He starts again.
She marches past us. She’s coming for you. Wants us out in the open. Thinks if she can pull us across the country, away from our walls and the sea, that she might stand a chance. She wants us to chase her. We can’t do that. We’ll die. Which just leaves you. She thinks she can break your spine inside its shell. Send in the shadows. Eat you up from the inside out. Scoop out that mountain of yours. Watch for her, she’s a tricky one. Watch better still for her ratshit lover. He’s got a disregard for gates and walls that twists my gut. Ward everything precious to you.
His hand lingers a moment as he searches for the words. Finally,
Friends are coming. Old friends. If you’re smart, you’ll trust them. They saved you once. They’ll do it again, if you let them.
A pause, a scratch.
This isn’t a time to be proud. If they say run, you run. Go west and south. I can have ships waiting. Send a hawk with white wingtips a week before you need them.
There, that’s the last dregs of his pride swallowed down. They don’t taste as bad as he’d thought they might.
This doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten that you left us alone against her for near twenty years, or forgiven it. But this is close as you’ll get. This is a hand of friendship.
A few lines blank, then:
I know you have my son.
He pauses, runs his fingers through his hair. And hadn’t that been an awkward conversation, his spymaster’s wiry hair brushing hisear as she muttered sotto voce. ‘Your boy’s in the mountain.’
Just that, then off into the dockside roil leaving him with a singing heart and a burning rage. He steeples his fingers against his temples, and swears quietly. This was what his wife would have called a ‘delicate situation’. He wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. After a beat, he drains the cup, and writes:
Keep him safe. Or I’ll kill you all myself. As many times as it takes.
That was about as much as he had patience for. He finishes off with a few perfunctory stabs of the quill.
In greatest salutation, from one proud city to another, in these parlous times, when we are surrounded by murderous cunts.
Fallon
He folds the letter, seals it. The early afternoon air is clotting around him, thick with tanner’s stink and gunpowder smoke. He needs some fucking daylight.
Slowly, he levers himself up with the blackwood cane, stretches. Cocks an ear to footsteps on the stairs, fast and light. He can hear them echoing up through the tower.
Old instincts kick in, images of Slickwalker rattling through his brain. His eyes flick to the cabinet. The blade leaves it easily enough. He switches the cane to his other hand, finds a balance, and waits.
The door bursts open, the messenger’s eyes widening at sword-point before the startled lad skids to a stop and Fallon recognises him enough to compose himself.
They both watch each other for a second. The messenger’s breath racing with enough urgency to tangle his tongue.
‘Your wife, Lord. Sh-she’s awake.’
Fallon’s moving before the words fade from his ears, dropping blade and cane and barrelling past startled cries. The stairs are a blur, a shadow. He moves across them like a storm to the hightower, towards the sound of gulls and the low voices of a gaggle of physickers, preening like gannets. One of them moves, placatory, his arms outspread – he goes down like a sack and the others scatter. And there, in the bed, in the light, with open eyes and a smiling face is Arissa, her name as light in his head as a rung bell.
He throws himself on her, knits his arms to her, feels the shape of her. The back of her head against his hands. The angle of her ribs beneath her shift. He kisses her, and the world closes in on itself. Doors shut and the howling gale of worry stops. His mind falls quiet. The shudder of war slides off the walls and for the first time in years his heart knows peace. He twines his fingers in her hair and marks the line of her jaw, tears springing from a deep place he’d forgotten. Distantly, he feels her trace his temples, the new scars, the shaven hair. She laughs. He feels it bubble inside her and presses her face to his neck for the joy of her breathing, peppering her cheek with small, hot kisses.
Her laughter slides to sobbing, great retches of relief.
‘It’s OK,’ he whispers into her hair. ‘I’ve got you, Riss. I’ve got you.’ He holds her, her hammering heart, her sweat-salted hair, her warm skin.
