The Liar's Key

“Hail, the castle!” His voice reaches them, thinned by the distance.

Princess Alica’s face is stone. She strings the arrow to her bow once more and draws it.

“The flag . . .” Contaph stares at her, a frown throwing his brow into deep furrows. Out among the enemy contingent the white flag flutters.

She looks once, out across the wall. “A mistake,” she says. “It helps me adjust for the wind.” She arches her spine, drawing the bowstring back further across her breastplate . . . and the arrow is gone, just the hiss of it left behind amid our silence.

The princess drops the bow and steps away from the wall. Behind her a high-pitched cry rings out. A pause. The sound of galloping.

“Princess Gwen—” The cousin runs out of words.

“Shot her sister . . .” The whisper ripples along the wall.

Alica whirls back around to face them all. “No negotiation. No surrender. No terms.”

Another sharp turn and she’s striding toward the stairs at the tower’s centre. Contaph jogs, clanking to catch her, the others strung out behind. I’m at her shoulder. So close I can hear the tightness of her breath.

She doesn’t turn her head as Contaph draws level at the head of the stair. “Kerwcjz would have had her staked over a fire for us all to watch by morning. He’d have set her singing my troops a song of pain and kept her at it as long as his torturers’ skills allowed.” The cousin and three others arrive behind us. Alica keeps her shoulders to them. Back at the wall the first rock explodes against the battlements. All along the enemy line engines of war release their pent up forces with throaty twangs.

“We win this, or we die. There is no third way.”

And in that moment I knew my grandmother.

And rock rained down upon us.

ELEVEN

“I’m so hungry.”

“Finally he wakes!” Snorri’s voice close by.

I opened my eyes. “I’ve gone blind!” Panic seized me and I struggled up, banging my head on something hard.

“Relax!” He sounded amused. A big hand pushed me down. The old magic sizzled unpleasantly at the contact points.

“My eyes! My fuc—”

“It’s night time.”

“Where are the damn stars then?” I touched my forehead where I’d bashed it. My fingers came away sticky.

“It’s cloudy.”

“Where’s the lantern?” I had him this time. We always kept the lantern burning on dark nights, wick trimmed low. Better to waste a little oil than trip overboard in the dark when nature called.

“You broke it when you fell over.”

I remembered it all. That woman! My hand!

“My hand!” I shouted, stupidly grabbing the place she stabbed me and yelping in pain.

Tuttugu uttered a sleepy complaint and stopped snoring. These days I only really noticed his snoring when he stopped.

“Why am I so hungry?”

“You’re a pig.” I heard Snorri turn over and gather his covers.

“You’ve been asleep the best part of two nights and a day.” Kara’s voice from the other end of the boat.

“Well . . .” I paused to consider that. “Well, it didn’t work. You mutilated me for nothing.”

“You saw nothing?” She sounded unconvinced.

“I saw my grandmother. When she was younger than I am now. She was a scary bitch back then too! Worse, if anything.”

“You delayed too long before tasting the blood,” Kara said.

“Well excuse me for being busy staring at the six inches of steel sticking out of the back of my hand!” I still couldn’t believe she didn’t warn me.

“You may see more when you next dream. Perhaps what you seek.” She didn’t sound bothered—sleepy more than anything.

I glowered at her in the darkness, but judging by the soft sounds all around me the three of them had already fallen back into their slumbers. I couldn’t follow them. I’d slept enough. Instead I sat staring into the darkness, rocked by the waves, until the skies shaded into pale to herald the dawn.

•   •   •

I spent those cold dark hours staring at memories of memories. At my grandmother a lifetime ago, at the sacrifices she made to deny her enemy, at the fire in her that drove her to attack long after hope had fled the battlefield. Like Snorri. Or rather, like Snorri had been.

In the grey predawn I watched the northman slumped across the tiller, the slits of his eyes dark as he watched me back. Baraqel would talk to him soon. The angel would walk across the waves and speak of light and purpose, and still Snorri would steer this boat south, aimed toward death.