“This is our guide?” she asked Sollis.

“It is, Highness.” The hardness of his expression as he stared at the shadowed woman told her much of his regard for this whole adventure. “Arrived two days ago with a note from the High Priestess herself. We gave her bed and board as ordered and that night she knifed one of my brothers in the thigh. I considered it prudent to confine her here.”

“Did she have cause to attack the brother?”

Sollis gave a small sigh of discomfort. “Seems he refused to assuage her . . . appetites. A terrible insult in Lonak society, apparently.”

Lyrna moved closer to the Lonak woman, Sollis keeping two paces ahead, hands loose at his sides. “You have a name?” she asked the woman.

“She doesn’t know Realm Tongue, Highness,” Sollis said. “Hardly any do. Learning our words sullies their soul.” He turned to the Lonak woman. “Esk gorin ser?”

She ignored him, shuffling forward a little, her face becoming clear. It was smooth and angular with high cheekbones, her head almost entirely bald but for a long black braid protruding from the crown to snake down over her shoulder, a steel band shining on the end of it. She wore a sleeveless jerkin of thin leather, an intricate mazelike tattoo of green and red covering the skin from her left shoulder to her chin. Her gaze scanned Lyrna from head to toe, a slow smile coming to her lips. She said something in a rapid tumble of her own language.

“Ehkar!” Sollis barked, stepping closer, glaring a threat.

The woman stared back and smiled wider, showing teeth that gleamed in the gloom.

“What did she say?” Lyrna asked.

Sollis gave another discomforted sigh. “She, erm, wants food, Highness.”

Lyrna’s Lonak had been learned from a book, the most comprehensive guide she could find in the Great Library. An aged master from the Third Order had tutored her in the various vowel sounds and subtle shifts of emphasis that could change the meaning of a word or a sentence. He had freely admitted his understanding of the wolfmen’s tongue was patchy and dulled with the years since he had journeyed north in his youth, gleaning knowledge from a few Lonak captives willing to talk in return for freedom. Nevertheless, Lyrna had sufficient command of the language to produce a rough translation of the woman’s words, but decided she would enjoy hearing the dutiful brother say it.

“Tell me exactly what she said, brother,” she commanded. “I must insist on it.”

Sollis coughed and spoke as tonelessly as possible. “When the men are on the hunt Lonak women look to each other for . . . nightly comforts. If you were of her clan, she’d want them to stay on the hunt for good.”

Lyrna turned to the Lonak woman and pursed her lips. “Really?”

“Yes, Highness.”

“Kill her.”

The Lonak woman jerked back, the chain between her fists, ready to ward off a blow, eyes fixed on Sollis in readiness for combat, even though he hadn’t moved.

“It seems she speaks Realm Tongue after all,” Lyrna observed. “What’s your name?”

The woman scowled at her, then abruptly laughed, rising from her crouch. She was tall, standing an inch or two higher than both Sollis and Smolen in fact. “Davoka,” she said, raising her chin.

“Davoka,” Lyrna repeated softly. Spear, in the archaic form. “What are your instructions from the High Priestess?”

Davoka’s accent was thick but the words spoken with enough slow precision to be understood. “Take the Merim Her queen to the Mountain,” she said. “See she arrives whole and living.”

“I am a princess, not a queen.”

“A queen she said. A queen you are.” There was a certainty to the woman’s words that warned Lyrna further questioning on this point would be unwise. The meagre collection of works on Lonak history and culture in the Great Library had been vague and often contradictory, but they all agreed on one point: the words of the High Priestess were not to be questioned.

“If I release you, are you going to stab any more brothers, or make unseemly suggestions that insult their calling?”

Davoka cast a contemptuous glance at Sollis, muttering in her own language: Wouldn’t sully my nethers with any of these limp-pricks. “No,” she told Lyrna.

“Very well.” She nodded at Sollis. “She can join us for dinner.”

? ? ?

Davoka sat at Lyrna’s side at dinner, having glared at Jullsa to make a space. The lady had blanched and excused herself from table, curtsying to Lyrna before rushing off to the chamber she and Nersa had been given. I’ll send her home in the morning, Lyrna decided. Not so hardy as I hoped. In contrast, Nersa seemed fascinated by Davoka, stealing glances over the table, earning a fierce glower or two in return.

“You serve the High Priestess?” Lyrna asked Davoka as the tall woman ate, slicing pieces of apple into her mouth with a narrow-bladed knife.

“All Lonak serve her,” Davoka replied around a mouthful.

“But you are of her household?”

Davoka barked a laugh. “House? Hah!” She finished her apple and tossed the core into the fireplace. “She has a mountain, not a house.”

Lyrna smiled and summoned up some patience. “But you have a role there?”

“I guard her. Only women guard her. Only women can be trusted. Men act crazy in her presence.”

Lyrna had read fanciful accounts of the supposed powers of the High Priestess. Noble-hearted men driven to insane passions by the merest glimpse, according to a somewhat lurid tome entitled Blood Rites of the Lonak. Whatever the truth of it, all the accounts pointed to a strong belief in her Dark powers. In truth, it was this, rather than her brother’s entreaties that had made her agree to this expedition.

Many years of study, quiet investigation, tortuous cross-referencing but still no evidence. Look in the western quarter for the tale of the one-eyed man, he said, that day he stole a kiss before the entire Summertide Fair. And she had. The tale, brought to her by the few servants she could trust to seek answers in the capital’s poorest quarter, had seemed absurd at first. One Eye was king of the outlaws and could bind men to him by will alone. One Eye drank the blood of his enemies to gain power. One Eye defiled children in dark rites conducted in the catacombs beneath the city. The only certainty to the tale was its end; One Eye had been killed by the Sixth Order, some said by Al Sorna himself. On this all the sources agreed, but on little else.

And so she kept looking, gathering accounts from all over the Realm. A girl who could call the wind in Nilsael, a boy who could talk with dolphins in South Tower, a man seen raising the dead in Cumbrael. A hundred or more fantastical tales, most of which turned out to be exaggeration, misunderstanding, gossip or outright lies on further investigation. No evidence. It maddened her, this absence of clarity, this lack of an answer, spurring her on, making her deepen her research, becoming a burden to the Lord Librarian with her constant demands for older and older books.

She knew much of this interest stemmed from the simple fact that she had little else to do. Her brother’s rule left her with no real place at court. He had a queen now, little Janus and Dirna to secure his line and a boundless supply of advisors. Malcius liked advice. The more the better, especially when one advisor contradicted another, which of course would require him to order the matter at hand be subject to further investigation, usually so thorough in nature it was several months before a conclusion had been reached and the matter had resolved itself or been superseded by more pressing affairs. In fact the only advice Malcius wouldn’t listen to was that offered by his sister.

Never forget, her father’s words, spoken to a little girl many years ago as she pretended to play with her dolls. A man who asks for advice is either indulging in the pretence of consideration or too weak to know his own mind.

To be fair Malcius always knew his own mind when it came to one thing: bricks and mortar. “I will make this a land of wonders, Lyrna,” he told her once, laying out his grand plan for a reborn western quarter of Varinshold, broad streets and parks replacing narrow alleys and slums. “This is how we secure the future. Give the people a Realm fit for living, not merely existing.”

She loved him, it was true, a fact she had demonstrated in the most terrible manner. But her dearest brother was the most colossal fool.

“How many men do you have, Queen?” Davoka asked her abruptly.

Lyrna blinked in surprise. “I . . . have fifty guardsmen as my escort.”

“Not guards. Men . . . Husbands you call them.”

“I have no husband.”

Davoka squinted at her. “Not one?”

“No.” She took a drink of wine. “Not one.”

“I have ten.” The Lonak woman’s voice dripped with pride.

“Ten husbands!” Nersa said in astonishment.

“Yes,” Davoka assured her. “None of them with more than one other wife. No need when married to me!” She laughed and thumped the table, making Nersa jump.

“Guard your tongue, woman!” Lord Marshal Al Smolen growled at her. “Such talk is not fit for Her Highness’s company.”

Davoka rolled her eyes, reaching for a chicken leg. “Merim Her.” She sighed. Sea scum, or debris swept onto the shore, depending on the inflection.