“Often it is that which we least expect

that we should be most prepared for.”

from the journal of Scanlin Ross, First Sword in Tyrian, Believer

Old Ristaiel of Kevarn snarled more than a hunting cat with a moonbear up a tree.

“Shirahnyn are here, I tell you! Now, you tell me why.”

Aralt answered with silence, content to watch the progression of color washing over the older man’s battle-scarred visage. Who knew the human face could display so many variations of red? He would have been amused had he been in a better mood.

Four letters had arrived just that day. Four more letters to add to the growing stack of missives wedged into the bottom drawer of his desk, imploring him to resume efforts to locate the missing kavistra. After three years, Aralt thought cleric and chancellor alike would have made peace with the truth. He certainly had. That didn’t mean he liked it. But alas, no. The faithful of Askierran, from the Gulf of Aerulyn in the south to the ruins at Kaeryli in the north, awaited the return of their high priest with firm determination and expected Aralt to be the one to deliver him. How many times would he need to tell them that they placed their faith in the wrong man? How many times would he have to grapple with the bitter truth that Endru Kynsei had erred, naming him as Lian’s kervallyn? The naysayers had been correct. He had been too young. Too arrogant. Too cavalier about the faith everyone assumed he shared. At least one of those was still true.

He rose to examine guttering wall sconces, adjusting the lamps until leaping flames danced within amber globes. The wicks needed trimming and the reservoirs filling. His nose wrinkled. Since the refinery had been reduced to ash, all that was left was the crudest of fuels. Those ran as low as his patience.

Ristaiel shoved back his chair. “I should come back another time?”

Another lifetime suited him better, but Aralt curbed his irritation, answering more out of trained civility than anything else. “No. Forgive me. Must be the noise.”

So far, kegs of good cider—more plentiful than fresh food that late in the season—and the bright sounds of pipe and fiddle united long-standing rivals in an uneasy companionship at the public house next door. Not that Aralt expected it to last. Relations with their north-border neighbors were tenuous as ever. Disputes over land ownership had escalated, pitting farmers against huntsmen, dividing kin. A lean winter only made tempers hotter. One thing they could agree on was that Shirahnyn in the north were a gift to no one.

Beyond mullioned windows, the late-winter sky was plum-dark, the low-lying parish streets cloaked in mist. Even on a clear night, the broad expanse of the northern heavens offered precious little moonlight so close to year’s end. Only a single moon shone brightly, the others waning crescents, slivers of melting ice soon to turn dark faces on their world. Pools of everlight would soon burn day in and out to ward against all manner of creeping things more fearsome, locals claimed, than the horrors that lay across the fjord and could not be bound until Syth’s Eve passed.

Aralt thought it utter nonsense. Oh, the danger of the Naharasii was real enough—or had been until their defeat ten years prior—but the rest was mere fairy tales, northern superstition fit to scare children and entertain old fools. He had traveled abroad too many times on such nights to fall prey to such hearth tales. He did not fear the darkness. Neither was he northern-born, a fact the governor of Kevarn sitting before him was fond of reiterating.

“Well?” The oldster twisted and turned in his chair, impatient as ever. “Get on with it then, Kell-bred.”

“But we've bandied words all day,” Aralt said mildly, watching the color rise again in his companion’s craggy face. “Why stop when you’re enjoying yourself so thoroughly?”

“I’ll debate ye all night if I have a mind to!”

“I’ve no doubt you would,” Aralt sighed. Not that he would have called their discourse debating. More like Ristaiel attempting to harangue. Mentioning an ambiguous Shirahnyn threat late in the game was just more verbal gymnastics.

“What would you have us do? Ignore invasion?”

“You’ll forgive me if I missed the invasion fleet.” Aralt neglected to mention the winter-sick Shirahnyn his rangers had dragged in following the explosion at the refinery. Surely a more stimulating exchange awaited him with that man than the one he was having with Ristaiel. “I thought this meeting was called primarily to address the border raids so we don’t waste time on petty disputes during the Grand Meeting. Unless you want the entire Alliance to weigh in on local matters.”

“Don’t need no such,” the old man mumbled and chomped. “But if you gets your way, you’d have us all be cowards, turning away from what’s rightfully ours.”

“Cowards?” Aralt asked, cocking an eyebrow in response. “Explain to me why it’s cowardly to exchange the spoils of war for lasting wealth.”

Ristaiel’s mouth folded downward in a thin line of obstinacy few angry bairns could have surpassed. Aralt thought better than to mimic him, though it would have served the old codger right. As if he suddenly realized how childish he appeared, Ristaiel’s expression turned to one of disinterest. He snatched up his mug, draining the warm brew with false pleasure. Pride lifted his gaze a moment later. Blue eyes, sharp as winter, glared from beneath a creased brow. The enameled copper cup clattered on the table top. Empty. It was all Aralt could do not to roll his eyes. What would the man say next?

“Do these hands look like a warrior’s? Or like the hands of a pansy arbiter?”

Sea Lords above and below! Aralt managed not to swear out loud as he put aside the maps on the table between them, slowly rolled the cuffs of his linen shirt up to his elbows, and held out his own scarred hands.

“Pansy arbiter?” he repeated the insult. “Pansy arbiter?”

“From your own private war, no doubt.”

Aralt shut his eyes briefly. There was simply no placating the man. Clearly, Ristaiel had neither forgiven nor forgotten that one occasion, three years before, when Aralt had been detained from an arguably vital summit. However wrong-headed it might be, the old man seemed bent on revenge.

“Loyalty to two lands divides the man.”

Now we come to it, Aralt thought. No condolences for the death of his father, just casting a net of suspicion. He tried not to sneer. “I had no idea you had a gift for poetry. I’ll give your regards to my mother.”

Ristaiel glared at him. “Never had me no quarrel wi’ your father, nor your grandfathers neither.”

Only, Aralt concluded, with me. He could not argue with the truth. He was laird of two lands, divided by region, oath-bound to both. No one else openly questioned his motives—or his allegiance—but then, Ristaiel had distrusted him from the moment Aralt had arrived in Tyrian as a young man. Resentment grew over his meteoric rise in prominence from the rank of Second Sword to lieutenant governor to governor in a few short years. No hereditary titles, those. No indeed. Not that any of it seemed to impress Ristaiel, northern-bred as a shaggy glacier dog. He granted Aralt about all the respect due a meddling pedigreed pup.

Where were you, Aralt wanted to ask, when Kyrrimar burned? When blustering, hand-wringing idiots with four score and ten excuses about why they could lend no assistance to their beleaguered neighbors quaked in the aftermath of the assault? No help then, no explanations now. Had his departure from the north not been delayed due to mediating insignificant local disputes three years ago, he might have been able to thwart the attack on Kyrrimar to begin with. Or at least spare Devailyn and Lian Kynsei whatever fate they met. The entire Northern Alliance knew it, whether they admitted it or not. Still, some had the audacity to criticize his decision to cross into hostile southern kingdoms, calling it the pursuit of ghosts and shadows. In the end, he had to concede what even his own father would not: that the sons of Endru Kynsei, perhaps the most inspired kavistra ever to hold the title, were both dead. Nothing was going to change that. Not even the growing pile of letters in the bottom drawer of his desk.

Three years he had tried to tell the Kierran clergy in his last letter. Three flaming years! They needed to bury their dead, figuratively, if not literally.

And there sat Ristaiel, bristling with resentment, awaiting an answer. Worse, expecting an apology. Curse the northerners and southerners together!

A few rough jabs brought color to the dwindling hearth. They had monopolized the local magistrate’s offices for two days, and for what? He poked at the fire again, hard, sorely tempted to feed it with the rejected treaties and maps littering the table. The letters from Askierran would go on next. No doubt they would burn blue, like heavenly fire. Poke. Poke. Embers popped and flew in every direction, and he took vicarious pleasure at the thought of the logs being Ristaiel’s fat head.

A sip of wine—he had tired of cider hours before—then back to it.

“Kevarn has mustered against invasion from the east for years. The people have warriors’ hearts, but they need to be fed to keep them strong,” Aralt said finally, taking solace in the polite language of the bargaining table. “The winter’s dead fill the bellies of scavengers, but crops feed your children. Children are tomorrow’s warriors. Who will defend your borders from the next Horror if not them? And who will your border clans raid next winter when they’ve plundered their neighbors down to the bones of their breeding stock? It won’t matter who holds the land you dispute—no one will have had the use of it long enough to bring a harvest.”

Ristaiel, in contrast, was rarely polite.

“That land’s the land o’ my people!” The old man thumped the table emphatically with what was left of his right hand. A tactical display, surely, emphasizing a rich combat history. More than one ballad had been composed about the bloody battle at Soskice Field and a heroic young rogue named Ristaiel Soralyn. Most of them were bad.

“And your point is?” A regrettable choice of words, but there it was.

Ristaiel looked fit to burst. “That land belongs to the Kevarni. We’ve cut its wood an’ tracked game on it long before you came along wi’ your fancy maps, Kell-bred. Farmers in that region spoil everything wi’ fences an’ beasties an’ neat little rows of greens covered wi’ shite!”

“Forget about the farmers, man! You’ll have no game if it has nowhere to live that side of the river!” Aralt said sharply, ignoring the slur on his heritage. “You think it’s bad now? Wait until next autumn when everyone wants to fill their meat lockers and all that’s left are skeers. How many tree rats do you suppose it takes to feed a family for the winter?”

Increased noise next door gave him reason enough to shout. Polite discussion only slowed things down. Fine. He looked his northern neighbor straight in the eye; the old man averted his gaze. Northerners, in particular, seemed to find his green eyes off-putting. He only took advantage of that on occasion.

“You prompted this meeting,” he reminded Ristaiel, slowly lacing his cuffs and propping his elbows on the table, his fingers entwined. “You made the trek now instead of waiting until everyone else arrived for the Meeting. I’ve treated you like the guest you are, but if you aren’t in the mood for civilized negotiations, then we can settle this the old way. Deal, old man, or duel. Your choice.”

Ristaiel snorted with surprise, bright eyes burning with distrust. For all he looked like a retired whistle punk, hunkering there in a loose-knit cotton pullover and trews, his well-oiled larrigans laced up to his knobby knees, he was still a formidable swordsman, and they both knew it. No doubt he knew how to fight with an axe as well. But Aralt was young enough to be his grandson. Taller. Stronger. Faster. Ristaiel might get lucky, but they both also knew how unlikely that was. Aralt tried not to smirk as he shifted tactics.

“Listen,” he said softly, forcing Ristaiel to lean forward to hear. He had never been so close to the man’s ugly, scarred face. That had to have been one hell of a battle on Soskice Field. “Tyrian can support her people and so can Kevarn—without raiding. Your word will keep all but the renegades in line—if you'll only give it. After that, our rangers can attend to their appointed duties. Let them concentrate on any Shirahnyn fool enough to be traveling the Alliance without…” he paused, considering. “Without an acceptable purpose? We wouldn’t want to deprive them of a little sport, now, would we?”

Ristaiel’s upper lip twitched. He nodded stiffly. The word would be given. Aralt let out a pent breath. Would that they could have arrived at the decision before breakfast rather than after second supper, but an open door was an open door, and he intended to explore every opportunity for further negotiation before Ristaiel grew tired of his hospitality. Before he could proceed, however, a deep belch sounded at the doorway.

Matarel’s unholy dam. What now?