Bitter experience won on the Sacrifice March had made me glean all the supplies I could from Lorine, something that required an additional promise of payment beyond our already struck bargain. I also insisted Evadine appoint veterans of previous crusades to lead companies of adherents, making sure they carried sufficient gear and food to at least form camp and feed themselves come evening. Furthermore, the number of miles to be covered per day was restricted to no more than ten, easy for trained soldiers but not a mob of churls. As with the grim trek to the Vale, lack of proper weapons was the starkest deficiency in our growing host. Those who had answered the Lady’s call before knew to bring an axe or billhook but most had neglected to arm themselves at all. On this point, Lorine proved intractable, mostly for want of stocks rather than thrifty obstinacy.

  “My storehouses are filled with grain, not blades, Alwyn,” she told me on the third day out from Castle Ambris. The duchess had decided to ride with her Chosen Company at least part of the way, a sign of ducal approval for the Anointed Lady’s cause. “I said I’d let my churls march with your Martyr. I didn’t promise to arm them.”

  Unwilling to lead a mostly weaponless host to Athiltor, Evadine agreed to my suggestion that seven-foot pikes be cut from the forest. The work required three days, stretched to five by the continual arrival of more recruits. The pikes were crude things, just stripped branches with one end whittled to a point, but they were far better than nothing. Although clearly impatient, Evadine acceded to another four-day interruption to the march while Wilhum and I did our best to instil some semblance of discipline upon this ragged host. As expected, the strictures of military life sent many scurrying back to their farms and villages, but most stayed and suffered through the daily bouts of drill. When we resumed the march, it was an untidy but mostly cohesive column that snaked along the eastward road, resembling a monstrous centipede in the way it bristled from end to end with pikes.

  The swelling of our ranks began to drop away when we approached the border with Alberis. They still came, but in their dozens rather than hundreds, bringing tales of others who had opted to flock to Athiltor rather than the Lady. Listening to these accounts, it became clear to me that Evadine’s rise had never been as universally lauded among the faithful as I thought. Many were so steeped in Covenant orthodoxy as to doubt her Martyrdom, although had wisely kept such sentiments concealed until this moment of crisis. Even more surprising was the depth and scope of this divide in doctrinal adherence.

  “Lost it to my own brother, my lord,” one surprisingly cheery soul informed me when I enquired after the bloody patch over his right eye. “Spoke against the Lady, he did. Called her…” He faltered, casting nervous glances at the pike-bearing recruits filing past. “Names best unspoken,” the one-eyed man continued with a cough. “Couldn’t abide that so we got to fighting. I lost an eye. He lost his life and I’d call it a fair bargain. Least now I’ll get to plough his fields with a steady hand. He was a terrible drunkard as well as a heretic, see?”

  Others told of long-standing neighbours transformed into bitter enemies, families sundered as sons warred with fathers or sisters with brothers, all for the sake of the Risen Martyr. Since the start of the march I had been industrious in spreading the story of Luminant Durehl’s murder and the council’s supposed seizure by the devious schemer Arnabus. I retain a perverse pride in these acid-toned missives in which I imbued Arnabus and the dread Captain Sorkin with all manner of unnatural malignancy.

  “Know that this false cleric and his captain serve not the Seraphile but the Malecite,” one of my more strident passages intoned. “Know that they practise the most vile rituals. Know that children have fallen into their clutches and their blood spilled in arcane rites to slake the Malecite thirst for blood.”

  I was, of course, no stranger to deceit, but even I consider these pamphlets to represent an apogee of the liar’s art. Arnabus did certainly possess unnatural abilities and I harboured no small measure of malice towards him as a result. His intrusion into my dreams in the guise of Erchel’s ghost left me with an abiding sense of violation for which I intended to extract fulsome redress. But, despite the cleric’s evident malevolence, I had no real sense that his actions arose from any adherence to the Malecite, not that it prevented me from pretending otherwise.

  The fact that my disingenuous pamphlets found so many ardent believers is something I look upon now with as much shame as professional satisfaction. Ayin and the few other scribes in our number were industrious in producing copies. These were in turn handed to scouts and any recruit with a horse who would carry them to towns and villages within two days’ ride. My artful dishonesty was then proclaimed to all who would listen and the pamphlets pressed into the hands of the literate. I was confident the stories would grow with the telling, acquiring more lurid details than I could conjure, and so it proved. By the time we neared the Siltern River, there were those among our ranks willing to swear to the Martyrs that servants of the Heretic Ascendant had sacrificed their son or daughter to the Malecite before their very eyes. Disturbingly, most appeared to believe this had happened despite cautious enquiry of those who knew these folk revealed them to be mostly childless.

  “No such thing as a bad lie,” Lorine quipped one morning, another pearl of Deckin’s wisdom. “As long as it’s useful.” We had just watched Evadine suffer through one particularly gruesome account sobbed out by a kneeling man in ragged garb, his feet dark with the mud of several days’ travel.

  “They cut her from chin to belly, my lady!” the fellow wailed before casting himself at the Anointed Lady’s feet. “Drank her blood and laughed and danced, they did! Oh my poor dear sweet Illsah…”

  “He said her name was Elmah when he started,” Lorine observed, turning away and not bothering to keep the disgust from her face. “What strange magic you weave, my lord Scribe.”

  “Words have power,” I agreed with a shrug. “Especially when you write them down. As for lies, I learned long ago that you can only really sell them to a willingly gulled audience.”

  “Do you think she knows that?” Lorine cast a pointed glance at Evadine, now resting a comforting hand on the weeping father’s head. “Or have lies and truth all become a jumble for her?”

  She spoke with an incautious volume that brought a warning scowl on my brow. “Truth always wins out in the end, my lady Duchess,” I said. “Once this is all settled, I’m confident it will once again ascend to a place of reverence in this realm. Under the rule of the Ascendant Queen, the Testament of Martyr Sihlda Doisselle will predominate in Covenant lore, and there was never a better guide to both truth and justice.”

  The disgust on Lorine’s face shifted into squinting doubt for a moment, then, as she moved closer to me, hardened into grim realisation. “So,” she sighed, “that mad bitch really has captured you.” A sad, shallow curve formed on her lips and she raised her hand to stroke my cheek, a gesture I knew to signal a farewell. “I find I much preferred you a cynic, Alwyn.”

  “Anyone can be a cynic,” I said. “Cynicism is not wisdom, merely an excuse to watch the world burn when you should be helping to quench the flames.”

  Lorine arched her brows. “But are you quenching, or stoking?” Her hand dropped to her side and she stepped back, not allowing me the chance to reply. “I believe, my lord, it is time for me to return to my duties. The work of a duchess is far more burdensome than I ever imagined. Besides, I believe I’ve had my fill of witnessing battles, and I’m sure your Martyr will be glad to see the back of me.”

  I bowed low. “Your diligence is rightly famed, Duchess. I shall convey your gracious parting words to the Anointed Lady.”

  “My thanks, my lord.” As I straightened, Lorine came close, arms enfolding me in an embrace of surprising warmth. “For the first time, I’m not entirely sure we’ll ever meet again,” she murmured into my ear. “But I do hope so, Alwyn. You and Bryndon are the only true family I have left.” As she drew back, she clasped my hands and I felt something small and hard against my palm. “Parting gift,” she said, voice much softer now. “One of my mother’s favourites. The ingredients are very expensive and difficult to mix in just the right proportions. It’s so potent it doesn’t even need to be drunk. A single drop to the skin is enough and it barely leaves a mark. The effects are akin to a seizure of the heart, the kind that took my dear husband from me not so long ago.”

  She gripped my hand tight, pressing the bottle into my flesh, gaze steady with unmistakable meaning.

  “I know my scrolls too, Alwyn,” she said. “And, at heart every Martyr’s tale is a tragedy, one that holds no room for love. Mad or not, she surely knows that.” Releasing my hand, Duchess Lorine Blousset turned and strode away, shouting for her servants to fetch her horse.

  “Does it look the same?” Evadine asked as we reined to a halt atop a rise a quarter-mile south of our objective. Coming here had been my idea, one I wasn’t sure she would agree to. In fact, she seized upon it with a bright-eyed enthusiasm I felt stemmed from a desire to be away from the main body of her growing host for a day or two.

  She sermonised less these days, the nightly invective that had once been a feature of life in the Covenant Company was a thing of the past now. She still led supplications once a week but her sermons were shorter and more prone to utilise passages from the Martyr Scrolls, where before she relied on unrehearsed words arising from nowhere but her heart. I had yet to ask her why, but saw a new reticence in the way she spoke to the common folk, a closed stiffness where before she had greeted them with warm tactility. I ascribed this shift, something in truth I had begun to notice after my return from Caerith lands, to the ever increasing burden of her responsibilities. Soon she would be a queen, not just a Martyr, and while a queen should serve her people, she cannot be of the people.

  These, at least, were the comforting tales with which I salved my swelling disquiet. For, to be in love, I know now, is to be a fool.

  Below us the vast, spiral-tiered crater of the Pit Mines lay in its grim, grey-sided majesty. “Yes,” I told her. “Much the same.” By my estimation, the famed royal prison was mostly unchanged save for the sparseness of its inmates, just a few dozen standing about in small, fearful clusters. The bodies littering the ramp were more numerous.

  “No sign of guards,” the Widow said, bringing her mount to a halt nearby. She had taken a troop of scouts to the keep overlooking the mines, bearing word of the Anointed Lady’s arrival and demanding the lord in residence, whoever he might be these days, open the gates and depart this place immediately. “Keep’s empty too,” Juhlina added, “save for a few servants. They said the lord and his men did some killing when they caught word of our approach but took to their heels this morning.” She inclined her head at the inmates below. “It seems strange this lot didn’t run off too.”

  “No,” I replied, kicking my heels to urge Blackfoot to a walk. “Not everyone forsakes their home so easily.”

  The chain on the gate took a few blows with a pickaxe before it consented to shatter. For many years the great oaken doors had rarely been fully opened and ancient hinges groaned and squealed as they swung aside. The few inmates nearby instantly fled at the sight of us, moving in a slow shuffle that told of weakened muscles and a parlous diet. One stumbled to her knees when she tried to run, attempted a feeble rise then gave up with a hopeless sigh. As had often been the case when I dwelt within these walls, I couldn’t place the age of this inmate. She stared up at me with tired, resigned eyes set in features besmirched by soot, dirt and the creases that come with hardship rather than passage of time.

  “How long since they fed you?” I asked, crouching at her side, the sunken hollows of her face stark with shadows.

  “Days,” she rasped, the grating croak of her voice causing me to reach for my canteen. “Punishment, his lordship said,” she went on after a weak gulp or two. “He did that, sometimes. And—” her weary eyes slipped to a nearby corpse, dusted in gravel, dried blood discolouring the sackcloth garb “—this, when he got angry. Got terrible angry last day or so. Guessed you’d be the reason, eh?”

  She bared yellowed teeth in a smile then coughed up something that stained her lips dark red. “The name of this lord?” I enquired, taking hold of her shoulders to stop her collapsing into the dirt, feeling the bones beneath her threadbare garb.

  “Never…” she smiled again “… thought to ask.” Her eyes dimmed and she sagged, though I felt the faint thrum of a pulse when I put a hand to her chest.

  “See to this woman!” I snapped, summoning soldiers to my side. “Get her to the keep. Water but only a little food for now. Gather up these others too. Make it known that they are freed by the word of the Anointed Lady.”

  Questioning of the surviving inmates revealed the recently fled Lord Warden of the King’s Mines to be a knight named Aurent Vellinde. A man of far more industry and cruelty than the late Eldurm Gulatte, it was apparent Sir Aurent had accrued a long list of crimes during his tenure, the worst of which being his hasty massacre of prisoners when word of the Anointed Lady’s approach reached him. Astute as well as sadistic, the lord warden clearly had a gift for gauging a changing wind. Apparently, he had also heard my story and decided not to risk a visit with so uncertain an outcome. I sent the Widow and my best trackers in pursuit but knew their quarry had too great a start to be caught. However, I did make careful note of Vellinde’s name and the documents found in his chambers were useful in providing clues to his future whereabouts.

  “Death by hanging,” Evadine promised me that night. “One of the first decrees of the Ascendant Queen the moment she sits on the throne. Unless my lord chamberlain would like something more elaborate.”

  We lay together in the lord warden’s bed, entwined atop a mattress where, it occurred to me, poor lovelorn Eldurm had once lain, his mind no doubt beset by dreams of the woman I held in my arms. I had seen enough to concede the possibility that ghosts may have substance in this world and couldn’t suppress a shudder at the thought of the dead knight’s spectre standing over us, his grey, rotted face set in miserable, depthless envy.

  “Lord chamberlain?” I asked. Despite our unquiet recent exertions, I felt a need to keep my voice low. This chamber was three storeys above the main hall where the rest of the Scout Company bedded down. I knew most would never even entertain the notion that Evadine and I were engaged in anything other than planning the coming campaign, but maintaining some measure of circumspection seemed wise.

  “You’ll require a suitably grand title if you’re to be my consort.” She nuzzled at my ear. “Or do you find it not grand enough, I wonder.”

  Consort. The word rang with hollow absurdity in my head, but so did all the alternatives. Husband. Prince… king? I was and would never be any of those things. A Risen Martyr had no need of a spouse, or any form of base human love, not when she was filled with the grace of the Seraphile.

  The feel of her lips on my neck was enticing, but I shifted away from her, swinging my legs off the mattress to sit up. The lord warden’s chamber was dark save for a faint glimmer from the embers smoking in the fireplace. Still, I remembered this room well. Sir Aurent had seen fit to adorn the walls with various weaponry and shields, presumably trophies or loot from his battles and tourneys. Such vanity had never troubled Eldurm, for all his faults. It made me hate Aurent more while deepening my fear of his predecessor’s ghost.

  “What’s wrong?” Evadine asked, stroking a hand down my back.

  “I wrote you many letters here,” I said, my eyes drifting to the shadowed bulk of the desk near the window. “Or rather, I wrote letters for Lord Eldurm to sign. I always wondered how many of my words you actually troubled yourself to read.”

  “For a time I read all his letters in full. I felt I owed him that much. I knew how badly he had fallen, you see?” The mattress bounced as she sat up, arms enfolding me, chin resting on my shoulder. “Poor old Eldurm was a victim of a spell I never cast, not knowingly. I stopped reading his letters in any detail when I noticed how much his wordsmithing had improved. The penmanship was too accomplished, the contents too poetic. His words had ever been clumsy, but they were his words, and they were true. Your words were plainly written by a soul who had no love for me at all.” She put her lips close to my ear, voice soft and breath hot. “What letters would you write to me now, my lord?”

  Lust stirred with fierce inevitability, but still I didn’t reach for her. Eldurm was not the only ghost in this place and I was preoccupied by the tour I had taken of the Pit’s deepest shafts. There I found a small nook in the tunnel wall where once a foolish, arrogant youth had begun his second education under a woman now proclaimed a Martyr. Also a murderer, a treacherous voice from the darker corners of my mind reminded me with sibilant cruelty. She collapsed the tunnel, remember? She killed them all. All those faithful idiots…

  Evadine’s embrace tightened as another shudder ran through me. “Why did we come here, Alwyn?” she asked me. “What did you hope to find?”

  A pertinent question for which I had no answer. There had been a faint hope that I might discover one of Sihlda’s congregation here. Carver perhaps, somehow miraculously spared Sihlda’s final judgement on the damned souls who followed her. Mayhap he had continued to live out his days revering the woman who had killed his brothers and sisters in faith. But Carver was dead. They all were, nothing but rot and bones made part of the substance of this dreadful place. More than the false hope of survivors was the basic need to see it again, walk the same tunnels where I had transformed from thief to scribe, look upon that mean nook and feel Sihlda’s presence once more. But, if she were among the ghosts littering this crater of horrors, like Eldurm, she refused to make herself known.