both solitude and confinement, also the folly of dwelling on the fate of friends. But in those days he had still possessed his song, and the walls that held him were no barrier to its reach. Now he had only his memories and the nagging, persistent need to know what had become of Ellese and the others.
He hadn’t caught a single glimpse of them since his capture on the lake. The soldiers of the Merchant King had swarmed Crab’s boat with staves in hand, displaying little hesitation in their use. Ellese had made the mistake of swatting away the hand of a soldier as he made to bind her wrists and been clubbed to the deck for her pains. Vaelin had suffered his own flurry of blows when he tried to step to her side. As he lay on the deck, gasping from pain and clutching ribs he suspected might be broken, a sackcloth bag was thrust over his head and his wrists were bound with thick twine. There had been a few hours of lying in what he assumed was accumulated bilge water in the bowels of the ship-sized boat. He heard Nortah’s voice raised at one point but whatever witticism he had intended to bestow was rapidly drowned by a harsh shout and the dull thwack of hard wood on flesh.
Eventually he had been dragged from the damp into the open air. Harsh prods propelled him across solid ground as he peered through the weave of the sack at what he took to be some form of dockside. Then came the gloomy interior of the carriage and the jangle of chains followed by the feel of cold iron on his wrists. The bag was whipped away, and he caught a fleeting glimpse of a soldier’s armoured back before the door slammed shut.
“Is this how you treat a noble visitor?” he had muttered to the gloom with a weary laugh, reflecting on the uselessness of Erlin’s lessons in etiquette.
“I don’t suppose,” he asked the mouse now as the carriage’s wheels continued to rattle over what he hoped were cobbles, “you know the name of this place?” He accompanied the question with a few bread crumbs. The mouse, however, appeared unimpressed. The black beads of its eyes gleamed as it paused to regard him for a second before hopping closer, gathering the morsels to its mouth with tiny claws.
“No.” Vaelin sighed. “I doubted you would.”
He strained to peer at one of the larger gaps in the planking. It was barely the width of his small finger and revealed only a variety of passing light and shadow, although from the increased pitch of noise, it was clear the carriage was indeed now navigating some kind of city. The sheer number of accumulated voices he could hear, coupled with the hours it took for the carriage to come to a halt, convinced him this was a far more substantial place than a mere town.
He reckoned it took a total of four hours before the vibration of the wheels gave way to something far smoother and the carriage came to a halt. A hard metallic clanking and the door swung open. Vaelin blinked watery eyes in the harsh daylight until his vision cleared to reveal a hard, frowning face that, he realised, was one he had seen before.
He judged the man’s age at a few years more than his own, his smooth shaven features marred by lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. His black hair was drawn back into a topknot revealing a forehead marked by a trio of old scars, two of which hadn’t been there when Vaelin last saw him. Also, his expression had been very different. The face of a man in love, Vaelin recalled. Also, whilst his memory increasingly contrived to discard some details as he grew older, the visions conveyed to him by the blood-song never dimmed, especially those concerning Sherin.
The man’s eyes narrowed as Vaelin’s gaze lingered on him, nostrils flaring in a disdainful sniff. “Fetch a bucket,” he said, glancing to the side. “He cannot assault the king with such a stink.”
With that he stepped back and two soldiers in red-lacquered armour climbed into the carriage. They removed Vaelin’s chains and one barked out a command to get up. Vaelin groaned as his muscles stretched for the first time in days, getting unsteadily to his feet only to be shoved towards the door. It was clearly a push calculated to cause harm, forcing