Shadow Queen - By Deborah Kalin Page 0,13

all false solicitousness. ‘Are you too tired, perhaps?’

‘A loose stone underfoot,’ I lied.

Pushing down the fear – which tasted like blood bubbling in my throat – I let him lead me onwards. Inside the sanctuary, the bodies of the fallen had been dragged into haphazard heaps along one wall. I gagged on the smell of it, fresh slaughter trapped in a place of worship, seething and stewing and clamouring for the sky.

Alone among the dead, Grandmother lay on her back on one of the pews near the altar, her eyes closed and arms crossed as if laid out on a bier. The arrows which had killed her had been snapped off so only small jagged stumps of wood protruded from her flesh. The apparent mark of respect surprised me, and I glanced at the man who’d triggered all this carnage.

Still grasping my elbow, he stepped us up to the altar, then said, ‘Surprised I haven’t put her head on a spike? This way is more practical. I look reasonable – and I give the people the chance to see she really is dead. Gerlach,’ he ordered, gesturing the weasel-liveried soldier forward. ‘If you’d do the honours?’

I struggled for calm. He was going to kill me after all. He was calling my bluff. I had nothing left to bargain and my first subterfuge had stripped me of the dignity of honesty. His face said he knew it all and hoped to see me grovelling in the blood of my own court and kin before he had his man, Gerlach, despatch me.

My knees collapsed and I fell to the floor with a thump. Gerlach reached out and put his hand on my brow. Though he must have felt the fear flushing heat through my skin and the slick of sweat beneath the pads of his dry fingers, his long face gave no indication of it.

I trembled, my lips parched as I waited for the final slice of steel across my throat. But Gerlach’s lord didn’t draw out his dirk. Instead he knelt beside me, and Gerlach touched him too, upon the forehead.

Done with any pretence at self-control now, I stared at the man who had killed my family, who was looking up at Gerlach. At his lord’s nod, Gerlach began to intone. They weren’t the words of any binding ceremony I knew, and I’d never heard of a soldier sanctifying a binding, but the import was clear enough. My bowels turned to water with the relief and the sick, sick hope of life rising in me.

Kneeling amid the carnage of my court and clad and tangled in their blood, I bound my life to the man who had engineered the slaughter.

SIX

FROM THE SANCTUARY hall we stepped out into the nascent glow of dawn. All over the upper courtyard, soldiers in unadorned garb were at work: sorting through bodies, stacking the dead, despatching the wounded. I didn’t see them saving any wounded for healing.

A half-dozen soldiers snapped to attention as we emerged, their gazes seeking out my husband for orders.

My stomach contracted, forcing a rank, burning knot up into my throat. No doubt they waited for me: bound now – wife and captive in one. I mustn’t quail when they surrounded me. I would insist on walking unassisted to my prison cell.

Instead, my husband clasped my hand and tucked it through the crook of his arm as Gerlach’s men formed into an escort behind us.

‘We need to find you clean clothes,’ he murmured, pulling me closer with nary a grimace.

Shaken and exhausted by the night, my ability to reason was limited. All I knew was that this man had won – the Turholm was his in its entirety. And now he had me in his power, the ultimate living token to cement his claim to my throne. He didn’t need me to look like an accomplice anymore, so why maintain the pretence I was part of his plan?

With a gentle squeeze of my forearm, he bent his head towards me as if sharing a confidence. ‘Smile,’ he whispered. ‘You’re a bride.’

A strange gurgle escaped me in place of a laugh. I choked it down, for it would surely turn to sobs. ‘A particularly bloody one.’

‘Appearance is everything,’ he said, his answering laugh genuine for all I could tell.

Which was my answer, of course. By maintaining the pretence of collusion, he cut me off from those still in the Turholm who might otherwise have aided me against him. If I hadn’t been numb and