uncle tried to head north. A longer route, but it would see us arrive safely, if late,’ said Xaver, his eyes hazed with the memory of blood and battle.
‘What happened?’ I prompted, impatient.
Xaver made to speak, but Dieter answered instead. ‘They held the north as well.’
‘The Iltheans? Or the Morvingen?’ Fear fluttered against my ribs. Was every land angling for my throne?
‘Both,’ said Xaver. ‘The Morvingen have always hankered after my uncle’s lands. They let the Ilthean army march north to outflank us, then swelled those ranks with their own men, hiding behind Ilthean livery.’
The drightens were all stiff with tension now, their indecision burning away like mist beneath a rising sun.
‘And why would the Iltheans wish to detain your uncle?’ Dieter asked.
‘He knew the size of their force. He knew of their stronghold on Turasi lands. He knew the legions were marching on the Turholm.’
His words were followed by indrawn breaths and wide eyes, the drightens baited and hooked. Maja looked to be already calculating, while Merten had his eyes squeezed shut.
‘Marching here,’ said Helma.
‘Scarce a week behind,’ Xaver answered.
‘Who leads them?’ asked Maja. ‘Which of the Ilthean generals seeks glory this time?’
‘His name is Sidonius,’ said Xaver, cutting a glance at Dieter, though it was Sepp who reacted with a shudder. Xaver put a hand on Sepp’s shoulder and finished, ‘He’s better known as the slave-born general.’
And there it was: the crisis point.
Sidonius. The emperor’s prized slave-born general had reputedly never lost a battle, never allowed a land he invaded to escape the conqueror’s yoke. He had brought swathes upon swathes of land under the empire’s dominion.
What they had heard stilled the drightens, eddied through the minds of each. Divided, they hadn’t the force to withstand the snakes. United they might. There was a man already at their head, awaiting only their decision to pledge to him.
My accidental poisoning had threatened to topple everything Dieter had garnered. Where one Svanaten failed him, however, another saved him. Sepp and Xaver’s news dissolved all uncertainty. This Sidonius might bring war in his wake, but in his bow-wave the threat of him brought unification – under Dieter’s rule.
It was obvious to me that Dieter realised it. He’d run the numbers through his head, but the gathering of his dark brows, and the throbbing beat of the pulse at his temple and throat, didn’t speak of equanimity. Perhaps he strove not to appear too victorious too soon.
He caught the eye of a soldier and nodded towards Sepp and Xaver. ‘Unbind them. Then let them supp.’
Sepp, and Xaver’s men with him, were to be offered rooms and refreshment. Xaver would now represent House Vestenn. He looked dazed by the sudden change in his fortunes. It was one thing to be the last surviving Vestenn; it was another to be acknowledged as such.
Struck bone-weary by politics and manoeuvring and the inevitable, I followed Sepp’s shuffling feet from the room. The political currents were settling before I’d reached the door. The drightens had much to discuss. Dieter would be ratified by the end of the day.
TWENTY-FIVE
BRIGHT-EYED, EARNEST, AND only two years my junior, Sepp had been my closest friend for as long as I could remember. Most of my early life had been spent in his company – hunting frogs by the river, helping him herd the geese on summer days, stampeding through the thralls’ runs.
In later years, when we left childhood games behind us, his time had been monopolised by an apprenticeship with the master of horses, while mine had been swallowed by Grandmother’s strictures. We still stole every moment we could together, precious times in the kitchen, where I learnt the intricacies of cooking, or in the stable, where he taught me how to nurse a colicky horse, his touch sure and deft. My favourite times with him had been when we took the ferrets into the kitchen cellars. In the dim and cavernous depths we would set the ferrets free to hunt the rats while we sat, perched on barrels containing apple cider or oil or brine for pickling, and simply talked, free and unguarded and ungoverned.
We had shared our thoughts on everything, from Grandmother’s mercurial treatment of Sepp to the marriages she was considering on my behalf, from the progress of my father’s breeding program with the horses to news of the latest stirrings among the nations bordering our lands.
Although Grandmother’s manner towards Sepp was never warmer than indifference, and was often far colder, still he had stood apart from the