The Walls of Air Page 0,88

land is rife with them, hiding by night to haunt the roads by day, stealing and killing whatever they find. Barely did I escape with my life. Your messenger was a brave man, my lady. A worthy representative of the Realm.'

He bowed again, deeper this time. And as he did so, he swept his scarlet cloak back like a mating bird, its scalloped edges like blood against the snow. Gil had a brief glimpse of the token that hung on his gilded belt - small, oak, shaped to a man's hand. Hot rage swept her, more Winding than her former grief. She stood motionless as Alwir offered Minalde his arm, the massed troops and the populace of the Keep parting before them, and led her upward to the dark gates, Stiarth of Alketch trailing elegantly at their heels.

What the messenger wore at his belt was the token of the Rune of the Veil that Ingold had given to the Ice falcon for his protection before the man rode away.

'He murdered him.' The tapping of Gil's boot heels sounded very loud in the arched roof of the great west stairway. The Icefalcon would never have given up that token.'

'Not even to someone who was empowered to negotiate for the troops we'll need?' Minalde asked quietly. She and Gil reached the landing, where an old man from Gae seemed to have homesteaded with two unofficial wives and large numbers of caged chickens. 'Not even in the case of an emergency? If it was a choice between one or the other of them? He'd fulfilled his own mission in summoning the messenger.'

'The Icefalcon?' Gil sidestepped two chicken crates and a cat and continued down the steps. From the corridor below, dim yellow light shone up, marking the back door of the Guards' barracks; with it came a whiff of cooking odours and steam. 'Believe me, there was no one he valued as much as he did himself. Least of all some- some scented Imperial Nephew whom he could have broken in half on his knee.' They turned right at the foot of the steps, went down a short stretch of corridor whose walls looked to be of the original design, and then passed through a makeshift side door and into a jumble of rough-partitioned cells to the right again. 'He never went in for that kind of altruism, Aide. The only way Stiarth could have gotten that amulet of Ingold's was by force, in which case he'd have had to kill him, probably by trickery. Stealing it from the

Icefalcon would have been tantamount to murder; that was his first line of defence against the Dark.'

Gil spoke quietly, but her anger was still hot in her breast. Maybe it was the memory of the messenger's creamy smirk, or the fact that the negotiations were first and last with Alwir, with Aide being used merely as his rubber stamp. Maybe it was only the memory of waking up in the rain-dripping dimness of that stable back at Karst, when the Icefalcon had come to check in his cool, impersonal fashion whether she was well. But something of it must have carried into her voice, for Aide touched her sleeve, bidding her to halt.

'Gil,' she said, 'whether the Icefalcon would have given it to him of his own free will or not - let it be.'

'What?' Gil's voice had an edge, sounding sharp in the gloomy half-darkness of these deserted corridors.

'I mean - Gil, you're the only one here who knew about that token. But you're not the only one who thinks that -that Stiarth na-Salligos might have had something to do with the Icefalcon's not coming back. And, Gil, please...' Her low voice was suddenly urgent, almost frightened, her eyes plum-coloured in the grubby and flickering light. '... Alwir says we can't afford to let negotiations fall through. Not for that.'

Gil bit back a cruel reply. She stood for a moment, struggling with her sullen rage, knowing that Aide was, in a sense, right. What's done is done. The murder by treachery of one of the few friends I had is done. Past.

'Maybe,' she said slowly. 'But if that kind of treachery is common coin, do we really want negotiations to continue?'

Aide turned her face away. 'We don't know that.'

'Like hell we don't! Aide, you've been reading those old histories and records as much as I have. Compared with some of the crap they've pulled on settling the Gettlesand border question, murdering the Icefalcon would