Stormed Fortress: Fifth Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts
commanded to muster. No town-born adult might resist that decision, not if he expected to thrive.
Therefore, the five riders on their lathered mounts breasted the moil at the main cross-road. They parted ways with the laden carts serving the craft quarter market, joining the smart, lighter vehicles and lackeys bound on genteel business uptown. As the press slackened, the Varens courier slapped the dust from his blazoned jacket. He assayed a sly glance. The expression under Lysaer’s felt hat appeared reasonable enough to try a last appeal. ‘The mayor’s played fire with politics for more years than I’ve been alive. Blessed Light, Lord, you cannot expect your grand cause to be served by a routine man bearing dispatches!’
‘I expect you to deliver my sealed writ, nothing more.’ Lysaer tipped a nod to acknowledge his two armsmen, then gave an encouraging smile to ease the fresh nerves of his page-boy. ‘That inn, the Flocked Starling, should do very well. My company stops there for a bath and a meal, followed up by a change of clothing.’
While the Varens man gaped like a trout, the Light’s foolishly sparse retinue reined over to the curb and dismounted. The page took smooth charge of his master’s hot horse. Foamed bits and grimed reins brought no disdainful comment, raised as he was at the ploughshare. His birth-born talent was as matter-of-fact. ‘I sense nothing amiss, here,’ he said after a moment. ‘No untoward workings or sorceries.’
Lysaer clapped the boy’s shoulder. ‘Well done. Carry on.’
The yokel ducked, hiding his blush. He had never known privilege, unlike the silent, paired veterans behind, who once had served as honour guard for Avenor’s lost prince. Now, Ranne and Fennick’s taciturn competence headed the avatar’s personal train. Their appointment had been Sulfin Evend’s replacement, after the late, vile strike by cult sorcery destroyed his three elite captains.
Hawk-nosed Ranne never showed second thoughts. His whistle rousted the Flocked Starling’s grooms, while his more personable, ruddy companion unbuckled their scant baggage and stayed to attend the unsaddling.
‘Don’t want your stashed coin rifled out of your gear?’ Ranne needled his comrade-in-arms.
‘Sweet life, I don’t!’ Fennick’s quick glance appraised the poleaxed rider from Varens, caught still astride in the bustling street. ‘Don’t rush the occasion to sour my fun, or are you too gutless to try a hen’s wager?’
Ranne tipped back his helm, while the master self-named as the Light’s Blessed Prince continued discussion with the stalled courier. Then he shrugged and declared the importunate odds: ‘That we’re going to have Tirans declared for the Light before the hour of sundown?’
‘Midnight,’ corrected Lysaer, who had overheard through the clatter of hooves as the brow-beaten rider spurred off on his errand. ‘We’ll have Tirans after sundown, because her stiff-necked Lord Mayor has too much experience to bow to my overture.’
Which feint of sly statecraft left the Varens courier shamed scarlet under the lion’s share of embarrassment. Alone on the carpet before the high council-men ensconced on the governor’s dais, he was left standing in his dusty clothes, redolent of horse and greased leather. He did not have an ambassador’s grace to disarm the pitched tension before him. The attendant High Magistrate looked furious in his lace. Worse, the suffused ire on the Lord Mayor’s face suggested the Light’s dispatch sparked a diplomatic explosion.
Packed in volatile ranks on the floor, and parboiled by sun through the windows, the guild ministers steamed in their lappet hats. Their whispered distress stretched the pause, dropped since the moment the finicky secretary had knifed through the Sunwheel seal.
‘What appeal is presented?’ a guild spokesman ventured across the stuffy atmosphere. ‘How daring a claim does this royal presume to impose on our free city of Tirans?’
For answer, the Lord Mayor raised acid-sharp eyes, and instead accosted the courier. ‘You know what this says?’ Rings sparked to the pitiless snap of a finger against the unreeled parchment.
The tired rider sweated, trapped by the authority lidded under the vaulted ceiling. ‘I’m a Varens man, your Worthiness. Routine messenger, only. Not my place to know, far less to opinionate on what’s written and sent by my betters.’ Which statement admitted no more than the service badge sewn on his jacket.
But the vulture wearing the seneschal’s robe lashed back in jaundiced suspicion. ‘You could be the Light’s dedicate, come under plain clothes.’
‘No.’ The questioned man shifted, to the chink of rowelled spurs. ‘I’m a hired rider, paid by the route. The scrolls in my dispatch pouch bide under seal. The state contents are never my business.’
Nor had the wax been breached beforetime, a fact witnessed by everyone present. First to crack, the town’s acrimonious advisor slapped off his velvet hat.
‘We’re wasting our strategy grilling the messenger! What does the Exalted Prince have the gall to demand?’
The Lord Mayor’s cheek twitched. ‘That by sundown today, we are to be flying the Sunwheel banner from the most prominent pole on our watchtower.’
‘Ultimatum?’ The Minister of the Treasury bristled. ‘Sheer arrogance!’
‘A plea of insanity, more apt to spark war than move us to grant an alliance.’ The advisor sniffed. ‘Beneath our grace to respond, I suggest.’
‘Ignore this? Are you mad?’ The dimpled treasurer stabbed out a finger. ‘This showman has tied the port towns in silk wraps! They embrace errant creed for a menial bargain that secures their defence against piracy!’
‘Then let’s hear the last line of that writ!’ The armed veteran wearing the garrison’s blazon banged the table with his unsheathed dagger. ‘We hoist the Light’s flag, or else what is threatened?’
‘Or nothing,’ responded the Lord Mayor, fixed by icy thought in his upright chair. His frown stayed perplexed. ‘No ultimatum has been presented. We have no other statement. Just the one sentence, which also poses us an impertinent impasse.’ The pause lagged again, while his fish-eyed glare raked over his disgruntled council-men. ‘The rank challenge lies here: the questionable banner we’ve been asked to raise has, thanklessly, not been provided.’
The miserable courier cleared his dry throat. ‘Your pardon, Lordships. And no fault, by Varens. But on my ride in, I was also charged to leave a wrapped bundle, addressed to the day’s standing gate captain.’ Set at risk by the more volatile jab, that the Light’s avatar was in fact present in Tirans, unannounced with a retinue of three, the rider settled for malice. ‘I don’t broach state seals. But a hare-brained fool knows that packet held cloth, set under the Sunwheel blazon.’
‘Black Sithaer, the rogue nerve!’ pealed the gaunt justiciar.
If the garrison captain stayed his ill temper, the less-disciplined officials heaved to their feet. Amid declaiming shouts, and the chorused hysteria of trade ministers crying for reason, the fire of singed nerves prevailed.
‘I will not give way!’ The Lord Mayor pounced on the presumptuous parchment and ripped it to fluttering shreds. ‘I grant this upstart nothing! Never, for anyone, will we discard our town’s pride and independence!’
‘Then stall diplomatically!’ A fat bursar swiped through the small blizzard, ranting, ‘Do less, and we’re likely to cut ourselves off! Don’t forget that the ports supporting the Alliance could freeze our trade by embargo.’
The arms captain howled. ‘You would choose out of fear, for the sop of security bought by the gold in your ledgers?’
As the upset devolved to a fist-shaking knot, the dispatch rider ducked in retreat and quietly let himself out. To his novice’s eye, the brash avatar had brought the Light’s cause no genial accord: just a single, shrewd line that had driven a wedge through Tirans’ steadfast high council.
Word leaked on the tongues