The boy stumbled up the wooden steps of the guest house. He paused at the entry, only to lean against its frame and catch his breath for a few wheezing gasps. Alright. Alright. You can do this.
He pushed at the door and slipped inside. Then, he cut through the crowd and went straight up to the thegn. He waited a moment, but remained unnoticed, so had to clear his throat.
The man looked at him. His dark, penetrating eyes grew a note more steely. “You again? You trying to get an eye put out?
“Sir. Thegn, that is.” He tried to lower his voice so that at least the other tables wouldn’t overhear. “That note you had, it spoke of assassins. I know where the assassins are right at this moment. They are here, in Baght Town. But some of Athairdrost’s men have them captive. If you act now, you can free the assassins and put them on the right path to find Athairdrost.” He felt a sudden attention settle on him. He tried to swallow, but found his throat dry. “If you act quickly.”
The man’s eyes narrowed by increments.
He did his best to persist. “Which is… which I gather is what you are desiring. I gather.”
The thegn got to his feet. He drew his sword in a long, slow snickering slither of steel-on-steel. “You were spying.”
The other men at the table all stopped eating. They looked over, confused. A few of them reached for weapons too.
“Please. You must hurry.”
“That is an extraordinarily dangerous thing to say, boy. If Prince Athairdrost has taken some criminals, that is of no concern to us.”
“Dangerous,” repeated the thin man across the table. He was fingering a long, narrow knife.
“Maybe I made a mistake not taking out both your eyes,” continued the thegn. “Choose your words very carefully now.” He tapped the tip of his sword casually against the tabletop, knocking out a slow rhythm of passing moments. “How do you come to know any of this?”
“I was sent,” said the boy. He immediately regretted it. Lying was a mistake. It was too easy to get caught out in a tense moment. But he pressed on: “I was sent by Ingoldsthere.”
“To spy on me?”
“Not to spy on you,” he managed to stammer. “No. Not that. I’m small, aren’t I? Hardly noticeable. Ingoldsthere thought I’d be useful in Baght. Useful for looking about. I was only supposed to say something if I found something.”
“And conveniently enough, you found something,” said the master-at-arms, not sounding entirely convinced.
“Old Magian Ingold said nothing of this to me. And how do I know you are not one of Athairdrost’s scurrying rats, sniffing about? Could be you’re telling the truth about spying, but perhaps not the whole of it?”
His mind raced desperately. Just as with the other scripts he’d learned, the spectre in the dreams must have imparted some scraps of history too. The letters and language were both secrets of the Shadowed and Anthine Vells. It was death to teach an outsider those words and symbols. He could use that. “I can read your old tongue. The secret tongue. And I can write it. No one else knows it. Give me something to write with and I’ll prove it to you. None of Athairdrost’s spies could know that, could they? Just tell me what to write.”
Moliagul eyed him for what seemed like the of a whole painful minute. But, eventually, he crooked a finger at a servant. “Bring vellum, and a quill, and ink.”
As the materials were placed before the boy on a table, he realised that he’d never actually written anything in the waking world. He done it often enough in the dreams. And, so, he just sort of felt that somehow he knew how to write. His fingers trembled. He took the quill. This could be a terrible mistake. And then, as he held it, he felt its barely noticeable weight, he felt the hard, flexible give of the goose quill. It felt comfortable. It felt like an extension of his own body. When the thegn recited some lines of poetry for him to translate and write, he did so, fluidly and without effort. The thegn seemed taken aback. He added: “The sun is an angry red eye, write that.”
The boy dipped the quill but stopped. “I can’t.”
“You don’t know?” asked the thegn, brushing fingers back along the hilt of his unsheathed sword.
“No. I mean, no one can write that in the old language of the Anthine Vells. There is no word for ‘sun’. Or, at least, I don’t know of one.”
After a silence, the thegn nodded. “That is true. The language of my ancestors is ancient and descends from the age of glorious night, when Our Lady of the Everlasting Darkness was the only goddess upon the earth, and all the world was beautiful, starlit and moonlit and peaceful. There was no need to name the yellow-curse. The trespasser. The hate-scorcher.” He spoke thoughtfully now. “And my ancestors did not deign to sully their tongue with a name for that cursed thing, when it did creep into the world.” A moment’s consideration. “But of course, if you are a secret student of Ingoldsthere, then you would know all that, wouldn’t you?”
The boy nodded.
Thegn Moliagul held himself quite still, thinking thoughts that passed like clouds over his eyes. “Though… it remains possible that Athairdrost may have found some lost book writ in the old language and unravelled it. Here, I’ve another question. Tell me: why are The Shadowed and Anthine Vells called by that name?”
The boy didn’t know. He could only guess. Because of great cliffs? Mists? Thick trees. “Because,” he started, and then he had a thought… “because of the flowers. The dark flowers that grow there.”
“Yes.”
“We must hurry,” said the boy, if we are to–“
“I am not done just yet. You answer my questions well enough, but my heart is still misgiving. There is something fibbish about you.” He crossed his arms. “If you are of my people, and my kingdom, and if you are thralled to my Prince Morholt, then tell me this: in ages past when my ancestors were still kings, before we were… benignly adopted… into the Princedom of Sorthe, what did my ancestors wear for a crown?”
Again, all he could do was guess. Gold? Silver? Iron? No, wait–if they were such ancient kings, they might have had a crown carved of stone… a crown of sea-ivory… or carved obsidian or jet? But before he guessed, the motto on the shield came back to him and it made sense. “Flowers,” he said.
“Flowers?” snorted the Thegn, his tone incredulous. He tightened his fingers around the hilt until he formed a fist. “Is that what you say? My ancestors, great Warrior-Kings of Moliagul and the Shadow’s Own Vells wore flowers on their heads?”
“Yes, sir. In a wreath. It was the flowers of the Vells. The Wreath of Night-Everlasting.”
For a tense moment the thegn did not move a muscle. At last he lifted his sword and he slid it back into his scabbard. “Lieutenant, ready the men. Tie leather covers over the shields and everyone, turn your coats inside-out. We want no one, least of all Athairdrost himself, to know what we are about, or who we are.” He turned to the boy. “So Athairdrost’s soldiers have taken these southern assassins, have they?”
The boy nodded. He could feel his heart beating so hard it seemed that his ribs might crack.
“And these assassins, you think if we free them, then they might put an end to Athairdrost? Might save me and my men some trouble?”
Another quick nod.
“Well, we shall see what we may do about that. Also, child?”
The man leaned down until his face was eye-to-eye with the boy’s. His bristly beard was almost touching the child’s chin. A smell like cinnamon and scented wax came off him. “You ought not lie.”
“What do you–“
“My people in the time before Sorthe were ruled by a lineage of queens, not kings. You were otherwise right in all your guesses.”
“But you believe me anyway?’
“I believe that you are some sorcerous creature pretending to be a boy. I can fathom no other way that you could have leapt correctly at so many guesses. Perhaps you can imperfectly read thoughts. I believe also that you have rather a southern cast to you: hair, skin and eyes. You don’t look Sorthe. You look like a southerner. The sort of southerner who might well be allied with assassins.” He smiled. “So, either it is a trap… but in that case, I am expecting a trap and it will not go well for the trappers. Or, it is not a trap, and we have a chance to deal a blow to that nasty murdering princeling Athairdrost. Either way, I think the risk is worth taking.”
“I see.”
“But, boy, listen to me carefully.” He leaned so close that his breath got right into the boy’s face. “If this is some foolery of a trick, you’ll be the first to be garrotted. You understand?”
The boy nodded. “No trick.”
Moliagul raised himself back upright. “I hope not. For your sake. And also, No trick, my thegn.” He smiled.
“Yes. Right. Of course. No trick, my thegn.”
There was a clattering of weapons being collected, and scuffs as stools were pushed out. The boy felt himself begin to tremble a little as he watched the men ready themselves to fight. There looked to be at least two dozen fighting men, all well armed and armoured. In the back of his mind, he tried to count up how many soldiers he’d seen at the inn.
Would this number of swords be sufficient?
Soon enough, he’d know. They all would.