About the Author

Rebecca Levene is an experienced author of fiction and non-fiction and has written scripts for TV and video games, including one voiced by Mickey Rourke. She began her career writing media tie-ins for properties ranging from Doctor Who to the Final Destination movies. More recently, she has published two original supernatural thrillers and a short story which the Guardian said ‘combines thwarted ambition and a gallery of fascinating secondary characters to wonderfully readable effect’. In addition to her writing, she is also working on the storyline and scripts for the hit app Zombies, Run! You can follow her on Twitter @BexLevene.

The Hollow Gods

Smiler’s Fair

The Hunter’s Kind

Image Missing

www.hodder.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by

Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright © Rebecca Levene 2015

The right of Rebecca Levene to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 444 75376 9

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.hodder.co.uk

For Fiona Singh,
who remembers our childhood for both of us

Prologue

For as long as she’d understood what a birthfeast was, Cwen had dreaded her twelfth. She woke up on the morning it finally came, turned her face to the wall and kept her eyes tightly shut, as if she might be permitted to sleep it away and never suffer its consequences.

She heard Griotgard approaching her bed, but he wouldn’t be able to shake her awake. Everything she touched must be washed before a warrior could handle it, and any food she left was thrown into the forest, too defiled even for the pigs. She rolled over and looked up at him.

‘Hawk day for you, girl,’ he said. His face was very red and very square, without any softness in it.

‘They told me I’d have a feast before I go.’ She dropped from her bed to the wooden floor of the longhall. ‘And you’re not invited.’

Last night she’d laid out the clothes she was to wear today. Her father had provided them, looking to the left of her head as he set them out one by one on the bed: woollen trousers and shirt, hide boots and belt, a linen jacket and a hooded cloak in forest green. The jacket had been embroidered with a portrait of the Hunter, smiling and golden. Cwen hated it. It was the Hunter who’d put the hawk mark on her cheek while she was still inside her mother’s belly, and singled her out for this fate.

The other Jorlith were rising too. She’d crossed practice swords with some of the youngest in her training and they smiled at her now, but it was with pity. Her pride wouldn’t allow that and so she straightened her back and nodded gravely back, like a thegn acknowledging the village churls. She was a thegn, whatever else the mark on her cheek made her.

Her mother was waiting outside the longhall. She stared for a long moment at the birthfeast finery she’d embroidered with her own hand, and then her face tipped upward to cast a beady eye over Cwen’s wildly curling orange hair, which she’d forgotten to comb. Cwen was startled to realise she was the taller by a head. Her mother was, as always, perfectly neat: hair plaited, an embroidered scarf draped round her neck and a silver acorn brooch clasping her gown tight across the plump breasts at which Cwen had never been permitted to suckle.

‘My darling,’ her mother said finally. ‘So beautiful.’

‘Who cares about beautiful? I’m the strongest my age. I beat Osbeorn at staves yesterday, and he’s near to being a warrior full.’

‘Yes. That’s good. I wouldn’t … Cwen, if there was any way – if I could have stopped this, kept you for myself …’ Her mother looked away, seeming to war with some strong emotion, and when she looked back her face was calm. ‘Come then. The food grows cold and the sun’s already risen.’

The guard owls swivelled their golden eyes to watch as they walked across the swaying platform that led between the Jorlith longhall and the village square. The great moon pines’ trunks stretched into the sky above and far down to the forest floor below, where the thegns would never walk and the churls grubbed in the dirt of their farms. The wind was light today and scented by wild rose.

Westleigh housed 122 bodies, nearly the most the Hunter permitted, and it seemed as if every one of them had come from their homes to stare at Cwen as she passed. Only the thegns had been invited to the feast, but the churls would be given the meal’s scraps and besides, she’d always been a curiosity. Other villages had three hawks or half a dozen; sometimes every child in one family bore the mark. She’d waited and waited for another hawk to be born into Westleigh, but she was the only one.

Her training had suffered for it; she had been unable to touch any of those she sparred with. Unable to touch anyone. She’d sometimes stroked her own arms, wondering what it would be to feel another’s skin against them, but that was childishness. Today she needed to put all such weakness aside.

Her parents’ manor sat in the crook of the largest branch of the largest ice oak for miles in any direction. No one had ever been allowed to doubt their wealth. The thatch was fresh and the plaster bright white between the supporting beams. Inside, the tables were already laden with meats. The smell was as thick as gravy and she kneed aside two hounds who had been drawn by it to loiter in the doorway.

The babble died away as the guests noted her presence. Some looked like they felt they should speak, but what could they say to her on this of all days? Nothing. She felt as if she’d lived her whole life in that silence.

She whistled as she walked to the head of the table, tuneless and loud. Her mother drew away from her, embarrassed, but her father watched stern-faced until she sat at his right side. She leaned away from him and tried not to let his disdain spoil her appetite. A bullock and two lambs had died for this meal, and she didn’t know when she’d have such plenty again. Everyone gobbled their food, the sound of the chewing and slurping like a kennel. If she’d let the dogs inside their manners could barely have been worse.

The sun was climbing and she must be gone before it reached the top of its daily hill. When the feast ended, the thegns formed a corridor down the length of the great hall for her to walk. She watched her boots take each stride and tried not to shake. Why should she be afraid? She’d been trained for this since the moment she could walk.

Outside, the rest of the village had gathered. Someone had laid a knife and a spear on the wooden platform and she picked them up. Her mask would be last of all; she turned to see her mother holding it. The wooden face was placid, a sharp-beaked bird with round eyes and scarlet cheeks. Her mother’s face was equally calm, but Cwen could see the turmoil in her eyes and longed to reach out to her.

She didn’t. She wanted her mother to be left with a good, strong memory of her and so she put on the mask, her fingers fumbling to tie the leather cords at the back. Suddenly she was crying, her eyes hot with tears. But it didn’t matter: the mask hid them.

It was an awkward climb, with a spear in one hand and the knife clenched into her armpit because she’d forgotten to hang it at her waist. At the bottom, she couldn’t stop herself taking one last glance at her home in the treetops high above. Only one figure remained in sight, leaning forward to watch her descent. It might have been her mother but she was too far away to be sure.

The trees clutched darkness around them. Cwen knew better than most what it held. Leaf mulch squelched beneath her boots, its decayed stench banishing the memory of her feast. The whole thing already felt very distant. Fifty paces on and the village did too, lost to sight in the treetops.

The path was broad enough that the sun would strike it at noon and keep it safe from the worm men and the moon beasts, but now everything was in shadow and nowhere felt safe. She’d never seen one of the monsters but she’d seen pictures. Griotgard had shown her the bestiary when she was four and she’d wept at what was painted there. He’d told her these were to be her prey when she joined the Hunt. It seemed more likely she’d be theirs.

The forest was filled with noise. In the village there had been other sounds to drown out the bird calls and insect skritches and rustle of unseen things, but here they seemed far too loud. She jumped at the snap of a twig to her left, scolded herself for behaving like a child – and then jumped again at a howl to her right.

She’d soon drained her leather flask dry and her throat was parched. She could hear the maddening gurgle of a stream to her left. It must be the Briarburn, which wound through the farmland to the west of the village and then headed down towards the distant plains, where the savage tribespeople lived. To be so loud it must be close.

She peered between the oaks, but the undergrowth was tangled and wild and hid what lay beyond. She took one step from the path and paused, shaking, but no attack came. Of course it didn’t. The moon monsters slept during the day; that was what everyone said. And what kind of warrior was she, afraid of a few trees?

The ground was thick with brambles; they caught at her trousers and scratched her hand. She took out her knife and sawed vainly at the knotty stems until the sap set her cuts stinging and she abandoned the attempt. She wasn’t sure at first if the flecks of light were tricks of her eyes or true sunlight, but as she moved they kept their shape and gained in brightness until she was sure that what she saw was daylight dappled through leaves.

A tension she hadn’t been aware of loosened in all her limbs and her spine. She flung her head back and yelled in triumphant relief.

Something, very close, called back. It was a high-pitched scream, almost human. But there was a strange quality to it, a tone both high and low that could never have emerged from any person’s throat. A moment passed and a second cry came from her other side, and then another from behind. They had surrounded her, and the undergrowth was too thick to wield her spear.

‘You’ve got a head full of shit and air, Cwen,’ she hissed to herself and drew her knife. It looked too small in her hand, its blade not even as long as her forearm.

The screams came again, closer, and she caught her first glimpse of what pursued her as it shook the branches far above her head. Its own was lost in shadow but an eye flashed green and huge and then was gone.

She backed up until the trunk of a moon pine braced her upright. She needed its support. Her knees had weakened with fear and she gritted her teeth and locked the joints. The beasts would hardly care how she died, but she imagined Griotgard laughing at her cowardice and it stiffened her resolve.

Then the first of the beasts pushed through the undergrowth into plain view and she couldn’t stop a whimper of fear. The teeth were the length of her hand; the eyes shone with their own internal flame, brighter than the scarce daylight; and when it lifted one clawed foot she saw the glint of scales. It looked like no natural animal, but like a stitched-together thing made of the worst parts of all the rest.

The monster sank to its front knees until its head was only a few feet above hers. There was intelligence in its eyes, as much cunning as she’d ever seen in Griotgard’s. Its lips peeled back, as if to show her the full length of its fangs. It was mocking her, she was sure of it.

She raised her spear and snarled back at it. ‘I’ve a fang too!’

It howled, reared back to strike – and then screamed again. She braced for the blow, frozen, and only slowly realised that its scream had changed into a desperate sound. A dark stain spread from its open jaws down to its chest. Blood: all that the creature had or at least more than it could spare. It fell back to its knees and then on to its side, crushing bushes and plants beneath it, and the smell of its gore mixed with a sudden puff of wild garlic.

There were more screams and other cries: human sounds, and these ones were triumphant. There was a great creaking and cracking and snapping of branches all around her as the smell of blood grew thicker. The beasts were dying. They were being slaughtered.

Before the screams stopped she knew who’d come to her aid and her face burned beneath its mask. It would have been easier to die an idiot than live to see her idiocy witnessed by the Hunt.

The beasts had crushed so many trees and bushes in their death throes that the sun was blazing down on her unchecked when the first of the hawks emerged. Their expressions were hidden behind masks, wide-eyed blanks. The nearest tilted its head sideways, so exactly like the bird its mask resembled that Cwen giggled helplessly and couldn’t stop. And then the final figure emerged from the trees and the laughter dried out in her throat as all sound died in the forest, birdsong quieting and insects stilling, as if the whole world held its breath where this figure walked.

She’d seen a hundred paintings of the Hunter, a score of tapestries. She’d hated that face from the moment she knew who owned it. Now the hatred melted under the strength of that calm regard and left something formless behind.

‘Cwen,’ the Hunter said. ‘Youngest of my hawks.’

Cwen knew she should bow. She didn’t.

Some of the gathered hawks hissed behind their masks and the two wolves that flanked the goddess raised their hackles and growled. The Hunter neither frowned nor smiled. Beneath the golden curls of her hair, her face was terribly scarred. None of the paintings showed that and Cwen felt a stab of terror as she imagined a beast so powerful it could wound a god. ‘We looked to find you miles from here, child,’ the Hunter said. ‘You wandered from the path.’

‘I was thirsty. No one said how far I had to go. No one told me anything.’

‘They warned you, I am sure, of the dangers in the dark.’

Cwen looked down, abashed. ‘Yes.’

The Hunter said nothing further, but when she turned and strode away, Cwen felt compelled to follow, trotting on the heels of the Hunter’s wolves.

When the sun began to set, they turned aside from the path into a clearing three hundred paces across. Cwen was shocked to see a building in its centre, rooted to the ground like a tree. Her steps faltered but the other hawks walked towards it and she couldn’t bring herself to seem a coward in their eyes as well as a fool.

Closer to, she could see that the building was open on one side, its peaked, wood-tiled roof overhanging a large open space full of shadows as dark as those beneath the trees.

‘The monsters will not come here,’ the Hunter said. ‘The ground is safe from them.’

For the first time, one of the other hawks turned to speak to Cwen. He pulled off his mask to show the face of a boy little older than herself with the fair hair of the Jorlith. ‘Our bodies keep it safe,’ he said. He gestured at the sharp-featured statue of a man that stood in the hall’s entrance. ‘That was Wulfsin, one of us. He died nearby and we buried him here. His body has the Hunter’s magic in it – it keeps the beasts away.’

He grinned but she wasn’t sure what message he wanted her to take from his words: that she was safe, or that she too would one day die to make a haven for the rest. The statue’s face was young. That day of death wouldn’t be far off, if she only lasted as long as him.

There were fewer hawks than she’d first realised, only two dozen or so. This couldn’t be the whole Hunt, but she had no idea where the rest were and too much pride to ask. She watched as they led their mounts into the enclosure and gaped as the nearest turned its beaked head towards her, blinking beneath its shaggy golden mane. It was every bit as monstrous as the beasts the Hunt had saved her from.

‘You’ll have your own too,’ the Jorlith boy said. ‘We all catch one to ride – it’s the first thing you’ll do.’ He smiled again, entirely friendly this time. Maybe he’d meant to be friendly before.

‘The moon’s monsters can be made to serve us,’ the Hunter said. ‘I bent the greatest of them to my will a millennium ago, and these dumb beasts are more easily swayed.’

Cwen studied the creature, which looked far less fearsome saddled and under harness than its brothers had wild in the woods. She reached out a hand and its forked tongue flicked out to lick it, just like her father’s hounds when in her loneliness she’d sometimes crawled to their kennels to sleep among the warm, stinking press of their bodies.

‘What’s his name?’ she asked the Jorlith boy.

‘He doesn’t have one.’

‘We do not name the things we mean to kill,’ the Hunter said.

‘But …’ Cwen stared at the beast, which stared back, its red eye more soft than fierce in the twilight.

‘When all their brethren are gone, they too must die. How else will the world be rid of the moon’s curse?’

Cwen watched in silence as the hawks made camp, laying out blankets beneath the wooden roof and building a fire whose smoke rose to fill its rafters. The sun set out of sight behind the trees and the sky darkened through purple to a pinpricked black. There was a lot of laughter as the hawks worked, but she couldn’t see what any of them had to be happy about.

Blankets were provided for her, and a place close to the fire. She supposed it was a kind gesture. All the hawks had unmasked now and several tried to speak to her, but she shrugged off their questions and pulled her blankets to the furthest corner of the room. Their eyes followed her beneath frowns but no one moved to stop her and no one spoke to her again.

It was easier to sleep than she’d expected. The surge of fear she’d felt earlier had washed away to leave behind exhaustion and she’d barely closed her eyes before blackness came.

She woke with the same abruptness to find the Hunter leaning over her. It wasn’t a sound that had woken her, she was sure; the goddess’s presence alone had been enough. The fire had burned down to embers and in the near darkness Cwen could see that her new mistress glowed with a faint golden light of her own. It outlined her curls like the promise of sunrise.

‘Come,’ the Hunter said.

Cwen thought of refusing. She hesitated for a long moment while those bright eyes gazed down at her and the generous mouth remained silent. It was the silence that defeated her in the end, as it had beaten her down her whole life. She rose to her feet with a sigh and followed as the Hunter strode to the boundary of the camp.

The scars on the goddess’s face were softened by night into four long shadows. They shifted like serpents as the Hunter spoke. ‘I dreamed of the new moon last night,’ she said.

Moon dreams were ill-luck, everyone said so. Cwen had never imagined that a goddess might be haunted by them.

‘Something I thought long banished has been born again,’ the Hunter said. ‘And on the same day you came to me, the youngest of my hawks. There must be purpose in this, but …’ She frowned, studying Cwen’s face in a darkness her eyes could perhaps penetrate. ‘You are angry, and your anger is not with the moon.’

Cwen couldn’t find a safe reply, but the Hunter nodded as if she’d given one anyway.

‘Your skin is very dark,’ the goddess said. ‘As dark as an Ashane’s. Do you know why?’

‘Yes,’ Cwen said, her voice vibrating with anger. ‘Griotgard told me. My mother fucked one of your Wanderers, and I was what came of it. She could have lain with anyone, he said. Women do it all the time. But she had to go and choose a half-foreign mongrel so everyone would know I wasn’t my father’s.’

‘Yes. Yes, that is the truth.’ The Hunter reached out and rested her fingers against Cwen’s cheek.

Cwen froze, more shocked than when the moon beasts had ambushed her in the forest. No one had ever touched her that way. No one had ever touched her at all. The goddess’s skin was smooth against hers, far different from the coarse hair of her father’s hounds, and burning hot. Or perhaps fiercely cold – the sensation was so strong and strange she couldn’t tell. She wanted to flinch away from it and to hold the Hunter’s hand against her so she could never let go.

‘Do you know what this is?’ the Hunter asked, tracing the outline on Cwen’s cheek with her fingertip.

‘It’s the hawk mark,’ Cwen whispered.

‘No, only the ignorant call it that because of its shape and because it singles out my hawks from the common flock. It is a rune, my rune. Do you know why it was put on you?’

Cwen shook her head. It made those fingertips brush across her cheek and she shivered.

‘I only mark those whose parents pray for it,’ the goddess told her. ‘Your mother did not want you. Your father did not want you. They prayed for me to take you as my own.’

Cwen jerked back from the words and the Hunter’s touch. ‘That isn’t true! Of course she wanted me – it was you that took me away from her!’

‘No. I would never steal a child from a parent who loved her. Your mother could not love you, because of what you were – because the day your growth showed in her belly was the day your father knew that she had betrayed him.’

Cwen felt a sensation so strong, she couldn’t tell if it was rage or grief. Perhaps it was both. ‘You’re lying! You’re lying to me!’

‘I will never lie to you. It was your mother who deceived you, because she could not bear her own guilt.’

‘She didn’t want me?’

‘Never. But I want you. And do you know who I am?’

‘You’re the Hunter.’

‘So your people call me. The Hunter, the Lion of the Forest, the Sun’s Right Hand and the Moon’s Bane. All these words and none of them my name, as if they fear that merely speaking it might pollute their tongues.’

She paused a while and Cwen knew what she was supposed to ask. Eventually she did. ‘What is your name?’

‘Bachur, which is eldest in the eldest tongue.’ She cupped Cwen’s cheek, and this time Cwen leaned into the hot-cold caress, into the comfort of it. ‘This rune’s true meaning is “beloved of the eldest”. Bachur is a name only my hawks know, my beloved, just as only I see your bare faces. When you die in my service, your mask will be sent back to your family to hang above their hearth. But in the clearing in which we plant your body, we will carve a statue of your true face, because only we truly see it. Do you understand?’

‘My mother asked you to take me away before I was even born?’

‘I wanted you, Cwen. You belong with me.’

It was the first time the Hunter had spoken her name. It sounded more musical on her tongue than it ever had on any villager’s. Cwen nodded and was shocked to feel the splash of tears. She clenched her fists, angry with herself for the weakness, but Bachur took her hands and gently loosened her fingers.

Cwen gasped, half a sob, and the goddess put her arms round her and pulled her against the gold-chased armour on her chest. Cwen’s cheek pressed awkwardly against the junction of the armour with her neck so that it was half against leather and half against bare skin.

‘The moon is rising,’ Bachur said. ‘Will you fight him for me, Cwen? He cannot be allowed to live.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Cwen promised, her voice muffled against flesh. ‘I’ll kill him for you.’

PART I

Betrayal

1

Here and there, embers still glowed in the ruin of Smiler’s Fair. The corpses were everywhere, pitiful black twiglike bones grasping through the wreckage for a rescue that never came. And worse, far worse, the meaty red mess of those the fire hadn’t entirely consumed.

The heat and his exertion bathed Sang Ki in sweat and soot coated him, turning his fair hair as black as the dye his fellow Seonu used. He would have done much to avoid this task. He’d seldom had to heave his great bulk so far, or over such difficult footing. He wished he could have left his men to the search, but he didn’t trust them to do it properly.

King Nayan’s son had been here, of that he was quite sure. Did the boy’s corpse now lie as fire-flayed as the poor unfortunate to his left, trapped beneath an ash-black sculpture of the Smiler himself? That remained to be seen. Close questioning of the fair’s survivors had revealed that a boy who was almost certainly Sang Ki’s quarry had been wearing manacles on his wrists, a legacy of his brief imprisonment by Gurjot. His body, if it lay here, should be easy to identify.

One more day, Sang Ki had promised himself, and if neither his scattered scouts nor his own search uncovered the prince, he would return to Ashanesland and declare the job done, confident that Krishanjit would never return to contradict him.

Alas, he wasn’t entirely alone for the hunt. The carrion bird strutted beside him, its head bobbing above his. Its feathers were only a shade greyer with ash and its stink was sadly in keeping with its surroundings. Gurjot had never returned from Smiler’s Fair, but his mount had flown to safety and landed at Sang Ki’s feet while her old master was no doubt still aflame. The lack of loyalty in the creature was disappointing, her new attachment to Sang Ki even more so. The bird refused to be parted from him.

‘Well, Laali,’ he said, ‘what do you think that might be?’

Something glittered in the rubble, beautifully ornate where the fire hadn’t softened and deformed it. He used Laali’s knobbly leg to steady himself as he knelt beside it. He’d always enjoyed pretty things, and had already pried several jewelled treasures from corpses with no further need of them.

This, he realised, had once been a strongbox, but its melted lock sprang open at his touch. The coins inside looked worthless until he wiped one clean with a finger and saw the sparkle of gold beneath the soot. His cloak served to polish the rest and he was soon back on his feet, cradling a sizable collection in his shirt. The coins weren’t wheels – they were no currency he recognised. The face on their reverse was a woman’s. Queen Kaur’s perhaps, but no: the Iron Queen had never smiled so freely.

He was pondering how he might determine their provenance when he heard the voice, pitifully weak and calling for help in Ashane. The cry came again and he saw a small heap of rubble shift. A hand emerged, fingers wiggling feebly.

Sang Ki hesitated. He’d grown used to the mutilated corpses but he’d yet to reconcile himself to ending the torment of those still clinging to life. And this was a woman’s voice; he could be sure that the lost prince didn’t lie trapped here. There was no need to dig this time and she’d die without his assistance soon enough.

The cry came again, a little stronger this time, as if the woman sensed his presence. Perhaps she’d heard his footfalls. Another whimper, and he could stand it no longer. His knees creaked as he lowered himself to the ground once again and pulled the half-burnt planks and shattered tiles away.

The body he revealed was far smaller than he’d expected. It seemed incredible that she’d survived, buried, for three days. She was hideously burnt, of course. The skin of her face and arms had crackled like mammoth fat. Her hair was mostly scorched away and her breasts were an obscenity. But she was breathing and her eyes were open, though clouded with pain.

If she’d survived this long, it seemed feasible that the attention of a physician could save her. Sang Ki slipped one arm beneath her body, resting her weight against the folds of his belly and bracing himself before he attempted to rise. Her clothing was almost entirely burned away and she whimpered as he touched her ravaged skin. Only her thick leather belt had survived the fire, and the knife suspended from it.

No, not a knife. It hooked and held his eyes as he froze with her body cradled in his arms. It was a sword in miniature, tarnished by the fire yet clearly finely made. When he wiped it clean, he felt the sharp facets of jewels beneath his fingers and then saw their glitter. And along the golden hilt itself there was script, worked in platinum. Some of it had melted in the intense heat but it didn’t matter. He knew what was written there. He’d seen it a dozen times hanging at the waist of the woman who’d murdered his father and then fled Winter’s Hammer. This knife belonged to Nethmi, who’d once been known as Little Blade.

By a fluke of wind and the will of the gods, one small segment of the fair had survived the inferno unscathed. Its residents hadn’t wanted to remain latched on to the ruin of their home like maggots on a rotting body, so had taken what few beasts of burden remained, disassembled their houses and moved them to a hillock some thousand paces away, where they’d reconstructed a sad echo of the once mighty fair.

Sooty children and drooping whores turned to watch as he led Laali through their streets with Nethmi resting on the bird’s back. He’d heard there was an Eom healer here. It seemed quixotic, he knew, to bring a woman to be healed whom he soon meant to see hanged, but he wanted her conscious and in her right mind when she paid for her crime.

The healer’s rooms weren’t difficult to find; Sang Ki followed the sounds of screams through the mud-choked passages to a small, ill-made house. After staring for a second at the walls, one brightly painted with pictures of grape and grain and the other with a huge portrait of Lord Lust, his member swollen angrily red, Sang Ki concluded that it had been cobbled together from the wreckage of two or more different dwellings.

The physician looked as patchwork as his home. The man’s hair was long and purple, caught in no topknot but instead allowed to fall to his hips. He’d painted his face the precise shade of orange best designed to clash with his hair and his hands were red, though whether from blood or dye, Sang Ki couldn’t tell.

The Eom seldom left their lands. They were somewhat like the Seonu in that, although unlike the Seonu they had never spent centuries wandering lost and separate from the other tribes at the start of the great exile. They’d simply found a place that suited them and stayed within its borders, doing whatever it was they did when no one else was watching. They’d last emerged in any numbers more than seventy years ago when they’d decided to broker the peace that ended the Five Tribes War. No one knew why they’d come then nor why they’d returned to their home after.

‘She may live,’ the Eom said with a quick glance at Nethmi, held awkwardly in Sang Ki’s arms. ‘Leave her on that bed and go.’

‘I’d rather stay,’ Sang Ki replied.

‘Does it seem likely I care for your wants?’

There were six beds in the cramped room, five home to victims of the fire. Sang Ki placed Nethmi on the sixth and turned back to the physician. With some reluctance, he drew out a handful of the gold hoard he’d found earlier. ‘Perhaps this will increase your interest in my desires.’

‘Am I to eat gold? Someone burned down the only market in a hundred miles. You’d have done better to bring me food. Are you an Asheneman or a tribesman? The worst of both, it seems to me: sure that gold will solve every problem and too ignorant to know that those are Kardosi sovereigns. You’d have to cross the wide ocean and a thousand years to find a country where you could spend them.’

‘I …’ Sang Ki said, and found no further words. He watched in silence as the Eom knelt by Nethmi’s bedside. His touch was far gentler than his words as he held her chin between his fingers to turn her head and inspect the damage. Nethmi groaned in agony all the same.

‘If you must stay, bring me water,’ the physician said as he continued his inspection. ‘That’s the worst loss fire brings, worse than the pain, though I’m sure she doesn’t think it now.’

There was a barrel in one corner of the room. Sang Ki was sorely tempted to drink himself, but at the Eom’s glare he ladled some into a goblet and brought it to Nethmi.

She choked on the first mouthful and then screamed in pain as trickles leaked from her mouth over her raw skin.

‘Carefully!’ the Eom snapped.

Sang Ki slowed the flow of water to drips and watched as Nethmi’s swollen tongue darted out to lick them from her lips. The Eom used her distraction to begin spreading a pungent lotion over the worst of her burns, frowning at her whimpers. Within seconds some of the raw redness had leached out of them, and Sang Ki opened his mouth to ask the composition of the unguent and then snapped it shut again.

‘Your lover?’ the Eom asked as he set aside her belt and pulled off her few remaining rags of clothing.

‘The woman who murdered my father.’

‘You’re a generous man. When you bring me coin I can spend, my work on her will cost you dear. Did you dislike your father?’

‘He was the best man there could be. She’ll hang for her crime when she’s well enough to look me in the eye as I kick away the stall.’

The Eom stopped his ministrations and turned to stare at Sang Ki. His eyes looked almost black against the orange of his skin. ‘You’re Ashane, aren’t you? Mixed blood, but you have the accent. And this woman is Ashane too.’

‘I am Seonu Sang Ki, son and heir to Lord Thilak of Winter’s Hammer. This woman is Nethmi, formerly of Whitewood and wife to my father.’

‘Definitely Ashane then, and so you certainly can’t hang her.’

Sang Ki felt the first stirrings of anger. ‘I think you’ll find that I can.’

‘Not according to your own laws. This woman is pregnant.’

Sang Ki brought both Nethmi and the reluctant Eom physician to his own encampment. It was meticulously neat, as anything in his mother’s charge must be, but worryingly small. Only a bare two hundred of his men had survived the immolation of Smiler’s Fair and, though their numbers had been swollen by the remains of Gurjot’s troops, it was still a much diminished force. They’d dug a ditch around their tents and seeded it with bitterthorn caltrops, but there was insufficient wood for a palisade. The sooner they departed this place, the safer he’d feel.

His mother was slow to answer his summons and frowned as she entered the tent. The frown deepened when she saw the mutilated woman he’d laid out on his own cot.

‘Look at her knife,’ Sang Ki said. He’d placed it beside her on the bed.

His mother stared at the weapon, her expression hardening into something grim. ‘Nethmi.’

‘Indeed. And this fellow here—’

‘Eom Min Soo. And you are Seonu Hana – an honour, elder mother.’ The physician bowed with far more courtesy than he’d ever shown Sang Ki. But then, his mother had a way of commanding it.

‘Min Soo assures me that she will live, if given the proper treatment,’ Sang Ki told her.

His mother knew him too well. She folded her arms and silently waited for the rest.

‘She’s pregnant,’ Sang Ki said, ‘which apparently means we can’t hang her. Although who’s to tell if we do? I doubt any of my men would much care.’

‘I care.’ Min Soo flicked his long purple hair over his shoulder. ‘And I will tell.’

‘Of course we won’t hang her,’ his mother said. She turned to Min Soo and added, ‘Please wait outside.’

Min Soo folded his arms in turn and stood stubbornly still. It occurred to Sang Ki that the Eom and his mother were remarkably similar. ‘You gave her to my care. I won’t let you kill her.’

‘I don’t plan to,’ his mother said flatly. ‘You can treat her in a few moments. Now wait outside.’

Sang Ki had yet to see his mother lose a battle of wills. The Eom grunted and strode through the open tent flap, pulling it closed behind him. In the sudden gloom the smells of unguent and scorched flesh seemed far stronger.

‘Why don’t you plan to kill her?’ Sang Ki asked.

‘The baby, of course.’

‘Are you really so sentimental? There are two of Gihan of Fort Greenshore’s anatomy texts in our library. If you recall, the man dissected pregnant mothers before one of their fathers put a trident through his eye. Nethmi can’t be more than a few weeks gone. I’ve seen the pictures, and what lives inside her now is little different from a tadpole.’

‘A tadpole that in a few months’ time could inherit Winter’s Hammer. A tadpole that will need you as its regent. Without this child we could lose the fort entirely – King Nayan would have the right to pass it to another lord.’

‘But this child isn’t my father’s. How can it be? There’s no roundness in her stomach, no milk in her breasts. Thilak’s child would be showing itself by now, more than three months later.’

His mother shrugged. ‘Some babies grow slowly.’

‘Even if that’s true, even if it is Thilak’s, its mother is the woman who killed him.’

‘Do you think I’ve forgotten?’ Her face twisted for a moment in pain and he looked away. He found her grief hard to bear, too much a reflection of his own.

‘Then must we really care for her?’

‘Yes. You won’t be disinherited when I can prevent it. Thilak wouldn’t have wanted it and he wouldn’t want his own child dead. It’s … it might be the last thing we have left of him. We need to remain here while she gets well, but we’ll take her back to Winter’s Hammer for the birth.’ His mother looked down at Nethmi, writhing in pain on already bloody sheets. ‘Then we can hang her.’