Song Of Unmaking

He recognized many of the faces, though some had gone grey and not a few had gained new scars or lost an eye or a limb. Too many were missing, and a surprising number were new—young, most of those. They had been in the children’s house when Euan left, or had come to the tribe as hostages or in marriage alliances.

There were more than he remembered. They filled the circle of the hall, overflowing to the edges. There were more shields and weapons hung on the walls, and a good number of those were bright and new, not yet darkened with smoke or age.

He had feared to find a weakened clan and a faltering people, but these were strong. They were eating well for the dead of winter—the remains of an ox turned on the spit in the center, and the head of a wild boar stood on a spear beside the high seat. The king was wearing its hide for a mantle over a profusion of plaids and a clashing array of golden ornaments.

The old man was gaunt and the heavy plaits of his hair and mustaches had gone snow-white, but his back was still straight and his hand was steady as he drank from a skull-cup. The pale bone was bound with gold and set with chunks of river amber, and the wine inside was as red as blood. It was imperial wine—drinking defiance, the king liked to call it.

He was arrogant enough to leave his dun unguarded and his doors unbarred. Some downy-cheeked stranger was chanting, badly, the lay of a battle Euan himself had fought in. People were already hooting and pounding the tables to make him stop.

Euan raised his voice above the din, drawling the words as if he had all the time in the world. “Now, now, that’s not such a bad vaunt for a stripling. He’s even got his father killing three generals, and there were only two that I remember—and I killed them both. Look, that’s old Aegidius’s skull my father’s drinking from, and there’s the nick where I split it, too.”

While he spoke, he moved out into the light. He knew what he looked like, wrapped in rags and filthy tatters, with ice melting and dripping from his matted beard. He allowed a grin to split it, flashing it over them all, until it came to rest on his father’s face.

It was expressionless, a schooled and royal mask, but the yellow wolf-eyes were glittering. Euan met them steadily. “Good evening, Father,” he said.

The hall had gone silent except for the crackling of flames on the hearth. No one even breathed. Out of the corner of his eye Euan caught the flick of fingers. Someone was trying to expel him as if he were a ghost or a night spirit.

That made him want to laugh, but he held the laughter inside. He had played his hand. The next move was his father’s.

Niall the king studied him for a long while. Euan knew better than to think that slowness was the wine fuddling the old man’s brain. Niall was clearer-headed with a bellyful of wine than most men were cold sober.

At last he said, “So. You made it back. Took you long enough.” He filled the late General Aegidius’s skull to the brim and held it out. “This will warm your bones.”

That was a great honor. Euan bent his head to acknowledge it, but he did not leave the door quite yet. “I brought you a gift,” he said.

He held his breath. Gothard might choose to be difficult—it would be like him. But he came forward at Euan’s gesture.

He was even more rough and wild a figure than Euan, with his mad eyes and his pale, set face. He stank of magic, so strong it caught at the back of Euan’s throat.

“Uncle,” Gothard said in his mincing imperial accent. “I’m pleased to see you well.”

The king did not look pleased, but neither would Euan have said he was displeased. The bastard son of the Aurelian emperor and a Calletani princess was a potent hostage—even without the starstone.

Niall would have to know about that, but not in front of the whole royal clan.

Maybe he caught a whiff of it. Anyone with a nose could. His eyebrows rose, but he asked no questions.

“Nephew,” he said. He beckoned to the servant who stood closest. “Take him, feed him. Give him what he wants to drink.”

Gothard had been disposed of, and he could not fail to know it. Euan did not find it reassuring that he bowed to the king and let the servant take him to a lower table—not terribly low, but not the king’s table, either. A flare of temper would have been more honest, and a blast of magic would have been almost comforting.

Now Euan would have to watch him as well as the rest of them. But then, that had been true from the moment Gothard shed the skin of his magical protection and stood up in the camp he had failed to save. Gothard was no more or less untrustworthy than he had ever been.

For Euan there was a place beside his father and the best cut of the ox that remained. Tomorrow he would be looking out for daggers in the back, but tonight he was the prince again, the king’s heir. He was home.

Four

Euan woke in bed with no memory of having been brought there. He had lasted through four cups of the strong, sweet wine and uncounted rounds of bragging from the king’s warband. They were courting him—eyeing the king’s age and his youth, and reckoning the odds.

The wine was still in him, making his head pound, but he grinned at the heavy beams of the ceiling. He was in the tower, in one of the rooms above the hall—he recognized the carving. Rough shapes of men and beasts ran in a skein along the beam. Like the tower, they were older than his people. He had known them since he was a child.

His face felt different. His hand found a cleanly shaven chin and tidily trimmed mustaches. The rest of him was clean, too, and the knots and mats were out of his hair.

He sat up. He was still bone-thin—no miracles there—but months of crusted dirt were blessedly gone. He was dressed in finely woven breeks, green checked with blue in a weave and a pattern that he knew. The same pattern in rougher and heavier wool marked the blanket that covered him. There was a heavy torque around his neck, and rings swung in his ears and clasped his arms and wrists. He was right royally attired, and every ornament was soft and heavy gold.

He hardly needed to look toward the door to know who stood there, waiting for him to notice her. She was nearly as old as his father, but where age lay on Niall like hoarfrost, on Murna his first wife and queen, it was hardly more than a kiss of autumn chill. Her hair had darkened a bit with the years, but it was still as much gold as red. Her skin was milk-white, her features carved clean, almost too strong for beauty. They were all the more beautiful for that.

She looked like a certain imperial woman—not the coloring, the One God knew, but the shape and cast of her face and the keenness of her moss-green eyes as they studied him. It startled him to realize how like Valeria she was.

Well, he thought, at least his taste was consistent. He let the smile escape. “Mother! You haven’t changed a bit.”

“I would hope not,” she said. “Whereas you—what have you been living on? Grass and rainwater?”

“Near enough,” he said. “I’m home now. You can feed me up to your heart’s content.”

She frowned slightly. “Are you? Are you really home?”

“For good and all,” he said. “I’ll tell you stories when there’s time. I’ve seen the white gods’ Dance, Mother. I’ve brought an empire to its knees. It got up again, staggering and stumbling, but it was a good beginning.”

“All men love to brag,” she said.

“Ah,” said Euan, “but my brags are all true.”

“I’m sure,” she said as if to dismiss his foolishness, but her eyes were smiling. “There’s breakfast when you’re ready. After that, your father will see you. Something about a gift, he said.”

Euan nodded. “You’ll be there for that?”

“Should I be?”

He shrugged. “If it amuses you.”

“It might.”

She left him with a smile to keep him warm, and a parcel that proved to be a shirt and a plaid and a pair of new boots, soft doeskin cut to fit his feet exactly. Someone must have been stitching all night long.

It was bliss to dress in clean clothes, warm and well made and without a rip or a tear to let the wind in. There were weapons, too, the bone-handled dagger that every man of the Calletani carried, the long bow and the heavy boar-spear and the lighter throwing spear and the double-headed axe, and the great sword that was as long as a well-grown child was tall.

He left all but the dagger in their places. The day was dark as he went out, but the sun was well up—somewhere on the other side of the clouds. Last night’s glimmer of clear sky had been a taunt. Snow was falling thick and hard, and wind howled around the tower.

It could howl all it liked. Euan was safe out of its reach.

There was food in the hall, barley bread and the remains of last night’s roast, with a barrel of ale to wash it down. Euan ate and drank just enough to settle his stomach. If he had been playing the game properly, he would have lingered for an hour, bantering with the clansmen who were up and about, but he was still half in the long dream of flight. His feet carried him to the room where the king slept and rested and held private audiences.

It was the same room he remembered. Just before he went away, the trophies of two legions had been brought there. They were still standing against the wall. The armor of the generals, their shields and the standards with their golden wreaths and remembrances of old battles, gleamed as if they had been taken only yesterday.

They struck Euan strangely. For most of five years he had lived in the empire, surrounded by guards in armor very like that. Seeing them, he understood, at last, that he had escaped. He was free.

Maybe it was only a different kind of bondage. His father was sitting in the general’s chair that he had taken with the rest of the trophies. Away from the clan and its eyes and whispers, Niall allowed himself to feel his age. He slumped as if with exhaustion, and his face was drawn and haggard.