The Smutch in the Sky

"Someone to see you." Barden, leaning on his walking stick, fixed Fritillary Reedling with an unrelenting stare telling her that whoever it was, this was someone she had better not refuse to see.

She leant back in her chair, stretching her aching back. On the desk in front of her were two piles of reports, one heap already perused, the other higher one as yet unexamined. All of it depressing. The Horned Death outbreaks continuing, the Primordials still throwing stones at clerics affiliated to chapels, Prime Valerian Fox's power now unassailable in Ardrone, King Edwayn ill and blind, Prince Ryce and his family holed up in a castle, the Lowmian court in turmoil as the Regala argued with her councillorsand worst of all, increasing numbers of fools joining the Grey Lancers, as they had become known.

She looked up at Barden. "I hope whoever it is has good news," she said.

"I doubt it. He says his name is Lord Herelt Deremer."

She sat without speaking, incapable of movement, her only thought being how little she wanted to see him.

Barden was staring at her, waiting for her reply, so she asked, "Did he say anything else?"

"No."

"Any opinion about him?"

"He has a fine tailor. Masterful bootmaker, too."

She rolled her eyes. "Make him comfortable in the small reception room downstairs. I'll come down when I am ready, in about an hour. Let's see how he takes the wait. Have some Staravale port on hand; he used to like it, I remember, although that was a long time ago."

"And your guards?"

"Ah, yes. I don't think he'll risk an assassination in the palace, but by all means ask the guards to search him for weapons, then place five of them outside the door. Oh, and send for Agent Brantheld and Peregrine Clary. Do you know where they are?"

"Proctor Gerelda did say she was going to check the city defences again over the next few days to make sure the new regimen has been implemented, and Peregrine has been in the Swordsmen's Guild for training all this month. I should be able to round them up."

Once Barden had gone and she could stop the pretence of com posure, she stood and started to pace the room with long angry strides. The very thought of Herelt Deremer aroused her to throbbing rage; she could feel the ire pulsing through her body like too much bad wine. And to think she'd loved the rotten weasel once upon a time. Wholeheartedly too, giving herself over to a passion she'd never felt since. What a giddy-brain she'd been back then!

Breathe deeply; calm down, you fool.

Who would have thought he'd turn up here after she'd ignored his call for an alliance?

Sweet Va, she supposed it would be interesting to see how much Herelt had altered in, what, twenty-five years? He'd been a good-looking man back then.

But first she needed to calm herself. One thing was for sure: she did not want Lord Herelt Deremer to think the idea of meeting him again had in any way agitated her.

He was still a handsome man.

How annoying... They were the same age, but now she looked more like sixty, whileapart from appearing to be fatigued at the momenthe had worn well. Killing babies had not left its permanent mark on his face.

No, wait. When she looked more closely, it was there, in his eyes. The hardness of a man who had seen too many deaths. Killed too many innocents. A coldness.

He stood up when she entered, but did not smile.

She closed the door firmly behind her and crossed the floor towards him. "The years have treated you well, Herelt. Who would have thought I'd be the one to age so poorly! I shall have to take Va to task for injustice, I think."

Shut up. You're rambling.

"Your face may have changed, but your tongue hasn't," he said, still without the hint of a smile.

She was the one who smiled, not at his words, but at her discovery that she felt nothing. No regrets over her own behaviour, no lingering affection, not even a vestige of anger, at least not on her own account. For the others he had hurt, for them she could still feel the rage.

"Did you not get my message through Brantheld?" he asked.

"Yes, I did." She didn't ask him to sit.

"I did not receive a reply."

"No. Apparently, it escaped your notice that I represent Va-faith and, as such, I cannot countenance an alliance with an organisation whose main activity appears to have been to murder twin babies."

"That's an over-simplification, and you know it. What should be of more importance to you is that I have already brought that activity to an end."

"How generous of you. And how much did that have to do with Regala Mathilda, I wonder?"

He gave a slight shrug. "She did tell me to disband the Dire Sweepers or she'd see me strapped to a traitor's wheel. We negotiated, and there's no more twin murder. Actually I'd already stopped it anyway, but she didn't know that."

Well, fobbing pox, that's the truth! The information her witchery gave her was unequivocal.

"We are still seeking out victims of the Horned Death, however," he added.

"Still murdering, in fact."

"Mercy killing. No one recovers, you know that, and they do spread the disease. We save lives. Fritillary-"

"You don't have the right to use my name, not now. You lost that right, long ago. Had I known what you were when we first met, I would have killed you there and then."

He inclined his head, ever the polite nobleman. "Your reverence, you need me now. You need an army. You need the Dire Sweepers. Because there's one thing I do know: Valerian is not like his sorcerer forebears. He is more powerful, more greedy, more ruthless. His ambition exceeds all others. He's building an armed force, and there are contingents of them in every country of the Va-cherished Hemisphere, recruited by his many illegitimate sonsborn sorcerers, every one."

He sounded so rational, so sincere, so genuine. And every fibre of her witchery was telling her that he utterly believed what he was saying.

Yet everything she knew about him told her a different story of his honour. He had deceived her with another woman. He had abandoned them both. Even when they'd first met, he'd already been a murderer; he'd admitted that much to Gerelda. He now headed the most conscienceless band of cutthroats ever in existence. He'd tried to kill Saker for no other reason than that the witan had seen too much one night during a killing spree of the Sweepers in a Lowmeer fishing village, and he recognised Saker as one of her agents.

"I can't see any reason to believe you," she said. It was a lie: her witchery gave her every reason. "You are seeking legitimacy because you've lost the protection of the Vollendorn line."

He was still standing, his hands by his side, his gaze steady. The bleak tragedy she read in his eyes brought a bitter taste into her mouth. Don't be fooled. You've been fooled by him before.

"You do need me, nonetheless," he said. "King Edwayn does whatever Fox wants. Prince Ryce is helpless. The Principalities are riddled with little pockets of Fox's lancers, all ready for his signal to actand he is ready to give it, any time now. Lowmeer is rotten with the devil-kin we haven't been able to find, all sucked dry and spreading the Horned Plague before they die of it themselves."

He's pleading? She felt sick. "Sorcery makes even less sense to me than A'Va. If I were a sorcerer, why go to all thisthis falderal of Bengorth's Law and devil-kin and twins? Unless you can explain that to me, you are not leaving this room a free man."

"Do you mind if I sit first? It's been a difficult day."

That at least had the appearance of truth. Not even the smart cut of his clothing could hide his weariness. She subdued a twinge of uncharitable gratification and waved her hand at the chair he had vacated. "One chance, Herelt Deremer. Explain the Fox family to me. Tell me what sorcery is. Give me all you know. Then, and only then, we might have something to discuss."

He sat and picked up the port Barden had given him earlier, turning the goblet in his hands without drinking. She remained standing, looking down at him.

"Let me start," he began, "by telling you how I came by this knowledge. I had a lot of time on my hands after I was woundeda knife wound in my back." He glanced at her, smiling slightly. "I was fighting one of your agents at the time: Rampion. I suppose he told you. Anyway, while I was recuperating, I started doing some research to answer questions I had. Like your agent Gerelda Brantheld, I started with old documents. I looked at history. The Deremers had some old family diaries. There were collections of old tales and stories in our library. Then I started poking around in the Grundorp University Library, and speaking to my old professors. I put information together.

"The last thing I did was kidnap a son of Valerian Fox. In the end, he was extraordinarily obliging."

She flinched away from him in distaste; the truth was there, sat urating his words until she could smell their stink.

He gave a hollow laugh at her cringe. "Oh, Fritillary, what I did to him was nothing compared to what he'd done to others! He was one of the fellows I call the Gaunt Recruiters, coercing people into Fox's Grey Lancers."

This time she didn't chide him with using her name. His pain was real. His disgust was real. But how is what he did forgivable, no matter how sorry he is? The Sweepers killed babies!

She folded her arms and looked away. "Stop blathering, and get to the point, Deremer."

"The Fox family keep to themselves, scattered over some twenty different estates in all the countries of the hemisphere. The patriarch of the familynow Valerianis always in total control and is usually long-lived. Valerian's father was an exception and I have reason to believe it's because your Prime killed his pa, but that's not important. In the end, I concluded the Fox patriarchs had access to some kind of supernatural power that prolonged life, just as shrine keepers do. They also use their sorcery to bind their underlings and minor family members into a kind of obedient slavery, even though they live in opulence, surrounded by plenty.

"I don't know the source of the sorcery, but Bengorth's friend Ebent Voss was probably the first sorcerer of the Fox line. History tells us he was a very sickly fellow who helped Bengorth seize the throne, along with my ancestor. I think he was the first to discover a sorcerer could use small amounts of sorcery to seize other people's life-force and add it to his own. His victims were young, and after having part of their life sucked out of them, they'd eventually become diseased, grow horns and die young and insane. And so the Horned Plague was born. It can spread to those around the initial victim, mostly to family members or neighbours. Nasty.

"Unfortunately for Ebent Voss, he was touched by scandal. There were rumours about children disappearing and his involvement. Because of that scandal, I think Bengorth Vollendorn found out what he was really doing.

"According to my ancestor's diary, Ebent Voss and Bengorth had a massive falling out. I suspect Voss told Bengorth something like this: 'You're dead if you tell anyone what I can do. Keep quiet and I'll make sure your family stays on the throne and I'll use my sorcery to ensure Lowmeer prospers under your reign.' That is how Bengorth's Law started."

She sat down. "But that's not how it is now."

"No. When Bengorth Vollendorn died, Ebent Voss disappeared from court and changed his name to Fox. After that, it was A'Va's devil-kinsupposedlywho made the threats to the Vollendorn regals. Bengorth's descendants had no idea that it was a sorcerous thing, with Fox family members involved. My ancestors, the Deremers, didn't know either. The diary that recounted the original tale was deliberately concealed, presumably by Aben Deremer, the very first Deremer involved. So Aben's successors, my ancestors, pledged their lives to ridding Lowmeer of twins, believing twins became devil-kin who spread the Horned Plague, all caused by A'Va. And all the time it was a single sorcerer, sucking their life essence to extend his own."

She had trouble understanding the horror of it. "The same man through the centuries?"

"No, no. One at a time. First there was Ebent, who lived to be close to a hundred and fifty; after he died, his son. Then his grandsonwho was Valerian's grandfather. I think there's rarely more than one adult sorcerer at a time. They don't like their own kind. At least, they didn't until the present.

"Valerian is the exception. He appears to have set out to have as many sorcerer sons as he could, each with a different mother selected from within different Fox estates. No daughters. Perhaps he killed the girls. Perhaps he uses his sorcery to determine all his children are male. As far as I know, he's never showed any of them how to replenish their life force when they expend it using sorcery. So the young men are all gradually dying, worn out."

"A caring father indeed! So whoor whatwere the devil-kin who appeared to the regals?"

"Probably the sorcerer himself, disguised by his sorcery, using his powers. I suspect the one who appeared to Regala Mathilda recently was one of Valerian's sons. The Foxes muddied the water all along the line to confuse matters, and to make twins the target of Vollendorn wrath. At the same time, no one is going to be worried by the death of twins if they are to blame for a plague. That enabled the Foxes to target twins, or one in a set of twins, when they were still babies or toddlers. Twins were their prey. They were never more than innocent children the Fox family fed on to increase their longevity."

She said slowly, swallowing back the bitter taste in her mouth, "So the Horned Plague in twins is a result of a crime committed years earlier when the victims were young, a slow death that only really begins to kick in when they hit puberty. How better to disguise a voracious appetite for life, than to find a group of innocents to blame at the same time as you suck the life from them. How did they know where to find twin babies to satisfy their hunger?"

"I don't know. Possibly they coerced midwives to tell them. Or maybe they used sorcery to sense a double birth."

"And the Dire Sweepers went haring off, for generations, killing the innocent victims."

"Yes." The word was as stark as the expression on his face. "The matter became a muddle of lies and distortions. The Foxes distanced themselves from the Vollendorns. They even invented a mock Shenat branch of the family and shifted the base of their public face to Ardrone, while keeping their vile sorcery mostly on the Lowmeer side of the border."

Sweet Va, this is hard to hear. She wanted to block her ears, leave the room, forget all she'd heard. Instead, she sat straighter, raised her chin. "Go on."

"Valerian Fox was in Lowmeer a lot before he was the Ardronese Prime. On those trips he fed himself on the life force of many children at a time. He travelled from one Fox estate to another, selecting Fox family women to give birth to his children. Once he became a Va-faith Arbiter, and later still, the Prime of Ardrone, he actually had connections within the Lowmian network of clerics working to save twinswho were only too glad to tell him where they were being placed."

She closed her eyes, unable to look at him. "I don't think I've ever heard such a disgusting recital of iniquity. Your whole family has spent hundreds of years killing innocent children for nothing."

"Yes. We were all as blind as hedge-born moldwarps."

Her stomach roiled and she swallowed back the bitter taste of bile in her mouth. "Do you have any other horrors to tell?"

He glanced away from her stare, as if he couldn't say the next words while meeting the condemnation in her gaze. "Only this. The limitation on sorcery has been that each time you use it, it eats away at your own lifespan. So being a sorcerer was always a balancing act between using sorcery without growing too weak, then rejuvenating oneself by sucking the future life from a child, the younger the better. The ultimate aim was not just to maintain your power, but to add to your lifespanall without killing yourself with too much youth. Apparently there's an art to it."

She grunted.

"Get it wrong and you can kill yourself," he added. "Fox is not passing on this art to his sons, at least not the ones I know about. These recruiters of lancers are all his sons, all young men, all sorcerers using their power and they grow weaker, day by day. I would imagine that mostly they don't understand what is happening to them. Either that, or they think their father will show them how to extend their health and their life as soon as they have proved themselves."

"I did wonder-"

The door was flung open without a knock. They both turned to look. Gerelda was in the doorway, wearing her travelling attire and her sword, her hair dishevelled, and an expression on her face that didn't bode well. Palace guards were clinging to her arms to prevent her from entering the room. She said, "Your reverence, it's started. Vavala is under attack. I think you had better come and look at this. And tell these fools to leave me alone!"

Fritillary waved a hand at the guards, and asked as calmly as she could, "Look at what, Gerelda?"

"The sky! The fobbing sky! You need to come out on the terrace."

Birds? She wondered. More of Saker's birds?

But it wasn't birds. When she and Deremer followed Gerelda and stepped out on to the palace terrace, she raised her face to look. It was a lovely spring day, and the blue of the sky was dotted with cloudsthe kind of fluffy white ones that children like to stare at until they see shapes of people and animals.

Across that balmy background was a splash of dark. A dirty mark, as if someone had thrown sludge from a giant pail, splashing the filth in a noxious stream. It commenced near the horizon in the east and trailed off towards the west, stretching over more than half the vault of the sky.

"The mark of the tar-pit," a voice said at her elbow. She looked down to see Peregrine standing there, his gaze fixed on the stain across the clouds. "The black smutch."

"It's just smoke," she said, and didn't believe her own words.

They weren't the only ones out there on the terrace. She was surrounded by palace guards, and most of the palace staff as well. Even Barden had hobbled out, leaning on his stick. She was in the midst of her friends and in no danger, but the dread she felt was eroding every sense of normality or safety.

"Barden," she said, the calm in her voice a complete contrast to the clamour in her chest, "I want a message sent to every cleric in the city, calling on them to remind people we are under the protection of Va and to have faith and courage. Tell them I will lead a service in the main chapel in an hour. Another message to the captains of the palace guard and the city guard, telling them to expect attack from any quarter, including, it seems, the sky. A third message, send to every shrine keeper in the land: 'Prepare the Oak.' "

Only then did she turn to Deremer. He was still gazing at the sky, facing away from her. She touched the back of his shoulder and a sharp tingle shot up her arm. She jerked her hand away and looked at her fingers.

He'd winced at her touch and now he turned to face her. "Sorcery," he said, nodding at the sky. His tone held no satisfaction. "This is a sign to his scattered supporters. Proctor Brantheld is right; he is launching his attack. I hope you are ready."

Her heart thudded uncomfortably. "Far from it."

"Do we have an alliance, your reverence?"

"We certainly have something to discuss."

As they filed back inside once more, she rubbed the tips of her fingers together, frowning. They prickled still and for a fleeting moment of disorientation she thought they glowed.

She dismissed the thought, and began to plan.