The Black Hawks. David Wragg

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      ‘Beating the poor wasn’t in any Article I ever heard.’

      Heali gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘Maybe you’ve not heard the new ones. They’ll let anyone in these days, give some alley-boy a stick and a red robe and call him a confessor, I dunno, makes me question sometimes …’ He tailed off. ‘Stay out of their way, Master Chel, for your own sake. The Rose have a long memory and a longer reach.’

      Chel only sniffed. His legs were trembling. He hoped Heali couldn’t tell.

      The wild-haired preacher’s head emerged from beneath the rancid cart. ‘They’re gone,’ Chel said, doing his best to look reassuring.

      She clambered out and fixed him with her clear eyes. ‘Mother bless you, child. You and your people shall be in her highest favour.’

      ‘Er, if you say so.’

      She turned and began working at the cage’s bolt, trying to prise it open. Within, the sallow and frightened faces shrank back, more alarmed than ever. Interfering with the Rose’s confessionals was simply not done.

      ‘Hey,’ Chel called after her. ‘Hey! They’ll be coming back, you don’t want to hang around for that, right? This will make things worse!’

      The preacher stopped for a moment, and looked out over the harbour as a briny gust from the coast blew dust around the plaza and the bells rang on around them. ‘A great storm is coming,’ she said, her eyes still on the harbour. ‘The Mother has shown me. There will be a cleansing flood.’

      He squinted out at the sea, still glittering in the morning sun, trying to work out what she saw; her words were all too close to Mercunin’s earlier proclamation. ‘You know, there’s a porter up at the palace you should meet, you two would get on like a house on fire.’

      Heali grabbed his arm, pulling him away. ‘That’s enough, Master Chel. You can’t help the touched any more than you already have. We’d better get back up the hill.’

      With one last look at the struggling preacher, they made for the palace.

       TWO

      What seemed like half the palace’s population was crammed onto its white walls, jostling and bickering for a clear view of the bay. Above them, the lone, sad warning bell of the palace’s solitary spire tolled in fitful answer to the jangling mass below.

      ‘Can’t see a bastard thing,’ Heali muttered, squeezing around a gaggle of servants. He was a hand shorter than Chel, who didn’t have much of a view himself. They laboured along the crowded battlements until at last they found a space between the chattering crowds.

      ‘God’s breath,’ he whispered as Chel pressed in alongside.

      The mid-morning sun, kept low in the northern sky over the sea by autumn’s arrival, gleamed from the gentle waves of the bay. But where sea should have followed, the neck of the bay was blocked by a giant black vessel: long, wide and low, a floating fortress of dark wood and metal, its sails and oar banks crimson and gilded with silver. A pair of smaller vessels, just as dark, trailed it like ducklings. Chel guessed even the smallest would have rivalled the largest ship currently moored in the harbour. The main ship could have sailed over the grand duke’s pleasure barge without scratching its hull.

      They didn’t seem to be advancing. The dark ships sat out to sea, riding the waves up and down in place, anchors dropped, while the terrified bells rang out around the bay. A small boat, black flag of truce fluttering from its prow, had dropped from the largest ship and was rowing into the bay beneath the watching eyes of the port’s population, and the swivelling half-dozen giant skein-bows on the headland sea-fort. From the other direction came the duke’s barges, moving to encircle it, the tin hats of crossbowmen glinting from their decks.

      ‘What are they? Who are they?’ Chel asked, his eyes not leaving the floating fortress. Adrenaline washed through him, refreshing the fearsome trembling that had only just left him from his encounter with Brother Hurkel.

      Heali’s brow was slick, his breath short. ‘Norts, boy. The black ships of the Norts have come for us.’

      Others were joining them, muttering and shouting filling the air as guardsmen jostled with servants and house staff, occasionally shunted aside by the arrival of someone with a title to wield. Their hubbub filled Chel’s ears.

      ‘Is it an invasion?’

      ‘It’s a blockade!’

      ‘But if Denirnas Port is closed, it’ll be nothing but river traffic ferried up from Sebemir! The north will starve!’

      Chel nudged Heali. ‘We’re not enemies of the Norts. Are we?’

      ‘I’m not much inclined to go down and ask them, Master Chel.’

      In the port, the bells faltered, then one by one they stopped. Perhaps the operators were now watching the scene in the bay, or piling their worldly goods onto a mule and making for the mountains. Two fluttering objects had risen from the main deck of the giant Nort vessel, like outsize birds with wings of spider-silk. They glimmered and glistened, borne aloft on the inland breeze, anchored by thin ropes or cables to the vessel beneath. The silk-birds soared up and over the little boat and the approaching barges, twinkling beneath as if they carried lanterns.

      ‘What in hells do you suppose those are, Master Chel? Totems? Decorations?’

      ‘If they’re sails, they’re very small and very far away.’

      A further commotion ran through the crowd like a wave. ‘Oh joy,’ muttered Chel as he watched ducal guards pushing their way to the promontory. ‘The grand duke and his entourage are here. I’m sure everything will be just fine now.’

      ‘You sound a touch insincere, Master Chel.’

      ‘Call me judgemental, but if three years in Sokol’s service have taught me anything it’s that the more skivvies, flunkies and lickspittles that surround a lord, the less contemplative their decisions.’ And that’s without counting his repellent offspring, he added to himself.

      Robed notables scuttled in the duke’s wash, hemmed by the brooding house-guards. Chel half expected to see Lord Sokol among them, but it was still early yet. He watched them bustle their bullish way through those already gathered, his lip curled. There was the duke’s eldest, Count Esen, pushing an inattentive kitchen-waif from his path and almost off the ramparts; only the swift hands of a watching guardsman prevented her from falling. Count Esen only smirked.

      Chel felt Heali’s restraining hand on his arm.

      He spat into the dust and sighed. ‘At least that ghastly prick actively blackens his father’s name.’ He watched a pale, slumped figure come trudging after the other nobles. ‘That little prince doesn’t do a thrice-damned thing, just slopes along like a kicked dog after the rest of them.’

      Heali chuckled. ‘Tough job, being the ward of a grand duke. No doubt takes a lot out of him, weekly lectures at the Academy, the feasts and festivals.’

      Chel froze. One last figure had come to join the ducal party: Sister Vashenda had stopped a way short of the promontory, looking out over the bay. Chel was rooted СКАЧАТЬ