Half a year after Kell had met Batsen in Miramas, ashen flakes fell from clouds the colour of old bathwater, and gathered at the feet of walls throughout the grey Vos city of Kalten. In summer, the greens of leaves and bushes had clashed brightly with the rocky coastline, but now the winter storms came in and drenched the cold granite on which the castle stood.
Castle Kalten overlooked the river mouth and the sea beyond. It was almost crescent shaped, as much carved out of the rocky promontory as built upon it. From the esplanade, which doubled as a market square, the castle's curtain wall looked wide and squat, seeming much less high than it really was. Narrow wooden tenements encrusted with sea salt huddled together on South Cliff's rocky terraced steps down to the river mouth. Rickety jetties meandered out across sandbanks from their lower levels. On the North Cliff, taverns and merchants' holdings clustered around the esplanade in front of the castle.
Five travellers in thick winter cloaks strode briskly along a narrow street leading to the esplanade, almost running down anyone who didn't get out of their way in time. Few others were in the street as the bells tolled the changeover from the Hour of Walkers to the Hour of Smoke. Four of the hooded heads turned back and forth, scanning the men and women around them, but the centre man's unseen eyes kept to the front.
The citizens in the street gave the group a wide berth, trying not to look at them when the weapons and armour under their cloaks clanked and rattled. The group made directly for the castle gatehouse, where two soldiers in mail, wearing the Ducal crest of Kalten in addition to the stylised Vos eagles on their red surplices, emerged to meet them. The leading cloaked figure handed one of the guards a scroll bearing a wax seal. The guard immediately saluted, and allowed the five men inside.
Once within the castle, the travellers lowered their hoods. Four of them wore highly polished helmets, with a T-shaped opening for their eyes, nose and mouth. The fifth man had only neatly-combed jet-black hair on his head. His pale blue eyes and thin-lipped mouth remained as expressionless as any steel helmet. Several pages met them at a further interior door, and took their travelling cloaks. While the four escorts wore mail over thick gambesons, and sleeveless white surplices with a crossed circle on the chest, the black-haired man wore expensive robes of deep blue. Golden thread was woven around the hem and sleeves, and the same crossed circle hung in silver from a chain around his neck.
While the armoured guards took up sentry positions, another page led the man in blue up a spiral staircase, and showed him into a room that was lavishly appointed. Murals of ships were painted on the plaster walls, while colourful tapestries gave the room a cheerful warmth. A fire burned in an impressive stone fireplace. Bread, cheese, fruits and meat were spread on platters spread across a long dark table, interspersed with pewter tankards and goblets.
There were three other people in the room already, wearing similar blue robes and crossed-circle pendants. The two men were in the middle of some discussion, but they stopped when he entered.
"Eminence Kesar," the sole woman in the room said.
Elena Fehr would have been attractive if her expression wasn't one of cold detachment. Her black hair was cut short and the upturned tip of her nose took a few years off her which the crinkles at the corners of her eyes added back on.
She raised a goblet. "Your health, Eminence Kesar."
Rodrigo Kesar nodded in return. "Well," he said pleasantly, "I'm sorry to have kept you all waiting. He began helping himself to food. "Suffice it to say the weather hasn't been getting any better."
Jan Voivode turned his large and watery eyes on them. He was the oldest person in the room. The waves of his hair now flowed as much with silver as the copper that had burnished it in his youth.
"You should, perhaps, have come by carriage," he suggested. "At least that would have brought you all the way into the castle."
Kesar merely smiled. "The journey down from Oweilau is quicker by ship. Or at least it usually is." He took his platter and moved to a window, opening a wooden shutter to look out over the courtyard. "Four Eminences to witness a single wedding. Interesting."
"Freihurr vom Kalten is an important man," Ludwig Rhodon said, all business-like. "For a secular noble," he added quickly.
Rhodon's hair was whiter than Voivoide's, having been born albino. Somehow the white suited his almost baby-faced appearance. "It is only proper for the Final Faith to acknowledge his standing."
"And for the Duke to acknowledge ours," Fehr added.
"Which he has done, by inviting representatives of the Collegiate of Eminences." Rhodon, ever fastidious, dabbed at the corner of his mouth to remove a crumb. "I hadn't expected a marriage to take place at this time of year though, to be honest."
"People get married at all times of the year," Voivode said with a shrug.
Fehr shook her head, smiling. "Not Dukes and royalty, or their families. A summer celebration is more usual."
"And would be, shall we say, a little too late." Kesar said.
"Too late?" Voivode echoed.
Fehr merely nodded to herself.
Kesar glanced briefly around. "By summer the blushing bride's condition will be far too obvious for either family to make political capital out of it. After today, it will mean good news in the spring — a happy cementing of an alliance — but a summer wedding would be an all-round embarrassment."
"And none of us want that." Rhodon said.
"Our blessing is a sign to other nobles that Freihurr is an important man in the eyes of God as well as in the aristocracy," Kesar mused. "Perhaps he has some plans to expand his influence and the backing of the Final Faith will certainly help him make any proposed advancement stick."
Fehr scowled. "I'm not sure the Anointed Lord would be so approving of a bride in this condition."
"Indeed not, but at the same time she recognises that Kalten is loyal and important, so this compromise suits both sides. With the wedding being earlier, we can attend and not have to make public our disapproval of a staunch ally." Kesar locked gazes with Fehr. "Unless you're suggesting that you wish to withdraw?"
"I never said that."
"I'm certainly not withdrawing," Ludwig Rhodon said. "A winter wedding allows us all to appear at our best, and the alliance between Kalten and the Duchy of Malmkrug is a positive one, should we need to call on the western cities for anything."
Voivode nodded. "A strengthening of our alliances can only be a good thing."
"I suppose you're right," Fehr agreed. "But the tacit agreement to these… laxer morals troubles me. And it troubles the Anointed Lord."
"Are you claiming to speak for her?" Kesar asked.
Fehr flushed slightly. "Not at all, but her beliefs on such matters are well known."
"I know she's concerned with that which gets between Man and God. I don't believe a child does that, do you?"
"The pursuit of pleasures of the flesh does." Fehr snorted. "Still, everything is set, and the Anointed Lord has given her blessing, so I will give mine."
Rhodon and Voivoide exchanged relieved glances, while Kesar's features remained bland. As their meeting broke up, he remained where he was, keeping that bland expression; it had taken him many years to perfect it, and it was too useful a weapon to leave unused.
Kesar didn't relax until he was alone in the room, then he smiled. Tomorrow would prove to be an interesting day.
The shooting cell was cramped, but it was well hidden, and that was the most important thing to the man inside. A person could stand right outside the base of the tower and look straight up at it, and see nothing but stone and wood, with no sign of the opening that looked out at the Esplanade. To see the opening, an observer would have to be a magician, hovering at least twenty feet in the air.
The shooting position itself was a bare two feet high, forcing him to lie flat, with a small loophole giving a good field of vision. Thankfully there was a small cubby-hole behind it, just large enough to stand up in and stretch. He made sure to do this at least once an hour during wakefulness. He knew better than to let himself become cramped or numb and so miss the shot when the time came.
He had placed a covered chamber pot and a knapsack of provisions in the cubby hole. He also had a bucket of earth next to the chamber pot, to hide the smell with. It would be embarrassing, as well as fatal, to be discovered because of an out-of-place stink. He had spent one night sleeping in the cell already, and there would be another before his chance would come. He had known that when he first entered the cell, but the timing had felt right. It was better to already be in position, waiting, than to try to slip in when the target was already on the way.
The cell granted a good view of the esplanade that fronted the castle, a blank white expanse with a cliff face to the right, and tradesmen's stalls and shops in a descending terrace to the left. Despite the chill weather, there were people on the streets below. Most were tradesmen going about their business, or hawkers selling their wares to sailors and fishermen selling the day's catch. A dog stood out stark black against the snow and a cart rumbled out of the castle.
The assassin had a keen eye, and was confident that he could put an iron-tipped bolt through the chest of anyone in the esplanade below. But he was after one target, and one only. Besides, some of the people below were there to confuse and confound any pursuers while he escaped and he didn't know who they were. They didn't know him, he didn't know them. It was safer for all of them that way.
The man in the cell smiled and aimed his crossbow at a couple standing near the dog. The woman was pretty enough, the man not sufficiently handsome for her, in the shooter's opinion. The man looked on his woman proudly, as if he wanted any observer to see what a catch he had made. Then, for an instant, he looked up at the clouds, and his throat was an inviting target. He would never see his death coming. However, the man in the shooting cell settled for cocking a finger at him instead.
A madman — a role in which he was certain the aristocracy, if not the Final Faith, would cast him, until they knew better — could create great terror and confusion from this position. A few seemingly random bolts from the blue piercing heads and hearts would create outrage across the nation. Shoot the dog too, and the populace would really get into a frenzy. There were people who would get a thrill of pleasure from that. He wasn't one of them, but for a moment he could understand them. He shivered, thinking that this was a sort of understanding he could do without.
He slid out of the narrow shooting position and made use of the chamber pot and the earth. By touch alone — he daren't light a candle and give away his position to the outside world — he then retrieved a small water skin from a knapsack and warmed himself up with some stinging liquor.
Getting the right balance of simplicity and forward planning had been at the forefront of his thoughts for many months. The best way to kill someone with the least chance of getting caught was always — and would always be — to hit them over the head with a piece of street debris in a dark alley one night. The more one planned and set conditions, the more likely it was that some element would become a stumbling block that would get you hanged. With that in mind, he didn't wonder that he had nightmares of being trapped in a coffin. He almost regretted the decision to take up his position two days in advance of the duty he had been hired to undertake. Almost, but not quite. It was better to be part of the scenery, invisible, than to skulk his way to a good position when the streets were thronged.
He squinted up at Kerberos. It looked the colour of a bruise tonight, like blood purpling under dead skin. He looked away, half imagining that it was a bilious, sickly eye, watching him. It felt like a spotlight, picking him out for all to see, and that, at any moment now, he would hear the cries of alarm and anger. Then the soldiers would come.
He turned away with a grimace, but could still feel its diseased light on him. He curled up and closed his eyes, as he often did when he felt troubled. He always hoped that he would sleep, and find the thing that troubled him gone in the morning.