light was breaking. A faint lifting of the night. Landra could see the land ahead of them, details in the cliff line, the slump of rocks.
‘You sure?’ Ben asked.
Morr Town, where the new king will go. She almost laughed. ‘Yes. No.’
The oars dipped again. Light enough to see the water churned up before Ben got into his rhythm again. The cliffs in front of them looked like faces. Vast grey stone, sheer up to the sky.
Ben rowed south along the coast, past the first beach they came to, round a sheer point where seals slept. The cliff dipped, scrubland running down to meet the sea. As they rowed closer, Landra saw a rough path scrambling up. Seabirds circling in the morning air, riding the dawn wind. A few seals sat on the rocks and stared at them as they came in. The boat crunched against the shingle. Wave breaking round the sides.
‘You sure?’ Ben asked again. Landra clambered awkwardly out into the water. Cold up to her waist. She gasped at the cold. Sting of the salt on her legs. Ben handed her the bundle of food.
‘Thank you,’ Landra said awkwardly. Ben was already pushing the boat off back into the sea with the oars. She dragged herself over the shingle through the water, her dress clinging heavily around her legs. Slipped stubbing her foot against a rock and plunged her left arm into the water, the salt stinging her burns. Got up onto the steep rise of the beach, climbing upwards like climbing a hill. The pebbles moved down around her feet in a landslide. A thick band of rotting seaweed, alive with hopping flies. Cuttlefish bones and a dead jellyfish, glistening silvery red, tentacles splayed out. Looked like bones and a dead heart. The grey cliffs stared down like faces. Old gods watching. The old things of the land. The gulls circled, screaming at her.
Landra turned to look out to where Ben’s boat was already disappearing into the sea. Raised her hand and waved. Pointless. But he’d been a kind man.
Eltheia. Fairest one. Keep safe. Keep safe. Him, and Hana, and the child.
She sat down on the shingle. The pebbles pressed uncomfortably into her skin. She picked up the first pebble her hand rested on. A hagstone, grey-greenish, the hole blocked by a smaller pale grey stone. An omen? She threw it wide into the sea. Made a lovely deep sound. She chewed a little bread, drank from the skin of water. Nasty, fishy, stale taste.
She got up and began to walk stiffly up the cliff path, a weary peasant woman in an ill-fitting dress, smelling of fish and tallow and herbs.
A month, they stayed at Malth Calien.
‘What are we doing here?’ Thalia asked Marith, after a few long dull days.
‘Waiting.’ He smiled with terrible heavy sorrow. ‘Calling in all who will come to me.’
‘For what?’ she asked, feeling her ignorance. The place bustled with men, soldiers, business; a ship had gone out at dawn the first morning and Marith chafed after its return, watched the sea every day.
Marith said slowly, ‘To claim my throne.’
‘But … you are crowned king.’ A crown of silver in your shining black-red hair.
‘King of what, exactly?’ Irritation in his face, that she did not understand this world of his. ‘Third Isle is one island of the White Isles. The seat of the king is Malth Elelane, on Seneth, the Tower of Joy and Despair, the tower raised for Eltheia, the tower from which Altrersys ruled as the first king. There is my throne. My crown. My home. I have told Ti that I am coming. That I am king, returning home. Ti and … and Queen Elayne. They do not answer. So I must come with swords and spears, and make them kneel to me as king.’
‘They thought that you were dead,’ said Thalia. ‘They may not even believe that it is really you. Tiothlyn only saw you so briefly.’ You killed your father, she thought. What else are they likely to do?
‘They never believed I was dead,’ said Marith. ‘That would have been too much for them to hope for, that I was dead.’
So bitter. So bitter his voice. But what do I know, she thought, of family? I who was given up at birth to the God. And yet … the petty rivalries of the Temple, the little slights over nothing that grew and festered over the years into mortal wounds. Yes, she thought, perhaps I do know of these things.
She said after a while, ‘And if they do not kneel?’
He laughed bitterly. ‘What do you think? But they will.’ His eyes rolled in his head, he looked mad as he said it. She shivered. So vile. So much hate in him. Kill him, she thought then. You are wrong to feel for him anything but disgust. But he woke that night sweating, whispering his father’s name. Thalia gave him water, stroked his face. His eyes burned like fever. ‘But I had to do it. I did. I did. He would have killed me. Killed you.’
‘Yes. You did.’
He had been drinking heavily at dinner, as he did every night, laughing and shouting with his lords in Malth Calien’s great hall, rough and violent, a thing she hated and thought from everything he had said to her that he would hate, but he seemed so caught up with them, a man among men, a king in his court, a warrior boasting of his deeds. He sucked up their adoration, the envious among them raised endless toasts to Marith the War Leader, Marith the Conqueror, Marith who would outshine even Amrath; he laughed about it to Thalia, mocking them, but it pleased him, his pale flushed face shone; the next morning he would smile and tell her they were empty craven fools and then in the evening he would drink it up again with his wine and come stumbling to bed filled with their praises, laughing with pride.
‘He hated me.’
‘Yes.’ She thought: he did not hate you. I saw that, I who have never known a father. He did not hate you, any more than you hated him. But there is nothing else that can be said. If we repeat the lie, it is true, is it not? Without that lie … without that lie, we are nothing.
I could have stayed in my Temple, when the men came to kill me. Woken the other priestesses. Called the guards. I did not call for help. I ran. Two slaves died. I ran.
‘I’ll bury him with all honours.’ Marith rubbed painfully at his eyes.
He is almost pitiful, Thalia thought. And I … I do pity him. So indeed we shall be happy. If pity and lust together can make love and happiness.
‘All honours.’ He was drifting back towards sleep. ‘He would have killed you … He told everyone I was dead … King Illyn …’ he muttered again, rubbing at his face, ‘King Illyn Altrersyr …’ The walls of the Great Temple rose up in Thalia’s mind, high and huge, the faint glimpse of golden domes and silver towers, the sound of voices talking about things she had never seen. High great walls, shutting out the world.
The weather changed, becoming bitter cold, hard frosts, one morning a faint dusting of snow. The marshes froze over, a thin skin of ice that cracked beneath the weight of a man’s foot. The reeds stood out bare and black. The birds fled with the ice, the last flocks of them gathering on the roofs of Malth Calien and flying into the west like long plumes of smoke. Lone deer picked their way through the frozen landscape. The trees bent furred under the frost. The last few lords of the furthest islands came, of those who would come, and the news ran down from Seneth that Tiothlyn was crowned king
