LAMIA N. BAYEN
Author & artist

For Klaus, the days that followed would have passed in a daze were it not for the threat of capture, keeping their senses sharp and their legs willing.
 

How could they have done this? Each step he took away from Dunraven compounded his incoherent disbelief. Why have they done this to me?
 

Master Arnander had once been the Queen’s Spyglass before the fall from his horse that had forced his early retirement and had begun training Klaus to the Form of Intelligencer from the clumsy age of four. ‘Make a box,’ he had said. ‘Keep it in your bones, for that is where your matter is least disturbed. Give it a name, for that makes it stronger. Give it a key, for that gives you more power over it. That name must never pass any lips but your own. Here you will banish all things that splinter your attention or cloud your judgement. This box is how you will become a man, and this box is how a man becomes a king.’
 

And so into this box went all the anger, all the hurt, all the bewilderment of no longer being an Ealdorman, or a Wintermantel.
 

But what purpose did that leave him with now?
 

He put this problem into the box too, keeping only the salvageable portions of himself: scholar, soldier, spy. Then he closed Afldalr, for that was the box’s name, and turned its key in a lock that had never been so tested. But Master Arnander was right. Afldalr made the days that followed bearable.

*

For now their road was clear: south, with the Ninvellyn.
 

Klaus updated his map whenever light permitted. A map, perpetually in the making, had been folded in his breast pocket for as long as he could remember. Usually it would have brought comfort; now his heart squeezed painfully against it.
 

He carried it in his mind’s eye. Here were the Stern Mountains towering at Invelmar’s northern peak; he’d retained their teeth and gaunt-cheeked faces and always marked the plateau where he’d fumbled through his first battle. From this deadly crown Invelmar unfolded south into the gentle Helftad mountain range that shaped her temperate heart. Strongholds and citadels followed the rivers meandering down from the Sterns.
 

And here was Dunraven, Invelmar’s southernmost citadel and gleaming jewel. A city of great castles and sky-bridges; of jade and russet towers rising high over Longtooth Forest. The rivers Lune and Larin flanked its walls; sleeping lions that embraced along its southern perimeter to birth the great Ninvellyn river. Klaus knew their streams and tributaries like the veins of his forearm. Dunraven was as old as Sturmsinger’s alliance of Northern tribes, conceived to rival the southern citadels the North had so envied. That was before the Second Redrawing, before the Northerners invaded the South and changed the land there forever.
 

Further south the land gently dimpled into the shallow bowl of the Paiva valley that swallowed the Ninvellyn into its wilderness. It was unfamiliar. As far-flung as Klaus’ assignments had been, he’d had no duties in the valleylands. And duty had shaped everything.
 

‘We would have been getting ready to leave for Frastlingen tomorrow,’ said Arik, as though hearing his mind.
 

It had only been a month since their return from Kriselmark on the north-eastern Invelmari border, dismantling an armoury Far Northerners had quietly amassed. The simmering conflict the Far Northerners fostered against Invelmar was older than the Sonnonfer, but not for decades had their raids been as frequent as they’d been in the past sixmonth. No smoke without fire; Queen Adela’s peace treaty with the Far Northern warlord Täntainen had collapsed a year ago upon the delivery of his dismembered remains to her gates. The investigation into his assassination had fallen to the lot of Lord Wintermantel, a master amongst the Eye’s Intelligencers.
 

‘Wouldn’t you rather be with them?’ Klaus replied quietly.
 

‘Come off it, Klaus. Surely you’re not feeling guilty. After the way they’ve used you?’ When he made no reply, Arik dealt him a sharp look. ‘Plenty of others to do our work.’ 
 

Klaus said nothing. Arik was definitely more committed to his Form of Warrior than to the Arm of the Court that led the Isarnanheri’s campaigns. He poked Klaus in the rib.
 

‘Don’t you remember when you were fourteen, desperate to snap your bow in two and hide in the hold of a ship to Salussolia?’
 

‘That was a long time ago.’
 

‘Exactly.’ Arik’s eyes raked his back as they threaded their way through the trees. ‘They broke you in good after that.’
 

A pair of lustrous child-eyes stared back at Klaus still, as devastating as they had been nine years ago: the moment that had turned his heart for good. Even before that deathblow, foolishness had been talked, cajoled, contemplated, and whipped out of him, day after day of perfecting his Form. Submission had been inevitable. Eventually the Blood Pact had eclipsed everything.
 

‘The Chain won’t turn itself, Arik. Three generations from now, the Prosperes will take the throne.’
 

‘Not through me. Plenty of other Prosperes waiting to sire the next round if I drop dead.’
 

‘But your uncles –’
 

‘My cousin Fridolin will succeed them instead. He’s no soldier and they hate his father.’ Arik ducked under a low-hanging branch. ‘Their pride could do with a battering.’
 

‘Watch your voice. Extra patrols are still out looking for the Umari instrument.’
 

Arik snorted. ‘It’s been over a month. How long will they keep looking for a relic no one knows how to use?’
 

‘For as long as it takes. The Queen won’t stop until it’s found.’ 
 

The theft of the ancient instrument from the court library, now some months past, continued to cause uproar. Klaus had held it once, when he used to dream childish dreams of journeying as far as Ummandir from where hailed his bowmaster, imagining it had properties that would perfectly calibrate his maps even under alien stars. Ha. Now you will have your wish.
 

He banished the spiteful voice to Afldalr, to perish beside childish dreams.
 

They stayed back from the river, where merchant vessels sailed to and fro and nobles moored pleasure boats idly along the Ninvellyn’s banks. Soon they would pass Oskar’s and Taunsen’s Confluences where the Ninvellyn received the Rivers Laithe and Lark from the west, bringing more river traffic. A fourth night’s hike would take them past Fourwater Bridge and into the Paiva.
 

‘It’s not too late to turn back,’ Klaus repeated when they stopped to rest. ‘For both of you.’
 

‘Put an end to that. Verdi, will you stop fidgeting? That blasted oceloe won’t settle until you do. What’s the matter?’
 

‘He’s restless.’ Verdi snatched Ravi by the scruff of his neck. Even supper hadn’t curbed his incessant scuttling. ‘Oceloes have a nose for dangerous places. Or people. Living or dead…’
 

Arik’s hand froze halfway to his mouth. ‘You don’t seriously buy into the horseshit the Derindin say about spirits haunting the Paiva?’ The little Derindman looked away quickly, but his lower lip jutted out defiantly. ‘Eisen’s blade, you do…’
 

‘Thousands died there during the Second Redrawing,’ Verdi retorted. ‘Whole bloodlands, buried in the valley. Why d’you think no one goes there? Even the Invelmari Guard keeps to the river –’
 

‘Yes, because by land it’s a jungle with nothing in it –’
 

‘Deep down even Northerners sense it, that’s why. The echo of something terrible.’ Verdi raised his eyebrows at Arik. ‘Clearly some more than others.’
 

‘Load of rubbish. And all that rascal does is misbehave. The only thing he’s got a nose for is whatever might fill his belly.’
 

Barely audible, Verdi murmured, ‘He’s just trying to stop so much ending up in yours.’
 

Tales of tormented spirits clinging to the overgrown Paiva had never troubled Klaus. He had learned to listen through the rambling of bards. Oftentimes the kernel of truth had to be scratched free from a mountain of dirt; sometimes a ballad or song was its only resting place. His Ummandiri bowmaster Kelselem Ousur’had had impressed that upon him. Besides, Klaus had no need of ghosts. He’d been haunted for as long as he could remember by the plague of dreams that had grown yet more vivid since his escape.
 

‘Isn’t this a relief?’ Verdi timidly asked him once Arik was asleep. ‘You never wanted to be king.’
 

This, at least, was true. He was not a spoke in the next turn of the Chain; this should have been the greatest relief. But what had paved his road here? Years robbed in service to the Ealdormen; a soul extracted by the Eye to perfect a Form he hadn’t chosen – and had no right to have. A hoard of intelligence that made him too dangerous to be allowed a freeman’s life.
 

Tersely Klaus replied, ‘Not yet.’ 

*

Fifteen meant taking an oath that would be as inescapable as his shadow. Fifteen was when he was deemed to have mastered his Form. The ceremony he’d first dreaded, then grudgingly craved, was only hours away, and the healing gash on the back of his shoulder was still oozing. Gisla was not the gentlest of physicians, but without a fresh dressing his ceremonial robes would be ruined.
 

‘Arik said Intelligencers don’t live long,’ Elodie worried. It was a big word, but as familiar to them as their own names, for they were Wintermantels. ‘Or else have strange accidents.’
 

‘Make yourself useful and fetch me that bowl of water, princess,’ Gisla told her. ‘Your brother has to be ready soon.’
 

‘Arik likes to tease you,’ Klaus reminded her. But there was plenty of truth to her words. Master Arnander had never spoken of what had caused the fall that had forced Queen Adela to release him from his Spyglass’ duties leading her Intelligencers. At least he had survived.
 

Elodie carried the full bowl carefully in dimpled arms to the physician. A frown puckered her brow.
 

‘Why must you do this?’ She planted herself in front of where Klaus lay on his belly, her brown eyes brimming with reproach. ‘You can still be an Intelligencer without joining the Eye of the Court.’
 

He kept still as Gisla removed the dressing, wincing at the touch of iodine tincture on raw skin.
 

‘You promised not to get upset about this again, Elodie,’ he admonished. ‘This is a great honour. All the Ealdormen have to take a Form. Soon you will too.’
 

Her pout grew stubborn. ‘I will be a Jurist.’
 

She was only six. She had no idea of the bitter wound that had been opened for him on this day, a wound that no amount of tincture would heal. It had only been a handful of years since he’d been brought to heel. At least she would get to choose.
 

‘You will be the best Jurist that ever was seen in Invelmar.’
 

‘What about Verdi? What Form will he have?’
 

Gisla’s reply darted swiftly over his head. ‘Fie! Viridian is a servant, princess – and Derindin! He can’t take a Form.’
 

The little girl looked at her critically. ‘He’s better at that than you are.’
 

Klaus hid his smile, for it wouldn’t do to upset the Thane’s wife.
 

‘Once the Queen swears you in to the Eye, will you have to become Spyglass one day, like Master Arnander used to be?’ Fear furrowed her brow again. ‘Will Father?’
 

Gisla put her irritation into the final bandage. Klaus refrained from gritting his teeth. Even this slight tensing of his jaw was too much freedom for an Intelligencer’s face.
 

‘No, and no,’ Gisla rebuked. ‘Have you been listening to anything Mistress Ulverston has taught you? When Queen Adela dies your father will become king, and your brother will be king after him. They can’t be both king and Spyglass.’
 

Elodie ignored the physician, waiting instead for Klaus’ reply. He sat up slowly, still stiff from the last campaign in the Sterns.
 

He had not chosen this Form. He had certainly not chosen to be promoted to the Queen’s innermost circle of spies. In another life, his would have been a path of sea voyages and chronicling dying tongues and a study of stars. Once he’d finally shed those childish dreams, he too had wished to be a Jurist, and this too had been denied.
 

Fortunately there’d been one thing that had anchored him.
 

‘We must all keep the Blood Pact, Elodie,’ he said quietly. ‘In different ways. And this is the way of most Wintermantels. Is that not worth the risk?’
 

‘No.’
 

‘Melodia!’
 

She was impervious to Gisla’s appal.
 

He took her hands and twirled her on the spot until she burst out laughing, then steadied her.
 

‘The Blood Pact has kept the kingdom safe for more than nine hundred years, Elodie. Nowhere else in all the Seven Parts has there been such a peace. When you see war, you will know how precious that is. And it is worth every risk.’
 

All children had to learn, paupers and princesses alike. It was the way of the North; the lifeblood of the Sturmsinger Chain. And it had been his anchor and would remain so always.

*

Arik crouched behind thick reeds on the Ninvellyn’s eastern bank. ‘The last patrol station is half a mile south of Oskar’s Confluence, on the other side of the river. We should pass it in an hour.’
 

They waited for the changing of the guard, setting off with nightfall. Klaus couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt warm. Damp cloaks did more to chill than warm them, but a fire was still too risky. Ravi had disappeared, keeping dry somewhere in Verdi’s pack.
 

Verdi elbowed Klaus encouragingly. ‘Still no sign of anyone coming after you.’
 

‘I’m telling you, they’re probably just happy to see the back of him,’ Arik repeated. ‘Once the patrol station’s behind us, we can breathe easily.’
 

He'd barely spoken when a horse’s neigh tousled the silence.
 

They froze. Klaus pricked his ears. Was it coming from across the Ninvellyn?
 

Torchlight glimmered through the trees behind them.
 

‘They’re on this side of the river,’ Verdi breathed.
 

Stooping low in the undergrowth, they retreated back into the forest, away from the riverbank. The anticipation of capture crystallised into acrid fear. Voices accompanied the lights now. Did they have hounds? They’d have no chance against them.
 

Verdi stopped: a long narrow clearing lay ahead, cutting off the safety of the forest. Another step and they would lose the cover of the trees.
 

‘Go south along the riverbank, then,’ Arik hissed.
 

But a growing murmur of conversation had followed them from the riverbank.
 

Klaus risked the moonlight, darting across the clearing before it was too late. Arik cursed, following. An eternity later they were in dense forest again, still ahead of the approaching voices.
 

Klaus paused. They had surely been intermittently visible in the deepening twilight. But there was no commotion in their wake.
 

A horse stepped into the clearing behind them.
 

Klaus sank into the undergrowth.
 

The horseman stood still. Klaus’ heart raced. Did he see us? A moment later torchlight filled the clearing as four others joined him, dismounting with grunts of relief.
 

‘Make camp here,’ said one. ‘There are still a good few hours to the patrol station.’
 

Klaus recognised the voice immediately: Anselm Rainard, a retired Intelligencer of the incumbent ruling house and cousin to the Queen. The hair rose on his arms.
 

He ordered racing thoughts. Anselm had been with the party of Intelligencers expected to return from Port Ellenheim. His heart thumped; this meant something else –
 

‘We’ll be there for breakfast if we leave before sunrise.’ Satisfied with whatever had stirred his suspicion in the forest, the first horseman also dismounted: Eohric Ealdwine, former Isarnanheri, Master of the Guard of Wintermantel.
 

Klaus’ ears burned. Ealdwine had never warmed to him as a child, blocked many of Lady Wintermantel’s plans to take Klaus on her travels, vehemently opposed Klaus’ preferred Form of Jurist, and advised against his early graduation to the Eye of the Court. Klaus was convinced Ealdwine had only tolerated him out of fervent loyalty to Lady Wintermantel, to whom he was particularly devoted. Klaus had never understood what he’d done to earn the veteran soldier’s disregard.
 

Even in their predicament, Arik grinned at him. Ealdwine had boxed his ears as a boy, but nothing matched Ealdwine’s special resentment of the Wintermantel boy.
 

Maybe he knew all along.
 

Klaus dismissed the thought. Lady Wintermantel was the shrewdest woman he knew. She too had become an Intelligencer upon her marriage into an Ealdorman house. She wouldn’t trust even Ealdwine with the secret of Klaus’ sham birth.
 

Dread congealed in his veins. There’d be no escape if they were heard retreating into the forest.
 

He jerked his head east at Arik. But Arik tapped his ear.
 

Reluctantly, Klaus waited. These men had been away for weeks; they were unlikely to have heard of their disappearance. They’d started a fire now. The others were also Ealdormen: Lord Cenric of house Eldred, a high-ranking Intelligencer; Lord Berengar Prospere, Warrior general and a distant cousin of Arik. Klaus couldn’t identify the youngest man, though his curly copper hair was familiar. Then he placed him: another Eldred, memorably missing most of his left ear.
 

Ealdwine sat facing the forest, the river at his back.
 

‘She will not like this,’ Cenric muttered.
 

Klaus couldn’t help but strain to listen. They had travelled at Queen Adela’s bidding, and he’d learned nothing of their mission.
 

‘The mine is vast,’ said Anselm. ‘My spies say it spans the length of the mountain. But there’s no trace of the spring.’
 

‘Perhaps because it’s not there,’ Berengar Prospere remarked. ‘A spring of that size, still hidden?’
 

‘Can’t afford not to find it, if it is. After all, the mine was there – just as the scrolls promised. It should run south, which is most troubling of all.’
 

‘Then why’ve they not found the spring yet?’
 

‘If it was sealed off at the Second Redrawing, as they claim…’
 

A snort. ‘Impossible. Unless it’s been buried underground.’
 

Ealdwine shook his head. ‘And you think the Derindin have no idea it’s there?’
 

‘They’re too busy land grabbing. And squabbling. That’s all they’re good at now.’

Klaus was thankful that Verdi had made it furthest into the forest, out of earshot.
 

‘This wasn’t always the Derindin way,’ said Cenric Eldred. ‘And there may come a time when they remember that.’
 

Berengar Prospere snorted again. ‘It’ll take a lot more than this rabble to remember.’

Ealdwine watched the fire. Rarely had Klaus been able to guess the man’s thoughts – beyond his loyalty to Svanhilda Wintermantel and the Blood Pact.
 

‘Well, we must know whether the Derindin have found it,’ said Cenric.
 

‘Unlikely.’ Anselm threw away an apple core. ‘Take the two clans who own the surrounding territory. They’ve been circling each other for decades like dogs in a ring. Had they set their sights higher, they could irrigate the whole Mengorian range with such a spring – an aqueduct watercourse would suffice. Instead they dig ditches and mine gems to sell to Zenzabrans so they can gild their citadels.’
 

‘Then perhaps we should be grateful they’re not better men,’ said Berengar. ‘They’re certainly not ambitious.’
 

‘It will be good men who will prove to be a thorn in our side,’ Anselm replied, almost regretfully.
 

‘We are safe from good men and clever ones both if those mines are merely full of gems,’  said Cenric. ‘But now this report suggests they’ve found deposits of iron ore.’
 

There was a pause filled with the sounds of eating, and the hiss and spit of damp wood resisting flames. Klaus hoped the smell hadn’t woken Ravi, whose nostrils were bigger than his bottomless stomach.
 

‘Iron is inferior to our steel,’ declared the Prospere general.
 

‘Undoubtedly. But iron and water both…’
 

‘If it’s there, the spring will make the southern wastes habitable … cut a road south to the North Zmerrudi Sea,’ Ealdwine murmured.
 

‘And that is the crux of the matter,’ finished Anselm.
 

A cold shiver grazed Klaus’ spine. What on earth had these men been doing in Derinda?
 

A single thud clapped in his chest: Eohric Ealdwine was staring directly at him.
 

The undergrowth was thick, the early moonlight barely penetrating the darkness under the trees. But he could have sworn that Ealdwine’s eyes had momentarily locked with his.
 

And then Ealdwine looked away, face disappearing into a cup. The Ealdormen’s talk moved on to the missing Umari instrument.
 

Klaus unfroze, hands trembling. He waited, but Ealdwine didn’t look his way again. He resumed Form, regaining control of himself.
 

He crept deeper into the forest, measuring every step to avoid the snap of branches underfoot. Better slow but certain. Arik followed. When they caught up to Verdi, Ravi was wide awake and curled quietly around his neck. They detoured eastward, away from the river but safely out of the reach of the court.
 

‘What was that all about?’ Arik asked once they could finally risk speaking. ‘Berengar’s meant to be escorting Intelligencers back from Port Ellenheim. Doesn’t sound like that’s where they’ve been poking around.’
 

Klaus shook his head, just as bewildered. ‘That was the official story.’
 

‘Who was the redhead? Couldn’t make out his face.’
 

‘Clevenger Eldred. An Intelligencer.’ Klaus knew very little of him. ‘He was Spyglass Adelheim’s squire, before he died, though he wasn’t admitted to the Eye.’
 

Darkness brightened the whites of Verdi’s eyes. ‘What were they looking for?’
 

‘A mine in the Derindin desert.’ Klaus quelled another wave of unease. ‘Nothing I was ever privy to.’
 

‘And a spring,’ Arik added. ‘They’re going by the scrolls.’
 

‘There’s no mention in the Sonnonfer of either a mine or a spring.’ Of this Klaus was certain. No one studied the scrolls of the Sonnonfer more deeply than Intelligencers.
 

Verdi’s eyes widened. ‘Ealdormen, spying in the desert?’
 

‘Don’t worry,’ Klaus reassured him. ‘The Eye sends fewer spies to Derinda than all the Parts.’
 

Arik looked dubious. ‘You really think Cenric went all the way down into the desert?’
 

‘No. Cenric probably won’t even go as far as the border towns now. Likes his comforts too much. Especially as the Derindin are suspicious and difficult to bribe.’
 

‘I heard stories once from my uncles about underground lakes that Sturmsinger found during the Second Redrawing,’ Arik mused. ‘I thought they were legend.’
 

‘Heard?’ Verdi raised an eyebrow. ‘Or overheard?’
 

‘Perhaps that’s what they wanted people to think,’ said Klaus. ‘To keep the water hidden.’ 
 

‘Water and metal ore,’ said Arik. ‘Sturmsinger wanted to dry out the South, he wouldn’t have overlooked a spring. Or a mine – any native metal will undercut imports from Invelmar. The Queen’s probably worried about Derinda having metal that we can’t tax.’
 

But Klaus sensed a more ominous threat. ‘They’re afraid of a Derindin road to the sea.’
 

Verdi gaped; Arik frowned. To the Northborn, the world was simple enough: impenetrable ice at one’s back to the north, the lifeless Black Lava fields to the west, the steppe-savanna and swamp lakes that separated Invelmar from Pengaza and the Aurelian Part to the east, and to the south – sand. The endless and impassable sand of Derinda, through which it was difficult to imagine a road to the Zmerrudi Sea beyond; a salt barrier at the bottom of the Silfren Part.
 

So Klaus understood their silence. ‘Derinda’s been sand-locked to the south for centuries, without an ally in the world. Irrigation would open another road out of the desert. A sea crossing, south to the Zmerrudi Part and east to the Sirghen Part, bypassing Port Ellenheim. More routes out of this Part than Invelmar has right now, in fact. And iron, mined at home, with the water to do it and no Invelmari levy on trade through the North.’ He glanced at Verdi. ‘And the only thing preventing any of it is a huge waste of sand without water.’ 
 

Verdi stared back with fear and something else – a complex frustration, composed of layers of Derindin bitterness around a nucleus of loyalty to the benefactors who had raised him.
 

‘You’ve a knack for collecting reasons to be executed these days.’ Arik clapped Klaus’s back. ‘Side-stepping assassination wasn’t enough. I applaud your knack for self-preservation, I really do.’
 

But thoughts of Adela’s response to even the remotest of threats to Invelmar’s hold on the South left no room for jesting. Would I, too, have been ensnared in this web? From this, at least, Klaus would be spared.
 

Fear frosted Verdi’s voice. ‘Maybe we should head east to Pengaza instead…’
 

‘Excellent idea,’ said Arik immediately. Verdi glared at him.
 

Klaus replied, ‘We stick to the plan.’
 

His friends swapped increasingly wild theories about Southern uprisings and Northern retaliations, shaking off the fears of older men as they went. It was a distraction, at least. By the time they stopped to rest, mines and hidden desert springs were once again the stuff of rumour, and nothing seemed more distant in possibility than the idea of a fleet of Derindin ships on the North Zmerrudi Sea, trading with Morregrat or Zenzabra. They continued southward undeterred, for whatever lay ahead, a much more certain fate waited behind them.