Kingdom of Ash

No one in Anielle or the gray-stoned keep looming over its southern edge shouted with alarm at the ruk that descended from the skies and alit upon the battlements.

The keep sentries who’d been on watch had only drawn their weapons, one racing into the dim interior, and pointed them at Chaol and Yrene as they slid off the mighty bird.

The cold on the open ocean was nothing compared to the wind off the wall of mountains the city had been built against, or the blistering chill from the sprawling Silver Lake it curved around, so flat that it looked like a mighty mirror spread beneath the gray sky.

Yrene knew Anielle’s layout was as familiar to Chaol as his own body—and knew, from the memories she’d seen in his soul and what he’d told her these months, that the gray shingles of the roofs had been hewn from the slate quarries just to the south, the timber of the houses taken from the tangle of Oakwald lurking beyond the flat plain that bordered the southern side of the lake. A small offshoot of peaks jutted like an arm from the snaking body of the Fangs, hemming in the city between it and the Silver Lake—and it was into the barren slopes that the keep had been built.

Level after level, Westfall Keep rose from the plain to the higher reaches of the mountain behind it, the lowermost gate opening onto the flat expanse of snow, while other levels flowed into the city to its left. It had been built as a fortress, the countless levels, battlements, and gates all designed to outlast an enemy assault. The gray stones bore the scars of just how many it had witnessed and survived, none more so than the thick curtain wall that encompassed the keep.

Intimidating, imposing, unforgiving—Chaol had told her the keep had never been built for beauty or pleasure. Indeed, no colorful banners flapped in the wind. No scent or spices drifted on it, either. Just chill, thick dampness.

From the lichen-crusted upper towers, Yrene knew that one could monitor any movements on the lake or the plain, in the city or the forest, even along the slopes of the Fangs. How many hours had her husband spent on the tower walkways, gazing toward Rifthold, wishing he were anywhere but this cold, dark place?

Chaol stayed close to Yrene, his chin high, as he announced to the dozen guards aiming their swords at them that he was Lord Chaol Westfall, and he wished to see his father. Immediately.

She’d never heard him use that voice. A different sort of authority. A lord’s voice.

A lord—and she was a lady, she supposed. Even if flying had forced her to abandon her usual dresses in favor of rukhin leathers, even if she was certain her braided hair had been whipped in about a dozen directions and would take hours and a bath to detangle.

They lingered on the battlements in silence, and Chaol’s gloved hand slid into her own, the wind ruffling the fur along his heavy cloak collar. His face revealed nothing but grim determination, yet the hand he squeezed around her own … She knew what this homecoming meant.

She’d never forget the memory she’d witnessed of the father who had thrown him down the stone steps a few levels below, granting Chaol the hidden scar just past his hairline. A child. He’d hurled a child down those stairs and forced him to make his way to Rifthold on foot.

She doubted her second impression of her father-in-law would be any better.

Certainly not as a gaunt-faced man appeared in a gray tunic and said, “Come this way.”

No title, no honorific. No welcome.

Yrene tightened her grip around Chaol’s hand. They had come to warn the people of this city—not the bastard who had left such brutal scars upon her husband’s soul. Those people deserved the warning, the protection.

Yrene reminded herself of that fact as they entered the gloomy keep interior.

The tall, narrow passageway wasn’t much better than the exterior. Slender windows set high in the walls permitted little light, and ancient braziers cast flickering shadows on the stones. Threadbare tapestries hung intermittently, and no sounds—not music, not laughter, not conversation—greeted them.

This drafty, ancient house had been his home? Compared to the khagan’s palace, it was a hovel, not fit for ruks to roost.

“My father,” Chaol murmured so their escort wouldn’t hear, no doubt reading the dismay on Yrene’s face, “doesn’t believe in wasting his coffers on improvements. If it hasn’t collapsed, then it’s not broken.”

Yrene tried to smile at the attempt at humor, tried to do it for his sake, but her temper roiled with every step down the hall. Their silent escort at last paused before two towering oak doors, the wood as old and rotting as the keep itself, and knocked once.

“Enter.”

Yrene felt the tremor that went through Chaol at the cold, sly voice.

The doors swung open to reveal a dark, column-lined hall speared with shafts of watery light.

The only greeting they would get, it seemed, since the man seated at the head of the long, wooden table, large enough to host forty men, did not bother to rise.

Each of their steps echoed through the hall, the roaring, mammoth hearth to their left hardly taking the edge off the cold. A goblet of what seemed to be wine and the remains of the evening meal lay before the Lord of Anielle on the table. No sign of his wife, or other son.

But the face … it was Chaol’s face, in a few decades. Or would be, if Chaol became as soulless and cold as the man before them.

She didn’t know how he did it. How Chaol managed to lower his head in a bow.

“Father.”

Chaol had never been ashamed of the keep until he’d walked through it with Yrene. Had never realized how badly it needed repairs, how neglected it had been.

The thought of her, so full of light and warmth, in this bleak place made him want to run back to the ruk waiting on the parapets and fly to the coast again.

And now, at the sight of her before his father, who had not bothered to rise from his chair, whose half-eaten dinner lay discarded before him, Chaol found his temper in need of a short leash.

His father’s fur-lined cloak pooled around him. How many times had he seen him on this chair, at the head of this mighty table, which had once seated some of the finest lords and warriors in Adarlan?

Now it lay empty, a husk of what might have been.

“You walk,” his father said, scanning him from head to toe. His attention lingered on the hand Chaol still kept clasped around Yrene’s. Oh, he’d surely bring that up soon enough. When it would strike deepest. “Last I heard, you could not so much as wiggle your toe.”

“It is thanks to this woman,” Chaol said. Yet Yrene stared at his father with a coldness Chaol had never glimpsed before. As if she were thinking of rotting his organs from the inside out. It warmed Chaol enough to say, “My wife. Lady Yrene Towers Westfall.”

A kernel of surprise lit his father’s face, but swiftly vanished. “A healer, then,” he mused, surveying Yrene with an intensity that made Chaol want to start shattering things. “Towers is not a noble house I recognize.”

The miserable bastard.

Yrene’s chin lifted slightly. “It may not be, milord, but its lineage is no less proud or worthy.”

“At least she speaks well,” his father said, sipping from his wine. Chaol clenched his free hand so hard his glove groaned. “Better than that other one—the swaggering assassin.”

Yrene knew. All of it. She knew every scrap of history, knew whose note she carried in her locket. But it didn’t ease the blow, not as his father added, “Who, it turned out, is Queen of Terrasen.” A mirthless laugh. “What a prize you might have had then, my son, if you’d managed to keep her.”

“Yrene is the finest healer of her generation,” Chaol said with deadly quiet. “Her worth is greater than any crown.” And in this war, it might very well be.

“You don’t need to bother proving my value to him,” Yrene said, her icy eyes pinned on his father. “I know precisely how talented I am. I don’t require his blessing.”

She meant every damn word.

His father turned that aloof stare upon her again, curiosity filling it for a moment.

If he’d been asked, even minutes ago, how he thought this encounter might go, Yrene being utterly unfazed by his father, Yrene going toe to toe with his father, would not have been among the possible outcomes.

His father leaned back in his chair. “You didn’t come here to at last fulfill your oath to me, did you.”

“That promise is broken, and for that I apologize,” Chaol managed to say. Yrene bristled. Before she could tell him not to bother again, Chaol went on, “We came to warn you.”

His father lifted a brow. “Morath is on the move, this I know. I’ve taken the precaution of having your beloved mother and brother removed to the mountains.”

“Morath is on the move,” Chaol said, fighting the disappointment that he would see neither of the two people he needed to speak to the most, “and it is on its way directly here.”

His father, for once, went still.

“Ten thousand troops,” Chaol said. “They come to sack the city.”

He could have sworn his father paled. “You know this without a doubt?”

“I sailed with an army sent from the khagan, a legion of his ruk riders amongst them. Their scouts discovered the information. The rukhin fly here as we speak, but their Darghan soldiers won’t arrive for at least a week or longer.” He came forward—just one step. “You need to rally your forces, prepare the city. Immediately.”

But his father swirled his wine, frowning at the red liquid within. “There are no forces here—none to make a dent in ten thousand men.”

“Then begin the evacuation, and move as many into the keep as you can. Prepare for a siege.”

“Last I looked, boy, I was still Lord of Anielle. You gladly turned your back on it. Twice.”

“You have Terrin.”

“Terrin’s a scholar. Why do you think I sent him away with his mother like a nursing babe?” His father sneered. “Have you come back to bleed for Anielle, then? To bleed for this city at last?”

“Don’t you talk to him like that,” Yrene said with dangerous calm.

His father ignored her.

But Yrene stepped up to Chaol’s side once more. “I am the heir apparent to the Healer on High of the Torre Cesme. I came at your son’s behest, back to the lands of my birth, to help in this war, along with two hundred healers from the Torre itself. Your son spent the last several months forging an alliance with the khaganate, and now all of the khagan’s armies sail to this continent to save your people. So while you sit here in your miserable keep, tossing insults at him, know that he has done what no other could do, and if your city survives, it will be because of him, not you.”

His father blinked at her. Slowly.

It took all of Chaol’s restraint to keep from sweeping Yrene into his arms and kissing her.

But Chaol said to his father, “Prepare for a siege, and get the defenses ready. Or the Silver Lake will run red again beneath the claws of Erawan’s beasts.”

“I know the history of this city as well as you do.”

Chaol debated ending it there, but he asked, “Is that why you didn’t kneel to Erawan?”

“Or to the puppet king before him,” his father said, picking at his food.

“You knew—that the old king was Valg-possessed?”

His father’s fingers stilled on a crust of hearty bread, the only sign of his shock. “No. Only that he was building a host throughout the land that did not seem … natural. I am no king’s lackey, no matter what you may think of me.” He lowered his hand once more. “Of course, in my plans to get you out of harm’s way, it seems it only led you closer to it.”

“Why bother?”

“I meant what I said in Rifthold. Terrin is not a warrior—not at heart. I saw what was building in Morath, in the Ferian Gap, and required my eldest son to be here, to pick up the sword should I fall. And now you have returned, at the hour when the shadow of Morath has crept around us on all sides.”

“All sides but one,” Chaol said, motioning toward the White Fangs just barely visible through the windows high above. “Rumor has it Erawan has spent these months hunting down the wild men of the Fangs. If you are so short of soldiers, call for aid.”

His father’s mouth tightened. “They are half-savage nomads who relish killing our people.”

“As ours have relished killing them. Let Erawan unite us.”

“And offer them what? The mountains have belonged to us since before Gavin Havilliard sat on his throne.”

Yrene muttered, “Offer them the damn moon, if it will convince them to help.”

His father smirked. “Can you offer such a thing, as the heir apparent to the Healer on High?”

“Careful,” Chaol growled.

His father ignored that, too. “I would rather have my head on a pike than give the wild men of the Fangs an inch of Anielle’s land, let alone ask them for aid.”

“I hope your people agree,” said Yrene.

His father let out one of those joyless laughs. “I like you better than the assassin-queen, I think. Perhaps marrying the rabble will breed some backbone into our bloodline once more.”

Chaol’s blood roared in his ears, but Yrene’s lips curved into a smile. “You’re exactly as I’d pictured you to be,” she said. His father only inclined his head.

“Prepare this city, this keep,” Chaol managed to say through his gritted teeth. “Or you’ll deserve everything you bring down upon it.”