The Promised Lie Read online

  Perhaps more, she thought. They would have shared bedding as soon as they were old enough to sleep away from their parents.

  She shuddered, despite herself. She’d slept in all sorts of places, since she’d left home, but she hated the thought of having no privacy, day in and day out. A slave pen would be kinder, she thought. And yet, none of the villagers would have known any better. The children would grow up, marry the girl or boy next door, then have children of their own. The headman’s kids wouldn’t be considered any better than anyone else’s children. Her lips twitched in cold amusement. The village simply wasn’t big enough to support an aristocracy.

  And they’d probably hate the thought of marrying someone from the next village, she considered. Villages could be remarkably insular. Even somewhere five miles away might be too far for them.

  Pushing the thought aside, she searched the upper floor. It was uncomfortably warm and stuffy, worse than anything in the Golden City. She hoped it got cooler at night. A handful of clothes – shirts and trousers, long dresses that had been patched so extensively that she doubted there was anything left of the original garment – were piled in one corner. No underwear, of course; underwear was a luxury. A set of smaller clothes – she guessed the children were somewhere between five and seven, judging by the sizes – and a handful of padded cloths. There wouldn’t be anything saved for later, she knew. The villagers would pass clothes around when the original owner didn’t need them.

  But there was nothing to suggest what might have happened to the villagers. She took one last look around, feeling a flicker of sympathy for the headman’s family, then walked back to the ladder and clambered down.

  Lord Robin met her at the bottom. “Anything?”

  “Deserted,” Isabella said, curtly. “And nothing useful at all.”

  “It looks as though they left some time ago,” Lord Robin said. “The food on the table wasn’t abandoned today.”

  Isabella nodded as they walked back outside into the bright sunlight. It was hard to be sure, but Lord Robin was right. It didn’t look as though the villagers had seen the mercenaries coming and fled in all directions. Come to think of it, it didn’t look as though the villagers had planned their exodus either. They hadn’t taken their clothes or tools, particularly the tools that would be hard to replace. It wasn’t the Golden City. A decent axe might cost a villager more money than he earned in a decade.

  “Richard, Jim, check out the north side of the village,” Lord Robin ordered. “Isabella, go with them. If you find anything, call me at once.”

  Big Richard opened his mouth. “Sir ...”

  “That’s an order,” Lord Robin said, sharply. “Do as you’re told.”

  Isabella shrugged as the two men headed towards the north side of the village. She’d worked with people she hadn’t liked – or hadn’t like her – before, although there was something deeply personal about Big Richard’s dislike that bothered her. She was fairly sure she’d never seen him before. And she was certain he didn’t know anything about her past. He would have told the entire company if he’d known the truth. Unless he thought he could blackmail her ...

  Nah, she thought. He’s too dumb for blackmail.

  The hovels were empty, completely empty. They made their way from hut to hut, finding nothing but faint signs suggesting that the occupants had left in a hurry. Isabella kept a silent tally of everything they’d left behind, puzzling over just how much had been abandoned to the elements. Even if the villagers were hiding somewhere within the countryside, they should have come back to recover their tools. If worse came to worst, they could sell them to raise funds.

  Big Richard spun around, drawing his axe. “I saw something move,” he said. “I saw it!”

  Isabella frowned. There was nothing ... nothing, save for the odd background sensation. And yet, Big Richard looked spooked. He was holding his axe at the ready, his eyes moving from side to side as if he expected an attack at any moment. Little Jim looked concerned too, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. Isabella wasn’t sure if he was worried about a mystery attacker, or his brother waving the axe around in a confined space.

  “I can’t sense anything,” she said, slowly. And yet, she knew that might be completely meaningless. There were ways to hide from a magician’s senses. “What did you see?”

  “I saw ... I don’t know what I saw,” Big Richard said. “It was ... just there.”

  His piggy eyes narrowed. “And you can’t sense anything?”

  “Not really,” Isabella said. And yet, something was nagging at the back of her mind. “Shall we go outside?”

  The sunlight seemed brighter, somehow, as they stepped out of the hut. She looked around, noting the abandoned pigpen and chicken run. The villagers wouldn’t have abandoned their animals, not when they needed the beasts for their own survival. And ... her eyes narrowed as something clicked in her mind. There was no life at all within the village. No birds sang in the trees, no insects buzzed through the air ... the village was dead.

  “There’s one more building to check,” she said, nodding to the hedge-witch’s hut. “And then we’ll go back to the others.”

  The two men didn’t make any rude remarks as they followed her to the hut. They were spooked. Isabella paused as she reached the wooden door, reaching out – once again – with her senses. There should have been a locking spell or two on the door, perhaps a sneaky transfiguration spell on the knob. Hedge-witches lacked the formal training of sorcerers who went to the Peerless School, but that didn’t stop them studying magic. Or sharing knowledge, despite the law. And yet ... there was no magic protecting the hut. If the door hadn’t been covered in carved runes, she would have wondered if it really belonged to a hedge-witch or merely someone trying to compete with the headman.

  “No protections,” she mused. “I wonder ...”

  She pushed the door open, gingerly. The interior was dark, too dark. She cast a light-spell, revealing a wooden table, a cauldron perched over a burnt-out fire and a shelf of potion ingredients. There didn’t seem to be anything too exotic, let alone forbidden, within eyeshot, but that meant nothing. She knew from grim experience that anything forbidden, anything that would bring the Inquisitors down on the hedge-witch like Richard’s axe, would be carefully hidden. And yet ...

  Richard poked her, roughly. “What is that?”

  Isabella bit down a sharp remark – she knew he expected her to show some reaction – and followed his pointing finger. A tree – a small tree – was growing in a wooden pot, its branches reaching up towards the ceiling. Her eyes narrowed as the background sensation grew stronger. The tree, whatever it was, wasn’t just out of place. It was ... wrong.

  “I don’t know,” she said. The back of her neck started to prickle. Every instinct she had told her to back away from the tree as quickly as possible. “I think ...”

  “There’s another one,” Little John said, sharply. He jabbed a finger towards the rear of the building. “I ...

  Isabella forced herself to keep looking at the tree. It seemed to loom larger and larger, as if it was somehow more real than any of them. And then ... she thought, just for a second, that it had moved. Something was very wrong ...

  She yelped as something snapped onto her right wrist. For a moment, she thought Richard had grabbed her ... and then she looked down. A tree branch had wrapped itself around her wrist, a tree branch that had grown out of the wooden walls. She reached for her magic, trying to cast a spell, only to have the magic flicker and snap out of existence. The branch tugged a second later, pulling her towards the wall. Both trees were growing now, turning into a nightmarish vision of tentacles reaching for the human intruders. A defensive spell? She’d never seen – or heard – of anything like it.

  Another branch grabbed her left wrist, an instant before she could draw her sword. She tried to cast another spell, but the magic simply refused to form ... no, it faded almost as soon as she drew on it. The branches yanked her forward ..
.

  Little Jim lashed out with his sword, cutting through both of the branches. The wood around Isabella’s wrists went limp, falling to the ground. Isabella drew her sword as she looked desperately from side to side, trying to find a way out of the chamber. The door was gone, replaced by a writhing mass of tree branches that were growing at terrifying speed. She looked up, just in time to see more branches reaching down towards them.

  Richard grabbed her shoulder. “Use magic,” he shouted, as he swung his awe at the nearest branches. Pieces of wood flew in all directions, but the mass came on. “Get us out of here!”

  “I can’t,” Isabella snapped back. Her magic seemed to have completely deserted her. She couldn’t muster the power to cast even a simple spell. The light was already failing. “It isn’t working.”

  “Fucking useless,” Richard snarled at her. “I ...”

  Little Jim pulled a bottle out of his back and splashed the contents on the nearest piece of wood. Isabella barely had a second to realise what he intended to do before he snapped a firelighter at it, setting the liquid on fire. Flames spread rapidly, burning through the wood at a terrifying speed. She heard something scream in her head, an instant before a pathway started to open to the outside world. Richard ran forward, swinging his axe with immense power. The branches parted, allowing him to flee.

  “Go,” Little Jim shouted. “I ...”

  A branch stabbed him from behind. Isabella watched in horror as the branches melded with him, turning him into ... into a monster. And then they reached for her. She turned and ran, waving her sword frantically as she evaded the swinging branches and threw herself into the open air. Behind her, something was roaring in anger ...

  “Jim,” Richard shouted. “Where is he?”

  “Gone,” Isabella shouted back. “Run!”

  The entire village was coming to life, the wooden buildings turning into ... things. She ran towards the horses, hoping they could get out in time. Lord Robin and the others joined them a second later, swinging themselves into the saddles and running for the gate. The palisade was coming to life, creepers slowly reaching out towards the fleeing mercenaries. Isabella heard something laughing, in the back of her mind, as she dug in her spurs. They made it out with only seconds to spare.

  “Well,” Lord Robin said, once they had put some distance between themselves and the village. “We now know what happened to the villagers, don’t we?”

  Isabella nodded, slowly. Something ... something had moved into the village. And it had killed the villagers and their animals and the taxman ... she cursed under her breath. Seven years at the Peerless School and three more in the hardest training course known to mankind – and seven years of experience as a mercenary – and she still didn’t have the faintest idea what that creature was. She’d never heard of anything like it ...

  ... And yet, there were stories. Whispers of things ... she hadn’t believed what little she’d heard, but ...

  “I’m not going back,” Alexis said. The swordsman was trying to hide it, but it was clear that he was terrified. “Whatever that was, sir, I don’t want to face it again.”

  “That’s for Lord August to decide,” Lord Robin said. “We carried out our mission. We’ll go back to the inn and collect our wages.”

  And mourn our dead, Isabella thought, grimly. She’d have to write a report, although the gods alone knew who might be alive to read it. What was that thing?

  Chapter Two

  “This is an insult, father,” Crown Prince Reginald of Andalusia said. He threw the parchments to the floor, contemptuously. “This is an insult to you, to me, to our entire lineage!”

  He slammed his palms onto the table, hard. “He has the nerve, the insufferable nerve, to write to you and ask for your congratulations, even as he steals a kingdom from you!”

  “A kingdom that was never part of my patrimony,” King Romulus said. Unlike his son, he was calm and composed. “We have no historical claim to the Summer Isle.”

  “King Edwin swore a mighty oath that you would inherit his kingdom, if he failed to produce an heir,” Reginald said. “And we paid in full for his oath.”

  He scowled at the map. King Edwin had needed help to regain his throne, after his enemies had driven him out of his capital and forced him to flee. King Romulus had provided it, at a price. Edwin had no heir, no one he wanted to inherit his kingdom. It had been easy for the weak king to offer his kingdom in pawn, in exchange for money and military supplies. And now Edwin was dead. Murdered, perhaps. The only thing that any of the reports actually agreed on was that King Edwin was dead.

  “He made an agreement, Father,” Reginald said. He leaned back in his chair, trying to copy his father’s calm. “And we have to enforce it.”

  He felt a hot flush of impatience, mingled with annoyance that someone – anyone – had dared to challenge his father. King Romulus hadn’t been expecting to actually have to fight for his kingdom – the Grand Sorcerers had frozen all conflict – but he’d held Andalusia together after the Golden City had fallen and the Empire had vanished. Reginald himself had led troops in combat, crushing rebels and intimidating foreigners. Andalusia was relatively stable these days, unlike some of the other kingdoms. The Summer Isle had been on the brink of civil war for as long as he could remember ...

  King Edwin had given his word, damn it! The document was very clear. In the absence of a suitable heir, King Romulus would inherit the Summer Isle. It would be good for the Isle, no doubt. Andalusia’s ruler – and his firstborn son – were hardly dependent on the snake pit of vipers King Edwin had called his nobility. Romulus could crush King Edwin’s former vassals like bugs, if they displeased him. Reginald had led troops against two overmighty noblemen himself, over the last five years. Neither one had lived to regret defying their king.

  His father tapped the map. “We do not need the Summer Isle.”

  “No, but we cannot afford to let people think that we are weak,” Reginald pressed. “If we don’t collect what we’re owed, others will think they can cheat us too.”

  He took a breath. “Edwin was a king, Father,” he added. “It would weaken us if we decided his word wasn’t his bond.”

  King Romulus looked as though he had bitten into a lemon. Kings wielded absolute authority these days, now the Grand Sorcerers were gone. The Summer Isle had been Edwin’s personal fiefdom, his lords drawing their power from their monarch. And yet, Edwin’s corpse hadn’t managed to cool before Earl Rufus Hereford had declared himself King Rufus I. Reginald had no idea how the earl had managed to convince the other two earls to go along with it – or at least stay out of his way – but it hardly mattered. The only thing that mattered was that Hereford had cheated King Romulus – and, by extension, Reginald himself – out of his due.

  And if people start thinking that a king’s word is worthless, he thought grimly, our word will also be called into question.

  He studied his father for a long moment. King Romulus had aged over the last five years, as he’d fought to hold his kingdom together. His brown hair had started to turn grey, even though he was fitter and stronger than many of the young men in his court. Reginald knew it would be a long time before his father died, something that left him relieved and fearful in equal measure. What was the point of becoming king if one was crowned too late to have an impact on the kingdom? His father was a cautious man, but Reginald ... there were entire kingdoms to seize, if one had the power and inclination. He wanted to test himself against the other monarchs before it was too late.

  Raising his eyes, he looked around the room. Lord William – his father’s personal toady – refused to meet his eyes. Reginald scowled at him anyway, on general principles, then turned his attention to his own oldest sister. Sofia looked back at him, her dark eyes silently daring him to make a snide remark about how women shouldn’t be involved in government. Reginald pitied the poor bastard who got married to her. Sofia’s combination of iron-willed determination and religious fanaticism would make
her a stubborn wife. If she’d been born a man ...

  We would probably tear the kingdom apart after father died, Reginald thought. Even as a woman, she’s formidable. And she might be able to rule if I died.

  The thought made him scowl again. He knew his father was worried about having only one son – he had three daughters, but only one son – yet Reginald couldn’t share the sentiment. Having too many sons was unsafe, particularly now. But then, as King Edwin had found out, having no sons was even worse. The man had been infertile. He hadn’t even managed to sire a single bastard. Queen Emetine had been forced on Edwin – she was the sister of Earl Hereford, who’d now seized the throne – and she’d probably been her brother’s spy in the king’s bedchamber, but kings had mistresses. Even a bastard son could have been given the throne, if there was no legitimate child.

  “You are correct to argue that we are owed the island,” King Romulus said, calling his son’s attention back to him. “But taking it will mean an extensive military operation ...”

  “No, Father,” Reginald said. “The other two earls will support our claim when we land troops.”

  “You think they’ll support our claim,” King Romulus said, flatly. “You will discover that noblemen have a habit of turning their coats, as long as a blade isn’t kept pointed at their throat.”

  “Our troops will be the blade, Father,” Reginald said. He’d wiped out one aristocratic family – pour encourager les autres – and he had no compunction about doing it again. “I will cut their throats if they disobey.”

  “And they will fear a decline in their power,” King Romulus added, as if Reginald hadn’t spoken. “They are big fish in a small pond, Son. But what will they be if the Summer Isle is added to our kingdom?”