• • •

“You’re looking uncommonly pleased with yourself.” Darin strolled into the High Hall, a dining gallery named for its elevation rather than the height of its ceiling. I like to eat there for the view it offers, both out across the palace compound and, via slit windows, into the great entrance hall of my father’s house.

“Pheasant, pickled trout, hen’s eggs.” I gestured at the silver plates set before me on the long trestle. “What’s not to be pleased about? Help yourself.” Darin is self-righteous and overly curious about my doings, but not the royal pain in the arse that Martus is, so by dint of not being Martus he carries the title of “favourite brother.”

“The domo reports dishes keep going missing from the kitchens of late.” Darin took an egg and sat at the far end of the table with it.

“Curious.” That would be Jula, our sharp-eyed head cook, telling tales to the house domo, though how such whispers came to Darin’s ear . . . “I’d have a few of the scullions beaten. Soon put a stop to it.”

“On what evidence?” He salted the egg and bit deep.

“Evidence be damned! Bloody up a few of the menials, put the fear into the lot of them. That’ll put an end to it. That’s what Grandmother would do. Light fingers get broken, she’d say.” I went for honest outrage, using my own discomfort to colour my reactions. No more selling off the family silver for Jal, then . . . that line of credit had come to an end. Still, I had the Norseman safely stowed away in the Marsail keep. I could see the keep from where I sat, a slouching edifice of stone more ancient than any part of the palace, scarred and disfigured but stubbornly resisting the plans of a dozen former kings to tear it down. A ring of tiny windows, heavily barred, ran around its girth like a belt. Snorri ver Snagason would be looking up at one of those from the floor of his cell. I’d told them to give him red meat, rare and bloody. Fighters thrive on blood.

For the longest time I stared out the window, watching the keep and the vast landscape of the heavens behind it, a sky of white and blue, all in motion so that the keep seemed to move and the clouds stay still, making a ship of all that stone, ploughing on through white waves.

“What did you think of all that rubbish this morning?” I asked the question without expecting an answer, sure that Darin had taken his leave.

“I think if Grandmother is worried, we should be too,” Darin said.

“A door into death? Corpses? Necromancy?” I sucked and the flesh came easily off a pheasant’s bone. “Am I to fear this?” I tapped the bone to the table, looked away from the window, and grinned at him. “Is it going to pursue me for vengeance?” I made it walk.