Serovek maneuvered his mount to start down the slope. Anhuset stayed abreast of him as the others fell in behind. “My impression from his letter is that he welcomes the monastery’s willingness to take over guardianship of his brother’s body. He simply needs someone else to take Megiddo there.”
A man bearing a strong resemblance to Megiddo, only older, met them at the door. A woman, coiffed and layered against the cold, stood next to them. Both bowed stiffly, and their gazes shuttled back and forth between Serovek and Anhuset, lingering on her the longest.
“Welcome, my lord.” Pluro Cermak offered a second bow. “We’re most pleased to have you guest with us. Come in from the cold.”
Anhuset didn’t follow Serovek across the threshold. The invitation had been for the vassal’s lord, not his escort, and she considered herself part of that group. They would wait outside until Lord Pangion had spent time with Cermak in courteous fraternization.
Serovek was having none of it. He half-turned, scowled at her and the soldiers with her, and motioned them forward. “Hurry it up. You're letting all the heat escape just standing there.”
Cermak’s wife gaped at them like a caught fish, eyes wide as she huddled behind her husband while the margrave and his party hustled into the hall. Anhuset entered last, using her heel to shut the door behind her.
Pluro motioned to the fire roaring in the hearth at one end of the room. As startled by the twist in social protocol as his wife, he still managed to remember his hosting duties. “Please warm yourself by the fire. I’ll have food and drink brought.” He turned a severe look on Lady Cermak who fled for the kitchen.
Soon, a parade of servants, led by Lady Cermak, brought out cups of warm ale and hot tea, along with boards of bread and dried fruit set on a table not far from the hearth. Anhuset nursed a cup of the tea, warming her hands around the heated ceramic.
“I hate it when he does this,” one of the soldiers closest to her muttered. “We’re better off in the kitchens flirting with the maids.”
Another elbowed him. “Stop complaining. It’s a sight better than standing outside freezing your balls off, and the ale isn’t half bad.”
Not part of their conversation, Anhuset kept her thoughts to herself, but she agreed with the first soldier. Every state dinner or social gathering she’d ever been forced to attend at Saggara had been an exercise in awkwardness. Brishen and Ildiko, raised among the intricacies of court machinations in Haradis and Pricid, navigated those dangerous waters with effortless finesse, and she’d witnessed Serovek do the same when he visited Saggara. She, however, lurched and stumbled her way through such interactions. The humble kitchen seemed a much more inviting place to her as well, even if it was in a human household, where the gods only knew what horrors lurked in the stew pots suspended over the cooking fires.
She grumbled under her breath but adopted a neutral expression when Serovek waved her to where he stood with Cermak and Lady Cermak. The woman’s eyes grew wider with every step Anhuset took, her face paler. Had Serovek’s master-at-arms been present, Anhuset might have put a wager forward over how long it took for the lady of the house to bolt, certain if she didn’t, she’d be eaten.
As if a Kai warrior accompanying his entourage was an everyday event, Serovek casually introduced her to his vassal. “This is Anhuset, the Kai regent’s second, what they call asha,similar to Carov, only with more power and more responsibility. She’s agreed to accompany us to the monastery as a representative of the Kai kingdom.”
Anhuset pushed back her hood so their hosts might have a better look at her and gave a short bow. “I am honored,” she said, careful not to expose too much of her teeth. Usually, she made extra effort to grin at any human she crossed, just for the sport of eliciting a reaction. That had no place here, especially since the lady of the house was twitchier than a rabbit and on the verge of banking off the walls at the merest ripple of her own shadow.
A small meeping noise escaped Lady Cermak, and though her throat visibly worked to exhale breath or words, nothing else escaped her mouth. Her husband had better luck. As pale as his wife and shackled to her by the death grip she had on his elbow, Pluro still managed a polite greeting. “Welcome to Mordrada Farmstead, sha-Anhuset. We appreciate the regent’s acknowledgment of my brother’s service to him.”
More dull pleasantries passed between them until the tea was gone and the food eaten. Anhuset hoped they wouldn’t linger much longer. They’d come for Megiddo, not to while away the day in stilted conversation with his brother. They still had several hours on horseback ahead of them before they stopped for the night at a riverside village Serovek had pointed out on his map the previous evening.
He set his cup down on the table. His men followed suit as did Anhuset. “I thank you for your hospitality, but we’ve a long journey ahead of us. If you’ll take us to where Megiddo rests, we’ll place him in the wagon we brought and be on our way.”
A quick, silent conversation passed between Pluro and his wife, words conveyed only through long looks and fast blinks. Lady Cermak, still mute, still nervous, finally spoke, and only to excuse herself from their company. Anhuset had the impression she’d just abandoned her husband to a fate of which she wanted no part.
Pluro straightened his quilted tunic and flexed his shoulders if he prepared for a confrontation. Serovek’s eyebrows crawled toward his hairline though he said nothing. The vassal motioned to the hall’s entrance. “If you’ll follow me please.”
Whispers of inquiry exchanged between those in Serovek’s escort reached Anhuset as they all trailed the two men out of the manor and back into the cold outdoors. Serovek fell back a step or two until Anhuset came abreast of him. Pluro didn’t wait but strode ahead, skirting a flock of roaming geese and a pair of hay carts parked nearby. Lines of wash flapped in the cutting breeze.
“What do you think?” Serovek asked her, his voice quiet.
She tried not to dwell on the pleasurable warmth that coursed through her at his request for her opinion. “I didn’t expect the monk not to be in his brother’s house.”
“Nor I.” He signaled to the rest of his men. “Wagon,” he said. They saluted and broke away to retrieve the wagon they’d brought transport Megiddo.
When they approached the smallest of the farmstead’s three barns, Serovek’s harsh “Surely, he’s jesting,” echoed her own thoughts. There was no possible way Pluro had stashed his own brother in a barn with the livestock. However, the man never changed directions, and soon they entered the dark, pungent structure.
Occupied by a few head of cattle, two mules, and a small number of sheep, the barn was a little warmer than outside, but their breath still steamed in front of them. Weak sunlight bled through splits in the building’s cladding and flooded the entrance, illuminating the space enough for the two men to see without too much trouble. Anhuset saw everything clearly, including the ominous thunderhead that had descended over Serovek’s countenance.
Pluro led them to the very back of the barn, past the stalls, hay racks and shelves of tack and tools, to another closed door partially covered in an array of webs spun by busy spiders. The webbing spread across the hinges and surrounded the latch and handle, signs that it had been some time since anyone had disturbed their labor by opening the door.
Anhuset and Serovek waited as their host paused to light an oil lamp before brushing away the webs and freeing the latch. Hinges squealed as he pushed the door inward. The newborn flames inside the lamp stretched fingers of light into the ink-dark room. Shadows fled at their encroachment, and soon the flickering illumination spilled onto a bier on which a man lay in peaceful repose.
Anhuset took in the sight with a heart that slowed its beat and breath that hovered in her nostrils. Beside her, Serovek sighed softly, a reverent sound laced with regret. Five men had sacrificed much to battlegallaand save a world. One of them had paid an even more terrible price.
Megiddo Cermak breathed but slept the slumber of the dead, his soul trapped in agallaprison while his body, kept alive and protected by ancient Kai magic, waited for his soul’s return. He wore armor similar to Serovek’s but plainer, its only nod to decorative elements a border of runes etched into the steel around the collar of his breastplate.
The bier on which he lay was a simple affair of wooden slats laid adjacent to each other, their ends fastened at either side to rails that ran the length of the platform. Designed for ease of transporting the dead, the bier acted as Megiddo’s transparent coffin as well for now. Kai magic, the last remnants of power Brishen had drawn out of his own people with necromantic spellwork, flitted across the width and length of the bier in tiny blue sparks that faded as fast as they ignited.