Viscount Redmond Marr, heir to the High Seat of Fallaros, sat by the bedside of Countess Vanora Marr and listened to her private battle to draw breath. In… and out, in… and… out. There was no regularity. With each inhalation the battle began anew. So it had been, day after excruciating day.

Dragging the fuck on, while he waited for his mother to die.

He shouldn't have been surprised––and he wasn’t. His mother had always been strong. Had always dictated the course of her life, and the course of the Frekifold tribeland, with assiduous care and an unwavering, purposeful hand. It had been a rare day when she allowed herself to be gainsaid and, if she ever did, it always turned out later that it had been part of a more subtle ploy on her part.

While he waited for her to die, Redmond Marr held his mother’s hand. It was still warm. Still suffused with life. Everyone had to walk into the cold, inescapable embrace of the pit in the end. Trust Countess Vanora to cling to the lip for as long as humanly possible.

“You were always one for hunting for the edge of things, for pushing and motivating your family and your people as close to them as you could,” Marr whispered into his mother’s ear, smoothing a strand of red hair back from her face. “But that is the thing about edges, Mother; the only people who really know anything about them are those people who go over them. So, fucking die, please. You’ll like it. I promise.”

He gave the Countess’ hand a squeeze. Leaned back. Let out a little impatient sigh, which would have been mistaken for sorrow by the dozen silent knights of her Corrival Guard that were stationed around the walls of the grand bedchamber.

The Corrival Guard, thought Marr, as he gazed blandly around at the stern, ever-attentive eyes that peeped through the visors of the helmets the guards wore, what a fucking inconvenience. Obligated to make sure that their charge only succumbs to the ravages of nature. If it wasn’t for those overzealous stick-in-the-muds I could have thrown Mother off a tower last week and gotten on with things. And there is so much to do.

Still, a dozen knights whose sole purpose of existence was to guard the body of the individual who held the High Seat of Fallaros, who answered to no law, were known to be completely beyond reproach, and took orders only from the Count or Countess holding the High Seat were a powerful tool. Damn intimidating for one, dressed in full plate under their long, spotless, deep blue coats, with two rifles crossed at their backs, a sword on one hip and a pistol on the other.

Marr patted at his short red hair and ran a finger over his immaculately shaven jaw. Yes, he thought he looked the part of Holder of the High Seat certainly, he just needed his mother to—

There was a rap on the door. The Corrival Guard did not move a muscle. There was no getting ready with them. They were loaded and cocked at all times.

“My Lord,” the steward called through the door, “Captain Gray requests an audience with you.”

“Show him in,” Marr said crisply.

The door to the opulently furnished room opened and then closed. Marr always liked to try and see if he could hear Gray approach on these occasions. He seldom could. The man moved like a fox, although in this particular room a shod horse could have walked silently over the expensive throws and rugs that covered the floor almost from wall to wall.

“My Lord,” Gray said quietly when he had stopped at Marr’s side.

“Captain Gray,” Marr said, not taking his eyes off his mothers sleeping face, “have you brought me Gunn? I wish to make an exhibition of him as soon as possible.”

He saw Gray’s shadow spread across the bed as the silver-haired captain leaned in closer. Felt the soft tickle of the man’s minty breath in his ear, sending little shivers of private pleasure down his spine.

“No, my Lord,” he said. “There has been a development.”

Marr ran a pale tongue along his teeth. “A development? It was my understanding that you practically had Gunn in your palm. I was hoping you were about to open your hand and show me him squirming there.”

“It’s a very unexpected bump in the road that you have set us down, my Lord,” Gray said, so quietly that Marr could barely make him out.

“All bumps are unexpected, Gray,” he retorted, struggling to maintain the distinguishing composure that had made him such a puzzle to his political friends and foes. “Otherwise you’d avoid the damn things and never feel them, wouldn’t you? You know that Gunn’s causing havoc on the roads––and not just Frekifold’s. We need him captured and made a public example of. That is very important. The emissaries of our friends from––”

“Sir, we should talk about this outside,” Gray said, almost right in Marr’s ear. The Viscount could feel the bristles of the other man’s beard tickling his earlobe deliciously.

“I don’t see why––”

“I’ve found her, my Lord,” Gray breathed. “I’ve found her.”

Redmond Marr sat very still, his pale blue eyes open but momentarily blind. A vision of a face had suddenly branded itself across his vision, across his thoughts, across his heart. His stomach clenched and he gripped the edge of his mother’s bed. He lurched to his feet. Memories flashed through his mind. Blood and grass and wind.

Heart thumping through his whipcord body, boots thumping along the plush carpet, he strode across the large room, barged clumsily out through an ornate set of double doors, and walked across the expansive balcony that looked down across the plains below all the way to the snow-dusted mountains.

He heard Gray shut the door firmly behind them.

“How?” Marr asked through clenched teeth.

“Quite by accident. Her renown amongst the local villages and trading posts led me to her,” Gray said.

“Of course it did. Where?”

“At Last Hallow. I sent her on her way before my memory was spurred. Even then, of course, I didn’t believe it.”

“How does – how does she fare?” Marr asked, careful to keep his voice down.

“She’s very different. In looks.”

“And in manner?”

A smile played across Gray’s arrogant lips for the space of a heartbeat. “Much the same, but more so. She looks like she lives life like a fighting cock.”

“She told you as much?”

Gray nodded out towards the mountains. “You don’t have to scale one of those fells to know that they’re cold and dangerous,” he said.

“Quite. And I don’t know what the bloody hell you’re smiling at, Gray,” Marr spat, jabbing a long, pale finger hard into the other man’s chest before he could recover himself. “These tidings are… They’re…”

“Troubling?” Gray suggested, straightening his shirt front.

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“Troubling!” hissed Marr. “I should fucking well say so. A stone in your horse’s hoof is troubling. She, and what her reappearance could mean, is something else entirely.”

“It’s unbelievable,” Gray said.

“And yet not so,” Marr replied. His pale eyes were watering in the wind that streamed up from the plains, carrying with it the smell of ice and meadow flowers. “I should have known that blood would out. But at such a crucial time!”

Marr dropped his voice, in spite of the fact that the wind whipped his words away almost as soon as they left his lips. “The emissaries from the Imperator of Vansgrima have not been reticent about reminding me of the deal I set before him, of the deal that our two parties agreed upon.”

“My Lord,” Gray said, “your––the woman has Gunn in her custody. Before we left one another, I took the precaution of warning her what might happen if I were to circulate rumours about one with her name. She’s coming here with Gunn in tow. She is very capable; an uncanny tracker, a ruthless fighter. Why not just let them arrive and kill them both?”

“No! I can’t have her anywhere near Castle Dreymark,” Marr said, his pale eyes popping and streaming. “If my mother were to recover, or someone else should recognise her…”

“My Lord––”

Marr held up a long white hand and shook his head, his red hair teasing free of the clutches of the scented oil that he used to hold it in place––an affectation he had copied from Captain Gray.

“No, our bargain with the Imperator hinges on me being the unopposed holder of the High Seat when the Vansgriman ships land on Fallaros. Frekifold has ever been the most dominant armed force of the six tribelands. With our army standing down, Vansgrima will scorch the earth and wipe the rest of the Counts and Countesses, and their tribelands, from the map.”

“I am aware of the plan, my Lord,” Gray said in a soothing voice.

“Are you?” Marr scoffed. “Then, you’ll bloody know that part of the plan––part of the bloody bargain––that will end in me being crowned ruler of all Fallaros, while the Imperator takes the rest of the Five Isles, is that I make sure that we have total control of the roads, yes?”

Gray nodded.

“And how can I tell the Vansgriman emissaries that, when they can see that it’s not the case? When they can see that Torsten Gunn is running unchecked, robbing and murdering and extracting his so-called vengeance all over the tribelands?”

“Then let me kill him, sir,” Gray said casually.

“You kill a dog like that, Gray. You kill a peasant like that––a nobody. If you kill a man like Torsten Gunn in secret––bury his body in the cold, hard clay or throw it into the sea for the crabs––his name will live on. A man separated from his flesh is no longer a man, no longer anything, but you can’t part a man from his name. It persists. Sometimes, I think that’s what ghosts are: names that burn for eternity.”

“But, if he just disappears,” Gray said, “that will at least appease the Vansgrimans.”

“Not when all of those foul, dirty, ignorant carls, cottiers and sons of the soil rise up in rebellion, it won’t,” Marr said. “And they will, if he just vanishes with no explanation. He has to die in public, renouncing what he’s done and confessing to his crimes. That will show those hayseeds that put up his men, supply him with food and horses, and fight for him that we’re not to be trifled with.”

“And that will still the turmoil within our borders and satisfy the Imperator?” Gray asked.

Marr licked his bloodless lips, but did not answer.

“Forgive me for saying so, my Lord, but aren’t we giving perhaps a little too much credence to the rumours circulating up from over the sea? About the flaying of prisoners, the torn bodies, the immortal soldiers of Vansgrima that have to be shot full of arrows before they drop? Or how they can catch sword blades in their gloveless hands? It strains credulity at best, though it’s understandable that the rabble lap it up. They always have. Surely, they don’t require such heightened respect from the likes of you?”

“That,” snapped Marr, “is because you haven’t seen what Vansgrima is sailing and marching north with, Captain Gray.” Despite his usually iron composure, and the ceaseless chill wind, a sweat broke out on the back of his neck.

“I’ve heard their soldiers are marble-hearted and barbarous, my Lord,” Gray said. “But, all men can be if they’ve the constitution.”

Marr laughed bitterly, recalling the clandestine meeting that he had had with the Vansgrimans. It was an ugly sound, made harsher by lack of practise and the wind.

“I too, Gray, thought the rumours were just overblown horseshit, concocted by the Imperator and then fixed to the usual savagery of war. Then, the emissaries of Vansgrima brought one of their soldiers to see me during one of our quiet talks.”

Marr swallowed, mouth suddenly dry.

“He was a nondescript fellow of average height and build. Eyes like a brace of obsidian stones. He took one of the guards accompanying me by the neck and squeezed it so hard that the man’s throat went through his fingers like meat paste––not a flicker of exertion on his face. My other guard stabbed his arm a couple of times with his dirk to try and stop him, but to no avail. Bastard didn’t so much as flinch. Then, he broke the other man’s wrist to disarm him and pulled his bottom jaw off his face. Calm as you like. Skin, muscle, sinew, bone. All torn away. So… calm. My man dropped, as you would, and the Vansgriman stove his head with his fist. A little portion of his brain landed on my boot if I recall.”

“A particularly strong man, perhaps––”

“Shut up, Gray,” Marr said quietly. “You see, all that was very… impressive, but it was what came next that made up my mind. Made up my mind to harness myself to this Imperator. At the instruction of one of the emissaries, the soldier reached down and pulled back the skin that had been sliced across his forearm. Pulled it back. Wide. So that I could see the mess of flesh and blood underneath, along with the shards of metal running along the bones and the rippling greasy sheen of the thaumaturgy that knit that metal to the man’s skeleton.”

Gray leaned on the battlement next to Marr. He stared from Marr back out across the hard, unforgiving country, then back to Marr.

As well he might, Redmond Marr thought to himself. As well he might.

“My Lord, as a man who has served you faithfully for many years, I hope I do not sound impertinent when I ask you whether you truly believe that the peasantry will capitulate to your new vision?” Gray said obsequiously. “Fallaros has ever been one land unified from the six tribelands, ruled by their Counts or Countesses, presided over by the High Seat––a new warden of which is elected every ten years. Do you think the people will accept a single ruler governing all of them together?”

“That’s the thing about prolonged systemic government, Gray,” Redmond Marr said. “The proletariat rarely lack the vision or true desire to change their lot, no matter how disgruntled they become. Oh, they might riot every now and again, burn an outpost or demand this or that, but it seldom lasts. They think; this is how it has always been and this is how it will always be. They see the way of the world set in stone, forgetting that it was men and women who planted the stone and set the world in it, forgetting that men and women have the power to knock down the world and uproot the stone. They fail to recall or discern that it all boils down to human beings at the end of the day––and what are human beings, when you strip away all the finery, but the most clever and ruthless of animals, hell bent on surviving. It takes someone of vision, of grit and fixity of purpose, to change the way things are done, to mould the world anew. Rules. Laws. Principles. They are just the constructs of men. Words. Acting, when the chance to change your lot presents itself, is everything.”

Marr blinked. Touched the stone of the parapet to ground himself. Reached for the strong arm of Gray to steady himself.

“Some will think me mad, perhaps,” he said quietly. “But it’s only because they lack the eyes to see that it is those mad enough to want to change the world that do.”

Speaking of that night when the Vansgriman had demonstrated their witchcraft had acted like an unexpected tonic to Marr. His mind felt clearer. His vision, sharper. His purpose, more clearly defined.

“I want all of it, Gray,” Marr said. “I want the tribelands; Keldland, Arifold, Skyvolla, Aldinfang, Kynthwaite, and Frekifold. All of it. The Imperator can have the rest of the Five Isles. Let him do what he wants with it. Turn them to desert and dust for all I care. But he is my surest way of getting what I want.”

“And what of her, my Lord?” Gray said. His usually slick voice had a brittle edge to it that Marr had not heard before. “What of Gunn?”

“We need Gunn alive,” Redmond Marr said brusquely. “Make it so. As for her… Fia dies in the wilds. I assume that Gunn’s gang will be looking for him, is that right?”

“From what I gathered through my scrying of her meeting with my agent, I deem that to be the case, my Lord.”

“Let them catch them if they can,” Marr said. “If they do and they kill her, so much the better. You need only wipe them out with some of your most skilled warriors and bring the outlaw back here. If they slip Gunn’s longriders though, it will be your responsibility to stop her reaching Castle Dreymark. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“Good. On your head be it.”

“My Lord?”

“Yes, Gray?”

“Will you be wanting any mementos? Any trophies for your collection?”

Marr shook his head. “I want it to be like she never existed. A person’s name can become their ghost, Gray. Do not let her haunt me further. Bury her in the cold, hard clay, or drown her deep.”