Free Shadowkings by Michael Cobley Page A

reached for the door.
    "No! Wait! Damn, but you never did have a sense of humour." The younger man sighed, took a handful of his cloak and rubbed his face on it. "I'm...sorry, I forget how badly we get on usually."
    "Another thing you forget is what I said I'd do if I ever saw you again," Mazaret said, hand straying to the dagger at his waist.
    Coireg's eyes widened in alarm. "In the name of the Mother, Ikarno, it was an accident!" He rose from his chair and backed away as Mazaret advanced. "It was eight years ago, for pity's sake!"
    "She was our sister and you let those Mogaun scum take her..."
    "There was nothing I could do, do you hear me? Nothing!" Trembling, Coireg tore the cloak from his shoulders, flung it on the floor then walked up to Mazaret and looked him in the eye. "There! You want to gut me? Well here I am, and you won't even have to reach very far. But before you do anything, you better listen because there's something you should know."
    Staring back, Mazaret was unsettled to see despair and sorrow naked in his brother's face. "What could you have to say that would interest me?" he muttered.
    "He's dead," Coireg said, falling into a chair at the table. "Father's dead."
    An awful empty silence came in the wake of those words and a sense of hollowness and a kind of panic filled Mazaret. This was no ruse. He could hear the truth in Coireg's voice.
    "How..." he said.
    "Poison in his food. He hadn't been well for quite a while, and the Mother knows how many times I begged him to leave Casall and join you here. He'd have none of it, of course, always claiming that the Midnight Ships would come to a halt without his personal direction."
    Mazaret leaned on the table. It was as if it were someone else hearing the terrible news and feeling this powerless anger and grief. Out of a numb stillness he tried to remember the last time he saw his father, which was during a secret journey to the north five years ago. Hevelik Mazaret, a baronet to the ancient crown of Anghatan, was also Master of Harbours for the city of Casall. Instead of fleeing the invasion, he had appeared to bend the knee to the conquering Mogaun, offering to manage the harbours and docks on their behalf. In reality he was assembling a clandestine organisation called the Midnight Ships, dedicated to providing an escape route for refugees, particularly nobles, desperate to leave. In the years that followed, the risk of being unmasked grew steadily but despite that, and his advancing age, he refused to step down.
    "If I retired," he told Ikarno during that last visit, "they would put some spineless fool in my place, a puppet for this Thraelor they've made High Captain. If that happened, many traders would opt for Rauthaz instead, or even some of the Jefren ports, and then where would they be, hmm?..."
    For a moment or two, Mazaret listened to the sound of his own breathing. Then he said: "Did they catch whoever did it?"
    "A kitchen servant was found dead the next morning." The younger Mazaret shrugged. "Maybe it was because too many refugees were turning up across in Keremenchool. Or perhaps one too many high-ranking prisoners had been spirited out of the Red Tower, and someone close to Thraelor decided that Old Man Mazaret should be made an example of..."
    His voice tailed off in a quiet, gasping sob, quickly stifled. Ikarno Mazaret regarded him with sorrow and pity, recalling how deeply Coireg had been affected by their mother's death sixteen years ago. They had, he realised, both drunk deeply from the cup of grief. He released a shaky sigh and reached out to rest a hand on his brother's shoulder. Coireg looked up with reddened eyes.
    "I was nearing Casall when word reached me. I stayed there a day and night before deciding to ride south to tell you. Five weeks is a long journey on horseback, especially for Olgen, my servant. When I started out, all I intended was to find you and deliver the news. But I dwelled on what had happened and now, as I sit before