A Sword from Red Ice

FORTY-ONE Raina Blackhail

Anwyn Bird was laid to rest in the manner of honored clansmen. Laida Moon, the clan healer, and Merritt Ganlow, the head widow, prepared the body over several days. Anwyn's brain was scraped out with a bladed spoon, and her torso was split open and the organ tree removed. Her skin was washed with milk of mercury and left overnight to dry. A soft putty of gray clay, silver filings, powdered guidestone and mercury salts was packed into her body cavity and skull. Her eyelids and mouth were drawn closed and sealed with clear resin. Laida fastened the torso with sutures of silver wire. Merritt brushed and braided the three-foot-long hair, securing it with a silver-and-jet clasp given by Raina Blackhail. The body was covered in a winding sheet of black linen and rested on a stone-and-timber plinth in the destroyed eastern hall.

As the women prepared the body the men rode out to the Oldwood to select and fell a basswood. A hundred-and-twenty-year tree was chosen and a loose line of over three hundred men formed, each waiting to take his turn with the ax. The felled log was limbed and dragged back to Blackhail by a team of horses. As the weather was judged uncertain it was brought into the house. Longhead hollowed it out with a carpenter's chisel, and the roughly finished log was left to cure for two days.

It had not been long enough, for the sap was still oozing and the sulfur wash that had been brushed on the inside walls now dripped on Anwyn's naked body. The clan matron had been entombed in the hollow of the tree. Raina shivered as she saw the yellow splotches on the mottled blue skin of the corpse. She stood on the greatcourt and watched the men lift the basswood onto a flat-bedded cart, their movements synchronized by terse orders from Orwin Shank. The great weight of the twelve-foot log made some of the older clansmen shake, but pride kept them shouldering their share of the burden.

Hundreds of clansmen and clanswomen stood in silence as Orwin Shank clicked the team of horses into motion and drove Anwyn Bird's body east toward the Wedge. It had been a small victory for Raina, that insistence that Anwyn not be laid to rest in the Oldwood as was planned and considered proper. She had won it not by reasonable argument or by wielding whatever small power she had left as chiefs wife. She had won it by a near-hysterical fit thrown in the presence of many people in the greathearth. "No," she had cried when she learned where Stannig Beade intended to place the body. "No. No. NO!"

After the outburst Stannig Beade had seemed pleased to let Raina have her way. It had been dark days for her then and she looked back now and realized she had lost some essential portion of control. And she was not sure she had it back.

Certainly she knew enough to play her role as grieving friend and chiefs wife on the greatcourt this gray and cloudy morning. She kept her silence and nodded acknowledgments at people, her bearing grave. But beyond that she felt wild and not-properly-hinged; an insane person playing at being sane.

People were treating her as if she were a damaged piece of pottery likely to break. They were careful with her, watchful, attempting to buffer her from shocks. Raina despised such treatment and would not normally have stood for it, but she could not rally the will to bring it to an end. It had its comforts, the buffering, the cautious care. She was fed and clucked over, shielded from the messages that arrived nearly daily from Ganmiddich and Bannen, and relieved of the duty of running this vast and creaking house.

Merritt had stepped into her place, emerging from the widows' hearth like an ancient warrior called by a sacred horn, Raina did not mind it much. At least Merritt was a Hailsman.

"Are you not coming?" Merritt said to her now as the cart lurched from the solid stone of the court onto the softer, lower surface of the road. "I'll walk with you."

The head widow's hand fluttered toward Raina's arm but Raina stepped away from it. She wanted no one touching her. "I am not going."

Merritt opened her mouth to protest this latest strangeness, but then thought better of it. Lips pressed into a tense line, she nodded curtly, and left to join the procession that was forming behind the cart.

Raina stood still against the flow of people. Corbie Meese, holding his delicate wife Sarolyn firmly by the waist, nodded to her as he passed. No man or woman would ride a horse to the laying-down of Anwyn Bird. They would walk the league and a half to the Wedge, where Stannig Beade would be waiting for them by a site he had deemed suitable to one of such high status. It would be a wooded glade cleared of snow or a stone bank above a stream, or perhaps she would be laid close to one of the paths so all that used the Wedge in the coming months would see her slowly blackening corpse and pay the respects that were its due.

Blackhail never buried its dead. They were left to rot on open ground, often in full view of hunting tracks, roads, rivers and lakes. Children who played in the woods and fields might stumble upon the hollowed-out basswoods and receive a lesson in death. No matter how beautifully a corpse was prepared, how it was nibbed with poisons and packed with precious metals, the flesh always corrupted in the end.

Raina recalled a nasty trick played on her the first summer she was here. She had befriended a handful of clan maids, Ellie Horn was one of them, and it had been decided they would go to the Oldwood to collect the wood violets that were in bloom and could be brought home and pressed into oil to make unctions. The girls were high-spirited that day, their voices sharp, their whispers theatrical and broken off by sudden gales of laugher. Raina recalled Ellie Horn complimenting her most particularly on her dove gray wool dress, "So pretty," she had said. "What would you call the color? Mouse? Mud?" The rest of the girls had giggled wildly while Ellie just looked at Raina with big fake-innocent eyes. Raina remembered the skin on her face pulling tight. She had been unsure of herself in such new company and had said nothing in her own defense. They had reached the first stand of trees by then and it seemed easier to go along and pick violets-

After they had spent an hour or so in the woods Ellie Horn had sought her out "I'm sorry for what I said about your dress. It was mean of me." There was such candor in Ellie's voice, such appeal in her bright blue eyes, that Raina had immediately believed her. "Look," Ellie had continued, moving closer, "I just found the best, most purply violets growing out of that downed log over there. I was going to take them myself, but then I started feeling bad about what happened and I thought to myself, I'll let Raina pick them." Raina had hesitated. Ellie nodded vigorously toward the old felled log. "Go on. You'll be surprised by how fine they smell."

That was the first time in her life Raina had seen a dead body. She had approached the log hopeful, not about the violets as much as about the prospect of friendship with Ellie Horn. Ellie was the important girl in the clan. The prettiest, the most smartly dressed, the ringleader. Raina recalled seeing something black and burned-looking and not understanding what it was. She had moved closer? — smelled the sickly foulness of rank meat, and then recognized the contours of a face. The blackened skin was floating above the skull, suspended on a sea of maggots.

She had not screamed. That must have disappointed Ellie Horn and the other three girls who were hiding in the shadows behind the yews. The girls had broken into nervous, excited laughter and it was only then that Raina fled.

It had been one of the many hard lessons she'd had to learn at Blackhail. This was not an easy clan. Its roundhouse lay the farthest north of any in the clanholds, and had not been designed to keep out the cold or take advantage of the bright northern sun. It had been built solely for defense. The main structure had so few windows that there was only one chamber in the entire building where you could be sure to feel sunlight on a cloudless day. The winters were long here, and springs came late. Raina had learned to set aside the light and airy pleasures of Dregg—the dancing, the hotwall gardening, the embroidering with city-bought silks—and had replaced them with more earthly ones instead. There was the pleasure of a sprung trap with a mink in it, the delight of being recognized by a herd of milk cows and the satisfaction of building a hot blazing fire against the cold.

She had learned to love Blackhail, and its proud, grim ways. She had even become proud and grim herself, and when friends or kin visited from Dregg she would feel superior to them. We are the first amongst clans, she would remind herself as she tolerated their frivolities. That claim was Blackhail's alone. Dregg might be brighter and better situated, but it would never be first.

Raina stared at the cart rolling across the graze and the crowd of people walking behind it and tried to hold on to some of that old and deeply held pride. She had the sense that if she could it might anchor her. She feared that she, Raina Blackhail, was drifting free of this clan. How much could a person lose and remain whole? A husband, peace of mind, a dear friend? What was left? Dagro was gone. Effie was gone. Now Anwyn. She lived in a house full of strangers, some of whom wished her harm. Since Dagro had died her life had been this clan. But this clan had changed. The Hailstone had shattered and the gods had fled. Stannig Beade had wheeled in half of the Scarpestone to lure them back, but no god would enter such an ili-begot stone. Blackhail was cursed. Its chief had murdered its chief, its guide was a man who would stop at nothing to gain power, and the guidestone at its heart was as dead and useless as Anwyn Bird's corpse.

Breathing hard, Raina turned her hack on the procession She found herself staring directly at the Scarpestone that stood on its tar nished silver plinth at the center of the greacourt. Work had just been completed on a wooden canopy that would be hung with skins to protect the narrow hunk of granite from rain and snow. Raina's lip twitched as she looked at it. At first she had wondered why the gods didn't simply destroy it as they had the first Hailstone. It would be an easy thing for a god—an exhalation. Now she realized the god didn't care..

So why should 1?

Tugging her shawl across her shoulders, Raina crossed the short distance to the roundhouse. People walking in the opposite direction minded her then looked away. Some elbowed their companions and whispers were exchanged. She could guess what they were saying: Why is she not attending Anwyn Bird's death march and laying?

Because the man who murdered her will lead the ceremony. And if I were forced to watch it there would be no telling what I would do.

Perhaps some of this answer was showing in her face, for clan maids and children seemed afraid of her and were quick to step out af her way. Raina felt an odd and bitter smile come to her face and she let it stay there as she made her way through the roundhouse.

Anwyn Bird's throat had been slit so deeply that the bone at the back of her neck had been cxposed. Laida Moon had told Raina that the clan matron would have died instantly. Was that statement supposed to bring comfort? Sheela Cobbin, one of the bakers, had found her.

Anwyn's absence had been noted for several hours but no one was too concerned — the clan matron had other responsibilities beside running the kitchens — and it wasn't until it was time to prepare the pork legs for supper that people began to wonder where she was. Anwyn was known to be fussy about pork and she had left no instructions regarding its preparation. One of the cooks thought they should parboil the legs to speed cooking. Another said you shouldn't parboil a leg that had been brined — it'd boil out all the taste, A heated argument erupted and Sheela Cobbin, who had been listening with growing impatience by the bread ovens, said they could both stop their hollering as she was off to fetch Anwyn Bird.

Everyone in the kitchen heard her scream two minutes later. Anwyn was found slumped by the little box pallet she used as a bed in her cell beneath the kitchen. There was so much blood it had seeped through the blanket, sheets and mattress and onto the rush matting that covered the stone floor. The last anyone had seen or heard of her was when she was seen heading down the stairs from the widows' wall and stopped to tell Gat Murdock that she'd meet him in the stillroom in a quarter to discuss the latest malt they were aiming to distill. Apparently Gat Murdock had gone to the stillroom, grown impatient with being kept waiting, taken more than a few tipples of the low wines, and then wandered off to dice with the old-timers in the greathearth. In fairness he was in a terrible state about it later, telling anyone who listened that Anwyn was the finest girl in the clan and that he'd give up his one remaining arm to have her back.

Raina had expected to feel sorry for him. But didn't.

Something had happened to her when she caught sight of the body and now she was something other instead. She could look back and recall the old Raina and know exacdy how she would feel and act in any given situation, but she could no longer feel and act that way herself. The old Raina had gone the way of the gods. And the new one didn't even know if she was sane.

Orwin Shank had been the first to perceive the change in her. He had held her in a mighty bear hug and rocked her back and forth as they stood in Anwyn's cell. "It's all right, my sweet lamb," he kept repeating softly. Quite suddenly she could not stand the raw-beef smell of blood.

"Unhand me," she had said.

Orwin had paused, surprised. Deciding that her tone was a symptom of grief he had continued rocking her. She had raised a hand and slammed him hard in the ribs. "I said unhand me." He had released her immediately and she left the room. It was the strangest night she could ever recall spending in Blackhail's roundhouse. Dagro's death had not caused the disruption that Anwyn s did. The shattering of the Hailstone had not left the clan as purposeless and bereft. She had always been the rallying point, the one who marched into the middle of a crisis, issued orders, served beer, put a lid on unnecessary fussing, made sure everyone was well fed. They had needed an Anwyn Bird or someone like her to cope with Anwyn's death. Instead they had a chiefs wife who left them to their misery, a kitchen staff who would have roused themselves to make hot food and bring cool beer if anyone had thought to direct them, a chief who was afield at war, and a clan guide who had spent much of the evening locked up in the greathearth with the elder warriors.

Raina had seen the great oaken doors barred by yearmen with crossed spears and had not cared enough to force entry. She understood that some manipulation was happening behind them and that she would learn soon enough its nature.

Cowlmen was the word that came out of the greathearth later in that long night. Hailsmen were tense, their hands returning often to the hilts of their swords as they descended their stairs, their gazes flickering around the groups of people who had gathered in the entrance hall below them.

Robbie Dun Dhoone had sent an assassin into the Hailhouse to spread terror and strike at the heart of clan. The Thorn King had surveyed the strength of the Hailish armies camped on Bannen Field and had judged them too great a threat to Dhoone's reclaiming of Ganmiddich. He was a chief known to have no scruples—look how he had dealt with his rival and uncle Skinner Dhoone—and now he had employed the kind of vicious tactics you would expect from such a man. His plan was to cause sufficient terror to force Mace Blackhail into ordering half of his army home.

"We should expect more strikes," Stannig Beade had warned the sworn clansmen. "The death of our beloved Anwyn is just the start."

He had not addressed these words to the clan, and Raina had only heard them repeated secondhand later. Corbie Meese had given her a brief account of what had happened behind closed doors. "Raina," he had said, his voice low and filled with strong emotion, "Stannig believes there may be a cowhnan concealed in this house."

Raina had simply stared at him. How could it be possible that a good man like Corbie could believe such lies? Cowlmen? Did he not recall the last time there were rumors of cowlmen in the Hailhold how they supposedly killed Shor Gormalin and then left never to be heard of again? How was it possible that both she and the hammerman had lived through that time and come out with two separate experiences of the truth?

She had said one thing to him, because it was the only solid truth she possessed. "Skinner Dhoone was not Robbie's uncle, Robbie was a Cormac who named himself Dhoone after he'd decided that if he looked far enough back into his mother's lineage he would find her related to the Dhoone kings."

Corbie had looked at her strangely. "Stannig said it only as a figure of speech."

She bet he did. She damn well bet he did.

Sworn clansmen had mounted a torch party that night, riding out from the Hailhouse with long flaming firebrands housed in their spear horns. Raina could not discern its purpose, beyond the need of decent men to take action against evil. Stannig Beade had ridden at the party's head, and it appeared that no one else beside herself questioned whether this was fitting behavior for a guide.

The woman with the greatest respect in the clan was dead. He was guide. Didn't he have to grind some bones?

Two days later, whilst Laida Moon and Merritt Ganlow were preparing Anwyn's body with milk of mercury, two Scarpemen had found Jani Gaylo dead. Her throat had been slit from ear to ear and her body had been dumped down the old wellshaft in the kaleyard. It was frozen solid.

If there had been any doubt in Raina s mind, that cleared it up. Stannig Beade had murdered both women. Anwyn Bird had been a threat to him. Her status in the clan was high and she wielded her influence with subtlety, and the day she had decided to take overt action against him was the day she'd ended up dead. "Stannig Beade is no clan guide and must he shown as such. We are many. We can send him back to Scarpe." Those were close to Anwyn's last words, doubtless repeated imperfectly by pretty little Jani Gavin not much longer after they were originally spoken.

Poor, silly girl. She had probably not been much older than seven-teen. Too young to be killed far telling tales. As there were only two people in the roundhouse who understood the relationship between Anwyn and Jani, the maid's death was taken as further evidence of cowlmen. The girl had been tilling the onion beds in the kaleyard, the story went, when she had been jumped from behind by her assassin. He was growing bolder now, people whispered. It was the closest thing to the truth that had been said.

Stannig Beade was growing bold. So where did that leave Raina Blackhail? Three people had been in the widows' wall that day. Two were dead. Sworn clansmen were distracted and tense: a whisper could make them draw a sword. For the first time Raina could remember, the clandoor was shut to tied clansmen. Those who were already within the house were permitted to remain under its protection, but those farmers, miners, loggers, trappers, dairymen, tradesmen, cotters, charcoal-burners, weavers, tanners and millers who applied at the door for safekeeping—as was their right as men and women making their living within the Hailhold—were turned away.

Dagro Blackhail would no longer have recognized his clan.

Or his wife.

Raina stood for a moment at the foot of the great stone staircase and wondered what to do with herself. The Hailhouse was half empty now. Anwyn Bird's funeral rites had pulled hundreds away. Her absence could be felt in dozens of large and small ways. Smoke-blackened cobwebs were collecting in the corners of the hall. The scant torches that were lit had been improperly dried and dipped and were giving off more smolder than light. A sour and greasy smell was wafting from the kitchen; the hearths had not been raked in days. The list could go on, but Raina no longer saw the point of cataloguing the decline in Blackhail's house. Who was left to mind it? Anwyn was no longer here to stand stubbornly against the chaos. Merritt Ganlow might have a go, but she was all sharp edges and would rub people the wrong way. Anwyn Bird had been a block.

Oh gods, Army. Raina breathed in the smoky air and felt the tar settle in her lungs. A Scarpeman sitting above her on one of the steps was taking a breakfast of headcheese and rye bread. He had a chunk of brain-and-tongue loaf and was chipping off pieces with his handknife and popping them in his mouth. His eyes had the yellowish tint of many Scarpes. Chewing and swallowing he watched Raina, daring her to move him. Six days ago when Anwyn was alive he would not have been allowed to block the way to the greathearth, let alone eat on the stairs. The old Raina would have been incensed, but would not have risked the potential humiliation that might occur if she made an aggressive move toward a man. The new Raina didn't care either way. If she'd had the will to stop him she would have marched up the stairs and snatched the headcheese right from his hand and slapped it into his face.

The old Raina had worried too much about what people thought of her. She had wanted to be liked as well as respected— Her mistake was in believing that if she worked hard enough at being a good chiefs wife she would eventually make a good chief.

Chiefs wife was not the same as chief. That fact was so clear to the new Raina she wondered how it was possible she could ever have believed anything else. The evidence was there—look at Mace Blackhail, Robbie Dun Dhoone, and the Dog Lord. You didn't rule a roundhouse by being nice. The Stone Gods were gods of war. Not gods of hearth and home.

The old Raina had supported the clan, but never once thought to lead it. I will be chief. The words could have been spoken by a child, so little understanding lay behind them. Anwyn had tried to push her; once that day on the balcony as they'd watched the Scarpestonc roll in from Scarpe, and once in the widows' wall on the day that Anwyn had died. And she, Raina Blackhail, had not allowed herself to be pushed.

Always cautious. Always wary of her standing in the clan.

Her caution had killed Anwyn Bird. I will be lessened, she had cried when Anwyn had tried to force her into speaking up against Stannig Beade. She must have had a hole in her head.

There were no holes there now, but she was not sure what she was left with. She remembered going to see Laida Moon in the sickroom while the healer was preparing Anwyn s corpse. Laida had been holding a glass tube full of mercury in her fist. The metal pooled and roiled as they spoke, forming shiny beads that rolled from one end of the flask to the other. When Laida set it down to fetch a jug of water, it had taken less than ten seconds for the metal to harden into a dull lump. The room had to be cold, Laida had explained to Raina later, so the body would not soften and corrupt. The mercury existed in an uncertain state between liquid and solid, and the difference in temperature between her hand and the old air was sufficient to flash between.| them.

That was how Raina felt, standing by the foot of the staircase: in an uncertain form between two states. Liable to soften into hysterics one moment and harden into anger and contempt the next.

She had not slept through the night in six days. How could she? Every floorboard creaking in the night might be Stannig Beade come to kill her. She was the only one left who knew what he was. The only one in the clan who understood how very little Blackhail's guide cared about the gods.

For six nights she had slept in the widows' wall with Merritt Ganlow, Hatty Hare, Biddie Byce and a half-dozen other widows who had come together to reestablish the hearth after the Scarpes had left.. Safety in numbers, Raina supposed. Yet she did not feel safe. And she barely slept.

When you do not sleep eventually you do not eat. Appetite had left her and she could not recall the last time she had eaten a proper meal. Yesterday morning she had taken a little milk in honey offered to her by young Biddie Byce. Biddie was a quiet and gentle girl, yet quite capable of perceiving the changes in the chiefs wife. She was afraid of what it meant to herself and her clan, Raina realized as their fingertips had touched over the milk cup.

She had reason to be.

Uncertain what to do, Raina left the entry hall and headed for the kitchens. As she passed the doorway leading to the east hall, her maiden's helper stirred against her hip. Ignoring it she entered the cavernous space of the main kitchen. Not much was being done. Two Scarpewomen were skinning a freshly trapped rabbit on the kneading table. The older woman had pinned its skull to the wood with her knife while the younger one flensed the legs. Blood was soaking into the highly polished hickory surface. Poor Anwyn. Six days dead and Scarpes were not only using her kitchen, they were bloodying her bread table.

Borrie Sweed, the broom boy, was sweeping spilled flour halfheartedly across the floor. He looked up when Raina entered, his expression hopeful, but she passed him by without greeting. She had an idea that she might simply sleep. Stannig Beade would be gone for several hours. Anwyn's bying would take time and he would not dare dishonor her memory by returning from the Wedge ahorse. No. He would have to walk with the rest of them. Anything less would be unseemly.That Would give her two or three hours where she could be sure she was safe. But where to go? The widows' wall would be too empty and exposed. The greathearth was open to sworn Scarpemen. Anywhere aboveground seemed unsafe. She would go to the underlevels, rest in the peace and darkness beneath the Hailhouse, and see if she could regain her mind. It wasn't much, but at least it was a decision. And it would stop her having to think about what was happening to Anwyn's corpse.

Carefully avoiding the area where Anwyn's cell had been located, Raina grabbed a safelamp and worked her way downstairs. She smelled dead mice and ripe mud. The air was thick with gases that were not easy to breathe. The lower she went the wetter the stone underfoot became, and the deeper the silence. It was soothing to be in a place so quiet and dark, where she could be sure to meet nothing except mice and cellar rats. She felt the weight of her exhaustion pressing against her shoulders and kneecaps. She could tell from the trembling of the light that she must be shaking. Perhaps she should have brought a blanket, for it was icily cold, and she had nothing except her mohair shawl to keep out the chill. Longhead had once told her that the farther you went underground the warmer it became. She would go deep then, perhaps even as far as the secret room where she had hidden the last remaining chunk of Hailstone.

Yes, she would go there. It would be still and safe, and the few belongings of Dagro's that she had kept for her own were there as well. To touch them would be good.

The journey was much easier this time as she had no sixty-pound weight on her back. Within hardly any time at all she found herself crouching in the low-ceilinged foundation space. It was a short journey then, past support columns, drain walls, sealed wellheads and ancient dungeons to the T-junction where she needed to turn.

The standing water was a foot deep here and Raina hiked up her skirts and grimaced as cool, gelid liquid flooded over the tops of her boots. Luckily, Yarro Blackhails strongroom had been built a half-level higher than the corridor, and when she slid back the stone tile that concealed the entrance she was pleased to see dry ground below her. Feeling a spike of girlish energy, she vaulted through the opening.

The Hailstone stood here. She could feel its presence straightaway. Hie gods no longer lived there and the small chunk of granite retained no power, but some residue remained. It charged the space in the strongroom, lightly, almost imperceptibly pulsing the air. Raina looked, but did not approach it. It stood in the corner, a dull stone placed against a wall of dull stone. No dust had settled upon it and no spider had dared use it to anchor a web. The old Raina had had some jaw, she realized. To steal the stone: that took balls.

Quite suddenly she was too tired to think. Pulling off her boots, she glanced about for a place to sleep. Yarro Blackhail had built his small square strongroom to house treasure, not people, and beside the single market crate which she had brought here herself many months earlier there was nothing to interrupt the hardness of the stone floor. At least it was dry.

Raina lay down, bundled her shawl into a pillow, and fell into an exhausted asleep.

She dreamed of the gods. With the empty shell they had lived in less than ten feet away from her head Aow could she not?

When she awoke she knew what she must do.

The flame in the safelamp was guttering, and she worried about the time. How long had she been asleep? How much oil had the lamp reservoir contained when she first picked it up from the shelf by the kitchen stair? Had it been full? Or half empty? Stiff and muddy-headed, she found she could not be sure. All was quiet. Quickly she rose and stepped into her boots. The leather felt like pulp. Her dress was soggy around the hem and didn't smell good. She crossed to the tile entrance, placed an open hand on the indents in the stone and drew it back. Just as she swung a foot up to climb out, she thought about Dagro's belonging on the crate. Planting the foot back on the ground, she hesitated.

The light in the lamp could go out any moment. The oil in the reservoir was gone. A tremor of panic passed along her spine, and in defiance of it, or perhaps because of it, she turned back in to the room. The few items she had secreted after her husband's death lay on the top of the balsa-wood crate, gathering dust. Raina brushed her fingers over the tops of them, touching them one by one. She took what she needed and left.

She was going to have to kill Stannig Beade.

The price of regaining her peace of mind was his death.

The price of avenging Anwyn's murder was his death.

The price of becoming Hail chief was his death.

This time she did not bother to hike up her skirts. She had no idea what time it was and uncertainty made her hurry. Water sloshed at her feet, rippling ahead of her every step. Light do not go out, she told the lamp. The flame had shrunk to a small tooth of red. It illuminated a weak circle around her body, barely touching the walls and the surface of the water. She could smell decay now. The rot at the heart of the Hailhouse.

Tht.

Raina's head shot sideways to track the noise. She had just emerged from the foundation space and had climbed the half-stair to the lower cellar level. The sound had come from a corridor off to her right. Her gaze could not penetrate the blackness. She extended the lamp, but its light just created a red corona around the dark. Rat, she told herself, and moved on.

The second flight of steps seemed steeper than she remembered them and the weight of water in her dress dragged against her. Sections of the second, middle, level of the cellars were open to the space above and Raina realized she was missing the feint pools of diffused light that would filter down in daylight. It was after dark. She had slept in the strongroom all day.

Well and good. He would be back by now, and it did not take a scholar to guess where he would head once the business of settling the clan was done. Stannig Beade was growing bold in his use of this house. Raina turned from her usual path, entering a section of the underworld she had never entered before this night. Then I will have to grow bolder. And this is my house. Not his.

Strange, but the air was different here beneath the western quadrangle. Not fresher exactly, but moving. It skimmed over the surface of the standing water, raising ripples and creating a scum of foam. The corridors narrowed, and Raina hunched her shoulders and drew her free arm close to her body. According to Effie this section had been dug at a later date than the others. Raina guessed the girl was right. The edges of the stone blocks were sharp and still square, and the mortar between them was visible as a network of pale lines. Which chief had ordered this excavation? she wondered. Which one had been worried about his head?

Raina climbed a short flight of stairs^ took a right turn, and then ascended a ramp. She was moving quickly now. The standing water was gone, and the drenched hem of her skivl slapped against the ramp.

For a wonder, the lamp was still burning. Raina thought about that as jte reached the top of the ramp, recalling something Effie had said many months ago, when asked how she made her way through the underlevels. Don't know. Never seem to need a light You just see after a while. And no one can sneak up on you.

But you could sneak up on them.

Raina turned the lamp key. Her steps grew more certain … and more hushed. The passageways appeared to her as a series of shadowy frames, and after a while she could walk without brushing against the walls. Effie had told her about the route to the chiefs chamber while Dagro was still alive, but a sense of propriety had forbade Raina from taking it in until now. It had been Dagro's domain, and she'd had no wish to violate his privacy. Later, when Mace had become chief, her overwhelming desire had been to avoid any place where she might encounter her second husband. With Stannig Beade it was different. The Scarpe guide could—and would—go to hell.

On impulse, Raina set down the lamp. She had no need of it now. She had remembered something that old, turkey-necked Gat Murdock had said the morning of the Sundering while dust from the Hailstone still blew in the air. "The Hail Wolf has returned." She had paid no attention to it at the time. Gat was Gat; known for his good riddances, not his good sense. Now she realized she had missed an essential truth. The badge of Blackhail wasn't two swords crossed in parley. It wasn't a she-bear suckling her cubs. It was a lone wolf, scribed in silver on a black field. She, Raina Blackhail, had to become that wolf.

The darkness was her black field. She moved through it toward the chiefs chamber. When she passed beneath the entrance hall she heard footsteps and voices. A strong, rumbling vibration shook the walls. It took her a moment to realize it was the great clan door being drawn closed for the night. Good. It meant sworn clansmen would retire to the greathearth to game and sup. Clanwives would retire to their chambers with their bairns, and Scarpers would lie low and await opportunities to do whatever mischief weasels did.

It must be getting colder, Raina decided. She was shivering, and her feet were growing numb. Halting for a moment, she pulled off her boots. A cup of water swilled out from each of them. Leaving the boots in the center of the passageway, she moved on.

She padded as quietly as a wolf after that.

Effie had told her little about the passageway leading to the chief's chamber, save that it passed beneath the entrance hall and then led down. Raina took the turn she needed and descended a series of steep, low-ceilinged ramps. Now that she'd heard the elan door being drawn on its track, she had a sense of where she stood in relation to the above-ground spaces. The knowledge that she was approaching the chiefs chamber worked upon muscles in her throat. Her airways tightened. An artery in her neck beat a pulse.

When she saw a band of light ahead, she slowed. Crouching, she touched her maiden's helper, made sure it was there.

The light was coming from an opening at the top of the ramp. The opening was a quarter of a foot high and over twice that in length. As Raina crept toward it she saw that a slim brass grille was fixed over the aperture. The light coming through the opening was faint and softly orange. Smoke snaked between the bars of the grille. Glancing around, Raina tried to make sense of it. The ramp had come to an end by a corner where two walls met. At first she thought the passageway had ended also, but as her eyes grew accustomed to the light she spied a narrow ledge winding around the corner.

The ramp's angle meant that she approached the opening from below. Rocking forward she switched from a crouch to a kneel. Her damp skirt hem sucked against her calves. Raising her face so that it was parallel to the opening, Raina peered through the grille.

And saw four wood poles and a pair of feet. The feet were sandaled and pointed away from her. They were a man's feet; there was no doubt about that. They were large and covered with coarse black hairs. The right little toenail was crusty with fungus. Realizing she would see more if she altered her perspective, Raina lowered her head. The singed and ragged hem of Stannig Beade's ceremonial robe slid into view. It was hiked up to shin height. He was sitting, she decided. That explained the four wooden poles: chair legs. And now that she could see further, she understood that he was sitting behind the Chiefs Cairn, the big chunk of iron gray granite that Hail chiefs used as a worktable. As she watched, tendons in his ankles relaxed and his heels rose up from the soles of his sandals. Scratching sounds followed, and Raina guessed Stannig was leaning forward to write.

Raina used the opportunity to breathe. The opening was probably a drainage conduit, cut to prevent flooding in the chiefs chamber. Excess water would drain down the ramp. Had Effie crouched here, she wondered, watching Dagro's feet as they moved back and forth across the chamber? It was a bewildering thought. Raina remembered herself as an eight-year-old girl: men's feet had not figured in her interests.

Suddenly tendons in Beade's ankles sprung to life. His heels came down and his robe hem dropped to his ankles. He was standing. Swiftly, he moved across the chamber. The farther away he walked, the more Raina could see of him. Soon she could see as high as his waist. His hands were at his sides. Big, scarred, and covered in the same coarse hairs as his feet, they twitched as he moved. Abruptly he passed out of sight, screened off by a corner of the Chiefs Cairn. Sounds followed; rustling and soft thuds. Two slaps were followed by a ripe-sounding fart.

And then the lamp was snuffed. Of course, he sleeps here now.

Raina's nostrils flared as she drew breath down constricted airways. She waited and did not move. Time passed. Dust settled. Little tingles of pain racked her knees. Mice scurried on the ramps below her; busy, aware. The roundhouse groaned as it cooled, shifting and shrinking through the night. All was quiet in the chiefs chamber. Beade slept as soundly as a man with no one to fear.

When a mouse streaked across her legs, Raina didn't make a sound. Instead, she began to rise. The mice no longer knew she was here. It was time.

The transition from kneeling to standing took minutes as she allowed her body the opportunity to adjust to its change in state. Once upright, she padded across the ramp to the ledge. This was her darkness now. She could smell it and taste it. Her pupils felt as large as wells.

The ledge was two and a half feet wide. A drop of varying depth lay below it. Raina had some fear of it—it was not as harmless as mice, after all—but she did not let it slow her. She had found a way of moving, a rhythm, that propelled her forward without sound.

The ledge turned a perfectly square corner and ended twelve feet later. No openings here, nothing that could be peered through and used to gather intelligence. Raina did not need it. She knew the chiefs chamber well, knew exactly where the end of the ledge stood in relation to the interior space. Close to the door, and opposite Beade's sleeping mat. Raising both palms to the wall, she searched for a mechanism that would allow entry to the chamber. She did not know what to expect. There was nothing on the interior of this wall that gave ati||j thing away—certainly not a panel of tile that slid on a track. Tiny pills of mortar crumbled as she touched them. She had started the search at chest height and now moved higher. Fingertips ghosting across stone, she walked the length of the ledge. Nothing. She searched higher, raising her hands over her head. More nothing. Why hadn't she thought to ask Effie for details? Because she had been appalled at the thought of spying on her husband; that was why. Virtuous Raina scuttling herself yet again.

Raina continued searching. Effie, Effie, Effie. Such a strange and endearing girl. What mischief had brought her here and kept her coming back? It was not slyness—Effie Sevrance was not that sort of girl—so it must have been curiosity. She was a child who liked to know things.

Lifting her hands away from the wall, Raina stopped in her tracks. A child. Effie had been five when she'd found this secret entrance. A wee little thing, barely three feet high. She probably hadn't been looking for anything—just trailing her hand across the wall. Raina crouched, approximating a height of three feet. Bending her arm to shorten its length and letting her fingers idly bounce over the stone, she walked along the ledge once more. No luck. Raina deepened her crouch, and let her hand drop all the way to the base of the wall.

A foot from the end of the ledge she found it. Four fingerholes. One large hole on the bottom, three smaller ones above it. Raina inserted her thumb into the large hole and her three middle fingers into the smaller ones. Her fingertips quickly passed from stone to wood to air. This part of the wall was nothing more than a veneer; stone facing fixed to wood. A hollow core lay in its center. Raina hooked her fingertips around the lip of the wood and tugged gently. A section of wail, two feet long and a foot high, began to slide back onto the ledge. If it had been solid sandstone it would have weighed twenty stone. Yet as a hollow wooden block faced with sandstone on two sides it had to weigh under twenty pounds. And it moved freely. Something—perhaps a thin pad of felt or suede—had been fixed to the base of the block to allow ease of movement.

Raina drew it back slowly. The edges of the hollow section chinked softly against the solid wall When the block was free she slid it along the ledge. Stale smoke wafted through the opening. All was dark and still on the other side. Hearing the faint piping of Stannig's breath, she waited. Listened. Once she was sure the breaths were evenly paced, she drew her maiden's helper. A wolf, she told herself as she bellied through the hole.

Raina knew this space. An old Hailish banner depicting a silver hammer smashing the Dhoonehouse was suspended above the opening. Raina's head brushed against its base as she passed into the chamber. Some chiefs wife famous for her constancy had embroidered the damn thing over a period of five years. All the details of the Dhoonehouse were said to be technically correct and rendered in perfect scale. It was a clan treasure now, albeit a lesser one. Raina wondered about its placement. It seemed convenient that its base covered the join where the fake wall and real wall met. Good for her, though. It meant there had been one less discrepancy capable of catching Beade's eye.

Raina stood. The chamber was a fraction brighter than the passageway. A torch burning in the adjacent stairwell sent a ghostly plane of light under the door. After hours of near total darkness, Raina found it easy to see through the gloom. The chamber was sparsely furnished: a single chair, the chiefs cairn, various weaponry suspended from the ceiling and walls. Beade's sleeping mat.

The clan guide of Scarpe and Blackhail lay asleep and naked on his back. A light-colored blanket was twisted around his legs. His head had lolled to the side and his mouth was open. Drool rolling toward his left ear shone faintly in the borrowed light. Raina took in all the details: the hands resting on the belly, the eyelids twitching as he dreamed, the dense, graying mat of pubic hair, the water jug standing close to his shoulder. It was power she felt, not fear or bravery. A cold and joyless satisfaction that spoke to her and said, He's mine.

Was this how chiefs felt when they rode to war with superior numbers and weapons? No pleasure, just an emotion that lived between pride and contempt? Was this how Beade felt as he waited to murder Anwyn?

No. Raina shook her head as she glided toward him. Because I feel fury as well.

Anwyn Bird was the single best clansman in Blackhail; its solid, dependable heart. A protector to a thirteen-year-old newly arrived from Dregg. Girl, you will stay in the kitchen with me and I''ll hear no fussing about it. Those had been Anwyn's first words to her; the beginning of a twenty-year friendship that had been the most complicated and long-lived relationship of Raina's life.

I failed you, Anny. My dear one. My love.

Do wolves weep as they kill? Raina did not think so. Forcing herself not to blink, she kept her eyes dry. She had a job to do and moved into position to accomplish it.

Claiming power.

Becoming the Hail Wolf.

Leaving the old Raina behind.

When she was ready, she picked up the water jug in her free hand and emptied its contents over Beade s face. His eyes snapped opened ami his head jerked upright. Several things happened quickly one after another then. He recognized the person kneeling over him. instantly understood her intent, felt the blade of the maiden's helper enter his throat, reared up his shoulders in an instinct he was powerless to stop—the desire to be upright when facing danger—felt the blade gp deeper, coughed in panic and swung his big right hammerman's fist up toward Raina. She took an angled blow to the underside of her jaw. Her teeth were firmly clamped together and the force was transferred to her skull. Vertebrae in her neck crunched together as her head traveled sideways and back. Her vision rippled like a stone dropped into water. But her grip on the knife's handle held firm.

Beade watched as she murdered him.

There were hard sinews and thickly walled tubing in a man's throat and Raina had to saw with the knife to sever them. Blood pumped trom the ragged hole, coating her hand. It was as warm as bathwater. Beade was losing strength. His hands and lower arms flailed, yet he could no longer lift his upper arms from the sleeping mat. His teeth were bared. Surprise and panic had left his eyes. The eyelids fluttered, preparing to close.

Rising higher, Raina applied more force. "Look at me," she whispered. "You waited too long, Scarpeman. Should have killed me the same day you murdered Anwyn. Should have watched your back. The Hail Wolf returned and you didn't even know it'

She spoke other things then, dark words that spilled out of her like poison, words that had been trapped inside her body ever since the day in the Oldwood when she had been raped by her foster son. Mace Blackhail. She spoke and sawed as blood rolled across the floor and pooled around her knees and the lamplight beyond the door flickered and waned. Mace, she named the dying man. Mace. Mace. Mace.

When his heart began seizing she reached behind her back and pulled Dagro's silver ceromonial knife from her belt. Probably she was damned forever for what happened next, for she took the knife in both hands and stabbed him through the heart. She was smiling.

Rising, she left him there: a corpse in the chiefs chamber, a chiefs knife sticking out from its chest. She felt wild and filled with power.

Released.

One more job to do and she was done. Hieronymus Buck, a tied miner, had once told her what they did to open seams in the mine. "Light fires we do. Heat up the rock face so it nearly glows. Then we pumps the water from the Bluey. Water hits the rock and it's the mother of all explosions. I've seen thirty feet shatter in a single go."

Raina Blackhail wiped the blood from her hands as she made her way through the roundhouse. She'd be lighting a fire under the Scarpestone this night.