“Seneschal, please,” Sareya said, and now she was really sobbing. “I was teasing. I’ve made mistakes, I know that now, but I’ve changed. You have to believe me.”
“Dry your tears and wipe your nose,” Vihtor said. “Maybe you don’t set much stock by the Order’s code, but, by Menselas, I do. Touch a comrade like that one more time, and you’re out. Is that understood?”
Sareya sniffed as she nodded.
“Get out of my sight,” Vihtor said, and she turned and fled.
To Naul, Vihtor said, “Idiot.” Then to Orix: “I respect your honesty. You’re from the Plains of Khisig-Ugtall, aren’t you?”
“City of Ivrian, Seneschal,” Orix said.
“You do your people credit. But in future, make sure you fight for the right reasons.”
Vihtor turned to regard Anskar.
With a lump in his throat, Anskar said, “I’m sorry, sir. I shouldn’t have lost control the way I did.”
Vihtor stared at him for a long moment, then said, “No, you shouldn’t. As a knight, you’ll be expected to show restraint and understanding. Sareya was taken from her family as a child and brought here to the Burg. Though necessary, such things scar a person deeply. You’d do well to remember that.”
Moonlight spilled through the narrow window above Anskar’s bedhead, splashing the sheets and his naked torso with crimson. Jagonath, the red moon, was in the ascendancy tonight: the bloodshot eye of Menselas, the priests of the Elder called it. The avenger moon. The destroyer of dreams. Anskar lay on his bed, unable to sleep, worries about the pending trials wrapped up with anger about Sareya and her lies, and the feeling he had disappointed the Seneschal.
He tried praying to the Elder aspect of Menselas—the font of wisdom and control—but it did no good. He couldn’t focus. He felt lost, a failure, as if he’d been on the brink of greatness and let it slip away from him. Nonsense, he knew, but the realization didn’t help.
He gave up on the Elder and switched instead to the Litany of the Healer, which Brother Tion had made him learn as a child. Anskar struggled with the ancient Skanuric words, and still barely understood them, but the familiar rhythms of the prayer always seemed to soothe him.
Menselas would forgive his loss of control—Menselas always did—and come morning, maybe things would look different. If morning ever came.
The flutter of wings outside his window startled him, and he pushed himself up on one elbow, craning his neck to see. There was nothing, just the dark background of night saturated by the moon’s ruddy glow. Probably an owl, he told himself. Or a bat.
He held his breath, listening for any sound, but none came. He slumped back down on the bed, and straight away all he could think of was Sareya. By the Five he hated her. When he closed his eyes, he could see her smirking face reveling that she’d brought him down to her level.
But it wasn’t just anger he felt. He saw Sareya’s image in his mind again, her unlaced shirt, the lingering scent of her perfume …
Anskar rolled over onto his side and buried his face in the pillow, ashamed by the pressure growing in his groin. It wasn’t his fault, he told himself. She was the one making him feel this way. That’s what Niyandrians did. They were sorcerers through and through. She’d beguiled him.
He formed the sword of the Warrior in his mind’s eye, and this time it blazed golden, so clearly it was almost solid. He imagined himself grasping the hilt; pictured Sareya as a red-skinned and bat-winged demon; saw himself drive the blade between her breasts so that blood bubbled from her mouth and she wailed and twitched till she stilled.
With a mumbled prayer of thanks to the Warrior, he rolled onto his side and let his head sink into the pillow.
The novices were split into twelve groups of eight and told to sit quietly in the antechamber outside the Dodecagon, the great hall in which they were to face the first of the trials. Anskar sat at the end of the stone bench allotted to his group, nursing sweaty palms and repeatedly wiping them on his pants. Brother Tion would no doubt say there was virtue in patience, but why couldn’t they just get on with it and let the trial begin?
He was tired from lack of sleep, and had only managed to eat a few spoonfuls of porridge at breakfast. He wouldn’t have been able to keep down any more than that. But now all he could think about was how sluggish he felt—and the ramifications of failure. It didn’t help to remind himself that this was the first of three attempts at the trials. Failure—any failure—was absolute to his way of thinking. You didn’t get three chances in battle. One mistake, and you were dead.
Of course, Larson had admitted to failing the trials at his first two attempts, and the stablemaster had slipped up in battle and lived to tell the tale, albeit with a mangled leg. So, maybe the Order was right to be lenient; but Anskar wasn’t interested in just getting by. He bet Vihtor Ulnar never failed the trials, nor the Grand Master, not anyone else high up in the Order. That was the difference between Anskar and the other novices: they wanted to be knights. He wanted to be the best.
He licked dry lips and tried to swallow but couldn’t make enough spit. Today’s trial should be easy, he told himself. A simple test of sword play. None of the others practiced as much as he did, nor had they grown up with the knights. None of them had his natural gifts.
Unable to bear the waiting any longer, he stood and shook out his arms, then went through a sequence of footwork drills. As he limbered up with slips and pivots and stance switches, he cast surreptitious glances over his group. Blosius, the rich boy from Kaile, looked as though he were going to be sick. He watched Anskar’s exercises as if he knew he should be doing them himself but didn’t think there would be much point.
The twins, Clenna and Rhett, whispered to each other and sneered whenever they met Anskar’s gaze. They were both skilled with the blade and showed quick footwork, but Clenna was stronger mentally. She had the flat eyes of a killer.
Anskar didn’t know the other four in his group but had seen them around. They were all older than him, having failed the trials before. It could be that this was their last chance. By the defeated looks on their faces, a couple of them could already hear the dead-eyes outside the Burg sharpening their talons.
The sound of hammering and occasional crashes and shouts from beneath the marble floor drew worried looks from the novices, but Anskar knew it must be the Niyandrian masons converting the Hooded One’s chapel into a banker’s vault.
He caught Sareya and Niv watching him and immediately looked away, pretending to take an interest in an oil painting above the blackwood double doors to the Dodecagon. The painting combined the emblems of the City States, the Pristart Combine, and Kaile—star, ox and scythe, and hawk—and above them, the silver gauntlet of the Knights of Eternal Vigilance, fingers and thumb splayed to denote the five aspects of Menselas. Of course, in recent years, the Order had adopted a five-pointed star in place of the hand: it was less intimidating to the vanquished locals, they claimed, who were learning to live under mainland rule. The priests of the Healer had taken the theory a step further and preferred the symbol of a five-petaled rose.
The painting was a reminder of when the rival mainland nations had come together to save Wiraya from the Necromancer Queen. The allies had gained their first foothold in Niyas here at Dorinah, besieging the city for weeks until it capitulated. Branil’s Burg—Anskar had no idea what it had been called before—had been swiftly garrisoned, and formed the bridgehead for the final push toward the capital, Naphor.