Bloodheir by Brian Ruckley

“Our very own Wardcaptain come to test our hospitality.”
    Ammen smiled, and then tried to fill the gaze he turned on Urik with suitable contempt. He knew this man was useful – important, even – to his father, but knew as well that he merited nothing in the way of respect.
    “Don’t puff yourself up too much, Ochan,” Urik growled. “I’ve come here to warn you, not amuse you.”
    “Warn me? Warn me?” Ammen felt a shiver of anticipation at the tone in his father’s voice. He knew it well. It presaged anger, danger, violence. When he was younger, Ammen had soon learned its perilous implications. Urik evidently did not recognise it, or did not care.
    “Yes, warn you,” he snapped. “And I needn’t have come, so don’t think you can—”
    Ochan was up and out of his seat in a single smooth movement, lashing a long arm across the table to seize the collar of Urik’s cape. He pulled the Guardsman’s face close to his own.
    “I think I can do as I like in my own house, don’t you, Urik?”
    Urik hesitated for only a moment before nodding. Ochan released him and sank back into his chair. He had knocked some of his piled trinkets to the ground, and flicked a finger at them.
    “Pick ’em up, boy,” he said to Ammen, who obeyed at once, going down beneath the table on his hands and knees.
    “What is it you think you’re warning me about, then?” he heard his father asking.
    “That your luck’s run out, that’s what. You’ve been named for taking. The Guard’ll be looking for you tomorrow. It’ll be me, as like as not.”
    “You?” roared Ochan. He sprang to his feet once more. His chair tumbled backwards, one of the legs rapping Ammen’s hip as it went. “You? Is it that I’m not paying you enough, Urik? Is that it? You’ve got yourself a hunger for more of my hard-won coin. That’s what this is about, is it?”
    Ammen stuck his head up above the level of the table, not wanting to miss such excitement. Urik had shrunk back towards the door, holding up both his hands as if he could fend off Ochan’s anger.
    “No, no,” the Wardcaptain insisted. “It’s nothing to do with that. I don’t want a thing more from you, Ochan. Not now, not ever. You don’t understand. This isn’t us, it’s not the Guard. The word’s come down from higher places, from the Tower of Thrones itself. You’re to be taken and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Nothing.”
    “Then what use are you to me?” hissed Ochan as he edged around the table. “I’ll have back every coin I’ve passed into your stinking, fat little hands all these years.”
    “But I’m here, I’m here, aren’t I? I’m here to give you the chance to disappear.”
    “Oh, yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? If they take me, your name’ll be the first to spill from these lips, Urik. You’ll join me in whatever cell they’ve got in mind for me, or under the headtaker’s axe.”
    “Ochan, please . . .” Ammen grinned to hear such a note of pleading in the voice of this man who held high office in the city’s Guard. “Please don’t think such things. I’ve taken my life in my hands just coming here to warn you. If I could turn them aside from your trail, don’t you think I’d do it? Haven’t I done it often enough before? No, this is beyond me, far beyond me. Your only chance is to take yourself off somewhere you’ll not be found.”
    Ochan the Cook rushed forward and drove the Wardcaptain back against the wall. He pinned the small man’s shoulders to the stone.
    “It’s the Shadowhand,” Urik cried. “They say it’s his command that you be taken. Sweet Gods, what could I do in the face of that? Nothing! Nothing!”
    Ammen rose quietly to his feet. His father was silent and still, staring into Urik’s fearful face. Ammen had heard of the Shadowhand, of course: the Tal Dyreen who whispered in the High Thane’s ear.
    Ochan released his grip on Urik’s shoulders and stepped back, deep in thought. The