Items related to King of Assassins (The Elven Ways, 3)
Synopsis
King of Assassins is the third novel in the spellbinding fantasy epic, The Elven Ways.
Thrown into exile on Kerith by a sorcerous act of war, the Vaelinars have used their own unique talents to gain power over the races native to this world, and to create magical Ways that remold Kerith forever. But now their war has followed them, ripping holes in the fabrics of both universes. The Vaelinars stand at a dangerous threshold as old and new betrayals threaten the destinies of the peoples of two worlds.
Against this background of betrayal and ever-shifting alliances, two star-crossed lovers—the half-breed Sevryn and the orphaned, goddess-touched Vaelinar, Rivergrace—must escape the fury of a desperate ruler. The Warrior Queen Lariel, having accidentally revealed to Sevryn the forbidden powers that gained her the throne, has begun a vicious manhunt to destroy him. Fleeing her wrath, Sevryn and Rivergrace find no safe haven as the world’s magic begins to disintegrate around them and the old Gods wake.
In the midst of this chaos, Sevryn is charged with finding the King of Assassins—a quest that may consume him. And only Rivergrace has any hope of discovering the means to save both Sevryn and the world she loves.
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About the Authors
Jenna Rhodes (a pseudonym used by R. A. V. Salsitz), was born in Phoenix, Arizona and is a writer of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery novels. Rhodes has been writing since she was in 3rd grade. She has published over 50 books and short stories. She can be found at rhondiann.com.
Jenna Rhodes (a pseudonym used by R. A. V. Salsitz), was born in Phoenix, Arizona and is a writer of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery novels. She also writes under the names Emily Drake, Anne Knight, Elizabeth Forrest, Charles Ingrid, Rhondi Vilott Salsitz, R.A.V. Salsitz, Rhondi Vilott, and Rhondi Greening. Rhodes has been writing since she was in 3rd grade. She has published over 50 books and short stories. She can be found at rhondiann.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
—MARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN U.S.A.
IT IS SAID in the lands of Kerith, “It is better to have Death knock on your door than a Vaelinar.” I may well be the proof of that old Dweller proverb. I am Vaelinar, after all, or half of their blessed and cursed blood, and we are the invaders of these lands, blasted here by some magical or immortal meddling that we have not been able to decipher. Yet here we are on Kerith and many regret our coming. It is no wonder, for we arrived clad in battle gear and ready to ride into a fight and, from the feuds which exist among our various bloodlines to this day, I have no doubt we were prepared to wage war upon each other rather than some arcane enemy. Welcome or not, we carved out our places here, particularly in the western provinces known as the First Home of the continent. We found Kerith malleable to our will, for we can see the very threads of its physical being and cast, tangle, and weave those threads to our wishes in varying degrees. We have forced Ways upon the land which betray its natural laws but have given us both wealth and convenience. We remembered our old dominance and arrogance which cloaks us still, while we have forgotten the name of our mother world, and even yet plan to replace the very Gods which all mortals should respect. Then there are those like myself, born in between, who hope only to know the truth and live to see its justice.
My name is Sevryn Dardanon and I am the bastard son of the Vaelinar traitor Daravan and Mista, the Kernan witch woman he abandoned. She soon abandoned me as well, trusting that the streets would be kinder than her maternal bond to me. I looked for them both until I realized that neither of them searched for me and I was alone. The two of them left me with only anger to fire my survival. Thus was I forged.
I took to thieving like any boy hiding in the back streets until Gilgarran found me and brought me up to be his apprentice, to make a spying and killing tool of me. A spymaster himself, an occupation that is redundant for a Vaelinar, he nonetheless fostered me well in the years we had together. He told me there would be more to come in my schooling, but then he was murdered by Quendius while taking me on a quest to uncover secrets which were not ready to be revealed. His failure brought me down with him and left me enslaved. The hammer of this fate left me tempered.
For twenty-some years I worked the foundries of the smuggler and weaponmaster Quendius, living through degradation that the Gods have been kind enough to let time blur for me. I brought out of that pit, buried and sharpened inside my core, the fierce will to do what was right by the world, as sharp as any edged blade.
I was found again by the Warrior Queen Lariel and her brother Jeredon, taken in and valued. Rulers of the valley kingdom Larandaril used my Talents and gave me a home in return. But none of this compares to meeting the love of my life who restored not only my faith but my soul. What can I say of Rivergrace who rode the tide of the Silverwing River into the lives of the Dweller family called Farbranch? I met her when she was still a girl, poised on the threshold of becoming an incredible woman, and she captured my heart and holds it still in her slender hands. For Rivergrace and any of the Farbranches—Nutmeg, Tolby, Lily, and the three brothers—I would die a thousand more deaths. Rivergrace and I have died once, and it was her light that brought me back. I no longer fear death, just the separation and the pain. Her love anchors me as steady as a sheath, as the time for my wielding draws close.
I am but a weapon. I have no illusions beyond that I only question who will wield me. Will it be the queen to whom I vowed my service, or the woman to whom I gave my heart, or a shadowy, unknown figure I have yet to meet?
May the Gods treat me with the respect a good weapon deserves, show me my destination, and aim me truly. Being Vaelinar, however, I should know that the Gods never grant us anything but what we rip from Their hands . . .
There is a quarter of Calcort where city walls do not hold back the wilderness, and the city streets thin to nothing more than dirt lanes, and those in turn fade to stony hills landscaped with vineyards as far as the eye can see. One might presume it would be the weakest point of the city, but none have ever succeeded in invading over those hills and across those vineyards. It might be because of wards set long ago by the Mageborn before that class destroyed itself, or it might be attributed to the catacomb of caves scattered underneath the hillsides, a brittle rock strata waiting to collapse under the weight of an approaching army with its many men, its cavalry, and wagons. No one knew for certain. He didn’t know and it made him nervous. Sevryn had never trusted Calcort; his senses, his Vaelinarran nerves, told him not to. The city gates had been assailed again and again through the history of the First Home, with occasional success, yet the vineyards had stood fast. But he could not trust them to do so again. The need to stand and protect pricked at his nerves.
Sevryn walked past an aged yet well-loved farmhouse, the last true house on the lane and one which ruled the biggest of the vineyards. A beamed cider house stood to the left, with wine-making barns to the far rear of the property, sided by the barn and pastures.
“Kisses or coins?”
Against the lowering of the sun, two young women stepped out of the weathered building and smiled as they drew close. The taller of the two, by far, slipped her hand to the back of his neck and massaged him gently, repeating, “Kisses or coins for your thoughts?”
He made a noncommittal grunt. “You wouldn’t like them.” He reached back to cover her hand with his for a moment. “But I’ll take payment in kisses. Always.” Her skin was slightly cooler than his and he tried to warm her. “I’m on watch.”
Rivergrace laughed teasingly. “You are the most suspicious presence in this quarter, right now.”
“And you the most luminous.”
His gaze swept the two, her slender Vaelinar self with gleaming auburn hair that reached almost to her waist and her sister, Nutmeg, who looked not a bit like her: a Dweller who stood as tall as Grace’s elbow, with bouncing brunette hair in curls, and almost too pregnant for any one woman to bear. Nutmeg grinned up at him, Rivergrace’s sister of her heart, bonded as close as any kin could be. She did not look like she carried the heir to the throne of the Warrior Queen of Larandaril, wrapped in the hardy body of the Dweller folk, but she did. Not that she did not look pregnant, because she most certainly did, but Dwellers usually did not carry royalty. And because she did, a tension thick enough to be cut with a knife ran through this end of Calcort and through Sevryn as well. No one connected with any of the ruling Houses of Vaelinar was ever safe. He had not been able to save his friend Jeredon from blood feuds and conspiracies of the ild Fallyn, but he would lay down his life to protect Rivergrace and Nutmeg.
As for his love—she was as pure a Vaelinar as he was not: willowy, ears curving to a graceful point, hair of auburn tumbling down nearly to her waist, and eyes . . . oh, those eyes. Eyes of aquamarine, and cobalt, and sky blue, eyes that shouted of magic. Sevryn felt he could fall into those eyes forever and know that he was loved. His own plain gray eyes disguised his inheritance of Talents and abilities. For the Vaelinar it was simple: multi-hued eyes could see the very threads of the world and meddle with them, and uncomplicated eyes could not. He’d spent a lifetime making good use of the arrogance of being overlooked and underrated.
Rivergrace’s gaze swept over darkening shadows and she frowned before she sat, undoubtedly noting the three Vaelinar guards across the street who melted back into the dimming light as watchers took notice of their appearance. She looked back to Sevryn. “And you are watching them guard us?”
“No. I seem to be watching the intangible. There is that which they can’t—nor can I—quite see. I’m a half blood, but if I can feel, they ought to be able to as well. Yet I see no sign that they do. Something is not right. How can they be missing it, and what the cold hells is it I’m missing?” He longed for the touch of her withdrawn hand even as he scowled at the trio on the lane’s other side. Their watch post was next to the shop and home of the herbalist, her own yards blending into the edges of the vineyard grapes. Next to the herbalist across the way stood the cobbler’s abode, his back fence hanging with tanned leathers getting an airing before storage. Beside him, sat the pottery shed and kiln, and the small, gabled house which made up the home of the ceramics maker. Beyond those businesses, a crude sidewalk and gutter began, curving slightly and leading back into the city proper.
Her words warmed him. “If you worry, then I will worry. I trust your instincts.”
“Mmmm.” Sevryn ran his hand through his hair. “I’m walking,” he said. “I can’t stand here and do nothing.”
She watched him stride off, shedding energy like tiny sparks as he did, like a firebrand being carried through twilight. Nutmeg put her hand on Rivergrace’s arm to steady herself a bit as she sat down with a muffled sigh.
“What was that all about?”
“Just a feeling. A shiver down the back of the neck. A pinch in the gut. Nothing definite and yet . . . something awry.”
“I thought you weren’t superstitious.” Nutmeg leaned upon Rivergrace slightly.
“Of course I am, I was raised Dweller!” She pinched her sister. “But neither am I flinching at shadows. You?”
“No idea what I am at th’ moment, except one big stomach.” Nutmeg folded her hands about her abdomen. She looked down at it solemnly, her curls bouncing about to settle in a gentle cascade upon her shoulders.
There was nothing palpable upon the air that Rivergrace sighted, except a very slight darkness flowing where darkness should not be despite the coming evening, and moving against the wind. How could shadows move against the wind? Perhaps a trick of the light as it changed how it fell upon the street, or the way the buildings shifted in its reflection, or did she even see such a thing? Sevryn had gone in a different direction, but had he doubled back and could that be his elusive form she almost saw? She didn’t think so. She knew the way he moved, even when he could only be seen in the corner of the eye or the sigh of the twilight. Every fiber of her being was attuned to him, as it should be, for all that they shared including death.
Rivergrace didn’t discount what she thought she saw, any more than she would Sevryn’s restlessness, for Vaelinars viewed the world in a different way. If she concentrated, she could perceive the tiny strands of light that made up the falling dusk. She could see the edges of every tiny grain of dirt that went into the brickwork, the fibers of the wood cut into planks and shingles. She could sense the water in the air, nearly gossamer drops of dew waiting to coalesce into something heavier, more substantial as nighttime fell. She could feel the pull of water in the bodies across the way, coursing in their blood, collecting in their tissues. More, she could sense the potency and the wiles of the River Goddess of the Silverwing, the Goddess whose being had become inexplicably and inexorably intertwined within her own essence. Life was water and it called to her, drop by drop, stream by stream. Grace blinked, shedding her inner sensing of the world, before she felt compelled to pluck at its strands and . . . do what? Create havoc? Call the water to her when she had no right to do so? How would that help anything? With a sigh of her own, she tried to shake off the mood Sevryn had handed to her. Her attention dropped to Nutmeg and the commanding size of her stomach as her sister contemplated herself. The sight halted her and led to another thought entirely.
Without preamble, Rivergrace said, “What were you thinking?”
“Only that I was in love.” Nutmeg rubbed the palm of her hand over her ample tummy and sat back wryly. “It seemed enough at th’ time. But it was never a kind of lusty, must scratch that itch kind of love. It was a gentle, nurturing love. He needed me.” She shrugged and cast a sideways glance. “I was wonderin’ when you’d ask.”
Rivergrace leaned against her Dweller sister. In every way but blood she counted, she was more than adopted into the Farbranch family, she was bonded, woven into the very fabric of their lives as skillfully as Lily and Nutmeg Farbranch’s hands upon a loom could weave true. Nutmeg hadn’t known whom she rescued that day from a small raft on the raging River Silverwing and, if she had, Rivergrace did not think her sister would have acted any differently. Nutmeg had pulled her sister into her family and woven her firmly into its fabric. Such impetuousness had always ruled her bold sister’s life. “I wasn’t going to ask.”
“But you did, and rightly so. Mom and Dad have not. I rushed into it, did I not? Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like after the wars. Would he have come back all full of confidence and then we would have had sparks? I canna decide what I think about that. I want to love someone the way Mom and Dad love. A deep, abiding trust.”
“With lust and sparks.”
“Aye! With lots of sparks. I cannot even think about that now. Now I’m to be a mum, and I have doubts about a future beyond that.”
“There’s time enough later, but I’m pretty sure there is always a possibility for sparks.”
“There had better be! I don’t want to be missing out.” Nutmeg sat with one arm upon her burgeoning stomach and her brow faintly twisted as she looked across the dirt lane at the guards who stood just behind the shadow of the eaves, waiting and watching. “I want to throw rotten apples at them.”
“Meg!”
“I know, I know. But they are here and Jeredon . . . Jeredon is gone. Where’s th’ fairness in that, I ask you? Where?” The brace of guards across the lane sprawled on a bench, looking at ease even as their very heritage spoke of quickness in reaction unlikely to be matched by the average city folk. They could afford to be indolent—and arrogant. Both Rivergrace and Nutmeg sighed and looked away from the ever-present guards.
Grace straightened again, something tickling at the edge of her senses. She had thought Sevryn overkeen. Now she wondered. She shook it off as her sister looked up and into her face.
“If we’re askin’ questions never asked before . . .”
Oh, no. But she smiled faintly. “What?”
“Nothing I would ask, for myself, but because of Jeredon.” Nutmeg pushed back a heavy lock of hair from her temple. “Did you feel anything when you died? I wonder because, well, I wonder if Jeredon feels anything?”
Grace held her features perfectly still. Her thoughts darted about until she reached out to grab and steady them, wondering what she could say. She had died, and so had Sevryn, on that quest they all took to cleanse the sacred River Andredia. Two had died and Lariel had maimed herself, given a part of her flesh, to mend the river and her family’s pact with it to protect the valley of Larandaril. And Jeredon had been paralyzed. But she’d come back and so had Sevryn; Jeredon recovered, eventually, with Nutmeg’s love and nursing. Finally, she answered, “I can’t say what Sevryn felt, but my experience was all interwoven with the Goddess of the Silverwing, and she couldn’t die. A peace surrounded me, peace with healing, and I felt my mother’s presence, and I—I felt whole. I knew a kind of sorrow for leaving you all behind, but I knew the way ahead waited and I was eager to go. Then I got reknit and returned, but I had no sense of the timing of all of it. I was hardly there, Nutmeg, and there was something tugging at me, but I never got to it, never touched the awe of it before I was back.”
“Was it . . . dark?”
Her sister held her gaze, although Rivergrace wanted very much to look away. Slowly, she said, “Dying is not something I want to remember. It was cold and hurtful and frightfully lonely. But Death itself is entirely different.”
“There is something beyond.”
“I think so.”
“Does Sevryn think so?”
She tilted her head. “We don’t really talk about it. There’s too much to do here.” Rivergrace looked at Nutmeg’s hand, thinking of Lariel’s maimed hand and the sacrifice of flesh. “I’m sorry I can’t give you the comfort you want about Jeredon.”
“If you don’t fear death, what do you fear?”
Rivergrace could feel the color leaving her face, the warmth draining away, and her head jerked imperceptibly. “Quendius,” she said, her voice barely loud enough to be heard. “And Tressandre ild Fallyn.”
Taken aback for a moment at the name of the weaponmaker outlaw as well as the rival Vaelinar, Nutmeg found the breath to make a rude noise. “Two blights on th’ face of the earth! Rotten apples they are, trying to spoil the barrel. At least they never allied.”
“No. Not yet. Even Tressandre knows better than to partner with the venom that one is.” She shook herself. “At least we have that for luck. How much gloomier can you be, Meg?”
“Just thoughtful. Some days the babe is so heavy, it seems all I can do is sit and think.”
“Then think about life and baby names!”
“It’s no matter—it’s—” Nutmeg’s hand on her belly moved, almost imperceptibly. She beamed and her expression showed the change of her thoughts.
“Oh, there he kicks again. Want to feel it? You’re never here, and soon it’ll be too late.”
“Too late?”
“He’ll be born before you get back here again.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know it’s been forever since I’ve seen you.” Nutmeg’s face twisted wryly. “I think if Master Trader Bregan hadn’t had a caravan comin’ this way, you would never have visited.”
“The caravan made for good cover. As much as I want to see you, I can’t. It could be taken as a sign that the queen has made a decision about the child, and that could be dangerous for the two of you. Lariel has not declared an heir yet, because of that. If Bregan hadn’t been coming this way, I might not have been able to come.” Machinations. Motives within motives, webs within webs. She knew that Nutmeg knew, even if both of them did not embrace the politics they’d fallen into.
“But he kicks so strongly. Just feel it.”
“No,” refused Grace gently, as she had every time the offer had been made on this visit. The thought of some being living inside her sister and kicking as though in protest made her faintly queasy. “And you don’t know it’s a he. You kicked a lot, according to Mother.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead, trying to hide her unease. That shadow amongst shadows had moved again, like a river of dark water across the side of the herbalist’s house. Or had it?
“She does say that.” Nutmeg rubbed the end of her nose. She circled back to Rivergrace’s question. “What did I think beyond Jeredon?” She waved her hand to indicate the guards. “Not of that, to be certain. Not that Lariel would have guards set upon me and others there,” she twitched her thumb to indicate an even more shadowy corner a little down the street, not far from a small but raucous tavern. “Diort has three Galdarkans who come and go, but mostly stay.” She made a huff. “Did I ever think I would attract th’ attention of the Galdarkans and the east? Never.”
Rivergrace tried not to show her surprise that Meg was aware of the Galdarkans, for she’d been in Calcort three days on this visit and Sevryn had only informed her that eve of the watch he had been keeping, not only on Lariel’s guards but the others he tabbed as being from the warlord Diort. The Vaelinars had been assigned for protection but there was no knowing why Diort’s men stood watch. She dragged her concern back to the ox in the middle of the room, as it were. “You must have had some inkling of complications. Jeredon was the Warrior Queen’s brother. His death doesn’t diminish that. You can’t tell me you didn’t think of it. You’ve never climbed a tree where you did not know exactly where you’d land, if you fell.”
Nutmeg rolled her eyes. “Listen to you. If we ever get home, no one will know a thing you say. You sound just like one of the elven with words of honey and spidersilk to trap the listener.”
By home, Nutmeg meant the orchards and fields of the groves by the Silverwing, a place of hard work sunup to sundown and faraway neighbors, a home overrun by Ravers and abandoned because of that. The folk they’d left behind were not city folk, far from it, and their ways held a directness of their own. The diplomacy and tact she’d learned in the courts of the Warrior Queen would not go far there. Grace bumped her shoulder. “Forget what I was saying. What are you saying?”
Nutmeg fussed with her hair, pulling it off her shoulders and away from her face, fastening her heavy tresses into a ponytail which, the moment she took her nimble fingers away, sprang out of its knot and came tumbling back down. “I was thinking,” she said quietly, “that I was foolish t’expect that he might ever stay with me, but while I had him, when he was wounded and healing, I was good for him. He needed Dweller common sense and care in heaping spoonfuls, and he got it. When he began to walk again, a step at a time, the beauty of his happiness took my breath away. An’ I did that. Part of it. I think he loved me then. When he left me for the war, and he went to Tressandre, I told myself he was decoying the ild Fallyn away from me. Keeping me safe so that they would not harm me or use me t’ twist him in their ways. I told myself that—over and over.”
“And I think you were right. But . . .” Grace hesitated to ask. “Did he know you were with child? Did you ever get a chance to tell him?”
Nutmeg shook her head. “No. I barely knew it myself, and he . . .” She stopped as memory flooded her eyes and an unshed tear sparkled on her eyelashes. “I think somehow he sensed it at the end. War and blood all around us. Yet he touched me, and said my name, and a wonder seemed to fill him, just for a moment, before his life winked out. Did I imagine that? I hope not. I hope it was real.” She put her hand on Grace’s arm. “I knew how t’ dance. Kiss. Laugh an’ flirt. But I had never been with a man before. I took what precautions I knew about, but Vaelinars have such a power runnin’ within them.” She looked into Rivergrace’s eyes. “If you’re asking questions for Lariel, I don’t plot against her rule. If you’re asking for yourself, it happened, Grace, because I loved him so blessed much. And now look where we are. I have a babe the size of a tree growing inside me, and a pack of guard hounds on my heels. And you wearin’ a sword on your belt. Who’d have thought?”
Rivergrace reached out and took Nutmeg’s hand, found it chilled despite the lingering warmth of the day, and she squeezed gently. “I wear this sword as much because of Sevryn as I do for any other. I wish I could say the others don’t matter, but we know they do. Still,” and she did not resist this time when Nutmeg took their laced hands and placed them over her stomach and she could feel the tiny but insistent bumps under her palm, “it would be nice if you could raise him as a Farbranch like you did me.”
“Would it not? Just think, a Vaelinar with th’ roots and sense of a Dweller! Look at you. Lariel could do worse for an heir.”
Rivergrace freed her hand to place her finger across Nutmeg’s lips. “Words like that could cause a wagon load of trouble.”
Nutmeg flashed a look. “I may be small, but I am not simple.”
Lily Farbranch emerged from the doorway of the farmhouse, wiping her hands on the hem of her apron, a half-smile curving her lips. “Grace has not been gone from us long enough to think such things, Meg.” She smoothed her apron down as both her daughters adjusted on the bench to make room for her, but she stayed in the doorway, leaning a shoulder against it. The dusk softened the lines in her face and laugh creases about her eyes, but added to the shimmer of gray strands among her dark hair. Nutmeg echoed some of her looks, but not all, for she carried her father Tolby’s looks as well. Their mother watched them for a long moment before adding, “I know it’s getting late, but the two of you need t’be thinking of letters to draft in thanks to Lord Bistane and Lord Tranta for their birthing gifts.”
“Think of,” Nutmeg responded. “An aryn wood cradle. D’ you wonder if Lord Bistane carved it himself?”
“I think he might have planned the crafting of it. He’s been at Ashenbrook so much cleaning the battlefield and preparing for another, it’s hard to tell if he’s had time while bolstering the lines there. The wood, though, came from his forests, no doubt of that.”
Aryn wood was a wonder, a bane against wild magic and corruption still lingering in the lands from the wars among the Mageborn centuries ago. It was considered such a beneficial wood that baby toys were made from it, when it could be gotten, to carry good fortune and guardianship for the young. To have an entire cradle made of it—well, that was a gift beyond compare. Bistane took after his father Bistel, stepping into his position as a warlord whose strategy and execution were incomparable, but who also held a deep love for his land and for the aryn trees which had come from the unknown lands of their Vaelinar past, a handsome, straight-backed man who carried his legacy well. Rivergrace smiled in fond remembrance.
“I had not expected anything from th’ Lords, what with all that.” Meg fell silent, her gaze dropping to the dirt lane. When she looked up, it was to say, “Lord Bistel protected me, you know. At Ashenbrook. From the Raymy and all. I heard his last words.”
Lily dropped her hand onto her daughter’s shoulder. “We know. You told us the tale.”
Nutmeg opened her mouth as if to add more, but tightened her lips instead, her hand working on her lap, twisting a knot and then letting it go.
“What about the baby cart?” Rivergrace prompted, to ease Meg’s sudden mood. “Not aryn wood, but a fine mahogany ship, with those ocean waves carved into it.”
“It is a fine carriage, with a ride as soft as wool.”
“Tranta said the making of it was one of the things that eased the loss of his brother.”
Lily murmured, “Every war has its losses, but this last is almost too much to bear.” She dropped one hand to caress the top of Nutmeg’s head.
In the memory of dark times, a flicker of movement caught Rivergrace’s eye.
“He still works on the Jewel of Tomarq, does he not?” Lily asked softly. “Putting the Jewel to rights after it was shattered?”
“Aye, he does. Obsessed with it. He says he can see the Way pulsing still within those bits of gem and Jewel, and swears he will find a way to put the Jewel back together. I don’t know if he can, but Lariel says if anyone can, it will be Tranta Istlanthir. I say it cannot come quickly enough, for I miss his light and quick wit.” The lord of the coast, with his sea-blue hair, was one of her favorites. Even as she rued the loss of his humor, something sharp stabbed at her senses like a knife in the dark. She turned her head about.
Nutmeg stood abruptly. “I’d better get t’ those letters. They have to be grand ones. I’ll be glad for your help, Rivergrace.”
Grace surged to her feet as well, but not because her sister stood. She saw a movement in the shadows, a thrusting lunge that caught her attention, and she cried out, throwing the bench over and Meg behind it, as men and steel launched at them. Even as Nutmeg rolled in the dirt, she reached out and grabbed the heavy three-legged stool next to the bench and grasped it firmly in her hands.
Rivergrace pulled her weapon and unlatched the chain belt worn about her waist, snapping it into the air, thick and sturdy, into the face of the first Vaelinar coming at them, sending his sword arm awry. She slashed him across the throat, and took a second out with the back swing of her blade. Nutmeg got the third in the knees with a smashing blow of her stool, and then a second to the head. He moaned but once. Grace cried out, “Attack!” worried, as she saw no sight of Sevryn. Lily made a smothered sound in the doorway before getting out, “I’ll find Hosmer,” and disappearing into the depths of the farmhouse, no doubt to go out the back way in search of Nutmeg’s brother who had joined the city’s Guards.
Grace moved cautiously behind the small barricade of the wooden bench, searching the deepening shadows across the way. No movement, not of Sevryn or Vaelinar or Galdarkan. She glanced down at the one attacker who remained alive at their feet, the second she’d caught with her backhand. Crimson spilled over his chest and bubbled from the corner of his mouth, but he lived. His eyelids fluttered as she knelt over him.
“Who sent you?”
His mouth pulled. His breath bubbled as he answered, “No survivors.” With a hand too quick to stay, he grabbed her sword to slit his own throat.
“Velk,” muttered Nutmeg.
Rivergrace stood carefully. “To be expected, I suppose.” Though the assailant was undoubtedly a Vaelinar, she did not recognize him and he did not wear the colors of any affiliation.
A sound across the way caught her attention, and a body toppled from the depths of the dusk. One of the queen’s Vaelinar guards. Just beyond, she could see shadows grappling, one being shrugged off with a grunt and a cry that stopped abruptly. That body, too, fell out into the street, and Sevryn jumped into the open, clear of it. So Lariel’s guards had been at work defending Nutmeg, although not successfully. She wondered how big a force had been sent against them and tightened her grip on both the sword and chain.
“Get her inside,” Sevryn ordered. He turned to set himself in the street.
Grace hesitated but a moment, before seeing what he turned to meet.
Kobrir, the assassins all assassins hoped to be one day, spilled out into the lane. Sevryn stepped into a stance to face them.
THEY ATTACKED WITHOUT WARNING. What assassin worth his salt would do otherwise?
He pivoted and countered by letting fly with daggers readily at hand: one, two, and three. They dropped and lay unmoving in the afternoon shadows, but from the quiet, he knew there were more and he was also fairly certain his downed opponents were not dead or dying but injured enough to stay out of the fray. Sevryn drew back quickly to find a defensible spot among the shanties footing the dirt lane and when he turned around; the three bodies were gone, melted into the late afternoon shadow, retreated. The Kobrir did not leave their dead or wounded behind.
He could tell the Kobrir by the deadly stealth with which they moved and how quickly and soundlessly they closed on him out of the sidelines even as they blurred in and out of the narrow buildings and ditches. He recognized the odd smell of their skin and the stain of kedant venom on the weapons they grasped. And he knew that as soon as they regrouped, they would attack again.
He felt strangely alone in the middle of the street, not liking it. He made his way down it, toward the city itself until he reached a tavern. The Kobrir did not kill just for the sake of it. They had their targets and kept their collateral damage as low as possible. So if they were after him and him alone, it behooved him to add numbers to the fight, milling about in the street, engulfing both forces. He backed up and kicked the door twice, hard, yelling “Fight! Fight!”
The tavern doors flung open with a crash, spilling out spectators both drunk and sober. A few took to their heels, shouting for the Guard. Master Trader Bregan emerged into the last of the sunlight and threw his head back, taking in the Kobrir just out of range.
“Ho, Sevryn. What are you up to here?”
“I appear to be having a bit of contract problems.”
“Let me help you with the negotiations.” Pulling at his leather sheaths, Bregan ended up next to Sevryn, his own vicious swords in his hands. “Trouble always did shadow a Vaelinar’s heels,” he said, kicking away a drunk who staggered off, muttering. His own breath held a faint haze of liquor.
“Good timing.”
“Too early for dinner and too late for lunch. Truth be told, I should be down at the stables, packing for the road.” Sevryn knew Bregan had been a sword master in his youth before his accident, and despite a weakness in his right side, he was still formidable. And game. He had not always been thus; he had fallen into drunken ways in self-sorrow after his maiming, but judging from his current form, those self-destructive times were far behind him. A master trader with a powerful guild and an even more powerful father behind him, Bregan still fought most of his own battles. Sevryn felt him move instinctively to his flank as the two of them backed into an alley. “What’re we facing?”
“A few traitorous Vaelinar besides the handful or two of Kobrir.”
Bregan swallowed a curse and raised his blades as shadows heaved and the attack came at them.
Sevryn swung away from the first knife with a hiss, stepping away with a vicious parry, and found himself with precious little time to do anything more than react. He shouldered away the lunge of a second assailant, blades whining as they slid off one another. The alley gave them close quarters and shadows in the late afternoon sun, and the experienced Kobrir knew how to work the scene to their advantage. Assassination was all they had been trained to do, its dark art swam in their veins instead of blood. They maneuvered him about as Sevryn found himself blinded by a shard of unexpected light one second and then doused in inky darkness the next. He let his ears and his hands do the work then, sensing what his eyes could not. Another step into the fray, letting Bregan guard his back, the Kernan trader prince nearly as good with his weapons as those the two of them faced.
An assassin took his measure with a slow blink of his eyes, the only part of his face visible under his veil. He raised both hands in a salute to Sevryn before stepping into his assault. Sevryn met him hand to hand before sweeping his boot out and catching the other in the kneecap, crumpling him to the ground. A dagger to the throat and Sevryn leaped over the body, carrying Bregan with him. He held two in a frontal assault, now in cautious movement, assessing him further. Still at his back, Bregan grunted harshly as he took a blow, and his sword sang a steel-driven note as he met blade with blade.
He looked to make certain Grace had not come after them, braver than she should be but, to his relief, saw no sign of her. He could fight his best if he knew they were clear, and he knew that she knew that.
Then Sevryn lost all thought except for the need to meet attack and mount attack, to give as good as he got as the tide of Kobrir descended upon them.
He didn’t intend to die that day. So when Death granted a respite, Sevryn grabbed at it and Bregan and hauled his comrade up, clambering above the fray like a creature going tree-born, as the Kobrir fell back in disarray and confusion and lost them momentarily. Sevryn crouched on the edge of the roof, eyes intent upon the alley below. A cold moist wind off the river bathed his heated face, hiding his scent, barely rippling the edge of his cloak, and curling off the edge of the daggers he held. Unsure of the exact moment it had happened, Sevryn had gone from prey to hunter. That quickly the tide had turned.
Without doubt, living remained imperative. He put his hand out, stilling the companion who moved restlessly beside him. He could appreciate the other’s stiffness, the leg brace that helped more than it hindered although the limb the brace contained remained unwieldy. Bregan quieted with a slow inward hiss of breath. Sevryn winced, but none of the shadows below—the shadows which moved in spite of the torchlight and the moonlight—seemed to take notice. They were searching, quietly and effectively, save that none of them looked up. When the Kobrir did, the pitched battle would begin again. They would swarm up walls to the rooftop as handily as they had swarmed the alleys. He could almost swear that the laws of flat and incline did not hold for them. He had once seen a Kobrir creep across a ceiling, although with some effort that made him think later that they might have been using climbing gear of some sort to achieve that. As assassins, they had no peers.
Except perhaps a man like himself who had been trained by both the street and by Gilgarran, which did not give him an edge, just an opportunity. He could hold his own against one. Two. Even three. But more than that boiled down below him, shadows merging and dividing until he lost count of the twilight shapes. He remained convinced they had come for him although the Master Trader would be a far richer prey if hostage taking were their intent. Yet in the skirmish below they had—had he imagined it?—acted as if Bregan were an inconvenient obstacle to be put aside with as little harm as possible, so that their target might be achieved.
He let his mind wander down twisted ways as dark as the shadowed and misty alleys below him. If Sevryn were taken out, how vulnerable would Nutmeg be? Lariel? With her brother only two seasons dead, who could stand for Lariel if he were gone? Not that the Warrior Queen needed anyone to raise a blade for her; she was nearly as swift and sure as he was with a weapon, but who would have her back? Only Bistane after him. Sevryn told himself it should be too dangerous to so openly assassinate him.
Shouldn’t it?
Who could be so bold?
He felt that the tyrant Quendius did not hire the Kobrir. Likely they would no longer work for him, if they had ever worked for him in the past. The rogue Vaelinar weaponmaker did not keep bargains, knew no boundaries, and had little respect for anyone but himself. If he wished Sevryn dead, he and his bound servant Narskap would come do the deed themselves and relish the doing.
Perhaps the ild Fallyn had hired these blades. That would fall naturally to their bloodline. Tressandre ild Fallyn, known for ambition without measure, would not hesitate to cut him away from Lariel if she could. Yet Tressandre’s actions would not be blunt but sharp and hidden, unaccountable, untraceable. The Kobrir attack would be too obvious for her, unless she were desperate. Of all things the sultry woman could be at this moment, he did not think desperate was among them. She had converts now who would be less subtle than she, but they would hesitate to act independently for fear of her retaliation. It was well that they should be afraid of her. He was. But not here, and not now.
His thoughts spun a dark web about him, weighing whether he might live or die. Yet none of them could explain or shake from him the sense that he indeed stood at a crossroads. He would make decisions in the next few moments which would inalterably change his course. They would impact his world and the few he would either stand with or leave behind, and nothing would be the same. He’d felt this fate upon him only a few times in his life, and he had never thought to feel it again. Mentally he flipped a silver coin and sent it spinning through the air, waiting for it to fall . . .
He leaped from the rooftop, killing two as he landed, dancing backward in a slight retreat. They grouped to follow. Another step backward as they closed. And another as he drew the fray down the street. Away from the Farbranch farmhouse and cider mill. Back toward the wards of town and city. Back to the alleyways and gutters and streets like those where he’d lived his early life. Like a mother bird would fake a broken wing to draw the tree foxes and other predators away from her nestlings, he drew them away from his loved one. Bregan, at his flank, moved with him without question as he took to the rooftops a second time. The cloud of Kobrir circled about him below, ravens after the kill, intent on their mission. He decided to strike while he still had some advantage. Sevryn extended his senses, felt his mind identifying the pattern of the reality about him, inhaling long and deep and silently as he learned it intimately. Then he spoke, loosing his Voice Talent that began deep in his diaphragm and pushed out of his throat, vibrating the very air, and the Kobrir reacted. They could not help but respond as he compelled them to submit. Even Bregan started at his side.
He heard his taunt echo from the alley juxtaposed to their current position. He lifted a finger to Bregan and leaped the span, landing softly behind them.
They struck in the darkened maze of alleys behind the Trader and the Yoke pub. He heard them coming, at least five, his hands open and stance wary. Shards of black splintered apart and reformed. He had no fear of street cutthroats and bullies, but as they rushed him, he could hear the hiss of their breaths as they sucked inward, preparing.
“Blades high,” he said. He slashed backhanded across his right flank, catching the first who had hoped to come in under his guard. Swathed in black, the assailant crumpled at his boots but it was Bregan who kicked the body aside. He parried a blow and struck under it, only to have it firmly parried back to him. Bregan let out a grunt which might have been in sympathy, but Sevryn knew was more likely to have come from shielding.
He would have to trust Bregan to take care of himself. He had his own concerns. The trader had grown up with a sword in his hand, and even if he had been forced to change from one lead to the other because of a grievous injury, he had come back nearly as strong and twice as clever, no longer being able to count entirely on his strength. The trader could fight.
Sevryn twisted a knife blade off his sword and countered with a punch of his left fist, his own dagger buried deeply in his hold save for four inches of the point. The Kobrir fell back. Under his veiled face, Sevryn thought he could see pain in the eyes, but the moment fled so quickly, he couldn’t be certain. He hadn’t time. Three Kobrir rushed him, and thoughts fled to reflex, movements honed into him by years of hard training and sparring with some of the best fighters in the world. The trade of killing by body and blade took him over, possessed him, and when he blinked to wipe sweat off his brow with the bloodied back of one hand, he saw two more bodies fallen before him, while three fresh Kobrir glided quietly from the back alley to replace the dead.
They barely gave him time to register that before they were on him again.
He fought with the awareness that they held back. Perhaps it was Bregan shielding part of his vulnerability, but they could have worked that. The Kobrir took every advantage they could. He had faced them before, and barely lived to tell about it. But they had to know, even as he and Bregan protected each other, the two men also hampered each other’s full movement. The assassins had to know that, and waited to use it. But why did they wait?
Sword and daggers bit and clashed. Hisses of pain were sucked in and muttered warnings grunted out. He sheathed his sword in favor of another dagger. He’d never used a shield, he wore scarred and supple leather vambraces to protect his forearms, and dagger work, wet work, seemed to be the only way to beat the attackers back. They would take him down. No two of them fought the same, and he no sooner mastered the rhythm and attack of one when he would drop back and another step into his place. They were growing canny. His thoughts scattered before their strikes and blows. He took another Kobrir down before he found time for a second, deep breath. If he had been hurt, he did not feel it, would not until later. His pulse pounded in his ears, loud but steady, and he could feel the warmth of kedant coursing through his veins. That told him he had been hit, at least once, but he no longer had the sensitivity that many Vaelinar had. He’d been shown his vulnerability and he’d fought it, building up a slow but definite immunity to the venom which had been particularly virulent once. If the Kobrir had thought to lay him low, they missed their bet. The veiled and shrouded being in front of him dropped back on his heels, retreating, as if reading his thoughts, and he took the precious moments offered to recover his stamina.
The inside of his right arm quivered a bit with the strain. He shook it to loosen his muscles. Blood splattered off him as he did. It ran into a black-crimson runnel in the hard-packed dirt. He could feel Bregan at his back, trembling from boot to shoulder. Was it weariness or fear? Either way, Sevryn couldn’t blame him. He’d never had such a number of assassins come after him so relentlessly. He’d fought them before, though never in such numbers, and they would retreat rather than assault a target futilely. This time was different. It would not halt until he was either dead or he had killed all those mustered against him.
Bregan jostled him roughly, with an inhaled hiss, and Sevryn broke their stances to whirl about. Three Kobrir snarled and ranged against his sword mate, like war hounds worrying at a breach, seeking to bring him down and leave Sevryn standing alone. Bregan dropped to one knee, his braced one, shielding the good leg and letting the golden metal brace of the bad one act as a shin guard and more. He, like Sevryn, had gone to hand daggers in place of his sword, for the Kobrir pressed him close and desperately. To kill him was one thing, but to kill those he loved and that Lariel had put under her protection, as she had all the citizens of the western lands, was another. Anger filled Sevryn, a hot anger that fed new blood to tired muscles and nerves, surging inside him like an irresistible tide. He would ride that anger as long and far as he could.
Sevryn filled his left hand with both of his fighting daggers to reach inside his vest for his throwing knives. One, two, three, they left his fingers with growing accuracy until the last thunked home, centered in one of the revealed eyes of the Kobrir on Bregan’s left. The veil fluttered as he hissed out in pain, and fell with a truncated wail. A man down with the Kobrir did not always mean death, but he knew this one would not rise again.
Fighting stopped a moment. He had assassins at his flank who froze as if listening to silent instructions. The heated beat of his own heart filled his mind.
Then Bregan pivoted on his heel, bringing around his braced leg, the leg covered from mid-thigh to calf within a golden, enruned cage designed and crafted by Vaelinar hand. He swept his leg out, catching Sevryn behind the knee, sweeping him to the ground.
Kobrir swooped over Sevryn, covering him, pinning him down as the trader began to back away. He paused. Bent. Whispered in his ear. “I’m sorry, Sevryn Dardanon. Very sorry. The Gods spoke to me and I had to listen. They’ve awakened, finally! Awake! They told me to bring you here.”
Then Bregan’s voice was gone, shouldered away, the trader dragged off by Kobrir hands, his heels digging a groove into the alleyway dirt before he twisted free and took to a run; then all Sevryn knew was many, many hands upon his body, hands like steel claws.
Another dry breath upon his ear, grazing his cheek, carrying the scent with it of a drug that tickled at his memory, a drug he should have known, but which he could not place, and why in God’s name did he think now of drugs and Gilgarran’s teachings about drugs and spying when he was about to die and he should be thinking of his Rivergrace and the sorrow he would be bringing her? His heart ticked once, twice, and the killing blow did not fall.
Instead, the Kobrir at his neck said, “We were betrayed.” Breath sprayed hot on his face. The low husky whisper continued. “We know the secret of the death of life. We were brought here to kill you, but we now break our contract. We honor your mother, and we have been shown you must live. As you love your soul and those of others, come find the king of assassins. Find him and find answers. Or your Rivergrace is lost. Her sister is lost. The queen to whom you are sworn is lost. And more.” He dropped a pair of handcuffs into the grime of the alleyway where they smoldered as if newly forged. A second item, a thin shiv of unique make with a D stamped on its slender hilt followed.
And then they all disappeared like the black smoke of which they seemed to be made, black smoke with hands as hard as obsidian. He tried to look for them, and his vision blurred. Sevryn groaned as he tried to rise to give chase and could not.
He knew nothing more until someone kicked him in the shoulder.
“STAY IN THE GUTTER this close to the tavern and they’ll be pissin’ on you, lad.” Tolby Farbranch reached down to Sevryn whose ears rang as he looked upward uncertainly. Stunned, he hadn’t moved for . . . how long? Sevryn blinked as the rough and callused hand reached down and pulled him to his feet. He fought for his balance, and the grip shifted to his shoulder where it stayed, fingers biting into the flesh beneath his light armor. Tolby had come from the fields, it seemed, for he smelled of grape leaves and late sun, and he wore his short sword and a wickedly sharp pruning hook tucked into his belt, a man as solid and welcome as a good rock wall at his back.
Sevryn patted his old friend’s hand. “I think I already have been. You should have been here earlier.” He stomped one foot and then another, steadying himself. He’d been unable to do anything but lie still while the Kobrir retreated, and then his thoughts had addled on him. Who would think to mention his mother to him, a woman gone and long thought dead? She had to have gone to dust long ago, born of Kernan blood that lived a tenth of the lifespan of the Vaelinar. She had to be long gone . . . but not forgotten, and why remembered by the Kobrir?
Sevryn couldn’t understand why they had refused their Kill. The knowledge that the assassins had turned on their contractor . . . impossible! He’d still be lying in the alley effluvium if Tolby hadn’t rousted him, his thoughts spinning a cocoon about him. A glint caught his eye.
He bent, scooping up the handcuffs and dagger before Tolby’s sharp gaze could spot them and palming them inside his shirt. “Nutmeg? Grace?”
“A little shaken and their mettle is up, but they be fine. Hosmer is standing guard.” Tolby’s mouth curled. “Sorry I missed th’ action.” A caravan guard in his youth, Tolby Farbranch could more than hold his own. He dusted Sevryn off. “Grace said there were two of you?”
“One fell back.” Sevryn wiped his nose and mouth with the back of his hand. “Let’s see how he fared.”
“You did for the others?”
“As well as I could.”
Tolby nodded and said gruffly, “That’s as well, then. I won’t have killers after my daughters.”
“Hosmer can hold them?”
“With his brothers.” Tolby shifted his belt on his hips. “I will feel a bit better after we send word to th’ queen.”
“Soon as I check on Trader Bregan.”
“He stood with you?”
“For most of it.” Sevryn did not part with more detail than that as he surveyed the alley. Tavern first, but if the trader had well and truly fled, he’d not catch up to him for a few days, not until things were settled here. Tolby fell in step with him as he strong-armed the tavern door open, a structure of solid wood, smelling of beer and raw hard liquor, and smoke. Few enough faces outlined by sooty lamplight turned to squint warily at them in the doorway. He saw no sign of Bregan. A low growl of disappointment escaped his throat. He shouldered the door shut before muttering, “Bregan turned tail on me.”
“There will be a season for that one,” Tolby said.
“Without doubt.” His temples throbbing, Sevryn attempted the street, Tolby in step with him. His head cleared more with every step. “Rivergrace will be wanting to know where we are.”
“Oh, she knows where we are. She’ll be wantin’ to know what trouble we’re in.”
Sevryn smiled in spite of himself. He would be held accountable for his actions, and he did not mind it. Despite his shortness of stature, common to all Dwellers, Tolby nearly matched him stride for stride. At the farmhouse, Keldan, the youngest Farbranch, met them at the front door with a wry grin, saying only, “Things are quietin’ a bit.” He brushed his dark hair from his eyes, his longish wavy cut reminding Sevryn of the hot-blooded elven horses the Dweller so admired.
Nutmeg was the center of attention. She sat, her feet up, her face scrunched in consternation over the display of concern as Lily moved back and forth between her and the kitchen. Rivergrace perched on a stool nearby, a cleaning rag in one hand and her sword in the other, taking slow, deliberate wipes along the blade, her head bent in thought. The moment the two men stepped in the room, her face came up and her gaze fixed on Sevryn, searching, and then she relaxed into a smile.
Nutmeg put her hand up at Tolby. “Now, Dad, don’t be yelling at Grace for putting me on the ground. I was a prize target before that.”
“Mmmmm,” her father said, leaning over to kiss one, then the other on the cheek. He turned to Hosmer. “Two different groups of assassins, or am I wrong in my thinking?”
“No, you’re right. The Vaelinars swept in first and they would have taken Nutmeg if you had not been here, Sevryn.”
“Ild Fallyn?”
Hosmer, a shorter and stockier version of his father, shrugged. “Not wearing th’ black and silver, but that would be a fair guess, we’re all thinking. What we cannot guess is who the Kobrir came after.” Not a question outright, but Hosmer locked his gaze on Sevryn.
He did not answer, thinking that the Kobrir might not have been in Calcort at all, save for his drawing them there. But he could not be sure. Their targets had been many and their contract broken. Had he just proved too costly and they changed their minds? Or was finding the king of assassins a deeper trap? The handcuffs tucked away inside his shirt smoldered, and he thought of Rivergrace and the faint scars about her forearms from just such a binding when she was a child, cuffs commissioned and used by Quendius to enslave her and her family. His jaw tightened. Grace blinked up at him as if she’d caught that in his face, and he reminded himself how sensitive she was to him now. It was the way they were meant to be. He dropped a hand to her shoulder and squeezed it lightly.
She put her weapon and cleaning cloth away briskly. “We have to get word to Lariel.”
“Pigeon master is at the nor’eastern quarter, near the curve of the river, edge of the lanes. Night is falling, but he can still set them on their way. I’ll come with you,” Hosmer offered, tugging at his City Guard’s tunic, the rest of his uniform consisting of cuffed horse boots over plain trousers. His light brown hair curled down to his collar, and his expressive hazel eyes darted a look between his father and Sevryn.
“Good, then.”
Keldan bounded to his feet and out the door before anyone could suggest he go saddle the horses. He held all three mounts by their reins when Sevryn drew Rivergrace out to the courtyard, Hosmer on their heels. Keldan’s face warmed at Sevryn’s raised eyebrow. “I had ’em ready.”
“Indeed. That, or the tack appeared out of thin air.”
Keldan gave both the tashya-bred horses a muzzle rub before giving Sevryn his reins and lending Rivergrace a leg up to her saddle. The hot-blooded creatures arched their necks and snuffled the palm of his hand eagerly as if still searching for the sweet-grain he must have fed them earlier. They tossed their heads in disappointment at finding his hand empty. Grace took up her reins gently.
Keldan lit a hand torch and passed it to his brother, for the other side of the city, like this quarter, would be dark on the fringes, night having fallen well and truly. He opened the courtyard gate to wave the mounts through.
The City Guard had already gathered the bodies that they could find and were carting them through the streets to the city surgery as they rode past. Rivergrace looked down to the carts, where cloaks and tarps covered the dead.
“No Kobrir.”
“No. They always take their own.”
Her mouth tightened slightly. “The one Vaelinar who lived but briefly made sure he could not tell me who sent them.”
“But it must be obvious,” Hosmer remarked. “Vaelinars opposed to Queen Lariel. It has to be the Stronghold of ild Fallyn.”
“And you’d likely not be wrong, but proving it would be nigh impossible. The ild Fallyn are as shrewd as they are treacherous.”
“So nothing will come of this.”
“For the moment. They have tipped their hand, so Lara is forewarned, and that has some worth.”
“Surely you can mark them as ild Fallyn, somehow, some way. Would not their bloodline give them away? Ears? Eyes?”
“While it’s known that the ild Fallyn breed true, it’s also known that they take in many half-breeds. Those are most likely the ones trained and sent, for if they had sent true of their line, we might not have stood so easily against them.”
“Why?”
“The ild Fallyn can levitate,” Grace told him. “That’s how they build their Ways, and how they built their Stronghold. Tressandre or Alton could have crossed lanes in a single bound and been on us before we scarce knew they were there.”
The torch he held wavered slightly in his hand. Then he shook his head slowly. “It’s a wonder any of you are still alive.”
Her mouth quirked. “I am only by the grace of your family.”
He dropped his reins to grip her skirted knee. “That’s not what I meant!”
“No, but it’s true.” She clasped the back of his hand before moving it aside gently as their horses bumped shoulders in the lane. “Which brings to mind . . .” She turned to look at Sevryn. “It might not be ild Fallyn. It could be Quendius.”
Did she sense the cuffs he had hidden away? “It could.”
Her brows knotted a moment. “He would have sent Narskap to oversee it.”
“Narskap died at Ashenbrook.”
“So it was said, but no one has found the body.” She stroked the neck of her horse. “No one has seen Quendius either, although signs of his movement have been found. He would have taken Narskap back, if he could have gotten his hands on his old hound.”
She did not call Narskap father, nor would she, although he had been, in another lifetime. Now the being burning inside out with his Vaelinar magic could hardly be called human, or alive, he thought. The man she’d known as her father, Fyrvae, had not existed in decades, not since he had failed in his escape from the mines of the weaponmaker, and the loss of his wife and child had broken him. He watched Rivergrace’s face as she absently tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. So young, still, her journey from the underground caverns of her escape having been put in suspension, held in the arms of a Kerith River Goddess until released tens of years after onto the flood-swollen waters of the River Silverwing which had carried her and her tiny raft past the apple orchards of the Farbranch family. Because of her, the Farbranches had eventually had to flee their ranch and take up residence in Calcort, but their hard work and shrewdness and family bonds ensured they would succeed.
Hosmer held their horses as they reached the pigeon master’s coops and home. The smell of bird dung drifted on the damp night air, Rivergrace wrinkling her nose as she stepped into the front lobby of the home with Sevryn.
A Kernan, smoking his pipe in the corner, as he set the wing of a bird, put both his charge and pipe down carefully. He moved to the counter fronting his lobby. “Business, is it?”
“Yes, and we’ll need nightfliers. Word must go out now.”
The Kernan nodded. “Distance?”
“We’ll need three teams. To the Istlanthir hold on the coast, to Larandaril, and to the Vantane House in the north.”
The pigeon master sucked on his lower lip for a moment. “That’ll be pricey.”
“Coin does not matter. Speed and sure arrival does.”
He nodded in understanding. “I have but seven birds who can manage those routes.”
“And we’ll need six. They will be sent back when rested.”
The Kernan flushed briefly. “Oh, I have no doubt your lords will see right by my birds. No doubt.” He drew out six containers, with fine slips of paper for the messages to be written upon, and quills and ink. He turned his back on them, saying, “I’ll get my fliers.”
Sevryn inked the warnings to Tranta and Bistane and Lara quickly, passing them to Grace to be blotted and rolled into the copper tubes. Spare messages, but he wrote more to Lariel using the shorthand he and the queen had developed over the years for the work he’d done for her. Rivergrace filled her slender hands with the tubes, and let out a small cry when the pigeon master came back from his coops. One of the birds on his arm was a silverwing. It cooed when it saw her, putting its head out for her finger to stroke. He did not know the affinity of such creatures toward Grace, but it existed and he could not explain it. Some Vaelinar had the Talent for animals, but her Talents were Water and Fire. No. This perhaps was born from her association with the Kerith Goddess, or her years with the Farbranches at the edge of the wilderness, or perhaps merely from the goodness of her heart.
“She goes to Larandaril?”
“Aye. That’s her range.”
Rivergrace stroked the bird’s head one last time. She handed him the tube Sevryn had marked for Lariel, and its twin for the next bird.
The other five fliers were skyhawks, nightfliers who also ranged in the day, and whose wider wingspread and deeper chests marked them as longer-distance birds. Each had a paint smear upon its head: blue for the coastal regions and green crossed with white for the Vantane hold. Sevryn would ordinarily marvel that a pigeon master in Calcort had such messenger birds for those routes, but with the Raymy invasion and battle at Ashenbrook, and the subsequent military maneuvers throughout the Vaelinar and Galdarkan forces, it only made sense that communication would be necessary. He and the pigeon master fastened the tubes to the birds’ legs quickly, and then the Kernan sent them winging into the night.
He paid the pigeon master, who thanked him and said, “Good news?”
That was the only thing out of character. Why would the man ask what sort of news he sent? Sevryn stared at him for a moment before answering, “Who asks?”
The man had the grace to flush and stammer back, “N-no one, good sir. No one at all.”
“There had better not be.” He took Grace by the elbow and steered her back outside.
Now he had to wonder if his messages would be delivered to whom he had intended. Message agents were sworn to be discreet and this one had been . . . almost. Hosmer looked down from his mount. “Done?”
“No. Is there another messenger in town?”
Hosmer sat back in his saddle, thinking. “One,” he answered slowly. “A dodgy fellow, though.”
“Nonetheless, we’ll stop there as well.”
Hosmer looked to his sister. “Not safe for her there.”
Rivergrace put her chin up. “I can hold my own.”
“No time to waste, Hosmer, arguing with her.” Sevryn made sure Rivergrace was seated before swinging up himself. “Take us there.”
And so Hosmer did. The dodgy fellow smelled of beer, and his birds were field owls, their big yellow eyes blinking as they entered the birder’s hut and aviary.
“How much?”
The bird man gave a twisted grin, only half his face obeying the attempt. Half-brained, Sevryn thought, as he watched the man limp across the dirt floor of his cottage, one arm hanging slightly, one leg dragging a bit behind. But the floor of the cottage was well-raked and clear of bird debris, a difficult task with as many bird perches as were set into the dirt. He revised his opinion of the fellow. Perhaps a stroke had rendered him but half a man.
“A gold bit each.”
Sevryn winced, thinking of old days when he might have killed to have a gold bit pass his palm. Still, a bit was less than a half and far less than a full coin. Reminding himself that most of the coins in his purse had come from Queen Lariel, he nodded. “Done.” He watched the shrewd intelligence gleaming in the man’s eyes. “Another bit if you can tell me if Master Trader Bregan has left town.”
“Oh, that one! Aye. Lit off like his tail was on fire. Took his caravan back to the coast empty. No profit in that. Someone put the fear of the Gods into that one.”
Rivergrace turned her back slightly to hide her expression as he dropped the promised bits into the man’s good hand. He tucked his fee into his own coin purse and made a sweeping bow only slightly affected by his condition. “Ink ’n paper on the counter. Write what you will. I’ll attach them.”
“We can do that,” Grace murmured.
The birder shot her a look as if assessing her ability. The field owl at her elbow clacked his beak, and she put her hand out to gently stroke his throat feathers. The man gave his grimaced smile again. “As you wish. Loose them, too?”
“I will.”
The bird perches were marked with the flags of the cities and holds to which they’d been trained to fly as destinations. He chose his birds swiftly as Grace penned the notes, her handwriting even smaller and clearer than his. Sevryn and Grace braved their clacking beaks to fasten the letter tubes to their legs before they were set free. As Sevryn watched them take flight as only an owl does, swift and silent, he felt more certain that the word he sent would be carried to its destination, one way or another. He watched them take wing, the birder silent at their backs, letting them do as they would, but ensuring that his birds were being handled safely.
They were. Sevryn had chosen his messengers carefully before setting them to the sky.
He could not afford to be silenced.
“WHAT IS THAT?” Rivergrace asked quietly, her words muffled as she did not wish them to carry, to disturb the quiet which had finally fallen in the Dweller farmhouse. She sat behind him, her body cushioned in quilts and linens, her hair tickling his face as she leaned toward him. She watched what he held.
“A present from the Kobrir,” Sevryn told her, as he turned the shiv over and over in his hands, carefully, for it was as keenly sharp as any stabbing/slicing weapon he’d ever come across, and it reeked faintly of kedant as well.
“They know us well enough to leave presents now?” She smiled faintly as she sat on the small bed behind him with the point of her chin on his shoulder so that she could look down at his hands as he examined his gift.
“So it seems.” He did not wish to let her know about the cuffs, so he kept them close, burning his skin even as he did so, from the malignant, binding magic which was twisted into the fiber of the steel. He paused, letting the engraved, ornate letter D shine in the candlelight.
She sucked in her breath. “Daravan?”
“My thoughts exactly, yet how can it be?”
“The Ferryman.”
He thought of how they had last seen Daravan and his brother who resided neither in the flesh nor entirely in the phantasmic, a Way in and of himself, linked inextricably with Daravan who, as the named brother, held the only life the two of them shared. It was Daravan who told them that the Vaelinars were not the Suldarran, the Lost, as they believed themselves but the Suldarrat, the Exiled, traitors against Trevilara their world and queen. It had struck them deeply, and hard. Yet, even as Daravan had exhorted them, railed against them for their trespasses in Trevilara’s war, he took the tide of Raymy, lizard men who had no heart and souls as any man would reckon them, and sent them on a journey where only a Way could take them. Perhaps it had been to a when rather than a where, for such was the twisted nature of the Way known as the Ferryman, but the invading force had been swept from the field of Ashenbrook. It was but a temporary diversion, but without it, the battle, and all, would have been lost.
That troubled him. He did not hold Daravan as the sacrificial type. Why had he swept up the Raymy? When would they come back, a massive tide of war and destruction? What had been Daravan’s true intentions? At Ashenbrook, the massed armies of the Vaelinars and the Galdarkans had stood to do what damage they could. If the Raymy, turned aside from the battlefield of Ashenbrook, returned elsewhere and could not be met by an army, what destruction could they truly wreak upon Kerith? He knew that Lariel, as Warrior Queen, kept forces marshaled at Ashenbrook. But what if she were wrong?
The Raymy would return. Perhaps any day. Perhaps in a decade. They did not know. So an army camped. Waiting.
Sevryn turned the shiv in his hands yet again.
“If he’s found his way back . . .” Rivergrace began and then halted.
“We know the Way he created to take them is not perfect. We have handfuls of Raymy who drop here and there, as whimsical as frogs dropping from a raincloud and as lethal as the deadliest viper.”
“But the bulk of the army stays . . . wherever it is he took them.”
“As far as we know.” Sevryn traced the D. “I know Daravan had dealings with the Kobrir. He admitted as much. He meddled. He assassinated. He did whatever it took to keep us from regaining our heritage and our truth. Whatever. I would not put it past him to have returned and be doing it again.”
“I saw—” Rivergrace hesitated.
“What?”
“A shadow that did not fall as other shadows did. A river of darkness moving past and against the flow of dimming light.”
“Even the Kobrir don’t move like that, although they would like to.”
“I’m thinking of a story Lily told us once of a man who brought her a cloth, a weave unlike any other. Nightweave, she called it. He left her a number of coins to tailor a hooded cloak for him—”
“I remember. She kept the remnants.”
“Aye.” Rivergrace moved from her position behind his shoulder to sit next to him. “She thinks it was Daravan who commissioned the cloak. She never knew for certain. And if it was, and if he had such a garment with such powers, then a river of darkness could indeed flow against the pattern of falling light.”
“Well, then.” Carefully, Sevryn put the shiv away in his wrist sheath. “We have two votes for Daravan.”
“The Raymy cannot be far behind.”
“If he can control it, he will use their return to destroy us. He endeavored to do it in the past, and I doubt he’s given up his goals.”
“For Trevilara.”
The corner of Sevryn’s mouth twitched. “She must,” he said, in slow deliberation, “be a hell of a woman, like you.”
Rivergrace slapped the back of his hand lightly. “I don’t know if I’ve been complimented or reviled!”
“Come close, and I’ll tell you.” He turned his head to blow the candle out, reaching for her as he fell back onto the bed. His hands traced messages of love and longing over her skin.
ON THE COAST OF THE COUNTRY, Tranta Istlanthir paused, hanging halfway between the sky and the ocean, the wind tugging at his gear as it strained to pull him free. Rough waves far below him futilely sent fingers of spray after him, thinning to a salty damp mist before they fell back into the sea in a foam of white and green. He set his hands to his ropes again, balanced on his feet to check the setting of his spikes, and looked up to the cliff’s edge which loomed perhaps three body lengths above him. Nearly there.
The ild Fallyn had sent one of their best levitators to assist in building a footbridge across the chasm on the land side of the cliff, from the rough hills which held the now deserted Istlanthir and Drebukar guard barracks. Work on the bridge progressed rapidly, but he did not wish to wait. He climbed, as he had always climbed, and his father before him had, to the cradle which held the Jewel of Tomarq. It was a kind of sacrifice to the gem which had caught the fire of sun and magic to aim her wrath upon trespassers of the bay and coast. Did she know of the sacrifice? Had she sensed his brother’s death leap to protect her before she herself was shattered? She was only a stone, but he had always thought of her as more, for she had been made a Way and that, in itself, made her unique. The wind twisted him upon his gear and he took a deep, stabbing breath. He had fallen from her heights once. He had caught himself upon the same capricious wind and broken the fall, saving his life but laming himself and losing the memory of it for days. If he had but remembered in time, he would have known that a spy had been observing her weaknesses up close, and he had met with her potential attacker who had driven him off the cliff. He would have deduced that that enemy would return until he had accomplished his goal in destroying her entirely. Instead, it was his brother who had met the return and failed. But it was not his brother’s fault. No. Tranta owned that himself, even if it would not bring his brother back.
Tranta wiped his face dry with the back of his hand and set to finishing the climb. It proved farther than three lengths, but it mattered little, for when he topped the edge and pulled himself onto the summit, it was done.
No one else had ever stood in the shattered remains of the Jewel. He’d set a barrier for the bridge workers which no one could cross. He did not wish the ruins to be disturbed or picked over by those who thought her relics might make a pretty ring or bauble. True to her majesty, the Jewel of Tomarq had not broken into dust, but into shards as big as his fist and bigger, into splinters that would rival a throwing dagger, into rocks the size of a man’s head. He dropped his gear on the ground and sat to remove the harness of spikes from his boots. The sun had risen while he climbed, and it was still bitter cold on the cliff as he squatted in the ruins and looked at the failure of his House.
It was said that when the Drebukar miners unearthed the gem, she came free willingly from the dark under the mountain’s vein, already near polished and whole although she would be faceted later and when the mine’s patron, the head of the House of Istlanthir laid his hands on her, she asked to be set forever in the sun. It was also said that the heads of both Houses dreamed of her destiny and that they worked together to forge the Way that would make her the Jewel, the Shield, of Tomarq. It was the first and only time two Houses made a Way between them.
Tranta did not doubt it. The gem had always held a majesty and an affinity for the sun’s fire, her judgment and justice an apocalyptic spear which burned to ashes whatever it struck. Lariel had told him to give up. To gather the remnants together and bring them to Larandaril until they could decide how best to dispose of them, while House Drebukar reopened the mines of Tomarq to search for her likeness. He did not think the mines would hold a twin to her might, and even if it did, the Way that was made into her depths could never be unmade and laid upon another. Ways did not survive their unmaking and, often, an insufficiently skilled Vaelinar did not survive the attempt to create a Way. It was, for a bloodline, a once-in-a-lifetime happening.
He touched the gem nearest him. He could see from its shape that it belonged melded to the crooked splinter lying next to it. He mated them to one another upon the ground, moving through the bits and pieces, putting the puzzle back together as he had attempted once, twice, a dozen times before. She bit at his fingers and palms, some of her edges sharper than the finest made sword. His hands went raw and bloody before the sun had even begun to climb on the eastern horizon and workers began to arrive on the other side of the barrier. This here, which must go . . . no, not there, but there . . . And yet, it would not be enough. It had never been enough. He paused at the edge of the fire pit, its charcoal interior now cold and dead. He could not create enough heat to meld her edges back together. If he could bring the mouth of a volcano to her, perhaps . . . even then, it would only be a perhaps. Who knew what fires and pressures had created her in the first place? He was not a God.
He ground his teeth in frustration, kneeling among the hundreds of other pieces he had not yet fit together, and looked at the travesty of his attempts. Blood from his torn hands dripped slowly and thinly upon the glittering bits. Sweat from his brow trickled down his face and jaw to fall upon the splinters. If it were enough to give his soul to make the Jewel whole, he would have given it. But it was not. Yet, even as he squatted and his blood dripped down, a heat reflected from his shattered puzzle and light dazzled over his hands with a faint sizzling sound, and the thousand tiny, jagged cuts healed. He sat down in shock.
Tranta rubbed his hands. Usually she did not cut him. The fragments would turn in his fingers and hands so as not to harm him, but today he had been frustrated and she had responded in kind, twisted at his maddened touch upon her. Yet—and yet—she knew his touch on her and rose to protect him. Tranta examined his hands minutely. Not a scar. No pinkness or so much as tenderness. He twisted his hands back and forth in examination. The Jewel of Tomarq had healed him, but she was never a healer. Always a guardian. Had he discovered a new power within her depths? He needed to test it. Perhaps he was not meant to return her to her former glory because a new destiny awaited them both. Fatigue swept over him, and he put the heels of his hands to his eyes. With his brother gone, he was the only guardian the Jewel had left, and he feared he was failing her. Seeing things he did not really see. Hoping for a restoration that he could not possibly affect. He sighed.
Spring clouds filled the sky, dimming the day. Someone shouted at him over the barrier, and Tranta went to answer the call, parting the ward with his body to see what the problem might be. The Kernan foreman with more than a few hints of Vaelinar in his blood, leaned on his stone-working pick, a knife-like smile parting his lips. “His lordship says we are nearly done. The anchor is set and set deep on this side. We’ve got nets below, three of ’em,” and he paused long enough to spit to one side, although Tranta could not be sure if it was an opinion of safety nets for the rope bridge or not. “When we hitch it up, it should hold. Even if typhoon winds hit. Though,” and he squinted through one plain brown eye, “I wouldn’t want to be on it then.”
“Nor I. Sounds like good work from you and all your lads.”
“Thanks for that. His Lordship might walk on air, but it’s we who bite the rock, and bite it deep.” He hefted his pick. Before joining his crew, who sat on break waiting for the ild Fallyn engineer, he surveyed his side of the cliff. His jaw worked a bit as if chewing the words up first. “I be sorry for the Jewel,” he offered, finally. “My brother is a fisherman, my father a short voyage trader. She guarded the harbor well for all of our lives. Our words of sorrow for the loss of your lordship.”
Tranta dropped his chin. “I thank you for that.”
The foreman nodded back and sauntered over to his crew. On the far side, Tranta could see the rest of the workers busy, and no sign of the ild Fallyn yet.
Tranta traced the barrier with his sigil and passed through again. It parted reluctantly, with a shiver, and he knew that its force was weakening. He would have to decide, and soon, what to do with the remains of the fiery mistress who had dictated all of his life before she could be carted off and sullied by hands that would hold her only for wealth and greed.
A ray dazzled his eye. Clouds thinned overhead and the rubble lit up, and he could hear a hum in his ears. The empty cradle turned in its stead at his elbow, but the noise did not come from the machine’s near silent workings. Tranta bent cautiously. He put his hand out. Warmth flooded his senses and vibration his hearing, and his nerves fired into vigilance. The hairs at his temples and back of his neck prickled. The gem nearest his palm nearly leaped into his grasp, burning, twisting in his hold.
There, there, there.
The stone fired in his hand, burning, glowing, and sending a beam striking outward. Not enough to destroy, no, but undeniably it pulsed in frantic warning.
Tranta fumbled at his belt for his telescope as he strode to the seaward edge and knelt there, one hand full of the fiery eye and looked upon the waters. He swept the stretch once and then caught it, where the beam fell upon glittering waters, its red eye bobbing on the ocean’s tide.
Intruder.
He could see the helm of the boat cutting through the waters swiftly, and the lens brought into detail not the exact shape of the rowers, but enough of them to know they did not move like men.
Tranta shot to his feet and bellowed, “Send a bird down to the port. On the leeward side of the cliff, near the cove of Keniel, intruders.”
Excited shouts and cries followed his orders and in another breath, a bird took wing, followed by a second a long moment after as the work crew fumbled to send word. The first bird, undoubtedly, had escaped when they’d opened the cage to get the second. Someone had the presence of mind to yell, “Message away!” to confirm the obvious.
Raymy. Scouts from the remnants of the original force, perhaps, lying off the coast and out of sight, venturing timidly into their waters to look for their army. Or perhaps not. Whoever or whatever sailed that boat did not bear a badge which gave them clearance to ply their trade upon these waters, the badge which allowed the Jewel of Tomarq to overlook them.
Tranta’s hand trembled. He looked down at it, as the stone remained hot and heavy in his hand, pulsing with its wispy voice. Dare he call it that? Its voice thinned and then tailed off, as if knowing the alarm had been called and heard. Or had he heard anything but the wail of the wind over the cliff and across the cradle and through his hair? How could he have heard anything? It was his mind, only his mind, and the alarm he had called, had he condemned innocent men? He retrained his scope on the waters below, to the leeward side of the cliff where the boat cut the water closer and closer and he could no longer say with any surety if its occupants moved as men did or not. They had tarps up to cut off the sea spray and wore oil skin cloaks and floppy hats as further protection against the water, hunched over their oars as they rowed with quick and steady strokes. He dropped the orb, pain throbbing through his hand as if it had burned to his very core.
It fell among its mates and rolled to a stop on the bruised and tender green grasses of the cliff top, shaded by the workings of the cradle. He folded one hand over the other gingerly in protection, but the heat fled as quickly as it had come, and his flesh seemed none the worse for it. How could he have felt such heat and not been seared by it?
Tranta stared down. Shaded, no longer refracting the light of the sun, he expected to see the dazzle dim and then bleed out altogether, but the orb glowed steadily. Then, one by one, other orbs caught fire in the rubble. His head felt muzzy as the vibration picked up strength to thrum louder and stronger in warning. He stood among them as belief forced its way into his body and mind. The Jewel of Tomarq lived still. She served, even broken and shattered and unable to strike as she had been faceted to strike, but she sounded the alarm. He squatted again, to be closer to the glowing stones. Their color grew even more brilliant as he knelt over them, as his belief in them grew. The Way had been changed, malformed by the attack, but she had not been broken.
Triumph surged through him. She had been made to be used, freed to face the sun in all its glory, and she wanted to be used still. He had only to find a new Way for her. He filled his pouch with a handful of the larger pieces, gems the size of his fist, experiments flooding his mind.
The Kernan foreman cut short the moment he was savoring. “Istlanthir! Lord. A bird has come to the field post.”
Warmth still flooded his mind. He blinked it away. “Back to roost?”
“Nay, lordship, a new bird. Field owl, it looks like. Has th’ other birds all in a fright. No one dares go near it, so the master sent me for you.”
That cleared his mind like a dash of cold seawater. “Field owl, you say?”
“So the coop lad marked it. He’s a bit dim, that lad, but he knows his fowl.”
“He should.” Tranta opened his barrier and stepped through again, the afternoon sun on the back of his neck. He tightened his hair in its brace, the ponytail snagging a few blue strands on his rough hands as he did so. He shook them off and watched them drift away like spiderwebs on the wind off the sea cliffs. The ild Fallyn engineer sat on a stump, charts and diagrams held down by rocks on a table in front of him, but lifted his gaze long enough to give Tranta a jerk of a nod as he passed.
Tranta did not trust the man any further than he could throw him, but it was not politic to slight him any more than it would have been to refuse his help. Was that a bird feather drifting off the hem of the man’s short cloak as Tranta passed? And if it was . . . why?
Before Tranta could think much more on it, the coop lad came pelting up the crest of the hill. He carried the field owl in both hands, unaware of the creature’s ability to rip him open with either beak or talon. He thrust the carrier at Tranta. “Sir! Sir!” Then he stood panting, too winded to say anything else.
Tranta put his forearm out and spoke a soothing word, and the owl turned harvest moon eyes on him, blinking. “Fed him yet?”
“Just a scrap, sir. Just a shred.”
“See to it, then, soon as I get the tube off.” Tranta felt the owl settle on his arm and close its claws tight about him. Owls felt even lighter than most birds. It swiveled its head about to fix its gaze on his face. Tranta spoke a few more words, nonsense really, part of a sea chantey that had been in his head all day, and the owl settled, eyes half-closed. He rubbed the knuckle of his finger down its chest. It radiated heat just as the Jewel of Tomarq rubble had. He found the tube and untied it quickly. The owl dipped its beak down to rub the back of his hand as he did so, and found itself transferred briskly back to the coop lad’s arm. “Go and feed him. Settle him in, but keep him isolated.”
“No fear, sir! Lordship.” The lad took a deep breath. “The other birds are scared spitless of this one.”
No doubt. The owl was probably a predator of their kind. He kept no vantane in his roost, but if he had, that proud war bird would have scared this field owl even as it terrified the others. Pecking order.
Tranta found himself grinning at his thought, as he twisted the tube open and popped the tiny scroll out. His smile disappeared immediately.
“What is it, Lord?”
“Word from afar. I may be gone for several days. No one crosses that barricade, not even the Stronghold of ild Fallyn. To do so will mean death. Understand me?”
The Kernan squinted his brown eyes as he looked back to Tranta’s warding, and he nodded, tightly. “No one, Lord.”
Tranta thrust the note in his pocket and took the easy way down from the cliffs, whistling for a groom to bring up a horse.
IN THE NORTHERN HILLS and forests of the lands known as First Home, a manor house sprawled at the edge of mighty aryn groves, with far-flung fields beyond them. They did not look like the holdings of a warlord, but they were, and now, the inheritance of a man who had lived long and well among the Vaelinar. Bistane Vantane felt the welcome weight of his family’s estate fold about him like a cloak as he rode in, dismounted from his weary horse, and turned his reins over to one of the waiting stable lads. “Rub him down well, Cathen. He deserves it, he brought me all the way from Ashenbrook.”
He watched them move toward the open stalls in the back, the horse dampened with sweat and blowing lightly, but walking soundly. Then he turned away.
“Welcome home, Lordship.”
Bistane paused in the stable doorway. His leathers creaked faintly as he looked to see who called his name, and spotted his brother Verdayne standing half-shadowed.
“Brother, will you never learn not to stand unrevealed unless you intend not to be revealed?”
“Someday, I’ll learn. I just keep forgetting what a jumpy lot you elven-blooded are.” The corner of Verdayne’s mouth twisted wryly. He shoved his hands into his jacket, and a glint came into his eyes that, for the briefest of moments, echoed that of the father they shared, though his height and diffident posture came from the mother they did not.
“Bastard,” said Bistane fondly and grabbed for his brother, bringing him close in a rough hug. He ruffled Dayne’s hair. “You’d be jumpy, too, waiting for the Raymy to rain down on you.”
“I’d gladly go in your place, but I think the women fighters would throw me back.” Verdayne twisted out of his hold and stepped back, grinning.
“Perhaps.” Bistane considered. “No, undoubtedly they would. No one attracts the fair sex like I do.”
“Bah. Sounds and smells like the mulch and fertilizer I spent most of the last three days spreading down on the sapling orchard.”
Bistane laughed as they exited the barn. “How do they look?”
“Excellent, if I do say so myself. I have that much of our father in me, I can grow aryns.”
“Indeed you can, but don’t doubt yourself. There is much, much more of him in you than that.”
Verdayne tossed him a look. “I’d rather have heard it from him.”
“I know. I would have, too. A spare man with praise, he was.” Bistane stripped off his riding gloves.
“I can fight.”
“And well I know it.” Bistane rubbed his rib cage ruefully. “I have the scar to prove it.”
Verdayne flushed. His dark blue eyes, blue upon indigo, Vaelinar eyes with their multiple shades of color, darkened even more. “I never meant to—”
“Of course you did! But not to hurt.” Bistane threw an elbow at him, Dayne dodging easily, with a Dweller’s grace. Dayne’s dark curls bounced as he did. His hair was not black like Bistane’s, but a rich, dark brown, with a curl that kept it close to his head until it needed cropping so badly that his brow could hardly be seen. In his youngest days, catching Dayne for a haircut was like rounding up wild cattle or sheep. It seemed like only yesterday. It wasn’t, quite, for all that he was half-Dweller, his brother had already outlived much of his family, including his mother. He would probably live two to three hundred years, near three times the age of most of his race, unless war or assassination took him first, or some dire plague that even stout Dweller constitution couldn’t withstand. But Dayne was like Bistane in that he would age slower and that thick, dark hair would someday go snow white, like that of their Vaelinar father.
Something stirred on the wind. Bistane lifted his chin, and his attention, from his brother who went stock-still.
“What is it?”
“Don’t know. Something.” Bistane rubbed his bare hand across the back of his neck. He’d gone with his hair shorn close to his head lately, to keep his battle helm better fitting and to . . . well, he supposed, to emulate his warlord predecessor and father.
“I can tell that much.” Verdayne put his shoulders back.
Bistane shook his head apologetically. “I don’t know more than that. There are times when . . .” he paused. He would not say it aloud, but there were times when the presence of his father walked these lands as strongly as he did when he was alive. He’d never told Dayne he’d seen him or asked if the other had, as well. He was a warlord now. Questions of his sanity would not be wise. This, though. He lifted his index finger. “It doesn’t feel like . . .”
“Father,” finished Dayne.
They traded a long look. Did Verdayne feel his father’s presence as he did? Dayne did not blink.
“Oh,” Bistane breathed. “And you never said anything. You will pay for that.”
“What would I say? Ghosts don’t exist.” The corner of Verdayne’s mouth quirked up. “And you think you’re man enough to take the toll from me?”
“I know I am.”
Dayne set his feet. They both knew that stance, the readying for a quick, fleet start. Dayne’s first offense was usually a quick and lithe retreat. Then he would circle back when he thought he had the advantage. It was a strategy which worked for him, playing off the height disadvantage.
Bistane curled his hand. “Come here, little brother.”
“You have far more years than I do, but not the wisdom that goes with them!” taunted Dayne.
Bistane readied to chase after him as Dayne moved, but it was not to take to his feet and run this time. The other put his head down and charged, with a snort just like a recalcitrant wild bull. He hit Bistane low, knocking him clean off his feet and gasping in surprise in the stable yard grit and grasses. They rolled around, both of them whooping for breath for even as Bistane had lost his, so had his brother when they had collided.
Dayne finally ended up on top, pinning him. “You, Brother, are built like a stone wall.” He inhaled gustily.
“I am just biding my time,” he warned.
“Well, and I know that.” Dayne hopped off and put his hand down. “But I got you.”
“That you did.” Bistane got up, shaking himself off. “And I will wager you never learned that from Father or any of the teachers he lined up for us.”
“No, I learned that from old gardener Magdan.” Verdayne’s eyes went a little moist, for he had been as close to the Dweller gardener as he had to his warlord Vaelinar father, his booted feet planted firmly in both worlds. Both of his fathers, real and foster, had died in the last year.
Bistane moved as if to pass him, put his foot out and swept Verdayne’s feet out from under him before his brother could blink away the tears. Verdayne went down with a whoop. Bistane looked at him. “I learned from old Magdan as well.” He grinned and headed to the main house with a swagger to his steps.
Then he heard a whistling. He looked up. A silverwing raggedly rode the wind in from the south dipping up and down on the uneasy currents, a bird rarely seen in this northern land, but he’d had a few trained to messenger for him. This one looked exhausted, its wings flapping erratically. Behind it, as if stalking the bird, glided a field owl.
“Get the owl,” Bistane ordered.
Verdayne dashed back in the barn to retrieve a bow and arrow, a utilitarian set, and nocked the arrow before Bistane could purse his lips to whistle the silverwing down as it neared them. The arrow flew past it, and caught the owl in the wing, bringing it down with a screech. As if relieved, the silverwing circled slowly and then plunged in a ragged dive to Bistane’s outstretched hand.
“Did you kill it?” He focused his attention on the messenger, for a tube did indeed glitter upon its leg.
“No, and good thing, too. It’s carrying a scroll.” Verdayne bent over his quarry and stretched his hands out. “The birder will be furious I shot it.”
“Both carry messages?” Frowning, Bistane whistled for Habbane, the head stables lad, as he worked at the thong to get his tube freed from the silverwing as it gasped and quivered in his hold. The poor thing’s journey had nearly done it in. He tried to think who could have sent it, and how far.
“I can set the wing, I think.” Dayne clucked soothingly to the owl, and it settled in the crook of his arm. “They’re both played out, Brother. They’ve come a long way.”
Habbane came running with the limp he’d had since he’d been kicked by one of Bistel’s warhorses a decade back, and he bowed. “Lordship, Lord, forgive me. I was in the mares’ barn. Your Ilytha is about to drop her foal.”
“No explanations. Take this silverwing and put it to roost. See it’s fed, but slowly. It may be famished, but I don’t want it to choke.”
“And the owl?”
Verdayne said, “Broken wing from the arrow.”
“Can be set, or I can wrench its neck.”
“Set it,” both Bistane and Verdayne said as one.
“Hold it, then. No sense having it scare the wits out of this little one. I’ll be back soon as this one’s settled.” Habbane staggered off, whistling through his half-toothed mouth for the lads who helped him run his stable yards and coops.
Bistane opened his scroll. He read it, frowning, then looked to Dayne. “Give me yours.”
The scroll flashed through the air. It startled the owl who flung both wings out, then gave a screech of pain as it did so. Verdayne settled it back down, folding it back into quiet.
“Same message.”
“Someone wanted to be certain.”
“Indeed, he did. This is from Sevryn. They tried to assassinate Nutmeg.”
Dayne had been worrying at the owl’s injury, snapping the shaft in two and working it through the creature’s wing as gently as he could. He looked up sharply. “At Calcort?”
“None other.”
“You’ll be heading there, then.”
“No. I’ve been at Ferstanthe, on the way back from Ashenbrook, and what I find there sends me to Larandaril. Faster now, for I can wager that we’ll get a bird from Lara sometime tomorrow.”
“Why were you at Ferstanthe?”
“Because Azel sent for me. What I have to tell you, though, is best not discussed out here in the open, but it must be said before I leave.” Dayne nodded solemnly. Neither spoke another word when Habbane returned for the injured owl, and they walked to the manor house that had been Warlord Bistel’s domain.
BISTANE TAPPED OUT A BOTTLE and decanted it into two handblown glasses meant to be gripped in the palm of a man’s hand, barrel-shaped glasses, and the caramel liquor filled each glass halfway. He left the lid off the bottle before taking up his glass and settling back into his chair. The messenger birds had been cared for and safely tucked away in the croft built for such creatures. Dayne took his drink up as well, speculatively, and both of them eyed the massive chair on the other side of the study desk: their father’s chair. Empty. Likely never to be filled and equally as likely never to be taken out of the study and put away. Bistane took a deep sip of his drink and stayed quiet for such a long time that Dayne, despite his inner promise to himself to be quiet and content and certainly not impatient as Dwellers could be (after all, they did not have the time, let alone the lifespan, of the average Vaelinar) and finally blurted, “Why Ferstanthe?”
Bistane’s eyes came back into focus and he looked over as though realizing he wasn’t alone and had forgotten that. He took a very short sip of his drink before answering, “I was looking for something.”
“And you didn’t find it.”
“No. But I did find something else.” Bistane sat back even further, swung his boot heels up on the edge of the desk, and began a tale. “I was riding home from Ashenbrook, to see how you were doing, and the farmlands, and to swing by the Library because of something gone missing that bothered me, and because Azel had sent me a note that I decided I should answer. Despite the fact worry carried me there, I enjoyed the journey. I like the northern lands with their evergreens and free-flowing brooks and . . .”
Dayne sat back and listened to his brother launch into his story.
There was a wind in the high forests, and the evergreens shook and moaned against one another, sounding like both the sea and a ship sailing upon it, its timbers creaking and echoing the force of nature which carried it. Azel d’Stanthe of Ferstanthe came to the gate of the library grounds when summoned, one hand wrapped firmly at the collar of his cloak, his towering body hunched as though the winds could lift and carry even his substantial figure away with it.
“Bistane! My lad. Good of you to come. I hope I did not thwart any battle plans by asking you to detour here.”
“You would never ask lightly, Azel. Whatever your concerns, I’ll do what I can.”
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