Banebringer

by Carol A Park

  “So you’re saying that you trusted me because of the circumstances at the time, not because of who I am?”

  Ivana rubbed a hand over her mouth. No, she wanted to say. She had trusted Aleena in a moment of weakness, because she had been the closest thing she had to a friend. Which was also a luxury she couldn’t—shouldn’t have. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  Aleena looked skeptical. “And what if I decided to leave your employ?”

  “You are not a prisoner.”

  “Really? I could leave? Just like that?”

  There was a tense silence while the two women locked eyes, until finally it was Ivana who had to look away. She rarely felt so anxious about anything. Not even Dal Heilyn.

  Not that she hadn’t considered the question before. What if Aleena betrayed her, whether for coin or conscience? She had never answered the question satisfactorily in her mind, and she didn’t like it that Aleena was bringing it up. Why right now, of all times?

  “Why would you ask me something like that?” she asked finally.

  Oddly enough, Aleena looked triumphant at that response. She stood up, put her hands on the table, and leaned over it to speak softly to Ivana. “Because you and I both know that no one in your position should ever—ever—hesitate to answer that question.”

  She strolled away from the table and down the hall. “Still your turn,” she called back before disappearing.

  Ivana found her hands clenched so tight in her lap that her fingernails were digging into her palms. What was the point of that? To prove she could trust someone else? To prove that Aleena trusted her? To expose the one flaw in her carefully constructed world, her one weakness?

  Bells rang down the hall and a moment later Dal Heilyn walked into the room, followed immediately by the bell of the door tinkling as the messenger also arrived.

  She unclenched her hands. Even if it were true that she could trust someone else, she would never trust a man like him again.

  Ever.

  Vaughn might as well have not existed, for all the attention Sweetblade paid him on the first leg of their journey that morning. They had ridden in silence for the first half of the day, Sweetblade, by all appearances, sleeping—with her head resting back against the wall of the carriage behind her and eyes closed.

  As mid-day approached, Vaughn dared to speak at last. “I hope I didn’t embarrass you last night.”

  She snorted and responded without opening her eyes. “I can assure you that I am quite comfortable with the sight of the male body, Dal Heilyn, even one as unremarkable as yours.”

  Perhaps not the best opening. “I noticed that I haven’t seen a single man in your employ yet.”

  There was a long moment of silence, long enough that he shifted uncomfortably, before she spoke.

  “That’s because there are none,” she said.

  Interesting. He waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. “I also noticed a few of your women with children.”

  “All but one, in fact.”

  He blinked. “That’s rather unusual.”

  She finally opened her eyes. “A woman with a child? Did your mother not explain to you the way these things work?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said, and he was certain she knew it. “I meant so many of them…and unmarried, I presume.”

  She met his eyes, and her face was harder than before. “I imagine that as long as there are men more eager to spill their seed inside a woman than to accept the consequences, there will be no lack of unmarried women with children.”

  The comment was pointed, and he felt his defenses rise. She made it sound like every woman who spread her legs to a man was forced into it. So he snorted. “And do the foolish women who let them bear none of the responsibility?”

  There was a long moment of silence while she stared at him.

  She excelled at those.

  “Indeed they do,” she said softly. “In most cases, I would say they end up bearing all of it.”

  He couldn’t respond to that. He doubted protesting that he was always careful would matter. So, instead, he tried to redirect the conversation. “I find it ironic that you are lecturing me on morals.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Lecturing? I was merely making an observation. I cannot help if your conscience is so guilty that you need to point out the obvious in order to assuage it.”

  “I don’t need to—” he began, but broke off as she turned away to look out the window, one corner of her mouth turning up.

  She was baiting him. And he had taken it.

  Half of him was outraged. Half was embarrassed. The other half admired her, which was a dangerous—and thrilling—feeling.

  That was more than a whole, but right now he didn’t care. He had her talking and wasn’t about to lose the opportunity. He would never prove he wasn’t a threat if he didn’t talk to her. “I don’t suppose you would be interested in elaborating on your choice of workers?”

  She shrugged. “It’s no secret. As you so astutely pointed out, they are young, unwed mothers. Such women often fall into unfortunate circumstances, and so I provide employment that is kind toward the difficulties of raising a child alone.”

  The contrast between her two jobs was so stark that he laughed before he could help himself. “You run a charity?”

  She turned back to frown at him. “It’s no charity. They receive room and board for themselves and their children, along with a small allowance. In return, they work hard at honest employment and abide by certain expectations.”

  He refrained from pointing out the further irony of her providing honest employment. Instead, he latched on to her final statement. “Expectations? Like chastity?”

  “That would be one requirement, yes.”

  He couldn’t help himself. He gave her his most charming smile. “And does their employer abide by the same standards?” Idiot. Don’t you remember what Aleena told you?

  Indeed, she gave him one long, unblinking stare—her face turned from cool to frigid—and then went back to staring out the window.

  He heaved a heavy internal sigh. He wasn’t giving up. He had dodged Gildas for far too long to, in the end, be killed by the same assassin he had tried to hire to kill him. What irony that would be; his father, if he heard of it, would be pleased.

  That thought alone was enough to keep him holding on.

  What if she could be persuaded with coin? They were both about to receive a substantial reward for slaying the bloodbane; what if he offered her his share to keep her away?

  He rejected the idea almost as soon as he had it. If she were interested in his coin, she would have suggested it already. It was probably more advantageous to her to have the threat gone.

  Maybe he could blackmail her. He knew her secret; he would keep quiet as long as she agreed to leave him alone.

  Or…she could just kill him and not have to worry about it.

  When he considered it from her perspective, her plan to murder him made a lot of sense.

  Except, of course, that he knew he wasn’t actually a threat to her.

  The carriage slowed and then came to a halt, and the door opened a moment later. The head of one of the servants appeared in the doorway. “Dal, Da, we’re stopping to rest the horses and eat. You are, of course, welcome to join us.”

  Sweetblade rose and gave him a gracious smile. “Of course.”

  The servant offered his hand to her, and she took it and descended without a word to Vaughn.

  He ducked out of the carriage after her and surveyed their surroundings for threats instinctively. A well-traveled road, but they were in between villages. An olive tree orchard hugged one side of the road, and a dense patch of woods stretched out along the other.

  Those with the caravan—a healthy contingent of guards and the rest of Ri Talesin’s servants that were accompanying him to his country estate—clustered together on a patch of ground in the orchard. They were kind enough to make room for him and Sweetblade
.

  Situations like this always made him uneasy. It was one thing to socialize; it was another for a group of people to include him in on their everyday activities, as they ate, joked, and generally acted like normal people.

  Because what they never knew is that he wasn’t normal. If any one of them knew what he was, at best, he would be rejected from their group immediately amidst looks of fear and hatred; at worst, he would find himself in the hands of the Conclave, after being beaten just enough not to kill him, as any demonspawn deserved.

  Sweetblade, on the other hand, a person whom he had previously thought of as aloof and cold, made easy conversation with the guards and servants. When they expressed admiration for the rumors of their slaying a bloodbane, Sweetblade blushed and demurred, saying it was luck and a pinch of irrational outrage at the thought of her inn being smashed, and nothing more.

  She carried herself with such a sweet persona that if he didn’t know better, he would have believed without doubt she was an innocent but delightful and intelligent young woman, enjoying a rare excursion outside the safety of the city to a new place.

  Relative safety, he revised. Nowhere was ever truly safe.

  He, of course, knew it was a charade. But was she really the cold woman whom he had encountered thus far, or was that a persona as well? Perhaps the brooding, weary woman he had watched rocking the babe was closer to the truth.

  He riffled through his bag while eating, making sure everything sensitive he had brought along was still safe inside after it had been stowed on top of the carriage. At least he had managed to retrieve his bow and arrows before they left, by asking in front of the Ri’s messenger. Sweetblade hardly had a public reason to keep them from him, especially since he was now known as a bloodbane slayer.

  Guards would take any help they could get, if it came to it.

  Everything looked to be in order, until he flipped open the flap on the qixli’s leather case. He frowned, pulling the device halfway out while still in the bag. The aether in the qixli was shimmering slightly.

  He rolled his eyes to the sky. It was a sign that someone was trying to contact him. It wasn’t the first time over the past few days, but he had ignored it thus far. Whoever it was—and he had his suspicions—was persistent.

  He glanced at the guards. He couldn’t take it out right now, but neither could he let it go. It was too large to fit in the hidden flap in his coin purse, where he had stashed his supply of aether. If they searched him upon arriving at the Ri’s manor and found a glowing qixli…

  It might raise some questions, to say the least.

  He stood, bag, bow, and all, and started walking away from the group, toward the woods on the other side of the road.

  “Dal?” one of the guards asked.

  “Need to relieve myself,” he said. He grimaced. “Might be a few minutes.” He then waved his bow in the air. “I’ll be fine.”

  The guard chuckled. “Have it your way.” The guard turned back to the group, but Sweetblade watched his departure with narrowed eyes.

  He walked a little ways into the woods, found a rotting tree stump, and sat down on it. He slid the qixli, a circular device about the size of his palm, out of its case. At first glance it appeared to be a small cosmetic mirror. A wooden frame surrounded a polished glass center, and when he looked into it, he could see his reflection.

  But that was where the similarities stopped. Upon close inspection—and especially if the damn thing were glowing—one could see that there were, in fact, two panes of glass, held in place by the frame, and in between was a silvery substance that swirled slowly when the device was tilted—liquid aether.

  He held each side of the device firmly between his hands and waited.

  After a moment, the shimmering subsided, and then the indistinct shape of a face appeared in the aether, slightly raised, as though someone were pressing the face of a doll to the back of the substance.

  The mouth of the face moved. “It’s about damn time, Vaughn,” a tinny voice said. “Where are you?”

  It was who he had thought: Yaotel. Vaughn fought back a grimace, though neither he nor Yaotel had the sufficient profile to able to see each other’s facial expressions clearly on the qixli.

  “Do I have to report everywhere I go now?” Vaughn asked, only partially feigning annoyance.

  The qixli made an odd metallic sound, like someone coughing into a sheet of aluminum. It didn’t transfer sound perfectly—at least, not for him. But Vaughn had used these devices enough by now to know that it was the sound of Yaotel snorting. “Don’t get smart with me, moonblood. You know why I’m contacting you. Where are you?”

  Vaughn ground his teeth together. “On the road.”

  “Uh-huh. You got a woman with you?”

  “Do I look stupid?”

  “You really want to know?”

  Vaughn grunted, but couldn’t keep a smile from creeping onto his lips. Vaughn was the only one among the Ichtaca who was of noble blood, and Yaotel was the only one who didn’t seem to care.

  “You’re going through with it, aren’t you?”

  “None of your business.”

  Now it sounded like the aluminum being waved gently in the air. A sigh. “Look, if it’s not too late, I’m telling you: get out. This is a foolish scheme. It can’t go well.”

  Yep. Definitely too late.

  “However, I know you don’t care about my opinion. So here’s something you might listen to: he knows.”

  Vaughn’s stomach dropped into his knees. “What? How?”

  “You’ve got a lot of skills, Vaughn, but sneaking around isn’t one of them.” There was a pause, no doubt while Yaotel had the same thought Vaughn did. Ironically. “How many assassins did you try before you found one who’d take the job?”

  Vaughn said nothing. Sweetblade was the fourth and had been his last hope.

  “Right,” Yaotel said, interpreting his silence. “Well, you’re in over your head. Whatever you’ve said and to whom, he’s heard about it. And he’s not happy. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get your ass back here where you’re safe.”

  Safe. He was tired of being safe. He had just wanted to be free. What was so wrong with that?

  Vaughn closed his eyes briefly, trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong. It had to be one of the women—either a plant, or someone eager for a few coins in exchange for useless information. But what had he said?

  Who knew. Damn, it was always a woman.

  “Vaughn?”

  “Thanks for the information. I’ll be extra careful going forward.”

  Yaotel heaved another metallic sigh. “I hate to do this to you, but no matter what happens, we can’t be associated with it. And if it goes poorly…” Yaotel didn’t speak the additional words Vaughn knew were implied. You’re on your own.

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I understand.”

  “All right. Well. Here’s hoping I see you again this side of the river.”

  The aether swirled, and the face sank back into it. The aether no longer shimmered.

  Vaughn put the qixli back into his bag and stared at the ground, hands clenched into balls. This kept getting worse.

  If his father knew he was looking to have him assassinated, that probably also meant that he had learned the name Vaughn had been using for himself the past few months. A name he had just given to the Ri of Weylyn. And if his father heard of his recent adventure, he would know exactly when and where to find him in the next couple days.

  But surely he was being paranoid. It was impossible for his father to both hear about the slaying and travel to Ri Talesin’s manor in time to catch Vaughn. It hadn’t even been two full days since the bloodbane fell.

  Unless his father was already in the city for some reason.

  He should have pressed Yaotel more. How had Yaotel found out that his father knew, for instance?

  “Who were you talking to?”

  He jumped up a
nd whirled around. Sweetblade stood directly behind him, a hand resting casually on her thigh.

  He relaxed when he saw it was her, though that wasn’t a logical reaction.

  “Damn you, woman, don’t you have any respect for a man’s privacy?”

  “Who,” she asked, eyes glimmering dangerously, “were you talking to?”

  His gut reaction was to deny that he had been speaking, but she obviously had overheard him, so that would clearly be a lie. “Myself,” he said. “I find myself good company.”

  “No,” she said flatly. “It sounded like one side of a conversation, and I heard another voice as well.”

  So she hadn’t understood Yaotel’s words. That didn’t surprise him. The tinny voice that came through the qixli wasn’t very loud and didn’t carry well.

  She was scanning the trees. “Also, you lied about needing to relieve yourself.”

  She had followed him immediately, then. Of course. She wasn’t going to let him out of her sight. What excuse had she given the guards?

  “Is another of your kind here, invisible?”

  He almost laughed, but it would have been bitter. His kind? It was an apt example of how deep prejudice against Banebringers ran, that even an assassin held some subconscious bias against them. “We can’t all turn invisible, you know.”

  “In fact, I know very little about it,” she said calmly. Still, her hand rested on that thigh, probably because she had a dagger hidden there, and she moved a little closer to him.

  He swallowed nervously. She wouldn’t kill him here, would she? Far too close to the guards, right? And so close to all those innocents?

  “I could, you know,” she said softly, as though reading his mind, still moving closer. He backed away and promptly bumped into the tree behind him. “Accidents happen. A bloodbane could strike at any time.”

  “Unlikely, this close to the main road out of the city,” he said.

  She stepped even closer, made a swift movement with her hand, and then the point of her dagger was digging into his ribs. “But not impossible, wouldn’t you say?”

  “But what were you doing here?” he countered. “And why weren’t you hurt? An innkeeper doesn’t get so lucky twice in a row.”