Mortain was dead, too, and it had been Drystan who’d done it. Brandyn walked over to the cell door, where Mortain’s lopsided look of shock was wedged between the wall and a box. He wound the sorcerer’s hair in his fingers and lifted him to his face to look at the creature once more. He didn’t seem so terrifying now.
“Thank you for helping me. But I don’t understand,” Brandyn said to the man clutching Drystan. He instinctively fought looking at Drystan’s mangled body, but he had to. Drystan had died saving him. Brandyn owed him a life debt he could never repay. “I don’t understand,” he said again.
“More men will be coming. It’s not safe for you here.”
“Who are you?”
The man looked up. “A friend of the Derehams.”
Brandyn looked around the room at the theater of carnage. “And a friend to me now.”
The man said nothing. He pressed his lips to Drystan’s bloody forehead and pushed a sob into his flesh.
“You can’t leave him here,” Brandyn guessed. He stepped over several corpses to look out the cell door. Both ways down the hall were empty. For now. “I’ll help you take him, but I don’t know the way.”
The man stood, lifting Drystan in his arms. Red-faced, he nodded. “I know the way. Come.”
Brandyn followed the man out, allowing himself one last glance at the massacre. Mortain’s headless body was slumped against the bottom of the chair, and the sight of it prompted Brandyn’s realization he was still holding the head. He should drop it, kick it straight into a gutter where it belonged.
But somewhere in Duncarrow, someone had his father’s head. He wouldn’t release this one so easily.
Brandyn jogged behind the stranger, one eye cast over his shoulder. But it was not guards who stopped his pace, but the sound of voices he knew.
Voices of his people.
“Brandyn! Oh Guardians, you’re safe! You’re free!”
Brandyn gasped. “Aunt Yesenia?”
“We have to go, now!” the stranger called back.
“Then help me free them,” Brandyn said. He searched for anything he could use to unlock the cell door. He kicked over a stool, lifted a nearby bucket. His hands searched through the dust, shoving stray pieces of hay to the side. But there was nothing.
The stranger shifted Drystan to one arm, and with his other, he used his dagger’s point to pick the lock. It sprang open, and Yesenia flew out, crushing Brandyn to her chest.
“You don’t look well at all, little one,” she said when she pulled back and examined him. “Oh, no, Brandyn, no—”
Brandyn swooned into her arms.
* * *
“We have to get out of here before more guards come!” Ash screamed.
“He’s dying!” Yesenia cried. She knelt by Brandyn, who had slipped into unconsciousness.
The man with her scooped Brandyn into his arms. Their eyes met briefly. Ash recognized him. Corin Quinlanden. The good one. The one who never would have let his Reach become what Aiden did. The man who should have been lord.
“Corin. Hold tight to him until we can get him to safety. Until aid arrives, we are the traitors here,” Ash said to Corin.
Corin nodded. “I know you.”
“And you know this boy in my arms who has died saving us all, and we can talk about both things when we are no longer in the dungeon of our enemy.”
Yesenia’s gaze passed between the two men. She nodded, exhaling. “I know a better way out than the way we came in.”
* * *
Brandyn floated in and out of awareness as he bounced in someone’s arms. It seemed they were climbing higher, but to where? Was he dying? Was this the final path he would take before his promise was spent? He remembered when he was a small boy, much smaller than he was now, hearing his mother tell of how her mother whispered of a great stair she would climb as she went to meet the Guardians.
He strained to see who held him, but the morning light blinded him. His head throbbed with the exquisite pain that had finally caught up and was now declaring itself. The rest of him was a broken mess. He didn’t want to know how bad it was. As long as he didn’t know, he could still convince himself he might live.
“There,” a man said. Brandyn heard others now, footsteps along what sounded like stairs. Farther they wound, until he was dizzy.
“What is this?” a man asked. He knew this man, even though they’d only just met. He was the one who’d taken care of the guards before they could do to him what they’d done to poor Drystan.
“You’ve never been up here?”
“No.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t have, would you? This perch is for the Lord of the Easterlands. Our father never brought Gretchen up here. He brought me, once or twice. Preparing me, in the event something happened to Aiden.”
The other man inhaled in recognition. “Then I do know it. But from the ground. As a citizen who gathered among other citizens to hear the lord speak.”
“From here we can see, to the east, to the sea, and Fionn’s Pass in the west.”
“But how do they hear him? All the way up here?”
Brandyn’s eyes opened wide enough to see the conal curve of an amplifier. It was significantly bigger than the one they had in Longwood Rush, but they did not climb to the tops of trees to address their people there.
“Brandyn. Finally.” Yesenia’s worried face flashed in and out of his vision as it slowly returned. “We must find a healer.”
The man holding him eased him down. Brandyn wobbled, unsteady, as he struggled to gain footing. A sharp spray of pain spread through him once more. He looked up at the man who had been holding him. Uncle Corin.
What had he heard his mother say so many times over the years? It should have been Corin.
“Rest him here for a moment. He’ll be safe there. We’ve thrown the bar over the door,” Corin said to the stranger, pointing at the lounger at the far side of the perch. “Ash. That’s your name, isn’t it? Gretchen’s boy. She once loved you a great deal.”
“She loved me longer than once,” Ash replied, but he did as Corin suggested, laying Drystan gently down. He seemed afraid, regretful to leave him, even for the moment, as he backed away.
Yesenia took Brandyn by the shoulders and pointed. But as he followed the direction she gestured, the hand on his shoulder tightened to a vise.
“Guardians,” Yesenia whispered. “What has happened?”
Brandyn leaned into the railing for support. His gaze traveled beyond the city walls, but he didn’t know where to focus. Blood and flesh littered the fields between the forests, dotting the landscape. Thousands of bodies there must be, a whole sea of them. As he strained to better understand, he saw the vibrant blues and violets and greens painting the ground in waves.
But there were men still living, too. Men bearing the orange standard of the Southerlands, wandering around in a daze, surveying the same damage.
“I understand now,” Yesenia said low, breathless. “Oh, Guardians, I finally understand. He never wanted the Medvedev to fight for him. He wanted them to die, every last one, at the hands of the kingdom. To leave us this aching regret that would linger many generations.”
Corin stood at Brandyn’s other side. He rested a hand on his back. “You are still holding the sorcerer’s head. I tried to take it from you, but even when you were lost to us, your grip never lessened.”
Brandyn looked down and was once more taken by surprise at his determination to hold fast to something so vile. “I’ll know what to do with it when I know.”
“He can’t hurt anyone anymore. We owe everything to Drystan. Poor, sweet boy.”
“I’ll take him back to his mother,” Ash said. He didn’t seem to be there with him, but moored elsewhere, to another moment, another time. “So he can be laid in the crypts with the Derehams before him.”
Between Corin and Ash passed a knowing look. “You are still so loyal to Gretchen, even after all these years have passed and she belongs to anot
her lifetime,” Corin said. He moved to Drystan and knelt by his side. He brushed his hand over the boy’s face. “My poor sister. She has endured so much. This will crush her forever.”
“There are some things for which rescue is impossible,” Ash said. “The last consolation I can give her is that he will be buried with his people.”
“The only magic that could restore him was the magic that lived within the one he killed,” Corin said. “But that same magic has now laid waste to the entirety of the Saleen. It is a vile magic that has no place in this kingdom, even for the good it might have done.”
“Drystan’s life cannot be measured so simply.”
“No one’s can. But men will still try to, because it is the only way to make sense of what does not.”
Brandyn moved to another corner of the perch. He looked down into the town at the base of Arboriana. The citizens moved with the same dazed confusion they’d seen in the Southerland men as they surveyed the fruit of their warfare; as if they had awakened from one horror only to find themselves in another. He turned to Corin. “Where is Cian? Is he not the lord now?”
“The king named me Aiden’s successor,” Corin said with an uneasy look. “The Easterlands belongs to Cian. But we must tread carefully here, until we can get a better handle on what has happened in Duncarrow.”
Brandyn nodded. “Go find him, before one of our enemies does.”
“What will you do?” Yesenia asked.
“I came here with others. They will be looking for me.”
“You’re in no fit shape to do anything but rest, Brandyn.”
“I’ll rest when I find my men. We’re not so far from the Sepulchre, if I need to ride there.”
“Foolish and stubborn, like another Warwick I know,” Corin teased.
“I’ll be with him,” Ash said, stepping forward. He laid a hand on Brandyn’s head. “I’ll help you find your men first, and then I’ll take my… I’ll take Gretchen’s son home to her.”
Corin approached him. “Allow me to take Drystan somewhere safe until you are ready to escort him to Wulfsgate. We can prepare him for the journey so his mother can still look upon him when you arrive.”
Ash cast a cautious look at Drystan and then, after a pause, nodded.
Corin met his eyes. “I promise you. I will see to the task myself.”
Ash let out a soft, shuddering sob and then guided Brandyn toward the stairs.
* * *
“Ash!” Lisbet cried, flying nearly into him as he stepped beyond the castle entrance and headed toward the bridge. “Where is he? Where’s Drystan?”
Ash had managed to place his emotions somewhere safe until he saw the hope die in his daughter’s face. For, she was his daughter. He could see it now, even if he’d been afraid to accept it before. She was born after his “death,” but when Ash learned Gretchen had conjured him in another form, he could not resist returning to her. In her grief and confusion she had not seen through him, that it was he, the Ash of flesh and blood, and not the ghost of her imagination. He had never been able to stay away for long. He left when he realized that his weakness had been the cause of her conception once more. That the cycle of hurt would never end as long as they were together.
Ash shook his head. He dropped to his knees and Lisbet fell into his arms.
“Tell me. Tell me what happened.”
“I cannot find the words,” Ash managed through his tears.
“But did… did he…”
“He did. He was brave, and he was perfect, and he has saved this kingdom, Lisbet.”
Lisbet sobbed against his chest. He held her tight, his own tears no longer restrained by anything strong enough to hold them.
“Where is he?” she asked, pulling away. She wiped at her eyes. A subtle but powerful change came over her as she forced back her grief, replacing it with calm. She was so much like her mother that it sent a soft dagger to his belly.
“With his uncle Corin. He will see that Drystan is prepared for the journey.”
“I had not thought of…” Lisbet’s whole body shuddered with her sigh. “I can’t think of it now.”
“You came here to stop him?”
She shook her head. “Kian told me that if I intervened in any way, Drystan would fail. That I could not even say goodbye to him, for the damage it would cause to his courage.”
“I would like to know more about what you learned from Kian, someday, if you will tell me.”
“I came here to take him home,” she said. “To my mother and father.”
“He is your brother, and I would not take that honor from you. But he is… he is also my son, and if you would allow it, it would mean everything to me to accompany you.”
Lisbet smiled tightly. She kissed his cheek. “Of course you can come. But that means you will have to face my mother. She’ll know how you’ve deceived her.”
Ash nodded. He looked past her, at the three girls who had traveled with her. Followed her, was more like, because Lisbet was a leader, like Gretchen. They would follow her to Wulfsgate, too. They’d follow anywhere she led. “I always intended to tell her, one day.”
“There was something else Kian said to me.”
“Oh?”
“About…” A conflicted look passed over her face. “Not now. Maybe we can discuss it on the journey home.”
“We shouldn’t delay for long. Corin and Cian will work to restore order, but there are still those here who are loyal to Aiden and to the crown.”
Lisbet nodded. “The girls haven’t eaten much in days. Let’s get food in their bellies, and we can be on our way.”
* * *
Brandyn lingered behind, giving space to Ash and Lisbet’s tearful exchange. He’d begun to understand something about Ash, about his unlikely connection to the Derehams, but it was not his business.
Something more pressing caught his eye as he looked into the growing sunrise.
Arms waved his way. He couldn’t make out faces in the glare, but he knew it was his attention they were after. These were his men.
Brandyn quietly slipped past Ash, but before he could go to where the men had beckoned him, another familiar face stopped his heart.
“Brandyn?” Gabi’s small voice was foreign, like a song from another lifetime.
“Gabi…” He had resigned himself to never seeing any of them again. He’d accepted that the path they’d been set on did not lead back to one another.
He lifted Mortain’s head out to the side, anticipating what would come next.
Gabi flew into his arms. When he groaned in pain, she jumped back. “Oh no. What happened? Oh, dear, you look terrible.”
“I’m fine,” he insisted, trying to smile. “I promise.”
“You are not fine, Brandyn Blackwood!” She gaped as she looked down. “Is that a man’s head?”
“He was no man, Gabi.”
“Yet that is most definitely a head! Have you gone mad?”
Eavan Quinlanden was there too, and she laughed at them both. “Can it truly be that after the months away from one another, the first thing you two do is bicker like children?”
But there was another with them. Meadow Ashenhurst, for whom Brandyn had news she would very much like to hear.
A hard swell of hope spun up within him. Gabi had survived, Meadow had survived, Ember was safe. Little Meadow was here, too. They’d all lived.
“Whose head, Brandyn?” Gabi demanded.
“One of the men responsible for taking our father from us. I’ll get them all, before it’s done. Make a proper collection of it.”
Gabi nodded. She bit down hard on her lower lip. “Do get them all. But... maybe not... about the collection part...”
Brandyn turned to Eavan. “You should go inside. It should be safe for you now. Your uncle has gone to find Cian and make things right.”
Eavan shook her head. “This isn’t my home anymore.”
“Your father may be a traitor, but your mother is inside somewhere, w
orried sick for you.”
“My mother is dead,” Eavan said.
“Dead?”
Eavan waved around. “Dead. Dead to me. Dead in the ways that matter. Do you see her? Was she with Corin, and Yesenia, when you were with them? Did she come down when the sorcerer fell?”
“Eavan, she may have been in hiding. Mortain and Waters—”
“Where was my mother when the king tried to take me?”
Brandyn reached forward and took her hand. “We all do what we have to in order to survive, I guess. We’ve already lost too much.”
“How is it we are all here, now, together? What nonsense have the Guardians conspired to bring us to this moment?” Eavan mused.
The sun passed behind a cloud and Brandyn saw Khallum in the distance, with the other men who had summoned him. Joran. Law. Rutland. Oakenwell.
Khallum had Mads Waters at the end of his sword.
“Meadow,” he said, approaching the girl. “Brook is safe. He’s in Greystone Abbey. I’ve seen him with my own eyes. Steward James has taken good care of him, and he left him in capable hands when we rode east. You’ll be reunited again soon. I’m certain of it.”
Meadow buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
“I’ll be back,” he said to the others.
“Oh, no, no way, I’m not leaving your side, Brandyn,” Gabi said. “Not this time.”
* * *
Brandyn climbed the small hill toward the group gathered under the cluster of oaks. He could see now, as the trees shaded them from the sun, that gathered were the men who had come to Whitechurch believing in the vision of a twelve-year-old boy.
Only Darrick, the Grand Minister, and Joran were missing.
“Aye, there’s our little lord. Nice of ye to join us,” Khallum charged with a sly grin. “While you’ve been busy getting the piss knocked out of ye, we got our hands on this ratsbane.” He shoved the tip of the sword into Waters’ neck.
“Took that many of you to do it,” Waters hissed.
“Nay, just me, but all great performances deserve an audience.”
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