Both Hawks echoed the gesture. But as his hand traced the star sigil across his chest and he murmured the expected arach shae, Kestar could no longer contain his impatience. “Will you take us to this girl, Lord Kilmerredes?”
“Of course. Far be it from me to obstruct the Church’s sacred duty.” The duke’s tone edged back toward civility, a sword easing grudgingly into its sheath, though his look was still sharp enough to wound. He gestured out to Lomhannor’s entry hall. “If you gentlemen will follow me.”
* * *
Kestar had seen only a handful of elves during his years in the Order. Most of the elvenkind had been driven out of Adalonia, and most of those left behind were slaves, born in captivity—or apprehended, with any magic they possessed neutralized by the Cleansings. The rest were insurgents constantly on the move through the wilderness, surfacing only to liberate as many of their kin as they could reach. Unless they used magic, they were almost impossible to track. The Order hadn’t pinpointed a mage of significant power for nearly eighty years and, ever since, they’d relied upon patrol circuits old and new to ferret out the mages who remained.
All these had been half-breeds no person of breeding would acknowledge, as they were blatant reminders that the blood of elves and humans could mix. No one ever willingly admitted to siring or bearing one, for to lie with one of the elvenkind was almost as great a sin as having elven blood or power oneself. It didn’t require much of the one to allow the other to awaken in even the most prosaic of citizens, and inexorably, the amulets of the Hawks found them all.
With the aid of his premonitions, Kestar’s own amulet had found a few. But it had never sensed anything like the girl in the cellar in Lomhannor Hall.
Halfway down the stairs the pendant roused, igniting heat that started at his chest and spread through him with every step. He barely heard Celoren’s shocked breath, barely caught the glimmer of his partner’s amulet and Enverly’s out of the corners of his eyes. As Kilmerredes led them to a small storage chamber, Kestar marked him only by his big hands producing an iron key, and by the curt order he barked into the room as he unlocked and hauled open the door.
In that instant pale light streamed over Kestar’s field of vision, and he thought he felt a ghostly breeze rippling over his hair, cool as the breath of trees.
Then his sight cleared, showing him only the blue-white glow of the amulets, and the room they illumined. There was no window through which sunlight could shine or an outside wind might wander, though he marked fresh bricks where a window once had been. For furnishings there was only a low shelf, a pallet with a threadbare coverlet, an empty crate beneath the bricked-up window, and a chamber pot in the corner. None of that mattered, though, when he saw the figure huddling facedown upon the floor before them. As the light dimmed, Kestar’s heart thudded beneath his amulet. Sweat dampened his brow despite the room’s chill.
The girl wore Tantiu clothing, though the sari swathed about her and the shapeless silwar beneath were as threadbare as the coverlet; what might once have been brilliant patterns in the silk were faded by time and hard wear. Her clothing alone was enough to startle Kestar anew. He’d seen far more half-breeds than pureblooded elves, but not one had been clothed like one of the Tantiu.
Who was this girl?
“You’ll go with Father Enverly and these two men,” the duke announced, with an impassive tone that belied his piercing gaze. “They are Knights of the Hawk.”
“Am I to die now, akreshi?” the captive whispered. She didn’t lift her head, and the angle muffled her voice, yet Kestar still caught the hollow resignation in her words.
“If you submit to the Anreulag’s Cleansing power, my child, the gods may have mercy upon you.” No such mercy, though, came through in Enverly’s voice. “Come, on your feet.”
“Obey him, Faanshi, as you would me,” Kilmerredes said. “Do not, and you’ll try my patience and mercy, and I possess neither in as great a measure as the gods.”
Without quite knowing why, Kestar helped the girl rise. He had to remain firm—this was a mage they were taking into custody—yet something about the tension of her frame begged for gentleness. Her head jerked up as his fingers closed about her arm, and her eyes, slanted and summer-green over her gauzy veil, froze him. His amulet brightened at their contact, reflecting against those eyes and calling up panic in their depths. And something else as well, a gleam of gold like sunlight through leaves, reaching back to illumine something in him—
Sunlight.
This girl was the source of the light in his premonition.
She stared up at him in naked fear, and for the briefest moment, guilt that he might have caused such fright stabbed through him. “Don’t be afraid,” he heard himself murmur.
When Enverly spoke again, however, the moment passed. “Bring her, Lord Vaarsen. You and Sir Valleford will accompany me as I escort her to Camden. Then your services will no longer be required.”
“You don’t wish us to witness the Cleansing, Father?” Kestar protested.
“Your patrol has been delayed long enough.” The older man’s tone turned severe. “You’ll ride with me back to the church, and then you and your partner will resume your circuit.”
“Father, Lord Kilmerredes, the girl must be guarded,” Celoren put in, pointing at each of their amulets in turn. “We’ve all now seen her power. The elven rebels would surely find her valuable. And the assassins who attempted to take Your Grace’s life haven’t been apprehended.”
“Might I suggest, Valleford,” Kilmerredes said, “that you and your partner focus upon finding the elven rebels? If the good Father requires guards for the girl, I’ll provide them. She’s my property. If she survives the Cleansing, I’ll want her back.”
Enverly smoothly nodded. “I’ll make every effort to see that she remains useful to you, Your Grace.” Then he glanced at both of the Hawks, adding, “So shall we all.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” the duke growled, stalking out of the cellar and raking his angry stare across priest, Hawks and slave girl alike. On the latter, his regard lingered longest. “And I’ll expect you to keep her in the state in which I yield her to you now.”
In the wake of the nobleman’s departure Enverly beckoned to the Hawks to follow. Kestar kept hold of the girl’s elbow, and Celoren fell in behind him, prepared to intercept her should she bolt. But she did no such thing. She crept along at Kestar’s side up the stairs and out of the Hall, each step wary, the progress of a small wild creature surrounded by predators that might bite at any time. Nor did she make any noise as he led her to where his restive mount waited, reins in the hands of one of the footmen.
“Do you know how to mount?” Kestar asked. She shook her head without raising her eyes.
Already astride his own horse, Enverly sneered down at them both. “Bind her and throw her across your saddle horn if you must, Vaarsen, but bring her.”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Father,” Kestar answered, too distracted by the girl to give more than cursory deference. He couldn’t quite fathom how to treat her, and that bothered him. She didn’t strike him as mad in the slightest, no matter what the duke had said. “We speak the truth,” he offered as he helped her up onto Tenthim and then swung into the saddle behind her. “The Cleansing won’t be pleasant, but you’ll be harmed as little as possible.”
“Yes, akreshi.” She huddled in on herself in the saddle.
Kestar slipped an arm around her to hold her steady while he urged Tenthim into motion, and felt her go rigid in terror. Terror of him? That thought bothered him even more. When they were well on their way down the mountain, with the priest taking point and Celoren on Pasga in the rear, he murmured another question toward her ear.
“Your master...does he treat you well?”
At first Faanshi gave him no answer, and when she spoke at last he almost missed the toneless whisper beneath the clatter of the horses’ hooves. For all their softness, and perhaps because of it, the slav
e girl’s words seared.
“The akreshi duke’s always said that the Hawks would come and Cleanse me of my sin, and that I have much sin to Cleanse away. I suppose he was right. I’m treated as I deserve.”
* * *
Escorting Father Enverly and the girl called Faanshi down to Camden and then gathering their belongings from the inn to resume their interrupted patrol should have been the end of it.
Tenthim and Pasga seemed pleased to be traveling again, taking to the road with energetic wills. The horses’ mood at first rubbed off on Celoren, who sat easier on his chestnut riding out of Camden than he had riding in, and who hummed jaunty fragments of song in his rough tuneless baritone. But a formless worry simmered in Kestar’s mind, unease that neither Cel’s rising spirits nor the late afternoon sunshine could dispel. He tried to tell himself that they’d done their duty, that nothing else was required of them in Camden. And yet...
Halfway to Tolton, the next town up the Kilmerry River, Kestar pulled up hard on his horse’s reins. Tenthim blew out his annoyance at the disruption of his pace, but his rider paid no attention to his mount’s disgruntled shifting, or how Celoren halted Pasga a few yards farther along the road and turned in the saddle to frown back at him.
“What is it? Don’t tell me you’re having another—”
Kestar snapped his head up. “No,” he replied, lifting a hand to cut Celoren off. “I’ve got to go back.”
“What? Kes, we’re done. The mage has been apprehended.” Celoren nudged Pasga back toward Tenthim, staring hard at his partner. “Brother—friend—you’re getting obsessed with this.”
Was he? Kestar winced, but didn’t look away from Celoren’s concerned eyes. “Something the girl said while we rode down from Lomhannor...I can’t get it out of my head. That her master always said the Hawks would come and Cleanse her of her sin. That she had much sin to Cleanse away.”
“Sin?” Celoren stiffened astride his horse, and Pasga, sensing the change of his rider’s mood, snorted restlessly. “Did she mean her magic? But that’d mean—”
“That His Grace the Duke of Shalridan knew one of his slaves was a mage. And I think Enverly knew it too.” Kestar scowled. There was no chance they’d be overheard on an empty road, and yet he pitched his voice down. “You heard what they said to one another—‘I’ll make every effort to see that she remains useful.’”
Horror welled across the older Hawk’s eyes at the reminder, all the prompting he needed to utter Holvirr Kilmerredes’s reply. “‘I’ll expect you to keep her in the state in which I give her over to you now.’ Blessed, All-seeing Anreulag. The good Father doesn’t intend to Cleanse that girl at all.”
At any other time Kestar might have smiled to see Celoren’s mind in accord with his own, but now he could only nod and tug Tenthim’s reins to turn the horse back the way they’d come. “And at His Grace’s behest. No wonder he was so anxious to send us on our way.”
“He was right about one thing, though. Kilmerredes can destroy us both.”
“That’s why we’ll return to Camden under the cover of darkness.” His scowl deepening, his urgency conveyed to the animal he rode by the set of his frame and his legs, Kestar pushed Tenthim into a gallop. “That girl may be a mage, Cel, but she may also be our only witness to a sin almost as great. We need to talk to her. Now.”
Chapter Seven
Malcolm Andershaal, blacksmith of Camden, looked up from his anvil as a trio of watchmen rode past his forge—for the fifth time that day. He frowned within his beard. Though many years and many miles separated him and his birthplace, he still remembered the last time he’d seen so many watchmen on the streets; in those days the watchmen of Dareli had hunted him. Now he and his children were safe. But even when they’d been fugitives, they’d never warranted a hunt like the one that had swept Camden in the past two days.
They’d never warranted the Hawks.
“Da!”
The door burst open, letting in cool outside air, the smell of the potter’s kilns down the street and the panting figure of his son. Though he didn’t yet match his father’s breadth and bulk, Roki aided him at the forge. And like his father, Roki had spent the past two days anxiously watching the activity in the town. He was only fourteen, but old enough to remember when their family had fled west to Kilmerry Province.
The blacksmith grunted at his son’s arrival but didn’t pause in his work. With sturdy tongs, he moved the iron hinge he’d just finished hammering from his anvil over to a bucket of water on his bench. Heated iron hissed and steamed at the dunking. Satisfied, he turned at last to his offspring.
“What is it, lad?”
“There’s a gentleman outside asking if we can shoe a three-legged horse.” Brown eyes thoughtful, Roki stepped forward and held up his hand. “He said to bring you this.”
The sleek bit of darkness in his son’s fingers, blacker than the soot on his own massive scarred hands, told Malcolm all he needed to know of what had turned the town upon its ear.
“Well,” he rumbled, “this ought to be interesting.”
Plucking the raven feather from Roki’s grasp, he stumped over to toss it into the glowing coals in the hearth. Once the pinion caught fire and curled into a wisp of ash, Malcolm hauled a deep breath into his lungs. It tasted of smoke and hot iron, and it steadied him. It reminded him of the new life he’d made for himself and his children, and of the man who’d made that new life possible.
“You all right?” Roki’s face crinkled with concern.
“Aye, I’m fine. We’ll be fine, lad.” Malcolm clasped his boy’s shoulder to give his assurance extra weight. “Mind the forge. Put the tools away for the evening and douse the fire once you’re done. I’ll go see what our visitor’s about.”
“All right, Da.”
He spared Roki one small proud smile as his son set to cleaning up after their day’s work. Only then did Malcolm venture out to discover what the Rook had brought to his door.
* * *
Never mind two near-sleepless days of riding. Never mind the utter lack of time to bathe, and barely enough to retrieve garments and certain powders and other accoutrements for disguises. Rab had a gift for looking every inch the outraged young gentleman, even in clothing that had not an hour before been locked away in a storage chest in a barn on Camden’s outskirts. The crumpled velvet doublet, linen breeches and battered tricornered hat lent him a perfect air of a travel-worn, travel-weary fop.
Rab’s irritation, on the other hand, needed no artificial encouragement as he stalked the length of the cottage Malcolm Andershaal kept next door to his smithy. Though the furniture, hearth and stairs took up much of the single chamber that made up the lower floor, there was still considerable room for Rab to pace. “I tell you our presence here is madness! How long can we hide in a town full of prying eyes? Did you count how many of the watch patrol the streets?”
“If you took issue with my intentions,” Julian snapped, “you should’ve said so before.”
The Rook wasn’t garbed nearly as elegantly as Rab; his woolen shirt itched, as did the false beard that hid most of his face. It made him look like a servant, which was the point. But though he could vanish into his chosen role for whatever length of time was required, right then his disguise felt as ephemeral as air. An uncharacteristic nervousness had tormented him all the way to Malcolm’s forge, making him hyperaware of each man, woman and child they’d passed, certain that at any moment someone would cry out and bring the watch down upon them. Even more vexingly, a small superstitious part of himself he’d never been able to banish, even though he’d turned his back on the Church years ago, kept expecting the Anreulag Herself to appear out of nowhere and smite them on the spot.
Julian loathed that nervousness, for it told him Rab was right. They’d outrun a lion only to ride right back toward his very den. It was madness—yet here they were in Camden. Julian had yet to figure out precisely why, which aggravated him even more.
“I did say s
o before!” With a relentless speed that betrayed his own frayed nerves, Rab kept a dagger twirling without breaking the rhythm of either his pacing or the automatic sweep of his attention past every doorway and window in sight. “And I’ve yet to see—”
The front door opened, cutting Rab off, and the sight of Malcolm Andershaal’s husky frame filling the doorway let the assassins marginally relax. With an effort Rab exhaled and secreted away his dagger, while Julian rose from his chair.
“Hello, Malcolm,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”
“Six years.” The blacksmith closed the door behind him. Without surprise he took in the apparent gentleman, his shabbily clad apparent servant and the alert, tense stances beneath both men’s attire. “I suppose all the fuss in the streets has something to do with you, Richard.”
Julian cracked a smile. The name was as false as his beard, but the sound of it was oddly cheering. “A bit.”
“Do I want to know?”
“No. For the sake of your family, don’t ask.” He stepped forward to embrace the blacksmith, prompting Malcolm to crack a grin of his own, and after they pulled back from one another Julian clasped the other man’s wide shoulders. “Gods, it’s good to see you and your little ones—Roki, at any rate.” He cast a droll look toward the stairs. At the very top of the stairway a small shadow shifted position, the only sign he’d glimpsed thus far of Malcolm’s younger child. “Elette has yet to grace us with her presence.”
Malcolm followed Julian’s gaze, his expression gentling. “She’s a shy fawn, my Lettie. Talking barely more than she did when you saw us last, but she pays attention. If she has a mind to, she’ll join us.” His attention returned then to his guests. “We’ve not forgotten what you both did for us. But we didn’t expect to see you again.”
Julian said, “Our debt’s clear, Malcolm, but this time Rab and I need your help. We’ll tell you nothing that’ll risk you and your children, and we need only food, a place to stay for the next few hours, and information.” Reaching into the pockets of his disreputable clothing, he pulled a gold coin out just far enough for its glint to catch the light. “We can pay.”
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