Bonds of Vengeance: Book 3 of Winds of the Forelands (Winds of the Forelands Tetralogy)

by DAVID B. COE

  “But I’ll remain a prisoner, not in the tower perhaps, but in the castle.”

  “Yes.”

  “And whenever your dukes journey here, and whenever you welcome nobles from the other kingdoms, I’ll return to the tower.”

  “I would think so, yes.”

  “Forgive me, Your Majesty, but that isn’t freedom.”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t suppose it is. Though you’ve helped us a good deal in the past turn, you’re still guilty of crimes against this realm. You made some poor decisions long ago, and now you must live with the consequences of those choices.”

  I chose to fight for my people! What else could I have done? She knew she couldn’t say this. She wasn’t even certain she still believed it entirely. And yet she felt that she could barely contain her rage. Not for the first time, she wondered if she had been wrong to turn against the Weaver, even knowing that Kearney and Grinsa would have taken Bryntelle from her.

  “There is another way,” he said after a lengthy silence. “I can offer you asylum in Glyndwr, just as I did for Lord Tavis after his escape from Kentigern. You would be confined to the castle there, just as you are here, and there are far fewer children in Glyndwr Castle than there are in the royal palace; your daughter might be lonely at times. But Glyndwr receives few visitors, so you’d spend little or no time in the prison tower there.”

  He was offering her exile. He made it sound inviting, at least when compared with the life that awaited her here, but there could be no other name for it. Eibithar’s king was asking her to choose between banishment and imprisonment.

  “You don’t have to decide today.”

  “How soon would I leave, were I to agree to this?”

  “As soon as the dukes have departed. I’d send a sizable group of men with you—you and your daughter would be safe. The snows linger a bit longer in the highlands, but the journey wouldn’t be difficult this time of year.”

  She looked down at Bryntelle. At least she wouldn’t have to see her mother in a prison every second turn. “I’ll consider it,” she said.

  “Good. Personally, I think it a far better place for you than Audun’s Castle. That doesn’t mean that you’re not welcome to remain here. But I believe Glyndwr would be easier. For both of you.”

  And for you as well. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  He took a breath, his eyes falling on the baby. “She’s well, I take it.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “I’m glad.” He stood there a moment longer, then crossed to the door. “I’ll leave you. Keziah should be along shortly to take you to . . . to where you’ll be staying.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. Thank you.”

  He left her, closing the door softly behind him. Once more Cresenne found herself thinking that there was more to him than she had thought. True, he had angered her—who was this Eandi king to question her choices?—but clearly he had been disturbed at having to imprison her, despite what she had done, despite the consternation his generosity was sure to evoke from his dukes. When she asked herself if the Weaver would do the same for an Eandi in her position, she had to admit that he wouldn’t. No doubt others in the movement would take Kearney’s compassion as a sign of weakness, but Cresenne saw it differently. It seemed to her that if all Eandi were like Kearney of Glyndwr, there might never have been a conspiracy.

  Keziah came for them a short time after Cresenne’s encounter with the king. Two soldiers stood with her in the corridor, but otherwise she was alone.

  “I have a key to the tower chambers,” she said. “The king and I thought it best that we involve as few others as possible.”

  Yet another kind gesture from the king and his minister. And in that moment an odd thought struck her: what must Tavis of Curgh have thought of all Kearney had done for her? He would have had every right to be offended, even appalled. But for some reason Cresenne doubted that he was. Forced to reconsider her opinion of the king and his archminister, she had begun to question her perceptions of all Eandi, as well as the Qirsi who served them.

  The archminister glanced at the soldiers for a moment. “Stay here,” she said. “We’ll be out in a moment.” Without waiting for a reply, she stepped into the chamber and shut the door.

  Cresenne gave a puzzled look.

  “I need to examine your things before I allow you to take them to the tower. Kearney made me promise that I would, at Gershon’s urging no doubt.” She smiled, as if at a great joke. “I didn’t think you’d want the soldiers watching.”

  Cresenne made herself smile as well, but her stomach was knotting again. It seemed each time she decided that she had misjudged the Eandi, something new happened to make her question that decision.

  “You have a weapon in here, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “Yes, a dagger.”

  “I’ll have to take that of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “And you have gold?”

  The minister was pretending to serve the movement. She would have been paid by the Weaver, just as Cresenne had.

  “You know I do,” she said, her voice flat. “You have to take that as well?”

  “Not all the men who serve the king are immune to bribery. A prisoner with gold is halfway to freedom.”

  It was an old saying, but it did nothing to cushion the blow.

  “I’ll keep it for you,” Keziah told her, misreading her silence as she pulled the blade and leather pouch from Cresenne’s satchel. “The dagger as well. Both will be returned to you.”

  “You told me my imprisonment was for appearances only, that I would be freed after the dukes left.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Then why is any of this necessary?”

  Keziah straightened, her eyes meeting Cresenne’s. “I also told you that the dukes would likely be here for some time. Imprisonment does strange things to people. Even knowing that you’re to be released eventually, you may find yourself desperate to win that freedom before we can offer it.”

  Cresenne wanted to argue, but looking down at Bryntelle, she knew that the minister was right. It would take all of her strength just to endure a few days in the tower. What if the dukes remained in Audun’s Castle for half a turn, or more?

  “This is your life now, Cresenne. Freedom as you’ve known it is no longer yours. It pains me to say this, but it is the truth.”

  Cresenne felt tears on her face, but she didn’t bother to wipe them away. Hadn’t she said much the same thing to Kearney just moments before? Why would hearing it from this women affect her so?

  “Surely you’ve thought of this yourself,” Keziah said, sounding nearly as forlorn as Cresenne felt.

  “Yes,” she said through her tears. “And I’ve spoken with the king of going to Glyndwr, of accepting asylum there to escape the confines of this castle.”

  The minister appeared to consider the idea for a moment. Then she nodded. “I think you should.”

  Cresenne agreed. She knew in that moment that she and Bryntelle would be making the journey to the highlands as soon as the last of the dukes left the city of Kings. But she kept this to herself for now.

  “I told the king I’d think about it,” was all she said.

  Keziah nodded a second time. “Good.” For several moments she continued to watch Cresenne, holding the dagger in one hand and the pouch of gold in the other. “We should go,” she said at last. “Javan arrives within the hour. Preparations have already begun.”

  Holding Bryntelle tightly in her arms, she followed the woman out of the room and then down the stone corridor as the two guards fell in step just behind her. It would have been a far shorter walk had Keziah crossed through the inner ward, but the minister kept to the shadowed hallways, sparing her the humiliation of walking past Gershon Trasker’s soldiers; one more kindness among so many.

  Despite their roundabout route, they reached the prison tower far too soon. Cresenne had hoped that the anticipation of her captivity would pro
ve to be worse than the reality, but upon stepping foot in the sparse chamber, she began to tremble so violently that she had to sit for fear of collapsing. There was a single straw bed against the wall opposite the door, and she lowered herself onto it, still clutching her child. A simple wooden cradle had been placed by the bed, and a clean woolen blanket laid within it.

  “Are you all right?” the minister asked.

  “I will be,” she managed, her voice shaking.

  “Shall I stay?”

  “No. We’ll be fine.”

  Keziah started to say something, then stopped herself. “Very well. The next few days promise to be quite full, but I’ll do my best to come see you.”

  “Thank you.”

  The minister stepped out of the chamber and one of the guards pushed the door shut, the clang of iron on iron making Cresenne jump. She heard him lock the door, his keys jangling like gold coins, but she didn’t look up. She didn’t want him seeing the tears on her cheeks.

  “I don’t want her mistreated in any way,” the minister said, her voice barely audible through the small iron grate on the door. “If she needs anything, or if her child is in any distress at all, I want you to come to me immediately, no matter the time, day or night. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Archminister.”

  Even as Keziah’s footsteps retreated down the stairway, Bryntelle awoke and began to cry.

  “Are you hungry, little one?” she asked, swiping at her own tears and unbuttoning her shirt.

  Lifting the baby to her breast, she happened to glance toward the door, only to find one of the guards leering at her through the iron bars.

  Didn’t you hear the archminister? she wanted to scream at the man. Don’t you think that mistreatment includes gaping at me as I feed my baby? She glared at him, but he didn’t look away. At last, she lay down on the bed, her back to the door, and fed Bryntelle that way.

  She heard his boot scrape on the floor as he finally turned away, heard him mutter, “Qirsi whore.”

  After a time, Bryntelle tired of eating, but she remained awake, cooing at Cresenne and gazing around their new surroundings with wide eyes. Eventually Cresenne refastened the buttons on her shirt and sat up, casting a dark look toward the door. The guards were ignoring her.

  From the city, she could hear horns blowing and people cheering. It seemed Javan of Curgh had arrived. She stood and carried the baby to the lone window, but could see nothing from there save the spires of Morna’s Sanctuary, and the ridge of the Caerissan Steppe rising beyond the great walls of the city.

  Still she remained by the window for a long while, listening as the cheers grew nearer and finally faded. Javan was in the castle.

  Only a short time later, she heard voices from the corridor and then footsteps just outside her chamber. She had known the duke of Curgh would come to her eventually, but she didn’t expect him so soon, nor had she thought that he would bring his son and wife, as well as Grinsa and a second Qirsi who must have been his first minister.

  “This is her?” the duke asked, stopping before her door, his lean, bearded face framed in the small grate.

  “Yes, my lord.” Grinsa.

  Javan stared at her, his eyes boring into hers. Bryntelle gave a small cry, and his gaze flicked to her for just an instant before returning to Cresenne.

  She shifted Bryntelle to the other side, feeling uncomfortable under the duke’s glare.

  “I assumed you were helping the king so that you might avoid the gallows.” Javan glanced at the baby again. “I see now that you had other reasons.”

  Cresenne could think of nothing to say.

  “If it were up to me, you’d hang anyway. I suppose you know that.”

  He watched her, as if awaiting a response. She gave none. A part of her wished that Grinsa would say something in her defense, but she knew that he wouldn’t. And they had the gall to call her a traitor.

  “You have nothing to say to me?” the duke demanded.

  “No, my lord. I don’t.”

  His lip curled up, as if he were snarling at her. “Kearney is wrong to show you mercy. You’re a beast and I pity your child.”

  She shouldn’t have cared what this noble thought of her. She should have kept her silence. But his words stung, and Cresenne found that she couldn’t just let him leave.

  “I cost you the throne, my lord, and little more. If your ambitions had been the only casualties of my actions, I would feel no remorse at all. As it is, I feel that I owe an apology only to your son, and to the family of Lady Brienne.”

  “Now I truly feel sorry for the babe you hold in your arms. For if you believe that my son’s imprisonment and torture cost me nothing, then you don’t know what it is to be a parent.”

  He might as well have slapped her. She felt tears fall from her eyes, and a tightness in her chest that almost stopped her breathing. Before she could answer him, Javan stepped away from her door. A moment later another face replaced his. The duchess. She had golden hair and bright green eyes, and she looked at Cresenne with an odd mix of distaste and sympathy, as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to hate the woman she saw, though she knew she should.

  “I’m sorry,” Cresenne whispered, tears now coursing freely down her cheeks.

  The duchess offered no reply, and a moment later was gone.

  Tavis appeared in the door’s window next, his face truly a blend of his mother’s and father’s, though he was forever marked by the rage and grief of Kentigern’s duke. Strangely, he seemed to hate her least of the three of them. He didn’t say anything, however. And having just apologized to the boy’s mother, Cresenne couldn’t bring herself to say the words a second time. She and Tavis merely held each other’s gaze until finally the boy stepped away from the door.

  She heard someone speak in the corridor, but couldn’t make out what was said. For a few moments it seemed that all of them were leaving the tower. Then another face loomed in the small opening. Grinsa’s.

  “The others have returned to the king’s chamber,” he said.

  “You should have gone as well.”

  “I was concerned for you.”

  She gave a harsh laugh. “Of course you were.”

  “I should have known that you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Yes, you should have. You should have known it, and so you should have gone away with your Eandi friends.”

  He whirled away from the door, and once more she thought he would leave her. Instead he called for one of the guards.

  Almost immediately, Cresenne heard the familiar sound of boot on stone.

  “Open the door,” Grinsa said.

  The man did as he was told.

  “Now go.”

  The guard stared at him briefly. “I don’t take orders from you. And I’m not going to leave two white-hairs alone, not when one of them is a traitor.”

  “I’m the baby’s father.”

  “All the more reason for me to stay.”

  “I’m also a friend of the king.”

  “So you claim.”

  Grinsa gritted his teeth. Then he turned to look at one of the torches, and an instant later it exploded like shattered glass, sending embers and fragments of wood in all directions.

  “I could do the same to this door any time I wish. I could also do it to your sword. Or your skull. If I wanted to help her escape, I could do so any time I wished, and there would be nothing you and your friends could do to stop me. But that’s not my intention. Now leave us.”

  The guard looked frightened, but still he hesitated.

  “Leave!”

  At last, the man hurried to the tower stairs, and with one last backward glance, started down them to the floor below.

  The gleaner entered the chamber.

  “I don’t want you here,” Cresenne said. “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “What is it you think I’ve done to you, Cresenne? I’m the one who’s been wronged, not you. You lied to me. You used me to get informatio
n about Tavis and his gleaning. You sent an assassin to kill me. All I did was love you.”

  “That’s not true, and you know it. We both lied. I didn’t tell you I was with the movement, and you didn’t tell me you were a Weaver.”

  He cast a quick look toward the door, as if fearing that one of the guards had heard. But no one was there.

  “You can’t possibly equate the two. I kept my powers hidden to protect myself and . . . and others as well. I even wanted to protect you. That’s how much I cared for you. I thought that there was a chance we might remain together forever. And you know as well as I what the Eandi do to the wives of Weavers.”

  “And still you serve them.”

  “I serve no one. I seek only to prevent war.”

  She laughed. “You really believe that, don’t you? With one breath you speak of saving yourself and the people you love from Eandi executioners, and in the next you claim to be your own master. You’re a fool, Grinsa.”

  He looked as though he might say more, but then he heaved a sigh, shaking his head. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I am.”

  Without waiting for her reply, he turned and stepped from the chamber, pulling the door closed behind him.

  Bryntelle started at the sound, then began to cry.

  “Grinsa, wait.”

  Cresenne crossed to the door, fearing that he would leave the corridor. But reaching the grate, she saw that he was standing at the entrance to the stairway, looking back at her, his face pale in what remained of the torchlight.

  She wasn’t certain what she wanted to say to him. She just knew that she didn’t want him to go after all. At least not like this.

  “When I told you before that I didn’t love you, that I’d never loved you . . .” She looked away. “That wasn’t true.”

  “I know,” he said, and left her.

  The rest of her day seemed to stretch on for an eternity. Mercifully, no one else came to see her, her solitude interrupted only by the arrival of her evening meal as the sky outside her window began to darken. But even then, too sickened by her encounters with Javan and the gleaner to eat, she merely sat on the bed, feeding Bryntelle when the child cried, and waiting for the day to end so that she could just sleep.