by Tanya Huff
“My sister is not for you to discuss.”
“Your sister makes her own choices.”
“My sister …”
“Is probably halfway to Bartek Springs by now,” the ambassador broke in, stepping forward—although not quite between the two. “I think it would be best if you wasted very little time in beginning your pursuit.”
A few moments later he dropped onto a bench and sighed deeply. “Frankly, Captain, you weren’t much help.”
Liene grinned. “You seemed to be doing fine on your own. I suspect they’re going to have an interesting trip.”
“Interesting?” The ambassador rolled his eyes. “You bards have such a way with words.” He supposed he should be thankful that it would be interesting some distance away from him.
* * * *
“Of course you have my permission to go after your sister.” Prince Otavas clasped his hands together behind his back, hiding the way his fingers had begun to tremble. “She’s in danger the closer she gets to that … that … to Kars. Stop her. Bring her and my cousin back to safety. And if this Gyhard has other ideas, well, do what you have to.”
“Thank you, Highness.” Bannon frowned slightly as he studied the prince. It was evident to the trained eye that the younger man was very afraid. “Highness, you’ll be perfectly safe. There’s no one here who wishes to harm you, and Kars is not only far away but they say the bards …” With an effort, he kept the distaste from his voice. “… are preparing to deal with him.”
Otavas tossed his head. “Of course I’ll be safe,” he snapped, irritated that Bannon had recognized his fear. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No reason, Highness.” The Emperor had ordered him to return Vree and Gyhard to the Capital. Gyhard had to pay for what he’d done; for his treason, for Vree’s betrayal. But the prince … Bannon shook his head, confused. He had a target and the target should be everything. But the prince’s safety was his responsibility. If the prince was afraid, then he’d failed. And who will guard his dreams while I’m gone?
“Is there something else?”
“No, Highness.” Bannon bowed. “I’ll return as quickly as I can.”
“Take the time you need,” Otavas told him. He managed a shaky smile. “I’ll try to stay out of trouble while you’re gone.”
“Thank you, Highness.” If Bannon’s answering smile was steadier, it was only because he was a much better liar.
* * * *
“Don’t trust him.”
“Why not?” Gerek jerked the strap tight on the bulging saddlebag. “Because he’s an arrogant, amoral, little shit?”
Kovar snorted. “Because he’s an Imperial assassin.”
“So’s Vree.”
“Exactly. And as Vree has proven herself capable of killing without orders, it’s very likely that Bannon can, too. Vree, however, needs our good will; her brother does not and therefore has no external controls on his actions.”
“So you want me to control him?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Kovar paced across the bedchamber and back, his agitation sounding through the slap of his soles against the polished wooden floor. Only the Duc of Ohrid had refused carpet in his palace suite. “You couldn’t control him if you wanted to. If it comes to a fight, you’ll lose—don’t ever forget that.”
Gerek’s lip curled, the expression making him look remarkably like his father. “Anything else?” he snarled.
“Yes. Don’t trust Gyhard either. And don’t forget that according to Karlene, Bannon hates him.”
“Vree seems to be the only one who doesn’t.” Throwing open the trunk at the foot of his bed, Gerek waved away the smell of cedar and began to rummage through his clothing. “Oh, and Maggi,” he added, without looking up. “She feels sorry for him.”
Kovar snorted again, the waxed curls of his mustache trembling. “Your sister is very young and I believe that Vree is afraid.”
“Afraid?” Gerek straightened to stare indignantly across his bedchamber at the bard. “Vree isn’t afraid of anything.”
“I think I have been a slightly more impartial observer than you, Your Grace, and I have seen this fear.”
“I didn’t think anyone’s impartial observing Vree, she’s carrying too much history. However,” Gerek held up a surrendering hand as Kovar opened his mouth to protest, “I suppose I may be more partial than most. So, what’s she afraid of?”
Kovar drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, wondering if the younger man was being deliberately obtuse. “Gyhard. She’s afraid of Gyhard.”
“I don’t think so.” He threw a sweater up onto the bed with unnecessary force. “As much as I wish she weren’t, she’s in love with Gyhard.”
“Is she? Is it logical that she would be? This man, this abomination, destroyed her life, drove a wedge between herself and her brother, and now sits like a parasite in her mind. Why would she love him? Isn’t it more logical to believe that she does what he wants because she is afraid of him but, unable because of her training to admit fear, she calls it love instead?”
Both Gerek’s brows went up. “I think you’ve been listening to too many fledgling ballads, Kovar. Even by bardic standards that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Doesn’t it?”
Unfortunately, it did. “Maggi says …”
“Magda is little more than a child.” It was Kovar’s turn to raise a cautioning hand. “This whole situation is much more complex than a simple love story. I’m not asking that you believe me, Gerek, just keep it in mind. Please.”
“Yeah. Sure.” He shook his head as if trying to settle unsettling information. “Anything else?”
“Yes. Be careful.” Kovar used enough Voice to make his concern plain. Due to the circumstances of Gerek’s upbringing, the bards considered the Heir of Ohrid to be one of theirs. “I’d hate to have to tell your father that he’d lost you.”
“You’re the entire country away from my father,” Gerek reminded him with a not entirely successful laugh. “If I were you, I’d worry more about telling Annice.”
* * * *
“My mother’s death was what made me an assassin.” So strange to say my mother and made me when it had been our mother and made us for so long.
Magda paled under the color the sun had laid across her cheeks. “You didn’t … I mean, you were only seven, you couldn’t have …”
“No. I didn’t.” Unable to decide if she were amused or hurt by the assumption, Vree’s voice held no expression at all.
“I’m sorry, Vree.” The younger woman reached between the horses and laid her hand lightly on Vree’s arm. “That was a stupid thing to say. I forgot the most important lesson the Healers’ Hall tried to bang into my head.” When Vree lifted a questioning brow, she lifted her hand and explained. “Brain first. Mouth second.”
She was so contrite, it was impossible not to smile. “I always thought I hid my reactions better than that.”
“Not from me. I’ve been learning your kigh, remember”
“And when you’ve learned it, you’ll know me better than anyone?”
Magda grinned and tucked a curl of hair into the corner of her mouth. “Not quite anyone.”
About to say, Bannon, Vree felt Gyhard’s kigh stir and realized that her brother hadn’t really known her at all. “And will I know you better than anyone,” she asked.
“That depends on you.”
If they hadn’t been riding down a public road, she might have surrendered to the unexpected lack of barriers between them. Might have. As it was, she had no real desire to fall off the horse.
She felt Gyhard withdraw enough to keep them separate. *There’ll be other times,* he promised.
The reins gripped between damp fingers, Vree suddenly needed to fill the silence. “My teachers always said, throat first, eye second.”
“Eye?” Magda asked uncertainly.
“Through the socket and into the brain. Takes a more specialized dagger, though. Longer, narrower b
lade. You can slit someone’s throat with your teeth if you have to.”
“Vree, that’s really gross.”
“Only if you forget and swallow.”
Magda swiveled in the saddle and stared at her, aghast.
As far as Vree could remember, she’d never seen anyone look so disgusted. Although she tried to keep a straight face, she couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “It’s a joke, Maggi, a joke.”
*Is it?* Gyhard wondered, and then wished he hadn’t because it stopped the laughter.
*Mostly.*
* * * *
Two days’ travel into the mountains, a pair of ravens led Karlene to the scattered remains of a body by the side of the road. A shallow indentation scratched into the dry soil and an oblong pile of fist-sized rocks indicated an attempt at burial, but such pitiful protection had been no protection at all against the local scavengers.
Wrinkling her nose, Karlene squatted by a piece of bone and was astonished to see that desiccated tissue still clung to it. Although the body had been torn apart, none of the flesh appeared to have been eaten.
“That’s very odd,” she muttered as she stood.
Cocking an ebony head, one of the ravens fixed her with an amber eye, its cry sounding very much like loud and raucous laughter.
“Easy for you to say,” Karlene told it derisively, then she stopped and took a closer look at its perch. Cracked and faded, the leather collar that had held Kait’s head erect on her broken neck was unmistakable. Needing no further confirmation, she turned away before she chanced to spot Kait’s head.
While her right hand sketched the sign of the Circle over her breast, Karlene Sang the kigh a question. Considering what had happened when Kars’ other companions had fallen, the answer surprised her.
Kait’s kigh was nowhere around.
It was very strange.
* * * *
The timber-holding stood at one end of a narrow valley close by where the river broadened into a natural basin to hold the logs sent down from the cutting crew upstream. Although a high wooden stockade surrounded the buildings, the gate was open and a small herd of shaggy cattle were grazing around the stumps in a cleared pasture.
Had he come out onto the lip of the valley anywhere else, the trees would have blocked his view and he very likely would have missed the holding entirely. Sinking down onto his haunches so that the necklace of bone he wore tucked under his robe clattered against the ground, Kars stared at the cattle, at the buildings, at the stockade, and wondered where he’d seen them all before.
“In a dream,” he murmured. “Or in the memory of a dream?”
Perhaps the shadow of familiarity that lay over the valley was an omen. He didn’t think he believed in omens, but as he couldn’t remember exactly what he believed in, he supposed it didn’t matter.
“There are people there, Kait.” She brushed the back of her hand against his cheek and he smiled, teeth still surprisingly whole and white between cracked and bleeding lips. “Our family. Yours and mine.” There had been a family before the Song … before the Song … the Song …
*NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!*
Trembling, tears spilling over into wrinkles so deep the moisture disappeared within the crease, Kars held up a placating hand.
“I won’t leave you,” he said softly. “I promise.” How could he leave her? She’d given him reason to live when he’d lost his heart for the second time. She’d stayed with him even after her own Song had ended. She was all he had. “We’ll be a family again. Like we were.” When she nodded, he smiled again. “Your legs are younger than mine, child. Go down there and look around. See if they’ll welcome us.”
He watched her move down into the valley, skimming the ground, swirling around rocks and trees like pale smoke. She looked so much better without the brace. He remembered how pleased he’d been when she’d put it aside.
As she passed, the cattle rushed to the far side of their pasture and stood, shaggy orange rumps against the fence, heads turned toward the open gate of the stockade.
* * * *
*Trouble coming.*
*How can you tell?*
Shoulders hunched against the driving rain, Vree tossed her head to clear the water from her eyes and said, *There’s a horse galloping hard toward us. In this weather, you don’t ride like that unless there’s trouble.*
*I can’t see anything.* He could see the rump end of Magda’s horse and Magda slumped forward in the saddle. Past her, he could see another horse-length, maybe two, of the ribbon of mud that Shkodens referred to as a road—the Empire spent considerably more tax dollars on road building than on music and, at the moment, Gyhard wholeheartedly approved—but then the translucent curtain of rain became opaque.
*Listen.*
Rain. Creak of wet leather. Hooves lifting out of and falling back into wet earth. *I don’t hear anything.*
*Listen for what doesn’t belong.*
He heard it then, the low pounding like an angry drum roll, held against the ground by the weather. From the way Magda straightened, he suspected it had now come too close to ignore.
Head cocked, wet hair plastered tight to her skull, Magda tried to figure out not only what the sound was, but where it was coming from. The rhythmic pounding seemed to bounce off the individual drops of rain and surround her. “Which is ridiculous,” she told herself, pulling her mount’s reluctant head around.
Diagonal across the road and turned toward Vree, she didn’t see the rider burst suddenly into view. Her horse slammed back onto its haunches, Magda fought to keep her seat. And lost.
A moment later, Vree knelt on the shoulders of a very wet young man. Gasping for breath, he stared up at her, unable to understand how he’d been on the back of a galloping horse one instant and on his back in the mud the next.
“You should watch where you’re going,” she said, her voice devoid of inflection.
Gyhard had a sudden memory—it had to be one of Vree’s—of Avor lying in the same position. The only difference had been, the Sixth Army Messenger knew how he’d ended up flat out on the road and how long he had left to live.
“Vree?”
Rising lithely, Vree moved to where Magda sat pulling mud out of her hair. “Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so.” Her confused expression was, in most ways, identical to that of the young man.
“Can you stand?”
“I don’t know.”
Grasping Magda’s left wrist, Vree slowly pulled her up onto her feet, ready to stop if she gave any indication of pain. “Does anything hurt?”
“No. No,” she repeated, her voice growing stronger as she looked down at the imprint of her body in the mud. ‘I guess I was lucky I didn’t land on a rock.” She spotted her horse and Vree’s, bulky shadows cropping grass by the side of the road, noticed a third horse a little way off, then noticed the rider carefully getting to his feet. “Who’s he?”
“The idiot who ran into you.”
“What happened to him?”
The corners of Vree’s mouth curled up into what was only peripherally a smile. “He stopped to make sure you weren’t hurt.”
Magda glanced from Vree to the filthy young man and came to the correct conclusion. Rolling her eyes, she stepped toward him. “Are you all …”
He charged past her, fists raised.
“… right?” she finished as he hit the ground again.
When he grabbed for his dagger, Vree stepped on his wrist. “I wouldn’t,” she said quietly.
He stiffened, then saw his own mortality in the dark eyes looking down into his. The fight went out of him so completely, its absence left him trembling.
Gyhard was pleased to see that the boy wasn’t a total fool.
“Dusty?”
“Your horse?” Magda asked as she squatted beside him. “It’s right over there. It didn’t go far after you …” She paused.
“Fell off?” Vree offered.
“… parted company. Are you all righ
t?” Licking rain off her lips, she rested her palm lightly on his chest. “It’s just that I’m a healer and …”
“A healer!” He jerked up out of the mud and clutched at her hand. “I was riding for a healer!”
* * * *
The village had been built just above the high tide mark down on the flats where a broad creek spilled fresh water into the sea. Small boats were pulled up on the gravel beach and empty drying racks made skeletal outlines against the gray on gray of sea and sky.
“Why is it all fishing villages look the same?” Vree wondered. “Put this on the coast anywhere in the Sixth Province and it wouldn’t look out of place.”
*Maybe it’s because all fish look the same.*
They didn’t stop at the village but pounded right up to the crowd of people standing on the clifftop overlooking the bay. The young man was off his horse before it had actually stopped moving.
“I didn’t have to bring Raulas, Mother! I found a younger healer just up coast!”
Magda dismounted almost as quickly.
*Younger healer?* Gyhard wondered as a thin woman with pale hair hurried toward them.
“Thank all the gods in the Circle and then some!” She grabbed Magda’s hand and pulled her toward an oiled canvas tarp propped tentlike over two still forms and the bent figure of her son. “We’ve kept them as dry as we can, but we didn’t want to move them any farther!”
“What happened?”
“Didn’t Dumi tell you?” She broke off as Dumi moaned and ran out from under the tarp toward the edge of the cliff. “Dumi! Stop! It’s gotten worse! Don’t go past the ropes!”
Dumi ignored her. A few of the villagers began moving to intercept him, but they seemed to be carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders and were obviously not going to get to him in time.
Vree slammed her heels into her horse’s ribs and when the astonished animal leaped forward, she slipped free of the stirrups and drew her feet up under her on the saddle. As they drew level with her quarry, she yanked back hard on the reins. The sudden stop catapulted her forward. She flipped in the air and landed with knees bent, palms against the ground, facing a still running Dumi. Straightening her legs, she drove her shoulder into his stomach and, a heartbeat later, knelt on his shoulders for the second time that afternoon.