by Tanya Huff
Five heavily-muscled bodies dropped onto the benches at the far end of Gerek’s and Bannon’s table. The old men ignored them, all their attention on the game. The young women nervously shifted positions in order to keep them in sight.
“Hey, Pa!” A sausagelike finger pointed down the table at Bannon. “Look at the pretty little man.”
Five heads swiveled on bull necks.
“I hear that in the South they cut off their balls to make ’em that pretty.”
“What did he say?” Bannon asked.
Gerek shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”
“I heard,” offered one of the others through scabbed lips, “that if you stroke a Southerner just right, they squeal like a pig.”
“You squeal, Southerner?”
Teeth clenched, Gerek began to rise.
A viselike grip around his wrist stopped him. “It’s me they insult,” Bannon said quietly. “So it’s my slaughtering fight. Tell me what they said.”
Two of them squealed. Three of them laughed.
Gerek told him. Bannon’s fingers tightened around his wrist. “I don’t need your help,” he growled.
“There’re five of them.”
“I can count, Your Grace.”
Scowling, Gerek sat back down. Fine, he snarled silently. He thinks he’s such hot shit, he can prove it. I’ll be here to pull his butt out of trouble when he gets in over his head.
Over his head seemed an apt observation when the four younger men stood.
“Jonakus!”
He waved a placating hand at the innkeeper. “Don’t worry. The boys won’t bust nothin’ but the pretty little Southerner.”
“I’m warning you …”
Her warning came too late. Bannon somehow managed to spit in three out of four faces.
Over the next few moments bellows of rage turned to shrieks of pain that didn’t quite drown out the wet crack of more than one joint separating.
Gyhard watched with his mouth open and barely managed to get it shut in time to yell, “Don’t kill anyone!” before it was all over.
Eyes glittering, Bannon stroked one of his daggers across Jonakus’ throat. “Squeal,” he said in heavily accented Shkoden.
Sweat beading the dome of his head, Jonakus stared in horror at the broken, bleeding bodies of his sons and squealed.
Bannon moved the point of the blade to the stubbled chin and lifted Jonakus’ head until their eyes locked. “I see again,” he told the older man quietly, “I kill.”
The sudden smell of urine and a spreading stain indicated just how much Jonakus believed the threat.
Stepping back, Bannon gestured at the door. “Go.”
Three of them carrying two of them, they went.
The innkeeper picked the abandoned purse up out of a puddle of beer. “This oughta cover the damages.”
Wondering why he was the one panting when Bannon had been in the fight, Gerek stared at her. “That’s a pretty minor reaction! Does this sort of thing happen often?”
She snorted. “Not usually until they’ve had a bit more to drink. Then they get ugly.”
“What did she say?” Bannon asked, cleaning off his daggers.
When Gerek translated, the ex-assassin laughed, his eyes still gleaming. “I’d hate to see them any uglier.”
“No one’s ever beaten them before,” the innkeeper added. “I’m impressed.”
“Only impressed?” Gerek shook his head. “As much as it pains me to admit it, I’m amazed!”
Shrugging, she started to clean up. “Keep an inn long enough and nothing amazes you, my lord. We had a two-headed calf in here once. Still alive it was, too.”
“What did she say?”
By the time Gerek finished translating the information about the calf, both men were laughing so hard they had to sit down. A soft touch on Bannon’s arm drew him around.
Kasya stood looking down at him, eyes half-lidded, cheeks flushed, moist lips slightly parted. “I think,” she sighed, drawing one finger lightly along Bannon’s jaw, “that I’m in love.”
Bannon didn’t bother asking for a translation.
* * * *
Far to the south, at the Sixth Army garrison, the corporal of the watch stood over the huge brass drums and pounded out the pattern that began the day. A soldier for fifteen of his twenty-one years, Bannon obeyed the command and woke. He lay testing his surroundings for threat then rose silently to his feet. In the pale gray, predawn light, he scanned the loft, not moving, barely breathing, until he was certain he and Gerek were alone.
He’d returned to the inn when Kasya had fallen asleep, slipping away from the warm comfort of her embrace and back to the security of a companion he knew was no threat. While he regretted leaving, and doubted the necessity, he couldn’t break the caution of his training. Assassins had died of warm comfort before. For all Gerek a’Pjerin was an arrogant millstone hung around his neck, he was also an ally.
And an attractive ally, too, Bannon admitted, his gaze tracing the line of dark curls running over ridged muscle and disappearing behind a loosened waistband. Had circumstances been different … He put desire aside with little difficulty, Kasya having taken the edge off.
Wearing only breeches and wrist daggers, he slipped down to the inn yard. In the Empire, inns even smaller than this one would have a bathhouse. “Well, what can you expect from barbarians?” he sighed, glancing disdainfully at the hand-pump and trough by the door.
Back to the rising sun, he began his morning exercises. As he moved through the increasingly complicated pattern, he couldn’t help but imagine he was no longer alone. Every now and then, out of the corner of his eye, he’d actually see Vree in her accustomed place and it hurt every time when he turned to face her and she wasn’t there.
She should be there. Beside him.
This was the time of day when he missed her the most; missed the sound of her, the smell of her, the mirror image as they moved together in the assassin’s deadly dance that promised an eternal partnership. He’d get her back. He had to get her back.
And what then? asked a little voice in his head. Do you return to the army?
No. Not the army.
What about the prince?
The prince needed him. He needed Vree. But somehow he couldn’t seem to bring those two needs together.
The prince is mine. Not Vree’s. Not the army’s. Not our-slaughtering-father-the-dead-commander Neegan’s. Mine. In his whole life, the only other thing he’d ever had of his own had been Vree. Until Gyhard had taken her.
Gyhard.
He twisted in the air, his heel slamming into an imaginary throat, a dagger suddenly in each hand. Once Gyhard was dead, everything would be like it used to be between him and Vree.
Rolling up off one shoulder, he saw Gerek cross the yard to the privy and his lip curled. He’s hobbling like a slaughtering old man. When he emerged, a moment later, Bannon was as far from the privy as he could be without leaving the yard. He wanted to be alone with his memories of Vree. He didn’t want to put up with the facetious comments of the slaughtering useless noble foisted on him by a ball-less ambassador.
Ignoring the hint, Gerek crossed the yard and stood just outside the danger zone. He had a good eye, Bannon reluctantly acknowledged. One of the more common scars in the Imperial Armies came as a result of standing too close to an assassin’s morning exercises.
He went on a little longer and a little more strenuously than he would’ve without this particular audience, but finally, torso shining with sweat, he had to stop.
“What?” he demanded.
“Nothing.” Gerek spread his hands, determined not to be provoked. Maybe the Southerner could be a pain in the ass all the way to Bartek Springs, but he had better things to do with his energy than reply in kind. “I watched Vree exercise one morning back in the Citadel and you two move exactly the same way.” Uncomfortably the same way, actually. Although not usually attracted to men, he thanked the Circle for loos
e trousers.
Unbuckling his wrist sheaths, eyes locked on the sweaty leather, Bannon scowled. “And why were you up that early, Your Grace. Because she was?”
His implication colored the question. “We didn’t sleep together, if that’s what you’re asking.” Making an obvious point of considering it, Gerek added, “I guess I’m not Gyhard’s type.”
Bannon’s head jerked up. “My sister makes her own choices!”
That was more, much more than Gerek could resist. “Funny, that’s what Gyhard said. You may have a greater amount in common than you think.”
Even half-expecting the attack, it still came faster than he was able to react. He survived only because Bannon ignored a lifetime of training and tried to throttle him barehanded. Fighting for air, Gerek threw himself forward. The impact with the ground broke the smaller man’s hold. He managed to get in two good blows before something that felt like a steel bar drove up under the center of his ribs and he found himself flat on his back, gasping for breath, staring up at a dagger point suspended terrifyingly close over his left eye.
Oh, shit. The moment he could speak, determined to hide the fear even if it killed him, he gasped, “Your nose … is bleeding.”
Startled, Bannon touched his upper lip with the fingers of his free hand and gazed in astonishment at the crimson smear.
Gerek tried very hard to look past the dagger. “The four guys last night … didn’t even touch you.”
Rolling his weight back off Gerek’s shoulders, Bannon stood, shaking his head as though to settle in unsettling information. He picked up his wrist sheaths, and walked, still shaking his head, toward the inn.
With his left arm clamped against his chest, Gerek got to his feet. “Well, I hope that shook up your worldview,” he muttered at the closing door. “You arrogant little prick.” Then, with the memory of that dagger poised to take out his eye sending him limping back to the privy, he added, “Remind me never to do that again.”
Nine
On his hands and knees in a stand of larch, Kars gently picked another mushroom. He examined the pale yellow cap for blemishes, ran a finger lightly over the white warts, turned it over to check that the gills were open and free of insect damage, and, satisfied, placed it with the others in a fold of his robe.
“We’re very lucky,” he said softly. “In a few weeks, it will be too late. Do you see, Kait? This little veil here, it becomes a collar when they’re old.”
Kait whispered something, but he couldn’t hear it over the gentle patter of dead larch needles falling from the trees. He didn’t ask her to repeat herself; he knew how frustrated she was that she couldn’t help. He wished she’d believe him when he said it didn’t matter, that he loved her for what she did and loved her no less for what she could no longer do. But she was young and the young always felt they had to prove themselves. Being dead wouldn’t change that.
The inner flesh of the mushrooms was firm and white. He tested each with the point of a ridged fingernail to be certain they hadn’t lost their moisture to age. It was late afternoon before he found enough. When he’d finally filled the fold in his robe, he straightened, ancient joints protesting the damp, and carried the fungus carefully back to the hollow where he slept.
He had the rocks ready—one with a hollow and one with a curve—and his small, fire-blackened pot, and a green glass flask that had once held … once held … He couldn’t remember. It had last held the same promise he would pour into it today.
Who had told him about the mushrooms? Who had shown him how to crush them for their juices? It had to have been the dead, but there had been so many dead.
So many.
One hand rose to stroke the necklace of bone; a remembrance from each of them as they’d left him. He had lost them all. All but Kait.
“Now we’ve found a new family,” he told the shadow of the girl hovering protectively around him. “A family the stockade will help us to protect.”
Kait knew where they kept their beer. They took all their water from a single well.
He hummed as he poured the cloudy liquid from the pot to the flask. Kait moved closer to listen. He could only remember one Song.
* * * *
Eyes narrowed, Karlene rocked back on her heels and watched a guard wearing the double sunburst of the Second Army efficiently search her packs. He’d obviously been on border duty long enough, or often enough that he didn’t have to actually think about what he was doing. His bored expression never changed as he rummaged through her meager possessions.
“Please …” When he looked up from her instrument case, she added, “Be careful with that.”
A few minutes later, she was back out in the drizzle and moving up the gentle slope to the pass. She’d been prepared to use Command to get across the border, but no one in the customs house seemed to think it strange she was going back to Shkoder—after all, the Empire now had bards of its own. Shoulders hunched against the wet, she walked quickly through the Giant’s Cleft.
The moment she passed the midpoint, the world felt different. It shouldn’t have, as she didn’t Sing earth, but it did and in a multitude of ways she couldn’t define, she knew she was home. Her step lightened as she hurried toward the guard tower at the Shkoden end of the pass. When a helmed figure stepped forward, she Sang her name.
“Bard?” Nastka pulled off her helm and peered across the border, as though she were checking to be sure that this unexpected bard was alone. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve been called home.” Remembering why destroyed her pleasure in it. “I’ve been in the Empire for the last two years.”
“Well, since you’re not Gabris, you must be Karlene. I’m Nastka i’Milena.” Holding out her fist, Nastka laughed at the other woman’s expression. “This is the easiest pass through these mountains. We make it a point to know about any prominent Shkodens on the other side.” Her other fist lightly pounded her leather armor. “If the Empire tries anything, we’ll be ready.”
She seemed so proud that Karlene didn’t have the heart to tell her the Empire barely thought about Shkoder at all and that its most likely venue for “trying something” would be dumping surplus production and not an armed invasion. Shkoder’s natural defenses were too good to attempt the latter and the trade imbalance too great to ignore the former.
“So, what do you Sing?”
“Air, fire, and water.”
“You going to be in the area for Third Quarter Festival? Jazep’s around somewhere and if the two of you could get together in the next couple of days, you’d have all four quarters. You might even get me into a Center to hear that.”
“Jazep’s a friend of yours?”
“Oh, yeah, we go way back. We thought my eldest girl, Jelena, was his. Turned out she wasn’t, so he stood as her name-father.” As Karlene’s expression changed, she frowned. “What is it?”
There were a hundred ways to tell her, but they all came down to the same thing. “Jazep’s been killed. That’s why I’ve been called home.”
Nastka stood perfectly still for a long moment, her complete and utter lack of reaction speaking of a greater loss than weeping and wailing would have. She blinked once, silent tears cutting a warm path through the rain on her face. “Was it the thing he was following? The thing that scared the kigh?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going after it.” Not a question; but then, it didn’t need to be. “Do you know what it is?”
Karlene sighed and nodded. “It’s a Cemandian bard.”
“I thought the Cemandians hated bards.”
“They do.” Remembering the abomination Kars had become, she added, “They tortured him because he could Sing the kigh. They made him insane.”
The information elicited no sympathy. “Him? It isn’t an old man, is it? Looks too old to live?” When Karlene’s eyes widened, she explained about Jazep’s visit and about the old man who’d come into Shkoder at around the right time. She didn’t mention that he�
�d called out a name as he crossed the border. He was crazy, after all. “If we’d known,” she growled, grinding the knuckles of her right hand into her left palm, “we could’ve stopped him. Jazep might still be alive.”
“Or you might be dead.”
A jerky rise and fall of armored shoulders was her only response. “Two days and I’m finished this shift. I’ve got free time coming. I want to help.”
“Thank you, but no.” Karlene used just enough Voice to push the last word over into Command. “I’ve faced him before, and I think I know his Song. He doesn’t seem to have any protection against bards.”
“Tell that to Jazep,” Nastka reminded her grimly.
* * * *
Just down from the pass, Karlene sat under the umbrella of a huge old pine and listened in astonishment to the message the kigh brought from Marija at Bartek Springs. Her Royal Highness wanted Vree and the healer she was traveling with held? Captain Liene had told Marija to deal with it? It would’ve been laughable had the potential for disaster not been so great. She Sang back a single word.
“How?”
While she waited for an answer, she reflected that Vree’s imminent arrival—or perhaps more accurately, Gyhard’s—came as no surprise. Gyhard had unfinished business with Kars. His past seemed determined to interfere with whatever future he and Vree could cobble together.
“Her Highness leaves how up to us. We don’t have to hold her long, her brother is close behind.”
“Bannon?” Karlene whistled away a kigh unbraiding her hair, and frowned. “What’s Bannon doing in Shkoder?” Then she remembered, the fledglings and Jazep had driven Prince Otavas’ trip to Elbasan right out of her head. Given that Bannon was in the country, sending him after Vree made sense. He was probably the only living person with a chance of stopping her.
It wasn’t going to be pleasant. Bannon hated Gyhard and the last she’d seen them, he wasn’t getting along that well with his sister either.
Had she a way to do it, she might have warned Vree. “All things being enclosed, probably a good thing I can’t.” Neither Her Highness nor the Bardic Captain would be very happy about it. “On the other hand, I’d better warn Marija.