The Nightborn

by Isabel Cooper

  “Just so, my lord, and worse. Thyran the Traitor, Thyran Bloody-Handed, has returned.” Before any of the seven could reply, before the startled gasps from around the court could turn into murmurs of speculation and disbelief, Branwyn continued. “I saw him myself, in the siege of Oakford, and I’ll swear as much before any knight of Tinival. The man who broke the world walks it again.”

  * * *

  She was the most interesting thing to happen all day—all bloody year, if Zelen was being honest.

  The pageantry of council sessions always appealed to him: the rolling words of the ceremony, the smell of incense, and the rich colors of tapestries and stained glass and clothing. He came away feeling as though good had been done, and despite his tenuous position, he’d helped accomplish it often enough that he didn’t entirely dread the meetings or reporting on them to his father. The family very rarely issued instructions to him, and mostly it didn’t offend Zelen to carry them out when they did. Some meetings were actually exciting.

  Until Madam Alanive’s entrance, this had not been one of them. The year was winding down, and the business at hand involved reports of winter supplies—necessary but dull—preparations for the Festival of Irinyev—much as they’d been every year—and toad-like Marton rambling about the Problem of Vice in Our Fair City for the fifty-third time.

  Then, this woman. New. Terrifying in the news she’d brought: Thyran, servant of Gizath the Traitor God, had almost conquered the world a hundred-odd years back. He had started years of storms, blizzards that had damaged even Heliodar badly and had reduced the more northern landlocked kingdoms to famine and cannibalism. He, his storms, or his armies had also unleashed a fascinating assortment of monsters on the world. Just before the storms had reached their peak, he’d vanished. “Died,” all of Zelen’s tutors had said, but they’d never mentioned how. When Zelen had gotten old enough to read for himself, he’d discovered that nobody knew.

  If he was back, with an army… Zelen saw the blood drain from his fellow councillors’ faces and felt it leave his own. Nearsighted Starovna raised their joined hands above their head, parted them in a circle, and rejoined them at their heart, the sign that invoked the Four Gods for protection. Kolovat smoothed his mustache.

  Marton was the first to speak. “What proof, madam, do you have of this?”

  The woman didn’t seem surprised by the question, nor as irritated as Zelen would’ve been—though, granted, she didn’t have ten years of dealing with Marton to get her back up in advance. She faced the assembled council with her shoulders straight and her chin high: serenity, thought Zelen, but no trace of arrogance.

  He also thought that bad news had never come in such a lovely form.

  Madam Alanive was as tall as most of the council, as tall as Zelen himself or taller, with broad shoulders, round hips, and hard muscle showing beneath the sleeves of her tightly laced gown of blue wool. Her eyes were a slightly darker blue than the gown’s summer-sky color, her hair rich gold and pulled back into a simple knot, her features square and strong boned.

  Along the hem of her gown and the cuffs of the sleeves ran gold embroidery in patterns of knotwork diamonds, and opals shone from the ends of a bronze torc at her neck. The woman wore no rings, and the torc was too broad, and too open at the front, to be used against her. Her skirt was neither very full nor very long, and the boots she wore under it were polished to a sheen, but still boots.

  That might have been normal dress in Criwath, but Zelen suspected it was more significant, and he wasn’t surprised by the woman’s reply.

  “I was present at Oakford when he attacked, my lord,” she said. Her voice was low-pitched and precise, every syllable clear. “I witnessed his magic at work. The man himself, if he is a man, was recognized by the soulsword of a Sentinel there, among other signs.”

  The soulsword made sense. The Sentinels, odd creatures that they were, each carried a dead person’s spirit in their sword, usually one with some expertise in battle or magic.

  “Sentinels,” Starovna said, more to their fellow councillors than to Branwyn, “generally know their business where such things are concerned.”

  “After a hundred years,” said vulpine Yansyak, “even a spirit could be in error.”

  “And the Sentinels have their own…agendas, you know. I know little about them or their training,” Marton said, proud of his ignorance, “but they’re not precisely human by the time they take the field, and even assuming good intent”—which his tone implied would be foolish to do—“gods know what sort of faults in perception or judgment that leaves them open to.”

  Branwyn Alanive listened quietly, without a dramatic change of expression, but Zelen saw her jaw tighten. He felt for her: he wanted to throw inkstands at half the council on a regular basis, and he wasn’t generally pleading for help in a war.

  “It seems to me,” he said, leaning back in his chair and drawling in a manner that had always infuriated his father and older brother and did much the same to Marton now, “it doesn’t matter much whether the Bloody-Handed himself has made an appearance or not. The lady’s speaking of a damned large army on the Criwath border, with at least one magician who’s Thyran’s equal in power. Unless we claim Olwin and the rest are imagining that, it sounds as though the rumors are true, and we have a problem.”

  The other five glanced at each other. Kolovat and Starovna were nodding, grave. Yansyak was chewing on her lower lip. If Thyran wasn’t leading the army, she was too polite to say in front of the visitor, maybe whoever it was would be content with Criwath. Maybe it wasn’t Heliodar’s fight. Marton was tapping his fingers on the table, considering a number of issues, none of them likely matters Zelen wanted to hear about.

  Rognozi surveyed all of them and then lifted his thin hands.

  “Enough,” he said. “Madam Alanive, you have stated the premise of your case and stated it well. We’ve asked those questions which come to mind, and you’ve answered. This matter deserves more consideration than that we can give in an afternoon’s audience. We will take it up again…” He considered, glanced at the faces of his subordinates, and then said, “Two weeks hence, at noon.”

  This time, Branwyn’s dismay was far more evident. The others might not have noticed the tension in her shoulders or the widening of her eyes, but her quick inhalation nearly echoed in the room. “My lord,” she said, taking a step forward, “I don’t wish to question your judgment, but the matter is urgent. The border holds for now, but there’s no knowing when Thyran’s next attack might come or what he’s doing in the meantime.”

  “All the more reason for caution,” said Starovna, with the same lack of passion they’d used to support Branwyn’s claim.

  “As you say,” Rognozi agreed. He addressed Branwyn again, a perfect formal blank that Zelen knew from experience was utterly immovable. “Madam, your passion speaks well for your cause. But if the matter is an urgent one, so too is it weighty, and I will not see our blood spilled in haste. The schedule stands.”

  Branwyn, without Zelen’s experience, nonetheless clearly had caught on to the futility of arguing. “As you say, my lord.”

  Only then did Rognozi allow himself his dry version of sympathy. “Where are your lodgings?” he asked.

  “The Leaping Porpoise, my lord, near the harbor.”

  “I would house you as befits an ambassador,” said Rognozi, “and my wife would welcome the company.”

  Knowing Lady Rognozi, Zelen was sure that was true, but Madam Alanive wasn’t. He recognized the struggle on her face as she battled between not wanting to impose and not wanting—or not daring—to decline an offer from the high lord. “My lord is too kind,” she finally said.

  Rognozi gestured to one of the footmen. “You will tend to her belongings.” Not bothering to get an answer, he turned back to the room at large. “The hour comes for us to take our leave,” he said, the first step in the clos
ing rite. Servants began circling the room, putting out candles.

  Kolovat stood, the amethysts in his circlet catching the light, and walked to stand at Rognozi’s right. “In the name of Poram’s might and the power of creation.”

  “In the name of Sitha’s craft and the webs that uphold civilization,” Starovna chimed in, walking to the left-hand position.

  Marton positioned himself beside Kolovat. “In the name of Tinival’s justice and the truth we all must seek.” As always, Zelen tried not to roll his eyes.

  “In the name of Letar’s healing,” said Yansyak after a few quick steps to the furthest left of the room, “whether that be union, vengeance, or death.”

  Zelen and Rognozi stood at the center, eldest and youngest, and finished in unison, “May the gods favor that which we’ve done here and guide us in the world outside.”

  Chapter 3

  There were certain difficulties, Branwyn was learning, with being an actual guest in a social sense, rather than a paying customer, seconded soldier, or half-welcome visitor boarding until she could kill the appropriate beast and move on. Chief among them just then was the fact that, while the rest of the court’s inhabitants seemed to know precisely where to go after the closing rite, she didn’t, thanks to Lord Rognozi’s generosity, and thus stood in the middle of the room like a lost duckling. Many of those present, councillors and servants alike, gave her a minute of scrutiny, but none approached.

  If diplomacy hadn’t been involved, Branwyn would have found the nearest servant and made inquiries, but her briefing had been not only lengthy but foreboding. There are more layers in Heliodar’s etiquette, Adept Consus had said, than in a Silanese feast-day cake, and any of them can be a weapon for an enemy. Don’t provide it.

  Branwyn surveyed the room, noting points of entry—official and less so—possible hiding places for traps or assassins, stained-glass windows in complex rose patterns that glowed red and blue even in the afternoon’s subdued light, thick tapestries with soaring dragons and dancing long-limbed stonekin, and furniture that appeared far too heavy to break over a foe’s head, even for her.

  Yathana’s absence from her side left her off-balance. Branwyn thought—prayed, really—that she’d disguised the soulsword enough that the servants who moved her wouldn’t gossip, but there was no way of knowing—and she missed Yathana’s presence regardless. The spirit had grown up in Heliodar, for one thing, before she’d joined the Blades, the militant priests of the Dark Lady, and she might have had useful notions about the situation.

  Gods knew Branwyn didn’t. She stood, tried not to look too lost, and examined the stained-glass windows. Their designs were the gods’ symbols, repeated and joined in patterns: a golden spider for Sitha, a green pine tree for Poram, a blue sword for Tinival, and, for Letar, red droplets that could be blood or tears, or both.

  The craftsmanship was lovely, and the scenes on the tapestries were fascinating, but neither was likely to be any help. Perhaps, Branwyn thought, she should go assist the servants down at the Porpoise.

  Then she saw Verengir turn from a diffident conversation with the mustached lord and head in her direction.

  Standing and in motion, he confirmed her earlier impression. The doublet framed a figure narrow at shoulder and hip and fell just far enough on Verengir’s thighs to encourage speculation. What Branwyn could see of the man’s legs between the hem and the top of his dark-brown boots was clearly lean and well maintained: his burgundy hose left little room for concealment.

  A belt with a bronze buckle in the shape of a topaz-eyed lion held a money pouch, a bronze-hilted knife, and a matching sword. The council got to go armed; Rognozi didn’t, likely for the same reasons he didn’t wear jewelry, and neither did Marton nor Starovna, but the others wore swords of various lengths.

  “Madam Alanive,” he said with a sweeping, flourishing bow, one leg stretching back behind him. “Forgive me if I presume, but you look as though you’d welcome assistance.”

  “I suspect I would, my lord Verengir,” Branwyn replied. “Am I meant to strike out on my own, or follow the high lord like a stray kitten, or—” Over his shoulder she saw Rognozi stroll out of the room, deep in conversation with a man she didn’t recognize. “Ah.” She bit back a curse. “I suppose that eliminates one possibility.”

  Verengir glanced behind him and chuckled, but kindly. “I thought so. Rognozi means well, unless he has reason not to, but it’s probably been a generation since he’s had a guest who doesn’t know the way to his house. And it’s Master Verengir, or Zelen. I won’t be the heir except under truly unfortunate circumstances.”

  “Branwyn, then,” she said, and held out a hand.

  Habits died hard, and she wouldn’t have been sure what else to do in any case, but she was still a little startled when Zelen took her fingers lightly in his, bowed again, and touched his lips lightly to her knuckles. “A pleasure, Branwyn.”

  Her hand tingled at the contact, and the rest of her body wasn’t far behind. “Likewise.”

  “Would you care for an escort, or simply directions?”

  “An escort,” she said, “if you have the leisure.”

  “Oh,” Zelen replied, “I expect I can manage it. I didn’t come with a carriage, but I can hire one easily enough.”

  “I’d prefer to walk, if you’ve no objection. It’d help me learn the city better, and I’ve spent about an aeon sitting lately.”

  “A trouble I know well. Shall we?” He offered a crooked elbow, and Branwyn took it.

  A pit of vipers, Yathana had said about the Heliodar court, never being averse to clichés. Branwyn wasn’t prepared to say that she was wrong, but a few of them did have lovely scales and hissed very prettily.

  * * *

  Impulsive gestures had their flaws, and the downside of offering his arm to Branwyn when they were still in the council chamber was that they had to part when they reached the Star Palace’s outer hallway and footmen brought their cloaks. It was not the most elegant moment Zelen had experienced.

  Branwyn’s cloak was thick black wool, lined and trimmed with gray and brown fur, and an inch or two shorter than her gown: practical, again. She started to reach for it before the footman put it on her, bumped his hand in the process, and grinned awkwardly. “Apologies.”

  “Sickeningly helpless, aren’t we?” Zelen said when another man in livery had helped him into his red brocade cloak. “I promise I do know how to dress myself, rarely as I may call on the skill.”

  Laughing, Branwyn took his offered arm again, though with a carefulness in her movements that made Zelen sure she spent little time in such a position. He would have wagered as much even before: her skin was smooth for a warrior’s, but the marks of sword and bow were still there. She smelled mostly of the mint-scented soap common to the better sort of inn, but slightly of leather and metal as well. “I admit, I’m not used to servants.”

  “And that,” Zelen said, “is probably the other reason Rognozi left you. He expected that your retainers would get directions. His man probably spent a few minutes trying to find them.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” said Branwyn. “I hope it wasn’t inconvenient for him.”

  “No, he’d give up quickly enough. Rognozi was born and raised when nobody would travel alone, that’s all. Not even a soldier.”

  A glint in her eyes and a slight tilt of her lips showed that Zelen had guessed right.

  The gilded magnificence of the Star Palace gave way to the gardens. Trees blazing crimson and gold in autumn colors lined the pathway toward the gates. Beyond them were bare flower beds and rosebushes where the last petals of the season spread blood-red on the ground, casualties of the rain that had slackened to an unpleasantly damp mist.

  “I hadn’t heard the name Thyran since I grew too old for tutors,” Zelen said.

  “Mostly, neither had I,” said Branwyn, and sighed. “
That’s part of what I’m up against, of course. Even the worst—or best, in a way—of necromancers couldn’t raise a man a hundred years dead, and the council knows it.”

  “Then what happened?”

  She gave Zelen a look that felt as though she mapped every inch of his face, then said: “He never died.”

  They came to the garden gates, where the trees parted and fanciful wrought-iron and silver bars allowed a view of Heliodar’s shining many-colored roofs. A few still stood half-fallen-in, and there were gaps that didn’t appear in paintings from a hundred years before. Zelen had gone all his life without really calling that to mind, and now his attention was drawn to the absences, the scars that still lingered.

  “The general who faced him set off a spell and took them both out of time,” Branwyn went on once they’d passed through the gate. “Then, one of Thyran’s more historically minded surviving minions discovered his whereabouts and how to break the enchantment. He didn’t get a wonderful reward for his pains, but he succeeded.”

  “A hundred years of sleep didn’t improve Thyran’s temper, I take it?”

  “No.”

  They took the road down, though not very far. Rognozi’s mansion sat just below the palace on Ravens’ Hill. Zelen searched vainly for a comment with wit to it, abject fear not being quite the thing to show to a woman one admired, short-foundationed though that admiration might be.

  Thyran. At eight, Zelen had dressed up as the man—well, in principle, though it had mostly been a matter of black cloth and injudiciously applied raspberry jam—to try to frighten his sisters. He’d gotten a slap from Alize that had made his ears ring, and another from his nurse. After his father had heard the news, Zelen had slept on his stomach for a week.

  A son of Verengir did not use that name lightly.

  “I can understand why,” Branwyn said into the silence, bringing Zelen back to the present. “Not only does it sound unlikely, but nobody would want to believe it. I didn’t.”

  “You mentioned other signs.”