“Your attitude doesn’t become you,” said Gedomir. “Particularly not when I had been going to tell you that, if the autumn ends well, we may be able to find extra money in the household funds for that charity house you operate.”
As usual, outrage at the customary tactics warred with a tenacious vestige of shame for being so ungrateful to his family, with more and newer shame—for feeling the old sort and for knowing the bribe would work—the inevitable winner. “I’m sorry,” said Zelen, trying to sound less truculent than when he’d been nine years old and speaking with a missing front tooth. “That’s kind of you. I’ll see what I can manage by way of invitations, though I really can’t make any promises.”
“I didn’t expect any.” Gedomir pulled on one of his gloves. He hadn’t taken his cloak off: the visit was a swift one, an afterthought to his primary business in the city. “Out of curiosity, what would you recommend we do?”
“Help them, of course. I’ve no notion of tactics in the middle of a forest, and I’m certain plans would need to be made, but that’s a matter for specifics—the generals could discuss it. We have wizards and soldiers, neither doing very much.” The words came more heatedly than Zelen would have expected. “And it’s an army of Gizath’s creatures attacking human lands. How could we not see a just cause there?”
“Ah.” Gedomir’s mouth twitched in what, on a more frivolous man, might have passed for a smile. “You would have served the Dark Lady well, Zelen.”
* * *
“I’m afraid I don’t have the time to be fitted properly,” Branwyn lied and, more truthfully, added, “but I’m certain that a seamstress of your skills can work from this dress’s measurements.”
She handed a folded bundle to the woman, who took it with a cautious expression and shook out the blue wool gown that had served Branwyn at court and a number of formal dinners. For a miracle, neither she nor anyone else had stained it yet, but Lady Rognozi had gently made it clear that Branwyn needed more.
“The fabric’s a bit thick,” the seamstress said after making a lengthy comparison between Branwyn and the dress and pinching the wool between thumb and forefinger, “but if you’re willing to try on the other once I make it, so I can adjust it properly, I can manage. What are you thinking for the ball gown? I’ll tell you now I haven’t got much left, this close to the festival, but there’s some rose-printed gold silk that would suit you nicely.”
“That will be fine,” said Branwyn, “thank you. When it comes to the cut, though, I’ll need sleeves to the wrists and a long skirt.”
The seamstress was one Lady Rognozi recommended. She was, therefore, used to dealing with the vagaries of the nobility and used to maintaining an appearance of calm neutrality. Only a few seconds of unblinking regard gave her away.
That and Yathana’s opinion. She’s not sure whether you’re a raw-meat-eating barbarian or one of Marton’s sort, except that Marton and his lot wouldn’t go dancing unless it was at sword point.
“You can make the neckline low and the dress tight,” Branwyn added, stung at the comparison, “and cut out as much around the stomach and back as you can while maintaining the fit. I have scars on my arms and legs, though, that I’d prefer to keep hidden.”
That was, in most senses, another lie. The reforging did leave its marks, and Branwyn’s were on her limbs, but they weren’t as easily explained as most scars would have been. Branwyn had picked up a few of those on her back and sides, even with the quick and thorough healing that Sentinels gained. The prospect of showing them in a ball gown didn’t disturb her at all.
You’re both lucky, said Yathana. Trying to disguise Rowan’s hair, or, gods help us, Vivian’s face, that would be a job.
Branwyn knew it, and knew as well that it had little to do with luck. Her comparative skill at diplomacy had played a part in getting her sent to Heliodar, as did her blessing from Tinival and the fact that she’d been on hand to witness Thyran’s attack, but another, larger factor was the fact that clothes could hide the marks of her reforging.
She could make everyone believe that she was entirely human and nothing more—at least as long as all went well.
* * *
Evening was falling in vibrant shades of rose, gold, and violet. A few stars were out, low above the city’s roofs, when Zelen followed Lady Rognozi’s instructions to the dressmaker’s on Flaminia Street.
He paused in front of the shop, where a plaster dummy wearing a butterfly-print gown smirked at him despite its lack of features. Lady Rognozi had been fairly confident regarding his timing, but she was a woman who took a while about her wardrobe. It would be just his luck to be too late—or perhaps the will of the gods, thwarting his more underhanded, if still likely harmless, motives.
When he tapped on the door, a boy with a spotted complexion and arms an inch too long for his otherwise good attire answered. “Buying for a…lady, sir? Has she been here before? You’ll have to know her figure pretty well otherwise.” He winked.
“Rather hoping to meet one here,” Zelen said.
The boy snickered. Zelen would have, too, twenty years before. “We’re not that kind of establishment, m’lord, but I have heard—”
“That’s to say,” Zelen interrupted, “I was hoping to find one of your customers here. A blond lady from Criwath, my height or so, blue eyes… Oh, thank the gods,” he said, as Branwyn stepped out of the back room, bowing to the seamstress, before Zelen had to try describing her figure to an adolescent.
“It’s always wonderful to be appreciated,” said Branwyn, turning toward him with a startled smile, “but I don’t believe I’ve done much to deserve it.”
“You can’t imagine how untrue that is. Good evening,” Zelen added, and bowed.
“Good evening,” said Branwyn. Her smile lingered and turned curious. “You were looking for me?”
“I was. Lady Rognozi said you’d still be here.”
“That explains the method, but not the motive,” she teased.
She was dressed plainly, in the same dark clothing that she’d worn at the clinic and the Rognozis’ house, but it was much less plain now that Zelen had explored the form beneath it. The devilish glint in her eye didn’t help his composure, nor did the quirk of her lips. The shop boy was going to start snickering again soon.
“I’d like to take you to dinner,” he said, abandoning all preliminaries. “There’s a place a quarter hour’s walk from here that I think you’d enjoy.”
“You appear to have a good sense of that so far,” said Branwyn. “I’d be glad to go.”
* * *
Leaving the shop became a mindless undertaking: rote thanks, a bow, a coin for the boy. Then she was out on the street, her pace and Zelen’s falling into an easy match, and the evening took on new life and vividness. Energy Branwyn had lacked a quarter of an hour before flooded back threefold.
“It’s not what I’d call elegant,” Zelen said, leading them down a narrow road that snaked behind the public bathhouses and around the main barracks of the city guards, “but they spice their wine well, and they make a truly excellent pierogi. Besides—and apologies if I’m wrong in your case—but I’ve found there can be such a thing as too much elegance.”
“You aren’t wrong at all,” Branwyn said, laughing. “I’ll admit I don’t dislike living a mostly ornate life for a few weeks, but a simple meal is a nice change. Besides, even tavern fare here is more elaborate than what I’m used to.”
And you’d eat boiled horsemeat without salt if it meant lingering near his biceps for a few hours.
“I take it,” Zelen added, as they went on, getting free of the crowds and coming into a clearer street, “that I’m not interrupting any delicate negotiations. Lady Rognozi said that you were free as far as she knew.”
“For a wonder, yes. I was going to have a tray sent to my room and read The Triumphs of Aeliona, but I’m cer
tain you can entertain me as well as Fousan for a while.”
She gave him a long, slow look, and he met it. The darkness of the city streets at night was no obstacle to reforged vision, and Branwyn saw clearly how Zelen’s eyes darkened and the pulse under his jaw beat faster. Dinner would be only a prelude, a pause before they resumed what they’d had to leave off two nights before.
The street was quiet now, the crowds dispersed and less drunken or rowdy. Footsteps and quiet conversations were the only sounds.
“I’m hopeful that I can manage to amuse you,” Zelen said. His voice was soft, but there was nothing subdued or timorous about it: it was the brush of skin on velvet, the wingbeat of the hunting owl. “My conversation may not be quite as lyrical, but—”
Behind them, at least two people drew weapons. Branwyn realized as much in an instant. In another, she knew that the last turn had taken them into a lonely part of the street, where the buildings were mostly warehouses and shops with no owners living above them. In a third, she saw Zelen reach for his sword with an air of shock she thought was genuine. She didn’t have time to be sure.
She was spinning already, Yathana out.
The street behind them was blocked. Seven figures in dark clothes stood there, weapons in hands: Branwyn spotted two swords, a few clubs, and at least one crossbow in the back ranks.
This was going to be quite the evening.
Chapter 12
Zelen’s first thought, when Branwyn tensed and dropped her hand from his arm, was of robbers. Even as he drew his sword, he concluded otherwise. They weren’t in the part of the city the larger gangs claimed as their own, and no small band of ruffians would have gone after two fit, relatively young, and well-armed people.
Also, the people who’d been following them were silent. Robbers would have demanded money, and drunks out for blood sport would have gloated. These just advanced, the dark mass splitting into individual armed forms.
With a grace that Zelen wouldn’t have credited if he hadn’t seen it, Branwyn swiveled on one foot, turning her side toward their assailants. A twang cut through the air, and then a light object clattered against the stones where she’d been standing.
Facts flashed across Zelen’s awareness as single words: crossbow and then assassins.
Running wouldn’t help. The city watch was few and far between, nothing to pin his hopes on, but anything was worth a shot. “Murder!” Zelen shouted at the top of his lungs.
Then he threw himself forward, coming in low to the ground and whipping his sword toward the ankles of the closest adversary. The killer sidestepped, but barely, and then Zelen was in among them, where darkness and close quarters gave him the advantage. The assassins didn’t want to hit each other, but he was perfectly content to kill every damned one of them, if he could manage it.
Seven against two meant he had little hope there either.
He turned in time to catch a club on his upper arm rather than the side of his head. The pain was instant and breathtaking. Zelen struck out half-blindly and felt flesh give way before his blade, drawing a hiss from the man it was attached to. As his vision cleared, he pressed the advantage, stepping forward to block a lunge, then whipping his sword sideways and up across his foe’s chest.
A clang came from his side in the darkness, then the beginning of a startled cry, and finally a gurgle. The voice was low, totally unlike Branwyn’s. Thank you, Mistress of Flame, Zelen managed to pray silently before coming around, back to the wall, to cut into the knee of a club-wielding woman.
The strike took the woman down, as Zelen had known it would: she curled up shrieking on the ground. The crossbowman fired again. Zelen hiked a knee into the groin of another assassin—the man he’d wounded first, with the cut on his chest bleeding copiously but apparently not enough to keep him down—and glanced over his shoulder.
Branwyn pulled her blade from the chest of a dying man and leapt sideways as another club came down. Zelen’s heart froze. He knew she wouldn’t make it, but he couldn’t watch. His foe was recovering, another man was coming in with an overhand slash, and Zelen had to turn back, raising his sword in his own frantic defense.
A series of grunts and cries meant Branwyn had escaped grievous harm. In his gratitude, Zelen had no leisure to consider the ring of metal on metal he’d heard before they started, a noise without any apparent source.
* * *
A crossbow bolt hit Branwyn in the neck.
It bounced off, of course, but the impact closed her windpipe briefly, causing a deeply undignified ulgk. More importantly, the man in front of her gaped, and there was a gasp from behind him that meant the wretched crossbowman had likely seen the deflection, too, despite the darkness. There was a flurry of movement in that direction, not coming toward her.
She would have sighed if her breath hadn’t already fallen into the rhythm of the fight. When the man in front of her tried to strike, a swing made slightly wild by his surprise, Branwyn caught the blade, stepped in, and whipped Yathana across his jugular. She sprang past him toward the fleeing crossbowman, but one of his friends was in the way, trying to break her skull again.
That blow was easier to sidestep than the one that had hit before, praise Poram’s darkness and Sitha’s stone. Blunt impacts hurt, even in Branwyn’s metal form, and the muscles on her left side were soon going to start feeling the hit she hadn’t been able to dodge.
Her circular kick to the woman’s elbow missed the joint but connected with a crack nonetheless, and from there it was only a smooth unfolding of her body to plant Yathana in her foe’s stomach and carve a path upward.
The crossbowman had fled, though, and that was far from ideal.
Three of the assassins were dead, another down and curled in on herself, and one fled. As Branwyn turned from her new position, Zelen ran the sixth through. He winced as he did so, but did a good job of it, and neatly ducked to avoid the long knives of the seventh. That brought Zelen within the assassin’s guard, which he took quick and thorough advantage of: a solid punch to the stomach, then a sword hilt to the temple.
“Your sense of range is excellent,” said Branwyn, after the man crumpled and she peered around to ensure that no more were coming. “Are you hurt?”
Zelen’s face was whiter than usual and his lips set, but he shook his head. “I was about to ask you the same,” he said, and then frowned, examining Branwyn with an intensity that made her glad of the darkness and his unaltered vision. “You gave me a rotten few moments there, you know.”
“I’m well,” she said, “but sorry. I’d imagine they were after me, unless you have more enemies than I was aware of.”
* * *
“No,” said Zelen. “Politics can be ruthless, but it hasn’t been deadly here in longer than I’ve been alive. Besides, I’m not much of a target.”
He bent to the man he’d just felled and felt his neck. The heartbeat there was steady. Later, the fellow might well die—knocks on the skull could do that—but for the moment, there was little that needed doing. Zelen rose and went toward the woman he’d crippled, who’d fallen silent and still when he’d been too busy to notice. Blood pooled under her leg, but she still lived as well.
The fabric of his cloak didn’t tear easily; he had to take his knife to it.
“Here,” said Branwyn, coming up behind him and holding out her hands. “A shame neither of us brought bandages.”
“Dreadfully negligent. What night on the town is complete without a bit of bloodshed?” Zelen passed his cloak to Branwyn, who drew it taut and held it for the blade. He cut a long strip of the fabric, then knelt down again and began to bind the assassin’s leg. The darkness was no friend to his endeavor, but he managed.
“This is nothing new for you, is it?”
“Bandaging, or doing it without a light in an alley when I’ve just escaped death? At the risk of ruining my reputation, I’ll giv
e very different answers.”
Branwyn laughed, soft and smooth as always. “I was thinking the former,” she said, “though I’m no judge of your life. I’ve seen less skill from healers who’ve spent years at it—less from a few Mourners, in fact.”
“I’m sure you say that to all the men,” said Zelen, “but I thank you.” He tied the knot and got to his feet. The others caught his eye then, the ones beyond his reach.
The world smelled of blood and offal. He’d never before seen any of the people in the alley, but four of them had been people and no longer were. Zelen bowed his head. “Queen of the Dead, Mistress of the Flames, Letar, Who Is the End of All, we give these souls into your governance.” He still knew the words by heart, he discovered, and Branwyn joined him. “May their evil perish with their flesh, and may you in your evenhandedness best use what good remains.”
“So it is, and was, and shall be hence,” Branwyn added at the end, and shrugged when Zelen glanced at her. “A local variant, I expect. Thank you. That was kindly done.”
“It was what I could do.”
The pleasant tension from before the attack was gone. Branwyn was as lovely as ever, even bedraggled, but Zelen couldn’t have thought of pleasure in that alley, and she gave no indication of doing so either. Her hand lingered on Zelen’s as she returned his cloak, though, smoother than he remembered and oddly cool. He suspected that the fight had thrown off his perceptions.
“Have you killed people before?” she asked.
“No. Seen them die, yes, but never at my hand.” The weight of that was coming toward him, the dust of its progress already visible from the walls of his mind. “You?” he asked, and then recalled her obvious skill and felt idiotic.
But she shook her head. “Not people, until now. If I hadn’t been used to other creatures, I might have thought to try and spare these. Ya—a friend of mine would say that was stupid, and she might be right. It’s certainly pointless to regret now.”
The Nightborn Page 8