“I don’t believe you have cause to regret,” said Zelen, and, on impulse, put an arm around her waist. “You likely saved both of our lives. And you were splendid doing it.”
“I’m sure you say that to all the women,” she echoed, “but thank you. And now—” She glanced at the wounded. “Where does one take captured assassins in this city? My information fell woefully short in certain respects.”
Chapter 13
Tinival had a shrine close by, which was fortunate. Branwyn was beginning to feel her bruises even before she and Zelen picked up the surviving assassins, and carrying a decent-sized man a few city blocks didn’t help matters.
It did render her thoroughly conspicuous. She could only be glad that the transformation had worn off by the time they reached any decent lighting, and that Zelen knew the way.
For a man who was entirely human, too, he’d fought quite impressively, and she hadn’t been lying about his skill at healing.
The company was even more valuable. At the end of the prayer, Branwyn had looked from the dead to the two that Zelen had managed to leave alive, and remembered all the comments about Sentinels that she’d never quite been supposed to overhear. Half a step from murderous at the best of times had been one, and Well, they have to satisfy their urges, don’t they? Gods know they’re useful, but…
But.
The man on her back was a dull pain, deadweight despite not technically being dead. The streets were dark, but those people in them stopped to stare regardless, and most backed away.
Have you killed people before?
Not people.
The twistedmen and the rest of Thyran’s creatures were buds from greater beings, fusions of demons and the people who’d gone over to the Worldbreaker’s banner of their own will, spawned with all their progenitors’ hatred. Branwyn had slain other things in her life—outright demons and creatures transformed by sorcery—and she’d never regretted it. She’d wondered, at times, whether they were as irredeemable as the Adeptas said, but she’d always met them when they were preying on her charges, and they were too dangerous for her to even consider being less than lethal.
More to the point, she’d simply never considered it. Twistedmen and monsters were more trouble than they were worth where interrogation was concerned. Gizath’s human forces were more often the business of the Blades, and letting them talk was usually deadly. If you came face-to-face with an enemy, you struck to kill. So Branwyn had been trained, and so she had lived, and until she’d seen Zelen fight, any alternate path had never been more than a vague philosophical concept.
That had made her good at what she did, and what she did was the life she’d chosen. Branwyn couldn’t regret it. All the same, she kept the memory of Zelen’s face when he said You were splendid close, and the remembered feeling of his arm around her made a strengthening contrast to the weight of the unconscious man on her back.
The streets were darker than they had been before, and Branwyn had learned to treasure light where she found it.
* * *
“You bring strange gifts, Master Verengir,” said the knight on duty. He was one of the stonekin, tall and lean with glittering sky-blue streaks in his dark hair.
Zelen knew him slightly, partly from holy days but mostly from occasions when their separate business had taken both of them to the Temple of Letar at the same time. “Well, I was passing a dark alley, Lycellias, and I thought of you,” he said.
Walking had given him some composure back. It had helped more to have a quartet of squires take the wounded away, back into the interior of Tinival’s temple. Zelen knew a Mourner was stationed there: the assassins would live, if divine might could aid them.
“Had they your murder in mind, or did you prevent another’s death?” Lycellias asked.
“I’m fairly sure we were the targets,” said Branwyn, “but how did you know?”
“Had they been footpads, they’d have gone to the guards. Had it been a brawl, you’d have involved no authorities. Therefore…” He spread his hands. “How did it come to pass?”
They told him. Lycellias listened with complete, attentive calm, and as always, Zelen wondered how he managed such stillness while wearing plate mail. He couldn’t have done it, and while he was on the slender side for a human, the stonekin was far narrower in the shoulders and hips. Perhaps it was a blessing of Tinival.
“Some few days may pass before they can speak, if they wish to buy their lives in such a manner,” he said when Zelen and Branwyn had finished their story. “Should that be the case, I assume you’ll wish to know what they say.”
“You assume well,” said Zelen. “Send a note to my house and I’ll come hear from you. If you think I should hear the story direct from the assassins, I’m willing, but the day I start doubting a knight’s accuracy is the day I take to the wilderness and grow a beard.”
Branwyn snickered at the image, and even Lycellias’s thin lips curved up. “And you, lady?” he asked.
“If you don’t mind fetching me,” she said, glancing at Zelen, “it might be better to go through you. I’d rather my hosts not know about this.”
“A courteous guest,” said Lycellias. “Or a suspicious one. The first quality is kind, and the second likely wise.”
“I suppose so.” Branwyn’s chuckle was only an exhalation and had no real humor in it. “I wish I could say that the Rognozis would have no motive to kill me, but I suspect every noble family here could have reason. Granted, if they did want me dead, I’m not sure why they’d hire outside help. They could simply poison my dinner and say I’d fallen ill.”
“That would still make people suspicious,” Zelen said reluctantly, “and a run-in with a lot of thugs might not. Or not as much. There’d be rumors either way, but if I wanted you dead, a few assassins could be a better option, on the balance.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Branwyn said. A smile flickered on her face, appearing and disappearing in a heartbeat. “Lady Rognozi was the one who suggested the dressmaker’s. It’s likely we were followed from there, if not before, assuming I was the target.”
“She made no secret of where you were, though. Granted, she knows me”—Zelen decided not to mention the lady’s matchmaking agenda—“but she doesn’t have a very suspicious nature, and the servants might have told a caller where you’d gone. Unless you’d told them not to.”
“No,” said Branwyn.
Lycellias cleared his throat. “Speculation may serve little purpose now,” he said, “when more knowledge will likely emerge within a few days and may counteract any conclusions you reach. Your homes would serve you well in the meantime. Rest may provide new avenues of speculation.”
And he had his duties to attend to, Zelen read between the lines, and didn’t need two outsiders cluttering up the temple.
“Excellent points,” said Branwyn, apparently reaching the same conclusion. She bowed. “Thank you for your assistance.”
“The Silver Wind calls, and I rejoice in answering. Do either of you feel the need of an escort?”
“Not for me, thank you,” said Zelen. “How many squads of assassins can be lurking about on one night?”
“The night in question has a great deal to do with the answer,” Lycellias said. “Yet I think your judgment sound. May Tinival shield you on your journey.”
* * *
It was a silent walk back to the hill where both the Verengirs and the Rognozis lived—silent between Branwyn and Zelen, at any rate. The city supplied plenty of noises, of the sort Branwyn was familiar with but only just getting used to on a grand scale, and she was careful to note and identify as many as she could.
Zelen had probably been right about the likelihood of more assassins, but probably rarely saved lives.
“Do you have a story prepared?” he asked as they approached the Rognozis’ gates.
Branwyn had
n’t ever needed one before. “I suppose a tavern brawl would reflect poorly on my diplomatic image.”
“That depends on the audience,” Zelen said with a chuckle that warmed her despite both the chill and the situation. “But I’d blame a runaway horse, if I were you. That sort of thing happens from time to time. Say you got out of the way, nobody was hurt, throw in a smashed-up fruit cart if you like. Details tend to help.”
“You sound as though you’ve provided a few alibis before.”
“In my wayward youth.”
“I’m thankful for your waywardness, then.”
“I’d planned to be considerably more wayward,” he said, making a wry face, “but I fear this isn’t our evening.”
“No.” Battle led to lust more than occasionally, but that was in the immediate aftermath, and usually in the flush of triumph. After hauling wounded people through the streets, then talking over who in the crowded city might most want her dead, Branwyn wanted only a hot bath, a soft bed, and darkness. From the lines around Zelen’s eyes and the slump of his shoulders, she suspected he felt the same. “Another time.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” said Zelen. Once again he took her hand and kissed the back, but this time he held it for longer. “And I’ll send word when I hear from Lycellias.”
Chapter 14
“They gave us little enough, I fear,” Lycellias said.
One of the sword-marked doors led to a short, wide hallway of polished maple. A plain door off of that opened onto a small but airy room where two couches faced each other across a golden-red wooden table. Lycellias sat on one, Branwyn and Zelen on the other. The news surprised none of them.
“Can’t expect a person to give their name and address when they hire killers,” he said, “damned disobliging as it is of them.”
“No,” said Branwyn, “but I’d cherished hopes of a description.”
Lycellias nodded. “So too had I. But the prisoners each said that the person who sought them out was cloaked and hooded. Beneath the hood, they both said, the face was unsteady. It shifted constantly so that they couldn’t speak definitely of any feature.”
“Did they get any sense of a figure? A voice?” Zelen asked.
“Tall, they said, with neither breasts nor curved hips that they could make out. A cloak hides much, of course, and much more can be done with binding. They did say that the person spoke with refinement and, indeed, that they acted fastidious—always standing, touching nothing in the place where they met, and so forth. The voice, they said, was low.”
“Well,” Zelen said, “we’ve eliminated most people who aren’t at least the wealthier sort of merchant.”
“The Rognozis seem unlikely as well. She’s too buxom for binding or a cloak to have much effect, and his age would be obvious even if his face was enchanted,” Branwyn added.
“Unless,” said Zelen, “they used an agent. That means the rest of it’s no good either. Plenty of people with resources who came up from the docks, you know.”
“An agent would yet be a beginning,” Lycellias said. “The place of the meeting is known to us now as well, and there may yet be more to find there.”
Lycellias made a good point. “Fair,” Zelen admitted, as if a knight could be otherwise. “Sorry for jumping straight to despair. I’ve chased too many cold trails lately, if that’s the phrase I want. Never been much of a hunter.”
“Which quarry do you speak of?” Lycellias asked.
“A missing boy down at the docks. No trace of him, and we turned over every rock we could find.”
“Ah. We’d have been of little aid then, and the child’s kin would have known it.”
It was true. The knights were wonderful when you knew the scoundrel you wanted brought to justice or had a specific innocent at a specific place who needed defending, and they were top-notch at determining whether or not an alleged scoundrel actually deserved that name, but the Silver Wind didn’t help when nobody knew who was to blame for a crime nor whether one had even taken place. Neither did any of the other gods.
Branwyn echoed his thoughts. “Knights for judgment and defense, Blades for dark sorcery, Sentinels if monsters are involved—”
“Much luck you’d have finding one,” Zelen said. “I think it’s been ten years or more since the Order sent any of their people to Heliodar.”
“—but for those who’ve merely vanished, mortal vision is the only recourse. It’s a pity.”
“Searching for lost things, if they were tied enough to the one who sought them, was one of the Traitor’s powers,” Lycellias said. “That was long ago, before he was the Traitor, before even my grandfather’s day. The art has left the world, or gone beyond the reach of mortals.”
“I hope it’s gone beyond the reach of Gizath’s people now, too,” said Zelen. He didn’t much care for the notion of anybody being able to find him or what he wanted hidden through sorcery. Imagining the Traitor’s minions with the ability made his flesh crawl.
“Nobody’s seen evidence of it in the war. Or the histories from before the winters.” Branwyn mentally paged through old books. “I think that he lost that influence during his fight with Letar.”
Lycellias nodded. “The wounds from that battle were to the world as well, and not only the physical.”
The Battlefield was northeast of Criwath. Nobody knew the precise location because nobody with any sense wanted to go to the place. It was where Gizath had killed his sister’s mortal lover and where Letar had, in turn, tried to kill him.
“Unfortunate in many senses,” said Branwyn. “A way to track our quarry magically would be very useful—but then, it’s possible that trying to kill me wouldn’t have been enough of a tie. I’m assuming they were trying to kill me, by the way.”
“You were the target, yes.”
“So I’d figured. The butler at the Rognozis said that a man had come with an urgent message for me and been directed to the dressmaker’s.” Branwyn rose from the couch. “It’s rather comforting for everyone, or should be. I only have to survive the next week or so, and I’ll leave this unknown enemy frustrated.”
“Gods willing,” said Zelen. He’d spent most of the previous night asking them for exactly that.
Such prayers were pointless. None of the Four could prevent mortal evil, not directly. Zelen hadn’t forgotten that, but he hadn’t been able to stop his petitions either. The people he’d killed had weighed on his spirit and his own closeness to death had shaken him, but he would have endured either a million times rather than watch that club coming down toward Branwyn’s skull.
* * *
Outside, a wide square stretched between the temples to the north, clerks to the east, crafters to the south, and inns to the west. It had been mostly empty at night, but in the middle of the afternoon, as the year wound toward harvest and the Festival of Irinyev, it was an ocean of people.
The shining carriages of lords, with matched horses and jingling reins, passed peasants’ mule-drawn carts full of cabbages and the heavily laden ponies of trading companies. Shops sold bright glass jewelry, herbs from the high mountains of Silane, and amber from Kvanla, the most common port of ships that went out from Heliodar.
The people were mostly locals: largely dark of hair and eyes, pale-skinned, covering as little and wearing as many trailing ribbons as was practical. Some had the bronzed complexion of Silane, though, or wore the checked weave of Affiran. Even a few of the waterfolk and stonekin wandered through the crowd.
When Branwyn had come to Heliodar, she’d wondered at its size and the sheer variety it contained. Then, knowing the city’s potential fate, she’d feared for it. Leaving the conversation with Lycellias, her first thought was of how many threats such a crowd could hold.
Easy, said Yathana. A tight string will sound clear, but one too badly stretched will snap.
Zelen hadn’t taken her arm th
is time, leaving them both free to draw weapons quickly, but he matched her pace closely. It was a pleasant sensation to have that side covered, since she knew he could defend himself well.
It also meant she didn’t have to raise her voice when she’d gathered enough composure to speak. “A mage, even just for one spell, and a set of professionals wouldn’t be inexpensive. Am I wrong?”
“I don’t think you are. Not that I’ve ever tried hiring killers, granted, but I’d wager it’s a sight more than most people could manage, even as a small group. I doubt there are a dozen shopkeepers who dislike you or your mission that much.” They left the temple square by the east, walking onto a broad road full of soberly dressed people bustling about on errands. “There are a handful of respectable merchants who could swing it, one or two less respectable—might get a discount, for that matter—but I think we should focus on the nobility. They’ve seen the most of you, for one thing.”
Branwyn nodded. Then the individual words struck her, rather than the overall meaning. “We?”
“No question about it,” Zelen responded immediately. “For one thing, it comes off as rather atrocious for Heliodar if a diplomatic envoy gets killed here, and even worse if she’s in the company of a noble house. Even I’ve picked up that much of the principle. This is my city, as little as some might believe the sentiment from me, and I’d rather not have it disgraced.”
“Understandable,” she said, remembering what he’d said about Thyran and Heliodar when they’d first walked together. “And I’m grateful for your help, even though you didn’t have much choice in the matter.”
“That’s the second part, isn’t it?” Zelen asked. He grinned as charmingly as ever, but there was a hardness to it that Branwyn hadn’t seen before. The edge didn’t quite seem new, though. What had there been in his life before to bring it out? “Nearly getting killed quite spoils the evening. I’m inclined to bear a grudge in that category.”
“By that logic,” said Branwyn, only mostly joking, “I’m the one you should bear a grudge against. If you hadn’t been with me, you’d have had a pleasant night elsewhere, and a dead foreigner would just have added interest to the local gossip.”
The Nightborn Page 9