The Nightborn

by Isabel Cooper

  Nobody moved to assist. By doing so, they might break her concentration, with horrible results. They, like Zelen, knew just enough to realize their own uselessness.

  His skills had limits. He’d never fought hard enough for the path that would have lifted more of them.

  “It’s hardly how I’d hoped the evening would go,” Branwyn said from behind him.

  Zelen’s heart responded Branwyn before his mind could focus on Sentinel and all the questions that raised. “I wanted to join the Dark Lady’s service when I was younger, you know,” he said, turning toward her. “As a Mourner, of course. Even then I was too frivolous for a Blade.”

  “I’ve never met a person outside the Blades who wasn’t,” said Branwyn. “What changed your mind?”

  “My family wasn’t having any of it. Bad form for a son of nobility to become a jumped-up undertaker, even a holy one,” Zelen said. Years later, he could still remember his father’s words, right down to every exasperated pause. “Makes it look like we don’t have enough property to go ’round too.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought of that, but then, I don’t spend much time thinking about property.”

  Zelen nodded. Sentinels were taken from the ranks of the unwanted: the orphans, the foundlings, the bastards. Their training, from what stories he’d heard, also tended to be light on courtly graces and aristocratic customs. Branwyn, he assumed, had been given special instructions for…well, for whatever purpose drove her.

  That was a subject he should probably inquire about, he knew. Gedomir would likely want him to, and perhaps rightly so. The woman had been keeping more secret than Zelen had suspected.

  “If you’d taken the vows back then,” Branwyn said with a little who-knows hitch of her shoulders, “you might not have been here tonight. That is, Mourners aren’t specifically prohibited from dancing and so forth, but the ones I’ve met have had to be on duty at all hours, and they’re usually dead tired when they’re off. It’s not a life that lends itself to balls—which is probably why we don’t have any here now, damn the luck.”

  “Well. Yes,” said Zelen, because she was right, from what he knew. A few of the younger Mourners had attended the ball, but they had, in fact, all gone back to the temple long before he and Branwyn had slipped out to the garden.

  The guilt didn’t vanish. That was always a part of him, only aching more or less at times. Branwyn’s words pushed it back toward less, though. The circling If I’d chosen differently, I’d have fixed this ran into Or not even known it happened until too late and was shaken out of the pattern.

  Branwyn pushed back a strand of hair, leaving a streak of dirt on her forehead. “I should explain…many things…” she said, uncertainty apparent for the first time since Zelen had met her, “and I should be more tactful about what comes next, but I’m tired and we’re going to go deal with the rest of these creatures soon. And, as you now know, I’m not really a diplomat. Therefore”—she squared her shoulders, confidence returning as she went on—“your family sounds like vile people, the sort that make me glad I don’t have relatives, and you have my sympathy. I think you turned out…splendidly…regardless.”

  * * *

  Weariness and danger were as good as wine for breaking down her guard, but Branwyn knew she wouldn’t regret speaking. Watching Zelen’s face soften out of its expression of tight pain would have been worth it alone, even if she hadn’t known she’d been the cause.

  Whatever he thinks of me when he has a chance to rest, I’ve done him a bit of good now.

  “I’m too weary to do the filial-spirit bit and protest,” he said in return, “so I can only thank you. You’re…going, you said?”

  “A half dozen of us. You’d be an asset, but”—she surveyed the room—“if you’d do more good here, as a healer and a familiar face, say so. I’m inclined to trust your judgment either way.”

  “I’d rather…but I might be able to keep people calmer here, and if one of the demons slips past you all… No, I should stay.” Zelen quirked a grin. “Besides, it’s hardly as though you’ll need protection, is it?”

  “Or you,” she said. They were too much in public for her to risk kissing him, but Branwyn squeezed his shoulder quickly. “Be careful, all the same. I’d like to see you again soon.”

  That was true, and not merely because she wanted to go to bed with him. It would have been easier if that had been the only reason. Branwyn headed out quickly. She wouldn’t wait to hear if he echoed her sentiment, or to try to figure out whether he was only being polite if he did.

  Those in the Order knew its reputation long before they chose whether or not to be reforged. Zelen struck her as an open-minded man, but the most open-minded of men had their unexpected blind spots.

  And Branwyn had lied to him.

  It had been in a good cause. She didn’t regret it. Where other members of the court were concerned, she might have said, and meant, that she hadn’t lied—she was a military envoy from Criwath—so much as left out certain information. Thinking of Zelen, thinking of herself, she couldn’t wish she’d chosen otherwise, but she also couldn’t couch it in terms other than lied.

  Killing the remaining demons was brutal, clumsy, cold work. With five companions, all armed and focused on fighting, it wasn’t particularly dangerous by Branwyn’s standards, but the creatures were unpleasant to see, even for her, and a fight was a fight, demanding concentration. Even a rat can get lucky had been one of the first lessons she’d learned, and Your enemy’s luckiest when you’re the most confident another.

  It still wasn’t enough to take her mind off Zelen for long, not completely. In the thick of battle, her vision narrowed, but once the demon shattered and vanished, Branwyn wound up wondering whether Zelen was all right back at the palace, recalling how his hands had felt in those moments behind the statue, or wondering whether that evening had ruined any chance for another such encounter.

  She slammed her branch into the final demon’s head with perhaps unnecessary force and found little satisfaction in its death. It would only dissipate, returning to unconscious scraps of creation from a “life” it had never sought and perhaps didn’t welcome, unaware of the trouble it had caused.

  “The problem is,” said Branwyn when they stood surveying the aftermath, “as I said, these things don’t exist unless they’re drawn to our world.”

  “How do you know?” asked a palace guard who’d come with them. “Made a study of demons, have you?”

  Darya would have responded sharply. Emeth would likely have punched the man. The Adeptas, and Olwin, had sent Branwyn for more than one reason. She reminded herself of that and replied calmly, with another of the half-truths she could comfortably tell everybody but Zelen. “We thought it might be useful, when preparing for war, to know what it might draw, or what our enemy might summon.”

  “Masses of people?” Mezannith asked. “We’ve had these festivals every year, though, and never with this result. As far as I know, there’s no stack of corpses nearby either.”

  “Life does it as well as death, once they’re here.”

  “Ah,” said a third of their companions, who’d been out in the gardens when the demons attacked. He coughed. “Well.”

  “Once they’re here?” Mezannith picked up on the crucial point.

  “It’s very rare for them to come through naturally. When they do, it’s usually because there’s been enough death or life in one place, at one time. I doubt this qualifies.”

  “So this was deliberate?” The general’s question was swift and intense.

  Branwyn wished she had a more certain answer. “Probably in part.”

  “Give me the least troubling option first.”

  “Badly done magic makes the world weaker,” said the wizard with them, a pale-haired youth, either uncertain of themselves or of speaking up. They gulped and went on when Mezannith jerked her chin a
t them impatiently. “Maybe an apprentice tried a thing they didn’t ought to have.”

  “Right,” said Branwyn. She’d been called out to handle one of those incidents. It had ended even worse for the wizard in question than it had done for those around her, and that was saying a great deal. “Nastier spells bring them forward too, even when cast properly, and those who cast them generally don’t care. And specifically, if somebody summons a large demon, the small ones can slip through behind it.”

  The mage winced. “So—”

  “It’s possible that there’s a major demon roaming Heliodar, yes.” Mezannith gave Branwyn a hard bit of scrutiny. “Should I hold out hope, Madam Alanive, that one day you’ll bring us a piece or five of cheerful news?”

  “The world is large,” said Branwyn, “and life hard to predict, and hope is always valuable.”

  “No, then.”

  “No, not really.”

  Chapter 19

  “You’ve done well here,” said the Mourner, magic glowing reddish-orange as her chair lifted her up and away from her final patient, the young mage who’d spent so much of her strength stopping time for the worst of the wounded. Now the badly injured lay, asleep but stable, on makeshift beds, and the wizard was slowly sipping a goblet of heated, watered wine.

  City guards, wearing more severe uniforms and carrying less ornamental swords than the ones who’d been at the palace, checked the gardens. A Blade went with them, vast in their black clothing, and a knight in polished armor.

  Zelen couldn’t feel glad about it; he didn’t have the strength to feel much except a dull relief. The night was over. Nobody had died.

  Nobody in the ballroom had died, he corrected himself, and that did spur him to approach the Mourner. “Pardon, but do you know if the people who left here are all safe?”

  “The people who left here?” She raised coppery eyebrows.

  “The ones who went to get help, I mean. I don’t think any of us bolted for it.”

  The correction helped. “I would hope not. I didn’t witness the rescue party myself, but this is the only place where the temple has received an unexpected summons tonight. I expect, if any of them had been badly injured, we would’ve known of that before I was sent here.”

  “Thank you,” said Zelen.

  It had been foolish to worry, he thought. Branwyn would naturally be all right. Sentinels were more than human, weapons of the gods. If the stories were right, they were practically unkillable—though the stories had never really mentioned what happened when they didn’t have soulswords, and “practically” wasn’t “entirely.”

  Still: Branwyn was all right, and he’d been an idiot to worry. He suspected he’d been an idiot about quite a bit.

  He watched the Mourner turn her chair, skimming across the floor as if she were sailing a boat over a very smooth lake, and move off. All of it seemed a long way away.

  “Here,” said a youth in undyed robes, one of the Mourner’s apprentices. They pushed a goblet into one of Zelen’s hands and a slice of bread into the other. “Sit down, eat, and drink. Just because the demons didn’t get you doesn’t mean the evening didn’t leave a mark.”

  Zelen managed a smile. “I’ve said the same thing myself a few times. Or similar. Without the demons.”

  “Then you know it’s true,” said the apprentice, and disappeared into the crowd again.

  The stairs were empty. Zelen sat on them and obeyed orders. The wine was good—not high-quality, but well-spiced—and combined with a few bites of bread, it took away a bit of the numbness.

  He’d expected the evening to go differently. He’d very much wanted it to go differently. But it could have been worse.

  The voices around him merged into a soothing, low hubbub. Zelen closed his eyes. Soon, once the wounded had been moved to more comfortable surroundings, he’d get up and seek his home. A bath would be good if he could stay awake long enough—the demons’ nature meant that he hadn’t gotten bloody, though he was conscious of dirt now, and sweat—but otherwise he’d fall gratefully into his own bed.

  Talking with Branwyn would have to come soon. He’d go to the Rognozis’ house in the morning, or whenever he woke, and seek a private meeting, and not only to discuss her identity. Perhaps her mission was really no more than she’d said, and she’d only kept her true nature silent because she didn’t want it to be a distraction.

  If the person behind the assassins had known they were targeting a Sentinel, did that make matters worse? Zelen wasn’t sure, but he could hardly see how it would improve the situation.

  The bread was almost gone, the goblet nearly empty. Most of the unwounded guests, save the guards and those with some experience at healing, had left the palace. Word of the night would spread quickly—hells, half the city likely knew by now—and there’d probably be no few guesses about Branwyn’s involvement, since she was an outsider as well as the one who’d known how to fight the demons. Zelen might not be the only one to work out the truth.

  The truth was probably the precise sort of thing Gedomir had asked him to watch for.

  Zelen was too tired to think much about that.

  He would figure out what to tell his brother after he spoke with Branwyn.

  At twenty, that change in loyalties would have bothered him more. Twenty was many years gone.

  * * *

  Branwyn wasn’t sure when the Rognozis’ house had started to feel comfortably familiar rather than intimidating and alien, but she suspected that the aftermath of two attempts on her life had something to do with it. It also contained a bed, which was a significant asset then.

  One of the guards, not the one who’d asked how she knew about demons, had offered to walk her home, but she’d declined. In the very unlikely event that another crew of assassins came after her, she didn’t want to get another civilian harmed, least of all one of Heliodar’s guards. She was reasonably sure that would be a diplomatic incident of some sort.

  Thus, she dragged herself up the stairs alone and fumbled for the key Lady Rognozi had given her earlier that evening. “There’s no reason to keep the butler up late on a festival night,” she’d said, “and we certainly don’t want to make a young woman like you keep our early hours.” She hadn’t quite winked.

  Branwyn cracked the door, slipped inside—and stopped.

  At the bottom of her vision, the floor had looked out of place, an inch lower than it should have been. Branwyn blinked, and it was normal again.

  Carefully, she closed the door, and the sound of it shutting echoed many times and too lightly. Clack became click-tick-tickticktick. Then that, too, was gone. The hallway was silent. The mirrors showed the dark shapes of shadows and her own form, wavering and unclear—but that might have just been mirrors, particularly those made more for ornament than accuracy.

  The rest? It had been a long night, and she’d been fighting demons. Viewing them took a toll, even for her. They were not supposed to be in the world, and even reforged vision could only cope so much with their presence. Aftereffects might well have started to show up, in which case the cure would be a good night’s sleep.

  Her shoes slid over the wood with serpentine sounds when she walked, and the skirts of her gown rustled. The material of both was unfamiliar, and the hall far quieter than usual. That might have been all.

  There could be a major demon roaming the city. She’d said as much herself.

  Weariness or warning? Branwyn didn’t bother trying to decide. Overthinking would be of no use at all. If her exhaustion was leading her astray, she’d feel foolish, but not for the first time, and she’d always survived before.

  She didn’t bother picking up her skirts either. The night had given her plenty of experience moving with them at their full length, and she wanted to keep her hands free. Crossing the dark hallway quickly, she aimed herself like an arrow for the stairs, her room, and Yatha
na.

  Part II

  Call: What is justice?

  Answer: A shield for those in peril. A wind that sweeps away deception. A sword against those who choose evil.

  Call: What are its tools?

  Answer: Patience, forswearing judgment until all is known. Proportion, that retribution may balance misdeed. Protection: above all else, to guard the weak against the strong.

  —Litany of Tinival’s Knights

  The mistake here is thinking that affection and preservation are one. Gizath once ruled over those forces that tie the world together. He does still, in many senses. Hate is as much a tie as love. In sparing Heliodar from the worst of the general destruction, I don’t necessarily suggest that Thyran acted out of fondness for the place. He may have had a far worse fate in mind for it.

  —Gwyrn of the Red Tower, at the Midsummer Debates

  Chapter 20

  “Lord Gedomir’s here to see you, sir,” said Idriel.

  Zelen tried to open his eyes, made it about halfway, and muttered a curse. “Later.” The bed was warm. His muscles ached. He saw no need to be conscious a minute sooner than he had to. Without any idea what hour it was, he knew nonetheless that it was too damned early.

  “My apologies, sir,” the valet said, “but he’s most insistent about it. He says it’s urgent, and I’m afraid I couldn’t prevent him from entering.”

  That was a polite way to say I can’t have the footmen throw the heir of Verengir out on the street as though he were a dishonest peddler. On that particular morning, Zelen would have loved to disagree, but thoughts of the clinic and of family surfaced before he could actually move his mouth enough to do so.

  He managed to lift his eyelids on the second attempt. By the light that escaped his drapes, it was midmorning. “Show the plague in, by all means,” he said. “And bring some very strong tea, please.”