The Nightborn

by Isabel Cooper

  “Very good, sir,” said Idriel, and vanished. He’d known Zelen too long to suggest that his employer try to dress before receiving that particular company, or even that he get out of bed.

  If Gedomir wanted to invade Zelen’s house, he could take Zelen as he was.

  He stepped through the door just as Zelen sat up. “You won’t have heard the news, naturally,” said their father’s heir, looking disdainfully over Zelen’s tousled hair and bare chest. “It’s only fortunate that I find you without…external company.”

  “Fortunate for you, me, and the hypothetical lady. The general rule for gossip, by the way, is that one issues an invitation. And generally provides wine. Cakes are—”

  “Lord Rognozi and his wife are dead.”

  The words made no sense for a second. Then they took Zelen’s breath away as thoroughly as any of his mother’s lectures or the beatings his father had ordered. Gedo wasn’t putting in nearly as much effort as had gone into the other incidents: he was either very talented or very fortunate.

  “When? How?”

  It would have been unsurprising for Lord Rognozi to have perished quite naturally and uneventfully, and dimly possible that his wife might not have survived the shock and sorrow of it, though it would’ve run counter to what Zelen knew of the lady. That wouldn’t have brought Gedomir to his bedroom.

  “Murdered. Butchered, in fact, late last night. If you want the more sordid details, I’m afraid I didn’t ask for an anatomical report. I’m given to understand that the servant who found them is in a state of shock.” He smoothed an imaginary strand of impeccable hair back from his brow. “And your…envoy…has vanished. As has her very large, very likely magical sword.”

  “She’d never—”

  Zelen lunged forward, with no notion of what the motion might achieve. Denial simply demanded action.

  As he’d so frequently done in their past, Gedomir smiled with lofty derision, not to mention a share of pity. “She has, I’m afraid. You’re welcome to try and convince me that a burglar broke into one of the best-warded noble houses in the city and did nothing but slaughter the inhabitants, or that a servant with years of service suddenly went unstoppably berserk in a manner that didn’t rouse the attention of the others in their quarters.”

  Colors faded from the world. Zelen sat silently and Gedomir fell silent as well as Idriel stepped in, carrying a tray of tea and cakes. He put it down in front of Zelen and glanced between him and Gedomir: Shall I pretend you have another engagement?

  Zelen shook his head. Even that motion took an almost unsupportable amount of strength. “Thank you, Idriel, that will be all,” he said by rote.

  “Very good, sir.”

  “It may not be entirely her fault, granted,” Gedomir said. “I can perceive no motive for the action, regardless of what others may think, given what you’ve told me of her nature. The Criwath court, or even subversive agents there that Olwin knows nothing of, may have placed a spell on her for this purpose. Or her experiences in the war may have caused damage that hid until now.”

  “If she did it,” Zelen said, “I’m certain that it wasn’t of her own will.”

  “I’m certain that you’re certain. And Father and I are prepared to take that into account,” Gedomir said, spreading his hands. The ring with Verengir’s crest, his only ornament, gleamed in the pale light of the autumn morning. “Honestly, the information she can provide is more valuable than any vengeance would be—the Dark Lady can wait on her claim. Father thinks the rest of the council might even see a case for clemency, if the circumstances are right.”

  “Does he?”

  “Would I speak falsely?” Gedomir’s lips tightened, but then he relaxed. “I understand that you’re…biased, but for once your proclivities may have been useful. There’s clearly more here than simple murder. Father and I are prepared to investigate it and to argue as much in the face of all opposition—once you retrieve the woman, of course.”

  * * *

  There was rock under her cheek and blood in her mouth. Her arms were sticky—probably more blood—and a net of pain wrapped her whole body, fiercest around her right knee and her left eye. Branwyn was fairly sure her nose was broken too.

  All of that was comparatively minor. She’d been injured more severely in the past, though not often, and the healing of a Sentinel was already doing its work, pulling bones and muscles back into place. Even the knee, which would likely have crippled a normal person for life, would give her only a few days of trouble. Branwyn knew as much, and none of her wounds troubled her.

  She had no room in her mind to worry about them anyhow. As consciousness returned, she searched her memory for the fight that must have taken place and found only blankness, then paralyzing fear.

  After the ball, she’d felt uneasy about the Rognozis’ house. She’d gone to get Yathana. From that moment, she remembered nothing concrete: she had a dim recollection of the world spinning, of a sword in her grip and the smell of blood and death, but that was all.

  Now she was—her eyes focused, one considerably slower than the other—in an alley, in the early morning, wearing the blood-soaked remains of her ball gown.

  Yathana was gone.

  Her memory had an enormous hole.

  There was blood on her arms, up to the elbows, and she couldn’t feel any cuts there.

  What happened? was her third question.

  Where’s Yathana? came in second.

  The first was What did I do?

  * * *

  “We do have guards,” Zelen pointed out. “The city and the house. They’re trained for this.”

  “They’re trained to subdue drunks and disrupt fights, and they have a good deal of that to contend with already. They also know much less about Madam Alanive—or whatever her name truly is—than you do.” Gedomir paused, which told Zelen nothing good was going to follow. “What they do know is that she’s likely a murderess. Their duties are much simpler than ours. It’s not likely that they’ll try to get to the bottom of the incident. Were I the gambling sort, I’d wager that they’d stick her full of crossbow bolts, dump the corpse at the burning grounds, and congratulate themselves on a job well done.”

  The image painted itself across Zelen’s mind with scorching clarity.

  Next he thought of the knights, but didn’t even try to bring that option up with Gedomir. Tinival’s servants would be very thorough, but they too had other duties, and little or no experience of political intrigue. Branwyn was dangerous, particularly armed, and they knew that.

  If her actions were due to insanity or magical control—or, he forced himself to speculate, if she had genuinely murdered the Rognozis out of her own free will—she was very likely to fight. She would probably kill a few of her opponents, and at that point if no other, they would certainly and justifiably turn to lethal force.

  Carefully, so he didn’t disturb the tray whose presence was still an alien weight in his lap, Zelen sat back against the pillows. Gedomir observed with his arms crossed over his chest, impassive and tolerant. “I can’t make any promises,” Zelen said to him.

  “We would expect none. You failed to probe deeply enough past her facade to predict this, after all—the house is aware that your knowledge is far from complete.”

  Zelen wanted to have a bitter, flippant riposte, or at least not to flush like a lectured schoolboy. He failed at both.

  He did manage to keep meeting Gedomir’s gaze, which grew regretful. “That, however, was at least partly our fault,” said Gedomir. “We asked too much of you, particularly considering the situation in question. You have my apologies, and I’m confident that I can extend Father’s as well.”

  “There was no sign of any of this,” Zelen managed, “and what could I have asked? If it was a geas—”

  “No, no,” said Gedomir, “I quite understand. And if you don’t succe
ed at this, then I don’t doubt there will be very good reasons for it. Only do your best, for the family’s sake and the city’s. And the woman’s, too, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “If you require assistance, send a message to the estate. You have the full support of Verengir in this.” Gedomir bowed. “I wish you luck, Brother.”

  “Thank you,” Zelen said, and even kept from gritting his teeth.

  Chapter 21

  The world and necessity both broke down in Branwyn’s state, becoming a series of very small observations and steps that weren’t much larger. It was part instinct, part training; it let her push aside panic and manage events. Questions of Yathana’s whereabouts, of her memory, of her potential actions all faded, becoming the stones her more urgent thoughts walked on, there but unnoticed.

  First step: Assess the damage. Pain had done a large portion of that job for her, but Branwyn went back over the situation with more attention to detail as well as the future. She wasn’t dying. She didn’t need help to avoid dying. That situation wouldn’t change if she tried to move.

  Second step: Assess the circumstances.

  Branwyn slowly surveyed the alley. She’d never been in a pleasant or a scenic alley, and this one was no exception. It smelled—even through her probably broken nose—like garbage, heaps of which lay against the walls behind her. A pool of what she would have liked to believe was water, but probably wasn’t, lay a few inches from her face. Beyond that, the remains of barrels and a spectacularly broken table had probably shielded her from discovery.

  It wasn’t a bad temporary hiding spot, but it wasn’t exactly good for recovery, and it wouldn’t last forever.

  The temples, the guards, and the council itself were all out. If—Branwyn braced herself and met the worst possibility head-on—if she’d actually committed some manner of unspeakable crime, she’d throw herself on Tinival’s mercy and then likely on the Order’s, which didn’t really exist. But if she was innocent, she had no way to prove that. Without memory, whatever she said to Tinival’s knights would only be an opinion, with no weight toward truth or lies.

  A person with wealth and, likely, power had sent the assassins. If that person was responsible for her current state, turning herself over to the authorities might be the worst path Branwyn could take—not just for herself, but for the city and possibly the world.

  “Tinival’s balls, you look bad,” said a high voice. “You need a healer?”

  It was a measure of Branwyn’s injuries that she hadn’t heard footsteps, though the new arrival didn’t have much weight to make noise regardless. A child, one arm in a sling and a cast, eyed her from a gap between the barrels.

  “No,” Branwyn rasped, which gave her more information: attempted strangling had been part of her evening. She tried to clear her throat, winced, failed, and went on. “Thank you.”

  The child didn’t leave. “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Ah.” The child looked to be in the ambiguous stage that came after toddlerhood and before apprenticeship. They showed no trace of shock or more than idle curiosity. “Drinking, huh?”

  “Not precisely.” The pressure on Branwyn’s side was becoming too much. She pushed herself cautiously upward.

  “Hey!” said the child, poking their head further through the gap. “You go around with the healer from the clinic, don’t you?”

  “Hunh?”

  “Zelen, at the clinic with the squidface. My cousin dances down at the theater, before the shows and all, and she says she saw you two there. You want me to get him? You look like a house fell on you.”

  “No!” said Branwyn, so quickly that the child darted backward but didn’t run. “No, thank you. This is…” She pulled her thoughts together, breaking midway to spit blood. “You should go. It’s dangerous to be around me.”

  “Everything’s dangerous,” said the child, who glanced down and kicked a rock, but didn’t flee. “Bet you couldn’t get to me before I could run.”

  “I’m not the danger,” said Branwyn, and hoped that she was right, or that the child was.

  The child peered behind them warily, then around. “You running from the law?” They returned to the gap in the barrels, their voice lowered. “I know a place you can hide.”

  “Not just the law,” said Branwyn. “Ruthless people.” By shifting her weight carefully to her good leg and putting a hand on the wall, she was able to claw her way up to a standing position. She stood there briefly, panting.

  “What’s ‘ruthless’?”

  “It’s—” She thought, which was not the easiest task in her current state. “People who don’t care who they hurt if it gets them what they want. Or what they think is best,” she added, not wanting to define the word too narrowly to include herself.

  “Huh,” said the child. “You want me to show you that place?”

  Branwyn’s head swam. Were she the only one at stake, she would’ve refused—or so she liked to think—but her death or captivity would likely mean her would-be killer went unhindered. That in turn had a decent chance of endangering the world, which included Heliodar and the child waiting for an answer.

  “Please,” she said.

  “All right,” said the child. “Wait here. I’ll be back as soon as I can get you a cloak. Maybe you shouldn’t have stood up.”

  “No,” said Branwyn, leaning against a wall, “no, it’s better I get used to it now.”

  She watched her would-be rescuer depart and thought the thing she hadn’t said: that if the child brought back lawmen rather than a garment, she’d need to be on her feet. It wouldn’t do her very much good, but at times like that, the principle counted. It was really the only thing she had left.

  * * *

  “You’ve…heard, m’lord?” said the Rognozis’ butler, looking more mortal and less certain than Zelen had ever seen him.

  “I have. My deepest sympathies.” Zelen eyed the half-open doors with no great enthusiasm. “I’ve come to see if I might be able to find out more than the guard,” he went on. “Different perspective, you know.”

  The butler nodded. “If you can help find that…woman,” he said, clearly longing to finish on an obscenity but brought up short by his training, even in such circumstances, “then gods bless you.”

  The house was a strange shell of a place. Zelen’s footsteps didn’t echo, but he felt as though they should have. “Are you expecting…” he started, and then hesitated, consulting a mental chart to try and remember the Rognozis’ heir. Their marriage hadn’t produced children, he knew that much.

  “His lordship’s niece,” said the butler. “Within a matter of days. Certainly she’ll be here for the burning.”

  “Yes,” said Zelen, a memory coming back to him. Marior: a short, dark woman, fond of horses. He’d seen her off and on, but they’d never talked much. She seemed an unlikely choice to secretly be the actual murderer, even were he grasping at straws.

  He couldn’t allow himself to do so.

  The floor was gleaming. “You’ve cleaned up the tracks, I’m sure.”

  “There weren’t any, m’lord,” said the butler. “It’s quite likely the creature went out the window after committing her…deeds…or simply took great care to clean her boots.”

  Either was possible: Branwyn was careful, and a Sentinel could manage the climb from a second-floor window easily, particularly when there were trees outside. “I don’t want to keep you,” said Zelen.

  “No, no, but—well, I’d as soon not see it again, m’lord, if it’s all the same to you. We’ll clean the bedchambers out properly tomorrow, and we’ve gotten the…the worst of it away, but otherwise we’ve kept things as they were. Her room included. It’s the second door on the right, upstairs. My lord’s was at the end of the hall, my lady’s next to him.”

  “Much obliged,�
� said Zelen, and began his trek through the house.

  Branwyn’s room was neatly arranged, the bedclothes smoothed, all curtains and chests closed. Nothing there gave any sign of a murderous rampage or indeed of any other use. Zelen found clothing, two pairs of boots, and three books: The Triumphs of Aeliona, a small volume of poems about the seasons from a Criwathi-sounding name he didn’t recognize, and a philosophical treatise that he did, albeit from many years ago.

  The belongings spoke of an active mind and a woman who traveled light, who never really settled in any one place—but Zelen had known as much already. He searched the boots for concealed keys or knives or messages, but discovered only leather.

  One of the maids was watching him. “Sorry,” said Zelen, “but nobody found a ball gown in here, did they?”

  “No, m’lord.”

  “No. She’s likely still wearing it, then. Or was.” That argued, strongly, for the theories Gedomir had suggested and Zelen wanted to believe—or at any rate against cold-blooded, deliberate murder. Nobody, much less a warrior, would of her own volition go kill people in a floor-length gown, then climb out a window to get away, not when she had plenty of time to change clothing. “What about a sword?”

  The maid shook her head. “Must’ve taken it with her.”

  “Yes, just so,” said Zelen absently.

  She’d gone to the trouble of getting her sword but not of changing her clothing.

  Nobody would have needed a sword, let alone a mystical one, to kill the Rognozis. Branwyn could have done it barehanded. Half the servants probably could’ve managed as much.

  Barehanded murder would probably have been considerably less brutal than what had happened. The servants had, as the butler said, done their best to remove the worst remnants of the crime, but a certain sense of events was still very, very obvious from the Rognozis’ chambers.

  The human body held a great deal of blood. In Lady Rognozi’s room, the stain spread not only across the floor near the threshold but up the walls as well. One small, distinct handprint stood out from the rest, clear against the gold-figured paper.