“Yes. A poem by… It doesn’t matter.” He sat back. “Go home,” he said to the child, “and don’t mention this to a soul.”
“She said it would be dangerous. If I talked.”
“She’s right. One way or another, this is nothing you should be part of.” He turned and fished some coins out of his pockets. “But you did right to help her, and right to get me. Thank you.”
“Thank you,” said the child. They pocketed the coins quickly but didn’t leave right away. “And I hope you didn’t kill the high lord and lady, and I hope people don’t kill either of you.”
Then they darted off, or at least Branwyn didn’t see their shape beyond Zelen’s shoulder any longer.
“I don’t want to leave you here until nightfall,” said Zelen. Branwyn could read the consternation about him even when she could barely see straight. A portion, she knew, was his calling as a healer, a portion suspicion of what she might do, given the stories about Sentinels, and a third portion might be personal fondness, but Branwyn didn’t want to make any assumptions. “But there’s no damned way of moving you until then without standing out, and if I come back with supplies, I’m as likely to be followed as not.”
“How long?”
“Five hours or so. Thank all the gods that it’s autumn.”
“Go,” said Branwyn. “I’ll be all right. And I won’t be in any state to escape. You can bind me if you want.”
“No!” He actually drew back at the idea, a supple motion she’d have appreciated more if she hadn’t been a bloody mess. “With your knee as it is?”
“It’ll heal. And you have no reason to take my word.”
“The offer is a fair reason,” he said. Then he took off his cloak. Bronze gleamed from his torso in the weak light, and Branwyn noticed the embroidery on his doublet as he leaned over to slip the folded wool under her head. “I’d give you more, but the aim is not to attract attention, and a shirtless man near winter would do plenty of that.”
“Wouldn’t ask for more,” Branwyn said. She felt a dim urge to object even to the cloak, but her sore head overruled pride. “Thanks.”
“Don’t move more than you have to,” said Zelen, “and for the sake of…everything…don’t die.”
Chapter 24
Branwyn didn’t die, though there were intervals throughout the next few hours when it would have seemed like a reasonable option, if not for her mission, her larger duty as a Sentinel, and, surprisingly, the knowledge of how shaken Zelen would be if she did.
She slipped in and out of consciousness. Out was better, far better, but the pain kept waking her up. She fought back screams at those times, aware enough of her surroundings to hold back, and stared mindlessly at the ceiling, practically unable to breathe from the agony. Pain that severe meant she was healing, she knew: life was returning to the broken parts of her. The knowledge was no comfort. She endured in a white haze until exhaustion took over and she passed out again.
The Forging had hurt, maybe even as much, but that had been in a clean, shining room, with the Adept to help with the worst of the pain and Sentinels-in-training bathing her brow with cool cloths. She’d been able to scream when she needed to.
Now all the world was pain and filth and the smell of her own dried blood. And the Rognozis’, possibly.
She’d been an honored candidate during the Forging, a weapon-to-be against the darkness, not a possible murderer. That had been different too.
And there’d been Yathana at the end. Branwyn hadn’t known the soulsword, then, of course. She hadn’t known what she was missing.
Nobody had ever been able to destroy the blades or the spirits in them.
That didn’t mean nobody could figure it out.
Branwyn would have wept, but she couldn’t manage tears, and she was already taking the kind of gasping breaths that went with sobbing when she tried not to scream. The ceiling swam in front of her, faded to blackness, appeared again, and vanished in turn.
Eventually, it was no longer duty or consideration keeping her alive, only her inability to act. Ending her life was not even a question. The magic of her reforging would heal her as long as she did nothing drastic, and she couldn’t have moved enough to manage that. She became pain itself, pain and shapes and light that slowly faded.
“Poram’s blood, Branwyn.”
Zelen was her fourth or fifth thought. First she had to recall concepts like words and voices and other people—like herself as a person, separate from pain.
Slowly his features became clearer. So did the worry.
“No,” Branwyn choked out. “Mostly mine.”
How badly off was she? Zelen had seen people die. She wasn’t dying; she knew that much. She’d never thought to ask what it looked like when she healed. Perhaps it was disgusting beyond measure.
His expression softened when she spoke, and Branwyn read relief there. Her vision was getting better. “Do you know who I am?”
“Zelen.”
Relief grew stronger. Then he was holding something cool and metallic against her mouth. “Drink. Slowly.”
She recognized the strong, pine-sap taste of dragon-eye syrup, and the knowledge itself made the pain seem fainter—a little. It didn’t take the edge off, but that edge wasn’t rusty and jagged any longer.
Zelen removed the flask after a while. His face disappeared, and she felt his touch on her ankle.
“You were bloody far away when I came in,” he said from the vicinity of her feet. “I’m afraid this will hurt, but try and stay with me.”
New pain swept over her leg when Zelen lifted it. Branwyn went rigid to contain her scream. Her hands clawed at the stone beneath her, which didn’t help, as they hurt too, but then her leg was straight and resting on a board. As the fresh pain ebbed, she recognized that this was a better state of affairs. There was pressure around her ankle, then her thigh, as Zelen bound board and leg together. The immobility was soothing.
“Still here,” she whispered when she could talk again.
“Good. Good.”
The darkness beyond him spoke in cultured tones and a voice like rustling leaves. “The horses are standing, and I’m ready to assist.”
“Wha—” Branwyn said. The syrup was starting to take effect in earnest, and she wouldn’t have had the strength to be alarmed anyhow, but confusion was entirely possible. She blinked at the darkness. It became one of the waterfolk, who regarded her dispassionately out of amber eyes and folded supple legs to kneel down by her feet.
“A friend,” said Zelen, moving to her head. He slid his palms under her shoulders. “He’s not wealthy or noble—not as the council sees it—and I trust him with my life.”
“Oh,” said Branwyn. That would have to be good enough for her. Perhaps it was the painkiller or her injuries, but she had no difficulty convincing herself that it was. The waterman’s touch was soft on her good ankle. His hands had fur like a rabbit’s.
She didn’t see the signal that passed between Zelen and his companion, nor did they speak. Branwyn was on the ground, and then she wasn’t. The world was moving.
Outside was dark. For a little while it was cold. Then they lifted her again. She heard horses, shifting their weight and snorting, and she was passed onto the seat of a large carriage. Zelen knelt beside her, one hand at her shoulder and one on her thigh.
Branwyn didn’t look at his face. It would be just as painful to find faith in her there, when she herself didn’t know if she deserved it.
The world had developed fuzzy edges and was fading fast away from her.
That was all right. That was good. As the carriage started to move, she let her consciousness go with it, rolling like a small boat on large waves.
* * *
When Branwyn’s eyelids closed and her breathing faded into the deep steadiness of drugged sleep, Zelen muttered quick prayers of th
anks to all the gods: Letar for the healing, Sitha for the craft of the syrup, and Poram for the plants that had gone into it. Neither justice nor battle seemed terribly relevant, but he thanked Tinival regardless—best to leave nobody out, and the words kept him busy.
Branwyn’s sleep would spare them both. She wouldn’t feel the drive—Altiensarn was careful, but the streets were never perfectly smooth, particularly not in the slums where Branwyn had been hiding, and they included a number of sharp turns. For Zelen’s part, he wouldn’t be tempted to ask her questions that he knew she couldn’t answer, even if it had been at all wise for her to speak.
He makes treachery of bonds, and bonds of treachery. Zelen had read plenty of theological poems in his youth, when he’d still aspired to the priesthood. That one, on Gizath’s nature, had been truly disturbing. The Traitor God didn’t just rule over flagrant backstabbing or the magical process of setting a thing’s nature against itself, but the dark side of all the ties mortals had to each other—the ones he’d truly and, some said, wisely ruled before his fall. Under his guidance, faith became fanaticism, love obsession, and loyalty slavery or blindness. The priests said as much, but few put it with such frightening clarity.
Darkness hid Branwyn’s face, but Zelen remembered it well enough. It had still been bruised and bloodied when he and Altiensarn had carried her out of the building, but already far less swollen than he would have expected after a few hours, even a day. The cheekbone was almost mended.
Sentinel, he thought, and stared at her.
There were plenty of stories. The Sentinels were necessary in all of them, but in the best they were still ruthless and alien, living weapons without the divine guidance or the almost ascetic focus of the Blades. Grimmer tales spoke of berserker rages or said that the soulswords needed to kill a living creature every month to keep their powers.
Once Zelen had passed the age when being able to scare friends over wine was a mark of prestige, he’d never really listened to the tales.
Branwyn slept in drugged peace. Nobody would have mistaken her for fragile—even when she’d been curled in the corner, her eyes heart-stoppingly distant, there’d been a sense of endurance, rather than helplessness, about her—but her face might have been gentle beneath the damage.
There’d be more convenient prey for a blood-drinking sword than the High Lord of Heliodar and his lady, whether animals or people whose deaths wouldn’t attract the whole city’s attention. Berserker rage fit the scene but didn’t pair with the premeditation that getting Yathana would have implied, or the damage to Lady Rognozi’s room but not her lord’s. The lady might have run, might have fought, but a struggle that put holes in walls and shattered furniture? That would have been difficult for a hulking dockhand in their prime. Branwyn could have destroyed the room out of rage, but why that one and not Lord Rognozi’s?
Zelen knew he couldn’t trust his judgment for any sort of ultimate decision. He knew what he wanted to be true, and he knew how badly he wanted it. There was no getting around that.
The carriage sped on, darkness inside and out.
Chapter 25
Even Idriel and Feyher had the night off. That would arouse suspicion before very long, but if the gods were kind and Zelen was competent, he’d have more idea what Branwyn had or hadn’t done by then, not to mention a shred of real evidence. If not, they might all be dead regardless.
Branwyn added more fuel to that fire when she woke halfway up the stairs in the front hallway. She came back to consciousness in total stillness, looked up at him, and said, “There might be a demon. I didn’t want to alarm the child. They couldn’t do anything if there was. And then…couldn’t talk.”
Even then her voice was slurred, the faint roll of her r’s exaggerated and her words punctuated with seemingly random stops and starts. Her eyes were glassy in the dim light, but Zelen didn’t believe for a heartbeat that she was only rambling from the pain and the drug. “A demon,” he said, keeping her weight steady. “Like the ones we fought? Don’t move your head.”
“No. Th…”—she took a few breaths—“those were small. Kind that slip through the cracks when there’s magic. Or when a big one is summoned.”
“And such a demon could have killed the Rognozis,” said Altien. The three of them turned off the landing and onto the second floor. “Demons have not been my study, but it seems likely that it could have broken you in the process.”
Branwyn flinched. Zelen’s impulse was to comfort, but squeezing her shoulders would not help, to say the least. “Temporarily broken, I should say,” he said. “Considering.”
“Yesss. Even…even me. Even armed. Even—” She glanced over at Altien. “Ah, intrigue’s gone out the window. ’MSnetinel. Sentinel. Order of the Dawn.”
“They are also not my area of study, nor my people’s,” said Altien after many silent steps down the hallway, “but they seem to serve a valuable function and to do it well. I take it that would have given you no small advantage in combat, madam.”
“You take it c’rectly. But a demon, a real demon…might’ve been a match for me. Especially if it was fresh and I wasn’t. Of course, tha’s what I’d say if I was a murdererer hoping to get away with my crimes. So noted. But if I’m right”—she was fading again—“we have a considerably difficult situation.”
“Their bodies vanish,” Zelen put in hopefully. “You might have killed it. In here, Altien, please,” he added, jerking his chin toward the spare-room door.
“Would be nice if I had,” Branwyn agreed, “but the problem is, we don’t know. That is…a significant number of our problems here, Zelen. Funnnnnnamental uncertainty. ’Sgonna get us killed.”
“You are,” Zelen said, “in some ways the most well-spoken drunk I’ve ever met, if also the gloomiest.”
“And the most correct. And it’s the situation. And I’m not drunk.”
“Technically speaking,” said Altien, “the lady is correct.”
The spare room was large and dark, the bedclothes dim white shapes. Without needing to discuss it, Zelen and Altien turned so that Branwyn’s head was in line with the pillows, lifted her gently, and laid her on the bed. “Be careful,” she said, dazed and small in the sea of white.
She didn’t speak harshly, but Zelen still winced. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
“Wha—yes. Or, relatively. Why—oh. No. Not because of me,” she said, clearly believing she explained the obvious. “You should be careful because there could be a demon.”
“When couldn’t there be?” Zelen muttered a few phrases, and the magical lights shimmered faintly into existence. Pure and clear, they painted Branwyn’s wounds in unforgiving detail. “Gods have mercy.”
Darkness had blurred lines and taken the depth from colors. In the light, her face and neck were a study in red and purple: deep bruises, patches of missing skin, and dried blood. Blood had matted her hair in places, too, near where Zelen had felt the swellings on her head.
“They already have granted as much as you’ll gain from them by invocation,” said Altien. “Where does one obtain water and basins in this household? And do you have an adequate supply of female clothing?”
“Shockingly,” Zelen said, retreating into the joke, “no. Water and basins are in the kitchen.”
“I’ll go for them.”
“Really,” said Branwyn. She spoke with the slurred single-mindedness that Zelen had seen in many patients and more drunks—that he’d probably displayed a time or two, as the latter—but more desperation than was usual, “it’s not unlikely. And I can’t be of any assistance. I used my knives, and I’ve”—Zelen saw her eyes shine with more than the haze of the drug—“I’ve mislaid Yathana, and if I’ve failed so badly as to leave the demon alive—”
“Hush,” he said and, forgetting the last few days, took her hand. “If you went after a demon and took on all of this”—he gestured to the len
gth of her body, with its broken skin and shattered knee—“as a result, that’s not failure.”
“It’s not success,” she said grimly.
“It’s a bloody lot more than most could’ve done.” Very gently, painfully aware of the places he shouldn’t even graze, he pushed a lock of hair back from Branwyn’s forehead. “I know injuries, mmm? Yours weren’t from a single blow. Whatever you fought, I’d lay odds it’s not feeling in peak condition just now itself.”
“Might still come after you, peak condition or not. ’M in your house.”
“And I’m not a Sentinel, but I’m not helpless. I’d be insulted that you thought so, except that I’ve drugged you.”
“Against a demon—”
Branwyn wasn’t exactly wrong. The small demons at the ball had been bad enough. The notion of a larger one out there, shambling its way toward him… Zelen grimaced but didn’t turn away from Branwyn. “There are a few things around here that’ll be better than steel, and some magical defenses as well,” he said. There were chests in the cellars. Winter hadn’t hit Heliodar as hard as other lands, but it, and the monsters that had come with it, had demanded a response. The great houses preserved their artifacts well. “Tomorrow, I’ll go to the temples and the mages for more… Don’t worry,” he added, seeing her stifle an objection. “After the ball, I shouldn’t wonder if they’ve got half the city asking for extra protection.”
Wire-tight muscles eased in Branwyn’s neck and shoulders. Zelen stroked her hair again and inwardly cursed all that kept him from doing more—the uncertainty of their situation as well as her injuries. As if reading his thoughts, she said, “I wouldn’ trust me too extens’vely, either, were I you.”
It wasn’t a quip, and Branwyn wasn’t seeking reassurance. Both of those were clear. She spoke bleak truth in a slurred, cracked voice, closing herself around the pain to do what was useful.
And it was truth she spoke. If she’d been possessed, she could be again. Spells didn’t necessarily only work once. Madness, or conditioning, was unpredictable. Zelen couldn’t say he should trust her or even that he did.
The Nightborn Page 15