The Nightborn

by Isabel Cooper

  He’d done so not that long ago. When they’d been fighting the demons, he’d put his faith in her as unquestioningly as he’d done in Altien when a particularly complex bit of healing or a large and thrashing patient—or a possible murderer in an alleyway—required two of them. He’d never thought to doubt. It had been a brief feeling, but its absence hurt all the same. Worse, it meant that he could offer no reassurance.

  “You deserve better than all this,” he said.

  * * *

  Gentleness called forth the tears that Branwyn had been too overwhelmed to shed from pain. Her body still lacked too much water for them to do more but prickle at the back of her eyes, but they were there. Zelen had known her for all of two weeks, knew that she could’ve killed two people brutally, and still his hand around hers and his fingers in her hair were the gentlest touch she’d known since she’d become a Sentinel and a weapon.

  She swallowed and welcomed the pain. It centered her.

  Did she deserve better? The Rognozis aside, she’d killed people, gotten others killed, and chosen her path. She hadn’t had very many choices, but who did? The farmer’s child and the wheelwright’s apprentice didn’t exactly make mindful choices about their future. Neither had Zelen, gentle and deft and barred from his calling for stupid reasons of status.

  Hazy, slurred, she formed words. “Ever’one deserves better than all this.” She gestured to indicate the world. It hurt, though not as badly as it would have a half hour earlier. “It’s…” A quotation drifted up through rapidly thickening layers of mist, a passage from a book she’d read on some road. “‘A web’s pretty ’nless you’re a fly.’”

  “And she quotes Cosnian while drugged,” Zelen remarked. At first, Branwyn thought he was talking to her and pretending to have an audience.

  No, his friend was there, setting down large basins of hot water and thick, folded towels. She remembered bathing as a thing normal people did and liked the idea, then looked at Zelen and quickly away. They’d almost been lovers. Now, given what she might have done…

  “My name is Altien,” said the third person in the room, “and with your permission, I’ll assist you in bathing while Zelen acquires clothing. I know that a female attendant is usual, and I’m male, but I promise you that while I’m sure you’re comely by the standards of your people, I don’t have such exotic tastes.”

  Branwyn blinked, then giggled, from the formality and the drugs but also from relief. “Yes,” she said, “an’, Zelen, get weapons. Wards.”

  He gently set her hand down and rose. “Quite so. I’ll be back soon—can’t imagine the family’s left any very lethal guardians in the cellars.”

  “I’ll listen for screaming,” said Altien. “Madam, I suggest that you let me sit you upright, if you have the strength.”

  She did, barely. The door closed behind Zelen, and Branwyn looked after him for a long moment. “He deserves better,” she said.

  “You would each say that you survive in a satisfactory enough fashion.” Altien began cleaning her wounds with the careful, impersonal precision that Branwyn was used to from healers. “I would say that you’re both correct, in both senses, but I’m not infatuated with either of you. I’m going to cut this garment off. The strain of removing it will do your muscles no good, and any value it once possessed is certainly gone.” His tentacles twitched in distaste.

  “We’re not infatuated,” Branwyn said, barely noticing as Altien produced a pair of small scissors from his garments and made short work of her now-filthy dress. “Just…pleasan’ company.”

  “Nonsense.” Altien returned to the task at hand with an occasional sibilant noise when the cleaning process bared a particularly hideous bruise or swelling. Branwyn supposed it was the waterfolk equivalent of tsk. “Your attempt to deceive either me or yourself is impressive, however, given the sedation. I’ll credit your nature. On your stomach now—I’ll brace you.”

  After a second of pain, during which the dragon-eye and willpower managed to keep Branwyn from screaming, she changed position and found herself very glad that Zelen wasn’t the one ministering to her, suspected murder aside. She’d been bathed by healers before—Sentinels, like all weapons, needed the occasional cleaning and repair, and the knee wasn’t her first broken bone—and had come to accept the temporary helplessness, but being taken care of would have weighed on her far less easily when it was a lover doing it, or an almost-lover, or the subject of infatuation, if Altien was right.

  Branwyn suspected that Yathana would’ve agreed with him. She expected to hear the dry, sardonic voice doing so in her head, and the silence hurt more than the skinned places on her spine that Altiensarn was attacking with soap.

  You can’t help that. Don’t dwell on it.

  “Drugs work on us,” she said to give herself another focus for her thoughts, “jus’ takes a lot. Mostly. A friend of mine’s completely immune, but that’s…” She shrugged. “I’osn—idionsa—” She knew the word, but it was a corkscrew that her tongue couldn’t follow.

  “Idiosyncratic? Hmm.” Branwyn felt cool salve on her back, then bandages being wound around her torso. Altien eased her backwards, which didn’t hurt as much as the reverse motion had done. Propping her head on the edge of a basin, he began washing days of filth out of her hair. “An interesting order, the Sentinels. I would avoid pressure on your right shoulder as much as possible. The bone isn’t broken, and I don’t believe you’ve torn the muscles significantly, but it’s a near thing.”

  “Oh,” said Branwyn, and a thought floated up in an increasingly thick fog. “How’d you find Zelen? Or other way?”

  “He provides healing services to those who can’t afford professionals, thus taking some weight off the Mourners. I came to these lands to study humans, specifically their physiology. Our meeting was natural.”

  “Of course,” said Branwyn. She closed her eyes.

  A little while later, the basin moved. “There,” said Altien. Branwyn was aware of motion in the region of her shoulders and hips, of being turned and lifted slightly. The world was all mist now, but she was clean and the pain, though present, was remote. Relaxation stole over her, and a set of blankets settled more concretely about her. “Sleep is called for now. We can address the matter of your clothing later, with less awkwardness.”

  Branwyn made what she meant as a noise of assent, and then asked, “Zlen?”

  “I’m certain he’s well, but I’ll make sure of it. Sleep.”

  She’d never obeyed orders so readily.

  Chapter 26

  Waking, Branwyn was again unsure where she was. This time she was in a bed, though: warmth above her, softness beneath, and a pale-blue canopy before her slowly focusing eyes. She could focus her eyes, which was an excellent sign. She remembered why that pleased her, which brought the rest of the immediate past back, though her memory of those crucial few hours remained a blank.

  She inhaled slowly, evaluated, and exhaled again. Pain was still in residence around her knee and one side of her head, and was a fainter presence along her backbone, but it was maybe a quarter of what it had been. She could reason around it. She could simply live with it, as long as she had to, the way she lived with the silence in her mind and the worry, beneath her conscious thoughts, about whether that would ever end.

  Moving was still difficult. Branwyn sat up gradually, with an occasional hiss of pain when her knee became too involved in the process. The bruises she could see—she was still naked beneath the blankets—were faint purple-yellow, and the places where her skin had split from the impact had healed over to pink lines. A few of her muscles, particularly those in her back, were still healing, and her knee was swollen and disinclined to flex.

  Judging from what she knew of her healing rate, and the faint light through the windows, she’d slept at least twelve hours. She wondered how badly her reputation had suffered in the process.

&nb
sp; There was nothing she could do about that.

  A small table by her bed drew her attention before she could start earnestly brooding. Branwyn saw a clear flask of wine, its pale color likely a sign that it was heavily watered. A plate beside it held sliced brown bread, pears, and a wedge of pale-violet cheese. Next to that sat a heap of folded white cloth with a note on top.

  I didn’t want to wake you just to have you dress. The shirt should fit until one of us finds better clothes. I should be back within a few hours of whenever you read this. Please don’t leave the room, for everyone’s safety. The servants won’t come in, but I can’t keep them out of the house without rumors starting.

  There was a blotchy mark, where the writer had clearly considered adding more, but then only a signature: Zelen Verengir.

  “Gods love you, Zelen,” she muttered to the empty room, “for thinking I could even try.”

  All the same, she smiled, the first time she’d done so out of anything but the darkest of mirth since she’d woken up in the alleyway. Zelen was alive and well enough to write: that was good news.

  He also trusted her enough to leave her unrestrained. Logically, Branwyn wasn’t sure whether that was good or not, but it was pleasant to know.

  All three of the occasions when Branwyn had put her faith in him had been out of her control: the assassins and the demons had attacked them both, he’d guessed about her being a Sentinel, and she hadn’t been in any state to try to escape, or to fight, when he’d found her in the burned-out house.

  None of that weighed on her as heavily, or as uncomfortably, as she suspected it should have. Zelen was almost certainly her friend, definitely not her enemy, but neither a Sentinel, a priest militant, nor part of her mission. His aims might be different than hers, and if they weren’t, he still might give the game away through lack of training. Officially, the man was a useful liability.

  All of Branwyn’s teaching said that she should have been dismayed by having to rely on him, and by having him know so much about her, but she felt no inclination to worry. Perhaps she had enough to worry about as it was.

  Yathana would have been a source of reason, one way or another. She would also have been another person to trust, one that Branwyn wouldn’t have even theoretical doubts about. The soulsword was buried in the rubble of another abandoned building, maybe, or on the belt of a half-skilled brute who’d spotted a good blade on the ground, or being sold cheap in some secondhand weaponsmith’s.

  Those were the pleasant options.

  Branwyn ate. She dressed, with a moderate amount of cursing. Zelen was near her height, so the tunic he’d left only fell to midthigh, but she wouldn’t be walking around scandalizing people in the very near future.

  She considered the room.

  Exits were the door opposite her, a smaller one in the side wall that Branwyn guessed led either to a closet or to quarters for a personal servant, and a set of large windows, not entirely hidden by thick silver drapes. An enemy might be able to come down through the chimney of the small fireplace, too, but Branwyn certainly couldn’t get up it.

  Potential weapons were scarce. The lights were magical, which meant there were no candlesticks. A small eating knife went with the food. Branwyn supposed she could damage a foe not made of bread with it if she used her entire strength and went for an eye. There weren’t even tongs near the fireplace. She wondered if the servants carried them from room to room, if stirring up fires without touching them was another of the prodigious ways people used magic in Heliodar or if Zelen had removed the tongs while she slept.

  If he had, Branwyn couldn’t fault him.

  She sat back and inspected her hands. They were by no means unmarked—as bruised as the rest of her, with swelling beginning to fade near her right wrist—but the marks were no map of what they’d done.

  For the first time, her mind was clear enough to really think of the Rognozis, her kind and caring hosts. They’d been innocent as far as her mission went, though neither of them had been as naive as the word implied. A man didn’t serve as High Lord of Heliodar for decades without awareness of the world, and Branwyn would’ve wagered his wife had shared that quality, in her own fashion.

  No, not innocent. Not naive. Only good-hearted, and not prepared for the scope of the forces that moved across the world now—or the depth of their evil.

  Whether or not Branwyn had struck the blows that killed them, she might have been at fault for that lack of preparation. She didn’t think the enemy, whoever it was, had targeted them for hosting a Sentinel, or even knew that facet of her identity, but if the Rognozis had known, they might have been more careful, or not made the offer at all.

  If she’d come to the city openly as a Sentinel, her enemy might have gone deeper and her contacts refused to talk to her. That had been the Adeptas’ argument. It had been King Olwin’s, it had been Vivian’s, and it had been the one Branwyn had believed. She still thought it was, and she thought that she thought that not only to assuage her guilt.

  Thyran would kill far more than two people if he got his way. War exacted a red toll. Branwyn had known that since long before Oakford.

  “Dark Lady, take the pain of their deaths from them,” she said, the old litany for those who fell in battle coming easily after years of use. “Lord of the Scales, let them know their own courage. King of the Wild, make a place for their mortal remains in your creation. Queen of the Golden Webs, give them the thanks of the civilization they died upholding.”

  “May the Four so grant,” said Zelen, stepping into the room.

  * * *

  The day, which was barely more than half over, had already been long: long and cold.

  Branwyn had still slept deeply when Zelen had left clothing and food. One shoulder had poked out of the blankets, still bruised enough to inspire concern rather than lust. Her gold hair had spilled across the pillow above it, reminiscent of the webs that decorated Sitha’s temples in silk, metal, and stained glass.

  A web’s pretty unless you’re a fly. He thought he’d always hear Cosnian’s quote in Branwyn’s drug-slurred voice from then on. The words of the Southern Kingdoms’ greatest cynic sounded both odd and oddly appropriate from one whose entire life was duty.

  He’d left before he could let himself think about how much he wanted to stay with her.

  Work had been slow at the clinic. That had let Zelen slip out and ask a few questions of people he knew: former patients, men he’d drunk with after the day’s labors, and Tanya, who’d been playing a few streets away and come to investigate. He’d asked all of them if they’d heard about a big fight a few nights before, if they’d seen anyone looking as though they’d been in one, if any of their acquaintances had disappeared lately, or if a gold-hilted sword with an opal in the hilt had turned up.

  He hadn’t actually had to ask Tanya. “Haven’t seen anyone hurt as bad as they’d be if they’d tangled with your lady,” she said. “Not nearly, not assuming she gave a little bit as good as she got.”

  “She would have,” said Zelen, trying to ignore both your lady and his idiotic impulse to beam at the phrase.

  “She all right?”

  “She will be. You did well,” said Zelen, and Tanya smiled more at that than at the silver he slipped her.

  His other conversations had been less straightforward but revealed as little. Nobody had gotten worse than a black eye and a split lip in a fight, or for most any other reason—except a set of crushed ribs, but that had been an accident loading a barge, in full view of witnesses. Missing people were harder, since many took to the road when love or money turned sour, without informing anyone they left behind. There’d been only one disappearance that really puzzled Zelen’s contacts, though, and he’d been fifteen and bookish, a clerk’s apprentice.

  That was worrying itself, on top of the previous missing child, but Zelen doubted that a stripling would’ve been ab
le to land a punch on a maddened Sentinel, much less leave one too badly injured to walk.

  Nobody had seen a fancy sword. They certainly would’ve remembered that.

  Until he reached the room, carrying the day’s letters, and heard Branwyn’s prayer, he still hadn’t been sure whether or not to tell her. There was still plenty he didn’t know. She could have killed the Rognozis and met with an accident or a fight later. She could even have been in league with the demon, then turned on it.

  Then her voice had reached him, hoarse with injury and cracked with grief and regret, in the words of a prayer Zelen had once learned but never had cause to use.

  He could have kept his silence as easily as he could have stopped breathing.

  When Zelen closed the prayer, Branwyn turned to look at him. Most of the bruising had faded from her face, leaving only a faint shadow around one eye. With her grave expression and his white shirt for clothing, she had an almost holy air about her, and a very solitary one.

  “Nobody’s seen anything,” he blurted out. It was all he could offer in the face of her somber regard. “No fights. No injuries. One disappearance, but hardly the sort who’d give you trouble. And you’re not the sort to fall down stairs. I’ve seen you move.”

  “That argues for a few possibilities,” Branwyn said, “and only one of them is entirely good, even as little as good is possible in the situation. I could have killed the demon and staggered away blindly, either to escape the authorities or because”—she shrugged—“blows to the skull don’t exactly inspire clear thinking. But I might not have.”

  “True. I’ve set up wards around here in case.” The paraphernalia in the trunks had been carefully packed away, oiled and censed by an unknown hand but one that appeared expert to Zelen’s decidedly inexpert judgment. Sigils in twisted silver and copper wire, set with gems, now hung from the doors and windows in each room, and braziers burned in the front hall.