The Nightborn

by Isabel Cooper

  Darya, Branwyn’s friend and fellow Sentinel, spent much of her time hunting in ruined cities. Now Branwyn recalled her stories with a new perspective, one that let her understand them much better. She didn’t think any of the rooms would contain the restless dead Darya had talked about, but neither guards nor cultists were an especially pleasant alternative. As for monsters, one never knew.

  Down, said Yathana, and I think on the left. Hard to say from this distance.

  Regardless, Branwyn opened the doors up and down the hallway, gave each room a quick inspection, and left when they contained neither a child nor, in most cases, any signs of use. One end of the hall was boarded up, and scorch marks stretched long, misshapen fingers out onto the wall in front of the boards on either side.

  “With any sense,” Branwyn whispered, “they’d have given up being cultists after all of this.”

  Nah. Probably made them try harder to be worthy. That’s how fanatics work. Yathana chuckled. I should know. But my cult’s right.

  “Is this the time for existential philosophy?”

  In a desecrated building, right before we might die? Absolutely.

  Branwyn opened the last door, found nothing, and then followed a winding, narrow staircase down to the ground floor.

  There, a reasonably skilled and fairly unpleasant person had carved murals into the wood. Most of them showed a giant head—presumably Gizath—glowering at people in different states of vice: a man in a gutter with a bottle of wine, a woman in a low-cut gown, a mob at the gates of a castle. Another scene met with its evident approval, one in which a well-dressed family accepted the obeisance of three soldiers and a peasant couple.

  Oh, for a picture of a waterfolk orgy.

  The first door Branwyn opened led to a small room with a table, a chest, and a bookshelf. She didn’t spend much time investigating, but at least one of the books looked like it was bound in…

  Well, it could, in theory, have been goatskin or pigskin, undyed, but Branwyn wouldn’t have been confident about saying it was either.

  New plan. We get the girl, the knights execute every damn one of these people except Zelen, and then we come back with a squad of Blades and set fire to the place. Sorry about your young man’s house, but…

  Branwyn doubted he’d mind.

  Chapter 35

  It’s at the end of the hall, said Yathana, as Branwyn crept forward. At least, that’s where the corruption is strongest.

  “Do you know if they’ve still got a demon?” Branwyn asked under her breath. The door opposite the study had only been a linen closet, though why cultists conducting rituals in an abandoned wing would need linens…

  Well, she did know. Or she could guess, little as she wanted to. They were quite organized about the whole business; Branwyn had to give them that much.

  No. After a certain point, degrees of corruption don’t register. Once you’ve drowned, it doesn’t matter if you tried to breathe twelve feet of water or only ten, does it?

  “No,” said Branwyn, and the neatly stacked linen took on a new connotation. “How long would you say they’ve been worshipping the Traitor? Sacrificing to him?”

  Generations. Maybe since before the storms.

  For a second, Branwyn could see darkness overlaying the whole hallway—not the shadows that had been transparent to her since her reforging but the grime of old filth, spreading and clinging to wood and rock. She shuddered, and had the mission not been so urgent, would have paused before opening the next door, perhaps found a cloth to wrap her hand in. The handle felt as though it crawled underneath her palm.

  She pushed it open regardless.

  “Mmmmmmfffff!”

  The muffled, desperate, angry sound came from one corner of a small bare room, not much more than another closet with the linen taken out. There was a shape there, a small version of the comma human beings became with their limbs tied together. As she hurried over, Branwyn recognized the face that she’d dimly seen through her injuries. It was bruised now, with a large purple lump near one temple.

  “Easy,” she hissed. “Be still, be quiet. I’m going to get you out.”

  Tanya looked in her direction but didn’t focus on her, and it took a moment for Branwyn to realize why. Mortals didn’t have the Sentinels’ vision in the dark. She’d been navigating fine, but there was no light in the hallway, and none in the room.

  The girl had been in there for a few hours, and that was bad enough.

  How long had they kept the other children in darkness? It seemed almost worse than what had followed. Should Branwyn let them live long enough—which she had no intention of doing—a cultist could perhaps argue that the sacrifice itself was necessary from some twisted viewpoint, but the bonds and the darkness spoke of either cruelty or horrible indifference.

  Tanya flinched at the sound of Branwyn drawing her belt knife, and her body was rigid until Branwyn cut the rope binding her ankles to her wrists. Then her sigh of relief mingled with a muffled yelp of pain as feeling began to return to her limbs. The girl did her best, but there was another yelp when Branwyn freed her arms and legs individually.

  “Shh,” said Branwyn before she untied the gag. “We’re going to wait here until you can walk again. Then I’m going to lead you out and put you on a horse. Can you ride?”

  Tanya shook her head.

  “Then just hang on to it. If I’ve pleased the gods lately, Zelen and I will be there the whole time. If not, climb onto the saddle, hang on, and nudge the beast in the sides. Don’t kick. It should take you to a safer place than this, at any rate.” Branwyn passed her knife over, hilt-first. “If anybody who isn’t me, Zelen, or one of Tinival’s knights lays a hand on you, cut them and run. Run first, if you can.”

  “But Zelen…” the girl croak-whispered. Branwyn wished she had water, but there was none. “His men were the ones what did this.”

  “His family’s men. He didn’t know, I swear it.”

  Tanya hesitated, and Branwyn let her. The girl would have to get the feeling back into her hands and feet before they could go forward. She could get it back into her mind as well, as Branwyn would have had to after such an experience—as she had done, when she’d found out what had really happened in the Rognozis’ house—and decide whether she trusted Branwyn and Zelen, or at least whether she figured they were the best she was going to get.

  Meanwhile, Branwyn asked. “When was the last time you saw another person?”

  “A–a while ago. Hard to tell time. They dumped me in here, and then a woman in white came in and looked at me like I was a cut of meat from a butcher. Did everything but ask to see my teeth.” Tanya managed a weak grin. “I showed ’em to her anyway.”

  “Good.”

  “I guess that wasn’t too long ago. I haven’t gotten hungry yet, or had to piss, though I’ve been sweating enough that maybe that doesn’t matter.”

  “Hunger might not either,” Branwyn said absently, “if you’re scared enough.”

  “I’m scared, all right.”

  “Sensible.”

  Tanya rubbed at her wrists. “What’d they bring me here for? I thought maybe”—she shrugged—“men, you know, bad ones, but nobody’s touched me except to grab me and tie me up, and one of ’em belted me for biting, and there was the lady in white.”

  “Human sacrifice, probably, to keep a demon under a modicum of control,” said Branwyn, listening with her gift. There were people coming down the hallway from the main part of the house, at least four of them, but they were far away yet. She pushed the door closed, in the vague hope that they’d be on other business and walk right past. “It seems that Zelen’s the only member of his family who doesn’t worship Gizath. It’s a complicated situation.”

  “You’re not bloody kidding!” said Tanya, wide-eyed.

  * * *

  “Master Zelen,” said the footman
, as disapprovingly as the difference in their rank allowed. “Are you well?”

  “I am,” he said, flinging off his cloak in a dramatic gesture that also spattered the walls with rain. “There’s much else I can’t say the same about.”

  He was cribbing wildly now, drawing from every play he’d ever caught glimpses of on a drunken evening, and there was no time to tell if it worked. Zelen had the notion that he might lose his nerve if he tried, as though he raced across a bridge and dared not let his weight rest long enough to look down. “I must see my brother now. Lives are at stake, do you hear me?”

  “I—”

  “Tell him that. Tell him that I’ve been about his business and discovered a darker secret than either of us had ever dreamed existed. Tell him I’ll await him in his study,” Zelen finished, feeling that was considerably anticlimactic.

  To make up for that, he stalked down the hall and was glad that his boots weren’t too wet to rap on the stone floor.

  The study wasn’t locked. The study was never locked. The servants knew what would happen if they went in the family’s rooms without orders. As far as Zelen knew, none of them had ever taken the chance.

  As he kicked open the door, relishing the wet print of his boot on the wood, it occurred to him that he didn’t actually know what the consequences of disobedience were. Being turned off without a reference or pay had always been his assumption, and it had seemed bad enough, but the new and terrible information of the past few days made Zelen reconsider.

  Servants left rarely, but when they did, they simply vanished.

  Surely, he thought, they couldn’t all have been sacrifices. Surely that would have excited too much comment. But he actually couldn’t be sure, and the very need to consider the possibility was chilling.

  Gedomir didn’t keep wine, brandy, or whiskey in his desk, or Zelen would’ve poured himself a stiff drink, oncoming battle or not. Holding it would have conveyed the proper mood, for one. Lacking that, he picked up a series of carved stone paperweights on the desk—cats of different sizes and colors, all rather charming and one of the few remotely human touches in the place—and then dropped them out of order, in between pacing from the door to the window and back.

  It didn’t take much pretense at all.

  He was by the desk, toying with a gray-blue sitting cat the size of his palm, when he heard the door open.

  “Gedo, thank the gods,” he said, turning with the figurine still in his hands. “This place is torment for a sober man, you know.”

  “Zelen.” The delay made sense. Despite the hour, his brother was impeccably dressed: gray tunic, black surcoat, breeches, and boots, silver-buckled sword belt and silver-hilted sword in a sheath worked with the same metal, not a hair out of place. “You choose the most interesting hours.”

  This time, he wouldn’t rise to the bait. He’d let his emotions carry him away when Gedo had told him about Branwyn—had told him what he wanted Zelen to believe about her—and Gedomir would believe that the same would be true when Zelen heard any particularly important news about the matter.

  He didn’t bother putting the figurine down, just summoned as much wide-eyed alarm as he could. “I’m sorry for waking you, Gedo.”

  “You could’ve saved me the interrupted sleep, and yourself the time and the strain on your horse, most likely,” said Gedomir, stepping inside the door. “I expect to be in the city by tomorrow afternoon. Mother, Father, and Alize are halfway there already.”

  Lord and Lady Verengir, and their elder daughter by virtue of traveling with them, didn’t spend more than three hours on the road at a time. There was a small inn between the estate and the city, one that Zelen suspected made its entire profit from his family’s infrequent trips and the ability to use their name.

  “It couldn’t wait. You’ll understand…” He passed his free hand across his mouth, letting it shake, and watched Gedomir watch the motion. “I hope you’ll understand. You’re not going to believe what I’ve discovered—”

  “No,” said Gedomir.

  He took a few steps further into the room, but Zelen now noticed that he stayed carefully far away. Behind him, the shadows in the hall grew more solid, developing harsh faces and broad shoulders, dark armor and bared weapons.

  “No,” Gedomir repeated, “I don’t think I would.”

  Chapter 36

  Gedomir had never regarded Zelen particularly fondly, but now his gaze was brimming with contempt. “I don’t even want to know the lies you’ve come up with,” he said. “It would only insult us both.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Shock and fear were appropriate. Zelen gave them free rein and yanked back hard on guilt, or hoped he did. “I came because—”

  “You found the…woman’s…sword.” Gedomir ticked off points on his fingers as he stood, square-shouldered and upright as a statue, eyeing Zelen as though he were a maggot in meat. “You didn’t bother consulting with me, our parents, or even the girls about it. Instead, you practiced a rather shoddy deception with a broom handle.”

  The last word was the kick in the stomach. Zelen didn’t respond. The guards moved in, each taking one of his arms in a none-too-gentle grip. The cat statuette fell to the floor.

  They knew. Yathana hadn’t counted on Gedomir’s paranoia about having the sword around outweighing his distaste for it, or some event had made him decide to check on it, or, hell, Gizath had given his faithful a vision. It didn’t matter. They knew.

  He thought that as hard as he could, hoping that Yathana would pick up on it across the house and through their barely existent bond: They know. Get Tanya and run for it.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked,” Gedomir went on, “by your lack of any family feeling. You’ve constantly demonstrated that you have no regard for the ties of blood any proper gentleman should feel—and yet, you manage to disappoint us again. Tell me, Zelen, didn’t you even think of consulting us?”

  The question, and his brother’s genuinely wounded manner, startled Zelen into a cawing laugh. “Consulting you? What in Letar’s name would you have said if I did?”

  Now that he was alert for it, he saw Gedomir flinch at the mention of the goddess. It wasn’t much, only a slight twitch near his left eye, but it put to rest any ideas Zelen might have had about the whole business being an awful mistake.

  “Or am I wrong?” With nothing to lose, he pressed his point. “Has there been some horrible error? Did the demon that killed the Rognozis not bring Branwyn’s sword back to you, like a good dog returns game to the hunter? Do you and our parents, and even the girls”—Zelen imitated Gedomir’s delivery—“not worship the Traitor?”

  The blow was openhanded, but full strength. Zelen’s teeth split two of Gedomir’s knuckles open, which was a small bright point in the whole wretched evening.

  “You shouldn’t speak of truth that’s beyond you,” Gedomir said, shaking his wrist. “Our lord knows more of loyalty and order than any of his degenerate sister’s favorites, as feeble an example as you may be.”

  “Oh, lovely, a theological debate.” Zelen glanced toward the guards. “And you gentlemen? Faithful to the Backstabber? Blackmailed? Don’t care as long as the money spends?”

  It was possible that the eyes of the guard on the right, a relatively new arrival whose name Zelen hadn’t learned, shifted. The one on the left, Nislar, opened his mouth, but Gedomir waved him to silence.

  “Don’t bother with any of your tricks, Brother. Their fealty is far more certain than your honor.”

  “Honor, off ’er.” Zelen grinned with bleeding lips, falling into the accent of the docks. “Depends on the night, doesn’t it?” That got him another blow, this one to the right eye.

  “I’d hoped there was more sense and less filth in you,” said Gedomir. “Foolish of me.”

  “Absolutely. You do know that I told Tinival’s people about you, don�
��t you? Swore in front of a knight and all that? And by the way, I’d start hitting with the other hand soon. You’re apt to sprain a finger at this rate.”

  “I’d have expected nothing else,” said Gedomir. “But it won’t matter.”

  “No? Going to take over the world before they can act? Flee west and join up with Thyran?”

  Gedomir didn’t switch hands, but he did make a fist and aim for just under the rib cage that time.

  “Don’t speak that idiotic upstart’s name in this house. If not for his…whims, your strumpet would have no war to drag us into. We could proceed to our goal in an orderly fashion, as He always intended.”

  There were several points of possible debate there, but Zelen was trying to breathe.

  Gedomir continued. “I’m certain you did swear. I’ll be just as certain that you honestly believed what you were saying, you poor fool. After all, the Sentinel doubtless has many wiles, and you were never the most…stable…young man. Returning home to drown yourself will only prove that you realized, too late, where your madness had led you.”

  “You”—Zelen gasped out—“think they’ll believe it?”

  “They won’t have the power to do otherwise. The high lord’s dead, no heir has been selected, and the knights don’t rule the city, much as they may wish it. Our parents and Alize honestly will know nothing of what’s happened here. By the time a suitable candidate takes the seat, your woman will be dead, and you’ll be no more than an unfortunate footnote to the whole messy business. Take him to the lake,” Gedomir said to the guards. “Hold him under before you throw him in. I don’t want any busybody saying that he didn’t look as though he’d drowned.”

  “I can’t blame you for your ignorance,” he told Zelen, “but I had hoped you’d have more regard for your own blood, even so.”

  Zelen drew himself upright, despite the sickening pain in his stomach. “The rest of us have four gods to your one, Brother, and the Dark Lady isn’t known for forgiveness. If I were you, I’d worry less about what’s in my veins and more about what’s on my hands.”