by Ari Marmell
Cerris began to wonder if something more than the loss of their companions, devastating as that might be, was eating away at her.
She brightened a little, though, when he explained that those same magics might enable them to hunt for other survivors. "Though I'm not saying it'll be easy," he warned her. "I'm tired as a succubus with a quota, my spells aren't very potent at the best of times, and I've never tried maintaining one of these phantasms on someone else at any great distance. We can't afford to rely on them for more than a few hours, and you need to avoid speaking with anyone who knows you well. There's a good chance they'll see through it."
"I understand. Do it."
Moments later, a man and a woman who only somewhat resembled Cerris and Irrial departed the cooper's workshop.
The better to avoid running into anyone whose familiarity might prove troublesome, Irrial headed toward the late-night taverns she'd never frequented in her prior life as an aristocrat, while Cerris donned the Cephiran tabard that was starting to feel as familiar-and as much in need of a warm bath-as his own skin, and took to the streets.
As the moon flounced through the sky, leaving a wake of brokenhearted stars, Cerris meandered from block to block, chatting with guards standing post, off-duty squads working on a friendly drunk, even an officer for whom he offered to carry a crate of charts and records (aggravating his back in the process). Most had heard only third- or fourth-hand accounts of the engagement, in which the size of the attacking force and the valor of the Cephiran warriors were both obscenely exaggerated. All accounts agreed, however, that only a very few insurgents had survived, and most of those were held under heavy guard, awaiting brutal interrogation. Cerris felt as though his heart had sunk so low he was in danger of digesting it, and he held precious little hope that anyone but Irrial and he remained.
By the time he returned to the cooper's, it was all he could do to drag his feet across the cobblestone streets, and his neck ached abysmally from the strain of supporting a head stuffed with sand. It had been a very long day, filled with exertions physical, emotional, and mystical, and Cerris was frankly surprised that he hadn't simply collapsed like a sack of grain-very, very tired grain-hours ago.
Irrial, apparently having taken his warnings to heart, was already back, waiting for him on the workbench.
"I'm afraid," he said, dropping hauberk and tabard in an untidy heap by the door, "that I didn't-Irrial! What's wrong?"
For he'd seen, finally, that the gaze she'd turned his way was harrowed, her face so terribly pale that her freckles stood out like blotches of rust, the dark circles beneath her eyes as gaping sockets.
"I think my cousin's dead, Cerris," she told him softly.
"What-Duke Halmon?" He'd meant to go to her, to comfort her, but found himself sitting down hard, all but falling, on a barrel across from the bench. "How…?"
"They're just rumors," she admitted, chewing the ends of her hair, "but so many…
"I spoke to friends and family of half the resistance," she said after a moment, regaining some measure of composure. "But nobody's heard from anyone. Either everyone left is hiding very quietly, or…" There was no need to finish. They both knew what or meant.
"It was while I was in the taverns," she continued, "that I heard the rumors. Some of the people the Cephirans have rounded up from other towns say that there's a reason beyond the normal squabbling that's keeping the Guilds and the nobility from responding to the invasion. They say a lot of Guildmasters and nobles have died recently. Including-including Halmon."
"I heard a little something about that," he said, deciding that now wasn't the time to mention precisely who had told him. "But I never heard anyone named, or I'd have told you. And they didn't say exactly what-"
"Murdered," she told him intently. "By Corvis Rebaine."
The barrel tilted beneath him. Cerris's legs twitched, his arms flailing as he struggled to keep his balance against what felt like a physical blow. "Wh-what did you say?"
She shook her head incredulously, misinterpreting the cause of his shock. "I know. Of all the times for that godsdamn bastard to crawl back out of his hole. If it's true, no wonder the nobles are so hesitant to give up their soldiers. And no wonder the Guilds are that much more determined to have them. This is all we bloody needed, isn't it?" Then, more softly, "Hasn't he hurt us enough?"
Cerris actually trembled, just a bit, his jaw hanging mute.
"Oh, Cerris, I'm sorry." Casting her own grief aside, she rose and laid a gentle arm about his shoulders. "You must be exhausted. Come, we've got some cots back here that'll do for the night. We can decide what to do tomorrow."
Numbly, he allowed the baroness to lead him across the room, to tuck the blankets around him as though he were a child. But despite a weariness so deep it pressed upon his soul, Cerris found sleep an elusive quarry for many hours to come.
"My sincerest apologies, good sir." The speaker had a greying beard and heavily lined face, but though his physique was running to fat, the peculiar rippling of his flesh suggested a powerful musculature beneath. He wore a leather apron scorched a dozen times over, and smelled strongly of smoke. "I didn't rightly expect it t' take me so long."
"Quite all right," the younger fellow replied as the blacksmith led him past the forge and into the workroom beyond. "I knew it was an unusual commission from the start." He grinned without much mirth. "I'd have to have been crazy not to, really."
The blacksmith wisely chose not to respond to that. "I know we've been over this," he said instead, "but I have t' ask once more. Are you certain this is what you want? You'll find no better armor'n mine, but those spikes you asked for… Someone strikes 'em at the wrong angle, they'll guide the blade right to you when it might've missed."
"I'm willing to take that chance. May I see it, please?"
A callused hand yanked away a heavy cotton blanket. Both men stood rigid, a faint chill running up both spines even though the younger had designed the abomination before them, and the elder had forged it.
Even unoccupied, it loomed, straining forward on the rack as though ready to wrap metal fingers around exposed throats. Black steel, white bone, spines sharp enough to skewer anyone who so much as looked at them wrong…
But it was the helm to which they were irresistibly drawn, rats staring up at a swaying serpent.
"If nothin' else," the old man offered with a forced chuckle, "nobody who sees you in this monstrosity's goin' to forget you anytime soon."
"That," the other said, "is entirely the point."
The gaping sockets of the iron-banded skull looked into their souls, and the jawbone laughed in silence. CERRIS AWOKE, blinking away the dream and the afterimages of that blasted skull, to find the blankets twisted into a veritable rope around his body. Obviously, his fatigue notwithstanding, he'd not experienced the most restful sleep.
'Why, it's almost as though you had something weighing on your mind.'
Disentangling himself and tossing the blankets to the floor, he sat up and peered blearily about. The light gleaming through the high windows and the sounds of the street outside suggested that he'd slept away not only the morning, but part of the afternoon as well. No surprise, that. As the various shocks and disappointments of the past days filtered slowly into his brain from wherever memories hid at night, he rolled off the cot, made quick use of the copper pan currently serving as a chamber pot, and stumbled halfway across the workroom. Then-limping on a newly aching toe and loudly cursing the leg of the workbench, but substantially more awake-he crossed the rest of the chamber, dipped a mug into a barrel of lukewarm water, and washed some of the nighttime grit from his mouth and throat.
And it was only then that his mind caught up with his senses, and he realized he was alone.
"Irrial?" And a bit more loudly, making a slow circuit of the room as though she might've been hiding behind a barrel. "Irrial? Are you here?"
Nothing.
All right, no reason to worry. She could be elsewhere in
the shop, perhaps arranging with Elson or Rond to acquire some food. She might even have darted out for supplies, or to find out what was happening in the city, though he wished she'd waited for him to cloak her in another illusion. Or perhaps-
He stumbled to a halt at the far wall, where a polished sheet of brass hung as a makeshift mirror. A large pair of shears lay open on the floor, amid a scattered heap of auburn tresses. Cerris nudged it with his bare feet, seemingly unable to comprehend its presence. Despite the poking and prodding, the hair revealed nothing new.
Now, perhaps, it was time to start worrying. Obviously, whatever she was doing, she'd taken rudimentary steps to keep from being recognized, and that assuredly meant it was something Cerris didn't want her doing alone. He dressed swiftly, ready to go hunting for her, scooping up Sunder and reaching for-
The Cephiran hauberk and tabard were gone.
"Oh, gods…" Cerris burst through the door and pounded into the street, legs pumping, only just remembering to cloak himself in an illusory disguise. And if it proved insufficient, if any of the "Royal Soldiers" made to stop him, he'd cut them down. By pairs, by squads-it didn't matter.
Because he knew, as surely as if she'd tattooed a map into his flesh, exactly where Irrial was going.
'Ah, you're just pissed that she has the stones to do what you should have…'
Maybe he'd been blessed with an extra dollop of Panare's fortune that morning, or perhaps, after the past few days, the sight of a crimson-clad soldier racing pell-mell through the streets didn't draw much attention. Whatever the case, while he received more than his share of startled glances, nobody made any effort to stop him as he pounded across the cobblestones, twisting around or even leaping the occasional vendor's stall, until he finally arrived at Rahariem's Merchants' Guild.
He blew past the clerk at the desk-who may well have shouted a protest, but Cerris never heard it-and hurled doors from his path, sometimes hard enough to crack wood against an adjacent wall. A hired guard stepped into his path, more likely to ask his business than to stop him, but Cerris drove a knee into the man's groin and two fingers into his sternum, and was off and running once more before the man finished crumpling to the floor. Stairs flashed by beneath his feet, three, even four at a time, until he'd reached the highest floor. Around the corner, down the hall, praying he wasn't too late…
Irrial spun, sword outstretched, as he burst through the final door, and for an endless breath they didn't know each other. Her hair was chopped short in crude imitation of a military cut, and the hauberk weighed heavily on her shoulders, but her arm was steady. Blood dripped from the blade, adding to a larger pool of crimson that spread across the carpet from the body of Guildmaster Yarrick.
Sunder fell slowly, as though wilting, to Cerris's side. "Gods, what have you done?"
"What had to be done," she said flatly, daring him to argue.
He accepted, slamming the door behind him. "Damn it, Irrial. We needed him! We needed to know why, who else was involved-"
"I'm not an idiot, Cerris. I tried! But he came at me, I didn't have-"
"Don't you dare! You had a choice, all right. You could have asked me to come with you! We could have taken him without killing him."
"I thought-"
"You didn't think! You were angry, and you acted blindly. So how did you enjoy murder, Irrial? Is it everything you'd hoped?"
The baroness staggered as though he'd slapped her, nearly tripping as her heel struck the corpse by her feet. Her jaw worked soundlessly, and the sword fell unnoticed to the gore-soaked carpet. Even within the heavy hauberk, her shoulders quivered visibly, and she seemed unable to pull her gaze from her open hands.
"Cerris…" It was not the voice of an adult, but the call of a distraught child. "Oh, gods…"
Cerris understood, then, just as clearly as he'd understood where to find her. Taking a deep breath, he shoved his own anger aside and crossed the room, holding Irrial as her entire body shook with racking sobs.
He said nothing, for there was nothing to say. Both of them knew what she'd lost; knew for what she'd grieved, all unknowing, since the attack on the caravan. And they both knew that her tears, no matter how many she shed, would never wash the stain of blood from her hands. JUST AS THEY HAD THE PRIOR EVENING, Cerris and Irrial took the long way home, avoiding streets on which he might have earlier been seen. And just as they had the prior evening, they made the trip in silence.
Cerris helped her from the tabard and-as gently as the awkward mail allowed-the hauberk, dropping both in the corner near the scattered strands of hair. The rest of her clothes followed, not out of any romantic ardor but because they were spattered with Yarrick's blood. The normally modest baroness seemed disturbingly unaware of, or indifferent to, her nakedness. He handed her the nearest tunic and trousers; she climbed into them stiffly, mechanically.
Cerris, who could scarcely recall the years before he'd first learned to kill, found himself utterly at a loss. He didn't know what to say, or how to comfort her.
And gods damn him, more than a small part of him just wanted to shake her, to demand she get over it. To insist that they had larger worries than guilt.
'Well, finally! Now you're thinking like yourself again!'
He ruthlessly smothered those feelings, but every now and then he'd glance her way and feel not sympathy, but a flickering ember of irritation.
Some minutes later, she apparently came to the same conclusion. With a literal shake of her head, as though she could shed the crush of emotions like so much water, she took a deep breath and faced him. "What now, Cerris?"
"Now? Now we get the hell out of this damn town."
"What? But-"
"Irrial," he said, perhaps more sharply than he'd intended, "there's nothing more we can do here. The resistance is over. The Cephirans know our faces. Dying for a hopeless cause may sound noble, but I've come damn close to doing it myself, and it's really not as much fun as you'd think."
"I know," she admitted. "But I can't just abandon my people."
"You want to help Rahariem? The way to do it is out there." He gestured vaguely in what he was pretty sure was a westerly direction. "Find out what's keeping the Guilds and the nobles from reacting to this invasion, and fix it. I promise you, the armies of Imphallion have a much better chance of driving the Cephirans out than you do."
'Oh, right.' Gods, he wished that inner voice would just shut up, but it kept right on yammering. 'Like that's the reason you want to be out there. You couldn't care less about Rahariem. You want to find out about-'
"We already know part of the problem, don't we?" she asked. "It's Rebaine."
'Yeah. That.'
"It's not him, actually," Cerris said carefully. "Someone's lying, or-or something."
Irrial blinked twice. "What would make you think that? It's not as though he hasn't done this sort of thing before."
"I just-I just don't think it sounds right."
"Why not?"
"Look, it doesn't matter-"
"Cerris." She rose, stepping toward him, and there was something he didn't recognize, and didn't like, behind her expression. Her gaze flickered to his face, to Sunder, and back again, and while they still showed no sign of recognition, he could swear he saw the first gathering clouds of a terrible notion in the depths of her eyes. "Why not?"
He was utterly exhausted, his last reserves drained. He was worried, even terrified, at the repercussions of those rumors. He was furious at having been betrayed by Yarrick, at whoever or whatever was behind the falsehoods spreading through Imphallion. And maybe, just maybe, he was falling in love for only the third time in his life.
And even though he knew it was a mistake from the moment the words passed over his lips, a part of him exulted in freedom as Cerris spoke the truth he hadn't uttered to another living soul in years.
"Because I'm Corvis Rebaine, Irrial."
Irrial's features went so utterly slack that he wondered briefly if she'd passed out, even died, o
n her feet. It was the clenching of her fists, the slow flushing of her cheeks, that convinced him otherwise-and convinced him, as well, that it never once occurred to her to doubt his word.
After all, what halfway rational man would lie about such a thing?
"You bastard…" It wasn't even a whisper, barely a wisp of breath.
"Irrial, I-"
"You bastard!" No whisper, now, but a shriek of such fury that it almost, almost, hid the agonized heartbreak beneath it.
He never saw it coming. One instant he was standing, reaching for her with a pleading hand, and the next he was on the floor, his jaw throbbing, blood trickling from where his lips had split against his teeth.
Irrial stood over him, fists shaking, and he truly believed in that moment that had she held a weapon, Yarrick would not have been the only man to die at her hands that day.
"Irrial, please. I'm not the same man I-"
"Not the same man? Not the man who conquered Rahariem? Not the same man who slaughtered more people in one day than the Cephirans have killed in the last month? Not that man, Cerris?"
"Not anymore," he insisted, propping himself up on his elbows. "You've known me for three years! Do you really think those were all a lie? How about the past weeks? Were those?"
She glared, mouth twitching around two or three possible answers.
"Irrial, I don't even think of myself as 'Corvis' anymore. It was so long ago…"
"Long? Not so long that I don't still have nightmares. Not long enough to un-kill all the people-some of them my friends, my family!-that you butchered. No, Cerris, it hasn't been that long at all."
"Irrial, I'm sorry. I truly am. I lo-"
"If you say it," she hissed, "I swear to every god that I'll slit your damn throat!"
"Fine!" He surged to his feet, shoving her aside, anger rising to reflect her own. "Then how about the fact that I saved your damn life? How about the fact that you need me to save your precious city?" He stopped, breathing heavily, struggling to rein himself in. "Irrial, whatever happened in the past, whoever I am and whatever you think of me, Rahariem needs us both. Imphallion needs us both. And we need each other."