She tucked her gloves away and stepped quickly around the room, delving Rymark, Ellias, and Timbriend in turn, her touch thorough enough to determine each person’s innocence. Beside Fess once more, she nodded. “You’re safe, Your Majesty, at least so far as the people in this room are concerned.”
Timbriend spoke into the pause. “King Ellias has informed me of your unique gift, Lady Deel. Why not delve the entire camp?”
Rymark answered for her. “We have thousands of men and women here,” he said. “The use of the gift is tiring. While it may come to what you suggest, even with Lord Fess joining her, the process would take weeks, perhaps months, to complete.”
Ellias dipped his head in agreement. “Come, Timbriend. We are done here, and I wish to see your analysis of last night’s engagement as soon as possible.” The tent flap fluttered at their departure.
Toria gestured at the map. “Where will you place your camp, Your Majesty? I should know that before we depart.”
“You’re still leaving?”
She nodded. “Nothing has changed. Despite your losses here, Cesla’s losses were worse. He gambled a sizable force on the attack and lost much of it, but you still need weapons, and the camp to the west has fewer casualties than any other—we must find out why.”
“Our losses may be greater than you know, Lady Deel,” he said, nodding to Fess. “Your suggestion of placing twin rings around the forest requires a great deal of men and perfect discipline. We have the first, provided we don’t suffer many more attacks like last night’s, but the second is impossible, or nearly so.” He shook his head. “We already have more conscripts than I’d prefer. Men who’ve joined the army at the point of a sword have a way of disappearing.”
“All the more reason Fess and I should investigate the lower casualty rate at your outpost,” she said. “Whatever they’re doing is working.”
Rymark sighed. “Very well.” He pointed to a spot thirty leagues from their current position. “I’ll be moving the camp here.” His finger landed on the Darkwater River, ten leagues north of Treflow.
Her heart might have skipped a beat as the implications of his choice became clear. “You’re planning lines of retreat, Your Majesty?”
His eyes, somber and hooded with lack of sleep, betrayed him for an instant. “I’ve developed an intuition about battle, Lady Deel, which has seldom betrayed me. I will use every tool and suggestion that I can put my hand to, even using the arcane knowledge of the mathematicum. But my intuition tells me this is a war I cannot win.”
She kept herself from nodding, unwilling to confirm his fears. “Hold as long as you can. If men and weapons cannot win the war, then we will find another way. If Aer is willing.”
“You’ll need uniforms and letters of authorization,” Rymark said. “They’ll help you move among the outposts, and you’ll be able to commandeer whatever you require.”
They reached the first outpost later that morning, the men already working to split weapons and supplies, with the majority moving farther from the forest. Toria reined in her horse, sighing. Wag sat on her left, waiting patiently.
“Lady Deel?” Fess asked.
“It’s time that you shouldered your burden as a member of the Vigil, Fess. We’ll delve a sampling of the soldiers and check for vaults.” When his face tightened, she went on, her tone sharpening. “Bronwyn didn’t pass her gift to you. It went free and came to you by Aer’s intent.”
The fingers of his hand twitched, an attempt to brush her assertion away. “Chance.”
Her tone became withering. “Don’t be childish. You know better. Bronwyn chose you to be her apprentice and then died, purposely without passing it on to you. Aer stepped in and brought the gift to you anyway. You would never have received it by mere chance. When we see Timbriend again, I can ask her to calculate the probability of such an event, if you wish. I have no feel for the mathematicum, but I know an impossibility when I see it. Aer chose you.”
“I didn’t want it.”
“No one does!” She clenched her teeth. “Some of us only think we do. Then we discover exactly what you have. Do you think you’re the first to be disappointed by what you’ve seen in your fellow man? You wanted to believe they’re good. You should have known better.”
Struck, he tried to retreat into his stoicism. “Do you have any other commands, Lady Deel?” His voice imbued her title with mockery.
She chose to ignore it. “Yes. Give me your hand. I’m going to show you something I’ve hidden behind my walls for decades. I haven’t let anyone see this, but you will.”
He didn’t move. “Why?”
She shrugged. “I could give you any number of reasons. Why not? We’re nothing more than animated dust with burdens to be shared. I’m tired of dragging a secret around with me. I have more cheap justifications, if you want to hear them.”
“Why do I feel like none of those are the real reason?” he asked.
“Because you’re insightful,” she said. “The truth is I’m tired of you wallowing in your self-pity and depriving me and the rest of the world of the hope you brought to us. The gift didn’t make you precious, Fess. You already were, just the way Aer made you. Imagine it, a boy who grew up in the urchins who managed to find joy in everything. You have no right to let your self-pity deprive others of such a gift. Yes, I said gift.”
He laughed at her, but the sound carried no joy, only breath. “Do you think I want to be like this?”
She nodded. “You are choosing this. It might not seem that way to you, but you are. You’ve wallowed in your grief until the tears dried and there was nothing left but self-pity.”
Her words struck him like axe blows against a sapling, shaking him until his expression crumpled. “I don’t know how to get back,” he cried.
“Oh, Fess,” she said, enfolding him in her arms and putting her head on his chest. “You were like a breath of wind that captured our hearts. Let us love you.”
“Bronwyn loved me and she died.”
She reached out for his hand. “We all die. Here, let me show you something sad and foolish and funny.” She took his wrist and guided his hand to her cheek. Then she opened the locked door where she’d stored the memories she’d collected, recollections she’d prized above all others and taken care to keep secret.
She didn’t see the pupils of his eyes dilate as the gift took him, but he grew so still he might have become one of the surrounding trees. When he came out of the delve, he held her, his embrace willing and voluntary. She thought she might cry, but he needed more than that. She let his warmth cover her, a welcome hearth fire on a cold night.
Then she laughed. “Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
He chuckled. It sounded ghastly, like a man who’d never made the sound before, but it loosened after a moment. “That is funny to you?”
“Elanians are possessed with an ironic and rather tragic sense of humor compared to those of the other kingdoms,” she said, knowing Fess had to realize that wasn’t the whole truth. He’d delved her. He couldn’t help but know the shame she attached to those memories.
“Bronwyn taught me that the church holds the rite of confession as sacrosanct,” he said. “There’s little privacy in the urchins. Our lives are too crowded and desperate for it. I’m not a priest, but I will honor your confession. I don’t know what a priest would say, but I think courage comes in many guises.”
Then the tears did come and she clutched at him until she could laugh again. Pushing away, she started for the guards at the perimeter of the outpost, leading Fess and the sentinel toward the gate. “Come. We have much to do on our ride west.”
Wag padded at her side, but after half a dozen strides, he stopped, his legs stiff and the ruff of his neck standing on end. A rumble of promised violence throbbed deep in his throat, and he scented the air, his nose twitching.
“Stop,” Toria called to Fess. Quickly, before they could draw the attention of the soldiers manning the gate, she put her hand on Wag’s he
ad. “What do you smell?”
The forest, Mistress. There are men here who reek of it.
For Fess’s benefit she spoke out loud. “You can smell evil?”
No, Mistress. There are men here who smell like those who attacked the man-pack.
“We have to be sure, Wag,” she said. “Do you know what you’re smelling?”
Mud.
Realization and fear coursed through her. She licked her lips, fearing the answer to her next question. “Were there any men left in the man-camp who smelled of this mud?”
None living, Mistress.
She pulled a shuddering breath into her lungs, let her fear drift away with it as she exhaled. “Fess, have your weapons ready. There are men here who have gone to the forest.”
Without seeming to move, a dagger appeared in his free hand, hidden behind his forearm. “How many, Lady Deel?”
She stopped, horrified at her unwitting mistake. “How many in this camp have the smell of the forest on them?”
Wag’s nose twitched before he answered. Half the pack, Mistress.
Chapter 28
I marked the passage of time by the intervals of light and darkness outside the small window of my room. Maybe five days had gone by. I couldn’t be sure. My healer, a short stump of a man with prominent eyebrows, didn’t talk much except to tell me how stupid I’d been.
“I’d say you’re lucky you didn’t bleed to death,” he groused, “except it wasn’t luck at all. It was my skill, and even at that, it was a close thing. It’s just plain stupidity, going out in the city at night.”
During my stay, I’d learned not to argue. “Thank you,” I said.
The healer glowered at me, his eyebrows trembling with suppressed indignation, but he could find nothing in my gratitude with which to take exception. “Humph. Stay out of trouble, Lord Dura. There are two things I don’t enjoy—repeating myself and restitching wounds.”
I knew the first to be a lie. Master Gieman loved to repeat himself, especially where comments on my stupidity were concerned. “That sounds as though I’m being discharged from your care,” I said.
He nodded. “Evidently, you’re needed at court. Your guard and the lady are waiting for you outside.”
Fifteen minutes later I stepped into the noise of Cynestol, a current of sound I’d been unaware of during my time at the healer’s. Scents of meat and smoke washed over me, and in the distance I heard honest laughter, but the buildings waved in my vision as though the earth and heavens had become untethered from their moorings.
Gael caught me before I could fall. “Can you ride?”
I nodded. “I think so.”
She and Rory helped me into the saddle, and after a few blocks of walking through Cynestol’s working-class quarter, my head cleared enough to worry. “Won’t the healer talk?”
“No.” Gael shook her head. “He’s an old friend of Bolt’s.” She must have seen something in my pallor or expression that worried her. “Come, Willet, just a little farther.”
Her tone made me wonder just how bad I looked. True to her word, we were only a mile from the palace. Even so, the distance stretched into an agony where I felt each step of my mount in my injured side and the slightest misstep of my horse sent the moon and stars spinning.
When we got to the palace stable, I slid out of the saddle into Gael’s arms, as if my bones had turned to wax. I heard more than saw the clink of heavy silver coins she used to buy the hostler’s silence.
I felt as if I could have slept for days more. “How long until court opens?” I croaked.
“Not for twelve hours or so,” Gael said.
We threaded our way through the halls, and the rooms set aside for our use, a short journey that carried its own misery. Every time we came across a servant or functionary, I had to surrender Gael’s support and pretend to be a healthy man in possession of his requisite amount of blood.
When we made it to the privacy of our chambers, I fell into bed and plummeted into slumber.
Sunlight streamed through the west-facing window in a bar of light that spilled across the rich blue-patterned carpet in the room, up the bed, and onto my face. I didn’t understand at first, but a moment later my heart, already beating faster with the loss of blood, accelerated with my panic. I jerked awake, then put a hand to the stitches in my side.
“Court,” I gaped.
“It’s alright, Willet,” Gael said, “Bolt is there and he’s made excuses for us, as he has for days. His excuses would have fallen apart in Bunard, but in Cynestol’s court they have worked to perfection.” She couldn’t quite suppress the smile that made me want to cover her mouth with mine.
“What would those be?” I croaked as I reached to make use of the water pitcher by the nightstand. Stripped to the waist, I had a better idea of the damages. I’d taken a sword stroke to the side, and judging by the padding beneath the linen binding the wound, it had been significant, but the wound had lost most of its heat. I wouldn’t die because it fouled.
“He and Rory are letting everyone in court know that you’ve noticed my wandering eye here in Cynestol, specifically for a certain male servant, and you’re taking the luxury and the time to remind me just why I chose you to be my future husband.”
I didn’t have my full allotment of blood, but some of it made it to my face anyway. “They’re saying that?”
She nodded, this time showing more teeth as she smiled. “Or something even more suggestive.”
“You know what everyone will think,” I said.
Now she laughed. “Willet, my love, if I cared what people thought I would never have agreed to bind myself to ‘Laidir’s Jackal’ in the first place.” She shrugged. “It’s a different culture here. The nobles in Cynestol are far less concerned with the timing of the consummation of a betrothal and far more concerned with honoring the vow while the marriage is in force, however short that may be.” She took a deep breath and slid her hands around my neck. “However, if you’re worried about Bolt and Rory being truthful . . .”
Our lips parted a moment later and she smiled at me. “There. You just reminded me why I chose you. Come, those excuses will wear thin even here. We need to make some kind of appearance.”
I took a step toward the massive wardrobe at the other end of the room and wobbled. “I’m still unsteady on my feet,” I said. “People will notice.”
Gael laughed, a deep seductive sound. “I’ll just remind them that I am physically gifted.”
She laughed harder when I gaped at her. “You’re not concerned with your reputation?” I asked.
“When we could die any day from dwimor, insane people from the Darkwater, or power-mad clergy within the church?” She shook her head. “I think you’re asking the wrong question, my heart. The real question is why do you care what people think?”
She had a certain logic to her arguments. After that, I stopped worrying about the opinions of strangers. In truth, I usually didn’t. I’d carried any number of names in the past year or so. Jackal, assassin, and peasant-lord were just a few I could repeat in polite company. If the court of Cynestol wanted to label me a deflowerer of women, they would do it with or without my objections.
Better that than have Archbishop Vyne discover us.
Gael helped me dress, and we left our room to make our way back to court—where the assembled frippery of Cynestol nobility waited to press their case for rule to the last Errant. My mind was in better shape than my body, but not by any great amount. I hoped I would be able to delve enough of the nobility to sustain our ruse.
Outside our door, Rory waited, lounging against the far wall in a way that would make anyone think life in Cynestol bored him to death. He fell in beside me after a quick scan up and down the hallway. For the moment, it stood empty.
“What was it about the queen’s body that upset you and Bolt?” he asked.
The image of the queen, unclothed and facedown in her coffin rose in my mind. “She broke her neck, but it wasn’t any
dwimor’s doing.” I briefly wondered why neither Gael nor Bolt had spoke of this to him, but I couldn’t think of any reason he should be left in the dark.
“How could you know that?” Rory pressed.
It took me a moment to remember he’d been guarding the door. He hadn’t seen Chora’s body. “She had identical cuts above the back of each knee. Deep.”
Rory had never shouldered the burden of serving Collum in its wars against Owmead, but he’d picked up a lot of experience on the streets of Bunard. “The killer hamstrung her? Why?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” I said, “but I don’t think a dwimor would bother with trying to disguise the queen’s death as an accident.”
Rory shook his head. “But that doesn’t make any sense either. For that to work, someone would have had to plan her death ahead of time.”
“Possibly,” I said. “Or they’d have to possess the resources to improvise on the spot. That means they’d have to remove the queen’s body before anyone could see her.”
“And then guard the body with the cosp so no one might see how she really died,” Gael added, her voice hard.
Rory checked the hall around us, though his physically gifted hearing would have picked up on anyone following. “The Archbishop,” he said.
I stopped. “Possibly not.” I turned to Gael. “He wasn’t close enough to so quickly arrange her death, but the queen’s advisor was. He never left her side.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Bishop Gehata. But he could be working for Vyne.”
I nodded, holding up my hand. “Aer have mercy, I’m tired, but I have to find a way to touch him.”
A few moments later, we arrived at court, Rory preceding us to scan the crowd for any who might not be visible to others. We stepped into the silvered hall and the kaleidoscope it produced. Gael put her hand on my arm. “Speak of evil . . .” she murmured.
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