Fifth Quarter

by Tanya Huff

  “No.” The bard shook her head. “He didn’t tell me, you did. In the Healers’ Hall. You asked if the kigh were like Bannon, and you carry two kigh, so …” Karlene let her voice trail off. Yesterday, she’d only had enough energy for guilt and survival, but sleep and food and the village healer had rekindled curiosity. It had seemed that all through the morning a new question had risen with every fall of hoof on stone. As the oppressive heat pushed her thoughts down dark and self-condemning paths, the answers would be a welcome distraction.

  Vree dropped her gaze to her lap, her fingers beginning to unravel the knots again. After a moment, she nodded.

  Karlene released a breath she couldn’t remember holding. “Who is he?”

  “My brother.”

  “Were you—you and Bannon—born like this?”

  Vree snorted. “No.”

  “Did you choose it?”

  “No.”

  Karlene glanced over her shoulder at Gyhard. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Vree stiffen. “How did it happen?”

  “We fell into a trap.” The generous curves of Vree’s mouth flattened into a pale line. Did she want this bard to know how easily they’d fallen into Gyhard’s trap? Or how Bannon’s body had defeated her? Or how Bannon’s body had…

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Why not?”

  Vree stared at Karlene in astonishment. For her entire adult life, no one had ever continued a conversation when she’d said it was over.

  “Unless you have some sort of a death wish, I’d drop it,” Gyhard contributed, sounding amused.

  Karlene twisted around to face him. “A death wish?” she repeated scornfully.

  “She’s an assassin. As I mentioned before, they’re trained to have somewhat limited responses.”

  Karlene blinked, suddenly remembering the feel of the blade on her throat. Assassin. She kept forgetting. But neither could she believe that Vree would kill her merely for pressing a point and said so.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Gyhard sat up and brushed an ant off his arm. “She’ll kill anyone who gets in her way.”

  As much as she would have preferred not to, Karlene could hear the truth in his voice and had to believe him. One hand holding a pale strand of hair off her face, she turned back to Vree. “Am I in your way?”

  Vree carefully untangled another bit of the shrine. This foreign singer, this bard, already knew she was an assassin. Had to have noticed that she was no longer a part of any of the seven armies. Although she seemed to have no indication of what that meant, if Gyhard was right and bards couldn’t be trusted to keep quiet, Vree would have to decide whether or not to kill her as soon as the prince was safe. She couldn’t risk her even accidentally betraying them—betraying her and Bannon, or her, Gyhard, and Bannon, it didn’t matter.

  “That,” Gyhard said, rising lithely to his feet, “remains to be seen.”

  “I’m asking Vree.”

  Gyhard bowed mockingly. “Pardon me, Lady Bard.”

  “Am I in your way, Vree? I’d like us to be friends.”

  Vree pulled another thread loose. “Why?”

  Calm bardic tones cracked slightly. “Because I could use a friend right now, and I think you could, too.” Whatever Gyhard was, Karlene would bet the entire contents of the circle that he wasn’t a friend.

  Iron self-control kept Vree from trembling. There’d always been Bannon…

  Standing over them, Gyhard braced himself against an unexpected wave of jealousy and tried not to feel the knives twisting. He was suddenly glad he hadn’t mentioned that the prince could be alive, that he hadn’t offered the bard reason to hope. “Very touching. It’s time to go.”

  Vree shook her head, curls of sweat-damp hair falling over her forehead. “In a minute. I want to finish this.”

  “You’ll never get it untangled. Give up.”

  “No. Once I find the one thread that releases the rest …” Vree hooked a finger through a loop, twisted, and knots seemed to slide apart of their own volition. “… everything works out.” She rose to her feet and hung the small shrine back in the tree. “Just a matter of finding that one thread.”

  Gyhard flicked one of the wooden ovals with his fingernail and set the whole shrine spinning. “Very symbolic,” he said dryly. “But do you really need the complication of a friend you may have to kill?” He flicked it again, harder this time. The oval began to spin, wrapping about the others, catching up the longer threads, and reentangling the whole.

  Vree took a deep breath and came to a visible decision. Her right hand folded into a fist. Muscles moved with purpose under the silk of her shirt.

  Gasping for breath, arms wrapped around his stomach, Gyhard dropped to his knees and stared up at her in pained astonishment.

  *Vree! What have you done?*

  *Something I should have done days ago. The sanctimonious little shitbrain; thinks he can do and say what he wants because he’s in your body. Well, he’s wrong!* She stomped over to the horses, posture leaving no room for compromise.

  Karlene smiled for the first time in two days and followed.

  * * * *

  Dusk in the Capital muted both the glorious display of colors—statues, mosaics, friezes—and the grime of thousands of people living one on top of the other. Habit placed Commander Neegan in the narrow space between two buildings where he scowled at the deepening shadows. He’d been to every expensive inn in the city, his black sunburst ensuring answers to any question he cared to ask; nothing. For some reason his targets had changed the pattern they’d followed for the last thirteen days.

  There were a hundred, a thousand places they could be. Finding them would take a little more time than he’d anticipated.

  A rustling behind him dropped a dagger down into his hand. He whirled and threw. The pigeon managed half a wingbeat before it realized it was dead—dagger point driven into the packed earth behind it, narrow hilt pressed tightly against the soft gray feathers of its breast.

  There was, however, no doubt that they’d be found.

  * * * *

  “Vree told me about the cart.”

  Gyhard turned from his contemplation of the stars and stared at the bard. “I wonder why.”

  Karlene crossed the stableyard to stand beside him at the small corral. “Perhaps she doesn’t like the intimacy that a shared secret brings.”

  “And you are her friend, after all.” He leaned back against the rails, studying her, weighing her potential threat. “So where are the third and fourth members of our intrepid party?”

  “She’s asleep.”

  “You should be asleep as well. You still aren’t completely recovered. If you want to give your all in the service of the prince, you’ll need an all to give.”

  As her eyes adapted to the dark, Karlene could make out the dim shapes of horses by the far curve of the fence. “I woke up, saw you weren’t there, and decided this might be the time for a talk.”

  “I went to the privy—I never use pots if I can help it—and stopped to admire the night sky.” He hooked his thumbs behind the waistband of his full trousers. “Talk about what?”

  The bard shrugged. “About what’s going on. Why it’s going on. Where we’re going.” Her gaze caught his and held it. “Who are you?”

  “Gyhard i’Stevana.” He jerked free, fully aware that she made no effort to hold him. “That wasn’t very nice,” he snarled. “I’m quite sure it probably contravenes any number of Bardic Vows.”

  “So do you; just by existing.” Her brows drew down, throwing her eyes into shadow. “You’ve been assuming that you have all the power here—power over Vree, probably because of her brother; power over me because I need you to help me rescue what’s left of a young man who never hurt anyone in his entire life and who deserves better than torture and terror after death. Well, you’re wrong. Vree let you know that this afternoon; I’m letting you know it now. You need me as much as I need you, and I strongly suspect you n
eed her more than you need anyone.”

  “Is it so obvious?”

  Taken aback by his almost wistful tone, Karlene stared at him for a long moment, then finally sighed in exasperation. “That would be what you’d respond to. And I had such a good mad going, too.” She mirrored his position, leaning against the rails. “Even at a full gallop, when both of you have your attention locked on the road, I can feel the attraction humming between you. You’re not another brother, no matter what you look like.”

  “And what do I look like?” Gyhard asked dryly, deeply irritated by his flash of weakness. It must be love; only love leads to such blatant stupidity.

  “Like a young man, late teens, early twenties. Attractive. Arrogant. You act, however, like a man much older. A man accustomed to command, certain of being obeyed. I hear a man who has spent a lifetime learning to control everything around him.” She half smiled, enjoying his discomfort. “Now and then I hear a man who is finding that control slipping through his fingers. Callused fingers, working class fingers. The body doesn’t go with the voice or the attitudes the voice expresses.”

  “You should tell fortunes.”

  A quick gesture dismissed his facetious statement. “The body does, however, go with Vree. Not only do you share the same features, but your musculature is almost identical; those bodies were meant to do the same thing. Your kigh and your body are not fully meshed. Somehow, Vree’s body holds both her kigh and her brother’s.” She paused and turned to face him. “Your name is Shkodan, not Imperial. I don’t know how it happened. The mere fact that it happened at all would terrify me under other circumstances, but you, Gyhard i’Stevana, are wearing Bannon’s body.”

  Across the corral, one of the horses nickered softly.

  “You seem to have given this a great deal of thought,” Gyhard murmured.

  “I can’t think about His Highness all the time; it hurts too much.”

  “And suppose I tell you that you’re right. What then?” All at once, Karlene found it very difficult to breathe. It was one thing to spout incredible speculations in the middle of the night, and another entirely to have them confirmed. “I don’t know,” she managed at last, amazed at how composed she sounded. “Is this the first time it’s happened?”

  He rubbed at the fine triangle of hair in the center of his bare chest. Bannon; Aralt; a caravan guard; a chance-met stranger in the foothills of the border mountains; the young man with beautiful eyes who’d loved a crippled bard; the bandit … After a moment he said, “No.”

  “What? Who?”

  “What am I? Who am I?” He spread his arms. “Just a man who doesn’t intend to die.”

  Eyes wide, Karlene stepped away from him. Everything died. By refusing to accept that, Gyhard had taken himself out of the Circle and that alone made him as much an abomination as the dead men they followed. When she finally found her tongue, she could only manage a strangled, “How?”

  Shaking his head, Gyhard exhaled noisily. “I warned Vree that bards ask a great many intrusive questions. How do I do it? That is none of your business. How do I happen to be in this body? That is Vree’s business. If she wants you to know, she’ll tell you herself.

  “But know this: whatever the situation is, or becomes, between Vree and myself, you can affect it only in small ways.” Memory laid his hand over the ridged muscles of his stomach. The point where Vree’s fist had connected was still tender. “You can’t change anything.”

  “I Sing the kigh. Maybe I can.”

  Suddenly exhausted, Gyhard pushed himself up off the fence. “Don’t threaten me,” he said quietly. “As long as I’m in her brother’s body, Vree will do whatever she must in order to keep him alive. I think she’s amply proved that.”

  “Are you warning me …”

  “No.” He stopped, halfway to the inn and looked back at her over his shoulder, the night wrapped around him like a black velvet cloak. “You were warned this afternoon.”

  “She’ll kill anyone who gets in her way.”

  * * * *

  “What were you staring at?”

  The guard swallowed a painful lump in her throat, snapped to attention, and locked her gaze a hand’s span to the right of the slender man’s left ear. Although the voice had barely risen above a whisper, the question crackled with menace. “You, you look familiar, sir.”

  Commander Neegan’s brows drew in. He’d had too long and infuriating a day to put up with an open-mouthed inspection by a lowly member of the city guard. There were no laws against an Imperial citizen walking the streets of the Capital after dark. “Familiar?” he growled. “In what way?”

  Even without the uniform, she’d have known he was an officer the moment he opened his mouth, and not a guard officer either. Only Imperial Army officers could stare in such a way that the person on the receiving end felt like they’d just been scraped out of a public privy. Back ramrod straight, one hand clutching the haft of her pike, the other pressed against the side pleats of her kilt, she breathed a silent prayer to Doyu, the god of fools, that she wouldn’t end up on the wrong end of an army lash before morning. “You look like, well, I mean you move like someone I saw night before last. Sir.”

  The change in his expression almost made the idea of a flogging the lesser of two evils.

  “Tell me.”

  So she did. Everything she could remember of what happened—and she found that under the circumstances she could remember the details with incredible clarity—and everything she’d told the man and woman who’d accosted her.

  “And I move like the woman?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But not the man.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did they say why they were interested in the foreign singer?”

  “No, sir. Just that they were going to the Healers’ Hall to see her, and now she’s gone.”

  “Gone or dead?”

  “Gone, sir.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “My brother’s partner’s cousin’s nephew does laundry at the Hall. Sir.”

  Neegan nodded slowly, one hand rising to stroke the scar on his throat. He didn’t understand how Bannon could so quickly throw off years of training and no longer move like an assassin. He didn’t understand why they’d be interested in the foreign singer. But it seemed obvious that if the singer was gone … “And I see no reason to doubt your brother’s partner’s nephew,” he muttered aloud.

  “Brother’s partner’s cousin’s nephew, sir.”

  “Of course.” He graciously accepted the correction.

  The guard’s heart began beating again.

  If the singer was gone, then Vree and Bannon were gone with her. But rumor implicated the singer in the kidnapping of His Imperial Highness Prince Otavas.

  The guard had seen an old man with two dead men in the tombs along the East Road. The singer had said an old man and two dead men took the prince. Neegan didn’t for a moment believe that the men were dead. “But I don’t expect there are four dead men roaming the city.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why didn’t you report this to your commanding officer?”

  “I reported the dead men in the tombs, sir, and was demoted one rank for being drunk on duty.”

  “Were you?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Then your commanding officer is an idiot.”

  “Yes, sir!” She was beginning to like this dangerous little man.

  “Tomorrow morning, I want you to repeat everything you’ve told me to Marshal Usef.”

  Her jaw dropped. Up until that moment, she hadn’t believed that sort of thing actually happened. “Of the First Army, sir?”

  “Yes. Of the First Army.” He pulled a leather square out of his belt pouch and stuffed it into her hand as she seemed incapable of taking it from him. “Tell them that Commander Neegan says they should look for His Highness along the East Road.”

  “Yes, sir. But why tomorrow morning, sir?”

  “
Because I want to catch up to them first.”

  In spite of the heat, the guard shivered. She remained at attention until the commander disappeared into the night, then she moved out away from the buildings to give the moonlight a chance to illuminate the piece of leather in her hand. The black sunburst, stamped with the Imperial seal, stared up at her like a single, dark eye in the center of her palm.

  Eleven

  “Still sane?”

  Vree yanked the shirt over her head, glanced down at Karlene asleep with her mouth open, then back to Gyhard. “Why should you care?”

  Gyhard frowned and slowly stood. He tried to get a look at her face, but too little of the dawn light seeped through the slats of the shutters. It was the first time in all the mornings they’d shared that she hadn’t simply spat a defiant yes back at him. “I used to ask,” he said slowly, almost answering her question, “because I was amazed that against all odds you were still sane …”

  “And now you ask because you think I’m not?” Her whole posture suggested she dared him to challenge her. “Go on!” exclaimed the line of her jaw and the set of her shoulders, “I’m not afraid.”

  “And now I ask because …” … I’m afraid you’re not. He suddenly realized it himself. Since the night in the Healers’ Hall, her movements had lost much of their fluidity, her eyes were shadowed, and she’d begun to do things—little things—he’d never seen her do before. He’d be willing to bet that Bannon, in his own body, had rubbed his palms together while he thought. All at once, he became aware that she was waiting for him to finish, and under her defiance he could sense apprehension. His belief in her sanity might easily be what maintained it. Wasn’t it enough that he would be responsible for her madness? Apparently not. He finished the sentence as fatuously as he could. “… an insane assassin would not be a comfortable companion.”

  “If I go crazy, you’ll be able to kill me—us—and it’ll be over.”

  Would it? “If you go crazy, you’d be more likely to kill me, forgetting or not caring about whose body I’m in.”

  She balanced a throwing dagger on the ball of her index finger, flicked it into the air, and caught it. “You’re probably right.” A burgundy drop of blood marked the place where the point had pierced the skin.