Fifth Quarter

by Tanya Huff

  He dared to hope they’d died under the rock.

  But demons were tricky, and he’d believed them dead before.

  When he could no longer see where to place either feet or staff, he led the way to an outcrop of rock and sank to the ground.

  Otavas stumbled after him, stomach growling. He didn’t want to ask the old man for anything, but the old man was carrying the food. “I’m hungry,” he said, sounding much younger than seventeen.

  “Of course you are, my heart.”

  The three plums were not at their best, having spent the better part of two days in a calfskin pouch, but the prince wolfed them down, then licked the juice off his fingers. Two biscuits, hard and dry, and a few mouthfuls of tepid water finished the meal.

  “In the morning, I will make mush,” the old man told him. “And then we will gather up the bounty of the land.”

  “Bounty?” Otavas swiveled his head around and waved a hand at the canyon walls he couldn’t see. “Of this land? There’s nothing but a lot of rock and scrub!”

  The old man sighed. “Do you remember how you used to set snares for the rabbits far away from the cabin because you knew I hated to hear them scream?”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “Of course it was, my heart.”

  Otavas flinched back as an ancient hand reached out and unerringly patted him on the thigh in spite of the darkness. He frowned and rubbed at the place the old man had touched. He didn’t know how to set a snare for a rabbit. Did he? Still frowning, he barely resisted as he was pulled down to pillow his head on a bony lap. Brushing a dangling finger bone off his cheek, he rolled over and stared up at the stars.

  “You must sleep, my heart. We are still far from home and safety.”

  Otavas traced the Road to Glory with his gaze and twisted just far enough to see the four brilliant white stars that made up the points of the Imperial Diadem. Imperial … Emperor … Tears spilled out the comers of his eyes as he remembered. He was Prince Otavas, the Emperor’s youngest son. Prince Otavas. He’d never set a rabbit snare in his life.

  “Sleep, my heart.”

  Holding his memories like a shield, the prince fought the compulsion. And lost.

  The old man looked to where his family sat, a semicircle of shadows against the shadows of the night. “We must keep watch,” he told them softly, “so that the demons do not come on us unprepared.” Wheyra, Hestia, and Iban, he turned around where they sat. Kait, he moved up to the top of the rocky outcrop he leaned against.

  As she climbed clumsily in the darkness, he stroked the matted hair back off the face in his lap. “Remember how you would hold me when the demons tried to take my dreams? I will hold you now, my heart, and protect you as you so long ago protected me.”

  * * * *

  “We’re staying here until the moon comes up.”

  “No.” Karlene tried to push past her, but brown fingers clamped around her arm like an iron vise.

  “You want a busted ankle to go with his arm?” Vree asked, pushing her face within inches of the other woman’s. “If we can’t see well enough to move safely, you can’t.”

  The bard knew better than to try to pull away. “But we’re so close.”

  “Close enough to trip over them. We don’t want that.” When Karlene nodded reluctantly, Vree released her and sank to the ground. Both hands searched for potential disaster—she wasn’t certain fire ants even lived this far north, but she had no intention of finding herself sleeping on a nest. She rolled a few loose rocks out of the way and then thankfully shrugged out of the jury-rigged pack.

  “We should’ve kept one horse for the gear,” Gyhard muttered as he dropped the little he carried.

  “We’re trying to sneak up on them, and horses don’t sneak worth shit.” Vree stretched out, pillowed her head on the pack, then twisted so she could see Gyhard outlined against the stars as he settled down beside her.

  *He’s too close.*

  *You can watch your body more easily.*

  *Vree, he’s broken my arm.* A broken arm, no matter how cleanly the bone set, would never be as strong as it once was. He would never be able to depend on his body as he had before Gyhard. *He has to pay for that.*

  “I know.” He was so close, she could see the pain he tried to hide, see the way he held his left arm protectively with his right.

  “You know what?” Gyhard asked, wondering why her words had sounded like she pushed them through a blocked throat.

  Vree closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself. “I was talking to Bannon.”

  “Out loud?”

  As he knew the answer already, she didn’t bother responding. She hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud.

  “Vree?” Karlene sat on her other side, all the highs and lows rubbed off her voice by emotional exhaustion. They were so close that every rock, every tree, every bend in the trail could hide the prince. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

  Muscles tensed. “About what?”

  “His Highness.”

  His Highness. Vree bit back a nearly hysterical giggle of relief. “We should catch up and follow him for a couple of days, find the patterns, note the weaknesses, and plan a way to use them.”

  *Just like Neegan did,* Bannon snorted. *Giving the commander a chance to kill us from beyond the grave?*

  *Shut up, Bannon.*

  *I can’t believe you care that he’s dead.*

  *He was our …*

  *Father? Yeah, right.*

  Father. No. *Teacher. Commander. He kept us together.* His laugh ground salt into open wounds. *Then he’d love this, wouldn’t he?*

  Karlene shook her head, forgetting that night hid the gesture. “We can’t go on like this for another couple of days.”

  Bannon continued to laugh as Vree shoved him back as far as she could. Which wasn’t far. “Neither can we,” she murmured. “We’ll move on when the moon rises.”

  “But now …”

  “Now, I’m going to sleep. I suggest you do the same.”

  Karlene stared down at the Vree-shaped shadow in disbelief. “How can you sleep?”

  A fingernail cut a half-moon into her palm; teeth clenched, she forced the fist to open. “I can do anything I have to.”

  * * * *

  An assassin has no family but the army.

  An assassin has no family but the army.

  An assassin has no family but the army.

  An assassin has no family but the army.

  An assassin has no family but the army.

  An assassin has no family but the army.

  An assassin has no family but the army.

  AN ASSASSIN HAS NO FAMILY BUT THE ARMY.

  A hundred voices said it. Vree listened for one alone.

  She was seven. Her mother had just died. Neegan was absurdly young, with no scar on his throat, and his voice able to roam where it pleased. He had not yet survived long enough to be made an officer.

  “An assassin,” he said, wiping her cheeks with strong fingers and lifting her face so she could stare into his eyes, “has no family but the army.”

  The moonlight touched her face and Vree woke trying to hold onto the feeling she’d just been given a gift. *The army was his family, Bannon. He gave it to us.*

  *Gave us to it.* His mental voice held no forgiveness. *If you had no family but the army, Vree, what does that make me? He screwed that up, too, sister-mine. But then, he died for you at the end. Right after he held a slaughtering knife at what he thought was my throat.*

  *I …* You mean more to me than training, Neegan had said to her with his death. I would rather die than kill you.

  *He also said he’d rather die than voluntarily miss a target. Look, Vree, you feel what you want about him, but if I feel nothing but slaughtering satisfaction that he’s dead and I’m not, well, he has only himself to blame. Isn’t that what he taught us? Do anything you must to reach your target. Do anything you have to in order to survive.* Fear turned th
e anger to a sullen crimson pulse. Bannon opened her eyes and turned her head toward Gyhard, repeating, * Anything,* so softly she thought she might have imagined it.

  Gyhard was awake and staring at her with a hungry longing that made her want to grab his shoulders and shake him until his ears bled. She’d already killed one man who loved her—in his own dark and twisted way—did this one think she couldn’t kill two?

  *It’s all right, sister-mine. I can hate him enough for both of us.*

  The moon turned Karlene’s pale hair into a gleaming silver-white braid that looked too perfect to be real. When Vree stood, the bard’s lids snapped up and she whispered, “Is it time?”

  Palms rubbing against each other, Vree nodded.

  Vree saw the shadow first, flowing down the curve of the outcropping, one dark stream ending in the outline of a hand and moonlight-elongated fingers. Tracing it back to its source, she found the slumped silhouette of a watcher—not a stump or boulder as she had first assumed. She forced her eyes to remain locked on it, fighting the compulsion to look away and then fighting the terrified panic that rose when she refused to give in.

  *No one sits that slaughtering still. We don’t sit that still.*

  *We’re alive.* She watched a moment longer, then swept the area at the base of the outcrop with a tightly leashed gaze. Two more. No, three—two of them so close together the darkness nearly made them one. Four in all. *That’s not so bad. We defeated that many at the ford and these ones don’t look armed.*

  *We were defending ourselves at the ford. If our kigh things won’t face them, we can’t attack.*

  *We’re not going to attack. We’ll go around.*

  She could see a shoulder and some old man hair. Kars. The dark on dark bundle by his side had to be Prince Otavas. Belly to the ground, Vree squirmed closer. It didn’t help much. Even allowing for bardic exaggeration, Karlene’s description of the prince had little in common with the filthy young man resting his head in Kars’ lap.

  *That looks friendly.*

  *Does everything have to come back to sex with you?*

  *I said friendly, sister-mine.*

  The young man moaned and pushed at the air with one long-fingered hand. Four or five thin gold rings winked in the moonlight.

  *It’s him. And he’s alive.*

  Her weight on fingers and toes, Vree started back to Karlene and Gyhard, left safely hidden behind a bend in the canyon with orders to stay there. As little as she’d been able to see creeping forward, she could see less now. A rock rolled away from a questing foot and bounced down a rain-cut gully. Vree froze and watched it wide-eyed as it slammed into the knee of one of the silent watchers. A pale oval of face turned toward her.

  If she didn’t move, it wouldn’t see her.

  For the first time since she took up a blade for the goddess, Vree was up against greater patience than hers. The dead eyes stared unblinkingly toward her. And stared. And stared.

  A tepid rivulet of sweat dribbled down from Vree’s temple, across her cheek, along her jaw, to drip off the point of her chin. The night seemed impossibly quiet; her breathing dangerously loud.

  *The eyes—they’re not focused. It doesn’t actually see us!* Bannon’s nerve broke and Vree made no attempt to regain control as they scuttled, lizardlike, back to the bend in the canyon. When strong hands closed around her arm, she came closer to screaming than at any time in her life.

  “Is he there, Vree? Is he there? Is he all right?”

  The bard’s breath touched her ear, no warmer than the night air but so alive Vree found herself leaning toward it.

  “Is he there?”

  “Yes.” As she sat on her heels, she wasn’t sure which of them answered, decided it didn’t matter. “But he’s asleep.”

  “Kars …”

  Senses stretched nearly to the breaking point picked the name out of a thousand tiny whispers of air. “I’m not going to kill the old man,” she answered, half-turning to Gyhard. “I can’t. He has his back against a rock, and there’s one of them on it. He’s in shadow and the prince is very close, so I don’t want to risk a throw.” Her fingers laced around each other, the trembling buried in the weave. “I’m going to go back …”

  *Are you out of our mind!*

  “… and wait until dawn. When he wakes up, he’ll have to take a piss. I’ll grab him then. When people think that death hides in the darkness, they’re a lot more careless if they make it through the night.”

  Karlene made a sound very much like a sob. “That could almost be a song.”

  Vree wiped sweaty palms on her thighs and covered the motion with a shrug. “Sing it later. Gyhard, you’ll have your chance to talk to Kars. You’ve got until dawn to find something to say,” Bannon added scornfully.

  “But the prince,” Karlene protested.

  “The old man won’t do anything if there’s a chance I’ll hurt him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She remembered the gentle, protective line of shoulder, arm, and hand. “Yeah. I’m sure. You just be ready to Sing if you’re needed.”

  It seemed darker over by the rocks, the dead and living equally hidden by the night. She didn’t want to go back there…

  *Then don’t go!*

  … but the journey that had started in the governor’s stronghold in Ghoti was coming to an end and what she wanted couldn’t stop it. Vree was as certain of that as she’d ever been about anything.

  If the prince is alive …

  He was.

  If we can free him …

  They were about to find that out.

  If Gyhard tries to jump to the prince …

  Then they’d all be dead and it would be over.

  *I don’t want to be dead, Vree. And what if he doesn’t try to jump to the prince?*

  *Then you won’t be dead. But you’ll still be here.* Bannon had become a constant, painful pressure against her—physically and emotionally. She was so tired of failing to sort out which was her and which was him. *Wouldn’t death be better?*

  *Not mine.*

  “Vree?”

  She felt Gyhard’s warmth beside her, the way she’d often felt Bannon’s warmth pressed close in the past.

  “If I had this all to do over again …” He paused and in spite of herself, she turned to face him. His expression reminded her of the times Bannon had attempted to apologize for involving her in some recklessness. “If I had this all to do over,” he repeated, very softly, “I’d arrange the defenses of Ghoti so that the Sixth Army would only have to send its second best assassins.”

  Vree stared at him for a moment, then pressed the heels of both hands against her mouth to keep from roaring with laughter. When she finally regained control, she rubbed the tears from her eyes and found him watching her, smiling just a little, sharing the joke.

  The moment stretched, lengthened.

  The silence pulled Karlene around, dragged her attention away from the nearby prince. She’d never heard it speak so loudly.

  Then Vree, almost deafened by the pounding of her heart, whispered, “Think about what you’re going to say to Kars,” and the moment shattered with the old man’s name. “Watch and wait,” she continued. The training she fought to wrap around her had once fit like a second skin—she couldn’t remember taking it off. “Make your move as soon as I have His Highness in my hands.”

  Gyhard nodded; by the time he raised his head, she was gone.

  *I didn’t think that was so funny.*

  *I did.*

  *My body, Vree.*

  *I know.*

  *When I get it back, I’ll make you forget him.*

  Once, the intensity in his voice would have stoked desire, bringing heat and hopelessness equally mixed, Now, it only stroked a chill down her spine.

  Moving as quickly as survival allowed, Vree followed the shadow paths and made a wide arc around the tiny half circle of dead sentinels. Sometimes she was herself. Sometimes she was Bannon. Sometimes, she wasn’t sure. Unseen,
or at least unremarked, she/they came at last to the ambush site she’d chosen earlier.

  A thorntree, a multibranched and thriving cousin to the tree at the way station, rose into the night. Vree tucked herself into the safety of broken shadow, the separate pieces of darkness together hiding the whole. This is where the prince would come in the morning. Men seemed to prefer to piss on bushes and trees, she didn’t know why, and this was the only one of any size close enough.

  * * * *

  “Wake up, my heart. The night is nearly gone and we have so far still to go. You must wake.”

  Otavas stirred, trying desperately to hang onto the remnants of a dream. He was listening to a song—a sad song filled with loss and confusion and pain. Somehow he knew that if he could just find the singer, then everything would be all right.

  “Wake up, my heart.”

  He had no choice. His eyes opened, and he saw the dangling bits of bone and the old man’s face above that. Above them both, the sky arced silver-gray. Not quite day but no longer night. Balancing his head like an egg on a spoon, Otavas pushed himself up onto his knees and waited for the world to stop wobbling.

  “The demons made no move in the night, my heart.”

  Demons. The prince whirled around and had to clutch at the rock face behind him to keep from toppling.

  “I kept you safe as you once kept me.” The old man smiled tenderly; and Otavas found himself returning it.

  He loves me. Black brows drew in as the prince tried to figure out why that was wrong. I don’t love him. Perhaps that was it—but it didn’t seem to be enough. Attempting unsuccessfully to push the accumulated residue of induced sleep away, Otavas struggled to his feet.

  “Don’t leave me,” the old man said.

  “No, I just have to …”

  “An Imperial prince does not discuss his bodily functions.” The voice rose up out of memory. “Do you understand me, Highness?”

  “Yes, Nurse.” But Nurse Zumi had been dead for years. Hadn’t she? “I just have to …” He waved a hand at the thorn tree and was relieved when the old man smiled again.

  “Go ahead, my heart. I promised you mush this morning.”

  Ignoring the silent sentinels, Otavas stood by the tree and fumbled with his trousers.