Sword

by Amy Bai

  CHAPTER 21

  The air was so cold it hurt his throat; he wrapped a fold of his heavy wool cloak over his face, leaning on ice-slicked stone, and looked out over a landscape glittering with snow under the cold, bright sun.

  Cassdall's winters had been nothing like this.

  He guessed, from the groaning complaints of soldiers coming back from patrols, that Lardana winters were also mild. The heart of the lowlands wasn't visible from here, but the land stretching past the distant roll of the foothills was brown rather than white.

  Kinsey frowned into the wind, trying to hold several pieces of a story in his head, trying to make them fit with the story he found himself in now. It was like building puzzles, a pastime one of his nurses had taught him when he was very young. It was a game most of his cousins had laughed at him for, but the exercise had become a way of thinking that let him set aside all other attachments and work at a problem until he had a full picture before him, complete, yielding up its secrets.

  Who would have guessed that silly hobby would serve him so well so far from home?

  The Book—gods, it had already acquired capitals in his mind—was the most confusing thing he'd ever read, which was something of a sweeping statement coming from a scholar-prince. He'd been through it twice. It wasn't long, just bewildering, full of natural philosophy melded with magical theory, predictions of disaster and salvation—some of which had, alarmingly, already come to pass—and all of it woven through a tale of invasion, war, a land occupied, a people exiled to this very mountain and doomed to watch their kingdom overrun by their conquerors.

  The parallels gave him chills that had nothing to do with the frigid wind.

  Behind him, his bodyguards, newly assigned since Devin had passed on his grim news, shifted and coughed. They didn't want to be out here and Kinsey felt bad for that, but he couldn't think inside walls today. The fortress was filling with refugees; all the empty rooms were being swept out in a commotion of talking and weeping and orders. He needed quiet and today, that could only be found outside.

  Devin ought to be on his way back, speaking of Devin: Taireasa had said he was riding up the ridge with Waylen, who was in poor health after his ordeal and needed rest.

  "But if they knew what was coming, why didn't they act to prevent it?" Kinsey muttered, running a hand through his hair, which was tangled from sleep. He'd been coming back to this question over and over.

  "Certain events have a weight in the world, Cassdall prince. They cannot be moved without terrible consequences. Surely you know that; you've witnessed a few of these already."

  The old lady: Taireasa's teacher, the Lady Captain's former teacher. She'd slipped past his bodyguards like a ghost. Now poor Ludor and Jerin were hovering, daggers in hand, wide-eyed as though she really was one.

  Gods, she looked like a ghost, with her silver hair and pale eyes and creased, graying skin.

  "I've been trying to meet with you for some time," Kinsey said coolly.

  "I know. Here I am." She came forward, a heavy fur cloak wrapped about her shoulders, and rested her elbows casually against the battlements. The wind didn't seem to bother her. Kinsey waved his bodyguards back, trying not to scowl. A fortnight past, he'd have given a great deal to speak with this woman, but right now, with all the pieces tumbling around in his thoughts, he wasn't sure what to say, what to ask.

  To be honest, he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

  "Which is precisely the state I've been waiting for, young prince," Saraid said, making him go even colder, if that were possible. Dear gods, he'd forgotten she could—

  Read every thought in his head.

  That was horrifying.

  "It's less interesting than you think," she said placidly. "Also less invasive, at least on my end. I'm afraid that much of the time, I have little choice."

  Kinsey stared at her. "You… can't help but hear me?"

  "Can you shut out every voice in a crowded room? Can you shut out even one?"

  He glared down at his hands, wrapped in wool and pressed onto dark stone. "No, lady," he replied, thinking of Taireasa and her headaches. Gods, if he found magic frightening from where he stood, how much worse must it be for those who had such a Gift?

  "It gets easier," Saraid said, smiling. "The more organized the mind, the more force behind the sending. You've a very organized mind, young Kinsey of Cassdall. They need you here."

  "Do they?"

  It wasn't an idle question.

  Had he chosen the mountain path because it was the quickest and safest route, or because he was drawn here? Had his uncle objected so strongly to his presence because his advisors thought a shy scholar was a threat to a new ruler's reign, or because this particular scholar had to leave Cassdall? Could any amateur historian have filled this requirement—or, like Devin, Taireasa, and Kyali, did he have to be here?

  And if so, how much of his life had bent itself around that necessity?

  He was shaking. He didn't think it was from the cold. He felt like he stood on the battlements instead of leaning on them—like there was only the wind between him and a very long drop.

  "Geas," Saraid said, a word he'd seen more than once in the Book.

  "Fate."

  "Necessity, young prince: fate is far too mild a word for it. Fate gets confused with romance and power and other things men concern themselves with. Necessity. A thing that must be in order for the world to continue. A linchpin for all time. Your three friends, they must be here. They must be together. Many hundreds of years ago, events were set in motion that made that necessary, and all the world is remaking itself around us now to achieve it. I believe you've read enough to understand me."

  Oh gods, he'd been right, he didn't want to hear this.

  Kinsey huddled in his cloak, teeth chattering, more afraid than he'd been in... in more years than he could remember right now. He'd faced assassins with less distress. And here, there wasn't even anything to point to, except one iron-willed but otherwise benevolent old woman watching him with a disturbing blend of amusement and sympathy in her eyes.

  "I'm a long way from understanding," Kinsey admitted.

  "You're closer than you were, Cassdall prince. Closer by far."

  "So now you come to speak to me. You could have saved me several months of dithering, lady Saraid, if you'd just handed me the Book when we got here."

  "I think you know why I couldn't, Kinsey prince."

  He turned to face her. From fear he'd moved to anger, still shaking, not wanting her to see that—though it was probably a singularly moot point when you were dealing with a woman who read thoughts. He had little he could complain of in his exile, but he had seen how Devin and Taireasa suffered, and he ached for them.

  "Yes," he said, hearing the edge in his own voice. "No interfering with—with geas, if that's what you want to call it. We had to find our way to one another, and to here. We had to win the battle with the Sevassis army, we had to make peace between ourselves. And I had to find the Book on my own. That's a fairly broad definition of alone, though, Lady Saraid: Corin hid it in plain sight. And your people have provided shelter, food, protection, teaching in the use of magic, Devin's harp, the Lady Captain's armor, and then these…" He waved a hand. "These odd little nudges in the right direction. Excuse me if I'm a bit slow in understanding, but how are these things not interference? And how, if they are, do you justify not offering all the help you can give?"

  Her eyes had gotten darker: he could see the iron under the gentleness now, and he was glad of it. Kinsey sucked in a frozen chestful of air, trying to slow his pulse, to unclench his fists.

  "My, you do have a sharp tongue on you," Saraid finally said, which was so infuriatingly patronizing Kinsey made a noise of pure scorn and spun, unable to look her in the face. He leaned on the dark stone, trying to remember the last time he'd been this angry about something.

  Her hand pressed on his shoulder, not at all welcome. "You'll need that edge, prince of Cassdall," she said eas
ily.

  "I'm hardly a prince of anything. Why do you keep calling me that?"

  "It's what you are. Or did you really think the only role you had to play here was as librarian to a crowd of exiles?"

  Gods.

  "It is, granted, the role that's important right now," she allowed in her dry, meditative way and Kinsey glared at her, feeling a flush crawl up out of his collar in spite of the freezing wind.

  "How do you know that?!" he cried. Ludor and Jerin looked over from the door, alarmed. Kinsey flung a hand out before they could come over and settle what must look like a fight from there, never mind that one of the participants had to be at least seventy years old. "That, Lady Saraid, is nowhere in the Book I just read. Nowhere."

  Then he shut up, feeling the blood leave his hands, his face, because dear gods, it was.

  "A hart as swift in thought as fleet of foot," Saraid quoted softly; Kinsey could see the rest of the passage in his mind. A stag courant with two crossed rolls of parchment was the arms of his father's house. But he'd read it as heart, the spelling being less clear that far back, and Taireasa's description of her connection with Devin being very much a thing of hearts.

  "But—but that makes no sense," Kinsey murmured, leaning most of his weight against the wall. "How would I—I'm not—"

  "Evidently you are."

  "But it didn't say what I have to do!"

  "That's the trouble with prophecies: they're so dreadfully vague. It didn't mention what I have to do either, young prince. Only what Her Majesty and the Corwynall siblings must do. Our duty is to see to it they have the chance to figure out for themselves how to achieve it." Saraid twisted, coming to lean next to him, staring up at the great blocks of weathered stone that made up the western wall. "I've had many more years than you to study this, Kinsey prince, and I'm afraid that's the most solid of my conclusions. Eairon saw much, being halfling and far more Gifted than those of us with blood diluted by the centuries. But the Sight isn't such a clear tool: one gets things in snatches, scattered images, and has to piece them together as well as one can."

  Kinsey dared a sidelong glance at her, found her smiling wryly, like she knew what he was about to ask, and he supposed she probably did. "You... have the Sight, Lady Saraid?"

  "My sister did," she said simply. "She's been dead for many years now."

  "I'm sorry," Kinsey murmured.

  "Me too."

  There was an audible ache in the words and he scowled, because he didn't want to feel sympathy for this unapologetically blunt, maddening old woman who had turned his whole life upside-down in fifteen minutes of conversation. She pulled her cloak closer around her neck and sighed, looking like she was preparing to leave. Kinsey blurted out the rest of his questions in a desperate rush, not knowing if he'd ever get another chance.

  "Why did your Clans hold onto your magic? Why didn't the Lardana? Or did they ever have any? Did Eairon charge your people to be—some kind of guardians? What else are you waiting for?"

  Saraid stood blinking in the onslaught, her pale eyebrows rising slowly into her hairline. She set a hand on his sleeve, tipped her head back, and let out a great shout of laughter.

  "Dear gods, boy, swift in thought indeed. Slow down."

  "Lady—"

  "Kinsey, you're going to have to get used to the notion that we don't know much more than you do. We had the Book to read over many long centuries, and we're more Gifted, as a people, than either the Lardana or the Cassdalls could hope to be. But that's where it ends. We're guessing nearly as much as you are now: we just had a head start. Surely you know better by now than to believe we know all."

  "But—"

  Saraid sighed. She reached out, making him flinch back slightly—years of bracing for assassins made it hard to let anyone, even an old woman, get this close. But Kinsey held himself still, one hand lifted to stay his bodyguards, who definitely wouldn't like this, and let her set her palms gently over the sides of his face.

  He couldn't remember the last time someone had done that. He coughed away an unaccustomed tightness in his throat and stared into her pale, knowing eyes.

  "We are the last," she said, sounding so tired, suddenly, that he gave in to impulse, brought his hands up to cover hers, and kissed her cheek.

  "Good lad," Saraid said. She patted his cheek once and left him standing in the wind, shivering, trying to parse that last statement. He didn't get anywhere and he blew on his fingers, trying to make his mind work.

  Saraid's words circled in his head, trying to fit themselves somewhere in the piecemeal picture he was building for Taireasa, for Devin, for himself. Kinsey shut his eyes, ignoring the wind, the piercing sunlight, the faint grumbling from his frozen bodyguards. He was seeing fragile parchment pages, seeing the words on them, re-creating the Book out of memory. It was a good thing he'd read it twice. Even so, the effort brought beads of sweat to his forehead, which froze immediately. Something… something Saraid had said echoed…

  It was right on the first page.

  I am the last of us, and I watch, from this last of our fortresses.

  We are the last…

  And: Eairon being halfling and far more Gifted than those of us with blood diluted...

  "Faery tales," Kinsey breathed. "Halfling Síog…oh dear gods, I'm an idiot."

  He pressed his hands to his aching head, concentrating fiercely, trying to remember a single passage in Tenets he had passed over more than once. It was far harder: his tired mind wanted to forget Tenets and its endless list of rules, begats, and lineages. But he had thought this particular phrase important somehow, though he'd had no notion why at the time, so he ought to be able to…

  And certain of Men made their Way to the great Fortress of the last of the mighty Síog to learn of them; and some Men returned with great Skills.

  "Yes."

  Shaken, Kinsey collapsed against the wall. The Clans weren't men who had served the fae folk, nor men who had learned from them, or they weren't just that. They were also the remnants of the Síog. And Taireasa, Devin, Kyali—their Houses had bloodlines that mingled, long ago, with the old occupants of this fortress. All those dreadfully boring begats led here.

  "But what does it mean?" he murmured.

  Nothing simple, he thought, and frowned down at the distant treeline, where four figures on horseback were struggling through the deep snow, so muffled by their cloaks they looked like strange bears.

  It was Devin, he realized, and felt a weight he hadn't even known was there lift from his heart. He'd missed his strange, impulsive, musical friend. He wanted to know how Devin was, if the Eanin's teaching had helped, if he was perhaps willing to try playing the harp indoors. Taireasa was someone he thought he might be able to call a friend (though you might want to call her much more, his treacherous mind whispered) and Curran and his wife were more than pleasant company, but by and large he was alone in this society, an item of curiosity and gossip, a foreigner.

  It wasn't a new experience. But having learned Devin's loud, intrusive, and entirely whimsical notion of friendship, Kinsey had, for the first time in a lifetime of hovering unaffected at the edges of everything, discovered loneliness in its absence. He raised a hand, knowing he was barely visible from here, but it felt good to do it.

  Then he saw the movement on either side of that small party, the gleam of armor in between bare branches, and he began to shout, hands curling into fists against the cold stone.

  "Devin! Devin, look out—ah, gods—"

  "M'lord!"

  Armed men burst out of the trees. The four cloaked figures turned, far too late, then turned again as the party to the other side of them broke cover. Kinsey spun, seeing Ludor's shocked face, Jerin's glance over the wall, the hard look of dismay that followed.

  "Alert the guard. And the Lady Captain!" he snapped, and flung himself through the door into the hall already running.

  * * *

  They had no paper large enough to copy whole maps. Kyali had two scribes an
d the aide she had finally admitted she needed filling the available sheets with pieces of maps instead, because it was damned impossible to plot the movement of troops without writing something down.

  Ink stained her fingers black. She avoided wiping them on her armor and scowled as Slade set a cup of tea on her desk, moving carefully, as though he was facing an angry bear.

  "Thank you," Kyali said, tired of being offered tea by a boy who acted as though she was going to draw her sword on the spot. But that was, she supposed, her own fault.

  Carrying her sword bare everywhere would be comforting, actually.

  She preferred to deal with enemies she could see. Trying to flush out a skulking traitor was far harder—someone spying for a self-proclaimed king who wanted them all dead—someone who could be standing next to Taireasa right now—

  The quill snapped in her hand.

  Now there was even more ink on her fingers. She breathed ice, shut her eyes, and sipped at the tea, ignoring the stain she smeared all over the cup. It was no wonder Slade looked like he was ready to bolt out of the room at any moment. He kept hovering by the door.

  "The Cassdall captain to see you, Capt—er, Lady Captain," the boy announced. Kyali nodded, turning to the map cabinet, more to hide the expression on her face than because she wished to smudge anything in there with ink. Slade let Annan in and ducked out, and Kyali snatched up a cloth and scrubbed furiously at her hands, glowering at ink stains and not-quite-steady fingers.

  Ice.

  Nerves. Damn.

  She was so short on sleep it took constant effort to keep her face still, to stop her Gift from flaring out and setting fire to half the things she touched. To keep her mind clear enough for decisions. Annan's presence wouldn't help with any of that.

  "Captain," she said, looking at him only from the corner of her eye.

  "Captain," Annan replied, coming to sit, uninvited, on a stool at the map table. He had been outdoors: there was frost melting on his spaulders, snow clinging to his boots, glistening in his hair. His gaze was mild and unreadable when she finally gave up on the ink stains and made herself meet it, and Kyali felt a few muscles in her shoulders unknot.