They sat below the boundary wall. She unbuckled his helmet and cuirass and held the cuirass for him while he shrugged it off. She sat against him with her knees folded up on his lap, her shoulders under the curve of his arm. She unlaced his jerkin and bent her ear to his chest. “Better,” she said. “And this—just to be sure.” She leaned into him and pressed her lips gently to the pulse in his throat. She laid a hand on his ribs. “It’s beating wonderfully now.”
He kissed her. He sat up from the wall, cupping her head in his hands, and he bent his face to hers and kissed her lips, her eyelids, her forehead; he lifted her chin with his fingers and kissed the hollow at the base of her throat. Her arms were around his neck and her cheek against his and her tears running on his face. He tried to lift her to look at her. She shook her head. Her lips brushed his ear. “Don’t,” she said. Her voice was thick. So he put his arms around her waist and held her, his head and shoulders braced against the sun-warmed stones of the boundary wall, his chin on her shoulder, and he listened with his eyes closed while she cried.
He opened his eyes at the smell of wood smoke. They were smoking the hives over in the bee field. Over Ceno’s shoulder, he watched the smoke trail away southward toward the city. He could see the Hill just visible above the pines in the hazy distance, the Palace and Senate buildings in delicate white-marble miniature—and the moment shattered against it, and there was nothing but Tasso, and the orders in his saddlebag, and the cavalry column mustered and awaiting his command on the parade ground at Vione.
She had felt him tense. She unfolded her arms from his neck and sat up, sliding her knees from his lap, wiping her face quickly with one hand. “Does it pain you?” she said. There was no trace of tears in her voice.
“The surgeon asked me the same question. I’d rather it had been you; he weighs more.”
“It was stupid of me. I know you were wounded.” She touched his ribs very gently.
He covered her hand with his and pressed her fingers down. “No pain.”
“A thought, then.”
“Just that five months ago I could not wait to be out of Choiro. Five days ago I could not wait to be out of Choiro.”
“You aren’t staying? I assumed His Highness would want you tethered close.” She had his wrists in her hands. Her fingers tightened. Her voice had soured. “Or is this for him?”
“I refused his commission.”
She tilted her head to look in his face. “You refused—?”
“I’ve been given the command at Tasso. I’m to return at once.”
She looked at him silently. Her fingers were closed so tightly around his wrists that his fingers were numb at the tips.
“I’ve the orders in my saddlebag, if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you.” She said it through her teeth. “Oh, I believe you were idiot enough. And you’ve no idea how to lie.” She closed her eyes. “Why, in Heaven’s name? No—don’t say it. I know the answer. Anyone else but you would have taken it, for fear or for duty or—”
“Or for five hundred thousand stadia of Vareno land at Inumæ, or for you.”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Was I on offer, then?”
“If you had been on offer, I don’t know that I could have refused him.”
“You’d have refused him. I said you have no idea how to lie.” She shook her head. “He’ll kill you. It doesn’t matter your name or your rank or the rightness of it or the wrongness of it. He’ll kill you because you looked him in the face and told him no.”
He studied her. She did not meet his eyes. She had turned his hands over and was tracing the scar on his palm absently under her fingers. “My father wouldn’t. He was a businessman; he had something His Highness wanted. I could help him very much, he said. I was twelve years old, and I trusted him because he was my father.”
He did not say anything. She held his hands on her lap and looked up into his face. “He asked me if that was my reason,” she said. “His Highness, I mean. He asked me if it was for vengeance—if I was planning such a vengeance for him as I planned for my father.”
“He threatened you?”
“He knew I tried to see you that night. He was waiting for me at the apartment. He asked me how long I’d been dealing with you behind his back. All of it coolly and quietly: he doesn’t lose his head when he’s angry. But don’t you see? He hears conspiracy in every whisper, reads it in every word. He’s always been afraid, more so now that his fears have been vindicated. And you must spit in his face and tell him—”
“What did you say?”
“What?”
“When he asked you if it was for vengeance. What did you say?”
“I said it was for justice.” Her voice was cool. “Unlike you, I know how to lie.”
“He believed you?”
“If he thought me a threat, I’d be dead. He is not careless. Nor is he merciful. You know that by now, surely.”
“What is Vaiz doing in the city?”
“Vaiz would not betray me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I don’t know what I think. Tell me what she’s doing in the city.”
“My frescoes are going to an art dealer this afternoon. She’s handling the sale.”
“Listen to me. I’ll send horses for both of you. Go to the chapel of the Hospitallers. Two of the brothers are settling some business for me in Cesin. You can ride with them and remain at Vessy under my father’s protection.”
“And you? After all, I’m not the proud, stubborn fool who defied the Prince.”
“I’ll be in Tasso. The Prince will have forgotten me in a month.”
“His Highness doesn’t forget. You’ll be dead in a month, and I think you know it.”
“My offer was genuine.”
“Do you think Vessy lies beyond his reach if Tasso doesn’t?”
Torien did not say anything.
“Anyway, I belong in Choiro,” she said. “I belong to Choiro.”
“You belong to nothing and no one.”
“We have spoken of this before—of choice.” She smiled, thinly. “Always a choice, you said. I remember. But you will take your choices to your grave in Tasso, and I will live.”
“You’ll exist,” he said. There was a bitterness in him that he could not put in words.
Her fingers were busy at the lacings of his jerkin. She did not look in his face. “Better that way,” she said. “Better just to exist. I’ve learned that over sixteen years. I wish to God I hadn’t forgotten it for you.”
He found Ædyn in an empty stall in the stable. The boy was sitting cross-legged in the corner with a harness strap on his lap. He was oiling the strap, dipping his hand in the oil and running the leather on his palm and rubbing it between his fingers. His right arm was tied in a sling. He was bent on his work and did not look up until Torien crouched in front of him, blocking the light. He looked up briefly. He did not say anything. The stable was quiet. There were late-afternoon shadows crawling across the floor. The chapel yard was deserted in the heat. “Antoni said you would be here,” Torien said. “Where is Jovan?”
The boy sat with his shoulders braced against the wall, holding the strap on his lap. “He took the carriage to have the wheels studded, Lord. Muryn says there might be early snow in the pass.”
“Muryn?”
“One of the brothers from Cesin, Lord. There are some others. They are all lowlanders.” There was cool disdain in the boy’s voice. “Some of them can’t even speak Cesino.”
“They’ve treated you well?”
The boy shrugged. He was looking at the strap. “Jovan says he will teach me my letters, if I want.”
“You should let him.”
“Because I will never hold a sword?”
“Because if you learn the sword all you’ll know is the sword. Learn your letters and you can take up any trade you wish.”
The boy did not say anything.
“Anyway, you can hold a sword left-handed,” Torien said. “I’ve seen it done.”
The boy did not say anything.
“I’m sorry I can’t take you home myself, Ædyn. I owed you that.”
He waited on his ankles for the boy to say something. The silence stretched on uncomfortably. They were waiting for him on the parade ground at Vione. He had planned to reach Ostre with the column by sundown and spend the night along the river. He took his wallet from his belt and laid it on the boy’s lap. “For your family,” he said. He rocked back on his heels and got to his feet. “Give Jovan my thanks.”
“Take me with you,” Ædyn said. He had the wallet in his hand. He lifted his face to Torien’s. His eyes were brimming with tears. “Please, Lord Risto. Let me go with you to Tasso.”
He sat back down slowly on his knees. “I can’t, Ædyn.”
“I won’t be a burden to you. I’ll tend your horse and kit. I’ll learn my letters, I swear.”
“Your place is with your family. They’ve prayed God for three years to see you again alive and well.”
The boy swallowed and said nothing. He clenched the wallet in his hand. The harness strap had slid forgotten to the floor. Torien squeezed the boy’s arm. “My term is done in two summers. I’ll find you in Charys on my leave. We’ll go hunting.”
“I lied to you about my family.” Ædyn looked up from the wallet. “On the ship. I lied to you that I am of the Charysi.”
“Ædyn—”
“I am of the Brycigi.” The boy’s face was pale, but his shoulders were very straight against the wall. “I wandered too far on a hunt. A patrol took me before I could end my life. I wouldn’t talk. They said they would take me down to the fort and make me talk. They tied my hands and dragged me behind the horses. I slipped my hands free and got away, but I was afraid they would follow me back if I tried to go home. I was afraid I would lead them to my people. I went down to the lowland. That’s where the slavers took me. They didn’t know I was Brycigo. None of my masters have known—none but you.”
He had the boy’s elbow tight in his hand. He did not say anything. The boy rushed to fill the silence. “I was going to kill you in Modigne. That’s why I waited at the smithy. You were the governor’s son. I was going to kill you for my people.”
“You didn’t.”
“I couldn’t. You were wounded. You trusted me.”
“You should not have told me this, Ædyn.”
“I wanted you to know.” A tear slid down the side of the boy’s nose. He sniffed. “I’ve shed blood for you. That is a sacred bond between us. I wanted you to know. Not just because you took it from me with torture. I wanted to tell you of my own.”
He shook the boy sharply by the arm. “Do you know what I’m doing in Tasso? I am going to execute my officers and every tenth man of my command. The Senate will send someone else to do it if I don’t. They’ll hang me on the Traitors’ Wall. But they would pay anything I ask for intelligence on the Brycigi, do you understand? They would give me the lives of my men.”
“I know.” The boy’s voice was a whisper.
“Do you understand the choice you’ve given me? It’s treason if I let you go.”
“I know,” Ædyn said. “I mean to spare you the choice.”
He pulled his arm from Torien’s hand. He fumbled at the sling and withdrew a long, slender steel blade, bone-hafted, which Torien recognized as a surgeon’s scalpel. Belatedly Torien understood. He knocked the boy’s hand aside. The boy ducked away from him. Torien caught the boy by the shoulders and shoved him to the floor. “Ædyn,” he said. He held the boy against the floor, his arm across the boy’s chest, his knee in the boy’s gut. He scrabbled with his free hand for the boy’s wrist. “Ædyn, listen to me.”
The boy turned his head against the floor. He clenched the scalpel in his fist and slid the blade under his jaw and opened his neck from right ear to throat.
Dimly he was aware he was shouting, the boy’s neck under his hands and the boy’s life pulsing out warm between his fingers—swearing and shouting for help to the chapel, to the street, to anyone who could hear, and no one answering, and the boy shivering beneath him, and he not being able to shout anymore because the tears had closed his throat, and the boy lying now very still on the floor and he face-down beside him, pounding his fist on the tiles until the blood ran, feeling nothing; and the silence stretching after, and the shadows creeping steadily to dusk—and much later the ringing of the vespers bell and the clatter of Jovan’s carriage coming in from the street.
“The Commander will see you in his office,” the Guardsman said.
It was mid-afternoon, and the column was camped on the flatland below Baralla. There was a storm over the sea toward Epyris, the clouds hanging low and black-bellied, thunder murmuring in the distance across the water. The air was hot and breathless, waiting. He went alone across the barracks yard to the headquarters and then under the Emperor’s eyes down to the office. The door was open, and he could see from the corridor that the man behind the desk was not Briule. He stopped in the doorway. “Pavo told me you were dead.”
Dio Valle looked up. “He told you what he thought he knew,” he said. “He had faulty intelligence from Salina.” He pushed back his chair. “Here, sit. I heard that you took a knife. Also that you did not exactly ingratiate yourself with the Household Guard.”
Torien did not move from the doorway. “I came to see Briule.”
“The High Commander is on Epyris.”
“High Commander?”
Valle looked at him quizzically. “You did not know?”
Torien did not say anything. He spun on his heel away from the doorway. Valle came after him down the corridor. “Risto.”
“I made a mistake to come.”
“Listen to me, Risto.”
“I’ve got to report. My congratulations on your commission, Commander. At least one of us knows how to ingratiate ourselves.”
“Listen to me.” Valle pulled him around by the arm so that they faced each other. “You have not been betrayed, nor will you be. You have not lost your friends. Let them help you, if they can.”
He brushed Valle’s hand from his arm. “For your own sake, Dio, forget that I came.”
“I know your orders, and I know why you were given them. None of that matters now. We have lost Tasso.”
“What?”
“The tribes allied against us. They slaughtered the garrison at the mines and armed any of the slaves who would fight. They sent two thousand horse against the fort. They sank every ship in the harbor and poisoned the water supply. The garrison surrendered after eight days.”
“It was a ruse, Dio.”
“It is no ruse. Lieutenant Chareste anticipated the attack. Two weeks ago, he sent a message advising that the tribes had taken the mines and were preparing to move on the fort. He requested reinforcements. Modigne had no officers to spare. Half of them were gone to the Wall. By the time we could get a troop assembled, we learned the fort had fallen.”
Torien looked into Valle’s face. “There were survivors?”
“A ship’s crewman made it on foot to Istra. He told us the tribes are using prisoners as slave labor to tear down the fort. He did not know how many.”
“And at the mines?”
“I do not know.”
Torien was silent.
“There was at least one survivor,” Valle said, quietly. “Someone must have carried intelligence to Chareste. There is hope that Lieutenant Senna made it at least to the fort.”
“Have there been ransom demands?”
“Not yet. Not that I have heard.”
“If he were alive, they would try to ransom him.”
“Not necessarily. It is possible they know he was disinherited. Anyway, they are driven by patriotism, not greed.”
“Aidar was on Pavo’s coin.”
“He served Pavo’s purpose as far as it serve
d his own purpose. Pavo put him in the position to assume control of the mines, thereby of the tribe. It was never for the coin.”
“So let him have Tasso, if he wants it. He gives us his prisoners, and we never set another foot further south than Istra. Or do we have to kill a few thousand natives before anyone is allowed to mention peace?”
“Two columns have already been dispatched to Istra. You will be ordered to join them. The Empire does not want peace, not now. We want the reassurance of an enemy outside ourselves. Otherwise we have nothing but the Traitors’ Wall.”
“Is that a threat?”
“I said you have not lost your friends. If you hang, it will not be alone.” Valle smiled, briefly. “But remember that your friends would prefer you did not hang.”
He knelt at the fire pit in the girl’s shanty. A spattering of rain had come through the lattice, and he could not get the wet tinder to catch. He tried to feed the flame with bits of salt grass, but the grass only smoked and curled up in black wisps. He gave up and sat against the doorpost with his helmet off, looking out into the street.
The storm had passed. The air was clean and cool. There was a breeze off the hill. The sun was low over the flat rooftops, and there was lamplight through the edges of the curtained doorways down the street. He heard voices and a burst of laughter. The black horse danced this way and that at his tether, ears pricked. Torien stretched his legs straight across the doorway. For two weeks, he had been in a saddle or on his feet in the daylight hours, flat on his back on the hard, dry earth in the nights. He had not noticed how sore he was until now. He closed his eyes. He opened them at the smell of smoke and the flicker of firelight and the sound of someone moving around the shanty.
It was not the girl, though the resemblance was plain. The boy was the same age, bronze-skinned and hollow-cheeked, not yet full-grown, though his arms and shoulders were knotted with muscle. His dark hair was uncut and tucked behind his ears. There was a long, ridged white scar from a whip weal across his face. He sat cross-legged, looking at Torien across the fire. His hands were clenched on his knees, his shoulders straight, his chin up. He was afraid and was trying very hard not to show it. “Are you Risto?”
Blood Road Page 27