“What heinous sin did I commit to deserve that?” Cyrus looked at her. “Listen, why don’t you stay over here at night, away from your parents—and especially your mother. It’ll be easier to protect you and you’ll be able to go over there during the day with ease.”
“Because I refuse to sleep in a common room with a group of men.”
“This house has bedrooms,” J’anda said. “You could have your own.”
“I will not leave my parents unattended,” she said, then turned to Cyrus. “Decide quickly if you’re going to come with me.”
He wrenched himself off the couch, leaving a deep imprint in several places from the edges of his armor. “I’m coming.”
She nodded. “Very well. With myself, you and Isabelle, we should be able to hold off any assassins until reinforcements are able to reach us.”
“Don’t forget Mother,” Isabelle said. “I sense that she misses being able to cast a fireball and hurl it at people.”
“That explains a lot,” Cyrus said, following Vara as she turned to leave. With a wave, Isabelle departed.
“Sleep tight!” Vaste called after Cyrus. “Don’t let the vicious she-elves bite! Well, maybe one of them.”
As he stepped back outside he almost bumped into Vara, who was waiting for him on the stoop. “You’ll be sleeping in my room,” she informed him.
He nodded. “All right.”
“On the floor. I don’t think I need to mention this,” she said after a moment’s hesitation, “but nothing will be happening between the two of us.”
Cyrus felt his cheeks redden as he looked past Vara at Isabelle, who averted her eyes. “We’ve been on the road together for days, sleeping in close proximity. I think I can handle it without getting inappropriate.”
“Yes, well...” Vara said, somewhat stiffly. “There’s a vast difference between sharing a camp, sharing a room, and sharing a bed, and I don’t want for there to be any misunderstandings between us.”
“I get it.” Cyrus’s cheeks burned and he chanced to look at Isabelle again. Hers were also flushed, and she seemed to be studying the texture of the sidewalk. “I will conduct myself as a perfect gentleman.”
“I am certain you will,” she replied, turning away from him.
You can tell she was uncomfortable with that, he thought, because she didn’t say, “For once.”
“I doubt I’ll do much resting anyway.” He fell in line behind Vara. “They’ll be coming tonight.”
“We’ve come to the same conclusion,” Isabelle said. “If these bastards are as bad as you’ve said, they’ll have someone watching, and they’ll have seen Vara by now, which makes it unlikely that they’ll hesitate. I have most of my people sleeping now in preparation. We suspect they’ll hit around midnight, hoping everyone will have gone to bed.”
“I would have guessed after sundown,” Cyrus replied. “But it could be any time. It’s not like they’ve been reticent about attacking in the middle of the day.”
“Regardless,” Vara said, turning to face them as she reached the front steps of the house, “this fight will be different. My parents are to be protected at all costs. I will not have them be killed or used as leverage against me.” Her jaw was set. “If these assassins are coming tonight, we face them, we kill them—then we get Father well and get the hell out of here.”
Chapter 15
Night fell as if it were the slow drip of dark coffee filtering into a mug, Cyrus thought as he peeked once more out of a second story window onto the street below. Lamps were lit every hundred feet and in the dim light he could see Thad and a handful of others from both Sanctuary and Endeavor lingering on the stones below.
Replacing the curtain, he turned to look around the sitting room. The house was three floors and a cellar; Vara’s parents had their bedroom on the top floor, Vara and Isabelle were housed on the second floor, along with a generous living space and bathrooms with running water.
Vara sat behind him, eyes looking toward the stairwell leading up to the third floor. Isabelle sat opposite her, legs crossed, leaning back, eyes closed in deep thought. Cyrus’s gaze lingered on her; the healer’s traditional white robes were tighter than those worn by Curatio or Vaste and much more flattering. Isabelle was fit, like her younger sister, but her hair was worn loose around the shoulders. In human years, she and Vara looked to be of comparable ages though in fact he knew Isabelle was almost two centuries the elder.
His eyes came to rest on the hem of her robes, then the well-stitched and elegant leather boots she wore that carried not a speck of mud. He brought his gaze back up to find her looking back at him, a sly smile draped across her lips. “We do look quite a bit alike, don’t we? I mean, excepting the differing attire.”
“What?” Vara’s head snapped up.
“Somewhat,” Cyrus said, recovering quickly from being caught looking. “But you’ve got a much more mischievous air about you, more relaxed and less...”
“Tense?” Isabelle looked to her sister. “She’ll calm down in a hundred years or so.”
“I am not tense,” Vara said. “Well, perhaps now I am, seeing as there are people trying to kill me, but on a normal day—”
“You’re tense, little sister. I could place my stave in the crack between your butt cheeks and it would snap in two, that’s how stiff you are. And it’s not a recent problem.”
“You do seem a bit tense, dear,” Chirenya’s voice came from the stairs as she descended from the floor above. “Perhaps your ox isn’t doing his job properly; you’re supposed to be more tranquil afterward.”
“I’m just here to protect her,” Cyrus said.
“Oh, yes, and I’m the younger sister of these two, not their mother,” Chirenya breezed as she continued down the stairs to the first floor.
Vara returned to her watch of the stairs, lost in thought. Isabelle stared around, languid.
“Did you come here from Reikonos?” Cyrus caught the healer’s gaze.
She nodded. “Why?”
“I was wondering how the war was going.”
“I suppose you haven’t heard all the latest, being on the run as you were.”
“Didn’t always hear it before that; most of what we heard was about the dark elf movements against the southwest part of the Confederation. I have no idea what’s happening around Reikonos, in the north or the Riverlands.”
Isabelle stared back at him, cool. “What have you heard?”
Cyrus took a deep breath. “Prehorta got sacked, hard. Survivors said most of the townsfolk fled long before the dark elves got there, but they burned everything and left a garrison force to block trade with the Confederation from the southern Plains of Perdamun. Haven’t heard anything since then.”
Isabelle took in a deep breath. “It’s not been pretty. Since then that particular dark elf army—somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 strong—has moved to Idiarna and sacked it.”
Cyrus exchanged a look with Vara. “That’s the biggest town between Prehorta and Santir.”
“Yes. It would seem the dark elves mean to cut off the Confederation from the southern plains.”
“They haven’t come for Reikonos yet?”
“No.” She shook her head. “The Confederation army has held a firm line against any advances north of the Waking Woods and the dark elves haven’t bothered to drive east to the Riverlands or sneak past Lake Magnus to hit the Northlands yet. They’ve focused everything on the southwest; on cutting off the Plains of Perdamun.”
“Seems an odd choice,” Chirenya’s voice came from the stairs again. In her hands was a plate of meats and cheeses, which she carried over and sat on the table between Vara and Isabelle. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to throw everything they have at their enemy capital and knock them flat? Without Reikonos, the Human Confederation becomes a bunch of squabbling little provinces that lack any coordinated ability to fight back.”
“I think that is the plan,” Isabelle said. “But rather than try to hammer th
rough the defenses around the city—which are considerable—the dark elves have chosen a roundabout way. Perhaps they don’t wish to lose all the forces they’d have to commit to a direct assault of the capital, or perhaps they hope to force the humans into a surrender without ever laying siege to Reikonos. Whatever the case, cutting them off from the southern plains is brilliant; at least half the capital’s grain supply comes from there with the other half coming from the Riverlands.”
“Starve them out, eh?” Chirenya’s voice was laced with disdain. “Reminds me all too much of the last war.”
Cyrus looked at her face, mottled with a simmering resentment. “How did that go?”
“We won, of course,” she said, not bothering to look at him. “But it was a brutal war, and the dark elves never go about anything directly. They didn’t come at Pharesia then, either—of course they were more spread out back then; they had cities and towns all throughout the southern plains and the Waking Woods, even in places as far flung as what you humans now claim in the Northlands and Riverlands. They had more to defend than they do now.”
Cyrus furrowed his brow. “If they had all these settlements, what happened to them?”
“Abandoned after the last war,” Isabelle replied. “In a great wave, the dark elves retreated from everything, claimed their borders encompassed the Waking Woods and retreated into the depths of Saekaj Sovar. It’s only been in the last twenty years or so that they’ve started to emerge again.” She chuckled. “For a time, if you saw a dark elf anywhere, it was a rare sight.”
“But before the war started—this one, I mean,” Cyrus said, “there were enormous numbers of dark elves in Reikonos. We have many in Sanctuary—”
“Indeed, we have some here in Termina and I’ve heard there are even a few in Pharesia,” Chirenya said. “As Isabelle says, all fairly recent. Well, at least on the timescale of an elven life,” she said, her final words carrying an edge aimed at him. “I suppose you were just a child when they began to reemerge into the world in numbers.”
“So was I, Mother,” Vara said.
“Yeah, she’s only older than me by a year,” Cyrus said.
“And more mature by only a millennium.” Vara’s impassive face cracked as she looked sidelong at him.
“Regardless, it’s an ugly thing, what’s happening to the humans,” Chirenya said with a sniff. “Though I suppose if your government hadn’t been quite so arrogant in sending their forces into the plains, it wouldn’t have happened.” Cyrus bristled, but bit back his first response—that the elven kingdom had an army present when the war began. “I’m just glad that the King recognizes that it’s in no one’s interest if the dark elves win the war with your people.”
So irritated was Cyrus that it took him a moment to realize what she’d said. “The King recognizes that? How so?”
“Oh, hadn’t you heard?” Chirenya spoke with the satisfaction of someone sharing forbidden knowledge. “It’s on the lips of everyone in the city. The rumor is, the Kingdom has been selling all sorts of weaponry and food to the humans at very discounted prices that are supposedly financed out of the Kingdom’s treasury. They’re shipping them up the Perda and along the coast to Reikonos.”
Vara was the first to speak. “Let us hope that the dark elves do not consider that an act of war.”
“They may consider it whatever they like,” Chirenya said. “If they try to begin a war with us they’ll be beaten back and taught a lesson for their arrogance.”
Vara stood. “That’s all the time I have for bravado today. I believe I’ll retire to my room.” She shot a look at Cyrus. “Coming?”
He nodded to her and followed, prompting Chirenya to let out a self-satisfied guffaw. “Do try to take your time, ox; it will take all you have to relieve the tension she’s building now. And don’t forget your ventra’maq!”
Vara opened the door to her room, bristling. Cyrus followed and shut the door as the paladin collapsed face first on the bed. She turned her head to look back at him and he could see a tiredness on her fine features. “You may not remember much about your mother, but I daresay you’ll never forget mine.”
Cyrus did not respond, and after a moment she rolled over, her cheeks flushed. “I apologize. That was...unkind.”
He walked to the window, brushing the curtain aside to look onto the darkened street. “You didn’t speak any untruths. I don’t remember my mother.”
“That doesn’t mean I was right to say it.”
He looked back at her. “What she said...don’t forget your ‘ventra’maq’? It sounds familiar.”
Vara buried her face in the pillow and her reply came back too muffled for him to hear.
He stared at her, in full armor, sunk into the bed as though she were a pouting teenager. “What did you say?”
Pulling her face out of the pillow, she turned back to him, her cheeks red. “Ventra’maq is a potion, mixed by an alchemist.” Her face got redder as she spoke. “It’s used by women who wish to avoid pregnancy.” She propped herself up on an elbow. “You really are a bit of a naif, aren’t you?”
He turned away. “I remember where I’ve heard of it; my wife used to take ventra’maq.”
“Ah, yes, your elusive wife.” She curled up on the bed. “I have wondered...divorce or...” Her words were soft, and drifted off mid-sentence.
“Divorce. A few years before I joined Sanctuary.”
“I see,” she said, staring off into space. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you were married at some point, commanding physical specimen such as you are.”
“What about you? Were you ever married?”
“Close, once,” she admitted after a pause. “But it ended...rather badly.” Her gaze softened. “How is your arm?”
He grimaced, reminded of the ache in his shoulder. “Better. Still hurts, but not enough to slow me down.”
“Take off your armor,” she commanded. “Curatio gave me a salve to apply to your wound. There’s nothing magical about it, but it should aid the natural healing process.” She turned and retrieved a small tin from the saddlebag she had left atop the nearby vanity.
“We’re under threat of attack,” he said. “Even ignoring the insinuations your mother just made, this is not the best time.”
“I always ignore the insinuations my mother makes—and it’s the time we have.” She strode back to him. “Would you enjoy an infection? Perhaps you prefer to be bedridden for a month? Lose your arm?”
Grumbling, he slid the pauldrons over his head after removing his helmet and gorget. With her aid, he unfastened his breastplate and backplate and slipped the chainmail over his head. He stared at the spot where the assassin’s dagger had broken the links.
“You should invest some of your growing fortune in stronger chainmail,” she said as she steered him to a chair in the corner of the room. “Sit,” she commanded as she walked behind him.
He complied. “There’s no chainmail I’ve ever seen that can perfectly protect you from harm.” He felt the cool sensation of the salve running across his skin, spread by her fingers, and let out an inadvertent gasp of surprise.
He looked up at her and she grinned. “Does that hurt you in some way?” Mischief caused her eyes to dance.
“No,” he replied. “But your hands are cold.” He shuddered from some combination of pain, chill and pleasure as her fingers rubbed the shoulder that had been in agony only a few hours before. She kneaded the tender muscle as she applied a healthy dollop of the salve, massaging the tender lip of skin where the assassin’s dagger had pierced his flesh. He groaned as she applied pressure to an area that had not received healing thanks to the black lace. “Now that spot—that hurts.”
“Tell me something.” Her words were calm and soothing, like the ointment she was applying. “You’ve now trekked hundreds of miles out of your way, putting yourself in the path of countless dangers on my behalf...” She hesitated.
His eyes were closed, and he felt her hands working through painf
ul areas of his shoulder and upper chest. He grunted in discomfort as her fingers moved from relieving tension to stabbing at an unhealed section. “Yes?”
The pressure on his shoulder stopped and he heard the rustle of her armor move beside the chair as she knelt next to him, looking up, her blue eyes wide. “Why?” She continued to stare at him, her eyes fixed on his. “What are you fighting for?”
Cyrus licked his lips. The searing sensation of the salve had worn off and suddenly he felt cold and hot at the same time. He stared back at her, into the eyes of the blond-haired paladin, and saw something beyond the usual intensity there, a hope that he both knew and feared, one that reminded him of the night that J’anda had shown him through magic what he desired in the deepest well of his heart.
“I...”
He started to speak, then stopped. Her hand was on the metal of his greaves, resting on his thigh, sending a thrill through him even though he could feel but a little of the weight. He searched for the words again, and halted, still struck by her eyes. I need to tell her, he thought. I’ve needed to tell her for years, and this is it...
He felt a very slight tremor, and wondered if his legs were shaking. “I...what?” Vara had stiffened, her eyes darting around. “What is it?”
She stood and brushed passed the bed, tossing his breastplate to him on her way to the door. She unlocked and opened it as Isabelle appeared on the other side. “Did you hear?” The healer was breathless.
“Yes. The cellar?” Vara tossed another look at Cyrus, who was sitting in the chair, barechested as Isabelle looked around the doorjamb at him. “Come on, get dressed.”
“Why?” He fumbled with his chainmail, struggling to slide it on.
“Because,” Vara said. “They’re here.”
Chapter 16
“What?” Cyrus asked. “How did they get in the cellar?” Having looked around earlier in the day, he had found it to be empty, with no windows and no way in or out save for the staircase.
The Sanctuary Series: Volume 03 - Champion Page 10