Slowly, following an instinct he couldn’t have named, Chriani slipped the ring to his finger.
Do not be alarmed.
In his head, Lauresa’s voice filled him like a whisper in a close room. Her voice and not her voice, there and not there all at once. He felt a spike of cold fear, felt the echo of Barien’s voice in his mind the night before as he made the moonsign, involuntary. Hand in motion before he could stop it, then realizing that all around him, others were making it as well. No one noticing him where they warded themselves against the darkness of death where Barien lay.
None around can hear the words that pass between us, Lauresa said. You wanted answers. Above them, the black smoke of Chanist’s torch rose straight, no wind to twist it.
What sorcery is this? He tried to force the fear from his mind, not wanting it to carry across whatever link twisted its way between the princess and him.
This is the sorcery of court, Chriani. The ring you wear is dweomered and chained to this one I wear. Within the Bastion, my father and mother, my brother and sisters have access to such things. One of the privileges of rank.
The pendant, Chriani thought. He remembered the storm-scent of the energy that had pulsed in Lauresa’s palm, felt an uncomfortable tightening in his groin that he tried to ignore.
The pendant, she echoed. He started, hadn’t meant for her to hear him, but she had. I am sorry for that. I was afraid, but fear is a sorry reward for the loyalty you showed me.
It fell into place, then. The shadow that had hidden them, the slow fall that had saved them. Then pushing through that memory was the memory of the endless kiss they’d shared. Chriani squeezed his eyes shut, the memory hammering at him even as he pushed it away.
You saved us last night. He shaped the words clearly, tried to focus. If she felt the other thoughts as he desperately tried to focus past them, she didn’t show it.
The sorcery of the pendant saved us. It is a tool like any other. Do not fear it.
I do not fear.
You lie badly, tyro.
Where his eyes opened, Chriani forced himself to stare straight ahead. He felt a faint surge of anger, familiar.
Your story to Captain Konaugo last night might have cost you your life for all the ease he would have had disproving it.
I had not intended to have to lie to Konaugo on your behalf. Chriani felt the anger kindle to something sharper, welcomed it.
I am educating you, not berating you, the princess said. A well-told lie must be a thing that the listener wants to believe. Had you told Konaugo that you were suspicious of Barien, you could have admitted that the order to guard me came while you diced with my father’s stolen crown in a Valnirata brothel. He would not have cared.
Barien barely dead and I should have betrayed his memory to save your secrecy?
There is much more at stake here than my secrets, the princess said evenly. When greater things are at stake, a moment’s betrayal is easily forgiven, even by the dead.
Chriani felt his heart hammering in his chest, felt a shadow twist through him. On the staging ground below them, Chanist stood alone before the flames, singing one last time. The closing lines of a lament older than Brandishear itself.
You promised an explanation, Chriani said. He saw the prince’s eyes squeeze shut.
As Chanist touched the brand to the pyre, a sheet of flame erupted, fountaining out from oil-soaked wood. As much as he wanted to, Chriani couldn’t look away. The tang of woodsmoke was sharp in his nose and eyes, his mind dark with a bitterness he could taste as Barien’s body burned under the brilliant Clearwater sky.
I promised answers, Lauresa said. They’re not the same.
As the prince high stepped slowly back, there was an undercurrent of emotion in him, Chriani seeing it only because he’d seen it the night before. A sudden weariness that revealed the age beneath Chanist’s straight-backed strength.
When Lauresa’s voice came to him again, there was an uncertainty in her that caught him off guard. I am sorry I did not recognize you at once last night, tyro. But where you found me puts my life and future in your hands. For all my bluster then, you were right. No power or position obliges you to lie for me.
Chriani offered nothing back. Three years since she’d last spoken to him, but it felt longer now. From the platform, Chanist descended slowly. Around him was a slow shift of movement, like the ripple-spread of erratic raindrops. Through the crowd, one by one, they made the moonsign. The night-time warding, out of place somehow under the clear light of the sun.
The room you found me in was my father’s war room, Lauresa said. A place of private council and intelligence. Maps, histories, journals. Since the announcement of my marriage, I have sought and sometimes found there the unfiltered history of Allenis Andreg, Duke of Teillai and my husband-to-be. At court, knowledge is a weapon. When I arrive in Teillai, I intend to be well armed.
Where the name echoed in his mind, Chriani felt the burning at his chest again. He tried to focus past it, kept it at a level below words. That explains your presence there but not our exit.
For me to have been found by the Bastion guard in the prince high’s war room would have created scandal. The military secrets of Brandishear are locked in my father’s mind, not in any written record. But before this morning, word would have reached the markets and the taverns of my attempt to steal those secrets in order to secure my place in Andreg’s court and Prince Vishod of Aerach’s beyond it.
Chriani saw shadows twist within the fire, the suggestion of movement wrapping the blur of Barien’s body where it was consumed. He thought he felt a great weight pulling on him, dragging him down into the heat that touched chill skin even from the distance of the courtyard below.
You offered to protect me last night, Lauresa said. I would take that offer, freely given.
It is, he said. No hesitation.
As the pyre collapsed in on itself, he made the moonsign again. Around them, the wall was emptying.
“You were Barien’s tyro, were you not?”
It was the imperious tone more than the absurdity of the question that reminded Chriani that the princess was speaking aloud for the first time. She’d turned to face him, watched him with a look suggesting she might not have noticed she’d been standing almost beside him the whole time. The same tone of distant command from the night before, slipped into far too easily, he thought.
Yes, it is. The tone in his head was gentler. Regardless, when you are spoken to by the prince high’s daughter, a response is generally in order.
Chriani cleared his mind again.
“I am, highness. I was…” His voice caught on the words.
“I would have you escort me back to the Bastion.”
“Yes, highness.” Where Chriani nodded, he saw the guards who’d escorted her up from the staging ground fall back. He ignored their looks as Lauresa turned and he fell into step beside and behind her. Following at the customary five paces as she made for the stone steps to the courtyard.
Along the ranks of private apartments that ringed the inner wall, Chriani saw more eyes on him than he would have thought possible. He felt the keep shifting back into the pace of its regular life, garrison and artisans, couriers and traders slipping quickly into the routine of high-end commerce that worked within its walls. At every intersection, he saw someone’s gaze drawn to the princess, then just as steadily drawn past her to settle on him where he walked behind.
They’re watching, Lauresa said through the silent link the rings made. When they see and hear nothing, they’ll conclude that this is what it appears to be. Barien was my warden. I showed a moment of compassion to his apprentice.
And what is the point of that? Chriani asked.
Actions at court are placed under a scrutiny the likes of which you cannot imagine, she said. If I had so much as glanced at you when I made my entrance, that fact would already have made the rounds of the keep and the markets. Living at court, one must develop more and more ingeniou
s means of keeping plans, actions, words secret.
How could anyone hear us?
By the same manner in which I heard you speak to my father from outside the throne room last night.
Chriani blinked. Lauresa touched the pendant at her throat, adjusted it slightly.
From the pieces you provided, I assembled something that my father wanted hear, she said. That book was a favorite of my mother’s. A memory of a happier time for him.
And with the words, Chriani felt a sudden hint of longing — emotion and sensation he could feel through whatever link the ring made between them.
I heard Barien’s voice, he thought. A connection there to the inexplicable sensation of the princess’s thoughts in his head that he suddenly longed to make sense of. When I told your father I was called to protect you, it was the truth. But it was Barien’s voice in my thoughts, like yours.
Barien had his own access to devices such as I have. He was my mother’s warden originally. When she left my father’s court and Barien stayed to watch over me, my mother left him more of such trinkets than I think my father knew.
Where the central court opened up to the archives quarter to the west, Lauresa slowed, Chriani matching her pace.
“I have an errand,” she said as she turned back. “Accompany me.”
Chriani glanced to the dim emptiness of the hall of records, a faint chill threading him suddenly.
“Yes, highness,” he said. He hid his uncertainty as a courier hustled past, nodding to the princess where she turned, Chriani five steps behind her.
From across Brandishear and even farther afield, students, researchers, and the occasional sage came frequently to Rheran to partake of the wealth of the knowledge Chanist’s court collected. Even so, the archives quarter was rarely the busiest part of the Bastion, and less so today with the keep locked down. Along the hall of records, Chriani passed the same rows of locked doors he’d passed the night before, caught the gleam of evenlamps from the stones of the floor. Scrubbed clean, then scrubbed again most likely. No trace left of what they’d witnessed the night before except the memory he carried with him now.
At the intersection where he’d first seen Barien’s body, Lauresa slowed.
Are we alone? she asked.
Chriani glanced down all four corridors, the libraries to the west, galleries north and south. No sound in the stillness surrounding them.
I believe so.
She nodded. Show me where you found him.
Why? Chriani’s own voice in his head carried an edge it shouldn’t have had.
Because whoever killed him did so in an attempt to murder my father. As Lauresa turned back, her words were just as sharp in his mind. Because Barien was my warden and my mother’s warden before that, and was no less dear to me than he was to you, and I would see the place where he fell.
Chriani stepped past her, led her on. At the midpoint of the corridor, opposite the silent busts of Lauresa’s own line, he stopped. He made the moonsign quickly, noted the look she gave him.
When you found him, she said, what did he say?
He said nothing, Chriani thought evenly. You heard me tell your father and Konaugo.
I heard what you told, them, yes. I also felt the lie in your words then like I do now.
“This errand is done, princess.” Even at a whisper, his voice was a harsh echo against the stones, swallowed by his footsteps as he stalked away.
Konaugo knows it, too, she said simply. Her voice carried the same even tone in his head, unsettling somehow when she should have had to call to him from along the corridor. Barien taught you stealth? Insight, instinct?
My mother taught me, Chriani said sharply.
Then use those gifts. Barien was attacked within sight of the central court. He should have moved for the great hall, or the garrison quarter at least.
He was chasing whoever it was…
He was mortally wounded, tyro. Whoever had attacked him was gone or they would have finished the job.
Chriani stopped. He stared down the length of the corridor he’d followed the night before, looked south to where Lauresa stood.
He was forty strides from being able to raise the alarm, but instead, he turned east and south and died alone. Why?
Faint footsteps along the central court in the distance pushed Chriani to one side, watching as another courier ran past. He felt a trace of anger, felt Lauresa’s question resonate. So obvious a point that his missing it spoke to his state of mind the night before. All the blind anger that had driven him. All the fear.
He walked back to where the princess stood, crouched beside her. Faint traces of red-black still clung to the mortar of the stones, he saw. Maybe scrubbed just once after all.
What did Barien say to you?
But even as he heard her words, Chriani’s gaze slid along the stones of the floor. Something there. Faintly scratched, the outline of a dagger or knife.
“Seek the blade…”
Chriani spoke aloud as he slipped to hands and knees, ignored the look he caught Lauresa give him as he searched both alcoves and the corridor to north and south. He felt the instincts take over, felt his senses somehow separate from himself, spilling out into the space around him.
Along the corridor, he saw the telltale signs of others having searched, before and after the body was taken away, most likely. Konaugo and Chanist would have asked the same question Lauresa did, would have spent most of the night seeking an answer to it. But the dagger-mark was faint, barely distinguishable from the faint cracks of wear and age that veined the dark marble of the floor.
Follow by fourteen. Keep it safe… But to the questioning look Lauresa gave the thought, Chriani only raised a hand to silence, following the corridor north, the direction the dagger pointed.
Fourteen paces? Not likely that Barien would have been able to make a full stride in the condition he was in. He counted fourteen flagstones instead, dropped low to the floor, the princess following. With no dagger or blade on him, he felt for the picks, took the largest out and ran it around each stone in turn across the breadth of the passage until he found the one that shifted, just slightly.
The instincts his mother had given him. Barien had sharpened them. He let his senses fill him, tried not to think.
Beneath the stone was black sand, packed hard above the foundations below. With the picks, Chriani dug through it silently. Just as silently, he pulled up a knotted strip of blood-soaked cloth where it wrapped a sheathed dagger, Ilvani glyphs across the leather.
Where he went to work the knot free, he felt Lauresa’s hand on his shoulder where she dropped to kneel beside him. Replace the stone, she said. Leave no trace. Chriani did so, listened again when he was done to be certain that they were still alone.
In an alcove, he knelt to slip the knot easily, unfolding the strip of cloth to reveal the image on its underside. The insignia of the prince’s guard, the same embroidered grey that he’d pulled from Barien’s lockbox the night before. This one torn roughly along the seam that joined it, stained red-black. Chriani could only stare.
The dagger he’d never seen before, but he knew it all the same.
It was an Ilvani design, darkly malevolent where his shaking hand held it to the light. The haft was steel and bone, thin so as to lock tight to the hand that could hold it in any grip. It was set with cap and clasp of dull-gleaming dwyrsilver, the same style as the narrow single guard that flared to a pair of razor-curved spikes. The twist of the blade, the perfect balance, spoke to speed and deadly fury. A scalloped blood-edge crowned its base, shaped and honed to do as much damage being pulled free as it would deal on the initial strike.
Chriani noted the double edge of the dagger etched with an intricate pattern of fine flowing scar lines. A legend engraved in an Ilvani script, unreadable to his eye. One of the older tongues of the Greatwood. Over that legend, the dull stain of dried blood clung to the well-worn steel of the blade — but in a specific and stylized pattern. The steel was acid
-etched in twisted lines, creating a flattened groove whose rough surface would bind and color the blade with the blood of those it slew.
The glyph that Barien’s blood made was one that Chriani had known since the day he was born.
It will take more than one of them…
The Valnirata hated Chanist. Ilvalachna they called him and his father alike. The Ilvani Scourge. There were stories they told in the Greatwood that the rangers and the border guard would repeat in mocking tones, of how the Ilmar alliances had always been little more than gauze shrouding Brandishear’s great lust for domination. Chanist plotting secretly as his father before him had plotted, seeking to one day crush all the Ilmar and the Valnirata alike beneath his foul hand.
Chriani felt a sudden chill. From a dark corner of his mind, he saw the torn edge of the wound that had laid Barien down, felt the burning again where Lauresa’s name was marked off on his skin. An extension of the mark his mother had made there, told him to never show but to never feel shame for. The same Valnirata warclan mark that adorned the blue-grey steel of the blade.
And when he looked to Lauresa suddenly, conscious that she had stepped away from where she’d been standing close beside him, he saw a trace of cold anger in her eyes. Looking not at the blade, but at him where he held it, stared at it with a recognition he cursed himself silently for not being smart enough to hide.
He felt the ring on his finger, forced himself to clear his thoughts again. He offered up a wordless oath on Barien’s soul in the hope that she couldn’t feel what was in him now.
And then from the hall ahead, footsteps, rising quickly. A steady guard’s pace, boots loud on the stones. As he rose, he felt Lauresa’s hand find his, the ring pulled from his finger. The dagger and the insignia she left with him.
“Keep it safe,” she whispered, her voice as cold as her look had been. “Wait for my word. If anyone asks, you accompanied me as I attempted to obtain a selection of journals but found the archives unexpectedly closed.” She was already heading up the corridor, walking slowly as she motioned for Chriani to fall in behind her.
He had only managed to slip the dagger and the insignia within his shirt when she slowed at the corner, Ashlund and two garrison guards there to greet her. Her presence requested by the prince, their message and her response a blur in Chriani’s mind.
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