“And Umeni was also not there, lord. I was. I caught Sergeant Thelaur as she fell. As noted.”
He stepped forward, nodded again as he set his written report down before the captain. She glanced at it but made no effort to scan it.
“Umeni wants your head, soldier. And all I’ve been able to think of since yesterday dusk is whether my life would become simpler if I handed it to him.”
“I have no doubt that it would, lord. But to make it easier on all of us, and to spare you the embarrassment of later admonishing Umeni for his incompetence, this was a targeted raid. Seek the report of Guard Second Rank Makaysa.”
“I have. It was less earnest in its conclusions than you seem to be.”
“I urge you only to look to it for support of my conclusions. First squad was targeted with a ride-by ambush, designed to draw second squad…”
“Is there anything else?”
Chriani did his reluctant best to square his shoulders. As he did, he realized that when he slipped his spare jacket on to avoid the new stains on the first, he had forgotten how long it had been since the spare had been cleaned. He saw Rhuddry grimace as she looked from him to her food.
“I request furlough to Rheran, effective immediately.”
A slice of orange slowed halfway to the captain’s mouth, but it found its way in the end. She chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “Am I to assume this is proof against Umeni finally taking the revenge you deserve? Or are there other factors at play in this asinine request?”
“Any ranger who suffers injury in the course of field duty that requires the magic of the healers may request detached duty,” Chriani said simply. “According to the regulations of the prince’s guard, as I recall them.”
“Chriani, wiping your ass in the field is the only use you’ll ever have for any copy of the regulations of the prince’s guard.”
“Perhaps that’s where I read the regulation in question, lord. Magus Milyan can confirm my injuries, and the healing administered by…”
“Spare me, please.” Rhuddry spread honey to bread with a knife far too sharp for that task. The muscles on her arms stood out as she watched Chriani, as if she might be thinking of other uses for the blade. “Your escapade with Milyan last night has already been brought to my attention, even as he insists I appoint you squad leader. Something about leading a force of war-mages into the deep wood.”
“Magus Milyan can use Makaysa or any of her squad to lead him to the trail he needs to find.”
“Thank you for that, master Chriani. Your tactical advice means the world to me. Milyan also recommends I have you subjected to divination, with your will or against it, to determine why exactly the Ilvani would make what he describes as a significant investment in arcane resources to locate and claim you on the battlefield.”
Chriani made no reaction, but the fingers of his left hand squeezed shut to still a moment of trembling.
“My own opinion,” Rhuddry continued, “is that I trust Milyan’s divination slightly less than I trust my horse to sing. And that the Ilvani’s urge to target you with any weapon can be easily explained by them having met you.”
A bell sounded in the distance, calling the morning mess. An unfamiliar ache was twisting through Chriani’s newly healed shoulder as a result of his standing at attention. The magic of healing did that sometimes, he had found. As if even while it knit torn tissue, it drew from some greater reserve of strength to leave a weakness in its wake.
Rhuddry popped a slice of beef into her mouth, thoughtful. “Master Chriani, it occurs to me that since you joined my company, you spend half your time attempting to prove you can take on responsibility you haven’t earned. And the other half of your time acting as though any responsibility is too much for you.”
Chriani said nothing. Simply waited, understanding the importance of that.
Rhuddry took a long drink from her wine mug before setting it down. “Furlough denied,” she said with a thin smile. But before Chriani could react, she spoke again. “Instead, I’m placing you on courier detail to the Bastion. You’ll start by taking the report Milyan is to have prepared this morning. His thoughts on the Valnirata’s magic will keep Chanist’s mages entertained through the High Winter, no doubt.”
Chriani nodded. “Thank you, lord.”
“Thank me by leaving your adjutant here. She’s worth at least three of you.”
“And two more for her horse,” Chriani said. Before the captain could question his response, he added, “Forgive my humor, lord. Kathlan will accompany me, but we will return as quickly…”
Rhuddry interrupted him with laughter, in a way that set Chriani on edge. “You have absolutely no idea why I would deny you furlough but send you to Rheran just the same. Do you, soldier?”
“Because you enjoy every captain’s love of doing the things others ask of you, but in a way that makes it seem like you ordered it, lord?”
Chriani enjoyed the moment it took for Rhuddry’s surprise to shift to anger. Only a moment.
“Because on courier detail, you’ll spend the rest of your assignment with the rangers on the trade roads and out of my sight.” Rhuddry drained her mug. “I don’t want you back in my camp or my command, master Chriani. You are dismissed.”
He stood there silent, just long enough to make her uncomfortable — partly for the sake of doing so, and partly because the anger that rose in his heart, in his throat made him very aware of how important it was that he not speak.
Making a captain uncomfortable was one small thing he could do, Chriani realized. One small thing he had done, and which had just gotten him exiled from the rangers as a result. He felt the blood hot at the back of his neck as he turned from her, his hand trembling again as he walked away.
When he made a stop at the war-mages’ pavilion, he found Derrach working, even as Milyan was apparently off seeking an audience with Makaysa. The overstuffed satchel that contained the magus’s reports for the Bastion was waiting, though, as were the orders to deliver them. A glowing rune set into the satchel’s clasp guaranteed that Chriani had no thought of opening it. He had the acolyte wrap the case in oilcloth before he would even touch it.
“You owe me healing,” he said evenly as he checked the wrappings, making the moonsign because it seemed warranted for once.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the acolyte said.
“What I’m talking about is I counted what you left in my purse last night.”
“I can’t…” Derrach said.
“I’m being reassigned. Sent back to the Bastion.” Chriani felt nothing in saying it, knowing that word of his effective demotion would be spread across all corners of the camp by day’s end. “It’d be a shame if word of your private sales got out some short time after I was too far away to be connected to them.”
Derrach’s expression was dark as she fished once more in the voluminous pockets of her robes. She pulled out the same jar Chriani had seen the previous night. Black glass sealed in wax and paper, reset now with a wire ring, tightly wound.
“No draughts,” she said, “but this will do you. Heal your wounds, proof against poison. One fingerful. Probably two doses left after last night, but I can tell Milyan I used it all on you. Take it and go.”
Chriani nodded thanks as he slipped the salve to an inside pocket of his jacket. He took the satchel, held it more carefully. “What’s in here, anyway? What’s Milyan sending to the Bastion for?”
“How would I know?” Derrach asked indignantly. She tossed her head to sweep her black hair back as she turned away. Then she turned back a moment later to see Chriani still waiting. He had scooped a handful of Ilvani blood gold from his purse, tossed one to her.
Derrach sighed in ill-concealed spite, though she caught the coin. “He’s sending for more resources. Reporting what he’s learned from the weapons taken from the Ilvani. Screaming about how you and the others failed to return those coins you saw.”
“And what are t
hey?”
“He has no idea, even after a night awake with his oldest histories. Hence his interest in being the one to find out.”
“What else?”
“That’s all, and a fair sight more than you have any business knowing.”
Chriani tossed a second coin to Derrach. She scowled. “Military intelligence, or so Milyan deems it. He claims that his divinations can read the origins of the Valnirata weapons, and not just those taken on your raid. He calls them dweomercraft of the north. Says the Ilvani of Calalerean are using magic of Crithnalerean. New alliances, or so he reads it.”
The politics of the Ilvani was complex and unclear, and a thing Chriani had always been happy to know as little about as possible. Calalerean was the northwest corner of the Greatwood that bordered Brandishear, and one of the provinces of the Valnirata lands. Crithnalerean was the Ilvani exile lands, north of the Greatwood and marking the expanse of the Clearwater Way — the path Chriani had taken a year and a half before. The exile lands bordered Calalerean and Laneldenar adjacent to it, along the frontier of Aerach to the east. That part of the Valnirata that bordered the Duchy of Teillai, where Lauresa had been delivered to her new life.
“Anything in Milyan’s notes about me and divination?”
Derrach snatched a third coin from the air without looking. Her expression showed what Chriani took to be a thankfully honest puzzlement. “Not that I saw. Are you taking a sudden and unexpected interest in your future, soldier?”
Chriani smiled as he turned to go, was almost through the tent’s door flap with the wrapped satchel before he turned back again.
“The drawing,” he said, remembering. “In the book Milyan looked at. Crows against dead trees. What was that?”
Derrach was at the table, her long hair framing her face as she hunched over a carefully arrayed selection of scrolls. Her eyes narrowed as if she was suddenly wary of Chriani’s powers of observation. “Field notes,” she said. “From one of the Imperial surveys. Assessments made of old magic of the Ilvani.”
“You speak the old Ilvani? The tongues the Valnirata use?”
“Of course.” Derrach’s tone gave the impression that she might have been hurt by Chriani’s lack of insight.
He tossed a fourth coin to the table, watched it roll off and to the floor. With a flick of her fingers, Derrach had shifted it somehow to her hand. She smiled as Chriani made the moonsign.
“Lóech arnala irch niir. Lóech niir.” He spoke the words from memory, tried to shape the accent properly.
“Three coins for the truth of revelation,” Derrach said. “Reveal your truth. Or perhaps Three coins for the truth of confession would be better. It’s from an old word, lóecharinna. A revelation of personal faith.” Her eyes narrowed again. “How do you know this?”
“The Ilvani we pursued into the Greatwood were saying it,” Chriani said. Not entirely a lie. “Tell Milyan I remembered it. Figure out what it means yourself and impress him. Help take his mind off you stealing from his stores.”
Chriani nodded a farewell in response to Derrach’s dark look. But he was thoughtful as he walked away.
When he found Kathlan at the stables, she had packed food for a good day or two. No need to sit mess, which suited Chriani fine. If she wondered at his silence as they made their way out of the camp, she didn’t ask about it. If she had any guess as to why he chose the quickest trail, wanting to minimize the number of people who would see them go, she didn’t voice it.
They headed south and around the perimeter, circling the camp at a distance before returning to the track that would take them to the well-guarded ford on the Locanwater, then to Alaniver and the trade road north. Two couriers passed them along that west-leading track at a fast canter. The morning patrols were heading out as well, but bending off to the east, toward the distant forest.
Once they had slipped beyond the camp, it didn’t take long to lose all sight of it within the rolling swells of scrub grass. The only sign of its four thousand soldiers was the faint traces of smoke from the kitchens and the captain’s pavilion. Rhuddry was probably still finishing her breakfast, Chriani thought.
The day was bright around them, with blue sky and scudding cloud blowing east. The morning sun held the dark stain of the forest wall along the eastern horizon behind them. That shadow didn’t fully fade against the pale hills until they had made the road, the sun just past its height. Through a spread of tilled fields and pasture, they pushed east and north alongside wains and farm traffic.
Only then did Kathlan speak. “You’ll tell me what this is about when you can.” Not a question.
“Of course,” Chriani said. He saw her nod like that was enough.
The road from Alaniver to Rheran was a week of riding with good weather and long days, but even with the need to deliver Milyan’s satchel in a timely fashion, Chriani found himself in no particular hurry. In Kathlan, Chriani could feel the same excitement she had exhibited on their initial journey south to the ranger camp, the same sense of wonder as when they had ridden the patrol roads around Rheran when her leg was first healed. To one who’d spent a lifetime dreaming of riding, every day on horseback carried a sense of contentment that Chriani knew was beyond him. He drew on Kathlan’s contentment, though, especially as the journey wore on and all he felt by the end of most days was sore.
The world beyond the Bastion was nearly as new to him as it was to her, but he didn’t see it as she did. He had traveled some of these roads before and more than once, but only as a child. Riding with Barien while the sergeant served as warden to Lauresa, he had seen the southeast steppes of Brandishear and the seaside forests, had traveled west and north to Elalantar. On his own, he had gone east to see the farmland of Aerach spread beyond the end of the Clearwater Way.
Still, the land carried a sense of sameness to his eyes that he couldn’t shake. He couldn’t embrace it in the way of Kathlan, who would seek out the stories of every town and village in which they stopped. She marked the days that way, Chriani instead noting the landscape’s slow progression of grasslands to farmsteads. Great flocks of sheep dotting the hillsides gave way eventually to terraced fields following the river valleys on their meandering way north to the sea.
They stayed most nights in billeted lodgings, their insignias of the prince’s guard enough to earn them a pallet by the fireside or the soft dryness of a hayloft. Even a spare room and a clean bed twice, stopping at farmsteads north of Alaniver and south of Cadith, where the last harvests were in and the seasonal laborers had already headed north to the forests for the winter.
The respect for the uniform was a thing Chriani wore with less comfort than Kathlan, even though he had worn the uniform far longer than she had. Most often, their offers to pay for their meals were refused with grace and admiration, the folk of the frontier knowing the job the rangers did and showing their respect for it as they could. In even those cases, Kathlan would leave a clutch of silver siolans on hearth or windowsill before they departed in the morning.
Another difference between them — Kathlan could sleep easy in those strange beds, or sharing rooms with strangers. But for Chriani, each night on the road took him into the deep night wide awake, whether in Kathlan’s arms or sleeping separate in shared bunkrooms. When he did sleep, the strangeness of traveling brought him back even before the first glimmer of dawn. Listening to the sounds and the silence.
He was thus growing more tired as the journey wore on, using the excuse of rain to add a day to that journey, and to spend much of that day in taverns among the close-set farm villages that spread south from Rheran. They had taken an inn in Glaeddyn, Chriani talking up the prospect of a bath to Kathlan, but truly more interested in a solid night’s rest for himself behind a locked door. It had worked to a point, the city’s noise and traffic putting him in mind of the more familiar clamor of Rheran. But as it had each day along the road, with any thought of that city where he’d spent most of his life, Chriani found himself dwelling on the thought o
f why he was returning to Rheran, and of what he hoped to accomplish there.
He had no idea what he was doing, what he was searching for. Only the dark and unspoken knowledge that he could think of just one person in all the Ilmar who would want him destroyed. A person who knew the risks of having him killed, and so who might have conspired instead to have him taken by the Ilvani and never seen again.
When he had returned to Rheran in the deep winter of a year and a half before, taking the last steps along the path that had changed him, Chriani had said words alone to the Prince High Chanist. A newly appointed squire with a promise of commission still to come, no note of distinction in his record.
“You would serve me after all this? To what end, master Chriani?”
Eight years a tyro, held back by a sullen anger that became a point of pride in him. As if he might have had nothing else to be proud of. He had stood alone in the Bastion throne room, a place where not even ambassadors and nobles walked unescorted, to issue a challenge.
“To watch you, my lord prince. To remind you of the price of your ambition.”
That Chanist was behind the Ilvani attack that targeted him was an easy guess, though Chriani still had nothing like a full sense of what had forced the prince high’s hand. He had challenged Chanist. Had used Irdaign as a threat to warn the prince that the truth would come out if anything happened to Lauresa or him. But that knowledge would be undone if Chriani could be undone, Chanist manipulating events to his own ends. The Ilvani claiming Chriani, controlling him. Making it appear as though he had turned traitor, perhaps. Making sure that if the truth ever did come out, that truth would never be believed.
As he’d taken up his commission to the guard and the responsibilities that came with it, Chriani found himself set into a position from which he could make good on his promise to watch the prince. Circling Chanist from a distance, like an outrider on long patrol. Never a word between them, as was proper. Rarely in the same room at the same time, Chriani’s new duties taking him across the Bastion and on patrol around it.
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