Three Coins for Confession

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  As a ranked squire and then a commissioned guard, he was part of a more complex power structure. The business and appointments of the prince high, the security and operations of the Bastion, became things he was made aware of, was asked for comment on. No longer information overheard at the mess table or traded as secrets, incomplete and half-heard. But even as he used his new position to make good on his promise, Chriani felt himself falling back under the weight that position imposed.

  As a tyro, his skill with the bow had seen him named a braggart. A liability, always trying too hard to make his betters look bad, and so his betters had responded in kind. A guard with Chriani’s skill at arms was seen as an asset, though. A disciplined warrior, a potential leader in the field. Except each time Chriani demonstrated his lack of discipline and leadership, it only underlined to those around him how their first impressions had been correct all along.

  In all important ways, Kathlan was Chriani’s opposite in uniform. As Chriani’s tyro, she had fallen into life in the guard with an ease that required him to hide his jealousy. She took to the rigors of rank, took to her duties with the same forthrightness and honest effort that had been the foundation of everything else in her life. And so he found his attention split. Upholding the dark duty of his private promise to the prince high, made in deep night and the shadow of an empty throne room. Upholding the brighter obligation of the pledge he had made to Kathlan the very next day, waking in her loft to find her watching him.

  Over his first year as a guard, Chriani had made good on his promise to watch the prince high. To remind him. But in the end, it had been Kathlan whose presence in his life reminded Chriani of more significant obligations.

  He had slipped from the bed that first morning after his return from Aerach. Had crossed over to where she sat on the floor, wrapped in a blanket. He sat with her, let her wrap it around him too. It had been cold that morning.

  “Do you remember what you asked me before?” he said. “The night I left?” It was a question from the previous night, before Chriani’s challenge to the prince high closed off the path that had taken him to the exile lands, to Aerach and back. But the question looked back further to the beginning of that path, when he’d stolen a horse with Kathlan’s aid and set himself back into the life of the princess he had loved once. The princess he had watched ride away in the end.

  “I asked you what you could possibly know if you didn’t know what you wanted for yourself. I asked you your ambition.”

  “I want you to be mine,” Chriani said. “I want to speak oaths with you. Take the marriage rites if you’ll have me…”

  “Slow that talk down,” Kathlan said to interrupt him. No look of surprise in her, though.

  He had expected surprise. He felt an unfamiliar warmth flood through him when he saw acceptance instead. Then he felt that warmth redoubled as she pulled herself onto him, sat astride him and pulled the blanket tighter around them both.

  Eighteen months since he pledged himself to her, and Chriani had felt his threat and his promise to the prince shift over that time. The implicit pledge of mutual destruction he and Chanist made, tempered by his commitment to Kathlan. Not softened. Just made smaller, Chriani feeling his world expand around him in a way he had never expected.

  On special dispensation from Guard Captain Ashlund, Kathlan had been assigned half time to remain in the Bastion stables where she’d spent her whole life, caring for the horses of the prince high’s own regiment. She had two other stable hands working under her, spent every other day at Chriani’s side for weapon and hand-to-hand training.

  It wasn’t enough, though. Chriani had known it from the start.

  “I’m going to ride with the rangers,” Kathlan had told him, more than once. When the orders came, the ranger captains having watched her for a year, Chriani was ready to set aside the secret truths he knew. Give himself over to the greater truth of what Kathlan meant to him, for a time at least.

  He was thinking about the truths he knew when the walls of Rheran came into sight late on their ninth day out from the camp. Those last days of the journey had taken them into High Autumn, passing the nights at the celebrations of harvest fest in small towns along the long, straight road from Glaeddyn. He was thinking about all the questions Kathlan hadn’t asked him over those nine days, content with small talk on the road, and sharing songs with the farmers and merchants whose paths ran alongside theirs for a time.

  Kathlan’s voice was good in its own right, but it was the way she sang a story that truly caught the ear. Her love of tales, her appetite for lore, had been well sated since she and Chriani rode south. She would share stories in the mess each night, reading the old histories and seeking out the knowledge of the veteran sergeants in her off-duty time.

  For his own part, Chriani had no real interest in tales, though he had been forced to learn his share of them from Barien. The lore of the Incursions. Stories of soldiering from the rangers and the Rheran guard. The history surrounding the Empire’s fall more than sixty years before, and the rebuilding of the Ilmar in the aftermath of that fall. But the story he was a part of was the only one he knew well. And he had been fighting for a year and a half against the need to tell it. All the things he needed to say to Kathlan before it was too late.

  It was a strange feeling, Chriani had come to realize, to care for someone enough that their pain cut you more than your own. Understanding how important it was for them to never hurt, to never fear because of you. He had never experienced that before, not even with Barien. And from the first day of his pledge to Kathlan, of coming back to her and understanding the truth of what he was meant to be, Chriani had set himself up to hurt her on the steel-sharp secrets kept close in his heart and mind.

  On that bright blue-white winter morning when he’d pledged himself to Kathlan, he told himself he would free those secrets in the end. He would dull their edges, would leave them to the light and air and let them rust away like cheap iron. Instead, he had sheathed them in silence and honed them with more silence still. Had added to them, in fact. Rhuddry’s last words to him, effectively exiling him from her camp, were something he’d spent much of the nine-day journey thinking on. Wondering how he’d explain it to Kathlan. He could apologize for all he was worth, but that was only half the battle, he knew. The main thrust would be convincing her to let him release her as his adjutant, so that she could go back alone. Knowing she’d have no problem doing so as long as Chriani was no longer her unwanted baggage.

  She would be all right without him. He could convince her of that. Maybe even set her on that path before he stepped onto the path of whatever his return to the Bastion would bring. Easier that way.

  For nine days on the road, Chriani had felt the prince high’s words in the throne room that night wedge into his thoughts like an always-shifting sliver. A part of him had expected to die that night in the throne room, surprised that it hadn’t happened then.

  “A man might die many ways, squire.”

  Nine days on the road, and Chriani had felt the memory of the black arrow’s magic burning in him over nine mornings of waking in the faint light of promised dawn. Wondering over each of those mornings what had made the Prince High Chanist decide he’d waited long enough.

  Darkening cloud the morning they sighted Rheran had turned to rain by the time they reached the south city-gate, well before sundown but the day already gone to gloom and shadow. Traveling the main road, they had passed Bastion guards and couriers at regular intervals throughout the day, Kathlan returning their nods of salute more quickly than Chriani did.

  He felt the faint chill at his neck, down his back, that told him he was expecting trouble. He found himself turning to watch the retreating backs of the guard patrols they passed, more than once. He chastised himself for his paranoia each time, even as the memory of the black arrow burned in his mind once more.

  The harvest fest celebrations in the Brandishear capital tended to expand around the seven days of High Autumn w
ithout restraint, starting in the last days of Patalis and running well into Tarcia. As such, the trade streets were crowded despite the weather. Where Chriani and Kathlan rode steadily toward them, the walls of the keep were slabs of shadow pocked with torchlight, marking off the extents of the walled fortress that was the heart of the city. Within the keep, the central stronghold of the Bastion rose on its low bluff of dark stone, but Chriani could barely make out the lights of its towers through the haze of rain.

  As they passed the market court, they saw it packed tight with tents and wagons, crowds of city folk and travelers moving shoulder to shoulder through the spaces between. Bonfires were burning at the centers of the wider intersections, sending off as much steam as smoke, but their warm light helped cut the gloom where shuttered lamps were straining to fill the falling dark. Beyond the market court, they would approach the wall of the keep and circle around to the north gates. Those were the main entrance to the center of the city, opening out to the steep slope leading down to the harbor and the seawall.

  As they drew close to the keep’s south wall, though, Chriani slowed to bring Kathlan close beside him. “We should get a room,” he said. “One last night.” He heard the words come out wrong even as he was saying them, but if Kathlan heard any extra meaning in them, she gave no sign.

  “What about your Bastion business?”

  “It can wait a night. Same for Milyan’s reports. Whoever they’re marked for can read them by daylight tomorrow as easily as lamplight tonight.”

  Kathlan laughed. “Whoever they’re marked for will be Chanist’s mages. Nothing I can think of would make me keep them waiting.”

  “I’ll keep them waiting for you.” Chriani leaned across in the saddle to kiss her, feeling their horses bump shoulders and blow their displeasure. “We report tonight, it’s straight to cold showers and the barracks. I say we got caught an extra day on the road with bad weather. Private room. Hot bath, warm fire.”

  “Is that an order, lord?” Kathlan’s tone was mocking but her expression was serious.

  “Do you know the penalties for disobeying a superior, tyro?”

  “If they don’t already involve physical punishment, let me know what else I need to do, lord.”

  Kathlan made a full salute with a flourish, Chriani laughing. She clasped his hand as they rode.

  The inn they steered to was the Trickster, two steep lanes south of the keep along a high side street. Chriani knew the inn more by reputation than custom, with that reputation built primarily on its proximity to the keep’s secure southwest gatehouse. That proximity made it a preferred locale for Bastion guards needing a place for private trysts off duty, or for sleeping off debauchery whose aftermath would be too trying even for the barracks.

  Mud-soaked and dripping, almost half a year gone from the Bastion, Chriani wasn’t worried about either of them being recognized at the inn stables or the common room, both of which they passed through in short order. A single Ilvani blood-gold paid for the inn’s best room and dinner besides — lamb stew and well-aged cheese, bread with fresh butter, a jug of ale and two mugs that was all carried with well-practiced skill by the eager serving boy who escorted them.

  The room was an oversized top-floor turret, clean and simple. A fire along the inside wall was already burning hot, copper kettles steaming on the hearth. “The lord’s suite,” the boy proudly named the room. “Fire burning all the day, just waiting for you, weary travelers.” The tub the kettles filled was pocked but watertight, Kathlan already stripping off her riding clothes even as the boy filled it. To Chriani’s eye, he looked like he was taking his time, and spending less of that time watching the tub than he was watching Kathlan. A clutch of copper cinches set him to finish and sent him packing, though.

  Chriani made sure the door was locked before he set his own clothes out to dry, hanging his cloak to cover the room’s single window. Holding back its edge for a moment, he saw night falling in the city beyond, heard the ringing of the evenmark bells in the keep. Hand to the glass to block the room’s reflection from his eyes, he marked off the tavern’s second-storey roof spreading below him. The hiss of water was loud at the gutters, rain hanging like a curtain of dark grey.

  As he slumped in front of the fire, he listened to Kathlan singing as she soaked. It was a barracks hall song whose lyrics could make the strongest sergeant blush, but Kathlan’s interpretation was even more stridently lewd. He assumed that was for his benefit, felt the stirring of his hunger for her even through his fatigue. A familiar feeling, and welcome, but shrouded this night by the darkness that traced through Chriani’s mood and mind.

  “A man might die many ways, squire.”

  Eighteen months before, the Prince High Chanist had threatened his life. Chriani in turn had dared him to take it.

  Chriani irnash! Lóech arnala irch niir!

  We hunt Chriani. Three coins for the truth of confession.

  In thinking through it, Chriani found that it made a kind of sense, as much as madness could make sense. Eighteen months before, Chanist had wanted all-out war with the Valnirata. Had committed acts to accomplish it whose darkness Chriani wouldn’t think on. For the prince to have struck any bargain with the Valnirata would have seemed inconceivable in the aftermath of those events. But Chriani remembered what Derrach had said about Milyan’s intelligence.

  The Ilvani of the western forest were using magic of the exiles of Crithnalerean. It had started there, perhaps, with Chanist able to more easily conspire with the exiles than with the war-clans of the Greatwood. His troops had far more contact with the Crithnala, who themselves hated the Valnirata of the Greatwood nearly as much as Chanist did. The prince high seeking out unlikely allies. Setting Chriani at the center of some duplicitous bargain that would leave him free to seek his war with the Ilvani once more.

  It was all guesswork, though. Still too many things that didn’t make sense. Chriani eyed his saddlebags where they sat beneath the bed, the mage’s satchel inside. He remembered the glowing sigil on the latch. Information there, no doubt, but he wouldn’t be the one to claim it.

  Kathlan’s song had changed, but he hadn’t noticed when. The lines of a romantic lay hung sweet and mournful against the splash of water, the crackling of the fire. Chriani fed more wood to the grate from the ample supply at the hearth, then watched Kathlan as she finally stood. Water flowed from her, skin gleaming dark in the shadows. Hands running along arms and legs to dry herself, wringing her hair.

  Chriani irnash…

  The Ilvani had called his name.

  “Water’s still hot,” Kathlan said as she crossed to the bed, drying herself with the extra woolen blanket the boy had left. Chriani washed but didn’t soak long. With his boot knife, he shaved and trimmed his beard, then stood at the hearth to dry. By the time he slipped in beside Kathlan, the bed was already warm.

  Their lovemaking was slow but sudden, a product of the fatigue that both were feeling. But in the time after, they were both equally content to simply inhabit each other’s arms, feeling the warm glow of the room wrap around them as the fire died to flickering shadows.

  Chriani felt Kathlan’s fingers along his shoulder, marked her tracing out her name in the Ilvani script as she sometimes did. He had shown her the lettering that morning of their pledge, had carefully explained the four names and as much of his reasons for scribing them as he was able. She had gone quiet when Chriani showed her Lauresa’s name there. He told her half the truth of the path that had brought him back to the side of the princess he had once loved, even as he pledged his love for Kathlan again. Saying what he needed to say to make her understand.

  He told her the story. The princess attacked along the Clearwater Way while under guard and bound for Aerach. She and Chriani escaping, fleeing ahead of Valnirata war-bands and the order of assassins who would eventually be exposed as the dark force behind the attempt on the life of the prince high and his oldest daughter. Chriani was caught up in it, taking up Barien’s duty of prot
ecting the princess with his life. Learning things about himself he had never thought to know. Finding the strength that Barien had always known was in him.

  It was a good tale, as tales went.

  As Kathlan’s hand found his, her fingers touched the steel ring that Lauresa had given him. Chriani had told her of the ring’s magic on that bright blue morning of a year and a half before, and had shown her the magic of the black iron band. Two secrets he had eagerly shared to show her he had nothing to hide anymore.

  The lies came too quickly sometimes. Too easily.

  The steel ring was one of a matched pair, the power they shared putting the thoughts of two people in connection when both rings were worn. Before they parted, the princess had told Chriani to wear his always, and he did. She told him she’d put her own ring on if she ever needed him. Kathlan hadn’t been pleased to hear that. Chriani had set her mind at ease, though. Telling her truthfully that when Lauresa said it, he was certain he would never hear her voice in his mind again.

  “When I came back from Aerach,” Chriani said quietly, “we talked about taking the rites.”

  The words hung quiet in the silence and firelight of the turret room. No sense that they were even in him until Chriani heard himself speaking them. Remembering that morning of deep winter. Remembering the truth he shared with Kathlan, and the truths he had kept hidden, and the promises he’d made because he felt the ache of those hidden truths as a wound he needed desperately to close.

  “I remember,” Kathlan said sleepily. “Do you remember me saying no?”

  “I remember you saying to slow it down. You never said no.”

  “So slow it down.” Her fingers had walked up his hand and across his chest beneath the blankets. Chriani shifted to put his arms around and beneath her. He kissed her gently.

  “It’s been more than a year. I go any slower, we’re running backwards, Kath. We could take the rites.”