Three Coins for Confession

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  When the light of the watchfires came into sight, Jeradien sounded the horn to warn the camp of a squad returning. Chriani’s eyes marked the rangers beyond the firelight, hunkered down behind the upthrust stones and with arrows nocked. A heightened sense of wariness didn’t pass until all the riders had slowed within the defensive perimeter.

  They walked the horses to the grove, whereupon Venry untied the Uissa prisoner and pulled her to the ground. While the lieutenant’s horse was unsaddled and rubbed down, he hauled the prisoner off, disappearing with her beyond the trees. Chriani knew it should have been him dealing with her, but he was content to let Venry have his moment. He needed the time to focus, trying to slow his frantic thoughts. Remembering how the prisoner had watched him. Trying to understand what her presence among the Ilvani might mean.

  As he rubbed down his horse, Chriani saw two Aerachi rangers crouched around Jeradien. One was tending to the wound at her leg but she was talking low to both of them, all three glancing in his direction at different times. He knew there’d be no need for a formal debriefing.

  As Kathlan walked past him carrying her saddle, he called her over. “Where’s Dargana?”

  “Went to the tent, lord. I told her to stay out of sight.” Though Kathlan’s response held the formality that told Chriani she was still angry, he heard a break in its chill tone.

  “Go see our rangers,” he said. “Tell them what’s happened.”

  “I can’t tell them much until I know myself,” Kathlan said. She didn’t wait for a response as she turned away.

  When Chriani went in search of Venry at last, the lieutenant was at one of the western watch fires, conversing with another ranger from his squad. They had the Uissa prisoner staked to hold her, the ropes at her wrist attached to a heavy horse hitch driven deep into the rocky soil. Her pale face was streaked with dust, her dark eyes bright. Watching Chriani in silence as he approached.

  At a whispered word from Venry, the other ranger made a quick exit. The lieutenant turned to Chriani, his attention caught by the blood at his shoulder. “You should see the healers,” he said absently. He was calmer than he’d been in the Ilvani camp.

  “It’s fine for now,” Chriani lied. He had been feeling the pain spreading steadily throughout the ride, reaching well down his arm and across his back now. His left-front shoulder, which no healer could ever see.

  “This one is a problem,” Venry said. He prodded the Uissa prisoner with his foot, forcing a wince in response. Though she shared the seeming reluctance to speak that Chriani had seen in the assassin he had faced and defeated when defending Lauresa, there was none of the Ilvani’s silent stoicism about her.

  “I doubt we’ll gain any information from her,” Chriani agreed, “but we have enough rangers to watch her while we decide what’s to be done.”

  “Uissa’s importance to Aerach has made that decision for us, sergeant. The dealings between the order and the Ilvani must be brought to my Duke Andreg at once.”

  Venry’s voice carried the same conviction Chriani had heard that first day in the road. He felt a subtle shift in the lieutenant’s attitude, the anger tempered now with something stronger.

  “The news will get to him in good time. Or send two of your riders as courier if you can’t wait…”

  “The troop sets a course for Teillai at dawn. A day and a half’s hard riding will get us there, though there’ll be a fair bit of open country to cross.”

  “We’ll have plenty of time to get the prisoner to Teillai once we’ve met with the Ilvani.”

  “That plan has changed, sergeant, owing to recent events. I’m taking command.”

  There it was. Chriani’s original tactic of using obedience to the duke as incentive for Venry to follow his lead would naturally fail in the face of a better use of that obedience.

  “Take command of whatever you like, Venry. My squad will ride for the Greatwood without…”

  “The assassin will be questioned.” Venry’s dark eyes burned now with a cold light. “You will tell the duke about the Ilvani magic we saw. And about why the Calala have followed you across two principalities and the exile lands.”

  “I’ll say what I have to say…”

  “You’ll say it when I order it, sergeant. Or the prince’s mages will find the answers in ways you might not like.”

  The watchfires had wrapped the crown of the hill in a streaming wreath of smoke, spilling off south as the wind pulled it away. Chriani looked up to the light of the Clearmoon, waning but still bright. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the Darkmoon, passing through new and gone from a night sky that seemed brighter somehow without its blood-red stain.

  He felt a lightness to his thoughts. The weight of responsibility had lifted from him, even if it took Chriani’s familiar sense of failure to do it.

  “I’ve given the order,” Venry said. “I’ve called for double watch through the night. No way to tell what else might be out there. Assuming that’s not something else you know but haven’t bothered to mention.”

  “Permission to seek the healers, lord?” Chriani met the lieutenant’s gaze, holding it fast.

  “Acting Sergeant Chriani, as long as it involves leaving my sight, you are free to do as you like.”

  Chriani turned without a word. He felt Venry’s eyes on him as he tracked across the top of the hill, heading for his tent.

  It took an effort to seal the tent’s door flap with one hand, the pain in Chriani’s shoulder radiating through his fingers now. He waited a while, listening for footsteps. The wind made it hard to pick out the fainter sounds on the hilltop, but when Chriani was certain he was alone, he carefully stripped off his armor and the blood-soaked tunic beneath.

  He had no light, seeing by the faint glow of firelight through canvas walls. With brandy and clean cloths, he wiped and flushed the wound, the knife punching deep into muscle but missing bone and tendon. He tried for stitches, but the torn flesh flared with an agony that went white-hot behind his eyes. He drank the brandy instead, waiting until the pain had passed.

  The troop was riding for Aerach in the morning. He didn’t have much time.

  From a distant corner of his mind, Chriani felt the thought of how reassuring uncertainty must be. He found himself wishing he could lie to his own mind as easily as to everyone else in his life, tell himself he wasn’t sure what his next move should be. But he did know his next move. He always knew, following a course of anger and instinct his whole life.

  He and Dargana would head into the Greatwood alone. He would wait until the deep night, mark the movement of the sentries before he set out for her tent. They’d have to leave their horses for the sake of quiet, but that would work to their advantage in the end. In the thick of the forest, they would move slower but it would be easier by far on foot to evade pursuit.

  Kathlan was his only point of uncertainty, burning in his thoughts as his shoulder was burning now. She’d be in danger if she came with him. Would lose everything she’d ever wanted, everything she’d worked toward for a year and more. But she might just as clearly be in danger if she stayed behind. They might question her in Teillai. Assume that she knew the things Chriani knew — or that Venry thought he knew, at least.

  “Chriani…”

  At the door flap, he heard the urgency in Kathlan’s voice. Word of Venry’s orders had spread.

  He winced as he pulled his bloody tunic back on, unsealed the tent, then sealed it again behind her. She took over for him on the last pegs, his fingers fumbling in pain.

  “You’ve heard…” Chriani began, but she put a finger to his lips. She lit a candle from his pack so she could see, lifting the tunic to assess the bloody mess beneath.

  “First things first.”

  More carefully than Chriani thought he deserved, she washed the wound out a second time. She stitched it tight as Chriani drank again, a fear rising cold and dark from his gut, twisting up to his heart. Each beat of his blood was reflected in the pulsing pain a
t his shoulder, but that was fading with the wound closed.

  “Here,” Kathlan said. From an inside pocket on her jacket, she pulled the glass jar with Derrach’s salve.

  “Keep it,” he said. “The stitching will do fine.” The magic of healing could mean the difference between life and death in the field, but Chriani’s wound was nowhere near that serious. He was trembling, though, Kathlan noting it as she slipped the salve back to her pocket.

  It was a different kind of pain he was feeling now.

  Kathlan spoke as she gathered up bloody cloths from the tent’s ground-sheet floor. “I need you to tell me what’s going on, Chriani. I need the truth.”

  “You know what’s going on, Kath.”

  “I know what you’ve told me. I know it’s not all. The Ilvani hunting you. These mercenaries. The one who went after the princess…”

  “I killed the one who went after the princess,” Chriani heard himself say. “This one’s different. I don’t know her…”

  “But she knows you, Chriani. I saw the look on her when you were standing over her.”

  He could have told Kathlan he didn’t understand that any more than she did. That much was the truth at least, his mind fragmenting as the pieces of the puzzle reshaped and resized themselves.

  “Why was the princess marked for this? What did they want from her?” Kathlan’s voice as she spoke held a clarity that made Chriani understand she’d been thinking the question for much longer than it took to ask it. Much longer than just this night.

  “Like Venry said. They hate the duke. Wanted to hurt him…”

  “Then why attack her before she even gets to Aerach? Venry said they work at court.”

  “I don’t know, Kath.”

  Chriani had to look away from her, staring down to the war-mark at his shoulder. The tight black of Kathlan’s stitching was all but lost already in its dark ink.

  “When you lie to me, I know it, Chriani.”

  He could tell her about Chanist. He knew that in the moment. Had known it since the night he rode in through the Bastion stable gates on his return from Rheran. He could find the strength in himself, find the will to tell her who was behind the attempt on Lauresa’s life. Who had held the blade that slew Barien. Tell her the truth of all the prince had done, what he was.

  He knew he wouldn’t, though. Something stopping him tonight as it had stopped him a year and a half before. Not the unexpected feeling of near-pity he had felt for the prince high in the throne room two weeks past. Not the understanding that in telling Kathlan, he would force her to share the pain he carried for Barien, for Lauresa, knowing all the while that there was no end to that pain now.

  If he told her the truth about the prince, Chriani understood that it would be only as a distraction from deeper truths. Darker truths. An excuse written down in blood and memory, to let him keep hiding the thing he did need to tell her. The truth of what he had done. What he was.

  “I need to get to Dargana without anyone seeing,” he said at last. “The two of us need to run for the Greatwood tonight.”

  “The three of us.” Kathlan’s voice held a tremor that cut through its normal strength. Still defiant, but breaking. Something chipping away at it.

  “No, Kath. It’s my commission I’m throwing away, but I never earned it to begin with. I won’t let you fall with me…”

  “I make my own choices, Chriani…”

  “But you can’t make my choices, Kath. You can’t share in this. Not this time.”

  A long silence. Kathlan’s hand touched his bare shoulder, trembling. “Then just go to Teillai. It’s two days ride, we’ll come back when it’s done…”

  “I can’t go to Teillai,” Chriani said.

  He felt light-headed. A sense that the ground was opening up beneath him, the tent and the black sky both falling.

  “Because of her,” Kathlan said. The clarity again. A thing she had been thinking on for a year and a half now, but the words were breaking even as she said them. Chriani grasped her hand, tried to squeeze the tremor from it but he was shaking suddenly. Couldn’t stop himself.

  “Not for her. There’s something… there’s someone else…”

  Not that, he thought. Not now.

  Something broke in him, finally. He felt the weight of this one last truth crush every lie he’d ever crafted. Felt it push aside every other thing he might have said, like wind-whipped grass breaking before a cavalry charge.

  From when he was younger, he remembered vague dreams of running, and of never being fast enough to escape the unknown darkness he feared would catch him. He felt that same sensation now, felt it close around him. Felt it force the words from him that he knew would be the end of everything.

  “There’s a child, Kath…”

  The trembling in her hand stopped. Her fingers slid from his shoulder. The chill of the tent was at his bare back where she shifted away.

  “Lauresa’s child…” Chriani whispered. “The duke of Teillai’s first-born is mine. Or so she told me. On the road, before I left her to ride back to you.”

  He heard Kathlan’s breathing quicken from behind him. When he turned to face her finally, the pain in her expression cut through him like flame-hot steel, eclipsing the pain at his shoulder.

  She was silent a long while. “Why?” was what she said in the end.

  “Because it was all we had.” A clarity in Chriani’s voice as he said it. A thing he’d been thinking on for too long. “The first time I was with you, Kath, I knew how I felt about you. I knew I loved you, even if I couldn’t say it then. And if I’d known that first night with you was the only night we’d ever have, I’d have given you anything you asked for.”

  “You still love her.” Not a question.

  “No,” Chriani said, and it was true. He’d known that truth since the night he’d ridden back into Rheran a year and a half before. Feeling the faint pain that healing had left behind at his fresh-severed finger, and realizing that the pain in his heart that had been Lauresa was gone. The pain he’d felt since the day he met her, a tyro twelve years old.

  “But you did.”

  Chriani tried to reach for Kathlan’s hand but she pulled away, green eyes fixed to his. “I did,” he said. “I loved her once before I ever set eyes on you. I loved her a second time even as I loved you. And I love you now, and that’s all there is.”

  “All there is except your secret daughter of a duke.”

  The thing that had broken in Chriani was breaking in Kathlan now. He heard it in the tremor that threaded her voice, felt it as heat and cold coursing through him, saw it as the shaking in her arms, her hands clenched to fists now.

  “She’s not… Her parentage won’t ever be an issue, Kath. Aerach’s titles go father to son…”

  “So glad you worked all that out beforehand, then.”

  As she shifted toward the front of the tent, he tried to hold her. Kathlan drove her fist into the stitches at his bare shoulder in response, Chriani crumbling beneath a storm of pain that flared white-hot in his mind.

  “Don’t touch me…” Kathlan whispered. She fumbled at the door flap, tearing the pegs free. “Don’t ever…” Then she was outside and gone.

  Chriani lay there for a long while, waiting for the pain to subside before he could push himself to his feet. He stared at the candle, still burning. Its light was shimmering where the walls of the tent rippled in the wind.

  From what seemed a lifetime ago, he remembered Barien telling him that Kathlan was the best thing that would ever happen to him. He remembered ignoring the warrior. He might even have laughed. Turning so that Barien wouldn’t see the flush at his face to tell him Chriani already knew he was right.

  He remembered Barien singing with Kathlan at that harvest fest that was the first night for her and Chriani. An emptiness rooted deep inside him, reminding him that another piece of Barien’s memory had been broken off tonight. A kind of living thread that ran from him to Kathlan to the warrior, vanished into sha
dow.

  “Sergeant Chriani.”

  Jeradien’s voice came from outside the tent. Chriani felt the breeze cold at his bare back.

  The door flap was still unsealed. The Aerachi ranger should have waited for his response, asked his permission to enter. Proper protocol when seeking out a superior.

  She pulled the flap wide instead. “I am to offer apology for striking you, lord.” Angrily stated, making it clear she was doing so only because Venry must have ordered it. She had pulled the tent open without asking leave for the same reason, leading with her sense of sullen defiance.

  Her eyes were downcast to counter the insolence, giving Chriani time to stumble backward, grab his cloak to hide himself. Almost quick enough.

  Jeradien looked up. She saw the war-mark at Chriani’s shoulder an instant before he covered it. A thing they would kill him for one day.

  From her crouch at the entrance to the tent, she shot forward in a rising charge. Chriani had never moved faster in his life as he rolled out of her way. It wasn’t enough.

  He fell beneath the weight of her as she struck like a mule’s kick, taking him into the back wall of the tent and tearing it from its moorings. She was locked tight to him, the two of them trapped in shadow as the tent wrapped around them. Then she’d torn it free with one hand, Chriani gasping cold air as her other arm wrapped around his throat.

  “Treason!” she screamed. “Aerachi rangers! All on me!”

  Chriani put everything he had into the elbow he drove into Jeradien’s face. Part of it was caught by the mail she was still wearing at her shoulder, but he felt her stagger back, managed to slip out of her chokehold.

  As he twisted away from her, she spun for a side kick. Her boot struck him squarely in the shoulder, dead center in the Uissa warrior’s knife wound.

  The world flared white around him for an endless moment. Then it was done.

  Chriani was on the ground and on his knees, Jeradien kneeling in front of him with her dagger at his throat. Two other Aerachi were at his side, pinning his arms behind him. He couldn’t move, could barely breathe through the pain. He heard footsteps, voices shouting.