First Blood

by K. Gorman

  “The undersworn…” Her brows drew together in confusion as she searched her mind—then shot into her forehead. A wave of shocked giddiness exploded in her chest and she burst into laughter. “Are you serious? Holy Elrya, could you imagine the looks on the Council’s faces if I did that? On old Tommin’s? Bright tits, man, I think half of them would write my name on their lavatory cob. The rnari would use it as fucking target practice.”

  By technicality, all of the Raidt were undersworn to the Cizek bloodline—an unhappy by-product of the demon-sword days. It hadn’t been obeyed or enforced in two hundred and fifty years, but it still existed, and, notably, the Raidt had not made a move against the Cizeks in all that time.

  Well, no open moves, anyway.

  Elves were nothing if not wily.

  But, the fact that it still existed—in writing, no less, which was more than could be said for her bloodline contract—meant that, technically, any of the Cizek line were as eligible for her blade-swearing loyalty as the Raidt line.

  She could toss the Raidt crown prince for the Cizek second-in-line.

  “It would get you away from Tarris,” Doneil said, as if reading her mind.

  She snorted. “It might be worth it for that alone.”

  He didn’t say anything, just watched her, eyebrows lifting.

  “I didn’t say that,” she added.

  “Of course you didn’t.” He shot her a grin, yellow eyes flashing with good humor. “I personally think it’s a great idea. It’d piss off the Council, fulfill your unspoken oath, and send a message to Tarris.”

  “I’m not sure I want to send a message to him.”

  “Oh, no, I know you want to—you’re just not sure you should.”

  She pinned him with a stare. His grin only widened.

  “You are a troublemaker,” she told him, switching back to Janessi.

  He snorted, also switching. “You’re the one who gave me the idea. I just voiced it.”

  “Some things are meant to be kept to oneself. Especially concerning certain matters.” She held up a finger when it looked like he was going to speak again. “I’m starting to understand why you’re at a human castle rather than in the Raidt.”

  “What can I say? I dislike politics. And you are already doing it, even if the notion hadn’t crossed your pretty little head.”

  Her stare narrowed, and his face took on a mock-sobriety, one hand rising as if to fend off an impending blow. “Fine. I’ll be quiet.”

  Experience made her very much doubt that, but she lowered her hand anyway.

  “I think I liked your idea of become a rnari nun better.”

  “Someone’s coming,” said Prince Nales.

  Up ahead, a middle-aged woman in a dark-colored homespun dress—a closer version of the figure she’d seen earlier—was walking up the side of the road toward them, the objects of her attention clear in the hesitant gaze that turned their way. It irked her that the prince had voiced her presence, as if she and Doneil had been too caught up in conversation to do their jobs properly. His tone had held a slight edge to it, as if in rebuke.

  “She’s from the farmhouse,” she said, giving the woman an irritated glance-over. “There are two others, at least, both smaller.”

  “Must have heard us coming,” Doneil said with a grin.

  She skewered him with a glare—no, they hadn’t been quiet in the past few minutes—then nudged her horse to walk faster, soon catching up to Prince Nales. The woman saw this and faltered, wringing her hands, eyes widening obviously when she took in Catrin’s non-human looks and the lay of her armor.

  With the prince leading, it had likely been easier to overlook the two elves at his back. Now, she was forced to address them. To see them.

  Catrin felt a momentary pang of regret. In this part, elves may be an uncommon sight, but rnari were even rarer.

  And intimidating.

  That made her frown.

  We shouldn’t be like that. We’re meant to protect the weak, not harass them.

  Prince Nales directed his horse ahead, loosening the reins so that the gelding stretched his neck out. “Do you need something?”

  His tone was warm, friendly. When she glanced over, his expression had shifted. His normal shuttered frown had vanished, replaced by a hesitant smile and a quiet curiosity that sparked in his eyes.

  Shy and gentle, but welcoming. Open.

  It surprised her.

  The woman hesitated. Her wide eyes stayed locked on Catrin for a moment longer, then switched to the prince. She wrung her hands again, but the motion seemed more half-hearted this time, relaxing. She took a step forward, emboldened, and her tone turned up in a hopeful cant.

  “Are you from the castle?”

  Pemberlin, she meant, not Pristav Castle in Lorka. Not unless she’d seen the prince before—he was wearing no identifying signifiers other than a small, gold lapel pin of a sword, which could have been taken for military. In fact, if Catrin hadn’t moved forward as she had, an instinctual guarding action on her part, he would have passed for military. Upper-brass military, perhaps, with his nice jacket, quality boots, and the long black sheath of the straight sword at his side, but military nonetheless.

  She’d have to remember that for the future.

  “Yes,” he said. “Are you all right? Did you…” He glanced to the fields, which looked untouched, and to the house with its single stack of smoke—no demon burn like they’d read in the reports coming to Pemberlin, but that didn’t mean anything. As they were finding out, demons were disposed of in many different ways. “Did you have problems? Do you need healing?”

  “You can heal? Oh, thank Abier.” The woman winced, obviously reminded of what, precisely, had befallen on the god’s feast night, but resolutely drove past it. “It’s not for me, it’s—a stranger came last night. A nice stranger,” she added hastily, catching the shift in their manner as they all stiffened. Though bandits were about as common as elves in this area, they did occur. What they’d be doing at a poor farmhouse, Catrin wouldn’t know. “Killed two of those… things last night. After that, we’d be happy to take him in—gods know we could use the extra hand—but he needs far more help that what we can give.”

  She hesitated, her gaze once again flitting between the three of them. Protective, Catrin realized. Not sure whether to trust them wholly.

  But something in their demeanor must have won out. Either that, or she was truly desperate.

  “Actually,” she confessed, her voice lilting smaller. “We don’t rightly know what to make of him. He is, well…”

  She hesitated, once again glancing to Catrin and Doneil, though the glance felt more inquisitive than fearful this time.

  “Strange?” Doneil supplied.

  “Yes. Though not in the way you are. He’s certainly strange-looking, but definitely human. Foreign.” She bit her lip, giving them another glance-over. “It’s probably better if you come see yourself. I think you’d know about these things better than I.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then, the prince raised his gaze through the trees to the homestead beyond. The other two people hadn’t moved, watching.

  Catrin followed his stare, frowning as she considered the woman’s words.

  A foreign stranger. Like Treng, perhaps?

  She almost snorted at the thought. If Treng had shown up on someone’s door in the middle of the night, they wouldn’t be nearly so calm about it—even if he did kill demons for them.

  The man was a damned nightmare.

  After a few seconds, the prince twitched his reins and turned his horse for the farm’s track.

  “All right. Let’s have a look.”

  Chapter 9

  “Well, she wasn’t wrong,” Doneil said, his elven slipping through the air like water over river rocks. “He is human.”

  Catrin kept her features smooth as she sized up the man spread out over the cabin’s communal bed frame.

  He looked Gatali to her—brown eyes, black ha
ir, an obvious bronzing to his skin—his eyes had near bugged out of his head when she and Doneil had walked in, gaze sweeping over them, lingering first on her two blades, then her eyes and ears, and giving the prince only a passing glance. It made her think he hadn’t seen an elf before.

  Which was odd. Maybe he was used to light elves? But—no. Not with that skin tone. Forest elves?

  The woman was right about something else, too—he was definitely foreign. He didn’t speak Janessi, instead replying to Nales’ questioning in a language none of them recognized.

  He was also brawny—and definitely a soldier. She’d pegged him for that almost immediately. He had an edge in the way he held himself. Like he was prepared to fight, even in his injured state.

  Civilians didn’t have that edge. Not unless they’d been attacked.

  Plus, he’d taken down two demons. Two. Single-handedly. And the second with a very broken leg.

  She glanced down once again to the end of the bed and resisted the urge to curl her lips back.

  The women had done their best to reset it and make a splint, but the break was clearly beyond their help. The entire leg had bent forward at the knee joint, every bone and tendon that had held it in place snapped and strained.

  Elrya, just looking at it made her want to leave.

  She could only imagine how that last fight must have turned out. The demon must have caught onto him—injured prey, weakest—but he had still taken it down.

  And… setting it afterward.

  Gods, that must have been horrific. For all involved.

  “So,” Doneil began after another minute, in Janessi this time. “Can I heal him, or are we going to stare at him for a bit longer?”

  She felt the attention of the entire cabin switch to her.

  She hesitated. “He’s dangerous.”

  “He’s in pain.”

  She didn’t need to look over to notice Doneil’s tension. As a healer, he’d be able to sense the man’s pain, the same way her bond with Kodanh allowed her to sense winter frost.

  But she had a job to do.

  “He can stay in pain until I make a decision about him.”

  “Bright tits,” Doneil spat. “You’re a bitch.”

  “I’m practical,” she said, then switched to elven. “The man took out two demons, one of them with a broken leg. I’d rather not have to wrestle him back into bed if he decides to go after our princeling.”

  There was a brief silence. The three turned their attention back to the man on the bed. He watched them warily.

  “Who are you?” the prince asked for the second time. “Where are you from?”

  The man glanced at him, then gritted his teeth and moved. Catrin stiffened, but he only reached for the trousers that hung from the head of the bed. Though pain shadowed his face at the effort, he fished a worn leather wallet from a pocket, flipped it open, and pulled out a small, pale green card. With a glance to her, he kept his motion deliberately slow when he passed the card to Nales.

  The prince’s eyebrows arched into his forehead.

  Catrin craned her neck. “What is it?”

  “Identification, I think. There’s a photograph with writing, and a similar emblem to the one in his tattoo.”

  “A photograph? Aren’t those done on glass?”

  “No, you can put them on specially treated paper.” Nales’ eyebrows drew together. “I’ve never seen one like this, though.”

  “It’s using the Veronan alphabet,” Doneil pointed out. “That’s some common ground, at least.”

  “Yes. I don’t recognize the language it’s making, but I’m sure someone might know.”

  “Lord or Lady Stanek, possibly,” she suggested. “Hells, even Treng might know.”

  Growing up where he had, the man had an immense grasp of languages.

  The prince tried to speak to him again, switching first to Gatali, then to another language, but the man just shook his head.

  She frowned.

  A polite cough came from her right.

  “He was carrying this, Miss. Some kind of weapon.”

  She glanced over. The older woman—Sannya was her name—held out something folded in a handcloth for her perusal. Her two daughters, Rinya and Eleza, stood behind her, expressions uncertain and watchful. They had pale skin and dark hair like their mother, and their faded homespun blended in with the cabin’s painted boards and simple furnishings. The place was larger than she’d expected—three rooms, rather than a single, with a drop-down stair on a pull leading to an attic story. The inside of the house had an airy feel to it. Though the furnishings were simple, mostly of dark-colored wood, they were sturdy and well-cared-for.

  She took the item, an eyebrow lifting at its surprising weight. When she opened it, the other eyebrow shot up.

  It looked like a dueling pistol. She’d only seen two, but the shape and the trigger were instantly recognizable, and it even had a slight smell of burning. Both the barrel and grip were stockier than she’d expected, though, and made of metal where she’d normally seen wood, with a glass window on its side next to some block-like Veronese letters. And it lacked a hammer. Or a place to put the powder.

  Perhaps they were inside?

  Except… a quick glance showed her that the barrel itself was closed off. With a strange, glass-like attachment blocking its end.

  And dueling pistols were more a weapon the nobility carried—but he certainly wasn’t a noble. Tits, he wasn’t even Gatali, or he didn’t speak it, anyway. Nor did he speak Janessi, elven, Finian, or any of the other half-dozen languages they’d managed to muddle at him in the past several minutes.

  She passed the potential handgun onto Doneil for his perusal—noticing, as she did so, that the man’s attention shifted with it.

  Hmm.

  She turned her own curiosity back onto his body, trying to parse out clues. A mixture of ink tattooed his skin, none of it spellforms that she could see, though some looked to be in old Veronese script. Most of it formed pictures. Flowers, skulls, emblems. One such emblem matched the colors of a flag on the shirt he wore, though it was faded.

  “Which flag is that?” she tilted her head. “Yetra?”

  “No, Yetra uses orange stripes.” The prince made a gesture. “These are red. Blood representation, perhaps?”

  Catrin considered the man again. “He is a soldier.”

  “There are too many stars, though, and they look all different. Maybe it’s an alternative version? Older? A representation?”

  Perhaps. Both the tattoo and the shirt came with a recognizable eagle, though the one on the shirt was as faded as the flag it bore.

  She tilted her head. “How’d they get it on the shirt like that? It’s not woven, or embroidered. Paint?”

  Nales considered it. For the first time since they’d left Pemberlin, his expression approached something resembling genuine interest. “It does look like paint.”

  “Very accurate paint.” Catrin’s eyes narrowed, studying the designs once again. “His tattoos are very accurate, too.”

  “Maybe he afforded the royal tattooist,” Doneil said, distracted.

  Suddenly, the man’s entire body stiffened. He tried to hide it, tried to keep the blank neutrality on his face, but it was like watching a spring crank tight.

  She followed his gaze to find Doneil looking down the barrel of the pistol with its end pointed at his face.

  She reached over and gently pushed it to the side. “Are you an idiot?”

  “What? I wanted to see if the powder was already inside.”

  So he had known it was a firearm before he’d done that. Her assessment of his idiocy ticked up.

  “Do you know how often those things misfire? Temdin, there’s a reason the rnari keep to crossbows.”

  “I thought that was because the Raidt hates goblins?”

  “Well—that, too.” Actually, it was humans the Raidt hated, specifically humans like the one standing a few paces to their left, wearing his princely ins
ignia on the inside of his lapel, but Catrin appreciated the candor.

  Besides, goblins made a close second.

  She blew out a breath and once again turned her attention to the man on the bed, sizing him up for what was likely the sixth time.

  “Right,” she said. “Doneil, heal him up. We’ll bring him with us.” They’d be more able to provide for an extra mouth and body than the small homestead. “If we don’t figure him out along the way, they can sort him out at Pemberlin. We can use the extra fighter, anyway—and I’ll take that.”

  She hastily grabbed the pistol when Doneil made to put it on a nearby table, keeping its thick barrel pointed at places that didn’t have warm bodies. Perhaps she was being paranoid, but she had read a series of reports once on accidental deaths brought about by firearms.

  “Thank you, Milady,” Sannya said with a small curtsy. “You do him a great service.”

  ‘Milady’? Elrya, save her. Between that and Guardsman Ternadon, she was getting all sorts of promotions these days.

  She hoped Doneil was too busy healing to notice the title, but doubted she’d be that lucky. The man had keen ears.

  “I’m happy to help a fellow soldier,” she heard herself saying.

  Sannya curtsied again. This time, her daughters followed suit. Catrin attempted to prevent the blush that threatened her cheeks.

  It was a good thing she didn’t have pale skin like they did.

  “Besides, I imagine the castle has more resources for an extra mouth—meaning no offense.” She glanced around the small cabin, taking in its white-painted walls, the flower box outside the casement window, the colorful hemming on the blankets and curtains. “You have a lovely home. Did you make these yourselves? Those designs are well-done.”

  She gestured to the end of the table bench, where a white-painted triskele of three flowers looped through itself over the dark-stained wood.

  Sannya had barely glanced to the furniture, instead watching where Doneil bent over the man’s leg. “My Dan did, before he passed. And we owe this man more than we can say. He saved our lives.”

  “You’ve done well by him. We’ll take care of him.”

  This time, Sannya did look at her, and Catrin’s heart panged when she saw the caution in the woman’s eyes. Life was hard out here, and they, too, were strangers. Hard to trust. But something in Catrin’s expression, or in her voice, must have swayed her, because she relaxed. Her head swung back to the man.