The Cephiran hauberk and tabard were gone.
“Oh, gods …” Cerris burst through the door and pounded into the street, legs pumping, only just remembering to cloak himself in an illusory disguise. And if it proved insufficient, if any of the “Royal Soldiers” made to stop him, he’d cut them down. By pairs, by squads—it didn’t matter.
Because he knew, as surely as if she’d tattooed a map into his flesh, exactly where Irrial was going.
‘Ah, you’re just pissed that she has the stones to do what you should have …’
Maybe he’d been blessed with an extra dollop of Panaré’s fortune that morning, or perhaps, after the past few days, the sight of a crimson-clad soldier racing pell-mell through the streets didn’t draw much attention. Whatever the case, while he received more than his share of startled glances, nobody made any effort to stop him as he pounded across the cobblestones, twisting around or even leaping the occasional vendor’s stall, until he finally arrived at Rahariem’s Merchants’ Guild.
He blew past the clerk at the desk—who may well have shouted a protest, but Cerris never heard it—and hurled doors from his path, sometimes hard enough to crack wood against an adjacent wall. A hired guard stepped into his path, more likely to ask his business than to stop him, but Cerris drove a knee into the man’s groin and two fingers into his sternum, and was off and running once more before the man finished crumpling to the floor. Stairs flashed by beneath his feet, three, even four at a time, until he’d reached the highest floor. Around the corner, down the hall, praying he wasn’t too late …
Irrial spun, sword outstretched, as he burst through the final door, and for an endless breath they didn’t know each other. Her hair was chopped short in crude imitation of a military cut, and the hauberk weighed heavily on her shoulders, but her arm was steady. Blood dripped from the blade, adding to a larger pool of crimson that spread across the carpet from the body of Guildmaster Yarrick.
Sunder fell slowly, as though wilting, to Cerris’s side. “Gods, what have you done?”
“What had to be done,” she said flatly, daring him to argue.
He accepted, slamming the door behind him. “Damn it, Irrial. We needed him! We needed to know why, who else was involved—”
“I’m not an idiot, Cerris. I tried! But he came at me, I didn’t have—”
“Don’t you dare! You had a choice, all right. You could have asked me to come with you! We could have taken him without killing him.”
“I thought—”
“You didn’t think! You were angry, and you acted blindly. So how did you enjoy murder, Irrial? Is it everything you’d hoped?”
The baroness staggered as though he’d slapped her, nearly tripping as her heel struck the corpse by her feet. Her jaw worked soundlessly, and the sword fell unnoticed to the gore-soaked carpet. Even within the heavy hauberk, her shoulders quivered visibly, and she seemed unable to pull her gaze from her open hands.
“Cerris …” It was not the voice of an adult, but the call of a distraught child. “Oh, gods …”
Cerris understood, then, just as clearly as he’d understood where to find her. Taking a deep breath, he shoved his own anger aside and crossed the room, holding Irrial as her entire body shook with racking sobs.
He said nothing, for there was nothing to say. Both of them knew what she’d lost; knew for what she’d grieved, all unknowing, since the attack on the caravan. And they both knew that her tears, no matter how many she shed, would never wash the stain of blood from her hands.
JUST AS THEY HAD THE PRIOR EVENING, Cerris and Irrial took the long way home, avoiding streets on which he might have earlier been seen. And just as they had the prior evening, they made the trip in silence.
Cerris helped her from the tabard and—as gently as the awkward mail allowed—the hauberk, dropping both in the corner near the scattered strands of hair. The rest of her clothes followed, not out of any romantic ardor but because they were spattered with Yarrick’s blood. The normally modest baroness seemed disturbingly unaware of, or indifferent to, her nakedness. He handed her the nearest tunic and trousers; she climbed into them stiffly, mechanically.
Cerris, who could scarcely recall the years before he’d first learned to kill, found himself utterly at a loss. He didn’t know what to say, or how to comfort her.
And gods damn him, more than a small part of him just wanted to shake her, to demand she get over it. To insist that they had larger worries than guilt.
‘Well, finally! Now you’re thinking like yourself again!’
He ruthlessly smothered those feelings, but every now and then he’d glance her way and feel not sympathy, but a flickering ember of irritation.
Some minutes later, she apparently came to the same conclusion. With a literal shake of her head, as though she could shed the crush of emotions like so much water, she took a deep breath and faced him. “What now, Cerris?”
“Now? Now we get the hell out of this damn town.”
“What? But—”
“Irrial,” he said, perhaps more sharply than he’d intended, “there’s nothing more we can do here. The resistance is over. The Cephirans know our faces. Dying for a hopeless cause may sound noble, but I’ve come damn close to doing it myself, and it’s really not as much fun as you’d think.”
“I know,” she admitted. “But I can’t just abandon my people.”
“You want to help Rahariem? The way to do it is out there.” He gestured vaguely in what he was pretty sure was a westerly direction. “Find out what’s keeping the Guilds and the nobles from reacting to this invasion, and fix it. I promise you, the armies of Imphallion have a much better chance of driving the Cephirans out than you do.”
‘Oh, right.’ Gods, he wished that inner voice would just shut up, but it kept right on yammering. ‘Like that’s the reason you want to be out there. You couldn’t care less about Rahariem. You want to find out about—’
“We already know part of the problem, don’t we?” she asked. “It’s Rebaine.”
‘Yeah. That.’
“It’s not him, actually,” Cerris said carefully. “Someone’s lying, or—or something.”
Irrial blinked twice. “What would make you think that? It’s not as though he hasn’t done this sort of thing before.”
“I just—I just don’t think it sounds right.”
“Why not?”
“Look, it doesn’t matter—”
“Cerris.” She rose, stepping toward him, and there was something he didn’t recognize, and didn’t like, behind her expression. Her gaze flickered to his face, to Sunder, and back again, and while they still showed no sign of recognition, he could swear he saw the first gathering clouds of a terrible notion in the depths of her eyes. “Why not?”
He was utterly exhausted, his last reserves drained. He was worried, even terrified, at the repercussions of those rumors. He was furious at having been betrayed by Yarrick, at whoever or whatever was behind the falsehoods spreading through Imphallion. And maybe, just maybe, he was falling in love for only the third time in his life.
And even though he knew it was a mistake from the moment the words passed over his lips, a part of him exulted in freedom as Cerris spoke the truth he hadn’t uttered to another living soul in years.
“Because I’m Corvis Rebaine, Irrial.”
Irrial’s features went so utterly slack that he wondered briefly if she’d passed out, even died, on her feet. It was the clenching of her fists, the slow flushing of her cheeks, that convinced him otherwise—and convinced him, as well, that it never once occurred to her to doubt his word.
After all, what halfway rational man would lie about such a thing?
“You bastard …” It wasn’t even a whisper, barely a wisp of breath.
“Irrial, I—”
“You bastard!” No whisper, now, but a shriek of such fury that it almost, almost, hid the agonized heartbreak beneath it.
He never saw it coming. One instant he was st
anding, reaching for her with a pleading hand, and the next he was on the floor, his jaw throbbing, blood trickling from where his lips had split against his teeth.
Irrial stood over him, fists shaking, and he truly believed in that moment that had she held a weapon, Yarrick would not have been the only man to die at her hands that day.
“Irrial, please. I’m not the same man I—”
“Not the same man? Not the man who conquered Rahariem? Not the same man who slaughtered more people in one day than the Cephirans have killed in the last month? Not that man, Cerris?”
“Not anymore,” he insisted, propping himself up on his elbows. “You’ve known me for three years! Do you really think those were all a lie? How about the past weeks? Were those?”
She glared, mouth twitching around two or three possible answers.
“Irrial, I don’t even think of myself as ‘Corvis’ anymore. It was so long ago …”
“Long? Not so long that I don’t still have nightmares. Not long enough to un-kill all the people—some of them my friends, my family!—that you butchered. No, Cerris, it hasn’t been that long at all.”
“Irrial, I’m sorry. I truly am. I lo—”
“If you say it,” she hissed, “I swear to every god that I’ll slit your damn throat!”
“Fine!” He surged to his feet, shoving her aside, anger rising to reflect her own. “Then how about the fact that I saved your damn life? How about the fact that you need me to save your precious city?” He stopped, breathing heavily, struggling to rein himself in. “Irrial, whatever happened in the past, whoever I am and whatever you think of me, Rahariem needs us both. Imphallion needs us both. And we need each other.”
She glared up at him, he down at her. “You’re right,” she said, shoulders slumping and head bowing, a marionette with its strings gone slack. “We do … for now.
“But make absolutely no mistake,” she added, stiffening once more. “We’re allied in this because I want what’s best for my city and my people. But that’s all we are: temporary allies. Nothing more, not now, not ever.”
“Irrial …”
“That’s Lady Irrial,” she corrected, turning away with her head held high.
And Corvis Rebaine, the Terror of the East, could only stand and watch as she stalked from the room, leaving him to make his own preparations for the long journey ahead.
Chapter Nine
“IT’S … JUST AN ORDINARY HOUSE.”
Kaleb looked askance at the fellow beside him. “You were expecting a palace? A mansion? Maybe a warren of some sort?”
“I’m not sure,” Jassion admitted, fingers fiddling with the links of his mail sleeve. “I guess I just expected … I don’t know. More.”
The sorcerer’s spell had guided them across dozens of leagues, from the terrible forest at Imphallion’s outskirts to the city of Abtheum, crouching like a hunting cat beside a major highway. They’d had little difficulty entering, for this far from the borders (and lacking the paranoia of certain other rulers), the Earl of Abtheum hadn’t done much in the way of increasing security. Jassion had packed away his tabard, since the last thing they needed was the attention of an official welcome and state visit, and they’d instead passed themselves off as traveling tradesmen. The guards at the gate gave them a glance that would have had to linger even to qualify as cursory, and permitted them passage.
A somewhat more modern city than Mecepheum or Denathere, Abtheum was built as much of wood as stone. Its streets—some cobbled, others hard-packed dirt—were mostly aligned to a prearranged plan, rather than twisting every which way in a more natural growth. Roofs sloped sharply to high peaks, their overhanging eaves casting narrower streets in perpetual dusk, and the air was surprisingly pleasant. Abtheum, apparently, had benefited from the relatively new innovation of underground sewers.
Through sundry neighborhoods they’d walked, Jassion growing ever more pensive, following a trail only Kaleb could sense. And finally that trail had led them here, to a neighborhood of vendors and artisans, neither affluent nor impoverished. Just … comfortable.
Ordinary.
The house, clearly of recent construction, wouldn’t have looked out of place in a village a fraction of Abtheum’s size. Its walls and surrounding fence were whitewashed, and most of the grounds were occupied by vegetable gardens, each plant clearly marked and arranged in orderly rows.
Jassion stood immobile in the street, gawping as though it were the maw of hell.
“If you don’t move eventually,” Kaleb finally said, “you’re going to get run over by a cart. Either that or they’ll put a plaque at your feet and dedicate you to somebody.”
“I can’t, Kaleb.” The sorcerer actually had to lean in, so quiet was that voice. “I can’t go in there.”
“All right, then,” he said with a shrug. “I’ll talk to them by myself.”
It was, as he’d obviously intended, precisely the right thing to say to spur Jassion into motion.
Dirt and pebbles crunched underfoot, Jassion starting with each sound until they’d finally reached the door. The hand he raised to knock was visibly shaking.
The door drifted open, accompanied by a slightly nasal “Yes?” Staring up at them was a sandy-haired boy with startling green eyes and a poor complexion, probably just entering his teens.
“I …” Jassion’s tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth, smothering whatever words might have emerged.
“We need to speak with your mother,” Kaleb interjected, though not before perceptibly rolling his eyes at Jassion’s unease. “Is she here?”
“Mom!” Even Kaleb started back a step as the boy turned and unleashed a shout that implied his father might, in fact, have been some sort of trumpet. “Someone’s here to see you!” Then, far more softly and with a careless shrug, “She’ll be here in a minute, I’m sure.”
Indeed it was rather less than a minute before they heard an inner door—or perhaps the back door into the garden—slamming shut, the pitter-pat of soft footsteps approaching. “Lilander,” a feminine voice admonished from an unseen hall, “what have I told you about shouting …”
Jassion couldn’t hear the rest of it. The blood pounding in his ears was as the hammering of Verelian, or the charge of Kassek War-Bringer. Had the street behind him been consumed in a volcano, he’d probably never have noticed.
She appeared before him, clad in a sea-green tunic, wiping the garden dirt from her hands. Her chestnut hair—darker than he remembered, and shorter—was tied in a haphazard tail, and her face showed the lines and cares of decades. But hovering about her like a haunting ghost, Jassion saw the teenage girl he’d known, the sister who’d given herself to evil’s own avatar to keep her baby brother safe.
“I’m so sorry,” she said with a gentle smile. “I’ve asked him to mind his manners around guests, but—”
“Tyannon?”
She blinked once. “I’m sorry, have we—”
And then she looked, really looked, at this stranger on her porch. “Oh, my gods …” It was her hand, now, that shook as she slowly reached for him, the other held tight to her lips. “Jass?”
The Baron of Braetlyn crumpled to his knees, arms wrapping of their own volition about his sister’s waist, and wept.
THE KITCHEN WAS JUST AS PLAIN as the rest of the house, and smelled faintly of wood smoke. A hearth with a cauldron, and a relatively new wood-burning stove, occupied one wall, leaving the bulk of the room for an oak table and thinly upholstered chairs.
Jassion sat hunched over the table, as small as he could make himself, his hands wrapped tight around his second flagon of mead. Tyannon, across from him, kept reaching out and pulling back. Lilander hovered beside her, puzzled, worried gaze flitting between his mother and this strange, frightening man who, so he’d just been told, was an uncle he’d never met. Clearly, he was trying to decide whether he believed a word of it, and wondering what the hell to do about it once he’d made up his mind either way.
B
ut Kaleb, who’d pulled two chairs back from the table before slouching into one and propping his feet on the other, paid them little mind. No, his attention appeared fixed on the most recent member of the gathering who stood, arms sullenly crossed, beside the kitchen door.
Hair darker than either her mother’s or brother’s was cut just below her chin in a “just be done with it” sort of style. Her eyes, too, were dark, the green of the deep seas off Braetlyn’s shore. Her features were sharp and angular—clearly she favored her father more than she did Tyannon—making her, although not at all beautiful in the most classical sense, certainly striking, even exotic.
Or maybe that was just the irritated scowl that had staked a claim on her face. Regardless, throughout the conversation, Kaleb’s attentions would flicker between Jassion and the baron’s niece, and once or twice he gave a shallow nod, as though in sudden understanding.
Finally, after an uncomfortable interval for everyone involved—save possibly Kaleb—Jassion looked up from his drink. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice steady though his cheeks flushed with shame. “I didn’t mean to … Well, that wasn’t the first impression I’d have chosen to make.”
“It’s all right, Jass,” Tyannon told him. “I understand. We all do.” Her eyes had not, in truth, remained entirely free of tears, either.
He nodded and stood, then bowed toward the young woman at the door. She returned a stiff curtsy.
“I’m delighted,” he said, and behind the formal tone he might even have meant it, “to meet you both.” He extended a hand to Lilander, and his lips even twitched in a brief smile at the boy’s deeply sincere expression as he took it.
“It’s nice to meet you, Uncle Jassion,” his niece told him, though her attention was fixed mostly on her mother. Her voice carried a surprising weight, given her slight frame. “Even if it should have happened much sooner.”
“Mellorin!” Tyannon snapped at her.
“It’s all right,” Jassion said. “Perhaps I should have looked for you before—”