Three Coins for Confession (18 page)

Dargana rose slowly to a sitting position as Kathlan stepped
back. The exile carefully reclaimed her bloodblade where it had fallen, Eliana
and two of his balisters tensing in response. Chriani stayed where he was,
stock-still.

The exile assessed the situation as she slowly stood. She stepped
around Chriani to where he could see her from the corner of his eye, even as
she kept her own gaze on the guards at the end of the alley. “You certainly
know how to impose order in the ranks, half-blood,” she whispered.

“You’re welcome,” Chriani whispered back. “And stop calling me
that within earshot of anyone else unless you want us both dead. We’re waiting
on word from Chanist. Try not to kill anyone until then.”

Dargana shook her head. “I can’t say I was surprised a year past
to hear that your prince had somehow stayed alive. I knew you didn’t have it in
you.”

From behind him, Chriani heard a change in Kathlan’s breathing.
Not understanding what Dargana said, not knowing what it meant. A tremor rocked
his hand at the bow. He felt the pressure of memory seething, tried to push it
back into shadow.

He remembered darkness in the Ghostwood that stood at the heart
of Crithnalerean, the Valnirata exile lands. Dargana could have killed him and
Lauresa both that night, but Chriani had stayed her hand. Had told her the
truth.

“If Chanist were the father of one I loved,”
she had said
when he was done,
“I would cut his living heart from his body.”

“Not now,” Chriani said quietly. “Or not even I’ll be enough to
save your life in this city.”

“Show them your shoulder, half-blood.” Dargana smiled, lips still
showing blood. “They’ll forget all about me.”

Footsteps from the darkness beyond the alley mouth filled the
silence that followed. Eliana’s guards fell back, their lack of response
telling Chriani it was a runner returning. A Bastion sergeant by her uniform,
no one Chriani knew. Not the guard Eliana had sent.

She was breathing hard, took in the scene before her with a
perplexed look, but her surprise didn’t slow her orders. She nodded to Eliana.
“Word from the Prince High Chanist. Under escort, Chriani of the prince’s guard
is to bring the prisoner to the throne room at once, and to be given all
necessary support.”

With a look of dark reluctance, Eliana motioned for his balisters
to stand. Chriani waited until they had unlocked their crossbows before he
lowered the Ilvani bow, feeling an ache twist through his arm and shoulder. He
tried to fight the tremor that seized him. The cold that numbed his body was
finally settling in as his bitter surge of strength faded.

“Sheathe your blade and stay between Kathlan and I,” he said to
Dargana. “Keep your hands together and in front of you. Don’t say a word until
I tell you.”

Dargana smirked again, but she nodded as she slipped the
bloodblade to its scabbard. She set herself in position between Chriani and
Kathlan behind her, keeping her eyes down, matching their pace as they
advanced.

Chriani felt eyes on him — the questioning look of the
Bastion sergeant and the other guards, the dark hatred that came off Eliana in
waves as the squad fell in around them. As they stepped clear of the mage-light
and into the shadow of the street, he saw the wall of the keep looming in the
distance, light flaring to life in the darkness above it.

He oriented himself toward that light as it filled window after
window of the Bastion, burning bright. Drawing him on like stars used to chart
a sea course by night, but which were never bright enough to show what might be
lurking within the endless dark.

THE KEEP WAS IN LOCKDOWN, both it and the Bastion as
alive as Chriani had ever seen them by night. Sentries were thick at the
southwest gatehouse when the doors were opened to them, and even thicker along
the walls of the keep and the Bastion outwall. Uncounted eyes watched their
group closely as he, Kathlan, and Dargana were escorted across the keep’s broad
courtyard, toward the staging ground and the Bastion gate ahead.

Those gates were open as they passed within the fortress, with
guards stationed there and at every corridor intersection beyond. Chriani even
saw young pages flitting along the edges of the great hall where it angled into
the servant’s quarters, papers or packages in hand. Not much chance that they
had been ordered to actual duty, he knew, but they would keep busy and out of
the guards’ way while they kept their eyes and ears open for the story of the
night.

They walked as a procession along the central court, Chriani and
Kathlan in dry uniforms courtesy of the captain of the Bastion. That was
Ashlund, a close-shaven veteran who towered over Chriani, and whose bulk
blocked the light of evenlamps along the corridor where he paced ahead of them
now. Ashlund had held the captain’s commission for the same year and a half
that Chriani had held his commission in the guard. His promotion had come only
weeks before Chriani’s own, in response to the death of Captain Konaugo. Before
Chriani had left the Bastion, he and Ashlund had honed a mutual hatred over
long years.

The captain had been waiting beyond the gatehouse for them, a
squad of six guards with him. His expression suggested that Ashlund already
knew it was Chriani he was waiting for. The way that expression soured even
further told Chriani how bad he looked, still barefoot and barely dressed in
the aftermath of the fight.

“A wet sack of shit would have made a better fit for commission
in the prince’s guard than you right now,” Ashlund said evenly.

“Remind me, lord, what the penalty is for compelling an officer
to keep his own counsel by breaking his jaw.” Chriani’s voice carried a dark
earnestness that translated to shock on the faces of the other guards and
Kathlan alike. Where she stood at his side, he heard the quick change in her
breathing. A subtle warning to watch himself, but she said nothing.

Ashlund smiled, the ruddy skin of his wind-burned face tightening
in a wholly unattractive way.

“You think to present yourselves to the prince high like this?”

“I was thinking I wouldn’t be attacked in my sleep and driven
half-naked to the street by a war-band within Rheran’s walls. Captain Konaugo
had his faults, but he stopped well short of giving the Valnirata free run of
the city.”

Ashlund’s color rose to a deeper red to tell Chriani he’d won
that round, and that he should stop while he was ahead. He had thus acquiesced
when the captain ordered clothing brought to the gatehouse, giving him,
Kathlan, and Dargana time to dry themselves by the fire while they waited for
the courier to arrive. He and Kathlan dressed quickly, their borrowed uniforms
a reasonable fit. Her silent glare calmed him, just a little. Chriani’s tunic
was still wet and showing blood at the shoulder, but he kept it on beneath an
overtunic and jacket to keep the war-mark covered.

Ashlund said nothing about Dargana’s appearance, nor did she
speak any word to him as they walked. He only stared darkly at her belt, and at
the bloodblade still sheathed there. No one had tried to take it from her,
which told Chriani how important the events of this night had become. He was
glad for her silence, but was conscious of the Ilvani’s eyes burning into his
back all the while they walked.

Crossing the interior courtyard to the entrance to the throne
room, Ashlund ignored full salutes from four guards at the great doors as he
ordered a halt to their group’s movement with a wave of his hand.

“I’m to guard the three from here,” he said to Sergeant Eliana.
“On the prince high’s orders.” A handful of words, but they neatly dismissed
the sergeant, established Ashlund’s authority, and wrapped two members of the
prince’s guard within the same cloak of distrust that marked an Ilvani of the
Valnirata treading through the deepest corridors of Brandishear’s best-guarded
fortress. It was a subtler insult than Chriani would normally have expected
from Ashlund, who had always typically refrained from calculated rudeness in
favor of direct physical threat.

Sergeant Eliana scowled as if he’d been hoping for a front-row
view of whatever was in store for Chriani, but he only nodded. His squad turned
with him as he did, Ashlund pushing open the throne room doors.

The garrison called it the throne room, but in fact, it had been
long years since any ruler of Brandishear had used the cavernous space as
anything but a primary council chamber. Chriani knew that the throne had been
long gone even before Chanist took the crown, replaced with long tables and a
huge central fireplace, tall shelves along the walls stacked with books and
maps. Not a place for false praise and nobles’ deference, but where a prince
with a reputation for fairness and an eye for skill and dedication in others
would meet, eat, and drink with captains and ambassadors, merchants and
tradesfolk as equals.

It was a good tale. Chriani had believed it once.

They were alone as they entered. No other guards, the main doors
closing behind them. The smaller doors far across the chamber, leading to the
private entrance hall outside the prince high’s quarters, were shut. Ashlund
stepped past the three of them to take up a position next to the great meeting
table that dominated the room, the fireplace burning brightly. Maps were strewn
across the table, as they almost always were. Two flagons were set among them,
beside a dozen goblets.

“We await the prince high,” Ashlund said, but he gave no orders
as to where or how Chriani and the others should wait. He simply watched, his
gaze ignoring Kathlan but flitting from Chriani to Dargana with the same cold
revulsion.

In Kathlan, Chriani saw a rapt expression as she paced slowly
across the throne room floor. A great mosaic was set in the open space between
tables, showing the falcon of Brandis that was the standard of Brandishear, its
wings unfurled, tight knots of blue and white tile marking a great circle
around it. He realized he didn’t know if she’d ever actually stepped within the
throne room before, but he could feel her reaction to the power in the chamber,
seemingly clinging to the walls even when the great room stood empty.

He remembered his own first time staring down at the great falcon
that marked the floor. A child of ten years, only two years past being pulled
off the street by Barien when Chriani’s attempt at cutting the sergeant’s purse
had gone very wrong. He remembered being presented to Chanist, feeling the
power and the authority that resonated within him. He remembered the ceremony
and the writ that had made him a tyro and Barien’s adjutant, the prince high’s
hand on his shoulder, the ice-blue eyes watching him.

A jumble of images and impressions that could be recognized from
his own life were circling him at a distance, shuffled and faded in his mind, like
he might be having that life told to him by someone else. Too many of those
images were Kathlan, reminding him that he had brought her into this. He had
used what little power he had to get her the chance she had always deserved.
Letting her step away from the stables, letting her be what she could be. He
was hoping desperately now that her closeness to him wouldn’t make her pay for
his mistakes.

The prince high was on his way. Chriani would know soon enough.

“Who is she?” Kathlan’s voice was a subtle whisper at his ear
where she had made her way over to him. Chriani knew what she was asking,
looking to see Dargana pacing around the fire, staring to the flames and
seemingly deep in thought.

“I’m sorry you’re angry with me,” he said quietly. He turned himself
to keep his back to Ashlund, not wanting to worry about whether the captain
could read the movement of his lips as he spoke.

“I’m not angry, Chriani. But I’m tired and I’m cold, and I don’t
know what’s going on because you haven’t told me.”

“I did tell you. She’s the Ilvani who captured Lauresa and I, who
helped us in the end. She led a war-band, and the last I saw of her was in the
Ghostwood. I promise you, if I had any thought I’d see her again, I’d have
given you her name.”

“She captured you? You said she saved you.”

“She did save me. Me and the princess both. Tried to kill me
first, though. You know what that’s like.”

It was a calculated attempt at humor, but Kathlan’s expression
didn’t warm. “What was she saying on the street? About the prince high still
being alive?”

The cold of the question seized Chriani, held his mind tight. It
was something he should have been thinking on, he realized. Using the time of
their walk to the Bastion to come up with an answer.

“The Valnirata hate Chanist,” he said simply. “They call him the
Ilvani Scourge for besting them in the Incursions like he did. The exiles are
no exception.”

“She said you didn’t have it in you. What in fate’s name does
that even mean?”

Chriani took a quick glance over his shoulder at Ashlund, saw the
captain focused on Dargana. A fear twisted through him that he had to fight to
speak over, his whispered words carrying an impossible weight in this place.
“She and I are kin somehow. My father was of her war-clan, and an exile like
her. I’m a traitor to both sides in her eyes.”

It was a good tale. He found himself almost believing it, even as
Kathlan shook her head, incredulous.

“And you brought her here?”

“She brought us here, Kath. She told me while you ran to the inn
that she’s got a message for the prince high. I don’t know what it’s about, but
we’ll see it through.”

Chriani heard his words hang heavy in the silence. He had no idea
whether Kathlan believed them, no idea what was happening. He had brought her
into this, and there was no sense how it might end.

From under her arm, Kathlan thrust Magus Milyan’s satchel into
Chriani’s hands. Then she stepped away from him without a word, suddenly intent
on the bookcases along the east wall. Chriani glanced behind him again, saw
Ashlund watching him this time.

He made his way over to Dargana by the fire, half expecting
Ashlund to call him back, but the captain maintained his stony silence. The
exile was still staring to the flames, but she raised her head as he
approached, her dark eyes bright in the firelight.

“How are your wounds?” he asked her.

“Healed clean and numb as a week-old horse’s kick, no thanks to
your mud magic.” The magic of animys and the healers was an Ilmari tradition,
and so the Ilvani shunned it. The Valnirata had their own traditions of
herbalism and alchemy that were said to be nearly as effective, though few
among the Ilmari had ever seen such healing. Eighteen months past in the
Ghostwood, Chriani had become one of those few.

“You’re welcome,” he said coldly.

“As are you, half…” Dargana checked herself in response to the
coldness of Chriani’s gaze. She smiled. “As are you, lord. That’s right, isn’t
it?”

“Why are you here?” Chriani shifted to put his back to Ashlund
again. “The truth, and quickly. I have my own business with the Prince High
Chanist, and I don’t want us at cross purposes. It’s a short walk in here under
guard, but you need to follow my lead if you want to walk out again.”

“The Ilvani hunt you for the bloodblade, Chriani.”

Dargana’s words caught him by absolute surprise. A darkness had
slipped into her expression that Chriani didn’t understand, but whatever game
the exile was playing, he had no time for it. “Answer my question.”

“I just did, lord. The blade you carried in the Ghostwood. The
narneth móir wielded by Caradar, the exile warlord, who killed your Prince High
Chanist’s father and put the son on the Brandishear throne. The blade that
Chanist seized from Caradar when he cut him down and ended the Incursions. The
Ilvani want it. I’m here so that you and I can make sure they fail.”

For the eighteen months since Chriani had ridden back from his
long road to Aerach, the dagger that had killed Barien had been far from his
thoughts. Never forgotten, but set aside in that place within his mind where it
could be hidden from sight. But even as Chriani tried to process what the exile
was saying, the side doors opened at the far end of the throne room.

As if he might have heard Dargana speak his name, the Prince High
Chanist was there, stepping quickly into the room as the doors were closed by
guards standing watch in the hall behind him. He was dressed in grey beneath a
uniform jacket of the prince’s guard, as he almost always was. His head was
bare, the prince having never worn a crown to the best of Chriani’s knowledge. His
only symbol of rank was the armband of his own company and regiment, the falcon
of Brandishear set in gold thread at his shoulder.