Three Coins for Confession (21 page)

“To Ilvani deception and nothing more.” Ashlund spat to his hand,
wiped it to his leather in a gesture of dismissal. “Brandishear fears no seer’s
magic. Will you tell us that the shades of the Incursions rise against us
next?”

In the defiance of the captain’s tone, Chriani understood
something. Though his anger was his own, Ashlund was speaking for Chanist now.
It was a subtle shift in his language, in his posturing. But a well-practiced
one. Taking that role because he was used to doing so, the prince high’s
weariness pushing him to silent reflection in a way Chriani wasn’t used to
seeing.

He sensed the age in Chanist again. Saw the once-straight back
bent as the prince high stared at the coins and the talisman across the table.

“You Ilmari have your seers,” Dargana snapped. “Your spells of
sending. This is different. The moment the Ilvani of the cult in Crithnalerean
knew Chriani through the blood magic they used on his finger, every cultist of
the lóechari knew Chriani as well, like they might have known him his whole
life. For every sortie you fight, for every scout party that engages the cult,
every cult commander in the Greatwood will know your troop movements at once.
You’ll set your companies along the forest wall and the Valnirata will slip
between them, because a single lóechari scout making contact tells every cult
commander where you are.”

She leveled her gaze at Chanist, cold. “Imagine the battle at Welbirk,
prince. The day Caradar slew your father, with your brother and sister already
gone. Imagine that every Ilvani of the Greatwood had known that day that the
prince high of Brandishear and both his heirs had fallen, his company lost,
Rheran in chaos. Imagine all the Valnirata mobilizing at once to take advantage
of…”

“Enough,” Chanist said. His voice was quiet against the exile’s,
but the strength in it was enough to stop her.

A long silence held, Ashlund breaking it. “My lord prince, I ask
your permission to arrest this agent of the Valnirata…”

“This Ilvani will be given free leave to journey to Aerach,
captain.” Chanist stood slowly from the table, a decision made. Chriani and
Kathlan were on their feet at once. Dargana took her time rising, Chriani
noting the calm in her expression. No sense of triumph, though, not even in
response to Ashlund’s fury.

“My lord prince, I beg you…”

“A captain who cannot hear my orders is of little use to me,
Ashlund.”

As the prince paced along the table, Chriani saw the strength
surge in him. He was taller somehow, the grey hair turned to gold again in the
firelight as he stepped forward to scoop three of the coins into his hand. The
pulsing talisman he left where it was.

Ashlund nodded, his face a mask suddenly. “As you order, my lord
prince.”

“A squad will accompany this exile as Brandishear’s envoy, to
meet with an envoy of Aerach. I’ll see that the message is sent to Vishod’s
seers myself. You will deliver Chriani’s documents and the Ilvani artifact to
Varyn in the tower, captain. That is all.”

“With your permission,” Ashlund began, “I will lead this envoy
myself…”

“Chriani leads the envoy of Brandishear,” Dargana said again.
“There’s no negotiation on that.”

Chanist was staring to the magic in his palm, the coins glowing
gold with their own light. “I am sure Captain Ashlund will have no problem
having Chriani in his company…”

“Chriani leads the company and this captain comes nowhere near
it. Or I’ll return alone to tell the Laneldenari that the Ilmar is lost.”

Chanist looked up from the coins, a flash of gold playing across
the prince’s blue eyes. “Why?” he said simply.

“I trust Chriani. Unlike you or this by-blow of a blacksmith and
a prize pig.” She glanced to Ashlund. “When those I don’t trust get too close
to me, they end up dead.”

Chriani heard the evenness in her tone, saw the prince high
assessing it. The way Dargana had spoken told him she’d chosen the words
carefully.

Beneath that care, he knew she was lying. Some other reason, some
other game playing out here. Things she wasn’t saying.

Chanist simply nodded. “So ordered. Captain Ashlund will name the
squad but Chriani leads it. He can treat you with whatever degree of trust he
thinks is warranted.”

The prince high’s words hung in the silence of the throne room.
Chanist’s hand clasped around the coins as he paced toward the smaller doors
leading to the private entrance hall and his quarters. Watching the prince go,
all of Ashlund’s anger drained from him in an instant. The captain stood now
with an expression of absolute confusion, as close to fearful as Chriani had
ever seen him.

“My lord prince, why…?”

“Because I share this Ilvani’s fear of what I do not understand,
captain. And I would hear what the Laneldenari have to say before I pass
judgement on it. And because I will serve my people at any cost…”

Chanist faltered, two steps from the doors. He turned back, his
gaze finding Chriani, and he was old again in the pale light of evenlamps that
lined the walls above him. Something lost in him.

An unfamiliar feeling twisted through Chriani. Pity for the
prince high. Then he pushed it down again, felt it break against Barien’s
memory and the sharp pain it made.

He remembered holding Barien in the empty hall of records,
feeling the warrior’s life ebb from him. He remembered those last moments of
life, remembered the wound that had dropped the Bastion’s best sergeant.

He remembered, would always remember, that it was Chanist’s hand
that had done it.

Lauresa had begged him not to go after her father for what had
happened. Irdaign her mother had bade him let Chanist live, seeing the anger in
Chriani and knowing what it might do. And though Chriani had found in the end
that he could forget what the prince high had tried to do to Lauresa, could
forget the destruction his madness had attempted to wreak, he would never
forgive him for Barien.

“Captain Ashlund will make whatever arrangements are necessary
for your departure.” Chanist said it to Chriani, but Chriani was looking past
the prince. Wouldn’t meet his gaze. “This meeting is done.”

The prince high pulled the doors open, Chriani seeing guards on
the other side stand to attention. They pulled the doors sharply closed, the
echo of brass and wood hanging for a moment in the silence.

Chriani felt Kathlan’s hand find his where she had stepped up
behind him. She was shaking.

He waited for Ashlund to speak, confident that anything he said
first would do nothing good.

“Chriani of the prince’s guard,” the captain said at last. “By
order of the Prince High Chanist, I award you temporary rank and the commission
of acting sergeant, and command of a squad to be named by me. Your commission
and orders will be written up. I assume your adjutant will join you.”

Chriani nodded but Ashlund wasn’t looking at him. “Yes.”

“See yourselves to guest barracks. Keep your Ilvani assassin
under control and out of my sight. You are dismissed.”

Chriani felt a spike of anger rise, but Ashlund turned to snatch
up the talisman, the remaining coins, and Milyan’s satchel from the table. He
strode quickly toward the main doors, pulled them open with a bang and stood
waiting. Chriani moved to follow, motioning Dargana to fall in behind him,
Kathlan behind her.

As they passed along the interior courtyard, the doors slammed
shut again behind them. Chriani glanced back to see Ashlund standing in the
shadows. The captain was watching as the three of them made their way toward
the great hall and the barracks beyond. When Chriani turned back again at the
great hall doors, Ashlund was gone.

IT WAS A TEN-DAY JOURNEY from Rheran to Aerach, and even
with good weather, Chriani knew they’d be spending five of those days along the
Clearwater Way. It was a journey he had never made before the winter road that
had taken him east a year and a half before. A journey he’d had no intention of
ever making again.

On their way to the guest barracks that Ashlund had ordered them
to, Chriani cornered three pages and directed them to clear out two rooms with
doors that could be locked and watched. He sought out the sergeant on duty, a
veteran named Gredia, and asked her for four guards. It took dropping Ashlund’s
name and repeating Chanist’s orders to force her to action, but the length of
time it took for the guards to arrive made Chriani suspect the sergeant had
double-checked those orders first.

The guards were to watch Dargana — not for her own
protection, but to make sure no one else in the Bastion had any ideas about
coming for her. Too many soldiers there had lost friends and comrades along the
Clearwater Way. As such, Chriani worried at how the amount of ale that
typically flowed in the mess halls in the off-duty times might collide with
word that a Crithnalerean war-band leader was presently the guest of the prince
high.

Waiting for the guards to arrive, he heard word that supported
his instinct to keep Dargana and the soldiers of the Bastion away from each
other. Six more Ilvani had been found dead near the site of the unprecedented
attack in the city, spread across a lane approaching the Trickster’s front
doors. All of them had been killed by a bloodblade, most with weapons drawn
that did them no good in the end.

One of the dead Ilvani had been carrying potent magic, someone
said. A single black arrow. The war-mages would be examining it.

Chriani and Kathlan took the second room once Dargana was safely
locked away. Kathlan held him in the dark, and only when he felt her shaking
did Chriani realize how hearing the full story of the attack and the black
arrow had affected her. Knowing now that the Ilvani hunted him. She asked no
other questions, though, for which he was grateful.

He wasn’t sure he’d even managed to sleep before the dawn came
with Ashlund knocking at the door and handing him his orders in angry silence.
The single terse page was masterfully vague and suspiciously lacking in
direction, making Chriani suspect that no matter the outcome of the mission, Ashlund
was already planning how he could deem it a failure.

A promotion from first-ranked guard to acting sergeant was almost
unheard of outside a combat zone. It was a remarkable sign of the promoted
guard’s expertise, and of the trust enjoyed in the eyes of superiors. Or it
would have been, at least, if the promotion hadn’t been Chriani’s, and if
Ashlund hadn’t already spread word across the Bastion that it was a promotion
wholly unearned. The rangers assigned to his squad were five veterans Chriani
didn’t know — another sign that the captain was taking steps to
ensure his first command was also his last.

They set out eight strong from the Bastion just after high sun
and the daymark bells, after a rushed morning of preparation, and with Chriani
still feeling the fatigue of the previous eight days in the saddle. Kathlan
looked better rested by far, though he was fairly certain she hadn’t slept any
more than he had.

The service records for the squad’s rangers accompanied Ashlund’s
orders, but even though Chriani heard their formal introductions in the stables
before they left, he suspected he would struggle throughout the journey to
match faces to names. Walaric was the youngest member of the squad, which made
the number of misconduct citations in his record that much more impressive.
Daellyn and Wilric were sister and brother from the southern mountains, having
made rank there before their combat skill brought them to the Bastion. Jessa
had made her name as a tracker. Beah was trained as a healer, and could work a
bit of magic.

That last note had been marked as confidential. Many among the
guard were so fearful of spellcraft that even healing magic was something to
distrust — a feeling Chriani understood all too well. He had never
known the magic of the healers before the dark path he’d set out on a year and
a half before. He had gotten well used to it since then, though.

Because he didn’t know the new rangers, Chriani had no sense of
who to pick as his second. As such, he chose Kathlan, rationalizing that as
long as making a wrong pick from among the others offered a chance of insulting
the better choices, he was better off insulting all of them in the name of
making a choice he knew he could trust.

Most of Kathlan’s duties as second involved overseeing the horses,
which she would have done anyway, and guarding Dargana. She managed to get the
exile into the leather and uniform jacket of the prince’s guard for at least
the march out of Rheran, but Dargana had the insignia torn free even before the
south city-gate was fully behind them. When they made camp that first night,
she used her bloodblade to cut the sleeves from her armor while she sat by the
fire. She left her tunic sleeves intact, though, the war-mark well covered. She
also kept her hair tied back at Chriani’s instruction, hiding the Ilvani peak
to her ears.

The shorter days of autumn saw them on the road by dawn each day
as they made their way from Rheran to Caredry, and the start of the Clearwater
Way. Then through the guard post citadels of Gleoran and Durrant, Talimeth and
Rhercyn. They were traveling quietly, attracting no attention. Along the trade
roads, they had stayed away from inns and private houses to set camp each
night. Now, within the stockade walls of the Clearwater fortresses, the rangers
pitched their tents away from the tents of other squads. Whether soldier or
civilian, all those who crossed the Clearwater Way did so with the fear of
Ilvani attack on their minds, making Chriani understand the importance of
keeping Dargana out of sight.

The exile clearly wasn’t a prisoner. She rode free, and in
addition to her bloodblade, Chriani had outfitted her with an Ilvani handaxe
looted from the Bastion’s store of captured weapons. But he recognized the
importance of at least making it look as if Dargana was being kept under guard,
including having her and Kathlan share a tent at night while the other rangers
took watch.

At first, Chriani was glad of the excuse to keep a distance from
Kathlan. He had no idea whether anyone else in the squad knew of their
relationship, but he hoped that distance would ensure it never became an issue.
However, as the journey wound on, he quickly realized that the nights of that
journey were the first since his return from Aerach that he and Kathlan hadn’t
spent at least a brief time beside each other, locked tight in each other’s
arms. The sense of emptiness that accompanied those nights alone was a feeling
Chriani found far too familiar. Another journey he had hoped to never make
again.

Before they left the Bastion, Chriani had discovered that the
promotion to a sergeant’s commission came with a new uniform jacket and
insignia. The falcon of Brandis was at his shoulder in gold now. He and the
rest of the squad wore the regalia of a detached patrol, heading for foreign
lands. Marked as the prince’s guard but losing their regimental sigils.
However, far more important to Chriani than the change in insignia was the
badge he wore within his belt — a golden disk set with moonstone,
which glowed faintly in the absence of all light to show its dweomer.

The badge had been given to him with great antipathy by one of
Chanist’s war-mages, a venerable scarecrow named Varyn. His sun-dark skin was
laced with scars whose lines were suspiciously straight. Self-inflicted, some
rumors said, in the administration of secret blood rites condemned by Ilmar law
and any sense of self-preservation.

“You have use of this relic on the prince high’s orders,” Varyn
had said dismissively after summoning Chriani to the prince’s tower along the
Bastion’s northern flank. That was the domain of Chanist’s court wizards and
healers, and home to the library and collections of arcane regalia they kept on
the prince high’s behalf. The reputation of its magic and its half-mad keepers
made it a place Chriani was glad he had seen only once before.

“The relic will aid you in your… problem with the Ilvani,”
Varyn explained, “masking you from divination and related sorceries while you
wear it. So there is no misunderstanding, the relic is worth far more than you
are now or will ever be. It remains my property and will be returned. Should
you not return it, I will hunt you down and discipline you in ways that will
shatter all your previous conceptions of just punishment. If you happen to be
dead at the time, it won’t help you.”

Varyn had also returned the talisman Dargana claimed, its severed
cord of red leather retied. Chriani noticed as he hadn’t before that most of
that coloring appeared to be bloodstains. It gave him even less interest in
taking it, but the outraged Varyn was most insistent.

“This is your test and proof of the badge’s power, simpleton. As
long as the talisman shows no light, you are safe. If it glows again, then the
badge’s magic has failed and the Ilvani can find you. Seek out one of Prince
Vishod’s war-mages if you can. Though finding one of any competence will be a
challenge.”

Chriani had worn the badge day and night since then. It had
started around his neck on a chain, over tunic and under armor, but the disk
pulsed with an unnatural warmth that quickly unnerved him. He had clipped it
within his belt in response, its gold not as well hidden from sight but its
warmth not as noticeable.

Each night and morning since, alone in his tent, Chriani had held
the talisman and stared at it in the darkness, confirming to his own
satisfaction that its blood-red light was nowhere to be seen. The oily sheen of
the stone had disappeared, gone now to a layer of dust that wouldn’t rub off.

He had shown the disk to Kathlan and Dargana before they set out,
wanting to put both their minds at ease about the Ilvani’s pursuit of him.
Kathlan showed the greatest relief, the exile simply shrugging. “You put Ilmari
magic against the sorcery of Muiraìden, you’ll lose eventually,” Dargana had
said. “Stay moving either way.”

The longer they traveled, the more focused Chriani became on the
questions he had for Dargana. Questions he hadn’t been able to ask yet, having
had no chance to speak to the exile privately since the throne room. With
Kathlan riding at her side, Chriani had been forced to limit their
conversations to signs of Crithnala activity and other dangers of the road.
More worrying, though, was the relative closeness of the other rangers, all of
who kept one wary eye on the Ilvani exile as they rode. Chriani had no idea
what their relationship to Ashlund was, but he was certain that anything they
saw or heard would reach the captain’s ear when the squad made it back to
Rheran once more.

They had met Ilvani bandits three times since joining the
Clearwater Way at Caredry. The frequency of those skirmishes was enough to
trouble the veteran rangers, but the attackers had dispersed quickly when shown
any resistance.

“They’re Crithnala fleeing Calala war-bands,” Dargana advised the
rangers after the first brief encounter. “Seeking supplies and coin, but not
willing to die for it.” She didn’t seem to care that most of the rangers
ignored her, or seemed more than happy to talk of killing the Crithnala no
matter what their intent. “If we meet the Calala they’re running from,” she
told them, “it won’t be so easy.”

That Calala attack came in the morning along the final leg of the
Clearwater Way. They were nine days in, the fortress of Rhercyn behind them and
the border of Aerach one last day’s ride ahead. The skies had stayed clear
across the exile lands, but that was changing. The Ghostwood and the Greatwood
alike were too far away to be seen from the Wayroad, but the southern sky above
them was shimmering gold and green along the horizon. Not so to the north,
where the air was streaked by cloud that thickened as it rolled in from the
sea.

At a point where the Wayroad twisted between a low pine bluff and
sand to the north, they found themselves facing sudden bowshot from behind
them, and the cries of Ilvani warriors coming through the trees.

It was an ambush, obviously. A feint that might have taken a
squad of new-made guards by surprise, or one of the privately guarded merchant
caravans that braved the Wayroad when time was of the essence or sea passage
around the Sandhorn was made hazardous by seasonal storms. A trap that would
have caught Chriani as a tyro, before he’d faced the Ilvani and their deadly
silence in battle.

“Ambush west!” he called, but the rangers were already
scattering. Two drove back along the trail, flat to their horses’ necks and
shields up to protect against the arrows that continued to arc out from the
trees. The other three cut hard around the bluff, pushing off the road with
bows drawn and firing into the six Ilvani hidden in shadow and scrub beyond. The
main force that would have attacked from cover if any of the rangers had
panicked and bolted away from the token attack from the rear.