Three Coins for Confession (29 page)

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 at 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.