Three Coins for Confession (53 page)

Chriani told her the last thing he had to tell her then. The
thing he’d told Dargana. How the blade of Caradar that had seemingly started
all this — had brought him to the Ilvani’s attention and into their
sights — was with Lauresa. How he had given it to her to give to the
daughter he would never know. He felt the pain of each word as he spoke it like
broken glass on his tongue. Afraid to say it. Knowing how he had to.

“Thank you for telling me,” Kathlan said when he was done.
Chriani heard the pain twist in her voice as he kissed her, hoping in some way
that he might draw that pain away from her. The last thing he had needed to
say, done now.

He would have no secrets. Not anymore.

The thud of hoofbeats marked the arrival of an Aerachi patrol at
the way station. In addition to Chriani and Kathlan, two merchants with a pair
of horses each were waiting for escort, along with what looked like a trio of
noble’s couriers.

The six rangers nodded to each of them in turn as the others
mounted up, Chriani and Kathlan standing, walking to their horses hand in hand.
Their fingers parted only as they each climbed up to the saddle.

“I’m sorry, Chriani.”

He had paced away toward where one of the merchants was sharing a
wineskin with the rangers, all of them laughing. Kathlan on her horse stood
behind him, hadn’t moved. He reined to a stop, turned back toward her.

“You need to go back,” she said. “Ride safe.”

The chill of distance was in her voice, and a strength that said
these were words she’d been thinking on for a while.

“Kath, what are you doing?”

“Staying, Chriani. You’ve got your life back. You’ve got your
road to follow. Ride it well.”

“No.” He kicked his horse forward to step beside her, reached for
her hand but she backed away.

“Don’t do this,” she said. “Don’t make it harder.”

“It’s not…” Chriani felt his mind fumbling for words. “I don’t
understand.” But even as he said it, he realized he did understand. The words
came back to him from the tent three nights before, locked in his memory but
distant. Not focused on in the moment, for the sake of all the other things he
had needed to focus on.

You need to run,
Kathlan had said.
You need to get
away.
Not
we.
Just him.

“If I had fled that night, you were planning on staying,” he said
numbly. “Right from the start.”

“No, Chriani, I was planning on running, same as you should have.
I didn’t plan on sticking around for them to understand I helped you, then
invite me to share your traitor’s fate. But I wasn’t going with you. I can’t go
with you. Not anymore.”

Behind him, one of the Aerachi rangers whistled. Chriani turned
back, waved to let them know he’d heard. With the courier and the merchants in
tow, the squad set off at a trot toward the west.

“I’m no traitor, Kath. You have to believe that. I didn’t plan
the attack, I didn’t call for…”

“Fate and faith, Chriani, you’re a fool twice over. I know who
you are. I’d trust you with my life, rank and uniform or not.”

Chriani felt the words carry through him with a strange echo. He
remembered that last night along the Hunthad, and understanding that he trusted
Kathlan with his own life. He had vowed to say it to her that night, but the
words and everything else had been taken from him.

“Then what…?” It was the only thing he could say now. Too late
for all the rest.

He saw it in her eyes before she spoke. Saw the pain there that
he knew was greater than any hurt he’d ever known. The truth he’d told her, and
all the truths that split off from that.

“At Osthegn, when Irdaign found me. After talking to Lauresa,
waiting for the troop to assemble. I saw the girl. Your daughter. Only from a
distance, mind. She’s beautiful.”

In the space deep inside him where the shadow dwelled, Chriani
felt something break. He reached for Kathlan again but she stepped her horse
back with no more than a flick of her toes.

“Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t. Please.”

He wouldn’t think on any of the reasons he had to return to
Aerach. He wouldn’t. Not yet. It was something for the future he had always
dreamed of seeing, but that future was in front of him now and turning to
darkness before his eyes.

“Tell me what’s between you and the princess,” Kathlan said. “The
duchess. Lauresa. The truth, Chriani.”

The words he’d spoken to Kathlan in Venry’s camp were in
Chriani’s mind. The darkness of his confession that night, come back to him as
if only a moment had passed. He felt every word that had gone unspoken since
then, every lie he’d woven into his life in the years before.

“I told her I would die for her,” he said. The truth.

“And?”

“A part of me did. And a part of her died for me. And there’s
nothing left after that.”

Kathlan said nothing for a long while, turning away toward the
sea. Its salt scent was fresh on the wind, but the horizon was lost behind a
veil of cloud.

“Kath…”

“Do you know what you want, Chriani?”

“No,” he said. The truth. “I’m sorry, Kath, but I can’t see it
yet. But I’m looking, and I’m trying, and I know more than I know any other
truth that whatever I want, it has to be with you.”

Kathlan nodded as if she understood. Then she turned her horse,
began to walk away.

“I’m staying in Aerach,” she said as Chriani spurred up beside
her. “I’ll seek a place in the guard here.”

“This isn’t the place for you, Kath.” Chriani tried to edge
around her, reaching for her hand again, but she slipped past him easily. “You
know how they think of women in Aerach, and in the guard most of all. You’ll
work twice as hard to get half as far, even if you manage to find someone
willing to take you for what you’re worth.”

“Good thing I already work twice as hard as anyone else. And I’ve
got Shara, who more than knows what I’m worth. He already offered me a place in
his troop, but I told him I wouldn’t be comfortable in Teillai. He thinks it’d
be because of what happened with you. Not that he’s wrong.”

“Kath…”

“I’m riding for Aleran. You’re riding for Rheran. Shara’s given
me some names, said he’ll send letters to speak for me. Other captains who
don’t have their heads up their asses. I know my path, Chriani.”

A shadow was in his mind, twisting around the words he meant to
say. Strangling them down to the darkness where his secrets hid. The other
horses were gone, hoofbeats and the jingle of tack already fading behind him.

“Please, Kathlan. I’ll do anything you ask of me.”

“I’m asking you to go, Chriani. Find your way. Find your place,
whatever it’s meant to be.”

“Kath, I can’t lose you…”

“Goodbye, Chriani.”

She turned her horse past him with the lightest flick of the
reins, then spurred away to the east.

“Kathlan!”

Chriani shouted her name as she picked up speed. He didn’t
follow, though. Already knowing she was gone.

The fog was lifting, breaking the cloud that shrouded the city
and the broad farming steppes beyond. Kathlan was pushing her horse with
precision, because she knew that if Chriani tried to follow her, he’d override
his own mount before she had any need to slow. No way he’d ever catch her.

She had asked him what he wanted. His life back and in order was
the easy answer. And he had that, granted in an unexpected instant by the
prince high he had sworn to hate.

There was more to it, though. He felt an understanding settle in
on him, his mind trying to make some sense of the pain twisting through him,
centered on his heart.

He wanted to know he had made a difference.

The threat of the cult was done. Chriani had accomplished that,
had made his decision to stand and fall if he must. He had expected to die, had
been thinking of the others who would follow him to finish what he’d started.
But in a twist of fate he had never expected, he was following himself now.

He had a report to make to the prince high, he knew. To Ashlund.
He would tell them what he could of the Laneldenari, and of what Veassen and
the others had said. A chance there for peace, maybe. A chance to build on what
had come before.

In war, we find the strength of life, but our lives are more
than war.
Farenna had said it on the council floor.

War, which is the dream the Ilmari made.
Chriani
remembered Contáedar’s dark hatred, as he remembered Chanist speaking of the
Greatwood burned to ash and spread across the Ehadne Sea. But he remembered the
weariness in the throne room as well.

I will serve my people at any cost,
the prince high had
said. That same weariness in Farenna.

Between themselves, he and Lauresa had stopped a war. With
Dargana’s strength guiding his hand and his heart, he had undone the dark magic
that promised a second. But if war came anyway, it would all have been for
nothing.

His mind had drifted, he realized. He was alone. Kathlan was gone
ahead of him. Behind him, the patrol and its civilian cohort had vanished into
the mist.

In the council of masters and in his tent two nights before,
Veassen had spoken of fate.
I saw that you would do what you were meant to
do.
Chriani held onto that thought now. Felt it shimmer against the shadow
within his mind, even as he felt that shadow breaking.

He turned his horse, spurred it to a jog toward the west. The
patrol party wouldn’t be far ahead of him, but he didn’t want to risk
surprising them at a gallop. Ilvani were on the Clearwater Way, the Brandishear
couriers had said.

He rode toward where the last of the fields of Aerach would fall
away to wild rose and scrub grass. He slipped within the mist, felt the sun at
his back and shadow before him as he passed along the Clearwater Way and was gone.

SIDNYE
(QUEEN OF THE UNIVERSE)

THE
EXILE’S BLADE TRILOGY

Clearwater Dawn

Three Coins for Confession

The Timeless King

(Coming 2016)

WE
CAN BE HEROES

A
PRAYER FOR DEAD KINGS
and Other Tales

BLACKHEATH
(with Quinn Hamilton)

THE
VOICES OF THE DEAD
— Dark Tales & Lost Souls

TALES
OF THE ENDLANDS

The Twilight Child •
Shadow to Shadow • The Moonsign Scar •
Daeralf’s Rune •
The Game of Heart and Light •
The Voice • Black Run • A Space Between •
Stories

ONE
SIZE FITS ALL
(as Gary Scott)

Scott Fitzgerald Gray
(9th-level layabout,
vindictive neutral) is a writer, fiction editor, story editor, RPG editor and
designer, and man about town. He shares his life in the Canadian hinterland
with a schoolteacher, two itinerant daughters, and a large number of animal
companions.

More info on Scott and his work (some of it even occasionally
truthful) can be found by reading between the lines at
insaneangel.com.

Thanks and admiration to the following for taking up arms
when the bell sounds.

The Council of Masters

Colleen, Shvaugn, and Caitlin

Seers of the Bastion

Gabriel Duclair, Colleen Craig,
Jennifer Landels

War-Mages of the Prince’s Guard

François Bertrand, Shvaugn Craig

Artificers of the Myllasir

(studio)Effigy, Pawel Lyczkowski,
Tokarev Anton, Margo Black, Peter Polak, Susanitah

The Odes of the Leisanmira

Alter Bridge, Collective Soul, Ramin Djawadi,
Tom Holkenborg, Guy Gavriel Kay, George R.R. Martin,
Porcupine Tree, Red, Scott Stapp, Mary Stewart,
Barry Windsor-Smith, Hans Zimmer