The Wounded Shadow Page 8

  Just as it had every other vault I or the rest of the Vigil had broken, save one—Queen Cailin.

  Toria or Pellin would have to make the attempt. I would never allow Fess to break my vault, though I trusted him more. At ten and six, he was the second-youngest person ever to come to the gift, despite the hopelessness of his upbringing in the urchins. I carried the burden of every soul I’d consigned to mindlessness and death. Fess had already endured his share and more of misery in life. He didn’t need any more.

  The wind picked up out of the south, lifting the wealth of Gael’s black hair to wave like a cape of darkest velvet. A stab of grief pulled the air from my lungs. The gift of domere that I owned would extend my life for centuries while she would live out her allotted decades. I had another impossible task to go with finding a way for us to live out our lives together. Not only did I have to let the Vigil break my vault, but they had to do it in a way that left the knowledge it contained intact.

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed, gales of grief and rage flooding out of me at the ridiculous unfairness of my situation.

  “Willet?” Gael moved her horse closer to mine, put her hand on my arm.

  I gasped for breath. “It’s absurd. The whole thing. It wouldn’t even make for a good tale because it’s unbelievable. Only the mind of Aer could create it.”

  Gael caught my mood first. She knew me that well, knew what I needed so desperately in that moment. Catching my gaze, she lifted her chin and laughed as tears coursed down her cheeks, sharing her grief for her sister, Kera, for me, but refusing to let it define her. She laughed.

  Rory joined in a moment later, his voice warbling between the clear high tones of boyhood and the deeper thrum of the man he would become. His losses and failures were known to me. Abandoned, he had headed the urchins, an informal guild of child beggars, thieves, and pickpockets who’d wrested life, however temporary, from the poor quarter.

  Only Bolt didn’t laugh—though I thought I saw longing in his gaze. I’d never delved my guard, had no idea the depth of sorrow that he must have carried. I’d seen him laugh, genuinely laugh, exactly once in all the time he’d guarded me. It had looked painful.

  We made our way back to the Edring, where Toria would no doubt pester me with questions about my conversation with Ealdor. The one thing a traveler could rely on in this hillside region was that the roads never ran in a straight line—instead they’d been laid out as if they followed the flow of water from the frequent rains. Newcomers spent weeks learning their way around the cobblestone paths that ended at destinations that defied prediction. Bolt knew the village as well as the sword he carried, an effortless familiarity.

  We rounded a corner, entering the shade of jaccara trees growing from a planter in the center of the street. As we approached our estate from the north, Bolt reined in and dismounted as if we’d arrived. “Get down,” he said in a conversational tone, “but slowly.” He lifted his head, gesturing over my shoulder. “We have trouble.”

  Two men, dressed in nondescript clothing that blended with the sand-colored wall surrounding the estate, stood outside watching a couple of boys play catch. It took me a second to notice that while the heads of the men were pointed toward the boys, their eyes scanned the streets.

  “That’s a roll of ones,” I said. Soldiers—the good ones, anyway—have a way holding themselves even when they’re not standing at attention that draws the eye. It’s a readiness for violence they maintain even when they’re not on patrol. “Do you know them?” I asked Bolt.

  He shook his head. “No. They have the olive skin tones of Aille, but for all of that, they could be attached to the crown, the church, or anyone.”

  “It’s not just the men,” Rory said. “Look at the boys. They’re nearly the same age as me, and they’re, what, ten feet apart? There’s no fun in throwing a ball that far. What do we do?” To emphasize his question, he pulled a dagger, spinning it around one hand before making it disappear again.

  Gael touched my arm. “Give me a moment.” Then she walked away. I watched as she left the little square and then reappeared to approach the soldiers from the west, carrying a basket of cut flowers as if she’d just been to the market. We watched the soldiers as my betrothed walked toward them.

  “It won’t work, yah?” Rory said. “How many people with her coloring live here?”

  She would have known that. “I think that’s what she intends. If they’ve been sent to take us, they’ll have our descriptions and act accordingly, but if they’re only watching, they’ll let her pass.”

  Gael went past the guards and through the gate. Half a heartbeat later, the guards followed her. I moved to follow, my hand on my sword while my heart struggled within in my throat. Bolt stopped me, not threatening, but I could hear him growling a stream of invectives under his breath.

  “Will you please say something that makes sense?” I asked. Across the distance of the square, another pair of men sauntered up from a side street to take the place of the two that had followed Gael inside.

  “They’re cosp,” he spat. “Physically gifted soldiers who serve as guards for the Merum order in Aille.” His lip curled in disgust. “After the crown and church disbanded the Errants, the Archbishop decided it would be a good idea to buy the service of those who were similarly gifted.”

  “Are they as good as Vigil guards?” Rory asked.

  Bolt shook his head. “No, but they don’t have to be. Archbishop Vyne commands enough of them to fight us to a standstill or worse.”

  Rory turned, leaning toward the guards with his right ear. “I don’t hear any sounds of fighting.”

  “How did they find us?”

  “Custos,” Bolt said, “or more likely Peret Volsk.” He ground the name like a curse. “The librarian blends in, but that popinjay doesn’t.”

  Rory shook his head. “Churchmen. None of you have enough sense to learn how to check for a tail. That one thinks too highly of himself.”

  Bolt nodded. “He always has.”

  I’d inadvertently delved Volsk months before, uncovering his treachery, but behind the door in my mind where his memories lay were other memories that gave the lie to Rory’s assessment. “Not anymore,” I said. Bolt didn’t push me for an explanation and I didn’t bother to provide one. His enmity for the Vigil’s former apprentice and golden boy went too deep for forgiveness.

  Without warning, Rory sneezed, bending double while his cloak fluttered with the motion. Only Bolt and I could see his hands when he straightened, a dagger clutched in each. “We’ve got more behind us,” he murmured. “And they’re headed this way.”

  Bolt didn’t move but sighed, his hand finding his sword in the midst of an idle scratch. “How many?”

  Rory’s hands fluttered beneath his cloak again and came back as empty as his expression.

  “Too many for us to fight, I take it?” I asked.

  Bolt turned without making an effort to hide his motion or intention and nodded. “Eight. And they’re all gifted. We might as well join Gael. We might win a fight, but we’d have to put any number of them down, most of them for good.”

  What he didn’t bother to say was that I would be the most likely to die, since I had no physical gift. For good measure I took a quick glance at the eight behind us, scanning each face to see if my suspicions proved true. Then I caught a glimpse of the setting sun. Where did Ealdor go when he wasn’t pretending to appear to me? “You’d think talking with one of the Fayit would be enough excitement for one day.” I grabbed the reins of Gael’s horse, adding them to those of my own. “We might as well go see what the Archbishop wants with us.”

  From the south, bells began to toll. I only heard a few at first, soft with the intervening distance, but more joined in until the sound came toward us like a wave. “Aer help us,” Bolt said. “I think I know.”

  My questions slid from him, ignored, as we walked out from beneath jaccara trees, the three of us striding across the square with our horses trailing us
as if we weren’t sweating with the need to pull steel. At the gate I turned to one of the two men lounging there and put the reins in his hand. His eyes went wide and then wider still when Bolt and Rory followed suit. “I’m going to want my horse back. Oh, and he likes a bit of apple with his oats.”

  We stepped past them into the entryway and the men following behind us closed in, blocking the sun. “One of these days that mouth of yours is going to get you into trouble,” Bolt said.

  “You mean it hasn’t already?”

  “I mean trouble I can’t get you out of.”

  “Well, luck might be smiling on you today,” I said. “We have no idea what’s waiting for us.”

  “I do,” he said, but again, he offered no explanation for the sudden grief in his eyes.

  We walked across the courtyard with eight of the Archbishop’s gifted trailing us.

  “They’ve got the house and the rest of our group buttoned up,” Bolt said. “Otherwise, they’d have drawn steel before now.”

  The broad doors to the entry swung open at our approach, showing another half-dozen church guards trying to pretend they were ordinary people. I shook my head. As if ordinary people all wore the exact same ordinary clothes.

  “Not a lot of imagination there,” Rory said. “I bet none of these men has ever pulled a bluff in their life, much less a con.”

  We stepped into the dining hall. Domed in the style popular in Cynestol, it held a pair of tables made from single slabs of wood each two hands thick, a pace and a half across and fifteen paces long. Big as the room was, it barely contained the crowd. Men and women—some of them young but all with very functional-looking swords and daggers at their belts—clustered around us. Gael sat in the middle of the closest table, but her posture radiated restrained motion. She glanced at me before her gaze returned to a whippet-faced man with a long nose at the head of the table.

  Toria and Fess were nowhere in sight.

  “Come, Lord Dura,” the whippet-faced man said. “Sit.”

  Nothing in his voice hinted at a reason for the presence of so many armed men in the house or how they had found us. Rory and Bolt took seats across from Gael as I took the one next to her. I reached out to give her hand a comforting squeeze, and she gave me an indulgent smile. “Until we know what’s going on, I probably should keep my hands free,” she whispered to me.

  “Excellent,” the man at the head of the table said. “We worried for your return, Lord Dura.” He lifted his right hand and crooked a finger. One of the guards, with more time and scars than the rest leaned forward. “You can clear the room now, Batten, and seal the doors.”

  The man stroked an untouched glass of wine in front of him with that same finger. “An introduction is in order, of course. I am Lieutenant Hradian. Your names, I already know from the descriptions given me with the exception of this flower.” He nodded to Gael.

  Gael inclined her head in a gesture I recognized from court. “I am Gael Alainn, of Collum.”

  “A lady, no doubt,” Hradian said. “Your manners speak of court, and your grace speaks of other gifts as well. Your group numbers significantly fewer than I was led to expect.” He nodded toward the empty seats around the table. “This charming estate shows signs of recently hosting nearly a dozen.” He made a vague gesture toward the general vicinity of the stable. “As well as a pair of large dogs, of which only one remains. Where are your companions?”

  At our stoic stares, he continued. “I assure you all, you have nothing to fear from me or from His Holiness.”

  The tide of bells, muted by distance and the walls of the estate, intruded upon our conversation as the church the next street over began tolling in unison, the heavy iron bell the only one to peal. Across from me, Bolt’s face blanched, though his expression never changed.

  “You’ve brought enough gifted to decimate an army,” I said. “What exactly does Vyne want that requires our service—voluntary or otherwise?”

  Hradian nodded. “His Excellence does not confide in me.” For a moment he broke his gaze to cast a measuring glance toward Bolt, and something akin to speculation bordering on wonder passed over his eyes before he continued. “Archbishop Vyne wanted me to assure you that he has told me nothing about you except your descriptions and other trivial details that would allow me to find you.” He nodded toward Gael. “He failed to mention the lady.”

  I nodded. “You’ve surrounded us with armed men, Lieutenant. I’m sure you can see how that would make me suspicious. Exactly how do you intend to prove that you’re from the Archbishop and don’t mean us harm?”

  Hradian nodded. “He told me to expect this question and that in the presence of so many gifted, no answer would suffice.”

  I smiled. “Clever man. It seems strange that the Archbishop did not send a letter with you.”

  The look of speculation I’d seen in Hradian’s eyes returned, sharper, before he answered. “When I asked the Archbishop for such a letter, he said something strange.” He glanced at each of us. “He said that if we were taken or attacked in any way, he didn’t want to betray you.” Hradian leaned forward, like a racing hound straining at the lead. “Cynestol boasts hundreds of thousands and the rest of Aille holds that and more, but I was given fully half the cosp to make this journey.”

  He looked at each of us in turn, as if he could will us to answer his unspoken questions, his dark eyes intent above the sharp nose that dominated his face. “The Archbishop’s counsel is his own,” he said, “but it is my job to protect him, even from his own counsel. I have enough men to force all of you to Cynestol.”

  “Without proof that you’ve come from the Archbishop, you die first,” Bolt said. For an instant I saw something eager in Hradian’s gaze.

  “But those weren’t your orders, were they?” I asked. As entertaining as a pitched battle that would get us all killed might be, Ealdor’s costly information still hung in my ears.

  The bells pealed outside the window. I might have heard voices between each strike of the heavy clapper against the sound bow. “Why don’t you tell us why the bells are ringing, Hradian? Is the Archbishop even alive?”

  He nodded, and I heard a long sigh whisper from Bolt as he squeezed his eyes shut against some private pain. Hradian looked at me as if I’d somehow managed to read his private letters, but he gave me one slow nod.

  “There were supposed to be others here,” he said. “I was told to seek an older man or, failing that, an Elanian woman. In their absence, I have little choice but to bring you, Lord Dura.”

  I favored Hradian with a humorless smile. “It’s so nice to be wanted. I’ll try not to disappoint His Stupendousness.”

  Hradian stiffened at the jibe. “The Archbishop is to be referred to as Holiness or Excellence, and nothing else. I and the rest of the cosp serve him with our lives. He is the leader and spiritual head of the largest order on the continent and wise beyond your reckoning.”

  I shook my head. Despite the distance from Bunard, Hradian’s arrogance, even on behalf of another, could have been Duke Orlan’s or any other of the countless nobles who despised me. “And yet, for all his wisdom, the Archbishop surprised you,” I said, “when he forced you to put children in the vanguard.”

  Hradian gave me an unblinking stare. “Lord Dura, you are commanded to accompany me to Cynestol this very hour.”

  Chapter 11

  Hradian had hardly blinked when I insisted he leave a man behind to take care of Modrie, but he’d been more than serious about the need for haste. Any and all attempts on our part to pack, or even eat, were forestalled, and we were on horseback riding from Edring as dusk approached. On our left, the sun slipped below the horizon, and the light died with a flare of red against the clouds, like an omen of blood.

  I shuddered. When had I become a superstitious man?

  Hradian barked an order, and the leading wedge of the cosp lit torches to guide us. Hooves thundered on the cobblestones as we closed the distance to Cynestol. I tried once to pry
additional information from the lieutenant, but the pace and the noise precluded any conversation. Bolt looked as serious as I’d ever seen him.

  “How far are we from the city?” I asked him.

  “Another two hours from the cathedral—there is no way we can keep this pace.”

  “I didn’t think we were that far away.”

  He grimaced, the expression lurid in the light of the torches. “We’re not, but Cynestol spreads widely and it never sleeps. Even at night much of the city is crowded and progress slows to almost a halt.”

  An hour and a half later, or something close to it, we crested a hill and stopped, brought to a halt by a wall of sound. Cynestol filled a broad bowl in the landscape, surrounded by a rim of low hills. Within that depression thousands of iron bells peeled their grief, and the entire city of Cynestol vibrated with the multitoned cry of anguish and loss.

  Hradian reined in, all expression sliding from him until he might have been cast from stone. With the sharp bark of an order, the entire group of cosp dismounted and, as one, knelt to face the east, each man or woman’s hand rising to inscribe the intersecting arcs on their forehead. It wasn’t until I stepped closer that I heard him reciting the antidon for the dead in a low voice.

  Bolt stepped in beside me, his customary stoicism in place, barely. “Tell me,” I said. “What kind of woman was Chora?”

  There was no movement that might have betrayed his thoughts. “The last time I saw her, she was hardly more than a girl, but she had a talent for self and space that made her a beautiful dancer even before Sylvest died and she inherited the gift of kings.” He paused as the sound of bells gathered and broke, washing over us. “Better if it had been the prince, or even the Archbishop,” he said softly.

  But not softly enough. Hradian wheeled, his expression stricken and his hand on his sword, but my guard only shrugged. “No insult intended, Lieutenant. Archbishop Vyne is an old man and no fool. He would long since have arranged for his successor, but if Queen Chora has died without passing her gift to Prince Maenelic, then the largest kingdom on the continent is about to descend into chaos.” He stopped to look at me. “The timing here feels more than a little coincidental.”