Aron shivered, part from outer cold, and part from inner. Despite the tall boy’s fiery looks, he seemed to have ice in his heart. This was the type of person Aron had expected to find at Stone. Someone devoid of emotion. Of conscience.
“Thought we were supposed to keep all this quiet, Dun.” Windblown shifted his eyes to Stormbreaker, who looked both amused and chagrined. “Brother spare us. You’d think the boy never heard of Sabor before.”
I’m… naked. The thought hit Aron hard, driving away all thoughts of the tall boy with the icy eyes. A flush colored his entire body redder than Dyn Mab’s finest ruby. He needed to get up, flee back to his room for a tunic and breeches, but he couldn’t seem to move, save to cover the most important parts.
A moment later, Zed elbowed his way out of the little crowd, bumping the tall boy, who bared his teeth as if he’d like to shift to a mocker and spit poison in Zed’s face. “You have no place here,” the boy said in a too-calm, too-controlled voice.
“Leave off, Galvin,” Zed muttered as he pulled off his own tunic. “We serve the same master now, so you might as well get used to me.”
Zed threw his tunic at Aron, who snatched it, stuffed his arms into the large sleeves, and scrambled to his feet as the fabric fell to his knees.
Shirtless, Zed looked almost as large as the boys snickering behind him, but he was far more muscled about the chest and arms. The older boys seemed to take stock of this when Zed turned to regard them with one of those wild Altar hunting looks he got before he tackled rock cats with bare hands and dagger. The crowd started to disperse. Even Galvin and the older Stone Brothers, who were all marked in one fashion or the other to indicate status in the guild, began to walk away, most shaking their heads.
Windblown gave Zed a disapproving look. “Fight no one else’s battles, boy. You robbed Aron of a chance to test his own mettle against Galvin—and Galvin could have used a proper combat to vent some of his rage and grief over the loss of his master.”
“Aron will have many chances to test himself when the day hasn’t taken such a toll.” Stormbreaker’s expression remained neutral, and he looked more at Zed than Windblown. “And against a more fair opponent than Galvin. I think you and Aron will work well together, Zed.” His gaze shifted to the blue boy at Dari’s door. “Or will it be three, Iko?”
The blue boy frowned, but said nothing. Aron could make no sense of Stormbreaker’s question to the Sabor, and wasn’t sure he wanted to.
“Come on,” Zed said, taking Aron by the shoulder and steering him back toward the east-facing tower. “We have a fresh, long day awaiting us tomorrow.”
Aron didn’t protest or look back at Dari. He didn’t care to see the laughter still in her dark eyes—laughter at his absurdity.
“Aron,” she called as he walked away, and he stopped without turning around. “After you’ve dressed, will you return for a moment? Zed can come, too, if you’d like. We need to set a schedule for your training, and discuss a few other things.”
Aron swallowed. The heat in his cheeks was almost painful, but he made himself nod before he started walking again.
Zed moved beside him, arms rigid at his sides, and he kept looking back over his shoulder. Finally, when they reached the door of their chamber, Zed muttered, “What’s he want, you think?”
Aron shook his head, confused until Zed nudged his shoulder and pointed behind them. Aron turned to see that Iko had followed them from Dari’s room to their own. Aron couldn’t help moving toward the chamber door, and Zed opened it. They slipped inside, never taking their eyes off the Sabor. Then they both peered out at Iko through the partially open doorway.
Iko refused to meet Aron’s gaze, but he moved forward, showing a grace and fluidity definitely not human. Each step communicated power and absolute control.
How old is he? Aron wondered. How much training did he need to proceed so surely, so quickly, without making a sound?
He thought about Lord Cobb’s assertion that if Lord Baldric had chosen not to admit the Sabor, they would have fought their way to Dari, taking much of the Stone Guild down as they proceeded. Now Aron could believe that bit of warning. Even in human form, without the paws and claws, Iko was fearsome.
The Sabor boy stopped a distance from the door, turned, and took up a position similar to his stance outside Dari’s door.
“He’s protecting you, I think,” Zed muttered.
Aron slammed the door as much from surprise as denial. “I don’t know him. I’ve never even met a Sabor. Why would he bother with the likes of me?”
Zed gaped at him, then shook his head. “Aron Weylyn. You’re not exactly a normal arrival at Stone. You were stolen from a dynast lord’s vengeance, chosen as the first apprentice to the First High Master. You rode through the gates of Triune under guard of Lord Cobb himself, and you’ve been assigned for twice-daily tutoring with a girl like Dari—don’t you grasp any of that?”
“But that was because of Stormbreaker, and the war, and Dari!” Aron glanced at the closed door. “I didn’t—I don’t—” But he trailed off, uncertain of what to say next.
Zed’s gaze was steady and unusually serious. “The Sabor and my former people in Dyn Altar share a few beliefs about fate. Mainly that fate is really another word for the will of the gods—for us, the Brother, for the Sabor, Cayn.”
Aron looked Zed in the face, startled to hear him speak the name of the horned god of death inside—in their bedchamber, for the sake of the Brother—seemingly with no fear at all about bringing them ill fortune. He started to touch his cheek to ward off the bad omen, but wondered if he would look foolish following his mother’s traditions before the older boy. His hand shivered from the wish, but remained at his side.
“In desperate times, fate watches, fate circles, then dives like a hungry hawk, striking people who will be important.” Zed’s eyes lost some focus, and he seemed to be reaching beyond himself, back to what his own mother might have taught him. “Fate chooses who will affect what’s happening in Eyrie, who will rise up and shift the winds. I sense fate circling above you, Aron Weylyn. Dari and Stormbreaker, too. Great events may be drawn to you, and you to them, whether you wish it or not. I bet Iko thinks the same thing, maybe even had a vision of it as Sabor are prone to do, and that’s why he came here with his mother.”
Aron’s mouth came open again. He could hear Zed’s words, but he couldn’t allow them any space in his heart or mind. “That’s—that can’t be. Me being important like that, I mean. It’s foolish.”
“Is it?” Zed’s easy smile reflected no offense at Aron’s disagreement. “Well, foolish or not, for me and for the Sabor—for a lot of people raised with older traditions—if we truly think we’re in the company of a person fate is circling, we have a spiritual duty to help them if we can. So even though you’re a bit strange, and more than a bit annoying, I’ll draw my blade in your defense.”
Zed lowered his head and spread his arms as he said this, in the gesture of an old-style promise of fealty, as formal as the one Aron himself had sworn to Dari back in the woods, at the first of their journey to Triune. Aron had played at such oaths dozens of times with his brothers, but this—this was no game. Zed was as serious as Aron had been when he gave Dari his own promise. Zed was truly pledging his service, as if Aron were some dynast noble.
All Aron could do was stand stupidly and dredge through his mind for some return of Zed’s offhanded kindness. He finally came up with, “Uh, thank you. And thanks for helping me in the hall.”
Zed looked up and shrugged. “That was no spiritual duty. It’s work together now or be talon-meat for the older apprentices. They’ll take whatever liberties we give them—and I suggest we give them none at all.” He gestured toward the unmade bed. “You’ll find your tunics and breeches and underclothes in a trunk that slides beneath the slats. Best give me back my tunic and get dressed, unless you’d like to go before such a pretty girl in nothing but your skin again.”
Aron flushed all
over again, pulled off Zed’s tunic, and went to gather his own. The whole time he was dressing, he tried not to think about the big, silent blue boy outside his door, or anything Zed had said about fate, and the will of the gods, and fate striking people destined to rise up during desperate times. In his opinion, all the madness they had encountered since his Harvest, that had been happenstance and offshoots of Dari’s presence in their traveling party. If anyone was chosen by the gods to be important in this world, in this desperate time, it was her, not him.
Yet was it not his legacy that had caused Stormbreaker to select him?
As Aron pulled on his breeches and tied the waist-string tightly for a good fit, the dav’ha mark on his arm smarted. He glanced down at the shape, now a well-drawn set of raised, reddened lines, a scar in the perfect form of a downward triangle, topped by an upward twist into a pentagram.
Cayn, the horned god.
Aron felt wicked just looking at the image, at thinking about the horned god in his bedchamber. Then a snatch of conversation from that jumbled day after his Harvest drifted through his mind.
He left the essence of all of those people in torment, in hopes they would do murder for him. Lord Brailing sent this boy’s family to kill him….
Was that real?
Had he heard that, or dreamed it?
Aron reached into his mind, prodding with his legacy, caring nothing for who might sense the workings of his mind, or notice the color of his graal. The blood in his veins moved more slowly, chilling him even as he pulled his tunic over his head.
Those words were true.
His legacy made him certain of that fact.
The words were true, and Dari had said them, and he had the memories now, of everything that was spoken in the clearing.
Stormbreaker said, “Tek was a marker, to make certain Aron’s family died when the time came.”
More images flew at Aron, of Wolf Brailing gathering his family and fleeing into the woods. Of the pictures occupying his father’s mind before the Guard bore down upon them and killed them all. It was almost like he was dreaming his father’s dreams, or reliving his father’s last moments in complete, painful detail.
His father didn’t get far enough away because he didn’t want to put too much distance between himself and the route the Stone Brothers took. He had wanted to hide the others, and then—
And then he was planning to come after me.
The certainty of Wolf Brailing’s motives for the route he took, the choices he made, pummeled Aron like fists.
His father hadn’t surrendered him at all, Harvest or no. Wolf Brailing never planned for Stone to get away clean with Aron.
He told me I’d always be his son, and he meant it, and he died for me.
They all died for me.
Aron wanted to beat himself with his own fists, but Zed was pulling at his arm again, leading him forward toward the chamber door. “Daydream later, dunderhead. Dari won’t be patient forever, and me, I wouldn’t keep that girl waiting.”
Aron couldn’t respond, because his senses were slowly leaving him. The warmth he had drawn from waking safe in a room, from crying out his losses, from Stormbreaker’s comfort and Zed’s kindness, all of it, every bit of it, rushed out of him as if his essence had sprung a dozen leaks.
They passed by Iko, and Aron didn’t so much as glance at the Sabor. Didn’t notice if Iko moved to follow, didn’t care in the least. He was turning to ice, inside and out, because now he knew what he should have known since the day after Stormbreaker claimed him.
My family’s bones lie like sticks in the woods because of me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
DARI
Blath stood in silence, keeping herself between Dari and the room’s window as Stormbreaker helped Dari fold marked maps and load a traveling pack. Moonslight gave the Sabor’s skin a soft look, and Dari knew it to be that soft and more, from the many times Blath had held her since she could first remember.
The only mother I’ve known. I’m fortunate, and more than blessed that she’s here.
Yet having Blath so close again brought Dari’s emotions and worries perilously close to the surface. It should be three of them, Blath, her, and Kate. Three, as it had always been, since the deaths of her parents. Three, and sometimes four, when Iko decided to take up with them for a few days.
It was all Dari could do to focus on folding the blanket she would use to shield Kate from the night’s chill, assuming they were fortunate enough to find her this night.
Was that possible?
Would fate finally cease its watching and circling and let her bring Kate safely back under her protection—before her cousin sent his own brand of assassins out to find her?
Stormbreaker handed Dari a spare dagger, sheathed and wrapped with leather straps she could use to tie it about her waist. “I know you have little need for such a basic weapon, but it would please me to know you have it, just in case.”
Dari took the knife and belted it across her hips, letting the tip tap against the leather breeches Blath had brought her. Her loose white tunic covered the hilt as she thanked Stormbreaker, but she kept her gaze averted from his.
If she found Kate tonight, she would leave and try to smuggle her sister into Dyn Ross, then back home.
But how could she just… go, after making dav’ha with Stormbreaker and Aron, and assuring the Lord Provost she would help to train the boy?
Before making this journey, Dari never would have believed she could feel such fierce loyalty and concern for anyone outside her family and their small circle of allies, much less two people with Fae blood. An image filled her mind, of Aron in all of his naked embarrassment a few moments back. He was still such a boy, yet there was much to him already, with all he had suffered. At least the damage seemed to be healing enough that he took the silliness in the hall with some grace. That was a promising sign.
If she could find Kate and get her safely across the border to Dyn Ross, she could return to Triune and see to her duties with Aron. Though if she didn’t return, Dari was fairly certain Lord Baldric and Stormbreaker would not fault her. Her grandfather might even arrange to have a tutor located and sent for Aron, someone with suitable strength of graal. Yes, everyone would understand, except—
Except Aron.
It would be more pain for him. More loss. And what would he make of that? Never mind the fact that the thought of never seeing Stormbreaker again left Dari feeling empty and at odds in ways she never expected.
She stole a glance at him.
He didn’t notice, but Blath did. Her dark brows arched upward, but otherwise she gave no outward reaction. Dari wasn’t fool enough to take that for approval, but she knew Blath wouldn’t interfere. That wasn’t Blath’s way, or her role in Dari’s life.
Dari almost wished Blath would charge forward like an angry mother or some Fae dynast lord from Altar or Vagrat or Mab, where the “properness” of women remained so important. She wished Blath would roar and forbid any further association between her and Stormbreaker, because everything would just be simpler, then, wouldn’t it?
Dari glanced at Stormbreaker again, at the handsome line of his face, at his white-blond hair pulled tight against the nape of his neck.
If Blath forbade me to notice him further, would I disregard her?
Probably.
Cayn’s teeth, this was complicated. She wasn’t some lark with loose morals—and the last thing she needed was closer association with the Fae. The need to find her sister crawled like bugs beneath her skin, mingling with concern on top of worry until Dari knew that if someone shouted behind her, she’d probably shriek and break into pieces.
“I—I’m being selfish. I’m sorry.” She wet her dried lips with her tongue and wished she had thought to bring more water to the room. “The day has been long, or I would have remembered to ask about your sister. You mentioned her in Lord Baldric’s quarters. Tia Snakekiller? She’s still missing from Harvest, is she not?”
“Then we should search for her, too,” Dari said. “We can inquire about her just as easily as we can speak with your sources and the other guild houses about Kate.”
Stormbreaker looked horrified, then gained control of his expression, once more becoming calm, almost blank, before he spoke. “That won’t be necessary. Tia took her vows and survived her trial long ago. If she wants my assistance, she’ll find a way to send for it.”
“But what if she’s injured?” Stormbreaker’s attitude puzzled Dari. She squeezed the folded maps in her hands, but caught herself before the paper crumpled. “What if she can’t get word to you?”
“Tia isn’t my twin, but I would know if her peril were dire enough to risk disgracing a Stone Sister by suggesting she needed any man’s help to complete a task.” Stormbreaker’s gaze was clear now, firm and decided, and understanding sank across Dari’s shoulders.
She tucked the last maps into her pack without further comment. Though she had never met Tia Snakekiller, she felt some kinship with the woman, who no doubt had to battle twice as hard as any male to earn her place in a stronghold like Triune. Though Dari’s people allowed women complete freedom, even they held on to prejudices about which gender made for better soldiers, and who ought to have rights of leadership and command.
“How did both you and your sister come to be at Stone?” she asked, distracted by her own thoughts, too much so to censor the question. “Isn’t that unusual, siblings taking vows?”
Stormbreaker’s expression shifted again, this time to a look of granite stillness. “That tale is long and perhaps not worth repeating.”
Dari’s insides heated at her breach of manners, intruding on his privacy so deeply. She had obviously wounded him just by asking. As she fished in her mind for the proper apologies to offer, her eyes met his, and she sensed his pain in her own heart. The ache made her want to weep and throw her arms about his neck.
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