“I know about it all, Rianna,” said Ned. “I know you love Darien Aldemoor, and that you gave yourself to Rayen.”
Rianna nodded. All the lies she had once relied upon to spare Ned’s feelings—those were gone.
“I could never leave you.” It was all he could do to keep his voice steady.
“I can’t give you what you want,” said Rianna Gelvan. “And I’m tired of men wanting things from me. Please go. I can work in the kitchens again until I’ve paid my way out.” There was a grim set to her face that he had never seen before. It was all the more stark now that her face was nearly a skull and her hair was gone. The dark snood she wore was unkind to her face, contrasting with her skin to bring out every line of bone. But that was less unnerving than the ridged bones of her skull, which served to remind Ned how fragile she was. How fragile and fleeting, he thought, were both their lives.
“I know I can never have you,” said Ned. “I will help you find Darien Aldemoor.”
She eyed him with cold suspicion. “What’s in it for you?”
“Rayen Amaristoth is hunting Darien,” said Ned. “I expect we’ll come upon him. I’ll kill him for you.”
In a graceful, deliberate motion, Rianna reached into her skirts and drew out a knife. The insignia on its hilt was of Master Gelvan’s house, a letter G flanked by eagles. Weak sunlight flickered along the blade’s edge as she held it up for inspection with this new cold gaze he didn’t know. “Only if you let me help.”
* * *
THEY charted their course that evening. The noise of the tavern provided a distraction, gave them something to look at when they could hardly look one another in the eye.
Rianna thought Ned might try to win her with a gentlemanly manner by pulling out her chair or with other cultured affectations, but he did not. On the contrary, he kept a distance and avoided small talk, which he had never been that adept at in the first place.
Perhaps with the way she looked now, he was having second thoughts about her. That would be convenient. It seemed to her now that beauty was an inconvenience at best.
“We’ll have to camp in the woods,” Ned was saying. “I’ll pick up supplies tomorrow morning.”
“Does that mean we’ll need a tent?” said Rianna. Her hands clenched in her lap under the table, where he would not see them. She knew Ned would never harm her, and yet.
“No,” said Ned. “It’s not too cold yet, and if it rains, these forests are full of caves.”
“How will we go about looking for him?” she asked. “That’s the part that I don’t understand.”
He nodded. “Well, lucky for us, your man is being hunted by a rather ostentatious character. Everyone in this part of the world knows Lord Amaristoth. Anyone he encounters will remember him.”
“But how is he searching for Darien?”
Dipping his quill in the inkwell and then blotting it on a rag, Ned touched the pen to a parchment and drew. A shape that resembled half a figure eight emerged from the pen, and then he closed it with a straight line. He drew another line through its center, tipped with a triangle. A bow and arrow. “Rianna, you must bear in mind that the man we are tracking is an experienced hunter,” said Ned. “More than experienced. It defines who he is.”
Rianna’s jaw tightened. “I know.”
“I’m not telling you this to upset you,” said Ned. There was something different about him, though she couldn’t understand quite what it was. All she knew was that in all the time she had seen him that day, she hadn’t once been seized with the impulse to reassure him—or to lie to him. Is that a change in him, or in me? she wondered. Have I become cold?
Ned had developed muscle that made his lank limbs seem more proportionate. He walked with more ease now, rather than as if he half-expected to trip over himself. The tooled leather scabbard at his belt, which had once been an ornamentation, now looked weather-beaten, with shallow slashes in it.
Ned was still speaking; Rianna focused again on his words. He was speaking to her as he would speak to another man, matter-of-factly and without softness. “I’m telling you these things because, in order to accomplish our goal, you have to understand the nature of what we’re dealing with.”
Next he drew a curved line and connected both ends of the parabola with three straight lines. A harp. “Darien Aldemoor,” said Ned. “He may know how to fight, but ultimately he has no power against someone like Rayen. If we manage to find Darien before Rayen does, we will have to be ready to help him defend himself.”
“Darien knows how to fight,” said Rianna.
Ned looked down at the parchment on the table. “I’m sure,” he said. Then he raised his eyes with what seemed like an effort, and his tone became all business again. “I’m sure he does. But he’s not an Amaristoth.” He cleared his throat. “There’s something else you ought to know. Darien is believed to have murdered his companion, Hassen Styr.”
“He didn’t,” said Rianna.
“I wouldn’t be helping you find him if I believed he had,” said Ned. “I believe the politics of Tamryllin have taken a strange turn. But I thought you should know what is being said, and that if you find Darien, it’s unlikely that the two of you can stay in Eivar.”
Rianna nodded curtly. “I knew.”
And what was Eivar to her? A white, rose-entwined mansion that had been her home. A town where her soul, it seemed, had been devoured and swallowed. The idea of leaving Eivar did not disturb her, but that was not all. It was a freeing idea, as if the world could become new again.
Her soul grow new again, in Darien’s arms. There, at least, was something she could still hope for and believe. And once she found Darien, perhaps he would know how to save her father.
“We’ll leave tomorrow,” said Ned, “unless you are not well. Have you the strength?”
For some reason the question gave her pause. Strength. “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I have strength to get up tomorrow and to do what must be done,” she added, seeing his concern. “More than that—I don’t know.”
For the first time Ned touched her. Rianna stiffened slightly, but it was a brotherly touch, his hand on her wrist. “That is all the strength anyone needs,” he said.
“But what about pain?” she asked. She couldn’t help it; she wanted answers, and Ned, with his new calluses and grim look seemed to have them.
But she was wrong; he shook his head. “I don’t know.”
CHAPTER
30
TRUE silence was a thing she had never known in her life. Her father had made a point of shielding Rianna from the noise and the rudeness of the world—she understood this now, too—and once she’d have been hard-pressed to think of a place more deeply quiet than the stately street of their house. But here in the woods, silence was tangible, much like a live thing itself; she was at once awed and tormented by it. She could not retreat to her father’s library and lose herself in a story. There was no great sounding of bells from the Eldest Sanctuary threading the silence of deepest night. The clatter of the kitchens that had worn at her mind and body had receded, like a memory from someone else’s life. If not for the stubble of her hair and the cracked skin of her hands, she would not have believed it had happened to her.
Now there were the pervasive scent of pine, shadows piled upon shadows from a maze of overhead branches. Amid so much quiet, Rianna’s thoughts echoed in the chambers of her mind as if it were a dungeon with no door, wall folding into wall of moldering smooth stone. Nights, the echoes reached into her dreams; she would awaken in the morning with Rayen’s whisper like a knife rasping in her ear. Yet somehow it was worse to be awake.
There was, of course, Ned, but he didn’t speak much. It was as if he sensed that she couldn’t bear conversation just now. What could she say? And if she did begin to talk, she feared she might break down and weep. And that, she thought, was enough of that. She was finished with turning to others for sympathy—and especially to men.
In a different fram
e of mind, the cold might have distracted her. She was well-fitted against the weather—Ned had bought her a cloak and warm undergarments before they had set out—but nonetheless it was getting to the end of autumn, and a chill had begun to gnaw deep in the northern woodlands. At this time of year, the Gelvan home would have been warmed by wood fires, and she and her father would have been preparing for the journey south.
Thoughts of her father were chief among the echoes that tormented her in the woods’ stillness. Again and again she saw him collapse, his eyes fixed on hers even after the light had gone from them.
At such times she was most tempted to turn to Ned, to hide her face in his shoulder as she would once have done without even thinking. But that had been before Darien Aldemoor, before the ill-fated betrothal. Before Rayen Amaristoth, her thoughts supplied helpfully. Yes, she replied within her mind. Yes, curse you. That, too.
It was also out of consideration for Ned that she did not turn to him. She knew he loved her, and she knew—now more than ever—that he was a good soul. He did not deserve the pain of false hope. He seemed stronger now, but she knew that could be illusory, that men concealed so much behind façades of strength. Or façades of vulnerability, come to that.
She would not allow her thoughts to go down that road—she would instead think of what remained to be done next. So far, the task of tracking Rayen Amaristoth had proved surprisingly simple. On their last day in Dynmar, she had suggested that they pay a visit to the shoemaker she had met with Rayen, recalling that Rayen had had some remaining items to pick up from him before he was on his way.
Now that she knew his true nature, Rianna marveled that a man such as Rayen Amaristoth had so endeared himself to the common folk. Once she would have taken it for proof of his goodness and generosity. Once, a mere week ago.
Clearly there was an advantage to procuring the loyalty of so many, even the powerless. It was a valuable lesson.
The day they were to set out from Dynmar, she and Ned had entered the workshop at dawn, where the shoemaker was already at work. With Ned keeping a respectful distance behind her, Rianna had greeted the man warmly, but with the reserve of a highborn lady. She knew if she were too friendly, she would lose his respect and excite suspicion.
“So it’s the friend of Lord Amaristoth—Lady Leya, wasn’t it?” said the shoemaker, looking wary. “He’s already left—I’d have thought you’d be with him. Wasn’t Lord Amaristoth escorting you to your family?”
Rianna trilled a lighthearted laugh. “He was,” she conceded, “but Lord Amaristoth is a man of the world, with many worldly concerns. Thus he appointed me a bodyguard and departed on his own errands. I don’t recall where he said he was going…”
“Well he was just here a few days ago,” said the shoemaker. “I believe he said he was heading toward the village of Korrit. Needed to see to it that his boots would last the journey.”
“Of course—Korrit,” said Rianna with a nod and a smile, as if the memory were coming back to her. “What such a man would have to do in such a dismal place, I can’t imagine.”
“Nor I, my lady,” said the man. “Were you needing something?”
As they left the shop, Rianna noticed that her hands were shaking. Still she managed to keep her posture erect and to maintain a stately pace, as if they were out for a stroll.
“You’re good,” said Ned, showing the first sign of humor she had seen in him since his return. “I would never have guessed you were anyone but the cheerful, exceedingly shallow Lady Leya.”
She had given him a sharp look, wondering how he could congratulate her, so guilelessly, for her skill at lying. She remembered the games they had played as children, where pretending to be other people had formed the backbone of their play. She remembered the way he was forever trying to rescue her, and she constantly chafing to have her own adventures. A coil of rage arose in her—it was not for women to have adventures, because they were women and they were weak, passive treasures to be desired. Desired, toyed with—hunted. But Ned was not to blame for this.
So in the following days, they aimed themselves at Korrit, which by all accounts was even more a backwater than Dynmar.
“My guess is he is picking up supplies there before he heads into the mountains,” said Ned. “Everyone believes that that is where Darien went. That’s where the Path is said to be.”
“Do you believe in the Path?” Rianna asked, picking desultorily at her skirts.
“I don’t know … and I don’t much care,” Ned said shortly.
“You sound angry.”
“Songs are nothing to me,” said Ned. “Once I tried to believe they mattered, because you love them so. But now I understand I care nothing for words spun to music by a man removed from danger. A blade sings louder.”
Rianna crooked a smile and said nothing. She knew she owed Ned quite a lot, and it would therefore be rude to point out that his views were more vehement than necessary. She wondered if he would ever forgive her, but it was too wearying a thought to pursue. Ned Alterra was his own man; it was not her place to dictate to him how to spend his days.
But there was an unmistakable kernel of truth in what he’d said. A blade sings louder. Each evening when they stopped for the day, she practiced with her dagger. Ned once offered to help her, but she pretended not to hear. And she tried not to think too much, as each motion triggered the release of a memory. A knife is intimate in the kill, she heard Rayen Amaristoth say, one of the echoes that rebounded in the smooth-walled cell of her mind.
Ned watched her, and she wondered if he felt what she did: that in those moments he may as well have been miles distant, a speck on an ever-receding shore.
Perhaps, around her, he had always felt that way.
One night, when the echoes became a cacophony that she could not escape, Rianna began spinning with her dagger in a series of slashes that did not even make sense, yet she could not stop; as the trees stood in vast disapproval and the frigid wind whipped at her face, she whirled faster and faster. Their tiny fire threw wavering light so she could see the ground, the stones, but nothing else beyond the black curtain of night. Ned was no more than a shadow, and then not there at all, as she spun and spun.
And then her blade clanged as it hit something hard, and she saw that Ned had entered the light and intercepted her knife with his own, stopping her dead. She glared; it had been a week that they had traveled and never had he dared interfere. “Leave me.”
“You’ll have to fight me first.”
There arose in her an unprecedented fury. Without a word, she attacked him, and later she wondered if she might have killed him that night, if he had not fought well. She hissed as she plunged her knife toward his knees—a blow that would maim. He leaped to avoid her blade and then swiped at her knife, knocking it from her grasp. Her fingers stung as the hilt was torn away and she nearly fell, gasping for breath and clenching her hands in fruitless anger.
“There are a few things I can teach you, if you’ll let me,” said Ned.
“Why—because I’m a girl, I need lessons from you?”
Ned bent to the ground to retrieve her dagger and presented it to her with a slight bow. In the faint light the insignia of her father’s house gleamed like a reminder, or reproach. “I am no weapons master,” he said. “But I learned a few tricks abroad. We share a common purpose—shouldn’t we help one another?”
“Are you saying there are things I can teach you?” she said, half mockingly.
Ned’s face remained expressionless, as if considering the question. At last, without looking at her, he said, “Many things.”
Rianna felt ashamed then, though still inexplicably angry. She turned away, but the next evening, she allowed him to join her within the circle of the firelight. No longer could she lose herself in the whirl of her own dance; that was lost to her. But she understood that to learn, she needed help, and Ned now seemed to have knowledge. Nothing could make him graceful, but there was a steady adeptness in his move
ments now, and speed.
“You know it’s likely that Rayen will kill us both,” Rianna said one night when they were done.
“I know,” said Ned. “Can I dissuade you from accompanying me?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you.”
“He is one of the finest swordsmen in the kingdom,” said Ned.
“Alas,” said Rianna, sheathing her knife and bending smoothly at the waist to collect sticks for firewood. “What a loss that will be for the kingdom.”
Most days, though, they did not speak. She was too preoccupied with her private world—and she suspected that he had his, as well. Rianna was awakened one night by Ned crying out in his sleep, a continuous wail that she knew would have shamed him to have her hear it. She could have gone to him, held him in her arms. Perhaps more—what did it matter now? Instead she turned over on her side and tried to sleep.
In the morning, Ned showed no sign that he remembered his nightmare—for so it must have been—and she wondered how much he held back from her now. He had been to the lands beyond the Blood Sea, faced the nameless perils there. In another time, she might have been jealous, demanded to hear detailed descriptions of the places so far beyond the scope of her experience. Now something held her back. Just as she would never tell him how it was to bed Rayen or to love Darien, there were myriad dark threads of thought that he might never share with her. This was something she now understood, without ever having to ask.
* * *
IT was in the second week of their journey that Ned found Rianna crying. She had gone into the woods to relieve herself and not returned, and he, becoming worried, at last followed where she had gone and called out for her.
“I’m here,” she said shakily, where she stood clinging to a tree. “There is nothing wrong.”
“Are you sure?”
Rianna raised her skirt to the level of her knee, exposing her bare leg to the cold. A trickle of dried blood stained her leg all the way down to her boots. “Do you see that?” she said. “Do you understand what it means?”
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