by Tanya Huff
He read the thick parchment packet twice.
The Empire had sent an assassin into Shkoder and not just any assassin, but one of the two who’d recently rescued His Imperial Highness and been released from her oaths as a result.
Technically, she was no longer an assassin.
Nor did she think she’d been sent.
She was staying with the bards.
“And just what exactly am I supposed to do with this information?” he asked himself, wondering why everything in Shkoder always seemed to come back to the bards.
* * * *
When Bannon had shared her head, it had been difficult to find where her thoughts ended and her brother’s thoughts began. Their shared lives had created a tangle of hers and his and theirs. Thinking about it afterward, she’d been surprised that Bannon had been able to pull free so easily when the chance came to return to his body. Thinking about that later still, during the long days she’d spent wandering the confines of the bardic suite in the Imperial Palace, she realized Bannon had always known which parts were him. Why shouldn’t he? She’d defined him all their lives.
Gyhard was different. He was always there, but he never tried to be where she was. She could think around him and be reasonably certain he wouldn’t become tangled in the thoughts.
Tucked into the thick window embrasure, Vree stared out over the Citadel wall and down at the city, her hands busy with a dagger and whetstone, needing no guidance after so many edges. If she wanted to leave, they couldn’t keep her. She was small enough to fit out of the window, and the jump to the top of the wall—her lip curled—would be less than challenging. The wall itself would be ridiculously easy to descend.
And then what?
Until Gyhard, Bannon had been the one person in her life. There was the army—a living, breathing, single creature—there were targets, and there was Bannon. Occasionally, bits of the army would become more separate than other bits—Emo had almost become a person—but it never lasted. Anyone outside the army was lumped under “other” and forgotten.
She’d had to notice Gyhard; he’d been wearing Bannon’s body. Then there’d suddenly been Karlene, just when she needed a hand and Bannon’s no longer reached for her. Now, there was Magda, who so desperately wanted to help she was next to impossible not to trust. Three people to take the place of Bannon and an army….
From a room higher in the four-story building, Vree could hear a voice lifted in song. From the other end of her floor, two instruments clashed, sorted themselves out, and began to make music. A breeze lifted her hair off her forehead, and Vree slipped down off the windowsill and inside. If the bards were going to watch her with the kigh, she wasn’t going to make it easy for them.
Slipping the dagger into its sheath, Vree caught sight of her reflection in the blade and suddenly wondered if the sifting of her past originated with her or with Gyhard. Was it the situation that drove her to self-discovery or was it him?
*Hey.*
*Hey, what?* he answered and her awareness of his presence grew.
*Are you messing around in my head?*
*I wouldn’t think of it.* She saw the memory of his smile as he spoke. Bannon’s smile. No. Bannon’s face. Gyhard’s smile. *I’m leaving everything exactly as I found it.*
*Liar.*
The bittersweet sense of inevitability accompanying that single word closed off further conversation.
There were a number of things Gyhard wanted to say, but he couldn’t, not without letting Vree know that he had access to more of her thoughts than she realized. Perhaps her need to consolidate her identity did come from him, he had no way of being sure.
He’d seen a man once who’d fallen from a bridge and broken his neck. Against all odds he’d lived, even though the closest thing around to a healer was the village midwife. The man could see and hear and speak, but he couldn’t move or do anything with the body he wore. Gyhard had wondered at the time how he’d kept from going mad.
He found himself wondering it again.
The bardic touching, the tracing of his boundaries, had left him restless. Strengthening his sense of self was quite probably the most dangerous thing they could do. He wanted …
He wanted Vree. To hold her. To love her. To be held by her. To be loved by her. He wanted them to be able to make a future together. Whether death would eventually have a part in that future, he wasn’t sure.
It had been enough just to be with her.
Had been. Now, he wanted a body of his own.
And this is after only one day of poking about at us. Carefully, he reached out and touched Vree’s memory of the moment she dragged him back from oblivion. She’d been willing at that instant to do anything rather than lose him. He was trying very hard to do the same.
* * * *
“Well, can you do it?”
Magda carefully anchored the scroll she’d been studying, one hand resting lightly on a faded line drawing of a caraway plant. Talent made up only a very small part of being a healer and healer’s apprentices spent a lot of their evenings in the library. She twisted lithely until she could look the Bardic Captain in the face. “I’m not even sure I know what it is I’m supposed to do.”
“Find the abom … Gyhard a body with no one dying to provide it.”
“Uh-huh. And how am I supposed to do that?”
Liene scowled, drummed her fingers against the head of her cane, and finally stomped away.
Magda shook her head and went back to her reading. It was a good thing both her mother and Stasya had warned her that the old woman’s bark was worse than her bite. Although Stasya had pointed out that Liene still had all her teeth.
They’d warned her about a number of other things as well, but she’d happily disregarded most of them.
Sighing, Magda brushed a curl away from her face. “A body without a kigh is a dead body and I can’t just shove his kigh into a dead body.” She made a disgusted moue at the thought. From the mice the cats used to leave on the steps of the keep to those the healers had not been able to save, dead bodies were not among her favorite things.
* * * *
The pass between Shkoder and the Empire looked as though a giant had carved it out of the Smitts Mountains with a knife. Sheer rock walls rose up on either side of a broad passage years of use had made as easy to travel as any lowland road. Long before the current king’s grandmother had convinced their duc to join the kingdom, the miners of the mountain principality of Somes had traded iron ore with the First Province of the Empire through that pass, picks and shovels amending what nature began.
As Jazep approached the guard tower on the Shkoder side, he could just barely make out through the early morning haze the Empire’s sunburst flying next to the crowned ship at the midpoint of the pass.
Two of the three guards came hurrying out to meet him.
“Jazep? Is that you?”
A huge smile split the bard’s grizzled beard. “Nastka! I was wondering why I hadn’t seen you in town!”
“Now you know.” Tossing her helm to her companion, she returned his hug with equal enthusiasm, leather armor creaking. “What brings you up here? Not crossing surely? We had two of those Imperial fledglings up here during my last shift. Who was with them? I know, Tesia. She took them to the halfway point and said she was letting them feel the difference you get in earth kigh when you’re standing on your own soil. She wasn’t kidding me, was she?”
“No. The kigh can always tell when you’ve come home.” He shifted his feet and his smile faded. “I backtracked a disturbance in the kigh to the pass.”
“Do tell.” Nastka retrieved her helm. “Trouble?”
Jazep shrugged. “I don’t know. Troubling. It’s almost as if they’re afraid.”
“The kigh? Afraid? I don’t like the sound of that.”
“No, neither do I.” He turned and looked toward the Empire. “Can you remember what and who came through five days ago?”
“I can do better than that. Mi
la—oh, this is Mila, by the way.” The second guard nodded shyly. “It’s her first shift at the pass. Jakub’s up at the beacon. You remember him, skinny guy with too much red hair?”
“I remember.”
“Of course you do. Mila, go get the lists.” As the younger woman ran back to the tower, Nastka grinned proudly. “Duc’s seeing to it that everyone in the guard can read and write.”
Jazep had actually heard that from the Duc of Somes herself, but the disturbance in the kigh had driven it right out of his mind. “Her Grace has a lot of good ideas.”
“Her Grace is going to put this place in a song.”
“I saw Jelena when I went through town.”
Nastka’s grin softened and her dark eyes shone. “She’s grown into a beautiful woman, hasn’t she?”
“She has.” Jazep reached out and gripped the guard’s shoulder. “Just like her mother.”
A few moments later, he frowned down at the rough sheet of paper and shook his head. “Two wagons and a single traveler. Not exactly a busy day. Do any of them stand out?”
“Well, the old man …” Mila began, then lapsed into an embarrassed silence when both Jazep and Nastka turned to look at her.
“Go on,” Jazep urged, using just enough charm to put the girl at ease.
“It’s just he was so old. I couldn’t believe he was able to walk at all, let alone cross the mountains from the Empire into Somes. He said he was looking for his family.”
“Is that all?” It was difficult to imagine how one old man could so upset the kigh.
“No.” Mila shook her head, frowning as she remembered. “As he walked away, he said, ‘Come, Kait.’ But he was all alone.”
Four
“His Imperial Majesty desires your presence in his private audience chamber.”
On his way out of the palace to an assignation with a very obliging young wine merchant, Bannon stared in disbelief at the guard blocking his path. “The Emperor wants to see me? Why?”
“I did not presume to inquire.” She managed to sound simultaneously sanctimonious and disapproving.
“But I bet you know.” The ex-assassin grinned, his tone evoking the shared camaraderie of uniform.
For a moment, he thought she was going to tell him, then, after a barely perceivable shake of her head, she snapped, “I know only that His Imperial Majesty desires your presence in his private audience chamber.”
It’s trouble and she’s keeping her distance. Imperial assassins were trained to recognize danger in all its unexpected forms and, while his mind raced, trying to work out what he’d done to merit the personal attention of the Emperor, Bannon fought to calm the pounding of his heart. Whatever the danger, he wasn’t going to get out of it on the edge of a blade. He needed information. “Have I time to change into a clean tunic?”
“No.” Her eyes remained focused on the wall just behind his left shoulder.
“Prince Otavas is with the Empress; I should let him know where I am in case he sends for me.” Considering he was the prince’s personal bodyguard, it was a reasonable request.
“If His Majesty decides His Highness should know your location, His Majesty will have His Highness informed.”
Big trouble. She turned, beckoned with her pike, and Bannon fell into step beside her, still with no idea of what he’d done. His unease grew as they walked through a palace complex crawling with courtiers and servants and the less easily defined classes between and passed no one he knew. By the time they reached the narrow flight of stairs leading up to the section of the palace reserved exclusively for the Emperor, sweat stained his tunic. Not even the tight muscles of the guard’s butt moving under her uniform kilt as she led the way up the stairs distracted him for more than a moment or two and, as he climbed, he became increasingly conscious of the empty space at his back. Vree, where are you when I need you!
The half-dozen soldiers of the First Army waiting in the antechamber ignored him until he reached the small, iron-bound door. Then the corporal stepped forward and demanded his weapons. Bannon had been at the palace long enough to know that no one approached the Emperor armed but something in the corporal’s tone lifted the hair on the back of his neck.
Slowly and deliberately, he drew the long dagger off his belt, unbuckled the two wrist sheaths, slid the extra throwing dagger out of the sheath strapped to his left shoulder, and removed the slender blades from the ornate leather tongues of his high sandals. Under other circumstances, he would’ve found the corporal’s expression hilarious as he reached under his kilt and drew the three throwing stars out of their strap on the front of his sling. As it was, he merely added them to the pile and waited for the door to be opened.
When it closed behind him, habit scanned the room for avenues of escape—there were none. Marshal Usef, commander of the First Army, stood rigid behind the throne, his face below his crested helm twisted with rage, both hands crushing his heavy belt as though that grip alone kept his hands from Bannon’s throat. Seated on the throne, his calm a stark and frightening contrast to the marshal’s agitation, the Emperor lifted a hand and beckoned him forward, rings flashing in the lamplight.
With his mind shrieking, “Danger!” loud enough to drown out the pounding of his heart, Bannon dropped to one knee at the edge of the dais, needing Vree beside him so badly he almost saw her there.
“Is the tale you told my son the truth?” the Emperor asked. In spite of the gentle tone, each word emerged as a separate and distinct threat.
Startled, Bannon looked up. What could he have told the prince that would …? Then, all at once, he understood. Part of the story had slipped out when Otavas asked him why he was so angry with his sister and, once started, the rest just seemed to follow.
Silk whispered against silk as His Imperial Majesty leaned forward. “There are no secrets from me in this Empire,” he said. “Did your sister save the spirit of the man who led a rebellion against me? A man who intended to take the life of an Imperial Prince? And did you lie to me about it, telling me that this man was dead?”
His mouth gone too dry for speech, the stink of his own fear in his nose, Bannon nodded.
“Treason,” Usef hissed, and his hand moved from his belt to close around the jeweled hilt of his sword.
Even weaponless, Bannon knew he could defeat the marshal. But then what? His mind raced. There were guards outside the small door to the antechamber and undoubtedly guards outside the larger door leading to a less private audience hall. One word from the Emperor and a good part of the first army would be in the room. He couldn’t fight them all. Not alone. But if he silenced the Emperor? A fist closed around his throat, and he couldn’t breathe. Lay hands on the Emperor? He didn’t think he could. He didn’t want to die. “Majesty, I …”
“You lied to protect your sister,” the Emperor cut him off. “I understand that.”
Bannon’s eyes widened as he suddenly realized that the treason Usef referred to was not the treason he’d committed in presenting Prince Otavas’ body for Gyhard’s use—a direct breaking of his vow to protect the Imperial Family. The Emperor only knew that Gyhard was alive, and he understood about the lesser treason of the lie. Bannon’s relief was so great, he had to fight to keep himself from trembling and at that moment he’d have walked through fire had the Emperor commanded.
“Why the bards lied, I do not yet understand.” For a moment, the Imperial voice evoked shadowed rooms and heated iron. “But I will. Unfortunately, as they are both away from the Capital training our native-born bards, answers will have to wait.” Bannon found himself caught in a dark gaze that seemed to strip away skin and muscle and bones and stare straight into his heart. “For now, we will have no further lies between us.” the Emperor leaned back. “Marshal, relax. This young man is not a danger to me. He wants to help. Don’t you?”
“Yes, Majesty.” His voice sounded hoarse, barely under his command. “Yes, Majesty,” he repeated; clearer, firmer. “I want to help.”
“Good
.” Imperial approval touched him like a benediction, filled for a moment the empty space where Vree had been, then disappeared. “I want this Gyhard back in the Empire. I want him to pay for his crimes. I want you to go to Shkoder and bring him back to me because, after the great wrong he did you, I believe you have the right to bring him to justice.”
Bannon ground his teeth at the thought of Gyhard paying for what he’d done, paying for every instant he’d spent usurping Bannon’s body. And then, through the hate, he remembered. “But, Majesty, my sister …”
“The sister he took from you? The sister he controls?”
“Controls?”
The Emperor spread his hands. “How else would you explain her denying her training? Her denying everything she lived for? Her denying you?”
How else?
Back at last in his own body, Bannon felt Gyhard turn his head to stare at Vree, felt the surge of the other man’s emotion, and heard his voice say, “I love you.”
Then he pushed, viciously throwing the intruder from his body, and was alone.
“NO!” Vree’s denial held as much pain as rage.
Because he’d shared her mind for so long, he knew what she was going to do and why and he was powerless to stop her.
How else could he explain her choosing Gyhard over him? Bannon’s hands opened and closed as though they held the other man’s life and slowly crushed it.
“I give you your sister’s life. I want only the one who was Aralt.”
Not as much as Bannon did. “But, Majesty, the bards said they couldn’t remove Gyhard without hurting Vree.” It was, he told himself, the only reason he’d supported the lie. He even half believed it.
“If you return your sister to the Empire, I will see to it that the bards will be able to do exactly as I command them. We are no longer dependent on Shkoden bards.”
It might work. Vree would hesitate, unable to raise her blade against him. He would capture her, blindfold her, and contain Gyhard until they returned to the Empire. Rubbing his palms together, Bannon frowned. “Majesty, if the bards are protecting him, I won’t be able to get close to Vree. The moment those kigh things tell them I’m coming, they’ll hide her.”
