Daughter of Blood

by Helen Lowe

  “The arms of Yorindesarinen are one, as well as three. To realize our full power you will need helm, sword, and shield.”

  Nhenir had only disclosed the first part of that statement in Stoneford, but Malian had already begun to suspect the second. Suspicion, however, was not the same as certainty—especially since Raven had told her that when Fire’s scouts reached the ancient battlefield, Yorindesarinen’s shield was broken. By the time the Darksworn returned in greater force, the pieces had disappeared. “So what you’re saying is that I may never fully inherit Yorindesarinen’s legacy.” Malian felt a hollowness that was no longer just hunger, yet was cursed if she would accept defeat before she had even begun.

  Benches scraped, snaring her attention as a group of muleteers rose. “Still, you were remade once.” The reminder was as much for herself as Nhenir. “And if you’re one as well as three, shouldn’t you know where the parts of the shield are?”

  The muleteers stopped just short of the doorway, debating where to go next. Beneath the hubbub, Nhenir’s mindvoice remained cool. “When the shield broke, the bond between us must have broken, too. I have not felt its presence from that day to this.”

  “So the remnants could be anywhere.” I must not lose hope, Malian thought, as the drovers she had entered with occupied one end of the recently vacated table. The muleteers decided on the cockfight those outside had been discussing, and clumped out as off-duty town guards crowded in. Malian, about to start toward Raven, stayed where she was. Her eyes watched the room, but her mind returned to the frost-fire sword’s bargain with Amaliannarath, the Darksworn power that had subsequently died bringing the House of Fire to Haarth. The sword’s pact had bound Nhenir to silence as well—and who knew what other bargains the weapons might have made?

  “I am still yours, as I was Yorindesarinen’s until she bade me leave.” Nhenir’s mindtone was silver-edged darkness, reflecting the moon for which it was named.

  But if, Malian reasoned, Yorindesarinen ordered the helm to leave when she lay dying, why not give the same command to the sword? Admittedly, the blade might lack Nhenir’s ability to transport itself—except that this was the weapon that had placed a geas on a prince of the Darksworn, and through him his entire House. “So you must have been capable of preventing your own capture. Did Yorindesarinen foresee the geas?” she asked silently, despite knowing the frost-fire sword did not speak. “Did she order you to allow yourself to be taken?”

  At the bar, an ale keg toppled with a crash as a patron lurched into it. Confusion followed as the man tried to regain his footing, the woman serving behind the bar moved to retrieve the keg, and those closest made valiant efforts, half serious, half sport, to roll it away. Malian took advantage of the uproar to head toward Raven’s table, but felt a telltale twitch between her shoulders as soon as she moved. The sensation was still present when she seated herself. “I’ve caught someone’s attention,” she murmured. The corner location meant her back was half turned to the room, concealing the movement of her lips but increasing her reliance on Raven’s vigilance.

  “I thought we’d picked up a burr.” He spoke around a mouthful of food to disguise the shape of his words.

  About the time we came out of the pass, Malian thought, knowing he had a good instinct for such things—as did she, even without using her seeker’s sense. Turning on her stool, she raised her hand for a server and took the opportunity to assess the room. “Nothing obvious,” she said, once the nearest server had acknowledged her.

  Raven was the one most likely to have been recognized, since the hedge knight was a persona he had used through long years of travel among the realms of Haarth. Crow, on the other hand, was as different from either Carick the River scholar or Heris the scribe as it was possible to look. Malian had even woven the hair on either side of her face into the narrow braids favored in Lathayra, working in crow feathers pulled from a hedge outside Stoneford to give color to her mercenary’s name. “Could Ser Raven have old enemies here?”

  “It’s possible.” The server finally reached their corner, and Malian ordered ale and whatever meal was being served that night. “We should see the town,” Raven added, as the man departed. “There’s a night fair where we can buy supplies and I’ve been told of a cockfight. We could make money if the bets fall right.” And draw our watcher out, Malian assumed, since gambling and exploring Aeris had not formed part of their plans until now.

  In fact, she had already seen most of what the town had to offer when she came here a year ago, pursuing rumors of the Lost. Now she traced patterns in the spilled ale on the tabletop, sword-for-hire fashion, and monitored the surge and clatter of the crowd. Even after their meals arrived, she still kept her seeker’s sense tuned to the room—but their watcher, she decided, must be adept at concealment.

  Feigning absorption with her meal, she also reflected on how much Raven had slipped back into his hedge knight persona since leaving Stoneford. Obviously that suited their current situation, but Malian wondered if he sensed that she found the old Normarch relationship more comfortable. Which I do, she conceded. Yet however much she might feel easier traveling with Raven, Malian could still see the warrior from the Cave of Sleepers—Aravenor—in his face and manner. Now she examined the latter name silently, as she had several times since learning his true identity in the Stoneford shrine, and admitted that she found it disconcerting to contemplate just how long he had lived: first sleeping through aeons in the cavern outside of time, then living a thousand years more, here on Haarth.

  With you and the rest of your House concealed behind the visors of the Patrol, she thought, still concentrating on her bowl. He was not just any Patroler, though. The man sitting opposite her was both the Patrol’s Lord Captain and a prince of the Darksworn who had been alive when Yorindesarinen died . . . Nonetheless, Malian’s strongest recollection from her vision of the Cave of Sleepers was the weariness and grief stamped into Aravenor—Raven’s—face as he lay sleeping with Yorindesarinen’s sword on his breast.

  With the weight of Yorindesarinen’s sword on his breast, she amended now. In Stoneford, Raven had told her that he was the last from all three Lines of the Blood of Fire, and Malian could only imagine the burden of trying to hold an entire House together under those circumstances. She did not need to ask herself whether he had proven equal to the task—and not just because Fire had followed him into their long sleep and later a new life on the world of Haarth, or because he was still their Lord Captain. Earlier in the year, she had also seen him hold a band of beleaguered Normarchers together against a far larger force comprising were-hunts and Darksworn facestealers.

  Definitely not uncomplicated, Malian reflected, scraping up the last of her meal. When she pushed the empty bowl away and looked up, Raven had his most hard-to-read expression turned to the room. I need to remain cautious, she thought, even if he did bring me the sword and I have pledged to take his Darksworn House as my own. Or perhaps, she added wryly, because that’s what I’ve done.

  She met Raven’s eyes, keeping her expression that of Crow, a sword-for-hire of dubious repute. “How long does this night fair stay open? Or shall we try the cocking pit?”

  15

  The Night Fair

  In the end they split up, deciding that was more likely to draw the watcher out and also determine which of them had attracted the unwelcome attention. Raven joined the off-duty guards, who had decided to attend the cockfight as well, while Malian made her unhurried way toward the night fair. She stopped to look at anything that might catch a sword-for-hire’s interest, from a cobbler stitching boots beneath the pool of light outside his narrow shop, to the display in an armorer’s window. Even without Nhenir’s invisible visor lowered, the helm’s power enabled her to sift surrounding sounds: the voices of merchants who still had their doors open, calling out to passersby, and a woman humming as she closed shutters. Out of sight down a side lane, a boy was playing with a puppy, and further back along the street, someone was following c
arefully after her. Malian did not need to look around to know; she could hear it in the pattern of the footsteps.

  A man, she thought, because there was considerable weight to the tread, however unobtrusively her follower moved. She paused outside a second armorer’s and pretended to watch the smith, who was still working. Behind her, the footsteps stopped. When she moved on, the footsteps resumed, matching their pace to hers. Malian crossed diagonally to a harness maker’s door, glancing casually around as she did so, but there were too many passersby to identify the follower. Cautiously, she extended her psychic awareness, but could detect no hint of power use.

  If she had not known that Crow looked both dangerous and down-at-heel, Malian would have assumed her tail was a thief. As it was, every sense was alert as she turned the next corner and saw the night fair, a large two-story building that formed one side of the main square. Once Malian drew closer, she saw that people were already streaming in and out. The pattern of footfalls was still with her as she strolled into the market and surveyed the first aisles, where the goods were either displayed on planks and trestles or in booths beneath colorful awnings.

  The array was far less varied than in the River cities, but Malian took her time among the stalls that offered dried food and other supplies for travelers. Aeris being a caravan town, business was brisk, but by the time she reached the last stall, Malian had narrowed her tail to one of three men. All three had emerged from the street she walked down and were lingering in the same part of the fair. One looked like a mason, with stone dust in his hair and clothes, while the second could have been any muleteer frequenting the Aeris taverns. The third man was an Aralorni archer, similar to those she had seen at the Midsummer tourney in Caer Argent.

  Malian surveyed the surrounding lanes in an undecided fashion, then crossed two aisles to reach a booth displaying daggers. Most were of Ijiri make, although there were several Emerian blades and one matched pair in the Ishnapuri style. She nodded to the booth-holder and bent to inspect a stiletto; by the time she straightened, the archer had arrived. He ignored the knife merchant’s greeting and spoke directly to her. “You look like you know your weapons.” His voice, broad with the vowels of Aralorn, was rough as gravel. “What would you recommend?”

  Malian let her expression shift into a sword-for-hire’s wariness. The archer might be tall, like most Aralorni, but his shoulders and forearms were thick with a swordsman’s muscle, and instead of the Aralorn longbow he carried a crossbow across his back. He also had a hatchet thrust through his belt, a shortsword at his hip, and at least one dagger that she could see. His stance was relaxed, his hands resting on his belt buckle, but the eyes regarding her were hard. Just for a second Malian’s truth and seeker’s senses flickered, and she saw the archer’s face shift, as though the eyes looked out through a mask.

  Facestealer, she thought, and her stomach muscles tightened although she kept her voice neutral. “That would depend on what you’re looking for.”

  “Well now,” he said, and although his tone was casual, almost amused, the hard eyes narrowed. “I thought that was you. But you’re not what I expected.”

  From the corner of her eye, Malian saw the booth-holder step back—as she would, too, in his place. The current of danger was palpable as the pine and dust on the night breeze. A stronger draught made the lanterns sway, and the shadows around them danced. “I?” she demanded, holding to Crow’s tone, with just a hint of truculence coloring the next, logical question. “Are you hiring swords, then?”

  The wind gusted again, skittering dust and litter through the market, and the facestealer’s teeth bared, just a little. “My kinsman”—the rough voice paused—“my esteemed kinsman, does not hire swords. But he has been seeking a pair of gray-clad couriers and gave me a mark to follow. A signature, you might say.” The hardness in the eyes was tempered with appraisal. “The signs became confused in Caer Argent, with the trail appearing to depart both east and south, and by the time the eastern path disappeared, the southern one had grown cold. I decided to retrace my route to the River, to which all the couriers eventually return.” A smile touched his mouth but did not reach his eyes. “Then today I picked up my mark again, stronger than ever. You, though, are no courier.”

  Malian’s mind raced, guessing that his mark must have attached itself to Jehane Mor’s medallion, which the herald had given her to wear when she walked the path of earth and moon. Later, when she tried to give the medallion back, Jehane Mor had made it a permanent gift. The shift must have confused the tracking spell and drawn the facestealer to her instead of the herald. Malian resisted the urge to touch the disc, which she wore concealed beneath her shirt, and spoke with a sword-for-hire’s flatness. “I don’t know you or your kinsman and I’ve no truck with heralds of the Guild, if that’s what you mean by gray-clad couriers.”

  Phrases like “troublemakers” and “fetch the guards” filtered to her through Nhenir, but she kept her attention on the facestealer, whose appraising gaze had narrowed. “You talk like a sword-for-hire, too—out of where, Lathayra? But your stink says native power, only with something else coiled in there that doesn’t feel quite right . . .” If the archer had been a dog, or the wolf his manner suggested, Malian thought he would have sniffed at her. “A riddle, but I leave hunting out answers to others. And I don’t much care for power users, outside my own kindred.” He cocked his head, considering. “Or within it, come to that. Best to kill you and have done.”

  He drew the axe and swung in one swift, fluid movement. If Malian had not been expecting an attack, the blade would have split her skull. Yet even as he moved, her mind was burrowing into the wooden handle, splintering it to shards as the weapon cleaved the air. A voice screamed as her opponent cursed and snatched at his sword, which Malian’s power told her was warded against magic. She threw the dagger from her wrist sheath, and the facestealer’s smile was contemptuous as he deflected it with the sword. He was fast, she gave him that, but so was she, and his contempt slipped as she drew the frost-fire sword before he could counterstrike. The blades clashed together—and his sheared off below the hilt.

  The facestealer spun clear of Malian’s descending blow, a long, wickedly curved dagger appearing in his hand. This time he was more reluctant to engage and they circled, alert for weakness. Throughout the night fair the lanterns grew dim, and Malian’s psychic awareness sharpened as shadows crept out from every corner. The facestealer hesitated, as though weighing something that did not quite fit, before taking a wary step back from their conflict: “But perhaps not today, after all.”

  “’Ware!” Nhenir’s alert flared simultaneously with the psychic surge that heralded a portal opening. All around the night fair the creeping shadows leapt forward like hunting spiders, at the same time as a knot of blackness fell from the roof, unfurling into a weighted net. Malian sprang aside before she was entangled and slashed at the descending mesh, which curled away from the frost-fire blade like paper disintegrating into ash. It was steel, though, she realized, and not bespelled in any way despite the surrounding shadows.

  The facestealer had dived clear at the same time she did, but an edge of net had still caught him across one shoulder. “Thanir!” he spat, flinging it clear and moving back-to-back with Malian as they both edged further away. For now, she was willing to let the alliance stand, despite guessing he would abandon her as swiftly should circumstances change. The fairgoers were shouting and shoving to flee the warehouse, but a wind howled out of the shadows, snapping the doors and windows shut. Those trapped inside screamed, but Nhenir whispered in Malian’s mind, showing her how to force the closures wide again. She hesitated, reluctant to play her hand too soon, and instead reached up as though securing her headwrap and lowered the helm’s invisible visor.

  The moment Nhenir’s dawn eyes closed over hers, illusion fell away and the shadows acquired the shape of warriors in barbed armor and grotesque helmets. Yet only one, Malian thought, a tall figure in black armor that was honed to s
pur points at elbow and shoulder, had genuine substance. His visor was up as he stepped clear of the densest shadow, revealing a face of austere planes and sculpted angles. Around the periphery of the fair, those who had not been able to escape fell silent, huddling behind booths and beneath trestles.

  “Well, well.” The newcomer’s voice was smooth and dark as obsidian; the language he spoke sounded like strangely accented Derai. “I thought you intended murdering the hire-sword in your usual way, Emuun. Instead it seems you truly have turned native, recruiting their mercenaries to guard your back.”

  Emuun grunted. “Need breeds strange alliances, Thanir.” His tone was conversational, but he stayed back-to-back with Malian. “And this mercenary has an impressive sword.”

  “Indeed. Aranraith sent me after you, but the sword may interest him as well.” Thanir did not so much as glance Malian’s way, making it clear any interest did not extend to the swordbearer. At her back, Emuun snarled a curse.

  “With a net? That is beyond a jest, even for Aranraith.”

  Thanir’s expression did not change. “Aranraith does not jest, and neither does Salar, you know that. They require you to answer for your treachery in Emer.”

  “Treachery?” Emuun sounded as though he was testing the word. “You know better than that, Thanir, even if Aranraith does not.”

  “Do I?” The obsidian voice was soft. “It appears I don’t. Not at all.”