Kallandras heard the laughter.
It was brief, but heavy, sensual; it lingered like a caress that is both unexpected and forbidden, but not—not quite—undesired or undesirable; there was about it a satisfaction and a cruelty that was so natural it was the most striking element of the voice itself. Wilderness there. Power.
It was also kin to voices he had heard before, in a past that was never far enough away.
Demon. Kialli. Kin.
Devon.
He armed himself. Lifted his hand and armored himself by that motion.
And stepped into the hall.
The man’s scream had faded into a terrible silence.
Aidan was mute, as mute as the man, as terrified as he had ever been.
The man in black gloves came up to him then and grabbed both shoulders. He struggled; his captor released one shoulder for as long as it took him to swing an open hand.
Aidan understood the unspoken command better than most; he stilled at once.
The man spoke in the foreign tongue. No one answered.
He spoke again, his voice colder. Again there was no answer.
The next set of words was a question; Aidan thought his collarbone would snap at the momentary clenching of large hands.
No answer.
But that third time, that third time Aidan realized his captor was speaking to the light. The light itself seemed to be alive.
And it was wrapped around the man who’d come to help him. Wrapped around him, and then, somehow, sunk in as if it weren’t light at all, but a shining, shimmering liquid, something thick and oily and heavy.
The man’s body began to twitch and spasm; his hands reached up; he clawed at his face, drawing blood. Or it seemed like blood; it was dark a moment across a sheen of black-speckled blue light. The light seemed to pool there, where the wounds were, glimmering darkly.
Feeding.
This was going to be his fate.
He knew better than to struggle.
He knew better, but he did.
There were nine men in the room. Nine men, the boy, and the man that was—and he admitted this only to himself—of all his allies closest to him in nature, in ability. Devon ATerafin. Not a brother, never that; they had chosen different masters. But they had chosen masters, and they both knew the price and the value of service.
He walked quietly; silence was the first of the arts that he, a man born to speech and the vice of song, had had to master. His footfall did not disturb the man who seemed at the center of things, perhaps because his attention had been absorbed, momentarily, in the beating of a boy. A short task, that; not a challenge, not even a real distraction; he spoke above the sound of his own open palms.
It did not disturb his conversation.
But unfortunately, the creature to whom he spoke was not so absorbed, not so inattentive. “I believe,” he said, in his nonlanguage, “that we have another . . . guest.” He spoke in a voice that was in tone and texture so similar to Devon ATerafin’s that were he not bard-born Kallandras might not have heard the difference.
The man whose most distinguishable feature was his stature looked up from the height of a boy’s shoulders. His face was impassive. But he offered Kallandras none of the warning, none of the threatening conversation, that he had offered Devon.
Instead he turned to the eight men who stood adrift, and ill at ease, in the large hall.
“Kill him. Quickly.”
They stared in surprise; most of their attention was focused upon the ATerafin. Had they responded immediately, it wouldn’t have mattered. He had enough time to do what must be done.
Flicking the folds of his sleeve to the side, he pulled back his arm and threw an awkwardly shaped, ornate, dagger.
When it struck, Devon ATerafin screamed.
Screamed with its voice and his own.
The man in the black snarled in genuine surprise.
Then he lifted the boy—both hands still gripping his shoulders—and flung him half way across the hall; he was rubbish now, unwanted detritus.
A sword was drawn in the hall, a sword long and curved and slender of blade. It had a name; Kallandras thought he could almost hear the echo of it hang in the air between them. A bad sign, that.
In reply, he drew two blades of his own.
“I serve,” he said softly, “the Lady.”
“And I,” the large man replied, “the Lord.”
He did not like the odds; seven men to one. But he thought, as the giant closed, that at least four of those seven would wait for the sword’s edge to decide who was victim and who was victor.
It would be a short wait. Kallandras had rarely seen someone so large move so quickly.
Fire.
Now the fire came.
It singed his skin, but not from the outside; this fire was liquid, and it bubbled in his veins. He fought against it.
He understood pain well. He was Astari, after all.
There, and there, and there; three scars whose pain still echoed when the air was sea-heavy. He remember the fight they’d been taken in.
He remembered.
His enemy.
His enemy’s face. It came back to him in a dark so profound it seemed etched in light.
Pain, yes.
This was not the blade’s pain, but neither had that been, and the scars that he counted deepest had come from wounds that drew very little blood, in the end.
Save us, he told himself. Save us. Pull the blade. Throw it.
His hands rose as if they were not his hands; they felt too heavy, too large, too stiff.
Save us, he said again.
Those hands trembled, spasmed. He could not force them to rise. He could not find the fire in time.
Throat raw with screaming, he could still taste both blood and dryness, dryness and blood. Something was missing from his memory of fire.
Kallandras admired the man’s speed. Paired with his size, he thought it unmatched, possibly unmatchable. Sword flashed in the dimming light that coated the ATerafin who lay, knife in muscles of his thigh, across the floor.
The giant crossed over him as if he were a bridge, using the speed, the muscle, the weight—not of sword but of the arm and shoulder behind it. Kallandras had been trained to fight where fighting was necessary, but he was forced back by the speed of his opponent’s sword, by the strength of blows that could not be merely deflected and forgotten.
He did not know where the pain came from. Fire? It had a source, he was certain it must—but a drowning man doesn’t often ask where the mouth of the river is. The burning held him, held him, scoured him; he felt flesh singe and wither beneath its august touch, its ancient light.
Save us, the voice said again.
And this time he heard it, understood that it was distinct. Who, he thought, are we? Because he didn’t know. He didn’t know the answer to the question. Until the fires had come, he wouldn’t have known how to ask it.
We will die, fool, the voice said, and he recognized it as distinct, unknown. Desperate.
The fire. The fire. The fire.
But he’d felt pain before this. There was a time before this.
No, the voice said. There is only now, and we will perish in it if you will not act.
But he heard a voice, saw a face: Dark, night-eyed, grim.
He almost died, then, although he did not know it. Because he knew where the pain was coming from, what the wound was; what he would see if he listened, if he watched—and he did not wish to live it again. Had it been taken from him? Had it? He would part with it willingly.
Everything you are, we will own, the voice said. We are the Compact. We are the circle. We protect what must be protected. There is no duty that comes before our duty. Give your o
ath, and I will accept it. If I accept it, your life will no longer be your own.
There was a knife in his thigh. It hurt, not so much because there was pain—although it was there—but because, if not for his training, it wouldn’t have been the thigh that she hit. She. Black-haired, beautiful, wild.
He did not want to be here. He had suffered once, had lived through it once. He was bleeding. Why? Why, Allia?
She didn’t answer, of course. Treachery of this nature was its own special explanation, its own torment. He tried to stand. His leg was on fire. Poison, he thought. He remembered thinking, Poison. He almost didn’t care.
Make your decision. Your life—
Will no longer be.
Your own.
What more did he want, the heartless bastard? Had he not already made his choice? The proof of his cursed loyalty was there at his feet for all to see.
The circle widened, darkened. There was blood on his hands, the dead at his feet—the dead—Allia, dead, at his feet. Allia.
Pain. Fire.
He looked up, he remembered it now, looked up into those night eyes, those inhuman, unshuttered eyes, and he saw her killer. Saw—gods he had hated it then, he hated it now—that her killer was the words, that beneath the death with which he veiled every phrase and every silence, every move he made, he had fashioned himself loveless for the duty of protecting the Empire’s heart and soul: King Reymalyn and King Cormalyn. The Lord of the Compact. The man who fashioned, who forged, and who tested the Astari.
Devon was bleeding.
She had wounded him, and the wound was burning, burning, burning. Poison?
“Decide,” Duvari said. “After tonight you cannot avoid the decision.”
The knife.
The knife was in his thigh. She had missed—had she missed on purpose? Had she missed because she had doubts, had learned to love him? He wanted to believe that, but honesty—with himself—was his fatal flaw.
Pain.
I thought I was in love with her.
His fatal flaw. No, I was in love with her. Allia, what would you have been if you had chosen a different life, if you had chosen—
Life.
They had both chosen lives of death.
“I choose to serve the Lord of the Compact.”
“And what does that service entail?”
At his feet, the dead. He bowed his head. “Everything. Everything in the service of the Kings. No loyalty to any House will come before my loyalty to this service. No oath will come between me and the oath I make now.” He took a breath, started to speak, to say more—but Duvari, cold and grim, lifted a hand, silencing him.
His single act of generosity, of kindness, in the face of loss. “Who swears this oath?”
“Devon. Devon ATerafin.”
Devon ATerafin.
He was burning; his thigh was on fire; he understood what that fire meant now. His hands, twitching and shaking, rose; he could not see them; could barely feel them.
He knew that the dagger was in his thigh; that it was somehow working its way out of his flesh. Shaking, because fire was not the death he desired, he reached out and grabbed the knife’s hilt.
And pushed.
The screaming was not his; the pain was.
In the silence of what was left of himself, of his memories, Devon ATerafin began to recite the names of the Trinity. And as he did, he began to remember other wounds, other scars; to hold these, to keep them, to remake what he understood himself to be.
He caught the blade once in the tines of his own weapon. Caught it a moment, held it there, straining, testing.
The man grunted in surprise.
Kallandras spoke. “You serve the Lord of the Night, but the night is my Lady’s domain; if she is served in darkness, we are the brotherhood who serves her. But they do not know who you serve, nor who I serve.”
The man grunted again, forcing his sword in, in, in, its sharp edge seeking Kallandras’ exposed throat. “We both know there is no Lord of the Sun,” he said. “It’s a lie, it was always a lie.”
Lower, his voice.
“The rules of the Lord apply to his people,” Kallandras said, as if the giant had not chosen to speak. “And I will allow for those rules when I face men, and not the shadows of men. The light casts you, and the servant of the light casts you out.”
The man shoved then, shouldering weight, risking the edge of his enemy’s weapons. Kallandras broke free, dodged, ran nimbly over to the ATerafin’s side. He felt all eyes upon him; he had been bard-trained, and knew how to draw the attention when it suited his needs.
Had been Kovaschaii-trained, brother-defined. He knew what his needs were, and he exploited everything to that end.
The tall man’s eyes widened; he was not, Kallandras saw, a complete fool. “The Lord,” the man said, “rewards power. It is only power that he values.”
“Were you there, at Leonne’s dawn?” the bard asked, the words almost a song in themselves. “Were you there, to see what he saw, to hear what he heard? Can you know the mandate of the Lord himself?”
“The Lord,” the giant said, advancing slowly now, “rewards men.”
“The Lord rewards honorable men, or so it is said. The South once understood honor; they have cast it aside. Why else would the Lord have abandoned Leonne?
“Why,” he continued, pitching his voice, “else would the Lord have brought us here, in the service of Leonne’s rebirth?”
The man sneered. “You are fools,” he said to the six who waited, armed, for some sign, some turn in the course of the fight itself.
“But,” Kallandras continued, softly, “you have chosen to ally yourself with the Usurper, the Lord of Night; you are not a man; you are beneath the notice a man deserves.”
He came, then.
And Kallandras smiled.
Because he had been trained to fight when it was necessary, and the fight here was not. There was no pride in him, no desire to do the right thing; there was a death, it was waiting for his hand to deliver it.
“Silence,” he said, speaking with the voice. And then, as the roar left the man’s lips in a rush, he added, “Do not move.”
It would not hold him long. Kallandras knew it, accepted it as truth. The bardic voice worked best where its effects were felt but not noticed, where it encouraged behavior that was almost natural. Here, with death between them, there was no question of that; it was a test of wills, and in the end, the command the voice exerted would fail.
Had it been a matter of time, that might have concerned him. It was not. It did not.
Kallandras stepped in and gracefully separated the man’s head from his shoulders.
The sword twitched and shook as the body, free from its compulsion, reacted. Kallandras stepped out of its way, wincing only when it fell across Devon ATerafin. He waited a moment in silence, his weapons, like his arms, at his side.
When he looked up, the six men were farther away. He spared them that glance, but no more.
Quietly, and with a reverence that they could not miss, he knelt before the corpse of the man. “Brother,” he said softly. “You have been carried too long by a man who does not know your worth; too long by a man who serves your ancient enemies. Will you allow his killer to raise you? Or will the vengeance due your master’s killer be meted out as you see fit?”
“I vote for vengeance,” a voice said.
Kallandras smiled. “ATerafin. Kind of you to join me.”
“Not really,” Devon replied. He was shaking; Kallandras could hear the aftershock in his voice. But his body was almost still to the sight. “And I think I must be delirious. Tell me you aren’t speaking to that sword.”
“I think it unwise,” the bard said gravely, “to lie to a member of the Astari. But I fe
el compelled to warn you not to touch the blade.” He paused a moment, mock-gravity falling into its reality. “Are you—”
“I don’t know.”
All the answer he needed in those three words.
“We’ve lost the eight.”
“No,” a voice said, from the farthest reaches of the hall. “You haven’t. No thanks to either of you.”
Shining in the darkness was the orange glow of a pipe. And above it, face lit from beneath by a spark of natural fire, Meralonne APhaniel. “The eight have been taken by the Magisterium—”
“This is not magisterial—”
“And turned over immediately to the Imperial Guard,” he continued. “ATerafin, you are far too predictable.”
“And you aren’t predictable enough.” Devon rose, knees folding in toward chest and stretching just as slowly once he’d rocked his feet to touch ground. “What are you doing here?”
“Housekeeping. For all the thanks I receive in the doing. Although if the truth were known—and it will be, so I might as well deliver it myself—the young boy that Valedan chose as witness is largely responsible for my presence.”
“He knew enough about the magi that he could run to the Order from the Imperial Palace, unchecked, and be turned immediately over to you?”
The pipe glowed; it showed the edge of the mage’s smile. “Not exactly, no. I was . . . visiting an old friend.”
“Or were being visited by her?” Kallandra’s question.
“No, actually. In truth this escapade was met by you and he; she did not rouse me.”
“But?”
“I’m afraid, ATerafin, that you serve too completely the interests of another master, and he is not known for his gentle consideration of the magi.” He bowed, slightly. “I do not think that this is the time to ask, regardless.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said quietly, “there are detections and blessings that I believe it in your best interest to voluntarily—and immediately—undergo.”
Kallandras waited out the three-beat silence, thinking that it was always this way with men of a certain type: their quietest voice was reserved for a statement that allowed no opposition.
Devon bowed; the bow was stiff.
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