Sworn To Conflict: Courtlight #3

by Edun, Terah

  “He says Caemon was gravely wounded. The burns will take time to heal. He can be moved, but only slowly, and he can’t be woken because of the pain,” Inga translated loosely.

  Ciardis nodded. “Tell him okay. I understand.”

  Inga relayed her thoughts.

  “We’ll move him back to camp,” Ciardis murmured softly to herself. “He’ll be treated there.”

  Inga relayed that, as well, and the old healer reached forward to grip Ciardis’s wrist with a surprisingly strong grip. “No!” he shouted.

  She turned to him, startled.

  The fierce look in his eyes was alarming. With confusion, she turned to Inga. “What did you say to him?”

  Inga frowned. “Only what you said aloud. Hold on.”

  She spoke to the old man in the same language as before. He responded back furiously.

  Inga sat back on her heels, her face thoughtful, and said, “He says the Algardis Army will imprison Caemon. They will hurt him. He won’t allow his patient to go back to his jailers.”

  Sighing, Ciardis understood. She raised her eyes to look into the old man’s. “I’d never allow that. He is my family. My kin. I will care for him.”

  Inga relayed the words, but the man didn’t look convinced.

  Ciardis tapped the corner of her golden eyes and traced a finger just over the corner of Caemon’s right eye, “Schwester. Bruder. Family.”

  A tear descended down her cheek and the old man’s face softened. He spoke.

  Inga translated, “He says your heart says what your words cannot. He will release him into your care.”

  Ciardis nodded and thanked him.

  Turning back to Sebastian, she said, “It’s time for us to leave.”

  Chapter 20

  Ciardis had had enough. Enough of the lies. Enough of the people she loved getting hurt. It was time to end this. Barnaren would tell them what was really going on in the North—today.

  She looked back with worried eyes over her brother’s deathly still form. Members of Thanar’s sanctuary had rigged a sling between two horses with handlers riding on either side for support. She was nervous but she knew they were no more than thirty minutes from camp, where he’d get the care and attention of the best healers in the North.

  As they came into camp Ciardis broke off from the main body to personally escort her brother to the healing center. Entering the tent she could do nothing but wait as the healers did their jobs. Hovering, she stepped back after the second healer nearly elbowed her in the face with a tentacle. She hadn’t been shy when facing down the healers of the Ameles Forest to get through to Terris, but then again the healers of Ameles didn’t have the assortment of claws for hands, tentacles on their arms, or eyes in the backs of their heads that the diverse grouping of healers of the North did.

  “Step outside,” one ordered.

  That’s where she put her foot down. “I’m not leaving him.”

  Stubbornness clouded her eyes as she stood as tall as she could. They weren’t impressed. When she tried to stay, one of them physically threw her out of the tent. Battlefield healers were less gentle in most respects.

  Furious, she scrambled up from the mud only to come face-to-face with a duo she hadn’t seen since her first day awake in the Algardis camp. The Truthsayer and the Lord Chamberlain. Spitting out mud, Ciardis glared at them. All right, she had hoped they had died in the spidersilk attack, but, well, hope was futile in this case.

  Wiping her mouth furiously, she snarled, “I assumed the two of you had gone back to the Imperial courts.” More polite than, “I wish you had died by poisoned claws.”

  Lady Arabella smiled craftily. “We had hoped, but unfortunately the emperor has need of us here still.”

  “Oh really?” Ciardis said. Her curiosity was piqued and a dark wariness had settled in her stomach. These two were trouble. Where they went ominous warnings followed, and she had no desire to see them stay here for one minute more.

  “Yes,” said the Lord Chamberlain as he looked her over with disdain.

  “Perhaps you could help us with our task?” Lady Arabella said.

  ‘ Ciardis’s hackles went up. “I don’t think so.”

  Lady Arabella looked toward the tent behind Ciardis. “Your brother is back, yes? I have questions for him, too.”

  Ciardis’s eyes widened and she flinched back as if slapped. “Don’t you go near my brother, or so help me god—”

  “The questions could be answered just as easily by you,” cooed Arabella.

  Silence. Ciardis read the undertone of her words carefully. If she didn’t answer Arabella’s questions, her brother would be forced to. And she didn’t think him being unconscious would stop Arabella. The woman gave her the feeling that she wanted to wake him and administer the truth serum this very moment if she could.

  “What kind of questions?”

  A smile blossomed on Arabella’s face.

  “I assure you, the answers will come easily to you. They’re about the nature of your Weathervane gifts, after all.”

  The Lord Chamberlain spoke. “Shall we go somewhere...more private?”

  “Not while I’m still living,” said Ciardis softly. “If we do anything, it’ll be right here.

  Arabella smiled. “It wouldn’t be secluded, per se. Just more quiet.”

  “Perhaps the horse run?” the Lord Chamberlain suggested.

  Ciardis was reluctant, but that area was open and in full view of the soldiers on guard duty. They couldn’t attack her there. Not without anyone else seeing. She thought about calling Vana, Kane, or Sebastian. That would have been a smart decision, but she worried that they wouldn’t want to come. Wouldn’t want to stick their necks out for her brother. The same brother who had betrayed the empire not once but twice.

  She nodded stiffly. “Let’s go.”

  When they arrived in the large snow-strewn field where a herd of horses munched on dried hay, she turned to them with her arms crossed defiantly.

  “So what are your questions?”

  Arabella started to unwrap the fabric on her sleeve.

  “One more move,” Ciardis said, “and I’ll cut off your hand.”

  Arabella looked up at her in surprise and then let loose a peal of laughter. “Oh, dear girl. I merely wish to show you something.”

  Ciardis was still wary. “Slowly,” she commanded, gesturing with her knife at Arabella’s wrist.

  Lady Arabella slowly removed the first flap from her wrist, letting the fabric fall to trail and flutter in the air while the rest of her wrist stayed bandaged. Ciardis noticed a subtle raised bump along the underside of her wrist, where the truth serum lay in its folds.

  From the top of the fabric she had carefully unwrapped she plucked a small silver disc that shone in the sun. She tossed it to Ciardis, who barely caught it as it flew through the air, catching the sun’s rays as it went. Too late she realized it might be a ploy as she had dropped her knife in her fumbling attempt to catch it.

  But neither the Lord Chamberlain nor Lady Arabella moved.

  “Well?” said Lady Arabella. “Do you recognize it?”

  Ciardis turned the silver disc this way and that. It was made of smooth metal worn by time and hands. In the center of one side was an infinity symbol that had been carved into the metal with precision. On the other, nothing.

  Holding the lightweight disc up in one hand, she said, “Am I supposed to recognize it?”

  “It was in your brother’s tent,” said Lady Arabella.

  Ciardis shrugged.

  “No idea what it is,” Ciardis said.

  “And you don’t feel a surge of power from it?” said Arabella slowly. “Because, you see, Ciardis, that belonged to your mother.”

  Ciardis’s head came up in surprise. “My mother? Then how did Caemon get it?”

  “Exactly my question,” Lady Arabella mused while tapping her hand impatiently. “Because, your brother has never stepped foot in court, or we would know. He has had no
contact with your mother’s allies over the years, and, yes, we would know that, too. So how did a medallion she always kept on her, one that disappeared when she disappeared, come to be in his possession?”

  Ciardis stiffened, not ready to even assume that what Lady Arabella was hinting at could be true.

  “What are you saying?” she said quietly.

  “That your mother is alive,” said the Lord Chamberlain.

  “And that you, my pretty little Weathervane, know exactly where she is,” said Lady Arabella with glee. “Why else would you come to this barren wasteland?”

  Ciardis shook her head rapidly. “You’re wrong. My mother died years ago. I’ve never seen her, and I came here by chance.”

  Arabella murmured, “I wish I could believe you, but it goes against my nature.”

  With a sick smile on her face, she walked forward while unwrapping the last of the cloth from her wrist. Ciardis backed away quickly, grabbing the knife from the ground with a shaky hand.

  “Stay back,” she stammered, ready to scream.

  She watched in complete surprise as the Lord Chamberlain picked up a rather large rock.

  What is he going to do with that? wondered Ciardis.

  Her answer came in the next second as he walloped Lady Arabella on the back of the head with mighty thud. She collapsed on the ground with a profuse amount of blood pouring from her wound.

  Mouth agape, Ciardis looked from the comatose and likely dead Truthsayer to the man, who casually tossed the rock to the side.

  “I suppose you have questions,” said the Lord Chamberlain in a measured tone.

  “That would be an understatement,” Ciardis said, looking at him warily.

  “And they will all be answered,” he said as he stepped forward and quickly grabbed her wrist with a speed and strength she hadn’t known he possessed.

  But Ciardis wasn’t without her own tricks, and she punched him straight in the nose. He stumbled back, cursing, with red blood pouring down his shirtfront. In the meantime Ciardis was desperately trying to reconcile what she knew about the man before her and what she had felt in his touch. There was magic there. Strong magic. She narrowed her eyes and took in the cold gentleman. Even as she stared straight at him she couldn’t get a glimpse of his magic. It was carefully concealed, and even now it avoided her mage sight as it hid in the corners of her vision, tucked away like sparkly mothballs trying to hide under the bed.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  He snapped a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his nose while eyeing her balefully.

  “I am who I always have been,” he intoned. “Lord Chamberlain to His Imperial Majesty Emperor Bastien Athanos Algardis and friend to Lady Companion Lillian Weathervane.”

  “You mean former friend,” Ciardis said, “seeing as she’s dead.”

  “On the contrary, Lady Ciardis Weathervane,” the Lord Chamberlain replied, “your mother is very much alive, and I can prove it to you.”

  “Nice try,” Ciardis said with a sharp smile, “but I don’t need anything proven to me. Particularly not from a snake like you.”

  He frowned in confusion and then his face cleared up as he gazed down at Lady Arabella’s body with understanding. “Oh, you mean her. I incapacitated her at your mother’s request. She was getting too close to the truth.”

  Ciardis decided to humor him. “And, pray tell, what is the truth?”

  “That your mother is alive,” the man repeated as if she had a few too many rocks rolling around loose in her head.

  “If she’s alive,” said Ciardis stubbornly, “where has she been all this time? How could she abandon her position at court, let alone my brother and me?”

  He studied her with careful eyes. “I think that perhaps it’s best she explain that to you. You might realize that you haven’t been as alone as you thought.”

  Ciardis laughed bitterly. “I grew up begging for scraps. Passed from family and family until I was old enough to make my own way with side jobs. Even then I lived meal to meal in a hovel until I managed to finally find board at the small inn in a room with holes bigger than my head and patrons that liked to slap my ass as I walked by. There was no one looking out after me. Not there and not here.”

  “And what about in Sandrin?”

  “What about the capitol city? I managed to attach myself to an incompetent sponsor and wound up on the wrong side of nearly everyone at court.”

  “Perhaps your sponsorship wasn’t as bad as you think. You can’t know what went on behind closed doors, what the Lady Serena did for you in private meetings.”

  “Oh, and you do?” said Ciardis spitefully.

  He opened his mouth to object. She got there first. “I am done talking about my sponsor, who has disappeared on me once again, I might add, thank you very much. Is there anything else?”

  He said simply, “Yes, there is. You’ve wanted to know since you were child what your mother was like. Why she abandoned you. If she has thought about you this whole time. Every orphan does. I did. The difference is that you can do something about it. Now’s your chance.”

  Ciardis felt warring emotions tearing through her like a kick in the gut. She didn’t want to imagine meeting a mother. Her mother. What if he was lying? What if her mother was dead like the whole court assumed? Worse—what if she didn’t want her? She had stayed away for so long, she had to have done so on purpose.

  But the urge was there. The urge to see her. To be enveloped in her warmth. To have her hold her and tell her that everything would be all right, that the war would be won, that the issue of the Sarvinians would be solved, and then she would teach Ciardis everything she knew about being a Weathervane. A true master of her powers.

  Ciardis focused outward, pushing down the turmoil and the rapidly fleeing thoughts in her head. “What’s in it for you? Why are you doing this?”

  Déjà vu hit her all over again. Less than two days ago she had asked her brother the same thing.

  He pursed his lips and said, “Not everything at court is as it seems. Not everyone is content with the way things are run.”

  “And you think my meeting my mother would change that?” she asked incredulously.

  “Lillian could be persuaded to come to court, to truly reveal herself, if she had her daughter by her side,” he said.

  Ciardis found that hilarious. “And why would she do that?”

  “The bond of mother and child is strong, Ciardis, particularly when that child is threatened. And believe me, Lady Weathervane, you have many enemies awaiting your arrival back in our fair city.”

  “From what I’ve heard,” Ciardis persisted, “my mother was on trial for murder when she fled.”

  “Semantics. There was an accusation but no proof. Now that we know what really happened, we can clear her name with the evidence.”

  “What evidence?” Ciardis said. “If you have something that could clear her name, even in death, you have to come forward!”

  He said, “No, Lady Weathervane, I have to do nothing. I wish to come forward, though. But only with the most powerful conclave of Weathervanes in the history of the empire by my side. Then, and only then, will I come forward.”

  Ciardis knew in that instant that he was convinced her mother was alive. What he spoke of was treason. It almost made her think that the courtiers that orbited around the emperor weren’t as dumb as many were led to believe. The duke of Carne notwithstanding—that idiot couldn’t even manage to handle a proper assassination attempt on a girl who had no guards or protectors.

  The Lord Chamberlain saw the blossom of hope in Ciardis Weathervane’s eyes. “Come with me,” he said, “and you can meet her. Stay here and you will always wonder if your mother is truly alive or dead.”

  Chapter 21

  Ciardis was reluctant. She refused politely.

  “I promise on the honor of my line, the Steadfasts,” he said with pleading eyes, “you will meet no harm where I’m taking you.”

  Ciardis di
dn’t know why, but at that moment she felt she could trust him. She didn’t want to, but she rarely ignored her gut, and she knew it was telling her that if she didn’t take this opportunity she’d regret it for the rest of her life. The chance to see her mother. She had to go.

  “How will we get there?” she asked.

  He pulled a family amulet from underneath his robes.

  “That, my dear, is simple,” he explained, “She’ll meet us in the Aether Realm; this amulet gives me access.”

  He held out his hand.

  Feeling nervous, Ciardis took it, and he pulled her with him through the temporal planes. She felt the familiar feeling of magic from the jump between the Earth Realm and the Aether Realm. When her stomach had settled and she could see, she noted that she was standing before a large garden alcove. And the woman she had come to see was standing in front of her.

  Ciardis watched as the woman approached in a deep blue cloak with thick mist swirling around her feet. She couldn’t see anything about her face or body. Her face was concealed within the dark hood and the cloak covered her from head to toe. Ciardis’s mouth went dry and her eyes strained in anticipation of that first glimpse. The glimpse of the woman she hadn’t seen in more than sixteen years. The woman who had abandoned her long ago in a small village in a small northern vale without a note or a name. The woman who had caused the town to treat her like filth, AND call her a baseborn bastard of an itinerant girl too busy to care for her.

  As those memories swept over her, a silent tear slid down her cheek.

  The woman reached a gloved hand forward as if to wipe the tear away, but held herself back. Instead she lifted her hands, which Ciardis could see were shaking even through the emotional cloud of her mind, and pushed back the heavy hood that concealed her face.

  Ciardis gasped in shock. She hadn’t expected this.

  A woman with blonde hair as striking as the wheat fields of the vale in august and captivating blue eyes stood before her. Lady Companion Serena, her sponsor for the Companions’ Guild, stood before her.

  “I knew you despised me, Serena,” Ciardis hissed in shock, “but I had no idea you could be so cruel as to come here and pose as the one person I would give my life to see.”