Fifth Quarter

by Tanya Huff

  “Who died?” Karlene asked suddenly, her voice surprisingly strong.

  The irritation vanished and the innkeeper heaved a heavy sigh. “Aven—that’s the cobbler with the shop next door—it was his son. Only days old.”

  The bard paled beneath old tan and the crimson blush added that day by the sun. “A baby?”

  “Aye. His mother’s not recovered from the birthing and now this. Babe just up and died. Aven says one heartbeat he was warm and the next cold …”

  “Cold,” Karlene repeated.

  “Aye, cold. And the next thing poor Aven knew, the babe was dead.”

  * * * *

  “How could I have forgotten about the babies that died in the Capital?” The thick golden mass of her hair spread out over the rim of the bath, her eyes closed, Karlene gnawed on her lower lip.

  Vree braced her foot against the broad ledge that ringed the small bath and provided a place to sit while soaking. Lip curled, she dug her fingers into the knotted muscle of the bard’s right leg. “You met two dead men up and walking, you were hit on the head, His Highness got snatched, and you spent a day in the saddle when you should’ve been resting in the Healers’ Hall.”

  “That’s not an excuse,” the bard began, but Vree interrupted with a snort.

  “Maybe not, but it’s a slaughtering good reason.”

  On the far side of the bath, his position dictated by the need to accommodate three pairs of legs, Gyhard swiped at the sweat dribbling down from his hairline. “Why is he doing it,” he muttered. “Babies! I don’t understand why.”

  He sounded so confused, Vree found herself wanting to slip a blade across the throat of the person responsible.

  *What for?* Bannon demanded.

  *Because he’s in your body and I keep reacting like it’s you that’s been hurt.* Which made perfect sense, but then, all the best lies did. Mollified, Bannon settled back below the surface of her thoughts. “Maybe he isn’t doing it,” she suggested, allowing Karlene’s right leg to slide under the water and picking up the left. “Maybe it’s just happening.”

  Gyhard glanced up at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you said that our spirits …”

  “The kigh.”

  “All right, our kigh …” The foreign word felt unbalanced in her mouth, like a borrowed dagger. “You said they look away from the dead. Maybe baby spirits, baby kighs, haven’t been around long enough to get attached to their body. Instead of looking away, they run.”

  “And the babies die,” Karlene murmured.

  Vree nodded. “And the babies die.”

  “It makes sense.” Relaxing, Gyhard shifted position, sending a wave of rapidly cooling water to lap at Vree’s chin.

  For the first time since they’d peeled off sweat-stained clothing, Vree turned to look full at him. “This is the only death we’ve run into on the road; I think he stopped here.

  If it only took the dead passing by, we’d be knee deep in bodies by now.”

  He played with a bit of loose plaster as he considered it but found himself considering her instead. That she was both dangerous and dangerously loyal, he’d known from the beginning. Adaptable, beautiful, ruthless; he’d discovered that on the road. Since she’d challenged him over the bard in the Healers’ Hall, he’d seen that a strong intelligence lurked beneath her single-minded intensity. She was capable of such intense love that she’d agreed to lay her sanity on the line rather than have her brother die. All at once he found himself wondering what Kars would have thought of her.

  Kars. He closed his eyes for a moment and wondered if this new love, if it was love, had somehow called back the old. He’d lived too long to believe in blind chance. When he opened his eyes again, Vree was still looking at him. “You want me to find out why he stopped?”

  She nodded. “The more you know about a target, the better your odds of success.”

  “He’s not a target, Vree.”

  “No?” She locked her gaze onto his. “Then what is he?”

  Gyhard flushed, but before he could answer, Karlene pulled her leg from Vree’s grip. Sucking the moist bathhouse air through her teeth, she pushed herself forward and onto her feet, the water rippling around her hips. Her nostrils were pinched tight and her voice trembled. “We have to catch up to him before he stops again. We have to catch him before more ba …” She looked fleetingly surprised, then her eyes rolled up and she collapsed.

  The water itself caught the bard and eased her back onto the ledge.

  Vree stopped her forward dive so suddenly her muscles locked. Blood roaring in her ears, she glared at Gyhard, silently demanding an answer.

  “Water kigh,” he said softly, pulling himself up and out of the bath, the quick economy of his movements in direct contrast to the matter-of-fact tones in his voice. “She must be very strong in that quarter for them to manifest without a Song.”

  “Water spirits?” Vree could feel her skin crawling under the caress of the warm liquid. All the tension the heat had dissipated returned. Between one breath and the next, she stood dripping on an ugly mosaic of cavorting gods that adorned the floor.

  Focus on freeing the prince, she told herself, crouching to slip her hands into the bard’s armpits and haul her up out of the bath. The rest of this doesn’t matter.

  *She’s got great …*

  *Not now, Bannon.*

  Gyhard reached for a drying cloth and shook his head. “And you thought this would be less complicated than just you and I,” he said mockingly.

  * * * *

  It was getting dark. Otavas licked the peach juice from his fingers and pressed his spine hard against the rough side of the cart. They’d stopped three times since they started again in the late afternoon; once for him to relieve himself, once to fill the empty skin with fresh water, and once so that the dead could change places between the shafts of the cart. They were not going to stop for the night.

  “We have to get home,” the old man told him earnestly. “So we can start again.”

  “I’m not who you think I am!” Over the course of an impossibly long day, the prince had shouted it, whimpered it, wailed it, but every time the old man had merely smiled.

  He was losing track of how long he’d spent within the confines of the cart, passing unseen and unheard through the lives of those who lived or moved along the Great Road. Muscles ached from the constant pounding as the high, narrow wheels slammed into every imperfection, every pothole in the stone.

  He flinched as the old man lightly stroked a warm, dry finger down the length of his arm.

  “It’s late, my heart. It’s time to sleep. Dawn comes early this quarter.”

  This quarter? Otavas twisted to stare through the dusk at the wizened face. The countries to the north, Shkoder, Cemandia, and Petrok beyond that divided their year into quarters; the Empire did not. “Who are you?” He wondered why it had never occurred to him to ask before.

  Rheumy eyes filled with tears. “You’ll remember everything, my heart, as soon as we get home. But now you must sleep.”

  Sleep. The prince glanced toward the end of the cart where the dead sat. Not the men this time, but the two women. He guessed that the younger, Kait, was thirteen or fourteen and Wheyra his age or a very little older. To his disgust, the old man had introduced them just as though they were people. Kait had stared past him, unblinking eyes locked on the old man’s face while Wheyra ignored them both, crooning to a desiccated bundle that crawled with flies. No, he couldn’t sleep, not around them. Pity may have tempered the horror, but the horror remained. Bad enough to be trapped in this waking nightmare—worse to be plunged time after time into the terror of darker dreams.

  “No.” He shook his head, sable hair flinging lines of shadow against the night.

  “Yes.”

  Something in the old man’s voice drew him around. Something in the old man’s eyes held him.

  “Sleep.”

  * * * *

  “Yesterday, around noon, an
old man came into the village and got food and a cotter pin—didn’t pay for any of it, just asked and, for some reason no one I spoke to is clear on, they handed it over.” Gyhard straddled the bench and leaned an elbow on the tabletop. “No one saw where he went.”

  Vree glanced toward the group of four travelers at the other end of the common room who were speculating on the prince’s kidnapping and making their own loyalties loudly clear. She leaned forward so as not to be overheard should any of the four suddenly stop talking. “No one was willing to look where he went?”

  “Very likely.”

  “What’s a cotter pin?”

  “Among other things it’s used to hold a wagon wheel on the axle.”

  “He has a wagon?”

  “Or a cart.”

  “Shit on a stick.”

  He smiled at her expression. “Don’t worry about it, nothing’s really changed; his horses are going to have to rest as often as ours.”

  “Oh?” Her brows went up and she drummed her fingers against the table. “What if the dead are pulling it? the dead who never need to rest. The old man can do everything but shit in the wagon and how often are they going to stop for that?”

  “Not often,” Gyhard admitted. He swung his inside leg out over the bench and leaned back against the table. After a moment’s thought, he said, “Perhaps the other wheel will fall off.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Vree jerked her chin at the stairs leading to the loft. “This is going to really upset her.”

  “Then maybe we shouldn’t tell her.”

  It could have been Bannon sitting there, offering to share a secret with that exact glint in his eye. Just between you and me, Vree … But it wasn’t Bannon. She shook her head, uncertain of what she was refusing.

  “Suit yourself.” Gyhard stood and turned toward the door. “I’m going out to get some air.” As he passed her, he rested his hand, for a heartbeat, on her shoulder.

  *He touched you! I don’t like it when he touches you! I don’t want him to touch you!*

  *It’s your body …*

  *And just you remember that, sister-mine.*

  * * * *

  “A skin of watered wine, a dozen cooked sausages, a hunk of cheese, a loaf of bread, and six peaches,” Gyhard murmured, pulling a peach from his pocket and rubbing at the fuzz with the ball of his thumb. “Why would Kars have taken peaches?”

  Ninety years before, they’d bought a basket from a trader who’d been crossing the mountains on his way to Cemandia. The fruit had made Kars violently ill; closing up his throat, choking off his breath, causing his skin to erupt in painful blisters.

  Juice dribbling down his chin, Gyhard leaned back against the well housing. He supposed the passage of time could have changed Kars’ reaction; after all, the passage of time should have killed him and hadn’t.

  Or perhaps it wasn’t Kars they followed at all.

  Cemandian law produced a steady progression of crippled bards. Perhaps another had torn free and joined Kars in his nest on the Empire’s side of the mountains long enough to learn of the fifth kigh, and it was this bard they followed now.

  “No.” Gyhard chewed and swallowed and tasted dust. Although his head could create reason after reason why the old man who’d raised the dead around the Capital was not the young man he’d abandoned to insanity so long ago, his heart knew otherwise.

  Then why the peaches?

  His teeth scraped against the pit and he started, pitched into memory.

  “That is so incredibly sensual, the way you do that.”

  “The way I do what?” Gyhard grinned and sucked the juice off the pit, holding it by his fingertips and rolling it between his lips. “This?”

  “That.” Kars lifted himself up on his elbows, eyes gleaming. “I love to watch you eat those. It almost makes up for not being able to eat them myself.”

  Perhaps Kars had taken the peaches in order to watch someone else eat them. But he journeyed with the dead. Or did he?

  All at once, it seemed there was a very good chance that his Imperial Highness, Prince Otavas, was alive.

  Gyhard tossed the pit into the darkness and stared up at the stars. If Vree thought that the prince was alive, then the simplicity of find the prince became lost in the resumption of strike and counterstrike. They’d have to start thinking about killing each other again.

  He didn’t want to think about killing her.

  * * * *

  “And may I inquire what your business is in the Capital, Commander?”

  “No.” Neegan sealed his message to Marshal Chela and pinched the wick of the sealing wax between thumb and forefinger. “Your marshal can if he wants to, but all you need to know is that I am loosed at a target.” He paused then added, “Commander.”

  The woman on the other side of the desk gave no indication that she heard any insult in her visitor’s husky enunciation of her rank. She’d been raised to play the political game that guarding the Emperor required and would not be thrown out of countenance by a grimy provincial who stank of his days on the road. “You’re here very early and you’ve obviously been riding hard; the facilities of the First Army are, of course, yours to enjoy.” Her tone suggested Neegan wouldn’t recognize a bath if he fell into one.

  Neegan stood and pushed the folded parchment across the desk. “I want a courier sent immediately.”

  “No trouble at all, Commander. Will you be waiting at the garrison for a return message?”

  He leaned forward slightly. “No, I won’t. I told you, I am loosed at a target.”

  The words brushed an edge across her throat. She swallowed and forgot to breathe as she watched him leave the duty room, cross the portico, and disappear behind the bulk of a painted pillar. All at once she understood why the First Army trained no one to wear a black sunburst. The assassins were weapons to be used when a single blade could decide the course of a battle. They had no defensive use and the First Army existed for the sole purpose of defending the Imperial Family. Commander Neegan was a weapon unsheathed. She wondered what battle he was deciding and a not entirely unpleasant frisson lifted the hair on the back of her neck.

  It’s like having Death herself walking around the city.…

  * * * *

  He’d been to the Capital once, many years ago, but he’d forgotten how big it was, how many people crammed within the circle of its wall. A pair of assassins—two people trained to disappear—would assume they could lose themselves easily in a city this size. Neegan stood outside the palace wall and swept his gaze over the wedge of the Capital that he could see, wondering why anyone would be willing to live in such conditions. Stacked up on top of each other six deep…

  Under a clean uniform tunic, the flesh between his shoulder blades twitched as the guards on duty at the First Army’s gate stared curiously at his back. In a very short time, the rumor of who and what he was would reach them—rumor raced through the ranks faster by far than legitimate information. He was used to being the center of speculation, all assassins were; it worked to their advantage far more often than the opposite case. In this instance it would have no effect at all. His targets, in the short time they had remaining, would stay as far from the army as possible.

  Foolishly believing themselves safe from pursuit, they had stayed at the best inns all along the South Road and would very likely continue to do so. He expected to find them by nightfall at the absolute latest. By morning, it would be over.

  * * * *

  Although a morning’s hard riding had still not brought them within a day’s walk of the old man and his dead, when the heat began to rise in shimmering waves off the pale stone, even Karlene reluctantly admitted the need for both water and shade. They guided their lathered horses off the road by a marker indicating a well under Imperial protection and in a short time came upon a copse of trees gathered around a small, contained spring.

  The marks of cloven hooves in the dirt indicated that cattle, not travelers, were the usual visitors, but for the moment
they had the area to themselves.

  * * * *

  “What is it?”

  Vree continued untangling the lengths of coarse thread and polished ovals of wood that she’d lifted down out of a slender beech. “A shrine to the wind.”

  “What’s it for?” Karlene knelt beside her, reaching out to lightly caress the feather carved into one of the pieces of wood.

  “Luck.” Vree told her shortly.

  The bard looked intrigued. “You believe that acknowledging the wind will bring you luck?”

  “I don’t know what other people believe, but I believe in taking luck where I find it.”

  *You’re in a mood.*

  *Sod off, Bannon.*

  *No.* She could hear the scowl in his voice and fought to keep his expression off her face. *Why are you being such a slaughtering bitch? You were nice enough to her last night.*

  *What are you talking about?*

  *The massage in the bath. The helping hand to the pallet.*

  *Helping. Nothing more. I left when the healer arrived.*

  *You’re right. Nothing more.* His mental voice grew shrill. *It’s never anything more, Vree, and I’m tired of it. I can’t live like this!*

  *Look, it’s my body …*

  *So you keep reminding me!*

  Karlene’s eyes widened as Vree’s hands began to twitch and writhe in her lap like huge brown spiders. Muscles rolled and strained under the thin silk of the assassin’s shirt. It didn’t take bardic ability to sense the internal struggle and she wondered what, if anything she should do.

  *Bannon! Stop it!*

  *I don’t want to live like this.*

  *You think I do?*

  *Then get him out of my body!*

  *How?* With a desperate grip on her sense of self, Vree forced Bannon back. Chest heaving, she spat out a mouthful of blood from where her teeth had been driven through the soft flesh on the inside of her lip and carefully stretched her hands out on her thighs, gripping her own muscles for stability. “What?” she demanded, suddenly aware of the bard’s concerned gaze.

  Karlene sat back on her heels and frowned. After a moment she said, “Is it Bannon?”

  Startled, Vree looked past her at Gyhard lying under a tree barely a body length away, one arm thrown up over his eyes.