by Tanya Huff
“What gods do you follow?” an elderly woman demanded abruptly, slapping the strap of her short ceremonial flail against the side of her leg as she separated from the huddle.
Since coming to the Empire, Karlene had been asked that question half a hundred times. “I believe that all life and all gods are enclosed within the Circle.”
“Oh, that,” the old priest snorted. “The northern all-encompassing heresy. Well, there’s little enough damage you can do.” She stepped aside. “You might as well take a look. You’re lucky, they don’t smell as bad as they did. I expect the heat’s started to dry them out some.”
Karlene could feel the attention of the crowd lock onto her as she crossed the open area around the covered bodies.
As she passed one of the priests, he sprinkled her with warm liquid and then began to sprinkle everyone within reach. A young—woman or man, she wasn’t sure—knelt to one side, surrounded by acolytes, rocking back and forth and moaning, blood dribbling from three or four places where teeth had closed on the edge of soft tissue.
An expectant hush fell when she dropped to one knee and took hold of the canvas. They were waiting for her to solve the mystery. Put name and faith to these discarded shells that underscored their own mortality. Could she? If one of the bodies was—had been—Prince Otavas, would she recognize him after all he’d been through? What marks would a living death cut into flesh?
Her grip leaving a damp print on the heavy fabric, she quickly flipped it back.
Not the prince. Thank all the gods in the Circle, not the prince.
It was the two men who’d taken the prince, recognizable in spite of advanced decay. She pressed the knuckles of her right hand against her mouth as she started to gag, unable to believe that they could have ever smelled worse. They were as unmistakably dead as they’d been that night in the alley but thankfully, no sign of life remained. Breathing shallowly through her teeth, she gently covered them again.
No sign of life … The hair lifted off the nape of her neck as she stood. But something remains…
The kigh nearly knocked her over, their sudden whirlwind dragging the canvas from the ground and spinning it into the crowd. Someone screamed. The prayers grew louder. Backing away from the bodies, Karlene tried to block out the rising noise and concentrate on what the kigh were trying to say. They acted much as they had back in the palace on the night the terror began but, this time, they were able to tell her why.
“Are you all right?” the ancient priest demanded as one of her burly acolytes stopped the bard from sagging to the ground. “You’re white as salt.”
“I know these men.” While that wasn’t the problem, neither was it a lie. The kigh drew back to dive around the edges of her vision, the winds died, and she tried to move away from the stranger’s arm holding her upright. Her legs buckled and she stayed where she was. “I saw them in the Capital.”
“The Capital?” In varying tones of disbelief the revelation rippled through the collected priests and into the crowd.
“These bodies were two of those I mentioned, the ones that were taken from their tomb,” Karlene continued. She began to tremble, in relief as much as anything, as Vree appeared at her side and slipped a supporting shoulder under her left arm. “Their rites have been performed, they only need to be sent back.”
“Sent back? How did they get this far down the road?”
She couldn’t say she didn’t know and be believed, so she asked a question of her own. “How do the dead arrive anywhere?”
The ancient priest looked disgusted. “Well, I don’t imagine they walked. I suppose the pertinent question is, who brought them this far and where is that person now?” She turned away from Karlene and began issuing orders. Someone protested that her god had no more right to control the situation than any other, and in another moment, they’d all forgotten the stranger existed.
As Vree took most of her weight, Karlene pressed her cheek against the smaller woman’s head. “Get me away from here,” she murmured. “Please.”
She didn’t know how Vree did it—she suspected she didn’t want to know—but the crowd melted away before them. It took two attempts to gain the saddle and she was barely in it before she began urging her horse up the road. She heard Gyhard begin a question and heard Vree answer it, “She has to get away.”
“We have to leave the road,” she explained as they caught up and flanked her. “I have to Sing.”
“Why?” Gyhard understood the bardic emphasis even if Vree didn’t.
Karlene tried to tell them but found she couldn’t form the words. To actually say it aloud would make it too real to bear. The kigh continued to skirt the borders of her sight.
“What’s going on?” Vree asked, dropping back and then guiding her gelding up against Gyhard’s outside leg. The bard looked like soldiers she’d seen sitting in the midst of battle, surrounded by carnage, untouched by sword or spear but wounded just the same.
“How should I know?” Gyhard protested. “I have no more information than you do.”
Vree’s eyes narrowed. “You have a hundred years more information than I do.”
“Not about this.”
*Then what good are you?*
They left the road at the first opportunity; followed a lane that edged a field of cotton, became a path, then disappeared. Karlene reined in at a small hollow and slid to the ground. She dried her palms on her thighs, took a deep breath, and stared at a clump of wild lilies swinging violently in a sudden breeze.
“Well?” Gyhard asked at last.
She sketched confusion in the air. “I don’t know what to Sing. The air kigh …” Her hands traced the area around the lilies. “… they say that the kigh from those two bodies are still around.”
Vree felt the skin along her spine crawl and only training kept her from checking back over her shoulder—toward the road. “Still in the bodies?”
“No. The air kigh say that the other kigh should go away, but because of what Kars did to them, they’re lost. They don’t know where away is or how to get there.” A trickle of sweat ran from hairline to collar. “I’m supposed to Sing and fix it.”
“And while you do …” Gyhard glanced up at the position of the sun. “… your prince moves farther from us.”
“I can’t leave them like this.”
“Neither can you accept responsibility for every life, pardon me, every death that Kars has discarded. He’s older than you think and has been doing this for a very long time.” Implicit in his tone was the declaration that he, Gyhard, had personally accepted as much responsibility as he was going to.
“Fine. Not all of them.” She sent a silent apology to the rest. “But these two are here and I am here.”
Gyhard wrapped one leg around the saddle horn, braced his elbow on his knee, and dropped his chin into his cupped palm. “So Sing,” he sighed.
“Sing what?” Karlene flung up her arms, frustration chasing the terror chasing the sorrow chasing the Song. “I don’t know where away is or how they get there.”
“What about the air spirits?” Vree glared suspiciously from a ripple in the grass to a strand of mane blowing out just a little farther than the rest.
“They’re no help. They keep repeating away like I should know.”
“So sing what you do know. You can talk to spirits, talk to these.”
“It isn’t that simple,” Karlene insisted.
Vree shrugged impatiently. “It had better be. Or how were you planning on laying the prince to rest?”
How had she planned on laying the prince to rest? She hadn’t. Karlene swallowed. Here I come, galloping to the rescue with no idea if a rescue is even possible. Talk to them. Call them. Not the notes that called fire or water or air. She could only Sing three of four quarters, how was she suddenly to Sing a fifth when until a few days ago no one believed a fifth quarter existed?
She wet her lips and Sang, repeating the little she knew about the two lost kigh in every combination
of note and tone she could think of. I can’t do this. I don’t know enough about them. I don’t know enough about the fifth kigh. I …
I have a kigh.
She strongly suspected that pausing to think it through would tie her tongue in knots. But the Song wasn’t about thought; it was emotion, it was touching the past and the future, it was sharing pain and joy and truth and self.
Maybe it was that simple after all. Maybe the bards had never needed to learn to Sing the fifth quarter because they couldn’t not Sing it. Every time they touched an audience, or one listener, or one hundred, they were Singing the fifth quarter.
Karlene took a deep breath, more for courage than for her voice, and put herself into the Song.
Between one note and the next, they were there; frightened, hurt, twisted by the darkness within which they’d been forced to exist. They clutched at her, pleaded for an end. She couldn’t heal them, so she Sang them comfort, Sang them their love for each other, Sang them peace.
How had she planned on laying the prince to rest?
Eyes closed, her voice wrapped around them and, just for an instant, she crossed the line and became the Song. For that same instant, she knew what the kigh meant by away and she knew how to get there. She Sang them how it should have been and then they were gone.
She managed to Sing a gratitude although to who or what she didn’t know. The knowledge of away faded with the Song, but the loss didn’t matter because she knew how to find it again.
“Are you going to fall over?” Vree asked.
Karlene wiped at the tears streaming down her cheeks. She couldn’t remember crying. “I’m fine. In fact, I feel terrific.”
*She looks postorgasmic.*
*She looks like she just came face-to-face with her god.*
*That’s what I said.*
But behind the flippant remarks, Vree could feel the effect the Song had had on Bannon and, somehow, they seemed better defined than they had for a while. She knew where he ended. He knew where she began.
* * * *
They passed Shaebridge just before dusk, their pace having been drastically slowed by the traffic approaching the city. Walk turned to trot turned to canter turned to full gallop as they tried to make up the time they’d lost. The sound of their horses’ hooves softened as they moved from dressed stone to the packed clay of the road that followed the crest of the river valley, but it remained loud enough to cover the sound of the single horse galloping behind.
* * * *
“What’s the matter?”
Vree turned from the gable window, pulled around by the bard’s whisper, to find the older woman merely an arm’s length behind her. Her muscles tensed, began to move, but she managed to prevent the response training and experience dictated.
“Vree?”
Her heart pounded from the effort of holding the attack. “I thought I heard something. On the roof.”
“Probably a pigeon.”
“At night?”
“A pigeon having a bad dream.”
It had been the smallest of possible sounds, snapping her up out of a fitful sleep. Bannon hadn’t heard it. She was beginning to doubt that she had.
Karlene misunderstood the barely visible tremor. “Are you cold?”
It would be the easy answer. “I’m not used to this.” A wave of her hand indicated the night outside the loft. “The nights in the south of the Empire are as heavy and warm as the days.”
Moving a little closer, Karlene smiled. “Very bardic.”
“Probably Bannon.”
The smile disappeared. “Can’t you tell?”
She could feel the ten crescents, cold and heavy in her hand. “Not always, not anymore.”
“Is it getting worse?”
Bannon paced, testing the confines of his cage. “Yes.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No.”
*Can she Sing that carrion eater out of my body?*
Unable to stop herself, Vree jerked around to stare at the sleeping Gyhard. *Even if she could, we still need him.*
*What for?*
*To deal with Kars.*
*The bard can deal with Kars.*
*She’ll be freeing the dead.*
*Then what will we be doing?*
*Freeing the prince.*
*He’s dead, Vree. You said the bard will free the dead.*
*She can’t free all of them at once!*
*You don’t know that.*
*We still need him to deal with Kars.*
*Why? Kars is alive. We can deal with Kars the way we’ve dealt with all the others.*
*Stop it! You’re confusing me.*
*You’re confused, sister-mine, but I’m not doing it.* Bannon’s mental voice picked up the intonation of command. *Ask her.*
*Bannon, I …*
*Ask her. Or I will.* He began to force his control past hers.
*Bannon, I don’t want to fight you.*
*Why, Vree? Are you afraid I’ll win? That I’ll take over?
That I’ll keep you imprisoned the way you’ve kept me?* She could feel the accusation stretching back beyond the time they’d shared a single body.
*No! I’m afraid I won’t stop. That I’ll push until you’re gone!* She slammed herself at him with every phrase. *And then he’ll have won! Is that what you want? For me to push you right out of here?*
His consciousness retreated so completely, so quickly, that she had to throw out a hand to steady herself against the age-polished wood of the window frame.
*I want my body back.* He sounded like he was five; hurt, frightened, betrayed. She wanted to hold him, to tell him everything would be all right, be the anchor and the shield she’d always been for him. But she couldn’t.
Who would hear her if she cried that she wanted her body back? Who had heard her when she was five?
Gyhard stirred. Even asleep, her brother’s face now bore the patina of the man who wore it. Could the bard Sing him out of Bannon’s body? If she did, where would he go?
Vree closed her eyes and collapsed for a heartbeat into the comforting circle of Karlene’s arms. She trembled as she felt warm lips touch her hair, then she set her jaw and pushed away. “No …”
“Why not? We could both use the comfort.”
“I can’t, not until Bannon has his body again.”
Karlene shook her head in disbelief. “You’ve made the big sacrifice, Vree. Why continue sacrificing yourself for him?”
Vree spread her hands. “I am him.”
There had to be a hundred responses to something so ridiculous but at the moment, Karlene couldn’t think of one of them.
* * * *
He could hear the two women talking, their voices rising and falling in murmured cadences too soft to carry the actual words to his position on the roof. Cloaked in the night, Neegan weighed his options. Until this point, he’d concentrated solely on tracking his targets; now he could begin to plan the kill. When sleep claimed them once again, it would be easy enough to slip through the window, slit their throats, and put their betrayal to rest. The foreign singer would awake beside a pair of bloody corpses and the structure of the Empire would be restored. Assassins who deserted from the seven armies died.
But these targets were a special case, and Marshal Chela wanted to know why. Although he considered their reasons of less than no importance held up against the enormity of their faithlessness, it wasn’t the first command he’d been given that went against his personal preference. One of the two would have to be taken alive.
No. Both. Threatening Bannon would drag the truth from Vree. He doubted he’d get it any other way. The brother was the sister’s only weakness. Bannon was his own weakness as well, but he’d pile lie upon lie to save himself the way she never would to save him. And to save her? Neegan wouldn’t want to put it to the test.
Perhaps they should have been separated. But so few children became available for training with a sibling so close in age and ability. It had
been an opportunity impossible to resist.
And I was right. They both survived, finding strength together where they might not have had it alone. They were two of the best.
Which made it worse when they betrayed his judgment, his decision to keep them together. The army was supposed to be the only family an assassin had…
It was the only family he’d ever had.
These two had spat in its face. His face.
Neegan didn’t want to kill the foreign singer if he could help it—he could leave her in good conscience for the First Army—but neither would he hesitate if she interfered with his mission.
He wasn’t surprised to find they were no longer in a private room. The way they’d spent their stolen coin, he was surprised that it had lasted as long as it had. Right hand working around the leather-wrapped grip of his favorite dagger, he weighed the possibility of success while all three slept grouped together in the loft. On one side of the scale, it would be over. Finished. He could let go of the anger devouring his heart. On the other side, he would have two of the best assassins the seven armies had ever trained to subdue as well as an opponent of unknown skills to deal with.
I will wait the short time necessary in order to face them one at a time. He had survived longer than almost any other Imperial assassin. Long enough to become an officer. Long enough to know that to strike in anger dulled the blade.
“Soon,” his dagger whispered as he slid it into the sheath.
* * * *
Far enough north for snow in the winter, the roof of the small inn sloped gently from ridge to eaves. Over the years, Neegan had slept on worse beds. Though the night was cool, the threat of rain had passed and up above, the stars, the same stars that blazed out over the Sixth Army, divided the sky into a thousand portents.
He saluted the Archer, and, warmed by the heat of his anger, closed his eyes.
He opened them again just before dawn when the sound of the inn door jerked him awake. Rolling up into a crouch, he worked the night out of his muscles and peered over the eaves, waiting to see who the early riser would be.
Bannon.
Neegan frowned, his own action arrested, as he stared at the slight figure crossing the innyard to the privy. It was Bannon. And yet…
