by Tanya Huff
No. The patterns of shadow between the day and night could be deceptive. The angle of observation, looking down from above, elongated some movements while it masked others entirely. And Bannon had changed. He had cast aside everything he’d been taught to believe in—surely such corruption would leave a physical sign.
Wrapping his betrayal around him, Neegan waited until the rough plank door to the privy closed, then moved silently off the roof. He would take Bannon as he emerged and it would all be over by the time the sun cleared the horizon.
* * * *
*Vree!*
*I feel it, too.* She lay still on the pallet, senses extended; the sounds, the smells, the feel of the air currents against her skin sifted for threat.
*Whatever it is, it’s not in here,* Bannon declared after a moment.
*Outside?*
*Yes …* A weapon clasped loosely in each hand, she rolled up onto her feet in a single, fluid motion. *Gyhard’s missing.*
*What the slaughter is he up to in my body?!*
They were at the window, shielded by the side wall of the gable, eyes and experience scanning the innyard.
*Privy door’s closed.*
That this explained where Bannon’s body had disappeared to did nothing to lessen the sense of danger they shared.
*Do you see anything?*
*No. But there’s enough shadow out there to hide an army.*
So they waited, wounds left by the emotional battle the night before buried beneath trained responses.
* * * *
Tucked into a fetid corner between the stable and the privy, Neegan set his anger aside and narrowed his focus to Bannon’s capture. The anger would be easy enough to take up again when it would no longer be in the way. He listened to the sounds from within the small building—the splash of liquid, the rustle of cloth, the creak of wood as a man’s weight settled on it—and timed a likely exit.
A blade held across the throat wouldn’t be enough, but a sharp pommel blow behind the ear would significantly slow a counterattack. Perhaps even prevent one entirely.
Wood creaked again. Cloth rustled.
* * * *
*Door’s opening.*
*I see it.*
*Something’s down there, sister-mine.*
*Then so are we.*
* * * *
Gyhard stared in astonishment as Vree flung herself out of the loft’s small gable window, hit the ground, rolled, and ended up facing him, crouched with a dagger in each hand.
“If you’re trying to make me piss myself, you’re too late,” he muttered, wondering when she’d cease to amaze him. “What are you doing?”
* * * *
Neegan froze in place, unable to believe what he saw. Bannon’s only reaction to his sister’s sudden appearance seemed to be surprise. He neither assumed a defensive position of his own nor moved to support hers.
* * * *
Vree’s gaze flicked from one pool of darkness to another. “Something’s wrong.”
“What? With the stairs?” Gyhard checked to see if his heart had started beating again.
“Something’s out here. Something dangerous.” *Bannon, cover the corner by the bathhouse.*
*How?* If he’d had teeth to clench, he would’ve forced the word through them.
*Sorry.* Vree slid sideways to shrink the blind spot caused by the angle of the building.
All at once, Gyhard realized she was perfectly serious. The hair rose off the nape of his neck and, slowly, he turned. “I don’t see anything.”
“That’s the worst kind.”
Hands out from his sides, wishing he had a sword, or a shield, or even one of Bannon’s narrow-bladed daggers, he began backing toward the inn.
Not until he called her name from the doorway, did Vree move to join him.
* * * *
If Neegan hadn’t known better, he would have sworn this man was not, nor had he ever been an assassin. Calling himself several kinds of fool, he shook off the paralysis and tried to understand what he’d just seen. The kind of training Bannon had undergone—the kind of training that made certain responses instinctive—could not be discarded.
Except that it had.
Thirteen
“You jumped out the window?” Karlene stared at Vree in astonishment. “Why?”
With the landlord seeing to bathwater for one of the inn’s other guests—and therefore safely out of earshot—and the common room empty except for them, Vree saw no reason for evasion. “There was danger; in the innyard. We had to protect Bannon’s body.”
“Danger!” The word bounced off the walls and Karlene hastily lowered her voice. “What kind of danger?”
Vree looked confused. “How many kinds are there?”
“No!” The bard waved an impatient hand in the air. “I mean, who or what caused the danger?”
“I don’t know.” Vree shrugged, tucked the flying tails of her increasingly grimy silk shirt down into her pants, and tightened her belt. “I’d say a who, though, not a what.”
The bard pushed past to the door of the common room and scanned the visible wedge of yard. She whistled the four notes that would call the kigh and then Sang a question at them. After a moment she Sang a gratitude and came back inside. “They say there’s a man forking shit over by the stable and that’s all.”
“Now.” The sense of danger had faded. Whoever’d been out there was long gone. Vree didn’t need air spirits to tell her that.
Karlene sighed forcefully and turned to Gyhard. “Did you feel it, too?”
He shook his head. “But then no one started teaching me to recognize it when I was only seven.”
*Six.*
*I was seven, Bannon.* Vree could feel their identities beginning to merge again and desperately hung onto the memory of a small child whirling about barely in time to duck beneath a flailing leather strap, having finally learned to read the air currents and avoid a stinging welt. She only hoped it was her memory and not her brother’s that she clung to.
“So you believe there was something out there?”
Gyhard tightened the buckle on his saddlebag and straightened. “Do you know how long an Imperial assassin usually lives after training?”
Karlene glanced from Gyhard to Vree and back again. “No,” she said tentatively. “How long?”
“Three years. You see, the sort of people that assassins are used against—traitors, rebel leaders, the officers of opposing armies and such—are usually well aware that they’re targets. As a result, they make certain preparations. Now assassins take that into account, but in about three years or so, the odds catch up to them.”
“If the assassins know that, know the odds, why do they … uh …”
“Follow orders? Why are you asking me?” He cocked his head at Vree. “The bard would like to know why you followed orders.”
Rubbing her palms together, Vree fought to get around the concept of refusing to follow orders.
“You must have known the odds,” Gyhard persisted. “What did you think when you went out after a target?”
“The odds meant nothing.” Vree’s chin came up and her eyes narrowed. “We were the best.”
“There.” Gyhard spread his hands and turned back to Karlene. “All assassins are taught to believe that from a very young age. Now, as Vree and Bannon have been working assassins for the past five years, that seems to indicate that they, at least, have reason to believe in what they’ve been taught. They are the best. Or among the best. If Vree tells me she senses danger, I believe her.” He slung the saddlebags over his shoulder and picked up a wrapped package of journey food. “I’ve settled up with the landlord. We should get on the road.”
Brow furrowed, Karlene picked up her own bags. “You should have woken me,” she muttered to Vree as they followed Gyhard to the stables.
Vree snorted. “If I’d had time to wake you, I’d have had time to take the stairs.”
* * * *
Head bowed, a filthy rag over his h
air, Neegan methodically forked horse shit from the stable cart into the manure pile. Clad in a rough tunic and short breeches he’d pulled from a wash line two houses away, he stood hidden in plain sight and watched his targets.
While he had never seen either of them around horses to give him a basis of comparison, Bannon’s movements still lacked the deadly grace that marked an assassin and he wore only a single dagger hanging in plain sight from his belt. Vree, for all she retained her training, seemed to periodically lose control of bits of her body—as though she forgot, just for an instant, who she was.
Was she sick, he wondered. Had she picked up some kind of brain disease in Ghoti? Perhaps they left the army rather than risk spreading it. Perhaps they were looking for a cure.
But that theory didn’t explain Bannon.
Had Bannon sustained an injury in the assault on Aralt’s stronghold? A blow to the head that had caused him to forget who and what he was? Neegan had heard of that kind of an injury although he’d personally never believed such a thing to be possible. Was Vree guarding a brother who could no longer guard himself? Actually, had he not known their relationship, Neegan would not have assumed from what he observed that they were brother and sister.
He studied them for a moment as if they were nothing more than targets. Not lovers, not yet. But they no longer flirted with the boundaries blood placed around them. A line had been crossed or the boundaries had been shifted—he wasn’t certain which.
They spoke of their horses, or the weather, or the condition of the secondary, packed clay road they now followed but said nothing that would even begin to answer the multitude of questions he suddenly had. Neegan cocked his head as Vree swung into the saddle and turned to Bannon, her exasperation apparent from a distance.
“Can’t we beat Kars to his stronghold and ambush him?” she asked. “I hate trailing along at his heels.”
“First of all, it isn’t a stronghold, it’s merely a cabin, or it was. Secondly, it’s a long ride to the mountains and I rather think our friend the bard here would prefer to catch up and free His Highness sooner than that. The longer the prince is with him, the more twisted his kigh becomes.”
“You never said that before.”
“I should have thought it was obvious.” He smiled and Neegan fought to keep from staring. Even from across the stableyard, the expression on Bannon’s face had nothing of Bannon in it. What’s more, it had been Bannon’s voice but not Bannon’s manner of speaking.
When they rode out of the innyard, galloping off toward the dawn, Neegan dropped the manure fork and raced along the shadowed paths to his horse and gear. Apparently, his targets were helping the bard to rescue the prince. But that doesn’t change anything, he reminded himself as he buckled on his arm sheaths. It didn’t change the fact that they’d deserted, spat on their oaths, turned their backs on everything he believed in, on everything he’d taught them to believe in. Didn’t change the penalty. Eventually, Bannon would seek a little privacy by the side of the road and, when he did, Neegan would be waiting. Once he had Bannon, he’d have Vree.
“Before you kill them, ask them why.”
He would ask the marshal’s question, but now that confusion threatened to overwhelm his personal sense of betrayal, he would also take the time to ask a question of his own. What had happened in Aralt’s tower?
* * * *
When they finally allowed the horses to slow to a walk, Vree dropped out of the saddle to stretch her legs.
*We’re going to forget how to get anywhere on our own two feet. Gonna end up looking like fat-assed officers.*
Vree arched her back, rocked forward, then arched it again, working the stiffness out of her shoulders. *Giving the pounding it’s taking, if my ass is getting fat, it’s in self-defense.*
She glanced up as the bard fell into step beside her, then let her gaze drop back to the road. There were always people attracted to danger, who courted a symbolic death by courting Jiir’s blades. Vree recognized the bard’s fear—You could kill me at any moment. Would you kill me at any moment?—so she recognized the other woman’s attraction and while she was willing to accept that Karlene honestly wanted to be her friend, she could sense something else as well. Something that confused her.
*She pities us, sister-mine.*
*But she doesn’t know that we’ve broken our oaths …*
*Don’t be so slaughtering stupid, Vree. She pities us because of what we are.*
*You mean with both of us in one body?*
Bannon rolled Vree’s eyes. *I mean she pities us because we’re assassins.*
*That’s ridiculous.*
*I don’t think so.* She felt his resentment, couldn’t tell where it was directed. Or at whom. Felt him retreat into a sullen silence.
“So …” Karlene cleared her throat and made her voice sound curious, nonthreatening. “What did your parents think about you becoming assassins?”
“Children with parents aren’t trained.”
“You must’ve had parents once.”
“Mother was a soldier. She died.”
“What about your father? Or Bannon’s father?”
“Same man. We look like each other but not like I remember her.” Brushing a fly off her face, Vree caught it on the wing, crushed it, and dropped the body. “Probably a soldier; but we don’t know who he is.”
“Didn’t he come forward when your mother died?”
“He could easily have been dead, too.”
Karlene shook her head slowly in disbelief. “You sound like you don’t even care.”
“I don’t. We don’t. The army is our family, the only family an assassin needs.”
“But you’ve left the army …”
Vree flicked a glance back over her shoulder, unable to prevent the involuntary motion. The world stopped as she thought she saw a horse and rider moving into the very edge of her vision. A heartbeat later, they disappeared into a dip in the road.
*Bannon! Did you see that?*
*We’re not the only people on the road, Vree.*
*What if the danger from the inn’s following us?*
*What if it is? We can’t do anything until it catches up.*
He was right. She forced her attention back to what the bard was saying.
“… and you’d always had Bannon.”
“I still have Bannon.” Vree’s right forearm twitched and a throwing dagger appeared in her hand. A twist and it disappeared. She turned and glared at Gyhard, walking on her other side.
Karlene followed her gaze and considered everything she’d learned about assassins since dawn. “Was Gyhard a … a target? Was he prepared?” She read the answer in the set of Vree’s shoulders and the studied indifference of Gyhard’s expression. “He took Bannon’s body when Bannon killed his body, didn’t he?”
“Rough justice, Lady Bard,” Gyhard suggested.
All things being enclosed, Karlene had no intention of comparing the immorality of his action to the equally dubious morality of assassination. “How did you do it?”
“That’s no concern of yours, but I think you’d do the same if it came to a choice between transferring and dying.” He looked at Vree, his mouth twisted into a rueful smile and his voice softened, becoming almost a caress. “I never meant for you to become involved.”
Vree jerked back, as though she were shaking off his touch. “No, you meant for me to die!”
Gyhard’s eyes narrowed. “I meant for Bannon to die.”
“I know.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “That was Bannon.”
“You couldn’t stop him?”
She shook her head. “I thought it was me.”
* * * *
The captain raised her hand. The order to halt echoed down the line. She squinted at the walls and towers of Shaebridge and could just barely make out the garrison flag of the Third Army through the reflected glare of the afternoon sun on the yellow sandstone. “Orlan, send a pair of runners into the garrison. Have them see if Comman
der Neegan checked in with the Third Army. If he hasn’t, then he didn’t enter the city and neither did they. Send another pair to the bridge with a full description of the bard and her companions. If it turns out that they’re not in the city or over the bridge, then they must-have taken the road along the river.”
“Sir!” The squad leader saluted and wheeled his horse around, racing back along the road to where his people stood panting in the sun. They’d had a hard, fast march since the marshal’s courier had met them two days ago, double-timing back along the road. They all knew there’d be no rest until His Highness was found.
Rubbing her eyes, the captain slumped in the saddle. “Tell the company to stand down where they are,” she growled and reached for her water skin. As she swallowed the tepid liquid, she stared at the city and at the two roads bracketing it as if by will alone she could determine where the fugitives had gone.
I should’ve held them when I had them.
But she’d had no reason to hold the whore and his sister and no way of knowing—until the marshal’s courier told her—that they had a companion who knew where to find His Imperial Highness. She had no reason to feel like a fool, but she did.
The captain swallowed another mouthful of water and wished for something just a little stronger. Her orders were clear; capture and question the bard using any means necessary to discover the location of Prince Otavas. But how the slaughtering bloody blazes was she supposed to capture and question a woman who could sing herself invisible?
The best she could hope for was that the assassin who’d passed them half a day before the marshal’s courier arrived—Commander Neegan the courier had named him, although the captain had never heard of an assassin making commander who continued to use his own blade—would hold the bard after he’d slit the other two’s throats.
* * * *
The sudden gust of wind very nearly blew Karlene off her horse. She clutched at the saddle horn as a pair of kigh tried to drag her to the ground. Somehow she managed to whistle them back and then hurriedly dismounted while they swirled around her, just slightly more than an arm’s length away.
