He sounded so sure her heart lifted. “None, not even one or two? You’re full certain of it?”
“Ever I keep an eye out for them here. See, when the blue-capes are here, there’s a thought,” he shrugged, his voice faltering, “that maybe you might be, as well.” He smiled warmly at her. “Always listening for my starling, I am. So the scavvies know to watch for them, and they saw none.”
“But you said you sent the scavvies away.” Her heart sank. “An Renda and her father came after…”
“Aye,” he replied, “but I stayed near, ever hoping to get someone to listen to me and send the people to Durlindale. I didn’t go inland until I felt the quakes start, and the wave followed hard upon. My word upon it, girl. They were not here.” He looked at her expectantly, watching the relief wash over her. “Well? Come now, there’s talk of fire and hot food elsewhere.” He followed her gaze over the piles of broken lives. “There’s naught we can do for these poor souls in the dark and the wet. Let’s be away from this wretchedness, at least until daybreak.”
“Lovely mulled wine,” offered the grizzled scavvy awkwardly. He sat wriggling his cold, numb toes in the warmth of the fire, wrapped in a borrowed green and gold cloak while his own threadbare clothes were stretched over chairs to dry. He wiped imaginary crumbs from his chin self-consciously. “The meat and bread were most welcome, and I thank you kindly for them, Your Grace.”
Trocu nodded graciously. “We are doubly blessed, Tagen, both in having provisions to share and in having you here to share them.”
Gikka felt Tagen’s exquisite discomfort at being in the presence of Trocu Damerien––
The duke his own self!
––naked and wrapped in the duke’s own cloak, beholden to him for food and shelter, and she wanted to laugh and cry all at once. This man she loved as her father, this wretched scavvy who could not beg the attention of the board of ministers in Brannford, now had the care, the attention and even the respect of the ruler of all Syon. She’d seen it in the moment the two men met. One leader recognized another, and while Tagen felt awkward and unworthy to be in Trocu’s presence, Damerien had sized him up and found him worthy. She only wished Tagen could accept that and relax.
Her old mentor could not know that she had found Damerien––Brada Damerien––tortured, shivering and naked, curled up and wretched in his own excrement in the bottom of Kadak’s stronghold. That night, it had been her ragged cloak that had covered his nakedness, and her skills, skills she had learned mostly from Tagen, which had seen him through the final battle with Kadak and safely back to his castle for the Succession. Tagen would never know, but Trocu surely did.
“Well, the meat and bread,” sighed Nestor, “were our own to offer, but I’m embarrassed to say we…found the wine in the cellar of this house.” He cast a stern sideways glance at Chul, who was sitting almost worshipfully at the newcomer’s feet.
Gikka swallowed a grin. As much as the boy respected Gikka, for this man to have been her teacher made him well nigh a god in the boy’s eyes.
Tagen looked around him, letting his gaze rest approvingly on Chul for just a moment, and the boy smiled. “Still, I’m grateful to you and to all them as provided, sir.”
Nestor smiled, clearly warming to the man in spite of himself.
“It seems we’ve a bit of time.” Damerien smiled hospitably, clearly trying to put Gikka’s old mentor at ease. “Tagen, tell me, how did you come to meet Gikka?” He looked warmly at Renda’s squire. “In all the years I’ve known her, she’s never told us the story.”
Gikka’s eyes went wide. “Oh, my Lord, sure that tale’s not worth a thought.”
Tagen laughed. “And yet, if His Grace would hear it, who am I to deny him?”
“I insist!” Trocu looked between them. “Unless the story is somehow ––”
Gikka snorted. “Oh, no, nothing like that.” Trocu looked at her with a wicked grin. At last she just shook her head, resigned. “Very well, but if you must tell it, tell it true. No polish, mark you. I’d have them hear a plain report of it.”
“Just the truth, I swear it,” he smiled, and Gikka noticed he was already more at ease with them. “Oh, it’ll be half a lifetime ago now. She were no more than ten.”
“Twelve,” she corrected. “You’re polishing already.”
“Aye, I misspoke me, twelve, she was. A scrawny ragged little scavvy, but fearless as you please, and such a touch with a purse….” He looked up self consciously and reached for his glass. “The other children, they were afraid, doing as they were told, but this one had a look like a hungry graetna. Worth marking, aye? So one night, I seen her come out of an alley, pathetic little knife in hand. Odd, aye? So I watch her a few more nights. Next time I catch her, must have been half a month hence, I ask her, being careful, me, and she denies it so sweet I almost believe her even watching her wipe blood from her blade! But I have guilty knowledge, me. I know the fleeks are looking for who’s been tockin’ drunkards in the alleyways!”
Trocu looked a bit disturbed. “You mean to say you met her while she was killing people?”
“Not just any people,” Tagen replied. “Had she done, I’d have cut her throat myself. No, these were wicked, evil men.”
The duke looked at Gikka.
“Aye, they were. Men as had it owed to them, aye,” she murmured. “Them as make prey of a little girl’s smile.” She tried to keep her tone light, but the darkness of the memory encroached. “Them as knew what happened to us either feared to make a noise or they took a profit themselves. They would set one or another of us orphan children, unknowing, to walk this street or that and be grabbed for ill use. Came my turn…” she looked down. That was the first time she’d ever taken a life, and she’d made a mess of him. Long and slow. Took days to get the blood off, and more days still while the fleeks sniffed about for who’d tocked him.
Trocu closed his eyes. “I begin to understand. “But you were only twelve!”
“The others were younger,” she smiled sadly at the memory. “Sure they couldn’t have done for themselves.”
Tagen laughed weakly. “Told me she’d watched him the tenday until she’d caught him clumsy with drink. ‘I’ve patience, me,’ she said, as proud as you please. She’d no idea of her danger. But that, that fearlessness, that’s exactly what called me to take her up to teach. Patience, skill and heart, she had, my starling. Noisy, though,” he winked at her. “Still is. Is how she got that nickname.”
She laughed and shook her head. “Since then, I’ve learned a thing and more.”
“Noisy,” he repeated playfully, “like skeletons dancing on a tin roof, noisy.” His laugh faded. “But in her eyes, I seen a spark, one as would blow up into flame.” He reached over and squeezed her hand. “And my privilege it was to be holding the billows.”
“Syon’s good fortune, as well,” smiled Damerien. “We could not have won the war without her.”
Behind them, the door opened quietly, and Jath slipped in to sit down beside Chul. “Sorry to have been so long about my chores. Zinion took quite a fright,” he said quietly, glancing up at Gikka. “Not to fret, though. It were nothing a pile of carrots couldn’t soothe. But what he saw in Brannford were a worry to him.”
“Aye,” she answered. “It were a worry to more than just him.”
“Tagen,” began the duke, “now that we’re all here, so please you, I would like to know what happened in Brannford. Gikka tells me you warned the scavvies away ere the worst befell the city. Can you tell me what you saw that gave you warning?”
The man shrugged and scratched his head. “The water. It were all wrong, Your Lordship. Can’t find better words for it. For two days together, I watched the water and the land beneath it fall away, with no high tide between.”
Trocu frowned. “How do you mean, the land fell away?”
“The sea wall has marks on it for high tides and low tides. When the tide drops to the lowest marker, the sea takes on a shade, aye? Still the
water is enough to hold up the piers and the ships, but at the lowest mark, you can make out the kelps and the muck along the shelf.”
“Aye, I remember,” said Gikka. “The water takes a mud brown color for being so low.”
He nodded. “Except the tide goes out two days ago, and looks to keep going out, lower than the lowest mark, and come we to wondering if the fleet ought not to set out, storms be damned, so the ships don’t founder.”
Nestor frowned. “It’s been many a year since I lived near the sea, but the thought strikes me that the tide should be at its higher marks in the Feast of Bilkar, aye?”
“Aye, which is what had me at watching in the first place,” replied Tagen, beginning to relax and warm to his story. “My sense of it was like all the sea were being sucked up into a giant breath for the storm to shout at us, but ever as it drops, the water keeps to blue and green, with no sight of ground beneath it.” He looked anxiously between them. “Don’t you see? From where I stood, it looked like Syon just lifted her skirts up out of the sea a bit, neat as you please. She didn’t, mind. Leastwise I don’t think so. Turns out it was as I said, the sea taking a big breath to shout at us.”
Trocu stroked his chin, considering. “This may seem an odd question, but did you notice any mages coming through Brannford the tenday? Or anyone else who caught your attention?”
The question took him completely by surprise. “Mages?” He shook his head. “Not a one. I’ve only ever seen one or two in all my life, so it’s a thing to mark when they come through. No, we seen none.”
“They would not have needed to come into Brannford itself,” said Chul quietly. “Not if they were the same mages that destroyed…” He hesitated and looked cautiously between Nestor and Damerien. Damerien gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Destroyed Castle Brannagh,” he finished.
Chul quickly related what he’d seen of the siege at Brannagh, and Tagen shook his head. “No, it were none such. This were all in the sea and the ground, no flashes, no fires but those of oil spilled and catching a candle here and there.”
Nestor stood and walked to the fire. “Were there no quakes? Nothing to give warning at all?”
“Not in warning, no.” He shrugged. “A rumble here, a rumble there, nothing I haven’t felt before, nothing as would give a man pause. Not until right before the wave came. Then the quakes shook the town to pieces, ripping her from top to bottom. By the time it hit, the wave were like an afterthought, like washing up after all the damage were done. It came down upon her from the north side and just swept the broken rubbish aside.”
“Wait,” said Trocu, a worried look coming into his eyes, “did you say the wave came from the north?”
He nodded. “Aye.”
“Northeast,” offered Nestor. “You mean it came from the northeast, from out at sea?”
Tagen shook his head. “What hit Brannford curled off the main body of the wave that passed out to sea, but that big wave? It came from the north and went straight southward.”
“From the north,” gasped Damerien. “It may well have destroyed the entire coastline. But what is to the north that could possibly…?”
Jath looked up at Damerien with a strangely distant look in his eyes. Then he murmured but a single word. “Pyran.”
Ten
Brannford
Renda had ridden alongside the Bilkarian monk in silence since their last stop at midday. The shadows lengthened quickly during the Feast of Bilkar, and this near the coast, the cold was almost painful at night. The knights had ridden hard all the previous day and through most of the night, but now they were sure of reaching Brannford, and more importantly Brannford’s inns, by nightfall. With the city not far beyond the crest of the hill, they could afford the luxury of slowing to rest the horses.
Ahead, Daerwin talked quietly with Kerrick, a soft chuckle rising occasionally through the generally somber tone of the conversation. Now and then, one of them would make a gesture as of swinging a sword or raising a shield in the telling of whatever stories they shared followed by an appreciative chuckle or a gasp of amazement.
Renda knew she would be welcome to join them, but she had no energy for it. She chose instead to ride beside Laniel, even in his silence.
Behind, the rest of the knights were likewise silent, still digesting what Renda had told them along the way of the plague, the battle with the cardinal and the fall of Brannagh. The sad testament of war was that, as green as these knights were, even they had all lost friends and loved ones to war. Once the accolades were no longer fresh and the celebrations of the war’s end had passed, those lost were still lost, as they well knew. Grief was nothing new to them, and at least they were seasoned enough to focus it into resolve against the enemy, even if that kind of focus was much more difficult when the enemy was yet unknown.
For Laniel’s particular flavor of grief, however, she was at a loss.
“Are you well,” she asked at last.
His head lifted beneath the furred cowl he wore. “I think not, Lady.”
When he did not continue, she wondered if she had offended him by asking. She cleared her throat a bit self-consciously. “Forgive me. I do not mean to pry…”
He shook his head. “I take no offense. I am grateful for your concern. But I am uncertain how I might express to you how I feel.”
She nodded.
“In the space of a day, everything I’ve held to be the purpose of my life for a century and more has been taken from me because I was weak.” He turned to her, and she saw deep confusion in his dark eyes. “Weak! I, a priest of Bilkar! I am disgraced, and by my god Himself. I do not understand how it is that I yet live or even why I should.”
Renda studied his face. She knew these feelings. She had felt them herself—still felt them occasionally in the depth of night when sleep was not deep enough to hold off the darkness. But always her answer was the same: the danger to Syon had not ended with Kadak’s death. Her task was not yet finished. If that was enough to keep her from dishonoring herself, so be it. Once she was certain of victory, however, she would revisit the feelings and face them, possibly for the last time. But for now, she must live. So must they all. And she could not have the only priest among them entertaining thoughts of suicide.
He saw the alarm in her eyes and shrugged. “Forgive me. My thoughts wander to further weakness.”
She felt a sigh rise in her breast and quelled it. “Such thoughts touch us all, from time to time.”
His voice hardened. “They do not touch Bilkarians.”
“It seems they do.” She reached over and squeezed his arm gently. “If you would find your strength again, Laniel, remind yourself that Bilkar Himself set you to accompany us for a reason. He entrusted you with His most earnest mission.” When she saw Laniel draw breath to protest, she raised a brow at him. “Bilkar Himself called it so. Not I.” She shivered, looking at the eastern path ahead of them and beyond it, to the sea. “I wish I knew what He knows that worries Him enough to send His highest priest with us, and do not think to argue that point with me. Gaed may be Abbess of Bilkar, but you are unquestionably His most powerful priest.”
Laniel nodded grudgingly.
“So occupy yourself with that mystery, an it please you. For my part, while yet there is nothing we can do but ride, I might be better pleased not to know what might so vex a god. My sleep will surely be sweeter,” she sighed. “Ere long, we shall be in Brannford. Once there, we will take our ease, gather our strength, and plan our voyage to Byrandia.”
“Byrandia,” he repeated with a wistful smile. “I recall that I did envy you this challenge. And here I find myself. It seems I have found challenge in my path after all.”
“Then it is a good day indeed, what’s left of it.” She looked ahead of them, to where the bare sticks of the foothill forestland eased away toward the coast. “Of course, we still must find a ship that will make the voyage, which may well prove our challenge for many days to come, so.” She smiled bravely. “For cha
llenges, it seems we shall not want! Therefore, be of good cheer, Laniel.”
He smiled in spite of himself. “Ever the ray of sunlight in a darkening world, you are, my Lady. No wonder it is that Lord Kerrick prizes you so dearly.”
“Your pardon?” She looked away, despising the flush in her cheeks and the feeble deceit in her tone.
“Come now. Have I truly said something you do not know? The question remains whether you should prize him as dearly. If you allowed yourself the…weakness.” He looked over at her for a moment, studying her. “After all, he is exactly the sort of man your virtues should attract.”
She struggled for a reply and found none.
Suddenly, Daerwin drew up short ahead of them, and signaled a stop. Renda rode up beside him to see what had stopped them, and the others drew up behind them.
“What in the name of…?” Kerrick squinted toward the billows of black smoke rising from behind the shattered walls of the city. The smells were those of the battlefield, of burning wood and flesh. Flocks of scavengers circled high above, hungry and frustrated by the fires below. “This is Brannford? It cannot be!”
“Yet it is,” scowled the sheriff. “Come. And caution, all of you. I would not have us ride blindly into a trap, for all our worry for those within.”
* * *
Chul squinted up into the rain as he worked. The cloth he’d bound around his face to stifle the smell of rot and death moved softly with his breath. “I still don’t see him.”
“Who, Colaris?” asked Gikka, casting her own glance into the sky in spite of herself. “He’s probably moved clear of the smoke and stench and found himself a dry spot to perch. Ever one for a tender stomach, him.”
“I worry for him with all the other birds up there. Some are bigger, and the way they circle…”
She stood up straight from where she’d been working and stretched her back. “Gulls, one and all, from the look of it. Any but the biggest of that lot as would try to catch Colaris would have a big surprise, they would. Fear him not, now. That bird’s been minding himself since the war.”
Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) Page 16
