“When he came to me this morning,” Allystaire said, “Harrys let slip something about a couple of the Delondeur men gone missing. I had not the time to think on it much earlier, but…”
“Ah,” Idgen Marte said, sitting back and setting down her wine. “That.”
Allystaire set down his wine as well. “That?”
“Aye, that,” she replied, shrugging. She dropped her voice. “If it helps, they’re not missing. I know exactly where they are, but it’s a bit of a walk and it’s cold. They’re not going anywhere.”
Allystaire eyed her for a moment, brow furrowed, cheeks tensed. “I assume you had a reason.”
“Of course I did,” Idgen Marte replied. “You think I would’ve done that lightly?”
“Why?”
“It came from the Voice,” Idgen Marte said. “Sit, eat, and listen.”
* * *
The only part I don’t like about how Cold-damned dark winter gets is how Cold-damned cold it gets, Idgen Marte thought, as she lingered in shadow along the tree line. Even wreathed in shadow, seeing the world as a blur, its only defined spaces where light and dark mingled, she could not escape the cold.
Regular skulking will do, she finally admitted to herself, and released her Gift. The world shifted instantly back into focus. Darkness swallowed her. She put her back to a tree and let her eyes drift nearly shut, waited. Eventually, from the light of the moon, stars, and the distant fires and torches of the Oyrwyn camp, her eyes adjusted and began to pick out shapes.
None of them were moving, no matter how hard she stared at the vague outline of tents and pavilions, tried to will the shadows to separate into men.
Two men. She muttered their names to herself once again. Chosen Man Rhomand. Sir Luch Chattren. The first is heavy, jowled, grey. Wrestling and boxing champion of his unit. Known toady to the latter, a dangerous man with a sword. As his sort tend to be.
In her mind, she heard the description in Mol’s voice. Sort-of-Mol’s voice. Mol had been speaking as the Voice, then, not as an eleven year-old girl. Speaking as the furious avatar of a goddess, with a timeless, powerful anger behind it, and a resignation. She closed her eyes and ran through the conversation again, every moment of it, every spoken word and nuance. She may never have become the minstrel she’d trained to be, but the recall she was taught still served her well.
“It’ll look suspicious, two men disappearing at once,” Idgen Marte said, when Mol had found her alone in the Temple.
“These two are well known to consort with one another,” Mol countered. “It will appear as if they have struck off together. And they have hoarded supplies anyway, though not to leave, to sell dearly to their fellows.”
“How do you know this?”
“They confessed to that as well and meant it even less. They will be coming to check on their cache, to add to it. Meet them.”
“And do what?”
Mol had turned those large, ageless brown eyes up at her. “The Shadow’s work.”
“I’m not a murderer, Mol.”
“I never suggested you were, Idgen Marte,” the girl said, anger melting into a sad resignation. “You will ask them to surrender. To face the justice of their Lady Baroness, or the Lord of Highgate, or the Arm. They will refuse. And what will you do then?”
“The Shadow’s work.”
The weight of the tree brought her back to the moment. She let her breath out slowly, blowing it down the neck of her coat so no steaming cloud would give her away.
So damned cold. She moved her toes within her boots, her hands inside the sleeves, against her forearms, where she’d tucked them. Winters in Cansebour were pleasantly chilled. Flurries were a novelty. Snow that lasted more than a day in the streets was a generational event.
At least there was the weight of the sword at her side. At least there was that. She pulled her right hand free, wrapped it around the hilt, the leather-wrapped wire smooth, warm, fit to her hand like it was made for it.
It had been, after all.
Torvul had been waiting for her as she left the Temple that night, after praying. He hadn’t said a word at first, just extended it to her, held almost reverently in both hands. Slightly longer than the one that had broken months ago, the curve more pronounced, even in the failing light of winter the hilt and the slim silver lines along the scabbard gleamed with deadly beauty. She’d looked at him curiously, and not a little in awe.
“You’ve got a lot of reach,” he said. “Best to maximize it. More curve, more force. Think of it as the thinnest sliver of a crescent moon. One that you see on a night with a lot of shadow.”
She had never been a woman given to tears. Less so since she’d taken to the life of a sword-at-hire. But the weight of that sword in her hands, on her hips as she had buckled it on, the mastery of craft that she could feel in its weight, in the hilt, the way it fit at her side and how she knew it would move with her as she walked or ran or blurred from shadow to shadow, what it meant—that brought tears to the corner of her eyes.
Torvul pretended not to notice, and she didn’t have to hit him. It was a good decision for both of them. Solemnly, she had bent down, wrapped her arms around his barrel chest, and kissed his cheek. He’d smelled of smoldering coal and hot iron, astringent and earth.
When she stood, she muttered, “If you tell anyone I did that…”
“Too smart for that,” he said, waving a huge hand in the air.
“Why now?”
He looked at her then, the weight of his dark, deep-set eyes almost palpable. “You have work to do, Shadow.”
“How do you—”
“I’m the Wit. It’s my place to know things. Go. May it serve you well.”
She was snapped out of her reverie as two shapes broke apart from the greater mass of darkness at the camp. They were dozens of spans away yet, but the moon and starlight was enough too make out their rough form, if no detail. They were coming closer, straight for her.
They stopped. One appeared to kneel, then a light suddenly flared, was quickly dampened. A shuttered lantern.
Rather that use her gift and fade into shadow, she simply stepped, quick and graceful, to the other side of the tree, ducking nimbly under a branch as she went. She made no sound.
Stupid. Ruining their eyes. She turned her head so she saw them peripherally, trying to maintain her own. Then, they don’t have a reason to be afraid. Yet.
She heard them stomping through the trees then, snapping branches as they went. Then muttered counting, as one of them paced from one tree to another, then to an empty spot. They knelt.
The lantern, though shuttered, leaked enough light to cast shadows around them. She waited.
Branches were shifted, and rocks. A bundle wrapped in heavy cloth was unearthed.
She reached for her Gift. The world slowed, blurred. She leaned forward, was suddenly standing in front of them.
“Good evening, Chosen Man. Sir Luch. Out for a stroll?”
To their credit, they didn’t take too much fright. Both of them reached to their belts for weapons that weren’t there. Luch drew himself up. He was tall, but thin, with a kind of hard, mean slenderness to him.
“We have liberty of the camp.”
“This is beyond the camp. And I don’t give a good Cold damn what liberty you think you’ve been given.”
Rhomand went for the lantern, opened the shutters. That only gave her more opportunity. She spoke up again from behind them.
“I don’t even care about your little hoard. Not the food you have been sneaking, at any rate. If you are hungry, ask; someone from the village would feed you. The little collection of links, though? And the brass ring with the chip of glass, the little squares of silk, and whatever other treasures you took from that farmhouse? Those I’ll need back.”
There was a long, guilty silence. She had her
hand to her sword.
“Witch! You’ll have to do better than that to frighten us.” Luch again, imperious, arrogant.
Her reply came with her lips mere inches from his ear, a knife from her sleeve pressed to his neck for just a moment. “How about now?”
He jumped half a foot away, swung an arm wildly. Rhomand whirled, the lantern blurring in the night.
“Her name was Cecile,” Idgen Marte said, feeling anger burrowing up in her. “We knew she died in the first attack. She was put into the ground today. She was trying to keep her farm going after her husband died back in the summer, when reavers burned this place to cinders.”
“What’re you on about?” Rhomand swung the lantern towards where her voice had come from. When he saw nothing, he bent down to pick up a rock. In his huge-knuckled hand, at the end of a thick arm, it would make a formidable weapon. If he had a target.
“Her name was Cecile, and she sent her son inside the walls to be protected, but she wanted to mind her house and her stock no matter what we told her. She threw down the bottle-flare the Wit had given her and then took up a crossbow and put a bolt into your horse,” she said, reaching out and flicking at Luch’s cloak with the tip of her sword. Finally holding it, not even aware that she’d drawn it, the sword was like a song waiting to be sung, a lute waiting to be played.
“Some peasant did shoot at us, yes,” Luch replied, bending down to seize his own stone. “Shame when they involve themselves in war that way. Only one recourse.”
“She shot your horse,” Idgen Marte said, rage lowering her already scratchy voice to a hiss. “What did you do next?”
“Took proper retribution!”
“You detailed your favorite murderer to burn her house, and you killed her as she watched it burn. Not before you plundered what little of value you found in it, of course. Then you crushed her skull and moved on.”
“Peasant got what was owed her,” Rhomand wheezed. He never stopped moving, stone at the ready, arm cocked to throw or swing. “As will you, demon-bride!”
Circling them was effortless. Unfair. Moving to their rear, then their front, flashing from spot to spot in mid sentence, fooling their ears.
This work is not about what is fair, Idgen Marte reminded herself. She raised her sword.
“I will give you this one chance. Choose whom you’ll confess to: Landen Delondeur, the Lord of Highgate, or Allystaire Stillbright. Confess your crime, accept your punishment. Die like men.”
“I will not die in this shitstep village,” Luch sniffed and impulsively hurled his rock. It thudded off a tree trunk, shaking snow and dead leaves to the ground, skittered off into the night.
“We confessed what’er crimes we felt like t’tha wee girl,” Rhomand protested.
“You cannot repent of what you do not regret,” Idgen Marte said.
“Peasant lives do not trouble me. And we are unarmed; would you make yourself a murderer as you claim we are?”
“People like Cecile have long clung to shadows to keep them safe. Their hope, their refuge, is in being invisible. If the men with the swords don’t notice them, the men with the swords don’t kill them,” Idgen Marte replied. “I am that shadow. I cannot save them all.”
She appeared between them. Her sword flashed, cut Luch’s legs out from under him.
“But I am a Shadow with a sword.”
Rhomand’s rock flew at her, but she was already ducking and gliding towards him. Her sword darted out, the flat parallel to the ground. Her stroke was true; it parted his clothing like paper, speared straight through his ribs and into his heart. She pulled it free so fast and so clean the wound had barely started to bleed. He fell to his knees, dead before they reached the ground. The lantern hit the earth, stood upright, so straight and direct was his fall. His body slumped forward.
She stood over Luch. “I gave you a chance,” she said, lowering the blade to his throat.
“Were I armed,” he panted, “this would be different. Is this how your Goddess metes justice, paladin?”
“Allystaire is the paladin,” Idgen Marte answered him. “He is the hero, the knight, the holy man of song and story. He would have tried you, hung you. Mayhap you could have goaded him to a fight.” She shook her head and said, “He would not have killed you from ambush, in the dark. But he is bound to be a legend; I am but a shadow.”
The very tip of the sword took his throat, and his last words were lost in a choked gurgle.
She bent and cleaned her sword in the snow, drying it on the inside of Luch’s cloak. She bent and grasped the bag they’d hidden. In it was a meager pile of brass that barely glinted with silver. Scraps of silk and other kinds of cloth. A few pieces of jewelry. Such poor treasures for men to have died for.
“And yet you died for them as well, Cecile,” Idgen Marte muttered. “For them and for the life you were trying to rebuild. I am sorry I was not there for you then. I am sorry that all I can offer you and our Mother is cold and meager justice. I hope She has gathered you close in the next world.”
The Shadow lowered her head as she sheathed her newly blooded sword. For the second time in a night, tears threatened the corners of her eyes.
She hefted the bag in her hand, gripped it hard.
The tears didn’t fall.
* * *
Allystaire was silent for a long, drawn-out moment after she’d finished relaying the story. A tray with a bowl of stew, a fresh loaf, and a small bowl of butter sat untouched at his elbow.
“You’re not usually one to let food linger,” Idgen Marte said, for lack of anything better to say. “I’m sure you’re thinking of all the ways this was wrong.”
He held up one hand, palm out. “What did you do with the bodies?” His voice was barely above a whisper.
“All of that, and your first question—”
“Please answer me.” With his voice so quiet, she couldn’t quite judge how much anger was in the tone.
“I, ah, may have requested Keegan and his lads take care of it.”
Allystaire nodded. “Why did you not come to me?”
“It was my task,” Idgen Marte replied. “Appointed to me by the Voice. And in some ways by the Mother Herself.”
“Why not force them to confess to me, or to Chaddin?”
“You hadn’t gone making suggestions yet,” Idgen Marte pointed out. “And their crime was the vilest, and it was against one of ours. Because she shot a horse.”
“Do not mistake me,” Allystaire said. “If I knew of their crimes, no matter what Landen or Chaddin said, I would have seen them dead.”
“You could’ve known about their crimes,” she pointed out. “All you’d have to do is ask.”
“Think of where that leads,” Allystaire said, shaking his head. “Am I to question every man that passes through Thornhurst? Interrogate every person I contact, and slay them if I deem them a black enough sinner? I cannot wield Her Gifts summarily. That would be tyranny.”
“You gave Sir Miles a pretty summary judgment, if I recall.”
“He had tried to kill a child, after I had surrendered. He was a mad dog and I suffer no lack of sleep for having put him in the ground.”
“Then we ought to understand one another perfectly,” Idgen Marte said.
“Why could you not tell me?”
“Had I told you that I was off to kill two of Landen’s men, you’d have wanted to know why. Then you would’ve insisted on coming with me, calling them out and killing them properly, publicly. And what would that have done t’your plan for Landen and Chaddin?”
Allystaire sighed, turned to the plate at his elbow and absently ripped off a hunk of bread. He swiped it across the butter, stuffed it into his mouth, and chewed thoughtfully.
Good sign, Idgen Marte thought. He’s not too angry to eat.
Finally, Allystaire nodded. “You are
right. It would have ruined any chance of my suggestion working.” He raised a brow. “It still may not, you know.”
“We will see that it does.”
“What if it all melts away with the snow, as soon as they leave?”
“You are a better judge of people than that,” she assured him. “And Landen needs support if she hopes to hold her seat.”
“A Baron’s seat can change someone fast, and rarely for the better. Still,” he said, “I think Landen saw the truth of what her father became, and it frightened her. She will sue for peace. Innadan will be willing to listen, at least. Oyrwyn, though…”
“I have taken steps in that direction,” Idgen Marte said. “Oyrwyn will find campaigning difficult to manage in the coming year.”
“So many unknowns linger over this. How will the Sea Dragon’s Temple respond?”
“They cowered in fear during the battle. They fear Gideon.”
“I do not think that the Choiron Symod cowers,” Allystaire replied. “He wisely stayed out of Gideon’s reach, yes. Do not doubt that he is thinking of a way to counter him, to fight back. And there may be sorcerers yet to trouble us.”
“Cold,” she swore. “Eat your dinner. Let us get through the winter first. Then send Landen and Chaddin back to the Dunes, and Garth and your sister off to Highgate, and Cerisia off to the Vineyards, and then we can start looking for the next blow.”
“I would rather be delivering the next blow than waiting for it,” Allystaire replied. “But that depends on knowing who our enemies are and where they will be, and we cannot, in truth, say that we do.” He pulled the bowl of stew into his hand, cradling it in one large palm, heedless of the warmth of it. He shoveled in a few spoonfuls, eyes going distant as he chewed hastily.
“If it’s guidance you need, go to the Temple. Pray,” Idgen Marte said. “I can’t tell you what to do next and we both know you’d not likely want t’listen even if I did.”
He spooned more stew into his mouth quickly, nodding appreciatively at the bowl, then at her suggestion. “I think I may,” Allystaire said. “I have not tried to speak to Her since…” He trailed off, set the bowl down.
Crusade Page 20
