The Shattered Vigil

by Patrick W. Carr

  Rory shrugged. “Lots.”

  “Great,” I muttered, “he’s one of you.”

  I found Custos in a back corner thumbing through a book of children’s rhymes, turning each page after the merest glance. To the casual observer he would appear to be idly scanning the contents, perhaps searching for some verse or limerick of interest. Only I and a few other people would know that Custos was actually memorizing the book.

  A thought struck me. “Why are you doing that?”

  He raised his head, noting our presence for the first time. “It’s a volume I’ve never seen before. Lady Bronwyn sent it along with a note asking me to commit it to memory, but she didn’t tell me anything else about it.” Custos gave me an owlish blink to accompany a smirk. “I think it’s from their secret library we spoke of earlier.” He closed the book, his thumb marking a spot a little over halfway through. “She’s asked to delve all my memories of children’s rhymes when next we meet.” He ducked his head, embarrassed. “She and Pellin have thought up all sorts of uses for me it seems.”

  I laughed. “No one is surprised but you, my friend. I need your help.”

  Custos reached into his faded red cassock and pulled out a hawk feather to mark his place before lifting his head to smile at me as though I’d given him a packet of figs. “Do we need someplace more private?”

  I shook my head. “No, not yet anyway. Is the name Viona Ness anywhere within that head of yours?”

  He stilled for a moment while I imagined him reading through thousands of works with the speed of lightning. After a moment he nodded, and his gaze stilled. “She’s not in the library.” He shrugged. “At least not anymore.” He pointed to the east section. I didn’t see him over there very often. “Viona Ness is the daughter of a minor noble allied with the Deor family.”

  “Was,” I said. “She was killed two weeks ago.” I searched my memories of court for them. It didn’t take long. My recollections of the throne room were few in number and dominated by the efforts of the Orlan family and its allies to humiliate or kill me. “Tell me about them. Jeb says she wasn’t on the rolls of the gifted, but I thought you might know better.”

  Custos shrugged. “They have a gift of craft that, like all the other families, runs pure, but what makes them noteworthy is their talent set. It’s an unusual combination for a family within the city.”

  Something in my gut told me Custos was about to tell me something important. “What is it?”

  “Nature,” he said. “By all accounts the talent is so strong in the Ness family, the church has tested them to see if there’s something else going on there.”

  “Gift stealing?” Bolt asked.

  Custos shook his head. “Though they never came right out and said it, that was the implication, but there’s no gift that mimics the talent they have with animals.”

  I thought of Timmis, Braben’s stable hand, with his gnarled hands and missing teeth and how horses he’d never seen before sidled up to him like a long-lost friend. It was touching to see, but more than a few stables boasted men or women with the same talent. “Why would that put the church on guard?”

  He grimaced. “In the Ness family, it behaves more like a gift. When everyone in the family showed that talent for animals, the priests started to wonder.”

  “And what did they find?”

  Custos shrugged. “Nothing, my boy. Of course, the fact that the Ness family income is modest in comparison to most of the nobility didn’t hurt.”

  Rory nodded. “Why steal a gift if you can’t make money with it?”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “The church found something unusual and came up with nothing other than the fact that the Ness family is unusual.” I shot a look at Bolt. “Do you know why Viona was taken out of the library records?”

  Bolt shook his head as Custos answered for him. “She withdrew from the family about two years ago and left the city.”

  For a moment, I wondered if I’d heard him right. “She surrendered her nobility? Was she firstborn?”

  Custos shook his head. “No, fourth in fact.” He gestured at the library. “She’s not even here anymore,” he said, his voice subdued.

  I understood. To Custos, it was if Viona had more than died. Even her life had been erased. “Think, Custos. Is there anything else that might make Viona important?”

  He could have answered me right away, but out of deference, I saw him run through all the information in his head again. “No. I’m sorry, Willet.”

  I gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Don’t be. You gave us more than we had before. I think we’ll wander down into the city and see if we can find out why she wanted her name erased from the family record.”

  We left the library and made our way down to the nobles’ section of the city. It didn’t take long to find the Ness family’s estate. They lived in a fairly modest granite house on the edge of the river. I was more familiar with the Alainn family, so it surprised me that there were no armed guards at the gate, only a servant who appeared as thoroughly bored as only a man on sentry duty can. When we walked up, he looked at us as if we’d lost our way and had approached him by accident.

  “Good morrow,” I greeted. “Would it be possible to see Lord Ness?”

  He stared at me before nodding, his face slack with surprise. “Possibly. May I tell him the purpose of your visit?”

  Jeb or a member of the castellan’s staff had surely been here before, to tell Lord Ness of the death of his daughter. I doubted he wanted to hear about it again, but I couldn’t think of any other plausible reason to visit him. “Just tell him Lord Willet Dura is here to see him.”

  The servant’s eyes widened as he looked at me, and I could have sworn a smile had begun to surprise the rest of his face as he nodded and turned away.

  “Just once, I’d like to just have someone nod and say ‘Certainly, Lord Dura, I’ll just be a moment,’ or something like that.”

  Bolt laughed. “You’re famous. You should be happy,” he said in an overly bright tone of voice. “You’ve given that man something unusual to talk about for days on end. He can tell all the other servants that he got to meet the king’s hired killer, the man who killed Count Orlan and lived to tell about it.”

  “You’re mocking me.”

  My guard nodded. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  The servant returned and led us through a long hallway filled with paintings of animals depicted in colors no one would find in nature. Instead of turning into the audience room, the servant took us through another long hallway leading toward the back of the Ness estate, glancing over his shoulder every fourth or fifth step, as if he expected me to fly into a rage and start killing everyone present.

  It was a relief when we came out onto a wide shaded patio at the back of the house on a slope overlooking a branch of the river. In a broad green space a young man worked with a heavy-chested dog with short tan fur, taking the animal through a series of exercises and praising the animal at frequent intervals. Lord Ness came forward to greet us without extending his hand, his arms tucked behind his back. I bowed, taking care to incline my head more than custom and respect demanded. “Lord Ness, greetings. I’m Willet Dura.”

  Ness acknowledged me with a curt nod. “I know who you are.” His gaze slid from me to Rory and then settled on Bolt. “No one ever bothered to ask the right question.”

  I followed his gaze, which weighed and sifted my guard with all the feeling of a baker weighing out flour. “Lord Ness?”

  Ness looked at me in irritation. “I rarely go to court, Lord Dura. I find the company of the animals I train here and on my holdings to be preferable to that of nobles. You can see the fruits of our effort in the best-trained animals in the kingdom.” He pointed toward the young man and the dog, giving me a tight-lipped smile that didn’t even come close to touching his eyes. “I try not to traffic in snakes.”

  I smiled. “We have that in common, then.”

  He didn’t appreciate the comparison. “Lord Dura, let
me be blunt. You went to court, offended a powerful family and your guard there dispatched his man, his gifted man, after a single touch of blades.” He shook his head. “And no one thought to ask how a minor lord, the most minor lord, comes to hold the leash of such a guard. As I said, I don’t go to court often, but I was there the night you assassinated Lord Baine.” He shrugged, his face emotionless. “And now you’re here to talk to me about my dead daughter.”

  This wasn’t going well. “I can assure you, Lord Ness, I had no intention of challenging or being challenged that night. As for my guard, he is a friend, not an animal I hold on a leash.”

  His eyes narrowed. “And there you betray yourself, Lord Dura. The leash is for guidance, and animals can be far better friends than people.”

  He turned away from me for a moment, but not before I heard him murmur to himself. “Even family.”

  In front of him the young man whistled a short command and the dog returned to its kennel with unquestioning obedience.

  “That’s why I’m here,” I told him. “I would like to find those who killed your daughter and bring them to justice.”

  Ness shook his head. “The castellan’s men are investigating, Lord Dura. Your services are not required.”

  I waited for him to say more, but he continued to gaze at his garden and the dogs cavorting in it. I needed a way to break through the wall he’d put up. “The castellan’s men do not know the city as well as I, Lord Ness. Would it not be better to have as many men trying to catch Viona’s killer as possible?”

  His shoulders dropped from their defensive position, but he shook his head in denial. “Lord Dura, my daughter left to pursue some unknown ambition over my objection and without my permission. I hadn’t seen her in two years before they brought me to look at her body.” I could see the muscles in his throat working to push the words out. “If you catch the killer, will that bring her back to life, back to her home?”

  “No.”

  “Then what is the point, Lord Dura, of your investigation?”

  I hid my hands behind my back and stripped off my gloves, tucking them into my belt as I answered. “The dead demand justice from the living. You don’t wear the grief of a man who’s lost his daughter.”

  His eyes narrowed at me as if I’d slapped him. “Is it justice for my daughter you are after, Lord Dura, or is she just a plank in a scaffold, a clue that might reveal some bigger threat?”

  I had nothing to say, and Ness pulled air into his lungs as if breathing had somehow become difficult. “Viona died two years ago when she disappeared.”

  If I’d been a horse, my ears would have swiveled forward. “She disappeared?”

  He turned away from me. “Very well, Lord Dura. If it will hasten your departure, I will tell you everything I know. After Viona disappeared, the castellan’s men scoured the city for her for weeks. No trace of her was ever found. She’d vanished like the summer mist. Then a week ago, the castellan shows up with her family ring, the blood hardly dried, to tell me she’s dead, cut down here in the city, probably by one of those pickpockets you have a reputation for favoring.” He cut his eyes to Rory, who somehow exuded urchin despite the clothes and haircut Bolt had given him.

  Ness looked at me. “Now, will you go?”

  I nodded, but asked him another question anyway. “Lord Ness, before Viona disappeared, did she seem different to you?”

  He eyes narrowed into a withering expression. “You’ve never had a daughter, Lord Dura. Viona was sixteen. She became different every morning and sometimes at noon and sunset as well.”

  I shifted my feet in preparation to leave. “Did you plan to give your gift to her?”

  Ness shook his head. “No, Kyran is firstborn, but Viona’s birth and talent would have served her almost as well. Animals loved her.”

  He turned away from me, and I motioned to Bolt and Rory for us to leave, but after a couple of steps, I asked my last question, the most important. “Lord Ness, I can see you loved your daughter, and I believe she loved you, but why would she visit the ministry to erase her name from the family record before she disappeared?”

  He looked at me as if I’d become strange, shaking his head. Then he got angry. “She would never do such a thing, and those who did should be taken to account.” His voice quivered. “Viona was bright and shining and precious to all of us.”

  I had what I needed and turned to leave. After a half dozen steps, Ness called out to me. “Lord Dura, do you care about my daughter?”

  “I’m the queen’s reeve, Lord Ness.” I let a trickle of the anger I felt at Viona’s death seep into my voice at last. “My job is to bring justice.”

  He pointed at me. “Then find the man who tried to erase the memory of her.”

  Chapter 13

  I already knew where to look, but I didn’t say anything until we were back on the street that ran in front of Ness’s estate. I moved to one side of the entrance and waited.

  “The browns could come any moment and scoop you up, you know,” Bolt said.

  I shook my head. “I doubt they’re going to be looking overly hard in the nobles’ quarter,” I said. “Especially not on a side street tucked against the river. We have some time.”

  “For what?”

  I saw what I’d been waiting for just before I heard the footsteps. “Him,” I said.

  The young dog trainer turned the corner at the far end of the estate, then started as he saw us waiting for him, his steps faltering. I watched him approach, his head swiveling to check behind him as he came.

  “Kyran,” I said.

  His eyes widened, but he shook his head. “Leary. Third born.”

  Away from his dog, Leary looked more like a frightened boy than a trainer. I didn’t want whatever doubts or fears he obviously harbored about speaking to us to overwhelm him, so I came to the point. “Tell us about Viona, Leary. Tell us about your sister.”

  He jerked, hearing some insult to his father I hadn’t spoken. “Everything Da told you was the truth.” He shrugged. “But Da didn’t know Viona as well as he could have, or maybe he did, but didn’t want to see it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “We love being around animals. It’s a family trait, but from the time Viona was a girl it was more than that. People made her uncomfortable.” He looked away at nothing. “Even family.”

  “Except for you,” I said.

  Leary nodded. “It got worse as she got older.” He sighed. “And then she grew up and things got really bad.”

  I nodded. “She became beautiful.”

  “Worse than that,” Leary said. “She was stunning. It wasn’t as though father made her go to court very often. He doesn’t care for it himself, but there are expectations even for the minor nobility to appear at least twice a year.”

  I didn’t have to imagine the effect Viona would have had on court. The appetites of many of the younger nobles were well known. “Did someone ask for her hand?”

  Leary jerked and then bobbed his head. “She refused to go back.”

  I knew what was coming next. I’d heard the same story any number of times, though the names changed and the characters dressed a little differently. “Viona and your father argued.”

  But Leary shook his head. “No. Father told her she didn’t have to marry.” He lifted his eyes from the ground to look at me. “But he couldn’t keep the suitors away. Then she came to me one night and said she was going away, said she’d found animals to train and wouldn’t have to deal with court or the men there. That was two years ago.”

  He fell silent, but I had the impression there might be more. “And you never saw her again?” I prompted.

  Leary didn’t even come close to looking at me, and I had to strain to hear him as he talked to his feet. “I did. Every few months I’d get a note to meet her in the lower merchants’ quarter. She always wore peasant clothing and she’d cropped her hair.”

  I saw tears hit the ground beside Leary’s feet an
d his chest heaved.

  “But she was more beautiful than ever,” he said. “She glowed.” Leary shook his head. “You won’t tell Father, will you?” he asked. “That I would see her?”

  With an internal wince, I pulled the glove from my right hand. The walls in my mind felt secure, steady after weeks of rest from delving people, but there were so many doors. So many.

  Leary still had his head bowed, waiting for some assurance from me. Quite possibly, he’d told me everything, but I couldn’t take the chance. Some facet of his memories might tell me why a dwimor had elected to kill the last-born daughter of an insignificant noble. He had his hands in his pockets.

  “No, lad,” I said reaching for the skin exposed on the back of his neck. “I won’t tell.”

  My vision fell through his hair and into his mind, my gift burrowing a tunnel into his head. I lost my sense of self on the way, until I became Leary, a contented young man who loved animals—the third son of Lord Ness, my father and a minor noble who loved me as well.

  I sifted backward through memories, their colors and scents and sounds calling to me until I came to the surprise of Viona’s parting. I needed to see this in order.

  “Where are you going?” I asked as I stood in the entrance to her room. A crescent moon hung outside the window over the mountains to the west. Dawn was still two hours away.

  She jerked, looking at me, and for a moment her eyes darted to the bed where she’d piled sturdy, functional clothes and boots, the garb she wore as she trained or tended our animals. “I’m leaving, El,” she said, using the pet name she’d used for me since she’d first learned to talk. “I’ve got to get away from here.”

  I shook my head. “But why? Father says you don’t have to take a husband. You don’t even have to see the suitors, if you don’t wish.”

  She shook her head, and the wealth of deep chestnut hair cascaded around her shoulders like a waterfall, framing her flawless features. “I’d still have to make the required appearances at court.”