The Shattered Vigil

by Patrick W. Carr

  So intent was Lelwin on her task that she continued cutting through the thick cloth of the man’s clothes. But when Toria tightened her grip and forced the knife away, Lelwin’s eyes widened as if she’d been struck.

  Her voice came out as a growl, threads of rage and pain and loss filling it. “He owes me.”

  Toria nodded. Behind Lelwin, Fess stood coiled on the balls of his feet, ready to move in case Lelwin tried to turn the knife on her. “No one can gainsay you that, but this won’t help you.”

  “You can’t know that!”

  “I can and do. I have the memories to prove it.”

  Lelwin shook her head, but her hand lay still beneath Toria’s. “You’re not me. None of those women were me. I’m just an urchin, and no one looks out for us but us.” She whipped her head toward Fess. “Isn’t that so?”

  For a moment he regarded her, and Toria thought he might agree, but he turned, his eyes searching within the limits of torchlight. He pointed to the freshly turned earth of Bronwyn’s grave. “No,” he said. “There are others who will look out for us . . . if we let them.” He knelt. “Give me the knife, Lelwin.”

  Lelwin’s head jerked back and forth between them for a moment, like an animal caught in a trap. Then she stood so abruptly Toria fell back on the grass.

  She scrambled to her feet to stand next to Lelwin as her apprentice put the knife through her belt. Lelwin shifted to leave, the torch held high over her head, when some impulse took her and she turned to kick the dead man in the side, the sound of her boot against his flesh unexpectedly loud.

  His body jerked with the impact, and his head wobbled and lolled away from them before rolling back so that his blank stare landed on Lelwin. Somehow, it appeared accusing.

  With a cry of hurt and rage, Lelwin dropped the torch and buried herself in Toria’s arms.

  “Praise Aer,” Toria whispered.

  Fess lifted the torch from the earth before it could die. “There are more torches with my horse. We can gather what we are able, and then we must leave.”

  They retrieved their possessions, taken when each of them had been captured, and half a man’s weight in gold that held a bluish tinge even by torchlight. Then Fess led them south.

  Toria waited for him to speak, could sense the weight of unconfessed secrets upon him, but nothing disturbed the night air save the soft thud of hooves hitting the turf. Two hours and three torches later they crossed a road, and Fess twitched his reins to follow it.

  “When did the gift come upon you?” she asked.

  “Gift?”

  “Come, Fess.” Any other time she would have laughed, but two more of the Vigil lay dead, and the pair of urchins who now accompanied her south appeared to have lost most of themselves. She pulled even with him, noting he kept one eye covered in case he required night vision.

  “You killed seven men in about as many seconds, and you’ve held a torch aloft with the same arm for hours now. Any normal man or woman would have switched hands at least.”

  He acknowledged this with a small nod, but when he spoke he skirted the question. “Men attacked us in the town of Havenwold. They all had vaults. Lady Bronwyn delved one of them, said something came out of the darkness of his thoughts for her. She got loose before he died, but it left a splinter behind that ate at the doors she’d created in her mind.

  “We followed them, and I saw them sowing gold into the streams at night and then harvesting that same gold in the daytime.”

  He paused, waiting.

  “Someone wants to create a gold rush,” she breathed. “Even the fear of the Darkwater can’t withstand the lure of gold.”

  Fess nodded. “That’s what Lady Bronwyn said. She started eating chiccor root to fight the splinter. Then she sent me to gather the gold. I had to leave her behind.”

  “Her and Balean,” Toria corrected.

  But Fess let the obvious prompt go by, instead picking up the narrative of his story without explaining Balean’s apparent death. “I got careless. I didn’t think we were in danger. When I returned, you and the others were standing over her. Two of the guards found me and ordered me to surrender or else Lady Bronwyn would die. I did, and then they knocked me over the head. When I came to I was tied to my horse. I’m still not sure why they didn’t kill me.”

  Something, a hitch in his voice or the way he changed the cadence of his words, gave the lie to his story, some omission, but she answered the implied question anyway. “They wanted to turn you. They likely saw you as too young to be gifted.”

  He nodded, but the gesture carried no conviction. “During the ride to the Darkwater, Lady Bronwyn kept mumbling, but the words didn’t make any sense. They were just a jumble. But once, I heard my name and two words. ‘Be ready.’ Then it was just more noise.” He sniffed. “After the splinter took her, it was like she slowly faded away. What happened to her?”

  Toria pulled the night air into her lungs, felt the cool of it like balm for her mind. “It’s called dissolution. We lose the ability to keep the memories we’ve gathered partitioned away. Imagine multiple sets of memories filling your head all at once.” She paused, unsure whether she should push his confession. “It doesn’t occur often, thank Aer, but within the Vigil we fear it the way most people fear the wasting disease. When we take a guard, we make them swear to release us from life if it happens.”

  He might have nodded or it might have been nothing more than the stride of his horse that made his head dip. “When that man, Jorgen, touched her, I knew the time had come. The guards were too distracted to notice my approach.” He paused. “In the space of a heartbeat the first guard was dead. Then I threw his dagger at Jorgen. I might have been able to make a throw like that maybe one time in ten when I was with the urchins. I’m good, but Rory and Lelwin are better, and the Mark as well, for that matter.” He shook his head. “It seemed so easy, almost like I was placing it with my hand instead of throwing it.” He searched the darkness, his eyes wide in the torch’s guttering glow. “And then the rest were dead. I have no idea how . . .”

  The torch flickered, its fuel spent, and Fess reined in his horse. “That’s the last one. We’ll have to wait for dawn unless you want to risk a fall.”

  She craved light along with a bath and clean clothes as though she were starving for them. “How far away is sunrise?”

  “Two hours.” He dropped the spent torch to the road, where it hissed against the damp earth. By its last flickers he dismounted. Toria copied him, and Lelwin as well, though she didn’t speak. “How do I know that?” he asked her.

  “It’s part of the gift. Those who have it seem to keep track of time with the rhythms of their body. Elory . . .” Her voice caught.

  “Where is he?”

  “Dead. The speaker of the Clast said he was killed trying to save me. That was days ago.”

  They waited in the darkness for sunrise.

  Chapter 54

  By almost imperceptible degrees the sky lightened to the east, and Toria saw indistinct outlines—her horse, Lelwin clutching her knife where she sat, Fess patrolling around them in a set pattern. Half an hour later muted colors became visible and Fess pronounced himself able to guide them south.

  They came to a village halfway between dawn and noon—she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the name of it or its inn. Bronwyn’s death pressed on her mind like a weight she couldn’t escape or shift.

  The pounding of a smith’s hammer beckoned them onward, and they passed by farmers and street merchants, without response. They turned a corner, and Fess pointed at a squat two-story building of cut stone with a slate roof and a broad porch that ran the length of two sides of the building.

  “We should enter from the back, Lady Deel,” he said.

  She nodded, though she wanted nothing more than to dismount, run through the front entrance, and dive into the first available tub. Part of her wanted to weep at the distant tone in Fess’s voice—respectful, calculating, and so unlike the overgrown boy who’d lef
t Bunard with Bronwyn—but she had no comfort to give him.

  They dismounted in the stable yard behind the inn. Toria watched Fess speak to the stable hands, a pair of grizzled men bearing scars who wore their disdain for life in twisted expressions and narrowed gazes. Something he said, or the deadly grace he now wore, caught their attention. Their eyes widened, and each man dipped his head in acknowledgment, careful not to give offense.

  Off her horse, Lelwin moved to put the wall of the stable yard at her back, her right hand still clutching her dagger. When Toria and Fess moved toward the entrance of the inn, she darted from the wall toward them, positioning herself in between, searching for threats.

  They entered a broad hallway that led from the stables past the kitchen to a taproom that occupied most of the bottom floor. Fess caught the arm of a serving girl carrying a platter of used dishes back toward the kitchen. She turned, her expression a prelude to voicing her indignation, but stopped when she saw his face.

  Fess pointed to where Toria stood with Lelwin. “We need rooms and baths,” he smiled, lifting his hands. “As I’m sure you can see.”

  She nodded. “I’ll fetch my ma. The baths are out back.”

  Fess nodded. “That will be fine for me, but my lady”—he nodded to Toria—“and her attendant desire a greater amount of privacy. Do you have a tub you can bring to their room?” He pressed a silver half crown into her free hand.

  “Aye,” she nodded, staring at the coin. “Take the two rooms at the end of the hallway.”

  Fess caught her arm, depositing another coin in her palm. “We’ll need changes of clothes as well—nothing fancy, just clean.”

  “How long will you be staying?” the girl asked.

  Fess turned, deferring the question to Toria.

  “A few days, no more,” Toria said. “Just enough to rest before we continue on.”

  As soon as she left, the smile dropped from Fess’s face. “The village is too busy. The stable here is filled with pack mules. We’re still too close to the forest.”

  She nodded. “I have to rest, Lelwin even more so.” She didn’t want to think about the problem of the Darkwater. There were no solutions.

  “I’ll stand guard while the two of you bathe. Then Lelwin can stand watch while I get cleaned up.”

  Thirty minutes later, Toria slipped into one of the two copper-lined tubs in her room with a sigh. Wisps of steam rose from the scented water, and she tilted her head back until it soaked through her thick hair to warm her scalp. Next to her, Lelwin assaulted her skin with a lathered brush, her motions frantic.

  Two days later Toria was contemplating their next step as they huddled over a breakfast of bread and hot sausages—Fess already eating in that way Vigil guards did, facing the door with one hand on his sword, lifting his food to his mouth without ever looking at his plate. Lelwin ate, still clutching the dagger she carried with her everywhere.

  Toria saw Allta first, despite the fact that he followed Pellin into the inn. Then she was in Pellin’s embrace and wishing she could stay there forever.

  “We found bodies, so many, close to the edge of the forest,” Pellin said. “We tracked you here. I didn’t know what to think or who I’d find.”

  Sobs tore their way loose from her throat, and they stood with the other patrons of the inn eyeing them or ignoring them according to their temperament. “Bronwyn and Balean are dead—and I fear Elory is too.”

  His arms tightened, but there were no condemnations. “I’m sorry, so sorry, daughter of my heart. I was too slow to save them.” Too soon, he released her in stages, his arms slipping from around her shoulders, until they stood separated once more. “Come, your table will accommodate three more”—he waved Allta and Mark over from where they stood at the door—“and it’s isolated enough for our purposes.”

  Pellin pulled a chair from the empty table next to them, and Allta placed one against the wall, where he had an unobstructed view of the door. Mark stood beside Lelwin.

  Toria watched as Lelwin shifted away from both Mark and Allta, her eyes shadowed. The girl needed a healer and time. A lot of time. What to tell Pellin—there was so much.

  But it was Fess who spoke first. “Eldest,” he said softly, “you will want to delve me.” He glanced around the room, extending his arm casually across the table as though he was reaching for the salt. “It will save time explaining Lady Bronwyn’s death.”

  Pellin nodded. “Thank you, Fess. I’m sure Toria Deel has already done so. I think I can shortcut the process by doing this just once, on her.”

  “No,” Fess said before Toria could answer. “She has not.” For some reason he didn’t look at her as he said this, but at Allta.

  “Very well, Fess,” Pellin acquiesced with a sigh. “I will delve you after Toria Deel. I’m tired, but only in body.”

  Pellin removed his glove as he turned toward her, his gaze filled with questions.

  She sighed. Even now the thought of using her gift brought an ache to her mind, a dull throbbing whenever she tried to think. “I have suspicions, Eldest, but events . . .” Her shoulders lifted. “I was too tired to delve him. You will know most of what happened.” She mimicked Fess, pushing her arm toward the Eldest. He knew of her past, of course, of Cesla’s forbidden lesson in the prison beneath Cynestol.

  He just didn’t know she’d used that instruction as a weapon.

  His hands were always so warm, regardless of weather or circumstances, but when his fingertips lifted from her arm, his gaze turned cold, sorrowful. “Oh, my daughter, what have you done?”

  She thought he would say more, offer some solace or condemnation, but he folded in on himself in silence. Cesla, even Elwin, had understood her better.

  “Eldest?” Fess prompted. He shifted, pushing his arm farther across the table.

  After a hundred years in the Vigil, it still surprised her that the exercise of domere took so little time, while inside another’s memories, hours seemed to pass. Pellin’s fingers brushed the back of Fess’s arm and mere seconds later he started, jerking his hand back.

  “I submit myself to your judgment, Eldest,” Fess said. He turned, shifting in his seat so that he faced Toria squarely, his back to Allta and Mark. “I killed Balean.”

  Mark drew a sharp breath, and Allta shifted, using Fess’s body to hide his hands from the view of the other patrons, but Toria could just see the point of his dagger at the base of Fess’s neck. Fess straightened, sitting with the air of a man being careful with each breath.

  “Eldest,” Allta said in a low voice, “move back. You are within his reach.”

  For a long moment, as long as it would take to delve everyone else at the table, Pellin gazed at Fess without moving or thinking. “You will make recompense for Balean’s death, but as it so happens, Bronwyn’s death has deprived the Vigil of its expert on church law.”

  The boy nodded, the lines of his face as stark and stoic as any guard’s. How could he have lost every vestige of his youth in such a short time? “I’ve read the most applicable documents, Eldest. Lady Bronwyn insisted on my education.”

  “Yes.” Pellin nodded. “She would have.”

  Allta still held the blade of his dagger against the boy’s neck.

  “I know the price, Eldest.”

  “Doubtless, you’ve read through the main points,” Pellin said. “It rarely applies to members of the Vigil.”

  “It sounds like you’re trying to find a loophole, Eldest,” Fess said, his voice strangely accusing.

  “The circumstances of Balean’s death were exceptional, even accidental,” Pellin said. “There are, of course, consequences.” He sighed. “There always are.”

  Fess stared at the Eldest, his face inscrutable. Surely, the boy understood Pellin had no intention of executing him?

  “There is more, Eldest, that you should know,” Fess said.

  Pellin shook his head. “There can be no more, Fess. Delving is quite thorough.”

  “Bronwyn told me to ru
n when she passed,” he said, ignoring him, “that the gift would want to be passed on.”

  Pellin nodded. “I know, and I know why she said so. I saw it, Fess. She loved you.”

  Slowly, Fess lifted his arm from the table, but instead of placing it back in his lap, he reached up, past the blade at his throat, to touch the back of Allta’s hand.

  Toria watched, shaking her head in disbelief as his eyes widened, as someone else’s memories coursed through him.

  “There was a boy in your village, the son of the mayor,” Fess said. The knife kept him from turning, but he cocked his head to look at Allta out of the corner of his eye. “He wouldn’t look anyone in the eye, but he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off the melons.”

  Allta’s eyes widened, and he stepped back, sheathing his knife.

  “You see, Fess?” Pellin bowed his head and sighed. “We can dispense with trying to determine your punishment. Aer has already decided.”

  Chapter 55

  I rode as close to Bolt as he would allow, with Gael beside me and Rory behind. My horse, an unfamiliar palfrey stallion with few years and less sense, kept trying to overtake the lead horse, and I felt an odd pang at not having Dest beneath me. Out of habit, I wondered how much silver and gold we were burning through to keep ourselves mounted and moving at this pace.

  But money and horses weren’t the problem. With Wag’s nose and nearly tireless pace we’d cut the lead our enemy had on us until he was no more than half a day ahead. Bolt turned in his saddle with the same question etched into the crags on his face that had been there almost from the moment we’d left Bunard.

  I nodded, and he reined up as I rode past him.

  “Wag.”

  The sentinel stopped, then trotted back to sit and peer at me with his head cocked. With any other dog, its owner might make a joke about the quizzical look. They might offer some explanation that, of course, the dog would never understand. I laughed as I dismounted. The intelligence some dog owners pretended to bestow on their animals, Wag actually possessed.