In the Company of the Dead (The Sundered Oath Book 1)

by Ballintyne, Ciara

  “What I want,” she said, “is Lyram.”

  Hearing his name on her lips sent a shiver of pleasure down Lyram’s spine, but the look she gave him carried not an iota of warmth. He tensed in his chair, waiting for more.

  “I need a way into Jerrek to investigate. Send Lyram to Jerrek on a diplomatic mission. I don’t care what he’s there to negotiate—make it real if it suits you, or a sham if there is nothing you want of them. Perhaps a border agreement, or something else it makes sense for your military adviser to deal with personally.”

  Alagondar cast a glance between Ellaeva and Lyram. No doubt he’d noticed the familiarity with which she used Lyram’s name.

  “Why Aharris? I might be inclined to aid the Temple in this matter and help you across the border, but I would not ordinarily send Aharris to negotiate anything.”

  Lyram tensed. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted Alagondar to refuse her or to grant her request. Her absence had hurt, but her presence had the potential to hurt more. And of course, there were the secrets between them. He’d never told Alagondar that he’d died and been saved only through Ellaeva’s intervention, and Ahura’s mercy. He’d never told anyone that, nor what his resurrection entailed: that he was bound to serve Ahura’s Battle Priestess.

  “Lyram is... bound to me,” she said, speaking slowly as though picking her words carefully. “There is a debt. And I need someone I can trust to watch my back.”

  “Then,” the king said softly, “it is not my help you require so much as Aharris’s. What if I said no?”

  The skin around Ellaeva’s eyes tightened, though not a muscle shifted otherwise, and when she spoke, her voice was cold enough to raise frost. “The nature of the bond allows me to compel him, will ye, nil ye. But if it is your intention to refuse my request, Your Majesty, then I request that you speak plainly and simply say so!”

  She lurched to her feet, staring the king down with the expression of a monarch considering a declaration of war. The righteous anger made her face both beautiful and terrible.

  Lyram sat back in his seat. Compel him? In a literal sense? He hunched his shoulders at the thought. Then a sudden flush of heat rushed through him, dispelling the chill fingers of fear that brushed him at the realisation she might have dominion over him. If she insisted on taking him against Alagondar’s wishes, then it wasn’t an Ahlleyn diplomatic mission she wanted at all, but just him. She had betrayed something in this outburst. Despite her cold front, she did want him, she did miss him.

  Was the ache he felt his own or hers?

  “Peace.” Alagondar desultorily waved her back to her seat with a thick-knuckled hand. “I am not really considering refusing you, but I like to know what the stakes are. High, I presume, if you would risk angering a crowned king for the company of one man. Ahlleyn risks much if this goes badly and it becomes known that we aided you in full knowledge and of our own free will.”

  Ellaeva sat down, her eyes suddenly unfocussed and staring into the distance. “It is not the other kingdoms’ wrath you must fear, I suspect. It is the dark gods.”

  CHAPTER 3 – BURNING BRIDGES

  Lyram hurried to catch up to Ellaeva as she strode away from the king’s suite, his formal kilt and plaid flapping in his haste. Once dismissed from the king’s presence she was, as ever, rushing on without pause to whatever task she had next on her list.

  In the end, Alagondar had given her what she wanted. The words ‘dark gods’ had a galvanising effect when dropped from the lips of Ahura’s Battle Priestess. The day she spoke those words to Lyram in Caisteal Aingeal still rang stark in the halls of his memory, like a bell tolling for death. Little was known about most of the dark gods, beyond ancient and twisted references in nursery rhymes and folk songs, but that almost made it worse—like one’s childhood demons had turned out to be real after all.

  He panted breathlessly as they emerged from a twisting turnpike stair into a lower level. “Are you ever going to stop and talk to me?” The rolling echoes of their boot heels on timber floors almost swallowed his words.

  She stopped and wheeled about so abruptly in the half-lit gloom of the royal castle’s interior that he almost ploughed right into her. The smell of leather and polished steel surrounded her in a cloud, a scent somehow more intoxicating than Narrawen’s exotic eastern perfume. Candles flickered on the walls, but the only windows were arrow-slits, leaving her face partially in shadow. Her feelings turned to a glass bubble in his head, and though he poked and prodded it with mental fingers, she kept him out.

  “Do you not think we will have plenty of time to talk on the way to Jerrek?”

  “Not in private,” he said, his voice soft.

  A servant scurried past, her eyes downcast but peeking furtively as she walked. Ellaeva naturally drew eyes, not only because of the stark robes signifying a priestess of Ahura or the way she stood—so erect and with an aura of confidence bordering on arrogance—but because of the sword. On the hip of a priestess of Ahura, a blade could only mean one thing: Ciotach an Bhais had come to the palace.

  “You insisted on having me along.” He jabbed a finger at her, then realised what he’d done and dropped it to rest on the hilt of his sword. “Not just anyone who could get you into Jerrek, but me, personally.”

  She sniffed and turned again, proceeding down the hall with a slightly less aggressive stride. “I meant what I said to your king: I need someone I can trust implicitly. I cannot take the valkyrs as they are too recognisable. There are only two others I trust. One is dead, and the other is you. But there is a reason I stayed away so long, Lyram Aharris. It is for that same reason that we have nothing to discuss now. What I want, I cannot have.”

  The flat tone sent a shiver down his spine, reminding him of the thin line they trod, and her words on their last parting: If we defy a god, we will surely lose.

  They’d managed it once, a forbidden, stolen night of passion, shared despair, and broken faith. But Ellaeva had clearly decided that thumbing her nose at the goddess once was enough.

  And I should too.

  He lapsed into silence as they entered another stairwell. They took it all the way to the ground floor, emerging adjacent to the western curtain wall in the courtyard. She struck out for the opposite building, dodging adroitly around the bustling servants and groomsmen, then paused to let a woman with a horse in hand pass by, its hooves ringing sharply against the stone cobbles. She ducked behind them, perilously close to the animal’s hindquarters. She appeared to be headed back towards his rooms.

  Two soldiers approached, red cloth knotted about their biceps. The woman faltered at sight of Ellaeva, nudged her companion, and then both stopped and saluted.

  Ellaeva nodded to them, then turned to raise a quizzical eyebrow at Lyram.

  “They’ve not forgotten you,” he said. “The soldiers who rode out with you at Caisteal Aingeal, they’ll be yours for life.”

  Her cheeks turned pink in the moment before she turned away.

  “Do you have a plan?” he said as they entered the building housing his quarters.

  At the same moment, she said, “How are you and Drault?”

  He missed a step, almost tripping on the narrow risers, and forgot his own question. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth so hard. Drault, the man who had him caught on the twin horns of obligation, unable to keep one without abandoning the other. Lyram had sworn vengeance for his wife’s murder, only to discover that the crown prince was to blame and that keeping his vow to Zaheva meant treason. Drault’s blackmail, threatening to frame Lyram for the murder, kept him from appealing to the king for justice. Lyram had no proof, after all, only the testimony of the dead traitor Chancellor Traeburhn, who’d been complicit in the whole plot.

  They had emerged onto his floor, into another hall lit only by candles, before he found the words to answer her.

  “Nothing has changed,” he said, and meant it. Drault was still an arrogant, detestable arsehole, Zaheva was still dead, and he was still bo
und by obligation. And Drault still held his blackmail threat over his head. Even a fleeting glimpse of the prince was enough to ruin a good day, and days when duty forced him into the prince’s company for extended periods were an interminable horror. “How have you been?”

  She shrugged without looking at him, but her step faltered a fraction. “As well as can be expected for a Battle Priestess of Ahura. When I left Caisteal Aingeal, I travelled to Tembra to try and find my parents, then had to go to Mysena to hunt down a Rahmyrrim. Two hundred years old, and he looked no older than you.”

  “Service for a dark god must have some advantages,” Lyram said. “Otherwise, why do it?”

  A pensive frown twisted her lips, but she said nothing.

  “Did you find you parents?”

  She twitched, one hand on the handle of his brass-bound door. “I think they might be in Jerrek.”

  Then she opened the door, stepping inside, and leaving him dumbfounded on the threshold.

  As they entered Lyram’s sitting room, Everard rose smoothly and executed a bow in Ellaeva’s direction. Though his face was faultlessly calm, his unhappiness was evident in his over-stiff posture. When he straightened, a frown pinched his brow.

  This was Lyram’s private sanctum, one rigorously guarded by Everard. Few came here, and the room was still sumptuously and comfortably appointed by Zaheva’s hand, intended as a safe place for her husband to relax and unwind away from the eyes of the court. The broad windows were on the interior side of the building, facing the courtyard rather than out over the fortifications, and so didn’t compromise the castle’s defensiveness.

  Ellaeva unbuckled her baldric, propped the holy blade against a wall, and sank into a comfortably overstuffed chair.

  Everard, at a gesture from Lyram, subsided into a chair with faint mutters. The afternoon was late and the light in the room was fading, but there was enough thin warmth in the autumn sun for Lyram to take the seat on the window casement and savour it.

  “I have a plan,” she said. “We, and I suppose you, too, Everard, must leave here with whatever functionaries and guards a diplomatic mission headed by someone of your rank would usually require. Jerrek and Ahlleyn are not enemies, and they should let us across the border without fuss if we announce ourselves as a delegation from the King of Ahlleyn. Banners flying, plenty of pomp, that sort of thing. Whatever it is they are hiding, they would quickly attract the attention of every state on this continent if they started closing the borders to peaceful diplomatic missions from neutral bordering kingdoms.”

  “You can’t go like that.” Everard waved a hand at her priestess’s garb. His words were blunt but his tone, as always, was perfectly courteous.

  Lyram sighed and rolled his eyes. Everard and Ellaeva had a history of tension, mostly driven by Everard’s conviction that she was bound to get him in trouble. Is he wrong?

  “I know.” Ellaeva stood and pulled her robes over her head in a smooth motion.

  Everard choked, but Lyram merely leaned back in his chair. He already knew what Ciotach an Bhais wore under her robes, and it was perfectly decent.

  She tossed the bundle of black cloth aside and stood before them in a combination of cuir bouilli and iron plate that would suit a moderately well-off mercenary or noble’s guard. Lyram’s mouth dried. He’d forgotten just how much those robes hid.

  “Will this do?”

  He tried to moisten his tongue, then nodded. “You’ll be going as, what, a guard?”

  “Have you replaced Galdron?”

  Everard stiffened, and Lyram’s fingers curled hard around the arms of his chair.

  “No.” His voice came out a croak. Six months on and Galdron’s death still stung. Too many had died at Caisteal Aingeal, too many who would still be alive but for the machinations of the Rahmyrrim and Ellaeva. And now, what? Was he going to do it all over again in Jerrek?

  The door opened, and the last man Lyram ever wanted to see again stepped in with a sneer on his lips.

  “I hear you’re going to Jerrek, Aharris.” Drault struck a pose in the still open doorway, his hands on his hips as he stared down Lyram. His hair was unusually dark for an Ahlleyn, being so dark an auburn as to appear almost black except in the sun, and his green eyes scoured the room with contempt. “I’ll be coming with you.”

  Lyram stared at him blankly, unable to muster a response. Surely the king had not—Surely he knew his son couldn’t be trusted with this kind of knowledge? His stomach curdled at the thought of months in the prince’s close company... in the company of the man who raped his wife and cut her throat. He forced himself to speak. “I’m not convinced that’s wise, Your Highness.”

  “But my father is just dying for me to come along.” The prince smirked, and then his gaze lit on Ellaeva, standing in the centre of the room. “Who is this, then? A suitor, Aharris?”

  Lyram clenched the chair’s arms again, but Ellaeva stepped smoothly into the awkward silence and executed a bow. It was a cursory bow, to be sure, but recognisably a bow.

  “Your Highness,” she murmured. “I am the new captain of the guard.”

  Lyram jerked at her audacity—she’d taken the decision completely and irrevocably out of his hands—but Drault appeared equally surprised.

  Lyram closed his mouth before the prince could notice. Drault didn’t know. Likely he only knew the cover story and intended to shoulder his way into the journey on principle, his usual one being that Lyram couldn’t have any glory unless he could share in it. He’d been that way since the Siege of Invergahr, as if he could somehow scrub from national memory the fact that he had blubbered in a ruined tower while Lyram won the battle against insurmountable odds.

  “A woman captain,” Drault said, glancing at Lyram. “For all that you take on women soldiers so freely, I never thought you’d allow one so much power in your guard.”

  Another time, the comment would have made Lyram bristle, but his gaze had just fallen on Ellaeva’s robe near her feet. Her sword still stood propped against the wall, mostly out of sight, but Drault was worldly enough that he might connect one woman warrior and a bundle of black robes together.

  There was no way Lyram could move the bundle without drawing attention to it, since Ellaeva stood between him and the garment.

  “That’s Captain Ellie Decourt, not woman,” he said. There were many Ellies in Tembra, where the snowdrop flower inspired the name of many a fair-skinned farmer’s daughter, though it was considered too common by the nobility. Decourt was Velenese, but nothing in Ellaeva’s features precluded mixed heritage. “And you’d not be so quick to scoff at a woman captain if Narrawen was present.”

  “Narrawen is present,” her clear voice said from behind Drault.

  Drault half-turned, revealing the duchess standing in the doorway with her bow over her shoulder and a look of extreme displeasure on her face.

  Lyram grimaced. Was everyone just going to let themselves into his sitting room uninvited?

  In that moment, Everard stood, stepped to Ellaeva’s side, and discreetly kicked the robe under a chair as he took her arm. “I should show the captain to her new quarters.”

  “A new captain?” Narrawen raised her eyebrows and took in Ellaeva from top to toe. “Most timely for your trip to Jerrek.”

  Lyram clenched his jaw. So she’d heard the news, and she’d been present when Ellaeva arrived. Narrawen knew enough to ruin it all.

  “A political journey,” he said, folding his arms, “and one I’d rather not take.”

  Drault backed into the room, as though he didn’t want to be caught between them. He bumped against chair, which jostled Ellaeva’s sword. It fell to the floor with a rattle, drawing every eye.

  Casually, Ellaeva stooped to retrieve it. She carefully covered her sword hilt with her left hand.

  “Perhaps then,” the duchess said, favouring him with a bright smile, “my company will make it all the more pleasurable.”

  A muscle in Lyram’s cheek jumped spasmodically and
he ground his teeth. First Drault and now Narrawen. Well, he could not gainsay the prince, although he would appeal to Alagondar, for what good it might do him, but by Ahura’s blade, he could stop Narrawen. “You’ll do no such thing. We have reports of some upheaval in the region. I’m not convinced we should be risking His Highness, but we’ll certainly not be risking the stability of a duchy at the same time.”

  She gave him a wide-eyed look, still standing in the doorway and blocking Everard and Ellaeva’s departure, and her eyes flickered significantly to the priestess. “Surely you wouldn’t force me to stay here, consigned to no more excitement than to gossip about your mission and your companions.”

  And that simply, she had him. His shoulders slumped. Either he brought her along, or she’d reveal Ellaeva’s identity. The more who knew the truth, the greater the risk someone would slip up at the border or inside Jerrek, and he certainly couldn’t risk Drault finding out.

  “Why do you even want to come?”

  Narrawen stepped closer, touching his cheek with one gloved hand. “Lyram, dear, if I keep letting you run away from me, I’ll never get you to marry me.”

  Ellaeva sat in a chair carefully positioned in the early morning light streaming through the windows, to better allow the frictionnaire to see her face.

  “I don’t see how we can even get away with this.” Lyram watched them from alongside the sitting room fireplace, toying with the small row of framed miniatures. “Drault and Narrawen saw you only yesterday. They know what you look like. I can maybe explain the situation to Narrawen and secure her assistance, but Drault? Never.”

  “The difference will be subtle,” Melleph said, using no honorifics in the way of all her kind. “The differences will not be so great that he will think anything of it—just details overlooked in a first meeting. But they will be significant enough that she won’t match a description of her own self.”