“Rian!”
No answer.
Lark looked back to Trevere apologetically. “I can’t really command him…”
Trevere shrugged and tossed a wisp of hay into the fire, where it curled up with a crackle. “As long as it doesn’t come down on my head,” he said. “I’m no godfollower but that doesn’t make their wrath less real. You should know. You shot me with that stuff.”
“The Trifolder stuff?” she said, worried about where this was going.
He reached to his belt and she stiffened, expecting the blade, but instead he pulled out the bolt-case and rattled it, the painted metal shafts catching the firelight. The paper wraps still covered the poultice-anointed tips. She looked from them to his eyes, half-shut and showing no emotion.
“You know what's on these?" he said.
She bit her lip and nodded. The Trifolders supplied the Shadow Folk with many things in appreciation for their assistance, and that poultice was one of them. “A healing salve."
“Mm. Healing." He smiled flatly. "And what did you feel when the spirit manifested in the tavern?”
“Well… There was the smell, like sea caves. And it felt dark, only it wasn’t actually dark, it was more like not being exposed anymore. Being protected.”
“And how do you think it was for me?”
Lark hid a smirk. “You didn’t do so well against him.”
Trevere nodded and tucked the bolt-case away, gaze returning to the flames, and she regarded him sidelong until the kettle began to hiss. Hopping up, she grabbed it off the hook and rummaged in their saddlebags to find the cups and the pouch of herbs.
“It sounds nice…how you describe it,” Trevere said as she set a cup by him and poured. After the wild pursuit and the unhealthy gleam in his eyes this morning, Lark was not sure whether to be relieved or worried by his current mood.
“For me, it was more than pain,” he continued. “It was the tow of the dark waves, the weight of the earth over me. Crushing. Your ‘protection’... I had not expected it to be so strong yet.”
She fixed her own tea and thought better of cooking, at least for now; she did not want to make a mess or distract him. Putting the kettle near the fire but not back on the hook, she settled in again, warming her hands on the cup and just listening, because though the words came slow, Trevere kept speaking, as if he was trying to unearth his own answer from the rubble.
“This is only the beginning,” he said. “I have never seen it, but I know the stories. Earth-shaper, mountain-builder. Green hand. Tidal force. What was I expected to--
“Never mind. It doesn't matter. My Crimson mission is over, and I failed. But I'm glad of it. There have always been...competing voices--the General's, my maker's, the Emperor's. Others. Older, quieter.
“But I know why I'm here. I have never been his captor.”
Lark blew over her tea, puzzled. Was he cracked? Had losing his quarry been too much for him? Cautiously, not sure if he even knew she was still here, she said, “Haven’t you?”
His gaze snapped to her and she flinched, sloshing hot tea over her fingers. With a hiss, she set the cup down and flattened her hand to the cold stone, unnerved when he did not look away.
“Is the goblin your prisoner?” he said.
She scowled, eyes watering from the scald. “Of course not. He’s my baby.”
“Is he?"
“I found him in the old tunnels. Sick and hurt, just a little newt. I was a runaway, I could barely feed myself, but I couldn’t just leave him there, so I took him with me. It’s been years now. He’s mine.”
Trevere tilted his head, and she crossed her arms defensively over her chest, still wincing at the throb in her hand. Typical, came a sarcastic wisp of thought. Half-freezing and I burn myself.
“And if someone put your child in chains?”
“I’d kick their ass.”
A faint smile, there and gone in an instant. Trevere looked back to the fire. “Even if you'd asked them to?”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
He sighed and shook his head. “Go ice your hand. There’s a full trough outside.”
That’s what I get for interrupting, she thought, and heaved to her feet. The heat dropped off rapidly as she moved from the fire, and by the time she reached the big door she was shivering again. She pried it open and the cold licked at her cheeks, but that was not what made her freeze.
Faint moonlight now colored the road pale gold. In the middle of it, staring right at her, was the wolf.
From only a few yards’ distance, it was huge. She knew dogs fairly well—Bahlaer was full of them—and this beast overtopped the biggest by at least a hand. Its shoulder probably came up to her hip, and its winter coat gave it a forbidding bulk; the color she had taken for white in the shadows now looked pewter in the light. It watched her with pale eyes, its ears pricked forward and form perfectly still.
She took one step back and slammed the door shut.
The wood trembled in front of her. For a panicked moment she thought that it was scratching the door down, then realized that the trembling was her own. She backed away quickly, looking for a latch, but there was none.
Suddenly a deeper fear clutched her. Still retreating, she looked to the rafters and called, “Rian? Rian!” in a voice that seemed to squawk from her tight throat.
“What is it?” said Trevere, but there was no answer from above.
“Rian! The wolf!”
Hard hands gripped her. She struggled automatically, her fingers scudding the door, her brain on fire with one fear: that the wolf was out there and would eat her baby. A grunt from behind her and her feet left the floor. She kicked wildly and scratched at the arms locked around her waist.
The world swung. There was the fire-pit again. She fought, but a moment later found herself shoved flat to a hay bale, one arm pinned to it by a knee and the other by a hand, the second hand gripping the back of her neck. Stalks pricked her cheek and prodded against her nostrils.
“Get a hold of yourself,” Trevere growled in her ear.
Her booted toes scraped on the floor. She wiggled, finding purchase on the edge of the fire-pit, and tried to shrug him off, but it was like trying to throw off a lead weight. His other knee nailed into her spine, sending flashes of pain everywhere, and she whimpered into the hay.
“Think, woman,” he hissed, his poison breath all too close. “Is your goblin stupid?”
She shuddered, tears welling in her eyes.
“Did you see a black tail hanging out of the wolf’s maw? Scratches? Bits of cloth? Blood?”
A watery breath. She could not speak.
“If he’s hunting, I doubt he’s in earshot. I’m also fairly sure that goblins can climb trees. If the wolf is here, it’s because it can smell the horses, not for a nasty little tidbit like that.”
She tried to shake her head, and felt the grip on her neck relax. Sniffling, she pushed away from the bale and he let her. For a moment she thought of shoving backwards, of knocking him into the fire-pit—in a flash she saw the point of the metal tripod protruding from his gory chest—but he stepped out of her way and hooked one hand under her arm to help her up.
“Calm yourself,” he said. She looked to him and only now realized how much shorter he was. She could have pressed lips to his forehead without bending. His expression was stern but no longer tired; annoyance had wiped that away.
“I’m fine,” she sniffed, and tried to pull away. After a moment, he let her.
The blanket had fallen from her shoulders during the struggle. She watched his back as he moved to retrieve it. Beyond him, the door stood open a crack from her desperate scrabbling.
“You don’t understand,” she said. Her voice felt like broken glass.
“Don’t I?”
“You’re a monster.”
Deliberately, with great calm, he plucked the blanket up and shook it out. “They’re more clever than you think,” he said.
“What?”
/> “Children. They do things you never meant for them to do. They change themselves in ways you could not have anticipated. Because they do not belong to you—even if you bore them.”
Lark sniffed and rubbed at her sore cheeks. The cup lay on its side by her feet, herbs spread out over the drying stones. “What do you know about it?”
His mouth twisted slightly as he folded the blanket small, but he said nothing. She glared at him, then huffed and sat down on the edge of the hay-bale, hands knotting in her lap as she stared at the sliver of moonlight coming in through the door.
“Eventually, they escape," he said quietly. "Or you learn to set them free."
"Rian hasn't—" She frowned and glanced back to him, noting the tense line of his shoulders, the compulsive way he unfurled and refolded the blanket. “I thought you were here to drag him back.”
Trevere shook his head. “That won’t work anymore. The Golds have him.”
“So, what? You’re gonna rescue him?”
Trevere looked to her, and though the faint firelight painted his features like a mask, she saw fear in the sickle-curves of his eyes, like a sick animal behind cold steel bars.
“Kill him,” he said. “And I’ll need your help.”
Lark sat stunned for a moment, then let out an awkward laugh. “Me? Why do you think I’d help you?”
“Because you hate me and would be thrilled to see me punished.”
That slapped the laughter out of her. She stared at him as he shrugged the blanket around his shoulders and retraced his steps to the fire. “You’re betraying your people?” she said.
He did not meet her eyes, but sat down on the stone floor with his back to the hay. Sobriety had settled over him, and it drew Lark down as well, to where the spilled herbs were just sticky wads on the dry floor. Absently she reached for the kettle to remake her cup.
His hands linked around one knee. “I won’t tell you about how we’re made,” he said to the fire. “It’s nothing you want to know. But we were human once. This presents…problems, so normally we are given simple tasks—infiltration, replacement, murder. Tasks that don’t remind us of who we were.
“This task, though…
“Maybe it was sabotage from the start. They knew my history, but they gave me the boy and said ‘watch over him’. ‘Keep him safe’. ‘Become his friend’. It’s difficult to lie all the time without letting them come true.
“Five years, and I watched him grow from a hollow-eyed orphan to a brave young fool. I guarded his back. I started lying for him more than I lied to him. And they didn’t notice—my superiors. They weren’t watching me. I don’t know why.
“Then the wraiths shot him, and I thought I would die. Not because he was there on the stretcher, bleeding, babbling, his side frozen and all his innards ruptured. Not because he was dying.
“Because he wasn’t.
“That should have changed everything, but they never came for him. Their leader told me it was the bonds on him, keeping his soul in place, not the spirit we were waiting to catch. And I believed it. Then he was back, and he was normal, more or less. And I started lying to myself. Nightmares—those were only natural after such a shock, even if the nightmares had nothing to do with his injury.
“Nothing was wrong. Nothing was wrong.
“But some lies can’t become true--and I knew it even if I wouldn’t admit it. They had missed the spirit. It was in him, but he was still himself, in control or just unaware of it. We had won. And they would take him away, and he would never understand why they were killing him.
“I should have done it myself. It would have been easy. He trusted me. The spirit would have departed, and his soul would have gone free.
“But I couldn’t. I let him go but I never released him. I tried to obey my masters but I can’t go back. I thought we could catch him and I could kill them all—everyone, the mages, the soldiers, you, him…myself. But it’s gotten loose inside him. I can’t fight it.
“Now the Golds have him. I need help. The gods, the spirits, I can’t cry to them. They would help him but they won’t help me.
“I need them. I can’t kill him by myself.”
Lark closed her mouth with a click of teeth. She had known Trevere was crazy but she had not expected that. Like a drunken confession, or the words of a man who already knew he was dead.
She was loath to respond or even to stay seated. Right now being outside with the wolf seemed safer. But Trevere sat immobile, gaze fixated by the flames, and she felt an irrational stab of pity for him. Not nearly enough to override the fear, but maybe the hate.
Cautiously, she said, “Those were mages who took him. They can block our Shadow stuff.”
“That’s not what I want from you. You’ll be my emissary.”
“Oh will I?”
“If you want.”
She frowned. The cup in her hand had cooled somewhat, her scald no longer throbbing, and she blew over the tea and took a stalling sip. It did not soothe her, for the ribbon on her wrist rippled with the movement, a curt reminder.
“If I want.” Silence. “No threats, no promises? Just ‘if I want’?”
Trevere nodded. “I can’t follow you and I won’t keep hostages. Once I let you go, you can run, that’s fine. But if you’re interested, I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking.”
“And if I’m not?”
He regarded her with red-rimmed eyes, then held out his hand. After a long, puzzled moment, she reached out to clasp it.
His fingers clamped on hers like a vise. She glimpsed his other hand moving, and the red glow as the akarriden blade slipped from its sheath, and squeezed her eyes shut as the panic froze her limbs. Why, why did I fall for it—
The blade skimmed across her wrist, lighting queasy sparks like a rapist’s touch, and cut through the ribbon with a simple twist.
She felt it fall off and her eyes snapped open to see Trevere resheathe the blade. His own ribbon lay severed on the floor between them. He let her go when she yanked away, and sat back against the hay-bales, the fire casting changeable shadows across his face.
“There. Go if you want,” he said. “But I suggest you wait until morning.”
Lark scrambled away from the fallen ribbons. They lay inert, the runes dead. Though she had seen that blade cut through swords and shadows and spirit-flesh, she could barely believe it. “But I thought I'd die if—"
"I lied."
She stared at him incredulously.
A thin smile grew on his face. "You really believed a scrap of fabric could kill you? I knew it would work for a while, since you cultists are so terrified of magic you think it can do anything, but after Riftward?"
"You— But there was burning! And—"
"Tingling, yes, Voorkei made them tingle if we were more than a few yards apart. But what I threatened you with was necromancy, and Voorkei may be foul but he's not as foul as that."
She glared at him, wishing she had the power to wipe that smug look off his face. Not only tricking me, but then lecturing about it? You son of a—
Stop. Stop right now, before you do something foolish.
Taking a deep breath, she pushed that ire into a little corner of her mind and considered her new options. She did not trust Darilan, though he sounded sincere, and though her people would insist that she stay, she did not care. They had stranded her with him. She would not sacrifice herself for their benefit.
And yet…
In all her life, she had never been so close to something so mythic. Among the Kheri, the faith was the family business, nothing glorious or sacred about it, and the other gods were just rivals or partners, not beings of power. The spirits were basically ignored.
To serve as an emissary to some unknown force, sent by a crazed, rogue Imperial…
It sounded dangerous, and a little exciting.
She chewed her lip, watching him watch her. In the one day they had known each other, he could have killed her a hundred times. Instead, he chose to
trust her.
Well then, I’ll have to teach him better.
Squaring her shoulders, she lifted her cup and said imperiously, “Tell me about your little plan.”
Trevere smiled.
*****
Marks later, when the moons had set and the fire had subsided to dull embers, the wolf shouldered through the gap in the door and padded on silent paws to where the travelers lay. The goblin had returned during the plotting, and slept curled-up in the cat-blooded woman’s arms; the woman herself rested on her side with her braids spilling across the floor like tiny vines. Not far from them, the corrupted man sat with the blanket over his head and shoulders like a cloak, breathing the slow deep breaths of sleep.
The wolf had listened to everything. The speculations on where the Great Spirit was held, the consideration and discarding of the grey wraiths, the white wraiths, the Trifolders and the Shadow Folk as allies. The tentative focus on the Corvishfolk in the mountains—those hereditary enemies of all things Wyndish, those raiders and shamans and spirit-callers.
Across the banked coals, the wolf caught a gleam and halted in mid-step. Two slits of iris showed beneath the corrupted man’s lowered lids, catching the meager light like tarnished silver.
The wolf bristled nervously, the thin quills under its winter fur standing out. It had not sensed him waking.
“And what do you think?” the man whispered across the cold distance.
The wolf laid its ears back and took a step away. It could not answer with these jaws, and would not have done so even if it could. The corrupted man’s breath held a necrotic whiff, but stronger was the scent of the thing within him. It made a shape in the wolf’s mind, of polyps and tendrils and writhing threads, of poison stingers and tiny acidic maws. The wolf dared not go near.
“Was it futile?” the man continued, perhaps to himself. His lips barely moved in the shadow of the blanket, his voice little more than a rasp. “Chasing him away? I’m not a rebel.” His throat clicked, and he swallowed. “I was loyal. Purposeful. I enjoyed my job.
“Is this what they wanted?”
The wolf whined faintly and took another step back. It wanted to retreat to the fresh air, away from the pervasive smell of ichor and death. How the cat-blooded woman could not scent that, it did not know.
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 38
