“Is what your mother says true?” He put the same question to Vaughn.
“It is, Hywel. I knew. I doubt there’s a southland paladin or maven who doesn’t know.” The paladin rose. “The concerns of other clans were brushed aside in my haste to save my own. I did know of the wing found in Beltania. I saw it myself. With the Araneidae funding an investigation into the plague and its causes, I saw little need for us to become involved. Once the plague came here, it was a matter of survival. Our dead still lie in the field. Our mourning period has scarcely yet begun. So no, I did not see fit to invest our resources in chasing leads the Araneidae can more effectively pursue, nor did I see any benefit in burdening our already pained clan with the news.”
“You made many assumptions,” Hywel scolded.
“As paladin, that is my duty, to gather facts and then decide what is in the best interest of my clan.” He strolled until he stood before the elders. “If you’re implying I have failed this clan…”
“Take no offense where none was meant,” Pearce cautioned. “Enough casting blame. I want to know what dragged me from a warm bed and away from an even warmer female. If Vaughn and Isolde both knew about the wing, then it’s old news. So, tell us. What’s new? What’s happened?”
Vaughn leaned his hip against the arm of Pearce’s chair and folded his arms over his chest. “You heard him, Murdoch.” Vaughn stared at each of us in turn. “What happened tonight?”
Murdoch stepped forward, separating himself from the rest of us. “I took Kaidi to the field.”
“Without my permission,” Vaughn noted. “Why did she ask to go this time?”
“She heard an odd sound and wanted to investigate.”
“That seemed a wise course of action to you?” Vaughn’s lips tightened.
Jaw flexing, Murdoch nodded. “It did at the time.”
“Let me see if I understand.” Vaughn stared at me. “A female—who is betrothed to a fellow paladin—lures you into the night on the pretense of investigating an ‘odd sound’ you’ve made no mention of hearing yourself, and you never once considered how that might look to the gossips?”
Murdoch’s neck flushed red. “It wasn’t like that.”
“You’re fortunate Lleu decided to join you, or it would have appeared to be exactly that.” He lowered his voice. “Kaidi has made no secret there is no love lost between her paladin and her. It is also no secret that females wed to males whom they do not love will often seek love in others.” That he directed at Isolde. “It does not excuse their actions, and I won’t condone such behavior.”
Turning his back on us, he faced the elders and inclined his head as if in dismissal.
No, no, no. My fingernails bit into my palms.
I inhaled once then stepped to Murdoch’s side. “He found your missing clansmen.”
My declaration was met with a tensing of Vaughn’s shoulders as if I had hurled an object of great weight into him. Perhaps I had. I knew myself the burden of guilt experienced after a loved one passed. It ground down on your soul until sorrow mired you in a rut of their death’s making.
“Murdoch, stay where you are,” he said, voice hard as steel. “Everyone else, get out.”
A slow shake of Lleu’s head warned me to keep my mouth shut. I did, for Murdoch’s sake.
Shamed to my bones, I did as Vaughn commanded. I left Murdoch to face his paladin.
Alone in Murdoch’s room, I paced as he often did. Hands clasped at the small of my back, I walked until my calves burned from the exercise. Lleu had left with Bram, who arrived after our interrogation began and chose to remain at our backs, unnoticed except by the paladin and elders.
Outside the door an unfamiliar guard stood watch. I was grateful. Lleu’s reputation had been dealt a blow, as had Murdoch’s. For the rest of my time here, I would speak to no one. When the tailor came, I would nod and let him dress me fit for a maven. Afterward, I would climb in a bed smelling of Murdoch and try opening my eyes to what his peers saw. Was his affection, which I found subtle, so obvious to everyone else? Murdoch said once he read me well. I began to think the others did too. I frothed at the mouth when speaking of Hishima. Did I walk too near or stare too long at Murdoch? It was idle fascination. It must be. He was so different from males I knew.
When at last my legs gave out, I slumped in Murdoch’s chair and leaned over his desk. With my chin in my palm, I shut my eyes and fought the sleep that would bring me closer to Hishima.
A tap, tap, tapping set my teeth on edge. I glared at the door through blurred vision, ready to snap at the guard to hold his foot still, when I heard the annoying sound coming from behind me.
Hand in my pocket, clutching Bram’s knife, I approached the tapestry covering the window.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Fisting the material, I ripped it aside and swallowed a scream. “Are you out of your mind?”
Dangling from a rope outside the window, knuckles poised over the shutters, hung Murdoch.
“Possibly,” he admitted, gripping the ledge and crawling through the window into the room.
I slapped his shoulder. “Why not use the door?”
He caught my wrist. “Did you fail to notice the guard standing there?”
“He’s one of yours. He would have admitted you. That—out there—was madness.”
“Careful how you bandy that word about.” His boots hit stone. “I stole the idea from you.”
My hairline stung with the force of my embarrassment. “I had no choice.”
“Nor did I.” He leaned against the wall, still holding on to me.
“You’re their captain.” I tugged against him. “If you told them to move, they would move.”
His hand slid down to lace with mine. “The paladin has forbidden me to see you.”
“Yet here you are.” I held very still.
“Yet here I am.” He reached for me, brought me closer. “You drive me insane, Kaidi.”
I braced a hand on his chest. “I’m not sure if you mean that as a compliment or not.”
“Neither am I.” He smiled.
Tightness in my chest made breathing difficult. I told myself it was fear for Murdoch’s rope trick that made my heart drum so fiercely.
“What did you discuss after I left?” It was a much safer topic.
“The finding of our clansmen,” he said dryly.
“Well?” I popped him on his arm. “What did the paladin say?”
“He made me swear to keep what we saw quiet. No doubt Lleu will get such a visit as well. The paladin dismissed the council with his apologies, but they saw the wing and they will talk. It does him no good to forbid information in a time when people are starved for hope and answers.”
Daring to rest my head on his shoulder, I agreed. “Open secrets can’t be closed.”
“If Hishima agrees to an alliance, our clan’s trained warriors will be depleted for a time. It’s a risk the paladin is willing to take because our reputation serves us as well as blades ever have.”
“Let me guess. It’s more important to secure his allies than to secure his own people.”
“He believes the plague has done its damage and gone. He won’t spare guards to confront a threat he doesn’t believe in at a time when his resources are better used elsewhere. He swore he would pass along word to his brother, Rhys. If Paladin Chinedu visits, Vaughn said I’m welcome to speak to him as well, but I am not to talk of such matters here, now, with my own clansmen.”
The potential Vaughn had represented to me shriveled. “He is a fool for not believing you.”
“Believe what? A story he’s certain Lleu concocted to protect me from myself?” He snorted. “The paladin wanted proof, as we knew he would, and I had nothing to offer him but my word.”
“It should have been enough.”
He rolled his shoulder beneath my cheek. “It might have been, once.”
“Before me, you mean.” I lifted my head to see what truths his eyes revealed.
&nbs
p; “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” His face was grave, his arms tight around the cause of his troubles.
He tightened them further still. “Don’t be angry with me.”
“I’m not angry.” I had no right to be.
“Kaidi.” He cupped my face in his hands. “I need your help.”
“You do?” I sounded skeptical.
“I must have proof.” His eyes were earnest. “I am sworn to Vaughn, but in this he is wrong. My vows were to protect my clan at all costs, and his displeasure is a price I will pay with flesh.”
“No.” I choked on the implication.
“You lost everything fighting the cause I am taking up,” he said. “Don’t deny me that right.”
“You won’t find proof in Cathis.” I glanced aside. “The harbinger is finished here.”
“The harbinger?” he said slowly. “Is that what you call the winged female?”
I nodded. “You’ll have to find another town or city that has a fresh supply of corpses.”
“No. I don’t want those.” He steeled himself. “I want the harbinger.”
I understood why capturing her or one of her sisters was necessary if we wanted to sway the paladin to our cause. The harbinger was no corpse. She was far too cunning. That one was alive.
To cage one was to release all doubts about the true nature of the plague.
“Do you know where I can find her?” he pressed.
“There’s more than one,” I reminded him.
Grudgingly, he said, “I’ll take whichever one I can get.” Though I knew from experience he had the scent of a particular one in his nose.
“Remember, they are drawn to corpses. If we find a spot, then lie in wait…”
“We have no time.” He rubbed my arms as if to warm them. “Is there no other way?”
“There’s only one that I could tell you how to find, and she may not be there now.”
His grip tightened, shoving me back until he held me before him. “Where?”
I think he knew before I said, “In Titania.”
“Does Hishima know?” he asked quietly, as though he feared the walls might hear.
Her cadaverous face grinned through my memories. “It’s his chains that tie her.”
His eyes widened a fraction. “She’s his captive?”
I ran my thumb across the stump of my missing finger. “She’s his mother.”
The motion caught his eye, but he held his tongue. “That complicates things.”
“Hishima keeps her hidden away in an exhausted section of the crystal cavern beneath his manor. He has direct access to the cavern from the ground floor, and no one is allowed there. Not that there’s a reason to go. All the crystals in that section of the mine have long been harvested.”
He gave me a squeeze. “Is there another way into the cavern?”
“Several, but artisans keep odd hours. I’ve never in my life entered an empty tunnel. There’s always someone at work. The tunnel you need is best accessed through the manor or through the main tunnel. There are other ways, but they are difficult and you would be noticed taking them.”
He sounded thoughtful. “You know how to access the tunnel from the manor?”
“It was my curiosity about what drew Hishima down that staircase each night that led to my reintroduction to his mother.” I shivered. “I spied on him for days, and one night I snuck down to wait on his arrival. I followed him to where he kept her. When I saw Lailah chained…I panicked. He caught me fleeing and threw me at her feet. The flash of my betrothal ring caught her eye…”
Most of the finger was gone. All of it would be if I hadn’t been trying to work the ring off my hand when she attacked.
“Hush now.” Murdoch pulled me against his chest. “I was wrong to come to you.”
“You asked for my help, and I was happy to give it.” I assured him, “You did no wrong.”
“You don’t understand.” He kissed my temple. “I came here for more than information.”
“Oh?” I tamped down the warmth gathering in my chest.
“I want to…” His soft laughter was my undoing. “It’s harder to say than I expected.”
I felt bold in saying, “Tell me what you want.”
“You.” His embrace grew impossibly tighter. “Come with me.”
I was stunned. “What?”
“You understand these creatures as no one does. If I’m to capture the harbinger, alive, then I need your help. We have little time left. Hishima comes tonight, and the tailor sooner than that.”
“I can’t just leave.” No matter how I wished to. “Hishima would follow us. The negotiations would stall. Knowing Hishima, he would end them out of spite.” And then what? “I can’t risk it.”
“Can you risk the alternative?” He glanced toward the window. “You know what’s out there, and you know as well as I do no good will come of it. These—things—are not raising the dead to prove they can. They have a purpose. The harbingers are gathering those creatures to them. What happens when they have gathered enough? Do you think those corpses will care if they’re turned on their former clans? Do you think the one we fought last night cared that I once knew her? No. She cared only that I stood between her and the harbinger. Ignoring them now invites ruin later.”
“You’re right.” But did I dare risk my clan’s immediate future to spare them distant turmoil?
“All of the largest southland clans have lost souls to this evil. That means the harbingers are well acquainted with those locations and their fortifications. They will know there are fewer who can guard the walls or mind the roads. That is where the harbingers will strike. It’s what I’d do.”
Rubbing my eyes gave me a moment of solitude to gather my thoughts. “What about you?” The paladin struck me as the unforgiving kind, and no mercy would be shown to defectors.
“You asked me once if necessity had trapped me.” His exhale seemed an unburdening. “No. It didn’t. I could have pursued my greatfather’s trade and become a tanner. I could have owned a shop, lived in town and avoided the webs fate had spun for me. It would have been a good life.”
A simple life, a trade to be proud of, I had those things once. “Why didn’t you?”
He shrugged in answer. “As is sometimes the case with only children, Father wanted no part of his father’s trade. Untrained except for tannery, he took the coin offered him to stand guard. It was a poor fit for him and his temper.” He turned from me. “One night, not long after starting, Father picked a fight with a male who dared insult his slow response in opening the gate. A hood covered the male’s head, and Father failed to recognize him as Paladin Brynmor, Vaughn’s father, home from a raid. There was nothing to be done. Brynmor’s justice was absolute. He had been insulted, and he took the price of his humiliation from my father’s hide. I was called to fetch his body, after. Brynmor met me at the towers and told me to come to him in six years’ time and I could challenge him for the death of my father. Or I could accept his offer of becoming a page in the towers and earn the coin my father would have. How could I deny him? I had Mother and my little sister to think of.”
“He bought your goodwill.” I understood how bitter that must have made him.
“That was impossible, and Brynmor knew it.” Murdoch exhaled. “What he did, over the span of years, was teach me loyalty to his line. They fed me and my family, clothed us and kept a roof over our heads. When grief sent my greatfather to his grave early and I inherited, the realization was made that without him or Father to finish teaching me the trade, his gift was useless. Brynmor stepped in then with an offer to put me on the wall. My mother and sister were set with the funds we made selling the tannery. I kept enough gold to start anew, but what did I know but this place and these people? I had no desire to leave, no desire to indebt myself to Brynmor, yet in the end I followed in Father’s footsteps. But this work, it suits me. I can imagine no other trade as mine.”
“I pra
y that loyalty protects you.” That Vaughn would not be as swift to punish as his father.
“I have seen the ruthless underbelly of the paladins of Cathis. I’m well aware who I tempt in being here and in asking this of you.” He leaned out the window and grasped the rope. “Time has run out for me. I must go before I am missed.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I said once I have no regrets, but that’s not as true as it once was.” His smile wrenched my gut. “Take care, Kaidi.”
“That’s all you have to say to me?” After all this, he meant to unburden himself then leave.
“What?” His frown made me question the sanity of all who claimed he was smitten with me.
A few kind touches, tender caresses, those I showed to favored pets, not to those I desired.
I stalked him, shoved him against the wall and pinned him there with a forearm to his chest. I drew Bram’s knife from my pocket and held its point at Murdoch’s throat. “Take me with you.”
He scowled at the blade. “I asked you to come with me.”
“Yes, well, that’s not the point. This is.” I steadied my shaking hand. “Escort me home.”
“You will not play the martyr with me.” His eyes darkened. “You will not do this.”
The blade nicked his skin when he leaned too close. He didn’t flinch from the pain.
“It’s done,” I told him. “I have a knife at your pulse and I’m forcing you to help me escape.”
“I will aid you readily,” he growled. “There is no need for this pretense.”
“You’ve sacrificed enough.” I eased up on his chest. “Let someone share the burden.”
“Share,” he said, driving the blade deeper, “implies an equal split in responsibility.”
“Fine.” I met his stare and swore I was not lost in his dark eyes. “Let someone else shoulder the burden. You have worked too long and too hard to lose your standing here. Let both paladins blame me. They will assume I am the one at fault, and I am for dragging you into this.”
He stared down his nose at me. “Equal shares or I will claim them all.”
A Time of Dying (Araneae Nation) Page 13
