Pearl’s dark gaze took on an air of accomplishment, and he cast a look toward the woman behind the screen. “So,” he said, smiling coldly, “it is as We suspected. You crawl to Us in shame like a beaten dog.”
Vargha grimaced at the truth in his words. No good to deny it. “The loss to us is too great,” he said. “If our fourth fails, we will not send another pair. We will not complete the contract.”
Pearl drew in his breath with an affronted hiss.
A tinkling of bells and rustling silk drew Vargha’s eye to the screen. The Karakurt was standing now, her headdress towering above even the giant at the rear door. Pearl and the others bowed obsequiously. Vargha frowned.
Another form moved behind the screen then, emerging from the Karakurt’s silhouette, shadows giving birth to shadows. He was tall and slim of waist, and as he rounded the edge of the screen, Vargha saw that he was elegantly dressed. His long ebony hair was slicked back from a noble’s peak and clasped at the base of his neck with a gold band. Three red-gold bangles pierced each ear, but he was no Jamaiian sailor, this one. Vargha was hard-pressed to say if the man was Avataren or Bemothi, for his rounded nose, caramel skin, and slanted almond-shaped eyes belonged to both races. What surprised him, however, was the way the Karakurt’s minions shied away from the man; even the insufferable Pearl looked wan as he stepped aside. Not a good sign.
The stranger stopped before Vargha, and a cold gaze regarded him plainly if distantly, as if Vargha was but a smudge upon the window which he desired to look through. “A contract with us is a contract to the death, Agent Vargha,” said the stranger with the trace of an accent as foreign as his dress. “You will complete it or suffer gravely for your failure.”
Vargha wasn’t so easily intimidated as they must’ve thought him. “The Council of Malchiarr has decided,” he returned firmly, staring the stranger in the eye though the man’s serpentine gaze brought the uneasy sensation of snakes slithering under his skin. “Even Agasi silver can’t replace the lives of three of our agents. We will not commit any more pairs.”
The Karakurt chuckled from behind the screen, her deeply resonant voice filling the room. “You don’t understand, Agent Vargha. It matters not to us how you kill the prince—whether your agents do it personally or if his death comes from the hand of others you contract on our behalf—but you will complete your contract.”
“Or face extermination,” the stranger asserted.
Vargha felt a cold chill at the threat. This wasn’t how things were done. Extermination? It was a bold declaration, yet Vargha believed the man meant it. The utter emptiness in his smoldering dark eyes made anything seem possible.
The stranger’s ill gaze swept over Vargha, and then, quite without warning, he licked his thumb and pushed it against Vargha’s forehead. His touch burned like ice held too long against bare flesh. Vargha shuddered backwards, one hand instinctively reaching for his blade, and though the link was severed as he withdrew, still his forehead flamed with icy fire.
The encounter left him shaken. Vargha knew magic was being worked here—fell magic like none he’d encountered, and he wanted nothing more to do with it. “Threaten me all you like,” he managed, barely getting out the words without stuttering over his own urgent desire to flee the stranger’s empty-eyed gaze, “but our position stands.”
“I am sorry you feel that way, Agent Vargha,” said the Karakurt, sounding just the opposite.
Vargha spun and made for the door, yet still he was unprepared for the words that followed him out of the room.
“You are a marked man now, Agent Vargha,” the stranger said.
Vargha felt a tingling in the tips of his fingers, an itching that made him want nothing more than to drive his blade through the man’s heart and gut him like a pig. Instead, he squared his shoulders and rushed out, heading down the long tunnel, up the stairs, and out into the night.
***
When the Geishaiwyn was gone, the Karakurt walked to her screen and swept it aside. Her servants immediately prostrated themselves, faces pressed to the floor, eyes tightly shut; each recited a humming chant that ensured their mistress’s privacy.
All, that is, save the stranger. He watched her with a gaze as still as death, while from within the sleeve of his coat he retrieved a single feather the color of flame. This he rolled between his fingers, a bit of captured light.
“We will make this right, Lord Abanachtran,” the Karakurt said.
The Lord Abanachtran’s gaze flicked over her like the sharp edge of a blade, and though she was fully clothed, she felt its deadly touch mark her naked flesh.
“We will redouble our efforts,” she promised, now an urgent appeal. “Your master can depend on us, my lord. Please—please assure him of this.”
The Lord Abanachtran looked down upon her. He was nearly as tall as the giant. He brought his feather up under her chin and lifted her face to his with a jingling of headdress bells. “You should pray it be so,” he murmured. “My brothers are not so forgiving of failure as I.”
Then he was gone, flowing out of the room like oiled water, vanishing into the dark.
The Karakurt pressed a hand to her belly, taking a moment to still her beating heart, to quiet the riotous nausea tumbling her stomach. Every time the Lord Abanachtran visited he left with another piece of her soul. Composing herself, she walked over to Pearl. “Get up!”
He scrambled to his feet, eyes downcast. “Mistress—”
Her slap stole the words from his tongue. “What a farce you’ve made of this!”
He glared at his shoes with injured defiance.
Her next slap was harder and left upon his cheek a white handprint and a biting sting. “See that the val Lorian prince is found and his head delivered to me,” she snarled as she returned to her seat and closed the screen again roughly, “and perhaps something can still be salvaged of this fiasco!”
What she did not say was, Perhaps something can still be salvaged of us.
Thirty-four
‘A man from afar says what he will.’
– An old desert proverb
Ean’s company traveled steadily southward over the following week, trading the Gandrel’s bright autumn reds and siennas for the long golden grass of the hill country. The days passed without trouble, yet Ean was plagued with doubts.
He doubted his instincts, which had failed him abominably the night of Creighton’s death. He doubted his decisions, which were reckless and brash if Morin d’Hain was to be believed. He doubted his reasoning, knowing so much of it was born of vengeance, and he doubted his ability to lead his company of loyal companions. He doubted, and the doubts opened a door to indecision, indecision weakening to fear.
The fear he held off with strength of will, but the indecision was miserable.
A week had passed without incident, yet he was no closer to seeing the pattern woven by the many threads connecting through him. What did his pattern—his Return—a Shade, Björn van Gelderan, Geshaiwyn assassins, the Duke of Morwyk, and a zanthyr have in common? Where did their threads intersect, and how? And why was Raine d’Lacourte so keen to aid him? Raine had sent Ean south for his safety, but the prince worried that if he didn’t come to understand these things, his safety would be the least of his problems.
As if these matters weren’t troubling enough, Ean bore the responsibility not only of his own safety but also that of his companions. This weighed more heavily on his conscience now that he’d witnessed so many people offer up their lives to protect him. He felt a grave burden in this knowledge, for he had such nobility in his father to aspire to.
Alyneri may have previously traveled with the King’s Own Guard, as she said, but Ean suspected Rhys was traveling with them now for a different reason, one Alyneri would never suspect but which Ean felt certain he knew as truth: his father would soon be knowingly placing himself in harm’s way, and the king would not willingly do the same for Rhys and his men—knowing that they would so readily offer their lives i
n trade for his own. So Gydryn had sent them instead to protect his son on an equally dangerous journey, hoping that at least with Ean they all stood a chance of survival.
Just the thought gripped with a cold fist around Ean’s heart. That his father was so prepared to die… Every time the notion came to him, Ean had to push it away. The idea of losing his father too was more than he could bear.
Keeping company with his thoughts during the quiet hours of riding, Ean found himself watching his companions more and more: Alyneri rode in a shroud of thoughtfulness, self-contained in her blue cloak, her expression somehow sad; Tanis remained ebullient, his colorless eyes brightly shining as they took in the scenery; Rhys and his men rode in silence, stoic but intense, focused on their task, while Fynnlar complained incessantly to a silently loyal Brody.
The prince wished so much that he could send all of his friends away, to safety, to live out their lives in peace; it angered him that he knew he couldn’t, that he knew he needed their council, their support…their protection. So also did he realize that every decision he made would affect their future, their survival. He felt far from ready for that responsibility however it had been thrust upon him.
A week into their journey, while the others pitched camp in the bosom of grass-covered hills, Ean pulled Alyneri aside. He took her hand and led her upstream, following the little brook that pooled near their camp. When they’d climbed out of view of the others, he bade her sit beside him at the water’s edge.
Alyneri had warmed to him only slightly in the past week—mostly due to his leaving her alone—but she regarded him suspiciously as she settled down in the grass across from him. “So what’s this about, Ean?” she asked, looking around. “Why all the secrecy?”
“Privacy,” he corrected, casting her a troubled gaze. “I just want your opinion on something.”
“Yes, you need a bath,” she confirmed. “There. That’s done. Can we go now?”
Ean cleared a space of dirt between them, smoothed it with one hand, and then picked up a stone and began drawing with its pointed edge. Alyneri was about to voice a comment when the drawing itself caught her eye, effectively silencing her. When the prince was finished, he rested elbows on knees and regarded her startled expression with a sober frown.
She lifted wide brown eyes from the pattern scrawled in the dirt and met his gaze. “Ean…”
“I know,” he muttered.
“Do you?” she challenged. She straightened to better look at him. “Do you know how impossible it is that you’re drawing that pattern—or that you can even see it?”
“So you recognize it too?” For a moment her response gave him hope. If somehow she saw the same pattern…
Alyneri caught her thumbnail between her teeth and shook her head, looking amazed. “When I healed you,” she said, staring at the drawing, “it was this pattern I finally found. I’d almost forgotten how strange that moment was…”
“How do you mean?”
She lifted her gaze to meet his. “This is your pattern, Ean. That which is uniquely you—the very pattern that is the framework of your existence. A Healer’s first task upon any Healing is to find a person’s pattern, for without that, no Healing can begin.”
“What was strange about mine?”
She frowned at him, looking uncertain. “Usually finding the pattern is akin to…well, somewhat like searching for a leaf within the waters of a rushing stream. But your pattern…that pattern…it is the stream.” Abruptly she gave him a hard look. “But you’re no Healer,” she challenged. “How can you see this pattern at all?”
Ean hadn’t been sure how to break the news to her. There didn’t seem to be any easy way to go about it. He looked her in the eye. “Because, Alyneri…I’ve Returned.”
For a moment, her brow furrowed. Then she burst into laughter.
“Thank you for understanding,” Ean muttered crossly.
“Oh!” she finally managed to find her voice and pressed tears of mirth from her eyes, “but it’s so—so ridiculous!”
He was beginning to find her response vaguely irritating. “Why? Why is it so unbelievable to you?”
Placing a hand to her heart as she tried to stop laughing, Alyneri finally managed, “Because you haven’t any talent whatsoever, Ean!”
The prince gazed darkly at her and tried not to let her chiming laughter chip too many chinks in his ego. “Nevertheless, Alyneri,” he cut in deliberately, “it is the truth.”
His decisive tone dampened her amusement, and she composed herself long enough to look him in the eye. She frowned at him then. “You can’t really be serious.”
“I was hoping you might have something to offer in the way of advice,” he remarked testily. “Returned, but not Awakened. That’s what the Fourth Vestal told me. That’s what I’ve recently admitted to myself as truth, and that’s why—I’m fairly certain—Björn van Gelderan sent his Shade after me.”
She’d fallen silent at mention of the Fourth Vestal.
“So,” Ean said. “Have you any knowledge of the Returning, Alyneri? I fear my education extends to the Litany for the Departed and no further.”
She steepled fingers before her lips and stared incredulously at him.
“What usually happens?” Ean pressed. “How do you Adepts know of your talents? Is it always from birth?”
She shook her head slowly. “…No,” she admitted after a moment. “Oftentimes the gift comes with adolescence. In my case—I mean, Healers always pass on the gift to their daughters, so I always knew.”
“What about Tanis?”
She shrugged. “The same, I believe. His eyes, you know—colorless eyes are a sure sign of the gift. Certainly we knew from the moment he joined our household that he’d be a Truthreader, but he didn’t begin his training until this year.”
“And if they don’t Awaken during adolescence?”
Alyneri, for once, looked compassionately upon him. “I’ve never heard of it happening in later life. I suppose it’s possible, but you’d think it would be mentioned somewhere if anyone had done it.”
Why then? Why does the Fifth Vestal care what happens to me?
“Perhaps when we get to Jeune—”
“We’re not going to Jeune,” he told her, swallowing his disappointment that she’d nothing else to offer. “That’s just our story.”
“Then where?”
“Straight to the Cairs. Fynn has contacts who can…hide us,” he almost choked over the word, “until things smooth over.”
She gave him a troubled look. “And you’re at peace with that?”
He glared at her. “No, I’m not at peace with it!” He moved to his feet lest he expend too much emotion toward her, which she did not deserve. He stood glaring at the little brook with crossed arms instead. “But what choice do I have? My advisors either know nothing or else know nothing more that they’re willing to share. People are trying to kill me, and my death means only…only destruction to my father’s kingdom.” Abruptly he spun her a tormented look. “What else can I do?”
She considered him for a long moment in silence. Then she looked to the brook, a faint frown furrowing her pale brow. After a tense silence, she took a measured breath and offered, “Farshideh always told me that a donkey who pretended himself a horse was sure to falter on a stony path, but a donkey who thought himself a horse would be surefooted in any terrain.”
Ean looked heatedly at her. “What is that supposed to mean?”
She chuckled. “It was a lesson that took me a while to decipher, too.”
“And did you?”
“I think so,” she admitted with a modest smile. “In essence, she was trying to tell me that you cannot act against your nature—your true nature—and hope to succeed. Not that we can’t overcome faults in our character—such as being reckless or…or prone to emotional outbursts,” and here she lowered her eyes, clearly meaning herself. “But that we have a deeper nature lying beneath our faults, and to the former we must be true.�
�� Alyneri lifted her eyes to meet his once more. “What does your heart tell you to do?”
“To seek out Björn van Gelderan and all of his Shades and incinerate them,” Ean growled.
Her expression fell into disappointment, and she dropped her gaze to her lap. “I hoped that you had recognized that taking one more life won’t bring Creighton’s back…that sacrificing your life won’t change anything and only adds to…the loss. Life is such a precious and fragile thing, Ean. No…good man claims another’s life without regret.”
He thought she’d meant to say something else there at the end, but he didn’t want to press her. Forthright communication with Alyneri was hard to come by—the duchess hid her true feelings behind steel barbs that drove all but the most stalwart suitor away nursing wounds.
“Is that your intent then?” she asked, looking up at him beneath dark lashes. “Will you seek vengeance despite all reason?”
“If you would have me follow my heart,” he returned evenly, “that is where it leads.”
She turned away. “Then you’re a fool.”
Ean’s gaze hardened. “What do you want from me, Alyneri? You tell me in the same breath to follow my heart and then criticize me for it. Would you rather that I do nothing while others slay those who mean the most to me? You would have me continue on a deliberately craven path?”
She stood to face him. “I would have you show some foresight! I would see you think before you leap to your death in a stunt that accomplishes nothing! I would rather believe you a man of intelligence and restraint than a rash and hapless fool!” Her voice broke with this last, and she spun on her heel and stalked back to camp, leaving Ean smarting from the sting of her words.
Cephrael's Hand: A Pattern of Shadow & Light Book One Page 55
