She had his father’s last words, held inside her for six years. Waiting, she said, until Chriani was old enough to understand.
If I make it back, his father had said, there’ll be a place for us in any part of the Ilmar that sets faith in freedom.
He’d left the village before dawn, his mother said, only shortly before the rangers had come looking for him. He’d known it was coming, the round-up of those Valnirata Ilvani who had made the Ilmar their home. Up the roads from Welbirk and Cadaurwen, whispers of war had been drifting for a month.
If I don’t make it back, tell the boy of who I was.
Like him, his father had set out to prove himself. Like him, his father had never found his chance.
Above the tree line, then, Chriani saw faint black shapes flying low against the Clearmoon’s shadowed horn. He felt his pulse ratchet up, decided that perhaps the camp being on alert wasn’t such a bad thing.
Gavaleria! Chriani heard the call go up from at least three points around him, and he moved quickly toward the light of the perimeter fires, all eyes around him on the sleek shapes of the Valnirata griffon riders as they tore past overhead. He heard a distant shriek that cut the darkness like a knife, and even as high as the griffons and their unseen masters flew, he heard the horses suddenly frantic at the stables.
But even as he skirted close to the patrol line, Chriani saw a lone figure moving slowly through the shadows of a narrow stand of poplar beyond it. Like him, like everyone, Lauresa was watching the griffons circle overhead as they scouted the position and extent of Chanist’s camp. Unlike the rest of them, though, she was following their movement from the other side of the perimeter, having managed somehow to slip across it. She was alone, the midnight-blue cloak wrapped tight around her, just invisible enough that she was probably equally likely to get taken out by a nervous archer within the camp as by whatever might be lurking outside it.
Chriani felt a profound antipathy that he was suddenly thankful for. He judged the movements of the guards, waited for his moment even as Lauresa bore off toward a thin glade that edged a low hillock northeast of the camp. Where he slipped through the line, he made no sound, left no sign where he melted into the shadows. It didn’t take him long to find her trail in the frost already settled on the grass. He moved up the slope behind her, his footsteps the faintest echo of the wind that stirred the naked trees. He heard the song the princess sang, recognized a fragment of melody from the war room that night.
“Highness.”
She wheeled at the sound of his voice, Chriani seeing her hand move quickly to her waist. The dagger was there that she’d turned on him that first night, but she checked herself.
“You startled me.”
“As you would have startled any of the dozen patrols circulating through the area. In the interest of your not getting accidentally shot by your father’s own troops, we should return.”
“I am perfectly capable…”
“We have had this conversation, highness.”
Above, another endless shriek split the night. Lauresa’s eyes were cold where she turned from Chriani, the gavaleria patrol changing direction overhead. As one, the griffon riders arced back toward the east, hanging against mottled cloud as they slowly disappeared from sight.
Where he paced around the princess, Chriani felt something twist within his chest. As she looked to him finally, a shock of hair twisted from beneath the hood of her cloak, frosted gold in the Clearmoon’s light. Her eyes were the blue of the summer sky he’d screamed his heart out to on that day his mother died. In the ten years since he’d first come to Rheran, in the four years Lauresa had trained at his side, in the three years since over which he’d watched her at a distance, she had never seemed more beautiful.
From the poplar wood, he heard the call of an owl, another answering it from the distant forest, a faint echo. He felt the familiar pain again, felt the new lie twisting inside him in the deep place where all the other lies had been buried. He felt the scar her name made burning on his skin.
“What is it?” she asked.
In her look, he saw an uncertainty that he wanted to believe reflected his own. She took a step toward him.
Three words, Chriani thought. All it would take to end it, end the lie, end the pain that he only just realized had been crippling him for so long.
“Nothing, highness.”
He watched indifference fall across her like a veil, the same anger, the same distance in her that he still didn’t understand. She turned away, moved for downslope and the distant firelight of the camp beyond.
“I am ordered back to Rheran in the morning,” she said, “under Captain Konaugo’s escort. Under the assumption that you would rather not be part of his company, my father says you may remain here.”
Chriani wasn’t sure whether that was a choice he was supposed to decide upon or one that had been made for him. He hoped it was the latter.
At the bottom of the rise, a frozen creek bed crossed their path as it split a copse of willow, Chriani following Lauresa at the accustomed five paces. He would watch her ride out in the morning, he thought, and it would be over. No more waiting, no need to stand among the throng bidding her farewell from the Rheran docks alongside the rest of the city, because he’d be with the prince’s company a hundred leagues away. Silence from him, Lauresa gone, his life back to what it should be.
Easier that way.
“Why have I angered you?” he said abruptly. He heard the words hanging in the night air even before he felt the anger spit them up. In his gut, he felt the darkness twist like a creature separate from him. The anger following its own will, its own mind.
Lauresa stopped dead. She turned back, appraised Chriani coldly. Behind her, the arms of two ancient trees twisted together to form a kind of arch at the edge of the copse, moonlight through bare branches catching silver thread in her cloak that he hadn’t noticed before. A faint shimmering traced the princess where her chest rose and fell for a long space of silence.
“I thought you were different,” she said at last. “I was wrong.”
“Different from what?”
“Different from all the rest of them. The ones who fear what they can’t see, the ones who live by their superstition and their moonsigns. Regardless of the less than storied upbringing that saw her sent from my father’s court, my mother is still princess precedent and a lady of Brandishear,” Lauresa said evenly. “You would do well to remember that should you meet again.”
Chriani remembered the fear when he’d seen the horse vanish back to the fire it had been summoned from. He’d been feeling that fear all the time since, he realized suddenly. Feeling it feed the anger without knowing it, without knowing how to stop it.
“Superstitions are for children,” Lauresa said. “I expect it in those who know no better. I did not expect it in you.”
“Forgive me, princess, but I don’t recall word or rumor of the princess precedent being a court wizard during her time in the Bastion.” Chriani felt the words torn from the place where the darkness coiled. Where she turned back, Lauresa’s eyes flashed. “But that would be, perhaps, because she never was,” he said.
“My mother’s knowledge and gifts are her business…”
“Your mother carrying eldritch art in secrecy is a dangerous breach of law and custom.”
“What do you know…”
“I know that such power must be pledged to the crown…”
“This is not about law,” Lauresa snapped. “This is about you being afraid.”
“The death a renegade sorcerer can deal, the people have a right to be afraid.” There was no deference in him now, Chriani seeking actively for the rage, feeling it spread like a warm draught through frozen limbs.
The princess was silent a long moment. Then her cold gaze shifted from Chriani’s, glancing to his chest where a bandage she shouldn’t have been able to see covered her own name. Chriani felt a moment’s crippling uncertainty, followed her gaze to real
ize that she was looking instead at the bow still slung at his shoulder. He’d almost forgotten he was carrying it.
“I used to watch you at the harvest fest each year,” she said quietly. Something changed in her, he thought. A sudden sadness he couldn’t explain, hadn’t been looking for. “I remember you winning the archery competition two seasons past, splitting the target cleanly at two hundred paces against Konaugo himself. If it had been me shooting that day, I would have just as likely killed the wardens at either edge of the range even had I spent every waking moment in practice since the last time you adjusted the set of my arm.”
Chriani felt a sharp spike of uncertainty slam through him. In his chest, in his gut, the anger recoiled sharply. He heard the owl’s cry again, heard the sudden beating of its wings as it took to the air, unseen.
“My mother has a power beyond you,” Lauresa said. “You have ability beyond me. Should I fear you?”
Where she turned, the princess stalked off toward the watchfires of the perimeter with a sense of purpose that told Chriani it would be foolish to follow her. It was a good thing, he thought. He felt dizzy suddenly, his thoughts racing, the echo of her voice twisting in him like a knife point.
I used to watch you at the harvest fest each year…
In the war room, he’d looked in her eyes for some sign of recognition, some sign of memory for the years they’d spent together as children, seemingly a lifetime ago now. He hadn’t seen it then. Had caught only the dull reflection of the emptiness he’d felt inside himself in the month since the princess’s marriage was announced.
You trained me well, she’d said on the field a week past.
All along, the princess had remembered him. Through the three years he’d pined for her, then forgotten her, then gone mad with a feeling he was still afraid to name.
Lauresa kept her secrets well, he thought.
He wanted to follow her but didn’t, turning away from the encampment instead, fighting the urge to run for the moon-twisted pillars of willow through which she’d disappeared. He stood there for a long while, tried to fight the ache in his head and at his chest, flaring again. Around him, the night was silent. As the wind blew through the glade behind him, he saw the intricate play of red and white light through the leaves. The Darkmoon was high in the sky and past half-full, its dusky light unusually bright where its larger twin was shrouded with cloud in the west. The Clearmoon was pushing ever-closer, night by night. Lauresa’s wedding was likely timed for the approaching conjunction, as many events of state were. The two moons rising as one, their edges almost touching sometimes.
Along the scree of the creek bed behind him, he heard the faint crunch of ice and gravel beneath the sole of an armored boot.
Chriani moved fast but not fast enough. From out of nowhere, less from the shadows than seemingly from the shimmering moonlight itself, a figure erupted in a blur of twisting limbs, and Chriani felt the boot that had warned him with its telltale sound slam into him hard. He managed to twist just enough, felt his hip take the brunt of the force that would have split his ribs had it caught him straight on, then he was spinning away, steel slashing empty air where two knives hacked through the space he’d been standing in a moment before.
He had the bow in his hands, had drawn and nocked an arrow without even realizing it. One quick shot away, firing blind, hoping for an instant’s distraction, but there was no one there.
Chriani fought to breathe, tried to focus. All around, the ground was a morass of frozen mud and turf, every footstep sounding out in the chill silence, but he heard nothing now. He was still turning to scan the shadows when he was struck again. A hail of blows rained down where movement erupted around him, the figure suddenly there as if he’d unfolded from the air itself.
Chriani saw a face he’d never seen before. Frozen for one long moment where he blocked one cross-hand strike, ducked back to avoid another. Older than he was, fair-skinned and placid. Human, white hair cut ragged and short, cheeks marked with precise lines of ritual scars below unblinking eyes the dead black of a midnight storm. As the figure lunged, Chriani could fairly feel his intensity, focused in silence where his foot lashed out again to dropped him.
The figure wore a loose tunic of grey-white, shining like a beacon in the moonlight, the incongruity screaming in Chriani’s head, wondering how he could have possibly gotten so close without being seen. But then even as he stared, he saw the tunic and the body beneath it ripple suddenly, as if some shadow had crossed the sky. And then the white figure was gone again, a faint shimmer twisting along the edge of the trees.
Chriani fired off two shots blindly, wanted desperately to hold onto the bow, keep its familiar presence in his hand, but he was too close. Slinging it to his shoulder, he drew the battered short sword, managed to bring it around where he heard footsteps coming in from behind.
Where the figure unfolded from shadow, Chriani returned a half-dozen devastating strikes as he was pressed back, the assailant’s knives ringing out against the battered steel of the borrowed blade. His eyes ached where he tried to watch the figure, the shifting light seeming to play across and through him. If he stared, if he focused, Chriani could hold the image, but the instant he faltered, blinked, let the emotionless face shift to the corner of his eye, it was gone again.
The assailant wore no other armor, carried no other weapons or gear. Where Chriani saw them completely for the first time, the razor-straight knives were nearly the length of his forearms. It was the boots he fought to avoid, though, slamming into him again and again in a kick-striking style he’d never seen before, faster than he could comprehend.
Where he slashed up and around with the sword, Chriani felt it somehow hit home even as something struck the side of his head. There was a sudden flare of white light and he was stumbling, falling back across open ground. He slipped through a stand of tall shrubs and out the other side, fire burning along his back and chest, his left leg going numb where the assailant had connected with it mid-thigh.
His thoughts were unfocused, vision a blood-red blur in the twisted moonlight. He limped for the shadows, staggered to a stop as he sheathed the sword, pulled the bow again. He fought to calm himself, pushed the rage away as he felt for the instincts, felt for his senses as his mother had taught him. Listening, feeling.
He was ready when he heard the telltale scrape of steel on stone behind him.
He loosed the arrow, then had another nocked faster than he could ever remember shooting before. Not knowing exactly where the assailant was, but knowing that he had to be on one side or the other of the first arrow — shooting not to hit but to flush him out. Unless the assassin had somehow managed to bypass the reflexes of every warrior who’d ever faced a hail of bowshot, he’d dodge just slightly away from whichever side the first shot went harmlessly past.
Chriani sensed the faint blur of movement, the first arrow flashing past harmlessly a half-stride to the right as the figure twisted and he shot again. He heard the strangled cry, caught a glimpse of the white shaft shattering that meant he’d struck bone at the shoulder.
Then the assailant was gone again, twisting away to shadow where the trees suddenly shook with the movement of his passing. No sign of him where he must have pushed through the copse, but Chriani saw blood on white bark where the Darkmoon’s pale light played out.
It took him a moment to orient himself, his head still pounding where he tried to clear it.
He saw light through the trees where the figure had disappeared. Chanist’s camp.
He hadn’t realized how far Lauresa had led him, or perhaps he’d simply been pushed back farther under the assailant’s attack than he’d thought. Beneath the trees, frost-streaked shadows showed the armored imprints of the assailant’s footsteps pounding away ahead of him, but there was no sound. He watched the trees, the shadows to both sides, the firelight ahead, too far. Not close enough to shout even if he’d been able to raise a voice, pain tearing at his lungs with each breath.
He could see the officers’ pavilion bright in the light of a high-banked fire, the far end of his range. He could make out the distinctive figure of Konaugo pacing there, fitted a single shaft to the string and fired without hesitation. Another followed it even as the first hit, and he heard frenzied shouts rise to all sides where the fire suddenly flared in a shower of ash and sparks. A third shot went long, tearing at the canvas of an adjacent awning, figures flattening to both sides.
He heard the alarm raised, the troops still vigilant after the last one, false or not. But where the assailant’s tracks pounded steadily toward the light, Chriani saw them veer off suddenly. A half-dozen long strides, then the steel tread had slowed to follow a set of calfskin boots that carried on down from the wood’s edge. Small footprints, slender. Spaced close together where she’d been walking slowly.
Lauresa.
Where the wood thinned ahead of the open ground below the pavilions, Chriani ran without thinking, head pounding in time with the pain that twisted across his right side. He saw no sign of the princess ahead, frantically scanned the shadows even as he silently hoped she’d made it back beyond the near line of the sentry fires.
And then from behind him, footsteps. The ambush he should have been waiting for, distracted by the sudden fear that the princess’s tracks had engendered in him.
Where the darkness shimmered again, he saw the knives flash out where he jumped back, too slow. He felt white-hot pain at his shoulder as cold steel cut him, but the assailant was still moving, spinning impossibly fast. Where the whirlwind kick struck hard, Chriani felt it nearly take his head off, needle-sharp points of white light burning behind his eyes. Then he hit the ground with a lurch that told him he’d blacked out on the way down, something he couldn’t afford to do again. He felt the knives slam down behind him where he rolled, fumbled to pull an arrow as he stood, but it was no good.
Clearwater Dawn Page 18
