Three Coins for Confession

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  As if in response to her name, the exile’s eyes flickered open, scanning the darkness around her as if she wasn’t sure where she was. Chriani’s hand at her shoulder brought her arm lashing out against him, but she stopped it short when she recognized him. The hand went instead to the bloodblade, Dargana drawing it with a grimace of pain.

  “And what side is our side, exactly?” Kathlan was circling, wary, dagger held toward Dargana on the ground. “The Ilvani are hunting you, but she saves you. You call the guard, and now we’re running from them.”

  On the narneth móir, Chriani saw again the acid-etched glyph that marked the name of Halobrelia. The same glyph at the center of the war-mark that he and the dark Ilvani both shared.

  A shadowed doorway stood near the dead-end wall of the alley. Chriani ignored Kathlan’s questions as he pointed her to it. “In through there. Kick it open if you need to. Get to the room, get your insignia. Get Milyan’s satchel with our orders, and the glass jar from my jacket pocket.”

  “The guard…”

  “I’ll deal with the guard, but Dargana’s breathing blood. She’ll die if the bolts stay in, but she’ll die faster if I draw them without healing. Go, Kath. Trust me. Please.”

  Kathlan’s eyes were cold as she turned from him and sprinted away. He heard two kicks take her through the door, but his focus was on the bootsteps coming from in front of him, out along the darkened street. Shouts of challenge rose, Chriani not knowing if other Ilvani were fleeing the scene. Not knowing if they were still coming for him.

  The Valnirata warrior that had fallen still wore his bow. Chriani pulled it from the body’s back, strung it quickly. He had nowhere to take cover in the alley, but he could keep whoever was approaching from closing if he needed to. He collected the arrows that had spilled from the dead warrior’s combat quiver, spread across the rain-slick stones.

  “Half-blood…” Dargana whispered through flecks of red-black at her lips.

  “Stop talking,” Chriani said.

  “Your prince… Chanist…”

  Dargana spat the name, an enmity in her voice that Chriani felt reflected in his own heart. A heat twisted through him that shook off the chill, pushing even into his numbed feet.

  “What do you know of the prince?”

  “I bring intelligence to him… a message you need to send. You need to get clear from here… send word to Chanist…”

  “Save your strength,” Chriani said coldly.

  It wasn’t something he’d hoped to be right about, he realized. Even having made the decision, having returned to the Bastion, his suspicion of Chanist was nothing more than gut instinct. The quick reaction that his mother had warned him of, tried to teach him to look past.

  At the open alley mouth, a pulse of mage-light appeared, flaring from the stones. Figures pushed in from both sides, balisters crouched low with crossbows at the ready. A guard squad from the Bastion. A better option than facing the Ilvani, but Chriani understood how much trouble he was still in.

  “Chriani of the prince’s guard,” he called again. “Hold fire.”

  “Stand clear with your hands out and show insignias.” A deep voice rang out from behind the balisters, whatever sergeant was in charge hanging back.

  “My insignia and uniform are in the inn. My adjutant and I were attacked inside and took the fight to the roof. There’s no threat here, stand down…”

  “Lord, I see him. I recognize him.”

  It was one of the balisters who spoke. Chriani had to squint to see her face, remembering it as he did. She was a tyro alongside him. Two years his junior, she’d made rank as a squire two years before him.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said. In the chaos of his thoughts, he couldn’t recall her name.

  “Sergeant Eliana, it looks clear,” the balister called to the darkness behind her. Chriani heard no sense in her voice that she shared his sentiment.

  From the shadows behind the balisters, four more figures approached. A tall sergeant in full uniform cloak led them, Chriani guessing that he’d been on duty at the gatehouse. He recognized the longtime master of the gate guards, would have forgotten his name as well if the balister hadn’t said it. Another officer he’d spent much of his life annoying.

  “Stand,” the sergeant called.

  Slowly, carefully, Chriani stood. He spread his arms wide to show he had no weapon, but the only thing the balisters focused on were the dead Ilvani behind him and Dargana at his feet.

  A look of grim satisfaction twisted through Eliana. “How many with you? How many dead?”

  “My adjutant in the inn, fetching insignia and credentials. One Valnirata dead here, at least four dead on the roof. Possibly six dead on the street nearby. One other here, under my protection. An Ilvani who fought against the others, alive but injured.”

  In response to his words, the balisters sunk down. Eliana barked a command. “Step away!”

  “She needs healing,” Chriani said, ignoring him. “There’s no threat…”

  “Take them both!”

  Chriani swung his arms behind him even as the guards began to move. The balisters had only just shifted to the side to allow Eliana and his three swords to step forward when Chriani revealed the dead Ilvani’s bow in hand, an arrow already nocked and drawn.

  He had stood carefully so the guards wouldn’t see the bow held behind him as he rose. Balanced against his leg, out of sight. Wouldn’t see the arrow he’d slipped to his sleeve, unseen and ready to drop to his hand. That hand was rock-steady now, taking dead aim at Sergeant Eliana’s heart where he stopped short.

  No one moved.

  “You’ll hang for this, squire.” Eliana’s voice was ice.

  “That’s soldier,” Chriani corrected him. “And not unless any of your squad are stupid enough to shoot me first and send my fingers off the string. In which case, it’ll be a hanging you won’t live to see.”

  Eliana was quick to motion the balisters to lower their aim, but they stayed in firing position, weapons locked and ready. Chriani noted a faint disappointment in the one who’d recognized him. Brinta was her name. He remembered it now.

  “Chanist…” Dargana’s voice was a whisper from the ground, thick with pain. “Half-blood… if I don’t make it…”

  Chriani couldn’t look down, but he heard Dargana slip to unconsciousness. Each breath she took was a wet rasp.

  “This Ilvani has intelligence for the Prince High Chanist.” Chriani said it loudly, making sure everyone in Eliana’s squad heard. “Send a runner to the Bastion, tell them what’s happened here. Wake the prince and inform him that we need an audience.”

  Even as the words came, he wasn’t entirely sure why he said them. An instinct, perhaps, that it was a thing that might just save him in this moment. Taken to the prince high even in irons, he’d have a chance to talk his way free. Challenge Chanist with what he knew, with what he suspected. His career in the guard would be done, but he’d have his life at least. But standing off against other guards, armed and with threats made, he knew it was a short leap of assumption to see Dargana as Valnirata herself, and to see Chriani as being complicit in the night’s attack. If that happened, he’d lose his life in a heartbeat.

  Eliana spat. “You don’t get to decide how this ends, treason-bastard.”

  “Send a runner to the Bastion, lord. Give the prince high the following message, from me. This Ilvani agent was with me on the Clearwater Way.”

  The coldness of Eliana’s gaze matched Chriani’s own. He felt an ache starting in his arm, felt the chill press in around him as he stood motionless. The wind was low in the alley, but even still, he didn’t know how long he could hold the shot. Didn’t want to find out.

  With a nod to a guard beside him, Eliana gave the order. The runner slipped back out of the haze of mage-light, vanishing as fast footsteps in the shadows.

  Kathlan’s footsteps followed a moment later, coming back down to the broken door. “My adjutant approaches behind me,” Chria
ni said evenly, “bearing insignia and healing. Your squad will please remain standing down, lord.”

  Eliana said nothing as Kathlan appeared at the door. She had her dagger down low at her side, Magus Milyan’s oilcloth-wrapped satchel under her arm. Both her and Chriani’s insignias of rank were held high in her other hand. She approached slowly, Chriani hearing her footsteps stutter as she got close enough to see the bow in his hand, realize what was happening.

  “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “Open the jar. A fingerful to her mouth, then pull both bolts as fast as you can.”

  Kathlan needed no more instruction than that, dropping to Dargana’s side. She rubbed her hands briskly, fighting the cold before she slipped Derrach’s salve to the exile’s lips. Then she seized the remains of a bolt in each hand, Dargana waking with a scream as Kathlan pulled them fast, focused like she might be executing a field exercise. The healing power of the salve closed the wounds, though it did nothing for the surge of pain as they were remade. The Ilvani was fighting to breathe, teeth set, but the job was done.

  Dargana rose slowly to a sitting position as Kathlan stepped back. The exile carefully reclaimed her bloodblade where it had fallen, Eliana and two of his balisters tensing in response. Chriani stayed where he was, stock-still.

  The exile assessed the situation as she slowly stood. She stepped around Chriani to where he could see her from the corner of his eye, even as she kept her own gaze on the guards at the end of the alley. “You certainly know how to impose order in the ranks, half-blood,” she whispered.

  “You’re welcome,” Chriani whispered back. “And stop calling me that within earshot of anyone else unless you want us both dead. We’re waiting on word from Chanist. Try not to kill anyone until then.”

  Dargana shook her head. “I can’t say I was surprised a year past to hear that your prince had somehow stayed alive. I knew you didn’t have it in you.”

  From behind him, Chriani heard a change in Kathlan’s breathing. Not understanding what Dargana said, not knowing what it meant. A tremor rocked his hand at the bow. He felt the pressure of memory seething, tried to push it back into shadow.

  He remembered darkness in the Ghostwood that stood at the heart of Crithnalerean, the Valnirata exile lands. Dargana could have killed him and Lauresa both that night, but Chriani had stayed her hand. Had told her the truth.

  “If Chanist were the father of one I loved,” she had said when he was done, “I would cut his living heart from his body.”

  “Not now,” Chriani said quietly. “Or not even I’ll be enough to save your life in this city.”

  “Show them your shoulder, half-blood.” Dargana smiled, lips still showing blood. “They’ll forget all about me.”

  Footsteps from the darkness beyond the alley mouth filled the silence that followed. Eliana’s guards fell back, their lack of response telling Chriani it was a runner returning. A Bastion sergeant by her uniform, no one Chriani knew. Not the guard Eliana had sent.

  She was breathing hard, took in the scene before her with a perplexed look, but her surprise didn’t slow her orders. She nodded to Eliana. “Word from the Prince High Chanist. Under escort, Chriani of the prince’s guard is to bring the prisoner to the throne room at once, and to be given all necessary support.”

  With a look of dark reluctance, Eliana motioned for his balisters to stand. Chriani waited until they had unlocked their crossbows before he lowered the Ilvani bow, feeling an ache twist through his arm and shoulder. He tried to fight the tremor that seized him. The cold that numbed his body was finally settling in as his bitter surge of strength faded.

  “Sheathe your blade and stay between Kathlan and I,” he said to Dargana. “Keep your hands together and in front of you. Don’t say a word until I tell you.”

  Dargana smirked again, but she nodded as she slipped the bloodblade to its scabbard. She set herself in position between Chriani and Kathlan behind her, keeping her eyes down, matching their pace as they advanced.

  Chriani felt eyes on him — the questioning look of the Bastion sergeant and the other guards, the dark hatred that came off Eliana in waves as the squad fell in around them. As they stepped clear of the mage-light and into the shadow of the street, he saw the wall of the keep looming in the distance, light flaring to life in the darkness above it.

  He oriented himself toward that light as it filled window after window of the Bastion, burning bright. Drawing him on like stars used to chart a sea course by night, but which were never bright enough to show what might be lurking within the endless dark.

  THE KEEP WAS IN LOCKDOWN, both it and the Bastion as alive as Chriani had ever seen them by night. Sentries were thick at the southwest gatehouse when the doors were opened to them, and even thicker along the walls of the keep and the Bastion outwall. Uncounted eyes watched their group closely as he, Kathlan, and Dargana were escorted across the keep’s broad courtyard, toward the staging ground and the Bastion gate ahead.

  Those gates were open as they passed within the fortress, with guards stationed there and at every corridor intersection beyond. Chriani even saw young pages flitting along the edges of the great hall where it angled into the servant’s quarters, papers or packages in hand. Not much chance that they had been ordered to actual duty, he knew, but they would keep busy and out of the guards’ way while they kept their eyes and ears open for the story of the night.

  They walked as a procession along the central court, Chriani and Kathlan in dry uniforms courtesy of the captain of the Bastion. That was Ashlund, a close-shaven veteran who towered over Chriani, and whose bulk blocked the light of evenlamps along the corridor where he paced ahead of them now. Ashlund had held the captain’s commission for the same year and a half that Chriani had held his commission in the guard. His promotion had come only weeks before Chriani’s own, in response to the death of Captain Konaugo. Before Chriani had left the Bastion, he and Ashlund had honed a mutual hatred over long years.

  The captain had been waiting beyond the gatehouse for them, a squad of six guards with him. His expression suggested that Ashlund already knew it was Chriani he was waiting for. The way that expression soured even further told Chriani how bad he looked, still barefoot and barely dressed in the aftermath of the fight.

  “A wet sack of shit would have made a better fit for commission in the prince’s guard than you right now,” Ashlund said evenly.

  “Remind me, lord, what the penalty is for compelling an officer to keep his own counsel by breaking his jaw.” Chriani’s voice carried a dark earnestness that translated to shock on the faces of the other guards and Kathlan alike. Where she stood at his side, he heard the quick change in her breathing. A subtle warning to watch himself, but she said nothing.

  Ashlund smiled, the ruddy skin of his wind-burned face tightening in a wholly unattractive way.

  “You think to present yourselves to the prince high like this?”

  “I was thinking I wouldn’t be attacked in my sleep and driven half-naked to the street by a war-band within Rheran’s walls. Captain Konaugo had his faults, but he stopped well short of giving the Valnirata free run of the city.”

  Ashlund’s color rose to a deeper red to tell Chriani he’d won that round, and that he should stop while he was ahead. He had thus acquiesced when the captain ordered clothing brought to the gatehouse, giving him, Kathlan, and Dargana time to dry themselves by the fire while they waited for the courier to arrive. He and Kathlan dressed quickly, their borrowed uniforms a reasonable fit. Her silent glare calmed him, just a little. Chriani’s tunic was still wet and showing blood at the shoulder, but he kept it on beneath an overtunic and jacket to keep the war-mark covered.

  Ashlund said nothing about Dargana’s appearance, nor did she speak any word to him as they walked. He only stared darkly at her belt, and at the bloodblade still sheathed there. No one had tried to take it from her, which told Chriani how important the events of this night had become. He was glad for her silence, but was conscious of t
he Ilvani’s eyes burning into his back all the while they walked.

  Crossing the interior courtyard to the entrance to the throne room, Ashlund ignored full salutes from four guards at the great doors as he ordered a halt to their group’s movement with a wave of his hand.

  “I’m to guard the three from here,” he said to Sergeant Eliana. “On the prince high’s orders.” A handful of words, but they neatly dismissed the sergeant, established Ashlund’s authority, and wrapped two members of the prince’s guard within the same cloak of distrust that marked an Ilvani of the Valnirata treading through the deepest corridors of Brandishear’s best-guarded fortress. It was a subtler insult than Chriani would normally have expected from Ashlund, who had always typically refrained from calculated rudeness in favor of direct physical threat.

  Sergeant Eliana scowled as if he’d been hoping for a front-row view of whatever was in store for Chriani, but he only nodded. His squad turned with him as he did, Ashlund pushing open the throne room doors.

  The garrison called it the throne room, but in fact, it had been long years since any ruler of Brandishear had used the cavernous space as anything but a primary council chamber. Chriani knew that the throne had been long gone even before Chanist took the crown, replaced with long tables and a huge central fireplace, tall shelves along the walls stacked with books and maps. Not a place for false praise and nobles’ deference, but where a prince with a reputation for fairness and an eye for skill and dedication in others would meet, eat, and drink with captains and ambassadors, merchants and tradesfolk as equals.

  It was a good tale. Chriani had believed it once.

  They were alone as they entered. No other guards, the main doors closing behind them. The smaller doors far across the chamber, leading to the private entrance hall outside the prince high’s quarters, were shut. Ashlund stepped past the three of them to take up a position next to the great meeting table that dominated the room, the fireplace burning brightly. Maps were strewn across the table, as they almost always were. Two flagons were set among them, beside a dozen goblets.