Three Coins for Confession

by Scott Fitzgerald Gray

  “This Ilvani will be given free leave to journey to Aerach, captain.” Chanist stood slowly from the table, a decision made. Chriani and Kathlan were on their feet at once. Dargana took her time rising, Chriani noting the calm in her expression. No sense of triumph, though, not even in response to Ashlund’s fury.

  “My lord prince, I beg you…”

  “A captain who cannot hear my orders is of little use to me, Ashlund.”

  As the prince paced along the table, Chriani saw the strength surge in him. He was taller somehow, the grey hair turned to gold again in the firelight as he stepped forward to scoop three of the coins into his hand. The pulsing talisman he left where it was.

  Ashlund nodded, his face a mask suddenly. “As you order, my lord prince.”

  “A squad will accompany this exile as Brandishear’s envoy, to meet with an envoy of Aerach. I’ll see that the message is sent to Vishod’s seers myself. You will deliver Chriani’s documents and the Ilvani artifact to Varyn in the tower, captain. That is all.”

  “With your permission,” Ashlund began, “I will lead this envoy myself…”

  “Chriani leads the envoy of Brandishear,” Dargana said again. “There’s no negotiation on that.”

  Chanist was staring to the magic in his palm, the coins glowing gold with their own light. “I am sure Captain Ashlund will have no problem having Chriani in his company…”

  “Chriani leads the company and this captain comes nowhere near it. Or I’ll return alone to tell the Laneldenari that the Ilmar is lost.”

  Chanist looked up from the coins, a flash of gold playing across the prince’s blue eyes. “Why?” he said simply.

  “I trust Chriani. Unlike you or this by-blow of a blacksmith and a prize pig.” She glanced to Ashlund. “When those I don’t trust get too close to me, they end up dead.”

  Chriani heard the evenness in her tone, saw the prince high assessing it. The way Dargana had spoken told him she’d chosen the words carefully.

  Beneath that care, he knew she was lying. Some other reason, some other game playing out here. Things she wasn’t saying.

  Chanist simply nodded. “So ordered. Captain Ashlund will name the squad but Chriani leads it. He can treat you with whatever degree of trust he thinks is warranted.”

  The prince high’s words hung in the silence of the throne room. Chanist’s hand clasped around the coins as he paced toward the smaller doors leading to the private entrance hall and his quarters. Watching the prince go, all of Ashlund’s anger drained from him in an instant. The captain stood now with an expression of absolute confusion, as close to fearful as Chriani had ever seen him.

  “My lord prince, why…?”

  “Because I share this Ilvani’s fear of what I do not understand, captain. And I would hear what the Laneldenari have to say before I pass judgement on it. And because I will serve my people at any cost…”

  Chanist faltered, two steps from the doors. He turned back, his gaze finding Chriani, and he was old again in the pale light of evenlamps that lined the walls above him. Something lost in him.

  An unfamiliar feeling twisted through Chriani. Pity for the prince high. Then he pushed it down again, felt it break against Barien’s memory and the sharp pain it made.

  He remembered holding Barien in the empty hall of records, feeling the warrior’s life ebb from him. He remembered those last moments of life, remembered the wound that had dropped the Bastion’s best sergeant.

  He remembered, would always remember, that it was Chanist’s hand that had done it.

  Lauresa had begged him not to go after her father for what had happened. Irdaign her mother had bade him let Chanist live, seeing the anger in Chriani and knowing what it might do. And though Chriani had found in the end that he could forget what the prince high had tried to do to Lauresa, could forget the destruction his madness had attempted to wreak, he would never forgive him for Barien.

  “Captain Ashlund will make whatever arrangements are necessary for your departure.” Chanist said it to Chriani, but Chriani was looking past the prince. Wouldn’t meet his gaze. “This meeting is done.”

  The prince high pulled the doors open, Chriani seeing guards on the other side stand to attention. They pulled the doors sharply closed, the echo of brass and wood hanging for a moment in the silence.

  Chriani felt Kathlan’s hand find his where she had stepped up behind him. She was shaking.

  He waited for Ashlund to speak, confident that anything he said first would do nothing good.

  “Chriani of the prince’s guard,” the captain said at last. “By order of the Prince High Chanist, I award you temporary rank and the commission of acting sergeant, and command of a squad to be named by me. Your commission and orders will be written up. I assume your adjutant will join you.”

  Chriani nodded but Ashlund wasn’t looking at him. “Yes.”

  “See yourselves to guest barracks. Keep your Ilvani assassin under control and out of my sight. You are dismissed.”

  Chriani felt a spike of anger rise, but Ashlund turned to snatch up the talisman, the remaining coins, and Milyan’s satchel from the table. He strode quickly toward the main doors, pulled them open with a bang and stood waiting. Chriani moved to follow, motioning Dargana to fall in behind him, Kathlan behind her.

  As they passed along the interior courtyard, the doors slammed shut again behind them. Chriani glanced back to see Ashlund standing in the shadows. The captain was watching as the three of them made their way toward the great hall and the barracks beyond. When Chriani turned back again at the great hall doors, Ashlund was gone.

  IT WAS A TEN-DAY JOURNEY from Rheran to Aerach, and even with good weather, Chriani knew they’d be spending five of those days along the Clearwater Way. It was a journey he had never made before the winter road that had taken him east a year and a half before. A journey he’d had no intention of ever making again.

  On their way to the guest barracks that Ashlund had ordered them to, Chriani cornered three pages and directed them to clear out two rooms with doors that could be locked and watched. He sought out the sergeant on duty, a veteran named Gredia, and asked her for four guards. It took dropping Ashlund’s name and repeating Chanist’s orders to force her to action, but the length of time it took for the guards to arrive made Chriani suspect the sergeant had double-checked those orders first.

  The guards were to watch Dargana — not for her own protection, but to make sure no one else in the Bastion had any ideas about coming for her. Too many soldiers there had lost friends and comrades along the Clearwater Way. As such, Chriani worried at how the amount of ale that typically flowed in the mess halls in the off-duty times might collide with word that a Crithnalerean war-band leader was presently the guest of the prince high.

  Waiting for the guards to arrive, he heard word that supported his instinct to keep Dargana and the soldiers of the Bastion away from each other. Six more Ilvani had been found dead near the site of the unprecedented attack in the city, spread across a lane approaching the Trickster’s front doors. All of them had been killed by a bloodblade, most with weapons drawn that did them no good in the end.

  One of the dead Ilvani had been carrying potent magic, someone said. A single black arrow. The war-mages would be examining it.

  Chriani and Kathlan took the second room once Dargana was safely locked away. Kathlan held him in the dark, and only when he felt her shaking did Chriani realize how hearing the full story of the attack and the black arrow had affected her. Knowing now that the Ilvani hunted him. She asked no other questions, though, for which he was grateful.

  He wasn’t sure he’d even managed to sleep before the dawn came with Ashlund knocking at the door and handing him his orders in angry silence. The single terse page was masterfully vague and suspiciously lacking in direction, making Chriani suspect that no matter the outcome of the mission, Ashlund was already planning how he could deem it a failure.

  A promotion from first-ranked guard to actin
g sergeant was almost unheard of outside a combat zone. It was a remarkable sign of the promoted guard’s expertise, and of the trust enjoyed in the eyes of superiors. Or it would have been, at least, if the promotion hadn’t been Chriani’s, and if Ashlund hadn’t already spread word across the Bastion that it was a promotion wholly unearned. The rangers assigned to his squad were five veterans Chriani didn’t know — another sign that the captain was taking steps to ensure his first command was also his last.

  They set out eight strong from the Bastion just after high sun and the daymark bells, after a rushed morning of preparation, and with Chriani still feeling the fatigue of the previous eight days in the saddle. Kathlan looked better rested by far, though he was fairly certain she hadn’t slept any more than he had.

  The service records for the squad’s rangers accompanied Ashlund’s orders, but even though Chriani heard their formal introductions in the stables before they left, he suspected he would struggle throughout the journey to match faces to names. Walaric was the youngest member of the squad, which made the number of misconduct citations in his record that much more impressive. Daellyn and Wilric were sister and brother from the southern mountains, having made rank there before their combat skill brought them to the Bastion. Jessa had made her name as a tracker. Beah was trained as a healer, and could work a bit of magic.

  That last note had been marked as confidential. Many among the guard were so fearful of spellcraft that even healing magic was something to distrust — a feeling Chriani understood all too well. He had never known the magic of the healers before the dark path he’d set out on a year and a half before. He had gotten well used to it since then, though.

  Because he didn’t know the new rangers, Chriani had no sense of who to pick as his second. As such, he chose Kathlan, rationalizing that as long as making a wrong pick from among the others offered a chance of insulting the better choices, he was better off insulting all of them in the name of making a choice he knew he could trust.

  Most of Kathlan’s duties as second involved overseeing the horses, which she would have done anyway, and guarding Dargana. She managed to get the exile into the leather and uniform jacket of the prince’s guard for at least the march out of Rheran, but Dargana had the insignia torn free even before the south city-gate was fully behind them. When they made camp that first night, she used her bloodblade to cut the sleeves from her armor while she sat by the fire. She left her tunic sleeves intact, though, the war-mark well covered. She also kept her hair tied back at Chriani’s instruction, hiding the Ilvani peak to her ears.

  The shorter days of autumn saw them on the road by dawn each day as they made their way from Rheran to Caredry, and the start of the Clearwater Way. Then through the guard post citadels of Gleoran and Durrant, Talimeth and Rhercyn. They were traveling quietly, attracting no attention. Along the trade roads, they had stayed away from inns and private houses to set camp each night. Now, within the stockade walls of the Clearwater fortresses, the rangers pitched their tents away from the tents of other squads. Whether soldier or civilian, all those who crossed the Clearwater Way did so with the fear of Ilvani attack on their minds, making Chriani understand the importance of keeping Dargana out of sight.

  The exile clearly wasn’t a prisoner. She rode free, and in addition to her bloodblade, Chriani had outfitted her with an Ilvani handaxe looted from the Bastion’s store of captured weapons. But he recognized the importance of at least making it look as if Dargana was being kept under guard, including having her and Kathlan share a tent at night while the other rangers took watch.

  At first, Chriani was glad of the excuse to keep a distance from Kathlan. He had no idea whether anyone else in the squad knew of their relationship, but he hoped that distance would ensure it never became an issue. However, as the journey wound on, he quickly realized that the nights of that journey were the first since his return from Aerach that he and Kathlan hadn’t spent at least a brief time beside each other, locked tight in each other’s arms. The sense of emptiness that accompanied those nights alone was a feeling Chriani found far too familiar. Another journey he had hoped to never make again.

  Before they left the Bastion, Chriani had discovered that the promotion to a sergeant’s commission came with a new uniform jacket and insignia. The falcon of Brandis was at his shoulder in gold now. He and the rest of the squad wore the regalia of a detached patrol, heading for foreign lands. Marked as the prince’s guard but losing their regimental sigils. However, far more important to Chriani than the change in insignia was the badge he wore within his belt — a golden disk set with moonstone, which glowed faintly in the absence of all light to show its dweomer.

  The badge had been given to him with great antipathy by one of Chanist’s war-mages, a venerable scarecrow named Varyn. His sun-dark skin was laced with scars whose lines were suspiciously straight. Self-inflicted, some rumors said, in the administration of secret blood rites condemned by Ilmar law and any sense of self-preservation.

  “You have use of this relic on the prince high’s orders,” Varyn had said dismissively after summoning Chriani to the prince’s tower along the Bastion’s northern flank. That was the domain of Chanist’s court wizards and healers, and home to the library and collections of arcane regalia they kept on the prince high’s behalf. The reputation of its magic and its half-mad keepers made it a place Chriani was glad he had seen only once before.

  “The relic will aid you in your… problem with the Ilvani,” Varyn explained, “masking you from divination and related sorceries while you wear it. So there is no misunderstanding, the relic is worth far more than you are now or will ever be. It remains my property and will be returned. Should you not return it, I will hunt you down and discipline you in ways that will shatter all your previous conceptions of just punishment. If you happen to be dead at the time, it won’t help you.”

  Varyn had also returned the talisman Dargana claimed, its severed cord of red leather retied. Chriani noticed as he hadn’t before that most of that coloring appeared to be bloodstains. It gave him even less interest in taking it, but the outraged Varyn was most insistent.

  “This is your test and proof of the badge’s power, simpleton. As long as the talisman shows no light, you are safe. If it glows again, then the badge’s magic has failed and the Ilvani can find you. Seek out one of Prince Vishod’s war-mages if you can. Though finding one of any competence will be a challenge.”

  Chriani had worn the badge day and night since then. It had started around his neck on a chain, over tunic and under armor, but the disk pulsed with an unnatural warmth that quickly unnerved him. He had clipped it within his belt in response, its gold not as well hidden from sight but its warmth not as noticeable.

  Each night and morning since, alone in his tent, Chriani had held the talisman and stared at it in the darkness, confirming to his own satisfaction that its blood-red light was nowhere to be seen. The oily sheen of the stone had disappeared, gone now to a layer of dust that wouldn’t rub off.

  He had shown the disk to Kathlan and Dargana before they set out, wanting to put both their minds at ease about the Ilvani’s pursuit of him. Kathlan showed the greatest relief, the exile simply shrugging. “You put Ilmari magic against the sorcery of Muiraìden, you’ll lose eventually,” Dargana had said. “Stay moving either way.”

  The longer they traveled, the more focused Chriani became on the questions he had for Dargana. Questions he hadn’t been able to ask yet, having had no chance to speak to the exile privately since the throne room. With Kathlan riding at her side, Chriani had been forced to limit their conversations to signs of Crithnala activity and other dangers of the road. More worrying, though, was the relative closeness of the other rangers, all of who kept one wary eye on the Ilvani exile as they rode. Chriani had no idea what their relationship to Ashlund was, but he was certain that anything they saw or heard would reach the captain’s ear when the squad made it back to Rheran once more.

  They had met Ilvani bandi
ts three times since joining the Clearwater Way at Caredry. The frequency of those skirmishes was enough to trouble the veteran rangers, but the attackers had dispersed quickly when shown any resistance.

  “They’re Crithnala fleeing Calala war-bands,” Dargana advised the rangers after the first brief encounter. “Seeking supplies and coin, but not willing to die for it.” She didn’t seem to care that most of the rangers ignored her, or seemed more than happy to talk of killing the Crithnala no matter what their intent. “If we meet the Calala they’re running from,” she told them, “it won’t be so easy.”

  That Calala attack came in the morning along the final leg of the Clearwater Way. They were nine days in, the fortress of Rhercyn behind them and the border of Aerach one last day’s ride ahead. The skies had stayed clear across the exile lands, but that was changing. The Ghostwood and the Greatwood alike were too far away to be seen from the Wayroad, but the southern sky above them was shimmering gold and green along the horizon. Not so to the north, where the air was streaked by cloud that thickened as it rolled in from the sea.

  At a point where the Wayroad twisted between a low pine bluff and sand to the north, they found themselves facing sudden bowshot from behind them, and the cries of Ilvani warriors coming through the trees.

  It was an ambush, obviously. A feint that might have taken a squad of new-made guards by surprise, or one of the privately guarded merchant caravans that braved the Wayroad when time was of the essence or sea passage around the Sandhorn was made hazardous by seasonal storms. A trap that would have caught Chriani as a tyro, before he’d faced the Ilvani and their deadly silence in battle.

  “Ambush west!” he called, but the rangers were already scattering. Two drove back along the trail, flat to their horses’ necks and shields up to protect against the arrows that continued to arc out from the trees. The other three cut hard around the bluff, pushing off the road with bows drawn and firing into the six Ilvani hidden in shadow and scrub beyond. The main force that would have attacked from cover if any of the rangers had panicked and bolted away from the token attack from the rear.