The Dark Ferryman

by Jenna Rhodes

  Tranta saw him and waved a hand as Sevryn trotted downwind and past. He hoped the queen would be as welcoming. The information he had might soothe her as a balm, or . . .

  The border alarm cut across the shriek of the winter wind with its own screeching blast. Leaves shivered and fell from twisting branches. Aymaran tossed his head and danced to one side, his black-tipped ears flicking forward and back at the sound of the trumpeting. Sevryn urged him forward. Trumpets cut the air again, and Aymaran whinnied back in defiance. He looked back to Tranta and saw him falter, dropping the horse’s long rein line and staggering back, one hand to his chest as if the alarm cut through to his very heart. He went to one knee with a strangled cry and then toppled onto his face.

  Sevryn flung himself out of the saddle and vaulted the fence post as the horse in training did an awkward bucking jump over the body now in his pathway. Tranta laywith his backheaving as he fought for breath. He groaned as Sevryn took him in his arms and turned him over. A string of spittle hung from his lips as he gasped for air and his pale skin went gray but he lived and there wasn’t, to Sevryn’s questing fingers, a mark on him. Sevryn opened his winter vest to loosen his collar. He feared the worst. He had, once or twice, seen head injuries come back a year or two or even a handful of years later, bursting inside the head and felling an otherwise seemingly healthy man. He brushed his hand over Tranta’s brow. “What is it?”

  Tranta’s breath rattled in his throat. Sevryn wiped his mouth and then hoisted Tranta to his feet. “Can you stand? Walk? Just to my horse.”

  Tranta’s eyes rolled back in their sockets and then he blinked, trying to focus upon Sevryn’s face. He fixed his gaze upon Sevryn as a drowning man hangs onto a rope. But he stayed on his feet.

  Sevryn walked him, step by wavering step to the fence, found a gate, and fumbled it open while Tranta hung on a post by his elbows, swaying back and forth as if the merest gust of wind would bring him down again. Color rose over his skin, though, like the faintest of blushes while Sevryn brought his horse over.

  “Can you manage a leg up?”

  “Think . . . so.” Tranta wiped his mouth with the back of his hand again, dazed, but he tracked the horse and latched his hands over the saddle’s pommel. He went up like a sack of meal, but he stayed up while Sevryn mounted behind him and put one arm about his rib cage.

  “What is it? What happened?”

  Tranta coughed. “World,” he husked. “Exploded. My brother . . .”

  Fearing the worst, Sevryn closed his legs hard upon Aymaran’s flanks and whistled him to the wind.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  "WHY DID YOU DO IT?”

  "I saw the path of the sword. I knew it wouldn’t bring down its intended target. It’s no different than sighting a sapling and knowing which way it will grow.” Garner answered Bregan reluctantly. He pulled apart a piece of bread from its crust, both still warm in his fingers, and stuffed it in his mouth. He’d moved aside from his fellow caravan guards to take his meal, watching the sea in its flood tide and pondering what he saw: a sight that dug down and bored its way into him where it stayed as a bloody fearsome thing. He wanted no company while he weighed his actions, but the trader had sought him out anyway. He shrugged as if he’d said enough. He didn’t want to talk, and he hoped that the trader would catch the hint, but Bregan Oxfort merely sat and watched him, his eyebrows knitted low over his eyes. A scarred and muscle-bound Bolger nearby glanced over at them, before grimacing as if in distaste and looking away. Quendius kept watch on them, one way or another. Garner shifted as Bregan prodded him, uncaring that they were being observed. The Bolger got up with a bored yawn and moved away, leaving them alone.

  “You joined to pay off gambling debts. If the sword had hit true, you would be freed of your obligation. The holder of your chits would be dead. But you swung your bolo and stopped it.”

  “There are many things I won’t do to be free of a debt.”

  “A true Farbranch, then.”

  Garner’s hands stilled in the act of cutting a sliver of meat from his rations. He’d been found out. Or rather, had been known about all along. Garner resumed cutting his meat before putting his knife aside. He let the juices sop into his bread without eating. “What are we discussing here, Master Oxfort?”

  Bregan tapped the side of his leg brace with his fingertips. Garner observed and thought that might be a tell, a giveaway on his emotions. He’d have to watch for it when next he faced Bregan, if ever there would be such a time in the future. Sitting where he sat now, he could hardly imagine being in another time. Bregan continued, “Did you think that I would ever forget the face of a man who gambled across a table from me? Particularly one who usually won? Debts you may have, but I doubt they’re from your gambling habits.”

  “I have obligations also,” Bregan told him quietly. “And because of them, I made sure you were accepted as a recruit, because I desired to have the Hand of the Queen know what I might be up to. He would, if he wanted to, would he not, the lover of your sister? So what you have now is my gratitude, for one, and a problem we share, for the other.” Oxfort drummed against his brace. “Whatever debt you claimed, a purse of twenty-five crowns is put to your name. My life is worth far more to me than that, but it’s a fair reward, I think.”

  “More than fair.” Garner watched the trader’s face. He might be rewarded, but he thought he was also being bought.

  Bregan leaned forward, pitching his voice into a whisper, although it seemed unlikely any would hear the two of them, for he’d already had the area cleared when he crossed the ground to talk to Garner. “Our problem is that we saw a Vaelinar noble murdered.”

  “Scant little trace of that deed left.” Garner did not think that sight would ever leave him, it would stay in his mind forever: a greasy, bloody smear and gobbets of unrecognizable flesh that drew the kites from the skies immediately to pick it over until nothing but a few scraps of cloth remained. Gods who warred over a death both body and soul. A coldness shivered down the back of his neck before slithering away.

  “I know. I don’t know what it is Quendius plans . . . still, I know what he does is scarcely for the good of my people. Get word to Sevryn what you witnessed. Tell him of the death of Lord Istlanthir. Kever, I think, the younger brother, although I can’t be certain of that. You’ll have set up a way to communicate to the Queen’s Hand, I wager.”

  “We should have, if I am what you think I am.”

  “Yes. Well, I do make assumptions from time to time. Call it a good gamble.” Bregan paused. “Sevryn’s knowing is the only thing that may get the two of us out of here alive.”

  “As one of your guard, I’d hate to disappoint you.” He paused. “I’ll need a distraction.”

  Bregan smiled thinly. “I will be providing one, then.” He reached out to shake Garner’s hand.

  Garner grasped his firm grip, and the trader left him to finish his dinner. And take care of other matters.

  He mulled it over. The trader had waited till high tide. Therefore, the trader had weighed matters before talking with him before deciding the risk would be worth it. Oxfort wanted something done and Garner to be the doer of it. If he was caught, it would be on his head and his head alone. That would be a sure bet. Yet this was a thing he dared not to leave undone. He turned his head, catching the Bolger’s eye yet again, but they both looked to the sea. Ships came in, dozens of them, small and agile, with the tide and wind behind them.

  He finished up his dinner which, despite the juices soaked in and the tenderness of the roast meat, seemed to have gone dry and hard to swallow. He watched as other lads finished up, came over and clapped him on the shoulder, and asked him what Bregan’s life was worth. He quipped, “A few crowns.”

  His fellow hoisted two bottles of applejack. “And a round of drinks, thanks t’Master Oxfort,” at which they all cheered. He allowed as how he’d be right after joining them in a bit. The guard who’d been watching them lumbered to his feet and followed a
fter, grumbling for a pull at the brandy.

  Bregan Oxfort and he had much in common, as gambling men went.

  He hoped so, as this would mean their lives and many others, for he feared Quendius and his army as he had never feared anything before.

  Chapter Forty

  LARA SAT QUIETLY, with Tranta’s hand in hers, watching the rise and fall of his chest as he slept or ... whatever it was his body did, to recover from what had befallen him. She could feel the chill in his fingers as he lay in what her healers diagnosed as profound shock. Something had struck at him through his soul, and his body still reeled from the blow. He would recover, she thought, if she had to find a gateway to his spirit. Even quiet like this, even after working with the horses, he still smelled faintly of the ocean. His hair lay across the sheets like waves of a warm and inviting seashore. Her other hand strayed to touch it gently. His strength had always been a quiet but steady force, unlike that of Bistane who had a temper which could flare like a battle’s rage. Two strong men, one who courted her openly and the other who stayed silent, waiting patiently. Osten Drebukar had extolled Tranta’s virtues for him as a proud uncle would brag of his nephew, and no wonder for their houses were inextricably tied together. Losses faced her. She knew that. But she would lose no one in this way, if she could help it. Especially not Tranta.

  She pressed both of her hands about the one she held as if she could will warmth and her strength into him. No response answered her. Lara bowed her head over their hands. An emotion ran through her, one she scarcely recognized, the realization that she could not afford to lose him, not for any reason. She knew that her life was not her own, that she had been and would always be used for bargaining, for alliances, for diplomacy. Yet there was something here that she had just discovered and didn’t want to let go although she doubted she would ever be able to explore it. She wanted to. Her night with Daravan had given her two things: a temporary warmth and the knowledge that she no longer wanted to settle for temporary. Make that three: she also knew that Daravan did not hold a future for her. Did she resent what Sevryn and Rivergrace had? What Jeredon had held with Nutmeg and turned away from? Would it make her bitter to watch others moving toward a soulmate she knew she could never have? She would be forever wandering, one of the Suldarran, lost on Kerith. She had but one goal to accomplish in her lifetime and that was to bring her people back to Trevilara. Was it so close to her that she could see it truly in her visions with only Abayan Diort blocking her way? If she stepped past or over him, would she accomplish her goal and leave herself able to be fulfilled fully in all ways?

  Hope and fear entwined themselves inseparably within her.

  Tranta’s fingers fluttered in her grip. Lifting her chin, she removed one of her hands from her hold on his and watched him. Expressions raced across his face and disappeared, like tides rising and ebbing so quickly she almost could not catch them, and then his breathing altered. He fought to rouse. She leaned closer, urging him silently in his battle to stay alive.

  “We can’t say what it is,” Bistane told Sevryn. He leaned against the stairway railing, his keen blue eyes unrevealing. He did not have to say much because it was enough that he had come down to talk to Sevryn rather than Lara. The queen had few words for him, it seemed.

  “The head injury?”

  “The healers don’t seem to think so, but whatever it was, it nearly killed him. He stays in shock. Fortunate for all of us you were there.”

  “I wasn’t there for fortune’s sake. When you see the queen, tell her I have intelligence for her.” Sevryn turned abruptly and headed for the back stairs and the kitchen doors, to wash at the racks outside and fill his lungs with fresh air that did not have the stink of disapproval in it.

  A yard lad from the mews came running as soon as Sevryn stepped outside to the bite of air growing ever colder and drier. He puffed to a stop. “Milord, milord, one of your birds came in from Hawthorne way.” A message pellet filled his hand and he dropped it into Sevryn’s palm. “Urgent, we thought.”

  He flicked the lad a coin which the other caught as it flashed through the air. He twisted open the capsule and read, in cramped yet careful lettering signed with a G, “Shield & Kever destroyed by Q. Ships landing by Tomarq.”

  He read it again and yet a third time as if he could have misread or misinterpreted the message. He threw his head back as the wind howled down with a frigid blast to his face.

  Tranta had been right. Their world had exploded.

  He ran for the stairs. The queen would see him whether she wished it or not.

  It was said that the silvery streaks in her blue-and-gold eyes had come from lightning. He believed it when he saw true fury flooding them as he faced her. It was the smoke and steel from her grandfather, the anger which could be wielded like a weapon if it could be honed, and her eyes narrowed as if she did that very thing. The main window of her apartments framed her, a stormy blue-and-green vista at her back. She had insisted on speaking with him there, rather than in Tranta’s rooms. For that, he couldn’t blame her. They would have raised voices and they did so now. Or spoken in tight words so that any warrior would hear the steel they held. Bistane had followed on his heels and the room seemed crowded with just the three of them.

  “Give me leave to go after Quendius now.”

  One eyebrow rose. “This time you ask permission?”

  Warmth flooded Sevryn. From the pit of his gut where Cerat resided to the hollow of his throat upward to dash upon his cheeks. For all he knew, the red heat settled at last in his eyes, glowing and demonic. He would hide it from her if he could, but he didn’t need to. She turned away from him. Her maimed hand clenched and unclenched in the folds of her skirt. “If I have to kill every last standing Galdarkan, I will not leave our flanks and backs open for Quendius to savage. He will not feast on the leavings of our battlefield!”

  “As for your offer,” Bistane murmured, “how close do you think you can get if he heads an army of his own?”

  “I received information from inside those same forces. I think I can get as close as I need.” He closed his teeth on his own anger and felt it recede inside, a tide ebbing. “Before he closes on us, I should move.”

  “Gilgarran had reasons for leaving him in place. So, too, did Daravan. I argued with them. I saw . . .” She rubbed her forehead as if clearing away a cobweb. “No, Sevryn. I do not give you leave. We have a plan in place.”

  From that, he had deduced a trap whose springing depended on absolute surprise and so no one else had been privy to its formulation. He opened his mouth to protest when an alarm sounded, the border trumpets winding yet again and he went to the window to look out upon Larandaril as if he could see the trouble from there.

  Perhaps he could. Or perhaps it was only meant for Lariel. He saw a shimmer upon the glass of this broad window, a view that seemed impossibly detailed and clear, the rolling hills of the far boundaries as close as the nearby groves. The view rippled and distorted even as he looked out and Lara brushed him aside, blocking him as she leaned upon the windowsill. The long-range view blurred for him. He had no idea such a thing had existed for Lara, for anyone.

  But he’d already seen the trespassers as she viewed them now, and they both uttered in one voice, “Rivergrace.”

  Lara added flatly, “Get a detail.”

  “You’d think,” Nutmeg said wearily, her brandy-colored eyes frowning, “that all this wind would bring clouds.”

  “And rain.” Rivergrace shrugged into the hood of her cloak, tied snugly under her chin and yet it would be torn away every handful of minutes until she could tug it back into place.

  “Definitely rain. If not snow ’n’ ice.” Her hat long ago eaten by river waters, she had only a small scarf wrapped about her hair and down over her ears for warmth. Her nose matched her cheeks in redness and Grace doubted the color came from her cheerfulness and bouncy attitude. “Something good out of this bitter blow.” She wrinkled her nose at the sky as if she could in
timidate it. Her pony broke into a stiff-legged trot as they crested a hill. “We have to be near,” she added, her voice rising up and down with her pony’s gait.

  “We passed the border, that much I know. Didn’t you feel it? Like a window drape that didn’t want to be opened but finally gave way. And a prickling at the back of your neck as though something unfriendly is watching.”

  “I’ve had that since we left,” declared Nutmeg. “If we’re that close, we should be in time for early supper.” She bounced to a sudden halt as Grace pulled up her mount and her pony instinctively did the same.

  “I don’t think I want to ride in.”

  “What?” Nutmeg’s head snapped around.

  “I went to the library for help. What I found was . . . entirely different. ” She could not meet her sister’s eyes. “I found more questions than answers.”

  “Da would say that life never grows us a tree so tall we can’t climb it, but I’ve decided he’s likely wrong on that one.” Nutmeg brushed a finger against one eye that had grown a bit misty. “You can’t save someone from themselves, Grace. You can only be there to help them if they ask. You can help who you love if you want to, only I don’t want to. I figured that out, sometime after I found myself buried up to my chin in scrolls and books.”

  “It sounds like you have the right of it. Still, I don’t think I belong down there. Not now.”