by Vale Aida
He stood up. “Arrows are hardly difficult to come by. The armoury is not under guard. Has it occurred to you that one of your men might have shot this arrow and put the blame on one of mine?”
“It has,” said Dervain. He was terrifying like this, unflappable and smooth as ice. Sanctuary property. God’s property. Isemain preferred it when he lost his temper. “But try telling them that. They were uneasy to begin with. Now they’re mutinous. If you still mean to present the Queen with our hostage, we had best set off soon.”
That would explain the illness. Always sensitive, the Empath’s faculties swelled up like a sail whenever there was unrest. “You don’t approve,” said Isemain.
With satisfaction, he watched the lines ripple across Dervain’s forehead. It was only this past summer that he had learnt of the history between Savonn Silvertongue and the Empath, who in the telling transpired to be human after all, and stricken as they all were by human frailties. “I don’t,” said Dervain curtly. “There are attack dogs and there are vipers. It baffles me that Her Magnificence cannot tell the difference.”
What he needed was a good slap. But Isemain was a decent, god-fearing man, and knew that if he raised a hand to the High Priest’s protégé, it would probably be the last time he had hands. The Sanctuary protected its own. “It’s not your place to decide for her.”
Dervain stretched out his legs and got up. His eyes were narrowed in concentration. Times like these, Isemain wondered what he was looking for: the bright flashing lights of alarm, perhaps, or dull festering resentment, or the acrid stench of anger. “I see,” he said slowly. “You know why she wants him. And you will not tell me.”
It was the one advantage Isemain had. He was confidant to the Queen, and the father of her oldest and finest child, who would one day inherit her kingdom. For all his striking looks, Dervain was far too young and volatile for her. He was nothing but murderous chattel. “The Queen has a few questions for your pet magpie. I have no idea what they concern. Nor should you. After that, she may find a use for him, or let you dispose of him as you see fit.”
The muscles tightened in Dervain’s jaw. “We have a blood feud. It is my god-given right to kill him in a fair fight. Or to be killed by him, if events fall out that way.”
He made death sound terribly quotidian, like chipping a tooth or tripping down the stairs. “I don’t disagree,” said Isemain. In fact, he would have liked nothing better than to arrange such a fight. Either way it was bound to rid him of at least one thorn in his side. “But the Queen’s will is our bond. So you might like to make yourself useful in other ways.”
“Such as?”
“There are four hundred Cassarans marching on us as we speak,” said Isemain. “Ostensibly led by Lucien Safin, but you and I know who has been behind the sword and shield of Cassarah for years now. If she gets her way, neither you nor Marguerit will get yours.”
Locking eyes with the Empath was always a bloodcurdling experience. Isemain bore it as stalwartly as he could. “And,” said Dervain, his fine features growing rigid, “you are dispatching me to deal with it? You want me to leave the hostage here, with you, and go?”
“I want you to fall into a pit of hell and never come back,” said Isemain, “but yes, failing that, removing our opposition would be helpful. A rabble of cowards who hate one another. Easy pickings.”
“Thus removing the threat of mutiny, and dealing with this new army in one fell stroke,” said Dervain softly. “And in all the excitement, you intend to steal away with the prisoner and see that he reaches the Queen alive. Well done, my lord Marshal. Your usual lack of intellect makes this little triumph all the more precious.”
Isemain refused the bait. Full of hearty cheer, he asked, “Aren’t you leaving?”
Dervain moved to the door, stepping over the corpse again. Judging by the look on his face, Isemain was going to have to double the guard on his bedchamber and sleep in armour for the rest of his life. It was worth it. “I will go now,” said Dervain. “But I shouldn’t feel too pleased with myself if I were you, my lord. Your prisoner has worn so many masks he has forgotten the look of his own face. Question him if you like, and let him fill you up with falsehoods. You will find nothing real about him.”
He executed a flawless bow, and was gone.
* * *
In the furthest recesses of Savonn’s mind, a lyre was laughing.
He was half asleep, his thoughts not quite dreams, only images from memory with the associations between them loosened. He was with his patrol in the tavern called the Merman, watching the genesis of a drunken brawl. Some of their rasher boys had taken a dislike to the band of Saraians at the next table, with predictable results. Insults were exchanged, escalating first into threats and then the brandishing of steak knives: a sight that made him laugh, because he was only eighteen, and wild, and—had he only known it—at the starting post of the best year of his life. Rendell was trying to break it up, but of course, with their abysmal luck, someone from the city guard arrived just as one of his brothers-in-arms started grappling with a Saraian. The newcomer, irritation writ large all over his face, was the man who would later introduce himself as Gelmir. “What the hell are you lot doing?”
It occurred to Savonn mid-laugh that both they and the Saraians were about to be thrown out of Astorre, and he had not even visited the theatres yet. An unconscionable waste. Propelled by this impetus, he rose and interposed himself at Gelmir’s side. “Dancing, or trying our damndest to,” he said. “You must pardon the excess of left feet.”
It was an unconvincing lie, at least without a sizeable bribe to back it up. But the surprise made the staggering men break apart; and then, in the far corner of the room, one of the Saraians caught up a lyre and started up a lively tune.
He was beautiful: a half-seen shadow by the wall, red and gold and black, lyrestrings pliant under his clever fingers. Put Dervain in the same room as a musical instrument, and the two would always gravitate together. Someone would push a harp into his hands, or roll a flute over and beg a song; or, to escape a tedious conversation, he would flee to the spinet and start playing. And then, as now, the room would fall silent. One would forget what one had been doing. One would simply go still and listen, like the magpie at the minstrel’s song.
Eventually, the brawlers caught on. They produced a few valiant twirls for Gelmir’s benefit, the Merman resounding with laughter around them. A giggling barmaid grabbed a merchant’s wife and started a waltz between the tables. A chair toppled. The Saraians began to clap to the rhythm, and Savonn’s patrol filled in the words, mostly rude ones. Rendell had not bothered keeping a straight face, and was howling into his ale-glass. One missed him. Gods, how one missed him.
Gelmir rolled his eyes to high heaven, and retreated.
The music died away to applause so thunderous that a portrait fell off the wall. Amid a chorus of hoots and whistles, the two brawlers—scarlet with indignation—withdrew to their respective tables to be thumped on the back by their friends. The bartender, still cackling, poured them fresh drinks on the house. Every stray sound, every odour and texture and flicker of light had taken on a fresh, blossoming lustre, like the world after a rainstorm: washed clean and made new and exciting all over again, a rebirth in a heartbeat.
As if in a dream, Savonn wandered to the counter and bought a fresh tankard of ale. He judged his moment and, with a magician’s timing, sent the drink sliding down the counter to the lyre-player with a flick of his wrist.
He stood there, empty-handed and without expectations, wanting nothing, needing nothing, exulting only in the uncomplicated joy of what they had orchestrated together. Even in peacetime, there could be no discourse between Saraian and Falwynian. The man could not come over and pull up a stool beside Savonn, as any other interested party might. What he could do was what he had, in fact, done: accepted the drink, and studied Savonn across the rim of the tankard, his warm eyes thoughtful and curious and above all, entertained.
; Looking at him, one felt like a steeple catching fire from heaven. One would not have noticed, or cared, if anybody else was watching—not even Rendell, who would keep the secret for many years.
The scrape of the lock was a foreign sound that did not belong in the dream-memory. Savonn roused at once, all his fine-honed senses springing to alertness, and sat up on his pallet.
Unsurprisingly, it was Dervain. In the early days, when they used to prowl the streets near the Merman in the hopes of running into each other, the very thought of him often seemed to conjure a flash of auburn among the passing heads glimpsed from a window, or a secret smile across a stall in the marketplace. Tonight he was in full armour: cuirass, mail, jerkin, greaves and boots. The planes of his face always looked more severe when his hair was knotted back. His cloak hung red and black from his shoulders, and for some reason, his lute was in his hand.
Coming to adulthood in the house of Kedris and Danei, one learned to sense quickly from stance and expression when something was amiss. A palpable thundercloud followed Dervain into the room. The guards out in the hall sensed it, too; they shifted and fidgeted as the cell door swung shut. Dervain caught his eye and held it, their customary greeting whenever time and place permitted them nothing else. Then he set his lute on the stool, and walked straight to the barred window.
“I was thinking,” he said, “that surely you would have engineered an escape by now. I always overestimate you.”
Savonn’s wounds had ceased to trouble him, and could not be used as an excuse. The window, he had found, overlooked a second-floor balcony which he thought led to an unused parlour. In the last two nights, a piecemeal plan had begun to come together in his mind, riddled with ifs and maybes. If he wrenched the flimsy lattice away from the window, he might be able to swing down to the balcony. If the parlour door was unlocked, he could get inside, steal some clothes and knives, hide his face in a helm, and pass himself off as one of the Saraians. Then he might devise some way to slip out through the postern.
It was a decent plan, if tentative. There was no reason why he should not have given it a shot. The fact was that only three things were salient to his exhausted mind: Hiraen was dead; they had both failed to protect Emaris; and now all that remained to him was a blood feud and a man he had loved, the two inextricably intertwined.
He could not decide between a flippant response and a cold one. In the end, his voice was pallid as water. “You really do.”
He stood up, so Dervain would not loom over him. That he was not tall had been a cause of some grief in his adolescence. But with Dervain, it did not seem to matter so much. It felt quite natural to join him at the window, to study him out of the corner of one’s eye. Still they kept several inches of empty space between them, careful not to touch. “You are cold?” asked Dervain. “I asked them to bring up more firewood.”
Savonn looked down. His arms were goosebumped, but not from cold. For a wild moment he imagined pressing himself into the heat of Dervain’s body, pulling them both onto the pallet and ceasing to exist for a while. But he needed his wits about him to play this game. “You can bring it yourself later,” he said, “after you finish whatever you are about to do.”
“That will be quite a while,” said Dervain.
No elaboration was forthcoming. Savonn considered his moves. “I heard shouting in the yard.”
“Yes.”
They were both adroit at elusion and misinformation. It had been one of their favourite pastimes, wheedling accidental crumbs of truth out of each other. “And now you’re going to battle?”
Dervain was an expert at smiling without moving his lips. His eyes took on a different cast: the lines around them shifted and reformed, every plane and angle shot through with obscure amusement. “The Council of Cassarah has sent an army,” he said. “It appears they are trying to rescue you.”
The laugh that slipped from Savonn was startled, and therefore genuine. It seemed to surprise Dervain. He looked over sharply, as if his eye had been caught by a burst of light, and for a fleeting instant the smile lines deepened on his face. “Too many players on the board, etruska,” he said. “Isemain. Marguerit. The Council. I confess, when I set out to kill you, I envisioned a game for two.”
More ifs and maybes: if he did not escape, the Council might rescue him. If Dervain stopped them first, he would be taken to Daliss. Then, if he did not wish to die, he would make himself useful to Marguerit. He was good at making himself useful. Everyone learned that sooner or later. Even Merrott. Even Kedris. It was funny to think that, after all these years, he and Dervain might soon be on the same side.
But it was impossible. One might as well try to square a circle. Dervain wanted to kill him. And Savonn, too, had a debt he owed to the dead.
“Do you remember,” said Dervain presently, “the time I received that urgent dispatch from Marguerit? The courier had barely even set it down when I was called away, and you broke in to steal it.”
Savonn grinned. It was hard not to. “You caught me.”
“And you flung it unopened in the fire, and to this day we do not know what the Queen wanted.” Dervain’s voice was soft, his gaze fond. “It was then that I knew—or thought I knew—what manner of man I was dealing with.”
They had laughed about it after, lying on the floor of the consulate among bits of kindling and scraps of blackened vellum. Savonn had traded Merrott’s patrol maps for the next dispatch. A good price—Dervain would have needed them in any case, to do what he had promised Savonn. Lord Kedris, far away in Cassarah, would get what he wanted, and remain none the wiser about how his wastrel son had contrived it. One could not have everything.
It was no wonder Hiraen despised him.
Savonn opened his mouth to say something pithy. What came out instead was, “It was not my choice to leave you.”
Dervain went still, but did not speak. He had not expected this. With every blink his lashes dipped and rose again, a spectacle in itself. Savonn fixed his eyes on them and pressed his advantage. “My father wanted Betronett at any cost. Hiraen wouldn’t kill Merrott for him. That’s why I had to take care of it. I thought, after it was done…”
He had fancied himself free of his obligations to Kedris, free to take his lover and go where he pleased. A pretty dream. In the end he had come back to do his father’s bidding where Hiraen, brave stubborn idiot, had balked. To obey, to command Betronett like a puppet on a string, to serve as weregild for Hiraen’s life. In his father’s anger, no one was safe. “My—feelings—were not of a transient nature,” he said. “They tend not to be, at any rate. If you are truly an empath, you know this.”
“I know,” said Dervain. He did not hesitate, a fact that said more than his words did. “Neither are mine. That changes nothing.”
They stood for a moment before the dark panels of the window-lattice. Savonn listened to the tell-tale pulse pattering in the spaces between his brains and his ears, and wondered what a pounding heart felt like to Dervain at second hand. Dervain was right, of course. They spoke of choice, but one of them was a slave, the other his father’s son. Savonn knew better than most that feelings were irrelevant. He had felt, and he had left.
He let out a long breath and rallied his defences. “I just wanted to establish the rules,” he said. “It seems important if we are to keep playing. The stakes are higher now. But if you know me, you know nothing will keep me from the game. Here, or in Daliss, or anywhere else you might take me.”
Any less would be cowardice, unworthy of his adversary. “Maybe,” said Dervain. “But there is something I have neglected to mention, either to you or Isemain. Someone has stolen in under the ringwall and murdered two of my soldiers. It seems you suffer no lack of rescuers.”
For a moment, Savonn forgot to inhale. His first thought was Hiraen, late as usual. His second thought was I told you to go back to sleep, gazelle. His third thought was, They are dead, both of them, because of us.
“But if you escaped,” Dervain went on,
“where would we resume our game? We can hardly kill each other in Astorre, under Celisse’s eye.”
“I said nothing of escaping,” said Savonn.
“Perhaps,” said Dervain, paying him no heed, “we can meet only as cursed creatures do: in secret, shrouded by night. On the edge of the crescent moon, in the unholy light of evenfall.” He smiled, this time with his mouth. “If you abide there for me, I shall come to you. Just like old times.”
Speech, now, would reveal too much. Savonn stood by the window, forcing away thought and emotion, both of which would make him easy prey. Dervain gave him a last, heavy look and departed, locking the door behind him.
It was not until Savonn saw the lute on the table that he understood.
The way to freedom stood open. More than that, it had been waved in his face. Dervain did not want the Marshal to take him to Marguerit, under whose eaves he could not be killed. If Savonn fled, they could meet elsewhere, alone and undisturbed, and make an end one way or another. Evenfall. The ruin of Ederen Andalle’s ancient palace, on its haunted isle in the Morivant. Dervain never did anything by chance.
He examined the lute, its supple strings well-tended and in perfect tune. The thickest bass strings were made of several strands of sheepgut woven together, deep and resonant and—most importantly—sturdy between his fingers. It was the hardest thing he had ever done to unfasten them from the soundboard and bridge, and to tie them each one to the next, so they formed a cord of some five or six feet in length. Then he looped one end around a strut of the window-lattice and weighed the other down with his foot.
It took some negotiation, but in a moment the frame sprang loose almost noiselessly. Soon Dervain would leave with his men to meet the Council’s force. The holdfast would be half empty. In the confusion Savonn could climb out and meet with one or all of his rescuers, if he so pleased, or find his way alone to his rendezvous.
