Song of Unmaking

by Caitlin Brennan

  Sabata had his door open and was standing in the aisle, nobly resisting the mare who was doing her best to seduce him. When Valeria came up with saddle and bridle, he pawed impatiently. The road was calling. He wanted to be gone.

  She looked up from tightening his girth to find Quintus standing at Sabata’s head. He did not seem any more surprised by this than by anything else that happened in his world.

  “Tell the boys,” she said. “We’ll be back when we can. If you can help them with the mares…”

  “I’ll do my best,” Quintus said.

  “Good,” Valeria said. “Tell the princess regent I’m leaving the rest to her, but this I have to do for myself.”

  Quintus nodded. It was almost a bow. “Keep safe,” he said.

  It was not a bad blessing to take into the rising morning. Sabata was fresh enough to keep Valeria busy for a good distance through the city. By the time he settled, they were nearly at the gate and the sun was fully up.

  Kerrec’s path was clear in front of them. He thought he was invisible. To human mages, maybe he was. But Sabata could see beyond mortal sight.

  Valeria left Aurelia with few regrets. Except for Briana and the boys, there was nothing to keep her there. The patterns were calling her into the east, so strong and clear a call that it reminded her somewhat of the one that came from the Mountain.

  She stayed behind Kerrec for three days. That was long enough to be out of the city and well on the way to the eastern frontier.

  The war was still far ahead, but there were signs of it even here. Imperial couriers galloped past almost every hour, going or coming on their spotted horses. Towns were more obviously garrisoned. People were watchful, casting a wary eye on strangers.

  On the fourth day, Valeria let Sabata quicken his pace. Near sundown she came in sight of the town where Kerrec had stopped for the night.

  She almost turned coward and camped in a field, but she had not come this far to turn back now. She made her way to the inn where Petra’s presence was as distinct as a hand on her skin, through half a cohort of legionaries and a crowd of farmers coming home from the market.

  There was room in the inn. The innkeeper eyed Sabata with mild interest, but not as if he recognized what the stallion was. He would have kept Sabata apart from Petra—stallion separated from stallion, which was wise with mortal horses—but Sabata ducked, backed, and slipped out of his headstall. Before the stableman could open his mouth to cry the alarm, Sabata laid claim to the stall beside Petra’s.

  They were obviously not going to kill each other. When Valeria left them, they were sharing bits of hay over the stall wall while the innkeeper watched and shook his head. “Never saw anything like it,” he said.

  “They’re from the same herd,” Valeria said. “My brother said he’d meet me here. I see he came in ahead of me.”

  “Only an hour or so,” the innkeeper said. “He didn’t mention he’d be sharing the room.”

  “He takes things for granted,” Valeria said. “He’s the oldest, you know. Thinks he owns the world.”

  The innkeeper grinned. “He does, doesn’t he? Go on, it’s at the top of the stair. He ordered dinner already—I’ll make sure there’s enough for two.”

  Valeria thanked him with words and silver. There was still the stair to face, then the door, and the rumble of bad temper on the other side of it.

  She took a deep breath and started up the stair.

  The room was small but surprisingly light and airy, with a window that took up most of a wall. There were two beds in it, and a hearth that at this time of year was swept clean.

  Kerrec was lying on the bed under the window, stretched out on his back with his arm over his eyes. He had taken off his coat and boots but was still in shirt and breeches.

  He was awake. She could feel his awareness even before he said, “Thank you, I’ll take my dinner later.”

  He was always civil to servants—that much she could say for him. She answered equally civilly, “The innkeeper said it will be up in an hour.”

  He went rigid. His arm lowered. She was braced for anger, but it still shook her to see those eyes like hot silver.

  She steadied herself firmly, met his glare with a calculated lack of expression, and said, “I told him you were my brother and we were meeting here. It was Sabata’s idea. He horrified the stableman—he insisted on stabling himself next to Petra. There will be blood on the walls by morning, the poor man is sure.”

  “You’re babbling,” he said coldly. “You never babble.”

  “You noticed?” She dropped her saddlebags beside the bed opposite his and sat on it, tugging at her boots. “And before you start, no, I’m not going back to Aurelia. No, I’m not going to try to stop you. And no, I won’t leave you alone.”

  “Are you trying to make me hate you?”

  “I’m trying to keep you alive.”

  “I’m not helpless.”

  “No,” she said. “You aren’t. You have Petra—and the other thing. But you need someone at your back.”

  When she mentioned the other thing, his hand went to his breast. She could see the cord at his neck and the slight bulge under his shirt.

  He was wearing the master stone in a warded pouch—wise enough, she supposed. She could still feel it. She could smell it, too. It had a faint tang of hot iron.

  “You realize,” she said, “that if you can track him, he can track you.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Kerrec, “but if he does, so be it. It will save me a great deal of traveling.”

  “Then what? What will you do? Blast him? Stab him? Slip poison into his cup? Hope he doesn’t feed you to the void first?”

  “I’ll know when I see him,” Kerrec said.

  “If he lets you.”

  “This time he will. I have something of his. He’ll want it back.”

  “He’ll take it back.”

  “Good,” said Kerrec. “Let him try.”

  Valeria studied him as if he had been an especially difficult chapter in one of her books. “I should put a binding on you and haul you back to your sister.”

  “Yes,” he said. “So why are you talking about it? Why don’t you just do it? I’m no match for you.”

  She would have loved to slap the haughty expression off his face. “Because I’m called to this road, too. So are the stallions. They’ve told me so.”

  “They haven’t said it to me.”

  “Petra would if you asked him.”

  “How do you know what Petra would say?”

  “I hear them all,” she said. “You didn’t know that, did you? You never asked. I never knew to tell you.”

  “No one hears them all,” he said.

  “No one told me that,” she said, “so that I could be sure to do the proper thing and stop letting them do it.”

  He looked so offended she almost laughed. But then he said, “Well enough. I believe you. Now will you go away? Petra will tell you where I am. If I do something unbearably stupid, you can gallop to the rescue.”

  “It’s much easier if I’m there with you,” she said. She lay back on the bed. “I don’t have a choice, either, you know.”

  “You could sound less smug about it.”

  “And you could be less hateful.”

  She bit her tongue. That was not what she had meant to say.

  It seemed to have silenced him, at least. Maybe the edge was off his anger. He was still not happy with her at all.

  Dinner came while they lay in stiff silence, glaring at the ceiling. The maid set the tray on the table between the beds, curtsied to them both, and left as quietly as she had come.

  Valeria would have been willing to swear she had no appetite, but the smell of roast fowl made her mouth water. Just as she sat up, so did Kerrec—which the part of her that did not want to strangle him found encouraging.

  There was more than enough for two hungry men. Valeria did the best she could with her half. Kerrec ate more than she did—encouraging,
again.

  Except for his uncertain temper, he looked better than he had since he met the Brother of Pain. He was stronger. His color was better. Even his magic was less broken. What he had done to find the master stone and come this far had taken considerable skill.

  That had been his doing without help or support, and it was impressive. But now his magic was changing. It was partaking of the power of the stone.

  That was dangerous. The magic in the stone had come from Gothard. Whatever good the stone did, it might only be doing it in order to return to its maker.

  Valeria would keep watch over that—and keep quiet about it. She had said enough.

  Her body, in its weakness, wanted badly to cross the narrow expanse of the room and lie beside him. Her mind knew better. Even if, somewhere in the shards of his self, he still loved her, he had no room for that now. Everything he had was focused on his hunt for his brother.

  Somehow she had to change that. It was not going to be easy. If she bound or forced him, she could break his mind. If she left it too long or did too little, he would break on his own—or Gothard would do it for him.

  Thirty-Two

  Valeria more than half expected Kerrec to slip away before she woke, but she was up first. Breakfast was stiffly silent. So was their departure from the inn.

  He was freezing her out. She set her teeth and endured it.

  Gothard was somewhere toward the border, and probably beyond it. He was half a barbarian. It seemed logical that he would have gone to his mother’s people.

  If that was so, then he was on the wrong side of a war. And there were armies between.

  They followed the legions’ road to the north and then east, from the heart of the empire onto open plains of grass rolling away toward the distant teeth of mountains. Those mountains were in the barbarians’ country, on the other side of the river that was the empire’s border.

  The closer to the frontier they came, the farther apart the towns and villages were. Most of those clustered around forts or huddled behind walls. Fields were plowed and tilled, and there were guards to protect the crops.

  Most of the traffic had to do with the legions. Supply trains were running constantly, and couriers were even more frequent here than nearer Aurelia. The legions themselves were not marching. Except for cohorts traveling from fort to fort, the great mass of the army was on the border with the emperor.

  Everything was leading up to a battle. Rumors were flying as to where and when, but no one doubted that there would be one. There had been raids and skirmishes all summer. Bands of barbarians had come as far as three days’ ride from the river, pillaging and looting and killing whatever stood in their way.

  The emperor was camped near the branching of the river, where half of it turned to flow down through the province of Toscana to the sea, but the rest went on along the eastward edge of Elladis. “Your brother will be somewhere near there if he’s anywhere,” Valeria said.

  After days of icy silence, Valeria had had enough. If Kerrec would not say a word, she would do the talking for both of them.

  He had been tracking his brother through the master stone. She was careful not to touch it with her own magic, but Petra had no objection to letting her into his mind. Through him she knew what Kerrec was seeing and feeling.

  The stone was not as precise as a seeker spell. All it could do was tell him that he was going toward his brother and not away. Where Gothard was exactly, he could not see. Maybe when he was closer, that would come clear.

  They were a day’s march from the border in a raw and rowdy town that called itself Valeria Victrix. Kerrec had no humor and was not speaking to Valeria in any case, which spared her any comparisons between her unwelcome self and the town.

  The inn in which they found themselves was not the best or the worst to be had. It was clean, which was always the first requirement for Kerrec. The stable had room for two stallions, and the stablehands did not seem perturbed that they preferred to stay together. Its sleeping rooms were tiny, hardly more than large boxes, which forced the travelers to take their dinner in the common room.

  Kerrec ate in his usual grim silence. Valeria worked her way slowly through a surprisingly wonderful concoction of lamb, dried fruits and rice with spices that she had only tasted a time or two before. The cook came from Iliya’s country, and he had brought its arts and flavors with him to this outpost of the northern world.

  Kerrec finished long before her, but he rather surprised her by not stalking off to their cupboard of a room. He sat scowling at a cup of wine, not even pretending to drink.

  Most of the traffic in the common room was local and civilian, farmers and townsmen and vendors coming in as the market wound down. There was a table full of legionaries over by the far wall, but they were unusually restrained. It was early yet and the wine had barely begun to flow.

  More interesting to Valeria’s eye, many of the townsfolk were tall and fair, and one or two were even redheaded. The change had been gradual, but where a few days ago Valeria had been one of many dark, wiry people, now she was dwarfed by a crowd of big, light-haired men and the occasional woman.

  They were still imperial citizens, or trying to seem as if they were. No one affected the long braided hair and exuberant mustaches of the tribes, or wore gaudy checks and plaids instead of plain and serviceable browns and butternuts and greens.

  Memory ambushed Valeria. A big man, bigger than anyone here, redheaded and wolf-eyed, clashing with ornaments of gold and amber. She looked into Euan Rohe’s remembered face, so vivid that she almost reached up to touch it.

  It vanished into Kerrec’s narrow hawk-face and silver eyes. She regarded him in something very like bitterness. This, she had chosen over that. This was her life, the other half of her—this cold and cruel thing.

  Sanity struck quickly enough. Even for Euan’s fine white body, she could not betray her people. That was the choice she had made. Kerrec could be part of it, or he might not. It made no difference.

  From that position of shaky confidence, she opened what he would probably regard as hostilities. She did not care. It had to be said. “We’ll reach the river tomorrow. Then what? How are you planning to find him?”

  “I’ll know when I get there,” he said as he had the last time she asked.

  That was meant to cut her off, but she had reached her limit. “What are you going to do? Swim the river? Walk up to the nearest dun and demand that they produce the traitor?”

  His brow arched. “Do you have a better plan?”

  “I’ll come up with one that doesn’t get us both killed,” she said sharply. “You really were going to do that, weren’t you? Did it ever occur to you that the One would love a royal sacrifice?”

  “I was not going to do that,” he said tightly. “I was going to go as far as I could safely, and then scry for him. Unless you would rather do it for me?”

  “I well might,” she said, “though you’re doing well enough for yourself.”

  He shook that off. “I still remember how to focus. I’m not that far gone.”

  “Not now you aren’t,” she said. “I’ll be happy for you—after I stop wanting to hit you.”

  “If I’m such miserable company, why do you stay?”

  “Because Sabata won’t let me leave.”

  “Don’t blame the horse. You’d be here even if Sabata wanted you on the Mountain.”

  “Believe me,” she said, “I would rather be there than here.”

  “So would I,” he said. “But I have to be here.”

  “So do I.”

  They stopped. This was an impasse. It could go on, becoming more and more hateful, or it could stop with glare meeting glare.

  Or one of them could let go the offensive. Valeria knew better than to think it would be Kerrec.

  “We should sleep,” he said abruptly. “The earlier we get off in the morning, the better.”

  Valeria fought down her first impulse, which was to argue with him. The second was to f
inish her cup of wine.

  It was nearly full, and the wine was strong. While she sipped it slowly, rather than glare at Kerrec any longer, she let her gaze wander around the tavern. There were more legionaries now that the sun was going down, and fewer farmers and merchants.

  A new company of soldiers jostled through the door. The others were either auxiliaries or infantry, but these were scouts. Instead of brass and scarlet, they wore leather and blued steel, with the sun and moon of the empire at collar and belt.

  They had a lighter, rangier look than the others. A bit of wildness clung to them. They were laughing and yelling for beer.

  One of them looked straight at Valeria where she sat in the corner. He must be dazzled by the dimness inside after the sunset light without, but Valeria could see his face clearly.

  She had dreamed this. This place, this hour. This face squinting, then opening into incredulity.

  He was just about to decide that his eyes deceived him when she said, “Rodry.”

  His eyes went wide. “By the gods,” he said. “It is you!”

  Her brother left his fellow scouts to commandeer a table and start in on the beer, and made his way through the increasingly crowded room. He was grinning from ear to ear.

  Valeria got halfway to her feet before he pulled her up the rest of the way and hugged the breath out of her. He set her down, still grinning. “Gods! I thought we’d never see you again.”

  “I dream about you almost every night,” she said.

  “True dreams?” he asked.

  “This one was.”

  He appropriated a stool from the next table and sat opposite her. His eye fell on Kerrec, then flicked back to Valeria.

  She almost ignored the silent question, but she was too well brought up for that. “First Rider Kerrec,” she said. “My brother Rodry. He’s with the Ninth Valeria.”

  Rodry’s eyes went wide at Kerrec’s rank, and he sketched a salute. Kerrec bent in his head in return. He did not glare or say something cutting, which surprised Valeria somewhat.