“ They didn’t think so.” He shrugged. “Besides, it’s not for them. News of what happened here will spread across the fief. Many Cumbraelin fanatics will be quick to call it a massacre. If it becomes known that we showed respect for their customs in caring for the dead it may dull the hatred they wish to stir.”
“ You almost sound like an Aspect.” Her smile was so bright, so open, stirring an old, familiar ache in his chest. She was different; the guarded, severe girl he had met near five years ago was now a confident young woman. But the core of her remained, he had seen it the way she laid her hand on Alucius’s forehead and her frantic pleading behind the gag when she thought he was giving up his life for her. Compassion, it burned in her.
“ We always seem to be at different ends of the Realm,” she went on. “I had the fortune to meet Princess Lyrna last year. She said you were friends, I asked her to send my regards.”
Friends. The woman lies like others breath. “She did that.” It was clear that she didn’t know, Aspect Elera had never told her why they were always so far apart. Abruptly he decided she would never know.
“ Did he hurt you?” he asked. “Mustor. Did he…?”
“ A bruise here and there when I was captured.” She showed him the marks of the shackles on her wrists. “But otherwise I am unharmed.”
“ When did he take you?”
“ Seven, eight weeks ago. Maybe longer. I’ve lost track of time within the walls of this keep. I had finally been called back to the Order House from Warnsclave, looking forward to taking up my old post but Aspect Elera put me to work on researching new curatives. It’s a deadly dull task, Vaelin. Endless grinding of herbs and mixing concoctions, most of which smell quite appallingly. I even complained to the Aspect but she told me I needed to gain a broader grasp of the workings of the Order. In any case I was actually glad when a messenger arrived from my former mission with word of an outbreak of the Red Hand. I had been working on a compound which may offer some hope of a cure, or at least relief from the symptoms. So the local master sent for me.”
The Red Hand. The plague that had swept through the four fiefs before the king forged the Realm, claiming the lives of thousands in the two hellish years of its reign. No family had escaped untouched and no other sickness was more feared. But the sickness had not been seen in the Realm for nearly fifty years.
“ It was a trap,” he said.
She nodded. “I went alone for fear the sickness had taken hold. But there was no sickness, only death. The mission was quiet, empty I thought. Inside there were only corpses, but not taken by the Red Hand. Hacked and slashed, even the sick in their beds. Mustor’s followers were waiting, and they had spared no one. I tried to run but they caught me of course. I was shackled and taken here.”
“ I’m sorry.”
“ There is no blame for you in this. It would hurt me to think that you thought so.”
Their eyes met again and the ache in his chest lurched once more. “Did Mustor say anything to you? Anything that might explain his actions?”
“ He would come to my cell most days. At first he seemed concerned for my welfare, making sure I had sufficient food and water, even bringing me books and parchment when I asked. But always he would talk, as if driven to it, but his words rarely made sense. He rambled on about his god, quoting whole passages from the ten books the Cumbraelins revere so much. I thought at first he was trying to convert me but I came to realise that he wasn’t really talking to me, he cared nothing for my opinion. He merely needed to speak words he couldn’t speak to his followers.”
“ What words?”
“ Words of doubt. Hentes Mustor doubted his god. Not its existence but its reasoning, its intention. I didn’t know then that he had murdered his father, apparently at his god’s behest. Perhaps the guilt had driven him mad. I told him as much. I told him if he thought he could use me to kill you then he was truly mad. I told him you would kill him in an instant. It appears I was wrong.” She looked at him intently. “ Was he mad, Vaelin? Is that what drove him? Or was it… something else? I sense you know more than you tell.”
He wanted to tell her, the compulsion burned in his breast, the need to share it all with someone. The wolf in the Urlish and the Martishe, his meeting with Nersus Sil Nin, the one who waits, and the voice, the same voice he had heard from the lips of two dead men. But something held it back. It wasn’t the blood-song this time, it was something more easily understood. Such knowledge is dangerous. And she has seen enough danger on my account.
“ I am but a brother with a sword, sister,” he told her. “As the years pass I realise I know very little.”
“ You knew enough to save my life. You knew Mustor had no more stomach for killing. I was so sure you would cut him down when you saw he had me… I was proud of you, proud you didn’t. Mad or not, murderer or not, I could sense no evil in him. Only grief, and guilt.”
From below came the sound of a commotion. Vaelin glanced down to see Fief Lord Mustor upbraiding Caenis, the bottle in his hand sloshing wine onto the cobbled courtyard. The Fief Lord was dishevelled, unshaven and, judging from the slur of his words, considerably more drunk than usual. “Let them rot! You hear me, brother! Sinnersh are not buried in Cumbrael, oh no! Hack off their heads and leave them for the crowsh-” He staggered onto a patch of still slick blood and slipped heavily to the cobbles, dousing himself in wine. He swore extravagantly, slapping Caenis’s helping hands away. “Let those sinners rot, I say! This is my keep. Prince Malsiush? Lord Vaelin? This is my keep!”
“ Who is that man?” Sherin asked. “He seems… troubled.”
“ The Cumbraelins’ rightful Fief Lord, Faith help them.” He gave her a smile of apology. “I should go. My regiment will remain here awaiting orders from the king. I’ll have Brother Commander Makril provide an escort to take you back to your Order.”
“ I would prefer to wait here for a while. I think Sister Gilma would be glad of the help. Besides, we’ve barely had time to exchange news. I have much to share.”
The same open smile, the same ache in his chest. Send her away, his inner voice commanded. Only pain can result if you keep her here.
“ Lord Vaelin!” Fief Lord Mustor’s cry dragged his attention back to the courtyard. “Where are you? Shtop these men!”
“ I have much to share also,” he said before turning away.
At first Fief Lord Mustor raged at Vaelin’s refusal to stop the burial of the bodies, loudly restating his ownership of the keep and the primacy of his authority in his own lands. When Vaelin replied simply that he was a servant of the Faith and therefore not bound the word of a Fief Lord, Mustor’s mood degenerated into a baleful sulk. After his appeals to Prince Malcius earned only a stern look of disapproval he took himself off to his dead brother’s quarters where he had amassed a large proportion of the keep’s wine cellar.
They remained at the High Keep for another eight days, anxiously awaiting word of the war’s end. Vaelin occupied the men with constant training and patrols into the mountains. There was little grumbling, morale was high, boosted by triumph and the shared spoils of the keep and the dead which, though meagre, fulfilled a basic soldierly desire for loot. “Give ‘em victory, gold in their pockets and a woman every now and again,” Sergeant Krelnik told Vaelin one evening, “and they’ll follow you forever.”
As Sister Sherin had promised Alucius Al Hestian recovered quickly, waking on the third day and passing the basic tests that showed his brain was not permanently damaged, although he could remember nothing of the battle or how he came by his wound.
“ So he’s dead?” he asked Vaelin. They were in the courtyard, watching the men at evening drill. “The Usurper.”
“ Yes.”
“ Do you think he gave Black Arrow the letters of free passage?”
“ I can’t see how else they could have fallen into his hands. It seems the old Fief Lord went to great lengths to protect his son.”