The Nightborn by Isabel Cooper (howl and other poems TXT) 📗

debauchery. So they have led you to us, to bring us to this moment of noble decision, and I have every confidence that we shall prove worthy.”

He continued in that vein for a while—what seemed like a long while to Branwyn. She nodded and smiled in the right places, uttered vague but complimentary sentiments in others. All the time she thought of Zelen, who wasn’t precisely a young man, and of those more wide-eyed with faith in what people like Marton said. She imagined them marching off to fight skinless horrors and mind-warping evil, full of conviction that this would be an uplifting experience and that they’d come back better and nobler for it.

Criwath needed the soldiers. If Darya, Amris, and Gerant were right—and Branwyn had no reason to doubt that they were—the world needed the soldiers. The consequences of failure were a slaughterhouse, where desperate people killed and fed on each other or even worse. Thyran hadn’t succeeded before. This time, he might.

It was good that Marton was on her side. Branwyn told herself that throughout the end of the dinner and through the final goodbyes, when she gave Marton and his family a courteous bow and expressed her ideally sincere-sounding hopes that they’d meet again.

“Let me off here, please,” she told the carriage driver a few minutes into the ride.

“Are you well, madam?”

“Yes.” No. “Yes. The walk will do me good, though.”

Something, Branwyn thought, had damned well better.

Chapter 11

Gedomir snorted. “She’s a career soldier, she knows details about Oakford, and she’s persuaded at least Lady Rognozi that the matter is serious? I would have expected far more after a week, given your…abilities.”

“We haven’t exactly spent the whole week together,” Zelen responded. He leaned back, his chair on two legs, his feet on the desk of his private study, and a goblet of brandy in one hand. It was a comfortable position. More to the point, it irritated Gedomir. Zelen saw a muscle twitch under his brother’s right eye every time he took a sip. “She’s had others on the council to meet with, and it’ll be suspicious if I’m always on the Rognozis’ doorstep like an abandoned kitten.”

He’d had his duties as well, but it was better not to mention them. Gedomir was skeptical enough about the clinic when it didn’t get in the way of what he wanted.

“Can you arrange to be there in the future, when she speaks with the others?”

“Possibly, sometimes, if I can find out when and where and if I know the people well enough that I won’t be called out for it, or thrashed by a pair of footmen for being an impudent young wastrel. And I still might find out no more than I have already.” Zelen saw his brother’s expression darken. “Have you considered,” he pressed on, “that the lady might have neither dark secrets nor a hidden agenda? Sitha love us, Branwyn’s asking for help for her kingdom, not plotting to undercut you on the whitefish trade. I can understand disagreeing, but—”

“Naive as always,” Gedomir said. “What if the council should agree and propose the assistance in the form of a tax that would ruin us, or a levy of all able-bodied citizens under forty? Or what if this is Criwath’s plan—lure our military might, or our treasury, off chasing phantoms, then overtake us?”

“Why would they now?”

“Because they can, fool.” Gedomir sighed. “Don’t mistake me; her cause may be just, though I suspect Criwath doesn’t have the capacity to properly judge such a threat, and we may all agree in the end. If we don’t, and if disagreement must turn to action, it’s better to be fully prepared. That is where you come in.”

“It’s wonderful to know that you have a use for me.” Zelen took another sip of brandy, relishing the burn more than the taste. He couldn’t find a flaw in his brother’s argument, not then—perhaps it was the way all true heads of houses thought. The others on the council had never spoken to him about it.

“Your attitude doesn’t become you,” said Gedomir. “Particularly not when I had been going to tell you that, if the autumn ends well, we may be able to find extra money in the household funds for that charity house you operate.”

As usual, outrage at the customary tactics warred with a tenacious vestige of shame for being so ungrateful to his family, with more and newer shame—for feeling the old sort and for knowing the bribe would work—the inevitable winner. “I’m sorry,” said Zelen, trying to sound less truculent than when he’d been nine years old and speaking with a missing front tooth. “That’s kind of you. I’ll see what I can manage by way of invitations, though I really can’t make any promises.”

“I didn’t expect any.” Gedomir pulled on one of his gloves. He hadn’t taken his cloak off: the visit was a swift one, an afterthought to his primary business in the city. “Out of curiosity, what would you recommend we do?”

“Help them, of course. I’ve no notion of tactics in the middle of a forest, and I’m certain plans would need to be made, but that’s a matter for specifics—the generals could discuss it. We have wizards and soldiers, neither doing very much.” The words came more heatedly than Zelen would have expected. “And it’s an army of Gizath’s creatures attacking human lands. How could we not see a just cause there?”

“Ah.” Gedomir’s mouth twitched in what, on a more frivolous man, might have passed for a smile. “You would have served the Dark Lady well, Zelen.”

* * *

“I’m afraid I don’t have the time to be fitted properly,” Branwyn lied and, more truthfully, added, “but I’m certain that a seamstress of your skills can work from this dress’s measurements.”

She handed a folded bundle to the woman, who took it with a cautious expression and shook out the blue wool gown that had served Branwyn at court and a number of formal dinners. For a miracle, neither