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

Nobody moved to assist. By doing so, they might break her concentration, with horrible results. They, like Zelen, knew just enough to realize their own uselessness.

His skills had limits. He’d never fought hard enough for the path that would have lifted more of them.

“It’s hardly how I’d hoped the evening would go,” Branwyn said from behind him.

Zelen’s heart responded Branwyn before his mind could focus on Sentinel and all the questions that raised. “I wanted to join the Dark Lady’s service when I was younger, you know,” he said, turning toward her. “As a Mourner, of course. Even then I was too frivolous for a Blade.”

“I’ve never met a person outside the Blades who wasn’t,” said Branwyn. “What changed your mind?”

“My family wasn’t having any of it. Bad form for a son of nobility to become a jumped-up undertaker, even a holy one,” Zelen said. Years later, he could still remember his father’s words, right down to every exasperated pause. “Makes it look like we don’t have enough property to go ’round too.”

“I wouldn’t have thought of that, but then, I don’t spend much time thinking about property.”

Zelen nodded. Sentinels were taken from the ranks of the unwanted: the orphans, the foundlings, the bastards. Their training, from what stories he’d heard, also tended to be light on courtly graces and aristocratic customs. Branwyn, he assumed, had been given special instructions for…well, for whatever purpose drove her.

That was a subject he should probably inquire about, he knew. Gedomir would likely want him to, and perhaps rightly so. The woman had been keeping more secret than Zelen had suspected.

“If you’d taken the vows back then,” Branwyn said with a little who-knows hitch of her shoulders, “you might not have been here tonight. That is, Mourners aren’t specifically prohibited from dancing and so forth, but the ones I’ve met have had to be on duty at all hours, and they’re usually dead tired when they’re off. It’s not a life that lends itself to balls—which is probably why we don’t have any here now, damn the luck.”

“Well. Yes,” said Zelen, because she was right, from what he knew. A few of the younger Mourners had attended the ball, but they had, in fact, all gone back to the temple long before he and Branwyn had slipped out to the garden.

The guilt didn’t vanish. That was always a part of him, only aching more or less at times. Branwyn’s words pushed it back toward less, though. The circling If I’d chosen differently, I’d have fixed this ran into Or not even known it happened until too late and was shaken out of the pattern.

Branwyn pushed back a strand of hair, leaving a streak of dirt on her forehead. “I should explain…many things…” she said, uncertainty apparent for the first time since Zelen had met her, “and I should be more tactful about what comes next, but I’m tired and we’re going to go deal with the rest of these creatures soon. And, as you now know, I’m not really a diplomat. Therefore”—she squared her shoulders, confidence returning as she went on—“your family sounds like vile people, the sort that make me glad I don’t have relatives, and you have my sympathy. I think you turned out…splendidly…regardless.”

* * *

Weariness and danger were as good as wine for breaking down her guard, but Branwyn knew she wouldn’t regret speaking. Watching Zelen’s face soften out of its expression of tight pain would have been worth it alone, even if she hadn’t known she’d been the cause.

Whatever he thinks of me when he has a chance to rest, I’ve done him a bit of good now.

“I’m too weary to do the filial-spirit bit and protest,” he said in return, “so I can only thank you. You’re…going, you said?”

“A half dozen of us. You’d be an asset, but”—she surveyed the room—“if you’d do more good here, as a healer and a familiar face, say so. I’m inclined to trust your judgment either way.”

“I’d rather…but I might be able to keep people calmer here, and if one of the demons slips past you all… No, I should stay.” Zelen quirked a grin. “Besides, it’s hardly as though you’ll need protection, is it?”

“Or you,” she said. They were too much in public for her to risk kissing him, but Branwyn squeezed his shoulder quickly. “Be careful, all the same. I’d like to see you again soon.”

That was true, and not merely because she wanted to go to bed with him. It would have been easier if that had been the only reason. Branwyn headed out quickly. She wouldn’t wait to hear if he echoed her sentiment, or to try to figure out whether he was only being polite if he did.

Those in the Order knew its reputation long before they chose whether or not to be reforged. Zelen struck her as an open-minded man, but the most open-minded of men had their unexpected blind spots.

And Branwyn had lied to him.

It had been in a good cause. She didn’t regret it. Where other members of the court were concerned, she might have said, and meant, that she hadn’t lied—she was a military envoy from Criwath—so much as left out certain information. Thinking of Zelen, thinking of herself, she couldn’t wish she’d chosen otherwise, but she also couldn’t couch it in terms other than lied.

Killing the remaining demons was brutal, clumsy, cold work. With five companions, all armed and focused on fighting, it wasn’t particularly dangerous by Branwyn’s standards, but the creatures were unpleasant to see, even for her, and a fight was a fight, demanding concentration. Even a rat can get lucky had been one of the first lessons she’d learned, and Your enemy’s luckiest when you’re the most confident another.

It still wasn’t enough to take her mind off Zelen for long, not completely. In the thick of battle, her vision narrowed, but once the demon shattered and vanished, Branwyn wound up wondering whether Zelen was all right back at the palace,