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

on the anvil. If Branwyn had done this—if Branwyn had been forced to it—if she hadn’t—

None of that means a thing, he told himself in the cold inflections that were the closest he could come to his mother’s rebukes. Your duty is to evaluate the situation as it is, not as it might be. That’s the whole of your responsibility just now.

He forced himself to make a closer inspection.

The mattress where Lord Rognozi had lain and died was soaked with blood and torn in several places, and the hangings on one side of the bed had been shredded, but nothing else in the room was damaged.

Lady Rognozi’s room was a very different story. Many of the small glass windowpanes had been shattered. So had the iron bars of the frames, in several places. The mirror on the dressing table lay in shards, and the table itself had practically been cleaved in half. Her bed-curtains had suffered as well, though not so badly as her lord’s—a few wide cuts, as if in passing.

Most notably of all, the wall on one side of the room had a great hole in it. Zelen could look, carefully, past splinters half a foot long and into the study on the other side.

There was no blood there, he noticed, nor any near the window. And while the broken part of the window was large enough for someone Branwyn’s size to crawl through, the edges were treacherous with broken glass and metal.

If the legends were true, a Sentinel might have had ways of getting through unharmed or might simply not care.

Nothing in any of the rooms provided a clue as to where Branwyn might have gone—and the more Zelen found out, the less sure he was of what had actually happened.

Chapter 22

Walking was a truly hellish experience. Not only did every part of Branwyn hurt, but the cloak that the child had brought her was barely large enough to provide any concealment. She had to walk bent over, which didn’t help her spine at all—although it did let her lean on the child more easily, which, to her embarrassment, she had to do often.

“You sure you don’t need a healer?” they asked, after they’d tugged Branwyn off the wall and put their good shoulder under her arm. “You don’t have bones sticking into your organs?”

“No,” she said, “thank you.” A few staggering steps later, it occurred to her to ask, “How do you know that can happen?”

“I listen to things.”

Evidently they also watched, and watched well. Their path didn’t take them through any main street, but rather into a maze of narrow, twisting alleys where buildings cast shadows even in the morning light.

The smell of salt water mingled with that of garbage, meat, and human refuse. They were near the docks, Branwyn suspected, and likely a tannery or two. She couldn’t narrow the location down any further. At times, particularly after a misstep jolted her or the light got in her eyes despite the cloak’s hood, she barely knew where she was even as far as “the back streets of Heliodar.”

“Here,” the child eventually said, and Branwyn looked up, dazed, at the blackened wreck of a building. “Caught fire a while back. Nobody’s going to go in there now. It hasn’t fallen down yet, though.”

“Yes,” said Branwyn, realizing the child had mistaken her confusion for reluctance. “That…good idea. Thank you.”

She grabbed the doorway and pulled herself in. Beneath the mostly intact roof, the world was mercifully dark, and while the floorboards were bare and hard, at least they weren’t wet. She focused on a corner out of sight of doors or windows and staggered in that direction, holding onto the wall for balance.

“I’m going to go now,” said the child once Branwyn had managed to lower herself to the floor. “Mam will be worrying.”

“That’s wise,” Branwyn said, rasping out the words. Now that she was sitting again, she had enough strength to explain more. “You should stay away. Whoever did this…” Her voice, which had been sliding away toward a whisper, gave out. She gulped and tried again. “Might want to hurt people who help me. And their families. I’ll be all right. I heal fast.”

“You’d better,” said the child. “That must’ve been some fight.”

They didn’t bother saying goodbye or reacting to Branwyn’s warning. Or maybe they did: Branwyn thought she only closed her eyes for a moment, but when she opened them again, she was alone in the abandoned house. There was still some light outside, but between her vision and the shadows around the building, she couldn’t tell how much or how long she’d been unconscious.

She still hurt, which was no surprise at all.

Slowly, she grasped what remained of her skirt and ripped off a wide piece of silk, then pulled the remains up to bare her right leg. The knee was monstrously swollen and livid purple. Touching it, even gently, nearly made her scream, and she battled to keep from vomiting, which would only increase her pain.

Probably broken, Branwyn said to herself when she could manage words again. She bit her lip, squinted with her good eye to compensate for her bad one, and began to wrap the silk around the joint as tightly as she could bear.

Zelen would have done it better, she thought, for many reasons. She tried not to wish him there. As she’d told the child, it was too dangerous. The reforging meant that his skills as a healer, while useful, weren’t vital, and the comfort of his presence wasn’t worth risking his neck. Branwyn had spent most of her life alone. Another few nights wouldn’t kill her.

It didn’t occur to her to wonder if she’d fought him, or worse, until it occurred to her to wonder why that hadn’t occurred to her. She froze then, and her vision went blurry.

No, don’t panic, she told herself, speaking the way Yathana had done more than once in Branwyn’s youth. Thinking of the sword made her throat close up, but she