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

clung to the silent words anyhow. Follow the lines of your thoughts. Why didn’t you assume he was your enemy? Because you’re fond of him?

Yes, but it was more than that, and there was a point there, one more important than reassuring herself that Zelen likely still lived. Branwyn started wrapping her knee again, giving her body a task so that her mind could work.

That must have been some fight, the child had said.

Zelen was good in a fight, but he would have used a weapon. Branwyn could find no cuts or scratches: all of her wounds were from impact. She’d assumed, probably rightly, that she’d transformed.

There was no chance at all that Zelen could have caused that much damage to her metal form. No human could have managed it. Blows could bruise, and monsters had done more, but Branwyn had been kicked by a horse when she’d been metal, and it had done no more than leave a vast black-and-blue spot across her side for a few days.

If she hadn’t transformed, her opponent hadn’t fought with steel. Large men with blunt instruments might have managed her injuries, but in that case she would have changed. Even if she’d been out of her mind, Yathana would have done it for her: the power was actually the soulsword’s.

Branwyn’s wounds suggested that she had changed, that she’d been metal for a time and still been hurt almost too badly to move.

And that, in turn, suggested a foe far more fearsome than any she’d known Heliodar to contain.

She’d spoken of possibilities to Mezannith after the ball. Now the worst one of all struck her as quite likely.

* * *

Murder or not, life went on in certain ways. The clinic was one. Zelen knew that Gedomir wouldn’t have understood or approved. He hoped the Rognozis would have done both, and believed that the lady would at any rate.

They were dead. Nothing worse could happen to them. Others still lived, and it was important to make sure that they could keep doing so, especially while Zelen tried to find another path to follow toward Branwyn. He poulticed a woman’s burned arm, cleaned and sewed a large gash on a man’s cheek, and sent another woman to Letar’s temple, as the rattle in her chest was beyond his power. It might well be beyond the Mourners’, too, for disease was a tricky matter, but she was strong and otherwise healthy, which gave her a decent chance.

It was good to have that sort of work to do. Burns and cuts were straightforward. Illness was different, but even there he had a rough idea of its shape. There were no hidden agendas, no swift turns to yank his footing away when he’d assumed it was smooth.

Altien asked no questions. The work unrolled under Zelen’s hands, putting a small amount of order back into the world. After he’d given a child spiced tea for a cold, he felt enough like himself to have a meal, or at least bread and cheese with a glass of wine.

Three bites in, he heard the outer door open. Altien was seeing to another patient, so Zelen put down the bread and cheese and poked his head around the corner of his office.

Tanya stood in front of the door, sling and cast considerably more grimy than they had been but still intact. Her good hand plucked restlessly at her skirt.

“Hello,” Zelen said gently. “How’s the arm?”

“All right. Um.” She peered around the outer room, which was empty, and then behind her at the door.

“We can talk in my office, if it would help,” said Zelen. That was all the invitation Tanya needed to dart inside.

“Um,” she said again, once she’d shut the inner door securely behind her. “Did the woman from Criwath really kill the high lord and his lady? My sister’s beau just came back from the tavern, and he said—”

“Nobody’s certain.” Zelen fought to keep his reply steady and gentle. “They are dead, sadly, and she’s gone, but that’s all that’s known right now.”

Tanya looked down at the carpet. “So she’s a bad person?”

“We don’t know that either”—and oh, it hurt to say, as did what followed. “If she did it, if she could control herself when she did it, and if she knew that she was killing helpless old people rather than monsters, then yes.”

“You mean she might not have meant to do it or known she was doing it? Like a spell?”

“That’s one possibility.”

His heart was beating faster and his stomach had closed up again, but still Zelen sat calmly, not pressing the girl for answers. Carefully, he arranged the assortment of quills on his desk, then brushed imaginary debris off the surface.

“Can you follow me?” Tanya finally asked.

Chapter 23

“Ah, damn it to the lowest of the hells,” the shape in the corner said, in a croak that half resembled Branwyn’s voice. “Child, I specifically told you not to tell him.”

“Yeah?” Tanya tilted her chin up, shook off the reassuring hand Zelen tried to place on her shoulder, and riposted. “Well, you didn’t tell me who you killed. So you’re lucky I didn’t go to the guard right away.”

“You did well,” said Zelen, not using Tanya’s name in case Branwyn really was as bad as the worst possibilities. He stepped forward, ready to meet her wrath, lightly gripping his sword.

The shape shifted again and he knew he wouldn’t need it. Even through the shadows, he could make out a broken nose and a swollen eye and could mark that every movement was bought with pain. And when Branwyn rasped a response, there was no anger in it, only bitterness. “Yes. With the information you have, doubtless I’d have made the same choice.” She paused for a labored inhalation. “Who did I kill?”

“Lord and Lady Rognozi,” said Zelen flatly, and waited for a response.

Her laughter, hoarse and cheerless, took him by surprise. As he stepped back, as Tanya let out an indignant and wordless noise, Branwyn found words. “Gods rest