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

voice like rustling leaves. “The horses are standing, and I’m ready to assist.”

“Wha—” Branwyn said. The syrup was starting to take effect in earnest, and she wouldn’t have had the strength to be alarmed anyhow, but confusion was entirely possible. She blinked at the darkness. It became one of the waterfolk, who regarded her dispassionately out of amber eyes and folded supple legs to kneel down by her feet.

“A friend,” said Zelen, moving to her head. He slid his palms under her shoulders. “He’s not wealthy or noble—not as the council sees it—and I trust him with my life.”

“Oh,” said Branwyn. That would have to be good enough for her. Perhaps it was the painkiller or her injuries, but she had no difficulty convincing herself that it was. The waterman’s touch was soft on her good ankle. His hands had fur like a rabbit’s.

She didn’t see the signal that passed between Zelen and his companion, nor did they speak. Branwyn was on the ground, and then she wasn’t. The world was moving.

Outside was dark. For a little while it was cold. Then they lifted her again. She heard horses, shifting their weight and snorting, and she was passed onto the seat of a large carriage. Zelen knelt beside her, one hand at her shoulder and one on her thigh.

Branwyn didn’t look at his face. It would be just as painful to find faith in her there, when she herself didn’t know if she deserved it.

The world had developed fuzzy edges and was fading fast away from her.

That was all right. That was good. As the carriage started to move, she let her consciousness go with it, rolling like a small boat on large waves.

* * *

When Branwyn’s eyelids closed and her breathing faded into the deep steadiness of drugged sleep, Zelen muttered quick prayers of thanks to all the gods: Letar for the healing, Sitha for the craft of the syrup, and Poram for the plants that had gone into it. Neither justice nor battle seemed terribly relevant, but he thanked Tinival regardless—best to leave nobody out, and the words kept him busy.

Branwyn’s sleep would spare them both. She wouldn’t feel the drive—Altiensarn was careful, but the streets were never perfectly smooth, particularly not in the slums where Branwyn had been hiding, and they included a number of sharp turns. For Zelen’s part, he wouldn’t be tempted to ask her questions that he knew she couldn’t answer, even if it had been at all wise for her to speak.

He makes treachery of bonds, and bonds of treachery. Zelen had read plenty of theological poems in his youth, when he’d still aspired to the priesthood. That one, on Gizath’s nature, had been truly disturbing. The Traitor God didn’t just rule over flagrant backstabbing or the magical process of setting a thing’s nature against itself, but the dark side of all the ties mortals had to each other—the ones he’d truly and, some said, wisely ruled before his fall. Under his guidance, faith became fanaticism, love obsession, and loyalty slavery or blindness. The priests said as much, but few put it with such frightening clarity.

Darkness hid Branwyn’s face, but Zelen remembered it well enough. It had still been bruised and bloodied when he and Altiensarn had carried her out of the building, but already far less swollen than he would have expected after a few hours, even a day. The cheekbone was almost mended.

Sentinel, he thought, and stared at her.

There were plenty of stories. The Sentinels were necessary in all of them, but in the best they were still ruthless and alien, living weapons without the divine guidance or the almost ascetic focus of the Blades. Grimmer tales spoke of berserker rages or said that the soulswords needed to kill a living creature every month to keep their powers.

Once Zelen had passed the age when being able to scare friends over wine was a mark of prestige, he’d never really listened to the tales.

Branwyn slept in drugged peace. Nobody would have mistaken her for fragile—even when she’d been curled in the corner, her eyes heart-stoppingly distant, there’d been a sense of endurance, rather than helplessness, about her—but her face might have been gentle beneath the damage.

There’d be more convenient prey for a blood-drinking sword than the High Lord of Heliodar and his lady, whether animals or people whose deaths wouldn’t attract the whole city’s attention. Berserker rage fit the scene but didn’t pair with the premeditation that getting Yathana would have implied, or the damage to Lady Rognozi’s room but not her lord’s. The lady might have run, might have fought, but a struggle that put holes in walls and shattered furniture? That would have been difficult for a hulking dockhand in their prime. Branwyn could have destroyed the room out of rage, but why that one and not Lord Rognozi’s?

Zelen knew he couldn’t trust his judgment for any sort of ultimate decision. He knew what he wanted to be true, and he knew how badly he wanted it. There was no getting around that.

The carriage sped on, darkness inside and out.

Chapter 25

Even Idriel and Feyher had the night off. That would arouse suspicion before very long, but if the gods were kind and Zelen was competent, he’d have more idea what Branwyn had or hadn’t done by then, not to mention a shred of real evidence. If not, they might all be dead regardless.

Branwyn added more fuel to that fire when she woke halfway up the stairs in the front hallway. She came back to consciousness in total stillness, looked up at him, and said, “There might be a demon. I didn’t want to alarm the child. They couldn’t do anything if there was. And then…couldn’t talk.”

Even then her voice was slurred, the faint roll of her r’s exaggerated and her words punctuated with seemingly random stops and starts. Her eyes were glassy in the dim light, but Zelen didn’t believe for a heartbeat that she was only rambling from