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

the pain and the drug. “A demon,” he said, keeping her weight steady. “Like the ones we fought? Don’t move your head.”

“No. Th…”—she took a few breaths—“those were small. Kind that slip through the cracks when there’s magic. Or when a big one is summoned.”

“And such a demon could have killed the Rognozis,” said Altien. The three of them turned off the landing and onto the second floor. “Demons have not been my study, but it seems likely that it could have broken you in the process.”

Branwyn flinched. Zelen’s impulse was to comfort, but squeezing her shoulders would not help, to say the least. “Temporarily broken, I should say,” he said. “Considering.”

“Yesss. Even…even me. Even armed. Even—” She glanced over at Altien. “Ah, intrigue’s gone out the window. ’MSnetinel. Sentinel. Order of the Dawn.”

“They are also not my area of study, nor my people’s,” said Altien after many silent steps down the hallway, “but they seem to serve a valuable function and to do it well. I take it that would have given you no small advantage in combat, madam.”

“You take it c’rectly. But a demon, a real demon…might’ve been a match for me. Especially if it was fresh and I wasn’t. Of course, tha’s what I’d say if I was a murdererer hoping to get away with my crimes. So noted. But if I’m right”—she was fading again—“we have a considerably difficult situation.”

“Their bodies vanish,” Zelen put in hopefully. “You might have killed it. In here, Altien, please,” he added, jerking his chin toward the spare-room door.

“Would be nice if I had,” Branwyn agreed, “but the problem is, we don’t know. That is…a significant number of our problems here, Zelen. Funnnnnnamental uncertainty. ’Sgonna get us killed.”

“You are,” Zelen said, “in some ways the most well-spoken drunk I’ve ever met, if also the gloomiest.”

“And the most correct. And it’s the situation. And I’m not drunk.”

“Technically speaking,” said Altien, “the lady is correct.”

The spare room was large and dark, the bedclothes dim white shapes. Without needing to discuss it, Zelen and Altien turned so that Branwyn’s head was in line with the pillows, lifted her gently, and laid her on the bed. “Be careful,” she said, dazed and small in the sea of white.

She didn’t speak harshly, but Zelen still winced. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

“Wha—yes. Or, relatively. Why—oh. No. Not because of me,” she said, clearly believing she explained the obvious. “You should be careful because there could be a demon.”

“When couldn’t there be?” Zelen muttered a few phrases, and the magical lights shimmered faintly into existence. Pure and clear, they painted Branwyn’s wounds in unforgiving detail. “Gods have mercy.”

Darkness had blurred lines and taken the depth from colors. In the light, her face and neck were a study in red and purple: deep bruises, patches of missing skin, and dried blood. Blood had matted her hair in places, too, near where Zelen had felt the swellings on her head.

“They already have granted as much as you’ll gain from them by invocation,” said Altien. “Where does one obtain water and basins in this household? And do you have an adequate supply of female clothing?”

“Shockingly,” Zelen said, retreating into the joke, “no. Water and basins are in the kitchen.”

“I’ll go for them.”

“Really,” said Branwyn. She spoke with the slurred single-mindedness that Zelen had seen in many patients and more drunks—that he’d probably displayed a time or two, as the latter—but more desperation than was usual, “it’s not unlikely. And I can’t be of any assistance. I used my knives, and I’ve”—Zelen saw her eyes shine with more than the haze of the drug—“I’ve mislaid Yathana, and if I’ve failed so badly as to leave the demon alive—”

“Hush,” he said and, forgetting the last few days, took her hand. “If you went after a demon and took on all of this”—he gestured to the length of her body, with its broken skin and shattered knee—“as a result, that’s not failure.”

“It’s not success,” she said grimly.

“It’s a bloody lot more than most could’ve done.” Very gently, painfully aware of the places he shouldn’t even graze, he pushed a lock of hair back from Branwyn’s forehead. “I know injuries, mmm? Yours weren’t from a single blow. Whatever you fought, I’d lay odds it’s not feeling in peak condition just now itself.”

“Might still come after you, peak condition or not. ’M in your house.”

“And I’m not a Sentinel, but I’m not helpless. I’d be insulted that you thought so, except that I’ve drugged you.”

“Against a demon—”

Branwyn wasn’t exactly wrong. The small demons at the ball had been bad enough. The notion of a larger one out there, shambling its way toward him… Zelen grimaced but didn’t turn away from Branwyn. “There are a few things around here that’ll be better than steel, and some magical defenses as well,” he said. There were chests in the cellars. Winter hadn’t hit Heliodar as hard as other lands, but it, and the monsters that had come with it, had demanded a response. The great houses preserved their artifacts well. “Tomorrow, I’ll go to the temples and the mages for more… Don’t worry,” he added, seeing her stifle an objection. “After the ball, I shouldn’t wonder if they’ve got half the city asking for extra protection.”

Wire-tight muscles eased in Branwyn’s neck and shoulders. Zelen stroked her hair again and inwardly cursed all that kept him from doing more—the uncertainty of their situation as well as her injuries. As if reading his thoughts, she said, “I wouldn’ trust me too extens’vely, either, were I you.”

It wasn’t a quip, and Branwyn wasn’t seeking reassurance. Both of those were clear. She spoke bleak truth in a slurred, cracked voice, closing herself around the pain to do what was useful.

And it was truth she spoke. If she’d been possessed, she could be again. Spells didn’t necessarily only work once. Madness, or conditioning, was unpredictable. Zelen couldn’t say he should trust her or even that he did.

He’d done so not that long ago.