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

they could get too loud. “She didn’t kill the Rognozis. She and I have discovered who did, and we’ll swear to that. I’d like you to hear the oaths. In return, you’ll swear those that the knight asks of you. They’ll likely want you to keep silent about this for a few days.”

“Of course, my lord,” said Feyher. He looked startled, which Zelen had almost never seen from him, but there was neither hesitation nor question in his answer.

“Will she be staying here, m’lord?” asked Barthani.

“Yes. Do you object?”

“If her word’s good enough for Tinival, it’s good enough for us,” said Idriel.

Zelen nodded his appreciation, then added, “If you hear what we swear to and feel you can’t stay here any longer, I’ll understand. You’ll have a good character and two weeks’ pay.”

They all exchanged glances at that, even Feyher, but there was no time for questions. A quick knock came on the study door, followed by Altien’s voice. “Is everyone prepared?”

“As much as possible,” Zelen said, opening the door.

Altien stepped quickly into the room and to the side, taking up a place by the youngest housemaid. Behind him came Branwyn, as respectable as she could be in bare feet and what all the servants would recognize as Zelen’s clothing, and Lycellias behind her. His silver breastplate shone in the light, and the silver work on the sheath of his sword put Yathana’s ornamentation to shame, more so because it was genuine.

He tilted his head a little when he saw the assembled servants. “Good afternoon to you all,” he said. “I am Lycellias. How many are swearing?”

“Only me,” said Zelen, “and Sentinel Branwyn.”

A third murmur went around the circle. Zelen knew it wouldn’t be the last.

“Well enough. Sit as you feel comfortable.” When Branwyn and Zelen had taken chairs, and Altien and the servants had dispersed themselves as well as they would fit on couches, Lycellias walked over to stand in front of Branwyn. “The lady first,” he said, barely hinting that he recognized the person the city’d spent the last few days searching for. “Do you know how this proceeds?”

“I do.”

Lycellias nodded. One long-fingered hand went to his brow, then out to the east, first two fingers upright and the others folded down. “Tinival, you hear and see past all artifice. Yours is the wind that scours away falsehood, yours the knowledge of justice, yours the eyes that pierce every veil. Grant that I, your servant, may share in your gift, for the good of your world.”

A small breeze blew through the closed study, bringing with it the smell of roses and rain.

The knight touched his fingers lightly to Branwyn’s lips. “Speak your piece to me and to the gods, child of creation.”

Her story left out most of the gory details, but it was bad enough. One of the grooms covered her mouth at the description of Lady Rognozi’s death, and when Branwyn described the demon, the immovable Feyher shuddered. Lycellias himself grew graver and graver as he listened.

“You tell no lies,” he said at the end, “though I could almost wish you did, Sentinel. My temple, and the Healer’s, will have much work to do tonight.”

“More than that, I’m afraid,” said Zelen.

His story, once he’d taken the oath, wasn’t even really a story. “I found Branwyn’s soulsword, with a bloody handprint on it, yesterday,” he began, “behind a bookcase in my family’s country house.” There wasn’t much else to say about that, save to describe the conversation that he’d overheard while he was smuggling Yathana out, and the sword’s secondhand statement about Hanyi. “So,” he finished, “it seems that the rest of my family worship the Traitor. I don’t. I can take further vows along those lines, if that would help.”

“No,” said Lycellias, “that won’t be necessary.” He regarded the servants, who had moved on to looking different versions of stunned. “I’ll take all of your oaths, good people, that you’ll let four days and nights pass before speaking of this matter. After that”—he glanced back to Zelen, Branwyn, and Altien—“the four of us must hold conversation.”

* * *

It was a relief when the oath taking was done, the servants went about their business, and Branwyn was left in the study with Zelen, Altiensarn, and the knight. She was eager to learn what would happen to the Verengirs for the sake of her mission as well as Zelen’s peace of mind. She was also tired of being stared at.

The servants were likely quite nice people, particularly the valet, who’d taken Zelen aside to ask if he was all right, and the cook, who’d given all of them a keen glance and then declared that dinner for four would be ready before very long, assuming none of them minded a simple meal. Branwyn couldn’t even blame them for being curious. Sentinels were rare and strange. A Sentinel who had also been a suspected murderer, but now wasn’t, and had come face-to-face with a greater demon… Yes, Branwyn would likely have stared, and not done half as good a job hiding it as even the younger of the grooms.

Still, they and Lycellias were the first people other than Zelen and Altien she’d seen in days, and their regard was wearying. When the door closed behind the last of them, she was glad to be in a room with only familiar people and the preoccupied knight.

“How many armed guards do you believe your family has?” he asked Zelen, exactly as Branwyn had an hour or so before. “And what do you estimate their training and disposition to be?”

“A half-dozen professional guards,” said Zelen, seating himself on the couch next to Branwyn. “I’d say they’re about as well trained as any of the patrolmen in the city. Two watch each of the outer doors every night, and when I was growing up, they changed every four hours. The grooms and the coach drivers can likely pick up clubs if they need to, so that’s another half dozen, and Gedomir’s decent with a