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

“You bastard!” He was on his feet as soon as he recognized Zelen, then running forward headfirst with tiny fists upraised. “You lying son of a whore, you—”

Zelen caught him by the shoulders, breaking the charge. The force as the boy struggled spoke of his desperation, but even his flailing arms couldn’t do much damage. “Easy now. I don’t doubt you’ve got a good reason for thinking I’m everything you claim, but I swear I haven’t knowingly hurt anybody. Tell me what’s wrong, and let’s see if we can’t sort it out.”

The flood of expletives cut off. The boy froze, staring at Zelen as tears of rage made cleaner lines down his cheeks. “Sort it out? Like you did before? With my brother, Jaron, and Cynric, and pretending to help us? Acting like you were a friend to our sort, like—” He choked off whatever he was going to say next and lunged for Zelen again. “Where’s Tanya, you godsdamn liar?”

* * *

Branwyn didn’t know who the boy was talking about. Her mind immediately leapt to the child who’d found her in the alley, but she couldn’t trust her judgment on that. There were more than a few street urchins in the city. The disappearance of one might have nothing to do with another’s inclination to help strange wounded women.

She kept listening, not bothering to hide that fact. The valet had waved the maid back to her bed and was standing a discreet, or plausibly deniable, distance from the door. Branwyn had tried to wave him back in turn, but he’d simply shaken his head. Branwyn couldn’t blame him. Oath or not, she was an unknown quantity with a sword.

There was silence for a while, and Branwyn’s lesser gift enabled her to truly know that it was silence, not whispering.

Likely Tanya’s name took your boy by shock, said Yathana, and likely the child observed as much. Wasn’t what he was expecting. Children like that get good at reading people.

“I don’t know,” Zelen eventually said. “I had no idea she was gone until you spoke. I’ll take any oath you want on that, in front of any priest you want.”

“You… But…she…” The torrent of rage had turned into confusion and despair.

“Sit down, won’t you? Have a sip of that tea and a bite to eat.” Branwyn heard footsteps, then Zelen opened the door a crack. “Bran—Oh, Idriel, good. Get me clothes and a sword, would you? And rouse Jander and Lena. This might take a bit of force.”

“Right away, sir,” said the valet, glancing past him toward the boy, who was holding his mug like he wasn’t sure what to do with it. “Are you sure?”

“He wouldn’t do this on a prank,” Zelen said, “and if it turns out to be all a misunderstanding, I’d rather look foolish than otherwise. Thank you.”

He returned to the room.

“What are you going to do?” Branwyn heard the boy ask.

“Go and find her, of course. Any bit of information you can give me will help, but not until you’ve drunk at least half that and eaten three bites of the cake. You’ll be more harm than good talking until you get yourself steady. Gods help me, I know that.”

Branwyn heard the muffled noises of eating and drinking, as well as footsteps. Zelen was pacing, she guessed.

“When you’ve finished,” he said, “and not before, let’s start with the obvious question. Why did you think I was the one who’d kidnapped Tanya—or all of the missing, going by what you said earlier when you were trying to break my jaw with your head? By the way, old man, excellent effort, but I’d have thrown the tea at me first off, were I in your place.”

The boy laughed nervously, but almost immediately began. “We were playing before dinner. In an alley. I wasn’t daring her to do nothing dangerous, not after she broke her arm, so we stuck to ground. I was hiding and she was looking for me, that was all. Except she didn’t find me by time, so I headed back to the start…and I saw her. She—” The flow of words sped up and became ragged. “There were two men dragging her into a carriage. One had his hand on her mouth so she couldn’t scream. The other was a man I’d seen before. With you. When you said you were trying to find my brother.”

* * *

No wonder we didn’t find a damned thing was Zelen’s first thought.

His second thought wasn’t really a thought at all. It was pure rage, unfiltered by words. His family was the immediate target, but he himself wasn’t far behind. The connection between the missing children and the demon, not to mention Gedomir’s talk of “expeditions” and “supply,” was obvious in retrospect. If he’d reflected on it more…

That didn’t matter. The boy—Mitri—was staring at him, waiting for a response. Tanya was in his family’s grasp, waiting for a response as well.

“Well,” Zelen said, “trying to stab me was basically sound. Just a tad misdirected, and you weren’t to know.” Mitri blinked. “Never mind. I’ve found out a few things about my family recently. This is one more. Finish up the rest of the food. I don’t suppose you’ll wait quietly here while I take care of matters?”

“Like Sitha’s arse I will!”

“The right spirit, I must say.” Zelen went to the door again. “Idriel, if—”

“He’s just coming back,” said Branwyn. “Get me a paper and pen. I’ll write a message to Lycellias while you’re getting dressed and having the horses saddled. I dress very quickly when I need to, and your grooms won’t listen to me quite as well as they will to you. You don’t think she’s in the city, do you?”

“No,” he said. “They wouldn’t have brought a coach, and”—he glanced over his shoulder at Dimitri, who was staring past him at Branwyn—“the situation’s at the house in the country.”

Zelen did the math as he turned to retrieve writing implements, calculating how