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

“Oh, lovely, a theological debate.” Zelen glanced toward the guards. “And you gentlemen? Faithful to the Backstabber? Blackmailed? Don’t care as long as the money spends?”

It was possible that the eyes of the guard on the right, a relatively new arrival whose name Zelen hadn’t learned, shifted. The one on the left, Nislar, opened his mouth, but Gedomir waved him to silence.

“Don’t bother with any of your tricks, Brother. Their fealty is far more certain than your honor.”

“Honor, off ’er.” Zelen grinned with bleeding lips, falling into the accent of the docks. “Depends on the night, doesn’t it?” That got him another blow, this one to the right eye.

“I’d hoped there was more sense and less filth in you,” said Gedomir. “Foolish of me.”

“Absolutely. You do know that I told Tinival’s people about you, don’t you? Swore in front of a knight and all that? And by the way, I’d start hitting with the other hand soon. You’re apt to sprain a finger at this rate.”

“I’d have expected nothing else,” said Gedomir. “But it won’t matter.”

“No? Going to take over the world before they can act? Flee west and join up with Thyran?”

Gedomir didn’t switch hands, but he did make a fist and aim for just under the rib cage that time.

“Don’t speak that idiotic upstart’s name in this house. If not for his…whims, your strumpet would have no war to drag us into. We could proceed to our goal in an orderly fashion, as He always intended.”

There were several points of possible debate there, but Zelen was trying to breathe.

Gedomir continued. “I’m certain you did swear. I’ll be just as certain that you honestly believed what you were saying, you poor fool. After all, the Sentinel doubtless has many wiles, and you were never the most…stable…young man. Returning home to drown yourself will only prove that you realized, too late, where your madness had led you.”

“You”—Zelen gasped out—“think they’ll believe it?”

“They won’t have the power to do otherwise. The high lord’s dead, no heir has been selected, and the knights don’t rule the city, much as they may wish it. Our parents and Alize honestly will know nothing of what’s happened here. By the time a suitable candidate takes the seat, your woman will be dead, and you’ll be no more than an unfortunate footnote to the whole messy business. Take him to the lake,” Gedomir said to the guards. “Hold him under before you throw him in. I don’t want any busybody saying that he didn’t look as though he’d drowned.”

“I can’t blame you for your ignorance,” he told Zelen, “but I had hoped you’d have more regard for your own blood, even so.”

Zelen drew himself upright, despite the sickening pain in his stomach. “The rest of us have four gods to your one, Brother, and the Dark Lady isn’t known for forgiveness. If I were you, I’d worry less about what’s in my veins and more about what’s on my hands.”

That time, Gedomir didn’t even bother to hit him. He just addressed the guard on the left. “Make it last awhile.”

* * *

For a wonder, the footsteps outside did go past the door, while Branwyn waited with bared sword and Tanya hid in the corner behind her. They slowly grew fainter. A heavy door opened down the hall, then closed, and Branwyn, even with her gift, could hear no more.

“Can you walk?” she whispered, and Tanya nodded.

Good, said Yathana. Things are moving here.

“Moving how? I’m a Sentinel,” she added to Tanya, who was looking confused. “I talk with my sword.”

“Oh.”

Getting worse. A wizard could explain it better. A wizard could understand it better.

“But?” Branwyn asked, opening the door. She glanced in either direction and spotted no threat, so stepped quickly out into the hallway, beckoning for Tanya to follow.

But it has the feel of a tower ready to fall. Too much balanced on too little foundation, or too many supports knocked out. Could be both.

Branwyn, who didn’t want to risk speaking now that they were in the hall, nodded and grimaced.

More good news, Yathana added. Unless you saw a door that I didn’t, we’re going to have to go in that direction to get the child out.

If silence hadn’t been important, Branwyn would have cursed. There was nothing to be done about it, though, nor would there have been if she’d known. Branwyn started down the long hallway, opening one door after another in the hopes of finding an exit and listening all the while to make sure Tanya still followed.

The girl stuck close, walked quickly despite her long immobility, and kept as quiet as she could. Little weight and bare feet helped there. So, Branwyn suspected, did a childhood spent on the wrong side of the law at times, and not only when sheltering dangerous fugitives.

None of the doors led outside, nor to another hallway. One room had chairs and tables draped with dark cloth, as carefully cleaned but as bare of activity as much of the rest of the wing had been so far. Another, equally lifeless, had a series of cords hanging down off one wall, limp and dark.

That was how you called servants, said Yathana. Pulling on those would ring bells in their quarters, or make sounds through enchanted jewelry if your family was rich enough. House servants on the right, grooms and guards on the left.

Branwyn closed that door slowly, feeling as though she were putting the lid back on a coffin.

Finally she saw their salvation up ahead, obvious without her even having to open a door. The hallway branched into a lopsided T shape. A sharp right turn led down a long hallway, and a short stub of the path she was on ended in a thick set of double doors.

They looked normal enough, those doors. Underneath them, though, and from the tiny crack between them, Branwyn could see dull orange light, faint but definite. Even if she hadn’t known better from what Yathana had said, she couldn’t have