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  Against his chest, he felt the cold steel of the blade, caught a withering look as Lauresa glanced back to him.

  “You are dismissed, tyro. We grieve with you for Barien’s loss.”

  “Highness.” Chriani nodded, caught Ashlund’s dark look as he and the others escorted Lauresa away. He followed them to the central court, watched them make for the great hall and the throne room beyond as he headed for the gates.

  On the walls, he walked the morning away, not remembering any details of the routes he paced or the people he passed until Vanad, the younger tyro he’d seen the previous night, came looking for him.

  “Message from Konaugo,” he said. “You’re to the armories.” Chriani only nodded, then took his time making his way to the Bastion barracks. Through the gate to central court, there were a half-dozen guards on duty where there’d been two the morning before. They returned his salute as he passed, Chriani’s footsteps echoing where shadowed arches climbed into the bright light of the lamps above. The same view he’d seen through untold days, but it felt different now. An outsider’s perspective. Feeling the cold in the stone as he hadn’t felt it since that first day he’d been dragged here on Konaugo’s orders. Then, he’d feared that when the gates pounded shut for the night, he’d be trapped inside them. Now, he knew that when they shut, he’d be outside.

  The garrison halls were alive with movement, couriers passing in both directions alongside a steady stream of the prince’s guard emerging from the armory corridors, armor and weapons bundled and slung between them where they walked two by two. He asked after Konaugo, a terse nod directing him to the southeast tower.

  The armory was a great deal emptier than it had been the night before. Something happening. As Konaugo checked the edges on a brace of longswords, the ranger at his side nudged him, the captain looking up to see Chriani in the doorway.

  “The prince’s company rides tonight. Get two score shields and spears to the stables. Bundle three hundred broadhead shafts in quivers of twelve, as many of the officers’ arrows in equal number. Be quicker about it than you were in getting here.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  Konaugo returned Chriani’s salute with a detached air, but whether he’d forgotten his anger of the night before or simply had more important things on his mind, Chriani didn’t know or care.

  The Bastion armory had always seemed an anachronism, a legacy of a much older, much more troubled time. The larger armories of the city outfitted garrison, constabulary, and the rangers who patrolled the far southern borderlands and the Locanwater steppes along the Greatwood’s edge. The Bastion armory was the prince’s own, though, and as well-tested as his guard was, the long years of Chanist’s peace meant that the spears he pulled from their tall black racks had rarely seen handling beyond the time it took to edge and oil them.

  The air was thick with dust as Chriani worked, and over the time it took him to bundle and pack spears and shields from the armory, out of the Bastion, and across the keep to the stable gates, his lungs and eyes were heavy with it. He checked and counted out the arrows, cut himself once on a razor-sharp head. Virtually all officers of the prince’s guard cut and fletched their own shafts, a tradition that extended back to the Incursions. Each with some color, some pattern, some marking of runes along the wood that would identify them. In the time of Chanist’s father, they had ranked their count of the dead that way, it was said.

  Konaugo’s own arrows had his K scribed on the blades, charcoal-blackened shafts and crow-feather fletching. For shooting in darkness, Chriani suspected. Invisible where they would cut you down. He checked the spin and the balance as his mother had taught him, noted with annoyance that Konaugo seemed to know what he was doing.

  Chriani had given up wondering by his third trip whether the captain had enlisted any other tyros to assist him, not bothering to count the subsequent trips that he spent in wondering what had happened to inspire all the sudden activity. An attack on the prince high certainly accounted for the stronger defensive presence in the keep and the Bastion itself. But in the stable, there was Chanist’s own stallion being groomed and shod by Kathlan while Ashlund checked over its harness and tack. Outside the gates, Chriani counted forty horses to match the number of quivers he unlashed the last of, watching one of Ashlund’s party from the night before distribute them.

  At the sight of Kathlan, Chriani faded back, a sudden reflex. From the doorway, he watched her, tried to still the pain that flared suddenly in his chest and his gut.

  He drifted carefully into the shadows then, slipped behind him to the still air of the leatherworks. As anxious as he was to not let it be known he was available for further orders, he was more anxious to listen to the snatches of conversation he could overhear through the gapped wall to the stable proper. He’d had his ear to the wall for a short while, catching Ashlund mutter something about the height of the prince’s stirrups and Kathlan respond indelicately that he engage in an action as disturbing as it was probably physically impossible.

  He heard a louder voice from behind him, then.

  “Have you lost something, tyro?”

  Chriani wheeled, back flat to the boards. Across from him, Chanist glanced up from the shadows.

  “Forgive me, my lord prince. I did not see you.”

  “Clearly,” Chanist said. He was standing at a low table, carefully working an awl into what Chriani recognized was the prince high’s own armor. The breastplate had the stallion and the falcon side by side in gold leaf, laid out before Chanist where he adjusted its leather fittings.

  “I wear this infrequently enough that either it or my shoulders seem to forget each other when they meet again. We ride tonight, as you have no doubt been told.”

  “Yes, my lord prince.” Chriani was carefully judging the distance to the door, trying desperately to think of what excuse he’d use to try to get through it.

  “Help me on with this.”

  As the prince hefted the breastplate, Chriani nodded, fumbling his way through dust and shadow to stand awkwardly behind him.

  “Unless your arms are longer than they look, you may approach.”

  Chriani closed inside the customary five steps, helped Chanist lift the breastplate and settle it across his shoulders.

  “What have they told you thus far, tyro? Of the events of last night?”

  Chriani tried to swallow the sudden tightness in his throat.

  “Nothing, my lord prince.”

  “And what have you deduced all the same?”

  The blue eyes flicked back to meet his. Chanist smiled.

  “I ask you not to trap you, tyro. But I know how keen Barien claimed your powers of observation to be. If you tell me what you know, I can safely assume that most in the Bastion have so far deduced much less. Secrecy is of the essence for us in our action tonight. I would like an honest assessment of how much of it we have.”

  As he watched Chanist carefully adjust cinches and straps, Chriani considered carefully.

  “I know more than I should, my lord prince, and less than I would. Barien was attacked in the central court. You were attacked in the throne room before then. Whether Barien was pursuing your attacker or caught by surprise, only he can say but I know what I would believe.”

  “As do I.” Chanist took a step away, turned at the waist so that the interlocking plates of his armor shifted and set. Chriani felt a distance in the prince suddenly, felt the weight of things going on around him as he had in the throne room that night.

  “I would know the full matter of Barien’s death, my lord prince.”

  Chriani hadn’t known he was going to say it until the words were out. No idea where the will to speak them had even come from.

  Chanist turned back slowly. He swung his arm through a full range of motion, adjusted something beneath his shoulder plate as he appraised Chriani. But instead of the expected anger, there was an unaccustomed uncertainty to the Prince’s look as he spoke.

  “To what end, master Chrian
i?”

  “Because I have nothing else, my lord prince.”

  Where Chanist took his bracers from the bench, he slowly pulled them on. Too late, Chriani recognized that in the prince high’s using his name, there had been a subtle message sent. An invitation to choose his words equally carefully, but Chriani’s thoughts were racing, too far gone for that.

  Chanist was silent for a long moment before he spoke.

  “Last night, Barien was waiting for me when I returned from riding late,” the prince high said. “He asked for a private word. I dismissed my escort and we adjourned to my chambers, where Barien told me of intelligence of a possible assassination attempt within the court, he knew nothing more than that. I told him to find Captain Konaugo, we would meet immediately.”

  Chriani felt a chill thread through him. There was a tremor in his hand suddenly. He squeezed it tight.

  “But as I entered the throne room, I was attacked. I prevailed. The attacker apparently found his way to the war room, escaping from there with sorcery. Whatever he sought there, I doubt he had time to find it.”

  Chriani tried not to focus on the essential falsehood that wrapped the prince’s words. Impassive where he sifted out the new truth from the truth he’d known before, then sifted again.

  “Between the time the intruder escaped the throne room and gained access to the war room, he attacked Barien in the hall of records. Brandis’s blood be given again, I would that he had gone straight to the tower and taken all he found there but let Barien live.”

  He could see Chanist watching him, tried to avoid his gaze but couldn’t. A kind of power in the blue eyes that went beyond mere rank. He felt the dagger within his shirt, heard the echo of Barien’s warnings, but he and the prince were alone now in a way that should never have happened and would likely never happen again.

  “My lord prince, I have…”

  And even then, there was movement at the doorway. Chriani was already five steps from the prince again, backing up from some unknown instinct just as the familiar bulk of Konaugo pressed through, four others behind him.

  “My lord prince,” Konaugo began before the dark eyes caught Chriani in the shadows.

  “A moment, please, captain.” To Chriani, he nodded to continue.

  Chriani felt the chill of metal at his stomach, Konaugo’s gaze just as cold. Trust him not.

  He hadn’t dared reach for the dagger in the prince’s presence. He was thankful for that now.

  “You have what, master Chriani?”

  “I have knowledge of the assassin’s origins, my lord prince.”

  Outside, he could hear horses on the gravel of the gatehouse path, the troupe saddling up. Presumably what Konaugo had come to announce.

  Chanist’s expression was unreadable.

  “Explain yourself.”

  “Captain Konaugo spoke to me in the barracks afterward of Barien being killed by a bloodblade,” Chriani said evenly. The look that flashed from Chanist to the captain had the steely strength of a backhand blow behind it. Konaugo paled for what Chriani thought was probably the very first time. “If this is true, then one must believe that the Valnirata warclans are behind this attempt on your life, my lord prince.”

  Chanist was silent a moment.

  “You are as astute as Barien often boasted,” he said finally. In the prince’s voice, Chriani heard an unfamiliar edge. A degree of respect he’d never heard before.

  “My lord prince…” Konaugo began, but Chanist cut him off with a wave.

  “Ignoring the fact that it was your word that would have sent the tyro to Five Hog’s House tonight to swap what he knows for the thousand rumors already there, all Rheran will know where we’ve gone by this time tomorrow.”

  To Chriani, the prince high nodded.

  “He was Ilvani, marked of the Valnirata. He carried one of their daggers, the bloodblades. The narneth móir, they call them. An assassin’s weapon the like of those driven into my brother’s and sister’s backs, and which cut the heart from my father before he was staked out for the crows.”

  Chriani was conscious of his own breathing, the silence around them absolute.

  “That was the blade that slew Barien,” Chanist said, and the hard anger in the prince high’s voice made Chriani look away. From the corner of his eye, he saw Konaugo and both his riders do the same.

  And in the prince’s anger, Chriani suddenly felt his own anger fall away, and in the space it left within him, he felt the single thought rise that had churned in him for nearly a day now. The thing he’d told the prince the night before. The thing that twisted beneath the fear and the loss that battered at his instincts and his senses like the winter-driven sea.

  “My daughter spoke of you at length last night,” Chanist said carefully. Chriani felt himself flush, hoped the dust-streaked shadows of the stables would conceal it. “She said you stayed at her side through the alarm, waiting there to be relieved. That you didn’t even open the door to see what disaster had fallen beyond.”

  “Yes, my lord prince.”

  At the High Summer celebrations two years past, he’d seen Barien not back down from the challenge of four members of an Aerach escort, their choice of weapons. Not a fight to the death, to be sure, but their blades had been as sharp as his where he’d deftly disarmed them one by one, then carved the falcon of Brandis into their captain’s leather, stroke by stroke to the jeers of the festival crowd.

  “An alarm raised in the Bastion,” Chanist said, “and your only thought was to stay behind a locked door. I am curious as to why.”

  On that trip north to Elalantar, when Lauresa had pressed the handkerchief into his hands, he’d seen Barien ride down three wolves to fly straight at the brute that led them. One of the monstrous fell wolves of the Ebaradar passes to the west, the graowin as the Elalanti called them. A hulking brute, a wolf in shape only, nearly as tall as Barien’s horse where the warrior cut hard past it, launching himself from the saddle and swinging into it with axe and sword.

  “Barien taught me that the duty of a royal warden is to his charge, my lord prince.” There was a strength in Chriani’s voice that belied the fear he felt, reflected back in Konaugo’s dark look. He breathed deep, the chill of winter air coming in through the open gates.

  Last night, it had been the fear in Barien’s voice that had awoken him. But what could have made the warrior that afraid?

  “I had been ordered to guard the princess, my lord prince, and would have done so though the Bastion fell around us both. And had you or this captain or Barien himself attempted to breach her doors last night without answering my challenge, I would have died happily in my attempt to cut you down.”

  Chriani waited for the blow to fall, not knowing whether it would be Konaugo or the prince himself who landed it. But instead, Chanist smiled. A weariness in his look, Chriani thought. The mask of age.

  “Barien taught you to speak your mind in addition to all else,” the prince said quietly. He glanced up to Konaugo and the others, a single look sending them off. Konaugo caught Chriani’s eyes before he went, his malice seeming to linger in the shadows as he left them alone.

  “When Barien stayed with my court after the departure of the Princess Precedent Irdaign,” Chanist said, “he swore to hold my daughter’s life more dear than his own…” He faltered suddenly, looked to the doorway as horses were led out, the sky already darkening in the east. “I see that dedication in you, master Chriani. It will serve you well in my court.”

  The prince grasped Chriani’s arm, then, wrist to forearm, squeezed it in a grip that Chriani had to struggle to return. A sword-hand’s strength, viselike.

  He should have made rank at least a year before. Barien had championed him, had given him opportunity he’d squandered to buy himself a spot in the gatehouse guard for life.

  Chriani watched from behind the slatted walls as the prince’s company assembled at the gates, then climbed to the top of the wall again to watch them as they took the road. The
cloud of distant dust settled slowly behind them, the riders beyond it disappearing into the distant tree line, off the road and onto the secret trails the rangers used.

  Beneath his shirt, Chriani felt the scabbard, thought he could feel the bloody lines that etched the blade within. The narneth móir, they called it.

  He felt his chest and shoulder burning again. He saw in his minds’ eye the pattern his mother had made there. He sensed the delicate war-mark of the blade that was his own mark’s perfect match.

  Halobrelia forest-heart… Words from a rhyme his mother had sung to him, a long time ago now. Her songs were one of the few things from her life that he couldn’t remember anymore.

  It was long after dark when he forced the thoughts from his mind, later when he returned to the gatehouse barracks. Later still before he finally managed to sleep.

  — Chapter 5 —

  FIVE HOG’S HOUSE

  THROUGHOUT THE NEXT DAY, Chriani heard nothing from or of the Princess Lauresa, but there were enough other things to be listened to and overheard where whispered rumors of the reasons for the late ride of the prince’s guard swept across the keep and the city around it like cold rain. Despite the air of secrecy and the pall still hanging over the near-death of the king and the funeral of the boisterous sergeant who had fallen in his place, there was a strange and unknown energy in the air. Expectation, Chriani thought. Waiting.

  The state of things within the Bastion he couldn’t speak to, its doors closed off to him now. And for most of the day while he made himself busy with the gatehouse routine that was to become his life, he wondered what he’d do if he didn’t hear from her again. In his gut, he couldn’t shake the feeling like whatever part he’d had to play in the aftermath of his own life ending was over now, picked up by other people. He was a courier, relaying what he’d seen and heard, then stepping back to let other people decide the significance of those things.