Clearwater Dawn (36 page)

Where his tunic suddenly shredded across his stomach, Chriani saw the dark lines of Dargana’s bloodblade in her hand. He flinched in spite of himself as it flashed twice more in the faint light. On his stomach, two razor-thin lines bled faintly where she’d cut the hidden scabbard from him, her look dark as she unsheathed his blade that matched her own.

“Carrying a narneth móir of House Halobrelia is to invite slow torture before the merciful death that your lineage warrants in the first place,” she said. “Had you not borne the war-mark, I would have slain you on the sands.”

“I wear that mark by right,” Chriani said quietly. “My father was a Halobrelia exile. Like you.”

Dargana struck him with a backhand blow that darkened his vision for a moment with the force of it. Even sharper was the touch of Lauresa’s mind, and the sudden spike of fear he felt there that made Chriani understand suddenly what had driven her silence all this time. All the fear in her that she didn’t want him to feel. All the truth in him she didn’t want to hear.

“No half-blood compares its fallen father to what I am,” Dargana said coldly. “Do not make that mistake again.”

But before Chriani could respond, the exile leader had turned to Lauresa where she was held.

“And then this one,” she said.

As the princess shrunk back, Dargana had to lift her head, glanced back once to Chriani. “Even without that mark, you’re no closer to Brandishear nobility than I am. But this one’s never been more than a week away from a featherbed and a suite of servants. You make for strange traveling companions.”

What did you tell them of me last night?
Lauresa’s voice in his head for the first time was a cool breeze against the heat that had risen in him. No trace in it of the fear she feigned for the crithnala’s benefit. Dargana’s words were being translated for her again, clear through the ring as they echoed in his own mind.

I told them I would die for you,
Chriani said. No hesitation. And even as they formed in his mind, he knew the words had never been more true. In the emotional undercurrent that slipped beneath his thoughts, he felt her reaction. She closed her eyes again, something more than fear there this time.

I am Leisana, daughter to the master merchant Keithan at Glaeddyn. You are a young bravo of the thieves’ guild, hired to intimidate the father but desiring the daughter instead.

“She’s from Glaeddyn,” he said. “Her father’s Keithan, a merchant lord there. She’s with me, now.”

“With you how?”

“I was sent by my guild to encourage the father in a commercial alliance of sorts,” he said with what he hoped was suitable evasiveness. “I decided to take an additional commission on the job.”

Dargana smirked. Good, Chriani thought.

“Where did you ride from?” she asked, still watching Lauresa where the princess tried her best to look away.

We hid out at Caredry for a day and a night, hoping to find a caravan across the Clearwater Way.
Even as Lauresa thought it, Chriani echoed the words, feeling them spill from her mind to his voice in a continuous stream.
When the Glaeddyn garrison came first, we stole the horse and fled. We couldn’t take the Wayroad, we didn’t know where else to go.

“Kidnapping, then? How did you plan to collect a ransom in the crithnala lands?”

They’re after me, not her. She came of her own will, but her father is having trouble adjusting to that. We were making for Aerach. Get far enough from the Brandishear guard to make a life.

“You’re scaring her,” Chriani added to Lauresa’s words. “There’s no need.” The necessary illusion, the subtle undercurrent that Lauresa’s story wove, was of uselessness, he realized. Anything that Dargana thought she might get from the pair of them, she had more than enough power to take it.

Dargana turned to him, held the bloodblade that had slain Barien up before him.

“What of this, then?”

There was no voice in his head this time, Lauresa and Dargana both waiting.

As he almost never had in all the years since his mother died, Chriani found himself thinking of her cairn again. The separation between life and the things that life touches, that his grandfather had talked about.

“My father left the blade to me,” he said. It was the only answer he had in him, the connection between the narneth móir and the mark at his shoulder requiring an explanation that even he didn’t have yet.

Dargana nodded thoughtfully, spun the blade in her hand. Then she punched down in a fluid motion. And where Chriani’s bound arms were held in front of him, she hacked the steel ring and its finger cleanly off. No mark at all on the thumb that had hidden the ring. No mark on the other finger beside it.

Chriani fell to his knees, fought back the scream that welled up in him. He tried to fight the wave of nausea and the dull echo of Lauresa’s fear, very real now, that had shunted itself into his mind as the connection between them had broken, a pain in that break almost as great as the one shooting up his arm now.

Where Dargana stooped to pull the ring from Chriani’s severed finger, she glanced darkly to the rider who’d searched him, directed him to Lauresa with a nod. The princess didn’t struggle as her own ring was pulled roughly from her hand, but the fear was gone from her look now, replaced with cold rage.

Dargana met that look and sent it back in kind, but it was Chriani she turned to.

“That dagger belonged to my uncle, half-blood.” In her voice, in her eyes, her movement where she stepped slowly toward him, there was a menace that told Chriani he was already dead. “I am Halobrelia,” she whispered. “I can read the cipher of that blade’s engraving as easily as I read my own name. Something you should be able to do if you had any claim to that name yourself.”

“My father was Halobrelia…” Chriani said through clenched teeth, but Dargana kicked him hard, doubled him over where he fell.

“Your father was a race-traitor and a laóith-whore’s mate. My father was Halobrelia, as was his brother, the warlord Caradar, my uncle whose weapon this was. The simplest Valnirata child knows how your Prince Chanist dropped him with an arrow to the back, then slit his throat with this blade as he pulled it from his dying hands.”

“So you thought to revenge him by slaying Chanist and his heirs with that same blade?” Chriani shouted. “The assassins of Uissa doing the work you fear to do yourself?”

She kicked him again, pulled him up by his bound and bleeding hands and slammed him against the courtyard wall. Chriani felt what was left of his tunic shred as she seized it to spin him, one hand snapping his head back by the hair, the dagger held to his throat with the other.

“Your lies are as weak as your traitor’s heart, half-blood. That blade has been in Chanist’s hands since the day he claimed it in his dead father’s name. For the sake of my uncle’s memory, tell me where and how you obtained it that I might slay every laóith and half-blood hand to have touched it since, and I may let you die quickly.”

But Chriani wasn’t looking at her where the razor tip of the dagger hovered a hair’s-breadth above his throat. He was staring past her, watching Lauresa where she watched him.

She hadn’t heard what Dargana had said. Hadn’t understood the Ilvani, the link of translation gone with the ring.

He forced himself to look away, then. Not wanting Lauresa to see the realization in his eyes that he knew he couldn’t hide. He felt memories, images, impressions pushing through him in a flood even as he fought to push them back, tried to deny the sudden understanding that had rooted in him.

“So what was it?” Dargana’s voice where she circled around him brought him back, forced him to focus. “You stole the dagger from some museum of Chanist’s, then set your eyes on bounty more fair? Some prize rich enough that a company of Ilmar riders and a force of Aerach assassins would venture off the Clearwater way and into the crithnala lands in search of it?”

And then she faltered. Stared.

Shakily, Chriani followed her gaze down to his own chest. Where his tunic had been torn almost to the navel, the edge of the war-mark was exposed. He saw her read the name scribed there, saw her look up to meet the fury in his gaze.

Where Dargana looked slowly back to Lauresa, he saw a smile of dark understanding form at the hard edges of the crithnala leader’s mouth.

“Chanist’s greatest riches are his children, they say…”

Chriani tried to mask his reaction, but the exile leader saw it all the same. Her laughter chilled him, set the anger flaring like an oil-fed fire. He sought for it, called to strength that he needed now, one exile behind him, another that he’d have to get through in order to reach Dargana herself. He felt the pain in his hand flare white-hot, let it stoke the rage.

“Kill the thief and save his head,” Dargana called to the exiles around her. “Give the Ilmari princess water, then drug her. We ride for Brandishear at dawn.”

Chriani was set to spring, had already run the mechanics of every possible last effort at escape through his mind. Having deduced Lauresa’s identity was a good thing, he realized suddenly, as it meant they couldn’t kill her now. More value to the exiles as a hostage than a corpse. Whatever happened, she’d make it back to her father. She’d be safe.

He could hold onto that, he thought. That duty fulfilled, at least, before the end that was coming.

Dargana would die with him, though. He would let the anger take that as a last gift before the end.

But even as Dargana turned, there was a flare of light, and the ruins blazed with white fire like the slow-rising sun had come on all at once. Above, the raw shriek of griffons split the night, sudden chaos twisting through the crithnala where they scattered for the shadows, and where Chriani watched, he saw Dargana’s attention taken for the moment he needed.

He slammed his head back into the face of the exile behind him, felt him stagger back as he came up under the arm of the guard before him and swung into Dargana with a roundhouse kick. Like he’d hoped, she dropped the bloodblade she’d taken from him, and because he’d been hoping, he was already falling on it where it spun to the ground. He sliced skin from his wrists as he slit the ropes that bound him, rolling out of the way as Dargana’s axe slashed against the stones where he’d lain a moment before. He kicked out at her hand, dislodging her grip as she cried out, but where they both jumped for the dagger, Dargana got there first. Chriani backpedaled, snatched her axe from the ground as he ran.

From the air, a rain of arrows fell, the griffon riders’ eldritch light still burning bright in the tallest trees above them, illuminating the exiles below even as it screened their own aerial movement. Behind him, Dargana screamed orders in no language Chriani recognized, some kind of exile cant. But where the rest of the troupe melted back, she sprinted after Chriani, already moving for Lauresa where her crithnala guards were dragging her into the trees. She was watching him, brought her foot up hard into the groin of her closest captor. As he staggered, she twisted away, circling behind the other so that his attention was distracted for the moment Chriani needed to drop him.

He didn’t kill him. Couldn’t kill him. Just swung hard with the flat of the axe where he wheeled in, a blunted blow that dropped the exile more effectively than Chriani’s lack of skill with the weapon would have normally allowed. He felt the rage peak, felt it stoke a sense of control he couldn’t remember feeling before. He grabbed the exile’s bow, gambled precious time as he tore the fallen figure’s quiver and cloak free.

Where he saw Dargana circling along the edge of the ruins, Chriani pulled Lauresa with him as he ran for the opposite side of the clearing, fumbling the princess’s bonds and gag free as they ran. All around was chaos, sorcery and bowshot ripping the air as a storm of light and fire erupted in the forest around them. Dargana’s look said that she’d been truthful when she talked of Nyndenu as a place the Valnirata would never come, Chriani wondering as he pushed for the dark of the forest what would make them change their minds.

Where Lauresa sang, he got his answer. From her hands, he saw the knives of white light flare, saw them flash past Dargana and into the trees as the crithnala threw herself to the ground. From behind her came a scream, two archers in white staggering from the shadows where Lauresa’s sorcery had struck them, pale skin and scarred cheeks. The bloodblade flashed as Dargana wheeled. They both died quickly.

The assassins had followed them there. The Valnirata griffon riders had followed the assassins in turn, likely still not knowing what prize the Order of Uissa sought but hoping to gain it for themselves.

Dargana shouted another coded command to the unseen troupe shifting through the dark forest around her, and all across the clearing, a boiling wall of shadow rose. In Chriani’s head, in his heart, Lauresa’s song was exquisite agony, twisting with the pain still lancing through his arm where his hand bled freely. She sent the white knives of force out against two more archers as they ran, sent a pulse of yellow fire skyward against a griffon as it dove for them, dropping from the darkness with a shriek. Chriani saw its rider veer away, screaming as its armor burned.

He saw Dargana then, moving fast through the trees ahead of them. He pulled Lauresa back, changed direction sharply, but the princess caught sight of the crithnala leader, held her ground for the moment it took to change the pulse of the song that flowed from her. As the princess twisted her hands, Chriani saw Dargana suddenly spin where the bloodblade was pulled from her hand, grabbing at it, too late. She watched as it sailed through the shadows and into Lauresa’s grasp.