Dawn of Swords (44 page)

They left their horses in Deacon’s stables, which were certainly as well stocked as the man had claimed they were, with at least twenty horses stowed away inside. Crian picked out two strong-looking steeds, one of which was very similar to his father’s favorite white mount.

“Good choices,” Deacon said. “They’re all yours.”

The stable boy gave his master a queer look and then quickly turned his head and went about his chores, brushing the horses down and filling their feed bags. Crian chuckled, figuring the boy was confused about why his master would bestow such a handsome gift upon a stranger. Crian figured he should get used to this sort of anonymity. Perhaps he could change his name, lie about his heritage.…

Nessa held his hand as they paraded up the front walk and through the main entrance to the ample home. The inside was brightly lit, with candles placed on every available flat surface. Numerous servants bustled about, dusting the simple country furnishings and scrubbing the floors. They were a quiet lot, and they kept their eyes downcast, politely nodding if they were ever addressed. It reminded Crian of his time among the wealthy in Veldaren. So it seemed as though pieces of the two kingdoms had slowly made their way into the delta.

The scent of food reached his nose, succulent meats and exotic spices cooked over open flames, and Crian’s mouth began to water.

“Dinner will be ready shortly,” Deacon announced almost offhandedly, not bothering to turn around as he continued his way through his vast home. “I should have an open room upstairs where
you can spend the night. It isn’t much, but it will suit you fine, I think, given the circumstances.”

They entered a long hallway lined with expertly painted portraits of Deacon and his family. Lady Coldmine was a beauty, Crian thought, pulling his own lady love closer to him. In the paintings, all the children seemed so happy and carefree. Crian hoped he might meet a few of them before he left, perhaps at dinner.

The hallway ended at a large set of double doors. Deacon stopped before them, placing a palm on each and bowing his head as if in prayer. Crian waited patiently behind him while Nessa fidgeted. Finally, the bearded lord of Haven turned around. The strange expression on his face, with narrowed eyes and twitching mouth, revealed a sudden conflict.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, “but I’ve invited company.”

Deacon swung the doors wide.

The dining room was modest, and because it was located in the center of the abode, it was also windowless. Candles lined the center of a long table that was surrounded by chairs. Sitting opposite each other, looking almost bored, waited Clovis and Avila Crestwell.

Nessa yelped beside him, while at the same time something sharp pointed into his back. Crian peered over his shoulder; two servants were behind him, holding a dagger apiece against him and Nessa. A hand reached down and snatched Integrity from his grasp, slipping the sword from its sheath as silently as if it were covered with oil. Nessa looked frightened enough to faint, and though he tried to impart comfort through their clasped hands, she began to cry all the same.

“Please, come in,” said Deacon, standing against the side wall of the dining hall, his once firm voice suddenly unsure.

Crian urged Nessa into the dining hall, trying to remain outwardly calm despite the fact that his entire body was numb with apprehension. The double doors closed behind them, sealing
them in the room with Lord Coldmine, Avila, and their father, the Highest.

His father sat back in his chair, eyeing them with the faintest spark of interest. Avila leaned forward, scowling at him, her forehead and the left side of her face an ugly mishmash of pulped flesh and yellowing bruises from where he’d struck her with the candlestick. A person of lesser strength would not have survived. She flexed her fingers, mere inches away from the pommel of her sword, which was lying on the table, the tip facing him. They were both wearing their traditional black riding leathers, the insignia of the Crestwell house outlined in red on their chests. Crian slowly moved Nessa behind him, as if by some miracle he might defend her.

Crian looked at Deacon, torn between pity and fury.

“Why?” he asked, barely able to squeeze the sound from his throat.

The lord of Haven swallowed.

“Some things are more important than others,” he said. “And nothing is more important than the orders of my god, whether or not I understand them. I’m sorry, Crian. The faithful rarely walk an easy path.”

The older lord turned to Crian’s father and bowed.

“If you are done with me, my Highest, I will take my leave.”

His father wagged two fingers toward the door, still silent. Deacon backed away gradually, one tiny step at a time, bent at the waist. Keeping Nessa behind him, Crian slid out of the way so that Coldmine could exit. He had a thought to charge the doors when they opened, but that idea was quashed the moment he saw the servants—no, not servants, he realized, but his own men from Omnmount in disguise—holding their rapiers at the ready. Instead, Crian let the doors shut, sealing him in with his executioners.

“Sit…
down
,” his father hissed, and Crian immediately pulled out a chair and complied. Nessa lingered behind him, so white she looked ready to fade away completely. Avila slapped her gloved
hand on the table, ordering Nessa to sit as well. She obeyed at once, slipping in beside Crian, tears streaming down her cheeks as her tiny chest rose and fell with wheezing sobs.

The Highest placed a curved dagger on the table and started to twirl it, his eyes fixed on the spinning blade.

“I am very, very disappointed in you, son,” he said. His tone was the one he usually reserved for those under his command. He had never used it with Crian before, and right then Crian knew he was going to die.

He hung his head and said nothing.

“Imagine how distressing it was for me, coming to the Omnmount staging grounds to find a recruit dead and my precious daughter beaten beyond recognition. Her beautiful face was smashed, and her hair ran red with blood. We are lucky she is a strong girl, for a mortal woman would have died from the injuries you bestowed on her.”

His finger traced the ugly bruising, the line of cracked and bleeding flesh that ran from the center of his daughter’s formerly pristine forehead, looped around her left eye, and then bulged along her cheek to her ear, which was swollen to twice its normal size.

“She is stronger than you, Crian,” he said. “So much stronger. I now know my mistake. I should have made Avila my Left Hand, not you.”

A defiant streak rose in Crian, and against his better judgment he spat, “Perhaps you should have. After all, you do enjoy fucking her. If she were on your left, you would be able to do it more often.”

“There is no need for such crudeness,” his father replied, his tone not rising in the slightest. “You are in the wrong here. You have gone against my decree and, by proxy, that of your god.”

“So you speak for Karak now?”

“I always have. If not, why would he have arrived in Omnmount along with me?”

Crian froze.

“Yes, that’s right. The god you turned your back on now stands beside your brother, watching over his army as they prepare for the day they will raze this land into the Abyss. Had you stayed your upheaval, you would have seen it for yourself.”

“I never lost faith in my god,” Crian whispered, his head bowed. “Only in you and your rules.”

Clovis laughed, the sound filling the room and making Nessa cry all the harder.

“Shut her up,” growled Avila, finally gripping her sword and leveling it at him, without budging from her seat. “Or I will shut her up for you.”

Crian placed a hand on Nessa’s chest, silencing her. He knew his sister wasn’t one to make idle threats.

“How did you find us?” he asked, rocking his love in an attempt to ease her fear. “How did you know where I was?”

Clovis regarded him evenly.

“My Whisperer sees much. He said you fled across the bridge, and once I knew that, I knew precisely where to find you.”

“How did he see me cross?” Crian asked, thinking of that horrible night. “Was he one of the soldiers?”

His father shook his head, laughing once more. “Not at all, you impudent whelp. My Whisperer
paved the way for you
. He was the one who chased the soldiers away, allowing you to cross unmolested. An unfortunate loss of life for those who perished, yes, but you are worth a hundred of them, my dear son. I had to know. I had to be certain.”

Crian’s jaw dropped open. He remembered how fortunate he had felt when the giant beast of smoke had lashed out at the soldiers. But still, the terror that had accompanied it, the bloody spectacle.…

With newfound horror, Crian stared at his father, wondering what manner of monster Clovis called ally.

“So you know,” Clovis said, reaching underneath the table, “I went into the Ghostwood myself to gather your things.” Up came Crian’s dragonglass mirror. He slid it across the flat surface, and Crian stopped it with hands that seemed to move on their own. His father’s gaze seemed to linger on the mirror, and the faintest trace of sadness flashed across his face.

“We only had to wait for you to come to us,” Clovis said, the corner of his lip upturned. “I never imagined you would arrive so quickly.”

“But why?” Nessa murmured so quietly that Crian could barely hear her. But his father did, and to Crian’s shock the man’s expression softened.

“Oh, sweet child,” he said, “if I had caught my son fleeing into the delta by himself, he could have accused his sister of lying and given me any excuse rather than admitting to his sins. I needed to catch him in the act—catch him with
you
, my sweet—in order to prove how much he has betrayed me.”

His father grinned then, an expression so malicious that Crian flew up from his chair, knocking it back against the double doors, and grabbed Nessa around the shoulders, moving her behind him. Avila lifted her sword and began to rise, but the Highest grabbed the sleeve of her shirt and yanked her back down. Her ruined face sneered at him.

“None of this is Nessa’s doing!” Crian screamed. “You will let her go, and you will let her go
now
. Take me if you want—execute me—but let her live, or so help me, I will end you both right here and now.”

His father sighed and closed his eyes. He pulled the silver-white hair back from his forehead, a gesture he always used when frustrated.

“I am not going to hurt her,” he said. “And although I would so enjoy hurting
you
, I will refrain from doing that either. Though you turned your back on your deity, you did so without fully realizing it, which makes you a far different case from your renegade sister.”

Crian’s jaw dropped open. This was a most unexpected answer to receive. The tiniest hint of hope rose in his belly as he listened to his father speak.

“However, you have broken the laws of our family, and that carries a price. Your title of Left Hand is at once rescinded, an honor I now place on Avila’s shoulders.”

“Thank you, Father,” said Avila.

“Silence.”
He turned back to Crian. “Also, you will accompany us back to Veldaren and be stripped of the Crestwell name. You are no longer welcome at the family compound on the other side of the Queln. You will no longer regard me as father, and should you ever see your mother again, you shall not look her in the eye. Your room in Tower Servitude is hereby revoked. You will serve as a member of the Watch, living in the Tower Keep alongside the other mongrels who chose to give in to weakness, until you earn enough coin to find a dwelling of your own.”

Crian was shocked. He stepped back, a hand over his heart.
I am to live?
His blood pumped faster and he glanced behind him at Nessa, who was shaking, her hands clenched in front of her mouth.

“And what of my love?” he asked.

“Her?” said his father. “She’s Ashhur’s concern. What the girl does is up to her. She is free to go home if she chooses, or she can join you in Veldaren. I hold no ill will against her, naïve and stupid as she is. I expected better from you, Crian, not her.”

Nessa abruptly ceased her crying. Her wide, pleading blue eyes gazed up from beneath the snarled tangle of red hair.

“I am free to choose?” she asked.

The Highest pushed his chair back, stood up, and rounded the table. He knelt down until their faces were level.

“It is your choice,” he said. “Do you love this traitor enough to relinquish your god and fall into the arms of Karak? Do you love him enough to give up your life of ease and simplicity and spend the rest of your days washing clothes, raising babes, and cooking
meals for a man who will never earn enough coin for you to live comfortably?”

Nessa gazed up at Crian, and for a moment he thought for sure she would flee from him, flee from the hardships that such a life would entail. Instead she rose from the floor, walked up to him with a confidence he had never seen before in her, rose up on her tiptoes, and planted a kiss on his cheek.

“Always and forever, I choose you,” she said, biting her lower lip. “No matter what hardships we face, comfort will always come if you are by my side.”

“So be it,” said his father.

“You would do this for me?” Crian said to Nessa. “For us? Give up your life, your god?”

“What is a god to someone like me?” she replied. “All the prayer in the world would mean nothing if I never saw you again.”

“The choice is made,” declared the Highest. “You leave with us tonight, and your sentence begins the moment we arrive back on Veldaren soil. And do not even
think
of trying to rescue Moira. Your sister has made her choice, and she will die with the rest of the blasphemers in this godforsaken swampland.”

His father nodded to Avila, who scowled as she worked her way around the table, giving them both a wide berth. She yanked open one of the double doors and stormed out of the room. The Highest stood and approached him. He leaned in and whispered into Crian’s ear, just loud enough for his son to hear.

“Be glad forces other than myself wish you alive, boy. You tread dangerous ground here. You will be watched.”