Fifth Quarter (16 page)

"Worth as much as the Empire? You're a worthless piece of shit!"

Vree ignored Bannon's protest. "So you died five times…"

Gyhard sighed. "You've missed the point, Vree. I
don't
die."

She turned to face him, trusting—or not caring—that the horse would continue to follow the road. "You've left behind five lives, that's the same as dying. How did you do it?"

He got lost for a moment in the intensity of her gaze. Because it looked very much as though she
needed
to know the answer, he heard himself say, "Except for the first one, I left by choice. That made it easier."

"Choice," she repeated, and her tone cut with the same precision her dagger had.

There was no point in misunderstanding or in pointing out that she could have chosen not to save her brother. "You could have chosen to let that courier live. Chosen to die."

"No one chooses to die."

"My point exactly."

She stared at him for a moment longer, then whatever need it was in her eyes vanished and, her expression carefully neutral once again, she turned back to face the road, the moment when something could have been shared between them gone.

In a hundred and twenty-two years
, Gyhard mused, trying unsuccessfully to push away a rising memory,
everything reminds you of something else
.

"Why, Kars?" Because he couldn't look at the other man, he stared at his own reflection in the polished goblet, dark eyes wide with betrayal.

"You've had three lives. Why shouldn't she have two? It wasn't right for her to die. It isn't right for you to leave me. I'll kill you, then I'll Sing you back to your body."

Kars, his beautiful tragic Kars, gifted with the ability to Sing all four quarters but born in Cemandia where bards were seen as demon-kin. His life had been one of torture and torment before he'd finally escaped to hide in the mountains, no longer entirely sane. Gyhard could no longer ignore that insanity. He should never have told him how he'd moved his kigh from body to body. Should never have given him the idea of turning his incredible twisted power to Singing a fifth kigh.

He remembered how Ora, neck broken in the fall that had killed her, had struggled to her feet, head lolling to one side. Perhaps they might still have a chance. "Free Ora."

Gyhard stared down at the young hands that held the reins, seeing for a moment the hands that had guided his horse down out of the mountains, away from a crazy bard and his dead companion. He'd gotten rid of that body as soon as he could because every moment in it reminded him of the life he'd left behind. Of Kars.

Old choices. He'd lived almost a hundred years since then. Kars was long dead.

Chapter Six

"It's not what you're saying, sister-mine, it's your own unique way of saying it. Ask him where he's from and try to sound like you care."

"Slaughter it, Bannon," she growled. "Wouldn't it be easier just to rip off my clothes and impale myself on him?"

"Not on horseback. Should've tried it last night."
I
told you so
, was implicit in his tone.

Vree took a deep breath and forced unwilling lips up into a smile. "So where are you from?"

Gyhard tore his gaze away from a plump young woman spreading manure in a field by the road and glanced over at his companion. "Why do you want to know?"

"Well, Bannon? Why?"

"You're just… curious." He layered heated meaning onto the final word. Vree had no idea how he did it. Her own response fell sadly flat.

"I was wondering," he continued, "how someone so beautiful could allow her entire youth to be eaten up by the army."

"We didn't have a choice."

A morning spent trying to echo Bannon's words and Bannon's tone in what was essentially Bannon's seduction betrayed her. This time, she got the tone right. The bitterness surprised her.

"You didn't have a choice?" Gyhard repeated.

"We were raised in the garrison." She wasn't sure why she was answering. She wasn't sure who. "Our mother was in the army. We weren't very old when she was killed. The army raised us; fed us, clothed us, housed us, trained us. We owed them everything."

She swiveled in the saddle so she could stare full into his face, not understanding either the question or the almost gentle way he asked it. What right did he have, sitting there in her brother's body without a life of his own, to pity her? A flick of the wrist and she could kill him as they rode. He'd be dead before he even saw the blade.

"You never said where you were from." She turned her attention back to the road, all at once very busy with reins and riding.

Why not? Gyhard, fully aware that this delving for information most likely had ulterior motives involving his removal from Bannon's body, frankly didn't care. Whatever she… they were planning wouldn't work anyway. And whatever he told her could hardly be called secret compared to what she'd known right from the beginning. It was, in a way, very freeing. "I was born and raised in Shkoder. Do you know where that is?"

Vree smashed a bug against her thigh and wondered if he thought she was stupid. "Shkoder's on the other side of the mountain range that guards the Empire's north border. They have no standing army, a well-trained militia, and usually base rank on birth rather than ability." His flummoxed expression drew a scornful laugh. "If an army's to keep the Empire, it has to know about the surrounding countries."

"For defense?"

"Or attack." Everything kept coming back to the army. She supposed it was like losing a limb but having the pain go on in parts long rotted and food for worms.

"Or attack," Gyhard agreed. "Although I doubt that Shkoder would even consider something so innately suicidal given the respective sizes of the two countries. Also, Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress Irenka is a younger sister of King Theron of Shkoder."

Lifting her face to the heat of the sun, Vree sighed.

They'd—she and Bannon—once removed an old army commander who'd gathered a group of veterans around her and attempted to set up a private little fief inside the Empire. "Allies change."

"Very true."

Something in his voice pulled her head around again. Something in his eyes drove her heels in hard against her horse's sides.

"Vree, what are you doing? He's
supposed
to get interested in you." How to explain that she wasn't running from his reaction but hers. That she was in danger of responding to the face Gyhard wore and not the enemy who wore it. Slitting her eyes against a heated wind, she thought of nothing at all save staying in the saddle.

Hooves pounded behind her. Challenged, her gelding increased his pace. For a time they raced neck and neck, and then both horses began to slow.
Too much to hope that they'd run on forever
…

"Are you afraid of him, sister-mine?"

Easy to respond to Bannon's arch tone and brush aside the actual question. "Don't be an ass."

"Well," Gyhard began when they were walking again, "that was interesting. I assume you're unaware that racing on the Imperial roads is against the law and can result in heavy fines."

Vree carefully leaned forward to stroke the damp curve of chestnut neck, her heart beginning to drum less violently. "It doesn't count as racing until a second horse joins in," she pointed out. "I wasn't racing. You were."

"You were merely allowing your mount to work off excess energy?"

"If you like."

Clearly, she wasn't going to tell him why she'd so suddenly needed to get away. All things considered, he wasn't certain he wanted to know. "So, what were we talking about?"

"You. Who you were."

"Why not who I am?"

His question abruptly turned her mood. Her mouth twisted, and her eyes flicked over the length of his borrowed body. "I know what you are."

Gyhard i'Stevana squinted at the rapidly setting sun and tried, unsuccessfully, to convince himself that he could be home before dark.

"You should've stayed in Caraford," he muttered. "Should've diced with that toothless old man, choked down a bowl of disgusting mutton stew, and slept safely with the bedbugs until morning."

But he hadn't. And now it was almost dark.

He hunched his shoulders as a chill Fourth Quarter wind tried to push an icy gust down under his collar and kicked his horse into a trot. He should've stayed in Caraford, but he'd wanted to get home and surprise his family who weren't expecting him back for days.

Shadows in the forest flanking the trail grew deeper.

Fortunately, he'd traveled between the village and home a hundred times or more over his twenty-three years and couldn't possibly get lost. He knew every rock and every tree. Unfortunately, he also knew what might very well lurk behind them.

His horse suddenly shied sideways and he pulled it back to a walk, senses straining. He could hear nothing but the wind in the evergreens. See nothing but branches tossed against a darkening sky.

Moving slowly, so as not to attract undue attention should there be watchers in the dusk, Gyhard slid his light crossbow from its strapping and fumbled for a quarrel. Loading it would have been easier had the young stallion not continued to fight his control.

"Might be nothing," he muttered, hooking the string back under the steel claw and resting the loaded bow on his thigh—but he didn't believe it.

His eldest sister, who'd taken over the forest contract when their mother died, had sent him to ask their lord, the Due of Sibu for help. An early freeze and a desperately cold Fourth Quarter, had driven a small band of rough men whose lives had always been marginal onto the dark side of the law. Gyhard had insisted they could handle it themselves. His sister had disagreed.

I should've waited for the Duc. Come back with him
.

A branch snapped. He twisted toward the sound.

Something hit him between the shoulder blades with enough force to lift him out of the saddle. His finger tightened on the trigger and the crossbow bolt slammed into the frozen ground barely a heartbeat before he did.

A small panicked voice in his head shrieked at him to roll over, to draw his long dagger, to fight. Gasping for breath, right arm folded under him at a torturous angle, he wished the voice would shut up. He swallowed, tasted blood, and struggled to suck air through teeth he couldn't unclench.