Fifth Quarter (46 page)

Neegan read the thought off her face. "Assassins," he told her, as he had a hundred times before, "have no family but the army."

"I had Bannon."

He closed his eyes. "No. Bannon had you."

"Kill
him! Kill him! Kill him!"

Once, during training, Vree had slipped from a roof. The impact with the ground had knocked the breath out of her and numbed her entire body except for a sharp, focused pain in her chest where she'd cracked a rib. She felt like that now; numb, with a sharp, focused pain in her chest. There should have been a thousand things to say, but she couldn't think of any of them.

She rocked her weight back off her knees and stood. Stepping over the commander, over her father, as though he wasn't there, she walked slowly along the river's edge, brow furrowed. Why did the world suddenly seem to end just beyond her fingertips?

"Vree."

Even before the arrow had destroyed his voice, Neegan had never needed to shout. Vree stood where she was, acknowledging his call, but not turning.

"I have never missed a target."

"VREE!"

The desperation in Gyhard's warning snapped the world back into focus. Whipping around, she found Neegan exactly where he had to be in order to drive a dagger through her spine. She dropped to one knee, pushed the point of her blade through a black sunburst, and up under his ribs. A twist of her wrist moved the double edge from left to right and sliced through his heart.

He was dead when he hit the ground.

"He wanted you to kill him," Karlene said softly. "It was the only way he could stop trying to kill you."

"What? And that was a good thing?" Vree sucked in a deep breath and forced it out through her teeth. "I am so slaughtering tired of being everyone's slaughtering answer."

"Why wouldn't I be?" She was hanging onto a window ledge with fingers and toes. Shadows filled the cobblestone courtyard below, but they were the least of her worries—the fall would kill her. "Why did you warn us? Your life would be so much easier if we were dead."

"If you were dead, my life wouldn't be worth living."

Vree'd never noticed before how much Bannon— Gyhard looked like Commander Neegan. "Slaughter you, too," she snarled and knelt to wash the blood from her face and hands.

When Gyhard stepped toward her, Karlene grabbed his arm and pulled him back. "You're a complication she doesn't need right now." Her voice held a tone that suggested he not argue. "She's falling apart."

"And how long did you have to study to develop that amazing insight into human nature?" Gyhard growled, jerking his arm free. But he remained where he was. As little as he wanted to admit it, the bard had a point if for no other reason than the face he wore was too like the older face pressed into the dirt of the riverbank—a face that in death showed as much emotion as it had in life. "I'm going for the horses. You might start thinking about burying this lot."

"Burying?" Karlene swept a dismayed gaze over the five bodies. "But that'll take so long. We need to rescue the prince!"

Gyhard, wading across the ford, ignored her, but Vree stood and slowly turned. Mud stained the knees of her trousers, water dribbled down from her hair, and her lashes had clumped together into wet, triangular spikes. "We can't leave them for the crows," she said. "They were good soldiers, like you sang." Her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone with an almost feverish heat. "They were
all
good soldiers."

"Vree, we haven't got shovels or anything to dig with, and this whole area is rock and clay."

"We'll have to do the rites," Vree continued as though she hadn't heard.

Unable to step over, Karlene went around Neegan's body, almost frantic with the need to make the younger woman understand. "Vree, these people are dead, truly dead. Prince Otavas is alive, and we have a chance to save him, today. You
can't
want him to spend more time with…" Her gesture covered the four soldiers from the station. "… this sort of thing. They're dead! He's alive!" She reached out to grab the assassin's arm, but some instinct of self-preservation stopped her hand before it closed on flesh. "Vree,
listen to me."

"I hear you."

"A soldier expects to die in the service of the Emperor, and these soldiers
are
at rest. I guarantee it." She used as much Voice as she thought was safe. The last thing she wanted to do was overwhelm Vree's conscious control and release Bannon.

"What about
him?"

"Him, too. His kigh is…" Gone would not, perhaps, be the best word. "… not here. I'd know if it was."

Vree sighed and nodded, and some of the tension went out of her shoulders. "Then Jiir allowed this as a battlefield death. Good. The army was… was…" She bit down hard on her lip. When she released it, her chin jerked up as though daring the bard to comment. "Why did you tell us that he was… who he was?"

"I don't think he gave a shi…" Vree's face twisted, her fingers curled into claws, and her toes dug into the wet ground. "You want to know what's funny?" she said a moment later as though Bannon had not spoken. "He was always the closest thing to a father we had." She stepped over Neegan's body without looking down, put her foot on the shoulder of the one-legged soldier, and pulled her throwing dagger from the eye socket.

He felt the Song in blood and bone and in the memory of ancient pain.

"There're out there now, looking for me. They'll find me."

They were the demons of his youth. He knew them now. He should have known they would come for his heart. Long ago, they had taken everything else, flayed his spirit, and left him for dead.

But he had survived.

In many ways, he was stronger than he had been then. His gaze gently touched each of his four remaining companions where they rested in the shade. This time, he was not alone.

"I have run from them for too long," he murmured to the dark head on his lap. "We will make a stand and defeat them, you and I, once and for all."

Otavas stirred, his dreams touched by a dark hand. He would have wakened had he been able.

"We can't just charge in like three of the seven armies to the rescue," Gyhard said, his eyes locked on Vree's profile. "We need a plan, and we haven't much longer to devise one."

Vree touched the crossbow tied on behind her saddle. "We kill the old man. Karlene Sings away the dead. The prince goes home."

"I don't think Kars is going to be that easy to kill." The look she shot him lifted the hair on the back of his neck. Obviously, the pair of assassins sharing Vree's body thought differently. If they were thinking at all. Because he could do nothing to ease her pain, even if she admitted feeling it, he continued his explanation. "Suppose Kars has told the dead to kill the prince if he dies. If Karlene starts to Sing before he's dead, he'll stop her—remember he's had years of practice Singing a fifth quarter she's only just discovered. And it's going to take her a while to find the right Song. These people have been dead longer and they're all different—one Song isn't going to cover them."

"Isn't it?" Vree asked the bard.

Karlene hadn't actually considered it. Worry about His Highness mixed liberally with worry about Vree had kept her thoughts in turmoil since they left the riverbank. But—as much as she hated to admit it—Gyhard was right, they needed a plan. Two of the dead were from the fishing village, and she had to assume that any others— two more at least but possibly three—were from the tombs of the Capital. "Once they're out of their bodies," she replied, "I can Sing them all away at once, but to get them out…" She glanced over at Vree and shook her head. "I'm afraid that may take some time."

"All right." Vree shifted in the saddle, eyes narrowed. "We catch up. We wait until they stop. We go in and slit Kars' throat. Solves everything."

Gyhard sighed explosively and threw up his hands—an older man's gesture at odds with the body he wore. "What happens if you get killed?" he demanded, snatching up the reins again as his horse headed off the track.

"Do you see them there, coming up the track?" Had her eyelids functioned, Kait would have squinted; as it was she could only lean toward the three tiny figures down below. "Yesss, Fa… ther."

He patted her shoulder proudly. "Of course you do. When they get to that tree…" Kait swayed so she could look along the line of his outstretched arm to where a squat and gnarled trunk lifted twisted, nearly leafless branches to the sky. "… I want you to pull this branch away and then follow us as quickly as you can."

"Old bones move slowly," he told her as he released her. "We won't have gone far." Leaning heavily on his staff, he began the steep climb back to the top of the bluff where the others waited with his heart.

"Before you decide to die nobly," Gyhard announced caustically, "I want to talk to Kars." And say? He didn't know.
I'm sorry I drove you insane. Don't you think it's time you were dead
? Then what?

Bannon snorted. "You think he wants to talk to you after what you did to him? Do you think he'll just hand you the prince?" Vree finished.

"
Our
first priority?" Gyhard shook his head. "You presume, Lady Bard, that my priorities are yours. That is not necessarily so."

"And therefore deserves to die? I don't think so. Not for that." He reached out and touched Vree lightly, fleetingly on the arm. "If you can go in and slit Kars' throat, can you go in and get the prince out instead?"