Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (21 page)

Gikka looked out at the storm and shivered.  “Sure you’re
freezing.  Come back with me a ways, and we can talk away out of the storm.  We
found a farmhouse still standing not far beyond the gates, and there they’ve
made camp.”

“They?”  He smirked.  “Your do-gooder knights?”  He shook
his head.  “Gikka, you forget who I am.  Sure I’d not be welcome amongst such
lofty folk.”

“My word makes you welcome, Tagen, even in the duke’s
company.”  She squeezed his arm.  “Come, I’ll not hear no.  You’ve not been
warm or dry in days, and sure there’ll be a fire and hot food.  Besides, I’ve
someone I want you to meet.  A boy I’ve taken up to teach.”

“Sure you’ve come up in the world, girl,” he smiled.  “But
me, made welcome with the duke his own self, sure not!  That’s a lie even you
can’t sell, that.  But if you’re sure your so-and-so knights won’t turn an old
scavvy away…. Very well, but mind, it’s the promise of a fire and hot food as
turns my head.”

“As to knights,” she sighed looking out over the drifts of
broken lives, “my dearest hope is the sheriff and Renda were not here as it
hit.”

Tagen shook his head.  “No, none of your blue knights came
through.”

He sounded so sure her heart lifted.  “None, not even one or
two?  You’re full certain of it?”

“Ever I keep an eye out for them here.  See, when the
blue-capes are here, there’s a thought,” he shrugged, his voice faltering,
“that maybe you might be, as well.”  He smiled warmly at her.  “Always
listening for my starling, I am.  So the scavvies know to watch for them, and they
saw none.”

“But you said you sent the scavvies away.”  Her heart sank. 
“An Renda and her father came after…”

“Aye,” he replied, “but I stayed near, ever hoping to get
someone to listen to me and send the people to Durlindale.  I didn’t go inland
until I felt the quakes start, and the wave followed hard upon.  My word upon it,
girl.  They were not here.”  He looked at her expectantly, watching the relief
wash over her.  “Well?  Come now, there’s talk of fire and hot food
elsewhere.”  He followed her gaze over the piles of broken lives.  “There’s
naught we can do for these poor souls in the dark and the wet.  Let’s be away
from this wretchedness, at least until daybreak.”

“Lovely mulled wine,” offered the grizzled scavvy
awkwardly.  He sat wriggling his cold, numb toes in the warmth of the fire,
wrapped in a borrowed green and gold cloak while his own threadbare clothes
were stretched over chairs to dry.  He wiped imaginary crumbs from his chin
self-consciously.  “The meat and bread were most welcome, and I thank you
kindly for them, Your Grace.”

Trocu nodded graciously.  “We are doubly blessed, Tagen,
both in having provisions to share and in having you here to share them.”

Gikka felt Tagen’s exquisite discomfort at being in the
presence of Trocu Damerien––

The duke his own self!

––naked and wrapped in the duke’s own cloak, beholden to him
for food and shelter, and she wanted to laugh and cry all at once.  This man
she loved as her father, this wretched scavvy who could not beg the attention
of the board of ministers in Brannford, now had the care, the attention and
even the respect of the ruler of all Syon.  She’d seen it in the moment the two
men met.  One leader recognized another, and while Tagen felt awkward and
unworthy to be in Trocu’s presence, Damerien had sized him up and found him
worthy.  She only wished Tagen could accept that and relax.

Her old mentor could not know that she had found Damerien––Brada
Damerien––tortured, shivering and naked, curled up and wretched in his own
excrement in the bottom of Kadak’s stronghold.  That night, it had been her
ragged cloak that had covered his nakedness, and her skills, skills she had
learned mostly from Tagen, which had seen him through the final battle with
Kadak and safely back to his castle for the Succession.  Tagen would never
know, but Trocu surely did.

“Well, the meat and bread,” sighed Nestor, “were our own to
offer, but I’m embarrassed to say we…found the wine in the cellar of this
house.”  He cast a stern sideways glance at Chul, who was sitting almost
worshipfully at the newcomer’s feet. 

Gikka swallowed a grin.  As much as the boy respected Gikka,
for this man to have been her teacher made him well nigh a god in the boy’s
eyes.

Tagen looked around him, letting his gaze rest approvingly
on Chul for just a moment, and the boy smiled.  “Still, I’m grateful to you and
to all them as provided, sir.”

Nestor smiled, clearly warming to the man in spite of
himself. 

“It seems we’ve a bit of time.”  Damerien smiled hospitably,
clearly trying to put Gikka’s old mentor at ease.  “Tagen, tell me, how did you
come to meet Gikka?”  He looked warmly at Renda’s squire. “In all the years
I’ve known her, she’s never told us the story.”

Gikka’s eyes went wide.  “Oh, my Lord, sure that tale’s not
worth a thought.”

Tagen laughed.  “And yet, if His Grace would hear it, who am
I to deny him?”

“I insist!”  Trocu looked between them.  “Unless the story
is somehow ––”

Gikka snorted.  “Oh, no, nothing like that.”  Trocu looked
at her with a wicked grin.  At last she just shook her head, resigned.  “Very
well, but if you must tell it, tell it true.  No polish, mark you.  I’d have
them hear a plain report of it.”

“Just the truth, I swear it,” he smiled, and Gikka noticed
he was already more at ease with them.  “Oh, it’ll be half a lifetime ago now. 
She were no more than ten.”

“Twelve,” she corrected.  “You’re polishing already.”

“Aye, I misspoke me, twelve, she was.  A scrawny ragged little
scavvy, but fearless as you please, and such a touch with a purse….”  He looked
up self consciously and reached for his glass.  “The other children, they were
afraid, doing as they were told, but this one had a look like a hungry
graetna.  Worth marking, aye?  So one night, I seen her come out of an alley,
pathetic little knife in hand.  Odd, aye?  So I watch her a few more nights.  Next
time I catch her, must have been half a month hence, I ask her, being careful,
me, and she denies it so sweet I almost believe her even watching her wipe
blood from her blade!  But I have guilty knowledge, me.  I know the fleeks are
looking for who’s been tockin’ drunkards in the alleyways!”

Trocu looked a bit disturbed.  “You mean to say you met her
while she was killing people?” 

“Not just any people,” Tagen replied.  “Had she done, I’d
have cut her throat myself.  No, these were wicked, evil men.”

The duke looked at Gikka.

“Aye, they were.  Men as had it owed to them, aye,” she murmured.
“Them as make prey of a little girl’s smile.”  She tried to keep her tone
light, but the darkness of the memory encroached.  “Them as knew what happened
to us either feared to make a noise or they took a profit themselves.  They
would set one or another of us orphan children, unknowing, to walk this street
or that and be grabbed for ill use. Came my turn…” she looked down.  That was
the first time she’d ever taken a life, and she’d made a mess of him.  Long and
slow.  Took days to get the blood off, and more days still while the fleeks sniffed
about for who’d tocked him.

Trocu closed his eyes.  “I begin to understand. “But you
were only twelve!”

“The others were younger,” she smiled sadly at the memory.  “Sure
they couldn’t have done for themselves.”

Tagen laughed weakly.  “Told me she’d watched him the tenday
until she’d caught him clumsy with drink.  ‘I’ve patience, me,’ she said, as
proud as you please.  She’d no idea of her danger.  But that, that
fearlessness, that’s exactly what called me to take her up to teach.  Patience,
skill and heart, she had, my starling.  Noisy, though,” he winked at her. 
“Still is.  Is how she got that nickname.”

She laughed and shook her head.  “Since then, I’ve learned a
thing and more.”

“Noisy,” he repeated playfully, “like skeletons dancing on a
tin roof, noisy.”  His laugh faded.  “But in her eyes, I seen a spark, one as
would blow up into flame.”  He reached over and squeezed her hand.  “And my
privilege it was to be holding the billows.”

“Syon’s good fortune, as well,” smiled Damerien.  “We could
not have won the war without her.”

Behind them, the door opened quietly, and Jath slipped in to
sit down beside Chul.  “Sorry to have been so long about my chores.  Zinion
took quite a fright,” he said quietly, glancing up at Gikka.  “Not to fret,
though.  It were nothing a pile of carrots couldn’t soothe.  But what he saw in
Brannford were a worry to him.”

“Aye,” she answered. “It were a worry to more than just
him.”

“Tagen,” began the duke, “now that we’re all here, so please
you, I would like to know what happened in Brannford.  Gikka tells me you
warned the scavvies away ere the worst befell the city.  Can you tell me what
you saw that gave you warning?”

The man shrugged and scratched his head.  “The water.  It
were all wrong, Your Lordship.  Can’t find better words for it.  For two days
together, I watched the water and the land beneath it fall away, with no high
tide between.”

Trocu frowned.  “How do you mean, the land fell away?”

“The sea wall has marks on it for high tides and low tides. 
When the tide drops to the lowest marker, the sea takes on a shade, aye?  Still
the water is enough to hold up the piers and the ships, but at the lowest mark,
you can make out the kelps and the muck along the shelf.”

“Aye, I remember,” said Gikka.  “The water takes a mud brown
color for being so low.”

He nodded.  “Except the tide goes out two days ago, and
looks to keep going out, lower than the lowest mark, and come we to wondering
if the fleet ought not to set out, storms be damned, so the ships don’t
founder.”

Nestor frowned.  “It’s been many a year since I lived near
the sea, but the thought strikes me that the tide should be at its higher marks
in the Feast of Bilkar, aye?”

“Aye, which is what had me at watching in the first place,”
replied Tagen, beginning to relax and warm to his story.  “My sense of it was
like all the sea were being sucked up into a giant breath for the storm to
shout at us, but ever as it drops, the water keeps to blue and green, with no
sight of ground beneath it.”  He looked anxiously between them.  “Don’t you
see?  From where I stood, it looked like Syon just lifted her skirts up out of
the sea a bit, neat as you please.  She didn’t, mind.  Leastwise I don’t think
so.  Turns out it was as I said, the sea taking a big breath to shout at us.”

Trocu stroked his chin, considering.  “This may seem an odd
question, but did you notice any mages coming through Brannford the tenday?  Or
anyone else who caught your attention?”

The question took him completely by surprise.  “Mages?”  He
shook his head.  “Not a one.  I’ve only ever seen one or two in all my life, so
it’s a thing to mark when they come through.  No, we seen none.”

“They would not have needed to come into Brannford itself,”
said Chul quietly.  “Not if they were the same mages that destroyed…”  He hesitated
and looked cautiously between Nestor and Damerien.  Damerien gave an almost
imperceptible nod.  “Destroyed Castle Brannagh,” he finished. 

Chul quickly related what he’d seen of the siege at
Brannagh, and Tagen shook his head.  “No, it were none such.  This were all in
the sea and the ground, no flashes, no fires but those of oil spilled and
catching a candle here and there.” 

Nestor stood and walked to the fire.  “Were there no
quakes?  Nothing to give warning at all?”

“Not in warning, no.”  He shrugged.  “A rumble here, a
rumble there, nothing I haven’t felt before, nothing as would give a man
pause.  Not until right before the wave came.  Then the quakes shook the town
to pieces, ripping her from top to bottom.  By the time it hit, the wave were
like an afterthought, like washing up after all the damage were done.  It came
down upon her from the north side and just swept the broken rubbish aside.”

“Wait,” said Trocu, a worried look coming into his eyes,
“did you say the wave came from the north?”

He nodded.  “Aye.”

“Northeast,” offered Nestor.  “You mean it came from the
northeast, from out at sea?”

Tagen shook his head.  “What hit Brannford curled off the
main body of the wave that passed out to sea, but that big wave?  It came from
the north and went straight southward.”

“From the north,” gasped Damerien.  “It may well have
destroyed the entire coastline.  But what is to the north that could possibly…?”

Jath looked up at Damerien with a strangely distant look in
his eyes.  Then he murmured but a single word.  “Pyran.”

Brannford

Renda had ridden alongside the Bilkarian monk in silence since
their last stop at midday.  The shadows lengthened quickly during the Feast of
Bilkar, and this near the coast, the cold was almost painful at night.  The
knights had ridden hard all the previous day and through most of the night, but
now they were sure of reaching Brannford, and more importantly Brannford’s
inns, by nightfall.  With the city not far beyond the crest of the hill, they
could afford the luxury of slowing to rest the horses.

Ahead, Daerwin talked quietly with Kerrick, a soft chuckle
rising occasionally through the generally somber tone of the conversation.  Now
and then, one of them would make a gesture as of swinging a sword or raising a
shield in the telling of whatever stories they shared followed by an appreciative
chuckle or a gasp of amazement. 

Renda knew she would be welcome to join them, but she had no
energy for it.  She chose instead to ride beside Laniel, even in his silence.

Behind, the rest of the knights were likewise silent, still
digesting what Renda had told them along the way of the plague, the battle with
the cardinal and the fall of Brannagh.  The sad testament of war was that, as
green as these knights were, even they had all lost friends and loved ones to
war.  Once the accolades were no longer fresh and the celebrations of the war’s
end had passed, those lost were still lost, as they well knew.  Grief was
nothing new to them, and at least they were seasoned enough to focus it into
resolve against the enemy, even if that kind of focus was much more difficult
when the enemy was yet unknown.