Sword (30 page)

"That's
useful
," Annan said, sounding, for once, a little bewildered. Probably at the notion that magic could be in any way practical.

"Isn't it." Kyali was doing that thing with her fingers again.

Wounds that might otherwise be mortal?
How in hells had Kyali discovered
that
?

"Perhaps if we ask, the Clan Leaders will send someone who can teach us," Taireasa said, high and hurried. She rubbed at one arm, then,pulled a wayward strand of pale hair out of her eyes. "I had a message this morning that Arlen and Measail were on their way here with a handful of Clansfolk. They might even be planning to offer such a thing. One can hope."

"Yes," Devin said vaguely, still staring at his sister. "One can. Arlen gave me the harp, after all. I assume he meant for me to use it. Do you suppose they'll teach me to play the stones down around our ears?"

"It seems a short step from breaking glass," Beagan gibed.

Kinsey uttered a short laugh. "Could you really do that, Devin? Break glass?"

"I spent most of my childhood doing exactly that," Devin answered. "It didn't seem to matter what I played: something always broke. Sometimes I didn't even have to play anything. Until last year, actually. I started to get control of it then."

"Well enough to stun to silence the gathered high lords of the kingdom," Curran said.

"Not well enough to
stop
them," Devin snapped. He sighed into the hush that fell after that too-blunt reply and ran a hand through his hair. "Sorry. Illusion, glass-breaking, and a light breeze— these are all I can offer. Not much use. Fire and healing seem more helpful in a war."

"
My father
needed no stopping," Curran retorted, folding his arms across his chest.

"I know, Curran. Forgive me. Your father's no small part of why we survive up here."

"Fire was little enough use when the war started," Kyali muttered. Everyone looked at her, but she kept her eyes on the windows. It wasn't much of a peace offering, but it served to remind him he wasn't the only one suffering.

Devin took a sip of his wine and grimaced. Kinsey took the glass from him, flicked the bowl with his finger, and scowled thoughtfully.

"Does the harp…"

"Not really. No more than anything else, anyway."

"Maybe you should
try
to break something with it," Kinsey said.

"Inside the walls?"

"A point," the Cassdall prince admitted, but his expression said he was still trying to find some way to make it happen. "It would certainly make for a lively evening."

"Oh, gods," Annan muttered. "I'm not letting you two near the ale."

Kinsey looked much less like an owl rousted into daylight when he grinned like that. Devin couldn't help grinning back, and he felt Taireasa's faint envy coming through the bond they shared. "Good luck with that," he said to Annan, and then, taking the cue Taireasa silently sent him, bowed to her, and to the company in general. "I ought to find my own bed, begging your pardons—if glass-breaking seems like a good idea, it's probably time for sleep."

"Wisely said," Beagan agreed, and clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to speed his steps toward the door. Curran echoed the movement on his other side, more gently: a silent acceptance of his apology, Devin hoped. 

As they all began to file out the door, Devin glanced back. Kyali was still hunched by the window, avoiding the group, avoiding him, avoiding Taireasa. Taireasa had lost her distracted smile: she looked as unhappy as Devin felt most of the time.

For a painful second, the breach between them was perfectly visible on her face.

There was nothing he could do about it, nothing to fix it. And he couldn't stand to watch it happen.

C
HAPTER
17

S
he came across the first entrance to the secret passageways purely by accident, while trying to dodge her brother. The edge of stone under her hands as she pressed against the wall told her there was something more than ancient brickwork there: the memory of Faestan's hidden doors and passages was bright and sharp in her mind as she followed the seam. It was almost enough to drive her off—but she would be a fool to ignore such a thing, if it existed. Someone else would find it if she didn't. After three hard shoves, she fell into a darkness so clogged with dust that she thought she might put an end to the hopeless farce her life had become by choking to death.

That
almost
seemed preferable to speaking to Devin.

But if neither a Western army nor a cousin trained all his life for combat could manage to kill her, she supposed succumbing to dust in an abandoned passageway was a fairly pathetic and unlikely way to leave the world.

Shameful, hiding from her own brother like this.

But it was so much easier than seeing his face when she squashed yet another of his attempts to draw her out. She gave him nothing to hold on to—terrified, she had to admit, that one slip would be all it took to kick open the door of ice in her heart that kept him out. He pulled at her constantly, and his seeking heart held memories of the girl she had been once—
before
— memories she refused to acknowledge, memories that made her ache all over with longing and helpless fury. It was impossible to concentrate when he was in the room.

Taireasa let her be, amazingly, and wrapped her pain quietly around herself. Kyali was grateful beyond words for that.

Now if she could only find a way not to care how much she hurt them.

Ice.

The passageway wasn't meant for a tall person. With a fold of her sleeve stretched over her face to keep from breathing in dust by the bucketful, Kyali followed it anyway, feeling her way with one hand on the rough wall.

It branched out several times before landing her in one of the upper corridors, where she startled a Cassdall guard badly while shoving her way through the door in the wall. He watched her with wide eyes as she pulled herself out of the doorway and heaved it shut. When she began brushing herself off, trying not to make a face in pure disgust (no wonder she'd scared the man: she was so dust-covered she must look like a haunt), he got up the courage to ask her if he could help her find the guardroom.

Guardroom? On this floor?

"Please," Kyali said smoothly, and was led down a series of increasingly small corridors, each one less imposing than the last. At the end of one was a cul-de-sac with a shut door, the sound of laughter and good-natured shouts coming from behind it. The Cassdall guard, whose name she supposed she ought to learn, flung her a nervous sideways glance. In the sunlight from a narrow window, his face was the lovely color of new copper, and it was carefully free of expression, as though he knew before he even spoke what her reply would be.

"Begging your pardon, Captain Corwynall, but perhaps I ought to…"

"Thank you, I think I can handle it," Kyali said, so dry the dust might have been in her voice as well as all over her face. The soldier looked so uncomfortable she almost relented, but by then it was too late: he knocked in a complicated pattern she didn't bother to memorize, knowing it would probably change tomorrow, and the door swung wide. The laughter inside ceased and several strange faces peered out at her. They were no more alike than were the Fraonir, or her own people, but they were all quite plainly Cassdall. That fact was as evident in their features as it was in their dress: their light armor was different, making more use of mail, and their swords were shorter and broader than she was used to. They looked to be in the middle of some hilarious discussion, for smiles faded slowly from their faces but there was still merriment in their eyes as they gawked at her.

"Cap'n," one man said—it was one of Annan's officers, yet another name she should probably know—and stood. He looked at the glass of ale in his hand in dismay. The rest of them stood, too, like she was a great lady arriving to a dinner table, which was either bleakly comical or infuriating. She couldn't decide which.

"Lady Captain," Annan said, coming to his feet from behind the main bench, where he had apparently been stretching his legs out near a small hearth. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"

Amazing, how he could make the most basic courtesies sound like the opposite. And his
Lady Captain
always seemed to have the faintest edge of sarcasm.

"Coincidence," Kyali said, without bothering to add anything like politeness.

Annan raised an eyebrow, his dark eyes flickering over her dust-covered person. "We didn't wake the neighbors, I hope," he said softly, which she supposed was intended to be a jest. The soldiers at the bench were looking at her and Annan one after the other, like spectators at a jousting match.

"So far as I can see, you don't have any of those, Lieutenant," Kyali said. "I arrived here unexpectedly. Your man offered to take me to the guardroom. I figured I ought to know where that was. Now that I do, I'll leave you to your rest."

"She came out of the wall," the soldier who'd led her here blurted, then looked embarrassed when Kyali glowered at him. She'd rather not have these passages become common knowledge.

Annan's sharp gaze grew sharper still and he set his mug down decisively. "Not another word on that to anyone, Wendel," he murmured, striding to the door. "Lady Captain, perhaps I could accompany you back to the guard hall?"

Neither she nor the soldiers had time to object. Annan edged her out of the threshold, nudged the other soldier—
Wendel,
Kyali reminded herself—inside it, and shut the door firmly.

"There are passageways in the walls?" Annan asked, his voice gone softer than ever, nothing but calm curiosity on his smooth-shaven face. Up close, which was something she'd managed to avoid being with this particular Cassdall until now, she could see that he was younger than she'd first guessed. Perhaps not much older than she herself was. How he'd ended up at the head of a prince's guard was a point of curiosity.

Then again, here she was at the head of considerably more than a lord's company of personal guard, so what was the bloody point in wondering?

"Apparently," Kyali said, just as soft, mimicking his tone perfectly.

She couldn't say what it was about him that provoked her, but it seemed like every time they were in the same room, they were digging at one another. She found she was tired of it today. She had far larger things to worry about.

"Will you show me?" Annan asked, dropping his barbed politeness for something far more annoyed-looking (it cheered her immensely, which was probably an unworthy response, but there it was), and Kyali shrugged and turned toward the open hallway. Her own dusty footprints marked the spot. She reminded herself to sweep that away, then shoved inward at the hidden door. Dust billowed out.

Annan coughed, waving a hand in front of his face.

"How far do they go?" he asked, following her in.

"I only just discovered them. I'll send someone in to map them out."

"Don't do that. My—" There was a shuffling and a thud, and he hissed. She should probably have warned him to duck. Too late now. The passage door hung open behind him, limning his hunched form in wavering shadows of torchlight. Ahead was darkness. "Damn it, it's blacker than night in here. I should have lit this."

In the faint light from the corridor, she could see the candle he'd pulled out of a pocket.

What sort of person carried a
candle
in his pocket? He probably had a sandwich in there, too, in case he got hungry. He was fumbling around again, and she realized he was looking for flint.

Annan was not only irritating, he was more than a little strange.

Kyali spent a handful of seconds arguing with herself, then sighed and glared at the barely visible wick. It was almost worth the headache to see his eyebrows rise in the flickering light, when it caught.

"…thank you," Annan said doubtfully, eyeing the flame.

"Don't mention it. Ever. You were saying?"

"Ah." He held the candle out, peering around, and pulled the heavy door shut. He began to edge carefully forward. "I was saying, let my men do it. They're bored. And this is their sort of work."

Kyali frowned, following behind him and not liking it much. "Their sort of work is crawling in ancient tunnels?"

"Now you're deliberately misunderstanding. I thought we were going to give up this battle of wits and snipe at one another openly? Captain?" He took the right branching, evidently following her earlier footsteps. He looked back, meeting her eye for a second, and the candle was close enough to his face that she could see the sharp slant of his smile.

"Fine," Kyali said, and coughed. "Their sort of work is spying and sneaking."

"Was that so hard?"

"I take it there's an actual purpose to this particular line of open sniping, Lieutenant. Maybe we could arrive at it before we arrive at the other end of this tunnel."

Up ahead, Annan came to a halt, turning to face her. The candle flickered between them, illuminating swathes of dust kicked up by their passage. He was taller than her, and broad enough to take up most of the passageway, and she could feel herself flinch deep inside where the memory of any man at close quarters would always equal pain. Her fingers itched for a blade.

She didn't let herself move, though. She stared up into his face, fighting a profound, encompassing rage that had nothing at all to do with him, annoying as he was. She hoped her eyes weren't sparking, but judging by her pulse, they must be.

"Oh, I think you've guessed it," he said. "I am offering our services as couriers and spies to your cause. Most of us look similar enough to your people. We can move around in your kingdom unrecognized. We've far more experience than you at such things. We're
good
. Surely you've thought of it already, Captain."

She had. And it made so much damned sense she'd been chewing on the disagreeable taste of it for weeks, unwilling to ask for that kind of help. It was dangerous work. Not everyone they sent into the lowlands would come back, and those that were caught wouldn't...