Sword (43 page)

Annan had already dragged Aric from her bedroom, bless him. Kinsey had taken command of the sitting room and was ordering servants, telling his bodyguard to find more Cassdall men to guard the queen, which was a wise idea, considering.

"Don't look," Devin murmured when two servants carried Maldyn's twisted, crumpled form past the bedroom door. She was only too happy not to see that. She could still hear the despair in his voice, see the misery in his face. "Just stay here. You don't need to see. Where'd you come from?" he said then, and Taireasa blinked slowly.

"Secret passageways," she heard, and understood he'd been talking to Kyali. "Like in Faestan."

"Excellent timing. You're bleeding. What happened?"

"I met Earl Donal on my way here."

Donal.

"Oh gods, that
bastard
," Devin hissed.

"All that time I spent placating him," Taireasa muttered. "What a waste of effort."

Devin went still against her in sheer surprise. From behind her, she heard a strangled sound that might be laughter, or possibly something else, and she turned to see Kyali wipe her sword on her sleeve and sheathe it.

"I'll go, then, and speak to the guard," the Lady Captain said, and if she hadn't the faint thread of presence in her heart to tell her otherwise, even Taireasa might have believed Kyali was all right. It was that good a performance.

"Stay," Taireasa said. Kyali darted a glance at her, looked away.

"Stay," Devin echoed.

There was something new in him, a sadness, an understanding. Kyali began to look a little desperate. She was bleeding rather a lot, Taireasa saw, and she went into her small bathroom, found a cloth by candlelight, and soaked it in water from the washing bowl. Her hands were shaking badly. Nothing felt quite real.

When she came back, Annan and Kinsey were hovering by the fire, and Devin and Kyali were facing one another. Kyali looked like she was close to bolting, all blood and bunched muscles and desperation. Taireasa handed her the cloth, ignoring that desperation because acknowledging it
would
make Kyali bolt, she was sure. She peered into the darkness beyond the little door of stone in her bedroom wall. The door was just big enough for a tall person to step through, if she bent her head. She'd never had the slightest suspicion it was there.

"Just like Faestan," she said, and heard Kyali draw an unsteady breath behind her.

"I suppose, Majesty."

"Much of tonight is just like Faestan, Ky," Taireasa observed, ignoring that
Majesty
. The symmetry of it was horrible, and strangely comforting. Kyali had kept her safe again. It was what Kyali did. 

Devin reached out and caught Kyali's hand in his. She flinched, rose up on her toes again like she was preparing to leap away, and then, surprisingly, held herself still.

"You've carried it long enough, don't you think, sister? Far enough? Aren't you tired? "

Oh—gods.

"Speak sense. I don't know what you're talking about. Let go, Devin."

"I am, you do, and never, sister mine.
Never
. You're stuck with me for good. I think you're beginning to understand now just how stuck, aren't you?"

Or don't you hear me?
he said, in that other way that they could. The air around their joined hands was beginning to shimmer. Kyali stared at the floor, trembling with the desire to flee, the desire to stay—the two urges shivered through her, through all three of them. She didn't take her hand away, though. The shimmer grew pronounced.

Taireasa, I think this will take the three of us.

I don't want to hurt her. I've hurt her so much already.

She hadn't even realized she believed that until now. Taireasa put her hands to her face, too late to catch the tears.

Taireasa, it was never you! It was them, and they're dead, and good riddance. But she's hurting
herself
. Enough. I know the truth now, and you always did, didn't you? My stubborn, courageous, blind little sister is the only one who believes she's still hiding something to spare us pain.

Dear gods, that was
exactly it
. And of course, Kyali would.

"We're not going to be able to do this without you," Devin said aloud, strong and steady and sure, looking at Kyali, talking to both of them. He reached out with his other hand and set it on his sister's face, cupping it gently. She flinched, but she didn't bolt: she seemed frozen in place, her jaw knotting and her breath coming faster. "I don't know what it is we're supposed to do, or how we fix this, but I know it can't happen without you. We need you. And you need
us
, Kyali, like it or not."

The air was snapping now, making the drapes and the bedskirts flap. There was a faint hum coming from the abandoned glasses in the sitting room. Eyes grave, Kinsey got Annan by the arm and pulled them both back toward the wall, out of the way.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Kyali finally whispered. The faint thread of her presence was full of hope and terror and total despair.

"You stayed in my room that night," Taireasa heard someone say. In the stark silence that followed, she realized it had been her.

Kyali's eyes locked on hers. Taireasa swallowed, stepped closer, and made herself go on, because Devin was right. "You stayed to make sure they wouldn't find the doorway, that they wouldn't think to look for it. Didn't you? You were never going to gather the guard. You told me that so I would leave you there. And gods help me, I did, I should have known but I didn't, and I'm so—ah gods, Kyali, I'm so
sorry
—"

She caught the first sob, but she had to cover her mouth to stifle the rest. She squeezed her eyes shut, looking for the calm center of herself. "But I stayed too," she said. It was obvious that was not clear, so she fumbled for the words. "My Gift." It was so hard to breathe. It felt like the tears were burning into her skin, leaving scars. "That's when it woke. There. With you. I didn't leave. You stayed in my room… and I stayed with you."

"No," Kyali said in a small, shocked voice.

"I never left you," Taireasa said, the words coming faster now, rushing out. "How could I? I haven't since. I'm not going to. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Kyali, I never meant for that, I would never have asked it of you, and I don't want you to hurt any more.
I
don't want to hurt any more. I miss you.
"

"
Stop!
" Kyali cried, and stumbled a step back. She tangled her foot on the edge of the rug and thudded to her knees before Devin could catch her. He went down with her instead, pulled both her hands gently into both of his. He was crying now too, his presence alive with sorrow and horror and pity. Kyali curled into herself, breathing in great panicked gasps. 

"I can't. I can't. Let me go. There's nothing left, it's all ashes, just let me go."

"Not true," Devin said. "Breathe, sister."
You never backed down from anything, little sister, not once in your life.

I can't!

Taireasa knelt by Kyali and Devin, put her hands over theirs and lent her force to Devin's. They didn't press—she only knew now that they
had
been pressing, she saw that in Kyali's frustrated memory—only waited, open, hoping. Kyali shut her eyes, made a noise somewhere between a moan and a growl. And oh, there she was, wounded and despairing and stuck in that moment, that awful moment when she had known there was only a long, agonizing death in front of her and all hope was gone. There was the dark fury of her dreams, that Taireasa knew inside and out, knew by heart. Knew by her own choice.

We skinned our knees on the same stones, Kyali Corwynall. We laughed and wept together, we shared all our secrets. We grew from children to where we stand now, side by side. Whatever you think they took from you, I have long since held. Take it back from me.

Kyali opened her eyes. All her careful indifference was gone: her face was stark and bloodless and ravaged with sorrow and rage. They were at the center of a silent storm of warping air. Annan and Kinsey were no more than vague shapes outside it.

…I don't know how.

Like this
, Devin said, impatient, full of grief and a love so hard and unyielding it was like a blade. He tore one of his hands free, pulling a locket from under his shirt. "House Corwynall takes you back," he said grimly.

"No," Kyali said.

"Yes."

"You can't do that."

"I'm Head of House. For now, anyway. I can do anything I want."

"You can't—"

Devin leaned closer, and dropped the locket over Kyali's head, stopping her words. She shuddered as the shock went through her, into Devin and Taireasa; not the pain of that long-ago separation, but something warm and solid and enveloping. Devin shook his head. "We'll only follow you wherever it is you go, you bloody-minded, hard-headed, fire-haired wight. You'll never get rid of us. You'd do the same for one of us, and you know it."

"Shut up," Kyali rasped, head bowed, trembling with the effort it took to hold herself apart from them. Her presence was coming alive with memory, with pain, with a thousand things too complicated and sweet and hurtful for words. She was fighting that with everything in her. "Just shut up."

"Not likely."

Taireasa thought of Kyali swinging a wooden sword bigger than she was, Kyali flinging herself fully clothed into the Sainey because she hated the dress her mother had made her wear, Kyali standing at her mother's grave, pale and silent. Kyali laughing, Kyali shouting, Kyali with that ferocious scowl that everyone else thought meant she was furious, and Taireasa knew only meant she was thinking.

"When you were seven, you rode farmer Angus's prize milk cow halfway to Faiche Ford on a dare," Devin said, catching her tactic. "The same year, you rolled in a whole bag of flour and snuck into my room and scared me so badly I ran into the pig's trough trying to get away from you. I put eight crow-spiders in your bedroom the summer you were thirteen and you shrieked like a banshee, but you killed them all and put one in my pancakes the next morning. You thought I didn't know. I did. I ate them anyway."

It surprised Kyali into a choked laugh, which became something else. She pulled her hands free, and then simply knelt there, fighting and losing, yearning toward them and then away, her hands curled into fists on her knees and her eyes full of tears.

"There is no part of yourself you could ever lose," Devin said steadily. "Between us, I promise you, we have them all."

Kyali shook her head, fumbling for that cold distance, because moving forward was so frightening it made everything in her shake. Taireasa breathed with her, feeling that fear with her, that futile search. She reached out and put her hands over Kyali's as more tears spilled down her own face, no longer burning but clean, a cessation of pain.

"Did I thank you, Kyali Corwynall?" Taireasa asked. "I should have long since. Thank you for saving my life. Thank you for keeping me safe."

"Oh
enough
, I'm sorry, I'm so tired I can't think—oh
Father
, I'm sorry—”

Kyali rocked forward, pressed her forehead to Taireasa's. It hurt in so many ways, that gesture, and it was quite possibly the best thing she'd ever known. Kyali was shaking with sobs, coming apart under their hands, but it was exactly right. Devin wrapped an arm around his sister's heaving shoulders. Kyali let them hold onto her. After a moment, she let herself hug them back, a panic-tight grip, her heart a moil of gratitude and fury and drowning, terrible sorrow.

Taireasa didn't even hear Kinsey and Annan leave.

C
HAPTER
24

K
insey stood in his own bedroom, swaying with weariness. Annan was shooing the servants out, poking the fire back to life—stomping around like an angry general, snapping orders at retreating maids, stabbing at the hearth like there was an enemy hiding in the coals.

Kinsey stared at the high, lonely moon through the window. Tears kept stinging his eyes and he put a hand out and gripped the edge of his bed until the pain cleared his head a little. He leaned against the glass, trying to catch his breath, find his balance,
think
.

Gods, he'd never hurt so much for someone else. For all three of them. Tonight had broken his heart more than a little. He wiped at his face, cleared his throat, and wished he had a bottle of wine.

"Bed, my Lord Prince?" Annan said, coming up behind him, short-tempered and obviously hoping for his own. He turned, snapped something at a lingering servant who certainly didn't deserve it, and Kinsey met his eyes in surprise and curiosity.

Annan looked away first, which was interesting. He supposed even his unflappable master of spies was entitled to a twinge of sympathy now and then. A rock couldn't have remained unmoved, witnessing that.

"Bed," Kinsey agreed, wiping at his face again, because damn it, he couldn't seem to stop leaking tears. It was embarrassing, or it would have been if he had the energy to care. Annan hunched a shoulder, folded his arms, and heaved a gusty sigh. The man looked about as unsettled as he ever had, actually.

"But first…" Kinsey said, and turned to pull out a bottle of the Fraonir liquor Devin had given him, a dusty thing full of clear and somehow bright liquid. Annan looked at it with something approaching horror, which was a rather odd reaction, and then his broad shoulders slumped.

"Aye," he said, and went to retrieve a glass.

Two glasses.

"You're drinking with me, are you?"

"I am tonight."

Which was as much as he needed to know, Kinsey decided. It didn't look like Annan was in a talkative mood. He never was, when it came to himself. Kinsey poured generously, peering at the liquor curiously. Annan's dour look was telling.