The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (26 page)

He swallowed the urge to berate them.  He had to be a responsible captain, which meant accepting some level of never-ending protection.  Three lancers still made a tempting target for an assassin, so he simply nodded to them and went to his horse.

The big tawny Tasgard beast nudged his shoulder with its nose and he gave it a greeting pat.  Its—his—name was Havoc for what he had wreaked on the Jernizen lines, and though his hide was furrowed with scars, Sarovy preferred him to the horse he had been assigned for the Guardian pursuit: a younger, faster but fairly brainless creature.  Upon reassignment, Sarovy had pulled Havoc from the Crimson stables himself.  While they had not always gotten along, he owed the old horse more than to let him languish in an eight-foot cell.

Swinging into the saddle was like returning to his domain.  He felt comfortable in the embrace of his armor, comfortable ahorse; it reminded him of better times.  There had been an invisible beacon hanging over those Jernizen battlefields, a bright light guiding him onward.  To victory, to redemption...

Now he was raiding cultists and threatening civilians.  The shine had tarnished.

“What's the plan, sir?” said Lancer Garrenson as Sarovy turned his horse after the infantry.  The wind cut cold through the canyons of the streets, stinging through padding and plate; it had turned from northerly to southerly a few days ago and now kicked their cloaks ahead of them as they angled toward their target beneath the winter-white sky.

“We are going to get me shot at,” said Sarovy.

*****

From the comfortable darkness of the eiyenbridge, Ardent watched the Crimsons maneuver beneath her feet.  She could only see into the physical world through shadows, but those shadows did not have to be cast by walls and rooftops; they could be cast by men, and as long as she walked in their footsteps, her connection remained.

Thus, she observed her quarry like reflections in a mirrored floor.  The captain and his two bodyguards were restive; she had shifted her position many a time to stay in their horses' shadows, catching glimpses more of their gestures than their features.  Her cloak of eiyets clung tenebrous to her, whispering the words of her agents into her ears; they told of abominations, portals, the shimmer-shapes of archers, painful mage-lights, scouts at all corners.

Good information for the future, should they ambush these men for real.

A part of her screamed to do it now.  She could see the captain's throat from below—the underside of his jaw as pale as raw dough between the cover of his gorget and his crested helm.  One bolt, well-aimed, would crack through the roof of his mouth at this angle, straight into his fanatical brain.

He deserved it.  Nearly a hundred Kheri had been captured in his raids on the smugglers' coves.  Her contacts said that they had been shipped to the Imperial outpost of Miirut and then forced through portals, which meant their destination was probably the Imperial City.

In the shadowless circle, where no rescue could come.

She hissed through her teeth, and the eiyets echoed her.  For all her careful talk, she was vindictive by nature, and well understood Commander Tonner's complaints.  To remove her enemies—to crush them in her seething fist—was a great joy, and she wanted to feel it at this captain's expense.  Brazen man, showing himself so openly!

Yet he was no fool.  She could hear him through the mirror of shadows, directing his troops within the storehouse via the magic that connected them.  Though he thought himself prepared for her, he was not content to rest on that surety.  He knew there was more to do.

“A dance, you and I,” she told his image.  Slow and cautious at first, learning the steps, but then swifter and fiercer until one of them slipped up.

Even as she smiled, her mind slid to the other man—the one her eiyets had shown her.  The Pajhrasthani within the storehouse, shaking the bangles out from under his chain sleeves to summon elementals of air and fire.  Taradzuren by the cut of his goatee, perhaps the same one reported by the survivors of the cove raids.  A blood-traitor.

If the call came to destroy this company, she would deal with him first.

Then she would kill the captain.

*****

Linciard stirred, then cracked one bleary eye open, wondering what that sound was.  Like shuffling papers...

Realization struck, and he swung from the bed, the thin blanket shedding from his back.  “Savaad, what are you doing?” he snapped even as he stepped past the privacy screen that separated the living-space from the office.

Rallant glanced over his shoulder, one fine blond brow arched, a sheaf of papers in his hands.  By his expression, it was Linciard's fault for interrupting, not his.  “Reading.”

“Don't touch those.”  He grabbed for them but the senvraka whisked them away, smirking, and it was all he could do not to lay hands on the man.  “Those are official business.”

“Yes, and you really should learn to spell, Erolan.  Where did you grow up, the Night fringe?”

“I—  That's none of your business, and get your naked ass off my chair.”

Rallant rolled his eyes but rose and stretched indolently, giving Linciard an eyeful.  “It's not very comfortable anyway.  I prefer the bed.”

“Then get back there and stop touching my work.”  Linciard snatched the papers and smacked Rallant with them as the senvraka slid past him, much too close.

“Tease.  Now where did I leave my breeches...”

Linciard dropped the papers back on his mess of a desk, then took a moment to just breathe.  He did not want to throw Rallant out, but this kind of behavior was—

Something missing.
  He scanned the desk for whatever his subconscious had noticed, then snapped, “Sav!  The piking earhook!”

“Calm down,” said the senvraka from around the screen.  “It's not as if I don't have my own, I just left it with my armor.  Listening to you snore was too much to tolerate.”

“You're a bastard.  Did I miss anything?”

“The captain is out there tempting fate.  I don't know what you see in him.”

“
What?
”

“He's uptight, he has no sense of self-preservation—“

“Give me the hook!”

“Quiet, I'm trying to listen.”

Scowling, Linciard stalked around the screen and nabbed the arcane object from Rallant's ear.  The senvraka smacked his arm in annoyance, but when he slid it into position on his own ear he heard nothing.

“You're messing with me,” he said.

“I'm not.  He ran off with some infantry and all the ruengriin and is out there trying to bait assassins.  As if those two in the cells weren't enough.”

Linciard scowled, a headache already coming on.  He wanted to crawl back into bed and pull Rallant down with him—have some quiet time.  It felt like he'd been running in circles ever since his promotion, yelling himself hoarse at the lancers that used to be his comrades and superiors and chasing after the captain's back.  He had no idea how he was doing, or whether the others would tell him if he slipped up.  And that was just dealing with company strife, never mind the piking city.

He moved back to his desk instead, determined to start his day.  Rallant had been reading his attempt at a platoon report, and faced with his own childish, painstaking scrawl, he had to admit that his lover was right.  He was lucky he knew how to write at all, it not being a prized skill in the backwoods, but such an excuse would not satisfy the captain.

“It's not illegible,” said Rallant, emerging to drape an arm across Linciard's shoulders and play with one of his war-braids.  The contact between clothed hip and bare sent a warm surge through the lieutenant, which he struggled to ignore.  “I can get the gist of it, but you shouldn't use big words if you don't know how to spell them.”

“I'm trying to be professional.”

“Just be what you are.  He didn't promote you for your calligraphy skill.”

“Then what did he—“  Linciard swallowed the words, hating to whine.  Hating to be so uncertain.  He wished he'd stayed a lancer.

“You're doing fine.  Confidence comes with time.  I was born in the backwoods myself—northern Tremen county before the accursed Corvish forced us out.  But I spent a few years in the court at Thynbell and learned how to fake it.  You will too.”

“If you were at court, how did you end up here?”

Rallant fell silent, and Linciard glanced at him sidelong, not wanting to move from their pose.  The golden teardrop gleamed at the hollow of the senvraka's throat, but above that his smile was brittle—almost sullen—and his gaze had gone distant.

“I was there to influence those whom the lagalaina could not, but I...made a mistake,” he said finally.  “We're all here because of our mistakes, aren't we?  What was yours?”

Flames and screams and bare feet running over snow...

“I—  Nothing.  One day I was in the Border Corps, the next day transferred.”

Rallant's smile broke.  For a moment there was something in his eyes like thin ice on a lake, treacherous.  Then it dissolved and the curve returned to his lips, the purr to his voice.  “Well lucky you, to be saddled with the likes of us.”

Linciard opened his mouth, wanting to explain, but he couldn't find any words that didn't feel like exposure.  After a moment, Rallant pushed away to make a show of looking for his undershirt.  For all their physical closeness, they'd known each other barely two weeks and been sleeping together for less than one, and that sporadic.  They were strangers.

I don't want that
, thought Linciard, but he couldn't say what he did want.  Knowledge?  Love?  Or just a bit of company?  Still, he hated to see anyone hurting.

“Sav...is there something I can do?” he said.  “This is a big step down from the Golden Court, but it doesn't have to be bad, right?  I could talk to the captain...”

Rallant cast him a bright, false look while shaking his undershirt right-side-out.  “About what, us?  Your reticence irks me, but I understand.  You have an image to maintain for the Jernizen.  Though if you like, I'll break their teeth for you.  Defend your honor.”

“You'll—  What?”

“Well, and for myself, of course.  Those mouthy morons can't seem to shut up about me.  In fact, they think suspiciously much about it, but a Jernizen would rather eat his own horse tack than own up to being attracted to another man.”

Linciard exhaled, then stepped around the privacy-screen to rummage up his own clothes.  The last thing he wanted to focus on was the Jernizen.  “I'll talk to them.  Tell them to lay off of you—“

“Oh no.  If they know I talked, then the grudge is clear, and when they're found dead-drunk and buttfucked in a back alley, all suspicion falls on me.”

“Sav—“

“I'm joking.”

“I know a joke when I hear one, Savaad, and that—“

“Relax.  I have standards.  And if it does happen, well, I am a monster.”

That was too much for him, and he rounded on Rallant with his trousers in one fist, the other hand jabbing the air.  “Don't you even talk like that,” he barked.  “You're not gonna do anything, because you're not some slavering Dark beast, you're not some—“

He saw too late the way Rallant flinched at his gestures, his raised voice.  And then the senvraka was inside his reach, hands clamping down on his forearms, nails biting the skin, and his face was very close: all sharp white teeth and hard eyes, gold as the pendant.  “No?” he said softly, his breath hot against Linciard's lips.  “The Dark has no monopoly on horrors, Erolan.  You should know.  You've been fucking one.  The sooner you admit that, the better off you'll be.  That's what it means to follow the Light.”  His grin, fierce and sudden, held no humor.  “To know yourself without illusions, and live with it.”

For a moment Linciard was paralyzed, staring into those uncanny eyes.  It was like Rallant had gripped him by the heart—or the balls perhaps, filling him with fire.  He knew he was looking at a mask, but it didn't matter.  Neither did the warning.

“I'm sorry I startled you,” he managed finally.

Rallant blinked, the edge evaporating from his smile.  “What?”

“I'm sorry.  Look, can we...”  Linciard glanced to the rumpled bed.  His blood was up, and he'd always been better at demonstrating his feelings than speaking them.  “We're not on shift yet, let's—“

The senvraka broke into a laugh and released him, shaking his head as he stepped away.  “My fault.  Maybe I miss the drama of court.  I'm going.  I'll see you tonight?”

“Yes—  No, look, stay a moment.  We can just talk.”

“With you in that state?  I'll have to remember you like being manhandled.”

Linciard flushed to his roots but persisted.  “I'll tell the captain.  I'll deal with the Jernizen.  And I won't hit you.  I saw—“

“
Stop,
” said Rallant with real venom this time.  Even from a distance, his cold stare made Linciard wilt.  “I don't want your charity.”

“It's not.  I swear.”

Rallant said nothing, and, hands raised in surrender, Linciard weathered his scathing look of disbelief until it moderated into something stony but tolerant.  “Well, don your trousers and see me off, then,” said the senvraka finally.