The Lost Brother (14 page)

Lord Morgan shook his head. “It’s amazing
you can keep all this straight in your head.”

“Most people don’t think about details of
murder unless they have to,” Gwen said. “Believe me, there are
times when I wish I didn’t know what I do.”

“I don’t believe that,” Morgan said
flatly.

Gareth glanced up at him, surprised at
Morgan’s tone and that his words had been spoken without humor.

Morgan’s face was perfectly serious. “I have
no doubt you’re going to find out who did this. Not only that, your
honor is such that nobody will be able to believe for long that you
have betrayed either it or King Owain.”

They’d come a long way from accusations of
treason in a very short time.

Gareth

A
ll things being
equal, Gareth was glad for that, but it was a miracle that he was
managing to keep his voice level as he went about the business of
investigating these murders. Ever since Morgan had shouted
‘treason!’ to the hall, Gareth’s anger had been on a slow boil. He
was struggling to prevent it from bubbling over, and the
out-of-control nature of it shocked him. His hands shook with
it.

What he really needed to do was to move, to
shout, to brandish his fist at the sky in frustration.

“We should see the place where the body was
buried,” Gwen said, “and if we think we’ve missed something, we can
stop here again on the way back, since we have to pass this way on
our return journey.”

Gareth nodded his assent, still not trusting
his voice, and rose to his feet. As he walked with her back to the
horses, Morgan’s assertion continued to resonate in his head.

There had been a time when his honor had
been all he’d had left. Because of honor, he’d walked away from his
companions, from Gwen, from everything he’d spent his life training
for, even as he’d cursed himself for refusing to swallow down his
conscience so he could have the life he wanted. Gwen had never
chastised him for putting his honor ahead of her. She’d loved him
for it, even as she’d lost him.

Humbled by her sacrifice, in the five years
without her he’d endeavored to ensure that he hadn’t walked away
from his service to Prince Cadwaladr only to lose his soul to some
other honorless lord. At the time he’d met Morgan in Powys, Gareth
had been serving such a man. And then Gareth
had
resigned
his position again rather than obey one more order he couldn’t
stomach.

As when he’d been thrown out of Aberystwyth,
he hadn’t known if he’d ever be accepted by another lord again.
He’d known what he had to do, however, regardless of the
consequences. Whatever the price, he’d paid it with his eyes
open.

And miracle of miracles, after he’d left
Lord Bergam, Prince Hywel had found him and hired him
because
of his sense of honor. Then Gareth had found Gwen
again on the road from Dolwyddelan, and he was damned if he was
going to allow another man’s actions to take his life from him for
a third time, especially when he’d done nothing wrong.

He was going to fight this to his last
breath.

Unaware—or at least acknowledging—of the
turmoil inside Gareth, Bran led the company another hundred yards
up upriver to another location, nearer to the bank, which dropped
steeply down to the fast flowing water below. He came to a halt at
a gaping hollow. When Lord Morgan’s men had recovered the body from
the ground yesterday, they hadn’t filled in the makeshift grave
again. Snow had blown in, prettying up the scene, but thanks to the
mist coming off the river, it was starting to melt.

Seen through the eyes of the killer, it
wasn’t a bad place to bury a body. As where the horses had been
picketed, the ground here was soft and would have been softer two
days ago, so easy to dig into. Had the false Gareth not been
discovered, by the time the late winter rains flooded the banks and
brought the remains of the body out of the ground where he’d been
buried, the bones would have been unidentifiable and the killer
long gone. He was long gone enough as it was.

The killer’s mistake, beyond the murder
itself, was choosing to bury the man so close to the trail. Gareth
could have discovered the burial site simply by walking past, just
as Bran had done. Likely, it had been dark when the false Gareth
had died, so Gareth could see how what was clear in daylight might
have been less clear in the dark. But the burial was still sloppily
done.

Beside him, Gwen sighed. “Another
grave.”

Gareth reached up to help her dismount.
“Despite Lord Morgan’s confidence in you as well as me, you don’t
have to do this anymore, Gwen.”

“I don’t want to stop.” She shook her head.
“I’m just tired.”

This time, all the riders, including
Morgan’s soldiers, dismounted to have a look at the grave. There
wasn’t much to see, but Gareth crouched next to the hole anyway,
trying not to disturb it more than the men had yesterday. To their
credit, they’d scattered the dirt, picking through it in case some
of the man’s possessions had been discarded in it. Gareth brushed
the layer of the snow aside but revealed only more dirt.

As at the graveyard, Gwen took it upon
herself to walk in ever-widening circles around the site to see if
she could find evidence of the killer. Morgan joined her, having
watched her technique back where the horses had been tied.

Gareth glanced at them out of the corner of
his eye, noting when they paused a dozen paces away from him, close
to the trail. “Did you find something?”

“Boot prints again,” Morgan said.

“We shouldn’t be surprised by that,” Gareth
said. “Are they large like the others?”

“It’s hard to tell, but I think these are
normal-sized feet,” Morgan said.

Gwen peered at the ground. “I think this is
blood.”

That news had Gareth moving swiftly towards
his wife and looking to where she pointed. The leaves here were
particularly thick, since they were standing under an ancient oak
tree. And while snow covered everything, there was only a light
dusting here, making the blood obvious now that they knew what they
were looking at. Plentiful too.

Gareth thought he could even smell the faint
salty twang of it, though that was probably just his imagination.
The leaves throughout the area were discolored under the snow, and
when he and Gwen carefully brushed a few off and picked them up by
their stems, an area of darker ground underneath where the blood
had soaked into the earth was revealed.

“He was killed here.” Gareth frowned as
drops of rain pattered onto the leaves beside him. The air had
warmed since they’d left the fort, but he hadn’t thought it was
warm enough to turn the snow to rain. The snow hadn’t even melted
on the trail yet.

He glanced up at the sky, noting the dark
clouds, and then he returned his attention to what lay before him.
It was good they’d pursued this lead first thing this morning,
because even if the snow hadn’t erased the details of the crime,
the rain that was coming surely would.

“Why leave the horses so far down the trail
from where the false Gareth was buried?” Morgan said.

“I know the answer to that,” Gwen said.
“Imagine this: the riders stop to rest, and the killer asks our
dead man to walk with him a ways out of earshot of the rest of the
men.”

“In order to kill him!” Morgan tapped a
gloved finger to his lips as he thought. “He didn’t want to scare
the horses with the smell of blood, and he needed to get the man
alone. I wonder what he said to lure him away.”

“He could have promised him something,” Gwen
said.

Morgan nodded. “The killer could have
suggested he had a secret he would only share with our dead man.
Perhaps the killer told him that he distrusted one of the other men
in their party and wished to confide his suspicions to
someone.”

“Gold could have done it too,” Gareth
said.

“The false Gareth wouldn’t have gone with
him if he thought he was dispensable.” Morgan’s eyes narrowed.
“Ensuring that my people know the truth isn’t enough, Sir Gareth.
You must ride for your camp immediately. The killer was heading
that way, and even now could be standing at King Owain’s side,
telling him lies about you.”

Gareth looked back down the trail. “We have
an investigation in progress.”

“Don’t be stubborn,” Morgan said. “Riding to
King Owain’s camp is a journey of a few miles. If our killer has
reached the king or Prince Hywel before you, and is even now
insinuating himself into his inner circle, he will have given
himself away, won’t he? And if he hasn’t, you can lay all that you
know at your lord’s feet. That way, if Prince Hywel and King Owain
do hear rumor of your fall from grace, they will already be on the
alert and be prepared to follow those rumors to their source.”

Gwen put a hand on Gareth’s arm. “A few
hours away from the investigation in order to avert disaster at
home is surely worth the time and effort involved.”

Morgan barked a laugh. “And you can also
look for a man with big feet.”

That last was meant as a jest. Gareth
obliged Lord Morgan by giving him a twitch of a smile. “We give
way.” Cilcain’s lord had a habit of making sense, even if he was
prone to bouts of wild speculation, and Gareth regretted speaking
so little with him all those years ago, though at the time their
stations in life had been much further apart than they were now.
“Gwen and I will go. If all is well, we will be back before
sunset.”

“If we do not return, try not to assume the
worst,” Gwen said. “It may be that Gareth was needed for something
else.”

“In which case, you should bury the false
Gareth and Gwen without us,” Gareth said.

“It will be done,” Lord Morgan said. “In the
interim, I will do what I can to discover if anyone saw them. At
the very least, my men can question my people and the villagers.
They all know what you look like now, and your recent visit may
prod their memories about seeing your look-alikes a few days
back.”

“You should know that I did not reach this
region until yesterday,” Gwen said. “Gareth, on the other hand, has
been scouting this area for weeks. If he was seen with me, then it
would have been the false Gareth and the false Gwen.”

“I appreciate whatever efforts you can
make,” Gareth said, uncharacteristically content with foisting
these tasks onto someone else. “The more people who know we’ve been
impersonated, the easier it will be not only to put names to the
victims, but to combat rumor and gossip about what they have done
and what Gwen and I have done.”

Morgan gave a jerk of his head in
assent.

Gareth and Gwen mounted their horses and,
instead of turning east towards Cilcain as Lord Morgan and his men
did, continued up the trail into the western mountains. Once they
were out of earshot, Gwen looked at her husband. “I want to trust
Lord Morgan. But can we really? It would have been devious and
clever of him to bury the woman over his own grandfather’s grave.
Both bodies were found on his land. He could be hiding in plain
sight.”

“I don’t think so, but how can I know for
certain?” Gareth said. “Gwen, we’re looking for a man who knows how
to wield a sword and are heading towards a place where everyone
fits the description of our killer. We may not be able to trust
anyone.”

Gwen

H
er husband was
eyeing her, worried as usual about how she was feeling. The trail
was narrow here, barely wide enough for them to ride side-by-side,
which meant Gwen couldn’t evade his eyes for long. It had started
to rain in earnest too, and the water plunked onto her head from
the branches above her
.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

“Do you?”

“You’re wondering how I can be so detached
about the death of a woman who resembled me.”

Gareth gave her a small smile. “I was
actually thinking about how beautiful you are, but I suppose, if
you pressed me, I was wondering about that too. How are you
doing?”

“My anger is sustaining me right now,” Gwen
said. “I felt sorry for her before and didn’t think I was angry at
all. Now, if I allow myself to think about who she might have been,
and lose focus on what she did, I start to fall apart. How could
she do what she did—to me and to us? How could she pretend to be
me?”

Gareth reached out a hand to Gwen’s knee and
patted once. “I know how you’re feeling, Gwen, because I’m angry
too. When Lord Morgan spoke of how I could be bought, a red haze
swam before my eyes. I wish I had answers, but I don’t.”

“I’m working on pitying her. Perhaps she
didn’t have the advantages I had growing up or a loving
family.”

“If your father was her father, she could
have resented that he never acknowledged her.”

“My father didn’t know she existed,” Gwen
said. “I would swear to it. For all his faults, he would never
abandon his own child.”

“You can never truly know what is in another
man’s—or woman’s—heart, Gwen,” Gareth said. “Your father may not
have known about her, but somehow this woman was twisted up inside
enough not to care about you.” He canted his head. “Then again, she
may have thought whatever she was doing was relatively harmless—or
she was paid well enough to convince herself of it. It’s only
because someone killed her that her actions have taken on a more
sinister tone.”

“So she pretended to be me on a lark?” Gwen
wasn’t any happier about that. She’d had a privileged childhood
until she was ten, but her childhood had ended after the death of
her mother. From that day onward, Gwen couldn’t remember doing
anything on a lark. Ever. At sixteen when she’d met Gareth, she’d
been a serious young woman. For a brief time, he’d made her giddy
and joyful. After he’d left, she’d been bitter and resentful, and
the experience had hardened her a bit around the edges.