Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (6 page)

The prince twisted his sword against her ribs.

“Take me as a hostage,” Owen said.

“What?”

Nora looked up, as did Bashan. Owen shrugged at them both.

“Isn’t that how you say it? You could take me as a hostage, my lord. As a guarantee. I swear on my life, she will not tell anyone where you’re headed then.”

“Owen!”

“On your life, eh?”

“Owen, no!”

Owen shook his head. “You don’t understand. I don’t want to leave, Nora.”

Nora stared at her brother and focused on just breathing for a moment. Anger churned her stomach and burned in her throat.

Owen shook his head once more, then looked at her beseechingly. “Where do you want to go anyway?”

“Owen, please!”

“You were the one who wanted to run away, remember?”

“Not like this! Not with these people! We’ll find another way, our own way. Maybe go south, wherever you want to go.”

“I want to go to the Temple of the Wind. I want to become a pilgrim.” Owen looked up at Prince Bashan. “And I want to help you find the Blade.”

Bashan nodded. “I’m listening. Keep going.”

Owen licked his lips.

“There’s a library at the Temple of the Wind. But it’s not an ordinary library of books and scrolls. In the ancient world it was a collection of memories. If Kandar ever wrote down where he was headed with the Blade, that knowledge would be stored there. I could help you. I’m a scholar at heart, a scrivener by schooling. And I’m wasted in Owen’s Ridge. Let me come with you. And let my sister go home if she wants to. Unharmed.”

The tips of the swords were gone.

“Fine. You have a deal.” Bashan sheathed his sword. “She goes, you stay. Say your goodbyes quickly before I change my mind. Shade, look after our new recruit.”

“Yes, lord.”

Nora scanned Owen’s face. What she saw in his eyes made her heart break.

“You can’t do this,” she said.

He shrugged, then scratched the back of his head.

“I’m sorry. But I was trying to tell you all this time. You just weren’t listening. I don’t want to leave.”

“Owen, these are not good people.”

“The prince has a just cause. He should have been emperor. If it weren’t for the prophecy of the Blade, he would be.”

Nora hit the ground with her fists.

“The prince is a fucking jerk and isn’t fit to rule. Look at the scumbags he’s with. Murderers, thieves, mercenaries. They’d slit their own mother’s throat if they thought it’d bring them coin.”

“Careful, aye?” The young man called Shade still stood behind her, but Nora didn’t care. She just talked louder.

“What? It’s true! Owen, these guys torched Moorfleet without so much as a second thought because of a whiny, petulant princeling who acts as though he’s still four years old and the world belongs to him. Well, hello, reality. It doesn’t work that way. Stories are stories. Legends are legends. And there’s no such thing as a magical blade that imbues you with the right to rule.”

“Shh, Nora!”

“Don’t
shh
me! You’re better than this. You know better, Owen. You yourself carved the runes on those daggers and swords we made for those pompous pricks from Dernberia. What did you write? ‘My wielder thinks I’m magical’?”

Owen clenched his teeth. “This is different.”

“No, it’s not,” Nora yelled, and her voice broke. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Don’t you see? Open your eyes.”

He crossed his arms and studied her face as she cuffed away the tears.

“My eyes are open. It’s you with the illusion that you can just carry on with your life as though nothing happened. Maybe this is your last chance. Come with me. Do yourself a favor and don’t go back to the Ridge.”

His voice was hard and tense. She stared at her brother’s face. His eyes became her focal point, the fixed star. If she blinked now, she’d spin into the darkness.

“Oh gods. You believe it too, don’t you?”

“I don’t have to believe. I saw often enough.”

She rose slowly, seeking to steady herself by his gaze.

“What did you see? You saw nothing. There was nothing to see.”

Owen turned his head and looked across the river where the men were gathering. The world fell silent, and Nora took a breath as though it were her last.

“Yeah, well. If you’re going to be all self-righteous, maybe you shouldn’t have fucked our father,” Owen said.

Cold gripped her heart and squeezed. Nora struggled for air as though she were underwater. Mechanically she gripped the straps of her backpack and twisted the rough hemp as though it were a lifesaving rope. She opened her mouth. He didn’t believe that. He couldn’t! It was too…too… Her head reeled.

You never called him Father, only Rannoch. I did, though. And that’s all he ever was.
She wanted to say that. But nothing came except the salty taste that heralded vomit. She shut her mouth again. She wanted to hit him. Wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled. But nothing she could do would make him take back the monstrosity of what he’d just said.

So she left. One foot in front of the other. First the right, then the left. Looking ahead, she saw nothing but dead grass and forlorn windswept trees dotting the Plains. There was nowhere to go and nowhere to hide. She would be one tiny speck in the vastness around her. She didn’t look behind her until night had fallen and she was sure she wouldn’t see anyone. Owen never called out after her, anyway.

M
aster Telen Diaz sat on
top of the collapsed stone aqueduct, legs crossed and palms open to whatever the heavens had to offer. Night had fallen around him, but it didn’t make much difference to his wight eyes as he gazed over the emptiness of the Plains.

The world melted away beneath him and he saw himself from far above, outlined in a pale blue light. His condensed soul light pulsed steadily. The wights believed that all souls were of the essence of the stars and that everyone could tap into their innermost being and draw strength from the eternal stillness within if they so wished. But decades of watching humans had led Diaz to the conclusion that if they did know how to go far without and deep within, most chose not to know. They were content to be distracted, unfocused, carried about hither and thither wherever the winds would blow them, like the autumn leaves that swept past his lone figure. Few were like the stars above, striding in their set path untouched by any wind, a law unto and in themselves, unshackled by actions and words. How long had he let himself be bound, not giving heed to what his body did or said? When had he last gone far without and deep within? He had become too human, too much of a leaf.

He hovered over his body for a long time, lingering in the light and undisturbed quiet of the stars, and contemplated the web of interconnected cords surrounding him, some strands thicker than others. All the oaths he had chosen to take. The thickest was the cord that bound him to the pilgrim order, of course. It led from his body below him to the north in a faint blue line. To the north where the Shrine of Hin stood. With Master Darren dead—obviously not of old age—Diaz was the next eldest master in the northern realms, and thus he should be at the shrine. Should be. The pilgrim code was clear in this matter. Punish the wicked. Protect the innocent. Guide the lost. The daily grind of upholding law and order, passing out judgment, giving women over in marriage, and giving over the dead to the silent road in burials. Important, yes. Especially now that the north was without leadership. Moorfleet gone, the empire withdrawn, and the order’s representative killed. However, perhaps there’d be someone more suited to take up that role of oversight. All these years, Master Darren had been doing Diaz a favor. Unknowingly, but still. Diaz should at least hunt for his murderer. A thin strand divided itself from that thick one. One more obligation. Yet it was one of need.

The next strongest cord was the oath he had sworn to Bashan. The two men’s methods were different, as were their motives, yet perhaps their goals were still the same. Bashan was on a quest to regain all he had lost, however the young man defined that: mostly it was his right to rule the empire, yet some days it seemed to be only the loss of his riches and a comfortable life. And Diaz? When they had first met five years ago, Bashan’s cause had given Diaz the possibility of regaining his honor and finding a new sense of purpose. Purpose he had lost after… An echo of a woman’s laughter disturbed his thoughts.
Don’t think that! Don’t go back! Focus on what’s before you. The Blade.
Find the Blade, find purpose. It was never that simple, though, was it? Moorfleet had shown that. Every day the young prince sank lower and lower to new depths of debauchery and, bound to him, Diaz was pulled down alongside, not knowing how to cut the cord. An oath was an oath, and once you broke your word, even in the least of things, then all words had failed and every oath meant nothing.

He frowned, remembering the same words spoken by the girl, Noraya. Two thin strands bound together. Maybe it was the twins who’d caused his doubts, made him feel the need for introspection. The boy, Owen, in particular. The way he looked at Diaz, as though being a pilgrim master meant being flawless, all duty and honor and sacrifice for the code. Hadn’t he seen it that way once? Didn’t he still? And the girl—Bashan was right. She was insolent, impulsive, and reckless, albeit with noble intent. She had said no one taught her how to fight—and why should they? She was a girl, and a charcoal burner. But also strong and capable. The order would profit from more female masters of that spirit. From more masters of that kind in general.

So twins really did have their own magic about them. He smiled. They’d be able to spend two or three months together at the Temple of the Wind before Bashan continued his search for the Blade come spring. And maybe Diaz could teach the twins a thing or two in the meantime. He’d never had students before. Maybe it was time.

*     *     *

Dawn was creeping into the
world, coloring the last of the night charcoal gray. Some of the early risers among the men were waking as Diaz noiselessly walked into the encampment on the far side of the River Line. His wet clothes steamed as he stood next to the fire to dry. He nodded a greeting at the weary watcher on guard duty and then looked for Bashan’s figure among the sleepers. There. The boy Shade slept close to the prince, as always. And next to the pale, blond boy lay the dark-haired head of Owen. Good. It was as he had told Bashan. Maybe Diaz’s word did still have some influence on the man. Bashan was still malleable.

Then he doubled back. There was only one dark-haired head. The girl was gone.

Diaz blinked and checked he hadn’t missed her among the men. No, she wasn’t there. His gaze wandered over the grass around the encampment, looking for footprints leading away. There weren’t any. She wasn’t anywhere. He took a deep breath and tried to find the calmness within he had felt only a few hours ago. Instead, he stormed over to Bashan and grabbed him by his collar. The prince woke face-to-face with an angry wight.

“What the…?”

“Where is she?” Diaz demanded, shaking Bashan awake.

Bashan wiped a hand across his face and focused on Diaz.

“Where’s who?”

“The girl. The girl, Noraya. The girl I told you I’d hold you responsible for.”

“She left. It wasn’t my fault!” Bashan held up his hands over his head as though warding off a blow. “She and her brother—they had a fight. She wanted to leave, so I let her go home. Why are you so—I don’t know…what’s the matter with you? I thought you wanted to go pray or something.”

Diaz let Bashan go. He turned around to face west and stared back across the Plains in the direction from which he had just come. She had wanted to go home? It was a few days’ travel to Owen’s Ridge. If there was still an Owen’s Ridge to go to.

“Talk about tranquility! You said nothing was to happen to her. Nothing has happened. I swear no one touched her.” Bashan was still talking. It didn’t matter. Diaz tuned him out.

She had left. He had been gone but one day, and she had just left.

Diaz looked down at the sleeping boy at his feet. He had only known the twins for a couple of days. In the aftermath of his meditation, it seemed as if he could still see the faint blue cord binding him to Owen now. Diaz, by his oath, was under obligation to guide Owen to the nearest temple or shrine for education as a pilgrim. He was the master and Owen an initiate. Protect the innocent. Guide the lost. The boy was his responsibility and under his protection.

Fuck!