Blood in the Water (51 page)

Aremil couldn’t care about that. Not when Branca brushed aside his every attempt to reach her with Artifice. This wasn’t just her usual reserve veiling her private thoughts. There was something desperately wrong and he had to find out what it was. Setting his crutches on the bottommost step, he began the laborious climb.

“My lord?” A nurse, a girl from the town, halted on the stairs, startled.

“Master Aremil.” He tried not to vent his irritation on the girl. Serafia, that was her name. “I make no claim to any title.”

For all his insistence, too many people followed Lord Rousharn’s lead, deferring to him as Duke Secaris’s son. Aremil still wanted to know who’d spread that news.

“Master Aremil.” Serafia bobbed a dutiful curtsey. “Master Welgren is still with Mistress Charoleia.”

Aremil declined to correct her assumption. After all she had suffered, he could hardly refuse to visit Charoleia on her sickbed. “I shan’t stay long.”

He let the girl escort him through the fine reception rooms on this landing. As he made his way carefully between the pallets, he allowed himself to hope Charoleia would be asleep. Then he need not linger.

Few curious eyes followed him. Most of the patients were lost in their misery. The most dangerously wounded were brought here, those with injuries to the face and neck. The arrow wounds exasperated Master Welgren the most. Where he could, he extracted the steel heads, washing out the deep cavities with wine and packing them with lard-soaked linen. Where such surgery couldn’t be risked, he could only remove the splintered shaft, leaving the steel and striving to keep the wound from suppurating.

Aremil tried not to breathe too deeply amid the mingled smells of suffering and nursing. “Isn’t Mistress Branca here?”

He’d sent daily notes, first asking, then begging her to visit. Her scrawled replies always promised she would, just as soon as Master Welgren could release her, just as soon as the storms had passed by, just as soon as she’d had some rest. She’d still not come. Aremil didn’t believe she would. So he must act.

“She’s upstairs.” Serafia knocked softly on the door at the end of the room. “Master Welgren, it’s Lord— Master Aremil.”

Welgren opened the door, his genial face surprised. “Ostrin save us. Did you come all this way unaided?”

“Aremil, come in.” Charoleia’s voice was clear, if perilously weak.

Welgren stepped backwards. Aremil negotiated the narrow entrance of what had once been Duke Garnot’s presence chamber, now Welgren’s private refuge. He had insisted both women receive his personal care.

Polite greeting died on Aremil’s tongue. Beneath the ancestral portraits decorating the dove-grey walls, one of the two beds was empty.

“She died in the night.” Charoleia was as wan as the bandages swathing her head. “She never woke.”

“There must have been some injury we couldn’t see.” Shaking his head, Welgren returned to the marble table where his instruments and notebooks lay neatly arranged. “Some slow bleeding of her organs or perhaps within her skull.” He sighed heavily.

Failla sat on a stool, a clean apron covering old stains on her dun gown. “We’ve no notion what mischief the magic might have done bringing her here.”

“We don’t know that it caused any harm.” Charoleia’s violet eyes flashed with something of her old fire. “You’re to say nothing of the kind to Sorgrad. Without him we’d both be dead.” Tears sparkled on her cheek as the scudding clouds parted and sunlight fell through the many-paned windows. “He and Gren will mourn Trissa as sorely as anyone.” She closed her eyes and turned her face from them all.

“Forgive me, I won’t disturb you further.” Aremil began retreating. “Please accept my sincerest condolences.”

“Let me help you.” Failla rose swiftly to open the door.

“Thank you.” Aremil went back to the stairwell as quickly as he could.

Unexpected grief clawed at his heart. Trissa was dead. Though he’d barely known her. He’d never really paid her much heed. They’d exchanged a few words as he’d come and gone from Charoleia’s house in Vanam but he’d had scant reason to talk to Lady Alaric’s maid.

He halted, blinded by unexpected tears. Now he could never get to know Trissa. He’d never learn what had brought her and Charoleia together. Had she ever looked for some life beyond their travels and deceits? Did she have a family waiting anxiously for news? Would anyone care she was dead, beyond scoundrels like Sorgrad and Gren?

Wretchedness overwhelmed him and he wavered on his crutches. Trissa was dead, like countless others, fallen in battle or succumbing after days of drawn-out pain. If Poldrion truly existed, he must be filling ledger after ledger with names. The queues for his ferry across the river of death must be hundreds deep by now.

Hundreds deep or thousands? Doubtless Dagaran could supply the precise figure, for their army at least. Would Saedrin call him to account for each and every death? And for those killed fighting for Sharlac and Carluse and Triolle, mercenaries and slaughtered militia, helpless to refuse their lords’ commands? Aremil’s throat closed with anguish and he struggled to draw breath.

“Here, let me.” Failla steadied him with a hand at his elbow and deftly wiped his eyes. Just as she wiped her child’s running nose.

Aremil could only submit to her ministrations. He couldn’t decide which disgusted him more: that he hated her for such kindness or that he hated himself for his weakness.

“It was good of you to come,” she said quietly. “Who brought you the news? I was about to find you myself.”

Aremil saw no point in a lie. “I didn’t know. I came to find Branca. She won’t visit me.”

“She is very busy.”

But Aremil saw something of his own frustration reflected in Failla’s eyes.

“It’s more than that, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. She won’t say. She won’t talk to anyone.”

“She’ll talk to me.” Aremil gripped his crutches, ready to tackle the next flight of stairs. “I won’t leave till she does.”

“A moment, please.” Failla bit her lip. “Have you spoken to Tathrin?”

Aremil nodded. “This morning. I’ll tell him about Trissa as soon as I can.”

He hoped whatever unease Failla saw in his face looked like tiredness or grief. He didn’t want her thinking he begrudged her and Tathrin the comfort they had taken in each other’s bodies, before Tathrin, Sorgrad and Gren had ridden to rejoin Evord’s army.

Aremil hadn’t meant to intrude on Tathrin’s precious memories. Not when they redoubled the ache in his own heart. Then he realised Failla’s thoughts were all with Tathrin.

“Where are they now?” she asked desperately. ‘What’s the plan of campaign?”

“They’ve been sitting out the thunderstorms in whatever shelter they can find.” Aremil shivered with sympathy for Tathrin’s tribulations. “They’ll be marching for Pannal as soon as they can.”

“Are Duke Iruvain and Lord Geferin still making haste for Parnilesse?”

Everyone in the castle knew that was their aim. Everyone knew once the enemy crossed the bridge at Brynock, any chance of ending this war before winter was lost.

“They’ve been as badly hampered by the storms as our own men. Evord’s scouts say they’re moving more slowly, with their coaches and wagons bogging down in the mud and all the Duke of Triolle’s household clinging to their coat-tails. Tathrin says Evord’s leading regiments will close with their rearguard just this side of Pannal.”

“If the weather holds.” Failla looked through a window at the tumultuous sky. “And all we can do is sit and wait.”

“I know,” Aremil said heavily.

Tathrin’s thoughts were full of the upcoming battle. He was horribly afraid that Lord Geferin’s army would somehow escape them, that all their efforts would have been in vain. Then the dukes would prevail and their rule would once again sweep across Lescar. All who’d stood against them through this year of upheaval would pay for their defiance with their lives. All Aremil could do was remind his friend not to borrow trouble before Poldrion’s demons demanded their due.

A moan from the reception room drifted through the stairwell.

“I had better go.” Failla managed a wry smile.

“It’s best to keep busy.” Aremil managed a weak smile and slowly climbed to the next floor.

Should he be taking his own advice? Would forcing Branca to talk to him just make matters worse? One way or the other, he would soon know.

The door to Duke Garnot’s great bedchamber stood ajar. He pushed it open with one crutch. “Branca?”

“Aremil?” Startled, she looked up from papers strewn across the vast bed.

Moving this canopied heirloom, where generations of dukes had been begotten and born, was impossible. It had been easier to fill the space around it with elegant furniture stripped from the guest apartments.

“Branca, I’ve been so worried—”

“I’ve no time to spare today,” she said quickly, looking down at her papers again. “I’m drawing up everything I remember about the use of Artifice in healing. I’ve asked Mentor Tonin to look through Vanam’s archives, and to contact any other adepts—”

“Branca, stop it!” Aremil swung himself into the room and shoved the door closed with a jab of his crutch. “Why haven’t you been to see me?” He gasped as cramp seized him. Hastily sweeping some books to the floor, he half-sat, half-fell on a padded velvet chair.

Branca stepped back from the bed. “What possessed you to risk yourself coming here?” She twisted her apron with anguished hands.

“Why won’t you see me?” he asked desperately.

“Just leave me alone.” She fled to the far side of the room.

“Don’t you dare turn your back on me!” Aremil tried to stand up. He failed. The pain in his useless legs was nothing to the torment of being unable to reach Branca. Furious, he threw his crutches at the tapestried wall. Fabled Dukes of Carluse rode with gods and goddesses: Talagrin, Trimon and Larasion. All were tall and beautiful, strong and lithe. Every embroidered gaze mocked him for a helpless cripple.

“No!” Branca turned around, hands pressed to her tear-stained face. “Don’t think that!”

Some spark leaped through the aether between them. He caught a glimpse of her inner turmoil.

You can’t love a murderess.

“Branca, dear heart.” Aremil didn’t know if he spoke the words aloud or through the Artifice. “Gren killed that wizard. I saw it all through Tathrin.”

“No, you don’t understand—” Branca choked on a sob.

Her anguish shredded the veils wound around her thoughts.

I was so tired, so scared. I’d been doing all I could to save Charoleia from his cruelty, to soothe Trissa’s hurts—

“Trissa’s dead?” She looked at Aremil, aghast.

“No one told you?” How could he have known?

Then it was all for nothing, everything that I did—

Branca fell to her knees, hiding her face in her hands.

“Without you—” Aremil recoiled as she tried to sever the Artifice that linked them. No. He wasn’t going to let her.

“You helped Charoleia and Trissa withstand that vile torture. They gave nothing away of our plans, of our Artifice!”

“Who cares about any of that?”

An aetheric echo of Branca’s despair pierced him like a knife. Her self-loathing cut him still deeper.

I killed that old woman. The one who forced Failla to help her. I didn’t mean to, I swear it. But she would have handed me over, to Karn and to that wizard. I was so alone. I was so scared. I only meant to push her away!

Aremil saw Pelletria’s brutal fall. He heard the crunching snap of her thigh, of her neck. He heard Litasse’s scream of desolate grief.

Shaken to his core, he held out helpless hands. “You didn’t mean to do it. No one can blame you!”

How could he possibly comfort her?

“You can’t!” She sprang to her feet and disappeared through a side door hidden by a tapestry.

“Branca!”

He reached desperately for his closest crutch. It was too far away. Serve him right for indulging in childish tantrums. Very well. He would crawl like an infant if he must.

Before he could lower himself to the floor, the main door opened.

“Aremil?” It was Failla.

“Help me up.” Scarlet with embarrassment, he gestured at his crutches.

She swiftly collected them. “Lord Rousharn is looking for you.”

“Tell him to go piss up a rope!”

Gren’s obscenity escaped Aremil before he realised.

“Gladly.” Failla’s laugh startled them both. “But if you don’t forbid this he’ll act on his own authority.”

“What’s going on?” Aremil looked desperately at the closed door hiding Branca.

Failla turned serious. “We’ve had word of those mercenaries that fled from Tyrle.”

“Into Draximal?” Aremil looked blankly at her.

“They’ve sacked Wyril.” Failla looked sickened. “Now they’re calling every brigand loose in Lescar to join them and set up a new dukedom.”

“What does Lord Rousharn say to that?” Aremil knew he wasn’t going to like her answer.

Failla glanced apprehensively over her shoulder. “He says we must recall Evord’s army and send our regiments to contain them, while the Dalasorians drive off any mercenaries coming to join them. Then—” she broke off as heavy footfalls echoed up the stairwell.