Echoes of Betrayal (53 page)

“If I had been so invaded,” Dorrin said, “the invader would know—and my life would have been very different. I would have been like the other Verrakaien.”

“Unless it was a long-laid plan. Or she says perhaps you’re sisli—”

Dorrin let out an incredulous noise before she could stop it. “Sorry, my lord Mahieran, but in the first place, no, and in the second place, what difference would that make?”

He was flushed with embarrassment now but plowing ahead. “She says it’s unnatural, that you’ve had no lovers, no husband—”

“Uncommon, yes,” Dorrin admitted. “But neither has Paksenarrion—does your wife despise her?”

His gaze shifted aside. “She doesn’t want to meet her. She says she’s not worthy to be in a paladin’s presence.”

That would be true, Dorrin thought, if indeed Mahieran’s lady thought all women with swords were unnatural.

“And she says the other women feel the same.” Mahieran stopped short at that, brow furrowed.

Frustration edged Dorrin’s tone. “So—the noble ladies distrust me because I’m not like them, is that it? And use their pillow wiles to work against me?”

Mahieran glared at her. “It’s more than that. We are not ruled by our wives, Duke Verrakai. We have our own concerns about you.”

“Sufficient that you would risk your son’s life—and possibly more than that—should he be successfully invaded?”

“He won’t be. He withstood them before.”

“He withstood one attack, yes. You have much to be proud of in that. Verrakaien renegades, one of them badly wounded, trapped and away from any other resource. No way to access blood magery. Even so, formidable for anyone to defeat. But what he may face could well be much greater than that. A planned attack by those knowing the disposition and nature of the guards you set—”

“How would they know?”

Dorrin wanted to shake him. “Does your wife know?”

“Yes, of course. But Celbrin would never—”

“Never tell a friend not to worry, because you had set plenty of guards? She talks to other women about me. How much more likely it is she talks to other women about her children?” His expression
shifted from angry denial to thought. Dorrin went on. “Somewhere, Duke Mahieran, there is more treason to be found, and someone may have connections to your wife you do not know. That she does not realize are dangerous.”

“I suppose …” His voice trailed away. “But she would never do anything to hurt Beclan.”

“Not intentionally, no,” Dorrin agreed, though to her mind Celbrin Mahieran was as likely a traitor as anyone else. “But you do not know what she said to whom, or what those other women said to their other friends, even their servants.” She watched the expression on his face as it shifted and dared to go further. “And if there is a traitor still in the nobility whom you have not unmasked, what better way to gain information than by sympathetic questions from wife to wife, friend to friend? Verrakaien women, as well as men, were trained to evil; so no doubt were some among their allies.”

Duke Mahieran chewed his lower lip for a moment. “Do you
really
think Beclan’s in serious danger?”

“I do. They have had ample time to locate where you have held him, ample time to make a plan and carry it out.”

“I wish it were not you alone who could intervene,” he said. His gaze went past her to the wintry landscape and then came back, a piercing look.

Dorrin shook her head. “I cannot do it alone, my lord. But I can do what no one else but a paladin can do, and we have seen no paladins of late. I would have thought, with Pargun invading Lyonya, that Paks might come, but she did not.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, as if that would help him think, and then opened them again. “Well. I will try to fix my mind on your better deeds and your better traits, Duke Verrakai, and put out of thought your treacherous family and the concerns others have had. But if Beclan dies—”

“If Beclan dies before we arrive, it is not my fault,” Dorrin said. “I will do my best if he is alive then, but I can promise no more than that.”

“I want to believe you,” Mahieran said. “But it is hard … Serrostin’s son with green blood in his veins …”

“But not a cripple,” Dorrin said. She was tired of apologizing
for Daryan, when the lad himself was delighted to have nimble legs and a usable thumb growing ever stronger. He’d told her he hoped the other thumb would bud as well. His family would just have to accept it.

T
he shortest way across country would take too long, Mahieran insisted. Dorrin was equally insistent that they not approach by the direct route from the Mahieran country house. They compromised, taking the River Road west, then a forest track Mahieran knew that bypassed his home and led to another that approached the cottage from the east. They had with them Mahieran’s personal guard, ten of his household troops; he had refused her suggestion of a Royal Guard contingent. Dorrin hoped it would be enough.

On the second day, Mahieran would have stopped at dusk to camp again. Dorrin insisted they ride on. They reached the outer ring of guards at the turning of night. No one answered the hail, and with only a little searching they found the first bodies, garroted. “Holy Gird help us,” Mahieran said.

Dorrin touched her ruby, calling on Falk. The ruby glowed. “They’re still here,” she said. “In the cottage, and soon they will know I am here. Speed and surprise is Beclan’s only chance now. They expect no visitors.” She dismounted, pulled off her spurs, and put them in the saddlebag. They tied the horses; Dorrin tried a soothing spell on them; she was not sure it would work. “My lord,” she said, “this is now a military problem. I ask your leave to take command.”

“Very well,” he said, and nodded to his men.

The inner ring of guards also lay dead; the attackers had made no attempt to hide the bodies. Dorrin murmured her orders and could only hope they’d be followed. They hurried on and were almost at the cottage when the first scream wavered through the night. The cottage, a dim shape in the snowy clearing, showed a dark gap where a door stood open. Around the corner, light streaked the snow from another open door. Another shriek came from there.

“Granna Surn, the cook,” Mahieran muttered.

“This door,” Dorrin said quietly. She waved the tensquad around to the other. Mahieran plunged forward; she caught him by the
sleeve. “Carefully,” she said. “May be trapped.” Probably not, since the attackers expected no interference, but if they’d sensed her before she realized it—she flattened herself against the wall on one side of the door and eased her sword into the black gap. No reaction from inside.

She moved in and heard Mahieran’s harsh breathing behind her. When she felt the first touch of magery from another, she immediately called her light. There in the main room of the cottage two red-masked figures—priests of Liart—had hold of Beclan’s arms and were dragging him toward the door that led into the kitchen. Beclan wasn’t struggling, but she didn’t think he was dead. Dorrin tried to hold them still, but Duke Mahieran pushed past her to attack. The priests dropped their grip on Beclan; his head hit the floor with a hollow thunk. One of the priests threw a spiked ball at her, then drew his barbed sword. As fast, Dorrin caught the ball on her buckler. Mahieran, in a blind rage or panic, had tried to stab the nearest red-masked figure but instead took a swipe from the man’s blade that parted his clothes and drove his mail into his shield arm.

Dorrin parried Mahieran’s attacker’s blade just in time. She moved close to the Duke, but he was already moving again. Mahieran had never fought in formation; he had no idea how to work with her, how to let her protect his injured side while fending off attacks with his blade.

“And now we have all of you,” one of the priests said. He sounded confident. Perhaps he had not detected the tensquad. “The boy will be ours … and the two of you as well.”

“No,” Dorrin said. “You cannot force Falk from my heart.”

“Or Gird from mine,” Mahieran said. Though he’d lost his buckler, he now had a dagger in his heart-hand. Nonetheless, his face streamed with sweat, and his hands trembled.

Dorrin could feel the waves of hatred coming off the two priests, but they did not slow her. Protecting Duke Mahieran did; he was clearly not immune to attacks of blood magery that affected his body if not his spirit. She stamped, signaling him to advance with her.

Just as they moved, a clamor broke out in the kitchen. One of the priests glanced aside; Dorrin lunged, parrying the other’s blade with her buckler. The jagged edge caught on the buckler and jerked her arm aside, but her blade went home in the priest’s knee. He staggered
sideways, his blade flailing wide; the other one’s dagger grazed her shoulder, raking the mail beneath her clothes.

She whirled, staying low and tried to free her buckler from the first’s blade, but he was yanking at it, jerking her off balance. “Get that—” she said to Mahieran as the other priest’s dagger thrust at her again. Then she dropped her buckler as her own opponent yanked and drew her dagger as he staggered back, both arms flailing. Her sword went home in his neck this time.

Before she could turn to help Mahieran with the other priest, the fight in the kitchen spilled into the main room—two more she recognized as Verrakaien backing away from Mahieran troops, all hampered by the kitchen and its furniture, the narrow door between rooms. She got one of the Verrakaien in the back; the other, turning to meet her attack, was caught in the side by one of the Mahieran troops. The troops moved immediately toward their duke; Dorrin focused on the remaining Verrakai in the kitchen, whose magery felled one of the troops as she watched.

W
hen the melee was over, Mahieran clutched at his sword arm. Blood soaked his sleeve, dripped from his hand. Beclan lay, still unconscious, with blood beneath him. The two priests and both Verrakaien were dead—she hoped—but so was the old woman in the kitchen. She had been burned with the kitchen poker—the screams they’d heard—and killed during the fight by a sword stroke. Of the tensquad, eight were wounded, three seriously. Counting all the dead outside, the enemy had sold their lives dear.

Dorrin felt no triumph, only grim satisfaction. With the two unwounded men of the Mahieran squad helping, she bound Mahieran’s wound and then tended the others. Duke Mahieran had lost a lot of blood; he closed his eyes as they laid him down and seemed to drift off. The pool of blood under Beclan proved to be from one of the Liartian priests, not his own, though he had a lump on the back of his head and now a darkening bruise where his head had hit the floor.

“Will he live?” one of the men asked her, nodding at Beclan.

“I don’t know,” Dorrin said. She stripped off her gloves and
touched his head gently. Her hands tingled. Would she be given healing for him? “One of you—are the doors closed and secured? Someone posted to give warning?”

“But—but it’s over—we’re safe—”

“That’s what the Royal Guard outside thought,” Dorrin said. “This may not be all of them; we don’t know. Close the doors—make up the fire—and one of you see if there’s hot water in the kitchen—if not, put a kettle on. We need heat and light.” She looked around. Those with minor wounds were sitting or leaning against the wall. One had only one bandage. She pointed. “You—we need to get Beclan out of these wet clothes and warm. Go upstairs and see if there are blankets or a straw tick we can use.”

“Carry him up?”

“No. Too dangerous until I know all that’s wrong with him.” The man nodded and headed for the stairs.

Should she try to heal him now? With his father unconscious as well, with the suspicious eyes of those who did not trust her watching every move? She had helped the Marshal-General with Duke Marrakai’s similar injury, but—Beclan groaned a little, and then his whole body stiffened. She knew what would come next.

“What are you doin’ to him?” one of the soldiers asked her.

“Nothing but feeling the lumps on his head,” she said. “But if I don’t try a healing—” Beclan convulsed, something she’d seen before with head injuries. “This will kill him.”

“Then make it stop,” the man said, pulling out his dagger.