Fifth Quarter (18 page)

Karlene, who'd been expecting a less oblique suggestion, burst out laughing. "Yes, Highness," she agreed, "a pity."

Ghoti secured, a temporary tribunal in place until the Emperor could appoint a new governor, the Sixth Army began the march back to their garrison. Marshal Chela, riding up front out of the dust with her commanders—in spite of the roads there was always dust—glanced over at the officer riding to her right and shook her head.

"Slaughter it, Neegan. Are you still brooding?"

Commander Neegan turned a dark gaze on his superior. "They shouldn't have died. They were too good."

Wishing she had a crescent for every time she'd heard that over the last ten days, the marshal sighed. "Then their luck ran out. It happens."

"Maybe they chopped them up and fed them to the pigs," suggested Commander Leesh archly, from her place on the marshal's left.

Marshal Chela frowned. Her youngest commander hadn't yet learned to tread warily around the assassin— Chela couldn't decide whether that kind of bravado came out of ego or stupidity. As Neegan would endure either for only a limited time, sooner or later there'd be an accident.

"You're only put out," Leesh went on, clearly relishing the opportunity, "because the governor poisoned himself before your precious assassins could get to him. They died for nothing."

"They shouldn't have died at all." Neegan's hoarse whisper had an uncanny way of covering the distance when he wanted it to.

The marshal hid a shiver as it passed her and noted with approval that it had wiped the smile off Leesh's face. "I think," she said, her tone turning the thought to an order, "that we've heard quite enough…" A slight, black-clad figure following a small herd of goats down a scrub-covered hill to the east of the North Road caught her eye, and the thought she'd been about to voice marched on without her. "Neegan. Your eyes are younger than mine; what is that child wearing?"

Neegan rose in his stirrups, shading his eyes with a palm. A moment later, he spurred his horse off the road. The goats scattered. The goatherd screamed and tried to run.

"What's going on?" Leesh demanded.

"A very good question." The marshal raised her hand; behind her, officers shouted the orders that would stop the column. "And one Commander Neegan is attempting to find an answer to. Unless I'm very much mistaken, which I am not, that child is wearing the remains of an assassin's uniform."

"Aye, two of them. First a young man and then a young woman." The goatherd's mother stared at Neegan suspiciously. She didn't like soldiers and she didn't like this husky-voiced soldier in particular. "Governor Aralt told us the young man'd be coming and he had the signet like he was s'posed to. Didn't mention the woman, though."

"Aye. On horses. Not the best in the stable, mind, but good ones." Her eyes narrowed. "You gonna want them uniforms back? 'Cause I didn't take 'em. Those two left 'em behind. Got all new stuff out of the governor's stores. Hers was ripped up, that's why Use is wearing it with the goats, but his is still in good shape. Person could get a lot of wear out of it."

Well, sod you, too
, she thought and went back to mucking out the stables.

"I want to go after them myself."

Marshal Chela watched tension twist the muscles under the surface of Commander Neegan's face and kept her own carefully expressionless. "I need you with me."

"No." He shook his head. "With Ghoti settled, the whole sector is quiet. You don't need me."

The marshal ignored the direct contradiction. She allowed Neegan much more leeway than she allowed the rest of her staff. "And what if there's an uprising while you're gone? The sixth Army will be a commander short."

"Then promote Captain Lyhit. She's ready."

"You'd resign your commission?" Chela frowned slightly and locked her gaze on the commander's eyes. "These two mean so much to you?"

"They were mine." Neegan's voice had picked up the sound of a wire brush rasping against flesh. "Mine. When they deserted, they betrayed me."

"They betrayed the
army
."

For a moment he looked as though he'd argue the correction, then he nodded once, very slightly. "They have to be hunted down. You know the law."

"There are other assassins, less essential to the smooth running of the Sixth Army, that I could send," the marshal pointed out.

Neegan dismissed them with a barely controlled wave of his hand. "No. Vree and Bannon are too good. I have the best chance. Perhaps the only chance."

Chela remembered the cold touch of a blade against her throat and granted Neegan the point. "Very well." she said after a moment, her tone indicating this was the final word on the matter. "Go. Your commission stands unless we go back into the field. At such time, I'll promote Captain Lyhit to a temporary position and we'll discuss your reinstatement when you return. I want frequent dispatches. Do you know where to start?"

"It may." She waved his dismissal at him, then stopped him with his name as he reached the tent flap. "Out of the thousands under my command, those two should have been low on the list of possible deserters. Before you kill them…" She stared down into the smooth cut ruby set in the ring that marked her as a priestess of Jiir. No answers rose out of the bloody depths. "… ask them why."

"Three days…"

"Three days for what?" Gyhard asked as the inn's servants carried away the remains of their meal. He wondered how blunt she'd be in front of witnesses.
Three days to kill you. Three days to get my brother's body back
.

Vree leaned uncomfortably back in her chair—they were now too far north to request southern furnishings— and stared at him as if he were an idiot. "Three days to the Capital."

They sat in silence until they were alone again; Gyhard twisting the metal stem of an embossed goblet between thumb and forefinger, but Vree merely sitting, predator patient. Waiting.

"Our association will not end the moment we ride into the Capital," Gyhard said at last. "It will, after all, take time to gain access to the prince."

"Time," Vree repeated. "How much time?"

"That, for the most part, will be up to you. As we will, essentially, be assassinating him, I'll depend upon your expertise to get us into the palace and past his guards."

"Do it tonight,Vree!"

She watched Gyhard lift a cluster of grapes from an alabaster bowl and cautiously caught the plump, burgundy sphere he tossed at her. A well-known myth told how Kel, the God of Storm, had seduced a nymph by laying a trail of purple grapes from her tree to his bed.

"You are
no
nymph," Bannon snorted, lifting the thought off the surface of her mind. "But if it's an invitation, take him up on it."

Vree caught a second grape, and stood.

Gyhard stood with her and smiled. His eyes crinkled at the corners the way Bannon's had.

That's because they are Bannon's eyes, you fool
. After a long moment, she took a step away from the table, toward the smaller of the two bedchambers. "If you're depending on my expertise, I'd best begin making plans."

"What was all that about?"

Head pounding, feeling as though she'd just missed understanding the heart of an unexpected threat, Vree walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. "All what?" she snarled.

"All what went on while you ate. The laughing at his slaughteringly stupid jokes, the hanging on his every word like he's the oracle of the goddess, that last, long lingering look."

Vree lay back and closed her eyes. "Don't be an ass. I was just doing what you told me to. I was just trying to get him interested."

"He's interested. But
you
didn't do anything about it."

"I want
him
to do something about it."

"Why? You don't know how to make the first move?"

"Sod off." She rubbed her temples and wished Bannon would shut up so she could think things through. "If it's his idea he'll be less likely to suspect a trap."

"So kick his feet out from under him, beat him to the floor, and keep him too busy to suspect anything. You're not supposed to have a good time, Vree, you're supposed to get me back into my own body."

He didn't answer for a long moment and when he finally did, he sounded much like he had when he was very young and he needed her to chase the demons away. "Get me out of here, sister-mine. Before it destroys us."

Before it destroys us
. She drew Bannon's face up out of memory but pushed it quickly away. A chill traced icy lines down her back, when she couldn't be certain that she wasn't seeing Gyhard looking out through her brother's eyes.

Gyhard watched until her door closed behind her, then he dropped his gaze to the remaining grapes nestled in one hand. If he'd made the first move, she'd have allowed it. He'd exploited too much uncertainty over the last hundred odd years not to recognize it.

Dropping the fruit back into the bowl, he went into his own room and pulled his mirror out of the saddlebag. He stared down at the not-yet-familiar reflection. For the first time in too long a time, he had the freedom of his own past. It was a strange but wonderful gift Vree had inadvertently given him by refusing to let her brother die.

So why hadn't he made that first move? He could only be certain that it wasn't from a lack of desire.

"Does the answer lie in my past?" he asked the young man staring back up at him. "Or does it lie in yours?"

He wondered what they were talking about, Vree and her brother. He doubted very much that they were making plans to assassinate the prince.

Chapter Seven

He didn't like going into the city. There were too many of the living, too close together. They frightened him. But the dead couldn't give him the answers he needed.

Flanked by the cousins, their features hidden in the shadows of deep cowls taken from those too dead to rise, he joined the traffic heading toward one of the six gates that breached the wall around the Capital. Although he moved very slowly, no one jostled him or even demanded he get out of the way. The other travelers on the road seemed to be doing their best to deny his very existence. The pattern split as it reached him, swirled around, and, once safely past, closed up again.

Just before the gate, he gestured for his companions to wait where they were and went on alone.

The guard watched the old man approach and wondered how anyone so old could still be alive. She eyed the bone-topped staff, the threadbare robe, and the tangle of dull gray hair and wondered if maybe she couldn't be busy at something when he arrived. In her experience, crazy old hermits, while harmless, tended to stink.