Fifth Quarter (33 page)

"Me?"

"I mean it, Bannon. Behave." She rested both hands on the low pommel of the saddle, wondered for a moment where the scar across her knuckles had gone, realized it was Bannon's scar not hers, and pushed the thought away.

"Names?" barked the squad leader, significantly the younger of the two officers. His expression suggested he'd taken the loss of the prince, and his inability to find him, personally.

"Albannon Magaly," Gyhard replied with just the expected amount of challenge in his voice. He wasn't, after all, under this squad leader's command. "This is my sister, Vireyda Magaly."

"How does he know Mother's name?"

"He's in
your
head, Bannon. Now shut up, I need to hear what's going on."

Neither officer seemed to think it strange that he didn't mention the third member of their party. "You're southern."

Gyhard looked pointedly down at the dark olive skin of his arms, then pointedly back up at the peeling tip of the squad leader's nose. "Yes."

"Imperial citizens?"

"The Sixth Province has been part of the Empire for three generations!"

The older officer, a captain, half smiled at the indignant tone but the younger bridled. "Your business on the road?" he snarled at Vree.

"I'm guarding my brother."
Find the lie in that
, she sneered silently. Officers bloated with their own importance were invariably despised by the ranks.

"From what?"

"From danger." Vree locked her gaze over the junior officer's shoulder. Her hearing and sense of smell grew more acute and the edges of her vision expanded. She felt the way she did going through the perimeter into the enemy's camp when death lurked around every corner. Her wits would be her dagger here.

Vree glanced over at Gyhard, who was
not
sitting at attention. "No, sir."

"So." The captain swept her gaze across them, her eyes unfocusing slightly as they passed over the bard. "If you are guarding your brother, what is your brother's business?"

"He's a whore, sir."

"Hey!"

She fought to keep Bannon's protest from showing on her face—not that it would have mattered as both the mounted officers, and the infantry squad that had reached them during the questioning, were studying Gyhard with new interest.

"You're not, by chance, heading for the garrison at Shaebridge?" the captain asked, her eyes measuring the breadth of Gyhard's shoulders.

Gyhard shook his head. Vree thought he might have put more grace into the movement than usual for it caused the sunlight to throw rippled highlights through Bannon's curls. "Not the garrison, no."

"Pity." She nodded to her left. "Carry on." A moment later, she lightly put her heels to her horse and murmured, "An attractive pair, and who would dare take advantage of the brother with the sister around?"

"I thought I was to do the talking," Gyhard complained as they moved out of earshot.

Vree shrugged. "Next time have them ask you the questions."

"Then
why
a whore?"

"They also serve who service. "

"What?"

"Just something we say in the army…"

Riding a little behind and continuing to Sing, for they had the bulk of the company still to pass, Karlene considered what she'd heard. Had the Imperial officers the benefit of bardic training and the ability to separate the sound of truth from falsehood, they would have realized that they'd been lied to twice; the first time when Albannon Magaly—or more precisely the man in his body—had called Vireyda Magaly his sister, the second when Vree had said that her brother had not served in the army.

When she'd called him a whore, she'd meant it.

Karlene watched the muscles roll across Vree's shoulders and wondered if the younger woman even knew how much barely repressed hostility she felt toward the brother who shared her body.

Half dozing in the lingering heat of the afternoon, Otavas was shaken awake by a sudden jerk of the cart. He grabbed for the side, missed, and found himself sprawled half over the old man's lap, one hand tangled in the necklace of bone he wore. With a grunt of revulsion, the prince pushed himself erect and yanked his foot out from under Kait, who'd also fallen forward and was awkwardly trying to rise. His skin crawled where she'd touched his leg.

He steeled himself for the old man's solicitous inquiries and the feel of the soft, dry hands patting at his arms, but the old man seemed hardly aware of him at all. Instead of performing the expected pawing, he twisted around, pulled himself up to see over the high front edge, and cried out.

"Are you all right?" The prince's question was a conditioned response to the suffering in the old man's voice. Although he reached out, Otavas stopped himself before he touched the ancient shoulder.

"My fault. All my fault. I was too anxious to get you home."

"What's your fault?" The prince stood and, keeping a careful distance, peered out at the dead men running between the shafts—the dead
man
running between the shafts, for the left side of Aver's body twisted under him with every step, causing the cart to lurch as his cousin dragged both him and it forward.

"Stop running!"

With more strength than he'd previously shown, the old man threw himself up at the back and had the tailgate out before it was completely still. When Otavas tried to follow, Wheyra reached for him. "Okay, I'll watch from here," he said quickly. "I'm staying right here."

Wheyra stared at him for a terrifying moment—in many ways the prince found her the most frightening of them all—then resumed crooning to the corpse of her baby.

He could actually see everything from where he was but, looking down between the shafts where the old man knelt by Aver's fallen body, all at once he wasn't sure he wanted to.

"My fault, my fault." Tears etching tracks through the dust on his face, the old man reached out and patted Aver's cheek. He had forgotten how much movement could be asked of the dead. "Forgive me." His voice quavered with guilt. "I was too anxious to get my heart home." He'd forgotten his responsibility to the rest of his family.

The dead man tracked his movements with wildly rolling eyes.

"So soon, so soon," he murmured as he traced the shattered joints at knee and hip and lightly stroked the black patches of decay that showed through the skin.

Nose, fingers, lips—all had been burned a purple-black by the sun and in other places yellow pus oozed out through baked cracks. He could hold his hand above Aver's torso and feel the heat generated by the rot within. The left foot must have been dragging on the road for most of the day as it was nearly gone.

"You can ride the rest of the way home," he promised. "You'll last so much longer that way, you'll see." Leaning heavily on his staff, he got to his feet and turned to the still standing cousin. "Put him into the cart, Otanon. He'll be fine once he's in the cart."

Although he'd suffered nearly identical sun damage, Otanon's joints appeared to have survived the pounding they'd taken over the last few days. Eyes never leaving his cousin's face, he dropped the supports down from the shafts that kept the cart from tipping forward on its nose, then he bent and heaved Aver up off the ground.

The skin across Aver's stomach split and a rancid mass of organs and tissue spilled out of the body cavity. Up in the cart Otavas gagged, but the old man didn't appear to notice the stench.

Aver twitched in his cousin's grasp. His mouth opened and closed, but he made no sound.

He's still in there
, Otavas realized.
Gods protect us, he's still in there
. Fingers locked white-knuckled over the top board of the cart, he began to pray; for himself or for the dead, he had no idea.

"Put him in the cart," the old man said, his face folded into itself with worry. "He'll be fine once you put him in the cart."

Aver, dangling from Otanon's hands, somehow found the strength to jerk his head from side to side in a silent plea. Otanon didn't move.

"You'll be fine once you're in the cart," the old man repeated soothingly. "You'll see."

"Let him go." Otavas almost didn't recognize the voice as his. "Please, let him go."

The old man stared up at him, confusion mixing with the concern on his face. "But I never let them go," he said, reaching out to stroke Aver's shoulder. "They leave me."

It seemed as though the words or touch were a signal, for the dead man stiffened and his eyes opened as wide as destroyed tissue would allow.

"No…"

The old man sounded so distraught that Otavas rubbed his vision clear and leaned forward. During the heartbeat the prince looked down into the dead man's eyes, he found himself trapped in a horror too dark to understand with no hope of either escape or rescue. A shriek that could not have been made by a human throat rang in his mind as Otavas threw himself back, escaping into oblivion.

"No!" the old man cried again as Aver's kigh fled the ghastly wreck of his body.

Otanon made a noise very like a sigh, then, keening no less terribly, his kigh followed his cousin's. Both bodies collapsed to the road, wet meat smacking against dressed slabs of stone.

"Oh, my children…" The old man rocked back and forth, clutching his staff to his chest. They'd been called with one Song, and so they had to leave him together as they came—but it hurt. For all the times it had happened over the years, it never ceased to hurt.

"Unless you can explain your companion's involvement in the disappearance of my son, I will send a company of the First Army out along the East Road to join the company already searching and together they will beat the information out of her."

Fighting for calm, Gabris bowed deeply as the Emperor paused. "Imperial Majesty, I cannot explain, but I beg you to give Karlene just a little more time."

"She was alone with my son when he was taken." The Emperor gestured toward Marshal Usef standing just to the right of the throne, plumed helmet cradled in the crook of his left arm, his face politically expressionless. "Now I find that two strangers, targeted by an Imperial assassin, removed her from the Healers' Hall. You tell me that she is searching for my son, but if these two had answers, why did she not bring them to me? She has had all the time I am willing to give. I want answers, Gabris. I want my son."

"Imperial Majesty, I…"

"No. To whatever you were going to say, no. You will be moved to a secure suite in the center of the palace where you will not be able to warn her. At this moment, I do not hold you responsible…" His tone clearly indicated that could change. "… but I will not have you interfering."

Gabris closed his eyes for a heartbeat. What he had to say had to be said in such a way that it would not, could not, be interpreted as a threat. "Imperial Majesty, Karlene is a bard, powerful enough to finish the training of the young bards of the Empire soon to be returning from Shkoder."

Marshal Usef snorted. "I think this bard, however
powerful
, will be willing to be reasonable with a hundred swords at her throat."

Karlene Sang a gratitude and hurried back to the road, kicking up little clouds of dust from the dry earth with every step. "They're no longer heading east," she called. "According to the kigh, they're following a river. It would have to be the Shae, unless they've pulled incredibly far ahead, which would mean they've turned off the road at Shaebridge."

"You know this part of the country well," Gyhard remarked as she took her reins from Vree and mounted.

"I'd better." She settled into the saddle and flipped her braid back over her shoulder. "In a very short time I'm supposed to be walking the new Imperial bards over it."