Rules of Ascension: Book One of Winds of the Forelands (27 page)

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Authors: David B. Coe

BOOK: Rules of Ascension: Book One of Winds of the Forelands
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Thunder rolled over the city.
She pulled on her tunic, tossing her head to free her white hair. “No. I’ll go. I need to get out of here.”
Grinsa took a long, deep breath, but still he felt as though he were suffocating. It had happened so suddenly, and yet it seemed that he and Cresenne had been destined from the beginning to reach this point. “I will be back,” he said again, but he knew that it wouldn’t matter.
She paused, glancing over her shoulder at him. After a moment she nodded. She knew it as well.
Within a few minutes she was dressed. Grinsa had lit a candle and was absently gathering his things on the bed so that he could pack them into his satchel. Mostly, he was watching Cresenne. Her eyes were red, though he had not seen her shed any more tears, and her hair was disheveled. Still, he could not help but think that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever known. More beautiful even than Pheba. He had not loved this woman as he had loved his wife, at least not yet. But he had come to believe in the short time they were together that he could, given the chance. And now that chance was gone, stolen from him by a vision and the fate of Tavis of Curgh.
No
, he thought, correcting himself.
This is not Tavis’s fault. He didn’t ask for the Fating you gave him, nor did he make you what you are. You stepped onto this path many years ago, long before you met Cresenne or Tavis.
“What are you thinking?” Cresenne asked. She was watching him closely, looking sad and young and lovely.
“That I’m sorry. That I don’t want to lose you.”
“You don’t have to. If you just explained this to me …”
Grinsa shook his head. “Please don’t ask me again. Saying ‘no’ every time hurts too much. Maybe I can tell you when it’s over. I want to. Truly I do.”
She lowered her gaze and nodded. “I know you do.” She looked around the room briefly as if checking to see that she hadn’t forgotten something. Then she crossed to the door, stopping for just an instant to brush her lips lightly across his cheek.
Grinsa closed his eyes, breathing in her scent one last time.
Cresenne pulled the door open, but halted there. He sensed her looking back at him again, but he didn’t turn to her.
“What should I tell Trin?” she asked.
Tell him to take care of you. Tell him to remind you every day of how much I love you.
“I’ll leave that to you. You can explain my decision to leave however you want. But don’t tell anyone where I’ve gone or why. Please.”
“I won’t.”
“And Cresenne.”
“Yes.”
He turned and their eyes met. “Make certain that Trin knows I’ll be coming back.”
Don’t you forget that either.
“All right.”
She held his gaze for a moment longer, then turned away and pulled the door closed.
For some time he continued to stand there, staring at the door, hoping that it would open again. Lightning made the room glimmer, as if from a sputtering flame. Grinsa waited for the thunder, but it took longer than he expected. The storm was passing. But still the rain fell, gentle and cool, guided through the small window by the wind.
He shook himself, like a dog rousing itself from a long slumber, before shoving the last of his clothes and belongings into his satchel. Then he blew out the candle and lay down again, hoping that he might find a way to sleep a few hours more. It was a long ride to Kentigern—more than sixty leagues—and he would need to be rested if he was to get there in time to save Tavis.
She should have just gone to Trin’s room as she had told Grinsa she would. This was a terrible risk. But though what she needed to do could wait until morning, she feared that sleep would rob her of her nerve. She had to do it now, while the pain of what had just happened was fresh and her mind set.
For almost all their time together, she had felt that Grinsa was
hiding something from her, something more than just what Tavis’s Fating had revealed. She thought she understood the night he revealed to her that he possessed a second magic, but even after that, the feeling lingered. Now she knew why.
I’m tied to him somehow.
Suddenly, Tavis’s Fating mattered again. She would have given almost anything to know what Grinsa had seen, but she knew enough to see the danger. She had to do this, she told herself. No matter how she felt about the gleaner.
He shouldn’t have been able to keep such a thing from her, not for this long. It bothered her that he had. He was just a gleaner. Or so she told herself. But there was something mysterious about him, something that would have drawn her to him even had she not needed to win his trust, something that made the nights she had spent with him more than just a lie.
There were some among her people who possessed mind-bending power, a potent magic that allowed them to touch the minds of others and convince them of nearly anything. Cresenne wasn’t one of them. She had never needed such power. Men thought her beautiful and kind, particularly when she flattered them or made them believe she was attracted to them. She had learned long ago that she needed little more to make them believe her lies. That first night at the Silver Gull she had convinced Trin—even he was not immune—that she had feelings for Grinsa, and later, she had convinced the gleaner as well. The next night, when she and Grinsa had dinner alone, she continued his seduction.
Since that second night, however, something had changed. She knew that she had succeeded already in winning his trust and his affection. Indeed, she suspected that he was falling in love with her. But she sensed as well that what began as a seduction had become something far more dangerous. Only now, though, with the ache of leaving him twisting like a blade in her chest, did she know for certain. She loved him. Which was why she had to do this quickly, before she changed her mind, before she had the chance to gather her courage and go back to him.
So she walked silently down the corridor, passing Trin’s room on her way to the stairs. Stepping out of the inn, she stopped at the edge of the lane, trying to get her bearings. It was raining steadily and the streets of Galdasten were dark. She knew that most of the Revel’s Eandi performers were staying in two inns on the north side of the marketplace, just a short walk from where she stood, but it took her
several moments to figure out which way was north. By the time she started walking her hair and clothes were already soaked. Usually she liked rains in the warmer turns, especially after a day as hot as this one had been. But tonight, the rain just felt cold. She crossed her arms over her chest and hurried across the marketplace.
She had made it a point to know where the man she needed to see was staying, which inn as well as which room. Cadel had given her the man’s name before leaving the Revel, and it had been a small matter for her to inquire with the innkeeper. It was a precaution, one she had hoped would not be necessary. Certainly she had never imagined that she’d be sending this man after Grinsa.
“Damn him!” she muttered, as the rain ran down her face. “Bian take him to the darkest corners of the Underrealm.”
It would have made all of this easier if she meant it. In the beginning, she had thought it a simple task. At first glance Grinsa had seemed rather ordinary. Kind, to be sure. Intelligent as well, and handsome in a plain sort of way. But a Revel gleaner and nothing more. All she had to do was seduce him, learn what she could of the gleaning, and leave him. What better way to demonstrate to the Weaver that the faith he placed in her had been justified than to assure that their plot against Curgh and his son succeeded?
But there was more to seduction, she soon learned, than merely luring a man to one’s bed. And there was more to Grinsa than was apparent at first glance.
“Damn him!” she said again, quickening her stride.
She couldn’t say when she first realized that she wanted to end Eandi rule of the Forelands. There had been no single moment, no sudden realization. Rather, it seemed to Cresenne that her entire life had been building to this. She still remembered the shame she had felt as a child, learning with other children, Qirsi and Eandi, of Carthach’s betrayal and what it had cost her people. She would never forget how her father was treated, when, after his years on the sea, he became a lesser minister in the court of a Wethy duke. It was bad enough that the Eandi lord spoke to him with such disdain, dismissing his counsel with a wave of his hand and never even bothering to learn his name. But to see the higher-ranking Qirsi do the same filled her with rage.
Somehow her father accepted it all, but she couldn’t. If the ministers could treat him this way while fawning over the Eandi, they
were no different from Carthach. And if her father was willing to sacrifice his pride to remain in the court, then neither was he.
After her father died, the duke gave her mother and her twenty qinde and sent them out of his court.
“I cannot be expected to care for the families of every Qirsi who dies in my employ,” he said at the time. “Your people just don’t live long enough.”
Cresenne was ten years old.
Her mother spoke of the incident only once before her own death five years later. It was just before she died. They had joined the Crown Fair, one of Wethyrn’s traveling festivals, Cresenne as a fire player, her mother as a gleaner. They had finished a long day of travel and her mother had begun to show signs of the fever that would eventually kill her. It was dark in their room and Cresenne was certain that her mother had already fallen asleep.
“Your father was a good man,” she said abruptly. “Strong, courageous, kind. I wish you had known him when he was still sailing, before Wethyrn.”
Cresenne hadn’t known what to say, so she had lain still in the darkness, hoping her mother would say more.
“The lords of the Forelands don’t care about the Qirsi. They just collect them, the way they do war horses or swords. That’s what the duke did. Your father wanted a good home for us, otherwise he never would have worked for such a man.”
Those words stayed with Cresenne long after her mother’s death. And though, with time, they had allowed her to forgive her father, even to love him again, they had only served to deepen her hatred of the Eandi and their Qirsi allies. She often wondered if that had been what her mother intended.
The first time the Weaver came to her, walking into her dreams like some white-haired god, Cresenne knew that she had been destined to join his cause. Perhaps he sensed this as well, for she quickly became one of his most trusted servants. It helped that she knew the festivals and was willing to travel the Forelands with them. The Weaver had recruited several ministers by then, but he also needed Qirsi who weren’t tied to a particular court and could move freely about the land without drawing undue attention. There were others like her—chancellors, the Weaver called them—traveling with the Festival in Sanbira, the Emperor’s Fair in Braedon, and one or two
of the smaller carnivals in Aneira and Caerisse. But Cresenne was the youngest; the Weaver had told her so. Many of the older ministers seemed to resent taking orders from her, but she arranged their payments, and she spoke for the Weaver, so they never defied her.
The Weaver instructed her to eliminate Lord Tavis, but he left it to Cresenne to determine how this might best be done. She had no doubt that he would be pleased with her plan. She needed to make certain, though, that Grinsa didn’t ruin everything.
I’m tied to him …
What could that mean?
Still making her way through the darkness and the rain, Cresenne reached the inn, hurried through the door, and started up the stairs that led from the tavern on the ground floor to the sleeping rooms above.
“Who’s there?” a man’s voice called from behind the bar. A moment later he lit a candle, spilling light across the open room of the tavern.
Cresenne pressed herself against the wall, hiding in the shadows.
“I—I was invited by one of your patrons to his room, sir,” she said meekly.
The man stepped out from behind the bar and lifted his candle higher, but the light still did not reach her.
“Are you alone?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. He seemed a gentleman, sir.”
“I’m sure he did,” the man mumbled. “Bloody Revel.” He turned and headed back to his room. “Go on then,” he called, before shutting his door loudly.
She continued up the steps, walked carefully to his door, and knocked softly.
There was no answer for some time and she raised her hand to knock again. Just as she did, however, the door opened. It was dark in the corridor, and the man seemed to strain to see who had come. This was not a man she wanted to surprise, certainly not one she wanted to frighten. So Cresenne held out the palm of her hand and brought forth a small flame, summoning the magic as one would a memory.
He was taller than she expected, with dark eyes and dark unruly hair that gave him a wild look. He wore breeches but no shirt and Cresenne could see that he bore a small white scar on his shoulder, and another high on his chest.
“Who are you?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
“You’re Honok, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. He glanced down the corridor, as if checking to see if she was alone.

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