Sword (38 page)

"My sister did," she said simply. "She's been dead for many years now."

"I'm sorry," Kinsey murmured.

"Me too."

There was an audible ache in the words and he scowled, because he didn't want to feel sympathy for this unapologetically blunt, maddening old woman who had turned his whole life upside-down in fifteen minutes of conversation. She pulled her cloak closer around her neck and sighed, looking like she was preparing to leave. Kinsey blurted out the rest of his questions in a desperate rush, not knowing if he'd ever get another chance.

"Why did your Clans hold onto your magic? Why didn't the Lardana? Or did they ever have any? Did Eairon charge your people to be—some kind of guardians? What else are you waiting for?"

Saraid stood blinking in the onslaught, her pale eyebrows rising slowly into her hairline. She set a hand on his sleeve, tipped her head back, and let out a great shout of laughter.

"Dear gods, boy,
swift in thought
indeed. Slow down."

"Lady—"

"Kinsey, you're going to have to get used to the notion that we don't know much more than you do. We had the Book to read over many long centuries, and we're more Gifted, as a people, than either the Lardana or the Cassdalls could hope to be. But that's where it ends. We're guessing nearly as much as you are now: we just had a head start. Surely you know better by now than to believe we know all."

"But—"

Saraid sighed. She reached out, making him flinch back slightly—years of bracing for assassins made it hard to let anyone, even an old woman, get this close. But Kinsey held himself still, one hand lifted to stay his bodyguards, who definitely wouldn't like this, and let her set her palms gently over the sides of his face.

He couldn't remember the last time someone had done that. He coughed away an unaccustomed tightness in his throat and stared into her pale, knowing eyes.

"We are the last," she said, sounding so tired, suddenly, that he gave in to impulse, brought his hands up to cover hers, and kissed her cheek.

"Good lad," Saraid said. She patted his cheek once and left him standing in the wind, shivering, trying to parse that last statement. He didn't get anywhere and he blew on his fingers, trying to make his mind work.

Saraid's words circled in his head, trying to fit themselves somewhere in the piecemeal picture he was building for Taireasa, for Devin, for himself. Kinsey shut his eyes, ignoring the wind, the piercing sunlight, the faint grumbling from his frozen bodyguards. He was seeing fragile parchment pages, seeing the words on them, re-creating the Book out of memory. It was a good thing he'd read it twice. Even so, the effort brought beads of sweat to his forehead, which froze immediately. Something… something Saraid had said echoed…

It was right on the first page.

I am the last of us, and I watch, from this last of our fortresses.

We are the last…

And:
Eairon being halfling and far more Gifted than those of us with blood diluted
...

"Faery tales," Kinsey breathed. "Halfling Síog…oh dear
gods
,
I'm an idiot."

He pressed his hands to his aching head, concentrating fiercely, trying to remember a single passage in
Tenets
he had passed over more than once. It was far harder: his tired mind wanted to forget
Tenets
and its endless list of rules, begats, and lineages. But he had thought this particular phrase important somehow, though he'd had no notion why at the time, so he ought to be able to…

And certain of Men made their Way to the great Fortress of the last of the mighty Síog to learn of them; and some Men returned with great Skills.

"
Yes
."

Shaken, Kinsey collapsed against the wall. The Clans weren't men who had served the fae folk, nor men who had learned from them, or they weren't
just
that. They were also the
remnants
of the Síog. And Taireasa, Devin, Kyali—their Houses had bloodlines that mingled, long ago, with the old occupants of this fortress. All those dreadfully boring
begats
led
here
.

"But what does it
mean
?" he murmured.

Nothing simple
, he thought, and frowned down at the distant treeline, where four figures on horseback were struggling through the deep snow, so muffled by their cloaks they looked like strange bears.

It was Devin, he realized, and felt a weight he hadn't even known was there lift from his heart. He'd missed his strange, impulsive, musical friend. He wanted to know how Devin was, if the Eanin's teaching had helped, if he was perhaps willing to try playing the harp indoors. Taireasa was someone he thought he might be able to call a friend (
though you might want to call her much more
, his treacherous mind whispered) and Curran and his wife were more than pleasant company, but by and large he was alone in this society, an item of curiosity and gossip, a foreigner.

It wasn't a new experience. But having learned Devin's loud, intrusive, and entirely whimsical notion of friendship, Kinsey had, for the first time in a lifetime of hovering unaffected at the edges of everything, discovered loneliness in its absence. He raised a hand, knowing he was barely visible from here, but it felt good to do it.

Then he saw the movement on either side of that small party, the gleam of armor in between bare branches, and he began to shout, hands curling into fists against the cold stone.

"Devin!
Devin
, look out—ah,
gods
—"

"M'lord!"

Armed men burst out of the trees. The four cloaked figures turned, far too late, then turned again as the party to the other side of them broke cover. Kinsey spun, seeing Ludor's shocked face, Jerin's glance over the wall, the hard look of dismay that followed.

"Alert the guard. And the Lady Captain!" he snapped, and flung himself through the door into the hall already running.

* * *

They had no paper large enough to copy whole maps. Kyali had two scribes and the aide she had finally admitted she needed filling the available sheets with pieces of maps instead, because it was damned impossible to plot the movement of troops without writing something down.

Ink stained her fingers black. She avoided wiping them on her armor and scowled as Slade set a cup of tea on her desk, moving carefully, as though he was facing an angry bear.

"Thank you," Kyali said, tired of being offered tea by a boy who acted as though she was going to draw her sword on the spot. But that was, she supposed, her own fault.

Carrying her sword bare everywhere would be comforting, actually.

She preferred to deal with enemies she could
see
. Trying to flush out a skulking traitor was far harder—someone spying for a self-proclaimed king who wanted them all dead—someone who could be standing next to Taireasa
right now
—

The quill snapped in her hand.

Now there was even more ink on her fingers. She breathed
ice
, shut her eyes, and sipped at the tea, ignoring the stain she smeared all over the cup. It was no wonder Slade looked like he was ready to bolt out of the room at any moment. He kept hovering by the door.

"The Cassdall captain to see you, Capt—er, Lady Captain," the boy announced. Kyali nodded, turning to the map cabinet, more to hide the expression on her face than because she wished to smudge anything in there with ink. Slade let Annan in and ducked out, and Kyali snatched up a cloth and scrubbed furiously at her hands, glowering at ink stains and not-quite-steady fingers.

Ice.

Nerves. Damn.

She was so short on sleep it took constant effort to keep her face still, to stop her Gift from flaring out and setting fire to half the things she touched. To keep her mind clear enough for decisions. Annan's presence wouldn't help with any of that.

"Captain," she said, looking at him only from the corner of her eye.

"Captain," Annan replied, coming to sit, uninvited, on a stool at the map table. He had been outdoors: there was frost melting on his spaulders, snow clinging to his boots, glistening in his hair. His gaze was mild and unreadable when she finally gave up on the ink stains and made herself meet it, and Kyali felt a few muscles in her shoulders unknot.

"Do you have any regulars who have served in the Western provinces in their careers?" he asked.

She blinked, then frowned. "One hundred and twenty-eight," she said, not bothering to soften the edge of sarcasm in her voice. "At last count." Surely he didn't think she'd have missed something so obvious.

That eyebrow went up. She wished she knew what it meant.

She didn't care. She folded her arms, remembered the ink too late, and sank her teeth into her tongue in annoyance. Her armor was in need of cleaning anyway.

"Can you spare a few?"

"Were you planning to question their loyalties or ask them for a description of the latest dance steps over there?"

Annan cast her a sidelong look. One foot began tapping a slow, irritated rhythm against the floor. "The latter."

Her weary, battered mind gave her only the image of Annan dancing a gavotte in Tharst's great hall and nothing came out of her mouth, which had apparently opened on its own. Then his meaning came clear and Kyali sat across from him, forgetting ink stains and not enough paper, forgetting that this was the first time they'd been in a room together since she'd stumbled to her bed already regretting—

Not thinking.
Definitely
not thinking. There was nothing safe left in her head.

"You want to send your spies West," she said, stuck between dismay and admiration, because the idea was brilliant—and more than a little mad.

Annan shrugged. Something flickered in his gaze and was gone, which was just as well because she didn't care what it was, nor did she care that his mouth had turned up at one corner in a satisfied not-quite smile. "Only a handful," he said. "Three at most. We ought to know what's going on there, don't you think?"

"Of
course
I think. I've thought it for months. But the Eanin have a poorer view than they used to, the borders are shut, and the Sevassis foothills are guarded."

"It wouldn't be the first time someone's crossed the
Allaida
border."

Kyali leaned forward, considering. "You mean them to take the river down?"

"Perhaps."

He left an uninformative silence after that and she glared at him. Annan met it with his usual unflappable stare. Kyali let the silence spread, holding his eyes, not willing to give ground here—or anywhere else, for that matter. Finally Annan let out a small huff, twitching one hand briefly palm-up in a tiny surrender. "The Brysan Map suggests there's a river trail through the Sevassis foothills, Captain. I've a man who knows woodcraft, and two others raised on the Allaida border with Cassdall. They can pass fair enough, if folk on your borders and folk on ours are similar, which they seem to be. A handful of days learning Western speech and customs might be enough."

"Why?"

That got out before she could shut her teeth over it, and Annan finally looked her in the eye without the mask. What was under it was sharp as a new blade, and surprisingly fierce.

"Because I don't
know
," he said, voice full of the cool, dry certainty that seemed to be him at his most irritated. "They took your capital in a single night, Captain: they prepared so well it was nearly invisible. How did they move so many troops across your borders? How did they have so many to spare? And who rules those provinces now, if all their barons came East with their sons and then—"

Annan hesitated, his gaze dropping to her hands. Kyali realized she'd dug her fingers so far into her forearms that the leather tunic under her vambraces was straining and looked away.

"You killed them," he said, in an entirely different tone. Not quite a question. And it wouldn't be; that much, Kyali knew, was common knowledge. It made her remember blood soaking into a bedspread, a dead man's face frozen in fear.

Her brother's horrified look when she'd thrown a tiny piece of truth in his face like a slap.

It wasn't possible to meet Annan's eyes now. She could barely stand to be in the room with him. The walls were too close. She stood and crossed to the fireplace, knowing the gesture revealed far too much, but she couldn't help that. She had no idea what was on her face, but it certainly wasn't anything she wanted him seeing.

"I did," she acknowledged, fighting to keep her tone level, thinking of ice and snow, then of blood and dark. She could feel her eyes flaring. She willed herself still, refusing to shiver.

"Good," Annan said, surprising her into a glance over her shoulder.

He had stretched his long legs out, one heavy boot resting on the other, dripping snowmelt on her floor. He wore his armor like a second skin, easy in it. She wasn't thinking. She didn't-think her way back across the room, where she stood over him, studying his hair, his steady hands, the rise and fall of his chest, which got subtly faster as she watched. Her pulse picked up. The door was shut; it could be locked. And there was no better way not to think.

Oh, she was so hopelessly stupid.

And what was
he
? Just as stupid? Did he have something to forget, too?

Did it even matter?

He looked up at her.

"I'll send some of the soldiers who served in the West to your office tomorrow," she said. "Captain."

"Thank you," Annan said, and stood, slow and careful. It wasn't the same sort of careful that Slade was. That most were, around her. Not fear, not worry. Something very different. She had no idea what to do with it. She scowled—scowled harder when that corner of his mouth curled again. Kyali put a hand out and met the still-frozen metal of his armor with her bare palm, pursed her lips in satisfaction when Annan blinked.

His hand was cold, too, she discovered a second later, when it landed on the side of her neck. She jumped and he gave another ghost of a laugh, and all the thoughts flew out of her head into blessed silence, and there was no couch in her office but the floor would probably do just as well if they were quiet.