Three Coins for Confession (11 page)

“How did they pick me? In the middle of combat like that? Why was
I marked?”

Derrach made to answer but Milyan beat her to it, giving a bark
of laughter as if he might be correcting a child’s grammar lesson. “You were
marked before the battle started, master Chriani. Such weapons are crafted over
long days, prepared with rituals that would finance my retirement could I
recreate them.”

“But why?” Chriani said. The memory of the raid was twisting
through his mind as fragmentary images, each one frozen into place. “He shot at
me from a dozen strides away. Why magic an arrow to seek me for a shot any good
archer could have pulled off?”

Milyan laughed again. He whipped his spectacles off, polished
them absently on his filthy robe. “Did you listen to none of what’s been said
here tonight? Or are you simply as obtuse as every captain and most of your
fellow rangers report you to be? The talisman’s magic was to seek you, soldier,
and would have done so from across the Ilmar if need be. The Valnirata call the
relic
gavalirnon.
The hunter’s heart.”

Chriani felt the mage’s words slip into place in his mind, the
weight of the day’s events assembling around it. All the images locking in
tight.

“The arrow’s magic,” the magus continued. “That was to bind you
once the hunter’s heart had found you. Its magic is a dweomer of domination
that has no breaking, making you little more than a puppet. Your will and
spirit, consumed and controlled by another.”

The expression on the face of the Ilvani who had shot at him was
sharp in Chriani’s mind suddenly. Hair of grey and gold torn on the wind, a
wild light in his golden eyes.

“When you fell,” Derrach added. “When I gave you the unguent
because I thought you’d been poisoned.” Her look told Chriani this was a story
she had already told Milyan, for whatever it was worth. “The pain you felt.
Even at a distance, the arrow’s magic was tearing at your mind and essence.”

Chriani irnash! Lóech arnala irch niir!

Chriani made the moonsign. Didn’t realize he’d started until his
shaking fingers were already tracing the crescent above his heart.

For a moment, he tried to remember whether he had paid Derrach
for the healing. It was strangely important suddenly, though he wasn’t sure
why. He absently felt his coin purse, found it lighter. Understood that she had
taken care of it while he was insensible.

He nodded thanks to her, but she had already looked away. Then he
headed for the door.

“Master Chriani!” Milyan barked from behind him. “You will
attend. I have questions…”

Chriani stepped outside, letting the tent’s door flap close
behind him as he went. A part of him hoped that Milyan would call guards on
him, the night air filling his lungs, clearing his mind. He felt the anger
rising, felt it push his hands to his belt, the dagger and longsword there,
steel cold against his fingers. But he heard only silence behind him as he
paced away.

THE NIGHT WAS BRIGHT with stars as Chriani walked the
perimeter of the camp. He followed the well-worn access trails but stayed
within the sentries’ patrol lines, not feeling up to facing a challenge or
having to lie about why he was there. The pathways he walked were bright to his
eyes, the passing sentries loud against the quiet of the night, giving him
ample opportunity to avoid them.

He heard griffons more than once, heard the cries go up along the
patrol lines in response. From his own nights on perimeter watch, he remembered
hearing those warnings, and the long bouts of holding his bow drawn and nocked
that followed. He had no chance of ever hitting a griffon, he knew, the
gavaleria flying well above the range of bow and spell alike. But some captain
had embraced the false show of force long before, and so it was standard
procedure in the camps. A hundred archers aiming at faint shadows soaring
across the dark sky.

He didn’t know how long he’d walked, but the slender Clearmoon
was high by the time he finally stopped. He was atop a low rise, the bright-lit
tents of the barracks behind him. He stood staring at the darkness of the
distant Greatwood for a long while. Not actually seeing it, the wall of the
forest a league away. But sensing its shadow as a dark stain along the horizon,
swallowing the light of the stars beyond the shimmering that marked the pale
reflection of the grasslands.

He felt that distant darkness as much as saw it. Felt the threat
of that shadow this night in a way he hadn’t since he came to the frontier.
He’d done countless patrols and sorties over five months, remembered isolated
exchanges of bowshot across the great expanse of the Locanwater as it wound its
way close to the forest’s edge. But even as he stared into the night, Chriani
understood that the fear he felt now wasn’t coming from the forest.

This was the fear that came from within.

He’d been the target of an attack that had no precedent he’d ever
heard of. The Ilvani tracking him. Marking him with magic that had made a
ranking war-mage’s eyes go wide with wonder.

Kathlan had stopped that attack. Had saved his life, he was sure.
A dweomer of domination that has no breaking, making you little more than a
puppet.
The pain he’d felt when he drew close to the arrow, tearing at his
mind and essence, Derrach had said.

For a long time, Chriani had told himself there was nothing he
feared. If a thing threatened him, he would fight it. If it had no value to
him, he would ignore it. Eight years a tyro he’d won for that ambivalence.

Things were different now. More complicated. If the mark at his
shoulder was ever seen, it would be understood that Kathlan had known the truth
of Chriani’s life and said nothing. He could die fighting all he liked. Not
caring about anything except who he took with him, making a timeless reminder
of how good he had been before he finally fell.

A year and a half before, he hadn’t known what his life was
worth. Hadn’t cared about how long it was set to last. Today, he knew that
leaving that life meant leaving Kathlan behind, and that thought struck a cold
dread in him like nothing Chriani had ever known before.

Too many secrets. Too many truths he carried within him now that
were greater than he was, but Kathlan was more important than all of them in
turn. A bond between them that he had pledged at the end of the path leading
from Rheran to Aerach and back again. The storms that had remade his life. No
secrets from her. Not anymore.

No.

Because he was lying to himself, as always. Too many truths
buried inside him. Too many lies that wrapped those truths up tight.

The secret of what the Prince High Chanist truly was. Of what he
had done. Chriani had never told Kathlan. Could never tell her, could never
share the bitter sting of that truth and the madness that lay beneath it. But
that was for her sake, he could tell himself. A lie told to protect, to guard
against an ache he would carry for her sake.

No.

He felt the fear cut through him, felt himself shaking. A wave of
nausea hit his gut like the arrow’s magic burning in him, driving through him
like a slow knife.

No…

Eighteen months ago. It had been the first real cold Brandishear
had seen that year, High Winter a month and a half gone. Chriani had taken that
path that had changed everything, and had left the Princess Lauresa on the path
she’d chosen for herself.

Nine months later, there were birth celebrations in Aerach, and
every courier and merchant across the Clearwater had shared the tale.

He remembered that the Prince High Chanist had been in the field
then. The ranger camps were moving along the frontier, marking Ilvani
skirmishes outside the Greatwood, near Addrimyr. Echoes of the events of the
winter before.

Not all of it…

He shook his head to clear it. He buried that shard of truth,
those broken threads unraveled from his life, drawn to a net of tight knots
that held the past trapped beneath them.

An offering of blood,
Derrach had said.

The Ilvani had called his name.

The secret of what the Prince High Chanist had done was worth more
than Chriani’s life.

There it was.

The thought circling unseen, shifting through the darkness of his
mind as the truth so often did. His mother’s patience, waiting for the light to
break, for the pieces to fall into place.

He felt the chill air, saw that the lights within the barracks
tents had dimmed. He focused on the emptiness he carried at the deep center of
his thought and memory. His father, his mother. Barien now. Lauresa. The things
gone from his life and never coming back.

He placed the secrets there, felt them vanish back into the
shadow that he’d shaped for them. He would hold them there, keep them close.
Protect Kathlan from the steel edges of the truths she had no need to bear.

If the Prince High Chanist was making a challenge to what Chriani
knew, he understood what he had to do, where he had to go. He heard the call of
griffons to the east, the gavaleria winging their way back across the forest as
he turned toward the camp.

When Chriani returned to his tent, Kathlan was sleeping. Not
surprising considering the lateness of the night, but it felt like an
unexpected boon all the same. Along the paths from the perimeter, he had tried
to think of what he was going to tell her, coming up with nothing but silence
each time.

At her neck, he saw a pulse of green that warmed him with the
memory of its color. It was a silk ribbon that had been her mother’s, one of
many that had tied Kathlan’s hair all the time Chriani had known her. She
hadn’t been able to use those ribbons since taking her tyro’s writ, the uniform
regulations going on for half a page on the acceptable styles and colors of
hair ties. So she’d woven one through a knotted silver brooch, wore it always
now as a pendant on a leather cord, where its green reminded Chriani of the
late-summer fields outside Rheran when they’d met. Of rain in the green spring
that followed the winter of his coming back to her. Of Kathlan’s eyes, and the
peace of waking with her watching him.

He found paper and inkpen in his footlocker, lit a candle and
took the time to write a detailed account of the events of the previous day.
His hand was cramped by the end as it always was. When he received his
commission, the interminable amount of report writing required of the rangers
of the prince’s guard was a thing that had taken him by surprise. He folded the
report when he was done, would file it in the morning.

As he stripped down to smallclothes and slipped onto the cot
behind Kathlan, he realized how chilled the walk had left him, feeling how warm
she was even through tunic and loose leggings. She didn’t wake as she pressed
herself to him. Didn’t wake as she shivered, gave him the heat of her body that
quickly lulled him to sleep.

He didn’t stay that way long, starting awake again with just the
first edge of dawn shimmering through the tent. It was still dark to anyone
else’s eyes, but Chriani had enough light to see by as he slipped from the
blankets, crawled silently across the floor to the footlocker. He found a field
pack, stuffed it with clothing as he dressed.

At the bottom of the trunk, he found a wooden dagger. He’d packed
it carefully away before the journey south from Rheran, then had all but
forgotten it. He felt it shift back now into the space of memory where all the
things he’d forgotten would eventually be claimed.

It was a child’s practice blade, carved by Barien when he took
the eight-year-old Chriani in off the street and under his wing. It was the
first blade Chriani had ever practiced with, working day and night with it
until he made tyro under Barien’s guidance, gaining the right to train with
steel that came with that. If anyone had asked him why he kept it, Chriani was
quite certain he wouldn’t have been able to answer. So he kept it hidden,
hoping the question would never be raised.

He closed the footlocker, latched it with a click. When he looked
over to the cot, Kathlan was watching him.

“You know I wasn’t serious last night about finding you a horse.”

Chriani tried to find the words he needed to say, but the silence
still filled him. He forced it aside to say instead, “I need to ride for
Rheran. Business at the Bastion. I can’t talk about it. Not yet.”

Kathlan swung herself from the cot, the languor of sleep still on
her but her eyes bright, focused. “I’ll pack, then.”

“No,” Chriani said. He shifted across the floor to stroke her
shoulder. “You can stay.”

“I’m your adjutant, Chriani. I serve under you. If you’re ordered
to the Bastion, that’s what it is.”

“I don’t want you making the trip, Kath. I’ll be…”

She struck him on the same cheek she’d hit the night before.

“Listen, don’t…”

She struck him on the other cheek, harder. Chriani felt a sharp
spike of pain in his jaw as he wrapped his hands around both her wrists.

“Unless you’ve got a third hand to get in front of my knee, your
next words will get you in more trouble than you know,” she said sweetly.

Chriani was silent a moment. Slowly, he let her hands go.

Kathlan kissed him on both his flame-bright cheeks. Then she
pulled her uniform and leather from beneath the cot, dressed quickly. “What do
we need?”

“I need you to stay…”

“This is not a debate, lord.”

In her tone, all the jest was gone. This was the seriousness that
stopped his own voice when he heard it in her. Not anger. A conviction that he
loved, even as he felt himself breaking against it like the waves of winter
against Rheran’s steep stone shores.

Whatever was going to happen in the Bastion, whatever Chriani
meant to discover there, he didn’t want it to become part of Kathlan’s life. He
would save her from the truth if he could, but doing so meant feeling himself
bend beneath the weight of yet another lie.

“Prepare the horses,” he said finally. “Be ready to ride after
mess. I need to talk to Rhuddry.”

Kathlan kissed him, held him for a long while before she left.

The camp was just coming to life as Chriani made his way toward
the captains’ pavilions, their banners tight in a chill breeze from off the
mountains. He had donned his spare uniform jacket, washed himself before he set
out. He saw Umeni in the distance at one point, arguing with a sergeant Chriani
didn’t know. He slipped along a side track to avoid him, quite certain that his
overdue audience with Captain Rhuddry would involve as much of Umeni as he
could take.

He caught the captain at her breakfast, as he’d expected. The
look she gave him as her door guard ushered him in carried a dark lethality, as
he’d expected. She was dressed casually in sleeveless tunic and leggings, but
no one who met with Rhuddry would ever ignore her military bearing, in or out
of uniform.

“Captain Rhuddry.” Chriani nodded gravely to her, tall and
sharp-edged where she sat alone behind the pavilion’s map table, dressed now
with more food than maps. Boiled eggs and cold beef, brown bread, honey, and
fruit were set out before her, a cup of steaming wine at hand.

“Your absence in my pavilion last night was noted, master
Chriani. And reported.” She made no move to ask Chriani to join her as she
crunched her way through an egg, shell and all. He tried to feel slighted but
failed.

“Forgive me, lord. I was ordered by Guard Second Rank Makaysa to
report first to the war-mages, where I was struck down by Ilvani magic. A side
effect of the ambush and assault incurred by second squad yesterday, during
which Sergeant Thelaur was killed.” As he’d walked that morning, Chriani had
spent time thinking on how best to get all the pertinent points of yesterday’s
events across to the captain as efficiently as possible. His delivery hadn’t
been perfect, but it would do.