Three Coins for Confession (14 page)

As they passed the market court, they saw it packed tight with
tents and wagons, crowds of city folk and travelers moving shoulder to shoulder
through the spaces between. Bonfires were burning at the centers of the wider
intersections, sending off as much steam as smoke, but their warm light helped
cut the gloom where shuttered lamps were straining to fill the falling dark.
Beyond the market court, they would approach the wall of the keep and circle
around to the north gates. Those were the main entrance to the center of the
city, opening out to the steep slope leading down to the harbor and the
seawall.

As they drew close to the keep’s south wall, though, Chriani
slowed to bring Kathlan close beside him. “We should get a room,” he said. “One
last night.” He heard the words come out wrong even as he was saying them, but
if Kathlan heard any extra meaning in them, she gave no sign.

“What about your Bastion business?”

“It can wait a night. Same for Milyan’s reports. Whoever they’re
marked for can read them by daylight tomorrow as easily as lamplight tonight.”

Kathlan laughed. “Whoever they’re marked for will be Chanist’s
mages. Nothing I can think of would make me keep them waiting.”

“I’ll keep them waiting for you.” Chriani leaned across in the
saddle to kiss her, feeling their horses bump shoulders and blow their
displeasure. “We report tonight, it’s straight to cold showers and the
barracks. I say we got caught an extra day on the road with bad weather.
Private room. Hot bath, warm fire.”

“Is that an order, lord?” Kathlan’s tone was mocking but her
expression was serious.

“Do you know the penalties for disobeying a superior, tyro?”

“If they don’t already involve physical punishment, let me know
what else I need to do, lord.”

Kathlan made a full salute with a flourish, Chriani laughing. She
clasped his hand as they rode.

The inn they steered to was the Trickster, two steep lanes south
of the keep along a high side street. Chriani knew the inn more by reputation
than custom, with that reputation built primarily on its proximity to the
keep’s secure southwest gatehouse. That proximity made it a preferred locale
for Bastion guards needing a place for private trysts off duty, or for sleeping
off debauchery whose aftermath would be too trying even for the barracks.

Mud-soaked and dripping, almost half a year gone from the
Bastion, Chriani wasn’t worried about either of them being recognized at the
inn stables or the common room, both of which they passed through in short
order. A single Ilvani blood-gold paid for the inn’s best room and dinner
besides — lamb stew and well-aged cheese, bread with fresh butter, a
jug of ale and two mugs that was all carried with well-practiced skill by the
eager serving boy who escorted them.

The room was an oversized top-floor turret, clean and simple. A
fire along the inside wall was already burning hot, copper kettles steaming on
the hearth. “The lord’s suite,” the boy proudly named the room. “Fire burning
all the day, just waiting for you, weary travelers.” The tub the kettles filled
was pocked but watertight, Kathlan already stripping off her riding clothes
even as the boy filled it. To Chriani’s eye, he looked like he was taking his
time, and spending less of that time watching the tub than he was watching
Kathlan. A clutch of copper cinches set him to finish and sent him packing,
though.

Chriani made sure the door was locked before he set his own
clothes out to dry, hanging his cloak to cover the room’s single window.
Holding back its edge for a moment, he saw night falling in the city beyond,
heard the ringing of the evenmark bells in the keep. Hand to the glass to block
the room’s reflection from his eyes, he marked off the tavern’s second-storey
roof spreading below him. The hiss of water was loud at the gutters, rain
hanging like a curtain of dark grey.

As he slumped in front of the fire, he listened to Kathlan
singing as she soaked. It was a barracks hall song whose lyrics could make the
strongest sergeant blush, but Kathlan’s interpretation was even more stridently
lewd. He assumed that was for his benefit, felt the stirring of his hunger for
her even through his fatigue. A familiar feeling, and welcome, but shrouded
this night by the darkness that traced through Chriani’s mood and mind.

“A man might die many ways, squire.”

Eighteen months before, the Prince High Chanist had threatened
his life. Chriani in turn had dared him to take it.

Chriani irnash! Lóech arnala irch niir!

We hunt Chriani. Three coins for the truth of confession.

In thinking through it, Chriani found that it made a kind of
sense, as much as madness could make sense. Eighteen months before, Chanist had
wanted all-out war with the Valnirata. Had committed acts to accomplish it
whose darkness Chriani wouldn’t think on. For the prince to have struck any
bargain with the Valnirata would have seemed inconceivable in the aftermath of
those events. But Chriani remembered what Derrach had said about Milyan’s
intelligence.

The Ilvani of the western forest were using magic of the exiles
of Crithnalerean. It had started there, perhaps, with Chanist able to more
easily conspire with the exiles than with the war-clans of the Greatwood. His
troops had far more contact with the Crithnala, who themselves hated the
Valnirata of the Greatwood nearly as much as Chanist did. The prince high
seeking out unlikely allies. Setting Chriani at the center of some duplicitous
bargain that would leave him free to seek his war with the Ilvani once more.

It was all guesswork, though. Still too many things that didn’t
make sense. Chriani eyed his saddlebags where they sat beneath the bed, the
mage’s satchel inside. He remembered the glowing sigil on the latch.
Information there, no doubt, but he wouldn’t be the one to claim it.

Kathlan’s song had changed, but he hadn’t noticed when. The lines
of a romantic lay hung sweet and mournful against the splash of water, the
crackling of the fire. Chriani fed more wood to the grate from the ample supply
at the hearth, then watched Kathlan as she finally stood. Water flowed from
her, skin gleaming dark in the shadows. Hands running along arms and legs to
dry herself, wringing her hair.

Chriani irnash…

The Ilvani had called his name.

“Water’s still hot,” Kathlan said as she crossed to the bed,
drying herself with the extra woolen blanket the boy had left. Chriani washed
but didn’t soak long. With his boot knife, he shaved and trimmed his beard,
then stood at the hearth to dry. By the time he slipped in beside Kathlan, the
bed was already warm.

Their lovemaking was slow but sudden, a product of the fatigue
that both were feeling. But in the time after, they were both equally content
to simply inhabit each other’s arms, feeling the warm glow of the room wrap
around them as the fire died to flickering shadows.

Chriani felt Kathlan’s fingers along his shoulder, marked her
tracing out her name in the Ilvani script as she sometimes did. He had shown
her the lettering that morning of their pledge, had carefully explained the
four names and as much of his reasons for scribing them as he was able. She had
gone quiet when Chriani showed her Lauresa’s name there. He told her half the
truth of the path that had brought him back to the side of the princess he had
once loved, even as he pledged his love for Kathlan again. Saying what he needed
to say to make her understand.

He told her the story. The princess attacked along the Clearwater
Way while under guard and bound for Aerach. She and Chriani escaping, fleeing
ahead of Valnirata war-bands and the order of assassins who would eventually be
exposed as the dark force behind the attempt on the life of the prince high and
his oldest daughter. Chriani was caught up in it, taking up Barien’s duty of
protecting the princess with his life. Learning things about himself he had
never thought to know. Finding the strength that Barien had always known was in
him.

It was a good tale, as tales went.

As Kathlan’s hand found his, her fingers touched the steel ring
that Lauresa had given him. Chriani had told her of the ring’s magic on that
bright blue morning of a year and a half before, and had shown her the magic of
the black iron band. Two secrets he had eagerly shared to show her he had
nothing to hide anymore.

The lies came too quickly sometimes. Too easily.

The steel ring was one of a matched pair, the power they shared
putting the thoughts of two people in connection when both rings were worn.
Before they parted, the princess had told Chriani to wear his always, and he
did. She told him she’d put her own ring on if she ever needed him. Kathlan hadn’t
been pleased to hear that. Chriani had set her mind at ease, though. Telling
her truthfully that when Lauresa said it, he was certain he would never hear
her voice in his mind again.

“When I came back from Aerach,” Chriani said quietly, “we talked
about taking the rites.”

The words hung quiet in the silence and firelight of the turret
room. No sense that they were even in him until Chriani heard himself speaking
them. Remembering that morning of deep winter. Remembering the truth he shared
with Kathlan, and the truths he had kept hidden, and the promises he’d made
because he felt the ache of those hidden truths as a wound he needed
desperately to close.

“I remember,” Kathlan said sleepily. “Do you remember me saying
no?”

“I remember you saying to slow it down. You never said no.”

“So slow it down.” Her fingers had walked up his hand and across
his chest beneath the blankets. Chriani shifted to put his arms around and
beneath her. He kissed her gently.

“It’s been more than a year. I go any slower, we’re running
backwards, Kath. We could take the rites.”

She extricated herself from him, leaning back on one elbow to
assess him in the shadows. Not angry. Not upset. Just curious, her green gaze
bright to Chriani’s eyes.

“We could,” she said at last. “In the sense of it being a
possibility. But there being no point or purpose to taking the rites makes it
an open question of why we should?”

“For the sake of doing it. Showing everyone else what it means
for us.”

“We’ve got no family for either of us, Chriani. Who’s the
everyone
you’re so concerned for suddenly?”

“That’s not what I mean. It’s just that as much as it means
already, as much as we mean to each other, it gives us something else. Shows
the world what we are.”

“It’ll show the captains as well. You know the regulations.
Separate assignments. You’ll lose me as your adjutant. I’ll never be able to
serve under you.”

Chriani laughed, but it rang hollow in his ears. “I’ll be the one
worried about serving under you when it comes to that, Kath. And we don’t need
to make it public. Find a justice in some market town where no one’s watching.
Take furlough to Elalantar and come back with it done.”

“So you’re going from everyone knowing what we mean to each
other, to no one knowing, to only us knowing in the space of fifty words.
Except we already do know. Or I do, at least. So why is this so important to
you?”

Because Chriani had no answer he could give her, he kissed her in
reply. He felt her warmth, realized how cold the room had become.

“Fire’s dying,” he said as he slipped from the bed. He crouched
low to the hearth, banking coals and lining the grate with kindling and fresh
wood. He was stoking the flames from their slumber when he heard Kathlan pad
naked across the floor behind him. From the mantle where she’d set it while she
bathed, she took her pendant brooch, slipping it over her head. She dropped
down to sit in Chriani’s lap, her back to him as she pulled the blanket around
them both. As he wrapped himself around her, she rocked against him gently,
breasts and belly hard against his arms.

“Why is this important?” she whispered to the shadows. “The
truth.”

Beneath the blanket, Chriani caught a glimpse of green and silver
at Kathlan’s neck, the brooch and its silk ribbon that was the color of her
eyes. And with that came all the memory of the first time he’d seen himself in
those eyes. All the understanding of how the question of the rites was
important because he had hurt her. Over and over again, the thought hammered
against his mind like it might be hoping to break the silence of his tongue. It
was important because he had lied to her, had let each new lie settle on the
foundations laid down by the truths he still couldn’t tell her.

It was important because he had stood in front of Umeni, stood in
front of Rhuddry, and lost everything he and she had both worked for. A stupid
thing to do. Courier duty, and needing to tell Kathlan that if she wanted to
finish out her assignment with the rangers, she’d have to do it without him.
They would be together in time, but for now, he had no right to keep her with
him. Had no way to tell her why.

“I just want us to always be,” he said. “I don’t want it
changing. I want to think about the future and know what’s to come…”

“I don’t want children,” Kathlan said.

Something cold twisted inside him. Not where he’d been going with
the conversation. Not where he’d wanted to push her, not what he wanted to
hear.

Not that, not now.

“I didn’t mean…”

“We’re soldiers, Chriani. That’s our life, while we’re young at
least, and I hope for all time. I was daughter to two soldiers, and I watched
them both buried in uniform. I can’t put any child through that. I won’t leave
any child to page at the Bastion, and wondering each time you and I ride out
whether we’re coming back.”

He let the silence hang for a long while. “I didn’t want this
talk,” he said. “It’s not what I meant.”

“I know. But it’s been on my mind, and I should have said it
already. No secrets.”