Three Coins for Confession (40 page)

The assassin said nothing. She made no move, the arrows in her
trembling with each breath.

“She helped us in the ambush,” Chriani said carefully. “When the
last lóechari bolted, the assassin’s the one who dropped her horse. She kept
the cult from finding out we’re coming.”

“The lóechari will come soon enough. Their magic shows us to all
of them through these ones’ eyes.”

“They’d already seen us, through Taelendar.” Chriani showed
Farenna the now-lifeless talisman before he slipped it to his belt. “They were
tracking our approach through her. Watching since we left Sylonna, probably.
They’ll be coming, yes. But they’re blind for now.”

The captain glanced to the dark stone still at his own wrist, but
the anger didn’t soften. “You said this one works with the Calala. How do we
know she wasn’t scouting for them? Fighting among them from the start, then
throwing her lot in when it became clear her allies had lost the fight?”

“No one else in sight,” Dargana said to interrupt them. She had
circled back from the other side, Chriani not even hearing her as she slipped
through the trees and back onto the path. “But the noise we’ve been making,
anybody could know we’re here.”

“If there were more Ilvani, they would have joined the attack,”
Chriani said.

“They will quick enough, Ilmari.” Farenna stepped back finally,
his dark eyes cold.

Chriani turned to look down at the assassin again. He let his
memory run, showing her as he’d seen her a week before. Seeing subtle changes
in her. A gauntness to her look. Her bare feet were dark with dust and muck,
even as dried blood showed at her blunted toenails.

“She’s been running,” he said thoughtfully. “For days. She must
have broken free from the Ilmari.” He spoke to the assassin, challenging her.
“You’ve been following us.”

Farenna laughed, his expression showing a clear contempt. “No
Ilmari walks the paths of Laneldenar unseen.”

Chriani didn’t respond as he crouched before the assassin. He
thought about the black ring now hidden in his belt, taken from an Uissa
assassin who had passed unseen under eyes just as alert as any Ilvani patrol.
He lifted her face so as to meet her pale gaze.

“You’ve been following us,” he said again. “Why?”

At the corners of the assassin’s mouth, set against the pain
where the arrow wounds bled slowly, Chriani saw the flicker of the smile again.

“These assassins take up arms with the Calala,” Farenna said.
“Seeking revenge against the Ilmari by fomenting war.”

“No.” Chriani felt the details shifting in his mind. More to it
than that. “If they wanted revenge against the Duke Andreg in Aerach, there’s a
hundred easier ways to get it.” An unexpected anger twisted through him at the
mention of Andreg’s name. Thinking suddenly on the duke and his guard, smashing
Uissa in response to what had happened along the Clearwater Way during the deep
winter of eighteen months past. This duke he’d never met, who he hated on
principle for what he was, had made retribution for what the order had done. A
thing Chriani would never do.

“The order’s just as like to want revenge against the Calala
Ilvani,” Dargana said thoughtfully, “for killing a score of their warriors who
thought they’d carry out the princess’s assassination in Ilvani livery.”

As he had when the assassin was captured, Chriani thought of that
night along the Clearwater Way, and the Ilvani attack that had saved him and
Lauresa from the Uissa warriors sent there to kill her. “Which means you don’t
care about revenge,” he said to the assassin, thoughtful. “But you care about
power. Don’t you?”

The pale smile flickered just briefly.

“What was it Venry said?” Chriani tried to remember the Aerachi
lieutenant’s words. “Andreg smashed the order at midsummer. The assassins of
Uissa, scattered across the frontier and straight into Crithnalerean. Into the
Ghostwood. And you found something there. Old Ilvani magic you knew the Calala
craved and would pay for.”

It was no more than a guess, but Chriani saw the assassin smile
again.

“You’re smarter than your betters give you credit for, lord.”

When the assassin spoke, her voice rang as clear as her eyes. A
tremor threaded through that voice as well, speaking to the pain she was in.

“Who are you?”

“Tician.”

The smiled flickered at the assassin’s mouth again in response to
Chriani’s surprise. Showing how he hadn’t really expected an answer. He had
come up against the Uissa agent sent to kill Lauresa more than once. Had killed
him in the end, but never heard him speak. Never knew his name.

“Why are you here?”

“I was following you,” the assassin said. “On contract from the
Calala Ilvani. When their tracking magic failed, Uissa was called. I was in
Rheran when the attack came. The Calala sought me out the next day.”

“You were in Rheran why?”

“Business. Nothing to do with you or anyone you know, lord.”

“You’ll tell me anyway.”

“I won’t,” Tician said. “I’m pledged to duty and a code, the same
as all of you.”

Dargana laughed, but it was Farenna who spoke. “Then why are you
so free with your name and your mission, assassin?” He circled around her, his
long-knife down but still in hand.

“Because my contract with Calalerean is done, and I’ll tell you
anything you ask about them. That ended when I saw the coins transform the
Ilvani on the Hunthad. The blind agents, as Chriani called them. I don’t take
well to secrets held against me by my employers.” Her eyes shifted from Farenna
to Chriani. “And because I know I’m done without your aid, and I’m not ready to
die yet.”

Chriani laughed this time. “Saving your life would be poor trade
for you trying to kill me.”

“Your life or death was none of my concern. I don’t know what the
Ilvani wanted with you, and I don’t care. I was just hired to track you where
they couldn’t. I watched you leave Rheran, then followed you along the
Clearwater Way. The Ilvani were waiting across the frontier, south of Werrancross,
from where we followed.”

“They told you nothing?”

“They told me you carry something they want. I already knew what
it was, though, from when you and the exile had your heart-to-heart off the
Wayroad. I was there, listening.”

Chriani felt the quick touch of memory, his horse spooked that
day as he and Dargana talked. He saw Tician’s eyes flash to Dargana’s, saw her
smile in response to the exile’s dark look.

“If I’d been paid to kill you,” the assassin said, “I could have
done it then, Chriani. Or at the Leisanmira campfire. You would have made an
easy target.”

“You should have tried it. At least one Leisanmira there would
have made short work of you.”

Tician smiled again, then grimaced as if the effort had cost her.

“You said you would help us,” Farenna said. His tone had changed.

Chriani glanced over to the captain, saw a sense of calm restored
in him. Tician seemed to see it too, nodding cautiously.

“I help myself, Ilvani. But I can tell you what I know of the
plans of the Calala if it’s worth something to you.”

“That worth will be determined in Sylonna. You will ride back
with us…”

“No,” the assassin said. “We go forward. We find the temple and
the black tree. You want my help, that’s my price. I won’t go back to Uissa
empty-handed.”

Chriani saw Farenna’s expression tighten, angry again where the
assassin had interrupted him. “What do you know of where the lóechari hide?”
the captain said at last.

“I know what I overheard moving south along the Hunthad with the
Calala. They spoke of their orders coming from somewhere called Markura. A holy
site, they named it, but none of them had been there. Or at least none of them
remembered it. I know you seek the source of the power that Calala holds in
Crithnalerean. I know how you plan to destroy it.”

“Four who followed me are dead,” Farenna said coldly. “This
mission is done. We return to Sylonna.”

Chriani saw a sense of resignation in Tician’s eyes. Then he saw
her moving, but even seeing it wasn’t enough to let him react in time.

A sense of slowness overwhelmed his senses, like he might be
submerged to the neck in ice-cold water while watching the assassin tumble
along its surface. From where she was hunched down on her knees, Tician lurched
to her feet and spun in a single, smooth motion, lashing out with her injured
leg in a kick that took her fully off the ground. Chriani was only starting to
move, but it was enough that the blow caught him in the shoulder rather than
the head, where she’d been aiming.

The assassin pulled her legs up while still in the air, pushing
her bound arms down behind her. Her hands wrapped around beneath her feet and
were in front of her suddenly, even as those feet hit the ground and she was
running hard for the trees.

Chriani was up and after her. He heard Farenna hiss behind him in
a way that told him he was blocking the Ilvani’s shot, the assassin choosing
her course carefully. She was fast but still injured, her gait stiff where her
wounded leg slowed her. Chriani caught her in three steps but she spun around
again, struck him in the temple with her bound hands.

The double-fist strike sent a wave of shadow through his mind,
sent him stumbling. Chriani saw the fear in the assassin’s eyes as she twisted
away again, sprinting once more for the trees.

She stumbled as Farenna’s thrown long-knife took her between the
shoulders. A moment of stillness seemed to catch her, her body teetering as she
tried reflexively to grasp the knife, but her bound hands couldn’t reach it.
Chriani managed to catch up to her as she pitched sideways to the ground.

He pulled the knife, cast it away. Blood was at the assassin’s
mouth and at the new wound. A slow flow, but the pale blue eyes stared
sightlessly past him. He heard her choke out a last breath as Farenna stepped
up beside him.

“You trust too easily, friend Chriani.” The Ilvani warrior
snatched up his knife, his voice cold again.

Chriani said nothing as his fingers pressed to the assassin’s
neck. Trying to feel for her blood, but it was already still. She must have
been more badly injured than he’d thought. Pushed herself too far into
blood-shock with the acrobatic display that had nearly taken his head off.

Farenna reached down, grasped the body by the hair and hefted it.
“We waste our time here,” he whispered. His face was a mask as he set his long-knife
to the assassin’s throat.

“Leave her!”

Chriani heard the words as if it might have been someone else
shouting them. He wasn’t aware that he’d moved until he was driving into
Farenna’s throat with his elbow, sending the Ilvani stumbling back. All the
captain’s rage was redirected toward him as he righted himself, but Chriani’s
own heart was filled with an anger that burned equally hot.

“You dare…!” the Ilvani shouted.

“I’ll dare as far as you, Farenna, but I’m done with this. Ilvani
and Ilmari alike, screaming vengeance. Carving oaths into the dead. Enough of
it.”

Farenna’s grey-black eyes were cold, his knuckles white on the
knife. Chriani hadn’t drawn a weapon, knew that if he did he was dead. From the
corner of his eye, he saw Dargana with hands at her axe and dagger, though.
Waiting. He hadn’t expected the rage that had risen so quickly in him, though
he recognized it all the same.

The assassin had been worth something to him alive. Another
bargaining chip he might have used to buy his way back into Brandishear. An
Uissa agent with intelligence of the Valnirata. He could have delivered her to
Chanist’s war-mages, or even to Vishod’s, after the Laneldenari were done with
her.

She’d been afraid. He’d seen it in her eyes. It made a difference
to him. He couldn’t say why.

Farenna said nothing, even as the anger in him ebbed again. He
sheathed his knife. “Our mission is done, Ilmari,” the captain said.

Chriani shook his head in response, but it was Dargana he spoke
to. “What do you know about a temple? Markura, she called it?”

“A lot of names come out of the Ghostwood. A lot of places lost
within it. I don’t know this one.”

“We’re going to find it,” Chriani said.

“We return to Sylonna.” Farenna’s tone had lost its edge, but
Chriani was reminded all the same that the captain wasn’t used to being
challenged.

“You can ride for Sylonna. Tell Laedda and the rest that you let
Dargana and I finish this alone.”

“When I accepted you among my riders, Ilmari, it came with
obligation and trust in equal measure.”

“Just like you took obligation from Laedda and the rest of them
when you swore to see this mission through.”

“The lóechari track us…”

“They were tracking Taelendar, meaning they know she’s dead.
They’re as likely to think she took us down first as anything else. By the time
they figure out…”

“The troop is broken, Ilmari. I will not discuss…”

“Your troop is standing in front of you, waiting for the order to
push on, lord.” The title didn’t make any sense among the Ilvani, but Chriani
said it by instinct. Packed it with all the usual sense of challenge that the
word had carried when addressed to any of the officers whose orders he’d
defied.

“Our mission was to seek intelligence of the lóechari, and what
we have learned is dire enough,” Farenna said.

“Even more reason, then, that you need Aerach and Brandishear.
Even more reason to try to learn how the cult puts its power into play. Find a
way to undo that power.”

Farenna stood in silence a long while. Chriani saw his gaze flit
back to the dark amulet at his wrist.

“I will complete the rites for the fallen,” he said at last.
“Prepare to ride.”

While Farenna occupied himself at the bodies of Taelendar and the
other dead Ilvani, Chriani searched the assassin’s body, already growing cold.
He expected to find magic. Some kind of talisman, or a ring like his own to
explain her ability to follow them unseen. However, he found nothing on her
except her scabbard and a belt pouch filled with Ilvani bread and mead. Stolen
from the same provisioned glades they had rested in along the trail from
Sylonna, he guessed. He checked every seam of her tunic and leggings, searched
the pouch and her belt for secret pockets. He emptied the mead flasks and broke
the bread open, but she carried nothing else.