Vengeance of the Hunter (16 page)

“Thank you,” he whispered when he could find his voice. Kestar offered her a crooked little smile, and slipped the cord over his head. Dorvid’s amulet was heavier than his own, but the weight of it felt right, felt welcome. “I’ll wear it proudly in his honor.”

Ganniwer answered his smile with one much like his own, and then leaned forward from her side of the carriage to fix him with a fervent gaze. “Do this, too, in your father’s honor. Don’t let the Church destroy you as it did him. And don’t try to sacrifice yourself for Celoren and me.”

Glancing at his partner, Kestar began to protest, but Celoren was no help. “If you’re about to argue for the good of the Vaarsen and Valleford names,” he said, “spare us. I love my family, but not a one of them would tell me not to help you.”

“Vaarsen Hall will be safe in our steward’s hands,” Ganniwer added, “and I will gladly never set foot there again if it means you remain alive and well.”

“Mother...Cel...” Kestar looked back and forth between them, his brow furrowing. Before he’d even realized it his hand curled around his father’s amulet, his fingers toying with the pair of silver disks. The reflex comforted but gave no answer to the expectant looks trained on him now. “I don’t see any options before us. We’re in custody. The Hawks are the Anreulag’s eyes and sword, and She must surely have meant for this to happen. She just doesn’t let people go.”

“Except when She does,” Celoren said. “Remember, I was at the abbey too.”

Kestar could make no argument to that. Sighing, he admitted, “I did hear Faanshi. She wanted me to come to the elves—but that was all I heard. It wasn’t like before, maybe because she finished healing me, or because the elves taught her to protect her thoughts.” And himself by extension, but he wasn’t ready to think of that, even now. “But they might be trying something.”
Gods help them if they are.

“Then I recommend that you attempt to speak to that girl through whatever means you can, and find out what we can do to help.” His mother leaned back again in her seat and settled her reticule serenely in her lap. “That will, I think, be the most productive use of your time on the rest of this journey.”

“Don’t worry about ignoring us.” Celoren’s expression turned wry. “We’ll play charades.”

Kestar couldn’t help laughing at that, at least a little. “If I fall asleep, wake me at the slightest sign of trouble.”

Then he settled himself, closed his eyes and reached down within himself for his meadow.

* * *

Lomhannor Hall
,
Kilmerry Province
,
Jomhas 30
,
AC 1876

“Your Grace,” Idrekke Sother said with utmost deference, “given what we’ve begun to set in motion, I don’t think it wise for you or your children to travel. For your own safety, I must recommend that you remain at Lomhannor Hall.”

Sother had arrived early enough at the Hall that no one would look askance at her coming to call, but for the sake of young Artir and Yselde, she’d held off reporting to the Duchess Khamsin until after the children had been bedded down for the evening in their nursery. The women had retired to Khamsin’s personal parlor, and Enverly, already alerted, had been waiting for them.

He watched them now from his chair in the corner. The servants had brought them heated chocolate and cakes, and the scent of the chocolate filled the room, but the tray remained untouched near the hearth. Enverly was made ill at the thought of trying to consume either, and the women were too distracted. Sother stood straight and tall, at almost military attention, while the duchess stalked in restless circles around the room. She paced like her husband, and he idly wondered which of them had learned the habit from the other.

The mourning garb she’d had to assume, though, was entirely Khamsin’s own. No one could fault the propriety of the stark black, though it didn’t suit her dusky coloring. She looked every inch a proper Adalonian duchess, if one ignored her smoky veil and the Tantiu cut of the choli and sari she wore along with her long skirt. Which was the effect Enverly had intended when he’d recommended the wardrobe in the first place.

That long skirt flared now as Khamsin spun to eye the other woman. “It’s unavoidable.” She smiled thinly. “My husband’s will must be read, and the Church will expect to see Yselde confirmed as his heir. Camden won’t suffice. Particularly now that the people say that there’s a new firebrand of a priestess in the pulpit there, calling for the people to return to the old gods.”

Suspicions must be avoided
, Enverly wrote upon his slate.

To that, as she glanced his way, Khamsin laughed darkly. “Indeed. I am Tantiu, and my children half so. There are those who’ll seek to argue at the reading that House Kilmerredes shouldn’t pass into such hands. I must be in Shalridan to contest them. Fortunately for our purposes, this will also serve admirably as a distraction.”

Too canny to argue with that, Sother inclined her head, her eyes lighting—considering, Enverly suspected, the same implications and possibilities he’d already fathomed. “What would you have us do in the meantime?”

The duchess’s smile broadened. “You’ve already inspired one militia to riot in Marriham. We need more. Make certain they have any armaments they require. Moreover, there is the fascinating question of the Hawks our Captain Follingsen left behind in custody when he brought Father Enverly to join us. We know they’ve claimed not to know the whereabouts of the girl. But it’s quite possible that they’re lying. And were I a gambling woman, I might bet that the girl in question might be moved to act again on Lord Vaarsen’s behalf if he’s become her friend.”

Enverly straightened hard in his chair, gripped for an instant by a rush of reaction too fierce for him to label it as bitterness or anger or even hate. The room and the women in it vanished as he saw nothing but the faces of Kestar Vaarsen and Celoren Valleford, heard nothing but the thunder of the Anreulag’s disappearance that had left them alive. When his sight cleared, he almost dropped his slate in his haste to scrawl upon it,
How do you expect to find her if she does
?

“A just question,
akreshi.
Kestar Vaarsen denies any knowledge of Faanshi’s whereabouts. But now we know his, and, conveniently enough, he and his partner are also en route to Shalridan. From what our Captain Follingsen has reported, the patrol should soon be acquiring Lady Ganniwer Vaarsen herself to take with them, if they haven’t already. There will be a tribunal. That, too, I will be expected to attend.”

I’m coming with you.
Enverly’s chalk broke in two halfway through his next words, but he didn’t bother to retrieve the piece that fell to the floor. Scowling, he held up the slate for Khamsin’s inspection, and inwardly cursed every god he could think to name that he couldn’t simply communicate with the woman by the force of his will alone.

Both women looked at him now, the priestess visibly reluctant, the duchess with a more speculative glint in her dark eyes. “The Hawks have already arrested you once for your knowledge of the Rite, and I’m not of a mind to lose you and your counsel.”

Calculated risk
, wrote Enverly, beneath the words he’d scribbled before.

“It’ll be harder to hide you in Shalridan, especially in our lady’s company,” Sother said, but her expression turned thoughtful too. “But if the slightest chance exists that the Hawks could lead us to the girl, it may be worth the effort.”

Once again Khamsin began to pace, her motions too controlled to be restless, even as she nodded at Sother. “My sister’s daughter,” she said, her mouth tightening at those words, “risked herself to aid Lord Vaarsen. It’s reasonable to assume he wishes to repay that debt. If we can circumvent the Church’s intentions for them, if we have the slightest chance of directing their actions in our favor, we must take it.”

“Do you want the patrol that has them to actually reach Shalridan?” the priestess inquired, her brows rising.

“Send word out that if any of our people can keep them from the city, they should do so. If they can’t, we’ll take other measures at the tribunal in Shalridan.”

“I’ll take care of it at once, my lady.” Sother bowed, inclined her head politely to Enverly, and strode out.

When she was gone, Enverly wiped his slate clean and wrote anew upon it,
Efficient.
Where did you find her
?

The duchess gave him a satisfied half smile. “My lord husband found her, actually. I have merely chosen to take advantage of her usefulness.”

Like me
?

“Naturally. But I daresay the converse is true between her and me—and between the two of us, is it not? Enlightened self-interest is the strongest
ridah
of them all.”

* * *

The royal palace
,
Dareli
,
Jomhas 26
,
AC 1876

No one in the palace discussed it openly when the High Priest issued an edict, signed by the Bhandreid, that four dozen additional Hawks were to divert from their customary patrols and report for duty in Kilmerry Province. The same province where, the princess Margaine noted, the Duke of Shalridan had just died. To her mind, it was too great a coincidence to ignore.

And so she listened, discreetly as she could, to the murmurs that passed through the palace halls. Some were from the nobility currently in court. Others were from the servants, in quick furtive snatches when they thought no one else was in earshot. The accounts differed, some suggesting that the duke had been killed by one of his elven slaves, and others that his second wife had knifed him in his sleep—yet not a one put any credence in the official word of a riding accident as the cause of death. Nor were the public broadsheets helpful. Those of Dareli reported only that Holvirr Kilmerredes had died, and when Margaine finally acquired a copy of a paper that had come all the way from Shalridan, it proved to be three days earlier than Kilmerredes’s reported death and noted only that two assassins were wanted for an attempt on the man’s life.

When she found a second mysterious note waiting in her chambers, tucked unobtrusively within a sheaf of writing paper on her desk, she learned something more.

The Anreulag struck in Kilmerry Province.
Beware of those who seek to contain Her with blood
,
for She sees through the deceit and lies at the heart of all things
,
and Her uplifted hands bring lightning to the unjust.
Be vigilant
,
be courageous
,
and I’ll do everything in my power to ensure your daughter doesn’t suffer her father’s fate.
Leave a note where you found this one so that I’ll know you understand.
Ani a bhota Anreulag, arach shae.

She could learn nothing from the note itself; the paper was her own and the words were written in the same ink she kept in the well upon her desk. Nor could Padraiga’s wet nurse or any of the upstairs servants who saw to her rooms attest to anyone out of the ordinary entering them. Thus she could see no course before her but to do as the missive requested, and leave a reply hidden within her own writing paper.

I’ll be watchful.
Who are you?

That night, she found a reply:
It won’t serve you to know for now.
Just be ready to defend yourself and your daughter
.

The night after, she took to wearing a pistol in her skirts.

Chapter Fourteen

Shalridan
,
Kilmerry Province
,
Jeuchar 1
,
AC 1876

The first night after he saw the carriage from House Nemeides, the dreams ambushed Julian with all the screaming ferocity of Dolmerrath’s Wards.

He saw his own hands pushing Dulcinea into the study wall and reaching for her—and then other hands, seizing him and dragging him away when she screamed. He saw his brother Cleon, his fair stolid face transformed by rage, lifting the sword their father had carried in the war. And then the poker, its red-hot tip the final thing he saw before he was swept away by a tide of guilt and pain—

But this time, in the nightmare, he saw something else. Dulcinea’s pale silken hair became coal-black, her cornflower-blue eyes the green of summer leaves, and for a single agonized moment Faanshi stood before him. Her face glowed with empathy he didn’t recognize for what it was until it vanished, leaving her sweet young features hard and set, as he’d never seen them be before.

Faanshi!

Her name leaped up in his chest, the desperate shriek of a wounded rook, but it never made it to his voice. The sight of the sunlight fading from her eyes, of her turning away from him in cold rejection, struck him as surely as the sword and the poker. All the fight drained from his limbs, reducing his world to ever-constricting borders of fiery pain, and he could no longer resist the agony as it closed in. It was even a mercy to see his brother Erasmus, smiling narrowly, picking up a pistol and aiming it straight at his head.

He didn’t even bother to protest that it hadn’t really happened that way as his brother fired.

* * *

Julian’s voice returned to him in a wordless, mewling howl as he screamed himself awake.

In the moments between dream and awareness, he could see nothing but blackness before his eyes. Sheer animal panic rolled through him, and he had to paw at his face with both hands before he could assure himself he was unhurt—that he hadn’t been shot, that both his arms still ended in a wrist, a thumb, fingers.

Oh Tykhe
,
I
can’t see—!

The darkness persisted, and he was still thrashing frantically when Rab burst into the room, wild-eyed and tousled from sleep, and brandishing a lit candle before him. Only then, registering that he could in fact see his partner, did he finally begin to waken in truth.

He was covered in sweat, tangled in bedsheets, in one of the rooms he and Rab had rented in Shalridan. Every muscle in his body still quivered with adrenaline, and his mind was hazed with slumber that had given him no rest at all. But he was awake. He was alive. And, by the grace of Tykhe’s right hand, he was still whole. That would, he supposed, have to do.

“Julian.” Rab exhaled in relief and concern as he came toward the bed, lowering the candle so that Julian could better see his face. “Don’t mistake me, I’m glad you’re not actually under attack in here, but might I suggest we do something about this?”

“I’m sorry.” Julian slumped back against the pillow behind him. He’d had two when he’d gone to bed, though at some point during his nightmare he’d knocked them into the same disarray as the sheets; one was missing now, and the other was battered into near shapelessness. But it was still there to catch his head, and that was all that mattered. “I’d like to be able to tell you when this’ll pass. I can’t.”

“We can get you a doctor in the morning, or a healer, or an herbalist.” Rab smirked at the sharp look Julian gave him. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. I’ve spent too long keeping you in one piece not to know when you need assistance, even if you’re too stubborn to admit it yourself.”

“I do not require a doctor, an herbalist, or a healer.” He’d
had
a healer. But she was no longer available, no matter how much he longed to sleep again in her arms...and he was not, by gods, going to think about that.

“A chemist, then. There should be one in this town who can sell us a sleep-draught. Or hells, Julian, at least have some damned wine before you to go sleep, if that’s what it takes! Neither of us can function like this, and getting us thrown out of these rooms because our landlord doesn’t appreciate tenants shouting in their sleep won’t help.”

Rab was right, and Julian knew it—it was the third night in a row he’d managed to roust his partner out of sound slumber, after all. Yet he shied away from Rab’s forthright stare as he rolled over and off the bed, so he could try to put it back into some semblance of order. The summer night was warm, and Julian had stripped down to the bare minimum clothing. Under his loose shirt, though, sweat chilled his skin. His hands didn’t tremble, but he felt the threat of it lurking in the right one even as he snatched his missing pillow up off the floor.

“The carriage,” he muttered. “That blighted carriage. Tykhe’s tits! Why is she
here?
”

“You never did tell me who you saw back in the square.” Suspicion crept into Rab’s voice then. “I know of only two women who’ve ever gotten you into a state like this, and we left one of them behind with the elves. You’re not telling me—”

“I saw the carriage, Rab. It had Nemea’s House crest on it. And unless my noble, upstanding brother has a new blonde wife, there’s no one else it could have been.” Julian heard his own voice sharpening but couldn’t bring himself to care. Before his right hand could begin to quiver in truth, he balled it into a fist and punched the pillow he’d retrieved.

Rab closed the distance between them, then prodded determinedly at Julian’s nearer shoulder. “Oh, no, you don’t. I know that look. Were I your barrister, this would be the point at which I’d advise you in no uncertain terms that going within twenty yards of that woman would be illegal, unethical and certainly hazardous to your life and strangely restored limbs.”

Julian snorted. “You’re as much a barrister as I am the Serrina of Vreyland. And since when do you care about illegal activity?”

His best devilish grin flashing, Rab inclined his head. “Fair point, well argued.” Then the grin faded. “You
are
thinking about finding her. Or is it your brother drawing your aim?”

No one knew him better than Rab, and at any other time, Julian might have appreciated the younger man’s quick insight. In that moment he was weary of body and mind, with far too much of himself laid bare by a shy-eyed healer with hands full of light. The carriage had been the last straw, really. Tykhe had not only lifted Her left hand—She was swinging it straight at his jaw. He could think of no other reason whatsoever that he’d fled Faanshi only to stumble across the path of the first woman he’d ever loved.

Still, Dulcinea was in Shalridan. Along with, he had to presume, his brother. And all at once Julian laughed, low and bitterly, staring down at his new hand while he imagined it spilling Erasmus’s blood. “I’d like to see his face, seeing mine.”

“Before or after you slit his throat? I could point out we don’t actually have a contract, and you are still off your game.”

Rab was right about that too, he had to admit. They had priorities to pursue.
Still
... “I do have to see her at least.”

“For gods’ sake, why?”

A damned good question, one that Julian wasn’t at all sure he could answer—either for Rab, who was young yet, or for himself. “Regret,” he said, heavily, though that was less true a word than
guilt.
“Closure. A demon that needs banishing, if I’m to live as a remade man.”

Narrowing his eyes, his partner studied him, and then finally nodded. “As long as you’re not planning on doing anything stupid. You’ve already made an idiot of yourself over one female this year, and that’s quite enough.”

Julian managed a smile. “Fair enough. And who knows? We could get a little profit with my closure if we play this right. If Nemea’s here at all they’ve got to have something worth stealing with them.”

“Now you’re talking the first sense I’ve heard out of you in weeks.” Rab’s eyes lit up, brilliant in the candlelight. “And I daresay nothing will warm up those new fingers of yours like a little honest thievery.”

“My thoughts exactly. Now get out of here and let me sleep. I won’t disturb you again. We’ll begin our hunt in the morning.”

Reassured, Rab took his leave. Julian stretched out once more on the bed, closing his eyes and flinging his arms out to either side. Slumber was a long time returning for all his deliberate will to relax. The noises of the city outside their boardinghouse, for Shalridan was too large a city to be silent even at night, were a background clatter in his awareness. Nor was he entirely accustomed, even after several days, of the texture of a sheet against his right palm.

And neither could he banish the powerful image of that hand driving a knife through his brother’s heart.

* * *

Finding the public explanation for House Nemea’s presence in Shalridan required nothing more than acquiring copies of the newspapers from the past several days. In between stories lauding the new realm-wide telegraph lines, editorials for and against the right of Tantiu-born immigrants to build a temple to Djashtet, and a review of a new theatrical performance by a troupe of actors from Vreyland, Julian found word of the Duke of Shalridan’s death.

There’d been a public funeral, of course. Most of the noble Houses of the western provinces had sent representatives to pay their respects, and Nemea had been among the eastern Houses to attend. But, or so the society pages reported, the current head of House Nemea had additional business keeping him and his wife in the city for the next several days. Many other names were listed as well, this noble, that earl, half a dozen Houses taking the opportunity to renegotiate their standing with House Kilmerredes in the wake of its duke’s death.

Julian, however, cared for none of them. The only names that concerned him were Erasmus and Dulcinea Nemeides, and the only information he wanted was their whereabouts. But neither he nor Rab could afford to ignore the broadsheets’ proclamations that Hawks were active in Kilmerry Province, and that the Church was offering a sizeable reward to any citizen who aided in the apprehension of several persons wanted in connection with the Duke of Shalridan’s death. Including unnamed individuals matching their own descriptions—though they were eclipsed by the scandalized news that two Hawks were under suspicion of collusion with the duke’s escaped elven slave.

None of the broadsheets outright accused said slave and Hawks of murdering Holvirr Kilmerredes, though the implication was plain to anyone capable of reading.
Poor bastards
was all the sympathy Julian allowed himself to muster for Kestar Vaarsen and his partner; they’d chosen their own paths, just as he’d chosen his. But at reading the printed edict from the Church that the escaped elf slave was to be caught and Cleansed, and failing that, shot on sight, his mind went blank with rage. He fought it off only by virtue of ripping every broadsheet he and Rab had procured to shreds, and burning the lot in the fireplace of their boarding room suite.

They had a job to do now. He had to focus.

Rab needed no more than the work of a few hours to track down the house Erasmus and Dulcinea were occupying in the finest district in the city. Once they located their prey, they were able to track them—and begin their hunt in earnest.

With Hawks on the streets they took care to start small, a bribe here, a diversion of purchased goods there, just enough to bite into the flow of foodstuffs and art objects flowing into that rented house. The food they promptly diverted into Shalridan’s waterfront districts, where it could vanish without a trace among beggars and thieves. The shipment of a fine statuette, however, was harder. Julian and Rab were known in Shalridan, at least to certain elements of its populace. But they hadn’t been sighted in the city in weeks, and now watchmen and Hawks alike were on their own hunt for
them.
Which wasn’t new; they were, after all, assassins. But their usual targets had been one thing—men or women already involved in the underworlds of Adalonian cities, more often than not.

It was another thing entirely that they were now wanted for the death of a duke.

That they hadn’t even actually killed Holvirr Kilmerredes was beside the point. It took the two of them a full day before they could find a fence willing to take the statuette off their hands—and one they could trust not to immediately turn them in to the Church. Even then, it cost them a greater share of the profit than it would have done only a few short weeks before.

Still, it was enough to supplement their funds. And that, in turn, let them equip themselves for their primary goal.

It took doing. Judicious watch on the house told Julian and Rab that Erasmus rarely departed without Dulcinea in tow, and the lady herself even more rarely emerged without him. Yet when a red-faced porter and watchman arrived at his front door to report the disappearance of the statuette, Erasmus erupted forth with a temper that Julian could see even from down the street.

Smiling narrowly to himself, he seized his chance. For there was another thing he and Rab had learned: Dulcinea, if left to her own devices, had a habit of taking tea in the little garden behind the house.

Rab was already in action. His fair hair dyed brown, his hands disguised by riding gloves with one rigged finger, he was immaculate in jacket and waistcoat of dark green and gold—every inch the young gentleman, eminently at home on the wealthy street. He was striding from one house to the next, ringing doorbells and presenting, along with his elegantly forged cards, a lament about a lost and entirely fictitious dog.

Julian for his part had always taken the more unobtrusive route with their disguises. The irony of his preferring servant roles while Rab played the noble fop, when they’d each been born to the opposite, always made him smirk. It did so again now, as he mirrored Rab’s trek along the street—only behind the houses rather than in front of them, aiming for the back entrances used by servants. Or so he was prepared to do, at a moment’s notice, if he were challenged.