And Corfaire did what he had not done during the long battle. He screamed.
A second after, Erin cried out and fell over into her low-backed chair. The thick, cedar rest caught her in the back, but she didn’t notice. Corfaire’s scream cut off abruptly, and he lay staring at her with wide eyes, his chest heaving.
She hadn’t the breath to do likewise, but her eyes met his; they were green now, glowing in the pale light of her face.
And his, his were vaguely red in the oil-lit shadows of the infirmary, in the equally pale light of his face.
“Malanthi,” Erin whispered, drawing the Greater Ward as a silent shield between them. She forgot the last bed, forgot the battle that had passed and the men that had escaped, forgot that she was a healer here. Her hands reached down, and she found her sword. It flashed up, near whistling with speed, to rest in her hands like a gaudy, perfect plume above her head.
His eyes glowed anew, and now he found the strength to roll from the bed and crouch, scrabbling at his side, opposite her. He had no weapon and no armor to offer her. Blood left its signature down the front of his chest; the letters there were writ large. But his hands made no gesture, as he met her eyes with bitter resignation.
Any other expression, any haughtiness, any fear, any anger, would not have had this effect. Erin slowly lowered her sword. The room came back in a rush, and she fought herself and her blood to keep hold of it.
“Who are you?” she said, her words quiet and dangerous.
“Corfaire.” His answer was neutral still.
“You are Malanthi. Blooded.”
“Yes.” It was a bitter, cold word in the ice of his face. The blood was flowing more freely now. He could not stand thus for much longer.
Erin pointed her sword at his chest. The runes along it seemed to twist and pull toward him. “Lie down, Corfaire.”
He did not move.
“If I wish to kill you, I’m less likely to do so if you’re prone. That is the way of my line. Lie down”
This time he nodded and very stiffly made his way back to the cot. Erin offered him no aid.
“Why are you here?” she asked softly, when at last his shoulders touched the padded cotton and wool.
He didn’t seem to hear her; his eyes were staring up, straight up, at the flat pale ceiling. What image he saw there was made clear by his words. “Ah, Mother, can you see the irony of this?” They, too, were bitter and resigned.
And Erin felt the unforeseen undertow of his pain. She found herself setting her naked blade to one side, on the floor. Her hand stopped two inches away from him.
“Who are you, Lady?” he asked, and there was no sarcasm in the title. He flinched as he saw her hand hovering, but made no move.
“I am Erin of Elliath.”
“And that?”
It was a night for surprises, although this was a small one. “Don’t you know the line name?”
“Is it a house?” Erin bristled, and sensing it, Corfaire searched for other words. “No house, then. A family? I do not know it. These things were not studied by me.” He raised his hands and brought them into range of his eyes. Erin could see the pale white bracelet of slavery that adorned his arm.
“How did you come by that?” she asked. “What crime did your house commit?”
Corfaire laughed, and in that laugh was the first hint of anger that he had yet shown.
“My house?” If he could have thrown back his head, he would have, but the pillows caught all of the motion and damped it. “Lady, I have no house! What crime? I was born. That was enough.” He turned from her then, his voice quieter. “I was born to a slave. What matter the father?”
“No slave fights like that.”
“No untrained slave.” He grimaced, staring at shadow. “Did you think we were all quaint, ignorant little housekeepers?”
Silence. Erin cringed. How many warrior-slaves had there been in the halls of the palace in Rennath? Not one, to her knowledge.
“Who trained you?”
The smile that curled the comers of his mouth up was a familiar one—and not on his face alone. It was cold, hard, and very, very cruel. “My father.”
Erin swallowed and looked away. Her hands were curling again. “Why do you fight here, Corfaire?”
“Why does Darin?” he answered. “Why do you? No—answer only the first. I don’t know why you fight. I don’t know what you are.”
“Darin? Darin fights because—did they teach you nothing of your blood?”
“What use does a slave have with the gestures and pretenses of nobility? I was taught to fight. I was the best. And I fight to hurt the Empire. I fight to hurt my father.” He looked beyond her, and his words had the feel of an old vow, oft repeated. “There is no peace between us until one of us is dead.” He turned and caught her hand in a tight, fevered grip, unmindful now of the power that had been such agony. “But you, Lady of Mercy, did you ever hear my mother’s prayers?” His fingers bit into her, drawing blood. His eyes were wide now and dark, not red. She felt certain his consciousness would not outlast this exertion. It was suddenly important for him to rest. Why?
Because she believed his answers, the words, but more important, the emotion behind them. Pain call thrummed quietly within her mind. “Corfaire, rest,” she said quietly. “I am no God. No prayer that is spoken can reach my ears in any way other than normal speech.”
“Yet you know the blood—and you turn from even me, who makes no use of its power.” He coughed. “Except in combat, and where I can, in combat against the Empire.”
She reached out and smoothed the hair from his eyes and forehead, gentle now, and only a little repelled. That’s blood, not me, she thought, and I am my own master.
“Will I see her?” he asked, as his lids fell shut. “Will I see her?” He coughed again, and his eyes fluttered weakly open. “It’s been sixteen years. But I never forgot. I kept as much of her as I could.”
“Yes,” Erin answered. His grip relaxed, but she held on. “Yes, Corfaire. At the Bridge to the Beyond, she will be waiting for you.”
She waited until she could see the rise and fall of his chest, then rose to get bandages and a needle. This healing she could not do with power, but she had spent a number of years on the front before she had been given the power of the Sarillorn of the line, and she remembered the old, bloodless ways.
As she worked, all that he had said gnawed at her. How many more of his kind lived in slavery in the capital? How many more had his blood, which could feel the lasting Light of God, and perhaps be destroyed by it? How many more of her people were so divided?
She shook her head and continued to work.
“I don’t like you,” he said, above the crackle of the fire in the small sitting room. The great arms of a well-worn high-backed chair framed him loosely. His skin was tinged orange, and the pupils of his eyes caught the flame and held it, flickering. He wrapped an old wool blanket more firmly around his shoulders and legs; his chin rested on his knee. He turned to look at her, losing the reflection of fire, and taking the shadows instead.
Erin nodded quietly, watching him. She was tired and a little chilled. The only blanket she had was the grime of the day, which she would just as soon be rid of. Breeze blew in through the leaded window, where panes of glass had been deliberately broken, by which side, it was hard to say; nor did it matter. Lord Coranth had already seen that repairs would begin in a three-day.
“I don’t like you,” Corfaire repeated, his voice soft. “I don’t know why. I haven’t liked you since the first moment I saw you.”
“I didn’t like you then either,” Erin replied. She leaned down and picked up a mug of cooling tea. “But I do know why.”
“The blood.” He looked back to the fire.
“Yes.” The mug settled back on the low, plain table. “But not just yours.”
That caught his attention, and once again his face was half covered by shadows. The room was poorly lit. “What do you mean?”
r /> “The Dark Heart is not the only God.”
“No.” He smiled, the characteristically unpleasant lift of lips. “There is the Lady of Mercy.”
“She,” Erin said archly, as a well-experienced teacher to a novice, “is no God. Have you not heard of the Twin Hearts? The Bright Heart?”
“I studied no Church doctrine.”
She sighed. “It isn’t just doctrine; not from my understanding of it.”
“Then what?”
“The blood that you bear flows from the Dark Heart. And the blood that I bear, from the Bright.”
He raised an eyebrow in question, and she sighed more deeply. It was already late, and she was very tired. In an hour, the sun would make its presence known, and no doubt she would be called to the table again.
“Lady, tell me about the Twin Hearts.”
She did, hesitantly at first, and then more quickly as memory supplied a steady narrative she could cling to. It felt odd to sit so, explaining both her own power and the power of the Enemy, however dilute, to one who bore his blood.
Or did it?
No. Here, in the darkness, she remembered other evenings, and other explanations. She spoke until at last Corfaire seemed satisfied, and then rose, retrieving the cup that was now cold.
“Lady?”
“Yes?”
“What do you do now?”
“Sleep.” She brushed strands of stray hair out of eyes that were darkly lined.
“When you quit this place, I mean. What will you do?”
She took a breath, held it, and then slowly exhaled, deciding. “I go to Malakar.”
“To free the slaves?”
His sarcasm still riled, especially at this time in the morning. She bit her lip, containing an equally sarcastic retort. He watched her quietly.
“No,” she said at last. “But maybe afterward, the slaves will find their way to freedom with no one to hinder them. No one of any blood.”
He nodded then, and seemed to be satisfied.
The last meeting was held, once again in the dining hall. The table had new chips and scars along the worn face of its surface, but somehow the servants had managed to fit it back through the doors. They had brought the high-backed chairs from the sitting room as well, and arranged these as best they could in the stark environment of the hall.
Lord Coranth nursed a scratch that he was ashamed to say came not from battle, but from breaking a window; otherwise he was whole and looked a good deal more at home than he had mere days ago. Dervallen sat, as ever, by his side, and in silence.
They had eaten, but no servants came into the hall to clear away the remnants of dinner, and crumbs remained on plate and table, keeping company with crumpled napkins and half-empty glasses.
Erin smiled as she looked around in the after-dinner quiet. This room, messy and occupied, looked lived in. No lord’s manor, this, but rather, a large home.
“So, Hildy, you’re leaving us already?”
Hildy nodded and lifted her teacup. It was delicate and fine—and the only one of its kind in the room. Everyone else drank from large, earthenware mugs.
“I’m afraid so, Bennarion dear.” She sighed. “I’d love to stay, though. Mera tells me the berries are almost in season.”
“We’ll have some made into jams; you can pick them up on your way back through.” He sat back into the cushioned rests of his chair. “Tiras tells me not to expect any further trouble. Not for a while.”
“I know,” Hildy answered. “He made that quite clear to my boys.” Hamin, the only representative of her boys, grimaced.
“But what of you?” Lord Coranth raised an eyebrow.
“We should be safe for the time. At least on the road.”
“And you?” Lord Coranth turned to look at Erin. She smiled and nodded. “Then I must thank you all.”
Tiras sat alone, listening as the conversation broke up into small groups and passed from one person to another. Night had not yet fallen completely, but it would come soon. Looking out of the small window in the dining room, he saw the gardeners begin to end their day.
He was tired, and his muscles ached abominably, a sure sign of the age he would rather ignore. Just a little longer, a little farther ... He glanced at Erin, saw that she was speaking to Hildy with a hint of twinkle about the lines of her eyes, and looked away.
They had not managed to locate the house lordling and his advisers; night had swallowed them rather effectively. No doubt they would wend their way back to Sivari with word of the difficulty on the road. Word and fear.
He looked now at Darin, whose cheek was fastened to the dining table by either gravity or sleep—Darin, who wielded both the staff of the Line Culverne, and the fire of the Church of the Dark Heart.
Only the fire had been seen at play the previous evening, and Tiras had no doubt that the Church would be blamed for the failure of the raid. No doubt that Church power, or threat of it, would keep the merchant House of Vanelon at bay. He wanted to laugh and wanted to cry at the same time; his lips were still as both desires pulled him in different directions.
For although he would never say so to the patriarch of Culverne, he still hated the fire, if not the hands that wielded it. Oh yes, he was getting old—too old, if he could not be happy with the justice that the fire had wrought. But the smell of burning wood and seared flesh lingered like a ghost, an acrid taste touched his mouth and burned at his eyes.
The dead haunt us with no will of their own. No will? He wondered if Terrela would still be waiting in the halls of judgment, and if she would accuse him of doing nothing, or open her arms to one who had been too long from them.
He rose restlessly, hating war, hating the Empire, and wearying of life. In the morning perhaps he would remember that they had won this battle. He turned and walked out of the hall to seek the silence of his chambers.
So great was his self-control that the Lady Erin only looked up once at his passing and felt no call to him.
In the morning, when sun had barely crested the horizon, the caravan was ready to move. The guards stood in clothing that had been freshly cleaned and, to some of their chagrin, starched. They were silent; even Hildy’s tone was subdued. She kissed Lord Coranth and hugged his two children, tousled the hair of some of the small ones that had come to play, one last time, under the wheels of the wagons, and made her usual promises to return with goods and news.
“Hildy,” Lord Coranth said, as she turned to leave, “it wasn’t your fault.”
Hildy smiled sadly. “Doesn’t make it feel any better, does it?”
He sighed. “No. It never does.”
“Look after the graves.”
“You know I will.”
She mounted the cab of the wagon with Hamin’s silent aid. The reins were slack in her hands as she looked over Lord Coranth’s small estate. Two of her boys were buried there, including one who had made this journey many, many times.
Well, the merchant-voice said, that is the risk they’re paid for. She frowned, angry at the thought, and even angrier that it was hers.
“Come on,” she said aloud. “Rennath is waiting. There’re a lot of houses to fleece there, and they won’t keep forever.” With a billow of sea-green sleeve, she set the wagons rolling.
The voice returned in the darkness, an echo all the worse for the fact that the speaker would never come again. Night was chill, even so close to the fringes of dawn. Sleep, when it came, would last through the dawn and into early afternoon—by edict of the creature who now ruled the land.
Lady Amalayna sat shrouded in a thick counterpane. It was burgundy, but the darkness hid that fact mercifully. It was the only mercy granted.
Her fingers gripped the quilted, tasseled edges so tightly the twine made its mark in her palm. It was over. She had done the right thing. She had done her duty to her house, there, in the ballroom of House Damion, that long, grand room that was the envy of smaller houses. Lights had lined the walls, cupped in long, cut crystal; in the
center of the room a chandelier threw multicolored shards against the hand-knotted carpets. Those carpets were a deep, dark blue, with hints of indigo along the borders of stylized flowers with hearts of blood. She knew what they looked like; she had spent much time in silence examining them.
In the hollow of her neck, in blue and silver, she bore the crest of House Damion, publicly given and publicly accepted in the cold glitter of noble fanfare. Her father had stood to her right, his hand on her right shoulder, as was the custom. Lord Vellen had stood on her left. He knew that she had shrunk, if only a little, from the hand that he brought down. Still, her smile, cool and rigid, had not altered in the least.
Lord Tentaris had been invited—as had most of the lords of the houses of Malakar. He had stood near the back of the audience resplendent in dark, rich velvets and gold, and behind him, not so far behind that Lady Amalayna could not see, stood a slave in his house colors, bearing a young child.
Lord Parimon, the heir apparent of Tentaris. Her son.
She would not embarrass her son on his first major occasion, even if he would not remember it. She was certain his grandfather would tell him, when the time came. So she had borne all that had happened with the cold grace of House Valens. She had been known for it, once.
There had been some murmuring in the audience, but little shock. One or two of the ladies had issued forth a smattering of polite applause.
Even here, in the quiet darkness of her room, she could feel their eyes upon her, cold shades of blue, brown, and green. She could feel their envy of the position she would one day hold. Take it, then, she had wanted to shout. Still, she’d felt a little spark of pride at their envy.
It was gone now, completely guttered.
For she heard his voice, and it cut her deeply.
Would you accept rites to the man who murdered me?
She had not been idle. Although Tentaris had had few contacts within the hierarchy of the Church, Valens had many. She had used these ruthlessly to find out what position Lord Vellen held there. He was still leader of the Greater Cabal, but not by much; Lord Benataan of Torvallen was swaying the lesser players of the council.