Or perhaps not, for among those who waited was the gardener himself.
The house mistress knelt at his feet. “Lord.” She gestured, and the rest of the slaves did the same, surrounding him in a semicircle of obeisance.
“Why have you come?”
“The Lady.” The first slave answered. The two words hung in the air, so strong in their starkness that they were almost visible. As if aware of this, the slave spoke again. “We thought her dead.”
Lord Darclan did not reply. What was there to say? But he nodded, waiting.
It was the house mistress who spoke next, sparing a second to frown at the slave from the dining hall.
“We might have known that your plan would save her. The slave master spoke briefly of it before he ordered us to send our people away.”
“Gervin.”
There were nods, but none of the slaves spoke the name. If the Lord willed it, he alone might break law.
“Why have you come?” There was more insistence in the words, but no menace.
The house mistress raised her head and straightened out, although one knee still crushed the damp grass. “You saved her life then, and you might do so now.”
“I cannot.” Very bitterly he looked above them to see the walls of hovering red. “I have tried.”
Now the faintest trace of fear passed through her. He felt it quivering in the distance. “The slave master hid much from us, Lord. But not all. We—we older ones know what you—you might be.” She swallowed, and then her words came in a rush; to wait too long might give an opportunity to deny them. “You need lifeblood for your power. We—we can be spared, and we have come to offer what little we can.”
He had thought he would never know surprise again. He looked at them, counting maybe twenty in all, and felt their silence, weighted and hushed, as they stared up at him.
Laughter was no fit reward for what they offered, but he could not help it; a grim chuckle left his lips. He turned his back to them and stared at the open sky.
“You honor your Lady,” he said, when he could speak again. “And if it would help, I would accept your offer gladly. But that is not the way of the power I wield. Only the unwilling death yields what I need.” There were many slaves still sleeping in the castle. He did not have time to slaughter them all, and he knew that had he the time, he would not. Was it only Sara, now? He could not be sure.
The sigh that came was uttered as if from a single mouth. And then one of the oldest men rose, leaving his pose of servitude. The house mistress grabbed his leg as he passed her, walking to face their Lord. He reached down gently and pulled her hand away before continuing.
It was the master gardener.
“Lord.” He bowed. “Gervin was not the only man among us to have served, however distantly, with the lines. Not the only one who understood the nature of the Bright Heart.” His eyes were squinted slightly as he stared past Lord Darclan. “I studied with a master scholar of Meron. We had much in common, he and I; a love of living things, and an understanding of how to encourage them.
“I built this garden for you with the knowledge he gave me. I did not know who you were—but I guessed it. Who else might claim Mordantari as his own? But I slaved here. I thought I might still bring life, and its beauty, to the world that the Dark Heart claimed.
“Days ago, maybe more, you gave me leave to finally change this last part of the garden; you made it mine.” He smiled. “I set the slaves to work here, digging and laying. I had them weeding through all of the sun’s sojourn. And I saw the well. I saw its light.
“The Dark Heart must have unwilling blood; the Light, not so. I do not know if the Bright Heart can accept what we offer—but if it strengthens the Light, might it not weaken the Dark?” He reached out then, suddenly and swiftly, and caught Lord Darclan’s hands in his own. The difference of texture was more than just magical; the gardener’s hands were callused and warm, the Lord’s smooth and cold—the contrast between the mortal and the immortal. “Give our lives to the Dark Heart as we have willingly offered them. If it gains you no strength, will it not weaken his?”
Stefanos did not pull back. Instead he gripped the callused hands tightly as if discovering just now the reality in them. The solidity. “Are you all agreed in this?”
“Yes.” The house mistress answered.
“Why?”
“Because she is the Lady of Mercy, and the Dark Heart will destroy even that hope.” The house mistress smiled, but it was shaky. “Besides, when we reach the Bridge, we’ll have our own tale to tell to our parents and some of our children.”
He stared at them all, weighing what they had offered against the hope that it would make any difference. It had never, in all of the Dark Heart’s history, been tried. The blood of the willing ...
Yet he knew, too, that it was so slender a chance. He knew what Sara would say, could she accept or refuse what they offered. She would be very angry, very hurt, to know what his decision was.
“She will never know,” he said quietly. “I could not tell her.”
The house mistress smiled sadly, but nodded just the same. “She doesn’t have to.”
He closed his eyes, feeling the rough, slow pulse of the gardener’s wrist beneath his fingers. She would say no. It would be just one more death on her hands, above her head.
They were still very different, she and he.
“Yes.” His voice was soft and attenuated, like an echo. “I accept. But not in her name. In my own.”
There was a surge of fear, a wildness beneath the perfectly still surface. It kicked, hitting some harder than others, and it twisted at them.
“But it must be willing; I will take no life otherwise.”
“And it’s got to be quick.” The old slave from the dining hall rose and walked to join the gardener. “I might as well be the first, then. It was mostly my idea.”
Lord Darclan looked into his eyes a moment, and then nodded. No one alive had seen such a nod. There was admiration in it, almost awe. He released the master gardener’s hands and offered his own to the slave.
“Come, then. Walk with me. But I will ask you one thing: Your name. Who are you?”
“Reanis,” the man answered quietly. He said it with pride. There was nothing of the slave in him. The hand that gripped the Lord’s was strong, and if it trembled, it bothered no one. They walked quietly past the Well of Lernan, and out of sight of the rest of the slaves.
“Lord?”
Lord Darclan turned to look at the master gardener.
“I—I want to walk about the grounds for a bit. I’ll return.”
“You do not have to do this.”
“No, I know.” The gardener shook his head. “It’s just—all of this, it really is mine. I wonder who’ll care for it when I’m gone, but I always wondered that.” There were tears in his eyes, and Stefanos realized that they glimmered in the darkness like the Light of the well.
The innkeeper was far less surly in the presence of a crested house member than he had been the previous day. Corfaire noted this without any amusement at all. Lady Amalayna was obviously a woman with important business to attend to; when she placed her coin on the counter, it was taken with a great deal of bowing and scraping, and no argument whatsoever.
They did not entirely empty their rooms; much that was there could be left behind. In their pockets they took some of the gems the jeweler had not bought and some of the coin he had paid with. Backpacks and spare clothing were discarded. Weapons were not.
Erin alone took the time to change from her Empire dress to her guard’s gear. The one concession she felt she could make to subterfuge was the large, dark cloak she draped over her shoulders. Beneath its heavy folds, the Bright Sword hung at her side, its weight a comfort. She and it would not be parted again.
The streets were busy, but not so crowded as they had been in early evening. At least that was Erin’s impression, but she wondered if their ease of passage had something to do with Lady Amalay
na’s presence. The noblewoman was tall, and her step was the practiced gait of haughty contempt. She rarely looked to either side, and the set of her lips was cold and fierce. Nobody really spared half a glance to her companions; one look at her told them it was none of their business.
In the anonymity of timid crowds, they came to the turning point of the Westway. A wide road ran perpendicular to it, and Amalayna halted them there.
“Now,” she said softly, “be careful. Watch your demeanor.” Her cheeks were flushed, and her breath came quickly. “This road leads to the temple.”
The last was not necessary—even in the darkness, no one could miss the massive sprawl of grand buildings that rose above the stone walls.
“Guards?” Tiras asked sharply.
“Swords.” She shrugged. “There are not many buildings along this road, but it may be best to avoid the Swords in their patrols, at least until we come under the scrutiny of the walls themselves.”
“Ready?” Tiras turned to look at Erin. Erin nodded grimly and turned a similar look upon Darin. His fingers were white against the wood of the staff of Culverne, and his nod, although almost as brief and forceful as Erin’s, spoke more of anxiety than determination.
Erin was struck yet again by his age and forced herself to concentrate on the staff he carried: his office. He was patriarch of Culverne, and as she, had his duty.
Amalayna gestured, and Gerald and Cospatric stepped forward. They no longer wore Tentaris uniforms, but they did bear a crest: House Valens. Corfaire was likewise attired, but he moved less quickly, glancing back at Erin for permission.
She nodded, understanding.
Renar and Tiras, robed now in shadows, seemed to melt away. Amalayna’s party consisted of Darin, in Valens colors, and Erin—who wore a cloak of a midhigh station; a favored slave. The “guards” she now ignored.
“Do you understand what to do if we’re halted?”
Nods again. Only Corfaire bristled at the assumed note of command in her words.
There was irony in this situation that was not lost on Erin. To have learned so much and traveled so far just to turn the last few steps of her path over to an imperial house noble was something that she could never have predicted.
But it was not the first time that she had walked in the darkness, with the blood of the Darkness for company. She only prayed that this noblewoman would be as false to her heritage as Stefanos had strived to be.
Had, in the end, failed to be.
It wasn’t cold, but she shivered and drew her cloak more tightly around her shoulders. Even though they moved quickly and tightly, there was still time for doubt to gnaw at her.
No. She took a deep breath. If I’ve made mistakes, they’ve led me here. And here is where I must be. She had no time for doubt.
“Lady,” she said softly, and bent down. “Your hem.”
“Fix it, then. But be quick.”
The Swords met them in the road.
That they were no ordinary guard patrol was evident in many things, and Erin took stock of them all at once. They were armored in black, and the ringlets of fine chain showed beneath Church surcoats. Dark gorgets rose to meet the back ends of closed helms, and weapons cut the air with hard, clean lines. Sixteen in all walked in four rows; the front men obscured those that followed, but Erin thought she glimpsed crossbows.
More telling was the fact that not one man carried a torch. There was light enough in the city for their half-blooded sight.
Lady Amalayna stiffened, and a single word escaped her; it was not a pleasant one. Her hand curled momentarily in a fist, and she whispered quickly out of the corner of her mouth.
“Patrols are usually eight.” She clapped, briefly, and Corfaire halted; long habit. Gerald and Cospatric followed his cue, but nervously. Where Corfaire’s gaze was stiff and formal, theirs were wary; while his hands remained in position at his sides, theirs flitted above their sword hilts.
Darin halted, and his knees locked. He was grateful for it; his early years in the Empire shouted adamantly in his ears, and he almost hit the ground in obeisance. It would have been a breach of protocol; there were no priests present.
Amalayna murmured a harsh “stay” at her attendant and then stepped forward. The Swords had stopped in the street, and the hindmost two ranks had merged with the foremost; there were eight men abreast in two rows—little hope now that they would just pass.
“Lady.” One of the Swords stepped forward and bowed. He was no mere captain, no nervous youth. Had there been any edge of ambition in him, she might have played upon it, but he was older and wiser. This was very bad.
“Major.” She inclined her head; a curtsy was not, strictly speaking, necessary.
“What brings you from the High City?”
“I have come for an audience with Lord Vellen, the high priest. I would have stated as much to the temple guard.”
“It is odd,” was the man’s reply. “For we are leaving now to visit your former residence.”
“Really? Odd indeed.” Her words were polite and slightly bored. They impressed some of the Swords, but not the one that mattered.
“Yes. We’ve been sent to retrieve visitors to House Tentaris. If they still remain there.”
“Visitors? Ah—you mean the people from the market.”
“Indeed.” His gaze passed her shoulders, and his face altered subtly, the lines of it becoming hard and fixed. “Is there anything you wish to tell us?”
It was his offer of amnesty to her, and the only one he was likely to make. Nor would he have made a similar offer to any who was not the betrothed of the high priest. Any stain upon her would reflect poorly on that lord and be costly to the Sword who had caused it.
Amalayna’s jaw snapped shut. Yes, she wanted to say, there’s a lot I want to tell you. How could she come so close, not once, but twice, and have it all unravel in her hands? Reality washed over her, and its touch was very cold. What had she been thinking, to come this far? Where was the levelheaded woman that had once been the prize of two houses?
Even masked as they were by the pale tint of powders, her cheeks glowed red. Her head remained tilted up, and her lips remained closed. She had this one chance to step aside and wash her hands of this whole affair; even prolonging her answer as she now did carried the taint of treason.
Treason.
That one word, cold and sharp, slid down the back of her spine. Her head sank, and her hair brushed her cheeks.
“Lady?” the major said, the word a little less arrogant.
No act of treason had deprived her of the thing she valued most in her life. That was lost to her under the direction of the leader of the Greater Cabal—the man who gave orders to the Swords that stood arrayed before her. Her head snapped up, and her eyes were rimmed. “No,” she said softly. “I have nothing to say.”
And her hands cut the air between them, her lips running silent over ill-used invocations. Her left hand found one dagger, her right the other.
Of the twenty who had come, twelve served. The old slave from the dining hall was but the first, and he had died gracefully and quietly. No power of the Sundered that Stefanos held could mask or comfort pain, but the First knew the ways of mortal death, and he dealt the quickest blow that he could.
It was difficult. Habit and more than habit tried unsuccessfully to force his hand to slow or stay the descent of the knife, to linger in the shadow of human pain and human dying. Had he been hungry, he doubted that he would have been able to control this urge—not when he stood so close to death and the shedding of lifeblood.
But he prevailed. And as he touched each of his willing victims, he sent their message out across the void that separated him from his Lord. The touch of their peace, their love, and their hope was uncomfortable to him—and he knew it would cause more than discomfort to Malthan.
But how much? How much more? The taunting whisper of God was stilled; he felt nothing of his maker.
The starlight blinked, and the m
oon burned at his back; the velvet of near-cloudless sky could not contain them. He had no time to bury the bodies that remained behind when the life fled, and he knew that it became more difficult for the last few that followed.
Some, indeed, could not give fully what they had promised. Not among these was the house mistress that had served him faithfully from the beginning of his reign in Mordantari. She too died, although less gracefully than Reanis; her lips were frozen in the grim rictus of her own silent struggle with life and death.
Twelve had died. A dozen bodies lay in a neat row beyond the hedgerow. In the shadows, their throats looked swathed in dark cloth. He looked at them all and felt each death more strongly than any he had personally caused before. His bow was all he could spare them now, but if their sacrifice succeeded, he promised them more in silence. There was only one man left to come, and he waited in patience, although time was once again his greatest enemy.
The master gardener came around the hedges, the tread of his step light and firm. Stefanos moved to greet him, leaving the dead to their rest.
“Lord,” the gardener said, bowing quietly. He saw what the shadows did not fully hide, and turned his face away. “I am ready.” Fear tingled in an aurora around him, commingling with shame and determination.
Stefanos drew his dagger for the thirteenth time and held out his hand. The callused fingers that met his palm were no seeming; they were old and slightly bent. And they were wet.
“You do not have to do this,” the Lord said quietly, as he drew closer. “I will not take what cannot be fully offered.”
“I know,” the gardener replied. “I saw the others. They’re relieved, but they’re ashamed. Don’t think I could live like that.” He stiffened and stepped forward, as if to embrace too tightly this offered death.
“Besides, I think thirteen is a fair number; pit us, one for one, against the Greater Cabal. But please do it quickly.”