“Um,” she said again, once she’d shut the inner door securely behind her. “Did the woman from Criwath really kill the high lord and his lady? My sister’s beau just came back from the tavern, and he said—”
“Nobody’s certain.” Zelen fought to keep his reply steady and gentle. “They are dead, sadly, and she’s gone, but that’s all that’s known right now.”
Tanya looked down at the carpet. “So she’s a bad person?”
“We don’t know that either”—and oh, it hurt to say, as did what followed. “If she did it, if she could control herself when she did it, and if she knew that she was killing helpless old people rather than monsters, then yes.”
“You mean she might not have meant to do it or known she was doing it? Like a spell?”
“That’s one possibility.”
His heart was beating faster and his stomach had closed up again, but still Zelen sat calmly, not pressing the girl for answers. Carefully, he arranged the assortment of quills on his desk, then brushed imaginary debris off the surface.
“Can you follow me?” Tanya finally asked.
Chapter 23
“Ah, damn it to the lowest of the hells,” the shape in the corner said, in a croak that half resembled Branwyn’s voice. “Child, I specifically told you not to tell him.”
“Yeah?” Tanya tilted her chin up, shook off the reassuring hand Zelen tried to place on her shoulder, and riposted. “Well, youdidn’ttell me who you killed. So you’re lucky I didn’t go to the guard right away.”
“You did well,” said Zelen, not using Tanya’s name in case Branwyn really was as bad as the worst possibilities. He stepped forward, ready to meet her wrath, lightly gripping his sword.
The shape shifted again and he knew he wouldn’t need it. Even through the shadows, he could make out a broken nose and a swollen eye and could mark that every movement was bought with pain. And when Branwyn rasped a response, there was no anger in it, only bitterness. “Yes. With the information you have, doubtless I’d have made the same choice.” She paused for a labored inhalation. “Who did I kill?”
“Lord and Lady Rognozi,” said Zelen flatly, and waited for a response.
Her laughter, hoarse and cheerless, took him by surprise. As he stepped back, as Tanya let out an indignant and wordless noise, Branwyn found words. “Gods rest them, then. And gods help us all, because I’m not the one you have to worry about. You knew the Rognozis better than I did, Verengir—do you think they’d have fought back this hard? Against me?”
With that, she dragged herself into the dim light from the boarded window. Zelen forgot Tanya’s presence and muttered an oath.
One entire side of Branwyn’s face was swollen and purple-black, the skin scraped away in places. Her nose was indisputably broken, and one of her cheekbones might have been too. Dried blood covered much of her skin, so Zelen couldn’t tell for certain, but he was fairly confident that her lips had been badly split. Above the ruin of her ball gown, huge black bruises spread down her neck and shoulders.
Someone, probably Branwyn herself, had wrapped pink silk roughly around one of her knees, but the fabric didn’t disguise the swelling there or the joint’s unnatural angle.
He rushed to her side. “Gods, don’t move. What happened?”
“Don’t know.” Closer, Zelen could see bruises along her temple and her jaw. It took very little force to kill people with blows there. Branwyn was a Sentinel, of course, and that was said to help, but… Zelen dropped to his knees, immediately beginning a gentle investigation as Branwyn went on. “I got back after the ball. The house felt…off. I went for Yathana. Then I woke up in an alley. Your friend brought me here.”
“Yathana?” asked Tanya, who’d remained where she was and was watching avidly. Zelen considered telling her to go home but suspected it’d do no good. “Who’s that?”
Only brief hesitation betrayed what was likely Branwyn’s silent profanity. “My sword,” she said, outwardly casual. Her quick inhalation as Zelen touched her cheek was good camouflage too.
“You’ve got a fracture here,” he said, retreating as far as he could into the abstract. “Not as bad as it could be. Your nose too.”
“I’d thought as much.” She lay still beneath his inspection, gathering strength for her next question. “The Rognozis…how did they die?”
“A blade,” Zelen said carefully, mindful of Tanya. “Or blades.”
“They say there was blood everywhere,” Tanya added helpfully, “and Lady Rognozi was practically cut in half, an’ the lord’s head was just about clean off.”
Zelen swallowed. He kept on with the task at hand, passing his fingers lightly over Branwyn’s scalp. There were several sticky places, and one lump behind her right ear that made her wince.
“Stupid,” she hissed, quickly shook her head, and then just as quickly cursed. “As was that. And I didn’t mean either of you, but why would anybody use such force or be so obvious? They were practically beyond the Veil of Fire as it was.”
“Hatred,” said Zelen, “or madness. You may have been hit very hard right here.”
“Most likely, but I won’t fall over dead from it,” she said, and although the bruises made it hard to tell, Zelen thought she gave him a significant look.
