The world had developed fuzzy edges and was fading fast away from her.
That was all right. That was good. As the carriage started to move, she let her consciousness go with it, rolling like a small boat on large waves.
* * *
When Branwyn’s eyelids closed and her breathing faded into the deep steadiness of drugged sleep, Zelen muttered quick prayers of thanks to all the gods: Letar for the healing, Sitha for the craft of the syrup, and Poram for the plants that had gone into it. Neither justice nor battle seemed terribly relevant, but he thanked Tinival regardless—best to leave nobody out, and the words kept him busy.
Branwyn’s sleep would spare them both. She wouldn’t feel the drive—Altiensarn was careful, but the streets were never perfectly smooth, particularly not in the slums where Branwyn had been hiding, and they included a number of sharp turns. For Zelen’s part, he wouldn’t be tempted to ask her questions that he knew she couldn’t answer, even if it had been at all wise for her to speak.
He makes treachery of bonds, and bonds of treachery.Zelen had read plenty of theological poems in his youth, when he’d still aspired to the priesthood. That one, on Gizath’s nature, had been truly disturbing. The Traitor God didn’t just rule over flagrant backstabbing or the magical process of setting a thing’s nature against itself, but the dark side of all the ties mortals had to each other—the ones he’d truly and, some said, wisely ruled before his fall. Under his guidance, faith became fanaticism, love obsession, and loyalty slavery or blindness. The priests said as much, but few put it with such frightening clarity.
Darkness hid Branwyn’s face, but Zelen remembered it well enough. It had still been bruised and bloodied when he and Altiensarn had carried her out of the building, but already far less swollen than he would have expected after a few hours, even a day. The cheekbone was almost mended.
Sentinel, he thought, and stared at her.
There were plenty of stories. The Sentinels were necessary in all of them, but in the best they were still ruthless and alien, living weapons without the divine guidance or the almost ascetic focus of the Blades. Grimmer tales spoke of berserker rages or said that the soulswords needed to kill a living creature every month to keep their powers.
Once Zelen had passed the age when being able to scare friends over wine was a mark of prestige, he’d never really listened to the tales.
Branwyn slept in drugged peace. Nobody would have mistaken her for fragile—even when she’d been curled in the corner, her eyes heart-stoppingly distant, there’d been a sense of endurance, rather than helplessness, about her—but her face might have been gentle beneath the damage.
There’d be more convenient prey for a blood-drinking sword than the High Lord of Heliodar and his lady, whether animals or people whose deaths wouldn’t attract the whole city’s attention. Berserker rage fit the scene but didn’t pair with the premeditation that getting Yathana would have implied, or the damage to Lady Rognozi’s room but not her lord’s. The lady might have run, might have fought, but a struggle that put holes in walls and shattered furniture? That would have been difficult for a hulking dockhand in their prime. Branwyn could have destroyed the room out of rage, but why that one and not Lord Rognozi’s?
Zelen knew he couldn’t trust his judgment for any sort of ultimate decision. He knew what he wanted to be true, and he knew how badly he wanted it. There was no getting around that.
The carriage sped on, darkness inside and out.
Chapter 25
Even Idriel and Feyher had the night off. That would arouse suspicion before very long, but if the gods were kind and Zelen was competent, he’d have more idea what Branwyn had or hadn’t done by then, not to mention a shred of real evidence. If not, they might all be dead regardless.
Branwyn added more fuel to that fire when she woke halfway up the stairs in the front hallway. She came back to consciousness in total stillness, looked up at him, and said, “There might be a demon. I didn’t want to alarm the child. They couldn’t do anything if there was. And then…couldn’t talk.”
Even then her voice was slurred, the faint roll of herr’s exaggerated and her words punctuated with seemingly random stops and starts. Her eyes were glassy in the dim light, but Zelen didn’t believe for a heartbeat that she was only rambling from the pain and the drug. “A demon,” he said, keeping her weight steady. “Like the ones we fought? Don’t move your head.”
“No. Th…”—she took a few breaths—“those were small. Kind that slip through the cracks when there’s magic. Or when a big one is summoned.”
“And such a demon could have killed the Rognozis,” said Altien. The three of them turned off the landing and onto the second floor. “Demons have not been my study, but it seems likely that it could have broken you in the process.”
Branwyn flinched. Zelen’s impulse was to comfort, but squeezing her shoulders would not help, to say the least. “Temporarily broken, I should say,” he said. “Considering.”
“Yesss. Even…even me. Even armed. Even—” She glanced over at Altien. “Ah, intrigue’s gone out the window. ’MSnetinel. Sentinel. Order of the Dawn.”
“They are also not my area of study, nor my people’s,” said Altien after many silent steps down the hallway, “but they seem to serve a valuable function and to do it well. I take it that would have given you no small advantage in combat, madam.”
“You take it c’rectly. But a demon, a real demon…might’ve been a match for me. Especially if it was fresh and I wasn’t. Of course, tha’s what I’d say if I was a murdererer hoping to get away with my crimes. So noted. But if I’m right”—she was fading again—“we have a considerably difficult situation.”
“Their bodies vanish,” Zelen put in hopefully. “You might have killed it. In here, Altien, please,” he added, jerking his chin toward the spare-room door.
“Would be nice if I had,” Branwyn agreed, “but the problem is, we don’t know. That is…a significant number of our problems here, Zelen. Funnnnnnamental uncertainty. ’Sgonna get us killed.”
“You are,” Zelen said, “in some ways the most well-spoken drunk I’ve ever met, if also the gloomiest.”
“And the most correct. And it’s the situation. And I’m not drunk.”
“Technically speaking,” said Altien, “the lady is correct.”
The spare room was large and dark, the bedclothes dim white shapes. Without needing to discuss it, Zelen and Altien turned so that Branwyn’s head was in line with the pillows, lifted her gently, and laid her on the bed. “Be careful,” she said, dazed and small in the sea of white.
