None of that weighed on her as heavily, or as uncomfortably, as she suspected it should have. Zelen was almost certainly her friend, definitely not her enemy, but neither a Sentinel, a priest militant, nor part of her mission. His aims might be different than hers, and if they weren’t, he still might give the game away through lack of training. Officially, the man was a useful liability.
All of Branwyn’s teaching said that she should have been dismayed by having to rely on him, and by having him know so much about her, but she felt no inclination to worry. Perhaps she had enough to worry about as it was.
Yathana would have been a source of reason, one way or another. She would also have been another person to trust, one that Branwyn wouldn’t have even theoretical doubts about. The soulsword was buried in the rubble of another abandoned building, maybe, or on the belt of a half-skilled brute who’d spotted a good blade on the ground, or being sold cheap in some secondhand weaponsmith’s.
Those were the pleasant options.
Branwyn ate. She dressed, with a moderate amount of cursing. Zelen was near her height, so the tunic he’d left only fell to midthigh, but she wouldn’t be walking around scandalizing people in the very near future.
She considered the room.
Exits were the door opposite her, a smaller one in the side wall that Branwyn guessed led either to a closet or to quarters for a personal servant, and a set of large windows, not entirely hidden by thick silver drapes. An enemy might be able to come down through the chimney of the small fireplace, too, but Branwyn certainly couldn’t get up it.
Potential weapons were scarce. The lights were magical, which meant there were no candlesticks. A small eating knife went with the food. Branwyn supposed she could damage a foe not made of bread with it if she used her entire strength and went for an eye. There weren’t even tongs near the fireplace. She wondered if the servants carried them from room to room, if stirring up fires without touching them was another of the prodigious ways people used magic in Heliodar or if Zelen had removed the tongs while she slept.
If he had, Branwyn couldn’t fault him.
She sat back and inspected her hands. They were by no means unmarked—as bruised as the rest of her, with swelling beginning to fade near her right wrist—but the marks were no map of what they’d done.
For the first time, her mind was clear enough to really think of the Rognozis, her kind and caring hosts. They’d been innocent as far as her mission went, though neither of them had been as naive as the word implied. A man didn’t serve as High Lord of Heliodar for decades without awareness of the world, and Branwyn would’ve wagered his wife had shared that quality, in her own fashion.
No, not innocent. Not naive. Only good-hearted, and not prepared for the scope of the forces that moved across the world now—or the depth of their evil.
Whether or not Branwyn had struck the blows that killed them, she might have been at fault for that lack of preparation. She didn’t think the enemy, whoever it was, had targeted them for hosting a Sentinel, or even knew that facet of her identity, but if the Rognozis had known, they might have been more careful, or not made the offer at all.
If she’d come to the city openly as a Sentinel, her enemy might have gone deeper and her contacts refused to talk to her. That had been the Adeptas’ argument. It had been King Olwin’s, it had been Vivian’s, and it had been the one Branwyn had believed. She still thought it was, and shethoughtthat she thought that not only to assuage her guilt.
Thyran would kill far more than two people if he got his way. War exacted a red toll. Branwyn had known that since long before Oakford.
“Dark Lady, take the pain of their deaths from them,” she said, the old litany for those who fell in battle coming easily after years of use. “Lord of the Scales, let them know their own courage. King of the Wild, make a place for their mortal remains in your creation. Queen of the Golden Webs, give them the thanks of the civilization they died upholding.”
“May the Four so grant,” said Zelen, stepping into the room.
* * *
The day, which was barely more than half over, had already been long: long and cold.
Branwyn had still slept deeply when Zelen had left clothing and food. One shoulder had poked out of the blankets, still bruised enough to inspire concern rather than lust. Her gold hair had spilled across the pillow above it, reminiscent of the webs that decorated Sitha’s temples in silk, metal, and stained glass.
A web’s pretty unless you’re a fly.He thought he’d always hear Cosnian’s quote in Branwyn’s drug-slurred voice from then on. The words of the Southern Kingdoms’ greatest cynic sounded both odd and oddly appropriate from one whose entire life was duty.
He’d left before he could let himself think about how much he wanted to stay with her.
Work had been slow at the clinic. That had let Zelen slip out and ask a few questions of people he knew: former patients, men he’d drunk with after the day’s labors, and Tanya, who’d been playing a few streets away and come to investigate. He’d asked all of them if they’d heard about a big fight a few nights before, if they’d seen anyone looking as though they’d been in one, if any of their acquaintances had disappeared lately, or if a gold-hilted sword with an opal in the hilt had turned up.
He hadn’t actually had to ask Tanya. “Haven’t seenanyonehurt as bad as they’d be if they’d tangled with your lady,” she said. “Not nearly, not assuming she gave a little bit as good as she got.”
“She would have,” said Zelen, trying to ignore bothyour ladyand his idiotic impulse to beam at the phrase.
“She all right?”
“She will be. You did well,” said Zelen, and Tanya smiled more at that than at the silver he slipped her.
His other conversations had been less straightforward but revealed as little. Nobody had gotten worse than a black eye and a split lip in a fight, or for most any other reason—except a set of crushed ribs, but that had been an accident loading a barge, in full view of witnesses. Missing people were harder, since many took to the road when love or money turned sour, without informing anyone they left behind. There’d been only one disappearance that really puzzled Zelen’s contacts, though, and he’d been fifteen and bookish, a clerk’s apprentice.
That was worrying itself, on top of the previous missing child, but Zelen doubted that a stripling would’ve been able to land a punch on a maddened Sentinel, much less leave one too badly injured to walk.
Nobody had seen a fancy sword. They certainly would’ve remembered that.
