“Yes, madam,” Gedomir said, contrite or putting on a reasonable show of it.
“Seek your bed, Gedomir. The god has laid many tasks ahead of us for the next few days, and we must all remember our rightful positions.”
There was a silent moment. Zelen thought Gedomir was nodding and possibly bowing. “Good night, madam,” he heard again, and then footsteps.
Zelen started down the stairs again. The effort of it, the care involved in moving so that no step creaked under his weight, wasn’t exactly soothing, but it was a place to put his attention, which was almost as good. He wished it had taken more work.
Distraction.
The god.
The air of the stable yard was cool against Zelen’s face when he opened the door. That and the solid weight of Yathana were all that convinced him that he was solid and material, that all of the last few hours had really happened.
It had. He had to act on it.
As he made his quick, covert way across the yard to the coach house, Zelen felt the sword in his mind. There were no words this time, but he got a general sense of encouragement: a rough clap on his mental shoulder. It made the stones steadier beneath his feet.
Grooms and stable hands slept close to their charges, but the coach house was set off a little way in the stable yard and offered no half-comfortable bed of hay. Zelen was fairly certain that nobody saw him approach his carriage. The seat took some effort to pull up, and the ripping noise when it did come loose made Zelen hiss, but he created enough of a gap between the cushions and the wood to slide Yathana into. Fortunately, winter was coming on, and carriages weren’t overly warm. Furs hid a multitude of defects.
He was reluctant to leave the sword, not only because of fear that it—she, he supposed—would be discovered, or because she was the first sympathetic presence he’d encountered in the house. Power lingered about Yathana in a way that Zelen, no mage, could sense once he’d touched her. It was a refreshingly hot, clean force.
His mother’s words came back to him as he snuck back to his room. They hurt, but pain was familiar, even if not in that particular form, and secondary. She’d said Zelen was a distraction. He was afraid that he knew what he’d been distracting people from.
Chapter 29
“I’ve heard of the ‘Sundered Soul’ before, I believe,” said Altien. He closed the door behind him and took his seat, fur golden-brown in the afternoon light. “The memory occurred to me while I was putting the clinic in order. If I’m correct, it’s a story from the stonekin, and it concerns one of the gods, though I couldn’t provide more details. How is your knee recovering?”
“Quickly, thank the gods,” said Branwyn, and flexed it to show him. “Walking around the room only hurt a little today. The exercises have been helping. Have a look.”
Altien sat, peered, and then pressed in several places. Only three hurt, and only one drew a yelp from Branwyn. “Yes,” he said, finally, “excellent improvement. I’d give your physiology equal credit, though, and perhaps more.”
“The Adeptas will be flattered if I survive long enough to tell them. How would you say I’d fare in a fight?”
“I expect you’ve done your own assessment.”
“Yes, but two points are more stable than one.”
“Poorly, then, if you were up against a skilled opponent, or more than one. The knee wouldn’t collapse immediately, but it would hinder you badly. I suspect a day or two more before you’re at your full strength and speed. Do you anticipate combat?”
“Well, there’s at least one force in this city that wants me dead. I’d like to think secrecy and Zelen’s wards will help, especially given the ones you put up yesterday, but I liked to think I’d have quick and uneventful success here.” When Altien left the bed for his customary chair, Branwyn picked up the scroll of formerly hidden papers again. “I’ve been considering these too,” she said. “Did Zelen ever mention his family conducting magical experiments?”
“He rarely speaks of them at all,” said Altien, “except to tell me when he has to depart the city and pay a visit to the country estates. His elder brother occasionally arrives to deliver news, or orders. It’s not a warm family, even by the human standards with which I’m familiar.”
“It doesn’t sound that way even by the human standardsI’veobserved. Lady Rognozi said there was a tragedy when Zelen was three or so, a mother and child both perishing. That would have been around the time of these notes.”
Altien’s tentacles rose, then fell. “We can guess, though we shouldn’t assume, that the procedure went badly.”
“True. Especially since there’s no god-powered youth running about. This story you heard, do you happen to remember whether it had the soul in question as a force for good?”
“No,” said Altien regretfully. “I never even heard the entire story, only read a mention or two of it.” He paused. In the silence, Branwyn heard footsteps approaching the door. It was probably Zelen returning, but she tensed anyhow, and reached under her pillow for the knife Altiensarn had brought her. “I believe it was about the primordial battle, the one between Talleita and—”
“Gizath,” said Zelen, opening the door.
In dress and grooming he was as impeccable as ever, but his face was gray, and his eyes were shadowed. He carried a cloth-wrapped bundle that immediately filled Branwyn with hope, though it was matched by equal parts worry. Zelen moved like a man with a knife in one kidney.
“My family worships him,” he said numbly. “Some of it. Possibly all. I’m bloody certain of Mother and Gedomir. They were the ones who killed the Rognozis. Here,” he said, and pulled the wrappings off the object in his hands, revealing Yathana’s gilded-for-Heliodar hilt and fire opal. Zelen thrust her toward Branwyn, hilt-first. “I brought her back for you. It was the least I could do, after… Given what we are.”
* * *
