Altien stepped quickly into the room and to the side, taking up a place by the youngest housemaid. Behind him came Branwyn, as respectable as she could be in bare feet and what all the servants would recognize as Zelen’s clothing, and Lycellias behind her. His silver breastplate shone in the light, and the silver work on the sheath of his sword put Yathana’s ornamentation to shame, more so because it was genuine.
He tilted his head a little when he saw the assembled servants. “Good afternoon to you all,” he said. “I am Lycellias. How many are swearing?”
“Only me,” said Zelen, “and Sentinel Branwyn.”
A third murmur went around the circle. Zelen knew it wouldn’t be the last.
“Well enough. Sit as you feel comfortable.” When Branwyn and Zelen had taken chairs, and Altien and the servants had dispersed themselves as well as they would fit on couches, Lycellias walked over to stand in front of Branwyn. “The lady first,” he said, barely hinting that he recognized the person the city’d spent the last few days searching for. “Do you know how this proceeds?”
“I do.”
Lycellias nodded. One long-fingered hand went to his brow, then out to the east, first two fingers upright and the others folded down. “Tinival, you hear and see past all artifice. Yours is the wind that scours away falsehood, yours the knowledge of justice, yours the eyes that pierce every veil. Grant that I, your servant, may share in your gift, for the good of your world.”
A small breeze blew through the closed study, bringing with it the smell of roses and rain.
The knight touched his fingers lightly to Branwyn’s lips. “Speak your piece to me and to the gods, child of creation.”
Her story left out most of the gory details, but it was bad enough. One of the grooms covered her mouth at the description of Lady Rognozi’s death, and when Branwyn described the demon, the immovable Feyher shuddered. Lycellias himself grew graver and graver as he listened.
“You tell no lies,” he said at the end, “though I could almost wish you did, Sentinel. My temple, and the Healer’s, will have much work to do tonight.”
“More than that, I’m afraid,” said Zelen.
His story, once he’d taken the oath, wasn’t even really a story. “I found Branwyn’s soulsword, with a bloody handprint on it, yesterday,” he began, “behind a bookcase in my family’s country house.” There wasn’t much else to say about that, save to describe the conversation that he’d overheard while he was smuggling Yathana out, and the sword’s secondhand statement about Hanyi. “So,” he finished, “it seems that the rest of my family worship the Traitor. I don’t. I can take further vows along those lines, if that would help.”
“No,” said Lycellias, “that won’t be necessary.” He regarded the servants, who had moved on to looking different versions of stunned. “I’ll take all of your oaths, good people, that you’ll let four days and nights pass before speaking of this matter. After that”—he glanced back to Zelen, Branwyn, and Altien—“the four of us must hold conversation.”
* * *
It was a relief when the oath taking was done, the servants went about their business, and Branwyn was left in the study with Zelen, Altiensarn, and the knight. She was eager to learn what would happen to the Verengirs for the sake of her mission as well as Zelen’s peace of mind. She was also tired of being stared at.
The servants were likely quite nice people, particularly the valet, who’d taken Zelen aside to ask if he was all right, and the cook, who’d given all of them a keen glance and then declared that dinner for four would be ready before very long, assuming none of them minded a simple meal. Branwyn couldn’t even blame them for being curious. Sentinels were rare and strange. A Sentinel who had also been a suspected murderer, but now wasn’t, and had come face-to-face with a greater demon… Yes, Branwyn would likely have stared, and not done half as good a job hiding it as even the younger of the grooms.
Still, they and Lycellias were the first people other than Zelen and Altien she’d seen in days, and their regard was wearying. When the door closed behind the last of them, she was glad to be in a room with only familiar people and the preoccupied knight.
“How many armed guards do you believe your family has?” he asked Zelen, exactly as Branwyn had an hour or so before. “And what do you estimate their training and disposition to be?”
“A half-dozen professional guards,” said Zelen, seating himself on the couch next to Branwyn. “I’d say they’re about as well trained as any of the patrolmen in the city. Two watch each of the outer doors every night, and when I was growing up, they changed every four hours. The grooms and the coach drivers can likely pick up clubs if they need to, so that’s another half dozen, and Gedomir’s decent with a sword.”
Lycellias, who’d kept his feet, paced as he thought. His armor flashed in the light. For the first time in a while, Branwyn remembered Olvir. The two men were different in almost every way, but they were both knights, and preparing for battle made everyone kin. “And he, as well as at least one of your sisters, is a wizard,” the stonekin went on.
“I’m fairly sure.” Zelen spoke without inflection. “Could easily be all the rest.”
“That could be so,” said Lycellias. “We aren’t without defenses in such matters, but we might do well to involve the Blades. You mentioned that the others are coming to the city in the next few days?”
“For the burnings, yes. It’d look damned odd if they didn’t. Unless they find out what I’ve done with Yathana…” Zelen frowned. “And you know, I think they’d still come and try to brazen it out. Could always claim I’d taken leave of my senses, after all, or misinterpreted matters. They don’t know I’d met up with Branwyn again, or what I overheard.”
“If they do decide otherwise,” Lycellias said, “they won’t meet with clear passage. There’s only one road from your family’s estates, and I sent messages to the Temple just now. It will be blocked.”
“What should we do then?” Branwyn asked.
“Only what you’ve been doing. You’ve given us your knowledge, and the Sentinel has fought one dire foe already. Until the traitors are in our grasp, or that of the Shadow Queen, the duty is ours. But you”—Lycellias turned to Altien, his blue-and-black eyebrows slanting inward—“asked for me by name. Why?”
“We didn’t quite get to explaining this,” said Altien to Zelen, and produced the folded sheaf of notes that Branwyn had found.
The story was simple there as well, though it baffled Zelen when he heard it. “Judging by the date, R would’ve been Roslina, my aunt. She died when I was three. A number of the family did—there was a fire in one of the old wings. All damned suspicious now, of course, but I’ve no idea exactly what I should be suspecting.”
“I do, somewhat,” said the knight, and moved from the window to perch on one of the chairs. He sat lightly—even in plate mail, the stonekin couldn’t really sit any other way—but he passed a hand over his brow wearily before he began. “The story is old, mark you, and not one that I have ever heard as other than a legend, but in simple terms it is this: when the Traitor killed his sister’s beloved, out of spite and pride and unbrotherly jealousy, a piece of his essence split. There are tales that say it fell to the ground, unnoticed, when he struck the blow, and those that have it cut off by Lethiannar later, in the greatest of battles. One seems as likely as the other.”
