No lights shone from the house’s windows. It was a great black hulk in the darkness. Fans of white magelight shone from either side of the doors, though, giving the guards a good view of the road.
Shortly before they’d come into view, they reined in the horses. Branwyn came close enough to lay a hand on Zelen’s arm and bent toward him, talking as softly as she could manage while making sure he could still hear her over the rain. “I’ll be as quiet as I can, but I’m not a Blade, and I’ll be noticed eventually. Be prepared.”
“I will,” he said. “Come back to me.”
“I’ll try.”
He kissed her with the rain falling around them, her lips the only warm part of the world. He couldn’t take her in his arms because of the horses, and they couldn’t linger.
Letar, he prayed as she turned Brandy away from the road,you lost your lover to your brother’s evil. Have mercy on me.
Then he rode hell-for-leather, or as close to it as the mud and any consideration for Jester would let him, toward the house. The hood of his cloak fell back, and the rain lashed his face, but Zelen didn’t bother to pull it up.
He knew full well how he appeared as he crossed the edge of the magelight. The cloak was black, his hair black and straggling now that it was soaked, his eyes dark in a face that was pale by comparison. With Jester equally dark and wet, the pair of them could have come from a scene from a ballad about highwaymen.
The men who stood guard in the nighttime, wielding axes and spears, were not romantic figures. They stepped forward in challenge before recognition dawned.
“My lord Zelen?” asked Kostan.
“I need to speak with my brother at once,” he said, trying to sound as arrogant as Gedomir ever had. “Is my family still here?”
“Some, sir,” Otto replied. He was older and hadn’t come to “help” Zelen in his search for Dimitri’s brother. “Your lord father and lady mother have left for the city, as has your elder sister. The others depart tomorrow.”
“Good,” Zelen lied, and swung down to the wet ground. “Give my horse to one of the grooms and see that he’s well tended. I’ve ridden hard tonight, and I may have to do as much tomorrow.”
All but the most dedicated men, when told to leave what shelter they had and take care of a wet and likely out-of-temper horse, would hesitate. Verengir’s guards were mercenaries, not knights or Blades, and not the best of them at that. The long glance between them spoke of a complicated negotiation of seniority, favors, and potential blackmail, one that Zelen would’ve found deeply funny under other circumstances.
“It’ll be done, sir,” said Otto, and took the reins.
That would occupy his attention and then at least one groom’s. If Zelen and Branwyn were lucky, that groom might not be in a good mood on being woken. An argument would be a fine thing. Kostan, the lone guard left at the front, would be less likely to go investigate mysterious noises, or even respond to yelling.
So far, so good. Zelen strode up to the doors and hammered on them. After six hard blows, he heard quick footsteps and muffled swearing from the hall beyond.
Now he just had to make a scene.
* * *
There was a great deal to be said against the Verengirs. They were certainly traitors and, given the missing children, likely murderers as well. What little Branwyn had heard about the way they treated Zelen made her furious, even with her own limited experience of normal families, and at least one of them wrote excessively pretentious ritual notes.
They did let trees grow fairly near the wings of their house. Branwyn considered it a significant point in their favor.
She admitted that few people without a Sentinel’s gifts or other inhuman enhancements would have been able to perch in the highest branches of the ash tree nearest a second-story window. Fewer still would’ve been able to throw rocks from that position hard enough, and with enough accuracy, to take out the wooden separation between the panes and then the leaded glass itself. Branwyn did it in three throws, then leapt, grabbed the sill, and pulled herself in. Glass scraped her fingers and her back, but she’d had far worse injuries.
One day, Yathana observed,you’ve got to stop jumping through windows.
“I’m not jumping, I’m climbing,” Branwyn whispered, “and I’d love to. Furthermore, you’re the reason I can’t go in the normal way, you know.”
They’d thought about trying to bring Branwyn in as Zelen’s “captive,” the reason he’d come back in such a hurry, but there’d be no way to keep Yathana with her, and the soulsword gave her too many advantages to risk for the deception. Once Zelen had said his family likely conducted their rites in one of the disused wings, the window had struck her as the best choice. Branwyn could have wished for a quieter way, but perhaps distance and rain would be on her side.
She’d landed in a room without distinguishing features. It had likely been a bedroom, and the windows suggested it had housed family or guests, not servants, but the furniture had been moved out long ago. Now it was dustless but anonymous, only a dark square of walls and floorboard.
There was no obvious threat there either. Nothing any of the five senses could detect seemed off. The room was as bare of skulls or the smell of old blood as it was of furnishings. All the same, Branwyn felt her stomach start to coil, and a sour taste crept up the back of her throat. It might have been her mind, since she had a broad idea of what happened in the house, but she’d learned to trust her instincts, all the more so since the night at the Rognozis.
Deathmistress, give us a good ending, said Yathana. If a sword had a stomach, she would have been three seconds from losing an entire week’s worth of meals.This is what I sensed all along.
“It’s not just me then,” whispered Branwyn, drawing the sword slowly.
If you feel like the entire building is made out of flyblown meat, then no, it’s not just you. Gods, how long have… How did we…
