“As much as I need to.”
One of the footmen was dead when they got to him. The one with the wounded side was still breathing, though, and Zelen bound his wounds while Branwyn checked the other two injured men. He was going to have no sleeves at all if this sort of thing went on. He ardently hoped it didn’t.
“He alive?”
An unfamiliar voice slurred the words. Zelen turned, reaching for his sword as he did so but not very quickly. For one thing, speed was beyond him. For another, the speaker sounded as tired as he felt—and far more human than any of the guards or the servants had before.
“Yes,” he said.
The man who’d tried to hit Branwyn with the poker was pulling himself up to a sitting position against the wall. There was a hell of a lump coming up on his forehead. Branwyn stood over him, Yathana bare but not leveled at him.
“Is that…good?” The footman was more coherent than Hidath had been, gods knew, but his eyes had a trace of the same horror, and his hands were shaking. “He… They…they told me to do things, and I couldn’tnot. I tried. Forgive me. Forgive me.”
“I know,” said Branwyn, standing bloody in the darkness and speaking lullaby-gentle. “You were their prey as much as the rest of us. There’s nothing to forgive. Do you know if everyone who served here was afflicted in the same way?”
“I think so, mistress,” said the footman. “We…couldn’t talk about it.”
“I understand.”
Zelen finished with the sliced-up guard and got to his feet. “At least one of them was,” he said, “and he took it badly when the spell was broken. Finding the rest might be a good idea, and I’ll gladly…” That was a lie. He wanted nothing more than to leave the house and never see it again, but that wouldn’t help. “Gladly go with you for assistance.”
“I’ll go,” said Branwyn. “You find Tanya. Gods willing, she’s made it to the horses but not ridden off yet. Will you be all right to search?”
“Better than, thank you,” he said, and didn’t try to conceal how much he meant his gratitude. “Nothing’s broken, I just have to remember how to move.”
“That was… What was that, my lord? What you did? I didn’t see very much, was getting my breath when all hell broke loose—really so, I guess,” the footman added with a nervous laugh, “but then…what happened?”
“We stopped it,” said Zelen, “and I might be a priest.”
Saying that, feeling the shadow of Letar within him, and remembering the moments when he’d been overshadowed by Her presence seemed to push the walls further apart and let light into the hallway. He took Branwyn quickly in his arms and gave her a light kiss. That helped, too.
They were both here, even if “here” was still a wretched place. They were both alive.
He might wish for more—a large floating bed, for example—but it would have been greedy to ask. Zelen knew the gifts he’d been given.
* * *
It was a long journey through the house. The place itself was oppressive, more rigidly bare than half the peasants’ huts Branwyn had seen, despite the Verengirs’ wealth. What ornament existed seemed designed to show off money and emphasize virtue. Comfort wasn’t only an afterthought; it was as widely avoided as possible.
Branwyn, who had little to do with children, pictured four growing up in that atmosphere and found her lip curling up like an angry dog’s. She could almost feel sorry for Gedomir and Hanyi. The idea of Zelen’s youth made her want to take Yathana to the furnishings, particularly to a series of cold and disapproving portraits in one of the hallways.
There had never been much cheer in that house, but there was far worse now.
Two other guards were in the study, as Zelen had said there’d be. One was in a corner. He’d stopped screaming when his throat had given out, then curled into a ball and stared blankly into space. The other lay on his side with shoddy bandages around his arm and leg, cloth he’d slashed off the curtains. He struggled to get up when Branwyn and the footman—Mandyl—came in, but only managed to raise his head.
“What happened?” he asked.
“They’re done for,” Mandyl replied.
“The child?” The man was pale with more than blood loss.
“She’s alive,” Branwyn answered. “And well, I’m guessing.”
It was really more of a hope at that point, since she wasn’t disposed to count on either trees or horses, but Tanya had acted like a capable girl, and Zelen was nothing if not diligent. “Don’t try to move,” she advised the man, glad to see the worst of the dread leave him. “Help’s on its way.”
Similar scenes played out in other rooms, though with no wounded in those cases. There was a death, though: in the kitchen, the cook had deliberately fallen on one of his own knives. Branwyn shut his eyelids and muttered a prayer to Letar, asking that the man find healing in death for the horror that must have been his last moments of life.
Three of the newer, younger maids and grooms were in better condition, though still shaken. Branwyn deputized them to take care of the others. That group included two more huddled, speechless figures, a constantly weeping butler, and the senior housemaid, who had clawed raw lines down her cheeks but otherwise was coherent enough.
