Luda slapped her hands on her hips, scowling. “Will you be the one who has to unlock it tonight, or will I have to go searching for him?” She stabbed a finger toward the other guard, who backed away and waved his hands at his colleague in a gesture of refusal.
The first guard said something else Bron couldn’t hear, but at the volume Luda answered, he didn’t need to.
“You better not switch,” she warned. “Or I’ll tell the Hierarch you’re being cruel and playing tricks on me. I won’t care if he’s in his usual spot, praying to his goddess in the cellar.”
Once more she adopted her original serene demeanor with dizzying speed, disconcerting her guards who edged away from her. She gazed up at the sky with a sigh and said “I love the moon. Almost as much as my sister does.” And with that, she yanked open the rear entrance door and flounced inside.
For a moment, Bron stayed where he was, waiting for the sentinel Daggermen to grow bored again with the night’s guard duty before he slinked away. By the time he reached the river,where its liquid laughter hid the sound of his movements and the trees obscured his shape, dawn had painted the horizon purple and red.
Buoyed by the stroke of miraculous luck at not only discovering Luda but having her drop a wagonload of information about the Daggermen’s lair in his lap, he sprinted back toward the widow Zaras’s house where Disaris waited for news.
The cottage was still dark when he entered the front garden, which he found odd at this hour of the morning. No farming family stayed abed with the sun’s rise. The euphoria that had sustained him as he raced back to Disaris vanished, replaced by a keen wariness that raised the hair on his nape. His hand rested lightly on his sword still sheathed in its scabbard, and he slowed to a stroll as he approached the front door. The sense of something terribly wrong slithered down his back. The silence hung in the air like a shroud.
He found Zaras in the kitchen, sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood, her throat slashed. Whoever had killed her had taken her by surprise while she churned butter. She still clutched the plunger in her lifeless hand. He bent to close her eyes before continuing his search through the house. The detached calm that always settled over him prior to a skirmish or one of the bigger bloodbaths that left thousands of corpses from both sides sprawled on the fields, aided him now, keeping him focused and clear-headed as he looked for Disaris, despite knowing she was no longer anywhere in or near the cottage.
The bedroom he shared with her the night before was a shambles of broken crockery and wrecked furniture. Whoever had come for her had to fight for the privilege of capturing her. Blood spatters on the sheets and the floor threatened to shatter his preternatural calm, but he continued investigating, looking for something that might hint at who’d taken her and where.
He found his answer lying partially under the bed—a pillow with a note impaled to it by the hair bodkin Bron had made for her. He pried the swatch of paper free to read the ragged handwriting.
Come to the river. Once again, I have what you want. Your greatest weakness.
Bron closed his eyes for a moment. Disaris had been wrong—in more ways than one. Ceybold wasn’t dead, nor did he seek revenge against her through Luda. He sought it against Bron through Disaris. His personal, one-sided war with Bron had started the moment Bron’s magic manifested and the Daesin army brought him into its ranks. His hatred had only grown with the passage of time, culminating in a confrontation years in the making and at the sacrifice of one whose only crime was kindness shown to strangers.
Bron stayed long enough to carry Zaras’s body into her bedroom and set her gently on her bed. He covered her with a blanket, wishing he could promise not to abandon her, but only the gods knew if he would survive the next several hours.
He left the house, his back to the emerging dawn. He imagined Disaris, at the mercy of a man who saw her only as a weapon or a tool to be wielded against him. For the second time that morning, he raced for the river.
The daybefore Bron was to return to Burnpool, he agreed to meet Ceybold at the Feathered Wren for a few tankards of ale and an hour or two of conversation. It was, on the surface, a meeting of friends before one of them left for home and the other stayed behind. For Bron, it was a confrontation on neutral ground. He didn’t doubt Ceybold viewed it the same way.
The tavern was crowded for that time of day, and several of the patrons gathered there greeted Bron when he arrived, offering to buy him an ale or wine. He declined but made sure to pause and chat with each person who approached. While he talked, he spotted Ceybold waiting at a table in one of the tavern’s back corners, watching him. His friend raised his cup in salute, and Bron returned it with a wave.
By the time he made it to the spot Ceybold had reserved, there were three cups of ale waiting for him, sent by other tavern guests. Ceybold slid all three toward Bron. “I was going to buy you one, but it looks like I don’t have to.” He waved a hand toward the crowd. “I think half of Panrin is here to see and talk to the great battle mage, Bron jin Hazarin.”
His smile was as sharp as a razor, the expression in his eyes one of malice. Bron shrugged, taking a small pleasure in the other man’s obvious envy over what was, in essence, a mirage. “The title sounds more romantic than the actual position.” He quaffed one of the ales in front of him. He handed the second gifted ale to Ceybold. “We’ll share, and I’ll buy the next round.”
They spent the next few minutes in stiff, polite conversation. Ceybold asked more about Bron’s daily routine at Burnpool and shared his own routine as the yeoman’s son who’d taken over much of his father’s administrative tasks. “It’s dull,” he said. “Certainly nothing noteworthy like training as a battle mage, but my bastard father stays out of my way these days. He much prefers idling his time away with the various whores here in Panrin and Twebek. With any luck, one of them will kill him.”
Time hadn’t sweetened the bitter relationship between father and son, but it had changed it. Yeoman jin Silsu was a man who abused those weaker than himself and shied away from the strong. Ceybold was no longer a boy of thirteen, constructed of bony elbows, knees, and big feet. At eighteen, he was shorter than Bron but just as muscular and outmatched hisfather in physical prowess. It didn’t take the yeoman long to recognize when the positions of power between him and his son had changed, helped along no doubt by the bruised jaw and dislocated arm jin Silsu displayed one day during a village gathering. Ceybold had been fifteen then. No one attending the gathering missed the way the yeoman avoided his son or the fact that Ceybold’s hand was bandaged.
Ceybold’s personality had begun to change after that. He was still charming, but to Bron that charm had taken on a more sincere quality. When he wasn’t spending his free time with Disaris, Bron spent it with Ceybold. They became fast friends, or so he thought, until the day the Daesin army came to Panrin wanting to meet the boy who had commanded the wind and saved himself from drowning.
Their friendship had cooled after that, certainly for Ceybold who suddenly found other things to do when Bron invited him to go somewhere or do something. When they did interact, his comments were often snide, veiled insults disguised as joking remarks on Bron’s appearance, his likes and dislikes, even the way he pronounced certain words. Bron had shrugged it off, wanting to believe it was just Ceybold’s way. When he left for Burnpool, Ceybold didn’t wish him good luck or say goodbye. When he returned to Panrin in the spring after many months of training, Ceybold hadn’t welcomed him back. Bron had simply thought of it as the natural death of a childhood friendship brought on by distance and different interests.
The way he’d manipulated Disaris during the Honesty or Bravery game destroyed whatever remnants of their friendship still survived. Bron wanted nothing more than to drag Ceybold outside the tavern and beat the shit out of him, but he held his temper and bided his time until he finally revealed why he’d invited Bron to meet with him.
Ceybold didn’t waste his time. “Did Disaris tell you we kissed each other at Spirius?” The tone he used to ask the question made it sound like the two had swived each other in the town square in front of shocked onlookers. His expression was one of malevolent glee when he told Bron “I wish you could see your face right now. What are you going to do? Turn me into a toad? A snake?”
“Why bother? You’re already a piece of shit.” Bron rarely took the first shot, but he usually took the last.
Ceybold went rigid. Any hint of amusement, feigned or otherwise, disappeared. His lips pulled back in a baring of teeth. “Fuck you, you fish-bellied son of a—” He stopped when Bron half rose from his seat, swallowing the last part of an insult that he was wise enough to understand would probably have his father burying or burning his corpse the next day.
Bron stared at him. “Say it. Give me an excuse,” he dared the other man. When Ceybold stayed silent, he nodded. “Of course she told me.”
She hadn’t been the first to do so. The moment Bron had set foot in Panrin and stopped at the village mercantile to buy his mother a gift, no less than six people had informed him about the fact they’d seen the yeoman’s son kissing Disaris and wondering what he thought of that.
He’d disappointed them all with his casual shrug and noncommittal reply. “It’s Spirius. Someone is always kissing someone else at festival.”
Inside, he’d been a jumble of questions and confused emotions. Why in the gods’ names had Disaris kissed Ceybold? Every time she saw him, her upper lip curled.
