Blade of Dream, page 34
At first, she looked uneasy, perhaps even frightened. He saw the moment of recognition. Her eyes cooled, her chin rose, and a little hard smile pressed her lips back against her teeth. Knowing that he was involved made her inconvenience, her confusion, her humiliation all make sense.
Maur came in last, closing the door behind him and sliding the bolt home. The three of them—guardsmen in the city blue—stood before the stool where she sat, and Garreth couldn’t shake the memory of the same three standing at her kitchen asking for a little snack of fruit and bread when they had been small and her hair had still been dark.
Kannish crossed his arms and nodded toward Garreth and Maur. “Tell them what you told me. About the girl.”
Serria sighed and shook her head. Garreth had time to wonder what detail about his time with Elaine was about to be hauled out before Serria spoke.
“The Inlisc girl? She was nothing very much. Plain as paper. She was trying to hide it, but she didn’t know how.”
“Hide what?” Garreth asked.
“Her belly,” Serria said, and her voice was all contempt. “She wasn’t showing yet, but I know how a girl holds herself when she knows it’s not only her heart beating. And after how you treated Miss Yrith. Good enough for a quick time in some side alley, but too base for your marriage bed.”
Garreth spread his hands, ready to profess his innocence, but Kannish stepped between them.
“You’re saying an Inlisc girl came to the house looking for Garreth.”
“Yes. I told her to come here. He made his choice, and his problems weren’t ours. Not any longer. Told her to try the barracks.”
Kannish and Maur both raised their eyebrows. A rush of panic was rising in Garreth’s chest. “That’s not… There isn’t—”
“When was this?” Kannish said.
“I told you all this.”
“Tell it again, when was it?”
“Midwinter. Not long after the caravan came. I didn’t mark it. I didn’t have reason to.”
“What was her name?” Garreth asked.
Serria coughed out a laugh. “I didn’t ask, and I didn’t care. How many more should we expect? She was young, if that helps narrow the field for you.”
“How did she ask for him?” Kannish said,
“By name.”
“His full name? Garreth Left? Or just his first.”
Serria’s contempt spread to Kannish. “Is that the argument? She was at our house looking for someone else? In case we had some other young master Garreth stowed in a cabinet? This is ridiculous, and it’s nothing to do with me. Not anymore. I want to go home now.”
She started to stand, but Maur went to her side and pressed her gently back in place. “Not just yet, please,” he said.
“I have nothing to add,” Serria said. “Whatever your problems are, I can’t help with them and I wouldn’t if I could.”
“Just a few minutes more,” Maur said with a disarming smile, and Serria lapsed into a frustrated silence. Kannish pulled the bolt and the three stepped out into the wind.
“There’s no girl like that,” Garreth said. “I haven’t been with anyone. I mean, but her. There’s not—”
Kannish crossed his arms and leaned against the door. “There were two of them. One a Hansch man who sounds like he might have been the one you killed, and this Inlisc girl. The story changed every time they went. Sometimes it was they owed young master Garreth money, sometimes it was that he was holding a bag of wheat for them. Or he’d told them to stop by and look at a horse. I’ve found half a dozen people who had visits like that, and I’ll bet you a week’s fines I haven’t got them all.”
“Young master Garreth,” Maur said slowly, like he was trying the words for the first time.
“Exactly. Just the one name, and that he was our age. Whenever they were told they had the wrong house, they apologized and moved on. Except when they found this one who told them to clear off.”
Maur’s eyes shifted like he was reading the air, and he started to grin. “Everyone here knows who Garreth is. No reason to hunt all through Riverport for him.”
“I think they knew he was city guard too, but they didn’t come here. They were looking for his family home. Where he came from.”
“Where I was going to meet with…” Garreth said.
“Which they knew. And there’s my point.” Kannish turned to Garreth. “These two knew what no one in the guard knew and didn’t know what all of us already did. Whoever set them on you? It wasn’t us.”
Garreth took a long, shuddering breath. “Then who was it?”
“Not a hint,” Kannish said, “but there’s a good way to find out. And get her safe. And stop wasting the guard’s efforts. I’m going to get the captain. You know you can trust him now. There’s no reason not to tell him, yeah?”
The idea of telling the full story to Captain Senit was like looking over a cliff, but the only argument Garreth could find against it was his own dread. Kannish was right. Whoever wanted Elaine dead, it wasn’t the guard. Garreth made himself nod.
Kannish turned, and Garreth caught his elbow before he could walk away. The little flare of anger in Kannish’s eyes might have been Garreth’s imagination. It might not.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. You were just being stupid careful.”
“Not just for that. For all of it. I was thoughtless.”
Kannish looked up, squinting into the wind. “Say it to Tannen,” he said. And then a moment later, “Don’t worry about it. It’s all right.” The flatness of his voice meant it wasn’t and that it wouldn’t be.
Garreth let go of his arm and the friend he’d known from childhood walked away. The ache in his stomach could have been a dozen things—was probably all of them—but one for certain was the echo of Kannish’s disappointment. Across the yard, Beren was drilling half a dozen of the others on disarming tactics. Old Boar swaggered out of the common room with a woman Garreth didn’t recognize beside him, laughing at something he’d said and then turning serious. A gust stung Garreth’s eyes with grit, and he tried to rub the pain away with the heel of his palm. Maur looked into the distance.
“I’m going to—” Garreth said, and pointed to the cell door.
“Yeah,” Maur agreed. “I’ll wait here. If you need me, just call out.”
“Aren’t you going to miss your patrol?”
“Seems like,” Maur said.
Garreth pulled the door open and stepped back into the cell. Serria looked at him coolly as he latched the door. He didn’t throw the bolt. It felt different being there with only her and not Kannish or Maur or any of the other guard. Garreth had his blue cloak, his blade, his badge of office. They were the real thing, taken in exchange for his oath, but they felt like a costume. He crossed his arms, and that felt awkward too.
“They’re doing well, you know,” Serria said. “Your brother and his wife? They’re doing very well. The magistrate found in their favor. All the contracts were allowed. The house is on better footing now than any time in the last decade.”
“Good to hear.”
“Is it? I thought you’d be disappointed.”
“Please, Serria. I don’t want—”
“You showed the family nothing but contempt, after all. Your father built a life for you. A good life. And you walked away from it the moment he asked you to sacrifice anything for it. You wouldn’t do for them what your father did for you every day of your life. Every day.”
The words should have hurt. The gods all knew Garreth felt raw enough. Instead they punched him like a puppy trying its strength for the first time. He looked at Serria, not seeing the woman who’d run the small points of his home or his father’s mistress either, but only the person sitting before him. The age in her skin, the whiteness of her hair, the rage that brought color to her cheeks and squared her mouth.
“Your father is a good man, Garreth Left. He’s a good man who cared for you, and you treated his home like a brothel.”
I wasn’t the one fucking the help, he thought, but he didn’t say it. It would have been empty. There was no heat behind it.
What would it be like to be the secret lover of a powerful man? How many years had Serria shared his father’s body and his night, and then spent her days as his servant, excluded from his business, unwelcome at his dinner table, less than him in every way? He saw the bitterness in her, and it spoke to him of years spent being reminded that she was beneath him. The swelling in his chest wasn’t anger, it was pity. Someone bound by the heart to a lover whose full life she couldn’t share except as a servant.
Put that way, her burden wasn’t so different from his.
“Does he treat you well? Tell me at least that he loves you.”
“Of course he does,” she snapped. “You can hate me all you like. You can hate him and look for ways to embarrass him by running away to play at city guard. It won’t matter. I love him, and he loves me, and he has a bigger soul than you ever will.”
“He doesn’t,” Garreth said gently. “In fact, he’s more than a little cruel.”
“Wash the lie off your tongue. Mannon is the best, kindest man I have ever known. You aren’t half of him.”
“All right,” Garreth said. The confusion in Serria’s eyes was heartbreaking. “If you say so, I believe you. You know him better than I do.”
“Robbson and that woman are always trying to undermine him. I was more a mother to you than she ever was. I was the one who saw you fed and washed your clothes and put salve on your scrapes. You can call that servitude. You did, you all did, but I did what a mother would do. That was me.” The words were coming out of her now like water spilling from a broken cask. Her eyes held a horror that she was speaking these things aloud, but now that she’d started, she didn’t seem able to stop. “He stands by me. We are what we are in front of the world because we have to be, but now that the business is saved, now that he doesn’t need her…”
She snapped her mouth shut, her lips pale from the pressure.
“He’ll leave Mother and marry you,” Garreth said. “I hope you’re right. I hope he does.” He was almost surprised to realize he actually did.
The flash of darkness in Serria’s expression was enough to show that she didn’t believe he was sincere. Or that his father was.
“You were always kind to me. That’s true,” Garreth said, and the latch clicked. The door swung open behind him. Captain Senit strolled in, thumbs tucked in his belt and a scowl drawing the corners of his mouth down toward his jawline. Kannish came in behind him, and Maur in the back.
“Left,” the captain said, then turned to Serria. “Ma’am, I apologize for the wait. Kannish Wellis wants me to ask you about some Inlisc girl that this one drew into shame. What’ve you got to tell me?”
Serria gathered herself, dabbing tears away from her eyes, and told her story again, voice low and eyes downcast. When she was done, the captain opened the door for her. She left with her shoulders forward and her arms crossed in front like she was trying to protect herself from a blow.
The captain took her stool, dragged it to a space beside the wall, and sat with the front two feet off the floor and his back resting on the stone.
“Wellis,” he said. “This is where you tell me why I give a wet slap about that woman, her story, or who Left here’s been spending his playtime with.”
“Good questions, sir,” Kannish said, and told what he had to tell. He could have started with Elaine a Sal and Garreth’s undermining them at the boathouse, but he didn’t. He worked backward, giving as much justification for Garreth’s silence as he could before the blow inevitably fell. It was a kindness and a loyalty Garreth didn’t expect and wasn’t certain he deserved. He felt his heart beating faster, harder, fluttering behind his ribs as Kannish came closer to the central fact of his connection to the prince’s daughter. And as he reached it.
The captain’s scowl softened and slowly vanished. The stillness that took its place was worse. He lowered the stool so that all four feet were grounded and leaned a degree forward, listening to Kannish with the intensity of a man in a knife fight.
“Elaine a Sal went missing the day that Garreth killed that man at his house,” Kannish finished, “because she was there. She was the one they’d come to kill.”
The silence was profound. After a moment, Captain Senit shifted his eyes—just his eyes—to Garreth. Garreth nodded. It was all true.
When he spoke, each word came out on its own like beads on a necklace with little silences between them. “You didn’t think it wise to tell me this at the time?”
“I did, though,” Garreth said. “You asked who the girl was, and I said it was her. But you thought I was joking, and then my father came, and I started thinking about who might have… how they knew…” He trailed off and looked at the ground. For a long moment, the muttering of the rising wind through the door was the loudest sound.
“Where is she?” Captain Senit asked.
“She’s safe.”
“Did I fucking ask if she was safe? Where is she, Left?”
Garreth imagined saying I gave her to Aunt Thorn and all that would come after. “I don’t know, and that’s intentional. If the Inlisc girl and her friends found me, they could torture me to death, and I wouldn’t be able to tell them. But I can call her back to us.” I hope I can call her back to us.
“Fucking Kint and his palace intrigues,” the captain muttered, then drummed a finger against his leg. “All right. Who else knows about this?”
“There are two people at the Temple,” Garreth said. “Friends of Elaine’s. They’ll keep it to themselves.”
“Sure they will,” he said, but the sneer was perfunctory. His mind was elsewhere. “You three go put on your civilian clothes. Half an hour from now, you’re going to go reclaim the girl. I’ll have half a dozen shadowing you in case we’re needed and as much of the barracks as I can muster in earshot of the whistles.”
“I’ll have to go to Longhill,” Garreth said.
The captain’s scowl returned.
“My contact is there,” Garreth said.
“You’ve got contacts in Longhill?”
“Through family.”
The captain considered that. “We’ll do what we can. I don’t need to start a riot, but… You talk to no one, yeah? Do what needs doing to get her back to the barracks, and then we’ll see where we stand.”
“The palace?” Maur said. It was the first time he’d spoken since the captain had come.
“Someone’s trying to kill the prince’s daughter. I wouldn’t tell that sack of rats my mother’s name if I thought someone could squeeze a coin out of knowing.”
“It was the same for me, you know,” Garreth said, a little too quickly. “I had to know it was safe first. Before I could tell anyone, I had to know who was safe to tell.”
“It ain’t the same.”
“But—”
“I’m me, and you’re you,” Captain Senit said. “That makes it not the same.”
The pounding on the door was sudden and violent. All of them started, even the captain. Then, hand on the pommel of his sword, the captain stood. “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Captain.” Beren’s voice came muffled through the door.
“I’m in the middle of something.”
“Let it stand, then. I think we’ve got a problem.”
The captain growled, “I think we’ve got several,” and headed out. Garreth followed close. In the yard, the men who’d been drilling were still standing shirtless and sweating, the wooden practice blades in their hands. A handful of other people—men and women both—had paused in the street and were shading their eyes as they stared to the west and Oldgate. Garreth thought they were looking at Oldgate or else Palace Hill at its crown. He didn’t think to look higher until Maur spoke.
“That’s not a cloud, is it?”
Against the wind-whipped blue, a plume of grey-white stretched, thinner at the top and thickening as it disappeared behind the broad walls of the palace. Smoke. Something was burning. Something large.
“Is that the palace?” Kannish asked.
“Palace or else Green Hill,” Garreth said. “Shit. It looks big.”
“Right, then. New plan,” Captain Senit said, then put his hands to his mouth and shouted, “All you bastards get your blades and come with me right now. Anyone not with me on the count of ten works the shit cart for a month. Ten! Nine!” The guards scattered and he took Garreth’s arm. “We’re getting her. We’re getting her now, and we’re getting her in force. I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but looks like it’s already happening.”
She should have felt buried alive. Days came and went—or she had to assume they did—without even a ray of sunlight. Her time was measured in sleep and food, visits from Erja and Aunt Thorn, poultices that heated her flesh and poultices that cooled her. Her shoulder still hurt sometimes, but so much less that she could mistake the ache for painlessness. When she slept, her dreams were wild and vivid. She felt herself changing, though she couldn’t say what she was changing from nor what she was changing into. She only knew that some part of her was hungry for it.
Erja didn’t talk about the world aboveground. Her only concern was Elaine’s recovery, and she seemed pleased by it more often than not. She’d helped Elaine bathe the first few times, and while Elaine had often been attended in private moments, it still felt awkward being naked in front of Erja. As soon as Elaine’s shoulder was loose enough that she didn’t need the help, she didn’t accept it. Erja had covered her amusement, but not well.
Aunt Thorn, by contrast, brought news of Kithamar and of her father. The plague in Stonemarket seemed to be subsiding without spilling over to the rest of the city. The iron workers’ guild was putting together a fund to dredge the canals that ran through the Smoke. Byrn a Sal had missed his third day of audiences from the public, and the palace guard was spread thin looking for the missing heir. House Abbasann was vying to take the lead position in the summer games. The milk-eyed woman rattled off bits of gossip and telling detail like she was throwing a handful of gravel at a wall—one, then one or two others, and then a dozen things all at once. Elaine had the sense that she was being tested somehow, but she didn’t know the purpose.
