By Divine Right (12 page)

This was why I needed Gareth. Whatever he lacked in insight or intuition, he made up for in observation. With ten years more experience in the king’s service, he’d seen enough dying to make him an expert, but the stares of the dead held no interest for him.

I retraced the track of Robin’s struggle over to his body, where I rolled him over and searched his clothes. A heavy jingle drew my attention, and I cut his purse free and dumped the contents. My pulse
quickened once more as a glint of yellow, so rare as to be almost illegal, tumbled into my hand.

I almost stood then, but something about the rents in Robin’s clothing stopped me. I’d been in the last border war and had seen plenty of dead and injured, but the holes in his tunic and breeches were unique in their similarity. I examined a pair of wounds on his right thigh before unfastening the buttons of his coat and lifting his shirt to inspect the damage on his stomach and chest.

I shifted the body to get a better look. Whoever had cut him up had tried to kill him quickly and obviously failed. I probed one of the wounds on his chest. A slash, not a thrust, about a hand wide ran horizontally, or nearly so, across Robin’s right side, the wound much deeper in the center than either side. Curious, I checked a couple more, then compared them to the wounds on his thighs. Every wound appeared the same, a clean cut nearly a hand wide and almost as deep. They looked like sword or dagger slashes, but something about the depth bothered me—like a face that should have been familiar but wasn’t—and I stared, trying to place it.

Robin’s fist still clenched a sword, and there was blood on the blade. By the light of Gareth’s torch, I inspected the nicks on the edges. No, not nicks, something else. Nicks from sword parries left small triangular notches in the edge of a blade. Instead, Robin’s blade had small arc-shaped dents, as if he’d tried to hack through the bars of a prison. I tucked his sword into my belt, behind my own.

“Interesting.”

Gareth looked at me as if I’d surprised him. “Lord Dura?”

I buttoned Robin’s coat, my movements as respectful as I could make them. This was why I was here. Despite Gareth’s experience, he lacked the ability to extrapolate his observations. “You say Robin marked a man badly enough to kill. Yet there’s no one else here. And his purse was full, very full.”

I shook the purse and noted the clear ring of silver along with a richer sound I’d rarely heard. “So that leaves us with a set of attackers who have no interest in money and whose identities are so important they’re willing to spend the time and effort necessary to drag away a dead man.”

I pointed a finger at Robin, as if I could accuse him of something that would matter. “He was a Servant of all things. They don’t fight. They don’t strike back when struck. Who kills a Servant?”
At this point Robin’s death didn’t bother me nearly as much as his occupation.

“People kill for all sorts of reasons,” Gareth said. “Not all of them make sense.”

The education I received before becoming a reeve gave me a perspective on history. In the life of the church, I knew just how short a few hundred years could be. The Order Wars represented a long and lurid part of history on the northern continent. No sane man would ever wish their return, but the Servants had refused to fight, even then. I sighed. “Does the king know about this?”

Gareth nodded his head. “If he doesn’t, he soon will. The castellan was writing his report when I came to get you.”

Tension crept its way up the back of my neck, and I kept myself from sampling Gareth’s soldierly vocabulary, barely. The best I could say about the new castellan was that he didn’t come from the Orlan family. Being gifted, he’d never gone to war and didn’t have the experience to understand the kind of violence Robin’s death represented. I’d served in the last fight with Owmead almost a decade ago. A stab of pain shot through my head at the memory.

I focused on the scene before me. Blood soaked the earth and stones like spilled communal wine. What I saw made me wince, but it wasn’t the violence or the blood. “Where’s Elwin?”

Gareth made a vague gesture with his hand toward the southwest. “They took him to the House of Passing.”

I chewed my lip. Elwin had been wounded in the attack and survived it, at least temporarily. But instead of taking him to the succor of his order, the city watch had taken him out to the House of Passing. “He’s a churchman. Why didn’t they take him to a healer? For that matter, why didn’t they take him to the Servant’s cathedral? They’re the best healers in Bunard.”

I led Gareth back to where I’d tied up my mount, my pace urgent. I needed to see Elwin’s body, and if the slim chance remained that he still lived, I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to question him or witness his passing. “Has anyone else come forward as a witness?”

Gareth snorted. “In this part of the city? No sir. These aren’t the type of people that take an interest in another’s business.”

His reply failed to discourage me. There were more witnesses—they would just be harder to get to. Nothing happened in the city
of Bunard without someone seeing. The observers might not be the type the king’s magistrates would hearken to, but they were there. Whether they were beggars, pickpockets, thieves, or prostitutes, someone had seen the attack.

“I’ll be married in three months, Gareth, my year of betrothal completed, the husband of a lady and a man with responsibilities within the nobility.” I spoke to my fear. “I’ll learn the work of a respectable lord.”

Gareth blew air through his lips. “Why would the king allow that? There’s no one else that has your talent for seeing the way of things.”

I shook my head. There was no use in putting it off. Gareth might not be able to see the problem, but the king would, and I’d learned firsthand the difficulty of shading the truth with him in any way. Gareth would have to make report for me. “How long has Robin been in the city, Gareth?”

He shrugged and took another bite of bread. Dark crumbs littered his pale beard. “About five years.”

“What were a church functionary and his helper doing out at night? How does a menial Servant come by the skill to fight more than one opponent and kill one of them? Did you see his wounds?” I tried not to leer at the memory of his stare. “He bled to death. Against two or more swords, intent on killing him, he bled to death, meaning they weren’t good enough to land a killing stroke against a
Servant
.”

I turned a slow circle, searching out the closest buildings. This section of town was home to many of the shopkeepers, those less-prosperous merchants who worked without ceasing but managed to maintain their status. Most of the buildings close by housed the proprietor’s business in the front and their living space in the back. Some few possessed a second story. I pointed them out. “Start with those. A few of them would have a view of the fight. We need information.” I didn’t bother sending Gareth after those who filled the shadows of the city at night. They’d never speak with him. Skittish, sometimes they wouldn’t even talk to me. I nodded toward the dead man. “And have someone take care of Robin.”

I pushed Dest to a gallop in the hope of reaching Elwin before he died. I knew the place and the path well enough to make the trip in the dark. The House of Passing sat in its crevice between the hills like a gateway to eternity against the banks of the Ende River. The rocky path to it was lined with flowers, even in the winter, flaunting their colors—blue, yellow, or pink, but never red. The preceptors of the dead never allowed the color of blood.

Those who were gifted didn’t always use it for a profit. Some, out of conscience or guilt, used their gift in the service of the church, mostly those with the gift of Helps. I couldn’t imagine the effort it took to grow flowers in the winter, no matter how talented they might be with nature, but I was grateful for it just the same. The trip to the House of Passing was often the most beautiful the dying ever took.

Laidir funded the house out of the taxes levied on the four orders so that our city might have a place to send the dying no one wished to care for. The religious orders resented the tax, enough so that some had attempted to refuse payment, but the Vanguard had been forcibly disbanded and expelled for a year when they’d tried. The loss in revenue, and souls, of course, became unacceptable. Everyone paid promptly from then on.

No one order ran the house. It seemed death was one of the few things the four could agree on. The expanded structure had grown along with the city until it boasted two levels and four wings. Rich green grass surrounded the stone edifice and more flowers created a carpet of brilliant blue and yellow against the stolid backdrop of masonry.

As I approached, light fog rolled in from the river behind the house, shrouding the landscape in tendrils of mist that brushed the stone pier with ghostly caresses. In the gray of predawn I could see half-a-dozen flat-bottomed coracles, each a little wider than I was tall, stacked beneath a simple shed. After someone passed, the brothers or sisters would say the antidon in the tradition of their order. Usually the dead were buried or burned, according to the tradition.

But every now and then the old beliefs sprang forth and the dying requested the journey west in their attempt to join the mythical
Fayit, the eldritch beings who’d supposedly walked the earth before Aer created man.

The brothers and sisters in the House would load the body into the coracle and send it down the Ende, which meandered through the lowlands to the west, without falls or rapids, until it emptied into the Western Sea. From there the current caught it and carried it toward the setting sun and into the unknown.

I pulled my attention back to the house. The brothers and sisters who worked there volunteered in turns from the segments of the church that resided within our kingdom. They all had cause to know me. A candle shone in the window to the left and a shadow moved within. Care for the dying didn’t follow a merchant’s schedule. I checked the moon. It wouldn’t be full for another seven days.

I dismounted and stopped, my ears straining. An echo of sound, the distant crunch of gravel beneath a hoof, came to me, but dawn still lay some minutes away, and I could make nothing out except the dim outlines of the trees lining the path. My heart worked against my ribs, and I pulled my sword and backed my way into the torchlight of the stone entryway.

Geoffrey, wearing the white arm bands of the Vanguard and carrying the smell of death on his clothes, greeted me just inside the door. He gave me a polite nod and a heavy-lidded blink that always took a split second longer than it should have.

“Lord Dura. I wondered when you would return to us.” The subtle note of disapproval in his voice drifted to my ears as if he had to bribe the air to carry it to me. “Jocelyn has been asking after you. None of the other visitors will read the tales to her it seems.” He paused to check the moon. “She’s trying to make it to the next festival of Bas-solas. She’s close, but I’m not sure she’ll make it. You’ll wish to escort her, I assume?”

My head had nodded assent before I remembered why I had come. I’d escorted a dozen or more of the residents of the House to the threshold of eternity, reading them their favorite story or holding their hand, each time waiting to catch some hint of what they saw as they stepped through the door to forever. So far their blank stares defied me, refusing to surrender the knowledge. I hoped someday one of those passing to the other side would return long enough to give me some hint. I’d heard of it happening in tales and rumors until I
thirsted for it like a man in the desert. Geoffrey’s disapproval failed to shame me, my need was too great.

“I can’t read to her,” I said. “At least not now. I’m here on the king’s business. A man was brought to you a couple of hours ago. He’s probably passed, but I’ll need to see the body.”

Geoffrey’s eyes almost sharpened into interest, and he turned, crisp, like a soldier toward the east wing. “I’ll take you to him. He’s still alive, though we are at a loss to understand it. Sister Iselle believes he may pull through despite his grievous injury.” He sighed, a whisper of sound that carried mourning in it, though I knew from experience it wouldn’t be for the dying. “Her duties here weigh heavily upon her. She hopes and prays for each resident’s recovery.” His shoulders shifted beneath his cassock. “Servants often have difficulty with death. The Vanguard know better.”

I followed him into a long ward with a row of plain elevated beds on each side of a wide aisle running the length of the room. Cries filled the air, and I stutter-stepped at the unfamiliar sound. People didn’t suffer pain in the House—the brothers and sisters were skilled at easing it. We passed by a number of men whose injuries had fouled past the healer’s art, and the smell of infection hung heavy in the air despite the vinegar used to mask it. Then we came to the source of the cries.

Elwin, his head swathed in several feet of blood-soaked bandages, tossed on his bed, his back reflexing in arced tension, like a man caught in fever dreams, his head shaking from side to side. Sister Iselle stood over him with her weight forward, calling encouragements, trying to calm him, but each time she reached out to him, he flinched, recoiling from the prospect of her touch.

Disappointment settled onto my shoulders like a cloak. The blow to his head hadn’t killed him yet, but there would be no information coming from Elwin. “How long has he been like this?”

Geoffrey shrugged. “It can’t have been long. He was unconscious just a few moments ago.”

Elwin’s eyes opened, but his gaze passed through his surroundings with the stare of the unseeing. Then his arm reached toward me.

Iselle followed the gesture, her blue eyes shining in a heart-shaped face that would make most men jealous of the church she served and resentful of the vows of celibacy her order required. She straightened
to face me, her expression welcoming but tinged with sorrow as always. “Willet, it is good to see you again.” She glanced at Elwin. “You’ve always done so well with the passing. Do you think you can calm him? If we could get him to rest, he might recover. I’m hopeful—”

“Sister Iselle, you know that—”

“We do not know the future, Brother Geoffrey.” She thrust her chin in defiance toward Geoffrey and his condescension. “No one dies until they have breathed their last.” She faced me, her arm beckoning.

I stepped toward the bed. As much as I disliked Geoffrey, I couldn’t help but agree with him. Elwin’s soaked bandages stated plainly he would die from blood loss even if the blow didn’t kill him. I saw now why the watch, peopled with veterans from the last war, hadn’t bothered the healers. They’d recognized the certainty of Elwin’s death.

He stilled as I approached, the arc in his back easing and his arms coming to rest on the blankets. I couldn’t help but sigh at his passing. For a moment I had dared to hope I might be able to question him.

I turned back to Geoffrey and Iselle. “I’m sorry. I’ll need to search him.” I shook my head. “And I’ll have to look at the wound as well.” Geoffrey gave me another of his slow blinks and a nod I would have expected from any of the Vanguard, but Iselle turned from me, scattering tears.

Starting at Elwin’s feet, I worked my way up, feeling along his legs for anything he might have tried to keep hidden. Nothing beyond the bony ranginess of an old man came to me, until I came to his cloak. A lump made of tight layers of cloth lay within a small pocket stitched to the inside. I took it and tucked it into my belt, waiting for a more opportune and private time to see what I had.

When I looked up, Elwin’s dead stare caught me, and I placed my mouth close to the bandages covering one ear. “Elwin, can you tell me what you see?”

He didn’t answer, of course, and silence settled over the room once more. I shifted my feet in preparation to unwrap the bandages on his head.

Elwin’s body convulsed, lurching forward, and he grasped my head, the nails digging into my flesh. “Domere!”

The room tilted and went black.

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The
Shock of Night
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