Clearwater Dawn (23 page)

A single broadhead shaft had pierced the tangle of ink at the Ilvani’s shoulder, but whether because only one archer was good enough to hit it or because he’d called the hated symbol for himself alone, Chriani didn’t know.

It was one of Konaugo’s black-fletched shafts. Chriani stared for a long while.

When he finally turned away, he scanned the shadows, no one watching as he wrenched the black arrow free. He pulled five undamaged field-point shafts from the nearest butt, held the arrows straight along his arm as he walked, the blades of the broadhead locked between his fingers.

In the barracks, he stole a bow from a Bastion sergeant he recognized, stole into his tent as he watched him slip into the tent adjacent with a buxom ranger he didn’t know. It was a black-oak recurve, a little soft for Chriani’s arm, but the balance was good. He slipped it within his cloak, wrapped tight around himself as he slipped outside.

He saw Konaugo then, storming in with three other riders through the mud of the firelit central track. His speed told Chriani that he’d been made aware of the princess’s arrival. His expression suggested he’d heard who her escort was.

Where Chriani faded back into shadow, he slipped past the poplar grove, skirting the muddy track for a larger stand of trees he’d passed, just inside the eastern edge of the camp. He avoided the light of the perimeter fires as he slipped into the white-bark shadows, the tangle of winter branches clawing at the darkening sky. Where two guards drifted slowly past a dozen strides away, they faced away from him, watching the open fields outside the camp.

Chriani watched the mountains to the west, waited as the disc of the sun slowly descended. He had the bow out and one field-point shaft nocked in a fluid motion, already sighting to the southwest where his eyes pulled detail from the distant shadows. From the mess tent, he heard voices raised in song, marked off an arcing line of sight to a tripod brazier near the closest wall, a hundred paces away. He let the arrow fly, watched it strike the pan dead on. As it careened over in a shower of sparks, he heard a shout go up.

He fired two more arrows after it, shooting high. As they hissed through the open side of the tent well above the heads of the troops there, he saw those troops hit the ground, both shafts shattering where their blunted ends struck the canvas wall on the opposite side.

He had a fourth arrow nocked, spinning to fire to the other side of the camp, a lantern burning there where it hung on the post outside Chanist’s pavilion. One guard was close enough to it that Chriani hoped he got clear in time as his shot shattered it, a gout of oil exploding to flame. Through the officers’ pavilion, he fired once more, sent a blunted shaft ricocheting off the flagstaff where a Brandishear banner flew.

He nocked Konaugo’s arrow then, waiting as the alarm rose. He heard the perimeter guards behind him shouting for reinforcements, knew there’d be troops streaming past him too quickly.

Across the officers’ pavilion, he saw Konaugo moving at a speed that belied his muscled bulk. Carefully, Chriani drew the arrow back, tracking the captain’s movement as he shouted orders over the din. Chriani flicked his fingers, heard the bow sing. The arrow arced toward Konaugo, twisted past to catch his cloak as he ran, pulling him back by the neck where it pinned him to a hitching post behind him.

Chriani dropped the bow, slipped through the trees and out. All around him was pandemonium, no one noticing his sudden appearance in the midst of it. He ran like the rest of them, headed past the stables and across the archery yard, not looking to the body of the Valnirata rider where he passed it again.

He’d almost made it to Chanist’s pavilion when his legs went out from under him, the ground slamming up as something hit him hard. He felt hands at his back, knowing whose they were even before he was hauled up, his neck cracking as he was twisted roughly around.

Where he loomed, Konaugo’s face was twisted with a fury the like of which Chriani had never seen before.

“You wanted my attention, boy?”

Chriani kicked, managed to catch one of Konaugo’s legs with enough force to shift his balance, breaking the captain’s grip as he twisted away and shot to his feet. He caught the flash of a dagger drawn, heart pounding as he pushed back to give himself room. He’d have one chance if he was lucky.

“Captain Konaugo.”

The dagger was slipped away as fast as it had appeared. Konaugo wheeled to face Chanist where he strode through the center of the chaos, pulling his sword belt on.

“Is the perimeter secure?”

“My lord prince, the attack came from within the encampment itself…”

“Then clear the camp. Set two companies along the perimeter, instruct all others to sweep within it.”

“My lord prince, a witness has placed this…”

“Now, captain.”

Konaugo bit off whatever words were still waiting to be spoken. He nodded as he turned, not looking at Chriani as he motioned two sergeants to follow him. To the guards who had followed from his pavilion, the prince barked orders as he adjusted his scabbard.

“Jossel and Stevin, see to the horses. Adane, set extra watch on the stores and the armory. Tyro, attend to my daughter.”

Where Chanist’s gaze met his for just a moment, Chriani stared. He managed to nod as the prince passed him without a word.

Where he slipped past the unguarded entrance to the prince’s tents, Chriani found himself in a curtained alcove, a bright space of draperies and carpeted ground beyond it. He blinked against the light of evenlamps in the first tent, saw where a council room of sorts had been set up, a makeshift table of wagon boards spread with maps he didn’t slow to look at.

Beneath the central awning, the other two tents of the pavilion were closed off, Chriani looking into each in turn. To the left, a bedchamber, cut with white drapes. To the right, a study of some sort, shrouded evenlamps burning low above benches that lined the walls. In the center of the tent, a chair and a rough desk sat, a goblet on it holding down a stack of parchment. Lauresa was there, alone.

She was watching as if she expected him as Chriani pulled the canvas closed behind him. He felt a surge of warmth, braziers burning bright at each corner. He nodded to the princess but she returned it formally, distant. As he made to speak, she shook her head.

“Wait for my father,” she said. “And when he comes, say nothing of what happened in the war room that night.”

Chriani didn’t bother to hide a questioning look.

“What matter does that make now?”

“It matters to me, tyro”

In her voice, the anger of their journey that morning was back. Beyond the first tent, Chriani heard footsteps suddenly, could only nod to her as he stepped back, Chanist slipping inside. The prince pulled the canvas shut behind him, clasped the knotted ends of its lines to the tent’s corner posts. As he turned to pace toward Chriani, his expression was deathly cold.

“If you’d missed and killed someone, what then, boy?”

“I shot with practice-range shafts, my lord prince.” Chanist passed within a single step, Chriani fighting the urge to back up. “The Princess Lauresa requested a diversion capable of clearing your chambers.”

“You have quite the arm to sink a blunted shaft into a hardwood post an arm’s length behind my captain’s head…”

“Father.” Where she’d moved to stand behind the prince high, Lauresa’s voice had a calm urgency to it. Chanist glanced to her, back to Chriani as he circled to the desk, snatched up the goblet there.

“My daughter informs me that you have some intelligence for me, master Chriani. Speak it.”

At a side bench, the prince poured wine from a flagon of blue glass, a kind of dark tension in him. The age that Chriani had seen before was showing again. The prince ignored the pitcher of water alongside him, drank deeply.

“It is my belief that Barien knew of some complicity between the assassin whose attempt on your life he prevented, and one at the highest level within the court, my lord prince.”

“You will forgive me, tyro, if I greet your accusations of my guard and advisors with some suspicion.”

“Show him, tyro.” Lauresa’s voice was even in the shadows, her father glancing back to her.

From the pocket of his sleeve, Chriani carefully slipped the folded scrap of blood-stained insignia. Carefully, he pulled the dagger from its scabbard beneath his tunic. He stepped up to the desk, set both down carefully, stepped away again as the prince circled back.

Where Chanist reached for the insignia, Chriani saw his hand shaking. The dagger he stared at but wouldn’t touch, a tangible anger in him now.

“Tell me, master Chriani,” the prince said. “Quickly.”

He told Chanist, then. Told him everything, from Barien’s last words to the discovery of the dagger. He glanced to the princess once or twice as he spoke, saw her watching him, impassive. He told of Barien speaking the name of Uissa, saw Chanist’s eyes flash cold. He told how Barien’s last words had been spent in seeking word of Chanist’s and his daughter’s safety, and as he did, Chriani saw the prince’s knuckles white at the back of the chair he leaned against.

Chanist asked no questions as the story unfolded, and though Chriani had no reason to return to the events that had preceded Barien’s death and the careful lie that yet wrapped them, he found himself working back to that point in his mind. No matter what the angle he chose to look upon it, Lauresa’s request made no sense to him. It made no difference anymore, or should have made none at any rate.

The princess had talked about the fear of scandal had she been found in the war room that night, but how she’d planned to avoid the scandal of fleeing the Bastion in secret for a four-day ride across unmarked road alone, he didn’t know. Even assuming Ashlund knew nothing about it, as master of the guard in Konaugo’s absence, the fault would go to him.

My absence has been accounted for,
Lauresa had said. Maybe it had been, for all that. The princess kept her secrets well, Chriani thought.

They stood in silence for what seemed a long while, Lauresa moving in beside her father. He started as her hand touched his, looked to her with something like fear in his eyes. His hands were shaking where he pulled them from the chair, let the blood-stained insignia drop to the desk again.

“To die alone is a thing we all face one day, master Chriani. To die betrayed…”

The prince was breathing hard, hands to his head now.

“We tell ourselves these things we do have purpose that overcomes the pain they bring. We tell ourselves that there is a reason brave men fall…” Chriani wasn’t sure who it was he spoke to.

“Barien…” Chanist’s voice was hoarse, barely a whisper.

“Father…”

Where he turned to Lauresa, Chanist embraced her tightly, and as Chriani watched, he thought he saw something break in the prince high. He saw the strength seeping from him visibly, and a shadow around him as if the relative sizes of father and daughter had suddenly reversed from how he’d seen them in the throne room that terrible night. Lauresa strong now against him, holding her father up like the posts that support the sprawl of an aging tree.

Chriani thought he felt Chanist’s fear, then. He felt the memory twisting through him of kneeling at Barien’s body as the warrior’s life ebbed away. The same feeling of helplessness in himself that he saw reflected in a prince who stood across from now and grieved in rare privacy.

On the desk, the bloody glyph on the dagger’s blade caught the light. Chriani saw Chanist’s gaze flit across it, felt the raw anger towards that mark and what it had done. He thought of Barien struck down by an arm whose skin bore the same lines that marked his own. He felt the pain shift inside him, felt the lie twist in his gut as it always had.

Chanist’s voice shook him from the darkness.

“Loyalty goes only as far as who it is pledged to, master Chriani. Given what you knew, you did right to keep your silence that night in the throne room. If I am guessing correctly, you did right to try to tell me that night in the stables. When you could not tell me, you did right to take my daughter’s counsel. Barien taught you well.”

“My lord prince.” Chriani felt the first trace of the awkwardness that he realized he should have been feeling all along. As he had in the stables, he sensed the undercurrent of respect, foreign to him where it threaded the prince’s words. Chanist embraced Lauresa again. Neither spoke. She would do anything to help her father, she’d said. She had been prepared to risk riding alone to bring him this news. In seven days time, the reach across which that help might come would be sundered by political expedience and a long road.

Lauresa had always been Chanist’s golden girl, it was said. For long years after Irdaign had been set aside, the taverns had rung with songs telling of the number of discrete political visits Chanist continued to pay to her new home at Aldac, though less frequently on those days the Princess High Gwannyn went abroad in the city. Three lives split once by marriage, now to be split again. Lauresa, Irdaign, Chanist himself. And for the first time, Chriani wondered whether the prince saw as much of Irdaign in her daughter as he did. He wondered at what pain the prince must feel.

To die alone is a thing we all face one day…

“The Order of Uissa,” Chanist said suddenly. Where he looked to Chriani, the strength in his voice had returned.