After that they rode without speaking through streets that were slowly darkening with the coming night. Squares of yellow light appeared in the windows of the houses that lined the streets, but the silence was heavy and R’shiel could not feel the welcoming touch of the Citadel as she had when she arrived the last time.
It was as if the massive spirit of the Citadel had shrivelled and died—or perhaps he had simply retreated into hiding in the face of the Karien blight that swarmed through him like flies over a dying carcass.
Garet Warner opened the door to the Lord Defender’s office and was greeted by a blast of warm air. Someone must have thought to light the fire, he thought, although he was a little surprised. With the Lord Defender in “protective confinement” as the Kariens euphemistically referred to his incarceration, Garet used the office rarely, and he had told nobody of his intention to come here this morning.
He pushed the door shut and glanced around, but other than the blazing fire in the small hearth, the room was unchanged since his last visit. The heavy carved desk took up a great deal of space, and the comfortable chair behind it smelled faintly of the saddle soap used to keep the leather supple. The array of Fardohnyan and Hythrun weapons Jenga had collected over the years still hung over the mantle. The aura of the man permeated the room. It was as if he had just stepped out a moment ago and was due back any minute.
But perhaps it wasn’t completely unchanged; the pile of unattended paperwork had grown considerably. Garet groaned as he looked at it. He had his own work
to do. He didn’t need the added responsibility of the Lord Defender’s administrative tasks.
Most of the papers would be fairly straightforward. Requests for transfers, for leave, for permission to marry, for a score of other mundane, everyday matters that required the Lord Defender’s approval. But there would be the odd report that needed investigation, disciplinary matters that could not be settled with a mere stroke of a pen—most of them a direct result of the conflicts that arose frequently between the Defenders and the Karien invaders.
There would be orders from the First Sister, too.
Garet was well aware that even though signed by Joyhinia Tenragan, the orders were no more from her than they had been when she was on the northern border, a babbling idiot who would sign anything put in front of her. These orders came from Squire Mathen, and if he couched them in a manner easily digestible to the Medalonians, they were no less the orders of his Karien masters.
He moved towards the desk and then froze as the feeling he was no longer alone in the room suddenly overwhelmed him.
“Garet.”
He started and turned at the voice. R’shiel stood close behind him. She looked much better than when he’d last seen her. He was glad to see her hair had grown out a little and now framed her face in dark red curls. But there was something else different about her: a confidence that he had not seen before. He wondered how she had
escaped the Kariens, and why, having managed that remarkable feat, she had so foolishly returned to the Citadel. Standing behind her, wearing an air of lethal calm, was the Harshini half-breed, Brakandaran.
“R’shiel! Brak! How did the two of you…? Never mind, I’d rather not know.”
He composed himself and walked around Lord Jenga’s desk before he looked at them again. They were wearing the close fitting and supple Harshini leathers, which outlined their statuesque bodies, giving a hint of the natural grace and athletic ability that was part of their alien heritage.
“What are you doing here?”
“We have come to put things right,” R’shiel told him.
“And how do you plan to do that?”
“With your help.”
Her declaration didn’t surprise him. “I suppose you think I owe you something, for not supporting you at the Gathering?”
“You don’t owe me anything, Garet. But as you said when you slipped me your knife, you can’t help Medalon from a prison cell.”
“I’m not in a prison cell.”
“I used your knife to kill the Karien Crown Prince. I imagine a prison cell will be the least of your worries if the Kariens learn that.”
Garet was too experienced to let his apprehension show. “
You
killed the Karien Crown Prince? Founders, R’shiel, when you set out to cause trouble, you don’t mess about, do you?”
A small smile flickered over her lips. “Wait until you hear the rest of it.”
He shook his head. “Thanks, but I’d rather not…”
“No!” she cut in. “That is not an option any longer, Garet. You must decide. You are with us or against us. There is no more sitting on the fence.”
Garet sank down into the Lord Defender’s chair—more to give himself time to think than through any real need to take the weight off his feet. He knew about R’shiel. Knew of her Harshini parentage and her status as their long awaited demon child, but until this moment it had never truly occurred to him that she might actually be as powerful as the pagans believed.
“And if I choose not to follow you?” he asked, wondering how determined she was.
“Then I will remove you from the equation.”
“You’d kill me?”
“I killed a Karien Prince. You don’t think a mere Defender is going to cause me any grief?”
He placed his hands palm down on the desk and looked at her closely. Her whole being radiated a kind of leashed power, straining to be set free.
“So that’s it? Join you or die?”
“Pretty much,” she agreed with a shrug.
“You leave me little choice.”
“Then your answer is yes?”
He nodded cautiously.
In two steps she was across the room. She slammed her hands down over his on the desk and glared at him. “Then swear it!”
Garet opened his mouth to say what she wanted to hear, but the words wouldn’t come. She was doing something to him, something that would not permit him to lie. With a sudden and terrifying flash of clarity, he knew that if he took this oath he would
belong to her, body and soul, until he died, and perhaps even after, if one believed the pagans.
“Swear it, Garet,” she whispered. Her face was close to his, her eyes boring through him as though she could read every dark, unsavoury secret he kept hidden in the furthermost recesses of his mind. She wasn’t using magic on him, her eyes had not turned black, but whatever it was, he found her impossible to deny.
“I’m yours, R’shiel.”
She studied him for a moment and then stood back. As soon as she released him, Garet slumped back in his chair, light-headed. He closed his eyes for a moment, hoping that when he opened them again, the room would have stopped spinning.
“Sorry, Garet, but I had to be sure.”
He looked up at her, wondering what he had done. It took a moment for him to recover enough to speak.
“So, now what?”
“First, we have to stop the Kariens from hanging Tarja,” Brak remarked, as if it was no more trouble than squashing a flea.
“You know they’re blaming him for killing Cratyn, don’t you?”
“Well, they can hardly admit the demon child did it. When is his trial?”
“Trial? What trial? The Kariens aren’t big on the natural course of justice, Brak. Tarja’s scheduled to be hanged next Restday. In the amphitheatre so everyone can come and watch.”
“Then we have to put a stop to it,” R’shiel declared. “Where’s Jenga? Have they killed him too?”
“Not yet. Actually, they haven’t interfered too much with the Defenders. Most of their people don’t speak a word of Medalonian so they need us. There’d be a mutiny if they tried to kill the Lord Defender and they know it. He’s under arrest. They’re holding him in the cells behind the Headquarters Building, and it’s the Kariens who are guarding him, not our people.”
“Then we have to release him, too.”
“How? Your last attempt at breaking somebody out of the Citadel was spectacularly unsuccessful, as I recall.”
R’shiel frowned at the reminder. “I intend to plan this a little better. If we’re going to do something about the Kariens, the first thing we have to do is get rid of Joyhinia, and replace her with a First Sister who is on Medalon’s side, rather than her own, then…”
“Who are you planning to put in power? Mahina’s dead.”
“I know. I saw the head over the gate.”
“Whose idea was that?” Brak asked.
“The First Sister’s.”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.” R’shiel’s eyes hardened as she spoke, something he didn’t think was possible. Then she shook off whatever it was that caused such hatred to flare in her and shrugged. “I was thinking of Harith.”
Garet shrugged. Harith wasn’t popular. But she was, of all the Quorum members, perhaps the one who cared most about Medalon.
“Assuming you manage that, then what?”
“I need to find the Harshini archives. And I’m going to kill Loclon.”
“Loclon? What’s he got to do with this? Besides, he’s listed as a deserter. Nobody has seen him since the night of the last Gathering.”
R’shiel pulled the wooden chair on the other side of the desk across the rug and sat down facing him. “Joyhinia didn’t recover, Garet. The Karien priests simply borrowed another mind and put it in her body. That’s not Joyhinia issuing the Kariens orders. It’s Loclon.”
The whole idea was too bizarre for Garet to take in. “That’s absurd…it’s not possible…”
“Of course it’s possible,” Brak said. “You’re dealing with powers you refuse to acknowledge, Commandant, but that doesn’t make them any less real. Or powerful.”
“Perhaps she simply recovered…”
“Tarja destroyed her wit. There is no way Joyhinia could have returned.”
“But Loclon? How did he…?”
“It doesn’t matter,” R’shiel insisted. “All that matters is that we do something about it, about everything—Loclon, the Kariens, all of it. I can’t do anything about finding the answers I need until they’ve been taken care of.”
“Did you ride in here with your eyes shut, R’shiel?”
“I never said I thought it was going to be easy, Garet,” she said. “But it is necessary.”
The commandant nodded slowly. “Very well. But if you want me to cooperate, then I ask…no I demand…two things.”
“You’re not in a position to demand anything, Garet.”
“Nevertheless, I will demand them. If you don’t wish to heed me, then I’ll just throw myself on my sword now, and save the Kariens the trouble of hanging me.”
R’shiel obviously meant to object, but Brak cut in before she could say anything. “What do you want, Commandant?”
“First, I want your promise that you will listen to me. I haven’t been sitting here idly while the Kariens overrun Medalon. I have the men we need in the places we need them and the authority to mobilise them. But if we’re to do this successfully, then timing is critical. I don’t want anyone—specifically you, R’shiel—going off on a tangent because of some noble pagan purpose I don’t give a damn about and ruining it for the rest of us. I don’t care about your destiny, the Harshini or the rebels. I don’t even want to know what you’re looking for in the archives. Is that clear?”
“I think that’s fair. And the second thing?” Brak asked before R’shiel could get a word in.
“I want to disband the Sisterhood.”
They both stared at him.
“Disband the Sisterhood? Why?”
“I’m surprised you of all people have to ask, R’shiel. It’s a corrupt and destructive form of government. They may have started out with the right intentions, but what drives them now is nothing more than the quest for personal power. The Sisters of the Blade that led us into this mess. When we take the Citadel, we take the power out of the hands of the Sisterhood and place it with the Defenders.”
“So you want to replace one form of oppressive rule with another?” Brak asked wryly.
“No. Eventually, we’ll hold elections. The people of Medalon should be allowed to vote for who they want to lead them, not leave the choice to a handful of women who are trained from childhood to believe they are better than everybody else. We’ll put Jenga in charge until we’ve cleared out the Kariens and we can organise a vote. He has enough honour to see that it’s done properly.”
R’shiel gazed at him suspiciously. “How long have you been planning this, Garet?”
“The destruction of the Sisterhood? Since the day I learnt of the burning of a small village in the Sanctuary Mountains called Haven,” he told her.
For a moment she said nothing.
“You come from Haven.” It was more a statement of fact than a question; a sudden acceptance of his motives, an understanding of what drove him. He felt as if, on some unconscious level, she had forgiven him.
“Your real family was killed in that raid, R’shiel. So were mine.”
“I never knew you were Mountain Folk.”
“Why should you? I’ve been a Defender for as long as you’ve known me.”
“Then you’ve known all along who I really was?”
He shook his head. “You were born long after I left Haven. But I knew your mother, J’nel. And B’thrim, her sister.”
“What were they like?”
He smiled, partly in remembrance, and partly because of the expression on R’shiel’s face. For all her deeds, for all her awesome power, there was still a part of the child she had been lurking deep inside her, desperate for reassurance.
“B’thrim I remember as being a rather large, over-protective woman who would chase us with a skinning knife if ever she caught us robbing her traps in the woods. J’nel was the complete opposite. She was small and fragile and wild. We used to call her the Snow Child. She was never happier than when she was lost in the woods. As a boy, I was part of more than one search party sent to find her. She was the sort of person who could coax wild rabbits to sit on her lap. I never knew anyone like her. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that she caught the eye of a Harshini king.”
R’shiel closed her eyes for a moment and he exchanged a look with Brak.
“When did you leave Haven?” Brak asked.
“I was fourteen. The life of a woodcutter didn’t particularly appeal to me so I ran away to Testra. That’s when I discovered that knowing how to live off the land in no way prepared one for living in a city. I was caught stealing food by a Defender lieutenant. He gave me the choice to join up or be sent to the Grimfield. So I joined the Defenders. The lieutenant put in a good word for me and I was accepted into the Cadets. I’ve not been back to Haven since.”
“You were lucky to meet someone so generous,” Brak remarked.
Garet nodded. “I was. And I still owe him. His name was Palin Jenga.”
R’shiel’s eyes opened wide. “Then you have a debt to pay, as well as vengeance to seek.”
He nodded. “Which is why I insist on both my demands being met. I don’t intend to let your hidden
agenda ruin mine. I will never have another chance at this. Do we have a deal?”