His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) (23 page)

Muryn’s voice was mild. “Forgive me, Lord Risto. But I
saved you the ride to the farm, I hope.”

“If you’d any sense you’d have been most of a day’s
journey from here by now.”

“You thought I’d run?”

“For your own sake, Muryn, I’d hoped you would. By right
I should order your death. I’d hoped to avoid that.”

Muryn said, “Lord Risto—”

“You led me on so I’d stand aside and do nothing while
Sarre raised this place in rebellion. All that talk of the peace. I
don’t deny the fault lies partly with me. I was fool enough to
listen to it, to believe it.”

Muryn was silent a moment.

“I didn’t know his intentions, Lord Risto,” he
said, finally. “I’d have warned you if I’d known.
But he told me nothing. I suppose he didn’t trust me after you
came. I didn’t learn of the night attack until two days ago,
the day he moved openly on the fort. I went to him then. I used every
means I could muster to try to dissuade him from continuing
it—reasoned with him, pleaded with him. I tried to use his
father’s memory against him, painful as that was. He wouldn’t
be dissuaded.”

“You expect me to believe you, Muryn?”

“I’ve no way to prove it to you, Lord Risto, but it’s
the truth.”

“Easy enough to say that now.”

“I made known my fear to you, Lord Risto. Mægo wanted
nothing but vengeance, and I feared for that. I’d have hidden
it from you if I believed in what he fought for. For his father’s
sake—I wanted to hide it from you. He was Rylan’s son.
For his father’s sake, Lord Risto, I wanted him to live.”

Tyren didn’t say anything. He remembered that night, of
course—remembered Muryn’s words. He should have been
willing to act on them then. He couldn’t blame the priest he
hadn’t done so.

Muryn seemed to take confidence from his silence. “Mægo
wouldn’t have been satisfied until every one of your people was
either dead or driven from Cesin, Lord Risto. That was never what
Rylan wanted. He believed there might be peace between us, believed
it might come under the Empire. Mægo didn’t understand
that, didn’t understand his father’s work—or
understood it well enough and rejected it anyway, I don’t know.
There was too much hatred in him for anything else than vengeance.
But you can right his wrong now.”

“This isn’t finished, Muryn.” He said it curtly,
the words cool as steel on his tongue. “I intend to find Magryn
and all the rest of his survivors—to reinforce the garrison
here and put down this rebellion once for all. You’re not going
to turn me aside from it. You may as well save your words.”

“I’m not asking you to abandon your duty, Lord Risto.”
Muryn spoke as though he were admonishing a stubborn child. “I
never asked you to do that. No, I came to ask you remember those in
the village who took no part in the fighting. There’ll be
harvest work soon, lord, and there are few to do it now. You’re
the authority here, Lord Risto. You’ve the power of the sword.
The decision is yours. But you’ll secure their loyalty more
firmly by helping these people now than by showing them force. And
isn’t that doing your duty for the Empire?”

Tyren laughed. The bitterness inside him turned it to a painful
choking in his throat.

“Those who took no part in the fighting. Which are those,
Muryn? You told me peace came of justice. I tried to show these
people justice. I tried to give them my trust. And my adjutant took a
knife in his heart for that. So which of these people do I trust as
peaceable, Muryn?”

“Don’t harbor anger towards Maryna, Lord Risto.”
Muryn’s voice betrayed weariness for the first time. “She
acted of necessity only, and she has suffered for it.”

“Necessity,” said Tyren. “Necessity, Muryn, to
knife an unarmed man, conceal his body, and flee?”

“The lieutenant accosted her alone,” Muryn said. “He
demanded word of the rebels from her, first. When she refused to
speak he assaulted her. She defended herself, Lord Risto. It was
nothing more or less than that.”

If someone had dealt him a closed-handed blow across the face it
wouldn’t have matched the staggering, blinding impact of those
words. He stared at Muryn without speaking. He couldn’t have
spoken if he’d tried. His tongue was thick, the roof of his
mouth ashy dry. His heart had gone still and heavy as a stone in that
moment.

“She came to us afterward,” Muryn went on. “She was
afraid to tell her family, and afraid for them at the same
time—afraid you’d take reprisals against them. But Mægo
was already moving on the fort by then. That’s how I learned of
the attacks, Lord Risto. She brought the word when she came.”

He was only half hearing the words.

“Tell me she’s unhurt,” he said. That was all that
mattered. Let her be unhurt, please God. If he’d known—how
that might have changed it, changed everything, if he’d known.
Too late for that now. But please, God, let her be unhurt.

“She’s unhurt,” Muryn said. “Physically, at
least. There are other kinds of hurts, Lord Risto. But she’s
safe now.”

“Mægo said nothing.”

“Mægo didn’t know. She didn’t tell him. What
would she have told him? That she’d been in the fort, that
she’d been tending your wounded? It would have angered him,
yes, to know she’d betrayed him like that—because he’d
have seen it as betrayal, no matter how right a thing it was to do,
no matter she was doing it for his sake. But it would have hurt him,
more, and she loved him too much for that.”

There was a sickness roiling inside him. He swallowed, closing his
eyes against the unsteadiness. “If I hadn’t forced her to
it—” he said.

“It wasn’t your fault, Lord Risto,” said Muryn.

“If I’d known,” he said. He couldn’t get the
rest of it out. He leaned forward a little on his elbows, cradling
his face in his hands. He wouldn’t have had the heart to fight,
if he’d known. He couldn’t have forced himself to it, as
he had, in the name of duty. No, he’d have given himself into
Mægo’s hands instead, let Mægo do as he wished,
because none of that would have mattered—as long as he’d
gotten the chance to beg her forgiveness on his knees first. None of
the rest of it would have mattered. But he hadn’t known.

Muryn said, quietly, “What good does it do, Lord Risto, to wish
it happened differently? That doesn’t make a difference now,
doesn’t change it.”

Anger loosed his tongue all at once. The words came spilling out in a
rush—everything he’d kept bound up tight and cold and
hard inside him since the night the storehouses had burned. No,
longer. Everything that had been at war inside him since Choiro
seemed to drain out of him in one long, breathless stream of words,
leaving him exhausted, broken, empty.

“It makes a difference. It makes a difference, Muryn. Mægo
Sarre is dead at my hands, and there was no reason for it. He had the
right. It should have been me dead if you wanted justice for these
people. Me, not Sarre. That makes a difference, Muryn.”

Only as he finished did he realize he’d shouted it—that
he’d stood up from the chair and leaned across the desk towards
the priest with his weight on his clenched fists. For a long,
horribly silent moment he and Muryn looked at each other. Neither of
them moved. Muryn’s face was white and hard, the muscles
contorted in a grimace. It was pain, Tyren realized—deep,
bitter, twisting pain. That bewildered him. It was like seeing behind
a mask. He’d never seen emotion writ so plain on Muryn’s
face before.

Muryn closed his eyes and opened them again and Tyren drew back a
little, drew himself up, stiffening. He’d forgotten about the
knee in that moment of anger and it was protesting, paining him now.
But he didn’t sit down. He forced himself to stay on his feet,
to meet Muryn’s eyes. He expected Muryn to respond with anger
of his own and he braced himself for that. But there was nothing
changed in Muryn’s voice. He spoke quietly.

“Do you think I don’t regret it? I, too, Lord Risto. I
wish there’d been another way—any other way, so long as
Mægo might have lived. I swore to Rylan Sarre as they took him
out to die I’d look after them, keep them safe. Myra and Mægo
both. I failed him on both counts. I regret that, Lord Risto, more
than you can know. But regret accomplishes nothing. It happened as it
did and we live with that.”

Tyren said, sharply, “How?”

“Give us justice, Lord Risto. Show the people of Souvin they
needn’t rise in arms against the Empire to see justice done.
You’ll win their loyalty, I promise you. They’ve had
enough of bloodshed.”

“Their loyalty will lie with Magryn now. Mægo
accomplished that much.”

“Show his people justice and he’ll have no cause to
further this rebellion. You can bring peace to this place, Lord
Risto. You were given this command for that reason, I’m sure of
it. You didn’t come to Souvin in vain.”

Tyren said nothing to that. He might have argued it further. The
bitterness and guilt lodged like a shard of glass behind his heart
urged him to argue it further. Better for Souvin, he wanted to say,
had his coming been in vain. Better for Souvin had Mægo lived.
Better for Souvin had he taken the offer and surrendered the fort and
returned to Rien in shame, or else died at Mægo’s hands.
But he said nothing. None of that mattered. All that mattered now was
that he was alive, and Mægo dead, and there was no changing it,
and no use wishing it were changed.

The knee was hurting fiercely now. He sat down slowly, drawing up the
chair to the desk again, sucking in his breath through shut teeth as
he did it. That movement seemed to jostle him from some daze. There
were sounds trickling into his ears all at once: shouted orders and
hammer blows and hoof beats from the yard, and footsteps going round
the atrium beyond the office door, and the wind rustling the leaves
of the laurel tree out in the garden. Ordinary sounds, all of them,
reassuring by simple virtue of their ordinariness. They bespoke
routine—the promise of busyness, of good, honest work. It was
an unexpected solace.

He lifted his chin and looked up to Muryn again. “You know
where the Nyri have gone?” he said.

Muryn hesitated. Then he bowed his head. “I know, Lord Risto.”

“Then you can carry a message to them for me. My full pardon,
my sworn word they may return in safety to their land.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“You can go, Muryn.”

Muryn bowed his head again. “Thank you, Lord Risto.”

“Muryn.”

“Yes, my lord?”

“You’ve my permission to remove Mægo’s body
for burial. If any man gives you trouble for it you may direct him to
me, do you understand?”

There was silence in the office a moment.

“Thank you, Lord Risto,” Muryn said, quietly.

XIII

The Vessy summer sped on quickly now. Ships came upriver to the lake
from Arondy, the southern port, and from the provinces of Sevarre and
Remys, on Cesin’s northeastern border, now the spring storms
were done. They brought olive oil and wine from Varen, salt and spice
and silk cloth from distant Modigne, where the western caravan roads
came together. For a while, with the busyness the ships brought,
Torien could forget the rest of it—could throw himself into
ledger work, because the ships carried the tax records and revenues
from all round the province, too, and those needed to be to Choiro
before winter set in.

Moien came to him in the study one afternoon. “There’s a
messenger come up from the harbor,” he said. “Alluin
Senna’s aboard the ship that just made berth.”

Torien looked up. “Alluin’s here?”

“Looking for a night’s accommodation, his man says.”

“The fool,” said Torien. “He knows he’s
welcome here.”

But there was the faint gray shadow of doubt lying over him as he
waited in the yard for Senna to ride in. Alluin Senna was a legate
now, and powerful in the Senate, and it had been nearly ten years
since Torien had seen him last. A long time, and longer still since
they’d served together at Tasso. The years and the Choiro life
could change a man—and did, more often than not.

Senna had brought only a small retinue with him: four spear-men as
bodyguards, two slaves to attend the gear and horses. Otherwise he
was alone. He dismounted before the steps at the doors of the house
and gave his horse’s reins to a stable-boy who came running.
Torien stood at the bottom of the steps, Moien alongside him. He and
Senna faced each other a long, silent moment. Senna hadn’t
changed much in appearance, at least: skin still darkly browned from
the Tasso sun, the long, thin scar left by a glancing javelin head
still furrowing his brow over the right eye.

Torien spoke, finally. “It’s been too long, Alluin.”

Senna smiled. “Not quite ten years since the last time,”
he said. “It might have been less, if you didn’t keep
yourself secluded away from Choiro as you do. Not all of us have that
luxury.” His eyes went over to Moien. “You’re still
with him, Sere?”

“The pay’s better than army pay,” said Moien. “It’s
good to see you again, Lord Senna.”

They talked over a jug of wine in the garden room later, he and Senna
at the table, Moien in the doorway, leaning easily against the jamb.

“I didn’t know you were going to be in Vessy, Alluin,”
Torien said. “I’d have sent a fitting invitation,
otherwise—prepared a little better for your coming.”

“I travel this way deliberately,” said Senna. “The
Senate has me inspecting the provincial garrisons from time to time.
I find it amusing to come to them unexpectedly—see the real
truth of the matter before they’ve the chance to hide it away
behind dinners and decorum. I’ve just sailed from Sevarre. I’ll
be heading overland to Rien next, Choiro after that. Home, finally.
I’ve been wandering the Empire seven months now.”

“You know the Rien commander?”

“Ruso? I know of him. I’ve never met him. We come of
different schools, he and you and I.” Senna smiled. “He
was busy courting the favor of the Marri while we were still
weathering sandstorms at Tasso.”