His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) (27 page)

XV

It took him some time, when he woke, to determine where he was,
because the light was harshly white and his head was spinning. There
was stiffness in his limbs, a thick, heavy pressure behind his eyes.
Pain seared through him when he tried to move. He squeezed his eyes
briefly shut and swore through closed teeth—remembered the
wound then. He lay there carefully motionless, looking up at a low
stone ceiling, while the rest of it trickled slowly back: Senna and
Ruso, in Ruso’s office; Luchian, afterward. Muryn.

He was lying on his back on a thin woven-reed mat, bare stone walls
round him, a low iron-bound wooden door set in the wall across from
him. One of the rooms in the guard-house back at the Rien fort, he
supposed. A water jug sat against the wall at the foot of the mat, a
necessary pot in the far corner. Otherwise the room was empty. From
the light coming through the slit in the wall above him he judged it
was early afternoon, but he’d no way of knowing how many days
had passed. The wound had been treated, bandaged. He might have been
lying here a week.

There were booted footfalls outside the iron-bound door after a
while—low voices, the jangling of keys. He thought he
recognized one of the voices though he couldn’t immediately
place it. The door came open and he saw the black and silver of a
Guard uniform and his first, muddled thought was that it was Luchian
Marro. Then he saw the face more clearly: gray eyes, not blue.

He said, thickly, dazedly, “Aino.”

Aino said, “So you’re awake.”

He tried to push himself up on one elbow. He gave it up after a
moment and lay back. “How long has it—how long have I—”

“Lieutenant Seian’s troop found you two nights ago, found
you on the road about fifteen miles outside the city. I was surprised
you’d made it so far, with that wound. Your horse was ruined.”

“Luchian.”

“Commander Marro’s alive. He’ll recover readily
enough, provided there’s no infection. If the blade had gone
much higher he wouldn’t be so lucky.”

Tyren ran his eyes over the black uniform tunic, the silver unit
badges clasped on the shoulder-straps of Aino’s black-lacquered
cuirass.

“You’re Cesino blood,” he said, unsteadily.

Aino raised his eyebrows a little. He pushed the door shut behind
him. He didn’t say anything.

Tyren said, “I don’t understand.”

Aino crouched down on his heels a short way from the mat. “How
I came to be in the Guard, you mean? They find me useful. Mostly for
that reason—no one expects a Cesino to be a Guardsman.”
He smiled.

“You don’t have the scar.”

“I haven’t sworn the oath. Not yet. I was supposed to
prove myself first. Souvin was my chance.”

“It was you, then. How Luchian knew.”

“Of the priest, yes.”

Tyren lifted his right hand and pressed the fingers against his
eyelids, struggling to clear the dizziness from his head, to pin his
whirling thoughts down.

“Listen to me, Aino. You’ve no reason to harm him.
Luchian has what he wants now. He needed something to hold against me
and he has it now. That’s all he wants, all that matters to
him. There’s no reason to harm the priest. You know that,
Aino.” He was too sick-hearted to care he was begging. “Please,
Aino. You know he’s innocent.”

Aino brought his chin up. “There’s nothing I can do now,
Risto. Lieutenant Seian took the word to Souvin yesterday morning.”

The words died to ashes on his tongue. “No.”

“I’m sorry,” said Aino.

He said, “The family?”

Aino said nothing.

Anger engulfed him suddenly—furious black anger burning in him,
closing round his throat like strangling fingers.

“You bastard. Son of a bitch, I wish to God I’d known it
was you.”

Aino said, quietly, “It’s not what I wanted, Risto.”

“Not until I had this victory, is that it? Until I had Senna’s
favor. Is that it, Aino? No reason except Luchian had his grudge
against me. It doesn’t matter the priest was innocent.”

Aino turned his face away. He got to his feet.

“You’ve been charged with treason,” he said.
“You’ll be held here until the court martial. Time enough
for you to heal—for both of you to heal.”

He said, through shut teeth, “Let me speak with Senna.”

“The legate won’t be any help to you now. He’s
likewise under arrest for treason.”

That caught him off-guard. He was silent a moment, turning it over in
his mind, struggling to make sense of it. “Why?”

“He tried to defend you to Ruso. He was hoping to get Ruso on
his side, turn this whole thing into a squabble between army and
Guard. Stupid, of course. Ruso would never risk antagonizing the
Guard. He’s too pragmatic for that. Far more profitable for him
to turn Senna over to us, he knew that. Berion’s been trying to
get rid of Alluin Senna for years.”

“He’s a legate, Aino. You can do nothing to him here.”

“They’ve already taken him to Choiro for his examination.
You, meanwhile—you’re still under Ruso’s
jurisdiction, as an army officer. Though if the Rien court martial
finds you guilty no doubt they’ll send you to Choiro for your
execution—make an example of you.”

Tyren laughed. “Ruso’s jurisdiction. Why bother with the
trial? Ruso belongs to the Marri, you know that well as I do.”

Aino glanced back to him without saying anything. He rapped twice
with his knuckles on the shut door and went out wordlessly when the
guard opened it. In the silence that followed Tyren’s anger ran
cold. He lay there with his hands cupped over his face, his eyes
shut, swallowing to ease the thickness in his throat. A half-formed
prayer floated in his head and he repeated the jumbled words over and
over, desperately, until all meaning had been stripped from them: let
it have been quick, at least, for the woman’s sake—please,
God. For Senna there was that hope: a swift examination, a quick,
quiet, honorable death to quell the Senate’s murmuring. But for
Muryn—O threefold God, at least let it have been quick.

Later they sent a troop physician to change the dressing on the wound
and wrap it up again with fresh bandages. Apart from that he was let
alone. He didn’t sleep. The pain from the wound ran through him
constantly, and there was the deeper pain inside him, the sickness in
his heart. He ignored the meal they brought him in the morning though
hunger had coiled tight and heavy in the pit of his stomach. He
didn’t move from the mat, just lay there and looked up at the
stone ceiling, watching the light grow bright and then fade as the
hours passed, trying not to think.

Aino came again at the time of the evening meal. He brought barley
bread and hard cheese and raisins wrapped in a cloth, fresh water and
a skin of wine.

“You should eat, Risto,” he said. “They tell me you
lost a fair amount of blood.”

Tyren shook his head, wordlessly.

“At least drink something. The wine will do you good.”

“No.”

Aino looked at him in silence a while. Then he shrugged, and set down
the cloth by the mat, the wine and water next to it, and he turned to
go.

Tyren said, “Aino.”

Aino paused, looking back to him.

“It was your work. The old commander’s death in the
spring. Before I took the command.”

Aino didn’t answer right away. His eyes had sharpened,
narrowing a little; his mouth had tightened into a thin line.
Abruptly he lifted his shoulders again.

“It was the simplest way. Transferring him would have required
too much explanation, attracted too much attention in Vione, raised
too many questions. As it was—it was a hard winter, there’d
been sickness in the village. It was explanation enough.”

“So you were murderer as well as informer.”

“As the Empire has need of me,” Aino said. There was an
odd note in his voice—amusement or mockery, Tyren couldn’t
tell.

Tyren said, “The Empire or the Marri?”

“It doesn’t make a difference. You think Berion didn’t
know you’d been sent to Souvin?”

“You let them use you like that.”

Aino spoke blandly now. “I followed my orders. As any soldier
would have done. As you’d have done.”

“No.”

“You did what you did in Souvin because it was your duty.
Against your own better judgment, sometimes. But it was your duty and
you did it without question.”

He shook his head. “Not without question. I had reason, Aino.”

“And you think I had not?”

“There was no reason for Muryn’s death. Only that Luchian
wanted his revenge, no other reason.”

“Maybe not to your mind. But I’ve other considerations
than the glory and virtue of the Empire. I was never fool enough to
believe in that lie, Risto—never had the comfort of that lie
the way your kind do.”

He laughed in his throat, harshly. “Other considerations. So
they bought you too.”

“I don’t barter my loyalty,” said Aino.

“What was it, then? Some old grudge between your kin and mine?
You’re Tarien Varro come again in the flesh, maybe?”

“Call it blood loyalty if you want,” said Aino. “Though
that wouldn’t be the full truth of it. I’ve my own score
to settle with Lucho Marro.”

Tyren looked over to him, studied him a while, carefully—studied
his face, as a thought took hold all at once in his mind. The sudden
certainty twisted in his gut like a knife-blade. It was a hard,
proud, dark face, enough like Luchian’s he’d mistaken it
earlier. Yes, the resemblance was close enough, once you knew—close
enough to make him wonder he hadn’t seen it from the first,
hadn’t questioned it. But he’d only ever thought of Aino
as Cesino-blood.

“You’re his brother. Luchian’s brother.”

A tight smile touched one corner of Aino’s mouth.
“Half-brother,” he said.

“Your mother was Cesino?”

“Yes.”

“Luchian knows?”

“He knows. My father—” Aino smiled again. “I
doubt my lord father would know me as his if I stood before him. My
mother was—inconsequential to him, you might say. But Luchian
knows. For a while now. Since Vione. We were in the same column once
Mureno transferred him out of yours. He’s the one who
recommended me for the Guard.”

“And you’re loyal to him.”

“If that’s the word you want to use.”

“What’s he ever done to earn it, Aino? You know what he
thinks of Cesino blood.”

“As you said, Risto, that day we rode into the Outland—Cesino,
Vareno. It means nothing to me. I belong to neither world.”

“He had his uses for you in Souvin. That’s the only
reason, Aino. You owe him nothing. You think he’ll be loyal to
you once he decides your uses are spent? You think he thinks of you
as kin?”

There was a tightness in Aino’s voice. It was the nearest he’d
come to anger. “My concern, Risto, not yours. Don’t
delude yourself you know everything of the matter.”

Tyren made no reply to that. He’d lost the inclination to argue
it, suddenly. Absurd to argue it further. There was no need to waste
words on this. Let Aino give his loyalty and his life to the Marri,
let them do with it as they wished. What did it matter to him?

Aino had turned again to go. “You should eat,” he said.

XVI

Torien woke to the drumming of hoof beats out in the yard, muffled
shouts. There was dull red torch-light coming in through the slats of
the window-shutters, flickering over the walls of the bedchamber,
startling away the night shadows, and for those first dazed moments
of wakefulness the old battle readiness was clenched up tight inside
him. He was back at Tasso, waking to another night raid, and his
first thought was for his sword, his next for the horse lines. Then
clarity cooled his head. He could sense Chæla beside him still
fast asleep, could hear the calm, steady rhythm of her breathing. The
tightness went out of his muscles quickly as it had come. No need for
that anymore. Tasso was long years ago and the battles were a
different sort now.

He got up. He took a tunic from the chest beside the bed, dressing
quietly so as not to wake Chæla. Then he took down his cape
from where it hung by the anteroom doorway and went out into the
corridor, round the atrium, out through the great double-doors to the
yard steps. Moien was already there on the steps, buckling on his
sword-belt.

There was a horseman coming up the gravel path from the gate, some of
the gate guards running along quickly behind him. Torien could see
the horse was spent; sweat stood out thick and white on its flanks,
glistening in the torch-light, and it dropped its head low, snorting,
as the rider reined up. The rider himself was slumped forward in the
saddle. When he dismounted he went down onto his knees from sheer
exhaustion, struggling to gather the breath to speak. There was blood
running freely from a long gash splitting his right arm above the
elbow. Moien knelt hurriedly beside him, slid an arm across his
shoulders to hold him up. Torien recognized him when he lifted his
head. He’d been among Senna’s spear-men.

“Lord Risto,” he said, with effort. “I bring word
from Rien, from the legate Senna.”

“What happened?”

The man shook his head, tightly. He stammered through clenched teeth
as he spoke. “Let me—let me speak with you alone, Lord
Risto.”

“My study,” Torien said to Moien. “Help him up.”

In the study Senna’s man rested in the chair before the desk,
drinking heavily from the water jug Torien brought him, letting Moien
bind up his wounded arm with bandage cloth. When he’d strength
enough to speak again he said, “The legate’s been
arrested for treason, Lord Risto.”

Torien said, “Marro wouldn’t dare.”

“That isn’t all, lord. They’ve arrested your son,
too. He’s to go before a court martial.”

That took the words from him.

He said finally, roughly, “Why?”

“He attempted to prevent the Guard Commander—the young
lord Marro—from killing a priest. A Cesino priest, Lord Risto,
in Souvin. I don’t know everything of the story, lord. But they
arrested him for that, arrested Lord Senna for trying to defend him.
The legate’s being taken to Choiro now to go before the
Emperor. I wouldn’t have left him, Lord Risto, but he wished me
to bring the word to you. He trusted that to me before they took
him.”