But first he needed a moment alone.
He stared beyond the rail of the balcony. It overlooked the Tigre River as it snaked to the east. The sun had nearly set behind the castillion, casting a great shadow across the dark green waters. A few stars shone to the east, along with the rise of a full moon.
Another Hunter’s Moon.
He tried to read portent in it, but failed.
The day’s knighting had left him with a heavy heart and an unsettled sense of doom. He could not shake it.
He ran a palm down the cloak that was clasped in gold at his shoulder, a new shadowcloak, and at his waist, a fine new blade. On his other hip, he carried Rivenscryr, sheathed. It did not bear its diamond as his new sword did. That was kept on a cord around Brant’s neck, his new Hand of blood. Only a handful of people knew the significance of that drab, dull stone, and that was the way it would remain.
Until Tylar understood it better.
A hand drifted to the gold hilt.
A son had designed it, and a father had used it to sunder a world.
He pondered if the world might not be better if he tossed the blade into the river. Perhaps the stone, too. He wondered for the hundredth time why the stone had come again into the lives of gods and men. It had been dropped like a pebble in a still lake, and those ripples continued to spread. He feared he had not yet seen the full extent of that rippling.
He pictured again that dread island, shaped like a rocky crown.
As they had departed by flitterskiff, Takaminara had claimed the island, welling up a churn of fiery rock, no longer held off by poisonous flames. Molten fingers rose out of the boiling waters to grasp the island and drag it burning back into the waters. The fiery conflagration could be seen far across the flooded forest as they retreated. It spewed steam and great gouts of fire high into the sky as morning slowly dawned.
Finally, a creak of a door drew him around, away from that dark night.
A slender shape slid through, closing the door behind her. “I thought that was you slipping away.”
“Delia?” A bit of the darkness around his heart lifted. He had known she had arrived, but commitments had pulled them both in different directions until now.
She stepped into the moonlight, dressed in a slim gown of the lightest green, a complement to her hazel eyes and dark hair. She smiled at him, shyly, as if this were the first time they met. She paused a few steps away, plainly fearful that she was intruding.
He motioned to the rail, but she remained where she was.
“Tylar…”
Frowning, he came forward, sensing some great consequence in her stance. “What is it?”
“I wanted a moment with you, but there’s been such chaos this day. All the retinues, all the Hands from various lands.”
“I know. I was hoping…once all the tumult died down. After the feast-”
She cut him off. “I’m leaving with the evening flippercraft.”
He stared at her, stunned.
“My father,” she said. “I don’t like leaving him alone for too long-mostly to protect the servants from him.” She offered a smile to blunt the sting of what she was saying.
“You’re going so soon?”
“I must.” She even backed a step to prove it.
He searched her face, her eyes, and discovered the deeper truth.
“At this moment of my life,” she explained, “there’s room for only one man in it. And that has to be my father. While in the past he might have shirked his responsibility to me, quite callously even, I won’t do the same. I won’t pay back bile with bile, or I’d be no better. He needs me. That is my place.” She glanced up at him. “For now.”
“Delia…”
She took a deep breath, and her voice somehow both softened yet held a harder edge. “I spent time with Kathryn. I’ve gotten to know her. Her heart and her will. She’s borne much pain, now and in the past. I won’t add to it.”
“Delia, Kathryn and I, we’ve already-”
“No, you haven’t, Tylar.”
He wanted to protest, but she fixed him with those eyes, as hard as Argent’s, as sharp as Kathryn’s. He could not lie. Not to her. And in turn, he knew, perhaps it was time he stopped lying to himself.
She nodded, as if reading his thoughts. She stepped forward, kissed him on the cheek, then backed away. “I must hurry to meet my maid.”
She turned, and in a shimmer of pale green she was gone.
But before the door closed, a hand shoved out and stopped it. “Now that wasn’t pretty,” Rogger said with a sad shake of his head as he entered. He smoked a pipe and was dressed in fine cuts, a gray cloak over black.
“Rogger, I don’t-”
The thief held up a hand to silence him as he crossed the balcony, expounding his wisdom. “Young women…they’re as fickle as they come. Pretty, I’ll grant you. But I’ll tell you, great-mothers and great-aunts-they have a head on their shoulders and know what to do with the rest of their bodies.”
Tylar shook his head. “I see someone discovered Chrismferry’s ale.”
“And its cooking wine.”
Tylar leaned on the balcony’s rail. “I heard you met with the Black Flaggers this morning.”
“Had to. Cook needed salt. A barter for the wine. And if you need salt, no better place than a pirate’s ship to get it. Scrape it off their hulls.”
Tylar looked at him in exasperation.
Rogger waved him off with his pipe. “I met with Krevan. That is a pirate in a sour mood. Even with that comely Calla doting on him because of his chopped arm.”
“Any word on the Wyr?”
“Not a word. Like they packed everything and took off.”
Tylar frowned. Here was a major source of his unease. When they had escaped back to land with the flitterskiff, they’d found the Wyr had folded up tents and vanished, leaving only Krevan and Calla. He wouldn’t have been bothered by their sudden departure, except for what he had found on the island.
The six songstresses.
All identical.
Wyr-born.
Had Wyrd Bennifren left knowing what Tylar would find? Had he sold the songstresses to the Cabal? Had he fled to avoid any uncomfortable questions of collusion with the Cabal? Or were there deeper plots here?
He remembered the slain songstresses, throats cut by their own hands.
Only afterward did Tylar realize the absence of any Cabalists on the island. In fact, he had seen no real evidence of their direct involvement at all.
Only the hand of the Wyr.
But what did that portend?
Tylar’s hand settled again to Rivenscryr. A cold chill crept through his bones. He wondered what hand had truly wielded this sword back on that island. And to what end it had been put. An act of mere mercy or something more dire?
Facing the Hunter’s Moon, Tylar knew only one thing with certainty. In this war between Myrillian gods and naethryn, there were as many shades of gray as there were gods. And until this war was over, he would keep Rivenscryr at his side.
A knock on the balcony door announced yet another visitor.
“Regular crossroads here,” Rogger mumbled.
The door opened to reveal a cloaked shadowknight. Kathryn dropped her masklin when she saw they were alone. Strands of music flowed in with her, a dance under way. “Tylar, I don’t think you can hole up here much longer. Gerrod can dance with only so many Hands.”
“Sounds like duty summons the weary,” Rogger said and headed toward the door. “And women and wine summon the bearded.”
The thief slipped past Kathryn and through the door, leaving a pall of pipe smoke behind.
Kathryn waved it from her face and stepped into the more open air of the balcony. “The feast won’t be much longer.”
Rogger left the door ajar when he departed.
Music flowed out to them. Kathryn joined him at the rail. Stars rose to fill the sky, reflected in the water below.