Barnot did his drunken best to show the equally inebriated Val some basic cuts and guards, using some long pieces of kindling he’d taken from the log bucket by the fire. He wasn’t doing a very good job, but Val was enjoying himself, and the lad deserved a bit of fun.
Gill filled his glass again. They’d finished the brandy. He was drinking wine. It wasn’t very good wine, but he was long past caring. He knocked it back and filled the glass again. The thought of Villerauvais and all the people who had died there created a pain within him that felt worse than the wound to his shoulder. He drank again. It seemed no amount of booze would ease the hurt of the memory of Villerauvais.
“I’m sorry too,” Gill said, not trying to hide the slurring anymore. “I should have done more. If I’d gotten to that bastard beast a day or two sooner. They’d all still live.
“Men, women, children. People just trying to scratch a living out of the soil. All dead. For no good reason.”
“Is there ever a good reason?” François said.
Gill shrugged. Maybe. There were people out there who deserved to die. Evil bastards who wanted to shape the world in line with their own twisted ideas. Amaury, for instance. His eyelids were heavy. Too heavy. He let them rest for a moment. His head lolled forward and sleep took him.
Barnot had been drinking water for hours. The young lad had passed out early enough, but the captain seemed to have hollow legs. He pretended to be asleep on the bar as Gill grew drunker, and his words lazier, until at last his head had thudded onto the table. Their new friend, François, had chuckled, moved Gill into a more comfortable position, then left the tavern.
Barnot had waited a while longer, until he was sure he was the only man awake. He stepped over Val, who was lying on the floor, then tiptoed over to Gill, although he reckoned a bull could have stampeded through the taproom and not woken someone who had put away as much as Gill had. He had hesitated then. It had felt good to be back with the captain, fighting at his side. It reminded him of who he used to be. Before he had turned to the seed to drown out all the screams. Seeing that much killing robbed a man of his soul. You had to fill the emptiness with something. Dream-seed smoke had seemed like the thing—just the odd time at first, when the screams in the night were bad.
He didn’t know when “the odd time” became every day. Then the tavern was gone. His wife was gone. His life was gone. For a moment this evening, he’d had it all back, and it had felt better than the freshest seed. Now what was he to do? The king had called on him, given him a chance at living again. The Prince Bishop’s healer had taken all the rot out of his body—but the captain was his friend, had saved his life half a hundred times, as he had done for Gill. Betray his friend and do his duty, or betray his king? The answer was simple for an old soldier. It was the same one he had given with blood, sweat, and tears, every time it had been asked of him.
Barnot patted Gill down and quickly found the object the king needed, an odd-looking little cup. He studied it in his hand a moment, and wondered how so small a thing could be so important to such powerful men. Barnot knew there was bad blood between Gill and the king, even though it had been the king’s father who’d done Gill the wrong. Still, Gill lived by the same rules as Barnot, and you never turned your back when the king called on you. As bad as he felt doing what he was doing, Barnot could take some solace in the fact that Gill had made the wrong choice.
He put his cloak on, gave his sleeping friend a salute, and went outside. He had been told that there would be a courier waiting to take the Cup back to Mirabay, but did not know who that would be.
No sooner had he stepped outside of the tavern than a voice whispered from the shadows.
“Do you have it?”
The voice was harsh and strange-sounding. A woman’s? That he had not noticed anyone watching him was alarming to a man who had spent much of his life in the lands of men who wanted to kill him.
Barnot felt like an idiot for what he was about to say, but sometimes such things were necessary. “The swallows flew south early this year.”
“A sure sign of autumn snow,” the voice replied.
“Yes,” Barnot said. “I have it.”
It saddened him that the stories of Gill’s alcoholism were true. He had been as fine a captain as a soldier could ask for. Competent, and never careless with his men’s lives. Although Barnot told himself he had reason for what he was doing—the good of the nation, the will of the king, always a good soldier’s priority—he wasn’t able to shake the filthy feeling it left him with. He had betrayed one of the few men still alive he could count on, and for what? A purse of gold, the king’s favour, and freedom from the seed?
His bargain was struck, and there was no turning back now.
A figure emerged from the shadows. A woman, as he’d thought.
“The Prince Bishop sent you?”
“No more talk,” she said. “Give me the item and I’ll be on my way.”
Barnot nodded and took the odd little cup out of his tunic. He had never held Telastrian steel before. It was pretty to look at and pleasant to the touch, and he knew it was worth a fortune, but it seemed like a lot of fuss over something so small. Still, it was never a soldier’s place to ask questions, and he supposed this was as close as he had come to being a soldier for a very long time.
The woman took the little bowl and dropped it into a leather bag, which she then tucked into her cloak.
“I was instructed to convey our employer’s gratitude for your assistance,” she said.
By the gods, he thought, she’s fast. The blade was in and out of his chest before he had even realised she had one in her hand. She was good too. A killing strike so swiftly executed, and in the dark. What kind of king had a loyal, faithful servant killed for carrying out his orders? He should never have betrayed Gill. The gods were punishing him for his lack of fidelity to a friend. No soldier should let his mates down. It was a bitter thought to die with.
CHAPTER 29
Solène felt trepidatious going into the archive once again. She had spent the previous night working with dal Drezony, disciplining her thoughts by applying all she had learned about herself. With her fears and insecurities drawn into the open and their origins understood, it was much easier to stop them from intruding when she was trying to maintain focus. Whether that would still be the case when she was under extreme stress, she didn’t know. Nonetheless, it felt like she had passed over a threshold and taken hold of a set of controls that she hadn’t even known had existed before. There was still much she needed to learn and practise, but thanks to her new awareness, she was no longer so afraid of the power that resided within her.
Her biggest trouble that morning was staying awake. She’d been using modest amounts of magic all night and had not slept. A quick refresh from one of the Order’s physicians had helped for a time, but it had worn off. Doing something that required physical activity would have been easier—using magic just whittled away at what little energy she had left.
While her previous search of the archive had been aided by magic, it had been a simple matter of discovery, with little expected of her. This one was not. She needed to refine her search methods, and quickly. If nothing else, this would be a useful test of her new approach to magic, safe in the confines of the subterranean archive with its limited Fount and no one trying to kill her.
The Prince Bishop had left some notes for her, but there was little that he had not already told her—an ancient temple hidden somewhere in Mirabaya, visited by Amatus around the time he gained the magical power that would change the world. The Cup came from there. The temple might guide them in its use; it might unlock secrets they could not even imagine. It seemed to Solène that the Prince Bishop was grasping at whatever new magical trinket came across his path. She realised how much pressure he must be under, and how appealing anything that could relieve that might be. That didn’t change the fact that she didn’t trust him.