She sensed there was something forced about the captain’s ire, his curt treatment of the injured crewmen evidence of an already scant regard. “He’d better,” he growled but said no more, stomping off to berate the helmsman for letting the bow wander too far from the compass.
She found Iltis being nursed by Murel in the hold, the girl’s slender hands dabbing a reddened cloth to his bruises. Lyrna said nothing but pressed a kiss onto his stubbled head. It was gone in an instant, but she fancied she saw a smile twitch on his lips before he growled and turned away.
It became her habit to linger above as night fell. Orena and Murel had a tendency to jabber away for hours until sleep claimed them, usually about matters of the meanest consequence. Lyrna suspected there was a deliberate shallowness to their conversation, an avoidance of recent trauma in talk of past loves and girlhood escapades, a trauma she hadn’t fully shared thanks to her burns. She didn’t begrudge them their distractions but found she needed the comparative quiet of the foredeck to continue the ceaseless examination of evidence.
At first all contemplation had been coloured by the events in the throne room, a central horror that commanded her every thought, birthing uncomfortable conclusions. A plan years in the making, she decided. To prepare such a perfect assassin. And who would have thought Al Telnar would die a hero? She experienced a momentary shame at her many clipped dismissals of the lord’s approaches over the years. Clearly he had been a better man than she judged him, braving Dark fire to save her without care for his own life. But, hero or not, she couldn’t help but conclude he would still have made a terrible husband.
She began to realise concentration on a single event was obstructing the consideration of other evidence. She recalled a phrase from The Wisdoms of Reltak: “Beware the seduction of the quick conclusion. Do not indulge in the answer you desire until you know all you need to know.”
Subduing a city the size of Varinshold would require an army of thousands, she reasoned. Even with Realm Guard absent . . . The Realm Guard, marching forth with the invasion only days away. A case of remarkable ill fortune brought about by the attack on the Tower Lord of the Southern Shore . . . She strove to recover every scrap of detail she had learned about the attempt on the Tower Lord’s life. Two assassins, Cumbraelin fanatics . . . Two assassins.
She should call it merely a suspicion in the absence of other evidence, but allowed herself a certainty. Brother Frentis and the Volarian woman. They’ve been busy. Incredibly she felt a sense of regret at Frentis’s death. How much more evidence could I have wrung from him if he’d lived? But she lives, no doubt killing ever more as her countrymen rape my lands.
She looked down at her hands, finding her fists clenched, as they had been when she stabbed the Volarian. She recalled the twitch of the dagger in her hand as his heart had given a final convulsive beat after the blade pierced it. She can kill, she mused. But now so can I.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Frentis
The Free Sword held the blade up to the moonlight, running an admiring eye over the edge, smiling a little as he picked out the grey flames trapped in the metal. Truly a valuable prize to take home.
“That doesn’t belong to you,” Frentis told him as he vaulted over the battlement.
A Kuritai might have had a chance to parry the thrust, but this man had none of the unnatural reflex required. The hunting knife took him in the throat, stilling any shout he may have been trying to voice, Frentis holding him down until his twitching ceased. He crouched, looking down at the courtyard, seeing only a few Volarians pacing back and forth from one familiar doorway to another, all Free Swords. Kuritai too valuable to waste on guard duty, he thought.
His gaze roamed the Order House, drinking in the sight, every corner, rooftop and brick as he remembered, with an important difference. No blue-cloaked figures walking the walls this night, just an infestation of Volarians.
He took the dead Free Sword’s cloak, exchanging the Order sword for his own, and walked at a sedate pace towards the nearest guard, killing him with a knife throw when he got close enough for the man to make out his face. He completed a full circuit of the walls in an hour, killing every guard he encountered, only one managing to put up a fight, a veteran sergeant in the gatehouse with a swarthy, sun-bronzed look, probably from the southern empire. He managed a parry or two, shouting for assistance from his dead comrades before the star-silver blade slipped past his short sword to punch through the breastplate and into his belly. Frentis finished him with the hunting knife and found a shadow, waiting for someone to come in answer to the sergeant’s shouts. None did.
He slipped from the shadow and lifted a torch from its mounting, standing atop the battlements and waving it back and forth three times. Within seconds they emerged from the tree-line, over a hundred shadows running full pelt for the gate, Davoka’s tall form in the lead. Frentis made his way to the courtyard, lifting free the great oak plank that held the gates closed. He didn’t wait for the others, finding the doorway which led to the vaults and descending the steps at a run. The heavy door securing the Order’s supply store was guarded by two Kuritai, indicating the Volarians put some value on what they kept here. Frentis saw little point in further stealth and shrugged off his stolen cloak, advancing with sword in one hand and hunting knife in the other. As expected the guards betrayed no sign of alarm and drew their weapons, arranging themselves into a dual fighting formation he recognised from the pits, one behind the other, the one in front crouched, the one behind standing.
It was over in six moves, one less than his best performance in the pits. Feint towards the one in front, leap and slash at the one behind forcing the parry, extend a kick into his chest sending him reeling, block the thrust of the crouching man, open his neck with the backswing and send the hunting knife spinning into the eye of the other as he rebounded from the wall.
He retrieved his knife, took the keys from the hook in the wall and unlocked the doors. The vaults were as dark as he remembered, a faint glow of torchlight glimmering in the depths. He advanced with caution, keeping low, ears alive for any sound, hearing only the laboured breathing of a man in pain.
They were chained to the wall, arms raised and wrists shackled. The first was dead, hanging slack and lifeless, signs of recent torment covering his broad chest. Master Jestin, never to forge another sword. Frentis steeled himself against grief and moved on, finding more tortured corpses, brothers mostly but he recognised Master Chekril amongst them, making him wonder over the fate of the Order’s dogs.
He judged the next one dead also, a thin man of middle years, head slumped and dried blood covering his bare torso, then stifled a shout as the man jerked, chains rattling and wild eyes finding Frentis’s face. “Died,” Master Rensial said. “The stables burned. All my horses died.”
Frentis crouched at his side, the mad eyes fixed on his face. “Master, it’s Brother Frentis . . .”
“The boy.” Rensial’s head bobbed in affirmation. “I knew he would be waiting.”
“Master?”
Rensial’s head swivelled about, manic gaze scanning the surrounding blackness. “Who would have thought the Beyond so dark?”
Frentis rose and tried each key until he found the one that unlocked the master’s manacles, putting an arm around his midriff to help him up. “This is not the Beyond, and I am truly here to take you away. Do you know where they put the Aspect?”