Clearwater Dawn (7 page)

Chriani felt her other hand squeeze. As he forced himself to breathe, he smelled the sharply scented air that announced the advance of distant thunderstorms. He remembered the two tyros and the charred shadows where their hair had been.

“I can change hands a great deal more quickly than you can stop me,” Lauresa said quietly. “When the time is right, I will answer the questions that deserve answers. Until then, you will do as I command.”

She broke off from him, Chriani feeling the sudden spasm of pain that rose where she released her grip. He could only nod.

“The door,” she said. She had her belt undone, the robe already off her shoulders as she slipped through the curtain, disappeared within the haze of white that ringed her bed.

It would all make sense once she explained it, Chriani thought darkly. He’d barely had time to gingerly adjust the set of his leggings when he heard boots in the corridor beyond the alcove. At the door, he didn’t know whether he should draw his sword or not, deciding to just put it on correctly for a start.

As he cinched the scabbard belt again, someone knocked loudly.

“By your leave, princess,” called a voice through the door, deferential.

“In the name of the prince, identify yourselves,” Chriani said, a little too loudly. Outside, he heard the near-silent whisper of swords and daggers drawn, movement along the wall where he knew that whoever was there had flanked the door.

“In the name of the prince, identify yourself,” the voice echoed back, all deference gone.

“Chriani, adjutant to Barien. Standing guard on the Princess Lauresa as ordered.” There was a formality to the orders and responses that passed between ranks in the garrison, and the way that words were spoken often carried as much formal weight as what was said. Not for the first time, Chriani wished he were better at it.

“Open this door now…”

“Identify yourself,” Chriani demanded with an uncertainty he hoped they couldn’t hear.
Challenge them
, the princess had said. He winced as the fading pain twisted once more through his loins.

“Ashlund with three men, lieutenant to Konaugo, on orders from the prince high to ensure the location and safety of his children. Open this door or by Brandis’s blood, tyro, I’ll have your ears!”

Chriani took a breath, drew his own sword as he pulled the bolt back and stepped to the far corner of the alcove. The fact that Ashlund slammed the door open with his hand and not his boot was testament only to whose chamber this was, he suspected. The lieutenant was a close-shaven veteran, taller than Chriani and thicker from nearly any angle. Behind him, three more guards pushed in, blades still drawn. Ashlund slowed to let them pass through the curtain to the main chamber, grabbed Chriani’s tunic in a fist the size and color of an uncured ham. If he noticed that Chriani held a shortsword an arm’s length away, he didn’t show it.

“Explain,” he said, his voice a low growl.

“The Princess Lauresa is resting within, lord. I was on guard outside the chamber when the alarm was raised. At her request and for her security, I took position within the alcove.”

Lauresa’s lie, straight from memory. Chriani had seen what happened to tyros who misled the garrison command about things much more mundane. He watched Ashlund’s eyes, tried to slow down.

“I resolved to stay here until…”

“On guard by whose orders?” Ashlund interrupted.

“By Sergeant Barien’s orders, lord.”

“And the sergeant is where?”

“I do not know, lord.”

Chriani felt himself released, the hand that had held him pointing two massive fingers.

“The next time you find yourself on the other side of a door that I ordered opened, it will open or you will go back in pieces to the gutter where Barien found you. Is that quite clear?”

“I had not heard the stand-down, lord. Should I have opened the door without even…?”

Ashlund cuffed him across the side of the head, Chriani only fast enough to roll with it. He felt the pulse of rage flare blood-red behind his eyes, fought unsuccessfully to lock his own hands at his side. As his sword wavered, he saw Ashlund smile. Waiting.

“By Barien’s orders,” Chriani said with effort, “I was to guard the Princess Lauresa. Am I relieved of that duty, lord?”

Ashlund’s hand came up a second time, then lowered slowly when one of his men appeared at the curtain. Chriani could hear Lauresa’s voice from within, speaking to the others in hushed tones. A word was whispered in Ashlund’s ear.

“Go,” the lieutenant snarled. Chriani went.

Ashlund hadn’t told him to return to quarters, but he sprinted in that direction anyway, past the doors of the younger heirs where silent guards were ranked two abreast, watching him as he passed. He had to slip around the corner, peering back while he waited until their attention was elsewhere, then he sprinted on straight instead of cutting east for the great hall. Down the children’s court and through the warden’s door, carefully locked behind him as he headed past the armories.

He didn’t bother looking to Barien’s quarters, knew that the warrior would be in the thick of whatever had inspired the alarm. He was breathing hard, his head still reeling with the force of Ashlund’s blow that had at least erased the too-telltale marks Lauresa’s rings had made. He was nearly to the central court before he realized that his sword was still in his hands. Even with the alarm, he hadn’t heard the call to arms, he remembered. He sheathed it quickly.

But when he arrived at the Bastion gate, its bars were drawn. The portcullis was dropped, as he’d never seen it dropped in the ten years he’d been there. Through the bars, the staging ground was empty, Chriani lingering for just a moment. Then he slipped carefully to the gatehouse stairs, heading up quietly to the outwall, hoping to find Barien before being ordered to duty by another officer in his stead. Because in the short run from the princess’s chambers, a thought had become firmly lodged in his mind, something he might have picked up on at the time if it hadn’t been for the pulsing memory of Ashlund’s hand leaving little room for thought in his head.

Barien should have been one of the first at the great hall when the alarm was sounded, but Ashlund hadn’t known where the warrior was.

Three times as he made his way along the outwall, Chriani passed squads of the Bastion guard racing, sidelong glances made to his scabbard as he passed. He was carrying it under his arm now, tried to make it look like he was delivering it somewhere. Not sure how believable that was in the end, but not wanting to risk Barien’s wrath by abandoning it. At each tower, the garrison was out in full force now, but there was still no sign of the warrior. No officers either. Only sergeants, all of them with the same look of uniform unease.

He raced along past the spot where he and Lauresa had dropped, made it back to the top of the gatehouse when he passed another tyro racing by with a sealed message. Vanad, two years younger than Chriani and under the mentorship of Hestria, one of the Bastion’s sergeants-at-arms. Chriani caught sight of what looked like the prince’s seal as he called to ask if Vanad had seen Barien. A shake of the head in response, not slowing.

“What’s the alarm?” Chriani called, and Vanad stopped, doubled back, got close so he wouldn’t have to shout. Even then, he looked twice over his shoulder before he spoke.

“Attempt on the prince’s life,” he whispered. Chriani stared for a long while at the younger tyro’s fleeing back.

He slipped back in at the east tower, then, running for the closest stairs, assuming that Vanad’s account was the truth without really knowing why. He remembered the urgency in Barien’s voice, needed to find him because Barien was the only one who would know what was going on. Barien was warden to the princess, had ordered him to watch her. Barien would have the answers Lauresa hadn’t given.

But as he pounded down a narrow flight of stairs, a thought struck Chriani with a starkness that angered him for not having seen it before. He emerged in the archives quarter, bypassed the shadowed corridors to the side for the well-lit hall of records ahead, the central court beyond it. No sign of anyone else around him, but if the guard were searching for a would-be assassin, it was no time to be caught slipping through the shadows.

Barien hadn’t known that the princess was missing when he called to Chriani.
Seek her in her chambers
, he’d said.

So then what was it, Chriani wondered, that Barien had ordered him to protect Lauresa from? What was it that had driven the princess to leap from a fourth-story window in order to prevent being seen by her own guard?

Attempt on the prince’s life…

As he’d always been able to do, Chriani played the events of those few frantic moments back in his mind as he ran. Her expression shifting as he burst in, the angry exchange, word for word.

She hadn’t heard the alarm, he realized.

When he’d said it, he was doing little more than grasp for words that might staunch her anger and keep her from flinging a dagger across the table or having him demoted to the kitchens out of sheer spite. The words had caught her by surprise, though. She hadn’t heard the alarm, the bell ringing through the empty night from the top of the prince’s tower, almost directly above her.

When the time was right,
she’d said.

He was thinking furiously where he sprinted from the side passage. Only half watching the shadows around him, so that he almost missed the blood.

Where he skidded to a halt, Chriani whipped the shortsword out, the scabbard dropped behind him as he wheeled. He was in the intersection of a narrow corridor between the galleries of the archives quarter and the central court. Beyond that, the garrison wing where he’d started his long circuit was eerily silent.

It was bright in the intersection, an evenlamp blazing there. To both sides, fading in the shadows, staggered droplets of red-black ran along the wide expanse of the adjacent corridor toward the shadowed gallery halls. The archives wing was the center of Chanist’s public collection of art and artifacts, a steady stream of scholars passing through it from across Brandishear and all the Ilmar by day, deserted now.

Where Chriani dropped, the telltale red marks were slightly elongated, still wet against his fingers. Someone bleeding as they moved.

He tried to judge which way the injured runner had come, had to half-guess as he took the corridor to the left, following the trace pattern where it scattered to the shadows. He was silent as he slipped through the cover of wide columns to either side of the hall, the gallery corridors lined with the busts of Chanist’s father, brother, and sister. His uncles and grandfathers who had been the Imperial regents before the prince’s crown had been reclaimed.

He saw Barien’s body then.

Where a pool of blood spread past the warrior where he’d fallen, Chriani recognized the cloak and riding gear even before he was close enough to recognize the features of the pale face. As he ran to drop on the slick-wet floor at Barien’s side, the sword rang out where it fell forgotten behind him. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. He saw Barien’s chest slowly rise, heard ragged breath sounds echo wetly in the stillness.

His heart in his throat, he managed to call the warrior’s name, a sudden flinch telling him that Barien had heard. But as the warrior’s arm came up, Chriani saw the wound. A twisted slash across shoulder and chest, hacking through leather and muscle and bone at once. A short blade, spiked and curved from the way the flesh had been torn. Chriani had to close his eyes, tried not to think.

“You’re going to be all right,” Chriani whispered. “You need a healer,” he said. “I have to find…”

And with a speed that belied his wounds, the warrior seized Chriani’s arm, held it in a grip like steel.

“Princess…”

Where he clutched at Chriani, Barien’s eyes were wide like a cat’s, staring past him.

“Is she safe? Princess?”

Chriani nodded, realized stupidly that Barien couldn’t see him.

“She is safe. I was with her, then Ashlund came.”

He struggled to pry the thick fingers from his arm, but he might as well have tried to bend horseshoes with his bare hands. Barien pulled him closer, a spray of blood where he coughed catching Chriani across the cheek.

“You need a healer…” Chriani whispered, but the warrior held up a bloodstained hand to silence.

“Seek the blade,” he murmured. “Follow by fourteen, your only proof. Keep it safe. Keep her safe.” And in his voice as he spoke, Chriani heard a sudden trace of strength. The same resolve as always, none of the fear that had threaded the words that had woken him. None of the fear Chriani felt now.

“He owns Uissa.” Barien coughed wetly again. “I know not who else…”

Chriani had never heard the name before but he took it in, felt it lock into memory. As Barien shuddered, Chriani saw his eyes focus suddenly. Staring up as if he could see him, the warrior’s face blurring where Chriani realized that his own eyes were wet.

“Trust him not. Lauresa. Keep her…” Barien fought to catch his breath.

“She is safe,” Chriani whispered. “I kept her safe. You’re going to be…”

“Chanist…” the warrior breathed, staring blindly again.

“I don’t know where the prince is. I think he’s safe, I don’t know what happened…”