The Bloodstained God (Book 2) (20 page)

Of all his duties, Tilian Henn feared dinner
the most. His days were filled with excitement. He trained with the men, went into the woods with them and practiced a host of skills and techniques that he had never dreamed existed. And he was good at them. No lesser a man than Welcart had praised him. He was learning quickly. He was teaching, too. They spent hours practicing with blades in the open ground before the house, and he thought that at least the men of Latter Fetch had reached a level of proficiency where they would not disgrace their lord.

Dinner was different. While the other men gathered in the kitchen by the fire and drank beer and told stories Tilian was required to eat with Sara. It was not something he had been told to do, but Sara invited him to dine with her. He could not refuse.

It was not that he disliked her. Quite the opposite was true. He liked her a great deal, and admired her for her strength of character, for the way she had stood up to Elejine. She was very pleasing to the eye as well.

Tilian was no virgin. He was not shy with girls and happy enough to flirt and kiss, and sometimes more, but here he was faced with something he had never known before. He was faced with blood.

Sara was blood cousin to his lord, and even that was not the worst of it. The thing that rocked him most of all was that she did not seem to know it. She behaved just like all the girls he’d known in Bas Erinor. She laughed at his jokes, ate with her fingers, looked at him in the same way as they had. Tilian knew only one road with such a woman, and that road was closed by blood, and so he went nowhere. He was a mule, feet dug in, refusing to follow where his instincts led him.

It was bizarre. He sat opposite this woman, and now that Lira had taken charge of her wardrobe she attended dinner dressed like a lady of blood, decked in silks and satins, ruffed with lace, and she seemed to like that, because she wore it well. Even her hair had been tamed by the maid’s attentions, and now rested in demur plaits that twined down her back. Sometimes she dressed with a lot of bare flesh below the neck, and she did not sit primly, but leaned forwards, elbows and hands on the table, displaying her quite substantial charms in a way that he found difficult to ignore.

He, too, was required to dress more formally, though he had little enough to wear, and nothing to match Sara’s finery. He wondered where her clothes had come from. They had certainly not travelled with them from Bas Erinor, and so he guessed that they had always been here, resident, so to speak, at Latter Fetch. He had to bathe as well, every evening after a hard days work when all he wanted was a cool drink and the slump by the fire.

Today was the last day. The men were ready. Tomorrow they would leave to rejoin the regiment, and Tilian was looking forward to that. Even though he thought some of his decisions with the men might raise eyebrows, he was sure that he could justify what he had done.

He pulled on a clean shirt. At least there was no shortage of clean shirts for the captain of the Latter Fetch guard. At least they were dining in the parlour now. He pulled on clean trousers – the same clean trousers that he’d worn last night – and buttoned on a dark tunic that one of the footmen had loaned him. It hid a multitude of sins, and stains.

He made his way downstairs. Sara had been walking for a week now. The physic had allowed her out of bed on the condition that she rested, and that seemed to suit her well enough, because she spent hours in the library reading and writing notes on what she read, or so the gossip said. He assumed that Lira was the source of the gossip, and so it was accurate, but who could be certain? All he knew was what passed over the dinner table.

She was already there when he arrived, sitting at the table with a glass of wine in one hand, gazing at the fire. He could tell at once that her mood was sombre. She forced a smile as he entered, but it dropped away quickly.

“So you go back to Bas Erinor tomorrow?” she asked.

“Yes. We will leave early.”

“I will not see you again before you go.” It was a statement, not a question, but he did his best to reply.

“It is two day’s ride. I want to arrive as early as I can on the second day to see the men properly quartered.”

She did not seem to hear him, but looked at the fire again, and gulped a mouthful of wine. “What will you do when you get there? All your pay is unspent.”

Tilian shrugged. “I will rejoin my lord. I will serve him as best I can.”

She looked up sharply. “Do you love your duty so much, Tilian Henn?”

“I… yes, I suppose. I was nothing before I served my lord. Now I have purpose.”

“Even if it is another man’s purpose,” she said. The words were not scornful. “I envy you that. I will remain here and be bored,” she added.

“How can you be bored?” Tilian asked. “There is so much to do here.”

Sara waved the question away and called for the food to be brought. The food was the one aspect of dining with Sara that he enjoyed. Tonight it was venison, but not the crude roasted lumps that he was used to having on those rare occasions when his purse had stretched so far. In Latter Fetch the meat was served lightly cooked with a pink centre, and sliced onto the plate in thicknesses less than the width of his finger, and drizzled with a berry sauce which added a pleasing sweetness to the meat. There were vegetables, too, and a good red wine, though not a Telan one.

Sara did not seem to want to talk as they ate, so Tilian filed the silence with stories of the men of the woods, stories that Welcart and the others had shared with him. They were light tales, amusing anecdotes of the remarkable and the ridiculous, like the time when Brodan had stalked a great stag through the forest for half a day, employing all his skill and stealth to draw close to it, eventually stepping around a tree, bow in hand, to find the beast had stepped his way and now stood less than a foot from his arrow. Somehow, in the surprise of the moment the stag had hooked his bow with its great antlers and run off through the forest with the weapon borne aloft like a trophy, leaving Brodan with no meat and no bow, nothing but a sorry tale to tell.

She did not laugh at his tales as much as she had done on other nights, but she did smile at the punch lines.

They ate the main course, and this was followed by a confection of berries, sugar and cream, with some sweet spice that Tilian could not name. It was the very reason berries had been invented, he thought. In all his life he had never thought that food could be so rich and yet so delicate at the same time. The cook was a magician.

“I will miss your company, Tilian Henn.”

“And I shall miss yours,” he responded.

“Will you really?”

He looked up from the plate he was scraping, suddenly aware that the question was not a trivial one. She was staring at him in a peculiar and intense manner, and he sensed trouble.

“My lady…”

“I wish you would not call me that. I asked you not to.”

“And yet I must. You are my lord’s blood cousin.”

“There are times when I wish it was not so.”

“Ah, my lady, if we could spend wishes…”

“Do not be wise with me, Tilian. Do you not like me?”

“I admire you very much, my lady. Your beauty and your courage inspire us all.”

“But do you like me?”

“My lady …”

She banged the table with her open hand, hard enough to make the crockery jump, and Tilian jumped with it. He could feel the pressure of her gaze.

“I do,” he confessed. This was dangerous ground. It was a conversation that he did not want to have because he knew where it might lead.

“Then why are you so cold to me? Why do you push me away?”

“It is a matter of blood,” Tilian said.

“What nonsense,” she snapped back. “I know that you want me, Tilian Henn, I see it in your eyes, and I want you, too. Where is the harm in it? If your lord’s librarian and his captain of guard are more than friends, where is the harm?” She reached across the table and put a hand on his arm, and for a moment he let it rest there, wishing it might be so, but the moment passed and he pulled his arm free of her grasp and stood.

“You do not understand,” he said. He held up a hand to stop her interrupting. “No. Listen to me. I am the captain of my lord’s guard. I stand at his back and protect his life. I do his bidding. You are his heir. If I should fail and he should fall in battle what would other men say then? You would be lady of this estate. It would be
yours
, and I would be captain of
your
guard. If I shared your bed other men would say that I had killed my lord to possess what is his, and even I could not be sure that it was not so, that I had not in some way neglected my duty, hesitated when I should have acted.

“Besides the matter of my honour, I believe that my lord himself has some interest in you, and I cannot set that aside.”

“Have I no say in the matter? What if I prefer you to your lord?” She was angry, too.

“Indeed you have, Lady Sara,” he replied. “But I have not.” He turned and left the room, walked back along the dark corridors to his own bed. He was angry at himself, angry at Sara, even angry at the lord Hebberd for bringing her here, for leaving him here to be with her alone. He could not deny what he felt for her, but he had believed that he could set it aside, knowing that it was not his place, and that she would probably not have him anyway. She had torn that illusion top to bottom, and now he was damned either way.

Skal had found his way back to the Seventh Friend, to the tavern of that name. This time he had insisted on paying. After all, he was no longer a poor colonel, but had the modest resources of Latter Fetch at his back.
He had taken a room there, ate his meals there, and went up the divine stair only on the rare occasions that he was summoned to the castle. He was happier with the arrangement which had the dual benefits of being both more comfortable and more convenient to his duties with the regiment.

There were other advantages. The people here had not known him before his father’s fall from grace. To them he was the hero of the wall, a regimental commander, the victor of Henfray. He preferred that. He did not have to continually remember the ass he had once been.

He was getting to know Arbak’s people. The Durander girl, Sheyani, played the pipes each night, and he had learned to appreciate her exquisite skill. The general had given him a copper disk, marked in strange Durander characters and told him that it would shield him from the pipes’ power, but he rarely wore it. He liked to lose himself in her music, to feel the warmth and softness of belonging, the carefree pleasure that she played, even if it was false, even if it was temporary.

Bargil, too, was a familiar face. The tavern’s head doorman, ex-dragon guard, and the general’s minder treated him with respect, especially since Skal had asked the man if he thought Skal had got the stick out of his arse yet. Bargil had clearly remember the comment he’d passed to Tilian, and had the good grace to be embarrassed, which made Skal laugh. Laughing was apparently the right thing to do, because things were easy between them now.

It gave him a chance to watch the general, too. He envied the man his way with people. Arbak would look puzzled, and someone would rush to explain a matter to him. If he licked his lips the barman would produce an ale. When he talked to them he always seemed to use his hands, touching a shoulder, shaking a hand, slapping a back, and it was always exactly right. The general had a gift for contact. Skal had thought that he could learn by watching, but he couldn’t. And the general listened. He bent his ear to listen to the most humble of his people, and seemed to weigh what they said with unwarranted gravity. He had never seen a man so easy with the common people. An uncharitable part of him said that this was because he was one of them, but Skal believed it was something else. He believed it was because Cain Arbak lived his life according to the letter of Karim.

The general was not the Prince of Swords; that was plain enough. Skal himself could have beaten him in a fencing match without breaking a sweat, but Cain Arbak never took others lightly, never lied, never mocked, always honoured his promises, even when to do so was a considerable inconvenience. For all that he was not perfect. He became annoyed, he made mistakes, but at the same time he never blamed others for his shortcomings. It was an object lesson in Avilian nobility and virtue, and yet he was low born and unschooled.

The most apparent thing was that once he had made up his mind to trust you, that was the end of the matter. He trusted Sheyani, and Bargil, and most of the others who worked for him. More to the point, he trusted Skal Hebberd.

Skal had no idea why.

Like the general he had taken to sitting in the public room. As Lord of Latter Fetch he could have set up court in a private room, but he had followed the general’s example, and was glad of it. He had a table in one corner, and everyone knew that he sat there most nights to eat his meal. Officers and others from the second Seventh Friend often joined him. Some sat for the duration of a glass, some for less, and every now and then he would invite a group to dine with him. They never declined. Some evening he sat alone, ate quickly and retired early.

He missed Tilian, even if the boy’s absence had given him an excuse to move into the tavern. The constant reassurance of Tilian’s competence was something he valued highly, and he was more alone for not having him to hand.

It was one of his lonely evenings when he was sitting quietly eating, a jug of ale his only companion when the chair opposite was drawn back and he looked up.

“I was told I’d find you here.” Kaylis Faste sat in the chair. Skal had know Kaylis well at one time. In the old days back at the castle Kaylis had been on the periphery of Skal’s group of followers; never one of the inner circle, but always there or thereabouts. He was the eldest son of the Earl of Pragat, and heir to substantial estates in the west of Avilian. Kaylis had gone east with his father’s men to fight Seth Yarra under the Wolf’s command.

“Kaylis, still alive then,” Skal said.

“So far. You’ve done well.”

“Kind of you to say.”

“Your own command first out, and a victory. Quinnial was good to you.”

“He was.” Skal was cautious. He’d never entirely liked Kaylis. Not that that was a particular damnation. He hadn’t liked anyone much. He wondered what the man wanted. “But a necessary kindness, I like to think.”

“Yes. Who else did they have to send?” It was a slightly pointed question. After all, they sat in the general’s tavern, and Cain Arbak had been overlooked for the command that Skal had been given. “What’s good here?” Kaylis asked.

“The wine, the ale, the food, the music, most of the company. What do you want, Kaylis?”

“Just to talk,” the young man said. “Just to see how you are and what you’re thinking.”

Politics. This was about politics, and in the middle of a war. Skal had been good at politics in a detached sort of way, but his finger was no longer on the pulse. He had been absent from the game too long. He wondered what faction Kaylis represented, and who had sent him.

“I think mostly about the war, and killing Seth Yarra,” he replied. Kaylis smiled.

“Of course,” he said. “We all do. But some are wondering how the war is being run.”

“Well enough.”

“Do you think so? All our troops drawn away to the east, then a massive attack on the green wall. It was only by a miracle that Berash was saved.”

“And Avilian. And Afael. And it was no miracle, Kaylis. I was there. The battle was well fought.”

“Perhaps.” Kaylis called over a man and ordered a glass of wine for himself. He didn’t ask Skal if he wanted anything, and Skal thought to himself that old habits die hard. Kaylis dropped his voice. “Yet the man in command was low born. It should have been you, Lord Skal.”

Flattery? “I was too late to the wall. The battle was already begun, and the wall retaken.”

“A pity.” The wine arrived and Kaylis sipped it. He raised an eyebrow appreciatively.

“Not so much. I was a mere knight of Avilian when I was sent to the wall, and just raised up at that.”

Kaylis laughed. “Yes, but high born, Lord Skal, and blood will out.”

Skal decided to play the game. He was not so dim that he did not see where this was leading. “I could have done better,” he said. “Colonel Arbak failed to guard against a night attack, although there was no reason to suppose the Telans would not try it.”

“Exactly, you make my point, Lord Skal,” Kaylis’ tone was excited, as though his fish had just taken the hook. The old Skal had not been modest, and so he sought the words that his younger self might have spoken.

“Indeed, if it had not been for my prompt action on the wall it would have fallen and we would all be bowing a knee to the invader even now.”

“We owe you a debt, and there are those more highly placed than I who know it.”

“Is that so? I am pleased to know it.”

“Yes. Some would even go so far as to reinstate you at Bel Arac.”

“To have such within their gift they must be highly placed indeed. Do you speak of the King?”

Kaylis seemed a little flustered by such a direct question. “I speak of influence, Lord Skal, not mandate as such.”

“So who is it, this wielder of influence? Please don’t tell me it’s Bizmael.”

“The Duke of Carillon is with us, Lord Skal, but he is not the one who bid me speak to you.”

“Well, at least you have some sense. Bizmael is a fool. He doesn’t like me and it’s mutual, and if you want me to come in with him, then I expect an apology for the little show he put on at the training ground.”

“An apology?” Skal could see Kaylis was shocked at the suggestion. You simply didn’t ask a duke to apologise, and certainly not to a lesser lord like Skal.

“Oh, never mind,” Skal said. “I know he won’t. I’m loyal enough to blood to know where I stand. So what is the plan?”

“Plan?”

“Oh, Kaylis, don’t tell me that you came here just to sound me out. Is there even a plan? I’ll bet there is but they didn’t want to tell you. You’re too small a fish. Just make sure you don’t do anything rash. You do know that Arbak walks with the Wolf, don’t you?”

“Of course. No actual harm will come to him.”

“But you’d rather see the regiment commanded by someone high born. I understand that. Do you have anyone in mind?”

Kaylis opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again. He shook his head. “No, lord Skal, I am not privy to that.”

Liar. He knew well enough, and now so did Skal. They meant to give the regiment to Bizmael, and that would be a danger for all of them. The idiot would probably get all three thousand of them killed and lose Cain’s wall on the White Road. He was truly stupid enough to do that.

“Well, I suppose I ought to meet with someone then,” Skal said. “Someone who knows.”

Kaylis shook his head again. “I will be your contact,” he said. “Anything you need to know you can get from me.”

“Apparently not.”

“I said what you need to know, Lord Skal, not what you want to know.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Kaylis,” Skal observed. “You’re going against the Wolf and the duke. I’m not going to do that unless I know who says what goes. I don’t want my life in the hands of someone I don’t trust.” Especially if it’s Bizmael, he thought, who would love nothing better than to drop Skal in the cooking pot.

Kaylis looked at him for a while, studied his face. “I’ll ask,” he said eventually. “I can’t guarantee anything, but I’ll ask.”

“Fair enough, Kaylis. I’ll wait to hear from you.” He drained his mug of ale and poured another from the jug, emptying it to get three quarters of a mug. “Time for you to go.”

Kaylis swallowed down his wine, looked shiftily around the tavern and rose to his feet. “Soon, then,” he said.

Skal nodded and sipped his ale. He watched Kaylis walk to the door, and caught a sharp glance to the right. There was a man there, sitting on his own. He was a nondescript sort of man, dressed in plain cottons, wrapped in a heavy coat. He wasn’t a soldier, though. Well, it made sense. If you were going to risk exposing your plot to someone who you couldn’t be sure of then it made sense to watch him.

Skal glanced across at the general, who was sitting in his usual seat by the bar. He could just walk over there right now and tell him, but then the plotters would know, and he would never find out who was behind it all. He would wait. He would play the game and ride his luck to see what he could discover. The offer of Bel Arac was tempting, as he was sure it was meant to be, but he was equally certain that there was no real intention of giving it to him. Besides, Cain Arbak was a friend, low born or not, and he was a good soldier. There was no chance that he would betray the man, certainly not for the betterment of Bizmael of Carillon.