Treason Keep

Lork dropped him heavily and he spat dirt from his mouth as he looked around.

“Get rid of the body,” the woman told her henchman. “And see that we are not disturbed.”

Lork grunted in reply and returned upstairs. Mistress Heaner ignored Loclon and walked to the far end of the dark basement. She removed the glass from the lantern and lit a taper from the small flame, which she used to light a row of thick beeswax candles lining a long narrow table. He stared at the candles with growing horror as they illuminated a richly embroidered wall hanging that depicted the five-pointed star and lightning bolt of Xaphista, the Overlord.

“You’re a heathen!”

“Heathens believe in the Primal gods,” she corrected. “I serve Xaphista, the one true God. As will you.”

Loclon climbed unsteadily to his feet. “No. I won’t join your sick cult. I’ll report you for this.”

Mistress Heaner finished lighting the candles and turned to him. “You’ll report me? Perhaps you should consider your situation more carefully, Captain. You might be able to walk away from murder in the Arena, sir, but I doubt your superiors will be quite so understanding about Peny’s fate.”

“I’m an Officer in the Defenders! I can’t countenance this!”

“You are monster who kills for pleasure, Captain,” she reminded him. “I don’t recall that being a virtue the Defenders hold dear.”

“I don’t believe in your god.”

“A point that is quite irrelevant,” she shrugged. “You will serve him, however, whether you believe in him or not.”

“How?”

Mistress Heaner smiled, correctly interpreting his question as the beginning of his surrender. “The Overlord is a generous god. In return for your service, he will see that you are taken care of. All you have to do is keep me informed as to what is happening among the Defenders. Report any rumours you hear. Perhaps secure a document or two. I may even need you to kill, occasionally, something you have already proved is to your liking.”

“That’s treason!”

“You baulk at treason, yet you don’t seem to mind murder. A curious moral stance, don’t you think?”

“And if I refuse?”

“I believe we’ve already covered that.”

Loclon stared at the symbol of the Overlord and thought over Mistress Heaner’s offer. For all his faults, he believed in the Defenders and had been raised to think of anyone who practised heathen worship a traitor to his nation. The decision was surprisingly hard to make.

“Perhaps I can offer you another incentive, Captain,” she said softly. “You and the Overlord do share a common purpose, you know.”

“What purpose?”

“You’ve heard of the demon child?”

Loclon turned to her, a little confused by the sudden change of subject. “Everybody has. It’s just a stupid legend. The rebels claimed it was Tarja.”

“The heathens were wrong, as they are about so many things. There is a demon child, however, and she was created to destroy Xaphista. Naturally, my god would like to see that she does not live long enough to fulfil her destiny.”

“She?”

“The demon child is an old friend of yours, I believe. Her name is R’shiel.”

Loclon started as a sudden image of black eyes and a cold blade slicing his throat filled his vision. He could hear Mistress Heaner laughing softly as the rage consumed him, blood pounding in his ears.

“Ah, you remember her, I see. Your service to the Overlord will provide you with an opportunity to redress the wrongs done you by R’shiel te Ortyn, Captain. A convenient arrangement on both sides, don’t you think?”

In the months that had passed since then, Loclon never wanted for anything. His rent was paid on time by an anonymous donor. He often arrived home to find a small purse sitting on his side table, filled with gold rivets. He was welcomed at Mistress Heaner’s and was never asked for payment, although he had been careful not to kill another court’esa. In fact, the urge had dissipated somewhat, now that the promise of a chance at R’shiel was in the offing. He no longer considered his actions treasonous. He had been offered a chance for revenge, a chance that the Defenders had refused him. That justified everything.

But teaching cadets meant there was a limit to the information Loclon was privy to, and Mistress Heaner was growing impatient with him. Gawn, on the other hand, was far better placed to provide the intelligence she demanded. By bringing Gawn into the fold, his position would be secured and his chance at R’shiel would be certain.

Of course, he needed to find something to convince Gawn to join them, and as he settled his companion’s account with the barkeep, it came to him. In return for his service to the Overlord, Loclon would relieve Gawn of his most onerous possession.

He would kill his wife for him.

Chapter 22

Tarja lay awake for most of the night, simply watching R’shiel sleeping, thinking it was a pastime he thought he would never tire of. In sleep her expression was peaceful, her breathing steady and even. The faint, familiar sounds of the camp slowly coming awake as dawn approached filtered through the canvas walls of his tent. Reality intruded rudely into his own, private, perfect world. He almost felt guilty for being so happy.

He also knew it would not last. They were on the brink of war and liable to be hanged for treason. The Gathering was almost on them and Garet Warner was already talking of returning to the Citadel to make his report. Damin kept fingering his sword threateningly every time Garet mentioned the subject, still of the opinion that the safest course of action was to slit the commandant’s throat.

The rebels were growing restless, too. The shaky truce brought about in Testra was in danger of falling apart. Tarja felt responsible for the rebels, but his position here was ambiguous. He had been welcomed back into the Defenders, his desertion if not forgiven, then at least not mentioned, yet too much had happened for him to follow orders without question as he once had done. He was walking a fine line between loyalty to the Defenders and the responsibility he felt for the rebels who had put their lives in his hands because they believed he could help them.

And now R’shiel was back.

He loved R’shiel. He knew it as surely as he knew how to take his next breath, but he could not say why that night in the old vineyard in Testra a year ago, he had suddenly realised it. He could remember wanting to strangle her. They were fighting, something that until that moment they had done a great deal. R’shiel was trying to get even with Joyhinia and did not particularly care how many rebels’ lives she spent doing it. Tarja remembered wanting to slap some sense into her one moment, wanting to die in her arms the next. It bothered him a little. He felt no guilt that he had grown up thinking she was his sister. No thought that would in any way cloud his love for her seemed able to take root in his mind.

He reached across to gently lift an errant strand of long, dark red hair that had fallen over her face then froze as he felt something move under the blanket. Certain he had not imagined it, he threw back the covers and yelped with astonishment. His cry woke R’shiel with a jerk.

“What in the name of the Founders is that!”

R’shiel glanced down sleepily. A small grey creature lay curled between them, seeking the warmth of their bodies, although Tarja’s yell had obviously frightened it. With an incomprehensible chitter it scrambled up the pallet and wrapped its thin grey arms tightly around R’shiel’s neck, staring accusingly at him with black eyes too large for its wrinkled grey head.

“It’s only a demon,” R’shiel laughed, peeling the creature off so that she could breathe.