“That should only take a year or two,” said Zelen, but he finished his wine and rose with a groan. “Can you give me any advance knowledge?”
“I think,” said Branwyn, “that your father’s agreed to talk.”
* * *
Behind the outer room of Tinival’s shrine, hung with blue silk and shining with silver, plainer hallways led back to rooms where the god’s less showy work was carried out: barracks, armories, offices, and, up a long, winding set of marble stairs, a tower open to the sky and caged with intricate silver bars.
There, three knights stood in a triangle, armor polished to a mirror sheen, swords and heads both bare. Behind them was a Blade, tall and gaunt in a black robe.
Janayal Verengir, lord of his house, distant ruler and occasional terror of Zelen’s youth and more distant dictator of his adulthood, traitor to humanity and the gods, knelt in the center of the triangle. He was bald, thin, frail-boned with age, and wearing the plain garb of a prisoner, but his eyes were as cold and superior as ever.
He watched his son walk in, side-by-side with the Sentinel that he’d tried to frame for murder, and his upper lip curled in a sneer that Zelen knew very well. It mixed a complete lack of surprise with a maximum of weary contempt, and it had never before failed to make Zelen either ashamed or angry, often both.
For the first time, he felt neither.
“I should have expected this,” said Lord Verengir. “The distraction was always a necessary weak point. Most of you sensibly pursued self-destruction, but…” A shrug raised his bony shoulders for a fraction of a second. “I should have watched more closely, even so.”
“You’ll speak when you’re instructed,” said one of the knights, “or we’ll gag you, my lord.”
“It’s all right,” said Zelen. “I hadn’t hoped for…” He tossed aside both affection or remorse, as both seemed too much even for what he hadn’t let himself desire. “Anything else.”
“We’re here to witness a bargain, I believe,” said Branwyn. “Has the prisoner sworn his oath already?”
“The lesser,” said Lycellias. “Now comes the greater.”
He raised his sword, point straight up in the air, and the others followed. None of them showed fear of what their prisoner would do now, without weapons leveled at him. Faith was on their faces, and confidence, and nothing to mar that clarity.
“Traitor,” said the Blade, stepping forward. They kept their empty hands at their sides and were somehow more menacing than any of the armed knights. “You stand in the shadow of the Dark Lady. The smoke of your own burning curls about you. The Fifth can give you no aid now, and She has no mercy. Save yourself, if you can.”
At a distance, Zelen sensed power stirring, turning attention to the scene in the unhurried way of eternal beings.
“I offer knowledge,” said Lord Verengir, “true knowledge. You and your masters can use it, if you let me pass without torment.”
The thin voice didn’t crack. The expression of scorn didn’t waver, especially on the word masters. All the same, Zelen thought: Gedomir wouldn’t have taken the bargain.
It was no better to be a fanatic than a pragmatist. Maybe it was worse. But Zelen faced the man who’d talked endlessly of family loyalty, of duty and purity and obligation, and saw that he might not, in the end, value anything more than his own skin. He hadn’t gotten the chance to stab his father as he’d done to Gedomir, not even to strike him or shout at him, but he knew why he’d regarded him with so little feeling earlier.
There was nothing there.
“You who speak for Letar’s brother, for the Lord of Truth,” said the Blade, turning to Lycellias, “do you take his bargain?”
“I do so accept these terms,” said the knight, glittering eyes grave, “and I ask that the Deathmistress stay her hand, for the love she bears the brother who remains to her.”
Zelen perceived stillness. He thought it was consideration, but he could only dimly sense Letar now and was very far from knowing Her intent. Despite his devotion, he was glad of it. He only knew when the sense of impending power faded.
The Blade bowed their head. “She gives her assent. Speak, traitor. Buy your final mercy with the truth.”
The western wind blew through the tower, bringing with it the scent of rain and roses again. When it passed the silver bars on the sides, they rang like chimes, and the note went on for far longer than it should have.
Lycellias waited until it died, then, sword still held upright, he told the prisoner, “Begin with names.”
Lord Verengir wet his lips, opened his mouth, and spoke.
* * *
He mentioned a half-dozen names in all. It was more than Branwyn had expected, with her limited experience hunting human monsters, and fewer than she’d feared. She recognized most of them, though not well, from her stretch at court.
“Ranietz?” Lycellias asked at the end, the name unfamiliar to Branwyn until the knight clarified. “We know of your wife already, of course.”
“Then it’s no matter. She’s the only one of the bloodline left,” said Lord Verengir, but as Lycellias bent his attention on the old man and Branwyn, a cold wind blew past them. Verengir grimaced. “Her father served, though he was never particularly dedicated. His wife didn’t, but she died before that could be a complication, as did her other…issue.”
There was a nasty story there. Branwyn could guess most of the details, whether Zelen’s mother had been old enough to take part or not. Zelen himself, she observed, was taking all of the information in with a complete lack of expression and a straight back that would’ve done credit to most of the soldiers she’d encountered.
Lycellias nodded. “And those are all of Gizath’s servants that you know?”
“All I know. There are far, far more. You know that.” The old man’s thin, wormy lips turned up at the
