Clearwater Dawn (9 page)

Konaugo said nothing. Looked away as the prince stepped to Chriani, who nodded in earnest now. Not sure which of the conflicting emotions in him would be the first to be revealed where he felt the prince’s gaze reading him like a map.

But where he tried to keep from meeting Chanist’s gaze, Chriani saw the tunic. Spread to a bench behind the table, the pale blue-grey worn by the prince and all his guard was stained black with blood, torn through by a single jagged slash. On the prince’s cloak where it lay crumpled to one side, the same cut was visible.

“Tell me what you know.” Chanist’s tone was even, expectant.

All people had things to hide, Barien had often said. When Chriani had first entered the keep and the warrior’s service, though, the secrets his father had given him were a great deal heavier than anyone as young as him should have been made to carry. So it was good, Barien had told him more than once, that his mother had given him the talent for keeping those secrets safely out of sight. The gifts that parents give.

The first time he’d met the prince was when he had been formally petitioned as Barien’s adjutant. Chriani remembered carefully fingering the insignia that Chanist himself had presented, not understanding then the degree of honor implied in that. The trust that Chanist placed in Barien was repaid with a respect whose value would never be measured in rank or coin. The investiture of an apprentice was normally something a junior lieutenant would take care of only if he couldn’t pass it off on someone else. But there in front of the prince high, Chriani had obliviously bowed and spoken like Barien told him to, and he remembered being drawn into the warmth of the prince high’s booming laughter that had seemed as wide and as bright as the sun-high sky.

“Your father died in the Incursions,” Barien had coached him all the night before. “He traveled south from the village before you were old enough to remember. He was a bowyer and a militia sentry, and they say your skill on the range comes straight from his arms and eyes. You can’t just speak it, you need to think it all the way through. Think of nothing else.”

He remembered feeling the presence of the prince high, younger then but no less imposing. The hair and beard were just then beginning to lighten, but even now it was commonly said that Chanist would never show any sign of age but that.

Only a fool forgets there are always things worthy of fear.
Barien spoke the words with his dying breath, but Chriani had heard them before. The first time was that very first day, sitting alone in the warrior’s chambers.

“We learn to distrust our fear,” Barien had added then, “so the things worth being frightened of, we look away from. We end up afraid of only the things we see. From all the rest, we hide.”

Barien’s voice in his head this night had filled him with fear he hadn’t felt since that first day in the city. No way of knowing now what it meant, Chriani thought dully.

“You hide from something, you can’t fight it, lad,” Barien had said in response to the fear he felt then.

“Do you hide from anything?” Chriani had asked, but Barien only smiled.

Chriani felt the rough edge now that Barien’s last words had torn in his memory, no way of ever asking what secret lay shrouded in that fear.

One more thing he’d never have the chance to say.

Where the prince was waiting for him, Chriani nodded even as he felt his voice choked off by the old anger, blood pounding in his head suddenly as he tried to find the strength to focus but couldn’t. He heard the Princess Lauresa’s directive in his memory. He felt his bile rise at the thought of it, even as the recollection of the events she’d forbidden him to speak of twisted through him.

Barien had tried to teach him to follow orders, though never as successfully as he would have wished, Chriani knew. Barien had given and taken orders his whole life.

“My lord prince, I was ordered by Sergeant Barien to stand guard at the doorway to the Princess Lauresa’s chamber,” Chriani said. “I did not know his reasons.”

The warrior’s last orders to him.
Keep her safe.

“When the alarm was sounded, the princess came to the door, and in her uncertainty requested that I position myself within the antechamber. I remained there until Lieutenant Ashlund and his party appeared to relieve me.”

It was Barien’s orders he was following, he told himself. Not hers. Chanist only nodded.

“I was instructed by Lieutenant Ashlund to quit the princess’s chambers but he had no orders for me. I approached the staging ground but saw the gate down and no officers. I proceeded toward the great hall and discovered…”

And even as something rose in his throat, Chriani felt a faint heat on his skin. A stinging sensation, the hair on the back of his neck standing up like it might in the shifting air of a summer storm.

Truth magic. At the prince’s neck, Chriani caught sight of the pendant and realized that it was the same as the one Lauresa had worn. He tried to push the thought away, mentally willed the moonsign as he wondered without wanting to whether Chanist had already had the lies sensed in the words he’d spoken.

“I found Sergeant Barien dying, my lord prince.” Chriani tried to swallow but couldn’t. “He died before I could leave him to seek aid. I followed the track of his bleeding to where I believe he was assaulted, in the hall of records. I returned to his body to find members of the watch there. I challenged them in my anger and fear but meant them no harm, forgive me, my lord prince.”

He bowed his head, didn’t want Konaugo to see the wetness in his eyes, but the captain’s gloved hand clipped Chriani’s chin, lifting it roughly.

“Did he speak before he died?” Konaugo said darkly. “Any words, any information?”

And in the dead grey gaze of Konaugo’s eyes, Chriani felt the coldness of the stone floor where he’d wept at Barien’s side. He heard the warrior’s voice — 
Trust him not.
No idea who he’d meant, but Barien had never made much effort to hide his contempt for the captain’s angry approach to leadership.

Chriani shook his head.

“He asked after the safety of the Princess Lauresa and yourself, my lord prince. Then nothing.”

“And when and from where did Barien summon you?” Konaugo asked. His voice was softer this time, Chriani suddenly on edge. He’d never heard Konaugo speak softly before.

He faltered. He didn’t know where Barien had been. Had no idea how the mysterious summons had even come to him.

Chriani felt a sudden chill. Konaugo watched him darkly, expectant. Out of uniform.

In the hall of records, the floor had been streaked red-black, signs of a bloody struggle. Handprints clutching the stones. All the garrison around him, all the guards he’d passed as he ran the outwall had worn the uniform of the watch. All of them except the watch captain himself.

Trust him not.

“Because I am troubled,” Konaugo continued, “with wondering why, if Barien’s concern for the princess was so great, did he simply not stay with her himself? Shout to raise the alarm, any regular patrol passing by in time even if he wasn’t heard at first?”

“I met him in the barracks corridor,” Chriani said. “On the way from our quarters.” It was first thing he could think of, trying to keep the fear he felt from his voice. “He must have been on his way to the princess’s chambers himself through the warden’s door. He ordered me there. I went.”

“And Barien went where?”

“I do not know, lord. I saw him return through the barracks, I mean.”

“You sound unsure.”

“No, lord…”

“When you found him dying in the archives quarter, you said you were making for the great hall from the prince’s court. Do you routinely make your way between adjacent wings by way of the opposite side of the Bastion, tyro?”

The stinging seemed to flare suddenly, faint pinpricks of fire across Chriani’s shoulders and scalp.

“I ran the outwall first, lord. I had no orders, I was looking for an officer but there were none…”

“The notion of finding an officer in the great hall at the service of the prince high escaped you?”

“Having been given no order, I was still under the order of Sergeant Barien, who I presumed would be in barracks or the staging ground…”

“And what were you doing out of quarters when he met you?” Chriani felt a pressure pushing down on him, tried to focus past the chill of Konaugo’s eyes.

“I had returned from duty in the armories.” Past Konaugo, at the far doorway, a courier rushed in, met by Ashlund. “I had been delivered a message,” Chriani said instantly, grasping at that image. “For Barien. I did not find him in quarters, and so was proceeding to search for him.”

“A message from who?”

“A merchant.” In his mind, a randomly caught memory, the last person he’d seen pass along the courtyard track that day. A bookseller, his pushcart laden with scrolls and folios and bound volumes whose covers had been stamped with Ilvani glyphs. “A courier delivered it, no one I knew. Barien was at the armory earlier but had left. From the tone of the courier, I suspected it might be important.”

“What was his mood?” It was Chanist who spoke, Konaugo stopped on the point of speaking again. “Barien, I mean? When he ordered you to my daughter’s protection, what was his mood?”

The prince’s expression was dark, Chriani saw. Something like worry there, the bones of age showing suddenly through the strength and skin of leadership, like the ripple of an undercurrent across still water. He knew how long Barien had stood in Chanist’s service. Warden to a nation’s heir, the trust that had been there.

“His manner spoke of great concern, my lord prince. I had not seen him like this before.” That part of it not a lie, at least. “He was afraid, my lord prince.”

“And he said nothing to you before his passing?”

Where Chriani felt Konaugo’s gaze boring into him, he slowly shook his head.

“No, my lord prince.”

Then behind him, there was movement at the side doors. The prince’s private entrance hall, the northern arm of the prince’s court and the residence behind it. Chriani saw something change in Chanist’s expression, the shroud of age cast off to reveal the strength again. He knew who approached quickly behind him even before he heard her speak.

“Is it true?” Lauresa called. “Barien?”

Chriani felt Konaugo’s hand on his shoulder, moving him back from the princess with as much force as he could get away with. Where she swept in, Lauresa wore a cloak of dark wool held tight at the shoulders, the sweep of a white nightdress visible beneath it. Her hair was down, clothes changed while Ashlund was held at the door, Chriani thought. Her father met her gaze, nodded slowly.

She looked to Konaugo, the captain’s dark look softening just slightly.

“I am sorry, highness.”

Chriani almost believed it.

He made a point of inclining his own head only as deep as the captain did, watched Lauresa’s gaze flick across his without slowing. She held her father’s hands, slipped into his tight embrace, her slight frame dwarfed by him.

“Is the rest of it true?” she said quietly. Her hand strayed to his wounded shoulder, but he held it away, gently. The business of Barien over with a word, Chriani thought. On to more important things.

“True enough,” the prince high said. “Though I daresay it will take more than one of them to ever finish me.” There was an edge of attempted humor in the prince’s voice, but neither smiled. “It is said that Barien may have attempted to come to you tonight. What do you know of that?”

“Nothing, my lord,” the princess said. Chriani felt something tighten in his chest. Where it still rested on his shoulder, Konaugo’s hand twitched. “Unless it concerned the matter of a message which I had asked to have delivered through him.”

“What manner of message?”

“I had asked Barien a week or more ago to seek out a volume of poetry on my behalf. The
Lay of Ysabrylla
, a copy in Movyan’s own hand if it could be found. A farewell gift to be sent to my mother in Aldac before my departure.” Where he watched her, Chriani thought he saw a trace of self-consciousness cross the mask of sadness she wore. “You had said once that it was her favorite,” she said.

“And still is, I would expect.” The prince managed a smile, but Chriani thought he saw an unfamiliar sadness in Chanist’s eyes. An uncertainty there that he’d never seen before.

“Barien did not want me seeking it myself through the collectors’ houses. Too many tongues wagging in the city in advance of the wedding as it stands, he said. He thought to not let them also wonder what secret paramour I might be sending such a work to. I had asked for confirmation from the bookseller that it had been received and sent on to my mother’s house.”

Chriani tried not to stare. There was no chance that she could have heard him speak the desperate fabrication only a moment before, no way she should have been able to summon up a story that tied to his so neatly.

“I have been told that Barien was coming not with a message, but to guard you. Did you see or speak with him this night?”

“No, my lord.”

Chanist nodded, asked nothing more.

Chriani remembered the stinging sensation, realized it was gone now. Truth magic. His head was spinning.