Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (16 page)

Gikka chuckled, petting the bird’s head.  “You’ve no idea,”
she murmured.  She looked Colaris over quickly.  He seemed healthy and
unharmed, but he had no case strapped to his leg, and she began to worry.  Had
he been sent to them with a message?

“No, no, no!  I told them no! And I’ll tell you the same! 
No filthy birds in my inn!”  The innkeeper stamped his foot in fury.  “I should
throw the lot of them right out in the street for it!”

“What are you on about?”  She scowled.  “This bird here came
with your other guests, did he?  Who are they?”

The innkeeper raised his chin.  “Moneyed folk who paid
ahead, that’s who, and I don’t question beyond that.  Two men and a boy, and
they took
two
rooms, so please you.”

To Chul, she asked, “The other horses in the stable––did you
recognize their markings?”

“What?”  The innkeeper looked between them.  “Now see, here,
I’ll not have you spying—!”

“Fine animals, well-kept but tired,” Chul replied, ignoring
him.  “I saw nothing on their tack.”

Whoever they were, they traveled with a mind not to draw
attention.  Two men and a boy––obviously not the sheriff and Renda––so who?  Servants? 
Knights?  Brannagh had fallen.  It could be villains who stole the sheriff’s
harrier from his very mews.  Maybe even Maddock himself. 

She looked at Colaris where he stood blinking at her and
felt a laugh rise in her throat.  She’d have loved to see someone try to steal
Colaris.  Besides, he had his head to fly free as he would, so he had not
escaped.  He was here on Brannagh business.  But what?  She saw no point in
guessing.  She started past the innkeeper, through the modest dining room toward
the plain wooden staircase with Chul behind her.

The innkeeper gabbled on behind them, following them up,
straightening the well worn sound dampening rugs on the stairs as he went.  “One
tried to carry the bird up to their rooms, brazen as you please, but no, says
I, ‘don’t want no filthy birds in my inn.  I’ll thank you to leave it in the
stable with the horses.’  And so they seemed to do, but oh, treachery!  Now I
see they took the foul thing up anyway.”  He threw up his hands in exasperation. 
“As your lad here is doing now!  Now, see here!”

“Aye, so they did!”  She stopped on the landing and glared
at him.  “And so he will.  Only a fool would leave a fine hunting hawk in a
cold stable during the Feast of Bilkar, and only another fool would believe he
would!” 

“You know this bird?”  The innkeeper snorted.  “Fine hunting
hawk?  This scrawny thing?”

Colaris lowered his head and hissed.

“Aye,” Gikka growled, continuing up to the second floor,
“and so he is, the finest I’ve ever seen, with a rare mind all his own.”  Her
hand lingered over her purse a moment, long enough that she was sure the
innkeeper saw.  “You’re sure you’ve no more knowledge of who these men might
be?”

The innkeeper opened his mouth to answer, then shook his head.

She studied his face, watching for any tics or tells. At
last she was satisfied that he told the truth.  “Hear me:  an you know more and
you’d not tell me, best you continue to keep it to yourself for your own sake.”

“Kek!” Colaris called out sharply.  He moved restlessly on
Chul’s arm.

She frowned and looked down the short corridor at the top of
the stairs.  Six doors faced the hall, three to each side. “Come, which rooms
are theirs?”

“These two, they are, across from each other.  Yours lies at
the end of the hall, there.”  The innkeeper handed her a key.  “Now mark, don’t
start no trouble in my house.  Your haypind buys only so much.  Won’t have no
murder and mayhem here.  I’ve enough worries as it is.”

“You’ve been paid, landlord!” she barked at him.  “Now off
to bed with you ere I lose my temper!”

The man stared at her speechlessly for a moment, then,
clutching his coin, slipped past Chul and went down the stairs, muttering under
his breath.

“Gikka,” Chul said quietly.  “It’s past midnight.  Whoever
they are, surely they sleep.”

“Still, I would know who they are.  Perhaps some knights
escaped from Brannagh, or servants––”

“Gikka?”  Someone appeared behind her, seemingly from the
wall itself, and she had him on the floor at once.

The boy lying beneath her boot looked to be only a year or
so younger than Chul, perhaps half Bremondine by his medium dark hair and light
skin.  He only looked up at her, too surprised or perhaps too dull of wit to be
afraid of her. 

“Who are you, boy?”

“Jath,” he said simply.  “I take care of the horses.  You
are
Gikka of Graymonde!”

She frowned.  “How do you know me?”

He laughed, as if the answer were quite obvious.  “I were
pleased to mind Zinion for you now and again over the years.”  His eyes lit
up.  “Did you bring him?”

“Kek,” called Colaris, fluffing his wings.  He settled on
Chul’s arm and began grooming himself.

“Aye, he’s below in the stable, but how is it––”

“You…worry for Lady Renda and her father, as do we,”
continued the boy, his gaze dull and distant.  “We go to meet her in Brannford.”

“As do we,” she answered cautiously and helped the stable
boy to his feet.  “You say you see to the horses, and you’ve even seen to
mine.”

“Aye,” he nodded.  “I remember well.  It took many a carrot
for him to warm to me.”

“Or so he’d have you believe.”  Gikka smiled.  “Who is your
master, then?”

Now Jath seemed uncertain.  “I was told to say to any who
asked that I serve Vilford, Baron Tremondy.”

She shook her head.  “Never been to Tremondy Castle, not
with Zinion.”

“No, of course not.  Nor have I.”  The boy thought for a
moment, then shrugged and knocked quietly on one of the two doors. 

It opened almost at once.

“Nestor,
va’ar Proagh
!” Gikka exclaimed, her voice
breaking with relief.  At once, all was answered. She drew the old man to her
and hugged him, continuing in Bremondine.  “How do you find yourself in
Durlindale?  Is His Grace is with you?”

“
Va’ar Pro’chna
,” he smiled, returning her hug. 
“Aye, his room is just there, but he’s yet weak.  Pray, leave him sleep.”  He
saw the worry in her eyes, and he patted her arm.  “Do not fret, lass.  He’s
better than he was, now the plague has broken.  A night’s rest, and he should
be himself again by morning.  Right pleased he’ll be to see you, to say the
least.”  He smiled reassuringly and looked up and down the corridor.  His gaze
danced over the Dhanani boy holding Colaris.  “You’ve taken rooms here?”

She nodded.  “This was the first inn we saw.”

“Aye, the same for us.  Well, come in and take your ease a
moment ere you head for your bed.  I’ll not stay you long, but I shall have tea
ready in a trice to warm your bones.  Stop your protest.  I can see you
shivering, child.”  He looked toward the stairs and drew her inside, lowering
his voice again.  “Besides, I would hear what you know.  I take it you will be
riding with us from here, then?”

“I see no reason to travel separately an His Grace will have
us.  But we’d not compromise you with our presence if it’s a worry.”

He laughed.  “Thus far we managed entirely on wit and charm,
but should that fail,” he smiled, “we would welcome your strength.”  He looked
out into the hall where Chul and Jath stood watching them.  “Boys,” he called
to them in Syonese, “you’re welcome within or without, as it suits you.  I have
hot tea.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Chul, “but so please you, I’ll stay
and mind the bird.” 

Jath nodded.

Once Nestor went inside and closed the door, Chul relaxed
against the wall.  “Did you understand any of what they said?”

“Only a word here and there,” the stable boy answered
slowly, petting Colaris who still stood on Chul’s arm.

“I think I heard ‘Durlindale,’” Chul laughed quietly.  “Not
much more.  But by your look, I took you for Bremondine.”

“Oh, aye, part, through my mother.  The tongue she spoke was
not like this they speak now, though.”  He shrugged and took his cloak, a
“keeper’s cloak” identical to Gikka’s, seemingly from the wall where he’d stood
hidden as they’d come upstairs.  “So long it is since she died,” he continued,
“I barely remember the sound of her voice.  Besides, I’m all out of practice. 
Round Castle Damerien, it’s not Bremondine we speak most days.”

“Your mother died?” 

Jath nodded.  He wrapped the dormant cloak about himself for
warmth and sat on the floor in the hallway.  “My mother, father and sister,
all.  I nearly died, too.  Damerien brought me drowning from out the sea, saved
my life.”

“The duke himself?”

Jath shrugged.  “He gives out at the castle that I saved
his
life, though I think he pokes fun to say so.  Me, to save him!”  He laughed incredulously. 
“Well, I mean, I were small then, weren’t I?  Not even britched, just a naked
struggling child strapped to my dead mother’s back and being sucked down to the
deep as he found me.  I may be simple, but sure I’m not seeing how I saved him,
thus.”  He picked at a splinter that stuck up from the wooden floor and flicked
it away.  “I didn’t speak for two years after, so bad was the shock.”  He saw
alarm in Chul’s eyes and smiled gently.  “It’s not memory I speak.  I only have
it from stories I heard.  It were very, very long ago, that.”  He nodded toward
Nestor’s door.  “Them as serve Damerien raised me and when I came old enough,
His Grace took me to his service as a keeper,” he glanced self-consciously at
Chul, “for the horses, you see.  Not good for much else, me.  They tell me my
wits were harmed with being under the water too long, but I yet live, so here I
be and grateful.”

Chul sat on the floor beside him, propped against the wall
with his arm resting on his knee and stroked Colaris’s feathers.  “My mother
died, too, when I was a small.  Aidan, the shaman of my tribe, told her she
could not have another child and live, but my father did not…”

“Care?”

“Believe him.”  He looked down, trying to keep his voice
from breaking.  “Or care, I suppose.  I was only four years old when it
happened, but I miss her, even now.”

“She loved you and feared for you more than herself as her
time drew near.”   Jath smiled enigmatically, looking at Chul, or perhaps
through him.  “Vaccar wanted a son because he thought you were slow, like me,
but the child he got was a girl.  She was born alive…” 

“Stop crying!”  Vaccar screamed at the baby.  “You killed
her.  She won’t suckle you now!  Stop crying!  Stop it!”

Finally, he picked up the baby and threw her viciously to
the ground.  Suddenly, horribly, the crying stopped.

“
But she was buried with her mother.”

Chul’s eyes went wide.  Only he had seen what his father had
done.  How could Jath see all this?

“It was dead at birth.” Vaccar said, handing the tiny
wrapped body to Aidan as if it were a dead snake.  “It is not a son, so it is
no loss."

The shaman took the tiny broken girl child up tenderly
and Chul saw the frown that played over his face.  His sister’s body was not
yet cold and was only beginning to stiffen while his mother’s hand in his had grown
cold and stiff hours ago.

The child watched Aidan touch Dree’s face, watched anger
and sorrow play across the shaman’s face.  “She tried to give birth alone,
knowing she would probably die.  Why?  Why did she not come to me?”  He spoke a
brief prayer, not to Nekraba but to Anado, the god of mercy.

At last he turned to Vaccar.  “I shall call a
Consecration for child.  What was her name to be?”

“Don’t trouble yourself, Aidan,” Vaccar growled
irritably. “We did not name it.  It was born dead, after all.”

“I know her name,” murmured Chul.  The little boy stepped
from the shadows beside his mother’s bed, bruises on his arms and face, tears
cutting grooves through grime.  He ignored his father’s glare knowing he would
suffer for it later.  “My ka told me her name was––”

“Tanra.  That was the name your mother gave her.  You went
to the barrows and watched Aidan call the prayers for your mother––your ka––and
your sister, Tanra ka-Dree, while Vaccar did not.  He beat you for it when you
came home, and that was the first time you let your fear turn to rage.”

Chul stared at him, confused and astonished and not a little
scared.  Was Jath reading his mind?  He was even more surprised to find hot,
angry tears streaming down his face.  He had almost forgotten…  “No, I…Jath?”

“Vaccar…hurt you a lot.  He beat you, mocked you.”  He drew
a sharp breath.  “He tried to kill you because some part of him knew.  He was
wrong about…everything.”

“No.  I didn’t fit with the tribe.  I took things.”  Chul
looked down, wiping at his face angrily, knocking the tears away.  “He attacked
Chief Bakti because he wanted me to die.  Even now, I’m not certain I should
have lived.”

“Your father saved your life, Chul Ka-Dree.  Now you will
see things no Dhanani has seen in thousands of years, and you will be…”  He
reached over and lifted Chul’s face abruptly so he could look into the Dhanani
boy’s eyes.  His own eyes widened.

Chul stared back.  “What?”

But Jath swallowed the words and turned away.  “Forgive me. 
I sometimes look where I should not.”

“No, no!” said Chul.  “I take no offense, truly!  I am
afraid to hear more, but at the same time…  Please tell me.”

But Jath only shook his head.

“I just want to know how you know all these things,” the
Dhanani frowned slightly.  “You knew my name without asking.  My father’s name,
even my sister’s name.  Nobody knew my sister’s name.  Are you a shaman?  Do
you hear my thoughts?”

Jath shook his head.  “Damerien says I see the unseen. 
Fiona says it’s because I was dead for a time, but Nestor says that’s ‘washer
woman rubbish.’”