Bounty (42 page)

Even humbled further he could do naught but respect Damious’s wishes and do just that. “Then please accept what insignificant gratitude I can offer,” he said helplessly, swallowing the guilty lump in his throat.

“Good luck to you, Godren.”

Nodding, Godren got himself together. “And to you.”

“Take Blackie. He’ll be a swift way out of here. And for the gods’ sake, give him a better name.”

Feeling dismissed, Godren took his leave. He fetched Blackie, rousing the sleepy animal and leading him from the Underworld, where he paused in the floral-swept Ruins. The stone looked decidedly cheery with the blanket of petals accentuating it, and he decided it was a pleasant way to leave it.

Once more, he summoned Evantralis. As she materialized, Blackie whickered.

“On your way, then?” the slave asked.

“So it seems. But I can’t quite believe it.”

“One day, perhaps. And then it will crash over you more keenly than any ocean.”

“Would you…do one last favor for me, if it is not too much to ask?”

“If it is within my power, I will do it.”

“Will you tell Seth where I’ve gone? And that I had to, by the princess’s command, and by the command of feelings in me that she has come to mirror.”

“And where is it you are going, Venomtreader?”

Turning his gaze to the blossom-strewn distance of the alley, Godren imagined the countryside beyond the walls, beyond the city, and beyond his recent ambitions. “I’m going home.”

*

Memory laced the air across the bridge. Godren felt it pull over him like a cloak from his past, tattooed into his very breath as he crossed. Familiar essence overwhelmed him. His roots from before prickled, reawakening after a long dormant spell. The scenery related to deep ties within him, and suddenly connections he hadn’t known he’d lost returned.

Godren swallowed the dusky trepidation that emanated from the familiar yet hostile sleeping village around him. Here it was, everything he missed and everyone that would condemn him if they knew he was here, in their midst. Blackie plodded passively along, sensing his mood. Everything was quiet, as if dormant in response to his absence, and he tried to shake the eerie feeling. A smattering of belonging and refutation warred inside him at his return home, causing a rise of sentimental emotions and glitching uncertainty.

Directing Blackie down an all-too-familiar path, they ended at a quaint, slightly-crude dwelling with an old picket fence and a garden in need of weeding. Taking stock of the latched shutters, Godren quietly dismounted and made his way up the porch. The door was fittingly locked, so he rounded the house to the back, cloaked by shadows cast from the eaves. There, one of the windows was cracked open as usual – a characteristic preference of one of his family members – and he treaded stealthily toward that chance of entry.

Paint was peeling off the shutter, but the hinges were well oiled and devoid of creaking. Sliding his fingers further through the crack, Godren drew open the shutter and climbed through the window. Moonlight spread across the wooden planks of the floor, but that was the only sign of a breach. Years of shadowy survival tactics saw him safely delivered into the silent darkness of the unsuspecting room. He crept silently toward the bed in the corner, avoiding the creaky floorboards, and then abruptly stubbed his toe on an unanticipated object and went keeling forward, cursing and landing half on the mattress and half on the floor.

The sleeping occupant emerged from her dreams, alarm sending her upright, and Godren scrambled to get a hand over her mouth.

“Sshh, Carra,” he coaxed, climbing more comfortably onto the bed and ignoring his throbbing toe and a mysteriously throbbing shin.

His sister froze, and then her eyes grew very wide. In recognition, no doubt.

“It’s me,” Godren said anyway, and then slowly removed his hand.

“Godren?” Carra asked in disbelief, and then flung herself at him. “Blessed gods, I thought I’d never see you again.” Clinging hands and raining kisses assaulted him in affection. “We never thought we’d know what happened to you… What are you doing back? And Seth – is he alright?”

“He’s fine – not with me, but fine,” Godren assured her, overwhelmed by his sister’s emotional welcome. Only a few years younger than he, they had always been very close.

“What are you doing here?” Carra repeated, searching his face. Moonlit tears gleamed in her dark eyes.

“I came to know why,” Godren murmured. “Why I’m the murderer. I have to set things right, Carra.”

Carra’s eyes widened again. “But they still think it was you, Godren. We knew it couldn’t ever be, but you still went down on the record. You can’t be seen here – they’ll imprison you forever without waiting for any protest. You have to leave.” A candle-light desperation sparked in her eyes, and she began hustling him back toward her window.

He stopped her. “I can’t run anymore, Carra. I have to set things right or go down trying. Things have grown complicated, and it’s to that point.”

“What things?” Carra challenged.

“It would take more than one night to tell, I’m afraid. But the stakes of my life have increased, and things matter on scales that I cannot even comprehend much less express. I have…reached my end on the path that I’m on. Something must give or change.”

Carra’s eyes creased, pinched with a pain that wanted to deny him. “But they could hang you.”

“They have already hung my innocence and my life. If I cannot fix things, they might as well hang my body.”

A liquid diamond trickled down Carra’s cheek. “I – I never thought I’d regret seeing you again. But if you’ve come back only to turn yourself in–”

“Now I never said I was just going to turn myself in,” Godren said. “I don’t expect submission to fix anything. I need to try to figure out what really happened, tonight. Can you tell me what you know?”

“What do
you
know?”

“I hear it was Delcy’s father that was killed. I know he was never all that friendly toward me, simply because Delcy had hopeless eyes for me and I could never be good enough for her, but that never seemed like a good enough reason for me to kill
him
.”

“Stupid princess,” Carra agreed distastefully. “Nothing but gossip and flirtations. Well I’ll tell you what it was; she spread another fantasy about you and her the morning her father was found dead – but before he was found. She said you came to see her in the night, tossing pebbles against her window, sneaking in to be with her – the whole slopping classic. Mama and I paid it no attention, but I suppose since you always humored her when she sought your company in public, everyone else put some stock in the claims she always made. I know you only ever tried to avoid offending her – and, in turn, her already-displeased father – but in the public’s eye you were her unfailing escort at every social event held. And I know there’s no point denying a gossip’s endless tirade of claims, but…for that reason the fantasies she created spread. It was only a fluke that they ended up not being harmless.”

Carra shook her head. “When they found her father had been killed in the night, everyone made the connection about you being there, and they all knew sparks had flown between you and him over relationship issues with his daughter. A murder in such a tight community is no light thing, and they all went after you with appalled tempers and no tolerance. I do believe it shocked them out of their senses. Such a thing has not happened in the history of Wingbridge, and when someone must pay…raw tempers are quick to accuse.” Making a sound of disgust, Carra stared at the quilt that covered her lap. “To think…if Delcy had not been spoiled in the home and starved for attention elsewhere, you would not be in line for the headsman’s axe. And she will never change her story – not with the consequence of being exposed as a fraud. Sometimes, I wish it had been her and not her father.”

Godren did not voice his disapproval for her thinking that way. Having the galling capacity of Delcy’s selfishness revealed to him, he could not blame her. A strong resentment for the gossip’s antics rose up inside him, and he fought to keep it cool.

“That’s wicked of me, I know,” Carra decided on her own. “But I just can’t forgive her. I never shall.”

Leaving her stanch sentiments alone, Godren rose from the bed.

“Where are you going?”

“To fulfill her fantasy,” Godren said, “and visit her in the night. If she likes talking so much, I am going to make her talk.”

Fright dawned in Carra’s eyes at the conviction in his voice. He had forgotten – she did not know what he had become. She was not accustomed to his darker side.

“Don’t worry, Carra,” he reassured her. “I am not the murderer she made me.”

“But – but you haven’t even seen Mama yet.”

“Don’t wake her,” Godren discouraged. “If you wake her now she will only see what I
have
become.”

“Godren…”

“I’m angry, Carra. When someone does this to you…” He shook his head, unable to describe it.

“You aren’t going to hurt her, are you?”

“Not much. Just leave her shaken enough to do what I want, if I can manage it.”

Carra pulled the covers up farther, as if to reassure herself, but then cast them back and jumped out of bed to hug him again. She had to stand on her toes to get her arms all the way around his neck. The evidence of the years he had been gone suddenly wedged a lump in his throat.

“Take care please, Godren,” she pleaded.

He stroked her hair reassuringly. “I’ll do my best, Carra. I want to fix this.”

Drawing back, she looked up at him. In the moonlight, she took stock of his scars.

That was his cue to leave. “I’ll be back,” he said to leave her in some state of peace.

She nodded. Whether she believed or not, she seemed unable to bear voicing any question of it.

Feeling his own reluctance from the implications of unspoken sentiments, Godren took his leave and climbed out the window. Retrieving Blackie, he mounted up and turned toward his next stop.

There was no sign of dawn yet, luckily. He still needed the dark to cover his intrusion, and it looked like it was set to linger. He imagined his victim, sleeping unknowingly in her bed. After years of being gone, she would never see him coming. She was probably at peace – at least, whatever manner of false peace she fostered behind her ever spoiled, unsatisfied heart. That peace was more false than ever, he thought, for a great disturbance now pended, making its way to her doorstep.

Delcy’s house was larger and showed more preservation than the majority in the village, a tribute to her father’s superior wealth as a horse breeder. It was still plenty substandard in relation to the wealth he had seen in the city and at the palace, but for a small town and a perspective keyed to a humble lifestyle, it stood out with that same blue-blood intimidation that Godren always remembered. The well-tended trellis scaling the side of the old house screamed status, even as he now noticed it sagged and was rotting in places. There would be no climbing
that
to get in.

Leaving Blackie in the smattering of trees that flanked the house and gradually progressed into the resident woods, Godren cast about for some pebbles on the ground. Perhaps the best way to penetrate the house would be by the methods Delcy herself had fantasized about. Her window, while not at an ideal second story height, still looked down from above the ground level due to a scant few stairs that threw things tastefully off inside. It would do for his purposes.

Remembering the days when he and Seth used to go down to the pond under the bridge and skip rocks across the water, Godren reinforced his feel for a pebble in his hand. It came back to him with almost staggering ease, transporting him back to that place in time. Those years of comfortable experience aided him now as he chucked the pebbles expertly at Delcy’s windowpane. He half expected the glass to turn to water and swallow the pebbles with a
sploosh!
But when the stones only rattled gently against it and bounced off, he shook himself from his memorable daydream and went to crouch out of sight beneath the windowsill. Plastering himself against the house, he waited.

After nothing happened for a long time, he tried again, repeating the pebble ritual and then hiding once again. This time, after a few moments’ wait, he heard a latch release and the window slide quietly up. He imagined Delcy scanning the area, bemused when she found nothing, and then he heard the window sliding back down into place.

Sending a sudden iron hand up to stop it, he wedged it open and emerged from his crouch. Delcy’s evident fright progressed right to a scream, but he let his other hand snake out to cover her mouth and proceeded to hold her by the face as he pulled himself through the window. Crowding into her room, he looked into her frightened eyes and let the wheels of recognition come around. When she recognized him, a muffled sound of distress pushed through his fingers as she struggled against his hold.

“Be still, Delcy Caster.”

She stilled.

For a moment, Godren allowed himself to just look at her with all the pent-up resentment and fresh blame that raged within him. He let it burn from his eyes to hers, willing years’ worth of shame and remorse to overcome her right then as he stood before her to deliver it.