Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four (35 page)

“I didn’t mean … I’m sorry,” she said, still not meeting his eyes, “for not telling you.”

“Yes,” Cyrus said. “I’m sorry, too. Would it really have been that bad? I already took you on knowing what your husband was. Did you think having an ass of a brother would have stopped me?”

“I was afraid,” she said, as her body jerked from an unseen chill, “that you might think something like this could happen, and you would change your mind. I thought that perhaps it would be dangerous to tell you, that you weren’t as honorable or decent as you appeared to be. I had reasons,” she said, finally looking up at him. “Very good ones, every single one, or at least they sounded so in my head.”

“I trusted you.” Cyrus stared at her, and she flinched away. “In a way I haven’t … with anyone … in a long time. I understand your reasons, but as of about thirty days ago … when you knew who I was and what I stood for … they should have been null and you should have told me the truth.”

“I’m sorry.” She still did not look up, focusing instead on the floor, the marble, anything but him. “I’m sorry, Cyrus …”

“Yeah.” He heard the scrape of his boots on the floor as he turned back to the door. “I have to go meet with my officers. King Longwell is leaving tomorrow; they’ve been summoned to Enrant Monge by Briyce Unger.”

“Will we be going as well?” she asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Cyrus said.

He heard her move across the floor, taking tentative steps, her feet making a slight sucking noise as they pulled from the marble floor with each step. “Will you hand me back over to my brother? As though I were a piece of property?”

Cyrus felt the answer within him, steeped in the rage he felt inside at her betrayal.
Yes! I’ll hand you over to him, let him have you, be done with you and your lies, your deceits, with your …
He nearly choked at the memory of her fingers tracing lines down his skin. “You should get dressed,” he said simply, and walked out the door, careful to open it no more than was necessary to slip out, so as not to expose her to anyone who might be walking down the hall.

As he walked away from the closed door, he stopped, halted by some unseen feeling, something that ran through him, a ripple of strong emotion, and he tried to quiet it.
She lied. She betrayed you. Just like Vara. Just like Imina.
He felt his fist clench. Felt his mask of emotionlessness deteriorate, and he placed his hand on the stone wall of the hallway, as though he could draw some unseen strength from it. He imagined pebbles falling within him, into the giant void, the roiling maelstrom in his chest, the storm that threatened to break loose out of him and cause him to shed tears, something he had not done since … He remembered, and then pushed it down, back into the depths, along with the storm, along with everything else.

One foot in front of another. Keep walking. I need to meet with the officers. I need to decide what we’re going to do next
. He took a breath, then another, slow, as though he could excise the venom within simply by breathing it out. He imagined the stones falling inside him again, rocks, boulders, dropping into his center, weighing down his heart, so that he couldn’t feel the emotion within. He imagined ice, cold, frigid blocks of it, stacked all around his pain, cooling him, building a wall that it couldn’t escape. He let it contain the emotion, bury it, push it far out of sight, behind the wall, where he could no longer taste the bitterness of it in his mouth, and the blood rushing through his ears subsided.

One foot in front of another,
he told himself again, pulling his hand from the wall, letting his own strength hold him upright again. He stood up, trying to straighten his spine, as though standing as tall as possible could help somehow, disguise his weakness, put it to the back of him, where he wouldn’t feel it and no one would see it. He resisted the urge to let his knees buckle, fought it, let the ice hold his emotions in check.
One foot in front of another. Keep walking.

He took a step, then another, and the pace became quicker and quicker as his feet carried him away from the door, away from the handle he wanted to turn, the words he wanted to say, away from the feel of her skin against his—and back to his duty.

“Did you know?” It was Ryin who asked the question, after Cyrus had laid out everything that King Longwell had told him. Reactions had ranged from shocked horror (Nyad, who had her hands covering her mouth, her eyes wider than usual) to calm acceptance (Curatio and J’anda, each of whom let only a single raised eyebrow appear on their faces—Curatio, the left and J’anda the right, the contrast of their light and dark skin and facial reactions making them appear as bizarre mirror images) to unflinching, uncaring emptiness (Terian). Only Ryin spoke, though Samwen Longwell had a question of sorts on his face.

“Of course he didn’t,” Nyad said, turning to slap Ryin across the arm with a backhand, drawing an annoyed look from the druid as he rubbed his shoulder. She turned back to Cyrus, and her expression changed to perplexed. “Wait, did you?”

“He didn’t,” Curatio said, studying Cyrus. “This is not the sort of thing our gGeneral would have hidden from us.”

“I’d like to hear him say it,” Ryin spoke up again, still massaging the place where Nyad had struck him. He looked at the faces around him, Curatio, J’anda and Nyad in particular, showing some irritation with him. “It’s not as though it’s the first time he’s played games with the truth to get something he wanted. I just want to hear him say he didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know,” Cyrus said, his voice devoid of any emotion. “But now we have consequences to deal with.”

“Actaluere’s declaration of war isn’t as problematic as one might think,” Longwell said, drawing the officers’ attention to him. “They’ll have received a summons to Enrant Monge as well, and they’ll be obligated to attend. We’ll have a chance to smooth this over with Milos Tiernan himself.”

“What if our esteemed General doesn’t want to smooth it over?” Ryin asked. “I mean, we are talking about handing over his lover—”

“She’s my nothing,” Cyrus said, drawing a gasp from Nyad. “She is nothing to me, now.” He didn’t wait for the officers to react before plunging ahead. “She is, however, under the protection of Sanctuary, granted asylum because of the barbaric treatment of women in this land.”

“Asylum she gained from you under false pretense,” Ryin said. “She didn’t mention she was the sister of the monarch, did she? That seems like material information that could have influenced our decision to allow her to come along.”

“It wasn’t ‘our’ decision,” Cyrus said dully. “It was mine.”

“Great,” Ryin said sarcastically. “Because your stubborn decisions never lead us into war.”

“Calm yourself,” Curatio said to Ryin. “We do have a reputation to consider. Once we grant someone protection, do we lift it and throw her back to the same brother who willingly wedded her to that monster the moment it becomes inconvenient? That doesn’t seem to be the Sanctuary way.”

“And starting another war for Galbadien to contend with?” Ryin Ayend looked around the other officers. “Is that the Sanctuary way?”

“It is if we start and finish the war for them,” Terian growled. “I’m no fan of the Baroness, but I could stand to have another few battles before we head home.” He smiled coldly. “After all, we have troops that need seasoning. It’d be a shame if they marched all the way out here to take part in only one good fight before we turn around and go back to Sanctuary.”

“Cyrus?” J’anda’s cool voice seemed to demand a level of quiet from the others in the room. “What do you intend to do?”

“We go to Enrant Monge,” Cyrus said. “We’ll travel along with the Galbadien court, and I’ll speak with Milos Tiernan, outline our position, and we’ll see where we go from there. Maybe there’ll be a war with them …” He let his voice trail off before it returned, only slightly above a whisper, “… and maybe there won’t.”

“What position will you be outlining to him?” J’anda asked, looking around at the other officers.

Cyrus did not move, did not blink, and gave no hint of any emotion when he answered. “I don’t know yet. But I’ve got a little less than a month to figure it out.”

They left the next day in a long procession, wending down the hillside from Vernadam, Cyrus, the officers and the other guests he had brought following the King’s court. King Longwell was carried down on a litter to a horse-drawn carriage below. Unlike other carriages Cyrus had seen, this one was massive, almost a full living quarters in and of itself. When they reached the bottom of the hill, Cyrus saw his troops assembled for the first time in a month, though he knew Odellan had taken them through regular exercises.

“This looks like a fat and happy lot,” Terian said as they rode along the length of the column of Sanctuary’s army. “I’d gather that thirty days of rest has been good to them.” A harlot in red exposed herself from a balcony above them, then gestured to Terian with a come-hither finger. “A little too good, maybe,” the dark elf said. “Perhaps I should ask around and see if our boys have been behaving themselves.”

“I don’t care what you do,” Cyrus said grimly, “so long as you’re with us at Enrant Monge when we get there.”

“Maybe you should come on this inspection tour with me,” Terian said, slowing his horse. “It seems you have frustrations of your own to work out.”

“I’ve worked out plenty of frustrations in the last month,” Cyrus said, tense. “It seems to have left me with even more than when I started.”

“Perhaps you’re being too formal about things,” the dark knight suggested as Cyrus brought his horse to a halt, watching as the column began to get underway, marching slowly, in time, toward the west road out of the village. “You’re putting too much emphasis on feelings, and trust, and emotion and all these other ugly things that have no place in a bed.”

Cyrus stared at the dark elf as Terian tied the reins of his destrier to the hitching post. “Occasionally, Terian, I find myself envying you for the simplistic approach you seem able to take to your emotions.”

“Don’t speak about things you know nothing about,” Terian said darkly. “I am merely suggesting that you might be attaching too much significance to something that need not be so desperately complicated—or nearly so painful as you seem to be making it.”

“And I was expressing my admiration for your ability to go unfettered by the messy entanglements that seem to be constantly drawing me down,” Cyrus said. “I was quite sincere in what I said.”

“You still don’t know what you’re talking about, Davidon,” Terian replied, voice cold. “There’s a difference between this and the people you care about.”

“I wish there was, for me,” Cyrus said. “Unfortunately, thus far, there hasn’t been. Perhaps in the future.”

Terian smiled, a half one. “Stay a while. With our horses, we can catch up to the army after we finish our business within. Start now. It gets easier every time you do it, just like battle, and your soul gets hardened to it after a while, and it becomes reflexive, as it should be. A glorious release, without that horrible, life-draining emotion you attach to it.”

Cyrus’s smile was fake, but he tried. “Perhaps some other time. After as long a break as we’ve had, I suspect our formation will need some practice, and I mean to be there to see it.”

“As you wish,” Terian said coolly. “But you know full well that Longwell and Odellan can handle that better than you can. If you want to make excuses for yourself, find better ones. If you want to make yourself immune to such pains as you feel now, best get started. Either way, stop fooling yourself.” The dark knight turned and began to walk toward the door to the establishment, which was pushed open by a woman wearing a dress that exposed more supple, pink, flawless flesh than Cattrine possessed on her entire body. Cyrus’s eyes were drawn to it, even as the woman wrapped an arm around Terian’s waist, and let the door swing shut behind them.

Cyrus turned in his saddle to look down the column and caught sight of Cattrine toward the back of the formation with Ryin and Nyad, her horse shuffling along at a slow canter. His eyes took her in, her dark hair as well kempt as any time he had seen her, her riding clothes cleaned and in fine order. Her lips looked especially red, her scars well hidden now. She looked at the ground as she rode, despondent, though Nyad seemed to be chattering happily in her ear.

“The Baroness has an ill humor about her,” Odellan said, startling Cyrus as he appeared next to Windrider on his own horse. “A cloud hangs over her, some grief unspoken, I think.” He looked at Cyrus in curiosity. “As though Yartraak himself has settled darkness upon her heart.”

Cyrus stared at Odellan, trying to decide what to say. He finally settled on, “Keep your eye on the formation. I want our march in perfect order, and after today I want weapons practice for every one of our fighters; we’ll be ready if battle comes our way.” After seeing Odellan’s nod of acknowledgment, Cyrus spurred Windrider, who whinnied in anger at the rough treatment and took off at a run. “Sorry,” Cyrus said to the horse after a moment. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure the horse accepts your apology,” Martaina said, coming alongside Cyrus. “Now perhaps you should turn those words in a different direction—”

“Perhaps you should keep yours to yourself,” Cyrus snapped. “Because as it happens, I recall about a month ago you told me that even with all your vast experience, you didn’t know what you were doing in relationships.”

“I can see you’re blinded in your pain,” Martaina began slowly, after a pause, “but let me bring something forward in your mind. In spite of our similar ears,” she said, pushing her hair back behind the points of her ears, “I’m not Vara. If you’re looking for a sharp-tongued reply or an argument, look elsewhere. I’m a little too old to slap back at you just because you swing an emotional gauntlet or three my way.”

“I only have two gauntlets,” Cyrus replied.

“Then that must be something else you’re swinging around,” Martaina said, deadpan. “You might want to put it back in your pants before someone loses an eye—like you, yourself.”