Fifth Quarter (38 page)

Neegan froze in place, unable to believe what he saw. Bannon's only reaction to his sister's sudden appearance seemed to be surprise. He neither assumed a defensive position of his own nor moved to support hers.

Vree's gaze flicked from one pool of darkness to another. "Something's wrong."

"What? With the stairs?" Gyhard checked to see if his heart had started beating again.

"Something's out here. Something dangerous." "
Bannon, cover the corner by the bathhouse."

"How?" If he'd had teeth to clench, he would've forced the word through them.

"Sorry." Vree slid sideways to shrink the blind spot caused by the angle of the building.

All at once, Gyhard realized she was perfectly serious. The hair rose off the nape of his neck and, slowly, he turned. "I don't see anything."

"That's the worst kind."

Hands out from his sides, wishing he had a sword, or a shield, or even one of Bannon's narrow-bladed daggers, he began backing toward the inn.

Not until he called her name from the doorway, did Vree move to join him.

If Neegan hadn't known better, he would have sworn this man was not, nor had he ever been an assassin. Calling himself several kinds of fool, he shook off the paralysis and tried to understand what he'd just seen. The kind of training Bannon had undergone—the kind of training that made certain responses instinctive— could
not
be discarded.

Except that it had.

Chapter Thirteen

"You jumped out the window?" Karlene stared at Vree in astonishment. "Why?"

With the landlord seeing to bathwater for one of the inn's other guests—and therefore safely out of earshot—and the common room empty except for them, Vree saw no reason for evasion. "There was danger; in the innyard. We had to protect Bannon's body."

"I don't know." Vree shrugged, tucked the flying tails of her increasingly grimy silk shirt down into her pants, and tightened her belt. "I'd say a who, though, not a what."

The bard pushed past to the door of the common room and scanned the visible wedge of yard. She whistled the four notes that would call the kigh and then Sang a question at them. After a moment she Sang a gratitude and came back inside. "They say there's a man forking shit over by the stable and that's all."

"Now." The sense of danger had faded. Whoever'd been out there was long gone. Vree didn't need air spirits to tell her that.

"I was seven, Bannon." Vree could feel their identities beginning to merge again and desperately hung onto the memory of a small child whirling about barely in time to duck beneath a flailing leather strap, having finally learned to read the air currents and avoid a stinging welt. She only hoped it was her memory and not her brother's that she clung to.

"So you believe there was something out there?"

Gyhard tightened the buckle on his saddlebag and straightened. "Do you know how long an Imperial assassin usually lives after training?"

Karlene glanced from Gyhard to Vree and back again. "No," she said tentatively. "How long?"

"Three years. You see, the sort of people that assassins are used against—traitors, rebel leaders, the officers of opposing armies and such—are usually well aware that they're targets. As a result, they make certain preparations. Now assassins take that into account, but in about three years or so, the odds catch up to them."

"If the assassins know that, know the odds, why do they… uh…"

"Follow orders? Why are you asking me?" He cocked his head at Vree. "The bard would like to know why you followed orders."

Rubbing her palms together, Vree fought to get around the concept of
refusing
to follow orders.

"There." Gyhard spread his hands and turned back to Karlene. "All assassins are taught to believe that from a very young age. Now, as Vree and Bannon have been working assassins for the past five years, that seems to indicate that they, at least, have reason to believe in what they've been taught. They
are
the best. Or among the best. If Vree tells me she senses danger, I believe her." He slung the saddlebags over his shoulder and picked up a wrapped package of journey food. "I've settled up with the landlord. We should get on the road."

Brow furrowed, Karlene picked up her own bags. "You should have woken me," she muttered to Vree as they followed Gyhard to the stables.

Vree snorted. "If I'd had time to wake you, I'd have had time to take the stairs."

Head bowed, a filthy rag over his hair, Neegan methodically forked horse shit from the stable cart into the manure pile. Clad in a rough tunic and short breeches he'd pulled from a wash line two houses away, he stood hidden in plain sight and watched his targets.

While he had never seen either of them around horses to give him a basis of comparison, Bannon's movements still lacked the deadly grace that marked an assassin and he wore only a single dagger hanging in plain sight from his belt. Vree, for all she retained her training, seemed to periodically lose control of bits of her body—as though she forgot, just for an instant, who she was.

Was she sick, he wondered. Had she picked up some kind of brain disease in Ghoti? Perhaps they left the army rather than risk spreading it. Perhaps they were looking for a cure.

But that theory didn't explain Bannon.

Had Bannon sustained an injury in the assault on Aralt's stronghold? A blow to the head that had caused him to forget who and what he was? Neegan had heard of that kind of an injury although he'd personally never believed such a thing to be possible. Was Vree guarding a brother who could no longer guard himself? Actually, had he not known their relationship, Neegan would not have assumed from what he observed that they were brother and sister.

He studied them for a moment as if they were nothing more than targets.
Not lovers, not yet
. But they no longer flirted with the boundaries blood placed around them. A line had been crossed or the boundaries had been shifted—he wasn't certain which.

They spoke of their horses, or the weather, or the condition of the secondary, packed clay road they now followed but said nothing that would even begin to answer the multitude of questions he suddenly had. Neegan cocked his head as Vree swung into the saddle and turned to Bannon, her exasperation apparent from a distance.

"Can't we beat Kars to his stronghold and ambush him?" she asked. "I hate trailing along at his heels."

"First of all, it isn't a stronghold, it's merely a cabin, or it was. Secondly, it's a long ride to the mountains and I rather think our friend the bard here would prefer to catch up and free His Highness sooner than that. The longer the prince is with him, the more twisted his kigh becomes."

"You never said that before."

"I should have thought it was obvious." He smiled and Neegan fought to keep from staring. Even from across the stableyard, the expression on Bannon's face had nothing of Bannon in it. What's more, it had been Bannon's voice but not Bannon's manner of speaking.

When they rode out of the innyard, galloping off toward the dawn, Neegan dropped the manure fork and raced along the shadowed paths to his horse and gear. Apparently, his targets were helping the bard to rescue the prince.
But that doesn't change anything
, he reminded himself as he buckled on his arm sheaths. It didn't change the fact that they'd deserted, spat on their oaths, turned their backs on everything he believed in, on everything he'd taught them to believe in. Didn't change the penalty. Eventually, Bannon would seek a little privacy by the side of the road and, when he did, Neegan would be waiting. Once he had Bannon, he'd have Vree.

"Before you kill them, ask them why."

He would ask the marshal's question, but now that confusion threatened to overwhelm his personal sense of betrayal, he would also take the time to ask a question of his own. What had happened in Aralt's tower?

When they finally allowed the horses to slow to a walk, Vree dropped out of the saddle to stretch her legs.

"We're going to forget how to get anywhere on our own two feet. Gonna end up looking like fat-assed officers."

Vree arched her back, rocked forward, then arched it again, working the stiffness out of her shoulders. "Giving the pounding it's taking, if my ass is getting fat, it's in self-defense."

She glanced up as the bard fell into step beside her, then let her gaze drop back to the road. There were always people attracted to danger, who courted a symbolic death by courting Jiir's blades. Vree recognized the bard's fear—
You could kill me at any moment. Would you kill me at any moment
?—so she recognized the other woman's attraction and while she was willing to accept that Karlene honestly wanted to be her friend, she could sense something else as well. Something that confused her.

"I don't think so." She felt his resentment, couldn't tell where it was directed. Or at whom. Felt him retreat into a sullen silence.

"So…" Karlene cleared her throat and made her voice sound curious, nonthreatening. "What did your parents think about you becoming assassins?"

"Same man. We look like each other but not like I remember her." Brushing a fly off her face, Vree caught it on the wing, crushed it, and dropped the body. "Probably a soldier; but we don't know who he is."

Vree flicked a glance back over her shoulder, unable to prevent the involuntary motion. The world stopped as she thought she saw a horse and rider moving into the very edge of her vision. A heartbeat later, they disappeared into a dip in the road.

"I still
have
Bannon." Vree's right forearm twitched and a throwing dagger appeared in her hand. A twist and it disappeared. She turned and glared at Gyhard, walking on her other side.

Karlene followed her gaze and considered everything she'd learned about assassins since dawn. "Was Gyhard a… a target? Was he prepared?" She read the answer in the set of Vree's shoulders and the studied indifference of Gyhard's expression. "He took Bannon's body when Bannon killed
his
body, didn't he?"