Fifth Quarter (48 page)

Karlene drew herself up to her full height, which was considerably taller than either of the Southerners. "The prince was alive at the way station."

"A lot has happened since then," Gyhard remarked mildly.

"He's alive," the bard ground out through clenched teeth, "or your Kars wouldn't be trying to stop us."

"She's right." Vree forced her gaze up off the rough sling that bound Gyhard's broken arm to his chest. Bannon kept her eyes on it as much as he could, terrified he would have to watch helplessly while his body died. Vree could do nothing about his fear because if it became the only way she could save the prince, that was exactly what would happen. Her own fear, she kept where she always had.

An honorable death.

And maybe Karlene would Sing her to rest.

"You. You. Always you!
What about me?"

If Gyhard stayed away from the prince… She didn't know what she'd do. Nothing? But Bannon had to have his body back.

"Come on," she said suddenly. "We're wasting time."

He listened for the demons at dusk. Long ago they'd come to him as the sun set, dancing on the evening breeze. They didn't come this night as they hadn't come for thousands and thousands of nights.

Otavas stumbled after him, stomach growling. He didn't want to ask the old man for anything, but the old man was carrying the food. "I'm hungry," he said, sounding much younger than seventeen.

"Of course you are, my heart."

The three plums were not at their best, having spent the better part of two days in a calfskin pouch, but the prince wolfed them down, then licked the juice off his fingers. Two biscuits, hard and dry, and a few mouthfuls of tepid water finished the meal.

"In the morning, I will make mush," the old man told him. "And then we will gather up the bounty of the land."

"Bounty?" Otavas swiveled his head around and waved a hand at the canyon walls he couldn't see. "Of
this
land? There's nothing but a lot of rock and scrub!"

The old man sighed. "Do you remember how you used to set snares for the rabbits far away from the cabin because you knew I hated to hear them scream?"

"That wasn't me."

"Of course it was, my heart."

Otavas flinched back as an ancient hand reached out and unerringly patted him on the thigh in spite of the darkness. He frowned and rubbed at the place the old man had touched. He didn't know how to set a snare for a rabbit. Did he? Still frowning, he barely resisted as he was pulled down to pillow his head on a bony lap. Brushing a dangling finger bone off his cheek, he rolled over and stared up at the stars.

"You must sleep, my heart. We are still far from home and safety."

Otavas traced the Road to Glory with his gaze and twisted just far enough to see the four brilliant white stars that made up the points of the Imperial Diadem. Imperial… Emperor… Tears spilled out the corners of his eyes as he remembered. He was Prince Otavas, the Emperor's youngest son. Prince Otavas. He'd never set a rabbit snare in his life.

"Sleep, my heart."

Holding his memories like a shield, the prince fought the compulsion. And lost.

The old man looked to where his family sat, a semicircle of shadows against the shadows of the night. "We must keep watch," he told them softly, "so that the demons do not come on us unprepared." Wheyra, Hestia, and Iban, he turned around where they sat. Kait, he moved up to the top of the rocky outcrop he leaned against.

As she climbed clumsily in the darkness, he stroked the matted hair back off the face in his lap. "Remember how you would hold me when the demons tried to take my dreams? I will hold you now, my heart, and protect you as you so long ago protected me."

"We're staying here until the moon comes up."

"No." Karlene tried to push past her, but brown fingers clamped around her arm like an iron vise.

"You want a busted ankle to go with his arm?" Vree asked, pushing her face within inches of the other woman's. "If we can't see well enough to move safely, you can't."

The bard knew better than to try to pull away. "But we're so close."

"Close enough to trip over them. We don't want that." When Karlene nodded reluctantly, Vree released her and sank to the ground. Both hands searched for potential disaster—she wasn't certain fire ants even lived this far north, but she had no intention of finding herself sleeping on a nest. She rolled a few loose rocks out of the way and then thankfully shrugged out of the jury-rigged pack.

"We should've kept one horse for the gear," Gyhard muttered as he dropped the little he carried.

"We're trying to sneak up on them, and horses don't sneak worth shit." Vree stretched out, pillowed her head on the pack, then twisted so she could see Gyhard outlined against the stars as he settled down beside her.

"He's too close."

"You can watch your body more easily."

"Vree, he's
broken
my arm." A broken arm, no matter how cleanly the bone set, would never be as strong as it once was. He would never be able to depend on his body as he had before Gyhard. "He has to pay for that."

"I know." He was so close, she could see the pain he tried to hide, see the way he held his left arm protectively with his right.

"Vree?" Karlene sat on her other side, all the highs and lows rubbed off her voice by emotional exhaustion. They were so close that every rock, every tree, every bend in the trail could hide the prince. "Have you decided what you're going to do?"

Muscles tensed. "About what?"

"His Highness."

His Highness. Vree bit back a nearly hysterical giggle of relief. "We should catch up and follow him for a couple of days, find the patterns, note the weaknesses, and plan a way to use them."

His laugh ground salt into open wounds. "Then he'd
love
this, wouldn't he?"

Karlene shook her head, forgetting that night hid the gesture. "We can't go on like this for another couple of days."

Bannon continued to laugh as Vree shoved him back as far as she could. Which wasn't far. "Neither can we," she murmured. "We'll move on when the moon rises."

"But now…"

"Now, I'm going to sleep. I suggest you do the same."

Karlene stared down at the Vree-shaped shadow in disbelief. "How can you
sleep
?"

She was seven. Her mother had just died. Neegan was absurdly young, with no scar on his throat, and his voice able to roam where it pleased. He had not yet survived long enough to be made an officer.

"An assassin," he said, wiping her cheeks with strong fingers and lifting her face so she could stare into his eyes, "has no family but the army."

The moonlight touched her face and Vree woke trying to hold onto the feeling she'd just been given a gift. "The army was his family, Bannon. He gave it to us."

"Gave us to it." His mental voice held no forgiveness. "If you had no family but the army, Vree, what does that make me? He screwed that up, too, sister-mine. But then, he died for
you
at the end. Right after he held a slaughtering knife at what he thought was my throat."

"I…"
You mean more to me than training
, Neegan had said to her with his death.
I
would rather die than kill you
.

"He also said he'd rather die than voluntarily miss a target. Look, Vree, you feel what you want about him, but if I feel nothing but slaughtering satisfaction that he's dead and I'm not, well, he has only himself to blame. Isn't that what he taught us? Do anything you must to reach your target. Do anything you have to in order to survive." Fear turned the anger to a sullen crimson pulse. Bannon opened her eyes and turned her head toward Gyhard, repeating, "Anything," so softly she thought she might have imagined it.

Gyhard was awake and staring at her with a hungry longing that made her want to grab his shoulders and shake him until his ears bled. She'd already killed one man who loved her—in his own dark and twisted way—did this one think she couldn't kill two?

"It's all right, sister-mine. I can hate him enough for both of us."

The moon turned Karlene's pale hair into a gleaming silver-white braid that looked too perfect to be real. When Vree stood, the bard's lids snapped up and she whispered, "Is it time?"

Palms rubbing against each other, Vree nodded.

Vree saw the shadow first, flowing down the curve of the outcropping, one dark stream ending in the outline of a hand and moonlight-elongated fingers. Tracing it back to its source, she found the slumped silhouette of a watcher—not a stump or boulder as she had first assumed. She forced her eyes to remain locked on it, fighting the compulsion to look away and then fighting the terrified panic that rose when she refused to give in.

"No one sits that slaughtering still.
We
don't sit that still."

"We're alive." She watched a moment longer, then swept the area at the base of the outcrop with a tightly leashed gaze. Two more. No, three—two of them so close together the darkness nearly made them one. Four in all. "That's not so bad. We defeated that many at the ford and these ones don't look armed."

"We were defending ourselves at the ford. If our kigh things won't face them, we can't attack."

"We're not going to attack. We'll go around."

She could see a shoulder and some old man hair. Kars. The dark on dark bundle by his side had to be Prince Otavas. Belly to the ground, Vree squirmed closer. It didn't help much. Even allowing for bardic exaggeration, Karlene's description of the prince had little in common with the filthy young man resting his head in Kars' lap.

"That looks friendly."

"Does everything have to come back to sex with you?"

"I said
friendly
, sister-mine."

The young man moaned and pushed at the air with one long-fingered hand. Four or five thin gold rings winked in the moonlight.

"It's him. And he's alive."

Her weight on fingers and toes, Vree started back to Karlene and Gyhard, left safely hidden behind a bend in the canyon with orders to
stay
there. As little as she'd been able to see creeping forward, she could see less now. A rock rolled away from a questing foot and bounced down a rain-cut gully. Vree froze and watched it wide-eyed as it slammed into the knee of one of the silent watchers. A pale oval of face turned toward her.