Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (32 page)

“Indeed he has.”  She took the cup gratefully, more to warm
her hands than to drink.  She looked toward the makeshift lean-to.  “I wonder
that he took no one else in with him.” 

Kerrick shrugged.  “The space within is cramped.  Little
room for the ducal entourage, I suppose.”

“But he took no one.  Not my father, not myself.  I’faith,
he did directly refuse when I offered and instead bade me see to my armor
instead––armor, look you, which has not seen more than dust since Brannford. 
Sent me off, as I said, the way one might send a pesky child off, busy with
chores.”  She hated the note of petulance in her voice, but at every point
since they’d joined with the duke, she’d been sent off to mind the camp or see
to her weapons. She felt nearly as useless as she had at Brannagh.

“He knows you, Renda.”  Kerrick smiled.  “I suspect that he
knows full well that you watch since here you are, no more than fifty feet
away, within easy earshot and sword at your side, having already dusted your
armor per his orders.”

She nodded, chuckling at herself.  He could always seem to
put things in the best light.

“There, you see?”  Kerrick smiled.  “So he is not
unprotected, despite his best efforts.”

She rubbed her shoulders and looked out over their little
band, watching the knights take advantage of the unexpected stop to stretch
their legs, to spar with each other or even to sleep.  They’d been riding hard
for days with only a few hours of rest each night before they’d set out again,
and this respite was welcome, even if the reason was a bit worrisome. 

“If we stay much longer, we should probably count on making
camp here for the night.”  She sniffed at the mug.  “What is this, tea?”

“So it is.”  He grinned and sat beside her.  “I was much
amused to see that the duke’s man, Nestor, had thought to buy tea leaves in
Pyran right along with the other necessities.  I confess, at the time, I’d assumed
it to be one of the duke’s civilized eccentricities, or perhaps Nestor’s own,
but now, after many frozen days on the landbridge, I am most grateful for it. 
It certainly helps to make the brackish water more bearable.”  He raised his
mug.  “A manly drink, it is, my Lady.  Maybe too strong for the likes of you.” 

“Do you think so?” she grinned up at him.  “I always thought
it a drink suited…how did you once put it?  ‘Suited only to grandmothers at
their embroidery.’”

“No, indeed!” he answered with gravity.  “I have it on good
authority that this will put hair on your chest.  You’ve but to spy Grayson as
he bathes to see the effect.”  He raised a brow at her.  “When he bathes. 
Cheers.”

“Well then,” she chuckled softly.  “Here’s to hair on my
chest, I suppose.”  She took a grateful sip.

“Sure I thank you, my Lord.  Most kind.”

“My pleasure.”  He smiled and watched her for a time, and
she had a sense that he wanted to say something.

“Lord Kerrick,” she said at last, “is something the matter?”

“This many a month while I was at Windale,” he sighed, “I’ve
thought softly on you even while my attention should have been on my father and
on Windale.  Pure thoughts, virtuous thoughts.”  He looked down and smiled. 
“Mostly.  But these reveries were taken up with your grace and delicate beauty
at Brannagh.”

She looked away.  Surely she was no such prize now. 

“My Lady, you’re filthy.  You smell of sweat and horse
dung.  And now that you are back in your element, armored and armed, with your
mind focused so keenly on tactics and battle, I confess…”  He smiled.  “I find
you even more entrancing.”

She had not expected him to speak to her of this again so
soon, and once again, she found herself feeling awkward and uncertain.  And
flattered.  But these were dangerous feelings for a battlefield when her
thoughts needed to on more important matters.  He had to appreciate how little
she needed to distract herself with this just now.

“But,” he added, as if following her thoughts, “if your
thoughts did not turn my way in the laziness of peace at Castle Brannagh, it is
certain that they cannot now.  Nor would I seek to distract you with my suit.” 
He cleared his throat and drank deeply from his cup.  “So my purpose is in
telling you that while my feelings have not changed, I will not pester you
about this.  Not until we are at our leisure to consider and decide.  Only know
that I remain your faithful servant and await the day when you might give me
your answer.”

She smiled with relief.  “You flatter me with your
attention, Lord Kerrick, and with your understanding.  Thank you.”  She brushed
dirt off her armor and looked toward where the duke was still with the
prisoner.

“As to the duke, I should not worry overmuch,” he said,
nodding toward the crude tent, “Laniel is with him, and he is quite formidable
for a priest.”

“Alas, not so,” she said, her somber sense of duty returning
to her features.  “Laniel came out almost as the duke entered, no doubt at his
bidding.  His Grace is quite alone with the prisoner.”

She supposed she could understand why, if Trocu would
interrogate this mage, he might dismiss Laniel.  Not that Laniel would
understand a word spoken between the duke and this mage, and not that it should
much matter if he did, of course.  If any person in this camp could be trusted
with the duke’s confidence, it was the priest of Bilkar.  But she supposed
Damerien had quite enough to consider without having to explain his ability to
speak Brymandyan to anyone, even Laniel, though Laniel would never raise the
question.  Very well, that explained why he did not want any of the others
along, but not herself, and certainly not Lord Daerwin––Lord Daerwin who knew
all of Trocu’s secrets.

All his secrets, indeed.  Perhaps that was the flaw in her
thinking. 

Then again, Lord Daerwin had lost so much to these mages. 
She wondered if Damerien would spare his uncle––his son, she thought quite
deliberately, stripping away the ingrained artifice that lived even in her
thoughts.  Damerien could not bear to put his beloved son through the ordeal of
having to exercise his almost legendary restraint while interrogating one of
those responsible for the destruction of Brannagh, responsible for the death of
the last of the knights, the family servants, his wife…

His wife….  Her mother.  Ah.  Tears brimmed in her eyes,
tears she’d fought down and refused since that day not so long ago when she’d
watched Brannagh erupt in white light.  Now she understood.  It was not only
Daerwin’s sensibilities he would spare but her own as well.  She sipped at her
tea and sighed.

“Tears?  And a sigh.”  Kerrick looked down.  “For love of
your dear cousin.” 

“For love of Syon,” she snapped, a bit more harshly than she
intended, and wiped the tears away.  “Trocu Damerien is my dear cousin, yes,
but he is dearer to me still as Syon’s ruler. I am a Knight of Brannagh, and it
is my station to serve the duke, as it is yours.”

“I meant no disrespect, my Lady.  I just know that your
cousin the duke is…”  He shrugged the end of the thought away, unable or
unwilling to give it voice.

“Vexing?”  She chuckled gently.  “It’s all right.  That, he
is.  Believe me, I do understand.”

Renda brushed a stray bit of hair from her eyes and smiled a
bit ruefully.  “In all love and loyalty to him, I confess, my frustration with
His Grace comes when my duty to protect him and my duty to obey him come afoul
of each other. It was much easier when the duke was older and more inclined
toward obeying protocols.”

“Brada?”

She nodded.  “When he and my father led their armies,
Kadak’s demons trembled.”

“I met him only twice,” smiled Kerrick.  “What an
inspiration!  As fine a sword arm as any on the field and such a brilliant
strategist!  We could not have had a better leader during the war than he.  I
was deeply grieved to hear that he did not survive his wounds after the war. 
We will not see his like again.”  He jumped, realizing what he’d just said. 
“That’s not to say Trocu is not a fine leader!  As he gets older, I see more
and more of his father in him, and I rejoice.  But I do miss the old duke.  For
the reasons you said.  Before.”

Renda smiled.  “I understand.  Trocu has everything in
common with his father, for all that he has not been seen to lead men in war. 
But I have faith in him, as do we all.  It is no failing of his, after all,
that he should be born to lead men in time of peace rather than war. 
Leadership in time of peace is a different sort of challenge, and one whose
success is not sung as loudly in the taverns.”

“Peace?”  Kerrick raised a brow at her.  “Plagues and bound
gods, armies of mages wreaking havoc, allies turning on each other and entire
coastlines laid waste?  My Lady, if this is the face of peace, I think I should
prefer war.”

Gikka cleared her throat discreetly behind them.  “Is he yet
in there?”  She crouched down between the two knights and took Renda’s mug. 
“Been at it an hour and more, he has.  Sure an he’s not come by it by now,
there’s no blood in that turnip.”

Renda shrugged.  “The prisoner’s Byrandian, and he’s one of
the enemy.  Anything he can tell us is more than we knew before.”

“Aye, mistress, but what he knows could fit on the point of
a pin, I wager.  He’s at best a common foot soldier, and not one of power, or
I’d not be here to tell the tale.”  Gikka drank from Renda’s mug and made a
face.  “What is that, tea?”

One of the cloaks covering the lean-to slipped aside, and
Damerien stepped out, settling the cloth carefully back in place.  “Cousin,” he
said wearily, approaching Renda and the others.

“My Lord,” Kerrick rose and greeted the duke with a bow. 
“What news?”

“Nothing of note.”  Trocu nodded to Kerrick, then turned his
attention to Gikka.  “Next time, my lovely,” the duke chuckled, “I would charge
you, be ambushed by one at once higher in the chain of command and more
observant.  Do that for me, won’t you?”  He handed her the dagger she’d left in
the mage’s chest.  “I thought it best we not leave that with him, now that
Laniel has him all stitched up.  Not that I think he’d be able to tell one end
from the other, as heavily as Laniel has him dosed.”

Beyond them, Renda watched the Bilkarian pick up something
from the ground and stare at it.  She saw the look that passed between Laniel
and Damerien.

“Cousin?” she said worriedly.

“Kerrick, I leave you to watch the prisoner.”  Trocu offered
his hand to Renda and nodded to Gikka.  “Come, ladies.  I believe I shall have
need of your counsel, as well as that of my uncle and yon priest.”

“Concealment,” Dith murmured quietly from where he sat on a lumpy
ledge in the coral reef above the roadway.

Below him on the stone path, Glasada nibbled gratefully at
the shoots of marsh grass sprouting in the silt along the edges of the stone,
the same marsh grasses that had sprouted all over the landbridge at once. 

“Brilliant.  That should blind them sufficiently.  All of
them.  And of course by the time it’s any burden to you, we should be well into
Byrandia.”

By the time it could be any burden to me, he smiled to
himself, the grasses will be well established and will be able to sustain
themselves without me. Why, there might even be trees.

“You’re rather proud of yourself for this, aren’t you? 
Growing grass in briny soil, in the dead cold of the Feast of Bilkar besides…. 
Simple fire would have sufficed to cover our escape.”

Dith had thought of that.  But, of course, Glasada could not
eat fire, and neither could he hope to take actual physical cover in it, not as
well as in waist high grasses.  He smiled to think that Gikka would approve of
his version of her grass cloak.

“Ah, indeed.  All right, then, I will say it.  Well
done.  In any case, now we go straight on to Byrandia, yes?”

Dith jumped down from the ledge and smoothed out his
seamless gold robes.  “Not…just yet,” he breathed.  The grass cloak was not the
only tactic he had taken from his beloved Gikka.

“Grass, it is.”  Laniel held a handful of it out.  He
gestured over the haze of green that stretched out in all directions, steadily
deepening between the withering piles of kelp and seaweed.  “As you can see, it
has come up around the camp and as far as the eye can see.  I cannot say how it
survives the cold and the salty ground.”

Gikka sniffed at it suspiciously.  “The same way it came
sprouting out of ice and salt the first place:  magic.”

Not far away, Damerien and the sheriff were crouched looking
at the grass as it came up, pointing along the horizon, gesturing, speaking
very earnestly between themselves. 

Renda nodded, watching them.  “His Grace and my father would
seem to have come to the same conclusion.”

“Magic?”  Laniel smiled, a bit embarrassed.  “Of course.” 
He tossed the blades of grass away and brushed the dirt off his hands. 
“Apologies.  I am too old to be this naïve.”

“Laniel,” Renda chided gently, “when fire sudden rains from
the sky, one might be called naïve not to recognize it as magic.  Even one of
your abbey.  But this, this is subtle and strange, for all that it lacks
panache.”

Gikka smiled up at her.  “Does it, aye?”

Renda ignored her.  “All that marks it as magic is that for
grass to grow here, all at once, is unlikely––unlikely, but not so much so that
I should say it could not happen without magic.  So do not be so hard on
yourself.  Sure yon sheriff and the duke still debate whether it be magic or
no, for I doubt even they are certain.”

“It is. It must be.”  He scowled.  “And this naiveté of mine
is a weakness.”

“An it please you to call it so,” Gikka snorted, “it’s one
you’ll put right with time and study, not with harshness.  Mark, the landbridge
is coming all of brush and grasses now.”  She crouched down and studied the
plants growing at her feet, which by now were ankle height.  “The how of it is
less important than the why.”