No Quarter (40 page)

She'd almost reached the gate when something hit her from the right and took her to the ground.

This fight, Bannon won. He thrust his arms under hers and locked his hands behind her neck in a supposedly unbreakable hold just as Magda threw herself down beside them.

"Vree, listen to me. You haven't got time for this! Enrik says his body is dying, and he's not going to wait!"

"I don't care!" she spat. Bannon twisted so that her heel hit him only a glancing blow, got her to her knees and sat on the lower part of her legs. "I don't want it!"

"Why not? What are you afraid of? Vree, if you and Gyhard don't separate soon, you might not be able to. Your kigh are becoming so interlinked, even now you might not be able to find all of the bits of you and all the bits of him. You'll lose yourself in him and he'll lose himself in you."

"Yes."

Startled by the longing in that single syllable, Magda drew back. "But he
has
to have a body of his own!"

Vree shook her head. "He has me."

"He can't have all of you," Bannon growled.

"Not now, Bannon!" Magda snapped, "We've got to…"

"Maggi. Come here."

She turned to frown at her mother. "But…"

"No. Come here." Annice's voice took on not-to-be-argued-with tones.

Still frowning, Magda stood and slowly backed away until Vree and Bannon became a strangely shaped shadow in the night.

Annice stepped forward and put both hands on her daughter's shoulders, the grip equal parts comfort and caution. "Sometimes," she said, the past weighting her words, "people need to heal themselves."

"Let me go!"

"No." Bannon adjusted his hold. "Not this time. I let you go before, but I'm not doing it again."

Vree tried to smash his nose in with the back of her head but only hit a cheekbone.

"Vree, listen to me," he pleaded. "I understand what you're afraid of." Jerking back to avoid another blow, Bannon breathed in the warm familiar scent that all his life had meant he wasn't alone. "You're trying to do the same thing to Gyhard that I wanted to do to you."

"What are you talking about?" She'd intended it to be a snarl, but it emerged as more of a wail.

He knew what he meant, but he wasn't sure how to explain. Vree had changed, but so, he'd come to realize, had he. "You're not my arm or my leg, you're a separate person, with a separate life, and I have no right to try to make you into what I want. Being your brother doesn't give me that right. Loving you doesn't give me that right. The whole slaughtering Imperial Army doesn't give me that right.

And you haven't the right to do it to Gyhard either."

She went limp in his arms and started to shake. It could have been a trick, but he didn't think so. As he gathered her close, she pressed her face against his shoulder in blind need. He tried to remember if she'd ever turned to him before and wasn't very surprised when memory told him their position had always been reversed. "I will always love you," he murmured into her hair. "Just because you've chosen to share your life with a carrion-eating
abomination
…" He stumbled a little over the Shkoden word. "… well, you won't get rid of me that easily. I guess that you can love him, too."

Too. Vree fought to find her way through the maelstrom roaring around inside her head. Assassins had no family but the army. But she'd had Bannon. Had loved Bannon with a desperate intensity because he was all she had. Because she'd been allowed to love Bannon, she was able to love Gyhard. It had never occurred to her that she could love more than one person at a time.

Suddenly released, Gyhard cautiously extended his control. *Vree?*

Her answer wasn't so much in words as a tentative opening of final barriers neither of them had realized still existed.

Becoming concerned by the lengthening silence, Bannon pulled back until he could look down into Vree's eyes. He'd looked into them too many times in the darkness to need light now. "Sod off, Gyhard. This is my time, not yours."

Gyhard stopped her as she started to stiffen. *Bannon's right,* he murmured, and withdrew as far as possible.

Releasing a breath she couldn't remember holding, the air leaving her lungs in a long shuddering sigh, Vree touched the comfort of Gyhard's presence and rubbed her cheek against Bannon's shoulder. The last time she'd held her brother, only her brother, their relationship unwarped by the training that made them blades of Jür, she'd been seven and he'd been six. "Be my brother again."

"Just a brother with a sister? I wouldn't know how." He pressed his lips against the soft cap of her hair. "And neither, sister-mine, would you."

Vree sniffed and glanced over his shoulder at the shadowy figures of Gerek and Magda, peering at them in concern from the circle of light around a second lantern.

"It doesn't look that hard."

"Magda!"

Karlene's urgent summons spun her around. "Oh no!" Diving forward, she helped the bard lower Enrik to the ground. "What's wrong? What is it?"

*The body is dying.*

"We know that, but…" Suddenly grabbing his shoulders, she shook him, hard.

"Stop it!"

"Magda!" Karlene grabbed her hands and broke her grip. "What are you doing?"

"He's trying to die!"

"What?!"

"When the body dies, he's free! Enrik, you've got to hang on! Just for another minute or two!"

*No.*

"Yes!"

*NO!*

"I said, Yes!"

Ears ringing, Karlene caught Magda's chin, forcing her head up. "Magda, calm down! You're Vree's only chance. You can't fall apart on her now."

Vaguely aware that her mother was Singing a circle of fire kigh to light the yard, Magda stared across Enrik at Karlene. "Vree's and
Gyhard's
only chance," she snapped.

Karlene's mouth twisted into an approximation of a smile. "Yeah. Him, too."

Jerking her head away from the bard's touch, Magda pressed her fingers against the inside of Enrik's muscular wrist. His pulse felt thready, distant from her touch.

"I can't let him die."

*I am dead. Let me leave!*

Leave? She could've smacked herself. Of course. There was no reason for the dead kigh to remain. "We have a bard here who can Sing you out of your body."

*The body dies.*

"No, it won't." It should have seemed stranger than it did, reassuring a dead man, but it had been a strange day all around. "We have a kigh without a body of his own to replace you."

His eyes met hers, and she looked away. Some things could be borne; some things could not. *If I am free, the body is dead.*

"But…" Then she understood. It worked both ways. If Karlene Sang Enrik's kigh out of his body before Gyhard's kigh was in it, the body would die. Therefore, Gyhard had to share the body, however briefly, with the dead man.

"All right." Vree looked from Enrik to Magda. "Explain why that's dangerous."

"We don't have time…"

Vree's jaw set. "Then explain quickly."

"But…" Realizing she had no choice, Magda threw up her hands. "Okay. Quickly.

You know that living kigh don't like to be around dead kigh, especially not dead kigh acting like living kigh.
We're
all a little numb, so Enrik by himself isn't enough to cause us a lot of trouble but
we're
not stuffed in the same body with him and Gyhard
will
be. He might fling himself out again."

"Then I'll grab him again."

Magda sighed, spitting out a wet curl. "He might be caught in Karlene's Song and end up Sung away."

"I'm not going anywhere," Gyhard declared.

"What I'm trying to say is, he might
die
."

As Bannon's arm tightened around her shoulders, Vree closed her eyes for a moment. "And the alternative?"

"Things stay as they are."

"No." That decision had already been made. "Do what you have to do."

"I don't have to do anything right away," Magda reminded her gently, "you do.

You have to push Gyhard out of your body and into Enrik's."

"Like giving birth," Bannon offered when Vree hesitated.

She elbowed him hard, just below the ribs. "That's sick."

Doubled over, gasping for breath, he managed a shrug.

"Vree, hurry! I'm losing the pulse!"

*Do I have to make eye contact?*

Gyhard nodded. *I'm afraid so.*

Ignoring the lines of sweat dribbling down her sides, Vree dropped to her knees and shot a warning glance at Karlene. "Are you ready?" When the bard nodded, she looked into Enrik's eyes. Over the years as a blade of Jür, she'd looked into the eyes of the dead countless times—this time, the dead looked back. All the dead. "I can't…"

Death as practice. Death as profession. Death as escape.

There were too many. She could feel them gathering her into their company.

*Vree!*

Gyhard's terror jerked her back. Still teetering on the edge, she gathered up all her remaining strength and shoved everything she thought to be him through the dead and into Enrik's body.

Bits of her went with him.

Bits of him were left behind.

He didn't throw himself from her as Bannon had, but he went nevertheless.

Surprisingly, the actual doing of it hurt less than the fear of it had.

When at Magda's nod, Karlene began to Sing, Vree watched the dead man's kigh flicker and disappear. One by one, the dead of memory followed. When they were gone, Enrik's eyes held only the lifeless reflection of the surrounding flames.

The body breathed once. Twice. No more.

"NO!" Screaming in rage, Vree flung herself forward. "Get back here, you slaughtering carrion eater!" With every word she slammed both fists down on the broad chest.

"DON'T! YOU! DARE! LEAVE! ME!"

Warm fingers closed around her wrists and pulled her hands to either side. She pitched forward, barely stopping herself from smashing face first into Enrik's body.

"Vree… please stop." She knew the voice although it had never sounded so weak.

"That… hurts."

"Gyhard?"

A swollen tongue dragged across cracked lips. "Wish you'd stop… calling me…

carrion eater."

Pulling easily free of his hold, she sat back on her heels, her hands laced together in her lap as though she were afraid to touch him. "Gyhard?"

"Yes." He tried to cough and didn't quite manage it.

"What's wrong with him." Vree grabbed Magda's arm. "He sounds so…"

"Dehydrated. His body needs water."

"That's all?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Well, he could also use a bath."

Staring up at Vree's face, trying to memorize every curve, every line, Gyhard attempted a wink. "Remember the bath… at Elbion's?"

Magda was almost positive Vree blushed although the firelight made it difficult to tell for certain.

"What about Enrik?" Gerek asked, leaning forward for a closer look.

One palm resting lightly on Gyhard's forehead, Karlene shook her head. "He's gone."

"Witnessed," Annice said softly. "But what about Gyhard? Did sharing the body with a dead kigh hurt him?"

Before Magda could answer, Vree stared fixedly at Gyhard's face, searching for pain that went beyond the physical. "
Did
it hurt you?"

"No." Gyhard closed his eyes and felt the lingering awareness of being dead and trapped in life. It felt surprisingly like the guilt he'd shared a hundred midnights with. "But I… remember."

Karlene rocked back on her heels and stood. "All things being enclosed, I'm glad that's over."

Bannon caught her as she stumbled. "Is it?"

"It is for Enrik." She yawned and nodded down to where Vree and Magda were ministering to the abused body Gyhard now wore. "And it looks like Gyhard survived." The events of the day would be recalled and discussed in the Bardic Halls for years, but at that moment, Karlene was too tired to care. "Now, we've just got you two to worry about."

"What two?"

"You and Gerek. You, Your Grace," she said pointing a finger at Gerek, "were supposed to bring Magda back to Elbasan from Bartek Springs. I don't imagine Her Royal Highness is going to be too happy about your disregarding her wishes. And you," the finger moved to point at Bannon, "were given a direct order to bring Vree and Gyhard back to the Emperor. He's not going to be happy with you."

"All things being enclosed," Gerek muttered, scratching at the new skin on his shoulder, "I think I can deal with whatever Her Highness throws at me."

Unexpectedly pale, Bannon shook his head. "To disobey an Imperial order is treason."

Annice, still anxiously watching her daughter, snorted. "You leave the Emperor to King Theron, and you leave His Majesty to me."

"We thought it best to bury Kars' body with the others at the timber-holding."

"You're sure he's dead, Annice?" Theron locked eyes with her across the table.

"You're sure this is over?"

"I'm sure."

"Good." He scowled at the bowl of clear broth and pushed it to one side.

Annice pushed it back. "Although there are a few loose ends."

"Of course there are." Throwing a crested linen napkin over the bowl, he glared at her. "Annice, I am not eating this slop, so you can just have a server take it away. I want a good thick chowder and an ale."

"Neither of which, I've been told, you can have." Putting her elbows on the table, Annice levelly regarded her brother and her king. She suspected he'd agreed to a private lunch immediately upon their arrival in order to circumvent the dietary order of his healer. As Lilyana had taken her aside and given her quick but explicit instructions, it wasn't doing him any good.

"You've been told," he repeated, crumbling a dry biscuit in disgust. "That's never stopped you before. You were
told
to remain at Ohrid."

"Stasya was there to give early warning if necessary and the Dues of Ohrid were holding the pass long before you put a Bardic Hall in the keep—Pjerin was quite definite about that.
My
abilities were needed elsewhere."

"Which does not change the fact that you disobeyed a direct order."

"I couldn't stay there, Theron. Not when I
knew
what Maggi was going to do."