Sword (42 page)

She had laid her hands on her brother's bleeding chest and opened the door between them herself. It wouldn't shut again now.

The sandwich did come up. She staggered away from the mess, wiping her lips, breathing in pattern, but breathing didn't help. Nothing helped. Inside her it was all rage and burning, the terror and fury of being helpless, the knowledge of finding and then sweeping past her own limits. Watching Bran and Bryce learn their own the same way, through pain, had been almost more than she could bear. Watching Taireasa pull herself apart to achieve it, and then to fix it, had been even worse. And it hadn't accomplished a single thing. They
still
didn't know who among them was Tuan's man.

Someone could be with Taireasa now.

Her feet were taking her back into the passages and toward the royal apartments before she could process that thought fully. Kyali stopped, turned, then turned again, unable to decide. As she was hovering there like an idiot, unable to muster the wit for even so simple a decision as which way to go, a faint whisper of sound told her she wasn't alone in here anymore. She pressed herself against the wall instinctively, though the rational part of her said it had to be a Cassdall officer. Aside from her, they were still the only ones who knew about these passageways.

The footsteps were soft, careful. They shouldn't be.

They were coming her way.

She drew her daggers, because the sword was too big to be useful in here, and waited. It took forever: whoever it was, he wasn't a fool. Kyali wished she could shut her eyes. The gleam would give her away if the man had a light.

A figure materialized out of the deep shadow where the passage branched off toward the kitchens, moving slowly, looking around every few steps. There was something familiar about the shape of him, which wasn't what one would expect of a soldier: tall and broad but rounded, softened, not a man who spent much time using his muscles. Kyali folded her daggers up into her sleeves and crouched, feeling something prickle at the edges of her awareness.

The man drew closer, became the faintly outlined figure and dimly lit features of Earl Donal.

Kyali stood.

He started, one hand flying up to his broad chest, and breathed a curse. "Who… ah! Lady Captain," he said, his voice horrifyingly loud in the tunnel, like he was hoping to bellow up an armed guard to get him out of this. "Just the ma—ah, woma… just the officer I was planning to find."

"Keep your voice down, sir. What are you doing?"

An expansive wave. He had something in his hand: paper, by the sound of it. "I found a
door
, Lady Captain, a door hidden under a wretched old wallhanging by the dining hall. It's remarkable! It led me here. I deemed it best if I—"

"
Shhhh
."

"Sorry," he said, and went on in a hoarse whisper that would wake the dead. "I was saying, I took it upon myself to discover where the door led. But this place is vast. I thought perhaps I'd better warn you about it." He stopped, gaze on her. "I see you already have some awareness of this. You are an attentive officer, Lady Captain."

She still had her daggers in her grip, but they stayed in her sleeves. Gods knew she'd been waiting for just this to happen, though almost anyone else would have been better: the man was as subtle as a wild boar.

"What's in your hand, Earl Donal?" Kyali said—or started to say. He was on her in a second, much faster than she'd ever guessed he could move, shoving her back into the cold, dirty wall, one hand coming up, and what was in it now was definitely not paper.

The panic was instant, overwhelming. It brought something else with it, something that wasn't her, was firelit and frightened, was startled and so tired she knew it had to be Taireasa. The double vision was badly disorienting. Kyali yelled into the arm Donal shoved up against her face, brought her knee up, unfolded the daggers from her sleeves. One scraped over his ribs and he shouted; the other clattered to the floor when he struck her arm so hard it went instantly numb.

Kyali ducked without thinking about it, felt his blade pass just over her head. Taireasa was in danger, Taireasa was furious and
terrified
, was seeing something, someone, someone wrong and twisted and sorry and she couldn't tell who—

A blow struck her face, knocking her off her feet. Donal threw himself on top of her, hand scrabbling after the dagger in hers, his considerable weight knocking the breath out of her.

The panic swallowed her whole, left no room for anything else. She was back in Taireasa's bedroom and the pain was huge and awful but not as bad as the shame of being helpless, the shaking rage, the sick comprehension that she was going to die and that it was going to take a very long time. She screamed and heard it echo, which wasn't right.

She was in the tunnels. On the mountain. Not in Faestan.

This time she had a blade, this time she wasn't tied. This time there was only one of them.

She arched up and slammed her head into his chin, wrenched the dagger free and drove it deep. Then again, and again. Again. He stopped moving after the third blow, but she kept going. She couldn't stop until she was sure, very sure, and dead men weren't dead till they stopped bleeding.

Oh gods, Father!

HELP
, Kyali heard, right in her head, blowing down all the walls, opening all the doors.

She left Earl Donal dying or dead, drew her sword, and ran as fast as she had ever run in her life.

C
HAPTER
23

T
he wine tasted heavy and bitter, like it had gone bad. Taireasa grimaced and, looking around to make sure no servant was nearby to see, spat it back into her glass. It had made her tongue strangely numb. She stared at it for a moment, frozen, then snatched up her tea mug. The water was scalding, but she rinsed and spat into the fire four times anyway, until the numbness went away.

Then she sat, shaking like a leaf in a storm, and tried to decide if lack of sleep was a reasonable explanation for such paranoia, or if she was going mad.

It had been a very hard day.

"My lady?" Camwyn, her day maid, said, peering into the sitting room with a look like she expected to get a shoe or a glass of wine in the face. "Is the wine not to your taste?"

For no reason at all that made her laugh, and then she couldn't get it stopped. Taireasa put her hands over her face, giggling madly, a little frightened by the shrill sound of it. When she finally got herself under control and wiped her eyes, Camwyn seemed horrified. Behind her stood Maldyn, looking grave and worried, and almost as tired as she felt.

"Her Majesty should have supper now," he said calmly, and Camwyn left with plain relief to go order a plate from the kitchens. "You should at least
try
to eat, my lady," he added, seeing Taireasa's face.

"I suppose," she mumbled, and tried to breathe herself back to some kind of equilibrium. Her chancellor sat in the other fireside chair, glancing once at the abandoned glass of wine, steepling his fingers and frowning at the flames. Taireasa leaned back, letting him think. He'd get to what he wished to say in his own time. Maldyn was the most unhurried man she'd ever known.

Finally he shifted in the chair. "The Maurynim plan," he said, sounding hesitant, perhaps a little offended. It had barely had time to become a plan: Kyali had mentioned it only yesterday, the notion of rafts and soldiers and a far swifter, quieter route to the lowlands. A small force, not meant to overwhelm an enemy, only to help repel an attack.

"Yes," Taireasa said.

"I have doubts, Majesty. It is rash. But… I know very little. Could you explain?"

He glanced at the wine again.

Taireasa shrugged. "There is, at the moment, very little to know," she said. "I never had any intention of sitting by while traitors attack our allies, Maldyn. The Lady Captain's notion is an unusual one, but that might be why it works."

"Granted," Maldyn murmured. "Still…" A third time, his gaze flickered to the wine.

He met her eyes, saw that she was watching.

"Oh, Maldyn," Taireasa said, not angry, or even all that frightened—only sad, so sad.

His face, so clear and calm under the lines of his age, crumpled. "I'm so sorry," he whispered. "My lady, I'm so sorry. They have my wife."

The truth of that was evident in his miserable gaze, and in the horror and sorrow and helpless, doomed determination in his heart. She had never read it, never thought to. He had invited it only today. Had that been a way of pointing suspicion elsewhere, or a genuine desire to be done with the long charade? She could hear Camwyn coming back to the door, hovering, waiting for the right moment to present a tray. She could shout for help, could order him imprisoned, killed...

She couldn't imagine what she would be willing to do, who she would be willing to hurt, if it were Kyali or Devin the barons were holding.

"Tell me everything," she said simply. "And we'll see if we can fix this."

Maldyn's lips made a firm line. Tears followed the folds of skin down his cheeks. "I'm so sorry," he whispered again, and she understood.

It wasn't Camwyn at the door.

She turned her head, met the eyes of Aric, one of Kyali's lieutenants, one of her own bodyguard. Aric who had been in the tunnels under Faestan with her, who had come up the mountain by her side.

Aric, who was holding a drawn sword in her sitting room.

Taireasa stood, putting the chair between herself and the two of them. Sadness was filling her up, sinking into her bones, making it hard to move, to think. Fear and anger were there too, but distant, unreal. She slid farther back, knowing there was no way out of her apartments but the door he was standing in. Her bedroom was behind her.

Then Aric stepped all the way into the room, filling it with his armed presence, and she was ducking, reading his intention in his heart, and fear was everything.

HELP
, Taireasa sent, with no aim, no thought who to ask for help
from
. The rest of her bodyguard was outside the door. They would never get here in time. There
was
no time, because Aric was coming at her, his sword easily long enough to make up the distance the chair put between them. Maldyn stood up.

The sword passed close, a flash of firelit steel. Taireasa flinched back, tripped on the damned carpets, fell hard enough to knock the wind from her. She scrambled up as Aric got a fistful of her skirt and flung herself toward her bedroom door. Fabric tore, and the door fell open, and suddenly, from somewhere behind her, there was a great deal of yelling. She could feel Devin's terror and fury, hear his voice.

He was going to be too late. Aric was full of grim, desperate conviction, moving very fast. Devin would arrive just in time to watch her die, and then probably die himself.

No. That
couldn't
happen.

Taireasa spun, just barely missed being skewered by another flash of the sword—and let all the walls keeping her wrapped in silence fall down at once.

It was, for a terrifying second, overwhelming. Thoughts rushed at her, battered her senseless, filled her ears and her head and her consciousness. She could see the whole mountain, every soul on it. She was going to come apart in it, she couldn't hold on—

There was a noise behind her like two stones grinding together. A shout.

A blade at her throat, pressing against the delicate skin under her jaw.

"
Let her go
," Kyali hissed, trembling and barely recognizable she was so hoarse, so breathless.

"Get away," Aric said. He sounded far less sure.

"Taireasa—"

Oh gods,
everyone
was here. Devin skidded into the room, Kinsey and Annan on his heels, and came to a halt when he saw the sword poised just under her chin. Taireasa made an abortive twitch toward him, toward Kyali—where had Kyali come from?—and jerked up short with a small, smothered moan when the steel pressed in.

I can't die in front of them. I can't do this to them. Oh gods.

"She dies if anyone moves!" Aric sounded truly desperate now.

"
You
die one way or the other," Devin promised him.

"Let. Her. Go," Kyali snarled.

Kyali was here with her. Kyali was right here—and not just in body. There was another presence where before there had only been Devin. This one was small, curled tightly in on itself, black and bloodied and wounded. But it was—it
had
to be—Kyali.

Taireasa turned her head carefully and met a gaze gold as coins, bright as lanterns. Kyali was bleeding from a cut on her cheek. There was a bruise blooming there. There was more blood on her armor, on her hands. She was trembling in visible waves, rising up on her toes, her sword held steady in spite of her quivering muscles. She looked stunned, wretched, terrified, furious. She looked
awake.

"It will be all right," Taireasa said, for the second time that day… and she shut her eyes, shut out the voices, shut out the shouting and the terror, and fell backward into Aric's unfriendly embrace. The sword followed her, biting into her skin, but it didn't matter. Her mind found Aric's—found it and held it hard.

He froze against her, making a high and horrified sound like a rabbit in a trap. Taireasa dropped to the floor as Kyali drove forward and ended his life in one blurrily fast thrust.

Aric fell sideways, sword toppling out of his hands.

Taireasa knelt, looking at that, at the thin film of her blood on its edge, and heaved out a long sigh. Then Devin's arms were around her, pulling her up, and he was murmuring nonsense into her ear while he rocked her like a man holding a small child.

"I'm all right," she said, because if he kept doing that she was going to cry. "Maldyn."

"Dead," Devin said. "In your sitting room, with wine all over him."

"It
wa
s poisoned." She laughed into his shoulder, only it turned into something else halfway through and she had to bite her lip hard until she dared to raise her head and let the world see her face.