Kigh - Fifth Quarter Part 45

she pushed them through a blocked throat.

Vree closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself. "I was talking to Bannon."

"Out loud?"

As he knew the answer already, she didn't bother responding. She hadn't realized she'd spoken out loud.

"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."

"Just like Neegan did," Bannon snorted. "Giving the commander a chance to kill us from beyond the grave?"

"Shut up, Bannon."

"I can't believe you care that he's dead."

"He was our..."

"Father? Yeah, right."

Father. No. "Teacher. Commander. He kept us together."

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?"

A fingernail cut a half-moon into her palm; teeth clenched, she forced the fist to open. "I can do anything I have to."

An a.s.sa.s.sin has no family but the army.

An a.s.sa.s.sin has no family but the army.

An a.s.sa.s.sin has no family but the army.

An a.s.sa.s.sin has no family but the army.

An a.s.sa.s.sin has no family but the army.

An a.s.sa.s.sin has no family but the army.

An a.s.sa.s.sin has no family but the army.

AN a.s.sa.s.sIN HAS NO FAMILY BUT THE ARMY.

A hundred voices said it. Vree listened for one alone.

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 a.s.sa.s.sin," 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 a.s.sumed. 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 s.e.x 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.

If she didn't move, it wouldn't see her.

For the first time since she took up a blade for the G.o.ddess, Vree was up against greater patience than hers. The dead eyes stared unblinkingly toward her. And stared. And stared.

A tepid rivulet of sweat dribbled down from Vree's temple, across her cheek, along her jaw, to drip off the point of her chin. The night seemed impossibly quiet; her breathing dangerously loud.

"The eyes-they're not focused. It doesn't actually see us!" Bannon's nerve broke and Vree made no attempt to regain control as they scuttled, lizardlike, back to the bend in the canyon. When strong hands closed around her arm, she came closer to screaming than at any time in her life.

"Is he there, Vree? Is he there? Is he all right?"

The bard's breath touched her ear, no warmer than the night air but so alive Vree found herself leaning toward it.

"Is he there?"

"Yes." As she sat on her heels, she wasn't sure which of them answered, decided it didn't matter. "But he's asleep."

"Kars..."

Senses stretched nearly to the breaking point picked the name out of a thousand tiny whispers of air. "I'm not going to kill the old man," she answered, half-turning to Gyhard. "I can't. He has his back against a rock, and there's one of them on it. He's in shadow and the prince is very close, so I don't want to risk a throw." Her fingers laced around each other, the trembling buried in the weave.

"I'm going to go back..."

"Are you out of our mind!"

"... and wait until dawn. When he wakes up, he'll have to take a p.i.s.s. I'll grab

him then. When people think that death hides in the darkness, they're a lot more careless if they make it through the night."

Karlene made a sound very much like a sob. "That could almost be a song." Vree wiped sweaty palms on her thighs and covered the motion with a shrug. "Sing it later. Gyhard, you'll have your chance to talk to Kars. You've got until dawn to find something to say," Bannon added scornfully.

"But the prince," Karlene protested.

"The old man won't do anything if there's a chance I'll hurt him."

"Are you sure?"

She remembered the gentle, protective line of shoulder, arm, and hand. "Yeah.

I'm sure. You just be ready to Sing if you're needed."

It seemed darker over by the rocks, the dead and living equally hidden by the night. She didn't want to go back there...

"Then don't go!"

... but the journey that had started in the governor's stronghold in Ghoti was

coming to an end and what she wanted couldn't stop it. Vree was as certain of

that as she'd ever been about anything.

If the prince is alive...

He was.

If we can free him...

They were about to find that out.

If Gyhard tries to jump to the prince...

Then they'd all be dead and it would be over."I don't want to be dead, Vree. And what if he doesn't try to jump to the prince?""Then you won't be dead. But you'll still be here." Bannon had become a constant, painful pressure against her-physically and emotionally. She was so tired of failing to sort out which was her and which was him. "Wouldn't death be better?"