Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAY
“Skinny dogs gotta make fast friends.” ~ La’Angi saying
M y hand was shaking, but it didn’t stop me hammering on his door. With every flutter of my heart in my chest I expected to see a black-clad member of the Butcher’s guard spot me and drag me back. But the door gave way, and Callum’s ashen face made my heart sink.
I was grabbed in a fierce hug and pulled inside. “We didn’t know if you’d make it,” he said in the hushed tones of a sickroom. The stink of magework—burned metal and incense—hung in the air. “The One, Chay,” he whispered, still clinging. “I wish you’d been there.”
I fought to not throw him off me and demand answers, returning his hug. The smell of horse and salt clung to him beneath the reek of mage, and my eyes burned. I just wanted my friend.
“He’ll live,” Callum said, the words an expulsion of emotion, half-sob and half-declaration. “Kadan will live, Chay.”
My jaw ached from the questions I didn’t ask.
“Let him up, now, Cal,” Darrius said, and I was allowed enough space to see the sitting room was as full as I’d anticipated with the men I’d ridden with for the best part of my life.
The black tabard on my chest weighed as much as the keep itself.
Darrius put his hand on my back, and they made way for me. “I don’t know what you know,” the older man said, his tone hushed, too, his face long, lines of exhaustion carved deep into his weathered skin. “Luca’s long gone. They didn’t even know until the melee was underway, what with the attack on lady La’Angi.”
From somewhere far away, I knew that was good. Luca stood between Kadan and the fate he refused to follow. If Luca lived, so did Kadan’s dreams of a normal, happy life.
The room was softly lit. Flowers already adorned the bedside, and an empty jug with some cups. I stared at my friend, laid out on the bed, his skin sallow, his eyes sunken. His hair must’ve been washed, because it had been combed back to show the scar his birthing storm had left across his forehead. The soothsayers had called it a diadem mark. Our people called it a crown. He called it an excuse to avoid frequent haircuts.
The blanket started mid-chest, revealing the scar on his right shoulder where he’d been struck down in a skirmish years ago. The arrow had been fouled. Callum and I had taken turns carrying his scrawny ass what felt like halfway across the Steppes as he got sicker and sicker, looking for someone to fix what had been broken.
And we’d been successful, too.
“They dragged him from the saddle,” Darrius said quietly. “Henry almost died.”
I should’ve been there.
I could hear the waves against the shore. In my mind, Kadan and Callum were beside me. We were young, and they passed the beer back and forth, picking their way along the beach, talking about the adventures they wanted to go on. And I dreamed, too, of all the things that had become possible, beside ’Dan.
“He’ll live.” Darrius spoke with the calm of a man accustomed to passing on difficult news. “They’ve saved his foot, for now, but the mage didn’t do more than stabilize him before he was called away.”
Called away. There weren’t many men who could call anyone away from Count Darrius of Raider’s Ban, and only one person in the city with us who had that power.
Impotent rage flashed through my veins, and I felt the burn of it matching so sickeningly with the tears that prickled behind my eyes.
I hate him. The childish sentiment was entirely fair, totally justified, and I let it sit like a coal in my chest.
Kadan would live, despite the Butcher’s best efforts. Despite me charging away from where I’d been needed, stupidly chasing a wrong I could, and did, right.
“I hear you’re bloodsworn,” Darrius said, and his smile was tired. “Arabella would’ve loved it. And you.”
I shook my head, the words making no sense. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Sounded to me like you found one,” he said, and the smile settled a little more convincingly. His hand on my back rubbed a slow circle. “He’s going to miss you. I’ll figure out how to get news to you once we’re home.”
He didn’t make promises. I’d always respected that about Darrius. When he said he’d do a thing, he did. Kadan took after his father in that way.
It’s one of the reasons they were safe.
But, right then, I wanted promises. I wanted to know if this obvious attack on Kadan, and by extension Raider’s Ban, was enough to summon Darrius’ bannermen. I wanted to know they’d be rallying around Luca, and the Butcher’s head would be on a pike and rotted before the midwinter freeze.
“Chay,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what tomorrow holds. But I’m proud of you.”
It didn’t make sense. I didn’t know if that was because I couldn’t, right then, imagine anyone being proud of me for anything, or if it was because I truly didn’t deserve that regard for the choices I’d made to get here.
I thrust it all aside. “Luca escaped. Did the Wuurgard heir talk?”
“Not yet,” Darrius said, his eyes turning back to Kadan. “I don’t know how they’re going to feel about this.”
I didn’t ask who the mysterious they was. I knew some of them, I could guess at others, but now…now I wore the crest of the enemy. “The faster Luca marries her, the better.” I scrubbed my hand across my mouth to rub the bitterness away, my stomach writhing at the thought of crushing her into the mud so I could stand. “Wild horses, Darrius. I just said that.”
“I supported it,” he agreed grimly. “I’ll be waiting to hear from you. And not just for personal reasons. Knowing she’s Matri’sion trained might change everything. For all we know, she’s fully initiated, but leaves off the circlet for safety.” He was looking at a point somewhere out over the horizon. “Her mother was a force to be reckoned with.”
Kadan’s breath hitched. My attention zeroed in on his still form as his lungs worked and his shoulders shook, but he quickly settled.
“Collapsed lung. Mage fixed it, mostly.” He shook his head a little, as if trying to unstick a thought that niggled at him. I waited, but he didn’t say anything else.
I hadn’t been there because of my own stupidity.
The memory of the way Audrey had taken the knife I’d passed her, the way she’d gone for Mikus’ back like a cornered animal, sat alongside the reality of my friend, grievously wounded, nigh-dead.
“What do you need to know?” I asked Darrius, the question flat.
He shook his head. “Whether she’d cut Luca’s throat, for a start. Whether she might be a power in and of herself. If the wedding isn’t needed, if we could just take out Victor and trust her to hold the city…”
“Women can’t hold property,” I reminded him, my mind turning slowly.
He shrugged. “If she was an ally, she could choose her husband, at least. And free Luca to choose a wife.”
“You could change the rules,” I reminded him, knowing it was pointless.
“I could. Eventually.”
And how many other people’s friends would end up as Kadan was?
I wanted to sit beside ’Dan, hold his hand. I wanted to see his lashes flutter open and watch him try on his shit-eating grin.
“Victor’s going to respond to the assassination attempt,” Darrius told me quietly. “My best information says he’s going to strike back at the South.”
As if what he was doing to the captive wasn’t punishment enough. As if the eternity of poverty they were restrained by wasn’t punishment enough. “Why?”
“They killed Von Rhea. It’s a publicity thing. And war is good for business.” I felt sick. The horrific image of marching alongside the same men who’d almost killed my friend filled my mind. Following my thoughts, Darrius said, “You saved yourself a pew at the front of that service by getting yourself sworn to the lady. He won’t bring her. Especially now the wedding’s off. If she were married, it might’ve been tempting to see an heir faster.”
“I’m glad I’m the nobody son of a backwater fief,” I said, my body holding as much rage and hurt as it could. “I want to puke just talking about all this.”
Darrius pulled me closer, and I stooped so he could press a kiss to my head. “Anyone who believes that is the true nobody,” he told me, giving my back another rub. “Because you’re my son, regardless of whose seed sprouted you.” It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it. But it still made me feel like I couldn’t quite breathe right. “Would you rather not know the rest, Chay?”
I considered it for a moment as Kadan lay peacefully and entirely unresponsive. I wasn’t going to get to say goodbye to him. So, I’d better figure out how I could get to say hello again. “Tell me what our new plan is,” I said, and drew in a deep breath. The boy inside of me rested comfortably, trusting Darrius, and the rage ebbed, leaving sadness in its wake. “But tell me fast, not polite. I’ve a post to return to.”