Chapter 10
Delia finds him before he finds her.
Evran is halfway to the eastern wing, still carrying the weight of his conversation with Bran in the tight set of his shoulders and the restless churning of his thoughts, when a hand catches his elbow.
He turns to find Delia's face close to his, her dark eyes tight with worry, the kind that suggests she has been carrying it for hours and has only now found its proper target.
"There you are," she says, and her grip on his arm is desperate in the way that only comes from searching too long, the grip of a woman who is not going to release what she has found until she has satisfied herself that it is whole.
"I've been trying to get to the eastern wing all morning, but your guards are not letting anyone through who isn't Drakkari. "
"Naela's orders," Evran says. "After last night."
"I know about last night." Delia's voice drops, low and urgent.
She glances up and down the corridor, which is empty but for a Rendari retainer at the far end who is conspicuously not listening, and pulls Evran sideways into an alcove, one of the windowed nooks that dot the corridors of the Keep.
The stone bench beneath the window is worn smooth by years of use, and the light that comes through the glass is thin and pale with early spring. "Sit. Sit down."
Evran sits. Delia does not. She stands in front of him with her arms crossed over her chest, her mouth set in the firm line he is beginning to recognize as her version of controlled fury, the expression of a woman who has been told something terrible has happened and has not yet been given the opportunity to do anything about it.
"Are you alright?" she asks.
"I'm fine. Vaike is fine. Neither of us was hurt."
"I know the assassin didn't succeed. I spoke with Harath an hour ago.
" She uncrosses her arms and puts her hands on her hips, and the worry in her face is sharp and present in a way that makes Evran's throat tighten unexpectedly.
It is concern that comes from having decided you matter to someone, present and undeterrable.
"I'm not asking about your physical well-being, dear boy. I'm asking about you. Are you alright?"
It is such a simple question. It is a kind, direct question, and it cuts clean through the careful composure Evran has worn all morning, parting it along a seam he did not know was there.
He has spent the last several hours holding himself together through sheer force of will, through the discipline of putting one foot in front of the other and answering questions and making plans, and all of it has worked perfectly well until this moment, until a woman he has known for three days looked at him with genuine concern and asked if he was alright.
He opens his mouth to say yes, of course, I'm fine, and what comes out instead is this:
"I'm terrified. I didn't sleep at all."
The words are quieter than he intends. They carry more than he means them to, more than the simple fact of sleeplessness, carrying also the memory of the dark and the flash of the blade and the way his heart had hammered so hard against his ribs he'd been certain the sound of it would wake the entire stronghold.
They carry the hours he spent afterward staring at the ceiling while Vaike's breathing steadied beside him, unable to close his eyes because every time he did he saw the purple sheen of poison catching the light.
Delia's expression softens. She sits down beside him on the bench, close enough that their shoulders touch, and for a moment she is only a woman sitting with someone who is frightened, offering her presence without demand.
The warmth of her arm against his is steady and grounding and entirely deliberate, and Evran is grateful for it in a way he cannot articulate.
"Tell me what happened," she says. "You'll feel better talking about it."
So he does. He tells her about the night itself and nothing else, nothing about the conversation with Bran, nothing about the plan that is solidifying in his mind and hardening from a chaotic thought into something with substance.
He tells her about waking and being shoved from the bed, about the flash of the blade in the dark, about the purple poison he saw at the end.
He tells her about the way Vaike had moved, fast and certain, the controlled violence of a lifetime spent preparing for exactly this kind of moment.
He tells her about the aftermath, the guards and the questions and the long, silent hours before dawn.
Delia listens without interrupting. When he finishes, her jaw is tight and her hands are clasped in her lap, the knuckles pale with the force of her grip.
"You should move to the Rendari wing," she says. "Both of you. Harath has already offered. The rooms are more secure, the windows are harder to scale, and the guards are tripled. You'll be safer."
"Vaike won't agree to it. He won't want to appear as though he's retreating."
"Then you come. I'll make up a room."
"Delia." Evran touches her arm, lightly, and he can feel the tension in her beneath his fingers. "I appreciate it. Truly. But I'm not leaving Vaike's side. Not now."
She looks at him for a long moment, her lips pressed together, and then she lets out a breath and nods.
She is unhappy but resigned, a woman who recognizes stubbornness when she sees it and knows better than to waste energy fighting it.
Evran suspects she has years of practice in this regard, married as she is to a warlord.
There is a resignation born of loving someone who insists on being brave, and Delia wears it with the ease of long familiarity.
"Then at least tell me your thoughts on all of this," she says. "What do you think is going on? Is there dissent from within your clan? This did not come from nowhere, Evran."
Evran hesitates. The question is direct and reasonable, and he owes her an honest answer, but the shape of his suspicions is still too fragile and too dangerous to speak aloud without care. He thinks about what he knows and what he suspects and the vast, treacherous distance between the two.
"I think someone is targeting Vaike while he's outside the safety of his own stronghold," he says, placing each word with deliberate precision. "Someone who is seeking the opportunity the summit provides."
Delia's eyes narrow. "Do you know who?"
"I have suspicions. Nothing concrete yet."
"Who?"
Evran looks at her. He thinks about trust, about who he can trust in this place where the walls have ears and the corridors have eyes and a man with a poisoned blade can slip through a window in the dead of night.
He thinks about the careful arrangement of alliances and the price of misplaced confidence.
He thinks about Delia's hand on his arm and the worry in her face and the way she asked after him as though his answer were all that mattered to her.
"I wouldn't dare say without proof, because once I say it I cannot take it back," he says. "But I'm working on it."
Delia watches him, her dark eyes steady and perceptive, with the same sharpness he saw in them yesterday when she looked at him over tea and told him to hold on to what he had.
She is reading him, parsing what he has said and what he has not said and the careful space between them, and whatever she finds in his face makes her expression shift from worry into something else, something harder, something that carries the weight of resolve.
"Then let me tell you something," she says. "Something you need to know before you go any further."
She shifts on the bench, angling toward him, and lowers her voice. The corridor beyond the alcove remains empty, but she speaks as though the stones themselves might be listening, and given everything that has happened, Evran cannot blame her.
"The last time someone tried to assassinate a Warlord during the summit, it was thirty years ago.
Before my time as Harath's wife, before Harath was even Warlord.
His father presided over that Gathering.
" She pauses, and the pause carries weight, the weight of a story told many times that never loses its sharp edges. "It was an absolute disaster."
Evran listens. He can feel the importance of what she is telling him settling over him, the sense that he is being given something valuable, a piece of context that will change how he understands the terrain he is navigating.
"Unlike this time, the assassin was never caught," Delia continues.
"The attempt failed and the Warlord survived, but the killer escaped into the night and was never identified.
No one knew which clan was responsible. No one could prove anything.
" Her voice is flat and controlled, the voice of a woman recounting history she has studied carefully because it is relevant to her life.
"The summit was thrown into chaos. Not only that year, but for the next ten years.
The clans couldn't meet without suspicion and accusation.
Trade agreements fell apart. Military alliances dissolved.
The peace that the Gathering exists to maintain was shattered, because no one could trust anyone, because the guilty party was never brought to justice. "
The weight of her words settles over them, heavy and cold and inescapable.
Evran thinks about the careful balance of the summit, four clans and four Warlords, held together by the thin threads of trade and alliance and the mutual agreement that peace is better than war.
He thinks about how easily those threads could snap.