15
The Burnt Knight came to Tarne Crossing three days after the baker’s death.
Albric stood among the crowd that had gathered to watch the Celestian knight ride across the bridge. Sir Rengaric, the knight who held Tarne Crossing, had ridden out with an honor guard to formally accompany the Burnt Knight into his town, and they made an impressive spectacle as they came clattering across the pale stone bridge in a stream of banners and glittering steel. Red pennons flew from the archers’ towers and the horses wore garlands of scarlet maple leaves, for there were no roses so late in the year. Rengaric’s armsmen wore hardened leather and ring mail, not expensive plate, but they had oiled the leather and burnished the chain until it shone like bronze and silver.
A trumpet blared as the procession came to Tarne Crossing’s walls. With great ceremony the gates swung open and Sir Rengaric led his riders inside. The Burnt Knight rode in the center of the column, and as he crossed beneath the gatehouse arch and back into the sunlight, Albric and half the people of Tarne Crossing got their first look at the man.
He was an astonishing sight. The Burnt Knight rode a seal-brown courser, and his skin was nearly as dark as the horse’s coat. He wore his hair as a pitch-black mass of braids with small white shells clattering at the end of each one. Albric had never seen anything like it. Judging from the murmurs that swept the crowd, neither had anyone else.
The Burnt Knight was smaller than Albric had expected, and much younger. He carried himself well, and he wore his sword comfortably ahorse, but still Albric felt a twinge of doubt. Could he trust his life and his lord’s fortunes to someone barely out of boyhood?
He’d heard that the Burnt Knight traveled with a female companion, but there was no woman among the riders. Sir Rengaric led the procession to the market square, where he began a formal speech welcoming the Burnt Knight to Oakharn. Albric slipped away through the crowd. He had plans to make.
Over the next few days, Albric studied the Burnt Knight and his companion. He found the woman soon enough: she’d come to Tarne Crossing a day earlier, unobtrusively scouting the town and its people while the knight tended to sick villagers in Langmyr. They were careful, these two. They did not go blindly even into friendly lands. That made him feel a little better. Careful or not, though, he had no choice but to trust himself to them.
In the days following the baker’s murder, Albric had spent most of his time drinking alone and staring at the wine-soaked dregs of his conscience.
He couldn’t go through with it. He could not help Severine ambush one of Celestia’s holy champions. Neither could he stand by, idle and mute, knowing what she had planned. He’d dishonored himself and his oaths past any hope of forgiveness already; he couldn’t take any more. Wine pushed his other worries aside and gave him the clarity to see that much, although it hadn’t helped him think of a plan.
How could he hope to stop her? No mortal man could stand against magic. Albric had seen only the smallest part of what the Thornlady could do, but it was enough to convince him of that. He had no prayer of defeating her in combat.
The Burnt Knight, however, had a chance. Maybe a good one. Severine had sought Albric’s help in confronting him; surely she wouldn’t have done so unless she expected the Celestian to pose some real danger. If the Burnt Knight could threaten her, perhaps he could kill her—especially if he was forewarned of what he faced.
The only question left was how to betray the Thornlady without also betraying his lord. Much as he loathed Severine, his first duty was to Leferic: nothing he did could be allowed to compromise his lord’s position. Only after his duty to Leferic was discharged could he turn against the Thorn.
Fortunately, fate conspired to help him there. Albric knew that the Burnt Knight and his companion were investigating the massacre at Willowfield on behalf of the Langmyrne Lord Inguilar. As soon as they arrived, they began asking questions about it, but Albric had little fear that they would uncover his guilt. The only man in Tarne Crossing who could connect his name to the dead village was the guide they’d hired to show them to Willowfield, and he’d died under suspicious circumstances shortly before Albric had reached the town.
A nighttime robbery, they said. Convenient. It saved Albric the trouble of doing it himself.
With the spy dead, approaching the Burnt Knight should pose little risk to his lord, only slightly more to Albric himself, and—if he was lucky, if the Bright Lady was good—a fatal one to the Thornlady. He was far from certain that the young knight could match her, but the people of Tarne Crossing seemed to have faith in him. Albric supposed that would have to suffice.
He did not go directly to the Celestian. Severine was likely to be watching him, and it was impossible to approach the Burnt Knight discreetly. Petitioners were constantly tugging at his hem, begging for help with an ailing parent or a blessing for a newborn child.
Instead Albric went to the girl. He waited until she was off by herself in the market square, browsing through the stalls on a brittle winter morning. In the corner of his eye he could see a crow hopping from foot to foot among the ropes of onions that hung from a vegetable seller’s stall. The bird was too far away for him to tell if it was an ordinary crow or one of Severine’s dead pets, but he wasn’t inclined to risk guessing wrong.
Albric slipped through the crowd and brushed past the girl. He touched her elbow and muttered: “Don’t look up, and keep your voice down. We’re being watched. I need to talk to you.”
The girl nodded, apparently to something a flower seller was telling her about a wreath of prickly holly. She was very pretty, despite dressing in travel-stained men’s clothes. A thick braid of gold-streaked amber hair fell past her shoulders. Her face was a perfect oval, framed by a few bright strands that had come loose from the braid. The last hint of a summer tan still showed on her cheeks, though in winter it was fading to a suggestion of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Albric let his gaze linger. It was no hardship, and it gave him an excuse to talk to her, if Severine was indeed watching through the crow’s eyes.
“You’ve been following us,” she murmured back, holding up the holly wreath and running a finger along the wickerwork that supported the ornamental leaves. Between the glossy leaves the berries were red and orange and yellow, all the colors of the sun, to signify Celestia’s protection through the dark nights of winter. “Who are you?”
“An unwilling pawn of the Thorns,” he replied. The girl tensed, but kept her eyes on the wreath. He admired her discipline. “I would like to betray them. Can you arrange a meeting?”
“Maybe.”
“Try. The Dancer and Drum. Tonight, after sundown prayers. Go to the under-commons; I’ll be there. And be careful. There are unfriendly eyes in the sky.” He turned on his heel and strolled away, making a show of ogling another girl in passing.
Once he was safely out of sight, Albric ducked into a wine seller’s shop. He ordered a cup of strong red to bolster his courage, took a seat on a creaky bench in the corner, and began rehearsing his lies.
He had no way of knowing whether they’d come, but he had to hope. And if his hope was to be worth anything, he had to plan.
By the time Albric drained his second cup of wine, he knew the shape of his story. Close enough to the truth to protect him, far enough from it to protect his lord, and all of it designed to damn her.
After that it was only a matter of waiting.
He came to the Dancer and Drum just as sundown prayers began, and drank his way steadily through them. There was a time, not long ago, when Albric stood his prayers three times a day. Since Severine, he was unworthy of standing among the true faithful, so he hid from the sunlight and drank. Maybe, if he succeeded in scouring her from the world, he might stand in the goddess’ sight again … but even if that was denied him, he’d have the consolation of knowing that he’d tried. That he had done more than let himself be played as a Thornlady’s pawn.
Above, the sunset prayers ended. He could tell by the sudden stirring in the streets and the influx of new arrivals in the tavern’s upper commons. The main taproom was at ground level, where people talked and laughed and a quartet of musicians played. The under-commons, dank and dim and reachable only by a set of narrow wooden stairs behind the front door, were where people went to drink. The under-commons never changed, no matter the tide of the day’s prayers.
Albric ate a dinner of black bread and cheap meat, pale from the brining cask and so salty it burned his tongue dry. He didn’t know what animal it came from; he didn’t much care. It was there only to provide ballast in his stomach for beer.
He was on his fourth mug, and more than half drunk, when they arrived. Two hunched figures, shrouded in robes of sackcloth that covered their hands and dragged after their feet, hobbled toward the lonely table where Albric had gone to do his drinking. He scowled at them, and was about to order them off, when he caught the tip of the girl’s braid tucked inside her cowl and heard the soft clinking of shells from beneath the other one’s hood.
“Well, go ahead and sit,” he muttered.
They did, carefully, taking chairs equidistant from him so that one or the other could see any hidden movements he might make, and so he couldn’t lunge at one without turning his back to the other. Albric grinned sourly when he understood what they were doing. He finished his mug and stood, unsteadily, to fetch another. “Don’t trust me?”
“Would you?” the girl replied. The Burnt Knight stayed silent.
“Oh, no question, my judgment’s always been fine. Look where it got me.” Albric snorted so hard he nearly dropped the empty mug. “Do you want anything? The bread’s half sawdust, the sausage is likely made of patrons who didn’t pay their tabs on time, and I’d call the wine pig piss if it wouldn’t be such an insult to swine. But the beer’s all right.”
“Suppose I’ll have a beer, then,” the girl said. She sounded amused.
“Bread and water will suffice for me,” the Burnt Knight said.
“What, salt-pickled rat meat not good enough for you?”
The Burnt Knight turned his head slightly toward Albric. He could see nothing of the man’s face in the hood; only the pale shapes of the shells in his hair stood out. They tinkled against one another, oddly musical, as the knight shook his head. “Those of my order do not pollute their bodies with the flesh of the dead, nor do we muddy our wits with wine.”
Albric chuckled, a raspy sound without any real warmth. “Funny. She won’t touch meat, either. Says it cheapens the animal’s pain. Suppose the proper thing to do is make it suffer and then leave the corpse to rot. I’ll get the bread.”
He saw them put their heads together and start whispering behind him. They stopped and pulled apart when he came back with two mugs of ale, a wooden cup of water, and a platter of rough-hewn black bread. Albric pretended he hadn’t noticed.
“So,” he said, sitting, “can we talk?”
“We can. I apologize for not making proper introductions earlier. My name is Kelland; my companion is Bitharn.” No hesitation over the word ‘companion,’ Albric noticed. So the two weren’t lovers. That was in line with what little he knew of the Sun Knights, but he couldn’t comprehend how the man could spend his nights sleeping next to such a beautiful girl and keep his hands off her. Celestia’s Blessed had to be nearly as crazed as Kliasta’s.
“Albric,” he replied. No point lying about his name. It was common enough, and at this stage of the game he wanted to keep close to the truth. The rest of the tale could be shaped and shaded, but first they had to believe him and listen.
“You wish to betray a Thorn.” Kelland took his cup in a gloved hand and drew it up to his hood for a sip. The gesture struck Albric as peculiar; the under-commons were chilly, but not that cold. A man could take his gloves off at the table. Then he realized that this man could not: a glimpse of the Burnt Knight’s dark hands would tell the whole tale, and his faint hope would die with the first whisper to reach Severine’s ears.
They’d been more careful than he had. Good. Albric nodded appreciatively into his mug. Perhaps their youth wasn’t such a concern.
“I do.” Albric took a long swig of his beer. He glanced around for eavesdroppers and saw none. “There’s one Thornlady here. Her name is Severine. She plans to lay an ambush for you. You’re the only threat to her in these parts, now that the local Blessed’s gone to tend some dying noble. I don’t know exactly how or when she’ll do it, but I’ll warn you as best I can. If you want to ambush her first, I’ll do what I can to help.”
“What forces does she have?” Bitharn asked.
“She’s the only Thorn I’ve seen. I don’t think there are any others about. She has ghoul-hounds that run at her command. Six or seven of those, I think, but most of them have gone away. About a dozen dead crows that do her spying. And me.”
“What’s your role?” Bitharn inquired, at the same time that Kelland said, “Where have her other ghaole gone?”
“She sent the other ghouls to attack a band of Vis Sestani on the road.” Albric didn’t have to feign the grimace that came to him at the thought. “I pledged her my cooperation in exchange for their lives. I didn’t dare lie to her about that, not while her ghoul-hounds are out ranging. She has some way of sniffing out lies; I don’t know how she does it, but she knows when what’s said isn’t true.”
“Then how can we trust you?” Bitharn’s frown came through in her voice, although her face was hooded.
“You can’t, not to a certainty. Maybe you shouldn’t. I wouldn’t, were I in your place.” Albric drew a deep breath and knitted his fingers together on the scarred tabletop. “But I tell you this truly, and swear it on whatever hope of Celestia’s grace I still have: I want nothing more than to see that woman dead and defeated, and I will do everything in my power to make it so.”
“Why?”
“I’m hardly Blessed, lady. I’ve had my share of sins. But the things she’s done, the things she’s made me do …” Albric trailed off. He shook his head mutely.
“I accept your oath,” said the Burnt Knight. “What is the Thornlady’s plan?”
Albric nodded in Bitharn’s direction. “She knows you’re a tracker. The crows have seen you in the woods. The little girl, too—the runty one with black hair, the one you’ve been teaching.”
“Mirri,” Bitharn breathed. She sounded sick.
“I wouldn’t know her name. The crows have seen her in the forest. She sneaks out alone, did you know? I suppose she’s trying to put her lessons to use. Anyway, Severine plans to seize the child during one of her ventures outside the wall. She expects you’ll go out to find the girl, since you know her and the family’s sure to beg the Burnt Knight for aid. The trail will lead you right into her ambush.”
“We can’t allow that to happen.” Kelland shifted his weight, and Albric heard the creak of leather and chain under his robe.
“You should,” Albric said flatly. “I’m not telling you this so that you can hare off and try to interrupt it. She’ll kill whoever interferes, if she can, and if she can’t, she’ll pick another target. And another, if you don’t go after that one. It’s better if you know her plan so that things run smoothly and people don’t get hurt without reason. Listen to me. The girl won’t be harmed, not if all goes the way it should. Severine only needs her to create the trail that’s to lead you into her trap. As soon as that’s done, I’ll take her home, out of harm’s way. You have my word on this; I fought hard enough to make the Thornlady let me. But you must also pretend not to know that she’s safe, and go out onto the trail as if you truly expected to save her.”
“And then?”
“And then I hope and pray that you can best a Thorn in combat. You won’t catch her unawares. Her crows watch throughout the forest and along every road. If Severine thinks she’s at a disadvantage, she won’t stand and fight. She’ll flee. The only way to draw her out is to let her think that she has chosen the battle. But if you can’t best her, we’re all wasting our time. So that’s what I’m asking: Can you?”
“Yes,” Kelland said. There was no doubt in his answer. Looking at him, and seeing the familiar, fanatic light of the divine burning in his eyes, Albric believed the man. A tightness came loose around his heart.
“Good. Don’t tell me how you plan to do it. I don’t want her learning it from me.”
Bitharn gazed at him, steady and searching. “Will you fight with us?”
“Yes. If she doesn’t kill me first. She doesn’t need her servants to be living, and I doubt she’ll leave me alive if she learns of my treachery. If she kills me, and makes me one of those monsters . . . I hope you’ll end it quickly.”
“Bitharn’s very good with a bow.”
“I’ll take some comfort in that.” Albric grunted. An arrow in the heart was a far better death than the baker’s. Better than he deserved. “That reminds me: If you see any crows outside when you leave this place, shoot them. Real crows don’t lurk on roofs at this hour. Anything you see is a spy.”
“May as well make our position clear,” Bitharn agreed wryly. A short silence followed. Then she asked, oddly gentle: “Have you thought of what will happen after she’s dead?”
“No.”
“You’ll have earned some powerful enemies. The Thorns may want to make an example.”
“Then it’s a good thing you know how to use that bow.”
“There are other ways, other choices. You could travel with us.” Kelland’s hood lifted slightly in evident surprise as Bitharn spoke, but he did not interrupt. “The Dome of the Sun is always looking for servants with skill and courage. Whatever you might have done in the past, you’ve shown your true colors in coming forward now and trying to stop her. We’d be glad to have you with us.”
Redemption. The idea chimed in his soul like a high pure note unexpectedly struck from a tarnished bell.
It was a sweet image, for the heartbeat he let himself hold it. It was also a false one. The girl thought him a better man than he was, but Albric knew the truth. This wasn’t about redemption, though he hoped Celestia might forgive his sins if he stopped Severine’s. It was about revenge. He’d never been a particularly good man, but he’d never been a monster, either, until the Thorn had made him her dog.
Beaten dogs bit back sometimes. That was all this was. All he was. An oathbreaker and a knight who’d sullied his vows until he wasn’t worthy of the name. Redemption was a pretty dream, but it wasn’t part of his world.
“I’ll think about it,” Albric lied. “But keep your arrows ready all the same.”
They left a little while after that. Albric drank another mug of beer, dropped a handful of small coins on the table to pay for the meal, and went up the stairs to the night.
The cold startled tears into his eyes as soon as he stepped outside. He pulled his cloak closer and started for the west gate, which gave him the longest way to walk before he got back to Severine’s camp.
There was a small crumpled form on the cobblestones outside the Dancer and Drum. Albric initially took it for a clot of old rushes or an unlucky alley cat, but then the moonlight caught a fan of spread feathers and he recognized the dead thing as a crow.
He turned the bird over with the toe of his boot. It was too light, and by that he knew it was one of Severine’s: muscle and organs all withered away, leaving the empty shell as her spy. And it was dead, truly dead, but not by an arrow.
In the uncertain light it was impossible to see puncture wounds, and of course the girl might have pulled out her shafts, but Albric doubted they’d shot it. The stink of burned feathers drifted up from the little corpse as he nudged it, and melted ice glistened between the cobbles where it lay.
The stories said that Knights of the Sun could call upon Celestia’s holy fire to strike down evil creatures, leaving the innocent untouched. It seemed there was some truth to the tales. A little, at least. Enough to raise his hopes.
Albric crushed the crow’s skull under his boot. The brittle bone snapped with barely a sound, and he ground it against the cobbles until he could feel nothing under his heel but dust and gritty feathers and stone.
Then he walked on to the west gate and out of Tarne Crossing, the chill night warmed by visions of ghoul-hounds aflame.
SEVERINE WAS SEATED ON THE MOSSY log, reading a book in the dark. A hollow-eyed crow perched on her shoulder, its ragged head thrust forward at the pages. The bones of its neck peeped out from the rough collar of black feathers around its throat, showing the wound that had killed it.
“Where have you been?” the Thornlady asked once he stepped into the clearing. She marked her place in the book with a ribbon and closed it, tilting her head toward him.
“Drinking.” He didn’t stop. Albric had no interest in talking to her. He only wanted to sleep, and his tent was not twenty paces away.
“Have you had enough? You stink of beer.”
“I’m still walking, so the answer’s probably no.”
“Clever.” Her voice was cold and sharp as cracking ice. “Have you contrived of a plan to lure the Sun Knight to us? As I recall, that was your reason for spending the day in taverns.”
“As I recall, the reason for that was to drink. Which I did, so I’d count the day a success.” Beer and contempt were making him too reckless. Albric realized it even as he spoke. The gods promised victory to no man; he could lose everything if he was foolish.
He paused and turned back toward the woman. She was luminous and monstrous as ever, a thin creature of shadow crowned with trailing silver and staring at him with an eye that burned like a ghost-torch of Narsenghal. Albric swallowed uneasily, suddenly conscious of what he had been tempting.
“But I do have a plan,” he muttered, “so you might count it one too.”
She said nothing. She sat there, waiting, and her terrible eye raked his soul. He could just see the tips of her maimed fingers glinting in the moonlight, cold silverbound claws waiting to be warmed in blood.
“There’s a girl,” Albric said, struggling to work spit into his mouth so he could talk. “Her name’s Mirri. The Burnt Knight’s friend has been teaching her to track. Sometimes the girl goes out into the woods by herself. It’d be easy enough to take her and bait a trap with her. They’d have to come for her—they’d have to. People like that … they’d blame themselves for the danger she was in. Then you’d have them.”
“His friend has been teaching this child?”
“That’s what I said.” Albric shook his head. “A waste. She’s too pretty for that. The Sun Knights must be mad.”
“Perhaps,” said Severine. She laid the book open again, its pages blank leaves of shadow, and the dead crow hopped forward to read. “See that the child is taken.”
Albric’s shoulders sagged in relief, even as dread sank into him. He was committed now. “One other thing,” he said, suppressing a flinch as her head lifted toward him again. “I want your word that the girl won’t be hurt. She’s just a child. You don’t need to hurt her to draw out the knight. Once the trail’s laid, I’m taking her somewhere safe. Give me your word that you won’t interfere, that you won’t hurt the child, and that you’ll let her go.”
“If you like,” the Thornlady agreed, utterly indifferent.
It was the best he would get. Albric nodded gruffly, despising himself, and resumed walking back to his tent.
Behind him the crow croaked.
Albric froze. An icy shiver ran up his sides and along his neck, prickling the small hairs on its way. None of her dead things had ever made a sound before. If death itself had a voice, it was in that hoarse, choking rattle, feeble but viciously triumphant.
And yet he had faced death, many times in his life, and never felt such fear as the crow’s croak stirred in him.
“Oh, yes,” Severine said, “I forgot to tell you.”
For an instant the breath stopped in his lungs. She knew. She knew of his betrayal, of his meeting with the Burnt Knight, of the lengths to which his hatred had gone. All his plans were laid bare by her magic—how had he dared to imagine otherwise?—and all his hopes of stopping her were dust on the wind.
He wondered, for a fleeting mad moment, whether he would have any prayer of killing her if he simply lunged at her now.
“What?” Albric forced the word out, his voice nearly as hoarse as the crow’s. He could not muster the will to turn around and face her, to see his doom come.
“I sent my pets after the baby today. Our bargain should be fulfilled shortly. With, as promised, a minimum of unnecessary killing.”
She was mocking him with that last bit, Albric was certain, but it hardly mattered. Nothing mattered, except that his plan was still safe. He felt like a condemned man let free from the gallows; he could hardly think through the fog of his relief, and wished that he’d either had less to drink or a great deal more. Being only half stupid was not helping tonight.
He shrugged, for her benefit, and kept walking, praying that the weakness of his knees did not show in his step. “Hope they don’t take too long with it. I want this done.”
“Oh, I know. Do not forget what you owe me in turn.” The crow cawed again. It sounded like a dead man’s laugh. “And do not think to shirk it. I know your doubts. I see the shadows on the surface of your mind. But remember the costs if you think to betray me—and remember how many will pay.”
“Would that I could forget,” he muttered, and opened the flap of his tent. She did not try to stop him again.
Inside his tent Albric fumbled, stiff-fingered, with the latches and knobs of his lantern. It was nearly out of oil; he’d been so preoccupied that he’d neglected to refill it. He’d neglected many things, it seemed. After an interminable struggle he managed to pour a thin stream of oil into its reservoir and coax a small flame into the glass. It would have been easier in the moonlight, but he would rather work blind than endure another instant in the Thornlady’s sight.
With the lantern burning, he tied the tent flap to keep its scant warmth inside. The tent was musty and cold and creaked in the wind; it smelled of wet canvas and dirty clothes, but for all that it was peculiarly comforting. Even canvas walls offered a sense of protection from the Thornlady’s presence. Illusory it might be, but he’d take it.
Chafing his hands to restore feeling to his fingers, Albric searched for the prayerbook that hid his writing tools. He tore out a page, unwrapped the tip of his writing-stick, and, by the faint flickering light of his lantern, began to write his confession.
He did not trouble to hide this letter behind a false one. He wrote it plainly on the page. If other eyes should happen to find it on its way to his lord, so much the better; then others would see, and know, that Albric claimed all the sins of this journey as his own.
Finding the right words was a struggle. Albric had never prided himself on any skill with language: he was a man of the sword, not a courtier or poet. He could write simple facts well enough, and field reports seldom demanded more. But this, he felt, should be more than a mere recitation of what happened when. This should have something of beauty.
He expected it to be his eulogy. Bitharn had honored him with her offer, but he did not believe, in his heart of hearts, that he would be able to accept. He had seen and done too much that was evil. Redemption required more courage than he had left.
And while Albric did not expect to be remembered with praise, he hoped at least that others would understand that he had committed his sins in the name of duty. Not for himself: for the hope of achieving some greater good for his lord and his domain. So he sat there, by his weak glassed-in flame, and struggled to find the words that could catch truth in a net of lies.
It felt clumsy as trying to carve ivory with an axe, but in the end he found something close enough to suffice. The writing hurt; he hadn’t expected that, but it felt right. By the end his chest ached as much as his eyes did, and his fingers felt frozen through.
Laboriously Albric folded the letter and sealed it with the nub of a candle heated over the lantern. He tucked it back into the prayerbook and lay down to rest.
In the morning he would send the letter. Soon after he expected to die.