David Coe - Bonds of Vengeance

The two boys stopped, stepped back from one another, and bowed, first to each other, and then to Hagan. Their faces were as red as Sanbiri wine and their hair was damp with sweat. But both of them were grinning, Tavis looking happier than Grinsa had ever seen him. Whatever his reason for requesting the training, clearly it had done him some good.

Seeing the gleaner, Tavis’s smile began to fade.

“Has something happened?” he asked, wiping the sweat from his face with his sleeve.

“No. I was on my way to the prison tower and saw you here. I just stopped to watch.” He faltered. After all this time, he still found it hard to pay the boy compliments. “You’re very good,” he made himself say.

Tavis shrugged, looked off to the side. “I used to be.”

“You still are,” Xaver said.

“As are you, Master MarCullet.”

An uneasy silence fell over them, until Grinsa cleared his throat, forcing a smile. “Well, as I say, I was on my way to the tower. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Not at all,” the swordmaster said. “I shouldn’t work him too hard if he hasn’t been training.”

But Tavis didn’t say a word. It seemed he was eager for Grinsa to leave.

“If you need me, I’ll be with Cresenne,” he told the boy.

Tavis nodded once, his lips pressed thin.

Grinsa tipped his head to Xaver and Hagan in turn, then walked away, making his way to Cresenne’s chamber, all the while wondering if he should insist that Tavis return to Curgh. Javan and the duchess would support him, he knew. They wished only for their son’s safety; neither of them cared anything for revenge. And Grinsa wasn’t convinced that Tavis’s thirst for the assassin’s blood was something to be encouraged. If his vision the previous night was to be believed, it might be the death of the boy.

For his part, Grinsa would have been glad to end their journeying here, in the City of Kings. He had come to like Tavis despite the boy’s many faults. But Cresenne and Bryntelle needed him, and though he had resisted it for a time, he could no longer keep himself from thinking of them as his family. He still loved Cresenne, even after all she had done, and while he couldn’t be certain that she would ever love him, he wasn’t certain that mattered. Because of him, the Weaver wanted her dead. How could he leave her, knowing the danger she faced every time she closed her eyes to sleep? How could he leave Bryntelle?

More to the point, there was a war to be fought, and though few of the Eandi realized it now, it would fall to Grinsa to lead them, whether to victory or defeat. He had to remain here, so that when the time came, he would be ready to fight the Weaver. Certainly that’s what Keziah would have told him, and Cresenne, too, and perhaps the king himself.

Then why did Oirsar send the vision?

He faltered in midstride, as if suddenly stricken by some unseen pain. The vision. It was a warning. It had to be. Tavis should stay far from the Wethy Crown. He should break off this pointless and perilous pursuit of the assassin. That’s what it had to be saying. Except that visions didn’t always work that way. Long ago, before he left Cresenne to go to Kentigern, before he’d even met Tavis in the Revel gleaning tent in Curgh city, he had a vision of himself journeying with the boy, fighting beside him against the conspiracy. And though it seemed that what he had glimpsed in that vision had already come to pass, he couldn’t be certain that his path didn’t still lie with the boy. He had yet to have that moment of recognition, the one that came a turn or a year or ten years after a vision, when he realized that he was living the prophecy. He couldn’t be certain that he ever would-with some visions it never came. This didn’t mean the vision wasn’t true; it most cases it meant nothing. In this case, because of his dream the night before, it meant everything.

If that vision from so long ago had yet to be realized, then perhaps Tavis had nothing to fear from the singer. If, on the other hand, that moment had passed. .

Except that visions didn’t always work that way, either.

Grinsa spat a curse.

Of all his powers, gleaning was the one he liked least. The glimpses it offered of the future carried burdens he didn’t wish to bear and uncertainties that often left him frustrated and fearful. Even this latest dream, the meaning of which seemed so clear at first, had become muddied in his mind over the past few hours. If he chose to remain with Cresenne and Bryntelle, would it make a difference? Tavis might resume his pursuit of the assassin without him. Certainly the boy was stubborn enough to do so. And though the gleaner had seen the events on the Wethy shore as if he were there, Tavis and the assassin had paid him no heed. Even when he called out to the young lord, Tavis didn’t appear to hear him. Had his voice been overwhelmed by the sea and the storm? Or was it that he wasn’t even there? Had Qirsar, the god of the Qirsi, merely offered a glimpse of what awaited the boy if Grinsa did not accompany him on his coming journey eastward? The god had done such things before, many times.

Yes, it was a warning. But of what? If you go with the boy to the Wethy Crown, he may die; if you don’t go with the boy, he may die. Either was possible. Keeping Tavis in Eibithar seemed the only way to ensure his safety. And so long as the young lord didn’t learn that the assassin had gone east, Grinsa thought he could do that much.

He continued on across the ward, reaching the base of the prison tower a few moments later. He climbed the stairs quickly and upon emerging into the corridor outside Cresenne’s chamber, heard Bryntelle cry out. Hurrying to the chamber door, the gleaner saw Cresenne sitting on her bed, with the baby lying in her lap.

“Is she all right?” he asked.

Cresenne looked up, a brilliant smile lighting her face. “She laughed!”

“Really?”

“Yes. Come and see.”

One of the guards opened the door for him, and he stepped quickly to the bed to sit beside them.

“Watch.” Cresenne lowered her face to the baby’s belly and kissed it loudly, shaking her head as she did. Bryntelle let out a delighted squeal, her mouth opening in a wide, toothless grin. Cresenne did it a second time, drawing the same response.

“You see?” she said, straightening. “You try it.”

Grinsa smiled, but shook his head. “I don’t think she’s ready to laugh for me.”

“You don’t know that.”

He shrugged, staring at his daughter, unwilling at that moment to risk a look at the woman beside him.

“At least take her. She’s in a wonderful mood.”

“All right.”

He allowed Cresenne to place Bryntelle in his arms, grinning when the child continued to smile and coo. Cresenne laid her hand gently on his arm, leaning closer so that she could look at the baby as well. It almost seemed that his skin was aflame where she was touching him.

“You see?” she said, glancing at him.

He merely nodded, still not looking at her.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I’m just enjoying her.” Both of you, really .

“Something’s troubling you. I can tell.”

As quickly as it had begun, the moment passed. Briefly, as they sat there together, they truly had been a family. But this was a prison, and even as they spoke, the land moved inexorably toward war.

“It’s nothing. I had a vision, that’s all.”

“Of what?” He could hear fear tightening her voice, and he regretted saying even this much.

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does. What did you see?”

“I saw Tavis fighting the assassin.”

“Did you see the outcome?”

“No.”

She nodded, removing her hand from his arm and shifting on the bed so that there was more distance between them. “Where?”