David Coe - Bonds of Vengeance

“No. But we saw in it the opportunity for which we’d been waiting.”

“So the Qirsi did kill Filib of Thorald.”

“Filib the Younger, yes.”

Grinsa exhaled though his teeth. Eight years the Weaver had been planning this. Every noble who had died since Galdasten might well have been a victim of his movement.

“I take it you’re one of the Weaver’s chancellors?”

The man stared at him. “You aren’t supposed to know about the chancellors.”

Grinsa lashed at the man’s mind with his power until he screamed in anguish. “Are you one of them?”

“No. I’m more. I take his gold and pay his couriers.”

The gleaner gaped at him. “What?”

“He can’t pay them directly. He needs me to do it for him, so that no one can trace the gold back to him.”

“So you know where the gold comes from!”

The merchant clamped his mouth shut. Grinsa felt him struggle once more to take control of his own power.

He tightened his grip on the man’s magic and pounded his mind with mind-bending power.

“Tell me where it comes from! Is it Braedon? Is that where the Weaver is?”

The merchant screamed again, his head lolling from side to side.

A clap of thunder made the ground tremble and a moment later it began to rain in torrents.

Tavis! The gleaner had forgotten for a moment that the young lord was fighting the assassin. For all Grinsa knew, he was dead already.

“Tell me!” he shouted at the man. He pushed ever harder with his magic, heedless of the man’s suffering. “Tell me, and I’ll end this!”

Tihod said nothing, his mouth open in a silent wail. A trickle of blood seeped from his nose and was washed away by the rain.

“It’s Braedon, isn’t it?” Grinsa demanded, thinking it through. “That’s why he needs a merchant, so that he can convert imperial qinde to common coin.” He grabbed the man by the throat with his good hand and shook him. “ Answer!”

A strange smile touched the merchant’s lips, as blood suddenly gushed from his nostrils. “Never,” he whispered.

Grinsa let go of his neck and forced open the man’s eyes. The whites of his eyes were shot through with blood. One pupil was far larger than the other, and neither changed when the eyes were opened.

“Damn you!” the gleaner roared. “Tell me where he is!”

Even as he berated the merchant, however, Grinsa knew that the man was gone. His chest still rose and fell, though slowly and with great effort. But the gleaner still held his mind and his magic, and so could feel Tihod’s life draining away.

“Damn you,” he muttered.

He released the man and sat back, even that slight movement bringing another rush of pain. He needed to find Tavis and the singer, but first he had injuries to heal. His shoulder pained him more than the broken leg, but he could walk with a shattered shoulder. He placed his good hand on his leg and closing his eyes, probed the flesh and bone with his mind. He was weary beyond words, and the break wasn’t a clean one, but he poured what power he still had into setting and mending the bone, grinding his teeth together as he fought the pain. It grew so bad that he had to stop once and vomit. But at last, as the bone fragments began to knit together, his torment eased, as did the nausea.

Soon he could stand and, though his leg still ached, and a fire burned in his shoulder, he found that he could walk as well. He gazed out toward the shore and the gulf waters beyond, straining to see through the rain that still pelted the coastline.

At first he saw nothing, but then he realized that there were figures standing on the rocks. Two of them. Neither appeared to be moving, although the distance was great and the storm still obscured his view. Were they both still alive, then? Was that possible?

He quickened his pace, shielding his eyes from the rain. But only when a third figure suddenly appeared, seeming to rise from the rocks and the water like some beast from Amon’s deep, did the gleaner break into a hobbled run.

He held the boy fast, forcing his head down into the dark water and trying to keep the rest of his body still. Tavis was stronger than he looked, but he was no threat to Cadel, at least not anymore. He could thrash his arms and legs all he liked-it would only steal his breath. A few moments and it would all be over.

“Corbin.”

He started at the voice, recognizing it immediately. He shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Go away,” he said, over the rain and the keening wind. “You don’t want to be here for this.”

Tavis twisted his head suddenly and managed to get his mouth out of the water for just an instant before Cadel strengthened his grip once more. He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. Not now.

“Let him go.”

“I can’t do that. He’s as intent on killing me as I am on killing him.”

“Why? Because you killed Lady Brienne?”

Cadel turned at that, keeping a firm grip on the boy, whose struggles grew more frenzied by the moment.

Kalida’s hair and clothes were soaked, and rain ran down her face in rivulets. But her blue eyes were fixed on his, her brow furrowed.

“Yes,” he said at last. “Because I killed Brienne.”

“You’re an assassin.”

He turned his back on her. “You should leave.”

“I followed you from Ailwyck because I wanted to be with you, regardless of what you are. I still do. But you have to let him go.”

“This isn’t some innocent boy I’m murdering for no reason, Kalida. He came here to kill me. He nearly succeeded in killing me a few turns back. If I let him go, he’ll just try again.”

Tavis’s movements were becoming slower, weaker. A few seconds more and the boy would lose consciousness. It wouldn’t be long after that before he was dead.

“In Ailwyck, when we were together, you were trying to change. I know that now. You didn’t want to do this anymore.”

“And you saw how that turned out.”

“At some point you just have to stop. You can find an excuse for each new murder, be it gold, or revenge, or the need to defend yourself. But when does it end? Do you want to keep doing this for the rest of your life?”

He said nothing.

“Please, Corbin.” A pause, and then, “Cadel.”

It was his true name that reached him, that finally convinced him to relent. He did so knowing precisely what would happen, how all of this would end. But still, he didn’t do it for love. He didn’t even do it for Kalida, though he wasn’t foolish enough to think that he would have released the boy had she not been there. He did it because he knew that none of this would ever end. Already he had told Tihod that he would take this newest job. They wanted him to kill the king of Eibithar, on a battlefield, surrounded by thousands of armed men. And he had said yes. He did it because of the brigands he had been forced to kill on the road leading from Fanshyre to Ailwyck, and because of the questions that had followed. He did it because of Brienne’s ghost, whom he had encountered in the Sanctuary of Bian at Solkara.

“By this time next year, I expect you’ll be dead,” she had told him on the Deceiver’s Night, her words carrying the weight of prophecy. After Mertesse, and his narrow escape in the tavern corridor, he had allowed himself to believe that the girl’s wraith had been wrong. But no.

In a sense he did it because of all his wraiths. How many spirits could one man face on the Night of the Dead? How many kills was too many? He felt no sympathy for the boy, but he didn’t want to stand before Brienne and Tavis together, not after what he had endured this past year.

Slowly, he eased his grip on the young lord, pushing himself off the boy’s back until he was kneeling on the rock rather than on Tavis. The boy made no move to leave the water and so Cadel grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him out of the pool and onto the slick stone. Immediately Tavis began to cough and sputter, and his eyes fluttered open briefly before closing again.