David Coe - Bonds of Vengeance

Grinsa helped Cresenne from her mount, and all of them followed the guard up a winding stairway and into the castle corridors. They were given three rooms on an otherwise empty hallway. Grinsa took the room between Cresenne’s and Tavis’s, telling them both to await word from him before going anywhere.

“Surely I’m safe within Audun’s Castle,” the boy said, frowning. “I’m not a child to be kept in my chamber while you wander freely about the place.”

For once, Cresenne agreed with him. But a sharp look from the gleaner made it clear to both of them that he would not discuss the point.

Cresenne’s room was ample for guest quarters, though rather spare and chill. Aside from a bed, a wardrobe, and a single chair by the dark hearth, it was empty. She gently laid Bryntelle on the bed and watched her for a moment. The child slept still, though her mouth moved as though she were suckling.

Almost immediately someone knocked at the door. Pulling it open, she saw a young servant, burdened with a large load of wood and kindling. He bowed shyly to her and hurried to the hearth, where he began to build her a fire. She nearly stopped him-she could have started the flame with a single thought-but before she could speak, Grinsa appeared in the doorway.

He cast a quick look at the servant, then cleared his throat.

“How is she?” he asked, nodding toward Bryntelle.

“She’s fine.”

He nodded, his eyes wandering to the servant again. The boy had piled several logs in the hearth, placing the rest beside it.

“That will do,” Grinsa told him. “We can take care of the rest.”

The boy stared up at them, looking frightened. Certainly he had seen Qirsi before, living and laboring in a castle, but from the expression on his face, one might have thought that they were the first sorcerers he had ever met.

“Yes, sir,” he murmured. He bowed and quickly left the room.

Grinsa closed the door.

Cresenne turned away from him. “It didn’t take you long to tell the king all about me, did it?”

“You work for the conspiracy. Do you honestly think I’d allow him to make you a guest in his castle without telling him that first?”

She shrugged.

“I also told him I didn’t think you were a threat to him or anyone else.”

“That might have been a mistake.”

“I don’t think so.”

She gave a small laugh, facing him again. “You’re just like them. You think nothing of using our baby as a weapon against me.”

“We’re both guilty of that, Cresenne. She deserves better from both of us.”

“I won’t tell the king anything. I won’t betray the movement and I won’t risk my life to save the Curgh boy.”

He gazed at her for some time, offering no response, until she began to grow uncomfortable. She crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes wandering the room.

“What are you looking at?” she finally asked.

“Did you ever love me?”

“I did what I did for the movement. You must know that by now.” Her hands were shaking and she rubbed her arms, trying to get warm.

Grinsa glanced back at the hearth and an instant later flames leaped from the wood.

“That should warm you.”

“Thank you.”

“I did love you,” he said, stepping past her and sitting on the bed beside their baby. He looked down at Bryntelle for a long time, running a gentle finger along her cheek. Hands more gentle than any I’ve ever known . .

“I loved you more than I’ve loved anyone since my wife died,” he went on, his voice low now. “When I realized you were the one who sent that assassin, it nearly killed me.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m not sure. I suppose I’ve been wanting to for some time now. I never thought I’d get the chance.”

“So is this the reason you brought me to the City of Kings? Are you trying to exact some measure of revenge for what I did to you?”

He shook his head, though he still gazed a the child. “I’m doing it because I have to, just as I had to leave you in Galdasten.”

“To protect the boy.”

“It’s more than that.” He looked back at her. “Your movement will bring ruin to the Forelands, Cresenne. You may think that you’re building a new realm for the Qirsi, but all you’re doing is destroying the land, destroying Bryntelle’s home.”

“She has no home so long as the Eandi rule.” Cresenne said the words with all the force she could muster, but even she could hear how hollow they sounded.

“I’m going to defeat your Weaver.” He spoke with such certainty that she didn’t dare argue. “I may not live to see the end of the war, but neither will he. So you need to choose. Are you going to devote yourself to a doomed cause, or are you going to help me, and make certain that your daughter grows up knowing her father?” He stood, crossing to the door. “The king will want to speak with Tavis and me before questioning you. I doubt he’ll summon you before tomorrow morning, so you have some time to think about it.” He pulled the door open and started to leave. Then he stopped himself, facing her once more. “You never answered my question.”

She held his gaze as best she could, balling her hands into fists so that he wouldn’t see how she trembled. “Of course I did.”

“You told me that you seduced me for the movement. But you didn’t say whether or not you loved me.”

Cresenne tossed her hair and smiled coldly. “I didn’t love you. I could never love a man like you.”

He nodded, his eyebrows going up. She could see the hurt in his eyes. “I see,” he said quietly. “Well, thank you for being so candid.”

“Of course.”

She waited even after he closed the door, listening as his footsteps faded away. Only when she couldn’t hear them anymore did she collapse onto the bed beside her baby, sobs racking her body.

Grinsa walked for some time, prowling the castle corridors in search of Keziah, his sister, who was now archminister to Eibithar’s king. At least that was his excuse. As it happened he was just as happy not to find her right away.

He had hoped to begin the process of winning Cresenne’s trust, perhaps even her affection, though he wouldn’t have admitted that to anyone. But rather than accepting his honesty as a gesture of trust, the woman had seen in it only an opportunity to hurt him again. Her denials notwithstanding, Grinsa knew that she had loved him, or at the very least had cared for him. He still remembered, with a clarity that made his chest ache, their last night together in Galdasten, when he left her to win Tavis’s freedom from Kentigern’s dungeon. Her anger at his decision had been genuine and far too fervent to be dismissed as the ire of a frustrated conspirator. She had been hurt and bitter, as only a spurned lover could be. In the turn that followed, as he learned of her betrayal and battled to the death the assassin she sent to kill him, he came to question his perceptions, not only of that last night but of all the passion-filled nights that had come before it.

He had railed at himself for his stupidity and the ease with which she had deluded him. He was a Weaver, the most powerful of Qirsi sorcerers, and though even a Weaver did not possess the power to recognize a false heart, Grinsa felt that he should have known. Only with the passage of time did he begin to forgive himself, to see that perhaps he hadn’t realized she was deceiving him because she hadn’t been, not completely. It was true that she asked repeatedly about Tavis’s Fating, but it was equally true that he never revealed to her what the Qiran showed the boy. And still she remained with him until he left the Revel.

He wasn’t a fool. He knew why she had taken to his bed in the first place. But he had loved and been loved before, and he knew as well that no matter her talents for trickery, Cresenne couldn’t have been lying about everything. Passion such as they had shared could not be feigned.