VI
This time, however, there was a trail of blood.
A still shaken group of cadets followed it up the northwest tower stair to the apartment called Gothregor and there lost it, in the middle of the Highlord's small study. They looked behind chairs, out windows, under the table, and up the chimney, without success. Then someone remembered the catwalk to the other tower and, for her pains, was sent across to check.
"Nothing," she reported back, bright green with height-sickness, and lost her dinner behind the Highlord's chair.
Nonetheless, it was decided that the Knorth must also have crossed over and then gone down the southwest stair, while no one below had been in a fit state to notice. In that case, she could be anywhere in the greater fortress by now. The cadets were dispatched to search there, with orders from the Caineron captain not to tell anyone anything. When she included the Brandan cadets in this charge, their captain raised her brows, but didn't comment until they had gone.
"Two are missing," she said, as the Caineron tossed mere clothing over the bodies, temporarily concealing them. "One is almost certainly a guild master."
"No need to cause more panic. They'll be long gone by now."
"They came back after all these years, apparently as soon as word reached them that a young Knorth was in these halls again and spring weather permitted travel. They don't give up that easily."
"Look," said the Caineron impatiently. "It will be dawn soon. Mere or not, they aren't day hunters. By night, we'll have that wretched girl in our hands again, bound and gagged, if necessary, and the halls totally secured."
"As, perhaps, they should have been ever since she arrived."
The Caineron shook her head like a baited bear. She knew she had handled this badly, but be damned if she would admit it. "How could we guess that the contract was still active, thirty-odd years later? I know, I know: they've been after the so-called Randir Heir longer than that, but this is different. Anyway, the brat has scuttled again. If we can't find her, on our home ground, how d'you think the Guild will?"
"Gone back into hiding, yes. And hurt. With all due respect, how could your lady have been so stupid? We may have war over this."
"Over what?" asked the young Danior captain, emerging from the stairwell with her Edirr counterpart on her heels. "Trinity! Old Man Tishooo really took a dislike to this place, didn't he?"
"Never mind that damned wind," snapped the Coman captain, coming in with the Ardeth. "What in Perimal's name was that cry? That's what scared my ladies out of the few wits they had left."
"You're lucky," said the Ardeth soberly. "It reduced our Shanir to convulsions." She glanced at Brenwyr's huddled figure on the stair, and shot the Brandan captain a questioning look.
The latter replied with a flick of her hand: I don't know.
The Jaran captain had arrived during this exchange. "Well," she said, surveying the damage. "I see that someone got in the Knorth's way after all."
"Don't be an idiot!" the Caineron almost shouted. "A freak wind did this! Don't you farking know what the Tishooo is like?"
"All right, all right," said the Jaran pacifically. "Just tell me this, then: whose blood is that, on the floor?"
The Caineron shuffled her feet. If it had been left to her, the others would never have known. As it was, the Brandan told them.
The randon looked at each other with dismay. There hadn't been anything like this in the Women's Halls since the quarrel between Kinzi and the Randir Matriarch Rawneth, and even that hadn't come to blows, if only because the Shadow Guild had struck first.
"At least it's only a lady," said the Coman. "Think how much worse it would be if this had happened to someone important."
"Right," the Danior said drily. "It's only the Highlord's sister, his sole surviving blood-kin. Quiet as the man is, I don't see him letting this pass without comment. You were right," she said to the Brandan. "This could mean war."
"Not necessarily."
They all turned at the sound of this new voice. The Randir captain had entered the chamber some time during the past few minutes and stood in the shadows, hidden by her dress grays, listening. Now she came forward, half out of darkness. Moon light caught the thin gold lines embroidered on her shoulder and the white teeth of a smile which never quite reached her eyes.
"If the damage is repaired before the Highlord returns, how much complaint can he make, even if the girl is so ill-bred as to tell him? At the Priests' College, we have a healer so powerful that he once nearly restored life to a sheepskin coat. Shall I send to Wilden for him?"
The Brandan's brows rose again. "A Randir, prescribing for a Knorth? Shouldn't we at least consult Rowan, Torisen's steward? After all, this did happen in the old Knorth keep, not in the halls."
"Keep or not," said the Caineron, glowering, "the matriarchs made me responsible for the brat, and the only other death tonight in the halls was one of my own cadets. This is my business. Hell, yes: send for the healer! Should we risk civil war over a scratched face?"
The Brandan touched the marks around her own eyes, made with her own nails in the night nursery.
"There's something else you should see."
For a moment, it seemed that the Caineron would stop her, but then she stepped aside with poor grace. In an apparently empty corner, the Brandan bent to flick something away. A pale, tangled patch appeared, seeming to float a foot off the floor. In it was a confusion of thin arms, parts of two torsos, and a boy's head, lolling, dead eyes wide open in disbelief.
"Damnation," said the Jaran softly, after a moment. "They came back. And I was right: someone did get in the Knorth's way."
The others paid no attention to that. Taking the Caineron at her word that the missing Knorth was her responsibility, they disbanded in haste, each to secure her own compound against the two intruders still at large.
The Brandan stayed to help her matriarch. This time, Brenwyr rose at a touch on her shoulder. Blood had run down from her ears and red-flecked eyes, like scarlet tears.
"Save your questions," she said harshly. "I can't hear them anyway. And if you're staring at me, don't."
Descending step by blind step to the lower hall, she put up her hand to confirm what she had seen earlier. Among the night's other casualties were all the death banners on the west wall. Aerulan was gone.
A maledight curse—half pure malison, half prophecy—began to form below the level of Brenwyr's conscious mind. She felt it quicken, as always not knowing what shape it would take. Then it rose like a sickness which must be spat out or swallowed back. All the darkness of that long winter, all the misery and madness . . . She spat:
"Roofless and rootless, blood and bone, cursed be and cast out!"
No light, no relief, no sound, even, of her own voice in her stricken silence.
"Oh, Aerulan!" she cried.
The captain led her away.