nyctasia was, as usual, in danger. But she knew nothing of her peril till it was past, till Greymantle roused her from her stupor, licking her face and whimpering. She clutched at him, struggling to rise, and felt that his coat was wet and matted. Her hands came away dark and shiny with blood. When she saw the still figure lying near her on the floor, she believed for one dizzying moment that it was Thierran, and she cried out in confusion and denial of the sight.
She seemed to have stepped outside of time itself, and returned to the night of his death, as if everything that had happened to her since had been only a strange dream.
But as she came slowly to her senses, the moonlight and the dim lamplight from the hallway revealed who it was who lay there, his throat torn open raggedly, not slashed by Corson’s keen-honed dagger. She reached out a trembling hand to stroke Greymantle’s massive head. “Good lad,” she whispered. “Well done.”
Greymantle flicked his ears, listening, then trotted back out to the corridor on some quest of his own. But this time he wagged his tail in welcome. This was a scent he recognized.
Corson laughed at the eager hound who greeted her like a skittish puppy, tugging at her cloak then running ahead of her and turning back to bark impatiently.
“All right, beast, I’m coming. Get out of my way, then.” But when he came back a second time to herd her along, she saw that his muzzle and ruff were caked with blood, and her laughter died in her throat. Sword in hand, she followed him at a run the rest of the way, calling, “Nyc! Where are you?” But she knew, somehow, where she would find Nyctasia.
Greymantle darted to Nyctasia’s side but Corson stood frozen in the doorway, faced with the ghost of the man she’d killed, and Nyctasia standing over him with the same half-dreamy, absent look she’d worn that night.
“It’s not Thierran, Corson,” she said, in an unnaturally placid voice that Corson remembered.
“I didn’t think it was!” Corson lied, beginning to breathe again. “He’s dead and gone, and good riddance to him. The dead don’t return.”
“Our dead do not return to us,” Nyctasia agreed, “but we may go to them betimes, if we will. It is written, ‘To seek to commune with the dead is forbidden, but if the dead would commune with us, it is permitted to listen.’”
“What are you babbling about?” Corson demanded. She strode over to the dead man and shoved him with her foot, angry at him for giving her a fright. “Who’s this, then?”
Nyctasia did not seem to hear. “But why should it be easier to listen to the dead than to the living? If I’d listened to Thierran while he lived, perhaps he’d not be dead now.”
Corson had been with her only a few minutes, and already she was exasperated.
“Nyc, talk sense! Are you hurt?”
Nyctasia looked at her blindly. “I? I’m never hurt. It’s those around me who suffer… Corson, the night we left Rhostshyl, he came to warn me about the attack waiting outside the city gates. Oh, but he was pleased with himself, that he knew something I didn’t-I with all my schemes and precautions. He’d defied Mhairestri to save me. Even Mescrisdan didn’t know his plans. He believed that I’d be forced to stay in the city, under his protection… that I’d be grateful to him. I, grateful!” She laughed bitterly.
Corson shook her head. “He’d drawn on you, fool, don’t you remember?”
“How else to make me listen, save at sword’s point?”
“You’re dreaming, Nyc. He was a madman, that cousin of yours, and his brother no better. Now, what-”
“Oh yes, he was mad. He had the madness of the Edonaris, and the pride, and after that night madness and pride were all that was left to him.”
“If you mean to say that I shouldn’t have killed him, you’re crazier than he was. He was after your blood, and mine too!”
“Of course you’d no choice. Corson. He might not have killed me, but he’d certainly have killed you. Not because you wounded him in my defense, not even because you killed Mescrisdan, but because you spoke to him with scorn. You sneered at him.” She seemed quite unaware that a dead man lay at her feet.
Corson wondered whether it would do any good to slap her. Probably not, she thought glumly, but I’d feel the better for it.
“Let be,” Nyctasia said, as if to herself. “I know now what he wanted to tell me.”
Corson did not ask how she knew, and didn’t want to hear more. “Perhaps, if it’s not asking too much, you’d be good enough to tell me,” she began, making use of expressions she had learned from Nyctasia. “what you’re bloody, rutting well doing here with a corpse in the middle of the night, curse you!” she concluded, in her own words.
Nyctasia seemed to see her for the first time. “How charming to meet you again, Corson. This-” she added, gesturing toward the body as if introducing it, “is one of the Lady Mhairestri’s henchmen, unless I much mistake. His name escapes me.” She sighed, sounding tired and vexed. “She must have set him to watching the house some time ago. She’s admirably thorough. I expected something of the sort, of course, but I searched and found no one. He must have entered afterward. I wonder that Grey let him come so close, though.”
But Corson pointed to the open window. “More likely he came in that way. He might have been here all the while and climbed up to the roof to hide when he heard you coming. It’s easy to do.”
Nyctasia nodded thoughtfully. Corson waited for her to say something about carelessness, but she only remarked, “I suppose he didn’t see Greymantle in the dark. That dog is almost as good a bodyguard as you are, Corson-and he has much better manners.”
“But you enjoy my company, you know,” Corson reminded her with a grin. She handed Nyctasia her lantern, then bent and pulled the would-be assassin up by one arm, hoisting him over her back. “Over the cliff with this one, I think. The gulls and fish will make short work of him.”
Something fell from his hand and lay gleaming on the bloodstained floor, catching the moonlight. Nyctasia picked up her silver earring, and Corson saw her face harden with a fleeting fury, but when she spoke her voice was still calm and flatly amused. “A token for Mhairestri that the job was done,” she said lightly. “I’ll send her this instead.” She took one of the plain brass earrings the dead man wore, and slipped it into the pouch at her hip. “She’ll understand.”
She turned to the door, then, and called Grey mantle to her. “Thank you for disposing of the carrion, Corson. I must take Grey down to the shore and give him a washing. I could do with one myself, come to that, I’m filthy. Seawater’s as salt and sticky as blood, but cleaner at least. Cleaner…” Her clothes were bloodstained and dusty from the floor, and her hands were grimy with gore, though there was no longer a knife-wound slashed across her palm and fingers.
Only the drying blood remained to show where the cuts had been.
Corson followed with her lifeless burden, wondering what could possibly happen next. She could not remember that Nyctasia had ever before thanked her for anything, in all the time she’d known her.