Part 18 (1/2)

He kicked the priest's pallet. 'Conal? Have you seen Stella?' No answer; another slugabed. No, the pallet was empty. 'Bah. Is no one-'

Ena walked out of the room she shared with Stella.

'Where is the queen?' Robal asked her.

'Gone out,' replied the girl, her face untroubled. 'Before dawn.'

'Gone where?'

'To meet someone. The priest went a few minutes after she did.'

Stella and the priest? What had he missed? His heart seemed to turn leaden in his chest. Surely not. If she's the type to take up with spoiled babes like him, I'm better rid of her.

'Anyone else see them go?' he asked the room. Kilfor shook his head, then bent it back towards his soup. Robal knew his friend. She's a big girl, he was saying. She can care for herself.

As Robal made towards the outer door, it opened and Conal walked through. One look at his face was enough.

'What has happened to her? What have you done? Did you force yourself on her?' Robal bit his lip to stop further inanities from coming out.

The priest sat on his pallet and began to cry. Enormous tears squeezed out of his crumpled face, accompanied by a huh, huh, huh noise Robal took for sobbing. The display left the guardsman shocked: the vain, pompous priest would never lose control like this.

He put his hand on Conal's shaking shoulder. 'Tell us. What has happened to Stella?' He did not doubt for a moment this concerned her.

'She muh-met Heredrew,' said the priest, his voice a thin warble. 'Out there in the street. I...I went out to see. I thought she might be meeting suh-someone, I thought it might be huh huh him.' He sobbed some more.

'Then what?' Robal could not wait for the blubberer to compose himself. 'They kissed, and you were jealous?'

The priest shook his head.

'They did more?'

Just what is wrong with me? She walks out to meet someone she knows, does something to set this fool weeping, and I'm all over jealous?

'N-no. I hid in the shadows and listened to them for a while as they quarrelled. I...she struck him and they fought. Then they fell.'

'Fell? Where?' Robal did not even realise he had strode to the front door.

'Up the street. Against the rail. Up she went, and took him over. Her...her face looked frightened. She tried to clutch the rail but she couldn't reach.'

Robal lunged towards the shaking priest and grabbed him by the arm. 'Show me.'

A few moments later the five of them stood by the railing. Dawn had painted the distance with the bright colours of the desert, but the lower city remained in shadow. Robal could barely make himself grasp the rail and ease himself over so he could see below.

Fifty paces, his mind recorded. The roofs of houses below, or the cobbles of a street. No trees or bushes.

'She might still be alive, mightn't she?' The priest sounded like a child. Was a child.

'No.'

'We need to look,' Kilfor said. 'Ena, please go and fetch Phemanderac. Tell him to meet us in the lower city on the street below this railing. We need to know what to do.'

The girl, her own small face pale with fright, ran quickly up the road, then slipped down a side street.

'Someone tell me this is not real,' Robal muttered to himself as he strode down the street, the others strung out behind him. The last ten minutes had hollowed him out.

She might be alive. The priest's words repeated in his head in time to his slapping feet. She might be alive. She might be alive.

Oh Most High, so much blood. His, hers, spurting, flowing, trickling, mixing together, covering their broken bodies like a shroud, like a curse, a curse.

Robal fell to his knees. So much blood! What he had taken for a shadow when looking from the railing was in fact a large pool of bright red wetness. She had lain here, he had lain there. The blood had coursed from both of them, her immortal lifeblood mixing with his mortal ichor. Someone had dragged their bodies away; the blood ran out about there, twenty paces or so from where he knelt.

'No, Conal,' Robal said, sure of the thoughts in the priest's head, but knowing that in the words he was about to speak he admitted his own guilt. 'Leave the blood alone. I will not allow you even a taste.'

Kilfor and his father must have wondered what he meant, but asked no questions. He probably would have told them had they wanted to know. What need for secrecy now? What need for a guard?

While Robal continued to stare ineffectually at the drying blood, Phemanderac and the girl arrived. A few local people had also gathered. No one asked him any questions, which suited him fine, as he had no answers.

Stella and Kannwar watched the gathering from a nearby rooftop. Neither could say a word: their wounds were too many, too fresh, too serious, to allow speech. It had taken all they had to climb the wall furthest from the road. Both knew it would take a long time to recover.

Someone will work it out, she sent.

I have removed as many clues as I can, he replied.

I don't want to leave them!

We have no alternative. One of them sought our deaths. I doubt he was in control of his body when he did so. Certainly he's been controlled by another at least once before.

She conceded him the point. Most High, this hurts.

Worse every time, he said.

I'm not prepared to run off and leave these good people behind, she said. I don't see why they can't be given an explanation.

Run off? Not for some time, Stella. And no, no explanation.

She summoned her strength. You chafed under the Most High when he withheld the full truth. According to you, this was the root of the rebellion in the Vale of Youth. If you choose to behave in the same fas.h.i.+on, your story loses all credibility.

Silence for a time. She tried to turn her head, but could do no more than catch a glimpse of his ruined face. The longer the silence lasted, the more hopeful she became.

You trust them? he asked eventually.

With the exception of the priest, for obvious reasons, yes. Phemanderac and Robal with my life. Kilfor and Sauxa because Robal vouches for them.

Mm.

Silence again. Stella watched her friends weep as they gathered together to try to make sense of the scene before them. Conal was at the centre of the gathering and Phemanderac was clearly questioning him hard.

He didn't tell them what he did, she said.

No?