The Nightborn by Isabel Cooper (good english books to read .TXT) 📕

a story from the stonekin, and it concerns one of the gods, though I couldn’t provide more details. How is your knee recovering?”

“Quickly, thank the gods,” said Branwyn, and flexed it to show him. “Walking around the room only hurt a little today. The exercises have been helping. Have a look.”

Altien sat, peered, and then pressed in several places. Only three hurt, and only one drew a yelp from Branwyn. “Yes,” he said, finally, “excellent improvement. I’d give your physiology equal credit, though, and perhaps more.”

“The Adeptas will be flattered if I survive long enough to tell them. How would you say I’d fare in a fight?”

“I expect you’ve done your own assessment.”

“Yes, but two points are more stable than one.”

“Poorly, then, if you were up against a skilled opponent, or more than one. The knee wouldn’t collapse immediately, but it would hinder you badly. I suspect a day or two more before you’re at your full strength and speed. Do you anticipate combat?”

“Well, there’s at least one force in this city that wants me dead. I’d like to think secrecy and Zelen’s wards will help, especially given the ones you put up yesterday, but I liked to think I’d have quick and uneventful success here.” When Altien left the bed for his customary chair, Branwyn picked up the scroll of formerly hidden papers again. “I’ve been considering these too,” she said. “Did Zelen ever mention his family conducting magical experiments?”

“He rarely speaks of them at all,” said Altien, “except to tell me when he has to depart the city and pay a visit to the country estates. His elder brother occasionally arrives to deliver news, or orders. It’s not a warm family, even by the human standards with which I’m familiar.”

“It doesn’t sound that way even by the human standards I’ve observed. Lady Rognozi said there was a tragedy when Zelen was three or so, a mother and child both perishing. That would have been around the time of these notes.”

Altien’s tentacles rose, then fell. “We can guess, though we shouldn’t assume, that the procedure went badly.”

“True. Especially since there’s no god-powered youth running about. This story you heard, do you happen to remember whether it had the soul in question as a force for good?”

“No,” said Altien regretfully. “I never even heard the entire story, only read a mention or two of it.” He paused. In the silence, Branwyn heard footsteps approaching the door. It was probably Zelen returning, but she tensed anyhow, and reached under her pillow for the knife Altiensarn had brought her. “I believe it was about the primordial battle, the one between Talleita and—”

“Gizath,” said Zelen, opening the door.

In dress and grooming he was as impeccable as ever, but his face was gray, and his eyes were shadowed. He carried a cloth-wrapped bundle that immediately filled Branwyn with hope, though it was matched by equal parts worry. Zelen moved like a man with a knife in one kidney.

“My family worships him,” he said numbly. “Some of it. Possibly all. I’m bloody certain of Mother and Gedomir. They were the ones who killed the Rognozis. Here,” he said, and pulled the wrappings off the object in his hands, revealing Yathana’s gilded-for-Heliodar hilt and fire opal. Zelen thrust her toward Branwyn, hilt-first. “I brought her back for you. It was the least I could do, after… Given what we are.”

* * *

The sword took the strength in Zelen’s legs with her. He fell as much as sat on the bed, the world blurry and colorless.

He knew that the questions would come soon. He owed answers—owed the story, in fact. He was thinking of how to begin when Branwyn put an arm around him and he looked up, startled.

“Your sword—”

“Yathana and I can speak just as well without touching,” she said, and her hand was warm on his bicep. “Thank you for returning her. She thanks you too.”

Altiensarn was kneeling in front of him, peering from face to body and back. “You don’t appear physically wounded,” he said. “Are there injuries I don’t see? If not, I’m going to get you a cup of tea. Nourishment won’t solve our problems, but it will help a great deal.”

“I—” Zelen didn’t seem able to finish a sentence. They trailed off, boats loosed from their moorings. He made an effort. “No. No, I’m not injured. I don’t—”

“Think that you can eat,” Altien finished for him. “I’m perfectly aware, and we’ve both seen these circumstances before. I’m going to go extract the necessary provisions from your servants.”

Zelen watched him leave, more because it was too much effort to move his eyes than out of any real attention. There were next steps. There were steps that came next. Branwyn was beside him. He turned his head, which felt as though it took a year, and observed that she was beautiful.

It hurt.

“Gedomir asked me to get to know you,” he said, laying the words down between them, “then to tell him what I found out. I’d been reporting more or less faithfully up until the ball.”

Branwyn didn’t pull away. She didn’t move either. Zelen waited, deserving what came next.

“Did he know I was a Sentinel?”

“No. Neither did I.”

“I didn’t think so,” she said, in the same calm voice he’d heard when they’d been preparing to fight the demons: evaluation, instruction. “You seemed surprised. You might have been a very good actor, of course.”

“I might still be.”

“There’s no advantage in it for you, none that I can work out. I don’t suppose you stopped reporting for any reason other than circumstance.”

“No,” said Zelen. He didn’t know that he would have, and it wouldn’t have mattered.

“Did he tell you why he wanted the information?”

“Only that you were a foreign agent.”

“Well,” said Branwyn, after a minute that stretched out longer than Zelen’s entire carriage ride back, and he’d thought that had lasted an eternity, “that doesn’t seem unreasonable. If I were a noble family, even if I didn’t worship the Traitor God, I’d want to learn