Damn it.
Why did this kind of thing have to happen on my watch?
"Coming, Captain?"
I nodded wearily and followed Rieter out the door. Rune knew, he wouldn't let it rest if he thought that there was a chance I might let it go until morning, when the Sun Guards could handle it. He was too eager, was Rieter, to make sure that he got all the experience he could. He was one of those young men who think the Rune is going to come to Arcadia someday, and sweep all before it as it reclaims the world for humans.
Even if the Rune did come to Arcadia, why would it choose Grimhaven?
Not that that was a question that Rieter considered. Or any of the others, for that matter.
I walked carefully out of the Star Guard barracks, wincing as one of the old wounds I had received in the course of my sometimes ridiculous duty pulled at me. Most of the men I passed bowed to me, but I could feel the stares and the snickers behind my back. I was out of fashion- not really too old to serve, not yet, but with ideas that weren't comfortable, and habits that didn't change to serve the needs of the moment. That made some of them consider me dispensable. And it encouraged some more of them to think that perhaps I would be replaced soon, and that- just perhaps- one of them would rise to the lucky spot.
"Coming, Captain?"
I looked up again. I didn't think that Rieter was one of those who wanted to replace me, but who could tell? I loosened my sword in the sheath as I passed him. Let him think it was a cautionary gesture.
I didn't have to say who I intended it against.
**********************
"Captain Feren."
I nodded coolly to Captain Heret, my counterpart among the Sun Guard, as I stooped over the place on the street where the murder had supposedly taken place. I would have been pleased to leave this crime to Heret, if it had taken place just a bit later at night, or if I had managed to dither until morning came. But now that he was here early, I had to claim my place, or seem as if I were slacking in my duty.
"Did anyone see the murder?" I asked, holding a hand over the blood in the street, and wincing. It was wet, and very hot, for some reason, making me doubt for a moment that it was blood. When they finally managed to light the torches in the face of the damn wind that was blowing tonight, we would be able to see better.
"Not see, Captain. Heard." Heret leaned back on his heels, staring with hard eyes at the spot on the street where the blood, but no body, lay. He was over twenty years my junior, and still had all the sun-gold hair that marked his family, untouched by gray. He also showed no trace of tiredness, no trace of anything but devotion to duty, and that I envied him more than his hair, or the easy way he squatted. "About half an hour gone. One of the women on the street heard a scream. Very loud, she said, as if someone had suddenly been caused a great deal of pain. She was so frightened she hid instead of looking out the window." He exhaled in some annoyance. "A pity, that. We might have seen who did it, or at least where the Rune they took the body, if she had looked out the window."
I was glad to feel Rieter stiffen beside me. At least, ambitions or not, he was sympathetic enough to take anger with the indifferent tone Heret was using towards the witness.
"Where is she? I would like to question her."
Heret looked up at me, his face flaring briefly into light as one of the torches caught, and then promptly went out in the next gust of wind. "My people already questioned her." His tone was weighty, hard, and utterly dismissive.
I let out a quiet breath. This confrontation between Heret and me had been coming for a while, but I hadn't expected it here.
"The Star Guard as well as the Sun Guard should hear what she has to say."
Heret started, as if he hadn't expected the way I phrased it. Then his lips curved up in a smile. "Should they?"
"Yes." I locked eyes with him. His gaze was piercing, bright and gray- at least it would have been in normal light- and I found it hard to meet. He cared about this so much more than I did. "The crime occurred in the startime," I continued, using the ancient name for night. "That makes it mine."
Heret's smile faltered for the first time. He held my eyes for a long moment, then jerked his head to the side. "She's over there."
I bowed, never taking my eyes from his face, and then turned and walked over to the woman, who was huddling in the cloak of one of the Sun Guard officers against the side of the nearest house, as though trying to hide from the wind. She was probably colder against the stone than she would have been in the middle of the street, but I didn't try to dissuade her. Comfort to the witness is the important thing in these situations.
"My lady?"
She started and looked up at me; she hadn't been expecting the title. For that matter, I wouldn't have used it if I met her in ordinary social circles, but politeness is another little trick that I use in situations like this.
"Yes, Captain?" she said after a moment, her voice shaking like the wind.
I found myself pulling off my own cloak, blue and covered with the silver stars that mark our Guard, and draping it around her shoulders. She smiled her thanks, dropping her eyes to the ground, and seemed to stand firmer.
"I understand that you heard a scream?"
She nodded, eyes still downcast, but voice warmer. "Yes. And hid. There's really nothing more to it."
"What did the scream sound like?"
That made her look up at me in quick wonder. "A scream," she said. "Of course."
I ignored the anxious and impatient shiftings from the Guards on either side of me. "How did it sound?" I pressed. "Beyond loud," I added, before she could give me what she had already given Heret. "Was there a tone to it? Words in it?"
She blinked, and appeared to concentrate. "There may have been words," she said. "I couldn't tell. If there were words, they were in no language that I ever heard."
I blinked in turn, feeling my heart begin to pound. Something was out of the ordinary about this, beyond the absolute absence of a body. I opened my mouth to ask her another question, but was interrupted by Heret's loud and startled curse from behind me.
"What the hell?"
I turned around.
They had finally managed to get a torch lit, and Heret was holding it towards the street. He glanced up at me, his face a mask of shock, and his youth showing through in a way that didn't benefit him for the first time in years.
"What the hell?" he asked again, but less vehemently than before. His tone this time was bewildered, helpless, and took away all the pleasure I felt at seeing him put at odds and ends. "What the hell is this?" he repeated, and moved the torch so that I could see as I strode rapidly back towards him.
I stopped halfway there.
The puddle on the street shifted and glittered, looking like nothing so much as molten silver. One of the officers stupidly stuck a finger in it, then started back and cried out. I could smell burning flesh from here.
That last told me all I had needed to know, if the mere color of the liquid didn't.
I shivered. My wounds seemed to ache more than normal, and I felt memories crowding in on me, wanting to flash before my eyes. With an effort, I put them aside. Dimly, on the other side of the wall I was building, I heard someone say, "That isn't blood."
I recovered myself, and said, "Yes, it is."
Fortunately (or unfortunately, perhaps) Heret had also recovered his composure. He glanced at me. "Do you really think that anyone has silver blood?" he asked in scorn. He looked at his officer with the burned finger, and added, "Much less hot enough to scald the flesh half an hour after it's spilled?"
"No one human."
I could have drawn it out, I suppose; and perhaps I should have, to give them a little more time to prepare. But I needed their help, and needed to get them past the initial shock. Heret's face went white as it was, and he swayed as though he would fall over, putting out a hand at the last moment. His fingers landed a few inches from the blood, and he snatched them back.
"Corama?" he whispered, the name of one of the less dangerous breeds of non-humans we sometimes got moving through Grimhaven.
Unfortunately, I couldn't give him that good news.
"Elwen."
Heret fainted.
************************
Of course we found him. He had been wounded himself in the fight, and there was no other suspect. Only an Elwen could have killed an Elwen. No human I ever knew managed it, unless they piled on him all at once, or took him by surprise. Elwens wield magic that can tear off faces, burn bodies from the inside out, give their enemies plague. Some of them eat souls, or drink blood, for the Rune's sake! It had to have been an Elwen who had surprised one so completely and so quickly that he had time only for a scream.
That explained the absence of the body as well, of course. Elwen bodies burn a few minutes after death. That was another thing I remembered from the battlefields. It was an eerie thing, a horrible thing, to stand there among the bodies of the dead and dying, and to have it look as if no one and nothing had touched them, as if they had fallen dead of their own accord, or stabbed themselves. The Elwen bodies would have burned when they perished, wreathed in silver flames that cast no smoke.
A quick search of the streets turned up nothing, but I had fought Elwens before, and remembered something about them. We found him on a roof, where he had climbed so lightly that the family living in the house heard nothing.
I led the climb up to the roof, partially because I had fought Elwens before, and partially because some of my officers, even Rieter, were almost pissing their pants at the thought of actually facing an Elwen. They talk about the Rune and the destiny of our people and how the humans are going to take back Arcadia someday, but give them a real, live silverblood and they're crying like babes.
I climbed the roof, and found him lying there, quite calm, staring at me.
His skin was mostly brown, except where a long rent across his ribs had bled silver. The cloth from his tunic had stuck to the wound, forming a crude bandage. He panted quietly, but didn't seem to be in much pain. In fact, it didn't look as if his face showed much of anything at all, quite contrary to the usual flashfire temper of his race. It was set like stone- beautiful, of course, as all the bastards' are- and bore wide, diamond-shaped silver eyes. The hair that hung in curls to his shoulders was yet another of the unnatural colors that are so common to Elwens, the rich, deep green of jade. He was tall, probably six feet and a half- or he would have been, standing up- and his voice when he spoke was sweet.
Of course. The voice that the witness had heard crying out had been sweeter than normal, or speaking words of the language that the silverbloods speak among themselves.
"I will surrender, if that is what you want me to do. If you try to kill me offhand, I will kill you." He shrugged, moving his hair just a little. I thought he jostled his wound as well, but he didn't take a sharp breath or give any sign to show that. "I assume that you are Captain of the Star Guard?"
Just about to give my title, I swallowed my tongue. "How did you know that?" I asked at last.
"It's night," said the Elwen, arching his brows, as green as his hair, a little, as if to indicate I should know that. "We're in an eastern human city. Grimhaven is the name, I believe?" I didn't answer, just staring narrowly at him, and he went on without pausing for more than a moment. "The Guards are divided into Star and Sun, one for the night and one for the day."
"How did you know that?" I repeated.
He smiled a little. "My name is Dorren," he said, ignoring my question in turn. Then he paused, as if feeling my anger- they can do that, too- and said, "I learned more than a little about humans during the war."
"Which one?"
Dorren nodded as if in approval of my sense of history, and said, "The War of Acceptance."
Which meant that he had been alive more than fifty generations of my people ago, when humans had been new-come into Arcadia.
I shook my head in a daze. "You are to come with me."
"Of course." Dorren shifted, and managed to get his feet beneath him.
"Who did you kill?"
Dorren paused, and a ripple of emotion traveled across his face for the first time. "Another Elwen," he said.
"I already knew that. I want to know who he was."
"No, you don't."
That self-assured reply grated on my nerves, and I shoved him down the ladder a little harder than necessary. Of course, he dropped to the ground as gracefully as a great cat, and walked like one to the prison in the custody of our officers.
Damn it.
****************
And now I've got an Elwen in a prison cell and no idea what to do with him.
He didn't murder a Grimhaven citizen. He's as calm as though the murder was justified. But since he won't tell us anything about the victim or what his crimes were, it's a little hard to be certain of that.
On the other hand, he committed murder.
Damn it.
The whole future of the Star Guards could hang on this. Some of the city's going to want him put to death at once. Some of them are going to be scared to touch him. All of them are going to prefer to leave it up to someone else.
That leaves me.
I'll try talking to him one more time. See where that gets me.
*********************
It's over.
I went to the cell and stared at him until he noticed me. He was looking up at the ceiling with a faraway expression in his eyes. I followed his gaze, and realized there was a small window up there, barred of course, through which the fading stars and the rising sun were visible.
"Captain Feren?"
I jolted at the sound of my name, and looked back at Dorren. I hadn't told it to him. He must have picked it up hearing my officers talk.
"I want to tell you something. A story. Two stories, actually. I think it's fair." Dorren leaned back, as comfortable on the small cot in the cell as though in a broad bed. I had the impression that he was used to worse- or maybe it was that impossible Elwen grace, that would make them look at ease on a bed of stones. "You can judge for yourself."
I nodded slowly, my eyes fastened to his every movement- not that it would actually do me much good to draw my sword. I knew Dorren was only in the cell because he wanted to be. If he wanted to break free, he was perfectly capable of doing so.
"I served the Lady Eleriad during the War of Acceptance." Dorren's voice was soft and gentle, and he spoke a name I had heard only in legends as a scourge of our people with respect and affection. "She was the greatest war-leader there was. It came to the point where the sight of her Running Stag banner alone was enough to make the armies flee."
I hid my revulsion and nodded. It's another perversion of Elwens, that they let their women fight and even lead in armies, but it was one I had come to terms with a long time ago.
"There was one village." Dorren shook his head slightly, eyes wide, and I thought that he was seeing something other than the wall of the cell I had him in. "Agiri."
I shivered.
Dorren's eyes swung to me in instants at the movement. "You have heard of it?" he asked.
"An old shadow," I whispered, and forced a smile. "Something horrible happened there, but of course the stories are vague on it. Stories always are."
"I was the horror."
I stared at him. Dorren calmly lifted his hands and spread them, this time keeping his eyes fastened on my face as he spoke.
"Agiri betrayed the Lady. They took prisoners, Elwen children, and promised they would release them if Eleriad withdrew from their land. She did so. They butchered the children. She sent me in, and ordered me to do as I would. I was her right hand, the one that performed those things that had to be done, but that couldn't reflect on her. I got bloodied to the elbow so that her real hands didn't have to." Calm, so calm as he said that. I think I'm going to remember that tone for the rest of my life.
"I found the pregnant women and children of Agiri. I brought enough warriors to herd them out. I am a healer, but I can twist my healing gift, and I twisted it then. I slew the children with a pain flaring in their gut, and caused the women to miscarry their children."
I trembled, fighting the urge to draw my sword and hack him apart, fighting the urge to double over and vomit all over the floor.
Dorren continued speaking without giving me time to react. "This man, the one I killed- Quirrin- was- well, a person of some importance in Rowan, the city I come from. He held his position for a long time, and he was very good at it. His loyalty was unquestioned. He did what had to be done, the kinds of things that I did in the War of Acceptance, so that the hands of the rulers wouldn't be bloodied.
"He made our present ruler."
There was a pause. Dorren was staring at the wall again. "I don't understand," I whispered at last.
"He took a young man who never had any ambition, really, to be anything more than a very minor warrior," said Dorren, and for a moment shadows stirred in his gaze as though he was going to scream out. He shook his head very slightly, though, and continued. "He took him because he thought there was something in this young man that could let him become a Councilmaster to replace Eleriad, who died of a traitor's arrow in the War. I think he was right. This young man is very strong, now, is wise and just and proud and loyal to Rowan. And he does his own dirty work, when he thinks it has to be done.
"But that doesn't excuse what Quirrin did.
"He held this young man prisoner- told him his entire family would be tortured to death if he did not comply with Quirrin's wishes. When the young man fell in love, the same thing happened with his wife. And then his children. And then everyone else the young man ever loved, everyone he ever touched. Quirrin slew some of them himself, making his hold, as he thought, stronger on the new Councilmaster.
"At last the Councilmaster turned on Quirrin. Then the bastard faked his death and left Rowan." Dorren's voice was calm, even on the epithet. "The Councilmaster thinks he is dead. I knew he wasn't. I left, to make sure that I would find him, and that he would die to pay for his crimes."
Dorren turned his head and looked at me. "I have fulfilled the debt," he said simply. "The debt I owe to my Councilmaster, to my city, and to all those who suffered because of Quirrin. I never expected to live past the battle, but Quirrin had become confident and careless. He didn't think that I could find him. I did."
Dorren spread his hands. "That is all."
I stood there, throat tight and eyes burning. "Why did you tell me that?" I asked at last. "You could have told me the last part, and then left off the first, and I would have believed you wise and just."
Dorren's lips quirked. "But I wouldn't really have been wise and just, to leave off the first part," he said serenely. "Maybe it is just, that I find my doom in a human city, after what I did at Agiri all those years ago." He leaned back, folding his arms behind his head and closing his eyes. "I know that you will make the right decision," he ended.
***************
And here I sit.
It's over, and I still don't know if I made the right decision. Dorren was a butcher, a monster, and a murderer on top of that. He had killed women and children, and unborn children. He admitted that freely, and I have no reason to doubt him.
But he killed someone who ruined an entire life with quiet and subtle torture, who probably did other things as bad as- or worse than- Dorren did. Dorren just wouldn't tell me what those things were, because that wouldn't have been "fair."
Why do these things happen to me?
One thing only I know for sure, and that is this: it's ended. I can't stand the strain any more. The politics, the younger men, the staring eyes and the fear I see in everyone around me. Maybe Dorren changed my life, and it's his fault, I don't know. I just know that I don't want to wear the badge of the Star Guard any more.
I'm tired.
*********************
Note: This was found scribbled on the last pages of Captain Feren's resignation. Of course, it does seem to have some basis in truth, given that Captain Heret did have a fainting spell in the Street of Stars on the night in question.
But when the officers of the Star Guard dared to open the door to their Captain's office at last, they found only the pages of this note. Their Captain and the prisoner, if he had ever existed, were gone, and there was no body in the cell.
Given that, the story given in these pages cannot be authenticated, and must be regarded as the work of a mind driven mad by its responsibilities.
The Council of Grimhaven.
