Free Clearwater Dawn by Scott Fitzgerald Gray Page A

stepping across to block his view.
    Where his escorts stopped, Chriani staggered to a halt. Chanist glanced up, blue eyes cold beneath the blonde hair still not entirely gone to white, appraising him.
    “Untie him now,” the prince said.
    “Lord, I would urge extreme caution…” Konaugo began.
    “You think him the assassin, Konaugo? Are you mad, or do you simply wish to pretend so quickly that this is over?”
    From a mostly safe distance, Chriani had heard the prince giving orders for most of his life, but there was still a power in that voice that could seemingly take even those used to it by surprise. Konaugo only nodded, a gesture to the two guards alongside Chriani setting them to quickly cut his bonds. He rubbed his wrists, flexed his ankles where he stepped back. Not knowing whether to nod to the prince in thanks or not, he glanced to Konaugo instead, caught the dark look there.
    “My lord prince, he was detained in the act of attacking members of your own watch,” the captain said evenly, speaking to Chanist, eyes never leaving Chriani’s. “He carried a weapon without charge. Barien’s blood was on his hands…”
    “You know as well as I that no sword laid Barien down as you found him.”
    Konaugo said nothing. Looked away as the prince stepped to Chriani, who nodded in earnest now. Not sure which of the conflicting emotions in him would be the first to be revealed where he felt the prince’s gaze reading him like a map.
    But where he tried to keep from meeting Chanist’s gaze, Chriani saw the tunic. Spread to a bench behind the table, the pale blue-grey worn by the prince and all his guard was stained black with blood, torn through by a single jagged slash. On the prince’s cloak where it lay crumpled to one side, the same cut was visible.
    “Tell me what you know.” Chanist’s tone was even, expectant.
    All people had things to hide, Barien had often said. When Chriani had first entered the keep and the warrior’s service, though, the secrets his father had given him were a great deal heavier than anyone as young as him should have been made to carry. So it was good, Barien had told him more than once, that his mother had given him the talent for keeping those secrets safely out of sight. The gifts that parents give.
    The first time he’d met the prince was when he had been formally petitioned as Barien’s adjutant. Chriani remembered carefully fingering the insignia that Chanist himself had presented, not understanding then the degree of honor implied in that. The trust that Chanist placed in Barien was repaid with a respect whose value would never be measured in rank or coin. The investiture of an apprentice was normally something a junior lieutenant would take care of only if he couldn’t pass it off on someone else. But there in front of the prince high, Chriani had obliviously bowed and spoken like Barien told him to, and he remembered being drawn into the warmth of the prince high’s booming laughter that had seemed as wide and as bright as the sun-high sky.
    “Your father died in the Incursions,” Barien had coached him all the night before. “He traveled south from the village before you were old enough to remember. He was a bowyer and a militia sentry, and they say your skill on the range comes straight from his arms and eyes. You can’t just speak it, you need to think it all the way through. Think of nothing else.”
    He remembered feeling the presence of the prince high, younger then but no less imposing. The hair and beard were just then beginning to lighten, but even now it was commonly said that Chanist would never show any sign of age but that.
    Only a fool forgets there are always things worthy of fear. Barien spoke the words with his dying breath, but Chriani had heard them before. The first time was that very first day, sitting alone in the warrior’s chambers.
    “We learn to distrust our fear,” Barien had added then, “so the things worth being frightened of, we