by Matthew Ward
He spoke the latter with a smile, almost smoothing away the insult.
“We’re to find Lord Akadra,” said Altiris. “Bring him to negotiations.”
Constans pursed his lips. “Does Father know?”
Altiris hesitated. A lie would have been easy enough, except the slender trust that had grown between them in recent days was about the only leverage he possessed. “Only if it works.”
“Sounds fun,” said Constans. “I think I’ll help.”
Kurkas growled. “This isn’t a game, lad.”
“I know that.”
To Altiris’ surprise, the reply held no levity. Constans was changing. And an extra body wouldn’t hurt. “Lose the tabard.”
Constans grinned and offered a salute. “Yes, lieutenant.”
Kurkas cleared his throat. “A word, sah?”
Taken aback by Kurkas’ deference, Altiris allowed himself to be led deeper into the alley.
“You sure about this?” murmured Kurkas.
Not a challenge, but carefully voiced concern. Altiris had assumed Kurkas held command of their foray. It seemed Kurkas saw it differently.
Pride and concern quarrelled for prominence. Altiris swallowed both. “There’s no guarantee he’d let us send him away. Better to have him where we can see him.”
“I could thump him?” Kurkas murmured. “He’d stay put then. Wouldn’t be a bother. Been a long time coming.”
“It’ll be all right, Vladama.” Altiris laid his hand on the other’s shoulder. “Trust me.”
“Right you are, sah.”
There it was again: respect offered up only to a few. Now all he had to do was live up to it.
Altiris turned back to Constans. Without the tabard to disguise his rake-thin figure and grubby shirt, the boy looked a dyspeptic match for the poet he so often claimed to be. “No killing.”
Accepting the crisp nod at face value, Altiris straightened his sword belt, and strode towards the barricade, hands raised.
A stone cracked off the cobbles. A heavyset, red-haired woman shouted from the summit. “What d’you want?”
Altiris inched his hands higher. “To help!” He stifled a wince. It was true, wasn’t it? Help took many forms. “Name’s Devn. I was at Seacaller’s for the dying of the year. Radzar will vouch for me.”
The first sweat prickled Altiris’ shoulder blades. Were there bows behind the barricade? He’d be an easy target if so. Kurkas and Constans slowing to a halt on either side did little to set his mind at risk. Their deaths would be on him. No wonder Kurkas had ceded authority.
“Radzar’s gone to Harrowmoon Gate,” shouted the woman. “You’re out of luck.”
Harrowmoon Gate. Right in the thick of things. No getting in that way.
“Now listen,” said Altiris. “We—”
“I recognise him.” An older man reached the barricade’s crest. “Saw him talking to the Merrow’s woman a few nights back. Let them through.”
“You heard!” Altiris ignored a sidelong look from Kurkas and glanced back towards the constabulary cordon. “Come on! Before that dozy lot get interested.”
The woman scowled. “Let ’em through!”
Altiris jogged to the barricade and began to climb. A hand found his, the southwealder’s rose tattoo faded and scarred, and hauled him onto the uneven rampart of crate and roofbeam.
“Glad to have you,” said the older man, a hint of Selanni burr roughing the edges of the words. “We can use you, if you’re up for a fight.”
“Wouldn’t ’ave come all this way, else.” Constans clambered to join them, aristocratic speech abandoned for the rougher manner he’d mantled at Seacaller’s Church. For all his claim of not treating it like a game, he was enjoying the pretence. He reached down to aid Kurkas’ ascent. “Wouldna miss this for the world.”
A second, taller barricade blocked the street where warehouses yielded to dockside, fronted by ladders and its outer face bristling with wooden stakes, rusty blades and glass shards. Altiris suppressed a shudder. Once the ladders were removed, and climbing done by hand…? At least fifty protesters were in sight upon the summit. Upraised voices spoke to many more mustered behind.
“That’s fit to ruin someone’s day,” said Kurkas.
“If it comes to it.” For all reserve in the protester’s voice, pride shone through. “We’ll not let the Merrow down.”
“You mean Lord Akadra?” said Constans.
“Doesn’t matter what he calls himself, long as he’s speaking for us.” The fellow jerked his thumb towards a quintet of dockers. “We’ve got this sewn up here. If you’re serious about helping Radzar, Torin’s heading to Harrowmoon Gate. Tag along with him.”
Altiris nodded. It seemed unlikely Hadon Akadra would be anywhere near the fighting at Harrowmoon Gate, but hanging around Tribute Street wasn’t achieving anything.
“We’ll do that, thanks.”
Blood oozed up over Josiri’s fingers as he tied the makeshift bandage tight. The Drazina bucked and moaned on the cobbles, limbs thrashing. The wheeze and whistle of fading breath spoke ill of the lung.
“Easy, son.” Josiri smoothed a hand across the fellow’s brow. The sweat-sheened skin was cold to the touch. “Stretcher! I need a stretcher!”
He tore his eyes from the ailing Drazina and gazed into disaster.
The first of the Harrowmoon Street barricades had fallen easily enough, but there’d been another behind. Sarisov’s Drazina, expecting open streets and a horseman’s killing field, had ground to a halt against wooden stakes. Easy prey for the barrage of arrows, quarrels, rocks and refuse from the warehouse windows. The approach, already thick with bodies from the first assault, had filled with dead and dying Drazina.
Still the buccinas sounded, and black uniforms hurled themselves at the barricade with the growl of men and women lost to battle.
In the street behind, constables and hearthguards advanced beneath the interlocked shields of Lancras and Fellnore, dragging wounded to the hope of safety and the illusion of help. One of the impromptu drakonbacks shuddered, broken glass and flaming rags scattering wide beneath the sharp crackle of alchemist’s powder. A knight’s surcoat blazed as the fire caught hold.
“We’ll take him, lord.”
Kelver stumbled to a halt at Josiri’s side, a constable close behind with a stretcher fashioned from a Drazina’s cloak. What few physicians Sarisov had brought to Harrowmoon Street were stretched thin. Had runners not summoned serenes from nearby convents and hospices, they’d have been overwhelmed long before. Anastacia’s idea.
Josiri wiped a clammy hand across his face, and grimaced at the realisation he’d smeared himself with blood. “Get him to the Saint Tremere Convent.”
Kelver glanced up from manoeuvring the Drazina onto the stretcher. He looked every bit as exhausted as Josiri felt. “The Revered Sister says they’ve no more room.”
“Take him anyway. Tell her I appreciate her efforts.”
Kelver nodded, and the stretcher party withdrew. One down. Hundreds to go.
Buccinas sounded. Wounded and saviours scrambled clear as another column of Drazina charged the barricade. The rattle of crossbows vied with the hum of arrows. Fresh screams rang out.
“Sir! Lord Trelan!” A sergeant of constabulary hurried north from the splintered ruins of the first barricade.
Josiri knew the face, but his name? It vanished into the seething darkness that had claimed so many recent events. He gritted his teeth against the frustration. His failing memory was the least of current concerns. “What is it?”
“Trouble. The physicians’ shelter.”
Josiri urged weary bones to motion.
A final unsteady step, and Altiris left the pontoon bridge for the pier’s solidity. For all that the ramshackle bridge offered a shortcut across the crowded harbour, its sections bucked alarmingly with every lurch of the choppy, white-flecked tide. He’d kept meaning to take swimmer’s lessons, but somehow it hadn’t happened.
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p; Constans grinning at him with every almost-misplaced stride hadn’t helped.
At least the pier offered the illusion of solid ground, even with its tied-up merchantmen bobbing sedately with the outgoing tide.
“Now where?” he asked.
Torin pointed dead ahead, past the pier’s tarped crates and the three-storey redbrick warehouse dominating the immediate harbourside, to the towering harbour gate. “Where d’you think?”
Half the dockside was on the move, bonfires and blankets abandoned as they swarmed to the gate. And from the platform beside the warehouse’s loading gantry, an old, grey man shook an angry fist towards the streets, his dry voice coming and going with the rise and fall of the wind.
“Hold the line!” he roared. “Let them taste your mettle! Your determination! Let them feel the fury of the streets! Tressia can never…”
The wind bore the words away, but Altiris had heard enough – the man’s identity confirmed first by Kurkas’ slow nod, and second by the young woman at the demagogue’s side. Even distant in the grey dusk, there was no mistaking Kasvin for anyone else.
Constans drifted towards the pier’s edge, falling – by seeming chance – into perfect step behind one of the dockers. Kurkas peeled off left, his pace lengthening to cover the ground between him and two others.
“Well then. I guess that’s it,” said Altiris, and buried his fist in Torin’s belly.
Torin doubled over and staggered against a crate, but his left forearm somehow blocked the punch that should have driven him to the pier. His other filled the dusk with hot, red stars and a copper tang.
Reeling, Altiris lowered his shoulder and drove Torin into the crate. Once. Twice. Three times. After the third, the docker dropped gasping to his knees. A kick to the temple drove his wits away.
As the stars faded and his vision cleared, Altiris found Kurkas and Constans staring at him, each having struck two opponents cold in the time it had taken him to almost lose to one.
Or maybe not. Constans’ right hand was empty, but his left held a bloody dagger.
“I said… no killing,” Altiris gasped.
The boy shrugged. “He’ll live, if he gets help.”
Offering a grimace a fit match to Altiris’ mood, Kurkas dragged an unconscious docker into concealment among the crates.
“Poor technique,” he said. “Next time, go for the chin, or the back of the jaw.”
Altiris rubbed at his cheek. “I’ll bear that in mind.” He peered up at a gantry platform now emptied of life. “Let’s find Lord Akadra.”
In reality, the physicians’ station was little more than a timber yard’s forecourt, forced open by constabulary swords. The stench of blood and waste and fear was almost overwhelming. The sackcloth-draped bundles against the east wall evidence of the battle fought and lost within the walls.
Josiri found the promised trouble in the yard’s corner. A broken-nosed Drazina captain, helmet gone and his arm bloodied and bound, had a dozen blades ringed about a group of huddled protesters, all worse for wear than their captors. Three constables stood between, swords out towards the Drazina.
“What’s all this, captain?”
“Traitors, sir. The Grandmaster wants them hanged. Take the fight right out of their mates.”
Where was Sarisov, anyway? Josiri hadn’t seen him since the first assault.
“Take ’em out,” the captain shouted. “We’ll string ’em from the guildhall roof. They’ll be seen clear across the docks.”
“Nobody move!” Josiri felt a surge of freedom as something snapped deep inside. His temper, never quiescent, lent the words fire. “They’re prisoners. Constabulary prisoners. They get a trial.”
Drazina expressions crowded with doubt. Not so the captain’s. “These are the grandmaster’s orders… sir. No exceptions.”
He stalked closer until they were eye to eye – or more correctly, eye to chin. For the first time, Josiri realised just how imposing the other was. Not as tall as Viktor, but broader, and with the belligerence of a man well used to winning what fights he couldn’t annul through intimidation.
“Then Grandmaster Sarisov can tell me himself!” Josiri snapped. “In the meantime, Lumestra help anyone who offers harm – much less summary execution – to anyone within these walls, because I’ll see their heels dancing alongside. Am I understood?”
He glared about the gathered Drazina. One by one they sheathed their swords and withdrew into the courtyard proper. All save the captain.
“Watch your back, my lord,” he growled. “Streets are dangerous right now, and accidents—”
A dull, meaty thump. The captain’s eyes glazed over, and he slid sideways into a heap.
Behind him, Anastacia cupped a hand towards the courtyard. “Stretcher for the captain!”
A serene hurried over, her dark robes wet with another’s blood and her lined face creased in concern. “What happened?”
“He hit his head on something.”
The serene’s eyes dropped to the carpenter’s mallet hanging loosely from Anastacia’s other hand. Lip twitching, she beckoned for help.
Josiri shot Anastacia a weary look and drew her away. “I had that in hand.”
“I saw. Very stirring.” Her eyes went wide in mock horror. “Please don’t hang me, Lord Trelan. I’ll be good.”
“I doubt that.”
“Charmer.”
He frowned at the flutter beneath her words. The brightness of her eyes. “Have you been drinking?”
“Only medicinally.” She let the mallet fall and gestured to erstwhile captives once more in the custody of constables. “What do we do about them?”
Josiri scowled. Today or in the future, the hangman’s noose would claim them all. That was the law. He turned to the constable who’d first fetched him to the lumber yard. “Sergeant…?”
The other frowned. Confused, maybe even offended. “Kressick, my lord.”
Of course. Like so many figments claimed by clouded memory, it was obvious once reminder was offered. Josiri swallowed his frustration. “Escort them to the crossroads and cut them loose. The same for anyone else who can walk. Those who can’t go to the King’s Gate watch house. Lock them up, but give them whatever help they need. Then find Lieutenant Raldan and relay these orders to him. Understood?”
Kressick nodded. “At once, my lord.”
Josiri turned his attention to the prisoners. “Go home. Stay there until this is done.”
Disbelief turning to grateful nods, erstwhile captives shuffled away, Kressick and his constables in loose escort about them, leaving Josiri alone with Anastacia.
“I meant what I said.” She offered a small, genuine smile. “You were very stirring.”
Mounting annoyance swallowed up the rare compliment. “It’s all so bloody pointless!” he snarled. “A few days of this and we won’t need the Hadari. We’ll tear ourselves apart!”
His third battle in Tressia’s streets. The first time, he’d fought alongside Viktor to thwart Ebigail Kiradin’s coup. In the second, he’d led the city against the Crowmarket. He regretted neither. But this? There was no purpose to any of it.
Anastacia kissed him on the cheek. “Sometimes all we can do is all we can do.”
“Then where’s Viktor while this city slides into chaos? Why isn’t he here?”
Her focus shifted past his shoulder. “Be careful what you wish for.”
Josiri turned. Beyond the serenes and physicians and wailing wounded of the timber yard, a new formation of Drazina drew up beside the gate, Viktor a brooding shadow at their head and Sidara at his side in full Drazina uniform.
For the first time in long hours, Josiri felt a surge of hope. Anastacia following in his wake, he hurried to the street.
“Sidara? Thank goodness you’ve come,” he gasped, breathless. “We’ve wounded that could use your help.”
She pursed her lips, regret flickering across her golden eyes. “I can’t.”
Hope faded, leaving sourne
ss behind. “I don’t understand.”
A piece of him did, even before the ground shook. Before Viktor offered a weary glance and shrug of the shoulder. “That’s not why I brought her.”
The first kraikon rounded the crossroads, golden light sparking from rusted armour. Another followed. A third. They strode past Viktor’s escort and formed up, shoulder to shoulder, across Harrowmoon Street. A flood of simarka loped to join them. If anything was worse than the slaughter at the barricades, it was this. An echo of days past when the people of Eskavord had risen up against northwealder oppressors and the Council’s proctors had cleared streets.
Josiri glanced from Viktor to Sidara. “You can’t ask this of her.”
Sidara’s expression tightened. “I want to do this.”
“Viktor—”
“Don’t treat me like a child!” snapped Sidara. “People need my help.”
“It’s her choice.” Viktor moved to stand between them, the growl in his voice speaking to patience at its last ebb. “But if you wish, I will make it yours. This cannot spread. Sarisov has failed, so I must look to other means. If you forbid Sidara to act, I will honour your decision… then I will be forced to do so in her stead. You know what that will mean.”
Objection rooted in fear for Sidara’s safety – perhaps even for her innocence – shrivelled before a new, horrific prospect. Viktor’s shadow, whose chill grasp blinded or drove men mad. Most folk knew it from rumour if they knew it at all. If it were loosed in the city… against the city? The citizenry would no longer look to their Lord Protector with trust, only fear. The consequences were incalculable.
“It’ll only be a fight if they force it,” said Sidara, her voice level. “You know what kraikons can do. So do they. If a reminder will serve, then it shall, but my sword-siblings are dying. What would you do, Josiri?”
“It’s your decision, brother,” said Viktor.
“You know it isn’t.” Josiri met Anastacia’s gaze, received a small shake of the head, then focused on Sidara. “Do what you must.”