Banebringer

by Carol A Park

He hesitated, and then nodded again.

  “Repeat what I said back to me.”

  He did, and she was satisfied.

  Footsteps. The rasp of swords being drawn.

  “If there becomes a point when the guards seem distracted,” she said, hoping, for once, Vaughn actually had stuck around, “try to get away.”

  She turned him around to face the square. A moment later a dozen guards appeared.

  They halted when they saw her holding the man.

  The guards spread out around the area, encircling her, and then one stepped forward. “Let him go,” he said. “And perhaps we’ll be kind.”

  “Let me go,” she said, “and perhaps I won’t kill him.”

  One of the guards gave a grunt, and then rubbed his head. “Someone threw a rock at me!”

  Half the guards spun to look in the direction that the rock had to have come from.

  The man stomped on her foot, hard, and Ivana didn’t have to feign pain. He wrested himself free from her loose grasp and fled into the darkness. One of the guards called after him, but he didn’t stop, and they let him go, more concerned with her.

  As she had hoped.

  She held up her hands, dagger in the air. “You have what you wanted,” she said. “Now what?”

  “Put the weapon down,” the lead guard said.

  She raised an eyebrow, shrugged, and put it on the ground in front of her, continuing to hold her hands out.

  The captain jerked his head toward two others, and they approached her cautiously, swords out.

  She waited until they were within striking distance.

  And then, in one fluid motion, she dropped to the ground, under their swords, picked back up her dagger, and swept it at their knees.

  They stumbled back in surprise, and she rolled to the side and fled through the hole they had left in their circle, barely escaping the lunges of the nearest guards.

  Shouts rang from behind her, but she ran. Her thigh screamed at her every time that foot beat into the ground, the star leaf simply unable to keep up with this kind of punishment. She kept running anyway, taking advantage of the surge of energy while she had it. She ran until she was certain no one was close enough to see her, and then she started to climb a building.

  She was halfway up when she felt her stitches start to tear. She stopped, clinging to the side of the building as the agony of her wound ripping open caused darkness to obscure her vision momentarily. She waited until the wave of dizziness had passed and finished climbing. She reached the top of the building, ran along the flat roof, jumped over a narrow alleyway to the next one, and then climbed down the other side into a dark alley.

  She stumbled as she landed, her leg giving way beneath her.

  She leaned heavily against the building, and with a trembling hand, shoved another star-leaf into her mouth. It was dangerous, taking so much of it at once, but she couldn’t afford to be stopped by pain right now. Her bandage was warming with fresh blood, but she could do nothing about it until she was relatively safe.

  She waited long enough for the star-leaf to lessen the pain to a manageable level—it didn’t take long, as much as she had recently taken—and then kept running.

  A few minutes later, the thrill of the chase wore off so drastically she almost collapsed onto the ground.

  She knelt there for a moment, gaining her bearings, listening for footsteps. She no longer heard the shouts of following guards, or anything at all, except a tomcat howling nearby and the sound of mice skittering away at her presence.

  She turned her head toward the direction the mice were fleeing. There was an entrance to the sewers here. They were a death trap for someone who didn’t know their way around them, but fortunately, she did, and she knew enough of where she was to know where this access tunnel would likely lead.

  She limped over to the barred archway—large enough for her to crawl through—and examined the grate. Usually, they weren’t permanently attached, since they were designed as access tunnels for the men who maintained them as well. And, sure enough, she found hinges and a keyhole without any trouble.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t have anything on her she could force the lock with. They weren’t all open as the one they had entered the city through; only those frequented by people who needed to move surreptitiously. She searched the alley for a tool that would suffice, but it was dark, and here in the alley the buildings obscured most of the light the moon gave.

  A hand on her shoulder nearly made her jump out of her skin.

  She whirled around, blade out, and the person jumped back. She relaxed. It was Vaughn.

  “You about got yourself gutted,” she snapped. “What are you still doing here?”

  “I need to escape as much as you do,” he said. “I figured I’d follow you to see how you get out, since I haven’t the foggiest idea how we came in.”

  It annoyed her that he was able to follow her, but she supposed being invisible helped.

  Speaking of invisible… “Can’t you just…walk out?”

  He shook his head. “I’m starting to fatigue,” he said. “If I try to keep burning aether so constantly for much longer, I’ll risk making myself sick.”

  “I thought you said you regenerated blood faster?”

  “It regenerates proportionately at about the same rate I use it—like trying to pour sand back through the same hole you poured it from in the first place.”

  She shook her head. There wasn’t time to ponder this right now. She gestured to the locked grate. “You don’t happen to have lockpicks on you, do you?”

  He shrugged and shook his head, but then looked around the alley. He held up a finger, tiptoed to one end, and then picked something up off the ground. He came back and showed it to her. “Will this work?”

  How in the abyss does he do that? He had the best night vision of anyone she had ever met, and she was beginning to suspect it wasn’t entirely natural.

  She examined the bit of metal, bent it in half, and then tried it in the lock. It took a moment, but soon the lock released with a satisfying snick.

  Excellent. She glanced at Vaughn, who was waiting nearby. His frequent anxious glances at the ends of the alley were not comforting.

  “Are they nearby?” she asked.

  He nodded. “They don’t know where exactly you went, but they were able to follow you to the general area.”

  In a timely response, she heard the rattle of armor in the street nearby, and then conversation.

  She opened the grate. It creaked noisily, and she winced.

  “I heard something over there!” a voice said, too near for her liking.

  She crawled into the tunnel, and Vaughn followed behind. Any light they had was soon gone, but she crept forward, feeling her way through the darkness. She knew these access tunnels, and eventually it would end at a ladder which led down into the sewers, like the one they had entered through. The sewers themselves had sporadic light sources, enough to get her to one of the beggars’ tunnels.

  Sure enough, at one shuffle forward, the ground dropped out from beneath her hand.

  She halted, turned herself so that she could swing her legs over the edge, found purchase on the ladder rungs she knew would be there, and started climbing down.

  It was pitch black, so she didn’t even bother looking up to see if Vaughn had managed to follow. A moment later, his boots scraped against the metal rungs of the ladder behind her, so her question was answered.

  When she felt water soak into her boots, she stopped and carefully lowered herself down. The water shouldn’t be up over the maintenance walks at the sides of the sewers, but they had just had a heavy rain. It would be easy to be swept away if the sewers were flooded.

  Fortunately, it only came up to her ankles. She felt for one of the metal handles built into the wall and pulled herself along it until she felt relatively secure on the walk.

  She heard a splash as Vaughn reached the bottom.

  She closed her eyes and list
ened. There was no sound of pursuit through the tunnel, thankfully.

  “Did you close the grate after you?” she asked Vaughn.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Vaughn?”

  “Oh, sorry. Yes. I nodded.”

  She snorted. “In case you haven’t noticed, we can’t see anything, so you’ll have to use more than body language.”

  She felt him shift, heard cloth moving, and then a moment later, torchlight flared.

  She reeled back against the sudden light, eyes watering, and when she could finally see again, she stared open-mouthed at Vaughn. “How did you—where—”

  He was looking at the torch warily, as if expecting it to explode. “I still had the torch I bought in my bag.”

  “But how did you light it? And in the dark?”

  He finally looked away from the flame, seemingly satisfied that whatever he was worried would happen wouldn’t. “First,” he said, “I can see in the dark, as long as there is some light coming from somewhere.”

  That confirmed that guess.

  “Second…” He held up his pouch, which she recognized as the one he kept his aether in. “I have aether from a fireblood.”

  “Let me guess,” she said, “they can manipulate fire?” Like back at their first camp, with the fire pit.

  “Something like that,” he said. “But it’s the most dangerous kind for someone who isn’t a fireblood to use. It’s volatile, and while foci”—he waved the torch a little for emphasis—“do help, if it goes wrong…well, the result can be rather dramatic.”

  So apparently he had been expecting it to explode.

  She shook her head. At this point, she didn’t even want to know. “All right,” she said. “We have a ways to go now before we get back to where we came in.”

  He didn’t question her; he let her lead them deeper into the tunnels.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Beggars’ Refuge

  Vaughn trailed right behind Ivana. He had heard of the dangers of becoming lost in sewers—especially a system as vast and labyrinthine as this one. He wouldn’t have attempted it alone, but he trusted her expertise in this area. After all, she had just been prepared to traverse the tunnels without any light at all; he supposed with light, it would prove as easy for her as turning invisible was for him.

  It wasn’t long before they started to pass other tunnels. The only sounds they heard were their own footsteps as they sloshed through the murky water and the rush of water echoing around them.

  The water was foul. It smelled foul, it looked foul, and in places, it rose dangerously in depth, no doubt due to the recent rain. At one point, they had to wade through it, gripping the handholds on the wall to avoid slipping off the walkways.

  Ivana led them on, stopping at each tunnel to examine metal plates set into the wall—presumably markers of location. Finally, she turned down one, traveled a ways, and then turned down another. It was at this point that he saw, to his surprise, another light source ahead. The tunnel widened, the walkway began to rise in elevation, and her footsteps quickened. A moment later, they emerged into a large, cavern-like room. The water ran through a wide trough cut in the middle, but on either side was dry stone.

  And then, to his even greater astonishment, he saw evidence of habitation. Dirty scraps of blankets tucked against the walls, recent cook-fires…but no people.

  Ivana stopped. “It’s all right,” she said. “He’s a friend.”

  It took a moment, but one by one, people started to re-enter the room from all of the various side tunnels leading out. They emerged slowly at first, but when neither he nor Ivana made any moves, they appeared content to ignore them and went back to whatever business they had—which didn’t appear to be much.

  Vaughn looked at Ivana, eyebrow raised.

  “Several regions, including Weylyn, have outlawed beggars in the cities,” Ivana said. “They have to go somewhere, don’t they?”

  She headed to the farthest corner of the room, where a ragged man sat muttering over an odd assortment of items spread out on a ratty blanket.

  He knew Weylyn’s rules about beggars, of course, though he didn’t spend a lot of time in the cities. He took a few extra steps to catch up with her. “I thought in conjunction with that law, the government set up workhouses.”

  She snorted. “Little better than slave labor.”

  “Don’t they get an allowance?”

  “I rescued one of my girls from a so-called workhouse. Do you want to know what condition she was in when I found her?”

  “Surely better than if she had been living on the streets.” He glanced around. “Or down here.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” Ivana said, and, having reached the other side of the room, knelt in front of the man.

  Vaughn remained standing and shifted nervously. The beggars in the room looked as though they were paying him no mind, but sharp eyes glanced his way every so often. Ivana, they ignored.

  The man smiled. By the looks of it, he had only half his teeth. “Sweetblade,” he said. “I don’t like it when you bring friends.” The man spoke with the refined accent of Venetia, but his skin was the lighter tan of one of the central regions.

  “He’s harmless, Tenoch,” Ivana said. “I give you my word.” She shot Vaughn a look, as if to warn him against making her into a liar.

  The man grunted. “What do you have for me today?”

  Ivana snapped her fingers and held out her hand to Vaughn. He frowned, but handed her their dwindling bag of supplies.

  She opened a flap and pulled out the handful of dennil root she had picked earlier that day. She put it down on the blanket. “Dennil root,” she said. “You remember how to make the tincture I showed you last time?”

  The beggar flashed his toothless grin again. “Do you hear a cough?”

  “Good,” Ivana said. “This should be enough to last you and yours another month. After that, I’m afraid you may be on your own.”

  The beggar rocked back and forth. “Yes. I heard.”

  “I was hoping.”

  The beggar craned his neck to look at the bag. “Have any star-leaf?”

  Ivana smiled, and oddly enough, it looked genuine. “Nice try.”

  “Ah,” he said, closing his eyes, a half-smile on his lips. Then it faded. “Heard you’ve angered the Conclave,” he said. “Tried to take out a Hunter. So I heard.”

  Ivana said nothing, so he continued. “They’re saying you enlisted the services of a Banebringer to do it.”

  Vaughn started, and the man shifted his eyes to look at him.

  He swallowed and tried to smile.

  “They say she,” he emphasized the word and then looked away from Vaughn, “can suck the life out of you through her hands.”

  Vaughn raised an eyebrow. They thought that crazy Banebringer was with Ivana? Or at least, that’s what ‘they’ were saying…

  “That’s preposterous.”

  The man shrugged. “It’s what they say.”

  “Well, you can’t trust everything you hear. What of my girls?”

  He started rocking again. “Think one or two got away. They say they took the rest to the workhouses.”

  “What do you say?”

  “I say they’ve disappeared, to wherever the Conclave disappears worthless people.”

  “No bodies?”

  The man shook his head.

  Ivana frowned, and Vaughn was amazed at how remarkably calm she was, given that her entire life had been upended. Given that just a few hours ago she had risked being captured to send a stranger on what was likely a fool’s errand.

  “Anything else?”

  The man tilted his head to the side. “They know you’re down here.”

  How could he possibly know that?

  Ivana grimaced. “Thanks.” She stood up and started to turn away, when Vaughn spotted a coiled string on his blanket.

  He picked it up. “This is bow-string.”

  “So it is.”

>   He examined it more closely. It was odd looking. Sort of shimmery. And then he blinked. “Is this made with aether?”

  “Well, now,” the man said. “That would be illegal, wouldn’t it?”

  Considering it would have taken a Banebringer to do it and it was prohibited to keep aether—highly illegal.

  They didn’t have a weaveblood among the Ichtaca, but he knew a few who had managed to obtain such strings for their bows. They were nigh on indestructible. “How much?” he asked, reaching for the pouch inside the bag.

  Ivana’s hand shot out and gripped his wrist so hard he was sure it would be bruised. She gave him a hard look, and the man’s eyes grew even sharper.

  And the beggars around them were no longer feigning disinterest.

  Ivana pulled a few star-leaves out of her bosom and tossed them on the blanket. “A fair trade,” she said. “Use it wisely.” She tugged Vaughn away.

  Vaughn could feel the eyes of everyone in the room on them as they left through one of the side tunnels that didn’t have water running through it. “Did I do something wrong?” he asked once they were out of hearing range.

  She turned the corner and flattened herself against the wall, shoving him next to her, and then peered around the corner. Out of caution, he handed her his torch and took the opportunity to string his bow.

  “You don’t let people like that know you have coin on you,” she said quietly.

  “Well, I thought…”

  “You thought I trusted them?”

  Yes, actually. She had seemed comfortable enough.

  She snorted. “Not a chance, not even Tenoch, though he’s helped me get out of a few pinches.” She pulled back and laid her head against the wall, and then turned to look at him. ”For someone who’s been on the run for so long, you don’t have much street-sense.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t seek the company of beggars and thieves,” he said.

  “Oh? Then who do you seek the company of?”

  “I don’t have the luxury of company.”

  “What? Not even the occasional woman?” she asked, casting him a wry look.

  “Well. There is that. But can you blame me?”

  “Most certainly.”