by Jim Hodgson
“I understand your motives. They’re quite admirable. But you’ve been shot through the bloody arm. My healing magic can only do so—”
Elgin made a hissing noise like a small impression of a snake. Wagast shut up immediately and both men turned to look at her.
“Did you say something, darling?” Usta asked.
Elgin swallowed, licked her lips.
“Do you want some water?” Usta asked.
Elgin shook her head with a tiny movement, made the hissing sound again. She swallowed once more, then seemed to gather strength for a few breaths. Her hand fluttered on the bed and Usta lifted it, squeezed it. She squeezed back, faintly, but it was definitely there.
Usta leaned over as close as he could to hear what Elgin was saying.
“Iss,” she whispered. She swallowed again, tried again.
This time Usta understood her.
“Iss my dress all right?”
The assailant had chosen his or her placement well. The sun had been behind the attacker when the two arrows flew, which meant that the handful of people who had looked up to see where they’d come from had been forced to squint.
Alabora had ordered scaffolding constructed so that every inch of the rooftop in question could be searched and researched. Otherwise, it was too dangerous up there. Every guard who had been on the site the week previous to the attack was asked to give a thorough statement, then the statements were combed over for any inconsistencies.
There was nothing at all remarkable about the arrows used. They were most likely made by the shooter. The wood appeared to be local as well as the fletching. Anyone in or around Dilara who made an arrow would make something similar.
The part of the situation that stuck out to Alabora and Nazenin was the fact that there were no credible eyewitnesses whatsoever. A few people saw running — but a lot of people were running. No one was running with a bow, and there was no bow at the scene. There was a bow in one of the houses on the street near where the attacker must have been, but it was so old that when Alabora tested the draw it snapped in his hands.
What windows looked out onto the square had been full of people trying to get a look at the ceremony, faces known to the people who owned the homes. That was why the guard had allowed them to be there.
In any case, Usta distinctly remembered seeing a cloaked figure on a corner of a certain roof. Alabora was standing there now, looking down from where the shooter had most likely been on that day. It was an easy shot. A child with a few days of archery training could have hit something the size of a man without trouble.
Without the scaffolding, though, there was no safe way to get a man down from this vantage. Nearby roofs were too far for a leap. The ground was a fall certain to break at least one leg, if not kill the person.
Nazenin was coming up the last ladder to where Alabora stood. She turned, looked down, gave a clipped sigh. “Perfect.”
Alabora grunted his agreement.
Nazenin looked over her shoulder at the scaffolding. No one else was coming up. She leaned closer to Alabora. “I don’t think this was a man.”
“I don’t either,” he said.
“I don’t think His Majesty is going to like hearing it, but this had to have been an extramortal.”
“Probably right,” Alabora said. “But no one’s seen a damn thing. An extramortal running with a bow would have stuck out.” They’d been over this a hundred times before in the previous days. The weight of not knowing the answer was sitting heavily on both of them.
“So maybe it didn’t run?”
Alabora was thinking along the same lines. An extramortal’s abilities could be functionally limitless. He could jump farther, probably. Fall greater distances. Who knew?
“We go over the square again,” Alabora said. “Tear everything apart. Any space large enough to put a loaf of bread into must be searched.”
Nazenin sighed.
“What?” Alabora asked.
“Those were your previous orders.”
“Well, we can’t bloody well just let our king and queen be shot at on their wedding day with no reprisal, can we?”
Nazenin shook her head. “No. But we also can’t find an answer where none are present.”
Alabora made a noise. He didn’t like it, but she was right.
Nazenin changed the subject. “At least the recruitment and training are going well, eh?”
“Indeed. We’ll soon have the largest army Dilara’s ever had and no one to fight.”
“Yonca says the Yetkin are coming.”
“You’d know better about that than I would.”
Nazenin looked out across the rooftops, toward the sea. She nodded. “Aye. Sooner or later. They will come.”
Chapter 23
Gonul wasn’t sure of much, but he was sure that he needed to lay low for a long time. While the operation hadn’t gone as planned by any means, it had to be called a success. Usta wasn’t dead, but he was wounded and his whore lady love was hovering near death. If only that Wagast hadn’t been right next to her.
Blast. Gonul felt his fists clench. He’d planned this thing to the last detail and thought his biggest impediment would be getting that Ergam out of the way. As far as Gonul knew, Ergam was the only extramortal in the city other than Tig. They had some kind of way about them, the undead slaves. They knew things about one another that they kept hidden from the living. That’s why anyone who owned one had to keep a close eye on them.
And that need for a close eye was drawing Gonul back toward the site of the attempted assassination. He had instructed Tig to stay hidden, hadn’t he? Yes. He certainly had. And Tig was good at following instructions. But even so, the more Gonul went over and over the situation in his mind he felt the need to sneak to the site, find Tig’s hiding place, and whisper to him to stay put a while longer.
He’d heard stories about a criminal’s tendency to return to places where they’d committed crimes, but he’d thought them old wives’ tales. Now he felt a pull toward the palace square like he was afloat in a surging river being borne over a waterfall.
What to do?
He had to ignore the impulse. He must stay far, far away from the palace square at all costs.
All costs.
In the morning, the desire to go near the palace square was still with him. It reminded Gonul of the feeling of a coming sickness, as if he knew that tomorrow would certainly be worse than today. He decided to take a walk to clear his head.
He wasn’t in the habit of strolling, or doing any sort of exercise for that matter, but he had heard of people taking a walk to keep their mind off things, so he did. On the street, though, he felt as if people were looking at him more than usual. Nosy bastards.
This feeling had to be his imagination. Why should anyone be looking at him? He hadn’t felt any undue attention when he’d gone out for bread the day earlier. Nothing had changed. To combat this, he picked up the pace and put a determined expression on. That was good. This way, anyone who saw him walking would only see a man on his way to conduct some important business.
It worked. He walked from his home down to the main street that ran parallel to the river, then took that to the wall street and made a right. If he stayed on the wall street, then made another right when it brought him around to the river again, he’d make a big loop and get home with a hopefully clear head. And because he was sticking to the circumference of the city, he wouldn’t be going anywhere near the palace.
It had been a long time since he’d walked around the wall street like this. He’d probably never walked the whole thing, actually. He admired the section that had been repaired a few years earlier, where the battle with the wizard had taken place. That was the day when it all came crashing down for Gonul’s future.
He felt his teeth grind together.
“Mr. Gonul!” he heard a voice shout. Or had he? Could he be imagining things? He kept walking. There were sounds of boots behind him. Oh, no, they’d found out he—
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“Mr. Gonul, sir?” a man’s voice said.
Gonul turned to see a young palace guard. It was the one who had been particularly fond of his sticky buns. “Oh,” Gonul said, recognizing him. “Hello there.”
The guard nodded. “Just saw you walking by, sir, and remembered to tell you that you can come pick up your barrow, if you like. Generals Alabora and Nazenin have released their restrictions on the palace square.”
“Ah,” Gonul said. “Er. Ah. Well, that’s good?” This was a disaster. Gonul’s mind and heart raced. What should he say?
“Can’t say, sir. But if you’d follow me, I’ll accompany you unless you’re on another errand.”
Gonul swallowed, but his throat was so dry it was almost painful. He didn’t trust his voice so he just nodded. He wanted to wrap his arms around himself to keep from shaking but kept them down at his sides for fear that he’d look too guilty.
What if his shaking hands dropped the barrow? What if the false bottom opened and Tig fell out?
None of those things happened. He followed the guard to the site where they were waved through by another man who was leaning against a column, then walked to the barrow. The guard even snatched it off the wall and handed it to Gonul with a grin and a nod.
Gonul thanked him and walked away with the barrow’s wooden wheel bonking along over the cobblestones.
Gonul felt such a rush of relief and excitement he thought he would scream out loud or burst, but he managed to keep it bottled. He just walked along the street, back to his house, and took the barrow inside. He removed the false bottom, freed Tig, and then pushed the barrow out into the back garden. He leaned it against a wall, took the piece that formed the false bottom inside, had Tig break it into pieces that would fit in the stove, and burned the pieces to boil water for tea.
Chapter 24
Ergam was met at the tunnel site by some of his father’s associates. He’d never been able to get a handle on which of these men were actually friends of his father’s and which were useful political allies, but it occurred to Ergam that to a king those might always be the same thing.
They expressed their concern over his father’s final passing. Ergam had no way of knowing whether their condolences were genuine, but there was definitely something else going on that they wanted to discuss. He thought he might know what, so he just laid his cards on the table.
“I don’t want to be king,” he said.
The men and women looked at one another. One of them stepped forward, started to put a fatherly arm around Ergam’s shoulders, but Ergam leaned back away. The man made an apologetic gesture, then nodded toward the door.
Ergam followed him out into the tunnel, trying to think of the man’s name. He was relatively new, by extramortal standards, but had been some form of high-ranking politician in life. Some people were able to make their status persist through to their extramortal lives.
“You may not remember me,” he said, “But I worked closely with your father in Kanat. Alabas Solak?”
“My apologies, Mr. Solak.”
Solak waved this away. “I just wanted to say, as a friend, that you should keep your options open.” He looked over both shoulders. No one was around in the tunnel. “I know what it’s like to lose a loved one. I have done so in life and in my post-mortal life. Now is a poor time to make decisions.”
Ergam was trying to think how to tell Solak to go and fuck himself in a polite way, but was having trouble putting the words together exactly how he wanted them.
“On another matter,” Solak said. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet. Kadin Onan. Do you know her?”
Ergam shook his head.
“Before she was freed, she was owned by Ferdi Pocan? Textiles and candlesticks.”
“Not familiar,” Ergam said. He didn’t want to talk about textiles. He wanted to find out what happened to his father, find someone to blame, and kill them.
“She made sure nothing got stolen from the warehouses or, if it did, she figured out who stole it.”
Ergam stopped walking. He looked at Solak’s face.
Solak said, “I’ve spoken to her, explained your situation and asked if she would look around.”
“And?”
“And I think you should speak to her.”
Ergam found Kadin Onan at the foot of the slope, using a piece of heavy thread and a needle to repair a rip in her coat. She looked up as he came close. She wore a wide-brimmed hat and her hair over her face. She tied off the stitch in her coat, bit the thread apart with her teeth, then poked the needle through a scrap of leather and put it in her pocket.
She stood. “You must be Ergam.”
Ergam nodded, tried to think of exactly what to say. The words, “Can you help me figure out who killed my father,” seemed a bit much.
She put out a hand. “Kadin Onan. Sorry, I don’t know if I’m supposed to call you something special like Your Majesty and that.”
Ergam shook his head. “No need for it. Ever.”
“Right,” she said. “Well, follow me, I’ll show you what I found.” She walked away, golden hair flowing behind her. Most extramortals didn’t have a thick head of hair like that. She must have taken extraordinary care of it in her first life. She led the way to his father’s tent. “I think King Sakir was in here, based on the time of events. He was led away without a scuffle, though.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“The state of the tent. Everything is placed as though someone neat and tidy left it only moments ago. It’s hard for one person to grab another without at least kicking a chair over or a table out of place. Your father was not a weak man. He would have struggled.”
Ergam poked his head inside the flap of the tent. What Kadin said was true. It looked like someone had just walked out a moment before. But the person who had left would never be back, would they? He realized he was gripping the tent flap too hard when he heard one of the stitches give way. He released it and removed his head, nodded.
Kadin nodded back, then motioned him to follow again. They walked up the slope to a point where they were nearly over the mouth of the tunnel. She pointed to the ground. It looked to Ergam like just loose dark gray dirt, same as the rest of the slope in this area. Walking up the slope was a struggle, because with each step you slid backward a lot. Ergam considered himself a fairly passable tracker on flat ground, but in this loose dirt he was useless.
“You can see this is where the struggle was,” she said, circling her arm to encompass an area. “It’s hard to tell, now that the ground has been trampled, exactly what it looked like, but my guess would be that someone led your father to this point, then held him until help arrived.”
“Help?”
Kadin nodded. “Most likely the hill people.”
“But they’re so ...” he searched for the word. “Inept. I’ve been in a crowd of them myself once or twice and they did not fare well.”
“I suspect they had some device or tactic that helped them.”
“And why didn’t my father cry out for help?” He looked down the slope toward the mouth of the tunnel. “We’re not in the camp below, but we’re not that far away. I could hear someone crying out up here from inside the tunnel and I’m not the only extramortal with good ears.”
Kadin put her hands up to signify that she had no good answers.
Ergam looked around a bit to let the frustration he was feeling pass. “Then what happened?”
Kadin nodded, turned, and headed up the slope, putting her arms out to steady herself as each step sank into the dirt above her booted ankles. She stopped when they’d rounded a boulder and pointed. “You can see here that the group splits into several directions. The tracks seem to have calmed down, which means to me that the hill people had what they came for at this point. Perhaps they were carrying your father away.”
“So he could still be alive?” Ergam asked.
Kadin put her head to one side. “It’s possible,” she said, in a tone
that suggested she didn’t think it was very possible.
Ergam looked up the slope. He thought he could see another split in the tracks ahead.
“Farther up the mountain the wind and weather get a lot stronger and less predictable,” she said. “The trail is already less distinct just up there, where we can see. As you climb farther it gets even worse. If you head up there you’ll see what I mean.”
Ergam nodded. “Thank you for your help.” He started to head up the mountain, but Kadin put a hand on his arm. He looked at her in surprise.
“Don’t,” she said.
He resisted the urge to throw her arm off him. “Don’t what?” he asked, trying to keep it from sounding like a hiss.
“Don’t go up there and kill every hill person you can find. Don’t go on a crusade to avenge your father. Just … don’t.”
Ergam looked at her. He could feel his mouth working, trying to find a way to say that wasn’t what he was going to do, even though it very much was.
“My father was the head of the city watch,” Kadin said. “I grew up in the watch house in Dilara. I died there too, as a matter of fact. Spent many years tracking the people responsible as best I could. That’s how I got caught and forced into slavery.”
Ergam looked out over the treetops below. They looked green and healthy, completely unaffected by the turmoil and sadness inside him.
Kadin removed her hand. “I know what it’s like to lose a parent this way. I don’t know you, but from what I hear you are a good man. You have friends who care about you.”
Ergam nodded. He put his hand out and clasped Kadin by the shoulder. “I thank you for your advice. I do have great friends. But my father was my only family. The last of my family. The last there can or ever will be. I will find him.”
Kadin watched Ergam stalk up the slope. He’d said the words, “I will find him,” without a shred of doubt or drama, as though they were a fact as stark as the rocks themselves.