Liar's Moon

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  “Oh,” I said, not sure how to respond to this revelation. The moment had curled tight around us, and neither of us realized we weren’t alone until the dog’s scrabbling toenails and whisking tail worked into a frenzy of greeting. We looked up sharply as Durrel let himself through the gauzy curtains onto the balcony with us.

  I thought I saw Koya color slightly; she turned back to the view of the water. For all the talk of what stood between Koya and Durrel, I had seen them together only rarely, and their awkwardness was palpable. Durrel moved to stand beside me, and his hand gently brushed my shoulder. It was an affectionate gesture — a possessive one, and Koya saw it instantly.

  Her bright smile signaled the return of the careless Koya persona once more, and it was almost painful how seamless the transition was. “I must thank Stantin for hosting us,” she said merrily, and swept back into the house.

  “I don’t really understand her,” I said, although, strangely enough, I thought I did.

  Durrel’s hand dropped, but he didn’t move away from me. “She’s . . . complicated,” was all he said, and there was a world of meaning in that one word. At least I understood now why Durrel had lied about that last argument with Talth. He was the sort to hold a girl’s secrets close.

  Darkness had fallen, silhouetting him against the night. In the dark water behind him, I saw the lights of a boat, coming nearer. I took two steps backward, toward the house.

  “Durrel,” I said carefully. “Move away from the edge.”

  He shifted aside immediately. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.” I wasn’t certain — just an odd feeling about that boat. I peered over the balustrade, but the vessel had drawn beneath the balcony. When it didn’t reappear, I felt a prick of unease. “Something’s wrong.”

  Clinging to the shadows, I leaned farther over the railing. The boat had pulled to a stop outside Stantin’s house. A handful of men were disembarking stealthily onto the bank, and in the light of the boat’s lantern, I could just make out their mismatched gray doublets, crossed with red sashes.

  I yanked myself back inside, and waved to Koya and the others across the room. Claas saw me first, nudging Stantin to attention. “We have a problem.” I pointed to the river outside. “Guards.”

  “What?” Alarm colored Koya’s voice, and she hurried the other direction, toward the front of the house. A second later she reappeared. “Damn it,” she said. “It’s Barris. He’s brought the Watch.”

  Durrel looked from Lord Ragn to me. “What do we do?”

  “How many are there?” I asked Koya. “I saw about six out back.”

  A bang and a shout from downstairs interrupted whatever anyone might have said next. “Open up in the name of the king!”

  “Pox. We’ll have to hide.” I appealed to Stantin. “Do you have a cellar or something?”

  He was shaking his head. “That’s the first place they’ll look.”

  Koya touched his arm. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I brought them here.”

  “And I’ll send them away again,” he said. “Have no fear. In the meantime . . .” he said nothing more, but gave a significant look to Claas, then headed down the cramped stairway.

  “I’m coming with you.” Lord Ragn was quick on Stantin’s heels.

  When they’d gone, Claas herded Durrel and me gently into a corner near the balcony. “You can climb?” he asked us. Surprised, I nodded. “Good,” he said. “Wait for my cue.”

  “What?” Durrel said, but fell silent as footsteps pounded up the stairs. Koya grabbed her barking dog by its collar, and for a moment she looked just like the goddess Zet, warrior and mighty huntress.

  “You can’t go up there,” Stantin was saying, with altogether too much calm, as Koya joined him by yelling, “Barris! What the hells do you think you’re doing?”

  “Hist,” Claas said in a voice so low it was little more than a whisper beneath the breeze.

  Gray-clad Watchmen poured into the tiny sitting room, tripping over books and knocking aside furniture. Koya gave a convincing scream, and the dog lunged forward in her grip. I had the feeling she wasn’t trying terribly hard to restrain it.

  “We are here on official city business,” one of the Watchmen announced. “Stand aside and let us conduct a search of these premises.”

  “What could you possibly expect to find here?” Stantin asked, but the guard elbowed past him.

  “Don’t play stupid. We’re looking for his son.”

  I tensed, but Lord Ragn said with great dignity, “My son is in Tratua.”

  I stared at them. His son was in the corner, in plain view of everyone. Maybe they didn’t recognize him — but that was stupid; Barris knew Durrel. I felt Durrel stiffen to one side of me, and Claas’s hand squeezed mine. I looked past them, into the room, where the guards’ eyes crawled across every inch of the space, coming to stop everywhere but here, the corner where Claas stood with Durrel and me. It was as if they couldn’t help but look past us. I tugged on Claas’s hand, and he turned his solemn, deep-set eyes to me.

  “It’s you,” I said, barely more than a movement of my lips. “You’re doing this.”

  Claas said nothing, but a corner of his mouth lifted in the beginning of a smile. He pulled us back slightly as the Watchmen stormed through, some of them inches from us, but no one seeing, no one hearing the race of my heart or the too-swift measure of Durrel’s breath. I strained my vision, searching around Claas for a hint of shimmer or a glow or a fog I couldn’t see — but there was nothing. I was as blind to the magic as anyone else here tonight.

  “Now see here,” the Watch captain was saying, “we’ve come to search for two fugitives from the king’s justice, and we’ll tear every stone from these walls if we have to.”

  “You’re welcome to search,” Stantin said genially. “But you’ll see for yourself that we’re not harboring anyone.”

  Apparently that was Claas’s cue, because he squeezed my hand hard and pointed toward the balcony. We shifted as a unit, tight together, until we stood at the railing.

  “The climb is not bad,” Claas said. “I’ve done it before.” Durrel regarded him with utter disbelief, and he gave a faint laugh. “The cat got stuck on the roof. Now down you go. There’s a path to the water. Stantin and his lordship will keep them occupied. And I will keep you obscured as long as I can.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Too much was happening all at once. But Claas squeezed my hand one final time, and it said everything we needed to. I nodded and pulled away gently as Durrel swung one leg over the balcony.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  We could still hear the Watch yelling and stomping through the house, even as we lowered ourselves from the balcony. There was a window one floor down, with a wide ledge above it, and from there it was an easy drop to ground level. I hit the mossy earth a moment after Durrel, and he pushed me back against the house, one finger to his lips, the other hand pointing toward the water.

  A lone Watchman had remained with the boat and stood guard at the river. I looked quickly up and down the banks, but it didn’t seem as if any of Stantin and Claas’s neighbors were the sailing types.

  “We have to take out that guard,” I said in a low voice. “Can you manage?” I could do it, but Durrel was bigger than me, and could probably accomplish it with a little less fuss and noise.

  “Gladly,” he said, stepping out of the shadows and drawing his knife. He slipped up behind the guard and had his knife arm around his throat, the other hand over his mouth and nose, before the poor fellow could react. I counted the painful heartbeats, watched the frightened concentration on Durrel’s face as the pinned guard struggled futilely in his grip, until he finally slumped in Durrel’s arms, unconscious.

  We dragged the man well away from the water, and left him hidden behind a bush. I ran down to the river and grabbed the lead ropes of the Watch boat. “Help me,” I said, pulling the prow around to the water. “We’ll take this.”

  Durrel took the
other end, but hesitated. “Why are we stealing their boat?”

  “Because we don’t have time to scuttle it!” As the body of the vessel hit the water, I climbed inside, and Durrel hopped in neatly after me. I was too short to row effectively, but Durrel was an experienced boatman, and had us in the Oss’s swift evening current in moments. I dropped the boat’s lantern overboard, its light swallowed up by the swirling water. Claas still stood watch on the balcony; how long would the cloak of darkness and silence he’d produced protect us? Or had it faded as soon as he’d released my hand? Nobody came running around the side of the house, shouting about stolen boats, so I guessed the spell lasted long enough. I raised my lightless hand in farewell, but I didn’t know if Claas could even see us anymore.

  Durrel was frowning as he looked back at the Koyuz house. “I’ve never done anything like that before.” He sounded troubled. “Choking that guard, I mean.”

  “You didn’t look like a novice.”

  “It’s a wrestling hold,” he said. “But you usually let go after the other man begs for mercy.”

  “You showed him better mercy than they would have shown us,” I said, but Durrel rowed silently, his gaze far away. A moment later he scowled again.

  “Damn. I thought, standing behind Claas . . . I was sure they had us. What was that? Was it magic?”

  “I’m not sure. I thought it took two people for a spell like that, but maybe it was just a small magic.” It explained Koya’s odd attachment to her marriage, at least; the heroic rescuer of magic users was hardly likely to expose Claas and Stantin’s secret by petitioning for divorce. I studied the shoreline and water for any out-of-place movement, straining backward to hear the shouts of the Watchmen as they discovered their boat was missing. “We have to get rid of the boat. That Watch insigne on the prow might as well be a giant sign that says Boat Thieves.”

  “Where exactly are we going?” Durrel’s shoulders strained with every pull of the oars, but we skimmed along the water swift as a dragonfly. All the more reason to get to shore, before more of these swift little boats came after us.

  “Away from the gates,” I said, thinking of the tangle of vessels clogging the route beneath the great bridge. “No, turn around. Go toward the gates. It’ll take them days to find this boat in that mess.”

  He nodded, steering easily in the direction I’d indicated. “And then what?”

  “I’m thinking,” I said irritably. “If they tracked you to Stantin Koyuz’s house, of all places, they’ve surely already searched everywhere we’d frequent. So that means both the Temple and the bakery are out.”

  “I thought they couldn’t search the Temple.”

  “No, but they can stand outside it.”

  “All right, what about Cartouche?”

  I pondered this, but dismissed it. “They’ll tie that to Koya. It needs to be somewhere they’d never suspect you of going.”

  “Your friend’s house,” he said, but for a second I wasn’t sure who he meant. “Where you took me a few days ago. Not his house; we don’t want to lead the Watch there, but —”

  “His warehouse,” I finished. “Cwalo. That’s brilliant. It’s on the Big Silver, though. We’ll have to head downriver, where the rivers join.”

  “Quicker to walk from Oss Bridge,” Durrel said. “And the more space between us and this boat, the better. Let’s go.”

  We ditched the boat in the river, in the queue for the locks; the Oss was so thick with vessels, many abandoned, that we could leave the boat midstream and climb almost to shore across them. We dropped into the shallows at the bank and waded ashore, the water dragging at my skirts. Heads bowed, we trotted away from the river, dodging pools of light and taking as many back alleys as we could. Once I spied a brace of Greenmen strolling toward us, and shoved Durrel behind me, under a shadowed archway.

  Finally we crossed to the Big Silver side of town. No doubt its gates were sealed as well, those tall ships trapped at harbor. Cwalo’s warehouse was deserted, not even a sleepy dog guarding the property; apparently the owner’s reputation for swift revenge was enough to protect it. I popped the lock on the main door in a hurry, a little careless with the tumblers, and I think one snapped. Pox. I’d have to pay Cwalo back for that later. Inside, the warehouse was crowded with crates and casks and bales of cloth, very little moonslight streaming through the small, high windows. There was a flaw in our plan; our hiding place gave us excellent cover but no effective way to see out. If we wanted to know what was going on in the world, we’d have to poke our heads back through the door again.

  I paced, making a canal of Cwalo’s floor with my soaked skirts, until Durrel stopped me. “Take your dress off.”

  “What?”

  “You’re shivering. You’ll catch cold in those wet clothes. But it’s an oven in here; they’ll be dry in no time.”

  I saw the logic in this, but I hesitated. “You too, milord,” I said finally, and Durrel shrugged off his doublet and kicked his boots into a pile in the corner. Then we stood there, trying not to look at each other in our wet smocks, and I was painfully aware how little mine concealed, even in the dark.

  “We, uh, might as well get some rest,” I said. “We should be safe here until morning.”

  “Good idea.” Durrel glanced around and pointed to a bundle of cloth by the wall. He dropped beside it and pulled his knees to his chest, resting his cheek against them. I followed suit, a few feet away.

  But sleep was elusive. It wasn’t that late, first of all, and despite the warm evening, the warehouse was dank, and a chill seeped through me from the stone floor. “How can I be cold?” I said.

  “Shock. Come over here.” Durrel lifted his arm and beckoned me to him. I hung back, but my teeth were chattering, so I finally scooted over and let him put an arm around me. He smelled strongly of river wet, and a hot, salty scent I remembered from his days in the Keep. It wasn’t a bad smell, tonight. I told myself I should edge away again before I did something stupid, but I was very weary and disinclined to move. Light fingers stroked my hair, and I didn’t push them away.

  “I’m sorry about your magic,” he said, and that was so much the strangest and the least of the troubles facing us just now, that I didn’t know what to say. “I can’t imagine what it must be like. We always knew Meri had it, of course, but most of the time it didn’t mean anything. But for you . . .” he trailed off, but I didn’t have anything to fill up the gap, and besides, I liked the sound of his voice, low and soft in the big hollow space of the warehouse. “I broke my arm when I was a boy. For one entire summer I couldn’t ride or hunt or even write. I hated it, but this — it must be like losing a limb.”

  I flexed my left hand, where I had lost the tips of two fingers fighting Daul last winter. Was it the same? When I’d hurt my hand, had I felt this desperate panic, like there was a rend in my soul? “I never wanted magic,” I said, my voice halting. “All I knew was that it hurt people — having it, using it. And for the longest time I had to pretend I didn’t have it. But now, with the war —” and a dozen other things I couldn’t say aloud, meeting the Nemair, and knowing Meri, and coming back to the city alone, and then being courted by the Inquisition . . . I bent my head back and pushed those thoughts out of reach. “It’s a poxedly inconvenient time for it to go missing.”

  Durrel laughed, warm and sweet in the darkness, and his fingers curled around my small, damaged, unmagical hand.

  We were still sitting that way, hours later, as a pale, watery light filtered through the high windows. I blinked awake, disoriented for a moment. I thought we were back in gaol, and I jumped a little, but a gentle hand on my arm held me down.

  “Our clothes are dry,” Durrel said quietly. His face was very close to mine.

  “Is it morning?” I whispered.

  “Almost.”

  “We should get dressed, then.”

  “We should.”

  But nobody moved.

  “I was thinking of the day we met,” he said,
his voice low and breathy. “When you fell asleep in the boat with us? I think that’s when I first wanted to.”

  “Wanted to what?”

  “Kiss you,” he said, and tilted my face to his, to do just that.

  His lips were warm, and I felt a rush of heat from my hips to my belly. I twined my fingers in his, in his damp hair, and was shifting to my knees — when a noise from outside snapped us apart again. Breathless, Durrel held up a hand, and I edged silently aside, my heart banging as I eased to my feet and fumbled in the half dark for my dress.

  The noise turned itself into footsteps, and then a hand jiggling the warehouse door. Cwalo? Or the Watch? Durrel’s hand found mine and together we slipped through the maze of boxes and barrels, toward what we both apparently hoped was a rear exit. The warehouse door cracked open, and a saber of light cut through the darkness. Durrel and I flattened ourselves against the wall, as if we could make ourselves invisible again just by willing it. I looked around, frantic, but the door was swinging wide, and there wasn’t another way out that I could see. I held fast to Durrel’s hand, until my fingers tingled from the force of my grip.

  I glanced down, and nearly dropped his hand in surprise. He felt the movement and turned quizzical eyes to mine. “You’re glowing,” I whispered, and he looked down at himself, but could see nothing out of the ordinary, of course. I held my own hand up, and saw the faintest vibration in the darkness — some residue from Claas’s spell, or whatever that had been. We’d been cloaked in magic, and now, for some reason, I could see it again.

  “It’s back, isn’t it?” he said, and I felt myself grinning foolishly. “You should kiss me again. Who knows what might happen?”