The door opened to reveal the Shade woman with the grey braid.
She skidded to a halt at the sight of me, her well-lined eyes going wide. She, too, held a blade in her hand, but it dipped for a moment as she dragged a hand down her face.
“This was not supposed to happen,” she muttered, almost as if talking to herself. “You were never supposed to come here.”
I shifted my stance slightly, watching for a trick. “I am sorry to be such a disappointment, though you may be relieved to know I have always been such, according to those who know me best.”
She spat on the wooden floor. “Shut your prattling lips. You were not meant to die here, but dark take me if I will let you kill me instead.”
“Now, be calm,” I said. “There is no reason anyone has to—”
She lunged before I could finish, and I barely blocked her overhead swing. But hardly had her blade rebounded before it came again, swinging from my left this time. I tried to twist out of the way, but I felt the tip of the blade slice a deep cut in my forearm. I grimaced in pain and tried to step away, but she followed.
“You people do not poison your weapons, do you?” I said, trying to keep my tone light.
“Do you think servants of the Lord have no honor?” she said. Then she smiled. “You will have to find out, I suppose.”
She attacked again. I warded her blows, but each one forced me another step back. I could not risk a glance behind me, but I could feel the closed door at my back. The woman saw it, and she gave a grim smile. She was a better fighter than I was, and we both knew it. I took a wild swing that forced her a half-step back. But even as my sword came around, I could feel myself losing my balance. I stumbled, and she saw her opening.
“Die, wretch,” she hissed, swinging for my side.
The only thing I could do was fall to the floor. My sword clattered out of reach. Her blade hissed harmlessly through the air where I had stood a moment before. But I had only prolonged the inevitable. I rolled desperately onto my back, hoping against hope that I could roll out of the way of her next swing.
But the woman was not standing over me with her blade held high. In fact, she was only standing at all because Mag’s spear had pierced straight through her head and embedded itself in the wall. Now the woman hung feebly from the middle of the spear, bouncing up and down slightly with its spring. Her eyes were cold and empty.
I looked over. Mag stood in the right-hand doorway, blood spattered all across her clothing. She had arrived just in time to throw her spear across the room and through the head of my foe. Even as I watched, her battle-trance slipped away and warmth came back into her expression.
“Five, Albern,” she said. “I took five of them, and still I had to help you against one.”
“In a building like this, yes,” I said. “Put me on an open field and put a bow in my hand—”
“—and stand your enemies in a line facing you like practice dummies, and do not give them any weapons to fight back, yes, yes,” said Mag. She came to me and held out a hand to pull me up, forcing a slight smile. “We cannot always fight in perfect circumstances, you oaf.”
“Oh, be silent,” I grumbled. “And would you take back your spear? That is unnerving.” I pointed at the grey-haired woman, still suspended where she stood by Mag’s weapon.
Mag’s little smile died, and she went about the messy business of retrieving her spear. Once she had extricated it from the woman and the door, she cleaned it on the woman’s cloak. I went to where my sword had fallen and picked it up, keeping a suspicious eye on both doors leading out of the room. I did not want to be taken by surprise again.
Mag noticed my attitude and shook her head. “I got them all. The house feels empty.”
“But still evil,” I remarked. The air was still thick with the curious power I had felt earlier.
“Yes, still evil,” said Mag.
“How did the woman get past you?” I said. “She emerged from the left-hand door—the same one you went through. Did she slip by somehow?”
Mag turned to look at the door, frowning. “She did not. I circled the whole house and came back around the other way, and I did not see her until I killed her. But I passed a staircase leading up. The woman must have run upstairs, and then come back down after I had passed. She, and three others—they found me in the back room, surprising me by attacking from behind.”
My eyebrows shot for the ceiling. “However did you survive.”
Mag put a hand over her heart. “It was a near thing.”
I could not quite find a chuckle for her joke. A mercenary learns to lighten their mood, even in the midst of the grim business of killing, but I was never able to laugh in the presence of an enemy’s corpse.
“I wish now that I had not killed all of them,” said Mag. “I did not think to let any of the others live, for I thought we could interrogate this one.” She pointed at the corpse of the grey-braided woman.
“Interrogate …” I closed my eyes and sighed. The weremage. She was not here. In the fighting, I had almost forgotten about her. “Sky. I had not thought of that.”
“Clearly not,” said Mag. “In any case, we did not find what we sought, and I feel it would be unwise for us to remain here overlong. Let us be on our way.”
“A sensible suggestion,” I said.
I turned to the front door and threw it open, relieved, at least, that I would be able to escape the oppressive feeling that permeated the house. The open air outside felt like cool springwater on a midsummer day. I stopped just past the threshold and took several deep breaths. Mag was not so dramatic about it, but I could see the relief on her face as well. She planted the butt of her spear on the ground and leaned on it with a sigh.
“You!”
The voice—new, but still familiar—froze my blood. I looked up, the sinking feeling in my stomach growing worse, to see Yue marching towards us, her face red beneath her shock of bristling yellow hair.
“Dark take the both of you—you are under arrest, under the authority of the King’s law.”
“Constable Baolan,” I said, raising a hand to wave at her. “Well met, again.”
She stalked up to us in a huff, hands balled to fists by her sides. Behind her were the same two constables we had seen at the gate the day before. They looked at each other warily, hands near the handles of their clubs.
“I told you not to make trouble while you were in my town,” growled Yue. “And then, a short while ago, someone came and told me they saw you chasing a boy through the streets.”
“He was following us,” said Mag easily. “We wanted to know why.”
“He is from this town,” said Yue. “You are not. And before—wait.”
She stopped abruptly and pulled her club from its hook on her belt. Her companions did the same, though more slowly. Yue pointed at Mag and me, glaring.
“That is blood.”
I winced as I looked down at myself. “It … is. We were attacked.”
“Where?” snapped Yue.
I pointed into the house behind us. Yue glanced at it and then looked back to me.
“You go in first,” she said.
There was nothing for it. I did as she asked, with Mag just behind me and the constables bringing up the rear. We filed into the front room, and Mag and I stepped to the side. The bodies of the first two Shades, along with the grey-haired woman, lay on the floor in clear view. Blood had already begun to pool around them.
Yue hissed and raised her club as if expecting us to attack. But I had already raised my hands in surrender, and Mag had made no threatening move, though she still held her spear.
“Drop your weapon,” Yue ordered.
Mag sighed and did so, slowly raising her hands just as I had. “Constable, as my friend has already told you, we were attacked. We only defended ourselves.”
“After breaking down the front door, if I am not mistaken,” said Yue. My spirits, already low, plummeted further. The front door had plainly been sm
ashed open, a detail I had not recalled until Yue mentioned it.
“We did, it is true,” I said. “But only in haste.”
“Because of the boy, you claim,” said Yue.
“Yes,” I said. “He fled once his companions attacked us. He is young, between a child and an adult. He has short hair and wide, prominent eyes.”
Yue’s face went white. “Pantu? Did you—”
“We did not harm him,” I said. “And he made no move to harm us—only these ones did so. He fled soon after the fighting started.”
“If that is true, we shall soon find out,” said Yue. “Sinshi, go and fetch him.”
The constable hesitated a moment, looking uneasily between us and his master. But when Yue fixed him with a furious look, he hastened to obey, awkwardly trying (and failing) to close the front door behind him.
My stomach did another turn. We could hardly expect the boy to speak in our defense—though he had not seemed as bloodthirsty as his Shade companions, we had chased him and then murdered his fellows. We had to figure out a way to turn Yue to our side before the boy got here, or else we had to hope he had already hidden himself so well that the constable could not find him.
“May I explain our case further?” I asked Yue.
“I think I have heard your side,” spat Yue. “Now I would hear from the boy you chased, for no good reason that I have heard yet.”
“Is it so strange?” I said. “You know we are travelers, and you can likely tell that we are no strangers to battle and fighting. We are in a strange place, and then someone starts following us. Would you not be curious, if you were us?”
“Of course I would be,” said Yue. “But I imagine that, were I in your shoes, my path would not have ended in murder.”
“Not murder,” said Mag. “We told you—”
“Yes, that you defended yourselves,” said Yue. She looked at me. “You are right, Albern of the family Telfer, in that I can tell that you are no strangers to fighting. And given the chance, I would do much to avoid any sort of fight against your friend Mag, here. Tell me: if she is so great a warrior, could she not have defended you both without taking three lives?”
Beside me, Mag tensed and gave me a quick look. As I met her gaze, my mouth twisted as though I had bitten into a lemon.
“Albern—” began Mag.
“What?” snapped Yue. “What is it?”
Ignoring Mag’s urgent look, I spoke softly to Yue. “These are not the only three,” I told her. “There are three more in the back room.”
Yue’s face went as pale as the corpse of the Heddish man on the floor. But to her credit, her voice seemed entirely calm when she spoke again. “I see. And they were killed in self-defense as well, I take it?”
“Albern, you fool,” muttered Mag.
“Do you think she would not have found them?” I said. I met Yue’s gaze without flinching. “We should not be afraid of telling the truth, for we have nothing to hide.”
“That is a noble sentiment, though one I find hard to believe,” said Yue. She turned to the constable beside her. “Ashta, collect their weapons.” Ashta hastened to obey while Yue fixed us both with another hard look. “Indeed, the only reason I have not clapped you in irons already is that I can hardly believe two murderers as ruthless as you appear to be would behave so foolishly that they would let themselves be caught by constables and then freely admit to their own killings.”
“That is one point in our favor, then,” I said, taking off my sword belt and handing it to Ashta. Mag grimaced as the constable picked up her spear.
“Do not be flip with me,” said Yue.
“Why do the deaths of these people bother you so?” said Mag suddenly.
The rest of us froze—even Ashta, who had been halfway back to Yue with our weapons. Slowly, all three of us turned to stare at Mag.
“Are you … are you joking?” said Yue. “You have murdered six people in my—”
“Six people, yes, but not six people from this town,” said Mag. “None of these people are from Lan Shui, are they? I think the boy is local—Pantu, you called him?—but none of the others look Dorsean, or even half-Dorsean, like you. And they all seemed to be living here, in a house that looks to have suffered many long years of disrepair. I would guess that no one from Lan Shui has lived here in mayhap half a decade, and that you did not know the house was occupied at all. That means they were living here for some secret purpose, under your nose. And they are fighters, just as we are. What noble purpose could such warriors have for dwelling here, out of sight of the King’s law?”
Yue said nothing for a long moment. Ashta frowned as she drew near her sergeant again—but it was a frown of deep thought, not of anger or denial. Mag had struck upon something I had not even considered, and from the looks on the constables’ faces, I could tell her guess was at least close to the truth.
“Regardless of any of that,” Yue pressed, “the King’s law still applies, whether these people were born in Lan Shui or not.”
“Yet the King’s law provides for defending oneself against unprovoked attack,” I said.
“You keep saying that,” said Yue. “How far do you think such an excuse will stretch? There are six corpses in this house. Why did you not simply flee after the first two attacked you?”
My mouth opened, but no words came for a long moment. “Well … it all happened very quickly,” I said at last, well aware of how weak the excuse sounded.
I was spared further embarrassment as the front door opened and Sinshi returned with the boy, Pantu, in tow. Pantu did not look to have come entirely of his own free will. I was afraid his bulging eyes would nearly fall from his skull, and he was covered with a sheen of sweat that I guessed was not just from the heat outside. When he saw Yue looming over him, he flinched.
“I found him, Sergeant,” said Sinshi.
“Hello, Pantu,” growled Yue. “I thought we had moved past the point where I would find you involved in some sort of trouble every other week, and yet here we are.”
Pantu looked resentfully at her from under his hooded lids. “I did not do anything wrong,” he mumbled.
Yue thrust a finger at Mag and me. “These strangers say you did. Did they attack you and your friends here first, or was it the other way around?”
The boy stared at us for a long moment. The room went utterly quiet, and it felt as if time itself had stood still. The only sensation in my body was the same oppressive weight of power that had pressed upon me since the moment we first entered the house.
“These ones attacked first,” said the boy, pointing at the corpses on the floor. “The strangers only defended themselves.”
Yue’s shoulders sagged. She looked utterly flabbergasted as she thrust a finger at the corpses. “You are saying you were with them, boy,” she said. “If they committed a crime, you are complicit. And you are telling me they attacked Mag and Albern for no reason?”
“I did nothing,” whined Pantu. “These ones shoved me out of the way before the fight began. I wanted to escape, but they were blocking the door.”
“That is true,” said Mag quickly. “He did not join these others in the attack, and only—”
“Enough from you,” said Yue, her face flushing. She spoke derisively to Pantu. “Your friends are dead, and you will not even speak in their defense. Why did you even truck with them, boy?”
Rather than cowering further, Pantu straightened and pointed at his own face. An angry bruise shone on his cheek, a few fingers beneath one bulging eye. “They were not my friends. They paid me, and I ran errands for them, but they were never grateful for my work. They were a bad lot, and I thank the sky that these strangers rid the town of them. We did not need them here any more than we need the vampire.”
“Hist!” cried Yue, knuckles going white as they gripped her club.
“Vampire?” I said. “What vampire?”
“Nothing,” said Yue. “Ignore him. He is a foolish boy.” She seized Pantu’s shoul
der and pulled him to her side, as though protecting him from Mag. “With the only living testimony on your side, I cannot hold you. But I am warning you now: you are no longer welcome here. Fetch what supplies you need, and then ride from Lan Shui with all haste. Trouble follows the two of you like a heavy storm, and I will not tolerate it. Now get out.”
“We still want to know why he was following us,” I said to Yue.
“I suggest you accustom yourselves to disappointment,” she replied.
“What was that talk of a vampire?” said Mag. “If this town is in danger—”
“I said it was none of your concern,” said Yue. “Fetch what you need, and go.”
“Yesterday you told us you did not want us to leave without speaking with you first,” I pointed out.
“Consider those orders changed,” said Yue. “If you are gone before the day’s end, it will not be too soon.”
We collected our weapons from Ashta and left the house. I did not glance back over my shoulder until we were several streets away. Finally I stepped to the side of the street, Mag beside me.
“Well, that was a near thing,” I said.
“Near indeed,” said Mag. “Not that I was in any great danger. I could have trounced those constables with my eyes closed. Though I can understand why you would be frightened.”
I glared at her for a long moment, and she met my gaze without flinching. But both of us could only last a few moments before our faces broke into grins, and we chuckled together.
“Sky above, I thought we were doomed when that boy stepped into the room,” I said. “I wonder what made him speak in our defense?”
“I would like to ask him,” said Mag. “And we should ask after the weremage, too, since he is the last person alive who might know anything about her.”
“Yet he is with Yue,” I said. “And I think we would be pressing our luck if we tried to seek him out again, after all the trouble we have raised today.”
“Agreed,” said Mag. “Home, then, or what passes for it.”
The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) Page 17