He nodded wordlessly and I left him. I stopped at my room before I left the Castel. From the false panel in my trunk I withdrew and strapped to my right hip a pouch of the Talion-made Xne'kal darts, and freshly coated each needle with a full dose of kutarai. I strapped spurs to my heels even though I would not ride to the Gallant Fox, then stole into the streets and smiled grimly when I realized no one at the Gallant Fox would find my costume the least bit amusing.
* * *
The Gallant Fox was nothing but a ramshackle two-story, weathered-wooden building. A tin-covered, wood-framed awning shielded the worn and warped boardwalk in front of it from harsh weather and moonlight. Boarded-over windows stared blindly down at the street, and I detected no silhouetted motion behind them. Pinpoints of yellow light poured through the cracks in the window coverings and around the wood-plank door. The twisted steps creaked as I climbed them to the boardwalk.
I crossed to the door and vaguely I wondered if they had Selia inside as well.
I knocked twice on the door and flicked fallen paint chips from the back of my hand. A gruff voice from the other side of the door barked, "Who is it?" I mumbled something, then knocked twice again. The challenge gained volume, as did my mumbling. I knocked a third time and took one step back from the door.
I heard the wooden bar scrape against rusty brackets. As the door opened just a crack, and freed a thin sliver of light to stab through the night, I kicked the door hard with the heel of my right foot. The door caught the man behind it in the forehead and bowled him over as it flew open. I burst through the doorway before he'd stopped rolling, and dropped my right hand into the dart pouch.
I looked up and spotted two crossbowmen on the second story balcony across the room from me. I ducked behind a balcony support pillar immediately to my left and launched one dart as they sighted in on me. Their bowstrings hummed like badly tuned mandolins and whipped quarrels forward. One splintered the wooden post by my head and the other burst through the door's upper panel behind me.
My first dart hit one archer in the shoulder, and I sped a second at his companion. The first archer dropped to his knees, and his thigh-stuck partner joined him a second later, but I'd turned away from them to deal with the two men waiting on either side of the open door. The one closest to me, a tall, gaunt, blond man, still recoiled from the bolt that hit the door, but the second had already drawn his sword and lunged at me.
I let my momentum carry me further to my right so his sword slipped just wide of my left flank. I brought my left knee up and smashed it into ribs. He groaned and doubled over. I hammered him to the ground with a left hand to the side of his head, then drew a dart and tossed it underhand into the gaunt man's stomach. His painful bellow dwindled and stopped as the poison sped into his body.
I turned again as he slumped to the floor behind me, but no one else offered any resistance. The man who'd opened the door sat up and rubbed at his head. He smeared blood across his brow, and swore.
Still beneath the balcony, I dropped to one knee beside him, grabbed his chin, and tilted his head up so I could look at the wound. "It will bleed, but you won't die from it." I tightened my grip and forced his head back until he couldn't swallow. "The wound may not kill you, but I will if you don't tell me immediately where you have Morai."
He looked over at the dusty, blocky bar. "Morai?" I called out. An excited thumping sound boomed from behind the bar.
I released the ruffian's chin and he rubbed at his throat. "Do not move." He nodded earnestly, so I threaded my way through the tangle of dirty tables and broken chairs and around behind the bar. Morai lay there trussed up with enough rope to hold even Jevin captive. I squatted quickly and cut him loose with my ryqril.
The thief wriggled free of the ropes and tore off the dirty rag they'd used to gag him. He scraped his tongue against his teeth and spat. "Yuck."
I smiled. "How did you get yourself taken?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. Someone learned I worked for Lord Nolan, and kidnapped me to attract your attention. The six of these guys were supposed to hold you..."
"Six?!" The word exploded from my lips as I heard my captive scramble to his feet and I stood. He darted toward the door, only to fly back in, unconscious, courtesy of a blow to the face from outside the tavern. Above him, on the balcony over the door, a third crossbowman rose from ambush and shot at me. In one motion I dove to my left and arced a dart at him.
His bolt ripped a ragged furrow across the bartop. My dart slammed into his chest and he sagged against the balcony railing. The rotten banister disintegrated with a loud crack and he flopped down to the common-room floor amid the rain of debris with a heavy thud.
"By the gods!" Count Patrick stared beyond the man he'd knocked back through the doorway at the bodies scattered around the room. "Nolan, you did this by yourself?"
I frowned angrily. "Yes. Why did you come here?"
The Princess, her coronation finery hidden beneath a dark blue cloak, swept past him. "He is here because I asked him to bring me here."
"No," I slammed my fist into the bar, "no, no, no! You shouldn't be here."
My reaction puzzled her. "Why not?"
I held my open hands out to her in supplication. "Because you are in danger here."
She looked at me for a second, then shook her head. "No, you cannot be one of them." She stared at me in disbelief. "Tell me now, Lord Nolan, that you are not one of the plotters from Sinjaria, or I'll have the guardsmen who escorted us here slay you where you stand."
I closed my eyes and almost laughed. "Morai, please tell the Princess who I am."
"Your Lord Nolan is a Justice, Your Highness."
Her laughter pealed through the room. "Lord Nolan, I think your costume has fooled him."
I stared her in the eyes. "He tells the truth."
That stopped her laughter, but she still did not believe.
"You may be a fine fighter, as these fallen men attest, but you are no Talion."
I closed my eyes again and brought my breathing and heartbeat under control. I reached within and forced my mind to touch the thing I'd exiled from my right palm. It felt as cold as ever, but answered my call willingly. I hesitated before I gave it the command freeing it to flood my palm with ebon lines.
I knew she was lost to me. Shortly Duke Vidor would ask her to marry him, and she would accept. I acknowledged the fact that I had no chance to love her; I'd hoped I could have remained her friend. But the deathmark on my palm would drive her too far from me for even that to be possible.
Still, there was no other way. I released the thing and it filled my palm with black ice.
I opened my eyes and held my palm out for her to see. "I am a Justice, and I am here to prevent your father's death."
Two guardsmen entered the room and took charge of the unconscious prisoners. An officer followed them and looked to the Count for instructions, but Patrick just turned and looked at me. "What should they do, Lord Nolan?"
I thought for a moment. Since they'd addressed Morai's note to Lord Nolan the chances were excellent that these men knew nothing about the nekkeht. If they'd meant to kill me I would have been attacked on the street, and Morai would not have been left alive. I was almost certain his abduction and this ambush had nothing to do with the nekkeht plot; it probably stemmed from someone planning to hold me and use me later as the power factions settled out after the King's death.
I frowned. "Take them to the nearest jail and hold them apart from other prisoners. Search this place and bring all documents you find to the Castel without reading them."
The officer looked at Patrick, and the Count nodded.
"And Sergeant," I added, "use all your men. We will escort Her Highness back to the Castel."
Morai, strapping on his hastily recovered swordbelt, Count Patrick and the Princess followed me out into the cobblestone street without saying a word. I waited until we were fully clear of the guards, and I checked to make sure the Sergeant had not assigned
someone to follow discretely before I turned to speak.
The Princess raised her hand to my mouth and stopped me. "Why did you keep your identity a secret?" Betrayal played through her eyes. "You told a common ruffian who you were."
I ignored Morai's reaction to being classed as a common ruffian and gently shook my head as her hand fell away. "Do not imagine, either of you, that I distrusted you. My instructions were to reveal my identity as needed—even Captain Herman does not know who I am." That mollified the Princess, and the Count nodded with comprehension. "As for Morai, ah, he is the Morai from Selia's song, and both of them already knew who I was."
I nodded toward the bandit. "Morai has been gathering information for me so I can try to puzzle out who is behind the plot to kill your father." I turned to Morai. "Is the situation still tense and set for tonight?"
Morai nodded and the purple shadows falling on one half of his face made his expression very grim. "The factions are waiting, and they'll all fall upon each other when just one takes some sort of action."
Count Patrick frowned. "You know there is a plot to kill King Tirrell, but you do not know who is behind it?"
I nodded my head as we continued slowly toward the Castel. "According to Morai, every Sinjarian noble has purchased an army of mercenaries with Rimahasti gold. The Hamisian nobles have their house troops in town for the coronation disguised as peasants." I opened my hands, spread my arms, and shrugged. "Everyone is convinced something will happen, and they're all ready to profit from it, but we can't find the gloved hand with the dagger in it." I frowned with frustration. "Someone will strike because they're all caught up in enough seditious schemes to earn each and every one of them a noose."
The Princess laughed. "Not after midnight."
A cold pang ripped through my stomach. At midnight the assassin would strike, but I realized the Princess did not know that. "What do you mean by that, Your Highness?"
She smiled with relief. "Tonight, at midnight, my father and I will sign an amnesty for all the plotters and truly banish evil from the kingdom! That's what I wanted you to be at so you could witness it." She turned to the Count, who looked stunned by the news. "I am sorry, Patrick, but my father only wanted the witnesses to know before the announcement was made during the unmasking." She turned back to me. "Because you were from Sinjaria, and most of the treasonous lords are likely to be Sinjarian, I wanted you as my witness."
Morai laughed aloud. "That neatly dissolves the only thing holding most of these conspiracies together! Without the threat of betrayal everyone can pull out of a very risky business." Morai slapped me on the back. "Well, Talion, that knocks the spokes out of the rebellion wheel."
I stopped. "Damn, Morai, we've been looking at all the spokes for the key, but we need to look at the hub. Who's the one person talking to every faction in this madness?"
Count Patrick laughed, "Duke Vidor? Impossible. He's a tool!"
Ice flushed through my guts. "A tool is just a tool, unless it does the job by itself."
"No!" The Princess went pale. "My father asked Duke Vidor to be his witness...."
I grabbed the Princess by her arms. "Where were you to sign the papers?"
"In my father's study in the Wolf Tower."
I looked up beyond her and saw the dark silhouette of the tower against the cliffs behind it. One pale yellow light burned in the highest level. The Wolf Moon hung above the tower itself and I knew we did not have much time.
I turned to Morai. "You climbed the cliffs to enter the Castel that first night I found you?"
He nodded and pointed toward the cliff. "Beyond the graveyard, next to the old crypt entrance, there's a narrow crack in the rock that goes up far enough to reach a ledge. From there the walk is simple."
The four of us cut south along a narrow street that twisted its way up toward the overgrown cemetery. The Princess pulled off her slippers and held the hem of her gown up so she could run through the streets with us. Morai led our band, and quickly plied his skills on the cemetery gate's lock. The gate opened with a creak—we raced through it and rounded a hillock built of paupers' graves.
I led the party and I stopped instantly. The massive granite slab sealing the crypts had been torn aside and leaned against the cliff face like a wooden door handing from warped hinges. Broken vines hung like thick ropes silhouetted by the light glowing from within the tomb.
I shook my head. Only the nekkeht could have opened the crypt that way. I held my left hand out to stop the others. "Go no further."
Morai took one look at the crypt and drew his sword.
I shook my head. "Listen, all three of you." I pointed to the crypt. "There's something in there I have to stop, and I have to do it alone. I have to use this on it." I showed them my right palm.
The three of them nodded and I continued. "You three must hurry back to the Castel. Get to the King and get him out of the tower. Get him away quickly, don't trust anyone, and don't look back." I turned to Morai. "If you don't see me by morning, send a message to Talianna, and remember that word."
Morai nodded. "Drijen."
A voice rang out from the crypt. "Come, Talion, I wait for you. Tell your friends to hurry off on their tasks because it will do them no good." The voice trailed off into laughter and the Princess looked visibly shaken by it.
My eyes narrowed. "And burn every Lurker you see."
I stepped toward the crypt, but the Princess grabbed my shoulder. "Lord Nolan, Talion, you can't go in there. It'll kill you."
I took her hand in mine and kissed it. I remembered what His Excellency had told me so many years before. "It's better I die to destroy it than let it return the world to the days of the Shattering." I pulled Prince Uriah's ring from my finger and closed her hand around it. "Remember me as your Champion."
I stepped away and Count Patrick dragged the Princess back. Leaden feet carried me forward, but I felt no fear. I knew I was dead, the Goddess Shudath had told me as much. Perhaps she had been right, perhaps I'd die regretting my actions, because my grandmother would have relished King Tirrell's death. In that way I would be defeated by the dead, but that did not matter to me.
I was a Justice. Justice was my gift to the world. I had no other task, and could have no nobler purpose. Acknowledging myself already dead, I summoned my tsincaat and entered the Hamisian royal tombs to slay a creature that could not die.
* * *
I cautiously stepped into the crypt's antechamber and marveled at the lack of decay. Though faded by the years, the colors used on the wall murals still gave life to the artwork. The ornate stonework around the archway into the tombs themselves still had crisp lines and maintained the strength the artist first charged it with. It gladdened my heart to see such beautiful artistry before I died.
The pristine interior of the large crypt room mocked the neglected cemetery behind me. Niches carved high in the walls ringed the whole rectangular chamber. Whereas once they had glowed with magic flames honoring the dead, now they possessed only the jaundiced light of the thick, black candles the nekkeht had set burning within them. Back on the left side, in the farthest distant corner, I saw the blackened archway that led up through the valley wall to the Wolf Tower, and enough dirt carpeted the ground near it to suggest it had been cleared to permit passage between the Castel and the crypts.
The central chamber lay broader than it did deep and rose to a height of fourteen feet above the floor. A forest of evenly spaced pillars blossomed upward to support the vaulted ceiling. All across the floor, in an orderly pattern that terminated two-thirds of the way through the chamber, stone coffins rested upon tall biers. The rulers' stone effigies graced their coffin lids and lay staring blindly at the mountain above them.
The nekkeht sat and meditated in the very center of the chamber. His left eye, the one surrounded by the black-diamond tattoo, popped open. Thinning black hair did its best to cover a head too large for the gaunt body supporting it. A small man, he looked more like a scarecrow than a human
being.
He smiled and spread his hands as if welcoming me to his home. "I am Gyasi ra Tingis, Talion. In these humble and forgotten environs I have waited a long time for you."
I kept my tsincaat before me and walked along until only a dozen feet separated us. I passed by the tombs of a hundred Kings and Queens of Hamis and, in doing so, I felt strangely calm. It struck me that no defender of the royal bloodline could fail amid these coffins.
I looked down upon the nekkeht. "I am a Justice. I, too, have waited long for our meeting."
Slowly and easily the Lurker rose from his cross-legged position without touching his hands to the ground. "This tomb is a dreary hidey-hole, but, for an evening, it isn't that oppressive. It certainly offers more diversions than I've had available so far in this endeavor. While waiting for you I did find a way to amuse myself, however." He swept his right hand around his head with a flourish and the candles surrounding us brightened. "I hope you do not mind my decorations."
I noticed the back of my left hand itched, but I attached no importance to it. "They do not concern me. I am here to destroy you."
The nekkeht giggled, pirouetted, and leaped deeper into the crypts. His supernaturally enhanced jump carried him away from me with blurred speed. He landed on a sarcophagus, turned, and squatted like a gargoyle on top of it. He clung to the stonework like a squirrel on a tree and leered at me, but before he could taunt me with some childish comment, the dart I'd flung after him hit his right shoulder.
He snarled and ripped the dart free. "Ha! You expect this toy to stop me?" He tightened his left hand around it and I heard it crack. His hand opened and the splinters dropped away, but, as his right hand writhed at them, they burst into flame before they ever hit the floor. "Oh, Talion, your death will be my pleasure."
He sprang from the coffin like a frog, vaulted off the granite floor and tackled me. I'd half twisted to my left to avoid the full impact, but he battered me down and knocked the wind out of me just the same. We rolled and I shoved him off. He flew and slammed into a bier, but didn't even notice the collision.
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