“Nothing,” I said. “Just what I said.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“No one is asking you to,” I answered, closing my eyes again.
She paused, turned, and, by the sound of her heels on the stone, I judged that she was leaving. The door closed firmly. Then she came back and knelt beside me.
“I don’t believe it,” she repeated. “This has all the marks of a Hawthorne scam and I will not be taken in by it. Why are you here? What is going on? What do you know?”
I was going to ignore her questions, but the last one sounded odd. I looked at her and saw something similarly odd in her face. There was an anxiety there which had been in her voice when she first came in: an anxiety which had replaced the hatred with which she had been brimming when last we met. I hauled myself onto my elbows painfully and looked at her. “What do I know?” I repeated. “What do you mean?”
She hesitated, shot a hasty look at the door, and lowered her face toward mine as if she was going to kiss me. When she spoke, her voice was almost inaudible, and halting, as if she was finding each word, each thought, as she spoke. “I feel that something is not right here. And you feel it, too-no, you know it. Since you left, Garnet and I have been, well, ignored, it seems. Everyone-I mean everyone-seems to have forgotten us. Garnet is happy. He rides against the goblins every day. I am a court lady and I do what they do, though not as well as they do it. Sorrail. . I have barely seen Sorrail since you left, and when we meet at court he treats me exactly as everyone else. But it’s more than that. I think. . there is something more, something much bigger.
“The people here don’t seem real. Different people have told me the same stories, exactly the same, word for word, and no one reacts. I have heard two different people in a group recite the same pieces of poetry and no one comments. It isn’t just politeness; it’s as if they don’t remember. They are like empty shells, going through the same actions day after day. The only thing they show any real passion for is their war against the goblins. I know the goblins are terrible, but their passion. . it doesn’t make sense to me. And when you ask about it, you get the same stories repeated verbatim. Like what they have done to you now: I don’t understand it. For a while, before you left, I thought I did. But that was when I was more like them-when I was becoming one of them.”
She paused, glanced over her shoulder again, and then breathed, “I also feel watched. Kind of like when we were in Harvest. I do not know by who, but there is someone or something here in the city trying to reach me: a mind stretching out to mine. I feel very sure that I do not want it to find me. I. . I fear it may have already found Garnet.”
Not just a pretty face, Renthrette. Still, I wasn’t sure, but then she paused and spoke again.
“Back in the mountains,” she said, “the night this all began, you told a story about a girl whose family was attacked by Empire soldiers. Remember?”
I winced at the recollection and nodded fractionally.
“I think you owe me another story,” she said.
I told her everything. It might not have been wise, and I had been advised against it, but I trusted her-or, at least, I trusted my gut feeling that she wasn’t that good an actress. Anyhow, I found it hard to believe that she had been selected to wheedle the truth out of me, given the terms on which we had parted. No, the very fact that there had been no love lost between us made me take her revelations seriously. There was also a part of me which suspected that an agent of the “fair folk” would not be able to articulate the oddities of their city quite so baldly; they certainly didn’t seem too self-aware when cheerfully recounting by heart the history of some notched goblin-crushing weapon. And if they could identify the inconsistencies in their own tales, I doubted they’d announce them to Renthrette, even as part of some larger ruse.
I have to say that most of these carefully thought out justifications of my actions came to me after I had already confessed all to Renthrette, but I like to think that I had already recognized them intuitively. In fact, it probably had more to do with Renthrette’s earnest face, bent so close to mine that I could feel the breath from her lips on my skin, but why split hairs? In any event, I told her: quickly, in a whisper, and with one eye on the door, but I told her everything.
If it had not done so already, her allegiance switched in a heartbeat. “And they are all alive!” she gasped, joy breaking out all over her. “Lisha and Orgos and Mithos?”
“Yes. But be quiet! Part of the story I told Sorrail is true. There is a large Stehnite force mustering in the forest, but they know they can’t assault the city. They built Phasdreille, after all, and they know that storming the main gate will get them nowhere. The breach in the walls is largely blocked, but it is still their best chance of getting in. Sorrail and the rest of them know this, of course, and will have it heavily defended. The only chance for the Stehnites is to significantly reduce or distract that guard. That, I’m afraid, is the task dumped on me, and because I didn’t want it in the first place, I expect you to help. I know that makes no sense, but people in pain are permitted to abandon logic. If I’m in, you’re in.”
“We can’t do it alone.”
“We won’t have to, supposedly,” I said ruefully. Part of me had hoped she would denounce the plan as foolhardy, in which case I could have abandoned it and still say I’d tried. I should have known better.
“So what’s the plan?” she asked, a flicker of animation coming into her eyes.
I looked at her, sighing pointedly. She misread the gesture as being a symptom of my discomfort, and began pushing pillows under my painfully bruised back. I began talking, hoping to stop her ministrations before she did real damage. “Orgos and a company of Stehnites-the people you call goblins-are making their way to a secret entrance into the city. It is narrow and can only be opened from the inside, but it seems that the ‘fair folk,’ or whatever we’re supposed to call them now-the Arak Drül, I suppose-are unaware of it. We have to let them in. If the king and his ‘fair’ friends do know of the entrance, we will find out very quickly, I would think, but Orgos assures me that all will be well. So that’s that settled.”
“Where is this entrance?”
“There is an abandoned Stehnite necropolis beneath the city-”
“A what?”
“A goblin cemetery. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? A real holiday jaunt. Apparently we are supposed to go there-limp, in my case-and find some tomb which is actually the entrance to a tunnel under and out of the city. Having avoided being seen by the inevitable legions of guards with the aid of some device they seem to have forgotten to pass on to me, we then open the tomb, greet our companions warmly, and destroy the forces of darkness. Or, in this case, light. ‘And be home in time for supper,’ I think the original orders read,” I added dryly. I had already gone through a pretty bleak time with Sorrail and his men, and the plan that the Stehnite chieftains had produced, with Mithos and the others nodding gravely in the wings, now seemed an even bigger death trap than it had at the time.
“Can you stand?” asked Renthrette.
“I suspect so,” I replied miserably, “but I choose not to.”
“Come on. We have work to do.”
She slid the door bolt back and had her hand on the handle when the door exploded inward, throwing her heavily against the wall. I rolled panic-stricken from my couch as a man stepped into the room. He was hooded, but his posture somehow conveyed both strength and agility. It also seemed familiar. When he spoke, all doubt in my mind vanished. The assassin from the alley had caught up with me as he had promised. “Well, Mr. Hawthorne. So nice to see you again. And in the company of the Lady Renthrette, I see. Sorrail will be shocked.”
Renthrette had fallen facedown, but she was turning over quickly and her hand was fumbling for her dagger. He kicked at her wrist, a single, explosive snap that sent the knife skipping across the floor. I made a movement toward him, but he turned easily, ready for me, idly remarking to the prone Renthret
te, “How quickly you people change allegiances.”
“And what side would you have us on?” I demanded, stalling.
“No side,” he remarked simply. “I want you dead.”
A bit of a conversation killer, a remark like that, and maybe not just conversation. He passed his right hand across his chest and his fingers flexed oddly, like a magician performing a sleight-of-hand trick. Then he doffed his hood with his left hand, revealing the thin, balding features of Lord Gaspar, and drew his right arm back close to his head.
Part of me wasn’t surprised, not because I had suspected Gaspar of being a highly proficient murderer, but because I hadn’t liked him much. Not much of an insight, I know, but enough to make my next action a tiny bit more efficient. I lunged at him headfirst before the missile could leave his poised hand, crunching into his midriff just below his ribs. He gasped and fell back, but he was surprised more than winded, and his recovery was virtually instantaneous. The guards had, of course, taken my weapons-not that I could fight an assassin on anything like even terms in this condition if I’d had an entire armory to select from. He stepped back from me and I barely stopped myself from falling facedown. Renthrette was gathering herself into a crouch by my side, but he watched her from his place by the door and seemed smugly unconcerned. In his right hand he now brandished a length of fine chain which ended in a cluster of thin spines and razor blades. He was whirling it round faster and faster like a lasso, so that it whined thinly in the air.
“Just a scratch, Mr. Hawthorne,” he smiled, “that’s all it will take. One skill we have perfected since the time of the first goblin wars is the art of poison. This is a distillate from Briesh root. Very fast, very painful.”
He smiled again. His skin seemed to stretch transparent over his skull and his deepset eyes twinkled like polished stones. The pitch of the sound rose as he spun his weapon faster and advanced upon us.
Renthrette and I shrank back. He had raised the chain so that the weapon hummed like a swarm of bees over his head, and now he backed us into the cold stone wall. I spared a glance at Renthrette; she was standing now, straining back to stay out of the range of the poisoned blades that cut the air in front of our faces, but her jaw was set and resolute. For a moment my heart leaped, thinking she had a plan and was on the edge of action, but then I saw the truth: She was steeling herself for death. The realization brought a thin yelp of terror to my lips and she turned quickly to look at me, perhaps hoping to see an idea in my face, a promise that Reliable Will, Hawthorne the Resourceful, had one more trick up his sleeve. I checked my sleeves. Nothing. Gaspar took another step toward us and his mouth buckled into a small and satisfied smile. This time the Pale Claw would have their way.
Suddenly the door behind Gaspar opened inward and a sentry armed with towels and sponges stepped in. It took a second for him to react, but his hand went instinctively to his sword. Gaspar swung the chain wildly at the astonished guard, who raised one thoughtless arm to protect himself. A cut opened up along the edge of his wrist and he fell back clutching it. Gaspar turned hurriedly to us again but he was already off balance and Renthrette had moved sideways. Gaspar let out a few more inches of chain and spun the weapon faster. Renthrette sucked her breath in and slid down the wall toward the door. Gaspar paid out more chain and the deadly circle expanded. I wondered if I could time a lunge at him between the passes of the poisoned razors, but I felt the wind of it on my chest, heard it like some lethal mosquito in my ear, and my courage failed me. Renthrette, though, moved again, edging toward the still-open door. Gaspar grimly let out a few more inches of chain. Almost immediately there was a sharp thud and, in the silence that followed, a quavering tone, like the fading end of a bell’s peal. The needles and blades of Gaspar’s weapon had bitten hard into the wood of the open door.
Renthrette dived, rolled, and came up with her dagger. In about the same instant, Gaspar seized a long knife from his tunic and slashed at the air to keep her at bay. I, not realizing that Gaspar’s lethal spinning toy was out of commission, had dropped to the floor with a gasp of panic, which was quickly succeeded by a squawk of pain as I landed awkwardly on my elbow. Gaspar, perceiving this as an indication of attack, wheeled to faced me. As he did so, Renthrette lunged meticulously with her dagger, low and hard, held it for a moment, and then drew it out, bloody. Gaspar stood paralyzed and his eyes showed first shock, then pain, then nothing. He fell heavily forward.
The sentry was already dead. Whatever Gaspar’s other virtues, he hadn’t lied about the speed of his venom.
“Shouldn’t we be moving?” said Renthrette, wiping her knife clean. She was breathing heavier than normal, but otherwise she might have been suggesting that we leave a rather dull party.
“What?” I gasped, hardly able to speak.
“Don’t we have a job to do?” she demanded, her blue eyes transferring from the now-spotless dagger to my face with a hint of impatience.
“Can I have a moment to recover?” I sputtered, irritably. It had been intended as a rhetorical question, but Renthrette had never quite learned to spot them.
“Why?” she demanded. “We aren’t hurt.”
“I am!” I riposted. “Still. And someone just tried to kill us!”
“Tried,” she said, “and failed. So let’s go.”
“Where to?”
“You tell me,” she answered, “it’s your show.”
My show. I considered that, uncertain which was worse: the fact that I was indeed responsible for getting the Stehnites into the city, or the fact that Renthrette considered such an operation, a mission not so much audacious in its daring as suicidal, to be a “show.” Tough call.
“We’d better move quickly,” said Renthrette. “If Gaspar was one of the Pale Claw assassins you mentioned, then who knows who will be after us now.”
“They’ll all be after us once they find his body,” I said, “Pale Claw or not. What was Gaspar?”
“Chief Justice,” said Renthrette, bleakly.
“I thought it was something like that. Whether Sorrail and the king shared his politics seems rather immaterial, don’t you think? I wasn’t especially appreciated to begin with, and with the murder of one of their chief ministers under my belt I think we can rest assured that my popularity has entered a decline. Well, I don’t intend to wait around for them to find us.”
“Good,” said Renthrette. “I was beginning to wonder.”
“Do you have that oil lamp with you?”
“Always,” she said, as if I’d asked her if the sun was strictly a daytime thing.
We considered hiding Gaspar’s body to buy us some time, but we couldn’t conceal both Gaspar and the sentry under the small half-bed, and that was the only piece of furniture in the room. We considered locking them together as if they had killed each other, but they were too heavy, and I doubted it would help. Finally, we did what we did best: we ran.
There had been no point in my bringing either weapon or disguise into the city since the guards would confiscate them, so I was in the intriguing position of being totally recognizable and unable to defend myself. Renthrette may, for the moment, go where she pleased, but my unwelcome and beaten face would certainly excite inquiry. I didn’t know what would be best: to walk brazenly down the palace’s long echoing corridors, to skulk in the shadows, or just to sprint until my lungs exploded.
Renthrette led with a brisk walking pace that looked like she was going somewhere, and I scuttered behind in a kind of jog that looked like nothing of the kind. We passed a sentry getting a dressing down from his corporal for a dirty tunic. As we got clear, Renthrette muttered out of the side of her mouth, “Where are we going?”
“To the wine cellars.”
She almost broke stride and shot me a look that challenged me to say anything about feeling like a drink. Instead, she said, “The fair folk don’t drink wine.”
“I know,” I said, “but the Stehnites did.”
“Stehnites?”
“Go
blins.”
“Right. So what do we call the ‘fair folk’?”
“I told you,” I said. “The Arak Drül. That’s what the er. . Stehnites call them. Deadly Dull, might be a good translation.”
“And where are these cellars?”
“Under the kitchen that serves the main banqueting hall.”
“That’s right by the main garrison,” Renthrette exclaimed.
“Yes. Keep walking.”
“It’s where the palace guardhouse is and where the king’s elite troops live.”
“Yes.”
“We have as much chance of getting out of there alive as we do of walking on water.”
“About that: yes,” I agreed. “And it looks like we’re about to get our feet wet.”
A company of six soldiers and an officer had just rounded the corner and clearly intended to speak to us. “Lady Renthrette,” began the officer, “where are you taking Mr. Hawthorne?”
Renthrette looked at me blankly and opened her mouth like a large carp.
“I was hungry,” I inserted. “After a hard day of getting lumps kicked out of me by your worthy men, one gets a little peckish.”
“So I was taking him to the kitchens,” said Renthrette, throwing the carp back.
“I’m sure something could have been ordered for Mr. Hawthorne in his room,” said the officer.
“I’d just as soon stretch my legs,” I said weakly.
“I mean,” said the officer with a labored earnestness, “that though you are presently our. . guest, you should probably stay in your room until we get express word from Sorrail or one of the other duty officers.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “The moment I’ve eaten, I’ll go right back to my room and stay there.”
“No, sir,” began the officer, “I’m afraid. .”
“Now you listen to me,” I snapped, raising my voice, “I’ve had just about as much of this as I can stand. I came here as a witness to aid your army and was set upon by your thugs. Now all I ask is something to offset my hunger and rebuild the strength your troops knocked out of me.”
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