by A Van Wyck
“I cannot say that I do.”
Glee pulsed quietly through Mattanuy’s veins. “Oh?” He made a show of consulting his notes. “Marco dei Toriam. Is this not the same boy the keeper personally came to collect from another of your crime scenes just a few bells later?”
The commander was silent for a moment.
“I’m afraid I don’t remember. I deal with crime and deaths every day. One becomes very much like another.”
“Allow me to remind you,” Mattanuy offered, paging through the sheaves of his folder. “A shipping clerk reported an assault in Lower Dockside along Tapturn Street. On arriving, watch officers found two adult males mauled to death by feral dogs, one street urchin dead of a broken neck and one survivor – an unnamed youth.” He peered at the commander over his spectacles. “Was this ‘unnamed youth’ not the very same boy who earlier accompanied you to the scene of Meum’s crime?”
The commander showed no surprise at the depth of Mattanuy’s knowledge. Greyson knew his watchmen were not immune to the glint of Inquisition coin. The cunningly bland report he had filed on the mauling might have gone undiscovered without word of mouth to lead Mattanuy to it.
“It is possible. I do not recall.”
“But you do recall that Keeper Justin arrived, in person, to collect him.”
“The keeper was consulting with me on the manner in which the men had died. I had no interest in what he did after that.”
“And you did not interview the only witness to this gruesome event?”
“If such interview is not included in my report,” the commander inclined his head toward the inquisitor’s folder, “then no.”
“That is a little – careless – is it not?” Mattanuy injected a hint of reprimand to his tone.
The commander spread his hands helplessly. “Death by dog attack is not murder, merely an unfortunate accident. The watch’s efforts are better spent pursuing criminals.” The commander rose to his feet. “If you have no further questions, Inquisitor, I fear my attention is needed elsewhere.”
Mattanuy closed his folder with a snap and a smile. He rose to his feet. “Thank you very much for your time, Commander. It has been most enlightening. I’ll see myself out.” He walked unhurriedly to the door.
“Oh, just one last thing,” he said, his hand on the door latch. He halfway turned to regard the impassive commander. “Who determined that the cause of death of the two men was a dog attack…?”
“The keeper and I concurred on that point, I believe.”
“Of course. Good day to you, commander.”
The cacophony of the Watch House washed over him as he made his way down the stairs, unable to distract from the orderly composition taking shape in his mind.
A ritual murderer, emptied of his every animal whim. An animal intent on murder and a single survivor. And linking the two, with all his mental and magical power, the man who would change the Empire. Justin Wisenpraal. Aided by the City Watch.
Mattanuy climbed into his waiting carriage, deep in thought, and ordered the driver back to the Temple. He needed his books.
Who are you, Marco dei Toriam? And how are you important to the keeper’s schemes?
* * *
He walked blearily back to his tent. He didn’t miss the crunch of ice under his feet. The pass crossing had been worse than he’d expected and not so bad as the drivers had feared. The snow had been no more than knee deep at the worst, provided you avoided the drifts, and they’d made good time. They’d had snow in the Imperial city once, one abominably chill winter’s day. He recalled it as being a lot of fun. He and Rikkel and Uri and Peck had thrown snowballs at the girls and made snowmen that had melted by morning. That was well before his going to Clatter Court. Somehow, he didn’t remember it as being so cold then. Perhaps you got different kinds of snow. Snow that came to the city must be more civilized than the feral kind you got out here. The snow here had teeth and wasn’t afraid to use them. He shivered, drawing his over robe tighter about himself and missing the warmth of the keeper’s carriage he had so recently left.
Inspired by the stories swapped by the masha’na, he’d been trying to wheedle some histories of the Empire’s great martial heroes out of the keeper. Their discussion had dragged on into the early morning and the keeper had firmly turned him out, despite his protests, a few moments ago. Drawing his shoulders up against the chill, he cast about at the darkened forest nervously. They were officially in Renali territory now. It wasn’t the same night sounds he’d become used to. No monkeys chirred from the trees. No bats flapped silently above. The crickets played a different tune. Even the air smelled different. They were definitely in the Kingdom of Lakes now. He just hoped it knew they came in peace.
He distracted himself from the cold by thinking of some of the interesting facts he’d gotten out of the keeper. There had been some surprises. Who would have thought that general Yon Kama, one of the greatest military minds in the Empire’s history, had been a drunk who’d drowned in the knee deep fishpond inside his own courtyard? Or that the rebel, Lillin Darkheart, who’d almost overthrown the then-Emperor, had been the man’s sister? He wondered wryly if everyone knew as much or whether it was just Keeper Justin.
His breath plumed white before him and he stuffed his hands in his armpits, thinking. They were more than halfway now. It was a shorter distance between the mountains and the Renali capital than between the mountains and Tellar. That struck a melancholy chord with him. Despite all the hardship and the teasing and the grumbling and the worrying... this was the greatest adventure he’d ever had and he didn’t want it to be over. He’d found in the caravan what he’d never thought to find outside the Temple. Community. Once they reached their destination, that community would be split apart, everyone relegated to their predefined roles. His and the keeper’s time would become strictly regulated, every waking bell filled with the minutia of day to day politics. He feared the change that might bring to their relationship. He was loathe to share the priest’s attention with anyone. And he was somewhat intimidated by his own prescribed role in what was to come. The language wasn’t a problem. He was good at languages. He’d already had a smattering of Renali before and had become quite fluent under the keeper’s tutorship. And who didn’t speak Common these days? It was everything else he worried about. Despite all the keeper’s instruction, he wasn’t a diplomat. He was used to dealing with priests, not ministers and royalty. He flexed his writing hand. His speed writing was really coming along. If he was going to be the priest’s scribe, he was going to do it right. Just so long as no one asked him to work any complicated numbers. The keeper’s jest that he also fulfill the role of bodyguard brought a smile to his face.
He shook his head roughly and breathed on his hands before shoving them back under his arms. He consoled himself with the thought that the keeper wouldn’t have brought him along if he wasn’t up to the task. But then, he thought as he navigated by the dubious glow of dampened cooking fires, the keeper’s assessment of his abilities and his own did not always coincide. The keeper tended to err on the generous side.
He found himself hoping one of the wagons would throw a wheel or get stuck in the mud again on the morrow, delaying the journey just a bit longer. Just last week, one of the cooking wagons had–
The scream tore the night in two. He stumbled, gasping down a huge breath of deathly cold air. The scream had come from the opposite end of the camp where the women’s tents were pitched.Wood banged as the wagon on his left’s hatch slammed open. A barefooted man in a nightshirt jumped down.
“What’s going on, Bumble?” the man said, spotting him. “Was that a scream just now?”
A plump woman, her nightcap askew, stuck her head out of the wagon.
“What is it, Edgin?”
“I don’t know, wife. Best stay inside until I–”
From the dark behind Edgin the baker burst a horse at full gallop, on its back a helmed figure swinging a mace. It happened in an instant. There
was a sound like a bag of flour hitting the floor. Edgin’s head collapsed beneath the blow and his body smacked to the ground as the charging horse shouldered it aside.
He froze, mouth wide in shock, as the dark rider bore down on him, the windmilling mace whistling as its flanges bit the air between them. The horse seemed to jump at him, filling his vision.
The scream of terror was still only rising in the throat of Edgin’s widow.
The mace whirled on its upswing, speeding at his face.
He backpedaled, instinctively throwing his arms up between himself and the stained metal.Something snagged his heel and his trembling knees crumpled beneath him. He was falling. He watched stupidly, unable to blink, as blood spurted, the tip of a flange tearing a furrow of flesh from his raised forearm, battering it aside. The ground knocked the breath out of him and he was driven into it doubly, bouncing slightly as a hard hind hoof took cloth and skin from his shoulder before clipping his brow. His head pounded with a single drumbeat. The dark rider rode over him and was gone, away into the camp... Edgin’s widow was screaming… Screaming… Competing with the ringing in his ears. He lay dazed. For a terrifying moment, he was lying in the wreckage of a scaffold, staring up at the stars from the bottom of an alley.
The vehemence of the denial galvanized him, the urge to flee overriding both pain and disorientation and he sat up with a jerk. Holding his bleeding arm tightly to his chest, he pushed himself to his feet, stumbling. Edgin’s widow had jumped down from the wagon and crouched by her murdered husband’s side, frantically shaking him by the shoulder as if he would wake. Marco stared dumbly, a pounding in the back of his head. The woman was mewling.
Then who was screaming?
His thoughts sluggish and disjointed, he stumbled off, an urge to be away driving his unsteady steps. A ground hugging mist had risen. It coiled about his ankles like something alive, slowing him. Colors bled into it, rendering everything before his eyes in shades of grey. Screams, sounding tinny and far off, echoed from amid the white banks. Unsteadily, he struggled through it, clutching his bleeding arm.
Faceless figures, no more than darker smudges against the fogbank, flitted past him in a panic. The slow mist reached after their disappearing shapes with ghostly fingers, the only evidence of their passage.
A cluster of tents had caught fire, the flames dull and lackluster through his dimmed vision. Its heat pushed at the enveloping mist. The dark rider and his horse cavorted among the flames, his mace writhing with unholy fire.
Marco blinked. His head was clearing. The rider, made hazy by the heat of the flames, rode down the opposite side of the row of tents, touching the torch he held to them. A bowstring twanged nearby. The rider toppled over the cantle of his saddle, legs scything. The horse reared and galloped off into the night.
Finch appeared at his side, shoving him roughly in the direction of the forest. He stumbled.
“Grab however many you can and get under cover,” the slight masha’na commanded, fitting another arrow to his string. And then he darted away into the mist and was instantly swallowed.
The screams were suddenly not distant anymore. He was among others. And their panic was infectious. People scattered, yelling their terror, as one of Chapter Master Bulgaron’s guards appeared, trading vicious sword blows with one of the attackers on foot.
He’d never seen a real fight before. Not a life and death one. The combatants seemed unreal as they drove one another across his path, sparing no attention for anything but each other. Grunting and grimacing, they disappeared between the rows of tents, locked in their duel.
Gather however many you can, the masha’na’s order came back to him. Would they be any safer in the forest? He cast about, taking in the many fires that were blazing to life all over camp. The shadows of mounted figures, enlarged and distorted by the enshrouding mist, flitted between them.
At the very least, they’d be harder to see among the trees.
People were bumping into him now, running every which way. But no one paid any attention to a bumbling boy’s yelling.
“This way! Follow me! We have to get to the trees!”
He tried grabbing a handful of shirt but the panicked drover lashed out at the sudden contact. He snatched his injured arm back as the man fled. Someone bumped into him from behind and he almost fell.
As he righted himself, a full throated, terrified scream was loosed virtually on top of him and he spun. He did not at first recognize the older girl who came pelting out of the mist, fleet as a deer. But then, he’d never seen her with her face distorted in terror. The mist spat out a dark rider right behind her, bearing down on her at a gallop. She should have cut in among the tents and wagons where a horse couldn’t readily follow. But in the open, even running full out with both hands full of hiked up nightgown, she never had a chance.
The mist billowed around her ankles like the frill of a ball gown and her long braid whipped from side to side. The rider’s sword licked out. Her fleet footedness fled like a string-cut puppet’s. She catapulted into him and they went down together as the rider blew past.
He’d caught her automatically and they hit the ground hard, skidding to a stop side by side. She was alive, her wide eyes were filled with terrible awareness. He clapped a hand to her neck. Blood welled thickly between his fingers. The wound was not so much a gash as a gulley, it painted his hand and arm in an instant. Her wide eyes, so close to his, held him captive. She tried desperately to draw another breath through her ruined throat.
Hopeless panic overwhelmed him.
“Somebody, help!” he screamed, unable to look away from her.
One of her pale fingered hands trembled up to her gushing neck. He was aware of her other hand clutched in his and he squeezed tightly.
Her throat bobbed with agonized swallowing motions. Blood leaked from the corner of her mouth as she struggled to speak.
Oh, holy Helia, he needed to do something!
“You’rer going to be alright,” he sobbed the words, knowing he was lying. “You’re going to be–”
Her hand grew limp in his. Life fell away from her eyes, fleeing her blood spattered face.
The words of reassurance died in his throat.
He lay in the dirt with the dead girl, her blood a spreading stain around them, unable to look away. His airways drew closed, refusing to draw the breath she couldn’t. He didn’t know her. Had never spoken to her. Only seen her a handful of times. She might have been part of the cooking staff or one of the ambassador’s many attendants. He hadn’t even known her name.
Her blood clung thickly to his face. He could taste its copper tang on his lips. He swallowed hard, feeling it sink roots down to his stomach. Muscles clenched in protests as it kindled a fire there.
Her eyes were brown. Not green. Her hair was dark, not red. She had a fair complexion with not a sign of a freckle anywhere. It didn’t matter. The fire spread from his stomach, crawling along his veins. Suddenly – absurdly – calm, he let the fire pull him to his feet, surveying the area. Before, he’d been too befuddled to know where he was going. Now he saw he’d fallen not far from his tent. With purposeful strides, he covered the short distance and reached an arm into its small confines. His fingers closed around his seirin. The weighted wood balanced comfortably in his grip. The leather wrap welcoming his hand. Hesitating, he reached into the tent again, tearing open his meager pack. This was the one thing he’d asked the keeper to do for him before they’d left Tellar.
That last day, they’d gone down to the beach and he’d crawled around in the shallows. The keeper had watched, saying nothing as he’d pried small shells from the rock walls of the tide pools. The silent priest had accompanied him to the small grave up in Cedar district where he’d left a few by the simple grave marker.
Leaving his tent, ignoring the smoke, the fire and the screaming of people and horses, he walked back to kneel at the nameless girl’s side. Moving with great care, he laid two dark sea shells gently on her bloodie
d breast. The prayer for the dead rolled from him in one quiet undulation. “I’m leaving now,” he told her when he was done, echoing the promise he’d made a month ago, to another dead girl, “but I’m coming back.” He straightened. There was the sound of fighting close by and he set off toward it at a jog, the fire in his veins speeding his stride.
At least half a dozen small blazes had started throughout the camp, evincing some effort on the part of the attackers. The huge orange glow to his right probably meant one of the big communal tents had caught fire. Tendrils of thick, choking smoke were winding their way through the surviving mist and coiling ominously against the night sky. He loped through the shambles of the camp, skirting trampled tents and scattered belongings, sidestepping riderless, panicked horses and overturned wagons.
The tents opened before him. The mist had peeled away around a two wheeled cart, kept at bay by the heat as it burned. Through the billowing smoke he could make out one of the dark riders, raining blows down on a Temple warrior from the saddle. The rider drew his eyes like a lodestone. The fire rose in him like a tide.
He broke into a run. He didn’t bother fumbling for the fighting trance. The fire filled his head from corner to cranny. It was a calm unlike anything he’d ever experienced. His seirin hot in his hand, he raced up the cart’s pitched bed. Flames reached for him hungrily. The stink of singed hair assaulted his nostrils as tufts disintegrated from his head. His eyebrows wisped away into ash. It didn’t matter. His lead foot skimmed the up thrust backboard and he flew at the rider’s back, carried on wings of fire.
It all seemed so easy, so clear. He wasn’t scared. The fire had burned the fear right out of him. And he had his answer. An answer to the one question he’d never raised with the keeper.
He leapt high, clearing the horse’s rump and swung his seirin with every bit of his strength. It hammered into the back of the rider’s helm, bowing the steel inward. The seirin shattered. His forearms reverberated with the impact. He sailed past as the rider tumbled bonelessly from the saddle.