Assassin's Edge

by Juliet E. McKenna

  Shiv and Ryshad were both growing visibly frustrated as I struggled to listen and to translate at the same time. Olret waited for me to finish speaking before surprising us all.

  “Forgive me. I only know your tongue from the written word and speak it poorly.” His Tormalin was entirely comprehensible, for all his hesitations and harsh accent.

  “You have the advantage of me, my lord.” Ryshad spoke slowly with all the practised politeness he’d learned serving his Sieur. “It is you who must forgive our ignorance.”

  “May I ask how you know our language?” Shiv smiled but I could see he was thinking the same as the rest of us. Now we’d have to watch every word we said, even among ourselves.

  “I have visited your shores.” Olret could barely conceal his satisfaction at astounding us with this news. “Not often and never for long but we have long traded with the men of the grasslands.”

  A frisson ran through me. “The Plains People?” I enquired blandly.

  “Just so.” Olret had no trouble recognising the Tormalin term for the last of the three ancient races. “A select few have long made such crossings, defying the sea-roving shades, though ill fates befall the unworthy who risk themselves.”

  “I have never heard tell of such visitors.” Ryshad was hiding his scepticism behind a well-trained face.

  “We do not linger,” Olret assured him. “The men of the grasslands lay curses on those who outstay their welcome by overwintering, so we permit no such ship to land. Too many return laden only with stinking corpses, carried here by the sea shades.”

  Could there still be remnants of the ancient Plains People in the northern vastness? Tormalin history would tell us they’d all been driven out or married into the Old Empire’s high-handed delineation of their provinces of Dalasor and Gidesta. On the other hand, I’d known a fair few cast adrift from the wandering herdsmen of those endless grasslands to skulk like me on the fringes of the law. A lot of them had the sharp features and dark slenderness that legend attributed to the lost race of the Plains. Besides, plenty of those herding clans still passed down ancestral resentment of Tormalin dominance and that could well keep them silent about sporadic visitors bringing something worth trading. I wondered what that something might be.

  Olret was talking to Sorgrad again. “Forgive me, but you will not find a welcome if you bring trouble upon my poor people. We’ve suffered a full measure of grief in these last three years.”

  “The mountains have been burning?” Sorgrad was all solicitous concern.

  Olret nodded grimly. “The Maker first struck sparks from his forge two years since. At first we hoped the Mother’s judgement had finally come upon Ilkehan but every isle was shaken or riven. Fish floated dead from the depths of the seas. Goats choked with the ash or died later, poisoned by their fodder. Whole families smothered as they slept when foul air filled the lowest lying hollows.”

  “Then we appreciate your generosity all the more,” Shiv said seriously.

  I took another piece of the smoked meat and a sliver of flat bread and avoided Shiv’s eye. It was Planir, Kalion and a couple of other mages who’d set the mountains erupting hereabouts, to give Ilkehan something to think about besides chasing us as we fled his clutches. It looked as if the Archmage had started something reaching a good deal further than he’d intended.

  Olret managed a wry smile. “We searched out what favour the Mother showed us. There were turnips cooked in the very earth for the hungry. With so many beasts dead, we had fodder to spare for strewing on the hot ash.” He saw we were all looking puzzled at that and hastened to explain. “It prompts new growth, that we may recover the land as fast as possible.” His face turned sombre again. “But many have died for lack of food these two years past and Ilkehan preys on the weaker isles like a raven following a famished herd. He piles trouble upon trouble on them before claiming the land by force of arms and saying the people will it thus. Then he grants the starving food to keep them alive enough to work but too hungry to spare strength to resist him.”

  “Is that what happened to the westernmost isle?” I asked politely.

  Ryshad saw Olret was ignoring me again and asked his own question. “Have you no overlord or any union of Ilkehan’s equals to deny such conquest?”

  Olret stiffened as if he’d been insulted before forcing a smile and asking Sorgrad, “Do the Anyatimm now submit to some king?”

  “Never,” Sorgrad replied forcefully, half a breath ahead of ’Gren. “Every kin manages its own affairs and answers to none but its own blood.”

  “And all who share blood ties work together for the common good?” Olret smiled with satisfaction as Sorgrad and ’Gren nodded. “Thus is ever with our clans.”

  Which was all very well and entirely necessary in the mountains north of Gidesta, when the nearest neighbours were ten days’ travel over hard ground in good weather and thirty in bad. Everyone pulled together through that selfsame bad weather because they risked being the straggler who died if they didn’t. I wasn’t sure how well the notion would work here with everyone cheek by jowl in these meagre islands. “How are your leaders chosen?”

  Olret ignored me again. “What is Ilkehan to you?” he demanded abruptly of Sorgrad.

  “An enemy,” he replied simply. “To all of us.”

  ’Gren spoke up unexpectedly. ”He merits death by our law and by yours too, if that’s the price for wintering over the seas.”

  Olret looked at him with sharp curiosity. “How say you?”

  “Eresken was Ilkehan’s son?”

  ’Gren answered Olret’s nod with a satisfied smile. “I got it from Eresken himself that his mother was a slave taken from the grasslands and Ilkehan got her with child overwintering there.”

  Hope in Olret’s dark eyes was soon quenched. “What is one more misdeed among Ilkehan’s manifest crimes? Do you not think we would have stood shoulder to shoulder and marched against him if we could?”

  “Why can’t you?” asked Ryshad carefully.

  “He draws the true magic from every hargeard and wields it like none since the time of the wyrms. The rest of us are left without the strength to ride the oceans in safety and even should we try, Ilkehan uses his dark rites to find and sink our ships.” Bitterness choked Olret. “I do not know where he gets such lore. He kills any who see into the realm of enchantment apart from those cravens who crawl at his heels, learning his secrets until he sends them to curse his enemies to death.

  “Do you not think we would have thrown him down to break on the rocks below his stronghold if we could? He is proof against any attack. We could pile up our dead to reach his very ramparts and he would still be laughing as he watched us die beneath the lash of his magic.”

  “Have you considered sending a single man to kill him?” Sorgrad asked. “One might escape the notice that a host attracts.”

  Olret shook his head. “Ilkehan kills any exile who reaches his territories, lest they be some spy. As if I would let any man risk the Mother’s curse by making such a profane claim just to enter Ilkehan’s domains.”

  “What’s a hargeard?” ’Gren demanded, picking berry seeds out of his teeth.

  “You do not know?” Olret looked both wary and confused.

  “We do not know the term,” said Sorgrad smoothly. “It will doubtless be called something else in our tongue.”

  “The hargeard is sacred to the Mother and the Maker both,” Olret said guardedly. “Where we lay our ancestors to rest that the true lore may bind our past to our future.”

  Sorgrad nodded reassuringly. “For us, such rites are centred in the tyakar caves.”

  That meant nothing to me but visibly mollified Olret. “We use the Maker’s stones.”

  Because anyone laying a body to rest in one of these curse-stoked mountains would probably come back the next day to find their revered forefather nicely cooked for carving. I decided that was better left unsaid and tried one of the berries before ’Gren took a quite unfair share.

>   “We have hopes of making Ilkehan pay for his crimes.” Sorgrad had decided we’d spent enough time with shuffling positions and measuring up the other players. It was time to cast the runes and see who came up a winner. He looked Olret straight in the eye. “We have come to kill him.”

  That spark of hope flared again in Olret’s eyes and this time it burned brighter. “By your faith in the Mother?”

  “By the bones of my soke.” Sorgrad was in deadly earnest.

  Olret drew back a little. “But he has powers none can withstand.” That really galled him.

  “I killed Eresken,” ’Gren piped up.

  “We have the lore of the Forest Folk to protect us,” added Sorgrad with a nod in my direction.

  Olret barely spared me a glance, all his attention on Sorgrad. If we’d had him at a gaming table, he wouldn’t have walked away with breeches or boots, his emotions showed so plainly on his face. He desperately wanted to accept we could rid him of his hated foe but every pennyweight of sense tipped his scales to disbelief.

  “We have come to risk ourselves, not to bring danger to the innocent.” Ryshad spoke with his usual measured courtesy. He’d judged Olret aright, I noted, as the Elietimm betrayed relief at that. “But if Ilkehan were to be distracted, if some feint held his attention as we crossed into his lands, then our chances of success would be greatly increased.”

  “Is there not some insult, some predation of Ilkehan’s that you plan on avenging?” Sorgrad asked casually. “We need not know where or how but if we knew when you intended to act, we could make our crossing while Ilkehan was looking in another direction.”

  Olret was looking tempted but shook his head abruptly. “Were you captured crossing from my territory to his, Ilkehan would have his excuse to bring death to us all.”

  “So we make a dogleg and cross from someone else’s lands.” ’Gren patently didn’t see a difficulty.

  “Perhaps.” Olret’s eyes narrowed to give him a rather shifty expression. I guessed there was someone he wouldn’t be sorry to drop into Ilkehan’s line of sight. “Let me think on this. In the meantime, I welcome you as my guests, though I’m afraid we’re too busy to give you much entertainment. The Mother sends her bounties at this season and bids us gather all we can to see us through the grey days of winter. So, ease your travel weariness with a bath and then we shall offer what we can by way of feasting and music. Maedror!”

  Olret was talking a little too fast and with rather too much forced friendliness but for the present I’d settle for getting clean and dry and filling my belly. The man with the staff appeared as soon as Olret shouted for him and we dutifully followed him up to the first floor of the keep. The building proved to have a stair on either side joined by a corridor running through the centre, rooms on either side. I was ushered into a snug cubbyhole barely big enough for the bed blanketed with weaving which made best use of all the shades of the local goats. This was presumably to protect my virtue since the others got a larger bedchamber to share. Maidservants scurried hither and thither with ewers of hot water as lackeys hauled in baths. They mostly managed the carefully blank faces of servants interrupted by unexpected guests but one lass betrayed anxious glances at the stairs leading up to the higher levels. I guessed she had duties above that had to be completed, irrespective of other calls on her time. That kind of thing had been one of the many injustices that had set me against a life in service to others.

  The bath was bliss. To be warm all the way through again was utter rapture and, as well as scented soaps, someone thoughtful had set a pot of pale salve out on the tiny dresser next to the narrow bed. It soothed the split in my lip and my chapped hands wonderfully. I was rubbing in a second application when a knock sounded on the door.

  “Livak?” It was Ryshad.

  “Come in.”

  He shut the door and leaned against it, smiling with blatant appreciation at my nakedness. Freshly shaven, black hair curling damply around his ears, he wore clean breeches and a shirt which he hadn’t bothered lacing.

  “What’s everyone else doing?” I sat up and hugged my knees.

  “I drew the lucky rune so Shiv’s only just got his turn in a bath. Sorgrad and ’Gren are arguing over who’s going to wear the one smart doublet they’ve got between them.” Ryshad held out a towel and I stepped into his embrace.

  He held me close and kissed me with an urgency that roused my own desire. “Shall I lock the door?”

  “There’s no key.” I kissed him back, running my free hand up into his hair. “But I could take care of that.” I let the towel fall disregarded to the floor.

  “That might cause comment, if someone tried the door.” Ryshad bent to kiss the base of my neck and I shivered with delicious anticipation as his breath tickled. He cupped my breast and I could tell someone had given him a salve for softening roughened hands as well.

  “Stand the dresser by it?” I suggested when I could concentrate again.

  “Good idea.” He slapped my rump with gentle approval.

  I had the coverlets turned down on the bed before Ryshad had the door blocked and he swept me off my feet with a flurry of kisses, caresses and laughter. I pulled the shirt over his head as he kicked himself free of his breeches and we lost ourselves among the soft woollen blankets. If I’d thought the bath had been ecstasy, I’d been wrong. I didn’t care if Olret had adepts spying on us. All they would have learned was how completely the two of us could become one, when it was just the two of us, open either to other, giving, yielding. No differences of upbringing and experience could come between us, no divergence of attitude or expectation could distance us, no friends or ties of loyalty could pull us apart. Moving in instinctive harmony, every sense alive to touch and kisses, coming together in the ultimate intimacy, I knew beyond question that I loved Ryshad and he loved me. In that simplest of moments, nothing else mattered. We lay entwined, breath slowing, a lazy smile on Ryshad’s face as I brushed curls from his forehead now damp with sweat.

  A single apologetic knock sounded softly at the door. “If you’re ready, we’re invited downstairs for more food.”

  I smiled at the barely concealed amusement in Sorgrad’s voice. “We’ll be out in a few moments.”

  Suthyfer, Sentry Island,

  5th of For-Summer

  Temar!” Allin waved from the door of the cabin.

  “Finally,” breathed Temar. “Excuse me, Master Jevon.”

  The Dulse’s captain looked expectant. “Them pirates on the move?”

  “Let’s hope so,” Temar said fervently. He walked briskly up the beach, noting Halice abandoning some animated discussion with the Maelstrom’s boatswain and heading for the hut. So he wasn’t the only one frustrated by these past few days of tense boredom. Nervousness teased Temar. What would Muredarch’s new challenge be? Would he be a match for it?

  “What is it?” After the bright sun outside, he blinked in the gloom of the cabin. It was still stuffy and oppressive even after he had drafted some of Kellarin’s carpenters to cut windows through the walls and hang shutters.

  Larissa and Allin flanked Usara who was looking intently at Guinalle.

  “Muredarch just set sail in the sloop. He’s coming north.” The demoiselle was pale in the dim light, shadows like bruises beneath her weary eyes. “They brought a prisoner out of the stockade but muffled in a sack. I can’t tell who it is, not with the Elietimm warding the place so closely.”

  Temar looked at Usara. “These enchanters aren’t harrying you so much you can’t maintain the blockade?”

  “As long as we’re working within direct sight, we’re proof against them,” Usara assured him.

  “The winds are still against Muredarch, no matter what direction he might try fleeing in,” said Larissa pertly.

  “Those Elietimm only ever work together, which limits their scope.” Contempt enlivened Guinalle’s tone. “If they stray too close, I warn our mages to cease their working.”

  Halice frowned. “Which is all
very well as long as they stay stupid. What if they start working separately?”

  “Separately, they will be vulnerable to me.” Guinalle didn’t sound as if she relished that prospect.

  “Let’s go and see what Muredarch has to offer,” Temar suggested.

  Everyone moved towards the door, Guinalle the most reluctant. Temar hurried ahead to warn Darni what was afoot. “And Larissa will stay with you this time,” he concluded, deliberately not reacting as he heard the mage-girl’s protest behind him. Darni’s reply drowned out whatever it was Usara said to her.

  “That’s well enough by me.” The big man grinned ferociously before raising an almighty bellow. “On your feet! First corps, take the watch! Second corps, you can use the time for some sword drill. If those bastards think they’re coming here, you can meet them with a blade in your hand.”

  Halice’s mercenaries were the heart of the first corps, along with those of Sorgrad’s recruits whose skills matched up to their often vague claims of experience in battle. Deglain and Minare each took a detachment to the headlands now readied with treetop vantage points and fuelled beacons. The second corps gathered on the beach with eager faces. Kellarin’s men were determined to outshine the sailors who were in turn set on improving Halice’s opinion of their skills. As the Dulse’s crew lofted her sails, Temar watched his men cut and thrust and parry and stab with growing pride.

  “What do you think?” he asked Halice as she came to join him.