Assassin's Edge

by Juliet E. McKenna

  “Depends what they reckoned to Ilkehan,” countered ’Gren.

  His irrepressible voice faded as Shiv wrapped his spell around us. A breeze spiralled ever closer, ever faster, cool against my skin with the soft moisture of wind from the southern sea. The waterfall and grey rocks vanished as the breeze thickened to azure brilliance on the very edge of sight. Then the dizzying spiral seemed to get inside my head and the pleasant cool turned to a chill and wearisome damp making my very bones ache. I closed my eyes and swallowed hard but the sensation of my feet leaving the ground jolted me just that bit too hard. As solid ground lurched beneath my feet once more, I felt my gorge rising and hastily darted to one side.

  “Good thing we haven’t had breakfast,” said ’Gren cheerily. “You’d just have wasted it.”

  When I’d finished retching, I glowered at him. Ryshad handed me his water bottle and I rinsed my mouth and spat, wiping the back of my hand across my mouth. “Where are we?”

  “Inland and up the coast a way from Olret’s settlement.” Shiv had brought us to the edge of some looming barrens, grey rock ripping through the threadbare green on the steep hillsides. We were hidden from the keep by a substantial buttress of rock thrust forward from one of the mountains guarding the interior. It was striped with unusually pale scree and on one face some upheaval had snapped the smooth line of the rock to leave a splintered cliff above a litter of shattered stone.

  Sorgrad was peering out towards a long slew of morning mist cloaking the sea. “How do you suppose that fight for the fort’s gone?”

  ’Gren had other concerns. “Who do you suppose lives there?” He pointed at a long low house surrounded by a cluster of shabby outbuildings, goatskins nailed up for drying making pale patches on the gable ends. The wind shifted and brought us a whiff of mingled earthy smoke and cooking smells.

  “Do you think we could ask for some food?” I looked at Ryshad.

  “They can only say no.” He looked at one of the lesser buildings where a puff of steam escaped a window to be swept away by the gusting breezes. “I’d pay solid coin for the chance of a bath and a shave.”

  Sorgrad was already moving towards the isolated homestead. “We’ll get ourselves clean and fed and then we’ll try bespeaking ’Sar again.”

  “Wait a moment,” Shiv said, irritated. “Do you want whoever’s in there scared out of their wits?”

  The air shimmered around us and magic leached much of the colour from our skin and hair. We were still an unnatural hue but, with Halcarion’s blessing, a stranger’s first thought should be we were just filthy and exhausted rather than dread messengers from the Eldritch Kin.

  ’Gren picked up the pace as we crossed the wind-scoured turf. People busy about the scatter of buildings paused to stare at us. “You stay here,” Sorgrad commanded as we reached a low wall of close-fitted stone. He and ’Gren crossed another stretch of grass that yielded to a raggedly cobbled yard in front of the long central house. A couple of men leaned on long narrow spades crusted with dark earth. Both house and the random outbuildings looked built from whatever rock had tumbled down the mountainside, sides bulging with irregular-shaped stones. Few windows pierced the thick walls and those couldn’t have admitted much light through their grimy horn panes.

  “This doesn’t look very promising,” I murmured to Ryshad while trying to look innocuous under the suspicious gaze of the Elietimm men.

  “Let’s see what Mountain charm can do for us,” he said with a certain sarcasm.

  One of the men called into the doorway open on to the blackness inside the dwelling. A thickset woman with a dull orange scarf wound tight around her head appeared fast enough to suggest she’d been keeping a look-out through some peephole. Sorgrad stepped forward with a courteous bow and a sweeping gesture in the general direction of Olret’s keep. The woman stepped out of the doorway and waved a hand at one of the outhouses.

  “Isn’t that where the steam came from?” Shiv looked hopeful.

  ’Gren turned to wave us forward. I was in a mood to take a gamble as well. “I don’t know about you two but I’m more than ready for a bath.”

  The sturdy woman waited with Sorgrad and ’Gren while her sons or whoever they were took themselves off to their daily duties. She stood, feet solid on the irregular cobbles, arms folded across an ample bosom. Her face was creased with age and disillusion, mouth sunken on to almost toothless gums. She was certainly the oldest Elietimm I’d seen thus far and her speech was sufficiently fast and slurred that I understood none of it.

  “We can wash in the laundry house,” Sorgrad told us. ’Gren was already unlatching the door. “She’ll send some food out later.”

  “Please thank her for us.” I smiled to convey my gratitude but all I got in return was a dour grunt before our grudging hostess stomped off. “What did you tell her?” I asked in a low tone as Sorgrad ushered me towards the wash house, a low building with an irregular roof ridge and more than one loose slate.

  “I said we were travellers who had visited Olret with a view to trading and had been seeing what his lands had to offer in return for our goods.” He was looking thoughtful. “I said we wanted to make ourselves presentable before returning to his keep.”

  “It was Olret’s name made the difference,” ’Gren piped up. ”Until then, I thought she’d be setting the dogs on us.”

  “I don’t suppose they get many visitors hereabouts.” Ryshad unbuttoned his jerkin as we crossed the wash house’s threshold. He unlaced his shirt and pulled it over his head, grimacing at both the smell and the ingrained stains of paint and dirt. I wasn’t any too taken with him smelling like a hard-ridden horse either but I doubted I smelled of roses or anything close.

  “It won’t have time to dry, even if you wash it,” I advised reluctantly as I shed my own foetid clothes.

  “Shiv?” Ryshad grinned. “Don’t you mages help out in Hadrumal’s laundry at all?”

  “Are you mocking the arcane mysteries of elemental magic?” The wizard was already stripped to his breeches and unlacing them. “Actually, apprentices generally work these things out when they’ve done something stupid or dangerous and need to wash out the evidence.” He laughed at a sudden memory. “Let’s get ourselves clean and then I’ll see about the linen.”

  “You don’t want Pered choking on your stench, do you?” I joked. With the door shut and warm steam hanging around us, I began to relax for the first time since we’d come to these islands. Perhaps it was the familiar scents of damp cloth and harsh lye just like the wash house at home. Knowing Ilkehan was good and dead certainly did a lot to calm my nerves. Now we could get clean and fed and then join the celebrations at Suthyfer. It would be good to swap yarns with Halice now that the danger was safely past. My spirits rose still further.

  “Do we get in here?”

  ’Gren was naked, pale skin stark beneath the paint on his face. He peered into a broad stone basin in the centre of the floor where clouded water steamed.

  Sorgrad threw his breeches and underlinen aside and joined him, leaning on the waist-high rim wide enough to rest a bucket on or, in ’Gren’s case, a buttock. “I don’t think so. That’s a hot spring in there and we don’t want to foul it.”

  “Do you suppose there might be a wash tub?” I shivered in my shirt as I looked around the laundry. It had bigger windows than the main house with some bladder or membrane dried stiff and yellow and cut to fit the bone frames. The frames were none too tightly fitted and let in wicked draughts as well as a fair amount of light. More cold air whistled along a crude drain running down the centre of the sloping floor to disappear through a hole in one wall.

  “You could just about get in here.” Ryshad was stood something halfway between a horse trough and a sink, one of several standing against one wall with long lengths of coarse cloth looped on racks above them. Long and narrow with steep sides, each seemed to have been carved from a single block of pale grey stone veined with faintest white. All but the one at the end were heap
ed with thick brown blankets soaking in lye and waiting for someone to sluice water through them and beat out the dirt with the bleached bone paddles racked above.

  “Find the plug.” I grabbed a pail from a stone ledge and dipped it into the stone basin. The water was hotter than I’d have liked for a bath but I wasn’t about to complain.

  “Soap root.” Sorgrad was investigating the contents of small baskets and bowls on a shelf. He tossed me a tangled mass of slick fibres.

  I wasn’t impressed but didn’t want to upset our reluctant hostess by using anything better that had taken time and trouble to concoct from her scarce resources. My mother had given me more than one lecture on the costs and aggravation of soap making when my only concern had been simply looking pretty and smelling sweet for whatever swain I’d fancied flirting with.

  I sloshed the bucket into the trough and Ryshad did the same. The clouded water smelled faintly reminiscent of a colic draught from an apothecary’s shop but that was still preferable to wearing stale sweat and old smoke when we returned triumphant to Suthyfer and everyone’s congratulations.

  “In you get,” Ryshad smiled at me. Warm with the olive skin of southern Tormalin and dusted with black hair, his broad chest and strong arms looked quite bizarre against the paint staining his hands and forearms.

  I dumped my stale shirt on top of my grimy breeches and swung a leg over the hard edge of the trough, careful not to slip on the smooth base. Crouching in the shallow water, I rubbed at my arms with the pulpy root until I won a faint lather that turned a faint blue-grey. “It’s coming off.” I scrubbed hard at my face with the crumbling shreds.

  “Close your eyes.”

  I barely had time to heed Ryshad’s warning before he dumped a bucket of water over me. Once I recovered from the shock, it was wonderful to feel the heat scouring me clean. “Wait a moment.” I squeezed as much foam from the soap root as I could into my hair.

  “Let me.” I closed my eyes, savouring the deft touch of Ryshad’s strong fingers. Slick, his hands moved to my shoulders, blunt thumbs digging in gently to loosen muscle knotted by exhausted sleep on a cold stone floor. Just his touch roused my blood and I hoped the others would put my sudden blush down to the heat of the water.

  “Eyes closed?” His hands left me and another bucketful came crashing down on my head. I puffed and wiped water from my eyes, appalled at the colour of the water I was kneeling in. Had I really been that filthy?

  “Who was that?” Sorgrad was in the middle of soaping his own hair with grated root when a figure went running past the window.

  ’Gren didn’t pause as he scoured his face. ”No idea.”

  “Nor me.” I couldn’t have said if the person had been male or female, young or grown, not through that clouded excuse for a window.

  “Watch out!”

  ’Gren didn’t so much rinse his brother down as slosh a bucket full in his face.

  “Did you see?” Ryshad turned to the mage but Shiv was sitting on the rim of the spring’s basin, tracing a slow circle in the steaming water with a curious finger. His intense concentration looked ludicrous coupled with his lean nakedness. I tucked away a private observation that Pered was a lucky man.

  The mage looked up. “Sorry?”

  “What’s so fascinating?” Sorgrad had stripped enough colour from his hair to leave it dun and lifeless but the paint on his arms was proving more stubborn.

  Shiv began scrubbing at his own hands. “The way the fire beneath the rocks reacts with the water. I wonder—” He broke off and looked more closely at the inadequate lather. “This isn’t doing too much good.”

  “Can you do better?” ’Gren challenged, lobbing a handful of soap root at the wizard’s face.

  Shiv caught it deftly and made as if to throw it back, laughing as ’Gren ducked to one side. “Let’s see what a little wizardry can do.” He spun the fresh green of new rushes into the tangle of fibres and tossed me and Ryshad each a clump. Trying to see what we had left ’Gren sufficiently off guard that Shiv managed to hit him full in the face with his. Sorgrad came to his brother’s aid and soaked the mage with a pail of water.

  “Behave, children,” I chided while trying not to laugh. Whatever Shiv did to the soap roots was remarkably effective and the darkness poured out of my hair when I had another go at washing it. “How do I look?” I squinted up at Ryshad.

  He looked at me, head on one side. “Muddy brown.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him and stood up to let him sluice the dirty water off me. My arms were still tainted blue but you had to look close to see it. With luck, once I was dressed, people would just think I was feeling the cold.

  “Your turn.” I tugged the stopper out of the hole in the bottom of the trough and got out, pleased to see the Eldritch disguise flow down the gully and out beneath the wall. Filling the trough again helped keep me warm but I began to shiver as I washed Ryshad’s hair while he scoured his forearms.

  “Shiv? Any chance of some fresher linen?” The idea of putting that frowsty shirt on my clean body revolted me.

  “Give me a moment.” The wizard’s wet hair was black and sleek against his head.

  “Can you fetch me my shaving gear?” Ryshad grimaced as he ran a hand over his bristles.

  ’Gren tested his own chin as I rummaged in Ryshad’s bag. ”I don’t think I’ll bother.”

  “You can leave it half a season and no one notices unless your whiskers catch the light,” I teased.

  A knock at the door startled us all.

  “Hello?” Sorgrad wiped soap from his face.

  “Towels?” ’Gren wondered hopefully.

  A voice outside said something I didn’t catch.

  “Food!” ’Gren’s face broke into a broad smile. “Even better.”

  I moved to avoid brightening up any passing goatherd’s day as ’Gren opened the door entirely heedless of the fact he was bare-arsed and dripping wet. Wiry and muscular, he crouched to pick up a loaded tray.

  “What have we got?” Sorgrad picked up a lidded flagon and they set the spoils on the broad rim of the pool. Ryshad finished his cursory shave with a few strokes of his razor and came dripping across the floor.

  “You can share that.” A boiled goat’s head sitting in broth thick with herbs didn’t appeal to me. I prefer my food without an expression. I reached instead for a small plump bird and was agreeably surprised to find it had been stuffed with a sweet dough before baking to succulence.

  “Our hostess must be better disposed than she looked.”

  Shiv bit into a fat, glistening sausage. The mouthful muffled his curses as sizeable scraps of hot offal spilt down his chest.

  Ryshad coughed. “It looks like everyone wants to get us drunk.” He handed the flagon to me and I took a cautious sip.

  “What kind of liquor is that to give travellers?” I coughed. The powerful fumes of the spirit made my eyes water.

  ’Gren paused, mouth stuffed with flatbread scorched from the skillet. ”There’s enough food here to keep us busy for a while.”

  “From a woman none too pleased to see us in the first place.” Sorgrad ate a dark blood sausage in a series of rapid bites.

  We all looked at each other. Ryshad and I shared a lifetime’s habit of suspicion with Sorgrad and ’Gren and even Shiv was looking doubtful.

  “What can you see in the yard?” Ryshad scooped a bizarre concoction of cheese pressed with scraps of meat and herbs on to a slab of bread. Chewing, he crossed to a far window and tugged the bone frame just far enough awry for a clear view out.

  “There’s no one lifting so much as a slop pail out here,” said Sorgrad slowly.

  “Where are the people we saw before?” I watched Ryshad rummage in his bag.

  “Nowhere.” Sorgrad craned his neck for a better view out of the clouded window.

  “That doesn’t sound too friendly.” ’Gren stripped the meat from the goat’s head with deft fingers and packed it inside a hollow flatbread.

  Shiv
looked at Ryshad. “Anything on your side.”

  Ryshad rested his spyglass on the sill. “Men running in ranks like a proper drilled troop are coming this way in a hurry.”

  “The old woman sent Olret a message,” said Shiv slowly.

  “He’s sent us an escort back to the keep?” Sorgrad was sceptical.

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Ryshad finished his food in a few swift mouthfuls. “Let’s be ready to meet them, either way.”

  We pulled on shirts and jerkins, stepping into breeches and boots, ignoring travel stains and staleness. A shadow caught my eye and as I looked through the yellowed membranes of the nearest window, several furtive figures passed between the blurred outlines of the house and outbuildings. “The old woman’s menfolk are ready to argue the point if we try to leave.”

  Sorgrad was stuffing what of the remaining food would travel best into his and ’Gren’s bags. “If it comes to a fight, we take them all on at once.”

  “Can’t we just leave them gawping at an empty trap?” I asked at Shiv as I laced up my shirt. “ ’Sar can’t still be snoring?”

  “What is there to burn?” Shiv dug out his silver salver and looked around. “I need wood or wax.”

  But bone was all there was hereabouts, thanks to the local lack of trees. Wanting trees made me think of the Forest and I threw Shiv one of my everyday rune sticks.

  He didn’t hesitate, summoning a flame that burned with a strange green tint. He worked his now familiar magic once, then a second time, then a third, the rune stick burning with unnatural rapidity. Growing concern furrowed the mage’s brow as I concentrated on securing my bag and Ryshad’s to stop myself standing over Shiv. Ryshad was tense at his window while Sorgrad kept watch on the yard outside.

  “Well, wizard?” ’Gren demanded, his bag and Sorgrad’s slung on his back, knives ready to fight anyone who offered.

  “I can’t bespeak anyone, not Usara, not Allin, not Larissa.” I heard considerable disquiet in Shiv’s voice.