“And the girl’s mother?”
“Dead.”
“All right.”
“The ship is the Crystal Wing, out of Rooktown. One of my guards will accompany you to the wharf at dusk.”
It sounded too easy. After all Tobias had been through in recent days, he could hardly believe that in only a few bells he and Sofya would be sailing from Hayncalde to the relative safety of another isle.
“Something troubles you.”
“No.” He shook his head and forced a smile. “I’m grateful to you.”
“There’s more.”
How did he give voice to the thoughts flooding his mind? He had vowed to keep Sofya safe, and by sailing from Daerjen this evening, he would be doing that. But he felt like a general in retreat, ceding a besieged city to his enemy. This was Sofya’s home. To the extent that he could call any place home, it was his as well. He wondered if he was giving it up too easily.
He saw little point, however, in sharing his doubts with Nuala.
“It’s nothing, Mother Priestess. Thank you for arranging this.”
She eyed him with concern. “What else do you need?”
“I need a change of clothes and a chance to bathe. And…” He faltered.
“I’ve arranged for coin. You’ll have it before you leave. I’ll see to the clothes and bath as well.”
“I can’t thank you enough.”
“Keep her safe. That will do.”
He nodded, doubts crowding his thoughts once more.
Her frown returned. “You’re frightened.”
She read him too easily. So had Orzili. He would have to learn to mask his emotions. Another lesson denied him because of the years he had lost.
“A little,” he said. “Wouldn’t you be?”
“How old are you, Tobias?”
He picked up the princess and gave her a piece of bread from the platter brought to them bells before. “How old do I look?”
“I know enough about Walkers to understand that your apparent age and your true years might not be the same.”
“In my case they’re not all that different.”
“I’m not sure I believe you. Why were you sent back?”
The questions followed him everywhere. How far back had he come? Why had Mearlan sent him? He tried to act like a grown man, and his deception fooled some. Not all though. If he spent too long with certain people, they saw through his subterfuge.
“It doesn’t matter.” He met her gaze. “Neither does my age. I’m here now. Mearlan is dead. And I’ve vowed to keep his daughter safe.”
Nuala regarded him, solemn and silent.
“Maybe we should go north,” Tobias said, giving Sofya a crumble of cheese. “Everyone here knows me for a Northisler, and many assume I must be a Traveler. In the Labyrinth, or on one of the Sisters, we’d fit in. No one would notice us.”
“You may be right. The temple can give you as much gold as you think you’ll need to make the journey.”
“Thank you.” He broke off a piece of bread for himself.
“I’ll leave you,” Nuala said. “And I’ll see to your requests.”
“You’ve been kind to us,” he said as she reached for the door. “So were Jivv and Elinor.” He worried that others wouldn’t be so charitable. How would he fare without such aid. I’m fifteen.
“I can’t speak for Elinor and her husband,” she said, after a pause. “But the God brought you to our gates. Of course we helped you.” One would have thought he had thanked her for the smallest of considerations.
“What if I had been wearing Sheraigh blue?”
A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Fortunately, you weren’t.”
She left them. A short time later servants arrived bearing clothes, a large vat of heated water, and cloths, soaps, and oils for washing. When they were gone, Tobias stripped off his stale shirt.
Looking down at his body, he let out an involuntary gasp. This was the first time he had seen himself since the dungeon, and his stomach turned over at the sight of what Orzili’s men had done to him.
A lattice of raised, angry scars covered his torso, his arms. He reached around to his back, straining his shoulders, and felt a network of scars there as well.
“Demons and blood,” he whispered, tears streaking his cheeks again. He couldn’t say why he was crying. Thanks to the healer, he wasn’t in pain anymore. Nevertheless, he grieved for what had been done to him. This body, which still didn’t feel like his own, had been ill-treated nearly beyond comprehension. He longed to be fifteen again. Truly fifteen. Unmarked, with a lifetime ahead of him.
He winced at the first touch of the dampened cloth anticipating pain, but it didn’t hurt. He was healed, as healed as he would be. Somehow, that made it worse.
When he had cleaned himself and dressed in fresh clothes, he bathed Sofya as well. She chattered and laughed the whole time.
After, he rocked her to sleep and tried to sleep himself. He couldn’t.
He prowled the room, stood at the window, watched the rain, chewed more bread, waited anxiously for dusk. He dreaded their journey through the lanes to the wharves, even as he begrudged the time until their departure. He had never been patient.
At last, when the gray sky started to darken and the twilight bells echoed across the temple grounds, Nuala came to the room bearing a leather purse that rang with coins. Tobias strapped a blade and pistol to his belt and shouldered his sack, which still held another pistol, his powder bag, and the apertures he had taken from the castle. It also contained swaddling and food from the temple kitchens: bread, cheese, a skin of goat’s milk for the princess.
Led by Nuala, he carried Sofya across the grounds to another building. There he said his goodbyes to the high priestess, and followed a cloaked woman, whom the high priestess named as Della, back into the tunnels. They remained in them only briefly before returning to the streets.
“The passages in this part of the city have been neglected,” Della explained as they walked. “Sections of them aren’t safe. We have no choice but to make our way above ground.”
Tobias nodded and followed.
As they walked, Sofya looked up at the sky and at the houses they passed, smiling around the thumb she held in her mouth. To her, this was all a great adventure. Tobias envied her.
For some time their guide said not a word. She walked swiftly, and Tobias kept pace. They stuck to alleyways and narrow lanes, their route circuitous, but always angling eastward. The smells of fish, salt water, and ship’s tar grew ever stronger. At one point, as the terrain began to slope more steeply toward the water, their guide reached a corner ahead of them, peered out into the lane, and jumped back. She flattened herself against the side of a house and motioned for Tobias to do the same.
A patrol marched past, their footsteps and voices loud enough to drown out the noises Sofya made upon seeing them.
Even after they had walked on, Della remained in the alley, her head canted as she listened for the soldiers. In time, she peeked out again into the crossing lane and waved Tobias forward.
They encountered no more guards and soon spied the city gate, and beyond it the waterfront.
“How do we get through?” Tobias whispered.
Mischief glinted in Della’s eyes. “We don’t.”
She stepped off the lane at the next narrow alley, and followed the byway to a small open area surrounding an ancient stone house. Candlelight showed around a single shuttered window, and smoke rose from the chimney. Della knocked three times on the small wooden door, and then twice more.
The door opened, revealing a woman who appeared as old as the house itself. She was bent and frail. Wisps of white hair poked out from beneath a plain wimple, and one gnarled hand grasped a walking stick. Upon seeing Della, Tobias, and Sofya, she bobbed her head and grinned, exposing empty gums.
The three of them entered the house and the crone pushed the door closed. The building was cramped and sparsely furnished, b
ut warm from the bright fire.
“There’s a candle below,” the old woman said, her voice surprisingly strong. “There’s been no one on the other side.”
Tobias didn’t understand, but Della seemed to.
“Very good,” she said. “Our thanks.”
She stepped around the woman – difficult in the narrow structure – and gestured for Tobias to follow. He nodded to the crone as he passed her. She grinned again at Sofya, but the princess recoiled and clung to Tobias.
Della led him down a steep, dark stairway of uneven stone, which seemed to go on and on, into the very heart of Islevale. Long before they reached the bottom, Tobias’s knees began to ache. Already his shoulders and arms hurt from carrying Sofya so far. Eventually, mercifully, the stairway ended. At the base they found a simple table on which rested a candle in a pewter holder. Della picked it up and continued across the small chamber into a dank corridor.
“What is this place?” Tobias asked.
“The house belongs to the temple,” Della said, leading him into the curving passageway. “It conceals a tunnel that bypasses the gate. There have been times in our past when we didn’t wish for the court to know of all our comings and goings.”
He was sure this tunnel connected to those through which he had been rescued. He didn’t remember much from that night, but the few images he could recall reminded him of this passage.
“The guards still don’t know of it?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Not yet.”
They walked for a long time, the tunnel smelling of dirt and stone and water. Their steps echoed. Sofya let out little squeals, testing the echo herself.
Tobias tried to shush her, but this only encouraged her to make more noise.
“She’s all right,” Della said. “No one can hear us down here.”
The path began to angle upward, and soon after they came to another stairway, as tight and uneven as the first. Sofya quieted as they climbed, earning a smile from Della.
“Smart child. She knows when to play and when to be wary.”
The stairway ended abruptly at a heavy stone door with a large, blackened iron ring in its center. Della blew out the candle and set it on the floor. Then she pulled the door open and peered out at the night.
She waved Tobias through the doorway and into salty air and tall grasses, closing the door behind them. He turned a full circle to get his bearings. They had emerged from the city wall itself. Even having come through the doorway, he could barely see its outline in the weathered stone.
“Remarkable,” he whispered.
“Indeed.”
She led him at an oblique angle away from the wall and back toward the road, which they regained at some distance from the gate. The guards there didn’t see them. The waterfront loomed before them.
Torches burned on the three main wharves, and on the small quays that jutted into the gulf alongside them. Several vessels were moored to each wharf, shifting with the swells that rolled to the shoreline, their lines creaking against the iron bollards.
Sheraigh warships still surrounded the wharves, and dozens of ships lay anchored beyond them, bobbing on the waters.
As they neared the water, the lane broadened to accommodate the hulking wooden warehouses that loomed on either side. Despite the blockade and the dark of night, a few wharfmen and sailors still prowled the quays. Some carried crates and barrels, perhaps to the temple’s ship.
“Your vessel is on the south wharf,” Della said, glancing back at they walked. “Your captain–”
The words caught in her throat, and she stood dumb, her mouth open, her eyes going wide. Her body swayed and she lifted a hand toward her face, then stopped.
“My captain?”
The woman twisted, fell to the cobblestones. Only then did Tobias see the crossbow bolt that jutted from the base of her skull.
Chapter 30
28th Day of Sipar’s Settling, Year 633
For a single breath that might as well have been an entire turn, Tobias could do no more than stare. He had time to think that there was remarkably little blood for a wound that must have proved fatal the instant it struck.
Sofya pointed at the woman’s corpse and gave a small cry, which jolted Tobias into motion. The bolt had come from ahead of them. He lurched off the north side of the lane and ran, seeking cover. He clutched the princess to his chest, hunching his shoulders, expecting at any instant to be killed.
He spotted a narrow gap between two warehouses and veered toward that. As he reached the buildings another bolt thudded into the wood less than a hand from his head.
“Blood and bone!”
Breathless, blood pounding in his ears, he leaned against one of the buildings. He sat Sofya on the ground and stepped back in the direction of the gap’s opening, pulling his pistol free as he did. He paused to load the weapon and eased to the building’s edge. He checked rooftops first, seeking the outline of a bowman against the overcast sky.
Seeing nothing, he scanned the road, the buildings ahead of him, the wharves themselves. Della’s killer could have been anywhere. He glanced up at the bolt embedded in the wood, and tried to gauge where it might have come from. He shifted and rested his back against the other warehouse, peering out once more.
Still unsure of where his attacker hid, he reached up, grasped the bolt, and yanked it from the building’s façade.
He ducked back into the gap, and none too soon. Another bolt struck two hands below where the first had hit, with a thwack that made Tobias jump.
He retreated into the shadows, and knelt by Sofya, who jabbered in a sing-song as if all was right with the world.
Tobias lifted her again and trod toward the back of the buildings, placing his feet with care, unable to see anything but the dim glow of torches touching the heavy clouds above. Rainwater dripped on them and tapped the ground in uncertain rhythm.
As they neared the back end of the warehouses, Tobias saw that the terrain beyond the gap was open.
A few paces short of freedom, he heard the rustle of grasses. Had there been wind this night? He hadn’t noticed. He froze, waited, listened.
Hearing it again, his blood turned icy. Not a rustle. Footsteps. He backed away from the opening, raising the pistol as he did.
Fool! He had trapped himself. It wouldn’t be long before the bowman planted himself at the front end of the gap, and then he and his friends would have them. Tobias could fire off one shot, but in the time it took him to reload, their pursuers would kill them both.
He continued his retreat, sliding along the wall. It was darkest near the middle of the gap. That was the extent of his strategic thinking.
The scrape of a boot behind them made him wheel. A shadow at the mouth of the narrow passageway blocked the torchlight. The bowman.
Tobias shifted again, placing his feet without a sound, readying himself to fire his pistol. If he could kill the bowman, he might escape the others.
Realization flashed in his mind with the power of epiphany. His foe might have been thinking the same thing. Tobias dropped to his knees.
As he hit the ground, a crossbow twanged. A bolt hissed over his head.
He set Sofya down with haste, drawing a cry. Aiming once more, he fired at the shadow.
Flame erupted in the darkness, and the report of the shot echoed violently in the confined space. Sofya began to wail. Through the haze of smoke, Tobias saw the shadow stagger and drop.
Despite the ringing in his ears, he heard shouts from the rear of the buildings. The other men would be coming for them. He picked up the screaming princess and hurried toward the man he’d shot. As he strode through the passage, he tried to reload. Sofya struggled to break free of his grip, hampering his efforts. He dropped one bullet, and knew better than to stop. He’d never find it in this darkness.
A pistol went off behind him, illuminating the passage for the blink of an eye and booming like thunder. Sofya shrieked again. Something struck Tobias’s face, and
for an instant he thought he’d been shot. But there was little pain. He rubbed the spot with the back of his pistol hand and realized he’d been hit by wood fragments. The shooter had missed. Tobias strode on. His enemy would need time to reload, too.
Just before reaching the front of the gap, Tobias managed to get the weapon loaded again. He cocked it and adjusted his hold on the princess.
“Another step… and I’ll kill you.”
He slowed. The bowman knelt in front of the building, a short sword in his hand. Blood glistened on his shirt front. The crossbow lay at his side, without a bolt in the catch. Tobias didn’t believe the man posed a threat; he looked to be at death’s door, and he sounded no better. Still, Tobias couldn’t leave the gap without stepping over him.
He aimed the pistol at the man’s head. “You’ll let us pass, or I’ll fire.”
“I’m dead… already,” he said, his breath coming in wet gasps. “You don’t scare me. And my friends… are coming.”
“If you’re dead, and I can’t get away, you won’t mind telling me who sent you.”
The man smiled weakly, resembling a ghoul in the faint light. He didn’t answer.
Tobias took a step toward him, and then another. The bowman slashed at him with the sword, but Tobias remained beyond his reach. Footsteps slapped the ground behind him within the narrow alley. The man with the pistol. They were running out of time, and Tobias could only get off one shot.
A third man stepped into view at the corner of the building, a pistol in hand. Tobias ducked into the shadows.
“He’s here,” the bowman wheezed.
Demon’s blood!
An idea came to him. Desperate, bordering on mad and risky beyond words. What other choice did he have, though? He could only hope he was near enough to the wharves.
“Teelo!” he called as loudly as he could. “Maeli! I need you!”
“You’re not… you’re not fooling us,” the bowman said, his voice weakening. “You were… alone. Except for the girl.”
“Teelo!” he cried again, listening for the footsteps at his back. “Maeli!”
Time's Children Page 33