Albanus’ voice grew no louder, yet his words seemed to shake the walls. Tapestries stirred as if at an unseen, unfelt wind. The glow from the silver tray grew, brighter, ever brighter, till it sliced through closed eyelids like razors of fire. Then powder and liquid alike were no more, replaced by burning mist that still held the shape of that pattern and seemed more solid that those first substances had been.
A clap sounded in the room, as thunder, and the mist was gone, the graven silver surface clear. The glow lingered a moment longer, behind the eyes, then it, too, faded.
Albanus sighed heavily, and lowered his arms. “Done,” he muttered. “’Tis done.” His gaze rose to meet that of Demetrio; the slender young man shivered.
“My Lord Albanus,” Demetrio said, long unattempted humility cloying in his throat, yet driven by his fear, “I would say again that I serve you to the best of my abilities, and that I wish no more than to see you take your rightful place on the Dragon Throne.”
“You are a good servant?” Albanus said, his mouth curling with cruel amusement.
The young noble’s face flushed with anger, but he stammered, “I am.”
Albanus’ voice was as smooth and as cutting as the surgeon’s knife. “Then be silent until I have need for you to serve me again.”
Demetrio’s face went pale; Albanus noted it, but said nothing. The youth was beginning to learn his proper place in the scheme of things. He had his uses in gathering information. Perhaps, an he learned his place well enough, he could be allowed to live.
Carefully the cruel-eyed lord relocked the lacquered chest. “Come,” he said, turning from the chest. “We have little time to meet the others.”
He saw the question—what others?—trembling on Demetrio’s lips. When it did not come, he allowed himself a smile. Such was the proper attitude toward a king, to accept what was given. How sweet it would be to have all of Nemedia so. And perhaps beyond Nemedia. Why should borders decided by others deter him?
In short order they had donned heavy cloaks against the night and left the palace. Four slaves carried torches, two before and two behind. Ten armed and armored guards, mail and leather creaking, surrounded Albanus as he made his way through the dark streets. That they surrounded Demetrio as well was incidental.
They saw no one, although scurrying feet could often be heard as footpads and others who lurked in the night hurried to be out of the way, and from time to time some glimmer of sound from the Street of Regrets came to them as the wind shifted. Elsewhere, those who could not afford to hire bodyguards slept ill at ease, praying that theirs would not be among the houses ravaged that night.
Then, as they approached Sephana’s palace, where fluted marble columns rose behind the alabaster wall enclosing her garden, a procession of torches appeared down the street. Albanus stopped some distance from the palace gate, waiting in silence for a proper greeting.
“Is that you, Albanus?” came Vegentius’ growl. “A foul night, and a foul thing to have to slit the throat of one of my own captains.”
Albanus’ mouth twisted. This one would not live, not an he were a hundred times as useful. He waited to speak until Vegentius and his followers, a score of Golden Leopards, their cloaks thrown back to give sword arms free play, half bearing torches, were close enough to be seen clearly.
“At least you managed to dispose of Baetis. Have you yet found the barbarian?”
“Taras has sent no word,” the big soldier said. “’Tis likely, pursued as he was, that he’s no more than a common thief or murderer. Naught to concern us.”
Albanus favored him with a scornful glance. “Whatever disrupts a meeting like that concerns me. Why did the Guard pursue him so? Long time has passed ere they were known for such enthusiasm.”
“This matter differs from that of Melius. I have no pretext to ask questions of the Guard.”
“Make one,” Albanus commanded. “And now force me this gate.”
Vegentius spoke quietly to his men. Six of them moved quickly to the wall, dividing into two groups. In each trio two men linked hands to lift the third, who laid his cloak across the jagged shards of pottery set in the top of the wall and scrambled over to drop on the far side. From thence a startled cry was heard, then cut significantly short. With a rattle of stout bars being lifted, the gates swung open.
Albanus marched in, sparing not a glance for the guard who lay in the light spilling from the small gatehouse, surrounded by a spreading pool of blood.
Vegentius told off two more men to remain at the gate. The rest followed the hawk-faced lord through the landscape gardens to the palace itself, with its pale columns and intricately worked cornices, and up broad marble stairs to a spacious portico. Some ran to throw back the tall bronze-hung doors with a crash.
In the columned entry hall, half a dozen men started, and stared as soldiers rushed in to surround them with bared blades.
“Dispose of them,” Albanus ordered without slowing. He went straight to the alabaster stairs, Demetrio trailing after.
Behind him men began shouting for mercy as they were herded away.
“No!” a skinny, big-nosed man screamed. “I would not have done it. I—” Vegentius’ boot propelled him beyond hearing.
Albanus made his way to Sephana’s bedchamber along halls he once had traversed for more carnal purposes. But not, he thought as he opened the door, for more pleasurable ones.
Demetrio followed him diffidently into the room, peering fearfully for the destruction the magick had wrought. There seemed to be none. Sephana lay on her bed, though to be sure she did not move or acknowledge their presence. She was naked, a robe of blue silk clutched in her hand as if she had been on the point of donning it when she decided instead to lie down. Albanus chuckled, a dry sound like the rattle of a poisonous serpent.
The slender youth crept forward. Her eyes were open; they seemed to have life, to see. He touched her arm, and gasped. It was as hard as stone.
“She still lives,” Albanus said suddenly. “A living statue. She will not have to worry about losing her beauty with age now.”
Demetrio shivered. “Would it not have been simpler to kill her?”
The hawk-faced lord gave him a glance that was all the more frightening for its seeming benevolence. “A king must think of object lessons. Who thinks of betraying me will think next on Sephana’s fate and wonder at his own. Death is much more easily faced. Would you betray me now, Demetrio?”
Mouth suddenly too dry for words, the perfumed youth shook his head.
Vegentius entered the room laughing. “You should have heard their crying and begging. As if tears and pleas would stay our steel.”
“They are disposed of, then?” Albanus said. “All who were under this roof? Servants and slaves as well?”
The big square-faced man drew a broad finger across his throat with a crude laugh. “In the cesspool. There was one—Leucas, he said his name was, as if it mattered—who wept like a woman and said it was not he, but one named Conan who was to do the deed. Anything to—What ails you, Albanus?”
The hawk-faced lord had gone pale. His eyes locked with those of Demetrio. “Conan. ’Twas the name of he from whom you bought the sword.” Demetrio nodded, but Albanus, though looking at him, saw other things. He whispered, uttering his thoughts unaware. “Coincidence? Such is the work of the gods, and when they tangle the skeins of mens’ fates so it is for cause. Such cause could be murderous of ambition. I dare not risk it.”
“It cannot be the same man,” Vegentius protested.
“Two with such a barbarous name?” Albanus retorted. “I think not. Find him.” His obsidian glare drilled each man in turn, turning them to stone with its malignancy. “I want this Conan’s head!”
XI
Conan poured another dipperful of water over his head and peered blearily about the courtyard behind the Thestis. The first thing his eye lit on was Ariane, arms crossed and a disapproving glint in her eye.
“If you must go off to
strange taverns,” she said firmly, “drinking and carousing through the small hours, you must expect your head to hurt.”
“My head does not hurt,” Conan replied, taking up a piece of rough toweling to scrub his face and hair dry. His face hidden, he winced into the toweling. He hoped fervently that she would not shout; if she did his skull would surely explode.
“I looked for you last night,” she went on. “Your meeting with Taras is arranged, though he wished no part of it at first. You have little time now. I’ll give you directions.”
“You are not coming?”
She shook her head. “He was very angry at our having approached you. He says we know nothing of fighting men, of how to choose good from bad. After I told him about you, though, he changed his mind. At least, he will meet you and decide for himself. But the rest of us are not to come. That is to let us know he’s angry.”
“Mayhap.” Conan tossed aside the toweling and hesitated, choosing his words. “I must speak to you of something. About Leucas. He is putting you in danger.”
“Leucas?” she said incredulously. “What danger could he put me in?”
“On yesterday he came to me with some goat-brained talk of killing Garian, of assassination. An he tries that—”
“It’s preposterous!” she broke in. “Leucas is the last of us ever to speak for any action, especially violent action. He cares for naught save his philosophy and women.”
“Women!” the big Cimmerian laughed. “That skinny worm?”
“Yes, indeed, my muscular friend,” she replied archly. “Why, he’s accounted quite the lover by those women he’s known.”
“You among them?” he growled, his massive fists knotting.
For a moment she stared, then her eyes flared with anger. “You do not own me, Cimmerian. You have no leave to question me of what I did or did not do with Leucas or anyone else.”
“What’s this of Leucas?” Graecus said, ambling into the courtyard. “Have you seen him? Or heard where he is?”
“No,” Ariane snapped, her face coloring. “And what call have you to skulk about like some spry?”
Graecus seemed to hear nothing beyond her denial. “He’s not been seen since last night. Nor Stephano, either. When I heard his name mentioned … .” He laughed weakly. “Perhaps we could stand to lose a philosopher or three, but if they’re taking sculptors this time as well … .” He laughed again, but his face was a sickly green.
Ariane was suddenly soothing. “They will return.” She laid a concerned hand on the stocky man’s shoulder. “Why, like as not they wasted the night in drink. Conan, here, did the same.”
“Why should they not return?” Conan asked.
Ariane shot him a dagger look, but Graecus answered shakily. “Some months past some of our friends disappeared. Painters and sketchers, they were. But two were never seen again, their bodies found in a refuse heap beyond the city walls, where Golden Leopards had been seen to bury them. We think Garian wishes to frighten us into silence.”
“It sounds not like the way of a king,” Conan said, frowning. “They frighten with public executions and the like.”
Graecus suddenly looked ready to vomit.
Arian scowled at Conan. “Should you not be making ready to meet Taras?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Graecus, uttering soothing sounds and stroking his brow.
Disgruntled, Conan tugged on his padded under-tunic and jazeraint hauberk, muttering to himself on the peculiarities of Ariane. As he buckled his sword belt about him, she spoke again.
“Do you need to go so, as if armed for war?” Her tone was biting, her annoyance at him still high. “You’ll not have to fight him.”
“I have my reasons,” Conan muttered.
Not for a sack of gold as big as a cask would he have told her that someone in the city was trying to kill him. In her present mood, she would think he was trying to shift her sympathy from Graecus to himself. Erlik take all women, he thought.
Setting his spiked helm on his head, he said coldly, “Give me your directions for finding this Taras.” Her face as she gave them was just as cold.
The Street of the Smiths, whence Ariane’s directions took him, was lined not only with the shops of swordsmiths and ironworkers, but also of smiths in gold, silver, copper, brass, tin and bronze. A cacophony of hammering blended with the cries of sellers to make the street a solid sheet of noise, reverberating from end to end. The Guilds made sure that a man who worked one metal did not work another, but so too did they hire the guards that patrolled the street. No bravos lurked on the Street of the Smiths, and shoppers strolled with an ease seen nowhere else in the city.
As he came closer to the place of the meeting —rooms reached by entering a narrow hall next to a coppersmith’s shop and climbing the stairs at its end—the less he wished to enter it unprepared. He had no reason to foresee trouble, but too many times of late someone had tried to put a blade into him.
Short of the coppersmith’s he began to dawdle, pausing here to heft a gleaming sword, there to finger a silver bowl hammered in an intricate pattern of leaves. But all the while he observed the building that housed the coppersmith with an eye honed by years as a thief.
A pair of Guild guards had stopped to watch him, where he stood before a silversmith’s open-fronted shop. He raised the bowl he held to his ear and thumped it.
“Too much tin,” he said, shaking his head and tossing the bowl back on the merchant’s table. He strolled off pursued by the silversmith’s frenzied imprecations, but the guards paid him no more mind.
Just beyond the coppersmith’s was an alley, smelling as much of mold and old urine as any other in the city. Into this he slipped, hurrying down its narrow length. As he had hoped, damp air and mold had flaked away most of the mud plastered over the stones of the building.
A quick glance showed that no one was looking down the alley from the street. His fingers sought cracks amid the poorly dressed and poorly mortared stone. Another might have found such a climb impossible, most especially in heavy hauberk and boots, but to one of the Cimmerian mountains the wide chinks in the stone were as good as a highway. He scrambled up the side of the building so quickly that someone who had seen him standing on the ground and looked away for a moment might well have thought he had simply disappeared.
As he heaved himself onto the red clay tiles of the roof, a smile lit his face. Set in the roof was a skylight, a frame stretched with panes of fishskin. It was, he was certain, situated above the room he sought.
Carefully, so as not to dislodge loose tiles—and perhaps send himself hurtling to the street below—he made his way to the skylight. The panes were clear enough to allow some light through, but not for seeing. It was the work of a moment with his belt dagger to make a slit, to which he put his eye.
The room below was narrow, and ill lit even with the skylight and two brass lamps on a table. In it four men stood, two with cocked crossbows in hands, watching the door through which he was supposed to walk.
The big Cimmerian shook his head, in anger and wonder at the same time. It was one thing to be wary of trouble where none was expected, another to find it waiting there.
“Is he coming, or not?” one of the men without a crossbow asked irritably. He had a deep scar across the top of his head, where someone had caught him a blow that should have killed him.
“He’ll come,” the other man with no crossbow replied. “The girl said she’d send him right to this room.”
Conan froze. Ariane. Could she have sent him here to die?
“What will you tell her?” the horribly scarred man asked. “She has influence enough to cause trouble, Taras.”
“That I hired him,” Taras laughed, “and sent him out of the city to join the others she thinks I’ve hired. That should keep her quiet.”
Lying on the roof, the big Cimmerian heaved a sigh of relief. Whatever Ariane had done, she had done unknowingly. Then the rest of what Taras had said penetrated. The others sh
e thought he had hired. It was as he had feared. The young rebels were being duped. Conan had a great many questions for Taras. His broadsword slipped from its sheath, steel rasping on leather.
“Be you sure,” Taras told the crossbowmen, “to fire the instant he steps into the room. These barbars die hard.”
“Even now is he a dead man,” one of the pair replied. The other laughed and patted his crossbow.
A wolfish grin came to Conan’s face. It was time to see who would die in that room. Like silent death he rose, and leaped.
“Crom!” he roared as his feet tore through the skylight.
The men below had only time to start, then Conan’s boots struck one of the crossbowmen squarely atop his head, bearing him to the floor with a crunch of snapping vertebrae. The second crossbowman desperately swung his weapon, trying to bring it to bear. Conan kept his balance with cat-like skill, and pivoted, dagger darting over the swinging crossbow to transfix the bowman’s throat. With a gurgling scream he who had named the Cimmerian a dead man himself died, squeezing the trigger-lever as he did. Abruptly the scar-topped man, sword half drawn, coughed once and toppled, the crossbow quarrel projecting from his left eye.
Using the dagger as a handle Conan hurled the sagging body of the bowman at Taras, and as he did he recognized that pock-marked face. Taras had been at that other meeting he had interrupted by coming through the roof.
The pocked man staggered, clawing for his sword, as the corpse struck him. “You!” he gasped, getting his first clear look at the Cimmerian’s face.
Snarling, Conan struck, his blade clanging against the hilt of the other’s partially drawn sword. Taras shrieked, severed fingers dropping to the floor. And yet he was no man to go down easily. Even while blood flowed from his mutilated right hand, his left snatched his dagger from its sheath. With a cry of rage, he lunged.
It would have been easy for Conan to kill the man then, but he wanted answers more than he wanted Taras’ death. Sidestepping Taras’ lunge, he clubbed his fisted hilt against the back of the pock-faced man’s neck. The lunge became a stumble, and, yelling, Taras fell over the scarred man’s body and crashed to the floor. He twitched once, emitting a long sigh, and did not rise.
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