One of the attackers reached up to pull Borund from his mount, and I moved.
The first never saw me, never heard me. My blade slid across his throat even as he took a step toward Borund. The man gripping Borund saw the movement, released Borund and jerked back, his face startled, but he was too slow. I felt warm blood on my hand as my dagger darted upward and across into his exposed armpit, sinking deep. It slid out, slick and smooth and silent.
I turned toward the last man, on the other side of Borund and his horse, but he wasn’t there, wasn’t where I expected—
And then I felt William, felt the cold Fire surging along my arms, tingling in my fingers.
No.
I halted, searching, feeling too slow, the same terror I’d felt when racing across the Dredge toward the white-dusty man’s house now mingling with the Fire.
William had regained his feet. His horse had moved a few paces farther down the street. William was still leaning over, gasping for breath, when the last man’s knife sank into his side from behind.
I felt the pain, tasted it, like stinging, bitter sap. It seared through me, through the Fire, through the terror, slashed into my side like molten metal, and I gasped.
William arched back, the shock on his face clear, so close, almost tangible. Neck muscles pulled taut with pain, jaw clenched, he stared toward me, toward Borund, then sank to his knees, arms lax.
The man jerked the knife from his side, shoved him forward to the cobbles, then ran.
For a moment, the narrow street was silent, still, nothing but the nervous snort of the horses at the scent of blood. Then Borund shouted, “William!” and stumbled down from his mount. He tripped on the cobbles, but lurched to William’s side.
Blood was already pooling on the street, dark and black and cold in the starlight.
The serpent of rage around my heart that I hadn’t felt since the Dredge uncoiled and slid free. I tasted the blood—William’s blood—tasted the scent of the man who had stabbed him.
The scent led into the night, down the street to another arch. I could almost touch it.
My nostrils flared. The same calm anger that had consumed me on the Dredge after finding the white-dusty man’s body enveloped me. I could hunt this man down, could find him no matter where he hid. . . .
I’d made it to the arch, not even conscious of moving, when Borund snapped, “Varis!”
I glared back at him, saw him recoil at whatever he saw in my eyes, on my face. I didn’t care. This was my hunt. This was what I was.
But then Borund gasped, “He’s still alive! We need to get him out of here and I can’t move him myself!”
The naked desperation in his voice, the pure pain and the force behind it, cut through the white-cold anger. My gaze flicked down to William’s face, held in Borund’s hands. Beneath the river, I could see William breathing, his breath like steam in the air.
“Please,” Borund whispered.
With effort, I let the scent of the man slip away, shoved the anger aside, and ran to William’s side.
“We have to stop the bleeding,” Borund muttered, shrugging out of his jacket with the gold embroidery. The white ruffled undershirt beneath was already flecked black with William’s blood. “Get his horse. I’ll have to hold him in the saddle as best I can while you run ahead to the house and tell Gerrold and Lizbeth to find a healer and prepare a bed.”
“I can get the guards,” I said, rising, but Borund’s hand clamped down hard on my wrist, halting me.
“Tell no one else!” he hissed, eyes black with anger. “Especially the guards. After what Avrell told us, and especially after dealing with Baill, I don’t trust the guards. Only Gerrold, Lizbeth, and the healer.”
I hesitated, ready to protest that there was still one man out there, that leaving him alone with William was dangerous, that the manse was too far away, but the desperation in his eyes halted me.
He’d never listen, and I already knew that the last man had fled.
We hefted William up into the saddle of his horse, Borund grunting with effort, Fetlock snorting and shying, eyes white at the smell of blood. I suddenly recalled carrying the dead girl back to her mother, remembered how weightless the girl had felt in my arms, as if she were nothing but an empty grain sack, loose and useless.
William didn’t feel empty, nor weightless.
Hope surged through me, like warm water.
Then William was seated as best we could manage and Borund snapped, “Go! Tell Gerrold to fetch Isaiah. Quick!”
And I ran, faster than I’d ever fled on the Dredge.
* * *
I stood inside one of the empty bedrooms at Borund’s manse, tight against one corner, and watched the healer lean over William’s body. He moved frantically, sweat dripping from his face, even though he wiped at it continuously with a cloth. His eyes were wide but intent, trained on his swiftly moving hands as they ripped clothes, pressed clean rags against the flow of blood, held them until they were soaked through, then tossed them aside. He whispered as he worked, short, terse statements that sounded almost like prayer.
Already, the floor was covered with blood-soaked rags. A black-red fan of blood stained the sheets of the bed, dripped with slow, viscous droplets to the hardwood floor. I stood still in the corner and watched the blood gather at the edge of the bedsheet, form into a pregnant drop, then stretch.
“Blessed Mistress, help us! Why won’t the bleeding stop?” Isaiah hissed to himself.
And suddenly it was too much.
I fled the room, startled Lizbeth in the hall outside as she rushed to the room with more linen. She called out, “Varis!” but I was already past.
I flung myself into my room, so small in comparison to the one that held William, but I wrapped the closeness about me as I crouched into the corner, pulled myself into a tight ball. Tears threatened, but I thrust them back, cloaked myself in the coiled anger that still simmered, hot and deep. As deep as the Fire.
In the harshness of the anger I saw the street again, saw the fight, saw the three men surrounding Borund’s horse. I felt my dagger slit the first man’s throat, shudder into the second man’s armpit. And the third man. . . .
I heard someone open the door to my room, slowly, hesitantly, and I pulled deeper into myself, the skin around my eyes tightening. Footsteps crossed the room, light and careful, and then Lizbeth murmured, “Oh, Varis.”
She hesitated a long moment, her uncertainty like a stench on the air, then touched my shoulder.
At Lizbeth’s touch I gasped, choked on the taste of thick phlegm in my throat, and crushed my knees in close.
Lizbeth sat awkwardly on the floor in the corner, hesitated again, then pulled me close to her chest, brushed my hair with one hand.
“I thought the last man was going for Borund,” I hitched between gasps, voice so thick the words were almost unintelligible. But I would not cry. “I thought. . . .”
“I know,” Lizbeth said. “Hush now. I know.” And she began rocking back and forth, holding me tight, like the woman on the Dredge had rocked as she held the dead girl with the green ribbon in her arms.
Slowly, reluctantly, I let the tension drain out of my body, curled tighter to Lizbeth’s chest.
A long time later, when the anger had finally settled, when my chest ached and I felt empty and weak, Lizbeth still stroking my hair, I glared out at the floor of my room, unseeing, and said quietly to myself, “I thought he was going for Borund.”
* * *
Borund sat at his desk in his office, the papers that littered his desktop forgotten. A large decanter of wine sat squarely on top of them, a glass to one side, mostly empty. Some wine had spilled, but Borund didn’t seem to notice.
I stood against one wall, a few paces distant, where I always stood. The large room, with the chairs, the tables, the scattering of statues and vas
es and shaped stones, felt hollow and empty.
Borund reached for the glass without looking, tipped it back with a violent gesture, and swallowed the remaining wine, placing the glass back on the table gently. His eyes never left the blank spot on the wall in front of him.
I shifted uncomfortably.
“He began his apprenticeship with me when he was nine, you know,” Borund said suddenly, his voice too loud in the silence.
I didn’t respond, watching him warily. It had been two days since we’d brought William back to the manse and Borund hadn’t left the grounds once. He’d barely left his office, Gerrold bringing him food and wine. Lots of wine. Borund had sent Gerrold and Gart back to the street where we’d been attacked with a cart to take care of the bodies, but when Gerrold and the stableboy returned, they’d reported they’d found only blood on the cobbles. No bodies. Someone had already carted them away. Charls wouldn’t have wanted Borund’s body to be found in the middle ward. Not when he needed everyone to believe that the deaths were accidents. He must have had a cart waiting, ready to transport the corpses.
He just didn’t get the corpses he expected.
A few doors away, William slept fitfully and deeply. Isaiah had stopped the bleeding eventually, had cleansed and sewn shut the wound, but he’d said it was up to the Mistress whether William would live. The knife had gone deep, and William had lost more blood than he’d ever seen a man lose before and still live. There was nothing any of us could do now except wait.
Borund smiled. “I remember him standing at the edge of the desk, barely able to contain himself, his hands twitching as he clutched them behind his back. He’d glare at me when I ordered him to stand still. Oh, not openly. When he thought I wasn’t looking. And he hated keeping the records, writing down all those numbers in the logbooks, keeping track of the price of acquisition, the price the goods were sold for, the amount of the sale and to whom.” Borund’s smile widened. “But he got over that with time.” His voice was slightly slurred, the imperfections caused by the wine barely noticeable.
He looked up at me. “You don’t read or write, do you?” He didn’t wait for an answer, merely grunted, as if he were disgusted with himself for not thinking about it in the first place. “We’ll have to fix that. But not today.”
It’s what he’d said about the horses. I hadn’t ridden one yet.
His attention faded for a moment, then focused on the empty glass. He shifted forward enough so that he could reach the decanter and poured himself another glass, taking a good swallow before dropping back into his chair with a heavy sigh.
“Nine,” he muttered, and his eyes darkened. “The bastard.”
I knew he wasn’t talking about William anymore. Over the last two days, he’d only talked of two things: memories of William. . . .
And Charls.
I shifted again, straightened slightly, suddenly attentive. The last few days I’d moved around the manse in a state of shock much like Borund’s. This morning, something had changed. I’d had an idea. But I didn’t know if Borund would agree to it.
“The bloody bastard,” Borund hissed. “Vincentt, Sedwick, Terell, Marcus . . . all dead. Accidents, my ass.” He took another swallow. “Charls has to be stopped.”
I shifted forward, hesitated barely a breath, then said coldly, “I can do it.”
He didn’t seem to hear at first, his gaze fixed again on the blank wall. Then he looked up, almost startled. But the expression faded fast, smoothed out into cold consideration, the expression of a merchant, weighing options, gains, risks.
This didn’t last long either. The cold consideration of the merchant slowly shifted into dark anger. An anger I recognized. It was the anger that had seized me on the Dredge, when I’d gone in search of Bloodmark that final time, the same anger I’d felt on the street in the middle circle, when Borund had called me back from the hunt for the man who’d stabbed William.
“You can kill him? Without being seen?” he asked.
“It will take a little time. I’ll have to follow him, figure out his patterns. But I can do it.”
Something between us shifted. For the last few months, he’d wavered between ordering me to do things, and asking me, one moment laughing and joking with me, the next wondering whether a bodyguard was necessary, worth the expense. It had been awkward and unsettling. He didn’t know whether to treat me as family, like William, or as a servant.
But now, as he watched me, I saw his uncertainty over how to treat me, how to think of me, solidify.
He’d seen me kill before, had seen me stand over the bodies. And this was the image that settled into his eyes there, in his office, as he leaned slightly forward, one hand resting on the desk. He saw me as I was: a dagger, a weapon, a tool.
I’d never be family.
Some part of me twisted inside, tightened with regret. But it was small and was smothered by anger. At that moment, I wanted Charls dead as well.
“Then do it,” Borund said, and there was no longer a slur in his voice.
I straightened, hand resting on my dagger.
I would have done it anyway, no matter what Borund said.
But it felt good to have his approval.
* * *
I followed Charls and his men for the next two weeks, noted the taverns he liked to visit, the streets he traveled to get to his warehouses and the wharf, his manse behind the first set of walls in the residential district. At first, I stayed back, over fifty paces, just close enough I could keep him in sight. It wasn’t hard to track him; he always kept at least two men at his side, like that first night I’d seen him, outside Borund’s tavern. Bodyguards, like me. Gutterscum. But after a while I realized his bodyguards weren’t as wary as someone from the Dredge would be, and so I shifted closer. Not enough to catch their attention, but enough to note that I wouldn’t be able to kill Charls on the street, or at the warehouses or wharf. Not without being seen.
That left only one option: his manse.
At the end of one of these excursions, coming up onto the gates of Borund’s manse, I saw Avrell leaving through the side entrance to the gardens. He checked the night-darkened street, but didn’t see me. Then he drew a hood up over his head and moved away, toward the old city, his pace quick.
I frowned, wondered what he had come to Borund to discuss. But I said nothing.
That was Borund’s business. My business was Charls.
And I was ready.
* * *
I stood at the side of the bed and stared down at William, at his rounded face, his wild hair, his eyes closed in sleep. His breathing came in soft sighs, barely audible. Even in the moonlight that came in through the open window, I could see that the grayness of his skin had faded in the two weeks since the attack. He was still weak, could move about his room with the aid of the wall and the furniture, but it caused him extreme pain.
The anger inside me writhed as I remembered how his face had contorted the first time he collapsed. Sweat had drenched his skin just from sitting upright. His face had blanched. When he’d tried to shift his weight to his legs, his feet hanging over the side of the bed, they’d given out, folded like cloth.
He’d gasped as he was falling, but when he hit the floor, Borund not swift enough to catch him—
I flinched back, heard the scream again, heard the agony. And as I drew in a deep breath I smelled the stench of his pain—old sweat and rotten meat.
I shook myself. The anger held a moment more, then calmed. The remembered stench faded into the salt of the sea as a breeze pushed past the curtains at the window.
William.
His brow creased, face tightened. Sweat sheened his skin, and one arm twitched.
“No,” he murmured. “No!”
I reached forward, almost touched his cheek, but halted at the last moment.
Something twisted in my stomach and
I snatched my hand back.
I’d seen the way he looked at me at the tavern, after I’d killed that first man. Not fear. I’d seen fear plenty of times on the Dredge. No. William was more than afraid, he was terrified. Of me. Of what I could do, what I held inside. He was afraid of who I was.
I crouched down beside the bed, shifted closer so that I could see William’s face better in the darkness. I could smell his sweat, his scent. On the sheets, in the air.
His face was still contorted, and this close I could hear him whimpering.
I’d come into his room every night since I’d offered to kill Charls, and every night William fell into nightmare. Borund didn’t know, but Lizbeth did. I wasn’t certain how, since I made certain no one was near before I came, but somehow she knew.
Leaning even closer, I said softly, “Tonight.”
William shook his head, mumbled “No” again, but the tension around his eyes relaxed. His brow smoothed and his breath calmed.
I watched him a moment more, then looked up toward the window, out into the night.
Tonight.
* * *
Gerrold let me out of the side entrance, the one Borund and William had used to bring me to the manse. I stood in the shadow of its alcove and stared out at the side street. I wouldn’t move until the patrol had passed by.
A few days after the attempt on Borund in the middle ward, palace guardsmen began to appear in the city. Patrols had wandered the city at random before; that had started even before I killed Bloodmark and fled along the Dredge. I remembered the woman who’d halted one that first day in the real Amenkor, remembered watching them move on the streets after that, some on horseback, others walking. But after the attack on Borund. . . .
Now the guardsmen were everywhere, their patrols passing through the streets of the upper city at regular intervals, a few patrols scouring the wharf and docks below. Neither Borund nor I knew who had ordered them, Avrell or Baill. Perhaps it had been the Mistress. The guardsmen did nothing except ride by, watching, their eyes hard and dangerous, cold, their horses’ hooves clopping on the cobbles. No words were spoken, unless they were interrupting a fight. But they were felt.
The Throne of Amenkor Page 22