The ale-bearer had glanced twice at a group of men sitting a few paces distant, who had not taken their eyes from Serris since her arrival. Not that she blamed them—she was an outsider, and she saw no one else in the room with hair the color of fresh straw. Their gaze made Serris acutely aware of the scar that ran from her cheek down to her jaw, making her stand out even more. One of the men cast a greasy smile in Serris’s direction and made a lewd gesture with his pipe. Shame rose up, but she throttled it down. Fear belonged to the old life she had left behind. Instead, she let her anxiety become anger.
Serris felt Regel stir across the table, but he merely went back to spooning his stew into his mouth with the regularity of an automaton. Serris sniffed at her own food and scowled. She hadn’t eaten in more than a day, but she could not make herself do so now. Her stomach churned under the scrutiny.
Two of the men approached, as she had known they would. They wore hunting leathers etched with the mark of a fist clutching three arrows. Local soldiers, she thought. One of them took up a stance just to her right and behind, while the other slid his fleshy form onto the bench at her side. He had the face of a man firmly convinced of his own strength and charm but the eyes of a coward.
“Not invited,” she said. “Leave.”
“What’s a matter, beautiful?” The local breathed sour wine and pipe smoke in her face. “Too long without a sword in your sheath?”
Smoothly, Serris retrieved her tankard and took a long pull, using the gesture to conceal the dagger she drew from her belt and clutched in one white-knuckled hand. The old blade had become well worn, but she kept it honed and polished. Two years before, Regel had given her the dagger—the first weapon she had ever possessed, and the only one she would ever need. “Do not touch me,” she said.
Coward-Eyes ignored the warning. “You’re a whore, right? I can smell it. Lots of men touched you.” He traced the air just above her scar. “Looks like one missed. Mayhap I should try—”
Serris splashed the contents of her tankard into his face and jammed her dagger through his hand into the table. At first, the man’s face scrunched in confusion, then opened in a flurry of agony. Blood welled around the fine steel, and the man screamed in shock and horror. Reflexively, he wrenched away, but the dagger held fast and his pain only worsened. With a certain fascination, Serris heard the rattle of bones and saw flesh sawing itself against the blade. She tried to pull the dagger free, but she’d nailed it into the table too firmly and it resisted.
The man behind Serris lunged and she felt him touch her shoulder.
Then Regel moved, almost too fast to see, and the air parted around the right side of Serris’s face. The man who had grabbed for her staggered back, clutching at his hand. His fingers sailed through the air to plunk against the ceiling, then rained down onto the table around them. One struck Coward-Eyes in the face, and his screaming redoubled. Serris looked at one that had fallen near her, and marveled at its seared stump, which squeezed out not a single drop of blood.
Regel paused for a moment—half-standing, half-sitting—with his blue-bladed sword gleaming in his hands. Then he set the deadly blade on the table beside its scabbard and returned to his stew without a word. At this distance, Serris could feel the weapon, called Frostburn, like a shard of ice, hungrily drinking in the warmth of the fire and nearby bodies.
Serris looked at her initial assailant, whose hand had become a seeping fountain of blood and pus on the table. Wordlessly, she laid her second hand on the handle of her dagger and wrenched the blade free. Coward-Eyes staggered back, jostling another table and showering blood all over. He stumbled and cursed and fled, as did his maimed companion. She made sure to wipe her dagger in full view of the hall.
Conversations faltered into silence and all eyes fell on Serris, but she ignored them in favor of Regel. Her heart raced. She had seen it for just a moment—that same fire that had woke a walking dead girl and turned her to an angel.
“The Winterblood knew respect, once,” Regel said. “All unravels…”
“All falls to ruin.” Serris touched him on the wrist. “Come with me.”
His icy eyes burned into hers. She saw anger there—rage against the injustice of his imprisonment—but he could not come with her. Not yet.
“You’ll come with us,” a voice said.
Two soldiers in ringmail emblazoned with the fistful of arrows sigil stood at her sides, both pointing casters that crackled with full thaumaturgical charges. Lightning raced along the bow of the weapon on her left, while the murderpiece on her right smoked with fire magic. Each soldier wore a leather hauberk etched with the same arms as the two who had assaulted Serris. Wrath scripted the contours of the soldiers’ faces, and murder shone in their eyes. The woman was badly burned all along her face, and the man wore a crimson beard shot through with gray patches, like bones floating in blood.
Serris looked across at Regel, who focused again on his stew. He showed no sign of aiding her. She had no allies in this place. She stood and walked away, spine erect, between the two soldiers.
AS THE SOLDIERS led Serris up a creaking spiral staircase, growing hotter as they rose, she noted which boards made the most noise. Ultimately, they reached a balcony above the main area dimly lit with two smoking braziers that burned the same alchemical incense as below. The lavender aroma became a cloying morass at this height, and Serris felt swelteringly hot in her winter clothes, and she tried to ignore her discomfort by looking out over the heads of the patrons.
From this perspective, Serris saw so much more than she had from the entrance. Some patrons played at bone cards, and she could pick out those who cheated and hid cards behind their backs or up their sleeves. More than a few patrons subtly enjoyed each other with their hands below the table, and she saw a few ready weapons in case a situation turned violent. Had the soldiers not stopped her, Serris might have faced an entire hall of foes.
“Remarkable,” a man said behind her. “The difference a small change in elevation makes.”
The ruler of the Victorious Hunter stood from a throne-like seat that was the finest she’d seen outside Tar Vangr: a wide, padded throne of red leather and feather pillows. He wore threadbare robes that seemed nonetheless more extravagant than anything else worn in the common hall. He had graying raven hair and a network of riverbed-like wrinkles that made his unreadable eyes into pits of pitch. Serris saw immediately the man was no warrior, but in her experience that made him no less dangerous.
“I am Jeht, Defender of Gardh.” He bowed. “Be welcome in my hall, Serris, Angel of Tears.”
Serris met his courtesy with indifference. “You know me?”
He smiled. “Your master has told me often of you.”
She understood. “Lord of Gardh, then.”
His mouth curled into an expression halfway between bemusement and curiosity. He waved the soldiers to lower their weapons, which they did with only a touch of hesitation.
“Gardh has no ruler and never will,” he said. “I am its protector. I deal with threats to its safety, as you have so eloquently proved yourself.” He draped himself back into his throne. “Please. Sit.”
He gestured to a cushioned divan positioned two paces away and lower than his own throne. Serris saw, in the flickering firelight, that others had clustered behind Jeht’s seat: beautiful men and women, clad in silks and chains, the eldest no older than she. Serris recognized the desperation in their faces mingled with a growing resignation to their awful fate. She had lived with the same dying hope for years until Regel had saved her, and to see it now made her teeth stand on edge. She remained standing.
“You seem ill at ease, Serris,” Jeht said. “You have not yet eaten of my food, yes? Please, accept my hospitality, so we can sit as friends rather than enemies.”
He gestured one of his slaves to bring her a platter of sweet flatbread, and she took a piece. The ancient forms craved respect, after all. When she had tasted it, the soldiers relaxed their guard.
&n
bsp; “You call my master one of your servants,” Serris said. “I would persuade you to release him.”
“A true opening thrust, one without hesitation or guile. This, I like.” Jeht grinned. “He is of great value to me. If you compensate me for his loss, I will free him.”
Serris had started to dislike his smiles. She would not bother to ask how Jeht controlled the greatest assassin Tar Vangr had ever known. She gritted her teeth. “Speak your price.”
Jeht held out a hand to the male guard, who handed him a yellowed, much-read scroll. Serris noted the broken seal, which made her breath catch. She knew the fiery mark of Blood Ravalis. “This arrived two years ago, only days after the fall of the Winter King. It states that the conspirators who overthrew him had fled the city. It offers a description of your master and his fabulous sword, and—”
“Liar.” Serris half-drew her dagger, prompting the soldiers to aim their casters at her. “Regel loved the Winter King. Had nothing to do with his murder. That was Ovelia the Bloodbreaker.”
“As you say.” Unconcerned with her, the so-called Defender of Gardh spread out the scroll. “In any case, the Ravalis offer a prescription prize for his return, or a lesser reward for that of his corpse. I suspect they would pay a prize for you as well.”
“That a threat?” Serris glanced at the soldier to her left, whose fingers had gone white around the haft of her caster. The woman’s blue eyes burned with a building rage, and Serris knew she awaited a single gesture to strike. She smiled up at her. “I could simply take him.”
Jeht waved his hand to indicate the hall and its many grizzled occupants. “Over the last fifteen years, Gardh has accumulated a goodly number of hardened soldiers—outcasts, brigands, exiles disaffected with the rise of the Ravalis in Tar Vangr. None of them have read this scroll, but do you think they would treat with you any better than I? And while you may excel with a blade, do you truly believe you can slay every man or woman with a blade in this place? Would you?”
Serris saw the futility of her position. She understood the knife Jeht held over Regel, and now over her. She pointedly sheathed her dagger, and the soldiers relaxed. The tension eased in everyone but her. At the edge of her vision, she thought she saw someone watching from the stairs. She caught a flash of dark hair and eyes against a pale face.
“Now that we understand each other,” Jeht said. “I shall think on what service you might provide me to discharge your master from my debt. In the meantime, you will eat and drink and sleep in this hall, my guests and under my protection. And tomorrow, we shall discuss the first of your tasks for me.” He grinned that same infuriating grin. “I’m sure I can find a use for you, despite the scar.”
Serris nodded, rose without a word, and headed down the stairs.
THE FOLK OF the hall had started to shuffle off, either lying down closer to the fire or braving the snow to return to their homes. A few found shadowed alcoves together, and Serris heard giggling and sharp intakes of breath that told her all she needed to know of their activities. She stood alone in the common hall, veritably trembling with rage, while Jeht’s soldiers looked on, smirking at her. Serris found Regel still sitting in the center of the room and went to stand over him.
“You are a…slave to that man.” The word came hard. She had been a slave until Regel had freed her. “How dare you?”
“What choice do I have?” Regel spoke softly. “I have a life here. I sleep in safety. I eat. I live.”
“You live.” Contempt dripped from her tongue. “Flee, more like. How long have you hid in this place, away from your path?” She closed her fists. “What of tomorrow? Or the next day? When we become his whores to do with as he pleases?”
“What is tomorrow?” Regel asked. “Or the next day? Or the next?”
The fiery, fearless man who had saved her from a wrathful lord seemed to have melted away. No longer did Regel see any path before him. Serris understood, in a way, after his entire world had dissolved beneath his feet. And yet, she could not help the rage that built within her to see him so helpless.
From her pocket, she drew forth a hunk of reddish rosewood, a piece of a dying tree in a very special garden back in Tar Vangr. As far as she knew, that tree numbered among the last of its kind in the World of Ruin, where centuries of conflict and the continual assault of the world’s monsters had all but eradicated civilization. Firmly but with a touch of reverence, Serris set the hunk of wood on the table beside Regel’s mostly empty trencher.
“You saved me once,” she said as she turned to go. “Now it’s my turn.”
Regel stared at the wood for a long, long time. He picked up the chunk of rosewood and turned it over in his hand, exploring its contours. What he saw in its depths, none could say, but he certainly saw something. Then he palmed a small, sharp knife from his sleeve and began to carve.
SERRIS WOKE LATER that night, though she could not immediately say why.
At a glance the hall stood empty of activity, its rough-hewn floor covered with huddled bodies in varied attitudes of sleep. The fire had burned down to purple-glowing embers, their lavender scent reduced to the odor of wilting flowers. She half-expected to find Regel beside her, but Jeht’s favorite pet likely had his own chambers. Perhaps it was for the best. She had learned in their time together that he too slept only lightly, and his absence gave her the chance to deal with the threat alone.
Only when she saw the shadowed figure lurking behind a pillar nearby did Serris understand what had awakened her: the scent of lilac.
Serris drew her dagger subtly, then waited until the ale-bearer came upon her. When a tentative hand reached for her shoulder, Serris caught the woman by the wrist and put the dagger to her throat. She gazed up into her dark eyes, speaking without words. They exchanged a nod. Slowly, the women rose together and left the common hall, out into the snowy night.
The storm had passed, and moonlight illumined the empty street and the yard littered with corroded bits of metal, splintered lengths of wood, and other trash. It felt entirely too open, where anyone could see or hear them. The cold made Serris’s exposed skin itch and she pulled the ale-bearer in close. She could feel the woman’s body like a blazing beacon in the night and wanted all of it. The blade in her hand grounded her, though, and she resisted the urge. They could not tarry out here.
Serris forced the ale-bearer ahead of her and into the comparative warmth of the stable. The pitch-treated wood creaked around them, and snow made the roof groan. A dozen horses occupied the stalls, draped with blankets for warmth. The beasts seemed thin and weak compared to the one Serris had ridden to Gardh. At the end, her stallion whickered softly, luminous black eyes blinking sleepily at its mistress, then turned back to its rest. She recognized Regel’s black stallion snoring nearby.
Serris pushed the ale-bearer ahead of her onto the loose hay and stood over her. “Why did you wake me?” She gestured with the dagger. “You trying to kill me?”
The woman watched her, unmoved by the gleaming blade. She rose to her full height. “If you thought that, you’d have killed me already,” she said. “Do you have a name?”
“My master named me Serris, for the angel of vengeance.”
“That is beautiful.” She came forward and laid her hands on Serris’s hips gently. Suggestively. “I’ve done nothing worthy of a name, but I aspire to do so one day.”
“Answer.” Serris pressed her dagger against the woman’s neck. “What do you want?”
“I think you know.”
Heedless of the blade, the ale-bearer leaned forward and kissed Serris. Her lips were warm and soft despite the frigid air. Her hands massaged Serris’s sore backside and slid along her taut muscles. In that touch, Serris felt the rage of so many futile months melting, and her body relaxed. She lowered the dagger and seized the woman’s head to kiss her back. When the ale-bearer pulled her down into the straw, Serris followed gladly. She dropped the dagger onto the floor.
The woman had her bodice unlaced and her brea
st freed to the cool air before Serris came back to her senses. “Wait,” she said. “Why seduce me?”
“You know that, too.” The woman smiled with her full, sweet lips. “Or do you object?”
“No.” Serris kissed her.
The woman wrapped her legs around Serris’s waist and pulled her back to the ground. Their bodies coursed together for one shivering moment. Warm hands reached inside Serris’s clothes, lighting her skin to tingling. Need burned in her core. It had been so long.
Through force of will, Serris pulled back, breaking their lips apart. “I know you want something,” she said. “But why me? Why not my master? I am but a learner—he is far greater. Why have you never tried to win him?”
That gave the woman pause, and Serris could almost see her mind working to find an answer that would not offend. “He is…broken.”
The ardor cooled in Serris, and she pulled away to sit back on her haunches. The dagger Regel had given her lay next to her left foot, but she made no move to reclaim it. She did not want to touch it.
“He watched the king he had served all his life die,” Serris said. “He has lost everything.”
The woman sat up behind her and wrapped her arms around her. Serris welcomed the warmth. “He has you,” the woman said as she rubbed Serris’s shoulders. “You can save him. Save all of us.”
“He has spent years fleeing me.” Serris shook her head.
To that, the woman had no answer. She turned Serris toward her and ran her fingers along the lines of her cheeks and jaw. Her touch made the cut on Serris’s face stab sharply, and she looked away.
“You shouldn’t hide it,” the woman said. “You’re beautiful despite it.”
Serris drew in a breath, then blew it out slowly. “What would you have me do?”
Brigands (Blackguards) Page 25