by Tanya Huff
The only sound on the clifftop was the angry pounding of waves against rock.
*Impressive,* Gyhard murmured, feeling as though he hadn’t quite caught up.
*Thank you.*
*You know, people would pay good coin to see something like that.*
*Yeah? Well, maybe we’ll let them; the bards aren’t going to feed us forever.*
“You don’t understand!” Dumi wailed, tears running back into his hair. “Celja’s still down there.”
Vree twisted as she stood. The edge of the cliff had the raw look of a fresh wound. “Down there?”
“Stupid, stupid place to build a house. Stupid.”
*Nice view, though.*
*Maybe yesterday.* Grabbing onto Dumi’s wrist, Vree hauled him to his feet. “Celja’s house fell off the cliff?”
“Her father’s house.” He rubbed the back of his hand under his nose, but before he could continue, another voice cut in.
“It’d be more accurate to say the cliff fell out from under the house.” A heavyset woman, wet gray hair plastered against a round head, exhaustion turning her face a slightly paler shade of gray, closed her fingers around Dumi’s arm and stared tiredly at Vree. “It’s all sandstone around here. Stuff gets wet enough, it starts to slide. The boy’s right though, it’s a stupid place to build. You’re with the healer, Southerner?”
“I am.”
“When we sent him …” To get him out of the way, her tone added. “… we thought he’d have to go up coast to old Raulus i’Ilka at Eel Cove. He’s been retired for years and he’s older than spit, but he’s the closest healer around.”
Dumi twisted in her grip. “Gran, I have to get to Celja!”
“You can’t get to her, boy. Things are worse than when you left. The rest of it’s going to go any minute.”
“NO!” Dumi jerked free, but before Vree could knock him down for the third time, one of the village men got him in a secure hold and dragged him back from the sagging rope barrier.
His grandmother sighed. “She passed up her little brother and got the ropes around her father before the house slipped right off. We dragged him out through a wall. Didn’t mean to, but the wall ended up where he was. Now Celja’s tangled in the wreckage, can’t climb out and we can’t get a rope to her, because every time someone steps over that line, the whole enclosed mess starts to slip.”
Vree studied the area, well aware that the villagers were studying her. “Are you sure she’s still alive?”
“She was a few minutes ago.”
“If someone goes over to get her, the house will fall and both girl and rescuer will die?”
The heavyset woman shrugged. “That’s about it.”
“If no one goes over to get her, the house will fall and the girl will die?”
The silence was answer enough.
“There’s no chance she’d survive the fall?”
*Vree.*
*Calm down. I’m just asking.*
“You don’t know what’s down there, Southerner.” Vree allowed herself to be led about thirty feet along the cliff. “If you’re careful, you can crawl out there and look over.” The old woman pointed at a rain-slick patch of grass that extended out to where land met sky.
Taking the reference to crawling literally, Vree dropped to her belly and crept forward. When she got her first view of the wreckage, she sucked air through her teeth. The upper third of the cliff had collapsed. The house—the remains of the house—balanced between a steep slope of loose rock and a nearly perpendicular drop fifty feet into a churning sea. While she watched, a wave lifted a tabletop and smashed it into kindling against the cliff.
She crept a little farther forward and allowed the upper half of her body to drop over the rim. “Someone could climb down here and work their way over level with the house.”
*Someone?*
Behind her, Dumi’s grandmother snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no holds on that face big enough to support an adult, and I’ll not send a child down.”
“There’s holds,” Vree said, still scanning the rock.
“We haven’t time to anchor a safety line way over here.” But the protest held less force than it had.
“Don’t need one. Just drop two lines down by the house.”
“It can’t be done.” Colored by hope, it was almost a question.
Vree rolled over and looked up at her. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still a sullen gray. “Yes, it can.”
*Why, Vree?* Gyhard’s thoughts paced the confines of Vree’s mind as though looking for a way to escape. *Why risk both our lives for a girl you don’t know? Her own people have given up!*
*I don’t leave people to die.*
He bit back a protest as he realized that emotionless statement made a warped sort of sense. Death and Imperial Assassins were active partners. Besides, from his position inside her head, he could see that it would be no use trying to talk her out of it. *Are you sure you can do this?*
*I could do this in the dark under the noses of guards who would desperately like to kill me.* As Dumi’s grandmother shouted orders, Vree began stripping off her sodden clothes.
*Yeah, but can you do it in daylight under the noses of people who desperately want you to succeed?*
*First time for everything.* Naked, she began to limber up.
*Uh, Vree …*
*What?* Gyhard’s unease drew her attention to the various reactions of the watching villagers. *They look like they’ve never seen skin before.*
Well aware that Vree had no nudity taboos—they were impossible to maintain in the army and, as most Imperial citizens spent at least two years in uniform, they’d disappeared almost entirely throughout the Empire—Gyhard could only assume the embarrassment he felt was his own. The problem was, they weren’t in the Empire. *Is this really necessary?*
Before she could answer, Dumi’s grandmother asked much the same thing.
Vree flexed the muscles across her shoulders. “Wet clothes are heavy. They also get in the way.”
“But protection …”
“From what?”
“Scrapes. The rock.”
*Is she kidding?*
*You’re a new experience for them, Vree.*
Spitting on her palms for luck, she dropped over the edge of the cliff. She could hear Dumi calling and a faint answer rising up from the ruin of the house. *The tricky part’s going to be remembering not to kill her when I get there.*
*Another joke?*
*Mostly. Now shut up, I need to concentrate.*
Drawn back into himself as much as possible, Gyhard felt her attention shift to the cliff face. Her thoughts cleared until they focused on nothing but moving down and across, fingers and toes. The world became rock.
The rock under her right foot crumbled. Her left foot, already in the air, could find no purchase.
She dangled, her entire weight on fingertips alone.
Then the toes of her left foot found a crack; the side of her right foot, a crevasse.
Breathing heavily, she rested her forehead against the wet stone, unable to tell if the roaring she heard was her blood in her ears or the sea, waiting hungrily below.
A few moments later, still some distance from the slide, she felt a shiver deep in the rock. If it goes now, we’ll go with it. Her thought. Gyhard’s. It wasn’t important.
Knees and elbows were bleeding when she finally reached the house. The area was remarkably contained, loose debris having already fallen into the water. She was reaching for one of the two waiting ropes when the world shifted.
One chance. Everything risked on it. Lips pulled back in a vicious parody of a grin, Vree launched herself off crumbling holds at the wildly swaying rope. Rock careened off the cliff around her. Wood shrieked as timber framing twisted like taffy. She closed her fingers. The rough hemp cut into her palm. Something slammed into her shoulder. She snarled and hung on. The noise pounded at her.
Flung back and forth on the end of t
he rope like a rag doll, she fought to get her other arm up. To double her chance of survival.
Then it was over.
Her first thought was for Bannon. The sight of the second rope, hanging empty, nearly accomplished what the rock fall had been unable to do. Then she remembered and her heart started beating again.
Miraculously, the house had not yet gone all the way over.
Climbing back up to the lower edge of the slide as quickly as she could, Vree tied the ends of both ropes around her waist and then dropped back down even with the canted wall now the bottom of the building.
“I need more line,” she yelled. “Play it out slowly. Keep the …”
*Tension,* Gyhard offered.
“… tension the same!”
Cries from the clifftop seemed to indicate they’d thought she’d fallen.
“Talk it over later!” she screamed. “Just give me some slaughtering rope!”
She’d yelled in Imperial, Gyhard noted. It didn’t seem to matter. Her tone appeared to be enough for results.
Muttering under her breath, she moved sideways toward the smashed remains of a window that appeared to open out of a floor. When she reached it, she was astounded to see a young woman her own age peering out. “Celja?”
Celja smiled and brushed at the line of blood dribbling into her eyes. “Hello. Do I know you?”
*Shock?*
*Good guess.* “Celja, can you move toward me?”
“Sure. My legs are free now. They weren’t before, you know.” She crept forward on her elbows, looked down, and added. “I don’t think I could swim right now. Maybe I’d better stay here.”
“Come a little farther,” Vree told her, ducking as a splintered chunk of wood dropped past her ear. “Just a little.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Dumi’s waiting for you up top,” she said, untying the second rope.
Her face brightening, Celja pulled herself another few feet closer to rescue. “Do you know Dumi?”
“Not very well.” Her toes gripping the rock, Vree leaned out, slid the free end of the rope under the young woman’s arms and tied it off.
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
“No.” Easing back, she began to slide Celja out of the window.
The world shifted again.
One hand gripping the front of Celja’s tunic, Vree flung them both away from the slide, hoping the arc of the rope would be long enough.
It was.
Just.
Celja was unconscious but alive when they pulled her up.
Half a dozen hands reached for Vree as she came over the rim, most of her weight on the rope. Someone untied the knots, someone else threw a rough wool blanket over her shoulders. The scene had taken on a clarity she recognized and her blood sizzled the way it did after a target had been taken out. All that was missing was Bannon. And a body.
The villagers were shouting things, but she didn’t understand most of them. Everything seemed to be happening some distance away from herself.
Then she saw Magda kneel by Celja’s side. The healer looked up, caught her gaze, and nodded.
*It’s funny,* she murmured.
*What is?*
*If I hadn’t been so thoroughly trained to kill people, that girl would have died.*
Her need overwhelming caution, Gyhard extended his awareness and pulled the blanket more tightly around her, leaving his/her arms wrapped around her/his body.
She shivered.
*You’re cold.*
*No …*
* * * *
“One double pallet or two singles, my lord?”
Scowling, Gerek pushed wet hair back off his face. “What?”
The innkeeper sighed. The Circle enclose her away from nobility determined to rough it. “One double pallet,” she repeated, “or two singles? The double’ll cost you half an anchor; the singles, a gull each. You two sleeping alone or together?”
“Alone,” Gerek told her indignantly, reaching for his purse.
“Very well, my lord. There’s stew in the pot if you and your …” She took a good look at Bannon, reassessed both her first and second opinion and decided she didn’t want to know. “… companion want a late supper. Quarter-gull each, bowl of stew, bread, and beer. Bowl of fruit’s another quarter-gull.”
“Fine.” Gerek laid a half-gull beside the two copper coins already on the scarred counter. Until he’d spent the last few days in the saddle pounding at a full gallop down the South Coast Road, he’d thought he was in good shape, but every time they’d changed horses he’d mounted a little more slowly. The short walk from the stable to the inn—an establishment chosen purely on the basis of proximity—had nearly crippled him. All he wanted was to sit for a few minutes on something that wasn’t moving, shove some food into his abused body, then fall over. That Bannon appeared to be completely unaffected by the punishing ride irritated him more than he could say, and he strongly suspected that had it not been raining so hard, the southerner would have expected them to reach the next station before stopping for the night.
The public room was nearly empty. Although the three trestle tables could probably hold close to thirty people if they were willing to be friendly, this evening there were only six other customers. Two old men sat by the empty hearth pushing tricolored game pieces around a strategy board, and four young women sitting in the seats closest to the door giggled over mugs of beer.
Shoving his saddlebags under the table with the side of his foot, Gerek began to drop onto the end of the bench nearest the counter.
Bannon lightly touched his arm. “No,” he said. “You sit on the other side of the table.”
Gerek felt his lip curl—about the only protest he had the energy for. “Why?”
“Because this the only seat in the room where you can see all four entrances.”
“Four?”
“Door to the outside; door to the kitchen; stairs to the second floor, chimney.”
“Chimney? That’s not an entrance!”
“It is when there’s no fire lit.”
Grinding his teeth, Gerek shuffled around the table. “Fine,” he snarled. “Sit there. And I wouldn’t be surprised if someone came down the chimney and tried to kill you.”
Bannon bowed mockingly. “Tried to kill me, Your Grace. This way, I can protect your back.”
The giggling grew louder. Although they didn’t understand the language, they understood the tone.
As much as he resented both the implication that he would be unable to provide a similar protection and the reaction it had evoked, Gerek let it go. His father was fond of saying, Never fight with a man trying to pick a fight with you. Even if you win, you’ll lose. When Annice demanded to know what he meant, he’d add, The boy understands. It drove her crazy. Sometimes, Gerek thought that was why his father said it, except that he did understand.
“Suit yourself,” he said, slowly lowering his aching body down onto the bench.
Bannon bowed again, playing to his audience. When one of the girls called out something, he frowned—not because of what had been said, but because he suddenly remembered who’d have to translate it for him.
As the realization showed in Bannon’s expression, Gerek smiled guilelessly. “Did you want something?” he asked.
The young woman added a longer statement along with a lecherous waggle of pale brows. Her friends continued to giggle and one of them shrieked, “Kasya!” in exaggerated horror.
The gist was unmistakable and Bannon couldn’t stand not knowing the particulars any longer. “If you could tell me what she said, Your Grace?”
Gerek dropped his chin onto the heel of his left hand. “You know,” he drawled, “that’s the first time you’ve used my title and haven’t made it sound like an insult.”
“And it could easily be the last, Your Grace.”
All at once, he was tired of the posturing. Maintaining it took more energy than he had to spare. “She said you had a nice
bow, emphasis obvious, then she said it was too bad the table blocked so much of the view.”
“Did she?” Gerek forgotten in the possibilities, Bannon took two running steps, leaped lightly onto the table, flipped in the air, and landed on the far side. He bowed a third time, then made his way back to his seat by the more conventional route.
The giggling stopped and after a moment’s stunned silence, a low-voiced argument ensued.
“End of round one?” Gerek asked as Bannon sat down, impressed in spite of himself.
Bannon smiled, his expression for the first time since Gerek had met him, free of anything but the moment. “The advance, as we say in the army, is on her front.”
The innkeeper put a heavily laden tray down between them. “You break anything,” she growled, with a pointed look at Bannon’s damp footprint on the tabletop, “and you pay for it.”
The food was surprisingly good; the stew no more than two days on the fire and the bread soft enough to dip into the gravy without breaking.
Bannon took a cautious sip of the beer and set it aside.
“Too strong for you?” Gerek asked facetiously.
“A strong beer slows your reaction time.” Bannon moved his gaze deliberately from Gerek to Gerek’s half-empty mug.
Gerek ignored him. He wasn’t in the mood.
They were almost finished when the door slammed open. The flames flickered in the half-dozen flax-oil lanterns and one of the old men muttered a curse without looking up from his game. The five men who stomped in, rain dripping from grimy clothes, wore an assortment of scars and identical scowls.
The innkeeper laid a metal-headed club on the counter. “Get out,” she said. “I’ve told you before Jonakus a’Vasil, I don’t want you and your boys in here.”
The eldest, lamplight reflected in the beads of water on his greasy bald head, held up a purse in a three-fingered hand. “We got money.”
Weighing the nearly empty room against her expenses, the innkeeper’s eyes narrowed. “One drink each.”
“Just one.” Jonakus smiled. Under the mashed remains of his nose, most of his teeth were missing. “Sit, boys. I told you she’d do right by us.”