The Brazen Gambit

by Lynn Abbey

  The voice was feminine, but the woman who came out of the room with a short-sword in her hand wasn't Akashia.

  "Dovanne." The only light came from a oil flame inside the room, but Dovanne with her cropped hair and serpent-circled arm was unmistakable.

  She'd been the lamp-bearing templar who'd gone down the corridor. He hadn't seen her face or her arm. Still, if they had to face a templar guard, she was the best they could have hoped for. Dovanne took one look at him and came on guard behind her sword. She didn't care about Ruari and Yohan dashing past to rescue Akashia. She didn't care about anything except spilling his guts on the floor and wouldn't sound an alarm or call for help until she was finished with him.

  Dovanne, being smaller, had a slight advantage in the confined space of the corridor, but otherwise they were evenly matched. Her iron sword had a guard that offered some protection for her wrist. It also had a curved blade and had been sharpened along the outer edge only. His obsidian knife was a composite weapon, cheaper than metal, but every bit as deadly, with curved wedges of sharp black glass carefully fitted into a straight, laminated wood-and-sinew blade. It was long as her short-sword, had a naked hilt, and was razor-sharp along both edges and at the point.

  She feinted first, a probing cut toward his weapon-side wrist. He parried and she withdrew. The blades sang-gray metal against glassy stone-but softly: neither of them wanted to attract attention. He dropped his guard two hand-spans, inviting an attack. She remembered that move from the countless times they'd bouted against each other while they were friends.

  "Take a chance," he taunted in a hoarse whisper. "You always said I was slow."

  Yohan and Ruari had gotten Akashia unbound and were trying-without much success by the sound of it-to get her on her feet. Dovanne heard the same sounds and belatedly realized what was happening in the room, what would happen to her if she failed her duty to Escrissar.

  Beginning her attack with a low slash to his off-weapon thigh, which he had to parry, Dovanne tucked and rolled into Akashia's room- "Yohan!" he shouted as loudly as he dared. She came up to her feet with the sword poised for a downward slice-

  He knew her well enough to see the thoughts forming behind her eyes: two against one. She was going to call for help.

  "This one's mine," he announced, beating Yohan's knife aside with his own and praying that the dwarf would guess the strange rules of this particular game.

  It didn't really matter whether Yohan understood or not, he was interested in Akashia, not Dovanne.

  Dovanne tried another attack when the dwarf turned his back, but Pavek was waiting. They traded feints and insults.

  The room was bigger in all dimensions than the corridor, despite being crowded. The advantage swung to him, and he made his first serious attack: a quick beat against her blade then a thrust at the soft flesh below her ribs. She countered fast enough to make him miss, and they sprang apart.

  There was movement at Pavek's back: a loud-oooff-as Yohan scooped Akashia over his shoulder, effectively removing himself from any possible defense or attack as he scurried toward the door. Dovanne could see them better than he could, but he could see the desperation take command of her face. Ruari had Yohan's knife, but anyone with half the experience he or Dovanne had could see that the half-elf didn't know which end to point into the wind.

  Desperation called Dovanne's shots: One all-out attack against him. If she nailed him, she'd have the other two, hands down. She'd come out of this a hero.

  He saw the feint coming and parried with the middle of his blade, leaving the point in line. She came low with a counterparry, trying to get under his guard for an upward slash at his groin. But he was ready with a thrust. He gave the hilt a twist as the point pierced her skin and pushed the blade through to her spine.

  "Pavek...."

  Her knees buckled, the sword-as fine a weapon as was likely to come his way-slipped from her hand. He released the obsidian knife's hilt; she fell to the floor, and he picked up the metal sword.

  "Pavek...." She held out her serpent-wrapped hand.

  The wound was mortal; he knew the signs. He had her weapon, and she wasn't going to do anything treacherous with his. For the sake of the past, he bent down and took her hand. She squeezed with uncanny strength, trembled and grimaced as she pulled her head and shoulders up. He dropped to one knee and laid the sword down, thinking to put his arm behind her neck as she said her dying words.

  A gob of bloody spittle struck his cheek, and she went limp.

  He retrieved the sword and wiped his face on his sleeve, then he hurried down the corridor to give his companions a hand lifting Akashia to the roof.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "There's no way," Pavek muttered, shaking his head. Still in the templar quarter, on a street not far from House Escrissar, he huddled with Ruari and Yohan, Akashia slumped against his side, barely able to stand, oblivious to him and everything else. Yohan had carried her down the side of House Escrissar; the dwarf would carry her forever if he had to, but he couldn't carry her out of the city, at least not the way they'd entered it: the passage was too narrow, too low, with too many tight corners.

  "She's got to walk on her own."

  Neither Ruari nor Yohan answered, there being no reply to the obvious. He steadied Akashia with his hands on her shoulders, then stepped back. She tottered once from side to side, then her knees gave out completely, and she would have fallen if he hadn't gotten his arm around her quickly.

  "What's wrong with her?" Ruari demanded.

  "You're the druid. You tell me," he replied, sharper than necessary, sharper than he'd intended.

  His nerves were raw. They'd had no trouble-yet-other than the obvious problems Akashia herself had given them, and Yohan had wrestled successfully with those-so far. He didn't trust luck, not at times like this.

  The quarter echoed with the clang of brazen gongs, but: those were only domestic gongs summoning household members home from their evening activities before the great city curfew gong struck at midnight. House Escrissar itself remained dark and quiet, unaware, it seemed, that a woman lay dead on an upper-room floor and the prisoner she'd guarded was missing.

  For all Pavek had a dozen worries about Akashia, it was Dovanne's face that loomed behind his eyes: her face twisted with mortal pain and hate the instant before she died, and her face as it had been years ago. He told himself he had no regrets, that Dovanne certainly wouldn't let his dying eyes haunt her, if events had gone the other way. They'd had no choice tonight or ever, either of them.

  But he still couldn't get that look out of his mind.

  "I said: I'm no healer!" Ruari's hand struck his arm, demanding attention. "Wind and fire, Pavek, you're not listening. What's wrong with you?"

  He truly hadn't heard the words the first time Ruari must have said them, but something in the words-or tone-of the repetition penetrated Akashia's mindless daze. She whimpered and buried her face against his neck, but when he put his other arm around her, she stiffened, then began to tremble.

  His own helplessness in the face of Akashia's need drove Dovanne at last from his consciousness, replaced her death-mask with a black mask and talons. He'd come back. Escrissar would answer for what he'd done.

  But first they had to get Akashia out of Urik. "Pavek!"

  "Think fast," Yohan suggested. "Curfew's going to ring soon. Inside or out, we can't be here when it does. Don't suppose you had any friends who might do you a favor? A woman, maybe?"

  Dovanne returned, hard and angry, and remained with him until he shook his head so vigorously that Akashia's trembling intensified, and she clutched his shirt in fists so cold he could feel the chill through the coarse cloth. Telhami could heal her, he was certain of that, but getting her to Telhami wasn't going to be easy.

  He saw no other choice except to go to ground for the night and hope that sleep and food-which they could buy in the morning market-would restore her enough to make the rest of the journey possible.

  But g
o to ground where? The places of his life: the orphanage, the barracks, the archives, and even the customhouse paraded themselves before his mind's eye. Of those, the customhouse, with its myriad maze of storerooms, might be a last-chance refuge-a very last chance.

  There was Joat's Den, near the customhouse, where he'd done his after-hours eating and drinking, but Joat wasn't a friend to his customers, and the Den stayed open well past curfew. Besides, there was a reason he'd spent his off-time at Joat's: they couldn't go there without being seen by the very templars whose attention they were determined to avoid.

  There was one other place, filled with such mixed memories that he'd forgotten it entirely, even though it was where he'd spent his last night in Urik: Zvain's bolt-hole beneath Gold Street, near Yaramuke fountain. Considering his leave-taking, Zvain was likely to be less a friend now than Joat, but he would take them in-if only because with Yohan and Ruari beside him, they would be three against one.

  And maybe tomorrow he could complete the circle by taking Zvain out of Urik with them. There were four kanks; they could do it

  "Now, Pavek. Now!"

  "All right. I've... thought of a place. We'll be safe there."

  Yohan took Akashia in his arms and lifted her to his shoulder. "Where? How far?"

  "A bolt-hole under Gold Street." He started walking. "Belongs to an orphan I knew-" He was going to say more, then reconsidered. "He'll take us in, that's all."

  Three disparate men marching through the streets with a human woman draped over a dwarf's shoulder wasn't uncommon in a city where marriage was frequently a matter of slavery or abduction. They drew a few stares, but the people who stared were hurrying home, even here in the templar quarter, and not inclined to ask any questions.

  They had an anxious moment at the gate between the templar quarter and the rest of the city, but apparently no respectable household had reported a missing young woman. Pavek's explanation that his sister had run off with the wrong man-along with a hasty shower of silver from Yohan's coin poucti-saw them into the next quarter of artisans and shopkeepers with nothing more than a warning to be off the streets by curfew.

  * * *

  The alley where the Gold Street catacomb began had taken a beating in the most recent Tyr-storm. Most of the debris had been scavenged clean, but larger chunks of masonry covered the cistern that, in turn, had covered the catacomb entrance.

  Pavek swallowed panic-he hadn't considered what the storm might have done to Zvain's bolt-hole; hadn't, he realized gazing on this small disaster, truly considered what might have happened to Zvain, either. But the catacomb would have survived-the bakery attached to the alley made more money renting space dug out from its cellar than it made from its ovens, and Zvain... Zvain had managed before he'd arrived-he'd have survived his leaving as well.

  Pavek glanced around quickly and spotted another cistern. It proved empty and fastened to a slate slab. He had them underground before anyone else realized things weren't quite the way he'd expected them to be.

  By night the catacomb was as dark as the Dragon's heart They stumbled into each other, the walls, and the occasional door. There were dozens of people living here, all aware that strangers walked among them. Whispers and warnings disturbed the still air, but no one interfered. Still, Pavek stifled a relieved sigh when he finally felt the familiar wickerwork patterns beneath his fingers.

  "Zvain?"

  Nothing. He waited and whispered the name again.

  Still nothing.

  The bolt-hole might belong to someone else entirely; Zvain might have found a better place to live-he certainly hoped that was the case, but it was equally likely the boy's luck had gone bad rather than better.

  It didn't matter. The curfew gong would clang any moment now. There was no place else for them to go. Pavek drew his sword-Dovanne's sword; and a loud, unmistakable sound in the darkness-then, squeezing the latch-handle from habit more than hope, put his weight against the flimsy door.

  The latch-bolt hadn't been thrown; the door swung wide into a quiet, apparently empty room.

  The bolt-hole was musty with the smells food made if it dried out before it completely rotted. Food... or bodies.

  Swallowing hard and wishing for a torch or lamp, he went inside.

  His hand found the shelf beside the door, the lamp, and a flint sparker: all as it should be, and light revealed the bolt-hole as he remembered it last-exactly the way he remembered it last, even to the slops bucket on its side a few steps from the rumpled bed.

  Before he had considered the implications, Yohan brushed past with Akashia, and the moment was gone.

  They put her on the bed, where she sat, knotting the frayed linens through her fingers, but she wouldn't lie down. When Ruari asked if she was hungry and offered her a heel of bread from his belt pouch, she gave no sign she'd heard the question until he waved the bread directly in front of her eyes. Then she took it into her hands, tearing off crumbs, which she savored slowly. But she offered no conversation, no sign that she recognized them.

  "She'll be better in the morning, when she's had time to rest," Ruari said, as much a question as a statement.

  Pavek and Yohan exchanged worried glances and otherwise ignored the half-elf's comment. There was an outside chance Ruari was right. Physically, Akashia seemed unharmed. Her face was drawn, with dark smudges beneath her eyes and hollows beneath her cheekbones, but there were no cuts or bruises that he could see. She wasn't starving, and her clothes were clean, as was her hair. In outward respects, Escrissar had cared well for his prisoner.

  But Pavek knew how interrogators got their answers. He'd heard her moaning and, looking into her beautiful but vacant eyes, he feared that in her determination to keep Telhami's secret, she'd sacrificed everything that had made her human.

  Most templars, in a final act of brutal mercy, would-slash the throat of a prisoner when they were done questioning him, but though interrogators would question the dead without hesitation, they boasted that they themselves never killed.

  'There were those who would prefer her in this empty state: an especially vile breed of slavers traded in mind-blasted men and women, a breed scorned by their flesh-peddling peers-a sobering condemnation when he considered it. Other than keeping her from that fate, Pavek didn't know what manner of mercy he could give Akashia if her wits didn't come back. Right now, that wasn't his problem, and that was mercy enough for him.

  "Grab some floor and get some sleep," he advised Ruari and Yohan. "I'll take the first watch."

  He threw the latch-bolt and put a slip knot in the string dangling from it, to slow down anyone-the missing Zvain, included-who might try the door while they slept. Then he pinched the lamp wick, and except for a faint cast of moonlight through the isinglass stone set in the ceiling, the bolt-hole became dark. Akashia made small, panicked noises that left him sick with anger toward the interrogator who'd imprisoned and tormented her, until Yohan-Pavek assumed it was the dwarf by the way the bed creaked-whispered soft assurances that quieted her.

  The sound of one person comforting another was strange to Pavek's ears. The act simply hadn't occurred to him. He wouldn't have known what to say or do. Kindness had played little part in an orphan-templar's life. It had never seemed a serious loss.

  Until now.

  Urik was quiet above them. An occasional foot fell across the isinglass: a mercenary patrol, exempt from curfew and paid to guard the property of Gold Street. Templars weren't welcome here. Merchants didn't trust them. Pavek felt safe with his back against the door and the gentle rumblings of sleep all around him.

  And through that quiet darkness, Dovanne came to haunt him. He'd expected mat, with the bitter grief burning deep in his throat and behind his eyes. He wondered what if anything would have changed if he'd known how to console her as Yohan consoled Akashia, those years at the orphanage. Probably they'd both be dead-too soft and sentimental to survive in the templarate.

  The bed creaked. Pavek rose into a crouch on the balls of his
feet, the sword he had never sheathed angled in front of him.

  "Stand down," Yohan muttered, pushing the blade aside. He was a dwarf; he could see in the dark. "I'll take over." "How is she?"

  "Better, I think. She said my name, but I don't know if she knew I was beside her. I'm coming back, Pavek."

  "So am I."

  "Thought you might be. First, there's tomorrow. We're going to need a cart. She's not going to be able to walk. I could carry her to the Temple of the Sun. We're not poor-" "Not if you got four gold pieces every time you delivered a load of zarneeka." Once again, Pavek heard himself speaking more harshly than he'd intended. Even a night-blind human could see-feel-the scowl suddenly creasing Yohan's face.

  "For emergencies," the dwarf said, defensive and angry and shuffling away through the dark before adding: "Go to sleep."

  And Pavek stretched out where he was, thinking that it was easier to master druid magic than life outside the templarate, where people cared about each other and mere words held an edge sharper than steel.

  * * *

  Curfew ended and the day began in Urik not with sunrise but with the orator's daily harangue from a palace balcony. Pavek was awake and listening as the first syllable of the morning laudatory prayer to Great and Mighty King Hamanu struck his ear. There were the usual admonitions and announcements, nothing at all about a death or an abduction in the templar quarter. But then, he hadn't truly expected to hear any. The templarate cleaned its house in private; his own denunciation had been unusual-

  Which reminded Pavek of the earth cleric, Oelus, who had called him 'friend' and who was a healer. He'd never known which aspect of earth the cleric venerated, which of the many earth temples in Urik he called his home: a large one where his talents and choices might be overlooked, or a small one where his word was law? Either way, Oelus would be worth the risks associated with finding him-if Akashia still needed a healer.

  The harangue was over. Pavek stood up and stretched the night-cramps out of a body that was getting too old for sleeping on the bare ground. His companions were awake and blocking his view of Akashia.