by Lee Carlon
Corsari looked around the room again, and Doran wondered, How long will it take?
When Corsari’s eyes came back to Doran, she looked at the shroud and asked, “Did she dance well?”
Doran willed the tears back. If they came, they wouldn’t stop, and Corsari would surely know. It’s too soon.
“She danced very well,” Doran said.
Corsari nodded once, apparently pleased with the answer.
Doran moved to Snuffle’s snout. Her fingers touched the horn at the center of his forehead and then she rubbed his brow, and he leaned against her hand.
She was long past asking herself why she had to deal with these things. She no longer even complained about the unfairness of life, but every now and again she felt like reminding the universe she was just a teenage girl.
“Come on. Let’s go,” Doran said.
Corsari moved around the bed to follow. Doran led Snuffle and the hospital room walls around them faded.
5
The Nature of the Job
The unfinished black rock of the seventh circle was slick with afternoon drizzle. The suns shone as bright as ever, illuminating raindrops in shafts of light that lanced between the towering buildings of glass and steel that stood over the wall.
Eight years, Valan thought as he followed the familiar cobblestone path beside the wall.
He’d studied Ardel before arriving in Damar’s capital. The walls had been built by Maiten’s Chosen over the centuries. The first wall had gone up around the city and was ten times the height of a man. The subsequent walls, seven in all, had been built closer to the citadel, each new wall inside the previous one and circling a smaller portion of the city.
Eight years, and it all comes down to today.
The walls would have been impressive centuries ago, built after the departure of the Dragon Lords when any force that came against them was on foot, but now they were merely an inconvenience for Ardel’s remaining citizens, forcing them to follow a rat’s maze of twists and turns to pass through the walls. Each wall was a ring in Ardel’s dead and dissected trunk marking off another season of paranoid growth and activity.
The AI in Valan’s breast pocket buzzed, but Valan ignored it. Today, Rarick, you can wait. He expected the Lord of Damar, desperate for news of the mission to Turintar, to have men out looking for him, but Valan would stay ahead of them. He would go to Lord Rarick in Maiten’s Hall later.
Valan’s left foot slipped on slick cobblestones, and he winced in pain from the still mending leg. Not long now, Valan thought of his leg and the city and Rarick.
The AI finally stopped buzzing.
As he rounded a bend in the road, he saw the girl exactly where he expected her to be. Her shoulders were hunched forward in the seventh circle’s shadow, her features hidden by a loose hoodie she wore to keep the rain off. She stood motionless, but the lines of her body telegraphed her fury. Valan adjusted his hold on the big, leather-bound book under his right arm as he continued forward.
As always, when a plan was this close to completion there were too many simultaneous demands on his attention.
In addition to the girl, he could sense a death priest approaching. The priest was the reason Valan carried the book. Valan had hoped to pay the girl and send her on her way before the priest arrived, but he’d been so preoccupied reviewing his plans for the day that he’d dismissed Cali and her companions from his mind as a problem already solved. He realized now, there was still more work to do and there might not be time before the priest arrived.
“You did well, Cali,” Valan said as he approached and the girl still hadn’t moved. “This wasn’t an easy assignment.” Valan wanted to set the tone for the encounter. Sometimes it was enough.
He turned to look back down the road, wondering if the death priest would take that path, but the road behind him was empty.
“If you’re interested—” Valan turned back to the girl, and he caught the blur of something coming at him. He had time to turn his shoulder into the blow. The book he held fell to the road. With the impact of the blow taken against his shoulder, Valan leaned in and caught Cali’s right wrist then shoved her into the wall behind her.
She cried out and kicked his left leg. The leg gave under him with a violent twist, but still holding Cali’s wrist, Valan drove her hand into the stone wall. She dropped the weapon she’d used against him and tried to pull away. With one arm, Valan held her close with her back to him and slid his other arm around her throat.
She tried to beat him with her heels and elbows, her attacks furious but impotent. Valan tightened his grip around her throat, pulling her in closer. She flailed against him for a few seconds then stopped, her breath coming with difficulty. She slapped the arm around her throat.
“Are you finished?” Valan asked.
She flailed again with renewed energy as though the sound of his voice stoked her anger.
Valan tried again. “I can let you go, or I can snap your neck.”
Cali didn’t answer. Her hoodie had been pushed aside in the struggle exposing her gold and amber hair.
“I don’t often give second chances, but you have talent. One day you might be useful,” Valan said and loosened his grip.
“Fuck you,” Cali gasped. Then, “Let me go.”
Valan released her, and she staggered several paces from him. She stood with her back to him for a moment, gasping for breath. The book he’d carried with him was lying in the dirt next to the metal pole Cali had attacked him with. Valan stooped on his leg even as the pain twisted nerve endings and threatened to take control of his body away from him.
Some of the pages of hand written notes had gotten wet on the cobblestones, and the ink had run in a couple of places, but the characters written there were still legible. Valan wished he didn’t have to hand the text over to a death priest, but if things went wrong today, he’d be glad he had.
Cali still had her back to him.
He scanned the blurry characters. If he got a chance, he would write them down again. They would be first in the next tome he compiled.
“You should have told me,” Cali said quietly.
“There was no reason to tell you,” Valan said. He wanted to say more, but the girl still had her back to him.
The death priest was getting closer. Valan could feel him, and he knew his hopes of not exposing the girl to the priest were in vain. There was no chance now. He couldn’t send her away, not at such a pivotal moment in her career. She would either learn what her chosen profession really was or she wouldn’t. Valan would give her the words she needed and then it would be up to her.
She finally turned to him. Her face was wet from the afternoon drizzle, but her eyes were red. “There was every reason to tell—”
Cali stopped suddenly, her eyes going wide to examine something behind Valan.
Valan closed the book he held. He had most of the blurred characters committed to memory, but the opportunity to get the rest of them had passed. He just hoped the chance to influence Cali had not also passed with the death priest’s arrival.
He paused before turning. He could feel the presence behind him and to his left, lurking like the memory of a bad dream. Cali had stepped back, recoiling from the apparition. She sought reassurance from Valan who maintained eye contact with her. She straightened, and the color returned to her face. Being in the presence of a death priest was never pleasant. Valan just hoped this one had his face covered.
The priest was short and slight, but Valan couldn’t tell anything else about him. He tried to see into the cowl that hid the priest’s face, but the cowl might as well have been empty for all Valan could make out.
After a brief pause, Valan offered the heavy book. The priest accepted it with both hands. Valan watched the priest and realized he couldn’t even tell if this priest was a man or a woman, young or old. The anger he felt at the necessity to scribble notes from his life into the books he handed over to the priests bubbled up. He wanted to snatch i
t back. Those are my memories. Mine.
Still showing no emotion or reaction to the transaction, Valan told himself, It’s necessary.
He turned his back on the priest to check on Cali and show his contempt for the priest in doing so. Cali met his eyes again, a question in them now. Surprise flickered across her face, and when Valan turned to see what had caused it, the priest was gone.
“What was that?” Cali asked, a tremor in her voice.
“The priests look after something for me,” Valan said, trying to keep his tone conversational. There were many reasons he hadn’t wanted to expose Cali to the priesthood.
“You work with death priests?” She sounded disgusted.
Valan shook his head. “No! Never that. They are useful.” Valan knew he needed the right words now or he would lose her and he might as well have snapped her neck. The answer clicked into place, unrehearsed and unplanned for but there all the same. If it weren’t so useful, Valan would curse unplanned inspiration. “They are not so terrible. As you gain experience in this profession, you will learn that the priests and their kind rely on stories and costumes in a way that you will never have to.”
Cali’s mouth quirked to the left as she thought about this. Finally, she said, “You should have told me that you were planning to—” her voice caught, but she pressed on, “that you were planning to murder them.”
Valan suppressed a smile. The girl was still angry, but despite herself, she was intrigued by his hints of her future potential. “Would you have been able to complete the mission if I had told you?”
Cali clenched and unclenched her fists by her side. “I don’t give a fuck about Stan.”
Valan studied her. “That’s not true.”
“He was a useless—”
“That’s not true either,” Valan said. “If you didn’t care about Stan or Vernie I wouldn’t have been able to use you on this job.”
Cali’s hands fell open at her side.
Valan continued. “This is the job. You have to get used to it.”
“I could have found another way. You didn’t have to kill Vernie.”
“There’s always another way,” Valan said.
“Then why?”
“Because the other way puts us at risk. If you’re to continue in this profession, that is something you have to accept. This is a job of risks. You were close to Vernie, and I kept the truth from you because sharing the truth with you would have put us both at risk.”
“I wouldn’t have said anything,” Cali insisted.
“Of course not,” Valan agreed. “But can you say the same for your circulatory system? Are you certain you wouldn’t have given yourself away by blushing at the wrong time or getting tongue-tied? Do you know for a fact that an unguarded moment wouldn’t have been your undoing?”
“I can control myself,” Cali said.
“Stan and Vernie have been doing this for a long time. Do you know what they would have done to you if they’d discovered you were working for me and what we were planning?”
“They were friends.”
“Friends you betrayed. Most people don’t take that too kindly.” Valan stepped closer to the girl. “It’s all about managing and minimizing the risks. If you found another way with Vernie this time, that makes it easier to think you can find another way with the next mark, and then the next, until you’ve exposed yourself on so many fronts you can no longer even keep track of all the ways in which you’ve left yourself at risk. You have to plan for every eventuality. Risks are a natural part of this job, but you have to minimize them wherever you can.”
Valan took a leather bookmark from his pocket. He turned it over to look at the designs that covered both sides. Nobody but him would know it, but the intricate design he’d worked into the leather contained the key to decrypt the cipher in the book he’d handed to the death priest.
Only he could decrypt the book, and without the bookmark, the words would be lost to him as well.
“What’s that?” Cali made no move to accept it.
“It tells Tobin how much to pay you?” Valan said, still holding it out. Tobin would store the key in a safe place until it was needed.
“Tobin? Your pet giant?” Cali asked.
Valan nodded. Dragons and giants. Cali could call herself a Newterran all she liked, but she’d inherited the descendant’s distrust of giants, who in turn had inherited it from the Dragon Lords centuries ago. “Is that a problem?”
“Depends, how much does it say to pay me?” Cali asked.
“The price we agreed, plus a healthy bonus,” Valan said.
“What is it?” Cali asked.
Valan smiled. He couldn’t trust anybody who didn’t ask that question. If they weren’t in it for the pay, there had to be another reason. “I think you’ll like it. It’s a Dragonwing. I understand you like bikes.”
Cali’s eyes widened, and she almost didn’t catch the smile before it broke out on her face. She took the bookmark and pushed it into a pocket.
Valan watched it disappear and thought, Potential or not, if that doesn’t make it to Tobin, I will skin this girl alive.
“You’ll find him at the airstrip where you landed three months ago,” Valan said.
Cali studied him. He could see she wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come, so Valan said, “It gets easier.”
“I hope not. I’d rather live with the pain than find killing Vernie easy.”
“You didn’t kill her,” Valan said.
“Sure I did. I didn’t pull the trigger, but without me, it wouldn’t have been pulled. She’d still be here, and that’s on me.” Cali shrugged again then turned and jogged away.
Valan watched her go and thought, No. She’d still be dead. The only difference is you’d be dead too.
Cali’s words came back to him. I hope not. Valan wondered if it gets easier was just a lie old hands told each other to dull the pain. He’d looked into Vernie’s eyes as she died with his knife in her chest. Valan remembered his first kill. That had been worse. Much worse. Killing Vernie and her thug had been routine.
6
Honor and Promises
How many days like this can a man survive? Vincent asked himself.
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and rubbed the tears away, then got to his feet. Chen’s and Corsari’s faces came back to him, but he pushed them aside. Later, they could, and would, crowd his thoughts later.
He’d been sitting for hours, and his back was stiff, he stretched it out. He was on the third story balcony overlooking the square in front of the Turintarian palace. The suns were high overhead, and the flags at either end of the balcony fluttered in the breeze. He went to the balcony wall and leaned forward, resting his elbows on it.
As many days as it takes, Vincent answered his own question, letting his gaze linger on the empty square. He would survive the rest of this day and as many more as he could. Let the Gods throw everything they had at him, he would not tremble before a God, or anybody else ever again. He would not allow anybody else to die because of his hesitation or uncertainty.
Corsari’s face flashed in his mind again, and this time he thought, I’m sorry, Corsari.
He wished he could have taken her body home with Doran to bury her, but he would have to be satisfied knowing that Doran was not going to Damar.
Vincent straightened. He guessed it must be almost time.
“Vincent d’Rhyne.” Lord Marlan stood in the balcony entrance behind him.
Surprised to see the Lord of Turintar, Vincent covered it and replied, “Just Vincent, please.”
“Very well,” Marlan nodded, seeming to understand the significance of the request. He stepped carefully out onto the balcony with Vincent and took in the view of the square. “I used to watch people from here. It was one of my favorite places in the world,” after a moment he added, “before the Cleansing.”
“And now?” Vincent asked.
“Now there are not enough peo
ple to watch, and I rarely come here at all.”
They stood in silence for a moment, Marlan taking in the view and Vincent waiting for him. Hours ago, Vincent would have waited out of respect for Lord Marlan as a God’s Chosen, but that no longer had any meaning to him, or at least, not the meaning it once had. Now he waited out of politeness for another man.
Finally, Marlan turned and looked at him. “You remind me of your father.”
“I am not my father,” Vincent said, but with none of the rancor that habitually accompanied those words.
“No, that is clear,” Marlan said. “I think he would be proud of you.”
Vincent accepted the words but said nothing.
Marlan continued, “I liked Benshi. He was an honorable man.”
“No,” Vincent spoke firmly. “Today I have gained insight into the pressure my father lived with as Rhysin’s Chosen, but let’s not rewrite history because it suits us to do so. My father was a blood-thirsty tyrant, whether through choice or not, but he was not an honorable man.”
“I disagree,” Marlan said. “He could have taken Turintar at any time. I would have been powerless to stop him. He had the appetite for war, or he developed it, but he left Turintar alone. We made a deal, and I’ve always believed it was his choice to honor our deal.”
“A deal?” Vincent asked, but then he dismissed his own question as unimportant. He said, “He always called you a damn politician.”
Marlan’s laughter was sudden and unexpected. He put a hand to his chest and said, “I’d forgotten about that. We knew each other before he took Rhysin’s heart. He called me that then.”
Vincent smiled, surprised and pleased that anybody could speak of his father with warmth. He made an intuitive leap and his smile faded. “You helped him become Lord of Rhyne?”
Marlan looked down, then nodded.
“Why?” Vincent demanded. “Why would you do that? You must have known what it would do to him.”
“Because he was determined to make the attempt, and I didn’t want my friend to die.”