Lessek's Key

by Rob Scott; Jay Gordon

  ‘Riders,’ she croaked and cleared her throat, feigning a coughing fit. ‘Who?’ the soldier interrupted.

  ‘Riders,’ she said again, ‘from General Oaklen.’ The old general’s name had stayed her execution once before; she prayed it would work again.

  ‘General Oaklen?’ the sentry asked, ‘he was just here a few days ago. What does he want?’

  ‘That’s none of your concern, you dumb rutter.’ Brexan would have welcomed a swift death at that moment. ‘We have a message for the spymaster Jacrys. We’ve been riding for two days.’ She was glad that they were both thoroughly covered in mud.

  ‘Why are you out of uniform?’

  ‘Good rutters, but they do station the dumbest soldiers here, don’t they?’

  Sallax nodded in agreement.

  ‘We can’t ride through Falkan alone in uniform, you mule-kicked idiot!’ Brexan barked. ‘Now, are you going to stand aside and grant us entry, or shall we just wait here while you fetch your superior and explain to him why I have been delayed from carrying out the general’s command by some jumped-up little squaddie’s inability to UNDERSTAND ORDERS?’

  The guard shuffled his feet; this would not look good on his record. The spymaster would be angry that someone had been allowed to reach this floor in the first place, and Captain Thadrake would slice him from groin to gullet if he knew that he’d fallen asleep at his post. The spy was already furious with the captain for allowing the partisans to escape; the captain had, in turn, taken his anger out on the entire third platoon, which was now reassigned to guard duty here. Any one of them would rather have been ordered to scrape the hull of every ship that passed through the harbour than take guard duty – and he’d had fallen asleep! Bleeding whores.

  ‘Well?’ The woman’s impatient voice came from the stairwell again.

  ‘What’s the pass?’ he asked, trying to match the woman’s irritated tone.

  Brexan felt the wind go out of her lungs. A password? Three floors up in the most secure building in the Eastlands and you have a whoring password? She would have to distract the sentry and give Sallax an opportunity to knife the soldier and end this absurd exchange.

  She took a wary step forward; the guard drew his sword and Brexan stopped.

  ‘What’s the pass?’ he called down at them again, louder this time; Brexan worried he might start shouting and alert the entire building to their presence.

  She’d take an educated guess; she’d been a soldier long enough. If it failed, she’d make a run for him and try to get a blade in his throat before he could scream.

  ‘Lafrent,’ Brexan said, the spy’s other identity, the name he was using when first she met him. It was the only one of millions of possibilities racing through her mind that had any chance of being correct. She grasped it in desperation.

  Miraculously, the soldier lowered his sword. ‘Come on up.’

  They climbed the rest of the stairs.

  ‘What’s happening outside?’ the guard asked. ‘If he’s awake and I went off for a look, he’d have my guts for breakfast…’

  ‘Oh, the commotion? Someone’s tent caught fire. Half the rutting camp was sleeping, and someone thought it was an attack; people kept tripping over each other trying to find water. It was a mess.’ Brexan remained in front of Sallax, effectively blocking the guard’s view of the big Ronan. ‘What room is he in?’

  ‘It’s just through here, the second door on the left. I have to walk you down there. He’s a bit tiresome about procedures. You know the type. I just wish—’

  His final wish drowned in a gruesome rattle as Sallax’s blade took him in the throat. He fell to his knees, blood staining his hands as he clutched at the wound, and tried to swear at them, instead choking and coughing up blood that splattered their cloaks and stained the darkened stairwell. When he finally collapsed, drowning in his own blood, neither Brexan nor Sallax gave him a second glance.

  ‘Through here,’ Sallax said, opening the hallway door. ‘There’s no one, just an empty hallway.’

  They hurried to the door the guard had pointed out. After checking to see if it was locked, Sallax leaned against it as gently as he could, sliding it inwards a crack, careful not to allow the leather hinges to creak as the door swung open. Brexan followed him through.

  Jacrys’ bed was positioned in the centre of what was still, even after Twinmoons of neglect, an opulent apartment. Sallax left the torch hanging in a doorway sconce and they moved stealthily across the floor.

  For a moment, Brexan feared they would find the chamber empty and Jacrys, somehow warned of their approach, vanished down a hidden stairway, but as they reached his bedside, she saw that he was there, snoring away, sleeping the deep sleep of one who felt safe. Jacrys didn’t stir, even as Sallax gestured that Brexan should kill him without further delay. In the torchlight, she could see the sentry’s blood drying on the big man’s fingers.

  She drew her knife and checked her position. She thought briefly of Versen, and Lieutenant Bronfio, whose murder had started this whole adventure for her, and drew a breath to strike. It had to be deep, into the heart, and enough to shock him awake for long enough to see his killer – but not give him time to cry out. Use two hands, she thought, and squeezed the wrapped leather grip with all her strength. Do it now, Brexan, she thought, just do it – but then she hesitated, backing away a step and staring down at the sleeping man’s face. What’s the matter with you? she asked herself. Just kill him and go home. This man is a monster, the reason Malagon knew where to send the Seron who took you prisoner and broke your cheek. He killed Bronfio and made sure Versen was delivered into enemy hands. Just kill him!

  Sallax struck while Brexan was still caught in her crisis of conscience, slamming his own knife into Jacrys’ chest. He held it for a moment as the spy woke with a gasp and stared, eyes wide in horror, into the faces of his killers. Sallax lowered his face and growled, ‘This is for Gilmour.’

  Jacrys’ mouth moved, but he couldn’t manage to make a sound. His eyes fluttered and his nostrils flared with his efforts to breathe, and then he tensed as his body went into spasm. As consciousness fled, so the rigid tension dissipated.

  Sallax released the bloody hilt, leaving it standing erect in the spy’s chest. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Brexan nodded, staring down, waiting for Jacrys’ eyes to close. She was remotely aware of Sallax crossing the room to retrieve the torch and then coming back.

  He bent to examine a stack of papers spread across a wooden table. ‘Come look at these,’ he called in a whisper.

  ‘What?’ She watched Jacrys’ eyes catch the firelight, his mouth still stuck somewhere half-open and half-closed. A trickle of bloody saliva drooled down his chin as he fought to stay alive. She wondered if he could see her, if he recognised her, or if he was just staring at the faded tapestries that hung around the walls.

  ‘Over here,’ Sallax interrupted. ‘Do you recognise these?’

  She pulled herself away from the dying man and, gathering her wits, moved to stand beside Sallax. ‘They’re maps.’ She bent over the table to look at them more closely. ‘This is Pellia.’

  ‘And these?’ Sallax shuffled two or three others to the top of the stack.

  ‘That’s the river, and these are the heights above Welstar Palace. That mark right there must be the keep.’ She ran her finger over a semi-circular area around the castle. All this is a Malakasian encampment. It’s the biggest army I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Good rutters,’ Sallax said under his breath. ‘We have to take these. Look at the marks on there. These are maps of the river. Look at these boxes and circles. They must be places along the waterway for barges to load and unload whatever it is that Carpello is shipping – was shipping – from Strandson and Orindale.’

  And look here,’ Brexan pointed to another map. ‘This is the Great Pragan Range, the mountains on the southern border. I wonder what’s happening down there.’

  ‘I don’t know,
but let’s take them all; we can study them as closely as we like later. But for now, let’s—’

  A clamour rose from a lower floor, a wildly ringing bell, as if someone was trying to rouse the entire city against a pending invasion.

  Sallax and Brexan stopped, their eyes meeting across the wooden table. ‘What’s that?’ she asked nervously.

  Sallax turned back towards the spy and over his shoulder, Brexan could see what Jacrys had been staring at. A trail of blood, viscous, black in the half light, led from the spy’s empty bed to the wall, where, in front of one of the ancient tapestries, hung a bell rope, dangling from an old system of pulleys and cables that obviously ran to the servants’ quarters and the scullery below.

  Jacrys tugged the rope with all his remaining strength, sitting with his back propped awkwardly against the wall. A grim smile split his cadaverous face: the triumphant grin of one who has emerged victorious despite overwhelming odds. He twitched as waves of pain assailed him, but it didn’t change the smug assurance that, try as they might to escape, there would be no leaving the palace alive.

  ‘Come quickly!’ Sallax barked, no longer trying for stealth. ‘We have to get below the first level before anyone gets to those stairs.’ He scooped up as many of the maps as he could, folded them under his arm and charged through the door into the hallway.

  Brexan considered crossing the room to cut the spy’s throat, but shrugged and hurried out behind Sallax. She ran back to the small landing and headlong into Sallax, who had stopped. Brexan stepped back. ‘What is it? Let’s get going. Are they already on the stairs?’

  Sallax didn’t answer as the maps slipped from beneath his arm and spilled down the stone stairway.

  ‘What is it?’ She pushed past him onto the landing.

  The lone sentry was lying with his legs hanging off the first step, his torso propped up between the door and the wall. Sallax staggered and fell to his knees and Brexan managed to slip past him, over the dying guard, to grab the torch Sallax had dropped. Brexan picked it up, fanned it back to life and propped it between the fallen man’s legs.

  The flickering glow illuminated the rapier protruding from Sallax’s chest, the last attack of the dying guard. A long, wheezing rattle came from the sentry’s chest. Brexan gasped and reached for Sallax.

  ‘I’m dying,’ he murmured. ‘I’m dying.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ she said firmly, ignoring her tears. ‘Come with me. We have to hurry.’

  Below, the incessant ringing merged with the groaning and shuffling of soldiers rousing themselves from sleep. From the annoyed sounds that filtered upstairs, the groggy guards thought some gods-forsaken officer had spent too long with his head dipped in a wine cask and was now mustering them all for a late-night inspection. Thankfully, none of them appeared to be coming up the stairs, not yet.

  Sallax fell forward, and Brexan caught him beneath his arms. As she hugged him close, she flashed back to Versen, and how heavy he had been that day she’d tried to keep him afloat in the Ravenian Sea. ‘Please, Sallax, please,’ she cried softly, ‘you can do this. You’re so strong and it isn’t far, just a few stairs. Come on; we can make it.’

  ‘Leave me here, Brexan,’ Sallax whispered. ‘You can get out.’ He struggled to lift himself off her and fell back against the door, slamming it shut with an echo that rolled down the stairs. ‘Hurry now; you can make it.’ He reached for her with a bloody hand, and she held it in both of hers.

  He wriggled his hand free and reached for her again, stretching. She tried to take his hand, but he shook her off. ‘What is it?’

  ‘You can make it out,’ he said, ‘but you need—’ Gripping her tunic belt, he pulled on it, his strength failing, until the tongue was drawn back through the buckle.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to get out, but you have to make it look like—’ Again he tugged at her belt. Suddenly Brexan understood.

  ‘No, Sallax, I’ll stay here and fight beside you.’

  He ignored her. ‘You can do this.’

  Brexan angrily fought back tears as she unfastened her belt and untied the strap holding her cloak closed. Dropping the belt and her weapons, she pulled the tunic over her head.

  Sallax looked away, with a hoarse laugh. ‘I’m not supposed to peek,’ he murmured.

  Now she did cry. She gave him a long kiss on the temple, hugged him to her naked torso until enough blood smeared her body, then picked up her cloak and screwed it up into a ball. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, a sob in her voice.

  Sallax looked at her, his eyes glassy in the torchlight. ‘Tell Garec the truth about what happened. Make sure he knows.’

  Brexan sobbed, ‘I will. I promise. I will find him.’

  The bell rang on into the night and Brexan cursed Jacrys, wishing with all her heart he would die before Sallax, so her friend would hear the bell fall silent, but it didn’t happen. Sallax’s eyes fluttered open several times, then his head slumped on his chest, and Brexan watched as his final breath sighed from his body.

  ‘Oh gods,’ Brexan started quietly, then, fulfilling her promise, allowed her cries to grow in volume until they were enormous, great heaving sobs that echoed through the upper floors of the old residence. ‘Oh gods, oh gods!’ Holding her cloak and tunic, Brexan ran, half naked and splattered with blood, down the stairs and into the midst of the confused platoon milling about below. ‘Oh gods!’ She grabbed the first soldier she encountered, ensured he took a long look at her body, and then shouted, ‘They’re killing him! Please help, upstairs, please help! They’re killing him!’

  He turned and ran, followed by others, taking the stairs three at a time; then Brexan heard shouts echo down from the landing.

  Come quick!

  Bring weapons!

  We need a healer up here!

  One soldier walked her to the top step of the lower stairway. ‘You wait here,’ he said gently, helping her pull her cloak about her shoulders. ‘I’ll be right back; you can tell the lieutenant what happened.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ she wailed, ‘please. I was just – you know, working.’

  ‘I understand, and I don’t want you to worry. You’ll be fine.’

  In a moment he was gone and Brexan, still crying, slipped down the stairs and across the main hall.

  At the front entrance to the palace she was able to lose herself in the noise and bustle, slipping behind the tall hedge that encircled the grounds, where she pulled on her tunic and cloak and disappeared into the city. As she rounded a corner into an alley off the main thoroughfare, weeping and furious with herself for leaving Sallax alone, she could still hear that wretched little bell jangling. Jacrys was still alive.

  THE WELSTAR RIVER

  Captain Reddig Millard stood at the helm of the River Prince, his eyes fixed downriver. A Malakasian naval vessel had been flanking the barge for nearly half an aven and he was waiting for them to come alongside, give the order to heave to and deploy a boarding party to examine his papers, his cargo and his crew – but he would not turn and look at them.

  He had been working the Welstar passage to Pellia for too many Twinmoons to allow any puny cutter make him sweat; his cargo was legal, his crew was legal and his documents had been approved by the customs officer in Treven. No baby-faced so-called officer all got up in that absurd black-and-gold fancy dress was going to get under his skin, not on this trip. Millard was not going to worry about the four who’d bought passage, nor did he care that they’d asked to linger a while on the great bend below Prince Malagon’s castle. He had agreed to ship them with no questions asked and that’s what he was doing.

  Of course, he stood to make a handful of extra silver: free money, and nothing the customs officers in Pellia would notice, because his overhead costs were always the same, and his take for a load of crates and military passengers was always within a few Mareks of the same bottom line, give or take a beer or two. It was worth the risk. He’d pocket the silver, and the customs of
ficer in Pellia would check his papers, ask about the weather and accept a donation of a few bottles of decent wine. He might be slipped a tin or two of tobacco in thanks for the wine, but then he would be allowed to unload whatever was left of his shipment after the military had purchased what they needed for the palace encampment. The drill was always the same.

  Something was making Millard nervous, though; being shadowed this long by a navy cutter, and his crew, the old man especially – why would anyone want to linger on that stretch of the river?

  Doggedly determined not to look back at the wet-nosed cutter captain, Millard kept his eyes trained on the river ahead, charting the speed and heading of other vessels. A notion began to irritate him, lingering at the back of his mind like an itch he couldn’t reach: this was not going to be another routine passage. He unfastened the leather ties holding his tunic closed; his skin was warm with sweat despite the chill along the water.

  His new crew bothered him: at first he thought they were fennaroot runners, or maybe deserters, but he was beginning to fear that they represented something much more dangerous to him and his ship.

  In the broad but shallow cargo area below the raised helm, the crewmen lounged in the midday sun, smoking, drinking tecan and picking at what remained of their midday meal, all but the four strangers, who huddled together in the forward corner, talking among themselves and taking turns marking the cutter’s progress.

  It’s a faster ship. Millard wished they could hear his thoughts. There is no point staring back at them; they’ll catch up with this hulk whenever they please, so stop giving them reason to believe we’re up to no good!

  Millard nearly succumbed to his anxiety and turned for a quick glance, but he gripped the wheel with both hands until his knuckles whitened. ‘No,’ he said aloud. ‘The moment I turn round, they’ll know they have me, the bleeding whores.’

  The River Prince was like all the barges that worked the passage between central Malakasia and Pellia; she could haul three times the number of crates they could pile inside a schooner, and Captain Millard needed only one-third the draft: even at the height of the dry season, he could run the river from south of Treven all the way into Pellia with two thousand crates of summer vegetables or fifty pallets of freshly cut lumber.