Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  She let him begin to drive her; and saw at once that he was trying to work her around so that the sun was in her eyes. She snarled inwardly, let him think he was having his way, then turned the tables on him.

  She came at him in a two-handed pattern-dance, one that took her back to her days on the plains and her first instructor; an old man she'd never dreamed could have moved as fast as he did. She hadn't learned that pattern then; hadn't learned it until the old man and her clan were four years dead and she'd been Kethry's partner for almost three. She'd learned it from one of Her Swordsworn, who'd died a hundred years before Tarma had ever been born—

  It took her opponent off-balance; he backpedaled furiously to get out of the way of the shining circles of steel, great and lesser, that were her sword and dagger. And when he stopped running, he found himself facing into the sun.

  Tarma saw him make a slight movement with his left hand; when he came in with his sword in an over-and-under cut, she paid his sword hand only scant attention. It was the other she was watching for.

  Under the cover of his overt attack he made a strike for her upper arm with his gloved left. She avoided it barely in time; a circumstance that made her sweat when she thought about it later, and executed a spin-and-cut that took the hand off at the wrist at the end of the move. While he stared in shock at the spurting stump, she carried her blade back along the arc to take his head as well.

  The onlookers were motionless, silent with shock. What they'd seen from her up until now had not prepared them for this swift slaughter. While they remained still, she stalked to where the gloved hand lay and picked it up with great care. Embedded in the fingertips of the gloves, retracted or released by a bit of pressure to the center of the palm, were four deadly little needles. Poisoned, no doubt.

  She decided to make a grandstand move out of this. She stalked to the challenger's pavilion, where more of her would-be opponents had gathered, and cast the hand down at their feet.

  "Assassin's tricks, 'noble lords'?" she spat, oozing contempt. "Is this the honor of Felwether? I'd rather fight jackals—at least they're honest in their treachery! Have you no trust in the judgment of the gods—and their champion?"

  That should put a little doubt in the minds of the honest ones—and a little fear in the hearts of the ones that weren't.

  Tarma stalked stiff-legged back to her own pavilion, where she threw herself down on the little cot inside it, and hoped she'd get her wind back before they got their courage up.

  * * *

  In the very back of one of the drawers Kethry found a very curious contrivance. It was a coil of hempen twine, two cords, really, at the end of which was tied a barbless, heavy fishhook—the kind sea-fishers used to take shark and the great sea-salmon. But the coast was weeks from here. What on earth could the seneschal have possibly wanted with such a curious souvenir?

  Just then Warrl barked sharply; Kethry turned to see his tail sticking out from under the bedstead.

  :There's a hidden compartment under the boards here,: he said eagerly in her mind. :I smell gold, and magic—and fresh blood.:

  She tried to move the bed aside, but it was far too heavy—something the seneschal probably counted on. So she squeezed in beside Warrl, who pawed at the place on the board floor where he smelled strangeness.

  Sneezing several times from the dust beneath the bed, she felt along the boards—carefully, carefully; it could be booby-trapped. She found the catch, and a whole section of the board floor lifted away. And inside—

  Gold, yes; packed carefully into the bottom of it—but on top, a bloodstained, wadded-up tunic, and an empty bottle.

  Now if she just had some notion how he could have gotten into a locked room without the proper key. There was no hint or residue of any kind of magic. And no key to the door with the bar across it.

  How could you get into a locked room?

  :Go before the door is locked,: Warrl said in her mind.

  And suddenly she realized what the fishhook was for.

  Kethry wriggled out from under the bed, leaving the hidden compartment untouched.

  "Katran!" she called. A moment later Myria's companion appeared, quite nonplussed to see the sorceress covered with dust beside the seneschal's bed.

  "Get the priest," Kethry told her, before she had a chance to ask any questions. "I know who the murderer is—and I know how and why."

  Tarma was facing her first real opponent of the day; a lean, saturnine fellow who used twin swords like extensions of himself. He was just as fast on his feet as she was—and he was fresher. The priest had vanished just before the beginning of this bout, and Tarma was fervently hoping this meant Kethry had found something. Otherwise, this fight bid fair to be her last.

  Thank the Goddess this one was an honest warrior; if she went down, it would be to an honorable opponent. Not too bad, really, if it came to it. Not even many Swordsworn could boast of having defeated twelve opponents in a single morning.

  She had a stitch in her side that she was doing her best to ignore, and her breath was coming in harsh pants. The sun was punishing-hard on someone wearing head-to-toe black; sweat was trickling down her back and sides. She danced aside, avoiding a blur of sword, only to find she was moving right into the path of his second blade. Damn!

  At the last second she managed to drop and roll, and came up to find him practically on top of her again. She managed to get to one knee and trap his first blade between dagger and sword—but the second was coming in—

  "Hold!"

  And miracle of miracles, the blade stopped mere inches from her unprotected neck.

  The priest strode onto the field, robes flapping. "The sorceress has found the true murderer of our lord and proved it to my satisfaction," he announced to the waiting crowd. "She wishes to prove it to yours—"

  Then he began naming off interested parties as Tarma sagged to the dirt, limp with relief, and just about ready to pass out with exhaustion.

  "Swordsworn—shall I find someone to take you to your pavilion?" The priest was bending over her in concern. Tarma managed to find one tiny bit of unexpended energy.

  "Not on your life, priest. I want to see this myself!"

  There were perhaps a dozen nobles in the group that the priest escorted to lord's chamber. Foremost among them was the seneschal, the priest most attentive on him. Tarma was too tired to wonder about that—she saved what little energy she had to get her to the room and safely leaning up against the wall within.

  "I trust you all will forgive me if I am a bit dramatic, but I wanted you all to see exactly how this deed was done." Kethry was standing behind the chair that was placed next to the desk; in that chair was an older woman in buff and gray. "Katran has kindly agreed to play the part of Lord Corbie; I am the murderer. The lord has just come into this chamber; in the next is his lady. She has taken a potion to relieve pain, and the accustomed sound of his footstep is not likely to awaken her."

  She held up a wineglass. "Some of that same potion was mixed in with the wine that was in this glass, but it did not come from the batch Lady Myria was using. Here is Myria's bottle." She placed the wineglass on the desk, and Myria brought a bottle to stand beside it. "Here—" she produced a second bottle, "—is the bottle I found. The priest knows where, and can vouch for the fact that until he came, no hand but the owner's touched it."

  The priest nodded. Tarma noticed that the seneschal was beginning to sweat.

  "The spell I am going to cast now—as your priest can vouch, since he is no mean student of magic himself—will cause the wineglass and the bottle that contained the potion that was poured into it glow."

  Kethry dusted something over the glass and the two bottles. As they watched, the residue in the glass and the fraction of potion in Kethry's bottle began to glow with an odd, greenish light.

  "Is this a true casting, priest?" Tarma heard one of the nobles ask in an undertone.

  He nodded. "As true as ever I've seen."

  "Huh," the man
replied, bemused.

  "Now—Lord Corbie has just come in; he is working on the ledgers. I give him a glass of wine." Kethry handed the glass to Katran. "He is grateful; he thinks nothing of the courtesy, I am an old and trusted friend. He drinks it—I leave the room—presently he is asleep."

  Katran allowed her head to sag down on her arms.

  "I take the key from beneath his hand, and quietly lock the door to the hall. I replace the key. I know he will not stir, not even cry out, because of the strength of the potion. I take Lady Myria's dagger, which I obtained earlier—I stab him." Kethry mimed the murder; Katran did not move, though Tarma could see she was smiling sardonically. "I take the dagger and plant it beneath Lady Myria's bed—and I know that because of the potion, she will not wake either."

  Kethry went into Myria's chamber and returned empty-handed.

  "I've been careless—got some blood on my tunic; no matter, I will hide it where I plan to hide the bottle. By the way, the priest has that bloody tunic, and he knows that his hands alone removed it from its hiding place—just like the bottle. Now comes the important part—"

  She took an enormous fishhook on a double length of twine out of her beltpouch.

  "The priest knows where I found this—rest assured that it was not in Myria's possession. Now, on the top of this door, caught on a rough place in the wood, is another scrap of hemp. I am going to get it now. Then I shall cast another spell—and if that bit of hemp came from this twine, it shall return to the place it came from."

  She went to the door and jerked loose a bit of fiber, taking it back to the desk. Once again she dusted something over the twine on the hook and the scrap—this time she chanted as well. A golden glow drifted down from her hands to touch first the twine, then the scrap—

  And the bit of fiber shot across to the twine like an arrow loosed from a bow.

  "Now you will see the key to entering a locked room—now that I have proved that this was the mechanism by which the trick was accomplished."

  She went over to the door to the seneschal's chamber. She wedged the hook under the bar on the door, and lowered the bar so that it was only held in place by the hook; the hook was kept where it was by the length of twine going over the door itself. The other length of twine Kethry threaded under the door. Then she closed the door—

  The second piece of twine jerked; the hook came free, and the bar thudded into place. And the whole contrivance was pulled up over the door and through the upper crack by the first piece.

  All eyes turned toward the seneschal—whose white face was confession enough.

  "Lady Myria was certainly grateful enough—"

  "If we'd let her, she'd have given us all the seneschal stole," Kethry replied, waving at the distant figures on the keep wall. "I'm glad you talked her out of it."

  "Greeneyes, what she gave us was plenty. As it is, we'll have to send a good chunk of it back to Liha'irden to bank with the rest of the Clan possessions. I'm not really comfortable walking around with this much coin in my saddlebags."

  "Will she be all right, do you think?"

  "Now that her brother's here, I don't think she has a thing to worry about. She's gotten back all the loyalty of her lord's people and more besides. All she needed was a strong right arm to beat off unwelcome suitors, and she's got that now! Warrior's Oath—I'm glad that young monster wasn't one of the challengers—I'd never have lasted past the first round!"

  "Tarma—"

  The swordswoman raised an eyebrow at Kethry's unwontedly serious tone.

  "If you—did all that because you think you owe me—"

  "I 'did all that' because we're she'enedran," she replied, a slight smile warming her otherwise forbidding expression. "No other reason is needed."

  "But—"

  "No 'buts,' Greeneyes. Besides, I happen to know you'd have more than repaid anything I did. Puzzle that one out, oh, discoverer of keys!"

  A WOMAN’S WEAPON

  These Tarma and Kethry stories are not in any particular order, since I didn't write them chronologically. This one was inspired by the rather sexist comment that "poison is a woman's weapon," when I believe that police records show a poisoner is more likely to be a man.

  On the other hand, since most women are still physically weaker and smaller than men, they tend to take revenge in an indirect fashion. While it is true that very few men will sneak up on you when you're asleep and chop important anatomical parts off, it is equally true that most men taking revenge blow large holes in their opponent, rendering the use of those anatomical parts moot. Which may or may not prove that, as Kipling asserted, "the female of the species is deadlier than the male."

  The weather was usually more of a plague to a traveling freelance mercenary than something to be enjoyed, but today was different. Such a bright fall day, warm and sunny, should have been perfect. As Tarma and her partners rode over golden-grassed hill after undulating hill, even the warsteeds frisked a little, kicking up puffs of dust from the road with each hoofbeat, and they were at the end of the day's journey. But Tarma shena Tale'sedrin suddenly wrinkled her nose as a breeze so laden with a foul odor it could have been used as a weapon assaulted her senses.

  "Feh!" she exclaimed, jerking her head back so violently that one of her braids flopped over her shoulder. "What in hell is—"

  Her answer came as she and her partners, the sorceress Kethry and the great kyree Warrl, came over the crest of the next hill. The unsightly blotch on the grassy vale below them could only have been put there by the hand of man.

  Huge open vats and the stack of raw hides piled like wood beside the entrance identified the source of the harsh chemical reek. The amber-haired sorceress curled her lip in a scowl at the sight of the tannery at the bottom of the hill, though her distaste might as well have been for the cluster of hovels around it. "That's 'progress,'" the sorceress said flatly. "Or so the owner would tell you. Justin warned me about this."

  Tarma narrowed her eyes in self-defense as another puff of eye-watering potency blew across their path. "Progress?" she said incredulously, while their dappled-gray warsteeds snorted objection at being forced so close to the source of the stench. "What's progressive about this? Tanneries don't have to stink like that. And that village—"

  "I don't know much," Kethry warned her partner. "Just that the owner of this place has some new way of tanning. It takes less time supposedly."

  "And definitely makes five times the stink." Tarma would have lifted her lip, but she didn't want to open her mouth any more than she had to.

  :And five times the filth,: Warrl commented acidly. :The place is sick with it. The earth is poisoned.:

  Well, that certainly accounted for the unease the place was giving her. All Shin'a'in had a touch of earth-sense; it helped them avoid the few dangerous places left on the Plains, the places where dangerous things of magic were buried that were best left undisturbed.

  "If this is change, progress, I don't like it," Tarma said. "I know you sometimes think the Shin'a'in are a little backward, because we don't like change, but this is one reason why we prefer to stay the way we are."

  The sorceress shifted in her saddle and shrugged. "Well, that isn't the only thing the man's changed," Kethry continued. "And until just now, I didn't know if it was a good change, or a bad one."

  Her partner's troubled tone made Tarma glance sharply at the sorceress. "What change was that?"

  "There're no Tanners' Guild members down there except the owner," Kethry replied. "And I thought that might be a good thing, when I first heard of it. Sometimes I think the Guilds have too much power. You can't get into an apprenticeship if you haven't any money to buy your way into the Guild, unless you can find a Master willing to waive the fee. I thought that something like this might open the trades, give employment to people who desperately need it. But that—" she waved at the duster of shacks around the tannery building, "—that mess—"

  "That doesn't look as if he's doing much for the poor," Tarma finished
for her. "But there isn't much that we can do about it. We're just a couple of freelance mercs on the way to interview for a Company." At Kethry's continued silence, she added sharply, "We are, aren't we?"

  Kethry smiled a little from behind a wisp of windblown, amber hair. "Need isn't complaining, if that's what you're worried about. By which, I assume, Master Karden isn't interested in providing females with employment."

  "Possibly." Tarma shrugged leather-clad shoulders. "Whatever the reason, at least we aren't going to have to fight your sword and its stupid compulsion to rescue women whether or not they deserve rescue—or even want rescue."

  Kethry didn't even answer; she simply touched her heels to Hellsbane's sides and gave the mare her head. The warsteed, sister to Tarma's Ironheart, threw up her head and moved readily into a canter, all too pleased to be getting out of there. Ironheart was after her a fraction of a heartbeat later.

  The stench proved to be confined to the valley. Once they were on the opposite side of the next hill, the air was fresh and clean again. Tarma could not imagine what it must be like to live in that squalid little town.

  :Presumably, their noses are numb,: Warrl supplied, running easily alongside the road, his lupine head even with Tarma's calf. His head and shaggy coat were the only wolflike things about him; if Tarma squinted, she would have sworn there was a giant grass-cat running at her stirrup, not a wolf, in reality, Warrl was neither; he was a kyree, a Pelagir Hills creature, and bonded with Tarma as Kethry's spell-sword Need was bonded to the sorceress.

  Once out of the reach of the stench, the horses slowed of their own accord. Warrl looked pleased with the change of pace. He looked even happier with the village built of the yellowish stone of these hills that appeared below them, as they topped yet another rise.

  This would be their last stop before Hawksnest, the home of the mercenary company called "Idra's Sunhawks." Tarma had no doubts that between the letters of introduction they carried, letters from two of Idra's former men, and their own abilities, Idra would sign them on despite their lack of training with a Company. After all, it wasn't every day that a Captain could acquire both a Shin'a'in Swordsworn and a Journeyman White Winds sorceress for her ranks. When you added the formidable Warrl to the bargain, Tarma reckoned that Idra would be a fool to turn them down.