by Tim Pratt
“I know she can’t be as frivolous as she seems, but she certainly plays the part well.” Merihim moved to sit in the chair Eldra had departed, beside Rodrick. “Did she make an alliance with you, big man? Or, wait, no—she got you to suggest it, didn’t she?”
The Specialist snorted, but didn’t look up from the map.
“Why do you ask?” Rodrick said.
Merihim waved a hand. “She tried it on me, but I like boys. She tried it on the Specialist, but he likes books. And Prinn doesn’t like anybody, so he was no help. She made a pass at Temple, even. I think the lady of stone would have been receptive under other circumstances, like if Eldra wasn’t a conscripted prisoner under her authority, but our dear underclerk is too law-abiding to take advantage of the situation that way. Plus Temple’s smart enough to know Eldra would be taking advantage of her. We all figured you were the best prospect for Eldra’s come-here-go-away, keep-him-off-balance seduction style.”
“Maybe I’m seducing her.” Rodrick hoped he didn’t sound too ridiculous. It was a faint hope.
“Maybe mice eat owls,” the Specialist muttered. “But not in my experience.”
“They don’t take me seriously, Hrym,” Rodrick complained.
“So?” Hrym said. “That means they won’t expect you to do anything. You just have to be the muscle. Not even the muscle. The hand that carries the muscle. Enjoy it. This year should be very relaxing.”
“Impress me in the field, and my opinions about you will change.” Merihim smiled, showing off even white teeth. “I’m a reasonable woman. Show me you can do more than carry Hrym, and you’ll get to do more than that. And don’t let Eldra lead you around by the nose. Or any other part of your body.”
Eldra emerged dressed in a top with flowing sleeves and a bodice closed with laces, appealingly tight breeches, and knee-high soft leather boots, all in shades of green. She looked less like a huntswoman and more like someone playing a huntswoman in a piece of musical theater. She spun around, smiling. “What do you think, Rodrick? Am I ready to hunt fugitives in the Fangwood?”
“Evildoers should clearly beware,” he said.
“How do you have so many clothes?” Merihim said. “Did you bring a trunk with you?”
Eldra affected a look of puzzlement. “Of course not. Just one? That would hardly do. I have two trunks. Underclerk Temple was kind enough to have them brought down when we settled in these accommodations. I do appreciate her willingness to let us keep the tools of our trades.”
Merihim clucked her tongue. “You obviously have many fine qualities. Some of which are shown off to good effect in those clothes. That said, I’m not sure how much good you’ll be in the woods.”
Eldra dropped a little curtsy. “Oh, I’m a delight wherever I go.” Her hand flickered, and a moment later there was a thump as the knife she’d drawn and thrown in an instant stuck quivering in the drawing of Bannerman’s left eye.
7
FIELD TESTED
They all looked at the knife, and Merihim grunted. “You’d think I wouldn’t make the mistake of judging people by their appearance, as often as I’ve been misjudged for mine.” She worked the knife out of the wall and handed it back to Eldra, who tucked it back into the sheath at her belt. “You probably shouldn’t aim for the actual eye, though. Temple will be cross if we blind him.”
“It’s not my fault there’s no picture of his leg. I can hit that just as well.” Eldra caught Rodrick’s eye and gave him a conspiratorial and friendly wink.
Merihim clapped her hands. “All right, everyone pack what you need to do violence and sleep in the woods.”
* * *
Some hours later the Volunteers rode along a muddy track through a curtain of thin but persistent rain. Rodrick’s horse was a mare with a distracted air that kept stopping to crop grass at the side of the road. Merihim rode an impressive black stallion, probably a crusader’s warhorse, and she controlled it expertly while barely touching the reins, somehow conveying her desires psychically, or else with her knees. Eldra’s mount was a sprightly white pony that clearly wanted to run, and the Specialist had a plodding gray carthorse of a beast. Prinn was riding the most pissed-off looking donkey Rodrick had ever seen.
It was hard not to think Temple was making some sort of commentary based on the mounts they’d been assigned.
When the rain began hissing down, they’d paused to pull out whatever foul-weather gear they had, which mostly ran to oiled cloaks. Rodrick put on his cloak of the devilfish, which looked rather disreputable with its ragged hem, but it was very much waterproof and rather more durable than it looked, like most garments imbued with magic.
The Specialist drew up alongside him. “That’s a cloak of transformation, isn’t it? I saw a cloak that changed its wearer into a manta ray, once, and this seems similar, but not identical.”
“I just use it to keep the rain off.” Rodrick wasn’t keen to give away his secrets, or let his thieving compatriots know he possessed anything of great value. Hrym could defend himself, but the cloak didn’t have opinions about who owned it.
The Specialist nodded gravely, as if Rodrick had told him something of great significance. Water dripped from his broad-brimmed hat. “I was hoping to speak to your sword.”
Hrym was presently frozen to the exterior of a leather scabbard strapped to Rodrick’s back. He didn’t like to be sheathed when there was sightseeing to be done. “That’s up to Hrym. He chooses his own conversational companions.”
“What do you want?” Hrym said.
“You must be very old. Do you perhaps date from the era of the Shory Empire?”
Rodrick frowned. That was true, but it wasn’t supposed to be obvious. According to certain antiquarians who ought to know, Hrym was a type of rare Shory blade called a “spellstealer,” made to absorb enemy magics. He’d been left sitting in a dragon’s hoard for centuries, though, and had soaked up the dragon’s powers—along with its intelligence, and possibly even its personality—over the long years, becoming permanently imbued with ferocious ice magics and an equally ferocious mind.
“I’ve seen a few winters come and go,” Hrym said vaguely. Rodrick was never sure how much Hrym remembered about his long life. The sword claimed to have great gaps in his memory, and sometimes seemed to possess residual memories both from the dragon and from some of his earlier wielders, but he was also known to lie about almost anything when it suited him.
“I am a student of the wonders of the past,” the Specialist said. “Very few thinking beings are as long-lived as you, Hrym. I’d be most pleased to hear any details you can recall of ages long past.”
“Do you have any gold?” Hrym said.
“I … why do you ask?”
“Because I like gold. I remember things better when people give me some.”
The Specialist rubbed his ragged gray beard. “You propose an exchange of coins for knowledge?”
“Why not?” Hrym said. “Anything of value can be bought and sold.”
“That’s fair,” the Specialist said. “I have a small quantity of coin—must it be gold?”
“The fairest of all metals.”
“Very well.” He plucked a coin from his purse. “Will this do?”
“That will, indeed, buy you an hour of conversation on any subject of your choice,” Hrym said.
The Specialist winced, and Rodrick suppressed a grin. “Very well,” the old man said.
“Hand it to my manservant for safekeeping,” Hrym said. “I’m temporarily embarrassed when it comes to having pockets.”
Rodrick accepted the coin—inspecting it to make sure it wasn’t some base metal covered in a thin coating of gold, because the Specialist seemed a sharp sort—and tucked it away.
“Tell me,” the Specialist said. “What do you know of your origins?”
“I was forged some seven thousand years ago by a Shory blade-mage named Malik the Lame, so called because his left foot was crushed in an accident in his youth…”
Rodrick turned his chuckle seamlessly into a cough. Hrym hadn’t become truly sentient until he’d absorbed the dragon’s essence, and certainly didn’t remember anything from as far back as his forging. Besides, Malik was the name of a jeweler they’d worked with years ago in Almas, who had a technique for plating lead bars in gold, which Rodrick could then sell to unsuspecting fools as the real thing; exactly the sort of dodge he’d suspected the Specialist of perpetrating. Hrym was spouting great geysers of bullshit … but he’d found a way to make a little money on this venture, which was more than Rodrick had managed so far.
Hrym kept up his patter, full of grandiose and illogical tales of the wonders of his early life, wielded in battles between the famed flying cities of the Shory. The Specialist asked occasional questions, and nodded a lot, and made many fascinated noises. Hrym’s tale was quite lively, even the parts that didn’t make much sense. Rodrick had heard worse stories out of bards in common rooms. The Specialist was getting his money’s worth in terms of entertainment, anyway.
The Fangwood went from being a distant brownish-green blur to a nearby brownish-green blur, and soon the horses were carefully picking their way along what was either a very well-traveled animal trail or a sorely neglected human path. They’d pause occasionally so Merihim could consult the maps, marked with the locations of sightings of Bannerman. She had some notion of plotting those points through time to somehow deduce where Bannerman might be now, which Rodrick didn’t think was likely to succeed, though the Specialist commented that such techniques were used in some of the more enlightened cities to track habitual thieves and other criminals to their lairs.
They had to move single file, which at least cut down on conversation. “Probably aren’t any carnivorous lizards in these woods, at least,” Hrym said as they moved carefully through the gloomy forest. The rain didn’t fall straight down among the trees, but came in great plops as it gathered on branches and then fell all at once.
Rodrick barked a laugh. “That’s something to be grateful for.”
“Hmm?” the Specialist said from behind them. “Have you traveled in the Mwangi Expanse, to see such things?”
“Jalmeray.” Rodrick didn’t bother trying to suppress a shudder. “A remarkable place, beautiful cities, but the jungles … giant man-eating lizards were the least of it.”
“You’ve really been, then?” Eldra twisted on her saddle to look back at him. “I thought you were just making that up as a way to flirt with me.”
“I find the best flirtations are rooted in the truth. We weren’t on the island long, but the visit was … memorable.”
“You are a man of unexpected depths, Rodrick,” Eldra said.
“And entirely predictable shallows!” Merihim called from the front. She laughed at her own joke, a sound rather like rusty hinges squawking. Rodrick liked her less with every passing moment.
They reached a clearing, about as large as the main room in their headquarters, with a huge oak tree standing near the center, proud and alone. Merihim called the halt. The remains of an old campfire rested in a rough circle of stones near the tree. “Bannerman camped here, so it should do for us, too. Tether the horses.
They dismounted and started to lead the horses toward the edge of the clearing. “No, not all together,” Merihim said. “If Bannerman creeps up on us I’d prefer it if he can’t set all our horses loose to trample through the camp at once.”
Rodrick shrugged and walked his mount to the far side of the clearing near a clump of shaggy undergrowth, tying it to a tree and patting its flank. “That Specialist,” Hrym said from Rodrick’s back. “Did you see him swallow up that swill I served him? We could sell him a cow bone and tell him it was a sacred relic of Aroden himself! He may know his cookery, but he’s outclassed in this crowd.”
“Mmm. Maybe. What do you think of the rest?” Rodrick busied himself with unsaddling the horse and spoke in a low voice. He didn’t think anyone could hear them at this distance, but better to be safe.
“Prinn is some kind of murder-maniac, by the look of him, but Merihim’s got him on a leash of some kind. She seems to know her business, though she’s not as funny as she thinks she is. Eldra … well, if you’d asked me before I saw her throw a knife, I would have said she’d be deadly dangerous in a palace or boudoir and not much to worry about out here, but now … I’d say keep an eye on her.”
“Oh, I intend to. At least she’s easy to look at.”
“She doesn’t even have a pommel,” Hrym said. “I’ll never understand human ideas of beauty.”
Once the horse was settled Rodrick turned back to camp—and saw Prinn crawling on all fours, his nose inches from the ground, eyes closed, bony rear stuck up in the air as he slowly scuttled about. The others were regarding him with interest (the Specialist) or amusement (Eldra) or both (Merihim). Rodrick joined them, walking the long way around to avoid stepping into Prinn’s path. “What is he doing?”
Merihim showed her teeth. “Prinn is very attentive, very detail-oriented. He’s looking for some sign of Bannerman that we can use to track him more effectively. The Fangwood’s big, and after plotting Bannerman’s movements, I’ve been forced to conclude that he’s moving around almost at random. He’s crossing running water a lot, creeks and small rivers, probably to avoid being tracked by dogs, or even in order to disrupt divination spells—some of them are ruined by water. I can narrow his likely location to the southeastern part of the forest, but beyond that…” She shrugged. “One man on the alert for pursuit will see us coming easily. If Prinn can give us an edge, I’ll take it.”
“This campsite is a week old, at least.” The Specialist sucked his teeth—a repulsive sound—as he gazed around. “It’s been disturbed by animals, too. I don’t see any definitive sign to indicate which direction Bannerman was going when he left—not that knowing that would tell us much about his current whereabouts. I’m not sure what Prinn—”
The—What was Prinn? A sorcerer, as Temple suspected? People that strange were often sorcerers or oracles, in Rodrick’s experience—suddenly rose and hurried to Merihim, holding something so small it was invisible in his hand.
“Aha,” Merihim said. “Look at that. A bitten-off bit of fingernail, still with a shred of flesh attached. Looks like Bannerman snagged a finger on a bit of firewood. Foolish of him to leave it behind.”
“What good will a bit of flesh do?” the Specialist said. “A sufficiently powerful wizard could make use of something like that, I suppose, but if any of us were that strong, we’d be flying over the forest and controlling Bannerman’s mind.”
“I’ve got this bracelet.” Merihim held up her arm, which held many bracelets, but she was indicating one in particular, a hammered bronze thing forged of several interlinked arrow-shaped segments. She opened a tiny compartment in one of the arrowheads and put the ragged bit of fingernail inside. She snapped the lid closed, and the metal arrows began to glow with a faint light. “I can find anyone, if I can get my hands on a piece of their body. The bracelet glows more brightly when you move in the right direction, and begins to pulse when you’re very close.”
“Did Temple give you that bracelet?” the Specialist said.
“No, I acquired it some time ago, for an unrelated purpose.”
Eldra cleared her throat. “You were captured snooping around the Whispering Tyrant’s dead city. Were you looking for someone there?”
Prinn, who’d stood by silently, curled his dead-looking lips in a smile.
Merihim sniffed. “I told you, I was just out for a walk in the country. I didn’t realize I’d strayed into a restricted area. I know the crusaders of Lastwall are largely an illiterate lot, but they could have put up a sign with a skull on it, or something.”
“There are walls, fences, and sentries,” Eldra said.
Merihim shrugged. “Clearly not enough of them.” She looked at the sky. “I’d rather not track our quarry in the dark. He can’t escape us now, anyway—we could track him to
Tian Xia if it came to that. We’ll camp, eat, get some sleep, and go after him fresh in the morning. We’ll be done with this business by noon, I’d wager. Hrym, I assume your sight is magical, since you lack eyes. Can you see in all directions at once?”
“Among my many other talents,” the sword said.
“How’s your night vision?”
“I see as well at night as you do in the day.” Hrym did like boasting, but in this case Rodrick knew it was true.
Merihim nodded. “Would you mind taking watch, then? The rest of us will take shifts, too, but I’d be more comfortable with you stuck up in that tree, keeping watch from on high.”
Rodrick grunted. He usually just jammed Hrym point-first into the ground when he needed the sword to keep watch, but giving him a higher vantage point wasn’t a terrible idea.
“Always delighted to be of service.” Hrym’s tone didn’t match the words, but Merihim pretended not to notice.
Prinn clambered up the tree’s trunk as deftly as a lizard, barely pausing to find handholds. When he reached a thick branch thirteen or fourteen feet off the ground, he swung out, hand over hand, until he was some distance along the branch away from the trunk. As he moved, dry dead leaves showered down on the others. Prinn swung his legs up, hooked his feet over the branch, locked his ankles, let go of the tree with his hands, and in another moment was dangling completely upside down by his feet. He reached one long arm down and gestured impatiently.
Rodrick was loath to hand Hrym over to this creature, but he walked until he was standing almost directly under Prinn, reversed his grip on the sword, and held Hrym up, hilt-first. Prinn’s hand closed on the hilt, and for a moment, his face contorted in a flash of terrible rage, as it had when he’d watched Merihim walk away at dinner. Then all was blank again, and the man bent at the waist in a sudden fluid motion, folding himself nearly double as he jammed Hrym point-first into the bottom of the branch. Then he grabbed the branch with his hands, released his foothold, let his feet fall, and dropped, crouching where he landed for a moment before rising.