“What happened to you?”
Vaerana squatted beside Ruha. “Ambush.” The word came out mushy and difficult to understand. “They were waiting.”
“And I know who told them you were coming.” Ruha resisted the temptation to point out that Vaerana could have avoided the beating by awakening her last night. “The Cult of the Dragon has a spy inside Moonstorm House.”
A murderous glint flared in Vaerana’s eyes. “Who?”
Ruha pointed toward the kitchen, where a pair of scullery wenches were just entering the door. “The spy will reveal himself soon enough.”
Vaerana’s hand drifted toward the blood-smeared hilt of her sword. “What’s the sense in waiting? Let’s get him now.”
Ruha laid a restraining hand on the Lady Constable’s arm. “Wait. He is going to lead us to the dragon’s lair. That’s what I was trying to tell you last night.”
Vaerana scowled. “Then why didn’t you?”
“Because I would have ruined the trap,” Ruha explained. “The traitor was—”
The witch was interrupted by a muffled shriek from inside the kitchen. The door burst open and both scullery wenches came rushing outside. One woman held her hands over her mouth, while the other waved her arms at the door and yelled incoherently. With a sinking stomach, Ruha leapt up and raced toward the shed behind Vaerana and Jarvis. Vaerana pulled the crying wench out of the way and led Jarvis and Ruha into the kitchen.
The room was as dark as pitch, for all of the candles and tallow lamps had been extinguished. The cloying perfume of ylang blossoms lingered in the air, though not heavily enough to disguise a coppery, more familiar scent: blood. A few steps inside the door, the Lady Constable suddenly stopped and squatted on her haunches.
“Fetch a light.”
As Jarvis left to do his mistress’s bidding, Ruha knelt close to Vaerana and ran her hands over the floor. It did not take long to find Silavia’s plump, cool body lying facedown on the wooden planks. There was a soft, sticky mess where the back of her head should have been.
“Who did this?” Vaerana demanded.
“A cult spy.” Ruha no longer felt any joy in her coming vindication, in large part because they were going to find another body in the kitchen and she knew who it would be. “This is my fault. Had I not fallen asleep—”
“This is no time for blaming yourself!” Vaerana snapped. “Just tell me about this spy.”
“There were only two people in the kitchen with Silavia: Tombor and Fowler.”
“You think Tusks did this?” Vaerana scoffed. “And I was beginning to think you might not be such a bungler!”
Ruha bit her tongue. A sharp retort would do nothing to bring Fowler back, and even less to convince Vaerana of Tombor’s betrayal. The Lady Constable would realize the truth for herself soon enough.
Jarvis returned with a lit candle, which he promptly used to find and light several tallow lamps. As the flickering light illuminated the room, it became apparent that Silavia had been struck down as she fled, for she had left a short trail of bloody footsteps behind her. The rest of the kitchen looked normal enough; there were no tables overturned, the room was not strewn with utensils, and the walls were mercifully unspattered with blood.
Ruha took Jarvis’s candle and led the way toward the pantry. The oil press was not on the table where it should have been, but she quickly forgot about that as she stepped around the corner of the table and saw Fowler’s stout body sprawled on the floor. The captain was lying amidst a pool of dark blood, with the handle of a long butcher knife protruding from the middle of his back. His neck was turned at an impossible angle, and his astonished gray eyes were staring straight ahead.
Vaerana slipped past Ruha and crouched down beside Fowler. “So much for your spy.”
“I did not say that Fowler was the spy.” Ruha’s tone was sharper than she intended, for she was boiling over with anger and guilt. “I was speaking of your friend, Tombor the Jolly.”
Vaerana’s jaw dropped. “You think Tombor …?”
Ruha nodded. “He was the only one in the room.”
The Lady Constable rose, shaking her head. “Not Tombor. He saved—”
“I know; he saved you from the cult’s assassins, more than once.” Ruha paused, giving Vaerana time to draw her own conclusions. When the witch saw no sudden gleam of understanding in the Lady Constable’s eyes, she said, “The attacks weren’t real. They were a trick to win your confidence.”
A look of humiliation flashed across Vaerana’s face, but it vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. “You don’t know that.”
“Don’t I?” Ruha waved her hand around the kitchen. “Where are the ylang blossoms?”
Vaerana’s gaze roamed across the chamber, her complexion turning as white as alabaster when she did not find the eight bulky sacks. Finally, the Lady Constable whirled on Ruha.
“You knew he would steal the blossoms—and you let him?” Vaerana looked almost relieved to have someone upon whom to vent her anger. “You let him kill Fowler?”
“I did not let him kill anyone!” the witch snapped. Vaerana’s words hurt more than they should have, perhaps because Ruha feared there was more truth to them than she would have liked. “I had hoped we could follow him to Yanseldara’s staff—which we might have done, had you bothered to awaken me and hear my plan!”
Jarvis interposed his armored bulk between the two women. “Tombor was gone by then. I doubt he stayed much longer than it took him to kill the half-orc and Silavia.”
Ruha turned to the empty table and, seeing no mess upon the surface, nodded. “He was in a hurry to get out of here. He took the oil press with him.”
“The press maybe, but not even Tombor could sneak eight sacks of ylang blossoms out the gate,” said Vaerana, “The sentries would ask too many questions. They saw what you went through to bring those sacks to us.”
“Perhaps he took them out some other way,” Ruha suggested.
“Yes, and I think I see how,” said Jarvis. The burly guard took Ruha’s candle and went to the back wall, where a mass of roofing straw lay scattered around a butchering bench. He climbed onto the table and stuck his head up between the rafters, then raised the candle high enough to illuminate his shoulders sticking up through a hole in the roof. “He climbed onto the roof and threw the sacks over the wall.”
“Fowler’s trick!” Ruha gasped.
A long, heartsick groan slipped from Vaerana’s lips. She hung her head and braced her hands on the table edge. “I failed her.”
“Not yet.” Ruha went to the Lady Constable’s side and, rather uncertainly, laid a hand on her shoulder. “Tombor took the wrong blossoms.”
Vaerana raised her brow. “The wrong blossoms?”
Ruha nodded. “The ones Tombor took were only bait. They were picked in the evening, and they are not potent enough to serve the dragon’s wishes. Cypress needs blossoms picked in the morning, and those remain at the Ginger Palace.”
Vaerana stood up straight. “Then what are we waiting for?” She turned to Jarvis. “Find Pierstar and tell him to call out the Maces! We’ve got a palace to storm!”
Ruha caught Jarvis’s arm. “That won’t be necessary. Minister Hsieh has promised to give us the blossoms, in exchange for returning Lady Feng to him unharmed.”
“How are we going to do that?” Vaerana demanded. “Isn’t she with Yanseldara’s staff in Cypress’s lair?”
Ruha nodded. “When we recover one, we rescue the other. It costs us no extra effort.”
Vaerana considered this for a moment, then scowled. “That’d be fine—if we knew where to find the lair. And since you were trying to trick Tombor into leading us there …”
Ruha raised a hand to silence Vaerana. “There may be another way. In my room, I have a potion. If we can get Yanseldara to drink it, we can contact Lady Feng and perhaps discover the location of Cypress’s lair.”
Vaerana studied Ruha out of one swollen eye. “Where did you get this pot
ion?”
“From Minister Hsieh,” Ruha answered. “Now that he is helping us—”
“Helping us!” Vaerana thundered. “It’s Shou magic that’s done this to Yanseldara!”
“Yes, but—”
The Lady Constable shook her head. “How do you know this won’t hurt her?”
“I do not,” Ruha admitted. “Minister Hsieh said that if the connection between Yanseldara’s body and spirit is too weak, we could sever it entirely—but that is unlikely as long as she remains strong enough—”
“No!” Vaerana shook her head vehemently, then stepped away from the table and started toward the door. “When will you learn? You can’t trust a Shou—ever.”
“What other choice do we have?” Ruha started after Vaerana, who did not even acknowledge the question. “Wait! Where are you going?”
The Lady Constable did not even slow down as she stepped through the door. “Where do you think? To have Pierstar wake his trackers!”
Thirteen
Tang saw the serpent dart beneath a ti plant and hopped across the stream after it. He stirred the spear-shaped leaves until the viper struck at his snake stick, then flipped the Y-shaped head around and pinned the creature’s neck to the ground. He kneeled beside his captive and grabbed it behind the head. This snake was the largest yet, so great in diameter that he could not close his hand around its slime-scaled throat. There would be plenty of venom.
The prince twined the serpent’s writhing body around the shaft of his stick and, picking his footing very carefully, carried the heavy thing across the stream to his workbench. Atop the flat rock lay two sacks of supple leather cut from the collars of a pair of boots. With sharpened sticks protruding from them at all angles, the bags looked like melon-sized cockleburs. They were stuffed with wads of silk ripped from the battle tunics of dead soldiers, whose voices Tang still heard screeching above the drone of the mosquitos.
“Be patient, my troops. Soon I intercede for you.” If Tang could find the strength to see his plan through, his ancestors would be so overjoyed that he would no longer need to hide his failure from them. “Soon I pray to Yen-Wang-Yeh; I testify to your bravery, and he renders honorable verdict.”
The spirits took no comfort in the prince’s promise. They continued to screech.
Tang sighed and set his snake stick aside. He took the sack by the long, unsharpened stake that served as a handle—it was not wise to touch the bladder with bare hands—and held it close to his captive’s face. The frightened viper struck instantly, sinking its fangs through the supple leather and into the wad of cloth inside. The prince shook the serpent to encourage the release of more venom, then repeated the process several more times. When he had milked the last of the creature’s toxins, he flung it down the hill and stooped over to inspect his handiwork. Both sacks were so full of poison that cloudy beads of venom were seeping back through the fang holes.
Tang carried the poison-filled bladders down to the swamp, where the cadavers of his dead soldiers lay scattered across the pond as thick as lily pads. Most of the corpses had been savagely mangled by alligators or bitten cleanly in two by the wyverns, but a few were blackened and bloated from dozens of snake bites, often to such an extent that runnels of thick black fluid spilled from splits in the skin. These had been molested by neither alligator nor wyvern, and it was the observation of this fact that had kindled again the prince’s hopes of redeeming himself.
After retrieving his dugout and making a careful search along the edge of the swamp, Tang had located two relatively whole bodies that were not bloated with snake poison. One man had managed to swim to dry land after being eviscerated, while the other had either drowned or died of fright—the prince had found him caught beneath a cypress root with no obvious wounds.
Tang stuffed one of his poison bladders into the abdomen of the eviscerated soldier, then used his dagger to create a place for the second ball in the other man’s stomach. He closed the wounds with small wooden pins and dressed the pair in the cleanest, least-tattered battle tunics he had been able to find. If the men’s spirits objected to having their bodies used as bait, the prince could not tell over the din of voices already assailing his ears. He loaded the cadavers into the dugout, leaning one man over the bow and propping the other in the stern. Into the bottom of the punt, he placed a halberd and some supplies he had gathered from his dead troops, including a rope, torches, oil, and a waterskin.
After peering through gray mosquito haze to make certain no alligators lurked nearby—most had retreated to their dens to gorge themselves on last night’s catch—Tang slipped into the bog scum. As the water rose above his waist, the stench of decaying plants and rotten fish grew immensely more powerful. He gagged and nearly emptied his stomach, then slapped a hand over his nose and forced himself to breathe through his mouth until he grew accustomed to the reek. He pushed the dugout toward Cypress’s cavern, moving so slowly that even he could not see the water rippling. A familiar, cold weakness crept over his limbs, and his heart began to pound so loudly it drowned out the wails of the dead soldiers. In response, they raised their voices until it seemed the entire swamp reverberated with their howls.
“Worthy ancestors, please to silence spirits,” the prince begged. “It is difficult to be brave with such din.”
If anything, the spirits wailed more loudly, yet not loudly enough to drown out the small, whispering voice that kept telling Tang he was a fool to face the wyverns alone. It was not the place of Shou princes to wade through swamps filled with the choking stench of death and rot, or to brave black waters infested with leeches and alligators.
The bottom vanished beneath Tang’s feet. He forced his legs and arms into service and swam toward the cave. The closer he came to the moss-draped maw, the weaker his limbs felt. He doubted he would have the strength to enter the grotto, but that was not required. All he had to do was push the dugout into view of the wyverns, and they would do the rest.
As the prince consoled himself with these thoughts, it occurred to him there was a weakness in his plan. How would he know when—or even if—the wyverns took his bait? The poison would be both painful and quick. Once the stakes punctured the lining of their stomachs, the great reptiles would thrash about and screech madly for a short time, but Tang would not hear them. The dead soldiers were wailing too loudly; the prince would not have heard it if Cypress himself roared in his ear.
Tang allowed the dugout to drift to a stop, then hung from its stern. He had two choices: go into the cave with the corpses, or make his report to Yen-Wang-Yeh so the soldiers would be silent.
Or sneak out of the swamp while Cypress was away, added the insidious voice inside his head.
“I do not go back!”
Feeling proud for avoiding the obvious choice of a coward, Tang took the second most cowardly course and swam the dugout toward the yawning cavern. It seemed entirely possible the wyverns would kill him, but that was preferable to disgracing his ancestors by admitting that he had turned out to be a fool.
The punt nosed in front of the cavern mouth. When the wyverns did not immediately come swooping out of the darkness, Tang took a deep breath, then slipped beneath the water and pushed the dugout around the corner. The din of his dead soldiers faded to a watery roar, and the cowardly voice in his head stopped urging him to flee. The prince continued to ease forward, hoping his feet did not break the surface when he kicked, struggling to keep his hand from slipping on the boat’s slimy bottom. His lungs were already burning for air, but he knew it was only the coward in him looking for an excuse to flee.
Tang continued to kick, praying he would feel the wyverns’ strike rock the dugout before his craven lips opened and sucked a mouthful of fetid water into his lungs. It occurred to him that the wyverns might be gorged already. But they had to be ravenous after last night’s burst of fighting, and the two lizards had not yet finished feeding when Cypress sent them inside to guard the lair. Unless the prince had misinterpreted last night’s
events, they would be voracious enough to devour the punt as well as its contents.
So why hadn’t they attacked?
Tang’s yearning for air grew so overwhelming that he nearly opened his mouth. Instead, he blew his breath out through his nostrils and continued to swim.
At this point, he expected the coward inside to remind him that it was treason to risk the life of a Shou prince, to urge him to swim for the swamp. The whispering voice remained mercifully silent, perhaps because it knew Tang had come too far. The punt was his only camouflage. If he was not behind its sheltering bulk when he pushed his head above water, the wyverns would swoop down to bite him in two, just as they had bitten apart those bodies in the swamp outside.
A black fog gathered at the edges of Tang’s perceptions, and he realized he could no longer deny his lungs. He rolled onto his back and pushed his head up alongside the slimy hull. When his face broke the surface, he opened his mouth and quietly filled his chest with dank, moldy air.
The cavern ceiling hung thrice a man’s height above his head. It was a dark vault of broken stalactites and shadowy hollows, dimly illuminated by the swamp’s emerald light. Here and there were blocky holes where some huge chunk of stone had long ago fallen into the water, shaken loose by an earthquake, or perhaps some ancient outpouring of Cypress’s anger.
Tang allowed his gaze to follow the curve of the ceiling down to the wall, then farther down to a rock ledge looming above the water. Hanging above this stony bench were two pairs of huge orange eyes with slit pupils and gleaming, voracious gazes. The prince’s heart skipped a beat or several, and he stopped himself from crying out only by pulling his head beneath the water.
The wyverns struck the next instant, taking Tang’s bait so hard that they slammed the bottom of the dugout into his chest. The impact drove the air from his lungs, and he found himself choking on fetid brown swamp water. His head broke the surface of its own accord and violent coughs began to rack the prince’s body. He grabbed the side of the punt and tried to regain control of his convulsing chest.
The Veiled Dragon Page 23