The Dead Falcon (The Eastern Slave Series Book 4)

by Victor Poole

  Ajalia still had the folded paper, and the piece of marked leather that she had taken from the witch in the tenement. She wanted to get Delmar alone, and to find out what the old Slavithe words said. She remembered Card, and how the old man had said that he could read the old words a little. She remembered that she had asked him to teach her, when she had time, but Ajalia did not want to expose Card to the words on the scrap of leather, or on the folded paper. She was sure, almost, that the words would hold dark secrets, and she did not want to lay the burden of such filth on Card's mind.

  A rattle and a shuffle came at the door. Ajalia got up, and went to it.

  "Who is it?" she called.

  "Open the door, Ajalia," Delmar shouted. Ajalia smiled, and shoved the shelf to one side. She opened the door, and Delmar, Ocher, and Rane were revealed on the other side. The neighbors were gone. Ajalia put her head out into the hall, and looked down the stairs, and up the hall, where the other rooms lay.

  "You came alone," she observed, standing back to let the three men come in. Rane shot Ajalia a victorious glance as he came in; Ajalia shut the door behind Ocher, and pushed the shelf back in front of the door.

  "What happened here?" Delmar asked, watching Ajalia push the shelf.

  "Before we go to look on Tree's hideous remains," Ajalia said, going in front of Rane, who had headed to the inner room, "I think the three of us should have a little talk."

  Rane glanced uneasily at Ajalia, and moved to go around her. Ajalia got in front of him again, and met his eyes. Rane blushed.

  "What's this about?" Ocher asked, his eyes narrowed, and his face turning between Ajalia and Rane.

  "Apparently," Ajalia told Ocher, "something has happened to make me irresistible between last night and this morning, and Rane fancies himself in love with me."

  Ocher and Delmar both bristled; Ajalia saw that in the space of a few seconds, Delmar and Ocher formed a kind of alliance with each other, against Rane. Delmar had disliked Ocher, and Ocher had been annoyed with Delmar's ascendancy with Ajalia, but now both of them turned with lowering faces towards Rane. Rane blanched a little.

  "That isn't true," Rane said in a small voice. Ajalia smiled at him.

  "If you had been honest with me," she said, "instead of sneaking around corners, and keeping back information from me, I would have let you pine with dignity. But," she said, "you have brought Delmar into it. So."

  "How'd he bring me into it?" Delmar demanded, looking around at Ajalia. Ajalia was staring at Rane, who was glaring at her with a baleful look on his face.

  "I saw you, or heard you," Ajalia amended, "kissing Beryl. You claim that she hasn't tainted you, and that you never loved her. So what's up with the kissing?"

  Rane's face had turned a mottled blue color. His eyes, which had before been scornful and angry, became now like the eyes of a hunted animal.

  "Stop talking like that," Rane rasped. Ajalia turned to Ocher.

  "I told you," she said to Ocher, "that you were compromised. I told you to run away."

  Ocher was watching Ajalia with guarded eyes; Ajalia thought she could see him thinking about whether he should go away, and refuse to hear her, or if he was willing to hear out what she said.

  "Yes, you said that," Ocher said.

  "Well, now Beryl is dead," Ajalia said, "and now you know she was a witch."

  Ocher shifted uneasily.

  "Do you doubt still," Ajalia demanded, heat rising in her cheeks, "that your wife was a witch?"

  "She wasn't my wife," Ocher muttered.

  "She married you!" Ajalia shouted. She turned on Rane. "Both of you claim," she told them, "that she had no hold on you, and yet both of you," she said, "quail, and hide your eyes, when I mention her sins. Something is wrong."

  Delmar was watching Ocher now, a speculative look in his eyes.

  "My mother had laid a piece of herself in me," Delmar said to Ocher in a quiet voice. Delmar glanced at Rane, as though he would prefer not to speak of this before the spy from Talbos. "I didn't know," Delmar told Ocher. "I tried to attack Ajalia, but she cut the piece out of me, and taught me to destroy it." Ocher looked quickly at Delmar, and then at Ajalia.

  "She did this for you?" Ocher asked. Delmar nodded.

  "I had done the purges," Delmar said in a low voice. "I've been doing them since I was fifteen. I've never found it in all that time."

  Ajalia took note, and made a reminder to herself to question Delmar later. She told herself that he had, indeed, known how old he was. A part of her began to wonder what else Delmar had lied to her about. She looked speculatively at Rane, and at Ocher, and wondered what slabs of soul were tucked into their colors.

  Ocher was looking at Delmar, as though trying to test a rickety ledge. Ocher turned his eyes to Rane.

  "And you?" Ocher asked.

  "The purges?" Rane asked with a harsh laugh. "I'm not of your brotherhood," Rane said. "I don't do such things."

  Delmar and Ocher watched Rane as though they had just discovered that he was infested with fleas. They glanced again at each other, and then at Ajalia.

  "Will you look for pieces of Beryl?" Ocher asked Ajalia. "In Rane first," he added, hesitating, "and then, perhaps, in me?"

  Ajalia felt suddenly as though they were asking her to perform some embarrassing examination for them. Rane was still watching her, as though she were likely to turn on him, and strike at him without warning.

  "Tree said," Ajalia told Ocher, "that Rane had never slept with Beryl. Do you think that this is true?"

  "Oh, yes," Ocher said. "Neither have I," he added, glancing at Delmar. "No one may share flesh with the witch-caller." Ajalia perked up at this. She had suspected for some time now that Beryl held some secret office, and she had seen how the guards had known to look in the tenement, and in the forest when she had done magic there.

  "What is a witch-caller?" Ajalia asked. She directed her question at Delmar, but kept Rane and Ocher in her line of sight. She was acutely aware of the second window behind her; she was listening for the tumble of the small objects she had placed along the top of the desk. Some tickle of warning made her turn, and Ajalia saw a cautious hand lifting down the last fragment of stone. She thought that the people outside must have laid the ladder against the building again.

  "Hi! Stop that!" Ajalia shouted, and she went to the window. She lifted the heavy desk, and let it drop again against the opening; she heard a man cry out, and felt him clinging desperately to the wooden desk. She heard the clatter of the ladder as it fell, and the shouts of people below in the street. Ajalia put her face into the open space above the desk, and looked at the man who clung to the window outside. She recognized the young man who had walked before Tree, announcing the approach of the old Thief Lord. The young man's eyes were wide with terror; his mouth was a gaping mask of fright.

  "Please don't kill me, lady," the young man choked out. His eyes went to the street below, which was too far for a safe tumble. The people in the street, Ajalia saw, had scattered away from the fallen ladder, and below the young man was only the unforgiving white stone of Slavithe.

  Ajalia smiled, and pulled the desk away from the window. Ocher and Delmar had come to the doorway, and were looking around at the splattered mess of blood and shattered bone.

  "Get Rane," she called back to Delmar, and Delmar vanished. Ajalia guessed, because she would have done so in his place, that Rane would try to sneak quietly away when everyone's backs were turned. As Ajalia finished pushing aside the heavy desk, and extended a hand to Tree's young man, she heard an angry shout, and a scuffle near the door in the outer room.

  "You can't keep me here!" Rane bellowed. Ocher went out to help Delmar, and Ajalia smiled kindly at the frightened young man, who was regarding her proffered hand with deep suspicion.

  "You'll let me fall," the young man said.

  "I wanted to talk with you," Ajalia told him. "I won't hurt you."

  The young man regarded her through narrowed eyes, and slowly put out his hand. A
jalia pulled him up, and helped him into the bloody room. The young man's eyes went to the epicenter of the blood, where his late master had stood, and he swallowed.

  "Did he try to kill you?" the young man asked in a low voice.

  "Yes," Ajalia said. "What's your name?" she asked. The young man looked at her as though she was a ghost.

  "How did you survive?" the young man asked. Ajalia grinned at him. The young man did not smile back. "You should have died," the young man insisted. "Tree always won fights."

  "Because he fought dirty?" Ajalia asked. The young man hesitated, and then nodded cautiously. "What's your name?" Ajalia asked the young man again. The young man sent his eyes towards the room where Ocher could be heard, talking to Rane, and he swallowed again.

  "Will I be punished?" the young man asked Ajalia. He looked as though he were trying to decide if he could trust her. His eyes went again to the inner door, where Delmar had appeared. "I helped him get the things," the young man whispered to Ajalia, guilt and fear in his eyes. "I don't want to die," he added.

  "I need your help," Ajalia told him. "You can tell me some things about Tree that I want to know." The young man examined her face.

  "And I won't get in trouble?" he asked her, his eyes going again to Delmar, whose gaze was taking in the ruined room.

  "That depends," Ajalia told him softly, "on how honest and helpful you are." The young man shot her a grateful look, and opened his mouth. "I want your name, first," Ajalia told him. The young man smiled, and Ajalia saw that she had won him over.

  "My name is Isacar," the young man said. Ajalia pressed Isacar by the shoulder, and smiled at him.

  "I think," Ajalia told him quietly, "that you will work for me now."

  Isacar looked as though a great pile of jewels had rained down from the sky into his hands; he looked like a lost lamb who has found, purely by accident, its mother. He looked adoringly at Ajalia, and then bowed in an official manner.

  "I put my life into your hands, lady," Isacar said, and Ajalia grinned at him. Isacar smiled shyly back, and Ajalia told the young man to stand guard at the window.

  "I have many questions for you," she told him, "and you will have to be very discreet." Isacar held in an expression of glee. Ajalia saw that discretion was something Tree had demanded of his servants in spades. "I've got to work some things out with the Thief Lord," Ajalia said, "and with Ocher." And with Rane, she thought, but didn't say. Isacar took up his post near the second window, looking for all the world like a fierce guardian carved from stone. Ajalia glanced briefly out the window, and saw the people in the street gazing up with sour faces at the figure of Isacar, who was clearly visible from below. She thought that she would have no more trouble with the neighbors, now that Isacar was on her side. Ajalia stepped over the blood spatters towards Delmar, who had come back to the inner doorway.

  "You know how old you are," Ajalia said to him. She smiled, but there was a turning of anger in her soul. Delmar looked at her as though she had said some awkward thing. A frown creased his eyebrows, and sent dark lines through the stubble of his growing beard. Delmar was blond, but his beard, to Ajalia's delight, was turning out to be a glorious ruddy brown, with hints of red in the hair. The darkness of his beard, contrasted with his blond hair, made him quite unutterably handsome. He had seemed to age miraculously in the weeks since Ajalia had first met him in the forest outside Slavithe. His blue eyes were creased now with a look of blank confusion.

  "Of course I know how old I am," Delmar told her. "Why wouldn't I?" Ajalia blinked.

  "Are you seriously asking me that?" she demanded. Delmar watched her as though she were a crazy woman.

  "What do you mean?" Delmar asked. He was not mocking her; his voice was sincere, and concerned. He looked like a soulful and kind man when he asked her. Ajalia wanted to laugh; she wanted to rifle through Delmar's mind, to find out what folds of darkness had made him lie to her before. She remembered the dark shadows of his father's essence that had seeped from his brain, and she took a deep breath.

  "We have had two conversations," Ajalia told him calmly, "when you have claimed, almost with tears in your eyes, that you did not have any idea how old you were."

  Delmar looked as though he were experiencing some elaborate prank; he watched her speak with benign interest.

  "I don't remember this," Delmar told her. He looked utterly sincere. Ajalia tried to calm herself; she tried to tell herself that he had not been himself when he had lied to her.

  "Did you know that you were lying to me?" Ajalia asked him patiently.

  "No," Delmar said. "Did I really tell you that I didn't know?" he asked. He was beginning to look anxious.

  "Yes," Ajalia said slowly. She believed him when he said that he didn't remember. "You had shadows," Ajalia told him, "in your body this morning." She glanced at the front room, where she could just see Ocher and Rane huddled in close conference. Rane no longer looked as though he were going to run away, but he was speaking to Ocher with an intensity and an eagerness that, to Ajalia, looked promising. She imagined that they were comparing notes on their relationships to Beryl.

  "I had shadows?" Delmar asked her. His eyes went to Isacar, who was gazing impassively out of the window; Ajalia felt about Isacar much as she had felt when she had first found Card; she thought that Isacar was a great stroke of good luck. Finally, she told herself, she had a personal servant with whom she could plan, and compare notes. She already felt herself relaxing her guard, and relying on the solidity and loyalty of Isacar. She had encountered Isacar's type once before, in the house of her first Eastern master, and she counted herself very lucky indeed to have found the young man here, and in such circumstances of ready employ. She knew that Isacar would be loyal to her, and that he would tell her what he knew, when she asked.

  "You had great dark shadows," Ajalia told Delmar, "of all different colors, all through your body." She hesitated, and then told him how she had sent bolts of mixed magic into his chest, and how the magic had fled into his brain. She told him how he had somehow not seen or noticed what she had done, and how the dark shadows had melted finally out of his head when she had exploded the fragments of the books. Delmar's eyes darkened while he listened; when she had finished, he nodded.

  "It was an old trick," Delmar said grimly, "developed by the very old witches."

  "The witches who ate flesh?" Ajalia asked. Delmar nodded.

  "I did not think," Delmar said heavily, "that my father would stoop so low."

  "How did he know how to do that?" Ajalia asked. She looked again at Ocher, and at Rane. Rane's bruised and bloodied face was turned a little towards her; Ajalia knew that he had been watching her. "Rane told me," she said quickly, before Delmar could answer, "that your father made a deal with Tree, and with Tree's wife, when he was young."

  Delmar's eyes flickered to Rane, and then to Ajalia.

  "That is a lie," Delmar said. "It's an old story that the witches told, to destroy the people's faith in my father."

  "Rane thought it was true," Ajalia said. "And he was there," she added hesitantly.

  "Did he tell you that?" Delmar asked with a laugh. His eyes went again to Rane, and to Ocher. "He lied," Delmar said confidently. "He was not in my father's house until much later, and then Beryl had already been made witch-caller."

  Ajalia studied Delmar's eyes. Delmar believed what he told her, but Ajalia was still sure that Delmar did not know the truth of everything. She stood up wordlessly, and held out a hand to Delmar. Delmar took her hand, and she led him through the bloodied floor to the closet, where Tree had inscribed his gruesome message. Ajalia caught a glimpse of Rane, before she and Delmar passed more deeply into the room. She saw that Rane was watching Delmar with fixed dislike, and that he had seen her hand intertwined with Delmar's. Ocher's back was to the inner room, his face turned in earnest talk with Rane.

  The people outside the house seemed, Ajalia thought, to regard Isacar as a kind of cursed guardian angel. She was sure that no neig
hbors were in the hall now that Delmar and Ocher had appeared; the ladder, when she glanced out of the second window, lay abandoned on the white stone ground.

  Ajalia pointed to the writing in the closet, and Delmar's face turned dark, and angry.

  "Who wrote this?" Delmar demanded, turning to Isacar. Isacar was still facing out to the street; the young man glanced at Ajalia.

  "Tree wrote it," Ajalia said. "Didn't he?" she asked Isacar. Isacar nodded.

  "My grandfather wouldn't have written something vile, like this," Delmar said. He sounded disgusted.

  "What if it is true?" Ajalia asked. When she had let Delmar and the others into the front door, she had laid the heart stone down inside the shelf. She remembered it now, and went out to get it.

  "But it isn't," Delmar insisted, following her. "It can't be true," he added, looking disgruntled. Ajalia retrieved the heart stone, and called to Isacar. The young man came quickly to her side, and bent down, presenting his ear close to her mouth. Ajalia saw with pleasure that Tree's young man was accustomed to taking secret directions, and being ready to carry out dodgy instructions. She smiled again, and sighed with pleasure. Life, she thought, was going to be much more pleasant for her now.