“Wait,” Packer said, remembering the pistol. He peered back into the darkness, felt across the surface of the tray, but he could not find it. “The derringer…”
“There is no time,” she said. “Someone will have heard the noise.”
The lip of the tray was only a half an inch from the edge of the chute. The clearance was the same all around its edge. He looked on the floor. It couldn’t have fallen, he thought. Then he realized. Talon had taken it.
But he had no time to confront her. “Someone is coming,” she said. Packer now heard footsteps approaching from the corridor. She took his hand, pulled him toward her, and then pushed him down behind the small island. “Stay there!” she ordered in a whisper. She went back to the apparatus and yanked on the near rope, raising the platform slightly. Immediately, it began to rise, as Delaney and Father Mooring took over from above.
In an instant, Talon was crouched beside Packer, and they heard the door to the kitchen swing open. The footsteps stopped. Then they came slowly closer. Packer could tell by the sound that this was a big man, but light on his feet. A trained warrior, most likely. The man stopped again, listening to the creak of the ropes as they raised the tray through the chute. He walked toward the open dumbwaiter door, now hanging from one hinge. Packer glanced at Talon, could see her in the shadows, crouched, gathered, waiting, her face a picture of calm, her eyes cold and distant. A predator. She had her knife in her hand. A chill ran through him. He hadn’t seen her unsheathe it. It was just there.
The guard looked around the room once more, then edged closer to the dumbwaiter. He moved it slightly, examining the broken lock, its hinge. Then he put his head inside the opening.
Instantly, Talon was in the air, springing silently toward her prey.
She recognized him, this Hezzan Guard, as she came down on top of him. She could see his face as she grabbed his hair with her left hand, and snapped his head back. He had protected her. She felt no pity, however, as he took a quick breath in, reacting to the pain. Her right hand, knife held lightly like a surgeon, reached under his neck. She thought about how stupid he was to have put his head into that small, dark doorway. All the training he’d gone through under Vasla Vor, and he walks into a small room to investigate a loud noise, sees a small door with a shattered latch, and puts his head into it. These were her thoughts, flashing through her mind in the instant it took to bring the knife back toward her with a flick of the wrist. He flinched once, like a sleeping man when he dreams he is falling. Air rushed from his lungs through his open throat as he attempted to cry out. But the cut was well below his vocal cords. And then he was plummeting down the chute, head first.
“Let’s go,” Talon said to Packer, wiping her blade on her leather legging. She took Packer by the arm with her left hand, hauled him up, holding the gleaming blade aloft in her right. “More will come.” She walked Packer toward the door that led out of the kitchen.
“But Delaney—”
“Yes! We must protect Delaney, and your priest.” But she did not slow. Once outside the kitchen, she propelled Packer through a small corridor toward a larger door, with more light yet behind it.
He tried to understand what had just happened. She had moved like a cat. She had killed her own countryman without a trace of remorse, without so much as an acknowledgement of the deed, and now she pushed him toward…what?
He could fight her. But he feared he had nowhere near her speed, her agility. And he certainly didn’t have her deadly calm. She seemed completely at home here in the dark, dealing out death, walking into unknown dangers. In fact, she was energized by it.
And then they were through the doorway and standing in a large, marble meeting hall. Lamps flickered upward toward vaulted ceilings, lighting twelve men who sat around a triangular table. One of them was Huk Tuth. Two guards stood to their left.
The four men seated nearest Packer turned in unison as he and Talon entered. On the end, on Packer’s left, one man stood up hurriedly and turned to face them. He was a small man, with leathery skin and a patchy beard and heavy, half-closed eyelids. Another man, seated, spoke in Drammune, a sharp order in a cracking voice. Packer could not understand the words. But the meaning came clear as the pair of guards responded. They came toward Talon and Packer with halberds raised.
And then suddenly Packer’s right arm was twisted behind him. Pain shot through his hand, up through his wrist, his elbow, his shoulder. Talon stood behind him, shielded by him, his arm folded like a chicken wing, her knife at his throat. He could feel its razor edge pressing into his skin, as he had felt it once before. She was speaking in Drammune now, pouring out a guttural string of words that seemed to freeze the room.
“Meht ema Kar Ixthano,” she said. The room did not breathe. Eyes flashed from Talon to Packer to the lizardlike man. And then into the sickly silence she injected these words: “Kar Ixthano tah nochtram Hezzan Vastcha.”
Packer understood Kar Ixthano, the Right of Transfer. He understood “nochtram” to be some form of their word for death. And he understood “Hezzan Vastcha.” He knew that the death she spoke about was his own.
At this point Packer determined he could no longer safely follow wherever Talon led.
“Well, I can’t very well save the kingdom on an empty stomach,” Princess Jacq complained. “And I can’t very well eat this…substance. Do they have a name for such a mishmash here in the hinterlands?”
“Well, actually they call it ‘mishmash.’ It’s a slumgullion of sorts. And we are in fact inside the city limits—”
“Slumgullion?” She was aghast. “Do you mean to say these people serve gluewater? What the whaling boats cast off?”
“No, no, it’s not literal slumgullion,” Usher Fell tried. “It’s a nickname.” He had no idea how to get through to her. “It’s just stew, Your Highness.”
“Stew?” The princess laughed, a combination of derision and relief. “My dear Father Fail, I have eaten stew, and pretend as I might, I could never generate enough imagination to call this ‘stew.’ ”
“Fell.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m Father Usher Fell. You said ‘Fail.’ And while I understand the food here isn’t quite up to the standards of the palace—”
“Isn’t quite? I can tell you that this mess of pottage does not even meet the standards of the Mountain House. Look at it. No, go on, look! I want you to see what you’ve served me.”
He looked into her bowl, eyes downcast. Her Royal Highness, the Princess Jacqalyn Devray Arnot Sennett, had arrived in Mann incognito after leaving the Mountains on her own accord. Or at least, she thought she was incognito.
From the moment Hap Stanson mentioned the possibility of succeeding to the throne, the thought had hardly left her mind for a moment. By the time she reached the Mountain House she had decided to hold him to this veiled promise. But to do that, she would need to find him, and give him some guidance. So she traveled back to the city in a relatively ordinary, unadorned carriage, dressed in finery that was somewhat less ornate than she would generally deign to wear, and in the company of only two dragoons, both in civilian clothes. All of which seemed to her quite the equivalent of poverty. To an outside observer, however, she had dropped down maybe a single rung, from princess of the land to fine lady of wealth and means. She turned heads everywhere she went.
But the heads she wanted most to turn right now hid within clerical hoods. Spurred by her newfound religiosity, she went straight to the nearest church and demanded an immediate audience with the High Holy Reverend Father, Harlowen Stanson. The priest to whom she made her demands pastored a tiny church on the outskirts, and was unaccustomed to anything like the turmoil she caused. She ordered everyone about, sent meals back, demanded bedding and linens and comforts that many in town had never seen, and some had never heard of.
The priest made discreet and worried inquiries about what to do with this personage, inquiries made at ever-increasing levels of urgency, until eventually Fa
ther Fell was found and summoned. At the end of his first visit with the princess, her coach had left the church grounds, bound for the quiet inn that was still the base of Usher Fell’s operations. At the time, Father Fell did not fully understand why the priest of the little church had seemed quite so elated as he waved her goodbye. Now he understood completely.
But at the moment, Jacq was not finished discussing her soup. “And what is that? Look at that piece of…something. Right there. Tell me what that is. Is it potato, or is it lard? Or is it something else entirely? Well, Father Fall, I can promise you that I will not be putting it into my mouth. I can live without finding the answer.”
“Fell.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s Father Fell. You said, ‘Fall.’ ”
“Fell, Fall, it’s the soup I’m talking about here, not you.” She looked at him, saw he was crestfallen, and relented some. “Dear me, have I upset you? You didn’t cook it, after all. I’m so sorry, dear man.” Her voice took on a maternal quality that was highly patronizing, so much so that Father Fell immediately preferred the complaining. “You are only trying to help, aren’t you? So why don’t you take this away,” and here her voice turned suddenly cheery, “and tell the chef I want to see him at once! I’ll be happy to help him understand what is meant in Nearing Vast by the term ‘stew.’ ”
Usher Fell faltered. Her talking to the chef would be a disaster. “The cook,” he explained, “is actually the wife of the proprietor, Your Highness. And I must tell you that the situation demands a bit of delicacy. Not only would it be best if the proprietors did not know your precise identity, there is also a small matter I have been discussing with the innkeeper having to do with a horse.”
“A horse?”
“The price of a horse, to be more exact. A horse that seems to have gone missing.”
She looked into the stew again, aghast. She pushed it away.
“No, no—I borrowed it when I sent a rider to find you,” the priest desperately attempted to explain. “I mean, to find the High Holy…that is, Father Stanson. I am in discussions now with the man about payment for the loss of his horse, and would rather not create more animosity—”
The princess rolled her eyes. “Money. Is that it? It’s beyond me, really, the importance men attach to the stuff. It’s really so tiring.” She walked across the room to a large, fat purse, essentially a leather bag, that she had set on the dresser. “I would have thought men of the cloth would be above such things.” She pulled open the drawstring, stuck her hand in, pulled out a fistful of gold coins. “Here. How many of these do you need?”
The priest cheered up considerably. “Four. Just for the horse, that is. One more for room and board. Though that’s just paying what I already owe. I could prepay—”
“There, what’s that, seven or eight?” She poured them into his hand. “Anyway, there’s plenty more in the bag if you need them. As long as it helps get rid of those dreadful Thromes, one way or another, it’s money well spent.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” He counted the coins quickly. There were ten of them. He closed his hand around them. “Under the circumstances, I would suggest we postpone questioning the chef, and focus on the mission at hand.”
“Fine.” She looked at her dinner tray, still worried that the horse had somehow wound up in that stew. She picked up the apple that accompanied it. She studied it carefully, picked off a small blemish with a fingernail. Then she looked at the old priest coldly. “So. What is the Church’s plan for returning the Sennetts to power?” She bit into the apple. It popped, and she chewed it deliberately, staring at the priest, awaiting his answer.
Usher Fell blinked. He had ten gold coins in his hand, and an imperious princess with solid bloodlines at his table, one with the means and the desire to overthrow the current government. He had rumors, and the means to start more. He had God on his side, in the form of the High Holy Reverend Father and Supreme Elder. But plans? No, he had no plans.
The path before him, he was beginning to understand, would be strewn with obstacles.
Packer watched the faces of the men around the table. These were those who plotted against Talon, to overthrow her. She had come here to confront them, not to escape. But what good would it do, he wondered, for her to kill him now? They would still kill her. And that, he realized, seemed to be precisely the discussion now underway.
“Go ahead and kill him,” Tcha Tarvassa said in Drammune, standing at the corner of the table. His lizardlike eyelids were half closed. He had joined the Quarto to engineer this very coup, to overturn the perversion of the Rahk-Taa that had put the woman Talon in power. He was pleased to see she had arrived unsummoned, and had immediately proven her own Unworthiness. It would make this all easier. “Kill the King of the Vast,” Tarvassa continued, “and you shall by right claim his dominion. And then when we find you Unworthy, we shall kill you, and claim both yours and his.”
Talon scanned the room. Huk Tuth had taken Sool Kron’s place. She knew what that meant. The look in his eye, though, said he detested everything around him; her perhaps most of all. “Kill the King of the Vast, and with him dies the secret of the Firefish,” she answered.
“Give her some room,” Pizlar Kank said to the guards. They obeyed. “She is Hezzan yet. Let her speak.”
Talon’s eyes moved from Kank to Tarvassa to Tuth as she spoke. “You say you care not whether I slay the King of the Vast in violation of a signed treaty. That is dishonorable. You care not whether you falsely accuse and overthrow the rightful Hezzan of the Drammune. That is intolerable. But to care nothing for the power now at your fingertips, the power to control the Firefish and thus the seas, and thus the world…that, for any man born with Drammune blood, is unforgivable.”
She let the words hang in the air.
Tarvassa glanced at his fellow members of the Quarto. He clearly had no idea what to do next.
“Why don’t you sit down, Minister Tarvassa,” said the peevish Kank. Tarvassa sat. Kank turned back to Talon. “These men here gathered accuse you of Unworthy deeds.”
“Shocking. But I have a proposal for you,” she said. Talon watched Kank’s eyes. Sool Kron’s prediction had been accurate. Now that these bears had tasted honey, they wanted to own the beehive. They craved it. Kank believed they already owned it, that nothing could stop them. He had turned the government, and Tarvassa had brought him the Infiltrators, and Huk Tuth, apparently, the Glorious Military.
But Kank was wrong. They could be stopped right here, right now. All four men seated here before her, smugly claiming absolute authority over the land, offhandedly casting the life of a king to the winds, determining the fate of the Hezzan, would be dead within five seconds if she so chose. And no man in the room could stop her.
If she so chose, she would be a blur, executing a judgment sorely needed, these wrongs righted in an instant. Four men would be lying in pools of their own blood, while the nine remaining members of the Twelve would watch, and do nothing. Packer Throme would do nothing—he had forsworn the sword. Huk Tuth would attempt to stop her, but he was old and hunched and slow. So the two guards would go down next. And she had a two-shot derringer in her belt. That would leave her facing Tuth and the rest of these spineless weasels. The way she figured, she would have them outnumbered.
She relished the thought of it.
CHAPTER 16
Exchange
Delaney rolled out of the chute quickly, landing catlike on the floor. It took a grunting Father Mooring slightly longer. His toes reached downward for what seemed to him a very long time before touching solid ground again. He was glad for the feeling, though it seemed a tad too slippery for his liking.
Delaney took Packer’s sword and scabbard from the tray where he had put them for ease of access, and started buckling the belt around him. “That witch, I swear,” he muttered. “Leavin’ us to shuttle up and down lookin’ for ’em like we was huntin’ quail.”
In fact they had stopped here once be
fore, looked around, heard nothing, saw nothing, and kept going. They went down to the lowest level of the palace, the cellar, where they smelled coal and lye and heard women chattering in Drammune. “Household servants,” Father Mooring had whispered after listening for a moment. “Seems they heard a noise a while back, coming from this chute. But they have no key to open it.”
In fact, all the doors of the hatchways were locked tightly, all but the one into the room in which they now stood.
“I’ll kill her. I swear I will,” Delany repeated.
“So you’ve said,” the priest offered. “It may be they just ran into some trouble.”
“I’ll run some trouble into her,” Delaney offered back. His belt rebuckled, he wiped his hand on his trousers. He stopped and looked at his fingers. He touched them, then sniffed them. He looked at both hands, front and back. He looked around, a wild question in his eyes.
“What is it?”
He reached out for one of Father Mooring’s hands, pulled it up to his face, peering at it in the dim light. “It’s blood.”
“It’s what?” The priest studied his own palm. Convinced, he patted himself, his chest, his thighs, his rump. “I don’t believe it’s mine.”
“Nor mine.” Delaney looked more closely at the chute. He wiped his hand across the wood just below the opening, looked at his darkened fingers. Now he could see it, spattered across the wood, the door to the chute, and under the lip of it. On the floor. His spirits sank. He spoke low and mournful as he said, “He hardly got outta there, afore she kilt ’im.” Then his voice went high, cracking as he proclaimed, “Oh, Packer. What have I done to ye?” He looked at the blood on his hands. “Here’s a stain shall never wash away.”
“Now, let’s not jump to conclusions,” Father Mooring offered, his hand on Delaney’s shoulder. “This might be Packer’s blood, and it might not be. He’s in God’s hands. We must trust that all is working out as it should.”
The Trophy Chase Saga Page 110