by Kate Elliott
This close, Nallo saw clearly the scar on her chin and another on her neck, as if she’d caught an arrow or blade in the flesh. Trembling, she thought, I should kiss her.
Eyes flaring, Kesta said, “Nallo?” But her gaze skipped up from Nallo’s face to the sky, and whatever else she meant to say was obliterated by a grin of relief. “Cursed outlander. Look at him come down at such an angle!”
Pil and Sweet plummeted down over them. Shrieks of alarm were followed by whoops of laughter as the old raptor came down with a flourish right out in the open rather than in the more isolated parade ground.
“For such a quiet lad, he’s turning into a bit of a show-off, eh?” Kesta hadn’t released Nallo’s arm. “What’s troubling you?”
Nallo had never before had trouble speaking her mind. Indeed, it had been the thing people had liked least about her. But a horrible swell of uncertainty—about being a reeve, about Kesta, about their hopes for succeeding stranded up here—strangled her tongue. “I’m just hungry.”
She shook free of Kesta and hurried to meet Pil, while Kesta dogged her steps in a most annoying way. Yet the other reeve said nothing as they greeted Pil; as they checked in with the fawkners; as they sat down over an afternoon bowl of rice flavored with the last of the dill weed as Pil described in his endearingly awkward accent the brief battle on the river shore.
“It was Tohon,” he said. “The Qin scout.”
“The hells,” muttered Kesta. “So that’s what Volias was on about. Why would folk from Olossi risk sending scouts up here, when they know if they’re captured they’ll just be interrogated and executed?”
“They prepare an attack by scouting ahead into the territory,” said Pil with a shrug, as if the answer was obvious to him.
Kesta’s laugh was edged with a despairing anger. “We think the enemy may have as many as ten cohorts spread along the River Istri. That would be six thousand men. As good as the Qin may be, they have—what?—two hundred men? There is no army to save us!”
“Not yet,” said Pil, scooping up more rice.
“We don’t have to be useless!” snapped Nallo.
“What’s eating you?” Kesta waved her spoon.
Nallo leaped up and strode away as other reeves stared. She found a shaded corner deep in the compound, slammed her back against a wall, and stood there breathing and trembling for a while. It was the cursed sense of helpless uselessness that ate at her.
After a while Pil walked around the corner and leaned back beside her, settling in as though he meant to wait all night if need be. In truth, it was getting dark.
“Ah, the hells!” she said with a bitter laugh. “Let’s go look at the cursed city, eh?”
Silence was assent. He walked companionably, saying nothing as usual, until they reached the big balcony that jutted over the cliff face. Off to the right sat the huge winches for the provisions baskets, safely roped up. A wooden barrier fenced off the stairs so no idiot child could go climbing down and get trapped in the rubble that blocked the steps.
The sun had already set as they leaned on the railing and stared over the city turning to shadow below. Before, twilight had been a bright and busy time in Toskala, lamps bobbing along the avenues as carters and porters made their final deliveries, the night markets coming to life as the day died. Now the city lay dark except for the army camp beyond the outer walls where campfires flickered, and lanterns that lighted the sentry and curfew stations in the main squares and central thoroughfares.
With Pil she could say what she wanted without being judged.
“How can I be a proper reeve when I hardly know how to fly, can barely handle my raptor, and haven’t the least idea what to do in a fight? I lost sight of Kesta and you. I would have been lost except for the river. I came to Clan Hall to get training. Now there isn’t time. At least you know how to fight.”
“The commander makes this decision, how to train new reeves.”
His calm words smoothed the turbulence in her heart. Someone would have to take charge, and then things would change. “Flying provisions up from Nessumara might not seem like much, but it’s something. As long as we hold Law Rock, the people of Toskala have a hope that we can overcome the enemy. That matters, doesn’t it?”
Since she expected no answer, she was content to lean on the railing as stars came out between the patchwork clouds. The voice of the river blended with the steady wind in her ears. After a while, a lantern bobbed toward them, and Kesta walked up.
“I wondered where you had gotten to.” She hooked the lantern over a post and leaned on the railing next to Nallo. “Did you ever figure out what’s troubling you?”
“I just feel cursed useless, that’s all, but maybe once the halls choose a new commander we can get some kind of order and routine restored.”
“So we can hope.” Her hand was curled invitingly close to Nallo’s on the railing.
Nallo sucked in a sharp breath.
Pil took a step back. “Fire!”
One moment it was like a lantern’s light flaring in a distant quarter; the next, flames rippled skyward.
“That’s in Stone Quarter!” Kesta ran to the fire bell, grabbed the rope, and swung the clacker back and forth.
The noise rose skyward like the blaze, and a cadre of firefighters came running from the barracks to crowd on the balcony and watch, but of course there wasn’t a cursed thing they could do except to wonder what in the hells was going on in the occupied city.
• • •
THE TOUCH OF a hand roused Nekkar, and he flinched.
“I’m here to help you, Holy One,” said a female voice softly. She spoke with an odd way of rounding her e’s, and she stank so badly he gagged. “Can you move?”
A horrible taste coated his mouth. But when he twitched his feet, his legs, his hands, his shoulders, nothing seemed broken, although shifting the twisted ankle made his eyes tear.
“I think I can walk. Was I beaten?”
“Alas, you were, Holy One. I saw it all from the rooftop. But then they were called off to some other task before they could finish the job, fortunately for you.”
“Who are you, verea?”
“Let’s get you out of this rubbish.”
The ground slid beneath them as she hauled him out of a pile of stinking garbage. He could barely put weight on his left ankle; pain ripped through his shoulders with each movement. She led him to a ladder propped in the gap between gutter and eaves and, after looping a rope around his midsection, supported him up to the roof of a low storehouse. There he sprawled, spread-eagled and fearful he’d slide and plunge over, back into the rubbish heap. She pulled up the ladder.
“We’ve got to move you away from this alley, Holy One, before the soldiers come back looking for you. Can you move?”
The pain made tears flow. “Yes.”
She patted his forearm. “You’ve got courage, Holy One. Follow me.”
They wedged the ladder into a higher set of eaves to get from the store house up onto the warehouse roof proper. He tried not to let his weight drag on the rope, but as they bellied up to the peak of the roof, he slipped twice and she dug in her toes and halted his fall. Once at the peak it was easier to move sideways to the far end of the warehouse.
Like the other quarters, Stone Quarter was laid out in blocks, each block made up of compounds, one vast architecture of roofs crammed in against each other except for the occasional courtyards associated with artisans’ and guild workshops and the six temple grounds. Tonight, not even one paper lantern was hung out under eaves to illuminate the walkways below. No street vendors sold noodles or soup; no apprentices staggered drunkenly down the avenues roaring popular melodies.
They reached the warehouse’s edge just above an archway whose span bridged the avenue below to reach the roofs on the other side of the street. “Hold on, ver. This part is tricky.”
“We’re going across?”
“We are. I’m taking you to your temple. But you’ll have to he
lp me find it once we get down on the streets.”
“The soldiers will arrest us for being out after curfew. You’re not local, I can hear it. They’ll cleanse you.”
“They won’t catch us.”
She let herself down the pitch, then helped him negotiate a pair of drops that brought them to the span. It was a festival arch, sturdy enough. In daylight it would be seen to be painted a brilliant yellow, but the shadows were kind and it was not difficult to scoot across with a leg on either side of the peak. They were about halfway across when the woman slumped against the tiles. Feet shuffled and slapped on the street below. He flattened himself as lantern light bobbed into view. Soldiers drove a mob of folk down the avenue. Many of the prisoners were sobbing; others trudged silently, heads bowed. A few called out.
“At least allow us to gather our belongings before you expel us! We never did anything wrong!”
“Please let me return and get my children! They’ll starve. You can’t be so heartless.”
“Sheh!” The swaggering man at the front barked a laugh. “They break curfew, and yet they complain about us!”
“They could have stayed in their villages instead of running to the city, eh?” agreed another soldier. “Makes ’em look like they have something to hide, I reckon.”
A man broke, making a dash toward the alley snaking away behind the warehouse compound. While the forward contingent of soldiers pressed the rest of the group onward, three others went running after the fleeing man. So no one looked up as the crowd passed under the arch and down the avenue into a night illuminated only by the lanterns carried by the soldiers.
From the alley, a man’s screams rose, then failed abruptly.
After a moment, the three soldiers trotted out of the alley and hurried under the arch after the others, chortling and boasting as if they hadn’t just killed a man.
“So I said, ‘You’ve not fattened up that veal yet.’ Heh. That’s when I called you two over. We’d have given that foreign slave something to trim his pinched face, eh? Thinking he had the right to say no to us, eh! If sergeant hadn’t called up formation just right then, I’d’ve bust him down.”
A comrade answered. “You report him? That you saw an outlander, I mean?”
“Sure I did, but I got no coin because their tent wasn’t there no more when I led the captain over that way. I wonder what happened to that lot of young whores.”
“If they tried to set up in the city, they’ll just be thrown out, neh? Like the rest of these gods-rotted refugees.”
Their laughter faded into the gloom.
His shoulders throbbed and his ankle burned, and he was furious and shaking, but he crept after his companion to the next roof and after that to another, the huge rations warehouse overlooking Terta Square. There, arms hugging the roof ridgeline, they rested.
The square was lit by lanterns fixed on poles. Directly opposite, the temple dedicated to Kotaru was flanked on one side by a militia barracks brimful with enemy soldiers and on the other by a fire station left without a night guard except for its loyal dog. The rest of the square’s frontage was taken up by several large inns and substantial emporia now shuttered and dark. There were four wells sunk into the center, guarded by a contingent of soldiers. A long line of people still waited outside the Thirsty Saw, guarded by yet more soldiers. Several shuffled in through the door while, from the alley that led into the back courtyard of the inn where he had seen the Guardian, ten or more hapless folk came staggering out into the square clutching their left forearms. These refugees were prodded into line. Over in the gloom by the alley entrance lay a pair of discarded bodies.
“How do we get to your temple from here? Which street?”
“Lumber Avenue. Who are you?”
“I am a spy. Not from around here.”
“That I can hear in your speech. Yet there are people who sell information or their services to the army, in exchange for coin or preference or safety.”
“True enough, Holy One. But I’m not one of them.” He sensed a smile from her tone. “I need something from you I can’t get from the army.”
“This reminds me of an episode from a tale, verea. Cruel soldiers. A chatty, attractive spy. A decrepit man of middling years.”
“How do you know I’m attractive, Holy One?”
“You’ve held me close a time or two as we’ve made our way here. I know the feel of a shapely female body. I’m not dead. Yet.”
Her body shook with suppressed laughter. “Then we’ll hope for a happy ending as in the tale, eh?”
He smiled but could not sustain it. “How can I trust you?”
“How can any of us trust, in days like these with an army rampaging down the length of the River Istri, burning and killing as they go? Just like in ancient days, as it says in the Tale of the Guardians: ‘Long ago, in the time of chaos, a bitter series of wars, feuds, and reprisals denuded the countryside and impoverished the lords and guildsmen and farmers and artisans of the Hundred.’ ”
Nekkar mumbled the next line reflexively, overcome with bitter memory of the Guardian he had met. “ ‘In the worst of days, an orphaned girl knelt at the shore of the lake sacred to the gods and prayed that peace might return to her land.’ ”
Below, soldiers whipped the detainees out of the square as those in line watched helplessly, unable to flee or to fight.
“I’m a hierodule,” whispered the spy. “An assassin, sent from the south. I mean to kill Lord Radas, who walks in the guise of a Guardian wearing a cloak of sun. He commands this army. If we can cut off its head, then we can hope the body will die. Will you and your people help me?”
Her words struck him harder than the blows that had felled him. “Is this even possible? Guardians can reach into your mind and heart and know what it is you intend. I have faced one. I could hide nothing from her.”
“I will do it, because I must.”
She was so sure of herself! Not in a boasting way, but in the way master carpenters surveyed roofs and made pronouncements about what it would take to fix them.
“And when Lord Radas is dead, the soldiers and their captains and sergeants will run away and we’ll go back to how it was before?” he asked wryly.
For a while, the assassin remained silent. When she spoke, her words weighed heavily in the humid night air.
“There comes a time when change overtakes the traveler, as it says in the Tale of Change. Hard to say what lies beyond the next threshold. We must be ready for anything.” She brushed her fingers over his hand as a young woman might greet her uncle, not sexually but affectionately. “I’m called Zubaidit.”
The gesture sealed his heart. “Very well, Zubaidit. Our resources are limited, but if you can get me back to the temple alive, I’ll do what I can to help you.”
“My thanks. Tell me one thing, Holy One. Have you heard they are searching particularly for anyone?”
“Indeed, yes. I heard it from the mouth of a Guardian, wearing a cloak of night. She seeks the gods-touched, and outlanders.”
Her body tensed. “Would you hide a gods-touched outlander, Holy One? If I brought such a one to you?”
He thought of the man killed in the alley because he had tried to run away to find his children. He thought of the dead in the courtyard of the Thirsty Saw and those being dragged away for cleansing. He considered his apprentices and envoys, whom he must protect. The army would come round and take a hostage soon enough. But his temple had no protection if they thought to trust to the whims of those who held the whips.
“I will do what I can. That’s all I can offer. I’m Nekkar, by the way. We can’t climb roofs all the way to the temple. How do you mean to get me home when I can barely limp along?”
“Wait here for as long as it takes to chant the episode of Foolish Jothinin from the tale of the Silk Slippers. After that, move down to the alley behind this warehouse. You keep the rope. Stay on the lowest roof. Do you see it, there?”
“Yes.”
“Be
ready to move.”
She slid backward. Nekkar heard faint scrapes, and even that slight noise faded beneath the buzz of soldiers chatting and folk shifting and coughing and crying in despair. A guard slapped a kneeling woman until she struggled to her feet. From off over in another quarter of the city, dogs started barking, and an outcry rose into the night like so many wildings on a howl, as it said in the tales. Soldiers tensed. A man trotted out of the inn and cast his gaze toward the sky, but not—thank the Herald!—toward the rations-warehouse roof.
After an intense shower of noise, the storm of distant trouble quieted, the soldiers relaxed, and the man shook his head and strode back inside as the people in line extended hands toward him like beggars hoping for a handout. His soldiers used the hafts of spears to push them back.
The tale! He murmured the chant under his breath. Wind breathed over the square, marred by a tincture of smoke.
The brigands raged in,
they confronted the peaceful company seated at their dinner,
they demanded that the girl be handed over to them.
All feared them. All looked away.
Except foolish Jothinin, light-minded Jothinin,
he was the only one who stood up to face them,
he was the only one who said, “No.”
It was one of his favorite episodes, even if it took place in the city of Nessumara, which claimed to be most important of cities in the Hundred when everyone knew Toskala was the holy crossroads of the land, keeper of Law Rock itself. All those apprenticed to Ilu loved the tale, since Jothinin had been an envoy of Ilu, although not a very good one. His hands twitched, wanting to sketch the tale as the words flowed, but he dared not move, not even at the dramatic conclusion when Jothinin’s brave stand was all that prevented the innocent girl from being slain as, with his lengthy speech, the envoy roused the populace into the revolt that would overthrow the rule of brigands and restore the law. His final silence, the gaps in the chant where his words would have gone were he not dying from stab wounds, always made Nekkar’s eyes mist over.