by Tal Valante
TABLE OF CONTENTS
About All My Crimes
Dedication
All My Crimes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Riptide Publishing
PO Box 6652
Hillsborough, NJ 08844
http://www.riptidepublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All My Crimes
Copyright © 2012 by Tal Valante
Cover Art by L.C. Chase, http://lcchase.com/design.htm
Editors: Gordon Warnock and Rachel Haimowitz
Layout: L.C. Chase, http://lcchase.com/design.htm
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].
ISBN: 978-1-937551-43-8
First edition
June, 2012
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Betrayal cuts deep. Love cuts even deeper.
The war with the elves is over. But for Teregryn Eve, the human king’s former right-hand man, another nightmare is about to begin.
It’s taken Teregryn two years to recover his health and magic in the aftermath of the war. He’d rather retire from the world of men, but an assassination threat and a malevolent ghost force him on a quest to save the king who no longer wants him. The elves are dead to the last, so who’s the mysterious assassin? And why has his king—who was once so much more to him—forsaken him?
The answers may lie in Teregryn’s mind, but those memories are locked beyond his reach. As a web of lies and love unfolds around him, Teregryn must fight the past and present in a desperate bid for the future. Can he save everything he loves, or will the sum of his crimes drag him under first?
To my soul-brother,
For always standing by me.
I hover in the dark stairway, between the calmness of the second floor and the merry riot of the common room, clinging to these last seconds of anonymous freedom. The abandoned hall above tempts me. I want no part of the revelry, and the townspeople—if they recognize me—will not want me among them.
And yet, it’s the anniversary of the king’s victory they’re celebrating. I owe him a toast, at least.
My magic tingles and coils under my skin as I take the last steps and enter the common room. The revelry breaks upon me like waves upon a rock: music, the stomping feet of dancers, laughter and calls, roast meat and drinks. I skirt around the room and settle down at a corner table, away from it all.
“Port,” I say to the serving girl.
She returns with a glass and a lingering stare that makes my spine prickle. But she turns away to a company of three who clamor for her attention, and pays me no more heed.
It is ten minutes to midnight.
The tavern door opens, and in walks a giant of a man. My stare snaps to him as he brushes snow from his furs and pulls down his wolverine hood. The lamplight blazes off his bald pate and gold nose ring.
I straighten up with a jolt of recognition.
The giant weaves his way to the counter. Judging by his walk, he is either avoiding invisible columns or already deep in his cups. I shake my head when he orders a pint of shroom beer. That’s Rorrik, all right; only he will drink that foul slime.
He turns from the counter with his tankard and scans the room. My lips curl in anticipation of his surprise when he finds me, and his name teeters on the end of my tongue. But his eyes skim over me without pause. I sink back into my chair as he makes for an empty seat across the room.
On impulse I take the Third Sight. At once, light becomes music, a symphony so poignant it makes my heart hitch. The hearth is bellowing a bold aria, and all around me, a choir of candles answers in a softer voice. This is the music that plays on people’s eyes, the music that evokes pictures in their minds.
I reach out and tweak the music that washes over Rorrik. For Rorrik and for him alone, a green fireball seems to sail through the air and plunge straight into his tankard.
He still has the sense of mind—and the swiftness of reflex—to hurl the cup away and stagger back, shielding his face against the inevitable explosion. Which never comes. I make the illusionary fireball bob peacefully in the pool of spilled drink, and after a moment, I banish it completely. Rorrik curses and whirls around.
This time his stare rakes the room with feral intensity. When he notices me, his anger dissolves into confusion, which melts into glee.
“Teregryn Eve!” he booms. “I’ll be jiggered!”
The revelry grinds to a halt: the singing trails off mid-verse, and some dancers knock into each other as they stumble to an untimely stop. Every face turns to me. I hunch under the volley of stares, struggling against the lure of the Third Sight and the invisibility it can offer.
“Go on, back to your merrymaking,” Rorrik says to the hushed crowd. “Ain’t you ever seen a man drinking before?”
Gradually, the noise and dancing resume. Rorrik orders another pint of shroom beer—I hear him charge it to me—before heading over to sit opposite me.
“Sorry about that,” he says. “I wasn’t thinking.”
I raise my glass in dismissal. Now that Rorrik is here, I’m beginning to regret ever drawing his attention in the first place.
“So.” He takes a swig of his beer and wipes off a foam moustache. “How have you been? Where have you been?”
I shrug. “Recovering at St. Ceperess Monastery.”
Rorrik’s eyebrows climb up his forehead. “For two years? Gods! What did those blasted elves do to you?”
I’m about to tell him to mind his own business when another question rings in my ears: “How many swordsmen does your king have?”
I look around, but no one else is close enough to speak to me. My gut clenches. I grip the arms of my chair, but at the same time, I can feel leather cords around my wrists and the bark of a tree biting into my back. The tavern fades from my sight.
“How many pyromancers?”
The questions come from three stone-faced elves standing in front of me. One of them raises his fist. His slender fingers are already smeared with blood, the same blood I now lick from my lips.
“When is the next raid planned?”
A blow to my guts. The leather cords bite deep into my wrists as my body tries to double over.
“Where is the First Battalion bivouacked?”
I let my gaze wander over their shoulders, like I do
in boring council meetings. Behind them stands an elf with black curls and gray eyes and the lithe grace of a panther. Young, except these creatures are ageless; feminine, except there’s something hard and masculine in his poise. He might have been beautiful, if not for his emotionless features.
I stare into his eyes and give him a slow, insolent smile. He turns and walks away.
“How many swordsmen does your king have?”
“How many pyromancers?”
“Lord Eve?”
Rorrik’s voice reaches me from across a table and two years. “Teregryn!”
My stare snaps to him.
“Did you hear a word I was saying?”
My hands are shaking. I grip my glass of port to steady them. “I . . . What?”
“I said, did he ever tell you how he did it?”
“How who did what?”
Rorrik unhooks one finger from his tankard and points it at me. “Very funny. Look, the elves had been raiding us for ages, striking and skulking back into their woods. With me so far?”
I tip my head, acknowledging the obvious as much as wondering where he is steering us. I take a hasty swallow of port.
“Right. And then one day, they decide to attack in full force, out in the open. Now why is that?”
“How would I know?”
“And they might have overrun us, too, but the king somehow knew to meet them with an army. How is that?”
“How would I know!”
The words come out more harshly than I’d planned. I breathe, breathe, breathe, pulling in the unraveling edges of my patience. “Sorry. I wasn’t even there, remember?”
I certainly don’t. I had just escaped the elves, wracked with fever and illness. The memory of that time—and the two years of my following recuperation—have been completely burned from my mind.
Rorrik waves it away, but I can read the worry in his face. “I just figured the king might have told you, is all,” he mumbles by way of apology.
It’s meant to soothe, but it rankles. “The king has not seen fit to visit me these last two years,” I tell him coldly.
He flinches back; dismay is loud on his face. “But—”
The horologe strikes twelve.
The wall opposite my alcove becomes semi-transparent, and within it, a ruby light begins to pulse. Something is stirring behind the stones. The face of the wall bulges out, deflates, and bulges out again, like the throbbing of a giant heart. Staccato pounding thunders in my ears.
My hand clenches on my glass. “Rorrik,” I say with quiet urgency.
“Hmmm?”
“Can’t you see it?”
I hear his tankard landing on the table. “See what?”
Dark liquid oozes out of the cracks between the stones, separating into tendrils that crawl over the wall and twist themselves into familiar shapes. Shapes I never thought to see again. Elven runes.
The glass shatters in my grip. I hear Rorrik jump to his feet.
“Lord Eve?”
I point at the wall with a hand that drips port and blood. “Look!”
“Look at what?”
Wonderful. Whatever magic is at work here, it’s targeting me alone. Strangely fitting, since I am probably the only human left who can read those runes.
First, Gidden Loristan, they say. Then you.
The runes dissolve; the wall buckles one last time and smooths; the pulsing light in the stones ebbs away. The pounding noise recedes and merges with my own heartbeat.
“Lord Eve!”
I look up at Rorrik. His face is furrowed with concern, though probably for all the wrong reasons. The music has died down, the dancing stopped. Everyone in the room is pretending not to stare at me.
I rein in my stampeding breath, grip the table against my dizziness. “Help me find him,” I say quietly.
“Who’s him?”
“Who do you think is him? The elf that worked that magic!”
“Lord Eve—” Rorrik puts a hand on my shoulder “—the elves all died in the Cleansing.”
His words make my stomach churn. I push his hand away. “Well, we missed one.”
“Teregryn . . .”
I rub my face with my good hand and gaze at the stubbornly normal wall. Look over the strangely subdued people in the sitting room. Look down at my bleeding hand that bristles with glass shards.
“It’s just the drink,” Rorrik says. “Come on, let’s get that hand of yours bandaged, and I’ll help you to your room . . .”
I should go hunt that elf.
I should go warn Gidden.
I’m so tired . . .
I’ve been through seven kinds of hell in my short life. I cannot truly blame myself for following Rorrik upstairs and letting him tend me, then tuck me into bed, just this once.
The next morning, I wake up a new man: a dizzy, tired, sick-to-the-pit-of-my-stomach man. I stumble around looking for a chamber pot and throw up everything I’ve drunk or eaten in the last ten years.
I dress and pack my rucksack, keeping a wary eye on the walls. They remain smooth and dull, like well-behaved stones. What am I expecting? I had one memory surge last night; perhaps the wall incident was more of the same.
Except it wasn’t a memory, not by a long shot.
I’ll never drink spirits again.
My cloak hangs behind the door. I pull it on with a well-practiced flourish and reach for the leather door cord. And stop.
Etched on the back of the door in harsh, splintered lines, as if carved by a blade, is the elven rune for death. I can’t breathe. My lungs clamp down on painful emptiness as I reach out and trace the rune’s edges. They feel ragged and solid. A splinter jabs my fingertip; the pain is real.
I lurch backward and stumble and fall to the floor, sprawled on my back.
“This is the rune for death,” a cold voice says in my ears.
I know I’m alone in my room, but I can also see the elves as if they’re there. Two of them pin my hands to the forest floor. I can feel another sitting on my legs. A fourth elf sits astride my waist, carving the rune into my bare chest with the self-absorbed concentration of an artist. His dagger flashes. Slashes. Scents of loam and resin and blood and bile.
“Do you know why I mark you?” says the elf who is working on my chest.
I speak through gritted teeth. “Because you’re bored?”
“Because your people are the death of this world. You have no respect for life. No respect for souls.”
“Right, and you’re the model of compassion.”
A sharp slice gouges a cry out of me. I twist my head to the side. There, watching from a small distance, is the dark-haired elf. Kalen a-Shan. Their leader. His expression is still blank, but I’ve learned by now that elves express emotions with their eyes, not their faces. His are deep brown, just now. Not sure what it means.
I find my raw voice again. “Enjoying the show?”
He doesn’t answer, but his eyes darken nearly to black.
Another slash sends bolts of pain through my torso. I try to buck off the elf on my chest, but I can’t gain leverage. I refuse to scream. I glare at him instead.
“Enough,” Kalen says. My tormentor’s eyes brighten with surprise. We both turn to look at the leader.
“Take him back to the Circle,” he orders. “We’ll continue tomorrow.”
As two of the elves haul me up to my feet, I feel Kalen’s gaze linger on me. They drag me away to where I’m usually kept. I glance back at Kalen. He gives me a nearly imperceptible nod that might be of respect.
The canopy of trees dissolves into the ceiling of my tavern room, where I am still sprawled on the floor. My heart is pounding hard enough to rattle the building. My breath chafes the back of my throat. I roll onto all fours and push myself to my feet.
The death rune is still carved into the door.
With a snarl, I slip into the Second Sight, in which the world seems made of countless grains of all shapes. The door is a dense mass of them. I plunge in w
ith my mind and scratch and tear at the grains until the rune loses all shape. Not enough. I reach into the air grains around me and make them shake hard and fast with my anger. Then I push. A jet of boiling air shoots at the door, and the wooden boards begin to smolder. The disfigured rune crumples up.
When I come to my senses, the inner side of the door is burning, and I’m gagging on acrid smoke. I take the Second Sight again. The outer layer of wood grains is mating wildly with the grains of air, giving savage birth to fire. I place myself between them and push to either side, as if trying to keep apart two brawlers. The air whooshes. The fire stutters and dies.
I’m tired; my hands tremble as if I’d clawed at the door with my physical fingers. The Sight does that to people. But I have no time to indulge.
The door bursts open from without, revealing a livid innkeeper. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“It’s gone now,” I tell him.
Puzzlement scrunches up his face, and I realize I’m making no sense.
“Never you mind.” I toss a pouch of gold coins into his hands. “Buy me a sledge and a strong team. I’ll be leaving immediately.”
His voice remains gruff even as he weighs the pouch, which is much heavier than necessary. “Where to, Lord Eve?”
“The capital.”
Winter is ending, but outside it’s still crystal cold, and the wind mauls me with a thousand little claws. The frost dogs pull the sledge smoothly, kicking up flurries of snow. I crack the whip over their heads, cursing their slowness, cursing their heritage, cursing the two days’ ride to the capital.
Cursing myself for ever doubting the threat is real.
If any elves have survived the Cleansing, of course they would want to exact revenge on Gidden. He didn’t start the Elf War—like most every one of his miserable ancestors, he inherited it—but he’s the one who finished it. Like Rorrik said, when the elves made their suicide charge, it could have destroyed us. But Gidden had been ready for them. Gidden had wrested victory for our people at last.
The elven runes. The anniversary. It all makes sense. I have an elven assassin on my back, and we are both racing toward King Gidden Loristan.