Law of the Broken Earth: The Griffin Mage Trilogy: Book Three

by Neumeier, Rachel

  The sound deepened and deepened. Mienthe found she could see it, running before her, a narrow, faint ribbon of glimmering light—well, it was not light and it did not glimmer, but it was like that, in a way. It widened, and widened again. Mienthe could not see her own body, she could not see anything but the ribbon of light, but she imagined herself running, her legs moving, her arms, the impact of her feet on the road, the wind of her own motion against her face.

  The ribbon widened and widened, and opened; Mienthe skidded down it at a great rate so that she began to be afraid of falling, of the height from which she might fall, of where she might fall to, only she was more afraid of stopping, of being trapped motionless within the confines of the path. Though it was not very confining, anymore. It had widened so far it seemed to encompass the world. Its faint light surrounded her, pale as the glimmer of moonlight on pearl, and then she saw that a faint light did surround her, that it was moonlight, and with a tremendous sense of motionless, forceless impact, she found that she was standing once more in the night-dark solar, with the windows open before her and moonlight pouring through her hands and the breeze chilly against her face.

  There was no whining spiral wrapping itself around her, no blind darkness. Only the ordinary night, and the sounds of men calling to one another and of distant battle. But in a way, she almost thought she could still see that rising ribbon of light twining through the darkness, and the deep hum the spiral had made still echoed somewhere—she could not tell whether she was only remembering the sound it had made or whether she was still truly hearing that sustained note that was not quite music. Or, if she was still hearing it, whether that was only in her mind or actually out in the world.

  Blinking, she set her hands on the windowsill and shook her head. She tried to decide whether she’d ever truly heard—seen—experienced that strange magecrafted spiral at all. Whether she’d drawn it into the night air herself, or… No, she knew, even as the thought occurred to her, that she hadn’t drawn this spiral.

  A Linularinan mage had drawn it. Someone who had meant to trap her in his crafting? She was afraid that might be so. Tan’s enemies might not have known she existed earlier… Could that have been only the previous night? Everything had been happening so fast, and nothing that happened made any sense. Except that maybe the Linularinan mages had discovered her, or had realized that she was their enemy, or had decided that they needed to clear her out of their way before they renewed their search for Tan. That made sense.

  Mienthe took a breath that was half a sob and pushed herself away from the window.

  The guardsmen who had previously been in the hall were gone, replaced by three others. Mienthe wondered whether the shift had been about to change when she’d stepped out earlier or whether she had been caught in that magecrafted spiral much longer than she’d thought. Though it couldn’t have been so much longer, or she supposed it would not still be night. Unless it was some other night? No—it couldn’t have been that long, or the guardsmen would surely look a great deal more disturbed. She felt relieved but also surprised, as though it would really have been easier to believe that days had passed. Or weeks. Or years.

  “I’m going outside,” she said abruptly.

  “My lady—” the senior of the guardsmen protested, but Mienthe went past him without pausing and ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time like a child, and thrust open the door that led to the gardens and, past the gardens, to the stables and mews.

  She stopped there, right outside the door. The clamor of battle seemed much closer—much too close—she could make out individual voices shouting within the clamor, hear the thudding of horses’ hooves on cobbled streets, see the flash of swords through the shrubbery. A single arrow rose in a long, high arch, its wicked steel point shining like a chip of ice in the moonlight. The long smooth track of its flight caught Mienthe’s eye and she watched it rise, seem to hesitate at the apex of its flight, and then fall. It sliced through the air with a high, singing sound and, by some singular chance of battle, buried itself in the garden earth directly before Mienthe’s feet. She stared down at the humming feather-tipped shaft and thought how oddly like the hum of the spiral its whistling flight had sounded.

  “Lady!” one of the guardsmen said urgently, catching hold of her arm. “Lady—”

  “Yes,” Mienthe said dazedly.

  “You can’t stand here in the garden!” the guardsman said. “It’s not safe!”

  This was abundantly clear, yet Mienthe resisted his pull. She did not even know why. She began to speak, but then did not know what to say. Somewhere near at hand, men were shouting. Somewhere even closer, someone screamed, a high, agonized, bewildered sound.

  “It was a horse, that was only a horse!” said the guardsman when Mienthe flinched and gasped. “But it might be you next time, lady! You can’t stay here!”

  Mienthe stared at the man. If she’d meant to flee Tiefenauer, she should have gone with the queen. She’d thought the Linularinan commanders would send someone to the great house. She’d thought… It was hard to remember what she’d thought. But it certainly hadn’t occurred to her that Linularinan mages might specifically attack her. And if they did—if they did—she turned suddenly and looked east, as though she could see right through the town and the surrounding marshes and past the rivers and upper woodlands, right to Kames at the very edge of the Delta. Where she had sent Tan. Where, she found herself convinced, his Linularinan enemies would pursue him. Even there.

  And she would not be with him. She would not be there to counter any Linularinan mage who found him. Because the Linularinan mages had found her here, and if their first attack had failed, then they would only try again. Unless the ordinary swords the Linularinan soldiers carried killed her first.

  Mienthe caught her breath, shook free of the guardsman’s grip on her arm, and ran for the stables.

  There were no horses there. “They took them all—the town guard needed them,” said the senior guardsman, looking sick with dismay. “We didn’t know—we didn’t know you’d need them, my lady.”

  Mienthe stared at him. She said at last, “How could you have known? Where’s Geroen?”

  The guardsmen did not know.

  “East,” said Mienthe. “East. I’ll go on foot.” She took a step that way and found the three guardsmen falling in around her. She started to protest, but then did not know why she should object. And then she did: If the Linularinan mages found her again, she knew she would not be able to protect these men. But she could not send them away. She needed their help, and besides, they would not go.

  There was fighting immediately to the south and west of the great house, and more than a few disturbing sounds to the north, but the east seemed relatively clear. The cobbled streets were narrow and dark, well suited to barricades, and there were plenty of barricades. The Delta had always been pressed between Linularinum and Feierabiand; a large proportion of all the male townsfolk belonged to the militia, or had, and most of the rest were willing to fight. Even some of the women would fight: Plenty of upper windows held a woman with a bow, overlooking her husband or son in the streets below.

  And the people recognized Mienthe, which surprised her—they would look at her guardsmen and then at her, and then they would haul back an overturned cart or some other part of a barricade to let her through. At first she thought they would be dismayed to see her fleeing the great house, but instead they nodded to her and smiled grimly and promised her that those Linularinan bastards, begging her pardon, would have a hard time getting through these streets.

  Mienthe hoped they were right, but she couldn’t believe how quickly the Linularinan soldiers, however careless their fathers might have been, had pressed through the town to come to the great house. She thought she could almost feel them, or someone, behind her: a dark, looming, seeking presence that pressed hard at her back, humming with power. She thought they knew where she was—she found herself terrified, certain that if she looked over her shou
lder she would find someone there. When one of her guardsmen put a hand on her arm, she whirled, only the tightness of her throat keeping her from a scream.

  “There’s some Linularinan company up ahead there,” whispered the man, not so much to Mienthe as to the other two men. “Hear that? That’s not townsfolk up there.”

  Mienthe realized he was right. Up ahead, where the town gave way to farms on the drier bits of land and marshes between the farms, there was a low sound of men moving. A lot of men, moving through the darkness, coming into the town from the east. Muttered curses as they moved without a light over rough ground and muddy roads… The east should have been clear, but some clever Linularinan officer had thought to send a force around this way, either to block Tan’s escape or to flank Tiefenauer’s defenders. Mienthe found she had no doubt that the Linularinan officers knew about Tan, or at least that someone in Tiefenauer might break for the east and that they should stop him. It occurred to her that they might even have caught him—no. She took a breath and let it out again, slowly. Tan was, she knew, well away, far to the east. If this Linularinan company had been sent around to the east to stop him, it had gotten to its position too late.

  But not too late to block her.

  The senior of the guardsmen touched her arm again and jerked his head to the right, This way. Mienthe followed him down a narrow lane until he stopped in a doorway. The door was locked and no one answered the guardsman’s cautious rap, but the doorway was in deep shadow and offered at least a little shelter. “Likely they’ll go on past,” whispered the guardsman. “Likely they won’t search too close—only enough to be sure there’s not a great lot of militia or guardsmen ready to come after them and stick them in the back. But then, we’re obviously guard, and that means you’re obviously a lady, and I don’t know what they’d do if they found us.”

  The guardsman was probably thinking the Linularinan soldiers might take Mienthe as a hostage, but what Mienthe thought was someone in that company might recognize her as the one who had rescued Tan from their hands. She had a vivid, awful picture of coming face-to-face with Tan’s particular enemy, Istierinan. He would… if he caught her, he would… She had no idea what he might do, and she didn’t want to find out.

  The guardsman must have read some of this in her face because his expression became, if possible, even more grim. He said, “You two, lead them off if they come this way. My lady, if you will please come with me.” He led Mienthe farther down the lane. “There’ll be a side street or alley,” he muttered to her. “We’ll get around them in the dark. Even if they do spot us, they’ll not look too close. A man and a woman fleeing the town, that’s nothing to draw attention. Here, lady, watch your step.”

  Mienthe was well past worrying about a little mud. The street was too narrow for the moonlight to provide any illumination; it was too dark to see even the cobbles of the street. It was so dark there was a constant risk of running headlong into an unexpected wall, but she could hear—she thought she could hear—the tramp of soldiers entering the town. The sounds echoed oddly in the narrow streets so that it was hard to tell their direction and distance, but she was sure it was soldiers. Boots, mostly, and the unidentifiable sounds of a lot of men moving in company, but occasionally also the ring of shod hooves. That was bold, but then maybe the Linularinan soldiers had a few people who could speak to horses in that company; the gift wasn’t possessed only by the folk of Feierabiand, any more than straight light brown hair was possessed only by the people of Linularinum. But the sound of hooves made her check and turn her head, wishing she had an affinity for horses and could call one away from those soldiers.

  “Lady!” whispered the guardsman, realizing Mienthe had paused. He, too, was all but invisible in the darkness.

  Mienthe took a step forward.

  Light bloomed beyond the guardsman, lamps carried high on poles so that their light shone out before the approaching soldiers—another company, or part of the same one, but either way wholly unexpected. The guardsman spun around, his hand going to his sword and then falling away because there were far too many soldiers to fight. But then he drew after all, setting himself in the middle of the narrow lane.

  “No!” Mienthe cried, understanding that the guardsman meant to delay the Linularinan soldiers just that small time that might let her escape, and understanding as well that if he fought, he would die. “No!” she said again. “Don’t fight them!” Then she whirled and fled back the way they had come, hoping that once she was clear, the guardsman would let himself surrender, knowing that if she stayed he would certainly fight, and anyway she did not dare be captured herself.

  Behind her, swords rang. Before her, the darkness offered not safety—there was no safety anywhere—but at least some measure of concealment, at least until she ran into the other company of Linularinan soldiers. She looked for a way to get away from the lane, to slip away sideways. She tested one door and then another, but both were locked and no one came when she pounded her hand against the doors. She dreaded every moment that she might see the shine of lamplight off the painted wood of the buildings and the damp cobbles, or hear the sounds of approaching soldiers. Above, the moonlight slid across the shingles of the roofs.

  Ahead of her, Mienthe heard the flat sounds of boots on the cobbles. Light shone dimly, not yet near, but coming nearer. Behind her, she was almost certain she could hear more boots. She stopped, looked quickly about, and then leaped for a handhold on the windowsill of a house. The window was shuttered tight, but she got her foot up on the doorknob of the house and hauled herself upward. The windowsill provided her next foothold, and she tried hard not to think about falling—she would break her ankle on the cobbles and then she would certainly be caught—the moonlight picked out the details of the upper story of the building, but also mercilessly revealed Mienthe to anyone who glanced up from below. The upper windows were also shuttered, but besides the balcony there was a trellis with vines. The vines would never hold her weight, but she thought the trellis might, and anyway she could not find any other foothold.

  Below her, the two companies of soldiers approached from opposite directions. They would meet almost directly below her, and then how long would it take someone to look up? Mienthe gingerly committed her weight to the trellis. The sweet scent of the flowers rose around her as she crushed the vines. It seemed to her that the fragrance alone would draw someone to gaze upward, and on this clear night there was no hope of clouds to veil the moon. Mienthe tried not to make a sound as she pulled herself upward, got first a hand and then a knee onto the balcony railing—the railing had seemed sturdier before she needed to balance on it. She laid one hand flat against the rough wood, reached upward with her other hand, and felt along the edge of the roof.

  Below her, someone suddenly called out.

  Mienthe didn’t glance down. She was obviously a woman. Would they shoot a woman when they didn’t even know who she was? Or, if there was a mage with them, would he know who she was? Then they might shoot her—or just climb after her—probably a soldier would think nothing of this climb. Mienthe gripped the edge of the roof with both hands and scrambled to get her foot up to the top of the trellis. For a sickening moment she thought she would lose her hold and fall. Her arms trembled with the strain. Then she got a proper foothold at last, kicked hard, heaved, and managed to haul herself up to the roof.

  The roof tiles proved more slippery underfoot than Mienthe had expected. She made her way up the slope of the roof as quickly as she dared and then over the peak and down the other side. Behind her she could hear soldiers scrambling up the wall after her, and then a loud ripping, tearing sound as—she guessed—the trellis pulled away from the wall under their greater weight. The crashing noises and curses that followed were gratifying, but how long would it take the rest of the soldiers to get out of the lane and around to the other side of the buildings? So long that Mienthe would be able to get down and run for some other hiding place? What hiding place, that they could not imme
diately find?

  Reaching the edge of the roof, she indeed found a handful of soldiers there before her, along with a mounted officer. Two of the soldiers had bows, but it was the officer on the horse who frightened her. Without even thinking about it, Mienthe crouched, ripped up a heavy tile, and flung it down. Though she had not stopped to aim, the tile sketched a wide curving path through the air and hit the man in the face.

  The Linularinan officer crumpled backward off his horse, but Mienthe, in flinging the tile, lost her precarious balance, staggered sideways, tried helplessly to catch herself on the empty air, and fell off the roof.

  She did not have time to cry out, but also she did not exactly fall, although she did not know what other word she could use to describe what happened. It was as though she followed the same curving path along which she had thrown the tile; it was as though she rode a sense of balance she had not recognized until she fell along an invisible current in the wind or an unseen ribbon of moonlight. There was no time to be amazed. She fell, and then she was standing on the muddy ground next to the startled horse. The animal shied violently, only Mienthe caught his rein and flung herself into the saddle, wrenched his head around, and let him go.

  Only one soldier tried to catch her, and he missed his grab for the horse’s rein. The horse’s shoulder struck him and flung him aside, and then Mienthe was past, weaving through the maze of the town’s last scattered buildings and then pounding along a muddy moonlit road, heading out into the marshes and sloughs of the wide Delta.

  She did not look back. If anyone followed her, she did not know it.