The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle)

by M. Edward; mimulux McNally

  “Wait,” Claudja stood up before the last had gone. “Where is the man I was brought here with?”

  Her only answer was the closing door, and the snap of the lock.

  Claudja moved over near the tub, which she had to admit looked wonderful. There was a brick of soap on the towel rack, and suddenly the dust and grime covering every inch of her seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. Every muscle was sore and aching. She supposed it was entirely possible the devils just wanted her clean before they cooked and ate her, but a lady of the Duchess’s standing should not after all appear at dinner in her present state.

  Claudja undressed, left the silverware within reach on the towel rack, and slipped into the warm water with a groan she could not conceal. She was still just lying there a few minutes later, head thrown back and eyes closed, when the door opened and two of the little devils darted into the room. One snatched the dusty cover off the bed while the other grabbed Claudja’s pile of clothes, and the two were gone so fast that the door was shut and locked before Claudja shouted and threw the fork after them.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The party did not find a barracks building of a familiar kind in which to spend their third night in Vod’Adia, for by then they were in a very different place within the Sable City.

  They had followed the route through the streets that Deskata and the Westerners had plotted from the roof of tower, heading to the right for one long block at the next intersection, then left until they were beyond the wall around the noble district. They then zigzagged several blocks south and west until emerging shortly before dark on the edge of the vast open area surrounding the great palace with its nine towers, standing on a leveled hill in the middle of the sprawling city.

  In Zeb’s humble opinion, the place looked ever-so-much more terrifying from the ground. From a height and a distance the towers and long galleries had a wheel-spoke symmetry, but from the ground the whole place was a looming black pile of crenellated battlements and shuttered windows, behind which Zeb was not alone in thinking he saw the occasional moving light.

  The plan however was not to go into the place, and Zeb was happy for that much. The party could not be sure they had beaten the legionnaires, Phin, and the Duchess to the middle of the city, but if they had not than the game was probably over already. They carefully explored a three-story house on a corner facing the open expanse of bare ground on the palace’s north side, and occupied the place once it proved empty. There was a sort of short tower on the roof that would have been called a widow’s perch in a port town, from which they could watch the ends of four separate roads giving into the area, counting the one they had come in on themselves. In all likelihood the legionnaires would come from the north along one of them, if they made it this far.

  If a day or two went by without sighting their quarry, something would surely have to change for if nothing else the party would be out of food and water by then. Zeb did not want to think that far into the future when every day in Vod’Adia had become a violent trial, and the fact that no one else brought it up told him that the others felt the same.

  The group ate their rations cold in the evening, for any smoke from a fire would surely have been seen from the palace. Amatesu went up to the widow’s perch to keep watch as the daylight faded, lying under a blanket to remain concealed. The others slept in the interior rooms of the house where candles could safely be lit, or kept watch from the open windows on the third floor, sitting in rooms they left dark.

  Zeb sat a half-shift in a corner room with John Deskata after nightfall, the world outside once again completely black. John nevertheless sat on the floor before an open window, staring at the dark pile of the palace where an occasional light now indisputably winked in a window. Zeb tried to strike up a conversation a few times as he had yet to exchange three words with the man in as many days. He was met with total silence. John went away after his half-shift, and Zeb crossed his fingers in the dark.

  “Zeb?” Tilda whispered a short time later from the doorway, and he smiled.

  “In here.”

  He did not hear the Miilarkian Guilder step in, but was aware of her presence just the same.

  “Is there any furniture in here?” she asked.

  “Not a stick.”

  Tilda moved around the wall, trailing a hand until she came to a window and settled down before it. Zeb heard only the rattle of her bow against the bare floor.

  “Anything moving out there?”

  “Not a stick.”

  They sat quietly for a while.

  “Cold,” Tilda said.

  “Look, if you want to cuddle, you can just say so.”

  Zeb heard her let a breath out through her nose.

  “Ah, Zebulon. Whatever is to be done with you?”

  Zeb tried to get a read on her voice, but didn’t hear enough of it. Not angry, but not quite encouraging. He needed to hear her say more.

  “Say Tilda, can I ask you a question? About your friend?”

  “About Claudja?”

  “No. John Deskata.”

  “Oh,” Tilda said flatly. “We are not really friends.”

  Zeb was listening hard, though not out the window, but he thought he heard something from that direction for a moment. He turned to look outside but there was only inky blackness. There was only a faint smudge in the starless sky from where the moon would be, for the silvery light scarcely penetrated the gray dome of mist above.

  “Is that because he thought you were an assassin sent to kill him?” he asked.

  Tilda made no response for a few seconds, and Zeb thought he should perhaps not have started down this road. But if he just kept pitching random woo at her, Tilda was either going to get tired of it or else expect him to step up further with something more. She carried an awful lot of daggers if Zeb read her signals the wrong way. Even apart from that, something about John had been weighing on Zeb since they had first entered the Sable City.

  “You were in the inn, in Camp Town,” Tilda finally said. “The morning John Deskata told me…everything.”

  “I was,” Zeb said. “I didn’t get any of the Miilarkian, but the two of you said a lot in Codian. Great Houses and exiles, dead fathers and captains. Then of course there’s the ring that turned John’s eyes green.”

  Tilda sighed.

  “It really is not any of your business, Zeb.”

  “No, I know it isn’t, and I know Islanders are a closed-mouth lot about their own affairs.”

  “Then why bring it up?”

  Zeb’s instinct was to stop. Just as it was to run. Growing up in the Riven Kingdoms had taught him that much. Live to fight again another day, or to run away on that day, too. He could say such a course had gotten him this far, but that would entail looking at where he was.

  “Because something worries me,” he said.

  “I should imagine that plenty worries you, Zebulon. Do you mean something specific?”

  He could hear an annoyed note in Tilda’s voice now, but he was over the cliff this far already.

  “Why was John exiled from his House?”

  There was a soft noise as Tilda shifted, and Zeb had the sense that she was facing him, probably frowning with her arms crossed. The silence went on so long that he had given up on getting an answer, when she gave him one.

  “He had sex with his sister,” Tilda said flatly.

  Zeb blinked in the dark. “Sorry?”

  Tilda sighed. “Not his sister by birth, his Law Sister. Rhianne Kheminha. She became part of Deskata House to cement an alliance with House Kheminha, when both she and John were barely more than children.”

  “But they are not actually related, right?”

  “Yes they are, but by the Law rather than the Blood. For such an alliance to have any meaning, children thus exchanged become full members of the new House. With the same privileges and legal rights as their natural brothers and sisters.”

  “And with the same legal penalties for…well.”


  “Yes.”

  Zeb frowned. “But if she is a Deskata, according to the Law…You said she sent you here to bring John home to take over, right? Why can’t she run Deskata House on her own?”

  “Because it has never been done before. Leadership of the Great Houses has always passed through the Blood, with the automatic approval of the Assembly of House Lords. But the Deskatas have too many enemies in the Assembly, or at least too many who see us…them, as weak. Rhianne’s lineage is an excuse to disallow her inheritance, not a reason.”

  “Couldn’t they make a fuss over John just the same? Do a lot of people who have been exiled later inherit Houses?”

  “No,” Tilda said, and paused. “You’re smarter than you look, Zebulon Baj Nif.”

  Zeb shrugged against the wall. “I’d pretty much have to be.”

  Tilda made a sound that might have been the start of a laugh, but she did not let it get very far.

  “Everyone in service to the Deskatas will rally behind John, and then the House no longer looks weak. House Lokendah may still press the Assembly to deny him his rights, but their support will melt away if it appears a full House War is in the offing. There will probably be war between Deskata and Lokendah in any event, but if it is unsanctioned by the Assembly then all other Houses not in direct alliance with one of the combatants must stay out of it.”

  “Huh.” Zeb leaned back against the wall, thinking. “It makes sense, then.”

  “What does?”

  “What John is doing here, in Vod‘Adia. He has to get back to Miilark in a hurry. Faster than any boat could carry him, in fact. His House and his woman need him at home. So he is in here, hoping that the legionnaires are right and that Phinneas Phoarty can use their book to open a portal leading to anywhere. Even to Miilark.”

  Tilda was quiet, and Zeb did not wait for her to speak.

  “Of course, that is going to be a problem, seeing as how the Shugak sent Nesha-tari, not to mention Amatesu and Shikashe, specifically to stop Phin from casting any spell out of that same book.”

  Zeb waited for Tilda to say something. She did so, very quietly.

  “The Shugak paid you as well, Zeb.”

  “Yes, but as a translator. Nobody said a word about throwing my hat in the ring if the party starts trying to kill each other. I don’t even have a hat.”

  There was a soft leather creak, either from Tilda’s boots or the protective sleeves she wore beneath her half-cloak. Zeb hoped she was only leaning forward, as opposed to drawing a weapon.

  “It won’t come to that.”

  “Oh, Tilda.” Zeb shook his head in the dark. “Darling girl. That is exactly what it will come to. The one thing I know for sure about Nesha-tari is that she does what she says she is going to do. And I was looking John dead in the face when he spoke his Law Sister’s name. He still loves Rhianne, and he will do anything to get back to her. Anything. You must have seen it, too.”

  In the silence that followed Zeb thought he heard a faint noise, and he started moving his eyes around though it was pointless to try and find any sign of a Miilarkian Guilder in the dark. When Tilda spoke again it startled him though her voice came from the same place.

  “Are you going to tell Nesha-tari and the others?” she asked.

  “Do you want me to? Did you mean it when you told John that a dissolved Deskata House was better than one with him in charge?”

  Zeb heard the noise again, but Tilda was not doing anything to make it. It was coming in through the open windows, a faint rumble still far off.

  “I only came into this place to help Claudja,” Tilda said.

  “Then once you find her, you better run like hell. Follow me if you want, I know the way. Listen, do you hear that?”

  Zeb felt for the window sill in the dark and leaned his head out of it. The rumbling sound was flowing into the great open space around the palace, coming from the western side. Zeb realized why it sounded so familiar.

  “There are lights out there,” Tilda said from the next window down the wall. “Torches.”

  “Those are soldiers,” Zeb said. “Marching. At least a company.” He could see the bobbing lights now as well, and hear the unmistakable cadence of heavy boots striking the ground in time.

  “It is the hobgoblins, isn’t it?” Tilda asked, but before Zeb answered her a voice from the doorway called his name.

  Zeb and Tilda turned just as a blue light rose from a single twirling spark in Nesha-tari’s open hand.

  “The Shugak are here,” she said in Zantish. “Rouse the others.”

  Nesha-tari turned away toward the stairs, but before she left the doorway Zeb and Tilda exchanged a look in the flashing blue light. Then the room was plunged into darkness again, and the two of them felt their way along the walls and out into the hall.

  When they had left, two small red eyes opened and glowed in the dark from atop a beam across the ceiling. A small spiked devil floated down to the windowsill, looked around a final time, and disappeared.

  *

  Lord Balan tapped his hoof against the flagstones of the courtyard and the silver spark flashing in the darkness produced a strobe effect. Despite that he could not see Danavod at all, for at night the Great Black Dragon was wholly invisible. Balan’s arms were folded, and he was scowling.

  “It has nothing to do with any lack of faith in you, Balan.” Danavod’s sibilant voice came from everywhere in general and nowhere in particular.

  “Then why is there a horde of your Shugak blundering through my city?” the devil snapped.

  Hot, acidic breath washed over Balan’s back. He turned around but there was still nothing there.

  “Because you have not yet found what I seek, though you have had two days.”

  “It took two days for your hobble-whatsits to get here! You sent them in before ever you came yourself.”

  “Call it insurance,” Danavod’s voice came from elsewhere.

  “Nice policy,” Balan snorted. “A thousand jack-booted thugs and bouncing frogmen? The whole lot of them could blunder into one bored Cambion and get themselves all killed.”

  “Be a dear and see that does not happen, Balan,” Danavod said. “I would hate to have to bring in another thousand.”

  Balan grumbled, but there was no reasoning with the Wyrm. He stalked out of the courtyard with head and tail both shaking in disgust.

  He strode far down a hallway before summoning Poltus with a word. This time the Spiny Devil appeared instantly at his shoulder.

  “My Lord?”

  “Send someone to talk to the leaders of this Shugak ‘expedition’,” Balan growled. “Try to keep them from wandering into something they can’t handle. Not that they can handle much. Stupid frogs.”

  “Their forces have divided, my Lord. There are at least ten companies of them in various parts of the city. One is already approaching the palace.”

  “Then send ten of your brethren to talk to them, you pointy-headed dolt.”

  Balan expected Poltus to disappear but the little devil only closed its eyes and hovered in place, communing in an instant with the others of its kind. Balan stopped walking as he hadn’t really been going anywhere specific. He had already finished reading the little devil’s notes on Lamia, gleaned from the old Ettacean books and scrolls housed in the library within the palace.

  Poltus opened its beady red eyes. “Done, my Lord.”

  “There is something else?”

  “Perhaps. It would depend on what you want to know.”

  Balan looked back down the hall in the direction of the courtyard. He probably had several hours before Danavod would want to speak to him again, for while devils did not sleep, Dragons did. The Black Wyrm would surely rest now while it was dark and she was only semi-corporeal, invulnerable to attack. Balan would not have to worry about answering any more questions before dawn. It might be time enough to play out the diabolic scheming Danavod rightly suspected of him.

  “My quarters,” Balan said. Poltus bow
ed in the air and disappeared, but Balan walked down the hall as far as the next corner, turned it, and strode out into a different room several floors away.

  Poltus was already there, speaking to Uella who was sprawled out across the richly appointed bed, her indelicately delectable female form encased in a leather body suit that might as well have been shiny black paint. The leathery wings sprouting from her shoulders were folded against her back, and her beautiful face wore as always a cunning slant to arched eyebrows and a cruel turn to her ruby lips. For some unfathomable reason she had dyed most of her long hair green, leaving only streaks of blonde in the tumbling mass of it. Her eyes had bright red pupils, and a glassy sheen.

  “Is he mad?” the succubus was just asking Poltus. She did not sound particularly worried, but perhaps eager.

  “A little bit,” Balan said as he entered the room from around the corner to a sitting area. He stopped with a spark from his hoof and crossed his arms. Uella grinned at him broadly, showing her fangs.

  “Hiya, boss.” She stretched out the last sibilant sound, with the tip of her forked tongue between her teeth. Balan sighed at her.

  “Did I or did I not tell you to just watch the Wizard? To make sure he didn’t get killed?”

  Uella rolled her eyes and groaned, then flopped onto her back though the presence of her wings made her arch her spine sharply. She beat her fists and kicked her heels against the covers, tearing them a bit with the spiked heel of one thigh-high boot. The heel was long enough to stab somebody, which was probably the point.

  “But it was soooo boring! Everybody else gets to pile up bodies, and I’m supposed to just watch five idiot monkeys stumbling around? Really, Balan.”

  Uella rolled up to her hands and knees, tossed some of her green-and-blonde mane over a trim shoulder, and set her red mouth in a pout.

  “You can’t think of anything more fun to make me do?”