“Do your comrades still stand?”
“Let me pass,” the guard said.
Hernyn resisted the urge to rub the back of his neck, where it felt like all the tiny hairs were standing up. There was no urgency in the man’s tone, no fear, no excitement. Nothing, in fact. And surely his shadow should be angled the other way?
“That’s Ennick,” Din-eDin said.
“No,” Hernyn said. “I don’t think it is.”
The guard Ennick was now close enough that they could see his face clearly in the light from the wall sconce near the intersection in which they stood. Hernyn could see the man had the most beautiful jade-green eyes.
“Let me pass,” he said again. He had been looking beyond them, down to the far end of the Onyx Walk, but now he brought his gaze to bear upon them. “Let me pass.”
“He’s in shock.” Din-eDin pushed Hernyn’s restraining arm out of the way and stepped into the Onyx Walk.
Ennick brought up his sword and slashed at his captain, catching him on the arm as Din-eDin lifted it to block the blow to his head.
Hernyn raised the crossbow and let the bolt fly, feeling a hot burst of satisfaction when the bolt buried itself in the guard’s neck. The man put his hand up to the bolt and stood swaying for a moment before he dropped to his knees.
“Captain?” he said.
Hernyn broke his own rule and stepped into the corridor to help Din-eDin pull the other guard back into the relative safety of the narrow kitchen passage. They shifted him until he was sitting with his back to the wall. The bolt was plugging the hole in his neck, but turning his head to look at them started the blood flowing in earnest.
But he was looking at them now, and the strange, staring green of his eyes was gone. His eyes were very dark brown.
“Ennick?” Din-eDin said.
“Captain,” he said again. “Don’t-” He coughed, and a bubble of blood broke on his lips. “Don’t.”
“No fear, my boy,” the captain said. “We won’t.”
Ennick nodded, and his eyes closed.
“What was that?” Din-eDin frowned down at the body of his guard.
“Whatever it was,” Hernyn said, “it means we can’t trust anyone else who comes down this corridor.”
Din-eDin shut his eyes. “Makes things easier for us.”
“It does at that.” Hernyn glanced up at the older man. His jaw was set, and his eyes sharp, but the wound on his arm was bleeding. Hernyn quickly tore two strips of cloth from the dead man’s tunic. One he folded, and used the other to tie it securely in place over the gash on Din-eDin’s arm.
“Can you handle a sword left-handed?”
“As it happens.”
“Better to be lucky than good, isn’t that what they say?” Hernyn bent to strip Ennick’s body of weapons before rolling it back out into the wider corridor. “Let him be useful in tripping up the rest of his companions.” Hernyn glanced behind him. Amplified by the stone corridor, the voices of those in the kitchen echoed in the air around him. He was sure he’d heard Dhulyn Wolfshead’s ringing tone.
“This changes things,” Din-eDin said. “We can’t let anyone past us now.”
“That’s not all,” Hernyn said. “We’ve more to worry about as well.”
The man glanced from the corner of his eye. “Explain.”
Hernyn nodded at Ennick’s body. “It looks like there’s worse than death might come to us. Did you see how his eyes were glowing green? That wasn’t just Ennick, not at first anyway.”
The other man tapped the dagger he had at his waist. “We’ll have to be sure, then, won’t we?” His eyes narrowed. “Can we warn the others?”
But then they finally heard the sounds they’d been waiting for, rushing feet, jingling harness. Men who weren’t taking the trouble to be quiet. Din-eDin stepped in front of Hernyn. Hernyn was about to say something when he realized the man was right for once. Older, injured, and not a Mercenary. Three reasons to put him in front.
“Here they come,” Hernyn called back over his shoulder, hoping the amplification of sound in the service corridor worked both ways. Before picking up his second sword, he checked that he had a dagger in each boot, and that the one strapped to his left arm wouldn’t stick in the sheath. He stood squarely in the passage with the Guard Captain in front of him, facing the opening to the Onyx Walk, and lightly tapped the walls with his swords, fixing the space well in his mind.
He would rather have died with his Brothers, but if he could die for them, well, that would be enough.
The Tarkin and his family had followed the last three guards into the tunnel. Dhulyn hesitated at the opening. She was sure she could hear the sounds of conflict coming from the far end of the hallway.
“Should we wait?” Parno asked.
One of the many cords that bound her hair must have broken, for a fine blood-red braid fell over Dhulyn’s forehead with the minute shaking of her head. She pushed it back.
“We told Din-eDin we would close the passage,” she said.
Someone was yelling. Her hip was pressing against something hard. She must have fallen asleep waiting for Dhulyn to come back with wood for the fire. She could smell damp wool and smoke. Mar blinked, took a deep breath, and shifted. That had been the mountains, and long behind her. This was Gotterang, and Gundaron, and the ruins of the Old Market.
Maybe if she ignored it, the yelling would stop and she could go back to sleep. They’d spent more than half of the night hiding in a crawl space Gundaron had found, under a surprisingly intact floor of thick oak planks, but they hadn’t had much sleep. Trying to get comfortable on ground made uneven by loose foundation rocks and ancient garbage, with nerves stretched to the snapping point by the drizzly rain and the knowledge that they were being accused of having a hand in the Fall of Tenebro House, would have been difficult enough. As it was, the night had been marred by the noises of screams and running. A fire had broken out in the Old Market itself, and it had been close to dawn by the time she and Gundaron had been able to fall into sleep.
“Mar!” A hand shook her shoulder.
She cracked open one eye. From the look of the light that slanted down through the breaks in the old floorboards above them, the sun was well up.
“Did you hear what he said?” Gundaron shook her shoulder again. “Mar, did you hear?”
Without waiting for her answer, Gun crawled out of their hidey-hole. Still blinking sleep from her eyes, Mar followed, afraid to lose sight of him. Lionsmane and Wolfshead had been teaching her to navigate out on the trail, but in Gotterang she felt it would be all too easy to get completely lost.
Mar had a moment of panic when she didn’t see Gun right away, but then she remembered he no longer wore his Scholar’s tunic and, looking for the gray-brown of homespun rather than the bright blue of the Libraries, she spotted him. Gun stood on the fringes of a group gathered around a thickset man in breeches, boots, and a full-sleeved shirt who must have been standing on a broken bit of wall, as he was head and shoulders above the crowd. She blinked at him, holding up her hand to shield her eyes. Ran the taproom down by the fountain, she thought. That’s where she knew him from. She’d bought food from there last night.
“Imrion’s Fallen, I’m telling you that’s certain, they’re crying it in the Great Square. Lok-iKol Tenebro is Tarkin by acclamation.”
The taproom keeper had plenty more to say, but Mar had stopped listening. She tugged Gun by the sleeve.
“Gundaron,” she whispered, tugging again until he turned to look at her.
For a moment the sight of her face stopped Gundaron’s breath. A wisp of hair had fallen out of her head scarf and swayed over her right cheek. In the vivid depths of her blue eyes, her pupils shrank to pinpoints as she blinked in the morning sun.
“Is this what I helped him do,” she said. “Bringing him Wolfshead and Lionsmane? He wanted to be Tarkin? That’s what this is all about?”
His thoughts spinning, Gun followed Mar back into their h
iding place. She was right, wasn’t she? Lok-iKol was Tarkin. The things that he had done, the people he had harmed, all that research, not for scholarship-Gun’s stomach turned at the thought of his own naïveté-but to put Lok-iKol on the Carnelian Throne.
Mar was still waiting for an answer. He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. “There must be more to it than that.” He blinked, eyes narrowing as he followed the pattern of his thoughts to its logical conclusion. “The Carnelian Throne’s what Lok-iKol wanted-but not what the Jaldeans want.”
“But if the New Believers want the Tarkin’s full backing…”
Gun realized he was shaking his head. “But what they’re saying about the Marked and the Sleeping God-that the god should stay asleep and the Marked are trying to wake him-none of that is true.”
“I never thought it was, but-”
“No, no. I mean they don’t believe it themselves, at least, not the ones in charge, not Beslyn-Tor. There’s something else going on.” Gun hoped Mar wouldn’t ask how he knew-in fact, he was afraid to examine the knowledge too closely, afraid that it might be yet another thing the Green Shadow had helped him forget.
“If the Jaldeans have some other trouble in mind,” Mar was saying, “we have to tell someone.”
Gun nodded. “Who?”
“Come on,” Mar said, swinging her pack up on to her shoulder.
“Where?” Gun drew himself straight and formed his hands into fists when they wouldn’t stop trembling.
“Mercenary House.”
Parno rolled his shoulders, trying to work out the cramp that threatened to spread down into his lower back. The tallest in their group, most of the tunnels and passageways-some of them apparently natural, made by the passage aeons before of water long gone, some bearing the unmistakable signs of picks, chisels, and rock hammers-were just low enough to make him walk with his head ducked and his shoulders raised. Just as he thought he’d have to ask everyone to wait while he sat down and straightened his back, Parno saw what could only be the flicker of moving light reflected off the rocks as the tunnel they followed bent to the right.
“Something up ahead,” he said to Dhulyn’s back. She was just enough shorter, he’d noticed with disgust, to walk upright through most of the passages.
“Lamplight, not torches,” she whispered back to him. “Alkoryn’s not stopping.”
Which meant the old man expected to find lights ahead of him, which meant there was nothing for the two of them to worry about. Except whether he’d ever be able to stand upright again, Parno thought.
Exhausted as they all were from close to two hours of walking from one sealed entrance to another, everyone managed a short burst of speed once it became clear there was something besides more tunnel ahead of them. When Parno finally followed them all into the lamplit room, however, he saw that they were still underground, although in a chamber large enough-with a ceiling high enough, he found, straightening gratefully-to accommodate all of them easily.
The Tarkin led his wife and children immediately to the nearest beds, making sure they were seated comfortably before leaving them in the hands of the nurse Denobea and joining Dhulyn, who had stepped around them and the guards to stand beside Alkoryn. Head lowered and tilted to one side, she listened to his whispered orders, nodding, though at one point her face went completely blank.
Something she doesn’t like there, Parno thought, maintaining his position as rear guard just inside the entrance to the chamber. With his eyes still on his Partner, he arched his back and raised his hands over his head, willing his abused muscles to stretch out.
“Lord Tarkin,” Dhulyn said, her voice pitched to carry to everyone in the chamber. “My Brother Alkoryn Pantherclaw suggests that you rest here in comfort while he and I continue to the surface. There is fuel, food, and drink. We will return or send for you as soon as we are able.”
“Why must we wait?” The Tarkin, Parno was impressed to see, was not arguing, but simply asking the question.
“It’s very likely Lok-iKol will want Mercenary House searched,” Dhulyn said. “This chamber can be closed off and hidden, so you’ll be perfectly safe here. If it comes to the worst,” Dhulyn added, “my presence in the House is natural. Yours, Lord Tarkin, could not be explained. My Brother Parno Lionsmane will remain here with you.”
Parno met Dhulyn’s eyes over the heads of the Tarkina and her children. That’s what made her face change, he thought. Is it the thought of separation she doesn’t like, or the idea of leaving me here with my cousin, the Tarkin?
She smiled at him, lifting her shoulder in the slightest of shrugs.
In Battle. Only her lips formed the words.
In Death, he answered.
He was close now. Only a matter of hours until the decrees went out. He wiped sweat from the forehead of the body he wore and shuddered. And then only a matter of days until he had all of them, even the Seer, and the danger would be over, and he could throw off this disgusting shape, and undo, and unmake. Turn the whole shape-filled place into NOT. Perhaps find the doorway once again.
“No one in without a badge, my little quails.” A dark-haired Mercenary leaned out of the sentry’s window next to the gate at Mercenary House, tapped her own tattooed badge, her green eyes flashing.
“But we’ve important information,” Mar said, craning her neck to see the woman.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt he’s got information enough-but I’m not inclined to let him in, no matter how important it might be.”
“Then let Mar in,” Gun said, placing a hand on the gate in his eagerness. He swallowed, realizing that he’d just called Mar by her personal name. Out loud. “The Lady Mar-eMar I mean. You’ve nothing against her, let her in.” He looked at Mar, looked back up to the sentry window. “You’re Thionan Hawkmoon, aren’t you?” he said. “That’s how you know me.” He waved his hand impatiently. “It doesn’t matter about me, but you can let Mar-eMar in, she needs to speak to Dhulyn Wolfshead, or-”
“Ah, so you’re the little trickster from Navra, are you? I hadn’t seen you before now.”
Any hope Gun might have had that they’d do as he asked died at the tone in the Mercenary woman’s voice.
“Listen, children, we’ve our orders, and if I was likely to break them-which I’m not-it certainly wouldn’t be for you two. And besides-”
Thionan Hawkmoon froze in mid-syllable, her attention caught by something within the walls.
“And besides,” she took up where she’d left off. “There’s an order out for both of you. Seems you ran away after the Fallen House Kor-iRok was found dead.” She looked down at them with a wink. “Don’t make me send for the City Guards, now.”
Sixteen
FANRYN BLOODHAND AND Thionan Hawkmoon were both waiting when Dhulyn swung the counterweighted chunk of flooring to one side and climbed out, reaching back in to give Alkoryn Pantherclaw a hand up.
“We’ve left the others in the lower chamber,” Dhulyn said, telling her Brothers in a few words just who those ‘others’ were. “Hernyn?” Thionan said.
Dhulyn’s lips parted, but her throat closed on the words.
“Hernyn Greystone the Shield remained behind,” Alkoryn said for her. “That we might escape.”
“In Battle or in Death,” Fanryn said after a long pause. The eyes of the four Brothers met, and for another moment they were silent, in honor of the one who had fallen. And in unspoken prayer that they should fall the same way, on their feet, swords in hand.
“Since his body will be found,” Alkoryn said, breaking their silence at last. “We can expect inquiries, perhaps even a request to search our premises before the day is out. What is it, Thionan?”
Even Dhulyn could see and recognize the slightly furtive look that had crossed Thionan’s eyes.
“About an hour ago,” she said. “I turned away the Tenebro’s tame Scholar and that Navra girl you and Parno brought, Dhulyn, telling them I’d call the City Guard on them. I was joking, but…”
“You spo
ke truth without knowing it,” Alkoryn said. “Well, at least they have been warned. What else can you tell me?”
Dhulyn only half heard Fanryn’s first words. So Mar and Gundaron of Valdomar had come here. Looking for what?
“Lok-iKol holds the Dome and the city,” Fanryn was saying, leading the way out of the room that, to anyone who didn’t know better, held nothing but the old cistern of Mercenary House. “Of the High Nobles, Jarifo and Esmolo Houses are with him-”
“We saw their men in the Dome,” Dhulyn said as she followed the other women up a short flight of stone steps and through another counterweighted chunk of wall.
“The other Houses are holding off, waiting to see how true Lok-iKol’s arrow will fly, though there’s talk that the Tenebroso will be acclaimed by midday,” Fanryn continued, her face showing her displeasure. “The only one demanding to be shown Tek-aKet Tarkin, living or dead, is the Penradoso.”
“I know that House,” Dhulyn said, thinking back over the years to the last time she’d fought in Imrion. When she and Parno had met.
“You should,” Alkoryn said, pausing with his hand on the wall to take a deeper breath. Dhulyn didn’t like the look of the man, his color was worse than a sleepless night walking underground should make it. “Fen-oNef Penrado was an old ally of Tek-aKet Tarkin’s father, and he fought on the old Tarkin’s side at Arcosa. You’d have seen him there. The odds are very short that he’ll come to Lok-iKol’s side without proof positive that Tek-aKet’s dead.”
“Lok-iKol’s gone ahead and scheduled his anointing for next new moon,” Thionan added. “Twelve days from now. And the Jaldeans have agreed. So old Penrado hasn’t much time to decide.”
They’d reached Alkoryn’s map room by this time, and the old man looked better for being able to sit down in his own chair. Dhulyn leaned against the wall between the two windows, angled into a corner of the map shelves where she couldn’t be seen from outside, and stifled a yawn. If she sat down, she thought, she’d fall right to sleep.
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