“I’m pretty sure I already know them,” he said.
“What? How?”
“When those two idiots, Harrex and Parsus, had me locked in the room, just a few minutes before you arrived, I heard them arguing with two people outside. I got a good smell through the gap at the bottom of the door. A skinbag male who stank of muscle and sweat even though he talked like some pissy manor-born noble, and a woman. Someone should tell her that perfuming your underarms is a crime against nature. Anyway, her voice was younger but twice as mean.”
That certainly sounded like the two tutors. “What were they arguing with the marshals about?”
“They wanted to get into the room. Said they were supposed to make sure it was ready for you. They had something with them, but it was encased in metal so I couldn’t smell what it was. The marshals were having none of it though.”
I wondered what they’d been trying to do to my rooms. My lack of experience with the Daroman nobility was going to be a problem sooner or later. No doubt Koresh and Arrasia had allies of various sorts and ranks. There had to be at least a few Jan’Tep here, either hired out to the Daroman court or on some diplomatic mission for the newly crowned mage sovereign. The fact that our illustrious leader happened to be my father reassured me not one bit.
“Kellen, if you’re just going to sit there like a stump, you might as well get me another butter biscuit.”
“I’m thinking,” I said.
“Do it out loud then. While getting me a biscuit.”
“Fine. I’m thinking that if Koresh and Arrasia decide to eliminate me instead of running, I have no clue how they’ll go about it.”
Reichis grunted. “Probably should have thought of that before you threatened them.”
“I’ll get you another butter biscuit if you promise to stop being an arsehole,” I said, rising out of the bath.
“Well, look at it this way: how would we go about killing them?”
I walked over to the table, careful not to slip on the marble floor. “Well, I’d want to do it without witnesses, of course. Even if a tutor can’t be prosecuted by the marshals, it’s still not a good idea to advertise a murder.” I picked up one of the biscuits and tossed it at Reichis before taking another for myself. The squirrel cat’s paws snapped up out of the water and snatched it in mid-air.
“That means you need to keep an eye on your victim. Make sure you know where they are at all times so you can find the perfect opportunity.”
I nodded, looking over one of the bottles of wine before taking a swig. “So you need spies,” I said. “People who can get close to the target without attracting suspicion…Ah, crap.”
“What?”
“Get out of the bath. We need to get away from here.”
Reichis hopped up onto his hind legs and shook himself. “What’s the problem?”
“The boy.”
“What about him?”
I grabbed a towel and started drying myself off. “He said he needed to return to his duties.”
Reichis jumped out of the bath, sliding a bit on the smooth marble before coming to a stop. “So what? He’s a servant.”
“Yeah, but what duties? What was he doing before he brought us here?”
The squirrel cat shrugged. “Sitting outside our door, waiting. I guess every noble gets a servant waiting on them in case they need anything.”
“Did you see servants waiting outside any other rooms on our way here?”
Reichis growled as he worked it out. “Damn it. I was really enjoying this bath.”
I pulled my trousers on and flipped open my powder holsters. “He was keeping an eye on us for Koresh and Arrasia. Remember how he wanted us to stay in the room? Maybe they were planning an attack.”
“That quickly?” Reichis asked.
“I wouldn’t have thought so, but now I’m not so sure.”
“So now the kid’s gone and told them where we are.”
I looked around the room. “This isn’t a bad place to do a murder.”
Reichis and I split up, checking for hidden entrances. There were windows in the room, but they were over twelve feet up and looked to be locked tight, designed to let the light in, nothing more. In theory someone might have climbed up, but it was an unlikely route in. Other than that there was only the one door into the room.
“Kellen…”
I turned to see Reichis was stalking towards me, his belly practically on the ground. “What is it?” I asked.
“Behind you.”
I turned to face the wall. It was about ten feet away and there wasn’t much to see except the elaborate mosaic depicting happily bathing Daroman shepherds. The thing Reichis had warned me about moved so slowly that at first I mistook it for part of the decor.
A snake.
“Back away and let me get it,” Reichis said. I could hear both anticipation and trepidation in his voice. Squirrel cats have a thing about reptiles.
I shook my head. “I’ll hit it with the spell.”
The snake was working its way along the wall, inch by inch. It wasn’t very big—just a foot and a half long, and no more than an inch thick. It had some kind of membrane folded against its back.
“Regular snakes don’t look like that, Kellen. They don’t crawl along walls, and they don’t move that slowly.”
I pulled powder from my holsters and I was about to blast it when the thing shot out at me like an arrow. I barely dodged out of the way in time to avoid its fangs attaching themselves to my throat. I spun around to see Reichis try to leap up after it, but the snake held itself in the air as membranous folds of skin, green and glistening, waved gently from its sides like water lilies floating in a pool.
“What the hells is that?” I asked, already sounding out of breath from the speed at which my heart was racing, no doubt in an attempt to convince me to run out of there as fast as my legs would carry me.
“It’s a gods-damned langzier,” Reichis growled.
A langzier! I’d never actually seen one before, but from the way Reichis talked about them, squirrel cats hated langziers even more than crocodiles. And squirrel cats really hate crocodiles. Rumour had it the tiny snakes had been a gift from the Shan people to the Jan’Tep, bred with a singular ability: the damned things can fly. Once given their target, the langzier lies in wait, almost catatonic, until the intended victim appears. From that moment on, the langzier will attack over and over until its venomous teeth have sunk into its prey. It’s doubtful any culture has ever devised a more perfect form of assassination. Now one of them was floating before me, eyeing me with calm certainty, knowing I wasn’t fast enough to stop it.
“Kellen…” Reichis chittered nervously.
“I’ve got a plan.”
I really didn’t.
The snake was going to come at me again. Outrunning it was impossible. So was trying to slice it with my throwing cards, which were on the other side of the room in any case. It’s possible one of my castradazi coins might’ve been of some use, but those were also too far to reach. There was no way I’d be able to hit it with my usual blast spell, so instead of tossing the powders straight at each other, this time I flicked them from my fingers as I spun my hands in opposite directions, like a lady opening a fan. “Cara’juru Toth,” I intoned as the powders collided.
I’d spent half my nights over the past several months working on the juru variation of the carath spell. It’s not nearly as powerful as the basic form of incantation, but always relying on the same trick risked making me predictable. Besides, hard as it is to believe, there are times when the solution to my problems isn’t blasting a hole through someone’s torso. I leaped back as the spell took effect, the flames fanning into the air before me, becoming a kind of shield that would set anything that passed through it on fire.
In theory anyway.
The langzier flew through the explosion, missing me but dousing itself in the remnants of powder that glowed like burning embers. I watched as the snake swam through t
he air, shaking itself once, shedding the flames like dead skin.
Stick to the tried and true, I thought, reaching into my holsters to pull more powder. “Carath Toth,” I shouted. The snake evaded the blast easily, and this time I felt its oily skin rub against my own as it flew by.
Reichis was chittering angrily. “It’s toying with you, Kellen, figuring out how you move before it strikes for real. With your pathetically frail constitution, that poison in its fangs is going to take you down faster than a farm boy at his first—”
“Cara’juru Toth,” I said, going back to the fire-fan spell but this time using more powder. The air in front of me filled with flame. The light seemed to confuse the snake and it swam around blindly in the air, trying to relocate me. The heat on my fingertips was starting to worry me though.
“Get it over to me,” Reichis said. He was climbing up one of the taller tables so that he’d be high enough to glide down on top of the snake.
“He’s too small and too fast for me to hit, Reichis. Even if you grab him, he’ll bite you before you get your teeth on him.”
“That’s when you blast him! The langzier can’t dance when it sings!”
The snake came at me again. This time I fire-fanned too much powder in the air and felt my fingertips really starting to burn. I was screwed now. If I tried again I’d blow my own hands off.
“Get over here, Kellen, you idjit!”
Not knowing what else to do, I raced over to the table where Reichis was standing. The langzier flew through the flames, setting itself on fire and once again snapping in the air to shed the burning layer. Its skin underneath was red now, matching the fury in its eyes. I looked around for anything to defend myself with. I picked up a wine bottle and smashed the end against the table.
Just as the langzier flew at my face, brown fur filled my vision. Reichis landed on the floor with the langzier in his mouth. The creature wriggled, its sinewy body whipping around too fast for me to catch it. Reichis was trying to snap its spine by shaking it, but the thing’s head came around and bit him on the back.
“Reichis!”
“Now, idjit! Now!” he growled.
I was having trouble concentrating over the strange music that had suddenly appeared. A soft, melodic hiss came from the langzier’s jaws even as its teeth buried themselves into Reichis’s fur. The snake’s body was almost completely still though. The langzier can’t dance when it sings!
Problem was, the squirrel cat wasn’t moving any more either.
The langzier delivers two different poisons: the first one temporarily paralyses and the second kills. At the spot where the creature’s fangs were embedded into Reichis’s back, his pelt began to change colour. A sickly green spread across the squirrel cat’s fur like a swarm of locusts. I dropped to my knees and grabbed the snake’s tail with one hand and jammed the broken end of the bottle into its hide with the other. The damned creature’s skin was thicker than I’d expected. I raised the bottle and smashed it back down on the langzier again and again until I felt the glass shatter against the marble floor. Tiny shards flew up at me, stinging my cheek. My hand was bleeding, pieces of glass embedded into my palms. I now held half of the snake’s body in my left hand. I’d severed the creature in two.
With a soft hiss, almost a sigh, the snake’s jaws came free from Reichis’s back. I slammed the remains against the floor until I heard the bones of the langzier’s tiny skull splinter to dust.
“Reichis…”
He didn’t respond at all. He was giving off a horrible noise, halfway between a snarl and a desperate wail. His body began to shudder uncontrollably. I put my hands on his sides to steady him but the squirrel cat growled at me, “Don’t touch…”, green bile slithering out from between his teeth.
“Reichis, tell me what to do!”
“No… Nothing… Different for squirrel cats… We’re tougher th—” He convulsed several times and vomited on the floor. “Arsehole snakes,” he groaned.
I picked up a flask with water, poured some into a cup and put it near him. Reichis threw up again, much of it going into the cup. I tossed it away and reached for another one. He vomited once more, this time shitting himself as his little body tried to empty itself of everything it could.
I kept saying his name over and over again, but every time I reached out a hand to try to comfort him, he shrugged me off and crawled further away. “Gods-damned snakes,” was all he kept saying. Finally the vomiting stopped and he collapsed in his own filth. I came to him on my hands and knees and picked him up off the ground. His fur was so cold. I’d never known him to be so cold. The stench of vomit and defecation was overpowering. I held Reichis against my chest, trying to keep him warm.
“Get your damned hands off me,” he rasped, still shaking uncontrollably. He couldn’t get away though. He was too weak to do anything but lie limp in my arms. “I’m not your damned familiar.” His teeth snapped at me feebly. “We’re not family. This is business; that’s all it’s ever been.”
“I know, Reichis,” I said, trails of sweat sliding down my cheeks. “It’s just business. That’s all.”
We sat like that for nearly an hour, until the first tentative rays of light began to slither into the room from the windows above. The day would start soon, and someone would find us. Reichis had fallen unconscious, though his body still convulsed every few minutes. I rose carefully, still keeping him in my arms, and made my way back to our rooms.
I laid him down on the bed and found a towel and a jug of water and carefully cleaned his fur. I didn’t want to disturb him so the work was slow. When I was finished I threw the towels out the window and folded my blankets over him. Then I washed and carefully dried my hands. The feeling in my fingertips hadn’t returned yet, but I didn’t care. I adjusted my powder holsters and took a chair to face the door. I didn’t think Koresh and Arrasia would try a second time, not this morning, not now that the palace was awake. But my vigil gave me time to think, to consider strategies and to plan. I’d been an idiot to provoke them. They’d taken their shot and nearly killed Reichis. Now it was going to be my turn, and I wasn’t going to miss.
Because that, too, was just business.
11
The Butler
In between bouts of checking on the squirrel cat and contemplating various ways to murder Koresh and Arrasia, I packed our things. What had happened to Reichis had been my fault. I’d gotten distracted. I hadn’t come to the Daroman court for the money, and I sure as hells hadn’t come because I wanted to try to save their queen. The marshals had arrested me. That was their job. Mine was to escape. I should’ve done so last night, but I’d gone and let my sympathy for an eleven-year-old girl get in the way.
So, fine. I was an idiot. Reichis could tell me all about it in a few hours when he was ready to travel and I’d gathered our things together. Farewell, Daroman empire—may you fade from the pages of history faster than spilled water on dry sand.
It didn’t take long to pack our meagre belongings into our two leather saddlebags—along with a few items from the room that might fetch a decent price on our way out of the city. When I was done, I sat back down on the chair and let my hands rest inside my open holsters, my fingers close to the powders that wanted to burn almost as much as I did. I’m a coward by profession, but I longed for that door open, to see Koresh and Arrasia and whichever allies they could muster coming for us. I would use up every last grain of powder I had to blow a hole through the lot of them.
Despite my anger, exhaustion overtook me, and sometime later I fell asleep in my chair. When I awoke it was full light. I looked over to check on Reichis, but he wasn’t under the covers. It took me a few minutes to find him asleep under the bed. Sometimes he does that, when he’s hurt—finds somewhere to hide away and lick his wounds. I saw his eyes open when I spotted him, but he didn’t say anything so I just left him alone.
Someone knocked at the door and I had to hold myself back from blasting a hole through it. I kept my hand
s near my holsters though. For all I knew, Koresh and Arrasia might have decided not to wait before taking another swing at me. Or maybe they’d fled and now it was the queen herself who’d sent assassins to my door. Even if, by getting rid of her old tutors, I’d eliminated all her problems, how likely was she to want to replace two abusive tyrants with an unknown quantity who might be just as bad? Maybe the smart money was on using me to get rid of them, then having me disappear without a trace shortly thereafter. No doubt officially the blame would fall on Koresh and Arrasia’s supporters, but everyone would know that accepting the position of royal tutor had become a dangerous endeavour, and probably not worth the risk.
The second knock was louder than the first. Finally I took a few steps back from the door and said, “Come in.”
The door opened slowly and a man entered. He looked to be about forty, with a thick, muscular build. He was taller than me, which isn’t saying much, but he was taller than most Daroman folk too. If you needed someone to beat your enemy to death, this was the sort of guy you’d send to do the job. “I’m Arex Nerren, the queen’s social secretary. You’re her so-called tutor of cards?” he asked in what would’ve been a pleasant baritone if he didn’t sound quite so self-assured.
I nodded. “Who were you expecting, given that you knocked on the door assigned to the new tutor?”
“That’s fair, I guess. On the other hand, you’re not quite what I was expecting to find.” He entered the room and looked me up and down. Then he walked over to the chest of drawers like he owned the place, and pulled out another towel and tossed it to me. “You mind wiping whatever that is off your chest? Kind of looks like dried vomit. Maybe you could also put on a shirt, so we can talk like civilised people?”
I kept an eye on him as I took the jug of water off the table and washed my chest. Arex went through the rest of the drawers and pulled out a pair of trousers and a clean shirt and tossed them to me as well. The trousers were a rich black leather and the shirt was gleaming silver with purple trim. “A little effete, I know, but your generally dishevelled look should balance it out,” he said.
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