Just what we needed.
Better get strapped, then.
“Not one fucking word,” she told the Helmsman as she passed its upended carapace on her way to her cabin and her knives.
For once, Anasharal was silent.
THEY HAD SHENDANAK LAID OUT ON THE BED IN HIS ROOMS. GRIM-FACED Majak cousins lined the narrow corridor outside and took up space on the stairs, bulky and damp-smelling in their felt coats and boots. Shouldering her way up past them, Archeth caught impassive stares and muttered snatches of conversation in the steppe tongue. Covert warding gestures forked in her direction, hands touched to talisman purses. Here and there, she saw the glint of a knife being used—for now—to pick at nails or teeth.
There was an ugly, purposeful quiet to it all, and it kicked her straight back to the war. Armed men, waiting for violence to ensue.
At the top of the stairs, one of the cousins rocked to his feet and got in her face, berating her loudly until two of his companions forced him to sit back down. She couldn’t decipher any of what he said; her understanding of the various Majak dialects was limited to a handful of Skaranak phrases Egar had taught her over the years. But she didn’t really need a translator.
She masked her misgivings, kept her hands well away from the hilts of her own knives, and rapped sharply at the door. Rakan opened for her.
“Got your message,” she said.
“I would not have disturbed you, my lady, but—”
“Skip it.” She slid through the meager gap he’d opened, let him close up again after her. Saw two brace of Throne Eternal at his back with hands on sword hilts. “That really necessary?”
Rakan’s young face was grim. “We had to break a couple of heads just to calm things down. I think if Tand’s crew hadn’t shown up when they did, it might actually have been worse. It might have come down to steel.”
“Wait a minute.” Archeth frowned. “If this wasn’t Tand and Shendanak going at it, who the fuck started the fight?”
“I did.” Egar, in from the next room, pressing a wet cloth to the right side of his head. His face was a mess, one eye bruising up, a fresh gouge on the cheek. He grinned at her. “Afternoon, Archidi.”
“Yeah.” She was in no mood. “What happened to you?”
The Dragonbane lowered the cloth and peered into its bloodstained folds. “Bit my ear,” he said apologetically. “Still bleeding a bit, look. I kind of lost it when he did that. Wouldn’t have hurt him nearly as bad otherwise.”
“You were fighting with Shendanak? What the fuck for?”
“Basically?” Egar shrugged. “Because he’s a fat imperial fuck who’s forgotten where he’s from, and he needed a good spanking to help him remember.”
The Throne Eternal bristled. Archeth closed her eyes. “Great. Where is he?”
“In here.”
Shendanak lay on the big four-poster bed, belly up, unconscious. He’d been stripped down to a loincloth and Archeth thought the impression was rather like a butchered whale she’d once seen landed at the docks in Trelayne. One arm was splinted, the head was bandaged with windings through which blood had already soaked. The face was a torn-up mess—broken nose, both eyes blackened, the jaw looked lopsided with bruising, might be dislocated …
She gave up trying to assess. Salbak Barla, ship’s doctor from The Pride of Yhelteth, was bent over Shendanak with a poultice. He nodded absently at her.
“My lady.”
“How is he, Doctor?”
Barla sucked in air through his teeth. “Well, he’ll live. Your barbarian friend here was restrained enough for that. But it may be awhile before he walks anywhere unaided. He’s taken a lot of heavy blows to the skull. One knee is badly bruised, the joint may be cracked. Severe bruising to the groin as well. Ribs broken in numerous places. The arm”—a gesture—“as you see.”
“Yeah, that was when he did the ear.” Egar, behind her, voice still apologetic. “Like I said, I just lost it.”
“You certainly did,” agreed Barla.
Archeth held down the edges of a krinzanz rage. She turned to face the Dragonbane, who’d gone to stand at the window.
“So what was the plan, Eg?” she asked mildly. “I mean, I assume you had one.”
He would not look at her. Stared out at the rain instead. “I already told you, I lost my temper. But that fat fuck and Tand have both got their men out there beating up the locals for information they don’t have. Something you’d know about, if you got off the boat occasionally.”
“Don’t you fucking try to make this my fault.”
He spun from the window. “Archeth, they are betting on who gouges some information out of these poor bastards first. Someone had to put a stop to it.”
“Yeah—that’s what Rakan and Hald are here for.”
“Hald went with Gil. And anyway, I didn’t need any help.”
Breathe, Archidi. Keep it together.
“And what’s going to happen now, Eg? Who’s going to keep Shendanak’s steppe cousins in line now he’s not awake to do it?”
“I will.”
“You will?” Disbelieving. “Eg, the mood they’re in on the stairs, I’m surprised they haven’t broken in here and lynched you already.”
He gave her a grim smile. “Not the way it works, Archidi. Those kids are pure steppe. I can handle them just fine.”
“The two down in the stable were handled well enough,” said Barla, without turning from his work with the poultice.
“The two in the stable?” Archeth asked with dangerous calm.
Egar nodded. “Yeah, couple of Shendanak’s guys came out in the street while I was stomping him. That was before Tand showed up. I had to take them down as well. No big deal.”
“No big deal, I see. Doctor?”
“Superficial injuries,” Barla confirmed. “I’ve given both men a grain of flandrijn to keep them happy. They should sleep it off and be fine by the morning.”
“I see. Egar—let’s get this straight. Exactly how many men have you … damaged today?”
“Just the three. The others backed right off.” The Dragonbane paused. “Well, and there was the one in the tavern earlier, the other tavern, where I’m billeted. I bottled him because he was groping my whore, wouldn’t give it up.”
Archeth shook her head. “I’m sorry? You bottled him because what?”
“Yeah, it’s how I knew this shit was going down in the first place. The way they came in, throwing their weight around. Two he was with probably would have let it go, but—”
“Wait, wait.” She held up her hands, palm out. “Stop. Eg, suppose you act like I don’t know what the fuck is going on for a moment, and tell me what the fuck is going on. From the start. What happened? How did we end up like this?”
HOW DID WE END UP LIKE THIS?
It would have been a reasonable question for anyone on the expedition to ask.
Five months back, it was all bright spring sunlight and cheering, as the freshly minted flotilla sailed downriver through Yhelteth and out to sea. Fair winds and a high quest, the Emperor’s blessing and the city turned out in force to see them off. Jhiral, in a shrewdly calculated crowd-pleasing gesture, had made the day of their departure a public holiday, and the banks of the river were thronged on both sides. Every ship in the harbor flew sky-blue and silver pennants for luck. Even the Citadel—or at least the more collaboration-minded among its mastery—had been prevailed upon to offer up prayers for the expedition’s success and safe homecoming. Incense billowed from blessing braziers along the river, smoked out over the water, mingled with the crisscrossed traceries of a thousand fireworks set off.
Pretty noisy for a secret mission, Ringil reckoned as they left the estuary, shadowed on all sides by a mob of smaller craft filled with waving, bellowing well-wishers. But you could see even he was enjoying himself.
That’s “voyage of scientific discovery” to you, son, Mahmal Shanta told him, grinning.
And the wind stropped at the unfur
led canvas overhead, the sun glistened on the foaming churn of their bow-wave, and Archeth, who was already starting to miss Ishgrim, found a quiet smile despite herself.
Now two out of three vessels sat storm-battered and damp, huddled into Ornley harbor like whipped dogs in a kitchen corner. Dragon’s Demise was off up the coast, chasing another pointless lead, and it seemed the rain would never stop.
And for lack of other enemies, we’re tearing each other apart.
She heard Egar out with weary patience—the brawl over whores, Tand and Shendanak’s bet, the fight with Shendanak in the street, the stand-off with his angry cousins over his beaten body, the arrival of Tand and his men …
“Didn’t really need them,” sniffed the Dragonbane. “But it got things wrapped up a lot faster, you know.”
No surprise there—Tand’s mercenaries were a cold-eyed, scary bunch, a couple of hundred years’ brutal enforcement experience between them and all the scars to show for it. You’d have to be either pretty sure of yourself or pretty far gone to get into it with them. Shendanak’s cousins were tough enough in their unseasoned steppe-grown fashion, they were mostly younger men, and there were more of them. But in the end, methodical battle-trained competence was always going to tell. It was the axiomatic truth they’d all learned in the war.
“Where is Tand?” she asked.
Egar shrugged. “He got them to call Rakan, then he fucked off. Went back to his rooms, I reckon. You know how much he hates the rain.”
“Right. I’m going to talk to him.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No. You won’t.” Archeth jerked a thumb in the direction of the door and the men gathered on the stairs beyond it. “You say you can handle Shendanak’s crew? Then you stay here with Rakan in case we need you to do exactly that. You let me worry about Tand.”
IT WAS BRAVADO SHE DIDN’T MUCH FEEL. THE KRIN HAD PEAKED ON HER back aboard Sea Eagle’s Daughter, and now it was starting to wane. All she really felt was tired. But she lacquered on a thin shell of pretense as she went up through the streets to Tand’s inn, forced the ghost of strength down into her legs with each step, and reminded herself that she was the Emperor’s Named Envoy for the expedition, the Authority of the Burnished Throne made Flesh.
And an immortal black-skinned witch with dark magic from the veins of the Earth at her command.
Let’s not forget that one, Archidi.
She found Menith Tand sat at a table in one corner of the otherwise empty tavern bar, flanked by two of his mercenary crew and playing out a deck of cards in some version of solitaire she didn’t know. If he was concerned about the path of recent events, it didn’t show. Lamps had been lit for him against the late afternoon gloom, and in the light they cast, his narrow features were composed to the point of boredom. She saw he’d recently had a shave, and his ostentatiously undyed gray hair was gathered back on either side of his head with twinned clips the color of ivory—carved, so the rumor went, from the bones of an escaped slave. He met Archeth’s eye as she came through the tavern door and nodded, then leaned back in his chair to speak with one of his men. As she approached the table, the man stepped forward and for a moment her pulse ratcheted up. But the mercenary just made a clumsy bow and set out the chair opposite Tand for her to sit down.
“Greetings, my lady.” The slave magnate placed a new card, frowning at the pattern for a moment before he looked up. “Won’t you sit down?”
Archeth ignored the snub. She rested her hands on the back of the chair. “I hear you’ve taken some kind of bet with Klarn Shendanak.”
“Yes.” Tand went back to brooding on his cards. “What of it?”
“Are you entirely fucking stupid, Tand?”
The slaver turned over a card, did not look up. “Not entirely, my lady, no. Why, what seems to be the problem?”
“You really think going to war with the locals for a bet is a smart thing to do? You think we can afford that right now?” Quick, dark pulse of krinzanz rage. “I’m talking to you, Tand! Did your krin-whore mother drop you on your fucking head when you were a baby?”
The mercenary who’d put out the chair stiffened, laid hand to sword-hilt. Archeth peeled him her best lethal-black-witch look and watched with satisfaction as the hand slid away again. Tand, meanwhile—
The slaver had paused, theatrically, midway through playing out a card. Momentary stillness, and it was hard to tell if she’d got to him or if it was for show, but—yes, there. A vein pulsed in one temple. Archeth cheered inwardly at the sight. Then Tand completed his play, laid aside the slim sheaf of cards in his hand, and sat back in his chair.
“My mother was a noblewoman of Baldaran stock, my lady.” The pale, cold eyes swiveled up to meet her own, and for just a moment she saw the fury chained there, she saw how dangerous he was. But the slave magnate’s voice, when it came, was cool and even. “And as for krinzanz, I think it’s likely she saw less of it in the course of her whole life than is currently coursing through your half-blood veins. So. Perhaps we can dispense with the cheap insults now and behave a little more as befits our station, yes?”
She leaned on the back of the chair. “I’m all in favor of that, Tand. Let’s start by knocking off the occupation tactics. You were there at Lanatray, you signed the accord like everybody else. We are diplomatic guests of the Trelayne League, permitted access to the Hironish isles on that basis. Let’s act as such.”
“They made us their guests because they didn’t have a choice. The peace is fragile, my lady. They’d hardly deny us passage and risk the Emperor’s displeasure.”
“I think you overestimate imperial influence. By the best route home, we’re nearly three thousand miles from Yhelteth.”
Tand made a dismissive gesture. “We’re the best part of a thousand miles from Trelayne as well. By the time word of what we do here reaches anyone who matters, we’ll be long gone. That’s if anyone cares in the first place, which—if my knowledge of Trelayne Chancellery affairs is anything to go by—they won’t.”
He probably had a point. Ringil had told her exactly how remote from League affairs the Hironish isles were. Some of the dignitaries they met with in Lanatray had even been a little vague on where exactly the islands were to be found, how far north or west they would have to sail to reach them. And Tand, in his capacity as major player in the slave markets, had spent enough time back and forth between League and Empire in the last few years to be accurately informed. Still—
“The peace is fragile on both sides, Tand. What you’re doing here could be just the tinder it needs. You throw your weight around like this under the auspices of an imperial expedition and you’re creating a perfect pretext for war.”
“Frankly, I doubt that. But in any case, what we’ve done so far is considerably more controlled and less destructive than what will probably happen if the men are left much longer without some outlet for their frustrations. You have dragged us to the ends of the Earth, my lady, and now we’re here, you give us nothing to do. That’s not an ideal situation for fighting men.”
“So you don’t believe there’s anything to learn from these interrogations? The whole thing’s a sham, just to keep the men exercised?”
The slave magnate nodded sagely. “No call to let Klarn Shendanak know that, of course, but—yes, more or less.”
“I doubt I’ll be telling Shendanak anything in the near future. The Dragonbane put him in a coma.”
“Did he now?” There might have been admiration in Tand’s voice.
“You didn’t know that? You were there, weren’t you?”
“Yes, I thought the old tub of guts looked rather mauled when we arrived. But you know what these Majak are like—up on the steppe, they’re beating the shit out of each other the minute they drop out of the womb. They breed for thick skulls.”
“Well, Shendanak not so much, it seems.”
“No.” Tand looked genuinely thoughtful for the first time since she’d walked in. “That does put a di
fferent complexion on things. We’d better—”
The door of the tavern banged back. Twitchy with the crashing krin, Archeth jumped at the noise it made.
“Sire!” It was one of Tand’s men, grinning triumphantly in the doorway. “Sire, we’ve got it!”
He advanced into the room, campaign cap off for respect, shaven head gleaming with sweat in the low light. He seemed to have been running, he was panting hard. Took a moment to get his breath under control.
“We’ve got it,” he said again.
“I’m sure you have, Nalmur,” said Tand patiently. “But perhaps you could tell the lady Archeth and myself what exactly it is that you’ve got?”
Nalmur glanced at Archeth, apparently noticing her for the first time in the gloom. His expression grew a little more wary, but his face was still suffused with delight.
“The thousand elementals, my lord. The bet. We know what happened to the Illwrack Changeling!”
CHAPTER 4
e felt the change as soon as he stepped over the threshold of the croft. It came on like icy water, sprinkling across the nape of his neck.
He tilted his head a little to send the feeling away, traced a warding glyph in the air, like taking down a volume from a library shelf. Around him, the croft walls grew back to an enclosing height they likely hadn’t seen in decades. The boiling gray sky blacked out, replaced with damp-smelling thatch overhead. A dull, reddish glow reached out to him from the hearth. Peat smoke stung his throat. He heard the slow creak of wood.
A worn oak rocking chair, angled at the fireside, tilting gently back and forth. From where he stood, Ringil could not tell what was seated there, only that it was wrapped in a dark cloak and cowl.
The ward he’d chosen was burning down around him like some torched peasant’s hut. He felt the fresh exposure shiver through him. Reached for something stronger, cracked finger-bones etching it into the air.
“Yes—becoming quite adept at that, aren’t we?” It was a voice that creaked like the chair. Wheeze and rustle of seeming age, or maybe just the breathlessness at the end of laughing too hard at something. “Quite the master of the ikinri ‘ska these days.”
The Dark Defiles Page 4