The Shattered Vigil
Page 13
“So?” I asked.
She turned to face me, her sea-green eyes that completed her perfection resolute. “So how long before someone makes father an offer he can’t refuse, El? We’re one of the poorest families at court. Nearly every merchant in the upper quarter has income greater than ours. Laidir is a good man, but he doesn’t have a passion for dogs like some of the other rulers. Without his patronage, the other houses have little need to curry favor with us.”
“But you can’t just run away.”
She looked away from me, stuffing clothes into a canvas bag, but not before I saw something in her countenance catch fire and burn like a torch. “I’m not. I’ve been offered a job, El—training animals. And I’ve seen them. They’re beautiful.”
“All animals are beautiful, Viona,” I said. “Stay with us.”
But she crammed the last of her clothes into the bag. For a moment she paused, looking at the family ring on her hand, a heavy wolf’s head worked into silver. She buried her head into my shoulder before she drew my head down for a kiss she planted on my cheek. Then she slung the bag over her shoulder and left.
I sifted through memories, reading each note asking to meet me in the poor quarter, but other than those simple requests there was nothing that might indicate where she’d been or what she might be doing.
I came to Leary’s last memory. I crossed over the bridge of the Rinwash leading into the lower merchants’ quarter, searching for Viona. She would be waiting for me at the Hawker, the broad, low-roofed inn where most of the merchants met after they’d closed their meat or vegetable stands for the evening.
Then I heard screams that cut their way through my heart. I ran, yelling and cursing at the people in my way toward the sound as the cries became weaker. I turned the corner into chaos as people ran in every direction, fleeing mindlessly like animals running from a fire. A knot of men and women huddled around a figure slumped on the flagstones. I pushed my way through, following a trail of blood, and saw Viona’s body, her eyes glassy and staring through me. Rents in her clothing showed the indignity her killer had visited upon her, deep slash wounds visible on her neck, back, and arms. The world turned to fire in my mind.
I pulled out of the delve, struggling to separate my thoughts from Leary’s last memory of his sister. More than anything, I wanted to shove those images away, lock them behind a door within my mind, and never let them out again, but something in Leary’s last meeting with his sister struck me wrong and I was going to have to keep the memory in front of me until I could figure out just what. Worse, I had to find Jeb.
“We’re going to find the people who killed your sister,” I said, speaking to Leary’s bowed head. “She will get justice.” I couldn’t tell if he heard me or not. He didn’t nod or speak before he turned and ran back toward the alley that bordered his father’s estate.
“What did you see?” Bolt asked me.
I sighed. “Mostly what you’d expect, but there was something strange about her death I can’t put my finger on.” In my mind I stared at the image of her dead body, the knife cuts in her clothing showing pale, perfect skin sliced open by the assassin’s hatred.
Shaking my head, I set my face toward the tor that loomed over the nobles’ section to the northwest. “We have to get to the tor. I need to talk to Jeb.”
Rory shook his head at me. “You can’t go back there, yah? The browns are going to be looking for you all over the place.”
“The boy’s right,” Bolt said. “If you show your face, they’ll surround you with so many Merum guards you’ll be lucky to see the light of day again.”
I checked the sun. We had perhaps two hours of light left. “Then we’ll have to wait until dark so that we can sneak past the cathedrals.”
“I don’t fancy trying to fight a dwimor in the dark,” Bolt said. “Pellin and Allta were lucky in the extreme to survive that attack.”
I flexed my hand, sliding the thin leather glove back over the exposed skin. “I have to delve Lytling. Her mind holds the key.”
Bolt shook his head at me. “It’s pointless, Willet. She doesn’t see the world normally anymore. You won’t be able to make sense of what you see in there.”
I nodded. “So you told me before, but I have to try.”
Chapter 14
We stopped at an inn on the merchants’ side of the Rinwash, where I sat drinking overpriced ale and thinking. I assumed Bolt and Rory were doing the same thing. They sat across from me in silence.
“She might not be important,” Rory said at last. “Sometimes one of the urchins sees something they’re not supposed to: a bigger crime, one trader swindling another. Once, during the winter, I slipped into a merchant’s to steal a few bolts of wool. He’d just bought it from a seller from Gylden. Only the man wasn’t from Gylden, and he wasn’t a merchant. The first layer was wool all right, but beneath that it was cheap burlap.” He leaned back and lifted his tankard. “The fake merchant would have killed me for what I’d seen.”
I thought about that. I’d witnessed as much in my own experiences as reeve, and it seemed possible in this case, but in my gut it didn’t fit. “She ran out of the Hawker. I don’t know much about them, but the dwimor seem to ignore everyone except the one they’re supposed to kill.”
Bolt nodded. “She was young enough to see it. So, she saw it and tried to flee and it ran after her. If it was there for someone else—”
“The dwimor would have let her go,” I finished.
“If they behave the same as they did before,” Bolt said.
I tried not to think about all the ways they might be even more dangerous now that they were coming from whatever evil had gotten loose of the Darkwater. We drank our ale in silence, watching the door for church guards of any color as we waited for dusk.
The sun was just a sliver of orange-tinted crimson when we came around to the tor on the eastern side. I didn’t use that entrance much since it wasn’t located near my quarters or the guardroom where the reeves worked. My hope was that the church guards would be too busy keeping an eye on my usual haunts to cover the unfamiliar places as well.
We stood in the shadows of the trees and checked the alley that ran west to east toward the tor on the north side of the cathedrals. A mix of church guards wearing red, brown, blue, or white patrolled the walkway.
“Why can’t anything ever be easy?” I asked no one in particular.
Bolt and Rory both took this as an opportunity to quote some adage from their past that I found to be totally useless. “All right,” I said, looking at Rory. “The tor’s guarded. How do I get in?”
Rory smiled. “Join the urchins and after a few years of training you’ll be able to go anywhere you like.” He looked me up and down. “Provided you lose a few spans of height and about a hundred pounds.”
“Nice. What about you?” I asked Bolt. “There’s at least one dwimor out there somewhere, and we don’t even know who they’re hunting. Are you ready to use your sword yet?”
He shook his head. “The proscription against fighting the church isn’t some guideline. It’s carved in stone and with good reason. The Vigil has maintained its autonomy for centuries by voluntarily submitting to the oversight of the church, limited though it may be. If they start to view us as the enemy, that’s finished.”
“Take a boat to the north side,” Rory said.
I looked at Bolt. “That might work. The docks are right up against that side of the tor. Nobody uses that entrance except the supply masters.”
Bolt strode forward from the shadows with his head down and checked the branch of the Rinwash that separated the cathedrals and the tor from the nobles’ section. He paused to chuck a few rocks into the water before he returned. “No barges are headed this way and the water sounds pretty deep here.”
I nodded. “It would be. It’s the last moat in the city.”
Rory shrugged. “We’ll just have to swim.”
“He can’t swim,” Bolt said, pointing at me.
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Rory stared at me as if I’d disappointed him somehow. “What kind of a man spends his life on the river and never learns how to swim?”
I tried to stare down Bolt’s laughter and failed. “You two were made for each other,” I grumbled.
After he and Rory collected themselves, I saw Bolt shrug. “Well, it’s time for your first lesson. Let’s go.”
“No.” Memories of my last foray into the river were still too vivid. I’d almost drowned.
Bolt pointed. “This is our best chance. The flood wall will hide us from the patrolling guards, and we’ve only got to cover a few hundred yards.”
“It might as well be a few hundred miles,” I said. “Is there something about ‘I can’t swim’ that I need to explain? Even if the guards don’t see me, they’ll hear me screaming for help.”
“I’ll show you,” Rory said. “There’s a stroke the urchins use to move quietly across the branches of the river. It’s not fast, but it’s easy to learn and it’s quiet.”
“‘And a child shall lead the way,’” Bolt quoted the liturgy.
I shook my head. “Yes, that’s perfect. Now you’re borrowing your proverbs from Toria Deel.”
In the end there was nothing for it but to swim. We found a spot out of sight of the patrolling guards, who obviously didn’t think I’d be mad enough to try to escape by swimming, and slipped into the river.
“Stay close to the wall,” Rory said. “The current won’t be as strong there. Now, move like this.” I watched as he stretched out both arms over his head and brought them down to his side as he executed a relaxed frog-kick, gliding forward through the water for a couple of yards. He didn’t stroke again until he had almost come to a stop.
I swallowed my fear and tried to copy him.
“Don’t fight it, Willet,” Rory said. “The water will help you if you let it. Try to keep a lot of air in your lungs. It will help you float.”
Stretching out my arms, I kicked again.
An hour later, with my shoulders burning and my lungs set to explode, we clung to the stone pier that butted up against the north face of the tor. Men worked by torchlight to unload a barge, moving like phantoms in the flickering shadows. Smells of pelts and seasoned wood drifted over us.
With my arms shaking, I pulled myself out of the water and stood at the end of the quay, wheezing like a horse. The men at the entrance wore the king’s livery and vigilance, but there were no church guards with them. I heard the sound of swords being drawn while two more approached with their pikes leveled.
“Leave your hands at your side and approach to be recognized,” one of the guards commanded.
“That’s the crux of the problem,” Bolt muttered.
We stepped forward into the orange circle of light cast by their torches, and I saw the guards’ faces open in recognition.
“Lord Dura, what were you doing in the river?”
There didn’t seem to be anything to gain by being less than forthright. “I’m trying to run down a killer.”
All four guards snapped to attention, their eyes darting. Laidir’s death had left a stain on the guards’ reputation that would be a long time in cleansing.
“I don’t think the killer is in the tor,” I said, “and I don’t think he’s after the queen, but I needed a way to get into the tor without being seen.” My tunic made sucking sounds as I pulled it away from my skin. “Thus the river.”
They didn’t move.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “I’d really like to be about my business as reeve.”
The guards nodded and pivoted out of the way.
We entered into the cavernous space of the tor’s storerooms, where men moved by flickering torchlight to organize the latest load of supplies to come downriver. Rory looked around in shock. “Is this place ever left unguarded?”
I shook my head. “No, and there are no windows or other entrances from the outside.”
“Pity,” he said. “I could have kept the urchins fed and clothed with no trouble at all, and no one would have ever missed it.”
I shook my head as we walked past a small mountain of wool. “I wouldn’t count on that last part. The chamberlain doesn’t draw much attention to himself, but very little gets past him.”
“We don’t have much time,” Bolt said. “As soon as they change the guard at the dock, word of your presence in the tor is going to spread. Coming out of the river like some mythical sea monster is a good way to engrave yourself on the guards’ memory. It’s not like they get the chance to talk about their work very often.”
Rory looked at me. “Why didn’t you tell them to keep quiet?”
“Because that would have been the surest way to draw even more attention to us.”
“‘Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead,’” Bolt quoted.
“I like that one,” Rory nodded appreciatively. “We have one like it in the urchins: ‘Share a secret, lose a life.’”
Bolt winced. “Is everyone in the urchins as grim as you are?”
Rory nodded. “Pretty much.”
I picked up my pace until we were almost jogging. “If we hurry, we can be here and gone before any of the church guards know about it.”
Jeb’s quarters were two levels over the main guardroom. We ascended a narrow flight of stone stairs and made our way to the south end of the tor. Rory went first as we left the relatively deserted north end and encountered pockets of servants and minor functionaries whose tasks kept the kingdom running.
Twice Rory flashed a hand signal behind his back sending Bolt and me scurrying into hiding. By the time we reached Jeb’s apartments, my heart had resumed the furious pounding from the river.
I balled my fist and knocked softly, hoping. “He might still be in the guardroom,” I said. “We can’t go there.”
I waited a moment and knocked again, then started backward reaching for my dagger as the door flew open. Jeb’s chin preceded the rest of his face out the door, but when he saw me, some of the tension went out of him. “Dura. Should have known it was you. What do you want?”
“I need to see Lytling.”
His brows dropped low enough to turn his eyes into slits. “That’s not her name, Dura. Don’t call her that again. Her name is Aellyn.” I couldn’t see both hands, but I heard a popping noise.
“Is she here, Jeb?”
He nodded. “She’s sleeping, and you’re not going to wake her.”
I looked at Bolt. There wasn’t going to be any way for me to do this without arousing Jeb’s suspicion. He liked to use his knuckles to get the truth, but he wasn’t stupid. My guard’s shoulders lifted and dropped back into place.
“That’s fine, Jeb. I don’t need to.”
He still looked on the verge of refusing, but I could see the beginning of curiosity undermining his defiance. “If you hurt her, Dura, I’m going to be angry.”
His quarters weren’t large, only two small rooms, but anyone who didn’t know better would have thought Aellyn had been living here her whole life. Jeb led us through the chaos of his belongings in the outer room to what should have been his bedroom. Here, everything had been ordered, but a rag doll, its middle creased by repeated hugs, lay at the foot of the bed, and a set of clothes in Aellyn’s size had been laid out across the straight-backed chair.
The girl herself slept curled beneath a blanket, dwarfed by a bed built for an oversized reeve, but I could see the impression of Jeb’s head on the pillow next to hers and in the wrinkles of the blanket.
“How long did it take you to rock her to sleep?” I asked.
Jeb sighed. “A couple of hours. Every time I tried to get up, she plastered herself to me like a leech.” His face darkened to a shade usually reserved for thunderclouds. “If I ever catch up to the people responsible for this, I’m going to turn their name into a curse.”
I pulled my glove off and moved around to kneel at the far side of the bed, careful not to bump it.
“Dura,” Jeb warned.
Shocks and jolts hit me, body blows from an invisible fist as her memories poured into me. But there was no flow, no coherence or chronology to the images I saw. Aellyn’s memories didn’t connect to each other in strands but surrounded me, instead, as a cloud. If I hadn’t been so desperate, I would have broken the delve. Aer, help me, I pushed myself forward into her broken mind.
Flashes of light like bursts of solas powder hit me as I fell and became the memories I saw. A man stooped to place a coin in my begging bowl, then turned to leave. An instant later I saw him approaching from the opposite direction, his eyes looking at my torn shift. Without transition he appeared fifty paces away, his back to me, not looking back.
I sat in the urchins’ hovel at night, my eyes closed, eating to fill the hole in my stomach, images flashing past. Bounder led me away from the merchants’ quarter. Men approached me where I sat at the edge of the street. I was walking alone away from a farmhouse, my steps too small to take me anywhere.
A tall man with a rough voice lifted me into his arms.
A tall man with a rough voice held me close, protecting me.
A tall man with a rough voice folded my hand inside his.
A tall man with a rough voice put a charcoal stick in my hand.
A tall man with a rough voice lifted me into his arms.
A tall man . . .
In the part of my mind that wasn’t the broken child, I pushed again, trying to make sense of Aellyn’s memories, but the threads were broken. They didn’t lead anywhere—they floated in her mind like twigs suspended in water, neither leading forward to any future nor back to any past. Without a way to move in time, I had no way of finding the memories I needed. I floated up within the drift of memories, dots of color, not threads, that flowed past.
Then I saw it, a scroll at the bottom of Aellyn’s mind, dark and heavy, an anchor that dragged on her soul. It wasn’t the black obsidian color of those that had been to the Darkwater, but a charcoal gray instead. I dove back into the debris of her past, struggling to get to it, but the multi-colored flashes of remembrance buffeted me, turned me around, taking my sense of direction, and I lost my way.