by Marc Turner
If anyone knew, it would be Fume’s high priestess. Most likely she would refuse to speak to Senar, yet where was the harm in trying? Of course, in ignoring Mazana’s wishes he risked straining still further whatever ties existed between them. At least in doing so, though, he might better learn how strongly those ties were forged.
From ahead and to his left came a scream muffled by stone.
Senar’s mouth went dry. He picked up his pace.
Three turnings brought him to the corridor with the door leading to the cells—the same cells Senar had been held in when he first came to Olaire. Standing outside was not the pair of Storm Guards he’d been expecting, but the executioner. Senar had become so used to the giant staring at nothing that he was surprised to find the man’s gaze following him as he drew near. The Guardian stopped opposite him. There was a smell of singed hair about the other man, and Senar felt the warmth coming off his armor as it gave out the heat it had taken in through the day. The executioner’s chest swelled with each breath, and there was a faint scratching sound as the metal links brushed against each other.
Another scream came from the cells, gurgling into silence.
Senar looked from the giant to the door behind. There was a grille at eye level, darkness beyond. Doubtless Mazana had told the executioner she was not to be disturbed, and there was as much point in asking him to move aside as there was in asking the door.
The Guardian, though, had no intention of asking.
He locked gazes with the executioner again. So steadfast did the man’s presence seem, he might have set down roots in the stone floor. But Senar had learned from their duel on Dragon Day what force it took to stagger him. In combat the Guardian had only the time between sword strokes to gather his Will. Here, though, he could focus enough of his power that even the giant couldn’t stand against it …
Footsteps sounded from beyond the door.
It opened.
Mazana stepped from the gloom. A scabbarded dagger was pushed through the belt at her waist. Her clothes were spattered with blood—no prizes for guessing whose—and the skin of her hands and lower arms was discolored by purple-red blotches like birthmarks. She did not seem surprised to see Senar. She even smiled as she came toward him.
Then she was on him, somehow managing to push him back against the wall and pull him toward her all at once. A jolt passed between them. She locked her arms round his neck and kissed him, her tongue darting between his teeth. Her breath tasted of mirispice. Senar stared into her red eyes, too taken aback to react.
Then she bit down on his lower lip. He gasped as he felt the blood flow. Mazana responded by biting harder, and the Guardian yanked his head to one side to free himself. A growl sounded at the back of Mazana’s throat. She seized his chin and pulled his head round again, her fingernails digging into his skin. Gods, she was strong. Her breath was hot against his face. Senar raised an arm between them, not knowing if she meant to kiss him or tear out his throat with her teeth. She removed one arm from around his neck and reached between his legs.
He seized her wrist. Such was her strength, it was all he could do to hold her. A part of him didn’t know why he was trying. Maybe there’d been times when he wondered how they would be together, but it had never been like this. As romantic encounters went, this was about as sensual as being mauled by a flintcat.
Behind, the executioner stood motionless, watching. All adding to the ambience.
Mazana strained forward, snapping her teeth at him. She was giving off so much heat, Senar might have been standing next to a bonfire. He could sense the abandon in her, and it made him all the more determined to resist. Before today she’d never offered herself to Senar because it would have meant something to him. Now he was refusing her because it would have meant nothing to her.
Her lips had darkened where she’d kissed him. Stained by his blood? Her flesh seemed to have absorbed it. Senar still had his arm between them, just below her throat, and he’d recovered enough of himself to add a touch of the Will to strengthen it. As Mazana continued to push against it, her smile stretched to a snarl.
Then abruptly the fight went out of her, and she pulled away.
Senar sagged back against the wall, breathless.
Mazana was panting too. Her face twisted in anger or disgust or both, and the Guardian wondered at the swings of emotion he provoked in her. He looked from her blotchy arms to the door behind her. “Where’s Darbonna?” he said between breaths. “What have you done?”
As if he didn’t already know.
Mazana did not respond.
“Why? Why did she have to die?”
The emira’s lip curled. “A better question would be ‘why should she live?’ She tried to kill me on Dragon Day, then again this afternoon. Should I have let her keep trying until she succeeded? Do you think we could have become friends in time?” She stepped toward him. “But that’s not what really bothers you, is it? The fact that she’s dead. What bothers you is that I was the one holding the knife.” Her voice was mocking. “What’s wrong, Guardian? You don’t think the one who passes the sentence should be the one to carry it out? Would my soul be less stained if I’d given the job to another? Maybe I should have got you to do it instead. Would you have killed her if I’d asked?”
Senar did not reply. She knew the answer to that already.
Mazana studied him, then snorted and looked at her hands. The blotches on her skin had paled. The flush in her face was fading, too. She was back in control, but that scorn was still in her voice as she looked at the door to the cells and said, “The Merigan portal you went through when you came here, it’s along that corridor, isn’t it? Why haven’t you tried to use it since our illustrious friend Imerle passed away?”
“The gateway has a code. I don’t know the symbol for Erin Elal.”
“Then why haven’t you asked me to take you to the mainland? A ship with a water-mage could reach Gilgamar in a handful of bells.” She paused. “Perhaps it was because you thought I couldn’t survive here without you. Or perhaps you were afraid I might say yes.”
Senar crossed his arms. “You never offered before. Are you offering now?” The gods knew, he would have jumped at the chance just then.
The emira said nothing. She stood there rubbing her wrists. A smile formed at the corners of her mouth.
Then she spun and started along the corridor.
“Executioner, with me,” she called over her shoulder. “Since the Guardian is unwilling or unable, I will have to find my entertainment elsewhere.”
Scowling, Senar watched her go.
* * *
The gates of the Chameleon Temple were unguarded as Karmel strode through at Caval’s side. The courtyard beyond was deserted too, and as the priestess and her brother followed the colonnade around, the echoes from the slap of their sandals faded into a pool of silence. They had three bells to kill before their ship left for Gilgamar, but from the pace her brother set, it was clear he intended their stay here to be a short one—just long enough for them to freshen up and gather a few possessions. Not that Karmel was complaining. She couldn’t see the empty spaces in the shrine without thinking of the friends she had lost.
They reached the door to Caval’s quarters. Inside, sunlight poured through the room’s transparent west-facing wall, and Karmel shielded her eyes as she looked down on the city beyond. The fish market in Crofters Lane was thronged with people, seeking a share of the morning’s meager catch. Also present was a sizeable force of Revenants, ready to prevent a repeat of last week’s food riots. Prices had tripled now that grain shipments from Shamano and Elescori had dried up, and few of Olaire’s fishermen were prepared to put out to sea if it meant risking a confrontation with a dragon. Mazana Creed had tried to ease their fears by ordering the remaining Drifters to accompany them to sea. But to no avail. The reluctance with which the Drifters had met the order told the fishermen all they needed to know about their chances of outrunning a dragon if they met one.
Dragging Drifters from their duties in the Shallows had created another problem. Even from this distance, Karmel could see the muck and trash that had accumulated in the flooded streets. There were fresh bodies there too each morning. With not enough space to bury them all, the grounds of the Founder’s Citadel had been turned into a vast funeral pyre. The smoke from the fires formed a black smudge over the city, drifting south on the breeze.
Caval stood beside his desk, making no move to sit in the chair behind it. He was rubbing his left shoulder as if returning to the temple had made the pain of his old wound—the wound that had never properly healed after their father’s beating—flare up again. He still had the bad dreams, still woke in agony each morning as if his collarbone had been broken anew.
“Can it work?” Karmel said. “Mazana’s plan to destroy the stone-skin fleet, I mean.”
Caval’s smile was strained. “Reconsidering her offer to stay behind, are you?” Before she could reply, he moved to a bookcase and ran a finger along the spines of the books. He pulled one out and tossed it to Karmel. “Here, for the journey.”
She snatched at it, missed, and it thumped to the floor.
“You should find that an interesting read, especially the parts about the Rubyholt.…”
His voice died away.
Karmel had heard it too—a sound from the corridor outside. A footfall? A muffled cough? Instinctively she employed her power, sensed Caval do the same.
The door handle swung down, the door inward.
A dark-skinned man in a stained white robe entered. His nose and cheeks were crisscrossed with the spidery red capillaries of a hardened drinker, and the sway in his step told Karmel he’d started early today. The sight of him tugged at a memory, but when the priestess grasped for it, it slipped away. Behind him came a man whose right eye was swollen to the point of closing and a woman whose face was so red she might have fallen asleep in the sun. Both wore green uniforms. And both were armed.
The drinker halted a few paces into the room. “Show yourselves,” he said in an alien accent.
Or what? the priestess wanted to say. Her initial surprise at the strangers’ appearance had given way to indignation. What right did they have to intrude on her home?
“Show yourselves, I am saying again.”
Moving her eyes, not her head, Karmel glanced across at Caval. He tried to tell her something with his look—to stay out of sight, perhaps, while he dealt with these people. Then he surrendered his power and flashed Drinker a bright smile.
“How can I help?” he asked.
“The lady too, please,” Drinker said, looking at the book on the floor beside Karmel.
“Lady?”
“I was seeing two people enter the temple, hearing two voices at the door just now.”
Enough of this, Karmel thought as she let go her power. The man clearly knew she was here.
“See, just the two of us,” Caval said to Drinker, perhaps hoping to convince him there might be more.
Drinker’s lips quirked. Not taken in, then. “It is time I was introducing myself. I am Lydanto Hood, Gilgamarian ambassador to the Storm Isles.”
Karmel covered her unease. Gilgamar was first stop on their forthcoming trip to the Rubyholt Isles. A coincidence that this man had called on them so soon after their meeting with Mazana?
Lydanto waited for a response from the Chameleons, but when they remained silent, he said to Caval, “And you, unless I am being mistaken, are Caval Flood, high priest of the Chameleon.” He swung to Karmel. “You I am not knowing, though your face is—how do you say?—ringing the tower of bells.”
It came to her then where she’d seen him before: on the deck of the ship, the Crest, that she’d hitched a ride back on from Dian. Another coincidence? She could only hope she’d kept enough of a low profile that day that he didn’t place her.
The two guards took up station at the door. Karmel looked toward them, then said to Lydanto, “Do your greetings always come with armed men at your back?”
The ambassador’s expression was unapologetic. “You would have had me make the journey to your temple without an escort? The streets are being dangerous of late, in case you were not noticing.”
He did not ask his soldiers to withdraw, though.
Lydanto crossed to one of the chairs in front of the desk. It creaked as he settled into it. He withdrew a flask from a pocket in his robe, then unscrewed the cap and drank. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
The silence dragged out.
“Well, this is cozy,” Caval said. “We must do this again sometime.”
The ambassador hesitated, his expression suddenly pensive as if he’d been building up to something, only to have second thoughts.
“How did you find us?” Karmel asked him, anxious to get this over with.
“Since Dragon Day I have been instructing my men to keep a discreet eye on the palace. You were seen entering and leaving earlier.”
And the Gilgamarians had followed them here? Karmel hadn’t spotted anyone when she checked her backtrail, but maybe Lydanto’s watchers had guessed her destination and gone a different way.
“You’ve been looking for us?” Caval said.
“No.”
“Ah, then why are we talking?”
Lydanto collected his thoughts. “For you to understand, I must first be going back a way. You have been hearing what happened on Imerle’s flagship on Dragon Day?”
Caval’s face gave nothing away. “Rumors only.”
“Then you are doubtless aware that Imerle was inviting certain of her opponents on board to take part in the Dragon Day festivities. Among those opponents was Kalisch Rethell Webb, first speaker of the Gilgamarian Ruling Council, along with his daughter, Agenta. When the Dragon Gate went up, Imerle’s mage, Orsan, was unleashing a wave of water-magic upon the Icewing in order to cripple it and thus render it—how do you say?—a sitting goose.” He looked at Karmel. “Stop me if you are knowing this already.”
There went Karmel’s hope of him not placing her. But even if he recognized her from the Crest, he couldn’t know the significance of her being on board that day.
“And then?” Caval said, continuing the pretense that this was new to him.
“And then fortunately the kalisch foresaw Imerle’s treachery, and had his own ship standing by to rescue the Icewing. But not before the kalisch himself was being killed.”
“Yet his daughter survived, I take it.”
Lydanto nodded. “She was braving the dragons to sail back to Olaire in search of the vengeance against Imerle. Along with Iqral here”—he gestured to the male guard by the doorway—“she was in the palace when it was flooded. Alas, they were separated. That is the last time she was being seen alive.”
“Ah, and you think we might know what happened to her?”
“You were in the palace too. Or at least the Chameleons were.”
“Along with half of Olaire. Most of whom were trying to kill us, as I recall.”
“Agenta would have been with a party of soldiers wearing the uniforms like Iqral here.”
Caval’s gaze flickered to the guard. “Very dashing.”
Karmel frowned. What was wrong with her brother today? Was he looking for a fight? To Lydanto she said, “Even if we knew what this woman looked like, surely you don’t expect us to remember one face among all the others we saw that day.”
A ghost of a smile crossed the ambassador’s face. “If you had been seeing the kalischa, you would not be forgetting her.” His smile withered. “I am fortunate to be having some contacts at the palace. They are telling me the commander of Agenta’s forces, a man named Warner Sturge, survived Dragon Day, only later to be dying of his injuries.” Something in Lydanto’s voice said he had doubts concerning the manner of the man’s passing. “But there has been no word of Agenta. Perhaps she died on Dragon Day. Or perhaps, like Warner, she was suffering a wound and is now being treated at the palace.”
“T
he palace,” Caval repeated. “As in the place we just came from.”
Lydanto regarded him coolly. “You may be assured I will be taking my questions to Mazana Creed in due course. But not before I have been exhausting all other options.”
Karmel’s skin prickled. Was that a threat? He’d put just enough emphasis on “all” to make it clear he would not leave without answers.
The ambassador went on, “I am not asking you to be telling me what you were doing in the palace on Dragon Day. I am not asking you to be telling me how Imerle met her end. I am just wanting to know if Agenta is alive. And if not, where her body can be found.”
Caval made to speak, but Karmel got in first. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can tell you. Before the palace was flooded, the only people we saw were Storm Guards.”
“And after?”
“After,” Caval said, “we were more concerned about steering clear of strangers than introducing ourselves.”
Karmel had to offer Lydanto something, so she said, “When the corridors filled with water, we climbed to the terraces. If Agenta survived the flooding, perhaps she escaped that way too.”
“And left Warner behind, injured? I am thinking not. And if she had been escaping, where is she now? Dragon Day was eleven days ago. It is not as if she could be getting lost for all that time.”
Caval was in again. “It seems you’ve answered your own question, then. Better than we can, certainly.”