by Marc Turner
Mazana opened a drawer and removed a scabbarded knife. Fume’s knife. “But we can also assume Hex’s party isn’t the only threat we have to contend with here in Gilgamar.”
“Meaning?”
The emira unsheathed the knife and made a show of studying its blade. “Jambar paid me a visit earlier, had you heard? No? He tells me your emperor is planning an attack on the Alcazar.”
Senar tore his gaze away from the dagger. “Of course he is. No doubt Jambar saw me fighting on Avallon’s side, too.”
Mazana moved closer. “Don’t be so quick to dismiss the shaman’s visions. Some of them have already proved disturbingly accurate. Did you know, for example, that Avallon has brought more soldiers to Gilgamar than were invited? With Jambar’s help, Jodren has tracked down a sizeable force to a warehouse in the Lower City.”
Senar kept his silence.
Mazana watched him closely. “You hide your surprise well. You are surprised, aren’t you?”
“In truth, I am not. As I said, Avallon is far from home and among uncertain friends. You can’t blame him for keeping some soldiers close in case you decided to turn on him.”
“Or in case he decided to turn on me.”
“Right. The stone-skins aren’t enough of a challenge that he wants to make an enemy of the Storm Isles as well. He needs you. He needs your help against the Augerans.”
The emira’s laugh was dismissive. “Oh, come now, you know better than that. He needs me only as long as I am sympathetic to his cause. And since I have yet to commit to an alliance, perhaps he is tempted to do away with me in the hope my successor proves more accommodating.”
“After this successor has seen him betray you?”
Mazana said nothing. She halted a pace in front of Senar, close enough to strike. The Guardian’s gaze flickered to the knife in her hand. A single cut would be all it took to seal his doom. Sorcery oozed from the blade like pus from a wound. Senar met the emira’s gaze. Would she do it? He didn’t think so, but was he prepared to stake his life on it? If he raised a Will-shield against her, would she read that as proof of his guilt?
She studied him. He knew what she was thinking. If he’d suspected all along that the emperor had forces in the city, why hadn’t he told her? And what other things might he be keeping from her? Like, say, Avallon’s admission in their meeting yesterday that Erin Elal, and not the Sabian League, would be Augera’s first target in the coming conflict?
The Guardian swallowed. The fence between the two sides was feeling a lot more uncomfortable to sit on, suddenly.
“If all this is true,” he said, “why hasn’t Jambar seen the danger before?”
“Apparently he has. Apparently he dismissed it as too remote to bother me with.” Mazana examined the knife again. “Perhaps he was too willing to give your emperor the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps I have been guilty of making the same mistake.”
“And what has changed that Jambar is now so sure of his predictions?”
“The coming of Avallon to Gilgamar, for one thing. My meeting with Hex, for another. Back in Olaire, there was no foreseeing those two events would come to pass. Now that they have done, a veil has been lifted from the shaman’s eyes.”
“He sees clearly now, does he? Has he been able to tell you what happened to the stone-skins on the Eternal, then? Has he told you where they are now?” Senar paused then went on, “He sees only what he wants to see, Emira. And tells you only what he wants you to know.”
Not unlike the Guardian himself, he realized.
Mazana did not respond.
But she didn’t sheathe her knife either.
* * *
Floating in spiritual form to one side of Mazana and Senar, Romany watched the quarrel play out. Earlier she’d heard Jambar tell the emira about this Erin Elalese plot, but she found it no easier to credit now than she had then. If they’d been plotting something, after all, wouldn’t Romany have caught a hint of it along her web?
Unless the plotting had been done outside the Alcazar’s walls, of course.
She frowned. Events in Gilgamar were moving apace, what with the goings-on at the harbor. She wondered if she’d made a mistake by confining her web to the Alcazar. It was too late to worry about that now, though. Her web within the building continued to corrode, and her priority must be the repair of the existing strands rather than the creation of new ones. Besides, her purpose here in Gilgamar was a simple one: to observe the emira and strike at the appropriate time.
And she had an opportunity to do that now if she wanted to take it.
She had no idea whether Mazana really planned to stab Senar, but if the emira hadn’t meant to use Fume’s knife, she shouldn’t have unsheathed it. Her eyes had that raw red edge that Romany had seen in Darbonna’s cell. A memory rose of the old woman’s final moments, and the priestess shuddered. Mazana stroked a finger along her dagger’s blade. Working herself up to something, perhaps? If so, would Senar try to stop her? Or would he just stand there and look hurt when the knife carved him open?
Romany considered. What to do? The Spider had been reluctant to remove one of her own game pieces from the board, and Romany found herself of a similar mind. Something was brewing in Gilgamar, and it seemed reckless to act before the priestess knew all the facts. The stone-skins were coming, that much at least was clear. But why? And was their target just Erin Elal or all the nations hereabouts? If they’d set their sights on the Sabian League, wouldn’t killing Mazana play into their hands? With the other Storm Lords dead, the emira was the only one who could claim to speak for the whole League. If she died, the chance of a coordinated response to an invasion might be lost with her.
Romany shook her head in irritation. She was getting too far ahead of herself. In Olaire, the Spider had left to her the choice of when to dispatch Mazana, not if—meaning the consequences, whatever they might be, were none of her concern. Perhaps that was just as well too. There were times, like now, when Romany was glad to be able to leave the hard decisions to the goddess. To be shielded from the responsibilities of her actions. And yet there was no denying that her hand would be the one guiding Shroud’s blade. No denying either that Romany, by arguing in Olaire for Mazana to be eliminated, might have played a part in the Spider’s judgment.
Eliminated. Such a disingenuous word. What she meant was “murdered.” Why not just say it?
Romany watched Mazana close to within a step of Senar. The priestess had already squandered a chance to dispose of the woman when she let the Guardian creep up on her at the portal. How long could Romany rely on him keeping quiet about that? How many more opportunities to kill Mazana would she get? And if the priestess needed to harden her heart against the emira, well, all she had to do was remember that strip of skin hanging down from Darbonna’s arm.
Remember? Hells, she’d be surprised if she ever forgot it.
An image of Uriel’s face appeared in her mind’s eye, but she pushed it away. The boy would be better off without his sister in the long run. And Romany could no more base her actions on how Uriel would be affected than she could on her desire to return to her temple in Mercerie.
Taking a breath, she started spinning her threads about Mazana.
And the knife in her hand.
* * *
Senar stared at Mazana, struggling to understand what had just happened. One moment the emira had been holding the knife, the next it had twisted in her grasp like it had a will of its own. His eyes widened as a bead of blood formed at the tip of Mazana’s finger. He grabbed her hand and pulled her to him, then pressed her finger against his cuff. As if a bit of pressure would defeat the knife’s sorcery! He had heard what happened to the palace guard who’d been cut by Darbonna. Would Mazana’s wound refuse to close, as the soldier’s had? Could she bleed out from so superficial a scratch?
The emira had gone pale. The dagger fell from her hand and clattered to the floor. Senar kicked its hilt and sent it spinning and skittering across the floor. He had to
clench his jaw to stop himself shouting in frustration. Hadn’t he known the weapon was dangerous? Hadn’t Romany urged him to take it from Mazana? Why hadn’t he done so? Because it had slipped his mind? Or because he had feared a clash with the emira over it? And why not? he thought bitterly. What was the worst that could happen if he put off the confrontation?
In the next room, Uriel started coughing. Mazana tried to take back her hand, but Senar held her firm. He saw his fear mirrored in her eyes. Her breath came quickly. She pulled back again, and this time he relented. On his cuff, where her finger had bled into it, was a mark. Just a small stain, not the large blemish he’d expected. Mazana laid her injured finger across the palm of her other hand. Her gash was thin as a paper cut, and tainted by the same sorcery Senar had detected in the dagger. Blood gathered at its edges. But it did not well up to form a bead. Instead it soaked into the skin around it—just as the servant’s blood had done earlier when it came into contact with the emira’s hand.
Mazana stared at her finger. Then she brushed a thumb over it. It came back with the faintest smudge of crimson. So the flow hadn’t ceased completely, but it wasn’t as fast either as when the cut was first made. Mazana turned her finger to see if the blood would gather and drip. It didn’t. Senar’s thoughts raced. Her finger was absorbing the blood as fast as it seeped from the cut. Did that mean she was taking it back into her body? Did that mean she was … safe?
Mazana trembled. Senar sensed something building inside her, sensed her struggling to hold it in. He wasn’t sure which of them moved first, but she was suddenly in his arms. Her breathing steadied.
Perhaps Senar should have felt relief at her apparent deliverance. Instead, though, he found himself thinking back to the time he’d held her like this after her run-in with Greave outside the temple of the Lord of Hidden Faces. Good old Senar, always there to lend a shoulder. Was this all he was to Mazana? A crutch to lean on when she faltered? And what did she offer in return?
A knife in his face, that’s what.
If the emira hadn’t cut herself, it might have been Senar wearing that scratch, and with decidedly less promising prospects too. Would he have deserved it, though? He’d preached Erin Elal’s cause to her at every turn. He’d told the emperor about the Chameleons’ mission to Bezzle. That was the problem with trying to be loyal to two masters: you ended up being a traitor to both—
A knock at the door.
Mazana and Senar sprang apart.
Jodren entered, his coral bird perched on his shoulder, trilling. When he saw Senar, his steps faltered.
The emira’s voice was tight. “Yes?”
Jodren hesitated, evidently unsure whether his news was fit for the Guardian’s ears.
“Out with it!”
He straightened. “I’ve just received word from Twist,” he said. “Seems the missing stone-skins have been spotted in the Lower City. My men are hunting them now.”
* * *
Romany listened to Mazana order Senar to the Lower City. She wondered if that strange feeling at the back of her spiritual throat was disappointment or relief. She should have inflicted a more grievous wound, she knew. Something that severed a major artery perhaps, or pierced an organ. But that would have called for a more conspicuous manipulation of the knife, and thus risked arousing Senar’s suspicions. Then again, why did she think he would have identified Romany as the culprit? And even if he had done, he’d have had some explaining of his own to do to the executioner once he was found alone with Mazana’s corpse and a bloody knife.
The priestess sighed. She hadn’t been thinking clearly before her attempt on the emira’s life. Too many doubts clouding her mind. Now she considered it, instead of trying to cut Mazana, she could have induced the woman to turn the knife on Senar, for with the Guardian out of the way, Romany would have been free to reinvestigate the possibility of luring the emira through the portal.
All just speculation now.
Jodren was talking to Mazana about beefing up the number of Gray Cloak patrols in the Alcazar, and Romany took that as her cue to leave. Back to her quarters to lick her wounds and plan her next move.
When another opportunity to strike came, she would have to be better prepared.
CHAPTER 20
THERE WAS dust on Senar’s tongue as he halted beside Twist. Hanging from hooks in a wall on the opposite side of the street were racks of ribs, black with flies. Beneath, a pair of dogs stood on their hind legs, scratching at the stones in their efforts to reach the meat. In a doorway with a crimson-spattered frame stood a bare-chested man. A line of scar tissue ran up from his left armpit and over his shoulder, so thick it looked like the arm might once have been severed and sewn back on. Farther along, two more Gilgamarians squatted barefoot in the dust, watching Senar.
Twist hawked and spat. On his shoulder was perched Jodren’s coral bird. Not for the first time, Senar wondered why Twist hadn’t challenged him to a duel when he had challenged everyone else. Because Mazana had told him not to, perhaps? But why?
The mercenary stared at the hooks with their grisly loads.
“Missed breakfast?” Senar asked.
Twist grunted. “Did the chica send you?”
The Guardian nodded. Mazana had insisted he come, more because she wanted him out of the way, he suspected, than because she thought he was needed. And Senar wasn’t complaining if it meant he got time to do some thinking. Or should that be more thinking? He grimaced. If he took any longer to choose his path, he might end up looking indecisive. “What happened here?” he said, glancing at the blood-framed door.
“Not here,” Twist said. “At a cantina a few streets away. Nice place. Hey, they even got chairs.” He spat again. “Stone-skins stopped by this morning to pay their respects, some time after the seventh bell. Weren’t no warnin’. They just walked in with steel bared and started swingin’.”
“After the seventh bell? But the Eternal only arrived at half past the sixth.”
“Busy bastards, ain’t they?”
“How many stone-skins were at the cantina?”
“Coulda been four, coulda been forty,” Twist said. “By the time we got here, there weren’t many folks willin’ to sing chapter and verse.”
“Anyone you know among the dead?”
“Not as I’d want to admit to, if you gets my meanin’.”
“And that’s it? No other targets were hit?”
“No.”
An old woman shuffled up to buy some meat from the scarred man. When he carved half a dozen ribs from one of the racks, the flies covering it scattered. The woman started screeching like she’d thought they’d been included in the price.
From around a corner along the street, Mili and Tali appeared. They strutted up in their gossamer robes.
“If it ain’t the new recruits,” Twist said. “Let’s hear it.”
Tali stretched like a cat. “Plenty of sightings…”
“… of the stone-skins, O Great One.”
“But then there have been sightings…”
“… of the executioner, too, along with everyone…”
“… from the Faerie Queen of Imbar to…”
“… the Demon Lord of the Ninth Hell.”
Senar considered. “Any chance this talk of Augerans is just a ruse? Any chance someone could have heard about what happened on the Eternal and used the stone-skins as a front to settle scores?”
Twist barked a laugh. “You reckon folks round here need a front for that sort of thing? Besides, the timing’s wrong. News from the Eternal didn’t break till after this went down.”
The Guardian nodded absently, his thoughts troubled. There was something wrong about this. Assuming the Augerans who’d hit the cantina had come from the Eternal, why pick a fight with the locals and advertise their presence? Why come to this nowhere part of the city at all? He looked round again, wondering what he wasn’t seeing. Along the street he’d taken to get here, dust hung in the air as if a team of horses had just p
assed this way. Beyond, the buildings of the Upper City were a distant smudge of white, and if he craned his neck he could make out the battlements of the Key Tower to the southeast. Closer, nothing rose higher from the ground than the single-story mud-brick shanties all about.
“Why here?” he mused aloud, then looked at Twist. “Why would the stone-skins come here?”
“Been askin’ myself the same question. Ain’t nothin’ round here but flies and dust.”
“What about the Erin Elalese Mazana’s had you watching? Are they close by?”
“Close enough. Don’t see how the stone-skins coulda known that, though. And even if they did, don’t see what they gain by marchin’ into that cantina and redecoratin’ the walls.”
Tali said, “Maybe they wanted us…”
“… to know they were here.”
Twist nodded his agreement. “Explains the fireworks. City like this, you get a lot of background noise. Stone-skins had to make sure they shouted loud enough to get our attention.”
Senar’s skin prickled. And why would the Augerans want them looking in this part of the city unless they didn’t want them looking somewhere else? Like a trickster showing the lure with one hand as he lightens your purse with the other.
“Call off your search,” he said to Twist. “Pull your men back to the Upper City.”
The mercenary’s lips quirked. “Them’s the chica’s orders, are they?”
“Let’s pretend they are. Whatever the stone-skins are planning to do next, it won’t happen here. We need eyes on the Alcazar and the seawall. And we can’t watch them from here.”
Twist nodded, but did not move. He murmured something to Jodren’s coral bird, then twitched his shoulder and watched the animal take to the air. It disappeared behind the rooftops. The mercenary’s gaze shifted back to the man with the scarred shoulder.
“Was there something else?” Senar asked.
“That depends. Our friend there”—he gestured to the Gilgamarian—“was at the cantina when I showed up earlier. Red to the elbows, like he’d been wieldin’ a blade himself. Got me wonderin’ where that meat he’s been hawkin’ comes from.”