The Queen's Blade V - Master of the Dance

by T C Southwell

  At dawn, he camped in the forest, wrapped in a thick blanket Rayan had provided, and fell into a restless doze. When he set off again at dusk, his wounds throbbed once more, and he medicated it with wine and port as he rode, dulling the pain. Distant fires glowed in the night as angry Cotti soldiers put farms to the torch, their frustration growing with each day that they did not find the assassin who had slain their prince.

  Blade encountered a Cotti patrol and put on another convincing act, only this time the soldiers were more offended by his stench and pushed him into the gutter, where he lay until they left. They did not take his horse, however, and he blessed the fact that it was such a worthless animal. The rough handling renewed his wound's vicious throbbing, and he dared not remove all the padding in order to check if it was bleeding. Once again, he was forced to walk for some distance before he found a rock to use as a mounting block, which sapped his strength further. When he camped, he found hard journey bread and dried meat in the saddle bags, which the thoughtful Rayan had provided, and ate some before he slept.

  The journey continued thus for several days, each one depleting his dwindling vitality. His progress was slow, especially after the port ran out. On the fourth day, he came to a village and took a room at the local inn, posing as a poor farmer on his way to visit his sick father. The tale of Endor's demise had reached them, and although the searchers had not come yet, Blade retained his disguise. He spent a day resting in a comfortable bed, and sent a serving boy to purchase a vial of strong painkiller from the local herb seller. The medicine made him sleepy, but numbed the wound.

  Fourteen days later, he reached the Jashimari border, a journey that should have taken a tenday. He was a good two tendays behind the Contara assassins, and he knew his chances of reaching Jondar before they struck were growing slim. As his wounds healed and his strength returned, he set a faster pace, foregoing the cob's jolting trot and making it canter, which was more comfortable. Unfortunately, he had to let it rest often, since it was an old animal.

  In the first Jashimari inn, he shed his disguise and bathed, glad to be free of the stench. He picked the scab off the wound in his belly, which had healed despite the lack of attention. It still ached deep inside when he exerted himself too much, and he took care not to overdo it. The innkeeper did not recognise him when he left, but took his money without complaint. He sold the old horse and purchased a younger, faster animal, which the vendor assured him had good stamina. He put that claim to the test, trying to make up for lost time, and found it to be true.

  Each day, he rode the mare to the brink of exhaustion, and after four days he was forced to sell it and buy another, since riding it to death would leave him stranded on the road. Once again he was fortunate in his choice, and continued to set a fast pace, often covering a day and a half's journey in one. The days grew colder as autumn turned into winter, and a few light snow showers fell, adding to his urgency. He spent many bitter nights camped beside the road, for the speed of his travel meant that there was often no town to shelter in when dusk fell.

  Blade arrived in Jondar as the Warrior Moon waned and the Sea Moon began to show its rippled face, two moon phases after leaving Ashmarad. A thin layer of snow covered the roofs and rimed the window ledges, hid the piles of refuse and gave the city an air of cleanliness it did not deserve. Jondar bustled with its usual activity, and he was relieved to be home. As dusk fell, he sold his horse at a livery and walked to the palace, reviewing the plan he had formulated on his journey. He waited for twilight to thicken into night before he climbed the palace wall and flitted through the gardens to the wall beneath Chiana's window.

  There he waited for two patrols to pass, then moved out of the shadows and looked up, finding the window dark, which suited him. Either Chiana had not yet returned to her rooms, or she had retired for the night. Either way, he could enter undetected and wait for her to return, or wake her. He had no intention of alerting the palace to his presence by walking through the front door. It would only make the Contara assassins take more precautions once they learnt of it. He planned to stay hidden in Chiana's rooms until they made their attempt, then surprise them. She would be more than happy to have his company, of that he had no doubt.

  A frisson of alarm bristled his nape hairs, then his scalp prickled and his eyes snapped to the shadows as he whipped around. A dark form froze in the act of moving towards him, and Blade's hands flashed to the daggers in his belt. A whisper of sound came from beside him, and everything went dark.

  The Contara assassin turned his head and spat, glancing around at his companion, who stepped out of the shadows behind him.

  "I knew one of them would try to beat us to it."

  The second assassin studied the fallen man, who lay face down. "Who is it?"

  "Who cares?" the first drawled. "He's out of the running now."

  "Did you kill him?"

  "Don't reckon. He'll have a real headache, that's all."

  The second man scanned the garden. "Then let's get going, before another patrol comes along. We'd better hide him."

  "Aye."

  The assassins gripped their victim's ankles and dragged him into the bushes, pushing him out of sight without turning him over, then headed for a side entrance a few yards away along the palace wall. The soldiers posted there were already dead. The Contara assassins had been in the process of hiding the bodies when they had spotted the shadowy figure crossing the garden.

  Assuming that it was another of the four, they had waited for the opportunity to remove the competition. Some days ago, the Contara assassins had disagreed about working together, and two had decided to make individual attempts. Working together was an alien concept for assassins, and even the two who had agreed to a shared plan were uneasy about it. They finished stashing the bodies in the storeroom further along the passage and entered the gloomy interior beyond.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Blade came to with a gasp, roused by the furious jangling of all his internal alarms. Jerking his head up, he grimaced. His skull pounded, and it took a few moments for him to gather his wits and take stock of his situation. He fingered the lump on the back of his head, cursing. Whoever had hit him had almost cracked his skull, yet he was surprised they had not killed him. The realisation that it was almost certainly one of the Contara assassins formed in his stunned mind, which made his being left alive even more puzzling, but he did not have time to ponder it.

  With no idea of how much time had passed, he had to reach Chiana's room swiftly, or he might be too late. He scanned the garden for guards, then crawled out of the bushes and staggered to his feet, his head throbbing. Alerting the guards would do no good, even if he was of a mind to do so. They were more likely to arrest him and ask a lot of questions, and there was no time for that. Even if they recognised him and rushed to Chiana's aid, the assassin would lock her doors from the inside. The assassin would have reached her bedchamber by now, even if Blade had only been unconscious for a few minutes, and he was not about to risk her life on the unlikely possibility that he had not. Moving into the shadows next to the wall, he leant against it and clutched his head, stifling a groan.

  Every movement caused lances of agony to shoot through his skull, and his vision kept blurring as waves of dizziness washed over him. He glanced up at the window two floors above and winced, wishing he could take some of the pain-dulling herb. It would slow his reactions, though, and probably do nothing to stop the giddiness. He was in no condition to attempt the wall, but he had no choice if he wanted to avoid becoming Regent.

  With this in mind, he shouldered his bag and set his fingers and toes into the grooves between the stones, inching upwards. Keeping his eyes closed helped to negate the dizzy spells' effect, and when they came, he pressed himself to the stone and clung to it until they passed. Halfway up, he rested on the window ledge below Chiana's, rubbing his brow to try to rid himself of the terrible pounding in his skull. His ears rang and throbbed in unison with the rest of his head,
and his vision still blurred occasionally. Forcing himself to move on, he hooked his fingers into the next crack and hauled himself up.

  By the time he reached the balcony, a cold sweat sheathed him in icy moisture and his stomach was knotted. He leant against the cold stone railing, his breath forming clouds of steam. Until he had climbed the wall, he had not realised how tired he was. It all seemed to have caught up with him at once, compounded by the blow to his head. He would not have performed an assassination in such a poor condition, and now he was being forced to do something far more dangerous. When his arms stopped trembling, he rose and crept to the door, lifted the latch with the slim metal tool he carried for that purpose and eased the door open just enough to allow him to crawl inside.

  Turning sharply, he slipped into the nearest shadow and crouched there, stretching out his damaged senses to locate anyone in the room. He sensed Chiana's sleeping presence in the canopied bed, her soft, deep breaths audible in the silence. At first he sensed nothing else, and was just about to step out of the shadows and walk across the suite to alert the guards outside her door to the threat of the Contara assassin, when the faint scent of a tobacco pouch reached him.

  The smell did not belong in the Regent's bed chamber. In the still air it did not give him the location of its owner, and when he scanned the room he could not make out any alien shapes in the shadows. He waited, his keen nose detecting the imperceptible essence of stale sweat and rancid breath. Straining his ringing ears, he tried to detect the intruder's breathing, which would give away his location. After a few moments, he decided that the assassin was breathing through his mouth to minimise the sounds, which was why he could smell the foetid aroma of sour wine.

  Blade settled back into the shadows, using the same tactic as the intruder to remain hidden, only he did not carry such smelly items as tobacco, nor did he have bad breath. Also, a man who owned such a stench would not detect the smell of another, and although he had just spent a day in the saddle, he doubted that his odour could compete. He wondered if his entry had been noticed, but doubted it, since it had been silent, and, apart from the brief opening of the door, undetectable.

  The possibility that he may have to fight the strange assassin made him reach into his bag and draw out his boot-blades. Using immense caution, he strapped them on, covering the metal soles with the soft leather sheaths that improved his grip and silenced the blades' clacking. He had sharpened and repaired them as well as he could on the journey, and, although one was shortened, they were still deadly. Pushing his bag behind him, he crouched and froze, his hands on the hilts of the daggers in his belt.

  Several minutes passed in utter silence, then Chiana snorted and tossed, making him stiffen for an instant before he forced himself to relax again. Nervousness was useful to an assassin, but not when innocent distractions triggered it. While he waited, he pondered the incredible coincidence that had brought him to the palace on the night when one of the Contara assassins made his attempt. Or perhaps fate had once more taken him in its fickle grip, he thought bitterly. If, as Shamsara had said, he was an instrument of Tinsharon, then his presence here was preordained, and he almost wished he was somewhere else.

  To be used thus, even by God, rankled. One of his legs cramped, and he shifted to ease it, which made his knees ache. He was growing far too old for his trade, and, although his patience had improved, his ability to remain still in awkward positions had definitely deteriorated. At least the waves of dizziness had ceased to wash over him, and it seemed that he had not lain unconscious in the flowerbed for too long if the Contara assassin was still making his way across the suite. The guards outside were certainly dead, and the doors barred from the inside, if the assassin was any good.

  Blade's eyes were jerked to the sitting room door as a flitting shadow crossed it, and he tensed. His thigh cramped, and he cursed silently as he was forced to stretch out his leg to ease it. As the pain ebbed, the movement came again. This time the dark figure eased around the door like an oozing, solid shadow, and paused.

  Blade held his breath, his gaze riveted to the stealthy figure, which would melt into the gloom if he did not concentrate on it. It moved again, creeping towards the bed, and closer to Blade. He rose slowly, using the power of his legs to hold himself in a half crouch, his bent legs ready to propel him forward with strength gleaned from years of dancing. The intruder paused a couple of yards from the bed and drew a long, slender dagger from his belt, then stepped forward again.

  Blade left the shadows with swift, silent strides that ate up the distance between him and his target, yanking the daggers from his belt. He arrived beside the intruder as silently as a hunting cat stalking its prey, and reached out to slash the strange assassin's throat. The slight movement of air caused by his arrival alerted the intruder a moment too soon. He spun, jerked back and dropped into a crouch as Blade's dagger parted the air where his throat had been an instant before.

  The Jashimari assassin followed his target with deadly intent, stabbing him in the arm as he jerked aside to avoid the blow and lost his footing in the process. The stranger grabbed Blade's wrist, pulled him down and sent him sprawling with a soft thud and grunt. The man rolled to his feet as fast as Blade did, and like him, was difficult to see in the darkness. Blade could not glance away for fear of losing sight of his opponent, and lunged at the intruder again, feinted with one dagger and stabbed his foe in the side with the other as the man swayed aside to avoid the ruse. The Contara assassin backed into a small table and upset it, sending a delicate pottery vase to the floor with a terrific crash.

  Chiana awoke with a gasp and sat up, peering into the darkness, which, apart from the faint moonlight that streamed in through the window, was complete. Picking up the tinderbox beside the bed, she sent a shower of sparks onto the oil lamp's wick, which flared into brilliant flame, making her squint. Without bothering to put on the glass, she turned to see what had made the noise that had woken her, and gasped again in surprise.

  Two assassins faced each other a couple of yards beyond the foot of her bed, one of whom she recognised.

  "Blade!"

  The second man glanced at her, then back at Blade. "So, it was you I hit in the garden, not one of the other two. The Queen's Blade himself."

  The Jashimari assassin's frown deepened. "And I don't appreciate the headache."

  "I should have killed you."

  "Yes, you should."

  "Then I'll do it now."

  Blade shook his head. "I doubt that."

  "And when I've finished with you, I'll kill her."

  "Not when you're dead."

  The Contara assassin smirked. "Don't count on winning this encounter, old man. You should have stayed in retirement."

  Chiana shook herself from her stunned immobility and shouted, "Guards!"

  "Do not waste your breath, they are dead," Blade growled. She slid across the bed to reach the bell-pull, and he shot her a swift glance. "Stay where you are."

  The intruder chuckled. "You're not going to save her, elder. I'm half your age and twice as fast. You don't stand a chance."

  "I wouldn't wager on it, Contara pup. I've forgotten more about killing than you'll ever learn."

  "Then what are you waiting for?"

  "You to try to kill me, of course."

  Chiana clutched the bedclothes to her, watching the assassins with deep trepidation. Her confidence in Blade's ability was such that she was hardly afraid for herself, but she feared he would be hurt in this deadliest of encounters. In fact, he already looked injured. He held his head at an angle, and his features were pinched with pain. Tearing her eyes from the men, she turned to set the glass on the lamp and light another, hoping the extra illumination would help her husband. The assassins stood frozen, and she wondered what the intruder was waiting for.

  Then, as if alerted by a sixth sense, Blade spun and dropped as a second grey-clad figure emerged from the shadows behind him. A steely glitter flashed through the air where he had been
standing an instant before. The dagger clattered off the far wall, and Blade rolled to his feet and flicked one of his weapons, which missed the moving shadow of the second assassin by a hair. Chiana yelped as the first man turned and ran towards her. Blade swung, his feet slipping on the smooth floor, and launched himself at her attacker. The first assassin whipped around to face Blade, ducked and spun aside to avoid the slash of Blade's weapon.

  Chiana crawled to the head of the bed and crouched there, ready to flee, her heart pounding and her breath catching with terror. Her confidence had vanished now that two strange assassins attacked her husband. The second assassin emerged from the shadows, circling Blade with daggers in his fists. Blade drew a second dagger from his wrist sheath to replace the one he had thrown. The first assassin smirked.

  "Not so confident now, eh, elder?"

  "I could take on four of your ilk, pup," Blade snarled.

  "You're breaking the code, defending a target. Assassins don't defend. We're not guardians."

  "She's my wife, you imbecile."

  "Another blatant flouting of the code."

  "I don't care for your opinions, Contara scum."

  The man behind Blade moved, and Chiana opened her mouth to shout a warning. Blade whipped around, ducked the slash that would have opened his throat and stabbed at the second assassin's belly. The Contara assassin swayed aside in the nick of time, and the first assassin launched himself at Blade's back, causing Chiana to draw breath to shout again, but once more she was too slow.

  Blade spun and leapt, lashing out with a foot. The first assassin staggered back, struck in the chest. He gaped at the blood that trickled from the wound, then his eyes flicked to Blade's feet and his expression hardened. He lunged at Blade, slashing with both daggers. Blade spun away and launched himself into a high whirling leap, his blade-tipped feet slashing the air. The second assassin, in the act of leaping forward, was forced to throw himself aside to avoid the razor-edged steel.