by Helen Lowe
Two down: Jehane Mor wondered how many more there were. Shield or no shield, given the limited size of the shrubbery the remaining assassins must pinpoint their location soon. Although at least the area was large enough that they could not simply pepper the undergrowth with arrows and rely on their job being done—assuming they had enough crossbowmen for that. She continued to lie still, tense with listening, as an owl hooted from further down the hill.
Another bird answered from a grove near the river as a pebble clicked on the adjoining path. The sound was so slight that without her shield in place, Jehane Mor might not have heard it. No other sound came, but she could sense the assassin now: feel rather than hear or see him move closer as his mind brushed against the perimeter of her psychic shield. She felt him hesitate, reacting to the shield’s compulsion to turn away—and Tarathan fired his second crossbow quarrel. The assassin cried out, then fell, howling and thrashing on the edge of the path.
“Run!” Tarathan was already up and moving toward her. “Back up the hill to the palace, since the other two are below us still.”
They ran, dodging between trees and shadows to confuse their attackers, and heard a shout and the rush of feet—followed by curses as the partygoers began pouring onto the terraces, calling out to know who was hurt and what was happening. Jehane Mor sprinted after Tarathan, up the grassy slope and into the lee of the palace as a detachment of armed, Athiri retainers pushed their way down the steps and onto the lawn. A quick look back showed two dark-clad figures veering toward deeper shadow. On the terraces, a woman began to scream, a thin, high, shocking sound.
“Assassins!” another voice shouted. “Send for the Guard!” More Athiri retainers shouldered through the throng and onto the lawn, and the assassins fled, racing back down the hill toward the river while the armsmen moved in cautious pursuit.
“Do we come out now, outraged but unharmed?” Jehane Mor asked.
Tarathan shook his head, rewinding the crossbow behind a marble buttress. He still had the falcon mask, she noted; he must have shoved it into his belt when they dived into the shrubbery. “Too dangerous. I don’t trust these people. We need to get back to the Guild House as quickly as we can.”
They turned and walked away, keeping to the shadows cast by the palace as they made for the far side of the complex and the main gates. The gates were guarded, but the retainers there were all staring toward the gardens, intent on the clamor concealed by the palace buildings. “Even with your shielding, we won’t get by. We’d have to pass too close to them. If we go farther along,” Tarathan nodded toward the stables and their adjoining buildings, “we can scale the wall.”
They angled away from the gate, hugging the shadow of the palace outbuildings until they saw a gnarled tree growing between the stable and the wall. After a last, careful check, first Jehane Mor and then Tarathan climbed the tree and dropped over into the lane that separated the Athiri palace from the neighboring residence. The walls on either side were high, the lane deserted, but the thoroughfare at its far end was crowded. A fresh burst of fireworks split the night over Landward, and most of those in the busy street craned to look, apparently unaware of any disturbance in the Athiri palace.
Tarathan looked at the crossbow with regret, for although small, they did not have their cloaks and the weapon would be impossible to conceal. “Time to blend with the crowd, unfortunately,” he said, and pushed the crossbow over the top of the wall and into the grounds of the adjoining residence. Jehane Mor knotted the broken strings of his now-battered mask together, to make sure it stayed on, before they left the lane and moved into the heart of the festival crowd, strolling toward Westgate. The jostling, brightly colored throng made it difficult for Jehane Mor to hold her concealing shield in place, but she knew the sheer number of people around them would also screen their passage. Reluctantly, she let the shield go.
Although outwardly relaxed, she was aware of the crackling tension in Tarathan, mirroring her own. Her training allowed her to walk slowly, applauding the firebreather on the next street corner and exchanging a jest, rather than an insult, when an intoxicated reveler lurched into her. Beneath the apparent calm, her thoughts churned: she had heard of unlicensed assassinations happening before, but never against heralds. And an unlicensed attack should mean one rogue assassin, not five acting together. For assassins to defy the law in such numbers—she bit her lip and thought uneasily about the unprecedented lack of School activity in the dispute between Emaln and Sirith, a dispute that had now come to the brink of war.
“Enemy. There.” She followed Tarathan’s thought and caught the quick dart of movement, ducking below the roofline of a nearby inn. A moment later, a black-clad figure eased into view again and aimed a crossbow down at them. Both heralds leapt for the protection of an overhanging canopy as others in the crowd saw the assassin and yelled, scattering apart.
Jehane Mor caught at the light breeze with her mind and funneled a gust of dust and festival debris up from the street and into the assassin’s face. The crossbow wavered and the heralds were at the corner by the time he recovered. They swung into a narrower street that led to one of the many small canals that threaded the city; this one was wide enough to warrant a wooden bridge, the arch garlanded with festival streamers. Tarathan swung over the parapet and beneath the bridge, steadying Jehane Mor as she slid down beside him. Her camouflaging shield was already back in place as they climbed into the deep shadow of the struts that supported the bridge.
They lay there for a long time, listening to the passing and repassing of footsteps overhead and studying the reflections cast across the water. Two black-clad figures hung head down from either side of the bridge to peer into the darkness underneath, but did not detect the heralds flattened against the struts. “Three more on the bridge overhead.” Tarathan’s mindvoice was dark. “That makes ten altogether. So far.”
The heralds did not move for a long, bone-chilling half hour after the assassins left. “And this time,” Tarathan said, as they eased down onto the damp stone of the canal edge, “we leave the masks.”
Jehane Mor took off the exquisite owl mask, studying it thoughtfully as she recalled how Prince Ath had boomed out his offer of masks last night, yet had not seemed to notice their new masks at all, earlier in the evening. “Because he did not send them.”
Tarathan nodded, his eyes gleaming through the darkness as he tied the falcon mask around one of the struts. Jehane Mor tied the owl visage beside it, thinking that some river urchin was going to have a fine disguise for next year’s festival. She shook her head. “It’s impossible to know who to suspect when so many heard Prince Ath’s offer.”
“That’s easy.” Tarathan untied his distinctive knot of braids and let them fall between his tunic and his coat, turning up the collar. “We suspect everybody.”
But Jehane Mor was frowning as they resumed their indirect course toward Westgate and the Guild House, keeping to canal banks and unlit lanes. “Could it have been the minstrel who ordered this?” she asked. “We’ve suspected for some time that the Ilvaine have ties to the School of Assassins, as well as to the Sages and the Minstrels.”
“Close enough to influence ten assassins to break Ijiri and River law for him?” Tarathan shook his head. “It doesn’t ring true, especially when he has lived on the Derai Wall for so long. But we can take nothing for granted right now, rule no one out.”
It was almost an hour later, having twisted and ducked across the city, that they turned into the long street where the Guild House stood. The noise of the festival fell away, cut off by the large buildings and high walls that lined the thoroughfare. All the trading houses were silent, unlit except for the legally required lantern above their closed gates. The few residences were quiet as well, closed in behind shuttered windows and barred gates. The heralds did not speak, but their footsteps quickened—until Tarathan stopped, placing a hand on Jehane Mor’s arm and drawing her against the nearest wall. Startled, she followed his gaze up the long
street to the Guild House gate. The lantern set above it was dark, and although the gate stood ajar, as though waiting for festivalgoers to return, no light or sound flowed out into the midnight street. Everything was utterly still.
Chapter 5
The Guild House
“I don’t like it,” said Tarathan.
Jehane Mor knew what he meant: the gate should either be closed, or if heralds were still coming and going, then why were there no lights inside? In either case, the gate lantern should be lit. “If you go around the back,” she said, “I’ll wait until you’re inside, then come in through the front.” She paused. “Then we shall see.”
“We shall,” agreed Tarathan grimly, and was up and over the wall of a nearby house before Jehane Mor had taken her first step into deeper shadow, away from the circle of light cast by the nearest gate lantern. Cautiously, she moved along the street, staying out of the light and keeping her psychic shield up, but nothing disturbed its outer edge. She stopped in another pool of shadow ten paces from the Guild House gate, which gaped at her, silent as an unanswered question.
The minutes lengthened, but Jehane Mor remained motionless until she felt the touch of Tarathan’s mind, letting her know he was inside the Guild House grounds. The moment she broke cover, slipping out of the shadows and toward the unlit entrance, she caught movement from the corner of her eye. Her head whipped around as a dense inky blot, with long tendrils trailing beneath it, detached from an eave diagonally opposite the gate. The tendrils exploded toward her in a jet of black matter, and she sprang back, gathering her power to counterattack—only to drop to the ground for the second time that night as an arrow sang.
But the unseen archer was not aiming at her and the arrow flew true, piercing the attacker’s ink-black core. The creature shrieked, one long, keening whistle, before folding in on itself and collapsing to the street.
Jehane Mor rose to her feet, taking in the stain of black matter oozing across the cobblestones as the archer jumped neatly down from a vine-hung balcony, half a block away. He fitted another arrow to the string, quartering the street and surrounding roofs with his eyes before he walked toward her, but it was not until he drew near that she recognized Tirorn of the Derai.
“Darkspawn,” he said matter-of-factly, as if answering a question, and continued to watch the street. His mouth tightened as his gaze flicked to the ooze on the cobblestones. “A particularly nasty little lurker by nature, and aggressive, too, if it catches you unaware. Smotherer is another name we use, because they wrap their tendrils around a victim’s face and neck and choke them to death. We get infestations of them around my home keep, from time to time.”
Jehane Mor studied him, seeing no sign of the man who had lounged at his ease beside the Farelle bridge. “Is that why you are here?” she asked. “Hunting this creature?”
His sidelong glance was, she thought, careful. “In part,” he replied. “We caught some purported Ijiri traders trying to smuggle them out of the Gray Lands, but unfortunately neither the traders nor the lurkers were prepared to be taken alive. Our Earl decided that we had better find out who wanted lurkers that badly and why—and how many they had already obtained. I have been tracking this one for most of today, but there may well be more about.”
She continued to watch him closely. “Tracking it back to its base, or away from it?”
“That,” he replied dryly, “was what I was trying to find out.”
“But now it’s dead,” she said, “so you have lost the trail. I am in your debt.”
Tirorn shrugged. “Perhaps if you had been a warrior and well armed, I might have let you take your chance. But I know these creatures, and you, Mistress Herald, were at a serious disadvantage with only that toy knife of yours.” He looked down at her, and the dim light could not hide the glint in his eyes. “You could take this as repayment for your help at the bridge, but if you do not see the assistance rendered as being of equal kind—” He shrugged again. “Well, I understand that others among our Alliance owe you a debt of honor that has never been repaid.”
Jehane Mor concealed her surprise that he knew of that. “We do not regard our service to the Earl of Night five years ago as a debt, if that is what you mean.” She followed his gaze up and down the shadowed street. “What are you looking for? More lurkers?”
“Or the black-clad friends that accompanied this one here. There were a great many of them,” he said when her head turned sharply toward the Guild House gate, “and they were already leaving when I arrived. I assume they posted the lurker to watch for latecomers, such as yourself.” He frowned at the gate. “They may also have left other watchers inside—and you and your companion only have knives.”
Jehane Mor’s heart was thudding with tension and fear and she had to struggle to keep her herald’s mask in place. But her tone was calm. “I need to go in,” she said.
“You had better let me go with you.” Tirorn moved toward the gate. “You’ll need someone to guard your back.”
She hesitated, aware that Tarathan was inside the house itself now, although he had not signaled any alarm. “I didn’t think Derai involved themselves in the affairs of others?”
“I involved myself when I shot the lurker.” The look Tirorn shot her was searching. “Are you ready for this?”
Her answer was to step through the gate. At first she thought the yard was empty, with just the usual mix of moonlight and shadow falling across the cobbles. Then she saw that there were darker, more solid shadows sprawled in corners and fallen across doorways. Silently, she knelt by the first body, gazing down into the blank face and unseeing eyes.
“A friend?” asked Tirorn, who had remained standing, intent on the darkened apertures of house and stable.
Jehane Mor shook her head. “Someone I knew slightly, from chance meetings on the road. But a comrade, nonetheless.” She looked around at the other bodies, slumped in death, and was aware of a sense of unreality, as though in a moment the corpses would stir back into life again and sit up, laughing at the success of their festival jest. She and Tarathan had known danger many times on the road, had encountered brigands and murderers and been pursued through wild country by those sworn to vengeance, but this—this was the Guild House in Ij, where heralds had been protected by law for centuries.
The ivy that grew across the stable’s roof and wall stirred as she rose to her feet. Tirorn’s bow came up, then checked as a small owl emerged. “It’s an eave owl,” Jehane Mor told him. “They’re sacred to Imulun, the Mother Goddess.”
Slowly, he lowered the bow. “Your patron deity?”
Again she shook her head. “The Guild serves Seruth, the lightbringer, guardian of journeys.”
Tirorn nodded, but remained silent. And why, thought Jehane Mor, should the gods of the River mean anything to him, when the Derai had their alien pantheon of Nine? She pushed this thought aside, striving to center herself in the reality of timber and stone and ivy. But the stink of death and blood was everywhere, blunting her senses.
“Where is your friend?” Tirorn asked finally. “What is he doing?”
“Hunting,” Jehane Mor said. She walked across the courtyard to the main door of the house, which had been forced open. A knot of bodies lay across the threshold, and this time not all of them wore gray.
“Here,” said Tirorn, “the attackers lost their element of surprise.”
Jehane Mor said nothing, for the herald dead still bore no weapons other than their daggers; it was only on journeys outside the River lands that the Guild went armed. She pulled the two black-clad bodies inside the door aside and found Naia’s body beneath them. A knife was buried hilt deep in her chest, and Jehane Mor put a hand over the housekeeper’s eyes, closing them. “I don’t think there’s anyone left alive,” she said, and kept her tone cool as water, giving nothing away.
“Not that I’ve been able to find.” Tarathan emerged from the darkness at the end of the hall, wiping the blade of his knife clean as he joined them.
The Derai’s gaze flicked to the blade, then back to Tarathan’s face. “So they did leave watchers behind. Are you sure you got them all?”
“Yes. Two assassins.” Tarathan sheathed the knife and asked the question the Derai would expect, although he already knew the answer through the mindlink with Jehane Mor. “What brings you here?”
“Hunting a Darkswarm minion,” Tirorn replied. “It was working with the assassins who killed your comrades.”
Tarathan frowned. “Swarm minions in alliance with the School of Assassins. That’s not good.”
“Must it be the School?” Jehane Mor asked, arguing against her own foreboding. The implications, for Ij and the River, of the School and its Masters overturning centuries of precedent and pursuing unlicensed vendetta against anyone, let alone the Guild, were profoundly disturbing. The alternative, that a sizable part of the School had turned rogue and declared their defection so publicly, was almost as worrying. “How could this have been building,” she asked silently, “and no one heard anything, no one have known?”
Tarathan stared down at Naia. “They don’t call it the Secret Isle for no reason.” The edge to his voice could have quarried stone. “What if the School no longer wishes to be one amongst Three, and the followers of Kan have decided to come out of the shadows and rule alone? Who would stand in the way of their ambition?”
“All those who have held the River lands together since the days of the Cataclysm,” Jehane Mor answered softly, “including the Guild of Heralds. But if this is the work of the School, and not just rebel elements within it, then we dare not go to the Conclave.”
“No,” said Tarathan. “We must flee Ij. The rest of the River must be warned.”
“If this strike is not already one of many, up and down its length,” she said, expressing her deepest fear. “What of our people who may still be abroad in the city?” she added silently. “There were no other mindspeakers here, so we cannot warn them that way.”