by Spurrier, Jo
Isidro frowned at the passage. ‘Do it,’ he said. ‘Is there any way I can help?’
‘Well, the hardest part will be carrying the books down — they’re blasted heavy. Mira’s servants could help, but can we trust them not to tell her clan? My people will try to plant spies among the Wolf’s men, and if there’s gossip, they’ll hear it.’
‘There are a couple of people I’d trust to keep quiet — Amaya and Anoa. Do you know which books you want to take?’
Delphine nodded. ‘We should take the blank stones, too, and the mage-lanterns.’
‘Come and pick the books out,’ Isidro said. ‘I’ll see if the girls can come and help.’
Delphine nodded and stood. ‘Oh, and here.’ She fumbled inside her jacket and pulled out the harness, fresh stones gleaming in the fittings. ‘I fixed it. I figured you’d need it.’
Delphine and Isidro were setting the last stone in place when one of Ardamon’s men came to tell them that the party was ready to depart. As Anoa helped Delphine carry her packs out to the cavern, grimacing at the weight of the books hidden within blankets and clothing, Isidro made one last pass to check that nothing important had been left.
As he stepped into the stairwell, the lights in the hall dimmed behind him, and Isidro couldn’t help but remember how he and Sierra had rushed down here on that first night. Everything had all seemed so full of promise then; he’d been so certain that the wonders of this place would save them. Now, he tasted only bitterness and disappointment that it all had come to nothing.
Or perhaps that was unfair. True, the last month or so had slammed them with one disaster after another, but they’d freed the slaves, discovered wonders beyond imagining, and he’d found a greater ally in Delphine than he’d ever expected. It was a bitter departure, but there were some points of sweetness to be had, and for those he was grateful.
As Isidro stepped into the main hall for the last time, a strange sound caught his attention. It was so soft that for a moment he doubted he’d heard it at all — but then it came again, the muffled sob of someone trying not to weep.
Isidro stopped in his tracks and cursed himself for a fool. ‘Nirveli?’
The wall remained blank. There was no sound other than the distant rush of water over the cascade.
‘Nirveli, I know you’re there. I’m sorry we have to leave you like this, but please come out and talk to me.’
For a moment nothing happened, but then a few very faint points of light appeared at the base of the wall. Slowly, they rose in a foggy haze and resolved into a picture of a stormy sea, choppy, broken waves that swelled and crashed in an endless fury. In the centre a narrow pier of rock rose above the water, just big enough for the woman who sat there with her knees drawn to her chest, wet hair plastered to her face as the waves churned and rain lashed down.
‘Nirveli,’ Isidro began, but words escaped him. He knew how it felt to be alone and helpless, abandoned by people one desperately wanted to keep close.
‘It’s alright, Isidro,’ Nirveli said. ‘I understand. I’m just a ghost, after all. The needs of the living are more important.’
‘I wish there was something we could do — so you wouldn’t be alone,’ Isidro said.
‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll just go to sleep again. I won’t even know you’re gone. And I suppose the Akharians will be here soon enough. I won’t talk to them, mind — I’ll just sit here and curse them from sun-up to sundown. What are they going to do about it? Kill me again?’
‘I promise someone will come back for you,’ Isidro said. ‘I’ll make sure you’re not left alone for another hundred years. Vasant should never have done this to you. If it’s what you want, when all this is over I’ll find a way to release you, I swear.’
‘I … you will?’ Nirveli looked up with hope in her eyes. ‘I was so afraid to die. I could feel myself sinking and I begged Vasi to help me. I never thought it would be like this.’
‘Nirveli, I swear it on my father’s name. I’ll set you free, however long it takes.’ Isidro heard someone in the passageway, and glanced around to see Mira coming towards him.
‘Isidro, we have to leave,’ she said, but her voice died at the sight of Nirveli. ‘Oh …’
The ghost wiped her face while rain still hammered the waves around her. ‘Go!’ she said. ‘Just go, your brother needs you. But I do hope you can keep your word, Isidro Balorica, however long it takes you. It’s not like I could go anywhere, after all. Go!’
Rasten woke when Kell did, attuned by habit and experience to the stirring of his master’s thoughts. He’d learnt long ago not to let Kell come upon him unawares, and the conditioning was enough to cut through the pounding headache he’d woken with.
He left Sierra sleeping, sprawled and limp across the narrow pallet. He frowned at the bruises and needle-marks that covered her back and upper arms, and then wondered why the sight made him angry. Pain was a fundamental part of the training, and of course it would leave its mark. It was expected — so why should it anger him? It was confusing, and on top of the pain in his head it was an unwelcome distraction on what was bound to be a long day.
Rasten padded through the halls to Kell’s chamber, where he poured his master’s wash-water and laid out his clothes. He admitted one of the king’s food-tasters and the terrified servant who brought the morning meal, and while Kell bathed and dressed Rasten had them both sample the food before dismissing them with a curt word.
The duties were familiar, but Rasten was on edge. He couldn’t be certain Angessovar had done as he intended. He might have decided the risk was too great, or been stymied by any number of incidental barriers — the wrong man on duty, the presence of an officer who would ask unwelcome questions. Rasten went through the morning tasks braced to find everything just as he left it, preparing himself to weather the storm when Sierra discovered Cammarian offered up like a beast on a butcher’s hook.
He followed his master to the corridor outside the workroom, where everything was as he had left it: the doors closed, the hall quiet, still and cold. The fire in the furnace had died down overnight.
When Kell opened the workroom door and paused, Rasten felt a flutter of relief in his chest.
There was a body propped against the wall with a knife in its ribs and one bloodied hand resting in its lap, as though the man had tried to pluck the blade free before his strength failed.
Kell looked him over and then strode to the hidden cell. The concealed door hung open, with a third corpse sprawled across the threshold. All were clothed, and none of them had Cammarian’s fair hair.
Too many bodies, Rasten thought. The more men who went missing to account for this scene, the more likely the tale would fall apart under examination.
Kell stopped in the doorway, and from the set of his master’s shoulders Rasten knew he didn’t like what he saw. ‘It would appear,’ Kell said, phrasing the words with great precision, ‘we have suffered an incursion. The door was left unbarred?’
‘The staples are rusted, sir,’ Rasten said. ‘They wouldn’t hold the weight of the bar, let alone a ram.’
‘Ah, yes, you did mention that.’ Kell turned, leaning on his cane, and behind him Rasten saw a fair-haired man hanging from a noose tied to the cell bars, his face swollen and black. ‘Search the bodies, boy.’
Rasten found the first of the clues on the note tucked inside one of the men’s shirts. He scanned it briefly, but his attention was caught by the small, sooty fingerprints smudged on the page. He smeared them further before handing the note to Kell. On closer inspection, he recognised one of the men from the slopes of Demon’s Spire. He could have sworn the fellow was one of Angessovar’s personal servants, and momentarily wondered what he’d done to displease his master.
The naked corpse made him purse his lips, but Rasten smoothed his expression before presenting the rest of his finds. Kell hadn’t seen the prince stripped the day before. He wouldn’t know that the marks and bruises on his back should have been
days old, not raw and bloody still.
Kell gathered up the various clues and hints found on the bodies, and tucked them into his jacket. To Rasten’s mind, Osebian had laid the trail too well. Those planted hints told the whole story the duke meant to impart, but reality was never so neat. Kell would make the same supposition, but it appeared he wished to do so in private. He stood, leaning heavily on his stick.
‘Take those bodies into the outer chamber, boy — all except that one,’ he pointed to the cell with the tip of his cane. ‘Wrap it in a sheet and put it somewhere cold and out of sight. The king will want to see it, and the queen as well, when she arrives.’
‘The queen, sir?’ Rasten said. ‘She’s coming here?’
‘Oh, yes. Her majesty wishes to observe the girl’s training. I sent word when you set out to bring her here. She will be most displeased by this, but she will be even more so if she cannot view the body. I’ll inform the king, and you set this place to rights. Then, you may do as you wish with the girl. The program I had planned will not be possible, but you must not let her know we’ve had an upset. See that she is too occupied to realise anything is amiss.’
Rasten made a bow. ‘As you command, sir.’
Once Kell was gone, Rasten hurried through his tasks. He dealt with the unneeded bodies first, dumping them in the slush-strewn entrance chamber before cutting down the fair-haired corpse in the cell.
On closer inspection he couldn’t be certain it wasn’t the prince. The marks on his body were too fresh, but there was nothing to say Angessovar and his man hadn’t beaten him before sending him off, and the fresh wounds could mask older injuries. Rasten had never examined the prince closely enough to notice any identifying marks, but there was something about the scene that made him wonder …
By the time he returned to the cell, Sierra was awake and sitting on the edge of the pallet. She hid a yawn behind her hand as he shoved the key into the lock and swung the door open.
First, he seized her wrists and examined her fingers for traces of soot. There were none — her hands were perfectly clean. Even her fingernails had been scrubbed.
Sierra said nothing, showed nothing. She neither held his gaze nor avoided it, but only responded passively, as her treatment in these last weeks had conditioned her to do.
Rasten hauled her to her feet and shoved her through the doorway, driving her before him to the usual chamber. Once inside, he fought the urge to shake her senseless as he bound her to the crossbar and hooked the chain in place. The longer he watched her, the more certain he grew that she’d had some hand in whatever happened last night. The pounding in his head bothered him, too, and as he thought back he found it hard to remember what had taken place after he’d left Kell’s chambers.
She was too calm, too passive. Kell might not have noticed anything untoward — after all, this was what his training was intended to produce — but Rasten knew her too well to believe it. His Sierra would know by now that something was different. Kell was not here, for one thing, and Rasten’s power was throbbing beneath his skin, riled by anger and fear. If she truly had done what he was beginning to suspect …
He drew his knife and circled behind her to cut a nick in her skin and draw the sigil afresh. It let him tap into her power to draw the ritual circle around them and seal them both within this room. Kell would expect this, to prevent her from drawing power from the servants sent to remove the bodies, but it also meant that nothing that happened here would be heard or felt by anyone around them.
Sierra held power, of course. Even with all their precautions, she gathered it like a hearthstone absorbs heat from a fire. Even the throbbing of his head would feed her.
Once the circle and shields were in place, Rasten faced her once again. The crossbar was set high, and she had to stand on her toes to keep the chain from choking her.
‘Who is he?’ Rasten asked.
Sierra said nothing, but for a moment — only a fraction of a second — she narrowed her eyes.
Her breath was hot on his skin, and goose bumps prickled her neck around the indentations of the chain. ‘Kell isn’t here, Little Crow, and we are well shielded. No one else will hear this, but you will tell me what happened last night. Whose body is that in the hidden cell?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Sierra said.
Rasten slapped her across the face. Between the ritual and the permanent link between them, he felt the sting of tender skin splitting against her teeth, but she didn’t whimper — all she did was cough as the blow threw her against the links of the chain. He rarely resorted to such crude measures when he had more sophisticated tools available to him. But this was no ordinary day and no ordinary matter, and he needed her to recognise that fact.
Sierra shifted her feet, already feeling the strain of balancing on her toes.
‘Don’t think me a fool,’ Rasten said. ‘I know you had a hand in this. Did you think I wouldn’t remember I’ve had a headache like this before when you slipped past my guard? Tell me the truth!’
‘I am!’ Sierra said. ‘I don’t know —’
He didn’t let her finish — he dug his fingertips into the pressure-point in her shoulder and this time she did cry out; the words were lost in a shriek of pain.
‘We don’t have time for games,’ Rasten breathed in her ear. ‘You will tell me.’
She struggled and fought, blustered and wept, but in the end she surrendered. By then her skin was slick with sweat, and she was breathing hard and tossing her head against the chain that rubbed her skin raw, as though she forgot its presence from moment to moment and had to test the bonds over and over again.
‘If you … suspect …’ she said between panting breaths. ‘Why haven’t you … raised the alarm?’
‘Because, you little fool, it was me who manoeuvred the duke to come finish him off!’ Rasten hissed in her ear. ‘Do you think I don’t know what it would do to you to see him on the rack?’
Even as he said the words, Rasten wondered if he was lying. She would be devastated, torn apart, true, but in the end she would have put the blame where it belonged — at Kell’s feet, not her own. For a moment, he wondered if it would have been better to let Kell have his way with the prince. At the end of it, nothing would ever sway Sierra from her need to see the old man dead.
Sierra heard nothing of this, and yet her head swung up, and she fixed him with a glare of absolute fury. He hadn’t seen such fire in her eyes since the night she had faced him on a frozen riverbank, and done her best to kill them both.
‘They would have killed him,’ she whispered, and Rasten felt her power rising. Where it was coming from he couldn’t say — perhaps the shields were weakening again. He drew it away before it could become a danger. Sierra tried to fight him, but she didn’t have the skill, and he stripped it from her in a clean and brutal strike that left her coughing and choking within the chain.
This was why he’d done it. Sierra couldn’t be trusted to control herself, to know when to stay her hand or when to strike. With Cammarian on the slab she would have fought, and she would have failed, and Kell could have crippled her for it.
‘Yes, they would have killed him,’ he snarled, ‘and for your sake! You know what we can do to those who aren’t needed alive or in one piece, Sirri. Are you telling me you would rather have him in your place than dead?’
‘I’d rather have him alive and free,’ she rasped.
‘You little fool —’
‘If you tell Kell, he’ll know you played some part. If he puts me to question I’ll tell him what you said!’
‘Hold your tongue! You think I don’t know that?’ He slapped her again, punishment this time for stating the obvious. ‘You let him go? Alone, in the middle of the king’s army? Whose body was that in the cell?’
And once again, as he said the words, the realisation hit him. There was only one man close enough in colouring and appearance to take Cammarian’s place.
Sierra began to laugh,
a low chuckle that reeked of madness until he slapped her into silence and dug his fingers into her nerves again. ‘The duke?’ he demanded, feeling incredulous and utterly foolish that the possibility hadn’t occurred to him sooner. ‘You killed the heir to the throne?’
She couldn’t reply until he released his grip, and then she reeled in her bonds as though drunk. ‘Cam couldn’t just disappear — the whole cursed camp would be roused to search for him —’
‘And when they realise Angessovar is missing? You don’t think they’ll search then?’
‘They’ll search for the duke, not Cam. It will give him time, and he’s good at staying out of sight.’ She slumped, breathing hard, but still watching him from beneath pain-furrowed brows. ‘What matters is he’s alive —’
‘What matters is seeing Kell dead!’ Rasten hissed. ‘That is the only thing that matters! And now you’ve risked everything …’ He turned away in a fury, fighting to keep himself under control. ‘There will be consequences. Osebian will be missed, and this foolish deception of yours will be uncovered.’ That was the real threat. Little would be said of the duke’s own incursion into Kell’s domain: making a fuss would only cause embarrassment. Even Osebian’s disappearance might be glossed over in public, explained away by an accident or a sudden fever — but in private, answers would be demanded, if not by the king, then by his mother … and heads would roll no matter the response.
‘Alright,’ Rasten muttered. What was it Balorica so often said? Deal with the matter at hand — that was it. Suspicion would eventually fall on Sierra, there was no way around that. They had to be prepared. He could only hope there was enough time. ‘The king won’t question Kell too closely; he’s afraid of the old man, so he’ll accept what he’s told. The real questions won’t be asked until the queen arrives. She’s left Lathayan, but if it’s already spring in the south it’ll take her a while to get here …’ The corpse would be kept in cold storage, but it would be best if it could be coaxed into decay before her arrival. Of course, there would be Kell’s disappointment and thwarted lust to deal with, but Rasten could weather that. He’d weather it ten times over if it would secure his plan. ‘But the truth will get out eventually, and we must be ready to face it. Alright, Little Crow, here’s what we’re going to do,’ Rasten said. ‘Every moment Kell’s not around, we’re going to work on building your strength and your capacity until you’re powerful enough to resist him.’