The Quiet Man’s grip slackened as they hit the water. Tyvian threw his arms up, driving both of them deeper underwater and causing the Quiet Man to let go altogether. Tyvian looked up through the murky blue-green water, expecting to see the Quiet Man swimming upward. He was wrong.
The Quiet Man, his cloak billowing behind him like the black wings of a Perwyn manta, dove on top of him, a dagger glinting in one hand. Even now, in this alien environment, Tyvian still couldn’t make out anything definite about his would-be killer—he was a shadow in a world of darkness, a murky spot in a murky river.
Blocking was not an option; Tyvian grabbed the Quiet Man’s knife blade with his left hand. It sank deeply into the flesh of his palm, striking bone. The pain was cold. Blood mixed in with the water, making the world crimson.
He needed air, but the Quiet Man clung to him, trying to recover his knife for another strike. Tyvian grabbed the man by the throat and the two of them thrashed, gradually rising to the surface with their own natural buoyancy. The world spun, and all Tyvian could see was crimson water and white froth. The world narrowed as his lungs shuddered, in need of air.
The Quiet Man pulled the knife back from Tyvian’s hand and stabbed again, this time taking Tyvian in the shoulder. It bit deep, but again the water and Tyvian’s thrashing prevented the blow from sinking to the hilt. The Quiet Man had his arm around Tyvian’s head. They rose above the water for an instant—enough for a half breath for Tyvian—and went down again, this time with the Quiet Man’s cloak over Tyvian’s head.
Something hard bumped into his right palm as he struggled—Chance. Tyvian let it slide into his hand and pressed the trigger crystal against the Quiet Man’s chest. Doing this let the assassin withdraw his knife again and ready himself for another strike—this time at Tyvian’s face. Tyvian opened his mouth and shouted into the water: “BON . . . CHANCE!”
Chance appeared, striking up through the Quiet Man’s chest and back through his spine. The featureless man went rigid and then limp. Tyvian, bloody and half blind with pain, managed to withdraw his sword and banish the blade before his assailant’s body sunk into the depths.
One-armed and exhausted, he swam upward. The surface, though, was far away. Too far away. He felt the blood leaking from his wounds; he grew cold. Above him the sun seemed distant, uncaring. The world closed around him in darkness, and Tyvian let himself drift.
When Tyvian had told Hool to meet him “on the waterfront somewhere,” he failed to mention just how much of Saldor was made up of waterfront. Two mouths of the Trell River emptied within the city limits, creating two harbors, and from these harbors and rivers branched dozens of canals, wharves, and who knew what else. Hool found herself floating along with a never-ending stream of humanity as it flowed everywhere and nowhere, trying to find a place that would get her a decent view of most of the waterfront.
The city was so full of scents that parsing any one of them in particular from the riotous bouquet of sweat and tar and fish and roasting meat was virtually impossible. Even worse than all that, almost everything she sniffed had the nostril-searing edge of sorcery to it. This city was so thick with magic it practically glowed, and the fact made her skin crawl. Wearing the shroud had been bad enough, but now to smell the taint of sorcery on the streets, on the people, and in the air, was too much. Not even Freegate, for all its filth and congestion, had come anywhere near this bad.
At long last Hool found herself standing on a bridge overlooking the main harbor, not entirely certain where she was in relationship to where she had been—any scent of her passing was washed away by the hundred thousand feet of passing humans. She had an urge to urinate on something, just to claim it as her own, but Tyvian had explained to her that such activities would ruin her disguise at once.
Here, however, she could at least see and smell things with some degree of clarity. She could see a group of men hoisting a waterlogged body out of a river—this was, evidently, something of a profession in Saldor, as she had seen a number of people engaged in the practice. Given how much water there was, she guessed it wasn’t much of a surprise that people drowned all the time.
Hool watched them work for a moment as they stripped off the man’s boots and were rifling through his pockets. Something about the pale man looked familiar. She sniffed the air.
It was Tyvian.
Hool bounded to the dock in under a minute and tromped down the gangway toward where the men were haggling over Tyvian’s things. Before she could get there, though, one of the group blocked her at the end of the ramp.
“Oy there, my beauty!” The man was fat, wearing a leather vest that was too tight for him over a shirt that was too loose. He leaned against the railing of the gangway and smiled. “No business for ladies down ’ere. Can I help you with something?”
Hool glared at him. “Get out of my way.”
She moved to slip past him, but the fat man put himself in her path again. “Now now—no need to be frightened, beautiful! I didn’t mean no harm! What’s your name?” The man took off his cap and clutched it to his chest. “Ladies of quality shouldn’t be walking by their lonesome through a neighborhood like this.”
Hool looked around. This neighborhood didn’t look much different than the other neighborhoods she had wandered through. Hool guessed the man was just making things up so he could look useful to her. She decided to let him off gently. “You’re ugly and I don’t like you. Go away now.”
The fat man’s flabby cheeks reddened at this and his eyebrows drew closer together. “Too good for me, eh, missy?”
“Yes.” Hool smiled—finally, a human who understood.
The fat man grabbed Hool by the arm and tried to drag her behind a stack of empty shipping crates. He hadn’t been expecting her to weigh more than he did, so when he yanked, his hand slipped off and he fell back onto the dock. “You bitch!” He struggled to rise. The men who were stripping down Tyvian started laughing.
Hool cocked her head to one side. “What are you doing?”
“Yer coming with me, understand?” The man got up and pulled a knife, and then Hool did, indeed, fully understand.
She put her fist so far into his paunch that she hit spine. The man’s feet lifted three inches off the ground and his eyes crossed. The knife clattered to the dock. Now Hool dragged him behind the shipping crates. His mouth worked but no sound was coming out besides a hard wheeze. Hool knelt on his chest and grabbed him by the sideburns. “I am tired of you ugly, stinking men staring at me! Do you think if I rip off your head and wear it around my neck the others will leave me alone?”
The fat man blubbered, shaking his head, snot leaking from his nose. Hool wasn’t sure whether that was a No, they won’t stop staring or a No, don’t rip off my head. As she was considering this, somebody hit her in the back with a club. It hurt, but not really as much as the man swinging the club probably thought. When she turned around, the two men standing there—two of the men who had pulled Tyvian out of the river—had looks of surprise on their faces.
One of them recovered from his shock quickly enough to snarl at her. He had a length of chain he was swinging around, though Hool couldn’t imagine why. “You just got yourself in a lot of trouble, pretty.”
Hool considered killing them all but then remembered what Tyvian had said about the Defenders being able to see the future. She’d probably get arrested for killing three people. Or maybe not—did they let pretty women get away with killing people?
As she was considering this, the man with the chain swung it at her, so she caught it with one arm and yanked it away from him. “Why a chain?” she asked, dropping it to the ground. “Why not a knife or a rock or something? Chains are stupid.”
Before the attack could escalate further, though, another man’s voice called from across the dock, “Oy! He’s alive! The blighter is alive! Scatter, mates!”
The men beat a hasty retreat, giving Hool some nasty looks in the process but not stopping to explain what they meant. Hool ignored them and went to Tyvian’s side. He was on all fours and coughing up a gallon of saltwater. One arm was bloody from two deep stab wounds—one on the shoulder and one on the hand. Hool folded her arms. “What happened?”
Tyvian looked up at her, squinting in the afternoon sun. “Your son took a job with the other side, Hool.”
“What?” Hool grabbed Tyvian by his sodden shirt and dragged him to his feet. “What do you mean ‘a job’!”
Tyvian pushed her away and sat down. “Easy, Hool, easy—I’m injured, dammit. Give me . . . give me a moment . . .” The color drained from Tyvian’s face, which Hool knew meant he was about to pass out. She slapped him hard enough to knock him on his face, but it woke him up. “Damn! I’m . . . I’m surprised I’m alive.”
Hool took a bloodpatch elixir from beneath her shroud and pulled out the stopper. “Drink this. Then talk.”
Tyvian upended the small vial. The magic in the sticky liquid quickly stoppered his bleeding and shrank the wounds a bit, but he was still clearly hurt. He sat on the dock, breathing heavily and leaning against a piling.
“Those men were trying to rob you,” Hool announced.
Tyvian chuckled. “Not robbery—salvage. Enough bodies get found floating in the river, removing them and turning them in for bounty money is a good living for the unscrupulous. Anyway, if they were thieves, the joke’s on them—I haven’t got any more money.” He looked around at the remnants of his clothes that they had stripped off. “The bastards did take my boots, though. Honestly, how much money can you get for a pair of waterlogged leather boots?”
“They were trying to get your ring off. It didn’t work.”
Tyvian looked at his hand. “Good thing you got here when you did. Otherwise they might have started chopping.” He sighed and patted himself down. He found Chance in its sleeve holster, and this seemed to make him relax a bit.
Hool figured she’d waited long enough. “Tell me what happened to Brana.”
Tyvian explained, and, as he did, Hool grew more anxious. “Brana is working on a ship that sails in the ocean?” She could scarcely form the words.
“Well, I wouldn’t sail the Argent Wind much beyond sight of shore, but basically yes.”
“Brana is afraid of the water.”
Tyvian sighed and wrung the seawater out of a stocking. “No, Hool, you are afraid of the water. That isn’t the same thing as Brana being afraid of it. You’ve been underestimating him.”
“Don’t tell me about my own pup!” Hool sat on a crate. “I know my own pups!”
Tyvian shrugged, though it made him wince. “I don’t know much about gnolls, Hool, but as a former rebellious young man turned rebellious adult, I do know a thing or two about adolescent behavior. Brana is infatuated with Artus—he thinks Artus is the best thing on two legs or four.”
“So?” Hool snorted. “Artus is just a human.”
Tyvian set about ripping part of his remaining clothing to fashion a makeshift sling. “Brana is how old?”
“He has been alive four winters.”
“And he’s spent over half that time surrounded by humans, Hool. He’s used to them, and he sees Artus as his brother. Artus, meanwhile, is a teenager who resents being told what to do all the time, and so he’s managed to get himself a job where he thinks he’ll be respected. This should hardly be earth-shattering news.” Tyvian looped his sling over his shoulder and gingerly rested his wounded arm in it.
Hool wanted to shake the smuggler until his head fell off. She wanted to howl at the world. Her pup? On a boat? Working for a human? How could she have let this happen? How could she not have seen what the human world was doing to Brana? Was doing to her? “We need to get them. We can’t let them stay there!”
Tyvian put his good hand up in surrender. “Hool, calm down—the boys are perfectly safe. Well, safer than they would be with us, at any rate. Andolon is working with the Prophets, and the Prophets don’t like squandering assets. Right now they see Artus and Brana as an asset.”
Hool scowled. “Why would you do this? Now they are working for evil men.”
Tyvian shrugged. “I’m not such a sweetheart myself, despite what you think. Anyway, Artus is smart enough to know when he’s being given a raw deal—he’ll figure it out. When he does, Brana will be back with us, too.” He gave Hool a wink. “And as long as they stay over there, we’ve got ourselves a pair of spies.”
Hool considered. “You are putting a lot of trust in Artus. He doesn’t like you very much anymore, you know.”
Tyvian nodded. “Trust is what all great manipulations are based upon, Hool. What happened in the Famuli Club while I was upstairs talking to my brother?”
“Somebody whispered in the ear of the boy who tried to stab you when you came down.”
Tyvian grunted. “Obviously. Was it Andolon?”
“No.” Hool described the person she had seen—a woman, thin and old, reeking of magic and wearing a blue shawl over a blue dress.
Tyvian nodded, but if he knew who it was, he did not elaborate. “Now, let’s find ourselves a boat and get out of here before a mirror man comes sniffing around.”
“I am not going in a boat!” Hool stomped her foot. Tyvian sighed and then jumped into a small boat with a mast. Hool felt her pulse quicken as she watched the whole vessel rock back and forth in the water.
Tyvian stepped into the bow, leaning against the mast with his wounded side. Hool noted that he seemed to have no problem balancing. He held out a hand. “I promise it won’t sink, Hool.”
Hool scowled at him. “Why can’t we walk?”
“If I set foot on shore, the Defenders will be able to scry my location, and then we’ll both be arrested. On water, which is always changing, no location is ever the same, so they can’t scry here.” Tyvian smiled at her and beckoned with his hand. “Come on, Hool—trust me.”
Hool took his hands. “There are times when I hate you.”
“I know.” He yanked her aboard and guided her to a place to sit. “Just be still. Everything will be fine.”
CHAPTER 15
TO GLAMOURVINE
Tyvian seemed to think Hool hated boats because she was worried about drowning, but that wasn’t it—she could swim well enough to keep her head above water and she knew that boats didn’t usually sink. What she hated was the way the water moved. She couldn’t get her balance, she felt perpetually off-kilter. She also didn’t like how boats were able to move somebody from one place to another without making much of a sound and without leaving a trail—the whole thing was a strange, uncomfortable way to travel.
She huddled in the middle of the little boat, knees under her chin, while Tyvian tugged on various ropes with one arm and moved the stick at the back to make the sail work. He made Hool handle some of the ropes when two hands were needed, which she did without complaint. They headed north, away from the city. Though they sailed upstream, the current was slow and the breeze coming off the ocean was good. They moved at a good pace.
The city of Saldor lined both sides of the river for several miles—an endless series of docks, boathouses, and mills seemed to line up. There were small, half-naked boys fishing in the river in places, water taxis rowing important-looking people from one wharf to another, and several huge stone bridges, under whose arches their little sailboat easily slipped. Eventually, though, the urbanized shoreline gave way to marshy grass and enormous cypress trees, whose roots dipped beneath the water in a hundred places. The water lost the greenish-blue tinge of the ocean and gained more of an emerald to brownish-green tint. The air stopped smelling of salt and smelled, instead, of moss and mud. Mosquitoes buzzed around their heads in packs.
“Where are we going?” Hool asked at last.
> Tyvian grimaced. “To Glamourvine—my family estate.”
There were still people on the river—people in broad, flat-bottomed boats that slowly drifted downstream, as well as people living in tight little villages on the shoreline, their houses all built on stilts. The air was heavy, quiet, and humid. Hool didn’t say anything; she only sniffed the air for sorcery. She knew when she smelled it, they would be close to their destination.
She was right. Sometime in the late afternoon, after they seemed to have been aboard the little boat for a lifetime, Tyvian steered to a dock that jutted out into the river. This dock was no ramshackle affair—it was built to withstand all the storms the sea could throw and look good doing it—big, thick pilings larger than the massive cypress trees of the swamp were sunk into the river bottom, boards of sorcerously treated black wood laid in perfect lines to the shore. Tyvian clambered out and tied up their boat.
He pulled his torn, salt-stiffened clothing on with some discomfort and tried to straighten out his shirt collar. “Follow me. Do not stray from the path.”
He led Hool through a tunnel of vegetation—old trees covered in lively green moss, the ground thick with soft, lush grass, the sky above obscured by the dense interweaving of branches. The dying light of day bathed the path in a joyful yellow-green glow, but Hool smelled sorcery all around them, heavy and intense, and grew ever more nervous as they walked. Tyvian didn’t speak—perhaps, she thought, he could sense it, too.
The path ended at a huge, perfectly round door. It was overgrown—or, rather, looked like it was overgrown, with flowering vines—but when Tyvian touched the golden knob at the center, the door flew open, revealing a small courtyard edged by glorious rosebushes taller than Hool in her natural form. At the center of the courtyard was a fountain featuring an alabaster statue of a cherubic boy with a sword in one hand and a rose in the other, feathery wings arcing from his back. Water sprung from his eyes as though he were weeping.
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