Saber and Shadow

by S. M. Stirling

  Jaahdnni had expected new-rich showiness. Instead, there was dark paneling, flamewood shining with oil and polish. Scroll racks and modem bookcases covered two walls; a terrestrial globe stood in one corner, an ancient thing—she could see the differences, how ice had waxed and seas waned since it was made. A low desk piled with neat stacks of correspondence occupied one end of the rectangular room. Behind it ...

  She swallowed nausea at the obscenity. Shamelessly portrayed in mosaic of crystal and onyx, a solar eclipse.

  The soldier dropped her eyes down to the desk’s occupant. The Adderfang was so ordinary, reclining easily on her cushions in a neat dark civilian tunic. The marks of childhood malnutrition still showed around her eyes, along the darkened fingers; perhaps also the memory of hunger prompted the open box of sweetmeats and the pug-jowls of the Adderlord’s face. She smiled, showing bad teeth.

  “Jahlini, of no kin.” she said. A hand twitched, and servants appeared. Twins, a boy and girl of perhaps fourteen. Jaahdnni was impressed; matched blonds of that comeliness were not easy to find. They bore trays of tea and small seedcakes, setting them before the two women with fluid grace and retiring silently.

  The soldier introduced herself, consciously avoiding the superior-to-inferior inflection, then drew papers from her waist sash.

  “General-Commander Smyna is most displeased at the commission accepted from ... shall we say ... another faction—the House with a Golden Roof?” she continued. Carefully polite, she sipped the tea. After all, it was better to be within the sacred bonds of hospitality that protected a guest. Especially if you were dealing with city scum—lowlife city scum at that. She leafed through the papers by one corner. Only under orders would she rose face like this, to actually speak to one of these. “And I have been told that your latest commission, for the Iron House, is quite late. We had hoped that your organization would have been more ... adept, shall we say, in carrying out so small a project as a retrieval.” She looked up, her face blank, asking innocently, “After all, your artists are said to be much better than any outlander. Was I mistaken?”

  Jahlini sighed mournfully. “Alas, recovering the message from the two barbarians proved to be somewhat more difficult than at first imagined.” She ran a casual finger down into the interior of her cup before pouring; good, it was smooth. The kitchen staff were loyal, but one never knew. “Perhaps we have become somewhat oversubtle in the pursuit of our art; after all, for the most part we deal with persons of refinement, residents of Illizbuah, the City, who appreciate subtlety. Not barbarians or country bumpkins.... Ah, you shame me as your host; do drink.” She poured herself a cup from the common pot between them and drank; the soldier followed suit.

  Jaahdnni held the cup just below her chin and regarded the Adderchief through the gentle steam. Suddenly she realized one thing that had bothered her: the wet smell of stone and concrete that lay under the scents of wood and linseed oil. The scent of the herbal tea was pleasing, and she sipped again; perhaps dealing with this one, city though she was, wouldn’t be that difficult. I am so far removed from her that there’s really no point in taking her tone as an insult, and demanding her sword. That was for nobles.

  “A lovely blend of tea.” She inclined her head to the other. “You do your guest honor.” She sighed. “I fear, however, that I must return to necessity. If the little item is not returned to us, then I fear we will have to ask for the return of the fee—oh, very politely, of course. My commander is most concerned that this trifle not fall into the, ah, wrong hands, shall we say.” Namely yours, she thought, and pasted a smile on her face. Strange, the room that had been so cool was becoming stuffy.

  “Yes, indeed. I have prepared a letter of apology which will be delivered to the General-Commander. Now, what—ah, complexity. I fear we are too given to it. Take the use of dhilmaan, for example. Honey?” she added, holding a spoon above the pot. The soldier hesitated, noted that the Adder was taking none, and shook her head.

  “No, thank you. Dhilmaan?” The word was curious; in city dialect, it meant “loving twin.”

  “A poison. Two-stage; one part is administered as a solid, the other as a liquid or in crystalline form. One is insoluble in stomach juices; the other dissolves and activates it. Any systemic poison will do.”

  Jaahdnni looked down at her cup. “But ... you drank from the same pot,” she said weakly. Her breath caught; that might be fear. Pain shot down her left arm, then lanced into her chest as she toppled and arched, straining for breath. Air rasped into her throat, past muscles locking and contracting on the yielding cartilage of the windpipe.

  “Oh, the activator was deposited in a thin film on your cup,” Jahlini said, nibbling delicately at a seedcake and picking up a sheaf of papers. “Hmmm, fortunate that the temple won’t allow really potent aphrodisiacs to be legally sold for festival use—that would cut into our profit margins severely.... Where was—ah, yes, the poison in the tea. From beyond the Kahab Sea; HammerHeart, they call it. The doctors say it brings the most intense pain that a human being can feel; no doubt an experience rich in fascinating sensations.” She glanced over her file of documents.

  “You seem to be short of breath. Perhaps if you lay down for moment, my good gaaimun? Yes, like that.” The soldier was lying on her back, only the crown of her head and her heels touching the floor. The lean body arched like a bow, thrumming with muscle spasm; veins swelled in her throat as she strove to scream, a pressure so intense that a fine red mist burst from the capillaries behind one eye. “Now, as I said, General-Commander Smyna will be receiving the letter of apologies tomorrow. Also a regretful notification that we cannot allow outsiders to dictate the time or manner by which we execute a commission ....

  “But enough of these social pleasantries,” she concluded, when the twisting figure in army green was still.

  From the antechamber came scraping noises; the door was too thick to let through the hiss of blowguns, but an armored corpse made a good deal of noise. At the last, Jahlini clapped her hands.

  “Niecibo,” she said. Her secretary picked his way into the room, stepping over the emissary’s body with an incurious glance.

  “That letter of apology,” she continued. The thick folded paper slid across the desk. “See that it arrives tomorrow, at her bedchamber’s threshold. With the heads, of course. To remind her not to instruct us in our business.” She finished the tea. “And send me the new Overseer of Terminations; perhaps he will prove more competent than his predecessor.” She looked down at the body. Dhilmaan was such a tidy method; it prevented the sphincters from giving way on death.

  Chapter XV

  Megan touched the crown of her head and winced; the thick coil of braids was almost too hot to touch, and trickles of sweat ran down the flushed skin of her face and neck. It was hard not to give an audible sigh of relief as they passed into the shadow of the colonnade that fronted this side of the temple’s bulk. Peering around one of the thick stone columns, she studied the work gang toiling to remove the last bloodstains from the pale limestone flags of the square. The aqueducts had been opened to flush most of the residue away; looking out over the bright scene, it was difficult to remember the sights and sounds of so many dying, only days ago. But flies still buzzed around the thick brown crusts on the storm drains, and faint under water and carbolic came the sweetish smell of rotting blood.

  She shifted uneasily, very conscious of the looming bulk of the temple. It seemed to crouch, despite its height; crouch above the city like a beast on the body of its prey. Firmly, she took control of her imagination.

  When she spoke, it was without glancing back at Shkai’ra.

  “It is past the time agreed,” she said, scanning constantly. And if all these so-high wish what we have, why haven’t they arrested us?”

  “They believed our story about a cut-out,” she said. A third party holding the goods, in a place neither of them knew, under instruction not to release it unless the two women were alive and free.

&nbs
p; There were uniformed figures aplenty on the great expanse of the square, but they were patrols or functionaries, going about their business; and many priests, of every degree. For the rest, traffic was sparse and furtive; it would be some time before the center of Illizbuah’s life bustled once more. Megan felt curiously naked; she was unused to having ten acres of open space about her in the center of a city.

  “Still no sign of them. I still don’t like the idea of selling it to the General-Commander. You said she had reason to dislike you.”

  “And I, her,” Shkai’ra said with a shrug. “But I’m willing to deal. And the Reflection probably likes me even less, on principle. Our best chance; nobody would believe we haven’t sold it somewhere.” Her lips pursed. “From the way things have befallen, I’d say it’s some interesting piece of dirt. Factions want it to discredit others, but quietly, no open seizure. I wonder if any of these so-friendly parties know the details of the others’ offers.”

  Megan snorted. “Wouldn’t it put a weasel in the henhouse if they didn’t, and we told them?” She stepped back another pace, unconsciously shunning the bright expanse of openness before them. “Although my life would not be worth the satisfaction; besides, I am not in the habit of giving information to anyone.” She leaned against the cool stone of a pillar and looked over at Shkai’ra, concealed by the bulk of the next. “If you were they, would you pick this spot to trade it in? Coming here was like bending over and inviting the world in general to kick you in the arse.”

  Listen to yourself, she thought, forcing stillness. Blathering. Voice or body; it seems one or the other must be moving. The feeling of wrongness grew, and she had not survived to adulthood by ignoring such warnings.

  Shkai’ra spread a hand; Megan could see the fingertips protrude from behind the column. “So long as they pay, why not? Even now, there’s a good deal of coming and going here; two more are unlikely to be noticed. and who would expect them to make deals on their rival’s doorstep? It makes sense.”

  “Ha.”

  Two figures in dull-green uniform tunics with short-swords at their belts separated themselves from the guards around a work detail and sauntered casually in their direction. The two women straightened to meet them, maintaining their careful positioning on opposite sides of adjacent pillars.

  One of the army officers smiled, yellow teeth against the sallow olive of his face; the skin was sheened with sweat, but that was natural enough in this weather. He loosened a pouch from his belt and hefted it encouragingly. Megan stepped forward, and felt a crinkling sensation on the back of her neck.

  “This smells like the DragonLord’s compassion,” Megan muttered. The feeling of tension grew; she half turned.

  Shkai’ra stiffened as she walked, keeping a smiling face. Behind them there was the faintest clink of metal on stone; from behind and to their right, down the arcade. The sort of sound an overeager archer might make, the bolt-gun sounding as she twitched at a target’s motion toward escape.

  “Shields,” Shkai’ra said, in any easy, conversational tone.

  “What?” the Fehinnan soldier on the left replied, the smile slipping away from his face.

  “You don’t bring shields to a parlay,” she continued, and launched herself forward from a standing start, body horizontal to the ground and one hand outstretched before her, stiffening into a blade.

  The spearpoint of her fingers slammed into the vulnerable soft spot just below the breastbone, and the man halted as if flung at speed into a stone wall, his face purpling as shocked heart and lungs struggled to function. The Kommanza landed cat-stanced, feet braced; her crossed hands gripped the man by the belt and swung his passive body around the pivot of her heels, to stand between her and the side of the temple. The pulse thuttered in her ears, and the sudden coppery taste of combat excitement was on her tongue.

  This is what I was born to do, she thought briefly.

  Megan only had a flash of what Shkai’ra did as she ran. The man was too big for her to hold. He went for his sword, his weight going forward. One step, two, and her body left the ground in a kick. He never had time to drag the sword free, as his elbow broke under the impact of her foot. His body caved in toward the agony flaming through his arm, and Megan landed, taking the single step that put him between her and the others, one hand grabbing for the broken limb. As her hands closed on a forearm, solid and almost too big to get a good grip on, she was reminded of the sensation of deboning chicken. She twisted a little to hold the man’s attention and shifted her hold to the wrist. She wasn’t sure, but the slamming of the arm against the swordhilt might have broken some of the small bones in it. The soldier was rigid and sweating with pain, a muffled whine trailing from his throat as he fought to keep from crying out. She dug the claws of her other hand into the opposite side of his tunic, feeling cotton give under her tense hands and smelling the rank sweat that had broken out on him. She looked over his back toward the temple, very conscious of the immense open space behind her.

  “What now, O master tactician?” Megan snarled. “They evidently didn’t think as highly of our preparations as you did!”

  Before the other woman could reply, a voice called out from the arcade. “Shoot!”

  There was the barest second before the bolt-guns spoke. Megan felt the tense body between her hands quiver and jerk as three solid blows hammered it back against her grip. A four-bladed quarrel punched through breastbone and spine to spatter blood and bone chips stinging into her eyes; she tasted the hot salt of it through opened lips.

  Shkai’ra drove backward the six paces to the pillars, holding her once-living shield between her and the squad of bolt-guns that fanned out from the row of columns. It would not be long before a lucky shot whipped through soft tissue and struck her with killing force; even armor of proof would not stop a bolt at less than a hundred paces. From the corner of her eye, she saw Megan shed her protection and dive scrambling for the same cover; the dead man had twice her milk or more.

  No words were necessary as they dashed down the line of pillars, ducking and weaving with rabbit-like randomness, spending the minimum amount of time on the vulnerable outside arcs of their flight. Bolts snapped and skittered around them, knocking chips from the stone sheathing of the concrete pillars. The soldiers did not take the time to fan out into the square and gain a better vantage for their fire, trying to keep on their quarry’s heels, and exhausted the six rounds in their magazines.

  Megan clutched at a line of red on her thigh as they rounded the corner. “Nothing, scratch,” she gasped at Shkai’ra’s unspoken question. They looked out across the open expanse of the square, with its scattered parties of guards. Their eyes met.

  The blond woman jerked her thumb down to their left, along the front face of the temple itself, to where the great double doors stood open. “Only place they wont expect. No time—now!”

  They pounded down the frontage, past startled groups of worshippers, and up the broad shallow steps. There was no guard on the door; they plunged into shadow nightdark after the blazing sun of noon. A corridor lay before them, twice forty feet high, and nearly as broad, the main avenue to the interior of the dome. There was no succor there. Shkai’ra turned toward a secondary door on their left, with a quick fist to the throat of the robed guard and a swinging kick to the latch that held it. The rending tear of wood was loud in the scented gloom. Choking, the underpriest barely noticed the smaller figure’s trampling feet.

  The soldiers poured through the door. An upperpriest glanced at them, then returned his attention to the prostrate door guard. His hands moved with swift skill, examining the injury; the larynx had folded back on itself, rather than simply crushing. Now, if he was skilled, and she was lucky....

  He placed his thumbs on either side of the prostrate figures throat and pushed. There was a subdued pop and the cyanic blue of the underpriest’s face began to fade. Her superior rose and folded his hands in the sleeves of his robe.

  “What is this?” he said evenly
. “Weapons and violence in the house of Her?”

  “ShiningRadianceoftheDivineLight,” the captain gabbled. He jittered from foot to foot, and even in the temple the troopers behind strained forward like hounds on the leash. “We pursue two, ah, heretics. Unbelievers! Yes, profaning the temple, offering violence to a Holy Servant. Please, let us pass.”

  The upperpriest became utterly still. A slight sign sent one of his attendants noiselessly down the corridor; the rest ranked themselves behind their master, faces as blank as their shaven skulls.

  “What manner of persons were these, Child of Light?” he asked.

  The officer strained in an agony of frustration. Failure was not going to enhance his record; besides, one of the dead outside was a friend. “Ah, females, two, one tall and fair, one short and dark, ah ...”

  He stopped, appalled. The priest nodded, once. “So, you too know of this,” he said somberly. “Even among the Righteous Sword, true God-respecting obedience is seldom to be found.” He sighed. “Return to your lord, and assure her that these miscreants will be found and their secrets plumbed.” He paused. “All their secrets.”

  Chapter XVI

  The corridor was long and narrow, lantern lit, tunneling deeper into the massive outer wall of the temple, lined with grey stone. Panting slightly, Megan and Shkai’ra paused at a junction.

  Shkai’ra rose lightly on her toes, peering about, the tip of her saber making small precise arcs through the incense-laden air. It was close and still and absolutely quiet, even more silent than the steppe or deep forest, for there was no movement of air.