“You’ve a soft spot for the Choerkin lad.”
Another day, another time, the boy’s voice would’ve made her scream, instead she froze as her heart bumped the back of her tongue. She turned to stare into Ulrikt’s beautiful blue eyes set above a child’s smile. She recalled their talk in town when nobody saw or heard them. “Are we safe?”
“We are.”
She slapped him, hard as she could muster, and the crack of palm to cheek died in the air, not even disturbing the gulls who sat nearby. “You son of a bitch, you did nothing.”
The creased lips of his smile never wavered. “Good. That is the fire you’ll need if you are to bring him back.”
“What the hells are you talking about?”
His eyes rolled with a child’s giggle. “Ivin Choerkin. The heart of a woman is fickle, but not always unpredictable.”
“I don’t care for him.” The bastard was intuitive or the gods granted him powers to read minds. “He’s your enemy, why would you care?”
“You are slow to understanding, my child. Our people are not my enemy, nor have they ever been. Not even the Choerkin, despite them believing I am theirs.”
She growled and glared, but it felt weak and foolish. “You could have done something.”
He nodded, his smile gone. “I understand your thinking so, but like you I knew not what to expect. Sedut destroyed the scroll before it could finish its work.”
“We spoiled the bishop’s plan, but she’ll want blood.”
A pleasant chuckle returned the smile to his face. “You have studied so many words but learned so little. She set a trap we could not spoil: Either we allowed our people’s sundering, or we revealed the power to stop her.”
She was growing used to his insulting her intelligence, but the bishop winning angered her more. “The crone is a cunning witch.”
“She has not won, not yet. She does not know the limits of Sedut’s power, that will slow her long enough for your pursuit.”
“Do you know where they’re headed?”
He gave her an exasperated groan. “As do you, my child.”
“Sin Medor.” His stare didn’t require another jab at her intellect. Not Sin Medor, but if their opponent was the bishop… “The Tower of Markuun.”
He clapped his hands with a child’s excited smile. “There is the smart girl we knew in Istinjoln!” He pulled a vile from his pocket, its stopper sealed with wax. “The tower is a small part of the city of Bdein, a trading hub with its tentacles stretching across the Hundred Kingdoms. Find a source of water nearby, a well, an aqueduct… Better, a cask of whiskey in a tavern full of merchants.” He held out the vial.
She stared. Slapped his hand. She shrieked, her voice so high she imagined it tested his power to conceal them. “Poison? An assassin no better than those sent out on the Eve of Snows!” She shifted to a growl. “Drink that crap yourself.” She prayed for Dark so she might hide, run from this place, but she felt nothing; the gods abandoned her.
“You dare call the gods against me?” His smile disappeared and the child’s voice grew deep. “I killed two men in Inster trying to keep you safe. Sent their swords through their necks, for you. I healed your wounds in Istinjoln and again after the Dark wrecked you.” His form shifted, his body warping and growing, the adorable face of youth twisting into something malformed, something hideous, a person more frightening for what he’d become and done than his mere appearance. Shivers rocked her body and she cowered as she had in the Chanting Caverns. Then she’d prayed for the gods to save her, but prayers were worthless against their prophet, no matter which face he wore. Angin towered over her, his crooked eyes and nose resting over a terrifying snarl so like the one he bore when driving her scalp into stone.
But the voice was Ulrikt: Pure power in prayer, hearkening back to his most fiery sermons. “And I’d kill a thousand thousand more to save our people! What would you do? What would you not do to save your people?”
Her body shook and she stumbled and fell backward over her own feet. When she recovered to hands and knees and brought her eyes around, the innocent boy with beautiful eyes smiled. “We didn’t lose, my child.”
He offered his hand and she hesitated, but she didn’t refuse his touch. She was the sparrow in the dragon’s maw, and defying this truth would do her little good. But when he leaned in and kissed her lips, so gentle and warm, her gut recoiled even if her body daren’t fight.
Her breaths recovered from the unwelcome brush of lips and breath, but her words came in a tense rasp as she came to her feet. “You said we revealed our power to her.” It was unusual for her to stand above anyone, and yet, looking down on him she still felt the smaller.
“We saved our people from the Sundering, and Sedut revealed a power, but not all. The bishop knows nothing of me, and”—he stepped forward with the vile in a hand she recognized as her own—“she knows little of you.”
Meliu stared as the boy’s face shifted into her own, but it was blood streaked, and auburn hair hung from a scrap of scalp. She took the vile, striving hard not to look away. “No promises.”
Her wounded mirror smiled with eyes turned beautiful blue, and it spoke with the sonorous bass of Ulrikt. “That’s the smart girl, that’s the fighter who defied the Maimer’s Lash in Istinjoln.”
She cradled the vile in her hands, closed her eyes, and prayed she had the strength to throw the thing into the sea. “The same poison that killed Kotin Choerkin?”
Silence. When she opened her eyes no one was there, but the bottle remained clutched in whitening knuckles to prove it hadn’t been a dream.
The wind blew her tangled hair and she ran her fingers across her skull, relieved to find scalp instead of bone. She prayed to Erginle, and Light surged to calm her breaths, to prove the gods listened once more. She kept hold of the warmth, but the confidence she’d felt so often before was timid and weak. She had a direction, but still needed a plan.
She slipped the vile into her pack, and it slid to rest beside the Codex of Sol. The Face of Ulrikt’s power and knowledge staggered her. There could be no doubt the man was a prophet of Sol if he could read her mind… If the gods denied her prayers in his service.
Somehow, she needed to reach Bdein, slip into the Tower of Markuun, rescue a Choerkin from beneath the Bishop’s nose, and then transport the bastard all the way back to New Fost. Insanity was generous, it was Dancing Bastards crazy, but a plan formed in her head already, as stupid and unlikely to succeed as using the Wardens to reach the Codex, but it was a plan one step better than suicide.
25
A Tortured Man
A king’s counsel must know to speak their mind, and the wise king must know to take counsel with gracious words and not vengeance, even when they disagree. But if the mind is spoken without respect too often, the mind must be reminded of its place, or taken from its shoulders.
–Codex of Sol
Kinesee spent the next several days ensnared by armor and shields, her new guards so close, at times she felt she might as well be wearing them. When she complained, Maro stared hard at her and said, “Your child’s life is over, my girl, unless you want to die as a child.”
At first she figured this a lousy attempt to comfort her disguised as a life lesson, but as the days passed, she realized their honesty. It’d been chance when those men attacked her in the woods. These assassins came for her, and there was no reason to think they wouldn’t again. Papa always told her that folks had moments in their lives that changed them forever: For Iku it’d been meeting their mother, the birth of his children, but he said the first was when he watched a man swept from a fishing boat to drown in a storm. From then on fishing wasn’t so fun ever again, it was a way to feed the family and survive.
Kinesee figured she’d gotten several messages from fate of late, but it wasn’t until the weight of men wanting her dead fell on her shoulders that she accepted their message: It was time to grow up.
They’d told her that one assassi
n survived, but his wounds were grievous, and without proper prayers it’d take time for him to speak again.
Seven days after the attack, as she sat staring at a fire and imagining wise dragons flying in the flames, Maro interrupted her.
“The prisoner can speak… if you’d like to accompany me.”
She turned her head and rubbed the fire’s spots from her eyes. Not a stitch of her being wanted to see the man. “I’m no longer a child, am I?”
He rubbed her head. “You are and you aren’t. You just need to realize which the situation requires and when.”
“And I’m gonna guess this is one of those I have to decide.”
He grinned and raised his hands with a shrug. “See? You grow the wisdom of age already.”
“Let’s see this no good—”
He raised a finger with a smirk. “How old are you? And recall you are a lady.”
“No good cuss, then.” She strode to his side, but other guards led the way from the tent and formed a circle around her once outside.
She stared at the dirt and its trampled grass instead of at their backs. Funny that stepping outside meant she could see a shorter distance ahead than in the tent. She followed their strides a short distance before they entered another tent, and the guards cleared her view.
A dirty and beaten man sat strapped to a chair, his bearded face slouching to his chest as if asleep or dead. Semerun, another warrior who guarded Kinesee when Maro was busy, stood behind him. A hulking figure with knotted muscles and dark eyes over a long mustache.
Maro said, “Kinesee Mikjehemlut, this here is one Pedant Ilskrit. One of the men who tried to kill you.”
The man didn’t twitch, and Semerun grabbed the sides of his head with powerful hands, forcing his eyes at her. They pinched shut.
Maro said, “Look at the girl, or I’ll peel your eyeballs from your head before I kill you.”
Pedants eyes opened. “What of it?”
“Such a gentle young lady, clanblood, why the Twelve Hells were you trying to kill her?”
“She is at that… quite a looker once she grows tits.”
Semerun squeezed his head with hands so big they wrapped his skull, fingers digging so hard Kinesee swore she heard a tooth pop. “Manners.”
The man spit blood after Semerun loosened his grip. “You ain’t gonna learn a godsdamned thing from me, might as well kill me.”
Maro nudged her shoulder, and she cleared her throat. “Why do you want me dead?”
Semerun’s massive grip cut the assassin’s chuckle short. “Shits child, I don’t want you dead, but someone does.”
Maro said, “Hired then. How much?”
“A fifth-weight crown. Fer each of us. It’s in m’boot if you don’t believe me.
Semerun leaned the man back on the legs of the chair and Maro ripped his boots off, shook them onto the ground. A single gold coin. Maro tossed the boots to the side and snagged the coin, holding it in the light for all to see. “A Hidreng crown, that’s a lot of gold for a sad bastard like you.”
“So it ain’t no wonder why I took it, is there?”
“Ever ask yourself why somebody was paying so much to kill a girl, and in foreign gold?”
“Yeah, sure, but I weren’t dim enough to ask no question that might get me killed.”
Kinesee stepped forward. “After you wash the coin of the smell of feet, I’ll take it. Seems fair enough since it was the price to kill me.” She smiled and turned to Pedant. “Who hired you?”
“A bastard named Wymed… You’ll find him dead wherever the hells your man put the bodies.”
She sighed. “That’s a shame. I heard a farmer not far away had some hungry pigs… you might offer him this man.”
Maro struck his heels together with a nod. “Kill him first, or let the hogs take care of that?”
She spun on her heel. “Your choice, but don’t tell me which it is.”
“Wait a godsdamn wick… The Ravinrin ain’t that way.”
Kinesee kept her back to him, to make sure she didn’t crack. “I’m not a Ravinrin, and I am that way. I’ve seen my family butchered, why would I care what happens to you?”
“I don’t know nothin’, I swear by Kibole’s Night.”
Maro said, “This Wymed, he must’ve said something. They paid in Hidreng gold, were they Tek?”
“No, no. Leastwise I don’t think so. The boys, we all figured it was someone jest hidin’ what clanblood the wealth came from.”
“Clanblood?”
“Hells! I dunno! Clanblood shits gold we always say. Who else?”
“The Church.”
Kinesee turned to gaze on his silence. A face twisted in thought. “You sayin’ I was doin’ the work of the Church?” He spat. “I wouldn’t help no godsdamned holy.”
“You’ve a Slaver’s sense of right and wrong!” Maro laughed. “Kill a child, but not for the Church’s gold. But I was just asking.”
“I don’t think so, nah, but it’s like pissin’ on my head if it were.”
“Not the Church. Not the Church. Your boss man, any of your buddies, they ever mention the name Preat Yungar?”
“Clanblood ain’t he? Not as I recall.”
“How about Tirus?”
“Hells, maybe, I dunno. That’s a big godsdamned family roundabouts where I come from. Mighta even been a wrong-eyed Tirus or two you killed in the fight.”
Kinesee recognized the Tirus name. Clanblood from the far north with a hatred of the Emudar, and she surmised, the Mikjehemluts.
Maro tossed the coin into the air and she caught it. “What might their names have been?”
Pedant laughed. “Hells if I know.”
Maro sighed. “Semerun, squeeze this man until his head pops like a rotten melon, then you come and tell me what done fell out.”
“Aye, sir.”
Maro turned to her. “Do you have any more questions for him, m’lady?”
Kinesee stared, wishing she had a piece of wisdom, a question worthy of an interrogation. Instead she asked the only thing that popped into her head. “How many kin did you lose to the Shadows?”
Pendat stared, his cocky crushed. “Lost six brothers and sisters I know of.”
“What would they think of your hiring out for murder?”
His head tucked to his chest. “Every damned one woulda done the same.”
Kinesee straightened with a deep breath; it wasn’t an answer she expected. “I will forego prayers for them and for you. Let us leave, Maro.”
In a matter of flickers her escort of steel surrounded her beneath a bright sun. “Maro?”
“Aye, girl?”
“I didn’t lie back there. Never tell me what becomes of the man. I needn’t know.”
26
Skyward Prison
The sky, an Eye, the wingless Eye: Flying.
You say or said, amid the dead and undying,
the unable to speak and the never lying.
The Eye, you ask; to explain a monumental task,
to give a name, a tongue tying quest.
–Tomes of the Touched
“A bloody failure, one I could not imagine. You’ve ended your people.” The words were a mumble at first, and it took several flickers to recognize the voice as Iro’s.
The burn of hartshorn in Ivin’s nose brought consciousness but left his mind clouded. “Where the hells am I?” A single lantern lit the stone-blocked chamber with a bed of straw and a chamber pot for amenities.
“Bdein. The Tower of Markuun.”
His thoughts scrambled, the words were familiar, maybe, from Hidreng merchants visiting the Watch. He raised his eyes to meet Iro’s gaze. The man sat in a chair, back to a stone wall, with a cloak wrapping his frame. His complexion was pale, weak. “You’re gonna have to do better than that.”
“It’s of no matter, except to know you are a guest of the Bishop.”
The weight of shackles on Ivin’s wrists and the rattle of chains when he moved proved
what kind of hostess she was. “How long? I was… How long?”
“Five days.”
His memory blurred from the moment he read the scroll, but there were visions of blood and battle, and his heart palpated. “My people?”
“Will be dead, soon as Hidreng forces gather. I will ride them down like scoundrel wolvesand leave their carcasses for the gidebirds to peck.” He leaned, his right elbow resting on a knee. “Your people… slaughtered my soldiers, with the aid of some witchery.”
The rainbow and the red. Sedut. Ivin blinked with the memory: inhaling powdered gem and the woman healing him.
“The witch’s name. Who is she?”
“Knowing won’t do you a spit of good.”
Iro’s voice grew harsh, his tones those of a man who’d seen the inside of his own grave, and Ivin wondered what had happened to this proud warrior. “I want to know the woman’s name when I bleed her.”
Ivin chuckled; he couldn’t help it. “Good luck.”
Iro’s glare hardened to match his voice. “You mock me?”
“No. Hells no. I wish you well, I tried myself. It didn’t go no better.” Memories of the Ambush Chokes came to his clearing mind; companions dead in a whirl of flesh and bone. “With all sincerity: Good luck.”
Iro smirked. “She healed you.”
“Which goes to show how little she fears me.”
Iro’s finger came to his chin, and he stared. “Who is she?”
“High Priestess Sedut.”
“And her weapon?”
Ivin shrugged. “An artifact from the Steaming Lakes, you want more than that, ask her yourself.”
“You share secrets so freely.”
“Not my secrets.” Ivin rubbed his eyes. “The high priestess is no more a friend than your bishop. Go after her, it’s your doom, not mine.”
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