Winter of Ice and Iron

by Rachel Neumeier

  Kehera dragged herself up the last bit of the fence and crouched on top. She lingered just long enough to watch Pennon, lifting his sword against the mass of arriving guardsmen, be cut down and fall.

  Lieutenant Alen gained the top only a second after Eilisè. He threw an arm around each woman’s waist and simply jumped, which wasn’t quite suicidal because the street level on this side of the fence was rather higher than on the inner side. It was not a particularly enjoyable exercise, even so, and Kehera picked up a brand-new set of bruises on her knees. Alen dragged her up with a ruthless yank and half shoved her forward, heading left into a tangle of narrow streets.

  Behind them, they could all hear the shouts of their pursuers. The leaders were too close for comfort, and gaining. Alen had his bloody sword out again, running with it in his hand. At least the sight did clear the street in front of them handily.

  The steps of their pursuers seemed so close behind them that Kehera found herself bracing against the expectation of a sudden grab. Lieutenant Alen turned so suddenly she did not at once miss him, and took out the first pursuing guardsman with a vicious slash across the chest. It slowed the other five. Eilisè fumbled out the knife Alen had given her and threw it. It hit one of the men in the chest hilt first and bounced off, but it made him hesitate just a second, and Alen, taking advantage of his distraction, killed him, too. He ran forward and struck a third through the chest in almost the same movement.

  Three left. One of those put up a pacifying hand. “Look, Raft,” he began, “I don’t know what this is all about, but—”

  “Sorry, Voll,” Alen said, and over his shoulder added, “Fortunate Gods look on, girl, run!”

  Eilisè grabbed Kehera’s hand and hauled her down the street. Kehera yielded and they ran together. Not having Alen to clear the way made it harder, but at least none of the surprised people they passed tried to stop them.

  Then a guardsman stepped out in front of them, and then another, and now they didn’t even have a knife. Both Kehera and Eilisè backed up as the men advanced with drawn swords.

  “Aren’t you supposed to take us alive?” Kehera asked, bumping into a stand stacked high with hot meat pies and piles of fritters. The owner of the stand had sensibly disappeared.

  “Who cares?” said one of the men. “Harivin bitch, look what you’ve done to Suriytè.” He stalked forward.

  Kehera backed up, wishing she could protest that she hadn’t done anything, knowing it didn’t matter. Of course everyone would blame her—they weren’t even wrong, exactly.

  Eilisè caught up the deep pot of oil used for frying the fritters and, stepping forward, flung the boiling contents in the man’s face. He screamed, one hand going to his face. With the other he slashed wildly. By pure chance the blow connected with Eilisè as the young woman tried to scramble back. For a long, stretched moment Kehera thought he had missed. Then, turning, Eilisè fixed a wide, surprised stare on her and crumpled; not all at once, but slowly, clutching at the fritter stand with hands suddenly too weak to support her weight.

  Kehera leaped forward to catch her, too shocked to cry out. She cradled the other woman’s head in her lap. “Eilisè?” she said shakily. “Eilisè?” Her companion’s eyes were open, but quite blank.

  The burned man was blundering around, blind. Kehera had completely forgotten about his partner, until the man, outraged at the injury dealt his companion, lifted his sword and started forward. And then she couldn’t even move.

  Lieutenant Alen ran him through from behind, planted a foot on the body, and wrenched his sword free, all in the same fast movement. Dropping to one knee, he made a quick, cursory examination and straightened to meet Kehera’s eyes. “She’s dead. Unless you want to join her, you’ve got to get up.”

  “Yes,” Kehera said, not moving.

  The lieutenant grabbed her wrist with bruising force and hauled her to her feet. “She won’t thank you for sitting still like an idiot and letting yourself be killed or captured, and the general won’t thank me for letting it happen! I can’t carry you and fight at the same time. Be in shock later.”

  He was right. Kehera pulled free of his grip, rubbed her hands hard across her face, and made herself say, “What now?” Her voice was unsteady, but firm.

  Alen looked profoundly relieved. He led her away from the bodies at a fast walk, down one street after another, rapidly tracing a path through the narrow, confusing alleys. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, which was just as well, as Kehera not only did not know but could not bring herself to care.

  “Try to look normal,” said Alen.

  Kehera blinked at him.

  “Can you?”

  She took a deep breath and shook her head, not in denial, but trying to wake up. She felt . . . very strange. “Yes,” she promised numbly.

  “Good.” Alen took her hand and guided her quickly between two buildings, down a short alley, and into a tavern. Kehera had never entered a public tavern in her life. The low crowded benches, the heavy smells of smoke and grease and ale, and the low roar of talk were all rather overwhelming. She tried hard to look normal and allowed Alen to lead them quickly through the crowded room. For some inexplicable reason, no one seemed to take special notice of them. She had never felt so conspicuous in her life, but maybe everyone was too wrapped up in the loss of their Power to notice anything as trivial as a man dragging a woman through their tavern.

  The lieutenant seemed to know his way through this tavern very well, and led them straight to the kitchens at the back. The heat was like a blow in the face after the brisk outdoor air, and the smell of grease and cheap ale nauseatingly strong.

  “Hey, Raft,” said a fat man, heaving himself to his feet from his place at a broad table. “Got trouble?”

  Alen rolled his eyes expressively. “He turned out to be the jealous type,” he said, his tone indescribable. “And clever enough to use what’s happened as cover for murder. He’s got more buddies with him than I think I want to deal with. May I use your back door?”

  “O’ course,” rumbled the fat man. “Come on through here, then. Mind the steps, girl. Steep, they are.”

  The stairs he had led them to were in fact extremely steep. And dark. Kehera gripped the handrail and descended cautiously. In front of her, Alen was moving ahead with the confidence of familiarity. He stopped at the base of the stairs to collect a torch from a stack against the wall and light it, the snap of his candlelighter sharp against the heavy silence that had enwrapped them. From a hall to the left came muffled voices, accenting the quiet rather than troubling it.

  “That’s where the real gambling goes on,” Alen murmured in her ear. “Fortunes, bodies, and souls won and lost, sold and bartered. I doubt they’ve even noticed anything’s amiss. We’ll go this way.” He lifted his torch and led her to the right-hand door, which let into a short hall and then another steep stairway.

  “What’s down here?” Kehera whispered. These stairs were not only steep and dark, but slimy. And a disagreeable smell was starting to make itself far too apparent.

  The lieutenant slanted a quick sideways look at her. “You aren’t going to like it.”

  Refusing to give way to rage or tears, she said, “I’ll cope. What?”

  He steadied her with a hand at her elbow. “The sewers.”

  “Oh, Lieutenant, Fortunate Gods!”

  “Yes, I know. But the general’s plan has turned belly-up, that’s clear, and with any luck this will get us right away. As long as we meet nothing worse than rats, I shan’t complain.”

  “There are . . . other things we might meet, down there?”

  “Only the other kind of rat,” Alen said grimly. “Thieves and beggars and other low folk; they sometimes come and go through the sewers. But it’s worth the risk; too many guardsmen up in the streets, too many of them too close behind us. We’ve no choice, and this should get us right away. Can you bear it?”

  Kehera took a deep breath, and then wished she hadn’t as the smell
, thick enough now almost to taste, seemed to crawl down her throat. She coughed, then started to say that of course she could bear it—that wasn’t the question—but what if their pursuers figured out where they’d gone. Wouldn’t having gone to earth in the sewers limit their options terribly? They would be like a fox that had gone to ground, only one way to run and enemies waiting at the places they might come up. Could they count on no one knowing where they might come up? Wouldn’t it be better to say aboveground, where streets went off in all direction and every door offered potential escape?

  But Alen had not actually waited for her answer. He was ahead of her, pushing a door open with his foot with wary caution. Feeling overwhelmed, Kehera followed, trying not to breathe.

  The sewer was not quite as bad as she’d imagined. It was actually a broad channel, perhaps eight feet across, with a ledge on either side of it wide enough for easy walking. The water, thick with its unspeakable flotsam, flowed sluggishly a good foot below the level of these ledges. The torch Alen carried cast its light forward and received it back, glinting red, from numerous little pairs of eyes.

  Kehera said tautly, “I hate rats.” She was appalled to feel the tight prickle of tears behind her eyes. It wasn’t the rats, of course. It was Eilisè. Eilisè had hated rats worse than Kehera ever had, and now she wasn’t even here to worry about these rats. Because she’d been so brave, because she’d insisted on coming to Emmer. Worse, because Kehera had let her insist, and then let her get killed. Kehera struggled to pull herself together, knowing grief could be more crippling than any physical injury.

  Alen gave her a quick weighing look. “You must bear it.”

  Not being stupid, she realized perfectly well that his brusque tone was meant to straighten her spine, where kindness would—indeed—have let her go to pieces. She was still angry. That was fine. Anger was much better than sick disgust or wrenching grief for walking through sewers. She met his eyes and bit out, “I’m fine.”

  He nodded just slightly. “Carry this.” He handed her his torch. “If I have to fight, get back against a wall and hold off any attacker with that. Don’t try to run unless you truly must; it’s an absolute maze down here.”

  “I—I thought you said we’d left the guardsmen behind?” A glance around showed clearly that there were only two ways to go from this place: ahead or back. She more and more feared they should not have come down here.

  He nodded. “I’m sure we have. Merely a precaution. This way.”

  The ledge seemed rather less wide when one actually walked along it. The disgusting water lapped the stone far too close on one hand, and on the other the arching curve of the wall dripped and stank. Both ledge and wall were unpleasantly slimy. A green scum coated the stones, and the wall was dotted here and there with round, pale lumps, like the unhealthy growths of some obscure and particularly disagreeable disease.

  The next little time was a nightmare. The ledge, which had been wide enough at first so they might almost have walked side by side, narrowed to half that distance, and then narrowed again. It became increasingly difficult for Kehera to maintain her balance, especially when she was distracted by the fervent desire not to touch the filth of the wall. Worse, in places the ledge actually lowered, or the water level rose, so that the liquid lay over the stones in horrible puddles. Lieutenant Alen lifted her over these wordlessly, his boots far more suited to the necessary wading than her light shoes. Kehera thought she should perhaps not allow the man to put his sword arm out of action this way, but in the end she could not endure the thought of wading in the ordure, and she said nothing.

  They turned into a side tunnel, and then turned again. And again. Kehera was hopelessly lost very soon. The touch burned lower. She watched uneasily as the flame crept closer and closer to her hands. She mentioned it finally, and Alen cast a quick look back. He judged the length left on the torch and said reassuringly, “It’ll last till we get above. Another half hour, a little more. Are you going to last? We could rest here for a few minutes.”

  The thought of remaining in these horrible tunnels one second longer than necessary was intolerable. “I’m fine.”

  Alen nodded without speaking, as if he understood her thought, and turned again to lead the way. Then he stopped, after only one step. Kehera only just barely stopped herself from letting the torch strike him in the back. She bit back an exclamation of angry surprise and stood still, watching his taut stance, trying to decide what had caught his attention.

  The scrape of metal across stone, at their backs and not at all like the scuttlings of rats, answered this question unpleasantly. Kehera discovered that the phrase “a chill down the spine” was founded in literal fact. She shuddered helplessly. The shadows from the torch she carried betrayed her shivers with ruthless clarity.

  Alen pressed himself against the wall of the tunnel and beckoned urgently for her to pass him. The ledge right at this point was at its narrowest, not at all wide enough to change places comfortably. Kehera gritted her teeth, took the hand so urgently offered her, and let the man swing her dizzily wide over the offal-thick water and back with a thump against the suddenly welcome support of the tunnel wall, slime and all. They walked on, not too fast on the uncertain footing.

  “Turnings,” Alen murmured in her ear, so close behind her he was all but treading on her heels. “We need to take the next tunnel left, and then skip the next side turn, and then the next left again. It slopes up all that way. Then there are several little side tunnels both ways. Keep to the main passage. Got that?”

  Kehera went over it in her mind. Left, skip one, left, don’t get distracted by smaller tunnels. “Yes,” she whispered over her shoulder.

  “You’ll find stairs, up and down. You’ll want to go up, but go down. Two doors at the bottom. Knock on the one to the left and tell the man you’re sent by Jagharis. He’ll let you in and ask what the water level is. Say it’s full five and likely to come up. Walk past him and then up the stairs. Got that part?”

  “Yes,” Kehera hissed back over her shoulder, repeating under her breath, Full five . . .

  “A door at the top. Don’t knock, just go through. You’ll be in a wineshop hard by the Open Market. You remember where to go from there?”

  She indicated that she did.

  “The house is around to the east from the wineshop. About half a mile. Use my name and they’ll help you there. Don’t mention the general. Don’t use your own name.”

  “Are we going to be attacked down here?”

  “Probably,” Alen murmured. “Yes.”

  “By whom? Guardsmen, or—”

  “Hush.” The lieutenant obeyed his own injunction, walking with catfooted care, his boots nearly silent on the slimy stone of the sewer ledge.

  Kehera bit her lip and watched the ledge before them carefully, holding the torch low to illuminate their path. Even so, it was Alen who was the first to see the new threat in front of them. His touch on her shoulder stopped her in her tracks, and peering forward, she followed the direction of his stare to the gleam that was metal and not damp stone, the darkness that was black cloth rather than simply lightless air.

  “I’ll go in front again,” he said quietly. “You come close behind—a good span back so I don’t need to worry about taking your head off with a backstroke.”

  She started to acknowledge.

  Another voice cut hers off, grim and oddly flat in the echoing tunnel: “And then what will you do when one of my men comes and takes her away from you from behind?” Before them on the walkway, a man watched them steadily. Kehera couldn’t tell whether he was a guardsman or one of the thieves Alen had mentioned. For a second she had hoped he might be Quòn, but this was a stranger, and the disappointment of that was crushing.

  Alen said swiftly, “I’ll put her in the water and take both sides at once. How many of your men are you willing to lose trying to take us, and for how little profit? Back your people off and I’ve some coin I can spare.”

  Kehera screwed up
her nerves and her stomach for the suggested jump into the filthy sewer water. She promised herself that, whatever happened, she would not throw up.

  The unseen man answered heavily, “I am not a patient man. Nor have I a need for patience. Put up your sword, or I will have my bowmen shoot. Up lanterns, there.”

  Flame bloomed ahead of them, and behind, several lanterns in each direction, each held by a man with a sword. The men who weren’t holding swords held small wicked crossbows. Kehera looked at Lieutenant Alen in dismay; she could think of nothing they could do against crossbows. Jumping in the water probably wouldn’t help; she doubted it was that deep. The men in front were close, not more than thirty steps ahead; even indifferent bowmen could hardly miss their targets from that distance.

  “If you’re guardsmen, you’re out of uniform,” Alen said sharply. “And you’re not plain thieves or I’m a granny with wooden teeth. Who are you?”

  The leader took one step forward, lifting a lantern. Kehera’s skin prickled all over as she stared at him. She didn’t understand. He looked . . . like anyone. Big. Heavyset. There was nothing out of the ordinary about him. Except there was something . . . there was something wrong about him. Something almost familiar, though she knew she had never seen this man before in her life.

  The man shook his head. “The question is, who are you? No one, I think. No one of use to me.” He made a slight, impatient twitch of one hand, and two crossbow bolts were suddenly standing in Lieutenant Alen’s chest.

  Alen staggered. His sword sagged in his grip, its tip gritting across the slimy stones. Kehera tried to catch him, to break his fall, but he was too heavy. He sank down to his knees, his eyes glazing as his blood ran out. Kehera knelt beside him, clinging to his hands. She felt stunned. Too much had happened in the past few days. She felt her comprehension would never catch up. The death of earnest Lieutenant Alen, whom she had only just begun to know, seemed in that moment more unbearable than any other thing that had ever happened to her.