by Bell, Hilari
But that tale took the better part of ten minutes to tell, and no one believed it anyway. Under the Realm’s law, if a man wrongs another, he makes the wrong right, and there’s an end to the matter. But men who bear this mark, two linked circles, cracked on their outer edges like links broken out of a chain, are men whose debts have not or cannot be paid. Usually it means they’ve killed someone, and bribed their way off the gallows — for debts short of death can be otherwise repaid.
The reasoning behind those marks is that since you owe the law an unpayable debt, the law doesn’t owe you anything. If any man wrongs you, hurts you, even kills you, the law will do nothing about it, for you are outside its bounds.
The rumor is that unredeemed men starve to death or kill themselves. But I’ve found that people are kinder, and more reasonable than the law. I’ve sometimes worked for a day or two and been denied my pay. And many will refuse to hire a man so marked, which I can understand. But ’tis the look on folks’ faces when they first see my wrists that led me to finally take Fisk’s advice and hide them — and I found their fear worse than their contempt.
There was contempt in this man’s eyes, as he waited, but his expression was civil enough. I slipped the leather cuff up my arm and extended it.
Whatever message he carried must have been important, for he took a moment to study the mark and make certain of it. Those tattoos are made with magica ink, which cannot be removed even by burning, but only by more magic. To my sight it glowed faintly, but to normal eyes, in the dim alley, even black circles on white skin might be hard to make out.
After a long moment the man nodded confirmation and stepped back as if satisfied — then, with no warning at all, he drew a dagger and plunged it toward my belly.
I jerked away, but only the training my father’s arms master pounded into me, not so many years ago, brought my arm sweeping in to knock the strike aside and save my life. I leapt back, and back again as he came after me, trying to grab his knife wrist with my left hand as he struck once more. My right hand fumbled for the knife hilt at my belt and finally found it.
My knife was four inches shorter than his, intended for slicing meat at table and cutting tangled string, or brambles out of a horse’s tail. His was a weapon, both edges honed for slashing and with an extremely sharp point.
But reach matters less than speed in a knife fight, and my blade would cut his skin no less readily than his would ... had cut mine. As we circled I realized that my side stung, and something wet and warm soaked my shirt and vest.
I shouted for help, but knew ’twas of no use even before he smiled. He’d chosen this place well, the warehouses that surrounded us held timber, not people, and the clamor of the saw pits would drown out any sound that might reach the distant street.
Most of my mind was occupied with watching his knife weave before my belly, his left hand hovering over it to guard and grab if my own blade struck. I was also trying to remember every bit of the debris I’d had no reason to notice, to keep him from backing me into something that might trip me. The cobbles were smooth and rounded underfoot — fine for cart wheels, but awkward even to walk on, much less fight.
However, the tiny part of my mind that wasn’t engaged in survival was screaming, and I drew a breath and said the words aloud.
“Why are you doing this?”
Another of those empty smiles tugged the corners of his mouth, but that was all. ’Twas as if I was already dead to him, and no question I asked could matter. Real fear arose, cold, under the controlled exuberant panic of the fight. For the first time, it occurred to me that I should try magic.
I had once controlled a drunken bully by pushing magic though my animal handling Gift, and that oft-used ability to calm and persuade came to my mind as the grip of a well-used tool comes to the palm. I wrapped my will around this Gift, which isn’t supposed to work on humans even if they’re drunk, and shoved at the heavy lid that covers my magic ... and yet again, nothing happened.
I had used magic once before, to protect myself in a fight, but here there was no deep swift river to—
He must have noticed my momentary distraction, for he lunged again.
I leapt back, grabbing for his knife wrist with my free hand. He used his free hand to grab mine, and only a swift swipe of my blade kept me from being gutted. I followed up my block with a slash that opened the back of the hand that gripped mine, jerking free and away as his blade flicked toward my face.
We resumed our wary circling, but I was panting now. Blood dripped from his left hand onto the cobbles, but I could still see that sharp blade flashing past my eyes.
He was trying to kill me, and unless something happened to prevent him, he might succeed. A heartfelt wish for someone to find us, a stumble, a bird to distract him, surfaced in me ... and without my even willing it, I felt the slab of thought and intention that blocked my magic slip aside.
Light and power welled from the center of my being, rising and flowing — to my considerable surprise — down though my legs and out the soles of my feet.
I didn’t dare look down, but ’twas not my imagination. At the edge of my vision, I saw a soft glow running over the cobbles, like a flooding stream that has come out of its banks... And then I slipped on those glowing stones, scrabbled for footing, and fell.
I had enough control to fall backward instead of toward him, and I began to roll as soon as my butt hit the stones, trying desperately to get out of reach before his knife descended...
The splattering thump of his fall was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard. I stopped rolling, and looked up to see my would-be assassin lying in the midst of a huge puddle of glowing stone.
“What under...” He tried to stand, but his feet flew from beneath him before he’d taken a step, and an understandable confusion slowed his reactions.
I rolled to my hands and knees, and crawled as fast as I could toward the nearest place where no magical glow illuminated the cobbles — cobbles that were as slick under my hands as greased glass. They were so slippery that even crawling my knees kept sliding back or to the side, and I thrust my fingers into the space between the stones to keep my hands upon them.
I heard another fall behind me, and incredulous cursing, but I didn’t look back. Indeed, when I reached the stones that didn’t feel as if they slithered beneath my hands, I scrambled to my feet and ran all out for the open end of the alley, where sunlight glowed and people moved on the street.
’Twould not take him long to start crawling, as I had, and even if he couldn’t see his destination, he’d find the edge of that magical slipperiness soon enough.
I intended to be long gone by the time he did. As soon as I came across a passage, between a rope weaver’s yard and a paint maker’s, I cast a glance over my shoulder to be sure he wasn’t in sight and dashed down it.
On the next street I felt I might slow to a brisk walk — which I much preferred, for my knees were bruised from crawling rapidly over stone, and the stitch in my side from running was almost as painful as the cut.
I pulled the cuff that covered my tattoos back down, and tightened the laces I couldn’t knot with one hand, wondering at what my magic had done — for I’d had little to do with it.
I had no idea how long the magic that had flowed over those stones would last. It could have vanished minutes after I departed, or it might remain for days. If it lingered there for weeks, would other folk find it? Would some scholar come to study the ordinary patch of cobblestones that had suddenly acquired a most peculiar form of magic?
A professor who studied the human mind and Gifts once told me that the reason man has no magic, and animals and plants do, is because our thinking brains block our access to it. This seemed to me a reasonable explanation for why my magic only surfaced, uncontrollably, in times of great danger or stress — and since that day I’d tried to find some way to bring it forth at will and shape it as I wished. This was the third time it had appeared more or less when I wanted it to, though it h
ad only once taken the form I desired. And what was the point of having such a terrifying and freakish Gift if I couldn’t control it? How could I practice, experiment with it as Fisk suggested, when the only time it seemed to work was when my life was in danger?
I zigged and zagged through several blocks, changing my route at random until I was certain I’d lost him, then made my way back to the inn.
The cut on my ribs had stopped bleeding shortly after I’d stopped running, but it had made a mess of my shirt, drawers, britches and vest.
“Not to mention mending them, once they’re clean,” said Fisk, mopping dried blood off my back. “Stop twisting around; you’ll open it up again.”
“’Tis not so deep,” I said, ignoring his orders and craning my neck to look at the cut. “It stings more than anything.”
“Maybe.” Fisk reached for the bandages. “But that knife went through two layers of cloth before it reached you. Whoever he was, he wasn’t playing around. Which seems odd, in broad daylight, with a mark who’s dressed as if he hadn’t two fracts to rub together.”
“I don’t think he sought to rob me.” I’d been thinking about this as I walked home. “He never asked me for my purse, which most robbers do. He only asked my name ... no, he already knew my name! He asked to see my wrists, to confirm my identity before he struck. He followed me down that alley because he wanted to kill me, and for no other reason.”
’Twas a thought I found chilling, and Fisk’s expression was sober.
“There must have been some reason. Oh, I agree he was stalking you. But why would he want to kill you? We haven’t left that many enemies in our ... hmm.”
I’d already compiled the list. “Lady Ceciel. She didn’t seem to bear much of a grudge — indeed, she should have been grateful we didn’t haul her back to face trial — but we did put a stop to her experiments. Master Worthington lost everything because we exposed his scheme. That miller in Mickelson, who was cheating his customers. Master Humphreys, whose poor wife we helped to escape him.”
“Several others.” Fisk’s hands, wrapping bandages around my body, slowed. “Any number of wreckers, some of whom must have escaped. And a lot of Roseman’s men were loyal to him... All right, there are quite a few people who might hold a grudge. But I think most of them would want to do it themselves, instead of hiring an assassin. You’re sure—”
“Positive.” I had already answered this question twice. “I’ve never seen him before today.”
“That you remember.” Fisk tied off the bandage, and picked up the bloody rags he’d used to mop me up. “You didn’t meet some of Roseman’s men, who stayed at his town house, and neither of us even set eyes on most of those wreckers. And there’s another possibility, too. Thank goodness I’ll be able to get all this blood out of sight before Kathy gets—”
The door flew open as if on cue, and my sister burst into the room.
“They didn’t change horses, but I found... What happened? Fisk, are you hurt? You’re covered with blood!”
In fact, he’d kept himself remarkably neat as he cleaned me up, and I hadn’t yet put on a shirt to conceal my bandages. The cloths Fisk held looked gruesome I grant you, but still... It must be love.
Fisk reached the same conclusion, and the soft look he kept only for Kathy came over his face.
“I’m fine, and Michael’s only got a clean cut, so he’ll be fine too. But remember that sense you had, that someone was following us? It looks like you were right. We’ll tell you the whole tale over dinner.”
“If Michael can ride,” said my loving sister, “you can tell me on the road. I didn’t find an inn where they changed horses, I found where Rupert spent the night. He left there just this morning, heading west. We’re less than a day behind him!”
Michael told Kathy his story as we rode westward. She couldn’t think of any reason someone would kill to keep us from finding Rupert, but she didn’t seem too surprised.
“’Tis Michael,” she told me. “You can send him off to the safest place you can think of, and he’ll still get into trouble.”
“I’m right here,” Michael pointed out. “And ’twas not my fault those bees had built a nest in Uncle Rory’s garden shed. And that time with the millstream, I hardly...”
I’d have found this argument amusing, if not for the fact that anyone who wanted to kill Michael was probably ... unhappy with me, as well.
I also knew that, just because over the next few days Kathy no longer sensed anyone tracking us, that didn’t mean no one was tracking us.
We rode toward the mountains until sunset forced us to make camp, and according to the people in the last village, we’d narrowed Rupert’s lead by another hour. Kathy wanted to press onward, but with the larger moon waning toward a Darkling Night, Michael refused to risk the horses’ legs. I was more concerned for our necks, but it was because of the horses that Kathy agreed.
My noble not-quite-fiancée made no fuss about sleeping in a bedroll on the ground, which I found remarkable ... until Michael told me that as a girl she’d tagged along with her brothers on hunting expeditions, sleeping rougher than we were now. She giggled at my shocked expression.
Michael woke us before dawn, and it was cool enough we were glad of our coats. We watched sunrise from the saddle, the light first painting the mountains’ highest peaks with peach-colored light, which brightened as it rolled down their sides.
The next village we passed through was small enough that we found Rupert’s trail swiftly, and he was now only three hours ahead of us. Further, he was only a day behind the carriage, which in a small town this far from Crown City was almost as remarkable as Rupert’s horse.
The connection that occurred to me was so tenuous that I hesitated to mention it. Unfortunately, Kathy was getting to know me pretty well.
“Out with it, love. What’s bothering you?”
We were riding away from the village, and it wasn’t too hot yet ... so why did she look so kissable? But she also looked like a woman who wanted an answer. I sighed.
“It may be nothing, but we’ve been talking so much about that coach, it got me thinking. Michael, do you remember what Quicken’s brother-in-law told us about the nobleman who bribed him to report on the project?”
He had to think a moment, calling it back to mind, though it was less than a month ago we’d been desperately trying to discover who was sabotaging the Heir’s project — and framing Michael’s brother Benton for murder in the process.
“He said the man who paid him, and took Quicken’s reports, was a slender man with a noble’s accent. His coach was fine, though the crest had been... No, surely that’s too great a coincidence. It can’t be the same coach. Why should it be?”
“Since we have no idea who they are, or why anyone would bribe Quicken to spy, or why someone’s evidently kidnapped Mistress Merkle, I can’t say. But note the common thread?”
“That the goal of the project was to discover some way for Margaret to bear a Gifted child. But—”
“And reports on that project were paid for by a man who traveled in a coach that once had a crest on the door,” The connections grew tighter as I thought them through. “A slender man presided over Mistress Margaret’s kidnapping ... in a coach with a scratched-off crest.”
“I said I see it.” Michael sounded a bit testy. “But there must be scores, hundreds of coaches and carriages sold by their owners when they acquire a newer vehicle. Once the first owner sells them, the new owner would be bound to remove the crest. Indeed, the seller would probably remove it before he let the coach go.”
“I know that. I said it might be nothing.”
But people were more likely to paint over a crest than scratch it off, and since the project had been about Mistress Margaret ... maybe it wasn’t so tenuous after all.
The last village was even smaller, only a few dozen cottages and a smithy where the forge hadn’t even been fired since there was no work today. The idle smith, who was happy to trade his tim
e for a few coins, remembered Rupert, and also the coach that had passed through just yesterday. It was dusty, and moving too fast for the horses to keep up that pace much longer, but they likely hadn’t had to. Jane Scarson had been cutting lettuce in her garden and she’d seen it turn onto the track that led to the old keep, with four men riding beside it like it carried a payroll or some such thing.
“Four men riding escort?” Michael asked intently. “’Twas only two the last we heard of them.”
“Well they must have picked up two more, ‘cause there was four when they came through here, looking around all sharp like.”
“Does the road they took go anywhere beside this old keep?” Kathy asked. “Tell us about it.”
“Not much to tell. Baron Tatterman’s grandfather was the one who moved out, and they say it’s still sound, though no one’s lived there for nigh fifty years. And no reason for anyone to go there now, far as I can see,” he added.
For the most part he was probably right, but it sounded like an ideal place to hold someone prisoner for weeks, or even months. Kathy, Michael and I exchanged a glance that acknowledged this.
He gave us directions that were full of local landmarks like, “then take the track that runs through that field where Mack Dunn planted that fancy squash three years ago,” but Michael, raised in the countryside, thought he could find it.
The road that left the village wasn’t bad, for a country road. The lane we turned off on, to go in the direction of the keep, consisted of two ruts free of grass and weeds. The track that led to the keep itself was only a slightly wider break in the bushes, and I’d have ridden past it if Michael hadn’t stopped us.
He was proven right a few hundred yards later, when a damp patch of earth showed the clear lines made by carriage wheels and a number of hoof prints. One set looked fresher than the others, even to my city eyes.
“We’re about to catch up to them!” Kathy’s face glowed with triumph, and I was pretty pleased myself.