by Shannah Jay
'Find out what caused that,' Viran ordered his aide, his voice very soft, a mere breath in the ear. 'No use taking any risks.' He moved closer to his chosen exit and Aharri did the same, while one of the bodyguards moved across to the only visible doorway.
As the Hashite bodyguard reached it, sword drawn, he yelled, 'Flee!' Then he began using his skills and his body to buy the rest of them time.
Aharri didn’t use the doorway he had indicated for his escape route, but chose to leap instead on to a small table and lift a panel in the low wood-lined ceiling. He’d clambered inside and slotted it back in place before the attackers broke into the room. As he’d hoped, indeed gambled his life on, there was still a space above the room, loosely filled with the nerid wool which was often used as insulation to muffle sound and keep rooms private. In one corner of the roof there was a narrow exit, which he found by touch in the suffocating darkness of the wool mass. Thanks to his dead wife's early training in Sisterhood ways, he had kept his body supple and wriggled quickly down into the wormhole of a tunnel.
The sounds from below indicated that the Hashite guard hadn’t bought as much time as hoped.
'Poisoned blade!' was the last sound that brave man made.
Viran made it to the escape tunnel and his single remaining guard barred the entrance as the Prime Craftsman slipped inside. But there he found himself facing one of Benner's black-clad personal guards, grinning with anticipation. A well-set trap.
'Yield!'
'Who to?' Viran demanded.
'To your Lord Claimant.'
Without hesitation, Viran bit down hard on one of the buttons at the neck of his tunic. He’d known he couldn’t hope to be lucky for much longer, and preferred to die by his own hand rather than face capture - especially by the Lord Claimant, who had no inhibitions about methods of winkling information out of people.
With a roar of fury, the man dragged Viran's hand from his mouth, but the roar changed into a panic-stricken gurgle as Viran spat in his face.
'We'll go together.' Viran grinned as the world faded and a soft greyness began to lap around him.
Warmth and colour started returning as his soul adjusted to the transition from life, and the sound of his dead wife's voice came to him from a great distance away. As the last life sighed from his body, his dead features settled into a smile that was as joyous and innocent as that of a child.
On the ground beside him his attacker writhed for a moment or two, then began to sink towards death. But this man would find no colour and warmth on the other side. Beneath his stiffening body he could sense a deep rumbling sound and he could hear voices in the distance yelling, 'The Serpent! The Serpent's rising.' Something surged up in the escape tunnel, something so black and lightless that it
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made a hole in the darkness. The something shied away from Viran's body, but pounced on the last threads of life and consciousness in Benner's terrified guard, sucking his soul dry with a growl of satisfaction and spitting the husk of the body back into the world.
Two hours later in the castle, Benner erupted into a paroxysm of fury. 'What do you mean, Bel-Ashkaron can't be found? '
Roath bowed his head. 'Lord, the fault is mine. Do with me as you will.'
'Get out! Get out, the lot of you!' Benner screamed to the men awaiting his orders. As he watched his guards cram through the doorway, he shouted, 'Not you, Roath, you fool!' But the hysterical edge had gone from his voice.
Roath came back to stand in front of him, head bowed. 'Shall I kill myself, lord?'
'No you shan't!'
'You're generous indeed to forgive me.'
'Who said I've forgiven you?' Benner breathed deeply. 'I'm angry. Extremely angry. And I expect you to make up for this appalling failure. Make no mistake about that.' But he had the Gift of Truth and could sense that Roath really had done all that one man could, that Roath had been as sure as anyone could be in the Shambles that every possible exit from that room had been guarded. 'But you checked the ceiling. I told you expressly to check the ceiling.'
'We did so, Lord. I can't understand how he opened that panel. We had to smash it to get inside the ceiling afterwards.' He paused and added, 'And we did kill Viran, after all.'
'Yes. But he got Foorin as he died. Trust those Hashites to play sneaky tricks.' Benner began pacing to and fro. 'You say you have the Shambles surrounded?'
'Of course. Wesrov had that whole section surrounded before we even started tonight. And when we didn't succeed in everything we’d hoped for, we extended the net of watchers and placed our own men at key points.'
'You trust this Wesrov?'
Roath shrugged. 'We paid him well. He hopes to live and work in Tenebrak still. You yourself truth-tested him.' He waited for further orders and when none came, asked, 'Shall I have him killed? Made an example of?'
Benner's soft leather shoes marked the silence as he paced up and down on the inlaid marble floor.
Slap, slap, slap!
Roath waited.
At last, Benner stopped his pacing. 'No. Instead tell him to search the Shambles. High and low.
Every building. Every domain. Every single filthy stinking nerid shed.'
'I doubt that's possible, Lord.'
'I know it's not possible, you moron. But Wesrov will make a show of searching and that'll throw the whole Shambles into turmoil. And now that Viran is dead, Serpent be thanked, I'm not having anyone else fomenting rebellion in my city. Those Hashites will fall to pieces without him, you mark my words.'
Roath didn’t contradict him, though he didn’t agree. His lord was very good at believing what he wanted to believe in moments of passion or anger, and woe betide anyone who tried to say differently.
'From now on, there'll be a curfew in the Shambles, lifted for two hours only at midday.'
'Excellent idea, Lord of my Claim.' Roath grinned as he thought of the trouble that would cause.
'Excellent.'
Benner nodded. 'They'll not eat very well.'
'Some of the weaker ones will starve, Lord. An excellent ploy.' He frowned. 'Can they buy exemptions?'
'No.' Benner sighed as he said that. 'It's going to cost me. I could have made a fortune out of exemptions, but I intend to tighten the place up before we leave, as a warning. Then, just before we leave, we'll relax matters a little.'
'Good thinking, Lord.'
Benner sighed again. 'Sen-Sether is very insistent that we join him on this campaign, but it's the last thing I want to do, the very last. I'm far too old for fighting, too old for travelling, as well.'
'You aren’t old, Lord of my Claim.'
'Well, I feel old, and that's the same thing!' Truth to tell, he was losing his enthusiasm for the fight against the Sister hags. Why couldn't Sen-Sether leave him be?
***
In a cellar where wine and cheeses had once been stored, among a ragged collection of humanity who owned no homes of their own and paid each night for shelter, Aharri Bel-Ashkaron lay fretting.
He hadn’t yet been able to escape from the Shambles, and the net was drawing tighter by the hour. He should have heeded that feeling of unease, he really should, and always would in future. If he had a future.
He allowed a bubbling snore to issue from his lips, but sleep was far from him. For three days he'd been trapped there among the poorest of the poorfolk. Three interminable tedious days. And for him, the boredom had been worse, far worse than the hunger, for he'd not dared to display his money to buy better food or the services of a messenger. He wouldn’t go to his allies in the Shambles for help until he was sure who’d done this. Benner's guards couldn’t have got into the Shambles without help from inside. So one of the streetmasters was not to be trusted.
A drunk stumbled into the cellar, where sleeping space was rented out by a sour-face virago whose bedraggled appearance belied the fortune she’d amassed over a lifetime's dealing. Once, long ago, she’d been one of Jianti's pampered favourites. Now she had to earn her livi
ng like this. Till better times came. If they ever came. By which time she would have wasted her best years and be too old to profit -
unless she had enough coin saved to open her own house of love.
The newcomer paused in the doorway, then fumbled his way across the cellar by the light from one small lantern hanging on the wall in the corridor outside. After tripping over feet and exchanging curses with half the occupiers of the floor space, he shoved aside Aharri's neighbour and made a place for himself. Within minutes he, too, was snoring loudly.
Aharri waited. Friend or foe?
Still feigning sleep the man made a circle with finger and thumb, so quickly made and unmade that if you hadn't been watching for it, you’d not have noticed nothing. But Aharri was watching. That sign had never been betrayed to Those of the Serpent. It belonged to an inner group of subversives funded
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by the master traders that had never broken.
The sign was made again, followed by a gesture towards the man's private parts and then towards the door. Each movement seemed like the casual tossings and turnings of sleep.
A little later, Aharri grumbled, hauled himself to his feet and muttered something about 'needing a piss' before staggering out of the room, drawing more sleepy curses as he tripped over feet.
He half expected the man to follow him, but although he stayed in the privy chamber as long as he could, he had to move out or perhaps draw the attention of a hidden watcher. You always acted as if there were hidden watchers when you were moving around the Shambles these days. As he left the privy, a hand issued from a panel on the wall and again the circle sign was formed with first finger and thumb.
Aharri hesitated. He was obviously expected to follow the beckoning hand behind the panel, but this could be a trick, a trap. He tried to sense the rightness of moving through the narrow doorway in the wall, but was so weary he couldn’t.
As he stood there, indecisive, a head poked out briefly from the panel and jerked to indicate that he should hurry. He sagged with relief at the sight of Jianti's bodyguard and stepped quickly forward. He trusted Jianti. The streetmaster was utterly honest in her own way. And her bodyguard was a Hashite.
He grinned as the panel closed softly behind him. Jianti would no doubt expect a huge reward for saving him. And he'd pay it gladly. He hadn’t even considered the idea that she would be the traitor.
And when he was safe, he’d also pay her well to seek out and dispose of the person who’d betrayed them. She’d be glad to do that. A disloyal streetmaster was a danger to the whole Shambles. She could hire Assassins from the Guild. Indeed, they might even give their services free if they knew it was to avenge Viran's death.
CHAPTER 21 THE WAY OF THE SERPENT
By the time spring scattered flowers across the land, Sen-Sether was ready. He had men trained and armed, ready to lead the battle-fodder of common folk who’d been impressed into the army. He’d been amassing weapons for over a decade and special incense sticks for the past two years. Now his Dread Lord the Serpent was pushing him to move, swelling with power and a thirsting, ravening need to wipe the world clean of the Kindred's taint.
A hundred days marked each season in the Twelve Claims. At the beginning of the Spring Hundred, Sen-Sether sent out the call to arms. He spent some time composing his letter to Benner, smiling at the parchment with sneering satisfaction when it was done before calling for a messenger. He had little respect for Benner nowadays, though when they were both younger, they’d been as near to considering themselves friends as either of them had ever come. But Benner was becoming weak in his middle years, not to mention plump and lazy, and that was no way to serve the Serpent.
The Lord Claimant of Tenebron felt a shiver of foreboding run down his spine when he received Sen-Sether’s letter, written on a formal scroll, carried by a liveried messenger and embellished with the new seal of Sen-Sether’s claim, showing a serpent rearing its head. Benner read it in silence, not allowing his feelings to show, then stared at the messenger. 'You shall have your response by tomorrow, fellow.'
The messenger looked uncomfortable. 'Ah - your pardon, Lord - but my master said - he hoped you might honour him with an immediate response.'
Benner was nervous of Sen-Sether, but not that nervous. 'And so I shall,' he said, with that false smile on his face which instantly alerted Roath to trouble brewing. 'You shall have the response tomorrow without fail.'
He dismissed the messenger and made a slow and stately exit from his council room, beckoning Roath to follow him to his private quarters. There he flung himself on a couch and proceeded to beat the arm rest with a clenched fist and to curse fluently under his breath.
Roath waited for a moment, before asking, 'Trouble, Lord?'
Benner nodded and handed over the scroll. 'Read that.' He valued Roath's advice more than anyone else's and knew that the man was utterly devoted to him - for the obvious reason that Benner had raised him from nothing to a position of immense power and for the secondary reason that his relatives, who lived near Dalbrak, were very vulnerable to Benner's wrath.
'Sen-Sether is very insistent.' Roath handed back the scroll.
'Yes, curse him!'
'And he's not a man to trifle with, Lord.'
'No.' Benner was chewing on his thumb nail, ripping tiny pieces off it and spitting them out absently, a sure sign he was deeply perturbed.
'If I might offer some advice, Lord?'
'Why else do you think I brought you here, you fool?'
Roath bowed. He knew Benner was just blowing out his anger in words, as usual, and didn’t took offence at this word. 'I think it’d be better not to upset Lord Sen-Sether.'
Benner sighed.
'He seems to have the Serpent's favour. And - it wouldn’t do to risk losing that favour ourselves, would it?'
Benner sighed again. 'He insists I go in person.'
'It would be better, Lord of my Claim.'
'Better! To live rough and travel every day. Better! When I could live here in comfort. It's not as if those hags are threatening the Twelve Claims, is it? They're at the other end of the world from Tenebron and haven't come out of their mountains in over a decade.' He snapped his mouth shut and started fretting at the nail again.
Roath allowed his master time to calm down, always the best tactic with his lord.
'Who shall we leave in charge, then?' Benner asked at last, hunching one shoulder pettishly.
'You could leave me here, Lord. You know I’d never betray you.'
His lord considered this, then shook his head. 'No. I prefer to have you with me. You're the only one who has a bit of sense in his head.' The only one not blinded by the Serpent. But neither of them
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was ever stupid enough to voice such a thought, even to one another.
'Perhaps Commander Rexnith, then,' Roath said thoughtfully.
'He's an old fool.'
'But loyal.'
'Hmm.'
'You could make him Adviser to your nephew, Mezver, and the lad can be nominated as Regent -
though he’s not ready for any actual power.'
That made Benner laugh. 'Even if we did give him some power, he'd be too lazy to use it.'
Roath grinned. 'A good figurehead to leave behind us, then. And Rexnith is too old and devoted to the House of Benner to do anything but guard your interests. Besides - we could take one of his sons with us on the campaign, could we not, to further guarantee his loyalty?'
'I suppose so.'
But Benner was still not looking happy. 'Is something else bothering you, Lord?'
Suddenly his lord looked older than usual. 'I'm not fond of living rough or fighting on long campaigns. I'm getting too old for all that, Roath. I don't know how I'll cope with it.'
'I’d happily go in your place, Lord of my Claim.'
Benner shook his head. They both knew Sen-Sether would not accept that.
***
When Benner's response arrived in Setherak, written on a scroll just as long in even more elaborate swirling characters, and sealed with the hawk insignia of House Benner, red wax on black silk ribbon, Sen-Sether read it once, gave a snort of irritation then tossed it aside. 'He didn’t reply instantly, then?' he asked the exhausted messenger, who was standing at attention, hoping desperately not to incur Sen-Sether's wrath.
'He replied within the day, Illustrious Lord.'
'You told him I wished a rapid response.'
'Yes, Illustrious Lord. Just as you ordered. In fact, I used your exact words.'
Sen-Sether studied him. The man was telling the truth and although he seemed afraid now, it was clearly not because he had anything to hide. It was just a healthy natural fear of his master, the sort of fear that a ruler needed to rule safely, the sort of fear that Sen-Sether enjoyed feeling in his subordinates. 'You've carried messages to Benner before. How did he look this time?'
The messenger wrinkled his brow in thought. 'Tired. As if he's not sleeping well.' He hesitated, then added, 'Older, too.'
Sen-Sether nodded thoughtfully and waved one hand in dismissal. He’d sensed the same thing in Benner's latest communications, a tiredness of the soul as well as of the body. When this campaign was over and those hags were vanquished once and for all, he would have to consider whether Benner was really doing his best for their Dread Lord, whether he was even capable of ruling Tenebron as the Serpent would wish. There had been a few hints over the years that Benner might not be totally committed to anything but himself.
Sen-Sether's eyes narrowed in a calculating expression and his whole face took on a gloating look.
Perhaps Tenebron would be the first claim to be taken under Setheron's wing, the first step in the unification of their world. One day, the Twelve Claims would become one - under the house of Sether, of course.
He’d been Sen-Sether all his life, second to his brother Danver. When he killed the boy, Petur, he’d finally be able to kill his weakling brother. Then he would become Sether, Lord of the World.
He’d been patient over the years, but his time was coming. No more hiding. No more secrecy. No more restraint. He’d have unlimited power over all people. And would enjoy using it.