In front of my eyes, the paintings on the screen panels depicted domed buildings, nothing like those of the island. That they were ancient Awian palaces could not have escaped Gio’s notice.
He drew his rapier and practiced two or three sequences back and forth. He didn’t seem satisfied. I watched, excruciating pins and needles prickling my legs. My tight grip on my sword hilt was embossing an image of twisted metal wire into my palm.
Gio held his rapier over his shoulder, pounced to the side table and gulped down his glass of gin. Nothing happened. Gio returned to a cool first guard, began to spar with his shadow, leaving white dints in the plaster. I quietly stretched to see. He should be writhing in paroxysms by now, on the floor, in agony. He should be quickly asphyxiating, tongue too swollen to scream.
I could not for the eternal life of me think what had gone wrong. The poison was having no effect at all. In a few minutes Gio finished his exercises and, looking perfectly healthy, strode toward me. He was coming to close the shutters; I would be trapped inside. As soon as he passes the screen he’ll see me. He was just one step away.
I sprang out and made a dive for the window but it was too far. I landed in front of it, facing Gio.
His face was grotesque with astonishment. “Jant?” He snatched himself into guard, with me at sword point. His rapier’s bright tip hovered a centimeter away from my chest. I shuffled back until my calves pressed the window ledge, the night air behind me. I kept my hands down, in surrender. Gio’s crazed eyes were wide, amazement stayed his hand. He checked the doorway-if I was here, the other Eszai might be closing in. “Where’s Wrenn? What were you doing?”
He saw my glance flick to the empty gin glass. I was so confused, I couldn’t help but look. No man should stand upright after imbibing that much belladonna. “Poison?” he whispered; he knew my history. His face went white with fury. “You cowardly bastard! I’ll pour it down your throat! How long before it takes effect? Answer, damn you!” Fear high-pitched his voice. “What have I drunk? What is it?”
I said nothing out of sheer bewilderment; Gio should be very dead by now. My coat leather split at the breast under the pressure of his rapier point. He shouted, “Tirrick! Help! I’ve been poisoned! Assassin! Quickly!”
Voices on the mezzanine took up the shout: “Gio’s been poisoned!” “I knew the Trisians would try something!”
Gio leaned forward with a deep, earnest look. “Comet, do you blame me? Rejected from the Circle, you’d do the same.” He urged me to answer with a manic little nod. I made no move. He suddenly growled with hatred and drew his arm back for the thrust.
I dived backward out of the window. I fell, backflipped, spun into a full somersault, fighting to free my wings. Firelight stretched into a blur. Stars below me, white granite above. I forced my wings open. The left one bruised hard against a column. I flapped frantically to get air under them and banked breathlessly over the square. The rebels were all yelling but I couldn’t see them. I tried to get my bearings.
I fought desperately upward to the level of the Senate House ledge. Gio leaned out of the window, staring in mute horror. I pedaled my legs, pumped my wings and skimmed the roof above him, kicked off the ridge and glided out over the cliff.
I yelled to Lightning, “Run!”
Lightning said, “Oh, no. Hush.”
“Run! We must! Follow me.”
He had no choice; the rebels were staggering to their feet and reaching for weapons. They looked at each other, finding the nerve to cross the mosaic and attack. Lightning dashed around the corner, straight in front of them to the only conspicuous door-the library.
Below me I heard Gio swearing. “Get me water! Get me the ship’s surgeon!”
Was the aconitum belatedly taking effect? I called to Lightning, “The second floor is defensible. I’ll meet you up there!”
Lightning rammed the door open with his shoulder and turned in the entrance to face the men. “I am”-he loosed an arrow and the nearest one dropped his rapier and grabbed his hand, turned and fled trailing drops of blood-“Lightning. The immortal Archer.” He let another arrow fly at the largest man in the middle. It went straight through his hand that held an axe shaft. He jumped up with a howl and shook the arrowhead from the skin between his fingers. They all backed off. “You will find the stairs hazardous.” Lightning nocked another arrow to string. “I recommend caution, mob. Stay out.” He disappeared into the dark library.
I think he just made it worse. Five uninjured men clustered in. One kicked the door jamb. “Fuck him!”
He looked up at me; a birthmark half-covered his baggy face, gray in the dim light. Another was ex-fyrd, with Brandoch’s white trident badge on his tatty jacket. He called to bring more people around-a big hispid man whose jumper hood hung over his greatcoat; a burly woman, although in the darkness I couldn’t be sure.
I went over them low and swept up to the window to bleed off speed. I flared my wings, braked hard, bending my flight feathers right back. My air speed dropped to nothing; I fell. I hit the window’s louvre shutters with the soles of both boots. The shutters flew apart. I dropped through and landed squarely on my backside on the floor with my wings jammed in the window.
This story was pitch-black but I smelled the serious scent of paper and venerable patinated wood. I scraped a match and held it up, seeing that the well-stacked shelves lined a single central aisle obstructed with crates of papers. Lightning ascended the railed stairwell, whirled around with his back to me. “Comet? Where are you?”
By striking matches and peering through their weak light, I made my way along the aisle. He took deep breaths like a baited bear, stood statue-still, listening to the voices rising from the stairs.
“They’re both trapped. You go first.”
“Are you kidding? That’s Lord Micawater. The Archer. He’ll shoot me in the eye as soon as-”
“Lord la-di-da. Rush them.”
“Both eyes, probably…”
Lightning snorted.
“They’re immortals.”
“Then they can wait,” came the woman’s voice.
Lightning lowered his bow slightly and sat on a table. I said, “We’re safe here for the moment.”
“Oh, we’re safe, are we? Splendid. Shall I just make you a cup of coffee, then? This is your fault, Jant! We could have stayed unobserved. I was hidden. I was prepared to steal back to Stormy Petrel, while you could fly. But no; you cry out ‘Run!’ Now the mob knows we’re here-and I’m cornered!” He shook a fist under my nose. His face was indistinct in the darkness but I could see he was pouch-eyed from lack of sleep. “You irresponsible, foundling, Rhydanne-”
“Please don’t use ‘Rhydanne’ as an insult.”
“Drug addict. Well!”
“Well what? If you’d stayed by the columns they would have caught you. Gio saw me, then everything happened too fast to think.”
“Thinking is supposed to be your strong point. So, has he perished?”
Gio was far from dead. I protested, “I don’t understand it. Tolerance to that amount of belladonna isn’t possible; there are no recorded cases of recovery.”
Lightning drummed his powerful fingers on the table, sounding like a small horse race. He held his great longbow in the other hand, finger over the arrow shaft across its grip. I lit an almond-shaped lamp and paced to the window. The outlaws milled about below.
I felt queasy knowing that the aconitum was useless. I might have needed it myself at any time. I have never actually used it because scolopendium is such a fast-acting drug that on the rare occasions I overdose I am not in a condition to remember it or operate the ring. I have carried aconitum since I first learned of its effects, fifty years ago. Ah, damn. I haven’t replaced the tablets for-how long? Twenty years? And how many rainstorms have I flown through since then; how many long soaks in the bathhouse hot tub? It was a mistake that only an immortal could make. I said, “The tablets have been in my ring too long. The potency must have degraded. Gio
isn’t suffering the full effect, if any at all.”
“You have never learned to be an Eszai,” Lightning said quietly, which was worse than his shouting. “Let me take stock. Item: Gio will be determined to repay our attempt on his life. Item: it is four A.M., so we have a full hour before Petrel arrives. Item: I only have one hundred arrows. Item: I am in considerable pain, and I will not be able to run for a sustained time.”
“What?”
For answer Lightning wormed his hand under the bandages around his waist. He held it up, red with blood, and wiped his fingers over the old scar on his palm. I hadn’t seen the stain on his shirt. “The exercise agitated my wound; it has not closed completely. I didn’t want to mention it, but it’ll hinder me so you must know. Damn it, don’t look so taken aback; just go and watch the mob.”
Shrunken by guilt, I turned to the nearest window, swung one shutter open. Lightning said, “Do you see any of my fyrd?”
“No. There aren’t many Lakeland or coast Awians rebelling; they know they need the Castle.”
“Good. I’m grateful for that at least.”
A mass of people filled the plaza between us and the Senate House, red-lit by the bonfire. Their noise was incredible: a tumult of gossip, jabbering fragments of conversation and false rumors-I could use those. I looked down on their heads; hoods, caps and woolly hats. I spotted the mesomorphic woman elbowing her way to the top of the boulevard. There was a general slow flow in that direction, like the start of a landslide. The air thrived with anxiety and excitement. I listened carefully, trying to separate phrases from the chaos: “Let’s go. No point in staying now Gio’s snuffed it, is there? You heard what that prat Tirrick said.”
“I would if I could see a bloody thing. If there’s two Eszai there’ll be more, see? The whole Circle might be here.”
“Gio’s not dead! His orders are to stay put.”
“I gave up all that order crap last year. Come on, think what we can pick up on our way to the ship.”
Gio Ami emerged from the Senate House hefting a large rectangular shield which had a metal bracket to hold and a big padded hook for his upper arm to bear the weight while carrying it. He immediately sheltered behind a pillar, sword drawn. He seemed dazed and was hangover-pale; I could not decide whether the poison was working on him with reduced efficacy, or whether he was sick with tension. He bent nearly double to yell, “I’m here! I’m well. Look!”
“Shoot him,” I told Lightning.
Lightning dipped his head, trying to see Gio. I leaned out and shouted at the crowd, “Tornado’s coming. Mist is sailing half the Castle’s fleet into harbor! Thirty caravels full of fyrd and an Eszai on each ship!”
Gio’s adherents drew toward him but the woman beckoned people to join her. “Come on, we must reach the boats before Tornado arrives.” They surged toward the boulevard.
Gio tried again: “Come back! Listen, they’ll hang you as pirates! I’ll pay you an equal share of everything in this town! There are no more ships! Alone, you’ve no chance against Mist!”
I stuck my head out. “Tornado’s fyrd will arrest anyone who stays with Gio! He’ll be brought to justice!” I withdrew rapidly as an axe smashed into the window frame and fell onto the people beneath. I remarked to Lightning, “Gio can’t stop them leaving. I’ve managed to split them up.”
“Good.” He sighed.
A young swordsman gestured up at my window and babbled something vehemently. Gio shook his head but his friend continued to remonstrate. Gio pointed his rapier. “No, Tirrick!”
Tirrick looked at Gio, seeing a dirty and disheveled figure, and he must have realized at the same time as I did that Gio was not poisoned; it was his paranoia making him act as cautiously as if he was really feeling symptoms. I said, “I think Ata’s right-Gio is mad.”
Lightning said, “Maybe, but fortunately Wrenn is even madder.”
Tirrick glanced at the guards standing by the library entrance, and then ran past Gio into the Senate House.
“Now the fencing masters are arguing between themselves.”
Lightning bit his lips together. “I have always disliked Gio Ami because he professes to be a man of honor but he only lives by the codes that suit him-like his damn Ghallain traditions. He was married once, you know; if he still was then perhaps we would be spared this. But he feigned respect for the peninsula custom. They receive a candle as a gift on their wedding day. If they argue in the following years, they must light the candle and leave it burning for a time corresponding to the length of the argument. So, when it is burned down completely, the couple are automatically considered divorced. It happened to Gio. He called his wife a troublemaker, separated her from the Circle, and home she rode to find her friends aged and infirm, or dead and buried. Poor lady.”
I strained to see farther down the boulevard. White puffs of smoke like cotton bolls were rising from the base of the hill, where the harbor wall was hidden behind lines of houses. “I think Mist’s signaling. She must have figured that it’s all gone wrong. I bet she’s burning canoes…I just don’t know if the signal is for me or the Petrel.”
Lightning watched the stairwell sourly. He said, “Like amateurs we chose a stronger bow than we could manage and missed the mark. If I don’t survive, Jant, will you remember to take my message?”
I nodded, dumbstruck. I had never heard a fatalistic word from Lightning before.
The sky above the Senate was pale gray now; I was able to distinguish the features of the people below. A dark coat became burgundy red, drab showed as light blue, a boy’s hair was highlighted with henna. Dawn permeated a pallid, cloudless winter day.
I looked to the sea again and gave a yelp. The beacon islet was now dimly discernible, the surf breaking on its seaward shore. Heeling around it with four masts in full sail was a ship tiny with distance. She headed into harbor at a great rate of knots, her long pennants snaking. “The Petrel! See, the Petrel’s coming in!”
Lightning sighed with relief. A few minutes later, some lads in padded jackets hurtled up the boulevard, pushed eagerly to Gio. Gio listened, then waved them aside and called out, “This is it! We must meet the Castle’s flagship. I tell you, there’s only one caravel. There are two Eszai aboard and we’ll overwhelm them. Let me have the satisfaction of dealing with Wrenn-and your prize is the Stormy Petrel!”
The crowd yelled. Gio lifted his shield and hastened across the square, shouting his rabble into a formation akin to a fyrd division. The Ghallain swordsmen he arranged at the front, then the biggest, roughest men, the Hacilith boys and a couple of harridan girls at the rear.
But the swordsmen at the library door refused to move and glowered when Gio beckoned to them. His authority had gone but he pretended that it didn’t matter, gave up and returned to the thick column.
Lightning thought aloud: “I can improve the odds for Wrenn and Ata.” He instantly flexed his bow and loosed. A man at the head of the column reeled with a scream and fell, the arrow through his thigh. Lightning selected another shaft from the quiver at his hip, let fly and the astonished lad behind the first man yowled and squatted to the ground. I could barely see the arrow projecting from his leg above the knee. Lightning started counting backward from thirty, “Twenty-eight, twenty-seven…” as he lamed each of the men along the nearest edge of the formation, who were arranged like targets in a gallery.
Hearing their screams, the column flashed shields along its length. It surged away from us, bending and abandoning the wounded men, leaving around twenty sprawling and crawling on the mosaic. One man cried loudly as he snapped the fletchings off the arrow and pulled the shaft out through his thigh.
Gio, invisible behind his shield, led his file to the boulevard. They emptied very quickly out of the square, hurried between the slender stone walls and snaked around the hairpin bends. They left the battered mosaic empty; Alyss and the Insects were carious with missing tesserae. Litter was stacked up in the corners against the library and ash blew out of the cooling bo
nfire into the colonnade. Lightning cleanly and methodically shot down the rearmost rebels in the column, hitting the left thigh of each man. “You, four; and you, three…two…one. There. That’s all the arrows I dare to spend. Is this not disagreeable work?”
Some footsteps scuttled on the floor below us. Lightning called, “Join our gathering, by all means. But please introduce yourselves so I know who I’m shooting.”
A movement at the Senate House caught our attention. A swordsman began to back out, lugging one of Gio’s heavy coffers between himself and his friend. Another followed, and a fourth, until all the chests and ornate boxes containing Gio’s fortune were lined up on the mosaic.
Lightning asked, “What are those?” but I hardly heard him because I was seething with anger. Tirrick, the goateed little creep, was stealing the treasure and I could do nothing about it.
The senators were next to stumble out of the door at the foot of the pillars. A frightened youth in a pale tunic, then a dumpy old man were corralled by the swordsmen. Vendace came out last, reluctantly, being goaded by Tirrick behind him. The tall, wiry Trisian leaned his head at a strange angle because Tirrick held a dagger across his throat. Tirrick shoved him out onto the mosaic, and looked straight up at our window with a bold smile.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They’re parading the senators where we can see them,” I said.
“Tirrick,” said Lightning. “I know the type. Privileged but strident and embittered, the youngest son of a minor noble.” He licked his fingers and held them out of the window to judge the breeze. Then his fingertips rasped over the arrow fletchings and settled on the string. Tirrick angled his dagger across Vendace’s scrawny neck and called, “We’ll kill one of these for every shot you loose!”
Vendace rolled his eyes and stamped his foot. His brown arms were rigid by his sides.
I said, “The boxes are full of money. I think the swordsmen will take it to the ship, with the senators as hostages to shield themselves. It’s our chance to escape. Oh fuck, no it isn’t…”
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