She spread her hands in strong acknowledgment, and they stood looking at each other in silence.
“I find myself thinking, Champion, that I am glad of your discretion. I will be in the city a few more days at least, and it comes to me that it might be well if I am openly heard to speak against you.”
“That would be shrewd indeed.”
“There are more Nobles in residence here than I had expected, which is good for my business, but I wonder why so many have deserted the capitol. Perhaps the weather there has been dreary.”
There are spies from the Prince, from others, packed into the city. If anyone doubted your return to the kingdom, they will not doubt it now.
“I would not dream of dictating your actions, my lord. I will not come here again.” She turned to leave out the window. Mostly fruitless, the whole night, save only that he would relate her courtesy to his father and she could be certain the Prince and the Rat knew she lived.
“Sequa.”
She felt a spurt of rage that he would use her name so casually but he would certainly feel he had the right. Only a wonder he did not call her Squirrel as the Michelian Runners had. “My lord?” she questioned, still walking away and not caring for the insult given. He would move lightly, she knew, and swiftly but he would still have to come around or over the long table to put a blade in her. A thrown weapon would be God-blessed to be fatal and if the Gods had so deserted her, she deserved to die with a knife in her back.
“I have a letter from Jesan.”
Her lungs seized, the air in them turning to liquid rock. She had been punched in the gut by some invisible giant and her blood turned to acid and flame. She might have stumbled; she might have stood still as a statue. She might have begun to cry. Before she turned back to him, she pulled her veils down to cover even her eyes, in the ancient fashion long out of favor, peering through the thin sheer layer of fabric at a dim and blurry world.
“I landed at Northhome, when I came back from the Emerald Lands last Measure. Jesan and I had known each other before…well, before the exile. I paid them all a visit,” he said, calmly and directly. On the tabletop next to the bound book he had been reading lay a single, quarter-folded sheet of pressed paper, marked in blue wax.
“Are they well?” She impressed herself with the steady tone of her voice, though it sounded rougher and darker than even usual.
“They are as well as might be expected. The twins are growing to be as tall as their father and as placid as their mother. They are well cared for by the old nurse, who seems content with her lot.”
Sequa’s birth mother nursed the children of House Kimerian and though they had not parted on good terms, it soothed her to know she was still alive. Her last words to her daughter had been “We will never speak in this world again.”
“The Lord and Lady had already made their mark upon the northern ward, lowering the taxes and looking for new trade; I think our two families will have much commerce between them in the future.”
Sequa’s hand touched the letter, her left hand where a ring of golden hair nestled on her thumb, under her fingerless half-gloves.
“Jesan. Jesan seemed…restless. Bitter. Longing for something the north cannot provide. I could only wonder what that might be. He gave me the letter when I left. He said ‘give this to your Champion.’ I have been hunting after you for a Measure and had begun to quietly despair.”
She looked right at him then, turning her veiled face into his with a single deliberate motion and he nodded, sweeping his lantern from the tabletop. “I will retire for the night, I think and lock the door behind me. No one will enter here again till morning. You can let yourself out, Champion. May the Son hold you in His Talons, till we meet again.”
“Goddess bless your nights,” she murmured in reflex.
As he retreated from the room and took the bright flame with him, the coldlights on every wall flared back up to bath her in a gentle, golden glow. The blue wax turned black in their mild light.
Like ripping a knife from a wound, she slashed through the seal with one finger and unfolded the paper.
A single sentence in a clean, square hand sprang out in sharp relief against the creamy paper, the new kind pressed from wood pulp.
I do not love you for your face. Scattered at the bottom of the paper she saw a careless spray of dark-brown spots. She touched her tongue to one of them, imagining the taste of iron and salt. Heart’s blood.
The failure and mindless death of the night that still wrapped around her soul were coated in quiet benediction. Relief from fear.
Sequa stood for a long time on the thick, bright carpet, still as stone, her eyes dry and her thoughts empty.
~ * ~
It took her several days to track down the families of the other five boys she thought were possibly connected. All Merchant class, the ones who would actually have been out on a roof or outside staircase at some point. Hard for something to fall from the top of a building on street enclosed by a roof. In the end she thought she found perhaps two more deaths that met her patterns, and truly only one seemed to fit completely. It had occurred on the Fullness of the Goddess, one complete Turn before the death of the merchant’s boy, two Turns before the death of the whore. She needed to know if Cur had been anywhere near the outer wall of the city that day; if anyone would be able to say he had lurked near that youth’s demise as well.
Sequa had not visited Cur since the Balance and her failure with the merchant. She would not go to him sweating shame at her lack of control from every pore.
The Iron Quarters were not a favored destination for her at the moment; she could not shed the idea that someone had seen her slink away from the body of the Merchant-born. Of course, she would already have been arrested or dragged in for questioning. Anem, for all her tolerance, did not condone barefaced slaughter of innocent, unarmed people. But she would have to go there at some point, if only to speak to Anem again about her suspicions.
Perhaps they waited for her. Letting her come to them rather than risk a general brawl in the streets.
Slipping into the open main entrance of the Iron Quarters she made her way swiftly to the detention level. No one stopped her; no yells of alarm. No one followed her; no side glances and too-casual changes of pace. It appeared she had gotten away with murder. Yet again.
The atrium that led to the cells was empty when she arrived. No mugs of wine or jugs of water; no racked weapons.
Prescient terror reached out a casual hand and tightened it around her throat like a vise.
Cur’s cell was empty. Clean, neat, no blanket or slop bucket. All the cells were empty, and they were never empty.
Sequa struggled for a moment not to hiss or twitch in surprise then stalked back down the corridor to the guard station.
Suddenly not empty.
The guards had multiplied in her brief absence, three lounging against the far wall. She turned to the stout man wearing the officer’s badge who had taken up a place at the table against the wall.
“Where are the prisoners?”
He looked her up and down from behind his helmet and nasal bar, brushing imaginary water from the tabletop.
“Let ‘em go, don’t we? Can’t keep ‘em forever, if’n they’re just drunk or such.” He exaggerated his own accent for comedic affect, mocking her.
Sequa’s hands went out from her body, reaching upward for her weapons to bash the arrogance from his face. Will forced them downward again, reluctantly.
“And the ones you don’t catch and release?” She tasted blood again, her throat dry and rough.
“Oh, they go to the End of the Road and good riddance. Never see them again, like as not.” He grinned at her, eyes sharp and cold under his expression, daring her to move, to act.
In the corner of her eye, she’d seen three more guards enter to room and wished passionately that they would attack her. If they attacked her, she could respond. Under her half veil, Sequa clenched her teeth.
An
d nodded politely.
Once out in the corridor she set out at a dead run for Anem’s sanctum on the top floor.
She passed Parri in the outer office when she burst through the door. He drew steel in a flash, and she suppressed the now-familiar urge to jam his own blade up his backside. Thankfully, he had no time to stop her. Anem looked up blearily and with genuine surprise when her own door slammed open, which checked Sequa a little.
“Where is he?” Sequa snapped. She had too much momentum behind the question to be stopped, and indeed she had to physically stop her own headlong rush on the wall and spin back to the Commander. To her eternal credit, Anem understood instantly and came to her feet sharply.
“He’s gone?”
“Yes.”
“Sequa. I swear, I did not order it. I intended too, yes, but only after a solitary place could be prepared for him.”
Sequa slashed a hand through the air. I accept, I understand. “Where?”
“The End of the Road, Under Roof, south wall.” The city’s prison, called ‘The End of the Road’ sat against the far outer wall, Under Roof, where only the city’s poor would be affected by it.
“I’m Running it. Let the nobles whine.”
Anem’s head jerked, yes and Sequa fled headlong again, the door to the Noble’s Way flung wide behind her.
With the God at His height, the Noble’s Way was crowded. Perfumed women in wisps of cloth stretched languidly under His gaze, preening their bronzed skin like a songbird’s bright plumage. Young men stood bare-chested and self-important, competing for the attention of the women. Only a few private guards scattered among the groups, in bright mail and spotless white veils.
Down through the middle came Sequa in gray and brown and dirt, sprinting headlong for the main Way that led south from the curtain wall of the Temple Close. Shouts of outrage followed her like a flock of birds, and twice she narrowly avoided being grabbed by one of the peacock boys or a guard. By the time she took to the Child’s Road over the roofs, she had acquired half a dozen enraged young men and then left them behind in a shouting, impotent mob.
The End of the Road, set right against the south wall of the city, had its own exterior exit, a chute that let out onto a cart left there to collect the bodies of the prisoners who died. The large building had been cobbled together from three multi-story buildings generations ago. The entrance itself was not Under Roof, but marked the edge of the slum here. The Lord looked down grimly on the fruits of His justice, baking the bare dirt of the dead-end courtyard to grey dust. No windows, no ladders to the roof, or the other levels of the roads. Only two ways out. The front gates and the long fall to the wagon bed.
It housed the dregs of Ressen, the men and women who committed crimes too numerous or heinous to be allowed to walk freely. Most would know nothing but these walls until they died. The guards, only one step up from the prisoners, became half-feral vicious creatures with no compassion and little intelligence. Life inside these walls would be a horror on the best of days and death a relief.
Sequa checked at the front gate, two of the keepers confronting her. The big, brutal-looking men were watched over by a cold-eyed woman, so tall and thin she looked like a predatory insect. Somehow they managed to block the entire entrance even to her.
“The Iron Quarters delivered new prisoners today. I must see one of them,” Sequa snapped over the cross spears of the guards. The woman sneered audibly through her helmet and mask and made to turn away.
“No visitors. No whores. Don’t care which you are.”
Before she could turn away, Sequa slipped down her veils and snarled back, “If I have to play pick-up sticks with your ribs, I will see him. Now.”
The big guards looked impassive but the woman…peasant-born. Sequa could read her body language like a brightly lit signal fire.
She had been expecting the Champion to show up at her gate.
Excellent.
Sequa drew her new sticks and held them reversed, the long ends angled down her arms and a short stub protruding from her fists. The two men looked confused and contemptuous, another advantage to not carrying steel. So many people underestimated wood, usually until the bones of their hands shattered. She gathered herself, drawing down inward and going very still…
…and then noticed the motion in the dark depths of the gateway behind the women. Figures in the armor of the Iron Quarters; likely the guards who had conspired to bring Cur here in the first place.
Someone in the gloom there had a devious mind; they had set the watchdogs out like bait for her. If she attacked them—only doing their duty—they had cause and chance to retaliate. And there would be so many of them she would have to kill to survive. The armored and well-armed Iron Guards would be unlikely to make easy corpses but they could sacrifice these despised dogs and lose little. Even Anem would not be able to overlook slaughter in the open. Nearly…admirable in its cleverness, using her own nature against her.
Blood howled in Sequa’s ears, beating against the very skin of her eyes and tongue, desperate to be free. Somehow, she backed up a step, her joints aching and screaming to deny the motion.
The insect woman sneered again.
“Yeah, you get gone, you freak. Get gone.”
Sequa swallowed metal and sour spit and backed again. The slight flurry of motion in the entrance way slowed and steadied but did not disperse. However, many of the Iron Guards lurked there, they would stay till Cur had been killed.
She turned and ran for the next street over. She’d seen an exterior ladder to the top of the Wall there on the way over.
Ressen’s outer wall had no patrols down its whole length except in times of war—so never in the living memory of the residents. The posts in this area were far enough away that even if someone had seen her climbing up they would have taken too long to get there to stop her.
Her hands, shaking in desperate reaction to the death-need she had almost released earlier, clenched into fists. She had no rope, no climbing claws or picks; nothing but her sticks and her thick, leather climbing gloves, strapped to the bottom of her back sheath and now swapped out for her fingerless fighting gloves. She would have one try at this stupid, desperate plan.
At least that convenient cart waited to catch her corpse when she failed.
Sequa hopped onto the parapet of the wall and look downward. Perhaps four stories down to the wide, clay lip of the body chute set into the rough, red-and-grey stone. The edge looked dark with slime and foul liquids, chipped and cracked from Measures of misuse. It probably wouldn’t hold her weight.
Before better judgement could intrude, Sequa turned to face the city and stepped off the edge of the wall.
She caught the edge of the parapet with her leather-covered fingers, one stick clutched with her thumb against her palm, and jammed her toes into the crumbly, weather-beaten, ancient surface of the wall itself. Her beautiful new shoes gained just a tiny purchase. The wall itself sloped away from her as it went down, the base much thicker than the top. A tiny angle. It would have to be enough.
Releasing her hold, Sequa slid down the outer wall of the city like a raindrop across a sheet of metal.
Her fingers dug into the surface, leather instantly shredded. Her hands scraped and caught, gouging so deep it ripped through to cut her skin. She felt no pain though, nothing but the sensation of slipping into oblivion. The fall, heart-stopping, felt nothing like flying during a Run, nothing like the controlled acrobatics she excelled at. Shards of clay and rock spalled out to strike her face, still uncovered, and her eyes closed in reaction.
She might have screamed, in fear and exhilaration. She might have howled in terror.
Her left foot jarred sharply on the edge of the smooth, clay tube that launched the bodies from the wall. It groaned and shattered a heartbeat later but she needed only that moment. The stick in her hand flashed up and out, spun sideways to jam itself into the sides of the chute.
For a long moment, Sequa hung in the air from nothi
ng but the precarious grip of a piece of flexible wood against clay softened with a sheen of rotting meat and old blood. Then her free hand, blood trickling down the inside of her sleeve from the cuts on her fingertips, snapped out to find a handhold. She hauled with both arms, getting her knees and then shins inside the tilted surface of the tube. The angle remained gentle enough not to pitch her out again, but the reek nearly made her let go, layer upon layer of death. Coughing, retching up what little had been in her stomach, Sequa twisted her stick free and looked upward. A little glimmer of coldlight showed from perhaps half a story above her. The inside of the chute looked black and slick. Her fingers, shoulders, and back all shrieked an insistent melody of agony and injury.
Teeth set in her bare face, Sequa hauled herself up the greasy, putrid tunnel one painful handhold at a time, emerging an eternity later in a small, dark room with one door and a nearly dead, coldlight lantern against the far wall. She knelt on the rough wooden boards for many heartbeats, vomiting nothing until her stomach and chest hurt worse than her shoulders.
When she finally got to her feet, she felt woozy and weak, drunk with the fetid stink clinging to her leathers. Her veils, miraculously unmarred, stayed tucked under her arming vest.
Sequa reeled a little, bumping against the wall. What had she just done? What insanity had that been? All for Cur? For what? Coughing blood once more, she eased the door open a finger length at a time. Gods above and below save anyone on the other side.
The door opened onto a short, empty corridor with other doors to the left and right. Sound and motion on the left, nothing on the right so she went that way.
Luck held for her again, for the next room held stores of rough cloth, jugs of cheap, foul wine… she would rather be a little sticky than smell like a charnel house.
She cleaned her skin, hair and leathers of the slick decay marring them, a quick swipe with the sour liquid. The funk clung to her still; it might never go away, sinking into her soul itself like a blot of ink on a white dress. Time slipped away, but if she had not washed she would have gone mad in a few heartbeats.
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