“Don’t worry,” Helgin had replied. “She thinks she’ll get something out of it, or she wouldn’t have offered.”
He made the transition from Home to Park Hill; filth to ornate cleanliness. He kept near the side of the road, ready to seek a hiding place if threatened, but Park Hill seemed caught in slumber. He pressed on, moving in the shadows.
He thought of Sartas and the torn body that had lain in the Cavern of the Dead: it had not even been recognizable as his kin-brother. And McWilms, still and silent in the antiseptic womb of the med-pad, covered with the crusted scabs of lacerations, the sheets empty where an arm should have been. Guillene. If he could keep the fury kindled, if he could see Sartas and McWilms when he stood in front of the man, it would be an easy kill, then. He’d do it gladly. Another one to the Hag, another to join the dance that you began . . .
The guards at Guillene’s gates were simple: a hypodart of tranquilizer shot from the cover of nearby bushes—though Gyll garnered a few scratches even through his nightcloak; the thorns were sharp. Gyll hurried across the lane to the fallen men. There was a sharp buzzing in his ear, and he checked the snooper at his belt. A diode burned red—the gate was alarmed, and (swinging the snooper in an arc) the top of the fence. It took several seconds for the random field generator of the snooper to find a setting to blind the alarms. Finally, the diode went green and Gyll slipped inside, dragging the guards after him one by one. The gate closed behind him. Soon, Sartas. Soon.
Heritage’s groundcover was pleasure, quiet and soft, hushing under his slippered feet. There were parts of Neweden where snagglegrass, crackling underfoot, was nearly as effective an alarm system as any electronic device. The snooper remained quiet, and Gyll could sense no other guards on the grounds as he crossed the lawn. It seemed ludicrously easy to him—the rich on Neweden swathed themselves in protection.
The house was dark but for a few windows on the third floor. The structure was built of native stone; it felt warm to his touch, still radiating the fierce heat of the day. Gyll slipped around the house, looking for a side entrance. A door: the snooper shrilled in his ear, and once again Gyll paused to let it find the combination of signals to open the door quietly. He heard the soft click of an inner lock and touched the door’s contact. It yawned open. Gyll waited, sheltered in darkness, dartsling ready. No one came to investigate. He slipped inside.
It was quiet and cool. A sweet, smoky aroma hung in the air. He seemed to be in the kitchen; dishes were piled on a sonic washer, ovens lined the wall, a cup of mocha sat on the sideboard. Gyll looked closer at the cup. It steamed, still very hot. Someone was very near, then, or would be returning shortly. Either way, he had to move.
The third floor—he knew that must be the bedrooms. He needed to find the way up. The tense excitement of the hunt gripped him again. His mind clutched at the feeling, willing it to stay.
Gyll moved through a plush landscape. The house was filled with evidence of the company’s money. The walls were friezed with animo-screens, all still and quiet now; the furniture was massive and glittering. He could see the umber gloss of malawood, the more expensive red-brown of teak. An old pipichord filled one wall with keyboards, pull-stops, and brass foliage. Lifianstone statues stood in static poses along a hall, a monstrous holotank filled the center of another room, chairs in disarray around it.
He found trouble only once—as he came to the top of the ramp leading to the second floor, he heard a voice just down the hall and the click of an opening door. He had no time—he froze, ready to fire a dart. A man—muscles in Gyll’s belly relaxed as he saw that it was not Guillene—chuckled to himself as he entered the hallway. The man didn’t look in Gyll’s direction. Gyll watched him walk away, entering another door farther along. The door shut behind him.
It seemed that Dame Fate was watching Gyll. Nothing could go wrong. The feeling bothered Gyll. It all was too easy, too pat. At any moment he expected to be set upon; the back of his neck prickled under the collar of his nightcloak, but when he looked back, he saw nothing.
The snooper shrilled at him as he set foot on the third-floor ramp: someone above. Gyll barely had time to move back before he heard footsteps and off-key whistling. Gyll put his back to the wall, dartsling readied. He watched the floor—he’d told them a hundred times in practice sessions: if you’re around a corner, the first part of a person you’re likely to see is the foot or a hand. Watch the floor, watch the wall at about waist level—it will give you an extra half-second to react, and it may keep you alive.
He saw the worn tip of a leather boot and stepped forward, already firing. The man had no chance. The hypodart spat, the man crumpled, and Gyll caught him before he reached the floor, lowering him quietly. He glanced at the face—not Guillene. He moved the man away from the ramp and his escape route, then darted cautiously up the ramp, listening.
Still nothing. This floor was smaller than the others—one large chamber in which he now stood, the far wall glimmering with ice-colors from which a cool breeze emanated. In the middle of the room, floaters were arranged around a large table. Two doors led off the room. The place looked and felt empty, but Gyll had the snooper survey it. Nothing. He went to the nearest door and thumbed the contact. It hissed open.
A kitchen. Gyll left the door open, moving to the next. He touched the contact, feeling the tenseness grip his stomach again. He knew already, before the door opened.
Yes. He looked into a bedroom dimly lit by a shuttered hoverlamp. On a bedfield of rumpled sheets, a man and a woman slept. As Gyll stepped into the room, the woman woke, staring at him with startled, sleep-rimmed eyes, her mouth just opening in the beginning of a query. She knuckled at her eyes, sitting up, pulling the sheet over her breasts.
The dart hit her then. The mouth closed, suddenly, and she fell back. Gyll let the door shut behind him and moved to the bed, but the man didn’t awaken. He opened the shutters on the hoverlamp, letting the light fall on the man’s face. A smear of wetness trailed from the mouth; he smiled in his dreams.
Guillene.
Gyll stared at him, assessing the man who had killed Sartas. About my age, and that body hasn’t seen much work. If he’s cruel, it’s a mental cruelty, and others do the work for him. Sartas, I hope you enjoy his company. Make him your slave before the Hag.
He let the snooper check the room, found two alarms and deactivated them. Then he pocketed the dartsling and slid his vibro from its sheath. He activated the weapon; the luminous tip darted out, trailing the wire. Its growl filled the room and woke Guillene.
The man turned in his sleep, moaning, and his eyes opened—blue-green, with flecks of brown. He saw Gyll. Guillene bolted upright, the bedfield rippling. The woman jounced with it, oblivious.
“Who the hell are you? Where is Cianta? I told him to . . .” Guillene seemed to see the vibro in Gyll’s hand for the first time, and his voice faded to a whisper. He glanced at the drugged woman slack-jawed beside him. “Mara?” he said. He did not touch her.
“She won’t wake.”
“You killed her?” For the first time, genuine fright showed in him; he looked as if he were about to scream. He slid away from the woman, as if the fact that she might be dead and that close to him frightened him more than the rest. Gyll knew then that he’d never had to see the results of his orders, never had to deal with the mess.
“She’s done nothing to Hoorka,” Gyll answered. “She’s not dead. We don’t kill the innocent if it can be helped.” When Gyll named the Hoorka, Guillene had gasped, an involuntary intake of breath. He looked as if he were about to shout. Gyll put the vibro near his throat. “Don’t yell, man. No one in the house will hear you; they’re all like her.”
“If you want valuables . . .”
“I simply wanted for you to be awake, so you can tell the Hag who was responsible.” The vibro moved, menacing. Guillene leaned as far back from Gyll as the bedfield allowed. The sour odor of urine suddenly filled Gyll’s nostrils. He looked down to see the sheets wet
at Guillene’s waist. His nose wrinkled in disgust.
“I can give you money, Hoorka. Far more than the contract.” Guillene seemed not to notice that he had fouled himself. His voice was pitched high, he spoke too fast. “I’m worth nothing to you dead. Let me live, and I’ll enrich your organization. It will do you more good in the long ran.”
Gyll didn’t want to argue with the man. He tried to force himself into anger, and found that it had gone. “You’re a poor trade for Sartas, man,” he said. “You don’t deserve the quick death of the knife.” And words make a poor substitute for action. Remember Sartas; remember McWilms’s face, the empty sleeve. “Dame Fate must want you. She made it easy for me.”
“Kill me, and nothing changes, Hoorka. It doesn’t alter this world in the least. Moache will send someone else.”
“I don’t care about this world.”
“They’ll know who did this, Hoorka. The Alliance will seek your people out, because Moache will want them to do it. You can’t hide your presence, and you’ll just destroy your guild—that’s the price of using your weapon.” Guillene pressed his back against the wall. The dampened sheets dragged at him. He looked down at the vibro, not at Gyll, his chin pressing against his neck.
“Sartas’s honor demands it.” The scarlet rage had not left entirely. It was still there, masked by his disgust/pity for Guillene. He nurtured it in his mind as he would nurse a spark on tinder, willing it to grow, to leap into burning—to make the vibro move. Stop the talk, man. Do what you wanted to do, what you told Valdisa you must do. “This is for the Hoorka you killed and the apprentice you maimed. Tell Hag Death that Ulthane Gyll sent you to Her.”
“You don’t even know that I did this.”
The man’s bravado took Gyll aback. He let the vibro move away and heard the trembling breath of Guillene. “Who else?” Gyll spat. “You’d go to the gods with a lie on your tongue?”
“Hoorka,” Guillene said. His voice trembled. “Your people killed de Sezimbra. His people would have had more reason for revenge.”
“You killed de Sezimbra. Not Hoorka.” But the vibro didn’t move.
Guillene seemed to take hope. The chin rose, the eyes met Gyll’s for an instant, as if in a plea, but the voice was stronger. “Hoorka, I give you my word. I’ll spend what I have to and find the guilty ones, drag them to you with their confessions.”
Gyll knew the man lied. He could feel it in the words. He summoned up the image of Sartas’s body. That’s what those lies bring, he told himself.
Guillene still spoke, as if the voice could stop the thrust of vibro. “Hoorka, things don’t work the same on other worlds. You can’t expect us to do as you would. Gods, man, if you Hoorka haven’t learned that, then you’re all fo—” Guillene stopped. His eyes widened.
“Fools!” Rage flared, finally. “Is that what you say, man?”
The vibrotip circled before Guillene’s face.
“Hoorka, please, you can’t—”
“Insult Hoorka, and you insult me.”
“You must understand—”
“Strike at Hoorka, and you’ve struck at me.”
The vibro keened hungrily. Gyll’s hand lunged forward, slashing across the throat.
The body fell sidewise, hung on the edge of the bedfield for a moment, then slid softly to the floor.
Staring down at Guillene, Gyll searched for the satisfaction he should feel in the death, the gratification. He felt very little. He went to the bed, grasped the woman under shoulders and knees and took her into the larger room. She would wake there—away from the blood-spattered bedroom and the stiffening corpse.
Then, frowning, he made his way from the house.
• • •
Aldhelm’s body had lain the proscribed ten days in the Cavern of the Dead. Each day, as the sunstar touched the dawnrock with morning, an apprentice had added a scented log to the pile of wood that held the body, first anointing the log with the blood of kin. Ulthane Gyll, Thane Valdisa, d’Mannberg, Bachier, and Serita had done the blood service—the first five days from a cut on the left hand, the second from the right. Chips of ippicator bone had been placed over the open eyes. Aldhelm’s nightcloak had been pressed, the hem rewoven with gilt.
Now, as the dawnrock noted the passing of light, the Hoorka gathered. First came the jussar applicants with cloaks of red, then the apprentices with the normal black and gray uniform adorned by a scarlet sleeve, and finally the full kin. Their footsteps echoed among the stones. Glowtorches guttered fitfully in the hands of every tenth Hoorka, the erratic light throwing mad shadows to the roof. All passed once around the pyre, intoning the kin’s chant to Hag Death. Cranmer, on a ledge above and to one side, busied himself recording the ceremony. The Hoorka rustled to a halt, arrayed before the pyre.
Gyll was moody, tired. He’d arrived at Sterka Port only a few hours before, with time only to plunge his vibro into the ground near the dawnrock and then ready himself for Aldhelm’s funeral. He had not been able to talk to Valdisa, to tell her that Guillene was dead. Now he sat on the ground next to her, staring at the pyre and its silent burden, feeling the chill of Underasgard against his flesh. The scent of oil was heavy in the cavern, mingling with the pungency of spices. Flame crackled beside him as an apprentice came up and handed Valdisa a torch. Gyll glanced at Valdisa. She seemed to feel the pressure of his gaze and turned, smiling wanly. He touched her hand, almost as cool as the rock it rested on. Her fingers interlaced his and pressed gently. “I’m glad you’re back in time,” she said.
“It took longer than Helgin had thought. It wouldn’t have mattered. You’re Thane. It’s your task to see Aldhelm’s rite done property.”
“Still, this is better.” The erratic torchlight made her face waver, as if crossed by some unguessed emotion. She moved her hand away, staring again at the pyre. “It’s done, then?”
“Guillene’s with the Hag.”
“Have you told the kin?”
“Tomorrow. Tonight is for Aldhelm.”
She only nodded, solemn. Smoke from her torch watered Gyll’s eyes. He leaned away from her.
The torch Inglis held stank in Gyll’s nostrils—or perhaps it was Inglis himself. Gyll had found the cave system after an old and drunken lassari had babbled of it in Sterka. He’d taken Inglis with him to explore it. The caves, in Gyll’s mind, might make an excellent base for the group of lassari and jussar he’d joined: thieves and murderers hiding from the wrath of the Li-Gallant Perrin. Gyll had ideas for them—they had begun to listen, grudgingly. Now Inglis stumbled over the broken floor of the cavern and the torch came dangerously near Gyll’s clothing.
“Damn it, man. Watch where you’re stepping.”
Inglis reared about, the torch whuffing through air. “Shut your friggin’ mouth, Gyll. Just because you’ve managed to get the rest of ’em to listen don’t mean you can order me around. Try that again, and I’ll shove this friggin’ torch down your throat.”
Gyll knew that the confrontation between him and Inglis had been coming. The man had been undermining Gyll’s growing influence with the lassari band. Inglis had been one of the leaders, ruling by grace of his size and feared brutality. Gyll preferred to lead through discipline and intelligence, but these were not traits Inglis understood or appreciated. The lassari had been waiting to see which was the way of the future. Gyll could think of no better place to settle it—the dark caverns, the rest of the band waiting by the jagged mouth.
“Inglis,” he said, wearily. “You’ve seen me fight—if you still think you’re better, then you’re nothing but a fool.”
Inglis cursed and charged. The caverns echoed with their conflict—it was short. Inglis knew only one tactic—a bearlike charge, a straightforward attack. Gyll dodged the first blow of Inglis’s large fist, kicking the man as he lunged. As Inglis bent over in sudden agony, Gyll hammered at his neck with coupled hands. Inglis moaned, but did not go down. Gyll hit him again, and the man crumpled to the stones. Rock clunked dully under hi
m, the torch guttered nearby.
In a few moments, Inglis groaned to his knees, as Gyll watched.
“Enough?” Gyll asked.
For his reply, Inglis yanked the dagger from his belt and charged once more. This time, Gyll had to break his arm. He picked up the dagger from the stones, held it at Inglis’s throat from behind, one hand holding the chin up. The others of the band had by this time heard the fighting and entered. They stood around them like shadows, watching in silence.
“Enough?” Gyll asked again.
“You can beat me now, bastard, but I’ll find you sometime,” Inglis muttered through his teeth. He reached behind for Gyll, unwilling to yield.
Gyll pulled the dagger deep. Lifeblood splashed on the stones.
It was the first conflict in Underasgard between the lassari that would become the Hoorka.
Valdisa had risen, handing the torch to Serita Iduna, who stood beside the pyre. From under her nightcloak, Valdisa took out a dagger in a jeweled sheath—the Hoorka death-blade. It had once been a plain weapon, but now the blade was silvered, the hilt shone. She ascended the pyre—a rude stairway had been made in the logs—finally kneeling beside the body. Torchlight shone in her eyes; Gyll could see the tears gathered at the corners. He envied Valdisa her grief. Searching inside himself, he felt very little. He could make excuses—he was still buoyed by the adrenaline of the Heritage trip, tired from the long day, but no . . . He’d tried to summon up the sorrow that he should feel, that he knew he must feel somewhere inside, but it had hidden itself. Yes, he felt emptiness, but that was an intellectual sensation. Valdisa’s bereavement was genuine. Gyll wondered what was wrong with him.
Valdisa lifted the dagger and kissed the blade, tears shining behind the bright metal. She touched the flat of the blade to Aldhelm’s lips, then (her mouth taut, eyes half-closed and forcing the tears from under the lids) she plunged the dagger into Aldhelm’s breast.
A sigh came from the massed kin.
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