Assassins' Dawn

by Stephen Leigh

  “I understand that, Motsognir. You needn’t lecture me. But I could have used Vasella—alive—a while longer.”

  Helgin nodded into Renard’s irritation. He crossed his legs underneath him on the seat. “The woman’s your lover, or the man?”

  “Damn you and your frigging useless questions!” Renard slapped the table; the plant-pet quivered. “Dwarf, did you come here deliberately to irritate me? I tell you—I know what I’m doing.”

  “I don’t mean to irritate you, Renard. That’s just my outgoing personality shining through my dour exterior. I came to find out how things are progressing for you here in the dregs of Neweden society. You haven’t sent reports lately; FitzEvard’s slightly curious. I can’t say I really blame him, considering what he’s paying you.”

  “I haven’t had the time for paperwork.” Renard didn’t bother to disguise his growing anger. “Nor the chance. I can’t very well send them by the legitimate routes, now can I? In any case, why should you be the one so concerned?—you’ve a Sula in charge of Goshawk.”

  Helgin frowned. He tugged at his beard. “The Sula Hermond doesn’t know everything. He knows what FitzEvard Oldin wants him to know. He’s not here for the same reasons you are.” Helgin glanced critically at a hair plucked from his beard, then let it drop to the floor. “FitzEvard wants the reports to go only to me, not the Sula.”

  “So he’s just another pawn in the game.”

  “One metaphor’s as good as another.”

  “Pawns are cheap, easily lost, and sometimes it pays to sacrifice them.”

  “I hope not. I like this one.”

  “I could use him, Motsognir.” Renard looked thoughtful. His hand had gone back to stroking the plant-pet. He paced to the rear wall and back. “Think of the conflict it would create if your Sula were to die in the right manner—say, by lassari rebels. Vingi would be furious at the loss of potential profit, and embarrassed because of the way it happened. The Diplos wouldn’t raise a finger, and old d’Embry might just get thrown out of her job because of the backlash . . .”

  Helgin had risen, standing on the seat of his chair. In another, the posture would have been ludicrous, but the wrath twisting the dwarf’s face forbade amusement. “You’ll leave him alone, Renard.” His voice was uncharacteristically low; it seemed more sinister because of that.

  Renard only smiled. “Now who’s emotionally involved? You like him, Motsognir, neh? Is he your lover?”

  Helgin spat. His hands curled into fists. “I’m telling you to work with what you have here. Do you understand that?”

  “Are you giving me a choice?”

  “No.”

  Renard shrugged. He waved a lazy hand in acquiescence. Slowly, his face still ruddy with anger, Helgin sat again. “So long as we understand each other, Renard.”

  “I understand what I need to do. I know who pays me, and that’s all I need to know.”

  Helgin nodded. His expression relaxed in stages. The grin returned; he cracked his knuckles loudly. “Good. Then let’s get your friends back in here and tell me what you’ve been doing and what you plan to do.”

  As Renard moved toward the door, Helgin put his bare feet up on the table and leaned back dangerously in the chair. “And get rid of that damned thing around your neck,” he said. “It’s ugly and it stinks.”

  • • •

  She could see him sitting before the headless skeleton of the ippicator. Light from a handflare barred the walls and ceiling of the cavern with beast-shadow. He didn’t turn to look at her, though she knew that her approach, over the broken, treacherous stones of the empty caves far from the normal haunts of Hoorka, had hardly been silent. She stopped, hand near the hilt of her dagger, her nightcloak thrown back over her shoulder, out of the way.

  “Hello, Gyll,” she said. It was not what she’d been rehearsing in her mind.

  Now he turned. A hand swept the hood back from his head, revealing hair well-laced with gray. Gyll half-smiled, nodded. “Valdisa, it’s good to see you again. I knew you’d figure that it was me, and that you’d know where to look.”

  “You take a damned lot for granted, then,” she replied gruffly. She’d thought she’d known how she felt; now, seeing him, she was no longer certain. Emotions warred inside. She kept her hand near the leather hilt—Hoorka’s comfort, she thought, like Jeriad. “I have three kin being attended to for your bruises, and Underasgard is in an uproar. I’ll have to take disciplinary action that none of the kin—including me—is going to like. I could have sent kin back here to kill you for an intruder.”

  “You didn’t.” His attitude conveyed a studied relaxation: one arm propping up the body, the other across the knee of a flexed leg. “Hell, Valdisa, none of the kin were really hurt beyond their pride and a bruise that’ll be gone in a week. I’m good enough to have made sure of that. It’ll be a good lesson, especially to the apprentices you had guarding the entrance. It was too damned easy, m’Dame. Way too easy.”

  She continued staring at him, but her weapon hand relaxed, fisted on her hip. “Once, you were good enough to have made it look that easy. You’re telling me you’re back to that shape?”

  Gyll laughed, a full-throated amusement that rolled across the folded walls of stone. Valdisa didn’t share the laughter, didn’t move at all. I should hate him. I should hate him for what he did to me, did to his kin, did to Hoorka—for abandoning us as if his own damn restlessness were more important than the welfare of guild-kin. I should be angry with him. So why is what you’re feeling closer to jealousy? Her flat gaze watched him as Gyll leaned back to vent his pleasure, watched as the laughter slowly faded to a chuckle, watched as he stretched and rose. His loose clothing had the look of a uniform, but she saw no weapons. His face was as craggy as ever, etched with yet more time-lines, but the eyes were alight and restless, gleaming in the harsh light of the flare.

  “It’s good to hear you say that, Valdisa,” he said. “It must show a little, then. Yah, I feel much better now. You always told me that I was losing my tone. I was horribly out of shape those last few standards here.”

  “You could have managed to get back in trim,” she answered. Without leaving, she almost added.

  He knew. “Leaving was one of the best things I could have done.”

  “Not for Hoorka.” A pause. “Not for me.”

  “You did miss me, then.” His voice was very soft.

  “I’ve never taken lovers or made friends easily. You were both.”

  A look of something akin to sympathy came to his eyes—Valdisa knew only that she didn’t like the expression. Its very empathy repelled her. Gyll took a step toward her, holding out his arms in the welcoming attitude of kin to kin. The gesture rekindled Valdisa’s anger. She glared at the proffered hands. After a few moments, Gyll let them fall to his sides. “But you still harbor the grudge, neh?”

  “What the hell do you think?” Fury goaded her into shouting, the patronizing tones of his voice fueling the emotion. Gyll watched her, that cool sympathy/pity on his face, not saying anything, not reacting much at all. Valdisa forced herself into calm again. Hoorka show their inner faces only to kin—that’s how the code-line goes. Remember, he’s not kin. Not any longer. Her face became blank, neutral, a mask of flesh. With it, Gyll’s expression altered as well. The shoulders fell slightly, his lips clenched, and he seemed to sigh.

  “So that’s the way you’re going to play this?” he said. “As Thane to a dishonored kin-brother?”

  “Gyll Hermond is not a kin-brother, dishonored or otherwise. Gyll is nothing. He’s lassari, kinless. I do not hear him.” Valdisa spoke scathingly in the impersonal mode. Such a callous and deliberate insult would provoke a Neweden native to rage, and Valdisa readied herself, widening her stance for his attack.

  When he didn’t react at all, she knew just how much he’d changed in the intervening standards.

  “You needn’t speak that way, Valdisa,” he said mildly. “I wanted to see you again, sit in the quiet of t
he caverns with my old friend the ippicator, to see if the beast still made me feel close to She of the Five.”

  “Do you?” she asked, despite her anger.

  “I don’t know. I think maybe I do. The ippicators were always sacred to us, inviolate relics and not something to be sold as the rest of Neweden would do. I feel something looking at it.” His head turned back to regard the great ribs, the sheen of the bones, the five legs sprawled in collapse. “I think about how they were the pets of the gods and how the gods took them away from Neweden to live with them. And I look at the Great One here and I think about how much those bones would be worth, cut and polished.” He looked back at her. “You didn’t have to speak that way to me, Valdisa. I wanted to see you again most of all. I didn’t want us to scratch open all our old wounds.”

  “You could have communicated with me in the time since you left, but you didn’t.”

  “You could have initiated it just as easily.”

  “It wasn’t me that came back to see if he still felt Her presence in the bones of the ippicator.”

  Gyll exhaled loudly. He shifted his weight, and rock clunked dully under his feet. The sound was loud in the cavern’s stillness. “We’re both damned stubborn, aren’t we? Neither of us was ever willing to bend much.”

  “I don’t know that I’ll ever bend in this, Gyll. What are you here for? I hope you didn’t think to begin our relationship again.” Saying it stirred memory. The ghost of their affection and love was still there, underneath, battered and broken. It nagged at her. She glanced from Gyll to the five-legged ippicator’s skeleton, not wanting to look at him. She of the Five, why did You bring him back here? Why couldn’t you have kept him away?

  “Valdisa, there was a lot of feeling between us. That’s never really altered for me.”

  So careful he is. He makes it sound so easy, as if the rift were simply a crack easily plastered. “You’ve a hell of a durable set of feelings, then. You disobeyed a direct order from me as Thane, you made me declare you unguilded. You left me. You chose the Oldins over the Hoorka, Gyll. What’s the matter, don’t your Trader-Hoorka satisfy you? Doesn’t Kaethe Oldin open her legs for you, or don’t you have a pretty underling there you can seduce?”

  His smile was unsure. It flickered across his lips. “Valdisa, let’s be fair. I know I hurt you, I know I hurt the kin, but it seemed to be something I had to do. And I’m glad I did, in most ways. The Oldins are good people, Valdisa, and the Trader-Hoorka is an organization with great potential, not constricted like we were becoming here.” His eyes narrowed suddenly, and his gaze traveled her body. “Your nightcloak is tattered, the uniform is thin in places . . . I’ve heard tales since I arrived, Valdisa—they say that Hoorka is poor, that you don’t get many contracts anymore, and those you do work are always from the Li-Gallant.”

  “Nobody’s starved yet, Gyll. But, yah, we don’t get the contracts, and d’Embry won’t allow us offworld. What of it? It means we have to wear our clothes longer, means we don’t eat as well, means that some of the equipment can’t be fixed as soon as it breaks. You going to blame that on me, too? It wouldn’t have been different if you’d stayed Thane.”

  He didn’t believe that. She could see it in his eyes, in the way his mouth tightened. “The rumors have truth, then,” he said.

  She knew what she wanted, suddenly. “I don’t think talking with you is what Hoorka needs, Gyll. I want you gone.”

  “Valdisa, I left Neweden because—whatever you might believe—I thought I could do something for Hoorka. For us. I think I do have a future to offer, having seen the Families’ society.” He spoke with a fervor she remembered all too well. It engendered the same reaction in her that it always had. She shook her head into his words, and he began to speak rapidly, as if speed could alter her denial. “They can offer Hoorka much, far more than Neweden or the Alliance. Gods, Valdisa, you don’t know how suffocating the Alliance really is, don’t know how much they keep out from paranoia or some false elitism. Hoorka could be . . .”

  He stopped, realizing that she wasn’t listening to him. “Valdisa—” he began.

  “Gone,” she said. “And don’t talk to my kin, Gyll. Stay away from me, stay away from Hoorka.”

  “Talking isn’t going to harm anyone, Valdisa. There’s so much I wanted to tell you, so much I want to hear from you; how the kin are . . .”

  “Kin have died. You weren’t here to mourn them, weren’t here to give blood-duty.”

  The words hurt him. Seeing the pain in his eyes made her feel simultaneously pleased and repentant. She didn’t enjoy the ambiguity.

  Still, he persisted. “I don’t want us to be enemies, Valdisa. Maybe talking will change things, at least vent some of the bitterness you seem to feel.”

  She forced herself back into the Hoorka aloofness. “Maybe that’s exactly why I’m telling you to stay away, neh?” She turned her back on him, strode into the darkness of the corridor leading back to the Hoorka caverns. Her voice, disembodied, came back to him. “I’ll have my people away from the entrance in ten minutes, Gyll. I want you to leave. If you’re still here in half an hour, you’ll be considered an unwelcome and dangerous threat, and I’ll make sure you’re treated accordingly.”

  He could hear her footsteps moving away.

  The endless, mocking silence of earth and stone returned.

  • • •

  The next day the confrontation was still in the forefront of his thoughts. He mused on Valdisa and the Hoorka as he helped one of his crews unload crates from the shuttle hold, his shirt off like the rest of the laborers despite the Neweden chill.

  “Sula?”

  Gyll turned. The woman who’d addressed him was of moderate height, rather plain of face, and her clothing was that of a lassari. Yet she stared at him without the humility that should mark a lassari addressing a social superior. Her hands were on her hips, her head cocked at an angle in challenge. “I’m Sula Hermond,” he said, wiping his hands on his pants. “And you?”

  “My name’s unimportant,” she answered. She seemed nervous despite her air of arrogance. Her gaze moved about, and she licked her dry lips. “Can we move over by the other end of the shuttle, Sula? I would like to speak with you privately.”

  Gyll was tempted to refuse her, this no-name lassari. Yet his curiosity prodded him. You’re reacting with the vestiges of Neweden mores. This reluctance to talk to her is only because she’s lassari. Remember that you’re not a Newedener anymore, but an Oldin. “All right,” he said finally. “Marko, take charge here for a few minutes, will you?” The man grinned back at Gyll, glancing knowingly at the lassari.

  “Certainly, Sula. My pleasure.”

  Gyll smiled at Marko, shaking his head. He picked up his shirt, then walked with the woman toward the nose of the shuttle, putting on his shirt against the cool breeze. When they stood in the shadow of the nose, the thick strut of the landing gear beside them, he spoke to her. “Well, m’Dame? They can’t hear us here.”

  She glanced about once more. “I don’t like being here,” she said. “It’s too open. Too many people could be watching.” She looked back at Gyll and shrugged. “But I needed to contact you, Sula. From everything I’ve heard, everyone’s attention is centered on you: the Li-Gallant’s, the Regent’s. They want to know what you’re doing here.”

  “Just what it appears I’m doing—trading.” He could not keep a faint hint of condescension from his voice. “And which of those watchers do you represent?”

  “The Hag’s Legion and Renard.”

  Gyll knew that she watched his face for a reaction. He didn’t know if he was successful in keeping the shock and disgust hidden, but then, he did not particularly try. “What does the Hag’s Legion care about the Family Oldin?” His voice had turned colder, more distant. It hardened her face, made her step back away from him.

  “You were guilded kin once, Sula. We know that. You were Thane of the Hoorka, the scum that kill lassari for the Li-Gallant. They cast you
out, Sula, those Hoorka. Thane Valdisa had you banned from the company of all guilded kin; she made you lassari—no better than me as far as Neweden society’s concerned.” She paused, glancing about once more. Two people were walking toward the shuttle from the Sterka gates of the port. The woman kept her gaze on them, speaking faster now. “We need to know where you stand, Sula. Do you support the guilded kin who spat on your name and discarded you, or will you help the truly needy ones of this world, the lassari that look to the Hag’s Legion for support? You could aid us greatly.”

  “I’m a Trader, m’Dame. I don’t dabble in politics.”

  “You can’t avoid that here, Sula. If you deal with the Li-Gallant, you tread on the backs of all lassari. All we ask is that you consider that. There are things that the Hag’s Legion could use that wouldn’t involve your visible support: money, material, perhaps arms . . .”

  The two were still approaching, and Gyll could see that both wore uniforms—one that of Vingi’s guard, the other that of a Diplo staff member. The woman saw them as well. Her nervousness increased. She shifted her weight from side to side uneasily. “Sula?” she said. “I need an answer to take back to Renard.”

  “Then tell him no.”

  The woman scowled, baring her teeth—they were not good teeth; discolored, broken. “Sula, you’re not kin, you’re lassari. One of us.”

  “No.”

  She hissed, drawing her breath in between snaggled incisors. “Very well, then. You’ve made a mistake, Sula. I hope you don’t regret it later.” She looked at the guards, then back to Gyll. “I can’t argue with you any longer.”

  “I understand, m’Dame,” Gyll said. His voice had softened despite himself—he felt empathy for her, for the risk she had taken to come here openly, for the obvious passion of her convictions. “M’Dame, I bear no grudge at all against lassari, believe me, but I don’t intend to endanger my trading mission here.”