by Vale Aida
Action came before thought, but revulsion preceded either. He caught the man’s wrist and forced the clammy flesh back in one of the brutal grips Shandei had shown him, stopping just short of breaking the arm. A bone popped. Mole shrieked, tried to wrench his hand free, and shrieked some more, prompting another wave of guffaws.
“Oh, you don’t want him,” said Hiraen. His voice barely changed, but his eyes had taken on a flinty quality. “Pretty but savage, and mute as a brick. What about this?”
Nauseated, Emaris released the man with a jerk that sent him sprawling half off his chair. No one paid any attention, because Hiraen was holding up his bow. It was an excellent one: a double recurve designed to be shot from horseback, made from goldenwood and inlaid with silver, with a glossy ebony grip. Barrelchest’s eyes were showing the whites. “That’s one of them Betronett bows,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”
Hiraen grinned, and made an expressive gesture with thumb and forefinger. The man howled a laugh, smacking his meaty palms together. “You’re on.”
It was a complicated game that involved eight dice and a lot of yelling, mostly numbers and profanities. Hiraen got the hang of it at once. Emaris left them to it and wandered to the window, gazing across at the far tower. No signal from Daine and Nikas. Mole was watching him again, his gaze hungry and unwholesome, the sort that felt like spiders crawling on skin. But just then, Hiraen upended the cup of dice all over the floor and gave a triumphant shout—“Three sixes! Three sixes!”—and in the grumbling that ensued, Mole’s attention snapped back to the game.
It was now or never. An archway behind the table opened onto the stairwell, which was unguarded. Emaris took a last look at Hiraen, still whooping over a fistful of dice, and started up the steps.
The stairs were dark and steep. The winch was on the second floor, Nikas had said. Here a door led into another room much smaller than the one below, and quite deserted. A brazier stood by the wall, next to a pile of moth-eaten blankets. The light from the glowing coals illuminated a jigsaw of cogs and gears that spanned one wall from floor to ceiling, shining like great brass teeth. A great wooden lever protruded from the maw. There was one just like it backstage at the Arena, which Savonn had once let him turn. With a despairing glance out the small window, Emaris laid both hands on the lever and tried to budge it.
“What the hell’re ye doing?”
He spun round. The pile of blankets moved. It sprouted an arm, brown and gangling, and then a matching leg. A tuft of sandy hair emerged. Then the pile opened to eject a boy much younger than himself, with big, baneful eyes and a fresh crop of pimples dotting his cheeks. The winch was guarded after all.
Emaris offered a wavery smile. “Opening the gate. Uh, Mordel’s orders. The Empath and his army are here.”
The boy glared daggers. “You talk funny. I ain’t heard no orders.”
At the periphery of his vision, something moved in the window. A light was flickering in the second-floor room of the opposite tower, like a lantern being covered and uncovered. “Look,” Emaris said, pointing. “They’re signalling us. Give me a hand?”
The boy reached out, but it was to grab Emaris by the shoulder and heave him away from the lever. “That ain’t how they do it. If they be wanting the gate opened, they sound a horn from the keep. You tryna get me in trouble?”
Boots were clumping up the stairs, a dull tread, approaching steadily from the common room. Fear thrilled down Emaris’s spine, along with something very much like excitement. They were in close quarters. The boy’s spear was leaning on the wall behind the door, but it would be cumbersome here. And his mail only covered him to the thigh. “Is that so?” asked Emaris, his eyes wide, his voice level. “Gods, I hate my bloody commander. No one tells me these things. We’d best report that light, then.”
As he intended, the boy ambled forward to peer out at the other tower. Emaris could just make out the shapes of two faces in the opposite window, one fair and one dark. His sword hissed out of its sheath. The boy’s head came around sharply, but it was too late. Emaris slashed down, and the blade bit deep into the meat of his leg.
The boy screamed. In the same heartbeat the door flew open to reveal Mole on the landing, large and grotesquely pale, already drawing his own blade. Emaris caught the boy’s flailing arm, pivoted sharply on his heel, and swung his foe’s whole stumbling weight at the man in the doorway. Mole grunted. For a moment they seemed to hang suspended, the two bodies tottering on the landing. Then gravity triumphed, and they fell out of view, thumping all the way to the bottom of the stairs.
The common room exploded into shouts. He slammed the door shut, groped for the bolts, and rammed them home. The lantern was still flickering. He flung himself on the lever and pulled for his life.
The mechanism was ponderous, but well-oiled. The cogs clanked into motion. The winch shuddered, like a great cat straining to burst free of a cage. Then, as his arms shook with the effort, the gate began to groan open. More feet were coming up the stairs—at least two pairs, he thought, and the door wouldn’t hold for long. Hiraen was yelling. Unmistakeably, his bowstring sang.
The lever came to an abrupt halt, nearly pitching Emaris into the wall of cogs. The light had stopped flashing, and between the towers, the gate stood wide open. Now for the signal. He cast around the room till his gaze alighted on the pile of blankets. He seized one and, holding it on the end of his sword, stuck a corner of the mouldy fabric into the brazier until it curled, blackened, and started smoking. Then he ran to the window.
The feet had reached the landing. The knob squeaked, and the door rattled in its frame. Once more the goldenwood bow hummed. Someone hit the floor. Emaris thrust the smouldering blanket out the window, ignoring the sting of heat on his hands, letting the wind feed the fire. When the cloth was burning merrily, he drew back his arm and threw it as far as he could.
There was no room for error. He held his breath, hands slippery on the cold sill. Perhaps the flame had guttered out. Perhaps the rest of the troop, drawn up in their lines far below the ringwall, had missed the signal. Perhaps they had all deserted. But then, just as he was going for another blanket, he saw it: an answering flare of light from the pass, swinging back and forth in regular arcs.
His knees went weak with relief. It had worked. Anyas was coming.
The door rattled again. Hiraen shouted, “Emaris!”
“I’m all right!” Emaris yelled. “I did it!”
He retrieved his sword and ran to unbolt the door. Hiraen tumbled through, his bow in one hand, an arrow in the other. Emaris had a brief glimpse of Mole and Barrelchest lying prone on the stairs, their throats feathered with orange. The three other men and the boy were trying to clamber around them. As he watched, Hiraen fitted the arrow to the string and shot again, and another guard went down.
“They’re going to rush the door,” said Hiraen, out of breath but otherwise quite calm. Fine droplets of blood speckled his gloves. “You’ve got your sword?”
“Yes,” said Emaris, squaring his shoulders. “For once.”
But before anyone could move, there was a resounding crash of wood on stone. The front door had flown open. Nikas and Daine appeared at the bottom of the stairwell, their own bows trained on the guards wavering on the steps. “Take cover!” Daine shouted.
Hiraen caught Emaris round the shoulders and thrust him bodily back into the winch room. Staggering, Emaris saw him nock and draw again. Three bows hissed in unison. Nikas giggled. Then silence.
Emaris peeked onto the landing. All the guards were dead, the stairs a grisly landslide of bodies. The sudden quiet was deafening. From start to finish, the whole business must have taken less than twenty minutes. “All right?” said Daine.
Hiraen frowned, mostly at Nikas. He was looking at the corpse of the boy, the one Emaris had thrown down the stairs. There was an arrow through his heart. Sprawled among the bigger forms of the men, he looked terribly fragile, little more than a child, with features that could just a
s easily have belonged to any Cassaran. “I wish,” he said, “you had let that one live.”
Nikas was bent over Barrelchest, relieving him of a pair of ornate daggers. He shrugged. “Why? He would have thanked you for your mercy and then, if he had any honour, turned around and stabbed you in the back. You didn’t start soldiering yesterday.”
Emaris opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again. After a moment Hiraen said, “You and I have very different ideas about honour.”
Times like these, he reminded Emaris very much of his father. “But of course,” said Nikas, owl-eyed. He flipped one of the daggers to Daine, who caught it in mid-air. “You’ve never been a slave. Or a thief. Or hungry.”
“That’s got nothing to do with anything,” said Daine, but all the same he slipped the dagger onto his belt. To Hiraen he added, not ungently, “You’re going soft.”
“I’m really not,” said Hiraen. He picked his way over the bodies without looking at any of them, leading the way downstairs. Emaris trailed after him. “Any sign of that bloody fucker?”
“Lord Silvertongue?” asked Nikas. “No. They probably haven’t caught him yet.”
They were back in the common room. The table had been flipped upside down, the dice scattered on the rushes. “I’ll look for him,” said Hiraen. When Emaris moved automatically to follow, he added, “Alone.”
“Can’t I come?” asked Emaris, dismayed. “Savonn—”
“—wants you to look after Vion and those mad children,” said Hiraen, grimacing. He nodded in the direction of the gate. By the sounds of it, Anyas had arrived. “Stay here.”
Forestalling all protests, he stepped out of the tower and set off at a jog for the keep. Emaris could not help but think that Hiraen had just wanted to keep him out of further danger. At a loss, he gazed around at his companions: Daine, busy salvaging arrows, and Nikas, whose hands were full of rings and necklaces and other trinkets the guards would never need again. He had forgotten all about the new boys. He had also remembered something far more urgent.
“Nikas,” he said. They only had the vaguest idea of what the man used to do in Sarei, but this sounded like something he would know. “They’re expecting someone called the Empath. Have you heard anything about that?”
A gold chain slipped between Nikas’s fingers to pool on the ground. He looked up, his loot clutched absently in both hands. “Who said so?”
“One of the dead guards,” said Emaris. “Do you know the name?”
Nikas gave a slow, mordant smile. His face had lost some of its clownish aspect. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. By the gods, everyone does.”
9
Light and noise spilled from the feast hall on the keep’s second floor. Slurred voices were chanting a drinking song, though Savonn was not certain which one, as nobody seemed to know the lyrics; and someone was keeping time, very badly indeed, by crashing a goblet on a table. On the ground floor, a window near the back of the keep opened on a cavernous kitchen bustling with activity. Stoves lined one side of the room, smoking prolifically, while a woman in a greasy apron strode from one to another, stirring and prodding and turning over whatever was in each pan. Several children sat at a long wooden table behind her, chopping carrots and dicing potatoes. The air was redolent of delicacies: roast goose and gravy, chicken broth and buttered bread, cinnamon and nutmeg heated in wine.
Savonn was still standing there, computing portions and costs in his head, when loud singsong voices drifted round the corner from the inner courtyard. He deliberated briefly, then hoisted himself onto the sill of the kitchen window and swung over.
Nursing a vat of soup, the cook did not notice him immediately. A boy looked up as he slouched past, took in his dirty shirt and patched trousers, and returned to his chopping. Savonn filched a handful of chickpeas from a bowl and started down the room, weaving around pots and crates and barrels. He had just passed the line of stoves when a door crashed open at the far end of the kitchen, and a round, frazzled man strode in.
“Ey!” The massive haunches moved, trundling the man down the length of the kitchen. “Ey! Cook! Is the goose done?”
Savonn got out of the way, removing himself to a niche between a basket of unpeeled onions and a cask of wine. He took in the man’s yellowing cambric shirt with the sweat stains at the armpits; he savoured the bow-legged stride of the meaty calves, the curious mingling odours of good food and stale sweat, the coarse syllables of the highlander patois, and filed these away for future use. An actor could never have too broad a repertoire. The incoming tornado bowled his way to the stoves and planted himself at the cook’s elbow. “His lordship’s wanting it at table now. Says there’s no point saving it if the Empath’s not coming tonight.”
The Empath. A funny thing, to name oneself after a myth.
“It’s not ready,” said the cook. “Give it a moment, Shit-for-brains Mordel can wait.”
The resulting outburst was quite colourful, and contained some swears that were new even to Savonn. “Easy for ye to say, dandyhead, when ye ain’t the one he’ll be raving at. How much longer?”
“A moment,” the woman repeated stubbornly. “Take him some wine, that’ll keep him happy.”
Muttering, the man turned himself around thrice before he saw the cask next to Savonn, who was trying to chew and be invisible at the same time. Two big ringed hands appeared, tipped the cask on its side and began to roll it away. Then two yellow eyes, catlike and hysterical, landed on the bedraggled young man next to it. “Ey!” the man shouted, brandishing a fat index finger. “You! Take this up to his lordship Mordel. Must I do everything myself?”
The cook had already turned back to her stoves. Savonn dismissed the first five answers that came to mind, produced instead a mollifying stream of yes, milords and no, milords, and took over the rolling of the cask. It was heavy. He eased it out through the kitchen door, got it twelve feet down the hallway, and abandoned it in the first suitably dark corner he came across. Then he found a stairwell and began to climb.
He had stayed at Onaressi several times with Rendell, back when Betronett had kept a garrison here. The feast hall on the second floor was exactly as he remembered it from three or four years ago, the long, echoing room with the twelve fireplaces and their belching chimneys, the brass candelabra and the stout arched windows that looked down on the bubbling spring in the yard. The men ate, drank, and sang at trestle tables that filled the room from wall to wall, while the officers sat at a board on a low wooden dais, a good deal more sedate, though they seemed to have had their fill of the Midsummer feast as well. The one in the carved stone chair in the middle, with the stick-out ears and the alarming jowls, must have been Mordel. Savonn counted about three hundred in all, though there had been enough food in the kitchens to feed plenty more. They were awaiting someone who had failed to show. This Empath.
He left the hall and continued to the third floor. The hallway here was dark and drafty, with many doors that led into solars and officers’ quarters. Nothing stirred: everyone had gone to the feast, leaving their rooms unguarded. At the end of the hall was the door that gave onto the biggest and most finely furnished chamber, which Captain Merrott had used once or twice. Now, Savonn guessed, this fellow Mordel had claimed it for his own.
This door was locked. He slid a pin from his sleeve and plied the lock until it gave. Then he went in and shut the door behind him.
The window admitted some measure of starlight, silvering the furniture with a ghostly hue: the desk strewn with papers, the chests of personal belongings, the old hunting tapestry concealing a four-poster bed and a tall pine wardrobe. There was a small trapdoor in the ceiling above the bed, and a ladder tucked behind the wardrobe for access to the hidden loft. The gate towers, visible from the window, displayed no symptom of the violent coup that must have been taking place right about then. His men were doing their jobs.
He had a few minutes to do his. No point worrying about his doe-eyed squire. The papers, first.
&n
bsp; It was necessary to light a lamp, a risk he did not relish. The first few documents he went through were inventories, penned in a scribe’s neat hand; he doubted Mordel himself could read or write. The tallies from the armoury and the kitchens were enough to make anyone go green. If all the other forts were similarly provisioned, he would have no need to worry about supplies all through this damnable campaign.
Every document was written in Saraian, but that in itself was not telling. Neither were the maps. Then at last he got to the bottom of the stack, and found the dispatch addressed to Mordel.
His orders were simple and cryptic. Do nothing to arouse suspicion. No action is required on your part except to hold Onaressi and avoid angering Astorre. The Empath will come to relieve you by Midsummer. From him you will receive the other half of your wages, with further instructions. It was signed Isemain Dalissos, Marshal of Sarei.
Savonn knew the name. It was a grand one, belonging to the supreme commander of Marguerit’s armies, by whom the Queen had begotten one of her four heirs. Lord Kedris had smashed him at the Morivant eighteen years ago, but both Isemain and his career had survived the defeat. In that case, who was the Empath, and what had delayed him?
The door gave a creak. Someone must have glimpsed the light from the window. Swiftly, Savonn tucked the letter into his tunic and extinguished the lamp.
“Ho!” said the tornado from the kitchen, filling the doorway with his bulk. His sweet-sour smell preceded him into the room. “Ho! Snooping around in his lordship’s chambers, are we? What are ye after? Gold?”
Savonn was, indeed, after gold: the first half of Mordel’s wages, in all likelihood still unspent, since there was nothing here to spend it on. While the man fulminated, he moved round the desk and glanced behind the tapestry. The gold would be in the loft, of course. He would need the ladder, and his pin again.