by David Gross
“Yes, Bloodmaster,” said Sorcia contritely.
Her eyes turned to the ground until Rusk looked away, then they turned to Radu. Darrow took the opportunity to collect his sword, sheathing it as quietly as he could to avoid attracting the attention of the monsters that surrounded him.
“Our guests have brought us a gift,” said Rusk, “a gift from the Beastlord himself. We have the scrolls of Malar.”
Darrow glanced at Radu, hoping his master would not correct Rusk before his followers. Stannis had permitted Rusk to bring only a fraction of the Black Wolf Scrolls. Rusk had howled when he saw the torn fragment, but he dared not challenge the Malveens in their home. Now, with his pack looking on, Rusk might not take another humiliation so mildly. Probably Radu could kill any one of them, maybe even most of them. But he’d never kill them all before one of them tore Darrow to pieces. Of that he was sure.
Perhaps Tymora smiled on Darrow then, for Radu merely gestured for Darrow to take the reins of his horse. Darrow obeyed, grateful to stand apart from the werewolves.
“To the lodge,” commanded Rusk. At last the Bloodmaster permitted himself a smile at his victory. After his dangerous quest in the city, he was home among his people. He gestured to Balin’s corpse and added, “Don’t forget the meat.”
CHAPTER 8
THE AUDITION
Tarsakh, 1371 DR
Impious shadow of the king who was,” bellowed Presbart as the baron. His soldiers pointed their swords at Tal’s heart. “Release the scepter stolen from his tomb! ”
“I wear the crown by acclamation true,” replied Tal, leaping back onto the crenellated wall. “Deny my claim and hasten your own doom.” On the rhyming syllable, he struck a guard’s blade from his hand.
The weapon skittered across the stage and shot through the surrounding rails, sending Sivana and Ennis diving out of the way. Ennis managed to flatten himself, causing even more laughter among the other players.
Tal winced at the accident and smiled a weak apology. The distraction almost caused him to miss the incoming attacks. He parried one blade and leaped over the other. When the guard swung again, he leaped up to stamp on the blade, trapping it on the wall. His kick missed the guard’s face by less than an inch, and the man flipped backward to lay still.
“Your reign was not ordained, O faithless prince,” declared Presbart, brandishing his own sword.
The first guard grabbed a spear from the back wall and thrust at Tal’s head. Tal parried easily, then bound the spear’s shaft with his sword and thrust it into the baron’s sword, blocking them both.
Tal leaped from the battlement to arch over both men. He twisted gracefully to land facing them from behind. Still distracted by his earlier blunder, he neglected to bend his knees to cushion the blow. The impact of his body sent a booming echo through the trapdoor room below.
Before his foes could turn around, Tal thrust his blade under the arm of the guard, who cried out, clutched his heart, and fell to the floor. The baron dropped his sword and ran to hide behind the stage right pillar. Tal followed, slashing first on one side, then the other, as the cowardly baron dodged.
“In faith, I am a prince no more than thou,” said Tal, “As this, my final answer to your base demands will … oh, dark and empty. What’s the line?”
“That’s enough,” said Quickly from the floor. Her big arms were crossed over her chest, and she gnawed on the stem of her unlit pipe.
“I almost had it,” said Tal, walking to the edge of the stage. “The sword going off the stage threw me. We should probably reverse that so it goes backstage.”
Quickly nodded. “Right. Show Mallion what to do.”
“You’re giving the part to him?”
Mallion was the most beautiful man in the Wide Realms troupe, and he knew it. Even at nearly thirty, he looked only a few years older than Tal and the other young players. They all teased him for spending so much money on skin creams, hair tonics, and eye cosmetics, but his flawless complexion and rich black curls garnered him a flock of adoring admirers after each performance. Worse yet, in Tal’s opinion, he really was a fine actor with tremendous range. His elocution was second only to Presbart’s rolling phrases, and he was one of Tal’s few rivals for physical scenes.
Behind Quickly, Mallion buffed his nails on his chest. Beside him, Sivana flicked his ear and shot Tal a sympathetic wink. With Mallion and Tal, she was one of the most accomplished stage fencers in the company. Of them, only Tal had any real weapons training, but Sivana’s lithe, androgynous figure made her a better foil for the slender Mallion. Both of them squeezed together would barely make one Tal.
“He’s better for it, Tal. You know that.” Quickly beckoned him down from the stage. He leaped the rail and landed heavily on the ground. Walnut shells left by last night’s groundling’s crunched under his feet. “Besides, one more vault like that one and you’ll go straight through to the Nine Hells.”
“I can fall into a roll, instead,” he said. “Or we could move the wall to curve around there, and …”
“I’ve made up my mind, Tal, my lad. You’re good, especially at the swordplay, but Mallion makes the better villain.”
As if to prove the point, the handsome actor leered menacingly behind Quickly. Without looking, she poked him in the chest with a beefy elbow.
“Oof,” he said with exaggerated injury. Then he smoothed his neat beard in a gesture that made Tal think of a cat cleaning itself.
“What about me?” said Tal. Hearing the whining in his own voice made everything that much worse.
“I was thinking of Maeroven,” said Quickly.
Tal rolled his eyes. He didn’t want to play the bumbling cook. “But I played the nurse in The Curse of Brynwater Abbey,” he complained. “People will start expecting me to wear a dress every time I get on stage.”
“You should have thought about that before you perfected her voice,” said Quickly.
Tal wasn’t so distracted that he didn’t catch the change in her tone. He was about to suffer a tweaked nose.
“What voice is that?” he asked innocently.
Both Mallion and Sivana were hiding their faces. They’d told her about Tal’s Mistress Quickly imitation, which he was careful to do only well out of the troupe leader’s hearing.
“You know the one,” said the brawny woman, slapping him on the bottom. “ ‘No, no, that’s all wrong! Say it with guts. With guts!’ ”
Now the entire company broke into laughter. Sivana actually fell onto her back, kicking the empty air. She shook her head back and forth, sweeping the hard packed ground with her hair, which was black this month. No one could agree on its natural color, which was the source of speculation even among the majority of the company, whom she’d taken to bed.
“That’s not it,” said Tal. “It’s more like, ‘What’s the matter with you street buskers? Leave your spines backstage? Stand up straight and tell me that!’ ”
The laughter turned to wails and gasps, and even Quickly herself was fanning herself with one meaty hand.
“You’re a good play, Tal,” said Quickly with another sharp swat to his buttock. “Glad you understand about the part.”
He did understand, but Tal still felt a strong pang of disappointment. For months he’d been pestering Quickly to give him a role in which he could show off all he’d learned at Master Ferrick’s. Despite all his auditions, he always ended up with a supporting role, usually a comic foil or a character with a peculiar voice. He had no one to blame but himself for the latter, since he’d been mimicking the butts of his jokes since he was a small boy.
Quickly turned to address the company at large. “All right, you bunch of street buskers …” She paused for the laugh. “Back here tomorrow, in costume by noon. Don’t forget your wands for the jig.”
Half the company moaned at the reminder. Since last summer, Quickly began adding a jig to the end of the tragedies. She said it was to give people a lift after all the death and despair. Sivana jo
ked that it was to scare the audience out of the playhouse so the players had a fair chance to get a seat at the alehouses before the places were filled. Tal liked the absurdity of showing the dead princes and queens dancing merrily after their death scenes, shaking their skull-topped wands for the audience. It was a reminder that nothing was real on the stage.
“Hey!” called a voice from the first balcony. Chaney hoisted a pair of leather tankards and set them on the railing. “I brought you something from the ale cart.”
Tal scrambled up a beam to the middle gallery. He was nowhere as nimble as Lommy, but he was becoming quite the climber thanks to all the time he spent helping Quickly repair the thatched roof after the winter storms. It gave him a workout as well as an excuse to avoid the tallhouse, where Thamalon had been sending him messages. Tal refused to read them. He was still angry about Thamalon’s lecture about Larajin.
“Thanks,” he said to Chaney, taking the tankard and draining it in one long draught.
“Nice one! I thought you were taking it easier these days.”
“Special occasion,” said Tal, wiping the foam from his upper lip.
“So I see. You were pretty good up there, but I did worry you’d go right through that floor.”
“That’s ridiculous. It’s an excellent floor. I reinforced it myself only last month.”
“Well, there was that business with the sword, too.”
“Nobody was hurt.”
“And it might have helped if you’d remembered your lines.”
“All right,” sighed Tal. “That part was a problem.”
“Want another drink? I think I’ve got a few fivestars left.”
“No, thanks. Let’s get out of here.”
As they rose to leave, Chaney spotted someone on the far side of the gallery. “What’s she doing here?”
Tal followed Chaney’s gaze until it came to Feena, sitting alone in the gentlemen’s gallery. She wore a simple blue dress over a cream blouse, without the night-blue cloak she usually wore. Someone had embroidered the dress with bright green and yellow leaf patterns, and Tal wondered whether Feena had done the work herself.
Despite the efforts, she still looked like a country girl, but more like one visiting the city to see the sights. Tal almost expected her to dart away, as she did when she first began spying on him last winter. Instead, she walked up to the railing dividing the gentleman’s gallery from the common seats.
Tal considered whether he should just walk away. He was in no mood for her arrogant preaching, even though she and Maleva had saved his life twice. Still, his feelings toward the clergy of Selûne had mellowed since his meeting with Dhauna Myritar, and he was curious why Feena had returned. He met her at the rail.
“Well met,” he said, hoping the common greeting would hold true this time.
“Well again,” she said, glancing at his face only briefly before casting her eyes down at the rail. She did not seem shy so much as uncomfortable, and Tal was pleased to know he wasn’t alone in that. “Sorry you didn’t get the part you wanted.”
Her reminder of his failure annoyed him, especially since he found it hard to believe she was truly sympathetic. “It’s good not to get everything you want,” he said. “We spoiled rich children have trouble with that.”
“I didn’t say a thing!” said Feena. She turned to Chaney for corroboration. “Did I say a thing?”
“She didn’t say a thing. I’m pretty sure she didn’t.”
Tal took another of the deep breaths that were becoming the punctuation marks of his life. As he let it out, he said, “You’re right. I’m sorry. I must be a little more disappointed about the audition than I thought.”
“That’s no reason to be sarcastic.”
“No,” he agreed. “It’s no reason at all.”
“All right, then,” she said.
“All right.”
“This could be a long conversation,” observed Chaney, “if the two of you keep repeating each other.”
They both turned to glare at him.
“Of course, I could help by butting out, couldn’t I?”
“Are you hungry?” asked Tal. “Care to join us for dinner?”
Feena shook her head and opened her mouth to decline, but then she changed her mind. Perhaps it was as difficult for her to be civil as it was for Tal. “Yes, please. I would like that.”
They made an unusual spectacle as they strolled west down Sarn Street, two of Selgaunt’s most eligible bachelors on either side of an uncultured young woman who might have fallen off a milk wagon. Tal wore Perivel’s sword at his side, and even Chaney went armed with a slender blade. After the fight on the High Bridge, they were both more careful not to travel alone. Going armed made them look like bravos, especially when they swaggered down the streets in mockery of their more popular peers.
After a whispering group of Soargyl girls sniggered at them as they passed by, Chaney gallantly offered Feena his arm. He was always quick to defy the mores of his class. Feena looked at his crooked arm and shook her head. Chaney looked hurt, and Tal could tell his reaction wasn’t just in jest.
“I thought you and Maleva had gone home,” he said to her.
“We did,” she replied. “Mother wanted to see whether there was any sign of Rusk near the wood. Besides, the people there count on her for help.”
“Was there?” asked Tal. When Feena looked at him blankly, he added, “Any sign of Rusk.”
“No,” said Feena. “Not for certain, at least. His pack still roams the forest, but one of the other nightwalkers might be leading them.”
“Are they all nightwalkers?”
“Yes, but Rusk also leads a wider congregation on festival days. Even the good folk are afraid to turn him out of their villages at festival.”
“I don’t understand that,” said Chaney. He crooked his fingers above his head and capered like a goblin. “ ‘I’m the great bloody monster of an animal god, here to devour your children. Please come to my ceremony, and don’t be stingy at the offering box.’ ”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Feena.
“No,” agreed Chaney, “you’re right. I might be ignorant in the ways of rural beast gods, but it seems ludicrous to invite some barking madman into town when you know his people turn into wolves and eat folk.”
“That’s not all they do,” said Feena. “They’re hunters, and they don’t prey on the villagers.”
“Why are you defending them?” asked Tal.
“I’m not defending them,” said Feena. “I’m explaining why the people pay their respects to their god. You live in a port city. Don’t your sailors pray to Umberlee?”
“Sure,” said Chaney. “They pay tribute so the Sea Queen doesn’t sink their ships.”
“Ye-es?” drawled Feena, encouraging Chaney to make the connection.
“They’re warding off evil,” said Tal. “Like paying off bandits to leave your caravans alone.”
“Ha! You sound like Thamalon when you put it that way,” said Chaney.
“You take that back!” said Tal, capturing his friend in a headlock. They wrestled in mock combat for a moment before realizing that Feena was staring at them impatiently.
“How old are you two?”
“I’m one-and-twenty,” said Chaney, squirming out of Tal’s hold. “This big lout’s the baby, though you wouldn’t think it to look at him.”
“You’re both behaving like ten-year-old boys.”
“We were just having a bit of fun,” said Chaney. “You could stand to have a little fun yourself. In a few years, they’ll be calling you an old maid.”
Tal winced at Chaney’s crass remark. Feena was probably still a few years shy of thirty, but she was in no danger of appearing past her prime. True, her round hips and unrestrained breasts were not noble Selgaunt’s feminine ideal, but Tal doubted she cared about city ideals.
“I’m not here for fun,” she said, turning her back on Chaney and stabbing a finger at Ta
l. “I’m here to look after you.”
“I don’t need looking after.”
“Besides, that’s my job,” said Chaney, puffing out his chest. “I watch his back.”
Feena snorted derisively. “Why do I have the feeling you’re the one who gets him into trouble?”
“Hey!” protested Chaney.
“Hm,” observed Tal. Remembrance of the attack on the High Bridge darkened his thoughts, but he was too pleased that Feena had turned her sharp tongue back on Chaney to dwell on it. “She’s more perceptive than she looks.”
“Hey!”
“Let me guess,” said Tal, voicing a thought he had been considering since the moment of Feena’s return. “You’re the one Dhauna Myritar sent to help me.”
Feena lifted her chin. “That’s right,” she said, “and she also told me you promised to cooperate.”
Tal laughed. “We’ll see about that,” he said. “Now come on. Here’s the place.”
He nodded at a small shop whose sign depicted a pie through which poked the heads of three singing blackbirds, and through its door came the savory odor of chicken pies. They went inside and found a vacant table, where the proprietor took their orders and left them with a steaming pot of the hot black tea Sembians favored.
“Mother says she’s sure Rusk is alive,” said Feena. She poured for Chaney and Tal before filling her own cup.
“How does she know?” asked Tal.
“I don’t know,” Feena answered. “Sometimes she just knows things, and it does no good to ask how.”
She looked down at the table, and Tal realized she must be as frustrated with her mother as he had been with Chaney.
“If that ambulatory carpet comes back here,” said Chaney brightly, “Tal’s going to lop off his other arm.” The table rocked as Tal kicked him in the shins. “Ow! Well, you said so yourself, didn’t you?”
“You were lucky last time,” said Feena, fixing Tal’s eyes with her own. “You realize that, don’t you?”
“Maybe,” said Tal.
Feena’s face flushed as she raised a finger to berate him.
“Yes, I was lucky,” Tal added before she could speak. “I know, but I also didn’t know he was coming. Now I’m better prepared.”