earthdawn Anarya's Secret

by Tim Jones

  So she suffered herself to be led away by the young nobleman and his ork servant, barely caring where she was going, as long as she could eat warm food, and bathe, and sleep in a warm bed. With a corner of her mind, she noted with surprise that they were not crossing the Opthia and climbing the hill to where the nobles lived, but were passing the market and heading west. Well, there were some nice houses here too, she saw, large houses. Female laughter filled the air.

  "Nearly there," said the young man. They turned into a side street, narrower and more dingy than the road to the West Gate. They had not gone five paces along it when two figures stepped out from the shadows and there were swords at their necks.

  Anarya reached for her sword. Ezkrad went for his club. "Don't," said a voice, a woman's voice. "We want this one," the voice added. "For soliciting, do you understand? You do understand, don't you, Mettik?"

  The young man nodded. "Quite, quite. And here was I thinking she was a maiden in distress! The very thought!" The young man rallied, motioned his guard to come with him, and swept off. "You should be ashamed of yourself, you young trollop!" was his parting shot. He disappeared into an establishment a few doors down the street.

  "But I'm not—I wasn't—," Anarya protested. Her two captors— both women, both human—looked at each other.

  "Of course you wasn't, dearie," said the shorter and older of the two. She looked almost motherly, if anyone in the dark blue and brown livery of Borzim's guards could be said to look motherly. Beneath her ragged fringe of graying hair, her eyes and her smile were kind. "But you soon would have been. That nice young man is Mettik, the second biggest—no, maybe third-biggest—pimp in all of Borzim. He was taking you straight to his whorehouse. Probably wanted to try you out for himself first, though."

  "He'd have done no such thing!" said Anarya hotly. "Besides, I have my sword, and my armor."

  "None of that would of been much use after he'd drugged you, dearie. But maybe you're right, maybe you would have fought him off, killed him even. And then where would that have left us? Say what you like about Mettik, but he pays his taxes—most of them, anyway—and Lord Tesek likes citizens who pay their taxes. Pay their taxes and don't ask questions, isn't that right, Sezhina?"

  "If you say so, Qualia," replied the other woman. She was tall, as tall as Anarya, with close-cropped, honey-brown hair. Her face reminded Anarya, just a little, of her mother's. She did not look like a woman who smiled often.

  "Not much of a one for talking, our Sezhina. She's barely said a dozen words since she joined up last week. But then, I talk enough for both of us, don't I? Captain Nikim is always saying I should learn to keep my mouth shut if I want to get anywhere, and I suppose he's right, but well—"

  "Let's get this one back to quarters," said Sezhina.

  "All right, all right. Now, you won't cause us any trouble, will you, dearie? Sezhina here has got quite a temper when she's roused. I'll just tie your hands behind your back, like this—see, not too tight—and then you can walk in front of us."

  "Where are you taking me?"

  "Back to the Guardhouse, dearie. Where you'll be safe, and we can ask you a few questions. Don't!"

  Anarya, who had been tensing to run, felt the sword blade cold against her neck (if only she had worn her helmet!) and willed herself to relax. If these two were the best the Guards could throw at her, she might be no worse off in their guardhouse than anywhere else. She would have to think of a story, a convincing story, to explain her behavior, and then maybe she could join the guards herself—she'd had to fob off recruiters twice already, and the second time, the recruiters had become dangerously insistent before a dawdle of drunk and unwary youths came by to provide better pickings.

  "All right," she said. "Tie my hands if you must."

  They made their way back towards the square, just three women out for a stroll, stopping a couple of times while Qualia and Sezhina attended to minor breaches of Lord Tesek's many ordinances: a merchant whose wares were spilling out onto the street and blocking traffic, a dwarf whose horse was engaging in consistent and copious violations of the new public hygiene rules. "You clean that up!" said Qualia, and refused to move until the red-faced rider had found shovel and bucket. "And no tipping that lot in the Opthia, either!" she added as a parting shot.

  At last they made it back to the main square. It had begun to rain, gray drops that seeped down from a gray sky, rendering those scurrying for shelter or home more anonymous and insectile than ever. Lord Tesek's statue glared in impotent fury at the clouds. The three women made their diagonal way among the foot traffic in fits and starts, buffeted this way and that by passersby. The dark mouth of the guardhouse beckoned.

  There was a commotion behind them. "Wait on," said Qualia. "We'd best let this lot past."

  It was a large contingent of guards, bearing in their midst three struggling prisoners, two humans, one (judging from her height) a dwarf. Anarya caught snatches of conversation from two passersby who had paused long enough to take in the action.

  "— traitor to Borzim, they say, selling us out to the t'skrang—" "— hung at the gate as a warning, if what—" "— never trust anyone. Not even you, eh, Tvavert?" Not giving herself time to think, Anarya leapt to her left, momentarily out of reach of the distracted Qualia and Sezhina, and ran right across the bows of the guard contingent. "Stop her!", Qualia called, but Anarya was already past the guards and darting among the passersby, looking for a way out of the square. If she could get away into that warren of streets to the south-west—make up some story about her tied hands—that she had just escaped from the clutches of a pimp and procurer, maybe—she could—

  "Ooof!" said Anarya, and staggered backwards. She had run into the midriff of an obsidiman. Perhaps it was the same obsi-diman she had met earlier; they all looked the same to her. She wanted to keep running, but her head and her body were no longer reading from the same script. She shook her head to clear it and made to move on, but then heard a familiar voice behind her.

  "I told you not to do that, dearie," said Qualia, and hit her with something unpleasantly hard.

  Chapter 7

  Duke Kendik had taken the road north from Borzim in splendor. Now he was returning in a donkey cart. As he jounced his slow, painful way back to the town, Kendik reflected on the contrast. He looked down at his rich cloak, on which the Ducal sigil glittered; his fine clothes; his soft leather boots, spattered with the mud of the roads. He was beginning to get used to this fine clothing. When he next saw Anarya, he would like to be dressed like this—and to have the rank to go with it.

  "This is no way for a duke to be seen," he told T'shifa. "We shall have to get out of this cart and approach Borzim on foot."

  "As you wish," said T'shifa. The t'skrang had spent most of the journey ignoring him. Kendik did not know whether this represented personal enmity or a disdain of humanity in general.

  They edged another few hundred feet closer, and now Kendik, peering through the fog that bedeviled the plain, thought he could begin to make out the dark line of the town wall. Anything had to be better than another day on the road and another night sleeping in the rodent-infested inn of some hamlet so benighted it made Pust seem like a model of enlightened civic leadership. Lunusk two nights ago, Murt last night. Kendik never wanted to see either of them again.

  Despite the fog, they were close enough now to make out the wall, the shantytown at its foot, the gate, and the gibbets to either side. Time to stop, thought Kendik, time to—

  "Stop the cart!" hissed T'shifa. Kendik had never seen her so agitated. The t'skrang's crest was suffused with blood, so that it had gone a deep crimson color, and her teeth were bared in a snarl.

  The donkey ground to a halt. Its driver and, arguably, its master, an elderly and talkative woman by the Name of Ussa, turned her wrinkled face to them and asked would they be getting off now, on account of she didn't have any business in the town, and so she'd be getting back home if that was all the same to them?

&
nbsp; "You can go to Dis for all I care," said T'shifa. "Kendik, Atlan, with me." She leapt from the cart and hurried away towards the wall.

  Kendik ignored T'shifa and turned to Ussa. He apologized for T'shifa's rudeness, and added two further coins to the small pile she had already received for her troubles. As Kendik and Atlan followed T'shifa, they could hear Ussa cajoling her donkey to turn.

  T'shifa was moving fast. Her tail whipped angrily from side to side, scattering peasants and their possessions alike as she strode through the tent village beside the road. When she reached the foot of the wall, though, she stopped and bowed her head almost to the ground.

  Kendik caught up to her, with Atlan a few strides behind.

  "What is it? Are you hurt?"

  "Look up," said Atlan.

  Then Kendik saw, and understood. It was Akil, neck broken, tongue blackened, dead, hanging from a gibbet. Around her neck, a hand-painted sign read 'A Warning to Spies'.

  "What are we going to do?" asked Atlan.

  "Tonight, we return to my tent. We will see what the light of the morning brings."

  The tent village was evidently a regular haunt of T'shifa's, for she had her own tent here, and an anxious-faced man, small but wiry, who was guarding it for her. She dispatched him to buy food for the three of them, then, when he returned, paid him in kind and sent him off to wait for further instructions. When he had gone, they sat down to a cheerless supper of dispirited fish and gritty bread. Atlan seemed the worst affected. Looking at him, Kendik realized that Mors had been the driving force of their partnership. Without the foul-mouthed little Thief, Atlan was rudderless, a ship searching for a new captain.

  Kendik tried to strike up a discussion with T'shifa on what they should do next, but the t'skrang, more imperious than ever, was adamant that they would talk about it in the morning. Her answers grew more and more terse, until at last she simply rolled herself up in her blankets and turned her head away. Kendik went outside to relieve himself. In this slum, those who had tents that kept out the rain could consider themselves fortunate. Beyond the tents were the shanties, and beyond them the hovels. Kendik drew his sword and carried it at his side as he walked, aware of the attention he was attracting from the furtive and the desperate.

  Anywhere beyond the outermost shanty was fair game. His stream of urine hissed and steamed in the chill night air. The river fog had lifted, and the night was cold and clear. Kendik looked up and saw the stars, high above his troubles, prick the sky with light. Then he returned to the tent and gathered what bedding he could.

  He slept fitfully, tossing and turning beneath his inadequate blankets. Fragments of memory and dream churned in his head: his father, his mother, their house, the village. Playing on the village street with Lenos and Klune—Klune who, even at that age, was developing a formidable temper. She screamed in frustration as their ball of hide and twine sailed over the wooden rail fence of the bull's paddock and came to rest ten feet from the grazing beast. The bull did not raise its head. It made no sign that it had seen either the ball, or the three of them at the fence.

  "I'll get it! I'll get it!" said Klune. She made to scramble over the fence, but Lenos grabbed her by the ankle.

  "We need a plan!" he said. He was the oldest, the wisest, always the planner. "Kendik, you go to the top end of the paddock. Climb over the fence, go a couple of steps inside, and start yelling at the bull. He'll come after you, and Klune can go inside and get the ball."

  "Why don't you go climb over the fence?"

  "You can run quicker than me."

  It was true. Kendik's heart rose nearer to his mouth with each step, each slow step, along the length of the paddock. At last he was in position. Opposite him, at the bottom end of the field, he saw Klune, perched at the top of the fence, ready to leap inside as soon as the bull had moved towards Kendik. Kendik climbed over the fence. He walked two, three steps inside the field. And he began to yell.

  "Bull! You stupid bull, you big, stupid bull! Come and get me!" And he called the bull every Name he could think of, Names he had heard from carters on the village street, Names he had heard his father call his mother after his father had come home drunk.

  The bull responded. Slowly it turned and began to walk towards him. Then, seeing its target more clearly, it ran, getting larger with each stride. Kendik stopped yelling. He was fixed to the spot, his blue eyes locked to the bull's snorting face. Some part of his brain registered Klune in the field, Lenos with her, and both of them calling out to him. Move, move—

  He moved aside, and T'shifa's knife missed its target. It was headed for Kendik's heart, but instead it found his blankets, and snagged. Cursing, T'shifa tried to pull it free. Before she did, Kendik freed his right arm and put everything he could into a punch that smacked into the t'skrang's bony jaw from beneath. He felt a satisfying crunch, and blood flew from both sides of T'shifa's narrow mouth.

  But he was still trapped beneath the blankets. T'shifa raised her knife again. It glinted in the moonlight that seeped into the tent. Then it came down—and went askew, as Atlan hit T'shifa on the back of the head with his pack. The t'skrang slumped to the ground, unconscious.

  "You hurt, boy?" asked Atlan.

  "No," said Kendik. "Thanks. Got any rope?"

  For a long time, T'shifa would say nothing at all. It was hard for her to talk in any case, as her jaw was broken. She stared at them venomously and refused to speak. Kendik hated the thought of torture, but he was beginning to contemplate the possibility. What could they do, what could they use? Perhaps the t'skrang's own knife ...

  Or they could simply kill her and leave her here for the anxious-faced man to find. But where would that leave them?

  He stared at her. She stared back. She spat out a mouthful of blood.

  "Why did you try to kill me?" Kendik asked again.

  "There is a house," replied T'shifa. She spat out a mouthful of blood, then began again. "There is a house, in the town, which should still be safe. Even Akil did not know about it. I will tell you how to get there without being seen."

  "I'd sooner believe a Horror than believe you," said Atlan. "And besides, why didn't you try to kill me first?"

  T'skrang shrugged. "You were the sounder sleeper."

  "But why did you try to kill us at all?" asked Kendik, aware of the plaintive tone in his voice.

  "In the wake of Akil's death, I judged you a liability. Too likely to be captured, too likely to talk. From this point on, I decided, I would have to work alone."

  "Yet now you're telling us what to do and where to go?"

  "My part in this mission is over, young human. No t'skrang can recover from a broken jaw. I am bleeding to death. It will take a day or two."

  "That magician of yours, the pale-skinned one, could save you."

  "Not even he could save me," said T'shifa, breaking off again to cough up more blood. "Besides, he is much too valuable to be left in Pust for long. He will have been moved elsewhere."

  "I am sorry," said Kendik. "Sorry I killed you."

  "You were defending yourself. I should have struck more quickly. I did not want to do it, you see. Give me some water."

  "Please," said Atlan.

  "Give me some water, please."

  "Why are you telling us about this house?" asked Kendik when she had managed to swallow it.

  The t'skrang shrugged again. "I would have vengeance for Akil if I could. Though she was not of my people, she served us well and faithfully. Whatever you may think by now of the House Ishkarat, young human, we are not the worst evil that has befallen this region since the Scourge was lifted. Tesek is. His plans do not end with the town of Borzim and the plains of the Opthia. He wants to bring this whole region of Barsaive under his control. He would make this place a second Landis if he could, without the arts of civilization. He will fail, of course, but there will be rivers of blood before he is defeated. Rivers of blood." She paused and coughed again. As if to emphasize her words, bloody spittle drooled from her mout
h. "We want him stopped."

  "What's that to us?" asked Kendik.

  "I could say it is your duty to aid the poor and the weak, but you would not believe me. But I know that you, Kendik, want to find this woman of yours, and you, Atlan, wish to avenge your brother. Your answers lie on the other side of that town wall. I am tiring. Listen well, and then decide."

  Half an hour later, Kendik and Atlan left the tent. There was no sound from within. They walked silently between the tents and shacks until they were clear of them, then cut across the fields to the right. The moon had gone down, and visibility was bad. They walked cautiously.

  Kendik felt the ground give beneath his feet, and stepped back hastily. The smell told him that he was very close to the river.

  "I'm going to risk a light," he said. He uncovered the light quartz he held. He had found it among T'shifa's possessions, and it glowed unusually brightly, an intense point of light. Kendik wondered if it was another marvel of the Pale Ones' kingdom.

  Almost beneath their feet, the Opthia flowed by, dark and slow. One more step and he would have fallen in, along with the earth he had dislodged from its bank.

  "Do you reckon we're in the right place?" asked Atlan.