Swift slid her hand crossbow from her belt, expertly loaded a pair of short bolts, side by side, tensioned the wire by winding it slowly back, and set the trigger. Then she turned the handle, opened the door, took quick aim and fired at the broad muscular back on the bed, the two bolts burying deep into the victim’s flesh. In midthrust, he groaned and collapsed on top of the girl, his legs kicking. Swift dropped the bow, drew her knife, wrenched back his head and slit his throat as he tried to grope for her. He gasped with shock and pain and clutched his lacerated throat. Terrified, sprayed with blood, trapped under the dying man’s weight, the girl started screaming, but Swift clamped her hand over the girl’s mouth and pressed the bloodied knife against her throat. Seeing the desperate fear in the girl’s wide, blue eyes, Swift whispered, ‘I don’t have any choice.’ The blonde-haired girl stared back, her eyes pleading…and for a moment she imagined the face of her sister, Passion, staring at her.
‘You’ve seen too much, Ella,’ Swift argued. ‘You know who I am.’ She tightened her grasp on the knife to make the cut, but the girl’s innocent terror held her fast and again Swift imagined Passion doing the same. It was enough. ‘I can’t let you stay here,’ Swift reasoned. ‘If I don’t kill you, you have to come with me.’ The girl stared silently. ‘Promise you won’t scream?’ Ella tried to nod. Swift eased her pressure on her hand over Ella’s mouth, but kept her knife firmly at the girl’s soft throat as she lifted her hand.
Ella gasped for air. ‘Get him off me!’ she hissed desperately. Swift heaved the dead man aside, and as he slid to the floor like a heavy sack of grain, Ella scrambled off the bed. ‘Why?’ she whispered harshly, shaking with shock. ‘Why did you kill him?’
‘No time for questions,’ Swift replied, as she wriggled her bolts from the body. ‘Put some clothes on. Something warm. I’m fetching Barrel Taverner.’ She straightened and left the room.
When Swift returned with Barrel Taverner she found Ella, retching on all fours. ‘Get some clothes!’ Swift snarled. ‘Now!’
Taverner helped Swift wrap the dead man inside a sheet and they hauled him out of the room. ‘Don’t worry about the stairs,’ Taverner muttered under the weight. ‘We can drop him out the window from my room.’ The pair dragged the sheet-wrapped body along the short hall and around a corner to Taverner’s main bedroom, where they hefted their load up to the window and heaved it out. It landed with a heavy crunch in the stable courtyard. ‘You go,’ Taverner wheezed, recovering from the effort. ‘I can clean up the mess.’
‘What about the barrel?’
‘Leave it to me. It’ll go with the other rubbish on the wagon in the morning.’
‘I’ll get the payment to you. It’ll be a few days.’
‘I know you will,’ Taverner replied and took hold of Swift’s arm. ‘Thanks for leaving me the girl.’
‘She’s not staying,’ Swift replied. ‘I’m taking her with me.’
Taverner released his hold. ‘Why?’
‘She knows too much. She knows who I am. If they work out she was here when this happened, they’ll take her away, they’ll torture her until she tells them it was me, and then they’ll feed her alive to the sharks.’
‘But I need her, Swift.’
‘There’s a hundred girls who’ll work for you in her place.’
‘But she’s different. She has beauty.’
Swift bit the inside of her cheek and winced. ‘Barrel Taverner, you know and I know that when a man’s on top of a woman he doesn’t care what she looks like.’ She walked away, but turned at the door to say, ‘The money will be here in a few days. You won’t see me again, but I won’t forget what you’ve done for me.’ She headed for the room where a naked Ella was struggling into a tattered old black cloak, sniffing, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘You’ll freeze in that,’ Swift muttered as she bundled Ella out of the room, ‘but there’s no time to fix it.’ She stooped to collect her crossbow and pushed the girl ahead as they descended the stairs and headed for the tavern door. Swift scooped up her leather cloak, pulled it on, and held Ella back as she checked that the street was empty. Satisfied no one was out, she dragged the girl quickly towards the dark alleyway and they melted into the night.
‘Any news?’
Hordemaster Sharpeye Fist bowed and as he straightened he replied, ‘No, Your Highness.’
The inquirer rose from his plush maroon armchair, patted the head of his shaggy grey hunting dog and approached Fist’s imposingly tall frame. ‘No clues?’
Fist shook his head, gazing down at Prince Shadow’s slim figure and clipped black hair. ‘Your Highness, the clues all point to your brother having spent the night at a little tavern in the Foundry Quarter, but we searched it and there’s no sign of him, and none of the tavern regulars seem to remember seeing him there.’
‘Regulars. Shessian scum,’ Shadow snorted. ‘Of course they wouldn’t have seen anything. What do my brothers have to say about our brother’s disappearance?’
‘Prince Inheritor is organising the city watch to conduct a full investigation. Prince Thirdson is organising some of my men to search wider, under Warlord Roughcut’s orders.’
Shadow sniffed and played with a tassel on his maroon robe. ‘Roughcut,’ he mused. He looked up at Fist, noting the thick white scar crossing the man’s left eye and nose and running along his right cheek to his chin, and said, ‘Bring me the taverner before Roughcut gets his hands on him.’
‘Your Highness, I already have him downstairs.’
Shadow chuckled and clasped Fist’s muscled arm. ‘Of course you have. Efficient. That’s why I keep you. Bring him here.’
Fist bowed and withdrew, and Shadow watched him leave before he returned to his chair. Seated, he clapped his hands and a guard entered the chamber. ‘Fetch Seer Word.’ The guard withdrew. Alone, Prince Shadow stroked his thin black beard and rested his hand in his lap, suddenly aware of his small paunch. ‘Too much eating,’ he muttered and patted the dog’s head again. ‘So, who do you think is killing my brothers, Fighter? Eh? Who wants to kill the royal children?’ He grinned, adding conspiratorially, ‘Apart from me, of course.’
Fist reappeared with two guards escorting a large man with long dark hair. The guards herded their prisoner towards Shadow and hit the backs of the prisoner’s legs to make him kneel before the seated prince. ‘Barrel Taverner, the taverner,’ Fist announced.
‘Let the man stand,’ Shadow ordered. The guards hoisted Taverner to his feet and Shadow stood to cursorily inspect him, noting that his left eye was bruised and swollen and congealed blood clung to his upper lip. ‘Who beat this man?’
‘He was reluctant to come to the palace, Your Highness,’ Fist explained.
‘Is this true?’
‘Yes, Your Highness,’ Fist replied.
‘I was asking the taverner,’ Shadow interjected and waited for the prisoner to respond.
‘He doesn’t speak Kerwyn, Your Highness,’ Fist explained.
Shadow nodded and a wry smile appeared. He then spoke in the Shessian tongue: ‘Who asked you to come here?’
Taverner hesitated, casting a surreptitious glance at Fist. ‘Your Highness, I wasn’t asked to come,’ he replied in a measured tone.
‘If I had asked you to come, you would have come?’
‘Yes, Your Highness,’ Taverner replied.
‘Barrel Taverner—that’s your name?’
‘Yes, Your Highness.’
‘Owner of the Magpie and Maid tavern.’
‘Yes, Your Highness.’
‘Married?’
‘No, Your Highness.’
‘Do I know you, Barrel Taverner?’ Shadow asked, scratching his chin.
‘I served for five years in the army, Your Highness, under your father, ten years ago. I was a Hordemaster until I decided to leave.’
‘And you can’t speak Kerwyn?’
Taverner glanced at Fist. ‘I learned a little, Your Highness.’
Shadow smiled and also looked at Fi
st. In Kerwyn, he said, ‘Seems the taverner played you for a fool.’ Fist glowered at the prisoner and Taverner shifted on his knees uncomfortably. ‘Why did you leave the army, Barrel Taverner?’ Shadow asked.
‘I got tired of army food, Your Highness.’
Shadow smiled again. ‘Decided to cook your own,’ he said, and patted Fighter’s head. ‘Barrel Taverner, where’s my brother?’
‘Which one, Your Highness?’
Fist raised his gloved hand, but Shadow motioned for him to hold off. ‘I think you know which one, Barrel Taverner. He was at your establishment last night.’
‘Not at my—’
‘Barrel Taverner,’ Shadow interrupted. ‘Please. I know everything that goes on in the city and what I don’t know I pay someone to know for me. Prince Shortear was at your tavern. He probably took a wench or two, and probably drank quite a lot, and probably even started a fight or two. My little brother wasn’t very good on manners or social niceties. He could have easily lived in the Foundry Quarter like all the other scum that dwell there, but he didn’t come out of the Quarter and he was last seen in your establishment. Simple logic, isn’t it, Barrel Taverner?’
‘Your Highness, I—’
Shadow waited for him to continue, but when Taverner didn’t he said, ‘I know you weren’t responsible for my brother’s disappearance, Barrel Taverner. You’re a good man, an honest man, but you see, I have a problem. Someone seems determined to kill my brothers. Shortear is the first. I want it to stop there. Are you a father, Barrel Taverner?’
‘No, Your Highness.’
‘But I hear you have young girls who live with you.’
‘They’re not my daughters, Your Highness. Just street girls I found.’
Shadow grinned. ‘Very enterprising. No doubt very profitable too.’ He winked at Fist. ‘If someone started killing your girls, Barrel Taverner, you’d want to stop that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes, Your Highness.’
‘See? You know how I feel.’ He closed the gap between himself and the taverner and whispered, ‘I need your help, Barrel Taverner. I need to know who killed my brother. I need to know who is intending to try to kill my other brothers so I can stop them. Can you help me, Barrel Taverner?’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘Where have you been?’ Swift looked up at the three children standing in the entry to the ruined building. The dirty-faced and dark-eyed boy at the centre, the one who’d asked his question brusquely, was staring at her and at the stranger wrapped in a black cloak with the hood pulled up, crouching in the shadows. ‘Who’s that?’ he insisted.
‘A friend,’ Swift replied, straightening from kneeling. ‘Got a hug?’
The boy met her gaze defiantly and squared his chin. ‘No.’
‘I missed you,’ Swift said, appealing to him.
‘I didn’t miss you,’ he scowled, and ran back through the broken doorway, his two companions in pursuit.
Swift watched the three disappear into the jumble of street and buildings before she turned to the figure in the shadows. ‘Come on,’ she coaxed. ‘There’s no one else here.’
‘Who was that?’ Ella asked as she clumsily emerged over the rubble and dropped her hood.
‘Him?’ Swift asked, kneeling again to scoop water with a small white cup from a large fire-blackened bowl warming over a fire in the middle of the rubble. Faint white smoke curled up through the gaping hole in the roof. ‘Runner.’ She reconsidered her answer, and added, ‘My son.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Old enough,’ Swift replied, approaching Ella.
Ella sniffed. ‘What’s the water for?’
‘You have blood over you. It needs cleaning off.’ Ella opened her cloak to reveal bloodstains on her breasts, stomach and over part of her left arm. She shivered, remembering how the blood came to be there. ‘Wash quickly and thoroughly,’ Swift instructed. ‘We can’t stay here.’
‘How old is he?’ Ella repeated.
Swift paused to look at Ella, as if she’d forgotten the first time of asking. ‘Runner?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thirteen.’
‘You were very young when you had him.’
‘Fourteen.’
Ella caught her breath, but Swift ignored the reaction as she headed for the doorway. ‘It’s getting lighter,’ she said. ‘The market’s already busy. We can’t waste time. Wash yourself. I’ll keep watch.’
‘How? What will I use?’ Ella asked, staring at the cup and steaming bowl.
Swift bent and fossicked in the rubble and produced a rumpled green cloth, which she tossed to Ella. ‘Use that tunic.’ She went to the doorway and stood facing out. Ella slid out of her old cloak. Naked and shivering in the cool air despite the fire, she tore strips from the green tunic and scrubbed the dried blood until her skin was red.
Swift watched the tiny laneway quietly, glancing back occasionally at Ella, admiring the girl’s beauty. Carts and donkeys and people moved along the crowded street beyond the narrow laneway, and the shouting and cries of the market, the sound of bartering and argument filtered back. The tantalising odour of meat sizzling on an invisible cooking hearth set her mouth watering and she realised that she hadn’t eaten cooked food for almost three days while she was stalking the prince. He’d slipped out of the palace with his licentious companions and proceeded to slink and lurch from tavern to inn while Swift plotted how and when she could strike, keeping in touch with her quarry but staying invisible in the streets. She had grabbed food and drink sparingly when she could, buying from street merchants she knew she could trust, stealing from those she couldn’t, but she was sick of her rushed and spare diet of fruit and raw vegetables. She wanted cooked meat. ‘Can you see any bits I’ve missed?’
Swift turned to find Ella holding a wet rag towards her. ‘Turn around,’ she instructed, and scrubbed a streak of blood along Ella’s spine before wiping away a small spot Ella had missed on her shoulder. ‘Done,’ she announced. ‘Get your cloak on.’
‘I’ll be cold,’ Ella complained.
‘You don’t have a choice,’ Swift gruffly replied. ‘I’ll get you some clothes later.’ While Ella wrapped herself in her old black cloak, Swift tipped the water onto the fire, sending a cloud of steam hissing through the hole in the roof. Then she led the girl along the laneway and into the street.
The morning sun’s golden light made the whitewashed buildings glow and the green-tiled roofs shine. Most of the traffic was heading for the market, people carting goods they intended to sell, while a few were already moving back out, having made their purchases before the market became too busy. Swift led Ella across the street into another laneway that twisted between two and three-storey buildings where the sunlight hadn’t quite reached and the morning cold lingered, until they emerged onto another wider street, empty of people. A grey dog growled at them before it slunk into an alley. ‘Wait here,’ Swift ordered, pushing Ella back into the lane, and she moved quickly towards a shopfront. She knocked quietly and a few nervous moments later the front door opened and a woman ushered Swift inside.
Ella clutched her cloak closer, shivering, flexing and shuffling her feet. Her bare toes felt like they were going to freeze to the damp cobbles and she wanted to get into the spreading sunlight and let the warmth soak through her cold body. If it hadn’t been for Swift, she’d be snuggled in a cosy bed with a man’s warm body against her, tired, used, but comfortable. The image of the dying man flashed into her head and she winced at the horrible memory. Swift was taking a long time.
She wasn’t used to hiding like this, not since she’d been much younger. Luckily for her, Barrel Taverner had found her with her friend, Mouse, huddled in his stable one evening. Instead of chasing them away like so many other people did, he befriended them and gave them food and a warm bed in which to sleep. Then he taught them how to serve men who gave Taverner money for their pleasure. Ella didn’t like all the men she had to please, but Taverner kept the girls protected and hea
lthy, along with three other girls he rescued from the street, and it was a better life than she had known. An older woman, Frost, Taverner’s cook and his first girl, showed them how to control the unruly men and how to avoid becoming pregnant, and she intervened whenever Taverner was displeased—which was rare. They all worked in the tavern when they weren’t with men in the upstairs bedrooms, and when they weren’t sleeping with Taverner’s clients, they all snuggled together in Taverner’s huge bed in his private room. Taverner, Frost and the girls were her family. It felt like Swift had stolen that. The clip-clop on the cobbled street of approaching horses’ hooves startled her and she shifted deeper into the laneway, pressing against the rough stone wall.
‘You all right, girlie?’ Ella stifled a scream as she turned to the source of the voice. A haggard old man’s face stared through slitted eyes at her. ‘I don’t bite, girlie,’ the old man rasped through rotted teeth. ‘Who you hiding from?’
‘I’m not hiding,’ she explained, fighting her fear. ‘I’m waiting for a friend.’
‘Where’d she go?’
‘Across the street.’
‘Where?’
She checked herself. ‘Not sure.’
The old man coughed and spat onto the cobbles. ‘Aaarrrgh,’ he rattled. ‘Damn these cold mornings.’ He scratched his balls and tottered two steps back into his doorway. ‘Aren’t you cold, little girlie?’ he asked. ‘You can come inside by my fire.’
‘No,’ she replied, trying to stop shivering. ‘My cloak’s magical.’ The old man’s bushy eyebrows rose, but then he shook his head to show he didn’t believe her lies and withdrew, coughing as he slammed his door.
The horse hooves echoed along the street and Ella spied the red uniforms and polished silver helmets of three of the city watch on their tall chestnut mounts. She shivered when a rider stared in her direction, and pressed against the rough stone wall as if she could push it back to escape the guard’s penetrating gaze. The rider reined in and maintained his steady gaze while his companions moved out of sight, before he urged his horse forward and disappeared. Ella remained rigid, breathing rapidly until the hooves became muffled before she edged back to the corner to see if Swift had emerged, but Swift, with an armful of goods, was beckoning from the laneway. ‘How did you get here?’ Ella asked when she reached the young woman.
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