He stood up again, facing them. “Little tricks like thet,” he said, casually. “ ’Twill take a deal of trainin’. Lots uv hard work an’ practice when ye could be lazin’ about an’ flirtin’ wi’ ladies. Still want to?”
Kee and Tory exchanged a look; Tory saw Kee’s face change expression from incredulous to avaricious, and he expected his had done the same. Did he want to learn that sort of thing?
Was a pine tree green?
“Yes, please!” they chorused together.
2
A cool night breeze stirred in the grass and rattled in the branches of the scrub. Siratai crouched in what should have been cover too scant to hide a housecat--just a low bush and a scattering of weeds, really, a bit of scrub next to a desert shepherd’s hut. There was a full moon, and she should have been completely visible to anyone looking at all closely.
She wasn’t even remotely visible, of course. She was a Sleepgiver, and between her training and clothing designed specifically to hide someone in the moonlight, only another Sleepgiver could have spotted her.
And perhaps she would not be seen even by them. There was no point in false modesty; she was the best of the best. She had to be. Not only was she the daughter of Beshat, the acknowledged leader of all Sleepgivers, she was the Sleepgiver tasked with ridding the Nation of the cursed Karsites. The plaguey Karsites had been a thorn in the Nation’s side since the Sleepgivers had canceled the contract with them to interfere with the Kingdom of Valdemar. And that had happened before Sira had been born.
The Karsites, it seemed, did not believe that such contracts could be canceled except by themselves. They had responded to the cancellation in the most strenuous and bloody terms they could manage. The Sleepgivers had, of course, taught them an even bloodier lesson.
One, it seems, the fanatics refused to learn. If there was one thing that a Karsite could hold, it was a grudge. Not exactly shocking for a lot of fanatics, I suppose. They had been sending their priests across Ruvan to exact revenge on the Sleepgivers ever since the Sleepgivers had bloodied their noses for them and sent them packing with their own demons in hot pursuit. She’d heard about that story, the one that involved Cousin Mags, from the ones directly involved. Oh, that had been a tale!
Mind, the Sleepgivers had not done all that well out of that situation themselves; they’d lost the heir to the Banner Bearer of the Nation, that same Cousin Mags. But she knew the rest of that story too, and the result of all of the adventures in the strange land of Valdemar and the dogged pursuit of the one known as Mags had been that her father Beshat became the leader of all the People, so for her, it was an untarnished tale of triumph.
And now, well, it was time to add to that tale, with another mark in the tally of dead Karsite priests.
Sira lay flat to the ground, so still even an owl would not have been able to see her breathing, within easy reach of the hut door and just inside an invisible perimeter she had watched the wretched priest mark out this afternoon.
The idiots truly never learned.
They always trusted the first guide to approach them—and the only guides in Ruvan who knew exactly where the Sleepgiver Nation lay were, of course, Sleepgivers themselves.
They never questioned why a guide would even be willing to take them within shouting distance of the Nation’s rough border, here in the heart of Ruvan.
They never wondered why Ruvan tolerated a Nation of paid assassins in their midst in the first place.
And the first thing they did when they saw this “deserted shepherd hut” that was supposedly a day’s ride from the border of the Nation was to dismiss the guide and take up residence in the hut. They just could not resist the prospect of getting to camp within four walls and a roof, and they never once suspected the hut was a honeytrap.
And they always, always, assumed that because they were a day’s ride away, they were somehow safe and “invisible.”
They never suspected that when they began their preparations to send their demons into the Nation, they were anything but unobserved, for Sira was already here and watching them.
And this scenario proceeded exactly in this manner. Every. Single. Time.
This time was no exception. The Sleepgiver playing guide had quickly sent word to her father of another idiot at the Ruvan Border. Bey sent Sira out. She’d waited in the hills above the hut until the “guide” and his idiot appeared on the flat desert plain, trudging along it without the least attempt to disguise their presence. The idiot didn’t even insist on traveling at night so he’d have had a little chance of getting to his destination without being spotted.
I suppose I should be grateful they make my job so easy . . . but really, I’d like a challenge once in a while!
Maybe she ought to suggest to her father that from now on the Sleepgiver “guide” just kill them quickly as soon as they were out of view of any witnesses. And if that didn’t work . . .
Maybe we should start chucking the heads over the Border into Karse.
But her father would probably object to that. He preferred that the priests just cross the Border and vanish.
She’d gotten into place once twilight had deepened enough that, in her mottled gray-and-darker-gray clothing, with soot smeared across her face under the masking cloth, only another Sleepgiver would have seen her patient, slow creep across the landscape. And now, as predictable that scattered grain would bring pigeons, with the rising of the moon, the idiot came out of the well-lit hut into the darkness carrying a lantern in one hand. Thus ensuring he wouldn’t see her unless he actually stepped on her.
Does demon-summoning destroy one’s mind, or do only the mindless go into demon-summoning? It was a valid question, she thought.
He began his own labors, trickling some powder or other from his hand into the little trench he’d marked in the dirt. This probably marked the perimeter of the circle with some protective magic that would keep his demons from attacking him once he’d summoned them. And she was greatly tempted to change her plans, use the narcotic powder she also carried, render him unconscious once he’d conjured them, and go break the circle.
That would be stupid, Sira, she chided herself. There’d be nothing stopping them from attacking you. His hubris may be contagious.
She set the idea aside with regret. But it certainly would be highly amusing to watch the priest’s own minions ripping him to bloody shreds.
She waited patiently until his movements put the hut between himself and her. And then she moved, swiftly and surely, gliding noiselessly in through the open door. It was dark in there, of course, because he had the lamp. But she didn’t need to see to get into the rafters as silently as a spider. She knew every inch of this hut as well as she knew her own bedroom.
Once wedged in place, her little vadar tube loaded with a dart and in her mouth, she quieted. All Sleepgivers had to learn how to do this to one extent or another, because so much of what Sleepgivers did was waiting. But she was especially good at quieting. Again, her breath slowed, her mind stilled, and if there had been a Mindspeaker about, he’d have been hard put to tell that there was more than one person in this immediate area. Waiting was easy in this mental state, and nothing bothered her. Insects, even mice and rats, could run over her and not even make her twitch. She was neither cold nor hot, no matter the conditions. She simply was, a trap waiting to be sprung.
Light preceded the priest in through the door. He entered muttering what were probably incantations but what might also have been grumbled complaints about having to march on foot all this distance and live in a primitive hut for days at a time. He didn’t look like the kind of fattened, lazy magician who would find such a thing a hardship, but you never knew. The demon-summoning priests of Vkandis were a minority of the priests of the Karsites, and they enjoyed a great deal of prestige within the religion. With that prestige might well come a privileged and luxurious life.
He was not, of course, wearing the uniform of his calling; the robes of any priest of Vkandis, red or black, would mark him as a great plague to be eliminated at all cost once he crossed the border with Ruvan. The Karsites were not good neighbors to anyone, and Ruvan made absolutely no objections to people slaughtering Karsites wholesale, much less assassinating their priests, if they were found inside the Ruvan borders.
No, he was wearing the wrapped headgear and loose robes sported by just about any commoner of Ruvan. Nothing threadbare or patched but not of silk or fine linen either. Modest ornamentation in the form of a touch of embroidery at the neck. Hard to tell the exact color in this light but probably beige or sand. At least he’d had the sense to dress as someone who would neither be shunned or abused for his poverty nor attract attention for his wealth.
The first bit of good sense he had displayed. And the last.
Information was always valuable, and this might apply to the inevitable next Karsite idiot who came ahunting. Sira took all this in without effort, and instantly, as she waited.
Waited for him to put down the lantern. The scent of hot oil rose to reach her nostrils. Old oil. He hadn’t even changed what had still been in the lantern.
Waited for him to pick up whatever it was he was going to need for the summoning. A book—hadn’t he at least memorized his spell? Cretin. And a stick. Might be an object of power. Might not. Treat it with caution.
Waited for him to get . . . right . . . directly . . . under . . . her . . . and . . . bend . . . slightly.
She inhaled swiftly and completely through her nose and blew all the air out in a fast, strong puff through the vadar tube. The tiny dart that had been in the tube shot out and embedded to the feather right in his spine, between the shoulder-blades, in the hollow where it would slip between the vertebrae and deliver its load of toxin straight into the great spinal nerve.
He yelped and swatted, probably assuming he’d been stung by an insect or a spider. He swatted again as the prick began to burn, and then he collapsed in a boneless heap as the sechel toxin went to work.
And again, she waited.
Only when she smelled his bowels voiding did she drop down to the ground beside the twitching body. His eyes were open, he convulsed a little, and he struggled to breathe. He was dead; he just didn’t know it yet.
He could have been saved at this point if she had given him the antidote, but he would have been paralyzed for the rest of his short life.
Not that she had any intention of saving him. The antidote she carried was in case of an accident to herself.
His minor convulsions jerked his head around so that he suddenly looked up into her eyes. His eyes were fully dilated and his expression slack; he had lost control of his facial muscles. But he could still think, and she saw the horror in his eyes.
Was there something else in there? Did some distant priest of greater talent watch through his eyes?
Well, if so, her father had a message for her to deliver.
She bent over him, and said, slowly and in excellent Karsite, “If there is anyone in there listening, I beg you, for the sake of your dwindling number of priests, stop plaguing the Sleepgivers. You cannot breed priests faster than we can kill them.”
Then she slit his throat and embedded his own dagger in his heart. Yes, he had been nine-tenths dead, and rapidly dying. Still, a Sleepgiver took no chances.
She plucked the dart from between the dead man’s shoulderblades with great care for the point and put it back in a protective sheath. The sheath went into an envelope of similar sheathes, the vadar tube beside them. The envelope went into the breast of her tunic, under the camouflaging wrappings. Then she blew out the lantern, waited in the darkness for her eyes to adjust, and slipped out.
Good. Nothing out there waiting.
She went back in and dragged the body as far as a little hollow that still held ashes and bone fragments from the other Karsite priests she’d killed here. She went back for the book and the stick, using silk from her body wrappings to pick up each one, then took them out and dropped them on the body. Last of all she uncorked a very special flask of very special oil, decanted it on the body and book, and bent to light his clothing with her firestriker. The oil-soaked clothing caught immediately, and soon the body burned with an unnaturally bright, white, hot flame.
There were no manifestations of any sort as book, stick, body, and whatever other magic items he was carrying went up in the conflagration. And never mind how curious the Mages of the Mountain were about Karsite magic. Not that she would have given in to their pleas that she bring back items of magic—she was under orders to bring absolutely nothing back from any of these kills. There was no telling what might be coming along to the Mountain if she were to do so. And at the very least, she knew that Sleepgiver magicians could find the location of anything they had enchanted, so it was reasonable the Karsites could find the actual site of the Mountain that way as well. She sat beside the body, faced away from it to conserve as much of her night-vision as she could, and waited for the flames to die down. When she was sure they would burn out safely, she stood up.
Time to be gone.
She arranged her possessions for travel and set her face to the west, taking a pace best suited to moonlight.
* * *
• • •
Five leagues and some small part of the night later, she was secure in her own camp. Which was not in an exposed hut surrounded by scrub but halfway up an escarpment, in a little sandstone cave exactly like the many other sandstone caves all around it. She liked this one; it was one of several that had a little hollow at the back of it that exactly fitted her body. For the moment, she was not in that hollow; she lay belly-down on the floor of the cave, surveying the valley below and the cliffs above.
The desert was cold at night, and a chill wind passed by the face of the escarpment. It carried with it few scents besides that of cresete bush and sage. Off in the far, far distance, a tiny speck of yellow flickered. The corpse still burned.
Anything that moved at all out there got her immediate scrutiny, but the only things moving in the moonlight tonight were a small herd of desert deer, a few rodents that she identified by their characteristic scuttling, and one lone hare. And bats. There were a lot of bats here—bats by night, swallows and a desert falcon or two by day. It was peaceful here and much to her liking. She sometimes came out here for peace and pleasure when she wasn’t hunting those idiot priests.
Satisfied that she would sleep undisturbed, she inched her way to the back of the cave and unfolded a silk-lined woolen blanket. It smelled a little of horse and sage. This would keep her comfortable even in the coldest of desert nights. She wound it around herself, made sure all her weapons were immediately to hand, and dropped off into instant sleep.
She woke just as instantly as the swallows nesting in the cave above her head began to twitter sleepily. Once again she inched her way to the front of the cave, moving so slowly she didn’t even alarm the birds, and surveyed the landscape below her. It was clear of anything, and there was not even a thin skein of smoke on the horizon to mark where the dead priest had burned last night.
A turn of the glass or so later, she was on the move. Her face was scrubbed of soot with her face-wrap, and all the silk camouflage was stripped away and stowed in her bedroll secured to her back; her short hair was neatly tucked into her headscarf, her dart case was inside the breast of her tunic, water bottle at her side, provisions in a pouch on her hip beside her fighting-knife, quiver on the opposite hip, short-bow in her hand. She had other weapons on her person, of course, but those were hidden.
The sun wasn’t even up yet, but she wanted to get to her horse before the heat became intolerable. To that end, she ate one of her meat biscuits on the move, eyes everywhere, on the alert for anyone who might be able to spot her. This close to the border of the Nation, this deeply into the kingdom o
f Ruvan, she didn’t really think that there would be anyone stupid enough to try to ambush someone dressed as she was . . . but a Sleepgiver who assumed anything generally was not a Sleepgiver who prospered.
By noon she was on her horse, a scrubby, pony-sized, rough-coated specimen of a breed the Sleepgivers had been cultivating for centuries, if not millennia. You didn’t train this breed of horse, you taught it. Aku had been an “old” horse when she got him, but his kind were long-lived.
The old horse teaches the young rider. The old rider teaches the young horse. They were as clever, as smart, and as bloody-minded as their riders. If she needed to, Sira knew she could have tied herself to Aku’s back, passed out, and he would bring her home safely. She also knew that if she ever offended him, he’d plant all four feet and refuse to move, even to the point of needing as many as six more horses to drag him away. But he could go at a trot for three days straight from predawn to twilight and still fight a skirmish at the end of it. He could smell out water all on his own, and he had the good sense not to drink himself sick when he found it. He could even—unheard of in any breed of horse other than the Shin’a’in war steeds—be left with a full bag of grain and eat only as much as he needed for as long as the grain lasted. And then he would untie himself and go back to his stable.
Not in search of her. Aku was a horse, after all, not a dog, and not some fabled creature like the White Beasts of Valdemar. Given the nonappearance of his rider when the food ran out, he would simply go home, not in search of a mere human. He could only be reasonably expected to look out for himself and any mares and foals he happened to be with. The people of the Nation did not expect miracles of their horses.
His gait was terrible, like all of his kind; the one for distance was a very rough, hard trot. Sleepgivers who rode his kind quickly learned not to sit in the saddle unless the horse was walking. Not even at a gallop. You put all your weight in the stirrups, and by the time you’d been riding for six months, you had calves as hard as stone and thighs that could crack a walnut.
Spy, Spy Again Page 3