Shadows of Ivory

by T L Greylock

  Judging that she had little time before the creature finished its slow descent and pinned her to the lakebed, Eska took a deep breath, then burst out from her hiding place, kicking furiously, flashing the orbs in front of her in a manner she could only hope was threatening.

  The creature halted, reared back its head ever so slightly, its black eyes staring down at her, the sharp snout no more than two rowboat lengths away.

  They stared at each other for a moment, Eska’s breathing coming in shallow gasps, the creatures’ tail undulating in the water, its eyes betraying nothing. Eska’s arms slowed, her muscles tiring, the orbs fading to nothing more than embers. She thought she caught a glimpse of Eden, but the creature unhinged its lower jaw and she could not look away from the faint red glow emanating deep in its throat.

  Desperate, Eska threw first one orb and then the other. They floated for a moment, then sank, and she felt her breath catch as their light faded. But just before they winked out, Eden was there, stabbing the chisel into the closest glowing gill. At once the creature began to writhe, its silent pain eerie in the emptiness of the water, and the crowbar joined the chisel, ripping through scale-covered flesh.

  It was too late. The stingers enveloped Eska, piercing the length of her body, pinging off the copper helmet, two even striking the glass of her mask. But it was the hiss of air above Eska that nearly blackened her vision and knotted her stomach with dread.

  The hand that rose to her helmet’s glass portal was studded with stingers. Her skin burned. Water surged through the breach in her air hose, rushing down into her helmet. Eska glanced up, saw bubbles of air escaping, saw Eden hacking furiously at the creature, saw it angle itself to strike her with its snout.

  Reaching down, Eska ripped her knife from the holster around her calf. The water had reached her chin. She willed herself to take a final breath, found she could not hold it against the panic rising in her chest, swallowed water. Half-choking, Eska swam up, the knife aimed for the smooth plane between the creature’s eyes.

  Their bodies met, her legs entangling with its lower jaw, her arm wrapped around the snout, the knife descending, water flooding her helmet. She managed a gasp, felt the water rush into her ears and nose. Out of air, lungs screaming, Eska sank away through a cloud of blood that wasn’t hers. Before the lake took her, she knew the satisfaction of seeing her knife buried deep in the creature’s head.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “A wolf has no master.”

  It was, Manon decided, not ideal to be introduced to the Principe of Licenza while carrying two mysteriously acquired ingots of the Principe of Licenza’s gold in one’s satchel.

  To her immense relief, as the ingots seemed to burn a hole in her back, the Principe was far too intent on watching his hounds bay and strain at their chains to pay much attention to the herald introducing Manon, much less Manon herself. Still, she began to think that traveling with two of the stolen ingots, despite the security they offered her—especially if the Archduke choose to suddenly retract his dubious patronage—was perhaps not the best decision.

  The Principe held up a hand, cutting the herald off mid-word, and proceeded to walk down the corridor between the baying hounds and stop to contemplate the object of the dogs’ attention.

  The wolf was a sorry, skinny thing with matted fur and patches of dried blood in more than one place. It panted at the end of its own chain, head down, but yellow eyes unmistakably fixed on the new threat approaching. It lunged, testing the chain, testing the man, but the Principe had gauged the distance well and the wolf came up just short, its teeth snapping a hand’s width from the Principe’s kneecap.

  Slowly, the man lowered himself until he was squatting at eye level with the wolf. A rumbling growl grew in the wolf’s throat, but it seemed to know it would have no better luck with the man’s nose and it made no other move.

  The Principe stood suddenly, causing the wolf to flinch away, and walked back through the dogs. He looked at Manon, a casual, cursory examination, and then turned his attention to the herald. A single snap of his fingers silenced the dogs.

  “If she doesn’t know how to teach a wolf to hunt like a dog, to obey, then I don’t care to speak to her.” The Principe’s voice was deep and strangely melodious.

  The abrupt dismissal set Manon’s jaw and though the weight of the ingots on her back suggested she ought to take the opportunity to disappear, she found herself once more in possession of the backbone that had deserted her when she faced the Archduke—and said backbone seemed determined to make up for its absence, consequences be damned.

  “A wolf has no place among dogs. A wolf has no master.”

  The Principe’s gaze slid back to Manon with such weight that she felt the need to step back. He had a handsome face, but it was the kind of handsome etched by cruelty and viciousness, and he wasn’t so young that he could be said to be aspiring to cruelty. He wore it without artifice and with an appalling frankness.

  Frankness, though, Manon could understand. Better that than the Archduke’s slippery deception.

  The Principe’s gaze did not leave Manon as he addressed his herald. “Who is she?”

  The herald just barely managed not to clear his throat. “Manon Barca, a representative of our fair sister city, Arconia.”

  “And what does she want?” Still his heavy gaze lingered on Manon.

  Manon spoke before the herald. “I seek permission to visit the stone circle at Pontevellio. I’m studying the inscriptions.” It was a story of her own concoction and one Manon was quite pleased with. Innocuous but respectable—and far better than admitting she needed to visit the Principe’s private estate because the Archduke wanted her to. The Principe was notoriously protective of Pontevellio. Manon wondered how her father had gotten permission—or if Julian Barca had forgone such niceties entirely.

  The Principe’s gaze narrowed. “I suppose you think you’ll learn something new that the countless useless scholars before you somehow missed.”

  Manon put on as cheerful a smile as she could muster and hoped the anger biting away at the edges of it wasn’t too obvious. “My employer is optimistic.”

  The Principe of Licenza’s mouth curled into a scathing, contemptuous smile—in other words exactly what Manon wanted to see. The sooner he forgot her existence, the better. He turned back to the herald. “Tell Rinalto to write her a four day pass.” He contemplated the hounds once more and sighed when the herald spoke.

  “Shall the pass include use of a guest room?”

  “No, that would imply I wanted her there. But a hunting lodge should do. There’s one close to the stone circle. Rinalto will know it.” The Principe glanced at Manon once more. “I won’t be furnishing you with supplies or assistance. Anything you bring in with you must come back out with you. The lodge is,” he paused, his eyes gleaming at the anticipation of Manon’s discomfort, “rustic.” The Principe began to walk away but then stopped and faced Manon again. The gleam grew brighter as he smiled a vicious smile. “And beware of the wolves, madam. They run rampant on that part of the coast and are bold enough to attack people—and not just the careless ones.”

  ***

  Wolves or no, Pontevellio was quite possibly the most beautiful place Manon had ever been.

  She did not, however, appreciate this while arriving on horseback, soaked through by unrelenting rain, each step of her horse’s hooves squelching into the muddy track. The second horse, the one weighed down by a bundle of supplies strapped into a frame on its back, had planted its feet after the rain went horizontal, refusing to take another step until finally the lead horse must have bribed it, or so Manon imagined, to continue. Though what one horse might bribe another with was beyond her.

  It was in that semi-delirious state that she nearly missed the hunting lodge. The track she was following rambled along the coast in a vaguely southwesterly direction, taking her along cliff tops and through pine forests—the sparse kind with plenty of space between the trees, providing
precisely no shelter from the rain—and it was after a particularly terrifying, muddy descent into a cleft between hills that had Manon convinced she and the horses were about to attain the bottom on their, well, bottoms, that she found herself in a dense thicket of pines. So dense, in fact, that she could barely see the pebbly beach and the sea to her right and almost rode past the timber hunting lodge sheltered back in the trees to her left.

  The horses were only too glad to stop and for a moment, Manon and the beasts of burden were both content to savor the fact that they were no longer being pelted with fat drops of rain. When she began to shiver, Manon slid from her saddle and led the horses through the trees toward the lodge, her mind focused solely on the question of whether she would find dry firewood inside.

  A small stable stood just across the clearing the lodge was hunkered in and Manon led the horses inside, glad to find it solidly built and leak-free. She got the horses settled, being sure to put out some of the grain she had purchased before leaving Licenza, then made her way to the lodge.

  Rustic the Principe had called it, but small it was not, and Manon found herself in a cavernous great room filled with antlers and more than a few skulls of various beasts that had been unfortunate enough to cross paths with the Principe of Licenza and his predecessors. Manon saw, with relief, an ample stack of firewood next to the massive stone hearth at the far end of the hall. After depositing her supplies on a long table, Manon laid some logs and kindling in the hearth and, though her shivering was so violent she could hardly feel her gift, called upon the spark in her ribs to light them.

  The fire crackled to life and Manon forced herself to step away from the kernel of warmth and strip out of her wet clothes. She dragged a rough timber chair close to the fire and spread her trousers, shirts, and cloak across it, then pawed through the rest of what she had brought with her. Nothing had escaped the rain entirely, but she found a second tunic nestled deeply enough that it was more dry than wet. Manon slid it over her head, set out everything else to dry on the long table, and then crouched as close to the fire as she could get, knees tucked up into her shirt and arms wrapped around her legs.

  She woke later curled on her side, warm enough to tell she’d slept for some time, but damp enough still to grimace at the way her hair clung to her. She stretched and straightened and came to her feet, and only then did she notice the woman seated at the far end of the lodge, back to the door, feet up on the table, bow resting across her thighs.

  Manon backed up to the hearth and cupped a ball of flame behind her back. “Who are you?”

  The woman pushed back from the table and stood, rain sliding down her thick, oiled hood and cloak to drip at her feet.

  “You first.” She had a long dark braid that fell over one shoulder and she watched Manon with sharp eyes, but it was her feet that caught Manon’s attention. Her right leg ended just above her ankle and where her foot should have been, a metal contraption supported her weight.

  “I don’t make a habit of exchanging pleasantries with bandits.”

  The woman laughed. “If I were a bandit, you’d be lying in a pool of your own blood after I cut your throat while you slept, and I’d be far gone from here already.” Her gaze shifted minutely to take in Manon’s pack of supplies and the belongings spread out to dry. “Along with your valuables.”

  “Valuables? You’d be disappointed.” Manon curled her fingers around the flames in her palm.

  “Isn’t that precisely what someone with something to hide would say?” The woman’s fingers made no move for the quiver at her hip, but Manon had the distinct impression she could nock and loose an arrow with deadly speed if she chose. Her bow was strung, after all, and experienced archers didn’t tend to walk around with their strings exposed to the elements, leaving Manon to deduce it had been strung after the woman entered the lodge and for the strict purpose of intimidation. “Fortunately for you, your valuables don’t interest me. But your purpose here does. Because my valuables are out there.” She pointed her thumb back over her shoulder toward the door.

  Manon waited for her to continue, waited for an explanation or any indication of who she might be, but the woman seemed content to stand in silence, her thumb brushing back and forth against the taut bowstring.

  “I have a pass,” Manon ventured at last.

  “Let’s see it.”

  “Not until you set that bow out of reach.”

  The woman grinned. “I assure you, I have more than one way to kill you. But if you insist.” She stepped close to the table and unstrung the bow, then set the slender piece of curved wood on the table’s broad planks. She then removed her rain cloak, revealing a leather strap running diagonally across her chest and holding sheathes for four—no, five—knives of varying size.

  The gesture was not lost on Manon and she, suddenly out of patience, brought her arm out from behind her back, revealing the fireball cradled in her hand.

  “Enough of this. I don’t take well to being threatened.” Manon gestured at the door. “Leave.”

  The woman was watching the fire with a certain amount of healthy respect, but she did not seem overly concerned. “Unexpected,” she said, her mouth curving into a smile. “I can appreciate that. I don’t take well to being threatened either.” One hand reached for a knife and the blade flashed in the firelight as she drew it. The other hand released a buckle on her quiver, which fell to the floor at her feet, where it might no longer hamper her movement.

  It was in that moment, as Manon was deciding whether to dodge first—in anticipation of a knife streaking toward her—and then launch her fire, or the reverse, that the door to the lodge flew open with a bang and a cursing, bedraggled figure stepped across the threshold.

  “Gods, woman, do you want my cock to wash away in this rain? You’ve left me to shrivel up like an old man’s balls.”

  The woman’s face twisted in annoyance. Without looking at the new arrival, she spoke. “I told you to wait outside.”

  The man at the far end of the lodge pushed back his hood and shook his shoulders like a dog. He seemed unaware of Manon’s presence. “And I waited. But I’m done waiting. Last time you told me to wait outside, you forgot to tell me when I could come inside.”

  Something told Manon the woman hadn’t forgotten at all.

  “I’m a little occupied, Luca. If you didn’t notice.”

  The man was pulling a heavy woolen overshirt over his head. “Not sure why I should care.” He seemed to get stuck somewhere in the armpits and it took several yanks to free his broad shoulders. “You don’t even want a partner.”

  “Then we agree on something.”

  At last the man, now that he had littered the ground around him with two swords, a bow made from a dark wood, a holster of knives, three drawstring leather bags, and a pair of toothy steel traps—not to mention his wet cloak and sodden wool shirt—looked up long enough to take note of Manon standing in front of the hearth. A wide smile spread to his wind-pinked cheeks.

  “Hello. Nasty storm, isn’t it. Haven’t seen rain like this all season. Those horses both yours? Traveling alone?”

  From another mouth, the questions might have been ominous, but the man’s soggy appearance and the woman’s exasperated expression told Manon quite the opposite.

  The man strode the length of the hall and rested his elbow on the woman’s shoulder, either oblivious to the knife in her hand—and the fire in Manon’s—or entirely unsurprised by such behavior.

  “Ah, I see my partner is threatening you. She’s delightful, isn’t she.”

  “She threatened me,” the woman said, her annoyance descending into petulance.

  “And now you both appear to be threatening each other. Seems like good fun. Just your sort of rainy day activity, eh, Justina?”

  Her frustration mounting, the woman shrugged out from under the man’s elbow and flung her knife into the floorboards at his feet. It quivered there for a moment. “Have you no concern for who this woman might be? On th
e Principe’s private lands?”

  The man smiled cheerfully again. “I’m sure a civilized line of questioning would be acceptable to the lady.”

  “You’re forgetting this,” Manon said, interrupting and taking a step forward. She allowed the ball of flames to blaze brighter for a moment. “I’d like you both to leave.”

  Justina bristled. “You have no authority here. I’ll give the orders.”

  Manon felt her spark surge with anger. She let the flames grow to encase her arm. “And I’ll burn you where you stand.”

  Justina lunged at Manon, surprising her enough to cause the flames to wink out. Manon stumbled back to avoid the collision, desperately kicking a stool into the woman’s path as she called the fire back to her hand. Justina leaped—awkwardly, her metal foot catching on the stool, and crashed to her hands and knees at Manon’s feet.

  Manon went to one knee and grasped the woman’s collar, her flames bright in Justina’s eyes. The hunter flinched away from the heat.

  “No!”

  Luca’s shout drew Manon’s attention. She braced herself, but he made no move to attack her. Instead, he thumped his chest once, as though he needed to cough, inhaled deeply, and exhaled with sudden force.

  The lodge went dark.

  ***

  Someone was screaming.

  Manon dropped to her knees, the darkness suffocating her, her fingers reaching across the flagstones of the hearth for something, anything. She wished for the agonized, desperate screaming to stop, wished for someone to put the poor creature out of its misery.

  It was when she reached for the spark between her ribs that Manon recoiled violently in horror and her mind realized what her body had already felt.

  The spark was gone, sucked away, a yawning void in its place, its absence a thing Manon could not comprehend.

  She was the wounded, broken creature. The screams were hers.

  Voices, words Manon’s shattered mind couldn’t understand. Then the woman’s voice cut through, clearer, but no longer ringing with certainty. “Holy sister, what did you do?”