Gorgo grinned. “We’re a rogue enclave. We’re not so inbred as most of them.” He stopped himself from further explanation, realizing belatedly that Tiolt probably knew more about Pton history than he did.
The Kharvay woman next to Tiolt had been listening intently. “It’s so rare to see an Oribul here—and rather refreshing, I think.” She was perhaps forty, a well-cared-for noble with soft skin, fair like all of her family, and a rounded figure. She was one of the gold-colored Kharvays, with bronze eyes and thick hair the color of beer. Like most Kharvay nobles, she carried a rapier at her side. For some, it was merely an affectation. Gorgo wondered how well she could use it.
“Indeed yes.” Tiolt gestured to her. “Babinsa Kharvay, one of our foremost nobles.”
Gorgo had heard the name, and found his question answered. She was known to be a superb duelist. He extended a fist to her. She brushed it with her own, while she regarded Gorgo with head cocked. “I can show you where those records are, if you like. I’m going that way myself.”
“I would be obliged.”
Tiolt waved them off, and Gorgo followed Babinsa from the room. They climbed stone steps to the upper floors. Engraved scenes of history flowed over the walls, some etched in the bold, sweeping strokes of Kharvay artists, some in the lurid impressionism of a Mad Dream, and some with the exquisite detail of that famous Hologrim sculptor with the florid signature. Here was depicted the raid on the home islands of the southern raiders, the golden ones of heat and splendour. The engraving was worked in bronze; the fierceness of the southern raiders gleamed under a veil of gold, while the implacable attackers from Wyverna loured from dark unburnished metal. On another wall, Gorgo saw a working of the warships asail on the northern ices, the lines of their hulls and rigging precise in tarnished silver, only the stars and the glint on the waves picked out with bright polish from the cloudy dark.
He spared only a portion of his mind to note the engravings, for most of his thoughts were on Babinsa. She would have been a young woman at the time of the Uprooting, and must have known both Tiolt and Morbid. He tried a maneuver to draw her out. “I had never met Tiolt before. He’s not quite what I expected from the stories.”
“Really? How so? Isn’t he exactly what you’d think?” Babinsa smiled. “He was our leader only by an accident of birth, you know. His mother and Morbid’s were sisters, but his mother was the older by a year, so rule passed to him.” Babinsa giggled, surprising Gorgo. “The irony is he never wanted to rule. He was always happier buried among his books. And the rule of the ice islands was nothing but headaches, endless crises and disasters. I think he was relieved when the Warlord stepped forward.”
“And what of Morbid? She was not so pleased, was she?”
Babinsa grew thoughtful. “Ah, Morbid. She was something in those days—like Black Cat Kharvay come again. Her energy was ferocious. Bold, brilliant, passionate—unlike Tiolt, she wanted to fight. She had grand plans to rally the ice islands for battle.” Babinsa sighed. “Of course, it wouldn’t have worked. The southern raiders were too strong, and the ice islands too exposed. But Morbid swayed hearts. She was a magnet for many.”
By her wistful tone, Gorgo thought Babinsa had once been swayed herself. Perhaps Gorgo would have been too, if he had been a young man in those days. Morbid must have been a charismatic figure in the dark years.
On the third floor, Babinsa led him into the west wing, through one long room after another lined with scroll cases and bound books. The room she stopped in lay half in shadow, half in the morning light falling through its narrow windows. Shelves of stone filled the walls and ran in rows across the narrow room. Tables and chairs of wood clustered in the sunlight by the southern window. They looked old, carved in some nation of the continent, the forms of sculpted rock-serpents writhing up their legs and sides. Gorgo wondered if they had been brought over in the Uprooting, or more recently as plunder. It was silent and cool here, except where the warm hand of the sun lay over the floor.
Babinsa moved swiftly through the room, pointing out scrolls on the Greycowl monasteries: the Bright Light Order, the Midnight Sun Order, the Order of the Sinking Sky. Some of the scrolls were hundreds of years old; most had traveled here on the great warships during the Uprooting. Gorgo marveled at the wealth of history they represented.
“If you have any questions, I’ll be in the next room all morning,” Babinsa said as she departed. When she had gone, Gorgo moved to the shelves that interested him: not the Greycowl monasteries, but the cabals they had sent down to occupy the city of Madness. The Kahlrite caste came from the Order of the Sinking Sky, that much he knew from his own education. Gorgo flipped through books and scrolls, and settled down in the sun at last with a book bound in cracked green leather, written by some ancient scholar of Obrail, on “The Perversion Inevitable When Mountain Mysticism Descends to the Lowland to Grub for Ores.”
Hours passed.
Gorgo arrived at Passionflower Court just after sunset. The main gathering spot of the River District, the place was nearly as familiar to him as his own house. The court was at its most beautiful at this hour, its great expanse sparkling in the dusk with a multitude of muted lights. Thousands of luminous passionflowers unfurled pastel blooms, breathing rich perfume into the air and transforming every dark hedge into a starry sky. Torches and lanterns bobbed and wove across the paths and plazas. Pools and fountains glimmered, while a vein of crystal in a statue gleamed like wet rime. All around the courtyard the doors and passages of the great building were open to the evening air; people passed in and out, chattering, laughing and singing. In one of the clearings Kardic dancers practiced, their only accompaniment the soft thud of their footfalls, their long hair and scarves whirling as they leaped and spun as if the air and ground were one to them. Beyond them sauntered a little group of revelers, wine bottles in hands. One carried a harp, while on the shoulder of another a colored bird clung, feathers ruffling.
Gorgo seated himself on the ground beneath a row of dense yews, almost hidden under their branches. A few feet from him rose the massive statue of the Priest-Warlord of the Flower Throne, a man dead more than six hundred years and an ocean away, sculpted here in Wyverna by some Veajhing artist. His carved lips were drawn back in a snarl, his upraised sword bloody in his right hand, his left hand clenched around his staff. His stone eyes fixed on nothing, and no one watched him either. Despite the bustle of Passionflower Court, this clearing was remarkably private. Gorgo and Six & Seven had often come to this spot to share a bottle of blackberry brandy and while away the hours talking. Gorgo waited patiently as the minutes stretched, confident that his cousin would show.
“Yahsta’s tenfold claws! You’ve got an accounting to make.” Six & Seven’s voice was cheery, brassy as bright metal, yet the words were pitched low. He was featureless in the darkness; he carried no lantern.
“You weren’t followed here?”
“By the sweet kiss of the Warlord’s axe, you’re jumpy on this. How much heat are you in?”
“About enough to see that I’m boiled alive and my bones tossed in the sea. Settle down, Six & Seven; it’s big.”
“Sounds like.” Six & Seven settled down beside Gorgo. “What came down last night? Or should I say came up? I saw you with that little blonde.”
Gorgo fell in with his cousin’s humor. “Water. I came up with her money, she came up with an offer, I was willing to come up, we went up to a private room, someone unexpected showed up, and all demon hells came down.”
“I’ve a feeling you aren’t talking about an aggrieved former lover.”
“I wish it were that simple. Remember that flashy Kharvay from Screaming Midnight?”
“Do I!”
“He’s Morbid’s creature.”
Six & Seven was silent for a long moment. “This is beginning to sound worse and worse. You’d better start from the beginning.”
Gorgo told the tale, detailing the strange transaction he had seen. Six & Seven was nearly struck s
peechless, something new in Gorgo’s experience. “Yahsta’s green guts!” he finally burst out. “It’s practically a death curse. You’ve not offended any witches lately, Gorgo, have you?”
“A death curse for me or the Warlord?” Gorgo asked grimly.
“Aye, there’s that. I’d rather be ruled by an Oribul than a Kharvay, sure enough. But what in Yahsta’s name is to be done about it? D’you have a plan, Gorgo?”
Gorgo grinned fleetingly. “I’m working on it. First off, where does Morbid lair?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“She owns the Cataracts in Ilkour.”
“You do that just to make me look bad, don’t you?”
“Now,” Gorgo went on, ignoring him, “what would happen if I presented myself there, offering to sell Morbid some additional information on this deathtrap she’s bought herself?”
“You’d be killed. Besides, you don’t have any additional information.”
“Right. Which is why I want to find who sold that thing to Na•ar. There are bound to be some things that didn’t get passed on.” The idea of bracing Morbid had come to him earlier that day; it was a riskier course than he’d planned at first, but it was growing on him as perhaps his best chance to stop the plot.
“You don’t dream small, my son. But why do you want to meet Morbid at all? What could it possibly gain you except an excruciating death? How about turning this over to the jacks?”
“Ha. I’ve thought about it. But what would the jacks really do, even if they believed me? They might guard the Warlord more closely; little good that will do against the Assassin of the Kahlrites. Or they might seize Morbid for questioning.”
“She’s a Kharvay. They wouldn’t get a thing. And while the other Kharvay nobles are protesting this abuse, one of her confederates strikes with the assassin.”
“More than likely. This needs a more subtle touch, something from the inside. Anyway, if I go near the police, they’ll bring me in for questioning too, and I’ll lose any chance to stop Morbid. I don’t trust the police. Or the Fence either.”
“Hmph.” Six & Seven grinned. “But you’re willing to go near a murderous revolutionary whose whole plot depends on secrecy, let her know you know everything, and trust to her kindness and good will—”
“No. I trust her greed and fear. They’ll serve me better. If I have something she wants, she won’t kill me until she gets it. If my death means she’s found out, she’ll keep me alive.”
“You’re dicing with the Devourer. What are you gaining this way?”
“I can’t thwart her plans unless I get close enough to know them, can I?”
Six & Seven shook his head, blowing out his breath in exasperation. “There’s a crazy logic to your lunacy, Gorgo. I’m going to write you a fabulous ballad after your death. ‘Like the Gods of the desert, passion ruled his madness. The wails of women yearned in his wake; before the deadly hour, the Fates to slake, he with iron eye did—’ ”
“Did strangle his best friend with his own tongue. Shut up. I’m only throwing possibilities about. If you can suggest a better plan, go for it.”
After a short silence Six & Seven sighed. “By the murdering Warlord, you’ve really gotten into it.”
“Not half as far in as I will be soon.”
Six & Seven was right, of course. Nonetheless he emptied his pockets for Gorgo. Gorgo would need to pay user’s fees for the library, and since he couldn’t go home, the rental of a room overnight at Passionflower Court again. No, Six & Seven answered his question, no one had come looking for him at home. “Your mother was looking for you though. Something about some accounts you had to put in order. She seemed to feel you were shirking. Asked me where you were. She wouldn’t believe me when I said I didn’t know.”
It was like his mother to only notice his absence when work needed to be done. “Of course not, and you still haven’t seen me. You think I’ve gone for a pleasure jaunt in the Sealord’s District. I’ll give them a better explanation when this is over.”
“Or they’ll see for themselves when the jacks deliver your body, found floating in the morning tide. It’s occurred to me that you’ll be needing a bodyguard. Maybe I’d better not go home either.”
“No, I need you to go out and win me another stake. Don’t think small, and play a sure game. I’m not in great danger yet, I think, as long as I don’t show up anywhere I normally go. In two more days it may be another story. They’ll have that golem then. I’ll tell you what; we’ll meet morning after tomorrow, at daybreak on Storm Point.”
“Why there? What do you have in mind?”
“I just may go for that jaunt in the Sealord’s District.”
The Library of the Past, Gorgo thought by next midmorning, may already have given him everything useful it had to offer on the golem Cockatrice, which was almost nothing. The Kahlrites were described in some detail, but most of it sounded like this: “Then the copper chimes were struck in ascending sequence; the five Kahlrite priests of the Keys would bow, intoning ‘Vreel gyzhalla vax gail’; all would follow them, taking the symbols from about their necks and placing them in the copper bowl…”
It had probably been taken verbatim from the holy books of the Kahlrites themselves. Much of the text lapsed into the sacred rite-tongue of the Kahlrites, and no translation was provided. The ancient Kahlrites uttered “vreel gyzhalla vax gail” at the slightest provocation, but nowhere was it explained what this might mean.
Other books on the Kahlrites had clearly been written by outsiders, like that tome of cracked green leather Gorgo had first examined; they tended to be more condemnatory than helpful. Still, near noon Gorgo found something more significant, quite unexpectedly. It was in the journal of Sh’a’nee of the Bright Light Order. He had lived a placid life without ever leaving his monastery, but in his fiftieth year two distant cousins of the order showed up at the door one night, bloody and battered, refugees from the wreck of Madness.
“We had never expected to see descendants of our brothers who had gone down into Madness. We had considered them lost beyond any return. We purified them, and in long meditation they came to calmness at last. As the labyrinth of Madness released its hold on them, they told us tales of the ungodly creature that haunted its last days.
“Born from cock’s blood and serpent’s tongue, in this it mimics the ancient race of cockatrices. Our cousins saw the golem spring full-grown from the egg that holds her sleeping form, when a Kahlrite zealot called upon it with his filthy words. She wears a human image, a head taller than the tallest man, and her armor is fashioned of copper and its bastard sons: brass and bronze. In her right hand she carries a sword of deadly poison; in her left, the axe that split the rock of the gods.
“Serpents flock to her call. Six cousins in Madness fell into the sleep of death from the touch of the amber snakes she brought forth from her flesh. The fire asps she summoned set Madness in flames. Our cousins spoke of seven-headed abominations, and two-headed amphisbaena that spoke. They witnessed how weapons broke against the Cockatrice’s carapace, even those strengthened by their own spell-blood. They raved of the construct striding through nets of spells as though they were but cobwebs, and then whispered of her silence and craft, her fatal assassin’s skills. They spoke of comrades turned to stone by her glance. ‘It has no soul, but it can think and respond. It has no love, but it wears a woman’s form. Pitiless, monstrous.’
“But a very loyal being, we chided them; she killed no Kahlrites. Pitiless and loyal—a perfect being. If she would come to the mountains, she would learn to be a monk. Our cousins trembled at the words. On the 64th day we sent them into meditation and released their souls to the afterlife, seeing already they would never attain the purity of Greycowl monks.”
Gorgo closed the book and sat unmoving in the silent room. The chamber lay in shadow, the sun now at its apex hidden beyond the roof. Cold shivers crept up his arms, and an icy breath seemed to lift the hairs at his neck. What was he thinki
ng, chasing this thing?
4: Hunters and Prey
Gorgo took a ferry from the River District south into Sealord’s, a journey that would have taken him half a day on foot, but less than two hours by boat. He stood by the railing as the ferry sailed south, enjoying the sparkling of the clear grey sea under the afternoon sun. Wyverns wheeled in the sky above, soaring from their lairs in Yahsta’s Claws and arcing out over the sea. The dragon-like beasts seemed small at this distance, though Gorgo knew they were as huge as the great sharks of the deep, and as fierce. Gorgo watched as one of them folded its leathery wings and plummeted toward the water in a scream of sound, unfurling its wings just as it reached the sea with a noise like a thunderclap. It skimmed over the water, head snaking back and forth on its long neck. Its talons plunged beneath the waves and emerged a moment later clutching a massive fish. Huge wings labored to lift the beast again. The whip of its barbed tail splashed up sprays of water before the great grey lizard rose and dwindled again to a tiny shape in the sky.
A noisy din rose around the ferry as it threaded the narrow passage between Rookery Point and Seal Isle. Seals slipped dark and smooth into the cold water to play around the ship, and lumbered out again up the barren rocks, barking “ork, ork.” Above the seals’ breeding grounds, flocks of giant jaegers roosted, their droppings whitening the dark rocks. They watched unblinkingly for any sign of weakness among the pups below. The clapping of the jaegers’ wings and their harsh caws mingled with the seals’ cries, and the tide booming on the close-set rocks only added to the cacophony. Most of the ferry’s passengers seemed glad to put the rookery behind them, but Gorgo enjoyed its vitality.
Shortly after, the ferry rounded the high rocky cliff called Storm Point, where Gorgo had arranged to meet Six & Seven tomorrow morning. Storm Point was the easternmost spot of mainland Wyverna, the tip of the long promontory that formed the Oyster District. Huge oyster beds were planted in the shallow water along its shores, giving the district its name.
The Copper Assassin Page 5