Garret moved toward the city, passing more rows of yurts and sentries posted around braziers. As he walked, he removed a coin purse that was attached to the dead warden’s belt and emptied it in the mud. Then he pulled a few buttons off the inside of his tunic and put them in the pouch.
None of the soldiers in the camp paid much attention to Garret. It wasn’t until he reached a small postern gate of the mud wall—which was an oak door on a massive iron hinge—that he was stopped. One sentry moved in front of the door and the other took two steps toward Garret.
“What’s your business here?” the first asked.
“Got something for Raimier,” Garret said, holding up the pouch.
The guard narrowed his eyes. “What’s Raimier need with your fucking purse?”
“Ain’t coins. It’s buttons. My sergeant came up all in a huff ’cause Raimier’s collecting buttons from the men who drew blood today, and he missed a few. Gave me the pouch and told me to give it to High-Warden Raimier himself, and nobody else.”
“We got orders to keep the gate sealed till morning.” The sentry kept frowning. “Who is this sergeant of yours?”
“Gunther,” Garret said. “We’re camped down by the latrines.”
The first sentry rubbed his nose and sighed. “I can smell the fucking latrines on you, but I don’t know a Gunther.” He turned to his partner. “You?”
“I know him,” the second sentry said. “He didn’t go out raiding today, though. Why’s he collecting buttons for Raimier?”
“Fuck if I know,” Garret said. “I just do what I’m told. If Tybby wants buttons, buttons is what I deliver. He wants me plucking cock hairs next, that’s what I’ll do.”
The first sentry grunted out a laugh. It didn’t matter which country you were in, griping about the chain of command was always a reliable way into a guard’s good graces.
“All right, all right. You can go in. Raimier was headed to the holdfast last I saw him. You best hurry, though. They’re starting soon.” He stepped aside and motioned to the second sentry, who seemed less sure about letting Garret inside, but opened the door with a heavy copper key and pulled it open all the same.
Garret saluted the two sentries and passed beneath the wall. The fifteen yards of darkness were cool and damp, and then he was inside Mudwall proper and walking up an avenue toward the tower. Garret smiled to himself. Infiltrating an occupied Almiran city was easier than he’d expected. Once, he’d spent almost a month working out a way into a Papyrian outpost, and they weren’t even under attack.
The only people on the streets were other wardens. All the houses Garret passed had their windows shuttered. No candles in the sills. The doors were probably barred twice. Made sense. You only had to be a peasant in a city full of soldiers for a few hours to know it was best to stay out of sight.
That was true in every country, too.
As Garret walked, he studied the holdfast. It wasn’t particularly well built—plenty of loose stones and sagging windowsills to make for an easy climb. The top three floors of the building glowed orange in the night. Garret could make out shadows moving along the ceiling and in front of the windows. They must have gathered for the totem ritual. Garret didn’t know what that entailed, but lots of noise and people could always be turned into an advantage.
There was a tavern across the street from the tower that was full of drunken men singing and yelling and dicing. Garret made like he was heading to the tavern, but ducked into the side alley at the last second. There was a drainpipe running down the side of the tavern wall. It was a thick, circular ceramic thing. Garret grabbed the pipe with both hands and shimmied up the roof.
He surveyed the situation from the top. It was a long jump to the tower, but the tavern roof was thirty strides off the ground, maybe more. Doable. Garret traced a path back from the edge of the roof to make sure it was clear and could support his weight. He did a few quick squats to loosen his legs. He waited until the soldiers below started another loud song, then he sprinted off the roof, shooting himself up in the air as high as possible.
He caught the edge of a windowsill on the second floor. Steadied himself and froze, waiting for the cry of someone who’d seen him. When he heard nothing, he began to climb. It was easy work, but time-consuming because very few footholds and windowsills lay one on top of the other. He had to bank constantly to his left, wrapping around the tower in a lazy spiral as he moved upward.
At least they did something right when they built the tower.
The closer he moved to the top floors, the louder the sounds of drinking and revelry became. A drum boomed and laughter poured out of the window. When he reached the fourth level, he decided to venture a look. Garret inched his face past the sill and scanned the room quickly with one eye before moving away again.
Ten men, ten women. All of them wearing silk robes and ornately carved fox masks. Probably small lords under Tybolt and their wives. Two wardens guarded the door, and two more wandered around the room that he could see, meaning there were probably two or three more that he couldn’t see. A long table was covered in food and cups of wine and ale.
Quite the celebration, but no sign of Lord Tybolt.
It would have been an easy thing to poison Tybolt. Cleaner, too. Garret could have brewed a coated dose of nightshade that wouldn’t have taken effect for another two days. The lord would have gone to bed with a headache and died during the night. Cleaner than clean. Invisible.
But Garret had his instructions. He kept climbing.
The fifth floor was quieter, and stank of opium. Probably Tybolt’s private quarters. Garret reached a window and risked a peek. Two people in the room.
One was a warden in full armor, no mask. The other was sitting in a chair in the center of the room. He wore a black robe, and a black fox mask with gleaming yellow eyes and tall, pointed ears. He was holding a sculpting tool that looked similar to a trowel. Had to be Tybolt.
Both men were staring at the statue.
Garret had expected to see a figure similar to the mud totem in the sergeant’s tent, but this was something else entirely. The statue stood as tall as a man, but was shaped like a woman. It was completely covered in bluebird feathers—arms outstretched and carved into massive wings. Gemstones that had been planted amid the feathers twinkled in the candlelight.
“My lord,” said the high-warden, “I have the buttons.”
Raimier.
“Yes, yes.” Tybolt held out his hand without looking away from the statue. “Give them to me.”
After Raimier handed over the buttons, Tybolt placed them as the totem’s eyes, nipples, and navel. The rest went between her thighs.
“This will do it,” Tybolt said, placing the trowel on the floor. “It has to.”
“My lord,” Raimier said. “I must see to the men. We’re to clear out the woods at first light.”
“Of course. Go. Tell the others to begin on your way out.”
Raimier left, and Tybolt knelt in front of the totem so that he couldn’t see the window from which Garret was watching. Below, the sounds of chanting lords drifted upward. They wouldn’t be able to hear a thing going on in the upper level. Garret couldn’t help but smile. This was perfect.
He moved like a cat, slinking through the window and into a shadow. He snuck up behind Tybolt, who’d begun to chant a low prayer spoken too fast for Garret to understand it. From the back, he could see the lord’s sweaty neck and thinning gray hair.
Garret picked up the trowel as he crept behind Tybolt, who’d spread his arms as he prayed.
“Goddess of the woods and the sky, I ask your support. Show me my enemies clearly in the light of day. Guide my wardens’ blades so they might—”
Garret clamped one hand over Tybolt’s mouth and stabbed him in the throat with the trowel. He held him still until he bled out, then dropped him.
Garret left the trowel in Tybolt’s throat. Wiped his hands on the Almiran lord’s robe. Then he left the same way he’d come
in.
* * *
Garret escaped the city before the sun rose—walking confidently through the front gate and waving at the four sentries posted there.
But he wasn’t entirely safe yet. Once Tybolt’s body was discovered, there would be chaos. Then there would be questions. If one of the gate sentries happened to mention an unfamiliar warden with a butt-chin to the wrong person, they’d set hounds on him within a few hours. He had to assume that was the reality, and outrun them.
As soon as the road curved out of sight from the city, Garret darted into the woods and found a small, muddy lake. He removed the warden’s uniform, buried it beneath a layer of thick mud, then took his traveler’s clothes out of the goatskin bladder and dressed.
The face putty had hardened in the night, so Garret spent ten minutes throwing water on his face and scrubbing at the disguise. When he’d removed everything except the last bit of chin, he heard a splash on the far side of the lake. He opened his eyes, but all he saw was a series of ripples on the water. The size of the disturbance was concerning. Too big to be a turtle.
On instinct, Garret’s hand moved to his hunting knife. Something was wrong—all the birds and insects had gone quiet.
A black, reptilian snout full of razor-sharp teeth blasted out of the water. Garret put his arm up defensively and felt teeth sink deep into his forearm. He hissed, cursed, then jammed his dagger into the dragon’s jaw. Once. Twice. Three times.
The blade didn’t do much damage, but the last strike got the beast to loosen its jaws just a little. Garret twisted away, felt a moment of resistance before one of the dragon’s teeth broke and he was set free.
Garret grabbed his goatskin bladder and ran.
When he was thirty strides away from the lake, he risked a quick look over his shoulder. The dragon wasn’t much larger than a canoe. It was bleeding from the eye and mouth, but it wasn’t chasing—just glaring at him from the shallows.
He turned and ran flat out for twenty minutes before letting up his pace. Stopped in an open meadow to catch his breath, heaving air in and out of his lungs and cursing himself for being so careless. He was used to working in countries like Balaria and Ghalamar, where dragons were rare within a day’s ride of a city. But Almira was different—the great lizards were as common as salamanders out here.
If he wanted to survive in the backcountry, he needed to be far more careful.
Garret headed west, where he’d slip the line of wardens that Tybolt’s men planned to fight that day. It wouldn’t be difficult—they were looking for an army of wardens, not a single man traveling alone.
6
BERSHAD
Almira, Floodhaven Docks
When he left the castle, Bershad kept his face hidden beneath a cloak to avoid causing a riot. He and Rowan jostled through the crowd at Floodhaven harbor until they found the Luminata, which was a single-masted fishing dogger tied to a slip between a lumber barge and a Ghalamarian carrack that was resupplying.
The carrack was an explorer’s ship, destined for the Great Western Ocean beyond the Soul Sea. Her belly could carry six months of supplies and one hundred men to the far side of the world, where an unexplored continent had been discovered.
The nations of Terra had been sending out carracks for almost a decade, looking for fresh resources on the new world. Ghalamar and Lysteria—two countries that had been plagued by famine and drought for years—were searching the hardest. The few ships that successfully crossed the open ocean and returned again brought tales of a strange, bountiful land. The water of the harbors and rivers was so clear you could see all the way to the bottom, where the seabed was carpeted with delicious oysters and clams and crabs. The land was blanketed by an endless forest full of ripe fruit and herds of vibrant game. And, if all the stories were to be believed, fire-breathing dragons filled the skies and clans of unfriendly native warriors lived beneath the ground. Despite the dangers, more ships set sail every month. Ghalamar and Lysteria were desperate.
Briefly, Bershad wondered if that carrack was the ship Ashlyn had offered him passage upon, but he didn’t linger on the question. He’d made his decision.
As Bershad and Rowan approached the small dogger, a short Papyrian man with sun-soaked skin came up the dock to meet them. His head and face were clean-shaven, and he wore a cloth headband to keep the sweat out of his eyes. His tunic was as red as the fish on his sail. He grinned at them, his face bursting into a patchwork of smile lines and wrinkles.
“You are Ashlyn Malgrave’s cargo?” he asked, voice thick with a Papyrian accent.
Bershad nodded.
“That makes me Torian. And this is the Luminata, your transportation across the Soul Sea.”
“I’m—”
Torian stopped the introduction by wagging a finger at Bershad.
“Ah, don’t need the name. Don’t want the name. I get asked later, you were just two strangers with a bit of coin and the desire to see Ghalamar. Didn’t see no tattoos or famous faces.” He smiled easily. “Now if you don’t mind, we’re ready to go and your friends are already belowdecks waiting for you. You can leave the donkey with me; I’ll take care of the animal and your supplies.”
“Friends?” Rowan asked. Bershad hadn’t told him about their companions yet.
Torian smiled again and motioned toward the ship. “Belowdecks.”
Torian shouted a few orders at the crew, which comprised three other men. They were younger than Torian, but dressed in the same tunic and wearing the same headband. Bershad had a feeling they were his sons.
Bershad clambered belowdecks and found three people waiting for him: a lord, a widow, and a man chained to a support beam. All of them watched Bershad and Rowan as they climbed down.
The lord was sitting on a bench with a map stretched over a barrel. He had short flaxen hair and wore a set of fine riding clothes: supple deerskin boots, a blue silk tunic, and a cloak made from a jaguar’s hide. He narrowed his eyes.
“You are the Flawless Bershad?”
Bershad removed the hood of his cloak as an answer.
“And you’re the Grealor.”
“Lord Yonmar Grealor.” He said it slowly, as if it was a magical incantation instead of a name.
Bershad eyed the cloak strewn across Yonmar’s shoulders. Almirans were constantly using animal hides and bones for their totems, but Bershad’s family had honored the jaguars of their homeland by leaving them alone. When they ruled the Dainwood, it had been a crime to kill one—punishable by death.
Bershad didn’t put stock in rituals and prayers—in his experience, the gods never helped anyway—but he’d always loved the jaguars of Dainwood. Seeing Yonmar’s cloak made his pulse quicken with rage.
Yonmar followed Bershad’s gaze, then lifted the edge of the pelt.
“Oh, so sorry. I’d forgotten your ancestors used to worship the vile tree cats. My men have killed so many of them over the years that I had to start throwing some of my pelts away.” He shrugged. “No room in the wardrobe, you know?”
“Take that off,” Bershad hissed. “Or I will tear it from your body.”
Yonmar smiled. “You’ll do no such thing. You’re here because of Princess Ashlyn. I’m here because of the king.” He patted his chest. “Our papers of safe passage into Ghalamar are in my name, and I’m the only person who can get us across the Balarian border. That means that I am the one in charge of this journey. If you do one thing I do not like, exile, I will make sure the last thing you see is your forsaken shield cooking inside your donkey’s hide. Clear?”
Bershad glared at Yonmar. Thought about killing him on the spot. Ashlyn’s warning was the only thing that stopped him.
“What makes you so confident you can get us across the border?”
“Oh, it’s been arranged. I have a man in Taggarstan, but he’ll only deal with me.” Yonmar drummed his fingers against a leather satchel on his hip, which had the Grealor family crest branded upon it, but didn’t elaborate further.
&n
bsp; Bershad was having trouble resisting the urge to knock all of Yonmar’s teeth out, so he turned to the widow, instead. She had black hair pulled into a tight bun behind her head, and a straight dagger on each hip. Widows were notoriously vicious with their blades, known for slipping them into the seams and gaps of a fully armored man, slicing a few arteries, then ducking and dodging until the man bled to death on his feet.
“Vera, right?”
“Yes.”
Her cheeks were peppered with small, circular scars left over from an adolescent pox, and she was wearing black sharkskin armor. Same as Hayden. The armor was covered with small nooks and crannies, as if a thousand tiny rivers had dug their way into the surface and then gone dry. Wealthy merchants and lords all over Terra wore expensive sharkskin gloves and boots, and the best sword makers used it as leather grips for their weapons. But Papyrian widows were the only ones who used sharkskin for armor. They’d worked out a method to treat it that didn’t involve boiling—just tanning and salting for months—so that it became strong and flexible. Each piece was molded perfectly to the wearer’s body, cut and shaped so that it fit like a silk garment. Sharkskin armor was far lighter than plate, far stronger than other leathers, and twice as expensive as both of them combined.
There were three separate cords of hemp rope wrapped around Vera’s left thigh, and a leather satchel tied to the curve of her right hip. Papyrian slings—each with a different range—and a bag of lead shot. Bershad had never seen a Papyrian widow fire a sling, but he’d heard plenty of stories.
A shepherd with a wool sling and a stone shot could kill a wolf from a few hundred paces away if he was skilled or lucky. But the widow’s version of the weapon was something else entirely.
Hundreds of years ago—before the widows guarded Papyrian royalty—they were a secretive clan of female warriors who’d spent generations perfecting their warcraft while living on a remote island in the Papyrian archipelago. Papyrian slings were made from hemp and specifically designed to maximize range and velocity—the only weapon with a longer range was a Balarian longbow. Papyrian shots were made from perfectly rounded lead molds, and could punch through steel helms and chain mail as if they were paper. Their longest slings could rain havoc onto an entire cavalry division before a single horseman lowered his lance.
Blood of an Exile Page 9
