An unfamiliar man sat behind a barred opening, attending to a stack of papers. Adjacent to the office door stood another that led to the rooms beyond. The yellow light of an oil lamp wavered on the stone and cast a greasy nimbus through the bars. Stacked amid the clutter on the desk was a half-eaten meal on a chipped plate.
Lorth approached and pushed the hood from his face. The man let a fat hand rest upon his work at an impatient angle and looked up with a gray, deadpan stare. A shock of dark brown hair made his head look like a bear’s ass. A local man, by his dress and features, but not the warden Lorth had once known here.
A second presence lurked in an unseen corner of the office. Darkness whispered in the scar on the hunter’s neck as the man moved on the other side of the door.
“I come by the Shade of Belonging,” Lorth said.
The warden’s nostrils flared as he snorted a laugh. “Do you, now.” His attention flicked sidelong. On that cue, the other man emerged from the door. Cloaked and hooded in dirty gray, he looked Lorth up and down with furtive interest as he headed for the stairs.
He never made it. With one swift, sweeping motion, Lorth drew his knife and opened the man’s throat. As he dragged the body back into the antechamber, he found three black-cloaked thugs waiting for him, swords drawn.
The laws of the lawless are certain.
Lorth let his cloaking spell drain into the earth and drew his sword. As they charged him, he breathed a spiky word that send a gust of wind ripping through the room. In a storm of thrusts and parries driven by extreme impatience, he put them down.
Life departs unknown.
Silence returned. Lorth stepped casually over the bodies and then kicked in the office door, sending it in a splintered heap to the floor inside. He strode in to find the warden hovering against the far shelves with a knife in his fist. The chamber stank of fear. As the hunter spun his blade, blood drops splattered across the papers, a potato on the plate, the smoky glass of the lamp and the warden’s cheek. Lorth knocked the dagger from his hand with the flat of his sword. As it clattered to the floor, he noticed that the silver hilt was in the shape of a naked girl.
He leaned close, one hand on the wall as he gazed deeply into the warden’s eyes with the quiet rage of a starving wolf. “I need quarter. Since when did the Sanctuary of Os not recognize the Rede?” He leaned back, lifted his blade and casually wiped the blood off of it using the warden’s tunic. Then he folded the bare blade into his arms like a lover. “You’re obviously new here, so let me educate you on what will happen if you violate the rules of Sanctuary. I don’t have to be at large to mark you. I don’t even have to be alive. You’ll be marked in every town, ship, tavern and battlefield you soil with your presence—in fact, you won’t live long enough to visit one of those places. Do think on it.”
Pale as a candle, his eyes no longer blank, the warden jerked his chin to the far corner, where a bell rope hung. Lorth stepped aside. The man stumbled out from under his panther stare, wiping at the blood on his face. He hurried to the rope and pulled it.
Lorth sheathed his sword. He returned to the antechamber and waited until footsteps echoed in the hall beyond the second door. It opened in a rush, as if the one who had answered the summons hadn’t wished to be disturbed. A short, armed man with balding hair and sacks under his eyes appeared—and then froze as he noticed the bodies and the broken office door.
“Guest!” the warden barked.
With a catch in his breath, the guard looked at Lorth and then pointed down the stuffy passage. “That way.”
Lorth flashed a pithy smile. “After you.” As he moved into the nervous wake of the black-cloaked guard, he concluded that the term “hunter’s sanctuary” had become little more than subterfuge.
~ * ~
Evening fell, and the ass-faced warden of the Sanctuary had somehow seen to it that Lorth received the things he desired. His room was plain and small, with stone walls that wouldn’t bear a bright light, but he had a fire, a bed and—after a cold stare into the eyes of his reluctant guard—fresh clothes and a bath. Once, an assassin could come in here under the Rede and get these things without asking, and a lover usually came with the deal. Apparently, the new management reserved that privilege for better-behaved patrons.
Lorth sat in a tub enveloped by steam, soaking off the war grime of Tarth and listening with half an ear to the fire in the hearth, where unseasoned wood hissed water and oozed sap. In the back of his mind, he held awareness of the watch-web he had draped over the rooms, halls and streets around him. Nothing made an impression, until a presence filled the hall outside. Light steps, a woman’s scent. His loins warmed. Perhaps he would get some company after all.
The door creaked open. A girl barely into womanhood hesitated on the threshold like a wary cat, and then entered the room. Lorth relaxed his grip on the longknife beneath his thigh. She had curly golden-brown hair, sky-blue eyes and fair skin flushed as an apple in late summer. Wholesome, yet caged, she wore gray like a scullery girl, not a prostitute; her dress, though pleasingly tight, looked more as if she had outgrown it. A bruise stained her cheek.
She looked into his eyes with a maudlin air and then turned again to the door as if she had wanted to say something but lost her nerve. As she stood there, her hand resting on the handle of the door, Lorth thought of the hilt of the dagger he had seen in the warden’s office.
He cleared his throat. “I don’t need your services.” An outright lie, that, but she was too young to bear what he had to give her.
Her shoulders rose with a breath as she turned with visible resolve and came to him. She knelt by the side of the tub. “Milord, I need a killin’ done.”
He stared at her.
“You’re a hunter,” she blurted. You’re—” She clipped that off, staring at the mark on his neck. “I’ll pay you.”
He considered the power of lust as he studied the curve of her face and the curls of her hair, glinting in the light. The bruise below her eye had deepened in color. “With what?”
She bit her lip, her eyes filling with girlish eagerness as she unbuttoned the first two buttons of her undersized dress. With a painful smile, she reached out to touch him.
Her hand never got there. He gripped her wrist, causing her breath to catch with a cry. He rose in a rushing fall of tepid water, lifting her with one hand and gripping his knife in the other. She tugged at him to try to break free as his wolf’s gaze drifted down to the unfledged swell of her breast.
He released her. She cowered away from him, rubbing her wrist, breathing heavily. Lorth stepped out of the tub and placed his blade on the edge of the mantel. He reached for a torn blanket that served as a towel.
Women. If the Rede had a Shade for this sort of thing, he didn’t know it.
“You don’t want me?” She stepped back as if disoriented, and leaned against the door. A tear slid down her cheek.
“I’m not in the habit bedding girls.” He moved to the bed where the guard had left the clothes, and began to dress. “Doesn’t the warden protect you?”
“The warden...” She released a broken laugh. “Na.”
He returned to the hearth, grabbed his knife and sat down. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to ask you—”
His look silenced her. “What are you doing in a Sanctuary?”
Her gaze fell. “I’ve no place t’go. The warden is my father.”
“And you want me to kill him?” She looked up and nodded. “What are you called?”
“Leaf.”
He moved his middle finger along the edge of his blade. “Leaf. I will not kill the warden of a Sanctuary giving me quarter. That would compromise the purpose of such places, don’t you think?”
“You killed his men when you came,” she pointed out.
“They violated the Rede.”
She threw back her face with a high-pitched sound of incredulity. “D’you think my father cares about that? He sent me here to bed you, find out wh
o y’are!”
“And instead you want me to hunt him.”
“If I return without information, he’ll hurt me again.”
Lorth draped his arms over his knees. “You would give me your body in return for death, but not for information?”
“I’d rather you killed him.”
“What happened to the warden who used to be here?”
She shrugged. “Gone. Left when the city fell. But...” She hesitated. “My father’s not in charge. A wizard comes here—he wears a Darkstar. Father works for him.”
Lorth gazed at the fire as this uncomfortable piece of information settled into his gut. Darkstar. The Keeper at the gates had used that term when he ordered the Faerins to take him to the High Keep. This made sense. Garvin, the pale-haired, night-seasoned warden who used to run this Sanctuary—a good friend—would have gone nowhere but to his grave before handing this place to anyone. A Keeper of the Eye, however, could be persuasive.
Leaf continued, “I heard them. The wizard, he told my father that a hunter killed the—something about a raven—the high wizard who lived in the crystal tower.” She waved her hand in the general direction of the High Keep. “My father sent me here to see if it was you.”
“Did he, now.” Lorth closed his eyes and considered the probable paths spreading out from the silence in his mind. Only once had Icaros mentioned the wizard who tended the Waeltower of Os. Roarin, he had called him, as if speaking of an old friend. The name of a wizard so high up in the Keepers’ hierarchy that only a friend, or another wizard of that rank, would know anything but his title. A wizard powerful enough to protect an entire city from invasion. Lorth had never heard of a hunter skilled enough to take a man like that.
Raven, Leaf had said. He did know that Raven was the highest order in the Keepers’ hierarchy. Supposedly, only the Raven’s standard didn’t contain a bird.
“So was it really you?” Leaf broke into his thoughts.
“How long has Faerin occupied this city?”
“A fortnight,” she said to the floor. “A warlord came with an army. Forloc, they call him. Killed the City Guard and took the keep. Everyone thought the high wizard would protect us. Y’know they say he could turn himself into birds and fly o’er the city, watch things.” She shook her head. “He didn’t do nothin’.”
“When did he die?”
She looked up and around, like a child. “’Bout a week before the Faerins came. I think.”
Lorth clicked over the days in his mind. If this was true, Roarin would have died roughly around the time Lorth had received his summons from the Mistress of Eusiron and left the outpost in Tarth. He wondered if the summons had anything to do with this situation. Unlikely. The Mistress had quite a few resources at her call without resorting to hired assassins.
How did Forloc know about Roarin’s death and manage to mount an army and get it here in that short time? Even a hard ride from the Faerin border to Os would take at least a week, and that assumed the army had already gathered there. Forloc must have hired the hunter who killed Roarin—not just any hunter—and a damned reliable one at that, for Forloc to chance riding from Faerin before receiving news of the wizard’s death—which he would had to have done, to get here so quickly! Only a Faerin would be so brash.
Even more astonishing, why would the Eye allow Forloc’s presence in Os when the timing of his arrival lined up with such obvious coincidence with the death of the wizard who had for decades protected the city from invasion? And why had the Faerins allowed an armed company of Eusirons through the gate? Was the Mistress of Eusiron supporting them too? This made no sense.
Icaros would know. But Lorth needed more information before riding north.
“Milord?” Leaf ventured. She bravely lifted her chin. “I just told you things. Now will you help me? My father’ll kill me before letting me leave here. You could take him. Easy. You could even fight the wizard, I hear you’re—”
“I am not a wizard.” His stomach growled as he rose and went to the corner, where he had left his belongings. He rummaged for a pouch sealed with a spell of nonexistence, opened it and drew forth a heavy coin, which he tossed on the bed in her direction. The mud-carved crocodile glinted in the firelight. “That will get you far,” he told her. “Far as you like. But I wouldn’t advise using it in the Undersides.”
He didn’t wait for her response as he grabbed his things and left the room.
~ * ~
Later, Lorth lounged in a non-descript corner of the Sea Serpent, the tavern above the Sanctuary. He had eaten a fair meal, and now pondered the origins of his new clothes while a deeper part of his mind surveyed the room.
His new leggings were worn but sturdy enough, dark brown with leather straps well worked by use. His undershirt, once coarse but now threadbare in places, was roomy across his shoulders and fit comfortably beneath his hauberk, which he’d had made for him in Eusiron shortly before he left to seek his fortune. Made of boiled leather stitched with mail, the hauberk has served him well.
Alone, at a small table halfway between the bar and the door, sat a Faerin soldier. His uniform wouldn’t pass any sort of inspection; he had unfastened it in several places and a large stain blotted his chest and the lower part of an arm. He had been drinking heavily, and made little note of anyone around him. He didn’t look like a threat. But a hunter never took chances on comforting assumptions.
Four sailors huddled around the center table, laughing and hollering over a game of twigs. They had eastern accents, red hair in varying shades and eyes of blue and gray. They had had a great deal to drink, but they were not bothering anyone. Yet. The one on the right, with the patchy beard and the twitch in his leg, good chance he would end up breaking something before the night wore on.
Lorth’s new cloak blocked the cold night air pressing through the drafty window. It was shadow gray and smelled of tobacco. The hem was frayed, and the length on one side had a wavering line of crude stitches where a rip had been repaired. A small pocket inside still had a pipe in it, made of bone. He suspected its former owner wouldn’t be smoking much anymore.
He had checked his new clothes for bloodstains before putting them on. Always best to keep track of these things.
He lifted his glass and inhaled deeply, drank and let the golden fire roll down his throat with a sigh. Nothing like northland whisky, as Icaros used to say.
An older man with dark skin and a blue wool hat sat at the bar, nodding his head at the barman, who spoke in a low, raspy voice, hesitating between pouring ale and wiping up spills. The old man said something that caused him to rumble with laughter.
If Lorth’s mother still lived, she would be about the age of the tavern wench who sat in the lap of a young, well-dressed man near the back of the room. The flickering light from the hearth illuminated her graying blond hair and the creases around her mouth and eyes. She wore too much paint on her lips. It was the color of strawberries.
Lorth moved his toes in the ends of his boots. They were made of tough hide, creased and softened with wear but still in good condition. The right boot had a dagger sheath, now empty. Presumably, his guard had lifted the knife as payment for whatever atrocities he had committed to get these things.
People came, people went, and made no note of the corner where the hunter sat. A tavern maid crept close occasionally, filled his glass and then hurried off.
Lorth sipped his whisky and had begun to consider where he might find shelter for the night, when two men entered.
One wore a cerulean cloak with red trim. Lean, with fierce eyes and a cruel set to his jaw, he carried a sword and moved as one who knew how to use it. He stepped up to the bar, revealing a Keeper’s standard on his back with an ash tree and an osprey in flight. A black, interwoven six-pointed star superimposed the emblem like a shadow. Icaros had never described anything like that.
Lorth did recognize one thing, which he hadn’t learned from Icaros but from his own experience. The blood-red trim on the edges of
the Osprey’s cloak marked him as a Raptor, a warrior in service to the Eye. No ordinary warriors, these. They wielded their weapons with the perceptions of the wise, an extra set of senses unknown even to the deadliest blades.
Once again, Lorth wished he knew more about these men. He stared into his drink as if it were a scrying well. Perhaps he shouldn’t have stayed here, even for information. His threat to the warden wouldn’t hold with the Eye, and he had already gained their attention once today. He realized how confident he had grown in Tarth, where his patchy powers held dominion. But here in Sourcesee, they wouldn’t get him far.
The Faerin soldier had looked up from his drink at the arrival of the newcomers and now watched the two men from hooded, red-rimmed eyes.
The wizard turned, his gaze moving inward. Lorth’s blood rushed cold as the recognized the gathering energy of a sweep. He hadn’t dared to hold his shields against the Eagle at the gate, but he had more at stake now after his bloody escape from the Faerins. Without thinking, he breathed a word that caused something to blur in his mind beneath the threshold of exterior perception. Icaros had taught him this trick before he had left for Tarth, explaining that it would make him invisible to powerful minds. To his surprise, it worked: The wizard’s mind passed over him without seeing. Light rippled uncomfortably in the hollow beneath his rib cage as the wizard spun back around.
Lorth eased back in his chair with a slow exhale of relief. The tall man accompanying the wizard held his cloak tightly around his body as if the cold bothered him. A hood hid his face. They spoke in soft tones to the barman. Once, the barman in this establishment would have given them drinks and sent them on their way; he worked for the Sanctuary and wouldn’t reveal the identities or whereabouts of anyone in their care. But things had changed. A wizard comes here—he wears a Darkstar, Leaf had said. Darkstar. Did this refer to that black symbol on the Raptor’s cloak? If this man controlled the Sanctuary, the barman would tell him anything.
Take him to the Darkstar Osprey in the High Keep, the Eagle had said. Lorth’s instincts prickled on the deeper calm. The same man?
The Hunter's Rede Page 3
