Assassin's Edge

by Juliet E. McKenna

  “Can’t you rouse Planir or someone in Hadrumal?” Apprehension deepened Ryshad’s tone.

  “Give me a moment.” Shiv set down his salver and the half-burnt rune stick and heaved a weary sigh. It wasn’t paint causing those dark hollows under his eyes, I realised with a sinking feeling. This wasn’t the time to find Shiv had spent all his wizardry, not if we couldn’t summon help from beyond these islands. What could have happened to the other mages?

  “They’ll be at the boundary wall any moment now,” Ryshad warned from his vantage point.

  “I can see those slackers with their spades hiding round the corner of the house,” Sorgrad said ominously.

  ’Gren and I stood watching Shiv work his spell once more.

  “Planir, it’s me, Shiv.” The mage’s voice hardened as he bent closer to the amber radiance. “Open to my spell, curse you! I have to speak to you!”

  But the light faded inexorably from the cold metal. “Don’t do this to me!” spat Shiv, heedless of the rune stick burning his fingers. He gripped the salver so hard the silver buckled. With a snap that startled us all, it twisted out of his hands to fall blackened to the floor. Shiv stared at it aghast. “The magic turned against me.”

  A horrible notion struck me. “Was it the rune stick? The Forest Folk foretelling is Artifice even if they don’t call it that—”

  Shiv wasn’t listening. “There’s something very wrong.”

  “There will be if we can’t fight a way out of here.” Ryshad snapped his spyglass shut and shoved it in a pocket. We all drew our blades as we heard running feet on the stones of the yard.

  “It’s only a double handful or so,” said ’Gren scornfully.

  “Shiv, can’t you just lift us out of here?” I asked.

  “Where to?” he asked, exasperated. “Olret’s keep? That’s the only other place around here I know well enough to carry us to—and that’ll just about finish me.”

  “We’ve fought our way out of tighter corners than this.” ’Gren was unconcerned but then ’Gren was always unconcerned. Moving figures passed by the windows.

  “It’s whoever Olret’s sent that we have to worry about.” Sorgrad assessed the situation calmly. “If we deal with them, farm boys aren’t going to stand up to us.”

  Ryshad didn’t take his eyes off the door. “How do we do this?”

  Sorgrad used his dagger to loosen the bone frame in the stone aperture beside him. “We let them in through the door.” The window loosened. “Then we go out this way.”

  Ryshad scowled. “You three, maybe. Not me and Shiv.”

  “I can slow them down,” the mage assured him.

  “Once we’re out, we attack them from the back.” I resolutely ignored my own misgivings.

  “No more time to worry about it.”

  ’Gren leapt for the door as someone lifted the latch on the other side. He ripped it open and the Elietimm soldier fell into the wash house, taken unawares. He took that surprise to whatever afterlife awaited him as ’Gren struck his head clean off before darting out of the reach of the second man’s naked blade.

  “Go!” Sorgrad stood between me and the Elietimm forcing their way into the cramped building, bent on ugly slaughter. I used a pail as a step and, tossing the loosened frame aside, I went through the window feet first. ’Gren dived after me to roll on the bruising ground with all the skill of a fairground tumbler. He was on his feet, blades bright in the morning sun before Olret’s men realised what was happening.

  Most were already inside the wash house. Three were left outside to gawp at our sudden arrival. Two went for ’Gren and the last ran at me. I wasn’t about to start swordplay with someone half a head taller so I ducked down and caught up a loose stone the size of my fist. Catching him full in the cheek wasn’t as good as a strike to the temple but it sent him staggering back. He fell hard on his arse so I could shove my sword under his jaw to leave him twitching on the dusty ground. I don’t kill with ’Gren’s insouciance but if someone tries to kill me, I’ll answer to Saedrin for his death when my times comes. It was only then I realised I’d taken the insane risk of using the ancient Kel Ar’Ayen blade I carried.

  With deft footwork and vicious swordplay, ’Gren added the other two to a tally that’ll keep the elder god busy and everyone else waiting in line. Hearing their cries, one came back out of the door and I retreated rapidly, shoving the sword into my belt and reaching into my pouch for darts.

  But he wasn’t interested in fighting, running so fast even ’Gren couldn’t catch him before he jumped the boundary wall and fled.

  Curiosity warred with caution and I risked going a little closer. Two Elietimm in the doorway had their backs to me and whoever they were fighting had to be one of my friends so I darted in to hamstring the closest with my longest dagger. He fell, to be killed by Sorgrad and I caught a glimpse of Ryshad struggling with someone further in.

  A scream of agony shocked us all to stillness but me and Sorgrad recovered first. As I slashed at the other man’s knees from behind, Sorgrad caught the enemy under the breastbone. The man died, vain pleading silenced by a gush of blood. Sorgrad tried to throw the body back off his blade. I stepped forward to help, holding the corpse down with one boot and saw Ryshad hacking at two men unaccountably tangled in choking coils of sodden cloth.

  “Shiv got the laundry on our side,” grinned Sorgrad over the corpse between us.

  Shiv was standing on the rim of the pool, a narrow column of scalding steam untroubled by the cold air from the open door and coiling down and around a man whose face was pale, pulpy and undeniably dead. I spoke without thinking. “You cooked him like a pudding.”

  “Pretty much.” The mage sighed. “And I really am all but spent.”

  Ryshad kicked the swathed bodies at his feet to make sure they were good and dead. Blood oozed from rents in the blankets and flowed across the floor to join water and lye seeping down the drain. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He and Sorgrad were first out of the door, me following with an arm ready in case Shiv needed support. ’Gren was in the centre of the yard, proud and belligerent as a cockerel ready to leave all comers bleeding in the dust.

  “Let me repay your hospitality,” he taunted the unseen inhabitants of the steading. “My mother throws better bread than your women make to the dogs!”

  “We’re leaving,” Sorgrad warned him as we passed. ’Gren took a moment to piss copiously on the ground and then ran to catch up.

  Ryshad fell back to let the two of them go on ahead. “Shiv?”

  “I’ll be all right,” said the wizard tightly. “I just need some rest and to work out why my magic’s not reaching as it should.” He sounded quite as annoyed as weary.

  “Rest may solve it. How often does a mage do half what you’ve done these past few days?” Still, I was starting to share his concern that something, somewhere must be very wrong if we couldn’t contact any other mage.

  We passed the boundary wall, Ryshad checking all the while to be sure we weren’t pursued. “We’ll find somewhere to hide up and work out our next move,” he said decisively. “And we don’t want to be disturbed. Livak, can you work that aetheric charm against being tracked?”

  I did my best to sing the jaunty tune as we ran, hoping the Artifice was proof against my ragged breath and the jolting of the uneven, stony ground.

  Suthyfer, Fellaemion’s Landing,

  11th of For-Summer

  You’re building pyres already?” Temar felt distantly proud that he could keep his voice level.

  “No reason to delay.” Halice sounded weary.

  “I’d forgotten what it was like.” Temar didn’t mind Halice hearing his shame. “I fought with the cohorts for a year and a half but we were never involved in clearing the carrion, not esquires from the noblest Houses. We were all honour and valour and rushing to leave the battlefield as soon as our commanders gave us leave. It’s the comrades you remember, the fooling in the camps, the celebrations and the gratefu
l whores. Not the death.”

  “You’re a commander this time,” said Halice without censure. “Now you know why wiser men than us call a battle won the closest evil to a battle lost.”

  The two of them watched shrouded bodies being respectfully laid in a line along the crest of the rising land. The only sound was from the pry bars and axes breaking up what remained of the hulks of the Tang and Den Harkeil’s ill-fated ship.

  “Did Peyt live?” Temar asked after a while.

  Halice shook her head. “Not beyond midnight.”

  A sullen line of those pirates who’d escaped summary slaughter carried the salvaged wood up to the burning ground.

  “They should burn cleanly enough,” Temar remarked when the burden of silence weighed too heavily for him to bear. He plucked unaware at the edge of the bandage dressing the wound on his arm.

  “I reckon so.” Halice watched other captives sewing sailcloth winding sheets around the dead to be honoured with cleansing fire. Minare and his troop stalked among them, cudgels ready to chastise any who failed to show respect to the fallen. “Though a little magecraft couldn’t hurt. Has Allin recovered at all?”

  “Not as yet.” Temar couldn’t say that in an even tone and didn’t even try.

  “We’ll have to keep the burning hot enough without her then.” Halice pointed at the pyres being built with sombre efficiency by a bloodstained gang of mercenaries. “Deg knows how to catch the wind to best advantage.”

  “What do we put the ashes in?” asked Temar with sudden consternation.

  “We’d better talk to Rosarn. She’s inventorying the salvage,” Halice replied. “There must be pickle jars, butter crocks, wide-necked carafes, that kind of thing.”

  “You’d send someone’s son home in a pickle jar?” Temar was appalled, both at the notion and the realisation he had nothing better to suggest.

  “I’ve sent people home as no more than a few charred bones in a twist of greased sacking before now.” Halice turned her gaze from the measured destruction of the beached ships and Temar saw tears in her eyes. “I always told myself it was better their family know what had happened than be left with hope and fear from season to season.”

  “I’m sorry.” Temar couldn’t think what else to say.

  Halice smiled without humour, her sorrow retreating. “I wasn’t sorry to think I’d left all that behind. Me and Deg and all the rest of us who opted to stay in Kellarin.”

  “Will you still be staying?” Temar wondered aloud.

  “Oh yes,” Halice assured him. “We’ve shed too much blood to give up on you now.”

  “In the cohorts, any man wounded in battle was recompensed according to the severity of his wounds,” said Temar distantly. “I don’t know if the custom still holds but I intend to abide by it.”

  They watched the work continue for a while longer in the same pensive stillness. Other captives were dumping their fallen comrades in long boats with scant ceremony. The Fire Minnow waited in the middle of the strait to tow the carrion into open water. Her crew made ready to sail, with billows of white canvas and the D’Alsennin pennant jaunty at her masthead.

  “They’re taking those well clear?” asked Temar, concerned. “We don’t want corpses washing back on the tide!”

  “The sharks will make short work of that lot,” said Halice with grim satisfaction. “Remind me to tell Naldeth what we’ve done.”

  Temar looked again at the pyres being built, running an idle finger over his bandage until he inadvertently touched the tender sore beneath it. He banished the treacherous thought that Guinalle could heal the hurt for him. Her talents were needed elsewhere. He could heal as time and Ostrin allowed. “We need a shrine,” he said with sudden decision. “If we keep these ashes in humble containers, so be it but we should at least give them the sanctity of a proper shrine.”

  “Agreed.” Halice nodded firm approval. “Some families will want to leave the ashes where their loved ones fell anyway. We should make sure a roll of the dead goes back on the first ships to Tormalin. Do you think Tadriol would let us use the Imperial Despatch to send word to the families in Lescar and Caladhria?”

  “It’s not for the Emperor to permit or deny couriers to an acknowledged Sieur,” Temar retorted with some spirit. “The Imperial Despatch can take word of your losses to the far side of Solura or answer to me for it.”

  “Word to Bremilayne will reach Toremal quicker but the quickest way to get news to Caladhria and Lescar will be sending someone to Zyoutessela, so a courier can take passage on to Relshaz. Someone needs to take word to Hadrumal as well.” She reached into her jerkin and dug in an inside pocket to retrieve a thick silver ring. “This was Larissa’s. It should go back with her ashes.”

  Temar was puzzled. “I don’t recall her wearing that.”

  “Nor me.” Pity and apprehension mixed uneasily in Halice’s words. “I think it belonged to Planir.”

  “We’ll discuss who goes where when we have all the ships together.” Temar knew he was avoiding the question but he’d face down Emperor Tadriol and the entire Convocation of Princes before he’d tell Planir the woman he’d loved was dead. “We should bring them all in here, and everyone from the sentry island.”

  “Not today,” Halice said firmly. She nodded at the gangs of toiling mercenaries. “They’ll end up roaring drunk tonight and meaner than privy house rats. You should make sure any prisoners you don’t want lynched are locked safely in the Dulse’s hold as well.”

  “Oh.” Temar hesitated. “Do you think that’s wise, letting the men have such liberty? What if some of the pirates who fled sneak back in hopes of more mischief or stealing a boat?”

  “Then they’ll live to regret it just so long as it takes someone to sling a rope over a tree or gut them like a fish.” New vigour sounded in Halice’s voice. “Still, you’re right. One spark makes a lot of work if it catches. Rosarn can take out her scouts tomorrow.”

  “As soon as Guinalle can spare the time, she can drill me in the Artifice to search out any stragglers.” Temar straightened his back, shoulders square. “Ros can start a survey as well as clearing out vermin. Vaspret can help. The sooner we know what we hold here, the better we can plan how to use these islands.”

  Halice smiled. “You’ll be telling Tadriol Kellarin claims these islands? In your capacity as Sieur?”

  “Yes,” Temar said firmly. “Do you have some objection?”

  “None at all.” Halice looked at the steadily rising pyres. “It’ll be nice to see a battleground showing something more permanent than burn scars for winter storms to wash away.”

  For all his newfound determination, Temar’s thoughts turned inexorably sorrowful, so he was accordingly grateful for an apologetic cough at his elbow. It was Glane.

  “Beg pardon, Messire, Commander but what are we to do with the prisoners that aren’t working? Some are saying they were never pirates, only captives. And then there’s the wounded—”

  “I’ll see to the wounded.” Halice clapped Temar on the shoulder. “Justice and mercy are your prerogative, Messire.”

  Temar bit his lip as the tall mercenary strode away.

  “Rosarn! Do we have any kind of inventory yet? I want decent food for the wounded,” Halice called out. She kicked at a rickety remnant of some hovel and it collapsed with a clatter. “And somewhere a cursed sight better than this to sleep!”

  Temar turned to Glane. “Where are these prisoners?”

  The boy led him across gravel and dusty turf to a sullen gathering guarded by grim-faced men from Edisgesset. Some were blank faced with fear, staring dejected at the ground, some not even easing the painful bonds constraining them. Others huddled in twos and threes warily alert for any chance to flee, eyes vicious as feral dogs. One woman sat silent, hugging her knees, green dress bloodied around the hem and scorched on one sleeve, the skin beneath red and blistered. Temar felt she was not so much beaten as slyly husbanding her strength. Her hair was still secure in a tidy black bra
id pinned around her head.

  “Build a gallows,” he said in matter-of-fact tones. “Fit to hang a handful at a time.”

  A few faces disintegrated into sickened rage or wretched whimpers, his words confirming their worst fears. Consternation wracked the rest, several trying to stand for all the bonds hampering them. Their protests came thick and fast.

  “No, your honour—”

  “Your mercy, we beg you—”

  “They forced me—”

  “Silence!” Temar held up his hands. “You’ll all have your chance to plead for pardon.”

  “And to bear witness?” A bedraggled girl struggled to her bruised feet, tied hands awkwardly clutching a blanket some mercenary had thrown her to cover her ragged chemise. “Hang me if you wish, Messire. I don’t care but don’t let that bitch escape the death she deserves!” She turned on the woman in the green dress whose eyes were still fixed on the ground. “Muredarch’s whore, the filthy slut, she kept all his secrets.” She broke into wild sobs, kicking at the silent woman. “She made a whore out of me! Let any of them use me—” As she lashed out again, the woman in green tripped her with a deft foot. The hysterical girl fell hard and other prisoners turned on the woman in green and then on each other.

  “Break it up!” Temar ordered. Edisgesset men were already wading into the melee, pulling apart the struggling bodies, merciless with some, more gentle with others.

  One stood, the trampled girl unconscious in his arms. “What do I do with her, Sieur?”

  “Take her to join the wounded.” Temar gestured towards the edge of the woods where those hurt were being nursed away from the bloodstained battleground. He studied the woman in the green dress who was sitting still and silent once more. Her braid was ripped askew and a bruise purpled one cheek.

  “What’s your name?” asked Temar.

  “Ingella,” one of the other prisoners snarled.

  “Were you truly Muredarch’s woman?” Temar demanded.

  Ingella did not answer, her gaze not wavering from a tuft of grass that seemed to fascinate her.

  Temar was aware that every other eye was on him. “Keep your own counsel,” he said mildly. “Muredarch wasn’t the only one with Artifice to call on. We will have your guilt or innocence out of you one way or another.”