Watcher of the Dead

by J. V. Jones

  “Wait. Stay.”

  Angus completed a full spin. “I’ll wait upstairs. I know the way.”

  She followed him nervously as he crossed the kitchen to the interior door.

  “What time do you expect them back?”

  “They just left.”

  Two hours then. Good. “Fetch me a cup of hot broth to the solar. Quick now, girl. I’ve had a long journey.”

  The maid reversed her course, heading back toward the stove, and Angus took the doorway, looked around, and then made his way through the house. Young maids were a knowable commodity. Give them orders and they had a tendency to obey.

  She found him ten minutes later, nodding off in a padded chair in the house’s large and comfortable primary common room, the solar. All houses of a certain size and prosperity possessed such a chamber.

  “Leave me now,” Angus told the maid, accepting a cup of hot fragrant liquid from her delicately shaking hands. “Wake me when the master returns.”

  The maid bobbed a curtsy and left.

  Angus listened to her footsteps descend the stairs, set the cup down on the floor, and then exited the room. A hallway led to stairs which led to the third and fourth stories. He climbed both flights of stairs, took a moment to orient himself within the geography of the house, and then selected a door which opened onto space at the front of the house.

  It was an attic room with a sharply slanted ceiling and unplastered wood walls. A stained mattress and a handful of wicker boxes, piled unevenly against the interior wall, were the only contents. A single window faced south. Its shutters were tightly closed.

  Angus opened one of the shutters gradually over minutes, easing it back, keeping in the shadow behind the second shutter. The rear of the surgeon’s house, its walled yard, kitchen door and window, were clearly visible. Beyond that the south end of the street and a small bar-shaped section at the north end could be viewed through the spaces between houses. Angus spread his weight evenly between his feet, settling in for a long wait.

  An hour passed. The surgeon’s kitchen door opened and a man with gray hair—probably the surgeon himself—came out and pissed against the wall. The street was quiet. People walked its length, either alone or in groups of two or three, with purpose. No one loitered. An old man with a cane took his own good time reaching a house at the street’s north end, but Angus found nothing in the man’s appearance or behavior to raise alarm.

  In the second hour two children, boys of about eight or nine, ran into the center of the street and began playing a game that involved hurling a sealed waterskin at one another. Angus didn’t like this. When people stayed in place he got worried. And the Phage were not above using children.

  He watched the boys, increasingly aware that time was running out. Go, he told them silently.

  They stayed. He could hear their excited laughter and the crude oneupmanship of their taunts. The taller of the boys was dark-skinned and black-haired with a dusty tunic and no cloak. The other boy was smaller but perhaps older with red hair and pink skin. He was wearing the kind of roughly pieced deerhide favored by bush hunters.

  Angus closed the shutter. Time to go.

  Swiftly and quietly he made his way down through the house. The maid was in the kitchen—he could hear her clacking pots—so he took the front door and slipped out into the street. The sun was still shining but a smoky haze rising from the city stopped it from being bright. Angus walked to the corner, cut a turn, headed for the south end of the surgeon’s street.

  Years of training did not prevent the acceleration of his heartbeat. This could be simple. Or not. Making the turn onto the surgeon’s street, he deliberately slowed his pace. The arrangement with the apprentice was that the young man would walk out to meet Angus at midday. It was a minute before midday. Angus wanted to give the apprentice plenty of time to see him, to observe him perhaps for a moment or two, to set his young mind at ease.

  The boys were still playing. They were engaged in an unheated argument over the rules of the game. “Possession’s mine,” claimed the taller, younger boy. “You dropped it.”

  Angus tracked all the movements on the street. The boys, a woman walking with a cane, a girl leading a horse laden with milk pails. Two crows were pecking through dirt that had accumulated in a wheel rut. Angus’ gaze jumped from the birds to the surgeon’s door as light streaked across the varnished wood. The door was opening.

  He did not reach for one of his knives, though the instinct was there. He continued walking, easily, almost jauntily, toward the house and its door. A figure was emerging from the dimness of the entryway and every nerve in Angus’ spine was trained upon it. Size was right . . . shape was right. The figure stepped into the light.

  It was the apprentice, looking younger and softer than Angus remembered. The young man had shaved and donned stiff-looking formal clothes, probably his best. Angus peered into the dim interior behind the apprentice. He saw nothing, but knew better than to allow himself the luxury of relief.

  The apprentice raised his gaze and made eye contact. Angus returned it. The apprentice closed the door. Angus adjusted his pace, timing it so that he and the apprentice would fall into step as they met. You could tell a lot from a man’s neck, see what muscles were working in his throat and jaw. Angus could tell the apprentice had information. You could see it weighing down the muscles in his tongue.

  They fell into step, walking north. The apprentice was the first to speak. “How’s the arm?”

  Angus made a seesaw motion with his head. “Been worse.” Moving his hand against his coat, he made the silver coins stored there jingle softly. “Have you found her?”

  The apprentice kept his gaze ahead. His eyes were still bloodshot from lack of sleep. “Money first.”

  He was learning. Angus took out the cloth bag and tamped it into the apprentice’s cupped hand. More money than he would earn in five years. Maybe ten.

  The apprentice slid the bag under his good half-cloak. A second passed while he seated it.

  Angus said, “Where is she?”

  He wanted to talk, that was the thing about information. Once you had it, it was a pleasure akin to relief to pass it on. “She’s calling herself Anna Roach and she’s—”

  Angus slammed into the apprentice as the word ‘she’ left his mouth. The red-haired pink-skinned boy had hurled the waterskin directly at the apprentice, and as Angus and the apprentice slammed into the ground the waterskin burst right by the apprentice’s face.

  It was not filled with water.

  The two boys tore off down the street.

  Angus rolled onto his knees and dragged the apprentice away from the lye. He could smell it burning the young man’s face. He felt pinprick sizzles on his own face and hands where the splash had caught him.

  “Who’s treating her?” Angus said.

  The apprentice looked at him. His just-shaved face was beginning to singe as if it were being held to a flame.

  “Who?”

  “Sarcosa.”

  Angus heard the tht of a crossbolt lever being released. Grabbing the apprentice by the back of his cloak, Angus hauled the young man’s torso against his own, using the apprentice as a shield. A crossbolt lanced into the apprentice’s shoulder with such force that Angus’ teeth smashed together.

  Rising, he threw away the young man.

  The crossbolt had come from the tower manse with the copper roof. Angus knew exactly how long it took to crank and cock a crossbow and as he sprinted away from the apprentice he worked out the bowman’s angle of sight. Reaching the first alley between houses he darted into the gap. As long as he was close to a building on an east-west axis he was safe.

  He ran east toward the river, scrambling over walls, jumping fences, tearing through courtyards and private spaces. He had been a fool. He knew the two boys hadn’t been right. Someone had paid them to play there. Someone had given them a waterskin lined with God-knew-what so that it could hold lye, and instructed them to throw it at the tw
o men meeting outside the house. It had been a diversion, something to slow down the mark. Once he, Angus Lok, was on the ground he was a sitting target.

  Of course they weren’t interested in the apprentice. He was just the means, the lure.

  This had the Phage written all over it. The Crouching Maiden would not have set such a clumsy trap. Crossbolts at distance weren’t her style. She played with superior odds.

  Out of breath, Angus slowed to a walk. He calculated he had put half a league between himself and the manse tower and as there was no sign of pursuit he felt safe. Lungs pumping, he headed for the riverbank.

  The big black maw of the Burned Fortress swallowed the Eclipse two hundred yards upstream. Angus watched the water swirl above the drop. He jumped the floodwall and hiked down the bank. Kneeling in the mud, he splashed water on his hands and face. It cooled the burned specks on his skin. He rested for a while, not thinking.

  He wasn’t young anymore. How much longer could he outrun threats?

  Not for the first time he wondered if he was doing this in the right order. If Cassy was alive, if the lack of her body at the gravesite meant that she hadn’t died that night, then wouldn’t it be better to track her first?

  It had seemed clear: Take down the Maiden at all cost. Anyone who knew anything about the Maiden would tell you that she never failed to kill a mark. Once she took a commission with your name on it you were dead. Sooner or later you were dead. That meant Cassy was in grave danger.

  He was a father; he had to take that danger away.

  Abruptly, he stood. He could not think of his daughter, of the possibility of her being alive.

  It was too much for a man to hope for. It would drive him insane.

  Angus peeled along from the river, heading south. He needed to wash, and mend and launder his clothes. There were wormholes in his coat where lye had burned through the fabric. He considered returning to the lodging house—he had paid for ten days—but he knew from being a tracker that it was a mistake to follow patterns. Once someone identified a pattern in your behavior they could anticipate your next move. And there was no doubt in his mind: The Phage were on him.

  It was not worth worrying about how they had come to learn of his arrival in the city. Anyone—gate guard, market stall holder, drunk in the street—could have identified him and passed along the information to the Phage. They watched for their enemies. The important question was: Did the Phage know what the apprentice knew? Did they possess the Maiden’s latest alias and the name of her doctor?

  Angus Lok knew and didn’t care for the answer. He had to proceed as if the Phage knew everything. They had known enough to lay a trap at exactly the right place and time. And although their traps left something wanting their intelligence rarely did. That meant they were likely ahead of him. Even aware of that fact, what choice did he have but to continue? He would not, could not, stop looking for the Maiden. Angus Lok and Magdalena Crouch could not exist in the same world. It would not continue to happen.

  Finally he was getting close to tracking her down.

  Anna Roach.

  Sarcosa.

  She was here. Somewhere in this city she was rubbing ointment into her burned hands, sipping tea to slake her thirst, speaking to people who could not see the truth of what she was. She would be cautious, but it was too late. She had already made the fatal mistake. She had followed a pattern. She had returned home.

  Angus Lok took the Turret Bridge and crossed to the east side of the city. It was God’s Day and the bridgekeeper could not charge a toll for passage so the fact that Angus had no money made no difference. He had abandoned the purse containing his savings at the exact same place and time he’d abandoned the apprentice.

  He did not care about the money . . . and he could no longer remember the young man’s name.

  CHAPTER 30

  Heart Fires of the Sull

  ASH MOUNTAIN BORN rode in formation with Mal Naysayer and Mors Stormwielder across forested headland. The trail was wide and clear, formed from soft gray clay and gravel freighted with quartz. No saplings or ferns grew on it though the forest was feet away. The sun was high and in the west and a haze of cloud silvered it, anticipating the full moon.

  Ash rode at the head of the formation. It did not seem an honor as much as a right. The two Sull warriors rode at her shoulders, their recurve longbows strung and ready on their saddle horns, their longswords cross-harnessed against their backs. Ash knew they were ready to defend her. She knew she needed defending. Lan Fallstar was one Sull who wanted her dead. Chances were there would be more.

  The farther she got into Sull territory the greater the risk. She was Jal Rakhar, the Reach, and the Sull could not decide whether they wanted her alive or dead.

  Ash glanced down at her hands as they worked the reins. They looked like normal hands, with veins and tendons and horse dirt beneath the nails, but they weren’t. They were rakhar dan, and if they were chopped into pieces they could kill the Unmade. So the question for the Sull was: Did they kill her and divide her corpse, or keep her alive and farm her?

  She didn’t much like the sound of either of those and rejected both of them. Ash Mountain Born was determined to decide her own fate.

  A pair of blue herons flew over the path, whooping as they beat their blade-shaped wings. Ash wondered if they were close to water. She couldn’t see anything beyond the massive, shaggy cedars and the fern gardens below them.

  “Hear that?” It was was Mors Stormwielder. He was speaking Sull.

  Ash looked over her shoulder. The Naysayer was nodding in response. She hadn’t heard anything.

  “Listen,” the Stormwielder bid her.

  Ash listened. She could hear wind moving the cedar boughs, the distant echo of the herons, and a coolly repetitive drilling sound that was possibly some kind of bird.

  The Stormwielder nodded. “That is it.”

  She listened again. The drilling sound repeated, this time farther away.

  “It’s the rattle of a male moonsnake. It means a coven is forming.”

  Ash felt a chill rise along her hands and up the sleeves. “He’s joining it?”

  “No. The covens are females. After they feed, the queen may allow him to mate.”

  “It will be a big moon,” the Naysayer said quietly. “We guard our horses tomorrow night.”

  Mors Stormwielder said something in response, but Ash didn’t catch it. She did not have all the Sull words. For the first time since her human blood had been drained to make way for Sull blood, Ash felt the urge to open a vein. The desire to let blood was so strong she could feel where the knife should break her skin.

  Quickly she glanced from the Naysayer to the Stormwielder. What would they think? If either were to ask why, she had no answer. It might be the forest, the rattle of the moonsnake, her new name.

  Mountain Born. It was strong and it was true. She had been born twice; once on a mountain, once within one. The first time she had been a human newborn and the mountain was Mount Slain. The second time she was reborn as Sull, in a mountain cave east of Ice Trapper territory as she floated in a pool of her own blood. The name honored both births.

  It was a strange thing, the name. By taking it she had claimed her own identity. What she had not expected and what she would not tell the Stormwielder was that it made her, not more Sull, but more herself.

  She was no longer Foundling, no longer March or almost-daughter. She was Mountain Born, she was herself. Choosing a name was just the start.

  “We must stop,” she said.

  The two warriors exchanged glances but did her bidding, shortening reins and bringing their horses to a halt. They kept their saddles as she dismounted, watchful but not alarmed. Perhaps they thought she needed to relieve herself; she had been doing that a lot.

  She searched her saddlebag for the letting knife, the silver dagger Ark Veinsplitter had given her after she had become Sull. The weapon was wrapped in lynx fur. Its blade was so sharp that to touch it was to b
e cut. The grip was silver metal, with a design that had been worn to almost nothing by years of handling. Like all letting knives it felt right in the hand. Ash pushed up the sleeve of her her dress, baring the skin of her left wrist.

  Now the warriors understood. With tactful respect they lowered their gazes and quieted the horses. The Naysayer laid a hand on Ash’s white gelding.

  “Gods judge me,” Ash murmured in Sull.

  She pushed the blade across her skin. There was no pain, just a sense of opening, of becoming somehow larger than herself. Her body was no longer contained by her skin, and the insubstance that shimmered on the edge of existence touched her from the other side like a kiss.

  Live.

  Blood welled in a perfect line. Ash looked at it. The presence which she felt, the insubstance, withdrew. She swayed for a moment toward it, chased it, but it was gone.

  Blinking, she watched her blood roll around her wrist and drip onto the gravel. Time passed—she did not know how much of it—and the Naysayer moved forward on his horse.

  “Daughter,” he said, holding a small square of fabric toward her,

  “press this against the wound.”

  She took the fabric and did what was asked. She felt as if she were waking from a dream. Was this what it meant to be Sull?

  Mors Stormwielder broke the spell. “The Heart Fires lie ahead,” he said once she had stanched the bleeding, “It is fitting you have honored them. Come, we leave.”

  Ash dropped the square of bloodied fabric onto the path and went to relieve herself in the trees. She could not see what would be gained by telling Mors Stormwielder that she had not let her blood for the Heart Fires so she kept her peace when she returned and mounted her horse. As the gelding walked over the spot where her blood had fallen, she spoke a word to herself. “Raif.”

  She did not know where he was or whose company he kept, but she suddenly knew with great certainty that the blood she had spilled was for him.

  She did not rush to return to her horse. Stormwielder might have commanded Ash March, Foundling, but he did not command Ash Mountain Born, the Reach.