“I never thought about becoming a bandit concubine,” Winter said dully. “Maybe I should have.”
“When I got here,” Bobby said, “and you became our sergeant, I thought it had to be the same Winter. It’s not that uncommon a name, but . . . it felt like it was meant to happen.” Her young face had regained some of its eagerness.
“But how did you escape?”
“I stole a bag of coin from the office,” Bobby said proudly. “And I got to know one of the carters who brought in food. After a while I convinced him to smuggle me out.”
“Sounds like you had an easier time of it than I did,” Winter muttered. Then, catching Bobby’s flushed cheeks, she got an idea of the sort of “convincing” the carter had required, and shook her head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“I couldn’t believe I’d actually met you,” Bobby said, looking as though a weight had been removed from her shoulders. “I thought for the longest time about whether I should tell you, but it seemed like a risk. You had everyone fooled, and I couldn’t bear being the one who screwed it up. So I just went along.”
“These . . . legends,” Winter said. “Do they mention anyone besides me?”
“Not that I recall,” Bobby said. “Saints, I wish I could tell the girls at the Prison that I’d met you. Sarah would just about explode.”
Winter fought down a looming specter, with green eyes and long red hair. Can you be haunted by someone who isn’t dead? Her throat was tight as she poured herself another drink. They don’t even remember her.
“All right,” she said again. “Is that enough secrets for one night?”
Bobby looked a bit startled. “I wanted to ask you—”
“Later. Right now I am planning to get very drunk. The two of you are welcome to join me.” She repeated this in Khandarai, as a courtesy.
Feor looked down at her beer. “Alcohol was not permitted among the sahl-irusk when I was growing up,” she said. “The eckmahl were fond of it, however, and I was always curious as to what they found so attractive.”
“There you go.” Winter turned to Bobby. “What about you? Ever been really drunk?”
Bobby shook her head, blushing. “Some of the girls at Mrs. Wilmore’s would sneak a little bit, but I never did.”
“Can’t be a soldier if you’ve never been really drunk,” Winter said. “I’ll get us another bottle.”
And maybe then, she thought, I won’t dream.
Chapter Eighteen
MARCUS
After drinking to Adrecht, they’d had to drink toasts to the other captains, to be polite, and then to the king, the Princess Royal, and the Last Duke, and of course to Prince Exopter their royal host. At that point Marcus’ memory became a little blurry, though he was fairly certain Jen had suggested getting out the regimental roll and going through every name on the list, amidst a fit of giggles.
While things had not actually come to that, they’d made a fair start on the bottle, and it had been all Marcus could do to find his way back to his room at the end of the night. Jen, one arm thrown around his shoulders like an old comrade, had suggested he sleep where he was, but he was fairly certain she was drunk enough that she didn’t mean it the way it sounded.
He woke the next morning feeling surprisingly fresh, and moreover suddenly confident of what he had to do. He passed over his usual shabby uniform in favor of his dress blues, which Fitz had carefully laundered. His room included a mirror, miraculously unsmashed during the sack, and he stopped for a moment to regard himself with some satisfaction. If not the spitting image of the young man who’d graduated from the War College, he looked at least like a proper Vordanai officer.
Fitz was waiting in the antechamber, immaculate as usual, bearing a sheaf of paperwork under his arm. He saluted smartly as Marcus emerged. Marcus wondered if the young man’s hearing was good enough to tell when his chief was up and about, or if he just stood poised in front of the door all morning, like a guard dog.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning.” Marcus glanced at the papers. “Anything really important in there?”
“Nothing urgent, sir.”
“Good. Put it somewhere and come with me, then.”
Fitz saluted again, set the papers on a broken end table that Marcus had been using as a desk, and fell into step behind his superior.
“May I ask,” the lieutenant said as Marcus led him through the mazelike corridors of the Palace, “where we’re going?”
“We’re going to see the colonel,” Marcus said.
“Ah.” His tone didn’t indicate what he thought of the idea.
Marcus struggled to keep hold of the mood he’d had on waking. Jen had been right. Whether the colonel was sulking or not, there were questions that needed to be answered. He tried not to picture Janus’ face, gray eyes sharp with irritation, an eyebrow raised in sarcasm. “Really, Captain? Well, if you’re not capable of attending to such matters yourself . . .”
He shook himself mentally, looked back to make sure that Fitz was still there to provide moral support, and turned down the last corridor that led to the suite of rooms the colonel had claimed for himself. Somewhat to his surprise, the lieutenant stopped in his tracks.
“Something wrong, Fitz?”
Fitz shook his head. “I’m not sure, sir. But the colonel requested a pair of guards for this corridor, and I’m fairly certain I added the post to the duty roster.”
“Which company would have it today?” Marcus said. Fitz seemed to keep the entire schedule of the First Battalion in his head, writing it down only for the benefit of mere mortals.
“Davis’, sir.”
“That explains it,” Marcus said darkly. “Remind me when we get back to have a word with him.”
“Yessir.”
Marcus continued down the corridor, his good mood draining away. They were deep in the interior of the Palace, and apart from occasional skylights, illumination was provided by braziers of burning candles in discreet alcoves. It was probably his imagination telling him they were getting farther apart as he approached the colonel’s door, as though he were descending into a realm of shadows.
Or possibly not. Just up the corridor from the entrance to Janus’ suite, one of the braziers had fallen over. The candles had drooled wax all over the flagstones before guttering out, leaving that section of the corridor in semidarkness.
“Sir,” Fitz said urgently, “something is definitely wrong. I know there should be guards on the colonel’s door.”
“You’re right.” Marcus’ skin started to crawl, and he let one hand drift to the hilt of his sword. “Maybe he’s gone off somewhere and taken the guards with him?”
“Possibly—” Fitz sniffed the air and pointed. “Over there!”
They hurried past the colonel’s door. The corridor beyond was disused and mostly in darkness, but the huddled shape Fitz had spotted was wearing Vordanai blue.
“Saints and martyrs,” Marcus said, pulling up short. The sentry lay in a boneless heap against the wall, blood leaking from his ear and the back of his skull to pool on the floor underneath him. A spray of dark red stained the wall itself, as though he’d been slammed against it with great force. His musket lay forgotten nearby.
Fitz knelt, but only briefly. “He’s dead, sir.”
“I can see that,” Marcus said, forcing his mind to work. “I want you to run to the barracks and collect as many men as you can round up in five minutes, then come back here. Understand?”
“Yes, sir, but—”
“I’ll check on the colonel.” Marcus drew his sword. “Go!”
• • •
The door to the colonel’s rooms was slightly ajar, and something metal glinted in the gap. It took Marcus a moment to recognize it as the bolt, complete with fitting, torn out of the rock wall.
What the hell is going on? Marcus prodded the door with a boot and kept his sword in front of him. The door opened into the suite’s anteroom, which Janus used as
an office, and more doors let off into a dining room, bedroom, and servant’s quarters. The office was dominated by a big, flimsy table, which had been cracked in half by the impact of another body. This sentry’s face was contorted and black with the agony of strangulation, and his throat had gone a dark bruised purple.
Marcus took a deep breath, the point of his sword twitching. He considered calling out, but if the assassins—and what else could they be?—were still in the suite, he’d only be warning them. And if they’ve done their work and gone? It seemed unthinkable, but his mouth went dry.
The door to the bedchamber was half open. Marcus padded toward it as quietly as he could, and stopped abruptly at the sound of voices from within. The first, to his relief, was Janus’.
“I had been expecting—something like this,” the colonel said in Khandarai. A young man answered, his tone pleasantly menacing.
“You must be a fool, then, to walk so willingly to your death.”
“Your mother is the fool, if she thinks that killing me will change anything.”
Marcus resumed his quiet advance. Through the gap between door and doorframe, he made out a flash of blue uniform that was probably Janus at the back of the room.
“You understand nothing. The latest fool in a long line of fools who thought us easy plunder, and found out different.”
“Times have changed. The Redeemers have—”
“They have changed nothing. They wash in, and wash out again, like waves on a beach. It is of no importance. Mother remains.”
“The Last Duke does not agree. Neither, I suspect, does the Pontifex of the Black.”
“Gahj-rahksa-ahn.” Marcus didn’t understand the word, but the Khandarai spat it as though it tasted foul. “If you are the best he can muster, his order has fallen low indeed.”
There was a footstep, and Marcus’ sliver of vision was eclipsed by someone in brown moving between him and Janus. It was the best chance he was likely to get, and Marcus had not survived five years in Khandar by being chivalrous. He kicked the door out of the way and dropped into a lunge that would have made his old fencing master proud. The sword went in just between the young man’s shoulders—
Or should have. As Marcus started to move, the stranger twisted in place, impossibly fast. Marcus got a glimpse of bald head and a thin, mirthless grin. One of the man’s hands came up, viper-fast, and the edge of his palm struck the flat of Marcus’ sword a moment before impact. There was a sharp, wild ring of steel on stone. The blade had been neatly severed a third of the way down its length, and the shorn-off end slammed against the wall so hard it raised sparks. It bounced like a leaping salmon and pinwheeled across the room while Marcus stared incredulously at the broken fragment protruding from the hilt.
His eyes were still trying desperately not to believe what they’d just seen, but the rest of his body had enough sense to send him reeling backward as the stranger’s hand came around again, a lazy backhand blow that whistled through the air with the force of a cannonball. Marcus scrambled away, searching for his balance, and came up against the broken table in the main room. The stranger blurred in front of him, and only another wild dive to the side kept Marcus out of his path. With a crack like a gunshot, one end of the table exploded in a shower of splinters.
Marcus ended up on the floor, rolling until he bumped into a bedraggled sofa. He’d lost the remnant of his sword, and spent a moment scrabbling for his belt knife, but the Khandarai was on him before he could draw it. Marcus rolled again as the man came at him, but this time the stranger anticipated the move, and Marcus fetched up against his suddenly interposed foot.
“Good-bye, raschem,” the man mouthed. But before Marcus even had time to flinch, the assassin was gone, twisting away faster than the eye could follow. Marcus saw the glitter of steel overhead, and then heard another tremendous impact, as though a battering ram had crashed home.
Adrenaline drove him to his knees, though he was still desperately fighting for breath. Janus was in the anteroom, a thin-bladed sword in hand, and it was his attack the stranger had been forced to avoid. The Khandarai’s riposte had been intended to plaster the colonel against the doorframe, but Janus had ducked away, and the punch had hit home hard enough to crack the ancient sandstone. Janus’ sword flicked out as he moved, scoring a line on his opponent’s flank that cut through the Khandarai’s shirt and left a bright crimson stain.
At least he bleeds. Marcus struggled to his feet as the stranger rounded on Janus, warier now. The Khandarai tried to swat the colonel’s blade aside, as he had Marcus’, but Janus kept his nimbler weapon just out of reach and circled the tip around to pink his adversary’s sleeve. After the third try, this seemed to enrage the Khandarai, who picked up a nearby chair and hurled it like a handball. Janus twisted out of the way, and then had to dive for his life as the assassin came bulling in after the missile.
Marcus cast about, looking for a weapon. The best he could come up with was an ornamental lamp, and he was just reaching for it when someone whispered in his ear.
“Sir. Perhaps these would serve?”
Marcus glanced over his shoulder to see Augustin, Janus’ aged manservant, crouched beside him, a pistol in each hand. They were fancy guns, all oiled wood and silver chasing, but, important to Marcus’ mind, they were cocked and loaded. Marcus grabbed them without a word.
“Careful, sir,” Augustin said. “Hair trigger.”
Marcus was already spinning away, a gun in each hand. Janus had bought himself a few moments by ducking under the damaged table, but the stranger heaved it aside like a cheap toy. Marcus aimed carefully as the Khandarai stalked forward, and even managed a smile.
“Good-bye, demon,” he said, but the words were drowned under the blast of the pistol’s report, mind-shatteringly loud in the enclosed space.
The Khandarai spun as though he’d been punched in the shoulder and staggered a step. Marcus dropped one pistol and switched the other to his right hand, then let his mouth fall open in naked disbelief. The assassin raised one hand, blood dripping slowly from his palm. When he opened his fingers, Marcus heard the soft ping of a pistol ball bouncing off the stone floor.
He caught the thing—
“Get down, sir!” Marcus just had time to recognize Fitz’s voice. His instincts threw him to the ground and pressed his hands over his ears. Another roar of gunfire, a dozen times more violent, ripped through the chamber, and Marcus could hear the crazy zing and whine of ricochets. It was followed by a horrible wrenching sound and a shrill scream, then by ringing silence.
Marcus looked up cautiously. A dozen men stood on both sides of the outer doorway, the muskets in their hands still smoking. In the corridor just beyond, another soldier lay in a vividly crimson puddle, one arm and most of his shoulder torn away. Behind him was Fitz, his back pressed tight against the wall, eyes wide as saucers. There was no sign of the assassin.
To Marcus’ immense surprise, he himself appeared to be uninjured, or at least in no immediate pain. He found Janus also levering himself to his feet. The colonel fixed Marcus with an almost rueful look.
“Sir,” Marcus said, when he’d found his voice. “Are you hurt?”
“I don’t believe so, Captain.” Janus tossed his sword to the floor and patted himself inquisitively. “No, it appears not.”
“Fitz?” Marcus called over his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“Yessir.”
Even the bare few seconds that had passed seemed to have been enough for the normally unflappable lieutenant to regain his composure. His voice doesn’t even tremble, Marcus thought, a bit enviously.
“Anybody else injured?”
“I’m afraid Corporal Denthrope is dead, sir,” Fitz said. “The rest of us seem to be unhurt.”
“Right.” Marcus almost tossed aside the remaining pistol, checking himself at the last moment when he remembered it was still loaded. He carefully closed the hammer instead and turned to the doorway. “We’re going to want runners to eve
ry duty company. Close all the gates, start a cordon at the outer wall, and—”
“No,” Janus said, behind him.
“What?” Marcus rounded on the colonel. “Sir, with all due respect, that was an assassination attempt. It was nearly successful. We can’t just let him go—”
“They won’t be able to stop him,” Janus said. “And I’d sooner not lose any more men trying.”
Marcus wanted to scream. Part of him was still stunned by the impossibility of what he’d just seen, and the fact that Janus obviously knew something he wasn’t bothering to share made him want to pick the colonel up by his collar and shake him until he explained what the hell was going on. Half a lifetime of military decorum warred with raw emotion, and his fists clenched until the knuckles went white.
“Sir,” Fitz said urgently, “there’s more. The lower city is on fire.”
“Fire?”
That cut through the budding rage like a bucket of cold water. Marcus had lived in Ashe-Katarion long enough to absorb some of the fear its citizens had for the prospect of fire. Built largely of dry wood and straw-stuffed mud bricks, the city was a perfect tinderbox. Buildings were packed so tightly against one another that a blaze, once started, was almost impossible to stop.
The prohibition on the use of fire as a weapon was the one rule that everyone observed, even the street gangs. For the most part the Khandarai got by without lamps or candles and cooked in stone fire pits, so the risk of accidental flames was small. Nevertheless, large portions of the lower city burned down every twenty or thirty years. Among the upper classes, who lived inside the stone walls that served as a highly effective firebreak, these events were known as the “crimson flowers of Ashe-Katarion,” and the citizens often gathered on rooftops to drink and watch the show.
“Where?” Marcus said. “And how bad is it?” There was no such thing as a fire service in Khandar, but the Colonials might be able to accomplish something.
“Bad,” Fitz said. “Our sentries on the wall reported that four fires started along the west edge of the city, more or less simultaneously. There’s not much wind, but you know how these things spread. I’ve sent runners to all our patrols outside the walls.”
The Thousand Names Page 40
