by Jenna Rhodes
Sevryn watched the wretched being for a moment, wondering if the ordeal would be worth it. As he sidled through another spear-like patch of darkness, he suddenly realized that he had left himself wide open and flung his head back, looking up—even as Bretta plunged down at him.
He had only a flash of her face, her dive tearing her veil free as she leaped upon him, and then they were hand-to-hand and she fighting as though her life depended upon it. She curled her hand upon his neck, clawing deep and brought him down into the dirt with her. Her scar turned livid as he used her weight to anchor his twisting somersault back to his feet, and she scrambled up.
He balanced himself and watched her find her center, her lips curled back as though she were some great, feral beast he faced. His pact with stone and shadow faded away as the two of them stood exposed by the striped rays of sun slanting down on them, and he heard the murmurs of surprised Kobrir as he seemingly appeared out of nowhere. His attention locked on Bretta, her center of balance, and aware of her speed, rage-fueled this time. She slipped a little to her right. He mimicked her movement. Dust rose in the tiniest of clouds from their feet. He listened, not to their breathing or their steps, but to minor sounds in the background. Sounds of stealth, if he could catch any, for certainly there were still Kobrir he had to pass once he got through Bretta. They would not rush him yet, giving Bretta her chance to best him.
She palmed a dagger, a small one with a jagged edge, unfamiliar to him, but Sevryn knew it would slice wickedly and painfully. He disarmed her and took the time—and taking a blow just off a kidney—to toss it far across the arena where she could not easily retrieve it. As he took three deep, grunting breaths to shrug off the pain of her hit, he reflected that she’d probably meant the dagger as a loss, getting in a blow that could have doubled him over in pain. She’d missed her target but just barely, and pain radiated throughout the small of his back, agony that faded even as he shoved it aside to focus on her.
Bretta curled her fingers slightly and beckoned, a nearly imperceptible motion. She wanted him on the offensive. Sevryn danced a step back, refusing to step into her opening. Her lip curled in unspoken contempt. She lunged at him, both hands spread, and he parried her attack at her wrists, slipping one hand up and the other down—which was just what she wanted, as she grabbed his forearm with a grip of iron and his left hip with another claw-like hold.
But she didn’t find the weapons she thought to find there. She blinked twice, the only surprise she showed, as he spun out of her hold and dropped back a step to bring up his ithrel, the weapon she thought she’d imprisoned along his flank. Her mouth closed tightly as he nodded to one side in sardonic apology and his calf felt bared now, with the weapon pulled away from his skin and out of his wrappings. The pupils of her eyes flared in surprise even as he struck, and she ducked away out of sheer instinct, the ithrel shaving the top of her right shoulder, parting the fabric of her shirt with the faintest of whispers and leaving a long, crimson line after it. He’d claimed first blood.
No time to note it, let alone celebrate, for she dropped to one knee and loosed throwing stars at him. One buried itself in his shin guard, and the other sliced past his ear with its signature air-splitting noise. He flicked the buried one back at her. Bretta batted it away with a backhand even as her glove parted, sliced open, and blood welled out.
Second blood. None of them so deep as to cause either of them any pain or even slow down their attack, for nothing even close to a bleeder had been hit, but he had to wonder. Wonder when she’d become so clumsy or was she, like a mother bird with a broken wing, decoying him into an action that would prove fatal to him?
She’d dropped down from above. Was she positioning him for another? Sevryn took four running steps to his left and vaulted onto a low boulder that hugged the arena’s rock wall, scattering a knot of observers who darted off for safer climes as he swapped holds on his ithrel and looked up just long enough to target. He cocked his hand and threw, the ithrel tumbling end over end before thudding deeply into a long, dark shadow that perched out of place along the broken stone rim. The Kobrir dropped with a soft moan, to curl upon the sands.
Bretta let out a cry, a half-shriek torn from low in her throat, and rushed him.
He jumped as she did and they clashed in midair, hands and feet blurring as she attacked and he defended, landed and rolled under her kicks, to come up free and breathing hard. She lunged at him again, her fingers laced, her hands in one fist. He scrambled under her assault and came up with both hands to break her hold and got a kick in the lower stomach for his effort and a second to his right knee. His leg gave way, and Sevryn rolled as he went down. Red pain lanced through his knee, but he wasn’t hurt as badly as she’d intended. He proved it by getting up on that leg and bouncing to his feet. Her face creased in a frown, her scar deepening into an ugly purple-red.
He took the fight to her, then, determined to close it before she forced him to hurt her as badly as he had the first time they’d met with blows. She fought him as daringly as she had in the past, and he reacted as his body had been trained and retrained, with no time to think between blows and parries, forcing her to be the first to step back and take a deep breath. His knee sent lightning pains into his thigh as he put his weight fully on it, but he did not react to it. He could not let her know he had a weakness. Blood ran its way down her hand to drip sullenly into the dirt, and she shrugged her head to one side, easing a neck muscle.
He didn’t follow the movement with his gaze as she’d wanted him to. He’d seen her do it before, and this time with her foot lashed out in a vicious arc aimed at his temple, he ducked under it, her leg now thrown over his shoulder, and dumped her onto her back. He twisted her over onto her face and jumped with both knees to her kidneys, to a choked squeal of pain. Vicious, low and necessary, for Bretta had made it plan she would not stop at halting him in his tracks. She intended to kill him. To defeat her, he’d half-killed her.
Bretta let out a tiny whine as he crossed her arms behind her back and used the blood-soaked rag of her sleeve to bind her hands together. She kicked viciously at him as he stood up, grazing the knee she’d damaged, but he danced back to look down at her as she rolled to her back, glaring up at him.
He turned on heel and resumed his walk to the waiting guide who knelt even more hunched upon himself, muttering or incanting below his breath. Not Kobrir, maybe not even human at all, a wretched being curled up and ranting in a broken, barely audible voice. Sevryn thought it a bad joke.
Tired of games, bruised and hurting, Sevryn made short work of the two Kobrir who jumped him just short of his goal. He heard bones crack and sinews tear as he thrust them aside and knew a moment of fleeting regret as he passed over their writhing forms in the dirt.
One stride away from his guide, he turned. Kobrir filled the far end of the roughly circular arena where he’d started his journey. Did they ready themselves to rush him one last time?
He lifted both hands. “Are we done now?”
The herbalist materialized from out of the rock shadows and tossed him a small, closed pouch. It landed with a thump at his feet. “We are done. You are just beginning.”
Sevryn slid the toe of his foot under it, kicking it into midair where he caught it and tucked it inside the fold of his shirt after feeling its contents. Two hard vials lay within: the king’s rest, as promised. And the cuffs they’d given him originally, taken back and now restored, as well as the marked dagger.
He turned back to the guide. The man, if it was a man, stank, sweating out booze and bad food and little sleep. A stream of low and muttered nonsense issued from the filthy bag over its head, its edges damp with spittle.
He bent and pulled the hood off.
Bregan Oxfort babbled up at him, blinking blindly into the light.
NUTMEG SAT AT HER LOOM, working at creating a fabric she intended to use for the baby’s winter season, to sew a s
leeping bag against the drafty cold. She worked steadily, hands and feet moving in concert, the old wooden loom somewhat noisy as she moved it in a steady rhythm, her thoughts drifting far away. The mild thump and creak of the wood and the noise of fiber upon fiber as she passed the shuttles back and forth and corrected her tensions from time to time occupied her. It did not compare with the two great looms at her mother’s shop, with treadles and tension bars and the ability to create not only more intricate patterns but also finer cloth, but she’d grown up with a loom much like this one and it granted a certain serenity with its working. She listened to the muted clatter and tried to ignore the thoughts beating on the inside of her skull. Where was Rivergrace? Why did her Vaelinar guards seem intent on knowing if she had heard from her sister? What was happening at Ashenbrook? She had caught them talking about wanting to join their fellows there but they quickly stopped speaking if she drew near, thinking she had not heard them. If asked, they closed their lips mutely. Her Vaelinar guards saying little made Nutmeg more than suspicious at their tight-lipped demeanor.
She sat up, arching her back and shoulders to ease the tension. A hard thump somewhere deep in the house made the timbers vibrate and a muffled shout followed. She stood abruptly. Shadows swept over the windows, darkening the room, and she could hear thunder rolling from far away, gaining on Calcort even though she couldn’t see lightning striking. The walls shuddered. Bric-a-brac on shelves about the room danced in place uneasily. She put her hand out to steady herself, but it wasn’t a quake. The shaking came with the low rumble, a vibration that seemed to sink all the way into the bedrock below Calcort’s foundations. The whole city trembled at it. A wind came up with a sound like the rushing of a river at full flood tide, and the air filled with a salty musk. She could hear the sharp, piercing shrieks of birds as they flew past the farmhouse, fleeing. Then, all went silent except for that rumbling which grew ever steadily louder and nearer. The sun fled, a dark curtain dropping over the house.
Nutmeg lifted her chin in wonder and a bit of fear. She patted her thigh, where she kept a scabbard strapped, a thin but deadly blade inside it. She even slept with it now, when she could sleep. Her gaze darted to the short sword leaning against the wall nearby. Better the sword.
She could hear the rain start, heavy thudding drops that gave way to a cascade of water. She stepped to the window, and all she could see through the breaks in the shutters made it look as if she stood under a waterfall. The roof groaned with the weight being deluged upon it. Hard thumps fell onto the roof, and the house continued to shudder under the assault.
She stepped back abruptly as the door to the room banged open, Dayne filling it.
“We’re under attack.”
“Who?”
“Raymy. They’re dropping from the sky like hailstones.”
She went to the nearest cloak peg and grabbed her sword and harness strap from it. No more going about the waist, she thought ruefully, and simply slung it from her shoulder. “Where are we going?”
“Wherever we can,” he answered grimly.
Garner met up with Verdayne in the hall.
“When did you get home?”
“Late last night.” He looked rumpled and tired, but he wore rings on his fingers and a heavy gold chain about his neck. Gambling evidently agreed with him. He looked at Nutmeg and back to Bistel’s half-Dweller son. “Can you use those?” His gaze fixed on the sword and dagger in Verdayne’s hands.
“Quite well, actually.”
“Then you stay with her.”
“I have no intentions of going elsewhere. You?”
“With my father and brothers, at the yard. There’s attackers among the Raymy. We’ll be fine as long as they don’t use fire.” Garner made a face. “Even this rain can’t hold, and the timbers here are old and dry.”
“If they do use fire?”
“Get down in the root cellar and have Nutmeg show you the tunnel. It heads into the fields.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. “Garner, I can’t get through the tunnel in this condition.”
He looked upon her, seeing what he’d missed in the season he’d been roving. “Tree’s blood. Then get out the back through the vineyards, and to the caves beyond. Just get there, however you can. I’ll hold them off.”
“We’ll manage,” Verdayne said firmly, putting his hand on Nutmeg’s wrist. “I understand you’re a betting man. Odds?”
“Odds are it’s Nutmeg they’re after, driving the Raymy before them as a decoy.”
“I’ll take that bet.” He pulled Nutmeg toward him firmly. “They’ll have to get through me.”
“They?” Nutmeg looked from one to another.
Her brother took her hand a moment and squeezed it. “I understand they’re wearing the black and silver.”
No disguise for the murderers this time. She bit her lip and then took a brave breath. “I understand.”
Garner gave a sharp nod, darting away toward the front of the house at Tolby’s bellow.
Nutmeg hated that her heart pounded. She wanted to go back to her room and retrieve those things she couldn’t be without: the shawl that Rivergrace had woven to be a baby blanket, the small ring Jeredon had given her without ties, Bistel’s journal. The journal she’d tucked in its secret spot in the adobe foot of the bedroom wall where it would most likely survive any fire, the mud bricks as thick as two feet, but flame would destroy her other memories to ash left out in the open as they were. Still, only things. She told herself that as she could hear Vaelinar high cries and taunts over the clash of weapons.
She pulled herself together. “This way.”
“The cellar?”
“I thought we discussed that? I’d never get this great belly through th’ kitchen door and down the ladder. No, the backdoor to the yards is this way.” She shuddered as something screamed. “We may have to fight our way through, but once we hit the maze of the vineyards, we’re free.”
“Or trapped. They can burn through those vines if they know we’re in them.”
She threw him a look, knowing her face must have paled for she felt the warmth leave her cheeks. Then she shook her head vigorously. “Let them. They’re green enough, it’ll be hard to spark them and that should slow ’em down. The grapes will regrow, but they’ll not catch us.” She did not say that rebuilding the vineyards would take years, but Verdayne undoubtedly knew that and that if Tolby Farbranch had a choice between sacrificing the vines or his daughter, he’d pick the vines. She pushed her way outside into a nearly black wash of rain and cloud that pummeled her so that she ducked her head and hunched over in an effort not to be beaten to death. She could almost hear Verdayne follow her out, but only because the door made a muffled bump at his heels. The thunder had slowed to a vibrating growl, low and hard to hear but pressuring her ears all the same. She could smell the fish-and-salt odor of the ocean; it dwarfed her other senses, and she could taste the salt with every breath as it filled her nostrils and coated her lips. The brine made her almost instantly thirsty, and they’d left with nothing but weapons.
She scurried across the herb garden and through the flower beds, knowing the pelting rain would hide their footprints in mere moments as mud and water splashed about her ankles. Behind her, Verdayne let out a muffled curse and then a grunt as if he hefted something off his blades. She threw a look back over her shoulder and saw two dark figures behind her, one tumbling to the ground. She ran faster.
Something splashed at her heels. “Verdayne?”
“Behind you. Keep going.”
That was the nut of it, though, wasn’t it? The baby crowded her lungs and her stomach. She waddled, rotten apples, like an old biddy. She could hardly eat or breathe deep some days, and now, gasping for air already and hardly running faster than a crazed turtle, she didn’t know how far she could go. But there wasn’t a question in Nutmeg’s mind that she stop
. Tressandre ild Fallyn’s men would rip this child from her body, killing it and her in the process. She had not a doubt that those were the orders. She crouched over, for the vines were only now reaching toward the sky with their creepers and would grow much higher. Now she had to bend and shuffle as fast as she could. Mud pulled at her steps, weighing her feet down, as the pouring rain made it difficult to even see her way—but she opened her newly made Vaelinar sight, and the green threads of the growing fields caught her eye and tugged her way to them. And, to her astonishment, the rain tasted of salt, as though the skies wept heavily upon Calcort. Pray it did not last long, or the salt would kill the vines without any other help.
Nothing else jumped at them as they entered the vineyard. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath and scan their path. The terraced fields need not be a one-way trap. She could take him to the stone door where she’d taken Rivergrace and Sevryn and hope that one of the two of them could get it open. Once inside, the tunnels would take them through the stony hills to the river on the other side or, if they stayed to the tunnels, farther beyond. And, more importantly, it would be a locked stone door between them and pursuers.
She caught the sense of the door, hidden up the hill and over a terrace or two, like a beacon shining at her. Nutmeg had never seen it in that light before, but then . . . she brushed her hand over her face, trying to dry it a bit. She hadn’t had eyes like this before either.
Verdayne hovered at her shoulder. “My lady?”
“I’m fine. Just a bit winded. Stay close.” She took off toward the tunnel door, not running, but settling for a jog, and put her hands to her sling, tightening it a bit, so her stomach wouldn’t jostle about, stretching her skin painfully and making things even more uncomfortable. Halfway up the steep terrace, she felt Verdayne’s hand against her lower back, pushing ever so slightly, helping her make the grade.
