“Get on.” Sirius raised his hand to strike Rafen again.
Rafen surged forward, glancing at Sirius with hatred. Sirius grinned complacently.
The next forty minutes were agonizing. On the way to the gate, they passed the remnants of Sirius’ old camp, which were visible now, although entirely deserted. The shark-smelling tent had been pulled down and the equipment was gone. Two tankards and one barrel were lonely reminders of the men that had stayed there. Rafen guessed all three wagons and their teams were now in the city.
The merchants’ camps were gone too, with blackened patches of dried grass marking their old campfires. A pronghorn lingered, watchful.
The gate was abandoned and closed. As they neared it, the clamor Rafen had dimly registered over the past twenty minutes grew louder. The bellowing and screaming of men reached his ears. Confused rattles and explosions sounded, and horses neighed frenziedly. A dog barked without stopping.
“The end of a battle,” Sirius said, chewing on the end of his pipe. “War is a huge machine.”
He raised his eyes to the city’s stone walls, thinking over his own poetry. Then he stepped back, tore the pipe from his mouth, and threw it onto the grass, still with a trail of smoke coming from it. Shaking back long sleeves, he drew his black-handled dagger from his robe and jabbed it at the arched oak gate. A shimmer in the air became an expanding panel of green, swallowing all other colors. The gateway was lost for a minute in the brilliant kesmal, and then all was clear. It had vanished. The sound of battle, which Rafen had expected to be louder, was strangely hushed.
Sirius grasped Rafen’s shoulder and shoved him into the city first.
The small rectangular marketplace was crowded with upturned wagons and stalls; mangled, scattered forms; wounded horses struggling feebly to rise; and crumbling bricks and stones from the wall adjoining the main road. The head of a dead cow was visible beneath a pile of the rubble. Thirty men stood in various attitudes on corpses and broken stalls. Some were towering farmers or smiths, others squat innkeepers, others players; and there were some ragged ones whose quick, watchful expressions denoted them to be common thieves. Oram was the tallest among them. At his side, Pebble licked up blood with avid hunger.
At Sirius’ entrance, everyone turned. Still gripping Rafen, Sirius moved forward. Rafen stumbled over a child’s arm. He straightened quickly, gritting his teeth and resolving not to look down. He knew the perils of looking down; he had seen this once at New Isles.
What have I done? Rafen thought in anguish. I gave the signal – this is partially my responsibility.
In his anger against Frankston, he had scarcely thought about innocents being killed. He wanted to scream.
In patched boots with holes in the toes, Sirius stepped unconcernedly all over anything and anyone. “Is it done?”
“Done,” Oram said. “All terraces taken.”
The other men shifted nervously, uncertain. Sirius had been legend to many of them; they had heard of him, but never seen him.
“Where are the rest of the men?” Sirius asked. He glanced down and around with some distaste, as if he had expected this to be cleaned up.
“Most in the top terrace,” Oram said. “Was not hard to take. Cannons in side walls—” he indicated the left and right walls, “—so we shoot entrance to main road. Done, we keep climb. Other pirates—” he nodded at a cobbler and a young lord on either side of him, both of whom looked nothing like sea dogs, “—they start fighting in higher terrace before us, so easy when we come with merchants.”
Sirius shoved Rafen at Oram, who instinctively seized Rafen’s collar, nearly lifting him off the ground. The pirate captain moved over to the young lord and held his chin, turning his face to examine it. The young lord paled slightly.
“Welll,” Sirius said. “Looks intelligent.”
“Is,” Oram said. “Is intelligent. Plan taking of top three terrace. Gather and arm group of hundred fifty men and lead them to fight.”
Rafen thought savagely that Sirius was lucky to have people like this, as he himself did little planning at all.
Sirius patted the young lord’s cheek. “He’ll join the players. We have a problem, Oram.”
“Problem?” Oram said, pulling Rafen upright by his collar.
Rafen’s head spun from lack of water, and his stomach was cramped. Little white spots danced before his eyes.
“Problem,” Sirius said. “Rafen lost Wilkins somewhere in the city. And I am slightly worried Wilkins might have lost some teeth. He might not be the skull he was.”
Oram’s square face fell. “I find this,” he said, digging his free hand into a large pouch at his belt. “I did no think was Wilkins.”
He pulled out a yellowed skull with one brown, stained tooth. A large part of the bone was missing near the right eye socket.
Sirius’ eyes widened. He snatched the skull off Oram and held it up, staring at it wildly.
“Yes,” he said. “It is Wilkins. I’d know him anywhere. Gor, you’ve changed, Wilkins.”
Something inside Rafen snapped. He jerked himself upright, the muscles in his neck tightening.
“It’s dead!” he shouted. “IT’S NOT A PERSON. IT’S A SKULL. WHAT ABOUT – ABOUT – them—”
His hand shot out, indicating the layer of dead covering the flags of the Rusem marketplace. The other men stared at him as if they had just noticed his presence.
Sirius turned slowly to look at Rafen, his eyes glinting. “Have you learned nothing, Rafen?” he said softly. “Or do you want another taste of the Pirate King’s kesmal?”
Rafen stared at Sirius, his face flushed with anger. “I learned plenty,” he spat, forcing his own tears back. “I learned that I’m never doing anything for you again. I’m not scared of you.”
Brandishing a hammer, a smith at the edge of the marketplace dashed toward the open city gateway. Three figures in filthy cloaks were rushing toward the grasslands outside Rusem.
“Stop,” Sirius said sharply.
A wavering wall of green sprung up in the gateway. The three stopped uncertainly, turning. The woman and one of the men had the olive skin and dark eyes of the Ashurites. The way the third held the bronze knife in his hands was enough to tell Rafen he was a philosopher.
“Leaving so soon, friends?” Sirius said, the burrs in his speech sinister.
The woman whipped out a carved wooden stick that glimmered pale silver. “Let us go,” she said in a low, accented voice.
Sirius shoved the skull back into Oram’s free hand and made an expansive gesture. He still held the black-handled dagger, and all three philosophers understood his motive. The other Ashurite tore a nhanya blade from its sheath, and the air sang with the three’s kesmal. Sirius made another sweeping move, and their attack became smoke on the wind. Unlike Rafen, Sirius was able to extinguish kesmal effortlessly.
“You may try again,” he said, with a low bow.
Straightening, he twisted the dagger. The woman screamed, moving too late to defend herself and her companions. A forked, green explosion shook the ground, and more debris showered from the broken wall joining the main street. Sirius’ kesmal found its mark in each of their foreheads, the green spreading like a spider and their eyes becoming gray and hollow as they fell like broken dolls. Rafen stifled a cry.
Strained silence followed. The air smelled acrid, of singed skin.
“I think they were the last ones in the city,” the young lord said tersely. “We dealt with the rest. They were my father’s protectors, and the most dangerous ones we had to get rid of.”
“Funny,” Sirius said. “I thought they fought like children.”
Chapter Thirteen
Wynne’s Dress
Rafen leaned back against the wall of the hall. His head ached. He still hadn’t had any water. He closed his eyes, and the dead of Rusem swam up to greet him. The strange colors behind his eyelids reassembled themselves into twisted, broken limbs. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, trying to blo
ck the images out. Vividly, the forked green kesmal flew again, and spread cracked, moldy fingers on the philosophers’ foreheads.
Rafen’s eyes flew open. He tried to breathe deeply, to calm himself. Everything in him was twanging. He kept telling himself he wasn’t affected by all this; Sirius couldn’t touch him. However, he couldn’t forget that he had given Sirius’ signal to a third of the city. He ran nervous fingers along the bench he sat on, and focused burning eyes on the brilliant red tapestry at the back of the hall.
How had Sirius ended the kesmal of three of the most powerful philosophers in the city? They had attacked him, and he had flicked their work into nothingness instantly. Where did extinguished kesmal go? Could kesmal really simply stop existing, right after its moment of creation?
Rafen’s heart jolted.
It must have gone into Sirius.
The extinguishing of kesmal wasn’t what it looked like. Sirius hadn’t sent it away. He had absorbed it. It was such a new thought that Rafen briefly forgot his troubles. Perhaps this was the secret to ending his own fires when he wanted. Perhaps this was the secret to combating Sirius more effectively. If he had known this some time ago, he could have saved Erasmus’ corpse from the unnatural fire that had destroyed it.
Stalim shouted uproariously, and Rafen stirred, remembering again how and with whom he had come here.
Sirius had taken him and the thirty men up through Rusem’s terraces, so that he could examine his victory. While there had been thousands in the city that day, half of them, now concealed in the houses they were pillaging, had been Sirius’ already. The buildings were battered, and glass from windows was scattered through the streets. The dead were a never-ending trail, as plentiful as the worms that died after a heavy rainfall.
How could one day bring so many endings?
The young lord had proudly shown Sirius the destruction of the mansions in the upper terraces. This early triumph had enabled them to win the city, he had said. The lesser lords often had twenty to thirty soldiers of their own, if the Tarhian authorities allowed it. But the young lord had been able to raise the support of the nobility’s small armies because he was the son of Rusem’s ruler. Sirius had listened, his eyes roving the destruction. At the end of his tour, he commanded Oram to find the young lord some ale.
The young lord had shown Sirius into his father’s home, and now Sirius and his twenty “players” sat in Rusem’s great hall. The floor was of shiny, misty glass. A black table sat in the center of the room, upon which rested two flagons of ale, a loaf of bread, and a pile of dried meat. Sirius’ men had pulled out the curved chairs and now sprawled on them. Hopelessly drunk, Stalim was strumming his lute and singing tunelessly about Ruyan women.
Rafen sat on a bench by the left wall near an arched glass door leading onto a balcony. Pebble rested a blood-stained head beside him, and Rafen recoiled, as much as his burning muscles allowed. He was only waiting until everyone was as drunk as Stalim. Then he would procure a blade and attack Sirius, right in the moment when he was off his guard. If he was successful, Rafen would get himself some water afterward and find a way to contact Sherwin, Etana, and Francisco before setting out to find them.
The wide, arched mahogany door at the far end of the hall opened, and Harlam stumped back in, carrying a half-closed chest from which some pink material hung.
“Hear, hear!” gangly Jarvis roared, thumping the table with his fist. No one had said anything. He drank from a flagon, dribbling ale. The sight of it nearly cured Rafen of thirst.
Sirius followed Harlam as he trudged up to the black table and set the chest down.
“Harlam’s brought us more victuals,” Sirius announced. “Harlam, open the box. Gor, let’s find the wrapped ham.”
Rafen leaned against the wall, his gaze fixed before him. Even while speaking, Sirius was watching him.
The chest creaked as Harlam threw it open and tossed the pink fabric aside. The men at the table bellowed encouragingly. The pink material slid to a halt near Rafen’s bench. Rafen dropped his eyes, looking at it without curiosity.
It was a dress with a laced bodice that bore three black fingerprints.
Rafen’s blood ran cold. I’m hallucinating, he told himself.
But there was no mistaking Wynne’s dress.
Rafen leapt up, reeling. He stooped and fingered the dress. It was smooth beneath his fingers. Rafen remembered Wynne running her hands up and down it at mealtimes, pleased with her own elegance. He glanced up at the drunkards. Sirius had found the wrapped ham and was setting it down on the table while his men applauded him.
“WHERE IS SHE?” Rafen shouted. “WHERE IS WYNNE?”
Sirius froze, his hand hovering over the ham. “Wynne?” he said innocently, his gray eyes meeting Rafen’s.
“What have you done with her?” Rafen roared. The tremble in his voice was beyond his control.
Sirius smiled faintly. “What makes you think I ever met Wynne?”
The men around the table had paused, looking from Rafen to Sirius. Oram rose shakily, blanching at the thought of an eruption of kesmalic hostilities.
“This is her dress!” Rafen yelled. “I know you’ve met her.”
Sirius turned to glower at Harlam, who was drooling slightly at his elbow. Seeing Sirius move, Harlam stumbled away from him quickly. No one had forgotten Marius.
“Watch what you throw out of our chests, Harlam,” Sirius said. “Yesss… I had forgotten. I had forgotten.”
Sirius drew Wilkins, or what was left of him, out of his coffee-colored robe. He turned the skull over in his hands. “Wynne came to me,” he said. “She was tired of being in Fritz’s Hideout…”
Rafen flinched, his stomach pulsating.
“Yes, I know where the Selsons are,” Sirius said, waving a hand. Rafen forced himself to remember Sirius didn’t have the password. The royal family was still safe. “Wynne discovered my camp by accident, and heard me speaking to Stalim about wanting you. She felt she had a solution for me. Gor, she was a bright, forward little one.” He laughed lightly, raising his eyes. “She betrayed you. Told me exactly what you were planning, where to go, and what you looked like. I mistook Charlie for you, but when I saw your height, I knew my mistake. Yesss… Wynne said something about her father dying at your hands and—”
“He didn’t!” Rafen blurted, humiliated to feel burning tears in his eyes. “I didn’t kill Erasmus; I swear! I—”
“Well, well, birdie,” Sirius said coldly. “Such feeling! Wynne would have done anything to get revenge against you. She thought I would kill you, and then she could pretend the whole thing happened by accident, after you left the Hideout. She said she gave you a helping hand to get out of there.”
“She tried to stop me.” Here, at least, was proof that Sirius was lying.
“Oh, yes. She felt that was the surest way to make you get going.”
Rafen’s heart was racing as he stared down at the pink dress. He realized two things: that Wynne had been more like Annette than he had ever thought, and that Sirius was talking about her in the past tense.
“Where is she?” he asked in a low voice.
“Ha! ha!” Sirius said. “You’ll be happy with me, birdie. I strangled her with these hands.” He placed the skull on the table and raised his hands. Rafen noticed the brawn on the fingers.
“You didn’t,” Rafen whispered. He felt like he was suffocating.
“I did,” Sirius said. “Stalim saw it all. Didn’t you Stalim?”
Stalim strummed a chord on his lute, looked at Rafen, and winked.
Rafen’s blood thrummed in his ears. The glass floor reflected him as he surged forward, arms extended, hands clawing the air. He hit Sirius’ chest with a muffled thud, and the tobacco scent overwhelmed him and enraged him. He grabbed Sirius’ neck with both hands and tried his own strength, squeezing, working to close his fingers on the old flesh that felt like chewed parchment.
Sirius tore his hands away and threw him backward, and Rafen�
��s aches renewed their screams when his back hit the floor. In seconds, he was up again with only the speed the regular use of kesmal can bring, and he again reached for Sirius, flames running down his fingers. A hand grabbed his hair from behind and jerked him back. His scalp seared, but Rafen still tried hurling himself forward, screaming hoarsely, “I’LL KILL YOU!”
Sirius thrust the black-handled dagger to Rafen’s throat, and Harlam released Rafen’s hair, taking a dark handful of it with him.
“No,” Sirius said quietly. “I will kill you, Rafen.”
“Really?” Rafen gasped, his chest heaving madly. “When you need me for your victory? Kill me then.” He spread his arms to indicate he wouldn’t resist. “Slit my throat,” he said. “Do it!”
Sirius stared into Rafen’s eyes, incredulous of what he saw there. Slowly, the dagger moved away. Sirius returned it to its scabbard within his cloak. Harlam hovered suspiciously behind Rafen, ready to seize him should he try something.
“I will kill you,” Rafen said, glaring at Sirius. By telling the old man, he hoped he was unnerving him – because he needed every advantage he could get. “You wait.”
*
He was in hell, and it was terraced. His eyes burned with all they had seen. Marius, the people of Rusem, the philosophers, and even Wynne, months earlier, probably – all dispatched with a coolness that rivaled even Talmon’s. Rafen felt horribly, terribly like he had been responsible for it all. It weighed on him like a filled coffin.
Rafen didn’t see the balcony he stood on. He saw the Woods, and stood within the circle of trees Erasmus had trained him in, hearing the rhythm of Erasmus’ voice as it called fighting routines. Rafen’s hand moved quickly, even though he had no sword.
Wynne had begged and begged Erasmus to leave Rafen after he had attacked him as the Sianian Wolf. She must have left the Hideout for the last time the night Rafen, Etana, Sherwin, and Francisco had escaped. She had known too much for Sirius to let her go. Rafen wondered when she had realized who she was dealing with. Had she asked him if she could return to the Hideout? Begged him?
Servant of the King (The Fledgling Account Book 3) Page 12
