Sword and Sorceress 30

by Waters, Elisabeth

  “Until the matter is resolved,” Shada spit.

  “I’m sor—”

  Shada’s scowl deactivated the mirror before he could finish. She turned to Sienna. “You heard him. Our only chance is to kill the Consul before he can summon the necromancer.”

  Sienna grabbed Shada’s wrists and pulled her hands under her tunic. Baffled, Shada let her sister guide her fingers to the Assayas coil wrapped about Sienna’s waist.

  At Shada’s touch the enchanted rope slithered along her arm, snaking about her so as to be invisible beneath her leathers. She looked to the darkening windows. Sienna was giving her an escape route.

  “Father wants this?” Shada’s heart soared. The king was playing a subtle game, after all.

  “Father thinks his sword arm is the answer. He plans to challenge the Consul to a public duel.”

  “He doesn’t believe me?” Again, Shada felt an awful vertigo.

  “I believe you,” Sienna whispered. “Wait until moonrise. The Consul is at his house in Old Town. They say he has a terrifying bodyguard. You need to be careful.”

  Shada didn’t fear bodyguards. But to kill the Consul herself? When Shada was small it had been the Consul, rather than her mother or father, who joined her and Sienna for meals, who took her in his arms when she was frightened.

  “It shouldn’t have to be you,” Sienna held her tight.

  Shada shuddered, but she understood what had to be done. “He’s given us no choice.”

  ~o0o~

  Shada changed into a hooded vest and charcoal fencing tights and waited for the moon to rise.

  Crouched at the window she opened the locket at her throat. It contained a miniature portrait: Allaire of Tithon, Shada’s vanished mother. Allaire appeared to take notice of her daughter. Her stern expression softened into a smile. And then the cycle repeated.

  An illusion, yet Shada refused to be parted from it. It was all she had left of her mother.

  The last time Shada had seen Allaire, she’d been woken from sleep. The Queen sat at her bedside, draped in shadow. Allaire, always uncomfortable with physical affection, had kissed Shada on the lips. Before dawn the Queen had vanished and soldiers filled the halls.

  As a sliver of moon slipped above the dark horizon, Shada threw one end of the coil against the wall opposite the window. The magicked fibers bound themselves to the stone. She wrapped the remainder around her arm, stepped on to the window ledge and felt the cool wind off the water. The Citadel wall dropped fifty yards to the ground below.

  She stepped backwards, off the ledge. The coil pulled tight. She descended slowly, releasing the rope a foot at a time as the moon rose over the Citadel.

  Her feet touched bottom. She tugged the coil and its far end slipped free, whispering down to the wall to snake about her arm.

  On the ground Shada became a dagger of moonshadow, slipping invisibly through the anxious city, until she reached the mansions of St. Navarre’s noble families.

  Three bodyguards manned the door to the Consul’s stone manse. Shada didn’t like her chances. But unlike armored Guardsmen, she wasn’t required to use the front door. She crept around the side of the house. There she slipped off her boots, threw the coil up to the second story, and climbed to a window.

  Within she found no guards until she reached the upstairs hallway. And then she realized why.

  A seven-foot tall Heiracloyant blocked the corridor. Years under the desert sun had burned his massive body a purpled bronze. His face, neck, and chest, from hairline to torso, were covered in baroque tattoos. His nails and teeth had been filed to razor-sharp points, as witnessed by the scar tissue crowding his mouth and palms. He held two curved daggers, thumbs threaded through looped hilts. The floor around him was littered with bones—Heiracloyants considered defeated opponents a delicacy.

  A belt of fear constricted about Shada’s chest. She’d never faced anything like this. Before she could retreat the warrior caught her scent. Red eyes honed in. He sprang down the hall, lightning fast for his size.

  No choice. Shada drew her blade.

  The Heiracloyant attacked with all the power of a winter storm. Shada ducked beneath his daggers and slashed vertically. A knife turned her sword a hand’s length from his chest. His parry spun her backwards.

  Shada let herself spin, his knives slashing the air an inch from her face. She hit a wall, barely keeping her balance. Her hand ached. She was already out of breath.

  His jaw distended like a serpent’s, ruined tongue running across a mouthful of knives.

  He was going to eat her.

  Shada let her sword hand tremble. The Heiracloyant saw and smiled. Easy meat.

  She charged, aiming her feint aimed at his torso. As he tensed to parry she leapt sideways to the near wall, pushing off it and over his head. His blades missed her by inches. Shada hit the ground and kicked out as he turned to face her, her heel striking his leg. She hadn’t the strength to break it, but the impact brought him down on the opposing knee.

  As he fell she whipped her blade up, steel slicing between chin and collarbone. A spray of blood obliterated the symbols on his chest.

  Shada bit her lip to silence her scream. Terror, exhilaration, and relief blended until she couldn’t tell one from the other.

  She crouched beside the body, breathing hard, admiring the curved daggers.

  ~o0o~

  Her breath recovered, Shada continued along the hall, silent in her stocking feet. Beyond a curtain dim tapers revealed the Consul, seated at his desk.

  “Goddaughter.” If he was surprised, he gave no sign. “A Citadel full of murderers to call upon, yet Sisco sends you.”

  “I wasn’t sent,” Shada said. “I came.”

  “Shada, always the one to do that which must be done.” The Consul understood. He always had. “I’m no traitor.”

  Shada raised her blade. “Father says otherwise. Using grave magic to escape confirmed it.”

  “If it were you on the gallows, unjustly accused, would you meekly submit?” The Consul stood. “Or would you do what had to be done, no matter how distasteful?”

  Shada had no answer. She had to strike quickly or her nerve would fail. “What has to be done is killing Father, and the rest of us. It’s the only way you can be truly safe.”

  “Perhaps I could kill the great Sisco. But do you really believe I could murder you or Sienna?”

  “I believe men will do what they need to survive.” Shada moved in close. “You’re trying to summon a necromancer.”

  The Consul blinked.

  It was the confirmation Shada needed. She moved in a tight, lethal arc, her sword and body turning counter to each other.

  “Your mother and I were lovers.”

  She stopped her thrust.

  “Your father found out. This is my—and your mother’s—only treason. Sisco couldn’t forgive it.”

  Shada couldn’t breathe. This was the truth of it. The Consul was no usurper, but his—and Allaire’s—more intimate betrayal had destroyed her father’s certainty. In a moment the baffling past month snapped into sharp focus. She understood that her father was not only a king but also a man, and thus imperfect. And vengeful.

  A black cord lashed about her wrist, a tendril of tattered black fabric cool as winter. She pulled her arm back, but there was no give.

  A tall figure soaked out of the darkness, narrow and bent as a late season scarecrow. The pale, hairless head was shaped like a battered eggshell, but the hooded eyes suggested a vulture. Black cloaks rippled around him in thrall to a wind evident only to them, one of them tightening about her forearm.

  Shada’s heartbeat thundered. The Consul’s necromancer was already summoned and in the room.

  The black cloaks surged around her, shimmering like a kraken’s tendrils. One wrapped about her blade. The sword was stuck as if in stone. The icy fabric snaked around her arms and legs, coiled tight about her waist. The sword was pulled from her hand and flung across the room.

&nbs
p; Shada struggled uselessly. The cloaks gripped with crushing strength even as their cold began to paralyze her.

  The necromancer drew close, slipping cold fingers under her chin. Feeling for her rampaging pulse.

  Words rolled from his tongue as if their pronunciation were a pleasure long denied. “Life burns strongly in you, Princess.”

  It wouldn’t for long. Her every breath was a struggle.

  “Meet Pitch.” The Consul spat on the floor. “My new associate.”

  “She killed the Heiracloyant,” Pitch said.

  “I told you she was remarkable.” The Consul regarded Shada with pity, perhaps love, but certainly a fury colder than she had ever seen in him. “I’m a reasonable man. Sisco has forced me to do unreasonable things.”

  Shada couldn’t feel her hands or feet. Her teeth chattered. “You’re no better than him. You’re planning to kill us all.”

  “You and Sienna will be exiled. There can be no mercy for his inner circle, but Allaire’s daughters aren’t to blame for the king’s sins.”

  Shada managed a breath. Would she want to live, knowing her failure had doomed her father? Never, she would have said an hour ago. She felt differently with the necromancer’s icy hands on her throat.

  “This one is trouble,” Pitch hissed. “Her life is too bright. I will have it.”

  The Consul paled. “I forbid it.”

  “How will you forbid it?” The necromancer almost smiled. “She is my price. Pay it or I’ll have your corpse after Sisco’s Guardsmen come calling.”

  The Consul seemed to crumble. “Men will do what they need to survive. You have the truth of it, Shada.” He nodded to Pitch.

  Shada threw her weight left and right, but there was no give in the coils. The necromancer took her right hand, kissed it, and then sucked her ring finger into his mouth. A blunt pain penetrated her frozen limb. Blood trickled down her wrist.

  Pitch reached into his mouth and produced her severed finger. “A token of your flesh.”

  Shada was too cold to scream. The cloaks drew so tight she couldn’t breathe. She saw only one possible gambit.

  “Allaire,” she croaked. “Message. For you.”

  The Consul’s face flushed. “A moment,” he said to Pitch.

  The cloaks withdrew. Shada fell to her knees. Blood pooled beneath her right hand, but the lie came easily. “Mother sent word. Last week. Father doesn’t know.” With scarlet fingers she passed the Consul her locket.

  He stared into it. “Once upon a time Sisco loved her. But the crown changed him. She needed me, and I her. I no longer know how to live without her.”

  Her hand aching, Shada prepared herself. She would get only one shot.

  “It is the gravest of magics,” the Consul said. “How the enchantments of childhood fall from your eyes and you see the people you love as they truly are, rather than how they wish to be seen. It’s painful, but there is power in it. Shada, I am truly sorry that you will never know that power. I have no choice.”

  “Please don’t kill me.” Shada’s tears, her terror, were real enough. She worked so hard to hide them, but this once they would work for her.

  The Consul sighed. “Ferocious with a blade, you’re still just a child.”

  Shada put out her arms and her godfather took her into his, as he had so many times when she was small. Her left hand closed on the Heiracloyant dagger, tucked into her vest.

  “Tell me what Allaire said.” The Consul’s eyes moistened. “And Pitch will make it painless.”

  “I have no choice.” Shada drove the dagger into his heart.

  The Consul gasped. Scarlet splattered the floor beneath him.

  Shada allowed herself to feel the terrible grief—sharp as a blade—for only a moment then buried it deep. “I guess I am my father’s daughter.”

  The Consul’s gaze sharpened. He gathered the last of his strength. “More so than you know. Your mother and I… Shada, it was not a new thing. I—we—believed you to be…”

  The world turned sideways as Shada took his meaning. The bubble of feeling she thought locked away burst open, the sadness a hundred knives working at her insides.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. As the world reorganized itself around this knowledge, she found she was sorry for more than she could put name to. But her godfather—or her father—was gone.

  Pitch applauded. “Bravo, Princess.”

  Shada had nearly forgotten about him. But his cloaks were busy weaving about the Consul’s body.

  “With this fine corpse, I’ve no need of yours. But I’ll keep this—” Pitch waved her finger, “In case our paths cross again.”

  Necromancer and body vanished.

  One of the Consul’s bodyguards thundered through the doorway and saw the blood on the floor.

  Shada darted across the room and grabbed her sword. Her hand ached. Blood dribbled down the hilt. She felt light-headed, nauseous. The sword fell through her fingers. She stared down at it in horror.

  She couldn’t even hold a sword in her ruined hand.

  The bodyguard punched her in the face. She fell hard.

  He brought a boot down on her throat. “Where’s the Consul?”

  Shada couldn’t fight him. She’d never fight again. She was maimed. Useless; she couldn’t protect anyone with a ruined hand. She would never be a warrior.

  The great joke was she’d never been a princess, either.

  “You’ve misplaced a finger.” He pressed his blade to her hand. “Talk or lose the rest.”

  The pain was clarifying. She would find a way. She always found a way to do what had to be done.

  Shada flung up her left arm. The Assayas coil unwound at her silent command, striking him between the eyes. The fibers dug in. He shrieked and grabbed at his face.

  She scrambled out the window and slid headlong down angled shingle, the coil unwinding behind her. At the roof’s edge it pulled taut. She climbed quickly downward, right hand in bloody agony.

  Her feet touched the ground and she sprinted for home.

  ~o0o~

  A week later, St. Navarre felt something like itself again. Following the Consul’s disappearance his followers and mercenaries had dispersed. Rumor said he’d fled the city.

  Shada barely noticed.

  In Miss Delirium’s Dojo the many swords pulled from Shada’s walls had been tried and discarded. They lay about, hilts bloodied, blades blunted in frustration.

  Miss Delirium feared the task was impossible. Her sword hand ruined, Shada would never fight again.

  Shada believed that the barrier between the difficult and the impossible could be penetrated by determination and discipline.

  At the center of the room, among practice targets and sandbags, Shada leapt, attacked, and blocked, over and over. Sweating and bruised, her bandaged hand bleeding once more, she worked through each of the exercises until she executed it perfectly.

  And then she attempted one more difficult.

  She refused to think about anything but this moment. There were only the Heiracloyant daggers, one hooked to the thumb of each hand. Fighting with them was completely different. But if her body could no longer fight in the manner in which she’d excelled, she’d force it to learn another way.

  Miss Delirium watched each attempt with what might have been approval.

  Shada imagined her sandbag as the infallible King Sisco. She slashed left, jabbed right, and tore it to ribbons.

  The Piper’s Wife

  Susan Murrie Macdonald

  A lot of men underestimate women. Nearly all of them underestimate a pregnant woman.

  Susan Murrie Macdonald is married to a travel agent, not a piper, although her husband does wear the kilt on occasion. She is a ghostwriter of other people's blogs, a too frequent commentator on Facebook, and a freelance proofreader. She is also an ex-teacher, an ex-"civil serpent," and an ex-soccer mom. (She's still a mom; the kids just aren't playing soccer anymore.) She has a husband, two teenagers, and a cat who think
s she is the maid. “The Piper's Wife” is her second fiction sale and her first sale to a major market.

  Morag dipped her quill into the inkwell. “I regret to inform you,” she wrote, “that Ranall of Beacán fell in battle. He fought valiantly, and died quickly.” That was probably a lie, but she put it in every condolence letter, to ease the pain of the family receiving the news.

  Too little sunlight came through the canvas of the general’s tent for her to see to write, so she had two oil lamps lit. Brushing a wisp of coppery hair away from her face, she began the next letter. “I regret to inform—” She winced, then smiled.

  “My godson is kicking again?” Lord Stiofán asked. He lay on a cot, watching her as she worked. Stiofán, a middle-aged man with graying hair, was general of the Dalraidan army.

  “I don’t know if it’s your godson or your goddaughter, but this child is definitely wearing boots,” Morag complained. She sat on a pillow, a low folding scribe’s table before her.

  Lord Stiofán tried to sit up.

  The general’s wooden leg lay on the ground beside his cot. Morag picked it up and moved it out of his reach. “You lie back down,” she ordered, “or so help me, my lord, I will take this to your skull.”

  Lord Stiofán scowled. “In most armies, generals are obeyed, not threatened with their own limbs. You’re a brute and a bully, my lass.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere, my lord. The chirurgeon said you need to rest, and rest you shall.” She returned her attention to the condolence letter.

  “How many of those do you have left to do?” Stiofán asked.

  “Too many.”

  “And who shall threaten me into good behavior and act as the chirurgeon’s spy when you grow too large to waddle alongside the army?” he asked.

  “By then we’ll have won the war.” She laid a hand on her swollen belly. “Elshander is ready to send me home now, even though I have four months to go.”

  “Husbands do tend to worry,” he said dryly, “especially for firstborns.”

  Like many Dalraidan women, Morag had followed her husband to battle. Some cooked for the army; some did laundry. Some picked up a bow and fought alongside their men. Morag had become the general’s scribe.