King's Man and Thief

by Christie Golden

  "If unkind thoughts do breed like rats in the darkness," she said, "then what of a rat whose curse is to cause unkind thoughts? That is its purpose, and those who resist the desire shall be driven mad. Deeds such as we have performed here tonight will give pleasure. Denying the urges, performing socalled 'good' deeds—that will cause pain. Dreadful, sickening, crippling pain, until the sufferer inevitably yields to the desire to hurt, to kill. And then will come release—but for many, it will come too late."

  She began walking again, searching for the words to explain a concept that was as hard to grasp, even for her, as quicksilver. "Soon, little hurts will not be enough. Soon, those afflicted will want more pain, more cruelty—and these weaklings will not be able to stay sane, knowing what they have done and will do!"

  She whirled, all fire and intensity now. "We are immune to such contortions of the will, for we already embrace the darkness! Behold what we have done!" Marrika pointed triumphantly to the dead man, slain by them all. "How, then, can we be disturbed by wanting more? There is no conflict that will tear us apart inside. Ah, but the guards, the councilmen, the Blessers of other faiths," and she sneered, "they will be ripped apart. When a Healer's hands shine red with blood she herself has spilled, then how can she stay sane? When a guard, sworn to protect and serve, rips apart a child for the slightest transgression—why, then, madness is the only escape.

  "And when this curse has run its course, there will be no one left to stand against us. No one who does not see the world the way we do. No one who would have the strength of will to refuse conquest by our friends, our allies who have given us this great blessing. Now do you understand?"

  They did. The thieves laughed and whooped. When the celebration had sobered a bit, Marrika continued.

  "How fast a rat breeds," she purred. "The curse has begun, is certain to have claimed victims already. We should give it some time to take firm hold—say, about two weeks. The curse should reach its height just in time for the Midsummer Festival—the day when Braedon will least expect an attack."

  Applause broke out. Marrika laughed, taking it as her due, and halfheartedly tried to calm them. "But we must prepare. Midsummer Festival has always been a good time for us. There are many travelers in town with heavy purses. Much ale is poured, and those who drink deep may wake up the poorer for it. But this year it will be special. We have many things to do before we will be ready to take full advantage of this great gift from the god. Each of you will be assigned tasks. Of this, I will speak later. Enjoy the fruits of your labors."

  The meeting thus adjourned, as it were, the thieves began to leave —quietly, by ones and twos. Marrika walked up to Khem. She felt Freylis's eyes on her, but ignored him. He was nothing to her now but muscle for her cause. Khem rose, smiling.

  "You were magnificent," he said softly.

  She answered his smile by enfolding him in a hot embrace, kissing him deeply. Khem was far more interesting a lover than Freylis could ever be, and he had served—and was continuing to serve—her well.

  "You please me," she murmured, "in all things." They laughed quietly, together, and then she sobered. "I have been speaking with Blesser Kannil. I have a very important job for you to perform during the Festival. I can trust no one else with it. And," she added, slipping her hand between his legs, "I have another important job for you to perform tonight."

  Again the lovers laughed softly. Out of the corner of her eye, Marrika saw Freylis stalk off into the night. She spared a moment from her passion to enjoy her victory over the big man, then returned her attention to Khem's kisses.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I change but in death.

  —meaning of the bay leaf

  Darshirin's form was sleek and graceful, his movements subtle and yet powerful enough to propel him swiftly through the water. It was not yet dawn, though a slight lightening of the horizon would have proclaimed the morning's approach, had the aquatic creature bothered to look. But Darshirin was intimately familiar with the darkling depths of the oceans, and did not need eyes to "see."

  A flick of his powerful tail sent him rushing forward a few feet above the bottom of the harbor. Small clouds of swirling sand rose from the movement, then floated softly back downward. He emitted sounds; high squeaks and whistles, little clicks and chirps. He had tried to explain this method of "seeing" with his ears to Damir, but intelligent as the mortal was, and though he had the ability to hear and return some of the ocean's songs, Damir hadn't quite been able to understand.

  He did not need to. Darshirin and his kind understood; knew that sometimes song was the most powerful of all the gifts granted to the ocean's inhabitants by the One Who Makes. With his eyes, Darshirin could not see at all in this darkness. But with his vocal vision, he could have counted the number of shells on the sandy bottom, navigated his way through the sturdy beams of wood sunk deep to support Braedon's docks. He passed unharmed beneath the hulls of ships.

  The only things that he could not see this way, he recalled with a momentary flash of anger and pain, were the nets used by humans. He had learned to be careful around such things. He had taught himself to distinguish fishing vessels from cargo ships, and gave the former a wide berth. Darshirin certainly did not blame the humans for fishing; fish were delicious food! But neither did he wish to be caught a second time in the frightening strands that lifted him up out of the sheltering sea.

  Sounds were emitted; images returned. Broken shards of wood that had once been mighty seagoing vessels, washed up on the sands and in the shallow waters. Fish, and bits of floating items that Darshirin knew as human refuse, coming in from the sewer systems. He was not concerned. The ocean was powerful with a strength that mortals could not comprehend. It would take the filth that the humans spewed into it and make of the insult a gift; food for the ground-feeders and drifting seaweed. The ocean would wear it down, until it was part of the sea itself and no longer an earthly intrusion onto the green and blue depths.

  Darshirin paused. His expression did not waver, for in this form his mouth was fixed in a permanent grin. But his heart began to beat painfully. He emitted the high sounds again, and the picture returned. It did not, could not lie.

  Something was caught in the sewer mouth, hung up on piles of refuse and trash. Something that someone had intended to wash out to sea and vanish without a trace. Something that had thwarted that someone's intention by not doing so. Something very sad indeed.

  Slowly, reluctantly, Darshirin swam closer. The picture in his mind grew more detailed, and horror swelled inside the gentle creature.

  It was a human body, female. Probably the poor girl Darshirin had been dispatched to help locate; the councilman's daughter Lorinda Vandaris. He would need to look upon her in daylight, with his human eyes, to distinguish the finer points that would identify her, but he feared he had been successful in his mission.

  He wished he had not. Darshirin had swum the oceans for centuries, and was not unfamiliar with human corpses. He had seen far too many sea-swollen, rotting bodies of drowned men for that. He had even been witness to a barbaric burning of a vessel in Braedon's port; had watched sorrowfully as charred bodies clogged the harbor until the merciful ocean had gone about its business and washed them out to sea. But this ...

  Lorinda, if it was she, had been horribly mutilated. She was lacking many features that Darshirin knew to be common to humans, and the bloated body bore innumerable cuts and slashes. Darshirin darted about, overcome with his horror and revulsion. To do this to one another—he had known humans were barbaric, but...

  He recalled what Damir had told him of Lorinda. There is a girl who has been stolen from her people. . . . She is tall, fair as we of the land reckon beauty, and full of laughter. The revolting shape before him could not be reckoned beautiful in anyone's eyes. And Darshirin was glad she had known laughter once, for she had not died with it.

  His heart ached in sympathy. Though she was a human, she had clearly been of good heart, or else Damir would not
have said so. Not even the evil should end up like this; and that someone who was as kind and mirthful as Lorinda should be found so, hurt Darshirin deeply.

  He could not help himself. Those of the ocean kept their love and sympathy for themselves, and though it was not strictly forbidden, they did not share it with the land dwellers. But Lorinda . . . poor Lorinda. Darshirin closed his eyes and began to sing. He sang, in a voice that could not be heard by ears, of her beauty, and gentleness of nature. He sang of her brutal murder and tragic end. He sang, that those in the oceans might know of and lament the passing of something true and good.

  And as far as Darshirin knew, it was the first time since the oceans began to teem with life that the song of the sea had been sung to mourn one whose face was raised to the sun, and whose feet trod upon dry soil.

  It was almost dusk by the time Damir reached the meeting place. For a moment, the diplomat allowed himself the luxury of enjoying the beauty of a sunset over the ocean, something he was not often able to witness. The sun was a magnificent, swollen orb of orange-red. The sky itself was a rainbow of fiery hues, ranging from indigo to purple to yellow. Far above the horizon, the bolder, brighter stars were already beginning to appear. The ocean itself seemed to be bleeding, turning a rich variety of shades that mirrored the dying sun.

  Damir shook himself out of his reverie. There was a great deal on his mind, and he hoped that tonight, Darshirin would have news for him. He did not permit himself to hope that the news would be good.

  Just as the sun dipped below the horizon, a dolphin leaped and splashed down. Damir tethered his mare to the weathered tree, patted her absently, and made his way down to the shore. This time he had no trouble navigating the rocks and rough terrain, as he was properly dressed for just such activities.

  Again Darshirin broke the surface, but this time he was much closer and in his human form. And as the sea-being walked slowly out of the water onto the shore, Damir saw that he bore a dreadful burden.

  "Ah, no, please, no," Damir whispered futilely to himself. But he could not escape the truth.

  Darshirin's bluish-hued face reflected his own grief, and he carried the burden of the dead and barely recognizable Lorinda with as much gentleness as he might bear a newborn to its mother's arms.

  "I have found her," he said softly. "And it hurts my heart to have done so."

  Carefully Darshirin knelt on the beach, where the sand was still soft and rocks did not yet encroach into the ocean. He laid the body down tenderly, stroking the ruined face of the once beautiful girl with a gentle, webbed hand.

  Damir knelt too, forcing his own sorrow aside and replacing it with shrewd observation. Lorinda had been dead for several days—probably the full week that she had been missing. Damir estimated that she had met her dreadful fate on the same night she was abducted. He made allowances for the immersion in salt water and decomposition, and tried to distinguish what had happened to her while she was alive.

  His stomach turned over when he realized that in all likelihood the mutilations had been performed on a living body. Dear gods. Who—what—was loose in Braedon, that would do this to an innocent young girl?

  "Do you know who might have done this?" asked Darshirin, echoing Damir's thoughts. Damir shook his head grimly. "Not yet. But we will. This is ... an abomination. Darshirin, you must believe that we're not all like this!"

  Darshirin smiled ruefully. His emerald eyes sparkled with unshed tears. "I thought you were all without compassion, until I met you and Jemma. I know better now. But there is a darkness among your people, my friend, that stains the whole. At least the shark in the ocean gets no pleasure from his feeding; and at least those that he devours help him in turn to live. This," and the sea-being gestured helplessly at the bloated corpse, "this, I cannot understand. And I do not wish to."

  Dismissing the subject, he gazed at Damir. "I come bearing more bad news, I fear. I have not had contact with Jemma in many days."

  "When was your last contact?"

  Darshirin thought. "Fifteen days, as you land dwellers measure them."

  Damir closed his eyes. Things were just getting worse and worse. "Any word at all?"

  "None. I reported that she has made contact with Castyll, as you recall, but I have heard nothing since. She does not come to the ocean anymore, and I do not think it is because she does not wish to. There is an increased presence of Mharian guards along the docks."

  "Somehow that doesn't surprise me," said Damir. "Thank you, Darshirin. Your information and help have been invaluable. I think, though, it is time for me to become more active in this little scenario. I must journey to Mhar myself."

  They talked for a few moments longer as Damir explained his plan. Darshirin listened, nodded. "It is past time that I returned to the ocean," he reprimanded Damir softly at length. He rubbed his forearm, which was beginning to dry out.

  "Of course. I shouldn't have kept you so long."

  Darshirin glanced down at Lorinda's body. "What will you do with her?"

  Damir again knelt beside Lorinda. He closed his eyes and muttered an incantation. Light began to glow from his palm, and he moved his hand gently over Lorinda's body, covering every part of her. Beneath his radiant hand, Lorinda's body changed. When he was finished, she looked healthy and whole, as if she was just asleep and would awaken soon to look at the world again through laughing eyes.

  "That was kind of you," said Darshirin. "Those who love her would not wish to see her as we have."

  Damir knew that Darshirin, being related to the elven clans, could see through the illusion, as if the whole Lorinda was painted on gauze and laid over the real body like a shroud. "It's the least I can do. Would that we could have brought her safely home."

  "She will not be forgotten," said Darshirin quite unexpectedly. "I have sung for her, Damir, and now all the ocean knows of her loss."

  The admission startled Damir. Moved, he reached to clasp Darshirin's shoulder. Gently, the seabeing laid his own hand—slippery, moist, webbed, and warmly comforting—on Damir's own. Then he turned and slipped into the ocean. Damir did not see him again.

  He took a deep breath. Death was no stranger to him. He had even seen corpses mangled almost as badly as Lorinda's was. But few of those were people he had known; fewer still, people he had liked. Gently, he picked up the body, selfishly grateful for the mind magic that allowed him to, at least partially, fool himself as well as others.

  Deveren's mare was skittish at the smell of death, and pranced nervously as Damir approached. Not for the First time, Damir wished he could use his mind magic on animals. But they were less—or perhaps, Damir mused drily, more—intelligent than humans and their minds could not be so easily manipulated. For several long minutes, Damir used soothing words to try to calm the agitated creature. At last, her soft brown eyes still rolling in fear, she permitted him to strap Lorinda's corpse to her saddle.

  It would be a long walk, Damir thought, but at least this time he had brought his cloak. And it would give him time to plan.

  Alone with his brother in the fine dining room, Deveren stared into his goblet, not seeing the distorted reflection of his unhappy face in the glossy red surface of the wine.

  Lorinda ... dead. Not just dead, murdered. And not just murdered —butchered. His heart hurt just thinking about it; ached with sympathy for the loving father and the devoted paramour of the girl; and cried out, most of all, for his own wife, killed in a similar, if not quite so brutal, manner.

  He listened without comment as Damir coolly told the story of how he had found the girl washed up on the beach when he had left earlier to take a long ride. How he had cast a spell over the damaged corpse and walked beside the mare for many miles to bring it home to Vandaris. How he had not told the grieving parent just how badly his only child had been mutilated. How Pedric had sat and stared numbly, his eyes dry, his voice mute.

  "What in the Nightlands," said Deveren at last, wetting his throat with the ruby liquor, "is happening? Silence f
rom Mhar. Lorinda—gods, an innocent if there ever was one— murdered. An attempt on my life, and some kind of ratlike thing crawling about in Braedon's sewers." He raised sad eyes to his brother, who had no solace to offer.

  "I don't know," said Damir softly. He rose, and in passing laid a strong hand on Deveren's shoulder, gripping it tightly in mute sympathy. Damir went to the sideboard and poured himself a drink. He sipped it for a long minute. Deveren watched him dully.

  "I want to find out, though," Damir said at last. "And I intend to."

  Deveren frowned. "What do you mean?"

  Damir turned to face him. "I've decided to go to Mhar. In disguise. Too many things are happening for this to be just a run of bad luck, Deveren. My whole career has been based on an ability to determine what is merely bizarre coincidence and what's got some sort of plan behind it. And this thing reeks of Mharian interference. To be more precise, Bhakir's interference."

  Deveren leaned back in his chair, studying his older sibling. "What makes you so sure?" Damir smiled slightly, his thin lips curving upward. "Oh, I have my ways."

  Deveren shook his head. "It's too dangerous. Send one of your, er, 'ways' to do the job."

  "Can't. Dev, think for a minute." Damir sat down and gazed at his brother intently. "If I have my spies, then you have to know that Bhakir has his. Word surely has gone out that I'm here. For all we know, all this could be connected with him trying to get at me."

  "I wouldn't flatter yourself. After all..." Deveren broke off suddenly and took a gulp of wine. "After all," Damir finished in a soft, compassionate voice, "my spies couldn't find the killer of your Kastara."

  Deveren shot his brother an angry look. "Don't read my thoughts!"

  "I didn't. I only read your face. Dev, I know this has to be bringing back painful memories. And I did use all my sources to try to find out who'd killed her. But Kastara's murder was an accident. She wasn't the target. It was clearly a theft gone wrong—horribly wrong. But that's all it was. Lorinda's murder has an element of anger about it, of—of ritual, if you will."