He raced down the steps, slowing to a loud skip as he reached the first floor, and poked his head around the corner of the archway. Directly ahead was the door to the courtyard; to either side long halls led off in dark punctuated by coffin-shaped opals of light from the windows. These halls connected the tower to the main manor house at ground level.
A black figure reared into sight in one of these lighted spaces. It crossed the beam of crooked light, then disappeared again in shadow. He watched for almost a minute, until it appeared again in a lozenge of lunar grey farther down the hall.
Though the night watchman must be a thirty meters away by now and facing the other way, Jordan still held his breath and tiptoed very quietly across to the door. He eased it open, letting in a breath of cold, misty night air.
Jordan felt exposed just peering around the door jamb. The statues seemed to be staring at him. Aside from them, there was no sound at all now.
The two men might still be circling in the dark, only meters away for all he knew. Now that he was here Jordan had no idea what he was going to do. Sound the alarm? That would be the sensible thing to do—but this was doubtless some political feud, and Calandria's dress-up games aside, he was still only a mason's son, and it was not his place to interfere. He had already drawn the attention and wrath of the household for fainting at dinner. He was not about to compound that by waking the place, especially since the courtyard seemed empty now. Maybe the duellists had lost their nerve, and fled, or one had capitulated.
The silence drew out, and the outside chill began to penetrate Jordan's bones so that he shivered as he clung to the door. Then he heard a cough, followed by a faint groan.
The duel was over then, but the outcome had not been peaceful. Now what? Wake the household? Run back for Calandria, tell her a man was bleeding to death in the courtyard?
'So what', she would say. She was too ruthless, and seemed to think it best if Jordan unlearned empathy as she sometime had. But he couldn't do that.
He eased out into the night air, and paused half-expecting a dark figure to rush him from the forest of statues. Nothing moved.
He heard the groan again, and this time was able to locate its source. Huddled near one wall of the manor was a man. He held his stomach with both hands, and his mouth was open wide as he struggled to breathe. His epee lay neglected on the grass nearby.
Jordan ran to him and knelt down. The man flinched away from him. "It's all right," Jordan said. "I'm going to help you."
"Too... too late for that," the man gasped. He was tall and rangy, with a hatchet-shaped face. Lank black hair lay plastered across his forehead. He was dressed in the livery of Linden Boros' household. "I... I lost. Let it be."
"What are you talking about? You need help, or you'll die."
"I know." Black liquid welled up between his tightened fingers. "Got me... a good one." He gritted his teeth and raised his head to look at his belly.
"Yes, you lost fair and square. But he didn't kill you, did he? You've got another chance."
The man shook his head. "Can't... face them. Now. Too humil—, humili—" he didn't have the breath for the word.
"What?" Jordan was desperate that the man would die in front of him. He sat back on his haunches, suddenly angry. "You can't face them? Is that supposed to be brave or something?"
The man glared at him.
"I've always admired soldiers for their bravery," Jordan went on in a rush. "Being willing to die for your pride seemed honorable. But I guess some men are willing to die because they're brave enough to face defeat, and some because they're afraid of facing their friends after being defeated." He crossed his arms and tried to stare the man down. "Sounds like you're the second kind."
The man fell back with a groan, closing his eyes tightly. "I'd... I'd kill you," he gasped. "If I could stand."
"Yeah, that way you wouldn't have to listen to me. Cowardice again. Are you going to let me help you?"
"Go to hell."
"What's the problem?" Jordan nearly shouted in exasperation. "Where is everybody? Where are your friends? What's so awful about getting yourself sewed up? Who's that going to kill?"
"House—house rules." The man opened his eyes again, to stare at the stars and wind-torn clouds. "Boros rules. No duelling... allowed. I call f-for help... Linden loses. Loses face. Maybe more."
"We'll take you to Linden's doctor. He can cover up for you, surely?"
"Ordered... not to treat... duelists." The man began to shiver violently.
"Oh." Jordan looked back at the tower, which stood in black silhouette against the troubled sky. "So your surgeon won't treat you because he's ordered not to, and Yuri's won't for the same reason. I suppose it was one of Brendan Sheia's men who stabbed you, so his surgeon certainly won't help." The man nodded fatalistically.
"Lucky for you I'm not a member of this household, nor one of yours, or Sheia's," Jordan went on. "I've been given no orders against helping you."
"Are you... surgeon?"
"No, but," he guessed, "my lady is."
The man tried to sit up. Jordan slipped an arm under his shoulders and helped him. "How can... lady be..." A violent shiver took hold of the man. "C-c-cold."
"Come. We'll stand up. Then we'll see." Slowly and gingerly, he drew the man to his feet.
§
Calandria cursed in a language Jordan had never heard before. He needed no translation.
"Look at the trail of blood!" she snapped. "How are we going to hide him as you're suggesting? And what if he dies? We'll have a corpse in our room!"
"Not... my... idea," whispered the bleeding man.
"Lie back," she said to him. She knelt, whipping her nightdress around herself crossly, and poked at the embers of the fire. "You're going into shock. I'm going to get the fire well up, then we'll see to your wound." Jordan sat with his hands pressed hard on the man's stomach. Blood flowed everywhere, but no more than at the butcher's; Jordan was more worried by the amazing paleness of the man, and the coldness of his skin.
"Don't mind her," he said to keep his mind off these things. "What's your name?"
"A-August. Ostler." By Ostler he might have meant his family name or profession; Jordan didn't pursue the issue.
"I'm Jordan Mason. This is Lady Calandria May."
"Jordan, stop it! You're wasting his strength." Calandria thumped two logs onto the churned embers. Sparks flew up, and she poked the wood into position so it caught. Jordan had noticed before that she wasn't very good at tending fires, a strange lack in someone so otherwise talented. Luckily these logs needed no encouragement to catch.
"Get Axel," she said. "I'll take over here." She pulled her pack from under her bed, spilled its contents on the floor, and came up with two white metal tubes. Without glancing up, she added, "Then clean the blood off the steps, and yourself too."
Jordan ran.
He was glad now that they had taken the tower room. The place was set apart from the main manor, so comings and goings like this would be much less noticeable than in the house. Still, Jordan slowed to a cautious walk when he reached the downstairs gallery, and paused every few steps to listen for the night watch.
Infrequent lamps dimly lit the halls of the manor. Jordan's bare feet made no noise on the cold stone floor. He took servant's ways; the idea of walking the main halls still bothered him, especially now when no one should be afoot. This also allowed him to pause at the cistern outside the kitchen. Low voices came from inside. He cautiously ladled water into a bucket, and washed himself. He took the bucket with him up the tall narrow stairs to the top floor. If anyone stopped him, he could come up with any number of plausible servant's explanations for carting water about at two in the morning.
Even with this prop in hand his heart was pounding. As he reached the top of the stairs, he heard voices again. He plunked the bucket in a corner and quickly cast about for a place to hide. Finally he stood behind the door to the hall. Stupid, but what choice was there?
The voices became louder: a man and a woman in quiet conversation somewhere nearby. Very nearby. He held his breath, and waited for them to open the door.
Nothing happened. They must be standing just on the other side. Jordan waited for several minutes, but they did not move. But he had to get to Axel. Time to brazen it through. He took a deep breath, picked up his bucket, and opened the door quickly.
There was no one on the other side.
The voices continued. Jordan put the bucket down and placed his palms over his ears. The dialogue continued, within his own head.
"Shit! Not now!" He staggered back, nearly tipping the bucket. All the excitement tonight had made him vulnerable, and Armiger had stepped into his mind again. Now that he knew what it was, the voices were obviously those of Armiger and Megan.
He stood for a minute in silent panic, waiting for the vision to wash over him completely. He would lose himself here, just when Calandria and Axel needed him. Maybe someone would find him wandering like an idiot, blood-stained. If August died, he would be taken for the murderer.
As he thought this, the top-floor landing did begin to fade. He thought he saw the inside of Megan's house, lit by a single candle. She and Armiger sat close together, talking earnestly. The vision became sharper with each passing second.
Jordan reached out blindly, and felt the bannister at the head of the stairwell. He held it tightly in both hands to anchor himself. It was the panic he had to fight. There was no other way to stop the vision.
He put his awareness into the tip of his nose, and breathed slowly, in and out, counting his breaths as he did so. Over the next few minutes he used every trick Calandria had shown him to engender calmness, and gradually the voices faded. When he was confident he had them at bay, he let go of the bannister. He could see again.
Jordan wasted no more time, but grabbed up the bucket and went straight to Axel's room. He debated whether to knock or walk in, knowing Axel might be with someone. He stooped to peer through the keyhole, just in case.
A candle burned on the table by the window. Axel sat there in a loose robe, his hands steepled. He was speaking in a low voice to someone out of sight. Jordan craned his neck to see who he was speaking to.
"...The local humans don't seem to be in great awe of the Winds they deal with every day," Axel was saying. "They know the morphs and desals moderate animal populations. People treat morphs like they do bears or moose, with caution but not fear. But they mythologize the Winds they know the least—you can see it in their names for the geophysical Winds—like 'Heaven hooks' and 'Diadem swans'. They can't connect the activities of these Greater Winds with their day to day lives."
He still couldn't see who else was in there. Well, there was nothing to be done about it. Jordan knocked lightly on the door. Axel stopped speaking immediately. Jordan heard him approach, and then the door opened a crack.
"What the hell do you want? Do you know what time it is?"
"Come quickly," Jordan said. "We need your help."
Axel opened his mouth, thought better of it, and went to dress. He left the door wide open, and Jordan was able to satisfy himself that indeed, there was no one else in the room.
§
He was not surprised to find August asleep and breathing easily when he and Axel arrived. Calandria had removed the man's bloodstained jacket and shirt, and was examining a harsh gash under his sternum. Amazingly, the gash was not bleeding.
"I had to use nano on him, or he'd have died," she said without preamble. "Jordan, go wash the stairs."
He did so despite fierce curiosity. When he returned, August had been bundled under several blankets. The fire was roaring nicely. Calandria and Axel seemed to be arguing hotly about something. They stopped when Jordan entered, and both glared at him.
"Bad move to save him," Axel said. Calandria said nothing.
"What was I supposed to do, let him die?"
"What were you doing out there in the first place?" Axel shot back.
"What does that have to do with it? I was there. He was in trouble." Jordan stuck out his chin. "What was I supposed to do?"
"The question is," Calandria said drily, "what are we supposed to do, now that we have him? I let the nano work just long enough to suture the wound. I think I got it all out, but he may wake up in the morning without a wound at all. That's going to be hard to explain. Our discretion in this place seems to be evaporating. Once again you are the cause of the problem, Jordan."
"It's hard to think ahead when somebody's dying in front of you," Jordan said quietly.
Axel and Calandria glanced at each other. "All right," said Axel, "we're going to have to handle this carefully. He can't be moved right now, obviously. But he must be moved tomorrow night. You," he pointed at Jordan, "will be his nursemaid tomorrow. Then you will help me sneak him out and into town tomorrow night. Understand?" Jordan nodded. "We're lucky he's feeling personally humiliated. The fact that he wasn't supposed to be fighting will work in our favor; he won't come back here for a while—if, as you say Cal, he's not totally healed by morning."
"How could he be?" Jordan asked.
"Science," Axel said blandly. "Not the kind we're teaching you, though."
"Nano, right?"
Calandria swore in that other language again, and Axel laughed. "Yeah, nano. Shit, Cal, it was your idea to snatch Jordan in the first place. Live with it." She glowered at him for a second, then composed herself: the anger seemed to drain away totally, and she was once again her usual poised, calm self. This sudden calm was in its way more unsettling than the anger.
"How are we going to explain August's miraculous recovery to him?" she asked.
"He wasn't exactly in a position to judge how bad it was," Axel said. "All he knew was he had a hole in him. If it turns out to be less of a hole than he thought, well, he'll just thank the Winds, I suppose. We'll bandage him thoroughly, and if there's no hole there at all tomorrow, I'll put one in—cosmetic, of course, don't look at me like that."
Calandria shook her head. Axel smiled. "You're good at planning," he said. "I'm good at improvising. That's why we get along."
"When we get along," she said with a sphinx-like smile.
Jordan sat down on his bed, suddenly very tired. In the back of his head, he heard Armiger and Megan still talking. It didn't matter. At that moment, he had to wonder which was the more real—the quiet, ordinary dialogue taking place in his head, a thousand kilometers away—or the mad conversation Calandria May and Axel Chan were holding, barely a meter away from him.
"Jordan!" He looked up. "Did you clean the blood off the steps?" Calandria asked.
He shook his head, and rose to do so. He'd left the bucket outside, ready for this.
"I'll help," said Axel unexpectedly. After they got outside and shut the door, he said, "Are you all right?"
"Yeah."
"You did the right thing," said Axel as they both knelt to dip rags in the bucket.
"She doesn't seem to think so."
"Oh, she does. She just gets angry when something happens she can't control."
Jordan sighed, and began swabbing at August's blood. "Why?" was all he could think of to ask.
"Cal has her own problems," said Axel quietly. "She's never been a happy person. Why should she be? She never had a real childhood."
"What do you mean?"
"Cal was inducted into a military organization at a young age, after her mother was sent to prison. Over the years, they made her into a tool, an assassin who could serve the causes they were paid to support. She can change her face, her height, her voice... I don't know what she can't do. She can read a book and memorize every word the first time, or learn a language in days. She's probably the best fighter on this planet. She has amazing powers, but she's never really had her own life. She ran away from her masters, the ones who made her, and for years she used her talents to support herself. Then she got tangled up in the war against 3340.
"People had tried to destroy 3340 from witho
ut," Axel continued. "Cal found the way that worked—she killed him from within."
"You told me."
Axel shook his head. "I gave you the sanitized version. You know 3340 was in the habit of 'promoting' humans—turning them into demigods pretty much at random by making them immortal, replacing their biological cells with nano, that sort of thing. He'd subverted the whole human civilization on Hsing to this perverse lottery. Once you became a demigod, though, he took control of your mind using some sort of sophisticated virus program. One of his 'conscious thoughts', I guess. The place really was hell, there was no morality there, everyone just scrambled to try to become immortal, and didn't care what they had to do to get it.
"3340 looked unbeatable. But we kept hearing rumors that one demigod—and only one—had beaten the virus thought, and thrown off 3340's enslavement. Calandria tracked him down, and got the secret. Then she arranged to be 'promoted' by 3340."
"How did she do that?" Jordan had been dabbing at the blood spots one at a time; now Axel upended the bucket and poured the contents down the steps. "It'll be dry by morning," he said.
Axel looked at his now-wet feet. "You needed to really impress 3340 to get promoted. So Calandria betrayed us." He glanced up and, apparently satisfied by Jordan's shocked look, nodded. "The whole underground that Choronzon and the Archipelago had built up on the planet. Had us arrested, thrown in jail... sentenced to be eaten by 3340's data gatherers.
"It worked." His voice had become uncharacteristically flat. "The god took notice of her. He promoted her to demigod status on the spot. She became sur-biological, able to shape-shift, split her thoughts off into autonomous units, invent new senses for herself. They tell me it's the ultimate experience, short of real deification, but you're not even remotely human anymore. And of course, he slipped his virus thought into her, and it took her over."
Jordan had forgotten the wet steps. "Her plan didn't work?"
Axel half-grinned. "Our ally god Choronzon had arrived in force, but his navy was being cut to pieces. Calandria went straight into the heart of the battle. But once she got there... she fought off the virus, and flew through 3340's ranks showing all the other demigods how to get free.
Ventus Page 15
