Vengeance of the Hunter

by Angela Highland

  Rab considered her, reevaluating the strategy of wearing her down with charm. With that gimlet gaze she’d fixed on him, she didn’t seem as if she’d succumb anytime soon. But that didn’t mean it was safe to be truthful with her either. “Why don’t you tell me who you think he is? A clever woman like you must have a theory already.”

  Moirae snorted, and that gimlet gaze of hers narrowed. Taking his measure, just as he was taking hers. “I know this much. The House had three sons once. The first one’s dead. The youngest holds the House now. And the middle, ha. I was a little snip of a thing when he was banished, but I remember it all the same. That upstairs bloke of yours, he’s got the look of the old earl about him even with that black hair of his and the other sons being blond. Last I saw Mister Julian, though, milord Cleon had made a right mess of him. And this bloke’s still got both his eyes and hands.”

  No, she didn’t miss much at all, and Rab fought off a frown as the kitchen girl came back with their tea and coffee. In that blunt recitation she’d summarized almost everything he knew of Julian’s history himself, and it was odd indeed to hear a stranger putting it into words. As Moirae thanked the other girl, winning a bright smile in return, he thought fast.

  And when the maid left again, he leaned forward in his chair. If charm wasn’t going to work, it was time for a more practical approach. “Your presence here implies that you’re willing to investigate this theory rather than avoid it. What can I offer you to ensure that it doesn’t become a problem?”

  In this too, though, Moirae seemed disinclined to provide him an easy path. She took a deliberately long sip of her tea, nodded in satisfaction at it and then finally raised her penetrating gaze back to his. “That depends on how much of a problem it’s going to be for milady now.”

  * * *

  Drugged.

  The word made ostensible sense in Julian’s hearing. It was comprehensible Adalonic. Yet as his pulse sped up and his blood rushed through his ears, he could make no logical connection between that single concept and anything at all in his memories of his final days in his House. Dulcinea watched him, her mouth curling up on one end, though her eyes were far too sad for that expression to be called a smile.

  “You’d never lifted a hand against a woman before,” she said. “And unless you’re greatly changed even in spirit from the man I knew twelve years ago, you probably haven’t since. It wasn’t in you and it never was. Surely you must have wondered?”

  “Wondered?” The word clawed its way up from deep within Julian, in a harsh croak he barely knew as his own voice, and which made him think for an instant he’d begun to sound like his namesake bird. His paralysis broke, and for all that the urge to embrace her redoubled, he whirled to stalk across the room and back again; he couldn’t touch her, even now. “If by that you mean, did I nearly drive myself mad trying to figure out how the gods had cursed me, and why I couldn’t remember what I’d done to deserve their punishment? Why one gods-damned glass of wine had broken me, when it never had before? Yes, I bloody well wondered!”

  Dulcinea maintained her place at the window, respecting the physical distance between them. The tearful gaze she kept upon him, though, was as intimate as a caress. “Then I thank the gods you found me again, so that I can give you at least some measure of peace. Your wine was drugged. You were meant to be found molesting me in the study. It was all planned.”

  Julian went still. The Voice of the Gods had almost slain him with Her lightning, but that had been one great blast. This was a flurry of an attack, each word a tiny spear of fire piercing his chest—and he was too much the Rook to let it undo him now. He was steel sheathed in velvet, and his fingers flexed, the old and new alike, itching to draw his blades. “Planned by whom?” he asked, certain he knew the answer, yet determined to hear it with his own ears. “Who did this to me?”

  A wide, skewed smile blossomed momentarily across Dulcinea’s face, doing nothing at all to dispel the fright in her eyes. “I did. Your older brother was a boor and a thug. I elected to throw in with your younger one instead, but of course we couldn’t have you about to contest his taking over the House, now, could we?”

  All his instincts flared, though he would have had to lose both eyes to keep from seeing the signs of falsehood in her features now. “You’re a terrible liar, Dulcie. You barely stood being married to Cleon, and you wouldn’t have married Erasmus if every other man in the realm had dropped dead. Would you care to try a different answer?”

  “No, I would not.” She turned away from the window, not meeting his eyes as she strode for the door. “That is all the answer I care to provide. I’d advise you to accept it, and to look for any further lost dogs in other parts of the city.”

  As she passed him, Julian caught her by the arm, lightly but firmly, a contact he felt shudder through them both. “I can free you from him.”

  “I’d like to believe you mean that.” Dulcinea looked up at him once more, her eyes brimming, but now her voice was as calm as his own. “What have you been doing in the last twelve years? Do you have more money than the Bhandreid herself? A small army? Access to the Anreulag? Because that’s what it would take.”

  “I have the power to remove him from your life.”

  She chuckled, a sadder, more wistful version of the laugh he remembered. “A lovely promise. But don’t expect me to put any credence in it—I gave up believing in the promises of men. Goodbye, Julian. Forgive me if you can. Forgetting me would be better.”

  With that she slipped out of his grasp and out the door. He didn’t try to stop her, for the faith she’d expressed in him hadn’t eluded him—though he could take only marginal comfort in that now.

  You’d never lifted a hand against a woman before. You probably haven’t since.

  She was right, and it should have heartened him to know there’d been a reason for that aberration in his youth—a reason outside any flaw in his character. He wasn’t the kind of man who’d lift a hand against a woman in anger or in lust.

  But that didn’t make him blameless, for he was the kind of man who’d lift a hand against another for pay and profit.

  Or in the case of his brother, for vengeance.

  * * *

  “Come, Moirae! We’re leaving!”

  Dulcinea’s voice pealed just outside the common room, startling her maid into alertness.

  “I’m sorry,” she blurted to Rab, “but I’ve got to go.”

  “Permit me to walk you out.” Rab swiftly rose to his feet, offering Moirae an arm, but she darted past him and out into the foyer that led to the boardinghouse’s front door. Her mistress was there, and she turned her ashen face toward the sound of his voice. He noted instantly the traces of tears on her cheeks, but her demeanor was entirely composed now.

  “That won’t be necessary, sir. Our carriage is waiting just outside. Moirae, if you please.”

  The younger woman promptly moved to get the door for her, but not before throwing one last glance Rab’s way. Her mouth moved, without sound, but still distinctly enough that he was able to catch her meaning nonetheless.

  Remember what I said.

  Before he could give her any acknowledgement, both women were out the door, and Rab was left to wonder exactly what had just happened—and to hasten back upstairs to the partner, the one person left in the building who could tell him.

  “Julian,” he said as he entered their suite, “I don’t know what conversation you’ve just had with the mistress up here, but the maid—”

  Three steps in from the door he’d closed behind him, Rab stopped dead. The Rook stood at the window of their sitting room, staring with a gaze of purest frost out into the street, and answering him with a voice gone remote and cold.

  “The maid said what, Rab?”

  “That her dear papa had been in service to House Nemea when its second son was banished.” He cautiously edged nearer, not at all certain how he’d be received. “And that she has a rather clear memory of that Mister Julian, that
she’s quite certain now that her milady is miserable, and that she’s quite prepared to shake the hand of anyone who can do something about it.”

  “Conveniently, I plan to do just that.”

  “Julian, what exactly did our charming visitor tell you?”

  His partner turned and looked at him, with that two-eyed gaze to which Rab had still not quite become accustomed—and he’d never seen so hard and set a look on Julian’s face, before or after the healer girl had mended him. “That, oddly enough, I never was responsible for assaulting her because I’d been drugged that night. By her own hand, or so she’d have me believe.”

  It took very little effort to see where Julian was going with this, but there was no room for uncertainty or doubt, not with that ice in his partner’s eyes. “You think your brother made her do it?”

  “I think that maid of hers had the right of it. She’s miserable, and she was lying through her lovely white teeth. She sent Moirae to get me out of there all those years ago—I knew it, I knew somebody had to be paying all those people to smuggle me to the western provinces. Gods damn it, she sacrificed herself for me, and now she’s trying to do it again.”

  Julian moved then, with energy and purpose, to fetch one of the polishing cloths and whetstones they kept for the maintenance of their weaponry. Once he’d fetched those from the drawer where they’d been stashed, he brought out the roll of soft leather that contained all his extra blades, beyond the ones Rab knew were on his person. Rab wanted to protest—was, in fact, slightly surprised at the protest that bubbled up within him. But he knew better than to argue with a man with knives in arm’s reach, even if he was faster than Julian on the draw. And so he asked instead, “Are you certain she isn’t setting you up?”

  That the Rook paused for a moment in the methodical cleaning of his first blade worried Rab somewhat. But to his relief, Julian said, “As I’m not an idiot, yes, the thought did cross my mind. And as she wasn’t yet in a position to give me an informed contract, I’m not yet in a position to formally offer her our assistance. I’ll need to investigate the situation. Worst-case scenario, we rob my insufferable little bastard of a brother blind. Best-case...” He didn’t bother to elaborate, for the scrape of his dagger against the whetstone spoke for him, even as he looked up once more. “You did, I believe, warn me against anything stupid. I trust you’re not going to quibble with this plan?”

  “Of course not.” Grinning broadly, Rab pulled his own whetstone from his pockets. “I’m going to help.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Shalridan, Kilmerry Province, Jeuchar 3, AC 1876

  Faanshi had no idea where she was when she awoke, save that it was a dark, cool place—dark enough that, for an instant, on the border between sleeping and waking, she feared she was back in the cellar of Lomhannor Hall. Her own startled cry shocked her into full awareness, and only then, looking wildly around her, did she fully grasp her surroundings.

  She was still in the great underground chamber beneath the city of Shalridan, where she, Semai and the elves had arrived...however many hours ago it had been. Someone had laid her down in one of the nooks she’d seen in rows along the walls of the place. Beneath her was a thin mattress, and draped over her, a woolen blanket to keep off the chill. Within arm’s reach, she found a small loaf of bread and a morsel of cheese waiting for her.

  Standing stoic guard at the front of the nook was Semai.

  The guardsman turned at the sound of her awakening. “Good day, young akresha,” he greeted her gravely in Tantiu.

  He’d done that before, yet all the same, it took Faanshi a few moments before she properly registered that he was in fact addressing her. “Djashtet be with you, akreshi,” she replied in the same language, stricken with shyness. She’d begun to learn how to talk to Julian and to the elves. With a man of her okinya’s people, though, she could not yet see her way.

  Semai, however, solved that problem for her. “I think perhaps She is with you far more than me. I’d told you before that I believed in your power after seeing the man you healed. But I see now that the Lady of Time was testing me. I hadn’t believed, not truly. Not until I saw you heal the people of this place last night.”

  “Alarrah helped,” Faanshi said. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it all without her.”

  “That may be. I know nothing of magic...I’m but an old soldier. But I know what I saw, and the hands of the Hidden One’s healer were as stars, but yours were the glory of the Noonmother’s own light. It was what I needed, to know to give you this.”

  Semai stepped forward to her mattress, and Faanshi had to scramble to her feet to distract herself from his size. It didn’t help; he still towered over her, even when she was standing. But she saw what he held out to her, and forgot all of her nervousness. “A book, akreshi?”

  “It belonged to the Nobi, your okinya. She asked me to give it to you.” He still wore his blue korfi, but a certain indefinable mellowness to his tone made the young healer wonder if Semai was smiling. “Take it.”

  With trepidation, Faanshi did so. The book wasn’t large. It fit easily against the palm of her hand, and its closely bound pages were of the thinnest and most delicate paper she’d ever seen. Nor was the cover like that of any book she’d ever been allowed to see in Lomhannor Hall. Bright cloth adorned it, as colorful as any sari, yet muted and gentled by time and handling. On the pages were line after line of characters in a tiny, precise hand, one that made Faanshi look ruefully up again.

  “Ulima never taught me to read Tantiu script. Did she tell you what the book contains?”

  “Poems and prayers, and sometimes drawings when the Nobi’s hands were fit for such things. But there is also, when you’re ready for it, an accounting of your mother’s last days. I can teach you to read it, if you wish, as our time among the Hidden Ones and their allies permits.”

  “I do wish.” Faanshi had to pause a moment, for tears crept into the edges of her sight, and she had to simply stop and cradle the book to her so that she might inhale its scent. Traces of sage and sandalwood clung to the pages, reminding her sharply of her okinya. “Thank you. You honor me more than I can ever repay. And please, akreshi...if it’s not too forward of me...won’t you call me Faanshi? It sounds too strange to my ears to be called by a word meant for women of noble rank.”

  Deep laughter sounded from behind the korfi, and now Faanshi was certain the man was smiling. “I could tell you that your mother was of the highest blood of Clan Sarazen, or that the Lady of Time values nobility of deed above that of birth. But I shall not challenge your modesty. Faanshi it shall be.”

  She would have said more, but there was movement then outside the nook. Alarrah, coming to look in and brightening at the sight of her. “Faanshi, I’m glad to see you awake. Akreshi Semai, has she eaten?”

  “Not yet,” was his equable reply, the rhythm of his speech changing only slightly as he shifted into Adalonic.

  Faanshi remembered the bread and cheese—and realized with a start that she was ravenous. She scooped up the items before Alarrah could ask her to do so, though that didn’t stop her enorrè from saying, “Yes, get that in you. We both spent a lot of our strength last night, and we’ll need to replenish it for what lies ahead of us.”

  “What will that be? Alarrah, where are we?”

  The she-elf grinned faintly and turned to gesture to the wide expanse of the chamber behind her. “We didn’t exactly have time to tell you, and I suppose there was no reason for you to know. Welcome to what’s left of the royal palace of Nirrivy.”

  * * *

  Shalridan, or so Faanshi learned that morning, was a city of layers. Long before the coming of the Adalons from the east, fire and flood had caused those who’d built the city to raise the streets. Basements and cellars had been filled in with earth and sawdust, and there was even a song about a king of Nirrivy bringing down an entire mountain to make his city tall and strong. When Adalonia claimed Nirrivy as its own, the oldest surviving streets
became tunnels, and even the lowest levels of the king’s palace were forgotten—save by thieves and harlots and indigents, by those who stubbornly clung to the worship of the gods of Nirrivy or even Djashtet, and by elf-friends and wanderers.

  Now, the heart of the tunnels was the chamber that had once been, or so Faanshi learned, a ballroom of the lost Nirrivan palace. “It reminds me of Dolmerrath,” Faanshi murmured to Alarrah, once her sister took her and Semai out into the great chamber to look for the others. “I don’t know why. The light is different, and there are no trees here.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. We helped the Nirrivans build this place when it was still aboveground.”

  “Were you there, akresha?” Semai inquired.

  “No, akreshi.” Alarrah’s eyes took on a glimmer of wistful humor as she glanced at Faanshi. “But our father was, or so he sometimes liked to claim to me. He said he saw the king’s palace of Nirrivy still standing in its splendor before Elisiya fell, and before this land too was conquered. With far less bloodshed, but conquered all the same.”

  It didn’t take them long to find Kirinil. He was out among the tunnel-dwelling humans, around a central fire pit sunk into the floor. Faanshi hadn’t noticed it the night before, but it was impossible to miss now. Three different people were tending a pot filled with stew she could smell from several paces away. Bowls passed from hand to hand, and as soon as Faanshi, Alarrah and Semai came within range, several cries of greeting rose up to meet them. In particular, Faanshi noticed, herself.

  “Here she is, finally. Bless you, girl, sit down.”

  “Great Allmother, child, don’t you eat?”

  “Have some stew, for pity’s sake, it’s the least we can do after what you did!”

  Someone thrust a bowl into Faanshi’s hands, and though she’d already eaten the bread and cheese Alarrah had left her, her belly growled at its smell. She was a third of the way into it, scooping up thick broth and fragments of carrots and potatoes with the aid of more bread, when she saw she’d wound up sitting by Kirinil himself. And that her teacher was laughing.