by Tanya Huff
“That little …” All at once realizing that repeating the insult, even sarcastically, might not be a good idea, the guard began again. “That man is an Imperial Army Officer and an assassin and you attempted to detain him.”
Ruddy face suddenly pale, the woman stumbled back a step. “I didn’t do no detainin’,” she whined, her frantic gaze landing everywhere but on Neegan. He wondered if she thought that by looking at him, she’d release an attack. “I just touched him like. Barely touched him. I didn’t know …”
“I don’t care.” The guard jerked her around and shoved her toward the door. “Get out. Go home. And keep your touching to yourself in the future.” Not until the woman had scuttled out the door, did she turn back to Neegan.
“If there’s any way I can help, Commander,” she offered nervously.
“No.”
Recognizing a dismissal, she sketched a salute—although the army had no actual authority over the civilian guard—and quickly left the inn.
The tall young man swallowed, hard, but his eyes gleamed. “An Imperial assassin?”
Neegan merely stared up at him.
“And the two you were asking about?”
The silence answered.
“I see. Well, under those circumstances, I, that is, Evion’s will be glad to assist you in any way we can.”
They had stayed in the most expensive suite in the house.
They had eaten well. Some of the food Neegan had never heard of but Bannon had apparently ordered it by name.
They had both bathed.
They were richly but conservatively dressed.
They had plenty of money and they left a generous gratuity behind them.
“I’m sure you know about their servants …?”
“Tell me anyway.” Neegan had known Vree and Bannon all their lives and none of this made any sense. Made as little sense as them deserting in the first place.
They were continuing to the Capital, a server had overheard them discuss it. “But she don’t call him, Bannon, sir. No, she doesn’t. Calls him Gyhard.” At other, lesser inns, he’d heard they didn’t act like brother and sister. He thought he knew what that meant, thought it the most likely answer to Marshal Chela’s why.
He didn’t care why.
As he turned to go, his target more clearly delineated for the blade, the tall young man repeated almost coquettishly, “An Imperial assassin. Are you as good as they say?”
The blade of the dagger went through the hoop of filigreed gold that hung from his left ear on a slender chain and embedded itself in the painted plaster wall behind him, the crosspiece catching and dragging his head around, pinning it in place.
Neegan reached up and pulled his dagger from the wall. “Yes,” he said softly. “Thank you for your assistance.”
* * * *
Although the morning’s traffic flowed around the high, two-wheeled cart moving east along the West Road, no one seemed to actually notice it. Heads turned away and minds fought against chill darkness as it clattered past.
The cart had been designed to take supplies into the heart of the Capital where horses were not permitted. Even fully loaded, the oversized wheels made it easy to pull and the wrapped pole that joined the shafts offered a solid grip for one or two.
Within the shafts, Aver and Otanon had been running without rest since just after midnight.
He squinted up at the sky and then around at the rest of his family. The sun would soon be directly overhead and the day was growing hot. He should have the cousins pull the cart off the road so they could find shade and sit out the midday heat. He would not neglect his children just because love had returned.
“I’m taking you home,” he murmured, stroking a strand of dark hair off the pale face cradled on his lap. “We’ll start again, you and I, right where we left off. We’ll be happy, you’ll see.”
Caught in desperate dreams, Prince Otavas stirred but couldn’t wake.
The cart jerked over the corner of a paving stone heaved slightly out of place, bounced twice, and crashed to the left as the wheel popped off the end of the axle. Thrown violently against the side of the cart, he did what he could to protect his precious burden, then, as the cousins continued to run, found enough voice to yell, “Stop!” Shaken but unhurt, he had Wheyra and Kait unhook the back wall and he lowered himself carefully down to the road.
He sent Otanon to pick up the wheel and called the others to his side. “I know nothing about these things,” he told them. “But without the cart, how will we get my heart home?”
While the others stared blankly at nothing, Wheyra, her baby’s tiny corpse cradled against her chest, dragged her gaze from the axle to the wheel to the old man. “Los … cotter p … in,” she said. Although death had robbed her voice of most of its expression, the little that remained clearly suggested the solution was so obvious it shouldn’t have needed mentioning.
* * * *
Traffic became increasingly chaotic the closer to the Capital they rode. The youngest son of the Emperor might have been snatched away in the night, but commerce continued. After thirteen days, Vree had thought herself comfortable in the saddle, able to deal with anything that might come up. She was wrong.
*Vree! There’s a wagon coming right at you! Watch out for those kids! Who let that slaughtering chicken loose!*
*Stop flicking my eyes around.*
*You’re not watching!*
*And you’re not helping!*
The Capital grew larger, dominating the horizon. At the end of the South Road, one of the city’s seven double arched gates gaped wide enough to admit a pair of wagons side by side. Behind the wall, orange-tiled roofs climbed a gentle slope, drawing the eye inward and upward to the domes and spires of a dozen temples and then finally to the jewel at the apex of the city. The cluster of buildings that made up the Imperial Palace shone brilliantly white under the midday sun. Here and there, a flash of gleaming metal marked a polished copper roof and Vree thought she could see the flicker of a hundred flags.
All her life, she’d heard stories about the Capital, but none of them had prepared her for its immensity. It was larger than she’d imagined. Larger, she suspected, than anyone could imagine. And for the palace to be so clearly visible at such a distance…
*The garrison and the town besides could fit into one of the palace courtyards.*
*Twice,* Bannon agreed.
As they rode between the first of the tombs, traffic became even worse. They were part of a solid mass of people heading toward the city, caught up and carried along, their horses held to the pace around them but adding the slight advantage of height. The noise level grew—almost every conversation concerned the missing prince—and so did the smell.
*You could close your eyes and know the size of this place by the stench alone,* Bannon muttered.
Hovels and shacks of every description leaned against the outer wall. Naked children peered around the edges of elegant tombs while their elder siblings searched for opportunities on the road.
At the gate, years of training took over, and Vree studied the entrance to the Capital the way she’d study any city she might have to one day enter under arms. The wall was about twenty feet high and about ten feet broad at the bottom. Built of concrete rubble strengthened with bonding courses of ironstone, faced with flint and finished with chamfered stone bases, it still looked able to withstand the crash of troops against it but the years had definitely opened the way to more subtle attacks.
*Lots of good handholds,* Bannon observed. *And I don’t think they’ve got guards stationed in those towers.*
*There’re two by the gate.*
*So what?*
*Maybe they think this place is just too big to attack.*
Feeling as though the city were looming over her, Vree could only agree.
To her surprise, the Capital became much less overwhelming once they passed through the gate and turned onto a street that followed the inner arc of the wall. But the people
… In the Sixth Province, in the south of the Empire, there were few variations on dark hair and dark eyes and cinnamon brown to deep olive skin. Even though as an assassin she’d had contact with the world outside the army, Vree was used to people who essentially looked and dressed the same.
Tall, short, pale, dark, fat, thin, long hair, cropped hair, no hair. A group of people—impossible to tell if they were men or women or both—draped head to toe in multicolored flowing scarves, drifted across the road in front of them, their gauzy clothing making it appear they were pushed by an errant breeze. A hugely fat man, a monkey balanced on one shoulder, elbowed his way through the crowd oblivious to the ill will trailing him. A woman, no taller than a child, stomped along, chin thrust out, both hands resting on belt knives as though daring anyone to mention her size.
The language of the Empire predominated although the liquid syllables of the south had been replaced by a harder sound.
Vree recognized a Beltrain mercenary, the gold rings of a dozen successful campaigns glittering in his beard, and watched the stately progress of a pair of Ilagian merchants, their patrician features and ebony skin making the rest of the crowd seem ill-defined in comparison. A yellow-haired couple, spitting guttural syllables at each other, had skin so pale she was certain she could see blood move beneath it. A laughing cluster of young men and women had dyed their left arms green. At least, Vree assumed it was dye.
Bright colors turned the kilts, trousers, robes, shirts, tunics, mantles, cloaks, hats, hoods, and bare skin into an almost painful assault on the eyes.
“He’s a holy man,” Gyhard grunted, following her line of sight.
Crimson and blue strips circling his body, gray and white feathers stuck into the tangled mass of his hair, he leaped from one foot to the other, painted genitals bouncing about in a separate dance of their own.
Vree tore her gaze away. “He’s a lunatic,” she muttered.
Gyhard had been looking forward to Vree’s reaction to the Capital, had been looking forward to seeing it freshly through her eyes. The loss of the prince changed all that. “We’ll be leaving the horses at a stable up ahead. They’re not permitted any farther into the city than this.” He glanced over at her and noted her expression for the first time. “Are you going to be all right?” His tone dared her not to be.
She snorted. “I can climb into a dark room over the bleeding body of its guardian with no idea of what’s waiting for me inside. I can handle this.”
“Good.” Pulling his gelding’s head around, Gyhard deftly maneuvered past a cart of spilled cabbages and its cursing owner.
Glaring an urchin away from her stirrup, Vree followed.
* * * *
*So now what?*
*I don’t know.* Vree swallowed the last mouthful of beer in her tankard and covertly watched her glowering companion from over the rim.
*So ask.*
*He doesn’t know either.*
*I thought you were going to convince him to go after the prince.*
*Yeah, right. He hasn’t listened to a word I’ve said all day.*
They’d spent the afternoon collecting a hundred different fragments of rumor…
“The foreign singer who allowed the prince to be taken’ll be beheaded for treason.”
“Lady Death herself run off with the prince and struck the singer woman down as a rival, like.”
“The prince is dead, that’s why no one saw him taken outa the city.”
“If his Majesty’s searchin’ outside the city, then His Highness ain’t in the city.”
… and the evening sitting in the common room of a grimy inn eating food that could have been prepared by army cooks. Rumor had it that the truth eventually ended up at the Iron Dog. Vree broke a splinter of wood off the edge of the scarred table and dug at a piece of gristle caught in her teeth. Rumor, she decided, didn’t know what the slaughtering blazes it was talking about.
“If that singer woman says they were dead, I believe her.” Across the room, a very drunk woman in the uniform of a city guard slapped her palm against the table. “I seen the dead up and walkin’, I tell you.”
If not for Gyhard’s reaction, Vree would’ve ignored her; one more rumor that made no sense in a city of rumors that made no sense.
*He looks like he’s seen a ghost.*
*Or heard one.*
Surrounded by a jeering crowd, the guard lurched up onto her feet, eyes narrowed and jaw thrust out. “I’m tellin’ you, there ain’t no one robbing them tombs! Them bodies are walkin’ out on their own!”
“And then walkin’ off with the prince?” someone called.
“Why not? Singer woman says the two young guys was dead!”
“She got hit on the head,” someone else yelled.
“I didn’t.”
“Yeah, but you ain’t got enough brains to piss with.”
Hands flat on the table, she leaned forward until her nose nearly touched the nose of the last man to speak. “I don’t like you,” she growled.
He stood. She straightened with him until she stared up into his face a good six inches above her own. “The dead don’t walk,” he told her, daring her to argue.
She thought about it for a moment, then self-preservation overruled the beer. Scooping her helm up off the bench, she staggered for the door, muttering, “I know what I seen.”
Hot fingers closed around her wrist. Vree stared from Gyhard’s hand to his face. His eyes were so completely expressionless that if not for his heated grip she would’ve thought he’d abandoned Bannon’s body and left it empty.
“I have to talk to that guard,” he said quietly.
Vree put down her tankard and shook her head. “Look, you don’t believe …”
But, quite obviously, he did.
* * * *
They caught up to her before she got very far.
“Why should I tell you anythin’?” she asked, spitting into the gutter. “Yer just like them. Like all of them. Got busted down a rank ’cause I told what I saw. Got laughed at. You heard ’em, laughing. Well, no more. The two of you can just take yerselves outa my way.”
“I believe you,” Gyhard insisted through clenched teeth.
“Sod off.” Shoving her helm down on her head, she started to push by.
Gyhard nodded toward the dark crease of an alley. “Vree.” A moment later, he picked up the fallen helm and followed.
Her eyes wide shadows in the pale oval of her face, the guard stared at the woman kneeling over her. “I ain’t never seen anyone move so fast,” she panted, terror chasing the alcohol from her voice. “Yer hurtin’ me.”
Vree moved the blade a fraction of an inch. “I know. Remember it.”
He’d been uncertain of what would happen when he’d given the silent order, uncertain whether she’d even follow it, but years of army training had apparently made some responses instinctive. He stepped over the sprawl of legs and squatted by the guard’s right shoulder where he could see her face. Vree shifted her own position slightly to give him room, and it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps it had nothing to do with army training. An argument could be raised that they were working as a team.
A team. He didn’t have time for that now, not now, so he pushed it away. “Tell me what you saw,” he said softly.
“What I saw …”
“You said, you saw the dead up and walking.”
Her gaze locked on Vree’s face, she swallowed and told him everything.
When she finished, making allowances for darker skin, Gyhard was the paler of the two. “How old was the old man?”
“Real old.”
“You’re certain that you heard singing?”
“Yeah, but not with words.” For the first time she dared to turn her head enough to look at him. “Slaughter it. You do believe me.”
“I said I did.”
“Well, you’ll excuse me fer not believin’ you.”
*What a load of crap.*
*Are you sure?*
*Dead men don’t walk, sister-mine.*
*Two lives don’t live in one body.*
*It’s not the same thing.*
Vree stood as Gyhard did, daggers disappearing as she moved. *Are you sure?* she asked again. *Because I’m not.* She could feel Gyhard trembling even though she couldn’t see it. “What now?”
“I think we’d best go talk to that foreign singer.”
“We don’t know where she is.”
“If she was knocked unconscious late last night, she’s still at the Healers’ Hall.” He started out of the alley. “You may have to get us past a guard.”
*Oh no! One whole guard! Can we possibly do it?*
*Shut up, Bannon.* She fell into step at Gyhard’s side. “We’ll manage.”
Lying where she’d been thrown, one finger lightly resting on the bead of blood marking her throat, the guard thanked any gods who might be listening that she’d been forgotten and watched, without moving, until the two strangers disappeared into the night.
Nine
The two dead men who stood at the foot of her bed implored her with their eyes and pleaded with writhing arms and hands that clutched at nothing she could see. Their need engulfed her and Karlene fought for breath under its desperate weight.
“I don’t know what you want,” she gasped.
She could hear them screaming although their mouths were closed. The screams became a Song and just for an instant she thought she understood. Then the instant passed.
Flesh began to decay and fall from the ivory bone beneath. Bits of fingers dropped onto the blanket covering her legs. Even while they rotted, both men continued to beg for her aid. Bone followed flesh, crumbling to dust as she watched until only the eyes remained, burning in a pair of shadows.
Terror closing her throat, she struggled to answer them. “I don’t know what you want …”
“We want to talk.”
Not the voice of nightmare but the voice of a living man. Sleep fled and the shadows at the foot of the bed gained substance. Head throbbing, Karlene lifted herself up onto her elbows, squinting in the mix of moon and starlight that poured through the small, arched window high above her. “Who …?”
