The Trophy Chase Saga

by George Bryan Polivka

  Packer looked at Talon. Her eyes were focused, clear. She nodded her head once, urging him. It was the merest trace of a request, but that’s what it was. It was not a command. It carried no venom. She needed him to go with her, and she wasn’t forcing him. And he knew this was the answer to his prayer. He had asked God that the Hezzan would have some shred of sensitivity, even a secret fear. And though she looked like the Mortach Demal she was, she was being pursued and she needed him.

  “We’re going with her,” Packer said to Delaney and Father Mooring. And he stepped past his grim bodyguard.

  Delaney screwed up his mouth, and then his courage. And he followed. As did Bran Mooring, humming softly.

  The slightest trace of gratitude crossed Talon’s face, a momentary brightening of her eyes, a flash of appreciation.

  “Guards, stay here,” she ordered them in Drammune. And she closed them away, locking them once again in the guest rooms.

  Delaney gritted his teeth, seeing the resolve in his king. He searched for something he could say that wouldn’t seem disrespectful. “I humbly disagree,” he managed.

  “With what?” Packer asked.

  “Dern near everythin’.”

  “Noted,” Packer replied.

  Talon pulled her knife and looked up and down the hallway, listening carefully. All was silent. “Draw your swords.” Delaney quickly drew his, but held it out in the general direction of Talon.

  With a glance, Talon studied Delaney, then Packer, and then the priest. She shook her head and heaved a sigh. Two of them were unarmed, and the one who had a weapon thought she was the enemy. Talon pulled a derringer from her boot and put it in Packer’s hand. “Take this. Shoot only whom I tell you to shoot.”

  He accepted it before he thought. Now he looked at the small pistol lying on his scarred palm. He shook his head. “Talon, I can’t…”

  “What?” she asked, impatient. “You have given up the sword, fine. That is a gun.”

  Packer looked at Father Mooring for help, but the happy priest only shrugged. So he closed his hand around it, looked back at Talon, and nodded.

  Talon moved down the hallway like a cat, her knife held down to her side.

  “Any queen you know of does that?” Delaney offered in a whisper, ostensibly for the priest’s ears.

  “No,” Bran offered. “But I know of one back home who’d do pretty well in a boxing match.” His eyes twinkled as he padded along, trying to keep up.

  Following Talon, they turned a corner and heard voices and footsteps. She quickly ducked into another doorway, a small anteroom. A squad of soldiers went by, maybe a dozen, the iron studs of their sandals clattering. When the sounds faded, Talon opened the door and peered out. “Wait here.”

  “Mightiest person in all the land,” Delaney said in a whisper, “sneakin’ around like she was robbin’ the place. Strike you as peculiar?”

  “Shhh,” Packer glared at him.

  “I can’t help it. She’s tellin’ us wild stories, like she did your Panna. And remember how that ends up, with her killin’ yer swordmaster.”

  Packer closed his eyes, the brute force of Delaney’s accusation hitting him like a mule kick.

  At that moment Talon stepped back into the room. “We are going up to the roof garden,” she said. “It is at the highest point of the palace.”

  “Why up?” Packer asked, caught in his moment of doubt.

  “They are searching for me. There is open rebellion in the palace. They will not expect me to go up to escape.”

  “So we go where there ain’t no exits,” Delaney said, darkly.

  She looked Packer deep in the eye. “ We have no time for debate. If you trust me, follow. If you distrust me, stay.”

  “Well, I don’t trust ye,” Delaney offered. “She’s a killer,” he told Packer. “Don’t forget it.”

  She looked at Delaney. “Yes. But I only kill those who will not shut up.”

  Delaney’s face twisted like he had gotten a mouthful of something awful. He didn’t take his eyes away from hers. But he didn’t speak, either.

  She looked back to Packer. “Choose.”

  “I’m gonna kill her myself,” Delaney said to Father Mooring, in a whisper all of them could hear. “You wait.”

  “You will not kill her,” Packer ordered. Then he turned to Talon. “We will follow you, until you prove untrustworthy.” He turned back to Delaney. “And you will follow me.”

  “What if she tries to kill you, Packer? What if she tries to kill someone else? Do I stand and watch?”

  Packer heard the loyalty bound up in the sailor’s frustration. He looked again at Talon, who seemed to watch and listen from an impassive distance. “Then that’s different,” he said.

  Delaney pressed. “Permission to kill her if she tries to kill one of us, sir?”

  Talon cocked her head, waiting for Packer’s answer. Her look said she expected his response to be mildly interesting, perhaps even amusing.

  “If she tries.” He looked at Delaney. “Until then, you follow. No more questions.”

  “I got my orders, then.” Delaney held his sword in a clenched fist, like a butcher holds a meat cleaver, anxious to begin the day’s work.

  Talon was, in fact, amused. “Excellent decision. Let us go.” She ducked out the door and back into the hallway.

  The party wound its way up several flights of stairs, avoiding voices, and found the great doors to the Hall of Feasts closed but unguarded. It took three of them to draw the bolt and pull one of the huge doors open wide enough for them to slip through one at a time. Delaney stopped on the other side to push it shut, but Talon tapped the top of his head with her knife blade. “There is no time!” she said.

  Delaney whirled to face her, his sword clanging awkwardly on the door. She was already far out of his reach. Then he looked around him. He felt the familiar crick in his neck almost immediately. This one room was almost as big as the entire palace back in Mann. Marble floors, black and slick. Mahogany walls to the ceiling far above. A hundred chandeliers, each holding hundreds of lamps. At the far end of the hall, an enormous white granite staircase rose up to the ceiling like a pyramid, stairs on all four sides, and light pouring down onto it from above. Talon ran toward it.

  At the top of the pyramid was the dais, twenty feet square, and in the middle of it, a few more steps rose to the throne. Sunlight streamed into the room as though it was not the Hezzan, but some relative of the sun who reigned from up there. Those in the great hall could see the throne only if they were almost on the stairway, and of course during royal banquets, the stairs were ringed with guards. Packer marveled. Being granted an audience with the Hezzan under such circumstances was guaranteed to raise one’s heart rate. If only from the climb.

  Talon reached the stairs and climbed them two at a time. The others followed. She did not stop at the dais, but walked across the catwalk to the right and out onto the roof. At the top of the stairs something caught Delaney’s eye. He tapped Packer’s shoulder and said, “Look up there.”

  Packer looked up to see a sword fastened to the wall, out of reach, but prominent. It was his own. The one he’d left on the burning decks of the Camadan, placed here by Talon where it could serve as an inspiration—or perhaps as a reminder of that dark day.

  “Come!” Talon ordered.

  They obeyed.

  The view from the roof was spectacular. Unfazed by either the climb or the view, Talon sheathed her knife.

  “This way,” she said, leading to a small stone structure, a box no more than five feet high, and about as wide. She pulled a key from her pocket and used it to open a small, square, heavy wooden door. Inside was a tray, about four feet across. “Get in,” she said to Packer.

  “Whoa now!” Delaney reacted with full-scale alarm. “Don’t you do it!”

  Talon grimaced and climbed in herself. She turned back and held out her hand. “Get in. It goes down to the lower floors, to the kitchen and below. It is a mechanism used by ser
vants for catering to the Hezzan. Now it will be our escape.”

  “But all of us can’t fit,” Packer noted.

  “There are ropes here,” and she pointed to them, two thin ropes that ran just inside the door on the left. “We will lower ourselves using these. Once we are at the bottom, we will get out and signal the others that they should pull it back up. Then they will join us.”

  Delaney went crimson. “No, no, no! There is no way you are gettin’ in that thing with the likes a’ her. You’re the heavin’ king, Packer Throme. And that’s Talon!” he said once more, as if repeating it often enough would finally force it into Packer’s head. “And if you care to take a notice, she’s got a big knife in there with her.”

  “And you have a gun,” Talon said to Packer easily.

  Packer moved toward the opening. “I’ve made my decision. I told her we’d follow.”

  Delaney grabbed his sleeve. “Until she proved herself not worth followin’! Packer, what’s she gotta do to prove she ain’t Hezzan? Murder?” His voice whined like a windlass spinning free. He pointed at the dark opening of the dumbwaiter. “She could slice you into stew meat before you knew she wasn’t just stretchin’ her arms to yawn!” He did not let go of Packer’s shirtsleeve.

  Packer set his face, spoke sternly. “Am I your king, or am I not?”

  “Well, aye, ye are, and ain’t that jus’ my whole point?”

  Packer looked at his sleeve, and Delaney let go. He looked glum. And then he brightened. “Hey, how about you just let me go with her?” Delaney figured he had solved it. “Then I’ll send the devil-blasted thing right back up to ye!”

  “No,” Talon said from within the dark space. “I will not leave the King of Nearing Vast up here unprotected.”

  “I’ll go, then,” Father Mooring offered.

  “I will not leave Packer here without protection,” she repeated. She eyed Delaney coldly.

  “Without pro—” he was red in the face now, and wanted to give her everything that was on his mind and in his heart, but he couldn’t. There was too much. Like a herd of cattle trying to enter a squeeze-chute all at once, nothing at all got through.

  Packer climbed into the small space.

  “Pull down on the nearest rope,” Talon instructed.

  He set the derringer down on the wooden surface of the tray, and pulled. The platform creaked and moved downward. Delaney’s forlorn look seared into Packer’s memory. It was the look of a man losing his best friend.

  The platform moved easily, lightly, and with a smooth speed down into the darkness.

  Delaney looked at Father Mooring accusingly. “You coulda said somethin’!”

  Bran shrugged. “His mind was made up.”

  “Ye could have told him God wanted him not to go.”

  “But I don’t know whether God wanted him to go.”

  “Ah, what’s a priest good for, anyways? I never had no need of ’em.”

  “Well, I could pray,” Bran offered mildly.

  “Pray?” Delaney said glumly, sitting down on the hard tile of the garden walkway. “Yeah, ye could. Ye could pray that we weren’t the two biggest idiots who ever lived, standin’ up here on top of everything in the world Drammune, waitin’ for a murderer to prove she ain’t worth trustin’. Ye could pray I wasn’t the most worthless dunderhead ever stepped foot off a ship, pretendin’ I had some business protectin’ a king. Yeah. Ye could pray. Pray we had a king who didn’t find it just a fine idea to climb down a rat hole with a rat. Ye could pray that.”

  Bran sat. “All right then,” he said gently. “Let’s.” And he bowed his head.

  Huk Tuth felt his first trace of misgiving as he approached the Great Meeting Hall of the Hezzan. His brisk step slowed almost imperceptibly. The contingent of guards stationed outside the door, six of them now snapped to attention, wore not the dress reds of their station, but battle crimson. For a moment, he thought they were his own men, somehow arrived from the ships already. But no, the halberds were Hezzan Guard. No matter, he was the Supreme Commander, and only the Hezzan had more authority. “Follow me, all of you,” he said, and strode between and past them.

  They obeyed instantly.

  The Hezzan’s chair was empty. Tuth’s eyes cut back and forth among the four members of the Quarto. None of them stood. None of them recognized his presence, other than to cast haughty eyes in his direction. Because they did not recognize him, neither did any of the rest of the Twelve. His anger grew. He saw behind the Quarto, standing attention against the far wall of the room, two more members of the Hezzan Guard. Tuth drew his knife and approached Pizlar Kank.

  “Stop this man,” Kank said, a noticeable trace of alarm seeping through the cool exterior.

  The two guards behind him stepped forward to block Huk Tuth’s path.

  “Stand aside,” he ordered them. They did not move. “I am your Supreme Commander, and I order you to stand aside.”

  Neither budged. Tuth’s iron-gray teeth showed in a flash, but before his knife moved, before he spoke again, his eye caught the slight modification to the uniform, the telltale red triangle that was the end of a red sash, the belt of the Zealot, peeking out from the waistline of these two guards. He glanced behind him. The guards he had just brought with him, to help execute his wrath, wore the same. Their beards were ragged, their hair shaggy.

  Now Pizlar Kank’s eyebrows rose. “Did you have a message for the Quarto?”

  “Do the Hezzan Guard now serve the Quarto, and not the Hezzan?”

  “Not that this is any of your affair, but since you have proven your Worthiness many times over, I will tell you that even as you entered, we were debating a motion to declare the Hezzan Unworthy.”

  As the blood ran from his face, Huk Tuth considered how best now to counter this mockery of all that was Drammune. He didn’t know where to begin to plumb the depths of this debasement. A self-appointed board of judges, daring to pass sentence on a Hezzan? A wife of a Hezzan, who set herself up in power by kowtowing to such conceits? A raft of Hezzan Guards, abandoning their one sworn mission, obeying these pretenders rather than direct orders from the military?

  “You have approached the Quarto,” Kank said, his arrogance fully returned. “But as you seem to have no business here, I will ask the Guard to escort you to your chambers, where you, too, will await our judgment.”

  Tuth spun around and saw it, felt it—the betrayal and treason these guardsmen were perfectly prepared to execute. He looked one more time around the table, saw the empty chair from which Sool Kron had brought forth this monstrosity. And then he knew what he needed to do. He turned back to Pizlar Kank. He scowled. Then he said, “I claim the Kar Ixthano, for an Unworthy man slain by my hand.”

  “And whose dominion would you claim?”

  “That of Sool Kron.”

  There was a long silence. “He is dead?”

  “You will find him sprawled on the stairs two floors below us.”

  Kank nodded to one of the guards, who disappeared out the door behind Tuth. “What are your proofs of his Unworthiness?”

  A glimmer shone from Tuth’s eye as he said, “He was a politician.”

  Kank cleared his throat. No one in the room dared even to shift his position. Kank sniffed. “Can you be more specific?”

  “He said he would help me overthrow the Hezzan. He called her a vile stench. He also said he despised the Quarto.”

  Kank nodded. “We have known Sool Kron to be disloyal. And you could be very, very helpful to us.” Kank looked at his compatriots, who nodded back at him. “The Ixthano is granted,” he said breezily. “You may take your seat, Chief Minister Tuth.”

  The dumbwaiter, lowered by hand, passed the doorway to the Hall of Feasts, then no others for quite a while, at least four or five floors by Packer’s reckoning. During this time he heard nothing but the soft banging of the tray against the sides of the chute, and the occasional creak of the ropes. His back ached from the awkwardness of the angle required to pull t
he rope downward. That ache reminded him of another time, not too long ago, when he was cramped in darkness and unsure of his destination. Then, he had listened carefully to the foreign and terrifying voice of Talon, who walked alongside a cart filled with barrels as he stowed away on the Trophy Chase. He was afraid of being found out by her then. Now she was in the barrel with him.

  He remembered offering himself up to God then, putting himself in God’s hands. A glow of satisfaction filled him, thinking of all he’d been through since then. He was surprised and pleased that the fear in him seemed to melt away. God still had him in His hands, and He could still crush Packer, or protect him, just as He chose. Talon might kill him yet. But even if she did, he knew now that it would somehow work to the Almighty’s ends.

  He saw light from the outline of a doorway.

  “Stop here,” Talon said.

  Packer’s disfigured right hand burned him, aching from the effort. He was glad to stop at the outline of the next doorway, and see the dim light seep in from the cracks along its edges. And now the faint smell of lye and ammonia reached him.

  “Open it.” Talon ordered.

  Packer pushed. “I think it’s locked.”

  “Move to your left.”

  He squeezed himself to one side. He sat still a moment as Talon shifted her weight, and then suddenly the door exploded, slamming open. Packer saw her leg extended for a fraction of a second, and then he saw a blur, felt a wisp of a breeze, and she was standing outside looking around the room. He was sure he had never seen anyone move so quickly, and certainly not with such precision and such power. Not even Senslar Zendoda.

  “Are you staying there?” she asked, as though she had been standing there for several minutes rather than several seconds.

  He climbed out into a small kitchen. It was no more than ten feet square in size. This couldn’t be the kitchen for the entire palace. A few pots hung above a small counter, and there was a washing basin and a small stove, with a stovepipe turning at a right angle near the ceiling. A large cutting block jutted up from the floor to their left, an island built near the middle of the kitchen. Meals for a dozen or so might be prepared here, but not for the number of guests that could fill the Great Meeting Hall above them. Talon started for the door, outlined now in a brighter light. “This way.”