by Tom Lloyd
‘Good. Time to put on a show and welcome our players back.’
Nai moved slowly down the alley, listening for movement up ahead. Hearing nothing he glanced back at Amber, who stood at the corner, his eyes on the ground, desperately clutching the staff Nai had found him. Nai had changed the colour of their clothes with a simple glamour, but there was no disguising Amber’s height and bulk. Only the listless bewilderment of the population had allowed them to get so far, but he knew they shouldn’t attempt to head out of the industrial district of Wheel.
The city walls were intended for defence rather than containment, but once the search for Menin soldiers got organised someone would send out cavalry patrols. The Menin hadn’t mistreated the population of Byora, but Nai certainly didn’t want to be standing next to a high-ranking officer when they decided what to do with their conquerors.
He beckoned Amber over, but he didn’t seem to notice.
‘Amber,’ Nai hissed, ‘Amber, come here.’ As always he was careful to use his name as much as possible, the only name the Menin had left now. For his entire career the soldier had answered to ‘Amber’ rather than his birth-name, and that detail was likely all that had saved Amber’s mind.
Nai shook his head in irritation and went to fetch him, pulling him down the alley by the arm until he started following. When they came to a fork, Nai stopped the big man and fumbled in one pocket for a small silver-backed mirror.
‘This takes me back,’ he muttered under his breath as he used the mirror to check around the corner that it was clear. ‘For an erudite man, I think my former master rather enjoyed running from a mob every few years.’
He gave Amber a smile, but it was lost on the man – perhaps just as well since Nai’s former master, the necromancer Isherin Purn, hadn’t exactly endeared himself to Amber the one time they met.
‘Bet you never thought you’d have to rely on my skills at evading a witch-hunt, eh, Amber?’
Satisfied the way was clear, Nai looked to see what buildings were in view. ‘Right, we’re not far from the city wall now. If they intend searching every house they’ll start at the wall and head back in, so we’ll stay here.’
Behind one wall of the alley he heard sounds of activity, a hammer and chisel at work. With luck whoever was in there was alone and there would be no need for spilled blood, but Nai was a necromancer. He didn’t see the point in killing without a purpose, but his survival instinct was a strong as any white-eye’s. He pushed Amber out of view of the door and reached into his pocket again.
The last time he’d seen Amber, they’d fought in a tavern in Breakale. Since then Nai had been lying low, trying to decide upon his next course of action, but he was never without the few essentials any good necromancer needed to escape self-righteous persecution. He withdrew one of these now and held it lightly between thumb and forefinger, ready for use as he rapped on the door and waited for it to be answered.
With his sometime benefactor, the vampire Zhia Vukotic, off to the West, Nai’s thoughts had been turning towards stepping away from the conflict entirely. It wasn’t his fight, after all, and he owed no one much, but a necromancer knew the value of earning favour. Some instinct told him Azaer would prefer the term master to benefactor, and that could prove lethal to a mage of Nai’s minor skills, but King Emin was sufficiently amoral to be a good alternative.
The King of Narkang was unburdened by piety and ever the champion of pragmatic business. He would almost certainly be happy to buy Amber, and consequently the magical link he bore to Ilumene, off Nai. He didn’t expect much negotiation to be possible, but anything would be better than staying here. He glanced at Amber. The big soldier was near-insensate.
Though they’d parted on bad terms and Amber was a man who lived by the sword, Nai had enough respect for him to think he deserved better than a club to the head or a hangman’s noose. He had no idea what sort of life King Emin would offer him, but it couldn’t be any worse: they both had to rely on that.
The workshop door jerked open and a slender Litse poked his head out, pushing back long wisps of blond hair as he peered down at Nai.
The necromancer gave him his best smile and raised what he was holding to show the man. It was a peach stone, cleaned and smoothed, with three symbols carved into each side. ‘I was asked to give you this,’ he said.
The man looked from the stone to Nai and back, his mouth opening to speak, but confusion made him hesitate and quick as a snake Nai shoved the stone into the man’s mouth. The Litse recoiled, closing his mouth reflexively as he did. He took a frightened step back and then stopped, his expression of fright fading into glass-eyed blankness. Without waiting, Nai dragged Amber inside with him, nudging the Litse aside and closing the door behind him.
When a voice quavered, ‘Who are you?’ he turned and saw a young boy frozen in the act of rising, a chisel in his hand as though he was ready to attack Nai. The boy took a second look at Amber and opened his mouth to shout, but Nai already had his knife to the unresisting man’s throat.
‘Don’t scream or I kill him,’ he commanded, and ushered the man, clearly the boy’s father, forward. He moved willingly, staring vacantly ahead at the space between them.
‘What have you done to him?’ the boy asked quietly, trembling as he spoke.
‘I’ve put a spell on him,’ Nai admitted. ‘He’s entirely under my control now. If you don’t want me to order him to put his head in the fire, you’ll not cry out or try to escape, understand?’
‘A spell?’
The necromancer nodded and lowered his knife, pointedly turning his back on the man. ‘Go and stand by the door,’ he ordered. The peach stone was a popular necromancer’s tool, but it was only useful for short periods, unless one had an inexhaustible supply of people: the spell would last until the stone was taken out of his mouth, but the victim could neither do it themselves, nor eat or drink with it in.
‘What do you want?’ The boy was no more than eleven or twelve winters, Nai guessed, old enough to be learn a trade but still just a skinny child when it came to intruders.
‘Somewhere to spend the day quietly. We’ll leave once nightfall comes.’
‘He’s a Menin.’ He pointed at Amber.
‘One the enemies of his people are keen to capture, so I cannot allow the duchess’ men to hang him before then, do you understand?’
The boy nodded and Nai helped Amber into a chair, where the big man slumped wearily down.
‘What’s your name, boy?’
‘Isalail, Isalail Hesh.’
‘Well Isalail, can you tell me if anyone’s likely to come visiting today?’ The boy shook his head and Nai looked around the small workshop, then walked over to a doorway in the far wall, watching Isalail out of the corner of his eye as he did so. The boy was staring at his father, clearly unable to understand why he was just standing there rather than grabbing a log and hitting Amber over the head with it.
Then Amber grunted and jerked up in his seat, as though waking from a bad dream. One of his scimitars was out of its scabbard before he was even aware of it, and that action seemed to end any thoughts Isalail might have had of escape.
The door led to a store rather than family quarters. ‘Your father is safe,’ Nai said. ‘Where’s your mother?’
‘Dead, sir.’
‘Brothers, sisters?’
‘Also dead. It’s just me and Da.’
‘Good.’ Nai returned and said to the man, ‘You, tie your son to the chair – not tight enough to hurt him, mind.’
The man at once moved to obey, fetching a coil of rope from a nail on the wall while his son shrank back in his seat.
‘Don’t worry, Isalail,’ Nai added, ‘you won’t be harmed, but I don’t want to have to put the same spell on you. It is not without its risks.’
Tears spilled from the boy’s face. ‘You said he was safe!’
‘And he is. There is, however, an unfortunate side-effect of the spell – he is perfectly safe until I break i
t, but afterwards he will be vulnerable to ah … outside influences. Before we leave I’ll show you what to do, but you will have to make sure you don’t leave him alone, or in the dark, until dawn – that’s very important.’
‘Why?’ Isalail asked miserably.
‘You really don’t want to know,’ Nai said firmly as he watched the father secure the first knot. ‘Is that too tight? Does it hurt?’
Isalail shook his head and looked away.
‘Good. Look at me: we’ll get through the day and then we’ll be gone, and come the dawn your life will be back to normal.’ He paused and walked over to Amber. Finding the Menin’s purse he pulled out two silver levels and dropped them on the worktable. ‘Back to normal,’ Nai repeated, ‘but best you fetch a priest and pay for an exorcism after, just in case. Now, do you have any food?’
Ardela scratched at her belly for the fiftieth time that day and tried not to swear. The dress was filthy and stank like a cavalryman’s crotch, but that was her own fault for getting one so rancid. The fact that it came with fleas was a delight too far, but there was little she could do about it now. She had sat on the fringes of the crowd outside the Ruby Tower for three days, fading into the background alongside a hundred other broken souls in dirty-white capes or scarves. Brutally cropped hair coupled with fading bruises and a haunted look in her eye had been all the explanation she’d needed to be there; folk knew what that indicated in the wake of invasion. They’d seen she belonged with the rest of the broken.
The truth was she’d chopped off her own hair, and for the second, she’d had no trouble talking some off-duty soldier into doing that. Though she had encouraged him to vent his petty frustrations on her, the man had been too practised at beating an unresisting woman for her liking.
No different to dogs, when they’re worked up, Ardela thought as she walked through the market in Burn’s main square, idly begging for food. The beating I’d asked for, sure enough, but more fool him for not stopping when I said.
A woman held out a hunk of bread to her and Ardela accepted it like a votive offering, tears of thanks in her eyes. The woman looked embarrassed at that and gestured for Ardela to move along, but she was far from the only one to have taken pity on Ruhen’s Children. They were a symbol now: the woes of Byora given form.
The mood in this quarter of the Circle City was strange, a rare mix of pent-up frustration and ill-defined optimism. The priests had been displaced from their district of Hale, and now the Menin were gone too, murdered or chased away as the priests had been.
In their place stood the white-cloaked followers of the child Ruhen, now divided into three distinct groups: the broken and wretched beggars were Ruhen’s legitimacy, the proof that the priests had betrayed the people of Byora and their Gods had spurned them; the soldiers who bolstered the numbers of Byoran and Ruby Tower guards, Ruhen’s burgeoning power, and the preachers, who were his voice in the Land.
Ardela tore hungrily at the bread as she made her way back to the highway that ran down one side of the square. It was the main route between the looming dagger-shapes of the district of Eight Towers and the outer wall. She didn’t know why they were here yet: Luerce, first among these filthy disciples, had led his ragged flock there early that morning, and she’d known in her bones something significant was coming. As she reached the crowd a collective moan rose up on the air and Ardela turned to see the Duchess of Byora’s carriage approaching. She joined the rest of the crowd on their knees, reaching out as though for alms, droning their nonsensical prayer for intercession.
Ardela was furthest from the carriage when it stopped, but then the object of their worship stepped down and advanced towards them, his big bodyguard close behind. Ruhen wore a long white tunic and a single pearl at his throat. He looked to be ten or eleven winters, but Ardela knew from King Emin’s intelligence that he was far younger – and yet he surveyed the people of Byora with a king’s distant composure rather than a child’s curiosity.
Right then Ardela saw why they all believed, or hoped to believe: Ruhen looked both ethereal and immortal, a child apart from the rest of humanity, and he commanded their attention as easily as the grey-skinned Demi-God Koteer, who formed part of his retinue.
Let’s see how lasting their belief is, she thought cynically.
As the six-or seven-score beggars started forward towards Ruhen, the child’s bodyguard raised a hand before they could reach him and called, ‘Clear the road!’ One hand rested on his sword-hilt. ‘Make way!’
He wore a Ruby Tower uniform, but to Ardela’s practised eye it had been modified for combat, despite the gaudy gold buttons. While he wore a beautifully worked bastard sword on his hip there was another secured on his back, wrapped entirely in cloth.
Instinctively the beggars shrank back and retreated off the road. Ardela pushed her way to the front of the group and sank to her knees, ignoring those who tried to jostle her out of position. Ruhen approached them with a small, indulgent smile that had no place on a child’s face. Ardela felt her hand twitch as he came less than a dozen yards from her, but she made no other move. The renegade man of the Brotherhood, Ilumene, was too close for her liking, so she did nothing but mimic the others as they basked in his attention.
Somewhere off to her right she became aware of voices, breaking this moment of calm. Further down the road people on foot were heading towards them. The voices grew in number and volume while she strained to see past those with her at the roadside. Folk started to drift over from the market in the square, obscuring her view further, but Ardela couldn’t be seen to be impatient, so instead she watched those around her, the slack-faced addicts and haggard survivors of a region at war.
On the other side of the road was a group of labourers and shopboys. Most were looking down the road at whoever was coming, but a few stared at Ruhen still, and Ardela felt a prickle run down her neck. Once a devotee of the Lady and now confidante of her Mortal-Aspect, Legana, Ardela knew in an instant something was coming, some twist of chance she might yet be able to exploit.
She turned her attention back to the newcomers as folk began to gasp and exclaim, her hand automatically tightening when she saw who was approaching. A group of eighty or ninety people had entered the square and were marching towards Ruhen, not quite in military order, but still in three distinct columns. At their head was a man in black, but the bulk of the rest were far more colourful and instantly recognisable, dressed identically to the man and woman she’d personally murdered in Tirah on Midsummer’s Day.
In a crowd the Harlequins would have looked almost comical, dressed as they were head to foot in diamond-patchwork clothes, but for the blank expressions on their white masks, each with a bloody teardrop under the right eye and slender swords crossed on their backs. They walked with an effortless gait that made their companions look awkward by comparison, but even they had an athletic aspect to them that suggested they were also of the Harlequin clans.
Ardela slowly forced herself to unclench her fist. Here at last was evidence that the murders King Emin had arranged on Midsummer’s Day had not been senseless. It made little difference to the weight on her soul, but any small comfort was not to be rejected.
Ruhen started forward to personally greet the Harlequins’ leader, the man in black, who Ardela remembered was named Venn. He dropped to one knee, head bowed low before his master. In the next instant the rest of the Harlequins did the same and a collective gasp ran through the crowd: the Harlequins, who served no master and bowed to no authority bar Lord Death himself knelt to Ruhen.
The power of that symbol was clear for all to see. They knelt to a child whose followers preached a new way of worship, free of the burdens and strictures of power-maddened clerics. They made obeisance to the promise of peace in a Land beset by war, and in that moment the watching people of Byora felt the blessing of the Gods upon them all.
‘Heretic!’ came a sudden cry from across the road, and a man started running towards Ruhen, who had moved ahead of Ilu
mene and was momentarily out of reach of his bodyguard. A second man started forward in the next instant, a knife in his hand, and two more broke from left and right to cover their fellows. Screams rang out from the beggars and Ardela wasn’t alone in starting forward, but before any of them could reach Ruhen Ilumene was there.
Ardela watched Ilumene explode into movement, thin knives appearing in each hand. Unable to get in front of Ruhen in time, he barged forward at the first ambusher and kicked him in the side. The man was knocked sideways by the blow and before he’d hit the ground Ilumene was turning away the second’s blade, then in the next instant swinging around to stab him in the kidney. He whipped his other knife up across the man’s throat and slashed it open before returning to the first.
Ilumene’s kick had knocked the man right over, but he found himself on his hands and knees only a yard or two from where Ruhen stood motionless. He lunged forward at the child, but Ruhen finally moved, stepping neatly away from the reaching weapon and into the protective lee of the Harlequin Venn. Ilumene pounced on the man and stabbed him in the neck, even as the crowd of beggars had started rushing forward, intent on reaching the remaining two attackers following close behind. Ardela’s hand was inside her cape, her fingers closing around a dart tucked into the waistband of her dress, before she’d even thought.
She gave a practised flick of the wrist as she passed Ruhen and threw the dart. There wasn’t time to watch it strike; her attention was already on the remaining ambushers, but amidst the chaos of voices and running feet she thought she heard a yelp from the boy. Ardela continued on, side by side with a thin man whose arm was covered in weeping sores.
She let him reach the last of the ambushers first. The man did not check his pace as he shrieked with rage and clawed at the man’s eyes. The first knife-blow to his stomach he appeared not to notice; the second was hard enough to drive the wind from his lungs, but then Ardela leapt on the ambusher.
