“I have friends,” he said.
The man who accepted the halfling’s coin nodded. “Friends have value.” He set down his spear. He took the larger mask, holding it very carefully. “Especially friends like the Hammer That Falls.”
The other man opened the door as his partner returned the mask and the copper coin. The chamber beyond was lit with many lanterns, and carpeted with many rugs. A number of people sat inside, drinking tea.
“Corvus!” one of them called, and jumped to his feet. Tobin wore the same kind of shift as Corvus did and had a cushion tied to the top of his head with a length of twine. The cushion’s purpose became obvious when the goliath, on standing, knocked his head against the low stone ceiling. If he felt it, he made no sign. He rushed across the room and gathered Corvus in his huge arms. “I never doubted you would come!”
Corvus held his breath against Tobin’s hug for a moment, then said, “I have not always deserved your faith in me, Tobin Tok Tor, but I swear I will earn it now. I swear this on stone.”
A number of mutters and hisses from the others in the room caused Corvus to look to his halfling guide.
The small man nodded at Tobin. “That there’s the Hammer That Falls. We don’t know that name you used. We don’t want to know it.”
Corvus retraced his memory. “You never told me your name,” he said.
“And you never told me yours. I guessed it, bird-head man, and haven’t used it since. I got no plans to offer up mine or invite you to guess. We don’t use names. That man guarding the door, the one who didn’t talk? Been married to my sister for fifteen years and I got no idea what his name is.”
Corvus considered that. “Does she know his name?”
“How should I know?” the halfling answered. “Last I heard, they live down by the docks where I can’t go. I’d have to send a letter to ask, and I wouldn’t know who to address it to, now would I?”
Other than the two companions and the halfling man, there were a half-dozen people in the room, evenly divided by gender and representing a gamut of races and roles across Emirate life.
Corvus identified a man who bore no tattoo, but who did wear the symbol of the Crying God as a priest of Ilmater, a member of the only clergy still active in the Skyfire Emirates. A dwarf woman next to Tobin’s place in the circle was obviously a gladiator, and the man next to her wore silks like those of the courtiers in the el Arhapan palace. This man was a firesouled genasi, but Corvus had no doubt he expressed windsoul when he was in Calimport Above. The other three were all slaves, a pair of human women and another halfling man; this one with a demeanor so forgettable that Corvus was sure it had taken years to perfect.
Finally, he said, “You’re Janessar. A resistance cell.”
The maskmaker shrugged and took a cup of tea. “That ain’t a particular person’s name,” he said. “That’s a name lots of folks have heard.”
Fair enough, thought Corvus. He leaned over and removed the masks from his pail. “Whoever you are,” he said, “if you are foes of the genasi of Calimport Above and dedicated to the freeing of slaves, you should know that my intention is to leave this city, and soon. When I go, I will take the Hammer here with me, and a windsouled couple now in the el Arhapan palace. And I will take the women whose masks these are.”
He laid them side by side, scowl and smile.
None of them, not even Tobin, responded.
Eventually, the maskmaker inhaled deeply, then sighed long and loud. “You were right earlier. When you said I’d think you a fool and that I’d heard all kinds of crazy escape talk before. Half right, anyway. I never met a fool quite so big, or heard talk quite so crazy.”
It was Tobin who answered. “We will do it without you, then,” he said.
The halfling looked at his companions. Again, he shrugged.
The dwarf woman next to Tobin leaned in and tapped her split fingernail on Shan’s mask. “This one is with the dressers—has been all afternoon. They’re measuring her for leathers and laying out blades for her to choose from. She doesn’t talk, like the first one, but she hasn’t killed any of the overseers. The stablemasters think they’ve been given a second shot at glory—this one is more like a gladiator than her sister. There are a lot of windsouled around her. Difficult to spring, but perhaps not impossible.”
The firesouled man said, “I can get a message to the heir and the Akanûlan woman, but little more. The master of games has allowed them their weapons, though, and they seem capable. Perhaps if there was a coordinated effort.”
Corvus clicked his tongue. “But this is excellent news!” he said. He pointed to the other mask. “What about Cynda?”
Tobin sniffed. “That is why I was here talking to them, Cor—bird-head man. I have come every day for five days. They will not help me find her, because they believe she is dead.”
The maskmaker looked at Tobin, the expression of sympathy on his face the first sign of anything but artful distance Corvus had noted there. “The ones that get taken up to the Spiritbreaker always come back in a few turns of the glass, Hammer, a day at most. When did she kill that last overseer? Six days ago? Seven?”
Unaccountably, Tobin grinned at Corvus. “See, this is the sticking point, and they will not budge on it. You will be very impressed with me, Ringmaster. I have spotted a flaw in their logic.”
Corvus had as well. “I’m guessing that recalcitrant fighters are taken to some arcanist or dark priest who charms them,” he said. “The strongest of them last little time before they are returned and take up arms on the sand, but our friend never came back. You believe this means she did not survive whatever spells were laid on her.”
The Ilmatari priest spoke for the first time. “Or they killed her when her resistances proved too expensive to overcome. They would have measured her value in the arena against the cost of forcing her to fight. I am sorry, kenku. The Hammer That Falls has spoken of your friend at great length, and it is clear that hers was a rare and gentle soul.”
Corvus nodded. “Rare and gentle and possessed of a greater strength of will than all of us in this room combined. You believe she set a precedent in resisting them until she died. I tell you the precedent is something more than that. She resists them still. El Arhapan is a sadist and an obsessive, and probably the finest judge of fighters in all Faerûn. He will go to any length to break Cynda’s will, and she will go to any length to resist. And survive. She lives. I assure you, she lives.”
The maskmaker spread his hands. He asked, “What do you want us to do?”
Cephas and Ariella quickly established the boundaries of their luxurious prison. They were confined to one wing of the el Arhapan manor, but they soon learned that left a lot of room to cover.
“Four suites of private rooms, including our two,” said Cephas. “The dining chamber, two or three rooms full of couches and cushions, a half-dozen verandas and balconies. And whatever this place is.”
Ariella did not turn from her careful study of the map that made up the floor in the final room they had explored. It showed the city and its environs as far east as the Plain of Stone Spiders and as far west as a wavering line running from the Marching Mountains in the North all the way to the sea in the South. “The disputed boundary between Calimien and Memnonar influence,” she said.
At least they were no longer troubled by the slaves and servants who had initially followed their every step, offering refreshments, baths, or intimate companionship. These men and women greeted Cephas’s attempt to recruit them in an escape attempt with confusion that turned to anger when he persisted. Finally, he himself grew angry enough to chase the staff through a door he and Ariella were denied passage through by an implacable djinni sorcerer who, Ariella advised, was better ignored than engaged.
Now, once again wearing their armor over the simplest clothes they could find, they studied the contents of el Arhapan’s map room.
“I see where Manshaka is meant to be,” said Ariella. “And I suppose this glyph indica
tes the ruins of Schamedar. But what are these numbers in the deep desert east of the Calim River, beyond the Crying God’s Redoubt at Kelter?”
“I believe I know,” said Cephas. “Corvus said el Arhapan leaves the city only to travel to Manshaka or to training camps in the desert. And see, the glyphs for that city are the only ones besides the numbers picked out in gemstones. They look like the symbols around Corvus’s platform.”
“Of course!” said Ariella. “This is not a map. It’s a teleportation circle. An ornate one, designed for just a few locative combinations. That is, if we’re to believe what the kenku said about those camps.”
Before Cephas could answer, a windsouled courtier flew through the open window. Cephas brought his flail up into a ready position, but, to his shock, the man appeared to catch fire.
“He’s transitioning to firesouled!” said Ariella.
“Cephas Earthsouled,” the man said. “Listen. If you are your mother’s son and not your father’s, the house of el Arhapan must fall. Find the foundation stone, and remember the fire at Argentor.”
The man’s skin shifted from silver to burnished copper, and his crystalline hair burned away in flames that persisted around his scalp. “Ariella Kulmina. I am not the only firesouled hidden in this house.”
Those were his last words before Shahrokh flew into the room on a cyclone that flashed lightning. He gestured and the stranger rose into the air, struggling against unseen attackers.
“The kenku’s last words puzzled me,” the djinni said to the trapped man, ignoring Cephas and Ariella. “But the message they hid is now found out. You will show me where your pathetic conspiracy has hidden him in the sewers.” With that, the djinni swept the firesouled genasi back through the window.
Unable to intercede, Ariella and Cephas watched Shahrokh and his captive vanish into the distance.
Cephas turned to her. “I believe the ringmaster has just cued the last act.”
Far below, Marod el Arhapan paced back and forth in the luxurious box of the master of games. He was impatient at the slow pace of the crowds filing in, but exultant to be at his rightful place behind the lectern. This was his place; this was his role. Playing Shahrokh’s political games, parrying with his hopeless son, even warring against the cursed WeavePasha … All of it paled next to the exhilaration of the arena.
An aide approached with a slate covered in chalked figures. After a quick glance, he dashed it onto the ground, the shattered pieces crunching beneath his boots. “No, fool! There will be no other matches on the card. The fight we witness tonight is a fight for the ages! No one will need to be warmed up for this!”
He took his seat, eager for the night to truly begin. He had forced twins to fight one another before, of course.
But never twins who also happened to be Arvoreeni adepts.
Inside the hidden chamber tucked away in Calimport Below, the priest raised his head. “Shahrokh comes,” he said. Then he added, “I fear our friend did not survive the task we set him.” He looked at the others, then at Corvus. “His name was Ravin. He was an excellent chess player.”
All the Jannisars said, in chorus, “His name was Ravin. We will remember.”
Corvus felt helpless. Things were going badly before they had properly begun. He paused in his furious calculations. “Ravin,” he said, committing the name to memory. “I will remember.”
The others began to file out of the chamber, making use of a hidden way on the wall opposite. The maskmaker waved them through, urging speed. He said to Corvus, “Shahrokh is a skylord of the djinn. There are none here who can stand against him.”
Corvus said, “Go, and continue your work. Live.”
The halfling nodded once, and disappeared into the passageway. Once he closed the secret opening, it was undetectable.
Beside him, Tobin said, “Those Janessar are some pretty stout fellows. Can we stand against this Shahrokh?”
“Not even for an instant,” said Corvus. “If you know a way to the Djen Arena, go there and do anything you can to delay the fight between Shan and Cynda. I will deal with the skylord.”
“I know a way to the arena, Corvus, but you should not sacrifice yourself. You just said we cannot stand against him!”
“Good friend,” Corvus said, “there are sacrifices I have not told you of yet. But you must go now. I will not try to stand against Shahrokh. As I said, I will deal with him.”
“They’re still out there,” said Ariella. “At least a dozen as far as I can tell.”
Djinn swarmed the el Arhapan manor in numbers allowing no possibility for the windsouled pair to escape by air. Below, the Djen Arena was lit by enormous floating lamps, the stands nearly full. Cephas did not know what to expect, but he feared that the match his father had planned would mean death for some or all of his missing companions.
“If only the firesouled had told us what this foundation stone was!” he said. “And whether I’m meant to set it afire or throw it over the side, or something else.”
“I wish we hadn’t chased all the servants away,” Ariella said. “Perhaps they’d know what he meant by his message.”
“The servants have all fled the manor, windsouled.” The voice came from the far end of the hall. “I do not know what thorn you have thrust in Shahrokh’s side, but he has made this house a prison, and now only we remain on this ridiculous floating hovel.” Other words were murmured below these, in another’s voice.
Ariella did not hesitate. She drew her sword and released it with a whispered word of power. It spun past Cephas, down the long hallway, and into the neck of Lavacre, the tall, fat firesouled ambassador from Akanûl. He was still translating when it struck, and Cephas saw the man’s lips moving even as blood poured from between them.
“At least his last words were in the holy language,” Cephas said to Flamburnt. The short man watched the sword extricate itself and sail into Ariella’s waiting hand.
He ran.
Shan sat, waiting.
She had listened to Cephas talk about arena fighting to Tobin and the others during their journey across the Tethyrian highlands. She knew that the crowd played some role in the fighting, that their cheers or catcalls affected the morale of the gladiators.
Shan was not a gladiator.
For the twentieth time since the Calimien slaves turned her into this small room, she checked her equipment. The armor was not the equal of that she usually wore, but it was of good quality. Her style of fighting depended more on avoiding blades altogether, anyway, than the hack-and-slash Cephas and Tobin favored.
After she had considered and rejected a hundred or so blades in the outfitting rooms, a djinni had appeared, apparently an unprecedented occurrence to judge by the way the windsouled overseers bowed and scraped. The elemental dropped a package wrapped in oilcloth at her feet, then flew away. When she unrolled it, Shan found her own sword and parrying dagger.
These now hung at their customary places at her hip and over her shoulder. The scabbards were new, so she had rubbed fish oil into them to ensure smooth draws, after she had given up on making the Calishites understand she wanted tallow for the job.
They were afraid of her, although she had offered no resistance. They let her wander from room to room until she came to a kitchen and found the pot of oil.
She wished she had tried harder for the tallow. The fish oil would suffice, but the smell in the small ready room was driving her to distraction.
The fish oil conjured memories of a hill village far away, secreted above a brackish swamp that provided access to the sea. They traded with the halflings of the marshland, mutton and leather for dried fish and nuts and news of the wider world—and fish oil. Until this moment, she would have guessed it was the news she would come to curse the most.
News of the wider world meant glory and adventure, concepts she greeted with suspicion and that her sister greeted with wide-eyed wonder. Eventually, it meant the abbey and the deep training of the Defender’s Way, and then the wan
dering years the Way required. It meant word from the village of a monster that would come to steal hers and her sister’s voices. It was word of a halfling monastery razed by unknown enemies.
She shook her head. Damn that smell.
She checked again. The straps of the armor were tight. The draw of the weapons was smooth.
Shan did not know what she would face when the doors opened. Nor did she care, because she had no intention of fighting for the entertainment of the people outside, who must number in the thousands from the noise they raised.
Her plan was simple enough. She would scan the crowd for people who looked important. She would go to where they were and kill them until just a few remained. She would hold the last of them hostage and somehow make herself understood. They would bring Cynda. Then the two of them would leave this terrible place and go somewhere else. They would go to the next part of their lives.
The plan would have been even simpler if Mattias were alive. He would have found a way to sneak in and bring Cynda out undetected, or to swoop down from the air with Trill and pluck her out of her prison. If nothing else, he could have destroyed the arena.
If Corvus were there to direct her—and if she still trusted him—her role would have simply been to kill until someone told her to stop. Probably Cynda—it was almost always Cynda who found a way to stay Shan’s hand.
She checked her equipment again. Damn the smell of the oil.
Shahrokh was forced to dissipate the lower part of his body in order to pass through the door, but he in no way appeared diminished. Rage spilled from the djinni, elemental power radiating from him so strongly that Corvus would have been hard-pressed to stay conscious if he had been more sensitive to such emanations.
Even so, he felt buffeted by more than just the wind that blew from the towering djinni. Corvus was glad he had chosen to await Shahrokh from a reclined position, propped up against a pile of pillows and drinking tea.
Sandstorm Page 23
