“You’re going to kill the Prince …” Lalo stepped backwards until he bumped into the table on which his paints lay.
“Perhaps—” Zanderei shrugged.
“You’re going to kill me?”
The other man sighed, and from the other sleeve a second knife flickered into his hand. “Do I have a choice?” he said regretfully. “I am a professional. No one will deplore the work of the vandal who kills you and destroys the painting more than I… or perhaps it will have been you who suffered a revulsion of feeling and did it yourself—for I am sure that Coricidius forced you to this work. But one way or another, the painting must be destroyed—” Zanderei looked at the other portraits and for the first time amusement flickered in his eyes. “You are far too accurate!
“Reckon up your life, Master Limner—” he said more gently, “for once the painting is gone the painter must disappear as well.”
Lalo swallowed, afraid that his churning stomach would deny him dignity even in his death. And what had his life been worth to anyone, after all? Zanderei took flint and steel from a pouch beneath his robe, and in a moment light flared in the dimness of the room. Then the assassin set a stained paint rag aflame and held it to the canvas.
Lalo groped for support and his hand closed on the smooth side of a paint pot. His throat ached, holding back the urge to beg the man to stop. He hated the painting—he wished it had never been done—and yet, why did he feel the same pain as he had when the Hell-Hound struck Gilla to the floor? His eyes stung with unuttered grief for his work, for himself, for his family left fatherless.
The canvas had caught fire and was beginning to crackle merrily now. Bright flame fattened on the paint-soaked cloth and cast demon-flickers on the face of Zanderei.
“No!” The cry burst from Lalo’s lips, and as Zanderei straightened, Lalo’s hand closed on the paint pot and he flung it at the other man.
It struck Zanderei’s shoulder, and red paint splashed like blood across the grey robe.
The assassin exploded towards him and Lalo scrambled frantically around the table, snatching up more paint pots, brushes, anything he could throw. One of them hit Zanderei’s forehead, and as paint sprayed across his face he hesitated for just a moment to mop his eyes.
And in that moment Lalo kicked over the table and ran.
****
LALO HUGGED HIS chest as if he could muffle the drumming of his heart and stared around him.
He had confused memories of having fled down the corridor that edged the upper half of the Presence Hall, towards the back of the Palace, down the stairs by the dais, and then still farther, into a part of the Palace he did not know. Though the floor was still marble, the slabs were cracked and discolored, and plaster was chipping from the wall. Then he heard crockery clattering nearby and realized he must be hard by the kitchens.
At least, he thought gratefully, Zanderei the Commissioner would be even more out of place here than he. Cautiously he turned into another passageway and moved forward. But as he eased open the door at the end of it, he heard once more a faint pattering behind him—the steps of one who from long training ran so lightly his footfalls were only a whisper of fine leather on polished stone.
Stifling a moan, Lalo burst through the door, dashed across the wooden floor and the platform that opened out onto the kitchen courtyard, and flung himself into the first concealment he found.
It had looked like a cart, and as Lalo sank into its contents he realized what it was. Not the honey-wagon, thank the gods, but the cart into which they had collected the garbage from several days’ worth of princely meals. Gagging, Lalo wriggled deeper into the mass of turnip peelings and sour curds, soggy rice and pastry crusts and meat trimmings and bones.
He thought grimly, As long as I can retch, I’m still alive…
The cart moved beneath him and he heard the stamp of a hoof on stone. He realized then that not only was he alive, he might even escape, for if the horse was hitched, it must be time for the garbage to be taken away. He waited, breathing shallowly, for the endless minutes until he heard voices and the wagon lurched with the weight of somebody climbing onto the driver’s bench. Then they began to move.
Faster… Faster! Lalo prayed as he was jounced deeper into the reeking mass. The clatter of wooden wheels on stone was deafening, then there was a pause, a moment’s conversation with Honald at the Gate, and the duller vibration as the wagon trundled across the pounded earth of Vashanka’s Square.
Then the cart shuddered to a halt. Lalo strained his ears for the night-noises of Sanctuary, but heard instead shouting and the clamor of an alarm.
“Is that smoke? Theba’s paps, it’s the Palace! Leave the wagon, Tarn, we can give the beasts their slops in the morning!” The wagon heaved again and Lalo heard two sets of footsteps pounding back the way they had come.
He settled back down, realizing with wonder that for the moment at least, he was saved.
And what will I do now? Zanderei would tell everyone that Lalo had killed the guard and started the fire. If caught, he would be cast into the dungeons, if they did not kill him out of hand. And if he offered to demonstrate his skill in his defense, he might wish that they had…
He could not return to the Palace to accuse the ‘Commissioner’, but if he could reach the Maze he could hide indefinitely—there were still a few who owed him favors there.
And then … Zanderei would either assassinate Prince Kadakithis, or go peacefully home. The former seemed more likely, for one does not return a honed blade to the sheath without blooding it, and in that case Coricidius would fall as well.
And what would become of Sanctuary? The thought troubled his satisfaction. What kind of tyrant would the Empire send to avenge its son? For all his clumsiness, at least Prince Kittycat meant well, and if they must be ruled by foreigners, surely the ones they were accustomed to would be best.
And it’s all in my hands… Trying to control laughter, Lalo unwisely took too deep a breath, and began to cough again. Here I wallow in the Prince’s garbage, deciding what his fate shall be! Power bubbled in his veins like wine of Caronne. I could send word to Coricidius—he started this, he might believe me … or—he remembered rumors he had heard about Shadowspawn—I might be able to get word to the Prince himself…
But first I have to get out of here!
Cautiously Lalo poked his head over the rim of the cart. There was a whiff of smoke in the air, and above the wall he could see torches winking like glowworms in the upper windows of the Palace, but he saw no glare of fire—perhaps they had put it out in time. The cart in which he was sitting was parked just outside the Zoo Gardens, a few feet from the Processional Gate.
Sighing with relief, Lalo clambered over the side and began to strip off his smock and brush away the worst of the filth that coated him—
—And stopped, feeling a gaze that was not the dispassionate stare of the mangy lions beyond the barrier. He turned then, and looked across the square to the Palace Gate from which a familiar grey-robed figure had just emerged. For a moment fear froze him again, but he was still glowing with the inebriation of power. He let his smock fall to the ground.
Zanderei’s robe was of rich silk, while his own worn shirt and stained breeches would attract no attention. If he could entice the Rankan into the town, Lalo would be on his own ground, and the City itself might rid him and the Prince of their enemy.
Grinning nervously, Lalo walked into plain view, and then urged his stiff limbs into an awkward dash through the Gate as Zanderei and half a dozen Hell-Hounds leaped into motion across the Square after him.
Looking back over his shoulder at every other step, Lalo pressed his cramped limbs to greater speed along the Processional Way
. Hearing the guards close behind him, he dodged among the merchants’ houses to Westgate Street
and down Tanner’s Row, heading for the Serpentine. And as he ran, the blood began to course freely through his limbs once more, and he shed middle-age and awkwardne
ss as he had shed his ruined smock, and his fear.
Lalo leaped over a handcart that had been abandoned in the road and paused to send it spinning broadsides. That would not long delay them, but he could hear mercenaries laying bets on a dogfight in the next street. Laughing like the boy who had raced through these streets so long ago, he let his pursuers follow him around the corner, slid eel-like through the crowd, and laughed again as the tinny clash of weapons told him that the Hell-Hounds and the mercenaries had met.
But what about Zanderei? Lalo waited in the shadow of a quiet doorway and watched the gap at the entrance to the street. Night had fallen, and the moon, now almost at the full, was drawing free of the distorting smoke of the City and transforming the shape and shadows of the street with its own deceptive dappling. How could he tell which one—
Ah, there, a shadow moved of itself, and Lalo knew that his enemy was here.
So soon! Shock tingled through his veins and set every hair on end. I must run … the man moves too subtly—before those who would attack him for the silk he wears can note him, he is away. I am a dead man if I cannot trap him somehow. The glory he had tasted seemed now as inconstant as the moon. In a moment Zanderei would reach his hiding place.
And yet it was almost as if he had done all this before—he remembered a time in his boyhood, when he had come with his mates into the Maze in search of excitement and been set upon there. He had escaped by—he looked up and saw that this house too had an external stair. Without allowing himself time to think of failure, Lalo launched himself upward.
The wooden structure swayed alarmingly. Lalo clutched at a railing and nearly fell when it gave way beneath his hand. He could hear loud voices inside—a window opened and then slammed shut as he was seen, and for a moment the quarreling was stilled. Then he was on the roof, leaping over trays of drying fruit and ducking under clotheslines. He saw the dark shape behind him and jerked one end of the line free so that the hanging clothes clung damply to the man who was following him.
Something flashed by his cheek in the moonlight like a line of white fire. Lalo threw himself across the gap between two buildings, clutched at the ledge of a parapet and lay across it, gasping, staring at the quivering blade that matched the one he had seen in the throat of the slain guard. He hauled himself the rest of the way into the dubious protection of the gable end.
Two Hell-Hounds trotted down the street below, paused momentarily at the corner and gave a whistle which was answered from two streets away. Lalo wondered what had happened to the mercenaries. Then a shadow rose from the opposite rooftop, glimmering like silver as it came into the full light of the moon.
“Limner!” Zanderei called, “The soldiers will kill you if they catch you before I do—give yourself up to me now!”
Lalo thought of the blade which he had wedged uncomfortably into his sash and gritted his teeth. They call us Wrigglies, he remembered, Well, I had better do some quick wriggling now! Cautiously he squirmed across the tiles. A quiver beneath him told him that Zanderei had also crossed the gap, and he scrambled for the opposite stair.
But there was none. Unable to stop, Lalo leaped to the balcony in a crash of breaking crockery, and swung himself from the railing to the street below. The upper way would not save him, but as he had lain gasping he had remembered an alternative, darker and more dangerous both to the pursuer and the pursued.
Shards of terra cotta smashed and rattled in the street behind him as the owner of the balcony glimpsed Zanderei and pelted him with his broken wares. Lalo sped down the street and past a group wavering along from the direction of the Vulgar Unicorn.
I wanted to be a hero—he thought, forcing his legs to more speed, but how do you tell the difference between a dead hero and a dead fool? The singing behind him faltered and someone screamed. Zanderei—for a moment Lalo saw the assassin clearly in the moonlight—he had shed his grey silk and his shirt was torn—he looked as if he had been bred to the streets of Sanctuary. And as if he had felt Lalo’s gaze, he turned, and his teeth flashed in a brief smile.
Lalo took a deep breath and stared around him—he dared not move too quickly now lest he miss the spot, though every sense was clamoring to him to flee. There, at the end of the alley—a wooden cover that capped a circle of crumbling stones. Lalo pulled it free—the covers were usually left unbolted in hopes that people would throw refuse directly in—then, gritting his teeth, he lowered himself down the shaft.
It was not so deep as a well. Lalo landed with a splash in a sluggish stream slippery with things he would rather not try to name. Fighting his stomach, he realized that the Prince’s garbage had been fragrant compared to the sewers which were his last hope against his enemy.
He slogged grimly forward, counting his steps and putting out a reluctant hand to the slimy walls to guide his passage, listening behind him for the small sounds that would tell him that Zanderei had followed him even here. Catching his breath, he felt for the knife, but in all his scrambling it had been lost.
Just as well—he told himself, I would not have known how to use it anyway!
“You—Limner, you’ve done well, but what made you think you could win this game against me?” The voice echoed dankly from water-scoured stone walls. “I’ll catch up with you soon—wouldn’t you have preferred to have died cleanly?”
Lalo shook his head, though the other man could not see. He had reckoned his achievements and found them wanting, but if he died now at least he had tried to act like a man. He forced his way onward, fingers questing for the next break in the stone. What if he was wrong? Had he misremembered, or had the tunnels changed in thirty years?
“You will die, you know. This is the last bolthole. Your end is here.”
An end for both of us then, Lalo thought numbly. I will not mind—Then his trembling fingers found the crack. He moved his hand along the wall, lips whispering the numbers that had become a litany—sixty-six, sixty-seven steps… Please, Lord Ils, let it be here… sixty-eight… Shalpa help me, sixty nine, seventy!
His fingers closed on a rusting semicircle of iron, and stifling a gasp of relief he hauled himself upward, though his fingers slipped on the rungs. The splashing behind him slowed as if his enemy had paused to listen, then became a tumult as Zanderei began to run.
Lalo gained the top, shoved the wooden cover aside, and heart bursting, rolled over the edge into the clean air. But he could not rest now, not yet, not until the trap was sprung. Summoning strength where he had thought there could be no more, he hauled the cover over the shaft and drove home the wooden bar. And without waiting to see if it would hold, he staggered back to the first shaft and did the same thing there.
Then he sank to the cobbles beside it, pulse hammering, knowing that this last, god-given strength was gone and he could do not more. This was the only place in the network of sewers where two shafts entered the conduits so close together. Zanderei was trapped there now.
How sweet the air was to his lungs. From some upper room Lalo heard the tinkle of a gittem and a woman’s low laughter. A soft wind comforted his burning cheeks—a sea wind. And then Lalo remembered with mingled satisfaction and horror that Zanderei was doubly doomed. With the sea wind would come a rush of dark water from the Swamp of Night Secrets, propelled by the tidal bore.
“You—Assassin—you’ve done well—but what made you think you could win this game with me?” Lalo whispered through cracked lips. Laughter rasped his throat, and he sat shaking by the locked well-mouth while the slime of the tunnel dried on his skin. A stray pickpocket, passing by, made the sign against madness and scuttled away. He heard a whistle and then the clink of a sword as a Hell-Hound passed the mouth of the alley, but he supposed he looked like nothing human, crouching there.
“Limner, are you there?”
Lalo jumped, hearing the voice so close to him. The wood of the shaft-top shuddered as it was struck from below, and Lalo leaned on the bar. Hanging from the rungs by one hand, there was no way Zanderei could gain eno
ugh leverage to break free. That was what Lalo had heard in dark tales whispered by childhood friends, and later, over winecups in the Vulgar Unicorn. If he lived, he too would have a tale to tell…
“Assassin, I am here and you are there and there you will stay,” croaked Lalo when the dull hammering finally stilled.
“I will give you gold—I have never broken my word … You could establish yourself in the capital.”
“I don’t want your gold.” I don’t even want to go to Ranke, his thought continued, not anymore.
“I will give you your life…” said Zanderei. “Coricidius won’t believe you, you know, and the Hell-Hounds will have your skull for a drinking bowl. At the very least they will strike off your hands …”
Involuntarily, Lalo’s fingers clasped protectively around his wrists, as if a bright blade were already descending. It was true—surely he had lost all he had ever gained. Better to meet Zanderei’s knife than to live without being able to take brush in hand. If I cannot paint I am nothing, he thought. I will surely die.
But he did not move. Shivering with exhaustion and despair, still he would not throw away this victory, even though he hardly understood his reasons anymore.
“Limner, I will give you your soul…”
“You can only give death, foreigner! You cannot trick me!”
“I do not need to—” the voice seemed very tired. “I only need to ask you a question. Have you ever painted your own portrait, Limner with the sorcerer’s eye?”
The silence stretched into eternity while Lalo tried to understand. He felt a subtle quiver in the earth that told him the tide was beginning to turn. What did Zanderei mean? Of course he had done self-portraits by the dozen, when he could get no one else to pose for him—
—In the old days, before Enas York had taught him to paint the soul …
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