"Come on, she's been nothing but trustable. She could have turned us in to Cassinder's people any time in the last week."
Dante took another look at the door. "Unless she's holding out for an even bigger reward for bringing them a working loon."
"Fine, she gets to know nothing," Blays said. "But only because it's a genuine war secret."
Dante went to fetch Mourn and found him wave-watching from the bow. Empty gray waters rolled to the eastern horizon. To the south, far white hills slept under new and gleaming snow. A steady wind assaulted Dante's ears. One of the crew struggled with the rigging of the mainmast; atop the stern, another two argued with the rotund captain. The deck was otherwise clear. In the isolation, Dante gave Mourn a quick demonstration of his loons.
"I can hear the wind coming out of both of them," Mourn said after a moment. "The clan's loons spoke directly into your ear, and only when someone had something to say."
"Well, I'm not done." Dante wrapped the bones in cloth and tucked them away. "I just wanted to see what you thought."
"Why would you want my opinion? I didn't have anything to do with making them. The only reason I know about them is because I had the privilege of being born into the Clan of the Nine Pines. I may as well build a castle and ask that gull over there what it thinks."
Dante frowned out to sea. "I think we should rename you Cheer."
He wanted to construct a second set of loons and confirm his success with the first wasn't some confusing fluke, but he still wasn't sure what would come of the first. Besides, despite having sailed for several days, he'd spent less than an hour with the ocean. So he sat down beside Mourn, legs folded, and watched the incoming swells, the subtle tilt of the horizon as the Bad Tidings climbed each watery hill and slid down the other side. Waves hissed and splattered. A cold and constant wind grazed his face and forced its fingers past his collar. He reached his mind out toward the pair of loons every two or three minutes, unable to stop himself despite knowing there would be little or nothing he could do if the delicate nether-sheaths began to crack. Still, this ceaseless doublechecking reassured him, releasing a growing pressure that began in his head and slowly filled his gut.
An hour later, he checked the loons and found the nether was gone. He brought one to his mouth and spoke. He heard nothing but his own voice.
The nether had simply disappeared, reducing the loons to inert matter. He returned to Lira's cabin and assembled another functional pair, but an hour later, it too reverted to dumb, simple bone. He tried again, watching the third set without interruption. A little over an hour later, shining white cracks appeared in its shadowy sheath. The cracks thickened little by little; without warning, the black case burst apart. The trapped nether that linked the bones together dispersed at once, absorbing into the rag and floor beneath the loon.
Nothing he tried that day made any difference. He stayed up late and woke early. His head was heavy, but he forced himself to get up, wash his face, and return to work. Something strange had happened with the broken loons: the droplets of internal nether he'd used to form their sheaths had returned, but were unshaped. He took that nether and reforged it into fresh sheaths, wrapping these around new globs of nether drawn from foreign sources. An hour later, however, the sheaths collapsed again. Dante fell back on the cot, exhausted. What good was a loon that could only last an hour?
Late that morning, bells and shouts yanked him from his labor. Narashtovik grew on the horizon. Within hours, he'd be brought before Cally and held accountable for setting off the war.
8
Not long ago, Narashtovik had been called the Dead City. It was known as such even among its own citizens—what few remained, anyway. No one thought anything of the ghastly appellation; that was simply its name, earned through centuries of warfare and sackings that had reduced the city's outer rings to crumbling ruins. For those who stayed, it was a home, no more and no less, and while it was true that you could find ribs and skulls if you chose to poke through the fallow houses on its fringes, life at the core of the city was still normal enough.
Things had changed since Samarand's aborted war against Mallon some six years ago. The pine forests that infiltrated the city's old borders had disappeared, cleared for timber and tilled for crops. Fresh-cut wooden homes replaced most of the old stone ruins. The rasp of saws was like steady breathing; the rap of hammers a heartbeat. To the north, a high green hill considered the city, the site of the cemetery where Larrimore was buried. Past the outermost homes, the Pridegate circled Narashtovik's interior. Further yet, the Ingate that surrounded Narashtovik's oldest quarters was hidden behind steep black roofs, but at the city's very center, the staggering spire of the Cathedral of Ivars punctured the sky. Beside it, the keep of the Sealed Citadel rose like an upthrust fist.
As far as Dante had a home, Narashtovik was his. He hadn't seen Bressel since before the war, and anyway, he'd hardly lived there a handful of weeks. Before that, he spent his childhood and middle teens in a farming village in Mallon's breadbasket. Memories of his youth were a golden haze of streams and fields. Since leaving, he rarely thought of it.
Because in a way, he had been the midwife to Narashtovik's rebirth. He'd helped put down Samarand's holy war on Mallon. The refugees and survivors of that aborted conflict flocked to time-withered Narashtovik, making their claims on half-ruined homes that had lain empty for generations. When he wasn't busy on council business or one of Cally's endless errands, Dante enjoyed exploring those abandoned homes. They felt secret, sacred. Yet he'd been happier to see new families making them their own. Between the chimney smoke and fresh fields, it was clear the city had swelled all the more in the two-three years he and Blays had spent arming, supplying, and scouting the Norren Territories. Dante had missed that growth, that bustle, the knowledge he could step out into the street and see or buy or experience whatever he wished.
So he was worried about Cally's reaction to their news. And fearful of whatever fate might befall the city in the next months or years. But he was also glad, plainly and rightly, to be home.
"Think it still stinks?" Blays said beside him on the deck of the Bad Tidings.
"Absolutely."
"Figure out those things of yours?"
Absently, Dante touched the cracked bones in his pocket. "Not by half."
"Well, we're still a ways out. Plenty of time to finalize your will."
"It's not going to be that bad. Maybe he hasn't even heard."
"You're leaving me all your stuff, right?" Blays said. "Because I'm going to say you are anyway."
There was no point in a last-gasp scramble to perfect the loons. Dante was simply out of ideas. Instead, he descended to his cabin, nodding to the scurrying sailors belowdecks, and packed up his spare clothes and blanket and the cracked skulls of the rats. Back abovedecks, the Bad Tidings slipped past the western banks of the bay where a thicket of grounded ships rested in the silt where the river met the sea. There, an impromptu neighborhood had assembled among the wracks. The ships' sails were long gone, the bronze and iron stripped from figureheads and railings. Instead, clean white laundry flapped from masts. Residents jogged across planks nailed between half-submerged decks. Improbably, smoke curled from more than one of the grounded cabins; slant-walled shacks clung to masts and forecastles. The last time Dante had seen the bay, the old ships had been completely uninhabited, their hulls crusty with salt, gulls piping from rotten rigging.
"I almost hate to make port," Mart said behind him, startling him. "We're bound to pick up some new rats."
"So you're happy with the outcome of our arrangement?" Dante said.
"Happy? We'll have the only shit-free barley in all of Gask."
"You must be very proud."
"I've got half a mind to pressgang you." Mart's eyes glittered above his beard. "But then the sensible half suggests my body would wind up piled with the rats."
The boat came to port and sailors debarked to tie her off. Over the last few weeks, Dante had
become so familiar with the process he could have pitched right in. By the time the crew secured the gangway to the dock, a crowd of longshoremen, merchant's aides, and would-be travelers had gathered at the base of the pier, babbling and jostling, breath visible in the harsh light bouncing off the sea. A queue of carriages idled in the open square beyond the waterfront, but Dante decided to walk. No need to hustle to his fate.
Few norren lived in Narashtovik, and Mourn drew more than one look as their group thumped down the damp pier toward the waiting crowd. His hulking presence was enough to open a gap in the throng. Dante led the way, composing his route to the Sealed Citadel. Canden Street would be the shortest, but it was the first day of Thaws, and the main streets would likely be clogged with a plague of potters, tailors, and shoppers all looking to—
Metal flashed from the forest of fur coats. A short man plunged from the crowd, knife darting forward, his gaze locked on Dante's chest. Too late, Dante grabbed at the nether, his panic whipping it into a charcoal froth. The man's arm straightened, preparing to drive the blade home.
Lira flung herself forward, ramming her shoulder into the man's ribs. They thudded to the boardwalk, hands locked together, grappling for the knife. Lira rolled the small man onto his back and flicked her fingers at his eyes. As he flinched, she clamped both hands on his knife hand and twisted his wrist toward his body, bearing down hard. The man screamed. His wrist gave with a fleshy pop. Blays' sword snaked past Lira and speared the attacker through the left lung.
The retreat of the crowd left Dante in the middle of an empty circle. He stood there, shaking, as pink blood burbled from the attacker's mouth, the man's broken wrist flapping against the boardwalk.
Blays pulled his blade from the dying man's ribs with a wet shup. "I didn't think Cally would be that mad."
Jittery fury flooded Dante's veins. He knelt beside the assassin and grabbed him by the collar, yanking his head from the pier. "Who hired you?"
The man blinked, glassy-eyed, and coughed thickly. Dante shoved him down by the collar, banging the back of his head into the planks. "Was it Cassinder? All you have to do is nod."
The assassin choked, coughing bubbly pink blood over Dante's heavy cloak. He fell back, spasming, fishlike.
"He looks pretty dumb to me," Blays said. "Let's ask his pockets instead."
He crouched on the other side of the body and turned out the pockets of the man's cloak and doublet and trousers, revealing three more knives, one long and two small, a handkerchief, a plain leather purse clinking with coins, a bag of dried venison and cherries, a sewing kit, comb and scissors, and a pinky-thin vial of a viscous, black-brown liquid. Boots jogged the planks. Two armed men hurried down the pier, dressed in the black leather and silver trim of the city. They stopped cold when they saw the body. Drawing swords, they shuffled forward, right feet extended. Blays pocketed the vial.
Dante stood, sleeves foamy with blood. "This man attacked us."
The guards' faces were drawn with angry caution. On seeing Dante, the expression of the man on the right shifted to relieved recognition. "Are you all right, my lord?"
"I'm fine." Dante nodded to the knife Lira had knocked down the planks. "Be careful with his blade. It may be poisoned."
Another pair of guards arrived to handle the crowds and the corpse. The first pair led Dante and crew through the holiday-busied streets to the nearest guard station, a tight-quartered space inside one of the three-story towers that rose at intervals from the Pridegate. There, Dante answered questions (which he mostly ducked; he'd pass his suspicions about Cassinder along to Cally during his dressing-down) and waited around for a half hour until yet another guard arrived to inform Dante and Blays their presence was required at the Sealed Citadel. As if fearing they'd attempt to flee, this latest guard accompanied them from the tower into the rising hills beyond the Pridegate.
Children wove through the crowds, their dark hair threaded with grassy crowns. Men stopped at public houses while their wives eyed bright fabric and bought pies stuffed with the first and hardiest harvests—frostpeas, Gaskan squash, turnips. Most of the buildings here had been occupied and maintained even during Narashtovik's leanest times, and showed little of the recent patching and reconstruction that dominated the structures beyond the outer wall. Stone gargoyles guarded the rooftop gutters, silently judging the boisterous humans below.
"Thank you," Dante said to Lira. It was the first moment of semi-privacy they'd had since the attack. "I suppose that makes us even."
She shrugged, gazing across the revelers. "An action done in the name of duty is never the equal of one taken freely."
He gave her a long and skeptical look. "Are you talking about snagging you from that boat? We did that to find out where the Bloody Knuckles had gone. Saving you for information is no different than you saving me because of some crazy debt."
"What if I walk away and you're killed five minutes from now? My debt wouldn't look so repaid then."
"It's no fair if you keep changing the rules."
They passed under an arch of the Ingate, a second ring of solid stone which had separated nobles and well-landed merchants from the decay that beset the city for so long. Inside, the streets were rather more subdued; families strolled together between the bright tarps shading the stalls and carts gathered at every intersection and plaza. Dante could have differentiated the traders past the Ingate from those outside it even without the fine dress and casual pace of their clientele. Outside the Ingate, carts were piled high with cloth and toys. Inside it, velvet-topped displays held a bare sprinkle of goods—a half dozen rings, say, gleaming amidst the empty space of their surroundings.
A wide stone avenue climbed the city's central hill. The endless shadow of the cathedral fell over Dante's face. Across from it, a towering citadel gazed down from behind its unscratched walls. Dante wore none of the trappings of his station, but before he could introduce himself at the Sealed Citadel's iron gate, it raised with a series of heavy clanks.
"What, they don't even ask your name?" Blays said as they crossed into the courtyard. "If I'd arrived by myself, I'd be waiting until the walls fell down."
Gant waited just inside the courtyard, pale enough to look as though he walked between sunbeams and narrow-shouldered enough for Dante to believe he did just that. The majordomo bowed, back curved in that particular Narashtovik fashion.
"My lord Dante. It's been too long."
"I know, Gant," Dante said. "Hello and goodbye."
Gant tilted back his face. "Goodbye?"
"Figured I'd better say it now, since Cally's about to murder me. Is he up in his chambers?"
"I believe so. And I don't believe he will murder you, my lord. No matter what you've done this time."
"Oh, I don't know." He gestured to Lira and Mourn. "I've got two guests, as you can see. Will you find lodgings for them?"
"At once." Gant bowed and bobbed his head in a fashion that perfectly intimated Mourn and Lira should follow him up the stairs into the keep. Dante followed, too, but as Gant swept the others through the quiet foyer on his way to the guest rooms at the rear, Dante and Blays curled up the main stairwell instead.
"Well," Blays said, the single word echoing up the stone steps.
"Well," Dante agreed.
"You don't really think he could..?"
"No, I don't think so. Cally's a tyrant, but generally not a violent one."
"That's a relief," Blays said. "Except for the fact that means we have no idea who just tried to kill you."
Dante saved the rest of his breath for the stairs. Cally kept his quarters at the very top of the keep. Dante had no idea how the old man managed to climb up and down the stairs all day long. It probably involved demons. Big ones.
At last they reached the upper landing. A black carpet striped the hall. Tapestries illustrated and insulated the walls, weavings of Arawn at his mill and the starry arrangement of the heavens. Cally's double doors were closed but unlocked. As Dante opened the door, a
wintry breeze knifed from the open balcony and cut past his face. Dante's boots sunk into the cushy black rug. The woman to occupy the room prior to Cally had busied it with pious marks of her station as High Priestess of Arawn: holy books, candlesticks, intricately illuminated parchments, and silver statues of the White Tree. On moving in years back, Cally had hollered "Lookout below!" from the balcony and then flung most of the room's contents straight out the window. Now his chambers most closely resembled a scribe's den—bookshelves along both walls, black grenados of ink gleaming from the door-sized desk, great nests of parchment and quills and quill-snips and jars of white blotting-sand. That left the room's center quite empty. So, too, was the stuffed red chair at the far end of the room. The fireplace was cold and dark.
"Suppose he's invisible?" Blays said.
"No, I suppose he's quite visible. In a place that isn't here."
Dante left to track down a steward. The third man he found knew where Cally was—among the ruins on the outskirts of town—but balked at leading them there until Dante reminded him that dusting the mantels was several rungs less important than a direct order from a member of the Council of Narashtovik. After that, the man led them back downstairs and into the streets in a southerly course. Past the Pridegate, as many houses were ruined as intact. Many lots were nothing but snow, grass, and mounded stone. Twice, explosions boomed through the ruins further to the south.
"That's him, isn't it?" Dante said.
The servant didn't glance over. "I couldn't possibly say, my lord."
"That's definitely him," Blays said.
The steward led them into a patchwork field of snow and grass. One wall of a farmhouse stood between a slew of old stones and rotten timbers. Beside it, a solid chimney rose thirty feet into the sky, freestanding and intact. The servant led them toward its massive hearth. The ground around it was scorched. The cold wind stirred the scent of something burnt and sharp. A hinged door of iron had been bolted to the base of the chimney. It was also scorched.
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