“Nor I,” said Ebon. She returned to the table, and he took his goblet. “And I will never forget the words we spoke—nor the promises I made to you.”
“I should hope not. I very much intend to hold you to them.”
His smile felt somewhat forced. “Yet near the end—the end of the drinking, anyway—I remember you told me something. Something about truth, and how it came hard to you even then.”
Her smile grew careful. “Did I? Mayhap my thoughts grew muddled.”
The words came easily enough, but he heard the warning behind them. Let it be. Please. “Mayhap it was my wits that were addled, not yours,” he said lightly. “You told me so many things, after all, that I had never heard before. I was honored to learn them—and would do so again, if you ever wished it.”
Recognition dawned in her eyes, an acknowledgement of his unspoken invitation. “Thank you,” she whispered. And then she sighed, and straightened, and the moment passed them both by. She ran a finger along the rim of her mug. “I understand you have spent much time in Lilith’s company of late. More to the point, I understand Theren has, as well.”
Ebon’s eyebrows shot up. “And who have you heard that from?”
“The guild carries many whispers, and I do not listen only for the ones you ask me to.”
He sighed. “I admit Lilith still makes me uneasy. Theren seems to trust her utterly—well, better than I do, at any rate. But I do not know how much of that stems from good sense, and how much stems from her feelings.”
“She still loves Lilith, then?”
“I asked her that when Lilith was imprisoned, and she said she did not know. Yet her every action tells me that she does. It is not only the trust she places in Lilith. It is the little looks, the smiles and the half-hidden gestures. The way her hand moves towards Lilith’s, as though aching to hold her. I can scarcely believe the change in her demeanor, considering how she despised Lilith when I first met her.”
“Often love springs forth unbidden,” said Adara. “When it does, it is rarely governed by sense.”
Ebon smiled. “Do you speak of Theren and Lilith, or of us?”
She kicked him beneath the table, but gently. “I think we are more sensible about things than many. Nor do I doubt Theren’s judgement in this. She is a passionate woman, governed more by her heart than by her head, yet she has wit enough to know evil from good. She placed her trust in you quickly, though she had more reason than most to despise a merchant boy. If you are grateful for that trust, return it now. After all, is Lilith not proving herself helpful?”
He frowned. “Helpful enough, I suppose. Yet it is all in the service of catching Isra, whom she hates. And I have bitter memories of her treatment when I first arrived at the Academy.”
“Children may be cruel, but not be evil.”
Ebon mock-glared at her. “She is older than I am. Do you call me a child?”
She returned his frown, though her nose twitched as though she longed to smile. “You are newly come to manhood, Ebon, though you had little opportunity to ever be a child in truth.”
That brought to mind a question he had never thought to ask, and he cocked his head. “How old are you?”
She smiled. “Do you see wrinkles in my skin? Have you come to regret our tryst? Do you love me only for my beauty? That cannot be, for who could call me more beautiful than any of the fine ladies you must have met throughout your life?”
He stood suddenly, and she yelped as he lifted her from her chair, holding her across his chest while she wrapped her fingers together behind his neck. “I would call you so a thousand times, though the Mystics put me beneath their knives and command me to renounce your grace. But you have not answered my question. Tell me how many summers you have seen, or I may have to draw the truth from you by every means at my disposal.”
“Do your worst,” she purred.
nineteen
THEY SPENT THE DAY DOING little of consequence, and it was evening before Ebon left her at last. The sun had almost gone down, and he hurried through torchlight. He had time enough before curfew to return, but he had no wish to remain in the cold a moment longer than necessary.
The streets seemed curiously crowded for a Sunday, when many merchants and crafters chose not to work. But then, the Seat had become flooded with new arrivals recently. Ebon was not sure why, except for some vague rumors that the High King soon meant to make her next move in the war.
Ebon soon tired of struggling through crowds and having to halt for every passing carriage or wagon of goods. He broke away from the press, aiming for the yawning mouth of an alley that seemed to head the right direction. But when he reached the end, it turned north rather than south. He grumbled and increased his pace. Soon he saw the alley opening ahead, leading to another street packed even tighter than the last one.
He pushed into the crowds with a sigh, forcing his way across and into another side street. Here at last the way was clear, and it even headed in the right direction for a time. Ebon let loose a breath of relief and slowed.
A boot scuffed on the street behind him. He turned. The street was empty.
His heart began to race, but he scowled and fought the queasy feeling in his stomach. Xain, it seemed, was not done stalking him. He had a chilling thought: had the Dean seen him leave Adara’s house? But he dismissed that fear at once. No matter what Xain suspected him of, Ebon did not fear the Dean would threaten Adara.
Hunching his shoulders, he pushed on through the cold. The side street led him south, but it kept turning the wrong direction as it did so. Soon he had neared the Seat’s western edge, where the buildings showed more signs of damage from the fighting and the flames, and there were fewer people about. And then he came upon a street where there were no other passers-by at all.
Three quick footsteps sounded, shockingly close. But when he turned, the street remained empty.
He put his hands to his hips. “Enough of this. I can hear you, Xain, scuttling after me like some pickpocket. If you have received another note, I still know nothing about it. But come out and ask me anyway, if that is your wish, so that we may both go about our evenings in peace.”
The person who stepped from the shadows was not Xain.
Ebon froze. He could see no face beneath the green hood, but the person who faced him was a behemoth—nearly as large as Perrin, and clad in mail under their cloak. There came a hiss of drawn steel. A broadsword glinted in the moonslight. Ebon could not drag his gaze from its shine. Thick, heavy boots crunched in the snow, forming holes as deep as Ebon’s whole leg.
“I … who …” Ebon took a step back, almost stumbling in a drift behind him.
The figure reached up to drag its hood back. It was a man, his skin almost as dark as Lilith’s, and within his sallet his grey eyes reeked of death. His fist looked big enough to envelop and crush Ebon’s skull. Where Ebon had often been awed by the thickness and vigor of Mako’s muscular arms, this man now made Mako seem a spindly little boy, a bookish scholar tucked in some dark basement away from the sun, scrawny as Kalem was. Over the chain on the man’s chest was a tabard of black leather, and his fists shone with plate.
All this Ebon saw in the scant seconds it took the giant to approach him. They were only two lengthy paces apart now. But then he stopped.
“You have been seeking me.” The voice from his barrel-wide chest thrummed in Ebon’s lungs, deeper and stronger than Isra’s voice even with the strength of magestones. And at the words, knowledge struck Ebon like a mace to the forehead.
“G-Gregor,” he stammered. “You are Gregor.”
There came no answer, but the man’s eyes flashed. And Ebon recalled the story that Lilith had told him. In his mind he saw the hall filled with people, burning, all of them screaming. His throat seized up. He tried to take a backwards step, but his feet would not move.
“Why has your family taken an interest in me?” said Gregor. He took one step forwards, and Ebon wilted.
“I am not �
� I did not …”
Gregor shook his head, a single sharp jerk. “No lies. As long as your words interest me, you will live. As long as I hear the truth within them, you will live. You die tonight, but it is up to you how long you have before then.”
Like a striking serpent, a hand the size of a boulder shot forth to seize Ebon’s robes and haul him up off the ground. Ebon lost control of his bladder, and tears stung his eyes as piss dripped to the snow below him.
“I sought nothing,” he whimpered, voice shattering to a sob. “I swear it.” A lie, he screamed in his mind. A lie means death. But he could not help it. His thoughts betrayed him, for he knew now that he would die, here on this street and unseen by anyone.
But then behind Gregor, from the other side of the street, a second shadow detached itself from the darkness between two buildings. Ebon heard a soft snik-snik, and saw the silhouette of two daggers. Mako, he thought with relief.
He let his gaze linger too long. Gregor caught the look, and he turned on the spot, faster than such a man should have been able to move. Mako leapt, black cloak fluttering behind him. Gregor caught the daggers on his sword, and shoved back with a rumbling grunt. Mako danced, shifting from one foot to the next before striking again. Again Gregor parried the blow, swinging the sword in a wide arc and slicing down with it—but Mako was already gone.
They took a step back, taking each other’s measure in the darkness. Ebon wanted to step forwards, to do something, but he knew not what. He was a child in this battle of giants. What good would mists be, if he must draw within Gregor’s reach to use them? And he could not help Mako by shifting stone.
Then a hand seized his shoulder to drag him back. Had he not already voided himself, he would surely have soiled his clothes again. “Come, boy,” said a woman’s voice. “You are of little use here.”
He looked back and saw that she was clad just like Mako, and had her hair trimmed close to her scalp. Two steps he took beside her, away from Gregor, before he stopped. “We cannot leave Mako,” he gasped.
“That is not Mako,” said the woman. “Come.”
Ebon peered closer in the darkness—and then he saw that it was the truth. The man standing before Gregor was tall enough, but not quite as broad, and his eyes glinted blue beneath his hood, instead of dark like Mako’s.
Now the assassin’s knives swept forwards like serpents, striking here, there, and here again in the space of a blink. But though Gregor held no shield, he used his plated arm to block one of the blows, while the others glanced from his chain.
And then his fist swung, faster than when he had seized Ebon, and crushed the Drayden man’s face.
The assassin stopped moving all at once, as though a force holding him up had suddenly vanished. He held his feet for a heartbeat, though his nose was pulp and his jaw hung slack on tendons, displaying shattered teeth.
Gregor seized his head, fingers wrapping to the back of the man’s skull. With the grip for leverage, he pulled the assassin onto his broadsword. Four feet of blood-covered steel thrust out of the man’s spine, and his legs went limp. Gregor withdrew the sword and smashed the front of his helmet into the man’s face. Then he brought the man’s head down with a crunch against his armored knee.
The Drayden man slumped to the snow, a corpse three times over.
Even as she pulled Ebon away, the woman threw a dagger with a hiss of rage. It struck Gregor in his back, but rebounded from the chain and fell impotent to the snow. Gregor threw a look over his shoulder—but then Ebon was around the corner of a building and out of sight, still being dragged by the woman. Now that he no longer beheld the giant, Ebon found he could move again, and he ran, faster even than his rescuer. After they had passed a few streets, she yanked him to face her. He looked into her hard face, wincing at the scar that ran from her upper lip through one ruined eye.
“Back to the Academy,” she growled. “Stop for nothing. Look at nothing. Speak to no one. And if you value your life, do not leave again for any reason—not unless Mako is with you.”
Ebon wanted to stay a moment longer, to ask her one more question. But even as he hesitated, she seized a shoulder and whirled him around. Then she planted a boot on his back and kicked, hard. Ebon went sprawling to the ground, sliding along in the slush with a cry.
“Leave, you piss-stained steer!”
He left, scrambling to his feet and barely remaining upright. Once he started running he could not stop, but could only move his legs faster and faster. Soon he was winded, and his chest screamed at him in pain, but he only sprinted harder. He reached the main road that crossed the island east to west, and pressed heedless through the people there. Many of them he struck in his flight, but he did not stop for their angry shouts.
Before long he reached the Academy’s front door. Two paces away from it he stopped and doubled over to catch his breath, crying out as that sent lances of pain into his ribs. He looked back down the street. Gregor was nowhere to be seen, nor was any other threat.
The tears that had threatened now spilled forth, and bile leapt to the back of his throat. His mind burned with the image of the Drayden man falling to the ground, of the nauseating way his bones had bent the wrong direction. Falling to hands and knees he vomited, and saw all the wine he had drunk with Adara, and all the food he had eaten for supper, spill into the virgin snow.
It was a while before he could force himself to stand. His body groaned in protest when he did, and his legs were clay beneath him. But as soon as he could, he stumbled towards the front door. From the position of the moons in the sky, he had only just made it before curfew, and so he wasted no time before entering.
There in the front hall, to his great surprise, he found Theren and Kalem waiting for him. But if they saw the state of him, they did not remark upon it—and once he saw their pale faces and wide, frightened eyes, he knew that his encounter upon the streets was not the only thing that had gone terribly wrong.
“What is it?” he said. “What happened?”
“War is declared,” said Theren. “Tomorrow, the armies of the High King march on Dulmun.”
twenty
FOR A MOMENT, EBON COULD only stand and stare at the news. But then the pain in his side redoubled, and he stumbled.
“Here now,” said Kalem, as he and Theren came forwards to support him. “Ebon, what is …” Then his nose curled. “Have you …?”
Ebon blinked back fresh tears. “I need a bath. Please. Help me.”
They cringed, but they helped him, taking an arm each and escorting him to the bathing room, which fortunately was not far away. There he disrobed while Kalem went to fetch him water. Theren took his soiled robes and put them in a soapy basin to soak.
“What happened?” said Kalem, once Ebon had settled into the water and his friends sat to either side of him.
“Gregor found me.” Ebon shuddered at the memory of the man’s soulless grey eyes. “Somehow he heard that we were seeking him, and he found me out in the streets.”
Theren scowled. “How did you defeat him?”
“I did not,” said Ebon. He stopped, for his voice was dangerously close to breaking, and closed his eyes. “I did not,” he said again when he could speak. “I ran. And I only escaped because two of Mako’s fighters came to my rescue.”
“Did they … is Gregor …?” Theren glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one could overhear, but the bathing room was empty.
“They did not kill him,” said Ebon. “He killed one of them instead, and mayhap has killed the other by now, for she turned back after she got me to safety. Gregor did not simply kill. He took the man apart. I have never seen anything so terrifying. It was worse than watching Mako put Matami to the question.”
“How did he find you?” said Kalem. “What will you do now?”
“I do not know,” said Ebon. “The woman who saved me warned me not to leave the Academy again, not for anything, unless it was at Mako’s direction, and under his guard.”
; “That seems wise,” said Kalem, shivering. Theren glared and remained silent.
“Enough talk of that,” said Ebon. “I do not wish to think of it any longer. Now tell me of your news. When did Enalyn declare war?”
They told him all that they had learned so far. That day, while Ebon was with Adara, the High King Enalyn had proclaimed that her host went to make war upon Dulmun. What fleets she had managed to assemble set sail from the eastern docks, while a great force of soldiers marched east across Feldemar to attack Dulmun’s northern lands.
“What of the south?” said Ebon. If the High King’s armies meant to march on Dulmun’s southern reaches as well, that would take them near to Idris.
“Nothing was said of it,” said Kalem. “She may be hesitant to march her armies along the north side of the Spineridge. Or mayhap she means to attack there, and is keeping the plan secret, at least for now.”
“That brings to mind my chief question,” said Theren. “Why would she proclaim any of this? Would it not be better to strike in secret, taking Dulmun by surprise?”
Ebon had thought the same thing, but Kalem shook his head at once. “She does not hope to vanquish Dulmun by means of war. That could be costly in both lives and coin, and we are in the midst of winter. But for months now, ever since the attack, all the nine kingdoms have become mired by indecision. Only three kingdoms have openly pledged their support to the High King: Selvan, the land from which Enalyn herself came; Hedgemond, my homeland; and Calentin, who are so few, and so far from the war, that their support makes little difference either way, even if they had not sent only a token of their strength, which they have. The other kingdoms hem and haw, neither breaking their oaths nor rushing to fulfill them. By declaring this war openly and putting forth an assault, the High King means to prompt the other kingdoms to action. Now their oaths compel them to lend aid.”
“And if they do not?” said Theren.
The Firemage's Vengeance Page 13
