The Alabaster Staff
Page 23
She took his hand and paused.
“So what do I do?” she asked.
“Mount up. Talk as we ride.”
“No, I mean, how do I get up there?”
“Never ridden?”
Kehrsyn shook her head with an embarrassed look.
Nimbly sliding off the horse, Demok stepped behind Kehrsyn, gripped her by her slender waist, and lifted her onto the horse with one mighty heave. Kehrsyn squealed in mixed fear and delight. Once she was up, Demok mounted behind her and took the reins.
Through the rain-washed city streets they moved, Kehrsyn riding in front of Demok, gripping his arms to stabilize herself. She seemed glad to hold onto the rock-steady soldier, and, for his part, he did his level best to ignore it.
They discussed the plan as they rode, Demok constantly alert for the sights or sounds of any of the Wing’s Reach guards.
“Can’t I have the horse?” asked Kehrsyn. “That way I’d be sure to get away.”
“No,” said Demok. “Can’t change. Left with a horse, have to ride back on one.”
“You could say I took it from you,” said Kehrsyn, turning over her shoulder to look at Demok. In answer, all she got was a wry smile.
They continued to search, crisscrossing the city streets and gradually moving closer to Wing’s Reach.
“That’s them,” said Demok. “Lie down.”
Kehrsyn lay low against the horse’s back, one arm reaching forward to grip the front of the horse’s harness, the other arm held close to her body with the hand tightly gripping the horse’s mane. She hid her head to one side of the horse’s large neck. Demok slung his cloak over her to conceal her form as well as he could. For the rest, he would rely on the poor visibility and his cleverness.
He rode up to a pair of guards carrying a lantern.
“Ho there,” said one. The other sneezed.
“Ahegi?” asked Demok, casually steering away from the two, so that Kehrsyn’s head and reaching arm remained on the far side of the horse. He kept his mount pacing forward, both to imply urgency and to help keep Kehrsyn concealed behind the motion.
“Yonder, two blocks out,” said the guard in answer, pointing. “He’s a slave-driver. The gal’s long gone, but he’ll have us out here searching every nook and rat hole, block by block, until dawn comes or we catch our death of the flux.”
“Whichever comes second,” added the other guard.
Demok waved and continued forward. He circled around to the far side of Ekur, to place Kehrsyn and himself between the former priest and Wing’s Reach, then he turned his horse back toward where the guard had indicated Ekur would be found.
“Ready?” he asked.
“I guess,” she replied, and he helped her dismount. “Ooh, this is cold,” she grumbled as she moved away.
Demok watched as she glided down the side street in front of him, reached the end, and looked around.
She slid back and said, “This’ll do. Just be sure you pass me first.”
Demok nodded, and she moved off again. He waited until she was in position at the head of the side street, where it connected to the main thoroughfare. He walked his horse down the side street as well. As he approached Kehrsyn’s position, he could hear her teeth chattering.
The horse passed her hiding place and trotted out into the street.
Ekur and a few aides and senior guards stood forty yards away, well lit by a cluster of lanterns. Demok noted with scorn that one fawning aide held a parasol over Ekur’s head, despite the fact that the latter had a rain cloak and wore his hood up.
“Ahegi!” bellowed Demok, cupping his hands to his mouth to be heard over the heavy rain.
Three bull’s-eye lanterns swung around to illuminate the horse and rider. A mere heartbeat after Demok became fully illuminated, Kehrsyn bolted from her hiding place nearby, knocking over a barrel and shovel. She fled down the street. The sudden racket drew the bull’s-eye lanterns’ glare.
As soon as their beams alighted on Kehrsyn’s fleeing back, Ekur’s shriek carried through the night: “She’s heading back to Wing’s Reach. Stop her! Catch her and kill her.”
The portly old priest gesticulated wildly in the rain, his sheer hysteria whipping his followers to immediate action. With a clatter of steel weapons and cleated boots, everyone around, even the bearer of the parasol, rushed after the fleet young woman, their lanterns jostling in the rain like fireflies caught in a waterfall.
Within the span of a tenbreath, the street was vacant except for Demok and Ekur, the latter bearing a staff that glowed with a powerful, magical light.
“I thank thee for flushing the quarry,” said Ekur as Demok rode up to him.
“She is not the problem,” said Demok as he dismounted.
“She is more than trouble enough,” said Ekur.
Demok stepped closer, reaching beneath his cloak to pull a small item from his vest.
“I have a clue to the turncoat in Wing’s Reach,” the warrior said.
Ekur drew back slightly and assumed a more commanding stance.
“Hast thou?” asked Ekur.
Demok nodded, held out one hand, and said, “This was in the quarters of one of our people.”
He placed a small silver brooch in Ekur’s palm, and the aged former priest brought his lighted staff closer to inspect the item. He gasped when he recognized the intricate design worked into the brooch. It was a gasp that, Demok noted, was at once both relief and alarm, as when one dodges an asp only to step upon the tail of a lion. Ekur turned the brooch over in his pudgy hand, his breath quickening in fear.
“This—these—those who follow this path are the most vile of conspirators,” he blustered. “And we have one such assassin in our very midst? Why, nothing is safe! Knowest thou the name of this perfidious rebel?”
“Me,” said Demok, stepping in close so that his nose touched that of the former priest.
Ekur’s eyes went wide in surprise, but Demok couldn’t tell it if was from hearing the sudden confession of his true allegiance or from feeling the cold short sword that pierced upward through his diaphragm and into his black heart.
Truth be told, Demok didn’t care.
Kehrsyn huddled in a recessed doorway in a dark, narrow alley a few blocks from Wing’s Reach, precisely where Demok had ordered. She’d easily escaped the guards. In the end, she’d followed the guards themselves as they chased her phantom feet back to their home at Wing’s Reach.
Once there, she’d circled around them as they made their follow-up plan, and watched with no small relief as they departed back in the direction of Ekur and Demok. Spotting the landmarks that Demok had drilled into her, she’d found their rendezvous per his instructions. Despite her confidence, however, the cold weather teamed up with her exhaustion, both mental and physical, to make her a sodden, unhappy wretch.
She abandoned all intent of subterfuge. She stamped her feet on the paving stones, relatively dry beneath the arch. She let her teeth chatter fully, and the noise overcame even the heavy rain, at least to her ears. She wrapped her arms as tightly as she could around her and shivered uncontrollably.
She stared out at the rain, feeling entirely alone. No one was stupid enough to be out in such bad weather, and certainly no one was stupid enough to be out without a cloak. No one except her. She found herself missing the relative dryness of the crawl space beneath the back stairs of the Tiamatan temple, but she dared not move anywhere, because Demok had told her to meet him exactly there.
She was too cold to be mad. She just wanted to stop waiting, hoping her torment would end before she surrendered herself to the tears dammed up behind her eyes. How long could it take a veteran like him to kill a fat old priest, anyway?
At length, she heard the clop-clop of approaching horseshoes. Demok loomed out of the rain, leading his horse by the reins.
Kehrsyn forced a single word past her numb lips and chattering teeth, “Ekur?”
In answer, Demok walked up close to her, filling the d
oorway’s arch.
“You realize,” he said as he drew his short sword, “that you cannot enter Wing’s Reach alive.”
Demok rode up to the front door of Wing’s Reach, the splash of the collected rainwater in the streets almost drowning the clop of his horse’s hooves. He had one arm wrapped around Ekur, who sagged in the saddle in front of him. Behind his saddle, Kehrsyn’s lifeless body dangled across the horse’s back, her dark hair swaying with the horse’s stride. A slight curtain of excess rainwater dripped from her fingertips with every step.
“Ho the house!” Demok shouted.
Four guards burst out of the front door, wet and tense and tired. The sergeant looked up at Demok, while the other guards scanned the rainy darkness.
“Ahegi’s hurt,” Demok said. “Bad. Massedar’s room. Now.”
“What happened?” gasped the sergeant.
Demok gestured over his shoulder with a thumb and said, “She got him. I got her.”
“Good job,” said the sergeant, casting a bitter glance at Kehrsyn’s body. He grunted as Ekur’s limp body slid into his arms. “Gimme a hand, boys,” he mumbled through clenched teeth. “He’s a hefter.”
Demok watched the four of them struggle with Ekur. Between the chill, the rain-slicked steps, and Ekur’s porcine build, he knew it would take them time to get the body up the spiraling staircase. He dismounted and held the front door for the foursome. Then he cast a glance in and motioned to another guard who stood by, chatting quietly with a few comrades.
“Stable my horse,” he said in a tone that demanded immediate compliance.
He trotted back down the stairs, walked over to his demoralized mount, and unceremoniously heaved Kehrsyn’s inert body over his shoulder. He walked back inside Wing’s Reach and ascended the stairwell across the foyer from the one the guards were using to port Ekur.
He reached the third floor, his breath heavy from the exertion of carrying an extra hundred-odd pounds of meat over his shoulder. He moved down the hall, Kehrsyn’s hand batting against his legs. He reached Massedar’s room and pounded on the door. Massedar opened it after but a moment’s pause.
“Here’s one,” said Demok, stepping in and lowering Kehrsyn’s body to the floor, face down. Massedar started to say something, but Demok cut him off. “Other’s coming.”
After a moment, a foursome of guards shuffled in, panting and puffing, and dropped Ekur.
“Here y’are, sir,” wheezed the sergeant.
Massedar stepped closer to the old priest and stared at his lifeless face. He kneeled and pressed his fingers into the fleshy neck, looking for a pulse he knew he wouldn’t find.
“I fear the hours of his life are spent,” he said with measured sadness. “Nothing remaineth to be done, save only the final rites of passage. These shall I do for my old friend, alone. Let the doors be closed and the news be borne to the others of the house that Ahegi hath fallen.”
The guards nodded and backed out, closing the doors behind them.
Massedar rose, stepped over, and kneeled down beside Kehrsyn. He took her cold hand in his, and a curious, chuckling sigh of longing escaped his lips.
He turned to Demok and asked, “What hath come to pass here?”
Kehrsyn awoke with a groan.
“What happened?” she slurred.
She tried to sit up, but her vision swam. It seemed like a huge, heavy stone was rolling around inside her skull, whipping her head back and forth on her weak, noodle neck. She started to cry out in pain and despair, but a hand clamped over her mouth. Fortunately, whoever it was also cradled her head and shoulders in one arm and lowered her gently back down.
“Rest easy,” said a terse, rough voice.
“Demok?”
“Sshh, quietly,” he answered, pressing a flask of warm liquid to her lips. “Drink this.”
She took a few sips of the bitter, musky tea, then drank several heavy swallows once she got used to the flavor. She sighed and sank back, only then realizing that she lay on a comfortable mattress with a pillow beneath her head and warm woolen blankets tucked around. She heard a fire crackling and the incessant drumming of the winter’s rain on the roof over her head.
“Where am I?”
“Massedar’s suite.”
“But—” she began, and memory returned to her. “What did you do?” she asked, suspicious, but too weak to do anything about it.
She turned her head toward his voice and stared with bleary eyes.
He sat beside her, cross-legged on the floor. He ran one knuckle back and forth across his lower lip, his palm facing Kehrsyn so that his hand partially shielded his face. He looked back at her from beneath his brows, not an intimidating expression, but rather one of discomfort and shame.
“I … struck you. Base of the neck. Pommel of my sword.… I’m sorry.”
“Why?” she asked, and the pain of betrayal leaked into her voice.
Demok’s eyes flickered, almost a wince, and he said, “Ahegi’s order still stood. Kill you on sight. No questions. You couldn’t enter Wing’s Reach alive.”
“So you knocked me out?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Why not change Ekur’s order?”
“Might be accomplices. They must think you’re dead.”
“I could have snuck in,” she said.
He drew his mouth into a grim line and replied, “Couldn’t take the chance. The guards are alert. Besides, it helps for them to see your corpse.”
“Well, why hit me like that? I could have pretended I was dead.”
“Would have shivered. Or twitched.”
“You could have at least asked before you did it,” she groused.
“Would have been harder,” replied Demok. “For both of us,” he added, more quietly.
“Well, I still think there must have been a better way.”
Demok turned the cold compress over and brushed a lock of hair from her forehead.
“I know,” he said.
He rose and stepped over to the fire. Kehrsyn heard some clinking, as of coins, and after a few moments he came back holding a burlap bag that looked like it had something the size of a cat in it. He shook it. It jingled.
“Silvers, warmed by the fire,” he said. “They’ll help.”
He sat back down beside her, pulled back the blanket from her shoulder, and gently placed the bag of heated coins at the base of her neck, tucking some behind her and draping the others across to her collarbone. The burlap was scratchy, but the warmth radiating from the coins suffused her neck with a welcome ease.
“Do you have some more of that tea stuff?” Kehrsyn asked.
Demok held the flask and she drank some more. The aftertaste was an unusual bitter flavor, and left her mouth dry.
“I think it’s helping,” she said, smacking her lips.
Demok smiled, though only for a second, and said, “Herbs from Sespech. Potent.”
Kehrsyn lay back, closed her eyes, and listened to the fire for a while, drifting in and out of sleep. She felt the pain slowly recede, vanquished between the warm tea within and the warm coins without.
“Where’s Massedar?” she asked, her voice dreamy and slurred.
“Waiting next door. When you’re ready.”
“Thank you for taking care of me.”
Demok laughed, nothing more than a tiny snort through his nose, and said, “Least I could do.”
“It’s almost worth it to get hit like that just to relax in a bed like this.”
“Kehrsyn, I’m—” began Demok.
“Don’t worry about it,” Kehrsyn interrupted. “It just kind of scared me that you’d … you know … nah, just forget about it.”
Another long pause filled the room, broken only by the occasional pop from the fire. Eventually, Kehrsyn started flexing her fingers and toes to get her circulation going again. She stretched her arms and legs, exhaled wearily, and lay still again.
“If you’re ready,” Demok said, “he’s waiting.”
A cone of clove incense smoked on Ekur’s forehead, planted in the precise center of the two concentric rings that marked him as a man of letters. A shiny copper covered each eye. A deep stabbing wound in Ekur’s belly lay open like a rancid mouth, the skin around the cut pulled akimbo by the inert weight of his bulk. Massedar moved carefully around the corpse, inspecting it. Kehrsyn winced and turned her head.
“Why are you keeping him here?” she whispered.
“Soon shall his secrets be mine,” said Massedar. “I wished your presence—both of ye—that ye might witness the gravity herein and as well catch any nuance that lieth outside my ken. Silence, now, and attend ye.”
Kehrsyn stepped back. She held her arms across her chest, with one hand on her cheek as if it might shield her. She chewed on the inside of her lip. Demok stood to one side, hands crossed placidly in front of him.
Massedar crossed over to a large cupboard rather like a wardrobe, but when he opened it Kehrsyn saw it was a vast apothecary filled with alchemical preparations, raw materials, and unknown magical mixtures. His hand swayed like a cobra as he searched his supplies, then snatched an earthenware jar the size and shape of a soup bowl.
He pushed his fingers through the wax sealing the top of the bowl as he walked over to Ekur. Kehrsyn saw that the bowl was filled with a balm of a pale, disquieting shade of green. Massedar scooped the balm out by the fingersful and smeared swaths of it on the inside of Ekur’s forearms, at the hollows of his knees, at the base of the breastbone, and across the bottom of his jaw. The scent of myrrh flooded the room, overpowering the incense, and tendrils of green started to spread beneath Ekur’s skin, following the veins like blood poisoning. It was hideous to watch but also fascinating.