by Helen Lowe
“And the empathy bond is only between pairs.” Tarathan’s mindtone was grim. “Warning the Guild is the priority now, but we cannot do that via mindspeech either. The nearest pair with any mindspeaking strength is in Ar, which is too far for even you or I to reach.”
“We’ll need horses,” Jehane Mor said, as though the silent exchange had not taken place. “But Naia sent ours to the livery stable near the riverport. We’d have to cross half the city to reach them.”
“They’re too obvious anyway,” said Tarathan. “Who else rides Emerian grays?” His gaze swept the hall and courtyard and his mouth tightened. “But there should be a stableful of mounts here, all of them without riders now.”
Tirorn shook his head. “I suspect your enemies cleared the stable. They took a string of horses with them when they left.”
They crossed to the stable anyway, but found it completely empty. “Thorough indeed,” observed Tarathan dryly.
“You may be less noticeable on foot,” Tirorn said, clearly thinking out loud. “Especially if you change your clothes.”
“And we have money,” Jehane Mor added. “We can hire horses on the other side of the river.”
Outside, an owl hooted in alarm and they heard the heavy, startled beat of its wings, crossing the yard. Tarathan jerked his head toward the loft and they fled up the ladder and between the stacked, sweet-smelling bales of hay. Moonlight filtered through a small skylight and there was an opening, partly covered with ivy, that overlooked the yard. It would be used, Jehane Mor knew, for bringing the hay bales in. Tirorn made to pull the ladder up behind them, but Tarathan stopped him. “It’s never pulled up,” he whispered, and the Derai nodded as the owl called again, mournful, from the house.
Jehane Mor knelt beside the opening, peering down. The gate was still half closed, but she could see sparks of light from the street, and a moment later a flood of black-clad figures poured into the courtyard. There must be at least thirty of them, she calculated, most with crossbows held ready to fire. Moving swiftly, they fanned out toward the house and down the narrow alley that led to the backyard. “The dancers in shadow hunt in force,” she observed, as Tarathan eased to the other side of the opening. Tirorn crouched at her shoulder and she held up a hand for his benefit, cautioning silence.
The knot of assassins in the courtyard broke up as another black-clad figure stalked through the now fully open gate. His mask was a blank face of Kan, the eyes dark hollows, and the hilt of his sword jutted forward, gleaming in the torchlight. A taller figure stepped through in his wake and moved to stand against the wall, away from the light that flared across a steel helm fashioned into the likeness of some fantastic bird of prey. He wore armor, too, Jehane Mor noted, and like the helm it was in a style she had seen before.
“Darkswarm.” Tirorn breathed the single word into her ear.
Jehane Mor nodded. “In company with a Master of the School,” she said to Tarathan.
The Master looked slowly around the courtyard and then moved forward, spurning a body with his boot. One of the assassins who had gone into the house came over to him. “All within are dead, Master.” He spoke quietly, but his words carried on the night air. “Even our own, left behind to catch stragglers.”
The blank mask turned and the assassin stepped quickly back. “Who did this?” the Master asked. “How did our own die?”
“They were killed with a knife,” the assassin replied, “which suggests another herald. Their bodies are still warm.”
“The killer can’t have gone far, then. Yet there were to be none left alive, to report on what happened here.” The Master swung toward the armed figure in the shadows. “You said that your watcher at the gate would make sure of that—but it, too, we find slain.”
The voice that answered was cold and dry as dust. “By a Derai arrow.”
“Your ancient enemy.” Acid touched the Master’s calm tone. “Who now hunt in our Ijiri streets. You also said those Derai who come here have no powers, not even minor ones like those of heralds, so how could they overcome your dark watcher?”
The bird-of-prey visor moved, catching a spark of torchlight. “The watchers are useful, but not intelligent. And one alone may always be surprised.”
The waiting assassin cleared his throat. “Could these Derai have slain our people, as well as the watcher? What if they’ve made an alliance with the Guild?”
“What if, indeed,” the Master said softly. “You are sure the house is clear?” The assassin nodded as the Master’s masked gaze swept the courtyard. “Search every inch of the grounds as well: unearth every hiding place. Let’s make certain the killer is not lurking here before we beat the streets. But be quick—the sands are running out.”
“The roof.” In the loft, Tarathan pointed to the skylight and Jehane Mor nodded, hoping that it was not held down by the mass of ancient, twisted ivy that covered the roof. The Darkswarm warrior, she reflected, as they crept toward the skylight, had to be a danger given the powers she had seen his kind use on the Wall of Night, five years before. No obvious aura surrounded the one in the courtyard, but the ability to detect others’ powers often depended on familiarity with their weaves. And that could work either for or against her now, depending on how much the Swarm knew about Haarth magic.
Tarathan was half darkness, half moving shadow ahead of her, and she sensed rather than heard Tirorn following as she strengthened her concealing shield. She focused on making it unobtrusive, part of the natural sounds and movement of the night, and used a weave based on Emerian Oakward lore. Very few in the River, even other heralds, would know of that—or so Jehane Mor hoped as she extended the shield’s rim as far out from the stable as she dared.
“Search around the house first,” she willed through it. “Come here last, if at all.” Cold minds, intent on their killing quest, brushed against the perimeter of her awareness and she drew back, letting the edge of the shield dissipate into the rustle of ivy leaves and frayed cobwebs beneath the stable eaves.
Tarathan stopped beneath the skylight and reached up. For a moment Jehane Mor thought the skylight was going to stick, but then it slid soundlessly aside, revealing a narrow cavity beneath the ivy. “You first,” Tarathan said to her, and Tirorn knelt, offering his gloved hands as a step. Jehane Mor’s brows lifted, but there was no time for hesitation so she put one foot on his locked palms and pulled herself up, slithering beneath the ivy on elbows and stomach. The vines were draped between two gables, with just enough space, close to each gable end, to lie concealed—so long as one hugged the roof. She crabbed sideways, away from the skylight, to make room for the others. The long bow slid through first and then Tirorn followed, reaching down to help Tarathan, who lowered the skylight back into place.
Side by side, they lay between the ivy and the roof. Jehane Mor concentrated her power of concealment on the skylight, covering it with an illusion of the timber planking that formed the stable ceiling. A searcher would have to look very hard to notice any discrepancy, or already know that a skylight was meant to be present.
The scrape of the loft ladder, when it finally came, was startlingly loud. No other sound followed, but Jehane Mor could almost see the assassin’s head turning, staring hard into every shadow. The waiting silence lengthened—then snapped as an owl swooped toward the loft opening, before hooting alarm and flapping sharply away. The hoot was answered by a smothered curse as a floorboard creaked, then a voice called down into the courtyard: “Eave owl, Master, but there’s probably more than one. Shall we kill them?”
“Why waste time?” The acid was back in the Master’s voice. “Or risk being cursed by Imulun’s priesthood for our pains?” The unspoken epithet, fool, hung on the air. “What else is there, besides the owls?”
The listening silence returned. “Nothing,” the assassin said at last. “Just hay, and I’ve run a sword through that. I’ll go through this window and onto the roof, check that, too.”
“No need.” The Master was crisp. “Li
en and Miro have just gone over the roof of the house and can see the stable from there. They say it’s clear, too, so we must spread the net wider. I want this quarry found.”
“The night is not yet over.” The Darkswarm warrior’s voice carried clearly to the three beneath the ivy. “We still have time.”
“It’s not the day I fear.” The Master’s tone was dispassionate. “Ij is a city of many powers, and our work must be done before the others realize what we are about.”
“Together, we are stronger than these others.” The cold, dry voice was assured. “Do you doubt us, when we have already delivered those you thought incorruptible into your hands?” Again the small cough that might have been humor. “The Guild House in Ishnapur will wait a long time for the return of its own.”
“It is a very long way from Ishnapur to Ij—especially for the unwary.” Something in the Master’s tone sent a chill down Jehane Mor’s spine. “Bringing down the heralds will send a message that no one is beyond our reach. But they must all be dead. No one must escape the net.”
“Especially,” the dry voice said, “the two from Terebanth. That was our bargain.”
A whistle shrilled, piercing with command, and Jehane Mor guessed that the Master was calling the rest of his followers from the house. “Spread out,” she heard him order. “Search the city until you have found and killed every herald, but most particularly the two who wear the masks of owl and falcon. Their bodies you bring to me; any others can go into the canals.”
“And the Derai?” the Darkswarm warrior asked.
Jehane Mor could almost hear the shrug in the Master’s voice. “We’ll kill any who get in our way.”
There was a sound that might have been the murmur of voices and the whisper of departing feet, or then again, it could just have been the wind. The night around the Guild House stable grew very quiet after it fell away, troubled only by the soft, even breathing of the three who lay hidden on the roof. They lay so still that eventually an eave owl glided close overhead, as though they had become one with the ivy and the night.
Jehane Mor continued to hold her shield, aware that this was the danger time, when one person or a small group, suspicious or simply cannier than the rest, returned for another look—or perhaps had never left but waited as they did, watching and listening. She felt Tarathan’s cautious probing for any such foes and waited for his indication that it was safe to move. Tirorn, too, was patient, but she remembered the Derai Wall from five years before and was not surprised that a warrior who patroled its passes knew how to wait.
All the same, it felt like a very long time before Tarathan raised the skylight slightly and peered through the gap. Again he waited, before lifting the hatch clear and dropping neatly into the loft, his knife ready in his hand as he landed. Nothing moved, and by the time Tirorn and Jehane Mor descended he was at the loft window. “All clear,” he said, as they joined him.
“Then let’s go,” said Tirorn. “They’ve already come back once. Sooner or later someone is bound to return again.”
“First,” said Tarathan, “we need to find clothes that are not herald gray, and any money left in the house. We may need more than we have on us just to get out of Ij.”
Tirorn looked quizzical. “Bribes?” he inquired, not without irony, and Tarathan shrugged.
“We don’t know if this is one Master acting alone or the entire School, or how far the tentacles of this Darkswarm alliance reach into the families and institutions of Ij.”
“If it is the School,” Jehane Mor said, “then they will go deep. We shall have to travel fast and far.” Silently, she added: “And the Darkswarm warrior asked for our deaths, in particular.”
Tirorn considered her, his expression unreadable through moonlight and shadow, and she wondered how much of the conversation in the courtyard he had understood, how good a grasp of the River speech he really had. “Are you sure there’ll be money to find?” he asked finally, as Tarathan started down the ladder and they both moved to follow. “If these assassins are like soldiers, they’ll have looted any valuables they find.”
“Naia always kept hidden money for emergencies,” Jehane Mor replied, descending ahead of him. “The assassins may not have had time to discover it.”
They did not speak again as they skirted the courtyard dead or picked their way through the black and gray shadows of the house, with its fallen bodies and the wreckage from the assassins’ attack. Tirorn stopped to keep watch at the end of the long upstairs hall, by a window overlooking the courtyard, while the heralds went to Naia’s rooms. These were sparsely furnished and largely undisturbed; the assassins must have done all their killing before they penetrated this far into the house. Jehane Mor compressed her lips, trying not to think of the caretaker in the context of the unadorned room: a slight, straightforward woman with an Enkot burr to her speech.
Tarathan knelt and pulled out drawers from a heavy chest, searching in the cavity behind them with careful fingers. “It’s particularly useful, at times like these, to have a keen seeker’s sense. Ah.” He drew his hand back, opening a small but bulging leather bag. “Trust Naia to be thorough. There’s a good mix in this—Ijiri gold crowns as well as copper pennies and River marks.”
“And fortunately for us, she wasn’t sworn to the gray. She has plenty of street clothes here.” Jehane Mor held up a tunic and leggings with a long cloak, their colors indeterminate in the dim light. “I can wear these, but there isn’t much for you. You’ll have to make do with just a change of cloak.” She rummaged further and emerged with a dark cloak and two masks. “Imulun and Seruth. Not very imaginative, but half the country folk will be wearing them, too.”
Tarathan swung the dark cloak on and raised the hood. “My hands ache for my swords and a bow. I have a feeling, a nasty twitch between my shoulder blades, that we’ll need them before the night is out.”
“We have other ways of defending ourselves,” Jehane Mor’s mind voice was quiet.
Tarathan shook his head. “I had thought of using the Gate of Dreams to reach those in the Guild with abilities near to ours, but we know too little of what powers the Darkswarm have deployed here. They may well be stronger than us, as some were on the Wall—” He broke off, shrugging. “The more we use our power, the greater the risk. Besides, you remember what the Derai were like about their own who had power. We don’t want this Tirorn deciding that we need to be filled full of arrows.”
He took a step toward the door head as they both heard the Derai’s swift footstep in the hall. “Lurkers!” Tirorn said crisply. “A pair this time. They’re just floating through the gateway now, but may well have allies with them.”
Chapter 6
Facestealer
They ran, down the hallway and along another until they reached the steep, winding stair that led to the back door of the house. They fled down as quietly as they could and out through the kitchen garden to the rear wall. Tirorn hauled himself up and over and the heralds followed, dropping down into the backyard of another house and keeping to the darkest shadows as they ran across. After that there was a series of yards and gardens until finally they came out onto another quiet street, with the sound of festival revelry close by. Tarathan adjusted his Seruth mask. “Time to rejoin the crowds.”
“And head where?” Tirorn asked. He slipped his bow onto his shoulder, beneath the piled folds of his cloak, which Jehane Mor did not think would fool anyone who looked closely. “You’d be surprised,” the Derai said, correctly interpreting her lack of expression as she studied the cloak arrangement, “how little people who are drunk and absorbed in their own celebrations notice about those around them.”
“No,” said Jehane Mor. “I wouldn’t.” She looked at Tarathan. “North Gate is less direct. We’d have to double a long way back through the forest on the other side, but for that same reason, they may not watch it as closely as the river port or the Road Gate.”
“I’d be surprised if they don’t have watchers on the Main Roa
d and further upriver as well, but we’ll worry about that once we’re safely across.” Tarathan looked at the Derai. “And you? I don’t know how much you understood of what was said, back at the Guild house, but threats were made against your people here.”
Tirorn shrugged. “My people can take care of themselves. Our lodgings are in the northern part of the city anyway, on the island called The Sleeve, so I’ll go with you as far as the northern gate. Since,” he added, with an ironic glance at Jehane Mor, “I have involved myself in your business.”
“Without being asked,” she murmured, and he smiled faintly, acknowledging the echo of Orth’s words from the Farelle bridge.
They joined with a small group at the end of the street and were gradually drawn into the main current of festivalgoers. There were still singers and dancers going from square to square, but many people were moving more slowly and most were drunk, lurching along the streets and occasionally bursting into song or picking fights. Behind her mask, Jehane Mor wrinkled her nose at the whiff of vomit and urine beneath the smells of sweat, and food, and expensive Ijiri perfume.
Eventually the flow of the crowd split into two streams, one turning east for the Minstrels’ Isle while the other carried on toward The Sleeve and the lantern-boat races held on that island’s southern side. This second stream thinned as it entered the maze of narrow streets surrounding an old market quarter, and Jehane Mor began to notice furtive movement in side alleys and along overhanging rooftops. Tarathan watched these movements, too, without seeming to, and Tirorn fingered the bow beneath his cloak. “Is this for us?” he asked Tarathan, speaking from the side of his mouth.
The herald shook his head. “I don’t think it can be. There are just too many of them, and not everyone on the move is wearing black.”
“The guards, too,” Jehane Mor said, as six jogged through the crossroads in front of them. “I’ve seen more in the last ten minutes than we have the entire night.”
