by Dave Duncan
Thana was glaring. “You didn’t think to ask my permission first? He is my son!”
“And he’s the heir to the Tryst, Thana. That makes his safety my concern too.”
“And it makes his attendance today to welcome his father home a lot more important than your abominable lessons!”
Not when there were assassins around it didn’t. “No. I agree with you that this skipping out by himself has to stop. I would never humiliate an adolescent by having him beaten like a slave, but Addis is not going to forget today’s lesson. So it will be doubly valuable.”
Thana compressed her lips and said nothing. She never admitted defeat.
In a moment she shouted at the children to be quiet. Her tension was understandable, in that she was on her way to meet a husband she had not seen in almost two years. Restarting their marriage would require tact and adjustment, but she had married Nnanji for his potential, not his sensitivity. Given the primitive state of birth control in the World, she must realistically expect to bear another child within a year.
“Lady Mother?” piped little Tomisolaan. “Why is that mountain on fire?”
The procession was up in the bare brown hills now, good only for rearing cattle and horses. A bend in the road had brought them a fine view over the great bronze city and the wide silver River beyond it. Today the mountains of the RegiVul range were free of clouds, misty blue ghosts in the fall haze.
Wallie turned to look. “There should be two…”
But there weren’t two peaks smoking. One volcano had erupted about the time Lord Tivanixi had summoned the Tryst of Casr in the name of the Goddess. The Tryst had been aimed at the sorcerers, devotees of the Fire God, and the eruption had shown his displeasure. A second eruption had followed soon after Wallie had stepped down in Nnanji’s favor, and both peaks had smoldered on and off ever since. They must have had earlier names, but they were known to the swordsmen as Black Top and Red Top—ostensibly from the color of their rocks, but more likely from respective shades of Shonsu’s and Nnanji’s hair. The peak still smoking was the first, the southern one, Black Top. The other, presumably, was dormant—or extinct.
Wallie glanced back to Thana. She was a practical and hardheaded, almost cynical, woman, but the World ran on superstition. Even Wallie looked for omens in a way he never had before he became Shonsu.
Nevertheless he said, “They stop and start all the time. Don’t lose sleep over it.”
Thana stopped biting her lip long enough to say, “But when did this happen? We should have been told, or at least you should.”
Yes, plenty of people would have told Wallie if they knew of the change: Jja, Vixini, Horkoda, and more. If the news was widely regarded as a significant sending from the gods, he should have heard. Thana seemed to be treating it as such. She looked positively scared, not at all like her usual unshakably confident self. That was not the Thana Wallie knew. Or the change might have just happened today, in which case the gods’ message might be urgent.
“They come and go,” he said easily. “I expect volcanoes need time off too. By the way, have you ever heard of a high-rank swordsman named Mibullim?”
She shook her head.
“Nnanji sent a message from Quo last night about a Seventh by that name, and none of us have ever heard of him.”
“Falcons?” As usual, Thana had hit upon the most likely explanation. Not all pigeons made it home to their boxes safely.
Some earlier message about Mibullim had undoubtedly gone astray.
Or Mibullim of the Seventh himself had gone astray.
Or the sorcerers who ran the pigeon post were censoring the Tryst’s mail, and that was the most worrisome possibility of all.
“If you two don’t stop that, I’ll tell your father about you!” Thana yelled for the third time in the last two hours.
As before, the threat worked, at least momentarily. Nnadaro could have only vague memories of Nnanji, and Tomisolaan none at all, so Thana was turning him into a bogeyman for them. Then the band struck up again, praise the gods!
“That’s my cue,” Wallie said thankfully. “Excuse me.”
He opened the door and jumped out. The swordsmen all looked tired, dusty, and bad tempered, but he would willing have changed places with any of them to have escaped that carriage ride. He waited for his men to catch up, leading his horse. He took the reins, mounted, and rode forward.
Nnanji’s procession was in clear view, but still a mile or so ahead. Wallie urged his horse to a canter, intending to intercept. He soon estimated that Nnanji had about four hundred swordsmen with him, two-thirds of them on foot, which explained why their progress had been so slow. Most of cavalry must be Lord Boariyi’s guard from Quo, not Nnanji’s. He traveled mainly by ship, and horses were reluctant sailors.
Hearing hooves behind him, he glanced back, to see Adept Filurz spurring after him, uninvited. Having much less of a load to carry, his horse was having little trouble catching up with Wallie’s. And Wallie slowed down, because he had just realized what his bodyguard had seen and now proceeded to shout to him.
“My lord! There’s too many of them. Who are all those men?”
Far too many. The Quo-Casr road was home ground. Nnanji never took an escort of more than a score when he rode this trail, and usually fewer. Four hundred? If Shonsu’s hair had not been tightly clipped in a ponytail it might have stood straight up. This morning he had escaped assassination literally by a miracle. A simultaneous attack on Nnanji would have made perfect sense to whoever was behind it. And a simultaneous attack could never be organized when Nnanji was weeks away, roaming the World; only when he was at either Casr or Quo. That explained the timing.
Filurz drew level and rode alongside. “If those’re Lord Boariyi’s men, it’s the whole Quo guard, my lord. Why? And if they’re not, then who by the gods’ balls are they?”
“I don’t know. Let’s work it out. If Nnanji was attacked at the same time I was, and died, then surely Lord Boariyi would have sent a pigeon to tell us, as soon as there was light enough to fly.” Unless the sorcerers were behind the plot and were suppressing the mail. If the procession were a cortege it would be flying black flags. Or perhaps not, if Boariyi did not want the assassins to know their attack had succeeded.
One rider had detached himself from the company and was headed to meet him.
“Unless the big man’s behind the killing,” Filurz growled, still mulling pigeons.
“I can’t believe…” Yes, Wallie could believe, if barely. Boariyi had been leader of the Tryst before him. The priests had tricked him into accepting Shonsu’s challenge, which he need not have done, and Shonsu had won by the narrowest imaginable margin, in a duel the minstrels still sang about.
Boariyi had accepted that decision. He had been a tower of strength in the early days and ever since. He had extended the Tryst’s boundaries almost as much as Nnanji himself had done, until about five years ago, when he had expressed a desire to settle down, and Nnanji had appointed him reeve of Quo. He had served faithfully there, too. But had he nursed a secret resentment all these years? Did he feel that Shonsu had tricked him out of the leadership and then, when he’d decided he didn’t want it, given it to his oath brother Nnanji instead of back to the man who’d won it fair and square? That was not how it had looked to Wallie, but Boariyi would not have been human had he not seen it that way sometimes.
If both Nnanji and Shonsu had died in the night, Boariyi would have a very good claim to the leadership now. If Shonsu had died, then Thana would certainly have brought all three of her children along to meet their father and the killer could have made a clean sweep of all other claimants.
“If you’re right, adept, then I ought to have been organizing a state funeral instead of a celebration. But that isn’t how Lord Boariyi would do it if he were a traitor. He’d have brought his cavalry to Casr at the gallop to take command of the Tryst.”
Filurz was shielding his eyes against the sun’s glare. “I think that�
�s Lord Boariyi his own self out in front, my lord.”
“You’re right,” Wallie said with a rush of relief. “And that’s not the act of a traitor, either. How many people know where Swordsman Helbringr took the boy for his lessons?”
“Just me and Master Horkoda, my lord.”
“Remember he’s Nnanji’s heir. If the liege dies, that kid could claim to own the seventh sword, although his mother would have to hold it in trust until he makes Third. That sword could be a poisoned legacy if ever there was one. If there’s more trouble, you may have to race back to Casr and put a wall of steel around Addis.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The lone rider was indeed Boariyi, now recognizable by his basketball-player height and the way his stirrups almost touched the ground. Although he had filled out since the days of the immortal duel and was even developing the start of an unsightly paunch, he was still a mighty fencer, as Wallie well knew from their last test with foils, some ten or twelve weeks ago. Boariyi was a curious combination of cynic and puritan. He shared Nnanji’s obsession with honor and serving the Goddess, and yet he regarded the mundane world with a disparaging eye. Soon Wallie saw with dismay that he was carrying something on the saddle in front of him, a long, thin something rolled up in a rug. A something like a sword.
All three riders reined in. None bothered with salutes.
Boariyi lifted the edge of the rug to show one end of the contents. Yes, the long thin something was a sword in a scabbard of finely tooled leather. The hilt was silver, shaped like a griffin clutching a huge sapphire.
“For you, Shonsu,” he said. His oversized mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Our liege ordered me to give you this.”
Chapter 6
Surely Nnanji would never part with the seventh sword while he lived?
“He’s dead?”
“No, he’s alive, but he’s taken a nasty wound. Very nasty.” Boariyi glanced uneasily at Filurz, a middle rank listening to high-rank discussion.
Wallie ignored the hint. If he couldn’t trust the chief of his own bodyguard, whom could he trust? “Carry on. What happened?”
“Take this before I change my mind.”
With a strange mixture of longing and revulsion, Wallie took the package. Fifteen years… long time… He still dreamt of the days he had worn that most perfect weapon. He didn’t draw it, just laid it across his his saddle as Boariyi had carried it, still in its cover.
“What happened?” he repeated.
“He was billeted in the room next to mine. You know it; you’ve slept there. Middle of the night, I was awakened by a scream. I grabbed up my sword and ran in. The assassin was just scrambling out the window. I got her. I had no choice: it was strike or let her escape.”
“Dead?”
“Dead. I ran her through. A woman, hit from behind! Don’t tell the minstrels.”
The two Sevenths eyed each other for a long moment.
“You want my sword?” Boariyi said, still bitter. “Go ahead: disarm me, take me to Casr for trial. You must have a scapegoat. Of course I had to kill my accomplice so she couldn’t testify against me.”
“You talk like a shithead. If that was what you’d been up to you’d have given me this trinket sharp end first.” Not necessarily! If Boariyi were the traitor, he would not have expected to see Wallie alive. He would be winging it now, trying to find out how much was known, what had happened to the other assassin.
“If not me, then who? These things must take time to prepare. Who outside the Tryst knew he was coming?”
“All Casr did,” Wallie said, “so I suppose all Quo did too. He’s never been gone so long, so they could have set this up half a year ago. How badly is he hurt? Is he going to live?”
Again the other Seventh glanced uneasily at Filurz, the witness. “I don’t think so. She twisted a knife in his guts. He was squirting blood like a fountain. Writhing and screaming. You know how belly wounds hurt.”
And kill. The first danger was simply bleeding out, but if Nnanji had already survived some hours, there must be hope that the hemorrhaging had stopped. But even if loss of blood did not kill him, then the punctured intestines would bring on septicemia. The miracle antibiotics of the World were honey and spider web, primitive in the extreme.
“Adept Filurz, go and advise Lady Thana of what has happened. Bring her. Tell Swordsman Tilber to look after the children. She may have to babysit them all the way home.”
Filurz thumped his chest with a fist and wheeled his horse.
“And remember,” Wallie shouted after him, “what I said earlier about a wall of steel: do it!” Addis must be protected. Only when Filurz was out of hailing distance did Wallie wonder if Vixini, too, should at least be warned. As oath brothers, the two liege lords were equals, and if both were ever put out of commission, some people might see Vixi as a more suitable figurehead for a coup than the even younger Addis.
The two Sevenths began cantering back up the Quo trail. Nnanji wounded, or Nnanji dying… This had always been a danger, but Wallie had never drawn up contingency plans. Coming from him the suggestion would have seemed self-serving, and no one else had ever dared to raise the issue. He could try to claim the leadership by right, or the council might start quoting sutras and traditions. Past trysts had always chosen their leaders by combat, but past trysts had always been short-lived, ad hoc affairs.
Now the wagons must be circled. There was a major conspiracy here, which would not stop with two bungled stabs at assassination. And Nnanji had put him in charge by giving him the sword.
“Is he conscious?”
“Barely,” Boariyi said grimly, staring straight ahead. “When he could stop screaming he insisted we bring him home to Casr. Told me to give you the Chioxin sword. ‘For now,’ he said! You know the liege. He won’t stop fighting until we slide him into the River. The healers washed their hands of him at first glance; didn’t dare take his case. I dosed him with some poppy juice to get him into the litter.”
Poppy juice was dangerous stuff at the best of times, and especially so to a man weakened by loss of blood. Wallie must give Boariyi the benefit of the doubt for now, but keep him on the list of suspects. He was the only suspect they had, except the ever-distrusted sorcerers.
“How did the killer get into the bedroom?”
The big man glanced at him mockingly. “Nnanji ran up the stairs with her draped her over his shoulder. When Lord Shonsu comes to call, we organize a dinner with senior swordsmen, sorcerers, and the least dull civic officials. When Lord Nnanji comes, we order in the raunchiest juniors and lots of girls. Of course I ordered the arrest of the gentleman who catered the entertainment, but he had not been located before I left Quo.”
Wallie shuddered. So far as he knew, Nnanji was always faithful to his wife when she was available. The rest of the time he followed the free swords’ belief that any girl he fancied should feel flattered. Only very rarely, if ever, was the all-powerful Lord Nnanji refused. “Thana must not hear of this. Officially the killer climbed in the window. Since she didn’t, how did she get a dagger into the liege’s bedroom?”
Boariyi flashed his cynical smile again. “That was a puzzle at first. But his aides identified it as his own knife, the one he carried in his boot.”
Another shock! Knives and concealed weapons in general were strictly forbidden by the sutras. Wallie had allowed them in the earliest days of the tryst, during the war against the sorcerers, but Nnanji had promptly forbidden them again. News that he had gone back to carrying one was virtually proof that he had encountered sorcerer trouble.
“Then it may not be a conspiracy. She might have been acting alone?”
“That would certainly be a relief,” Boariyi said.
Wallie found even that comment grounds for suspicion and wanted to scream and smash something. He would not have described the big man as a close friend, but he had trusted him implicitly and worked with him amicably for fifteen years. Inevitably, though, the least whiff of treason in
the air poisoned everyone and everything. No face looked honest, all words were suspect.
To lie to Boariyi now would be futile, for everyone in Casr knew the truth. If he was innocent he would be insulted, and if he was guilty he would be alerted to the fact that he was still a suspect.
“It would, except that a girl climbed up to my balcony not long before dawn. She brought her own knife.”
“Great Goddess! Did you catch her?”
“Jja caught her by biting her leg; very effective.”
“Then you can question her and get to the bottom of this?”
Damn! Another suspicious question. “I hope so.” Then Wallie realized that Boariyi, too, was holding something back. He had not been surprised enough to learn of the second assassin. “Tell me about Lord Mibullim.”
That was it. Boariyi nodded slightly in appreciation, as if they were fencing with words. “A friend of my youth. We apprenticed together in Wrou. He joined a band of frees, I remained and worked my way up to being deputy reeve. Then the Goddess fetched me to Casr for the Tryst. I haven’t seen him since the day he made Third.”
“But you expected to see him?”
“No. Nnanji expected to. He’d sent Mibullim ahead with two Fourths and a couple of Thirds. They were bringing you orders to muster the largest force possible, but they never reached Quo. There’s been major bloodshed in the south. Nnanji narrowly escaped an ambush, several ambushes in fact. This morning his luck ran out.”
“Things begin to make more sense, then.” Wallie had always been surprised at how little resistance the Tryst had met as it expanded. Nnanji had predicted that a great many swordsmen, perhaps even a majority of them, would welcome it as a cure for the widespread corruption and incompetence in their craft. Mostly he had been right, at least until now. In most places the discipline and the return of honor that the Tryst promised had been welcomed, or at least accepted without a struggle. Now, Wallie had thought that the Tryst had grown too huge and powerful to defy. But bad odds had never stopped wars starting up back on Earth.
