Hawelli's lips tightened. He turned his back on me and grasped Calla's shoulders. "Have you forgotten—"
"No," said Calla hastily, "but things are different now."
An icy stare at me, this time over his shoulder. "But we talked about this—what we would do if Bekri were ever taken. You said you'd die fighting by my side."
"I know what I said. But there may be a more helpful way to die."
"By his side?"
"Yes." Defiantly.
He stared at her, then abruptly released her shoulders. "You're as mad as he is. Or as stupid." He settled himself down on a crate again, and looked disapprovingly up at us like a Flamen about to scold a pair of recalcitrant novices. "Naturally," he said, biting each word, "what's going on between the two of you means nothing to me."
I took a long breath as the light hit me. He was jealous. I had never been on the receiving end of jealousy before, especially sexual jealousy. The feeling was novel and not unpleasant.
"But I still can't let you go," Hawelli went on. There was satisfaction hidden in his voice.
"How do you plan to stop us?" Calla asked.
"By force. I'll tie you up if I need to. You're not going anywhere."
"Why not?"
"You know the location of my warbase. When you're caught, as I'm sure you will be, Kekashr will have it out of your hero here in no time at all."
My eyes were caught by someone drifting through the next segment of cellar. "You needn't worry, Flamen," I said. "If they were to catch us, they wouldn't ask us about anything as trivial as your warbase." Hawelli's face turned a dangerous red, but I gave him no time to answer. "Anyway, it will make no difference shortly."
"And why is that?"
"Because I believe you've already been betrayed."
The young boy whom Hawelli had sent to fetch Jebri came through the archway and stood quietly behind Hawelli, waiting to be noticed. He waited until his leader's outraged sputters subsided, then touched Hawelli's shoulder respectfully. "There's no sign of the Second Flamen," he said.
"Don't bother us now," Hawelli said testily. The boy shrugged and turned to go, but I put out my hand.
"Where did you look?" I asked.
"Everywhere. He's nowhere in the cellar."
"What difference does it make?" snapped Hawelli. "Why do you want to speak to him anyway? He wasn't even there for the raid."
"Exactly my point, Hawelli Flamen. Why do you suppose he wasn't there?"
"How should I know? Does it matter?"
Calla looked like she was slowly adding things up. "You don't mean—"
"I mean it's possible that Jebri is the little spider, the traitor, and he's gone off to sell Hawelli's secret to Kekashr."
Hawelli shook his head. "I don't believe you."
"Are you willing to take the risk?"
"There's no risk. Why should I listen to you?"
"Hawelli," Calla said softly, "I've found that Lord Tigrallef often knows what he's talking about. I know, it was a surprise to me too, but he's brighter than he looked at first. And if he thinks there's a chance that Jebri is the traitor—"
"But that's ridiculous," Hawelli grated. "Jebri is the Second Flamen. He's been an uncle to us all, especially to you, Calla."
There were tears in Calla's eyes. "I know that. But you should still listen to the Scion. Move your people, at least until you're sure you haven't been sold out."
"But the weapons—the stores—"
"Leave them for now," I said. "If I'm wrong, they'll come to no harm and you can return to them later. If I'm right, then you have no time to move them. Just get your people out."
Hawelli's face hardened. "This is a trick to make me let you go."
"The Lady give me patience!" Calla exploded.
At that moment, an urgent ringing froze Hawelli and the boy beside him. The source was a bell hanging just under the ceiling, on the end of a rope that vanished up through an aperture near the wall. The rope jerked again, frantically, three tense bursts of clangour followed a second later by two more; all through the cellar, Hawelli's revolutionaries picked up the nearest weapons and moved towards the entry. They went calmly and purposefully, as if the bell were a signal that put a well-drilled plan into motion.
"What is it?" Calla whispered.
"Morra, on lookout. She's signalling a large force headed our way. Not a patrol."
I didn't actually say I told you so, but I thought it. Hawelli scowled at me for a moment, and then at the ground. "Calla," he said, "are you determined to go with this madman?"
"Of course."
"There's nothing I can say?"
"You could wish us good fortune."
His face darkened. I think Calla was asking too much. Still not looking at either of us, he caught up a Sherkin sword from the table and tested its edge against his palm.
"Then go," he said bitterly. "Get out fast. Head for the sea; we'll be drawing them the other way, towards the market. Enjoy the Gilgard." He whirled, sword in hand, and was gone.
Calla and I joined the stream out of the hole. Hawelli's people boiled out around us and vanished into the wreckage and the street. I heard a shriek, abruptly terminated, and then a peculiar muted rumbling, like many feet walking across a pallet, and I remembered—when the Sherank wanted to move quietly, they would muffle their boots and horses' hooves with sheepskin.
Calla pulled me over the mound of rubble and through a shadowy gap in the back wall, then we were off and free and skimming through the ghostly streets of Gil towards the corniche. Somewhere behind us, there were screams and the clash of swords.
* * *
30
JUST BEFORE SUNSET, Calla and I stood again on the shingle beach under the mountain's looming mass. The tide was on the ebb, but the ledge that would take us back to the cavern was still under water. There was nothing we could do but wait. To the east, on the rim of the sea, a narrow moon was rising. In the northern sky, the first stars of the Crown and the Ladle had just become visible. I pulled my warm new cloak, courtesy of Hawelli and the Sherank, tighter around me and sat down on the pebbles.
"A beautiful night," I said. "These early spring evenings are really the best ones of the year, don't you think?"
Calla flopped down beside me. "You talk as if we're taking a quiet stroll in the moonlight. We failed, Tig. It was all a waste."
I threw a pebble into the sea. "I know. A waste of precious time, a risk of the whole enterprise, and we didn't even manage to save Bekri. You're right—it was a waste. We failed."
"You're very calm about it."
"We can't change the past." I took the bread out of my pocket and pulled it in two. Calla hesitated before she took a piece.
"It was my fault," she said. "You'd have gone looking for the Lady if I hadn't dragged you away—you might even have found her by now."
"Maybe," I said with my mouth full. "And maybe not."
"What's worse, Bekri was already in the Gilgard by the time we set out—"
"Stop it, Calla."
She bit unhappily into her heel of bread, chewed for a long time and then swallowed. "You blame me, don't you?"
"I blame myself. After all, going back was the heroic thing to do. I should have known better."
There was a pause. "Was that a joke?"
"Only partly," I said.
We sat quietly on the shingle waiting for the tide to go down. Kekashr and the frightened city seemed no closer than the moon itself. The sea calmly carried on receding; the moon-path across the water looked as solid as a marble pavement, as if we could set our feet on it and walk clear over the sea to Exile. I wondered what Arkolef and my mother were doing at that moment; the Flamens, I knew, would be happily and contentiously involved in their favourite pastime, planning their next hero's training, all unaware that I was still alive. Marori, the old Gilborn, would be mumbling in the corner: trust no one. Calla stirred at my side, and I reached on impulse for her hand. At least, I told myself, I could trust Calla.
She interwined her fingers with mine.
"Tig? What happens when we find the Lady?"
"We win," I said.
"No, no. I mean, what do you do with her if you manage to find her?"
Still holding Calla's hand, I leaned back on my elbows to look up at the spangled sky. "I invoke one of the Wills—they tell me I'll know at the time which one to use. The Lesser, with any luck."
"Why is luck involved?"
I laughed, softly and without mirth. "Because I'm afraid of the Greater Will. Nobody has ever invoked it, not even Oballef when he turned this island from a barren rock in the sea into a paradise. The Lesser Will was enough for even that."
Though I was staring at the sky, I could feel the intensity of her eyes. "So there is danger?" she asked.
"Possibly. There's a Caveat attached, but nobody knows what it means. I wonder if even Oballef knew. Unfortunately, it's in the same forgotten tongue as the Wills are."
Calla pulled insistently at my hand. "So you don't know what could happen." She sounded angry. "The Lady could destroy you even while you're trying to destroy the Sherank."
"No. Never."
"But how do you know? You've just said—"
"I'm a Scion of Oballef," I broke in, sitting up straight. "No direct harm can ever come to one of us from the Lady in Gil. That seems to be woven into the fabric of things. The dangers are of a different order."
"You're not making any sense."
I turned to Calla, enfolding her hand between both of mine. "When a Will is invoked, there is a melding. What the Lady does then depends on what's in the Scion's mind. And that's what frightens me, Calla. That may be what the Caveat warns against. There is such a thing," I said, dropping the words like stones into a pit of sleeping horrors, "as too much power."
The horrors stirred in their sleep. I tightened my grip on Calla's hand, as if she were a protective talisman, or the Lady in Gil in person. She exclaimed softly and curled her other arm around my shoulder, pulling me closer so that our cheeks were pressed together for a few moments. Then she pushed me gently away.
"Thank you," I said.
"What for, Tig?"
I resumed chucking pebbles into the dark receding sea. "For that moment of comfort, for one thing. For everything you've taught me. For volunteering to come with me in the first place." A cherished mental image came into my head. "For putting that wonderful look on Hawelli's face, back in the city. It was good of you to speak up for me."
Calla shifted uncomfortably. "Oh, that. Yes, well. About Hawelli and me—" she began. She stopped.
"What?"
"It's that Hawelli and I—we used to agree on many things. We disagreed on many things, too," she added quickly.
"Oh?"
"You know what I'm trying to say, don't you?"
I thought about it. "No."
She sighed. "Are you really so innocent?" She turned her face away. "I simply thought you might be wondering about Hawelli and me. After what he said in the warbase."
"About dying by his side?"
"Yes." She hesitated, then went on, "There was a time, not so long ago, when that seemed like a good idea if anything serious happened to the Web."
"Are you lovers?" The Lady roast me if I lie, the words just popped out. Calla went rigid. "We were," she said.
"Were." Past tense. I liked the sound of that. I reached out to take her hand again and pulled her around so that we were face to face. The moon turned her skin to ivory and her hair to ebony, and I was swamped again by that now-familiar deluge of tenderness. "How do you feel about me?" I asked.
Her voice was remote. "Don't you know?"
"Not really. There have been certain signs," I said, "that you find me not totally objectionable, but I have no experience in these matters. And I still can't imagine, hard as I try, why you'd sleep with someone like me unless you'd actually been ordered to."
She pulled her hands away. "You're very dense at times." She looked tight-lipped back at the sea.
I remember smiling. It was a mystery to me still, but the evidence seemed quite clear: nobody had ordered Calla into my bed. She had come to me because she wanted to. I took a deep breath and let it out again, still smiling. Bekri was in the south dungeon, the tide was about to uncover the slide-way to danger and possibly death, and somewhere in the mountain at Calla's back, the Lady was waiting—but for these few moments, in the quiet eye of the storm, we could allow ourselves to be happy.
"I love you," I said.
Calla glanced at me and away again. "I'm horrible to you."
"Not as often as you used to be."
"We could die tonight."
"I know."
She looked me full in the face, and said forcefully, "There are things you don't know about me."
"I don't care. I love you."
"If you knew—"
"It wouldn't matter."
"I'll wager it would." She stood up and walked away from me to the water's edge.
"Then tell me," I said, not moving.
She said nothing. I waited for a comment from the critic in my head. Nothing. I stood up and walked along Calla's moon-shadow. She turned as I reached her and flung her arms around me, as if she were drowning and wanted me, not to save her, but to drown with her. I was willing. No whispers this time, no fumbling or uncertainty; only a fusion and a sinking together, beyond fear and the reach of reason, into dark rhythmic waters.
"Time to go." Calla shook me. "The tide's well down."
I stared straight up at the Ladle. My bare legs were freezing and the hard pebbles were digging into my back, even through the thick cloak, but I was still too full of wonder to think of shifting. "If I die in the next few hours," I said dreamily, "I will not feel my life has been entirely wasted."
"Stop that." She kissed my forehead and helped me up and into my clothes. The moon was not much higher, but it felt like a long time had passed. At the far side of the beach, the ledge was visible just above the waterline.
"May the Lady in Gil help us now, if she never helped us before," breathed Calla. She edged her way on to the narrow strip of rock. I sidled along after her. Our Sherkin boots were squelching within seconds, but we looped our beautiful new cloaks up out of danger. There had never been a quieter night, nor a glassier, more silent sea; though my muscles knotted from sliding crabwise along the slippery ribbon of path and my back ached like it was carrying the whole weight of the mountain, I found myself savouring that stillness. The Sherank, the Web, the Lady herself, all seemed like a bad dream. Or a bad joke. If only the ledge led nowhere! If only, I thought, we could drop into the sea and swim away from the Gilgard's awful prospects, together, into a world where Gil and Iklankish were as dim and legendary as long-fallen Fathan. But the ledge did lead somewhere, and it was somewhere I was obliged to go; right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. All at once we were at the mouth of the cavern and Calla was bracing herself at the bulbous edge of the turning. A moment more and she had vanished inside.
I breathed deeply and took a last look at the brilliant moon, balanced like a bubble on the points of the Crown, then turned and slithered around the treacherous corner after her. She was waiting for me a few feet along, where the ledge sloped upwards to an entirely relative safety.
It was not as dark in the cavern as I expected, even before Calla lit her candle. Not only did moonlight wash through the opening, but the depths of the water were alive with phosphorescence that outlined the submarine towers and tors and swirled around the little fish and—notably—a long, dark, finned and tentacled shape the size of a Storican trunk-beast that cruised the cavern purposefully just under the surface.
"You see?" said Calla. "There is only one."
"One would have been enough. Thank the Lady we don't have to swim. Let's go."
The stairs were narrow, worn and absolutely straight, slicing like a swordcut through the solid rock. They ended in a high arched opening just ten feet from the top of the flume. Angel was not there; the ro
pe, neatly coiled and with one frayed and worried end where something had bitten it through, was the only visible artefact. I slung it over my shoulder—on the principle that you never know when you might need a good rope—and gazed into the blinding blackness of the sewer tunnel. From far, far away, there was a whisper of an echo of a sound.
Calla didn't seem to hear it. "What now?" she asked.
"We try to find the right rubbish chute and climb back up into the between-ways. With luck, Angel will be waiting for us there."
"You told him to wait here."
"No, Calla, you told him to wait here. Maybe he didn't like being alone."
She sniffed at that. "He's been alone most of his life."
"Never mind." Again, that distant ghost of sound. Calla didn't react and I began to doubt my ears. We started down the tunnel. My ears strained as we hurried along, hand in hand, but the fearful darkness that lay ahead of us was silent now.
Calla stumbled and fell, pulling me with her, but she managed to keep the candle alight. "What was that?" she asked in a puzzled voice. "I tripped on something."
"Rubble—no, bricks," I said, sitting up and rubbing my knee. "They're all across the tunnel."
"They weren't here the first time we passed," Calla said decisively. "This tunnel was as bare as a Gilman's cupboard." She lifted the candle higher and drew in her breath, shook my shoulder and pointed at the wall. Her eyes were huge.
I turned. The smooth rock-cut wall was broken by a square opening, which someone had, at some time, blocked with brick masonry. About half of this had now been torn away, leaving a jagged hole large enough for a man to crawl comfortably through; on the floor near the hole was a knife with a broken blade. The knife was familiar. I had last seen it in Angel's hand, at Calla's throat, during one of their minor disagreements. Of Angel himself there was no sign.
Calla hesitated. I took the candle and pushed myself halfway through the opening, holding the light into the darkness beyond. Upwards, there was nothing but more darkness, higher than the feeble light could reach; downwards, a rippled, water-polished surface of dark stone, tufted here and there with whitish fungus. At the edge of the light, a flick of movement; a roach as big as my thumb, white as a grub, scuttled into visibility and stood waving its antennae wildly for a moment, then flashed clear across the circle of candlelight, almost faster than my eye could follow. A broken second later, with a clicking of tiny claws, a snow-white bat hobbled after it across the light, looking, with its wrinkled face and folded wrinkled wings, like a little old blind man on crutches. It, too, disappeared into the darkness, and a second later a scrabble and a crunch marked the end of the miniature drama. I withdrew the light and sat down with my back to the sewer wall.
Gil Trilogy 1: Lady in Gil Page 21
