01 - The Compass Rose

by Gail Dayton

  “Quick thinking.” Obed clapped a hand on Fox’s shoulder. “Smart thinking. Thank the One that one of us could think.”

  “All the thinking in the world wouldn’t have helped if you three hadn’t been able to carry it off,” Fox said.

  Stone used the tip of his sword set in the floor to push himself upright. “So how do we get them back?”

  That would be the real trick, with Obed looking so obviously foreign, Aisse a woman, Fox blind and still half-lame, and neither him nor Stone speaking the language.

  “They won’t execute them out of hand?” Obed’s fear showed.

  Stone shook his head. “They’ll want to know why they’re here, who they’re spying for, what they’ve learned.”

  “If they think Kallista’s a witch, they’ll drug her.” Aisse sat next to Fox on the edge of the bed. “The drugs stop the magic, make her—she’ll do whatever they say.”

  “Destroy her will.” Fox nodded.

  “Destroy it?” Obed frowned as he paced. “Forever?”

  “Not forever,” Aisse said. “Till the drugs stop.”

  “So how do we get them out?” Stone said again. Why didn’t they understand that was the only thing that mattered? “We can worry about the rest later. First, we have to get them back, and fast. Before anyone figures out I’m no Ruler. Before they have time to get creative with their questioning.”

  “Where will they have taken them?” Obed spread one of the robes inside out on the table and took a charred stick from the edge of the fire, using it to sketch a rough box on one edge. “If this is the inn, where is that place?”

  Stone took the stick. “We’ve only been through Dzawa a few times before, but I think City Center is here.” He drew another box near the center of the robe and scraped a crooked line to it. “Not far from the lowest pool.”

  “What about inside?” Obed asked.

  “No City Center is exactly like another,” Fox said. “But they are all similar. There’s an outer wall. Beyond it will be Warriors’ barracks with women’s quarters, the Ruler’s house with its women’s quarters, prison cells, outbuildings, official government chambers—”

  “Draw it,” Obed ordered Stone, bracing his knuckles against the table. “Best guess.”

  Kallista groaned. Her head pounded as if a hundred cannon were trying to blast their way out. Worse, she felt muzzy, fogged up and—She cried out, reaching with her magic, only to recoil as pain doubled her over. She couldn’t touch her men, couldn’t feel them in her mind. She retched, bringing nothing but a sour taste from her empty stomach.

  Once more, Kallista reached for them, and once more pain slashed through her. She tried to push past it, ignoring the agony, but the magic wouldn’t rise. Nothing answered her.

  Someone snatched a handful of hair, lifting Kallista’s head for a slap that made her ears ring. Kallista caught the hand before she could be slapped again, using knowledge of pressure points to gain the advantage.

  “Don’t touch me,” she snarled, finally focusing on her tormentor. A woman a few years older than she, tall and square with a face permanently screwed into a scowl.

  “Witch,” the woman spat. “You’ll practice none of your evil here. Your magic is gone, the evil power purged from you.”

  Kallista turned aside the fear, questing inside for the core where her magic lived. It lay helpless, shriveled and starving, but it survived. The missing links to her men alarmed her more.

  “If you attempt magic,” the woman said in her cold hard voice, “you will be punished instantly, as you have already discovered. And then your punishment will be redoubled.” She twisted her hand free and raised it to strike again.

  “You will not touch me.” Kallista separated the words, giving them all the emphasis and power she could. She sat up, holding the woman’s gaze. Stone had found her light-colored eyes unnerving. She hoped this woman did also.

  “Witch.” The word was a curse in her mouth. But the Tibran didn’t strike a blow. “You have no power here. I will take your evil seed from your belly and destroy it. The Ruler says to wait, let you give birth and take the child to serve, but I know better. We must destroy it now before your evil spreads.”

  Kallista rose to her feet, stretching a bare hand toward the woman. She backed away, out of reach, obviously afraid.

  “You will not touch me,” Kallista snarled. “You will not touch my child. If any harm comes to my child, if you even look as if you are trying to harm it, I will cut your beating heart out of your body and feed it to the wolves. I do not need magic for that.”

  She snapped her fingers and the woman startled, losing her balance. Her fear gave Kallista an advantage and she took it. She dived across the room, knocked the woman to the floor, then scrambled forward and sat on her. Kallista grabbed her by the hair and banged her head on the hard stone floor.

  “Nobody threatens my child.” She banged the woman’s head again with every word. “Understand? Nobody.”

  The woman moaned and thrashed her arms and legs, but they had no strength. Kallista struggled back to her feet. What had they done to her? Her magic lay useless inside her, she walked like a drunk on a three-day binge, and she couldn’t find her men in her mind. Were they still alive?

  A single sob escaped her, but she choked the rest of them back. Torchay. He’d been with her when the mob attacked. Where was he now? Was he alive? They’d captured her, brought her here. Maybe they’d brought him too.

  Kallista looked around the cell. Tibrans didn’t expect a woman to defend herself, much less attack, or they wouldn’t have left anyone in here with her. Then again, the woman may not have had authority to be here. She sounded crazed. Kallista knelt to search her, batting away her feeble attempts to stop her, and was rewarded with a key that she hoped would open the door and a long, thin, lethal-looking knife. The woman had intended murder.

  Banging the woman’s head on the floor one more time for good measure, Kallista put the key in the door and stopped. She was wearing a Tibran woman’s dress—thin, flowing fabric that draped over her form. She would blend in, except Tibrans all had gold or yellow hair. Quickly, Kallista ripped a piece of fabric from the other woman’s dress and tied it over her dark hair. She opened the door and slipped out.

  Where would they have put Torchay?

  Torchay bit back a groan as his lurching progress around the perimeter of his cell collided yet again with the stone wall. He just needed to get round it once, to be sure he hadn’t missed anything in his blurry visual inspection when he’d first opened his one good eye. The left one seemed to be swollen mostly shut. Tibran merchants and farmers might not be trained to fight a man armed with swords, but they obviously knew how to administer a beating to an unconscious one.

  He had to keep moving, keep his bruised muscles from stiffening, had to find a way out of here to rescue Kallista and his child. No matter which of them—he or Stone—had sired it, he was its father. Had they beaten her too? Was she still alive? He had to believe it or go mad.

  The cell had no openings other than the barred grille through which they’d shoved him, not even a loose stone in one of the walls. Torchay fetched back up at the entrance and rested his forehead against the flat surface of the rusty bars, peering through at his blades. They lay piled haphazardly across the scarred wood of the table opposite, a full dozen of them. After removing so many, who could blame them for thinking they’d got them all? Doubtless that was why he had one left.

  Flexing his aching muscles, Torchay straightened and stretched. The guard sitting at the table looked up from his tankard and scowled. Torchay kept his face blank, reaching his arms to either side as far as he could. The guard grunted and went back to brooding in his beer.

  Torchay stretched upward, fingertips brushing the ceiling. He brought his hands down behind his head where, instead of locking his fingers together as he twisted his torso from side to side, he untied his hair to release the thin, sharp blade hidden in his queue.

  He slip
ped it from its leather sheath and tested the razor edge. A small sliver of a knife, it was long enough to reach a man’s heart or cut his throat. Now he only required getting the man close enough to do it.

  These Tibrans feared magic. Kallista’s little display at the inn would have told them they were dealing with magic, but would they know which of them was the naitan? And would this man know how real magic worked?

  Torchay leaned against the grille again, shaking his hair down around his face, doing his best to look wild and half-mad. He focused his gaze on the guard and began to recite his ancestry in as ominous-sounding a tone as he could.

  Scowl fiercer than before, the guard glanced up for only a second. Torchay spoke a little louder, pointing one hand at the guard and lifting high the one holding his blade, using street-show gestures. The guard glanced at him two or three more times as Torchay started adding buzzes and clicks and other strange sounds he’d once used to tease his younger sedili. Finally the man rose, shouting something, shaking his fist.

  Torchay raised his voice, letting a bit of spittle fly, the better to convince the man he was a mad naitan. If the man didn’t give in soon, he would have to start his recitation over. The guard shouted louder, but Torchay wouldn’t be drowned out. He added a whole-body tremor and the guard’s face paled. Come over here, damn you. Shut me up.

  Finally, at last, the guard scrabbled his sword from its sheath and rushed him. Torchay twisted aside, caught the naked sword in one hand and used it to yank the man hard against the grille while his little blade sliced into the jugular. He searched the dying guard and swore violently. No keys. He looked up and swore again. The man had left the damn keys sitting on the blasted table.

  He was not sitting here waiting for the dead man’s friends to come find him. One way or another, he would get those keys, get out of this hole and find Kallista. He had the sword. That was a start.

  Obed skulked in the shadows outside the stone wall surrounding Dzawa’s City Center, praying fervently to the Ruler of Heaven that his Tibran iliasti could get past the guard at the side gate meant for city staff. If either Fox or Stone spoke any Tibran, the task would have been simpler. As it was…He walked closer, listening, watching.

  Aisse giggled, pushing Stone upright again. Fox nuzzled her neck. “I promised I would put them to bed. They’re so blind drunk they’ll never find it without a guide. But when I get them all tucked in, I’ll be happy to come back and visit you.” She bestowed a smile on the guard that Obed had never seen on the small woman’s face, half lust and all invitation. Perhaps too much for their purposes.

  “They won’t do you any good in that state.” The watchman’s hands went to his belt, fingers fanned to display what lay between them. “Let ’em sleep it off wherever they fall and tend me now.”

  Aisse put on a worried face. “Aren’t you on duty?”

  “Sergeant’s already come by. We got lots of time.” He reached for her and Fox blocked his hand.

  “No,” he said in a slurred voice. “Mine.”

  “Well, I say she’s mine and you’re in no state to argue with me, are ya?” The guard shoved Fox back with one hand as he yanked Aisse out of Stone’s grasp and up against him with the other. Then his eyes went wide and he stared down at the knife protruding from his chest, Aisse’s hand wrapped around the hilt.

  “You forgot,” she snarled. “The female tiger also has teeth.”

  Obed slipped out of the shadows to catch the man and snap his neck before he could cry out.

  Fox took the watchman’s helmet and musket while Obed and Stone carried the body into the guard hut and tucked it into the shadows as best they could. The hut was small.

  “I am sorry,” Aisse said in Adaran when they finished. “I should have done what he wanted. I didn’t think. Now we have only until his sergeant returns on his rounds to find him.”

  “If you hadn’t killed him, I would have.” Fox settled the helmet on his head. “You should not have done what he asked. You will not. I’ll hold the gate against your return.”

  Stone took the musket from him. Obed held himself still, but would they never cease with their talking? Who knew what suffering Kallista endured while they delayed?

  “No, I’ll stay,” Stone said. “You know when someone’s coming—can see around corners. You’ll need that to find her. And I’d have killed him too, Aisse.”

  “I did.” Obed seized Fox by the elbow. “Now let us go and find her. Them.”

  Stone put on the helmet and stood at ease in front of the hut while the others walked across the first courtyard.

  “Do you see a building with high slits of windows, or perhaps bars across them?” Fox murmured.

  Obed searched the area around them. “Not here.”

  “Warriors’ barracks this way, I think.” Aisse turned them to the left. “Wouldn’t prison cells be close?”

  “Usually. Lead on, Tiger aila.” Fox set his hand on her shoulder. “Someone behind the building to our right.”

  Obed faded into the shadows as heavy footsteps sounded on the paved walkway. Aisse pulled Fox down into an embrace and held it as a Craftsman strode past. When he was gone, they went on, maintaining their lovers’ pantomime as Obed slid through the darker night. They passed a Laborer on his way to rest and a woman heading to her own before Obed saw the building they wanted. Fox and Aisse joined him in the shadows.

  “How do we get in?” Obed eyed the guards at the doorway.

  “Simple,” Fox said. “I’m delivering you to lockup. Except Stone was supposed to do this part.”

  “Vision aside, you don’t speak Tibran. How will you—”

  “Aisse wrote out orders. At the inn.” Fox pulled a paper out of his tunic. “Sound very official. Or they did when she read this back to me.”

  “What about Aisse? Is she a prisoner too?”

  “That’s right—you weren’t in the room when we worked this bit out, were you?”

  “I don’t go in,” Aisse said. “I will wait here until you have gone inside, then distract the guards so you can get back out again.”

  “No sex, Aisse.” Fox caught her arm. “Kill them if you have to, but don’t let them take what you won’t give.”

  “I decide what I give,” she snapped, breaking free. “I, only I. This is Kallista. Is Torchay. I give if I want. To get them free, I give anything.”

  Obed’s chest felt tight. This woman—He caught her hand and pressed it to his lips. “I honor you, Aisse ilias.”

  “Use the knife, Aisse.” Fox took Obed’s arm and shoved him into the moonlight. He sounded angry. Why?

  Fox marched Obed up to the prison entrance and presented the forged orders. The pair of guards studied them, peered at the paper, passing it back and forth, and finally admitted them to the building.

  “Now,” Obed muttered. “Where do you suppose they might have put them?”

  “Left,” Fox pointed. “Women are always quartered to the left of a House entrance. Why change it here?”

  Kallista sidled down the hallway, all her muddled senses alert for guards. Even if they didn’t fear women, they would fear a witch, wouldn’t they? She pushed herself off the wall, missing its support as she staggered along. She needed—no, she had a weapon. A knife, right here in her hand. She looked, to be sure it was there, then hid it in her skirt again. She needed to get out. She needed to find Torchay.

  She wove through a maze of corridors, trying to remember her path, to keep from passing the same way twice. But it all looked the same, especially after she stumbled into a section of open, barred cells. Even the ragged bundles of sleeping prisoners inside the cells looked the same.

  Eventually, she found a corridor that looked different. It had a table on one side piled high with blades and a guard.

  Kallista froze half a moment, until she realized the man was dead, slumped on the floor in front of the barred cell, blood pooling on the stones below him. And the blades were Torchay’s. She recognized the green-chased over-and-und
er sheath that held his twin swords. Why were they here? She lurched forward, catching hold of the table before she lost what was left of her balance. Torchay would want his Heldring swords. She could take another of the blades for the weapon she needed.

  “Kallista. What have they done to you?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  That sounded like—Kallista turned, peering into the shadowed cell, and saw Torchay’s face at the bars, looking anxiously back at her. Oh, Goddess, they’d hurt him.

  “Torchay, your poor eye.” She tottered across to the bars and reached up to touch his battered face, the swollen-shut eye.

  He caught her hand, kissed it. “Are you hurt, Kallista? Look at me, love.”

  She blinked at him, trying to bring him into focus. “I can’t walk right. I’m all…fuzzy.” A sob caught in her throat. “And the men—I can’t find them. The links are gone. Do you think they’re dead? And Aisse?”

  “I don’t know, love. They’re clever lads and Aisse is a tiger. They’ll have thought of something to stay safe. I’m sure they’re all fine.” He tipped her face up, lifting her eyelids when they tried to close. “They’ve drugged you with something. Likely that’s interfered with your magic and that’s why you can’t find them. Are you hurt anywhere else?”

  Kallista put her hands protectively over her stomach and the twin blades clanged against the bars. “Oh, here. I was bringing these to you.” Torchay took them from her as she went on. “She wanted to hurt my baby. But I wouldn’t let her. I hurt her instead.”

  “Good girl.” Torchay moved in the shadows, strapping the sheath on as always so the hilt of one sword sat just over his shoulder and the hilt of the other lay against his hip. “I need you to bring me something else, love. Can you do that? Bring me the keys. They’re on the table there, see them?”

  “Your poor eye.” She wanted to weep, tears choking her throat as she brushed soft fingertips over the swelling. She couldn’t see him clearly behind those flat metal straps. She needed to—they needed to get out. She shook her head, trying to clear it.