by DAVID B. COE
He had never spoken so of Harel in front of the other Qirsi, nor had he ever before suggested that he was less than candid in his conversations with the emperor. Some of the older chancellors frowned in response to his admission, but most of the Qirsi offered little by way of reaction. Maybe he had given them too little credit over the years. Wouldn’t it have been ironic if all this time they had thought of him as the weak one, the Qirsi who demeaned himself by his unquestioning service to the Eandi?
Kayiv faced him again. “You said before that the emperor doesn’t intend to bring any more Qirsi to the palace. Does that mean he doesn’t trust us? Did he send you here to ask about the conspiracy as a way of testing our loyalty?”
“He’s Eandi, Minister. I think it likely that he’s never trusted us entirely. But I believe he sent me here to do just what I said, to find out what you’ve heard about the conspiracy. I doubt there was more to it than that.” He’s not clever enough to think that way. He wanted to say it. Faced now with the possibility that they thought him just another fawning chancellor, Dusaan was tempted to tell them what he really thought of Harel.
A lengthy silence ensued, broken at last by Nitara.
“Well, I’ve heard little of the conspiracy beyond that it seems to be real enough. Some of the peddlers I’ve talked to in the marketplace believe that it might have been behind the murders in Kentigern and Bistari, but they have no proof of this.”
One of the others spoke up as well, noting, as the emperor had, that the movement had been far more active in the six than it had been here in the empire. For some time, Dusaan simply listened as rumor chased rumor around the chamber. Many of the tales were laughable. One minister had heard that the conspiracy was, in fact, a continuation of the original Qirsi invasion that began nine centuries before. It had gone unnoticed in the intervening centuries, but had been behind the early civil wars in Eibithar, Amnalla’s Rebellion in Aneira, and Valde’s Rebellion in Caerisse, all of which dated back nearly six hundred years.
Other rumors, however, proved disturbingly accurate. According to several of the chancellors, there was talk among the merchants that Filib of Thorald had not been killed by thieves, but instead was the victim of an assassination by the conspiracy. And Kayiv offered his own opinion that the king of Aneira had died at the hands of a Qirsi.
“Well,” Dusaan said, when the discussion had run its course. “I’m not certain how much of this to believe, but I’ll leave that for the emperor to decide. I have no doubt that he’ll be grateful to all of you for your counsel on this matter.”
“Do you really think so?” Kayiv asked. “Or do you think it will just scare him anew, and make him trust us even less?”
The young Qirsi sounded hurt, angry, bitter. If he hadn’t been susceptible to the Weaver’s overtures before, he certainly would be now. The same could probably be said of Nitara and a number of the others. Harel might have thought that he was protecting himself by suggesting this meeting, but all he had done was make it easier for Dusaan to win the loyalty of the palace Qirsi.
“To be honest, Minister, I don’t know how the emperor will respond. As I said before, he’s Eandi. It may be that he never trusted us. For now all we can do is serve the empire, as we’ve sworn to do. But there may come a time when our choices are clearer, and we have the opportunity to prove ourselves. When that time comes, I for one hope that the emperor will be watching.”
Kayiv grinned, a gleam in his bright yellow eyes. It almost seemed to the Weaver that the man understood him.
Chapter Twenty-five
Mertesse, Aneira
Had they been eager to reach the walled city of Mertesse, they might have made the journey from Dantrielle in less time. It was fifty leagues, and with the weather turning worse with each day that passed, progress didn’t come quickly, even on the well-traveled roads of Aneira’s Great Forest. Still, Dario and Cadel might have made it to Mertesse before the beginning of the new year.
Instead, they stopped frequently at inns along the road, playing music in exchange for meals and rooms. They never remained in one place for long, but neither did they hesitate to stop, even if they had paused at another inn only an hour or two before. Musicians in the Forelands rarely turned down opportunities to play, particularly if it meant free food, or, better yet, gold. To have done so as they made their way north would have been to risk raising the suspicions of the innkeepers at those establishments they bypassed. More than that, though, Cadel realized that they needed the practice.
Dario played the lute beautifully. Cadel actually preferred the pipes, finding their sound richer, more soothing. But he had to admit that his new partner coaxed a sound from his instrument that few of the lutenists Cadel had encountered before could match. Despite his skill, however, and Cadel’s own talent as a singer, their musical tendencies were not compatible, at least not at first. Dario had been performing on his own for so long that he had little sense of how to match his cadence to someone else’s singing. Cadel had the impression whenever Dario took up his instrument that he would have preferred to play one of his own compositions rather than accompanying Cadel as he sang. He knew the notes to play for pieces like the Paean and “The Elegy for Shanae,” but he never played them the same way twice. Cadel could only hope that he was more disciplined as an assassin than he was as a musician.
For his part, Cadel was willing to admit that he could be uncompromising when it came to music. He and Jed sang together for seventeen years. They knew what to expect of each other. They performed most of these pieces so many times that their performances became as natural and constant as the rise and fall of the moons. Jedrek understood that when it came to music, and to killing, Cadel always strove for perfection.
The problems were apparent to both of them from the start, but, predictably, Dario was far less disturbed by them than was Cadel.
“They’re going to pay us anyway,” the younger man said one night, after their fourth or fifth failed attempt to practice “Tanith’s Threnody.”
They were in a small village at the time, near the mouth of the River Orvinti, just a few days’ journey from Solkara. The king had been dead for nearly half a turn and they were still thinking that they might stop in Solkara for Carden’s funeral and the investiture of the new king. Most of the land’s musicians would be there, Cadel knew, and there was a good chance the Qirsi man they had been hired to kill would be as well.
“Getting paid is beside the point,” Cadel had answered, not bothering to mask his exasperation. “Music isn’t just a source of gold, and it isn’t just something we do for amusement. It’s our disguise, it’s what allows us to move about the land without drawing attention to ourselves. To those who listen to us, it has to appear to be our passion as well as the source of our livelihood. If it appears to be anything less, it will raise their suspicions. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” Dario said. “But I don’t see what’s wrong with them knowing that we’ve just started playing together. With all the festivals and revels in the Forelands, musicians are always moving around and finding new partners.”
We sound ragged, like tavern singers in some Caerissan farming village. Jedrek would have understood. And perhaps that was the point. Cadel hadn’t sung with anyone since Jedrek’s death; he had barely sung a note by himself. He wasn’t looking for a new partner, he realized. He was trying to replace Jedrek, which was unfair to Dario. When it came right down to it, the young man was right: musicians in the Forelands changed partners quite frequently. Though Cadel and Jedrek remained together for years, they performed with literally dozens of different singers and players. Indeed, they had been together so long, they might have risked drawing attention to themselves in that way.
Cadel was frustrated because of the way he and his new partner sounded, and because he worried that a man as young and blithe as Dario might get him killed when they turned from music to their more important trade.
“I suppose you’re right,” Cadel finally adm
itted. “We don’t have to sound perfect, at least not yet. But I still think it needs work.”
The young man shrugged, tuning one of the strings on his lute. “All right. It’s not like there’s anything else to do.”
As they continued northward, performing at inns and practicing well into the night, their playing improved. A few days after their conversation near Orvinti, as they came within sight of the royal city, word of the poisoning reached them. After a brief discussion, they decided to continue on toward Mertesse. After such an event, the guards in Solkara were likely to be more vigilant than ever. Even if the Qirsi man they sought was there, and even if he had survived the poisoning, they were unlikely to get close enough to him to earn their gold. Better to travel directly to Mertesse, where they were most likely to learn of the Qirsi’s fate. They would find regular work at a tavern in the city and wait for an opportunity to kill the Qirsi.
Cadel was so intent on improving the sound of their music that they spoke of little else throughout their travels. Only when they began to cross the narrow plain that lay between the Great Forest and Mertesse did he begin to wonder how Dario had come to his other, truer calling. Still, he didn’t ask at first. Their conversations tended to go much as did their practices, even when they weren’t speaking of music. Perhaps it was the difference in their ages. Perhaps it was Cadel’s fault for starting the partnership with his test of Dario’s fighting skill. Whatever the reason, nothing they did together came easily, and though neither of them had shown any sign of wanting to abandon their young partnership, there was, as of yet, no friendship between them.
It began to snow during their third day on the plain, fine white flakes dancing and whirling in the cold wind that blew from the west. A heavy blanket of snow already lay over the land north of the wood, so that it seemed the only colors left in the world were grey and white. Even the road they were on, no doubt a muddy brown every other time of year, was covered with a thick grey carpet of half-melted ice and snow that made for slow walking.
As the snowfall increased, Dario halted to check on his lute. He always kept it wrapped in a soft cloth when they traveled, and now he added a second layer of animal skin.
“The cold’s bad enough,” he muttered as he tucked the skin snugly around his instrument. “But this snow will damage the wood.”
“We won’t go much farther,” Cadel told him. “Just another league or two.”
The lutenist looked up. “We can make the gates tonight if we keep at it.”
Cadel hesitated. The truth was, he didn’t want to reach the city just yet. There were matters he and the younger man needed to discuss first. “Perhaps, but I’d rather not stay out in this cold for too long. I feel a bad throat coming on.” He grimaced. “If I can’t sing, we’ll have to pay for a room.” It was a lie, but under the circumstances a necessary one.
Dario eyed him a moment longer, then gave a small shrug, his answer whenever they disagreed.
There were few inns anywhere along the road between the Great Forest and Mertesse, and fewer still as one drew nearer the city. The two assassins journeyed farther that day than Cadel had intended, stopping at last at a small farmhouse just beside the road that looked too small to be an inn, but had a sign swinging in the wind out front. They couldn’t have been more than two or three leagues from Mertesse—Cadel thought he could just make out the walls of the castle looming above the plain in the distance, stark against Mertesse Forest, but shrouded in the swirling snow.
The innkeeper was an old woman, a widow, with rheumy eyes and yellow teeth. She had only one room for rent, which made it unlikely that she would give them their beds in exchange for a performance, but Cadel was determined to stop before they reached the city.
After haggling with them briefly, she agreed to six qinde for the room and their meals, provided they would play for her, and her daughter’s family, after supper. It seemed a fair price. Cadel paid her and she led them up a narrow stairway to the room. Their quarters were quite small, as were the straw beds, but the chamber was no worse than others they had stayed in since leaving Dantrielle.
The woman left them, saying that their meal would be ready before long. Dario sat on one of the beds and began carefully to unwrap his lute.
“What are you doing?” Cadel asked.
He didn’t even look up. His yellow hair fell over his brow, hiding his eyes and much of his face. But Cadel could imagine his expression as he said in a flat voice, “I assumed you’d want to practice. We’re to perform tonight, and you still don’t seem happy with how we sound.”
Cadel frowned. As difficult as he found the younger man, he had to admit that he had handled things poorly since they started traveling together.
“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” he said, drawing the other man’s gaze. “I’d rather we talked for a bit.”
Dario looked uncertain, but he laid his lute gently on the bed. “All right.”
Faced now with the prospect of actually carrying on a conversation with Dario, Cadel found that he didn’t know how to begin. He started to say something, then stopped himself, realizing that he hadn’t the words. After doing this several times, he rubbed a hand over his brow, exhaling through his teeth.
“What’s this about?” Dario asked, narrowing his eyes. “Is there something else I’ve done wrong?” Almost immediately he shook his head. “Actually that couldn’t be it. You never have trouble telling me that.”
“You’ve done nothing wrong,” Cadel told him, ignoring the gibe. “Before we reach the city, I…I feel that we should know more about each other. We want to convince people that we’re…”
“Friends?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve talked about this before.”
“No, we haven’t.”
“Sure we have. It’s no different from what I said before about our performances not being perfect, and about musicians finding new partners. If we don’t know everything about each other nobody’s going to notice.”
Again, the lutenist had a point, but Cadel didn’t care. He’d had enough of the younger man challenging him at every turn. Cadel was the one who would be doing the killing. It was his reputation that had gotten them this job in the first place, just as it would get them every subsequent job they were likely to have. Dario would do as he said, or Cadel would find himself another partner.
He was ready to say as much, but then thought better of it. It might make him feel better to tell Dario how angry he was, but it certainly wouldn’t help matters. He was about to kill a Qirsi, and he needed a partner for that. Would he have preferred Jed? Of course. But Jed was gone, and for better or worse, he had chosen this man to take his place. Driving him away now would have been folly. Still, he did need to make Dario understand which of them was in command.
“Nobody else may notice,” he said, managing to keep his voice even. “But I think we should talk anyway. We’re about to enter Mertesse. We’re not just musicians learning to play together anymore. We’re assassins, and we’re hunting a sorcerer. I expect you to guard my back, to keep me from getting killed or captured while I find this man and earn our gold.” He grinned. “I think I’d feel a bit more comfortable with that if I knew for certain that you wanted me to come out of this alive.”
Dario’s expression didn’t change. “So you do the killing? Always?”
“Most of the time. Certainly when we’ve been hired to kill a Qirsi. That’s the way I’ve always worked. When I find a partner who’s my equal with a blade, I may change my mind. But that hasn’t happened yet.”
The other man nodded and looked away.
“Depending on the job, we might be able to work differently,” Cadel said after a brief, awkward silence. “But not this time. This is our first job together, and as I said, we’re hunting a Qirsi.” He regarded the lutenist for a moment. “Have you ever killed a white-hair?”
Dario faced him again, seeming to search for some sign that Cadel was mocking him. “No,” he admitted. “Hav
e you?”
“Seven times.”
“All right,” Dario said, turning away again. “I guess this one’s yours.”
“They’re all mine,” Cadel said pointedly, “unless I decide differently.”
Silence.
“Tell me how you became a blade.”
Dario shrugged. “It just happened. I needed gold, and I couldn’t wait for my apprenticeship to end.”
“Why did you need the gold?”
He gave a small laugh, looking at Cadel again. “All right,” he said. “If you really want to know, I needed the gold to take care of my sister and brother. I grew up on the Plain of Stallions, south of Tounstrel. People who live in the Great Forest think they have trouble with road thieves, but that’s nothing compared with what we used to face. The thieves down there roam in large groups, usually on horses they’ve broken themselves. Mounted raiders we call them.”
He picked up his lute and plucked two of the strings. “One day they attacked our village. It was early, the sun wasn’t even up yet. They attacked us in our homes—in our beds, really—stealing what they could, killing those who fought back, and burning our houses and barns. My family didn’t have much—a bit of gold, a silver ring my father had given my mother, and my father’s lute. When the raiders tried to take the ring, my father fought them. He was killed, as was my mother. One of them tried to cut off my mother’s finger to get the ring, and another grabbed the lute. Before I knew it, I’d grabbed a meat knife and killed them both. They hadn’t even noticed me.”
He played a few more notes, then put the lute down again, though he continued to stare at it. “With my parents dead, it fell to me to take care of my sister and brother. We had no money, and the raiders had also killed the smith to whom I’d been apprenticed. After the raid I knew I could handle a dagger, and killing the raiders hadn’t bothered me at all.” He looked up, meeting Grinsa’s gaze. “So here I am.”
