“You're suddenly an expert on horse behaviour?” Sasha asked. “You're a city girl.”
“I know love when I see it.”
“Oh go on,” said Sasha. “It's not even a serrin term.”
Rhillian shrugged in the vague, all-encompassing way of serrin. “Yes, it's a strange human concept. It's intrigued the serrinim for endless centuries because it translates into so many Saalsi words that all mean very similar things, but not entirely. Usually it's the Saalsi terms that have trouble finding precise translations in human tongues, not the other way around. ‘Love’ has obsessed nearly as many serrin as it has humans over the years.”
“I doubt that,” said Sasha, with a faint smile.
“Ah,” said Rhillian, holding up a warning forefinger, “don't make the mistake of assuming we don't know what it means. Serrin love. We just have a hundred words for it, and a hundred concepts of deep affection, not one. I think humans struggle so greatly with their singular concept because they refuse to accept that there are so many different kinds.”
“Huh. Where's the romance in that? Humans like mystery, Rhillian. Mystery is…well, mysterious.”
“So is ignorance,” said Rhillian, smiling. “And humans love ignorance all too dearly.” A bee buzzed to some flowers nearby. Peg swished his tail, chewing contentedly. “You could have left him with Saalshen's holdings in Eldin. Kessligh left Terjellyn there.”
Sasha shrugged, a little warily. As much as she liked Rhillian, there were some concerns she was less eager to share with her. “It gives me an excuse to visit Rochel. Kessligh approved-I always got along better with Rochel than he did. He's a conservative, aggravating old grouch, but he admires spirit. He seems to think that I'm an example of character over common sense, which appeals to him.”
“You probably are,” said Rhillian.
Sasha smiled. “Aren't we all?”
“En'ath,” said Rhillian, with another shrug. The universal truth. Or, in simple human parlance, “well spoken.” Sasha did not add that neither she nor Kessligh had wanted both their horses in Saalshen's Petrodor stables. There was that old Lenay saying about too many eggs in the one basket.
“Sasha? Did you seriously think it might have been me who betrayed you?” Rhillian sounded hurt.
“No,” Sasha sighed, “not you personally. But some of the serrinim…they're not all as nice as you, Rhillian.”
“Kiel,” Rhillian said shortly.
“Aye, well, there's him.”
“He's a principled man,” said Rhillian, without conviction.
“Aye he is,” Sasha agreed. “Most serrin are. So's Patachi Steiner. I just don't like any of his principles.”
Rhillian twisted her lips in wry assent. “I just…” she began and paused. Sasha gazed at her in surprise. If there was one thing serrin very rarely did, it was begin a sentence and not finish it.
“What?”
“I did not want to make you doubt Kessligh, Sasha,” Rhillian said earnestly. “I just thought that it would be truly grand if I could join with some of my closest human friends in fighting for a common goal. And I would be honoured to fight with you.”
Sasha blinked at her. Honour, another of those human concepts that barely translated. And this one was far less well received amongst the serrinim than “love.” Rhillian was trying to say…something. Trying to escape the bonds of language that separated them, however many words they shared. Did Rhillian doubt? Did she wonder, perhaps, at her own strategies, even as she insisted she did not? Did she wish for human guidance? Or did she simply fear that it could be as Errollyn had warned, and that the moral, principled, high-minded serrin could be driven so hard by the need to survive that they would become everything that they despised and were fighting against?
Sasha smiled at her and grasped her hand more tightly. “I would be honoured too,” she said simply.
Rhillian disappeared for the rest of the day, taking Errollyn with her, and leaving Sasha with little to do. It had been a long while since she'd had a genuinely lazy day. She practised taka-dans, and walked in the gardens and chatted with Bryanne Rochel.
Rhillian returned after the evening meal and, as dusk fell, they began the long trek up the Backside slope toward home. The journey would be safer now, with a day between them and the events at Riverside. Serrin company now that Rhillian had completed her meetings, would make it safer still. The Backside slums were an improvement on Riverside. They were still rickety and cramped, but the slope ensured the water flowed downhill and did not accumulate in poisonous puddles. Some folk actually waved to them in the dusk and called greetings. Women washed clothes, or prepared meals on exposed kitchen ledges, chatting with their neighbours or scolding rowdy children. Sasha knew well from Lenayin that people did not need to be wealthy to be happy and decent. It was a relief to see that in at least this part of Petrodor, the harsh lessons of Riverside did not hold entirely true.
Further up the slope, signs of wealth grew more pronounced. Houses had hard foundations and brick walls were held together with mortar. Dwellings overlapped, or loomed one above the other, as the slope increased. They mingled with the run-down shacks of more recent squatters, all jumbled together with the planning and forethought of a messy, forgetful child. Roads and trails began to multiply, and the party left the larger path they were on and made headway on narrow steps and winding paths. The serrin took the front and rear of the group as night fell and they progressed by the half-light of a fading moon.
After a long climb through winding alleys beneath ever-heightening walls, they found themselves in a narrow street leading onto a courtyard. Above loomed the spires of Garelo Temple, the second largest temple in Petrodor and a rare break in the almost impenetrable barrier of heavily guarded mansions that separated Backside from eastward Petrodor. Even so, it was a dangerous bottleneck to pass through if they did not wish a long trek around the entire city.
Rhillian murmured to one of the three other serrin Sasha did not know. Liam and Yulia waited-Yulia still without a blade. A nice present that would make for some mudfoot, although they would probably sell it to one of the merchant houses soon enough for a handsome price. Serrin did not sell their swords outside the Nasi-Keth. Any Nasi-Keth could make a small fortune by selling their blade to humans who couldn't get it any other way. Losing a blade cast great suspicion upon the dedication and loyalty of any Nasi-Keth. No wonder Yulia looked so guilty.
Sasha peered past Errollyn to the dark wall that rose at the edge of the courtyard. “Can you see anyone?”
“No, they've all got arrowslits.” Errollyn had a shaft on his string, but did not draw. That was House Belis, over there, behind that wall. They had a view of all comings and goings through Garelo Temple. The patachis had once tried to mount a joint guard around the temple, to stop the nightwraiths passage. The death watch, its unfortunate members had called it. Life expectancy on the death watch had been measured not in days, but in hours. At night, no part of Petrodor outside the fortress walls of the great mansions did not belong to the Nasi-Keth. At Garelo Temple, they had written that message in blood.
The walls of Garelo Temple were lined with arches, like ribs along the temple's sides. Errollyn looked that way now, and even Sasha saw movement by one pillar. Hand signals in the dark, too indistinct to make sense of.
“We'll have to run,” Rhillian said grimly. The signals had meant nothing good, Sasha gathered. She peered to the right where buildings overlooked the courtyard opposite Belis Mansion. There was no telling where a man of the families might be hiding with a crossbow, this dangerous night…
“I'll go,” said Liam, with intensity. “I'll draw their fire.”
“Adele will go,” said Rhillian, nodding to a serrin woman with gleaming, pale hazel eyes. “She sees better. You'll follow. We go rapidly from then. Give them no chance to reload.”
One of the other serrin also had a bow, and took position behind and to one side of Errollyn. Adele whispered some last-minute advice in Liam's e
ar, hands gesturing the way ahead, then she readied behind Errollyn and the other archer. Both men drew their bows with creaking force. Adele sprinted, a lithe shadow fading into the dark, her soft boots making barely a sound. Sasha held her breath, but no arrowfire came.
Rhillian gestured and Liam set off in pursuit. “Damn, I hate archers,” Sasha muttered to herself. All her training, and she had no defence against archers but to move fast, hide silently and pray. It wasn't fair.
“I'm sorry to hear that,” came Errollyn's voice. Sasha blinked. She hadn't meant that.
Another serrin ran, and still no firing. Sasha peered across the courtyard gloom, seeking the shapes of people. Adele seemed to arrive at the temple, Liam gaining behind. Another signal from Rhillian and Yulia took off running. Two thuds from the Belis wall and a frightening hiss. Yulia fell. Errollyn and his companion fired, and Rhillian sprinted into the courtyard. Sasha watched in horror as Rhillian reached the fallen girl, hauled her to her feet and dragged her stumbling onward. More thuds from the wall, and a clatter of crossbow bolts off pavings as Rhillian threw Yulia flat, falling together.
Another thump from Errollyn's bow, and a scream from the Belis wall. One of the crossbowmen had evidently stuck his head up too high.
“Go!” Sasha told the other serrin bowman. He loosed another arrow and sprinted.
“You next,” said Errollyn, drawing his third arrow and seeking a target. Pitch black, firing at hidden archers at a hundred paces, and Errollyn was actually seeking targets, expecting to hit someone. Just ridiculous.
Sasha checked the narrow road behind them, to be certain there was no one sneaking up. Errollyn fired and cursed in Lenay. Sasha sprinted across the courtyard. Dark shapes along the way were flower gardens, she realised as she ran, every sinew dreading the imminent hiss of arrowfire. A shot came, and she flinched in midsprint, but the hiss-and-clatter fell some distance behind.
Ahead, the temple and its surrounding protection of arches and pillars approached. She heard another two thuds, but again, the bolts were far away. And then she arrived, skidding to a halt behind the pillars. Immediately there were footsteps and then Errollyn arrived. He must have been fast to have nearly overtaken her. She was quick but her legs were not nearly as long.
Against the wall of the temple, Yulia sat. Sasha ran across. “Yulia! Are you hit?”
“She's fine,” said Rhillian.
“I'm sorry,” said Yulia, miserably. “I…I heard the shot and I flinched, and then I tripped up…”
“It's okay,” said Sasha. “I flinched too. We don't have to do that again, do we?”
Rhillian shrugged. “I don't actually go looking for trouble, you know.”
“If you shout loudly enough, and wave your knickers in the air, trouble will find you,” Errollyn remarked. Rhillian gave him an emerald stare that might have pinned a more timid person to the wall.
“You actually missed back there,” Sasha told him, waiting for her heart to slow once more.
“You imagined it,” said Errollyn.
“His second shot did not miss,” said the second serrin bowman, covering the courtyard with his bow from a neighbouring pillar. “He's the only one who actually found the arrowslit.”
Sasha stared at Errollyn. “You shot a man through the arrowslit? I thought he just stood up too high.”
“Those wall posts have roofs,” said Errollyn. “You can't stand up high.”
There were several more serrin already waiting at the temple. One was Terel, tall with red-brown hair and deep bronze eyes. “Nice to see you well,” he said at Sasha's side as they made their careful way around the temple, away from the Belis Mansion.
“And nice to see you,” said Sasha. Like Errollyn and Aisha, Terel had fought with Sasha in Lenayin and she knew him quite well from their time together on the road to Petrodor. Unlike Errollyn and Aisha, Terel was quite the traditional serrin…if “traditional” was any sort of word to apply to a people who did not practise traditions in the sense that most humans meant them. He was formal and reserved, but no less likeable for it. “Been waiting long?”
“One waits,” said Terel, in eloquent Saalsi. “One lives, one ponders, one counts the stars.”
“Quite,” said Sasha, repressing a smile.
There was a passage between the temple and the rectory, and the party slipped down it, gathering again beneath the columns on the temple's far side, directly upon the main ridge road. The ridge road ran along the top of the Petrodor Incline, from one end of the city to the other, connecting the most powerful properties in Petrodor. Here, the opposing walls were high, but without guard posts-only the most powerful families willingly picked fights with the nightwraiths. The nearest off road was to the right, Sasha knew, having come this way a few times before, though never on a night like this.
“Errollyn, Adele, Marlen, Liam, Yulia,” said Rhillian, “you go ahead. I'll guard the rear with Sasha, Vinae, and Terel.” She was more worried about House Belis than whatever lay ahead, Sasha realised.
Errollyn leapt the steps from the temple grounds down to the road and ran softly beside the opposing wall. The others followed, spreading out to avoid giving wall archers an easy shot into a bunch. Vinae-the second archer-watched back toward the Belis Mansion, an arrow at the ready. There would be other serrin in the temple grounds, Sasha knew, invisible in the shadows, or on rooftops, securing these strategic grounds from the families.
There came a noise from the right, the sound of a gate creaking open. Then yells as men poured forth from a property in Errollyn's path, a stream of waving torches and weapons. Rhillian swore. “House Therold,” she muttered. “And so the ground shifts once more.”
Errollyn's bow thrummed. Vinae launched a shot into the dark, then more shots came from temple shadows, and from the roof overhead. Men screamed and swords flashed, a chaos of fighting in the firelight.
“Come on!” Sasha urged, desperate to assist.
Rhillian held up a firm hand. “Wait!” As if expecting something more. From a property much further up the right-hand road, more men with torches came charging. And then, to the left, the Belis gate squealed and ground. “Vinae, we'll take the left,” said Rhillian, as calmly as if she were noting the warm weather. “There's a lane opposite Belis House, we'll never make the right-hand lanes now.”
Sasha saw immediately what Rhillian had in mind. They could not go right, the odds were against it. They had to stop Belis's men from hitting Errollyn's group from behind. May as well go through them.
Men were streaming from the Belis gate, some armed with swords, others with polearms with wicked heads, and a few with axes. The Belis men looked like no family soldiers Sasha had yet seen, with steel helmets and metal breastplates that glinted in the torchlight. Plate armour. Sasha, Rhillian and Terel crouched while Vinae held fire. To the right, Errollyn's group seemed to be winning through.
The Belis soldiers ran past the temple and Rhillian charged. Sasha and Terel followed, and arrowfire tore from the grounds. Six men fell in an instant. Sasha and the others tore into their side, diving into the sudden gaps in their ranks. She slashed low across one pair of legs, parried a blow and removed a head. She was about to parry a new threat, but he fell to Rhillian's flashing blade, and another dropped with an arrow in the throat.
In an instant, a charging formation of twenty-plus men were transformed to a fleeing, shrieking band barely half that number. Rhillian was already charging up the road toward Belis Mansion, from where more men were emerging. Perhaps these had expected to follow behind their braver fellows, or to harass the serrin archers in the temple grounds. Surely they did not expect to see one lone, female serrin come charging at them with blood on her mind.
Rhillian, too, was faster afoot than Sasha, and arrived well ahead. She faked a strike, spun past, and felled one and then another with magnificent precision. Another aimed a halberd for her head, but Rhillian skipped back like a dancer, killed his companion who tried to outflank her, deflected a stab for h
er middle with a downward, vertical blade which miraculously changed to a horizontal, upward cut with a twist of wrists and elbows. The halberd-wielder fell, gushing blood from the throat.
Four dead before Sasha and Terel even arrived, the men from House Belis did not know what hit them. Sasha cut through one and found the others already scattering, those on the periphery falling as serrin arrows found them. Rhillian was already running to a dark gap in the walls opposite the corner of the Belis Mansion. Atop the mansion walls, Sasha caught a glimpse of activity within the guardpost arrowslit, confused crossbowmen not knowing who to shoot in the melee. She dived through the gap as Rhillian waited behind for Terel and Vinae.
There were steps in the narrow alley, leading downward, and Sasha risked her poor human eyesight, hoping to secure some distance for those behind to follow. She found a corner where a second alley ran off to the right and the slope dropped sharply. Above the next house, there was suddenly a view of the harbour well below, agleam with the last light of a half moon upon the horizon. Little ships, in silhouette against that silver light. Now, they just had to survive the descent.
Soft footsteps behind, above the ongoing yells and screams of men on the ridge road above. Terel emerged on the stairs, half carrying Vinae who seemed to have caught a crossbow bolt in the shoulder. Damn. Rhillian came past at speed, feet flying on the steps as Sasha would never have dared in the dark. She took the lead and Sasha fell behind, guarding the rear from any pursuit. It seemed unlikely. An open road was one thing, but an alley in the dark meant single combat with serrin for whom the night was as bright as any day.
They continued down the steps for a fair time, slowed by Vinae's injury. Rhillian took twists and forks with what Sasha presumed (or hoped) was local knowledge, occasionally turning back uphill, or over a short rise of stairs. Many times they passed rear gates in the walls and Sasha suffered bad memories of Riverside, spears and clubs lashing at her from unexpected dark corners. One time Rhillian actually missed a tripwire and triggered a nearby bell, which set a dog barking madly behind its wall. Rhillian seemed not to care, but Sasha could not escape the feeling of unseen eyes upon her back, aiming crossbow bolts in the dark.
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