by J. V. Jones
Frowning, she turned her attention to the door. Little mouse steps pattered on the stone beyond. Something creaked. Silence . . . then a bright laugh quickly muffled. Katia. Katia was on the other side of the door, talking with the Knife.
Please take him to your room, Katia. Please. Ash hated herself for wishing it, hated the thought of Marafice Eye’s massive hands pressing against Katia’s spine, yet she needed the little maid to distract the Knife. She had to leave Mask Fortress. Tonight. And the only way she could slip from her chamber undetected was if Katia lured the Knife away for a bedding.
Bedding. Ash rubbed a hand over her eyes, trying to dispel the image the word showed her. Bedding wasn’t the right word for it at all.
Feeling her cheeks grow hot, she risked taking one more step toward the door. Marafice Eye could speak quietly when he chose to, and she couldn’t hear his voice, though a conversation was taking place. Katia spoke, her voice low for moments, then high with excitement as she continually forgot the need for secrecy. Ash caught the words kiss and gift. A long silence passed, and when it broke rough breaths could clearly be heard.
“Witch.” Marafice Eye’s voice cut through the wood. The word had a nasty edge to it, and Ash felt the flesh on her arms pucker. Sounds followed, a whole lot of them, then two sets of footsteps padded along the hall. Ash rested her head against the door. They were gone, but she didn’t like it one bit. Was it her imagination, or did the lighter set of footsteps appear to drag? Knowing such thoughts would only slow her down, she pushed them aside. This wasn’t the first time Katia had been with the Knife. The little maid could look after herself.
Ash moved around her chamber, checking the body-shaped lump of cushions beneath the sheets, pulling on her thickest, plainest cloak, and opening the shutters so that those who eventually discovered she was gone would think she had somehow managed to escape by lowering herself down the Cask’s outer wall and so misdirect the search. Stopping at the brazier, she raised the brass lid and thrust a mitted hand into the black, powdery soot. The soot was hot as she worked it into her hair, hot and itchy as sin. It caught in her throat and made her eyes tear, so she scrunched up her face until she was done. When she opened her eyes a minute later by the mirror, she saw a strange girl staring back. Matt black hair did not suit her at all, making her face look like something preserved in wax. Abruptly she turned away. It would have to do.
What to take with her? What would she need? She had thought everything through beforehand, thinking of little else for the past six days, but for some reason she had avoided thinking about what she would have to take. Everything in her room belonged to Iss. Oh, he said it was hers and made a point of giving her many pretty and inexpensive gifts, but when it came down to it he took them back at will. She’d seen the truth of that herself these past few weeks, as Katia and Caydis Zerbina plucked objects from her room on his say. She wasn’t Iss’ real daughter at all; he never let her forget that. Almost-daughter was what he called her. Almost-daughter was what she was.
Foundling, Ash told herself. Left outside Vaingate to die.
Angry now, she felt less inclined to leave empty-handed. That silver brush on the dresser would fetch a price at Alms Market, and the pewter cloak pin was set with some kind of red jewel that might be worth something to someone. She snatched them up and bundled them into her cloak lining before her resolve had chance to turn. What else? Spinning, she examined her chamber. Horn books bound with pigskin, their library chains still attached, would be worth a good few coins apiece, but Ash quickly rejected them. Too heavy. Too noisy. If she tried to sell them, the chains would surely give her away.
Abruptly she turned toward the door. She didn’t have time to conduct an inventory of her chamber. It was leave now or lose her chance.
If only I could be sure.
No. Ash shook her head so hard a cloud of black soot wafted from her hair. She had to go. Stay and she would be a fool, and anything that happened to her would be no one’s fault but her own. She was a foundling; no one would care for her but herself. Penthero Iss did not have her best interests at heart. Worse than that, he planned on taking her to the Splinter and . . . Ash hesitated, took a breath. Truth was, she didn’t know what her foster father intended to do. She only knew that her belongings had been taken to the Splinter, the second most powerful man in Spire Vanis had been set to watch her door like a common foot soldier, and every morning while she washed her face and dressed her hair, her maid rifled through her underclothes, looking for blood.
Ash took a final look around the room. None of those were the real reason she had to go, though. Whatever was trapped inside the Splinter, aching with hate and need so great that all she had to do was put her hand against the door to feel it, was what finally forced her into action. Just the memory of the thing’s desperate, unspeakable misery was enough to turn her stomach to lead.
It wanted what she had. And Ash March, Foundling and almost-daughter, wasn’t prepared to give it one whit.
Steeling herself, she pushed against the door. Cold bit her like a snake, and she had to fight the urge to step back. Weeks of poor sleep had worn her down, and little things like the constant cold in Mask Fortress now affected her more than they used to. Almost as if she were about to plunge into water, not darkness, Ash took a breath, held it in, and stepped into the corridor. It was deathly quiet. One greenwood torch smoked above the stairs. No light at all reached beneath Katia’s door.
Ash moved quickly. She had already lost minutes to indecision, and she knew from observation how little time it took Marafice Eye to do his business. He might step from Katia’s room any moment, hands tugging at the leather straps on his pants, small mouth still wet with Katia’s saliva.
Promise to take me with you when you go.
Katia’s words made the heat come back to Ash’s face. It was the only serious promise she had ever made in her life, and although she had chosen words to deliberately mislead the little maid, she felt no better for it. After tonight Katia would find herself back in the kitchens, and that was the one place in the fortress she didn’t want to be.
Better the kitchens than where I go. Hardening herself against emotion, Ash rushed down the stairs. Tonight was Slaining Night, and the Rive Watch would be out in force, patrolling the city and keeping order. Brothers-in-the-watch would be thin on the ground within the fortress.
Slaining Night was the oldest of the Gods Days, and people celebrated it only after dark. Ash was not really sure what the festival marked. Her foster father said it was a celebration of the founding of Spire Vanis, marking the erection of the first strongwall at the base of Mount Slain by the Bastard Lord Theron Pengaron. It sounded reasonable enough, and people did warm rocks from Mount Slain in their hearths or charcoal burners, yet Ash had heard other things said. Old servants in Mask Fortress talked about death and sealing darkness and keeping old evils in their place. Ash had even heard that the name Slaining Night had nothing to do with Mount Slain at all and that in some cities to the east it was called by its true name instead: Slaying Night.
Ash frowned into the darkness. What in the Maker’s name was she doing? Tonight was quite frightening enough without digging up a lot of old nonsense to frighten herself even more. Sometimes she could be as dim as a lamp trimmer. Tonight was her best chance of escaping from Mask Fortress. She had spent all day hoping Katia would lure the Knife from her door, and now that she had gotten her wish and was well under way, she had to keep her mind to the task in hand.
Setting her jaw in place, she approached the last run of stairs. A graymeet bench and its accompanying alcove created a trap for shadows on the landing. Torches were sparse, as any flame without a Slain Stone at its base was considered ill luck tonight. Ash shivered. Penthero Iss probably hated that. He hated the old ways and the old traditions—anything that spoke of Spire Vanis’s barbaric beginnings and past.
Hearing footsteps below, she slipped into the graymeet alcove to wait until whoever caused them passed. T
he limestone wall was as cold as iron against her back. The stone bench, with its hard seat and sculpted backpiece, couldn’t look less inviting to sit on. Funny to think that grangelords and their ladies had once sat here and flirted, their golden wine cooling as they stole kisses and slid their hands beneath silk. All gone now. Penthero Iss had seen to that. He claimed to be a man who liked culture and art and high things, yet although he tore down or put an end to many things that had been common in the fortress in Borhis Horgo’s day—dances held in the barbaric light of a burning pyre, death duels fought with broad-blades in the quad, and the yearly slaying of a thousand beasts to mark winter’s end—he seldom introduced anything new in their place. Penthero Iss seemed more concerned with destruction than creation.
Chilled, Ash slipped from the graymeet and took the last steps down to ground level. The footsteps faded into the distance, and she guessed that a single brother-in-the-watch was making his rounds of the Cask. That meant she had only a few minutes before he appeared again.
The black oak door and its gate were open and raised. Even though Ash knew brothers-in-the-watch used the gate constantly throughout the night to move between the Red Forge and the Cask, it didn’t stop her from feeling relieved when her booted feet sank into snow. Wind ripped the cloak from her chest, driving the metal fastening against her throat. Tears stung her eyes as she forced the door closed and stepped into the shadows close to the wall. The snow was old and slippery, polished to ice by the winds of Mount Slain.
It was not dark. The Red Forge was kept burning through the night, and the red light from the forge fire combined with lamplight from the three occupied towers to make the snow glow like human skin. The Horn was especially bright. The most intricately worked of the four towers, with its iron outwork and lead cladding, was positioned due west of the Cask. Katia said that the Lord of the Seven Granges was holding a gathering there tonight. Wicked it is, miss. Right wicked! There’ll be prostitutes and shaven women and worse!
Ash edged along the west gallery wall, heading in the direction of the Horn. The faint, tinny sound of muffled music grazed her ears. Singing followed, then high tinkling laughter, then the wind blasted it all away.
Ash fought with her cloak. “Thirteen,” she whispered softly to herself for no reason. Thirteen doors and gateways led out onto the quad. As a child she had sat on the practice court and counted them. She could recall a time when twelve of the thirteen had been in use, but then Penthero Iss had shut down the entire east gallery and sealed off the Splinter, and now only eight doors were left. Eight. And the Rive Watch had keys to them all.
Directly opposite, set deep within the carved limestone facade of the east gallery, lay the boarded and defaced Shrine Door. The door, which led down to a small crypt once used by the Forsworn, was made of wood that had been ported all the way from the Far South and was gray and hard as nails. It had defied defacing by Spire-made chisels and blades and had been painted with a grotesque likeness of the Killhound instead. The bird leered at Ash from across the quad, its sexual organs red and swollen, not like a bird’s at all. Ash could not remember a time when the door was unmarked. In Borhis Horgo’s day the knights who named themselves the Forsworn because they renounced all prior oaths upon entering the order had moved freely about Spire Vanis. They had helped Horgo defeat Rannock Hews at Hound’s Mire; and forty years later Iss had expelled them for it. Like everyone else, Ash had heard the tales about the twelve old and infirm knights who had fled to the crypt during the expulsions, sending messages to Penthero Iss, begging for asylum. Iss had supposedly granted their request, commanding carpenters to seal the Shrine Door and the crypt’s three small windows, interring the men alive.
Abruptly Ash took her gaze from the door. Suddenly everything she looked at seemed to be warning her to turn back, to return to her chamber by the fastest route and put all thoughts of leaving behind her. It was unnervingly easy to imagine herself in a room built of stone with no way out.
No. No. No. Ash fought the fear before it came. Tonight or never, she told herself, deliberately increasing her pace.
Ahead a pale slash of light marked the stable door, drawn together but not yet closed for the night. Lying halfway between the Cask and the Horn, the stables were her intended destination.
As she headed for the light source, she heard the Cask door creak open behind her. Not daring to look around, she stopped dead. Her heart thumped like a cracked bell in her chest. Remember the hares, she told herself. Only things that move get hunted.
Sounds were difficult to catch in the wind. Ash heard nothing she could put a name to at first. It could be a routine patrol, a brother-in-the-watch changing guard, servants bringing spitted meat and kegs of black beer to the Horn. Surely the fact that no one was shouting and running was good? Ash thought it highly likely that news of her escape would be greeted by something harsher than a softly creaking door.
Having waited for over a minute, she risked glancing back. The Cask door was closed. No one was in sight. The chains holding the gate raised were still. Satisfied, she carried on toward the stables.
Sounds of music and laughter from the Horn grew louder. A side door opened as she watched, and a fat man dressed in shiny silk stumbled out. Bending double, he promptly vomited against the wall. Ash didn’t stop. The man was too drunk to notice anything moving in the shadows behind his back.
A half-moon rode low over Mount Slain, casting a well-defined shadow for the Splinter. Ash tried not to look at the ice-bound tower, preferring to watch steam rise from the fat man’s stomach contents, ice crystals form on her boots—anything rather than the Splinter itself. It was foolishness of the worst kind, yet she couldn’t help herself. To look meant to think, and Ash didn’t want to turn any portion of her mind that way. Not now, while she was this close.
Paces away from the massive crossbeamed door of the stables, she stepped as quietly as she could. The dry, sawdusty odor of hay and oats mingled with the stench of horse sweat and urine. Ash was glad of smells that had names, rather than the strange, slightly chemical odor that blew with the wind from Mount Slain. Rubbing her eyes to clear away the last traces of wind tears, she padded to the door’s edge. All was quiet, and after a moment she braced herself and peeked inside.
Master Haysticks and two grooms sat on wooden crates with their backs to the door, drinking something hot from pewter tankards and playing blocks with the hard focused attention of men serious about their game. The stone floor was brushed clean and all the horses were boxed. A pair of safe-lamps hung from brass pegs on the wall above Master Haysticks’ head, their horn guards yellow as an old nag’s teeth.
Ash didn’t pause to take a breath before entering. She had to risk this. The stables were her best chance—she had known that from the moment she had decided to go. The gate beyond the stables was the most used and the least checked. The brothers-in-the-watch who manned it were more interested in who was going in than coming out. Those who entered through the stable gate were usually tradesmen or deliverymen or fellow brothers-in-the-watch. Grangelords, petty gentry, rich merchants, and anyone else who thought enough of themselves to worry about appearances always used one of the other gates, preferring to call grooms to lead their horses away.
Master Haysticks and the two grooms did not hear Ash enter. A groom with a neck as red and shiny as a loin of beef had just thrown the blocks, and Master Haysticks and the second groom were studying the lay of the wood. They did not look pleased. Loin Neck had thrown a good hand, and Ash could tell from the shell-like clink of coinage that money was riding on the wood.
She took a moment to recover from the ravages of the wind and cold. The stables were dim despite the two safe-lamps, and sounds of horses blowing, feeding, flicking their tails, and snoring were comforting to her ears. She liked horses. After a moment she began edging toward the long line of horse stalls that lay directly across from where the men sat gaming.
She had to get to the far door. The stables were the reason the
brothers-in-the-watch manning the gate were lax; they knew that whoever presented themselves for leavetaking had already passed through the stables and therefore the inspection of the stablemaster and his grooms. Ash had thought this through. She wouldn’t stand a chance at any other gate. Brothers-in-the-watch were on guard day and night. They asked questions and would call a commanding officer rather than risk letting anyone of uncertain credentials pass. Why, the west gate alone was manned by a full sept and lit by so many torches that Katia said that all the snow for thirty paces melted.
Ash sucked in her cheeks. If there was any way to leave Mask Fortress other than through one of its four gates, she wished she knew it. Climbing over battlements and roofs was out: She had broken her arm falling against an iron siege guard when she was six. She knew just how treacherous the walls of Mask Fortress, with their iced-up stonework, murder holes, and spiked embrasures, could be.
“Hey! That throw doesn’t count. Bloody rat over there turned the tally.” Master Haysticks’ voice rose in anger. “Throw again or I’ll have you on dung duty for a week.”
“’S not my fault the rat—”
“Throw again!”
Sounds of crates creaking and grown men huffing muffled the click of Ash’s bones as she crouched close to the floor. Shadows deepened as she crawled toward the line of stalls that ran the length of the stables. Every stall in the stables had dividing walls that came to an end a full foot above the floor. Once a week the stables were sluiced clean, and the gap between the walls and the floor was needed to allow all the horse muck, shed hair, and moldering grain to be carried away.
Tucking her head close to her body, Ash ducked under the wooden divide and into the first stall. It had to be safer than iced-up stone.
A black gelding stood asleep close to the door, its legs locked in position, its eyes closed and tail slack. The sound of hay snapping beneath Ash’s chest woke it instantly. Ash held herself perfectly still as the large, liquid brown eye of the horse regarded her. The gelding dipped its head and smelled her breath. Dust itched in Ash’s nostrils and hay stalks scratched against her cheek as she worked to control the impulse to shy away. The gelding’s forehooves were big as war hammers, shiny with neat’s-foot oil, and shod with iron.
