The girl whimpered and squirmed as Laheran examined her collar. Not guild work. There was a reason that most guild collars were dipped in gold, despite the cost. Gold didn't rust.
The iron of these collars was rusty, and like sandpaper. The rust had worn her neck raw underneath; at Laheran's nod, two of his men gripped her with practiced hands so that he could inspect her more closely. His probing finger came away with blood and a greenish pus.
"Idiots," he said. And: "Key."
The guard sergeant thought about protesting for a moment, then shrugged and pulled a key out of his pouch. Laheran quickly unlocked the collar and dropped it to the dirt.
The wound was festering badly.
Amateurs. As though the only way to treat slaves was with beatings and chains. The girl was twelve, perhaps thirteen. Her round eyes and sharp chin proclaimed her of Shattered Islander stock, clearly, possibly Klimosian or Bursosi. She could be almost presentable, quite attractive in a year or two, and might well respond better to kindness than the whip if she wasn't to be brutalized into scarred ugliness and sullen tractability.
Practiced fingers felt at her forehead—she was running a fever—then dropped to feel at the rest of her. Hmm . . . perhaps sooner than a few years.
He turned to Kelimon. "Take the three of them to the ship. A bit of healing draughts on the neck should be enough, but examine them all thoroughly; she may need more." Laheran turned to the guard sergeant. "They are all property of the Slavers' Guild; all were caught as fugitives."
But the majority of the dozen or so slaves in the kennels—Laheran would have to check the records in order to be sure just how many—had escaped, taking with them what horses and what money the guild had had here.
Still, there was nothing more that these three could tell him. They'd only seen the dwarf, who had hustled them outside through the rear window of the slave cage.
The guard shook his head. "I think Lord Kuryil—he's the keeper of the dungeon—expressed an interest in her."
"Then he should have had the sense to see that her health was attended to," Laheran said from between taut lips. "She is not for sale here. Take them away, Kelimon, take all three of them away. We'll drop them off at guildhall in Pandathaway."
Normally, Laheran would have taken the guard's comment as an opening for a negotiation. But if Kuryil was deliberately degrading the girl's condition in order to lower her price, he ought to be taught a lesson. Besides, Laheran was irritated with all of them. He was honest enough to admit to himself that that was the real reason he was rebuffing Kuryil—not to educate the lord, or even because he suspected that a bath, some healing, and a few tendays of gentle but firm handling might increase the girl's value.
The gray-robed wizard and his apprentice stood to one side, twin masks of indifference on their bearded faces. The apprentice looked like a painting of the wizard as a young man; Laheran could see where the squint-lines were beginning to form, tracks of a buzzard around the eyes.
"Shall I open it now?" the wizard asked. "Or shall we all stand out in the hot sun all day?"
Laheran stood in front of the door. As before, there were those awkward Englits scrawlings and the signatures were symbols—a sword, a knife and an ax—but the final words were in Erendra.
The warrior lives, they said.
And: Don't open this door. A surprise for slavers waits inside. Preserve it for them.
Laheran looked at the wizard and at the guards. "You take orders from Karl Cullinane, do you?" he asked, more rhetorically than otherwise.
One of the guards bit back a response.
"Well?" Laheran snapped. "Out with it."
"It cost Lord Erif a goodly amount of money to have it preserved for you, Master Laheran," the guard said. "He did it for you, as a gesture of cooperation with your guild, not because he takes orders from Karl Cullinane, or anyone else."
Laheran nodded. "There's truth in that. My apologies." He set his palm against the splintered wood of the door, but it didn't move. He pushed harder, and harder, but still there was no motion, not even the slight give of a bolted door.
He walked to a shuttered window, worked his fingers in between the overhang of the shutter and the wall, and pulled.
Again, nothing happened; the spell of preservation had kept the building sealed, just as the murderers had left it.
He sighed. Enough; it had to be done sometime.
"Release the spell," Laheran said.
The wizard stepped up to the door and lightly touched it with a split-nailed finger, quietly but carefully pronouncing three syllables that could only be heard and forgotten, not remaining on the tongue or the mind.
The shutter released and swung violently open, barely missing Laheran's nose. The slam of it against the wall sent hands reaching for swords.
He drew his own sword and, standing carefully to one side of the window, stuck it inside and waved it around.
Nothing happened.
One of the guards stepped forward. "I don't understand why all the delay," he said as he took a step forward and pushed on the door.
Laheran moved quickly, catching the guard across the waist in a leaping tackle, just as the door swung wide.
Thwup.
A feathered bolt bit into the guard's shoulder; the heavy man dropped his weapons and screamed.
Laheran rolled easily to his feet, brushing himself off. "Best take your man to the Spider," he said to the other guards, as one knelt over the pale form of the idiot who had opened the door. "There's nothing to interest you here."
Laheran stepped inside. It was as he'd thought: one of the dead men was Daviran. He'd apprenticed with Daviran years ago; Davi was one of Laheran's few friends.
And now clever Davi sat in a chair, his face pale in death, his throat slit from ear to ear.
There was nothing alive inside the kennel. He could see one body spread out on the floor, and there was another dead man sitting in a chair, and yet another tied upside-down to the top crosspiece of the slave cage, but a live man hadn't fired the bolt; a crossbow had been nailed to an open closet door opposite the entry, and an improvised rope and pulley arrangement set up to make it fire through the opening door.
Laheran knelt to examine the body under the table. The right hand was crushed, splinters of bones peeking through the bloody flesh, as if someone had run the hand through a wine press.
That hadn't killed him, though; his chest was crushed, the breastbone smashed inward, probably killing the man instantly.
That smelled of the dwarf, Ahira, and Davi's slit throat spoke of Walter Slovotsky.
And the poor, dead bastard tied upside-down to the cage was pure Karl Cullinane. Laheran let his hand rest on the short length of spear that projected from the dead slaver's chest.
He could just see the monster tying the guildsman upside-down, and then taking his time hefting a spear, only to throw it almost through the slaver.
The three of them would die, and that was all there was to it.
Laheran drew his knife and considered the edge. Was it really possible to cut a man ten thousand times without killing him? Ahrmin had been right: Cullinane was too much of a threat to be allowed to live. He had to die. And his friends with him.
Laheran looked once again at the parchment note on the door.
The warrior lives, you think? Not for long, Karl Cullinane. Not for long, you murdering animal.
Laheran tore the parchment down from the door and slashed it to ribbons.
CHAPTER 6
Tennetty
The business of the samurai consists in reflecting on his own station in life, in discharging loyal service to his master if he has one, in deepening his fidelity in associations with friends, and, with due consideration of his own position, in devoting himself to duty above all.
—Yamaga Soko
The difference between being a trusted friend and a devoted vassal is non-trivial. Me, I'd rather be the first; vassals tend to go to the well too often.
; —Walter Slovotsky
"Come in," she said.
Her room, a small cubicle down in the dungeon level of the tower, was lit only by a flickering lamp set in a stone niche at eye-level. It was cold down below the ground, and it smelled of ancient mold, but that didn't seem to affect Tennetty as she sat tailor-fashion on her rumpled bed, considering the edge of a bowie, her face cast into shadow, hiding the patch over her missing eye.
"So," she said. "You let them talk you out of it?"
"What are you saying? That I don't want to go?"
She snickered. "You have a keen eye for the obvious." From somewhere in the darkness she produced a whetstone, spat on it, and began to hone the edge of the knife with slow, even strokes.
Jason didn't like that kind of accusation, and he didn't know how to deal with it. "I thought I proved something in Melawei," he said, not realizing how foolish the boast sounded until the words were out.
She eyed him evenly. "You proved that you could use a rifle, once. You did it when it counted, I'll give you that. But you didn't prove that you're a substitute for him, boy. You sit in his chair, and you expect all of them to look up to you like you're him. . . ." She spat on the stone and continued to stroke it down the edge. "Well, you're not. Not by me."
"Tennetty, I—"
With no warm-up, no hint that she was about to move, she lunged at him, springing from the bed.
"Guards!" he shouted, as he caught her knife-arm, trying for a kick to her kneecap.
She got her leg behind his and swept his feet out from under him, landing heavily on his chest, one arm trapped underneath him.
The tip of the knife flickered in the lamplight, descending—
—and halted an inch from his eye.
"Your father would have beaten me, Jason. You're just not as fast as he was, not as brave, not the ruler he was, not—"
A rifle-butt slammed against her head with an audible thunk. From the edge of his vision, a huge hand reached out and fastened itself around her wrist; another, somewhat smaller hand gripped her by the hair and lifted her up, not at all slowing at her muffled groan of pain. She struck out with a free hand but it was blocked, the sound like a fist slapping a side of beef.
"Take her, Durine," Kethol said, releasing his grip on her hair, stooping to help Jason up.
She tried to lash out with a savage groin-kick, but Durine, moving more gracefully, more quickly than any man his size had a right to, had already turned to catch the kick on his hip.
Like a mastiff with a rat he grabbed her, then shook her hand until the knife dropped from it. Durine yanked her toward him with one hand, punching her in the pit of the stomach with the other.
Retching, she staggered, and would have collapsed if Durine hadn't economically spun her about and thrown her to the ground, then knelt beside her, gripping both her hands in one massive paw, drawing a beltknife with the other.
He looked up at Jason, who was standing half-supported by Kethol. "Do you want to do it, sir, or should I?" Massive shoulders shrugged under his leather jerkin. "Makes not much of a difference to me."
Jason struggled to sit up. "Would you all—"
Tennetty snarled, a sound more animal than human. "Just testing him, I was just testing him," she said, the words coming out as a threat, not a plea.
"Let her up, Durine," Jason said. He straightened, a salty taste in his mouth; he reached to the bleeding corner of his lip. He couldn't remember how, but it must have been cut in the fight.
Durine looked at Kethol, who shrugged, as though to say, It's up to him. Reluctantly, the big man let go of her hands and rose, not sheathing his dagger. "I'd not go for that knife, Tennetty," he said, his voice casual, perhaps a touch embarrassed, as if he'd caught himself repeating a transparent platitude like, Remember to dress warm when it's cold. "It'd be sort of a foolish idea."
She nodded and worked her way over to the edge of her bed, pulling herself up to it, rubbing her hand against the side of her head. In the flickering lamplight she looked old, and about used-up. "I hear you."
"I think you've done enough testing of him." Kethol picked up her pistol belt from where it hung near the bed and slung it over his shoulder. "Well, young sir, what do we do about this?"
"I just came to ask her about the party, the one I'm taking to Home, and then to Endell." Jason tried to dismiss it with a wave. "We got into a disagreement about how ready I am, and she tried to prove a point."
Kethol's mouth twisted into a smile. The expression didn't look right. "With respect, sir: this is why you called for help? You were perhaps proving that you've mastered that form of self-defense?" He turned to Durine. "What do you think?"
Durine shook his head. "I don't like it. We haul her in front of the general, at least."
Kethol snorted. "After he told us that he doesn't want to see our ugly faces for the next two tendays? Maybe Captain Garthe instead?"
"Over an assault on the Heir?"
"I'll decide what's done about it!" Jason snapped.
Durine thought it over for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, sir. We can discuss it with the general while you're gone, I guess. Long as you're not taking her with you. You give a dog one bite, not two."
Tennetty shook her head. "Wrong. I'm going with him. I'm as good as there is at what I do."
"Threatening royalty?" Kethol shrugged. "Who's going to keep an eye on you?"
She shook her head, then clearly regretted it. "If we're going to carry any cargo at all, we've got to keep the group down—remember, we've got to bring Slovotsky's woman and kids back from Endell. Bren Adahan and Aeia are bound for Home, and that means we can take maybe three more. Jason, me, and three more. I was thinking of Garthe, Teven, and maybe Danagar, if he can travel, but—" A spasm of pain creased her face and closed her single eye, leaving it watering.
"A corporal and two of the general's sons? Captain Garthe would be fine, but I've got a better idea," Kethol said, looking at Jason. "What would you say to me, Durine and Pirojil for the other three? I'd mean you'd have to talk the general into letting us off our punishment, and getting Piro healed up."
Which wouldn't bother Jason at all.
"Me instead of Pirojil," Tennetty said. "You either take me or kill me. Karl told me to watch out for you, Jason." Moving with exaggerated slowness, she rose from the bed and walked over to him. Durine glanced quickly at Jason, but Kethol's eyes never left Tennetty as she unstrapped her pistol and slowly, carefully, pulled it from the holster, handing it butt first to Jason.
"Cock it," she said.
Durine raised an eyebrow. Kethol shrugged, then nodded.
Jason cocked the weapon, holding it as he'd been taught, the barrel pointed toward the ceiling.
"Lower it now, point it at me." Again moving slowly, she reached out and pulled his arm down, until the muzzle was resting just underneath her chin, cold steel against her flesh.
"Either trust me or shoot me, now," she said, as though she didn't care one way or another.
"It's your decision, sir," Durine said. "Your father used to have a high opinion of Tennetty, but I don't know as you'd want to give her another bite. You give a dog one bite, not two."
"You already said that," Jason said.
"So I did. Well?"
Jason jerked his head toward the door. "Leave us alone for a moment or two," he said, not lowering the pistol. Was she really betting that she could beat the hangfire?
"We'll be just outside the door." Durine said. He and Kethol scooped up their rifles and left.
"What would you advise my father, Tennetty?" he asked.
She didn't hesitate. "I'd tell him to shoot. You can't trust somebody like me, not after I've come this close to killing you."
"Even though I know you won't do it again?"
"You don't know. You can't know. I don't know. Your father wouldn't give me another chance."
Jason nodded. "Maybe you're right." He pulled back the hammer, lowered the weapon and uncocked it, then handed it to her
. "Then again, as you were so kind to point out, I'm not my father." He turned away from her and walked out of the room, his back feeling quite naked and completely vulnerable.
CHAPTER 7
Goodbyes
I've never liked cats' ways of taking their leave—the ungrateful little creatures just go without saying anything.
Not my way. Saying goodbye is something we humans do pretty well.
—Walter Slovotsky
Aeia escorted him into the bedroom. "Take it easy on Mother," she whispered. "She's not doing too well."
Doria was already there, her legs curled under her as she sat in an oversized chair by the window, a lapdesk and pen across her lap. As Aeia and Jason walked in from the outer room, she set the lapdesk on an end table and walked to them.
Andrea Cullinane was asleep in the bed, her face seemingly a little younger, a trifle less worn around the edges than it had been when Jason had seen her in the workshop. For a moment her breathing speeded up and her eyelids fluttered, but just as Jason thought she was going to wake up she turned over on her side and buried her face deeply in her pillow.
"She'll be fine, I think, but she's been overdoing it with the magic for a long time now," Doria whispered, her lips pursed in professional disapproval. "Just think of her as a recovering junkie and you'll have a good picture." She guided them out toward the hall, far enough away that the whispers wouldn't carry to the bed, but close enough so that the three of them could still see Andrea's sleeping form.
" 'Junkie'?" Jason asked.
Doria's brow furrowed. "Drunk, then. Think of her as a drunk trying to give up drinking. The trouble is, she can't give it up; but she has to cut it down to the point where it's not going to hurt her."
Aeia shook her head. "But she's going to be okay?"
Doria didn't answer for a moment. "Remember that I'm not what I was, but—"
"But you've still got a feel for the way of things," Aeia said firmly. "That's what Andrea says," she added, when Doria seemed about to protest.
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