by Jon Sprunk
“They are being assembled as we speak, Majesty.”
“Put Lord Du’Quendel in charge of the expedition.”
“Du’Quendel? I don’t believe he has any military experience.”
“Humor me. The generals can run the show, but I want Lord Du’Quendel on his way the first thing tomorrow morning. And send Lieutenant Walthom’s unit as well.”
“As you command.” Hubert pointed to the box on their left. “I see Duke Mormaer has decided to attend this evening.”
Glad for the distraction, Josey followed his gesture to the next box, where the Duke of Wistros was sitting down with an elderly matron.
“Let me guess,” she said. “That’s not his wife, either.”
“No. I haven’t any idea who she is. I’m certain his mother is passed. Possibly an aunt or some other relative. Odd, though. Mormaer isn’t a regular attendee of the theater. In fact, to my knowledge Mormaer hasn’t attended a production in years, but he turns up here tonight.”
Josey resumed her study of the seats below. Armed soldiers walked among the patrons. “Perhaps he holds the same contrary opinion of my attendance as you and hopes to see me pelted with rotten fruit.”
Hubert turned to her, his brow pinched together. “You’re up to something.”
Josey gave him a bland look. “What do you mean? I’m simply enjoying this, my first night out of that drafty stone shack you call a palace. In peace, if it pleases you, my lord.”
“You’ve set a trap!” He leaned so close his nose bumped into her ear. “You’re using yourself as bait to draw out the assassin, and Mormaer is in on it.”
“Keep your voice down.”
Josey grimaced as she glanced over her shoulder at her guards. This was the moment she’d been dreading. Hubert’s face was a stiff mask, but she could see the anger bubbling underneath. More than that, there was true resentment. She didn’t blame him. That had been the hardest part of the plan for her to accept. But Mormaer had sworn her to secrecy; it was the only way he would assist her. Now, with Hubert sitting beside her, wounded, she wished she had insisted on the need to include him.
“It was Mormaer’s idea. He came up with a plan to catch my attacker. The fewer people who knew…”
“Fewer meaning not your lord chancellor. Who else knows?”
“Only those who must. We don’t know anything about the assassin. He could be masquerading as anyone.”
“Am I a suspect, too?”
Josey met him frown for frown. “If you were, you would be sitting in a very cold cell right now, and not here beside me. I trust you, Hubert, even with my life. If this fails, you are my last line of protection.”
“Majesty, I cannot protect you if I am not informed-”
A voice called from the hallway behind them. Josey rose as the curtain dividing the back of the box was pulled aside. Lady Philomena stood in the doorway. She wore a long indigo gown that personified her. Plain, but expensive.
The lady made a small curtsy, so small that Josey almost missed it. Josey bent her head to precisely the same degree.
Hubert made a bow. “I was not aware Your Ladyship enjoyed the theater.”
“I do not.” She looked to Josey. “I enjoy nothing which distracts me from the grandeurs of the Prophet. But I have come at the prelate’s behest, to relate His Holiness’s relief that the empress survived the cowardly attempt on her life and our sincere wish that this event will bring Her Highness to a closer relationship with the Church, which is the true source of authority.”
Josey forced herself to smile. “My lady is too kind. Please convey my thanks to the Holy Father, and ask him to pray for the soul of our servant, who was killed in the attack.”
“Yes,” the lady said. “Your manservant, was he not? So fortunate for him to be able to give his life for his mistress, the noblest end for a man of such odious birth.”
Josey stared, unable to believe her ears. To hear Fenrik degraded so… like he had been a pet or a piece of furniture. Her hands, gripped in her skirts, began to shake. Before she could say what came to mind, Hubert jumped in.
“I believe the performance is about to begin. Perhaps Your Ladyship would grace us with your presence afterward.”
Lady Philomena raised a delicate eyebrow. “Not this evening, Your Grace. I must be off to vespers.” Then to Josey, she made another minute curtsy. “Highness.”
Josey said nothing, not trusting herself to remain civil, as the lady departed. Once the curtains dropped back in place, she spat out a string of invectives that made Hubert stare.
“That rotten bitch,” Josey said as she went back to her seat, feeling a little better. “I’d like to tell her where she can put her wishes.”
“Yes, she’s a conniving snake.” Hubert took a deep breath. “But she is also a powerful force in the Thurim. And she speaks with the prelate’s voice. That makes her doubly venomous.”
The house lights went down. The curtain rose, and polite applause sprung from the audience as a woman in a frilly yellow gown and a hat bedecked with long feathers strode to the center of the stage.
“Tonight for your pleasure,” she said in a strong voice that carried through the theater, “and to honor our patroness, Empress Josephine”-there was a round of enthusiastic applause from the floor-“we shall perform The Caliph’s Jewel.”
As the players took their places upon the stage, Josey settled back in her seat and tried to look calm, but her insides were twisted up in knots. She was taking an awful risk. But it’s worth it if the plan works.
And it would. Through her discussion with Duke Mormaer, she had tried to think about it from the assassin’s point of view. Interestingly, her time spent with Caim had come in handy. Although no expert on the art of killing, she had a certain perspective, and Mormaer’s scheme made sense. She even thought Caim, wherever he was, might approve of their logic. She tried to find comfort in that thought, but it had been easier when they were back in the palace just talking about it. Actually sitting here, on full display like a target at a carnival game, was quite a different matter.
Josey was just beginning to relax when voices rose in the corridor outside her box. Someone sounded angry, but whether it was one of her bodyguards or another she could not tell. She started to glance over her shoulder. A sound like rustling paper crashed in her ears as something brushed her cheek. Josey froze, her entire body clenched with fear. No no no! I don’t want to -
Small wings fluttered and disappeared over the roof of the box. Josey inhaled a shuddering breath. It was just a pigeon. Caim would laugh his head off if he’d seen that.
She leaned over to share the joke with Hubert, and froze at the look on his face. Mouth open, he was turned around in his chair looking to the back of the box. Josey turned her head. What she saw robbed the heat from her blood. One of her guardsmen had reached over, but instead of fingers, glistening black tentacles extended from his hand to cover the other guard’s face and throat. While she and Hubert watched, the stricken guard collapsed to the floor. The killer looked in their direction.
Hubert stood up, grabbing for his sword, but a vicious swipe from a fistful of writhing tentacles hurled him over the railing. Hubert!
A cry for help lodged in Josey’s throat as she slipped off the seat of her chair. She reached into her skirts for her knife, but her legs were tangled up in layers of petticoats. She couldn’t breathe. It was all happening too fast.
The imposter’s appearance shifted as he advanced. His eyes receded into their sockets, his skin bubbled and darkened like charring meat, and the grotesque tendril-hands morphed into hooked talons. Josey kicked her chair into the assassin’s path, and the creature shattered it with a casual slap. Its rubbery lips stretched upward into an obscene grin. Josey dug through the material twisted around her legs. Someone help us!
A woman screamed. Relief washed through Josey as the cry was taken up by others. She imagined the people below, standing up in shock and pointing at the imperial box. The ass
assin stopped and released a ferocious roar that pummeled her ears and drove her to the carpet. She knew the knife was strapped to her thigh, but she couldn’t find the handle. As the assassin loomed over her, she looked up, expecting to feel the painful bite of claws.
A flash of intense light blinded her, followed by a burst of heat over her face and arms like the blaze from an oven. A bitter stench filled her nose. Josey blinked away spots of residual brilliance to find the assassin was gone. A dense cloud of smoke hovered in its place. Coughing and waving to disperse the haze, she stood up. In the next box, Duke Mormaer and the old woman were gone. Instead, Hirsch stood in their place, both hands extended toward her. Thin trails of smoke rose from his open palms.
Josey released her skirt and crawled to the railing. Hubert hung by one hand; the other still held his sword. Blood dribbled from a cut across his forehead, but he was alive. Josey laughed in spite of herself and the situation. It had been Mormaer’s suggestion for her to pretend to send away Master Hirsch in public. After pretending to leave with Captain Drathan, the adept disguised himself and accompanied the duke to the performance. It had worked to perfection.
Josey reached down to help Hubert. The floor of the theater was in chaos as people shoved to get to the exits. As she got hold of his wrist, a scraping noise from behind sent a shiver down her spine. Josey turned her head to look behind her. The assassin clung to the roof of the adjacent box section. It looked more monster than man, with a hulking physique and long, veiny limbs. Green flames danced along its hunched shoulders and down its back, but the fiercest fire burned within its cavernous eye sockets as they turned toward her. Gathering its legs, the assassin leapt across the distance and landed on the side of the imperial box. Its claws shredded the lacquered privacy screen.
Though it wrenched at her heart, Josey let go of Hubert. Sobbing, she pulled up her skirt and grabbed for the knife, even though she suspected it would be futile against this thing that had withstood swords and mystical fire and yet refused to die. With a roar, the assassin pushed into the box. The stench of its breath, like putrid rotting meat, made her cringe. The knife in Josey’s hand quivered as the assassin stood over her. Blood dripped from its claws. She braced herself, refusing to look away. She had gambled the lives of her soldiers and her friend. The least she could do was face her end like an empress.
A blur of bright steel sprang up beside Josey. As she tumbled to the floor, Hubert appeared and threw himself in front of her. The slim tip of his sword pierced the assassin’s side. Its fiery eyes gaped wide, whether in pain or shock Josey could not tell, but the monster leapt back with superhuman agility, dragging Hubert with it. She heard a crackling noise an instant before she was blinded by a second blast of scintillating light.
Josey got up on her knees, wiping her eyes. Through a blurry fog she spotted a huge hole in the side of the imperial box. The edges of the hole smoldered. At first she didn’t see Hubert, but then he pushed up off the floor under the wreckage of the partially collapsed ceiling.
“Are you all right?” they each asked at the same time.
He brushed a hand down the front of his evening jacket, the fine gabardine now caked in dust and stone chips. “I believe my attire has been vanquished.”
“I’m sorry, Hubert.” Tears formed in her eyes as she considered what had almost happened because of her. “Please forgive me.”
He smiled as he straightened his lapels. “It is always interesting to serve you, Majesty. And it is my great honor.”
Footsteps echoed in the corridor behind the box. Josey steeled herself for anything, while Hubert looked around for his sword.
Hirsch leaned through the curtained archway. “Everyone still in one piece?”
“Thanks to your magery, Master Adept,” Josey answered. “Is it dead?”
Hirsch shook his head as he went over to the railing. “I merely drove it off.”
Josey’s heart sank. They had gone through all of this and had nothing to show for it. Out in the hallway, she could see the legs of her bodyguards sprawled on the floor. Their blood soaked through the short red carpet and pooled between them. I’m not worthy of such devotion.
Hubert had gone over to stand beside Hirsch. “Perhaps it’s not dead, but you managed to hurt it.”
Josey joined them. Past the charred partition, streaks of soot and luminescent green slime spread across the wall of the theater, and then ended as if their source had vanished into the air. Hirsch bent over the shattered railing and came back up holding a long splinter of wood. On the tip was smeared a glob of the greenish black stuff.
“Is that-?” Hubert started to ask.
“Yes,” Hirsch replied. “I may be able to track the beast with this, if the material isn’t too badly tainted.” To Hubert he said, “Come with me while the spoor is still fresh, and bring every soldier you can spare.”
“How-?” Hubert tried to ask, but the adept was gone.
Josey pushed her lord chancellor toward the archway. “Go with him. Take Captain Drathan and the guards.”
“I won’t leave you defenseless.”
A tall figure moved into the archway. “I will remain with the empress,” Mormaer said.
Josey considered the offer. Hirsch needed help. Whatever the assassin was, she feared the adept would have his hands full if he managed to catch it.
“Thank you, Duke Mormaer.” Josey nodded to Hubert. “Attend Master Hirsch. Don’t let anything-”
“I’m going!” Hubert pressed past the duke and ran down the corridor.
The theater was amazingly quiet in the aftermath of the attack. Below, the audience, orchestra, and players had fled. Josey’s hands shook as she clutched the railing. I could have died here tonight. Now what? I could be attacked again, on the way back to the palace, or while sleeping in my bed. Sleep? She huffed at the thought. Though she was exhausted down to her bones, she wouldn’t be able to sleep as long as the assassin remained free.
“Majesty,” Mormaer said. “My guards and I shall accompany you to the palace.”
Josey turned. Alone in the dim lighting with him, she was keenly aware of how large he was. If he wanted, he could push her over the side and claim it was an accident. Yet when she looked into his eyes she saw a hint of… understanding? Certainly not compassion.
“It was a good plan,” she said.
Mormaer’s expression did not change except for a tightening around the eyes, but any warmth she thought she had seen in his gaze froze over.
“We should go, Majesty.”
Josey bit her bottom lip as she walked past him, angry at herself. She had said the wrong thing, as usual. But Duke Mormaer was so damned inscrutable; she never knew what to say around him.
A squad of armsmen in Mormaer’s black livery stood in the corridor. Two of her bodyguards lay at their feet in pools of blood. Josey paused to pay her respects to these men who had died in her defense. Their eyes stared up at the ceiling.
“Duke Mormaer, my cloak, please.”
When he fetched it, she laid it gently over the faces of her bodyguards. Dark spots appeared in the fabric where their blood soaked through.
It was only as she turned away to follow Mormaer, his men falling in behind them, that Josey noticed a detail about her bodyguards. Neither had sported any claw gouges or throat punctures. Instead, each had died from a straight cut across the throat, as neat as if done by a chirurgeon’s blade.
A chill ran through Josey. If not the assassin, then who killed them?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
C aim palmed the hilts of his knives as he headed up the street. The conversation with the old woman had only increased his desire to leave the city. But first he wanted to make sure Liana and Keegan were all right. He realized it was insane, that they were safe with their uncle, but this place-the atmosphere, the tension, the unfriendly shadows-made him anxious just the same.
I’ll just stop by for a quick look to ease my mind, and then be on my way.
Coming around
a corner, he pulled up quick. Something warned him to drop behind a row of dirty snow mounds. A dozen heartbeats later, a group of armed men passed through the intersection. Soldiers this time, and moving like they had a purpose. Caim rubbed his aching thigh as he crouched on the frozen cobblestones. They were headed deeper into this ward. Liana had said her uncle’s shop was in that direction. It could be a coincidence…
Caim stayed low as he moved. He didn’t believe in coincidence. Maybe Keegan and his outlaw friends deserved whatever trouble they stirred up, but Liana was there. Damn the girl. Why couldn’t she have stayed with her father?
As Caim turned onto a crooked lane, he spotted three lookouts; two loitering on the street and one perched in a second-story window across from the shop with a hammer-and-nails placard. Spotters. And if they knew what they were doing, the man up top would have a bow…
What are you doing, Caim? Just turn around and walk the other way .
But he dipped into an alley three doors down from the shop and followed it to another backstreet behind the storefronts. Peering around the corner, he saw a fourth lookout huddled behind a snowbank. Caim considered his knives, but then put them away. Instead, he reached out to the shadows. They crowded around him as if eager for his summons. He wove a few around him in a cloak and dismissed the rest, who drifted away slowly.
Hugging the wall, Caim moved down the narrow alleyway. The sentry continued rubbing his hands together and blowing into them, but he didn’t make a sound as Caim passed him.
When Caim got to the back of what he thought was the right shop, he looked for a way up. One of the second-story windows was cracked open. Despite protests from his leg and arm, he started climbing. The bottom half of the shop was faced with rough river stones interspaced with deep groves, which made it easier. The shadows stayed with him, concealing his efforts as he reached the windowsill. He eased open the shutters and climbed inside.
Caim sent the shadows away as his feet touched down on the dusty floor of a small room with a sloped ceiling. The shop was quiet. Nudging the door open with his toe, he stepped out into an L-shaped hallway. A cool draft blew across the back of his neck as he slipped around the corner. Voices wafted from the downstairs. A man and a woman. He didn’t recognize the male, but he knew Liana’s voice at once. He went down the steps without any pretense at stealth.
