by Vale Aida
“Oh, no,” said the man. “Oh, no, no running away for you, my little one. You got a lesson coming. You know what we do to thieves here?”
A dull thud. He must have stumbled over a chair in the dark. Savonn glanced back. The man had produced a switch of some smooth, whippy wood that he held like a flail, waving it back and forth as he advanced. “Are you deaf, boy? I said, do you know what we do to thieves here?”
“I heard you,” said Savonn. He twitched the tapestry aside and began to drag the ladder out from behind the wardrobe. Any moment now someone would raise the alarm. “I shouldn’t like to deny you the pleasure of showing me. Where is the gold? I’m a terrible thief.”
The man’s face twisted in confounded rage. A fist the size of a mace shot out and caught Savonn by the hair, forcing his head back. Not even pride could prevent him from flinching. The switch descended on his cheek like a thunderclap. “Insolent boy,” said the man. His chest heaved with stertorious breaths. “We’ll take ye to his lordship, for starters. He’ll have ye whipped, that’s for sure. Or worse. What do ye say to a night in the stocks, eh? What do ye say?”
In the kitchen, the man had seemed like a compelling character: the Bad-Tempered Steward on a Feast Night, for whom the Scared Scullion Boy might adopt large eyes and a stutter to weasel out of trouble. But now that he had laid hands on Savonn, the man was no longer interesting, only a tedious mishmash of unexciting features and reused mannerisms, the latest in a long succession of looming adversaries. In the household of Kedris Andalle touch meant anger, and anger meant violence. Savonn could not remember a time when he had not held this to be true. There was nothing to do now but get rid of this latest threat as efficiently as possible.
He switched to Saraian, and made his voice low and harsh. “He says nothing.” If he kept his lips from moving, as a ventriloquist might, the words seemed to come from everywhere in the dark room at once. “But I say, you shall not touch him. And if you do…”
Something crashed in the feast hall, saving him from having to invent a threat. The man startled back, letting go of both Savonn and the switch. His eyes bulged. It was then a simple matter of speed and dexterity to slide a knife from one’s sleeve and plunge it into his chest.
The man gave a choked grunt. Savonn pulled the knife free. “Touch me again,” he said, resuming his normal voice, “and I will strip the skin from your living fingertips.”
A wordless gurgle. He was not Kedris, just an angry little man with a stick. Savonn wished, now, that he had not resorted to lethal measures. “You might also want to stop looking flabbergasted,” he added, since it was too late for regrets. “Quite unseemly, you see, once the rigors set in.”
By the time he wiped the knife and put it away, the quality of the noise from the hall had changed. The music had stopped. People were shouting, and more crashes resounded as tables and benches were shoved out of the way. A solid mass of men was advancing across the lawn towards the keep, smooth as an oiled wagon. The bows of Betronett bristled on every shoulder. And to his irritation, someone else was approaching the room.
There was no time to get the trapdoor open. Taking a quick look around the room, he drew the curtain over the window and availed himself of the ladder. Then he began to climb.
A moment later Lord Mordel burst into the room, and an unsurprising sequence of events began to unfold. Emitting a stream of orders to the two servants with him, his lordship cut himself off to swear at how dark it was. One of the servants fumbled towards the lamp, tripped over something on the floor, and began to swear, too. Further inspection revealed that the object in question happened to be the Bad-Tempered Steward, having recently suffered an acute case of knife-in-heart, and being quite dead.
“Milord!” the servant squawked. “It’s Emmin, sir! He’s murdered!”
But Mordel was not listening. He reached for his ladder, which was still leaning against the wardrobe, and made to pull it under the trapdoor. It did not budge. His eyes followed its length up and up, and then widened.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Who the hell are you?”
Sitting cross-legged on top of the wardrobe, Savonn waited until all three pairs of eyes were on him. Falling into schoolroom Saraian again, he said, “You are awaiting a guest.”
This was a situation that might go any number of ways, depending on Mordel’s wits and temper, and whose reinforcements arrived first. Mordel’s mouth opened and shut and opened again. He said, “The hell do you know about that? Is he—”
Savonn said nothing. A sneaking suspicion exerted itself in the lines of Mordel’s face. “It’s you! You’re the—the Empath?”
The servant had finally reached the lamp. As the flame kindled, Savonn allowed them to see his face. “What a state I find you in,” he said. “Feasting and drinking with your gate wide open, and strange men overrunning your lawn. Dearest Mordel. You have disposed of your command with such care.”
Mordel’s jowls unhinged. Of course he had never met this Empath any more than Savonn had. The world was full of stories of gods and demons and dragons, but one only had to go to a temple and ask any worshipper if they had ever met Aebria or Casteia to know if they were true. “I—”
“Let me guess,” said Savonn. “You were just about to fetch your arms and armour to repulse the intruders?” By now swords were ringing in the courtyard. A horn was blowing, wild and desperate, calling the revellers to arms. “No, of course not. You were going to get your gold out of the loft and escape through the postern. Half your wages, yes?”
“Milord,” said Mordel. He had switched from the mountain patois to something that approximated formal court speech. “No—that’s not—”
“Such a pity,” he said amiably, “that you will never receive the rest of it now.”
The door flew open a third time.
He was beset by a rib-racking urge to laugh. It was not Hiraen, as he had hoped. The newcomers were three men in mail, whose faces he recognised from the dais in the feast hall. The officers, here for their orders. Distracted, Mordel and the servants stared at them, and Savonn saw his chance.
He put his weight on the ladder and swung it off balance. It swayed and crashed down into the middle of his audience, taking him with it. A rung cracked Mordel on the forehead. Savonn’s weight, arriving in the next moment, rammed him flat to the floor. The knife from his sleeve dispatched one of the servants; a well-placed foot took care of the other. The three officers yelled, and advanced on him.
“Impostor!” Mordel gasped, crushed beneath two inert bodies and the ladder. “Impostor! Seize him!”
Cornered, outnumbered, and rudely upstaged, Savonn did begin to laugh, and set himself to doing as much damage as possible. He ripped another knife from his sleeve and sent it flying into the first man’s neck. The second he tripped. The third grabbed his arm and tried to pin him, and he careened backwards, slamming his shoulder into the man’s body. The grip did not loosen. Annoyed, he trod hard on his captor’s foot. The fellow swore, hopping, and shoved him face-first onto the flagstones. Then the second man, who had recovered, delivered a shattering kick to his side.
The sounds of fighting had reached the keep, echoing in the hallways below. “All right,” said Savonn. “All right. I yield.”
They wrestled him to his knees. It was going to be a long evening. “Check him for more knives,” said the one who had kicked him. “He’s stabbed three people already.”
They patted his sleeves down, unearthing the pin, several matches, a vial of noisome green liquid he had won in a bet with an apothecary, and two more knives. “There’s another in my shoe,” said Savonn helpfully. “Left or right, I can’t remember. And one strapped behind each shoulder.”
They searched all the places he recommended, and found he was not exaggerating. “This little bastard’s got more knives than surface area,” said one man. An educated sort; his least favourite type of captor. “How’s that possible?”
The noise was coming closer, surging up the sta
irs. Behind them, Mordel was moaning and making ineffectual attempts at getting up. “We ain’t got time,” said the other man, who still had Savonn’s arm caught in a socket-jarring grip. “Just knock him out and—”
“What? And miss my pouch of diamonds?” asked Savonn. Out in the hall, someone was approaching at a run. “It’s in one of my sleeves. They’re a special kind, made from the tears of a phoenix and—”
“Savonn?”
It was the voice he had awaited; a good thing, because he did not, in fact, possess any diamonds. The men froze. “Oh, dear,” he said. “Quite the after-dinner party, isn’t this?”
“Savonn! Where in blazes are you?”
If he called back, they really would knock him out. “That’s me,” he said. “My friend’s a stupidly good shot. You’d better tie me up and get behind me. I don’t suppose you have any rope?”
They did not. They conferred briefly, and one of them went to unfasten the curtain cord. As soon as the fellow was out of reach, Savonn twisted around and bit the arm holding him down.
Hot blood filled his mouth. The man behind him screeched. He made to draw his sword, found he did not have enough hands to do so, and released his grip on his prisoner. In an eyeblink Savonn had flung himself away, tittering with disapproval. Hiraen shouted, “Get down!”
He was already down. A bowstring hissed, and the man behind him hit the ground. “I yield, sir,” said the other, waving the curtain cord like a banner of surrender. The bow twanged again, and there were no further sounds, save that of Mordel gasping.
Savonn got up carefully. “There is,” he said, “always a certain relief in watching you walk into a room.”
His cheek was smarting, and his side felt as if it had been staved in with a hot rod. “You missed the fun at the gate,” said Hiraen, who seemed unhurt. “Been busy?”
He had found Mordel, spitting half-conscious imprecations from where he lay. “That’s the leader,” said Savonn. “Don’t kill him yet, I haven’t questioned him.”
“That one’s no soldier,” said Hiraen.
He was looking at the prone form of the Bad-Tempered Steward. The statement carried just the lightest hint of censure; or perhaps it was just that Savonn cared too much about what Hiraen thought, and always would. He said, “He touched my face.”
A pause. In a much different voice, Hiraen said, “Oh.”
Savonn turned away. None of his ribs appeared to be broken, so he retrieved his various implements and dragged the ladder over to the trapdoor. It was not hard to jimmy the lock. The way open, he climbed into the loft and found himself on a cramped platform under a slanting roof, too low for him to stand upright. He was surrounded by steel coffers that had clearly come a long way, dented and tarnished, but the locks still intact. He pulled the nearest box to him and picked that open, too.
“What’s up there?” Hiraen called.
Savonn was silent at first, looking at the contents. He had known, and Kedris had guessed, but it was different seeing it for himself. The game had begun in earnest.
“Nothing much,” he said. He picked up a handful of the stuff and tossed it down the ladder. “Just this.”
Hiraen did not answer. All he heard from below was the clatter of coins against the flagstones, each one of new-minted gold, with the square-jawed profile of Marguerit of Sarei embossed front and back.
* * *
After a brief charge into tepid resistance, during which Emaris discovered to his astonishment that Vion and the other boys were not half bad with their swords, Onaressi fell once more into Betronett hands.
Sentries had been posted on the walls, and the dead piled in cairns—ten bandits for every one of theirs, Casteia be praised. Tired, bloody and ravenous, the troop barged singing into the feast hall and sat down to the Midsummer banquet their enemies had abandoned. The servants lost no time making themselves pleasant to the conquerors, and neither did the cooks. None of the boys would shut up while they waited for the food to be served. “Did you see?” asked the tall one, who seemed to have imprinted on Emaris and taken to following him around like a duckling. “Did you see how I dislocated that fellow’s jaw with the hilt of my sword? Broke it, perhaps.” Then, perfunctorily, “My name’s Lomas.”
“I’m Vion,” said the small one, as Lomas passed around the plates and cutlery. “You all know that. Where’s the Captain, Emaris? I’ve still got his sunhat.”
“I’ve no i—”
“That’s Emaris,” interrupted Lomas for the benefit of the others. He jabbed a finger into Emaris’s chest with the air of a dealer showing off a racehorse. “Savonn’s told us all about you. He said you saved his life and your father was a great general and your sister showed you how to break a man’s rib with a fork. Here’s a fork. You can demonstrate on Vion.”
Vion threw a goblet at his head. It hit him between the eyes with terrifying accuracy and clattered to the floor. “Give that back. Emaris, where are you going? Aren’t you hungry?”
He was, but the thought of Savonn on the loose did not help his appetite. “I’m going to look for the Captain,” he said. “Save something for me.”
He found Savonn outside Mordel’s quarters in the third-floor hallway, reclining against the wall with not a curl of hair out of place. “There you are,” said Savonn. He looked so unruffled that Emaris wondered, resentfully, if he had even done any fighting. “I was just beginning to wonder if you’d gotten yourself killed.”
After being abandoned by his commander mid-battle, Emaris was in a vindictive mood. “You shouldn’t get your hopes up like that.”
“It’s my nature,” said Savonn. “Why aren’t you with Vion and his lot?”
Hiraen said something inside the room, and Daine laughed. Something heavy clanged, and there was the jingle of coins spilling across the floor. A wave of familiar anger washed over Emaris. He felt rootless and displaced, and worse still, unwanted. “I helped you take the fort. Are you now telling me to go play with the little boys who sauntered in, sword in hand, when the hard part was done?”
He loathed the words as soon as he had spoken them. Savonn’s eyes widened in mock concern. “Dear me. Were they so craven?”
It was too late to back down. From long practice, Emaris did not avoid the Captain’s gaze. As with encountering a mountain lion, there were principles one followed when dealing with Savonn Silvertongue: stand your ground, maintain eye contact, don’t present your back. “No. They fought very bravely, insofar as there was anybody to fight. Since you don’t seem to need me any more, perhaps I should squire for Hiraen instead.”
He prepared to be flayed alive. But Savonn only squinted at him with his head canted, as if reading a page of extremely small print. “Perhaps you should. Hiraen will be flattered. But the candidates I handpicked for your patrol will be terribly disappointed. Do they displease you so much?”
Presently Emaris realised that his mouth had fallen open in unflattering stupefaction. He shut it, conscious of the needling stare on him. “I haven’t turned eighteen.”
“I’m feeling fickle,” said Savonn. “And I have a surfeit of small boys to dispose of. Is there a problem?”
Emaris said nothing. He had always imagined receiving the news from his father. He gazed at the ajar door, the familiar sense of dread stealing over him again. Savonn gave him one of his unsettling, appraising stares, as if he knew what Emaris was thinking; then, with sudden briskness, pulled the door open and held it for him. “If not,” he said, “I should like to introduce you to Mordel, erstwhile commander of Onaressi. He was just telling us how he has never met the Empath and hasn’t the faintest clue who he, she, or they are. You haven’t missed much.”
“Nikas said—”
“I know what Nikas said.”
Emaris walked in. The room was cluttered with heavy steel coffers. Nikas was sitting on one, sketching, with Daine clinking a handful of coins beside him. Hiraen had another open, making tally marks on a sheet of paper. Behind them was a middle-aged man
with large ears, trussed up on the floor in a heap of ropes. Forcibly reminded of the questioning of the panhandlers, Emaris was in a mind to walk back out, but Savonn was getting in the way with all the skill of a lifetime’s practice. “Go on, sir,” he said. “Tell my squire what you told me.”
The prisoner made angry noises of protest. “I’m not your squire,” Emaris said, sitting on one of the coffers. “You dismissed me.”
Savonn eased himself into the chair behind the desk, a trifle stiffly. “I promoted you.”
“If you don’t mind,” said Daine, sending a coin spinning across the floor, “what is an empath?”
He was looking at Nikas, but Savonn answered. “A mythical being who senses feelings, and possibly has twelve eyes and a serpent for a tongue. They exist only in fairytales. So you see, I am very entertained, but not at all convinced.”
“Then—”
“It’s true,” Mordel spat. He sported an enormous livid bruise on his forehead, but no other injuries as far as Emaris could see. “He never writes directly. Sometimes his lieutenants come and inspect the garrison, but they never speak of him. Not so much as a name. Trust me, I’ve asked. Methinks they’re scared stiff.”
He met a formidable silence. “I swear, I never killed your Governor,” said Mordel, his voice splitting. “We even had orders to leave him alone. The Empath’s courier told us that he’d been seen on the road to Medrai, but we weren’t to lay hands on him, only make sure them horsemen from Betronett never joined him—”
“That was you!” cried Emaris. “You lamed our horses!”
Mordel shrank back from him. “Beg pardons, sir, but I’d lame them a hundred times over if it’d keep the Empath off my back. Men have disappeared, nay, whole troops have disappeared when he’s mad. And he was very plain, see—his lordship’s son wasn’t to be there or else…”
Hiraen, who had been silent so far, looked at Savonn. Savonn returned the look with a belligerent arch of an eyebrow. Without glancing up from his drawing, Nikas said, “You are now addressing that son, who has an interesting temper. Tread carefully.”
