Ash and Ambition

by Ari Marmell

  “The Inquisitors aren’t just witch hunters,” Ulia told her, joining her at the window, shoulder pressed to Silbeth’s own. “They’re the only ones in Ktho Delios legally permitted to practice sorcery. The only ones the Deliant publicly admits to, anyway. They can be assigned almost any task, if it’s deemed important enough.”

  “Something like finding the murderer of two Ninth Citadel agents?” Silbeth asked nervously.

  “Yes. What do we do? They’ll reach us in minutes!”

  The mercenary’s mind raced. While certainly no practitioner, she knew a little of magic. Several of the Priory monks and priests practiced mystical rites, enough so that she understood some basic theories. Almost against her will, she turned her head to study the coat that lay, innocent and unassuming, over the back of the chair.

  Blood. She’d chosen the coat because its dark hue hid the blood that had spattered it during her struggle with its former wearer. That had to be how this Inquisitor had tracked them from the bodies!

  But it was imprecise. It had only led him to the general vicinity, else he wouldn’t need to concentrate anew at each house, would already have located her here.

  “I have an idea,” she announced. “You’re not going to care for it, and the Salkos even less. But if we hurry, and if everyone does exactly as I say, and if the gods—or god—are in an abnormally giving mood today, we all might get out of this without spending the rest of our very short lives in a Deliant prison.”

  ___

  “Colonel! Colonel Ilx!”

  The Deliant Inquisitor lowered his hands—slowly, though he wanted simply to let them fall—and composed his features before turning. The interruption was irritating, yet he couldn’t pretend anything other than relief at the moment’s respite.

  It had been hours, now, since he had touched the blood of the dead man, etched the arcane glyphs into the soil around the bodies and summoned the essence of life recently spilled to guide his way. Hours in which he’d struggled to keep the feel of that life, those magics, in his head. He’d mentally redrawn the rune time and again to keep focused, and still it slipped away a bit more every time he stopped to feel for it. This interruption would make it that much harder, but the brief rest was welcome all the same.

  He was a bit young for an Inquisitor, was Navirov Ilx, and wore a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee to appear older. He might have tried for a full beard, had not the burn scar across the right side of his face—not blatant, visible only up close or in bright lighting—prevented it. Age notwithstanding, however, none who witnessed his work, or had to stand before his determined and nigh unblinking gaze, could doubt that he had earned his accolades and more.

  And right now, every iota of that determination was bent toward finding whatever criminal or enemy of the state had butchered two Ninth Citadel operatives. Navirov had no great love for the secret police, but still, such violations could not be allowed to stand.

  “What is it, Private?” he asked once the soldier appeared before him.

  The newcomer snapped off a salute. “You ordered me to find out if anyone had recently used Ninth Citadel authority to engage in any suspicious activity, Colonel,” he began.

  “Yes, I know. I was there. Spit it out, please.”

  “Yes, sir! A woman bearing a Citadel badge ordered the release of several prisoners from a nearby gaol, sir. No infractions of any importance, just petty transgressions.”

  “Hmm. You have the list?”

  “Right here, sir.” He handed over a page torn from a ledger, then pointed to a quickly scribbled and uneven line of ink. “Everyone from here down.”

  “Hmm,” he repeated. “Yashir!”

  A gaunt, severe woman with hair of blackest night and a coat to match—the only person in his entire entourage not clad in armor—stepped forward. “Yes, Colonel?”

  He passed the page over his shoulder without looking. “Have your people been looking into anyone on this list?”

  The Ninth Citadel operative scanned the paper. “This one. Povyar.”

  Ulia Povyar? Bit of a surprise, that. Navirov had met the woman a few times, at this function or that. She’d never struck him as a seditionist sympathizer. But then, one never knew, did one?

  “Happen to know if she has any friends or relatives on this street?” The Citadel was rarely so forthcoming with their intelligence, but the loss of two of their own had changed the rules.

  In the end, she had to send her own runner back to headquarters to look at Povyar’s file, and by the time they identified the Salko household as their probable destination, Navirov could have already located it by picking up the lingering threads of his spell. Still, at least it was easier on him this way.

  He ordered his people to surround the house, and to take up stations at the nearby intersections. Only then, flanked by several of his best soldiers and by Yashir herself, did he pound on the door.

  It opened to reveal neither a servant nor Master or Lady Salko, but a small, formally clad boy of perhaps ten or twelve years. His younger sister, garbed in equal finery, stood behind him, a silk-dressed doll dangling from her fist.

  Navirov dropped to one knee. “Are your parents here, son?”

  The boy nodded, eyes wide and shining.

  “Is anyone else here?”

  “I don’t know. They were.”

  “Who?”

  “Two pretty ladies.”

  “And where are your parents now?”

  “They…” The boy’s lip began to quiver.

  “All right.” Navirov rose. “Take your sister to your neighbor’s house. Run.”

  “Colonel—” Yashir began, voice hot.

  “Quiet. Go, child.”

  They ran, hands clasped.

  “You should have taken them aside for further questioning!” the woman from the Citadel snapped, livid. “Standard procedure—”

  “I do not interrogate children.”

  “You—!”

  “I am stepping through that doorway now. Whether or not you’re standing in it.”

  Yashir slipped aside, though the weight of her disdainful fury was nearly enough to slow his passage.

  Navirov and his soldiers found the Salkos and their household staff, bound and gagged in the wine cellar. None had been too horribly mistreated; a bruise here, a contusion there, just enough to subdue them so they could be tied.

  Or, he mused, enough to make it look legitimate.

  He had no evidence of any such thing, and—regardless of what Yashir might do in his place—he wasn’t about to arrest the victims of a seditionist on mere suspicion that their involvement was more than it appeared. He would, however, have a word or two with the Ninth Citadel, have the Salkos put under close surveillance for a time.

  He found the stolen coat, as well, along with the copper badges and identification documents. They were buried in the hay of a cart being pulled behind an old sorrel mare trudging casually down a neighboring street. Since most Ktho Delians knew nothing of magic—certainly not enough to deduce that he’d located them via the blood on the coat—this raised a whole host of new questions.

  “They cannot be more than minutes ahead of us,” he shouted at his assembled unit. “Spread out! Send runners to nearby barracks with Povyar’s description and get more people on the streets! Give them no opportunity to go to ground! Find them, surround them, and run them down!

  “And above all… Something is going on here, something we don’t understand. Something beyond mere sedition. So whatever happens, I want them alive.”

  ___

  “Sure, I remember. Wasn’t but a night ago you were here. Still,” the sentry hedged from behind his viewport beside the door, “I really ought to check with Koldan before I just let you walk in here.”

  Silbeth shoved her own face against, practically through, the tiny window. When she raised her voice, though, it wasn’t solely in an effort to intimidate the thug, but also to be sure he’d hear her over the sound of Ulia’s desperate gasp
ing. The spy remained upright only by leaning hard against the wall of the woodworker’s shop, far more winded by the cross-city dash than was her Priory of Steel companion.

  “Listen to me, you obtuse bastard! You think my friend and I just ran half of Tohl Delian for the exercise? We’ve got people after us! If they catch us, we’re dead, and if we’re dead, your boss doesn’t get any of the sizable purse he’s being paid for smuggling us the hell out of this wretched town! Now open the gods damned door!”

  Between his snarl and his hesitation, she wondered if she might have overdone it, but the notion of costing Koldan his due coin obviously weighed on the man. “Who’s after you?” he asked.

  “I didn’t stop to get their names! Rivals of yours, maybe?” Not precisely a lie…

  Grousing to himself, the sentry hauled back the bolts. Silbeth darted inside before the door was fully open, dragging a still-wheezing Ulia behind her by the hand.

  “I suggest you lock up,” she said as she blew past him, not that she anticipated it doing any good. The pair had barely avoided search parties on numerous occasions, only just managed to escape them on numerous others. The Deliant soldiers knew their general area, and she had no doubt they would swiftly find someone who could be intimidated into revealing Koldan’s hidden sanctum. As soon as the soldiers learned the notorious smuggler was based in the vicinity, it was the first place they’d look for the fleeing fugitives. Koldan was about to find a tidal wave of mail and swords crashing down on his head.

  The fib that got her through the door notwithstanding, she never genuinely considered not telling the smuggler and gang leader what was coming. Disastrous as she knew the revelation could be, it would be even worse if they were caught unprepared.

  He took it about as well as she’d had any right to expect.

  “You gods damned stupid bitch! You had to lead them right to us?!”

  “I had nowhere else to go, Koldan, and you—”

  “We’ll be lucky if we have time to get our asses out of here with a fraction of my money!” Indeed, his people were already in panic mode, gathering up the most portable riches and most incriminating of stolen goods. “You have any idea how much I’m going to lose, how much it’ll cost to set up a new shop somewhere else? This could break us!”

  “I understand. Obviously, what I said earlier about renegotiating no longer applies. I haven’t a great deal of coin on me, personally, but I can arrange—”

  “Oh, you’ll arrange, all right. When your employers find out how much they owe me, you’re going to wish you’d let the soldiers take you!”

  For all Koldan’s spitting fury—she felt the man’s saliva speckling her face from clear across the room—Silbeth found her hackles rising at the reaction. He was proving too quick to forgive, and for what? So he could demand an unnamed reward that she hadn’t even the authority to promise?

  No. This was wrong.

  “Very well,” she said calmly, stepping aside as one of the smugglers stumbled past her carrying an armful of metalworking tools. “Shall we get going, then? Ulia, you should—”

  “I don’t think so,” Koldan interrupted. “I have to oversee the evacuation, make sure we get all the most important stuff, and I’m not letting you two out of my sight. Besides, you’re responsible for this, you can bloody well help lug the equipment!”

  That was it, then. She could see the lie in his face, taste it in his words, knew what he had planned as surely as if he’d spelled it out. No way a man like Koldan stayed behind to “oversee” the gang abandoning its nest. He’d be one of the first gone, probably with the most valuable treasures stuffed in his pockets.

  No, he wasn’t running because he had no intention of trying to escape the coming soldiers; he was waiting for them. His only hope was to negotiate, to try and parlay something valuable into a monetary reward and a pass—or at least legal consideration—for his criminal activities.

  “Something” such as, for example, a pair of fugitives wanted by damn near every department and division of the Deliant.

  She and Ulia needed to find some means of slipping out from under Koldan’s gaze, needed to be out of here before—

  The heavily bolted portal, along with several chunks of the stone wall around it, blasted into the room in a hurricane of splinters, dust, and the dying remnants of the unfortunate door guard. Silbeth and Ulia had just run out of “before.”

  Silbeth had no idea what they’d hit the door with—portable ballista? Some sort of alchemical bomb?—and ultimately it didn’t much matter. The first handful of Deliant soldiers poured through the breach, and she moved to meet them.

  And as she ran, she shouted, loud enough for the others, soldiers included, to hear over the growing chaos.

  “Koldan! Get your mistress out of here! I’ll try to hold them!”

  Even in the face of growing danger, the smuggler’s confusion froze him. Ulia, however, was no fool. She must have seen the same potential for betrayal Silbeth had; the mercenary offered up a silent prayer of thanks when the other woman picked up on her cue, racing to Koldan’s side and clutching at him like a storybook damsel in distress.

  His frustrated, furious roar when he realized what they’d done—that the Deliant would never believe now that he hadn’t been involved in Ulia’s and Silbeth’s crimes, no matter what he did or how he turned against them—was near as loud as the detonating door. He spun away from Ulia, drawing a broad-bladed fighting knife, and sprinted for one of his many hidden exits. Ulia followed, armed with a smaller dagger she’d filched from somewhere on the smuggler’s body during her desperate cling.

  Soldiers pursued them. Soldiers spread throughout the workshop, running down Koldan’s people on the various levels. And then Silbeth couldn’t afford to pay any further attention due to the soldiers converging on her as well.

  At least the Inquisitor hasn’t gotten here yet…

  The trio facing her didn’t seem especially concerned, Inquisitor or no, though they were professional enough to maintain their guard. And no wonder. Three to her one, their broadswords to her oversized knife, their chain hauberks to her unarmored flesh. This pale foreigner would have to be one of the greatest swordswomen they’d ever heard of to pose them any real threat.

  Silbeth grinned, slipped to her left so they weren’t all coming at her straight on, and attacked.

  She twisted in midstep, allowing the first man’s swing to pass her shoulder with a finger’s width to spare, and slipped inside his reach. Her arm wrapped around his near the elbow, locking the joint as she thrust hard with the point of her knife. It punctured only shallowly through the sleeve of chain, but the tip digging into flesh, combined with her pressure on the elbow, was enough to break his grip on his own weapon.

  Maintaining the lock on the man’s arm, she threw her weight to one side, wrenching the limb from its socket and sending them both to the floor. He struck hard, crying out in pain. She rolled smoothly back to her feet, his fallen broadsword now held high and ready.

  The other two were almost upon her and she retreated, cross-stepping and shifting direction at random, her sword moving in wide but controlled circles. Again and again they tried to flank her, only to find that she’d stepped just far enough aside that they couldn’t. Again and again they struck, and each time she either pivoted from their weapon’s arc or deflected the sword aside with her own.

  Without warning or any obvious change in her stance, she abruptly leaned into a parry, deflecting one soldier’s sword hard into the other’s path. It wasn’t much, would scarcely have scratched his hauberk even if he’d walked into it. Still, he saw a blade appear suddenly before him and raised his own to ward it off.

  Silbeth’s own sword followed a fraction of a second layer, punching through chain and burying itself deep in the soldier’s guts. He slid from the blade with a groan and a hideous sucking sound to collapse in a spreading tangle of blood and entrails.

  By now the first wounded soldier had regained his feet, drawing a
heavy dagger with his one working hand, but he made little difference. Unable to fully defend himself and crippled by pain, he quickly fell a second time, and he’d not be rising again. That left Silbeth facing only a single opponent, and though the Deliant-trained woman was skilled, the outcome was never in doubt. After a few brief passes and parries, Silbeth almost casually danced through her defenses and split her opponent’s skull.

  She ran before any more of the Ktho Delian forces could converge on her, rushing to catch up with Koldan and Ulia. They hadn’t gotten far down the escape passage: a squared tunnel with rough wooden bolsters, and walls dripping with condensation and slick mildew. They’d slain a couple of soldiers on their own, which was presumably why they’d not gotten much farther.

  Koldan saw her approaching and drew breath to speak—perhaps to threaten or curse or command, or possibly all three at once.

  Silbeth swung her stolen broadsword. The smuggler’s head hit the floor with a wet smack, bouncing and rolling until it fetched up against the wall, lips still struggling to form those unspoken words.

  Ulia stared, open-mouthed.

  “He meant to betray us,” Silbeth explained. “He still would have—to the Deliant, if he came up with a new way to do so, or just killing us if he decided we were no longer valuable.”

  “But…”

  “He and I discussed detailed plans for sneaking us out last night. I know where to find the next person in his smuggling chain. If we hurry we might reach him before he hears that everything’s gone ass-ward, or at least before he hears it was our fault. With any luck, he can get us outside Tohl Delian’s walls.”

  “All right,” Ulia agreed, steadying herself and stepping carefully over Koldan’s body. “And then? We still have half of Ktho Delios between us and the nearest border.”

  Silbeth tried, and failed, to smile. “Then we improvise. And do a lot of hoping.”

  Chapter Eight

  The weeks it took to cross the unwelcoming reaches of the Outermark were, while perhaps not truly “hellish,” certainly among the most arduous, most uncomfortable, and most exhausting of Nycolos’s life.