A WOMAN USING the public fountain at the east end of the Old Market had taken pity on him and given Gun a clay pitcher with a cracked lip to take water away in. Though he’d known better than to try paying her-he hadn’t completely forgotten being Gundy the horse boy-he had still tried to give her something in return.
“Keep your scarf, youngster,” she’d said to him, though Gun was fairly certain the woman wasn’t that much older than he was. Poor nutrition during childbearing would account for more of her lost teeth than age-obviously she didn’t come from the part of society who normally had access to Healers. Not that anyone did now.
“You’ll need all you have an’ more, I should think,” the woman added, eyeing him up and down and appeared to make up her mind about him, for she went on in a quieter voice.
“Don’t take this amiss, boy, but have you any other clothes? Rumor on the street says they’re looking for a Scholar, something to do with the Fall of Tenebro House what happened last night. There’s a reward offered an’ all. I’m not saying you’re the one they’re looking for, but you stick out, boy, that’s a fact, and if you don’t want to be answering questions, you’ll try to look less like what you are.”
“But I-” Shock stopped Gun’s voice. Looking for him because of the Fall of the House? Water began to dribble from the pitcher as his hand relaxed.
“Watch it, boy, watch it. No need to waste water.” The woman propped up his elbow with her strong fingers. “I’m not asking any questions myself, mind, just passing along a bit of advice. If you’ve no other clothes, go down to old Semplon-Nast, south corner, the rag and bone man. Tell him Nessa sent you, and he’ll give you good trade for what you’re wearing.”
“And why won’t he turn me in?” Gun said, abandoning all pretense that he was not the Scholar being looked for.
“Three reasons. One, I sent you; two, he’s got no love for the Noble Houses and won’t care if one’s Fallen; an’ three, he’s blind. He can’t see a Scholar, but he can feel the quality of the cloth you’re wearing.”
Gun unwound his scarf and held it out to her. “Not for the water,” he said. “For the warning, and the advice.” This time she nodded once and took it.
Still, he waited until she had gone on her way before taking a firm grip on the clay jug of water and starting back to where he’d left Mar. He was careful to take a different route from the one he’d come by.
Bracing herself on the arch of the opening, Dhulyn leaned into the old kitchen fireplace, large enough, she was sure, to roast a mature inglera whole. She was just starting to feel the burn in muscles overtaxed by hauling wine casks out of the way, and firmly ignoring the familiar feel of cramping in her lower back. Even in the lantern light, you could still see the marks fire had made on the brick walls, particularly at the back, where Alkoryn now tapped upon the stones. Parno stood by him, a war hammer ready in his hand, the closest thing to a mallet they’d been able to find in the Tarkin’s armory, and just as extravagantly decorated as every other weapon there.
This was the middle one of our three fireplaces in the old summer kitchen, and though Alkoryn Pantherclaw had known perfectly well which of the three was wanted, he’d insisted that all of them be emptied of their contents.
“We hope to mislead those who’ll come after,” Alkoryn had whispered to the Tarkin. “If they do not know which of these holds the passage, they will have to break into all three. They may even think we escaped elsewhere.”
One of the guards had dropped a cask during the moving, shattering it on the worn stone floor, and now the heady smell of aged liquor mixed with the dry dust smell of the old kitchen itself made Dhulyn’s stomach lurch. She swallowed, looking for something to distract her. The Tarkin, Tek-aKet, was only a few paces away, half-sitting on an upright cask, his right arm around the Tarkina, his left hand resting on his daughter’s shoulder.
“Look, Zella,” he was saying, pointing with his chin to several barrels that had been rolled to one side. “That sweet wine was laid down by my father when I was born.” He looked up at her again. “We should have been able to drink it next year.”
“We still shall,” she said, in a voice so firm that even her little daughter nodded.
Dhulyn straightened as Alkoryn stepped back from the fireplace wall and motioned Parno forward. The Senior Brother indicated five particular stones, waited for Parno to nod, and then touched them again in a different order. Parno nodded again, rubbed his upper lip with the first two fingers of his right hand, and touched the stones himself.
“Tap there, my Brother, but gently. Say that you wanted to knock out a sentry, rather than kill him.”
Parno nodded, and hefted the war hammer.
“Want me to do it?” Dhulyn said.
Parno just showed his teeth as he swung the weapon forward and lightly but firmly tapped the stones in the order he’d been shown.
With a grinding Dhulyn felt in her bones, a section of wall moved backward. Two of the guardsmen helped Parno push it aside to reveal a long tunnel. Alkoryn caught Dhulyn’s eye and nodded.
“Lord Tarkin,” she called over her shoulder. “We’re ready. Alkoryn Pantherclaw will go first, seeing he knows the way.” Dhulyn tapped the shoulder of a tall guard with thick black hair. “Kole, isn’t it? Go with him. Then you three,” she said, nodding at the remaining guards. “Lord Tarkin, you and your family next, and Parno Lionsmane and I will come last.”
The Tarkin was nodding, but his mouth was twisted as if he’d eaten something unpleasant. “I don’t want to seem ungrateful,” he said. “But I cannot honestly say I’m pleased that the Mercenary Brotherhood knows of secret passageways in my Dome.”
Dhulyn shrugged. “It was someone else’s Dome before you, Lord, and the Brotherhood is older even than the Dome, older than the reign of Tarkins. Older than Imrion, if it comes to that. There’s many things we know.”
Hernyn wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and resisted the desire to spit. Then he thought about where he was, and how long he was likely to be there, and spit freely on the inlaid tesserae of the Onyx Walk. He heard an unmistakable clatter in the distance, and looked to Din-eDin, who nodded his acknowledgment that he, too, had heard the approaching noise.
“Won’t be long now,” the older man said.
It was Hernyn’s turn to nod. When they’d first taken up their station an arm’s length down from where the narrow service corridor met the Onyx Walk, they’d heard the sounds of voices and what seemed like moving furniture echoing up the long hallway from the old kitchen, but now, while they could still hear voices, the louder noises had stopped.
A shadow moved into their field of vision. Hernyn glanced at the extra weapons he’d lined up behind him on the floor of the passage and picked up a handheld crossbow he’d found among the Tarkin’s things. A toy, really, and he’d blushed when he saw that Dhulyn Wolfshead had seen him pick it up. But she hadn’t said anything, she hadn’t even smiled. It was a beautiful little piece, finely constructed out of ash wood and inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and probably intended for ceremonial use. And deadly just the same, he thought. Not very good for distances, of course, but he was willing to let the man approaching get close enough.
“Hold.” Din-eDin put up his hand; he’d squatted down to take a quick look about waist height around the corner of the wall, and was now straightening. “He’s one of mine.”
The Guard Captain was stepping forward to meet his man when Hernyn put out his arm, blocking his advance.
“Don’t step into the Walk,” he said. “Not for any reason. That’s how we get flanked. Make them come to us.” A part of Hernyn felt like a School boy reciting his lesson, as if Din-eDin had been only testing him; a part was embarrassed to have to correct an older, more experienced man; a part-and this by far the largest, was rolling his eyes at the carelessness of those who were not Mercenary Brothers.
He leaned against the cold stone of the left-hand wall and angled his head until he could see the approaching man clearly. He was in the uniform of the Tarkin’s Personal Guard, right enough. But why wasn’t he running? The only reason for the men at the other points to come down here was to fall back to this position when their own was overwhelmed-and if they were quick enough, to get out through the tunnels Alkoryn had said were there. And this man didn’t move like someone who’d been overwhelmed. He moved like someone taking a walk-or no, amended Hernyn as the man stumbled and put out a hand to the plastered wall of the Onyx Walk. He walked like a man who was drunk and determined not to show it.
Drunk… or wounded?
“Are you hurt, man?” Hernyn called out.
The approaching guard shook his head, but kept advancing at that strange, overly-careful pace. As if he pushed against a stiff wind, though no air stirred in the halls.
“Ask him where the others are,” Din-eDin said. Hernyn flicked his eyes to the older man. There was sense in that, at least.
“Do your comrades still stand?”
“Let me pass,” the guard said.
Hernyn resisted the urge to rub the back of his neck, where it felt like all the tiny hairs were standing up. There was no urgency in the man’s tone, no fear, no excitement. Nothing, in fact. And surely his shadow should be angled the other way?
“That’s Ennick,” Din-eDin said.
“No,” Hernyn said. “I don’t think it is.”
The guard Ennick was now close enough that they could see his face clearly in the light from the wall sconce near the intersection in which they stood. Hernyn could see the man had the most beautiful jade-green eyes.
“Let me pass,” he said again. He had been looking beyond them, down to the far end of the Onyx Walk, but now he brought his gaze to bear upon them. “Let me pass.”
“He’s in shock.” Din-eDin pushed Hernyn’s restraining arm out of the way and stepped into the Onyx Walk.
Ennick brought up his sword and slashed at his captain, catching him on the arm as Din-eDin lifted it to block the blow to his head.
Hernyn raised the crossbow and let the bolt fly, feeling a hot burst of satisfaction when the bolt buried itself in the guard’s neck. The man put his hand up to the bolt and stood swaying for a moment before he dropped to his knees.
“Captain?” he said.
Hernyn broke his own rule and stepped into the corridor to help Din-eDin pull the other guard back into the relative safety of the narrow kitchen passage. They shifted him until he was sitting with his back to the wall. The bolt was plugging the hole in his neck, but turning his head to look at them started the blood flowing in earnest.
But he was looking at them now, and the strange, staring green of his eyes was gone. His eyes were very dark brown.
“Ennick?” Din-eDin said.
“Captain,” he said again. “Don’t-” He coughed, and a bubble of blood broke on his lips. “Don’t.”
“No fear, my boy,” the captain said. “We won’t.”
Ennick nodded, and his eyes closed.
“What was that?” Din-eDin frowned down at the body of his guard.
“Whatever it was,” Hernyn said, “it means we can’t trust anyone else who comes down this corridor.”
Din-eDin shut his eyes. “Makes things easier for us.”
“It does at that.” Hernyn glanced up at the older man. His jaw was set, and his eyes sharp, but the wound on his arm was bleeding. Hernyn quickly tore two strips of cloth from the dead man’s tunic. One he folded, and used the other to tie it securely in place over the gash on Din-eDin’s arm.
“Can you handle a sword left-handed?”
“As it happens.”
“Better to be lucky than good, isn’t that what they say?” Hernyn bent to strip Ennick’s body of weapons before rolling it back out into the wider corridor. “Let him be useful in tripping up the rest of his companions.” Hernyn glanced behind him. Amplified by the stone corridor, the voices of those in the kitchen echoed in the air around him. He was sure he’d heard Dhulyn Wolfshead’s ringing tone.
“This changes things,” Din-eDin said. “We can’t let anyone past us now.”
“That’s not all,” Hernyn said. “We’ve more to worry about as well.”
The man glanced from the corner of his eye. “Explain.”
Hernyn nodded at Ennick’s body. “It looks like there’s worse than death might come to us. Did you see how his eyes were glowing green? That wasn’t just Ennick, not at first anyway.”
The other man tapped the dagger he had at his waist. “We’ll have to be sure, then, won’t we?” His eyes narrowed. “Can we warn the others?”
But then they finally heard the sounds they’d been waiting for, rushing feet, jingling harness. Men who weren’t taking the trouble to be quiet. Din-eDin stepped in front of Hernyn. Hernyn was about to say something when he realized the man was right for once. Older, injured, and not a Mercenary. Three reasons to put him in front.
“Here they come,” Hernyn called back over his shoulder, hoping the amplification of sound in the service corridor worked both ways. Before picking up his second sword, he checked that he had a dagger in each boot, and that the one strapped to his left arm wouldn’t stick in the sheath. He stood squarely in the passage with the Guard Captain in front of him, facing the opening to the Onyx Walk, and lightly tapped the walls with his swords, fixing the space well in his mind.
He would rather have died with his Brothers, but if he could die for them, well, that would be enough.
The Tarkin and his family had followed the last three guards into the tunnel. Dhulyn hesitated at the opening. She was sure she could hear the sounds of conflict coming from the far end of the hallway.
“Should we wait?” Parno asked.
One of the many cords that bound her hair must have broken, for a fine blood-red braid fell over Dhulyn’s forehead with the minute shaking of her head. She pushed it back.
“We told Din-eDin we would close the passage,” she said.
Someone was yelling. Her hip was pressing against something hard. She must have fallen asleep waiting for Dhulyn to come back with wood for the fire. She could smell damp wool and smoke. Mar blinked, took a deep breath, and shifted. That had been the mountains, and long behind her. This was Gotterang, and Gundaron, and the ruins of the Old Market.
Maybe if she ignored it, the yelling would stop and she could go back to sleep. They’d spent more than half of the night hiding in a crawl space Gundaron had found, under a surprisingly intact floor of thick oak planks, but they hadn’t had much sleep. Trying to get comfortable on ground made uneven by loose foundation rocks and ancient garbage, with nerves stretched to the snapping point by the drizzly rain and the knowledge that they were being accused of having a hand in the Fall of Tenebro House, would have been difficult enough. As it was, the night had been marred by the noises of screams and running. A fire had broken out in the Old Market itself, and it had been close to dawn by the time she and Gundaron had been able to fall into sleep.
“Mar!” A hand shook her shoulder.
She cracked open one eye. From the look of the light that slanted down through the breaks in the old floorboards above them, the sun was well up.
“Did you hear what he said?” Gundaron shook her shoulder again. “Mar, did you hear?”
Without waiting for her answer, Gun crawled out of their hidey-hole. Still blinking sleep from her eyes, Mar followed, afraid to lose sight of him. Lionsmane and Wolfshead had been teaching her to navigate out on the trail, but in Gotterang she felt it would be all too easy to get completely lost.
Mar had a moment of panic when she didn’t see Gun right away, but then she remembered he no longer wore his Scholar’s tunic and, looking for the gray-brown of homespun rather than the bright blue of the Libraries, she spotted him. Gun stood on the fringes of a group gathered around a thickset man in breeches, boots, and a full-sleeved shirt who must have been standing on a broken bit of wall, as he was head and shoulders above the crowd. She blinked at him, holding up her hand to shield her eyes. Ran the taproom down by the fountain, she thought. That’s where she knew him from. She’d bought food from there last night.
“Imrion’s Fallen, I’m telling you that’s certain, they’re crying it in the Great Square. Lok-iKol Tenebro is Tarkin by acclamation.”
The taproom keeper had plenty more to say, but Mar had stopped listening. She tugged Gun by the sleeve.
“Gundaron,” she whispered, tugging again until he turned to look at her.
For a moment the sight of her face stopped Gundaron’s breath. A wisp of hair had fallen out of her head scarf and swayed over her right cheek. In the vivid depths of her blue eyes, her pupils shrank to pinpoints as she blinked in the morning sun.
“Is this what I helped him do,” she said. “Bringing him Wolfshead and Lionsmane? He wanted to be Tarkin? That’s what this is all about?”
His thoughts spinning, Gun followed Mar back into their hiding place. She was right, wasn’t she? Lok-iKol was Tarkin. The things that he had done, the people he had harmed, all that research, not for scholarship-Gun’s stomach turned at the thought of his own naïveté-but to put Lok-iKol on the Carnelian Throne.
Mar was still waiting for an answer. He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. “There must be more to it than that.” He blinked, eyes narrowing as he followed the pattern of his thoughts to its logical conclusion. “The Carnelian Throne’s what Lok-iKol wanted-but not what the Jaldeans want.”
“But if the New Believers want the Tarkin’s full backing…”
Gun realized he was shaking his head. “But what they’re saying about the Marked and the Sleeping God-that the god should stay asleep and the Marked are trying to wake him-none of that is true.”
“I never thought it was, but-”
“No, no. I mean they don’t believe it themselves, at least, not the ones in charge, not Beslyn-Tor. There’s something else going on.” Gun hoped Mar wouldn’t ask how he knew-in fact, he was afraid to examine the knowledge too closely, afraid that it might be yet another thing the Green Shadow had helped him forget.
“If the Jaldeans have some other trouble in mind,” Mar was saying, “we have to tell someone.”
Gun nodded. “Who?”
“Come on,” Mar said, swinging her pack up on to her shoulder.
“Where?” Gun drew himself straight and formed his hands into fists when they wouldn’t stop trembling.
“Mercenary House.”
Parno rolled his shoulders, trying to work out the cramp that threatened to spread down into his lower back. The tallest in their group, most of the tunnels and passageways-some of them apparently natural, made by the passage aeons before of water long gone, some bearing the unmistakable signs of picks, chisels, and rock hammers-were just low enough to make him walk with his head ducked and his shoulders raised. Just as he thought he’d have to ask everyone to wait while he sat down and straightened his back, Parno saw what could only be the flicker of moving light reflected off the rocks as the tunnel they followed bent to the right.
“Something up ahead,” he said to Dhulyn’s back. She was just enough shorter, he’d noticed with disgust, to walk upright through most of the passages.
“Lamplight, not torches,” she whispered back to him. “Alkoryn’s not stopping.”
Which meant the old man expected to find lights ahead of him, which meant there was nothing for the two of them to worry about. Except whether he’d ever be able to stand upright again, Parno thought.
Exhausted as they all were from close to two hours of walking from one sealed entrance to another, everyone managed a short burst of speed once it became clear there was something besides more tunnel ahead of them. When Parno finally followed them all into the lamplit room, however, he saw that they were still underground, although in a chamber large enough-with a ceiling high enough, he found, straightening gratefully-to accommodate all of them easily.
The Tarkin led his wife and children immediately to the nearest beds, making sure they were seated comfortably before leaving them in the hands of the nurse Denobea and joining Dhulyn, who had stepped around them and the guards to stand beside Alkoryn. Head lowered and tilted to one side, she listened to his whispered orders, nodding, though at one point her face went completely blank.
Something she doesn’t like there, Parno thought, maintaining his position as rear guard just inside the entrance to the chamber. With his eyes still on his Partner, he arched his back and raised his hands over his head, willing his abused muscles to stretch out.
“Lord Tarkin,” Dhulyn said, her voice pitched to carry to everyone in the chamber. “My Brother Alkoryn Pantherclaw suggests that you rest here in comfort while he and I continue to the surface. There is fuel, food, and drink. We will return or send for you as soon as we are able.”
“Why must we wait?” The Tarkin, Parno was impressed to see, was not arguing, but simply asking the question.
“It’s very likely Lok-iKol will want Mercenary House searched,” Dhulyn said. “This chamber can be closed off and hidden, so you’ll be perfectly safe here. If it comes to the worst,” Dhulyn added, “my presence in the House is natural. Yours, Lord Tarkin, could not be explained. My Brother Parno Lionsmane will remain here with you.”
Parno met Dhulyn’s eyes over the heads of the Tarkina and her children. That’s what made her face change, he thought. Is it the thought of separation she doesn’t like, or the idea of leaving me here with my cousin, the Tarkin?
She smiled at him, lifting her shoulder in the slightest of shrugs.
In Battle. Only her lips formed the words.
In Death, he answered.
He was close now. Only a matter of hours until the decrees went out. He wiped sweat from the forehead of the body he wore and shuddered. And then only a matter of days until he had all of them, even the Seer, and the danger would be over, and he could throw off this disgusting shape, and undo, and unmake. Turn the whole shape-filled place into NOT. Perhaps find the doorway once again.
“No one in without a badge, my little quails.” A dark-haired Mercenary leaned out of the sentry’s window next to the gate at Mercenary House, tapped her own tattooed badge, her green eyes flashing.
“But we’ve important information,” Mar said, craning her neck to see the woman.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt he’s got information enough-but I’m not inclined to let him in, no matter how important it might be.”
“Then let Mar in,” Gun said, placing a hand on the gate in his eagerness. He swallowed, realizing that he’d just called Mar by her personal name. Out loud. “The Lady Mar-eMar I mean. You’ve nothing against her, let her in.” He looked at Mar, looked back up to the sentry window. “You’re Thionan Hawkmoon, aren’t you?” he said. “That’s how you know me.” He waved his hand impatiently. “It doesn’t matter about me, but you can let Mar-eMar in, she needs to speak to Dhulyn Wolfshead, or-”
“Ah, so you’re the little trickster from Navra, are you? I hadn’t seen you before now.”
Any hope Gun might have had that they’d do as he asked died at the tone in the Mercenary woman’s voice.
“Listen, children, we’ve our orders, and if I was likely to break them-which I’m not-it certainly wouldn’t be for you two. And besides-”
Thionan Hawkmoon froze in mid-syllable, her attention caught by something within the walls.
“And besides,” she took up where she’d left off. “There’s an order out for both of you. Seems you ran away after the Fallen House Kor-iRok was found dead.” She looked down at them with a wink. “Don’t make me send for the City Guards, now.”