01 - The Compass Rose (36 page)

“I would.”

Kallista opened an eye. This massage was seductive—and she had no doubt that was why Stone wanted to learn it. “You just want to put your hands on me.”

“Of course I do. Haven’t you been listeni—” Stone broke his words in half, his head jerking up as his nostrils flared. He sniffed the air. “I smell gunpowder. How—”

She saw the spark hissing furiously along the courtyard wall at the same time as Stone, but he was the one who acted.

“Down!” He tackled her, knocking Obed down with her. “Get down!”

They hit the pavement as it moved up to meet them. A blast greater than any lightning Kallista had ever thrown exploded through the courtyard. She grabbed magic, frantic to protect them, willing it into a shield wall. The blast shook them, burst an eardrum—she couldn’t tell whose. She was too busy with her struggle to hold the magic. It writhed in her grasp as stones, shaken loose by the explosion, rained down upon them. But she wouldn’t let it go, couldn’t. Their lives were at stake.

“Kallista—” Stone stirred, wrapped his hand around her wrist.

The magic curdled, but held. Something weighed them down, pressing against them, making it hard to breathe. Blackness hovered at the edges of her vision, but she couldn’t let go. Magic kept them alive. Her magic.
Their
magic.

She pushed at it, shaped it, slapped it when it wouldn’t behave. She forced it to harden, willing it to hold despite their fading consciousness. Someone would come. Such a blast could not fail to be noticed. Pray the Goddess they came soon.

“Eighteen silver cups.” Torchay repeated the count Aisse gave him as he wrote it down. His hand was beginning to cramp. Next ilias they acquired ought to be a scholar. This kind of work was not for him, though Aisse seemed to be enjoying herself. He’d have to teach her Adaran script, then she could do this part and he could rummage around in the trunks and crates.

Obed’s goods weren’t all useless luxuries. Besides the swords—Torchay’s hand rose to touch the hilt of the twin sword rising over his shoulder—they had found a crate of carefully racked daggers and knives, one of light, shimmering mail and another containing what appeared to be three matching pairs of delicately constructed miniature cannon no longer than his forearm.

Torchay had gone out at dawn with Obed’s directions and a letter of introduction to look at the horses and mules their new ilias had brought. He had never seen such magnificent beasts save at a distance as Adara’s prinsipi went riding by. Kallista’s kin in Turysh wouldn’t know how to treat them. His own people now…he could send to his parents, have his sedili come down to collect them. The high pastures of Korbin would suit the animals far better than cramped stables in a city. Tomorrow, he would go back, choose mounts and pack animals for their journey, then—

The floor vibrated beneath his feet, rattling the gemstones piled on the table before him, and a boom like nearby thunder echoed through the window. A window open to a cloudless sky.

Torchay threw his quill down, overturning the chair as he dashed for the door. He could hear Aisse call to him, but her words didn’t matter. Only reaching Kallista did. His iliasti could not protect her against something that sounded like that.

Courtiers crowded the corridors, asking questions no one could answer. They grabbed at him, trying to stop him, asking.

“I don’t know. I don’t
know
, dammit.” He threw off their hands. “I must get to my naitan.”

Some of them followed him, curious, or perhaps because he had purpose and they needed one. A few of them stayed with him all the way into Winterhold.

Dust and smoke floated in the air of the corridors leading to the practice yard, an odor he’d last smelled on the battlefield at Ukiny. His heart shattered like Ukiny’s walls and he stumbled.

“Goddess,
no
.” Torchay found his feet again and ran on, terror speeding his steps.

The courtyard door was gone, rubble blocking the way. He picked up a stone and threw it behind him, almost striking Aisse with it. He grabbed the next and dragged it aside.

The courtiers and guardsmen still with him moved forward to help. Aisse stopped one of them. “Go back,” she said. “Tell others—someone important. Get more help. Healers—send healers.”

Yes, healers. Please, Goddess, let the healers be needed
. Torchay clawed at the stones, desperate to get through. He was glad Aisse could still think sensibly. Sense was an impossibility with this terror gnawing at his soul.

The gap in the rubble finally opened large enough for Torchay to wriggle through. He brought dust and gravel down as he did, but no more large stones. Shaking the dirt from his eyes, Torchay looked, terrified of what he might see.

White with dust, Joh Suteny worked frantically to move fallen stones from a mound near the center. Torchay saw a shoe, a long delicate foot protruding from beneath the stones, and slithered down the piled-up rubble. “Keep working,” he shouted to those behind him. “So help can get through when it arrives.”

Joh looked up but didn’t pause in his digging. “
Hurry
. I can’t lift them by myself.”

Massive stones from the collapsed walls lay atop Torchay’s iliasti. Were they dead? He couldn’t reach them to find out. He fought down his panic, trying to see which boulder should be moved first.

“This one.” Joh tapped a broad slab leaning at an angle. “It’s holding everything else down.”

Torchay seized the stone and pulled. Joh joined him a second later. He couldn’t get under it to push without stepping on his iliasti. Aisse appeared, somehow wriggling between Torchay and the heavy stone to set her back against it and push up with her legs. A few moments later, another man joined them, and then another, and finally the thing began to rise. Higher they pushed it, until it teetered on end. Everyone jumped back as it slammed down the other direction and snapped in two.

“This one now.” Joh directed the rescue workers to the next stone.

Torchay moved smaller rocks out of the way, reaching through the crevices until he touched…something. Not hard stone or warm flesh. It gave as he probed it, spongy, becoming less resistant by the second.

“Magic.”
The word emerged on his breath and he took another. “She’s shielded them with magic, but it’s fading. I doubt it will hold much longer.
Hurry
.” He seized a stone and lifted as he stood, other hands coming to help.

“They’re alive,” he said. They couldn’t be otherwise. This kind of magic died with its maker, and it was tied to all three of them. “Get them out of there. Now.”

He prayed with every breath that the magic had held against the crushing weight of the stones, that it would hold long enough. He prayed that the fading shield didn’t mean fading life. She complained about poor control, that the magic didn’t do what she willed it. He prayed that was the problem now.

With a mighty groan and eight pairs of hands, the last of the big stones was lifted free. Aisse was already clawing away the smaller rubble, carefully brushing dust and grit from their faces.

“Don’t move them,” Torchay ordered when the others would have done it. “Let me check them first. I’ve got the training. I’m her bodyguard.”

Then why weren’t you here?
He could hear them thinking the question, though none of them said it aloud.

Stone lay sprawled atop Kallista, Obed beneath both of them. No remnant of the magic shield lingered as Torchay quickly checked pulses and breathing. All normal, thank the One.

He inspected Stone for injuries first, wishing he were conscious so Torchay could ask him to move hands and feet. He found no obvious breaks, no bleeding wounds, and only one lump on the man’s hard skull.

“Stone. Warrior.” Torchay tapped his ilias’s cheek and he stirred, moaning. “Can you move? Are you awake?”

“Think so,” came the muttered reply. Torchay didn’t want to acknowledge his relief but it was there. Stone lifted himself far enough to roll off Kallista and lost consciousness again.

“It’s safe to move him.” Torchay directed the bearers to a cleared spot against the single wall still standing.

Kallista’s shallow breathing alarmed him, but at least she
was
breathing. He found no breaks, bruises or bumps. Between the two men, she’d have been shielded from the worst, but her pallor disturbed him, as did her failure to respond to his attempts to wake her. Finally he let the others move her beside Stone. It would take a healer with more skills than his to determine the problem.

Obed had a lump on the back of his head that nearly doubled its size, but Torchay could find nothing worse. A rise in the level of noise behind him made him turn and sag with relief at the sight of the green-robed naitani scrambling over the rubble leading back into the palace.

He stood, met them as they approached. “She shielded them with magic. The harm seems minor, given what it could have been, but I cannot see what might lie beneath the surface.”

“We’ll just make sure then, shall we?” The healer, an older woman with a gentle face, patted his arm once before she began to direct her staff in caring for the injured.

Torchay stepped back and found himself next to the guard lieutenant. Joh looked shattered. Sweat and blood from minor cuts washed dark paths through the dust caked on his skin.

“You got here quickly.” Torchay wiped dust and sweat into mud on his own forehead. “I’m grateful.”

Joh mumbled something, the words indistinct. Did he mean them to be heard? Torchay glanced at him, then looked again, seeing something more than worry in the other man’s face.

“What did you say?” Horror sank its insidious fingers into Torchay’s heart.

“I didn’t know.” Joh turned unseeing eyes on Torchay, his voice barely above a whisper. “I swear to the One, I didn’t know. It was a vapor, a healing vapor. I didn’t know it would—”

The instant understanding struck, Torchay was on him, his hands around the murderer’s throat. Joh closed his eyes, surrendering to Torchay’s rage without a struggle.

“Sergeant! Release him at once.”

He heard the order but it didn’t penetrate the violence gripping him until hands laid hold and dragged him away. The lieutenant collapsed to his knees, coughing and gasping as air returned.

“What is the meaning of this?” Serysta Reinine demanded an answer.

Torchay snapped to attention. “Ask him. Ask the lieutenant who did this thing.”

Serysta signaled and guardsmen pulled Joh to his feet. “Lieutenant?”

Still wheezing, Joh made an attempt to come to attention. “Yes, my Reinine.”

“Did you do this?”

This time he managed to stand straight, pulling away from the guards’ support. “Yes, my Reinine. I did.”

She frowned.
“Why?”

Joh didn’t answer. Torchay’s hands twitched with the urge to wrap them around the murderer’s throat again, but he refrained. The Reinine would only stop him again.

With another gesture from Serysta Reinine, the guardsmen dragged Joh off through the rapidly enlarging opening. The Reinine picked her way through the rubble to the healers working over the injured. Torchay trailed behind her bodyguards. He vaguely noticed Aisse moving up beside him, but when she slipped her hand into his, he held on tight.

The two men were awake and sitting up with support. Obed tried to stand, but fell back again when his legs wouldn’t hold him. He struggled against the healers, subsiding only when he met Torchay’s gaze. “Ilias—” Obed coughed to clear his throat and spoke again. “Kallista—is she—”

“Alive, yes.” Torchay wanted to invade the knot of healers working over her, learn what they knew. He had no doubt Obed wanted the same thing, given the obsession he seemed to have with her. With a grimace, Torchay hauled Obed to his feet and supported him to the corner where Stone and Kallista had been moved.

Stone sat against the wall, holding a towel-wrapped chunk of ice from the cellars against the lump on his head. Torchay helped Obed to the ground beside Stone, and Aisse brought him his own chunk of ice. Then she put her hand back in Torchay’s, and they waited.

“She is alive,” Torchay said after a time, as much to remind himself as to reassure the others. “She has no serious injuries.”

“Then why won’t she wake up?” Aisse’s fingers tightened on his.

Torchay shook his head. He’d done all he could. Didn’t Kallista know how much they needed her? Without her, their ilian had no center. She was the one who joined them, made them a whole, gave them a purpose. Their loyalty was to her, not each other. They waited now, four disparate individuals, with nothing to hold them together—except Kallista.

“Maybe it’s the magic.” Stone cleared his throat and spat, likely spitting the dust out of his mouth. “She shielded us with magic. You know how using it tires her.”

“I know.” Torchay shifted position, propped a hip against the wall.

“How did you know what would happen?” Obed leaned forward to look past Torchay and Aisse at Stone.

“Know?” Torchay’s hands tightened into fists again. Aisse protested, but he paid her no mind. Had there been more than one conspirator here? “Know what?”

“I smelled it burning. You can’t mistake the smell of gunpowder smoke.” Stone made a face. “There wasn’t time to do anything but drop. No cover in the middle of the courtyard.”

“You didn’t just drop,” Obed said. “You knocked us both to the ground, the Chosen and I.”

“That’s what ilian is.” Stone felt the knot on his head and put the ice back. “Looking out for each other. Or that’s what they keep telling me.”

Torchay’s hands relaxed. Kallista was their center, yes, but perhaps the rest of them weren’t so separate as he’d believed.

Kallista’s eyes snapped open and she struggled against restraining hands. “Obed, Stone—”

“They are well. Aching heads perhaps, but perfectly well.” The green-robed naitan urged Kallista back down. “How do you feel, my dear?”

“You’re sure? The shield held?” She needed to see them with her own eyes. Again she attempted to rise.

“It seems so, yes.” The healer smiled. “You all three came through without much more than a bump on the head. We were a bit concerned about you, however, my dear. You showed no sign of injury, but we could not persuade you to come back to us.”