Across the Long Sea (14 page)

“Hush up,” the woman hissed back. “Don't draw attention, you great oaf.”

The men on the wall laughed, but quietly, and with obvious sympathy.

“Right, then, Russel,” the gap-­toothed man sighed. “In you go, and we'll say a prayer for your soul. Don't slip and lose the saw. Keep your boots on, who knows what trash is lurking underfoot.

Russel nodded. She stripped away her leather armor and sword belt, tossing them onto the sand. Clad only in short-­shirt, leggings, and boots, she waded gingerly into brown water. The spring parted and rushed about her thighs. As though disturbed by the intrusion, a new stink rose from the water. Bearded Lory gasped, while Peter clasped hand over nose and mouth. Russel blanched and bit her lip, but she held the hack saw above the water and didn't falter or fall as she sloshed toward the grate.

“Not as deep as it looks,” she said between quick, panting breaths. “Current's not so bad, either. But—­pah! The feel.”

“Aye, and we'd toss you the rope,” one of the guardsmen called from above. “But ye'd never make it over the dead man spikes, Russ.”

“Hush up,” Russel hissed, vehement. Her inhales were growing short, and her cheeks had gone a visible green. She reached the metal lattice, tested the bars; then she selected the most decrepit-­looking of the bunch and began to saw, metal against metal. The muscles on her arms bunched and flexed, while the saw began to shriek and groan.

“Vocent's bone cutter,” Lory explained. He watched Russel's progress with interest. “Lord Malachi's got quite a collection. It was His Majesty's idea, wasn't it? Insisted there's no better tool for the job.”

“The grate's metal, not bone,” Peter pointed out. He unlaced his own leather padding, tucked it beneath a scrawny hedge. He kept his sword firmly in hand. “Better to pull it out at the mortar than saw through.”

“Go on in and try, then,” the gap-­toothed man replied without kindness. “I've seen lads with more muscle than you, haven't I? Metal's near rusted through. Bet you a silver Russel'll cut through before you crack the mortar.”

“Done,” Peter snapped, red-­faced. He splashed into the channel, disturbing more stink, and walked against the current, sword held in one hand above the water. Russel looked up in surprise, then shook her head and continued with the bone cutter, metal shrilling against metal.

“Be easier if you could spell us in,” Lory suggested again, pursing his lips at Avani.

Avani sighed. “I'd like to see Lord Malachi manage it.” She tied her journey bag on her shoulders, gripped her own sword overhead, steeled her gut, and stepped off the embankment and into the spring. The current, while not dangerous, caught at her ankles. Surprised, she held out her arms for balance, and nearly lost her weapon to the effluvia.

“God's balls!” she swore in fair imitation of Mal, bobbling sheath and sword belt. Lory chuckled, and Avani wished briefly she was indeed a powerful magus, to turn the irritating soldier into a frog.

“Scuff your feet on the riverbed,” Russel cautioned without looking around. “Martin's right, there's debris all over the bottom. Trip and you'll be swallowing shit, or worse.”

Avani scuffed toward Peter. She stubbed her toe on something that gave, then on something that didn't. She gasped as more fetid gas rose.

“Smells like death,” she said, breathing shallowly. She reached the grill and clung to the latticework with one hand. The current tugged against her boots and trousers, an incessant plucking. The water was warm through the fabric of her clothes, and she couldn't help but think of blood and piss and other unpleasant things.

“There's a ledge above the water on the other side,” Peter said. “Wide enough for a man to walk. Help me, will you? As I thought, the mortar's loose here, and here. Pull.”

Avani wrapped her sword belt several times around her neck, securing sword and sheath across the back of her shoulders, well above the water. She took the grate in both hands, wincing at the slick of rust and slime against her fingers.

“Russel,” Peter said. “Lend us your strength.”

The soldier shook her head, amused. “The five of us could tug from dusk till sunrise and it wouldn't matter. Gate's spelled, see?”

“Is it?” Avani paused in fighting the grill, curious. “How do you know?”

Russel had unruly dark hair and freckled cheeks, and when she grinned under her mask, her dark eyes narrowed to slits.

“It's Wilhaiim,” she said. “Built by magi, served by magi, beloved of the magi until the magi ran near extinct. Everything about this city is inscrolled. Also”—­she winked—­“there's a sigil.”

She pointed through the lattice with the nose of her saw. Avani had to press her brow against the grate before she saw it, and when she did she drew a breath in astonishment, coughed on stink.

“A ward,” the gap-­toothed soldier mused. He'd crept up behind without so much as a splash, and fairly knocked over Avani. “Of course there'd be a ward. You, witch, what use are you at all? Russ saw the enchantment and you not even knowing it was there?”

“It's not a ward,” Avani retorted, lattice pressing lines into her cheeks, as she tried to get a better look. “That's a sigil.”

“Healers' mark,” Peter agreed. “Katie had a book full of the healers' alphabet, when she was still studying the art. I think she memorized more than half of them before she gave it up. She used to paint her herb jars with the most common glyphs, for identification. I recognize that one, it's commonly used.”

“What does it mean?” Avani asked, because she recognized it, too, and not from the king's dead mistress's herb cupboards.

“I don't recall.” Peter rattled the grate. “Fennel, mayhap? Or green thyme? I don't expect it matters. It's only happenstance, it's got nothing to do with the gate.”

“
Ai,
doesn't it?” Avani lifted the true-­gold chain hung around her neck, let Andrew's ring dangle next to her
sidhe
key. The yellow stone in the vocent's ring flashed and flickered and then burned a steady amber. An answering chill brought goose pimples to Avani's forearms.

“The temple's been here before us,” Lory groaned. “We'll have to brave the deadman spikes, use the rope after all.”

Russel shook her head and drew the bone cutter more rapidly across the bars. Rust fell in clumps to the water, then rode the brackish flow away toward the cliffs. On the bank the gap-­toothed soldier was folding abandoned leather armor into his cloak, knotting the bundle to a rope tossed down from overhead.

“Nay,” Peter said. “I've not brought Avani back to accidently pike her like a fish on the battlements. Russel's imagination is running away with her.” He tugged at the grill again, muscles straining. “There's no reason to believe that mark has anything to do with the sewers.”

“Prick,” Russel returned without animosity. “You're so clever, Shean, why—­”

She broke off with a small cry, staggering as the saw broke through the lattice. She nearly lost the bone cutter on the other side of the grate; only Avani's quick grab kept the tool from slipping into the spring.

Russel's jaw dropped. “Oh.” She handed Peter the blade. “Those bars, there and there. Quick. And you”—­she jerked her chin at Lory—­“help me push. In, you oaf ! I said push, not pull.”

Peter ran the bone cutter over metal with new enthusiasm. Lory and Russel and Avani set hands on the freed bar and shoved. It bent, groaning in protest, and Russel whistled in triumph. Avani heard answering whistles from overhead. The gap-­toothed soldier watched from dry land, leather armor disappeared, hands folded behind his back.

“It's glowing,” Lory said, drawing Avani's attention back. He stared at the sigil on the wall. “Glowing's probably not good.”

“I'm never wrong,” sighed Russel. “Now what?”

“I've got another free,” Peter said, panting. “Push.”

Lory grasped the second bar, and cursed and shoved. When he was done, there was a hole in the grate large enough for a small child to pass through. Russel regarded the opening, then the gleaming glyph. She looked at Avani.

“It hasn't burnt us where we stand. May be an alarm of some sort. You're small. Get over and stop it before the tonsured brothers take notice.”

Avani opened her mouth on a protest, than changed her mind.

“Help me through,” she said. “Cut myself on the grate and I'll be dead of blood poisoning before the week is over.”

Lory picked Avani up by the back of her shirt and popped her through the hole, holding her steady until she found her balance again against the current. Beneath her feet the spring bed felt uneven, cracking and shifting; unseen refuse dammed against the gate. The stink was almost overpowering. Avani felt sweat bead on her brow. She feared she might be sick.

“Climb onto the ledge,” Peter said. “Get out of the water.”

Avani could feel the glyph now, a thorn-­sharp whisper of power in her head. Andrew's ring flashed, sending yellow starburst over the tunnel wall. The ledge ran two handspans above the surface of the spring. Avani had to place her palms flat on the shelf and hoist herself upright. She floundered and flopped, and almost fell, but she'd always been agile, and she wanted nothing more than to be out of the effluvia. She dug her fingertips into cracks in the ledge, and wriggled sideways until she lay on her side, precariously balanced, beached on dry dirt like an overzealous island seal.

“God's balls,” Lory said. “I take it back, witch. You may be of use after all, if only for your pigheadedness.”

“Got it!” Peter said, a shout. “Push!”

As Avani struggled to her feet, she heard metal grind, followed by a flurry of splashes and yelps. The sewer wall was man-­made, graystone brick piled upon graystone brick. She clung to the cracks between bricks for balance as she pulled herself upright. The apex of the half-­moon wall brushed the top of her head. The bricks were cool, and dry, and smelled of earth instead of waste. She pressed her nose against the wall, closed her eyes, and breathed.

“Witch?” Russel prompted from below her feet. “No rest yet. The sigil?”

“
Ai
.” Avani opened her eyes, turned her head, and regarded the softly glowing mark on the wall. “I'll try.”

 

Chapter Twelve

“W
ELL
,” R
ENAULT
SAID
as he looked down from above, torch held low against the bars. “I daresay I should be grateful you've arrived in one piece, Shean. The city's become a dangerous place.” His close-­clipped beard creased as he grimaced. “I think you'd best bathe before I require formal audience.”

“ ‘One piece' is subjective,” Peter replied, squinting against torchlight. “For God's sake let us up, if it pleases you, Majesty. I'm half dizzy with fumes, and Russel's nearly fainted twice.”

“Haven't,” Russel muttered, but she leaned hard on Avani's arm.

The soldier was breathing in shallow, static bursts, and the flickering torch showed the slick of sweat along her face, although it was cold beneath the king's cellars. Avani's own head throbbed. Her nostrils burned. They all four were covered crown to toe in muck; no one had managed to avoid falling into the awful spring. They'd lost themselves in the sewers twice, and only Lory's apparently innate sense of direction had saved them from running in circles.

“As you say.” Renault clicked his tongue. The torchlight receded, then returned, doubled. Two young men in page's uniforms bent over the grille. One held a torch in each fist, the other strained and gasped until the king himself was forced to lend his strength. Rust fell in a shower as the king and his pages dragged the grate free.

Fresh air rolled through the opening. Avani lifted her head and gratefully breathed it in. The king and his lads winced and reared away from the opening, coughing.

“Bring the light back!” Peter called, muffling a curse. “There's a ladder in the wall, but the rungs are coated and slick. Give us some light!”

One of the pages edged back into view. He plugged his nose between thumb and forefinger, and held his torch over the square opening.

Peter clamored up the short ladder, knocking more flakes of metal free. He slithered free, then lay on his stomach on the cellar floor, stretching a hand down into the sewer.

“Pass me your blade, Corporal. You'll not manage to climb and carry it at the same time.”

Russel looked as if she wanted to protest, but Lory made a cautionary sound and she subsided. She passed her weapon up, then attempted the ladder. Avani stood below, ready to catch the woman if she slipped. Peter reached down again, this time with both hands, and grabbed Russel's collar, half lifting, half supporting as the soldier squirmed her way to freedom.

“You next,” Lory said. He sounded darkly amused. “I'll keep the sewer rats from your behind, witch.”

Avani nodded her thanks. They hadn't encountered a single living creature in the sewer, not a rodent or insect. The Maiden Spring was too foul to support life, the fumes too hazardous. She'd managed to discharge the sigil without difficulty by using one of the basic banishing cants Mal had taught her via correspondence, but she suspected the trouble taken was unnecessary. The sigil felt old, weak, forgotten. And if it triggered an alarm somewhere above ground, Avani thought only the greatest of fools would brave the effluvia-­filled tunnels in investigation.

“Gah!” Renault spat, horrified, as Avani popped through the hole and onto his cellar floor. “By the Scald, Avani, you're covered in shit.”

“I'm aware.” Avani lay on the cold cellar floor next to Russel. She turned her head and regarded Wilhaiim's king without favor. “Your kind welcome is much appreciated.”

Renault blanched. Avani watched as his disgusted expression smoothed away to bland courtesy. She saw the effort it took the man to walk across the flagstones and offer his hand. She spared him her filthy fingers and rose on her own, then helped Russel to sitting. Lory and Peter dragged the grate back into place, sealing back some of the rising gases. The two pages watched with identical expressions of alarm and excitement.

Both the lads and the king went unmasked. Avani supposed those quarantined in the castle had little need of protection, safely locked away from the rest of the city as they were.

“Can you walk? I've had baths ordered, but we've a few stairs to climb yet.”

“We can, Majesty,” Peter said, even as he wrapped an arm around Russel. Lory took the woman's other side, and between them the two men managed to get her upright and moving once again. Avani retrieved Russel's forgotten sword as they staggered after one torch-­bearing page. Renault fell into step by Avani's side, and the last lad took up the rear, torch smoking.

“Servants' stairs,” he explained, and herded them up a seemingly endless slant of square-­hewn steps. They met no other person coming up or down, although Avani heard hushed voices behind closed doors, and once, the faint sound of a warbling lute. She knew when they passed the kitchens, because she could smell fried bread and roasted meat and parsnips through the invasive stink of sewer on her clothes and skin.

The upper floors were quiet. Avani wondered how much of the court had fled early while they could still escape the city. She knew the wealthiest of families had country estates, and often started the plague season away from Wilhaiim, relying on isolation to keep sickness at bay.

The rising stair seemed to run on forever, perhaps to the very tip of one of Wilhaiim's white towers. But when the lad at the front finally stopped and opened a bronze-­bound wooden door, she realized they weren't very high up at all, and that the cellars must have been far below the bailey, the Maiden Spring running very deep in the earth.

She recognized the faded tapestries hanging in the corridor beyond the staircase, and the faded rugs on the floor. Torches burned in brackets between tapestries. Small pots of incense hung on silvery chains from the brackets, smoldering. The pots were new since Avani's last visit, and the sickly-­sweet smoke made her sneeze.

“Garret will take you to your old room,” Renault said. The true-­gold circlet he wore on his brow sparkled against torchlight. Avani noticed now that he'd traded his usual Hennish leather for a simple pair of black trousers and a matching tunic.

“Water's waiting,” he said. “Wash and rest, Avani, and we'll speak in the morning.”

“Wait!” She reached toward him, then remembered the encrusted state of her hand, and settled for beckoning with one finger. “Renault, is there news?”

“Witch!” Lory said, affronted. “You truly canna go about speaking to His Majesty in such a—­”

“He's not my king,” Avani said, although in truth she paid his tithe without protest summer and winter. “
Ai
, and it's Renault courting
me
for position in his empty cold room, isn't it?” But she softened her shoulders and tried for respect when she met Renault's thoughtful stare. “Unless he is no longer? Your Majesty, is there news of Liam and Malachi?”

“None,” Renault replied. “For the temple allows no messenger to pass my gates, nor any missive shot over the battlements. The fear of the Red Worm runs rampant.”

Avani used temper to bolster despair. “The infection is
inside
the walls, is it not? What danger in a missive?”

“We'll speak in the morning,” Renault repeated. “Private words are more easily overheard when there are midnight shadows to stand eavesdrop.” He smiled, very slightly, a twist of his lips against his beard. “I may not be your sovereign, Avani, but you're in my city now, and you'll not present yourself for audience until you've oiled your skin with the tansy and slept until dawn. Do you understand?”

“Aye,” said Avani, without enthusiasm. “So be it.”

H
ER
OLD
CHAMBER
was just as she remembered, but for the empty corner beneath the window where her loom once stood. Two large wooden casks stood before the kindled hearth, the first filled to the brim with clear, hot water, and the second empty but for a small bucket. A large vial of clear oil sat next to the bucket. Avani freed the cork, curious, and dipped her finger.

“Tansy, my lady. For oiling against the Worm. Though castle carl thought my lady would prefer a soak, as well,” the little page said, making a dubious face. “I think you may need
both
, my lady, even though the tub's a bit of a risk, what with the sickness.”

Avani laughed in spite of herself. The lad reminded her of a young Liam, and she couldn't fault his reasoning.

“A bath never hurt anyone.” She shrugged free of her journey bag and sword. The bag and the leather sword belt were soaked through. She worried both were ruined. She knew her sodden boots were. “Please, could you ask them to bring up more hot water?”

The page nodded. “Aye, my lady. There are clean clothes on the bedstead, my lady. His Majesty said you'd have no need of a lady's maid.”

“His Majesty is quite correct.” Without mind for decorum, Avani began stripping away her soiled clothes. The page bowed and hurried off in search of clean water, taking his torch with him, leaving the chambers dark but for the glow of banked flames on the hearth.

Avani's bare skin was black and crusty as dried tar. In the end her clothes had provided little protection against continuous slips and dips into the Maiden. She kicked her tunic and trousers and boots toward the door, irritated by the ruination of good fabric. She'd loomed the light wool herself, soaped and dyed the fibers with dearly bought pigments.

She climbed into the empty casket, used the empty bucket to dipper hot water from its steaming neighbor. The casket floor was rough under the soles of her feet. Avani upended the bucket over her head, and gasped at the heat of clean water across her shoulders. Muck and shit ran away in sluggish layers, turning clear water brown. Avani poured and scrubbed, scraping her scalp with her fingernails, shaking clumps of waste from her hair.

She wondered if she'd have to cut her long hair again, not for the Maiden, but in mourning, for Mal, and for Liam. She pushed the traitorous thought away. Mal was still alive, she could feel him still, like a raw nerve at the back of her skull, a distant limb gone phantom.

And Mal would keep her lad safe.

A knock on the chamber door preceded more hot water. Six young women carried water-­heavy buckets without visible effort. A seventh lass bundled Avani's shoulders in a thick towel, warm still from the laundress's fire.

“If you'd step out, mum,” she suggested as her companions refilled the cask. “We'll see about the dirty.”

Avani nodded, and stepped free of her soiled bath, fingering the cloth about her shoulders with interest.

“What fiber is this?” she asked. “Not silk, and not wool. Nor even hemp.”

“The tinkers call it algodon,” the maid answered. “It's a rare thing, new even to the castle, from the Black Coast, mum.”

Intrigued, Avani took the towel with her into the newly filled casket, wrapping it neatly about her hair and shoulders. She sunk to her waist in the fresh water, resisting the urge to rise and help the herd of youngsters as together they slid the used tub across flagstones to the window.

“Ware!” The nearest maid threw open the casement windows, glanced casually below, and together the girls lifted the entire cask, pouring its contents into thin air. The water splashed across sill and floor before cascading into the night. Four of the maids slid the empty bath back toward the chamber door, while their companions wiped up spilt water with their skirts.

“
Ai
,” Avani scolded. “That water's poisonous with filth. You'll ruin your gowns.”

“Don't worry, mum.” One responded, chipper past a wide yawn. “The laundress cleans us up every night, with what water's left after the ladies are done primping and oiling. Begging your pardon, mum.”

Avani shook her head. “Go,” she said. “Tell the laundress to wash your hands and the cask with white spirits.”

The lasses all looked at Avani as if they thought her mad, but they nodded assurances before they rolled their burden into the corridor, spattering bits of brackish water as they retreated. Avani, flushed and sweating from the heat of the water, eyed the droplets with mistrust.

Minute, monstrous entities
, the voice that wasn't quite Mal reminded her.
The seeds of disease. Often found in contaminated soil, salt water, animal corpses.
He'd written her an entire treatise on the dangers of moving straight from sheep or garden to supper or tea without properly cleansing her hands, as if she'd been a babe lacking in sense. As if her island mother hadn't insisted her family cleanse their hands clean in a bowl of the white spirits before every meal.

A breeze through the open window made Avani shiver. The water was growing cold. She stood up, rubbed the towel over her flesh to dry it, and took her shivers out of the bath to the hearth. The towel came off her skin more clean than soiled, although the state of her fingers and hair made her shudder.

Tomorrow she'd visit the laundress, demand more hot water
and
the white spirits.

Naked, she spread the towel on the hearth to dry. She twisted her hair into a knot atop of her head, unwilling to deal with it without a comb, and secured it with silver pins. The clothes on the bed were simple but to her taste: a
salwar
, and trousers, and soft slippers, each dyed black—­Mal's color, the vocent's color. A pointed message from the throne. She put them on anyway.

Avani dressed, then pulled shut the rattling casements. The night was growing rough with wind, the weather making mockery of temple proclamations. The air tasted of dawn. They'd been longer in the sewer than Avani had supposed.

She yawned wide. The bed was unchanged, high off the ground, hung with curtains, strewn with cushions clad in her own fabrics and designs. The rug at the foot of the bed was also her own, loomed before she'd grown too busy with clients to indulge her own tastes.