Across the Long Sea (17 page)

“Cataclysm,” Baldebert agreed. “Or the mountain, angered by the excesses of our ancestors. We take care 'round Old Man Mountain, even now. Blood wastefully shed in sight of his shadow is forbidden.”

“If that's true, why the guard?”

“To the ­people of Roue,
B
ūṛ
h
ē
Adam
Ä«
is much like a grumbling grandfather, more asleep than awake, best left undisturbed. To our enemy,” Baldebert spread his hands. “He is only a very large mountain, an impediment to war. Our enemy would like nothing more than to see the jungles run red with the blood of the Roue.”

“What're they called?” Liam asked, expression intent, and too close to eager for Mal's liking. “Who are they, the enemy you want us to kill?”

“Liam,” Mal cautioned.

“But it's obvious, innit, my lord?” the lad said. “The admiral, he knows what you are. He bought you a-­purpose, and he's afraid of your spells, my lord, and made mention of your poisons, even as he relies on your word of honor. He's not wanting sweet sorceries to ease plague or cajole crops into growing—­he's got plenty of crop, what I can see, and an army of healthy footmen. No, my lord. This one, he's wanting your darker sorceries, the sort you sit up nights regretting. He's wanting an assassin.”

“The lad's quick,” Baldebert said. He folded his expressive hands in his lap, clenching and unclenching. “And he's not wrong.”

“One man,” Tajit the driver said, surprising them all. He didn't turn around, and had to pitch his voice over the synchronized step of their escort. “One man, you need to kill. Only the one, then you can go free.”

Baldebert's pretty mouth flattened. He nodded once.

“Khorit Dard,” he said. “Lord of the Poppies, Servant of the Desert.”

The pull from the base of
B
ūṛ
h
ē
Adam
Ä«
to the crown took most of the rest of the day. The humidity slowly dissipated with the wheeling of the sun in the sky, moisture leaving the air in low hedges of drip and fog, until the afternoon was thin and dry, and the vegetation became the more familiar pine and scrub and birch Mal recognized from home. The gold-­tipped memory keepers were also less frequent, or at least less visible.

The sun was dropping back toward the horizon when they stopped on a plateau to switch out oxen and driver. The replacement animals were a matched set, black and hairy and fresh. They snorted at the waving green pennant on the wagon, and at sparkle of gold decoration in the guard, and tossed their shaggy heads, eager to continue up the mountain. The driver was a tall woman with long dark hair braided into a coil down her back. She smiled easily, and said not a word as she sank onto Tajit's cushion and clucked at the oxen.

Some instinct made Mal track Tajit, as the driver, leading his weary oxen by a single rein, disappeared into the small shed apparently used to stable man and animal. Tajit reappeared a heartbeat later, shed of his hat and coat, clad in green and gold. He stepped into line behind the wagon, just another soldier guarding Baldebert's prisoner on the journey skyward.

Once they were moving again, Liam sighed.

“My bits've gone all numb, my lord,” he complained. He scowled across the wagon at Baldebert, who appeared to be dozing beneath his hood. “Don't see how he can sleep with all this jouncing about. What's up at the top, do you suppose, my lord? This Lord of the Poppets?”

“Poppies,” Mal replied. “A red flower, medicinal herb. The seeds are very hard to come by, in Wilhaiim. The oil doesn't always survive the journey overseas.”

“Lord of flowers.” Liam squinted thoughtfully at scrub and pine. The bruise on his check had deepened from purple to black. “Doesn't sound too frightening, my lord. Let's kill him quick and go home. His Majesty will have noticed your abduction by now. Like as not he's sent his best ships after.”

The last was said loudly, and in Baldebert's direction. The blond man didn't stir.

“Avani's the more dangerous threat,” Mal said, conjuring a reassuring smile. “Once she learns her cub's been stolen, she'll show her claws, and ware any get in her way.” He shifted, working the muscles in his thighs and calves, wishing he could do the same with his shoulders and arms. “Have you spotted Jacob?”

“Not since shipboard.” Liam turned his contemplation to blue sky. “He's right canny, my lord. Likely he's watching from a safe distance.”

Mal recalled the roar of wind funnels across the water and shook his head. “Just so long as he stays out of mischief.”

Old Man Mountain's very precipice was a gilded rainbow in the colors of the setting sun—­three multilevel towers shining gold, sprouting from the rock as if grown naturally. Mal, who had grown up by the sea, fostered in the wind-­carved moors, and traveled into carnelian desert lands, had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

Liam gaped and gasped and clutched at Mal's thigh. Mal thought the lad looked like he was close to weeping.

“An entire palace made of gold,” Liam said. “Did you guess such a thing existed in all the world?”

“Nay,” Mal admitted, although in truth he found the extravagance disconcerting. In Wilhaiim a man could go his entire life without glimpsing so much as a single flake of true gold; the precious metal was almost as rare in Low Port. “Liam, look there.” He pointed with his chin, because his hands were useless lumps of inert flesh hanging from tingling wrists. “Elephant.”

Not a live specimen, but a statue carved from a single chunk of glossy black stone, tall as a man and long as three. The statue stood guard just off the path, to one side of a wide iron-­bound door set directly into the mountain's side. The road ended there, at the door, a day's climb to nowhere. The mountain face ran straight and sheer above, until rock twisted and joined with golden palace walls. Mal saw no sign of the expected arrow loops or murder holes, a castle's most basic defense.

The guard halted outside the door. The oxen sighed and stamped their hooves. Somewhere up in the gleaming spires a trumpet sounded, and a moment later the door groaned open, sliding smoothly into the side of the mountain.

“Is it magic, my lord?” Liam asked.

“Mechanics,” Mal said, noting the track set in the threshold. The door was thick, reinforced with bands of metal. It was scarred with the marks of sword and axe and cleaver, and pocked with burns, stained black in several places.

The army rolled into the mountain, drawing the wagon behind. Liam reached out to brush a hand across the stone elephant's trunk as they rattled past, awed.

Mal expected a tunnel. Instead they passed under an arched stone ceiling and into an open courtyard, a crater made palace courtyard, bound on all sides by natural rock wall. The palace itself rose from the crater on a single golden trunk, then split and branched, growing into the mountain before reaching for the purpling sky.

Liam's mouth worked soundlessly. Baldebert laughed softly, thumped the lad's shoulder, then sprang from the wagon even as it rolled into the courtyard. The army broke into two practiced columns, before and behind the wagon, then stood at rest. In the sudden quiet Mal could hear the groan of the gate sliding back into place. The invisible trumpet sounded again, two sharp blasts, making Liam jump. Then there was no sound but the strike of the oxen's hooves on stone, and the distant snap of pennants dancing far overhead.

Baldebert walked in front of the oxen. The courtyard was empty but for the motionless rank of soldiers at rest, but Mal saw the telltale signs of a working bailey: an anvil abandoned, a clutch of red-­feathered hens sheltering behind a small pyramid of empty wine caskets, a lone long-­haired sheep lingering over scraps of broken melon. Mal thought he heard a child's unhappy cry, quickly silenced.

Baldebert lifted a hand, and the oxen drew to a final halt. The driver dropped her reins and slid to the ground, tossed a merry smile in Liam's direction.

“Come,” she said. She spoke the royal lingua without accent. “Help your master.”

Despite shackles and bare feet, Mal made it out of the wagon with dignity intact. Liam resettled the
barasati
again around his shoulders. Sandalwood and amber wafted from the disturbed folds. Mal found the deep, woodsy scent soothing.

“Come,” the driver repeated. “This way.”

Baldebert waited at the foot of the tower, on the lowest of seventeen wide steps, black and smooth as the stone elephant. The stone was cool against the bottoms of Mal's feet, and slippery. The stone reflected the last rays of the sun beautifully, but Mal thought the steps were much the same as the golden towers: extravagant and impractical.

Baldebert smiled beneath his hood. The gleam of amusement in his desert eyes suggested he guessed Mal's disapproval.

“Welcome to the Broken Palace.”

Green-­clad attendants carrying long torches busied themselves atop the wide stairs, setting fire to kindling stacked in large ceramic braziers. The burst of sudden flame illuminated the stairs and made the golden tower gleam. Liam craned his head this way and that, goggling. Mal had eyes only for the tower's golden door, and the large yellow jewel set directly center, a stylized sun spreading set-­ruby rays.

The sun lit and shone as bright as the braziers, the yellow gem burning near white as Mal approached.

In the growing twilight, an answering gleam pooled on the black stone steps, yellow fire reflected from the brilliant stone set in Mal's ring.

 

Chapter Fifteen

W
ILHAIIM
WAS
A
city choking on a fog of incense.

The smoke clung to the streets, a low cloud of sweet-­scented haze that did little to conceal the stink of illness. Avani's nose, always sensitive, caught the stink of piss, and rotting garbage, and blood.

“Goddess,” she breathed, setting a hand to her mask. “It's near as bad as the Maiden.”

Russel shook her head. She held a torch in one hand, but the flame did little to disperse the gloom. Somewhere overhead the sun was shining; Avani had seen it through the castle windows. She could feel spring warmth through the sift of falling ash, but the city was wrapped in false twilight.

“Nothing's as bad as the Maiden.” Russel plucked at Avani's sleeve, guiding her over dirty cobblestone. “I agree this is as nasty a plague season as I've ever seen. The sweepers haven't been through for weeks. It's a lad or lass's job, cleaning the streets, binning the leavings, and we've none left to take it on. Which isn't to say grown men aren't also gone to ground,” she added as they passed the shuttered armory, forges quiet. “City's good as deserted, only no one's been allowed out, you see?”

“But, the smoke?” Avani flapped a hand, trying to disperse ash. “What foul amusement is
this
?”

“Hush,” Russel cautioned. “Not so loud. It's a healing smoke, or so we're told.”

“Not by Mal,” Avani argued. “Malachi Doyle may be a fool, but he's no simpleton. Smoke and ash such as this damages even
healthy
lungs.”

Russel choked, and Avani didn't think it was the smoke that made the soldier cough.

“Nay,” she agreed, dark eyes streaming in the light of her torch. “My lord Vocent was well gone before it got so bad. Before he left I believe my lord counseled the usual spring precautions.”

“Which are?” Avani asked. They passed a row of ramshackle row houses, built of graystone and mud, three stories tall, windows on every level open wide to the smoke. Lanterns burned, shifting shadows passed to and fro, but sound was eerily muffled, and Avani thought even a shout might go unheard.

“Ah.” Russel rolled her shoulders. “The masks, of course. Tansy oil. Hand washing, hot water, lye diluted. Fresh fruit and veg, when it's available. Water, boiled. And only smoked meat, not the fresh.”

Avani grunted approval, although she preferred white spirits to lye.

“It's the Masterhealer wants the possets burnt,” Russel said, low. “The mugwort, to kill the Worm, and the tansy, for cleansing.”

Without Russel's guiding hand Avani would have soon been well lost. She knew Wilhaiim. She'd spent enough time learning the twisting streets, the narrow back alleys, the groomed garden spaces. But the smoke and ash obscured familiar landmarks. The castle turrets were now invisible, the battlement and rooflines obscured. Without the anchor of the sun or stars overhead, Avani was quickly disoriented.

When the haze coalesced into two solid bodies blocking the street, Avani automatically reached for her dirk, remembered she'd left it behind for lack of sheath and sword belt. Wilhaiim was a safe city, abundantly patrolled, and she'd not regretted the choice until now. She'd assumed a city under forced quarantine was a sleeping city, amenable to curfew, but now she wasn't sure.

“Who goes?” Russel held her torch forward in the street. The flame shed a nimbus of spitting purple in the gray, reflected off tonsured heads and drawn blades.

“Bless.” The answering priest spoke calmly, but he didn't sheathe his sword, and his bulky companion blocked the way forward. “Russel, is that you? Out carrying and fetching for the king again, are you?”

“Brother.” Russel exhaled, but Avani noticed the soldier still stood on the balls of her feet, balanced. She grasped the torch like a weapon. “A temple patrol on every side street, now? Is that really necessary?”

The priest smiled beneath his mask, causing silk to ripple. “Wilhaiim's not immune to scavengers, even with the gates closed. This close to the temple, we supplement the watch.” He shifted his yellow stare to Avani. She saw the immediate recognition on his face, surprise and irritation both above the square of his mask, but he quickly chased emotion away with a cough.

“The mongers are all shuttered, this end, Corporal,” he said. “If it's fish His Majesty's requiring, I'm afraid you're out of luck.”

Russel fumed.

“If you think King Renault's worrying over the freshness of his fish while his ­people fall to the Worm, you're sore mistaken, also near close to speaking treason.” She shifted the torch from her left hand to her right, letting the flame lick insultingly close to the priest's robes. “We're about on business, brother. The Lady Avani's wanting a word with the Masterhealer about the Worm.”

The priest's knuckles whitened visible around the hilt of his sword. Russel lifted her chin, baring her throat as if daring the man to strike. Avani curled her fingers, reaching for magic, readying to throw a warding. Tiny green sparks fell in a shower from her thumb, sickly in the smoke.

“Warren,” the silent brother spoke at last, a rumble of warning. He watched Avani. “Best let them pass.”

His companion shifted on the cobblestones, away from Russel's flame and Avani's flexing fingers. He nodded.

“Aye, brother. You're right. Masterhealer will want the new vocent's ear, I imagine. Corporal?”

“Which is why,” Russel said, slowly and precisely, as though speaking to a young child, “we're out in this frankly poisonous morning. If you'd step aside,
Warren
, we'll walk on. I'd like to be out of the ash before my eyes run from my head.”

The priest stepped aside, bowing, impeccably polite. He didn't sheathe his sword.

“Just ahead, corporal. You'll see the temple lights two more streets up.”

“Thank you, I'm aware.” Russel strode forward, bootheels clicking against stone. Avani forced herself to walk after, gaze forward, even as the priests turned and followed their progress with interest.

“They're
armed
,” Avani hissed, once the smoke closed the priests away. “The brothers abhor violence. The temple counsels peaceful means above all others.”

“So they do,” Russel agreed. “But you'll find the Red Worm has turned everything on its ear, and even sweetest of grannies are taking up arms. Brother Warren, though, he looked as if he knew well how to wield his steel, and that's worrisome. Hush, now, they'll not be far behind.”

T
HERE
WERE
KINGSMEN
guarding Wilhaiim's temple, two pairs on either side of the narrow door, the king's red a bright spot in the smoke. Their cheeks were smeared with sweat and soot. They watched the sluggish trickle of ­people moving across the temple threshold, but evidenced no inclination to interfere in temple business, even when the priest standing defense in the door turned a grieving woman back, blocking her desperate bid for entrance with a long staff.

The woman shrieked and pulled at her own hair, falling on her face on the street in supplication, but the tonsured brother held firm. The sparse foot traffic allowed through paid the woman no notice.

“Leave it,” Russel ordered when Avani took a step in the crumpled woman's direction. “You'll only make it worse.” Russel snuffed her torch in a barrel of sand meant for the purpose.

“
Ai
, but—­” The woman lay still at the priest's feet, her long hair a tangle against his robes.

“Stop.” Russel said, sharp. Her fingers were hard bands around Avani's forearm. “Woman's done her duty; she'll only regret it more if you interfere.”

“Duty?” Avani demanded. She glared at Russel until the soldier released her arm.

“The theists bring the Worm-­touched here, to the infirmary.” Russel spoke into Avani's ear, the silk of her mask tickling. “When they don't hide them in a back room or cellar. It's not out of hope, it's royal decree.”

She moved back, adjusted her halberd, touched her sword, made the neat, common warding gesture with her hand. “Ready, my lady? Best if we find your friend quick and get out before we're numbered among the sick for breathing infected air.”

Avani nodded, gathering courage. She knew sickbeds, had grown up helping her mother ease the suffering of both the dying and the temporarily infirm. She prided herself on a calm head and steady hands in the worst of conditions, but she knew by the state of the quiet streets and the wrinkle of Russel's brow that she'd never before faced anything quite so terrible as the Red Worm.

Neither the tonsured brother nor the kingsmen prevented Russel from stepping over the distraught woman and shoving into the temple. The priest studied Avani with unfeigned interest, but seemed unimpressed by her uniform of vocent black. The man stepped sideways, allowing Avani to pass around both his staff and the still form at his feet.

She couldn't help herself. She bent briefly on the threshold, brushing fingers across the woman's head, murmuring a quick blessing. She hadn't meant to add the small prayer for courage, but it fell across her tongue of its own accord, turning the haze briefly warmer. The grieving woman sighed and moaned. The priest made a harsh sound of surprise or disapproval.

Avani ignored him. She rose and followed Russel's rigid back into the temple.

“Goddess,” she swore, blinking rapidly as her eyes tried to adjust to darkness and muted candlelight. She inhaled shallowly through her mask, expecting the fugue of sickness and sweat and too many bodies in a small space. Inside the temple, the air was oddly smoke-­free.

“The priests don't burn incense in the infirmary,” Russel said, correctly interpreting Avani's involuntary glance ceiling-­ward. “They claim it muddles the Masterhealer's nose. On clear nights, like tonight, they open the temple louvers. Air's not exactly fresh, but you won't be breathing ash. Watch where you step, now. Floor's not exactly fresh, either.”

The temple floor, which Avani remembered as cold stone, was strewn with a thick layer of dried straw and sweet flag, either to provide insulation or sop up fluids. The sick lay in regimented rows right atop the rushes, most without blanket or bedding to provide comfort. They lay in their clothes, or naked, or in a stage somewhere in between, and the flickering candlelight from the great candelabra hung suspended above made their young faces pale and ghastly.

Russel tapped Avani's elbow, rousing her from the paralysis of dismay.

“You're not here to save them,” the other woman cautioned. “Won't do anyone any good if you get involved. Look away and leave them some dignity. Can't say they much notice, anyway. The brothers see to that.”

Someone had swept a narrow path down the temple axis, and again from left to right, dividing the infirmary into four small sick rooms. Avani counted heads as she followed Russel toward the altar, and then had to start her count over again, fuddled by disbelief.

“So many,” she breathed.

Russel glanced over her shoulder. A reflection of candle flame leapt in her irises.

“Once here they're usually in no state to last long. Otherwise the priests would long ago have run out of room. As it is I think most of the brothers are busy with burying a rapidly growing pile of small corpses.”

Avani shuddered.

The temple altar was much as she recalled, a wide rectangular table shrouded in red fabric. The trappings of worship were gone, replaced instead by the necessities of the sickroom. Avani took quick inventory of cloth for bandages and flannel for bathing; and sweating pitchers of cool, fresh water; and thinned alcohol and witch hazel in shallow bowls for purification; and on ceramic plates, slabs of tallow and lye soap.

The priest presiding over the altar looked up at their approach. His hands were busy with rolling bandages, his face aged by lack of sleep and the bruises of sorrow, maskless. He nodded at Russel with weary familiarity, then looked at Avani with unconcealed interest.

“The wagging tongues spoke true,” he said, brows arching over yellow eyes. “Come to lend a hand, have you?”

“We've come on His Majesty's orders, looking for a friend.”

The priest's stare wandered from the altar to the spread of still forms on the temple floor. “We stopped recording names days ago, but mayhap if you've a description . . .” He trailed off, shoulders lifting beneath his robes.

“Our friend is an adult,” Russel said, gruff. “One of the volunteers. An island man called Deval.”

“I know him.” The priest nodded. “This time of night, you'll find Deval downstairs, in the library. He's a good man. Insists he's got far greater apothecary skills than the rest of us, and who's to argue?”

“The Masterhealer?” Russel suggested, scowling.

The priest smiled, and not with humor.

“You'll find the library stairs just there,” he said, nodding toward the rear of the temple. “I'd show you down, but I'm afraid we're short of hands and I've patients to attend.”

“Thank you,” Avani replied, then had to hurry to keep pace with Russel.

“You don't like this place,” she ventured. Russel's spine was stiff, her hand set firmly on the pommel of her knife. The woman looked stern and impressive in her red-­and-­black livery, the king's badge on her breast, but she swallowed often and convulsively, and breathed shallowly through her mask. “Are you afraid of the Worm?”

“Nay,” Russel snapped without looking around. “The plague season doesn't frighten me, though it's true I'd rather die on the point of a blade. It's the children, laid out and helpless as dolls, just waiting for the next trip to the corpse fires.”

“They're not lost yet.” But Avani couldn't quite quell a shiver.