Across the Long Sea (20 page)

“
Ai
, not quite.” Avani held the hairpin up, squinted at the scarlet strands. Three red worms, motionless, looped over the tip of the needle. The blossoming magus in Avani scented nothing of magic, foul or otherwise. But the shepherd and weaver—­

“Fiber,” she diagnosed. “Thin red thread, near weightless out of the wound. Or . . .” she paused, shook her head. “Nay. I saw it move. It must be a parasite. And this? A carapace?”

She looked down and away from the thread, met the ghost boy's blue stare over his cooling corpse. She hadn't felt him die. The priest had disappeared. She wondered if he'd gone for help.

“They itch,” the ghost lad said, for all the world as though he was speaking of nothing more pressing than a sunburn. “Itch and sting some, mum. Can I take Theo with me, mum?

“Theo?” Avani asked. She dropped the hairpin and its ugly burden into the clean rushes.

“My dolly,” the ghost explained. “He's a brave knight, he's not afraid of the dark. Can I take him with me?”

Avani found the doll beneath the lad's still-­warm corpse, pressed beneath the rushes and the child's grubby shirt. The doll was small but finely made, the knight's eyes and pointed beard prettily embroidered, his armor made of gray flannel and sewn with ribbons red and black. It was an expensive toy, and didn't match the dead child's bare, dirty feet or secondhand shift.

“He's wonderful,” she said, turning the doll over in her hands. “Red and black. The king's livery.”

“Aye, mum,” the spirit said. “That's what he said, he who made him. Sir Theo's the bravest of the brave. Can I take him with me, mum, into the dark?”

“Of course you may.” Avani said. She held the doll out in offering. The ghost lad grabbed it eagerly. He clutched the cloth knight against his chest, and when he flickered out, he took his prize with him.

Avani sat in the rushes until two theists came and carried the small corpse away. Then she rose and cleansed her hands and slipped from the temple into Wilhaiim's smoke-­wreathed dawn.

T
HE
PALACE
GUARDS
let Avani in through the tradesmen's entrance without comment. Neither of the kingsmen gave her bare face obvious notice. She'd torn away her mask halfway between the temple and the white palace, ground it beneath the heel of her boot, then been forced to breath ash and incense for her defiance.

She skirted the waking kitchens and climbed the back stairs to Renault's chambers. There she was turned away, politely but firmly, by another pair of guards who insisted His Majesty was finally abed and not to be disturbed until he sat the throne for supper petitions. Avani left message with the most outwardly sympathetic of the two women, then trudged the seemingly endless distance back to her own quarters.

She shucked off her boots and foul-­smelling clothes, set the hearth to burning with a murmured word, scrubbed her flesh clean several times over, making do with tepid water and white spirits, and then crawled into bed, expecting sleep to come at once.

She wasn't so lucky. She tossed and turned on the mattress as the sun rose and crept high and sent weak, smoke-­filtered strands through glass panes and across the floor, stretching pale fingers toward the Goddess on Avani's hearth.

When the morning touched the idol's brow, Avani gave up. Her bones ached as though she'd succumbed to fever herself, and her muscles cramped with lack of sleep, but her thoughts ran in restless circles, sharp and bright as the shine on the Goddess's metal skin. She kicked away warm bedding and rose. She dug clean, rumpled clothes out of her old chest and pulled them on over goose-­pimpling flesh, then retrieved Mal's journal from its place on the bedside table.

The journal felt heavy in her hands, and the black leather warmed quickly against her fingers. Avani cradled the book against her chest, thinking of the dead lad and his brave dolly. She took it with her from her room and down the hall, walking barefoot and silent on thick carpet. The torches in the walls burned steady and without smoke; the incense possets burnt to cinders and not yet replenished.

She counted the number of strides between her quarters and Mal's, as she had done from the very beginning, when she'd first feared she'd find herself lost in the palace.

Someone had forced the latch on Mal's door, bent the catch and damaged the lintel. There were deep wounds in the wood. Avani thought they were hatchet marks; she'd chopped enough wood to recognize the cut, and these were neatly done. If there had been a spelled lock against entrance—­and for as long as Avani had known Mal he'd never seen the need for anything more than a solid bolt and an imposing reputation—­the cant was broken.

Mal's room appeared mostly unchanged in Avani's absence. The ever-­present apples in their wooden bowl on the mantel were desiccated, shriveled and shrunken. Tiny motes of dust danced in front of the great paned windows that made the vocent's room one of the most precious in the palace. The rainbow-­hued glass lanterns Mal so loved sparkled in the morning light, candles gone cold. Vellum and parchment was stacked neatly atop his solid writing desk, weighted down by a collection of odd but familiar treasures, including an ebony feather as long as Avani's hand.

But the silver inkpot was overturned, and ink dried in a small puddle alongside the desk. There was a single boot print in the puddle and mirrored again with lesser depth across the flagstone floor. Someone had walked the rooms, someone with a boot size near twice as large as Mal's own.

Likely, Avani thought, the same someone who had neatly broken the latch, and stacked Mal's usually haphazard collection of desk work. It was Renault's doing. If she closed her eyes and concentrated, she could sense his lingering presence in the pores of the desk and the grain of the leather seat. He'd come looking for sign of his missing vocent, and left at enough of a loss he'd been forced to send for Avani.

Avani padded past the ancient wardrobe Mal used to hold his extensive collection of Hennish leather and velvet, gifts from the king to his vocent, pieces of a uniform worn only by His Majesty's right-­hand man. She glanced inside, counted four empty hooks and two pairs of well-­made winter boots. He'd taken only the minimum, planned on only a sennight away.

She found a sharpened stylus on his desk, and a stoppered clay pot containing a small amount of red ink. She took both with her onto the sleeping dais and into Mal's bed, where she pulled the heavy canopy closed on all sides, and mounded cushions against the carved headboard. She sat with Mal's journal on her knees, stylus in hand and inkpot balanced precariously on the soft mattress. She tucked her bare toes under the edge of the coverlet for warmth, and kindled a mage-­light to chase away trapped shadows.

Once she had everything placed to her satisfaction, wreathed in Mal's still-­lingering scent, she opened his black-­bound journal and began to read.

R
USSEL
STOOD
BEHIND
and to the right of the throne, hands clasped behind her back. The soldier's left eye was swollen nearly shut, her lower lip red and raw. She wore a gray shift and trousers instead of a kingsman's livery, and she was without sword. She didn't look at Avani.

Renault sat not on his throne, but on the long stair beneath the cold seat, a supper tray on his lap. He ate quickly and neatly, using the tip of his knife to spear choice bits of meat and fruit, keeping his fingers clean. He watched Avani as she followed Brother Orat across the empty hall.

His Majesty assessed Avani's rumpled
salwar
, her bare feet, and the journal in her arms. His smile was shrewd.

“Anything?”

Avani hesitated. The flagstones were chill beneath her unshod feet. She shivered.

Renault's smile faded to a humorless curl.

“Damn the man,” he said, and Avani knew he meant Mal. “I'm like to haul him home just for the pleasure of tossing him into mine own dungeons.”

Avani was too weary to dissemble. His Majesty went still. They regarded each other across a slant of graystone steps while Russel breathed painfully through cracked ribs.

Renault set aside his tray and rose. Deliberately he placed himself back in Wilhaiim's throne.

“The door in the library's sealed?”

Avani wondered that he dared speak freely when kingsmen in crimson and black stood at attention against the walls. She hesitated. Renault made an impatient gesture.

“Speak.”

“It's sealed.”

“There are more. From what we've so far determined, the
sidhe
tunnels run beneath the city like a serpent's barrow.”

“To be fair,” Russel said. “Most of the passages are long collapsed, filled in and unusable by man or beast.”

Avani blinked. Russel smiled small, winced at the pull of her bruised lip. “Did you think the Maiden gate is common knowledge, my lady? Wilhaiim's bowels have become my specialty of late.”

“The corporal and her men are charged with securing the recently remembered weakness beneath my city,” said Renault. He pulled at his beard as he watched Avani. “It's a tedious and often dangerous assignment, and one I prefer to keep quiet. The ­people sheltered behind Wilhaiim's walls needn't know the greatest threat to our peace may lie beneath the foundations of their homes, beneath our heavily traveled streets.”

“Mal wrote to me that he feared you were dismissive of the danger.” He'd written his concerns in his journal as well, Avani thought. And a vocent's journal belonged first to his king.

“I'm aware.” Renault grew still on the throne. “Don't scowl at me, witch. A king keeps his counsel; my reasons are my own.”

“He's lost your trust,” Avani guessed. She felt the flush of insult spread across her cheeks. “Mal's stood at your right hand since he was barely grown past childhood and now you've decided the
bhut
ruined his usefulness as your tool, compromised his mind.”

Renault launched himself from the throne. He took the stone stairs two at a time, then loomed over Avani. She felt the heat of the man's fury. Alongside the royal chair, Russel reached for a sword that wasn't there.

“Malachi Doyle,” the king said in clipped rage, “is brother to my heart and far more precious an ally than I deserve. He is not
useful
, he is beloved and worth ten times any other soul in the land. There is very little I wouldn't do to keep him at my side.” Renault's fists clenched and unclenched at his side. Avani forced herself not to step away. She stood motionless, afraid, as the king drew a deep breath and mastered angry tremors.

“He had other things to tend to,” Renault continued. “The difficult plague season, and his own health. The
agraine
strained his lungs, and Siobahn strained his heart.”

“You were protecting him,” Avani concluded. “He'll see it as coddling, and he'll resent you for it.”

Renault shrugged and turned his back. “By the time I have Malachi safely home, we'll have it in hand. Seal the doors and vanquish the Worm.” He seated himself again on the throne. “Mayhap one will take care of the other. For good.”

Malachi's leather book was warm in Avani's embrace. She shook her head. “
Ai
, you believe one has to do with the other?”

“Don't you? It seems the likeliest conclusion.”

Avani tapped her fingernails on leather binding and said nothing.

“I'll give you Russel,” Renault said. “And her troop of mud-­grubbers. The two of you seem to work well together.” The last was laden with sarcasm.

“What reason have I to stay and help?” Avani challenged, even as she knew she was lost. “Unlike Deval, I've sworn you no vows.”

The king's neatly trimmed beard split in a predatory smile. “Four,” he said, and ticked them off on his fingers. “I've asked you. You're unlikely to escape this city without Russel's aid, and Russel works for me. You've seen the dying children, and it's not in your nature to throw over the needy, as I well know.”

“And the fourth?” Avani met his arrogance without flinching.

“I can bring your boy back, and you won't leave me to my own devices until you see it done. Am I correct?”

Avani tapped Mal's journal again, a steady beat of agitation.

“Give me your word you'll do everything in your power to bring Liam home,” she offered at last, “no matter the cost.”

“Done.” Renault clapped his hands together once, sealing the promise. Then he shook his head. “I'll admit I'm surprised. Nothing of Malachi?”

It was difficult to look down her nose when the king sat seven steps above the crown of her head, but Avani managed.

“Mal doesn't need your aid, Majesty,” she said. “He has mine.”

 

Chapter Seventeen

“T
HIS
WAY
,
PLEASE
,” Baldebert said as the sun split down the middle and the doors swung inward. The yellow jewel was in fact two pieces of a whole, and not evenly divided. Mal noted the jagged crack where the jewel had been sundered, and the small scars where shards of the carbuncle were missing.

“Korit's Heart,” Baldebert said. He gave the gleaming halves a quick, resigned glance. “Once he wore it upon a breast plate. My sister saw to it that the Heart was cleaved, ruined, made harmless. Unfortunately the estoc that pierced the jewel did not likewise pierce Korit's blackened heart.”

“Your sister?” Mal repeated. The heat off the jewel in his ring warmed his cold fingers, and brought the blood rushing back on pins and needles.

Baldebert set a grimy palm on Mal's shoulder, guiding. “Steady, now. The floor is slick.”

Past Korit's Heart the floor was black rock cut into large squares and polished smooth, the seams near invisible. Mal managed a quick glimpse of more ruby and gold, large carpets the color of spring grass, and lingering knots of solemn-­faced soldiers peering from beneath enameled helms. Liam whistled under his breath, but kept close to Mal's side even as Mal knew the lad was eager to dash off and explore.

When Baldebert passed, the guards clicked the heels of their stiff leather boots together in respect. Mal, consumed by a growing suspicion, watched Baldebert instead of the luxurious surroundings. Baldebert pursed his lips in quiet amusement, but refused to answer Mal's unspoken question.

“This way,” Baldebert said once more, propelling Mal and Liam toward a near wall. He twitched aside an unremarkable green and gold tapestry, revealing a narrow opening, then awarded Mal a wry bow. “Used to be foreign emissaries were received properly, in the family chamber, but war necessitates change, as I'm sure you understand.” He nodded at Liam. “In first, lad, as I see you're chomping the bit. You'll see it's perfectly safe. Don't forget to check the wardrobe. Assassins seem to prefer a good wardrobe for concealment, wouldn't you agree, lord necromancer?”

Mal refused to rise to the gentle taunt, preferring instead to count the angry beat of pulse in his waking hands. The stone in his ring continued to flicker, reflecting off black tile, turning Baldebert's eyes to gold. Baldebert appeared unmoved, but Mal didn't miss the new furrow across the other man's brow.

Liam startled them both when he stuck his head back around the tapestry.

“Servants' hole, my lord,” the lad said with a shrug. “Stinks some of the oxen, and they've done without the flashy gold bits, but the admiral's right, there's naught in the closet but broom and pail.”

“Nicely done,” Baldebert said. “In you go, my lord.”

Mal slid around the wall hanging and into the cubby. The room did indeed smell, of cattle and sweat. Pieces of tack hung from hooks on clapboard walls. A carriage wheel lay on its side against an open wardrobe, spindles broken. A single wooden stool waited in one corner. The floor was hard-­packed dirt, and the small room too warm.

“Sit if you like.” Baldebert picked up the stool and placed it in the center of the room. Both Liam and Mal ignored the offering. Liam to wandered the room and poked again in the wardrobe. Mal closed his eyes and simply waited.

He could pick out the muffled slap of boots marching beyond the curtain, and the distant ring of sword against sheath. Murmured voices from within the golden tower, and past the clapboard wall, the stamp and mutter of castle life resuming in the bailey. He thought he also caught the distant gong of a heavy bell. He wondered if the sound was a warning, a call to arms, or only a tracking of the hours, and determined from the lack of alarm inside the tower and out that the gong was innocuous.

Liam stopped sticking his nose into corners and made use of the stool, scraping the dirt floor as he did so. Baldebert stood relaxed, breathing quietly. The kindling in the brazier popped and spat, recalling to mind the Selkirk's bonfire.

Mal almost missed the whisper of slipper against tile. He felt the current of cool air as the tapestry was brushed aside. Liam jumped upright, making the stool rock. Mal rolled his shoulders to ease protesting muscles and opened his eyes.

She was tall as her brother, but lacked his desert eyes. They shared the same nose and full mouth, and the same proud chin. Her hair was as long and black as Mal's, straight and fine where Baldebert's was a bird's nest of curls. She wore tunic and trousers cut from green silk, embroidered all over with gold thread, and both her gold circlet and slippers were detailed in shards of ruby.

She nodded in Mal's direction, then spoke rapidly to Baldebert, an inscrutable tangle of liquid vowels. Baldebert grunted.

“The Rani is puzzled by the fire on your finger,” he translated. “As we were promised the ivory shackles would keep your necromancies entirely at bay.” He walked a circle around Mal, head tilted. “I'll admit I'm curious as well. The jewel was dormant aboard my
Cutlass
, else I would have cut it from your hand for the sake of my crew.”

“Your crew would have been better served had you cut away the shackles at once,” Mal replied. “I haven't an answer for you, my lady. As you yourself must have seen, it was Korit's Heart set my sigil afire.”

Baldebert stiffened. The Rani's dark eyes shuttered, even as she shook her head and smiled.

“Clever is as clever does,” she said in the royal lingua. “You've your profession's memory for faces. I can but hope you're as adept at murder.”

“Oh, aye,” said Liam, pleased. “The driver. Tajit's replacement. Your nose is different. Smaller.”

“Putty and a deft hand,” the Rani said. She looked still at Mal. “Is this boy your apprentice? What powerful necromancy requires the mutilation of young flesh?”

Mal growled in warning. Baldebert shifted uneasily. Liam crossed the room to Mal's side and hovered, protective, even in the eye of the woman's distaste.

“Release me,” Mal offered without inflection. “We're wasting my time, and obviously you've little of your own to spare. You've gone to a lot of trouble to wield me, risked my king's ire, and he's not one to easily forgive. Well. Here I am. Release me and tell me what needs done.”

“Not yet, I think.” The Rani paced across the dirt floor, slippers sighing, until she stood against the wardrobe. She flicked a finger at Baldebert; her enameled fingernails glittered. “Take the boy, brother. See that he's fed and watered and made comfortable as circumstances allow.”

“Nay!” Mal lunged forward even as Liam shouted protest. The Rani sprang in the same instant. Mal found himself held in place by a long dagger, needle-­thin point pressed firmly beneath his chin, tasting his blood. The Rani's grip on the weapon steady, her weight against his back implacable. Mal cursed, pulling at the ivory shackles, watching helplessly as Liam and Baldebert tussled.

For all Liam's limited experience, the lad and the man were evenly matched, Liam unnaturally quick as he ducked and dodged away, eluding capture. He managed to knock away Baldebert's grasping hand, and kick the older man solidly in the gut, overturning the stool in his haste. But Baldebert had strength and maturity on his side; as Liam became more agitated Baldebert steadied, even as he limped, one hand pressed to his ribs.

They circled each other warily, Liam baring sharp teeth in a snarl. Baldebert huffed through his nose, exasperated.

“Come, lad,” he coaxed. “If I meant to kill you I'd have done so before now. Plenty of opportunities to toss you overboard, weren't there?”

“I'll not be separated from my lord.” Liam licked his lips nervously, and the flick of his red tongue between pointed incisors made the Rani draw a startled breath. The dagger at Mal's throat bit deeper, stinging.

“Tell your apprentice to stand,” the woman warned, bending to speak into Mal's ear. “Or I
will
have him destroyed, and happily. His kind have long been unwelcome on the mountain.”

Mal hesitated, but when Liam made an aborted move toward the crackling brazier, he put an end to the contest.

“Stay,” he ordered. “Now is not the time. Go and eat.”

“But, my lord—­” Liam looked very much as if he hoped to scatter the hot coals over his opponent.

“Stay,” Mal insisted. “I've seen enough angry fire to last me. Step aside. Admiral, you'll see my lad safe and returned to me, I'll have your word as a seaman and a prince.”

“My word,” Baldebert promised, with a gentleness Mal hadn't suspected. If Liam's strangeness set the Rani on edge, Baldebert seemed oblivious. “You trusted me on deck, lad, do so again. Your master is safer inside the Broken Palace than anywhere else in the world. Think. I didn't gamble my life on the Long Sea solely for Isa's crooked entertainment.”

Liam looked at Mal. Mal quirked his brows in silent admonition.

“Fine,” the lad agreed. He shifted his glare up and over Mal's right shoulder. “But, mistress, you damage Lord Malachi and
my word
I'll slit you nose to tail with your own ugly little blade, and nothing stopping me.”

“B
E
CHARY
OF
that one,” the Rani warned Mal when they were alone in the cubby, the woman's blade safely up her sleeve again. “In my grandfather's time, armies of good men were spent to bone, chasing the
Ishtipachas
—­demons—­from our forests and rivers. Necromancer you may be, but the trickster lords are older than even the first of you.”

“If you want my help you'll see him well cared for.” Mal could feel the trickle of drying blood on his throat, and longed to scratch. Instead he contented himself with studying the room once again. The dimensions were off, the space too narrow to match what he'd seen of the tapestry-­clad walls beyond.

“Clever is as clever does,” he murmured, tilting his head at the wardrobe. “False wall, Rani?”

“The golden tower is riddled with false passageways,” the woman agreed. “But what you see is something different. I'm going to release you now.” Her fingers were cool on his wrists. “Remember where you are, please, and that my brother does indeed have your apprentice in hand.”

Mal gasped aloud when the ivory cuffs fell away. Blood that had tingled in the warmth of his wakened vocent's jewel now rushed and burned through his veins as nerves remembered their place. He brought his hands protectively to his chest, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning. The yellow jewel cast an ugly light over his
barasati.

“Uncomfortable to be chained so long,” the Rani agreed, walking around to Mal's front, old ivory dangling from her fingers. “Baldebert especially argued long against the necessity, but I couldn't hope you'd come willingly, not after your king denied our request so many times.”

Mal's magic came back on dry land with far more control than it had over deep water. A gentle swelling of strength and heat, it brought fleeting dizziness like an old wine consumed too quickly, and made the hair on his body stand in delight. He could feel the minute life in the soil beneath his feet, the greater force attached to the soldiers in the tower, the ­people in the bailey. The muted hum of ghosts in the mountain, and the breathing of Khorit's Heart, an inhale and exhale on the other side of the wall, the Rani's ruddy flame of desperation, and the delicate spark of life sheltered within her womb. She was pregnant and, Mal supposed, likely willing to risk much to protect her bloodlines.

“I should kill you now,” he said. “If only to make a point. I'm not a nursery toy at the mercy of the strongest kingdom. I am a man. I should turn your walls molten and make for you a new ‘memory keeper' of gold and ruby, all skeleton and char.”

The Rani stood composed. “Another gamble I'm willing to take; you won't strike me down. Whatever happened on the deep water convinced my brother you're a good man, and Baldebert's trust isn't easily earned, and rarely so quickly. He's not usually wrong.” The rubies on her crown and slippers flashed as she tied the old ivory to her waist with a piece of ribbon, securing the manacles. “And if he is, well. You'll not return home without Baldebert's aid. No flatlander captain will brave the Long Sea this time of year, no matter your king's ransom.”

Mal rolled his wrists. His skin was chafed raw.

“Clothes,” he said, an order. “Proper clothes. And food.”

“All of those,” she promised. “And more. All of Roue, at your disposal. But first, walk with me, Malachi.” When he stood rigid, the Rani bowed her head in quiet supplication. “Please.”

“My city,” he said quietly, “is overrun with plague. My ­people are dying in the streets. I'm meant to be
there
. I'm needed in Wilhaiim. Children are
dying
. I'm needed.”

Whatever the Rani saw on Mal's face made her reach again for the ivory cuffs. Her hand hovered at her waist, then stilled. Her jaw firmed. Mal, who recognized that stubborn set from his own monarch's face, knew she had no room for empathy.

“Baldebert's mercenaries found you a day's ride from the flatlander capitol,” she pointed out, cold. “They followed you from the city's very gates to the edge of the sea and there they struck the deal that brought you across the Long Sea to my mountain. You wandered far afield for a man concerned with the health of his city.”

Mal opened his mouth on a snarl, shut it again when he caught the green sparks cascading from his fingertips to the hard-­packed floor. The ring on his finger burned from yellow to orange. The Rani startled as sparks rained across the edge of her slippers, yet still she didn't flinch.

“Standing here,” she said. “We only waste time. I've none to spare. If you speak the truth, neither do you. Will you come?”