Across the Long Sea (25 page)

Tajit grunted, and turned in the direction Liam indicated. “It begins,” he said, awarding Mal another broken smile, and a quick bow. “I'll find you after, Malachi Doyle. Look for me. Now go. Don't tarry.” He drew his sword and stepped forward, bellowing challenge.

Liam gaped after, frozen. Mal grabbed the lad around the waist and hauled him sideways and behind the nearest tent. Liam struggled, making a broken sound low in his throat, the tip of his sword dragging in the mud. Mal clapped his hand over the lad's mouth, silencing him, and crouched low beneath a quickly conjured warding as a group of red-­badged mercenaries ran past.

“Liam,” he said. “I need you to be still. I'll not leave you behind, but if need be I'll clock you over the head and carry you over my shoulder.”

Liam bit Mal's hand, hard, puncturing glove. Mal swore. More men ran past, weapons drawn. Liam stilled. Mal counted to ten, then spoke into the boy's ear.

“Better?”

Liam nodded. Mal withdrew his hand. Liam jerked away and to his feet, sheathed his sword angrily. “He'll die.”

“He will,” Mal agreed. He stood, brushing mud from his knees. “And so will we, if we linger to help. He's given us a chance at success. I, for one, don't intend to waste it.”

“Avani would stay and find a way to save him,” Liam said with a vehemence that made Mal's chest ache. “She wouldn't leave him behind.”

“I'm not Avani.” Mal turned his back. “Are you coming?”

Liam didn't answer, but when Mal slipped between tents, the boy followed only a few steps behind. Mal let the warding stretch to accommodate his reluctance. They'd walked a good way toward the center of the camp, skirting knots of frantic activity, before Liam scoffed.

“Knock me over the head, mayhap. You couldn't drag me but a few strides, my lord. You're that short.”

Mal grunted reluctant agreement, and resisted the urge to reach back and ruffle the lad's hair.

J
ACOB FOUND THEM
on their bellies atop a mound of mud-­slicked firewood, looking down onto Khorit Dard's tent.

Mal was growing increasingly desperate. They'd crept around tent and cook fire, crawled under empty wagons and over mounds of kitchen refuse, looking for a hole in the lord's final defenses. The camp was awake and in uproar, an ant's nest riled beneath the sinking moon. But even as men ran to and fro, shouting unintelligible orders, narrowly missing the edges of Mal and Liam, the wall of mercenaries around that final, pennant-­topped tent stood firm. Liam was grown morose and silent, and Mal was beginning to fear he'd have to drop the last twelve men where they stood, consign desert bones to the ruined fields, because he saw no way to slip past without catching their attention.

They were solid desert soldiers, armor like a second skin, weapons easy in their hands, and they would cut Liam to ribbons without a second thought. Mal was trying one last time to convince the lad to stay behind, hidden within the stack of lumber, when Jacob dropped from the night sky and settled on Mal's shoulder, scoring new marks through his tunic.

“By the Aug,” Mal sighed, at the end of his patience. He shook the bird off, ignoring Jacob's petulant mutter. “Not now.”

Jacob balanced on a split log, beak half open, wings spread. He tilted his head, black eye unblinking, and made a sound like steam off a boiling kettle.

“Jacob.” Liam rolled off his belly and sat up, relieved. “Mal, he's come to help.”

Mal returned his attention to the men below. “Last that bird helped we nearly went to the bottom of the sea.”

Liam snorted. Jacob laughed.

And the midnight sky groaned and tore asunder, and the ground rolled, tossing Mal up and into the air.

He landed hard, face in the mud. Lumber fell in pieces across his legs and spine, knocking the breath from his lungs. He heard screaming, and smelled scorched flesh. The ground rocked sideways even as he lay prone; for a moment he thought he was back aboard
The Cutlass Wind
. He scrambled to his hands and knees, dislodging wood, then managed his feet, legs spread against the tremor in the ground.

“Liam!”

A crater cut the ground where they'd perched. Splinters of wood and bits of fabric stuck up from the mud. Split logs lay whole and in new pieces across collapsed tents. He heard moans and felt life fading all around.

“Liam!” Mal stumbled in the direction of ebbing energy and found not Liam, but a gutted mercenary, beard stained black with blood. Mal backed away. The dying man looked after, mouth working, and then his spirit stood in the mud, blue eyes baleful.

“The prince,” said the haunt, in the desert tongue. “Save the prince.”

Mal struggled away, conjuring a mage-­light, sending it darting here and there, searching. He saw more ruin, and the dead man's bottom half strung across broken tent poles, but no sign of the lad. He shouted, and reached for Siobahn, and came up instead against the empty space in his head where she no longer lived.

He thought the ground rolled again, or it was his heart in his chest, but he found himself prone in the mud, this time on his back, the moon once more properly overhead. He thought he was shouting, but his ears were ringing as if from sorcery badly discharged, and he tasted salt in his mouth, blood or tears.

The dead mercenary loomed over Mal, stubborn to the last. The ghost pointed, insistent. “Save the prince.”

Mal crawled, away from the spirit, into the center of camp. He passed two more dead soldiers. Their haunts stood silent, paying Mal no attention. He stole a scimitar from one of the corpses, used it to prop himself back upright, found the ground steady again. He settled the pommel against his palm, and walked forward.

Khorit Dard's remaining guards rushed at him all at once. He smiled and let them come, let the battle lust come over him as it hadn't since he'd last fought for his life on Stonehill Downs. He welcomed the rage, and the red haze of the hunt, and he took the first man with his sword and his teeth alike, breaking bone as he sundered muscle.

There were seven, and he killed them all. It was inelegant and messy, and he thought he howled when he took them apart. Once Siobahn might have brought him back from the killing edge, but now he was alone in his skull, and he laughed as he slit his enemy's throat, laughed as blood spattered mud. His fists struck flesh again and again.

Thunder cracked and Mal staggered, almost falling. He caught himself against a tent pole, panting, and looked into Tajit's face.

“Are you indeed mad?” the man screamed, eyes flashing blue as the moon. “Why are you dancing upon corpses when Khorit Dard stands waiting?”

Tajit's spirit pointed. Mal followed the line of the other man's finger, realized he stood beneath Khorit Dard's billowing flag, was propped against the prince's crooked tent.

“Go!” Tajit ordered, breath cold against Mal's face. “Now.”

Mal let go the tent pole and dropped his sword. He took instead the long knife he'd chosen from his belt, carried it with him into the tent. His mage-­light bobbed after, shedding warmth in the dark spaces. Even partially collapsed, the space was tall enough for a man to stand upright, long and narrow. Rugs failed to keep the mud at bay. An overturned table lay across rumpled bedding. The candles in their sturdy branch were snuffed, but when Mal pulled glove from hand with his teeth and touched the tip of his thumb to the wick, it was still warm, warm as the ember of life lurking behind a fold of fallen roof.

“Khorit Dard,” Mal called, gentle. “It's no use hiding,
opion
prince. I've your taste, now. I'll find you if you run.”

The Lord of the Poppies was not a large man, nor small. He was of average height, but more bone than muscle, except for a roundness about his belly, and a sag beneath his chin. He wore no beard, nor a circlet. His face was delicate, and Mal could see the Rani's features beneath the more masculine angles. His eyes were all pupil, and he stank of charred flowers. When he stepped from behind his curtain, he limped.

“Joints,” he said in the desert tongue, then switched easily to the royal lingua. “The mud and the damp are hard on an old man. My daughter's finally seen reason, has she, and sent me a proper end?”

Mal turned his head and spat blood onto the rug. Khorit Dard regarded the bobbing mage-­light with curiosity.

“Magus,” he said, then, with more emphasis. “Necromancer.”

“Kill him,” Tajit urged from the door of the tent. “There's naught in your way.”

Khorit Dard winced and groaned and sat himself atop a large gold-­bound trunk. He stretched his legs across the rug, shifted to ease his swollen gut.

“Brought you across the very sea, did she?” he asked. “Dangerous, and clever. Isa was always the clever one, always knew which words to use to get her way. It was Isa convinced her mother to burn the flower fields, did she tell you that?”

Mal quirked his brows. The knife felt light and warm between his fingers, Tajit's ghost chill as winter at his back.

“I haven't any left,” Khorit Dard said. “
Opion
, I mean. If that's what you've come for. I sent most of it home, in golden caskets like this one. The rest I rationed over the years, I'm a careful man. I took the last when I heard the elephant guns roar. It's working on me now; don't waste your knife. It stops the brain, too much, and then the heart. Like drowning, only sweeter.” He looked vaguely around the ruins of the tent, then back at Mal. “Was it you who convinced her to use the guns? I'll admit I'm surprised. I honestly didn't think she had it in her, clever, cruel Isa.”

He coughed, swallowing a wheeze, then hummed. Thunder cracked and the ground shifted. Mal braced himself against the shivering candle branch. Khorit Dard laughed.

“
B
ūṛ
h
ē
Adam
Ä«
is angry,” he said, giggling. “He trembles in disgust. Wasteful bloodshed in sight of his shadow. Maybe not so clever after all, daughter.”

He snorted, and then gurgled in surprise as Mal's knife took him in the throat. He whined, mouth wide and welling blood, then slumped sideways, toppling from the chest.

Mal padded across the rug, retrieved his knife, wiping it clean on the edge of Khorit Dard's tunic. When he turned away, Tajit's ghost was gone, and Liam stood in his place, the raven on his shoulder, bloodied sword in hand.

“I killed two men,” the boy said, scars pale against blanched cheeks. “And Jacob plucked the eyes from three more. Fire's falling from the sky, and the mountain's quaking. Are you quite finished, my lord? Can we go home now?”

 

Physic

T
HE
LAST
OF
the
sidhe
gates on Mal's map wasn't a gate at all, but a grille in the floor at the back of the king's stables, buried beneath a generation of straw and barrels of moldy grain. The two surviving stable lads helped Avani clear the space, eager for adventure but doubtful as to what exactly they were searching out. She taught them how to read the map, how to decipher north and south and east and west on parchment, and when they broke in the afternoon for rest and reassessment, the youngest ran to the kitchens and returned with mince pies and sweet cider.

It was near evening before they scraped away the final layer of debris, baring the grille. The spaces between the bronze lattice were clogged with mud and horse manure, and the grille stuck so tight into the floor that in the end they had to hitch one of Renualt's best cart horses to the handle and drag it from the ground. It came free with a screech and a hiss, startling the cart horse into kicking, and sending the rest of the stable into a lather. The two brothers ran off to tend the animals, taking the cart horse with them, and leaving Avani alone with a square hole in the stable floor.

She rolled up the map, placing it carefully atop a pile of fresh hay, then lay on her belly on the floor and looked down. The dark opening smelled almost as poisonous as the Maiden Spring. When she sent her mage-­light into the shadow, it revealed a straight shaft cut neatly from the bedrock, and hand-­ and footholds carved into one wall. Nor was the shaft as deep as she'd first thought, the drop little more than twice her own height.

Avani muttered a quick prayer, then swiveled around and climbed feetfirst into the hole. The handholds were slippery and difficult. Twice she almost slipped, and as soon as she was close enough to the ground to drop without threat of injury, she did so.

As soon as her bootheels hit the dirt, she wished she'd had the forethought to use rope, of which there was plenty in His Majesty's stable, because it occurred to her, and too late, that
up
might be even more difficult than
down
.

Rope was the sort of thing Russel always remembered when they went hunting
sidhe
gates, but Russel and every other soldier in the king's ser­vice were busy scouring all of Wilhaiim with the caustic lye soap that had proved so effective against the Red Worm biters, the same soap that had kept the theist priests, all unknowing, protected in an infested infirmary, and had in the end saved many a citizen, including Peter Shean's grieving wife.

Wilhaiim, Avani thought with dark amusement, had learned almost overnight to value a hot bath and a good scrub.

“
Ai
, but not in time.”

Too many young ones lost, and their ghosts walked the city streets in great gangs, refused to move on. Avani hadn't yet found the heart to speak the words of banishment. Wilhaiim wouldn't recover quickly or completely, not with almost an entire generation lost to the plague. The streets were still too quiet, too many windows shuttered in grief, the surviving adults dead-­eyed and numb as they attempted to put the pieces of their shattered lives back together.

A gust of fetid air whipped around Avani's ankles and up the shaft, scattering pieces of straw across the stable floor above. Avani's mage-­light flickered. She twisted Andrew's ring on her thumb, clutched it against her palm until it warmed and soothed, and used the boost of energy to bolster her light. The sphere burst bright and white, revealing an opening in the shaft, another hole at knee height, a tunnel just wide enough for man or
sidhe
to shimmy through.

The draft burst again from the mouth of the tunnel and up the shaft, and with it came the shiver of barrowman magic. The gate, then, must be the other side of the rock.

Avani groaned and shed her cape and her sword belt. She kept her dirk, shoving it in her boot. Her hair, grown long again, she plaited quickly and tucked down the back of her
salwar
. Then she lay on her belly and crawled headfirst through the tunnel.

It was muddy and wet and immensely unpleasant, but relatively narrow. She slithered out the other end onto her elbows, tucked and rolled and came up standing.

“Still impressive.” The familiar drawl echoed off limestone. “Do you practice tumbling, black eyes?”

Her knife was in her hand before she thought much about it. Everin, who had taught her how to fight, laughed. Avani didn't, because in the light of her drifting sphere she'd seen both the beribboned doll in his hand, and the dangerous gleam of something that looked like to threat in his yellow regard.

“Those are dangerous,” she said, meaning the doll. “Renault ordered every one collected and burned.”

“He missed a few,” the big man said. “There's a veritable heap, just beyond -­ “he jerked a thumb sideways, and Avani noticed the gate open in the curve of limestone wall. “But don't fret yourself, the infestation's gone dormant. It's too cold down here. They need the heat of early spring to hatch, and they won't get that so far below.”

Without lowering her knife, Avani walked around Everin, carefully out of his reach. She glanced through the gate, and saw that he spoke true. Not four paces into the next tunnel a collection of the dolls lay limp in the mud, tossed carelessly here and there.

They had company, a skinny corpse fallen facedown over satin ribbons and mud. A man, his face worm-­eaten and unrecognizable, his eyes long gone to jelly. His gray hair, come out in clumps, mingled with the doll's yarn tresses. She saw no sign of his ghost.

“Who is he?”

“Desert man,” Everin said. “Spy, I imagine, sent by the desert lords on a killing mission. It's possible he didn't know the death he brought in his little dolls, but I doubt it. Far more likely this was the first foray in a war Renault doesn't yet know he's fighting.” He shrugged. “The
sidhe
found him, holed up here beneath the Fair with his goods. Killed him for sport, then decided mayhap they'd better tell Faolan. Faolan came to me.”

“Why?”

Everin shrugged. The doll swung back and forth, satin ribbons looped around his fingers. “They trust me to handle trouble, as much as the s
idhe
trust any man.”

“Nay,
why
.” Avani retorted. “Why are you standing here, in front of the very same gate I've just today decided to seek out and seal?”

“Your Goddess has a sense of humor. My luck. I didn't know you'd be here, Avani.” He turned slowly, so as not to startle, and lobbed the doll through the gate and atop her brothers and sisters. “I'd been trying to decide whether to gamble a small fire, burn the toys and any eggs might still be upon them. Seal the gate and I'll not have to risk it. We'll let them lie, entombed.”

“What about the barrowmen?”

“They'll not trouble with this tunnel again. They mislike human things, and they've had their fun with the dead man. When are you coming home? Your sheep miss you, black eyes.”

Avani sheathed her knife. “My sheep, is it?”

“I've finished the stairs, started the second floor. The summer lettuce is waking. Liam's ship docks at Low Port tomorrow. Two days to Wilhaiim, another three to look your fill on the Vocent. Then bring the lad back. Let him grow the rest of the way to manhood on the Downs.”

“If he likes,” Avani agreed. “Become lonely, have you, Everin?”

He smiled, then, and bowed, and folded his large frame back through the barrowman gate.

“Seal it tight,” he called back. “The
sidhe
will thank you for it.”

R
ENAULT
REFUSED
A
VANI
leave to meet
The Cutlass Wind
at Low Port.

“I'll not lose another vocent to mishap on the coast,” the king said. “And I have it on good authority your lad is hale and grown another handspan.”

She didn't ask after Mal. A new ease sat on His Majesty's shoulders. A good part of that relief was the plague season gone, Avani knew, but a larger part was Renault's brother soon returned to Wilhaiim.

“What will they be like?” she wondered. “Roue's contingent? Mal wrote of great cannons on carts, elephant guns that shook the ground and routed the desert army back over the hills.” She let Renault see her scowl. “Deval says they are jealous tradesmen, easily angered. And Liam writes their palace is built all of gold, and they grow their crop in flood.”

Renault smoothed his beard. Avani thought he smiled small behind his palm.

“They know war,” he said, simply. “And have a distaste for yellow-­eyed marauders. And now, thanks to Malachi, their Rani owes Wilhaiim a debt. I suspect Roue and I have much in common, and much to discuss. If your Everin's right, and there's war with the desert tribes looming on our horizon, then I'm going to be in need of an ally experienced in desert warfare.”

J
ACOB
CAME
FIRST
, over the white walls, riding the summer sky. The raven laughed when he found her, dropped like a stone to her shoulder, and bit her ear in greeting. The bird smelled of salt and amber and he chortled again when Avani scolded his betrayal.

Wilhaiim's great gates stood wide in welcome—­the Masterhealer had put his plague masks aside until the next spring. Peter Shean led Roue's small contingent past Wilhaiim's pennant with little fanfare, although all about the bailey, ­people paused and stood on their toes to better see.

“Scald strike me dead,” Russel muttered. She stood stiff in uniform between Avani and the rest of the watching court. “Your lad wrote true. They're hung all over with true gold.”

Avani had eyes only for Liam where he walked tall and proud midway through the procession. She whooped, and left Russel behind, dodging through the crowd and past Peter on his irritated chestnut. Jacob, complaining, took to the air. She elbowed aside a blond man in tattered captain's togs and launched herself at her son.

He was indeed grown taller, and he caught her easily, held her up off cobblestone as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

She laughed into his shoulder, and wiped her tears on his tunic.

“Avani! You'll never guess,” Liam said, proud and eager all in one breath. “I rode atop an
elephant
.”

“Did you?” She laughed and found her feet. “
Ai
, a real elephant? And here I thought they were but a story found in books, like the humpbacked fish, or the winged serpent.”

“Avani.”

She turned, still laughing, and then stilled. “Mal.”

He had true gold in the lobes of his ears, and around his neck, and enamel on the hilt of his sword. He wore silk as green as his eyes, and sandals on his feet, and his wrists were shackled tight in old ivory. His pupils were blown wide, obscuring iris.

Peter drew up his horse, even as the rest of the contingent eddied past.

“Be calm,” he said. “It's of his own doing. He wouldn't let us free him, not even once safely on land.”

“I tried.” The man in captain's togs hovered, desert eyes wide and worried. “He said he'd swallow me entire if I so much as touched them, and after our first crossing, I knew better than to chance it.”

Renault was suddenly at Avani's side, surrounded by nervous kingsmen, the Masterhealer lurking just behind.

“Brother?” His Majesty demanded, and all about, the bailey grew hushed. “What is this?”

“A constellation of stars,” Mal said. He licked lips gone red and chapped. “Avani, can you help me?”

Avani looked into his face, felt the pulse of power behind those blind eyes, and saw the other half of herself returned home, worn and wounded and frightened but intrinsically whole.

“I can,” she said with certainty. “Malachi, I can.”