Ascendant's Rite (The Moontide Quartet) (65 page)

‘Little girl,’ the man whispered, ‘harmless little girl . . .’

*

Cera Nesti caught Timori yawning out of the corner of her eye, and in the contagious way of yawns, she was soon doing the same, trying to hide it so the guests wouldn’t think her bored. It was yet another evening of trying to smooth ruffled feathers over her plans to confiscate produce that did not come to market at a preset price. Piero Inveglio had been flooding her evenings with rural nobles, mostly Rimoni, who owned olive orchards and vineyards and vast wheat-fields and were in a tither over what it would mean for them. It was all she could do not to slap them.

I should be confiscating their damned estates!

But progress was being made: the mere threat of fixed-price markets had seen them frantically donating and distributing produce in an effort to be seen visibly helping the cause, to stave off public opprobrium. Every concession helped, whether willingly given or not.

‘Timi,’ she said softly, ‘I think it’s time for you to go upstairs.’ She raised a hand in apology to the nobles who were trying to charm her into easing her war-time economy measures, then linked her fingers with her little brother’s and squeezed. She turned to Elena. ‘Timi wants to go up. Can you take him?’

‘I want Kaz to take me!’ Timori exclaimed, his face coming alive.

Elena smiled at Kazim; the giant Keshi had become Timori’s personal favourite of late. The young king was desperate to emulate Kazim’s energetic, masculine enthusiasm for riding, running, fighting and all the things that young boys dream of. Timi would be ten soon, and his training in martial skills was about to accelerate.

Cera found herself sharing that smile with Elena, and that made her heart just a little lighter. Things were still awkward between them, but the growing friendship between Timori and Kazim was helping to bring them closer together again.

‘In a few months, you’ll be old enough to stay for the council meetings,’ she reminded him.

Timori pulled a face. ‘Boring.’

‘I know. But Father would want you to stay and listen and learn.’

The little boy pulled a dutiful face. ‘Yes, Cera,’ he intoned, yawning again. It wasn’t really fair to invoke their dead parents, but it usually worked. ‘Can I go now?’

She looked at him fondly. ‘Sometimes I don’t think you want to grow up at all.’

‘Yes I do! I’m going to be a giant warrior like Kazim, and chase the Crusaders back to Yuros!’

I don’t think you’ll ever be a giant, little brother
. He’d always been small for his age: a narrow-shouldered, bony child with an angelic face.
But everyone will love you
. ‘You’ll be king, darling, and you’ll have whole armies to fight for you.’

Timori grinned, then paused. ‘What will you do when I’m king, Cera?’

‘I’ll be living in Kesh, having babies, I imagine,’ she told him, her light-heartedness evaporating at the thought.

Timi’s eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t want to, do you?’

Her smile froze, more at his perceptiveness than anything else. ‘I’ll do my duty, as a woman must.’

‘When I’m king, I’ll summon you home, and you can do all my council meetings for me, so I can do fun things,’ he told her magnanimously. ‘Kings should only have fun, and you enjoy boring things.’

She raised her eyebrows showily. ‘Do I just?’

‘Yes! You think dull things are interesting and fun things are dull!’ He gave her a hug. ‘What will happen if I fall in battle?’ he asked solemnly. He knew they were about to march, and in his imagination, he was going to fight in the front line beside Kazim. Comte Inveglio gifting him a suit of armour and a new sword hadn’t helped her moderate that fantasy.

She didn’t tell him that he wouldn’t get within a mile of the fighting unless things were going disastrously. Instead she went down on her haunches and looked him in the eye. ‘Nothing will ever happen to you, my darling. Kazim and Elena would never allow it, and nor would I.’

‘You’d be the last Nesti,’ he noted, determined to see this morbid line of thought through.

‘Yes, I would, but I’m only a girl, so when I marry, the family’s wealth and titles would revert to the Vernio-Nesti, our cousins at the Northern Rift Fort.’

‘I don’t like them,’ Timori said. ‘They sweat a lot and don’t wash.’

Which was about what Cera thought too. ‘So you see, you can’t die, Timi! Think how smelly Forensa would be if they were in charge!’

He wrinkled his nose and giggled. ‘Then I won’t die in battle. I promise I’ll be very careful and use my shield a lot.’

‘You do that, little man.’ She stood and nodded to Kazim, who lunged in playfully, grabbed Timori and lifted him onto his shoulders, which was not at all seemly for a king-in-waiting, but Timori still had a few weeks left of being able to be treated as a child, so Cera let him enjoy it. As they swept out of the room, she stared after them.

Everything I’m doing, I’m doing for you, darling boy. You’re the last male of our line, the last chance of the Nesti name passing unbroken into the future. Don’t you dare die.
She glanced upwards, invoking the gods
. Pater Sol, watch over him. He is everything.

She put to one side the nagging thought that she wanted to be exactly where she was, at the hub of the decision-making, for the rest of her life.

Then Pita Rosco said something about tariff rates that just
would not do
, so she had to rejoin the conversation and correct her garrulous treasurer without undermining him, and the evening’s duel of wits began anew.

*

Rutt Sordell wiped the blood from his dagger with one of the little maid’s rags, then sheathed it and dumped her limp body beside Jerid’s. He’d have loved to have reanimated them, but that took time and created gnostic echoes that would alert any mage within the castle, so he reluctantly let them lie. He did seal them in a protective circle to contain the stench of death. Then he went outside and shut the door.

Now comes the real test . . .

He carefully rebuilt Benirio’s face over his own, and replaced the mask of the guardsman’s surface thoughts as he resumed his position at the top of the stairs.

For a few minutes he was carried back, through old memories of childhood in Argundy, of the Noros Revolt, and discoveries in the fields of Necromancy and Divination, the solitary triumphs of his lonely life. There had never love, not from his cold magi parents consumed with social elevation in Argundy, and women had always been sinister, secretive creatures to him, witches who latched onto the weak. Sex had proved joyless and disappointing; he had never understood why people craved it. Only wine had truly stimulated his senses, but even that pleasure had been stripped from him when Elena collapsed his tower and destroyed his body. Since then, everything had been a slow descent into sensory deprivation: a fall that would end tonight.

Then sounds came from the foot of the stairwell: a boy’s happy crowing, and a deep masculine laugh. He banished the memories and focused his mind as the sound of boots on marble echoed, getting louder and louder. Then the big Keshi, Kazim Makani, appeared, carrying a tired but exuberant Timori Nesti on his shoulders. The Keshi glanced at him, and paused.

‘Who are you? Where are Jerid and Tello?’

‘I’m Benirio – I’m standing in for Tello tonight – and Jerid’s off having a piss. He won’t be long.’

Kazim frowned. Clearly two guards were expected to be on duty at all times, and familiar faces at that. But Timori was bouncing on his shoulders and then the nursery door opened and a plump Jhafi woman waddled out.

Timori greeted her cheerily, ‘Borsa!’

The nurse exchanged a torrent of Noorie speech with Kazim as they all entered Timori’s suite and closed the door behind them, amidst much shouting and laughter from the boy-king.

Rutt watched them, his eyes narrowed in thought as he made some hurried recalculations. He’d been expecting Elena, but it wasn’t altogether surprising – she must be guarding Cera while Kazim took responsibility for Timori. If he waited until Cera arrived, he risked facing both magi, and Elena would probably be more wary than Kazim Makani; she would certainly demand sight of two guards, not one. In theory, if he was still unmasked by then, he’d have all night; but he doubted it would be that easy. His mind teetered one way, then the other, in an agony of indecision. How could he lure in and kill all four of his quarry?

I must listen to Kore . . .

As he thought, the path became clearer: killing both Nesti children together was highly unlikely tonight, not with both doors warded. And Gurvon had said that Kazim Makani’s gnosis was very, very strong, in which case his wards would likely be beyond him to penetrate, at least in the time-frame available. And though the rapport between Elena and Kazim was their great apparent strength, Rutt could see a way of turning it into their greatest weakness. With one down, how would the other fare?

And what would be more likely to bring Cera Nesti to me, than the screams of her little brother?

The decision taken, he gripped Benirio’s spear and walked towards the nursery door.

*

‘I don’t think you quite understand our position,’ Piero Inveglio was saying, resuming the discussion interrupted when Timori left. The little coterie of rural Rimoni nobility had left their seats and were filing into a lounge where drinks would be served. ‘We have no desire to profiteer from the warfare ravaging Javon. But we are custodians of a legacy. Our Houses trace their lineage to senatorial families of old Rimoni, transplanted in foreign soils to preserve them. We live and breathe the history of an empire! We all have treasures of that ancient time in our custody, in safekeeping for future generations. Our estates are museums, gateways to the past! That is surely worth treasuring!’

‘So you are overcharging for your grain to preserve marble statues from Rym and Becchio?’ Cera asked coolly.

The whole room winced, and everyone began to protest.

Except for Elena, who gave a sudden weak gasp and clutched her belly.

Cera stared, suddenly deaf to every other voice, as her protector began to double over, all colour draining from her face as she began to wobble. Her mouth worked soundlessly, while someone made a thoughtless remark about women and their inability to deal with alcohol, then someone else squeaked, ‘Is she . . .
poisoned
 . . . ?’

All of a sudden everyone in the room was clutching at their own throats, turning pale and breathing heavily, but Cera felt no affliction at all, just the tightening of her breath in sympathy for Elena as she clutched her hand.

The Noros woman’s eyes locked on hers in dread. ‘
Kaz . . .
’ she choked out, then fell to her knees, her whole form becoming softly luminous, white light coalescing about her and then streaming upwards through the ceiling as the guests backed away from them.

Cera dropped Elena’s hand, frozen and terrified as the image of the giant Keshi filled her mind . . .
with Timori on his shoulders
.

She screamed her brother’s name and pelted towards the stairs to the royal suite.

*

Kazim Makani was still laughing at a teasing jest from the nurse. ‘Borsa, too much!’ he cried at another outrageous comment about him and Elena. He was seeking a riposte as he opened the nursery door, about to exit the room, and his eyes didn’t even register the deeper patch of shadow to his right, where Borsa’s door was partly open.

Then a spear thrust from the darkness and the leaf-bladed head plunged into his side, smashing into his lower ribcage, breaking bones and ripping through muscle and flesh, straight into his right lung. A man emerged behind it, smaller than him, but with considerable gnosis augmenting his strength. The blow was a brutal shock and he gasped, strangely numbed to the impact, though he could feel every inch of that spearhead as it tore him inside. He staggered, thrown against the doorframe, and then slid down it.

The man holding the spear wore the uniform of a Nesti guard – perhaps that of the strange guard he’d spoken to – but the face was different now: a straggling red beard and thinning hair, his nondescript, unknown face gleeful as he bore down and shoved Kazim to the floor.

Then purple gnostic-light coalesced in the spearman’s hands, flowed down the shaft of the spear and into Kazim. He fought it, but the sheer agony of the steel embedded in his flesh destroyed his resistance, and his limbs went numb. He crashed over on his back, his skull bouncing, dimly hearing Timori and Borsa cry out in terror.

With a hideous leer the spearman locked gazes with him and for a moment, Mesmeric energies coursed through his skull, freezing his brain as his intellect locked with his assailant’s. For just a moment, alien thoughts tore through his mind—

—and he
became
the other: a pale misanthrope, conjuring in darkness, stealing bodies from graves and brewing poisons and scratching at the future . . . uncertain and afraid, hating people, but craving them . . . seeking the approval of others and never getting it, until his god –
Gurvon Gyle
– took him in . . . Then a torrent of information filled his skull as conversations with Gyle, treasured like diamonds, blurred past him—

—and then the link closed down, its purpose served, for now the assassin knew
him
. The killer gripped the spear anew and twisted it in his wound, tearing sideways, then ramming the spearhead all the way through his body until it emerged from his back and crunched into the tiles, pinning him to the ground. Purple light – necromancy-gnosis – gripped him, and leeched at his very being.

Kazim’s senses began to fail – then white light burst through him from below and he almost blanked out.

*

Rutt Sordell released the spear, content with where it was right now. He wasn’t alarmed about the pale healing-gnosis that had manifested about the Keshi; that stank of Elena Anborn. He’d expected it from the moment he’d plunged the spear into the Keshi’s side. He understood their link better now that he’d raped the Keshi’s mind as he held him immobile and helpless. Killing her lover would be a blow for Elena – but forcing her to try and save him would utterly neutralise her. The life-drain spell he’d imbedded into the spear would continue to suck the Keshi’s life-force, forcing Elena to give more and more . . .