Blood on Bronze (Blood on Bronze Book 1) (16 page)

But not only had he brought the wrath of the city down
on himself in force, he’d failed utterly in his purpose. He cursed himself over
and over to visions of his father and Keda dying by the executioner’s hand,
until his mind faded to a darkness of its own, and sleep brought him such
relief as it could.

When he awoke, he had no real way to know how many
hours had passed, but it felt like many. He waited further hours, until he
guessed a day or more must have passed since he’d crawled into this hole, but
at last thirst demanded he leave. He cleared the rubble from enough space to
crawl through, slid down the other side, stumbled over the debris along the
rest of the side passage and emerged into the larger hallway. If guards had
come down here looking for him, he saw no sign of it. On legs that ached with
each step, he turned, and started the long way toward home.

~

Inina hear the first conflicting rumors well in advance
of the soldiers and guards that fanned out across the city. Arjun dra Artashad,
the criminal son of a traitor father, and now apparently, paid agent of the
Empire of Sarsa, had made some sort of mad raid at the citadel, and against all
rational expectation, had escaped. In less than three minutes she heard five
different versions of the story.

All of them in another way told her the same story –
time to get home. She’d promised Arjun she would be ready to flee if they had
to, and now, with a few last supplies, she would be. She’d packed the strange
magical space behind the seal stone with all their valuables, some useful
tools, extra clothes, and some food and water. She would fill the last
remaining spaces with what she’d bought today. Anything they might need more
immediately, like weapons, they should carry.

She made it home safely enough, whispered the news to
Lurshiga, and hid in their room with window and door barred. For hours she
waited hopefully for him to arrive. Unlike most returns home, she kept her
disguise on this time, her face marked with false pocks and scars, her hair
matted, and dirty loose clothes concealing her body. It was well that she had,
for though he failed to arrive, at last a squad of guards did so. They were
searching room to room, knocking on doors, and kicking in those too slow to
respond. She heard them coming two floors down, and hid the seal stone in a
small place under a false bottom they’d made in the secret space in the corner,
under a handful of dusty gravel to make it look old and unused, and hoped it
all would hold up to scrutiny.

When the guards arrived, she unbarred the door and
bowed and scraped before them as they searched the room as thoroughly as men
who were of serious intent, but in a great hurry, might do. They questioned
her, but she had a plausible story prepared, and of course knew no Arjun dra
Artashad. Without a word of apology or thanks, they moved on the next room, and
then left. Once they’d been gone a while, she replaced the bars, then waited no
longer in hope, but in fear of the news of death she expected to hear.

Inina slept fitfully, but after hours more Lurshiga
knocked on her door, with that news of death. However, it was not the death she
imagined. Arjun’s father Ashur, and his old nursemaid Keda, had been executed,
and their heads planted on stakes in the old, now rarely used manner, in the so
called square of justice where the East Road crossed a great bridge, and passed
near the citadel.  Though she’d never met them, she wept for Arjun’s sake, and
then for him.

16.
The Tale of Harvests

In the dark hours before dawn, Inina awoke to a knock
on the door. She grabbed her bronze dagger and crept to the door. On the other
side, a weak voice was speaking in a whisper.

“Inina, it’s me.”

Arjun!

She opened the door, let him in, and hurriedly closed
it behind them. She was shocked at his appearance. He was cut, scratched, and
bruised all over his body, and the patches not visibly hurt were still masses
of grime. He wobbled unsteadily. She pulled him into her arms and kissed him. A
faint smile appeared on his parched lips, and he collapsed. She was strong for
her size, and lowered him as gently as she could to the floor, grunting under
the strain.

Inina peeled the filthy, blood-soaked slave’s tunic from
his body, looked in shock at the sword cuts underneath, and even more at their
terrible condition – raggedly caked with black grime and dried blood. She
poured water into a bowl, infused with some herbs she’d gotten from the healers
of Inkiddu, and used it to clean his battered body. He alternated between sleep
and groggy consciousness, and mumbled thanks to her. She gave him sips of fresh
water from a pitcher, and kissed him as she bound his wounds.

When she thought he was ready, she spoke, “Come my love,
climb into the bed. Here, I’ll help you.”

But he managed it on his own, sweating with the pain.
He turned over, climbed onto the bed, and then sat looking at her for a moment.

“Sit with me,” he said, eyes shining with love
underneath their exhaustion.

She did so. Then strain caught up with them both, and
they fell asleep curled together, his arms around her and a hand on her belly,
protectively over their unborn child.

~

For many days they hid in the room, dealing only with
Lurshiga or one of the urchins who helped her keep house. When she thought he
was ready, Inina told Arjun of the execution of his father and Keda. He’d
expected it, and took it a grim expression and no tears, but his eyes burned.
Lurshiga passed them such news as she got. The manhunt for Arjun had died down
again, but things in the city were getting worse. Bal-Shim had been invited to
the city council, and was making speeches and urging the people on against what
he claimed were foreign conspiracies behind all the recent turmoil. Rumors of
conspiracies of all kinds were spreading in the city, and informers were said
to be everywhere.

Arjun was unusually quiet, and more than normally
tense. He spent a great deal of time reading the clay tablets he’d gotten from
Shirin. In the cloistered confines of their little room, it became hard for
Inina to take, and at last she said something.

“My love… what are you planning?”

“Revenge on Bal-Shim, and all of them.”

“Someday, but for now you’d best stay hidden with me.”

“I am.”

“By all of them, do you mean the names we heard in the
tunnels?”

“That is what I need to figure out. I already knew
some of them were working together. Shalmansar is high priest of Ur-Laggu in
Zakran, Ayab iru Heb is the largest slave trader outside the Empire of Sarsa,
Mada dra Keshil is head of one of the old landowning families, and Naram dra
Zash-Ulshad is head of another even older family, and from what I’ve heard, has
his hands in a lot of things behind the scenes.”

“It is an odd collection, all right,” she replied,
“and hard to see what would bring them together on the same side, let alone
work together closely enough on the council to be part of some secret little
group, but there it was.”

“One thing that unites them,” he replied, “might be a
desire for power, though they might have different ideas about what to do with
it. Perhaps we can find out more.”

“While we’re at it, and in disguise, we might want to
spread a few rumors of our own, about you fleeing the city,” said Inina.

A faint smile crept into his expression, for the first
time in days.

“You amaze me, as does how much I love you!” he said,
and pulled her to him for a kiss.

~

The next several weeks fell into a pattern. Arjun and
Inina, in various disguises, roamed the city collecting information and
spreading rumors that he’d fled the city. Beyond that one basic point, they
were deliberately varied and contradictory, as one could expect from rumors. In
one version, Arjun had been smuggled in a caravan to Har. In another, he’d left
on a ship for Hektaris, an island in the west where the pale-skinned blue-clad
folk had strange customs and were deeply devoted to Jamisa, goddess of the Sea.
In yet another, Arjun had gone to Sarsa to receive rich rewards from his
master, the Great King.  In Arjun’s favorite, he’d leapt madly over the city
walls, as he had at the citadel, somehow lived, and fled north on foot across
the hills and dusty plains beyond, to some city or other in the League of
Kasim.

They were careful never to walk the streets outside
together, or to visit the same people under different disguises. Nor did they
spend much time talking with anyone in the area near the street of vipers,
where they were too well known to succeed at disguises.  However Inina’s very
absence was raising notice and concern among her widespread group of friends.
One thing they feared was that not all those friends were all that reliable,
and someone might put her absence together with other pieces of information.

When not engaged in their efforts at espionage, Arjun
studied magic in Shirin’s tablets, or studied combat on sporadic visits to
Enlil iru Geb. He tried teaching magic to Inina, but quickly realized he didn’t
know enough himself to do so safely, and in any case she’d seen enough of magic
now to make her want to avoid it rather than use it. He had better luck
teaching her to read, and she proved a quick student. For her part, Inina spent
every hour she could spare working her growing new networks of contacts in
other parts of the city, but as her pregnancy advanced, she was finding walking
long distances more tiring. There was also the problem of keeping in disguise,
it was going to be a lot harder when she grew too full to conceal, and in every
costume, she happened to be with child.

~

Another thing that Arjun did, as time permitted, was
slip to the tunnels under the city, which now held no terrors for him, to
practice magic. He went in complete darkness, shadows following him and ghouls
fleeing before him. He put great study into the protective circles in the
tablets of Shirin, like the one he’d failed at when he’d unleashed the… thing
from outside.

This time, he tried no such dangerous magic, instead
once the circle was drawn, he conjured his flame, and pushed his hand with it
to the inner ring, where the protection was supposed to start. It held, and the
flame splashed in the air against the circle. He’d gotten it right! He smiled,
and began to practice other things.

As the weeks went on, he mastered various simpler
forms of the Words of Opening, testing them on his own protective circles. In
the process he learned a great deal about combining or altering different
aspects of magic. He began to bring fresh clay tablets with him, and compile
notes of his own. One day, he had great success working with the flame portal
on his hand. He found that he could alter it to project a narrower jet of flame
more than a foot out. At other times, something went wrong, and he ended some
experiments with agonizing magical backlash coursing over his body. With care,
however, he avoided disasters on the scale of the small earthquake he’d made at
the tower of guard.

One day, he reflected how often it might be that
someone was in a position of having as many tablets of magical lore as he
possessed, and a place to practice it, but no master to train them. He guessed
not often, at least not where such a person lived for long. He wondered if his
self-training would lead him unknowingly down paths usually avoided by magi. It
was a risk he was willing to take, in order to have his revenge.

But that led him directly to thinking of Inina. He was
not willing to take risks with her life, and that of their child. She was
staying at home for longer stretches as the baby grew inside her, and he
realized it was unlikely in the foreseeable future that she’d be joining him on
any more dangerous ventures. For that matter, should he even do so himself?  He
burned with desire for vengeance on Bal-Shim and all the man’s friends and
allies. Inina had joined with him knowing that, but now matters had changed. He
considered making the rumors true, and fleeing the city with her, but
immediately knew he could not do so while Bal-Shim lived. He then considered
sending her away to hide in some other land while he finished what he’d
started. But would she be willing to?  Then he caught himself. The only one who
could answer that was her, and he’d have to talk to her to find out. He decided
he’d better do so sooner than later.

But there was one more thing to do before he went
home.

He drew a fresh protective circle on the ground, with
such reinforcements described in the books as he thought would be specifically
useful against summoned things. He seated himself in the center, sword at his
side. Then he began to trace his fingers in the air, slowly drawing the Forge
of the Least of Worlds.

The small ring appeared as before, glowing with
traceries of magic. He left only one small thing incomplete as he studied the
rest. It took intense concentration and willpower, as well as a great deal of
his energy, to keep the rest in place while he did so. Everything looked in
order, everything looked perfect. He completed the ring.

There was a glow of magic, a disc of light inside the
ring, then a flash, and where the glow had been was a blue black void. Arjun
could see its outlines in shadow and magic. It was as much as his skill could
muster, a space smaller than that behind the red granite seal, no more than
four hands breadths in any direction, but large enough for certain needful
things.

He named his world, and gave it a word of command.
With the word, he dismissed it, closing the entrance as if nothing had ever
been there.  Then again with the word, spoken only in his mind, he opened the
entrance once more.

He had it! His spirit soared and his heart exulted.
Then exhaustion came over him from the potent magic he had worked. He almost
lost consciousness, and then sat for some time in blank listlessness, eyes and
mind unfocused.

Sensing presences, he looked into the darkness outside
his circle, and many spirits and shapes of shadow were there. He focused his
eyes to see them clearly, and was again amazed at how varied their shapes were.
Some looked like the shades of living people, in ancient garb, but with eyes
that looked lost. Others were alien and horrible, still others vague and
indistinct even with his sight, and others yet seemed whimsical, even friendly
in an unearthly way. Here in the tunnels were a few of a type he hadn’t seen
before, like shades, but of creatures resembling the victims in the hideous
carvings. Vaguely humanoid in shape, he’d never seen their like. They were
fainter than the others. One day, he vowed to find out more about what all the
shadow beings might be. But now, he had things to do.

~

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Arjun my love, I’m sure. I’ll see this through
with you.”

“You would be safer somewhere else. I have trade
contacts in Tem, and even visited there once as a boy, with my father. Things
will probably be safer there, at least for now.”

“I’ll think about it, but I’m not ready. Life in this
city has been hard on me more often than not, but it is all I’ve ever known,
and I don’t want to leave it without you.”

“Very well, I love you with all my heart,” said Arjun,
looking into Inina’s eyes, and the mixture of love and worry there. He knew she
felt more than she said. He made a decision.

“I promise you, once I’ve gotten Bal-Shim, I’ll stop.
The rest will have to wait for better days. We really will have to leave the
city then. I won’t raise our child like this.”

“IF you get him…” and now he could see repressed
emotions were nearing the surface in her, “Please, please be careful, Arjun,
and I know only you can decide what is right to you, but at least consider
stopping now…”

He frowned, and turned away, pain and purpose clashing
in his mind.

~

One day, Arjun stopped by the stall of Umrub the
G’abudim. For a long time, the taciturn man had had nothing new to say. This
time he gestured for Arjun to come closer, and spoke to him quietly.

“It has been granted.  Come to us in one week to our
quarter of the city, alone.”

Arjun thanked him, and moved on as if nothing
significant had been said. In passing, he’d noted something else. Since magics
had been placed permanently on his eyes, he’d thought he detected faint flashes
of magic on the G’abudim, this time he was sure he’d seen it, in the shape of a
glyph on the man’s forehead. Moving through the bazaar from Umrub’s stall,
Arjun heard some further news that put fresh fires in him. Merchants who dealt
in metals were whispering that the last of the bronze makers had been put out
of business or arrested on charges of foreign intrigue. The last of the bronze
makers but Bal-Shim, that was, and now the entire bronze making industry in
Zakran was in his hands. If the opinions of the merchants were anything to go
by, Bal-Shim was not doing a good job at it.