Champion of the Rose - Kobo Ebook (31 page)

Strake had made no bones about his opinion of the city's
decay, and before Vixen's death the two men had been jousting over the
feasibility of simply ripping out all the crowded, shoddily built houses which
had been squeezed into the docks. Replacing them would be costly, but Strake did not seem able to stop
worrying at the subject. His tone was
always light, but barely covered tangible discomfort.

Although he had conceded that the port was a little impaired
by the constricted access, Aristide was ever ready to sprinkle salt on any
attempt to place the appearance of the docks above other priorities. He produced a particularly bland expression
now and said, "If we do attract shipwrights, we could direct them to
making cosmetic changes about the foreshore."

"You think the skills transfer?"

"It's all working with wood. Putting it up, tearing it down."

"Don't forget the masonry." Strake nodded north-east to the heart of Tor
Darest, a patchwork of sun-kissed roofs and evening shadows on yellow
stone. "Has ship design changed so
much that sandstone is a major component?"

"Stone ships could be made possible."

They continued in the same vein, and Soren rolled her eyes,
inadvertently catching the gaze of the Tzel Aviar. The Fae listened with the same
stone-dropping-into-a-well imperturbability with which he met everything
else. Faint concentration, no sense of
emotion. It was highly unlikely that
either Strake or Aristide had forgotten the
Fae's
presence,
but the same quality of self-containment which captured the eye made it easy to
accept him as a silent part of the background.

They had started down the southern slope of the hill, the
same path she had followed with Vixen. Directly ahead and curving back to their left, the beach became an
uncertain glimmer in the gloom of the hill. The lights of Tor Darest were hidden by
Vostal's
bulk and the shipping tower at Sapphire Point was the only gleaming mote to the
south-west, where the coast travelled south from
Eldavar
River to form the western reaches of the Bay of Diamonds. The sun was now only a memory of colour and
all around them was shadow beneath a darkling sky.

"This is the best time of day."

Strake, gazing up at the lucent heavens. A few faint stars wavered at the limit of
visibility and the occasional gull floated in and out of view, heading across
the bay to find a perch. It had grown
markedly colder and the wind was picking up, bringing the tingle of salt. Above the shush of waves, Soren could hear
perfectly well the breathing of the seven who accompanied them, but so far as
the Rose was concerned, no-one and nothing else stood on
Vostal
Hill.

The sky, she thought, was exactly the colour of Strake's
eyes. Blue and black at once. "When does the moon rise?"

"An hour or more." Aristide took a step forward as he spoke, then stopped and looked back
at Strake for direction.

"We wait."

-
oOo
-

"I don't intend
to do it all at once," Strake said, breaking a long silence. "But I mean to have
Vostal
Hill made into gardens."

This was directed at Aristide, who shifted on the rock he
had chosen as a seat. "Why?"

"Because I'm not so profligate as to tear down that
monstrosity called the New Palace and restore the garden which was there."

A pause. "There
is a certain logic to that."

"No argument?" Strake didn't affect surprise, was simply asking.

"That would depend on your schedule." Aristide allowed sand to trickle from his
palm. The moon, a crescent above the
sea, did not cast nearly enough light to make this visible, but between them
the three mages had enchanted the vision of the entire group, so that night
became, if not day, a blue-stained dusk.

Dusting his hands together, Aristide stood. "We should return to the palace. A long delay in the chill will only make us
sluggish. Another sortie later at night
may bear more fruit."

Soren was surprised when Strake didn't argue, simply heading
down the beach over the tide-smoothed sand. Perhaps the wait was preying on his nerves.

"Both the killings here seem to have occurred after
midnight," Soren offered.

"Others did not."

She was not the only one who had learned the signs of temper
which would creep into her
Rathen's
voice. Aristide turned his assessing gaze on the set
of his King's shoulders, and the Captain of the Guard increased her pace. Now was not the moment for Strake to decide
he had a better chance of drawing out the killer by sending his defenders
away. He had the sword from the treasury
strapped to his hip, and was gripping the hilt as if charging off into the dark
with it drawn was the only thing which could alleviate his disappointment.

"I hesitate to suggest further investigation of the
Rose," Soren said, quite honestly. "But it may be the only way we're going to find this thing."

Aristide, keeping step with her, produced a gentle smile, as
if he thought her far too obvious. But
Strake's hatred of the Rose was enough to divert him.

"We know its abilities from the runes," he said,
looking back with a predictably irritable frown. "Our energies are better spent trying to
draw the assassin out. In the short term
at least."

He hadn't liked his own qualification, and increased his
pace. Worried he'd pull ahead of them,
Soren felt a prickle of unease, then a pitch of dismay. The Rose. It had so rarely been tangible since their return, she'd almost
forgotten that weird sense of conflict. Her step faltered and, on cue, breathing.

It was the Tzel Aviar who touched her arm, questioning her
without words. Soren forced herself to
walk on normally, then murmured: "On the crest of the hill. Can you see anyone?"

She didn't follow his glance up, already knowing the
answer. The Rose was not shrieking its
fear, but it was a definite warning. And
– the breathing sounded the same. Slow,
unhurried inhalations. Not a monster,
but a man.

"What is its location?" the Tzel Aviar asked. The words caught Aristide's attention, but
there was no fear of exposure from that source. He merely moved a step closer to hear her answer.

"Almost directly above us. A little behind now and a couple of hundred
feet away. Not moving."

"But likely to if we all turned and took aim. I wouldn't care to wager on the
shot." They walked on in silence as
Aristide surveyed the beach. Then, when
Soren's nerves were screaming for the delay, he called: "
Aluster
."

Use of his given name, when Aristide had remained so
determinedly formal with his King, was warning enough. Strake's long stride didn't check, but his
head came alertly up and, staring ahead, he said: "Where?"

"Forty feet behind and well above. I've marked the general area with a scrape in
the sand."

To their credit, only one of the guards so much as glanced,
and he covered it well. Soren, her heart
indulging in small cartwheels, took a much-needed breath and added: "It's
still not moving."

"Too many of us here," Strake said,
immediately. "I'll head back. Accompany me, if you will, Tzel
Damaris."

With an unexpectedly accomplished turn for acting, Strake
checked as if he had discovered some loss, looked down the beach, and then
strode back along the line of their footprints in the sand. "Position for the best possible
shot," he said to Aristide as he passed. "Soren, signal them when it reaches that stump-shaped rock."

Assuming that it came straight down the hill toward
Aristide's barely visible mark, that it moved at all, that it would fall
obligingly in with his plans. Soren
struggled to put the Rose's unease at a distance as the Tzel Aviar wordlessly
followed Strake down the beach, with the Captain of the Guard tagging
stubbornly at their heels. The guards,
proving their worth, drifted in a casual cluster in their wake, surreptitiously
checking their weapons, none of them looking directly at the target rock.

"Just yell," Aristide advised, frowning in
concentration. He was to try and break
the assassin's invisibility while the Tzel Aviar performed divinations. "Is it moving?"

"It – yes." She could not decide whether to be pleased or dismayed as the presence
shifted. A step, two, down the
slope. Strake was drawing closer, his
head bent attentively toward the Tzel Aviar, as if they argued some point. The guards were full of sidelong glances as
they spread down the beach, and Aristide left Soren to follow them a short distance
behind. It would be all too obvious if
not for that protective cloak of invisibility, which surely made the assassin
arrogantly careless. No way for him to
know she could hear his every breath.

Strake glanced up once, eloquently casual. The man who had taken so much was less than
fifty feet away, no sign of excitement or fear in his even breathing. It would surely seem the perfect chance. A quick dash down the hill, a single blow,
and then the empty beach stretching south. How could they stop him, after all?

"
NOW
!
"

Every crossbow came up, Aristide spoke softly, Strake's
sword was in his hand, and–

Dawn. A flare of
light so intense the seashore was bleached beyond Summer's height, though no
heat touched them. It was like ten
thousand
mageglows
had escaped their orbs, white
knives stabbing into vulnerable eyes.

Soren's attention had been on Strake, not on the
stump-shaped rock central to the burst. Even so she gasped in pain and clapped hands to her face, for the moment
seeing only colours. But she could still
hear. And concentrating around the
tumult of a Rose suddenly beyond frantic, she found the quick breath of one no
longer moving at a slow and steady pace, but running along the slope of the
hill, angling down toward the beach. Toward her.

For the first time she drew the Champion's Sword without
catch. It sang as it slid out of the
scabbard and her breath sobbed in her throat as she whipped it over her head,
the muscles in her forearm straining with the effort of not simply slamming it
to the ground.

He moved so quickly! No human could run like that. She
barely had time from realising where he was heading to grab hilt of sword and
get it between them, blinking desperately to clear her vision. And then another breath, with a shameful
measure of squeak, as she stared through streaming eyes at a beach where her
partners in this mislaid trap stood or stumbled, clustering toward Strake
because that's who they thought was at risk. And the thing, the sound of breathing, the assassin, moon-deadly,
songless killer was right in front of her.

Only Aristide turned at the noise she made, to find her
standing with Kittredge's sword outstretched, point at throat height
confronting a nothingness which made footprints in the sand. The assassin didn't cut her down, didn't
leave her slashed and bleeding to follow Vixen,
Vahse
,
all the others into the Moon's embrace. Just stood there.

Another ragged breath. The blunt tip of the sword shook. A length of dull metal she was completely unable to use, except that
somehow it held the killer at bay. She
stared past that wobbling tip at Aristide, his hands sketching the beginning of
some casting, face deadly serious. The
Rose had gone as still as a rabbit before a snake. Another breath.

The light didn't change. There were no clouds to cast a shadow across the waning moon. And yet, between that moment and the next, he
was there. Dark hair, a pale face, her
own height. Dressed in black specked
with dried rust. Vixen's blood. A carter's. Perhaps, she thought with slow dread, even
Vahse's
blood.

Jansette
had said he was
young. Beyond understatement, for this
was a boy. Fourteen, fifteen at
most. Fae blood to be certain, with a
human adult's height and that child's face. Delicate bones contoured with shadows, eyes moon silver framed by
improbable lashes. A smudge of dirt on
one side of his mouth. No sign of claws.

Noise, voices, gathering reaction made no impact on her as
she found the strength for another breath. Her arm ached, the sword an unsteady fingernail from the killer's
chin. Monster, murderer. Child.

"
Tuath
,"
he said, though monsters surely should not speak, let alone with such a light
voice, made husky with urgency. "
Tuatha
,
secra
del
."

As she struggled to make some sense of this, the Rose
stirred abruptly back to life, not in reaction to the words but to bring her a
breath, a presence suddenly falling into existence above her. Despite herself she turned her head in
reaction to the coil of unease shooting through her, looked up the hill and saw
the outline of a figure, almost certainly Fae from the height, drawing back a
bow.

Soren didn't see the shaft released, and the boy she held at
sword-point had vanished before it struck home. But she heard its meaty penetration, and the tiny noise he made before
he ran.

She turned, and watched the line of footprints appear until
they reached the rock and grass of the hillside. Then there were guardsmen everywhere, three
galloping past her to chase the invisible, another pair scrambling up the hill
toward an archer she felt she should tell them had already gone, vanished as
mysteriously as it had arrived. But she
needed to stay upright.

A hand on her back came as silent support. Aristide, his spell forgotten as he shifted
his attention between the doubled pursuit. He was saying something, and she forced herself to concentrate on the
calm reply of the Tzel Aviar as he and Strake came up the sand.

"Your casting was clean, Lord Aristide," the Fae
was saying. "That at least provided
an explanation for some of our difficulty. Another natural defence, for he would have had no chance to consciously
turn that spell. Revelation warped
became light. Anything cast on him, I
think we will find, will turn and mutate."