City of Demons (46 page)

The pain burned through him like a lightning strike. He dropped the poker as Draneck moved forward, pushing the blade deeper into the muscles of his leg.

“Can you stand that, Bane?” the Duelist hissed. “Or is the courage of your lot overrated?” The hilt was almost touching Garet's leg before he stopped. “And now for my dear cousin.”

He started to withdraw the blade, but Garet grabbed the rapier's bell-shaped guard with both hands. Draneck cursed and twisted the blade. Garet screamed, but held on.

The Duelist drew back his left hand to strike him, but screamed himself when Salick raked the saw-like edge of her baker's knife over the hand that still held the sword. Draneck fell back, both hands pressed to his body, trying to staunch the blood. Before he could look up, Salick smashed the hilt of her knife down on the back of his neck, dropping him like a polled ox.

“Good night, dear cousin,” she hissed, and then knelt by Garet.

The sword was still in his leg, and he could not stand. Propped up on one hand, he reassured Salick.

“I'm all right,” he gasped, then grimaced as the lightning ran up his leg again. “Or at least I'm not dying. Help the King.”

The King did need help. Trax had fought well early in his battle against Shoronict, but his lack of training was beginning to tell. Unlike the Duelist, he had neither had the time nor inclination to devote his entire life to fencing. A trickle of blood from his left shoulder and a clean cut on the shirt above his stomach showed that the match would soon end.

Salick looked desperately at the sword still stuck through Garet's leg. He gritted his teeth and tried to pull it out, but she grabbed the poker instead and leaped over him.

“No!” he cried after her. “Take the sword!” But she was already racing towards the King.

It was too late for her help. Shoronict disarmed Trax with a flick of his wrist, sending the King's sword cart wheeling across the room. He smiled slightly and drew back his arm for the killing blow.

Trax stood, desperate but unmoving in the face of his death. But the blow never fell. Shoronict gave a small start, and the smile faded from his face to be replaced by a look of wonder. The Duelist fell forward, revealing the King's broadsword sticking out of his back and a fat, terrified man in wet clothes shaking behind him.

“You...your Majesty,” the man stuttered, his grey hair raining drops of water on the floor as he trembled, “I, I came up those stairs to see if you needed me. I found your sword— you left it on the bed again.” He pointed a shaking finger at the body of the Duelist lying on the floor. “Then I saw this man attacking you, and...” He stopped speaking and started to weep, great tears curving down his round face.

“Excellent timing,” Trax told him, holding his wounded shoulder and gasping for air. He leaned back against the table and turned his head to the two Banes, Salick caught half-way to the King, poker still raised above her head. “May I introduce my butler, Master Barick.”

From his position on the floor, blood flowing around his fingers where the sword stuck out of his thigh, Garet looked at the wet clothes on the poor man and said to the King, “Your Majesty, I think we have already met.” The last thing he heard before fainting was Salick's near-hysterical laughter.

Garet half-woke several times before coming to full consciousness in the Banehall's infirmary. His earlier rousings were a jumble of voices and images. In one, the hawk-faced Guard who had stopped him outside the Palace held him, pinning his arms against his chest. She looked down at him angrily and said, “I knew something was wrong about you,” before the lightning went off again in his leg, and he dropped back into unconsciousness. Another fragment was the voice of the King saying, “I don't care how many of you it takes, Captain. Disarm all of them and send them back to their homes.” And then an image of a red dawn swinging overhead and the sound of wheels on stone.

Banerict was bending over his throbbing leg when he came fully awake. The physician was dabbing a stinging liquid on the wound and cleaning away the blood. Garet's pants had disappeared.

“So, you've finally decided to join me!” the physician said, smiling at him. “You'll be glad to know that a sword is no longer sticking through your leg, and the blood has stopped leaking out of you and staining the blankets.” He bent to examine the wound. “Yes,” he muttered, “if I were foolish enough to want such a wound, this would be the kind to wish for, clean, straight, and thankfully missing the bone and major arteries.” He straightened and smiled again.

“Where is Salick?” Garet rasped, his throat dry as dust.

Banerict helped him to a sitting position and gave him a cup of water from the small table beside the bed. “She is with Mandarack and some other Masters at the Palace, making peace with the King and his Council of Lords,” he told him. “But other friends of yours are waiting. Shall I summon them?”

Garet nodded weakly. He closed his eyes for only a moment, it seemed, when he heard Marick's outraged whisper to the physician.

“I thought you said he was awake, Banerict.”

“He is, more or less, Marick,” Banerict replied calmly. “He's lost enough blood to make him sleepy for a few days, and that leg will take a fortnight to heal, but he will recover fully.”

It didn't seem worth the trouble to speak, and soon it was quiet again. He must have slept, for when he opened his eyes, he was thirsty again, and Master Tarix, not Marick, was there beside him in her wheeled chair, offering him a cup of water.

“So, the rumours are true, Garet; you're not dead after all,” she laughed. “I'm glad, especially with all the time I've invested in your training.” The bruises on her face were fiercely purpled, making her look more damaged than the young man in the bed.

Garet eased himself up carefully and drank from the cup again. Feeling at last able to speak, he asked, “How are you, Master?”

“Bruised and sore, but otherwise happy,” she answered, and bent in her chair to look at his leg. Banerict had tied the edges of the wound together with silk threads dipped in some liquid to discourage infection. The threads pulled and stung whenever he moved.

Satisfied, she sat back and asked, “How are you?”

“Light headed, Master,” he replied truthfully. “The King gave us wine.”

“And trouble, too, I see,” she said, clicking her tongue.

“That was Shoronict and Draneck,” he said. “Who did this, I mean.” He pointed to his leg. Still thirsty, he reached to the table for more water, but found none. Turning back, he found Tarix studying him carefully.

“I wonder if you know what a name you have made in this Hall, Garet.”

He did not answer.

“You have forced many of us to look at things as you must—from the outside,” she laughed. “It's an uncomfortable view for many of us. Even Master Mandarack couldn't split open six-hundred years of tradition on his own.”

“I know I am an outsider, Master,” he said quietly. After all he had seen and done, he knew it was still the most important fact of his life.

“No one is born to the Hall,” she replied, laying a hand on his.

“But won't you and Master Relict have children in this Hall?” he asked, then apologized when he saw Tarix flush. “I'm sorry, Master, that was rude. I should never...”

She shook her head, taking away her hand and stifling a laugh. “No, Garet. I'd forgotten how all-encompassing your curiosity can be.” She looked down. “If Heaven blesses us, we might try reducing our patrols and other duties in the Hall for a few years to raise a child. Some Banes even leave the Hall and return to their old homes to do so.” She gave a small, self-conscious sigh. “But it is difficult to live more than one life. That is why most Bane couples give up their children to be raised by relatives. And there is, of course, no guarantee that the child will be a Bane.”

To live two lives
, Garet thought. He remembered Salick saying, long ago, that a Bane had no time to be anything else.

“Then why get married?” he asked, more to himself than to his visitor.

Her startled whoop shocked him out of his reverie. “Garet,” she said, fighting back tears of laughter, “there are some questions that you just can't expect people to answer!”

He ruefully shared her amusement, the tension easing from his tired body. She picked up the long crutches from her lap and slid them onto the bed beside him.

“Take these. You'll need a pair for a while.”

“But Master, these are yours,” he said. “You'll need them!”

“Don't worry,” she reassured him. “That crazy woman Dasanat and our own Banerict are conspiring to try and fix this leg,” she said, slapping her bent limb. “He wants to re-break it to let it heal straight; he still curses the last physician we had when I broke it, and Dasanat swears she can cobble me some sort of brace to hold it steady when I walk.” She thrust out the smaller set of crutches and rolled her chair towards the door. “Whatever happens, I'm sure I'll need this chair for a while longer, even if they're not mad.”

“Why is Dasanat here?” he asked. The last time he had seen the Mechanical, she had been so involved with her work that she barely left Andarack's house to eat or sleep.

She paused at the door and wheeled her chair around to face him again. “She's the one who brought word of Andarack's capture,” she told him. “That's been fixed, by the way. Once the Duelists were broken up and sent packing, he was found at their training yard, along with Gonect, both chained to the wall and spitting mad.” She laughed. “The other Ward Lords were so incensed that the King had their full support, and all their Ward guards to help get rid of those pompous bullies!”

After a moment of silence, she spoke again. “You're a Green now and should apprentice to a Master. I know that you owe Mandarack much, but if you decide to look to another Master, I would be pleased to accept you as my apprentice, if Banerict can make me fit for patrolling again, that is.”

Without waiting for a reply from the stunned Bane, she twisted her chair to line up with the door and propelled herself quickly back towards the gymnasiums.

Choosing a Master
, Garet thought. He had forgotten all about his promotion. Looking at his uniform, folded at the foot of his bed, he saw a green sash peeking out from below the tunic. Leaning back on his pillow, he shook his head. No wonder, with all this excitement he would probably forget his own name if people didn't keep calling him by it.

“Garet!” a voice called from the doorway, and he spent a pleasant hour with Marick and Dorict learning of the latest events. The Council of Lords was holding Draneck for trial. The Duelists were suppressed, and the King was singing the Banehall's praises, at least publicly.

Later in the day, Salick came rushing in. After many welcome, though awkward embraces, she explained why she had been absent.

“Honestly, if the Council could decide anything faster than mud crawling uphill, we would have been done in an hour,” she complained, sitting on the bed beside him and transferring the tray of food she had brought from the chair to his lap.

He asked her a question that had been on his mind, now that he had time to think again. “Where is Master Adrix?”

“In his quarters, with Farix and a few others,” she said. “There's only a few that didn't accept Master Mandarack as the new Hallmaster. They've all given their promise to the other Masters that they won't try anything.”

“Adrix is screaming bloody murder,” added Marick, who had followed her in, clucking his tongue at their displays of affection, “but only Farix is there to hear it.”

“How do you know?” Salick asked suspiciously.

“Oh, I had business outside his door today.”

Salick rolled her eyes. “Well, he can scream all he wants, his name wasn't even mentioned at the Council meeting today. I think that they've all decided to pretend he doesn't exist,” she said. “It's more convenient that way for the King and the Hall.”

“Did the King support us in Council?” Garet asked around a mouthful of roast chicken.

“Don't talk with your mouth full, Green!” she teased. “Of course he did, but every Ward Lord except Andarack had to be listened to while they droned on about tradition and duty and how none of this was their fault.” She grimaced. “Finally Master Mandarack shut them all up by explaining why this new demon is so dangerous, and telling them what they needed to do to help us.” She stole a chicken leg from his plate. “After that, they practically got down on their pudgy knees and begged him and the King to make peace,” she said, waving the drumstick in the air. “They signed the agreement an hour ago.”

“If you're done taking the food from a wounded Bane's mouth,” Garet laughed, “maybe you can tell me if the Caller has reappeared.”

Salick shook her head. “Not yet. In the last two days, patrols have encountered two normal demons, if the word can be used to describe such things. One was another Crawler and the other a Rat Demon,” she said. “Both were broadcasting fear. They were easily tracked and killed before they did anyone harm.”