Honor Bound (9 page)

"No clue." He tightened the strap
holding his pack. "I'm off, then."

"I'll walk with you a
ways."

Delgar shrugged and set off toward
his forge room. "That's fine, but then you're heading back to the
others."

"Did I say I wasn't?"

"You didn't have to say anything.
You look as worried as a newborn babe, and with good reason.
There's a sorcerer in this city, and I figure you want to warn your
kin just as much as I do mine."

Fox blew out a sigh of relief. "I
thought you'd understand."

The dwarf rounded on him, "I
understand that you're an idiot. After what happened on Kronhus,
it's not safe for you to show your face."

"Everyone thinks I'm dead. No one's
looking for me."

Delgar snorted. "They'll be rounding
up everyone who looks anything like the City Fox. Granted, you
don't come very close to the hero of legend, but why take the
risk?"

"My mother—"

"Your mother has refused to leave
that cottage for ten years. What's different today that will make
any difference to her?"

Avidan cleared his throat. The two
friends spun toward him, startled by his sudden
appearance.

"I might be able to help. There are
certain potions that bring swift and harmless slumber. Let Delgar
take Mistress Winterborn such a potion and then carry her back to
the den."

"I don't like it," Fox
said.

"It's not an ideal solution," Delgar
said, "but it's better than what you have in mind. Give me the
amulet as a token, so that she'll know you sent me."

Fox wasn't sure she'd remember it,
or him, but the suggestion struck him as sensible. He reached into
his pocket for the broken locket and held it out. As Delgar reached
for it, Fox's fingers snapped shut and he jerked his hand
back.

The dwarf blinked. "What was that
about?"

"I'm not sure," Fox said. He tried
unclenching his fist, but his fingers wouldn't obey. "I don't think
I can give it to you."

"Sure you can."

"No, I literally can't give you the
amulet. There must be some sort of compulsion built into it. You'll
have to take it from me."

Delgar sighed and shrugged off his
pack. He lowered it to the ground. Without warning he swung the
pack at Fox's ankles in a hard, rising arc.

The thief's feet swept out from
under him. For a moment his boots and his belt occupied the same
level plane, as if he was sitting on the ground with his legs
outstretched. And then, suddenly, he was. Pain jolted up his spine
as he hit the stone floor. Then Delgar dived at him, and the floor
seemed soft and yielding in comparison.

They rolled and grappled in
mismatched combat. Fox writhed and twisted and did his best to make
the dwarf work at not hurting him. Vishni, who as usual was drawn
by the sounds of an entertaining fight, cheered Fox on and offered
improbable suggestions.

But the battle was as brief as the
outcome was certain. In moments Delgar had him face down with both
arms pinned behind him. He pried over Fox's clenched fist to find .
. . nothing.

"Where'd it go?" the dwarf
demanded.

Fox rolled over as soon as Delgar
released him and stared at his open, empty hands. "I haven't the
first clue."

"That's bad," Vishni said flatly.
"That means the amulet is attuned to you. It can sense your intent.
And it will disappear rather than be taken. This is powerful
magic."

A grim possibility occurred to Fox.
"Could the amulet be traced?"

"Of course ! Why else would anyone
go to the trouble of making sure you
had
to keep it?"

"That would explain how the adepts
rounded up Eldreath's offspring," he muttered. "Assuming each of us
got an amulet."

"
Each
of us?" Vishni echoed. Her dark
eyes widened. "You knew you were descended from Eldreath, and you
didn't tell me?"

"You'd make a ballad out of the
tale."

"No I wouldn't!"

Fox sighed. "Vishni, you've already
got your book open to a new page."

The fairy looked down at the book on
her lap. "Oh."

He pushed himself to his feet.
"We've got to separate. If they find me, they find the Thorn.
Delgar, you go warn your people, then bring my mother to the
den."

Vishni caught his arm. "What will
you do?"

"Find a boat. Make arrangements.
When I figure out how to get Delgar to the mainland, I'll send word
to the Cat and the Cauldron."

"I like that tavern," Vishni said in
a small voice.

"I know." He brushed the knuckles of
one hand across her cheek. "No explosions."

"No promises," she said.

Nimbolk strode along the fisherman's
wharf, the hood of his cloak pulled low over his forehead. This did
not made him conspicuous, for the sea wind nipped sharply and most
of the humans covered their heads with hoods or knitted woolen
caps. Like them, he walked with hunched shoulders and an awkward
heel-to-toe stride. The clatter of his own boots against the wooden
planks offended him. No wonder humans crashed through the forest
like drunken trolls.

He skirted a group of men who were
sorting through the contents of a herring net and a pair of doxies
who watched the incoming fisherman with inviting smiles and hard,
coin-counting eyes. An old man wrapped in a tattered cloak crouched
nearby, using a barrel filled with brine as a windbreak. He might
as well have been invisible for all the attention the others paid
him. This filled Nimbolk with sorrow and outrage. He had heard
humans allowed their elders to go cold and hungry, but knowing this
did not prepare him to confront the reality.

Was there something in the brine,
Nimbolk wondered, that pickled the humans' brains along with their
fish? Or were they actively taught to ignore the world around them
and the people in it? It didn't seem possible that any sentient
being could be born as oblivious as these humans.

He lifted his gaze to the cliff-side
fortress, the keep that until recently had been held by the adept
Muldonny. A single road wound up the steep approach to the
fortress, but many more lay hidden beneath the streets and
buildings. Long before any human set foot on these islands, dwarves
had called them home. They'd been gone for a very long time, but
once their tunnels had linked the islands' system of caverns and
protected secrets so old that dragons had forgotten
them.

Were any of Stormwall's humans aware
of the ancient civilization beneath their feet? Would they care if
they knew?

The humans of Sevrin struck Nimbolk
as being every bit as contrary as they were oblivious. They had
many good things to say of Muldonny, whose alchemical weapons had
played an important role in ending the harsh rule of the sorcerer
Eldreath, but oddly enough, few people condemned Fox Winterborn for
the raid that killed the island's ruler and war hero. In fact, the
Stormwall fisherfolk seemed reluctant to say anything at all about
the red-haired thief.

People on Kronhus had been full of
talk of this City Fox, full of outrage over the death of their
adept. But they seemed equally upset at the attempt to use Tymion's
death to discredit Fox and his followers. Nimbolk's attempts to
learn what this Fox's goal had been and what his followers hoped to
achieve had not been well received.

He glanced down at his knuckles. If
he'd been in the forest with his fellow elves, the scrapes and
bruises from yesterday's fight would have healed by now.

It occurred to him that he was
experiencing life as humans did—cut off from others, dependent upon
his own strength, living out a singled-minded purpose with only
scant regard for those around him.

Perhaps he judged Sevrin's humans
unfairly. He wasn't sure an elf would do much better in a world
where everyone regarded himself as an island, linked only by
fragile bridges of blood or choice or necessity.

Is this what had happened to Honor?
The elf woman who's stumbled into the Starsingers grove that
midwinter nice had looked so frail, and she'd aged more than a
handful of years could explain. It was almost as if she'd been
denied the renewal of a springtime Greening.

Was that even possible? How could
any elf endure that and live?

Nimbolk quickened his pace, suddenly
anxious to leave this crowd of humans behind.

The wharfs gave way to an open-air
market, a small village of tables and tents and wagons where one
could purchase fresh fish, pot-ready rabbits and fowl, root
vegetables, baskets of summer berries, and a bewildering variety of
household goods.

A plump woman was tossing nuggets of
salt bread to passersby to tempt them into buying her strange
loaves—thin ropes of bread twisted into knots. Nimbolk caught the
piece she threw his way and munched it as he worked his way through
the crowd.

Up ahead a path disappeared into the
shadows between two rows of warehouses. Nimbolk veered away from
the crowd and slipped gratefully into the treeless shade. So much
sun, so many days at sea, had bleached any hint of summer green
from his hair and skin and left him as pale as a northland
human.

The noise of the port fell away,
muted by thick stone walls. Since there were no eyes to see him,
Nimbolk abandoned his attempt to move like a human. For a moment,
he reveled in the ability to move without being deafened by his own
footsteps. His expanding senses caught the muffled thud of fists
against flesh, the soft grunts of pain.

Judging distances was difficult in
these human-built caverns, but Nimbolk guessed the fight was taking
place behind the tall wooden building to his right.

Curious, he veered off along a
passage littered with old crates. At the end of the alley he turned
onto a rock-strewn strip of land between the warehouses and the
cliff overhead.

Four men stood behind the tall
wooden building. One of them, a yellow-bearded man wearing a
fisherman's knitted cap, sagged in the grip of two men sporting
identical tunics of blue-dyed leather. A third uniformed man thrust
a coin at his victim's battered face. Even in the dim light,
Nimbolk could see the tell-tale shine of fairy gold.

"There's no sense denying it, not
when this was found in your boat."

The fisherman spat a mouthful of
blood at the man's boots. "There might be white spatter on the
hull. That don't mean I'm on friendly terms with the seagull that
dropped it."

His tormenter raised a short club
and jabbed at his chest. The fisherman's gasp of pain ended in a
gurgle.

Nimbolk frowned. He wondered if the
thugs realized they'd broken this man's ribs and driven a jagged
bone into one lung. The fisherman was as good as dead. If the
purpose of this beating was extracting information, these men were
as stupid as they were brutal.

The club-wielded man poked him
again. "That's not the answer I'm looking for."

"Only one I got," gasped the
fisherman.

"Maybe you'd rather answer to
Captain Volgo? Because I feel obliged to tell you that he's not
half as pleasant as we three fellows."

Volgo.

For a moment Nimbolk stood frozen,
his mind filled with the image of Asteria lying face-down in bloody
snow, a man with a club standing behind her.

The fisherman spat blood into his
killer's eyes. The man swore and rocked back a step as he swiped
one sleeve over his face. His blood-streaked features twisted in
something almost like joy as he lifted the club high.

The man who'd killed Honor had worn
that very smile.

Nimbolk threw the knife before he
realized he'd unsheathed it. The blade spun three times before it
sank to the hilt in the man's exposed armpit, paying him his own
coin for the death he'd given the fisherman.

The man stumbled, and the downward
swing meant to end the fisherman slammed into the face of one of
the thugs holding him.

Their comrade yelped in surprise. He
danced aside, letting the fisherman fall as he pulled a sword and
looked around for an enemy to fight.

Nimbolk drew two daggers and obliged
him.

He walked down the alley, blades
held at his sides. The last man standing raised his sword high and
rushed forward, roaring like a charging boar.

Nimbolk lifted both daggers and
caught the descending sword in a cross parry. A quick twist
wrenched the blade from the man's hand and sent it clattering
aside. He stroked one dagger across the human's throat and kept
walking.

The club wielder was sitting on the
ground, one hand clamped to his wound. His eyes widened as he took
in Nimbolk's approach and he scuttled backwards like a crab. The
scent of blood and fear rose from him, mingling with the tang of
salt and sharper mineral odors.

Nimbolk pursued, bloody dagger
leading.