Lhind the Thief (34 page)

“Get my sword,” she commanded, without taking her gaze from
me.

“If you do,” I said, brandishing the book, “I will set this
on fire.” As a herd of guards splashed into the garden below me, I added, “If
they come anywhere near me.”

The duchess motioned to the three guards who’d just reached
the ivy and were about to pull themselves up. “Wait there.” She smiled. “I can
wait. Can you? Who
are
you?”

If ever there was a time for a lie, this was it. “I was sent
by Emperor Jardis Dhes-Andis,” I said.

Acid laughter rolled through my mind. Faryana was gone. I
froze, witless with fear. I’d left the pinhole open too long! Dhes-Andis’s
mental voice, still chuckling, sounded like distant thunder on the mental
plane.
I will back your efforts, my inventive
little apprentice, as long as you keep hold of that book. I want that book—

I slammed the mental door.

Think! I could make a shimmer, but that would not get me
away from the ivy. Could I turn into a bird? I was desperate enough—as if to
torture me with what I could not have, I heard Tir’s frantic cry somewhere
above the roof. I tried loosening my grip, but my body in its sodden clothing
was too heavy. I knew I’d drop like a stone.

Then the shivery sound of a sword sliding from a sheath rang
through the air, and the duchess said, “I am tired of waiting. Give me the
book, and you can return to the emperor with my compliments. In fact, since you
are obviously better than this fool, why don’t you come inside and take her
place? Give me what I want, and the book is yours. And as much gold as you
ask.”

She struck the frozen mage with the hilt of her sword, and
the woman thumped to the floor, helpless to break her fall.

Idiot,
I thought
at myself. I cleared my throat, then hummed to get her register, but a warning
tightening of my own throat caused me to wheeze in a startled breath. Curling
one hand, I surreptitiously tried a tiny shimmer, a flower among the ivy
leaves.

Nothing.

Dhes-Andis had done something to my magic. So that was why
he said he’d help me—he wanted me relying on him for magic, and had gotten
my
register. Meanwhile, he was probably
sending minions . . .

But he was a continent away, and my immediate danger was
here before my eyes. What to do? What to do?

Lie my way out of it, of course.

Trying for as callous a tone as hers, I said, “I can drop
you with a word. So no tricks.”

The duchess gave a breathless laugh, and backed up. “All
right, all right.” She snapped her fingers, and a guard presented a gem-chased
sword sheath. The duchess gave me an amused glance, and returned the sword to
its sheath.

My fingers had nearly gone numb. I loosened my death grip,
and climbed the rest of the way to the window, then slid inside, careful to
keep my back to the open air. She and her three guards (one had been sent to
fetch that crowd down below, getting rained on as they glared up at the
windows) and the prisoner, still lying awkwardly on the table with his arms
painfully bent under him, all watched me as I made a business of carefully
opening the book.

I looked down . . . at illegible scribbles.
While traveling on the ship I’d become proficient at the alphabet that Chelan,
Allendi, and Elras shared, but this one? I had no hope of reading it.

Not that I would have.

“I need to make the boundary,” I said in an important voice.
At my feet, the mage uttered a faint groan. I feared that my spell was already
wearing off.

I cleared my throat again, attempting to shape a voice-cast,
but once again, my neck tightened on the inside. I coughed, and looked down at
the book.

I opened my mouth to speak some gibberish, and the duchess
snarled, “You fraud! That book is upside down!” She held out her hand. “My
sword—”

I was about to dive out the window and take my chances with
the ivy and the rain-soaked horde below, when the door slammed open.

The duchess uttered a harsh laugh. “Hlanan Vosaga? This
is
my lucky day.” And to the guards,
“Take him.”

Hlanan had put on his red hat, and carried a tray of food.

He dropped the tray on the big table beside the prisoner,
who struggled to turn over now that the guards were not holding him down. Then,
as two guards closed in from either side, Hlanan flung a pot of hot drink at
one, and a bowl of soup at the other.

“Ahhh!” one yelled as steaming liquid splashed across his
face.

“Unh,” the woman grunted as she ducked the soup, bumped
against the table, then crashed to the ground, sliding in the soup at her feet.

Hlanan tossed a plate at the duchess, who ducked easily, her
teeth showing as she brandished her sword and advanced. But as she passed the
table, the prisoner punched out with both feet, catching the duchess in the
side. She stumbled, recovered, and lunged at Hlanan.

He staggered back, but not far enough. As my breath caught
in my throat, the sword point flashed into the middle of his baker’s apron—and
bent.

Bent?

She shortened her arm for another stab, but this time I got
my shivering joints moving. Vaulting over the table and somersaulting in the
air, I landed on her shoulders with both feet, and we tumbled to the ground,
with me on top.

Hlanan swayed back and forth, struggling with the third
guard, who was trying to obey the order to capture him, yet his eyes strayed
back to the duchess. I lost sight of them as Morith heaved me off, catching the
side of my head in a clout that sent stars across my vision. I lost hold of the
book, which I’d meant to use as a weapon.

So I tried to make a shimmer. Nothing. But there was the
brass bowl, I guess intended to catch the blood of the sacrifice, rolling at my
elbow. I picked it up and held it as a shield. Clang! The sword hit it hard.

The duchess had her back to the table. Mistake. The prisoner
had struggled upright and now flung himself on her, using his weight to knock
her to the floor.

I rolled out of the way, picked up the bowl, and cracked her
a good one on the side of the head. Bong! She slumped, moaning.

I jumped to my feet, to discover the three guards frozen,
two with looks of surprise on their faces, and one whose mouth distorted with
pain from burns. Hlanan’s stone spell!

Hlanan dashed to the prisoner and snatched up a fallen
sword. The young man flinched back, a foot coming up, but Hlanan said, “Turn
around.”

The young man’s bruised face cleared. He turned, and Hlanan
cut through the ropes binding him.

I grabbed the book from where it had fallen, and the three
of us ran out of the room. The hall was empty, a faint smell of singed wood on
the air, like a fireplace had been lit somewhere.

I said, “Guards below the window. Waiting for orders.”

Hlanan dashed back into the room, and yelled in the
direction of the window, “He escaped! Quick, to the stable!”

Then he slammed the door, and wheezed, “That stone spell
won’t last long, I’m afraid. She was already stirring.”

“Just needs to last enough to get us out,” I said.

He jerked his head in a nod, and turned to the prisoner, who
leaned against the wall, blinking rapidly. His face beyond the bruises was
pasty, his once-fine robe encrusted with weeks of grime.

Hlanan said, “Are you Tolvar Vaczathas?”

A brief, weary nod.

Hlanan reached under his tunic, and pulled a sheaf of papers
from the waistband of his trousers. So that’s what had stopped the duchess’s
sword! “Here. I think your king is going to want to know about these.” And as
Tolvar took the papers, “Can you make it outside?”

“I’ll make it.”

“Wait,” Hlanan said, and concentrated. He whispered, making
signs with his fingers, and before my eyes Tolvar turned into a Gray Wolf. “The
illusion should get you well away, as long as you don’t touch anyone.”

“Whom do I thank?” Tolvar asked.

“Don’t thank. Act. You really need to look at those papers.
It outlines Morith of Thann’s plan to take this kingdom for her own.”

Tolvar’s illusory brows lifted, and he lurched away.

“Let’s get out of here,” Hlanan said to me. “They’ll be
after us sooner than later. I left the knapsack behind the chicken house . . .”

Did the servants’ stairs seem smoky? A thin haze hung in the
air, and I wondered which of the desperate cooks had let something burn, and
what would happen to them.

Neither of us spoke until we got to the kitchen yard. As he
picked up the knapsack, I tried another tiny shimmer. A flower popped open, and
relief surged through me. So he’d only been able to block my magic inside that
room, not permanently.

An angry shriek rang from wall to wall. Even if I hadn’t
recognized the duchess’s voice, the way her servants froze made it clear who
was shouting, “Get them! The pasty-faced page and the man in green wearing a
baker’s apron and cap!”

Then, from another window, “FIRE!”

“Ah.” Hlanan’s grin was fierce as he flung off the cap and
apron. “Just in time.”

“Fire?”

“Morith’s suite.”

The entire household began boiling out of the kitchen doors,
as up above, flames glowed ruddy in two of the windows. “I had no idea how
terrible she is,” Hlanan said, squinting against the rain, which fell steadily
now, drenching us both. “She had a collection of torture instruments.”

“There they are!”

A patrol of Wolf Grays halted, spreading in a ring.

Hlanan looked down at his dull green coarse-woven tunic,
grubby after three days of wear. “Uh oh.”

“The page has the book.”

Hlanan and I exchanged glances. “Shimmer,” I said to him.
“I’ll run.”

I whirled around, leaped to the top of the chicken house,
and from there, another leap carried me over the iron spikes of the fence, one
just grazing my ankle. I landed and rolled in the mud, then I was up and
running, as overhead Tir squawked, swooping and diving.

I ducked between a couple of houses, my empty belly
growling. A fine time to remember breakfast, I thought as I splashed up a
pretty brick path, and skidded under a brick archway with a trio of matching
gargoyles grinning down from the top.

I looked both ways along the street—in time to see a crowd
of Wolf Grays dash out, spreading in both directions. I ducked back, but not
before a couple of them caught sight of me.

Sploosh, splash, I dashed through the puddles pooling in the
flagged street. On the opposite side, the mansions were slightly less imposing.
Good. Away from the river’s edge and the royal palace meant less noble housing?
My best running grounds were always narrow streets and close-built houses and
jumbles of fencing.

Two more streets, as the longer-legged guards slowly closed
the gap between us, and at last I reached what I was looking for: houses built
close enough together for me to roof-run.

A leap, a moment on a fence to catch my balance, and another
leap put me on a roof, as the panting guards closed in below, round faces
looking up at me. I turned away, ran across the roof, and leaped to the next
house.

The Gray Wolves had no chance of catching me, for they, too,
were sodden by the rain, and none of them could leap.

Roof runs were often exhilarating, especially in the rain,
as lighting blued the distant mountains to the east, reflecting in the lake,
and thunder boomed and crackled across the sky. Though I was hungry and tired,
a little light-headed, like the day I first met Hlanan, the old thrill sizzled
through me as if the lightning lent me some of its power.

The last time I’d roof run from chasers I was alone, not
belonging anywhere, or to anyone. I’d preferred it that way. It was safer.

It had not been all that long ago, but in one sense it
seemed another lifetime, for this time, I was running to somewhere, and I had a
partner. A trusted partner.

Tir flitted overhead. I dared not open the pinhole, because
I knew Dhes-Andis was waiting, but I didn’t need it. I followed the bird, who
led me gradually around in a half circle, past stables and houses and a clay
yard and finally past a huge apiary, built against a small loop in the river,
at the east end of the city.

I pelted down the pathway, with deep hedges to either side,
frequently looking behind me for the pursuit that I’d lost. The rain smeared my
prints almost as soon as I made them.

Tired, panting, I slowed up when I reached a little hillock
behind the last of the hives, and there Hlanan waited, my knapsack at his side.
As soon as I saw him I put on a last burst of speed—though I did not know
why—but before I reached him, my foot caught in a half-submerged tree root and
I shot headlong.

I didn’t splat headlong in the mud.

Hlanan caught me under the armpits, I slammed into him, and
his arms locked around me. I flung mine around him, and I clung, breathing
hard, half-laughing, dizzy with emotions that swooped like Tir through the
stormy sky.

Hlanan’s grip tightened until I pulled back a little, to
look into his face, his brown eyes shaped by own emotions, and then—it felt so
natural—I tilted my head and kissed him.

It almost went awry, my lips brushing the soft ruddy-gold beard
stubble that he had yet to shave. A second try, both of us breathless with
laughter, was more successful, firing my body with light.

Then he let me go, and looked at me with a rueful smile, his
forehead under streaming wet strands of hair both puzzled and tense. “Lhind?”

“I don’t know what that was,” I said, and remembered
something Thianra had said about hiding as a child. Maybe this was a terrible
mistake, but it felt so right, unlike my foolish experience with that rotter of
an actor. “I mean, I do, but I don’t know . . . what it means.
Except I do like it,” I said wistfully, and when he gave me a quick,
inadvertent smile, not all the evil mages and ravening warriors could prevent
me from saying, “Let’s try again.”