The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1) (11 page)

She hesitated only a fraction of a second. Then she nodded.

‘Go back to
The Drunken Plaice
. The obvious will be the last place they look, I hope. Wait for me there. Tell Noviss to make a nuisance of himself asking everyone where you are, as if you haven’t come back.’ She put her foot into my hand even as I spoke and was up on my shoulders as surely as an acrobat. She reached up, had hold of the rafters and was gone just seconds before the door burst open.

I recognised Mord from Niamor’s description: a red-haired killer; his brother Teffel—with the sea-potato nose—I’d met before. Killers with the hearts of sharks, both of them. They didn’t seem distressed to find Flame gone; I supposed they thought that with the dunspell on her arm she was as good as their master’s property already. They were much more interested in the fact that they had me, believing, no doubt, that I had come in through the ceiling, helped Flame leave the same way and was now trapped by the wards. By the smirk on Teffel’s face, he appeared to have forgotten my skill with a sword. Or perhaps he just felt more secure in the company of his brother.

They were armed with both swords and knives. Teffel reversed his hold on his knife and threw it. He knew what he was doing; only his stupidity in trying to maim rather than kill me gave me time to flick myself sideways. Even so, he nicked me in the arm. A minor wound, but it tore the upper muscle enough to hinder the effectiveness of my sword arm. I had no time to think before Mord followed up with a throw of his own. Another sideways flick, another wound. The knife went into my side, but it did more damage to my clothes than my hide. It bled copiously though, and looked a great deal worse than it was. I pulled out the knife and flung it through the window, an action that was designed to disconcert them; knives were a valuable commodity to Spitters and not usually thrown away, especially not in the middle of a fight. After that, I hammed it up a little in the best Hub theatrical tradition. I looked as though I was dying on my feet. The sword in my hand dropped weakly.

Teffel, the fool, fell for it. Even as his brother shouted a warning to stop him, he came at me like a charging bull and I carved up his belly like raw beef. He died with a surprised expression on his face and a lot of his innards steaming on the floor. Then I, like an utter idiot, put my foot in the mess and slipped, going down almost under Mord’s feet. Enraged, he forgot I was a woman and put his boot where he thought it would do the most damage. It did hurt, but not enough to be incapacitating. I grabbed his foot and he went down into the blood and muck as well. I rolled clear then; it wouldn’t do me any good to indulge in wrestling with a man of his size. I counted myself strong, but I’d always found it was unwise to assume anything other than the fact that most men have the edge when it comes to brute strength.

I managed to slice open his leg as I scrambled up, but it didn’t seem to worry him. The angrier he became, the less he seemed to feel. He erupted off the floor, sword sweeping at me as he came. I fended him off and sparks flew from the clash of blades. He didn’t have any finesse, but he was a strong man; agile too. I knew I’d win this one eventually, but I wasn’t sure how much time I had. We were making more noise than a couple of scrapping sea-lions and Mord’s fall must have shaken the whole house.

He kicked me in the shins, I came in under his guard and nicked his wrist but he didn’t drop his weapon. He circled me warily, and put his back to the window. I thought of the dunmagic. It still glowed around the window frame. I came at him with a flurry of lunges, one after the other, none quite carried through, all designed to force him back. He hit the wall—and felt the dunmagic. It jerked him forwards, towards my weapon. His face changed subtly; he felt the trap.

My blade wove patterns in the air in front of his nose and he fought me off with a desperation that didn’t improve his swordplay. Still, he hadn’t lost all his caution like his foolish brother.

Then the unexpected happened. A dark shadow rose up in the window behind Mord, an arm snaked around his neck and pulled his head back sharply, right into the dunmagic wards. He dropped his sword and screamed, but the sound was choked off by his attacker. Red light played along Mord’s skin; rather a pretty effect really. A faint smell of burning reached my nostrils.

‘I think you’re roasting him,’ I said mildly. I couldn’t see who was there but I didn’t need to. I knew. And I knew that dunmagic wards meant as little to him as they did to me.

‘Probably,’ he said and sure enough I recognised the honey-smooth voice. ‘It’s just that you seemed to be taking so long about disposing of him, I thought I may as well join in.’

God, the man
did
have a sense of humour. ‘Do you mind if I put him out of his misery?’

‘Be my guest,’ Tor Ryder said politely.

I killed Mord, and his body collapsed on to the floor. Ryder, who had been balancing himself somewhat precariously with one hand on the window sill, pulled himself into the frame and sat there. ‘You look a bit bloody,’ he said conversationally. ‘Is any of that yours?’

‘Not a significant amount.’ I wasn’t about to dally. ‘We’ve got company,’ I added. ‘Of a rather nasty kind.’ I could hear someone else clattering up the stairs and the stink of dunmagic had suddenly doubled. The company was very dubious indeed and, by the noise, there was more than one person too. One part of me would have liked to have stayed, to have had a look at just who was going to run through that door, to have tried to solve Flame’s problem there and then; the saner part of me prevailed. It always did. I was tired, my wounds ached, and Ryder—damn him—wasn’t wearing a sword. I sheathed my weapon, vaulted past him across the sill, hung for a moment by my fingertips, and then let myself drop on to the veranda roof below. More cuttlefish tiles disintegrated. The landlord was going to have a real problem with leaks by the time I’d finished with this building.

Ryder landed beside me and before I could move he had grabbed me by the hand and pulled me further across the lower roof, around the side of the building. ‘This way,’ he said. ‘We’ll go into the water.’ He gave me no time to object. A second later we were plunging into the sea.

I came up spluttering. The salt stung my cuts and I tried to remember if there were any blood-hungry fish found in Gorthan Spit waters.

‘You
can
swim, I suppose?’ he asked at my elbow.

‘You picked a fine time to ask, Tor Ryder,’ I replied, a little on the sarcastic side.

He grinned at me, and I thought to myself that this was the first time I’d ever seen him smile. He moved forward towards me and kissed me full on the lips, a brief rather saltily-damp kiss that was as tantalising as it was unexpected. I raised an eyebrow and stared mutely as we trod water. Somehow I had not thought of Ryder as being a man given to flirtations at serious moments, and several seconds later it was clear that this was a very serious moment indeed.

A bolt of dunmagic, red and malignant, sizzled into the water next to us.

It didn’t seen to worry Ryder too much. He said casually, ‘You see that boat over there? The closest one?’ He nodded out to sea. ‘Think you can swim that far under water?’

I looked. There were several small boats anchored there. Beyond them, further out still, there was a line of lanterns shining like pearls on the black velvet of the sea: the night fishing boats. ‘Sure.’

‘Next bolt, we play dead. Dive and swim for the other side of the boat.’

My thoughts followed his. The dunmaster hadn’t seen us go out through the window. He probably thought that we’d come in and gone out through the ceiling, where there were no wards, so he had no reason to think we weren’t vulnerable to dunmagic. With a little bit of luck, he would even think that one of us was Flame; it was reasonably dark and from that distance, it might be impossible to tell the difference.

I nodded my agreement, and the next moment the bolt came, evil and compelling. It hit us and I sank, only starting to swim once I was submerged.

Strangely enough, it was on that long and exhausting swim to the boat that I recalled where I had heard the name Ransom Holswood before. It all came back to me, prompted, I think, by Flame’s remark about the customs of the Bethany Isles nobility. Holswood was the family name of the ruling house of Bethany; it was the Holdlord’s name.

I thought back to what I had heard, not so very long ago, about the family. The Holdlord, I remembered, had been the father of two sons: Tagrus and Ransom. Tagrus had been the heir, Ransom the younger son. Ransom had elected to join the Menod, hoping one day to belong to the patriarchy, but when Tagrus had died in an accident, the Holdlord immediately asked his younger son to forget his Menod ambitions in order to take up the position of Holdheir—and Ransom had refused. Obviously the young man had still not obeyed his father’s request. He was now on Gorthan Spit, masquerading under the name of Noviss, unless I was very much mistaken. I wondered what the Keepers would make of that.

Now, where was I…? Ah yes, I was telling you about our escape from the dunmaster’s house. We were in the water… I came up on the far side of the boat. Ryder was already there, clinging to the gunwale. The vessel was a small one-man fisher, with a front cabin, a single mast and a stern tiller.

‘Ah, there you are. I was beginning to think I’d lost you—you hold your breath like a seal.’

‘Now what?’ I asked. Taking to the water had been his idea; let him get us out of this one.

He gestured to me to be silent and we listened for any sounds of pursuit. Sound carried in the still air; from somewhere along the shore we could hear the sound of a fiddle, the thump of dancing feet and the whoops of enthusiastic drunken dancers. I half expected there to be more bolts flying after us, but there was nothing.

‘We’d better stay here in the water for a bit nonetheless,’ he said. ‘Luckily these waters aren’t known for their sharks… We’ll climb into the boat later. Are you all right?’

I pushed my dripping hair away from my face and hooked an arm through a loop of rope that hung over the gunwale. ‘Fine. Curious, though. Were you looking for me? Or Flame? And if so, why? And how did you know where to find us? And who the hell are you anyway?’

‘You already know my name, and you know I’m a Stragglerman. What else is there? As for tonight, well, I was woken up by the din that young fool Noviss was making when he banged on your door. I eavesdropped and then I followed you.’

‘But why? And why did you intervene when you did?’

‘Why not?’

‘I can think of twenty reasons why not without drawing breath. All of them would have been perfectly adequate for me, had I been in your shoes.’

He shifted his hold on the boat and reached out to touch my face, running the back of his hand down my wet cheek. ‘Call it lust then. A desire to see that you survived the night, for purely selfish reasons.’

‘You’ve got to be joking.’

He shook his head. ‘No. Making love to you would be one thing I would never joke about…that cut of yours has started bleeding again. Let me tie it up for you.’ Using one hand, he pulled a black kerchief from around his neck and wrapped it around my upper arm, his movements deft and gentle. I was still trying to fathom him, and not having much success. The blanks in his story gaped like bottomless holes.

‘Don’t look so worried, Blaze,’ he said. ‘Just accept that I have an entirely personal interest in keeping you alive and well.’

‘I was managing quite well without you,’ I pointed out. I thought to myself that life in Gorthan Spit was becoming tedious; I doubted that I had met a single person who was quite what they claimed to be. Everyone had their secrets…

‘Have you had any luck finding your Cirkasian slave?’ he asked, changing the subject. In the dim light, it was hard to see how he had taken my rebuff, but he sounded unfazed.

‘Not yet.’

‘You’re actually after a particular slave, aren’t you. The Castlelord’s daughter? I did hear she’d vanished. And you think Flame might be her—or know something about her.’

‘How in the sweet hell did you know that? Castlemaid Lyssal’s disappearance is supposed to be a well-kept secret! And she’s only been gone a two months. Less—’

‘Oh, I get about,’ he said vaguely. ‘I was in the Keeper Isles before I came here and I know a few people there. Blaze, the girl probably ran away, you know. She had reason. Those godless Keeper hypocrites were selling her off to that pile of lard, the Bastionlord of Breth. He’s cruel and amoral, a pervert—a man who seeks out children, boys not old enough to know what’s happening to them until it’s too late. He’s also fifty years old if he’s a day—’

By this time my surprise had me spluttering like an idiot. How come everyone seemed to know the politics of the Islandlords all of a sudden? It was one thing to hear a few whispers along a back lane in Cirkasecastle, quite another to have it openly discussed in other nations. I said, ‘Nobody’s supposed to know all this. Who
are
you?’

‘Nobody special. I just keep my ears open. I have an interest in knowing what the Keepers are up to. And they are the ones who pressed the Castlelord for this match. I’d love to know why. You don’t happen—’

‘No, I don’t! I’m not privy to Keeper secrets.’ And I knew that not even what Flame had said entirely explained why the Keepers were interested in furthering a cross-island marriage.

He shook his head sadly. ‘That poor girl—is it any wonder that she wanted to run away? The wonder of it is that she had the guts.’

Something was nibbling curiously at my toes. I wriggled my feet in irritation and hoped it was nothing larger than a minnow. I said, ‘She was stupid. She fell into the hands of slavers almost immediately. She would have been better off staying home.’

‘If you find her, are you really going to return her to those bastards?’

‘It means two thousand setus to me. Of course I’ll return her.’

‘You’re still working for the Keepers, aren’t you?’

‘What if I am?’ I asked belligerently. I was rattled, or I wouldn’t have been so gauche. Then I winced and wondered where my wits had gone. ‘How did you know that? And what do you mean,
still
?’

‘I’ve heard of you before. The Keepers sent you to Calment Minor ten years back to help put down the rebellion there. You were the Council agent who saved the son of the Governor of Calment Minor when the convoy he was travelling in was attacked. I heard the Governor offered you citizenship as a reward, and you turned him down.’

Blood rushed to my head. That was something I preferred not to think about too much. I had come so close to a precious tattoo, only to find there was a price I would not pay for it after all.

‘There were…strings attached to the offer,’ I said tightly. I shivered slightly. The water had seemed warm enough at first but now I was beginning to feel the chill.

He nodded, sympathetic. ‘He was a very nasty piece of corruption, Governor Kilp. You were on the wrong side in that affair, you know.’

‘You knew me then?’

He seemed amused. ‘Not
quite
. I almost ran up against you several times, though. Saw you from a distance once or twice. Do you remember Gilly’s Scarp? That was me.’

I remembered all right. It had been one of the most frustrating moments of my career. I’d been told to find and capture a guerrilla scout nicknamed the Lance of Calment, a young man who was running supplies and messages and arms between one of their rebel mountain strongholds and supporters in the city of Tanta. I’d thought I had my quarry snared, but I’d been neatly outwitted. I’d climbed onto a ridge with a couple of men assigned to me by Duthrick, expecting to have the rebel I was after trapped in the gully below—only to find him outlined on the top of Gilly’s Scarp opposite, out of arrow range. He had waved at us cheekily before heading off to safety.

‘Great Trench below! That was
you?
And you admit to it? You could still be hanged for taking part in that rebellion, you know!’

‘Only in the Calments. And I suppose the Keepers would send me back to the hangman in Calment Minor if they knew who I was. But they don’t. They never did.’

‘And you calmly tell me this? I could turn you in! Are you crazy?’ I was already wondering if there was a reward for his capture. I’d made money turning in fugitives before.

‘I have that reputation.’

He was giving me surprise after surprise. That serious, unsmiling man I remembered from earlier in the day was a great deal more complex than I had first assumed.

‘Are you cold yet?’ he asked. ‘Do you want to get in the boat?’

‘I can wait a while longer if you think it’s better.’

I thought of the Calments, remembering wild days of danger and challenge when I’d pitted my wits and my sword against the desperation of a peasant uprising that had come to within a breath of success. I’d been only twenty years old, and this man could hardly have been much more than three or four years older. ‘What was your rebel name? I don’t remember hearing of a Tor Ryder. And I always thought that the man who got away at Gilly’s Scarp was—’

‘The Lance of Calment? Yes, it was.’ He sounded a little shame-faced. ‘I was young then and had a hankering for the theatrical. Tor Ryder is my real name, the one I was born with.’

‘
You
were the Lance?’ I was incredulous, at a loss for further words. The Lance had been both an irritation and a challenge to me in the excitement of that year in Calment Minor. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d thought I had him trapped, only to find he’d managed to slip away. It had become almost a game to me, and it had been a game I’d lost. I’d helped to put down the rebellion, but the escape of the Lance had been one of my failures. Oddly enough, in the end it had been a game I was glad enough to lose; the Governor and his cohorts had proved to be very nasty indeed and I’d developed a sneaking admiration for the rebel scout I’d chased from one side of the Calments to the other but never managed to catch…or meet.

He caught my half-smile at the memories. ‘It was a strange sort of fun, wasn’t it? We were younger in those days.’

He’d changed in more than his age though; the Lance of Calment would never have gone anywhere without a sword in his belt and a bow and quiver on his shoulder. Now Tor Ryder walked some of the most dangerous streets in the Isles of Glory without a weapon in sight.

He swam down to the end of the boat and peered around the stern. ‘He can’t still be waiting for us to come up,’ he said, referring to the dunmaster. ‘Let’s get in the boat before we get too cold.’ He pulled himself out and then helped me over the gunwale. The boat rocked alarmingly, but there was no reaction from the shore.

The vessel was actually quite a pleasant one. There was shelter in the small cabin, and a comfortable pallet. Tor Ryder set about untying the painter from the buoy that anchored us, then raised the sail.

‘We’re stealing this?’ I asked.

‘A petty larceny. I thought sailing back to the fisherman’s wharf might be safer than walking through the streets. We can leave the boat there and I’ll pay the wharfmaster to keep an eye on it until the real owner turns up. Always assuming that’s where you want to go.’

I thought of Flame and that contagion spreading through her body… ‘Yes, I do.’

He raised his eyes to the sail, now hanging loosely above our heads. ‘I’m afraid we’re not going anywhere just yet though. There’s no wind.’ He looked back at me. The greater moon had risen, and I could see him better now. Those blue eyes of his were still serious, but I wondered how I had missed seeing the crinkles at the corners; he might not have had Niamor’s light-hearted view of life, but he was far from being a humourless man.

‘You had better get out of those wet clothes,’ he said. ‘Wrap yourself in the blanket there. It looks clean enough.’

I nodded, but I didn’t move. ‘What makes you so certain that I won’t betray you to the Keepers?’

‘After all this time? You may do a lot for money, Blaze, but unless you’ve changed a great deal over the years, you would never do anything quite so petty.’

‘Petty? Perhaps there is still a price on your head that is beyond merely “petty”.’

‘Perhaps. I’ve never bothered to inquire. But I still don’t think you would try to collect it. Not you.’

‘You sound as though you think you know me quite well.’

‘I do—or I did. It pays to know the enemy. The only thing I didn’t know about you in those days was how beautiful you are close up.’

‘Flame is beautiful. I’m just big.’

‘You are magnificent,’ he said simply. ‘And I like big women. I’m rather large myself.’

Niamor had used the same word: magnificent. Somehow I liked it better the way Tor said it. ‘You’re a fool, Tor Ryder. People change.’

I was sitting amidships, dripping wet. When I shivered, he came forward and started to unbutton my tunic. I didn’t move. He peeled the wet cloth back over my shoulders, eased out the injured arm first, then the other so that I sat naked to the waist. The wound in my side had stopped bleeding. Fortunately, the knife had penetrated only the fleshy part of my hip, doing little damage. He pulled the blanket up over my shoulders, then knelt at my feet, his hands on my knees. ‘Yes, people change. But you haven’t, not that much. Back in Calment Minor I felt a strange sort of kinship with you, as though we were two of a kind, for all that we fought on opposite sides. I felt it again, that night we bumped into each other in front of Noviss’s door.’

He placed his right hand palm to palm with mine. Awareness recognising Awareness. Kinship. I recalled the way I had felt about the Lance of Calment… Yes, there had been a strange sort of comradeship there, for all that we had done our best to kill one another. But it had nothing to do with being two of a kind; Tor Ryder and I were sea-trout and lake-salmon: kin that swam in different waters.

He laced his fingers into mine. ‘Be warned, Blaze. If we take the natural step forward from here, you’ll never be able just to walk away without a backward glance. Not the way you could walk away from someone like Niamor.’ (Great Trench, was there
anything
he didn’t know?) ‘Love me now and there’ll be ties between us that will last forever.’