The Quartered Sea (58 page)

"Run." Gathering up his robe, Tul Altun leaped from the cart before it had quite stilled. Benedikt followed less gracefully. "Now I deal with the ship master," he announced, grinning wildly as they approached the gangway, "and then we're gone."

"Not quite."

The calm declaration stopped both men in their tracks. Benedikt didn't know how the tul felt, but he was glad he'd eaten so little back at the house. He'd never wanted to vomit quite so badly as he did on hearing that voice.

Two guards stood on either side of the upper end of the gangway, crossbows trained on the tul. Her hair braided with hundreds of tiny white-and-blue feathers, the xaan appeared between them and started down toward the pier followed by Hueru and a double row of guards.

The tul backed up a step and then another, Benedikt following. Neither man had to turn to know that the sudden slap of cleated leather on stone behind them was the rest of the xaan's guards, blocking escape.

"Don't worry," the xaan told them as she stepped off onto the pier and her guards took up position. "I won't start a fight that will destroy our house. My people won't prevent your retreat."

"If you were already here, why even bother to have us followed from the square" the tul asked scornfully. The contempt in his voice suggested he couldn't care less about her answer. Only the many small movements of his hands, arms, and head betrayed him.

"If I hadn't had you followed, you might have realized where I was and gone somewhere else. Right at the moment, the guards behind you are only preventing the curious from interrupting our conversation. I can't have that."

"Can't you?" Tul Altun's gaze swept his guards, then hers. As it swept over Benedikt, he had a terrible fear he knew what the fire in the tul's expression meant. "If I'm going to die anyway, it might be worth dying now to ensure that you're executed, too."

"You'll die a heartbeat after the Tulparax. Slowly, since, you'll have annoyed me." No one could have looked more reasonable than the Kohunlich-xaan. "You have one logical choice."

The tul tossed his head, gold and black striped feathers lifting in his braids. "How do I know you'll let me
live a long and prosperous life
!"

"No." Holding her braids back out of the way with one hand, she turned just enough to direct their attention back to the ship. "He will."

Between the two guards at the top of the gangway were two more, holding a bound, but still struggling, man. All three were bleeding from multiple wounds.

"Did he try and escape
again
?"

"Never mind." The xaan sounded more weary than annoyed as she cut off the explanation. "Lift him so that Benedikt can see his face."

Benedikt didn't need to see his face. He'd known who it was by the shape, by the movement, by the blood. He didn't know how, or why, but he knew who.

"Bannon."

The night had been a long one. Bannon considered his physical injuries minor compared to the shame of being caught. Imperial assassins might die—often died—while taking out a target, but they were never captured. This was all Benedikt's fault. Bards, nothing but trouble.

Then he'd heard Benedikt arrive and had realized he had only one last chance to be of any help at all.

He failed and took very little comfort in knowing how close he'd come.

When the very dangerous woman in charge had commanded he be displayed, he lifted his head before the guard could pull it up by the hair. His eyes widened. The pretty, golden boy he'd stupidly expected to see was gone, replaced by a gaunt, one-eyed man with black paint making a mess of his shaven head. Only the full mouth and its pouting lower lip hadn't changed. When it formed his name, Bannon went limp in the guard's hold.

Assassins depended only on themselves.

Assassins weren't supposed to fall in love.

I slaughtering surrender, all right?

Briefly, he wondered if it had been this bad for his sister, but since Vree had never spent the night tied and wrapped in a stinking net in a rat-infested bilge, with four less than friendly guards, he doubted it.

He'd almost rescued himself when you arrived. I have to let him finish it.

Benedikt stiffened. He felt as though he were drowning. And then he realized. He only sang one quarter, but that quarter was water and by all the gods in the circle, after what he'd been through, he wasn't going to drown now. He straightened, no longer hiding his height but using it.

The xaan's eyes widened. "You have hidden strengths after all. Good. Too late, but good. Your friend crept on board my ship last night. The only word he understood was your name, so I kept him for you. He wasn't easy to keep either; he killed three of my guards, one of them after they took his blades away. So if you go with my brother, your friend dies slowly. If you come back to me, he gets to live as long as you cooperate. And if you so much as sing a single note, my guards will kill you both."

In the silence that followed, the sounds of the harbor, the sounds of men and women who pulled a living from the sea, rose momentarily to the foreground as the fishing fleet returned. Beyond the barricade of guards, Benedikt realized with some surprise, life went on. This little drama only mattered to those involved.

Except that…

If I go to the xaan, I'll be responsible for the destruction of an entire people. If I don't…

Rescue came from an unexpected source. Throwing off Xhojee's cautioning arm, Ooman Xhai stepped forward to stand by Benedikt's side. "This man is a warrior of Tulpayotee," he said, the complete and utter absence of doubt in his voice forcing belief. "He is nothing to do with you."

"A warrior disguised as a priest?" Hueru snorted. "He was more believable wearing the woman's robes of a priest of Xaantalicta."

"Oh, very well." She folded her arms and glanced impatiently up at a clouded sky. "When he fails, it will put
that
lot of rumors to rest at least.

The tul's guard had seen Benedikt in full golden glory. Xaan Mijandra remembered the beam of sunlight just after he split the flood and realized, so had hers. Glancing around the surrounding circle of guards, hers and her brother's, she realized that if she didn't allow Benedikt to fail now that the words had been spoken, there would be trouble later.

"Fine. Sing. But one wave, one ripple out in that harbor and both you and your friend here die."

He'd called the god in a temple, with a song he'd sung a hundred times. But here? And even if he could call the god, that wouldn't save Bannon.

There was no rain. Nothing he could use.

"You're wasting my time, Benedikt."

And then he remembered the herbalist in Janinton. He'd been lying in her kitchen, not quite awake, listening to her explain to Pjazef why he was so tired.

"
The body is full of water, you know; he was Singing a different Song to bits of himself even while he was Singing the river
."

"
You'll just be moving a bit of water out of the way. Where's the harm in that?"

He looked into the xaan's eyes and, using what he'd learned from the Song of Sorquizic, he Sang to her.

"What the…" Jurgis grabbed for the rail as the
Silver Vixen
suddenly jerked forward. The volume and variety of cursing suggested he wasn't the only one taken by surprise. Bracing himself, he leaned over the bow and Sang a question to the kigh.

Karlene blinked. "They
think
?"

Jurgis shrugged again. "So it seems."

The ship flung itself out of the fog and into hazy sunlight. Riding the crest of a massive wave, the
Vixen
crossed the broad mouth of a swollen river and raced toward a low point of land capped with a brilliantly patterned tower.

The captain whirled around, scanned the faces staring up at him and pointed. "You, Janinton, grab your friends and bows and get up in the lookout. This is what you came for. The rest of you, prepare for…" He shot an irritated look at the bards behind him."… anything."

They swept around the point without slowing, so close they could see the reactions of the people out working in small, square fields. Ahead, at the base of a deep harbor, they saw a red-roofed city rising up onto a plateau.

Karlene Sang Benedikt's name to an air kigh and was almost blown off her feet.

Xaan Mijandra's mouth opened. And closed. Covered in a sheen of moisture, she fell to the pier. Her knees snapped up to her chin with an audible crack of bone on bone and her face collapsed in on itself. All those watching had seen death often enough to know it again.

Benedikt Sang a gratitude and fell silent.

Stepping forward, Ooman Xhai lifted one of the xaan's arms. Flesh that had moments before been plump and round was now dried and desiccated as though it had spent months roasting under a burning sun. "The judgment of Tulpayotee," he said. Releasing the xaan, he held both palms up to the sun and began to pray.

Ignoring the priest's drone and the uneasy murmuring all around, Benedikt met Bannon's astounded gaze and held tightly to the thought that he'd just saved hundreds of lives. That he'd just saved
this
life, and that was all that really mattered.