The Warlord's Domain (16 page)

Apart from finally getting to use his own money, Aldric also gained some advice—free, for a wonder; there were few enough things in a Guild House that didn’t have some sort of price tag—concerning lodging-taverns in the city. From the shape of him, the Guildsman who provided the information was most likely recommending not only which tavern had the best rooms for the best price, but the best food for any price. That was all right; neither Kyrin nor Aldric had ever known each other to be averse to a good meal…

“It’s getting late, m’love. Let’s get to where we’re going.”

“Good.” Kyrin hunched down into the deep fur lining her hood and watched as a single snowflake dropped like a feather from the evening sky. “He made it sound a good place to stay, at least.”

“And eat. I’d say he—”

The woman came running down the street toward them, stumbling, skidding on the snow that traffic had packed down between the cobblestones and screaming, always screaming. Her words were Drusalan, more or less—maybe a local dialect or something of the sort— but whatever the reason, she was ignored. More than ignored: ostentatiously rejected. People returning home on foot the short distance from where they had been shopping in the mercantile quarter of Drakkesborg, merchant families of quality who had town houses hereabouts, actually turned their backs to her, pretending that neither she nor her frantic shrieks existed.

Not understanding anything but the poor woman’s distress, Aldric shot a glance at Kyrin; it was returned augmented by a shrug that said plainly
your choice
. Kyrin suspected that she knew only too well why this woman was being treated as an outcast, and if Aldric didn’t know now was hardly the time to educate him. That need for a decision, and reasons to help make it, were perhaps what prompted the Alban to knee Lyard sideways, blocking the street. No matter how crazed she might be, the woman was at least sane enough not to attempt barging past a packpony linked by leading-reins to sixteen hands and a good many pounds’-weight of coal-black warhorse.

“What’s the matter?” Aldric asked it courteously; more courteously than he needed, for by her dress the woman was a servant and thus several classes further down the rigid Drusalan social scale than even foreigners. What he got in reply was a slipshod babble of words which, after the first sentence had helped his brain lock into some sort of understanding, were not blurred so much by dialect as by a mind skidding along the edge of desperation-born hysterics.

“
Hnach-at, keü’ach da
?” This time when he repeated the question it slashed out like a whipcut, in the clipped high-to-low mode that any armed and mounted man could use to a woman on foot, except when that woman was without doubt Princess Marya Marevna, sister of the Emperor… or Tehal Kyrin with a sword across her back.

It acted as he had hoped, like the slap across the face of any hysteric, to restore at least a degree of coherence. “Muh-muh-muh,” was all the woman managed at first, but that was more a result of her frantic run along the street than anything else.

She clutched at his stirrup-iron, face red and sweaty despite the evening chill, and gasped breath into her outraged lungs. Finally, as calm as anyone might be after such exertion, she looked up into his face and said in better Court Drusalan than he expected to hear, “My lady’s little daughter lies dying, lord. I… I ask humbly, of your courtesy—help me.” Her grip on stirrup and booted ankle tightened as her control slipped a little, and all the forced courtliness of her language dissolved in the anguish of one word. “
Please
... ?”

“Oh, God… Kyrin? You know more than I do about these things.”

“No promises.” She spoke softly, and in Alban. “But go with her. I’ll—I’ll see what can be done.”
And
, she looked the thought at him but kept its sound to herself,
what
you
can do, my dear
...

Giorl, equipped with pincers and long-nosed pliers instead of her more usual surgical equipment, and feeling more like an armorer than a physician, had almost finished her task when the knock came at the door. Without being told, one of the servants—who took care to remain well out of earshot when the
Woydach
had company—moved from his at-ease position to the great steel bar that ensured privacy, and only then paused to await instruction.

“Tell him to open it,” said Voord. He spoke with difficulty through teeth clenched tight shut, because neither the mild soporifics nor a large quantity of distilled alcohol had done anything to alleviate the pain of Giorl’s metal-work until she completed her operations on any given injury. Even after she was done, all he had to be thankful for was that the wounds once closed faded to a dull discomfort rather than the white-hot pain when they gaped open; and now only the sword-stabs in his flanks remained to be sewn shut.

“The Warlord commands: let the door be opened.” Giorl spoke the few high-mode words over her shoulder without either turning around or slackening the grip of her fingers and thumb on the layers of skin, muscle and subcutaneous fat through which she was threading an alcohol-doused gilt wire. Any loss of concentration and it would be all to do again, something for which Voord wouldn’t thank her. It was strange work, more mechanical repair than healing, and despite the pain it was plainly causing Voord it was like neither of the two skills which made her so important in the city of Drakkesborg.

Three men came in. They had evidently come directly from outside the building, for newly fallen snow was still piled deep on the hoods and shoulders of their Army overrobes, while inside the military mantles—Giorl paused in her work to stare until a whimpering groan from Voord reminded her of the task at hand—they wore the all-concealing garb of
tulathin
.

Only when the biggest of the trio put back his face-concealing mask did she feel a little more at ease. He at least was a man familiar enough to any who had known Voord Ebanesj in the past few years: the man called Tagen, who was Voord’s closest friend, confidante, bodyguard and some said lover. Certainly his presence indicated that the other two were friendly—so far as anyone could claim that a
taulath
was friendly.

“Tagen, I told you to take five men,” said Voord, and for all the weakness in his voice he overlaid the trembling fraility with menace. “I see you and two others. What happened?”

For all that she couldn’t see them, Giorl was conscious of the various servants in the room taking as hasty a leave as good manners would permit. Certainly Tagen said nothing until the sound of the great door closing made it plain that he and his people were alone again. She, of course, remained—not only because the work she was performing on Voord’s tattered body was not something he would allow her to leave unfinished no matter what the circumstances, but Voord and Tagen were both well aware that Giorl Derawn had already heard so many secrets that one more wouldn’t make a deal of difference.

“What happened, sir, was that he wasn’t alone.”

“The woman?” Voord sat up with a jerk, then lay back gasping as Giorl glared at him and continued to stitch. “I told you about the woman; I warned you before you left Drakkesborg that he wasn’t traveling alone, so what went wrong?”

“When we found him, he was being attacked already. You wanted him alive, so we killed as many of the others as we could, but by the time we were finished he had gone. There was snow falling, tracking was a waste of time, so instead of trying to follow we cleaned up our own mess, took the bodies out of sight into the forest for the wolves to deal with and left the steading where we found him as the owner would have wanted to find it. That’s what happened, sir. We lost three; the others were very good.”

“The others… Tagen, what were they? Mercenaries or hired bodyguards who had turned on their employer, or just plain bandits that you interrupted?”

“They were
tulathin
. Just like us.”

Voord swallowed this piece of information with as much reluctance as if it was a mouthful of rotten meat, staring at the ceiling and no longer reacting to Giorl’s attentions, in a manner that she found unsettling. What she was doing—the same thing that she had been doing this hour or more—was hurting no less; he simply wasn’t noticing it anymore. “And what about the target? You said he got away. Surely you went after him when you finished covering your tracks—or had he covered his own too well for that?”

“Sir, I said already—he didn’t cover his tracks, the snowstorm did. Even if we had gone straight after him we would have lost him just as quickly as—”

“As you did by doing nothing whatsoever!”

“Certainly he’s still alive, sir.”

“Oh. And what makes you so sure of that? Knowing it’s what I want to hear, maybe?”

“The
tulathin
say so, sir.”

“Ah. Wonderful. I’m utterly convinced.” Voord jerked and made a whining sound down his nose as Giorl sealed the last-but-one-loop of wire with a quick rotary twist of the pliers. Patient stared at surgeon, surgeon gazed at patient, and no emotion was transmitted either way.

“Almost done,” said Giorl. “I could leave the last until you’ve finished talking…”

“No, not when I’m just getting used to the notion of constant pain. Get on with it, and get it over with. I might be needing you for other matters.”

“
Woydach’ann
, you told me that when I was finished here I could go home. My daughter is sick. She needs me. She—”

“Can wait. Enough. Finish. Now, Tagen, tell me how this remarkable mess could have happened when I trusted all the planning to yourself and the
tulathin
? What went wrong?”

“They, and the three who died, have worked for you and for
Kagh’ Ernvakh
this year or more. But they remain what they first were,
tulathin. A
clannish lot, regardless of their hired loyalties. Most importantly, they have a net of spies and informants all over Alba and the Empire.” Tagen walked a little closer, seeming either deliberately or unconsciously to be distancing himself from the two
tulathin
.

“What I suspect happened,” he continued in the same careful monotone, “was what someone else wanted Tal—... him dead, and hired
tulathin
of their own. Both ours and theirs obtained their information from the same source, went to the same place and… well. An unfortunate coincidence.”

Giorl finished off all her sutures by braiding a scrap of soft leather into the wires, so that the sharpened ends would not catch on clothing or other skin. She was listening to all that was being said, but without any great attention since there was a feeling about the whole business which suggested she would soon be hearing about it over and over to the point of boredom.

“Is that what they told you?” Voord’s voice had lost most of its emotion, as if he had seen sense and regained full control of his temper. “Or was it an opinion you formed yourself?”

“Something of both, sir.” Tagen stiffened fractionally, seeing what Voord was driving at. “Though they did take great pains to tell me their view of the situation, and wasted no time about it either. Sir.”

“And was that all they told you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Voord took a long swallow of the drug-laced spirit that waited in a cup beside his bed. A dribble of the stuff ran like purple blood from one corner of his mouth as his lips quirked in a sort of smile and Giorl, seeing it, knew that whatever suffering had done to him it had not erased the mind-set of the man with whom she was familiar.

“And tell me, Tagen—again, in your opinion—was this
all
that they told you all that they knew?”

“Yes, sir.” And then that deadly pause. “I believe so, anyway.”

“So.” Voord raised himself on one elbow, brows furrowing a touch as the ache of old/new injuries nagged at his nerves but came nowhere near the stabbing anguish of before. “Guards!
Guards
!”

Soldiers sprinted into the room with gisarms at the ready. None of them knew why they had been summoned, just that when it was the new
Woydach
who did the summoning then it was as well not to keep him waiting. They stamped to attention, weapons ready at port-arms, and waited for orders. As usual, they didn’t wait long.

“Those two,” said Voord, indicating the startled
tulathin
who had just now realized how horribly things were going wrong, “are to be prepared for stringent interrogation. No, repeat no, preliminary questioning is to be carried out. By my command. Take them away.”

Even through the noises of armored men moving in formation and the voices raised in protest, Giorl heard Tagen’s breath come out in a sigh of pure relief. His Commander was evidently in one of those moods where listening to reason wasn’t a priority, and at such a time not even long-time friendship was a protection.

“My lord,” said Giorl, even though she knew already that it was a waste of breath, “your wounds are closed to the best of my ability. May I hold you to your promise and go tend my daughter now?”

“Of course not.” Voord swung his feet to the floor and stood upright unaided for the first time in several days. He chuckled and reached for his clothing. “Aren’t you forgetting what
I
pay you for, Giorl Derawn? All this doctoring is what you do for other people. For me, you extract secrets.”

“But I only have my surgeon’s instruments!”

“They’re sharp; they hurt; they’ll do. After all, it was a leather-working knife that first time. So improvise.”

Giorl shrugged. The sooner she was done here, the sooner she could get home and take care of Mai, because the poor child really was
not
well… “All right,” she said, all brisk now because that was the best way to be in present circumstances. The small, bright steel things clinked softly in their sprung clips as she closed the case and picked it up. “I wasn’t really listening. Those two… ?”

“They claim they’ve told me everything,” said Tagen helpfully.

“Oh, that old chestnut,” said Giorl wearily. “Well, then. Let’s see if they’re sure…”

Aldric and Kyrin followed the woman as closely and as quickly as they—encumbered by four horses, and two of those laden with baggage—could follow someone on foot who knew the layout of the busy streets and was moving with a speed born of panic. There was little opportunity to say much either to her or to each other, which was perhaps as well. Once again there was the unpleasant spectacle of other pedestrians looking, recognizing and then deliberately snubbing, and even though Aldric seemed not to notice—or betrayed nothing of it if he had—Kyrin was disliking the situation more and more.