A Dance of Chaos: Book 6 of Shadowdance (5 page)

First a servant, then a child
, thought Zusa, and she laughed despite her pain.
Can it get any worse?

“If you want us to talk, then we shall talk,” Zusa said. “But not here. Come with me. I still need to get dressed.”

Left hand holding Alyssa’s, she went down the hall to one of the servants’ quarters. Barging in, she found several occupying the room, two playing a game of cards, the rest relaxing from duties they’d no doubt performed overnight.

“Leave us,” Zusa said as she let go of Alyssa’s hand and walked through the rows of double-bunk beds to four dressers stacked side by side.

“Please,” Alyssa added as the others turned to her. “It will only be a moment.”

The servants were wise enough, or trained well enough, to not ask questions, and they quickly filed out, the last one shutting the door behind him. As Zusa began pulling open drawers, Alyssa came up behind her.

“You’re upset I likened you to a servant,” she said. “I’m not a fool. I can tell that much.”

Finding a pair of dark-gray breeches, no doubt for a man, Zusa held them to her waist. The length looked good, just a tiny bit too long, but it’d be easy enough to roll them at the ankle. Tossing them on a nearby bed, along with her shirt, she started searching for a belt. She found several, all thin and designed to hold up nothing heavier than the pants below. Ignoring Alyssa, she went to the door and yanked it open, not at all surprised to find two of Victor’s guards lurking outside. The servants had likely summoned them the moment they left.

“Fetch me a sword belt,” she told one. “Alyssa’s orders. Find the smallest one you have.”

She shut the door before they could protest. That done, she removed her cloak, set it atop the bed with the rest, and then began stripping down.

“It’s not that you likened me to a servant,” Zusa said as Alyssa stood in the center of the room, waiting for a response. “It’s that you say it only because Victor demands it of you.”

“Is that what this is about, my betrothal to Victor?” Alyssa took a step closer. “Or that you think I am putting him above you?”

Now naked, Zusa pulled the shirt over her head, pleasantly surprised by its looseness. Given Alyssa’s smaller size, she’d thought it’d be tight, but the shirt must not have been originally hers.

“You
are
putting him above me,” she said. “And even worse, putting him as your equal. You’re a lady of the Trifect, Alyssa. He should be groveling at your feet for the privilege of entering your family’s bloodline.”

She pulled on the pants, and they were as long as she’d feared. Sitting down on the bed, she began folding them, forming small, tight rectangles along the bottoms.

“Don’t act as if this is about me,” Alyssa said, crossing her arms over her chest. “This isn’t about my reputation, or my legacy as a member of the Trifect. It’s something far more selfish than that. Tell me what bothers you, Zusa. Let me hear it so we can move on, and you return to the mansion like you belong.”

“You wish to know what I want?” Zusa asked. She stood and crossed the room so she could grab Alyssa’s hands. “I want you to trust me. End your betrothal to Victor, and banish his men from your mansion. Trust me to protect you. Trust me to keep Nathaniel safe, and to ensure no one dares interfere with his inheritance. You need no one else. Trust
me
, Alyssa. Trust me to be at your side … always and forever. Is that so wrong of me to desire? Is it really so selfish a request?”

“Always and forever?”

It seemed all the air was sucked from the room. Alyssa’s hand reached up, and softly she trailed a finger along Zusa’s face, trembling only when her fingertip brushed a tear that drifted down her cheek.

“I would have you nowhere else,” she said. “But what you want, it
is
wrong, because I don’t think you can, Zusa. It’s too much for your shoulders to bear alone. Right now I ask that you trust me to know what I’m doing, and that what we do is best.”

“Yes,” said Zusa, bitterness in every word, “because your judgment in men has never once been in error.”

It was a hateful thing to say, and she knew it. So did Alyssa.

“Perhaps not just in men,” Alyssa said, and she pulled her hand back and clutched it into a fist.

Apologize, now
, thought Zusa.
Before the wound is too deep
.

But the hurt moved both ways, and it gave her an easy stubbornness to rely upon. Biting her tongue, she returned to the door and opened it. On the other side, looking confused, was one of the house soldiers. In his hand he held several sword belts.

“I pray these are sufficient?” the man asked.

Zusa grabbed the smallest one, shut the door, and then began looping it about her waist. It also had been designed for a man, and she had to use a dagger to pierce a hole in the leather so she could cinch it tight enough. That done, she brushed past Alyssa into a closet, found a pair of boots, and pulled them on. Meanwhile Alyssa said nothing, only stood listening to her prepare. She resembled an animal in waiting, poised to strike. When Zusa tried to pass her for her cloak, Alyssa reached out, grabbing her by the shoulder and clutching her tight.

“Stop,” she said. “Please, just stop. I cannot do this. I won’t. I’m sorry I can’t trust you like I should, Zusa, but doing so would only get you killed. To let that happen … for years I’ve asked everything of you. For once, let me spare you that burden. Veldaren is crumbling, and while I am bound to its destruction, I will not carry you down with me. Victor is but a flailing fool, the thinnest hope in a world where I truly believe there is none. If his plans fail, let him be the one to suffer, and I at his side. But not you, and not Nathaniel.”

“You don’t need to do this,” Zusa insisted. “Leave Veldaren. Put this damn place behind you, and let us build a life in Riverrun, or Angelport. We don’t need Victor to find happiness. Just you, Nathaniel … and me.”

Alyssa closed her eyelids, head tilting, frown growing.

“A wonderful dream,” she said. “But just that, a dream. I won’t flee from this. It’s not in me to do so. Whatever legacy I carry with me to my grave, I would rather it be one of blood than of cowardice.”

That was it, then. Zusa didn’t know what else to say. She felt her heart breaking, felt the friend she’d rescued from a damp dark cell suddenly becoming a woman who knew only death and hopelessness.

“I love you, Alyssa,” she said. “Does that not matter?”

Alyssa took a step back, eyelids still closed. For a moment she debated her words, a long, interminable moment for Zusa.

“In a different lifetime, a better lifetime, it would matter,” she said, so softly, so carefully. “But not this one.”

Zusa grabbed her daggers off the nearby bed and jammed them into her belt. She clasped the cloak around her neck and shoulders, and it folded about her, a meager comfort to the aching cold she felt spreading throughout her chest.

“How do you look?” Alyssa asked.

Zusa glanced to her gray shirt, her dark pants and boots, and the cloak wrapped about her.

“Like him,” she said.

Alyssa needed no more explanation than that.

“There are worse you could resemble,” she said.

A strong need to cover her face overcame Zusa. For once she felt she understood why the Watcher kept his features in shadow. The intimidation was useful, but being able to hide, to become something different from yourself to escape the hurt and turmoil …

A knock on the door, and then in stepped Victor without waiting for an answer. If he was taken aback by Zusa’s new outfit, he hid it well.

“I was told you’d returned,” he said. “I’m glad. I’ve been wishing to speak with you.”

“If this is about me obeying your orders, you can stop,” Zusa said. “Once Alyssa pays me, I am leaving.”

Victor stayed in the center of the doorway, denying her the possibility of an easy exit. There was a look on his handsome face she couldn’t quite read, something dangerous in his blue eyes that told her she should get out before he spoke another word.

“Actually, it is a far more delicate matter I’d have us discuss.” He glanced to Alyssa. “Assuming you two have a moment, of course.”

“Go ahead,” Alyssa said, sitting down on one of the servants’ beds. “Zusa was just finding herself some new clothes.”

“Ones with less blood on them, I see,” said Victor, glancing at the pile near Zusa’s feet. Something about it seemed to mildly amuse him.

“If you have something to discuss, then let’s discuss it,” Zusa said, having no patience for trivialities. She wanted out. She wanted away from Alyssa and the hurt tearing into her gut.

“Very well. I’ve been thinking of ways for us to strike at the Sun Guild without letting our resistance be known. If Muzien brings his entire wrath down upon us, we’ll be crushed in a night. Difficult as it will be, we must outwit him, and use his own tricks and secrecy against him until we know exactly when and where to attack.”

“What does this have to do with me?” Zusa asked.

Victor crossed his arms, any remnants of a smile on his face quickly vanishing.

“We want you to infiltrate the Sun Guild as our spy.”

“We?” Zusa asked, nearly laughing at the ludicrousness of it. So much for Alyssa keeping Zusa free from her perceived downfall of the city. So much for relying on Victor to save her from the dark corners of Veldaren that they’d have her infiltrate.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Alyssa said, and her neck flushed red.

“There’s no reason it would fail,” Victor insisted. “Muzien will have no reason to know who you are, nor of your allegiance to Alyssa.”

“Unless he’s looked into her past,” Zusa argued.

“And knows what? A woman in wrappings once guarded Alyssa? You’ll be anything but to them, Zusa. You’ll be a pretty face that knows how to kill. I daresay you’ll fit right in.”

It was crazy. She almost pushed past Victor, then decided it might be better to move to a corner of the room where the shadows were deepest. Diving in, she could reappear outside the mansion, be free of them forever. But to leave Alyssa helpless, to leave her and Nathaniel’s lives in that oaf Victor’s hands …

“You don’t have to do this,” Alyssa said, interrupting her thoughts. “I don’t want you to.”

And that was it, enough to change her mind. In the end, Zusa was more stubborn than she realized.

“I’ll do it,” she said.

Victor’s smile blossomed anew.

“Excellent,” he said. “Once we discover where he sleeps, where he eats, where his men stay … we’ll find a weakness and exploit it. When Muzien’s dead, the entire Sun Guild will come crashing down, ending their threat to us once and for all. Who knows, perhaps you’ll be able to kill him yourself, Zusa, should he let his guard down in your presence.”

“I think you underestimate the danger of our foe.”

The man shook his head.

“Or you underestimate your own skill. This will work. I’m sure of it.”

Zusa was far less convinced, but her word was given.

“Very well,” she said. “Come tomorrow, I will find a recruiter for the Suns and make myself known to them. Once I have, any contact between us will be done solely at my discretion. Is that understood?”

“Perfectly,” said Victor.

Zusa lowered her voice as she slipped past Victor.

“I die, or Muzien dies,” she whispered. “Either way you win, don’t you, Victor?”

His smile was his only answer, but it was answer enough.

   3   

T
hren Felhorn was on his way to the graveyard when he spotted two members of the Sun behind one of Muzien’s new whorehouses bickering with one another over the body of a prostitute. It was too dark for Thren to make out whether or not she lived, but the men were clearly debating who would get the first turn.

“Fuck off,” said one to the other. “If you’re so worried about where my cock’s been, choose yourself a different hole.”

Thren’s hand drifted to his side, where his short sword remained hidden by a long ratty coat he’d stolen. Every remnant of his former guild he’d tossed aside, for Muzien had declared a death penalty on his head, and being recognized was the last thing he needed. His hair he hid beneath a flattened cap, his face behind the high collar of his coat. His shambling walk was that of a drunk, his downcast eyes that of a man who’d spent a life beaten and trodden upon. No one would think him burdened with money or respect. To those two behind the whorehouse, he’d be a mark at best, or a bit of fun at worst.