Bazil Broketail (16 page)

Far away below he heard a distant slam. Then the sound of a gate being opened. An officer said, “Quick march!” and a squad of men tramped past, below Besita’s window.

Thrembode’s ears pricked up at the sounds.

What was this? It was past one in the morning. The smug, comfortable feeling faded. Lessis was in Marneri! That in itself bred danger. It was the most grievous misfortune that she should turn up here when the mission was about to reach its climax. If all went well, he would shortly be at the ear of the new king of Marneri, the witless Erald.

Already he had made good friends with Erald, who appreciated his lewd jokes and obscene pictures. Thrembode had some little cards that he’d bought in Ourdh that showed the most amusing positions!

He had the measure of the young man. He knew the mission had tremendous potential. He would be a section leader before this was over. Perhaps a new posting to Kadein, or to the far west, to the mysterious lands of Endro. Where the leash was longest and the control from Padmasa the weakest. Everyone said there were fabulous places out there, where cities floated and elf gardens were common.

But now Lessis herself was in Marneri. The slightest thing might arouse her formidable suspicion. He felt his pulse thud and his mouth dry out. Those poor bastards in Kadein. They’d been hanged in private after their interrogations. That was always the way with these hags.

Another squad was marching out and going in the other direction! Many men were in motion. It was an unmistakable sound: feet thudding on stairs, armor, shields clashing. Doors opening and closing. The noise from the Chapterhouse across the way grew louder. More men at arms were standing to the alert.

He slipped out of the bed and cracked the shutters an inch. A freezing wind blew in, but down below he saw a squad of men go marching out of the postern gate and into the square.

A small figure came running through the Dragon Arch from the Dragon House. Then there came another scuttling into the dark towards the postern gate.

And now, looking over to the bulk of the Novitiate, he saw several young women come running down the stairs and off towards the Dragon House.

Something was up! Something important enough to waken the center of the city in the middle of the night. He licked his lips. It was cold out there and the wind was chilling his belly, but he kept watching.

More figures were running through the arch that led to Dragons Walk. There was a distant uproar that was swelling in volume. Dragon voices! Nothing else could be so loud.

Somewhere, a dragon was screaming!

A chill went down his back. The plan was uncovered! It must be! But how? How had they done this? How had they penetrated the plot? He cursed and slammed the shutter tight.

It was that damned hag Lessis. The legendary ageless horror from the witches’ isle.

Thrembode had an uneasy feeling that the squads were heading for the gates of the city. Wall patrols would be stepped up, and from here on leaving the city undetected would depend entirely on smugglers’ tunnels.

He pursed his lips. It was obviously time to move on. Of course they could not detect Thrembode’s hand in this. He had dealt personally with the dragon from Quosh and that boy, but who would remember him? And how would they ever get information from his victims?

Meanwhile Smilgax himself was under a complex lifetime spell. He could tell them little about Thrembode. They had met only a couple of times, and that but briefly. Smilgax would remember more about the man that had raised him up in Troat. That man they would seek out.

Thrembode chuckled dryly to himself. Of course the fools would not find the dragon handler, unless they wished to visit him in Tummuz Orgmeen!

But Thrembode was in deep trouble anyway.

The Doom would be most displeased to learn of the loss of Smilgax. That was a weapon that had been most carefully bred and handled. It had taken years to mature, and would have led to a significant advance in the struggle to control Marneri through its ruling family.

The agent who lost such a thing could expect punishment. Possibly to swing in the dark of the deep pit for a year and a day, possibly worse, much much worse.

To make up for the loss of Smilgax, therefore, Thrembode needed a coup of some kind—something quite extraordinary.

More men went tramping past, heading for the postern gate.

His glance fell on the plump features of Besita. In a moment he was at her side and began a swift incantation. He took up a candle and struck a match. Then he took some of Besita’s hair in his hand and burned the ends a little.

Between his finger and thumb he snuffed out the flame. Besita did not stir, a soft snore continued.

The burnt smell rose in the room as he continued the dire syllables while he cut his forearm and dripped blood onto more of her hair. This, too, he burned.

Besita’s eyes opened soon after that and she sat up on his command. She noticed that he was using a scrap of her fine silk sheet to bind a wound on the back of his wrist.

“Besita, where would Lessis of Valmes be if she was sleeping in Marneri tonight?”

She would know this, of course!

“Lessis has an apartment here in the tower,” said the trollop. “It is directly above my apartment, three floors up.”

Ah ha! Easier even than he could have hoped for. At least something was running in his favor!

He strode back to the window and pulled open the shutter once more and looked up, examining the route he would have to take. He was quickly reassured. There were balconies and he was confident he could climb it quite easily.

He shivered nonetheless—it was damnably cold out there. Once more he drew inside and closed the shutters.

He gave the docile Besita a series of instructions and had her repeat them line by line. She was to dress and order her carriage brought around at once. She was to go down and order the driver to bring the carriage to stand in the passage between the tower and the Chapterhouse. She was to wait there until Thrembode joined her. If she was questioned, she was to say that she was acting on orders from the Grey Lady. That would keep them off!

The screaming was renewed from the Dragon House. Huge voices were shouting somewhere, dragons bellowing. Thrembode’s worst suspicions were confirmed; there was nothing for it but to improvise and seize the only opportunity that remained. He dressed quickly and tightened his cloak around his waist with the inner straps.

Besita was dressing. Without a word to him she went out and rousted her maid from her bed, bidding her to take a message at once to the coachman in his room at the Chapterhouse.

Thrembode made sure the message was given clearly and the maid dispatched into the night, and then he returned to the window. He thrust open the shutters and went out onto the balcony.

Helena of Roth looked around herself at the apartment and sniffed. The place was as barren as a dormitory for novices. What few furnishings there were, were meager, hand-me-downs, worn out and scuffed.

Helena of Roth was not impressed. Helena prided herself on her expensive taste in furnitures and rugs, and for her knowledge of all the intricacies of proper style and design. Her room in the Novitiate, though small, was well set out with Kadein rugs and Talion oak furniture. Without breaking the bounds for what would be appropriate for a well-born junior priestess, her room was impressive.

Yet here she was in the rooms of Lessis of Valmes herself and they were utterly inconsequential! The woman had no sense of taste. It was a shocking discovery.

The rooms themselves were sufficient, for tower rooms. They were too big to keep warm, but they had nice moldings around the high ceilings and there was a window in each room. Indeed, from the balcony there were excellent views over the river and the city which seemed spread out like a map below.

But the blue stone floor flags were unpolished and there was dust in the corners. The walls were bare, the cots in each room were covered in the boring blue blankets issued by the Novitiate. And there were hardly any rugs! How could someone as important as Lessis of Valmes live like this?

There was a single table in the front room, an old monstrous thing of dark wood with drawers set in one side. The chairs did not match it, nothing went with it and it was much bigger than anything else. It was a horror, done out in a heavy style that had been out of fashion for a hundred years.

What rugs there were, were old, faded things that should have been thrown out long ago. Indeed, the only thing in the place that looked cared for was the bookshelf, which fairly groaned with heavy tomes.

Helena imagined the apartment if she was allowed to fix it up. On the walls she’d have some of the latest paintings from Kadein,
trompe l’oeil
exercises that were simply marvelous fun. Then for furniture she’d put in a complete set of Talion oak work. With the blue stone floor flags polished up and some nice Marneri rugs set on them, the place would come alive.

But that was dreaming. It would be a long time before she would be able to obtain rooms in the tower. These apartments were only for the highest ranks.

Her room at the Novitiate would soon be a memory too. She would be moving on to the rank of junior priestess, and that meant transferring to the Temple.

She shivered. There was nothing comfortable about the Temple. It was freezing cold all the time and juniors were housed four to a room.

Gloomily she traced her fingers along the bookcase. There was a full set of the Birrak, all thirteen volumes, plus several copies of the Dekademon and commentaries. There was Ruling’s
History of Veronath
and the complete
Poems and Lays of Mistress Worthy
. It was all so hideously boring.

Just like the Birrak! It was just so tedious to memorize all those lines of declension. Helena hated the memorizations. She was just not cut out for that kind of mental effort. But she knew where she was going and what she would do. She would transfer to the Commercial Administration after her first year as junior. With her family contacts she was sure she would get in. And in the Commercial she would never have to bother her head with the Birrak or any of the rest of it.

However, the bookshelf did contain some things that aroused Helena’s interest. In addition to the boring old Birrak there were a dozen black tomes in leather sheaths that were securely locked and sealed with thick leather straps.

Their titles were written in the Cunfshon script and Helena could barely decipher them; however, she knew that one was definitely titled
Small Spells, River Enchantments, Tree Songs
. Another had a word that she was sure was “death,” but that was the only one of six she could identify.

It was so frustrating! Even after three years of studying the ancient tongue of Cunfshon she was quite hopeless with it. And the use of the tongue was something she would need when she went over to the Commercial.

It was so boring to have to learn it, and there was so much memorizing involved, but just being able to touch these exotic, powerful books gave Helena a thrill. This was the real power. These were books of the great magic, filled with the most awful secrets. How to turn people into frogs and rats, how to avenge any wrong and wreak malicious woe upon one’s enemies.

Helena tried all the locks once again, but they were solid and quite proof against any lock-picking techniques that she might possess, which she had to admit were nonexistent. But then the picking of locks was not something that well-bred ladies did, and Helena was first and foremost a well-bred young lady.

Of course she had already tried the drawers set into the rim of the rickety old table. Unfortunately they too were firmly locked. She turned back to the bed and sighed. There was no way to gain access to the forbidden secrets.

On the bed lay the boy, a dragonboy recovering from a black spell, an actual casualty in the long war with the great enemy. A boy who had been enchanted by an unknown agent of that enemy, who had penetrated right within the walls of Marneri.

This was more exciting as an idea than as a reality, unfortunately, or so Helena had discovered.

When Flavia had asked for a volunteer from the senior class, Helena had been glad to be selected; it was a mark that Flavia had forgiven her in the matter of the fuss caused by the awful Sappino on Fundament Day.

And when she’d been climbing the stairs of the great tower and entering the rooms and listening to Lessis give her instructions, well, it had still seemed exciting. After all, how many girls got to speak alone with Lessis of Valmes?

But now?

The boy slept, snoring lightly. He was a pretty boy, with a nice nose and a broad forehead, but Helena was impervious to the charms of boys from the lower social orders. To her he was just a dirty little dragonboy and she had to sit there, for hours it seemed, and do nothing but look at him.

She didn’t want to. She wanted Lessis to return from the Dragon House and let her go back to her bed in the Novitiate. It was late, way past bedtime. It was time for this adventure to be over.

After all, this boy was perfectly fine. He looked quite normal. If he’d been half turned into a frog or a rodent, then that would have been something to tell the others in the morning, but as he was he was totally boring. In fact she didn’t understand why anyone had to look after him since all he did was sleep.

Restlessly she turned in her chair. The fire was burning down; she would have to put another log on pretty soon. And even with the fire the room was not very warm. It was just as everyone said about these tower apartments; they had good rooms for summer, but they were iceboxes in the wintertime.

So far she had managed to keep the really big temptation right out of her mind, but now as boredom set in she found herself thinking obsessively about the bag, lying on the bed in the other room.

It was a very plain bag, covered in a coarse grey cloth. It had no fastener that Helena could see and seemed wide open for a little stealthy exploration. However, it was undoubtedly Lessis’s personal bag and this gave Helena pause.