Blood of Ambrose (10 page)

“I'm not the Emperor!” the King shouted. “There is no Emperor!”
I don't want to be Emperor!
he longed to add.
To hell with the empire!

“If Your Majesty would be a little more quiet—these walls are not made of marble, nor masonry either.”

“Then any listener has already heard too much,” the King said, but more calmly (and quietly). He wanted to throw himself at this stupid soldier and scream
Bring me my Grandmother!
But he owed this stupid soldier his life, over and over. Besides, hysteria would convince Lorn of nothing. And he was not stupid. He was
not
stupid. But he wasn't seeing things as they were, either.

“Lorn,” said the King, “what can we do by ourselves? Nothing, which is exactly what we've been doing. We'll sit here in this room or another like it, eating salt beef and stale biscuits until someone recognizes one of us and betrays us both.”

“Your Majesty, the soldiers—”

“What can they do?” the King interrupted. “You yourself told me my uncle is killing them whenever they say a word he doesn't like. Their officers are all with the Protector. As we sit here, I might as well be dead and buried to them.”

“The people—”

“Lorn, in the name of—of Fate, don't you see what I've said for the soldiers goes double for the people?”

“If we have time we can work something out,” Lorn said stubbornly.

The King suppressed an impulse to tear at his hair. “Lorn,” he said finally, “I'll always welcome your advice. How could I not? Your wisdom and courage are all that's kept me alive these past seven months. But the choice is mine to make. Lorn, I
order
you to go.”

The soldier glared mutinously at him for a long, tense moment. Then his glance dropped, and the King knew he had won. Lorn armed himself and left a few moments later without saying a word. The King heard him cursing incoherently as he descended the stairs outside.

Now the King had been alone for hours and it was long after dark. He was restless and bored and tense all at once. He had waited many days for nothing at all, in this same room, with nothing to do but exercise and stare at the wall. Somehow it was harder to do now, for a shorter time and with a greater expectation.

That was what led him to the windows. Lorn had told him never to open them at any time. But it was after dark, and soon they would be leaving here forever. And he was bored.

He opened the window shutters and peered out. Dull as it might seem to some, the city street at night was a world of adventure to him. He had been shut in every day since their escape from the Protector; in a sense he had been shut in his whole life.

The street was a channel of darkness below. There were no streetlamps and no traffic. The only light came from lit and open windows; there were few of these and none of them were on the ground level. He stared, fascinated, into the shadows, hoping to catch a glimpse of some passerby. But if there were any passersby, he couldn't see them.

There was someone down in the street, though, sitting at the front of a cart with its load covered by canvas. At least the King thought there was someone there: the figure was motionless and heavily cloaked; the street was dark.…He couldn't be sure.

Suddenly a window lit up just above the cart; light fell red upon the seated figure. The King saw, too, a dense uneven fringe of splayed stiff fingers lining the edge of the cart, thrusting out from under the canvas.

It was a death cart. The figure seated in front was a Companion of Mercy. The King goggled a bit at the red robes, mask, gloves—he had rarely seen these figures belonging to the city's night.

The Companion still hadn't moved. His (?) back was to the light, and shadow fell across the masked face. The King wondered if he had been struck dead by one of the hundred illnesses that killed without ceasing in the poorer quarters of the city. But alive or dead the Companion did not move.

Presently gentle hoofbeats approached from farther up the street; they could only be heard because all else was so quiet. Another death cart appeared, two red-clad Companions seated within it. The King wondered that the cart moved so stealthily, then realized that the wheels of the cart and the hooves of the horses must be padded. The new cart pulled alongside the stationary cart and halted. If the Companions spoke the King did not hear them. But the first Companion gestured with a red-gloved hand, moving for the first time, and the other Companions turned their masked faces away from the light. After a moment the King realized the Companions were not merely looking toward him, but
at
him.

That thought, in the chill blue air of evening, was menacing. He was alone. The most powerful man in the empire desired his death above all things. And, beyond all that…there was something strange about the red-clad Companions as they watched him and did not move, as they waited and watched him while the night grew darker.

He wanted to back away from the window, but he was afraid to move. Suppose he left their sight, and they decided to seek him out? The thought of those red-clad figures at the door of his room was terrifying. He decided not to leave the window until Lorn returned.

Suddenly he wondered if Lorn
would
return. Perhaps they had him already. The King wanted to make sure the door was bolted—had he locked it after Lorn left? Would it be worth the risk to leave the window for a moment, just to check?

With dreadful gentleness, hoofbeats arising from the darkness of the street announced the arrival of another death cart. The King watched with fascination as it appeared in the vague circle of light below. The two Companions seated within it were already staring at him as they reined in beside the other two death carts.

A frightful thought occurred to him. The second and third death carts each had two Companions. But the first, the one that had been outside his window since before he had opened it (the crow! they had seen the crow crash through the shutter!)—the first cart had only
one
Companion. Where was the other? Where had it gone?

The conviction seized him that the missing Companion was coming for him, that the others were merely waiting for their missing peer to bring him down to them.

Now every shadow seemed tinged with red—a high hood above red-gloved hands reaching for him. He felt he must go to the door—was something already moving stealthily in the room behind him? But he could not move a muscle. He could hardly breathe. He certainly could not speak. And if he called…who would come for him?

And so he watched, motionless, in speechless horror, as a gloved hand with long fingers reached over his shoulder, clamped itself across his mouth, and drew him, sobbing, back into the darkness.

*
A “call” is one half-period of the moon Trumpeter, or 7.5 days. See
appendix C
.

hose birds were a bad idea,” Wyrth was saying morosely. If I never have a worse I'll die a happy dwarf.”

“Not inherently bad,” his master disagreed. “We all underestimated the number of Coranians in the city.”

“Of course no one boasts of it. Might as well boast of being a dragon-worshipper back home under Thrymhaiam. But they remember, those crafty bastards. Hundreds of generations in exile, and they still understand the speech of the Wardlands! How many of them are Urdhven's liegemen, do you suppose?”

Morlock shrugged his twisted shoulders. One would be too many, and they both knew it.

One of the iron crows lay before them on the counter of Genjandro's shop. It had flown through the door less than a hundred heartbeats after Ambrosia's departure. They had immediately shut up shop and had been discussing what to do ever since.

“At any rate,” Morlock decreed, “no one of us will go to investigate this crow.” Its flame pointed in more or less the same direction as the last, toward Ambrose, and all of them felt the coincidence ominous. “It may be an attempt to separate us,” the Crooked Man added. “We will wait for Ambrosia's return and look into this together.”

“Ach, Master Morlock. Ambrosia may already be in the Protector's hands.”

Shaking his head, Morlock replied. “I await her here. You and Genjandro may go, if you wish.”

“
Hursme angaln khore?
”
^*
Wyrth quoted the Dwarvish proverb. “Blood has no price! I'll stay.”

Genjandro's wistful expression suggested he was thinking of his own blood. But, “
She
would wait for
us
,” he said. “I'll stay.”

Morlock nodded matter-of-factly. It was then they heard the soldier (all three of them heard the clanking of his mail as he approached) step up to the door of the shop and pound on it with his fist.

“Genjandro,” Morlock said calmly, “open the door.” He loosened his sword in its sheath as he spoke. The dwarf reached out, and his fingers closed on a bar of lead that Genjandro used as a counterweight. Then the merchant threw open the door and stood back.

The light from the shop lamp fell on the face of the soldier outside.

“Good evening, Captain Lorn,” Morlock said coolly. “I trust you received our message.”

“The Strange Gods seize you all, Ambrosian filth,” replied the Legionary. “I am here only at the King's command.”

“Good for little Lathmar!” muttered Wyrth.

“Then you know where the King is?” Genjandro asked.

“I'll take you to him.”

“No,” Morlock said. “Ambrosia is with him now, I guess. We await her return.”

Lorn, breathing heavily, stared at Morlock. “Then I wait, too,” he said finally.

“That may be unwise,” Morlock observed. “If—”

He paused. In the interval they all heard the rhythmical crash of booted feet marching in the lane outside.

“Please come in, Captain Lorn,” Morlock said. “Shut the door behind you. We have a decision to make.”

The King was relieved when his captor proved to be his Grandmother rather than one of the faceless red Companions—but not very. He anticipated a tongue-lashing for various stupidities, whereas a Companion would, he supposed, merely kill or kidnap him.

In fact, he was pleasantly surprised. His Grandmother simply set him down out of sight, grunted as if in pain, and pulled at her black gloves.

“Grandmother,” he said haltingly, “your, your hands…”

“Morlock and Wyrth patched me up,” she replied. “These gloves are Wyrth's making; with them I can do just about anything I need to—except scratch my palms, damn it!” She paused and asked, “Where is Lorn?”

“I sent him to Genjandro's to find you.”

“Good. Excellent. Then he's met up with Morlock by now. I was worried he might have gone down to deal with those creatures in the street.”

“Why are they here? What do they want?”

Ambrosia—a shadow in the sparse light from the window—shrugged crooked shoulders. “Something to do with you, of course. You're the man of the hour, Lathmar, if it delights you to think so.”

It didn't. Lathmar stood in silence, trying to think of a reply that was both true and properly respectful, until his Grandmother spoke again.

“We'd best get out of here, Lathmar. Come along. I've—”

Her voice broke off. A sudden poignant intuition caused Lathmar to turn. In the open doorway stood the shape of a Companion. Its red robes were gray in the dim light, but there were faint red gleams in the gaping eyeholes of its mask.

Ambrosia stepped in front of Lathmar, drawing as she did so the short curved blade strapped over her shoulders.

“Gravedigger,” she said, “get out of my way. I am Ambrosia Viviana; I will not tell you twice.”

The Companion did not retreat, but it did not move into the room either. Ambrosia advanced three paces cautiously, then—instead of cutting or thrusting with the blade, as Lathmar expected—she leapt forward with a chest-high kick.

The Companion disappeared from the doorway, and they heard him strike the corridor wall outside. Ambrosia rushed out the door, Lathmar at her heels. They saw the robes of the Companion settling down in the dust of the hall floor. Apart from dust there was nothing beneath them.

“A sending of some kind,” Ambrosia said. “God Creator! What a stench!”

Lathmar, his throat clenching like a fist, could not reply.

“We've no time to sort this out,” she continued. “Come along.”

He followed her down the hallway to the stairwell. Glancing back, he saw a shadow standing in the doorway of the room he had shared with Lorn.

“Grandmother,” he whispered.

“Shut up.”

They entered the stairwell. In the absolute darkness therein Ambrosia seized Lathmar's hand and led him upward. Beneath them, beneath the sound of their footsteps and their harsh breathing, Lathmar thought he heard something moving on the steps below.

They reached the tenement's highest floor. The hallway there was narrower than on floors below, the ceiling lower. Ambrosia led the way to the end of the hall, where it was narrowest and lowest.

“There doesn't seem to be anyone home,” Lathmar whispered as they went.

Ambrosia laughed. “No? I'd bet there's someone standing behind every door we've passed. But don't trust in that. We could be killed as we stood here and no one would even holler for the night-watch.”

“That's bad!” Lathmar replied. He was wondering how many of his people lived this way.

“Is it? I suppose it is. But they've got their own lives to think about. They've learned how to survive among the water gangs, the muggers, the corrupt watchmen, the thugs who prey on others for the pleasure of doing so. These people are tough, Lathmar, and they know what matters to them. They take no unnecessary risks because they meet and survive a hundred dangers in a day. Your best soldiers come from here, Lathmar—but they've got one flaw, from your point of view. They're realists, not loyalists like Lorn. They'll follow the strongest leader always.”

“And I'm not the strongest.”

“Not today. Look here, Lathmar, do you think you can lift me?” They had reached the hall's end.

He had spent the long days exercising—there was little else to do—but he looked up at his towering Grandmother fearfully. “I—I—don't think so, Grandmother.”

“We'll see. Turn around.”

He did so, and she put her back against his, linking both their arms at the elbow. “Bend over,” she commanded, and he did so. Then she swung her legs off the floor and, lying with her black flat upon his, kicked at the low cracked ceiling. He staggered under the weight, the force of the blow. Plaster dust rained down on them.

“Grandmother!” he shouted. “There's something there!” By “there” he meant the dark door of the unlit stairwell.

“Save your breath!” she said, and kicked again. Chunks of plaster fell with the dust this time. Light was flickering within the King's eyes, and the world was changing shape. Ambrosia kicked again and the world came apart in a chaos of shattered plaster and broken wood. His legs gave way, and they both fell to the floor. He was not conscious of this, though, until she lifted him up. The hallway window was blocked with debris.

“Grandmother,” he said groggily, “the window—”

“Get up!” she commanded. “No—not on my hands. On my forearms. Up you go!” She fairly threw him toward the ragged ring of dark blue that was the sky, the hole she had kicked in the ceiling. Choking from the dust, he found his head in the open air. He scrabbled at the flat filthy roof of the tenement, but there was nothing to grab onto.

“Lift yourself up!” she shouted.

“Can't!” he screamed back.

She placed her hand against his rump and pushed. The King of the Two Cities sprawled on the tenement roof. From the hole he heard a rush of footsteps in the hallway and sudden harsh laughter—his Grandmother's. Then came a burst of fire-bright light that left red afterimages in his eyes. When he could see again, his Grandmother was lifting herself through onto the roof.

“Phlogiston!” she said, laughing, to his complete bewilderment. “Never leave home without a pocketful, Lathmar! Brothers are useful creatures, sometimes,” she added, even more mysteriously. As she rose to her feet he saw that she had drawn her sword again, and that the grip, broken in two, was trailing smoke in the night air.

“What?”

“Never mind. I left him burning on the floor, with the tenants stamping out the fire—”

“The tenants?”

“Certainly. They fear fire more than a thousand gangsters, or the Strange Gods they swear by. Rightly, too, I'd say.” She sheathed her sword. “That was well done down there, Lathmar.”

He felt ashamed and surprised all at once. He didn't remember her ever praising him before. “I did nothing,” he protested.

“You did what you had to do. No one ever does more—many not so much.”

“I could have done nothing else.”

She responded with a cheerfully hair-raising obscenity. “You could have run, or simply panicked, even if there was no use in it. You did well. Let's go.”

The King followed her across the roof. The prospect of his city dizzied him as he approached the edge. The dim smoky light from myriads of lamps and torches faintly sketched in the successive ridges of skyline—crooked, angular, domed. It was breathtaking, vast, yet somehow constricting. It was as if he were seeing an entire universe at once—but a very small universe, which was closing in on him. He looked up at the low-hanging clouds and saw red light reflected there.

“Is the city burning?” he asked.

“No more than every night. Look here, Lathmar, can you jump across that?”

“That” was the chasm between the roof they stood on and that of the next building. It was only a couple arm lengths across, but lit windows on both walls descending displayed its depth. Fear stopped his throat—he could feel the impact of the street on his flesh—but he knew he could make it. He nodded.

“Good. We'll cross a few of these to break our trail, then tear through another roof and walk down to street level. Understand?”

The King nodded.

“Jump!” Ambrosia said.

The King jumped.

Before the night was over the King found himself wishing he had missed the jump and gone down in a red smash beside the tenement. “It would have been better than this!” he muttered to himself. He thought his words would be lost in the tramp of soldier's boots behind him, but the mailed fist gripping his neck tightened painfully. “None o' that!” a harsh voice said in his ear.