Blood of Ambrose (35 page)

She met Lathmar on the stairs. “Well met, Lathmar,” she said, kissing his forehead. “I didn't hope to see you again. You'd better talk to the crowd.”

“What should I say?” asked Lathmar, becoming less kinglike in the regent's presence, as usual.

“Tell them a bedtime story. Tell them to get home. Get out of my damn way.” She hurried past him.

The King's horse (old Trann, it looked like) was standing nervously in the stairwell entrance. As Ambrosia pushed him out of the way, Morlock half dismounted, half fell from Velox's saddle. Wyrth dragged him toward the guardhouse, and Ambrosia ran up to assist him, careful not to touch Morlock's wounded shoulder.

“You stupid son of a bitch,” she hissed in his face. “I'm getting sick of this. You go off to dance on the edge of chaos and we get to pick up the pieces as usual. Next time you'll listen to me or you can fucking rot. God Avenger destroy you, I hate your fucking guts!”

He kissed her tearstained cheek, and his eyes closed. The Guardians took him then and laid him on a table. Baran took shears and cut his blood-stiffened clothes away; Aloê took needle and thread and sewed up the tear in his flesh. Jordel anointed him with drugs to help him sleep, to heal his flesh, to restore his blood.

From outside they sometimes heard the King speaking to the crowd, sometimes heard the crowd roaring in response.

“I think he'll be all right, madam,” Wyrth said finally to Ambrosia, who had sat silently weeping as the Guardians worked on Morlock.

“Who cares if he is?” Ambrosia said harshly. “We'd all be better off if he died now. Less to worry about.”

“He'll outlive us all, madam.”

“I hope so,” she said dully. “I mean, I suppose so.” After a pause, she continued in the same lifeless voice, “It's just that he's all I have left. Uthar is dead, and my mother is probably dead, and my father is lost to me—worse than if he were dead. People are born and grow old and die, century after century, and the new faces can never mean to me what the old ones did. And Morlock is the last, and maybe he was always the most important. Even more important than Uthar. Don't tell anyone, will you?” she said with a shaky smile.

“Your secret is safe with me, madam,” the dwarf assured her solemnly.

The Guardians had taken Morlock to his room, and Wyrth had gone with them to watch over his master while he slept. Ambrosia was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with her arms crossed.

“Well,” she asked, “what did you tell them?”

Lathmar looked her in the eye. “The truth.”

Ambrosia grunted. “Be more specific.”

“I told them the Protector was an agent of a sorcerer in the dead city. I told them the battle was not over yet. I told them how to recognize a corpse-golem and some things to do about them. I told them to beware of Companions of Mercy. I told them to burn their dead.”

Ambrosia sighed. “All well said. If it had been said around the time you were born it might have done some good.”

The King shrugged. “I was wondering,” he said after a moment, “if he might not have a better claim than I do.”

“Why?”

“He says he's your grandson.”

“So are—Wait, you mean my
actual
grandson, the son of my son or daughter?”

“As I understood him, yes. He seems to be horribly old, rotting away. I mean—” he said, suddenly worried she might be offended.

She held up her hand. “You'd better tell me the whole story. Have you eaten or drunk?”

Lathmar suddenly felt faint. “Not since last night—it was—you wouldn't—”

“Never mind. Let's hit the kitchens; you can tell your tale between bites.”

That was what they did. But early on in the tale she called for Erl and sent him off in search of Steng. It was clear he could tell them more if he would.

Erl looked for Steng most of that night. The poisoner had fled from the Markethall Barracks that morning during the general uprising against the Protector's people. Toward morning, Wyrth joined Erl with a drawing of the poisoner and they searched together through the slums of the city.

It was nearing dawn when they found a landlady who said she had rented a room yesterday afternoon to someone who looked like the man in Wyrth's picture.

“And now I've a question for you,” she screamed after them as they ran up the stairs of her house. “Do you know what time it is?”

They went to the room the woman had described and kicked in the door. It was too late: Steng was dead.

Extremely dead.

The battle-scarred Erl hissed and drew back, his throat clenching with disgust. But Wyrth moved forward, drawn by technical interest. Steng had apparently hung some sort of weighted device from the ceiling. It was a pair of knives that rotated laterally. He had released it and stood in its path. Wyrth recognized the nose, a few ropy fingers, the hair. But Steng was now a bloody ruin.

“Why?” Erl gasped.

Wyrth thought he knew but said nothing. Time enough to ruin Erl's day later on—to tell him that there was indeed a fate worse than the death Steng had chosen.

There was a note.

He says he's done with me—that I'm no use to him now. He'll eat me or cut me up and make me a golem. I won't let him.
There was no address or signature.

“What does it mean?” Erl asked.

“Nothing good,” said Wyrth. “We'd better get this back to Ambrose.” They ran back down the stairs, pausing only to drop some gold in the outstretched palms of Steng's screaming landlady.

“Did you say something?” Erl called to Wyrth as they were riding through the Great Market.

Wyrth, too occupied in staying atop his horse to attempt a witticism, replied briefly, “No.”

“I thought I heard somebody saying something.”

Wyrth thought the same, but he didn't say so.

Later they learned it had started even then.

e quiet, can't you?” Morlock muttered. “Trying to sleep.”

“You've been sleeping for three days. Aren't you hungry? Aren't you thirsty?”

“Not for
that.
”

“What are you referring to?”

“If—” Morlock sat up in bed and looked around. Wyrth was sitting at the right side of his bed in a circle of lamplight, a book open in his lap.

“I dreamed the adept was talking to me,” muttered Morlock.

“It wasn't just a dream,” Wyrth replied. “Anyway, we've all been hearing voices, awake or asleep.”

“Thousands of them. But somehow all the same voice.”

“Yes. Inglonor and the ones he has eaten.”

“Inglonor. How did you learn his name?”

“It's a guess. He told Lathmar that he was Ambrosia's grandson, and of course that narrowed it down a bit.”

“Hm. It wasn't like a dream, though—it was as if he was actually here, speaking to me.”

“Well—where?”

Morlock gestured to the other side of the bed. Wyrth held up the lamp.

And there was somebody there, crouched down in the shadows. Wyrth put down the lamp and jumped across the bed, catching the other as it tried to flee.

The other laughed as Wyrth caught it by the shoulders. “I'll come for you all, soon,” it said, and reaching up to grab its own throat, neatly broke its own neck. Wyrth let it go and it fell to the floor.

“Another for the corpse-fire in the gardens,” he remarked.

Morlock was getting out of bed.

“Hey,” said Wyrth.

“As it happens, I am hungry, and thirsty too. And it looks as if you have much to tell me.”

“That's true enough,” Wyrth conceded. He rang for the hall attendant while Morlock dressed.

“Treb,” he said, when the attendant appeared, “it's another one of those.” He gestured at the dead body.

“Sure it's dead?” said Treb.

“It broke its own neck.”

“I've seen that trick before. Pretends to kill itself, and when you're not looking its sneaking off.” Treb drew a long knife and passed it through the corpse's heart and neck. “
Now
it's dead.” He deftly wrapped a cloth around the wounded neck to absorb the trickle of blood.

Wyrth nodded solemnly. “Better safe than sorry.”

“Nice. Witty. One of your own?”

“Take the meat and go,” said Wyrth, slapping him on the shoulders. (Treb was not too tall, so he could just manage it.) Treb, grinning, hauled the body away.

“That man,” Morlock said, when Treb had gone, “has never before spoken in my presence.”

“And tonight you were half-naked, and so especially terrifying.”

“Wrong half for that,” Morlock observed mildly, pulling on a tunic.

Wyrth waved his hands. “Fine. Tonight everyone makes game of Wyrth. Just so I'm forewarned. And forewarned is foreskinned—no, enough of that.”

“Yes.”

“It could be he's not scared of you because you are now a national hero, having rescued the young King.”

“Hm. I think he might have made it back by himself. He's a resourceful young man.”

Wyrth rolled his eyes. “Ambrosia considers him a bad-tempered and useless overgrown boy.”

“That almost clinches it, I'd say.”

“The other reason Treb isn't frightened of you…Well, it's been a long three days, Morlock.…”

It had begun for Genjandro three nights before. He had been settling his secret accounts with Vora, who kept his house and both sets of books—the ones for the merchant “Alkhendron” (his public face) and those for the spymaster Genjandro. She had been one of his agents, and a good one, too, but she had started to get nervous in the field and was making mistakes. So he had brought her in to work under his wing, and both of his businesses had prospered because of it.

“And something extra for Taan and Olis,” he said. “They did far more than asked on this last job.”

“Ugh,” said Vora sadly. “You'll never put the spying business on a paying basis, Master Alkhendron.”

“That's the treasury's problem,” he observed, smiling. “If they want something, they have to pay for it. And you can call me Genjandro, now,” he reminded her.

“Eh? Oh, that's right—it's your real name, isn't it? I can't get used to it. Are you going to go on being a spy, now that the war against the Protector is over?”

“Maybe,” Genjandro said meditatively. “But not in the city. If Ambrosia and the King want to spy on their citizens, that's their business, but I won't be a part of it. On the other hand, I don't see why I can't import information as well as rugs and whatnot from Anhi.”

Vora nodded, and they returned to their sums, working in silence.

“What?” Vora asked presently.

“I beg your pardon, my dear?”

“Did you say something? I thought you said something.”

“No.”

Vora nodded slowly. “Then you didn't hear anything?”

“No,” Genjandro said firmly. This wasn't quite true. It was almost as if someone were whispering at his ear, but whenever he turned to look there was no one there. It had started earlier that evening, and Genjandro was very much worried it had something to do with the adept Morlock had told him of. But it seemed safer to deny the whispering, to keep it out of his acknowledged reality.

Safer for him—but for Vora? She was nervous—not a coward (she'd proved that!) but a worrier. It was why he'd taken her out of the field. Would she be safer knowing about the adept, or less safe? Would it make her worry more, or less?

“I hear him all the time, now,” Vora said quietly.

“Who, my dear?”

“The adept. The evil presence in the Old City. The King told us about him.”

“Did he?”

“Yes.” Vora was weeping quietly, her sums put aside. “I didn't know he was evil when I first heard him. I didn't know. How could I know? He didn't tell me.”

“Don't worry about it, my dear.”

“Oh, it's past worrying. He's eaten me nearly entirely now; there's so little left.”

“Oh. Is there?” Genjandro said, somewhat stupidly.

“I heard him first more than a year ago, Vora continued. “I was still working in the field then, cleaning in Markethall Barracks—you remember?”

“I do indeed.”

“I was frightened nearly all the time. I never let you know that, but it's true.”

“I never guessed it, dear girl,” Genjandro assured her.

“Well, I was. And I heard his voice in a dream. He said so many things that sounded so wise. He said he could cure me of fear. He said I would never be afraid again. And so when I awoke I—I—I—I did something that let him in. He's been there ever since, eating away at me in the dark.”

“My poor girl,” he whispered. “We'll take you to Ambrose. You've seen Morlock—you know all those old stories are lies. There may be something that he, or those wise people from the Wardlands, can do.”

Her weeping grew louder and more hysterical. “No. There's no time. There's so little of me left. But…he says…he says he'll spare me if you let him in.”

Genjandro said nothing to this.

“It's easy,” she said quietly, “it doesn't hurt. And he gives you things—pays for what he takes. Only, I've nothing left to take—nothing left. Please. Help me.”

Genjandro didn't speak for a long time, and then he said, “She's completely gone, isn't she?”

A sigh escaped Vora's pale lips. “Yes,” her voice conceded. “I finished her earlier tonight, while she was listening to little Lathmar tell the crowd about me. It was most amusing when she realized who I was and what I'd done to her.”

“You shouldn't have begged. She'd never have done that.”

“You'd be surprised what people will do, right at the end, when they're breaking up. In any case, I know that it's by compassion that you will come to me. You give of yourself rather easily, and someday I'll be there to take that first bite.”

Genjandro laughed—not in defiance, but in simple amusement. “You don't know me, thing. I've spent my life buying low and selling high. You can't offer me anything worth what you'd take from me.”

Vora's shoulders shrugged, an odd humping gesture. “Then I've misread you, and you're in no danger from me.”

Genjandro stood and turned away.

“You can't get to Ambrose now, or leave the city,” Vora's voice told him as he walked away. “Apart from that, go where you will and see what you like. You'll find it interesting. It's my city now.”

Genjandro did find it interesting, and it was true that he could not reach Ambrose. He spent the night and much of the next day circumnavigating the walls of the city. But all of the gates were held by guards who would not acknowledge him or let him out—soldiers eaten by the adept.

The next night he slept—he could not do without it anymore—in an empty shed not far from the city's Water Wheel.

He woke the next morning to the sound of the wheel turning. He had, for a moment, the pleasant sense that everything had been a dream—that life in the city was going on as it always had.

But then, he realized, he would not have fallen asleep in this shed. He stepped out into the light, bracing himself for what he would see.

The Water Wheel was turning, the great man-powered wheel that drew water from underground rivers and aqueducts to supply the fountains of the city. It was being turned by men, not, as Genjandro had feared, by corpse-golems.

Genjandro went down to the gate where the workers entered. A great many men were waiting there—the Water Wheel was one place in the city where a strong man could always find work for wages. But with many of the men there were weeping children of various ages. And blocking the way to the wheel were several Companions of Mercy who either let a man pass or refused him at the behest of a smaller figure. As Genjandro approached he realized that the smaller figure was the dead baby Morlock had seen, still astride its monstrous dog-steed with mismatched human feet.

“No, no, no,” the baby was saying impatiently to one importunate would-be worker, who held a small severed hand in his larger ones. “No exceptions. I'm not looking for souvenirs. You must bring the child here: that's all.”

The man dropped the grisly object in the street and went away weeping. The dead baby turned toward Genjandro. Its eyes were wholly ruined—he could see maggots nestling there in the sockets—but it still seemed to see with them somehow, for it nodded and welcomed him by name.

“I'm surprised you remember me,” Genjandro said. “You must have a great deal to think about.”

The baby laughed. (Genjandro flinched, but didn't turn away: he was becoming hardened.) “But then, I have a great many minds to think with,” it pointed out. “Would you be surprised to find I've thought a good deal about you in the past day or so?”

“Nothing surprises me anymore.”

“A healthy attitude. A new world is being born, and I want to give you a chance to be a part of it.”

“Drop dead.”

“Too late!” the baby caroled cheerfully. “No, seriously, Genjandro: I hadn't realized how badly you want to get to Ambrose. I can let you pass, if you let me—”

“Drop dead,” Genjandro repeated.

“You could tell them what you've seen—give them the intelligence you've gathered. And perhaps you were correct in what you told Vora. Perhaps the Ambrosii could cure you of me.”

“You wouldn't suggest it if it were so.”

“Not at all. I don't know, candidly—my sources inside the castle are rather limited at the moment, though I hope to have better ones soon.”

Genjandro considered the offer carefully. “It's your best attempt yet,” he admitted.

“And your answer?”

“Drop dead.”

“You're a hard bargainer, Genjandro—I'll give you that.”

“I mean to sell my life dear, if that's what you mean.”

“Nonsense, nonsense,” the dead baby said peevishly. “When the time comes you'll give it away. I just hope to be the beneficiary of your self-destruction, that's all.”

“It's nice to have a dream.”

“Oh, drop dead,” the dead baby said, and laughed. “I suppose you're hungry.”

Genjandro was unwilling to admit this, but found he could not deny it. Even in the nauseating presence of his moldering interlocutor his stomach was growling.

“Have one of these,” the dead baby said, and one of the Companions silently handed him a wooden ticket. Engraved on it was a complicated seal with many figures around a single capital
I
.