Authors: Kelly McCullough
Broken Blade (18 page)
Harad nodded. “If that’s what you want.”
“What I want is to go to my fallback and sleep the night and day around, then get so drunk I forget that this whole stupid job ever happened.” Triss expressed his disapproval of that suggestion with a grumpy snort. “But what I need to do is make a serious fadeout while I figure out my next move. That means staying away from anyplace that might already have been compromised and minimizing the chance that anyone will pick up my trail again. So, assuming I got here clean, my best bet is to hold still until it’s time for the next move, and then to move quickly and decisively.”
Harad gestured toward the stairs. “Then, after you.”
When we reached the reading room, Harad went straight to the outer doors and opened them. Then he knelt on the threshold and placed one palm on the limestone of the balcony floor.
Looking up, he beckoned to me. “Come here.”
I could have asked why, but I figured I’d find out quicker if I just did as I was told. Life is like that sometimes.
“Give me your hand.”
I did, and he took it in his free hand. Harad closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath, causing one of the network of spells that wrapped him round to twist and kink slightly. The words sounded like some sort of archaic Kadeshi, but I couldn’t make it out well enough to be certain. When he stopped speaking, I felt a shock like a tiny burst of magelightning run from my hand into Harad’s.
Triss slid around for a better look then, as the floor of the balcony flared briefly green over most of its surface. The exception being a large black symbol like a circle bounded by crescent wings that ran spiderweb-thin through the stone—some kind of extremely sophisticated ward.
“I’ve just rekeyed it to you personally,” said Harad. “As the most likely entrance for one of your kind, I have long left this door open to anyone companioned by a Shade, but if what you tell me about this Devin and his society of assassins or whatever he wants to call it is true, that’s no longer a smart choice.”
“Has this ward always been here?” I hadn’t ever seen it before, and that was a very neat trick.
“Only for a hundred and twenty years or so. My predecessor used a different system.”
I opened my inner eyes as wide as they would go. “How do you hide . . . oh!”
I realized then that the whole of the building was impregnated with just a touch of active magic, barely more than the background noise of the world, and just enough so that the faint lines of the ward were concealed within the greater light. I was impressed: that took a lot of power to set up and maintain. It was far beyond anything I could have managed, both in terms of technique and raw power. But the ward itself looked so weak . . . what could you do with it? Only by looking closely and knowing just where the ward lay could I even make it out now.
“The obvious ward on the door is just another layer of distraction, to keep people from looking for this, isn’t it?”
Harad smiled. “Very good. What else can you see?” “Let me look a little more closely.” Again and again, I mentally traced the lines of the spell worked into the balcony, trying to figure out what it did.
“The ward on the balcony floor is just a triggering spell, isn’t it? For something much nastier? What does the nasty look like? Is it hidden beneath the surface of the stone?”
Harad shrugged. “Trade secret. Suffice to say that if your friend Devin comes knocking on my door, he will cease to be a problem for you.”
“If that happens, let me know. I’ll come take care of the body. It’s the least I can do.”
Harad laughed. “If that happens, there won’t be a body.” Then he left.
I settled down to read, and Triss took a little nap. He’s generally bored by books, and in this case I couldn’t blame him. Most of the pamphlet was blah, blah, Thauvic’s a vicious bastard, blah. But there were a few things worth knowing. I took a sheet of paper and a quill from a small box by the door—the carrel had its own inkwell—and made notes as I went, just as I had been taught.
—Succession of the Royal House of Tien and the Barony of Marchon.
—When Aral Kingslayer (I really, really hate that name) ended the reign of Ashvik (by sticking a sword through his throat) in 3207, Ashvik’s bastard half brother, Thauvik, then Chief Marshal of the army, took the throne with the support of the leading generals and the order of the Elite.
—That he was able to succeed his brother despite his bastardy was due to three factors.
—First and most important, he was very popular with the Elite and the military, where he had risen through the officer ranks based on merit rather than the favor of his brother, who publicly ignored him for most of his career.
—Secondly, though Ashvik had three legitimate children by his queen, he had executed all of them for “treason” to the realm and “attempts against the throne.” (All three were innocent, part of why Namara had marked him for death, the rest being the brutal murder of more than ten thousand innocent Kadeshi villagers.)
—Third, though Ashvik’s bastard daughters by the Marchon woman (oh, shit) might have had a slightly more legitimate claim on the throne, they were both underage and had been missing and presumed dead for some weeks at the time. The official story was that they’d been sent to the court of the Thane of Aven for finishing, but it was assumed they had been murdered by the late king—their bastard status precluding the need for a trial. (names?)
I hadn’t written this much in ages. I stretched my fingers to relieve the cramping and wished whoever had written this book had more sensible priorities, namely the same as mine. I wanted to know what the supposedly murdered girls’ names were though I feared one was Maylien. Anything else would have made my life easier, and that didn’t seem to be the way the dice were falling. With a sigh, I plunged back in. More blah, consolidation of Thauvik’s rule with a little judicious bloodletting including Baron Marchon, blah, enlargement of army and increase of power for the ministry of war, blah. And then something I could use.
—Six years after the disappearance of Ashvik’s illegitimate daughters by his last mistress, Juli Dan Marchon (younger sister of the baron), two young women were presented to the court by that same Juli Dan Marchon (now Baroness Marchon) as the long-missing heiresses. At that time, she asked that Maylien, the elder, be confirmed as her successor in the Barony of Marchon. There was no mention of any relationship to the late Ashvik. (I just bet there wasn’t).
—Thauvik disinherited Maylien because she had taken mage orders in her exile and settled the succession on Sumey (apparently he was comfortable enough on the throne by then to want to avoid the odium of executing his nieces). A short time later, Juli killed herself, and Sumey became Baroness Marchon. At that point Maylien vanished again, and rumors began to float around that she had murdered her mother, rumors that were hotly (too hotly) denied by her bereaved sister.
There was more about Thauvik and what the author perceived as his ambitions, but nothing that interested me. And that was it. I read my notes aloud both for Triss’s benefit and because that made them easier to memorize. Then I asked him to destroy them for me while I tried to think of what to do next. I had neither time nor good options.
I was pledged to help a girl who might have murdered her mother reclaim a baronial seat that the current king had already refused her. Assuming she was still alive, of course. Throw in the fact that I’d assassinated the king’s predecessor, who was also Maylien’s father and that I was going up against a man who’d once been one of my closest friends and . . . my head was spinning.
“How the hell did I get here?”
“By killing a king,” said Triss.
10
I
killed a king once upon a time. I was seventeen and armored in the certainty of my faith, completely confident in my purpose in life. I was Aral Kingslayer, Blade of Namara and proud of it. That man was gone now, lost somewhere in the depths of a soul shattered by the murder of his goddess.
killed a king once upon a time. I was seventeen and armored in the certainty of my faith, completely confident in my purpose in life. I was Aral Kingslayer, Blade of Namara and proud of it. That man was gone now, lost somewhere in the depths of a soul shattered by the murder of his goddess.
I could sense him sometimes, down there in the darkness, showing through in the skills I brought to some shadow-trade task he never would have consented to touch. Or in the momentary outrage I felt at some injustice, a flash of the morals I’d had etched into my bones by the priests and masters. Or, occasionally, in a black sense of humor that had grown somewhat rusty from lack of use over the last five years. I needed him now, to help Aral the jack pay his debts—to Maylien, to Devin, to the dead—but I didn’t know how to find him anymore.
I got up from the little desk, leaving the pamphlet for Harad to collect later, and I began to pace and to think. From the very first day I was brought to the temple, I’d been taught how to hunt men and women, how to sneak up and catch them unawares, how to kill them in any of a hundred ways. I was a manhunter to the marrow, trained in the arts of stalking and death by the very best in the world. But that didn’t do a damn bit of good when the man you were hunting was yourself.
Or did it? Could I apply the manhunter’s skills to myself? If so, where to start?
Then, like it was yesterday, I seemed to hear Master Kelos, “If you don’t know how to get at your target, or worse, can’t find him, look to his history. If you truly understand a man, if you know his background and habits, you can predict his actions, his location, even the exact moment to strike. Understanding starts from the beginning. What made him the man he is today?”
Where did Aral Kingslayer begin? That gave me my starting point. Because the Kingslayer had not been born with the death of Ashvik; that was merely the moment that made the name. No, the Aral who became the Kingslayer had taken shape at the temple school, where he trained with Siri and Jax and a dozen others, including his good friend Devin.
Some of my earliest memories were of me and Devin together. Our cubicles had sat side by side in one of the hallways of the boys’ wing, and since we were of an age, we were often together.
Dalridia,
the kingdom in the clouds. I was eleven, Devin twelve. Master Loris had taken us there so that we could train our bodies and our minds to operating in the thin air of the heights. For the first couple of weeks, we did nothing but run and spar and practice combat forms, ending each day with a collapse into the long sleep of exhaustion.
the kingdom in the clouds. I was eleven, Devin twelve. Master Loris had taken us there so that we could train our bodies and our minds to operating in the thin air of the heights. For the first couple of weeks, we did nothing but run and spar and practice combat forms, ending each day with a collapse into the long sleep of exhaustion.
This was the first night where we’d both been able to keep our eyes open past dinner. Loris had gone into the local village for reasons that I no longer remembered, leaving Devin and me alone in the big tent, which gave us extra incentive to stay awake. Truly unsupervised time was rare in the early years at the temple.
Triss and Zass wrestled and chased each other on the canvas walls in a shadow play just for us—the dragon and the tayra. I laughed when my familiar pinned his ferret-wolf opponent. Zass was faster than Triss and more slippery, but not as strong or large—they were well matched.
“That makes it your turn,” I said. “Tell me about the mountains of Aven.”
“They’re much of a height with the mountains of Dalridia, but there’s a lot more snow and ice.” Devin took a sip of efik.
“Is that why you drink that stuff?” I pointed at his steaming mug and the various implements used to make it. “Because it’s so cold where you come from?”
He snorted. “It’s a Varyan drink, Aral. I don’t think anyone back home even knows the stuff exists. I drink it because I like it and because it calms me down.”
“But it’s so bitter.” I shuddered in mock horror.
Most of the older Blades swore by the calming effects of efik, but among the younger trainees only Devin and Siri had yet acquired a taste for the stuff.
“You’re such a puppy,” said Devin. “Hey, Zass just won a fall, it’s your turn. Tell me about being born in sight of the temple.”
Varya,
the great temple of Namara, just after the service of mourning. I was seventeen and heartbroken. Alinthide Poisonhand had just been killed in action, the third Blade to die making an attempt on Ashvik VI, the butcher of Kadesh. Mistress Alinthide had been one of my favorite teachers and one of the oldest Blades still in active service at a hundred and fifty-four.
the great temple of Namara, just after the service of mourning. I was seventeen and heartbroken. Alinthide Poisonhand had just been killed in action, the third Blade to die making an attempt on Ashvik VI, the butcher of Kadesh. Mistress Alinthide had been one of my favorite teachers and one of the oldest Blades still in active service at a hundred and fifty-four.
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