“I
guess the real question is whether you want to try to shut the place down cold now or just have someone nip in and take a quick look around,” I said.
With sunset a half hour off, Maylien, Heyin, and I sat high up in a massive old oak tree on a heavily forested slope. Across the deep narrow valley below us, a small stone-walled keep stood on the edge of a fast-moving little river. Bontrang had chosen a perch above us, up where the branches wouldn’t support a human’s weight, while Triss opted to stay hidden within my shadow as he did most of the time I was in company.
The keep sat well down under the shoulder of the opposite ridge, centering the open scar of the cut where they’d quarried the limestone for the outer walls. The setting of the tiny stone-and-timber fort felt more than a little off to me, as though the builders had been more interested in keeping the place out of sight than making it truly defensible.
Oh, it had most of the usual defensive accoutrements, high outer walls of smooth-cut stone, a narrow moat fed by the stream that ran through the valley, corner towers with light catapults . . . But big ancient trees stood all around it within easy bowshot of the walls, and a ballista or other siege engine on the ridge would be able to hammer the central tower almost unimpeded. An attacker using burning pitch could set the place alight in minutes.
It might be strong enough to repel a casual assault by unskilled rabble, but it would never hold against a determined assault from even a moderately well-armed force. On the other hand, its tiny size made it a damned hard problem in terms of infiltration. That was why Maylien had asked me to have a look at it now that I was up and around again. She didn’t want to pay the blood tithe of a frontal assault for an unknown return, especially since Sumey might be able to use such an attack against her at court. And Heyin had flat refused to let his baroness go in there herself when they “had a damned sneaking specialist sleeping off a bender in the basement!”
I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to have heard that particular debate, but then, I
am
a sneaking specialist.
“I think we should start with a quick look around, Aral. If you’d be willing to oblige me.” Maylien’s tone sounded just as stiff and formal as it had every time we’d talked since I shoved my foot down my throat two nights before. “We might need to make a major assault at some later point, but I’d like to know what my sister is using the keep for first. She’s got a habit of tucking her dirty work away where it’s hard to find, like that dungeon she had you locked up in back in Zhan.”
I nodded. As I’d found out yesterday, Maylien had tracked me down by the simple expedient of having a spy in her sister’s house who’d gotten her a list of Sumey’s city properties. The Old Mews dungeon had been in the basement of the fourth building on the list. Knowing that told us that it had probably been Sumey who started the fire as well rather than Devin. I was frankly relieved by the thought—it felt better to believe that my onetime friend hadn’t sunk so low.
“Whatever she’s doing here, she’s kept it awfully quiet,” said Heyin. “And I don’t like the feel of the place. We’re only about an hour’s hard ride from the Marchon seat at Shaisin, but the countryside’s as empty as if we had a nest of petty dragons living in the forest, and that’s just not right. The ground’s lousy for farming and technically baronial land, but the timber’s damn good. There ought to be illicit loggers and charcoal-men about, or poachers at the very least. It’s not natural.”
“Has Sumey declared the area off-limits in any formal way?” I asked.
“No,” replied Heyin. “There aren’t even the usual dire warnings posted at the bounds. Everyone knows it’s baronial land and legally off-limits, of course. But most times and places that only makes sure the poachers stay extra quiet. It doesn’t scare them away.”
Maylien spoke. “When Heyin and I came out here last week, I asked a couple of the smallholders around the edges of the land what they knew about it. These are people who aren’t afraid to defy my sister’s rule. If they were, they wouldn’t be talking to me or I to them. But not one of them is willing to trespass here, nor talk much about why that is. I got a few bleats about the haunted castle and a few more about the night-walking dead, but that was it.”
“Seems like awfully fresh construction for a haunted castle,” I said.
Heyin nodded. “I checked into the rumors of night-walkers as well—I’d heard from those same folk before ever I brought Maylien to see them. But there don’t seem to be any more disappearances or unexplained corpses turning up around the edges of the wood than you’d normally expect to see in this kind of country.”
“The forest proper is completely empty of people?” I asked.
“It is,” said Heyin. “But you can’t confine ghouls and ghasts to one area like that. Especially not when there’s potential prey to be had by crossing the boundaries.”
Triss flickered into dragon shape, showing himself. “You and I can’t, maybe. But a powerful enough necromancer could.”
“Is that what
you
think is in the keep, Triss?” I asked.
“No.” Triss’s tongue flicked out. “The deeper shadows in the forest on the way here didn’t taste as I would expect them to if there were someone like that around, not enough rough magic. But it can be done, and the shadows don’t taste quite right either . . .” He shook his head in frustration. “There’s something almost familiar there though I haven’t been able to place it.”
“Well, the sun’s nearly down,” I said. “So, why don’t I just slide over there, have a look around, and save us further speculation?”
“I agree that’s our best course of action,” said Maylien. “Shall we go?”
“I don’t think that ‘we’ should go anywhere,” I said.
Heyin spoke at the same time, saying, “Baroness, we discussed this already. Surely you’re not planning on going with him?”
“Of course I’m going,” replied Maylien. “The whole reason for bringing Aral into our plans was so that he could get me through my sister’s defenses come the day of the challenge. If that’s going to happen, we need to practice working together against the nastiest security my sister can put together. If either one of you can think of a better way to do that than to have me go with Aral here and now, you’re welcome to tell me about it.”
“I’m convinced,” I said, though I didn’t much like the impersonal sound of “bringing Aral into our plans.” It made me feel like a piece on a game board instead of a human being. “Let’s go.”
Heyin said something unintelligible under his breath, but he didn’t elaborate or make any other argument, just sighed loudly when Maylien and I started down the tree.
I
pointed across the moat to the guard slowly walking back and forth atop the nearest of the keep’s little towers. All of the towers had guards, but this one was farthest from the front gate and the weakest link in the defense.
“That’s our first hurdle, right there. We can’t get over the outer wall without doing something about him. You can’t anyway. I could probably get past him on my own, but if I’m going to carve a hole big enough for you to follow me through, he’s got to either die or take a convenient nap. This is your domain and your mission, so it’s your choice as to which.”
Maylien grimaced. “Which would you recommend under the circumstances?”
“There are pluses and minuses to both choices. Dead is easier, and it’s permanent. There’s no chance of the guard waking up and sounding the alarm. It’s also not something we’ll be able to conceal later. Leave a corpse, and they
know
someone ghosted a guard. Get rid of the body, and they’ll still be pretty sure that someone killed the guy. Perhaps most importantly, if I do ghost him there’s no bringing him back. Right now all that we know he’s guilty of is working for your sister. He could be every bit as bad as those torturers who had me strung up in Tien, but he could just be a local kid who needs to make a living.”
“What about putting him to sleep?”
“That’s significantly harder to manage without using magic, which would light us up if your sister’s got another petty mage like Lok around. I have to get in close and dose him with opium and efik or cut off his air for a bit. Either way is imprecise. He could die, or he could wake up too early, or not all there. Best way to deal with too early’s to tie him up, but that’s as good a calling card as ghosting him would be if he’s found or wakes up. There’s no way to pretend we weren’t here if he’s discovered gagged and bound. Even if he’s not, there’ll be rope burns and other signs. Knocking him out and tying him up’s still my first choice, though. I’d rather not ghost anyone who might not deserve it.”
Maylien frowned. “My sister’s kept this place even quieter than she did that nasty little dungeon in Tien. Considering the kinds of things that was set up for, and the unholy . . . pursuits my sister has taken a liking to in the last few years, I really doubt that anyone here is an innocent lamb. But you’re right that we can’t know that without investigating first.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and straightened her spine. “I’m the rightful Baroness of Marchon. That man over there is one of my people, even if he does work for my sister. He deserves the benefit of the doubt. If you can put him to sleep without too great a risk to yourself, do it. If you can’t . . . if there’s any real chance that he’ll give us away or harm you, kill him.”
“Wait here. I’ll throw a rope down when I’ve taken care of him.” I slipped down to the edge of the moat and eyed the water.
It looked cold and smelled wrong somehow, swampy and rank where it appeared clean and clear. I didn’t really want to swim, but the heights of the walls relative to the surrounding trees made for an impossible sail-jump. Also, if I swam, I’d be much harder to see coming. So I edged my way out onto a root in order to ease myself into the moat quietly. Dim moonlight cast my shadow on the surface of the water, and Triss let out a hiss, then quickly changed shape and spread dragon wings wide between me and the water.
“Back up,” he whispered urgently.
“Why?” I asked, but I was already moving.
“Faster.”
Up on the tower the guard turned and looked our way, raising his lantern as he did so. I flattened myself in the leaf litter under the trees, and Triss flowed over me, covering me in shadow. Together, we waited for the guard to turn away.
“What’s wrong?” I asked once Triss finally signaled that the guard had moved back to his normal pattern.
“Something in the water,” said Triss. “I don’t know what, but when I touched the surface, I could feel things moving around down in the deeps. It tasted like the shadows under the trees. I don’t think swimming would be wise.”
“And I don’t think we can make the tower’s deck with a sail-jump,” I replied. “It’s simply too far above the nearer trees.”
“So we don’t jump for the top. There’s a little ridge in the bedrock just below the base of the wall, a few inches above the water. If you aim for that, I don’t think we’ll have any trouble.”
“Except for the part where I smash face-first into the wall and fall into the water if we come in too fast. Oh, and the bit where you have to shift from wings to claws in the instant between hitting the wall and falling into the water.”
“We’ve done harder jumps in the past,” said Triss.
“We were a lot younger then, and in better training, and you hadn’t been recently injured.”
“Are you saying you’re too old and out of shape to manage your end of things? Because I’ll understand if you are. I know I can do my part, but I’m sure we can find some other way for an old man like you to get in if we need to.”
“Listen here you lizard-brained excuse for a shadow-puppet . . .” I trailed off as I realized I was grinning.
For the first time in I couldn’t remember how long, Triss had simply teased me for teasing’s sake. For years now every one of his pokes or prods had a hidden nag underneath—worries about my drinking, or my choices in the jobs I took to keep us off the streets, or simply how dangerous it was for us to be living in Tien with a price on our heads.
Triss grinned back at me. “Does that sudden silence mean you’ve decided you’re not quite too decrepit to pull off a trick you could have done in your sleep a few years ago? Or, to put a finer point on it, that I’m right? . . . as usual.”
“Let’s just say that we’ll make the attempt. The worst that happens is we blow it and die horribly, and my last words will be ‘I told you so.’”
“I can live with that.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me? We’d better fill Maylien in on the new plan before we go.”
After all the discussion, the jump itself was almost anticlimactic. I did hit the wall quite a bit harder than I’d have liked—hard enough to knock the wind out of me and make a noise that drew the guard’s attention. But I managed not to slip off into the water, and Triss kept us hidden in shadow until the guard gave up and went back to his slow march again. Climbing up the tower wasn’t much fun. The stonework was all fresh-cut and very clean and straight. And the mortar had been applied with care and an eye to eliminating fingerholds.
Without Triss’s ability to cling to cracks finer than any sheet of paper, I’d have had to swim back across the moat or spend the night balanced on the three-inch ridge we’d used as our landing point. Add in the need to do things very quietly, and it took close to half an hour to make it up a tiny little forty-foot wall.