Council of Blades (8 page)

The youthful voice stabbed out from alley shadows; Ugo Svarezi never even deigned to take notice.

Leading his lean black hippogriff mare toward the garrison sta-bles, Svarezi plodded on with his savage, troll-like gait, crushing alley refuse under his heels.

"Svarezi! Turn!"

He turned. A short, thick "cat gutter" sword glittered in Svarezi's hand as he swiveled himself around.

Black vel-vet armor breathed in slow, sinister movements as he stood gazing back along the straight Colletran alleyway.

Behind him, his hippogriff gave a low and hungry growl.

A golden youth stood in the light: Blade Captain Veltro-young, angry, and backed up by a lounging band of perfumed swords. His young rabble draped themselves like a painted canvas across the alleyway, anticipating blood as they played with their naked blades.

Feet rustled the dust behind Svarezi, heralding the arrival of yet more of Veltro's men. The Blade Captain never turned. He began a slow, deliberate advance toward his first enemies, bringing his scarred, brutal sword into the light.

Farther down the lane, Veltro struck a heroic pose. The slim youth stood before his comrades, tossing aside the scabbard of his silver rapier.

"No bride for you, Svarezi! No general's baton-no more scorning Colletran honor. Tonight, your soul will be shrieking in Baator!"

With a feral growl, Svarezi came within sword reach and hammered the thin rapier aside. Veltro leapt back and bellowed orders to his comrades, who instantly surged into the attack.

From behind Svarezi, more war cries rang; he dropped the reins of his hippogriff and released her to the kill.

"Shaatra… feed."

With a shuddering hiss of pure release, Svarezi's hip-pogriff turned to stalk back down the alleyway. The four bravos charging at Svarezi's back skidded to a halt and carefully readied their blades.

Long and lean, with an eagle's beak and claws honed razor sharp, the hippogriff mare pranced slowly sideways toward her prey.

Facing five armed men, Svarezi never slowed the pace of his advance. He stalked coldly forward toward the flushed, screaming young Blade Captain at their rear, swatting rapier lunges aside one by one.

Like a black fiend, he homed in upon his chosen sacrifice, as sparks showered from clashing blades and sword points scored across his armored skull.

"Kill him! Kill him, you fools!"

Veltro's voice cracked in panic and excitement. He waved his toy sword and began screaming orders back down the empty alleyway. Svarezi advanced into the cen-ter of a hooting quartet of enemies, and finally brought his blade into play.

A courtier lunged; Svarezi cracked the man's rapier point away, trapped his forearm against his chest and wrenched the limb aside. The courtier screamed and reeled backward, his arm broken and his sword dangling from its lanyard at his wrist.

Stabbing from behind, a rapier pierced Svarezi's brig-antine and ripped a fiery line across his ribs. The warlord whirled, wrenching the sword from its owner's grip, then slammed the man against a wall and stabbed him in the groin. The broad blade twisted, spilling the stink of blood into the alleyway, and Svarezi tossed the shrieking car-rion aside.

Behind him, Shaatra screamed in lust for blood. A beak snapped, a wingbeat drove back a narrow sword, and suddenly the hippogriff spun to kick out with her rear hooves. A body screamed as it crashed hard against a mud brick wall. Another man gurgled horribly as the eagle beak fastened on his jaw. Shaatra shook her victim like a bloody doll, her triumphant hunting cries bubbling through the blood of living prey.

"Archers! Archers!"

Behind Veltro, a fresh flood of men appeared: a dozen crossbowmen in the particolored livery of Veltro's own brigades. The youth laughed as Svarezi stepped away from the embattled courtiers. Pointing with his silver sword, Veltro screamed his bloodlust to the skies.

"Fire!"

Troops knelt, jerked bow stocks to their shoulders and instantly took aim. Crossbow bolts whipped through the dust, stabbing into naked flesh and spraying blood across the alley walls.

Svarezi stooped down, wiped the blood from his blade upon a courtier's cap, and silently sheathed his sword. Behind him and beside him, dead and dying bravos clawed bloody trails though the dust-shot down to a man. Cheated of her kills, Shaatra raised a defiant scream, hurtling a corpse, shot through with crossbow bolts, aside. The black monster stared in anger at the crossbowmen, then spread her wings and rippled forward like a stream of liquid doom.

"Shaatra!"

Svarezi's command brought the creature slinking to a halt. Cowed, it ripped claws through a courtier's corpse while the black-clad general walked confidently toward the crossbowmen.

The soldiers spread out among the fallen courtiers, fin-ishing the wounded and stripping rings from blood-stained fingers that curled like dying spiders. Their sergeant slung his weapon, faced Ugo Svarezi, and bowed.

"Forgive our hastiness, my lord. We might have hit your mount."

Svarezi waved an armored hand in answer.

"Small matter. Another one can be found."

Collapsed against a wall with blood spilling through his hands, young Blade Captain Veltro still managed a precarious hold on life. Shot through and through by his own men, the boy still tried to somehow crawl away.

Svarezi motioned the soldiery aside and walked deliber-ately toward the fallen man.

Veltro stared at his soldiers as if still unable to com-prehend their treachery.

"They were my men… mine!"

"It takes a soldier to command soldiers, boy." Svarezi once again drew his savage blade.

Veltro raised his voice and screamed, cramming him-self into the dust in fear.

"You're finished, Svarezi! Colletro's court is finished with you! No Mannicci bride-no council seats! No Blade Council will suffer you again!"

The blade reversed to hover like an ice pick in Svarezi's hand.

"If the council is finished with me… then let us finish with the council!"

Svarezi stabbed the cowering young Blade Captain through the roof of his mouth, twisting the blade down into the sand like a slaughterer. The body beneath him arched, then jerked into deathly stillness.

Svarezi freed his sword and flicked the filth from the blade onto the alley walls.

Behind him, the crossbow sergeant scarcely spared a glance at his master's corpse.

"Did he speak the truth, sire? Will there be no Sumbrian bride?"

"What matter? Where a maid's door shuts, a master's opens." Svarezi wrenched at the feathered mane of his hip-pogriff, dragging her beak up from a feast of carrion. One armored fist drew a torn letter from the creature's saddle-bags and crushed it like a fragile treasure in his grasp.

"Enough of petty court intrigue. It is time to raise our sights to a higher prize!"

Svarezi swung himself into his saddle and slowly rode away. Beneath him, hippogriff claws left bloody footprints in an alleyway already thick with flies.

Each noble house would strive to outdo the others in sheer magnificence and gen-erosity.

In the drowsy warmth of a Sumbrian noon, Miliana walked through the wind-kissed colonnades. With her eyes half closed and her hair stirring out beneath her pointy hat to drift and feather in the breeze, Miliana could shut away Lady Ulia's voice and let the whole world pass her by.

Ulia never noticed; for her, life seemed to be a never-ending round of irritation and interference, and affairs never took a correct turn unless she was directly involved. Festooned in bells and ribbons, she trundled along at Miliana's side and shook the skies with her litany of woes.

"I told them! I told them all that I shall not suffer it! The parade has always left from the gates at midday. Why should they now desire to delay it by an hour?"

Letting one bored portion of her brain handle the appropriate prods to the conversation, Miliana stifled a yawn and turned her face into the breeze.

"If it's important, why not let them delay it for an hour?"

"Delay is change! Change!" Lady Ulia spoke the word like a witch's curse. "It is the thin end of the wedge. Once disorder is allowed, anarchy must surely follow."

"Anarchy?" Miliana watched a bumblebee meander past, and wondered where the creature's hive might lie. "Why anarchy?"

"When people fly off upon their own affairs, despite the seasoned wisdom of their betters, that is anarchy. Only social order brings peace, and peace is the tool for happi-ness." Ulia stabbed a scornful glance at her stepdaughter, irritated by the play of sun across the girl's freckled nose. "Really, Miliana, I sometimes wonder if you have absorbed any of your schooling at all. I think it is high time you turned your mind to higher things." Ulia stepped over a burnt, fur-edged crater in the cobblestones. "I am quite occupied enough without attending to your affairs every hour of every day. I have the tournament seating to arrange, the caterers for the banquet have presented the most awful menu, and now we have this painting affair as well…"

"Oh?" Miliana's bumblebee had landed upon a sprig of foxglove; the huge weight of the insect set the weed stalk swaying wildly up and down. "What painting might that be?"

"The painting, girl! The Lomatran painting! It is the betrothal gift from their embassy to our city." Ulia waved an arm and almost knocked Miliana's pointy hat clean off her head. "All very well for your father to arrange it; but where is it to be displayed? In what light, in what way, and who shall have the privilege of first viewing? Men are so impractical about such things…"

Guards were moving about the central courtyard of the palace. An engineer and a battle mage inspected win-dows, doors, and cobblestones, sketching notes for sinis-ter protective spells. Miliana watched the sorcerer with mixed curiosity and utter jealousy, instantly planning an afternoon of work on her own magic.

The security arrangements seemed overly complex simply for a painting and a party, until Miliana remem-bered her last session of eavesdropping on her father's affairs.

"The jewel is coming here?"

"Indeed yes, child. The Sun Gem-the very heart and soul of the Blade Kingdoms!" Ulia fanned herself, wilting flowers with the strength of her perfume. "Colletro's agents must hand it over to us at the festival-their ran-som for losing the campaign. But with this jewel thief running unchecked right through the town, we shall break the budget just on security for the wretched bauble!" Ulia placed fingertips across her eyes as if sum-moning a vision of the inevitable disaster. "It shall be the ruin of us all."

Miliana shrugged freckled shoulders in an utter lack of care.

"Why not just display a paste gem, and keep the real thing safely hidden away?"

With straightened back and a sideways sweep of her dark eyes, Ulia communicated absolute disdain.

"Really, my dear, you have no grasp of social niceties. It is a fault we shall labor to correct. Now do please leave me be. I have so much to attend to. So much to attend."

Success! Miliana closed her eyes in quiet pleasure as she withdrew. Lady Ulia bustled off like a shambling mound, leaving Miliana to spend a day in utter peace. Picking up her skirts, the girl swished off down the corri-dors to plan a perfect afternoon.

Reading, magic, and a bath.

Baths were Miliana's sacred times; a moment when she could lock her doors, hurtle her hat aside, and lose herself inside a universe of steam. With her chin over the edge of the tub, she would read and dream in blissful splendor until her fingertips turned white and wrinkly, and the water grew cold.

The advantages of her spellbook's rather odd construc-tion had swiftly been demonstrated; the smelly toadskin seemed utterly waterproof. Three times now, Miliana had accidentally dipped a corner of the volume in her bath, and although the water suffered, the book itself seemed none the worse for wear.

Once safely locked inside her room, Miliana gave a gentle smile. On a warm summer's day, nothing could be more delicious than bathing with the doors to the balcony wide open. It brought in the sunlight, and helped stop her spectacles from clouding up with steam. Safe and secure with her high elevation, Miliana Mannicci, mistress of a thousand freckles, pulled the stopper from her bath faucet and began the pleasurable task of loosing her clothes.

The Blade Kingdoms were blessed by a firm grasp of plumbing technology. A gleeful team of fiery salamanders high up in the palace ceiling spent their days snacking on coal and bringing a water tank to the boiling point through the intense heat of their skins. A network of gleaming cop-per pipes-designed by madmen, but installed by efficient, military engineers-brought the water up across the gar-den wall, took a left turn at the outhouses, dripped merciless droplets into the Blade Council's meeting chambers, and finally coughed and spattered itself into Miliana's gigantic seashell bath.

The first glorious clouds of steam arose and drifted through the jasmine creepers smothering the rails of Miliana's balcony. Unnoticed among those leaves, a long tube slowly edged itself up across the balcony.

The crook-topped end, equipped with a big glass lens, hunted back and forth for a while, fixed upon Miliana as she entered, singing, through her bathroom door, then settled itself contentedly into the concealing jasmine flowers.

Soothed by the sound of falling water, Miliana filled her bathroom with its essential supplies; towels, fuzzy slippers, her spellbook, and a mug of prootwaddle tea. Propping her book against a wooden washbasin, she began reading a page of confusing gibberish while begin-ning the wearisome task of undoing her bodice stays.

Frilly pants, gown, and pointy hat all ended up in an untidy heap on the floor, leaving Miliana naked but for a kiss of fine brown freckles. The girl closed her eyes and stretched herself, feeling the skin draw tight across her ribs, then opened one eye in puzzlement as an excited metallic clank came from the direction of the balcony.

The girl instantly ducked and scuttled like a crab for the shelter of a towel. Polishing her spectacles free of steam, she darted suspicious glances at the rooftops far and wide. The skies were free of hippogriffs, and her jas-mine creepers concealed her utterly from view. With a sniff of her pert snub nose, the girl turned away and went to check on the progress of her tub.

Seen as the gods intended, Miliana seemed much like a svelte, bad-tempered, bookish nymph. Warm beneath a streaming cloak of her own soft brown hair, the girl leaned across the bath and dipped in an experimental finger, then instantly whipped about as yet another noise sent alarms chasing up and down her naked spine.

Nothing moved; no floorboards creaked, nor did any shadows move. Miliana thought of repeating her attempt to detect hostile magic with a spell, then remembered that her last attempt had instead drifted her helplessly out into the air above the courtyard. While no bad thing in and of itself, her current state of dress might make a repeat performance somewhat embarrassing.

Feathers rustled in the ceiling overhead. The noise, it seemed, had just explained itself-although the local cor-morants must have reached the size of elephants, given the way they shook the plaster from the walls. With a sharp breath of self-irritation, Miliana turned back to her bath.

She eased herself into the tub one inch at a time. Hissing, sapped of energy and turning a quiet lobster pink, the girl settled her head back against the wall, closed her eyes, and let her mind wander off into a whirl of steam.

For three days and nights, Miliana had felt a hidden, watchful presence in the house, when she slept, when she dressed-even as she bathed. Experimenting with magic had brought the girl to grand new heights of paranoia; in her mind's fancies, she could imagine herself attracting the attention of unseen, unwholesome powers. Any sor-ceress worth her salt must surely be in constant danger.

The alternative suggestion, that Miliana was too insignificant for dire, extraplanar fiends to even waste a minute's time about, was simply too miserable a thought for her to contemplate.

Still, the thought had a certain common sense about it. Propping her cheek on her hand, Miliana heaved a great, unhappy sigh.

It would be a bewitching fantasy to consider herself even vaguely important, but the real facts were less than kind. There were no secret birthmarks on her backside, no hidden prophecies that made her the key to liberating mighty empires from evil overlords. Not even a magic talking pony as her special, secret friend…

It simply wasn't fair! Every other princess in the world seemed to have a damned prophecy! They were inheritors of evil dooms, magic powers, or the fates of empires. Instead, Miliana had an untranslatable book made from the skin of a dead toad (actually, a number of dead toads), and an attic full of overweight birds.

The girl hurtled a pewter jug across the room in helpless frustration, hitting the jasmine creepers on the balcony and making an instant noise of breaking glass. Bits of lens and bent brass pipe went spinning to the courtyard cobbles-all unnoticed as Miliana flung her dripping arms about her knees and hugged herself in impotent misery.

She felt stifled, trapped by a world of rules. How much longer could she escape being forcibly married off to some half-witted Blade Captain? How long would it be before Lady Ulia drove her stark raving mad-or worse, taught her how to think and act just as they felt she should?

Marriage constantly threatened; a life spent shackled to the Lomatran court, or Colletro, or some other gods-forsaken who-knows-where. Magic was the only key to Miliana's prison door. All she needed to do was learn a spell or three; then she could run away somewhere and take adventure by the horns!

Sly and persuasive, Miliana's paranoia perched upon her shoulder and whispered dreary poison in her ear: A real heroine wouldn't have to go out and search for adventure. Adventure would simply tumble down into her lap! And would a wandering heroine have access to baths and slippers? Where would a girl find food and drink-a roof from the rain?

Real female adventurers all had skin-tight chain mail, fabulous blonde hair, and magical talking swords and battle-axes and the like. Miliana held out a damp strand of her long brown tresses, bowed her head and closed her eyes in miserable silence.

Remembering page twenty-seven of her spellbook with sudden, gorgeous clarity, Miliana gave a curse and vio-lently splashed her bathwater at the walls.

The results were quite instructive. The spell syllable left Miliana's lips, images of runes burned hot and bright in her mental eye, and the entire world seemed to jump like a grasshopper. Miliana's bathwater rushed out of the tub all in one solid, speedy block-hit the wall and plowed clean through the flimsy plaster.

Miliana blinked at the newly made door to her bedroom in surprise, then shrank helplessly back as a wooden structural beam resoundingly split itself in two.

There are few moments in life when a shy, downtrod-den individual can truly feel possessed by the gods; time slows, the mind steps into overdrive, and the body moves with a speed, a surety and suppleness that has never been known before. A sword blow is dodged, a falling baby saved, an arrow parts the hangman's rope. These are the times when a mortal being feels utterly alive.

Sadly, for Miliana, this was not one of those times. With a melancholy sense of certainty, Miliana watched the wall collapse and the roof above her bath begin to sag. The ceiling quietly disintegrated into a storm of falling plas-ter, all of which descended straight down on Miliana's head.

Boards bounced, Miliana squawked, and untold tons of dust and rubbish thundered in from above: plaster, dead insects, live insects, bat guano, and rodent husks. As the piece de resistance, a warm, soft, heavy mass landed hard in Miliana's lap, thrashing and wailing in outrage and surprise.

After the storm, there came the lull. Plaster dust swirled in the air with a curious gentility. Miliana peeled free her spectacles and rubbed the smeared lenses clean using her own bedraggled hair. She put them back in place upon her nose, and stared dully down into the far end of her bath.

A rather surprised-looking bird had landed in the tub-a gigantic orange thing shaped like an over-elabo-rated peacock. It had a body at least as big as Miliana, coupled with a long neck, a curved beak, and great, razor-sharp claws.