Crossed Blades (15 page)

“For that matter,” said Faran, “we didn’t let you feed us strange mushrooms. I very carefully watched you pick them.”

“How did you manage to do that without me spotting you?”

Faran grinned and winked, burying her darker side under the brash teenager. “I thought we’d already established that I’m very, very good.”

When she’d first appeared in my life I’d wondered which of the two was the mask. But the more time I spent with her, the more I realized that the two faces were equally real. Now I wondered if she’d ever be able to integrate them, or if one must inevitably give way to the other. Then Jax plopped herself down on the ground on Faran’s other side and I pushed the question aside.

“All right,” said Jax. “I give up. I’m apparently a lousy conspirator and a fool on top of that. So, now what?”

Sshayar put one large paw on Jax’s lap and gave her a very hard look.

Jax blushed. “Oh, right. Thank you, Sshayar. Aral, Faran, I’m sorry. I should never have lied to you. I . . . I’d like to make excuses for my choices, but then it’s not really an apology. Suffice to say, I fucked up completely.”

“Apology accepted for my part.” I grinned. “I knew you were a fuckup beforehand, but I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t forgive you that particular flaw. Faran?”

She nodded at Jax. “If you’ll forgive me for spending the past month trying to decide exactly where and when I ought to cut your throat, I’m willing to call it even.”

“Then, I guess we’re going to have a problem,” said Jax. “Because you haven’t done anything that needs forgiving, and I have.”

Faran shrugged and smiled. “Fair enough. You’re off the hook as far as I’m concerned.”

“Thank you, both of you.” Sshayar coughed pointedly, and Jax looked at her and then winced. “Oh, bugger.” She turned back our way. “Triss, Ssithra, my profound apologies, both for my behavior and the oversight.”

The Shades accepted more gracefully than either Faran or I had, and we settled in to discuss what Jax knew about the abbey where the captured Blades were being held. It would have been the perfect time for me to bring out my map and the signet ring if it weren’t for two tiny details.

First, I still didn’t trust Jax any farther than I could easily throw her. She’d lied to me too many times and too easily over the last month for me to rely on her word now. Second, I agreed with Kelos that it would distract Jax to know he was still alive. At least, I hoped it was that I agreed with him and not simply that even now I had trouble going against his word. I had good reasons for my choice not to tell her.

I just wished that doing it didn’t make me feel like such a bastard.

*   *   *

Shan
had dandruff. I found that reassuring. I
knew
that the Emperor of Heaven never manifested himself outside the mother temple at Heaven’s Reach, but the dandruff made me
believe
it. It also made me wonder about the devotion of Shan’s servants in Tavan.

I wasn’t really lying in a bed of dandruff, just the accumulation of dust and other detritus atop the huge sculpture of the god that dominated the temple’s sanctum. But the fact that neither the temple’s novices nor its servants had bothered to clean the area inside the enormous iron crown for what looked like the last several years, didn’t speak well of their piety.

When Jax had checked in with the Sword of Heaven in Tavan she’d received orders demanding a midnight meeting with the Signet. At that point I’d absolutely insisted that I should go in ahead and set up where I could hear the whole meeting and cover her back if she needed it. Jax had resisted, but eventually given in.

Faran had supported me in my argument with Jax, then given me a serious chewing out once she could do so beyond the range of Jax’s hearing. I had to argue long and hard before she grudgingly agreed to allow me to go alone. Of course, I was pretty sure that she was lurking somewhere close at hand, in case things went wrong.

I shifted Triss away from my face now and peered down through the gaps created where Shan’s irregular stone hair met the lower edge of the iron crown. Nothing below had changed from the last time I’d checked, approximately two minutes ago. Neither had the careful positioning of my blowgun with its preloaded poison dart—I didn’t want to have to move much if I needed to shoot someone. Same with my other equipment.

Everything was as ready as I could make it, and fidgeting with it wasn’t going to help. I took a couple of slow breaths and for about the dozenth time wished that I had a couple of efik beans I could chew to take the edge off my nerves without dulling my wits. It was an old familiar craving and one I’d managed to beat by substituting booze for beans back when I returned to Tien after the fall of the temple.

It was the worst idea I ever had, and it probably saved my life. In responsible-sized doses, efik was a much less self-destructive sort of habit than alcohol, but the chances of my handling it responsibly were pretty much zero back then. I’d rather be a drunk in the gutter any day of the week than a sleepwalker cutting gashes in my arms so I could pack them with powdered efik and smile my life away in a filthy alley.

Alcohol might be slowly killing me now, but efik would have done for me in a matter of weeks back then. The switch kept me alive then, if for no other reason than how much I initially hated the booze. It took time and real effort for me to get to the place where I
needed
alcohol. Slow suicide is still suicide, but it gives you a lot more time to change your mind along the way.

I was very aware of time at the moment. The great bells of Shan ring on the quarters of the hour. His temples are the arbiters of time in most cities of the eleven kingdoms, though they compete with the universities for that distinction in the Magelands. Here in Shan’s sanctum, I could hear the faint gurgles and clunks of the huge water-clock that the timekeepers of Shan used to measure time during the hours when the sun hid its face from the world. Every five minutes it rang a gentle chime, so I knew how long I’d been waiting for the arrival of Jax and the Signet—one hour, thirty minutes, and change.

If the Signet was prompt, I’d have another twenty minutes to contemplate the god’s dandruff. If not, at least I’d be able to keep an eye on Jax while the Signet kept her waiting. For perhaps the dozenth time that evening I reached for the efik in my trick bag only to stop my hand halfway there when I remembered. The only efik I carried now was mixed with opium and packed in robin’s eggs to make an easily delivered and quick acting knockout drug.

Patience, Aral.

Easy for you to say. What does time mean to a shadow?

Shade, and not all that much in the divisions you normally use. Though, I must admit, your twitching makes me more aware of its passing than usual. I—hold on, the door behind the statue is opening.

I flattened myself even more tightly against the god’s stony hair, though I left the hole in front of my face unshrouded. I wanted to see if I could, and I didn’t think the risk too great. A moment later, the Signet entered my vision, coming around the sculpture from the right.

Now would be a good time to hold your breath,
Triss sent in a mental whisper.
The Signet’s Storm is directly above us, and I don’t know what it can and can’t sense.

I stopped my breath and slowed my heart as much as I could, which made me miss the efik all the more. With a few beans in me I could have easily gotten my heart rate down as low as thirty beats to the minute, and held my breath for as long as six or eight minutes at the same time. Without it, I would have trouble pushing it down much below forty, and holding my breath past three or four minutes was beyond me.

And the whole effort went for nothing when I felt the statue move beneath me and my heart rate exploded while my focus on not breathing gave way to an effort directed at not screaming.

The god wasn’t supposed to manifest anywhere but the mother temple!

14

F
lesh,
like stone. The assassin’s art calls for the mastery of stillness in the face of shock or surprise. Even in the face of the impossible. In this case, perversely, stone, like flesh. I forced myself to stillness as the giant statue on which I lay slowly shifted its position.

Shan had been carved with multiple arms, as the gods usually were—four in this case, though I had seen sculptures of him with as many as ten. As the Signet passed around in front of the statue, she touched the back of her left hand to the cross-legged god’s knee. That’s when Shan’s lower arms began to move, sliding forward and down with a dull grinding sound like the world’s largest knife being sharpened. Dust fell from the ceiling here and there, bringing with it the damp smell of rotting mortar. The whole thing made me want to shriek like a child and bolt for the exit.

Two things kept me in place. The first was a lifetime’s indoctrination in the need for stealth. The second, and far more important factor, was that the statue didn’t
feel
alive. I had witnessed Namara’s arrival in her stone avatar many times after I became a full Blade. The living statue that housed her soul would rise from the deeps of the sacred lake to give us our assignments or accept our obeisance after a successful mission.

The bright burning core of that experience was the feeling of vitality that radiated out from her physical form in every possible way. When you stood before the goddess you were aware of her presence in the same way that you were aware of the heat and light when you stood beneath the summer sun at noon. You couldn’t not
know
that it was there.

The sculpture of Shan had none of that
presence
to it now. In fact, when I thought to look for it, I could see a strong glow of magic about the arm that moved. The whole statue partook of the spell-light, but everywhere but the arm, it was more like the dim glow of a ghost fungus or honey mushroom. That was deeply reassuring. Divine enchantments, like that on my old temple blades, cast no spell-light. Which meant the statue’s motion was driven by mortal magic.

The mill-wheel-like grinding noise should have been another clue, since Namara’s statue had always moved with silence more perfect than any living flesh. The grate of stone on stone continued as the sculpture turned its lower hands palms up, bringing six-fingered hands together into a sort of cup. Climbing the toes of Shan’s left foot like a set of stairs, the Signet now ascended to the god’s knee.

From there she moved to seat herself in the lowered hands, taking possession of the religious throne they had formed. That gave me a perfect shot at the back of her neck—she’d even tied her ice blond hair into a thick braid and pulled it aside. It took a real effort of will on my part not to take the shot.

Do all of Shan’s idols do that?
Triss asked into my mind.

Maybe.
I’d never had an assignment that involved the temple of Shan, and the subject of the other gods hadn’t really interested me when it came up in my education.
Jax might know, or Faran, but I’ve no idea.

Siri would have. She’d always been more interested in matters theological, which is why she’d ended up with the assignment that earned her the name Mythkiller. Well, that and the fact that she was probably the best mage in the recent history of the temple, Kelos not excepted. So good that she’d been sent to study at the magical university in Uln for a few years after she became a full Blade. She could do things with shadow and spells that made my head hurt to even contemplate.

I’d once seen her step into the shadow of one tree and out of the shadow of another almost twenty yards away. When I’d asked her about it, she said it was a magical effect she’d been experimenting with. Then she went off into a rather abstract explanation that started out with a discussion of the way the fringes of the everdark interacted with normal reality and ended with something she called geometrical mathimagics. My big take-away from the conversation was that she would attempt to teach me to do it if I really wanted her to, but that she didn’t think she’d try it again herself since it felt rather like being frozen into a block of burning ice.

I’d never taken her up on it, though I was thinking it would be awfully handy right now if I knew I could use the shadow of the crown as my exit strategy if I needed to. The way the Signet’s Storm kept darting here and there around the upper reaches of the temple and poking its scytheblade head into various nooks and crannies left me feeling very exposed.

Jax is here,
Triss said into my mind,
near the front door.

Thanks.
I couldn’t see that part of the room from where I currently lay, and moving to get a better view seemed like a particularly bad idea at the moment.

She’s coming closer now. The Signet either hasn’t seen her yet or is ignoring her.

She walked into the narrow semicircle of space I could see clearly, coming slowly toward the seated Signet. She stopped about ten feet short of the double-hand throne and silently glared up at its occupant. If she was at all curious about where I might have set up to keep an eye on things, she didn’t betray it by so much as a sidelong glance. All of her attention remained focused on the woman seated above her, even when the Storm flew down to hover behind her.

“You’re early,” said the Signet.

Jax nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“That’s good. It speaks of obedience, and you need to learn obedience. I’ve had time to think over our last encounter, and it wasn’t at all satisfactory. Our deal was that you would cooperate with me and none of your people would get hurt. You violated that deal, and there’s a price to be paid for breaking your word to Heaven.”

Jax stiffened. “What have you done?”

“Nothing irreversible.” The Signet reached into her robe and pulled something out, flinging it to the ground at Jax’s feet. “Five right ears. If you do exactly as I say going forward, I’ll have one of my best leeches regrow them. If you take one more step out of line, the next thing I throw at your feet will be the head of the youngest of the prisoners. I know how you and your lover value your students, so I’ll make sure to have her killed in front of Master Loris.”

Aral!
Triss barked into my mind.

I froze with the blowgun I hadn’t even realized I’d picked up, halfway to my lips. Below me, Jax’s hands on her sword hilts were shaking. Her face looked very much as I imagined mine must, twisted into a mask by a fury that burned in the blood and bones.

“If you draw your swords, Blade, one of your students will die. If you or your familiar attempts to harm me, all of them will die, as will you and your lover. If you kill me, the message that spares them will not be sent in the morning and they will die by torture. If you do the slightest thing to make me annoyed with you, I’ll harvest you a matching packet of left ears. Do you understand me? A nod will suffice, but it had better happen damned quickly.”

At a cost I could only imagine, Jax removed her hands from her swords and nodded her head once.

Are you sure I can’t kill the Signet?
I asked Triss.

Yesss,
he hissed angrily in response—his loss of human speech patterns a clear sign of his own rage.
Too much remainsss at ssstake right now, but sssoon, I hope. Very sssoon, though I think Jax dessservesss firssst rightsss if ssshe wantsss them.

I can’t argue with that.

“Better,” said the Signet. “I don’t tolerate disobedience from my subordinates, and I certainly won’t tolerate it from a slave like you. The only reason you or your precious charges have lived even this long is that the Son himself has ordered that the death of Aral Kingslayer takes precedence over everything else to do with your failed religion.”

That left me blinking. What had I done to piss the Son of Heaven off that much recently?

“Here.” The Signet pulled a packet from her robes and threw it down beside the string of ears. “Your marching orders. There’s a map of the abbey with your route marked out and when you are expected. We set things up exactly as you suggested originally. Deviate one jot from the assigned path and your comrades die. You strike in two nights at moon-dark. Your Kingslayer should like that. Now, get out of my sight.”

Jax turned around and walked away almost casually. I wondered how much that feigned nonchalance cost her, and admired her for her ability to pull it off. I don’t know if I could have done the same in her place. Nor if I could have stopped myself killing the Signet on the spot. I’d barely been able to hold back with Triss speaking directly into my mind and infinitely less provocation. Loris was never my lover, nor the journeymen my students.

If Faran’s ear had fallen on the floor at my feet, could I have walked away like that? What if Jax’s had fallen with it? I had my doubts. Only the fact that my fellow Blades’ lives depended on the life of the Signet prevented me from killing her even now.

The Signet rose from her throne, and walked down the toes of the great statue. This time I saw her ring of office flash as she touched it to the giant’s knee. Flesh, like stone. Again I disciplined myself to stillness as stone moved unnaturally beneath me.

I didn’t move until the Signet and her familiar had long since departed the sanctum. Then I rose and, slipping back out the way I had come, I went to find Jax and Faran. We had plans to make and blood to spill.

*   *   *

I
caught up with Jax about halfway back to the snug at the inn. Or, maybe I should say, she let me catch up to her. Like all the great cities of the Magelands, Tavan was built around a university and magic was everywhere. Even most of Tavan’s thieves were minor sorts of mages, so the chimney highway was rife with tangles and blinds and other sorts of charms designed to confuse the unwary and prevent pursuit.

If Jax had wanted to, she could easily have used that environment to avoid dealing with me till we got back to the snug. Instead, she chose to dawdle along the main route leading from the temple quarter—the Magelanders confined the religious orders to one small area of their city—to the neighborhood that held our temporary snug.

“Jax,” I called before I dropped down onto the roof behind her—I didn’t want to startle her.

She turned and waited for me to get closer. “You saw?”

I nodded.

“I’m going to make the Hand pay for that, and not just the Signet either.”

“I’ll help.”

“Do you think we can really save them?”

Don’t you think we should take this conversation somewhere a little more private?
Triss asked.

“Maybe,” I said to Jax, “but we shouldn’t talk about it here.” I looked around for someplace we could speak without being overheard. “Come on.” I pointed up to a small water tank on top of a tall apartment block off to our left. “How about there? It’s close and it looks as isolated as anything around here.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Faran?”

“Can wait till we’ve had this conversation.”

“All right.” She frowned but led the way.

Like most such tanks, the top was slightly dished to act as a collector for rain water. Since the building was also the tallest one within a half mile or so, that put the center of the roof out of line of sight for pretty much everything but the university bell tower—over a mile distant. With Triss and Shayar standing guard up at the lip, we had as much privacy as it was possible to have without using magic.

Jax settled into a cross-legged seat. “So, I know why I wanted to have this conversation now and just between the two of us. What about you? Why did
you
want to leave Faran out of it?”

“I could go for the half truth and tell you it’s because you so obviously wanted a private conversation. And that I owed it you to honor that desire, since that’s true enough.”

“But?”

I took a deep breath while I tried to sort out how to tell her about Kelos. “But I have things that I need to talk to you about that are going to be hard enough for both of us without trying to include the junior division.”

Jax laughed a bitter little laugh. “I’m not going to like this one little bit, am I?”

“Probably not, no, though it
will
improve our chances of pulling this thing off.” I paused before asking, “How could you tell?”

“Because you’re wearing the exact same expression you had the day you told me you were breaking our engagement.” She straightened her back and shoulders. “Might as well get the hard stuff over with. Hit me.”

I reached into my trick bag and pulled out the shade stick. “Here.” I handed it across to her.

She turned it in her hands. “Looks like a map, and a fairly complex one, if I’m any judge. What’s it for?”

“The abbey where Loris and the others are imprisoned. They’re confined in a series of crypts underneath the sanctum. The only practical way in or out goes right under the idol.”

Jax held up the map. “So, this is the good news. How did you come by it?”

“That’s the bad news.”

“I kind of figured. And?”

“Master Kelos gave it to me.”

“That’s not possible,” Jax said flatly. “Kelos is dead. I’ve seen his name on the obelisk.”

“Devin’s name is there, too.”

“But Devin’s a traitor. You told me that yourself.”

“So is Kelos. In fact, Kelos is
the
traitor, the one who set us all up.”

“That’s not possible,” she said again. “Kelos could no more betray the goddess than he could cut his own heart out.”

“Actually,” I said lightly, “if anyone I know could actually manage to cut his own heart out, it’d be Kelos.”

Jax ignored my half-assed joke. “It can’t be true, Aral. Kelos
was
the order, the bedrock on which all of the rest of us stood.”

“He claimed that he was trying to salvage what he could out of an inevitable circumstance. That that’s why I wasn’t at the temple when it fell. He sent me away along with Siri and Kaman and some of the others, because he knew we would choose to die before we’d take the Son of Heaven’s deal. He wanted to save us for later use.”