Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1 (12 page)

‘Preparing a prison.’

‘A prison? For whom?’ And the answer came as he asked and Silk’s hand went to his mouth. ‘No . . . it will never work.’

Ho sent a dark glance to Koroll. The look seemed to say
Why did you bring this asshole here?
Koroll sighed and grasped his staff in both hands, resting his weight there. Ho cleared his throat. ‘What do you want, Silk?’

Silk dropped his hand. ‘Help. I want help tracking someone down.’

Ho grunted his understanding of the request. ‘The assassin you mentioned?’

‘Yes. He’s good. Better than most who’ve tried to set up shop here.’

Ho brushed a hand along the glittering granite wall of the sarcophagus. ‘Not my specialty. Nor Mara or Smokey.’ He grunted a dry laugh. ‘Something of a hole in our defences, hey?’

‘I will help,’ Koroll rumbled.

Silk raised a hand in thanks. ‘With all respect, Koroll, you’re not very . . . stealthy.’

‘I will give you my nights,’ Ho said.

Silk was quite surprised. ‘You said it wasn’t your specialty.’

The fellow shrugged his meaty shoulders. ‘I’ll pull something together.’

Silk tilted his head in cautious agreement. ‘Very well. Tomorrow night, then.’

Ho nodded to Koroll. ‘Make sure he gets out.’

The giant murmured a rolling laugh and raised an arm, pointing to the door. Silk was irritated at such a dismissal, but something in the strange mage’s grim manner told him not to object. He bowed instead, mockingly, and followed Koroll. At the entrance, he paused, turning back. ‘By the way . . . I thought I saw someone else down here.’

Ho stood motionless, his thick arms crossed, his gaze steady, almost suspicious. ‘That’s impossible. No one else could ever find their way down here.’

Silk gave a shrug, saluted, and headed out.

All the way back through the tunnels, he wondered whether he had discovered the truth of things. Was Ho simply Shalmanat’s warder-in-chief? And this huge stone sarcophagus. Did they really imagine it could possibly succeed? After all, how could they hope to lure the man-beast down here?

* * *

A voice whispering from across the fire woke her. That and the sense of a presence – at long last. She started up from beneath her blanket, blinking, and wiping at her eyes. The fire was a mere orange blur of embers. The stars through the overhanging branches glowed much brighter. At first she thought no one was there, but then the faintest of ghostly waverings, as of a mirage, betrayed a presence. A very weak and tenebrous breath of one.

She recognized the unwelcome essence. ‘Errant,’ she growled, making no effort to conceal her distaste.

‘Good to see you too,’ came a wavering ghostly response. ‘Sister. Cold night, isn’t it?’

She smiled thinly. ‘What do you want?’

The figure across the embers was of a man, seated cross-legged. Yet the bushes behind showed through quite clearly. ‘Want? Why must I want something? Could this not be purely social?’

‘No it could not.’ Only the eyes, she noted, held any definite presence. They burned with an inner light. And the teeth gleamed where the lips were curled back in that familiar habitual sneer.

‘Very well, sister. I am here for the same reason as you.’

‘No you are not.’

A phantom shrug. ‘Close enough.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Come, come. You sense it just as I have. You, who remain so very much of this
mortal
realm. And I, whose aspect could not help but take note of any play.’

Though she was resolved not to allow this one to bait her, she roused, annoyed. ‘Play? This is no game, Errant.’

‘Everything is a game, sister.’

‘With you.’

‘Your mulish mundanity bores me.’

‘The oblivious arrogance of those who expect others to entertain them sickens me.’

The flickering ghost-image across the campfire smiled. ‘Good to see you have not lost your edge, sister.’

She did not answer. Crossed her arms.

The Errant let out the faintest of sighs. ‘Very well. I know when a throw is made. A gambit opened. It is my nature, of course. Our . . . cousins . . . have made another play. The enormous dusty wheels of fate are grinding into motion once again. What might this game bring? Who is to say?’

She smiled at his uncertainty. ‘They worry you, don’t they?’

‘Of course they do! They have withdrawn. We no longer know what they intend.’

She made a show of shrugging her insouciance. ‘I am not worried.’

‘If you concerned yourself with the larger picture of things, you would be.’

‘Do not condescend to me, Errant. You are not intelligent enough.’

The eyes glittered hungrily across the orange glow. ‘And do not provoke me, sister. You are vulnerable. A nudge here or there and you could find yourself dead.’

‘Says a pallid ghost with little to no influence.’

The sneering smile twisted into slyness. ‘Oh, I have influence . . . elsewhere.’

A new voice spoke at the dying fire. ‘Making up, are we?’

The shade that was the sending of the Errant flinched and vanished.

She inclined her head in greeting to the hooded figure now warming his hands at the embers. ‘Welcome, K’rul.’

‘Sister. And what did our poor misguided friend have to say?’

‘He has sensed it also. Ripples from the Azath. And the stone was cast here. I fear he will try to interfere.’

‘It is true that he yet remains capable of meddling. Strange how those least fit to hold or wield power lust after it the most.’ K’rul turned his hands in the warmth and she knew it as a gesture purely for her benefit. ‘That is a mystery that remains beyond even me. However, another is in place to keep an eye on the Errant.’

‘And what of our cousins?’ she asked.

A tilt of the head. ‘They, too, remain beyond me. Beyond us all. None have ever succeeded in penetrating their secrets.’

‘Some may have,’ she murmured, her gaze deep in the flickering glow of the fading embers.

‘Possibly. But they have not returned to us, have they? They have disappeared within. The Azath are like black pits that swallow all.’

‘Yet they repeatedly demonstrate this compelling urge to intercede. They have goals. And for that they require agents. Brother, I will try to plumb their intent.’

K’rul sighed, drew his hands back to clasp them across his lap. ‘A perilous path for you, sister. And for me as well, I fear. That aside, is it not the case that only you, who yet remain free among us, could do so? Our brother lies imprisoned within the consequences of his own designs, while I remain enmeshed within mine. Very well, sister. I honour your intent and will do what I can to aid it.’

She bowed her head. ‘Thank you, brother.’

K’rul raised a finger. ‘Have a care. I foresee that this involvement could cost everything.’

‘That is as it should be, else it would not be worthwhile.’

The hand withdrew. ‘Very well. May you choose the wisest of all the many ways, Sister of Cold Nights.’

The hooded shape faded away into the dark and she was alone. Wincing, she stretched out her legs, arched her back, and threw more branches upon the embers. As the fire grew, she shifted to sit cross-legged, set her hands palm up on her knees, closed her eyes, and cast her awareness towards the city to the south.

She was searching. Searching for a flavour. The faintest of brushstrokes. Something . . . inexplicable. And through the darkness there came rumbling about her the creaking and grating of titanic wheels, such as Errant had mentioned. Only now, reverberating among the Warrens and Holds, these vibrations were not the cogs of fate’s machinations but the wheels of a gigantic wagon accompanied by the rattling of chains. And stricken by a chilling dread, she shuddered.

Wheels. Wheels groaning in the dark.

‘
HOW MUCH FOR
Pung’s head?’

Rafall, who had been sipping his tea, spat all over the mass of papers on his desk. He dabbed a sleeve to the cheap fibre sheets and glared at the youth slouched in the chair opposite.
Hood forefend! He can’t be serious, surely
? ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, lad. We have a good thing going here. A fat purse for the old harridan. That grain merchant. Let’s not ruin it.’

The lean youth appeared unmoved. His sharp gaze remained unreadable. ‘It could be done. How much would Urquart pay?’

Ye gods – where to start
? He opened his arms wide. ‘Listen, lad. We – all of us – we’re allowed to run our quaint little businesses because we keep our heads down and don’t cause too much trouble. Understand? The Protectress and her pet mages, they could shut us all down if they wished.’

‘You, maybe,’ the lad muttered.

Rafall winced and bit his tongue to stop himself from cursing the youth as he would any of his usual lads or lasses. He took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to do you a favour right now, lad. Here it is. With that little snipe there, you just effectively dismissed my life and therefore the livelihood of all those here who depend upon me for food and a roof over their head. Understand? Now, am I supposed to thank you for that? Or maybe I should now decide that you’re a threat to me and arrange to get rid of you. There. See how consequences of words and actions work?’

The youth shifted in his seat. His mouth tightened and turned down in an uncertain frown.

Rafall was pleased. Maybe he’d finally made a dent in that massive arrogance. The problem with this one was he was too good. It had all come too easy. Too much early success. For his part, Rafall couldn’t imagine what it must be like to see no one as a threat. But it couldn’t breed prudence, of that he was sure.

The assassin suddenly lurched to his feet. ‘You’re forgetting who works for whom, Rafall. Get the word out. I want to know how much.’

Rafall pressed a hand to his forehead. ‘You’re not listening. Just . . . listen.’ The lad had crossed to the window. ‘Look around!’ Rafall went on. ‘There’s a war on. Don’t start another. You won’t like it!’ But the youth was gone out of the window into the night. Banging started on the trapdoor to his chambers.

‘You okay, boss?’ one of his guards called. ‘Who’s that you’re talking to?’

Rafall moved to stand on the door. ‘A nightmare,’ he said. He could not take his gaze from the window. ‘Just a nightmare.’

Dorin stopped to rest on a flat rooftop. He was panting and sweaty, but not from his exertions. It’s nothing, he told himself. It means nothing. He’s just searching for a hold on you. Like all the others. Trying to control you. Remember, you can’t count on anyone.

He drew in the cool night air, felt the hairs on his neck prickle as they cooled and dried in the wind. And yet the fellow seemed genuinely kind to all the young pickpockets and cutpurses and clubbers in his employ. Like a father.

He scowled at that while he stared out across the dark rooftops. Yes. A father. Like the one who’d sold him. Pulled him yelling from his mother’s arms and sold him off for a few coins that he no doubt squandered on drink.

So much for love. Or affection. Or any other ties, blood or otherwise. He drew out a coil of his best cord and yanked it taut around a forearm, round and round, biting into the flesh.

The only ties he could count on were those he tied himself.

A scuff on the sun-dried tiles of the roof alerted him. He spun, throwing daggers readied. A fellow who looked like a wrestler stood eyeing him. He carried no obvious weapons, but his thick arms hung loose at his sides, and they ended at the wide gnarled hands of a professional strangler.

‘What do you want?’ Dorin called. For some reason he felt wary, despite the distance between them and the brace of weapons he carried.

‘We’d like to talk,’ said a new voice, and Dorin spun again, to where another fellow occupied the far corner of the rooftop. This one was dressed like a godsdamned male courtesan. Dorin backed away to keep both in view. His feet in their soft leather slippers touched the lip of the roof behind him. ‘I’m done talking.’

The fop smiled, hands held out and open. ‘A brief word, that’s all.’

For some reason Dorin paused before leaping off the roof. Why not? He was armed. Might as well hear this ridiculous fellow out. ‘All right. Talk.’

The fop smiled his encouragement. ‘Excellent. Thank you. We have a job for you.’

Dorin eased his ready stance ever so slightly. ‘A job? What?’

The uncommonly handsome bastard shared a glance with his equally uncommonly ugly compatriot. ‘The priest of Hood in town. We want him to meet his god.’

Dorin chuckled at the sentiment. ‘How much?’

‘One hundred gold rounds.’

It was an incredible price. Dorin raised an eyebrow. ‘For one dead priest?’

A modest shrug from the man said that they had their reasons. ‘As you see – an easy job. Shall we say you return here, this rooftop at mid-night, whenever the job is done?’

‘Agreed.’ Dorin hopped back off the lip and fell by lowering himself from one window to the next until he landed, a touch more heavily than he would’ve liked, in the alley beneath, and ran off.

*

Silk peered down over the lip of the roof into the darkness-shrouded alley. He couldn’t see a blasted thing. He crossed his arms and tapped a thumb to his lips. ‘Well . . . he’s acrobatic. I’ll give him that.’

‘And if he fails?’ Ho asked.

Silk shrugged again. ‘Then we’re rid of him.’

‘And if he succeeds?’

Silk smiled. ‘Then we’ll be rid of him a few days from now.’

But Ho did not share the smile. He rubbed his grey-bristled jowls, frowning as if troubled by some vague unease.

Silk rolled his eyes to the night sky.
Gods! There’s no pleasing some people, is there?
He waved Ho onwards. ‘Fine. Let’s take a tour of the walls. Mara says the Kanese infantry have finished their investment.’

‘They will attack on all sides. Hope to overbear us.’

‘Then we will be busy.’

Ho walked with a heavy tread, his hands clasped behind his back, his head lowered. ‘I fear so.’

They reached a ladder and Silk allowed Ho to go first. ‘You fear?’ he asked when they reached the alley. ‘What could you possibly fear?’

The big man sent Silk a puzzled look. ‘Having to kill, of course.’