Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1 (29 page)

The creaking of wood announced that one of the biggest enforcers had roused himself to peer up from his tankard of beer and perpetual game of tiles or dice. ‘Where’re you going, knife-boy?’

‘For a walk,’ he threw over his shoulder as he exited.

He headed for the main entrance. No one called or chased after him. He stared down the two truncheon-carrying fellows at the wide double doors and kept on walking on to the side street that led up to one of the Outer Round’s main avenues.

On this boulevard he took immense pleasure from simply being out and taking in the sights. Yet the streets struck him as very different from the ones he had made his own not so long ago. As reported, they were disturbingly empty. Shop fronts were closed and shuttered. No one was out hawking any wares at all. The few people he spotted were hunched in dirty cloaks, their gazes wary and frightened, their pace quick as if fearful of being chased.

His wandering brought him close to the base of the north curtain wall and here a gang of youths crowded the battlements. They were taking turns slinging stones at some enemy. They groaned at apparent poor shots while cheering lucky ones. Puzzled, Dorin stopped at the base of the first stairs he came to and called up, ‘Who are you shooting at? I thought the north was clear.’

A very young lad, no more than a child, ragged and looking near feral, stopped for a moment to eye him as if he were an idiot. ‘The godsdamned turncoat Crimson Guard is what! Where you been lately?’ He returned to his slinging.

Dorin rubbed his chin, surprised by the news.
Where have I been? Where no one has any curiosity, obviously.

He peered round to find someone to ask for news but found no one. The main avenue – utterly deserted. Amazing. And alarming. He picked a nearby shop at random and banged on the door. ‘Hello? Anyone there?’

After a long moment, rattling and shaking announced the unbarring of locks and bolts. The door cracked open a slit. A man with sunken hooded eyes gazed out at him sadly. ‘We have nothing for sale,’ he said, sounding exhausted yet frightened at the same time.

Dorin gestured to the wall. ‘I hear the Crimson Guard are here.’

The man nodded tiredly. ‘They have come chasing Ryllandaras.’

‘Then he has fled?’

The man shook a negative. ‘No. The monster has not fled.’

‘Really? That is . . . unusual, is it not?’ The fellow merely stared, blinking heavily. Dorin cleared his throat. ‘Sorry. Have you no bread? It is past noon and I could use a bite.’

The man blinked anew, as if flustered. Then, disconcertingly, he laughed, swinging shut the door. ‘Bread,’ Dorin heard him repeating in disbelief from within. ‘A bite . . . noon.’

Dorin moved on. He didn’t consider it so funny that he should ask for something to eat when it was long past mid-day. His thoughts turned again to Ullara and he headed for her family’s barn.

In the alley beside the large three-storey structure he looked through slats and was surprised to see all the paddocks empty. Not one mule or horse in sight. All was quiet, the straw dust hanging motionless in the thin beams that came slanting down. He climbed to the roof gable.

Within, the birds roosted as before, but far fewer now. Tall owls slumbered in shadowed corners while much smaller hawks and falcons eyed him with their distrustful bright yellow gazes. And asleep, curled on the straw, lay Ullara. She appeared so bedraggled, so defenceless, that for an instant he feared the worst. But as he stepped on to the slats of the floor she stirred and blinked up at him.

‘Am I dreaming?’ she murmured, smiling vaguely.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

Her eyes snapped awake and she started up on her elbow. ‘You should not be here!’

‘Yes, I know. Your father would kill you.’

‘No – that is, yes. But not him – they’re searching for you, don’t you know? All of them.’

He sat on a crate. ‘Who?’

‘Everyone!’

He raised his brows. ‘Really? I haven’t been out recently.’

‘Obviously,’ she muttered darkly, and drew her feet up under her. She regarded him quite sternly. ‘You’re supposed to be gone,’ she accused him.

He kept his brows raised. ‘This is the welcome I get?’

She surged forward to thrust her thin hands against his chest as if she would push him away. ‘This is serious!’

He caught her hands, then stilled as he saw how drawn and pale she was. He studied her more closely. She was, he saw, more than just thin – she was emaciated, haggard, her eyes yellow with jaundice. ‘You are not eating properly,’ he said.

She burst out with mad laughter at that, almost frenzied, then tilted as if the effort cost her too much. He caught her, drew her on to his lap and held her close. Her head fell against his neck and rested there. ‘When did you last have food?’ he asked.

‘We are doing better than most,’ she breathed against his throat. ‘My beauties bring me gifts.’ She waved to the slats of the floor. He squinted there at a scattering of tiny white sticks – bones. The strewn bones of countless small rodents and other animals.

He felt his throat tighten almost too much for words, his eyes stinging. ‘I see,’ he managed, hoarse, and rocked her on his lap. ‘I see.’

It was late in the afternoon, close to the evening, when he gently laid her back down among the straw. Before he left he set down a bag of coin, all he had on him, though he knew it a useless gesture. What use were coins when there was nothing to buy?

Back on the street, he headed for Pung’s compound. The damned siege, he’d decided, had to stop. It was killing her. Certainly, it was killing many other people. But he didn’t give a damn about any of them. All that mattered was his debt. A debt he could pay by ending things . . . were he willing to take the risk.

He stormed into the common room to find Pung himself there, which was unusual as the man usually kept to his private chambers above. The black market boss turned at his arrival, pointing. ‘There you are.’

Dorin affected disinterest, crossed to the table that held the beer and wine. ‘What of it?’

Pung addressed all the toughs at their tables, his tone aggrieved: ‘Man takes my coin, eats my food. Then, when there’s work to do, where is he?’

The table was also heaped with cured meats, cheeses and hard breads. The siege was obviously not hurting Pung. In fact, business had probably never been better. The thought came to him: when the host weakens, the parasites fatten. Dorin picked up a cut of cured ham and forced himself to eat it, unable to put Ullara out of his mind. The meat was ash in his mouth. ‘Sightseeing,’ he said round the mouthful.

‘Sightseeing,’ Pung repeated, mocking. ‘Well, work’s come for you.’

‘What kind of work?’

‘Your kind. A contract’s been opened. To all comers. They want the head of whoever’s behind these monster visitations.’

Dorin poured a glass of the watered wine, sipped it. ‘Who does?’

‘The powers that be.’

‘Well . . . he’s dead, isn’t he?’

Pung pulled in his chin and scowled as if insulted by the suggestion. ‘No body was found. There was no blood, no carcass. Obviously the bastard used his pet monster to smash the doors then strolled out.’

Dorin considered why he’d bothered covering for the wretched Dal Hon; he guessed he just felt sorry for the poor fool. Nothing, it seemed, ever went the pitiful fellow’s way. He shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

‘Yes I say so.’ Pung pointed a thick arm to the door. ‘So you’re gonna track him down and bring me his Burn-damned head!’

Dorin finished the sour wine, sucked his teeth. ‘And the price?’

‘Five hundred rounds.’

Dorin grunted, impressed. Five hundred was a fair lot of gold. ‘And the cut?’

‘My usual. Eighty-twenty.’

‘
Eighty?
’

Pung opened his arms, shrugging. ‘Hey, look at all the overhead I’ve got. You, all you need is a knife.’

Dorin was tempted to show the fat bastard just what he could do with that knife. But he was surrounded by near a hundred of the fellow’s sworn men, so he eased up from leaning against the table and ambled to the door.

The band of rabid-dog toughs all grinned at him, teeth bared, panting their silent laughter.

He decided then and there that this was the shittiest deal he’d ever cut. But then, it was his first, so of course it would be lousy. It was the beginner tax, he remembered his old teacher telling him. When you’re new to a field, or a region, everyone’s going to rip you off or dump on you. It was only natural. That is, until you established your presence. Your staying power. Only after that would anyone take you seriously.

Of course, that means you have to live long enough . . .

Halfway across the compound, he turned and shouted: ‘Gren! The godsdamned key!’

*

He wasn’t troubled by the assignment to track down the renegade mage because he figured the skinny wretch must be halfway to Unta by now, what with all the heat that was coming down on him from all sides. So too the youths who haunted the tunnels as well; no doubt they’d all run off.

But he didn’t get far into the catacombs before he started coming across signs that they were still about. Fresh tracks, parted cobwebs, scuffed dust – all marks of recent passage. It angered and puzzled him. Why were they hanging about? Pung’s thugs will round them up once they’d convinced themselves the beast was gone and it was safe to look for them.

He carried a torch for light, lit from the lamp at the entrance. It was difficult to gauge the time underground, but he knew it shouldn’t take him all that long to track down the youths’ hangout. It was a good thing for them that Pung’s muscle were not trained trackers or hunters. All those thugs had going for them was the typical dull brute indifference to the suffering of others. And that alone only gets you so far. They were also probably damned scared of coming down here into these dark narrow tunnels where their size was no longer an advantage.

He avoided the lesser travelled tunnels, always choosing the turn that looked the most recently taken, until his route brought him far down among the lowest of the catacombs. The torch was an absolute necessity; no light at all penetrated this far underground. He hated having to carry the damned thing, as it announced his presence down the long tunnels, but it was utterly black otherwise. Eventually he slowed, as all the tracks appeared to be converging on one particular chamber ahead. Footsteps behind him confirmed just how busy this section of catacomb was. He hastily jammed the torch into a gap in the stones of the wall and ducked into the nearest archway.

A troop of the digger youths passed, the lead one carrying a lantern. Dorin noted that they now boasted a mishmash of weapons and armour that looked to have been looted or stolen from all over. The effect of the oversized helmets and hauberks would have been comical were it not all so preposterous. What were they thinking? Pung’s boys will collect them and beat them senseless, perhaps even killing, or at least maiming, a few of the ringleaders as a lesson to the rest. He felt his teeth clenching at the stupidity of it.

Once the tunnel was empty again, he collected his torch and padded as quietly as he could to the open stone archway of the chamber. The portal led to what was obviously a tomb, one of the largest. He stood blinking in the entranceway as the amber light of flickering lamps within revealed the astounding sight of heaps of glittering funerary goods: silver and gold figures of the gods – Burn, Fanderay, Togg, Fener – along with cups and masks and great piles of necklaces, wristlets and brooches.

A fellow in dirty robes was hunched over the stone top of a sarcophagus, furiously sketching away with charcoal on a sheet of curling parchment. The damned Dal Hon mage.

Dorin eased in, edged round the stone coffins. He was about to reach out to grab the blasted fool by the neck when the fellow suddenly spoke up. ‘Have a drink! Won’t be one moment.’

Dorin let his arms drop, straightened, and let out a clenched breath. ‘You saw me coming.’

‘Saw your shadow. Have a drink!’ Without looking up from his work, the fellow gestured to another stone sarcophagus, this one cluttered with tall crystal decanters and ceramic jugs. Also piled there on silver platters – more funerary goods – lay apples, dried pears, and cuts of smoked meats.

Dorin examined the bounty, amazed. ‘You are not doing too shabbily . . .’ Thinking of Ullara, he pocketed two apples.

Charcoal stick in mouth, the mage held up the drawing, examining it critically in the lamplight. ‘So many fully stocked cellars and buried hoards and storerooms – and so many tunnels to dig,’ he said round the stick, sighing.

Dorin squinted at the drawing. It looked like a typical landscape – a village on a lakeshore – but the sketched shapes inhabiting it did not look at all human. The mage rolled up the parchment and set it aside. Still curious, Dorin asked, ‘Why the drawing?’

The little fellow pursed his wrinkled lips, studying him for a time as he had the sketch. He shrugged. ‘Kind of like a map. But I can’t make sense of it. It’s not adding up.’

Closer now, Dorin was annoyed to see that the fool still carried the disguise, or illusion, of an old man. He waved to indicate the fellow’s features. ‘You can drop that with me.’

A long slow shake of the wizened, monkey-like head. ‘No. Not an appearance. I inhabit all my disguises now.’

Dorin frowned, vaguely puzzled.
All?

‘Appearances,’ the Dal Hon lad continued. ‘That’s what’s working against us.’

‘Us?’

The fellow nodded, suddenly now irritatingly sure of himself, almost cocky. ‘You are young, slim, lithe. You do not look like a threat. The dumb muscle don’t take you seriously, do they? Neither of us looks the part, do we? This is proving an impediment – though admittedly a temporary one should we survive long enough.’

We?
He leaned back against the cold hard limestone of the sarcophagus. He felt as if the fellow were running along ahead in an argument he wasn’t even aware of – and somehow winning. He waved the words aside. ‘Listen . . . you know why I’m here.’

‘Oh yes.’ The lad seemed strangely unconcerned by the knowledge. ‘And I know why you haven’t struck.’