Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1 (47 page)

A lift of the brows. ‘Tried. No takers. Dead man walking they called me.’

‘They’re getting smart. Where is he?’

‘You think he tells me?’

‘Where do you think he is?’

‘He moves around . . . a lot.’ Loor touched his ear. ‘Still got the scar. You’re good. Why’d you miss?’

‘I still hit the mark, but I was put off by Tran. He really got up my nose.’

The lad laughed, a touch maniacally. ‘Yeah. He did that to everyone. Rheena finally got fed up with it and did for him.’

‘She did?’

‘Yeah. He was interfering with her chances. She’s good too.’ He leaned forward and Dorin would’ve been alarmed but the lad had both his hands on the table, scooting the glass back and forth. ‘Why’d you do it?’

‘Do what?’

‘Fuck everything up, man! You ’n’ me ’n’ Rheena. We was a team. We could be fucking running the show by now!’

Dorin stared at the wretched figure before him.
Ye gods, he just doesn’t see it, does he? Where to start?
Tell him that he, Dorin,
was
running things now –
his
show?

Now he felt only pity. Pity and disgust. He waved the lad off. ‘Get out of town.’

Loor fell back in his seat. ‘What? Leave? Leave town?’ He laughed feverishly. ‘If you haven’t noticed, there’s a siege on! The Kanese are closing the north.’

‘There’re still gaps. Head out tonight. Now. Before I change my mind.’

‘What, and get captured by the Seti and sold as a slave? They’ve moved south, you know – want in on the fun.’

‘Better chances than you’ll get with me.’

Now the lad’s lips started twitching and he threw the glass back, forgetting that it was empty. ‘It’s all your fault!’ he yelled, his voice cracking, and heads turned.

Oh, Queen of Dreams. Not a blasted scene!
‘Just go. Now. Don’t make me knife you just to shut you up.’

Loor heaved the glass at Dorin but he edged his head aside and it missed to burst against the wall. He surged to his feet, wiping his eyes. ‘You ruined everything!’ he snarled, and staggered from the common room.

Dorin sat quietly for a time. The other patrons were wise enough to return to their drinks. He rocked in his chair while he tapped his thumbs together on his lap. Ruined everything. Perhaps he had. So far nothing he’d started had turned out the way he wanted.

Ullara could certainly attest to that.

Perhaps he was a jinx. Some people were. They were just . . . unlucky. People got hurt around them. Better for all concerned that he slipped away as well. After all, there was an opening in Unta.

If he could just find Pung and finish this. The bastard wasn’t even showing his shadow.

Dorin stopped his thumbs. He leaned his chair forward with a crash of the legs.

That fucking little sneak-thief shit. He knows. He’s known all along!

He stormed from the common room.

He found Wu in his ‘quarters’ – the large cellar where he kept a fire, busied himself with his charcoal drawings, and hoarded a fair bit of the gathered funerary offerings of gold and silver.

The diggers guarding him let Dorin in and Wu looked up placidly from where he sat at a table, a slip of parchment before him. He laced his fingertips together, elbows on the table, and began, ‘Well now. Come to apologize for your ill-considered—’

Dorin gathered together the fellow’s shirt and jacket collar at his throat, dragged him from behind the table, and slammed him against the dirt wall. ‘Where is he?’

Wu pulled at Dorin’s fists, his eyes bulging. ‘Now, now. Don’t let’s be too hasty . . .’

‘You know, don’t you?’

‘Well . . . yes. But please . . . he is irrelevant now. We have taken the streets. Let him hide. Everyone has deserted him.’

‘He’s not irrelevant to me.’

Wu raised a finger between them. ‘I understand. But consider. There are more than just us in this matter.’

Dorin released him and the fellow straightened his linen shirt and fine jacket of lined black satin. ‘What do you mean?’

Wu nodded to the doorway where a number of faces stared in, their eyes huge. Wu shooed them off and they withdrew. Dorin noticed the monkey-like familiar in the rafters where it yawned hugely revealing enormous fangs and a bright red tongue. He crossed his arms. ‘Explain.’

‘If you corner him there will be bloodshed. And I do not like bloodshed.’

Dorin arched a brow. ‘Really. You don’t like bloodshed.’

‘No. It’s messy and unsophisticated. There are better ways of doing things.’

‘Such as?’

Wu brightened, flashed his yellowed crooked teeth. ‘My ways. Lying, trickery, deceit, cheating, or just plain patience. He will come to us.’

Dorin remained unconvinced. ‘Where is he, then?’

Wu wove his fingers together at his chest, paced before the wall. ‘Well . . . he has sought refuge in a temple.’

Dorin felt a gathering tension in his stomach. ‘Which temple?’

Wu faced him, raised his steepled fingers to his chin, almost wincing. ‘The temple to Hood.’

Dorin looked to the ceiling.
Queen-damned should’ve known it
.

Two figures dressed in dark walk an empty street at night. Ice crystals of sleet swirl about them. One is short, his walk a side to side duck-like waddle, the other tall and slim, his walk smooth and gliding, utterly silent. The short one taps a walking stick as he goes; the other holds his arms hidden within his cloak. This section of the Street of the Gods lies to the east, just next to the shore of the Idryn. The only sound comes from the pancake ice-floes clacking and bumping on their way downriver.

The two stopped before a rundown nondescript old mausoleum, its dark entranceway gaping open. The burned stubs of candles layered the threshold here, along with clay cups of liquor, wilted flowers, parchment messages, and other offerings. The shorter of the two figures stepped forward and planted his walking stick in front of him, palms resting on its silver head.

‘Greetings,’ he called. ‘We wish to speak.’

A tall shape moved within the murk of the doorway. ‘Hood grants no special favours.’

Wu rolled his eyes. ‘Not to Hood – to
you
.’

‘I am a mere servant.’

‘A studied pose to fool the gullible. But not me.’

‘There are no false poses before Hood.’

Wu turned to Dorin, muttered, ‘This is getting tiresome.’

‘I know you’re in there, Pung!’ Dorin shouted. ‘Come out!’

‘He is a guest of Hood.’

Dorin pushed forward. ‘Perhaps we’ll just come in there and get him.’

The shape advanced as well, resolving into the youth Dassem, sword readied. ‘Then you will meet Hood.’

Wu threw his hands up. ‘You are determined to shelter this criminal, then?’

‘All are equal before the Dark Taker.’

Wu pressed a hand to his forehead. ‘Oh, do shut up.’ He waved Dorin off. ‘Come. As you can see, he is nothing now. Just a rat hiding in his hole.’

Dorin spat at the doorway. ‘Rot in there, then, damn you to Poliel!’

Wu urged him away. ‘Enough. Let’s go.’

‘What of the child?’ Dorin called back. ‘You would keep
him
with her?’

Dassem tilted his head to where an encampment lay a little way down the empty road. Tents and awnings had been raised among the shrines and stone crypts, and campfires were burning. ‘She is safe with a family of adherents.’

Dorin allowed Wu to push him onward, but reluctantly, glancing back a number of times. When they rounded a turn both stopped and pressed themselves against the nearest wall. ‘What is the purpose of this mummery?’ Dorin hissed.

Wu raised a placating hand. ‘You shall see.’ He pointed the walking stick up the narrow alleyway between the squat shrines and crypts. ‘Ah, here we are . . .’

Two figures approached through the gloom. One Dorin recognized as Rheena. She held the arm of a slim man, slumped, his jacket torn. When he lifted his head Dorin was surprised to see the dejected features of Gren, Pung’s onetime lieutenant.

Wu jabbed the man’s chest with his stick. ‘Greetings, Gren. How the worm and the table have turned, though I don’t understand how tables turn – but that is beside the point. You understand your job?’

The fellow shook off Rheena’s grip, straightened his jacket. ‘Yes. But I want half up front.’

‘You have your life up front,’ Dorin grated.

‘Indeed.’ Wu nodded. ‘You’ll get no payment until the job is done. The east Outer Round wall here, two nights hence. Yes?’

Gren jerked his assent. ‘Fine.’

‘And until then you will enjoy the hospitality of our friend Rheena here – and my lads and lasses.’

Gren paled, swallowing. ‘Don’t let them at me. I mean it! Please.’

Wu jabbed the stick again. ‘Do your job. Don’t betray us.’

Rheena took his arm and yanked him away. Dorin watched them go. ‘Two days, then.’

Wu nodded once more. ‘Yes.’ He gestured, inviting Dorin onward. ‘A glorious boundless future awaits, yet here I am seeing to such trivial matters.’ He pointed the stick to the night sky. ‘This alone is a crime!’

‘Boundless in your imagination,’ Dorin muttered.

The young mage nodded, utterly untroubled. ‘Indeed. My imagination is boundless – and thus so my ambition and destiny.’

Dorin could only shake his head at such utter drivel.

* * *

Silk picked his way down the Idryn’s treacherous shore of frozen mud and iced-over puddles of meltwater. If he ruined the finish on his fine leather boots while on this errand he would be very annoyed. Earlier that day on the street one of the shambling destitutes had reared up before him like a terrifying vision of the future and muttered drunkenly, or as if dreaming under the influence of the d’bayang poppy, ‘Liss wishes to see you.’

He’d halted, flinching from the man’s stench. ‘What was that?’

But the human wreck slouched on. ‘Liss,’ he’d repeated over his shoulder, droning as if only half awake.

Now he found himself navigating the churned and frozen grey-green mudflats and cursing the witch thoroughly. Why couldn’t she live in a nice cottage like any other self-respecting witch? No, she had to sleep on the river shore, like some common fishwife. She was powerful, he knew, yet she insisted on living like the poorest of the poor. He couldn’t understand it.

He ducked under the lip of a wharf and walked down the slope of pilings to the current shore. The Idryn, he noticed, was lower than he’d ever seen it. Two figures waited ahead, both facing away, over the river; one squat and draped in hanging layered skirts and shawls, which one might interpret as worn against the cold, though Silk knew she dressed this way even in the height of summer; the other towering and equally ragged, the giant Koroll.

Silk nodded to them. ‘Greetings, Liss, Koroll.’

They glanced back to him. ‘You were right,’ Liss said to Koroll, ‘he really would get his fine boots muddy.’

‘Very funny, Liss. What, then, is so very pressing down here at the river? Are the fish plotting against us too?’

Koroll tilted his craggy, scarred and tattooed head in thought. ‘Few fish left here,’ he rumbled.

‘The river is low,’ Liss said.

Silk nodded patiently. ‘Yes. Yes it is.’

‘It is tainted.’

Silk frowned as he attempted to parse the comment. ‘Tainted? You mean poisoned?’

‘Tainted. Touched. I can taste it in the crayfish.’

Silk grimaced his disgust.
Gods. She actually eats the ghastly things?

Koroll swept an enormous arm to the south. ‘The Kanese have not left.’

‘No, they haven’t.’

‘Why haven’t they?’

Now Silk blew out a breath and hugged himself; it was damned cold here on the flats with the plains wind whipping him. ‘Well,’ he began, tentatively. ‘I suppose they want to defeat us.’

‘Exactly,’ Koroll affirmed, pleased.

‘There is ice on the flats and the frogs are sleeping,’ Liss added. She shot a hard glance to Koroll. ‘It has been a long time since the frogs slept this deeply.’

Silk looked from one to the other.
These are our mystical aids? Hood help us. What a damned waste of my time
. He clapped his hands together to warm them. ‘Well, thank you for that state of the frogs report. We’ll keep it in mind.’

‘Yet the Kanese are not the real threat,’ Koroll rumbled to Liss as if Silk hadn’t spoken.

‘That chance is shadow slim,’ Liss answered. ‘None would bet on that.’

‘Yet clearly some have.’

The old woman’s laugh was harsh. ‘A standing wager that none have survived.’

‘What are you two going on about?’ Silk demanded, quite offended at being ignored – he was, after all, completely unused to it.

Liss turned her gaze directly upon him and he was almost shocked by the attractiveness of her deep brown eyes.
The eyes of a very lovely woman
.

She looked him up and down then pointed to Koroll. ‘He speaks of the meddler in shadows. But I say that one’s chances are too low to concern anyone.’

‘Chances of what?’

‘Survival.’ She waved him off. ‘Now go. Give our news to the Protectress.’

He set his hands to his hips. Who was she to send him scurrying off like a messenger boy? He shrugged; it was all too bizarre. Sleeping frogs and a taint in the water? ‘Very well. I will go. But do not expect to see me again.’

‘Really? How sad. You make my day, my pretty, pretty boy.’

Silk sighed, then bowed, sweeping an arm in a courtier’s farewell. ‘I would rather kiss the crayfish, Liss dear.’

She was cackling with laughter as he picked his way off the mudflats.

* * *

Two days later, at sunset, Dorin settled alone into the ruins of a burned-out cottage just east of the city walls. Kanese cavalry watched here during the day, while at night torch-bearing columns walked patrols. He waited and watched, hoping Pung would take the bait. Personally, he wouldn’t if he were in a similar situation. But that was too easy to say – he wasn’t the one who’d lost everything and gone on the run.

Far into the night, long after he’d given up hope, the golden predawn light revealed movement on the wall: a shape slowly descending. Dorin eased himself to his feet and carefully approached. From cover, he recognized the monochrome outline of Gren, now on the ground, shaking the rope and peering upwards.