EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (302 page)

“You’re right. A priest would come with lawmen, not daggers in the dark.” He squirmed on the sill, staring at Dante through the dusky room. “You stole something.”

“Bread, maybe,” Dante said, bringing a hand halfway to his chest. He kept his eyes on the text.

“Oh, more precious than bread. No baker’s got the time and money to be chasing after some kid. Not that he wouldn’t hang you if he had the chance.”

“I’m trying to read.”

Blays made a thinking noise. “It’s just money, isn’t it? You’ve been rolling drunks in the alleys. Everyone’s got to eat, I guess, but if you’ve got the watch after you I think I’ve got a right to know.”

Dante looked up. Blays’ face was blanked by the light shining behind him through the window.

“Why do you think that?” Dante said.

“You are! You’re stealing. That’s rich. No pun.”

“How did you know?”

“I guessed,” Blays said, prodding the sill with a small knife he kept around for apparently no more than paring his nails. Dante laid a finger in the book to mark his place and swiveled in his chair.

“No you didn’t.”

“You’re right. I followed you.”

“You followed me!” The chair banged against the boards of the floor as he stood. Blays regarded him a second, then turned back to his nails.

“The money had to come from somewhere. It’s not like you do any work.”

“You followed me.”

“Isn’t that what I said?” Blays stood up and met Dante’s eyes. “Gashen’s swinging balls, you spend all day in here reading, then the one time I can be any use you’re out sneaking around by yourself? What am I protecting you from, papercuts? What am I doing here?”

Dante frowned, his self-righteousness draining away. He hadn’t thought about what Blays would think about their arrangement, but he sounded awfully proud for a fifteen-and-a-half-year-old beanpole who Dante knew he could probably beat up in a fair fight.

“It’s not just stealing,” Dante said instead.

“What else? Robbing? Maybe some larceny?”

“You talk a lot for hired help, you know that? You’re not paid by the word.”

Blays rolled his eyes and sat back down in the window. “Whatever. It’s your money.”

“You see this book?” Dante said, not caring he was shouting. He leaned over the windowsill and shoved the image of the white tree in Blays’ face.

“No, why don’t you bring it a little closer.”

“I took this from one of the old temples of Arawn. They want it back.”

“Looks spooky enough, doesn’t it?” Blays flicked the cover with his nail. “Who’s after you, a bunch of ghosts? That would explain why I’ve never seen them.”

Dante glared at him. A dark speck swam over his right eye and he blinked until it went away. He no longer knew what he was trying to prove. Conversation had always felt like a strange art, and in the weeks since he left the village he’d spoken no more than was necessary to buy things—that and the threats he’d made about the book to the guard.

“You’re being stupid,” he said.

“You’re the one talking about getting murdered over a book.”

“Just be quiet,” Dante said. He righted the chair and sat down and opened the book. He stared blankly at its first page, massaging his temples with one hand.

“So what’s so special they’d want to kill you for it?” Blays said at half the volume of their last exchange. He dropped from the sill and craned over Dante’s shoulder.

“Get off me.”

“I’m not on you.”

“Well don’t breathe so hard.”

“Stop breathing? Have fun dragging my corpse out of here, then.”

Dante smirked into the clean white pages. If the book had been there since the Third Scour it had to be a century old or more. Other than a bit of residual dust, it showed no signs of age.

“It wouldn’t be the first.”

“Oh, sure,” Blays said, pulling upright. He wandered back to the window. “And I’m the queen of Gask.”

“I killed two people before I hired you,” Dante said. He realized he’d meant it as a boast. His hands curled into fists. “Well, one. One of them must not have died when I stabbed him. And the other was a neeling.”

“You killed a neeling and stabbed some guy? Why haven’t you been knighted?”

Dante half-heard him through a memory of the pain-clenched face of the man he’d left for dead in the grass beneath the clouds. Blays saw his expression and gave him a sharp look.

“What was it like, then?” he said, voice lined with irony in case Dante was kidding.

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, tough guy.”

“They both tried to kill me first.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“At the end,” Dante said, rubbing his finger along the pebbled leather of the book’s cover, “there’s a kind of gurgle, a bubble of their final breath, and you wonder how they lived so long at all.”

“Sick,” Blays said. He drew his sword and swushed it through the air. “Why do people have to die at all?” he said, but he kept swinging his sword, slashing the space between himself and Dante, air whistling over his steel like the wind in the pines.

The sun had dropped into the jaws of the western mountains before the monks kicked them out of their cloisters a few nights later, suggesting if Dante had such interest in their order, he should speak with them rather than poring over old manuscripts that really didn’t reflect the modern understanding of Mennok. Dante thanked them and made vague noises about doing so. Crazy old idiots. How could the gods change when they were already perfect?

The door to their room at the inn creaked open while Dante was still trying to insert the key. His breath caught. Blays shouldered him out of the way, side-sword ringing as he wrenched it free. He edged into the room, leading the way with the point of his blade.

The only room Dante could afford was little bigger than one of the monks’ cells and even before he lit a candle it was obvious there was no one else inside. Their few possessions were scattered on the floor, the table tipped on it side, books thrown from the shelf, lying face-down with their pages spread like the bodies of birds. The pallets had been gutted, scattered from corner to corner.

“Funny,” Blays said, stirring the spilled straw with his sword. “I don’t remember wrecking up the place.”

“They were here,” Dante said.

The kid shuttered the window and turned to face him. “For the book?”

“Do we have anything else worth a pair of pennies?”

“Could have been thieves,” Blays said, eyeing him. “I hear you can’t walk down an alley in this town without bumping into one.”

“Grab your stuff.”

“Okay,” he said, and stood there. “Done.”

Dante ignored him and started scooping up his gear. He smoothed the pages of the tossed-off books and piled them in his pack.

“You’re serious,” Blays said.

“Very.”

“What, some hired thug comes poking around and you light out like a rabbit?”

“If that’s what rabbits do, then rabbits are smarter than you are.” Dante bundled up his dwindling supply of candles. Senselessly, some appeared to have been struck in half.

“It really could have been vagabonds.”

“It wasn’t vagabonds.”

“Well, if you’re so sure it’s some shadowy cabal, doesn’t running away mean they win?”

“In what sense,” Dante said, raking up the last of his notes, “can I be said to win if I’m beheaded in my sleep?”

“Now I don’t understand that at all.” Blays glanced at the open door, then shut and bolted it. “What about standing your ground? Sword in hand?”

“I don’t have a sword.”

“Symbolistically.”

“That’s for idiots. Idiots who don’t know anything.” Dante stood and looked around for anything he’d missed, dismayed at the sight of his old clothes shredded and mixed up in the straw. He liked wearing them when he could get away with looking like he’d been run over by a herd of pigs. “Let’s go.”

“I know plenty,” Blays said, setting his mouth. He put his sword away but kept it loose in its sheath. They bustled down the stairs. “My dad knew how to read.”

“Do you?”

“What’s your point?”

They exited the inn and Dante led them up the larger of the roads that crossed outside. The evening had grown brisk and their breath billowed from their mouths in a visible fog. A team of horses rattled past, forcing them into the gutter. The heat of the animals’ bodies rushed past them, followed by a flickering wind that grew steady a moment later, like the team was dragging a stormhead behind it.

“We’re being followed,” Blays murmured a few minutes later. “Don’t look back.”

“Do you believe me now?”

“Anyone who didn’t would be some kind of moron.”

After a quarter of an hour of brisk walking Dante began to get winded. Blays seemed fine and Dante tried to keep his breathing quiet. His brain wasn’t working well enough to take advantage of the fact they were relatively safe for the moment; the arterials carried decent traffic yet, and would for a few hours more. He stepped over a reeking puddle and was glad for the minimal lighting of corner torches and the half-moon. He had to think. They couldn’t just walk forever.

“We can’t just walk forever,” Blays said.

“Yeah, I’d figured that out.”

“They’ll follow us wherever we go.”

“They’ve got to sleep, too.”

“Even if we somehow gave them the slip tonight, do you really think that’s going to stop them?” Blays glanced briefly over his shoulder. “They’ve found you twice now.”

Dante touched the knife in his belt. “Bressel’s big enough to get ourselves lost in.”

“Oh, that’s worked so well so far.”

“Well what do you suggest?” he spat, then looked around to see if anyone had heard. The street was quiet, a few brisk footsteps and the occasional clatter of a team or the reeling song of a drunk.

“Stand and fight,” Blays said, resting his hand on the pommel of his sword. “Once we don’t have anyone right on our ass, we’ll have plenty of time to figure out our next step.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Is it? You’ve killed people before, haven’t you? Why run this time?”

Dante shook his head, feeling pale. “You’re just a kid and the only thing I know about fighting is it helps to stab them in the back. We’d be slaughtered.”

“Then let’s do that.”

“Getting slaughtered is not a plan.”

“Stab them in the back, stupid.”

Dante frowned. “I suppose you think we just hide in an alley, then jump out and say boo.”

“It beats waiting for them to catch us.” Blays glanced behind them again, brows knitting. “At least we’d take them on our own terms.”

“How many are there?” Dante pressed a palm against his right eye. The black speck was back. “Two?”

“Three. There’s another trailing a block behind the first two.”

“Those are not the world’s greatest odds.”

“Well, make a decision. If we just keep walking, eventually we’re going to turn down the wrong street and that will be it.”

Dante shook his head. He never should have stayed in Bressel. For all his reading, he still couldn’t
do
anything. For all the times the book’s authority had made him feel holy, it wasn’t like learning about history and creation stories that contradicted what he’d been taught would help him stand against armed men. There weren’t any instructions in it, nothing about the proper way to sacrifice a calf to gain a godly blessing, no words of power, no maps for a pilgrimage to sacred lands and artifacts. The mail-shirted man had been real, but Dante’s hopes were faint as smoke. There were men after Dante now, men who knew how to kill, and he was nothing more than another kid from the middle of nowhere.

“Shit,” he said. “Gods damn son of a bitch.”

“That about sums it up.”

“I can’t keep doing this,” Dante said. “My luck’s going to run out. Once we get rid of them, I’m running as fast and as far as I can.”

Blays crooked up half his mouth. “I’ve got strong legs.”

Dante shook his head again. “Money runs out in a few days.”

“I don’t think that will stop them from sticking cinders under my toenails and chucking me in the river when I can’t tell them where you’ve gone.”

“Gross,” Dante said, then shut his mouth. If Blays wanted to throw in his lot with Dante for a while longer, that was his business. “So what’s your big plan?”

“You strip down and run at them naked while I circle around behind them.”

“Shut up.”

“When we get to this corner,” Blays grinned, “we make like we just saw them—you know, get all scared and shouty—then we run down this alley and hide. When they run past us, we jump out and stab them.”

“That,” Dante said, “is a really poor plan.”

“You’ve got better?”

“Not at all,” Dante said. They reached the corner a moment later. Blays stopped and turned in a slow circle, gesturing broadly at the landmark of a finger-thin spire in the heart of the city. Dante caught on, shrugging like a stage-actor. Blays glanced back down the street, dropping his jaw when his eyes settled on the men following them, then cried out and darted for the dark mouth of the closest sidestreet. The heels of his boots disappeared into shadow before Dante had the presence of mind to run after him.

The footsteps of pursuit rang out immediately from so close behind him Dante didn’t know whether they’d have time to hide. From twenty yards down the alley, Blays looked back, then seemed to blink right out of existence. Dante’s mouth went dry—a ruse, he’d run off, left Dante as bait to make his escape—then a hand snaked from a doorway he hadn’t seen until he’d gone by it. Blays yanked him from sight and they huddled in the dark, struggling to slow their panting before the men rounded the corner.