Eye of the Labyrinth (24 page)

Chapter 44

Tia had developed a theory about human behavior over a number of years, mostly based on her observations of Neris. As far as she could tell, the human brain had a finite capacity. You could only fit so much into one head and, according to her theory, high intelligence came at a price. A person’s intelligence, she hypothesized, was in direct proportion to his common sense, and the more you had of one, then the less you seemed to have of the other.

She felt her theory had been totally vindicated when she emerged clean and contented from her bath, only to learn from the innkeeper that her “brother” had left a message saying he was going for a walk to have a closer look at Bollow’s unique architecture.

Tia was quite willing to accept that, like her father, Dirk Provin had one of those odd minds that saw things nobody else could see. She had overheard enough of his conversations with Neris to know the two of them shared a love for something most people could not even comprehend (although in truth, it was the conversations she
had not
overhead that really worried her). Neris had tried to explain his fascination with numbers to her once. He had spoken of the elegance of mathematics, of the beauty and simplicity of something so pure that it could never be corrupted.

To Tia, he had sounded like a man in love.

But having the ability to calculate in your head how much the world weighed did not excuse one for acts of blind stupidity, which was what Tia considered Dirk’s little excursion to be. A few hours before, he had been diving into alleys to avoid the Sundancers, and now he was off on a trip to see the sights. The sheer idiocy of it left her gasping.

What if he was recognized? What if he inadvertently ran afoul of the City Guard? Or worse, what if he was up to something? Suppose at this very moment he was betraying her? Perhaps, any minute now, the City Guard would come marching through that door to arrest her ...

It’s my fault,
she realized.
I should never have let him out of
my sight.

“Your brother’s back, miss,” the innkeeper informed her, pointing to the entrance of the taproom. He was a heavyset man with a barrel chest and quick eye for the needs of his customers. Since she had inquired about her “brother’s” whereabouts, he had been watching the door almost as closely as Tia.

Tia’s head spun round to find Dirk standing in the doorway, looking around the room for her. She waved to get his attention. As soon as he caught sight of her, he headed across to the small table she had commandeered near the kitchen door.

“Where have you been, Little Antonov?” she hissed as soon he sat down on the stool opposite.

“I thought I’d visit the Lord of the Suns and ask him to send a message to the High Priestess informing her of our plans,” he told her blandly, raising his hand in the direction of the innkeeper to indicate he wanted a drink.

Tia glared at him. “You just can’t give me a straight answer, can you? You’ve always got some glib, sarcastic come-back.”

“Well, what did you
think
I was doing, Tia?”

“I thought you were probably ...” she hesitated and then shrugged, feeling a little sheepish, “ ...doing something like sending a message to the High Priestess informing her of our plans, actually.”

Dirk smiled. “Well, there you go. I didn’t let you down.”

She sighed heavily. “Where did you
really
go, Dirk?”

“I went for a walk.”

“We’ve just walked four hundred miles,” she reminded him. “And we’ve another two hundred to go. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“It’s a different sort of walking. I like new places. I like getting a feel for different cities.”

“We’re supposed to be saving the world, Little Antonov, not broadening your horizons.” She stopped while the innkeeper placed a foaming tankard in front of Dirk and then waited until he had returned to his counter before continuing. “Just because you’re highborn and you missed out on your grand tour of the mainland when you turned eighteen, doesn’t mean you can use this little expedition to make up for it. What you did was stupid.”

“And to think I was hoping you’d be in a better mood once you’d had a bath,” he remarked, taking a sip from his ale.

“Don’t try making this my fault. My mood was just fine until I discovered you’d gone sightseeing.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You damn well should be,” she agreed.

He was silent for a moment, looking suitably chastened. Then he reached into his pocket. “Would you forgive me if I gave you a present?”

His question stunned her. “You bought me a present?
Why?
”

Dirk placed a small pendant on the table, attached to a fine silver chain. She picked it up curiously and discovered it was a tiny bow and arrow, wrought of fine silver wire.

The necklace was exquisite, and he had probably wasted their last coin on it. “How much did this cost?”

“Not as much as you think.”

“That’s not an answer. Did you steal it?”

He smiled. “No.”

“Do we have any money left?”

“Lots, actually.”

Tia fingered the delicate bow for a moment, thinking she had never seen anything so pretty. Then she frowned. “What have you been up to, Dirk?”

“I discovered a delightful new game called Rithma. Turns out I’m quite good at it.”

“You’ve been
gambling
?”

“Not really. Gambling implies taking a chance. I was pretty sure I could win, so it wasn’t much of a gamble at all.”

“Don’t split hairs. How much did you win?” she asked suspiciously. “Exactly.”

“One hundred and eighty-seven silver dorns,” he told her. “And the necklace.”

Tia was speechless. That would buy more than a few supplies. For that money, they could hire a coach and four to drive them to Omaxin. “I can’t believe you’d do anything so damn stupid! Suppose you’d lost?”

“I told you. I knew I could win so it wasn’t really gambling.” He held out his hand for the pendant. “If you don’t want it, I’ll take the necklace and the money back.”

Tia glared at him. “That’s right. Go back to the game and offer to return your winnings. Then they’ll be
certain
not to remember you.”

“Good point. I guess you’ll just have to keep it.”

He looked far too smug. He must have known there would be no way to return it without causing a fuss.

“I don’t understand why you thought
I’d
want this. I’m not some silly girl with nothing better to do than preen herself in front of a mirror all day. I don’t wear jewelry.”

“I doubt if wearing a simple necklace will cause you to start swooning, Tia.”

Tia got the feeling that somewhere behind those steel-gray eyes he was laughing at her. “What else did you buy?” she asked, deciding it might be safer to change the subject.

“Nothing yet. I thought we could go through the markets tomorrow before we leave and replenish our supplies. And unless you expect me to work out everything with a stick in the dirt, we need to buy some writing materials, too. Parchment and ink, maybe some charcoal sticks.”

“Now that we can afford to,” she snapped, jiggling the tiny bow and its chain in front of him.

“Look, if it annoys you that much, I’ll get rid of it,” he suggested. “I might be able to sell it ...”

“No,” she declared, slipping the chain into her pocket. “You’re not going to do anything of the kind. You’ve caused enough trouble already. I’m not going to allow you to compound the damage by trying to make it better.”

Dirk took another sip of ale and made no further attempt to argue about it, which Tia thought a little strange. She sometimes thought Dirk quarreled with her just because he could.

“Why don’t you go take a bath? You stink.”

He took a large swallow of the ale, and then nodded and climbed to his feet. “Good idea. You’ll be here when I get back?”

“Unlike some people, I don’t find it necessary to wander off sightseeing every time I enter a new city.”

He smiled. “Maybe you should. Your horizons could do with rather a lot of broadening.”

Dirk left the table before she could respond to that, so she settled for calling him a few choice names under her breath to vent her wrath. The innkeeper, seeing that she was alone again, hurried to her table to see if she wished to order more ale. She declined the offer, deciding to drink the remainder of Dirk’s unfinished ale instead.

She drank determinedly, then took the chain with its tiny silver bow and arrow out of her pocket and fingered it thoughtfully. She had never owned a piece of jewelry before. In Mil, jewelry was something you stole and then fenced to the Brotherhood for whatever you could get for it.

It really was a pretty little thing. But it was frivolous and she could not believe Dirk had risked their last remaining coin to win it. With a snort of disgust for Dirk and his stupid present, she slipped the chain over her head and tucked the pendant inside her shirt. The little bow rested just above her breast and the silver was warm against her skin.

She would keep it there until she decided what to do with it.

Chapter 45

It was a mixed blessing being away from Avacas and the Hall of Shadows, the High Priestess mused. On one hand, she didn’t like being out of touch with what was happening in the capital. On the other hand, all the events of import appeared to be happening around Antonov at the moment, and wherever he was, so she would be.

She was filled with a deep sense of satisfaction, now that Morna Provin was finally dead. For years she had privately fretted about the wisdom of letting that treacherous bitch live, but was helpless to do anything about it. In some bizarre pact that only men seemed prone to making, Antonov had given Wallin his word that Morna would remain unharmed while the duke lived, and so she had, for nigh on twenty years.

But it was over now. The Queen of Darkness was dead and good riddance to her.

Interesting, though, that someone had put an arrow through her left eye, putting an early end to what had been, up to that point, a very entertaining spectacle.

Antonov was certain Dirk Provin was responsible. She had scoffed at the suggestion until she had learned the fate of the
Calliope
. The destruction of Antonov’s ship was a particularly exquisite form of revenge. It would take someone who knew Antonov well to understand what his ship meant to him. Perhaps it
was
Dirk who killed Morna, although to make such a shot under pressure was not a skill that she thought the boy owned. He was a scholar, not a warrior, and the bow and arrow was the weapon of the lower classes. If Dirk had been responsible, she doubted he actually loosed the arrow that killed Morna himself. He must have had an accomplice. Probably one of his Baenlander cohorts.

That Marqel had stumbled across such amazing intelligence regarding his whereabouts was a stroke of good fortune that was long overdue. It was a pity that the girl had let the half-wit return to his ship, but to arrest him on Nova meant involving the Queen’s Guard, and once that happened, Kirsh would have learned of it and the boy would have been handed straight over to the Lion of Senet. While Belagren enjoyed a cordial relationship with Kirshov, his first loyalty was to his father. It would never have occurred to him that the High Priestess might want or need news of Dirk Provin even more than Antonov.

Belagren would have dearly loved to get her hands on Dirk. Or find Neris Veran. She was not particularly bothered which. She needed one of them. She needed someone to get through that damn Labyrinth.

The gate that had killed three of her people by showering them with acid had finally been cleared, only to reveal yet another barricade farther along the tunnel. How many of those damn things had Neris constructed? They had broken through twelve gates so far. Surely this was the last one?

The cost of keeping her people in Omaxin was draining her, the constant need to justify the expenditure to Antonov even more so. The Lion of Senet had agreed to fund the expedition when she was at the height of her power. But as the years dragged on, he began to question both the need and the cost of the venture.

Realizing she had just read the same sentence three times, Belagren threw down the letter she was holding in disgust. It was from Rudi Kalenkov, the Shadowdancer she had left in charge of the excavation in Omaxin.

Rudi was a small, ferrety little scholar with a good eye for organization, but the letter contained nothing but bad news. The engineers who had been examining the latest gate estimated that to dismantle it was going to cost a small fortune, and who knew how many lives. She had long ago given up thinking that anyone
other
than Neris could actually open it, unless, by some unforeseen miracle, she was able to find Dirk Provin, and then somehow convince him to aid her. Rudi needed workers brought in—stonemasons, laborers and the like—and they all expected to be housed, and fed and paid.

“Bad news?” Madalan inquired from the desk by the window, looking up from the more mundane dispatches from Avacas that Belagren could not be bothered with.

“Is it ever anything else from Omaxin?” she grumbled. The High Priestess walked to the window and looked down over the crashing ocean far below. “Why doesn’t it get any easier, Madalan?”

“It’s the price we’re paying for embarking on this course of action with only half the information we needed,” Madalan reminded her.

“We’ve Ella to blame for that,” Belagren snapped.

Madalan didn’t answer her. The High Priestess looked down at her aide with a frown. “You’re not agreeing with me.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you,” Madalan pointed out.

“You think it’s my fault?”

“I think we’re all responsible, in part. The excitement of our discovery overruled prudence, I fear.”

“You’ll be fearing a damn sight more if something occurs that we haven’t forecast,” Belagren warned. “Goddess, do you realize that I wake every morning before the second sunrise, just to assure myself that it happens?”

“Worrying won’t make the second sun rise,” Madalan said, with infuriating logic. “The next Age of Shadows may not even happen in our lifetime.”

“And you don’t think I need to
know
that for certain?” she demanded. “You don’t think that I would love nothing more than to go to Antonov tomorrow and assure him that his sacrifice was worth it? That in return for the life of his son the Goddess has assured me there’ll not be another Age of Shadows for a thousand years?”

“Why not tell him that anyway?”

“Because with my luck the very next day the damn second sun will disappear again!”

“It’s got to be worth consideration, though. I don’t really understand all that stuff Neris told us, but I do recall that he drew a very big circle in the dirt. Presumably, the next Age of Shadows isn’t due for a long time yet.”

“I can’t build a whole religion on a probability, Madalan.”

“Not when sex, drugs and human sacrifices work so much better,” the older woman agreed wryly.

Belagren turned on her savagely. “Don’t say that! Not even in jest. You’re the right hand of the High Priestess of the Shadowdancers! Do you realize what would happen if people thought
you
had no faith?”

“I have faith,” Madalan assured her. “Mostly in your ability to turn every circumstance to your advantage. You’ll find a way to deal with this, Belagren. You always do. Besides, you might end up finding the Provin boy.
If
Marqel’s information is correct. Not that I trust a lot that comes out of the mouth of that sly little bitch.”

Belagren smiled briefly. “But she’s
our
sly little bitch. Actually, I think I’m starting to grow quite fond of her. Do you believe she had nothing to do with Caspona and Laleno dying?”

“Not for a minute,” Madalan declared.

“Neither do I,” the High Priestess agreed. “But she’s covered her tracks well.”

“A little too well for my liking,” Madalan complained. “Be careful, Belagren. She could turn on us just as easily.”

“Don’t worry,” Belagren assured her old friend. “I can handle one grasping little Dhevynian thief.”

The assurance did not satisfy Madalan much, but before the other woman could answer, there was a knock at the door. Belagren impatiently called permission to enter.

“My lady?”

“Yes, Marqel?”

“There is a messenger here from the mainland. From the Lord of the Suns.”

Belagren glanced at Madalan and rolled her eyes. “Just what I need! More trouble from that senile old fool in Bollow.”

“It’s not like Paige to send you anything,” Madalan pointed out with a curious frown. “He can barely bring himself to speak your name.”

“Shall I show him in, my lady?” Marqel asked.

“I suppose you’d better,” she sighed.

Marqel returned a few minutes later with a young man of about twenty, wearing travel-stained leather trousers and a linen shirt, not the yellow robes of a Sundancer that she was expecting. The messenger bowed and handed over an envelope bearing the Lord of the Suns’ seal. Belagren accepted it and looked at the young man curiously.

“You’re not a Sundancer.”

“No, my lady. I’m a courier. I usually work out of Bollow delivering messages between there and Talenburg.”

“The Lord of the Suns employs couriers, now?” Madalan asked with a raised brow.

The young man shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, my lady. I only know that I was paid to deliver this to the High Priestess as quickly as possible from Bollow.”

“And is the Lord of the Suns expecting a reply?” Belagren asked.

“If he is, my lady, he didn’t instruct me to wait for it.”

Nodding thoughtfully, she dismissed the courier and broke the seal on the letter. She snapped the folded page open with a flick of her wrist, a little surprised to find it written in an unfamiliar hand. As she read the contents, the blood drained from her face. She was forced to sit down before she was halfway through it, feeling faint before she got to the end.

“My lady?” Marqel asked in concern.

“Get me wine, Marqel,” she ordered, feeling light-headed.

“A large one.”

The young Shadowdancer hurried to obey. Madalan rose from her seat at the desk and walked across to Belagren.

“What’s wrong?”

“Read it.” Belagren was incapable of saying anything else. She thrust the letter at her old friend with a shaking hand.

Madalan read the letter, her eyes widening in shock. “This can’t be genuine!”

“And if it is?” Belagren asked tonelessly.

“This is a trick! It has to be! Paige Halyn thought this up as some sort of desperate last-ditch attempt to discredit us!”

The High Priestess shook her head. “He’s not capable of anything so inventive.”

Marqel returned with the wine and handed it to the High Priestess. The girl was burning with curiosity, but was wise enough to say nothing. Belagren accepted the goblet and downed the entire contents in a swallow.

“Get me another,” she ordered. “And find that messenger before he leaves the palace. I need to know how long ago he was dispatched from Bollow.”

Marqel was smart enough not to question her orders. She filled the wine glass again and left without so much as a hint of defiance. Perhaps she was finally learning her place.

“Belagren, there’s an old saying, you know. If something seems too good to be true, then it probably is.”

The High Priestess nodded. “Oh, don’t worry, Madalan. I’m sure there’s more to this than meets the eye.”

“But—”

“But I can’t ignore it. At worst, it means I will be able to give Antonov something he desperately wants.”

“And at best?”

“At best, we are saved,” the High Priestess told her aide, shaking with disbelief, almost too stunned to accept that, out of nowhere, a miracle had landed in her lap. “If this letter is genuine, we are saved.”

“Perhaps,” Madalan agreed doubtfully.

Marqel slipped back into the room and sketched a hasty curtsy. “Three weeks, my lady.”

“What?”

“The courier, my lady. He left Bollow three weeks ago.”

Madalan frowned. “That has to be some sort of record.”

Belagren nodded. “Which means our young friend is already in Omaxin. Or so close to it that it scarcely matters.”

“What are you going to do?” Madalan asked.

Belagren barely gave herself time to think about it. Time was the one thing she did not have.

“For now, I’m going to do as he asks, Madalan. I’m going to send a message by bird to Rudi today, and withdraw the Shadowdancers from Omaxin.”

“And after that?”

“After that, as soon as this damn wedding is out of the way, I’m going to have a word with the new Regent of Dhevyn.”

“Kirshov? Is it wise to involve him in this?”

“Not only wise, but essential, according to
that,
” she said, pointing to the letter Madalan was holding. When her old friend seemed unconvinced, Belagren smiled and looked at Marqel, thinking of a day several years ago on Elcast, when a desperate young man had come to her for help to save a young thief from the lash.

“Don’t worry about it, Madalan. Kirshov Latanya owes me a favor.”