Fallen Blade 04 - Blade Reforged (37 page)

“Unless you’ve got a problem with it,” said Fei, and it wasn’t a question.

“Unless you’ve got a problem with it,” I agreed.

“I’m sorry, Aral. I didn’t realize it was a trap set for you until I saw the hell
in your eyes when she poured you that drink. If I’d had any idea how bad it was going
to be, I’d have sat out in the street day and night rather than let you walk into
that. But in the five years I’ve known you, you’ve never touched the stuff. I know.
I ask around about the people I hire shadowside, and all anyone ever said was that
you liked your whiskey a little too much.”

“There’s no way you could have known,” I said. “It’s a Blade thing and not one we’ve
ever let get bruited about on the street. For that matter, it wasn’t a problem while
the goddess was still alive; it was a tool. For some of us it still is. Devin seems
to use it just fine.”

“But not you.”

“No.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No.” She opened her mouth again, but I held up a hand. “Let’s talk about something
else.”

“Like what?”

“Like your hair. That’s pretty drastic.”

“It’ll grow back.”

“But that braid was such a part of you. Even looking you in the face right now, I
find it hard to imagine you without it.”

“That’s the point. If you can’t let something go when you need to, you’re its prisoner.”

“It was hard, then,” I said.

“Very.” She got up. “I need sleep and so do you. See you back here tomorrow night.”

“See you then.” She left.

Aral?

Yes, Triss?

I’m proud of you. You fought it off.

For now. Tomorrow’s another day.
Fuck but I missed certainty.

You’ll do it again.

I hope so, Triss, I hope so.

*

That’s
the damnedest thing,
I sent as I tugged on the rope that Devin had let down for me.
I’m not comfortable with things being simple.

The fortress of Kao-li was a huge pile of masonry completely covering a stony island
in the middle of the Zien River about fifty miles upstream from Tien. It was connected
to a second, much smaller island by a drawbridge. The little downstream island, known
only as the tollbooth, sat at the midpoint of a big stone-piered bridge between the
north and south banks.

The Zien was very wide at that point and all traffic into Kao-li had to travel across
a hundred feet or more of thick wooden planks to the center of the river and the tollbooth.
From there it crossed a short drawbridge to the smaller island, passed through a barrel-vaulted
passage in the base of the tollbooth tower, and then on to the second drawbridge.
In addition to the gates and drawbridges, the wardens of the tollbooth had the means
to cast down the main bridge spans on either side.

An army couldn’t hope to get in. An unaided assassin would have had plenty of trouble,
too. As I prepared to shift my weight to the rope, I drew a knife and sliced a long
gash in the tiny hide coracle I’d paddled across to the upstream wall of the fortress.
It sank quickly, weighted down by several large stones.

Easy makes me nervous.
I started up the rope.

This isn’t the part you should be nervous about.

I have plenty of room to be nervous about the Kitsune
and
the rope.

Without the latter, the climb would have been all but impossible. After they set the
stones of Kao-li’s walls, powerful magic had been used to fuse them all together,
creating
a single seamless whole with a finish as slick as any volcanic glass. The lowest wall,
on the downriver side was fifty feet of backward-angled glass coming straight up out
of the water. On my side, the height was sixty-five feet, and for all but the last
ten I wasn’t hanging close enough to the wall to so much as brace my feet on it.

I was sweating by the time I reached the top, though more from nerves than exertion.
For perhaps the dozenth time that night I thought about how much better I’d have felt
with a couple of efik beans calming my nerves and sharpening up my focus. Every time
I pushed the thought aside, the effort cost me a tiny bit of what felt like a very
finite will, like I’d started the day with a block of the stuff and I kept chipping
away at it. I shuddered to think about what would happen if I ran out.

As soon as I pulled myself up onto the lip of the parapet, Devin let the rope fall
away into the water below. “Come on, I’ve cleared a path to the north tower where
the king has his nightly bath.”

“Nightly?” I asked, appalled.

“Since he got here, yes. I don’t know whether he’s reached a new stage where he needs
them more frequently, or if he’s simply indulging himself because he feels more secure
at Kao-li.” Devin started walking. “The Kitsune’s there with him right now, discussing
what comes next. Once I’ve got you in place, I’ll go open the front door for your
little queen’s soldiers.”

There was a guard’s body slumped at the first stairhead we passed. I nodded toward
it. “When will his relief be along?”

“Never. I poisoned the whole of the next shift and killed the cooks before I started
in on the guards up here.”

Nasty,
sent Triss.
I don’t like it.

I agree with you, but there’s nothing to be done about it now.

We passed a dozen more corpses as we worked our way around the perimeter wall. We
were in less danger of discovery than we would have been walking down one of the
main streets of Tien in broad daylight. It was disturbing in a very different way
from the holes that the Kitsune had built into security at the palace. Here, there
was no mystery. You could see exactly what had happened. Devin.

“How many?” I asked.

“Counting the next shift?” He shrugged. “I didn’t bother to keep track. Don’t tell
me you’ve gotten even
more
sentimental in your old age.” I didn’t answer, and Devin continued. “It’s better
this way, we won’t have any immediate interruptions. Once I’ve let your slinks in
amongst the mice at the main gate, it should preclude any latecomers joining the party.”

“You sure you don’t want help with the gate?” I asked. The less I had to do with Devin,
the happier I’d be, but I didn’t want a failure on his part to waste all the blood
he’d already spilled.

“Quite sure. I wouldn’t want the great and mighty Kingslayer to have to dirty his
hands unnecessarily. Though, I must admit,
that
made me wonder if you hadn’t finally wised up.” We’d just come around a corner then
and he pointed across the river to what looked like a hundred fires burning away madly.
Farms, mostly, but also at least two entire villages. “I didn’t think you had it in
you to be quite so ruthless on the diversions front, but this is inspired.”

Triss swore bitterly in Shade, and I thought,
Oh, Prixia, what have you done?

“It looks like a good portion of your little queen’s army is out there burning and
looting,” continued Devin. “The garrison commander wanted to ignore it at first, since
no one is supposed to bother the king when he’s a-bathing. But then the first village
went up, and she decided she really ought to lead a major force out to deal with it
rather than try to explain it all to the king later.”

“That’s mad,” I said. “The toolbooth will be locked down tight now, and very hard
to crack. Are you sure you can handle it alone?”

“Oh yes, I’ve got it well under control. I had
lots
of poison and plenty of time to figure when and how to deliver it.
Speaking of which, we really should stop sightseeing now. I need to get you to the
tower and point you in the right direction before my little added something extra
starts hitting.”

I took one last sick look at the fires on the north bank—burning on a scale vastly
beyond anything Prixia had implied might happen—and then I followed Devin. What other
choice did I have? Walk away and let it all have been for nothing?

“Up that way.” Devin pointed to a high tower window a few minutes later. “There’s
an identical window around the other side that opens on the king’s bath. Just let
me…”

He snapped his fingers and a tiny dot of magefire like a dim candle’s flame shot up
to a place just below the crown of the tower. I couldn’t make out what it did there.
Neither with my eyes nor Triss’s senses. But Devin reached a hand outward a moment
later, sending a thin thread of spell-light from his fingertips to the nearest wall.

“Don’t worry, there’s not a mage alive anywhere close enough to see.” Then he made
a fist and pulled. An almost invisible line of blackness detached itself from the
wall and swung our way as the spell-light winked out. “There we go.”

He caught the silk rope and handed it to me. “The tower walls are even slicker than
the outer defenses—there’s no way up the outside without using serious magic or a
rope. I set this up last night as soon as we were done talking. Let it fall back when
you’re done, I’ll need it to rejoin you and I don’t want to fight my way past the
Elite in the lower levels.”

“I can’t wait.”

“Don’t start without me if you can avoid it,” said Devin. “I want to see the look
on Nuriko’s face when you kill her. Or, failing that, the look on yours when she does
for you. Either way I’ll have one more happy memory to carry me along to whatever
comes next.”

Before I could respond, Devin assumed his shroud fully and vanished into the night.

What do you think, Triss? Should I cut the line when we’re done with it?

Tempting, very tempting, but no. We’re probably going to need him to back us up.

I was afraid you’d say that. Shroud me up.
With a sigh, I swung across the fifteen-foot gap to the tower and started hand-over-handing
my way up the rope.

A few minutes later, I stepped down beside the body of the guard atop the tower. She
had taken a crossbow bolt in the base of her skull—a very clean shot an inch below
the rim of her helm. It would have severed her spine in the instant before it drove
up into her brain.

On the far side of the tower I released Triss to slip down over the edge. As expected,
he found a second rope there. It was bound up in a black silk bag with a wax seal
holding it shut. When Triss released the seal, the rope fell silently to hang a few
inches to the side of the window that was my target, just as I would have set it.
Pulling the rope up a few feet, I looped it several times around my calf and knee
to act as a rough brake. Then, headfirst and shroud in place, I slipped over the edge.

The scene I witnessed when I slowly poked my head down over the edge of the window
could have come straight out of one of the more lurid descriptions of the thousand
hells. The room took up half the top floor of the circular tower. In the center, a
few feet out from the only flat wall, Thauvik lay at his ease in a red marble tub
filled with what looked like a mix of blood and water.

An iron pipe circled the base of the tub in a loop that was anchored in a small fireplace,
presumably to keep everything, well, blood warm. Near the door a half dozen pale corpses
were partially covered by a huge waxed silk sheet. Gilded fetters hung from a crane-like
apparatus above the tub to make the bloodletting easier.

The Kitsune sat on a chaise lounge somewhat in front of the king and to his right,
her sword lying across her thighs and the nine-tailed fox curled up beside her. She
and the
king were speaking quietly but amiably about how best to arrange for him to keep up
with his soaks while on campaign. It took another big chunk off the block of my will
not to swing in and attack them the instant I realized what I was witnessing.

The only reason I was able to hold off was knowing that if I failed and died, there
was no one to follow me. Namara was gone. There would be no second assassin if I fell,
and no third to follow them if they went down in turn. When I’d killed Ashvik, I was
the fourth Blade my goddess had sent to make the attempt. And, though I had been aware
in the abstract that I might well fail and fall as my predecessors had, I had also
known deep down in my bones that another would follow me, and another. I had known
that justice would be done no matter what happened to me.

Until this very moment, with the prevention of a slaughter almost beyond imagination
hanging in the balance, I hadn’t realized how reassuring that knowledge had been for
the younger me. But I was older now. I knew that I could fail and I knew anyone could
die. The fall of the temple had brought both those lessons home in a way nothing else
could.

So, I used the time while I waited for Devin to plot out my every move and contingency
instead of simply rushing to attack. Originally, I’d figured on fighting the Kitsune
before dealing with the king, but now I decided that I had to kill Thauvik first if
at all possible and even at the cost of my life. Without him, there would be no risen
crusade, no matter how dangerous and powerful Nuriko might be. I was mentally rehearsing
my slide in through the window for perhaps the dozenth time when a loud clanging alarm
sounded from off toward the front of the castle.

“What’s that?” demanded Thauvik.

“I’m not sure.” Nuriko slid off the chaise, reattaching her sword to her rig as she
rose. “Bide a moment.” She crossed to another, smaller window. Pulling an eyespy from
her trick bag as she went, she set it on the ledge. “There’s heavy fighting on the
south end of the bridge, but no one’s cast the
bridge into the waters. That means the tollbooth’s fallen. Yes, and the inner gate
with it.”

She twisted the eyespy and made a gesture that would allow it to see around corners.
“There’s a much larger enemy force on the north bank—an army really—and fires in the
lands beyond. They’re trying to throw down the bridge to keep what looks like your
garrison force from returning to relieve the fortress.” She turned away from the window
and put her back against the wall to one side. “But then, there’s no way they could
get back here in time to make a difference anyway, is there, Kingslayer?”