Grim Company 02 - Sword Of The North (46 page)

She grabbed a pillow and was about to hurl it across the room when she glimpsed movement on the white marble streets below. A Whitecloak patrol was hurrying west towards the docks, their booted feet sending up great splashes of water. Without warning the sky suddenly lit up, heavy black clouds rendered an eerie blue for the blink of an eye. She thought it might have been lightning, but the tremors that shook the inn a moment later put paid to that notion. The vase she had purchased at the market to replace the one Ambryl broke toppled over, rolled a few times on the table, and then tumbled off to shatter on the floor.

Sasha felt the room spin as panic gripped her.
Alchemy
, she thought in terror. Memories of the Wailing Rift and the night Dorminia burned flooded back. Her breath quickened; her trembling palms began to perspire. She thought she’d resigned herself to another few days between the deathly dull confines of these four walls, but the sudden anxiety that overwhelmed her made a mockery of that resolution. Not even the threat of her sister’s wrath was enough to quell the frantic impulse to flee, to escape this building by any means necessary.

She called for Willard, but received no response. The inn shook again. She rushed across to the door and pulled desperately on the handle. The door was locked tight, as she knew it would be.

‘Someone let me out!’ she cried, rattling the handle desperately, giving the door a hard kick for good measure. In Dorminia one of the other guests would surely have answered her cries, if only to tell her to shut her whore mouth or something similarly charming. Not so in Thelassa. If the inn had other guests, they were content to mind their own business.

There was another flash of light from somewhere off in the city. She was certain she could hear distant screams, now. She picked up the small round table the vase had been resting on, thinking to ram it through the window and follow up on her earlier plan, wondering if she might force the straw mattress or at least a pillow through the opening to break her fall. Then she spotted one of Ambryl’s hairpins on the floor near the bed.

She put the table back down, hurried over to the bed and scrabbled around until her fingers closed around the thin piece of metal. She pulled away the few strands of red-blonde hair caught in the pin and tried to recall the lecture Cole had given her on how to pick a lock. As always it had been more an excuse for him to boast about the new skill he’d learned than any real desire to impart his newfound knowledge, but Sasha had been blessed with a keen mind for details. She’d been blessed with a keen mind for many things, when it wasn’t half-baked from narcotics.

She bent the end of the hairpin a little so that it stuck out at an angle, and then she carefully inserted the makeshift lockpick into the door’s keyhole and wiggled it around until she felt the locking mechanism catch. Despite her nerves, she managed to keep her hand steady long enough to gently ease it apart until finally it clicked. With a shuddering sigh of relief, Sasha thrust open the door and raced down the stairs into the common room.

It was empty save for Willard. The manager of the Lonely Siren had his back to her and was standing in the open doorway, staring out into the pouring rain. Sasha was about to ask him what the hell was going on when Lyressa emerged from the kitchen.

‘No need to be alarmed, dear,’ the innkeeper said brightly. ‘Probably just some troublemakers that have had too much to drink. The handmaidens will deal with them.’

Sasha stared, open-mouthed. She hadn’t laid eyes on Lyressa since the Seeding Festival over a month past, when the White Lady’s handmaidens had come for the woman in the middle of the night and taken her away. Yet here she was, back in the Siren as if nothing had happened, a kindly smile on her face and everything about her exactly as Sasha remembered it. Everything except one important detail.

‘You…’ she began in astonishment, hardly believing what she was seeing. ‘You were heavy with child…’

Lyressa rested a hand on her stomach. Where before it had been visibly swollen in late pregnancy, now it was almost flat. ‘Heavy with child?’ the innkeeper laughed. ‘I know I haven’t got the body I did ten years ago, but you wait till you get to my age, missy! Willard doesn’t seem to mind that I’ve put on a few extra pounds.’

At his wife’s mention of his name, Willard turned from the doorway. There was something strange about his face, Sasha thought. His eyes seemed… glassy. As did Lyressa’s, now that she examined the woman more closely. A shiver ran down her spine. Something was very wrong here.

‘You were at least six months pregnant,’ she said, trying to remain calm. ‘You went missing the night of the festival. I was upstairs when they came and took you away. I found Willard on the floor. He was in tears.’

As Sasha spoke, a strange thing happened. Lyressa began to blink. Slowly at first, but then more rapidly. Willard, too, was in the midst of some kind of internal turmoil, his eyelids flickering dementedly, his face shuddering as if there was something beneath his skin trying to break free. Sasha’s sense of unease deepened to a rising dread.

‘You’re mistaken,’ Willard snapped. ‘Your sister said you had to be kept locked up in your room. It’s the drugs, isn’t it? You’re a
hashka
junkie. Your mind’s playing tricks on you. I’m not judging you; we all have our problems. But you can’t come down here saying crazy things. You understand me? You can’t come down here saying crazy things!’ There was something frantic in the man’s tone, a rising mania like a kettle of water about to boil over.

Sasha reached up to her face and massaged her throbbing skull. Was Willard right? Could years of abusing every substance she could get her hands on finally have turned her crazy? She’d suffered hallucinations before, during her worst excesses. But they’d always passed quickly, leaving her in no doubt as to their source. She spotted the chair with the broken leg, the one that had been damaged the night Lyressa had been abducted, and she knew with utter certainty that she hadn’t imagined it.

‘I… apologize,’ she said slowly and deliberately. ‘You’re right; I’m talking nonsense. Excuse me. I need to go outside and get some air.’

Like the sun suddenly emerging from behind a thunderhead, Willard’s tortured expression relaxed into one of utter serenity. The abrupt change in his mood was every bit as unnerving as his crazed behaviour a moment before. ‘Go outside? Why, it’s storming something fierce! You’ll be soaked to the bone.’

‘Listen to Willard, dear,’ Lyressa added. Dark blood had begun leaking from her nose, but she appeared not to have noticed. ‘There’s trouble out on the streets. Why don’t you sit here a while? I’ll brew you a mug of hot tea.’

‘No, honestly, I enjoy the rain,’ Sasha said hurriedly, watching the blood dribble down Lyressa’s chin and patter to the floor and trying not to shudder. ‘I just need to clear my head. I won’t go far, I promise.’

That was a lie. As it happened, she did plan to go far – about the width of Deadman’s Channel away in fact. The
hashka
she had somehow possessed the foresight to hide in a nearby alley ought to fetch her enough coin to pay for passage back to Dorminia, if she could find a buyer. She wanted out of this city as soon as possible, with or without Ambryl.

Willard made no effort to block her path as she hurried past him and out into the late-afternoon storm. Her dark hair almost instantly became a sopping mess in the hammering downpour, and she squeezed her chin into her chest and tried to ignore the water soaking her boots as she splashed her way up the street. Another flash lit up the sky and she glanced back to see yet more Whitecloaks emerge from a side road and turn west towards the harbour, though she could make out nothing of the docks through the endless veil of rain.

As Sasha closed on the alley where her stash was hidden she drew level with one of the soaring spires for which Thelassa was renowned. This particular tower was small in comparison with those nearer the centre – not even half the height of the Obelisk back in Dorminia. She paused a moment to gaze up at the rain-shrouded pinnacle. Suddenly the entrance door creaked open and one of the White Lady’s handmaidens glided down the short row of steps leading up to the tower. The rain seemed to fall
around
the pale woman, leaving her white robes untouched.

The handmaiden stopped just in front of Sasha. ‘Return to your home,’ she said coldly.

‘What’s happening?’ Sasha asked, partly to buy herself some time to think in the event of any awkward questions.

‘There is a disturbance at the docks. A hostile wizard has arrived in the city. He will be neutralized shortly. Until then these streets are not safe.’

‘My house is just up ahead,’ Sasha lied. ‘I’ll return there now.’

The handmaiden stared at her for a moment with those colourless eyes. Then she drifted past Sasha, gliding west towards the harbour, eventually disappearing behind the grey curtain of rain.

Sasha heaved a sigh of relief and shook her head, sending droplets of water flying everywhere. The alley beckoned close by. She was about to hurry down it when she noticed the tower’s door was slightly ajar. The handmaiden had neglected to close it behind her.

‘Don’t be a fool
,’ she whispered to herself. No one knew what lay within those soaring spires. Or if they did, none ever spoke of it. The White Lady’s handmaidens were an enigma, but they were far from the only secret this city kept hidden behind its bright exterior.

She hesitated and looked around again. The streets were empty. She asked herself what Cole would have done in this situation, knowing the wisest course of action would obviously be to do the exact opposite. But the tower seemed to beckon to her. With a final check to be sure no one was watching, she dashed up the stairs and darted inside.

Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom. Outside, the roar of the rain continued unabated. Inside it was silent, and all but bare of decoration. Only a single torch on the opposite side of the circular chamber provided any illumination. It revealed a stairwell in the centre, with several doors positioned at equal distances around the circumference of the floor. After a moment’s hesitation, Sasha tried one of the doors and found it locked. Further inspection revealed a wooden panel positioned at head height. Sasha fiddled with it and discovered that it slid open to reveal clear glass, affording a perfect view of the room beyond. The room was well adorned with a bed and a sofa and small bookshelf in the corner, though it was currently unoccupied.

Sasha selected another door at random and slid back the panel to stare through the glass. This room was identical to the last – but this time there was a heavily pregnant woman lying on the bed. She appeared to be crying, though no sound penetrated beyond the room. Sasha banged on the glass, trying to get the woman’s attention, but it seemed that the door cancelled noise from both sides. The woman couldn’t hear her.

Wary of lingering too long in one place, Sasha abandoned the room and its occupant and climbed the stairs to the next floor, which was somewhat more brightly lit than the ground floor. Life-sized statues of the White Lady stared down from alcoves cut into the walls, capturing the likeness of the Magelord in a variety of poses from the serene to the vengeful. None truly did justice to the immortal ruler of Thelassa, though with all she had witnessed in the last few weeks Sasha was convinced that beneath the White Lady’s outward perfection lurked something warped and unspeakably ugly.

There were only two doors on this floor. Both were plain and featureless with no panels to slide back and see inside. Sasha found them both locked when she tried their handles. She thought she could hear whimpering from behind the door to the left, as well as a strange metallic snipping sound, but the last thing she wanted was to draw attention to herself by knocking on the door so she quickly moved away.

She was climbing the stairs to the third floor when she became aware of a foul odour in the air. It reminded her of the terrible smell that had infiltrated Dorminia in the days following the liberation of the city: the carnal stench of old blood going bad and corpses rotting on the streets.

Despite the warning her nose afforded her, Sasha was nonetheless unprepared for the horror that greeted her when she emerged from the stairwell.

With the exception of the stairwell and a narrow walkway adjacent to it, the top half of the tower was surrounded by thick glass. It formed a giant tank that rose to the apex of the building. Behind the glass, a thick and evil-smelling liquid oozed from somewhere far below, filling the tank to the top. As Sasha brought a hand to her nose to shield it from the stench, she realized with sickening certainty that the fluid was blood. A vast quantity of the stuff, enough to fill the rooms of Garrett’s estate with plenty to spare.

Something bumped up against the side of the tank. With rising horror, Sasha saw a tiny, vaguely humanoid shape scrape along the side of the glass, its misshapen limbs wrapped around a foetal body as it spun slowly in the sluggish current.

‘What the
fuck
?’ she whispered, and then she jumped as something struck the glass right in front of her. She stood paralysed in terror and stared into the face of an adult woman, naked and covered in blood except for the eyes, which were shockingly white and very dead, right up until the moment they swivelled slightly to regard her with an expression that almost stripped away her sanity right there and then. The woman’s mouth suddenly burst open; her lips formed a silent scream.

Sasha turned and ran. She took the stairs two at a time, desperate to get away from this tower of horrors. Such was her single-minded determination that she almost didn’t see the man preparing to climb
up
the stairwell. She smacked into him and almost knocked him down in her mad haste to escape the nightmare she’d just witnessed.

‘Who in the blazes are
you
?’ he demanded in a surprisingly distinguished voice. He was tall and sharp-featured, with a high widow’s peak. The white apron he wore was spotted in blood – as were the sharp metal scissors he carried in his slender fingers.