Joel Rosenberg - [D'Shai 01] - D'Shai (4 page)

But it didn’t, and eventually I found that I could breathe again, if not particularly well, nor with anything resembling comfort. Slowly, gingerly, I tried to move, then thought better of it. I think I had cracked my head on something—probably the floor—but it had been after I hit; I had reflexively curled properly. If Refle had walked in on me, he certainly would have been within his rights to draw his sword and pin me like a beetle against the floor, and he probably would have done it.

But the door was closed, and it remained closed, and after no more than a few centuries of shock and pain I was able to roll over on my side and then to my belly, and then to get my hands and knees under me.

My back and shoulders were a mass of bruise and pain. I’d definitely cracked my heel and head against the floor, and my left shoulder hurt too badly even to try to move it.

But, amazingly, I didn’t think I’d broken anything. While I resented the amount of my life that practice took, one of the nice things about the upkeep of an acrobat’s body is that well-developed muscles can protect the body against certain kinds of damage, and it seemed that being slammed against a stone floor was among those kinds of damage.

I vaguely remembered doing some of the right things: tucking my chin down toward my chest to protect my head, slapping back with my arms to suck up some of the motion into my chest muscles, slamming my feet down so that my feet and legs would drink up some of the rest, arching my back just a trifle so that my spine would bend instead of snap.

Even when the mind is clumsy, the body remembers, and an acrobat has to learn how to fall.

As Gray Khuzud always said, an acrobat also has to learn how to get up after a fall.

With a grip on a nearby workbench and a superhuman effort I stood, wobbly as a baby, hurting as much as an old man.

Pain or no, I had to finish up here. My coil of rope lay in the corner; I almost blacked out as I picked it up and slung it around my shoulder, but I held on.

If Refle was going to dispose of the evidence, the obvious place was his forge. The forge, a hulking monster of steel and stone, stood waiting in a corner, the coals banked, the ankle-straps of the bellows neatly coiled.

Large as it was, it still didn’t look big enough to be the source of swords and armor plate, but I really didn’t know enough about the process, and was neither likely to learn nor there to learn.

I took a piece of metal and poked at the ashes.

Nothing; just banked coals, waiting for air and fuel to bring them to fiery life.

Over against the opposite wall, two racks of spears and one of swords stood waiting. I couldn’t tell whether they were waiting to be repaired or waiting to be run through some peasant’s belly, but I expected that they’d do for either.

I scratched at my own belly, although the motion hurt.

I hefted one of the swords, the wooden grip warm against my fingers. I hadn’t ever held a sword; it’s not something that peasants, acrobat or no, do a lot of.

It seemed strangely light for its size, perhaps compared to the knives we used in the act. I always thought of them as remarkably heavy things, but this weighed about as much as a juggling wand, perhaps less.

The balance was wrong for my hand, or maybe not—the sword seemed to want to slash through the air, but my aching body definitely didn’t want to slash anything through the air, or move quickly at all.

I wasn’t here to play with swords; I put it back.

A rack of miscellaneous weapons hung on the wall—a pair of battigs, a daw, three small maces, and a dozen truncheons: leather-wrapped rods, suitable for smashing bones when you didn’t want to kill, or wanted to kill slowly, by crushing bone after bone. Any of them could have been the one he had beaten me with, but all of them looked new, the leather polished to a high shine, the wrist-thongs unworn.

Refle was a diligent worker, either as a would-be assassin or as an armorer. Or both.

Battered worktables, covered with all sorts of devices, lined the adjacent wall. I took a quick inventory.

There were weapons in recognizable states of assembly or repair—Refle seemed to be in working on the lock of a coward’s bow—some of the items were clearly tools, and there was one table with half a dozen stone pots about the size of preserves pots, each containing an oily liquid.

I didn’t think they contained preserves, and I didn’t stick in my finger to check what it was. There are some things you don’t need to know.

Nothing there, but what had I expected? A box, neatly labeled “EVIDENCE NECESSARY TO PROVE I AM GUILTY OF A COVERTRY. (signed) REFLEâ€

 

M
Y FATHER SAT
alone in the dungeon. The barred rooms were empty; few remain long in Lord Toshtai’s dungeon. A dungeon isn’t where our beloved ruling class stores living people, not like the Foulsmelling Ones of Bhorlani do. No; our dungeons are for dead people, for those who know that they’re about to die, and for those who don’t know that they’re dead yet.

Enki Duzun lay under a shroud, only her face visible. She looked more asleep than dead, if you didn’t look too closely.

I didn’t look too closely.

Gray Khuzud gripped my arm. “How could it happen, Kami Khuzud?â€

 

E
NKI
D
UZEN’S CHAIR
was empty at breakfast, and we just ate.

“Could you pass the preserves, Sala?â€