Six Heirs (6 page)

Things had looked so promising. At the end of the performance that day, he used his charmer’s trick once again. Instead of the retort originally written by Barle—“I cannot because I love another, forget me!”—Reyan had declaimed, “I cannot because I love another; it is thee!” bringing some previously identified girl onstage, who was alone and certainly had an appealing physique.

Barle, the head of the acting troupe, had cried out in protest when his young actor followed such an inspiration for
the first time. But he became more tolerant, given the comic success of this text bending. Fortunately, Barle had a good sense of spectacle.

After the show, Reyan had, as usual, offered his prey a drink. This decisive step taken, he showed her his caravan and presented her to each of his companions, nonchalantly mentioning his numerous voyages and his often totally fictional triumphs before the royal courts. Normally, at that point, his victory was sealed.

Seated in front of a goblet, Reyan had moved on to a performance of flattery, praising his companion’s beauty, noble bearing, disposition, and other real or imaginary qualities. Perhaps she was an actress? She would surely become a great performer...

His efforts were followed, at last, by a nighttime stroll, punctuated by visits to bars and taverns, until the moment when he finally thought himself ready to conquer the beauty’s bed.

Only this time, the evening was a failure, and he found himself walking alone in the dark. Just to make matters worse, a thunderstorm cracked overhead.

He violently stomped his foot into a deep puddle, splashing water everywhere. He was soaked anyway.

He didn’t always have to use all of these strategies. Usually his youth, charm, and a few witty words could storm most feminine...ramparts. He was frustrated to have expended such efforts in vain. The woman was simply selfish, he decided, amused at the same time by his own bad faith. No other woman, no matter how insensitive, would have left him searching for a bed like this.

“Sleeping” with a harlot was out of the question. His days of such debauchery had certainly come and gone, even if he still had some friends in the Three-Steps Guild.

Barle had surely locked down the caravan, and it was better for his health to sleep out under the stars than to wake up Barle, who was getting surlier with age. That left the inns, but Reyan knew that he had spent enough terces for the night. No, he had another idea in mind.

Despite their slight disagreements, Mess wouldn’t refuse his cousin some hospitality for the night. Especially if he could be made to recall that his house was, after all, their house, inherited in equal parts from their grandmother. Under this battering rain, he wanted just once to be recognized as a Kercyan. He wanted to be recognized as anything at all.

He stopped at a crossroad. Was it left or straight? Despite having grown up in Lorelia, he wasn’t completely sure which way to go. Truth be told, he tried to take a shortcut, dipping off into the narrow alleyways of the old neighborhoods, and maybe he had overestimated his knowledge of the largest city in the known world.

Out of instinct, he went straight and was rewarded with the sight of the Cheesemakers’ courtyard. The old family home wasn’t very far, on the Money Changer’s street, after the Small-Horse courtyard on his left.

A tremendous flash streaked across the sky, and thunder boomed shortly after. Reyan hurried his step.

Finally, he drew close to the building. It was certainly large, but ancient, very ancient. His great-great-grandfather, whose name he carried, had acquired the house more than a century ago, and it was already old in that time. For the young actor, it symbolized the fall of the Kercyan family, a story his parents had repeated over and over throughout his childhood. But tonight it represented, more than anything else, a roof over his head and an inviting bed.

The tricky part was going to be getting in without “disturbing” Mess, who wouldn’t hesitate to turn him out, and Reyan had had enough doors slammed in his face for the night. So he would simply skip asking his cousin’s permission to stay in his own house.

All he had to do was use the same entrance he had always used to sneak out without his grandmother knowing, to visit the brothels, seedy taverns, or other fine establishments of the Lorelien nightlife. Yes, at one time, he truly was depraved.

He hoisted himself onto the wall above the interior courtyard, accessible from Firebrand Street. In his time, their dog Baron guarded this courtyard, and Reyan had to remember to offer a treat to buy Baron’s silence. Now, anyone could enter; he was a bit annoyed by Mess’s carelessness, though it made things easier for him.

The hardest part was to walk, as on a tightrope, the whole length of the wall, which rose higher until it joined the common room’s little terrace. Some metallic spikes and miniature gargoyles were embedded in the top to discourage attempts of this type, but they typically did not present any true obstacles. But today it had rained, and the rock was slippery.

Reyan had fallen only once, one day when, on top of his habitual intoxication, he had chewed the dried roots of some plant imported from the Lower Kingdoms. He woke up a little before dawn, laid out on the cobblestones with Baron licking his face, and he’d had just enough time to slip into his room before his grandmother discovered him. He had never again smoked, breathed, or ingested any dubious plant or powder, no matter what its origins.

The darkness was illuminated by a lightning strike and he ducked, letting out a curse in the thunder. He could not
let himself get picked up by the watchmen; he would have a difficult time explaining why he was breaking into his own house. Worse yet, Mess wouldn’t necessarily confirm his story.

Finally, he reached the small terrace. The game was practically won; it was down to the final play. By gripping the decorative reliefs, he climbed the facade until he reached the little cornice two steps above him. All this seemed more difficult than it used to be. No doubt this was merely due to lack of practice. Then, once perched on the ledge, he pulled on the wooden shutter that covered the window to the third-floor hallway, praying to all the gods and their whores that Mess hadn’t locked or closed it.

The wood scraped against the rock and the hinges creaked, but the shutter opened. Reyan hoped that the noise would be drowned out by that of the storm and wouldn’t wake his cousin. He waited for another rumble of thunder before slipping into the house and closing the shutters behind him.

For a moment, he delighted in the simple pleasure of no more rain falling on his head. Then he listened closely for the sound of footsteps, but all he heard was the pitter-patter of water droplets dripping off his clothes onto the floor.

He took off his cape and his soaked shoes and rolled them up together. The bundle under his arm, he headed for his old bedroom. His cousin had no doubt kept it the same as always. It had been that way for a century, and Mess was attached to tradition, to their ancestor’s historic patrimony and other drivel of the same sort meant to prevent moving even a stick of furniture.

He passed in front of two doors opening to empty rooms, and then, after a final turn in the hallway, he arrived at his destination.

Reyan noticed a strange odor wafting through the air; he glanced toward Mess’s bedroom across the hall.

His door wasn’t closed.

Perhaps his cousin was not at home? It would really be a shame to have put forth so much effort at discretion in an empty house! He wanted to know for sure, and approached the door.

The odor was immediately stronger and Reyan felt uneasy; a morbid idea began to form in his mind.

He pushed open the door with the back of his hand and reeled, pinching his nose shut.

A corpse was lying there. Mess.

A flash of lightning illuminated the room, and Reyan was certain. The odor was awful, penetrating, and he had to muster his courage before approaching the bed.

There were no obvious signs pointing to the cause of death. His face didn’t look tense, and he was wearing his nightclothes. Reyan could only conclude that it had happened in his sleep, and that someone had touched the body afterwards.

Someone had laid him out on top of the covers. Someone had pushed his legs together, stretched his arms out, and tilted his head back slightly. Someone had pulled his clothes over his limbs. So why did they then abandon the body?

The odor became unbearable and Reyan turned away.

Thunder clapped and someone was in the doorway.

Someone, or something.

Reyan would keep each detail of this moment with him forever. A man with a dagger and wearing a scarlet tunic was watching him silently. He was bald and his face was painted: black eye sockets, black nose, black ears, all set against white face paint. Altogether, it had the morbid appearance of a human
skull. A monstrous, expressionless skull, lifeless except for two blazing flames: the eyes of a demon.

The actor was well traveled and could recognize what stood before him. One of the messengers of Zuïa, a furious madman, a cursed Zü killer.

In the flash of light, the thing spoke. His voice was guttural and his pronunciation of Lorelien very odd. Reyan wondered, while reproaching himself for the detachment he felt now, at the hour of his demise, if this was part of the usual assassin mise-en-scène.

“Are you ready to appear before Zuïa?”

The actor didn’t waste any time answering and charged at the intruder, throwing his cape and shoes at his face. He kicked the disoriented assassin and ran down the hallway.

His dagger. His poison dagger.

Did he touch it? No, he didn’t think so.

He ran past his grandmother’s old bedroom and then hurtled down the stairs to the second floor. The Zü was already on his heels, just three steps behind, maybe fewer. Reyan expected to feel that lethal steel penetrate his flesh at any moment, and the mental image gave him speed. He ran the length of the hallway in ten strides, came to the top of the staircase that would lead him to the ground floor, then threw himself down.

The Zü stumbled heavily over his body and flew right down the stairs. Reyan didn’t waste any time perusing the result and stood up to run toward the other stairway, which he leaped halfway down. He jumped over the rail and landed on the ground as the Zü was getting up, apparently unscathed. The Zü started down the rest of the stairs, no doubt grumbling threats and insults all the way.

The actor was already making for a distant door, which he threw open and ran through. The library—there were weapons in the library. He pulled down the first one he saw, and the Zü charged into the room, barely sidestepping an ax blow that Reyan had delivered too early.

The two men faced one another, each studying the other with the hope of surprising him in the darkness separating two lightning strikes. In normal combat, Reyan would have had the advantage with his weapon, but right now, with the help of the poison, the Zü would only have to touch him once to strike him down.

The actor never had much practice with weapons; he didn’t even carry one. The training he received in his youth was limited to the classic swords of the Lorelien nobility: thirty-five-pound blades anyone would struggle to handle. This skill only came in handy during a performance.

Before playing with Barle, he was also a member of a little circus troupe, for which he performed a number—a pathetic one, at that—that involved throwing knives. But the weapons hanging on the walls here had nothing in common with the perfectly balanced knives from the circus. Maybe he could still try?

A flash revealed that the Zü had shifted to his left, and Reyan, surprised, reeled back with a cry. Luckily, the thunderstorm was at its peak, and the flashes followed each other quickly enough that the adversaries didn’t lose sight of each other for very long.

Be that as it may, in this little game the assassin would have the upper hand sooner or later.

The room went dark again and the actor randomly struck in all directions, as he had been doing up until now, hoping
to injure the Zü—or at least prevent him from coming closer. The scene was lit up, then hidden again.

The killer seemed to be enjoying the scene, teasing the actor left and right, closer and closer each time. Reyan realized suddenly that he was nothing but anonymous prey for the Zü, and this horrified him.

He made his decision and immediately put his plan into action.

The glow of a lightning strike gone, he launched his axe in what he supposed was the direction of the Zü and flung himself toward the wall. His fingers grabbed at a metallic object; he pulled it down immediately and found himself with a bastard sword in hand.

A clap of thunder filled the room: he didn’t hear a cry or the fall of an axe. Calm restored, he listened, breathless in the fading light.

The intervals were getting longer, and this silent wait seemed to last an eternity.

The light returned to reveal a corpse. The axe had struck the Zü square in the forehead. Reyan drew near and mercilessly stabbed the point of the sword in the Zü’s throat, just in case.

Armed with a crossbow, he went through the house cautiously, locking every door and checking every dark corner. Reassured, he came back to the assassin’s body and searched him from head to toe.

He found a skeleton key, which he quickly slipped into his own pocket, a little wooden flask, a spool of thread, a little box containing a moist brown paste, a red headband, and, most importantly, a parchment. The little flask and the box must contain the poison and the antidote...or the antidote and the
poison. He would figure that out later. The rest was insignificant, except for the paper, which he unfolded with care.

As he feared, he couldn’t decipher it. Reyan knew and read several languages, but this one was not Lorelien, nor Ithare, nor Goranese, much less Romine. It was most likely Ramzü, given the bearer’s nationality.

He recognized some words, however, which were always written the same way as long as the Ithare alphabet was used.

Mess Kercyan

Reyan Kercyan