The Brazen Gambit (27 page)

I've my own scores to settle with that half-elf bastard," Pavek countered. "I'll get you there."

"Me, too," Ruari announced.

Pavek had forgotten the youth was with them, looking exceptionally grim and elven in the late twilight. He
regreted his description of Escrissar, but doubted it was any great part of Ruari's determination to join them.

"What do you say, Yohan?" he asked. "The three of us take down House Escrissar: the interrogator, the halfling,
Laq and everything in-between?" Yohan shook his head. "It doesn't work that way. I can't change my focus once I've
broken it. I swore in my heart to take care of her, and I failed. I thought she'd see the truth about the city more clearly in
the elven market, so I took her there instead of the customhouse. Your friends-" Yohan spat the word out so
sarcastically that there was no danger of mistaking its contrary meaning "-were waiting for us. Failure's forever."

"You're sure your banshee would stay in Urik?" Ruari asked, sounding young and anxious. "You're sure it
wouldn't come back here? I mean, if you broke faith with your focus, it was because of Quraite, wasn't it, as much as it
was that half-elf bastard in Urik? If you broke faith at all. You knew it was a bad idea to take the zarneeka to Urik.
Everyone knew how you felt, but Kashi and Grandmother, they wouldn't listen. They broke faith first-"

Though Pavek thought Ruari had raised sound and serious questions, he squeezed the youth's shoulder hard
enough to make him shut up. Yohan was still staring at the salt, toward distant Urik. When Ruari looked up, snarling
and ready for an argument, Pavek was able to mouth. Not now and Later. He gave Ruari's shoulder a friendly shake,
then released him.

"We'll go with you to Urik," he said, not a question this time.

"You, you can come, but not Ruari-"

Once again the youth scowled and opened his mouth. Once again Pavek snared a fistful of half-elf and squeezed
it for silence.

"Scum's got a right," he said, negotiating in flat, unemotional tones. "He tried his best, busted up tbe stowaway,
and the women got around him. He's got a right to choose which mistakes he tries to correct: Telhami's or Escrissar's."

If he finally had Yohan's measure, Pavek figured the weary dwarf would accept his offer. Besides, if Ruari became
too much of a nuisance, they could always clout him unconscious and leave him behind in some market village.

"We'll ask Grandmother." Yohan capitulated and turned toward them. Relief showed on his face, for all that he
was trying to hide it. No one wanted to die alone.

A little later, by the light of a lamp in her hut, Telhami told them their plan was typical male foolishness. "Kashi's
dead. She'd kill herself-she knows how-before she'd submit to that creature or betray Quraite's secret You've made
your point: I was wrong. What the poor suffer without Ral's Bream is a small price to pay. Until Laq is a fading memory,
our zameeka stays here in Quraite, hidden away. But Kashi's dead, and no amount of breast-beating or vengeance will
change that. There's nothing left to be done. We've all paid the price. Forget Urik. Forget it all. Let it lie." She looked
specifically at Yohan and added: "I'll forgive your focus, with the guardian's help. There's no reason to sacrifice
yourself."

Yohan was speechless, but Pavek swore loudly enough to awaken the entire village.

And Quraite's guardian. Awareness flowed into him- threatened to destroy him with its intensity-then Ruari's
hand was flat against his arm, helping him shape the power he'd instinctively invoked.

"Don't coddle me with your forgiveness," he roared, "or your tally of what's been paid and what's still owed. I
know better; I know Escrissar! Look at me, Telhami. Look inside me! Look at what I know about Elabon Escrissar and
tell me that there's nothing left to do!"

The old woman did not use her mind-bender's power to take the images he so desperately wanted to hurl into her
mind's eye. She didn't even raise her eyes to meet his, but she did, somehow, cut him off from the guardian's power.

Ruari's hand slipped away, and the energized air within the hut dissipated on the midnight breeze.

"Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy is far greater than yours," Pavek whispered. She'd diminished his voice when she
reaped the guardian's strength away from him. "He'd never let a favorite slip away unavenged."

His legs were dead-weight beneath him. Each step was precarious as he turned and plodded toward the door.
Telhami said nothing, did nothing to stop him.

There were three fresh kanks, provisions, and well-crafted obsidian weapons waiting beside the central well
when Pavek picked himself up from the tree-shaded place where he'd fallen-literally-to sleep after leaving Telhami's hut.
Telhami wasn't around. Ruari said she'd left the village for her grove at dawn, walking with just her staff to support her.
He said that she was sorry, that she'd grieved and sobbed, torn her clothes and wailed that she was ready to die before
she left her hut. Challenged by both himself and Yohan, Ruari admitted he'd spent the night spying and promptly ran
off.

The boundless energy of youth, Pavek thought enviously while he washed sleep-grit from his eyes. He was stiff
and sore, as if he'd been the loser in an uneven brawl-as, in a sense, he had been: Telhami had bested him before he'd
known he was in a fight.

And then, before dawn, she'd conceded defeat.

He threw a leather harness over the kank's carapace, narrowly dodging its saliva-drenched mandibles. It trilled in
the high-pitched, nerve-jangling way of bugs, making the hair all over his body stand on end, but the bug minded its
manners. He tightened straps around the food sacks and water jugs, and attached a long, obsidian knife to his belt.

Yohan was already mounted. The dwarf's eyes were still a study in red and black, but his strength had been
restored by a haif night's sleep. Ruari was returning with a fourth kank..

"In case we find her," he explained before any questions could be asked. "In case we get very lucky."

An extra kank couldn't hurt-especially if, as Ru said, they got very lucky. Pavek waited in silence while Ruari
harnessed both his kank and the extra one. Villagers came to see them leave. The farmers saluted them with fingers
twisted into various luck-signs or pressed sprigs of tiny white flowers into their hands. The druids hung back, their
expressions more complex and much harder to read.

Few words were exchanged. Everyone, presumably, had heard Pavek's midnight explosion-by rumor, at least, if
he hadn't actually awakened them. There wasn't much more to say. The sky was bright and cloudless, as it usually
was. A storm-dust, wind, or Tyr-might sweep down on them before they got to Urik, with no one in Quraite ever the
wiser. But, if there were no storms, they'd reach Urik in about four days. And after that-?

What could anyone say to three men riding to certain and unpleasant death?

What could they say to each other?'

Nothing.

Yohan tapped his kank's antenna to get it moving. Ruari went next with an optimist's bug at the end of a rope.
Pavek took up the rear.

Telhami was waiting for them on the verge of the Sun's Fist. Her silhouette was hunched and shrunken. Despite
the familiar veiled hat, Pavek didn't recognize her at first. She asked-an honest request, not a disguised command-to
use her arts together in their minds to sequester their knowledge of Quraite against all inquiry. It wouldn't, she
insisted, prevent them from returning, but it would thwart Elabon Escrissar or anyone else who sought to unravel their
memories.

"For Quraite-?" she asked.

Ruari and Yohan dismounted; Pavek stayed where he was. They knelt on the hard ground and were entranced by
mind-bending and spellcraft. He and Telhami were effectively alone.

"For Quraite," she repeated, and he wasn't swayed. "The guardian will keep your secrets safe from Elabon
Escrissar."

Settling himself in the kank's saddle he realized he knew exactly what the emptiness had contained: the
background against which he'd lived his recent life. There were names: Telhami, Akashia, the farmers and the other
druids, each associated with a familiar face and floating in an unnatural gray fog, as if he had dwelt in a cloud of smoke
since leaving Urik.

He had Telhami's word that he could find his way back, if me was lucky enough to escape Elabon Escrissar; and
that he would betray nothing if his luck ran out. It was thin, cold comfort, and he shivered the length of his spine,
prodding the kank onto the dazzling Sun's Fist behind Ruari and Yohan.

They left the kanks at a homestead barely within the broad belt of irrigated farms from which Urik drew its
foodstuffs. A small shower of silver from Yohan's coin pouch bought promises that the bugs would cared for and left
in an open pen. There was risk. There was always risk when one man bought another man's promise; neither knew who
else might raise the asking price.

But few things held as much risk as breaking into a High Templar's house with thoughts of assassination in their
minds.

Getting into Urik wasn't so difficult. Generations of templarate orphans had dared each other into reckless
explorations of the city's remotest corners. They lacked prestige and promotions, but their knowledge of Urik was
legendary. And just as Pavek was certain that there was no passage through walls near the elven markets, he knew
there was one beneath the northwest watchtower. The only thing he feared as he cleared away the rubble from a loose
foundation stone was meeting a band of his younger counterparts somewhere in the narrow, twisting passageway.

He knew they were halfway to the templar quarter when the passage widened into the shimmering blue-green
curtain of the sorcerer-king's personal warding.

"You first," he said to Ruari, who turned gray in the eerie light and refused to move. "You've got my medallion.
Give it back if you don't want to go first." He held out his hand.

"What makes you think I've got it with me?" Ruari countered, all spit and vinegar, and clutching his shirt where
Pavek had known the ceramic lump was hidden.

He cocked his head toward Yohan who, with a weary sigh, thumped the half-wit between the shoulders,
propelling him through the curtain, which hissed and sparkled but did not harm him. He and the dwarf scurried through
before the sparking died.

"What if I didn't?" Ruari demanded.

"You'd be dead," he said bluntly and kept walking.

The passage ended not far from the orphanage along the interior wall of the templar quarter, the most familiar part
of the city for him, but not for the other two, who were clearly daunted by the monotonous tangle of precise
intersections and nearly identical facades.

"How do you know where we're going?" Ruari asked in an urgent whisper, revealing that he failed to recognize
the subtle decorations that distinguished a High Templar's private house from a civil bureau barracks- and that he
couldn't read the inscriptions painted above every door.

"Magic."

And knowing that Ruari would realized that he'd been pulled and would need to even the score, Pavek drifted
closer, allowing the nervous scum to jab a fist into his arm. He hoped physical contact would settle the youth down.
Curfew hadn't rung, and though the foot-traffic was light, fellow wasn't the only color on the streets. There were
artisians and tradesmen making their way to homes in other quarters. A little laughter and sport helped them blend in.
Hugging the shadows would've drawn precisely the attention he didn't want, especially as they neared their
destination.

Outwardly, House Escrissar looked no different from any other flat red and yellow facade. There were three
doors- High Templars lived in luxury, but nothing was allowed to disturb the symmetry of the quarter-each marked
with the same angular symbol the halfling alchemist wore on his cheek. There were interrogator's glyphs, too, and
warnings that no one was welcome across the threshold unless specifically invited.

The orphans had respected those warnings. Their scavenging expeditions stayed well away from House
Escrissar, at least during Pavek's lifetime. But the buildings of the templar quarter were identical, and he had no trouble
locating the boiled leather panel that, when lifted, revealed a midden shaft: High Templars did not bury their rubbish in
their atrium gardens, nor did they dump it out the upper story windows as folk did in those mixed quarters where
scroungers kept the streets clean. They-or their slaves-gathered it up discreetly in buckets and barrels for other slaves
to collect.

Pavek warned his companions to watch their footing while me studied the shaft that stretched to the rooftop
above them. There was no shimmering curtain to block his view of the stars. But not all wards declared themselves so
boldly. Escrissar might have sealed himself within invisible wards, but even he would have had. to beg the spell from
King Hamanu, and the king might have wondered why. Pavek was willing to wager his life that there were no invisible
wards in the shaft or anywhere else.
Not that it mattered much. He wasn't expecting to be alive when curfew struck. He'd never had many ambitions,
had never expected to grow old-even when his life was secured by a yellow robe with a regulator's colors woven
through the sleeves. Death gathered up men like him sooner rather than later; but he'd never considered that death
was waiting around midnight's corner. Suddenly his pulse was racing, and he shook so badly he leaned against the
wall for support.

Pavek's thoughts turned gray and filled with open, honest faces, brown-haired teal-eyed Akashia foremost
among them. If home-that place beyond the empty fog-had held Akashia, he would have gone. He wouldn't die for Laq
or Ral's Breath or Urik; but she was here, needing vengeance, needing rescue. Her cries echoed through fog and dark.