The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) (14 page)

“You fought good,” he said. “I had my doubts when I met you. Didn’t think you’d last too long. I’m lucky I didn’t have you pegged right.”

“Well, you took a nasty hit for me in the thick of things.”

“Forget about it.”

Ranler spoke with enough finality that Kora said nothing else until he turned up the walk to a cabin. No shutters lined the windows, its curtains were linen sheets in various states of threadbareness, and Kora could only pray that the roof was sturdier than it appeared to the untrained eye. The yard had not been tended for what she guessed to be years.

“Is this where we’re going?”

“Obviously.”

“Does someone live here?”

“An old associate of mine used to.”

Kora was put off ease to think her life depended on a thief’s honor, especially a thief she knew nothing about, but there was nothing to do but follow Ranler, who picked the lock on the door within a minute.

“I’m going for light,” said Kora’s guide. “Wait here.”

The sun was beginning to set, and the cabin was a bit too dark to maneuver easily, not that there was much to the structure, just a filthy kitchen and a room with an unmade bed and some dilapidated chairs. Ranler rooted through a basket he found on the kitchen windowsill. Removing two half-consumed candles, he stuck them in tarnished holders. A bit wary, Kora nonetheless cancelled the effects of her invisibility spell as he approached.

“Do the honors?” he asked.

She lit the candles by magic, and Ranler passed into the main room, where he kicked the ratty rug aside and pulled open an expertly concealed trap door. Kora peered down a rope ladder to total darkness.

“Does the League come here often?”

“Only in emergencies. It’s a good hideout.”

             
“It’s a dump,” Kora said, though she admitted to herself he had a point. To her surprise, the thief cracked a smile.

“Kansten’s dubbed it the Landfill.”

“The Landfill? But there’s nothing here.”

“This upper room used to have junk stacked to the ceiling. We sold it all. Well, not the lanterns, if that makes you feel better. They’re down below.”

“Where I guess we’re going.”

The space below, though cool and unfloored, was not uncomfortable. It was large, for one thing, a single room the size of the cabin above obstructed only by rough wooden pillars. The League had set a table aside and stacked it with blankets, which Kora laid out for seating as she and Ranler waited. Bendelof and Lanokas came after fifteen minutes. Kansten and Neslan were next. They all burned with questions that neither Kora nor Ranler felt qualified to answer. In fact, Ranler refused point blank to say a thing, so vehemently that he intimidated Kora. She too kept silent. Finally, after hours of tension, Laskenay and Sedder arrived with Menikas. Laskenay spoke as she pulled off her wig.

“The short of it is this: Malzin and three of her thugs ambushed me. Ranler and Kora were there. Kora, may I tell them?”

Jarred by Laskenay’s lack of ceremony, Kora nodded, while Sedder reached for her hand.

“Kora is a sorceress.” Bendelof’s eyes grew at least two sizes. Neslan, the only other person who had not already known, did a double take. “Zalski will know as much by day’s end. He found Wilhem to be a spy and will kill him tomorrow, that’s my guess, whether publicly or in the solitude of the Palace I’ve not heard.”

Eyes darted uncertainly from one person to the next. Kansten let out a heavy, dejected breath. Lanokas, leaning back against the wood plank wall, rubbed his forehead as though it ached. Menikas had an intense expression as he searched for some plausible course of action. He was the first to respond.

“I assume that by now Zalski knows we’re in Podrar?”

Kansten shot, “Why else would we be at the Landfill?” Menikas gave her the evil eye, and she took a step away from him.

“Wilhem’s risked a lot for us,” Bendelof announced. “We have to help him. We at least have to try.” To which Ranler replied:

“A nice show of solidarity, three or four of us hanging with him.” This caused everyone but Menikas, who was too deep in thought, and his brother, who looked angry, to cloud their expressions with unease. Lanokas turned to the thief, his face hard.

“Wilhem’s a spy. His tips led us to the
Librette
. In the time since we lost contact he might have learned more, and even if he hasn’t, he’s one of us. Would you want us to abandon you?”

“I wouldn’t grudge it,” said Ranler.

Lanokas insisted, “If they hang him publicly we have the obligation….”

“We have the obligation to make sure the cause he’s dying for isn’t wiped out with him!”

The room fell silent once again. Ranler’s bald head glistened in the light from the candles and lamps. Lanokas glared at him, and Neslan positioned himself between the two, afraid one or the other might start a brawl. Menikas remarked, “If they hang Wilhem publicly, Zalski will have every guard he can spare at the execution. He expects we’ll make an appearance. Now,” he added, as Kansten sputtered protest, “that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t appear. It means we have to be smart.”

“The death will be public,” said Neslan. “Zalski won’t pass up this chance to lure us in.”

Menikas asked, “We have whom, exactly, to help with this?” Laskenay gave the answer: no one the League could risk exposing.

“But we have Sedder,” said Neslan, his eyes lighting up. Everyone stared at him. “We place Sedder at the front of the crowd,” he insisted. “They haven’t seen Sedder, have they?”

“They haven’t,” Sedder claimed. Kora grabbed his arm. “Only one or two guards, and that was in Hogarane. They’ll still be searching for the
Librette
.”

“Good,” said Menikas. “You get a prime view of the action.”

“I’ll be under the scaffold,” said Laskenay.

Kora felt calmer, knowing Sedder would have help stationed near; calmer, that is, until Menikas caught her eye. “How familiar are you with the crossbow?”

“Me? Good God! Not at all.”

“Well, Ranler’s the best we have. He’ll give some quick instruction.”

“Shooting’s not hard,” said the thief, “not from close-by. What distance are we talking about?”

“Fifty feet.”

Ranler let out a whistle, and Kora demanded, “What’s going on? Why me? Why can’t Ranler take the bow?”

“Ranler can’t turn invisible to take the post.”

“And where’s the post?” Kora asked.

“The nearest roofs. It has to be.”

Kora paled. “Roofs? No sir, I don’t do roofs. I don’t do heights, and I don’t know how to shoot.”

Laskenay assured her, “I’ll find a spell, improve your aim. I hate abusing magic, though.”

Menikas rolled his eyes. “We’ve no choice here, Laskenay. Her shots must
hit home.”

Seeing a strategy take shape seemed to hearten everyone else, even if Kora wanted to run screaming. Soon the League was throwing ideas around—most of the best came from Neslan—and before Kora realized they had a set plan, the plan was as developed, and as close to failproof, as anyone could hope.

445

CHAPTER EIGHT

Of Death and Diversions

High noon the next day found Kora cloaked with the invisibility spell, hanging her legs over the flat roof of the Old Town Hall, grateful the building was only two stories. Two stories did not make her head swoon. Structures identical to the red brick building on which she perched rose to the right and left: the courthouse, well preserved despite a broken window and scratched door, and the prison, in perfect condition, its windows barred. The mass of wood that was the scaffold stood mere yards away on an adjacent side of Podrar’s Great Square. Three men in blue uniform paced across it, swords at the ready. The boards creaked beneath their feet. At their back the executioner, masked per tradition, stood as still as the corpse he was soon to create.

The Great Square was ill named, being narrow and long, in fact a great rectangle, so that the crowd that gathered there was more than twenty people deep. Sedder, however, had wormed his way to the front; only one person stood between him and the scaffold. At the human mass’s back were seven or eight soldiers, including Lanokas and Ranler. The two were clad in uniforms Wilhem had supplied months back. Black suited them both.

The uniformed men were being charmed by a group of women with bob cuts and low-hanging dresses. All but one of the females were prostitutes, Kora knew, for Kansten, with Lanokas and Ranler’s prodding to help, had the soldiers thinking of anything but the execution. Not a bad day’s work. Menikas had predicted that, because of the
Librette,
Zalski could only spare his elites to guard the scaffold, not man the crowd, and the noble’s insigh
t had proved a stroke of luck. T
he elite guard knew their own and would have recognized imposters. Not so with the civil guard.

The prison door opened, and as though a legion of ghouls as invisible as Kora issued forth to set the scene by stealing voices, not one of the three hundred people in the square kept speaking. The unnatural stillness only deepened when two soldiers led out an unshaven, well-built man of about thirty-five with a hint of premature gray in his hair, which somehow retained traces of good grooming. He wore the dull brown tunic and pants of the man condemned. They fit him ill. The manacles on his wrists and ankles impeded movement, and the exertion they caused him when he climbed the scaffold made Kora’s bottom lip quiver. The men who guided him to death did not abuse him, not even verbally, but neither did they trouble to ease his passage. Wilhem himself looked straight ahead as he shuffled on. Kora’s first impression of the League’s most vital spy was one of pensiveness, but that was unsurprising, considering the circumstance.

We’re saving him. We’re saving a good man. This doesn’t make me a murderer, it doesn’t. Good God, just don’t let me hit the wrong person!

The scaffold guards stood at attention as the condemned approached and the executioner, showing life for the first time, fitted a rope around his victim’s neck. Meanwhile, the escort returned to the prison, and the spectators watched in respectful but silent solidarity with the spy. The quiet no longer felt unnatural, and the crowd’s worthless demonstration touched Kora as much as it angered her. She reached for the crossbow she had earlier laid behind her.

You stupid people. You frightened fools, don’t you realize how much you outnumber them? You could save him yourselves!

The guard serving as master of ceremonies stepped forward to read the charges, then pronounce the sentence. The executioner’s hand inched toward the lever that would open the scaffold’s trap door, and Kora aimed her weapon at the same moment Wilhem’s complexion mysteriously darkened. The spy’s gaze turned blank, his body rigid; Laskenay had cast
Estatua
, the spell she had used against Malzin the day before.

The rest happened in a rush that left no time to think. The switch was thrown; the rope snapped beneath the weight of the statuesque Wilhem, who fell through the trap door and out of sight. Kora, on her stomach now, with her crossbow at roof-level, hit one of the scaffold guards square in the thigh, then the executioner in the arm, before the crowd even realized someone was firing. When it did, the silence ripped in two as abruptly and completely as the noose. The mingled screams and cries of approval pained Kora’s ear. The master of ceremonies swung his head around, searching for the shooter, his senses compromised by the tumult; Kora hit him in the shoulder. The impact sent him off the platform’s back.

Meanwhile, Laskenay unshackled and revived Wilhem with a quick few spells. Kora’s next shot merely grazed the last guard; before she could shoot again, Wilhem rushed into the crowd, which by now was full of people running each and every way, attempting to scatter. The man in uniform dove after, but Sedder dispatched him in the thick of the panic with a dagger. The executioner, wounded in the arm, dared to dart forward and immediately stiffened as Wilhem had done.

Kora left the bow on the roof and jumped to the courthouse, where metal rungs attached to the building formed a ladder. As she climbed down, she saw Kansten knee one of the rear guards in the stomach.

The crowd’s screams grew louder as one of the scaffold’s legs burst into flame, courtesy of Laskenay, to cover the League’s retreat. The smell of smoke wafted through the air; half the platform was soon burning. Everyone fled as a single body, sweeping the newly freed Wilhem along. Kora, still invisible, stayed as close to the hysterical mass as she could without risking being trampled. As she fled the square, a series of crisp cracks of wood announced the scaffold had collapsed.

Kora worked her way to the Landfill as fast as possible. She could only follow the crowd for so long before her route turned off, and from that point she had to be conscious of her steps. She stayed alert, suppressing any thought that she might have killed one or more of the guards, appeasing her conscience with the thought that she had aimed to wound, though Ranler, on the way to the Great Square, had suggested she do otherwise. That the League had rescued Wilhem so easily astounded her.

Too easily, she thought as she descended the Landfill’s rope ladder. A now familiar twinge of unease in her abdomen took hold. The room’s occupants took such small notice of her entry that she glanced at her arm to make sure she was visible. When she stood on solid ground, she saw she was last to return: Kansten and Ranler were whispering in a corner; Bendelof was on her way to join them, her freckled face grave; the rest of the League had gathered around Wilhem, whom they blocked from Kora’s view. Kora rushed to the huddled group, nudging Neslan to force her way in.

“What’s wrong?”

The paneled wall supported the bulk of Wilhem’s weight. Though he stood, he was nearly doubled over. Lanokas, who shouldered up what part of the man the wall did not bear, pulled back the spy’s sleeve, and Kora gasped.

On the outside of his upper arm was what looked to be a knife wound, neither deep nor damaging in itself but a shade of inky green that made Kora’s gut seize up even more, almost forcing her to copy Wilhem’s posture.

“It looks…. It looks infected.”

Wilhem’s voice was stronger than Kora expected, with only a trace of  a rasp. “Close,” he said. “Poisoned.”

“Poisoned?”
             
“Zalski tricked us,” said Lanokas. Sedder punched the wall at his words, and Kora started.

“I don’t understand.”

Laskenay said, “He poisoned Wilhem after we eluded Malzin’s capture. The elites you shot from the roof were promoted this morning in reward for their incompetence. The hanging was a diversion, a cruel diversion, and we still don’t know what for.”

Kora’s face fell. She said, “Zalski expected those guards to die. He intended it.” Zalski might, in fact, have made her his unwitting executioner. And Wilhem would die as well, unless the League could work a miracle. He looked pale, and in pain, but his eyes were glued to the bandana Kora wore around her head. “What can we do?” she asked him.

“The poison’s irreversible after ten hours. It’s been fifteen.”

“That spellbook.” Kora’s words were involuntary; when they registered in her brain, she grabbed Laskenay’s arm. “The book with healing spells.”

“Those spells heal wounds. They don’t counteract a poison of this strength.”

“There has to be something!”

“I’ve been studying that book. I’ve read it through twice. There is nothing about poisons, let alone magically-enhanced ones.”

“You’re the Porteg girl,” said Wilhem.

The statement caught the younger sorceress off-guard, but she said, “I’m Kora, yes.” With a grimace, Wilhem forced himself to stand straighter.

“Zalski’s done his research on you. He knows you’ll want revenge for your father’s death, for the Foden murders. He fears what you might become, Kora. When he learned you were part of the raid that stole that list, his anger was unimaginable.”

Kora’s face went white, but not nearly as white as Sedder’s. “What list?” he demanded. Wilhem breathed deeply, painfully, and gave no answer. Undeterred, the Fodens’ son wheeled on Kora. “What list?”

“A…. A hit list.”

Kora watched Sedder’s brain working. She watched him comprehend how the murders must have happened; watched him realize she had known, and never told him. He sent her a glare so inextricably mixed with insult, shock, and anger that Kora flinched beneath its beam. She moved her eyes to the dusty, dirt-flecked blankets that covered the floor, and with that acknowledgment of guilt, Sedder stormed to the ladder. Kora made to go after him, but Lanokas stopped her, and followed Sedder himself. He was refusing to let her waste the only chance she might have—that Sedder might have—to learn why the Fodens’ names were on that list.

“I thought he knew,” said Wilhem.

“He should have known,” said Kora. “I should have told him. What none of us knows is why Zalski had them killed.”

“She was royal.”

“That’s impossible,” said Kora.

“She was the king’s sister, the old king’s bastard. And she knew it.”

Laskenay said, “Were she royal, Zalski would have killed her son.”

Kora replied, “Sedder’s not her son. Not by birth. They found him abandoned on a street corner.”

Beads of sweat broke out on Wilhem’s hairline, though the underground chamber was as cool as always. Neslan took up the job of helping him stand. For the first time, Kora noticed the spy’s left leg was positioned at an unnatural angle, and she suspected he had lost feeling or control of it, or both.

Menikas asked, “There’s nothing more you can tell us? Nothing we can do for you?”

“Nothing but that spell.”

“If you’re ready then,” said Laskenay. Wilhem nodded, and she whispered, “
Dwerma
.” Wilhem’s eyes slid closed. He fell into an enchanted sleep, and Neslan lowered him to the floor. “We can’t save him,” said the sorceress, “but at least we can spare him some measure of pain.”

“How long?” Kora hazarded.

“He’ll be gone before midnight. The poisoning’s entered its final phase. I just hope he doesn’t wake before….”

“If he does,” said Neslan, “we’ll make him sleep again.”

The League covered the dying man with a blanket, to keep him warm, and Kora scaled the ladder to the cabin above. Twilight had fallen; sun enough remained to make out silhouettes, but to ignite the lantern sitting on the bedpost, the lantern that seemed to entrance both Sedder and Lanokas, would pose too great a risk. The noble seemed relieved when Kora appeared. He descended to the organized chaos below, while Sedder turned an accusatory face half-covered in shadow to his childhood friend.

“You knew.”

“I suspected. I suspected, there’s a difference. There was no way to be sure.”

“I expect the lies and the bullshit from them, not from you.”

Kora folded her arms. “What do you mean, you expect it from them?”

“You weren’t the only one to see that list. If you think there’s nothing they’re still hiding from you….”

“I happen to trust them,” said Kora.

“Funny, when they keep risking your life.”

“
I’m
risking my life.
I
made the decision to work with them.”

“And
you
should have told me that Zalski had my parents killed!”

“Like you told me when they hanged Hunt?”

“You weren’t close to Hunt. You hadn’t seen or heard from Hunt in a decade. There’s no comparison, none.”

Kora shut her eyes, breathing deeply. “You’re right,” she admitted. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t want to upset you, not when I could have been wrong.”

“You knew what happened. It was poison, right? What were you waiting for, Zalski to confess it?”

“I was waiting for proof.”

“Convenient, when you thought you’d never find it.”

“I said I’m sorry.”

Sedder shook his head skeptically. “Just tell me the rest. Why did it happen? You know that too, I’d wager.”

“I only just found out,” said Kora. “Only just, please believe me.”

“Well?” Sedder prompted.