The Light of Heaven (35 page)

"It seems I have you at a disadvantage." She pushed the point of Kell's sword away and put her own blade to his throat. "Now, about -"

Stars exploded in her vision and her sword flew across the room. Crowe stepped smartly across, shaking the hand with which he had hit her and planted his foot on her sword. He levelled the tip of his blade towards her. Behind him, Kell spoke.

"I'm afraid, Sister DeZantez, that things are a little more complex than you thought. Your friend Crowe here is not only
your
friend. He's, shall we say, my friend Crowe."

"Sorry, God-girl," Crowe said.

"Kill her," Kell told him.

Crowe drew back his sword-arm ready for the fatal thrust and Gabriella steeled herself. She refused to close her eyes. If she was to go to the clouds to join Erak, she would go proudly. Crowe hesitated.

"One thing about Dez. She likes to think she's smart. Likes to think she knows it all and had it figured out. I like to think she needs to know she's not as smart, and I wouldn't mind seeing her face when she hears how different the truth is from what she thinks it is. When she knows what you're doing here."

Kell gave him a weary sidelong glance. "Well... I've been keeping track of your progress from Solnos - and, may I say, congratulations on dealing with the goblins. They've been the bane of my flock, as well as yours, for some time."

"If they were the bane on your flock, they were a bane you set on them when you -"

"Kicked them out of here, yes."

"That can't have been easy."

"A simple matter, actually," Kell said pleasantly. "Troops drawn from Lord Aristide's regiment at Fayence, some very good magicians and the promise of better pickings further north. The goblins are not as stupid as they sometimes seem, but they have sensitive spots, as do humans."

"Why here? Why not Freiport?"

"Freiport already has a means of governance. And, sadly, an ideal of freedom?"

"And this place's name is a lie." It didn't surprise her.

Kell helped himself to a goblet of brandy from the bedside cabinet. "What makes the Final Faith so strong?"

"Our Faith in the Lord and his faith in us," Gabriella said automatically.

He shook his head with a smile. "I prefer to think it's the centralised chain of command. You'll have to forgive me for my tendency to think in military terms, but I've been a soldier for a long time, and one thing I've always found most vital is to respect the chain of command." He sipped from his goblet and Gabriella longed to smash it into his face. "For many years, the Brotherhood has been organised in cells, hiding in the shadows. It lacks a central focus. It lacks a chain of command."

Gabriella understood at once. "It lacks an Anointed Lord."

"Or similar figure," Kell allowed. "Or at least it did, until now. Scarra is gone, Feyn is gone, who's left to lead the Brotherhood in Western Pontaine?" He grinned. "Oh, it's me."

"Those people out there won't take kindly to that idea." She hoped she sounded more certain of that idea than she felt.

"No? I think otherwise, Sister DeZantez. I'm their saviour. I brought them to a better life with no authoritarian interference. Oh, I make suggestions and give advice, and it's always gratefully received. In return they get... treats."

"Like pets performing tricks."

"A training regimen is a training regimen. And they love it because they feel loved by me. So they come and the men see training going on and they're invited to try it. And they do. And they do well. When the Brotherhood rises, supported by a central leader, they will have their own Knights, their own soldiers. It'll take years, to be sure, but this place is cut off from the world." He came over and leaned in close, so she could smell the brandy he just drank. "I have as many years as I like."

"It was lucky, finding this place."

"A Faith messenger between Turnitia and Scholten happened to get drunk in the wrong tavern and let slip that he was carrying some interesting documents..."

"The ships' logbooks?" Crowe said. Kell frowned for a moment, then nodded. "And copies of the records of Wyngarde and his Glass Mountain, all on their way to Scholten."

"You also hired an assassin." Gabriella said.

"Which one?" Kell said.

"To kill Eminence Rhodon."

"Oh, that one." He spread his hands. "What can I say...?"

"Something truthful would be nice," she suggested.

"Quite so, Sister DeZantez. You are correct. I did engage a man called Lukas Bertam to assassinate an Eminence at the wedding of vom Kalten's boy. But you already know that."

"I know about him and I know he died beforehand, and the shot was made by Joachim Foll."

"Foll?" Kell nodded to himself. "You don't happen to know who hired him?"

Gabriella didn't know, but she had an idea. It was one she didn't want to believe, but she didn't have to believe it. She just had to distract Kell with it. "Would you believe me if I said Rodrigo Kesar?"

Kell blanched. "You're - No?" He blinked several times. "But why...?" He turned to Crowe. "Anyway, enough chit chat. Be at one with the Lord of All, with my blessing."

Nothing happened. Kell frowned. "Crowe? You are the man Feyn hired for me, remember? Kill her."

Travis Crowe could feel the sword in his hand and imagined it penetrating flesh as it had so many times, but he found himself unable to move towards Gabriella. A sibilant voice hissed "Protect" in his ear, except that there was no-one there to have said it.

That voice wasn't the loudest one he could hear, though. Kell's own voice held that honour, but it was Kell's voice from a short while ago. Kell's voice proclaiming his ambition to be a religious leader. Kell's voice admitting to tricking the people here into being his soldiers and slaves.

Or was it his father's voice?

"Protect."

Crowe drew back his sword again and swung it right at Kell's face. Kell was inhumanly quick, ducking under the swing and shoulder-charging Crowe. Crowe tumbled backwards across the bed and rolled off the other side, as Kell lashed out at Gabriella with his own sword. She scooped up the nearest of her fallen swords in time to block and parry, before leaping up onto a table to kick him in the head. Crowe bounded over the fallen guards and added his blade to the melee once more, its tip darting out at Kell.

Kell snatched up a fallen mace and used that to block Crowe's blade, while fencing with Gabriella. He managed to drive her backwards, towards one of the doors through which the guards had entered earlier. She was able to keep straight in her mind where the fallen guards were, so as not to trip over them, but she didn't expect one of them, with almost his last gasp of life, to grab her foot and pull her off balance.

She fell, dropping the sword so she could use that hand to break her fall. Kell smashed Crowe in the gut with the mace, doubling him over, then leapt across to bring his sword down at Gabriella's head before she could rise.

She didn't try to rise, but instead rolled right onto her back and thrust one leg up at his groin, the whole sole of her boot powering into it. Kell's eyes bulged, and he staggered back, just in time for Crowe to ram a dagger up under his jaw and into his brain.

Kell toppled, the sword clattering loudly.

"Let's get out of here," Gabriella said.

There was the sound of booted feet and clanking of weapons and armour from below. "The other door."

They ran across the room and out through the door on the other side, onto a staircase.

Gabriella peered out onto the landing. No-one was there. Beckoning Crowe onwards, she moved and began to edge down the sweeping crystalline staircase. She could hear Crowe's weapons rattling and hoped the enemy, wherever they may be, weren't as sharp-eared.

There they were at the foot of the stairs: four men in red robes, fairly alert and obviously soldiers, but clearly not expecting trouble from inside the palace. They seemed to be chatting amongst themselves; one leaning on a polearm, the others with sheathed swords.

Gabriella had frequently defeated greater numbers of men who knew she was coming, sparring in the old arena, so four should be no problem. Her hands seemed to make the decision for her, drawing the swords before she even realised that that was what she had decided to do. As if to forestall any second thoughts she might have, the sound alerted the robed soldiers. They turned, agog at the sight of two warriors on the loose in Kell's home.

With a shout of alarm, one robed man started up the stairs towards Gabriella and Crowe. He tried to thrust at them with a pikestaff. Deadly on the battlefield against horses, but a stupid weapon to carry indoors. With no room to manoeuvre it, the owner was all but defenceless as Gabriella's swords flashed; one guided the polearm harmlessly aside, while the other cut down into the soldiers collarbone.

Then Gabriella was past that one, and engaging the Brotherhood soldiers further down the stairs. She blocked with one sword and thrust with the other; she cross-blocked with both, then swept a soldier off his feet and stabbed the man behind him.

She didn't stop.

Crowe watched, dumbstruck, as Gabriella swept down the stairs. There was blood and screaming and a grace to Gabriella's movements that seemed out of place in such a grisly scene.

Then he plunged down the stairs after her, swinging at the fourth man with a short sword before he could stab Gabriella in the back. Crowe's blade split the man's skull, and he fell, silenced and twitching. Now Crowe was in the fight, but the fight seemed all but over. Gabriella was continuing downstairs and Crowe's legs carried him along behind.

Footfalls and the jingle of mail approaching alerted Crowe to the arrival of a new enemy behind him. He spun left, gripping the end of his sword with both hands. The quillon punched into the side of the man's skull and he dropped.

Then a man with a crossbow stepped through the door at the bottom of the stairs, several more soldiers crowding in behind him.

Moving faster than a crossbow bolt as it flew was impossible, but Gabriella knew she didn't have to try to move faster than the bolt. It was the bowman's hand to eye co-ordination she had to outmatch. The man was wearing no glove, and so Gabriella could see the tendons of his hand flicker as he began to press the trigger lever.

Gabriella was moving before the bolt was launched. Releasing her swords, she dove head-first downstairs. Her quilted gambeson would protect her from too much damage when she hit the marble floor.

The iron-tipped bolt passed over her back, ricocheting from a step above her.

Gabriella half-slid, half rolled across the floor and came up with palms outstretched to catch her swords. One of them was immediately thrust into the bowman's gut. The bowman looked at her, astonishment keeping the pain at bay for a moment. Gabriella could feel the warmth of the man's blood oozing onto her hand, and wished she could just plunge it into water and cleanse it. She settled for kicking him first in the groin and then in the face as she rose to her feet. He flew backwards, screaming as he slid off the sword-blade.

There was movement to either side; Gabriella was now standing in a knot of the robed soldiers. Four of them. The bowman collapsed in a writhing, screaming heap and a sword was swung at Gabriella's head from the right.

Gabriella ducked, cutting at the man's wrist with her left hand sword. She reversed the sword in her right fist, slamming it up into the attacker's throat. Then the man was down, Gabriella flicking the blood off her sword and into the faces of the other enemies, who flinched.

Crowe leaped down, drawing into two of the soldiers with a flurry of cuts and blows. Gabriella blocked a series of lightning-fast cuts from the man still facing her, then pushed, not cutting or stabbing, but simply shoving his enemy back by brute force. The man's sword was knocked aside and Gabriella stepped forward, slamming her shoulder into the enemy's chest. The man, knocked off balance, started to fall. Gabriella slipped in the offal spilling from the bowman and crashed to the floor on top of him. Both her swords clattered aside.

Gabriella knelt astride her fallen foe and punched, then again, and again. Grunts exploded out of Gabriella's chest in time to the flashes of pain from her knuckles as she beat the soldier down. With each punch, the soldier's bare head smacked back into the floor.

"Dez!" a voice called, "Dez!" There was a pause. "Gabriella!"

It was Crowe. Gabriella looked up, startled by his use of her proper name. Crowe was the only man left standing in the hall. "He's dead, all right? That slab of meat you're trying to drive into the floor is not going to get up again."

Gabriella looked at the soldier she had been punching. The man had not moved even though the punches had stopped. Blood was pooling under his head. His face looked like it was wearing a mask of stewing meat. The anger that burned between her ribs and under her shoulder-blades was not subsiding. It was boiling the breath in her lungs and rushing in her ears. "He was..." Gabriella didn't know what he was now. A dead opponent and no more. That was all that mattered; that was all that could matter.

Gabriella let go of the corpse, scooped up her swords and stood.

"His name was Pett Wynn. He was a Knight of the Order of the Swords of Dawn from Oweilau." She pointed to another body, without looking round. "Johan Kroun. Knight of the Order of the Swords of Dawn from Malmkrug. You get the idea."

Crowe looked dazed. "These were members of the Swords? What -"

"Not were. Still are. Kell's bodyguards are a team of the Swords." Her voice was very small. She felt as dazed as Crowe looked. A door clattered then and she reached through it and hauled out the last face she expected to see here, short of the Anointed Lord herself.

It was Brother Markus, who had once guarded a crossroads right outside Joachim the assassin's escape route. He looked different in his mercenary garb and she supposed she had too, when she had worn Kannis' company's gear to slip into Turnitia.

"Sister DeZantez... This isn't what it looks like!"

"Isn't it? What in the Pits is it, then? A meeting to plan a surprise party for the Anointed Lord's birthday? Well, my lad, what shall the charges be? Apostasy, heresy?"