The Mirror Prince (53 page)
Authors: Violette Malan
“Did you hear that?” she said, her rough voice unusually loud in the cold air.
“The market?” Parno said dryly, bracing his feet as Warhammer, not as well trained as Dhulyn’s Bloodbone, shied slightly, pulling him forward.
Dhulyn held up one finger to silence him and listened again, eyes narrowed, head tilted. Parno shrugged, wishing he’d worn his heavier cloak, and waited for Dhulyn to agree with him. The main market, if he remembered correctly, was off to the east, closer to the saltworks, but the barrows and stalls of the fish market, the one that served the docks and the ships, could be seen off to the other side of the pier they’d just left. Even this late in the afternoon, the buzz of the buyers and sellers, the calls of the merchants hawking their wares, even the sound of an optimistic flute, were still clear in the crisp air. But if Dhulyn thought she’d heard something else . . .
“There!” Dhulyn’s head jerked up and she swung herself into the saddle urging Bloodbone with her knees into an opening between two houses, turning away from the docks. Parno was mounted and only half a length behind his Partner before Bloodbone’s tail disappeared from view.
The alleys between the houses and buildings in this quarter of Navra were none too clean, and the streets were not much better, Parno found as he followed Dhulyn out into a wider avenue. The freezing and thawing of early spring had heaved the cobbles and paving stones and left them slick underfoot. Even the dirt lanes were more than half slippery mud. Not the best conditions to be racing your horses, but Parno knew better than to argue with his Partner. He ducked an overhead sign with a swallowed curse. He was willing to wager practically anything he owned that it wouldn’t be her horse that went down as she rode it much too fast around the next tight corner.
And he still had not heard anything out of the ordinary.
The laboring breath and clattering hooves of their horses made enough noise that the few people they encountered had plenty of time to get out of their way. Market day it might be, but away from the market itself and the busy areas around the docks, most townspeople finished their business early in weather like this; the day was turning cold, and the sky promised snow. One tall old man, well-wrapped in a red wool cloak, looked up in surprise as Dhulyn Wolfshead galloped past him, and called out angrily, not noticing the tattoos of their Mercenary’s badges, even though both she and Parno were bareheaded from habit.
They turned into a street of better class houses, a few of them as much as four stories tall with the featureless lower walls that spoke of interior gardens or courtyards, or both. Not so fine as nobles’ houses, to Parno’s experienced eye these looked like the homes of well-to-do merchants. And suddenly Parno smelled smoke, and saw as they rounded yet another corner a three-story house with flames dancing in two upper windows that gave on the street.
Even now, he could not hear the sound of the fire, and he knew that Dhulyn—Outlander or no—could not possibly have heard it either. This burning house must have been some Vision she had Seen.
The usual crowd of people who gather out of nowhere at any sign of trouble were milling around in the irregular square in front of the burning building, but something was wrong—more wrong than just a house on fire. Parno frowned as he urged Warhammer forward. He’d seen many a mob in his time as a Mercenary, and this one wasn’t behaving normally. Those closest to the fire acted as he would expect, some craning for a better view, others pointing and yelling—shock and excitement apparent in faces and stances. As for those farther away, far too many were standing far too still, hands hanging limp, heads all, as he now realized, at the same angle. And aside from some shoving, and what looked like a fistfight breaking out on the far side of the crowd, no one was doing anything. Not putting out the fire, not bringing water, not even helping to drag out furniture. In fact, two men seemed to be preventing someone from coming out of the house. Parno edged forward into the opening Dhulyn had made in the crowd just as a man put his hand on Warhammer’s bridle. Parno bared his teeth as the man looked up. His eyes widened when he saw the red and gold tattoo reaching from Parno’s temples to back above his ears, and he backed away.
Closer now, Parno could hear the flames as they ate through the house wall, blistering the stucco to the right of the doorway. A woman at the front of the crowd threw a stone at the upper window on the left, screaming something Parno couldn’t make out.
Flames or no, Dhulyn rode Bloodbone right through to the front of the house, swung her leg over the pommel of her saddle, and jumped off, knocking the two men who’d been blocking the doorway sprawling over one another. The darker of the two sprang to his feet, a cudgel ready in his fist. Dhulyn stepped in close to him, knocked his arm away with her left forearm, brought her booted heel down sharply on his instep, and drew her sword from the sheath that hung down her back. All without taking her eyes from the doorway.
A young girl burst out of the now unguarded door, but was choking too much to actually speak.
“Children upstairs,” Dhulyn called out to him as Parno drew rein beside her, using Warhammer’s size and wickedly rolling eyes to push the crowding people farther back.
“I’ll go,” he said, tossing her his reins. Demons and perverts, he thought, not for the first time thankful that he didn’t See what Dhulyn sometimes Saw. Children. He pulled his feet from the stirrups and, steadying himself with his hands on the pommel, hopped up on the saddle until he was balancing on Warhammer’s back, wishing he was wearing something with more grip than his boots.
“Keep your eyes open.” He didn’t have to tell her to watch the crowd. She’d have noticed before he did that something was amiss.
Out of the corner of her eye Dhulyn Wolfshead watched Parno make the small jump that got his fingers hooked on the windowsill above them. The muscles in his arms bulged as he drew himself up, swung one leg over the sill, and was gone into the smoky darkness within the house.
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