The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle) (55 page)

Heggenauer clubbed the one on the ground with an awful sound of impact, and before he landed a second blow it too disappeared. The acolyte’s mace rang loudly off the cobblestones and echoed across the plaza. As the echo faded, it was replaced by the sound of slow clapping.

The seventh and last figure still stood at the obelisk in his gray suit, and his smile had not changed.

“
Very impressive,” the figure called, and Tilda understood its words perfectly though she could not have said what language it was speaking. Yet for that, its voice was somehow cultured, vaguely even regal.

“
Thou art as formidable a bunch of monkeys as I have seen in a goodly while.”

Nesha-tari shouted to him in Zantish, and the figure bowed in her direction.

“
I am known here abouts as Lord Balan, Madame. Though just Balan shall suffice, for you.”

Shikashe shouted in Ashinese, and Balan smiled at him.

“
Not just yet. But in all likelihood, soon.”

With that, Balan gave another bow to the whole party, thrust his hands in his coat pockets and strolled leisurely back behind the obelisk. He too disappeared, but without a pop of finality.

The party stared, for as he left they all had seen that Balan’s right leg ended in a cloven hoof which struck up a spark each time it touched the ground. There had also been a whip-like tail emerging from the back of his tailored suit coat. The spade-shaped head at the end of it had almost seemed to wave at them.

Chapter Thirty-Two

The Duchess Claudja Perforce of Chengdea presently had at least four things to worry about, only the last of which was her own life.

The first was Sir Towsan. Perhaps Gideon should not have been her first concern, but he was nonetheless. Her last sight of the old knight who had been as her father’s right hand since before Claudja’s birth had been grim. She had regained consciousness, briefly, behind the Dead Possum Inn after the Sarge had first punched her in the face, and seen Towsan fighting back-to-back with the Jobian acolyte Brother Heggenauer. They had been surrounded by both the filthy legionnaires and several Destroyers of the incendiary god Ayon, enormous in their black plate armor and wielding great two-handed swords with the blades engulfed in flames. Claudja had tried to get to her feet, and been struck a second time in the back of the head. She had seen no more, but knew that the odds for Towsan and Heggenauer had not been good. The best she could reasonably hope was that the absence of the Destroyers in Vod’Adia meant that the knight and the cleric had at least taken some of the bastards with them.

Yet Claudja wanted as much as anything to believe that Towsan might have survived. The situation behind the inn had been chaotic, and the Duchess thought she had seen other people fighting against the Ayonites, just before her world had gone black a second time. She had not seen them clearly and had no reason to expect help from any quarter. Yet one had seemed to be a dark-haired woman, flitting about and striking a Destroyer over the helmet with a club. It was probably too much to hope that Matilda Lanai had come after her and maybe saved Sir Towsan, yet Claudja wished it to be so fervently. Towsan had been almost a second father to her since she was a girl, and he would have been so by law had his son Lukas lived a few months longer.

Claudja had grieved for her betrothed already, and she could not bear the thought that his father may have fallen as well. Because of her.

So the Duchess thought of the next thing on the list in her head, occupying her thoughts as the legionnaires led her through the monochromatic streets of the Sable City. That thing did not fill her with worry, nor sorrow, nor guilt, but only with a murderous and white-hot rage. That thing was Pagette.

The Ayonites had been awaiting her arrival in Camp Town and they had already arranged with the legionnaires to lure her away from Jobe’s temple. In all of Chengdea there was only one person beside Towsan and her father who had known enough of Claudja’s mission to tip off the Ayonites well ahead of time, and that was Pagette. The trader and spy in her father’s service who had arranged for Claudja and Towsan’s travel to Camp Town could easily have sent word of the Duchess’s approach ahead of her, through the bullywugs whose language he understood. He was the only person who could have done so. If Claudja lived to see Chengdea again she had every intention of reviving some ancient Kantan methods of execution, involving teams of horses, to deal with that one.

Any return to Chengdea however was likely to require a miracle. If Claudja somehow got away from her captors and out of this horrid, dusty, demon-infested place, there was still the matter of her mission to the Codian Empire. It was the reason for her unorthodox departure from home in the first place, and was perhaps the last chance of saving her father’s realm from both the villainy of Ayzantium and the rank incompetence of the Daulic crown. That was now the third thing Claudja had to worry about.

Only then could Claudja face the cold fact that the situation she presently found herself in would almost certainly be the death of her. Even if her rag-tag bunch of captors, the most singularly worthless trio of soldiers the Duchess had ever seen, somehow managed to get her through Vod’Adia without getting them all butchered by gibbering demons or whatever had made the unholy roaring in the night, their intention was to move her, magically, to Ayzantium. That sounded like a death sentence whether the spell worked or not, and looking at the “Wizard” Phinneas Phoarty, Claudja was not brimming with confidence that the fellow could manage a parlor-room cantrip, let alone a complicated spell of teleportation. Every magician Claudja had encountered in Daul was elderly, with decades of wisdom and experience in the magical arts. Even with the premature streaks of gray in his brown goatee, Phoarty looked like a junior shop clerk with nervous, fluttering hands, wearing ill-fitting clothes.

But Phoarty apparently had a plan. Some way he hoped to aid Claudja, perhaps when the time came for him to work his magic and get them out of here. The young man with the perpetually perplexed expression was going to save her with his mighty wizardry. Claudja would not hold her breath waiting for that.

So during the second day of travel through the desolate black streets, Claudja walked with only seeming indifference. The legionnaires had slowed their pace after the first day and crept along more carefully, watching the buildings around them, and so too did the Duchess. Claudja’s head was bowed and her hands were tied before her but her eyes moved over everything, and she listened carefully to every word anyone said. She made an effort to note anything that might be useful as a landmark later on, even among the unremitting sameness of the black buildings.

Early in the day their route was blocked by a wall almost as large as that which surrounded the whole city, dividing one district from the next. They moved along it to the east and before finding a gate they reached a place where a section had collapsed outwards, obliterating a whole city block. It took the group until well after noon to pick their way over the rubble, and the legionnaires cursed frequently as they bruised shins and banged knees among the loose stones. Claudja carefully made her way across with a supporting hand from Phinneas. At least he was good for that much.

On the far side of the rubble the Sarge called a halt for a rest in the walled courtyard of what had once been a great house. The group stayed far away from the gaping doorways as they now knew something of the type of beasts that might lurk in the dark interiors. They sipped fetid water from diminishing skins, and disconsolately gnawed some fatty and poorly-salted meat, spitting out chunks that had gone to rot. The Sarge said they would rest for half an hour, and Ty and Rickard sprawled out on the ground. Claudja sat against the wall, glancing occasionally at the Sarge’s mutilated left hand. She hoped the wound had hurt a great deal. After a while she spoke to him.

“
Is your accent Tullish or Tholish?”

The Sarge looked over, his square jaw working on the last rubbery strip of meat.

“
Neither,” he said with his mouth full.

Claudja narrowed her eyes. “Gweiyrish?”

The Sarge smirked and forced down his food.

“
Ah, the Duchess has an education. Very knowledgeable, your Worship. I’m sure you make sparkling conversation at dinner parties and what-not.”

Claudja ignored that. “So, did you desert the Legions out of loyalty to the vacant throne of Gweiyer?”

The Sarge snorted. “Afraid I’m not that political. Whoever said we were deserters, anyway?” he asked, looking at Phinneas.

“
No one had to say anything,” Claudja said dryly. “You are legionnaires in league with Ayzantium. I believe that would run contrary to your Empire’s politics.”

“
What do you know of the Empire?” one of the other legionnaires growled from the ground. It was the big fellow with the flat Beoan accent and the belligerent slope to his forehead. The others called him Ty.

“
I know that desertion from the Legions is a capital offense,” Claudja said. “I know that none of you are ever going to be able to go home again.”

Ty looked at Claudja with smoldering hostility, and the sandy-haired fellow called Rickard pushed himself up to his elbows to glare at her as well.

“
Can we not gag her Highness?” he asked the Sarge, but the Gweiyerman looked faintly amused. He waved his men to silence with his mangled hand.

“
What is your point, Duchess?” he asked indulgently. “I can’t imagine you just want to make conversation with a bunch of commoners.”

“
How much do any of you really know about Ayzantium?” she asked. “About the kind of men you were conspiring with in Camp Town?”

The Sarge shrugged. “What’s to know? They have plenty of coin, and they’ll shell it out liberally in exchange for you. Horayachus was very clear on that point.”

“
Who is he, their leader? A Destroyer of Ayon?”

“
Some sort of Red Priest, right up until a burning inn fell on his head.” The Sarge grinned. “I suppose that is the Burning Man’s idea of irony.”

“
So, you are acting now on the word of a dead priest of Ayon? A minion of the god known as the Oath-breaker?”

The Sarge spread his hands. “All the Ennead have a lot of names. Besides Oath-breaker and the Burning Man, they call Ayon the Destroyer, the Stormking, the All Killer…doesn’t sound like a god I’d care to cross.”

“
There is no need to cross Ayon to draw his fury,” Claudja said, looking at each of the men in turn, including Phinneas. The young Circle Wizard’s brow was furrowed in that confounded way of his that made Claudja doubt him profoundly. She sighed, though not out loud.

“
Say you do get me to Ayzantu City. With no Red Priest to speak for you, why in the world would you think the Ayonites will give you coin instead of just bending the lot of you backwards over a sacrificial altar?”

Ty and Rickard looked over at their Sarge, who frowned grimly at Claudja.

“
Are you going to suggest we take you home again, Duchess? We’ve been through that once.”

“
No.” Claudja shook her head, though the brush of her dirty hair across the back of her neck made her want to cringe. “You were quite right, Sergeant. My father’s lands are menaced by Ayzantium and at present we have not the means to reward you sufficiently for my safe return.”

“
Then you don’t have much to offer, do you?”

“
But Chengdea was only the starting point of my journey. How much did your friend Horayachus tell you of the purpose for my mission?”

Their blank looks confirmed for Claudja that the Ayonite had told his hirelings little if anything.

“
You were headed for Galdeez, and the Empire,” the Sarge said flatly.

“
To meet with the Emperor himself, Albert of Beoshore,” Claudia said.

The legionnaires and Phinneas widened their eyes. Claudja lied in an easy, breezy tone.

“
His August Majesty expects my coming, and I am certain he would be willing to reward those who would help me on my way. Monetarily, of course, and even to the extent of forgiving past transgressions against his Imperial authority.” Claudja looked at each of the legionnaires in turn. “I could have you pardoned for deserting the Legions, and you could return to your homes again.”

Ty and Rickard exchanged a look, but the Sarge continued to glare at Claudja. He shook his head.

“
I’ve been in the Legions for sixteen years, Duchess. I know more than most that the Emperor’s munificence is not nearly so boundless as it’s made out to be.”

“
But would you not count on it more that you would the words of a dead priest of the Oath-breaker?”

Ty and Rickard both looked at the Sarge. He met the eyes of his men and when he saw the hope that Claudja’s words had kindled there, his lips pulled back in an ugly sneer.

“
You’re lying,” he growled at her. “You’d say anything to avoid going to Ayzantium. If the Emperor really expected you, there would have been real legionnaires waiting for you in Camp Town. Not us and a bunch of Ayonites.”

“
There probably were,” Claudja said. “I just had the bad fortune of running into you first.”

The Sarge snorted and shook his head. “Nonsense,” he said, but did not seem able to come up with a specific denial. He changed tactics. “Besides, you’d never put a good word in for us with the imperial authorities. Probably just smile while we were all strung-up from gibbets.”