The White Tree (42 page)

He nodded, dazed. She stood and he did too. He wondered if he was supposed to bow. He offered a kind of deep nod, and when the guards escorted him from her chambers, he knew it wasn't to control his path, but to protect him.

"Why didn't you do it then?" Blays asked when they had a moment alone. He had a bruise high on his cheek and a cut across his nose, but he looked to be in one piece.

"We'd have been killed," Dante said simply. He rubbed his eyes and looked up from a pile of Nak's notes. "We can't do this like we've done all the rest. We need a plan. A real one."

"Yeah," Blays nodded, letting his heels bounce against the side of the desk he was sitting on. "Was she as nice in person as at her sermon?"

"There's something about her. She's seductive."

"That's disgusting!"

"Not like that," Dante said, face going red. He shoved Blays.

"Wait, let's not rule this out," Blays said, righting himself on the desk. "We can use this. First, you flatter and sweet-talk your way into her confidence. Then, when the moment is right, you use that sharp tongue of yours to—"

"Shut up!" Dante shoved him again. How had they started talking about this? "I mean, she has a way with people. She's a leader of men. If she's like Cally said, then she hides it well."

"Well, I see how little it takes to win you over," Blays said, eyes lingering on Dante's neck. Dante touched the cold clasp on his collar, the badge Larrimore had given him after his talk with Samarand: a silver ring around a simple, stylized, seven-branched tree.

"This is how I'm going to keep close to her."

"Closer than a private audience?"

"This lets us choose the moment when," Dante said. "That gives us the power." He moved across the room to their one window. "They told me they'd assign you an instructor from the soldiers. You'll be with me on our assignments."

Blays tapped his finger on the desk, then leaned forward, elbows on knees.

"Just what are these errands, anyway?"

"I don't know," Dante said. "Things they need done."

They found out soon enough. Larrimore appeared the next afternoon to interrupt Nak's lesson with a tersely-worded order about a man spotted in the ruins beyond the outer wall. He wanted Dante to bring him in.

"Why?"

"Because I'm telling you to."

"A time-honored logic."

"Because," Larrimore said, tugging his collar forward, "he used to be one of our acolytes."

"Not fond of those who leave the fold?" Dante said, judging he still had some play to his rope.

"Not fond of those who leave it with their pockets sagging with our property." Larrimore tapped Dante's badge. "Nor is it particularly pleasing when they make a point of lurking about and robbing our monks when they're out on their business. Stealing from men of peace! What is this world come to?"

Dante nodded, mollified. "Should I know anything about him?"

"Dark hair. Queued. Bearded—in fact, a general mess, you'll know he's been on the streets a while. Name's Ryant Briggs."

"I meant of a less tangible nature."

Larrimore laughed, met his eyes. "Scared?"

"No," Dante said. He picked up his sword belt. "Well? What can he do?"

"Minor talents. Nothing you can't handle."

"Want him in one piece?"

"Would be nice," Larrimore shrugged. "But denial of men's desires is the gods' way of saying hello."

Dante nodded, buckling his sword around his waist. "He'll be yours by nightfall."

"I hope you're cognizant of the irony here," Blays said after Dante'd found him trading blows with one of the soldiers in the yard and explained their job.

"I'm cognizant. Remember why we're here."

"You'd do well to do the same."

Dante shook his head. They crossed the yard to the small door at the other side of the Citadel's walls, the only other exit from the place, a door far less ostentatious than the main gates but thick as his palm was wide and set in a passage too narrow to swing a sword. The sunlight flashed on the icon on his collar and the door's guards let them by. They strode east into the city, toward the fringes. Citizens' eyes lingered on Dante and the silver at his neck as he brushed by. He gazed straight ahead, a faint thrill of rank and recognition tickling his nerves.

It had snowed the night before and their boots slid on the ice-slick cobbles. They passed under the Ingate to the shabbier, less-peopled buildings between it and the gappy ring of the Pridegate, so named, Nak had told him in a brief break from the endless language lessons, because in all the times the city had been sacked no man who'd defended its outer walls had ever abandoned them except to be thrown in a coffin. Much of the city was still a mystery to Dante—he hadn't been outside the Citadel since the day he'd given them the fake copy of the
Cycle
—but the keep and the church were landmark enough to keep his direction even with the sun hidden behind a screen of clouds. The ground sloped down between the two sets of walls before leveling out in front of the Pridegate, threatening to yank itself from under their feet with every step into the snow.

It was easy to forget, behind the thick stone of the Sealed Citadel and among the bustling crowds behind the Ingate, that so much of the city was wrecked, forgotten, neglected, peopled by the lost and the landless and the outcast—when it was peopled at all. Dante paused in the street just past the outer walls. Birdsong and single footsteps trickled through the rubble and the pines. Behind him, far-carrying notes of shopmen crying prices, hammers shaping steel.

"We were rats recently enough," Dante said, gazing over the houses in their various states of decay. "Larrimore said he'd been seen in this quarter. If you were a rat, where would you hide from our soldiers?"

"A basement, to hide my light," Blays said. He sucked his teeth. "Or the second floor of a place where the stairs had caved in. If someone came for me in my sleep I'd hear them scrabbling around before they could get up to me."

Dante nodded, impressed, but didn't say so. They made a few circles of the weed-choked streets, examining the houses with fresh litter or footprints in the yellowed grass and snow-patched dirt, spooking a few grimy men ensconced in their filth in single underfurnished rooms. In the sixth or seventh house of their search they saw a tuft of long black hair beneath a blanket. Dante called their quarry's name, got no response. He walked toward the man and nudged him with his boot. Stiff. Blays took out his sword. Dante knelt and pulled back the blanket. The body's cheek looked bruised where it rested on the dirt floor, its open eyes dull and glassy. Dante shook his head.

When twilight came, the hour of roaming, they returned to the gateless gap in the wall and sank down against the stone, watching the shadowy figures of men in the distance. Footsteps echoed from the other side of the walls and they put their hands on their weapons. A blond man walked through, eyes darting to the scrape of swords being put away. He hurried into the growing gloom.

"Are they going to string you up if you don't find the guy?"

"They'll probably start with you," Dante said. "Give me something to think about for next time."

"I'd give
them
something to think about," Blays said. He picked up a stick and flipped his wrist in a tight circle, stabbing at the air.

"Been learning much?"

"A bit," Blays said. "They don't fight as dirty as Robert showed me."

Dante grinned. He hadn't thought of Robert in days. "Then they won't be expecting it when we make our move."

"Nor will I, at this rate."

Dante put a finger to his lips. More bootsteps, slowing as they approached the walls, as if their wearer were nearing the end of his journey. The man began whistling. In the day's last light Dante saw a bristle-bearded man emerge from the wall into the dirty street. A light, steady wind tossed locks of black hair over his eyes and nose. Dante let him get a ways down the street, then stood and moved to cut off the way back inside the gates, Blays half a step behind him.

"Ryant Briggs!" he called in the husky, cheerful voice Larrimore liked to use when he was delivering bad news. The man spun, his smile freezing on his lips.

"Who are you?" he said in Mallish, which came as only a mild surprise. His name was southern. He squinted at the pair. Dante edged forward, falling out of the long shadow of the wall and into the soft light of dusk. Ryant's gaze dropped to his neck. "A trained dog? Can you play dead?"

"My name is Dante Galand. You're to come with me."

"And you're to kiss my puckered ass," Ryant said, face gone tight. His left hand lowered to the short sword on his right hip.

"I wouldn't," Blays said.

"They'll give me much worse at the Citadel."

"You've been robbing monks," Dante said. He took another step.

"I had a brother in Bressel," Ryant said, and Dante stopped short to hear the city's name. "I say 'had' because I heard he died on the road a few weeks ago. Killed in a skirmish." He glanced beyond the wall to the hulking mass of Cathedral and Citadel miles deeper into the city. "Surely you've read the scriptures," he said, returning his eyes to Dante's. "Do you remember the part where they compel the church to drag the innocent into its squabbles?"

"What's happening in Bressel?" Blays said. His hands hung at his sides, empty for the moment.

"For all their talk, these people can't take the city," Ryant spat. It was like he'd been waiting for them, Dante saw, had been stewing in his reasons with no audience to which he could explain them. "So they camp in the woods and ambush the nobles and guildsmen and clergy and soldiers whenever they leave the walls. The sure sign a god's on your side, when you're forced to squat in the woods like a cur. They say the people are remembering the old ways, though, that they're joining the fight. For all I know Bressel's burnt by now."

The boys looked at each other for a long moment. They'd speculated sometimes on how things were going in the south, but no one had been able to give them any real news. Dante wanted to press for more, but Ryant would be in the hands of the Citadel soon, might say anything to ease his time if he were put to the knife or the boots—could even, unlikely as it may seem, speak about the boys' unnatural interest in the events of their homeland.

"Unbuckle your blade and come with us," Dante said to Ryant. "They may find mercy when they hear your story, but if you try to run or resist, I'll grant you none.

"Yeah, go on. Do as you're told."

"You don't know a thing about why I'm here," Dante said. He tensed himself. Ryant smiled with half his mouth.

"I know enough," the man said. He pinched his fingers together and the boys were swallowed in pure blackness. Blays' sword rang out from somewhere beside Dante. He drew his own and heard boots pounding away from them.

"Careful," Dante said, then ran after the sound of the man's feet, clenching his teeth at the blind plunge over uneven ground. He managed not to trip and dashed free of the shadowsphere and into the sudden brightness of twilight. Ryant disappeared around the rough-edge corner of a house a score of yards ahead. The boys sprinted after him, making a wide turn around the house in case he'd planted himself against its wall in waiting. Up ahead Ryant glanced over his shoulder and slipped in the snow, cursing as he bounced against the ground. He hauled himself up before he'd finished falling, faltered on his right ankle, then cursed again and ran on with little drop in speed. Dante closed to twenty feet. Ryant weaved through pines, ducking branches. A foot-high fragment of what had once been a full wall sprawled out in front of him and he vaulted it, crying out as his feet hit frozen dirt. He popped up, jogging backwards, and waved a hand at Dante. Fire whoomped up and Dante bent double, hand trailing the ground to steady himself. A strange anger took him—as if it were somehow offensive this man should try to kill him in order to save his own life—and Dante blanked his thoughts and wrapped the nether around Ryant's body in the opposite trick of what Gabe had shown him. Ryant's legs froze up and he toppled forward, sliding facefirst through the snow. Dante approached quickly, Blays circling to the his right.

Dante dug his knee into the man's back and yanked his arms behind him. He bound his hands and elbows tight with the rope he'd taken for his task, leaving Ryant's legs unsecured. Let him walk his own self all that way. He gave the knots at the man's wrists another tug.

"I'm going to let you up now," Dante panted, "and if you try anything other than walking exactly where I tell you I'll reduce you to a fine red mist."

Ryant only gurgled in reply, his throat caught by Dante's shadowy grip. Dante let the nether fall away, feeling its reluctance to part, its primal urge to clench Ryant's throat until his breath stopped. Freed, the man gagged, gasped, curled up as his body rediscovered it could move. Dante gave him a moment to regain his wind, then grabbed the ropes around his arms and, with Blays' help, hauled him to his feet.

"I'm going to curse your name the instant before they trim my thread," Ryant said, still half-choked. "One morning you'll wake up dead and never live again. Or maybe your arm will go black and drop off. Or maybe it won't be your arm, it'll be—"

"Get moving," Dante said, shoving him in the back.

Ryant had twisted his ankle in his first fall and their progress was slow. Blays took point, cloak thrown back over his left shoulder to keep his sword visible. Dante walked behind Ryant, eyes on anyone who drew too close while he kept his mind open to any surge of shadow from their prisoner.

"You can still let me go," Ryant said when they were waved through the Ingate after Dante'd shown the wall-guard his badge. The city lay under full dark by then, lit by sporadic lanterns outside public houses and at the more major street corners and by the weak aid of the moon through an overcast sky.

"Be quiet," Dante said.

"Look in your heart. I haven't hurt a soul. That's more than can be said for them."

"Boo hoo," Blays said from over his shoulder.

"It isn't a matter of justice," Dante said.