When True Night Falls (62 page)

And then the child looked at them. Straight at them, her dark eyes piercing through the shadows like lances. Her mouth fell open and she trembled violently, momentarily unable to respond to what she had seen. It would only last an instant, the leader guessed, and he was gesturing for one of his men to fire just as a family group wandered across the wharf, fouling the line of fire. He cursed under his breath and hissed, “Fan out! Contain them!” Even as the girl moved. Even as she warned her companions about the danger that was closing in on them, and they began to run.

Damn!
The officer thought, holding his weapon close to his side as he moved out into the open. Running now, his hand clenched tightly about the pistol’s grip.
Damn!
The people on the wharf got out of his way when they saw him coming—as they’d damned well better—but it wasn’t soon enough, it couldn’t possibly be soon enough, the fugitives were running toward the nearest crowd and would soon be lost among them, damn it!

And then he saw one of his men cut them off, herding them back into the open. The child stumbled, and the priest caught her up in his arms. That slowed them. They were approaching a part of the harbor where business was slow, and the crowds that had served them as shelter were thinning. The leader pushed his way by an old woman, nearly trampling a child in his haste. The Regent had said that the fugitives would be boarding a free merchanter, but that wasn’t the direction they were heading in now; he could only assume that the Regent’s source of intelligence had been mistaken, that they hoped to make it to one of the great passenger ships docked at the west end of the harbor, now drawing in their gangplanks to catch the departing tide.
Well, you won’t get there,
he swore silently, and he pushed for even greater speed.
You won’t get past this harbor alive.

And then there was an opening. Charrel had the clearest shot, and fired first; a crossbow quarrel lanced across the space between them and speared through the child’s thigh. She spasmed in the priest’s arm and screamed, and for a moment it seemed to her pursuer that a brilliant light, blood-red, enveloped her body. Then an elderly couple moved out of the way—at last!—and he fired, he held up the pistol and pulled on the trigger and felt the explosive power take root in his hand, to send death plummeting through the air with a force no crossbow could rival. The soft lead pellet missed the priest by inches but took the woman in her side, and she fell; red blood exploded across the white of her robe as she fell to her knees, and

—and—

—and—

His vision wavered. He staggered as though struck, dimly aware that sorcery was the cause. Trying to fight the effect. It seemed to him that the three figures were blurring, as in a drawing whose edges had been erased. Giving up their color, their form, to meld into the twilight. He shook his head desperately, hoping that his men were holding on. He couldn’t lose them now, not when they were so close to triumph. He squinted into the shadowy air as he lined up the second pellet in the gun’s chamber, as he aligned the second priming. It wasn’t that they were becoming invisible, so much as ... changing. Yes. That was it. The girl’s dark hair becoming a tangle of blond curls, the priest’s formidable bulk shrinking to the middle-aged pot-belly of a hen-pecked bureaucrat, the woman’s robe becoming mere housewife’s garb, blood-spattered....

“My God,” he whispered.

And he lowered his gun.

And he stared.

They were cringing now, terrified of him and his men, but they needn’t have been. Not now. Because he knew in his gut as he gazed at them that these faces were the real ones. Not what he had seen before. Not what he had fired at.

He looked about wildly, as if somewhere on the wharf an explanation would be waiting. What he saw, in the distance, was a merchanter setting sail. White canvas leaves dropping to catch the wind, angled sails billowing in the stiff southerly breeze. He struggled to make out the flag that topped the mizzenmast, and when he did he cursed. He knew that symbol, all too well. He had studied it in the Regent’s chamber only hours before.

“What is it?” came a voice at his shoulder. One of his men. “What happened?”

He turned back, saw one of his soldiers tending to the wounded. Trying to comfort the innocent victims, in a voice that must be shaking with fear. He felt that fear himself, like a knot in his gut.

“We vulked up,” he muttered. “We vulked it up good.”

In the distance, safely out of reach, the
Desert Queen
made for the open sea.

Not until they were safely out of the harbor did Damien feel the knot in his own gut loosen up. Not until the lights of the city were so low on the horizon that a passing wave might swallow them up, and the granite arms that reached out from the mainland to the harbor were all but invisible in the fading light, did he feel that he could relax.

Soft golden Corelight washed over the deck as he made his way to where Tarrant stood and it picked out jeweled highlights on the water beyond. About and above them the sailors scurried to make the most of what the wind had to offer, and Damien had no doubt that if the wind held in their favor the
Desert Queen
was capable of outrunning—and probably outmaneuvering—any possible pursuit. Wasn’t that the one capacity a smuggler needed most?

“I can’t believe we made it,” Hesseth was saying as he joined them. The girl was by her side, her arm around the rakh-woman’s waist. “I can’t believe there was no one watching for us.”

“They were watching,” Tarrant said quietly.

Damien looked up at him—delicate profile haloed in gold, eyes as dark and as secretive as the sea—and demanded, “So what happened?”

The Hunter shrugged; his eyes remained fixed on the sea. “They must have been misled, somehow.” A faint smile ghosted across his lips, then was gone. “Perhaps they followed the wrong trail. Perhaps they attacked the wrong people.”

A cold, sick feeling stirred in Damien’s gut. He had to force the word out. “Simulacra?”

“Perhaps,” the Hunter murmured.

Sickness transmuted into sudden anger. He grasped the man by the arm, closing his finger angrily about flesh no warmer than ice. “Do we have to leave a trail of blood behind us?” he demanded. “Does every victory have to cost some innocent his life?”

The dark eyes turned on him with gentle disdain. “You’ve made your feeling on that point rather clear, Reverend Vryce.” With his free hand he plucked Damien’s own from his arm, handling it like one would a child’s. “As it happened, I didn’t kill them. Nor do I think that our enemies will. I gave them, as you would have wanted, a fair chance. Even though that increased the risk to us all.”

For a moment Damien was utterly speechless. “But ... if the enemy thinks they’re us—”

“That illusion faded as soon as we were safely under sail, priest. Not the safety margin I would have preferred, but obviously it will have to do.”

He turned to go then—to seek out some private niche on the tiny vessel, no doubt, some shadow he could claim for himself—but Damien challenged him, “You spared their lives?”

The Hunter turned back to him; a sparkle of dry humor glinted in his eyes. “In all probability, yes.”

“For what reason?” He couldn’t imagine Tarrant motivated by human compassion.

“For the best of reasons,” the Neocount assured him. “Because I knew that if they died I would have to spend the better part of this voyage hearing about it.” And he added, with gentle maliciousness, “Verda?”

The Sea of Dreams, it was called.

It was dark. It was cold. It was turbulent and deadly. Eastern and western waters met with a clash above a sea floor studded with mounts and mountains, driven by a system of tides that revealed new hazards with every passing hour. Or concealed them, just as swiftly. In places there were obstacles so close to the surface that the currents parted around them, rippling with whitewater ferocity. In others there were pools where chance had turned the currents aside, so that in the midst of chaos one might find a circle of water as smooth as glass, a surreal arrangement that might last only seconds, or perhaps as long as hours. It was rumored that somewhere in the midst of the Sea of Dreams lay a vast pool of untroubled water, where even the wind had ceased to blow. After more than an hour on board the
Desert Queen,
Damien was ready to believe it.

Here the Novatlantic Ocean, fifty feet higher than its eastern neighbor, plunged through the rocky gap which nature had supplied, dashing its waves upon numerous obstacles as it churned its way east. Here the cold currents of the antarctic region met the warm waters of the tropics with whirlpool ferocity, raising a mist that gathered about the peaked granite islands, hiding them from sight. Here there was a path from north to south that might be sailed, but only by men who knew these waters like the back of their hands. And then only with luck, and only when the tides permitted.

Much to his surprise, Damien found that he had been afraid for so long now that even the sight of rocky obstacles passing mere yards from the bow wasn’t enough to upset him. In the face of what they were up against—and how long they had been fleeing—it just wasn’t enough to upset him. Besides, he had been through Novatlantis, which was a journey ten times longer than this and easily ten times as turbulent. If he had made it through that terrible trip without panicking, he could certainly manage to make it through this one.

Moskovan had given the option of remaining below, but not one of them had taken him up on it. Now they watched as barren islands, knife-edged in the moonlight, passed mere yards away to port and starboard. They watched as the sea gathered itself into an impromptu whirlpool between two islands, then suddenly dispersed. As the Novatlantic Ocean poured over some unseen obstacle to create a waterfall not ten yards high, but nearly two miles in length. It was a wondrous and terrible sea, and Damien was grateful that the man Tarrant had found to take them across it seemed eminently capable of doing so. God alone knew how many ships had been lost in those rocky depths.

If the Sea of Dreams seemed strange to the travelers, the sailors of the
Desert Queen
were even more so. Silent and somber, they maneuvered the sleek vessel through its passage with no more than short whistled signals passing between them. To Damien, who had grown accustomed to the shouts and banter of the
Glory
’s crew, their behavior seemed even stranger than the sea itself. But though there were at least a dozen questions he would have liked to ask Moskovan, the ship’s owner was not available for questioning. He might take on passengers for a price, but he clearly had no interest in catering to their curiosity.

And then the last of the great islands fell behind the stern, swallowed up by mist and darkness. Ahead lay somewhat calmer water, and a promise of smoother sailing. Damien let loose of the rail he had been gripping, and as the blood rushed painfully back into his hands he acknowledged just how tightly he’d held it. God in Heaven, what he wouldn’t give to be back in Jaggonath right now! Or any inland city, for that matter.

Moskovan had told them of a safer route, had even given them the option of choosing to take it. Nearly four times the length of this one, it involved sailing west into the Novatlantic, and circling wide round this turbulent sea. That course took longer but entailed little risk, and most black marketeers preferred it. As did he, Moskovan assured them. And then he looked pointedly at Damien and added:
When I’m not being hunted.

Whereupon Damien had made the only choice possible.

He looked back the way they had come and tried to imagine one of the Matria’s ships making it through that maze of islands and whirlpools. No. The choice they’d made had been the right one, and if it cost them more money and rubbed their nerves raw, that was just the price of freedom. Money well spent, in his book.

A firm hand on his shoulder startled him; he turned around to find one of the sailors beside him. The man stepped quickly back so as not to offend and muttered, “Captain said to stay with you.” A glance back to where Tarrant stood showed a sailor beside him also—though the adept’s response looked anything but cordial—but when Damien looked for Hesseth and Jenseny, he found them nowhere to be seen. One hand moved instinctively toward his sword as he demanded, “Where are my companions?” Suddenly aware that their greatest danger might not come from the sea.

The sailor, who had turned away to regard the sea, didn’t respond. He repeated the question again, more loudly, and this time the man seemed to hear it. “Back in the cabin. Captain suggested. Not good waters for the young, you see? Verdate,” he added, for Damien’s benefit. Assuming him to be a northerner, no doubt.

The priest was about to respond when something in the distance caught his eyes. Hard to say exactly what it was; it disappeared as soon as he looked directly at it, and thus was glimpsed more by memory than by sight. A glimmering, ever so faint, that seemed to shiver beneath the waves. He had barely drawn in a breath to question the sailor when another one flashed on the sea’s glassy surface—like a star this time, that glittered and bounced as it rode the waves, then disappeared from view.