Times assassin, p.21
Time's Assassin, page 21
part #3 of The Islevale Cycle Series
The two of them loosed their remaining arrows in quick succession, hers finding red and then the yellow ring just around the center, his doing the same. Orzili thought Pemin might have missed with his last arrow intentionally, but a quick glance at the autarch disabused him of this notion. His expression had tightened, and he eyed the trees around them with genuine anger.
Had he felt a sudden gust of wind? Orzili hadn’t.
The autarch and queen walked to their targets, tallied their points.
Orzili noted Deya’s pout from where he remained, bow in hand.
Pemin hugged his wife, kissed her lips. They returned to the edge of the clearing. Orzili bowed to the queen and she bid him farewell. Once she and her attendants were gone, Pemin sent away the others, leaving Orzili and him alone save for two guards who lingered at some distance, both armed with muskets.
Pemin regarded him, set himself, and loosed an arrow with a resonant thrum. Red.
“You are here, Orzili,” he said, squinting at the target, “which tells me you have failed in some way. And you are wearing ministerial robes you would have been given by my men, which tells me that you came by sextant. On your own. Am I to assume that you have lost another set of tri-sextants?” A pause and then, “Your shot.”
Chapter Fourteen
3rd day of Sipar’s Ascent, Year 634
Orzili pulled another barb from his quiver. His hands were steady, but sweat tickled his temple. He aimed and released.
Tracking the arrow, he knew this was not as good an effort, the arc too high, the flight less certain. He did find red again, but only barely.
He glanced at the autarch. Pemin watched him, expectant, awaiting an answer to his question.
“Yes,” he said, spending a breath on the word. “The boy has eluded me again, and yes, I’m afraid the tri-sextants are lost. I found Tobias, and the princess. A source in Belsan located them first, and I managed to confirm where they were, who they were with. I even lured them to Herjes, which was the perfect place to take them. I had my men with me, the tri-sextants worked just as they should. The boy and I fought. I had him. I had him! ”
“It would seem you didn’t,” Pemin said, voice cold.
“Ancients intervened.” He wouldn’t mention Droë specifically if he didn’t have to, nor his exchange with Qiyed. Though the latter might prove useful before long. “Tobias and his allies summoned a Shonla hoping his mists would confound the Belvora. And when the Shonla was shot, its cries drew two more Ancients, including an Arrokad. They put a stop to the fighting, and, as punishment for one of my men killing the Shonla, they helped the boy, the princess, and those with them get away.”
“More excuses.”
“No, Your Excellency. Not excuses. Facts.”
These might have been the bravest words he had ever spoken. Pemin glowered, nostrils flaring.
“I understand your anger,” he added quickly, “and I intend to do all I can to repair the damage resulting from this setback. But this is no excuse, and dealing with Ancients is no trifle. Have you ever treated with an Ancient, Your Excellency?”
Not the wisest of questions, that last. For an instant, Orzili thought the autarch might grab an arrow and bury it in his heart.
He didn’t. After a pause, Pemin shook his head. He did pluck another arrow from his quiver, but only to nock it to his bowstring.
“In truth, I haven’t. In certain respects, mine has been a cloistered life.” An unexpected admission, and a more generous reply than Orzili had anticipated. Yet the autarch wasn’t done surprising him. “That took some courage, Orzili. I have wondered about you in recent turns. It seems you have lost your way a little. I find your... passion reassuring.”
“You’re kind, Your Excellency.”
Pemin took his stance, aimed, and let the arrow fly all in one smooth motion. Another barb in the red. “Tell me about the tri-sextants.”
Carefully . “It seems the Ancients were familiar with the boy, and even had some sort of commerce with him. Commerce is everything to Ancients and these two—”
“Do not speak to me like I’m a naïf. I said I had never treated with Ancients. I did not say I was ignorant in their ways. And my forbearance only goes so far.”
Orzili’s mouth went dry. “Forgive me, Your Excellency. The boy owes one of them a boon, so they were inclined to help him and punish me for trying to kill the lad. They...they took the tri-sextants from us and gave them to the boy.”
The expression in those gray eyes hardened again. “Not the first time he has walked away with your devices. The tri- devices were an innovation I had hoped to keep as my own. There seems little chance of that now.” He waved a hand at Orzili’s arrows.
Orzili readied himself and let fly. Center.
“Tell me about the woman.”
The woman . He did this intentionally. He controlled them both, was master of their lives. And he liked to remind them of this whenever possible.
“She is...well.”
Pemin had drawn back his bowstring to fire again, but now he lowered the bow, let the tension drain from sinew and yew.
“Well?” he repeated. “Hardly reassuring.”
Orzili cursed himself. He could never allow himself an unguarded moment with this man. He knew this, and yet he had just done so.
“She’s fine, Your Excellency.”
Pemin didn’t look away or retake his stance.
“She grows restive,” he admitted. “This Lenna. She wishes to return to her own time, fourteen years in the future. And this has...has taken a toll on our marriage.”
“Maybe you should let her go. The other Lenna—the one you should be with—she waits for you in your home, yes?”
“In Fanquir, yes.”
“Might she be more useful to us?”
It was a fair question. For too long, Orzili had allowed his fascination with the older Lenna to overmaster his judgement. He knew she wished to leave, but he was in love with her—more than he had ever been with the younger woman in Kantaad. He didn’t love her now, and hadn’t for some time. He clung to her because their contest of wills had taken on its own exigencies, had become more important to him than their marriage, than Tobias, than Pemin’s wishes. He kept her here, in this time, not because he loved her or wanted her, but because he wished to win, to show her that he could be as resolute as she. Foolishness.
“She might be, Your Excellency. It is...a question worth considering.”
“You love her.”
“Of course.”
“I mean the older one.”
“I love her in any incarnation. But yes, I have allowed myself to fall in love with this other Lenna. A mistake.”
“I know what it is to love, Orzili. I cannot imagine how I would choose between two Deyas if I had that opportunity. That curse.”
The man was full of surprises today.
“Your Excellency is too kind.”
“You’ve said that twice now this morning. We both know it’s not true.”
Orzili considered the bow he held before leaning it against his quiver. “I should Span back to Hayncalde, Your Excellency.”
“Our contest isn’t done.”
“I concede. You’re the better bowman.”
Pemin grinned. “I find it’s easy to win such contests when everyone fears that besting me will cost them their lives.”
Orzili laughed. “Yes, Your Excellency.” He sobered. “The boy and the princess—thoughts of them consume me day and night. I want you to know this, so that you’ll believe me when I say that I will find them. I will make right all that’s gone wrong. Or I’ll die in the attempt. I swear it to you.”
He expected the autarch would respond with some warning of what another failure might mean for him. This had been an unusual conversation, however, and it remained so.
“I believe you, and I trust you’ll find them in time. I look forward to receiving word of your progress.”
Orzili approached the autarch, bowed low, pressed his brow to the man’s extended hand. He started away, intending to return to the castle, and Span back to Daerjen. As he reached the edge of the clearing, Pemin spoke his name, stopping him.
“The woman. The older Lenna. Let her go. I’m sure I’ll find use for her in our shared future. I don’t know as much about Walking as she does and you might, but I understand that with her here there is...a loss of balance. Send her back. Perhaps your fortunes will improve after you do.”
His throat tightened. He didn’t wish to let go of her, because he was still drawn to her, and because he didn’t like to lose any more than Pemin did. This was a command, however. Obligating. And also wise.
“Very well, Your Excellency,” he said, and left the man.
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The Span back to Daerjen proved more difficult than usual, as if the gap wind not only abraded his body, but also slowed him. Upon reaching the battlements of Hayncalde Castle, he crumpled to his knees, fell against the harsh stone of the crenelated wall. The sun still burned high overhead, searing his tender skin. He remembered the last time he Spanned back from Qaifin. He arrived at nightfall. Lenna greeted him with a blanket and kind words. It seemed another lifetime.
Orzili forced himself to his feet, shuffled like an old man to his piled clothes, and dressed. He needed food and a generous cup of wine. He also needed to speak with Lenna.
He beckoned to the nearest soldiers walking the wall, ordered them to summon Lady Stenci to his quarters. With each step he took toward his room, he felt a bit more himself. He needed to Span more often. When he fell out of practice, the gap affected him too much.
Upon entering his chamber, he crossed directly to the table on which he had left a half-full carafe of wine. He poured himself a
cup, downed it, poured another. Crossing back to the door, he ordered one of the guards in the corridor to have food brought to the chamber.
Before he closed the door, the guards from the wall-walk approached, swords and armor jangling with each step.
“Lady Stenci hasn’t returned from the city, my lord. Shall we have her sent to you when she does?”
Orzili stared. “She went to the city?”
“Yes, my lord.” This from one of the soldiers guarding his door.
“You saw her? Spoke to her?”
The man eyed his companion. “Yes, my lord. She came here and told us she was going.”
Orzili resisted the impulse to brace himself against the door frame. Something was wrong. This was...different. Why would Lenna go to the city? Why would she tell his guards where she was going? Recently, she had taken to leaving her chamber with some frequency, but rarely did she explain herself to anyone. She went on her walks, took soldiers with her to the shore, spent bells alone in the castle library. The city though... And this announcement of her intentions...
“Did she say why she was going?”
Another exchange of glances, both men clearly unnerved. “She said you sent her, my lord. She was going for you. A task she was to complete.”
It was, he decided, very important that he hide from them the panic rising like a tide in his chest. He couldn’t say why. Fear of Pemin, fear of her, fear of the sheer embarrassment that might result if they knew she had escaped him in this way. “She said that,” he repeated, false brightness in his tone.
“Aye, my lord.”
“And she came here to tell you this, to inform you of her intentions?”
“No, my lord. She needed something from your chamber. We assumed that you wouldn’t—”
He broke off as Orzili whirled away to stride back through his chamber. He started toward the far end of the room, but before he reached the chamber’s center, he veered toward his desk. Even in this, she would avoid his bed.
Three steps from the desk, he slowed. He recognized the kerchief as one of hers, couldn’t quite make out what rested on top of it.
It glinted like gold.
Another step and he knew.
“Get out,” he said, voice low.
“My lord, is she—”
“ Get out! ”
He heard them scramble away from his door. One of them had the good sense to close it.
Orzili could do no more than gawk. His first thought was to fear for her. Had he driven her mad by keeping her here against her will? Had he driven her to take her own life, to leave her shattered chronofor as an accusation, one last golden barb aimed at his heart, in this day filled with barbs?
No. Had she meant to do the unspeakable, she might have destroyed her device in this way, but she also would have taken her life right here and left her bloodied corpse on his floor. A memento more damning by far than the chronofor.
She lived still. He was certain of it. So why would she leave without any means to Walk? Why would she destroy the device? And why would she leave it like this, as some sort of signal to him?
Not a signal—a declaration. But of what?
It struck him like a thunderclap, sending tremors through his chest. He staggered, fell forward another step, so that he could have reached out and taken hold of the broken chronofor, bloodied his hand on those shards of glass.
For days and days after their encounter with the crazed Lenna he had asked her if her chronofor worked yet. It hadn’t, and wouldn’t, she had assured him, until the mad woman returned to her own time. Only one chronofor could work in any given place.
At some point, as his worry about the mad Lenna faded, and his obsession with finding Tobias and the princess reasserted itself, he stopped asking, forgot to care. And so did she, this woman who had lied to him day after day after day. Eventually, she did Walk again, could Walk again. The change went unremarked. It had fled his mind, and perhaps hers, too. Her mind wouldn’t be what it was, even after all this time.
He was certain, though. It explained so much: the growing distance between them, her sudden indifference to him, her casual cruelty.
The Lenna he loved had long since Traveled to her own time fourteen years in the future. In all likelihood, she left him
that very night, mere bells after the madwoman in red first entered their lives. And for all the time since, he had been sparring with that second, crazed Lenna. The one who bested him on the strand and sent Tirribin to feed on his years. Not so crazed after all. More clever than he in any future or past.
“Oh, Lenna,” he whispered. He reached a hand toward the chronofor, stopped himself before he touched it.
In a way, it made no difference. Pemin had told him to send her back. What did it matter if the Lenna who’d come from so far in the future left him today, or a turn ago?
And knowing that the Lenna who had been so cold toward him in recent days was actually the mad Lenna, the one he’d fought on the strand, made the distance between them easier to accept. He hadn’t been at odds with the Lenna he’d loved, but rather with a shadow of that woman, an accident of time and history.
None of this comforted him.
Yes, Pemin had told him to send the real Lenna back, but he didn’t have that opportunity. She’d left him. She had felt compelled to sneak away, like one escaping a prison. Forever she would think of him—this version of him—as her jailer, as the man who had refused to grant her the dearest wish of her heart. Had she waited, he would have been able to send her back himself. To be sure, the command came from Pemin, but she wouldn’t have needed to know that.
He scowled at the workings of his own mind. What had he become that he could think so, that he could wish to delay her happiness in order to lie to her and thus make himself appear more kind and generous than he really was?
The question led him to his second thought. The crazed Lenna had destroyed her chronofor and left it here as a message. She wanted him to know that she remained in this time. Why? Did she mean this as a threat? An invitation to pursue her?
In his mind, she was the crazed Lenna. Now he knew better. If she could deceive him for this long, match wits with him day after day without ever revealing who she was and what the other Lenna had done, her mind was clear enough. As he learned when they fought, she retained all the skills and experiences of the Lenna he loved. She was Windhome-trained, hardened by years as an assassin. She didn’t love him and hadn’t since that day she entered their lives as an addled version of the true Lenna, but she knew him intimately, as the other Lenna did. She would be a formidable foe if she chose to pit herself against him.
One had left him to return to her true time. Another had chosen to flee the castle rather than continue their partnership.
In destroying her chronofor, though, this second one had created a third possibility. He could almost hear the older Lenna speak of her.
There’s another Lenna, remember? Young? Pretty? Alive and well in Fanquir?
And now, with this chronofor broken, likely beyond repair, hers would work again.
He needed an ally. Against Tobias, possibly against this Lenna who had left him today. What better ally than Lenna herself?
Younger, stronger, her years not yet spent on Walks. She might even be glad to see him. Though, he realized now, he had neglected her for a long time. Too long. He hadn’t even bothered to send a bird, much less a longer missive by ship.
That couldn’t be helped. He was alone now. He had need of a Walker. And maybe he could repair with this Lenna what he had broken so utterly with the other two.
He retrieved his sextant from the table that held his wine and left the chamber. Mere moments ago, he had remarked to himself that he needed to Span more, to reacquaint himself with the gap.
So be it.
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She was in a foul mood as she followed the cart back into the city, the welts on her hands throbbing still. One of them had begun to itch. Her hair stank of the smoke she used to control the hives. It had barely worked today. The bees always grew more aggressive as the warmer turns gave way to autumn. But six stings in a single day. She couldn’t remember the last time she had fared so poorly with her hives.
Yes, she had three jars filled with honey to show for her efforts, but the swelling in her hand bothered her. Her reactions to stings were getting worse.
