Times assassin, p.7
Time's Assassin, page 7
part #3 of The Islevale Cycle Series
She and Quinnel kept their distance from each other, lest they draw the notice of others. Despite her confidence the night before, Lenna grew more afraid throughout that day. She despaired of ever leaving Vondehm. As the bells passed, word came from Jispar’s soldiers. The castle had been searched, as had the city.
No assassins had been found.
Late that day, when Sten dismissed her and the other ministers and Travelers from the king’s hall, Lenna was too weary from the night before, and too unnerved by the day’s events, to do more than retreat to her chamber and take to bed.
On this morning, she was flung from sleep onto her floor. Hands and knees. A crippling pain in her belly, and writhing sickness, akin to the queasiness that had come every day for more than a turn, and nothing like at all. She forced herself up, reeled to her chamber pot, vomited acid as tears streamed.
She felt an ominous warmth between her thighs. Blood ran down her legs, stained her floor.
She cursed, pulled her sleeping gown from her bed and put it on, heedless of the way it clung to the blood streaks. Someone seeing her in this state would expect that.
Lenna hobbled to the door and called for her page. When the girl came, she told her to fetch the healer.
More tears. She knew what this meant. One heard quite often of women losing pregnancies. How many lost them because of kicks to the stomach by their king?
She crawled back into bed, awaited the healer. She only realized then that she still held the incriminating chronofor. In a different future, Jispar had given it to her freely. Now, with the king dead and history irrevocably altered, no one would remember that. Its presence in her chamber was accusation, evidence, conviction. She buried it deep in her bed linens, pushed it farther down with her foot. Prayed to the Two that no one searched her chamber before she could rid herself of it.
The healer arrived moments later and confirmed what she had feared. The child was lost. The shock of losing her liege, no doubt. She doubted the Seer would believe this.
Sten came to her chamber around midday. She watched him from her bed as he wandered her chamber.
“I’m sorry for the loss you suffered today,” he said, his tone unctuous.
What could she say?
“Thank you, Seer.”
“The healer blames the trauma of His Majesty’s death.”
“Yes.”
“I wonder if the ordeal of a Walk through time might prove equally disturbing.”
“Not this again, Sten.”
He responded with a thinning of his lips and the baring of teeth.
“I wonder if you might tell me, Walker, where is your chronofor?”
She tried not to react, wasn’t certain she succeeded. “Wherever the king keeps it, I would...”
Lenna trailed off, seeing Sten shake his head.
“I looked. It isn’t there.”
“Then it’s been stolen,” she said, a tremor in her voice.
“I wondered about that, and then asked myself, why would a thief take the chronofor and leave behind sextants and apertures?”
“I wouldn’t know.” She fought to steady her voice. “You are free to search through my belongings. My wardrobe, my desk. Have at it.”
“I intend to. Shall I begin now?”
“Begin what?”
Sten turned. Lenna looked to the door, schooled her features against a rush of blessed relief.
Quinnel stood in her doorway. He glared at the Seer, then shifted his gaze to her. “I heard you were ill. I wanted to see you.”
“How touching,” Sten said.
Quinnel stepped into the chamber, his hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword.
“Once again, Seer, I question the efficacy of your divination powers. Because surely, if they were as honed as they ought to be, you would know the perils of mocking me, or my friend.”
“You threaten me, Spanner?”
“I encourage you to moderate your tone.”
Amusement quirked Sten’s lips again. “The minister will hear of this.”
“Yes,” Quinnel said, “he will. As will my king.”
The Seer cast another look Lenna’s way and crossed to the open door. “I’ll be back before long, Walker. In the meantime, I intend to post a guard outside your door. For your safety, of course. In the past day, as our search of the castle and city have proven fruitless, there has been talk of a traitor within these walls. Some have come to question your innocence in this
matter. Unjustly, I’m sure. Still, I wouldn’t want one of them to take it in their own hands to avenge His Majesty, nor would I want you to suffer any more than you already have.”
He exited the chamber, closed the door behind him.
Lenna and Quinnel locked eyes.
“I have my chronofor,” she whispered. “Usually Jispar kept it, but he gave it to me in a different time. And Sten knows it’s gone.”
“Wouldn’t it have returned to wherever the king kept it? In this time he never sent you back.”
“That could happen with another item—a bauble, a gown, something not tied to my Walking. Chronofors...” She shook her head.
“They’re subject to their own rules; they’re more like Walkers than objects.”
He appeared to weigh this: another Traveler, accustomed to the odd phenomena connected with such talents. Before long, he nodded and said, “Give it to me, then.”
“You can’t—”
“Just until we get you away from here.”
She stared, fresh tears spilling. “I don’t think I’m ever going to leave this place. Not alive.”
“Of course you will.” He crossed to the bed and sat beside her.
After the briefest of hesitations, he took her hand, laced his fingers through hers. “What happened today?”
“I lost the baby,” she said, breathing the words through more tears. She wiped them from her face, angry with herself. “I shouldn’t care. It was his child.”
“It was your child. Of course you should care. He or she would have been strong and smart and beautiful, like you. And in spite of him.”
She regarded their hands. “I should have left the palace in Windhome with you all those years ago. None of this would have happened.”
“We can be together now. That’s what matters. First, though, you have to give me that chronofor.”
“Of course.” She reached down to the end of her bed and retrieved the device, eyeing the door as she handed it to him.
Quinnel took it from her and tucked it into his hose, under a sheathed dagger that he wore there. “I expect they’ll search me when I leave here. They won’t find it.”
“It won’t matter. It’s missing. That’s enough to convince everyone that I killed Jispar. I’m the only person in Vondehm who would have any use for a chronofor. Sten knows that. He’ll see me beheaded.”
“No,” Quinnel said. “He won’t. Are you well enough to leave here tonight?”
She faltered, dropped her chin.
“Good. Be ready to leave after dark.”
“What if they put me in chains before then?”
“If they do, I’ll work out a way to free you, but I expect they won’t. Not yet. They won’t find the chronofor, and without it, they can’t prove anything. Most important, they think you’re too ill to leave your bed. We can make use of that. Tomorrow might be too late, but we can get you away from here tonight.” He held her hand to his lips, which were warm. “Now,” he went on, “here is what I need for you to do.”
His instructions were simple enough. So simple, in fact, that she doubted his plan would work. But he sounded sure of himself, which was enough for now.
Lenna didn’t argue with him or give voice to her fears. As he left her, she tried to look hopeful.
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The guards did search him when he left her chamber. They were thorough enough to find the sheath strapped to his thigh. Not so careful that they found the Bound chronofor hidden beneath it.
Orzili—that was how he thought of himself now—knew that he and Lenna could die this night. He was endangering the lives of Minister Kraetas and the Milnosian guards as well, and so his first task after leaving Lenna’s chamber was to seek out his minister.
He liked the man, just as he liked most of the people he’d met in the court of Arlis III. He trusted Kraetas. The minister was generous, kind, intelligent. In this case, however, he would be asking a great deal of him. Too much, perhaps.
He found Kraetas in his quarters, the door guarded by four of their soldiers. The guards allowed him entry of course, and the minister greeted him, as ever, with a smile and the offer of tea and a place to sit.
Orzili remained standing.
Kraetas’s expression hardened as Quinnel spoke, but the minister kept his silence until he had finished, and for some time after.
“This is why you asked to come with me,” he said, disapproval in the words. “Instead of Fesha. You planned this.”
“No, sir. I intended only to see Lenna. We were close friends back in Windhome and...and I’ve been in love with her for a long time. I had no idea that Jispar would be killed, and I never would have guessed that blame would fall on her.”
“Did she kill him?”
He wouldn’t lie. Not about this, under these circumstances. He was asking too much of the man.
“He violated her. Repeatedly, until she was with child. He was violent and cruel—”
“Jispar was an ass. I know it. Our king knows it. That wasn’t my question, but I fear you’ve answered.”
“They’ll kill her.”
“Yes,” the minister said. “That’s what is done to assassins who kill kings.”
“I intend to help her escape. You should know this.”
“You are an emissary of the king of Milnos, a representative of his royal court—”
“Then I hereby resign as royal Spanner and relinquish all privileges conferred by the position.”
Kraetas sighed. “Quinnel—”
“And I hereby request asylum within the royal court of Milnos, as provided under the Ring Treaty of 539.”
The minister stared, open mouthed. After a fivecount, he began to laugh. “Now that I did not anticipate. Very clever indeed. Sadly, I must refuse, in the name of my liege, Arlis III.”
Orzili’s turn to be surprised. “But—”
“Requests for asylum are not designed to protect criminals. The treaty specifies that someone guilty of any crime punishable on the isle in which protection is sought cannot be harbored. Murder is as illegal in Milnos as it is in Herjes. And so is aiding a murderer.”
Orzili sagged.
“I can’t allow you to accompany me back to Caszuvaar. Not if you insist on bringing the Walker with you. In fact, once we’re clear of this castle, I can’t associate with you in any way.”
It took him a moment. “Wait. Once we’re—”
Kraetas grinned. “I’ve always thought Jispar’s Seer was a bit of an ass as well. Really, I don’t like anyone in this court. And I sense that the agreement we worked out with the king was not as advantageous to our isle as it should have been.” He crossed to the door and opened it, motioning Orzili into the corridor. “I don’t wish to know any more about this,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Getting her out of this castle is up to you. And after that—well, I’m afraid at that point we will have to part ways. I cannot risk precipitating a war with Herjes.”
“I understand.” Orzili proffered a hand, which the minister gripped. “It has been my honor to serve with you.”
“And mine to serve with you. I fear you’re making a terrible error, but I admit I harbor a certain admiration for your passion, your courage.”
Orzili left him and went in search of the commander of the small contingent of guards that had accompanied them to Herjes. He would need the woman’s help to carry out what he had in mind.
She was reluctant at first; Quinnel’s plan was audacious. He assured her, though, that the minister had offered his limited support. And he promised as well that once they were away from the castle, she would never have to see him or the Walker again.
She agreed. It seemed no one in the Herjes delegation held Jispar or his court in much esteem.
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It helped that Jispar’s Walker was tall, and also that she was ailing.
Late in the day, two Milnosian soldiers escorted the Spanner to her chamber. In light of Seer Sten’s accusations and obvious hostility, as well as the apparent lack of security in the castle
—after all, the Herjean king himself had been killed by an unknown intruder only two nights before—no one in the delegation felt safe wandering the castle unguarded.
While saying his farewell to the ailing Walker, he noticed that she looked even more ill than she had earlier in the day. He called for the Herjean healer, requested on the Walker’s behalf a powerful sleeping tonic, which the healer, after examining her briefly, agreed would be a welcome balm for the poor woman.
As the gloaming darkened her chamber and the castle grounds, the healer delivered his elixir, recommending that she only take it
when she was ready to sleep. It would work quickly and keep her abed through the night.
The Spanner said his goodbyes to her in the chamber, with the door closed, but with his soldiers present. The Herjean guards thought nothing of this. The woman was distraught, ill. Word was she had been with the king’s child and had lost the babe in the aftermath of Jispar’s death. Grief, shock, or, some said, a guilty conscience.
While the Spanner spoke with the woman, the commander of the Milnosian guard arrived with three more of her soldiers. It seemed the minister required a word with the Spanner—a matter that couldn’t wait.
In the ensuing bustle of soldiers leaving the chamber for a dimly lit corridor, the two Herjean guards could be forgiven if they paid little heed to the one soldier who, while tall, was slight in comparison to others in her company, her bronze hair unevenly shorn, her uniform not quite as snug as it should have been.
Nor would anyone in the courtyards have seen a lone figure in dun clothes climb from a darkened window and jump to the shrubs below before stealing toward the castle gate.
The Herjean guards in the hallway might take a moment to peer into the room of the Walker—she who was said to be a traitor guilty of regicide. All they would see, however, was a shadowed shape bundled in the bed, and a healer’s cup—surely empty by now—
resting on the small table beside.
The delegation left the castle that night. And if the guards at the castle gate, with those odd etchings around their eyes, failed to notice that the delegation included one more guard than it had when the Milnosians arrived days before—well, who could fault them?
Once the emissaries from the Shield were clear of the gate and on the winding lane that led toward the wharves, two members of the company split off from the others—a soldier and a man in ministerial robes. No one followed. No one saw them.
The following morning, no one could explain how the Walker had managed to escape the castle unnoticed. Though the Seer, Curden Sten, had some idea. After all, he possessed the power of divination.
Chapter Five
6th Day of Sipar’s Ascent, Year 634
From the hilltop perch of the small stone house, Mara had a sweeping view of the Firth of Rime and the rocky shoreline that angled to the south and west away from Duvyn. On a clear day, she
might see all the way across the Inward Sea to the pale rise of Liyrelle. Today, a cool, heavy rain fell, a last gasp of autumn before winter’s arrival in Daerjen’s southern headlands.
Tobias and Sofya had gone to the village of Little Duvyn, a league away from the city proper, along the banks of the river.
They sought barrowfruit—or crane fruit if they could find it—and a flask or two of Brenthian white, along with fresh bread and the season’s last greens. Soon their choices would be limited to rabbit and fish, tearroot and kelp leaves.
Sofya loved the marketplace in Little Duvyn, and the merchants there seemed taken with her. In Duvyn itself, a father and daughter with dark skin—he with raised scars on his face, she with arresting blue eyes and perfect features befitting royalty—
might draw notice and prompt unwanted inquiries. Little Duvyn was, in many ways, like the Notch, the shadow village south and east of Hayncalde in central Daerjen. Most who lived there had escaped or fled or abandoned...something. They didn’t ask questions. They didn’t betray their fellow residents, or those who came to trade. Tobias and Sofya would be safe. And the princess wouldn’t be here.
From the doorway of the house, Mara eyed the firth again, then glanced up into a sky of unremitting gray. She preferred not to Span in a rain this heavy, but if the ship appeared before the rain abated, she would have to.
After fighting off Quinnel Orzili and his band of assassins, the three of them had little choice but to leave Seris Larr’s ship, the Sea Dove . The ship was known to their enemies, as was the captain herself. Larr gave up her vessel for a new one. Tobias knew the new ship’s name before Mara read the captain’s message.
The Gray Skate .
He had sailed the ship from Windhome as a young Walker of promise, barely more than a boy. And he had done so years from now, in a lost future, a thread of history destroyed by assassination. The implications of Walking through time could befuddle anyone, even those trained in the way of chronofors and Walks and the dreaded between.
Seris Larr piloted her ship to ports on nearly every isle between the oceans, as anyone observing her would expect. Sometimes she lingered in the waters around the Axle, or in the bays of Ensydar. Sometimes she anchored her ship farther south, in the calm waters between Liyrelle and Daerjen, near the mouth of the Firth of Rime. There was nothing so unusual about that.
And no one would see a lone figure flash through the space between the headlands and that lonely ship, lashed by a gap wind, guided by calibrations on a Bound sextant. A sextant that once belonged to Quinnel Orzili.
