A knife of oblivion, p.13
A Knife of Oblivion, page 13
part #8 of The Kingmakers' War Series
“This is the place,” Kael replied. It was exactly as his informant had described it. “I am sure.”
“We’ll be like dogs in a barrel if it’s an ambush,” Nath said, but he followed Kael anyway.
They crossed the plank, Auberon going first, Nath second, and Kael following at the rear with his hand on his knife. He could still feel the weight of wary gazes on them all from the doorways and windows of the buildings on shore.
They had to crouch down to step inside. The hut was larger than it appeared on the outside, with a set of recessed mud steps leading down to a lower level below the water. Overhead, sunlight winked through the slits in the reed roof. The air smelled like fish and seaweed, and the sea sucked at the slats with a gurgling sound.
An ageless woman sat cross-legged on a mat of knotted reeds and dried kelp in the center of the hut. A sea-woman, according to the word of Kael’s informant.
Nath’s stomach curled looking at her. He was reminded of nightmares and stories of the things that crawled from the wild sea in the north, far from civilization. The sea-woman had black eyes like a shark and a wide mouth that she kept carefully closed, her lips curled over her teeth, as she nodded at them in greeting. Her hair was a soft gray-white with a pearly sheen to it, and it fell over her shoulders in a tangled waterfall. Some might have called her beautiful, and some might have called her horrifying, and they’d both be right.
The sea-woman beckoned to them to step forward with a flick of her fingers that reminded Nath of the flutter of kelp on a wave.
They stepped forward. Auberon flexed his fingers at his side. Kael looked at the woman without flinching. Nath bit back another mutter of foreboding.
“Welcome,” the sea-woman said. Her voice was low and gravelly, like the mutter of the sea at low tide. “I heard you were looking for me, Kael of Estria.”
Kael gave no indication that he was surprised she knew who he was.
“And do you know what I seek?” he asked in an even tone.
The sea-woman inclined her head, not exactly answering the question. “I can give you the answers you wish, warrior-man. For a price.”
“Naturally,” Kael said. He reached into his coat pocket for the bag of gold coins he’d brought, but the woman made a sound in her throat and made another fluttering gesture with her long, webbed fingers.
“I do not want your cold metal trinkets,” she said with a curl of her lip. “They have little use to me.”
“What do you want, then?” Kael asked.
She blinked her wide, black eyes at him as she plucked at a necklace of shells that hung around her neck. “A promise from your prince.”
“I cannot speak for him, or make any such promises,” Kael said steadily. He gave no indication that he was concerned, but Nath’s heart sank. They couldn’t barter with the crown of the court in exile. They had no such power behind their little rescue attempt.
She frowned. “Such a pity. If you cannot secure a promise from him, then I am afraid perhaps you have nothing to offer me.”
The dragonsayer’s rescue was slipping away, and Nath felt powerless to stop it. He couldn’t let this happen. Not after everything else that was his fault.
He put a hand on his knife. Maybe they could threaten the information out of her.
The sea-woman saw his movement. She turned her black gaze upon him. “Little man,” she said, “you do not want to try to come at me with your steel. You would not prevail in a fight.”
“Come now,” Auberon interrupted, surprising Nath. “I am sure we can come to some other arrangement. One that doesn’t leave us disappointed or dead.”
He locked his seething gaze on the sea-woman, the same look he’d used to frighten away their would-be attacker in the alleyway earlier, and she gazed coolly back, uncowering.
“And who are you to threaten me?” she said to Auberon.
“You know what I am, and what I can do,” Auberon said.
The sea-woman smiled, deliberately showing her teeth. They were sharp and triangular like shark teeth, and there were three glistening rows of them in her mouth. She flicked her blue-green tongue over them.
“You do not frighten me, Seeker-man. I am from the saltwater world, which holds beauty and horror like you’ve never dreamed of. I have danced with monsters in the depths of the sea that would make your blood curdle. I have locked lips with mermen who could kill you with a flick of one finger.”
Auberon appeared undeterred. “But you are here now, in the air,” he breathed. “You are in my realm. And I can inflict enough pain with one stroke of my hand to make you claw your eyes out.”
The sea-woman leaned forward. Her eyes glinted with a strange kind of eagerness. Monster staring down monster, Nath thought.
“Maybe,” she said. “But I do not think your companion here will let you.” She indicated Kael with a flick of her wrist.
She was probably right. Kael wouldn’t let them torture the sea-woman. And perhaps with good reason. Maybe Nath had spent too much time in the company of thieves, that he thought everything could be solved with a blade. Thinking that made him think of Briand, and his throat tightened with a painful lump as he remembered how painfully and reluctantly she’d worked her way through the truth that diplomacy could work better than always thinking with her knife.
Then, Nath had an idea. One they all should have thought of before. He realized that he tended to think of the Seeker as a weapon only, but really, his mind was merely a tool that could be wielded for good or ill as he saw fit.
“He can give you more than pain,” he said slowly, thinking.
Everyone turned to look at Nath—the sea-woman with amused interest, Kael without expression except for one raised brow, Auberon with a recoil of abject horror.
“I’m not some doxy for you Monarchists to whore out as payment,” Auberon snarled.
“He can give you memories,” Nath added quickly, choking back a nervous giggle at their assumption. “You cannot go far from the sea, yes? You have never seen mountains, then, I’ll wager. You have never seen the Estrian plains. Lords, they are lovely.”
The sea-women hesitated. She appeared to be weighing a thought. She blinked twice and reached up to brush her fingers through one of her tangled locks of hair.
“Tell me,” she said finally. “Have you ever seen—” She paused dramatically, staring into Nath’s face as if daring him to lie. “—cows?”
Nath thought for one moment that she was making fun of him. He flushed, and then coughed to hide his startled laughter. “Er, cows?”
Auberon rubbed the place between his eyes in annoyance. Half of Kael’s mouth tugged in a ghost of a smile, probably at Nath’s bewilderment.
“Cows,” she repeated, her tone curious. “You know what they are? Those noble creatures with the soft, moist noses and the blunted horns? The ones that make lowing sounds like whales, and give milk to your young as well as their own?”
“Yes. Yes, I know what cows are,” Nath exclaimed. “Lords, I’ve just never heard anyone describe one so, ah, poetically.”
The sea-woman tilted her head toward Auberon with an air of eagerness. “And you?”
“I have seen cows,” Auberon answered, his face stiff as if he were holding back a snort of laughter. “I can show you in exchange for what you know.”
Nath fleetingly wondered what mundane and unremarkable creature from the sea, at least by the sea-woman’s perspective—did humankind seem obsessed with? But now was not the time for such ponderings.
They were close to an agreement. His heart banged against his ribs.
Would she agree?
“Show me a memory of cows, and I will show you one in return,” the sea-woman said finally.
Nath held himself still. He cut a glance at Kael, who looked as though he were also bracing himself against a reaction.
They were so close.
“All right.” Auberon heaved a sigh and held out his hands toward Kael as if he barely found the prospect worth his time. Nath suspected this was an act.
Kael unlocked the metal gloves, and Auberon reached for the sea-woman’s face. “Hold still.”
Nath averted his eyes as the Seeker pressed his hand like a claw over the sea-woman’s face. His stomach churned, and he felt like he was going to have to stumble outside and empty the contents of his stomach into the harbor. Kael put a steadying hand on his shoulder, and Nath drew in a quick, shuddering breath and wished that Snowball were with him. The little rypter always seemed to keep him calm in situations like these, situations that brought back the flood of memories from when he’d been a Seeker slave.
But the steady weight of his friend’s hand against his shoulder kept him anchored, and Nath swallowed the demons that threatened his mind with a gulp of the seaweed-smelling air and a shake of his head. Then Auberon was pulling away, and the sea-woman was leaning back on her mat, her face contorted with an expression not unlike ecstasy.
“Exquisite,” she said, blinking her shark’s eyes.
“Did you find her?” Kael asked Auberon. His tone was carefully controlled, but Nath could see the tension in the captain of the guard’s shoulders and jaw as he waited for the Seeker’s response.
“I found her,” Auberon confirmed.
~
The mind of the sea-woman had been unlike any Auberon had ever touched before. Slippery, somehow, as though he were handling the wriggling body of some many-limbed sea creature dredged from the depths. He’d sunk deep into her memories of cold blue seas and muffled whale songs, and shivers of dread had rolled over his skin as he probed deeper and wider into the murk of her mind. He realized that she could see through the eyes of fish that she kept as pets, and then he skated into the memories of the sea that her mind contained. It was like a staircase spiraling down and down in tight circles toward a dungeon. Down and down and down.
Each memory he slid into was colder and more alien than the one before it. At last, he saw where the sea-woman had nudged him—a school of yellow fish, undulating ahead of her through the vast blue, drawn to the flutter of a torn garment trailing in the current near the surface of the water. There was a woman’s body, drifting face-up, back arched, legs trailing like a dancer caught frozen in a moment of musical ecstasy. She was pale in the green-gold sunlight.
It was the dragonsayer.
The fishes’ minds held little snippets of memories. A swirl of hair like seaweed. A lifeless arm, its fingers slack, and the fish nibbled at the fingers gently, experimentally.
Then, a violent splash of rope that sent the school scattering. An explosion of white bubbles and churning water as human limbs punctuated the water and caught the unconscious woman. The fish fled to deeper water, flying fast as arrows from the interloper who’d disturbed their ocean.
When they looked up again, the woman’s motionless body dangled in the water, half in and half out, lit by green-gold sunlight. She jerked once as the rope tied around her waist tightened, and she disappeared into the air above.
Auberon strained in the memories, but the fish only swam away for deeper waters.
Then, he was in the mind of the sea-woman again, who was curious. She rose to the surface, and her head broke the water as the dragonsayer’s body was hauled over the rail of a ship with gray sails. A word was written on the side of the ship.
Auberon broke away from the sea-woman’s mind with relief. Kael and Nath were staring at him, and something dripped from his nose. He touched a hand to the lower half of his face, and when he drew it away, he saw blood.
“Well?” Nath demanded.
“I saw her,” Auberon said, and exhaled as if he were confessing something. He blinked at the memory that still lingered in his mind. His mouth tasted like salt water, and his skin felt tight, as if he’d been in the sun and wind for too long. “She was floating in the water. She was unconscious.”
Kael’s jaw flexed, and Nath swore under his breath. “And? Did you see what happened to her?”
“Yes,” Auberon said. He still felt the sting of salt water in his nose, as if he’d actually been in the sea.
They left the hut made of reeds and crossed the plank to dry land. Auberon shook off a shudder as his feet touched the cobblestones of the street. He felt unmoored. He had not liked being in the mind of the fish. And the sight of the dragon girl floating in the water like that, like she was dead…
He knew she was alive, but seeing her in that state had wrenched at him like a jagged-edged blade. Gutted him.
Auberon was still reeling a little from the effort of diving into the sea-woman’s mind. He was still dizzy from being in the heads of the fish. Was this what the dragonsayer experienced every time she dipped into a dragon’s head?
Thinking of her made his chest clench.
They hadn’t gone five steps when Kael stopped Auberon in his tracks.
“Tell us everything you saw,” he commanded.
“Men pulled her from the water and onto a ship,” Auberon said. “The name of it was Banaclees.”
Kael looked at Nath expectantly, and the ugly little Monarchist said, “It’s Mammish for ‘the way the sun shines on the water and makes you feel nostalgic for your homeland,’ or something like that.”
“So, we go to Mammot,” Auberon said.
“No, we speak with our spies to find out more. The ship might have a Mammish name, but that means almost nothing as to her whereabouts,” Kael said.
“Then,” Auberon hissed, “let us return to the palace at once to summon your spies.”
Kael hesitated. He lifted his gaze to the buildings around them, his shoulders tensing. Nath stepped to his side.
“Well?” Auberon demanded. “What are you waiting for?”
“Something’s wrong,” Kael said.
CHAPTER TWENTY
KAEL MOVED A split second before the attacker dropped from the roof above. The attacker landed in a crouch in a single, fluid movement, face obscured by black cloth, knife in hand.
This was no dockside thief.
This was a trained assassin.
The assailant lunged for Kael in a movement as graceful and fluid as falling water, but Kael was ready after months of training with the queen’s shadow guard. He dodged away, and then sprang forward, capturing the assassin’s hand and trapping the blade of the knife flat against his hip. The attacker struggled, but Kael was a stronger man. Nath came from behind and grabbed the assassin with an arm around the neck, and he bellowed at Auberon, “Quickly now!”
Auberon yanked down the black cloth, revealing the face of a young man with black, angry eyes and a mouth set with fury and strain. The Seeker pressed his palm against the attacker’s forehead, his fingers splayed like a spider’s legs, and the assassin’s spine went rigid as he made a strangled sound in his throat. Kael yanked away the knife, and the assassin thrashed against Nath’s arm, his legs kicking.
Auberon pulled back his hand, and his eyes gleamed. “Thought you could fight it, eh?” he said to the assassin.
The young man’s eyes blazed with anger, but before anyone else could speak, more dark figures dropped around them. Kael and Auberon whirled to fight, and Nath clobbered the unmasked assailant on the head and went to join them.
Instead, they flowed past the three men like water, seized the now-unconscious young assassin, and disappeared into the alleyways that curved and split away in a dozen maze-like passages.
Kael, panting, asked Auberon, “Did you find out who he was?”
“I saw that he was here to kill you,” the Seeker said.
“But this feels like helping you, and I’m not here to assist in your little political schemes. I’m here to rescue Briand. We aren’t allies, Monarchist.”
“I never said we were,” Kael replied. He signaled to Nath, who’d gone to the end of the street to look for any sight of danger. “Let us return to the palace at once. We’ve learned much today.”
He needed to speak with Jehn.
~
Kael met the prince in the queen’s garden. Jehn stood with his face toward the lake, his expression thoughtful as he listened to Kael’s account of the attack in the city.
“It is my firm belief,” Kael finished, “that this assassination attempt, for whatever reason, is aimed at me and not at you, given that all attacks have occurred when I was present.”
“And you think your family is behind this?” Jehn asked.
“I don’t know, sir. It could be that someone is trying to frame them. We cannot assume a straightforward motivation.”
“By that line of reasoning,” Jehn said, “we cannot yet assume that you are the target. It could be that these would-be assassins want to relax our guard.”
Kael studied the prince with surprise. “What are you suggesting, sir?”
“That I remain where I am for now and continue to take the precautions we’ve established. Until we know for certain what is at stake,” Jehn said.
Kael kept his face expressionless, but inside, he was almost amused.
Jehn and the queen of Nyr must be getting along better than expected in their new living arrangement.
“As you wish,” he replied.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CAIT WAS CROUCHED in the thief-queen quarters when Quill found her, sitting with her shoulders resting against the wall and her knees drawn to her chest, keeping herself distracted by relentlessly sewing red cloaks for the decoys who went on the missions under the banner of the Scarlet Blade.
“We need you,” he said, and Cait stuffed her sewing kit into her sash before she rose and followed him, her heart thumping in apprehension as they moved through the damp halls of the thief quarters. “We just got word that there has been an attack on a farm in one of our zones of protection outside the city. Needle is supposed to lead this morning’s run over the slaver routes, but…” Quill paused outside one of the doorways to the individual thief rooms. “Well, as you can see…”
Cait took a step past him into the room he indicated, and immediately covered her nose and mouth.
Needle lay facedown on his bed, snoring thunderously, with the blankets bunched around his waist and a bucket sitting on the floor beside him. The air was rank with the smell of vomit. Most of it appeared to be in the bucket, thankfully.
