All That Glitters (26 page)

So, the plan—­the only plan she had—­was this: since you couldn't see a Quiet Man coming, you couldn't help but be ambushed. The only choice one had in the matter was
where
the ambush would take place, and so she had determined the one spot where the Mute Prophets
knew
she would have to be in order to find Xahlven, and therefore where she would be ambushed: outside the Venerable Society of Famuli.

Myreon just had to get there before the Mute Prophets figured out what she already knew. For a full mage, that shouldn't be much of a problem, but she would have to pick up the pace. She smiled and made another feyleap that covered half a city block. For once
she
was the one making the plans that the other person was struggling to unravel. That felt good.

She leapt again, pushing herself, pulling as much of the Fey from the summer evening as she could. There was a
lot
of it—­too much, even for a big, chaotic place like Saldor. It made her think of Daer Trondor and Sahand's systematic manipulation of the Trondor sink, only somewhat less intense. Chaos was brewing, that much was clear—­she didn't need to be an augur to figure that out. Andolon's plan was about to bear fruit, and the brilliance of it was starting to become clear to her. Keeper's Court aflame, the Defenders swarming the streets, Tyvian Reldamar on the loose—­it was a perfect storm of the chaotic and unpredictable. How the hell did a low-­rate nobleman know this would happen when all the rest of the augurs in Saldor did not? Was his pet Verisi that good?

Or had it been Xahlven the whole time, just like Tyvian said?

Myreon made it to the Old City in record time, coasting on a ley of Fey energy that drove her feyleaps into the realm of the legendary—­she cleared both the West Mouth and the Narrow Mouth each with one bound, and the walls of the Old City had scarcely been a challenge. The Defenders, it seemed, were not looking for her at all.

So it was that, still fortified with defensive enchantments and armed with a staff she had liberated from a drunk in a Crosstown alley, she slipped from the shadow of a cypress tree along a dark carriage lane in the Merchant Quarter just across from the Saldorian Exchange. She eyed the great columned halls, watching for movement. The cool damp of the summer evening filled her nostrils and made her shiver; her body ached. It was past midnight now and too peaceful. Bloody mornings should begin with more warning.

She took great care to not be seen as she walked the short distance from the exchange to the Famuli Club. Once there, she remained in the shadows, waiting for some indication of where the Quiet Men would hide. There was none. She etched the Sigil of Danger again, and only managed to count to two before it vanished. They—­or someone else who meant her harm—­were here, somewhere. She'd made very good time from New Crosstown, but she hadn't made it quite quickly enough.

If the Prophets wanted to stop her, they would have to divine how she meant to get to the Secret Exchange and cut her off. If she could avoid them, all the better. But how?

Tyvian had told her about the window with the weak latch that she could enter to sneak into the exchange. To her knowledge there were only three ways to that window. The first was through the club itself and then onto the roof, the second was climbing the ivy-­covered walls, and the third was simply feyleaping to the roof. It stood to reason, then, that they would be waiting for her on the roof, hidden in the shadows surrounding the dome of the Secret Exchange.

There was an easy way to find out, of course. Myreon withdrew deeper into the shadows and, drawing the cool and the dark into her bones, worked a careful Etheric spell to craft a simulacrum of herself. A relatively simple thing—­more glamour than substance—­but worth it for the kind of fishing expedition she had in mind. With a thought, she impelled her illusory self across the street and to the walls of the club, where the simulacrum began to “climb,” or at least simulate it with as much accuracy as possible, given the situation.

The simulacrum achieved the top, and Myreon watched its progress with a farsight augury. It walked to the dome at the center of the roof and paused at the window—­no one emerged to hinder it. Had that really been her, she could have slipped right in.

Myreon frowned—­had she been wrong about all this? If they hadn't ambushed her on the city roofs, if they hadn't waited for her while she crossed over the city wall, and they weren't waiting for her outside the Secret Exchange, then the only feasible place they could expect her to be was . . .

. . . right here.

Her breath catching in her teeth, Myreon snatched up her staff, but in that moment somebody shoved a burlap bag over her head, drowning her in darkness.

They had been right behind her the whole time.

 

A
s Tyvian stood up to face Marcom, voices around him whispered to one another in a half-­dozen tongues:
That's Tyvian Reldamar. Heard he killed twenty men . . . Best swordsman in the West . . . Murderer and traitor. Burned Keeper's Court to the ground.
The effect on his self-­esteem was not to be underestimated. He gave Marcom a winning grin. “Swords, to the yield, right here, and right now.”

Marcom's flunkies began pushing tables out of the way and threatening patrons to clear out until there was a large area of filthy, sticky floorboards across which to duel. The patrons, for their part, were engrossed in the drama about to unfold. Whore, slumming gentlefolk, and skeevy barflies alike hung on Tyvian and Marcom's every motion. Marcom threw off a half cape and sank into the en garde position. “This time we do it for real. No more tricks.”

Tyvian drew Gethrey's sword—­a well-­polished but infrequently used rapier with barely an edge left on it and a trifle unbalanced toward the point. He gave Gethrey a significant glare. His former friend was watching him carefully; their eyes met. Gethrey made a slicing gesture across his throat and smiled broadly.

Turning back to Marcom, Tyvian mirrored the young twit's en garde. “Ready when you are, sir.”

Marcom pressed the attack, intending to test Tyvian's defenses. His technique was adequate but not sophisticated. Tyvian parried once, twice, without retreating a step, ducked a slash and then met the boy's lunge with a locking parry, bringing them
corps
à
corps
. Marcom pushed hard against Tyvian, but all his youthful enthusiasm wasn't quite equal to Tyvian's battle-­hardened strength; he easily held the boy at bay.

Tyvian could have ended the duel right there—­a quick sweep of Marcom's forward leg, a pommel strike to the fool's nose, and Marcom would be on his back with a blade at his throat. He couldn't do that, though. He had to lose somehow—­the knives at Maude's and Claudia's throats and the ring on his finger made that a certainty.

He let Marcom push him back but parried the boy's next two thrusts more out of reflex than intent. Marcom frowned. “You think you can trick me? I'm no fool, Reldamar!”

Tyvian countered with a few simple attacks at about half his normal speed, letting Marcom parry them while he tried to come up with a workable plan. “I should think you'd be pleased, Marcom—­you're doing very well.”

Marcom pressed the attack and the two of them skipped back and forth across the sticky floorboards, blades flashing. The bar patrons whistled encouragement and jeered on occasion, but nobody interfered. It wasn't immediately clear to Tyvian whether he was performing before a pro-­ or anti-­Tyvian crowd.

Marcom made a wild slash—­very sloppy—­and Tyvian beat his sword out of his hand. The boy's face froze in terror, but Tyvian stepped back, hands up. Boos echoed throughout the room as the young DeVauntnesse scurried to retrieve his blade.

Tyvian took the moment's respite to look over at Gethrey—­he was livid, his eyes bulging. “What are you doing?” he snapped.

Tyvian shrugged. “What do you want from me? The boy is as bad as his uncle ever was.”

“End it,” Gethrey growled, jerking his head. There was a sharp sigh and Tyvian's head whipped around to see one of the barmaids slump facedown on the bar, a river of red pouring from her slashed throat. The Quiet Man who had done it was gone; nobody noticed the girl was dead. Not yet, anyway.

The ring blazed with unconscionable fury, and Tyvian nearly dropped his sword. He stumbled back against Gethrey's table and his former friend gripped him in the shoulder. “For every touch you win, I cut a throat, Tyv—­think about it.”

Tyvian felt the ring pulse with power—­it seemed to glow on his hand. “I am,” he said, standing up.

Marcom
flechéd
; Tyvian parried and let Marcom run past, giving him a quick kick in the rear as he went. Marcom went stumbling into the laps of several whores, who laughed a bit too loudly and made a ­couple uncouth suggestions on what Marcom could do while there. Somewhere behind Tyvian, he heard a Rhondian voice shout,
“Olé!”

Yes, this was definitely a pro-­Tyvian Reldamar crowd.

Somewhere, though, another innocent was paying with her life. There was too much noise and chaos for him to know where, though. Tyvian's heart shuddered with anger.

Marcom got up, his pink hair mussed, his nostrils flaring. “You'll
bleed
for that!”

Tyvian offered no rejoinder. He couldn't keep this going—­the Defenders would be surrounding the Cauldron at any moment, Gethrey would keep ordering the Quiet Men to cut throats, and sooner or later Marcom would get lucky and stick him somewhere uncomfortable.

As they fenced, Tyvian tried to see solutions, but he wasn't finding any. Had the duel been to first blood, he might have been able to let Marcom win without gravely injuring himself. Had it been to the death, well, at least then it would be final. To the yield was a bit more . . . unusual. It meant they would duel until one or the other of them surrendered. Tyvian, of course, could just yield at any time, but that wouldn't satisfy Gethrey one bit—­that meant throats cut, no more Maude or Claudia. He also couldn't force Marcom to yield—­throat-­cutting, again.

The only way out was to get himself stabbed—­and to make it look good—­but without actually dying. He grimaced as he countered a particularly obvious feint from Marcom.
I can't believe I'm actually considering this.

He advanced on Marcom and loosened up his form, leaving openings that even a novice like the young DeVauntnesse would see. Even so, it took the boy two exchanges to notice and another before he actually struck. Marcom's blade sunk three inches into the meat of Tyvian's thigh; the pain stole his breath and made him fall to his opposite knee. He felt the blood spreading, warm and sticky, inside his breeches. Somehow, he managed not to cry out.

Marcom held his blade to Tyvian's cheek, a tight little smile on his pug face. “Yield!”

Tyvian looked at Gethrey, who was watching over a crystal glass of
chleurie
. Gethrey smirked and shook his head slowly. The room was silent.

“Kroth take you, you little priss.” Tyvian launched himself upward, pain flashing bright as lightning, and lunged at Marcom, blade thrusting wildly at the boy's chest. Marcom stumbled in his retreat and fell. For the third or fourth time in as many minutes, Tyvian refrained from ending the duel. Leaning heavily on his uninjured left leg, he waited for Marcom to rise. .

Marcom's eyes narrowed. “What game are you playing?”

Tyvian grimaced. “The same one you are, only I know I'm a piece and you think you're a player.” Tyvian switched to his left hand and modified his stance to minimize the pressure on his injured leg. It didn't help much, and it also meant he had to start fencing Barrister, which was really better suited to a sabre than Gethrey's poorly balanced, dull rapier.

Marcom was ill-­suited to the change in style. Tyvian attacked more forcefully with the edge of his blade, beating and striking Marcom's rapier out of line and advancing aggressively, though not as quickly as he might have with two good legs under him. Marcom battled but Tyvian again kept from ending it. He let Marcom struggle in
corps
à
corps
before letting Marcom push him over and onto his back. Marcom slashed with his rapier, putting a smooth, shallow cut across Tyvian's chest. Red blood bloomed across his white linen shirt. “Yield!” Marcom shouted, panting.

Tyvian looked again at Gethrey—­the fop was chuckling. He shook his head and waggled his finger at him.

“Why do you keep looking over there?” Marcom pressed his blade to Tyvian's neck. “I have you! You
have
to yield!”

Tyvian's mouth felt dry; the pain of his injuries seemed to sing in his ears; the ring throbbed with the weight of oceans. “I don't have to do a damned
thing
.” With his off hand, he grabbed Marcom's rapier by the tip and, feeling the blade cut into his hand, he pulled it aside and rose as quickly as he could. The room spun as the blood rushed from his head. He stumbled against Marcom, knocking the boy backward. There was a riot of movement and sound—­­people gasping, ­people cursing. He felt his hands push Marcom away, and it was then that he realized that he'd dropped Gethrey's sword.

His blood pressure gradually equalized and he found himself standing in the center of room, hands at his sides, unarmed. Marcom was three paces away, rapier drawn—­in easy lunging distance. The boy, though, did not strike. Nobody spoke; it was as though the entire barroom had decided to collectively hold its breath.

Tyvian spread his hands. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

Marcom's eyes were wide—­in confusion or fear, Tyvian couldn't tell. “Yield!”

“I refuse.” Tyvian kept his hands spread. “C'mon, boy—­take your shot. Kill me already.”

A
rtus and Brana ducked into a doorway as another squadron of mirror men marched by. Brana growled softly.

“I know.” Artus nodded. “There's a lot of 'em around.”

Brana nodded—­an exact mimic of Artus's own nod. “Looking Tyvian?”

“Yeah, but I wonder why they ain't kicking in doors and such.” Artus thought about it. “Guess they're waiting for the right wizard to tell 'em which door to kick, huh?”

Brana growled, which told Artus all he needed to know.

“I know—­we're almost there, okay? Just keep moving.”

Getting to the Cauldron was proving to be complicated. They had spent literally hours finding a way to cross both the Narrow Mouth and the West Mouth without being questioned by a Defender. All the bridges were guarded, all the water taxis stopped and searched, and stealing a boat was among the last things he wanted to try again, despite Brana's enthusiasm for that plan. They wound up bribing a corpse salvager—­a distasteful, toothless old man with knobby hands—­to hide them each in a sack and take them across both rivers in his black-­hulled boat. The little skiff had reeked of rotting meat and dried blood, and the inside of the sack had smelled worse, but they had made it. He had made a mental note to take some illbane powder at the next opportunity, just to be safe, and then they hurried through the narrow alleys and twisting cobbled streets of New Crosstown, dodging Defender patrols along the way.

They made it to the Cauldron just a few hours before dawn—­a time Artus was fast realizing had become like his natural habitat—­and observed it from across the road, keeping an eye out for tails or Defenders snooping around. Artus saw nobody. Come to think of it, the streets were unusually quiet. Everybody was keeping their heads low, he guessed. ­People here had heard how Tyvian burned down Keeper's Court; they were probably waiting for the other shoe to drop. He could almost taste the unease in the great city's odd silence.

Wherever Tyvian is found, the mirror men will make that place pay.
If Tyvian was found in the Cauldron, he had no doubt Maude and whoever else would get dragged back to the Block. He supposed the rich folks in the Old City would demand something be done about the rabble that would harbor such a criminal, and life over here would get harder—­more Defenders, more augurs scrying your future, more trouble if you stepped out of line. He'd seen that kind of thing happen in Ayventry and in Freegate before that. No matter what happened, the smallfolk were always the ones left holding the bag.

The basement entrance to the Cauldron didn't open to his knock—­not even the viewport slid back. “Is it closed?” Artus wondered, but he remembered seeing lights in the windows, and since when would a place like this close before dawn?

Brana cocked his head and sniffed the air. “Fighting inside. Blood.”

“You smell Tyvian?”

Brana yipped in the affirmative and began to get excited, his whole body squirming inside his illusory suit.

Artus grabbed him by the shoulders. “Okay, we need a plan.” He paused—­he realized he had no plans. “Whaddya think?”

“Escape on a boat!” Brana said, nodding furiously.

Artus licked his lips. “Well . . . actually, that's not such a terrible idea. Where will we get a boat, though?”

Brana snorted. “Docks, stupid.”

Artus sighed—­of course. Then again, he didn't have a better idea. “Okay, fine—­
I'm
going to go in here and spring Tyvian.
You
go down to that dock we went to the other night and get us a boat, okay?”

Brana
hurruffed
assent and then bolted away, moving with feline speed and grace into the Saldorian night. Artus, meanwhile, slipped around the side of the building and broke in through a window. After that it was just a matter of acting like he belonged—­a skill that Tyvian had spent extensive time tutoring him in. He was pretty damned good at it, too. Though he passed at least two whores on his way down to the common room, neither of them so much as batted a voluminous eyelash at him. He slipped through the kitchens and came out into the common room behind the bar.

There was some kind of fight going on in the center of the barroom floor. Artus heard the clash of steel—­a duel. ­People were stacked along the walls five deep, making room for the combatants. Nobody seemed inclined to move, and he barely squeezed his way to a spot atop the corner of the bar itself. There, through a fog of pipe-­smoke, he saw who was dueling: Tyvian.

Odd fact: Tyvian wasn't winning.

Artus had seen Tyvian duel enough to know that he was good—­very, very good. Indeed, their brief (and frustrating) fencing lessons had proven to him that Tyvian was capable of things with a sword that not only seemed impossible but that he had trouble seeing with his naked eyes. So, the fact that Tyvian was standing in the middle of the barroom floor with blood staining the front of his shirt and a nasty wound in his right thigh either meant he was fencing somebody equally as terrifying with a blade, or . . . what?