Broken Blade (13 page)

Read Broken Blade Online

Authors: Kelly McCullough

“Don’t you think it’s a little early for that?” he asked.
“It’s medicinal,” I said. “And it’s midafternoon.”
“But the meal you’re drinking is breakfast. I think that trumps the actual hour, don’t you?” He cocked his head to one side, and I got the distinct impression of a disapproving stare. “Especially considering the day we have ahead of us. Or have you already forgotten about Maylien?”
I hadn’t, not quite, but he was still right. With a sigh, I took a last drink, then recorked the bottle and set it aside. Sometimes it’s a pain having an external conscience, especially one that won’t shut up.
“Better,” said Triss. “You’re going to need your wits unscrambled if we want to find Devin and stay out of the hands of Lok’s crowd.” He sounded angry when he mentioned Lok, but the homicidal rage of the previous night seemed to have lightened enough to shift his focus to Devin.
“Lok’s crowd.” I shook my head. Their behavior didn’t make any more sense looking back than it had at the time. “Who do you suppose they are? And what do they want?”
Triss shrugged his wings. “Whoever they are, they know far too much about our kind for my comfort. Once we’ve recovered the girl, we’ll need to find and kill them and their master. The sheuth glyph would be enough to condemn them even without that trick they pulled with the deathspark and those Kadeshi mercenaries. That’s all information we don’t dare allow to spread.”
I shrugged. “With only four Blades left beyond Devin’s lot, I don’t know that the information matters all that much.” Triss froze and gave me a hard look, and I held up a hand. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t kill them, just that Blade secrets don’t seem to matter that much anymore.”
“Do you truly believe that?” asked Triss, and I heard real sadness in his voice.
“I don’t know, Triss. If Devin’s assassins are the future of the order, maybe it’d be better if more people had ways to take us down. Maybe it would be better if we died out completely.”
Triss shook his head wordlessly, then laid his chin on my thigh. I scratched him behind his ears, and we sat like that for a while.
“I’m sorry, Triss,” I said finally. “I just get depressed sometimes.”
“I know. I’m sorry, too. But that doesn’t mean we should give up.”
I wanted to say that I gave up a long time ago, but I couldn’t do that to Triss. Especially since it wasn’t really true. I might have given up on many things, but I’d never give up on him. And now after last night, I was maybe even starting to see some hope for me again. Which meant we probably did need to make some plans for the future.
“You’re right about that glyph’s being all kinds of bad news for the few of us that remain,” I said. “But I’m a lot less worried about the deathspark.”
“Why so?”
“A deathspark’s a mighty chancy bit of magic under the best of circumstances, even more so when tied to more than one man like that. If your target doesn’t take the bait within a day and a night, you’ve done nothing more than kill the ones you set it on to no good purpose. Beyond that, I doubt it’d even bother any of the other remaining Blades. I didn’t see any other swords on the bottom of the sacred lake when I put mine there.”
Triss shook his head. “That assumes it was the magic in the goddess’s steel that protected you instead of the touch of the goddess herself.”
I thought about it for a moment. Some of the powers that resided in the swords of Namara were intrinsic to the weapons themselves, but not all. And a deathspark was damned powerful magic to have to counter. Sacrifice magic always is—not to mention dark as night-spilled blood. It’s a sort of necromancy, burning up the life of a person so that their death will rebound on whoever killed them.
“Could be you’re right, Triss.” Then I shrugged. “Either way, I’m screwed. I’ve neither sacred steel nor goddess left to protect me.”
“Which means,” said Triss, sternly, “that we need to start thinking about how to prepare you for another deathspark.”
He had a point. “I assume there are things a person can do to ward against them. I just don’t know what since it never mattered to me before. I guess that’s one more item to put on the giant list of things we need to know yesterday. Along with who Lok was working for, how they found me, why they wanted to know about Devin, where Devin is, what his plan is, where did he take Maylien, who is Maylien really, and so on.”
“None of which can be solved from here,” said Triss.
“None of which can be solved from here. Which, I suppose, means that I need to get dressed.” I reached for the whiskey again, and Triss stiffened grumpily.
“For external use this time,” I said, “much as it pains me to say it. These cuts need cleaning.” Triss furled his wings and settled back down. “I need a bath, too, but that’s going to have to wait till we’re in a better neighborhood.”
Half an hour later, I was back on the street dressed as a much poorer and more travel-worn version of myself. Down in the street, the wind wasn’t half so cold though it still kicked up a lot of dust and grit. Many of the people I passed had wrapped scarves around their faces or turned up the collars of their vests and jackets. I made a quick stop at a public bath and another at an armorer—the one necessary before I could bear to put my boots on, the other to pick up a hard-used short sword. And that reduced to the brink of starvation the already thin emergency purse that had been tucked into the bottom of my cache.
Half an hour after that, I was making my way through the crowded streets and over the top of the Kanathean Hill toward the Old Mews, hoping desperately that the giant banner of smoke trailing away in front of me wasn’t coming from my erstwhile dungeon. Then I got close enough to see the fire.
It wasn’t the dungeon.
It was the whole damn neighborhood.

 

7
The
wind off the sea had whipped the flames into an all-devouring madness. The entire neighborhood was lost. I had a damned good idea where and how it had started, and I swore bitterly at the sight. Accidental fires didn’t spread this way, not in good neighborhoods, where they could afford to keep the antifire wards in top shape. Not even with these winds.
That made this emberman’s work. Lok’s mystery boss was covering his tracks and Devin’s, too, though I figured that last was an accident. Devin might have fallen a long way, but I simply couldn’t imagine him playing emberman. Fire killed wholesale. Using it like this marked you out as someone who couldn’t hit the target clean. Incompetent. A temple-trained Blade would sooner cut his own throat.
Though I didn’t think it would do me much good, I moved upwind and slipped through the cordon of stingers that were keeping people away from the fire. The line of watchmen, in the black and gold uniforms that gave them their nickname, were fending off a mixed crowd. Gawkers and opportunists mostly, leavened with the occasional concerned resident. I didn’t get very deep into the burning neighborhood. Even with the smoke mostly blowing away from me, the heat forced me to turn around before I’d traveled much more than a block.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit!” I turned away from the flames, toward the nearest wall and my shadow. “Triss, what are the chances of us circling around and picking up Devin and Zass’s trail somewhere beyond the edge of the fire?”
My shadow leaped and danced in the wild interplay of fire and light-cutting smoke just as you might expect of a normal shadow. The movement cleverly concealed what I recognized as a careful scan for other observers. But we were alone, though whether that was because of the effectiveness of the guards or because no one else was crazy enough to go so deep into the fires, I couldn’t say. And my shadow soon slid into the familiar shape of the dragon. He looked nervous and kept a close watch on the closest flames—even normal fire can hurt a Shade if there’s enough of it.
“I’m sorry, but it’s just not going to happen today,” said Triss. “It probably wouldn’t have worked even if we were able to start from that trailhead we found last night. Too many hours of spring sunshine have already passed since Zass last touched the stones there.” He spread his wings to take in the fires around us. “And now . . .” He shook his head. “Heat and light will have burned the trail completely away.”
“I wish you’d told me last night that we’d lose the trail if we waited. We could have—”
“Could have what?” interrupted Triss. “Chased a renegade Blade across the rooftops in the darkness when we were both injured and exhausted? Done so virtually unarmed? Facing who knows what traps Devin might have left on his back trail? With your nima drained to the dregs? And if we
had
caught him, then what? There are simpler and less embarrassing ways to commit suicide than facing Devin under such circumstances.”
I wanted to argue, but the heat of the flames was tearing at my back like a fiery scourge. Besides, Triss was right again. There are ways to wield power beyond the ends of your nima, but they require physical reserves I simply hadn’t owned the night before.
I sighed and nodded. “I suppose that trying for magelightning and bursting your heart instead is probably not the smartest way to end your life.”
“Neither is burning alive.” Triss looked around worriedly, and I nodded again.
“Point. We’ll have to find another angle on Devin and Maylien.” A coughing fit prevented my saying anything more. So I threw my arm across my face and started breathing through the fabric of my sleeve as I took us away from the fire.
Once I got out in the clear again, I turned toward the Spinnerfish. I figured I had just enough cash left to cover a meal and a few tongue-loosening drinks. With the shadow trail broken, I needed to find Devin some other way, and the Spinnerfish provided good food, rich information, and a pleasant place out of the wind where I could play bait.
If you want to catch a shark, you spill blood in the water—another thing I’d learned from Master Kelos. And since mine was the blood Devin wanted most . . .
I’d barely put my ass in the chair at the same table I’d had last time when Erk appeared from the back. He was holding my half-finished tucker bottle of Kyle’s, two glasses, and the drum-ringer. It saved me the trouble of asking after the bottle but also made me mighty nervous to be singled out like this again.
“Don’t you look sour,” he said after he poured the two glasses full. “I hope it’s not on account of your buying me a drink. I didn’t have to save the bottle for you in the first place.”
“Nothing on you and the Kyle’s,” I replied as I picked up my glass, then coughed to cover my jerk when Triss kicked me in the ass. “I’m thinking I should maybe be drinking a bit lighter anyway. Though I do find myself wondering about being graced with your presence at my table two nights in a row.”
Erk frowned. “If you’re that badly out of count on the days, maybe you have been tipping the bottle too much. But that’s not why I came by and not my business by any means.”
“Wait,” I said, “what do you mean ‘out of count’? What day
is
it?”
Erk raised his eyebrows and took a drink, then said flatly, “Sylvasday.”
“Oh.” That was four days after Atherasday, which was when I’d been deathsparked. I hadn’t realized I’d been out nearly so long. It was my turn to take a drink though, out of deference to Triss, I sipped the whiskey instead of knocking it straight back. Which is what I wanted to do after that news.
“Lose a couple days?” asked Erk.
I nodded. “Though not to drink.” I paused then, remembering Erk’s reputation as a former black jack. “Actually, you might be able to help me there. Do you know any way to avoid a deathspark?”
“Ouch.” He whistled. “That’s bad magic, and I can’t say I’ve heard of any way to avoid it except not hitting the target.”
“I’d never have thought of that.” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
“No, seriously. There’s no point in killing a man walking under that mark. He’ll burn away from the inside soon enough on his own. Why bloody your dagger? You just need to learn to spot the signs and walk away. Looks a lot like caras-dust addiction actually, bright eyes, lank hair, sweaty, talking too much. The main difference is that your caras snuffler doesn’t have an ash-drawn glyph on the back of his neck.”
“And if it’s him or you?” I asked.

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