Broken Blade (6 page)
Authors: Kelly McCullough
I’d just lifted a hand to check the latch when the balcony doors opened behind me spilling light across the marble floor from the chandelier within. Quickly and quietly, I took three long steps and dropped into a crouch within the deeper shadow offered by a large stone planter. I was almost relieved at the interruption. Until then, the job had been far too easy to justify the fee I’d been offered though a jack without Triss’s help might have found it a much more difficult task. Combine that ease with the too-expensive magic used on the letter, and it made for a very suspicious package.
As I settled in to wait and find out what might come next, I relaxed my control over Triss so that he could observe as well. Though I maintained a low-level contact with his mind that allowed me to use his senses along with my own, I wanted a more complete picture. So I drew one hand across my face, signaling Triss to thin the shadow veil enough for me to see with my own eyes.
A couple of red-clothed footmen came out through the open door with seat cushions and a cloth for the table and chairs sitting under the shelter of the trellis. Though they maintained the impassive expressions expected of servants to the high nobility, the hesitance of their bearing expressed a certain amount of bewilderment. Who could blame them? It was late and oppressively dark and growing steadily chillier, a strange time indeed for such a one as the baroness to be taking the air.
I didn’t recognize her beyond the insignia on her chain of office and the cut and fabric of her clothing. As a noble, she wore the divided skirts and loose shirt that would allow her to instantly defend her seat if duel-challenged by a rival. She had a heavy gold chain around her neck supporting a medallion of office with the Marchon insignia of a jade fox on a gold background. She was not atypical of the breed, tall and broad-shouldered, with the muscles of one who visited the salle daily.
True black hair and an unusually plain face were the only factors that distinguished her from seven-and-seventy other ladies of her standing, though not recognizing her face came as something of a shock to me. There had been a time not all that long ago when I could have identified every major noble in Tien and nine other kingdoms at a glance. But then, she was obviously quite young and probably only recently risen to the peerage.
“Bring the drinks and a small light, then go away,” she called in a voice deeper than I’d expected.
The servants did as they were told, adding a tray with two steaming pots and cups to match as well as a dim red magelantern that was only just a hair brighter than a thieveslight. Then they closed the doors, cutting off the brighter light from the room beyond once again. That left only the lantern to fight the darkness and made me much more comfortable. The thin layer of shadow-stuff over my eyes would prevent them from reflecting much light, but not all of it. If I wanted to see, I had to risk being seen.
With her back to the house, the baroness settled in to wait, occasionally sipping at her tea. I could probably have tried for the window again then, but curiosity held me. Who was she waiting for? And how did she expect them to arrive? Even without the second pot, there was no question she was waiting for someone, and very impatiently at that—every line of her body told the same tale.
I wasn’t terribly surprised when I heard an almost imperceptibly faint rustling in the roses below a few moments later. I shifted my position slightly to give me a better view of the far corner of the balcony—the same place I had come up and the most logical entrance for a climber.
I don’t really know who or what I was expecting, but it was not what I got. For what seemed an awfully long time after the rustling stopped, nothing happened. I was just beginning to think I’d dreamed the whole thing up, when a man appeared in the seat across from the baroness, looking for all the world like he’d been there all along. He nodded casually at the baroness as he picked up a cup and reached toward the second pot.
“Devin, you’re very nearly on time,” said the baroness, her voice harsh. “However did that happen?”
She probably saved me from betraying myself then, because I’m sure I gasped aloud in the same moment she spoke her piece. That noise was all that prevented Devin from hearing me. Never in my life had I regretted more the way that Triss’s assumption of shroud form made it virtually impossible for him to communicate with me. In that shape, he couldn’t even give me the sorts of squeezes and prods he indulged in as my shadow, though I could tell by the way he focused his attention on Devin that Triss was every bit as shocked as I was to find him here.
Devin!
I wanted to shout that name aloud, to leap up and hug the man it belonged to, a man the temple had raised me to think of as my brother. Even in the dim light, I couldn’t possibly mistake the familiar features, the Blade-trained bearing, the well-worn sword hilts jutting out above his shoulders.
But Devin was dead. Along with so many others, he had died when the temple fell. At least, his name was carved with all the others into a great granite obelisk in front of the ruined temple. The Son of Heaven had ordered the stone erected to commemorate the triumph of the forces of heaven over the “self-declared goddess of justice, rogue of heaven, and her twisted cult of regicides and priest-murderers.”
There had been over five hundred names carved in that stone, priest and Blade, novice and master. Of all the servants of the goddess, fewer than two score had escaped the list of the dead, and every one of those names had appeared on the posters that declared the ban and offered a reward for our heads.
That as much as anything was what had convinced me that heaven really had turned against my goddess, that every last name was there. The complete roll of the Blades was a secret known only to full members of the order and to a few of the highest priests, and we were all bound by mighty oaths and deadly magic never to reveal it. But there we all were, our identities exposed to the world by divine fiat.
Devin Urslan was dead, his name set forever in black granite on the tombstone of an entire religion. Yet here he sat, with a high noble of Tien calmly pouring a cup of tea—no. Efik. The rich smoky scent rolled over me as he poured, and I felt a moment of intense longing that I reflexively suppressed. That life was gone forever, murdered by the Son of Heaven and his gods. But then, so was Devin.
I couldn’t seem to make my mind deal with the contradiction of Devin both dead and buried and alive and drinking efik. But where thought failed me, temple-taught discipline took over. Aral the jack vanished, and I reverted to Aral the Blade.
The priests and teachers who had molded me into a living weapon for the hand of the goddess had set out to create a tool that could do its job in the most confusing circumstances and under the worst conditions. Routines set as deep as my bones took over.
Stop. Assess the situation. Act decisively.
And so, rather than rushing to embrace the brother I’d believed lost, I listened and I waited. The time to act would identify itself.
3
“Baroness
Marchon, you’re as lovely as ever. And,” Devin paused and took a sip of his efik before continuing, “if anything, your manners are more charmingly direct than I remembered.”
Marchon, you’re as lovely as ever. And,” Devin paused and took a sip of his efik before continuing, “if anything, your manners are more charmingly direct than I remembered.”
The baroness looked as though she’d been slapped and, well, she had been. “How dare you! You’re nothing more than a filthy peasant with an overdeveloped sense of his own—”
“Do shut up, Baroness, and remember what I am.” Devin’s voice came out smooth but firm, cutting across her diatribe. “Our contract doesn’t cover bowing and scraping, and I don’t have the time or the patience to pretend that it does. Your noble blood doesn’t impress me a whit. Zass and I have spilled bluer on a number of occasions, and, frankly, it all looks the same when it’s leaking into the dirt.”
He took another drink, wafting the scent of the efik my way. I drew in a slow, deep breath through my nose—good beans steeped just long enough. How I missed that.
The baroness was snarling, “I . . . You . . . How could—” But she stopped abruptly and straightened her spine before nodding ever so faintly and regally. Her voice when it came again was icy cold and perfectly contained. “I see. Thank you for the reminder of why and for what I hired you, Assassin. In return, you ought to remember that casting no shadow puts you under one. The temple of Namara is a smoking ruin, and your goddess is as dead as you are purported to be. The proscription of Namara’s Blades is quite clear about—”
“Ssst,” said Devin, raising a hand and cutting her off for a second time. As he spoke, he stood, pulling a short, curved sword from behind his shoulder with his other hand. “We’re not alone, Baroness.”
I wasn’t sure what had betrayed me, probably a sharp breath drawn when the baroness had spoken the name of the goddess. It had been years since I’d heard or said her name aloud. For me it hurt less that way. For others . . . well, what was the point of calling on a dead goddess?
“I know you’re here.” Devin carefully scanned the area, and I ducked my head to hide my eyes. “Whether you’re a simple burglar, an eavesman, or follow some other flavor of the shadow trade, you can’t hope to hide from me. You heard what the baroness just said about my shadow, and you know what it means, or you wouldn’t have given yourself away then. Will you come out so we can discuss this in an amicable way, or will you declare yourself my enemy by remaining in hiding?”
What to do? It was the hardest question I’d faced in years and one where my training couldn’t help me. Part of me still desperately wanted to talk to Devin, to embrace him as a brother returned past all hope and from beyond the grave. But the time that ingrained discipline had given me to think had raised too many questions.
How
had
Devin escaped the fall of the temple when so many others had not? Why, if he had, was his name on the list of the dead and not beside mine with the proscribed? I didn’t want to believe that someone I’d trusted might have betrayed the goddess, but what other explanation was there? For that, or for his presence here and in such company for that matter?
had
Devin escaped the fall of the temple when so many others had not? Why, if he had, was his name on the list of the dead and not beside mine with the proscribed? I didn’t want to believe that someone I’d trusted might have betrayed the goddess, but what other explanation was there? For that, or for his presence here and in such company for that matter?
The young baroness, with her contempt and her talk of filthy peasants and the hiring of assassins, was exactly the sort of unjust authority Namara had created the order of Blades to address. To find Devin, who’d once killed corrupt generals and deranged duchesses in the name of the goddess, working for such a creature . . .
But was I really so much better? I might not kill for money, but I’d taken my own goddess-trained talents and gone into business as a shadow jack, smuggling goods and letters, playing bodyguard to thugs and jackals, even the occasional bit of contracted theft when I got broke enough. I didn’t know what to think or do.
While I crouched there, paralyzed with indecision, Devin drew his second blade. As it came free of the sheath, I looked up and caught a flash of the lapis-inlaid oval of its guard shining like a blue eye forever open—the unblinking eye of justice. It was the message I needed. For me, Devin must remain as dead as if I’d buried him myself, one more part of a past I’d left behind forever.
I might have made a wreck of my life that mirrored the wreck of the temple, but I’d done it without turning the blades of justice into murderer’s tools. My swords rested now on the bottom of the sacred lake whence they had come. A weighted bundle that held my every image of the unblinking eye had gone with them. I might ply the shadow trades to keep body and soul together, but I refused to carry any token of the goddess while I did so. I refused to pretend that I was anything other than the petty shadow tradesman I had become or pretend that the goddess would have approved.
Training took over again. Once you have decided to act, act decisively.
I signaled to Triss that we needed to move, and he ceded control back to me. Slipping a black coil of silk line free of my bag, I dropped a loop over the stone planter I’d chosen as my hiding place. Then, as Devin dashed toward us, I took two long steps and leaped over the front of the balcony—putting me clear of the roses. Were it not for a thickened patch of the stuff of shadow acting as a glove, I’d have badly burned my hand on the rope when I used it as a friction brake on the way down.
In the instant my feet touched the ground, I let go the line and started into a gentle lope. I knew that Devin was right behind me. If I wanted to give him the slip, I needed to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible, and I needed to do it without breaking into the kind of hard, noisy run that would allow him to follow me by ear.
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