Liar's Island: A Novel (29 page)

“It was my fault,” Hrym murmured, very low, but Rodrick still tensed. Better if no one heard a voice that shouldn't be there.

“I fled, and here I am.” Rodrick spread his hands.

“All right,” Lais said. “But you haven't mentioned your ‘partner,' the treasure hunter who tried to kill you, with her men from Nex.”

“Ah. That's … more complicated. I'm not an assassin, it's true, but I am
occasionally
a thief.” Lais made a sound of disgust. People could be so judgmental. “Grimschaw hired me to steal a treasure map from the thakur's palace, and she helped me get out of the city when the thakur's people began pursuing me, because she wanted the map. But then she decided I should die, since I'd seen the map.” That much was true. He'd left out the bit about giving Grimschaw the wrong scroll and trying to cheat her, both because time was short and because those facts could hardly help him win over Lais again.

“How can I ever trust you?” Lais said. “You—”

“Don't keep the handsome ones to yourself, sister,” a woman said, gliding up beside them. It was the woman wrapped in folds of white cloth, who'd chosen this site for the meeting, and who'd seemed familiar to Rodrick. “Give us all a chance to practice our skills on such broad-shouldered targets.”

He recognized her, now, from her voice and those parts of her face that weren't covered by a mask, especially the ruby stud in her nose. It was Tapasi, the priest he'd been friendly with on the voyage to Jalmeray.

No wonder she'd known about this temple—she was supposedly devoted to She Who Guides the Wind and the Waves.
She
was part of the Knife in the Dark? The idea made him sick to his stomach. Not because she'd fooled him—he was self-aware enough to know horror at being
tricked
by someone would be hypocritical, when he tricked so many people himself. But to be cheated by someone for financial gain, as Rodrick did, was one thing—he could
understand
that. But … he'd liked this woman, and she was devoted to bringing about destruction for its own sake. That, he couldn't comprehend.

Unfortunately, Tapasi recognized him just as quickly as he recognized her. She stumbled backward, and raised her voice, shouting, “Rodrick! Rodrick is
here
!”

22

Marked by the Sign of the Eye

Tapasi lifted her hands, crackling with energy—her power derived from a dark goddess, Rodrick now realized—and the crowd turned toward him.

Lais struck Tapasi right between the eyes, then ran
into
the crowd, lashing out and knocking people down as she went. But there were fifty of the cultists, some of them doubtless trained in the same arts Lais knew.

Why couldn't she have a more treacherous mind? If Lais had just acted as horrified about Rodrick's presence as Tapasi had, if she'd leapt back from Rodrick and pretended to be one of the cult, she could have used the invisibility that granted to her advantage. But Lais always acted like exactly what she was: an honest woman, with ample skill for violence. Unfortunately, Rodrick couldn't send shards of ice and clouds of killing frost into the crowd, because Lais was there, too, and though she might willingly sacrifice herself to stop the Knife in the Dark, Rodrick found he wasn't willing to make that choice for her.

Lais snatched a torch from a sconce by the wall and swung the fiery end at the cultists trying to press in on her, clearing enough space for her to kick and punch, but it was just a matter of time before someone risked a burn and the rest overwhelmed her.

Rodrick drew Hrym and called up a freezing mist. Cultists began to slip and fall, but so did Lais, of course, though she still kicked and punched from her place on the ground, and even kept her grip on the torch. Rodrick, moving sure-footed on the ice as Hrym's wielder, reached down and grabbed her free arm, granting her a connection to Hrym and thus the same freedom of movement. A cultist loomed at him from the mist, using some magic to keep his footing—and then shouted as he was lifted off his feet and hauled into the air. Dhyana was getting involved.

That was good. But this wasn't the careful attack from concealment they'd planned, freezing the entire plaza of cultists solid and then hunting down any stragglers or escapees with Dhyana's help. If he could drag Lais to a corner of the plaza and get a good vantage point on the crowd, blast them with ice while they were slipping and sliding, then maybe the plan could be salvaged …

Suddenly shouts rose up from the jungle beyond the plaza: “For Nex! For the Arclords!” The roar of tigers and the clash of swords joined the confused shouts of the cultists in the plaza. Rodrick groaned. That must be Grimschaw, with more of her men, trying to follow the treasure map or kill Rodrick or both, and doubtless trailed by the hunters Nagesh had mentioned sending out after him.

“We have to get somewhere safe,” he muttered. Lais pulled away from him, immediately slipped in the slick fog, and clutched at his arm again to steady herself. She glared, but didn't break contact again. “Listen, Lais, if we can wait this out, Grimschaw and the cultists will kill each
other
.”

“Coward,” she spat.

“I prefer to think of myself as a realist.”

“And I prefer to think of you as
food
.” Nagesh appeared from the mist, untroubled by the ice. “It's such a pleasure to—”

Rodrick slashed the rakshasa across the face with Hrym's blade, and Nagesh stumbled back. The strike would have split any man's head in two, but it just left another thin red line in his flesh, the edges crusted with slivers of ice. The rakshasa roared in pain, and Hrym blasted a torrent of ice, the cult leader disappearing into the fog to avoid being struck.

Rodrick grabbed Lais and pulled her along with him, around the side of the temple and out of the fog. The battle raged here, too, though no one took notice of two more running figures. Grimschaw's black-clad servants of the Arclords were laying about with weapons and magic, fighting off cultists, and vice versa. The groups seemed well matched, with fallen bodies visible from both sides. One facedown corpse, clothed in white, might well have been Tapasi. She'd been so nice to him on the ship, given him advice, told him what to expect in Jalmeray … all while hiding her rot. Maybe she'd even been sent by Nagesh to spy on him. He was glad he hadn't succeeded in seducing the woman. At least he hadn't seen captain Saraswati among the cultists.

He chose a direction at random and darted among the trees, Lais finally able to follow on her own as they left the icy fog behind. There were supposedly other ruins in this jungle, and if they could find a place to hide for a while, they could come back later and pick off anyone who'd survived the battle back there. It wasn't cowardice, it was
prudence
, that's all.

After ten minutes, the sounds of fighting now faded into the distance, Lais said, “This is ridiculous. We left Dhyana back there, and you
know
she's still fighting, she wouldn't just run. We can't—”

She tripped on the corner of a large stone sticking up from the ground, the first time Rodrick had ever seen her do anything ungraceful. He paused to offer her a hand up, which she ignored, rising with great dignity. But the moment's hesitation made Rodrick notice the carvings etched on the immense flat stone: the same symbols from the temple the Knife in the Dark had overtaken, the wavy lines, the spiral … but underneath those, instead of a leaf, someone had gouged the crude shape of an eye, the stonework chipped and messy. Clearly a late addition—almost vandalism.

“Look at this,” he said.

Lais looked down, frowning. She moved her torch closer to the stone for better illumination. “Probably from the time of the Arclords. Their symbolism does favor eyes. Not surprising to find their mark. They defaced a great many things during their time on the island.”

Rodrick cleared away the fallen leaves and dirt around the stone, and realized it was an obelisk that had toppled long ago. He stared at it. The shape of the obelisk … the combination of the symbols of She Who Guides the Wind and the Waves with the eye of the Arclords … This exact configuration had been drawn on the treasure map he'd stolen from the thakur's library.

The Scepter of the Arclords was here. He'd inadvertently led Grimschaw almost directly to her target.

Someone shouted, not nearly far enough away, and Lais looked around. She pointed to what looked, at first, like a tumble of vine-encrusted rocks, but upon closer examination proved to be an arrangement of fallen stones that formed a sort of natural cave. Rodrick and Lais brushed the vines aside to duck inside … and instead of finding a dirty hidey-hole, discovered a set of muck-encrusted stairs leading into the ground.

“It must be the remains of another temple,” Lais said. “Or maybe part of the same temple complex?”

“Either way, it makes a suitable sanctuary.” Rodrick led Lais down the stairs, which descended for thirty steps before leading to a cobwebbed stone corridor that gloomed off into darkness.

Heaving a great sigh of relief, Rodrick slid down to the floor. “All right,” he said. “We should be safe for the moment.”

“Did we come into the jungle seeking safety?” she said bitterly. Her face was drawn in the light from the smoky torch. “I came to kill cultists, not run from them. The thakur's justice doesn't extend to the heart of this jungle, not usually. We must cut out the rot ourselves. I just wish I knew whether or not
you
were part of that corruption.”

“It's fairly clear the head of this cult wants us dead,” Hrym said.

Rodrick nodded. “Be practical, Lais. Maybe Hrym and I aren't as blameless as we pretended, but we've got the same enemies as you do at the moment.”

“You're thieves and liars.”

“The way you say it, those sound like bad things,” Hrym said.

“You deceive, and insinuate yourselves, and take advantage! How is that different from the Knife in the Dark?”

“We just want gold,” Hrym said. “I won't pretend we always steal from those who deserve it, but we don't kill people if we can avoid it. We're no heroes, but you saw Rodrick fight the demon to save me. Would a treacherous man bother to do that?”

“You're Rodrick's livelihood,” she said. “How can you think he cares for you? You're just another thing he can
use
.”

“I can't convince you,” Rodrick said. “There's no reason you should trust me. Certainly not my words. But if you can believe anything, believe this: Hrym and I would never turn a child against her parents. We would not teach hate and evil. We don't revel in destruction for its own sake. Words aside, you
can
trust actions, can't you? I saved you from that crowd. I could have fled, and tried to save myself, but I owe
you
a debt, after all this, and I mean to repay it.”

She scowled. “That's true. You've saved me twice, now, when it would have cost you little or nothing to let me die.” She sighed. “You're not good. But perhaps you aren't as bad as the Knife in the Dark.”

“High praise,” Rodrick said, though her words stung him more than he liked to admit. “I really do think Grimschaw's warriors and the cultists will reduce one another's numbers significantly. We'll stay here a while, then we can take out any stragglers.”

She nodded, and they waited in less-than-companionable silence for a while—until they heard the flutter of wings and low muttering above. Lais widened her eyes, thrust the torch into Rodrick's hand, and hurried up the stairs.

She returned a moment later, followed by Dhyana, holding her bow. She gazed down at Rodrick. “Well,” she said. “This isn't going as we planned.” She wasn't shouting at him, so maybe she hadn't heard Nagesh's speech about Rodrick being an assassin.

“Plans usually don't,” Rodrick said. “How did you find us?”

“I saw a torch moving through the jungle, and when the fog dissipated and I couldn't find the two of you, I realized it might have been yours, and came to see. Why did you run?”

“My strong sense of self-preservation had a hand in that,” Rodrick said. “Are the cultists and Grimschaw's people still fighting?”

Dhyana nodded.

“Then let's wait a bit for them to reduce one another's numbers further, and we can ambush whoever's left.”

“Not brave, but not a bad plan.” Dhyana moved deeper into the corridor, and Rodrick pointed Hrym up the stairs, conjuring a wall of ice to block entry from above. Might as well discourage other visitors.

Lais stood beside Dhyana, peering into the darkness down the passageway as far as her torchlight would let her. Rodrick waited for her to tell Dhyana about his deceit, but she didn't mention it. He doubted the garuda would take the news as well as Lais had. Apparently Lais felt she owed him enough to keep his secret, at least for now.

“We can rest a bit if you need to,” Rodrick said. “But soon, I want to go looking for the Scepter of the Arclords.”

Lais spun around. “What? It's
here
?”

“I think it's somewhere in the vicinity, yes. That eye scratched on the obelisk outside, below the symbols of your goddess of the waves—those same symbols were all drawn on the map I saw, to mark the treasure's location.” Rodrick suddenly regretted not kicking dirt over the obelisk. If he'd seen it, Grimschaw might, too. Then again, she probably had plenty to occupy her just now. “Of course, someone else might have looted it before us. But if not…”

“We should search now.” Dhyana rubbed her hands together with fervor. “If we have the scepter, we may be able to use its power to strike our enemies down in one blow, the cultists and Grimschaw's fighters alike.”

“Do we even know for sure the scepter is a weapon?” Lais said. “I thought no one knows
what
it does.”