No Quarter (23 page)

Had he come out onto the lip of the valley anywhere else, the trees would have blocked his view and he very likely would have missed the holding entirely. Sinking down onto his haunches so that the necklace of bone he wore tucked under his robe clattered against the ground, Kars stared at the cattle, at the buildings, at the stockade, and wondered where he'd seen them all before.

"In a dream," he murmured. "Or in the memory of a dream?"

Perhaps the shadow of familiarity that lay over the valley was an omen. He didn't think he believed in omens, but as he couldn't remember exactly what he believed in, he supposed it didn't matter.

"There are people there, Kait." She brushed the back of her hand against his cheek and he smiled, teeth still surprisingly whole and white between cracked and bleeding lips. "Our family. Yours and mine." There had been a family before the Song… before the Song… the Song…

*NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!*

Trembling, tears spilling over into wrinkles so deep the moisture disappeared within the crease, Kars held up a placating hand.

"I won't leave you," he said softly. "I promise." How could he leave her? She'd given him reason to live when he'd lost his heart for the second time. She'd stayed with him even after her own Song had ended. She was all he had. "We'll be a family again. Like we were." When she nodded, he smiled again. "Your legs are younger than mine, child. Go down there and look around. See if they'll welcome us."

He watched her move down into the valley, skimming the ground, swirling around rocks and trees like pale smoke. She looked so much better without the brace. He remembered how pleased he'd been when she'd put it aside.

As she passed, the cattle rushed to the far side of their pasture and stood, shaggy orange rumps against the fence, heads turned toward the open gate of the stockade.

*Trouble coming.*

*How can you tell?*

Shoulders hunched against the driving rain, Vree tossed her head to clear the water from her eyes and said, *There's a horse galloping hard toward us. In this weather, you don't ride like that unless there's trouble.*

*I can't see anything.* He could see the rump end of Magda's horse and Magda slumped forward in the saddle. Past her, he could see another horse-length, maybe two, of the ribbon of mud that Shkodens referred to as a road—the Empire spent considerably more tax dollars on road building than on music and, at the moment, Gyhard wholeheartedly approved— but then the translucent curtain of rain became opaque.

*Listen.*

Rain. Creak of wet leather. Hooves lifting out of and falling back into wet earth.

*I don't hear anything.*

*Listen for what doesn't belong.*

He heard it then, the low pounding like an angry drum roll, held against the ground by the weather. From the way Magda straightened, he suspected it had now come too close to ignore.

Head cocked, wet hair plastered tight to her skull, Magda tried to figure out not only what the sound was, but where it was coming from. The rhythmic pounding seemed to bounce off the individual drops of rain and surround her. "Which is ridiculous," she told herself, pulling her mount's reluctant head around.

Diagonal across the road and turned toward Vree, she didn't see the rider burst suddenly into view. Her horse slammed back onto its haunches, Magda fought to keep her seat. And lost.

A moment later, Vree knelt on the shoulders of a very wet young man. Gasping for breath, he stared up at her, unable to understand how he'd been on the back of a galloping horse one instant and on his back in the mud the next.

"You should watch where you're going," she said, her voice devoid of inflection.

Gyhard had a sudden memory—it had to be one of Vree's—of Avor lying in the same position. The only difference had been, the Sixth Army Messenger knew how he'd ended up flat out on the road and how long he had left to live.

"Vree?"

Rising lithely, Vree moved to where Magda sat pulling mud out of her hair. "Are you hurt?"

"I don't think so." Her confused expression was, in most ways, identical to that of the young man.

"Can you stand?"

"I don't know."

Grasping Magda's left wrist, Vree slowly pulled her up onto her feet, ready to stop if she gave any indication of pain. "Does anything hurt?"

"No. No," she repeated, her voice growing stronger as she looked down at the imprint of her body in the mud. "I guess I was lucky I didn't land on a rock." She spotted her horse and Vree's, bulky shadows cropping grass by the side of the road, noticed a third horse a little way off, then noticed the rider carefully getting to his feet. "Who's he?"

"The idiot who ran into you."

"What happened to him?"

The corners of Vree's mouth curled up into what was only peripherally a smile.

"He stopped to make sure you weren't hurt."

Magda glanced from Vree to the filthy young man and came to the correct conclusion. Rolling her eyes, she stepped toward him. "Are you all…"

He charged past her, fists raised.

"… right?" she finished as he hit the ground again.

When he grabbed for his dagger, Vree stepped on his wrist. "I wouldn't," she said quietly.

He stiffened, then saw his own mortality in the dark eyes looking down into his.

The fight went out of him so completely, its absence left him trembling.

Gyhard was pleased to see that the boy wasn't a total fool.

"Dusty?"

"Your horse?" Magda asked as she squatted beside him. "It's right over there. It didn't go far after you…" She paused.

"Fell off?" Vree offered.

"… parted company.
Are
you all right?" Licking rain off her lips, she rested her palm lightly on his chest. "It's just that I'm a healer and…"

"A healer!" He jerked up out of the mud and clutched at her hand. "I was riding for a healer!"

The village had been built just above the high tide mark down on the flats where a broad creek spilled fresh water into the sea. Small boats were pulled up on the gravel beach and empty drying racks made skeletal outlines against the gray on gray of sea and sky.

"Why is it all fishing villages look the same?" Vree wondered. "Put this on the coast anywhere in the Sixth Province and it wouldn't look out of place."

*Maybe it's because all fish look the same.*

They didn't stop at the village but pounded right up to the crowd of people standing on the clifftop overlooking the bay. The young man was off his horse before it had actually stopped moving.

"I didn't have to bring Raulas, Mother! I found a younger healer just up coast!"

Magda dismounted almost as quickly.

*Younger healer?* Gyhard wondered as a thin woman with pale hair hurried toward them.

"Thank all the gods in the Circle and then some!" She grabbed Magda's hand and pulled her toward an oiled canvas tarp propped tentlike over two still forms and the bent figure of her son. "We've kept them as dry as we can, but we didn't want to move them any farther!"

"What happened?"

"Didn't Dumi tell you?" She broke off as Dumi moaned and ran out from under the tarp toward the edge of the cliff. "Dumi! Stop! It's gotten worse! Don't go past the ropes!"

Dumi ignored her. A few of the villagers began moving to intercept him, but they seemed to be carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders and were obviously not going to get to him in time.

Vree slammed her heels into her horse's ribs and when the astonished animal leaped forward, she slipped free of the stirrups and drew her feet up under her on the saddle. As they drew level with her quarry, she yanked back hard on the reins.

The sudden stop catapulted her forward. She nipped in the air and landed with knees bent, palms against the ground, facing a still running Dumi. Straightening her legs, she drove her shoulder into his stomach and, a heartbeat later, knelt on his shoulders for the second time that afternoon.

The only sound on the clifftop was the angry pounding of waves against rock.

*Impressive,* Gyhard murmured, feeling as though he hadn't quite caught up.

*Thank you.*

*You know, people would pay good coin to see something like that.*

*Yeah? Well, maybe we'll let them; the bards aren't going to feed us forever.*

"You don't understand!" Dumi wailed, tears running back into his hair. "Celja's still down there."

Vree twisted as she stood. The edge of the cliff had the raw look of a fresh wound. "Down there?"

"Stupid, stupid place to build a house. Stupid."

*Nice view, though.*

*Maybe yesterday.* Grabbing onto Dumi's wrist, Vree hauled him to his feet.

"Celja's house fell off the cliff?"

"Her father's house." He rubbed the back of his hand under his nose, but before he could continue, another voice cut in.

"It'd be more accurate to say the cliff fell out from under the house." A heavyset woman, wet gray hair plastered against a round head, exhaustion turning her face a slightly paler shade of gray, closed her fingers around Dumi's arm and stared tiredly at Vree. "It's all sandstone around here. Stuff gets wet enough, it starts to slide. The boy's right though, it's a stupid place to build. You're with the healer, Southerner?"

"I am."

"When we sent him…"
To get him out of the way
, her tone added. "… we thought he'd have to go up coast to old Raulus i'Ilka at Eel Cove. He's been retired for years and he's older than spit, but he's the closest healer around."

Dumi twisted in her grip. "Gran, I have to get to Celja!"

"You can't get to her, boy. Things are worse than when you left. The rest of it's going to go any minute."

"NO!" Dumi jerked free, but before Vree could knock him down for the third time, one of the village men got him in a secure hold and dragged him back from the sagging rope barrier.

His grandmother sighed. "She passed up her little brother and got the ropes around her father before the house slipped right off. We dragged him out through a wall. Didn't mean to, but the wall ended up where he was. Now Celja's tangled in the wreckage, can't climb out and we can't get a rope to her, because every time someone steps over that line, the whole enclosed mess starts to slip."

Vree studied the area, well aware that the villagers were studying her. "Are you sure she's still alive?"

"She was a few minutes ago."

"If someone goes over to get her, the house will fall and both girl and rescuer will die?"

The heavyset woman shrugged. "That's about it."

"If no one goes over to get her, the house will fall and the girl will die?"

The silence was answer enough.

"There's no chance she'd survive the fall?"

*Vree.*

*Calm down. I'm just asking.*

"You don't know what's down there, Southerner." Vree allowed herself to be led about thirty feet along the cliff. "If you're careful, you can crawl out there and look over." The old woman pointed at a rain-slick patch of grass that extended out to where land met sky.

Taking the reference to crawling literally, Vree dropped to her belly and crept forward. When she got her first view of the wreckage, she sucked air through her teeth. The upper third of the cliff had collapsed. The house—the remains of the house—balanced between a steep slope of loose rock and a nearly perpendicular drop fifty feet into a churning sea. While she watched, a wave lifted a tabletop and smashed it into kindling against the cliff.

She crept a little farther forward and allowed the upper half of her body to drop over the rim. "Someone could climb down here and work their way over level with the house."

*Someone?*

Behind her, Dumi's grandmother snorted. "Don't be ridiculous. There's no holds on that face big enough to support an adult, and I'll not send a child down."

"There's holds," Vree said, still scanning the rock.

"We haven't time to anchor a safety line way over here." But the protest held less force than it had.

"Don't need one. Just drop two lines down by the house."

"It can't be done." Colored by hope, it was almost a question.

Vree rolled over and looked up at her. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still a sullen gray. "Yes, it can."

*Why, Vree?* Gyhard's thoughts paced the confines of Vree's mind as though looking for a way to escape. *Why risk both our lives for a girl you don't know? Her own people have given up!*

*I don't leave people to die.*

He bit back a protest as he realized that emotionless statement made a warped sort of sense. Death and Imperial Assassins were active partners. Besides, from his position inside her head, he could see that it would be no use trying to talk her out of it. *Are you
sure
you can do this?*

*I could do this in the dark under the noses of guards who would desperately like to kill me.* As Dumi's grandmother shouted orders, Vree began stripping off her sodden clothes.

*Yeah, but can you do it in daylight under the noses of people who desperately want you to succeed?*

*First time for everything.* Naked, she began to limber up.

*Uh, Vree…*

*What?* Gyhard's unease drew her attention to the various reactions of the watching villagers. *They look like they've never seen skin before.*

Well aware that Vree had no nudity taboos—they were impossible to maintain in the army and, as most Imperial citizens spent at least two years in uniform, they'd disappeared almost entirely throughout the Empire—Gyhard could only assume the embarrassment he felt was his own. The problem was, they weren't in the Empire. *Is this really necessary?*

Before she could answer, Dumi's grandmother asked much the same thing.

Vree flexed the muscles across her shoulders. "Wet clothes are heavy. They also get in the way."

"But protection…"

"From what?"

"Scrapes. The rock."

*Is she kidding?*

*You're a new experience for them, Vree.*

Spitting on her palms for luck, she dropped over the edge of the cliff. She could hear Dumi calling and a faint answer rising up from the ruin of the house. The tricky part's going to be remembering not to kill her when I get there.*