The Light of Heaven (6 page)

He kept up this slow pace him though every fibre of his body wanted him to run. This way he looked like an over-fed celebrant who had left before anything untoward happened. Nothing could get in the way of his simple ruse now. Feeling genuinely in need of a touch of the celebration he deserved, he helped himself to a shot from a silver hip-flask. It was the good stuff, brought up and across the Anclas from Pontaine. It burned smoothly on the way down - and exploded more roughly into his front teeth when a fist smashed into them. The fist belonged to an athletic-looking knight from the Order of the Swords of Dawn.

The knight wore a tunic, gambeson, and trews bound tightly to what looked to be shapely legs. Greaves were strapped to the shins, and bracers to the forearms. Iron caressed the shoulders and torso, under a surplice bearing the crossed circle of the Final Faith. Staring out from under the helmet were a strange and arresting pair of eyes. One was clear sapphire blue, the other a striking almond flecked with gold.

The assassin froze for a moment, startled out of his confident walk.

"What the -"

Instinctively, he pushed past her and started to run. How could they have found him?

Gabriella DeZantez started to run, bolting after the fleeing man. Why was he reacting so strongly when he had only been breaking a local prohibition on drinking spirits? He wouldn't have gone to the gibbet for that. On the day of a Ducal wedding he'd have got away with having his booze poured away.

Her heart pounded, every other beat feeling as if it was being given a kick by the slam of her feet on the cobbles. The street ahead sloped down towards a shallow grey estuary. Boats bobbed up and down there, making a fence between the slope and the dark muddy pools. Falling snow curtained off the warehouses and docks on the southern side. The clunking of woodwork and distant calls of men floated, muffled, across to Gabriella, under the dark segments of a wooden pontoon bridge which loomed up close, before stretching into the grey void. Ahead, the fleeing man darted left, onto the bridge across to South Cliff and Gabriella followed. At the other end of the bridge, the man darted left, towards another street opening.

Behind her, she heard horses' hooves booming thunderously on the thick planking. Gabriella was baffled. Who were
they
chasing? She looked around and saw that several mounted Knights of the Swords had crossed the bridge. The horses heeled around, the leading knight waving to Gabriella. It was a lanky man named Markus. The tone of his hoarse shout convinced her that something major was afoot.

"Sister DeZantez! Have you seen anyone?"

"Just the man I'm chasing. Who are you chasing?"

"Someone put a quarrel through Eminence Rhodon!"

She had no reason to assume her fleeing drinker was the same man, but some sense told her that it was a good enough reason for him to run.

"My man went down Three-Tun Alley! You'll never get those horses through there!"

"Keep after him, and we'll set up a catchment area. Drive him towards us."

Gabriella threw herself back into a run, wishing she had a bow. It didn't have to be one of those Volonne-designed repeaters either, just something that would bring him down quickly.

She turned into the narrow opening her quarry had run into, and skidded down a near-vertical alley that was as much a sewer as an alleyway, before bursting forth onto a promenade fronted with food stalls.

A ruffian suddenly lunged out from the shadow of a hay-wain, slashing at her with a dagger.

Gabriella pivoted aside, drawing her pair of short swords in the same movement, and catching his wrist between them. His hand, still gripping his weapon, arced to one side, while the rest of him crashed back against the wagon under a heavy kick from her boot.

She didn't spare him another glance.

A few travellers and labourers ducked aside as she pushed past them to keep her quarry in sight. As the cold gulps of air burned her lungs, she saw the fugitive sprinting for the base of the south cliff itself, which gave this side of town its name. Gabriella wouldn't be surprised if her quarry started making for the Jolly Sailors, as most criminals seemed to these days. The Jollies was a veritable thieves' den, though none in Kalten called it such by name.

She stopped trying to work out his course; the Jollies was all she needed to know. Get into that rat-warren of rotgut tap-houses and flophouses, and he could disappear completely. Gabriella would have to keep her eyes and ears very much open.

The man's footfalls were audible enough for her to keep track of them, and she followed him through an alley barely wide enough for her shoulders to fit through. She burst out into an old yard filled with cluttered little workshops, huddling tight against the base of the cliff. The yard stank like the privy that people clearly used it as, and was surrounded on three sides by the old brickwork of some kind of warehouse, three storeys high. The fourth side was a row of plastered walls with narrow back doors to the shops.

Gabriella looked around. There was no sign of the man, but she could still hear his footsteps. Something clattered above her, drawing her gaze to the warehouse roof. She couldn't see anyone there, but there was a decaying zigzag of steps leading up the side of the warehouse.

As soon as she started up the steps, two scruffy-looking beggars bounded down the stairs from above.

"Stop her," one of them rasped. "She mustn't catch up to him."

This one leapt at her from half-way up, slashing wildly with a wickedly curved dagger. She spun, letting his attack slide off the blade in her left hand, and slashed with the right. The man fell screaming, filling the air with the coppery stink of blood. The second man stumbled and that gave Gabriella the moment she needed to step forward with a stopping kick, planting her boot in his chest before smashing his nose with a pommel.

She jinked past his crumpled form and ran the rest of the way up the steps, sheathing her swords. As she reached the top of the flight the man was at the far end of the roof, just dropping out of sight and Gabriella sprinted in pursuit, as the man ran across the next roof.

Gabriella dropped off the edge without thinking. She landed on a lower roof, the impact jarring her from heels to hips. She rolled back up without losing momentum, and kept running.

Ahead, the man scrambled up a wooden ladder, pausing halfway to look over his shoulder. He then redoubled his speed, and disappeared up on to a higher roof.

Gabriella reached the foot of the ladder and scrambled up it and then she saw that he was across the roof, almost at the opposite edge already, but she was definitely gaining on him. There was a narrow gap between the end of the roof and the roof of the boathouse across the way and Gabriella kept going, landing not far behind her quarry. The tile under her leading foot gave way with a crack and - her heart in her throat - she flung herself forward, grabbing at the roof as the rotted beam under the tiles collapsed. She rolled forward and was off again as a shower of wreckage clattered an awfully long way down inside the building.

The fugitive had now extended his lead, and she pushed herself to keep up. She wasn't running so hard that she didn't have the energy to smile, as she saw the next gap was wider than any they had so far crossed. The chase would soon be over. There was no way the fleeing man could jump across that the way he had jumped the narrow cuttings so far, but nobody seemed to have told the man about the physical impossibility of such a leap as, incredibly, he accelerated off the edge of the roof.

Gabriella darted forward but was careful to not repeat his suicidal error.

As she reached the edge of the roof she saw the man roll face up in mid-air, and the glint of the crossbow's iron lath, just as his fingers clenched on the trigger bar.

Gabriella was already diving before the bolt was launched, flying headlong, out into the space between the roofs.

There was no sudden pain, so she knew the bolt had missed, but now she was also falling.

She slammed into the end of a cartload of straw bales a few seconds after the fugitive. He was already rolling out of the cart and onto the street between boatyards as she landed with outstretched hands. Gabriella rolled out of the cart and slammed onto the cobbles.

Tasting blood, she staggered to her feet. She stumbled off after the fugitive, drawing a sword. She held no illusions that it would be of any use against a crossbow bolt, but she didn't intend to give him the chance to launch another one.

The fugitive dashed towards the large double doors of a warehouse. A small door set into the main doors was ajar. He ducked inside, and Gabriella pushed through a moment later.

The warehouse was half empty, the remaining crates bearing rough scrawls identifying their ownership. It stank of mould and darkness. Bare wooden scaffolds and stairs led up to a catwalk halfway up the wall. The vast space was dark and gloomy, filled with enough pools of shadow to hide an army of ambushers, but there was plenty of dust on the floor, so it was easy to make out the fugitive's tracks.

Trying her best to stick to the shadows herself, Gabriella crept along after the footprints. They led to a trapdoor near the rear of the warehouse. She listened for any sign of the man. There was none. If the cellar was just a bolt-hole, well, even a cornered rat will fight, and the man she was chasing had already showed a willingness to attack. On the other hand, if there was a tunnel to a neighbouring building, or to Kalten's poor excuse for a sewer system, he could be long gone.

She broke off a piece of wood from a crate, opened the trapdoor and tossed it down into the hole, listening for any reaction. There was none, but the wood sounded as if it had hit something, very softly and quietly just before hitting the floor. Taking a deep breath, Gabriella leapt into the hole.

He was waiting for her ten feet down. If she had taken the ladder down she would have got his knife in her back. As it was, he got both her boots in the head, and they tumbled and rolled. The crossbow clattered into the darkness and Gabriella kept a hold of the fugitive's tunic.

He tried to throw her off, spinning and slamming her back against the ladder. Gabriella kneed him in the groin, and then slammed her elbow down between his shoulder blades when he doubled over. She punched him repeatedly before he could recover, then hauled him to his knees and smacked his head against the slick walls until he fell unconscious.

Shaking as she recovered her breath, she leaned against the wall. Was this the man who had shot Rhodon, or just a random sinner? Three people had attacked her as she pursued him, and at least two of them had done so specifically to end that pursuit. That fact suggested that he was more than a man taking an illicit drink.

Now her problem was going to be waking him up.

CHAPTER 3

Rodrigo Kesar watched impassively from a crenulated walkway. The position gave a good view of both the courtyard within the curtain wall, and the esplanade outside and was mercifully out of the way of the people who had to rush around to go places and get things.

Eminence Voivode had taken charge of several guards, and was having them cover the Healers rushing in and out the castle with their shields, as if he thought they were on an open battlefield under constant arrow-storms. Kesar couldn't fault him for his devotion, but he felt those guards could better serve by helping with the perimeter cordon being thrown around the city.

Eminence Fehr was in some kind of argument with vom Kalten's guard captain, and was gesticulating wildly. Doubtless she was trying to take direct control of his troops. Or perhaps she was blaming, or even implicating, them. Kesar wouldn't be surprised.

For his own part, Kesar was content to observe. That, after all, was his talent. The Anointed Lord would probably have heard the news by now relayed to her by a mage, but he doubted that she would want to take any action before reading the report that he would shortly write. Already a courier was being briefed to take a scroll on the first leg of its journey to the Great Cathedral in Scholten.

Rodrigo was careful to keep his expression calm and unreadable. It wouldn't do for anyone to think that an assassin could ruffle any of the Faith's higher ranks. Nor would it do to make light of things and potentially be proved a fool. Kesar always preferred to let others wonder what he was thinking. Usually he was thinking about probabilities. Not odds, he told himself; odds would have made him a gambler, while probabilities made him a mathematician and thinker.

There had been no further shots and so the most likely probability was that the bowman had been after Rhodon, and had already initiated an escape plan. That meant there was no further danger here, except from overly excitable guards getting in each others' way. Kesar had many questions, about who may have hired the assassin, and why, but he knew there was nothing that could be done until the person was found and made to confess his secrets. Until then, Rodrigo wasn't going to be stupid enough to get in the way of all those excited guards.

The ordinary Ducal soldiers of Kalten looked on warily as the Order of the Swords of Dawn took up positions in twos and threes around the esplanade. The Ducal Captain-at-Arms approached the stocky Preceptor DeBarres, commander of the Knights. Short but muscular, with a greying moustache and a pockmarked face, he was the military leader of the Order of the Swords of Dawn west of the Drakengrat mountains. He didn't look round from directing his subordinates as the Captain approached.

"Enlightened One... My troops have the situation under control."

"I'm sure you have, Captain, and you have my thanks for it. However, the Order will now take charge of security in the surrounding environs, for the sake of the safety of all. We'll try to inform you when we assign your troops to their new positions."

The Captain's face reddened, his lips thinning. "My troops -"

"Captain," DeBarres snapped gruffly. "You have done your duty to the best of your abilities but the Swords are now in charge here."

The Captain's spine stiffened, but, instead of saying anything, he looked towards a large, bear-like figure with a blond beard and aristocratic bearing. Duke Freihurr vom Kalten shook his head slightly, and the Captain stepped back a pace.