Casket of Souls (8 page)

Beka shared her commander’s cautious excitement. For the first time in years, the possibility of victory glimmered before them.

“Can we take the horses through the forest?” asked Myrhini.

“I don’t advise it,” Beka replied. “The trees are thick enough that we’d get strung out and make enough noise for the Plenimarans to hear us coming.”

“If the horses go south along the edge of it, it’s no more than a mile ’til it ends, close to the edge of the enemy camp,” said Nyal.

“Beka, did you get a sense of the layout of their encampment?” asked Myrhini.

“It was hard to tell in the dark, but I think they’ve set out the tents in lines, well away from the trees, roughly in a square.”

Going to the map table, Beka took up a wax tablet and stylus and sketched the camp, with the ruined house and the bank of the Silver River. “They’re caught between the trees and the river, Commander, and the horses are corralled here, on the northern edge. If we can push them to the river, they’ll have no choice but to fan out into a thinner line.”

Klia considered that for a moment, then nodded. “I want you to take your troop through the forest on foot here. Send your Urghazi Turma to scatter the enemy’s horses before the Plenimarans can get to them. I’ll take Captain Anri and Danos’s riders south around the wood, mounted. Nyal, I want you with me.”

“Yes, Commander.” Nyal exchanged a quick look of regret with Beka. Separated again.

“Myrhini, pass the word. We march at once,” Klia ordered. “Beka, Nyal, you’re dismissed.”

Beka gave her a grateful nod; Klia was demanding, but not unkind.

Outside Nyal took her hands in his. “I hope the Plenimarans provide us with a good supper.”

Beka forced a weary smile. Neither of them ever said good-bye or spoke of the very real possibility that each parting could be their last.

It had been easy for them when she was stationed with Klia in Aurënen. Several others in the turma had taken ’faie lovers; there was no rule against it, and in fact it had been encouraged. Half-breed children might carry some of the vigor of ’faie magic—something that was growing thin in Skala. Fewer wizard-born children were presented at the Orëska House every year.

Not that Beka had any desire for children. Not yet. She loved Nyal with all her heart, but she lived to serve Klia. Nyal understood that, and had solved the problem by volunteering to become a scout when they returned to Skala. She’d married the handsome ’faie at her parents’ home at Watermead, then had gone back to soldiering with him in the spring, much to her mother’s disappointment. Her father had understood better. She and Micum shared the same restless spirit. He had Seregil and Alec, and the Watchers; she had the cavalry.

He leaned down and kissed her, not caring if the sentries were watching. “Good hunting, beloved.”

“And to you, my love.”

Beka could feel his gaze on her as she walked away to gather her riders, but resisted the urge to look back.

D
UKE
Reltheus—a tall, striking man with silver-streaked hair and dark eyes—kept them fairly busy. Their first night on watch, Seregil scaled the back wall, but the house was too well guarded front and back.

“Looks like we’re going to have to get in by the front door,” he muttered.

“Hopefully our friend Selin can help us with that,” said Alec.

The duke’s house had only one main entrance, easily watched, and he came and went during the day at civilized hours over the next week—several times to the Palace, they noted with interest. He was often out in the evenings, as well—without his wife, Palmani, who was still in the days of her birthing confinement—visiting friends and attending Archduchess Alaya’s salon. Not quite the doting husband and father, he spent several evenings in the Street of Lights gambling houses, with a visit to the brothels here and there. From what they observed, his tastes ran solidly to women, including a fair-haired girl at their friend Eirual’s house.

Dressed as beggars or workmen, Seregil and Alec took shifts shadowing him. It was too risky to ingratiate themselves with any of the servants here in the city where they were known, so they had to content themselves with watching from a distance and awaiting their chance.

Silvermoon Street was the grandest avenue in the city, home to both the royal Palace and the villas of the most
prominent nobles. Alec happened to be on duty in his one-armed beggar’s garb when he saw a carriage leave and caught sight of the duke’s face at the open window. Instead of heading for the Street of Lights, however, the carriage went west.

It was an easy matter to follow. It had been another muggy day, and many nobles were out taking the air in carriages, on horseback, or on foot. The heavy traffic made for slow going.

Alec’s dirty, bandaged face and empty right sleeve drew a few disgusted or pitying looks, but little surprise, beggars being a common sight in all parts of the city. His hair was well hidden under a grimy head rag.

He nearly lost the duke when the carriage turned into Emerald Street. Alec narrowly missed being trampled by a band of drunken horsemen as he dodged across the street, managing to keep the carriage in sight until it turned in at the carved gate of one of the larger villas there, one they hadn’t seen Reltheus go to before.

The gates remained open but were guarded by several armed men in green livery. Alec waited a few minutes, then limped over to the open gate, holding out his wooden begging bowl. “Penny for a cripple, kind sirs?”

One of them took out a few pennies and tossed them into his bowl. “Go on now, boy.”

“Maker’s Mercy, sir. Who’s the master of this fine house?” Alec asked. “Does he have a heart of charity? Maybe a crust in the kitchen?”

“Marquis Kyrin can’t be bothered with the likes of you!” another guard told him. “Now get before I take my cudgel to you.”

“Bad luck to hit a beggar,” the kind one said.

“Worse luck to have the marquis find this creature hanging around the front door. Go on, boy, off with you!”

Satisfied, Alec made them a fawning bow, then limped away to take up his position across the avenue beneath a tree, waiting for it to get a bit darker to have a closer look. Kyrin had been mentioned in Princess Elani’s letter. Sitting on the ground, he set his bowl in front of him and began to rock slowly back and forth, droning his tale of woe.

“Maker’s Mercy, kind people, a penny for a cripple,” he
whined, keeping his gaze averted from any sharp-eyed acquaintances. Most people ignored him, but some paused to toss a coin or two in his bowl.

He wasn’t the only one begging among the rich; there were more about this summer than he’d ever seen in the city. Half a dozen other ragged folk had staked out a position as he had, or wandered among the crowd, bowl in hand. A hollow-eyed man with an equally hollow-eyed boy on his shoulder passed by and gave Alec a nod. Some of the rich citizens were generous with these unfortunates; others simply averted their gaze, or looked through the beggars as if they weren’t there. There was no doubt that their sort wasn’t welcomed here, as Alec soon discovered.

Before he’d collected the price of a cheap meal, rough hands hauled him to his feet and he found himself surrounded by five blue-coated men of the City Watch. One of them ran his hands down Alec’s sides and gave him a nasty grin as he felt Alec’s perfectly good arm hidden beneath his dirty peasant’s smock.

“By the Flame, look what we have here,” he exclaimed loud enough for some of the well-dressed passersby to hear. A few even stopped. One of them was Lady Mallia, a good friend of theirs, on the arm of some blond nobleman Alec didn’t recognize. Alec kept his head down, heart hammering in his chest.

The bluecoat tore the shoulder of Alec’s smock open and yanked his arm out. “You know what the penalty for false begging is, my boy?” he asked, giving him a hard shake.

“Pity, your honor!” Alec mumbled.

“Twenty lashes in the Tower,” one of the other bluecoats informed him, as if Alec didn’t already know. “And the pillory. Let’s see what we have here.”

He reached for the bandage shrouding nearly half of Alec’s face. Mallia was looking on with evident pity, murmuring something to the gentleman with her. One of the bluecoats still had Alec by the arm. The other four had him hemmed in pretty well, and most of them were a good deal taller and heavier than he was. Before the one reaching for his face could touch the bandage, Alec twisted his arm free, dropped
into a crouch, and sprang between two of the men at knee level, taking them by surprise. One still managed to grab the flapping tail of his torn smock, but what was left of the side seam let go and Alec sped on shirtless through the evening crowd, dodging the grasping hands of those trying to heed the bluecoats’ calls for help as they pursued him. If he’d been tackled it would have been the end of him, but Alec was fast and agile, and he knew the back alleys and low roads of the city as well as the lines on his own right palm.

Outdistancing the shouting, he turned into Gannet Lane at a dead run, narrowly missing collision with a pair of young ladies and their escorts. Screams and curses followed as he ran on, searching his memory and Seregil’s lessons for the right combination of turns. He rounded another corner, and another into a narrower street. He’d left the fashionable neighborhood behind. Respectable merchant folk filled the streets here, enjoying the cool of the evening. He earned plenty of disapproving stares as he stopped to get his breath, sweat clammy on his skin. His head rag and bandage were still safely in place, but a half-naked young man was notable in any street. This was borne out all too quickly when he heard someone shout, “There he is. Down there!”

The bluecoats hadn’t given up the chase after all. Before any well-intentioned citizen thought to grab him, Alec bolted for a narrow alley one street over, barely wide enough to walk down without turning sideways. At the end of it was a locked gate that led down into the sewers. Reaching into his head rag, he took out one of the picks buried in his braid for just such an occasion and quickly worked it around in the heavy lock. This one was well maintained and gave in a moment. Slipping into the reeking darkness beyond, he locked it behind him and felt his way down the steep, narrow stone staircase, following the faint sound of running water and squeaking rats.

Tamír the Great had laid down these vaulted channels before the first building was erected, and made her new capital the cleanest, least plague-prone city in the Three Lands. Stone walkways ran along the sewer channels, and the high-arched ceilings trapped the evil humurs overhead, allowing
the Scavengers to go about their business in relative safety. Grates made of metal bars crossed the channel in places, each with a locked gate that only the Scavenger crews had the right to open. But that didn’t stop footpads called gate runners from using this as their private refuge and highway.

Alec was acutely aware of the possibilities, and the fact that his current disguise had forced him to go out unarmed. Reaching into his head rag again, he pulled out a small lightstone and by its soft glow navigated his way along the stinking channels, back toward Emerald Street. Fortunately, it proved an uneventful journey. He came across only a woman and two young children—some gate runner’s family, or just a poor woman and her children seeking what shelter they could find. She swore at him and brandished a rusty knife, but he jumped the channel and gave her a wide berth.

Another stairway let up to a street near Emerald. He jiggered the gate and crept up to the door at the top to peer through the large keyhole. Night had fallen, and there didn’t appear to be anyone about. He left the sewer and found himself in a side street between the back gardens of large houses. Being half naked was just as much of a disadvantage here, for someone who wanted to go unnoticed. The street was deserted, so he scaled a few walls until he found an unattended clothesline and helped himself to a shirt. It was too fine and too clean for a beggar, so he rubbed it around in the gutter until it was suitably filthy. Dressed again, he checked his head rag and bandage, then made his way back toward Marquis Kyrin’s villa.

It was too dangerous to show himself in Emerald Street again. Keeping his distance from the guards at the marquis’s gate, he found the lane that ran behind the house. The walls surrounding the back courtyard weren’t impossibly high, but they were too smooth to scale without help. There was a gate wide enough for a wagon, but it was securely locked. Of course no one had conveniently left anything as useful as a ladder or rope lying around. Walking up and down the street, he finally found an empty barrel and lugged it back. Upending it, he climbed on top and stretched his arms toward the top of the wall. He was still a foot too low, so he sprang as
high as he could and managed to grasp the edge. The barrel fell over and rumbled away down the street, leaving him hanging there.

At this point, a less stubborn person might have given up, but Alec was tired of coming home empty-handed every night. With the edge of the stonework digging into his palms, he managed to pull himself up until he could see the house and the large garden below. The waxing moon cast just enough light for him to see the holes spaced evenly along the top of the wall, and the uneven remains of broken mortar. There had been iron spikes here originally, pulled out and sacrificed to the war effort. It was a common sight and made a nightrunner’s job a bit easier, too.