Ecko Burning (36 page)

“The what?” That one had caught even the Merchant Master on the hop, apparently.

“The Right of Appeal, my Lord. I illustrated the document for a patient, once, when I was still in the hospice. It required me to draw a feather.” He looked into Phylos’s face, though it was still in shadow and he could see no expression. “Seemed an odd choice, and I’ve never forgotten it.” Indeed that much was now true, he could see the very wording there in his mind’s eye. “Perhaps I could recite it for you, if you’ve forgotten?”

Even as the words were out, Mael realised that he’d made a bold gamble - there was no one else in the room, and if Phylos decided to smash in his skull with the poker, no one would be any the wiser.

He tried to remember how many people had seen them come down here - the guards, the porter, the young man who ran the household, had his name been Scythe?

But Phylos merely tapped his index fingers in a short annoyed tattoo. However close he may be to the chair of the Seneschal, he hadn’t made that final move. Not yet. There was still hope.

“Very well then.” The Merchant Master turned, raised his voice. “Bring the Lord...
ask
the Lord Foundersdaughter if she’d be kind enough to attend me. And make sure she’s escorted, this time.” He sat back, controlled a short, exasperated sigh. “And as for you, Brother, you have neither the aptitude nor the training for this choice of path - I think you’re getting in over your head.” His grin was audible. “Don’t you?”

* * *

When Selana saw Mael, she paled.

She swept into the kitchen, all cloak and skirts and hair and beauty, exactly as an artist might have drawn her. She descended on Phylos with a certain amount of justifiable indignation, but it crumbled like a harvest garland when she saw Mael standing there.

Phylos had not offered him a seat, and his feet and back were starting to hurt.

But that didn’t matter now.

“Brother Mael,” Selana said.

Her tone of voice held barely concealed fear - Mael understood that he’d played right into Phylos’s hands by asking to see her. If Phylos didn’t get the answer he wanted out of the old scribe, he would get it out of the girl, Lord or not.

Maybe he was out of his depth, but it was swim or drown.

“Brother Mael has asked to see you, My Lord,” Phylos said. “He has invoked the Right of Appeal.”

Selana blinked. “What is he charged with?”

“Nothing.” Phylos’s red shrug said
yet.

Mael watched the girl, his mind racing. Not sure what his plan was or even if he had one, he said, “The Merchant Master asked me why you came to see me.”

Selana inhaled, tension rising from her body.

Mael said, “I merely wanted you to be here when I answered the question.” He turned back to the chair. “I asked if the Lord of the City had been permitted to see her uncle, whom I understand is in the hospice?” One glance at Selana’s pale face told him that she’d been permitted nowhere near her uncle Mostak, or anyone else for that matter. “Perhaps,” he deliberately left off the “My Lord”, “you can offer an answer?”

For a moment, Phylos was absolutely still - as though he’d not expected Mael’s sheer daring to be that big. He understood completely what Mael had done - he had placed Selana squarely in a position where she had to choose, and in front of both of them.

Mael quelled a rise of panic and hoped to the name of every merciful God that this was not utter idiocy.

He could hear Saravin,
What are you doing, you daft old sod?
He could hear his own heart thumping in his ears. He could hear the scuttlings in the corner of the kitchen - the rodents that would be getting his personal leftovers when the cook turned him into stew.

Phylos learned forward, picked up a poker. With a flawlessly innocuous gesture, he prodded at the ashes, and a flare of heat washed against his face.

Selana backed up a step, but Mael did not move.

He was staring at the Merchant Master’s face, the height of his forehead, the slightly aquiline set of his nose, his high cheekbones and square jaw. The Merchant Master was typically Archipelagan, a handsome and powerful man with a very distinctive face - a face no Grasslander could mistake...

A face he knew.

A face he had seen recently, on a young woman, a face etched in harsh Kartian scarring.

Mael would have gambled every last damned thing he owned, up to and including his own ageing skin, that Phylos had a daughter.

Jayr.

Dear Gods.

They had taken his pack from him, but he remembered the picture. His mind was racing now - a tumble of questions. As the flare from the ash faded again and the close-up of Phylos’s face was gone, Mael could still see it as if it had been heat-brazed onto his thoughts. Phylos had a daughter, a daughter that had been gifted or traded to the Kartians - there was no other way she could carry scars like those.

He had a lever, but for a moment he had absolutely no idea how to use it, what to push against. There was no shame in Phylos having a daughter - but the slavery? That was another matter. And what of her mother?

Jayr’s colouring was Grasslander, darker of eye and hair and skin-tone than Phylos’s ice-blue gaze and pale skin. Why had the Merchant Master lost - given - his daughter to the Kartians?

He was hiding something. Mael had no idea what it was, but the knowledge alone was enough.

He straightened, let out a long and slightly unsteady breath.

Phylos had not answered his question, and was still sitting with the poker in his hand. If he actually decided to crash Mael round the face with it, then all of his insight and cleverness would come to nothing...

But the Merchant Master put the poker back in the rack and held his hands to the new glow in the fire’s ashes.

The cavernous kitchen had suddenly become a great deal warmer.

He said, “Brother Mael, I had expected more gentleness from a man of your background. The family Valiembor has taken terrible damage, and Mostak is not possessed of his full wits. With his brother dead,” he glanced at Selana, who stood like a carven statue, unspeaking, “and with what happened to Valicia, forgive me, he is exquisitely distressed and really cannot be disturbed. My Lord Foundersdaughter understands this.”

Mael gazed at her, willing her to speak, to stand up to Phylos, to voice a thought, anything. But it seemed she did not dare.

The scribe picked up the feather pen from the mantel. Twisting it between his fingers, he said, “It’s a funny thing, the importance of family. How close one can be to ties of
blood.”

There was just enough emphasis on the word, just enough of the flicker of the feather between his fingers, to make Phylos’s eyes flash with an interior light. To make Mael’s spine freeze as that gaze crossed his own.

The Merchant Master would have been through Mael’s pack - he would know that the scribe had seen Jayr.

And
exactly
what Mael meant.

For a moment, they were at a dead draw, unspeaking and immobile. Mael’s heart was screaming in his ears - he was an old man and more out of his depth than he had ever been in his life, but he swam on, determined not to go under.

Selana glanced from one to the other, understanding that something had passed between them, but not knowing what.

“I think, in the light of what’s been
drawn,”
Mael said, “that the Lord of the City should take more of a... personal interest in her uncle’s welfare?”

Phylos glared, and Mael imagined him considering the play that had been made. He had no idea how much Mael knew about Jayr - or didn’t. And he had to weigh very carefully what he would do next.

Mael nearly fell over when he said, “Very well then. If that is her wish.”

Selana’s mouth opened in shock. She shut it again almost immediately, stood up to her full height.

“Yes, I... yes, I would like to see my uncle. I would...”

Phylos leaned to pat her arm. “I will send the senior apothecary down to him, my Lord. To see... how he is.”

Dear Gods.

He had no doubts as to what
that
meant.

Now, the old scribe found himself in an odd position. He had the upper hand - but he didn’t know why, or how strong it was, or quite what to do with it. Like his opportunity with Selana, this was huge...

...and it scared him.

Heart in his mouth, he said, “Perhaps we should all go down together. Now.”

The tension in the great stone room froze. Mael almost panicked, he had no idea if he had just overplayed his dice.

Phylos withdrew his outstretched hands from the odd, clammy warmth of the ashen fireplace and said softly, “Don’t push your luck, Brother. I have a lot of - questions - I need to ask you. And I’m going to have answers.”

Again, he raised his voice to call and the young man called Scythe came in, inclined his head politely.

Phylos said, “Prepare a room for Brother Mael, he’ll be... staying... for a while. And please escort the Lord -”

“Wait.” Selana’s voice had a faint tremor, but her command was clear. She said, “I want to see my uncle now.”

Phylos gave a gentle laugh. “My Lord, he’s very unwell. I’m afraid -”

“I said ‘now’, Merchant Master.”

Mael bit back his smile, but his heart sang.
Good girl, brave girl. Well done!

Don’t get cocky,
Saravin grumbled at the back of his thoughts. Scythe paused, one eyebrow raised.

Selana gave the young man a glare, then turned to look down at Phylos.

“Well?” she said.

“Well enough, then.” With a billow of scarlet, the Merchant Master stood, opened his hands and bowed to her, the gesture sweeping and exaggerated. “I obey your wishes Lord, we will visit your uncle. Now. Please understand, though, that he is unwell, and may not be quite himself.”

Selana nodded, turned to Mael. “You’ll accompany us, Brother? I understand the hospice is known to you.”

She made as if to say something else, but Phylos spoke over her. “Brother Mael may accompany us if he wishes, but he will be returning directly here.” His smile was elegance itself, a gracefully concealed blade. “I feel he should be a guest of my household. Probably for a while.”

“What do you mean, they took him away?” Amethea’s voice was all shock. “Took him where?”

Triqueta kicked a laughing skull straight in its bared teeth, sent it skittering.

“What’re
you
looking at?” She glanced up, said, “Syke told me. Don’t ask.”

“Syke?” Amethea stared at her friend.

Triqueta bit back a sharp retort. At the corners of her vision, she could still see Syke and the others, still feel their rejection and the strike of their boots. Her anger died unspoken. Whatever Amethea had seen, she had been strong enough to break out of it - to throw back the figments that had come to drag the horrors from their souls.

“I’m sorry.” Triq’s apology was awkward. “I saw stuff -stuff I didn’t need to see.”

Family.

The loss of it roared loud in Triq’s mind, it caught at her lingering fears, made them surge into anger at whatever game this was, at whatever creature was twisting their figments back in upon them.

Make us victims, would you? Oh, I’ve had about enough of this.

Amethea was looking at her lap, at the floor, at the scattered remains, as though she couldn’t bear to look up. Triq reached a hand to her friend’s shoulder but the girl was already moving. She was frowning at the spiral designs in the walls and the lightless creeper.

She said softly, “Where are we anyway? Is this the place the - creatures - were guarding?”

“I don’t know, I guess so.” Triq’s blood was thumping a tattoo in her temples, her fury was twisting a knot in her throat. She needed someone to answer for this, someone to blame for the figments that had tormented them. For Maugrim, for Ress’s madness, for Syke, for every damned thing they’d seen since they’d left Roviarath.

For Redlock, for
Ecko.

Amethea had picked up a jawless skull, was turning it over in her hands.

“You know something?” As Triq spoke, her mind was clearing, her thoughts hardening, her voice gaining volume. “I’m going to find whoever’s done this, whatever the rhez it is. And I’m going to carve out its insides. Nightmares and figments, pieces of our pasts - they’re not funny. I’m going to take this
back.”

She spun, and one of her long horsewoman’s boots slammed out sideways, hard into the heavy wooden door. The door juddered, but held.

“Triq, what are you...?”

“I’m getting us out of here.”

She welcomed the door’s resistance - she needed it to defy her, needed something to pit herself against, something upon which to vent her helplessness and rage.

Triqueta had no weapons, no kit. The Banned were gone, her friends, her family, her little palomino mare. Her opal stones hurt as if Ress’s blade really had tried to prise them from the bones of her face.

She had only her courage and determination, the old breeches and shirt she stood up in, her boots.

But that was enough.

Triqueta kicked the door, harder this time, enough to make the sound echo tightly in the small room. The wood shuddered, tumbles of dust fell from the frame.

The bones on the floor clattered in echo as if they applauded her.

Amethea said, “Do you really want to do this? We’ve got no idea what’s out there.”

“I don’t care.” With a snarl that could have been Redlock’s, she kicked again.

“Wait!” Amethea’s voice was stronger this time. She was holding the skull out to the slant of light from the arrowslit, turning it to see the flesh-shreds that still clung to the bone. “Honestly, Triq, think. This isn’t right. Something about all of this -”

“What? People being walled up to die? You’re not jesting.” Triqueta kicked the door again. This time, it buckled under the blow and there was the distinct sound of splitting wood. She heard the drop-key rattling hard against its housing.

“Triq, stop.” It wasn’t a request. “Stop now. Before we mess up anything else.”