The shock of night, p.45
The Shock of Night, page 45
“And now it’s gone,” Pellin said, his voice devoid of feeling. Toria Deel jerked. “But our task remains. Will you let innocents die because you need to grieve, or will you fulfill your vows?”
She glared at Pellin with unalloyed hatred. I’d seen looks like that on the streets of Bunard. Someone usually died soon after. “Did I say I would not?” Toria Deel said.
Pellin turned his attention back to his porridge, dismissing Toria Deel and her loathing. “Then put a comb through your hair. If you’re on the streets like that, you’ll attract attention we don’t want.”
With jerks of her hands she brought forth a plain blue ribbon and pulled her hair back, tying it behind her. Moving with quick, birdlike motions, she met the gazes of everyone else present, daring them to say anything. But when she got to mine, too many emotions fought behind her glance for me to define any one of them. One moment she looked on the verge of apologizing, the next of railing at me. She looked away and busied herself with the simple meal in front of her.
A few minutes later, Pellin’s spoon rattled against the bottom of his bowl, and he stood. “Come. We’re supposed to meet Lord Dura’s friends at full light. Aer willing, they have something to tell us.”
Chapter 53
Rory stood at the east end of the yard close to the fortified gatehouse, flanked by three urchins. The dawn sun blazed over his shoulder, giving him the appearance of a stained-glass savior surrounded by undersized disciples. But the expression on their faces held neither hope nor condemnation, only the blank stare of fatigue.
We drew near, but before Pellin could ask a question Rory stepped forward, pointing to the first of the other three. “This is Lelwin.” A girl of about thirteen stepped forward. If she’d been better fed, her face would have been heart-shaped. “She coordinated the watch over the upper merchants’ section.”
He shifted to indicate a boy a bit smaller than himself. He wore clothes that wouldn’t have been out of place among any of a dozen types of apprentices, ill-fitting but decently made. “This is Mark.”
“The Mark,” the boy corrected.
Rory shook his head at him. “They probably won’t understand or appreciate that. Just leave it at Mark.” He turned back to us. “He had the lower merchants’ quarter.”
Rory pulled a breath and held it before introducing the last urchin, as if he expected a fight or an argument at the least. “This is Fess,” he said pointing to a tall thin boy with blond hair. “He organized the watch here and by the tor.”
Pellin’s eyes narrowed. “He’s wearing an acolyte’s robe.”
Fess stepped forward and bowed, wearing an insouciant grin. “That I am, good sir, and I stand ready to run any errand you wish, especially to the market.” He winked.
Rory closed his eyes and sighed. “And it begins.”
Pellin’s mouth compressed to a line. “He impersonates an acolyte so that he can trick the Merum brothers out of their coin?”
“Not just the Merum brothers,” Fess said. “I wouldn’t dream of discriminating, your honorship. I have a blue robe, a brown robe, and a white as well. Don’t get to use that last one too often. The Vanguard are stingy with their errands, they are. You might want to talk to them about that.”
Pellin looked on the verge of voicing the affront he wore on his face, but Bronwyn’s laughter cut him off.
When Pellin turned to face her, her mirth only deepened. “Give over, Pellin,” she said. “All four orders of the church have always spoken a good line about caring for the poor, even while they build grand edifices for themselves. Fess is just helping them keep their commitment.”
The boy’s eyes widened until they appeared almost comical. “Exactly what I’ve always maintained, my lady,” he said with a bow.
“Humph,” Pellin grunted. “And just how good for his soul is it to engage in theft from the church?”
Bronwyn shook her head. “Theft is theft, Pellin. Don’t reserve your condemnation for specific cases.” She looked back to Fess. “Still, according to the agreement, the church has to provide homes for each of the urchins who desire it. I think I know a place for this one. What’s your full name?”
His grin returned, larger than ever. “Confession.”
Rory spoke before Pellin could react. “That’s really his name. I’m sure you can imagine a few reasons why.”
Pellin’s offense drained from his expression. “I think we’ll just stay with Fess. Time presses on us. What did you and your compatriots see last night?”
Rory shook his head. “Nothing you wouldn’t expect any other night in Bunard, mostly people conducting business they don’t want seen in the daytime.”
I must have muttered something under my breath, because Pellin and the rest of the Vigil turned to look at me for a moment before continuing.
“Laewan is much taller than an average man,” Pellin said.
“You told me that, yah?” Rory said.
“Were there any men on the street last night fitting that description?” Bronwyn asked.
Rory sighed, turning to his companions. “Fess? Lelwin? Mark?” They all shook their heads.
We’d assumed Laewan would be out in the city the night before his attack, if he attacked on Bas-solas day, but did he have to be?
“He knows we’re looking for him,” Toria Deel said. Her voice sounded hollow, and the bags under her eyes came close to matching their dark color.
Pellin’s gaze narrowed. “Go on.”
Toria Deel didn’t meet his gaze. “What about a stooped man with a cane?”
Pellin and Bronwyn nodded, but Rory just shook his head. “Do you not think we looked for that? We steal for a living.”
I stepped away from the group, wandering as if my feet were in charge. Bolt gave me a quick look, but I waved him away. I needed to think. Pellin’s desperate conversation and Toria Deel’s grief kept me from focusing.
What did I know? Quite a few people from Bunard had somehow been deceived into going to the Darkwater. Bronwyn had said so, and I’d seen enough of her ability to believe her. Laewan had control of them. I’d seen as much myself after the attack on Braben’s Inn. The one limitation was light. Those infected by the Darkwater couldn’t abide it, which meant Bas-solas presented an opportunity to strike during the day.
While Laewan lived, he still had the gift of domere, held captive by the evil that had taken him from the Darkwater. The evil from the Darkwater wasn’t just sentient, it had a purpose.
What?
Frustrated, I shook my head to clear the question away. I didn’t need to know the purpose, only the most immediate threat to it from Laewan’s point of view.
The Vigil. The entire Vigil was here in Bunard, ripe for the picking. “Brilliant,” I muttered. “My impeccable logic has led me right back to what I already knew.” How many ways were there for Laewan to win absolutely? I could only think of two. He could corrupt the entire Vigil or kill all of us at once. “We’re all fools,” I muttered. “We should get out of the city and not come back until after Bas-solas.”
But I already knew the answer to that idea. Laewan held us captive by the very principles that threatened him. I’d run into that sort of man before. I turned back toward the cathedral, shaking my head. Built in a time when kingdoms and peoples expressed their religious differences with the point of a sword, it would be easily defended. A few dozen soldiers could hold it against hundreds.
I pulled early morning air into my lungs and tried to think. Bas-solas. Everything centered, I supposed, on the festival. Sometime during those two hours of darkness, Laewan’s goal was to kill or capture the Vigil—while our goal centered on killing him. And despite the aid of the urchins, we didn’t know where he was.
Stymied, I returned to the group, cudgeling my mind in time with my steps into some type of insight that would help us, but nothing came. The Vigil and the urchins all stood in silent regard of the morning while the sun inched higher into the sky.
“What are we waiting for?” I asked Bolt.
A clanking of iron signaled the opening of the broad gate leading to the Merum courtyard.
“Nothing any longer,” Bolt said. Armed men and women streamed into the yard in colored rows, like blooms in a well-tended orchard, wearing surcoats of white, blue, brown, and red. Those wearing brown each bore a heavy leather satchel, but no weapons.
Pellin stepped to my shoulder. “I contacted the head of each order in Bunard and requested every man they could put under arms. The Vanguard has the most, naturally, but the Absold and the Merum are surprisingly well-equipped.”
I nodded. “What about the Servants?”
“They do not fight under any circumstances,” Pellin said. “However, every healer and aide is at our disposal.”
I looked at all the rows of brown-clad men and women and my throat tightened. “Aer have mercy. I hope we don’t need them.”
Pellin nodded. “A worthy prayer.”
I watched as he split the soldiers into four mixed groups, placing each group under the authority of a Vigil guard. Bolt took our group to the north end of the yard and set them in formation before addressing them in a voice like a trumpet blast.
“Your job is to do exactly what I tell you. Our expectation is that there will be an attack on the city during Bas-solas, but the attackers won’t be from Owmead. They’ll be your own people—friends, brothers and sisters, maybe even children. For the first time in hundreds of years, the church stands united against a threat—one church, despite the different colors you wear.”
His voice dropped as he pointed at me. “Your first instruction is this—you will keep him alive at any cost. If I see any of you hesitating in fulfillment of that instruction, I’ll kill you myself.” His gaze swept across them. “Now, I want the best of each order in front of me before a minute has passed.”
Each faction of the church grouped together, their differing colors making them appear as a larger-than-life formal garden, and a blend of muttered voices filled our area of the courtyard before three men and a woman separated themselves to come forward.
“Listen carefully,” he said. “Along with me, you will each stay within three paces of Lord Dura at all times.” He turned to the Servant, a slender man with the hands of a musician. “During Bas-solas, you and the rest of your order will be torchbearers.” Bolt nodded at the satchel. “Do you have any solas powder in there?”
“No,” the healer said. “Sprin powder works better at stopping bleeding.”
“We don’t want it for wounds,” Bolt said. “We need it for light.” He sighed. “Stupid, throwing a campaign together at the last minute.” He pointed at the other three groups around the courtyard, each receiving their own set of instructions from a Vigil guard. “Send a runner from the Servants over to the others. Make sure every group has as much solas powder as they can get their hands on before dark fall. I don’t care if you have to beggar every alchemist in the city.”
Bolt turned to me, the lines in his forehead deepened by frustration. “There’s any number of things we should see to, but—”
“There’s no time,” I finished for him.
“And that’s the first sign that we’ve been outmaneuvered,” he said.
An idea occurred to me. “What if we had run?” I asked.
He cocked his head at me, and I went on, giving voice to a notion as it formed in my mind. “You said we should have left the city. Where would we go?”
Bolt’s shrug preceded his answer by a heartbeat. “To one of the outlying villages.”
I nodded. “And if we left during the daylight, he couldn’t have us followed, but Laewan had to consider that we might have run.” I looked around at the array of soldiers in the yard. “It doesn’t make sense. We’ve got twenty score soldiers here. If Bronwyn had tracked more than that coming back to the city from the Darkwater, she would have said something.” I shook my head. “Somebody would have noticed.”
Bolt called the signal, and we moved out of the courtyard and turned south toward the poor quarter. Lelwin appeared at my shoulder. She didn’t exhibit any discomfort at being out of her normal setting or routine. Her brown hair was cut short, and along with her weight and height, she could have passed for a boy. I’d never met her before, but that wasn’t unusual. The urchins were a large and fluid group.
“Rory told us things might get bad,” she said. “But he didn’t bother to explain exactly how.”
Out of the corner of my eye I looked for the telltale signs of nervousness expressed or suppressed and didn’t find either. The well-defined lines of her chin and jawline along with some seemingly accidental choices in clothing caught my attention.
I picked my way along my thoughts and words as if I were charting a maze. “We think a lot of people have been to the Darkwater Forest and come back. Do you know what that is?” At her solemn nod, I continued. “It’s possible they’ll attack the rest of the city at Bas-solas.”
She absorbed that with the concentrated stoicism of a field commander. I noticed the backs of her hands were sculpted, well defined. “How old are you really, Lelwin?” Her head turned to me, and for an instant I glimpsed a hint of the story that landed her with the urchins.
“You have a good eye,” she said. “I’m eighteen. I’ve been with the urchins since I was thirteen.” She raised a brow at my implied question. “I’d rather take my chances begging or stealing than take up trade as a night woman.” Her delicate, almost frail, shoulders lifted in a shrug. “During the winter, I hardly ever have to beg for a full day. A smudge here and there and a bit of artistry with the clothing to hide my age and I can make enough in a few hours to feed three or four of us.”
I smiled. “Those are the types of skills that could take you far as a merchant.”
She nodded at me, all seriousness. “That’s why I begged Rory to let me volunteer. I’ve watched some of the women at market bargaining for the best price on their wares. Humph. Amateurs. If I can get with a family of merchants that will take me on as an apprentice, I could set up my own house in ten years.”
“We think the brunt of the attack will come in the merchants’ or nobles’ sections,” I said. “I don’t think the poor quarter will be a target.”
She nodded. “Then why are you searching there?”
I sighed. “Because we don’t know. The man we’re looking for has disappeared, and we can’t find him. We’re going to continue searching every quarter of the city right up until Bas-solas.”
“What if you don’t find him?”
I sighed. “We go back to the cathedral.”
We passed over the bridge that led into the upper merchants’ quarter. Scores of people were already stirring in the streets. The countryside for ten miles or more around must have converged on Bunard, and I quailed at the opportunity for slaughter it represented. The press of people would make it almost impossible to move quickly. A few of the street vendors paused to look at us as we passed, but few took more than a passing note. Bas-solas always presented something new.
“And then?” Lelwin asked.
“If I’m right, every man and woman infected by the Darkwater will be trying to kill me.”
Her eyes widened as she waited for me to finish the line of my black-hearted joke, then realized I wasn’t kidding. “Why didn’t you run?”
“Because there are other people in danger too,” I said.
We didn’t talk anymore. When we got to the bridge leading to the poor quarter, I took off my gloves.
Chapter 54
Rain had yet to wash the burn marks of Myle’s phos-fire from the stones on the bridge, and I was grateful for the reference. I stood on the spot to orient myself, then walked diagonally across to the last place I’d seen Laewan. I put my hands on the weathered stones of the railing and closed myself off from the sounds and smells of life around me.
Partial images and emotions came to me, but nothing more than the detritus of a thousand lives that crossed the bridge each day, and I struggled to sift through that morass to find the one remnant that belonged to Laewan. Bits of memory floated across my awareness, pieces of life and love, overflows of jealousy and despair, and nearly colorless scenes of people focused on simply prolonging their existence from one day to the next, all subtly different. How many shades were there to human existence?
A hint of something darker flowed past me, and I stopped, reversing to find it. There. Some memories, in accordance to the emotion, were darker, but only one flowing past had been shaded in black so deep it swallowed light. I sifted it, holding it within my mind to see its owner.
Laewan. The ghost of a memory, as much as the stone of the bridge could hold, conveyed nothing more than his presence and the towering rage that consumed him, me. My insides rebelled at the spite and malice that defined him. I thrust the memory away and let the stream of memories pass by me once more, searching while my heart struggled to find its rhythm once more. An idea blossomed as I watched the flow. Perhaps there was a way to narrow the search for Laewan after all. If I was right I should see . . . There.
Another impression as black as the first flowed by me, this one more defined, more recent. I pulled it from the flow, checking to make sure it belonged to Laewan himself, and staggered again as his rage and hatred became my own. Hurriedly, I released it and dove back into the stream of memories and time until I came to the present moment.
Pulling my hands from the rail, I motioned to Bolt, and we stepped away from Lelwin and the rest of our escort. “There’s no point to searching the poor quarter. He’s not here.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know how the Vigil delves memories from stone,” he said softly, “but it’s always taken longer than this.”
I nodded. “I didn’t sift through all of them, just the ones from the attack to now.”
“How does that help?”
Time pressed on and against me like a merciless guard prodding me with the tip of his halberd, but I recognized the importance of checking my assumption. We couldn’t afford to be wrong. “That night on the bridge,” I said. “Which way was he headed?”
