A Fray of Furies, page 34
part #2 of The Waking Worlds Series
A vehement ‘no’ rose unbidden to his lips. He was being asked to abdicate a throne he was, only now, being told was real.
“You cannot miss what you will never know,” she purred, echoing his traitorous thoughts.
“You think the streets of Oaragh don’t teach regret?” he seethed at this obvious ploy. Now that he knew his ambition to be more than fantasy, every fallow day to follow would taste of starvation.
“I know they don’t teach turning lead into gold,” she returned. “Who was it, placed a box of jewels on my scales? Take my offer. You will earn the same, a hundred times over, before you’re done.”
The golden glare coming off her promise blinded him.
“But earn it anonymously,” he struggled against its pull.
“Everything has its price. The infamy you seek will rob you of much more than you could ever earn back.”
He believed her. What’s more, he didn’t think she was talking about coin. At least, not only about coin. Not many tales of the great thieves ended with them in their splendorous dotage.
However, all the tales of the mehz agreed: the only way to come out ahead was to outsmart them. Trap them in their own words. He followed her twisted logic to a bright idea.
“But if I surrender my future fame, does that not prove I value it less than the fortune you offer?”
He forged ahead under her sudden flat regard, “You thrive on sacrifice. Should you then not covet my coin more?”
Her pointed incisors put his smile to shame.
“What are you willing to pay for the answer to that question?”
Watching her smile hitch higher, becoming feral, he hurriedly amended, “Forget I asked.”
“Then choose.”
Her demeanor had changed, brooking no further discussion.
Shivering sands, what was he doing? Trading his fondest desire for another man’s politics? For an empire of sun worshippers?
It was, of course, not that simple. He’d lived in Tellar. He’d experienced, firsthand, the pyre of religious persecution. His gold and his steel had kept the worst of it at arm’s length. But all were not so lucky. Whispers of atrocities did make their way to the market square. Often voiced in tones of approval.
He’d be helping untold generations bear up under the Heli yoke.
He shook his head to rid himself of Neever’s influence.
Neever’s influence…
He stilled. The monk had sent him down here to trade. But he was no peddler, to haggle over terms and sums.
He eyed the mehz. She also thought his only options were to accede or go home empty handed. She’d overlooked the third option, though she’d named him a master thief.
He would steal it from her.
The decision instantly eased some unnamed tension in him. He matched her, grin for grin. “I wasn’t born yesterday, lady. We’ve discussed only price. I’ve yet to see the goods.”
“You doubt me?” Her tail gave the lie to her playful tone.
“Never buy a horse until you’ve checked its...”
She grinned broadly, showing some fang.
“Ahem,” he changed tack. “Call it professional prudence.”
“You want proof of Jurissen Swordlord’s visit,” she confirmed.
“If that is the name by which Juris Arbiter went at the time,” he qualified, “then, yes. Proof enough to convince Tellar’s temple.”
“I cannot control what others will believe,” she objected mildly.
“So show me what you have,” he offered. “And let me decide.”
“You would dictate terms to me?” She bristled visibly, her fur stirring. “I should throw you to the desert,” she tossed her head.
He wasn’t blind to the way she indicated the shallow pool.
“Better yet,” she crooned, reconsidering. “I should keep you.”
Her golden eyes said it was decided. He vividly recalled the touch of her tongue and could all but hear her stomach rumbling.
“If you keep me, lady,” he hastened, “you keep me from attaining any titles. I would be a meal without flavor.”
Her carriage changed slightly as she slunk toward him.
“Your bones will warn the next supplicant against insolence.”
Ah. That’s what was wrong with the stacks of treasure. They were festooned with half-buried skeletons.
“And when might the next be?” he asked, recalling the chipped and faded mosaic. “I doubt you’ve had a single visitor in my lifetime. And none for decades before that.”
She slowed.
“Knowledge of this place is lost,” he pressed his advantage. “If you keep all who find it, you keep word from spreading.”
She was a merchant, sitting astride a dried-up trade route.
“You must bait the snare, lady,” he told her. “I can spread word of you. And your fairness,” he hinted. “If I return triumphant.”
“Let you tell the world how you bested me? Outwitted me?”
She gathered her haunches under her, a deadly spring to follow.
“No one dares the desert that kills all comers, lady. You must offer hope of success, however slim.” There. He’d baited his own snare. “Surely it would be a small thing, for one so clever as you, to set supplicants on their way, gladly dragging their own doom?”
Slowly, very slowly, her ruffled nape settled.
“Perhaps,” she mused, reclaiming her elegance.
She weighed him with her eyes, “The swordlord – the one you call Arbiter – also thought to dictate terms to me. He escaped my displeasure–” she gestured “–by a hair’s breadth.”
For all his craft, he missed how she produced the braided lock. It was knotted at both ends, sporting several carved beads.
“This,” she told him, “is a promise-braid. The hair is his. The pearls are sunfire steel, impossible to counterfeit in this day and age. They bear the name of Jurrissen’s lover.”
“And would the Heli know this name?”
“I should say so,” she smiled, “they voice it in all their prayers.”
It took him a moment to put two and two together.
“When you say ‘lovers’… You don’t mean physical…?”
Her frank regard said she did.
“Wow,” he breathed. “Eris Bolk was a Holy Mother f–”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t think the priests are going to appreciate the joke.”
“Yet, it is inarguable,” she stated. “Satisfactory, yes?”
He nodded.
“Then, have we reached an accord?”
He nodded again.
“Your hand on it,” she demanded.
Suspecting her game, he shifted his burden to offer his hand.
“The other one,” she drawled.
Thought so, he switched around, extending the beringed one.
In a blink, she was plastered against him, anchored around his waist, his hand held in a backward grip.
“This, then, is the whole of our agreement,” she whispered, “I will give into your hand the love-lock of Jurrissen Swordlord. In return, you will surrender to me any hope of attaining the title of greatest thief alive and all that goes with it.”
He nodded.
“Speak it,” she insisted.
“I agree.”
With unexpected speed, she dragged his throat toward her teeth. But it was his lips she was after. He struggled, briefly, against the kiss, her body hard against him. As he relaxed, she bit him.
“Aagh!” he gasped, stumbling from her grip.
“By blood is our agreement made,” she told him, smug, through reddened teeth.
He considered, “Not the worst kiss I’ve ever had.”
He wiped his lip, tasting blood, “Nor even the roughest.”
Something dusty lingered on his tongue.
Her laugh was husky. Relaxed. Sure of her victory.
“Let’s have it,” he prompted, cupping his hand in her direction.
“Here, then,” she slinked nearer, dangling the knotted braid. She folded his fingers around it, trapping his hand with hers.
He felt her excitement peak. He returned her smile.
She’d been after his ring the entire time – he’d felt her testing whether it would come off, when she’d been maligning his knuckles. The ‘greatest thief’ thing had been a ploy to get him to relinquish it, hand and all. After all, who’d ever heard of a one-handed master thief? She’d been so clever with her words. As long as she ‘gave’ the promise-braid into the same hand she lopped off, their deal wouldn’t even cost her anything. She’d keep both.
He’d been tensed for her betrayal.
What he hadn’t expected was her overwhelming strength.
She held him fast as her voluptuous exterior fell away, revealing the mummified husk he’d tasted beneath. Greyed flesh, warped and tough as teak, imprisoned his hand and his prize in a vice. A bronze sickle-sword appeared overhead in her ready grip.
Crap…
Two fortunes’ worth of jewels scattered.
He plugged her gaping socket with the knife he’d secreted in the lockbox. Though she was obviously no longer using her eyes to see, hopefully she was still using her brain to think.
She froze. For a moment, he thought the blade had bitten deep enough. Then desiccated lips drew back from yellowed teeth in a smile. The greening khopesh chopped toward his wrist.
He screamed his denial, tugging with all his might.
Angry blue sparks arced over him. A shard of the shattered sickle-sword clipped his cheek. Broken ends of the bronze blade bounced off the surrounding pillars. The mehz skidded from him as though singed. Together, they stared at his transformed hand.
The limb she’d meant to lob off was encased, from fingertips to elbow, in a silvery gauntlet. He recognized the embossed pattern of his ring-knife. Despite the hard shell, he could feel individual hairs of the braid he held. Not trusting the sensation, he tightened his grip. A wicked blade, as long as his forearm, sprang from the gauntlet’s front-end.
“Well, skewer me sideways,” he marveled.
A hollow cough was his only warning. He ducked the claws that would have sheared his face off. He’d have hated to tangle with her when she was alive and dexterous. Even dead and diminished, she was damn-near too fast to follow.
The gauntlet clunked off the mosaic as he rolled. He expected to see his guts, unspooling in his wake, sure he’d sliced a swathe through his own stomach. But he leapt up, hale and with little time for relief. She was a blur he barely kept at bay, with wild, ungainly swipes. It was not a sustainable defense. Within moments, he was haggard, still suffering the ill effects of his near-drowning. She slipped through a gap in one of his more desperate swings.
Her stony front smacked into his back. Warning claws pricked blood from his throat and abdomen. His hands stilled in surrender.
“One last question,” he gasped.
“No more answers for you, meat,” she snarled. But she was too much a cat to resist playing with her food.
“How do I get out of here?” he insisted.
“Only by my hand may you pass through the pool.”
He felt her absolute shock at the answer she’d not intended to voice.
“Thanks,” he wheezed.
Silently praying to any god who would listen, he turned his weapon on himself. He was used to knives that responded to the roll of his wrist and the shift of his grip. The gauntlet was ungainly, like trying to eat a hardboiled egg with a felling axe.
Its blade slid painlessly beneath his clavicle and he ripped it upward. Because he really had accidentally disemboweled himself. Except he hadn’t. In his peripheral vision, a swath of silver dust fountained up. In its midst tumbled a desiccated arm. He sprang from the shrill scream puncturing his ear to snatch it from the air.
Limb in one hand, love-lock in the other, he raised a slew of water from the pool as he turned at bay.
The mehz stood stunned, staring at her stump of an arm.
“How?” she demanded.
He gave her his best grin, “Keep the change.”
She looked where the silver blade pointed.
The dagger sprouting from her skull had made little enough impression. The coin, sticking from her frayed sash, was another matter. His specter had said it would force answers from the dead.
Her screech of rage preceded her. But he’d already plunged her captive palm to the pool’s bottom. Her wild leap stalled in mid-air as the world around them stretched. Something that had been straining popped and he screamed as he was wrenched upward.
* * *
As promised, the river narrowed dangerously after Tongal, as Phelamy Mop was discovering for himself.
“Trim the mainsail!” he screamed, as he scurried about the bucking barge. “Furl the topsail! Secure the lines! Weigh the anchor! Man the oars!”
After a moment’s thought, he amended that, “Mule the oars!”
Unimpressed, Nomparal sat in the skiff, watching him panic.
“Useless lump!” he swore at the donkey, tugging on every rope and tie, hoping they’d somehow sprout sails. Or brakes, at least.
The barge clunked at another collision. Mop found himself on his back, staring into the spinning sky. It roared at him.
Well, that can’t be good…
He craned his neck.
As waterfalls went, this one was quite tame. The drop was little more than two stories and the plunge sputtered rather than churned.
“It doesn’t look so bad, actually,” he allowed.
The barge shuddered as something snagged at its belly.
Only then did he note all the razor-edged rocks, cutting through the current towards them, crusted around the outcrop.
“Oh,” he realized.
The entire construction caromed beneath him.
“I’ll save you, Nomparal,” he cried, diving in desperation.
The barge struck the jagged boundary head-on and stuck fast. The skiff went sledding from beneath his grip, taking Nomparal and their cart with it. The donkey’s ears fluttered dramatically.
“Mule overboard!” he managed before the canting deck catapulted him after.
“Heeeee–!” he screamed, before everything turned into bubbles.
“Ugh-egh!” he coughed as he broke the surface. The skiff, miraculously right-side-up, bobbed past. He clung to it miserably.
“Stop,” he addressed the lips massaging his scalp, “nibbling me and help me up!”
A clump of his hair was obediently torn from the roots.
“Ow! Never mind, I’ll do it myself.”
Dripping, but on deck once more, he stared toward the falls. Or, rather, where the falls used to be. The barge had turned all the way on its side, flattened against the rocks, like a sluice.
“Just look what you’ve done, Nomparal,” he reprimanded. Deprived of steady replenishment, the water level of Turquoise Lake was already starting to drop. At this rate, it would empty in just a few bells, disappearing down whatever sphincter its depths hid. Unless the sluice caved to the pressure first.
“I hope you’re well pleased with yourself,” he scolded.
In answer, Nomparal shook his head, wet ears flapping.
The skiff was cramped, bearing donkey and cart. Shivering, smelling of wet ass, Mop crammed himself into a corner.
He consigned himself to seeing this through to the end.
Or, at least, to the bottom.
* * *
The world lurched around him. The familiar sensation: time, blowing in his ear as it roared past. He throttled the impulse to fight his way upright, letting the vertigo roll him under. Moth-eaten though his memory was, its container viscerally recalled why it was a bad idea to startle Kassika.
He needn’t have bothered. He found himself alone, sitting on an unfamiliar cot in a narrow room.
Alone. That was unusual.
Mentally, he backtracked: the interminable cobbled highway, going by in fits and starts. Dwindling forest. Sprawling fields. A farmer... Master Goff, yes. That had been two days ago.
Three days? Maybe.
Where did that put him? He recalled Kassika, looking up at… a gate house. From there… shop signs... an inn. That sounded right.
Staring around at the pine walls, he took a deep breath. The graying boards seeped with the memory of pipe smoke, spilled meals and (in one corner) stale piss under a thin scrubbing of soap. He wrinkled his nose at the bedding, redolent with body odors.
The poorly fitted boards shifted as they redistributed an unseen weight among themselves. Their creaking said he wasn’t on the ground floor. The echo said more rooms flanked this one to either side. The clunk and scrape of pottery and pewter floated up from downstairs, along with merry voices and the sound of a musician warming up a reed flute. The soft din of the city washed up against the bubbled glass at his back.
So. They’d reached the capital. Kassika must have left him, to go hunting for help. Probably, he’d had one of his fits, else she’d have taken him along. No matter, he’d be able to find her easily enough. The great burrower fat she’d rubbed into her new cuirass had a very distinctive scent that made his hackles rise.
Doubt assailed him on his way to the door. A lone human’s scent stood out in a deserted wood. In the city, humans blended like leaves on a tree. What if he couldn’t find her? What if she returned while he was out? What if he had another fit, out there?
The thought of losing his way among the unfamiliar city streets filled him with a nameless dread. His hand paused on the latch.
Around his wrist, he spied a leather thong. Curious, he raised it to his face. It smelled of Kassika. He read the knots she’d left him.
Stay, they commanded.
He should have known.
Resigned, he lowered himself gingerly to the bed.
He’d hoped that sight of Tellar (home, presumably) would bring a rush of knowledge. Some things – the drape of a pennant, the screech of a gull, the smell of roasting eels – seemed eerily familiar. But they’d unlocked no true memories.
With any luck, Kassika would return with some good news.
He wondered how she was faring, out there. She was even more intimidated by the city than he was, though she was too stubborn-brave to admit it. And, when she got scared, she got angry. And violent. He pictured her, in her leather armor (and that shortsword she called a knife), scowling around Tellar.
