Living With Ghosts (53 page)

She said, “Drop it.” He struggled. She tightened her grip and repeated the command.

He coughed and tugged at her arm. She resisted. “I said drop it.”

He dropped it. Iareth hesitated, then released his wrist and picked up the knife. The handle felt unpleasantly warm. She tucked the tip under his ribs. “Now the key.” Again he was still. She dug the knife in and heard him moan as she drew blood. His unwounded hand clawed at a pocket and the key fell out onto the floor.

She brought the knife to rest at the fragile point where his spine joined his skull, then cautiously released the neck-lock. He fell forward, panting. She snatched up the key and ran for the door. The smoke was sickening.

Her hand shook. She fumbled with the lock. It was stiff. She could spare only half her attention for it, needing to watch Kenan. He lay still, face averted, cursing softly. The air tasted bad.

She had mishandled it somehow. That was her only clear thought, apart from the driving need to escape. The key would not turn. Smoke choked her. She coughed and found her vision beginning to blur. Her head hurt so . . . the perfume confused everything . . . She raised a hand to rub her eyes, and the key dropped from her damp fingers.

Smoke wrapped about her, clinging as river-mist. She could not see. The door was her only reference, solid, impassable. She coughed and pain doubled her to her knees. Nerveless, her hands brushed the floor. Somewhere she could hear Kenan speaking. The words made no sense. She could see nothing. His knife was still in one hand. The handle seared her. There were creatures somewhere in this mist, and she had no fire with which to banish them. They would find her, misbegotten creatures, and trap and tear and rend. She had lost Joyain in the cloying fog and she must—she
must
—find him. She must act.

Hands laid hold of her and dragged her upright. She fell into them, limbs too drugged to resist. Warm flesh against hers, and a touch on her face, quiet, possessive. She coughed again and said, “Valdin
kai-reth
?” That was wrong, she knew it as soon as she spoke, but she had forgotten the correct name. The hands drew her ungently from the door and dropped her in some boundless, misted limbo. Her hair was in her face; she could not make her hands move to push it back.

“Iareth
elor-reth
,” a voice said out of the mist. Fingers seized her chin so that her head fell back. His form was only barely distinct; pale eyes in a pale face beside her. He bent over her, and his breath carried that same cling of honeysuckle. He said, “Valdin Allandur’s whore. No fit companion for a clansman, I think.” She could not think; she could not speak. A point of red heat ran across her cheek, and she realized that it was the tip of a knife. Her blood, running down her face, felt cool, cold as her public persona. She could see herself flowing out with it, fragments of Iareth Yscoithi. Her eyes were filled with feathers, her ears with the sound of water falling. The knife touched her again, drawn along the outside of her right forearm. The fabric of her tunic dropped before it. No more
kai-rethin
uniform. The edges that defined her were breaking, pouring away with the dripping of her blood. There was no pain. There was only the knowledge of her dissolution.

She could not move. The knife stole her in pieces and she had no defense against it, bound by scented smoke. There were tears in her blind eyes, but she would not let them fall. Her hands were wet with her blood, touching memory, seeing at last the contradiction of her nature, half-blood, half-caste, half-committed, in deed and word and vow. By stone and flame, wind and wave and darkness . . . But not by blood, and blood is the last of all bindings.

She could find time, caught in this vague peaceful destruction, to wonder if Urien would forgive her failure. If Valdarrien would comprehend and remember. The knife was at her throat now, and it seared her. She raised her eyes and found that at the last they cleared. Kenan knelt over her and his face was blank. He said, “There is always a cost, dearest Iareth. And for me it is blood. To have what I most want, I require a life.” His free hand reached out to her and stroked her face. “You understand that this is not personal?” She was beyond speech. She could only look, and she knew that her eyes—her green Armenwy eyes—were mute. “A harsh punishment even for your treachery. But you may take comfort in knowing that your death will serve me.”

She had no words. The flow of her blood had taken with it the strength to hate. She was thinking of Valdarrien, who had surrendered his own life to a duelist’s bullet and cheated death to come back to her. She was failing him; she was abandoning him once again. If she could, she would have spoken his name and taken the taste of it with her into oblivion.

She could not. She could only hold to it, last of her memories, as her throat went under the knife.

In the salon of Amalie’s house, all the candles went out. Valdarrien d’Illandre let the glass he held drop to the floor, eyes wide, heart racing, hand already tightening on the grip of his sword.

Kai-rethin,andone.

21

I
ARETH YSCOITHI. Valdarrien could feel her: she was everywhere in the air. The scent of her clung to the air crowding in on him; the low breeze brushed his skin with her fingers. Everywhere and nowhere, wrapping him in alarm. It was still early; the streets of Merafi were unnaturally quiet. Shops remained shuttered, few carts rattled over the cobbled streets. The market squares were empty. Here and there, a prostitute hovered on a street corner or an anxious underservant scurried to work or a beggar poked through the gutters. It seemed that no one wished to be abroad unless they had no other choice. The city was being surrendered to shadows and unnatural things.

Like him. The light mist coiled toward him, lapped his boots and retreated. He paid it no heed, drawn on by that sense, that calling that told him all was not well. He should have forbidden her from leaving Amalie’s, he should have barred her way and forced her to remain. Her Lunedithin masters had no claim on her, no rights by comparison to his. He should have known danger lay ahead from the moment that word had fallen from her lips.

“I must return at least once to the residence, Valdin
kai-reth
. It is my duty.”

An ill omen trailed it, that duty of hers. He should have appealed to Urien to repeal it. But Urien had gone out in search of some irrelevance concerned with tides, and Thiercelin was asleep, and Gracielis . . .

Valdarrien had nothing to say to Gracielis. Merafi in peril, Tarnaroqui plots: none of that mattered in the least. She was in danger, his Iareth, and he must find her and win her back from whatever—whoever—it was that dared to threaten her. He climbed the cobbled road up from the low city to the hill, crossing the river at the Dancing Bridge. On higher ground, there were more signs of life. Here lights showed behind casements, there a faint strain of music drifted out. The low beat of bells spoke from the precincts of the Old Temple. The gates to the Lunedithin residence stood open: the guardhouse was lit but its doors were closed. No one challenged him as he entered and crossed the courtyard to the front door. He banged on it with his fist, once, thrice, five times, the sound bouncing round the walls. No one answered; he banged again, louder, and the door swung open. A young maidservant gawped at him as he pushed past her into the hall. “Monsieur . . . monsieur, please . . .” The taste of Iareth was stronger here, stronger and bloodier. Ignoring the girl, Valdarrien strode toward the stairs. Behind him, she called out to the household for help. His hand settled onto the hilt of his sword, cool and comforting. About him, doors slammed and feet hurried over wooden or tiled floors. His eyes narrowed.

A man stood at the head of the stairs, blocking his path. Red hair and a gray uniform, one of the royal
kai-rethin
. Valdarrien stopped, tightening his grip on the sword. He knew that face from somewhere . . . The man began to draw his own blade, stopped, gasped.

“Valdin Allandur?” The voice was light and accented, the thin face edgy and afraid. Valdarrien stared at him. The man—Tafarin Morwenedd, that was it—swallowed, said quietly, “Not possible . . .”

“Iareth Yscoithi,” Valdarrien said. “Where is she?”

“I . . . No one’s seen her today. She went out . . .”

“She came here. I can feel her.”

Tafarin fell back a step. “I don’t know . . . maybe Kenan . . .”

“I will find her.” Valdarrien closed the distance between them.

“Of course.” Tafarin dropped back another pace. “I mean, if you want to look . . .”

“I do not require your permission.”

“No . . .” Tafarin’s voice was faint. Valdarrien considered him in silence for a long moment. Then Tafarin stepped aside to let him pass.
I areth Yscoithi...
She was here, he was certain of it, and yet . . . Her scent tugged at him, drew him on down the hallway. He heard Tafarin behind him issue orders that he was to be left alone.

There were, it seemed, certain advantages to being dead, after all.

Her calling, that sense of her, drew him up another flight of stairs, along several passages and, at the last, to a door in the west wing of the residence. It stood ajar. At his touch, it swung open before him. The room beyond was gloomy, shaded from the weak light by a dense row of pines outside its windows. The casements stood open, framing those dour trees. The air tasted sour, spiced with iron and blood. The remains of several candles stood on various tables. A number of them had overflowed, trailing wax across the polished wood. There was a dirty-looking stain on one rug. The feel of Iareth Yscoithi was everywhere.

It was not her room. A pair of men’s gloves lay atop a chair; on the largest table a scatter of letters with aristocratic seals tangled with the candle wax. A line of invitation cards studded the mantelpiece.
His Lordship requests the pleasure of the company of PrinceKenan Orcandros
.

Kenan Orcandros. The sneering boy of fourteen who thought himself fit to rule an independent Lunedith and who had ambushed Valdarrien at Saefoss. Who had laid hands, now, upon Valdarrien’s Iareth. He could see her, now, on the fringes of his sight, straight and slim and trembling. Here, her hand had rested; here, where the floorboards were scuffed, she had struggled. Strands of her fine light hair were caught in the wood of the door, dusted the weave of the rugs. He was walking through her, lapped and drawn by her fear and her devotion. Entwined, entranced, he followed her from the salon to the bedroom beyond. Flakes of blood, flakes of skin shifted about him. Kenan’s spoor overlaid her, bitter, cruel. She had redeemed Valdarrien’s life at Saefoss from this same Kenan. Yet now . . .

Now . . . On the bed lay a blanket-wrapped bundle, dark and seeping. Valdarrien’s hand dropped from his sword. Blood on that blanket, on the floor about him, in the air . . . He reached out and pulled the blanket aside. Her face was as still as marble, calm and cool as he had always known her. Her throat was a bloody wreck. His fingers tightened on her shoulders, dug in, clutched at her, and she gave him no response. He dropped to his knees, brow resting against hers, each now as cold as the other. Nothing he did, it seemed, could hold her. He had fought back to her, and she had fled him once again.

Kenan would not escape. Her limp hand in his, her blood on his lips, Valdarrien swore it and lifted his head. The room was cold. Somewhere, out in the city, in the mist, Kenan still lived.

He would not live for much longer.

The river stirred, shifted, thickened. Across Merafi, windows were being locked, fires built up as fear pressed in. The mist lay dense and heavy over the low city, reaching its killing hands upslope toward the homes of the rich and the privileged and blanking out the thin autumn daylight. In her rooms at the Tarnaroqui embassy, Quenfrida shivered. Changes in the air, a wrongness, a sourness that should not be there. Something had been added, something had been done, scratching and straining at the fine bonds of her working.
Kenan
. He was a fool, always wanting too much, wanting more. If he overreached himself now . . .

Deeper into the city, Gracielis paced the length of Amalie’s kitchen. His feet were bare: under them, the flagstones spoke of old power, of enmity, of a violence without boundaries. Something building, something shifting out of kilter. He could not find it, could not sense if it was for good or for ill. Frown lines traced themselves across his brow. Urien had yet to return from the Rose Palace. There was no one else he could ask.

It did not taste like Quenfrida, not this time. This was both older and less controlled, as if the city itself was beginning to awaken, to remember.
Stone memory is the oldest
. That was written in the
First Book of Marcellan.
Stone memory and the blood of beginnings.

The river and the city were pulling apart.

Cold hands had hold of Valdarrien, drawing him through the streets. His face was dark. No one who looked on it once looked again. No one remained for long in his path. His hand was clenched and sore about the hilt of his sword. He had died in her name and transcended death to find her again.

For this. To be cheated of her by Kenan Orcandros. He had never known he could burn so deeply. He let it lead him, feeling Kenan ahead of him, like a candle, a pale bright point amid the shadows populating Merafi. Kenan had bound power into him, along with the river. Kenan would learn to regret that. Valdarrien’s path took him across the river, heedless of the poor state of the bridges, of the refuse and decay in the streets; then down through the old city into the deserted area around the old docks, past husked-out buildings. Perhaps there were bodies in the alleys and covered passages. He did not choose to notice them, any more than he registered shuttered windows and sealed doors, the odor of burning and sickness. He was drawn, he was certain . . . Through the old docks, to the remains of the bridge that had once led to the submerged shantytown. The river lay vast and swollen, sluggish with filth and debris. It smelled foul. The floating dock was gone. Away to the east flames burned over the estuary. Valdarrien stopped on the very edge of the river and spoke a name.