The Iron Ring (23 page)

It was a good instinct, since barely a moment later, Jaevis literally shouldered his way
through
the fence, the thin plywood splintering around his armored form. Artus gasped at this and picked up the pace again. At least, he reasoned, the guy's lost his sword.

He made another turn toward the center of the city, this time taking him down row after row of bakeries. This street was broader than the others, and clean, too, leaving him little to dodge around or throw in his path behind him. Jaevis was winded now, the weight of his armor finally taking its toll, and Artus began to pull away.

Then he heard Jaevis utter, “Enough,” and the bounty hunter came to a stop.

Artus, smiling at his victory, looked over his shoulder . . .

. . . in time to see the Illini's dagger slam home in his back. Searing lances of pain radiated out from just below his left shoulder blade and he tripped, sprawling forward on the cobblestones. He tried quickly to rise, but the white-­hot agony in his shoulder and arm made him swoon and fall back onto the ground.

Jaevis, breathing heavily, walked up to where he had fallen and put a boot in the center of his back. “End of road, boy.” He yanked the dagger out with a savage twist, making Artus scream and almost pass out.

This prompted a grunt from Jaevis, who knelt next to him and cleaned his blade on Artus's shirt. “You are lucky, boy. If you did not look just now, dagger would have hit you in spine.” He nodded solemnly. “Then you would be dead.”

Artus tried rolling away, but Jaevis jammed a thumb in his open wound, making Artus again go pale with pain. “Hit bone. Boy should know that knife was poisoned. Jaevis could leave you here to bleed, and you would die. Maybe from blood you lose, maybe from poison, maybe from infection. Very painful death.”

Artus tried to manage something pithy, or maybe just spit in the man's eye, but he couldn't get anything out. He wasn't Tyvian, after all—­he was just a street rat.

Jaevis took a deep breath. “You are lucky boy, though. Jaevis has nephew, about your age. Would not want him to die so painfully. I will do you favor, for him.”

Artus felt the tip of the dagger at the back of his skull. He said his good-­byes to his family, and realized, with a profound sense of appropriateness, that he was just another son that wasn't coming home.

“Oi, you!” he heard a man yell, and felt the dagger withdraw.

“Boy is thief. I take my due,” Jaevis said, standing up.

Through his tear-­filled eyes, Artus could just make out a pair of men coming up the street, arm-­length, spiked cudgels dangling from their hands. They were followed by the floating, glowing tattlers common to all watchmen. One of their tattlers flew over near Artus's face and the other circled Jaevis. The second watchman whistled. “Lookee here, Martus—­some Illini hick murdering a young boy in the street.”

The first watchman nodded. “Shame what the world is comin' to, Toffer. 'Ere now, you—­drop the pig-­sticker, eh?”

Jaevis grumbled, “I pay three marks, you leave. Deal?”

“My my, Martus,” Toffer said, “looks like this noble fellow has rid our fair city of another thieving soul.”

“Hann bless his stalwart heart, Toffer,” Martus replied, holding out his hand.

Artus, struggling through the pain, managed to wrestle his small purse from his belt and cast it on the street. “Seven marks,” he gasped.

Martus and Toffer both whistled in unison. One of the tattlers illuminated the coins where they had spilled on the cobblestones. “Well now,” said Toffer, “looks like we have a bit of a difference of opinion.”

“He pays with my money,” Jaevis growled. “He stole from me.”

A tattler sank to Jaevis's large purse and illuminated it clearly for the watchmen. “And I suppose,” said Martus, “that this thoughtful little pickpocket here took it upon hisself to leave you unrelieved of all that?”

“Do you happen to carry a small purse and a large purse at the same time, mate?” Toffer asked, grinning broadly.

Jaevis stewed for a moment and then said, “I give twenty-­five marks—­triple what boy is worth.”

Artus tried to rise but was beaten down again by his injured shoulder. He instead rolled onto his good side. “You'll get . . . four times what I got if you . . . if you take me to Top Street.”

“Why Martus,” Toffer said, “how much did the little urchin just offer us?”

“Allow me a moment to make me calculations, Toffer,” Martus said, and then added, “seven four times is twenty-­eight, plus this seven here is thirty-­five.”

“He has not such money,” the Illini countered.

“Tyvian—­” Artus began, winced, and then started again. “Tyvian Reldamar's got it. He'll pay you.”

Toffer and Martus exchanged glances. Martus whistled again and hissed, “Reldamar paid Captain Strayther
two hundred
today to stay clear of Imar's.”

Toffer nodded. “So he's got the money, then.”

Jaevis scowled. “Fools.”

“What's
that
?” Martus thrust the end of his cudgel into Jaevis's gut, all traces of whimsy gone from his tone. “You want to be a toughie, eh? Think 'cause you got yourself some armor and a tough face you can just flap your gums at anyone you please?”

“Boy is good as dead. I will—­”

Martus struck Jaevis in the solar plexus with the butt of his cudgel, causing the bounty hunter to stumble back. Toffer moved in and brandished his weapon in the Illini's face. “You listen here, you Kroth-­spawned tit—­I don't care if you work for the bloody Nine Queens of Kalsaar, Freegate belongs to
us
, and we don't take orders from nobody, got it?”

Artus knew Jaevis could kill both the men without much trouble—­he'd seen him fight Tyvian on the barge. Still, the bounty hunter put up his hands and backed away, his coal-­black eyes fixed on him. Even as the world began to spin, the eyes remained steady—­the axis around which Artus's delirium rotated.

Martus helped Artus to his feet. “Well, lad,” he said with a wink, “let's see if your friend Reldamar can pay up.”

“Otherwise,” Toffer chuckled, “we dump you in Arble Brook and see if you can swim with one arm, eh?”

The two watchmen laughed, and Artus saw their faces falling away from him. He found himself looking up at the black sky, and then remembered nothing else.

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MAN OF MERCY

“F
orty bloody marks,” Tyvian growled. He was sitting in a high-­backed armchair and glaring at the fireplace in his second guest room. Behind him, his face ashen pale and slick with sweat, Artus lay facedown in the bed, a mass of bloody gauze pressed against his wound by a scowling Myreon Alafarr.

“This boy needs a doctor,” Myreon stated simply as she set about changing the bandages. “The bleeding's stopped, but it's a deep wound.”

“Should have left the runt on the doorstep to blee—­ Ow!” Tyvian grabbed his hand. “Bloody hell!”

Myreon chuckled to herself. “That ring is the best thing that ever happened to you, Reldamar.”

Tyvian rolled his eyes. “Oh yes, what an improvement. I've gone from being a wealthy independent gentleman to a boarder for the inept.”

Artus moaned. “Rel . . . Reldamar . . .”

Myreon touched his forehead. “He's burning up, suffering from shock, who knows what else.”

“Can't you do some kind of Lumenal healing transmutation or something? We can't stay here for long, you know. I'm expecting more assassins at any moment.”

“My fingers are still too weak, no thanks to you. If you don't do something, the lad is going to die.”

“I already gave him a bloodpatch.”

“I already told you that the bleeding isn't the problem—­I think the wound is infected or possibly poisoned.”

Tyvian scowled. “How long?”

Myreon shrugged, a look of disgust on her face. “Without treatment? A few hours, maybe. Are you so coldhearted that you'd let a boy die of infection in your own home?”

Tyvian didn't say anything, stuffing his hands in his armpits. He pursed his lips like a petulant child.

“Just call a bloody doctor!” Myreon snapped. “I know that ring of yours must be torturing you about it—­just
do
it!”

“I won't let some trinket run my life,” Tyvian snarled.

Myreon threw the spent gauze in a wastebasket and sat across from Tyvian. “Don't do it for the ring, you stunted human being! Do it for the
boy
!”

Tyvian's teeth were clenched. “What's the boy to me?”

“For the love of Hann, man! Have you no soul?” Myreon pointed to the suffering Artus. “This boy
needs
your help. He stuck with you all the way to Freegate, despite your treatment of him. He's the closest thing in this world you have to a bloody friend, and you're just going to let him
die
?”

“The boy's a street urchin, Myreon!” Tyvian shot back, his face red. “He's like a stray dog—­he'll attach himself to anyone who feeds him! He doesn't give a damn about me. He stuck with me for the pay, and when he was injured and bleeding on the street, he thought he could just show up and I'd keep paying his way. If it weren't for
this,
” he held out his ring hand, which was contorted in agony, “I'd have ditched the little freeloader weeks ago!”

Myreon shook her head and leaned back in her chair. “You're a monster. I don't know why I expected any different from you.”

“Neither do I. Are you done with him?”

Myreon nodded, not looking at the smuggler.

“Back to your cell with you, then.” Tyvian clapped his hands and the house specters seized Myreon by the elbows and escorted her back to her own room.

As soon as the door closed, Tyvian stood up and screamed. The fire in his hand was unbearable. Just like in the river-­inn, he felt like the skin was blistering and peeling off his fingers, exposing the bone to the white-­hot fire of the ring. Holding his hand by the wrist, he slammed it against the mantel, the end-­tables, the walls—­anything in reach in an attempt to stop the horrible pain. He doused it in the basin of water Myreon had brought for Artus, but no relief was to be had. He scratched and pulled at the ring in the water, but as ever, it didn't move.

“I won't do it, you bloody ring! Not now, not
ever! YOU DON'T CONTROL ME!
”

The pain intensified even more, and Tyvian fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. He hissed at his hand. “No . . . bloody . . . way . . . in hell!”

Not knowing how he did it, nor remembering why, Tyvian found himself on the street, a heavy red cloak wrapped around him to fight the cold mountain winds. He had Chance at his side, at least, and the sun was rising over the Dragonspine, bathing the streets of the Cliff District in equal parts golden light and blue shadow. His hand still blazed with unbearable pain, but he had the wherewithal to check to see if he was being followed—­he wasn't, or at least not by anyone he could spot.

He stopped walking. He had to be followed. He couldn't conceive of a circumstance where he
wouldn't
be followed. He shook his head, trying to clear it of the fiery pain that still crippled him. Ducking into the shadows of a restaurant doorway, he pretended to peer through the windows as though inspecting the place. From his angle, the reflection in the frosted glass of the door gave him a foggy glimpse of the street behind him—­nothing but silhouettes and amorphous blobs of light, but it would be enough to detect movement.

A shadow shifted from one side of the street to another and vanished in a distant alley: his follower.

The ring burned him, making his eyes water. “Not now, damn you! Not . . . bloody . . . now!”

Tyvian's instincts dictated getting off the street—­perhaps breaking into this restaurant and maybe ducking out the back. The ring wouldn't permit it, though. The agony overcame his better judgment, forcing him from the doorway and back along the street, his feet dragging.

He tried to think, but all the ring wanted was for him to press on, to stagger forward to whatever nonsensical mercy mission it had in mind for him. The experience was not unlike that of being drunk, except instead of the pleasant, numbing cobwebs of alcohol, he was afflicted with mind-­blanking agony.

He looked behind him, blinking away tears. Nothing. Whoever was back there was good—­it was no mean feat to shadow a man on an empty street at dawn, especially a street so clean and so sunny. Pleasant three-­story town houses built in the stone-­and-­plaster Saldorian style lined both sides, each one with a small plot of lawn or a squat little tree out front. Between these were commercial properties of the highest caliber—­hotels with flower-­rimmed balconies and bars with rooftop decks that overlooked the entire city. The watch was paid well to make regular sweeps in this part of town, and anybody who didn't “belong” would be summarily tossed headfirst down the Stair Market and into the Chamber Pot.

­People in dark cloaks darting from alley to alley certainly didn't belong, and tattlers were very hard to hide from. This fellow was either a recent arrival in this area or he had a special talent for avoiding notice. Or both.

Tyvian kept onward, clutching his hand to his chest but keeping his cloak over his shoulders to conceal his weakness—­his tail was being wary, and he wanted the tail to stay that way until he could think of a plan for shaking him or her while being dispatched on a damned errand by a piece of cheap jewelry.

There was a break in the street—­a canyon had been dug out by water cascading over the lip of Dain's Lake, splitting the Cliff District in two before vanishing into a dark crevasse some thirty feet below. There was an elegant bridge of gleaming birch railings and mageglass supports arching over the gap, and some ten or fifteen feet to Tyvian's right, twenty feet lower, another bridge spanning it for the next road down. The upper bridge, where Tyvian now found himself, was lined with tall wooden flagpoles flying the colors of the various guild members and wealthy merchants who paid to have the bridge maintained—­advertising to the rich was worth more than any toll income.

Tyvian paused, trying to clear his head enough to do some very crucial calculus. Behind him, he caught a glimpse of his shadow—­getting closer, so much closer.

“Kroth,” he growled to himself, “dying would be better than this nonsense anyway.”

He drew Chance with his left hand and cut down a flagpole. He forced himself to catch it with both hands, though he practically passed out from the ring's objections. Then, holding one end, he began to run.

Tyvian heard his shadow break cover, coming at him at a dead sprintfrom behind. He angled himself toward the edge of the bridge, planted the flagpole, and vaulted.

Behind him, he heard someone swear in Illini (Illini?) over the rush of air past his ears. He pulled for all his worth with his arms, propelling himself through space. He had no idea if he'd cleared enough distance, no idea if he'd cleared too much. He dropped through the air, feet first . . .

. . . and struck the edge of the lower bridge, but only barely. Something in his leg cracked, but he had the presence of mind to roll forward. It was an ugly roll—­he flopped across the bridge like he had been poleaxed. He banged his head and arms pretty badly. New pain joined the old tortures of the ring, and they did not harmonize well.

Tyvian tried getting up, but his leg and arm were now howling together. He groaned and almost passed out.

No!
he cursed at himself. If he passed out, his tail won—­the fellow was already circling around, mostly likely, and trying to get down to where he was before he disappeared. He imagined he could hear the slap of his boots against the cobbles.

The world swirled and pitched. Tyvian vaguely recalled grabbing something to pull himself up but then falling down again. After that all he could see, hear, or recall were the sounds of his own cries of pain and the curses on his lips.

When he came again to his senses, he was standing on the street he had just leapt from. On his left was a respectable home sporting a sign advertising the medicinal and alchemical ser­vices of a Doctor Wich. The ring's assault upon him had abated somewhat, but his lower left leg was taking up the slack. He found he couldn't put weight on it.

Remembering the Wandering Fountain, Tyvian glared down at the ring. “Think you're tricking me this time, eh? You almost kill me and you expect me to go along with your little plot? I know what you're up to—­”

The ring flared as he turned away from the doctor's office. Across the street was a well-­appointed gambling house, catering to “Persons of Breeding,” according to the lettering in the window. Dragging his broken leg, Tyvian forced himself inside. It was empty, the morning light casting dusty beams of sunlight across the finely appointed room. Most of the chairs were set atop the gaming tables, but the bar stools were out and ready.

Tyvian shambled over to one and slapped his good hand on the bar-­top. “Whiskey!”

A serving specter poured him a tumbler, but Tyvian made it a double. Grimacing, he knocked it back in one swallow and demanded another.

“A bit early for you, isn't it Mr. Reldamar?” The voice came from the shadows. Tyvian tried to grasp Chance, but the ring had paralyzed his hand too much with pain. The voice chuckled. “There's no need for that.”

“Show yourself!” Tyvian growled.

Eddereon stepped into the light. His graying beard had been combed and his clothes were somewhat less rustic, but he was still every bit the barrel-­chested mountain man Tyvian had met on the banks of the river all those weeks ago.

“You son of a bitch!” Tyvian pulled a knife with his good hand. “I'll kill you now, ring or not.”

Eddereon brushed back his cloak to reveal the jeweled hilt of a longsword. “You are in no condition to murder me, Tyvian, and I would hate to kill you. May I sit down?”

Tyvian said nothing. He only knocked back his second double-­shot. Between the alcohol and the ring-­induced agony, he knew Eddereon was right.

The big man pulled up a stool beside him. “You are fighting the ring even now, eh?”

“I . . . refuse . . . to let you . . . control me,” Tyvian grunted.

Eddereon shook his head and smiled. “I am not controlling you, Tyvian. The ring is not making you into a trained animal. It is waking you up.”

“Kroth take you.”

“We don't grant the ring to just anyone, Tyvian. If we did, we would have put one on Banric Sahand ages ago, as well as any other monstrous villain you could name. Every cutthroat, blackmailer, thief, and rapist in this miserable city would be carrying the ring about.”

Tyvian snorted, trying to pry his pain-­soaked fingers out of a fist. “Yes . . . wolf among sheep. I remember this lecture.”

“The ring only punishes you for that which you know is wrong. If you are wracked with pain, it is not brought on by the ring, but by your own soul.”

“Nonsense.”

“Is it?” Eddereon cocked an eyebrow. “Can you remember the first time you killed, Tyvian?”

Tyvian scowled. He had been fifteen. A boy his age had challenged him to a duel for something stupid and childish—­some adolescent idea of honor, he supposed; Tyvian had run him through the neck. He remembered clearly how the boy had gurgled bubbles of blood as he died, a look of painful surprise on his face. “What of it?”

“How did you feel?”

Tyvian remembered weeping. He remembered going to his mother and demanding she use her considerable sorcery to bring the boy back. When she refused, she had laughed at him for his repeated pleas.
Really, Tyvian
, she had scoffed.
Anyone so stupid as to challenge you to a fight deserves what he gets. As soon as you stop that unseemly blubbering, you'll realize the little fool killed himself.

“You felt terribly, didn't you?”

“Go . . . to . . . hell.”

Eddereon smiled and shook his head. “Stop fighting yourself, Tyvian. The easy way is not the only way, nor is it the best of ways. If you follow your heart, you will find the ring as much a help as it is a hindrance.”