Vengeance of the Hunter (22 page)

They’d each fired multiple bullets.

“And here I thought I was dreaming,” Erasmus said. His voice held just the slightest trace of a slur, so little that it made no difference whether it came from sleep or any laudanum he might have consumed. “But gods, no. There
are
intruders in my room, and my beloved wife does indeed appear to be trying to kill me. Julian, is that actually you?”

“Hello, Erasmus.” Julian twisted, moving Dulcinea behind him as best he could, while Erasmus chuckled at them both.

“Well now,” he purred, “the two of you wrestling like that looks oddly familiar. Though I seem to recall a rather different location the first time. Father’s old study, wasn’t it?”

Dulcinea went rigid against Julian, letting out a snarling little gasp of fury, but over her Julian barked, “About that. The lady would have me believe that my actions weren’t my own that night, because she impaired me. Would you care to counter her story?”

“Oh, I’m quite content with the one we reported at the time,” Erasmus said blithely. “It certainly worked for Cleon. You are, I trust, aware he’s passed on?”

A red haze surged in the edges of Julian’s sight, and it took everything in his power to keep from hurling Dulcinea sideways and throwing the blade he’d taken from her. But Erasmus had downed Rab—he’d always been an excellent shot. And the knife Dulcinea had chosen was a heavy, unwieldy thing, a simple kitchen blade meant for hacking through meat to bone. And in the direct line of fire of a gun was no place to test his new hand’s aim with an unfamiliar knife.

“It came to my attention,” he said through clenched teeth. “Heart failure, or so the broadsheets had it. Leaving the House and his wife open to you.”

“Well, I could hardly leave either unmanaged. And now I’m dreadfully curious—why aren’t you dead too? For that matter, aren’t you a little more physically whole than the last time I saw you?”

“I owe it all to prayer and clean living.”

Erasmus tilted his head and then abruptly beamed, a wicked, ear-to-ear grin that Julian flatly refused to think of as resembling his own. “Don’t tell me. You’ve been visiting the elves, haven’t you? Oh, that’s droll. Especially coming from a man I just heard trying to convince our lovely Dulcinea here to let you take my life. Heresy
and
attempted murder. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Why haven’t you killed me already?”

“If you don’t, I will,” Dulcinea cut in. “Give me back the knife. I don’t want his blood on your hands!”

“And I don’t want it on yours!” Julian shouted back at her, all his control fraying now, before he hurled a glare back to the bed. “And as long as you’re asking, I’m an assassin, not a murderer.”

“Dear gods, I can’t believe what I’m hearing.” Erasmus sputtered with laughter and then blinked at him, wide-eyed, without a single tremor to his grip upon the gun. “You should split that hair a little finer, brother, I don’t think you got it all. I can’t wait for you to tell me the difference.”

“The difference is, I don’t kill you without a contract, no matter how much you deserve to bleed, burn and die, or how much I want the very last thing in the world you see to be me cutting your fucking throat.” Julian began to lean surreptitiously forward onto the balls of his feet, calculating which way he could spring most safely. “I break that code, I don’t get contracts. Ethics. Do you remember them?”

“And I can’t believe what
I’m
hearing,” Dulcinea seethed. “You want to use me as your excuse? I suppose you expect me to pay you too? Gods take you, Julian! I had this in hand! Kill him or don’t kill him, but don’t insult me with such so-called help!”

In that moment, broadsided by the invective of the woman he’d once loved, Julian hesitated and glanced back at her—and that single moment was all the opportunity his brother needed. He fired a second round, jerking Julian’s attention back, but his new hand was still a fraction too slow with Dulcinea’s pilfered kitchen blade. He missed. Erasmus did not.

A tiny burst of heat and pain slashed along Julian’s right arm, cutting a furrow through his flesh, throwing his balance and all his senses askew. He staggered backward, losing his grip on Dulcinea. Consciousness never quite left him, but the room began to tilt around him and his knees felt alarmingly insubstantial.

Damn it to Tykhe I’m bleeding
—

But then again, so was Rab. Rab had been downed first, and he had to reach his partner. Yet no matter what commands he hurled to his limbs, he couldn’t seem to keep himself from dropping heavily to his knees, his left hand clamping around the wound on the opposite arm. Beneath his haze, panic began to stir—but no, he still had the hand. He could still move the fingers Faanshi had given him.

With a throaty, mewling moan, Dulcinea moved—but not to him. She leaped at the bed, snatching at the knife he’d thrown, even as Erasmus fired a third time. Julian couldn’t see where she was struck, but he saw her driving the knife into his brother, again and again, in a burst of frenzied strength. Erasmus screamed, low and harsh and raw, and lost his hold upon his pistol.

The need to make it to Rab warred in Julian with a fogged suspicion that he should intervene in the conflict at the bed, and as the latter took shape, he hauled himself painfully back upright again. Before he could take two steps or draw any of his own blades with either hand, Dulcinea flashed him one last sorrowful smile. Then she snatched up the gun and fired one more round into his brother’s head, before she toppled over hard onto the floor.

Julian stared, and couldn’t stop staring, even when the doors of the suite flew open and several people rushed into the room. One of them was Dulcinea’s maid, who shrieked and rushed to her mistress’s side. With her came two of the footmen, last seen insensible down on the first floor of the house, and Julian could only assume someone had roused them. Another was a big strangely familiar-seeming man in Tantiu dress, who he couldn’t place just then. But two more were elves—Kirinil and Alarrah.

Last of all, her head swathed by a
korfi
that had fallen loose to show her face, was Faanshi.

“Blessed Lady of Time! Oh Julian, I thought we were going to be too late!”

She flung her arms around him, and he couldn’t keep back a cry of pain. Her magic, however, promptly smothered it. Julian’s world spun and narrowed to nothing but the golden light, until the ache faded from his arm and he was able to embrace Faanshi in return. His eyes closed. He pressed his cheek against her head, and all at once lost the argument with himself as to why he’d abandoned her in the first place. The relief that swamped him at holding her was simply too great.

“What the nine hells are you doing here, girl?”

“We had to come and find you.” Faanshi pulled back to look up at him, acute uncertainty crinkling her features. Julian had just enough time to realize her hands were still glowing before she lifted one, drew down his head and brushed the shyest kiss he’d ever received across his lips. “
I
had to come find you.”

“
Enorrè!
” Alarrah called from beside the bed. “I have the woman, but Nine-fingered Rab needs you now. I can’t heal them both.”

Rab. Julian would have pushed Faanshi over to him, but she was already scrambling to his partner’s side, reaching for him with her shining hands. He paused, torn, and then stepped up behind Alarrah and Moirae. The she-elf’s hands were glowing too, though they were muted little shimmers next to Faanshi’s. In a scant few breaths, their light died entirely.

Julian didn’t have to ask what that meant. Dulcinea’s eyes staring blankly at the ceiling was explanation enough. Adrenaline still surged through him too strongly for him to feel much beyond numbness at the sight of her motionless form—but somewhere beneath his detachment, he sensed an eighteen-year-old boy beginning to mourn.

“She shot him,” Moirae croaked, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Blessed Mother, blessed Daughter, I saw it. You’d all better go. The watch will come. They can’t find you here.”

“Are you sure?” Kirinil said. “There’s unrest all over the city tonight. The watch may be delayed, if they come at all.”

One of the footmen said grimly, “Then we’ll take care of it till they do. Go on with the lot of you.”

“Rab can move now,” Faanshi said, her magic settling down again with far less finality than Alarrah’s. That her power hadn’t triggered nearly so brightly as it had done for Kestar—or for that matter, for him—might have done much to reassure Julian. But that was almost irrelevant next to the simple comfort of seeing Rab getting to his feet beside her, his gaze shocked but clear.

“I’ll do,” he affirmed. “By all means, let’s get out of here.”

Kirinil backed out the way they’d come, while Semai hefted Rab to his feet. Julian offered Alarrah a hand up, for the healer’s features were drawn; she looked as tired as he felt. But his attention was on Moirae even as Faanshi came back to him, slipping her hand into his, tugging him with unspoken insistence toward the door. He could think of no apology to offer her, and so he didn’t try—but the maid’s sad face was the last thing in the room he saw before they hurried out into the night, and Dulcinea’s last words to him seared.

Chapter Twenty

It would have been safer to return to the carriage with the others as they fled the house on the heights. But Julian and Rab had brought their horses, and Faanshi followed the Rook entirely on instinct. Alarrah and Kirinil both shot her startled looks as they ran, but neither one gainsaid her. Including Julian himself, to Faanshi’s relief—for now that she’d found him again, she couldn’t bear the thought of letting him out of her sight. “Follow the carriage!” was all that her sister called as they ran.

They didn’t have to go far. Tornach and Morrigh were tied only a short dash down the alleyway behind the house they’d infiltrated, and as soon as they reached the beasts, Julian hefted her into Morrigh’s saddle, more swiftly than she’d ever seen him move. Then he leaped on before her, and Faanshi promptly looped her arms around his waist. In moments they were away, the two stallions flanking the carriage on either side as they galloped down off the heights and back to the heart of the city.

“How did you find us?” Julian demanded over his shoulder as they rode. “
Why
did you find us?”

Conversation wasn’t easy at the speed at which they moved, when most of Faanshi’s attention had to go to keeping her seat in the saddle. “It was my
okinya
Ulima,” she said, as loudly as she could manage over the tattoo of Morrigh’s hooves. “She sent the
akreshi
Semai before she died to tell us of a vision. Julian, she said we’d all die too if we didn’t stay together.”

What expression crossed his face at that Faanshi couldn’t tell, but she felt Julian tense before he had to shift to accommodate the downward slope of the long road they followed. He didn’t argue the idea of Ulima having visions, and that was a blessing, but his voice was still harsh nonetheless. “And this vision required
you
to come to the city? Do you have any concept of how dangerous it is for you to be here?”

“I didn’t think you’d believe the news unless I told you. And there’s more. Kestar is here. The Hawks have him.”

On the last few words her voice rose, only to cut off with a yelp as Morrigh sprang across a wide swath of muddy water in the road. His landing rattled her from her teeth to her toes, just as Julian snapped, “He’s in trouble again? What do you expect me to do about it?”

Stung, Faanshi cried, “He needs our help!”

“Gods damn it, girl, I almost died helping your good man the first time!”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Her voice cracked, yet she shouted anyway, for the memory of her magic fighting to drive away the death that had threatened him was still too raw and real. “I felt it happening, and my heart would have broken in half if I hadn’t stopped it!”

That too sent a jolt of reaction through him. Julian pulled up hard on Morrigh’s reins, and then twisted before her, enough that Faanshi thought he might turn to look at her. But then she saw that the carriage, too, had clattered to a halt and that Rab was wheeling Tornach back around. The younger assassin was waving vigorously back at them with one hand, and pointing ahead with the other.

“This,” Alarrah shouted down from atop the carriage, “is going to be a problem.”

“We’re going to have to continue this discussion later,” Julian said. And over his shoulder, Faanshi saw what had pulled everyone else up short.

They’d left the loftiest stretch of the heights, but much of the city was still stretched out before them, a sea of tiny glimmers of light that stood out against the darkness—or would have, had they not been dwarfed by the flames rising up from somewhere close to the water. Even from their distance, Faanshi could see smoke billowing skyward, blotting out the stars closest to the horizon, along with the new-risen moon. They were too far away for her power to sense any injury, great or small, but she had a sudden cold certainty that such wouldn’t be the case for long. “We have to go there, don’t we?” she called up to Alarrah.

“I’m afraid so. That way lies all the passages back down into the tunnels.”

“We can’t go back down there yet! We have to find Kestar!”

Alarrah leaned over from atop the carriage. “We will,” she said. That was no reassurance, for she thumped on the roof of the carriage and then beckoned to the Rook. “Julian, get her into the carriage. We can’t risk her.”

Faanshi shrilled a protest, but Morrigh was already moving, sidestepping toward the carriage under the nudging of Julian’s knees. Semai threw open the carriage door and beckoned her, urging, “In Djashtet’s name, child, get in as quickly as you can.”

She wanted to argue; she wanted to resist as Julian scrambled off the horse and turned to help her down. But that seemed foolish and childish, and before the company from Dolmerrath and before Julian most of all, these were the last things she wanted to appear. And so she clambered down from the stallion—but she paused before she climbed into the carriage, turning to Julian and embracing him swiftly.

“We heard the akresha’s last words to you,” she said. “I know you didn’t spill your brother’s blood. You’re a good man too.”

Julian blinked down at her, and then gave her the faintest trace of a smile. “Later,” he said gruffly, returning the embrace before he pushed her up into the carriage. It wasn’t much, and she wasn’t sure at all that he believed her.

Yet as she settled in with Kirinil and Semai and the carriage shot into motion once more, it gave her a surge of hope.

* * *

The streets grew crowded again as they headed down into the city, with people on foot and on horseback alike fleeing in every direction but the one they were trying to go. Faanshi glimpsed men and women of many ages, often carrying children or helping the aged hurry along with them. Many of the faces she glimpsed were smudged with soot, like Julian’s and Rab’s—a sign that the two assassins had intended to deal death that night. The house they’d gone to had seen death, even if not by their hands, and in steadily growing dismay she wondered what additional deaths the people of Shalridan might already have seen this night. And what death was likely to come.

As they made it down from the heights, the smell reached them first, a reek of ash and char and burning wood, wafting in their direction on every gust of the breeze. Even in the carriage Faanshi could smell it, and she saw Kirinil grimace at the stench himself, breathing out deeply through his nose, before his face went stoic and set. Not long after that she began to taste smoke on the air, and the night grew warmer as they pressed farther into the city.

Their progress slowed, enough that Julian and Rab had to pull ahead on their horses to both clear a path and scout their way. Shouts and wails began to rise up around the carriage, as the people they passed called to one another in fright, in reassurance and in invocation of half a dozen different gods. More than once Faanshi heard crying, from terrified babies, or from the frantic men or women who carried them.

Nothing caused them trouble, though, until someone tried to steal Rab’s horse.

Faanshi didn’t see what happened, not directly. All she saw was Tornach trying to rear, and Rab swinging a fist at someone to his right even as he fought to keep his seat on his horse’s back. Both he and Julian shouted, their voices pealing above the din of the people around them. Alarrah’s voice sounded too, calling out for the crowd to let them pass.

Semai warned them, glowering out the carriage window, “This grows very bad.
Akreshi
Kirinil, we need to aid our companions.”

“I agree.” Kirinil shot Faanshi a stern glance. “Stay here,
valannè
, you’ll be safer.”

You can’t help if there’s fighting
, Faanshi reminded herself. Some of her muscles half-remembered how combat felt, from her link to Kestar, and Julian had begun to augment that, teaching her the beginnings of how to defend herself. But in a crowd as large as the one outside the carriage, she didn’t trust herself to know what to do. Not when her magic was already beginning to stir, growling in response to blows it could sense being given and received, somewhere very near. “Please hurry,” she said. “I can guard the carriage. Help them!”
Help Julian!

Semai threw open the carriage door, and that drew the crowd’s attention to them.

“You have to help us!”

“Please, my mother’s sick, let us in, help us get out of here!”

“The gods-damned city is burning down! Let us in!”

Semai plowed out into the throng, bodily shoving two people aside so that Kirinil could emerge behind him. With the door opened, though, Faanshi’s power surged. Someone nearby was indeed ill, and though she swallowed and strove to invoke her inner hearth in her mind’s eye, her hands lit like lanterns in response. Before Kirinil could close the door, the glow spilled out to the nearest faces, and three of the people closest to the carriage went wide-eyed. Semai and Kirinil froze in astonishment at what the crowd began to shout now, and Faanshi herself, her shining hands on the door as she’d tried to help Kirinil from the inside, stared out at everyone before her in shock.

“It’s her. Dear gods, it’s her.”

“It’s the Tantiu girl.”

“She
is
a healer! Oh gods, healer, I beg you, help my mother!”

A disheveled man with ash adding extra gray to his dark hair pushed his way to the carriage, supporting a pale, gaunt woman who seemed to have barely enough strength to cling to his arm. She was coughing violently, and all Faanshi had to see was the traces of blood around her lips before she realized she had no other option before her.

“Of course,
akreshi
,” she murmured, and moved her hands from the door to the woman, letting the light have its way.

It didn’t take long. The woman gave one last startled cough and then cried out in a weak but clear voice, “What just happened?”

Her son embraced her, shouting in joy—and the next thing Faanshi knew, the crowd erupted in desperation, trying to reach her. How she got out of the carriage she was never afterward sure, but her magic rendered that irrelevant. She found herself surrounded on all sides, touching people who’d scoured their lungs breathing hot, smoky air, people who’d taken injuries and people who’d taken ill. From dozens of throats the word “healer” roared around her, redoubling when Alarrah sprang down from the top of the carriage and began to help her. Panic and fury from a dozen different minds flooded her thoughts, and there was far too much of it, with too much formless strength, for her to glean anything more definite than that. By the time she’d healed six people, she was crying.

She felt the panic begin to shift, as more and more of the people she touched began to spread the word of what she’d done. Someone shouted her name—Julian, she thought, as she spotted him on Morrigh determinedly pressing his way back to her through the throng—and the crowd took up shouting it too, a steady, rhythmic chant that soon filled the entire street.

“Saint Faanshi! Saint Faanshi! Saint Faanshi!”

Overwhelmed, Faanshi blinked and stared at them all.
Almighty Djashtet
,
what am I supposed to do
?

Someone called, “Is it true, Faanshi? Is it true you drove away the Anreulag?”

All she could manage in reply was a shaky nod, but that was enough. The outcry around her grew deafening, and only when Julian made it off his horse and pushed his way to her could she figure out what to do next. She flung herself into his arms, while he bellowed over her head, “Give her some space, for pity’s sake! I don’t care what you think she is, she’s wearing herself out for you all!”

Her face pressed against his chest, Faanshi drew in the scent of him, a bulwark against the pervasive odor of smoke in the air, and then straightened up again to face the crowd. “Please,” she began, too softly to be heard, and so she had to lift her voice and try again. “Please! Everyone! I don’t know how you all know of it, or even how or why I was able to do what I did.” As the crowd began to fall quiet, that gave her confidence—though Julian’s hands on her shoulders helped more. “But it’s true. It happened. This man here was with me, and so were these two elves.”

“Those of you who are friends to my people know what it means when the Anreulag comes before us,” Alarrah spoke up. “We’re alive to stand before you now because of my
enorrè
and her power.”

“See this? This girl gave it back to me.” Julian lifted his right hand high, turning it with fingers spread for all to see. “This too.” He pointed at his eye. “And now you’ve seen for yourselves what she can do.”

More cries began to rise from the people, but Faanshi waved them to silence, praying to the Lady of Time in the back of her mind that she could find the words that needed to be said now. “No, please. Please! Almighty Djashtet gave me power. That’s true. But all I want to do with it is help people, like my friends here with me, and all of you. And now another of my friends is in trouble and we’ve
got
to get to him. I beg you all, will you let us through now so we can reach him?”

“Who is this friend, lass?” called the first woman she’d healed. She was still nearby, still gaunt but now with color returning to her face, and with a looser grasp now on the sturdy arm of her son.

“His name is Kestar Vaarsen,
akresha
, and he was with me and my friends when the Anreulag came to us. The Hawks have him now. We have to find him before it’s too late.”

The mention of the Hawks was the greatest goad yet to the crowd. “Stand aside! Let them through!” shouted the son of the woman Faanshi had healed, and the people nearest the carriage began to back away, encouraged by Semai and the elves. And to Faanshi herself, the man added, “If the Hawks have your friend, miss, they’ll have taken him to St. Telran’s. That’s where they take anyone they arrest in the Church’s name. But good luck getting anywhere near the place tonight.”

“We’ve been there,” Alarrah said, in a tone that might have been conversational if not for the ominous look that came into her eyes.

“And we’ll find a way to make it there,” Kirinil said.

Julian for his part ignored everyone else and frowned down at Faanshi. “Now will you get back in there, and stay there?” he grumbled, nodding toward the carriage’s open door.