D
ERKH ALONE OF
the little group was not much of a music lover, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying the evening. Truth to tell, he couldn’t remember a time when he had felt so happy and relaxed. The revelation about the Greffaire settlers had lifted a last great weight from his mind—the fear that his acceptance in this new land would forever spring solely from the protection of the royal family. Now he saw the possibility of creating his own life here. Perhaps it would be the hard and humble life of a farm hand, but at least he could stand or fall on his own merit.
He craned his neck to look once more around the modest room, taking in the flickering lamps, the great spigotted casks of ale and neat rows of tankards, the men and women with laden trays threading their way among the tables. The cheerful bustle of the place was fascinating.
He hadn’t let on, but Derkh had never before been “out carousing.” On his fourteenth birthday, his father had taken him to a liquor stop to mark the presentation of his coming-of-age
papers, but it had been nothing like this place. The dingy basement room had been dark and silent, dotted with solitary men drinking with such grim determination it seemed to Derkh an ordeal rather than a pleasure. He had earned his father’s approval by managing to finish the fiery liquid without coughing, but he had not returned.
As a tune ended, the room erupted into cheers and stamping feet. Derkh let his eyes roam over the crowd: he saw mostly well-dressed men and women, but also people in the coarse plain clothing of laborers, shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone else and served just the same. Except for one frayed old fellow in a mud-spattered cloak, hunched over the bar at the back—he was being given a wide berth. Poor guy, probably smells even worse than he looks, Derkh thought, torn between amusement and pity.
An ear-splitting whistle—thank you, Tristan—brought Derkh’s attention back to his friends. He beamed at everyone at once, waggled his tankard in salute and drained it.
I
T WAS WELL
past midnight, and Gabrielle was flagging. She had seen it in her own patients—a lack of stamina that was the last telltale remnant of illness or injury. Ah well, she hadn’t done badly. She leaned her head into Féolan’s shoulder, closed her eyes and let her thoughts wander.
They would soon be back in Stonewater. She hoped Nehele had not had her baby early, without her. When they had first become friends last spring, Gabrielle had been excited at the invitation to attend an Elvish birth. Now, though, excitement had turned to concern. Nehele’s husband had been slain in the battle against the Greffaires; he would never fasten the baby-stone around his newborn child’s neck. The baby would be a comfort to Nehele,
but the birth was bound to plunge her into renewed grief as well as joy. Such a labor, Gabrielle knew, could be difficult.
Still thinking like a healer, Gabrielle opened her eyes and let them drift around the table, assessing the state of each of her companions. Tristan was in fine fettle. She knew from experience that he held his ale well, and also that he had the knack of seeming to drink more than he really did. Poor Rosalie, however, had made the mistake of trying to keep up with him. She was propped against Tristan, flushed and disheveled, giggling helplessly at nothing in particular. Gabrielle would be tending her in the morning, without a doubt. Féolan and Danaïs, to her amused surprise, both looked a little bleary. It was subtle—just a settling of the features, a clouding of the usual clear depths of their eyes. Not used to our dark ale, she thought. She might have to remedy that. She had been served a light wine at Stonewater that was exquisite, but she happened to agree with her father’s opinion that “There’s much to be said for a plain honest ale.”
Not that she ever overindulged. It was a discipline ingrained in her along with her bonemender’s training, to keep a clear head. “Accidents don’t take a holiday just because you do,” Marcus had admonished her, and she had seen his words proved true. Gabrielle had stopped refilling her own tankard when the evening was still young.
As, apparently, had Derkh. His dark eyes, when they met hers, were as clear and alert as ever. He lifted his eyebrows at her, mouthed a question: “Okay?” He had noticed her fatigue, then. Gabrielle smiled and nodded, waving away his concern, and pondered the young man’s sobriety. Just his natural bent, maybe. Or perhaps he feared losing his head and embarrassing himself. Rosalie will envy you tomorrow, Gabrielle thought.
T
HE
double doors swung open, a burst of heat and noise spilled onto the street and the cool night air washed over them. Derkh drank it in gratefully; he had not realized how close it had become inside.
“We’ll walk you to your rooms,” announced Tristan. Danaïs and Derkh had been housed in a comfortable inn not far from the castle, as the king’s hospitality was stretched to the limit by official delegates to the talks. “C’mon, Rosie girl, the walk will do you good.” Tristan hitched a firm arm about Rosalie, who was distinctly unsteady on her feet, and set a careful pace across the treacherous cobblestone paving. Derkh dropped back a bit from the chattering group to savor the quiet.
As they ambled by, he spied a bundled shape slumped in the gap between two buildings—the same ragged fellow he had seen in the pub, perhaps, or some other homeless beggar. The cloak certainly looked as filthy and ill-used. The man did not stir or raise his head from his bent knees as they passed, and the others, absorbed in talk, took no notice.
Derkh, lost in his own thoughts, soon forgot the unfortunate fellow. He was working on a future Gabrielle had suggested to him back in Verdeau, a future as a skilled craftsman. It had seemed impossible then, but now... Derkh cast his mind over the array of trades he had seen plied in the streets of Gaudette. Would the
Maronnais prove accepting enough to take on a foreigner as a prentice? Or would they keep the Greffaires firmly on the margins, eligible for only the unskilled seasonal work? He couldn’t predict. Too much about these people had surprised him already.
The streets were dark and silent, sparsely lit and nearly empty. Derkh’s inn was situated away from the busy center of town, chosen by its clientele not for liveliness, but for undisturbed sleep and access to royal doings. Derkh looked ahead at his friends—Gabrielle and Féolan arm in arm, their voices a quiet murmur, Danaïs pacing at their side. Tristan and Rosalie next, Rosie a little steadier now but still walking with the cautious, over-deliberate steps of the unaccustomed drunk. Affection washed through him, and he shook his head, not for the first time, at the unlikely friendships he had made.
How fares my family now? he wondered. Worse than he himself, that was certain. Derkh raised his head to the glittering stars, followed their sweep north, wishing he could send his mother some reassuring message on their wings.
Movement in the corner of Derkh’s eye snapped his attention back to earth. A flapping apparition launched itself toward them from a side street, a confusion of dark speed. At first his fuddled eyes thought he was still in the clouds, his star messenger taking ghastly shape before him. Then, as the black figure hurtled into the street ahead of him, the details crystallized into meaning: a shredded black cloak, flying behind a racing man. He caught a flash of teeth, bared in terrible effort. The silver gleam of—
A knife. The nightmare figure brandished a knife as long as Derkh’s forearm.
Derkh was airborne before his conscious mind knew what he was doing. Had he not practiced long hours with Col’s own
bodyguards against just such a moment? Arms outstretched, head tucked, he propelled himself forward with all the force his legs could give him.
And came up just short. Instead of crashing into the assassin’s—for so, surely, was the man’s intent?—legs and flinging him to the ground, Derkh caught a boot in the chin not a breath before sprawling into the cobblestones himself. Pain jolted through him, shattering in his right knee, merely brutal everywhere else, but he had the boot in his grasp and nothing now would loose his grip. Just as the foot lashed out to kick free, Derkh twisted it, hard, flipping himself over to get a full rotation. He felt the torque on the man’s knee, heard the grunt of pain, and the cloaked body hit the ground with a thud.
Derkh’s first shocked sight of his opponent’s face was paralyzing. Once down, the man had twisted around and launched himself on Derkh with the speed of an adder strike. Now Derkh stared up into an expression so bestial with rage, on eyes so blind with madness that there seemed nothing human there at all. The man’s full weight was across his chest, his knife raised high, and all Derkh could do was stare, sickened, understanding that he had become the assassin’s victim.
MOVE, BOY!
Col’s voice boomed, and Derkh was back in the grappling ring. Greffaire soldiers faced combat in armor, but Col had insisted Derkh also learn hand-to-hand fighting from the best trainers in the country—as much for protection against fellow soldiers who might find a scrawny adolescent an easy target, as against hypothetical enemies of the state.
His left leg whipped up, and with that move he understood that his assailant had more conviction than technique. Not only were his legs unpinned, but the dramatically raised blade gave him an
obvious opening. Hooking his leg up and around the man’s raised arm to block the knife thrust, he also managed to rock the heavy body back enough to free his left arm.
Derkh groped for the knife sheath at his waist, found it, and had his own blade sunk into the assassin’s neck in one swift upward thrust. With a gurgling cry, the man fell heavily against him, his long blade ringing against the stone beside Derkh’s ear. Gods, where are the others? he wondered wildly, not realizing they had barely had time to be aware of his struggle before it was over. They were at his side even now, though he could not see them. His senses were blotted out by the dying body pressed against him. Hot blood flooded over his face and glued clingy webs of hair against his cheeks and eyes; the stench of filth wrapped about him like a poisonous cloud.
As the sickening weight was dragged off him, Derkh rolled to his hands and knees and vomited onto the blood-slick stones.
I
T WAS
F
ÉOLAN
and Danaïs who pulled LaBarque off of Derkh.
Gabrielle waited in an agony of impatience, desperate to get to him. Then, just as she reached out to him, he shuddered and lurched up onto his knees. She understood then that Derkh was all right. No mortally wounded man cares where his vomit lands.
Though she longed to stay and comfort him, she forced herself to follow the bonemender’s protocol: the greatest need first. She turned to the cloaked figure, now lying spread-eagled some distance from Derkh. A terrible scarecrow, his features frozen in a snarl of hatred. Gabrielle swallowed, fighting her own revulsion. She forced herself to approach, to kneel beside him, to check for pulse and breath. There was none.
Backing away in guilty relief, she turned and looked for someone to tell. Tristan was occupied with Rosalie, who was sobbing uncontrollably. She caught the words, “It’s over now, Rosie. Finished for good, now,” and finally grasped what had happened. She tried to match the ruin that lay before her with the rich merchant Tristan had described and could not. He had been burned away, consumed by his own malice.
Féolan and Danaïs were with Derkh. They had steered him to a clean patch of road, wiped his face and hands and wrapped him in Féolan’s cloak. Now all three looked a question at her. She shook her head. “He’s dead,” she said.
Derkh flinched at the words, his shoulders hunching as though against a blow. Gabrielle was pierced with pity for him, pity and anger too at the injustice of it, that one boy should have to suffer such a relentless string of terrors. Her eyes prickled and then swam with tears as she made her way to him.
“H
E’S DEAD.
”
Gabrielle’s eyes filled with tears. She walked toward him, her face stricken, and if Derkh could have cast himself into the black pit of his own misery and disappeared, he would have done so.
What have you done? he accused himself. He could barely remember what had triggered the incident. You tackled some crazy old bugger who maybe didn’t even know you were there, terrified him into fighting for his life and killed him. All his good resolve had come to nothing. He had hurt her again. It was hard to imagine how one could repay a healer’s kindness more cruelly than with a corpse.
He couldn’t face her.
Nevertheless she stood in front of him, bent before him,
searched for and found his blood-sticky hands, grasped them and pulled him gently to his feet. And because he was beholden to her, because he deserved whatever she wished to say to him, he met her eyes when she spoke his name.
To his confused astonishment what he saw there was not disgust or anger at all. She was smiling through her tears, and her hands cupped his face the way the
seskeesh
had when they said farewell.
“You saved him, Derkh. You saved my brother’s life. If you hadn’t... If he had...” Sobs overtook her, and oblivious to the bloody mess down his front, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him against her.
Derkh held her waist gingerly. Too much had happened, too fast; he seemed to have missed something important.
Click, click.
Pictures flared into focus in his head, like the tumbles falling into place in a lock: the ragged old man at the pub, the derelict slumped over in the street. It was him. He followed us.
Click.
Rosalie—Rosalie who by all accounts knew how to keep her head in a crisis—crying like a terrified child in Tristan’s arms.
Click.
LaBarque, escaped from his guards far to the south.
He knew now who he had killed. His instincts had been right, after all. Tears of relief welled up in his own eyes. He closed them, tightened his grip on the best friend he had ever had and thanked every supernatural being he could think of that this time he had managed to avert, not cause, disaster.