The Dark Defiles (10 page)

A sober nod. “Yeah. And, but for the war, that license would have been a fine pair of balls to wave in Gingren’s face. Nice trick, really. Show up on your dad’s doorstep an accredited imperial officer and dare him to do something about it.”

“Do you see everything in such childish personal terms?”

“In my experience, my lady, the whole stinking dung cart of history is hauled along on such childish personal terms.” Klithren grimaced, as if surprised by his own sudden reach into gravitas. He shrugged. “In any case, I think it’s safe to say your comrade is some significant distance past
getting on badly
with his family. House Eskiath has cast him out utterly. They have named him outlaw. Seen the declaration of amnesty from blood vengeance myself, and Gingren Eskiath’s seal is on it. Ringil’s own father wants him dead.”

“And so do you.” Challenging him with her eyes.

Klithren made a throwaway gesture. “I am charged with bringing him to Trelayne in chains. If he sees fit to surrender, that’s what I’ll do.” His voice hardened. “But if he wants a fight, he can have that instead, and I’ll settle for his head in a bounty bag. Now where is he?”

She touched the goblet’s base with a finger. Grinned down at the scarred wooden table it stood on. Prodded circular ripples awake in the wine.

“Something amuses you, my lady?”

“Yes, my lord Klithren. You amuse me, if you think you’re going to take Ringil back to Trelayne in a bounty bag.”

“Are you refusing to tell me where he is?”

“Not at all. I’m warning you what to expect when you find him.”

Klithren rubbed at his mutilated ear. “I do this for a living, my lady. I fought at Hinerion and Baldaran during the war, and since then I’ve been gainfully employed hunting outlaws for both the League and you imperials at Tlanmar. In fifty-nine I brought in five of the Silverleaf Brotherhood single-handed.”

“I’m afraid I have no idea what that implies,” Archeth said politely. “Were they dangerous men?”

“The Tlanmar garrison commander thought so. Dangerous enough to pay three hundred elementals a head. And one of them claimed to be a black mage, just like your friend.” Another shrug. “Didn’t help him much, when the steel came out.”

“I’ve never heard Ringil Eskiath claim to be a black mage.” Still she toyed with the goblet, still she did not pick it up. “But I have seen him stand and kill things that would turn most men’s bowels to jelly.”

“Yeah—the Hero of Gallows Gap, the Scourge of the Scaled Folk, Last Man Standing on the Walls of Trelayne. Heard it all before, my lady, out of a thousand flapping mouths, most of whom were never actually there. But you know what? When I last encountered this war hero he was skulking behind an assumed name and denial of his origins, and the only way he could best me was to strike me down from behind, under cover of false camaraderie.”

A jagged pause. Klithren had not quite been shouting when he stopped, but the quiet that followed was tight with the rise in his voice. At the other tables in the tavern, his men paused in their drinking and chatter and glanced toward their leader. Archeth nodded.

“I see. So it would be fair to say, my lord, that your interest here is personal.”

“I am here on assignment from the Trelayne Chancellery,” said Klithren stiffly. “To secure the Hironish isles against invading forces, to dispatch or detain all enemies of the League discovered therein. Speaking of which, I think it’s time we cut the courtier pleasantries and I get on with my job. So I’ll ask you once more, politely, and hope you’ll give me a straight answer this time, because I’d not want to put a noble captive to the question quite this early in the game—
now where is Ringil Eskiath
?”

She picked up the wine, examined it intently. “Along the coast somewhere. Searching for a grave that probably isn’t there. Your good health, sir.”

Klithren watched her drink, nodding. Waited until she set the goblet down.

“Do you think you could you be a little more fucking vague, my lady?” Leaning in with a sudden, fierce grin. “Only—I have a few hundred men at my disposal and I worry that
along the coast somewhere
may not quite soak up all their efforts.”

She tucked away the little nugget of information he’d let slip. She shrugged. “I believe
Dragon’s Demise
sailed north from here.”

Klithren hung there, still leaned in over the table toward her. Something old and unkind glittered in his eyes.

“You are not taking me seriously, my lady.”

“My lord Klithren, I assure you I am. I was otherwise occupied the day Ringil Eskiath departed, I did not see him sail.”
True enough—otherwise occupied shivering and hugging yourself in your bunk, waiting out a krinzanz crash that made it feel like your eyeballs might fall out of your skull if you moved your head too suddenly.
“Others did, however, and I shall instruct them to answer your questions openly. I believe they’ll tell you that
Dragon’s Demise
took sail northward along the coast, but I cannot personally vouch for that fact.”

“You show so little interest, then, in your officers’ comings and goings?”

She built him a weary smile. “We are not a military expedition, my lord. Lanatray would hardly have permitted us passage if we were. We are explorers and scientists.”

“Yes. And latterly torturers, it seems.”

She left that where it was. “If Ringil Eskiath has deceived the imperial court as to his status in the League, then he has done my command a grave disservice, and I have no interest in protecting him from his enemies. As I said, I believe you will find him to the north.”

Klithren held her gaze pinned for a moment. Not many men could look her in the eye so long and hard. Then he sat back in his chair.

“All right. How many men are with him?”

She gestured apologetically. “Again, my lord. I cannot be precise. But let’s see; full crew for
Dragon’s Demise;
a substantial detachment of imperial marines. Say about eighty in all? Maybe a hundred?”

She saw how he worked to hide his disquiet. “A lot of men to dig up a grave, my lady. What were you expecting to find—a barrow full of guardian undead?”

She shrugged again. “These are unfamiliar climes for us. We try not to take unnecessary chances.”

“Hmm. And these imperial marines of yours—are they amenable to reason? Will they stand down if challenged under League authority?”

Archeth drank again, deeply—harsh metallic taste to the cheap wine as it went down. But she’d had time now to fumble through the new hand they’d all been dealt, and she saw only one useful way it could be played. She emptied the goblet and put it down.

“They will if I tell them to,” she said.

“
ou fucking
what
?”

Egar, bristling, still had eyes to see Archeth flinch at the hissed fury in his voice. But she rallied pretty quick.

“You need to calm down,” she told him. “If we’re going to turn this thing around, we have to be smart. We need to think things through.”

Well, maybe. But right now, he was in no fucking mood for strategy. He’d just spent an unpalatable half hour talking the Majak down from a suicidal last stand around the sleeping body of Klarn Shendanak. Now he stood downstairs in the inn on League street, face knotted up with mingled shame and rage, watching his countrymen hand over their killing iron to Klithren’s skirmish ranger elite without a fight.

Like you had some other choice.

The privateer incursion had been meticulously planned and now it yielded near enough a perfect victory. Aside from a couple of messy skirmishes with some die-hard Throne Eternal—whose bodies now lay heaped together, pin-cushioned through with arrows and crossbow bolts, on the cobbled street outside—this Klithren fuck had rolled up the imperial forces almost without incident.

“I am thinking things through,” he snapped at Archeth. “We’re fucked in the arse and you’ve just sold Gil out like a barrel of gone-over ale.”

“Keep your voice down.”

She took his arm. He shook her off angrily.

“We should have seen this coming, we should have
fucking
seen it coming!”

“How?” She came around to face him, voice low and urgent. “War declared out of nowhere, and a flotilla sent chasing up here after us before the declaration ink is even dry. Tell me how we could have seen that coming, Eg.”

Egar drew a deep breath and held it in. Let go his anger with a growl. It got a couple of wary looks from among the League men, but they soon looked away again, when they saw he presented no threat. Went back to their drinking or their card games or simply watching with fascinated gaze this bloodless humbling of the dread barbarians from the Majak steppe.

“You don’t want to worry too much about being overhead,” he muttered. “Pirate scum like this, they won’t speak Tethanne worth a shaman’s fuck.”

“Yeah? Klithren, for your information, almost certainly has fluent Tethanne. He’s been careful enough not to show it to me, but he let slip that he grew up in Hinerion, and apparently he’s worked both sides of the border as a bounty hunter. There’s no way you get by in that world without Naomic and Tethanne both. And chances are he’s brought a few other schooled borderlanders up here with him, too. So keep your fucking voice
down.
”

“All right.” Muttering tightly now. “But I still don’t see how selling Gil out is supposed to help.”

Dull crumping clunk like emphasis, as the next Majak in the line dumped his ax and knives onto the table in front of Klithren’s armorer. The skirmish ranger ran a rapid professional hand over the tangle of sheaths and belts and steel, calling it to the man seated at his side with pen and parchment.
Ax—machete—couple of knives, and—what’s this—oh, right, blade-edged bolas. Nice.
He indicated where the Majak should ink his thumb and make mark on the parchment, then nodded him aside.
Next.

The Majak turned away, fixed Egar with a baleful, blaming stare, and spat in the sawdust on the floor. But he went quietly enough, out the door under guard to whatever makeshift lockup Klithren’s men had cobbled together for the defeated rank and file.

Great. Just fucking great.

“I haven’t sold Gil out,” Archeth said patiently. “All I’ve done is give Klithren information he could have had from the locals in about five minutes anyway. The whole town saw
Dragon’s Demise
set sail north. The whole town knows what we’re doing here. But you want to know the interesting thing?”

He puffed out a disinterested breath. “Sure. Tell me the interesting thing.”

“Klithren already knew.”

“Knew what?

“Knew we were busy digging up graves. I told him Gil was up the coast looking for a grave that might not be there. He never blinked. He already knew.”

Egar shrugged. “So he had advance scouts, and they already talked to the locals.”

“No, I don’t think so. It doesn’t fit. Look, Eg, I can see a man like Klithren working a grudge, hearing about the expedition from someone in Lanatray and coming up here after Gil on his own hook. I can even see someone—Gil’s father, some slave merchant or other with an ax to grind—paying him to do it. Outfitting him for the trip. But a fucking
flotilla
? Hundreds of men? Diverted a thousand miles north of Trelayne, when the fight’s shaping up nearly five hundred miles south? That takes major resources. Connections. Yeah, maybe Klithren blagged himself the command, but someone in Trelayne made this happen, someone with a lot of rank and influence. And you know what that means, right?”

Egar nodded. “There was something here to find all along.”

“Yeah. And they were afraid we’d find it.”

“Oi, dragonfucker!”

It was one of the privateers by the table, a youngish-looking thug, built in the chest and arms, possessed of a raucous Naomic drawl that carried. Conversation elsewhere in the tavern petered out at the sound. Egar gave him a measured look.

“You talking to me?”

“Yeah—what you so busy boiling up with that midnight bitch? Cooking up your fucking escape, are you? Pack that in if you are, you’re both of you fucking done.”

Egar grimaced at Archeth, left her in the corner, and advanced deliberately toward the table. He heard a couple of low whoops from the spectators, anticipatory glee for the fight that looked to be brewing. And every Majak eye in the room was on him—the queue of those still to be disarmed rustled and muttered, the armed men around them tensed. Egar nailed the privateer who’d spoken with a hard stare, tapped fingers on the broad red-silk ribbon tied around his upper right arm.

“See this?” he asked the man coldly. “Me and that midnight bitch, we’re both prisoners-in-honor to your commanding officer. So you want to watch your step, son. Else I reckon he’ll kick your ignorant bilge-rat arse all the way down to the harbor and in.”

The privateer leered. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” Aping the leer, mocking it. “And something else. That midnight bitch? Been my comrade-in-arms since you were a pissing, shitting bundle at your mother’s tit. You got the balls to take off your steel, I’ll give you a spanking for lack of respect, right here and now.”

It played well—approving laughter sounded loud across the room, much of it from the same men who’d whooped low before. The privateer’s face mottled and he clamped a hand on his sword hilt. But one of Klithren’s skirmish rangers stepped in. He locked the other man’s hand down and shoved him back, eye to eye, voice a corrosive low-toned hiss. Egar didn’t hear exactly what was said, but the wind went out of the younger man like wine from a slashed skin. The ranger twisted his hand off the sword hilt, let him go with another contemptuous shove. Looked back to Egar and made an apologetic gesture.

“He’s young, Dragonbane, what are you going to do? Let’s just try to keep things civilized, shall we?”

“Suits me,” Egar lied.

He rejoined Archeth in the shadowy corner of the room. Kept his voice to a murmur that didn’t suit the words he uttered or the low pounding in his blood.

“All right, so what was there to find that has them scurrying up here after us? Tell me that much, please, because it sure as shit isn’t anything we’ve managed to dig up so far. The graves have all been empty of anything worth having. Your Kiriath city in the ocean isn’t here. And this dwenda Vanishing Isle is living up to its fucking name. So what else is there?”

“There’s a sword,” she began.

“A sword?” Voice tight with disbelief. “You’re telling me we came all this way for a fucking
sword
?”

“Just listen, Eg.”

H
E LISTENED.

They got a table, off in an alcove, ordered drinks for show, and watched the tail end of the Majak queue get stripped of their weapons. Egar slumped moodily in his chair, not entirely for show. The wine tasted bitter and iron on his tongue. He barely sipped at it, felt nonetheless as if he’d downed the whole bottle. He was dizzy with the implications of the last four hours, and nothing Archeth was saying made much useful sense.

“Look.” Hands down on the tabletop in an attempt to stop the spinning. “If they’ve already got this sword—already got away with it—then why send this lot up here afterward?”

“I don’t know,” Archeth admitted. “Maybe it’s bad communication. Ringil told me there’s a cabal at the heart of things in Trelayne, and he thinks they’re the ones who had dealings with the dwenda. Said he thinks the Trelayne Chancellery didn’t necessarily know about it. Maybe the cabal sent for the sword, but they haven’t let the Chancellery know it’s in the bag.”

Egar scowled. “That’s pretty fucking thin. Why would they do something like that?”

“All right, then maybe the ship with the sword never made it back. Maybe they got wrecked on the way home and the sword’s at the bottom of the ocean. Or washed up somewhere on the Wastes coast. It doesn’t much matter, does it? The point is they’re here and they want Gil—”

“Yeah, and you’ve told them where to find him.”

“What I’ve done is buy us a little time, and a fighting chance. We’ve got prisoner-in-honor status, flexibility to come and go within reason. And tomorrow at first light, Klithren is going to rig up and sail north after Gil. He’s going to split his forces to do it, and he’s going to take me with him.”

He shot her a skeptical look. “He told you that?”

“He didn’t have to. He’s got a hard-on for Gil like a fucking tent pole.”

“Ought to make the man happy,” Egar said sourly. “But if Klithren’s spoiling for that much of a fight, I don’t see him taking you along to talk the marines down.”

“You didn’t see his face when I gave him the numbers.” Archeth cut him a grim little smile. “Eg, this isn’t some meathead bounty hunter we’re dealing with. This guy’s built himself a knight’s commission and a naval command on a war only nine weeks old. That makes him pretty fucking smart.”

“Yeah. Smart enough to take us all up the arse before we saw it coming.”

She lost her smile. “Agreed. And we were slack, and we were stupid, and we deserved to get fucked over the way we did. Now can we stop wailing and beating our breasts about it, and
for fuck’s sake
concentrate on getting out of this mess instead?”

A flicker of old admiration woke in him. Archeth Indamaninarmal sat there across from him in all her battered glory. The woman who’d pulled him out of a jail cell, out from under certain death back in Yhelteth last year. The woman who’d rallied the engineers at Demlarashan when the dragon came. The krinzanz crash was there in all the jerky gestures she made, in the dark smears under her eyes and the hollow stare—but something else coiled there, too, at the core of it all, and he would have trusted that something at his back in a fight on foot with steppe ghouls.

He cleared his throat. Nodded.

“I’m still listening.”

“Good to know.” Maybe she’d seen the change in him. She leaned in a little closer. “Klithren grew up in the borders, so he knows a little something about imperial marines. And he probably saw them in action during the war as well. End result, he won’t want to get in a fight with them if he can avoid it. So he’ll take me with him, but he’ll take a fair few of his pirate pals as well, just in case. He’ll leave a rump force here because he figures this battle is won. At which point—it’s up to you and Rakan to prove him wrong.”

She sat back. He went on looking at her.

“You put all this together off one conversation with this Klithren? On the fly, while you were still talking to him?”

“More or less, yeah.” She rubbed at one eye with a knuckle. Sniffed. “Why?”

“Nothing, it’s, uh …”

“Oh, right. You think that’s fancy footwork?” She gave him a weary smile. “Try a hundred and fifty years at the imperial court.”

He scooted a surreptitious glance around the room. Now the disarmament of the Majak was done, they were getting more attention from the victorious privateers in the tavern lounge. But none of it amounted to more than muttering and speculative looks, and both died away as soon as he glanced in their direction. No one was listening in, nor realistically could have been, as near as he could judge.

“All right, so young Noyal and I turn the tables here. What then?”

“You get the fuck out of Ornley. Take back
Pride
and
Sea Eagle’s Daughter
, burn anything else in the harbor to the waterline. Tell Shanta he’s to run south under full sail. Skip Lanatray, skip anything bigger than a village you can scare. Reprovision fast, and then swing out wide around the Gergis cape. If there’s a League cordon, it’ll be sticking close to the coast; you should slip by them easily enough.”

“And you?”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m supposed to be your fucking bodyguard, Archidi.”