Enemy Page 6

  Konnon led them around the corner to the door of a shop, an armorer who worked for local bloodlords and armored the Citadel, and pushed inside. Despite the door not being barred, Draken saw no one within, though it was a narrow, deep space. His eyes quickly adjusted, revealing the leather-craft and metal polishing part of an armorer’s operation. Fully suited forms of plate, mail, and fishscale lined one wall like an honor guard. These armorers surely had a forge at the back of the city, where pounding hammers wouldn’t keep residents up all night. Three tables had half-finished suits laid out on them. Pegs on walls and carts stowed tools. Not a scrap of leather or trash, nor maybe even dust, littered the floor.

  Draken reached out to trail his fingers across the fine decorative stitching on a leather breastplate. Whatever odd light the magic filtered through his vision snagged on gold thread embroidered into brown leather, swirling vines and flowers with skulls and eyes and moons.

  The ambient, damp light shed from the street winked out as Halmar shut the door and latched it. A blink sharpened Draken’s vision. He could see the others’ expressions crease with frustration and slight alarm. No one else noticed when two silent men emerged from the shadows at the rear of the shop.

  Draken’s hand fell to Seaborn’s hilt, ready to draw. Bruche was nervous and spoke for him: “Halt for your Khel Szi.”

  Excellent. Announce me, why don’t you?

  But they dropped to a knee before him, startled, and lowered their heads. Jewelry around their necks and wrists jingled and fell quiet. Loyal, then. He frowned, feeling oddly sure of it. It didn’t soothe Draken’s worry for Sikyra but eased him into grim resolution. He had help. He wasn’t alone in protecting her, even on the street.

  Konnon spoke, softly polite. “A light, please. Khel Szi bids you rise and open the gate.”

  Gate? Here? Draken peered into the shadows. They sharpened and intensified into shapes and the darkness greyed. To one side an ornate metal banister encircled a stairwell leading down beneath another that led to the upper floors. Then one of the men struck a light. Draken blinked against the glare but pushed through the others to follow first. The floor creaked under their boots. Scents filled the air: the damp of anxiety now drying into fear; leather, fresh-forged metal, oils, and polishes all reminding him of battle preparations. The candle was poor and flickered out, but Draken could see … sense … when to reach out to grasp the banister. It was clammy under his hand, damp without being really wet, as if the metal sweated like the men.

  Someone stumbled behind him and muttered a curse. At the bottom of the several steps the floor sloped further downward. Draken drew Seaborn a little, enough to shed a dim glow. One of the armorers twisted to look at him. Draken dropped it back in the sheath. It had stung his eyes anyway.

  They passed tangles of cured leather, broken tools, and random pieces of armor. Despite the neat stacks, the long, narrow cellar had an air of discard. After several steps he realized two things: they had already gone far further than the depth of the building above, and they could be walking into an ambush. Draken’s thumb toyed with the loose bit of leather strapping around his hilt.

  You see now why szi nêre like to go first? You princes are all alike.

  Bruche’s chill filled Draken’s chest and slid down his sword arm. He lingered like an icy draught of ale filling the gullet: steadying but tugging on his control. They wordlessly shared their tension; both listened hard to the silence. Nothing broke it but the bootsteps of the men. Draken found he missed his sister slinking along to one side. She frequently caught things he missed. But he did see the shapes ahead fall still. He stopped and Konnon practically walked into the back of him. He uttered a soft curse and Halmar grunted for quiet.

  “The gate. Er. Khel Szi.” The elder armorer stumbled over the words.

  “Give a man some warning,” Konnon said with tense irritability, putting some distance between him and Draken.

  The gate swinging open made them all step back. It scraped on the floor, making his heart trip. The smell of stone filled Draken’s lungs. He hesitated, thinking he’d catch a whiff of death or decay, but what lay beyond only smelled of rocky dust.

  Another cautious glance back from the man ahead, a pause to listen. Silence. The lean armorer struck flint on stone and a light sparked as he bent to retrieve a torch from a pile to one side of the gate. And gate it was, metal wrought in an even more elaborate pattern than the bannister above.

  The torch flared. Draken averted his gaze from the stinging glare.

  “The Khel Szi tombs. Final chambers for your ancestors, my lord,” Konnon said softly, maybe using the informal address because he thought Draken would be disturbed or feel some grief. Draken felt nothing but a vague sense of displacement. Monoeans buried their dead, but Brînians and Akrasians always gave the dead to the sea, delivering them as directly to Ma’Vanni as possible. That the Khel Szis had once been entombed made him curious about the practice. Bruche didn’t know either; the spirit gave an inward shrug.

  Draken wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but shelves of skeletons in full Khel Szi battle regalia wasn’t it. Each shelf was marked with a birth name and the Sohalia count he’d died. Some had images of a face graven next to the words. Despite worry prodding him to get to Sikyra, he paused to study one, so ancient the markings had mostly crumbled away. The next resident must have been more recent; the carving depicted a hard-planed face atop thick shoulders. The name read Draku. He blinked. His father had given him something like a family name.

  Bruche relaxed since it became apparent they weren’t in immediate danger of being ambushed. I see the resemblance.

  Not a jest. It wasn’t like looking at himself, exactly, but he could see where his build and bone structure had come from. His gaze shifted to the remains, bones covered in armor, thick dust, and patches of leathery skin. The shadows tricked the eye to believing the long locked hair writhed around the skull like indolent snakes. Gauntleted finger bones gripped a decent replica of Seaborn. Red paint crackled over the tip of the stone blade and its flat bore carved images of the Seven Sohalia Moons and words scribed in a tongue he didn’t understand. Despite the lack of flesh, he had the feeling his elder could leap up into battle at any moment.

  Seaborn had no such engravings. Before he could ponder the meanings of the etchings, Konnon took up the torch. The two armorers backed to one side to make room for them to pass, hemmed in by shelves. The torchlight flickered over weepmarks and thin white stalagtites growing from the stone. Halmar didn’t exactly nudge Draken, but crowded him enough to get him moving again.

  Thom had told him Khel Szis don’t thank people for their service unless it was unusual or dangerous. He reckoned this qualified. “What are your names?”

  The wiry one lifted his chin. “Helmek, Khel Szi. And he is called Rhiles.”

  “Helmek. Rhiles. Names I won’t forget. I am in your debt. What would you have of me?”

  Rhiles stepped forward and gripped his arm. Swords hissed from scabbards. “Step back!”

  Halmar spoke so infrequently it took Draken a breath to realize the sharp tone was his. The armorer looked down at his hand on Draken’s arm and jerked it away with a strangled sound.

  “It’s all right. Speak, if you would.”

  “Aarinnaie Szirin …” Riles swallowed.

  His heart twisted. Surely she hadn’t found trouble in the city so soon after leaving his side. “What of her?”

  “I would see her protected, Khel Szi. Safe.”

  Gods, a bout of young love was hanging them up? Draken had a daughter to protect. “You know her?”

  “From the gate, Khel Szi, right here. She found our old ma once—she wanders. No longer right, her. Szirin saw her to rooms with a caretaker. I protested I didn’t have the coin but Szirin insisted it as payment for my letting her through the tombs ever since I was apprentice and she a little girl. They’re her tombs, I told her, but you don’t argue with Szirin.”

  He studied Rhiles’s face. He
’d broken his nose sometime, or had it broken for him. Draken suffocated the thought that Aarinnaie had just run off to do gods knew what while the city was under siege and soon to be occupied. If she were found by the Akrasians once they broke into the city—

  “I will keep her safe. Go from this place.” He looked at Helmek. “Both of you. Brîn is at war.”

  Helmek stared. Rhiles shook his head. “But the tomb gates—”

  “Not yours to guard any longer. Do either of you have children?”

  Helmek’s chin lifted. “Two.”

  “See them safe. Leave the city if possible. And I will keep Aarinnaie from harm.”

  Both nodded.

  Draken walked on without another word, into the bone-filled catacombs, every breath filling his lungs with the dust of his forebears. Here were more bones than he could count, all the flesh long since rotted away. He wondered again at the custom of interring them here, what the new Khel Szi had always thought and experienced while laying the old, dead one among the ancients. He had dumped his own father rather unceremoniously into the sea, as was current practice. But it felt … incomplete, somehow. He almost snarled at that thought. It shouldn’t. After all, Draken’s father had abused him as a child and tortured him as an adult. The gods granted no satisfaction to a man with an evil father.

  His thoughts had carried him right past all the dozens … hundreds? … of skeletons to the great door leading into the temple. From this side it wasn’t much to look at; rusted metal strapped the door but the wood seemed solid enough, as impermeable as it did from the other side. It was strung with dirty cobwebs.

  Aye. The dead rarely think to have the dust cleared.

  Bruche’s tone was arid. Draken couldn’t tell whether he had any good humor on the subject of the dead. He wasn’t inclined to study it too closely. “I assume there is a key?”

  Konnon shook his head, eased forward, and knocked.

  For a long breath, silence. Draken stood very still. Bruche lingered close to the surface and slipped up and down his swordarm like a chill mist. The catacombs was a good place to hide. It also was an excellent trap. Footsteps hurried toward the door on the other side, there was a scraping sound and a sharp clank. The door swung open and bright, wavering torchlight on the other side made Draken squint and duck his head. Damn. That stings.

  It’s a problem but not one we’re going to solve now.

  “Khel Szi.” The kindly old priest with hands soft as Sikyra’s, his voice tremulous and his face creased.

  Draken felt himself sliding into his more official demeanor, his chin lifting as he walked into the temple. Gods, the door was thick as his hand was wide, the stone threshold twice that deep, as if meant to keep the dead from escaping.

  Torchlight washed over the scrubbed white walls of the temple and flickered against brightly painted idols of the gods. He squinted and shadowed his eyes with his hand. “I understand there’s a bit of trouble.”

  “A mob at the gates, Khel Szi,” the priest said, giving him a curious look.

  Draken nodded. His gaze caught on Truls, drifting near the open temple door. Maybe Draken just imagined his satisfied expression. Beyond, a cacophony of shouts filled the night. No massive ram banged on the gates, at least not yet, but slaves ran around smothering flaming arrows stuck in the cobbles and gardens of the courtyard. More soared over the wall, leaving trails of fire slashing across Draken’s vision. He passed his hand over his face, wishing this enhanced sight away. Nothing happened. He strode outside, seeking relief in the darkness.

  Osias hurried toward him like a silver moonbeam. “I thought you were at the city wall, Khel Szi. But I hoped you would come.”

  “I came back for Sikyra.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the shouting. It was all so much more frantic and panicked than he’d expected. “Not long now before they break through and haul the ram to these gates, if they’re not already on their way. Where is she?”

  “In her quarters. Captain Tyrolean is with her.” Osias gave him an earnest look but didn’t question him, just followed quietly. Setia was missing. Gathering their things to escape, if she was smart.

  More arrows skittered across the cobbles, scattering sparks across a slave’s robes and inciting shouts and screams from the slaves and szi nêre. Another slave ran to beat the flames out, chattering in a strange dialect. Ahead, the tall formal doors hung open, shedding more torchlight from the Great Hall out into the night. Draken climbed the steps, head down to shade his eyes. Slaves and szi nêre and ordinary soldiers assigned to the Citadel hurried through the tiled round Hall, filling quivers and talking tactics. Every free male, pitifully few of them, was armed with sword and bow. Most were ranking szi nêre because the underlings had been sent to the front. Near the dais, one of the captains under Halmar, who was technically Citadel Comhanar though he rarely left Draken’s side long enough to give orders or strategize, stood with a huddle of seasoned, civilian fighters.

  Draken should speak to them, find out what plans were being laid and gauge the degree of immediate danger. Instead he strode quickly past to the corridor leading to the family quarters. Tyrolean stood outside the louvered door, holding his two bared swords. That told Draken all he needed to know about the immediate threat.

  “How is she, Captain?”

  Sikyra whimpered within, urging him to rush to her despite its lack of insistence. It sounded like the typical cry of a baby awakened in moontime, one who might just go back to sleep if left alone. But he would take her soon and there would be little enough sleep this night.

  “She’s well and safe. You should know, I saw Ilumat in the dungeon.” Tyrolean held steady, body and voice. “We … spoke.”

  One of his hands gripping the pointed hilt of his sword was bound over the knuckles and seeping blood. Draken’s brows raised. “And?”

  “He allied three bloodlords—that he’ll admit to.” He listed the names. Two Draken knew from local affairs, one he’d never heard of. An Islander, perhaps, spending Frost in Brîn.

  He was vaguely surprised not to hear Khisson’s name on the list, especially with the recent intelligence that he was in the city. The Dragonstar Isles were vulnerable to Monoean attack. Draken didn’t know any self-respecting Brînian bloodlord who would leave his home vulnerable in wartime. Insisting each family send a certain quota of fighters to the front was one of the reasons for Draken’s current disfavor among some bloodlords—the more short-sighted ones who underestimated the impact of a war with faith-fevered Monoeans.

  “Between the three they have perhaps four hundred men,” Tyrolean said.

  They’d disobeyed his orders to conscript fighters then, to have amassed so many. “Fair enough to take the Citadel this night.”

  “Aye. I’ll await your orders and escort you to wherever …”

  “To whatever secret hovel Aarinnaie has set up for us?”

  No flicker of smile tempered Tyrolean’s intimidating grip on his swords. “I know of some few. I will take you when you are ready, Your Highness.”

  He knew of them—how? But Sikyra’s cry sharpened, smothering his curiosity. One thing at a time. Draken pushed through the slatted doors, passing through the tiled antechamber without bothering to remove his boots or clean his feet. Lilna was in Draken’s quarters, folding Sikyra’s clothes with twitchy fingers. She bobbed into a bow, gaze lowered. Draken should reassure her that she would come to no harm, but he couldn’t make that promise.

  Sikyra pulled herself to her feet, chubby hands holding onto the bars of her cot. At the sight of Draken, she coughed a cry, took a breath, and bawled louder. Osias strode ahead to fetch her before Draken could tell him not to.

  At the sight of her in Osias’s arms, realization washed through Draken. “I must stay and lead the defense. You all take Sikyra.”

  No. He’ll take Brîn fair easily if you’re dead. Truls is right. He’s been right all along. You and Sikyra need to escape, now.

  Hiding does nothing for Brîn. They’
re about to take the Citadel.

  Ruddy fool, your life is everything to Brîn. We’ll attack later, when we can get the upper hand. Ilumat has it this night.

  “Truls says Elena is alive,” Osias said quietly. “How shall we explain to her we let you stay here to die?”

  Sikyra snuffled and cooed at Osias. Truls drifted around them, silent. Draken supposed he had nothing of use to tell him, now that he really needed it.

  “You cannot, Your Highness.” Tyrolean had entered behind him. “Brîn can stand without the Citadel, but it cannot stand without you.”

  Outnumbered. Might as well give in. Live to fight again.

  Flat, hollow: “Very well. Take us.”

  Draken took his daughter from Osias without meeting his gaze and laid her on his bed to dress her warmly. She kicked and gave him one of her rare smiles, trusting and oblivious of the turmoil fermenting below except for a quiver running through her little body when a scream pierced the trees and shutters.

  Draken drew a breath, forcing calm. “There, love.” He lifted her, snuggled in warm clothes and a blanket, and nodded to Tyrolean.

  “I must go a different way,” Osias said. “The bigger the group around you, the slower you’ll move.”

  “You’ll never make it out,” Draken said. “We have to take the tombs.”

  “Glamour, my friend,” Osias said, unsmiling and calm. Draken wondered if the Mance harbored resentment from their earlier conversation. His own had passed. The Mance seemed so steady and certain. Draken wished he’d stay near and impart some certainty to him.

  “And Setia?” Tyrolean asked.

  “No one notices a slave, which is what they will think I am,” Setia said from the doorway.

  Or they’d kill her for the crime of having dappled skin and Moonling blood. “We come out through Brightscar Leathers. Do you know the fountain at Bird Market? Come each dawn and dusk. The waterhaulers will provide you cover.” Osias would need it. They’d be searching for the Mance that was the Khel Szi’s great friend. But he didn’t need to tell Osias that.