“Lady, think,” Robert said, for perhaps the twentieth time that evening. “We’re barely moving, even with the path that the old man clears for part of the day.”
The old man in question narrowed his eyes at a title that seemed to have replaced his name. His brows, frosted with ice from his breath, came together in a creased V. But he did not demur or disagree with the slight thief—which was as much a sign of his approval as he ever willingly granted to Robert.
She wanted to tell them all that she was afraid of the road, afraid of touching the reality of the Empire that spanned the continent in anything other than the dreams that always came. Swallowing, she met the eyes of her three companions and nodded her grudging approval.
But they left her to the night’s call when the matter was settled. Robert returned to his snow-enshrouded retreat—fashioned at the direction of Trethar—and Darin settled in for an evening hour with his new teacher.
Erin sat in the stillness, so tired and weary that she almost prayed for a dreamless night.
“They have to be on the road.” Lord Vellen shuffled the papers and maps to one side of his desk and stood. The motion was stiff and formal, but it hid much.
“We’re spread too thin,” Erliss replied, his voice just shy of a whine. “I have our house guards, and your Swords, along the main roads where any traffic moves at all.”
“And?”
“Nothing.” It was best not to prevaricate. Erliss ran a hand through jet-black hair and looked up. His eyes were darkened and ringed by lack of sleep; his cheeks were hollowed, his skin almost sallow. “But they’ve only been ordered to sight and follow; fifteen of my men were not enough to stop her in Mordantari.”
Lord Vellen frowned and turned back to the desk. At his direct order, a recess to Karnari activity had been called; the Greater Cabal would not sit in official session until the beginning of the next quarter.
But he knew that Benataan Lord Torvallen was already in motion; spies had reported at least six meetings of an “informal” nature that had taken place at the Torvallen estates in the city. The nature of these meetings had been well hidden, but Vellen did not need their minutes to know what Lord Torvallen planned.
“Lord?”
“They must take to the road. You’re right, Erliss. We don’t have the resources to track them in the provinces—but we do know that they must travel to Illan. Where else can they go?” He did not need to look at the maps again; he had studied them, and he remembered them in detail. “There is only one road to Illan in the winter. They will have to either travel through the capital of Senatare, or around it. ” If he could but call his power, he would be able to find the woman; her blood-power could not be hidden from his God’s. But the power still burned and could not be controlled. Yet. Abruptly he turned and placed a hand upon the flat surface of his desk. “You have progressed well, Erliss. This will be the final test of your studies. Go to Verdann in Senatare. Find them.”
Robert took control of the party almost as soon as they found the road again. He was not, and had never been, a woodsman of any note, but the roads he knew well. He talked often and made as much sense as he usually did while he babbled, now at Erin, now at Darin, seldom, if ever, at Trethar. He wore the coat he had procured at the village long past with a dapper pride and a playful elegance that was completely out of place. Trethar found it annoying, but he found almost anything that Robert was prone to do or say annoying.
Robert found the inn on the road with an ease of familiarity that no one had the energy to question—not even Erin. Rooms, real food, and a chance to get truly clean held an allure that long absence had made undeniable.
Robert dealt with the innkeeper; Erin had expected more difficulty in the transactions, but kept silent at Robert’s bidding. In the end, the slightly built man held the keys to two rooms—one for his two attendant slaves, and one for he and Erin. Erin listened as he talked, and found herself cringing at the easy way he slid into the demeanor of a housed noble.
She knew better than to even raise a whisper of protest, and weariness helped her to keep her head bowed and her attention focused on ground, the way any slave, no matter how valued, would.
“Come along,” Robert said, and she looked up. He handed a key to Darin and gestured again; she followed as he walked down the long hall to the room that would be his. “We have food, or will have food shortly, and I’ve taken the opportunity to call for a bath for the lot of you.” The wrinkled bridge of his nose was no act.
“Why, thank you, Lord,” Trethar whispered, in a tight little hiss of a voice.
Robert chose to ignore him, which was just as well; they were not yet out of the innkeeper’s field of vision.
When the door to Lord Talspon’s quarters—Robert insisted that the house was real, which made Erin less nervous—was opened, Erin knew that they must be the largest set of rooms in the inn. They were well decorated, with two framed paintings of simple country idylls and a vase on each of two low tables. The carpets here were blue and deep. A large fire burned in the grate, coloring the glass of the windows with orange translucent fingers.
“I know it isn’t much,” Robert said apologetically, “but you can’t expect much from a town inn. I think they’ve done exceptionally well, all things considered.”
She turned at the sound of his suddenly unfamiliar voice, her eyes leaving the carpet.
“My dear Lady, are you well?”
She shook herself and smiled. This was just another room, the bed another bed. And Robert, approaching her with his gregarious, and unwelcome, expression of concern was simply Robert—whoever that happened to be beneath the flamboyant mask he usually wore.
He saw the turning of her expression, more eloquent than any word of warning could have been. With a shrug that was anything but subtle, he turned away and walked over to the wall—and another door, unnoticed until now.
It led into a study, with a large dark desk and yet another fireplace couched within the wall. The leaded glass caught most of her attention; all of the panes were there, and whoever had cleaned them was very good at the job.
“Come,” Robert said, “and lay the map out on the desk. There is something we need to discuss.”
She nodded, went to her pack, and came back with the tube that contained the Lady’s gift. Gently, she eased the parchment out and laid it on the desk. There was a plain, heavy ornament, made in the likeness of the inn’s crest, that served as a paper-weight for one side of the map; Robert’s hand served as the other.
“We are here, give or take a few miles.” He jabbed at a silver dot. We want to be”—and his fingers moved north in the lamplight—“here, give or take a few more.
“The road between these two points is, in the winter, the only passable road. I am sorry, as you seem so reluctant to travel this way, but we take the road. It leads to Verdann.” Robert paused, obviously expecting some reaction. After a minute, he frowned.
“My dear girl,” he said, folding his arms in a sure sign of mild annoyance, “surely you recognize the name by now?”
“Verdann is the capital of Senatare, the northernmost province of the Empire, if you don’t include Illan.” Her voice was without inflection.
“To be honest, I don’t include Marantine, war or no war.” Robert bent over the map, studying its lines as they seemed to glitter.
“No,” she said quietly. “We don’t pass through a large city.”
He snorted. Lifted and crossed his arms, letting the map curl up. “Passing around the city is possible on side roads, but those roads are neither patroled—which is good—or cleared at all in the winter; there’s also a marked increase in banditry, and the farmers are ... unfriendly. Besides,” he added, drawing himself to his full height, “I know the city. Well.”
Erin stared at him for a few moments. Her glance was enough to make him bristle, but then again, an early morning was enough to make him bristle.
“We can gain valuable information if we stop there. We c
an travel freely once we pass the gates, and there’s a quarter of the city which, while it may not be suitable for women and children, will hide us quite effectively from any would-be captors. We can get supplies there.” He took a step away from the table and let his arms fall to the side. “And we can get passage from Verdann to Dagothrin, the capital of Illan.” He took a step back and held out his hands in a poor mimicry of supplication.
And the worst thing about it was that he was probably right. If he knew the city, and could find any information about the occupied state of Culverne, the stopover would be very valuable.
If he knew the city.
But if he didn’t ...
“All right,” she heard herself saying. “We’ll enter the city.”
“Good. I have to leave for the moment to procure supplies. Never fear, though—I shall return in due haste. I never keep a pretty woman—uh, never mind.” He walked out of the study in the wake of Erin’s silence.
Erin waited in the dying warmth of the room, with fire as her sole companion. She listened for the jaunty step in the hall that would sound his return as he brought those supplies so necessary in the growing cold. Supplies, she mused bitterly, that she herself couldn’t safely provide.
She watched the flicker of firelight. It was red, almost too red, as it dwindled. She remembered and shivered abruptly, drawing her arms close. Red was the color of pain, the color of his eyes. It was the color of the blood that bound her life. Beyond her, through the wide slit of heavy open curtains, darkness beckoned, all cold winter night, devoid of the sounds of motion.
For a moment she saw undulating just to one side of the glass the writhing landscape of the Dark Heart.
The door to the suite burst open and Erin flew from it, a pale, half-ethereal shadow. Her feet felt less solid, and they made no noise as they struck ground that seemed shaky and treacherous. She ran to the room that Darin shared with Trethar, and with trembling hands knocked on the door.
Trethar opened it and frowned. “What’s happened?” he asked softly. She made no answer.
Darin sat in the center of his cot. The sweat beading his forehead was the only thing that made Erin certain he was still alive. With a wordless little cry she started forward. The motion seemed to pull some invisible string, and Darin’s eyes, circled with shadow, fluttered open.
He gave her a wan, happy little smile. “Look, Erin,” he said softly. “Look at what I can do.”
He raised his hands from their resting place in his lap; cupped between them, like a frail blossom, was a tiny red flame. She stared at it, transfixed.
“Erin? Erin, are you all right?”
chapter seven
Verdann loomed in the distance, sprawling beyond the open ground of blanketed farmers’ fields, rising steadily upward in a vain attempt to dominate the sky as it did the countryside. The walls of the city were high. From a mile off, they could be seen standing out against the flat farmland; what remained of the city inside, only approaching it would reveal.
“This,” Robert said conversationally as he picked up his pace, “is the evidence of the effectiveness of Marantine. It is the only city thus walled in the Empire. The border city.” He looked irritably back when Darin failed to respond.
Trethar murmured something quietly, and Darin looked up.
“Sorry, Robert. What were you saying?”
“That you spend altogether too much time with that ill-tempered old man. Never mind. It isn’t important.”
Darin wondered how a grown man could sound so petulant.
“Robert?”
“lady?”
“Will it be hard to gain entrance?”
“Not now. It’s been a number of years since Marantine was a threat, and besides, I came prepared for this.” He fingered the collars of a jacket that was still fine and noble, even if it had seen an extraordinary amount of use in the past month.
She nodded and fell silent. Robert stared at her a moment and then walked briskly toward the city once more, leaving his imprint in the powdered snow.
True to his word, Robert had come prepared. When the guards at the gate—and the term guard was to be applied advisedly— stopped them, he walked quietly to where they stood. His hands flew around the air, and from the angle of his chin, Erin knew that he was aggrandizing himself. She was thankful she couldn’t hear the words, although the mixture of tone and temper carried quite well.
Biting her lip, she forced her hand away from the sword hilt, wondering exactly how it was that Robert had survived his personality. She was certain that every guard on the curtain wall was now staring pointedly at their heads, and she barely managed to maintain an aura of indifference to match her lord’s. But as she heard the trill of his annoying, flowery speech lengthen on into a quarter of an hour, she made a note to speak with him. Next time, they would follow her lead.
“Very well, my good men,” Robert said loudly, in a tone that conveyed anything but respect, “if you would be so kind?” He brought something out from under his cloak and passed it quickly into the outstretched hand of one of the guards. The clinking of metal against metal was audible, even over Robert’s huffing.
The guards nodded in bored indifference and stood aside.
“Don’t just stand there gawking,” Robert said, irritable once again. “Come on. We’ve little time to reach an inn before they close the quarter down for the evening.”
Erin stood-back and let Darin and Trethar precede her.
“And I don’t need to say—” Robert began.
“Good. Don’t.”
The look that passed from Robert to the brown-robed mage was sharp and clear. “—that I can’t very well afford to buy off any more of these detestable guards. So we don’t want to be caught out past curfew.”
“Where are we going?”
“Talking,” Robert replied, as Trethar listened expectantly, “will only slow us down.”
“Robert, where are we going?”
“Now now, Darin.” Robert glanced nervously at the sky; it was already a deep blue.
Darin’s eyes darted from building to building, catching the lengthening shadows of garbage and snow in the alleyways. “I lived in Malakar for four years. I know the cities of the Empire. Where are you taking us?”
“Darin, really, I—what are you doing? Twin Hearts, Darin, is that necessary?” He eyed the staff of Culverne with some distaste as it slid out of the restraining strap at Darin’s back. With exaggerated care, the slight man brought his fingers up to massage his dimpled forehead. Behind Darin, the sound of metal’s hiss could be heard, and Robert wheeled almost too quickly and overbalanced on the ice. He prevented himself from falling.
“Lady, please.” His eyes fell to the shimmering blade of the unsheathed sword that adorned Erin’s hand. “I assure you, I know this city. Would I lead you into danger?”
Erin’s wary turn of the head was all the answer he needed—and all the answer she gave. He sighed.
“I realize that this is not, perhaps, the most savory part of the city, but I—”
“Where are we going?”
Darin, he might ignore; Trethar he might annoy. To Lady Erin, he gave an answer. “The Red Dog Inn.”
“Lead,” Erin said softly; the name meant nothing to her. “Lead quickly. We’ll follow.”
To Darin’s surprise, Robert did as bid without a single word. His expression spoke volumes—but Robert rarely left anything to the subtlety of expression alone.
After another ten minutes, no one was concerned with Robert. The buildings around them grew taller and less well kept; the alleys between these buildings grew darker and more frequent. All of the city’s shadows seemed to gather here; the stretch of buildings in the dying sun seemed the perfect harbor for them. There was no pretense of civility or finery anywhere in sight, and a soft breeze moved through the streets, carrying with it a smell of old garbage, urine, and decay.
Trethar mumbled a few sharp words to himself—nonmagical words, to Darin’
s ears, that he wasn’t particularly interested in hearing fully. If we get where we’re going safely, he said to Bethany, as she thrummed in his gloved hand, I’m going to kill Robert. Bethany made no response.
Robert stopped abruptly in front of one of several alleys. “Here.”
“Here?” Trethar asked, with narrowed eyes. “You lead.”
“It’s perfectly safe. It will get us out of the streets more quickly; if we don’t take the short cut, we’ve got to circumnavigate another four blocks.”
“You lead.”
“Nothing is going to happen, old man. Trust me. I’ve gone through this alley literally hundreds of times.”
A small red glow started in Trethar’s cupped hands.
“All right,” Robert said tartly, “if it makes you feel better, I’m perfectly willing to lead.”
The light in Trethar’s hands dimmed as Robert stepped into the alley. Erin followed at his heels, brushing past Darin so deftly he hardly had time to misstep. As he recovered, Trethar also dodged in front of him.
“Watch our backs, Darin.”
Darin drew his staff closer to his chest and followed his companions. They kept quite close together; if Darin had reached out with his staff, he would have been able to touch Erin’s stiff back just beyond Trethar’s chest.
“You see?” He heard Robert hiss. “No one’s—”
“Evening, Your Lordship.”
As one person, they froze. A shadow detached itself from the wall a few feet ahead of Robert. Then another joined the first, and another, and another.
“And what do we have here?”
Robert muttered something quietly.
“Tsk, tsk, Your Lordship. Language like that sets a bad example for us all.” The shadow stepped forward, and Darin leaned around Trethar’s broad back to try to get a better view. He could make out the outline of a slender man, no more.