Ferbin could see dark blood on the glowing blue band beneath the fallen flier. Holse checked the rifle and reloaded it, still with one knee pressing on the back of the struggling lyge flier.
“Thank you, Holse,” Ferbin said. He looked up at the thin, dark, puzzled face of the lyge, which rose up a little and gave a single great beat of its wings before settling back down again. The pulse of air rolled over them. “What should we do with—”
The grenade fizzed into life again. They scrambled away on all fours, Holse making an attempt to pull the lyge flier with him. They rolled and clattered across the hard surface, and Ferbin had time to think that at least if he died here it would be on the Eighth, not somewhere lost and unholy between the stars. The grenade exploded with a terrific smacking noise that seemed to take Ferbin by the ears and slap him somewhere in between them. He heard a ringing sound and lay where he was.
When he collected his scattered senses and looked about him, he saw Holse a couple of strides away looking back at him, the lyge flier lying still a few strides further back, and that was all.
The lyge had gone; whether killed or wounded by the grenade or just startled by it, it was impossible to know.
Holse’s mouth moved as if he was saying something, but Ferbin couldn’t hear a damn thing.
A broad cylinder, a good fifteen strides across, rose up in the centre of the tower’s summit, swallowing the thin tube that Ferbin had been talking to. This fresh extrusion climbed five metres into the air and stopped. A door big enough to accept three mounted men side by side slid open and a grey-blue light spilled out.
Around the tower, a number of great dark shapes started to appear, circling.
Ferbin and Holse got up and ran for the doorway.
His ears were still ringing, so Ferbin never heard the shot that hit him.
9. One-finger Man
Mertis tyl Loesp sat in his withdrawing chamber, high in the royal palace of Pourl. The room had started to seem overly modest to him recently; however, he’d thought it best to leave it a short-year or so before moving into any of the King’s apartments. He was listening to two of his most trusted knights report.
“Your boy knew the old fellow’s hiding place, in a secret room behind a cupboard. We hauled him out and persuaded him to tell us the truth of earlier events.” Vollird, who had been one of those guarding the door when the late king had met his end in the old factory, smiled.
“The gentleman was a one-finger man,” the other knight, Baerth, said. He too had been there when the King had died. He used both hands to mime breaking a small twig. A twitch about his lips might also have been a smile.
“Yes, thank you for the demonstration,” tyl Loesp said to Baerth, then frowned at Vollird. “And then you found it necessary to kill the Head Scholar. Against my orders.”
“We did,” Vollird said, uncowed. “I reckoned the risk of bringing him to a barracks and oublietting him too great.”
“Kindly explain,” tyl Loesp said smoothly, sitting back.
Vollird was a tall, thin, darkly intense fellow with a look that could, as now, verge on insolent. He usually regarded the world with his head tipped downwards, eyes peering out from beneath his brow. It was by no means a shy or modest aspect; rather it seemed a little wary and distrusting, certainly, but mostly mocking, sly and calculating, and as though those eyes were keeping carefully under the cover of that sheltering brow, quietly evaluating weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and the best time to strike.
Baerth was a contrast; fair, small and bulky with muscle, he looked almost childish at times, though of the two he could be the most unrestrained when his blood was up.
Both would do tyl Loesp’s bidding, which was all that mattered. Though on this occasion, of course, they had not. He had asked them to perform various disappearances, intimidations and other delicate commissions for him over the past few years and they had proved reliable and trustworthy, never failing him yet; however, he was worried they might have developed a taste for murder above obedience. A principal strand of this concern centred on who he could find to dispose of these two if they did prove in sum more liabilitous than advantageous to him; he had various options in that regard, but the most ruthless tended to be the least trustworthy and the least criminal the most tentative.
“Mr. Seltis’ confession was most comprehensive,” Vollird said, “and included the fact that the gentleman who had been there earlier had specifically demanded that the Head Scholar get word to said gentleman’s brother here in the palace, regarding the manner of their father’s death and the danger the younger brother might therefore be in. There had been no time for the Head Scholar to begin effecting such warning; however, he seemed most tearfully regretful at this and I formed the distinct impression he would do what he could to pass this information on should he have the chance, to whatever barracksman, militia or army he happened to encounter. So we took him to the roof on excuse of visiting the place where the fleeing gentlemen had absconded and threw him to his death. We told those in the Scholastery that he had jumped, and assumed our most shocked expressions.”
Baerth glanced at the other knight. “I said we might have kept him alive as we were told and just torn out his tongue.”
Vollird sighed. “Then he would have written out a warning message.”
Baerth looked unconvinced. “We could have broken the rest of his fingers.”
“He’d have written using a pen stuck in his mouth,” Vollird said, exasperated.
“We might—”
“Then he’d have shoved the pen up his arse,” Vollird said loudly. “Or found some sort of way, if he was desperate enough, which I judged him to be.” He looked at tyl Loesp. “At any rate, dead is what he is.”
Tyl Loesp thought. “Well,” he said, “I will concede that was well enough done, in the circumstances. However, I worry that we now have a Scholastery full of offended scholars.”
“They’d be easy enough to cull too, sir,” Vollird said. “There’s a lot of them, but they’re all nicely gathered and guarded, and they’re all soft as a babe’s head, I swear.”
“Again, true, but they’ll have parents, brothers, connections. It would be better if we can persuade a new Head Scholar to keep them in order and say no more of what occurred.”
Vollird looked unconvinced. “There’s no better way of ensuring a tongue’s held than stilling it for good, sir.”
Tyl Loesp gazed at Vollird. “You are very good at pieces of the truth, Vollird, aren’t you?”
“Only as needs be, tyl Loesp,” the other man replied, holding his gaze. “Not to a fault.”
Tyl Loesp felt sure the two knights were convinced that killing all the scholars at Anjrinh would end the problem that they might have seen Ferbin, alive and on the run.
Ferbin, alive. How entirely like that fatuous, lucky idiot to stumble through a battle unscathed and evade all attempts at capture. All the same, tyl Loesp doubted that even Ferbin’s luck would be entirely sufficient for that; he suspected the servant, one Choubris Holse, was providing the cunning the prince so evidently lacked.
Vollird and Baerth both imagined that simply excising those who’d seen the prince would put an end to the matter; it was the obvious, soldierly way to think. Neither could see that all such surgery had its own further complications and ensuences. This present problem was like a small boil on the hand; lancing it would be quick and immediately satisfying, but a cautious doctor would know that this approach might lead to an even worse affliction that could infectively paralyse the whole arm and even threaten the body’s life itself. Sometimes the most prudent course was just to apply some healing oils or cooling poultice and let things subside. It might be the slower treatment but it carried fewer risks, left no scars and could be more effective in the end.