‘No, you’re not!’ she cut in. ‘We’re all going together.’ She twisted a fist in his shirtsleeve, yanking. ‘And we’re going in this goddamned direction!’
He smiled at the admonishment and pressed a hand over hers. ‘Yes. Let’s get out of here.’ He moved out in front of her and started pushing a way through the crowd.
*
Studious Lock pushed open the main front door of the Nom manor house and regarded the night. It was very dark and very noisy. There was some sort of local celebration going on nearby. Very annoying. No doubt this was what the Mistress’s odd instructions regarded.
‘Guards,’ he called.
Three figures approached from the gloom.
Studious paused, a finger raised. Three? Was his vision going? Seeing triples now? He counted: ‘One, two … three.’
He decided to fall back on the elegance of logic and biology — the process of elimination.
Let us see, now. The tall fat one, Madrun, I know. As do I the tall skinny one, Lazan. That leaves the one in the middle who is neither as tall nor as fat nor as skinny as the other two. There we have it! Logic and biology clarify all issues.
He extended a gauze-wrapped finger towards the middle guard. ‘And you are, what? A polyp? A bud? Has one of you reproduced?’
‘Nay, Studlock,’ the fat one boomed. ‘What we have here is our first apprentice.’
First? Most alarming. ‘Apprentice? Apprentice in what? Guarding?’
‘Our philosophy and concomitant way of life,’ Lazan explained.
Ah, there you have it. All is clear now. ‘Very good.’ He examined the newcomer: wide loose pantaloons ballooning down to tight high leather boots. A wide gold sash over a loose silk shirt of the brightest verdant green. Studious knew himself no reliable judge of expressions and emotions, but it appeared to him as if the man standing before him was a touch embarrassed.
‘Dressed appropriately, I see,’ Studious commented, hoping to set him at ease. ‘Now. I have instructions for you from the Mistress. Please pay due attention and enact due diligence.’
‘Of course,’ Madrun assured him smoothly. ‘We are all seriousness.’
And the man’s face is straight as he says this — humorous byplay perhaps? How quaint.
‘Attend now, please.’
*
In the Eldra Iron Mongers in the far west of the city a man stood watching from the highest window of the old manor house. Leaning closer to the dirty glazing, he rubbed an even filthier rag over the glass, then hunched, peering. Through the rippled glazing the bursts of munitions reached him like flashes of fireworks during any one of the many religious festivals — fireworks ironically supplied by the Moranth. Beneath the barrage a broad pale dome flickered and winked in and out of sight.
Even at this great distance the window shuddered and rattled lightly.
He glanced to the card he held. So ancient. The Orb of Rulership. A white sphere held upraised in the hand of a cloaked figure.
He squeezed the card until the varnish cracked and shattered.
He only wanted to be safe. He only wanted the city to be strong.
How could he have been so blind?
*
Rallick was already on the roof when the assault began. For this reason he had mixed feelings regarding the Moranth’s failure to penetrate the Legate’s sorcerous defences. In either case, he felt that he had the best seat in the house, as they say, standing out on the roof peering up at the blinding eruptions where the munitions struck the clear opalescent wall of the Legate’s dome.
He blamed those blasts for his own failure to sense the approach of light slippered feet, and his failure to twist aside soon enough to completely avoid the blades that thrust for his back.
He rolled away but not quickly enough as blazing agony yammered down his back. He faced her now across the run of tiles, his own heavier curved blades out. She advanced, darting in and out. They tested each other’s skill, she stepping lightly with a hungry smile at her lips; he slower, careful on the sloped and shifting ceramic roof tiles.
‘You were a fool to return,’ she shouted over the blasts that rocked them in flashing chiaroscuro.
He said nothing, tensed, waiting for her to commit herself.
He did not have long to wait. She dodged in, feinting side to side, both blades spinning. A run of alternating high and low slashes backed Rallick up to the side of a gable. Here he pushed off, kicking her in the chest, throwing her back two steps. Her face betrayed open shock.
Rallick allowed himself an inward smile. Those slippered tracks at Baruk’s: small but heavy. He’d struck her with all his weight, treating her like an infantryman. Her reaction told him not many ever had.
Her lips pulled back from her small pointed teeth and she readied again, raising her arms high, both blades pointing down. Rallick shuffled away from the gable to clear his retreat. Multiple shadows flashed across them and waves of concussive force popped his ears. ‘There are greater threats,’ he yelled, motioning to the circling Moranth.
‘Their turn will come,’ she answered.
Time to surprise her again, he decided, and rushed. He was right: she was taken off guard. Yet every swing was met by a parrying blade, every spin and slash avoided, every thrust turned or slid aside. His charge ended when a circling counter-parry threw one of his blades wide, opening him to a thrust he avoided only by falling backwards.
He righted himself on the narrow level run along the spine of the roof, now rather surprised himself.
‘Ready?’ the girl asked, grinning.
Despite the agony shooting up his back he crouched, blades out.
The girl daintily slipped a foot forward on the tiled run. To either side the steep roof led down to a fall from the height of the Great Hall.
Rallick braced a foot behind, determined not to give ground this time.
She closed the distance in one leap. Blades clashed, scraping and rebounding again and again in a weaving dance of strike and immediate counter-strike until suddenly the girl pushed herself backwards. She snarled her frustration, her thin chest heaving.
‘Enough,’ she grated, and thrust out a hand.
A wave of pressure washed over Rallick: something like a strong wind or a splash of cold water. It passed on, leaving him untouched. The girl gaped at him. ‘How …’
He lunged and his blade caught her front, slashing scarves and flesh as she twisted sideways, slipping and tumbling down the roof. She bellowed, spat and hissed all the way down the slope until she disappeared over the edge.
Rallick hunched his shoulders and winced at the pain slashing into his back. He knew that that was certainly not the end of the creature. Under the cover of an eaves he knelt, untied a pouch and pulled out a shallow dish that contained a thick honey-like salve. This he scooped up in his hand and, reaching behind under his leather jerkin and shirting, rubbed into the warm wetness smeared there.
Almost immediately the pain lost its cut-glass sharpness and his breath came more easily. Some would think it ironic, he knew, using the alchemist’s offerings while engaged in a battle against him. Rallick wondered whether the term just was more appropriate. He remembered applying another alchemical product on a rather similar night a long time ago: dust of the magic-deadening mineral otataral. And on both nights it saved his life.
*
They circled high above the complex of Majesty Hall, over the flickering dome that so far seemed to have absorbed every munition dropped upon it. So tightly did they circle that Torvald sat sideways while the wide waist straps of the saddle harness held him tight. Below, the majority of the swooping quorls continued their runs. Blasting up to meet them came the magics of these mage-slaves who the Moranth claimed served the returned Tyrant himself. Torvald had a hard time accepting that, but what he had witnessed so far this night convinced him that something terrible had happened — perhaps deals had been struck with these mages themselves. Exactly what, he didn’t know for certain yet.