“He’ll tell you all about it later,” said the Elhim. We took off jogging down the dark twisting alleys of Lepan, past deserted shops and dimly lit taverns, past muddy sties, stables, and smithies reeking of coal and ash, always taking the downward-sloping ways that would lead us to the slow-moving Lepander River. Few souls were about in the night. Drunks sprawled in corners, lost in blissful stupor. A growling beggar whose face was ravaged with seeping burns lunged at Narim from a dark doorway, and the Elhim had to struggle fiercely to get away. A few late revelers staggered out of a tavern, but no one else prowled the dark lanes—not at first. The Elhim was taking us to a friend’s dinghy tied up down by the docks. If we could just get through the town fast enough ...
But every hundred paces I had to stop and cough, allowing the stitch in my side to subside, persuading some meager reserve of strength to seep back into my legs. I had tried to keep my body from atrophying completely in prison, but with poor food, little space, and the pain of constant injury, it had been impossible. “Sorry,” I gasped for the hundredth time as I bent double, leaning on an empty bin behind a fishmonger’s stall. The heavy, ripe air and the steepening pitch of the cluttered lanes told me we were nearing the river, but I had tripped on a rusty wagon tongue and couldn’t get moving again. Torches had flared into life all over the sleeping city. Shouts and the pounding of feet and the clangor of armed men on horseback came from every side, the noise grating in my head. “Go on. I can’t. ...”
Callia grabbed a dark apron from someone’s washing and wrapped it about her like a shawl. Glancing over her shoulder nervously, she tugged at my arm. “Come on. Can’t leave you after all this trouble. I’m shiv’d if I’ll let you get away without explaining.”
“Look, Callia,” said the Elhim, “head down past the slave docks. Go north until you come to the old customs house. There’s an alehouse just past, and an alley between. Down the alley you’ll come to some stone steps leading down to the river. The boat will be at the bottom of the steps. Wait for us there. We’ll be less noticeable if we go separately.”
Callia must have been wickedly afraid, for she didn’t argue at all. She only laid her hand on my cheek and said, “A life for a life. Be there.” Her breath was sweet and only faintly tinged with cheap wine. Silently she slipped into the shadows.
“Now you,” said the Elhim. “We’ll take it slower. It’s not far. But listen to me ... if we get separated or the boat’s gone or something happens to me, find your way to the Bone and Thistle on the Vallior road. Ask for Davyn and tell him I’ve sent you. He’ll help.”
The distance to the rendezvous may not have been far, but our journey was very slow. We cut through the ramshackle riverfront district, constantly forced to backtrack. Parties of armed men roamed the city, asking questions of clusters of sleepy residents.
“Murderer on the loose,” they were saying.
“A Senai gone mad from dragon’s breath, I heard.”
“Madman. Fired the Drover ’cause he didn’t like the ale! Copped a whore and said he’d gut her if he didn’t get his money back.”
Narim, his back flattened to a stable wall, whispered in my ear, “At least they aren’t saying you were dissatisfied with the woman. Callia would be most disturbed at that.” I was too tired to appreciate his humor.
Roving bands of ruffians were taking the opportunity to harass people in the streets. In one alleyway we stumbled over a dead Elhim whose face was pulp, bloody clothes half ripped from the slender, mutilated body. His purse had been cut from his belt. Narim was no longer smiling when he locked my arm in the vise of his fingers and dragged me onward.
Staying low, we scuttered across a wide lane, ducking into a stinking alley that sloped sharply downward. Its far end opened onto a broad embankment choked with weeds and rubbish, overlooking the dark, foggy ribbon of the Lepander.
“Down there,” whispered the Elhim from just behind me, nudging me toward a broken stone path that led down the embankment. “Go on down to Callia. I’m to leave a token so my friend will know who took his boat.”
I nodded, praying my watery knees could get me down the stone steps. Somewhere in the yellow fog, water rippled into a backwater with a soft plopping noise. The steps seemed to go on forever. But eventually my searching foot sank into mud instead of jarring on stone. Across a muddy strip was the vague outline of a dinghy bobbing gently beside a plank walkway, dark against the dark water. No sign of Callia—not until torches flared behind and before me to reveal a broad-shouldered man with a hard, cruel mouth holding the terrified girl by the throat, a knife pointed at her eye. Before I could move, a thick, hairy arm was clamped about my own throat, and my right arm was twisted behind my back.
“Well, well. Senai nobles are keeping low company these days. Don’t you know you can get crabs from bitches like this?” said the one holding Callia. I didn’t have to see the red mark on his wrist to know he was a Dragon Rider, and a very angry or very drunk one, unable to control his inner fire. Orange sparks spit and hissed wherever he held the girl close to him. She whimpered softly. “We’ll protect you, Senai. Our sovereign will appreciate that his family’s seed is not being dispensed in such unworthy vessels.” Then, with no more thought than plucking a fowl for his supper, the Rider whipped his knife across Callia’s throat and shoved her to the ground. Mud spattered her cheek, the eyes that had sparkled with so much life fixed in terrified surprise.
“Bastards!” I cried in my useless, croaking whisper. But outrage produced no magical surge of strength to prevent my ending ignominiously with my own face in the mud. While they wrenched my arms behind me and locked manacles on my wrists, black despair descended into my soul. If it had been in my power to will my heart to stop beating, I would have done it ... especially if I could have taken every villainous Ridemark warrior with me.
“Didn’t teach you well enough, did we?” said the murderer, wiping his bloody knife on my cheek. “We’ll tell Goryx not to be so dainty with you this time.” With heavy boots and the dragon whips they carried at their belts, he and his companion proceeded to give me a taste of what they had in mind. But they had no more than gotten started when they abruptly stopped again.
Shouts and heavy blows continued, but they had little to do with me, for which I was immensely grateful. My bonds made movement impossible, even if I’d had the strength to try or the fortitude to ignore the fresh indignities that had been laid over my already battered self. I was barely lucid enough to keep myself from drowning in the mud. But the proceedings were very odd. The Elhim could not be putting up such a fight as I heard. Somehow in my groggy confusion I envisioned an irritated Callia standing up in her green satin, the blood trickling down the front of it from her gaping throat, and throwing the heavy bodies into the river with a resounding splash. Or perhaps the splash was my face falling into the mud as I slipped into insensibility.
I didn’t want to open my eyes. The terror that I would see nothing but darkness was so absolute as to allow no other thought to pass through my mind. In the same way I dared not move lest I feel the damp straw, or the manacles about my wrists and ankles, or the iron walls so close about me that I could touch all four plus ceiling and floor at once. I dared not breathe lest I smell the stink of my fear and the foulness of my den of living death. Desperately I fought to stay on the far side of the boundary between sleep and waking. Better not ever to wake up. Better not to know.
“... not yet ready for visitors. But I thought you ought to see ...” The whisper came from the waking side, but learning who it was meant opening my eyes.