Four guards burst out of the front door, wet and tense and tired. The sergeant looked up at Demok, while the other guards scanned the rainy darkness.
"Ahegi's hurt," Demok said. "Bad. Massedar's room. Now."
"What happened?" gasped the sergeant.
Demok gestured over his shoulder with a thumb and said, "She got him. I got her."
"Good job," said the sergeant, casting a bitter glance at Kehrsyn's body. He grunted as Ekur's limp body slid into his arms. "Gimme a hand, boys," he mumbled through clenched teeth. "He's a hefter."
Demok watched the four of them struggle with Ekur. Between the chill, the rain-slicked steps, and Ekur's porcine build, he knew it would take them time to get the body up the spiraling staircase. He dismounted and held the front door for the foursome. Then he cast a glance in and motioned to another guard who stood by, chatting quietly with a few comrades.
"Stable my horse," he said in a tone that demanded immediate compliance.
He trotted back down the stairs, walked over to his demoralized mount, and unceremoniously heaved Kehrsyn's inert body over his shoulder. He walked back inside Wing's Reach and ascended the stairwell across the foyer from the one the guards were using to port Ekur.
He reached the third floor, his breath heavy from the exertion of carrying an extra hundred-odd pounds of meat over his shoulder. He moved down the hall, Kehrsyn's hand batting against his legs. He reached Massedar's room and pounded on the door. Massedar opened it after but a moment's pause.
"Here's one," said Demok, stepping in and lowering Kehrsyn's body to the floor, face down. Massedar started to say something, but Demok cut him off. "Other's coming."
After a moment, a foursome of guards shuffled in, panting and puffing, and dropped Ekur.
"Here ye are, sir," wheezed the sergeant.
Massedar stepped closer to the old priest and stared at his lifeless face. He kneeled and pressed his fingers into the fleshy neck, looking for a pulse he knew he wouldn't find.
"I fear the hours of his life are spent," he said with measured sadness. "Nothing remaineth to be done, save only the final rites of passage. These shall I do for my old friend, alone. Let the doors be closed and the news be borne to the others of the house that Ahegi hath fallen." The guards nodded and backed out, closing the doors behind them.
Massedar rose, stepped over, and kneeled down beside Kehrsyn. He took her cold hand in his, and a curious, chuckling sigh of longing escaped his lips.
He turned to Demok and asked, "What hath come to pass here?"
Kehrsyn awoke with a groan.
"What happened?" she slurred.
She tried to sit up, but her vision swam. It seemed like a huge, heavy stone was rolling around inside her skull, whipping her head back and forth on her weak, noodle neck. She started to cry out in pain and despair, but a hand clamped over her mouth. Fortunately, whoever it was also cradled her head and shoulders in one arm and lowered her gently back down.
"Rest easy," said a terse, rough voice.
"Demok?"
"Sshh, quietly," he answered, pressing a flask of warm liquid to her lips. "Drink this."
She took a few sips of the bitter, musky tea, then drank several heavy swallows once she got used to the flavor. She sighed and sank back, only then realizing that she lay on a comfortable mattress with a pillow beneath her head and warm woolen blankets tucked around. She heard a fire crackling and the incessant drumming of the winter's rain on the roof over her head.
"Where am I?"
"Massedar's suite."
"But-" she began, and memory returned to her. "What did you do?" she asked, suspicious, but too weak to do anything about it.
She turned her head toward his voice and stared with bleary eyes.
He sat beside her, cross-legged on the floor. He ran one knuckle back and forth across his lower lip, his palm facing Kehrsyn so that his hand partially shielded his face. He looked back at her from beneath his brows, not an intimidating expression, but rather one of discomfort and shame.
"I… struck you. Base of the neck. Pommel of my sword… I'm sorry."
"Why?" she asked, and the pain of betrayal leaked into her voice.
Demok's eyes flickered, almost a wince, and he said, "Ahegi's order still stood. Kill you on sight. No questions. You couldn't enter Wing's Reach alive."
"So you knocked me out?" she asked.
He nodded.
"Why not change Ekur's order?"
"Might be accomplices. They must think you're dead."
"I could have snuck in," she said.
He drew his mouth into a grim line and replied, "Couldn't take the chance. The guards are alert. Besides, it helps for them to see your corpse."
"Well, why hit me like that? I could have pretended I was dead."
"Would have shivered. Or twitched."
"You could have at least asked before you did it," she groused.
"Would have been harder," replied Demok. "For both of us," he added, more quietly.
"Well, I still think mere must have been a better way."
Demok turned the cold compress over and brushed a lock of hair from her forehead.
"I know," he said.
He rose and stepped over to the fire. Kehrsyn heard some clinking, as of coins, and after a few moments he came back holding a burlap bag that looked like it had something the size of a cat in it. He shook it. It jingled.
"Silvers, warmed by the fire," he said. "They'll help."
He sat back down beside her, pulled back the blanket from her shoulder, and gently placed the bag of heated coins at the base of her neck, tucking some behind her and draping the others across to her collarbone. The burlap was scratchy, but the warmth radiating from the coins suffused her neck with a welcome ease.
"Do you have some more of that tea stuff?" Kehrsyn asked.
Demok held the flask and she drank some more. The aftertaste was an unusual bitter flavor, and left her mouth dry.
"I think it's helping," she said, smacking her lips.
Demok smiled, though only for a second, and said, "Herbs from Sespech. Potent."
Kehrsyn lay back, closed her eyes, and listened to the fire for a while, drifting in and out of sleep. She felt the pain slowly recede, vanquished between the warm tea within and the warm coins without.
"Where's Massedar?" she asked, her voice dreamy and slurred.
"Waiting next door. When you're ready."
"Thank you for taking care of me."
Demok laughed, nothing more than a tiny snort through his nose, and said, "Least I could do."
"It's almost worth it to get hit like that just to relax in a bed like this."
"Kehrsyn, I'm-" began Demok.
"Don't worry about it," Kehrsyn interrupted. "It just kind of scared me that you'd… you know… nah, just forget about it."
Another long pause filled the room, broken only by the occasional pop from the fire. Eventually, Kehrsyn started flexing her fingers and toes to get her circulation going again. She stretched her arms and legs, exhaled wearily, and lay still again.
"If you're ready," Demok said, "he's waiting."
Ekur's body sagged on the tabletop. He had been thoroughly searched. His clothes were undone and his pockets turned out, revealing rather more of his pallid, cyanotic flesh than Kehrsyn would ever have cared to see. The bulbous way the flesh oozed over the wooden tabletop reminded Kehrsyn of the toad squatting atop Eileph's bald head.
A cone of clove incense smoked on Ekur's forehead, planted in the precise center of the two concentric rings that marked him as a man of letters. A shiny copper covered each eye. A deep stabbing wound in Ekur's belly lay open like a rancid mouth, the skin around the cut pulled akimbo by the inert weight of his bulk. Massedar moved carefully around the corpse, inspecting it. Kehrsyn winced and turned her head.