Lone drew away from the living dead man, and muttered something about coming back for his fee, and then he was out the door, leaving the grief-stricken necromancer behind, who now and again whispered the name Meretaten between howls of anguish.
For the next several nights, the guards at the Gate of Triumph reported seeing that dreadful person Hâlott wandering through the graveyard just beyond their post. What he was doing there, none knew, though one reported that he seemed to be weeping.
Rumors and whispers flew throughout Sanctuary, in the taverns and inns—the ’Unicorn, Yellow Lantern, Broken Mast, Six Ravens, and the many other establishments—over back fences, in alleys, down at the docks, and perhaps in the palace itself. No matter where, whenever men and women got together, inevitably their voices dropped and they whispered conspiratorially:
“That Nidakis, he’s not the first one of the court to have died in this manner.”
“A mysterious ailment, I hear.”
“Yar. Like the ones before: terrible fever, can’t keep anything down, coughing endlessly. They say their whole insides died—guts, lungs, hearts, livers, kidneys, all of it—and that’s what killed ’em.”
“That don’t sound like no snakebite to me.”
“Snakebite?”
“Yar. From one o’ them beynit snakes. Kill you in moments, they will.”
“Pah! Wasn’t no snakebite killed Nidakis.”
“Wull then, just how do you explain the fact that the healers found a tiny snake tooth stuck under the skin in the back of Nidakis’s neck?”
“I hear it was found in his mouth.”
“Bit him in the night, I hear.”
“Ooo, gives me shivers, it does, terrible snakes slithering through the dark.”
“’Fit were a snake tooth, a beynit snake, then the Beysibs are back.”
“Small, they are, I hear, and brightly colored.”
“The Beysib?”
“Nah, the snakes. The Beysib, though, eyes of a fish they have, them women.”
“Mayhap they’re gathering again.”
“Might have somethin’ to do with that ship what was wrecked.”
Rumors flew, whispers flew, and soon it was told that a huge conclave of the Beysib were plotting somewhere deep in dank tunnels beneath the city, and they would one day come forth en masse. It would then be a case of the devil you know—the savage Irrune—versus the devil you once knew—the fish-eyed Beysib.
Nadalya was quite pleased with this turn of events, for even some at court were caught up in the Beysib rumors. It was a nice bit of misdirection, Hâlott having used an embedded serpent’s fang to slowly deliver the deadly toxin. She would have to pay him a bonus. And because Nidakis had first sickened a full day after the courtyard gathering, and then had died three days beyond that, there was nothing to connect the gathering with his untimely demise. Yet even had there been, nothing could ever be proved. Regardless, Nidakis was dead—“Isn’t it sad, that poor youth, and he had seemed so healthy, too?”—and so she had temporarily cut off the head of that particular set of scheming serpents surrounding Naimun. Perhaps now the rest of the snake would die, and Raith would be safe from their plotting.
Little did Nadalya know that she had merely eliminated an insignificant member of a much larger cabal conspiring together for power. For, depending upon who was pacing it out, a mile or two northeast of Sanctuary in a closed room on a rich estate at Land’s End Retreat, powerful men gathered to speak of this latest assassination at court, and what they might do about it. Aye, though the conniver Nidakis was dead and his sycophants leaderless, the true head of that particular serpent was still very much alive.
None of this bothered Rogi at all, for he lay with an extremely well-satisfied lady of the evening in a room above the Yellow Lantern. His rather impressive and considerable dragon was very happy that night.
Consequences
Jody Lynn Nye
Pel held the compress on Tredik’s right biceps until the bleeding stopped, then dabbed at the deep slash with an antiseptic wash. The fair-haired carter’s lad watched him work, the pain dulled by a very small amount of poppy in a large slug of willow-herb tea. Pel wanted him conscious so he could appreciate what he was going through.
“Don’t tell my mother,” Tredik pleaded, as Pel sewed up the slash.
“That you’ve been brawling?”
The young man—old enough to know better—reddened. To his credit, he didn’t make a sound as the sharp needle went in and out of his flesh. “Not exactly brawling. We were having our own tournament, see? We’re training up for next time. That Tiger lady, she shouldn’t have bested everybody in Sanctuary so easy.”
“Why not? If she was well trained, hale, and aware, she had as much chance as any fighter here.”
“But it’s not right, a stranger taking the prize in our own city. One of us ought to have defended it properly. I think it was witchcraft. If that old Torchholder had been around, well, he’d have spotted her for what she was. I mean, what she must be. A witch, I mean. No outlander ought to be that good.”
Pel smiled. He doubted that during the years of the Bloody Hand, or even the early times of Irrune rule, that anyone would have been invoking civic pride, but it sounded as though Sanctuary’s youth felt something for their troubled and fate-trodden city.
“Well, it’s too hot to battle like that,” Pel said gently, winding bandages over the now-clean wound. “Infection grows in temperatures like this.”
“Oh, so we should wait until winter rolls around again?” Tredik asked, rolling one mud-brown eye to meet Pel’s bright blue gaze. Pel had to laugh.
“There’s no right season for stupidity and high antics,” the healer said. “You’ll do what you do. It’s not up to me to stop you. I won’t tell your mother …”
“Gods bless you!”
“ …If you do.”
“Ser Garwood!”
“You can’t hide what happened to your clothes, can you?” Pel reminded him. “Those rips and all that blood? Take your time over the matter. You can pick your moment to tell her the truth. But she must hear it. What if you’d been killed? If you’re going to fight like a man, you must learn to take precautions like a man, and your medicine afterward. Speaking of which …” He produced a small clay bottle with a chunk of wax-soaked rag for a stopper. “One sip of this three times a day, dawn, noon, and nightfall. You haven’t got an infection at present. This will keep one from appearing.”
Tredik pulled his torn tunic back on over his head. “I’ll be a man, all right. What do I owe you?” His face turned red again. “I haven’t got much money. Everyone’s been telling me they’re broke and asking me to wait. It’s getting so my father is telling me to ask for goods to settle the bills.”
Pel sighed. Actual cash had been growing very short for him, too. Admittedly, the quality of wares offered in exchange for his services were becoming more interesting since the wrecked ship had been found, but there were items for which he must pay in coin. Bezul had been kind about exchanging some of the oddities, but none of the merchants could hold out indefinitely. Pel felt as though there was a wall somewhere, and all of the money of Sanctuary was disappearing behind it. The wall must be broken down, or the economy, key to rebuilding this wounded city, would collapse. He slapped Tredik on the back.
“My next workday is this coming Shiprisday. Percaro traded a patch of land he inherited to Bezul for a new plow blade. I took it off his hands for a herb garden. It’s full of rocks in all the wrong places, blocking the sun. There’ll be at least three of you helping me to lay out the plot. If you haul the stones out, you can have them, trade them to Cauvin if you wish. I don’t need them. I need the space for plants.”