He’d been desperately trying to dredge up a traveller’s brief description of the city that he’d read some time ago and it came to him then and he gestured with his bared sword. ‘Keep inward. I’m fairly sure-’
‘Very good!’ Andanii sawed her mount’s head about and kicked its sides to send it leaping onward. Jatal followed, hoping to all the foreign gods that he had the right of it.
They charged through a series of long, relatively straight roads each no wider than two arm-spans. Jatal had spent every night of his life in his family gathering of tents where the wind brushed freely, and wide uninterrupted vistas spread on all sides. If these cramped ways and grim squat dwellings were typical of city life then he knew he wanted none of it. Also, his stomach clenched and churned, anticipating at any moment ambush or raking arrow-fire. The curious bell-shaped domed towers of the Thaumaturgs, however, reared steadily ever closer.
A turn brought Andanii into a near collision with a mounted Adwami scout — a youth of the Manahir. The column crowded to a stamping, clattering, sudden halt.
‘What news?’ the princess demanded of the young unblooded boy as each struggled to settle their mounts.
‘The streets are deserted, my lady,’ he answered, stammering, quite flustered to be directly addressing so prominent a noble.
‘I can see that,’ she snapped. ‘Where are your fellows? Were you attacked?’
‘No, m’lady. I believe they have, ah, lost their way.’
‘Lost their way …’ she echoed in disbelief. ‘Lost!’
The youth winced, ducking his head. He waved to the surroundings. ‘These strange twisting ways … I have never seen the like.’
Andanii rubbed and patted her mount’s neck to soothe it. ‘Well … true enough,’ she allowed.
Separated by the guards, Jatal reared high in his saddle to point to the blunt towers. ‘Know you the way?’
The scout jerked a nod. ‘Aye, noble born. A large walled compound. But its doors are shut.’
‘Take us immediately, damn you!’ Andanii snapped and the young man gaped, not knowing what to say. In Jatal’s opinion he made the right choice by merely hauling his mount around and stamping off without delay. The column followed.
After more twistings and turnings — the horses trampling abandoned baskets of goods and wares along the way — the alley ended abruptly at an even narrower path that ran along an unadorned wall of dark stone blocks. The wall of the compound. Andanii followed at the heels of the scout, sheering to the right, slowing in her headlong dash. The extraordinary narrowness of the channel forced them to ride single file. Jatal’s boots nearly scraped the walls to either side as he went.
The constricted path continued ruler-straight along the border of the Thaumaturgs’ quarters, but the scout halted at a set of slim stone stairs that led up to a portal in the wall. The opening was just large enough for a person to duck within. A door of plain wooden planks barred it. Andanii dismounted and threw herself against it.
‘Locked — or barred!’ she announced.
The door did not look too strong to Jatal. He dismounted and shook it: ironmongery rattled thinly. He raised a booted foot and slammed the aged planks. The door swung inward with a snap of metal. One of Andanii’s bodyguards laughed his scorn at this, but Jatal did not share the man’s confidence. Rather, this apparent lack of preparedness or concern for any direct assault only added to his unease. Something was wrong here. Profoundly wrong. He felt it in the acid filling his stomach, his sand-dry mouth, and a cruel iron band that was tightening about his skull.
Yet he dared speak none of this out loud. He knew that among these Vehajarwi, and the larger circle of Adwami nobles, his reputation was that of scholar and philosopher, not a warrior such as his brothers. And so he knew how any disquiet voiced by him would be received. Better, then, not to give this one guard any chance for further scorn.
And there was always Andanii, as well.
Spurred by the heat of her standing now so close, her quick panting breath in his ears, her face flushed and sweaty with anticipation, he stepped through first. The way led down into an inner open court, also quite narrow, rather like an encircling flagged path that allowed access to the many enclosed buildings. This too was deserted. The air here was much hotter and drier than the narrow shaded alleyways still cool with the night air. The sun’s heat now penetrating to the surrounding walls of dressed blue-black stone. From his readings, Jatal knew the rock to be of volcanic origin, even to the point of containing tiny shards of black glass. The guards crowded protectively about him and Andanii.
‘Now what?’ she asked him in the profound quiet. At first Jatal could not answer, such was the clash of emotions and thoughts the question elicited: elation that perhaps she truly did rely upon his judgement, versus anger and resentment that perhaps she thought him so weak as to be in need of such bolstering. ‘We should leave a quarter of the lancers with the horses,’ he managed coolly. ‘The rest should secure this court.’
Andanii nodded to the captain of her guard, who went to relay the orders. The quiet of the surroundings made Jatal suppress his breath as he listened. He caught distant yells over the brush and jangle of the troops’ armour as they spread out. Perhaps the Warleader and his men had reached the compound before them. Oddly enough, though no plants or flowers were in evidence, a cloyingly sweet perfume choked the air making him faintly nauseous.
‘M’lady,’ a lancer called from one of the neighbouring buildings. Andanii crossed in response and Jatal followed. They passed through the crowd of troops to an airy stone hall, perhaps a meditation space, or classroom. Within, a field of corpses lay sprawled across the flagged stone floor. All dead Thaumaturg magi. Or, since most were quite young, a class of their acolytes, students or postulants. The nearest was a girl. Her dark hair was cropped close to her skull, almost like fur, and her flesh was snowy pale where her legs and arms showed beyond her plain robes. The seeming reason her flesh was so unnaturally ashen was that her blood was now all pooled across the stones. The same was true of all the others.
A grisly assemblage of some thirty freshly dead.
‘Those fool mercenaries!’ Andanii snarled, and she pressed the back of a hand to her mouth. ‘They will bring the yakshaka down upon us!’
Jatal was not so certain of this; the mercenaries seemed to be across the compound. And the students lay toppled forward from cross-legged positions — a pose of meditation. Their features were still serene, though smeared in drying gore. The Warleader’s men were mercenaries, true, but they did not strike him as so coldblooded. Besides, if one of the mercenaries had come across such a pretty girl as this, Jatal had no doubt he would have done more than merely strike her down.
He turned to his second, Gorot. ‘Take charge of the main body — secure that courtyard.’
The old campaigner saluted and jogged off.
‘M’lady,’ Andanii’s guard captain called. He’d been examining the bodies and he peered up now, wonderment and a touch of unease in his gaze. ‘I see no wounds among them.’
A set of prints crossed the pooled gore. A calm unhurried set of bare splay-toed feet that walked on across the next court leaving behind a trail of drying blood. The killer? None of the mercenaries went barefoot. A fellow Thaumaturg? Yet the acolytes’ slippers lay in a jumbled heap next to the entrance — these people did not go barefoot.
Someone did. The detail nagged at Jatal. It was familiar but he could not quite place it. The prints somehow mesmerized him; he could not help but follow them. They climbed on to a raised colonnaded walk of a series of stone arches, where Andanii joined him. ‘We have to stop these fools from spilling any more blood.’