“It broke,” Aric explained. “Last I saw it, I’d buried it to the hilt in one of the raiders, but there wasn’t much left of the blade by then.”
“Too bad,” Ruhm said. He showed Aric his greatclub, which the erdlu no doubt would grow to resent if they rode for long. “Still have this. Wood’s better.”
“If that club was as old as my sword, it’d be nothing but wood chips by now,” Aric said. “There’s nothing wrong with steel, but any weapon a thousand years old is going to have some problems.”
Ruhm smiled at his club and laid it across his lap. “Let you know,” he said. “In about nine hundred and ninety-six years.”
XV
Flight
He finally gave in again.
He went back once more to the elven market, just as day inevitably gave way to night. The sun set, the wind rose, the cold began to settle in around the bazaar like an unwelcome guest who would stay too long. He intended just to watch, not to take any action.
And yet there was an elf woman there with long hair of the brightest copper, some of it piled on top of her head and held with jeweled pins, the rest cascading down her shoulders and back. In spite of the fur wrap she wore against the chill, the man could see that her body was lithe and strong. She stood at the end of the market where men met the elf women, in the glow of lanterns mounted on posts, and a human man leaned toward her, saying something. She smiled enticingly and responded, brushing his arm with her slender hand. After another couple minutes of back-and-forth, they walked away from the market, arm in arm.
The man couldn’t take it.
Once more, he raced up streets running roughly parallel to the route he knew they would take. He fingered the handle of the sharp knife he carried—the knife he had promised himself he would not use in this way again. His heart raced, and the cold air he breathed seemed to sear his throat and lungs.
The road he was on curved around and intersected the one they had taken. He reached the corner before them and stopped, breathing hard, leaning against the building. He panted and peered around the corner, watching their approach. They strolled together like long-time lovers, even though they had just met. The street was empty, but for them.
Go home, he told himself. Leave them alone. You don’t need to do this.
He had almost convinced himself of that when the human traced the elf’s cheek with his fingers, then kissed it.
A red screen seemed to descend over the man’s vision. He drew the knife. The thudding of his heart slowed and a strange calm enveloped him. He waited at the corner until they passed him.
Then he struck.
He drove the knife through the fur wrap and into the center of the elf’s back. She cried out in pain. The man dragged the blade down several inches, releasing blood in a steady stream, and yanked it out. By then the human was spinning around to face him, pawing for a weapon under his cloak. The man’s arm snaked out quickly, drawing the sharp blade across the human’s throat. Again, blood splashed his hand and the street.
A moment later, human and elf were both down, their limbs entwined, the man standing over them, wiping blood from his knife blade with his fingers.
“Murder!” somebody screeched. “Murderer!”
The man looked up and saw a woman staring at him from an open window. Before he could react, there were more shouts, and the thunder of running feet.
He would have liked to stay longer, make a few more cuts. That elf face, as pretty as birdsong … But he didn’t dare. Instead he took flight, racing back down the curving road he had taken to the intersection. At the first corner, he turned, slowed long enough to sheath the knife, then sped back up to a sprint. Another corner, and another.
The voices continued, though, screaming into the night, calling out his route. The pounding of footsteps didn’t let up. In the anxious cries he heard the news—not just an elf, but a human. Someone even mentioned the human’s name. It was a name the man recognized, not someone he knew by sight but by reputation. Ta’ak Enselti. An important person in the city.
The man had been seen, but not recognized. He was certain of that. Had his name been spoken aloud, he’d have heard it.
By a roundabout route, he headed for home. He managed to stay ahead of his pursuers, far enough ahead, he believed, to risk going there. He had to go there. There was nowhere else, nowhere safe. If the mob ran him down they would tear him apart. No one complained too much about the deaths of a few elves, but when someone of Enselti’s stature died, even the Nibenese authorities might get involved.
He didn’t dare get caught, or let himself be seen.
He ran.
He went in there!”
A woman had stepped from her home with a pail, intending to fill it from the nearest public cistern. Her infant son needed to be bathed, and she already had a fire going, tended by her oldest daughter, to warm the water. A shadowy form racing past her front door almost knocked the pail from her hands. “Hey!” she called after him. “Watch where you’re going!”
The man—or so she believed it to be, although he was draped in so much clothing she couldn’t be sure—just kept running. He appeared to be panicked by something. He reached the Serpent Tower, and she could hear his footsteps as he raced up its circular staircase. Then she heard other sounds, the drumming of hurried footfalls, and shouts, angry and alarmed.
She was still standing there when the man emerged from the tower. Here he slowed to a walk, adopting a patrician air. He went to a gate, where a guard met him with obvious respect and opened the way for him.
A moment later a crowd of people rounded a curve, running in the same direction the man had. A woman saw the woman with the pail, staring at the cliff side dwellings. “Which way did he go?” she asked. “He killed someone!”
“There,” the woman said, pointing at the gate through which the person had passed. She had only recently moved to this place, after her son’s birth, and she didn’t know the wealthy people who lived in the cliff walls. “He went in there.”
The people in the mob stopped, staring at the Serpent Tower, the estates dotting the cliff’s face. “In there?” someone repeated.
“The House of Thrace!” another called.
“It’s that boy,” another one shouted. “That boy, what’s his name? The crazy one!”
“Pietrus!”
“That’s right, Pietrus!”
“I heard he killed three people!”
“Just two,” another answered. “And one was an elf. But one was Ta’ak Enselti.”
“Enselti? I’ve heard of him!”
“He’s a landowner, a merchant. He’s well known.”
“I met Enselti once! He was so nice to me.”
The woman with the pail really needed to get some water. Her daughter was inside with the fire and her baby. She wanted to get back. “Well, that’s where he went,” she said. “If you say that’s the estate of the House of Thrace, then that’s who it is. I don’t know this Pietrus, but if he’s crazy, then perhaps he’s a killer.”
“Come on!” someone called. “Let’s get him! Let’s get Pietrus of Thrace!”
Rieve was working with her sword, performing exercises Corlan had taught her, when she heard the commotion outside. Shouts and hands slamming against the outer walls. She hung the sword up on the wooden rack her father had commissioned just for that purpose and went to see what all the noise was.
In the courtyard, she met her mother, father, and grandfather. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“I just spoke to Bryldun,” her mother said, naming one of the family’s guards. Her cheeks wet were wet with fresh tears. “There are people outside, demanding that we send Pietrus out.” She buried her face in her hands. “They say he killed someone! They claim he killed Ta’ak Enselti, and some elf woman Enselti was with.”