Brexan considered crossing the room to cut the spy’s throat, but shrugged and hurried out behind Sallax. She ran back to the small landing and headlong into Sallax, who had stopped. Brexan stepped back. ‘What is it? Let’s get going. Are they already on the stairs?’
Sallax didn’t answer as the maps slipped from beneath his arm and spilled down the stone stairway.
‘What is it?’ She pushed past him onto the landing.
The lone sentry was lying with his legs hanging off the first step, his torso propped up between the door and the wall. Sallax staggered and fell to his knees and Brexan managed to slip past him, over the dying guard, to grab the torch Sallax had dropped. Brexan picked it up, fanned it back to life and propped it between the fallen man’s legs.
The flickering glow illuminated the rapier protruding from Sallax’s chest, the last attack of the dying guard. A long, wheezing rattle came from the sentry’s chest. Brexan gasped and reached for Sallax.
‘I’m dying,’ he murmured. ‘I’m dying.’
‘No, you’re not,’ she said firmly, ignoring her tears. ‘Come with me. We have to hurry.’
Below, the incessant ringing merged with the groaning and shuffling of soldiers rousing themselves from sleep. From the annoyed sounds that filtered upstairs, the groggy guards thought some gods-forsaken officer had spent too long with his head dipped in a wine cask and was now mustering them all for a late-night inspection. Thankfully, none of them appeared to be coming up the stairs, not yet.
Sallax fell forward, and Brexan caught him beneath his arms. As she hugged him close, she flashed back to Versen, and how heavy he had been that day she’d tried to keep him afloat in the Ravenian Sea. ‘Please, Sallax, please,’ she cried softly, ‘you can do this. You’re so strong and it isn’t far, just a few stairs. Come on; we can make it.’
‘Leave me here, Brexan,’ Sallax whispered. ‘You can get out.’ He struggled to lift himself off her and fell back against the door, slamming it shut with an echo that rolled down the stairs. ‘Hurry now; you can make it.’ He reached for her with a bloody hand, and she held it in both of hers.
He wriggled his hand free and reached for her again, stretching. She tried to take his hand, but he shook her off. ‘What is it?’
‘You can make it out,’ he said, ‘but you need-’ Gripping her tunic belt, he pulled on it, his strength failing, until the tongue was drawn back through the buckle.
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I want you to get out, but you have to make it look like-’ Again he tugged at her belt. Suddenly Brexan understood.
‘No, Sallax, I’ll stay here and fight beside you.’
He ignored her. ‘You can do this.’
Brexan angrily fought back tears as she unfastened her belt and untied the strap holding her cloak closed. Dropping the belt and her weapons, she pulled the tunic over her head.
Sallax looked away, with a hoarse laugh. ‘I’m not supposed to peek,’ he murmured.
Now she did cry. She gave him a long kiss on the temple, hugged him to her naked torso until enough blood smeared her body, then picked up her cloak and screwed it up into a ball. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, a sob in her voice.
Sallax looked at her, his eyes glassy in the torchlight. ‘Tell Garec the truth about what happened. Make sure he knows.’
Brexan sobbed, ‘I will. I promise. I will find him.’
The bell rang on into the night and Brexan cursed Jacrys, wishing with all her heart he would die before Sallax, so her friend would hear the bell fall silent, but it didn’t happen. Sallax’s eyes fluttered open several times, then his head slumped on his chest, and Brexan watched as his final breath sighed from his body.
‘Oh gods,’ Brexan started quietly, then, fulfilling her promise, allowed her cries to grow in volume until they were enormous, great heaving sobs that echoed through the upper floors of the old residence. ‘Oh gods, oh gods!’ Holding her cloak and tunic, Brexan ran, half naked and splattered with blood, down the stairs and into the midst of the confused platoon milling about below. ‘Oh gods!’ She grabbed the first soldier she encountered, ensured he took a long look at her body, and then shouted, ‘They’re killing him! Please help, upstairs, please help! They’re killing him!’
He turned and ran, followed by others, taking the stairs three at a time; then Brexan heard shouts echo down from the landing.
Come quick!
Bring weapons!
We need a healer up here!
One soldier walked her to the top step of the lower stairway. ‘You wait here,’ he said gently, helping her pull her cloak about her shoulders. ‘I’ll be right back; you can tell the lieutenant what happened.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ she wailed, ‘please. I was just – you know, working.’
‘I understand, and I don’t want you to worry. You’ll be fine.’
In a moment he was gone and Brexan, still crying, slipped down the stairs and across the main hall.
At the front entrance to the palace she was able to lose herself in the noise and bustle, slipping behind the tall hedge that encircled the grounds, where she pulled on her tunic and cloak and disappeared into the city. As she rounded a corner into an alley off the main thoroughfare, weeping and furious with herself for leaving Sallax alone, she could still hear that wretched little bell jangling. Jacrys was still alive.
THE WELSTAR RIVER
Captain Reddig Millard stood at the helm of the River Prince, his eyes fixed downriver. A Malakasian naval vessel had been flanking the barge for nearly half an aven and he was waiting for them to come alongside, give the order to heave to and deploy a boarding party to examine his papers, his cargo and his crew – but he would not turn and look at them.
He had been working the Welstar passage to Pellia for too many Twinmoons to allow any puny cutter make him sweat; his cargo was legal, his crew was legal and his documents had been approved by the customs officer in Treven. No baby-faced so-called officer all got up in that absurd black-and-gold fancy dress was going to get under his skin, not on this trip. Millard was not going to worry about the four who’d bought passage, nor did he care that they’d asked to linger a while on the great bend below Prince Malagon’s castle. He had agreed to ship them with no questions asked and that’s what he was doing.
Of course, he stood to make a handful of extra silver: free money, and nothing the customs officers in Pellia would notice, because his overhead costs were always the same, and his take for a load of crates and military passengers was always within a few Mareks of the same bottom line, give or take a beer or two. It was worth the risk. He’d pocket the silver, and the customs officer in Pellia would check his papers, ask about the weather and accept a donation of a few bottles of decent wine. He might be slipped a tin or two of tobacco in thanks for the wine, but then he would be allowed to unload whatever was left of his shipment after the military had purchased what they needed for the palace encampment. The drill was always the same.
Something was making Millard nervous, though; being shadowed this long by a navy cutter, and his crew, the old man especially – why would anyone want to linger on that stretch of the river?
Doggedly determined not to look back at the wet-nosed cutter captain, Millard kept his eyes trained on the river ahead, charting the speed and heading of other vessels. A notion began to irritate him, lingering at the back of his mind like an itch he couldn’t reach: this was not going to be another routine passage. He unfastened the leather ties holding his tunic closed; his skin was warm with sweat despite the chill along the water.
His new crew bothered him: at first he thought they were fennaroot runners, or maybe deserters, but he was beginning to fear that they represented something much more dangerous to him and his ship.