Ruso coughed and wiped his bedraggled red beard from which no sparks now flew. Without his fiery aura, he looked common enough, and quite young. “You’re finished, old man,” he said hoarsely. “Just let me kill you and this will all be over.”
“It was your idea that we fight to the death, lad, although I keep telling you: I have no ambition to become the next Lord Artifice.”
“Ha. Ambition has nothing to do with it. Gods know, I have enough for both of us. Don’t you understand? When I lost the lordship, I lost my talent. D’you know how that feels?”
“I can guess,” said Gaudaric, not unsympathetically. “Yet you weren’t so bad before that as my apprentice.”
“But not good enough to marry your daughter.”
“Easily that good, except that she had chosen Ean.”
“She would have taken me if you had told her to.”
“Now, would I do a thing like that against her wishes?”
Ruso shook his tousled head. “You’re too soft, old man. If we had joined forces . . . but now that withered fool Ean calls you father and what am I? Nothing.”
An impatient voice sounded from the edge of the room: “Is this going to take all night?”
Although it wasn’t he who had spoken, Jame could make out Byrne standing in the shadows. Behind him, a tall, thin man held a knife to his throat. Two others flanked them, one short and squat, the other as wide as a temple door. All three wore black, but their garments otherwise appeared to be threadbare street clothes, and their masks looked suspiciously like pillow cases dyed black, with eye holes cut out of them.
“Are you all right, Byrne?” asked Gaudaric.
“Yes, Grandpapa, but I’m getting tired of standing.”
“Patience, boy. You know,” he added, addressing the shabby, black-clad figures, “I still don’t understand your place in all of this. Ruso is almost broke. What has he promised you?”
The squat leader stirred. “Recognition,” he said. “For an official assassins’ guild.”
“Oh dear. If the gods haven’t granted you a grandmaster in all of this time, what d’you think Ruso can do about it?”
“He will have power and influence when the Change ends. He told us so.”
“Yes, but don’t you understand? An assassins’ guild would fall under the auspices of Professionate, not Artifice. If Shandanielle comes back, healer that she is, do you see her sanctioning your efforts?”
The broad would-be assassin stirred. “Here now, brother,” he said in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. “Why didn’t you think of that? Lady Professionate is no friend to killers. Anyway, I’m tired of standing too. What say we cut out of this?”
Gaudaric twitched at the word “cut,” but the tall man lowered his knife. “Right,” he said. “It seems to me that we should be approaching a professional. Any suggestions?” he asked Gaudaric.
The armorer sighed. “Maybe the former Mistress High Hat of the Philosophers’ Guild. I don’t know. This is the Change, after all.”
The three trooped away down the stair. Jame flattened herself against the wall, but the first two only glanced at her as they passed. “It’s your party now,” said the third in disgust. Then they were gone.
Jame slipped up the steps and joined Byrne. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked him, seeing the shallow cuts that scored his neck and drops of blood on his collar.
“Well enough,” he said, fingering his throat. “Toward the end, his hand started to shake.”
Gaudaric pushed himself away from the table and lowered his visor. “Well, shall we?”
Ruso threw down his axe with a clatter. “Oh, what’s the use? I can’t kill you. Come to that, I don’t even want to. I’m a failure at everything.”
One of his mechanical dogs crept out of the shadows and nuzzled him. Gaudaric stared.
“But I thought that our special powers ended when the Change began. How did you animate it?”
Ruso scratched the metal head as it nosed its way under his arm with a high-pitched whine. “I cheated. See?” He opened a panel between its shoulder blades to reveal busy wheels and cogs. “It’s clockwork.”
“Really?” Gaudaric dropped his sword on the table, took off his helmet, and went to crouch by his former pupil. He stared at the younger man’s creation. “Why, it’s wonderful! Don’t you see? This is a skill that no Change can take away!”
“Let’s go,” Jame said to Byrne. “Your parents are worried half to death about you.”
“But Grandpa . . .”
She laughed. “Unless I miss my guess, he and Ruso are going to be discussing nuts and bolts until dawn.”
Jame escorted Byrne back to the Armorers’ Tower, all the way listening to his enthusiastic description of the fight which she had missed. It sounded as if the two had been fairly evenly matched. However, there was little question that in Byrne’s mind Gaudaric’s superior armor and skills had been about to triumph over the other’s youth. On the whole, he was sorry that his grandfather hadn’t finished the job, but he also had to admit that the mechanical dog was something special. Maybe Grandpa would build him one.
At the Armorers’ Tower, she turned the boy over to his anxious father and, as she departed, heard Byrne launch into his story again from the beginning with unabated zeal.
It was only shortly after midnight, but already it felt like a long day. Jame took the last lift cage down to the camp. As she approached her barracks, she saw more lights burning there than she would have expected at this hour.
Rue met her at the gate.
“Thank Trinity you’re back. It’s Brier. I think she’s gone mad.”
Crashes sounded inside the mess. Older randon looked in through the windows from the outer courtyard, but retreated as a harsh voice from within ordered them back.
“That’s Harn Grip-hard,” said Jame. “What’s he doing here?”
“I sent for him,” Rue said. “With you gone, someone had to do something.”
Jame pushed through the crowd and stopped in the doorway. A plank, formerly part of a dinner table, hit the wall near her head and shattered, showering her with splinters. Brier upended a bench and smashed it against the fireplace. The room was littered with similar debris. Here too there had been a long battle, one woman against herself.
“Now, now . . .” rumbled Harn and caught her around the waist. When he swung her off her feet, she lashed backward at him and he dropped her with a grunt. She spun and went after him. Jame slipped between them.
“Brier, stop.”
The Southron loomed over her, fists raised, then gave a half-strangled sob and lurched away.
“What in Perimal’s name is going on?” Jame asked Harn, as Brier sank down on one of the few remaining benches and laid her head on the table in her hands. “Is it a berserker flare?”
“Huh. No. She’s drunk.”
“But Brier doesn’t drink.”
“She did tonight—on your orders, your cadet tells me.”
“Go back to camp,” she had said. “Have a drink. Sleep.”
Jame glanced at the hovering onlookers. “Send them away,” she said, “and Harn, please go with them. Thank you for your help, but I’ll take care of Brier now.”
He gave her a dubious look. “Sure about that, are you?”