Angel's Deceit (Angelwar Book 2) Page 21
‘If you believe it is necessary, then I shall allow you to read the journal to him.’ Katarina waited for the victorious grin, then added, ‘On one condition.’ The grin disappeared.
‘What?’
‘You will never speak of what you learn ever again: not to your father, mother, priest, or husband. You will swear upon your life.’
Vixen thought for a moment. ‘Very well.’
*
The pigeon-man told us to find a priest. Seemed kind of sensible, and Galandor had even found one for us. Said he spoke with him on the eve of the battle, bared his soul or something as the pair stared down from a plateau and watched the campfires burning bright. A suspicious man might have wondered if the pigeon-man had planned this all along but with what we’d already put him through I didn’t feel like stretching his patience. Can’t say the others were mighty pleased with me either. Still, maybe I should have spoken anyway.
The eight of us headed north, back into the city we’d just saved. We scoured the place and found plenty of priests but not the one we were looking for. A name would have helped, but all the pigeon-man gave us was a vague description and the promise that the fellow was “just right” for us. Must be laughing his arse off now, I reckon. Probably payback for what we did to him, for making him see inside us. Can’t complain, I suppose. We got the better deal.
We spent three days searching for the priest, and twice missed him. Finally, someone told us they’d seen him leave. By then it was dark, so we bunked down in an inn for the night, resolved to follow the priest the following morning. We were young, hardened survivors of the world’s greatest battle. How hard could it be to find a single man?
The inn was dry, just like all the others. There was no sign of Grenellian’s army and we all figured they’d been slaughtered by the surviving Gurdal, else were busy dying of thirst somewhere. He should have known better. You put a Havakkian in front of a wall with a sword and he’ll fight till the long sleep takes him. Put the same man in a burning desert where nothing’s familiar… not many’d hold, and I can’t say I’d blame them. Once a man can’t see what he’s fighting for, pretty soon he starts wondering why he’s fighting at all. I reckon it’s the same for the Meracians, too.
Grenellian’s command tent was still there though, with a handful of camp guards, so Patrick and I took a little stroll over there. We found a dozen bottles of wine in the tent and decided we could find a better home for them across town. Found some coins in there, too, so we paid the men their due and took the rest as payment for saving the world. Seemed fair enough to me.
*
We left the city the following morning, sour and hungover, but glad to be leaving the desert and its butchery behind. We neared the top of the Spur and entered Meracia proper, the boiled sand giving way to a featureless plain. At the First and Last Inn we learned of a wandering priest, passing through with word of death and destruction on the Spur. The inn was dry – we may have drained it ourselves on the journey south – and we pushed on, the salt tang of the sea breeze in our noses. That’s why we hated the Spur so much. A boiling strip of sand that arches south from Meracia and joins the desert proper, but the Spur itself is narrow, and bordered on both sides by salt seas. You can smell the sea and hear the water, but drink it and your thirst’ll never be slaked. Lost a few that way, in the days before the assault. Might have been kinder than following Grenellian into the desert.
We found the priest two days later, in the first town we came to, some decrepit outpost scoured by the army’s quartermasters as they had rumbled south. Valeron found him outside and dragged the rest of us away from our warm ale into the night. The eight of us gathered round and stared down at the man.
One of the lads asked if Valeron was sure, and he asked real quiet, like Valeron was some kind of authority on priests or something. There was no doubting it though, the man before us matched the description the pigeon-man gave. Besides, how many priests would be lingering around the arse end of Meracia in the middle of a war? Certainly not the sensible ones.
‘You have found your priest,’ val Sharvina said, ‘and here is where we part ways.’ He’s a strange one, that Sudalrese, but handy in a scrape. Said he’d hold to his vow and then walked away, leaving us to clear up the mess that Galandor had dropped us in.
I booted the priest, and his eyes opened briefly. He cursed like a sailor, then threw up on Valeron’s boots and passed out again.
‘Should have let the pigeon-man die,’ someone muttered. Might have been me. Whoever it was, nobody disagreed with him. We’d found ourselves the drunkest priest in the world and now we were going to use him to build a religion. Looking down on the drunk, soiled priest, it didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.
*
Katarina watched Vixen carefully as she laid down the leather-bound journal, her ruddy cheeks paling.
‘That’s nothing like what the church teaches,’ Vixen said in a strained voice.
Katarina watched as the woman’s fingers flexed and contracted. Again and again as she wrestled with story. Just as Katarina was about to slap some sense into the woman, Vixen clasped Steven’s arm.
‘The Names of Salvation is wrong, Tol,’ Vixen told the sleeping knight, a hint of hope creeping into her voice. ‘You hear me? Wrong, and if it’s wrong about how the church was formed…’ She broke off, sagging visibly. ‘You need to wake up,’ Vixen muttered.
‘He already knows,’ Katarina told her. ‘This is not new.’
Vixen turned away from Steven. ‘The church teaches that the priest sought out the knights, that he made them into the Knights Reve and bound them into service.’
‘Your church lies.’
Vixen gestured at Kur Kraven’s journal. ‘He makes the priest sound like a drunkard.’
Katarina shrugged. ‘Perhaps he was.’
The northern woman’s eyes narrowed as she leaned towards Katarina. ‘Val Sharvina,’ she said quietly. ‘Tol’s ancestor mentioned one among the knights with that name. How is it that there is no mention of your family in the Names of Salvation? What was your ancestor even doing there?’
Katarina rose and flashed her most dangerous smile. ‘Just passing through, I am sure. A chance meeting on the road, nothing more.’
‘But—’
‘Just passing through,’ Katarina repeated forcefully. She smoothed her skirts and put on a false smile. ‘Remember your promise,’ she warned, scooping up the journal in one hand and leaving a bewildered Havakkian woman in her wake as she slipped from the room.
30.
Stetch waited.
Patience was a skill that all of the Sworn learned. They learned or they died, and those kind of lessons were the ones that stayed with you. By the time you took the vow you understood. You had been trained to deliver fast, brutal death at an eyelid’s twitch, trained for years with those reflexes honed until thought was all but redundant. It was the kind of training, Stetch knew, that didn’t naturally lend itself to serious contemplation, but the Sworn often operated far from home, alone and without orders – or at least specific orders; mostly, it would just be “fix it” or “kill the right people”. And that was the problem; there was a natural tendency to assume that anyone not of the Sworn was, by definition, “the right people” and therefore ripe for interment. Early accounts of the Sworn’s first years were filled with stories of Sworn men despatching large volumes of potential enemies, the matter usually ending badly for all concerned. In many of these cases, the then Duke of Sudalra had discovered, it had not only been unnecessary, but potential allies had either been lost through the Sworn’s reckless actions, or – as happened on more than one occasion – unfortunate casualties of the clear-up. So, the Sworn were also taught patience. They were difficult lessons, as Stetch well remembered, and often left scars. Not always the kind of scars that showed on a man’s skin. But usually that was how it went.
The Sworn were the throwing dagger’s sweet spot: a perfect balance between thought and act
ion, warriors trained to unleash mayhem and remove all threats to the homeland. They strained like dogs at their leashes, their natural tendency to slaughter all opposition. But there were times, most learned sooner or later, that you had to pick your moment, that hesitation wasn’t a weakness, but an opportunity to successfully remove your objective. And this, as much as Stetch didn’t want to admit it, was one of those times.
There were a number of ways to successfully board a moored ship. Stetch’s overriding preference was to stroll up the gangplank and execute the crew: simple, but effective; the path of least resistance.
Unfortunately, he needed the crew to deliver a letter to the Black Duke and for that they probably needed to be alive. Some of them at least.
The Fourth Isle was Sudalrese along with its captain and most of the crew. And with all the Meracian intrigue stinking up the city, Stetch figured someone would be watching it, maybe watching to see if some poor fool strode up the gangplank and handed the captain a letter bound for home. If an arrow didn’t take care of the matter then there were plenty of fast ships that could easily catch the Fourth Isle on the open sea. So Stetch had reluctantly opted for subtlety, and not killed a single person as he snuck on board while the crew were enjoying their last night on land. It was disappointing, but that was life as a Sworn man.
It was a simple plan, but also a rewarding one. Stetch had known within moments that it succeeded as soon as he was aboard and mercifully unholed by arrows. The lack of corpses wouldn’t help his standing in the Sworn’s ledger, but Stetch was used to sacrifices like that. In fact, it was starting to become a worrying habit. The harridan’s little knight should be long dead, but Stetch had – regrettably – let him live, even after he had assaulted her. And then he had let Kartane live, despite his strong suspicion that the world would a be better – and probably safer – place without him. To make matters worse, both men had got themselves in some almighty scuffle in Kron Vulder and neither had thought to invite Stetch. That was truly galling, an opportunity to really chalk up some corpses and he was less than a mile away without an inkling of what was going on. Not, Stetch admitted, that it was really his fight, the fight of the Sworn, but it was certainly a fight, and if you looked at it a certain way then it could, maybe, have somehow affected the homeland. In which case it was definitely a fight the Sworn – and Stetch specifically – should have been involved in and resolved with the utmost haste. So, really, it was a wasted opportunity to add to his tally in the ledger.
That was the problem with waiting, Stetch had found. Give a man time and he ended up thinking too much, stewing over chances lost, maidens missed, and every other problem that a man had managed to ignore by sheer virtue of keeping busy. Time was not his friend. Time was a pox-ridden bitch that needed beating down at every opportunity.
On the plus side, the city was ripe for a bloodbath. Stetch could smell it on the air: shifty glances, muttered curses at insignificant infractions, and the same kind of tension that any man found after spending half a bell in Katarina’s fractious company without ale. Meracian Intelligence would be looking for them now, trying to work out who had stepped into their little trap and then had the temerity to murder the trapper. A few more days, Stetch reminded himself. He figured that was a realistic guess as to how long they had before the Meracians finally put it together and found them. They’d probably torture a few people, but in the end they’d search the inns and the presence of Duke val Sharvina’s daughter and one of the Sworn would pretty much remove any doubt. Stetch was looking forward to it, but he faced a dilemma: while he personally didn’t care what happened to his charge, her father would have a very different view on how she should return home. The Black Duke, Stetch was certain, would not react well to a veiled corpse – even if Stetch delivered the heads of her killers. It kind of complicated the matter of the Meracians, and meant that he couldn’t just murder the lot of them and scarper; instead he had to keep her safe and kill whoever they sent, then find a way to sneak the damned woman out of town without anyone realising, and do all this while somehow not cutting out her tongue when she started snarling and snapping at him. Which meant a simple plan wouldn’t work. Which meant a plan with more ways to fail. But it had to be flexible, because there was no way of telling when the Meracians would figure things out; Stetch’s first warning would likely be a squad storming into the inn with swords drawn. He rather suspected that Katarina would find some way to spoil the fun for him, screeching in his ear or critiquing his sword style, or getting herself killed and leaving Stetch to face her father.
Why couldn’t it be simple?
Of course, if Katarina’s new pet killed her then Stetch couldn’t really be blamed, not really, not as it was the Black Duke that paired the two up. And ignored my protests. All he had to do was figure out a way to make it happen and Stetch could go back to a carefree – and blissfully screech-free – life of murder, mayhem and service to the homeland. And its grateful womenfolk, stranded far from home and in need of a different kind of adventure. And with that glittering prize in mind, Stetch began to consider his options.
*
By dawn Stetch had decided that fabricating some dispute between Katarina and the Kraven boy would require too much effort, and leave far too many opportunities for the whole plan to come crashing down around him. It was hard to imagine the Black Duke’s daughter becoming more intractable and irritating, but Stetch wasn’t about to put that to the test. The boy, however, had his uses. The more Stetch thought about it, the more he thought that Tol Kraven might actually be able to make himself useful. Kraven and Katarina seemed to have a tentative – if volatile – friendship, and the boy was too green to realise when he was being manipulated. If Stetch handled it right, he might be able to leave the girl in Kraven’s care while he despatched the Meracians. It was a neat solution, and the best thing about it was Stetch would get to keep his head – assuming Kraven didn’t fall asleep and let Katarina get herself murdered. With this dilemma finally resolved, Stetch closed his eyes and dozed in place; sleep was a neat way of avoiding those quiet times when a man had too much time on his hands, and in the absence of any women on board it seemed the best option.
Stetch felt the anchor rise, a deep thrumming that rumbled through his ribcage as the great weight was lifted from the coastal floor and retracted. The ship’s vertical momentum was joined by a minute sideways shift as the sea took hold of The Fourth Isle. Stetch kept his eyes closed, counting off the seconds in his head. Less than three minutes after the anchor was raised, the ship’s speed increased with the telltale unfurling of its sails. Not bad, Stetch thought. You could tell a lot about a crew by how quickly they raised their sails, and these ones knew their business. It would be soon, he knew. Stetch waited.
Five minutes later he heard the creak of the cabin’s door opening. Solid, doughty footsteps entered and paced across the room. Stetch waited until he heard the rustle of charts. Only then did he open his eyes, muscles slowly stretching as he tried to restore blood flow. Satisfied, Stetch opened the wardrobe door and stepped out into the captain’s cabin. The captain was ten feet away, poring over a table littered with charts and maps. The crown of his head was poorly covered, but the rest spawned a thick carpet of wild black hair, cascading down over a navy blue jacket that looked it had seen better days, and that those days had been in the age of the Prophet – before Sudalra even had a duke. Maybe a shade under six feet tall, but with the captain folded over the table it was hard to be sure. Either way, Stetch wasn’t worried. He took a step forward.
The captain seemed oblivious to Stetch’s presence so after a few seconds of waiting Stetch coughed politely. Somehow, it came out as a guttural cry, like a dog being skewered on a pike.
The captain heard it well enough, whirling around and gaping as he stared at Stetch. His face was thick with weathered lines, the result of pitting himself against nature again and again. Pointless, Stetch thought as the man’s jaw flapped uselessly. But then we are all fighting na
ture: either our own, or Nature itself. Hard to say which is the more pointless.
The captain’s eyes roved up and down, lingering on Stetch’s sword a moment too long before darting swiftly towards the door. Stetch shook his head gently, but he could see the idiot was still thinking it might be his only option. It was offensive, really. If Stetch had wanted the man dead he wouldn’t even have seen it coming.
‘Guess,’ Stetch barked, pleased when it distracted the captain’s thoughts of flight long enough for the man to engage his mind.
‘What?’
‘Guess who I work for.’
The Sworn didn’t have a uniform. When you were working discreetly (by their standards, at least) in foreign lands, sticking out was usually the last thing you wanted. What the Sworn did have, one and all, was a certain look. An unmistakable appearance of coiled violence that was reined in only by some supreme effort of will, liable to slip at any moment.
The captain looked over Stetch’s black tunic and shirt, gaze darting swiftly away from Stetch’s face because he already knew what he’d find there.
‘The Black Duke,’ he said quietly.
Stetch grinned. ‘Your country needs you.’ He waited until the cursing died down and added, ‘The homeland needs you to deliver a letter.’
The stream of invective was shorter this time, and in a magnanimous gesture, Stetch let it play out rather than cuffing the sailor round the ears. He withdrew the letter from his tunic and held it out. ‘You get to meet the man himself.’
The news was not greeted with a smile.
31.
Katarina woke to find spring sunlight streaming in through her window and the sounds of city life sneaking through the curtained glass. She yawned, padding across the room to peer between the drapes and found the sun halfway to its apex. Mid-morning already?