The Killing Song Part 5

In spite of the late hour, the neighborhoods of Deathsgate were livelier than any other they had pa.s.sed through, rivaling the waterfront of Cliffside and certainly surpa.s.sing the restrained hush of Fan Adar in Overlook. The people stumbling in the streets and staggering from the doorways of taverns looked like they had more in common with the sailors of Cliffside as well. All manner of races-from humans, to dwarves, to shifters, halflings, and warforged-were represented. Most them went armed as well. Swords, spears, axes, and maces hung ready for use, and even those in the crowds who carried no obvious weapons walked with a confident and dangerous stride. Singe caught Ashi staring again and nudged her.

"Try not to do that," he said quietly. "The more you look like someone new to Sharn, the more people will try to take advantage of you."

"You're scared they'll start a fight?"

"I'm scared you might start a fight. Look around." He nodded to the profusion of banners that decorated the buildings they pa.s.sed, the strings of pennants that hung across the street, and the paint and posters that daubed bold colors onto dark stone walls. Like Overlook, Deathsgate had been decorated for the coming celebrations of Thronehold. Unlike Overlook, however, the crimson and gold of Breland were not the dominant colors. The black and red of Karrnath, the blue of Aundair, the silver of Thrane, and the green of lost Cyre were all represented in equal or even greater proportion. The colors and crests of a variety of regiments and companies, some Singe knew and others that he didn't, added to the display.

"The people who gather in Deathsgate come from across Khorvaire, and the majority of them are no strangers to violence," he said. "They're old soldiers, mercenaries, treasure hunters, inquisitives, war wizards, bounty hunters, probably even a few a.s.sa.s.sins. I'd lay odds that every one of them saw something of the Last War. They're not going to be looking for trouble, but if it finds them, they won't back down."

Ashi looked and a little of the intensity faded from her eyes. She nodded slowly. "You and Geth belong here," she said.

A smile curled one corner of Singe's lips. "I suppose we do."

"You've forgiven him for what happened at Narath?"

The smile faded and an old ache grew inside the wizard. "I wouldn't go that far," he said. "You can't understand what Narath was like, Ashi."

She turned her eyes on him, and her gaze was abruptly hot and angry. "Blood in your mouth! I may be an innocent to Sharn, but remember who you're talking to and how we met. The Bonetree hunters raided and killed in the name of the Dragon Below. We stood in awe of dolgrims and dolgaunts as the perfect children of Khyber. I understand death."

Singe returned her gaze without flinching. "What was the largest raid you ever took part in?"

"The Bonetree destroyed the Hill Shadow clan shortly after I was made a hunter," Ashi told him. "Their camp was maybe three times the size of Bull Hollow. We killed their warriors and gave clean death to anyone too old to bring new blood to the Bonetree."

"The Hill Shadow clan had about a hundred people then." Singe pressed his lips together tightly for a moment. "More than ten times that number died in Narath. Very few of them were given a clean death. And I was on their side." He looked away from her. "I wouldn't say that I've forgiven Geth. I might say that I don't hate him the same way I used to."

"Dandra thinks there's more to his story-something he isn't saying."

"Dandra doesn't understand Narath either." He sighed. "I don't want to talk about this anymore, Ashi. We've got other things to worry about. Once we get to the House Deneith enclave, I'll see if there's a message from Geth, then I want to ask around and see if anyone knows anything that might give us a clue about where Dah'mir and Vennet are hiding. House Deneith often has connections with the city watch, and someone might have heard something."

"What should I do?" Ashi asked.

"Just stay close. Look around, see what goes on in a Deneith enclave. We should be able to pa.s.s without anyone recognizing your mark. Like I said, there aren't likely to be any actual members of Deneith on duty this late-just mercenaries hiring other mercenaries."

The Deneith enclave was a small, solid building on the edge of a largely deserted square. A guard wearing a blue jacket embroidered in silver with the emblem of the Watchful Eye superimposed on an upright sword-symbol of the Blademarks mercenary guild-stood outside the door. He straightened as Singe and Ashi approached, but Singe waved him to ease. "Singe, lieutenant of the Blademarks out of Fairhaven," he said. "Checking for a message delivered here."

The guard nodded and stood aside. Ashi glanced at him as they entered, then leaned close to Singe to whisper, "That's all? Shouldn't he have challenged you?"

"This is a recruiting center for the Blademarks. Deneith wouldn't hire many people if they turned them all away at the door. The guard is mostly for show."

Somewhere inside the building, a chime rang three times. Singe paused just inside the doorway and glanced back at the door guard. It didn't look like the man had moved, but ...

"Something's wrong?" asked Ashi.

"Maybe, maybe not," said Singe. "That was the commander's chime. It signals the ranking officer of an enclave that he's wanted."

"It could be a coincidence."

"It could," he agreed cautiously.

He started walking again, stepping through a small foyer into the main hall of the enclave. The room was large, with recruiting displays lining the walls. Behind the gla.s.s of the cases were paintings of and trophies from battles won by Blademarks companies, along with souvenirs brought back by Blademarks mercenaries from their exotic adventures. More displays celebrated the other branches of House Deneith's operations, the Defenders Guild and the elite Sentinel Marshals. The Defenders Guild display included endors.e.m.e.nts from famous people who had hired Deneith's bodyguards; the Sentinel Marshals display featured a history of the Marshals and their role in capturing lawbreakers across the Five Nations, along with a tall pillar plastered with the warrant-notices of notorious miscreants.

All in all, it was an impressive sight, well-designed to perform its intended purpose of enticing would-be mercenaries to sign up with Deneith's companies of warriors-for-hire. It was also exactly as empty as Singe had expected it would be at this hour. A few juvenile thugs a little too young for Deneith to take on were staring with fascination at a battered old horn recovered from the infamous Battle of Falcon Hill, but the only other person in the hall was the duty officer standing behind the long counter at the end of the room-until a door behind the counter opened and another Blademarks officer stepped out.

The newcomer was younger, about Singe's own age, with black hair worn long and vibrantly blue eyes. Those eyes went to Singe and Ashi immediately, and the newcomer exchanged a brief, quiet word with the duty officer, who promptly vanished through the door. A chill ran along Singe's back. "Ashi," the wizard said without turning his head. "Why don't you wait over there at the Sentinel Marshal's display?"

"The one closest to the door?"

He nodded and caught a glimpse of her eyes narrowing as she studied the new man behind the counter. "Not a friend?" she asked.

"No. His name is Mithas d'Deneith."

Her eyebrows rose. "He carries a dragonmark?"

"Worse," murmured Singe. "He's ambitious, a gambler-and a sorcerer. Wait for me and watch him in case he tries to cast any spells. I have a feeling that we won't want to stay here long."

The hunter glided over to the display with the grace of a hunting cat. Singe crossed the room with long deliberate strides, the chill along his back slowly changing to an angry heat. "Mithas," he said when he was close enough.

"Etan!" Mithas greeted him with a joy that was blatantly hollow. "What brings you to Sharn?"

"I'd ask you the same thing," Singe said, "but I'm not really interested. You've wriggled your way into command of a recruiting center. Congratulations." He put his hands on top of the counter. "A message may have been sent here for me. Have you seen it?"

Mithas made a show of looking under the counter. "A message? Let me see ... Bayard ... Bayard ..." He stood straight, still smiling. "No, nothing for-"

"It will be addressed to 'Singe.'"

"Oh, of course! Singe." He opened one side of his blue Blademarks uniform jacket and extracted a folded sheet of grayish paper from an inner pocket. "That would be this message. It arrived through House Sivis just the day before last."

Singe held out his hand. Mithas lifted the message out of reach, and his smile took on a predatory gleam. "What, no thanks? I see a message addressed to my old friend, take personal charge of it, even leave instructions to be summoned when you arrived, and this is what I get for my troubles?"

"More likely you saw my name and wanted to see what you could get out of me. How much money do you need this time that a command posting can't pay for it?" An idea sprang into Singe's head, and he let his hand fall as he grinned. "You're not the commander here. Twelve moons, I knew no commander would stay the night at a recruiting center!"

Two bright spots of color leaped into Mithas's face, and his smile faltered. "I'm the night commander!"

Singe let out a short, barking laugh. "That's not a posting-that's punishment! What did you do this time to ..." He cut himself off with a shake of his head. "No, I don't care what you did. I don't know what you think is in that message, but give it to me or I will go to your commander and let him know that you've been interfering with private messages. And I'll guess that you paid someone to tell me to come back at night if I showed up during the day shift, so that's bribery." He held out his hand again. "Message. Now."

The man on the other side of the counter looked as if he was working hard to maintain even a semblance of friendship. Singe heard the young thugs behind him muttering and glanced over his shoulder to see them watching the brewing confrontation. Ashi was beyond them, half of her attention on the Sentinel Marshal display, the other on the thugs and on Singe. He turned back to Mithas.

Just in time to catch him glancing toward the door behind the counter-the door through which the duty officer had disappeared. The skin on the back of Singe's neck p.r.i.c.kled. He hadn't made it through the war without developing a good sense of when someone was up to something. Mithas looked back to him, meeting his eyes, and the smile vacated his face. Reflexively, he lifted the message higher. Singe kept his eyes on the other man's face.

"What's going on, Mithas?" he asked softly, dangerously. "Waiting for your friend?"

"Just making sure he doesn't come back too soon," Mithas said. "He doesn't need to see money changing hands." He twitched the paper. "You've got to be good for ... what? A hundred?"

His voice was light. Deceptively light. He was stalling. "You're going too far," Singe growled at him. "Give me that message before you get yourself into trouble."

For a moment, fear flickered across Mithas's face, but then his expression hardened. "You want to be careful about starting trouble, Singe. You're already in enough of it." The cold smile came back to his face. "Are you sure you don't want to tell me what you're doing in Sharn when you were last seen running from a burning village in the Eldeen Reaches?"

The p.r.i.c.kling on Singe's neck turned into a painful burn. Caught up in his anger, Mithas twisted the knife of his words a little more. "Word filtered back to the House a few weeks ago. The survivors of some kind of raid on a little backwoods settlement were full of praise for the heroic death of Toller d'Deneith, but it seemed no one knew what happened to his lieutenant. I think the lords of Deneith would like to have a talk with you, Singe. And I'm going to be the one to give them that chance, thanks to this." He snapped the gray paper of the message between his fingers. "I know opportunity when it spreads itself out in front of-"

At the other end of the hall, Ashi let out a startled exclamation, and there was a sudden, sharp sound like tearing paper. Mithas glanced past Singe, and a look of surprise and anger flared in his eyes.

Singe didn't let the moment of distraction go to waste. He leaped up and forward, thrusting himself across the smooth wood of the counter. Mithas tried to twist away with the message, but the message wasn't Singe's target. He kicked out with one swinging leg and clipped Mithas's shoulder, spinning him into the wall. Before the other man had even managed to turn himself around again, Singe was on him. He punched Mithas hard across the jaw, then pinned him against the wall long enough to hammer a second blow into his belly. As Mithas doubled over, Singe plucked the message from his fingers.

"You never know when to shut up," he told the choking man. "That's why you always lose at cards too."

He stuffed the message inside his vest and vaulted back over the counter. Ashi was halfway along the hall, her eyes wide with surprise, her sword half-drawn, and a piece of paper clenched in her fist. The young thugs were standing back out of the way-one of them had a knife out but didn't look like he sure whether he should use it or not. Singe ignored them and intercepted Ashi.

"What just happened?" she asked.

"Nothing to worry about right now," he said, turning her around. "We're leaving."

"Singe, look at this." Ashi tried to put her sc.r.a.p of paper into his hands. He pushed it back at her.

"Later!"

There was a groan and a whistling intake of breath behind them. Singe's belly tightened and he whirled. Mithas was up again and leaning heavily against the counter. His eyes flashed malevolently. He flung out a hand, and words of magic rippled from his tongue, raw and half-formed to Singe's ears, the intuitive magic of a sorcerer rather than the practiced spell of a wizard, but just as dangerous. Singe darted his fingers toward Mithas and tried to call out a spell of his own, something to break the other man's casting, but Mithas was just a heartbeat faster. Before he could even gather his will to resist it, a kind of peaceful calm rolled over him. The fiery syllables of his spell froze, then faded, on his tongue. Ashi grabbed him and shook him, but it seemed as if all he could do was focus on his old friend Mithas.

The sorcerer pushed himself off from the bar. "Why don't you just come back here, and we'll keep talking, Etan?" he said through teeth clenched tight with pain. "You're not in a hurry to leave, are you?"

Something at the back of Singe's mind screamed that yes, he was, but the words that came out of his mouth had no urgency at all. "No, I'm not in a hurry. What did you want to talk about?" He shrugged off Ashi's hands and started to amble back toward Mithas, but the hunter seized him and swung him around again.

"Rond betch!" she spat. Singe watched her eyes narrow in concentration, felt a sudden heat in her grip-and the eerie calm that had gripped him shattered like gla.s.s as the power of Ashi's Siberys mark brushed aside Mithas's magic. Singe stumbled, anger washing over him once more, then spun back to Mithas. The sorcerer's eyes were bulging in confused amazement at the sudden, effortless breaking of his spell.

"You dabbling b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Singe hissed at him.

Mithas just choked, "How-?"

And that was when the thug with the knife managed to find the nerve to attack. Whooping like a halfling raider, he threw himself at Ashi, his blade raised high. It was a ridiculous, clumsy attack, and Ashi didn't even bother to draw her sword, but just reached up, grabbed the wrist of the young man's knife hand, and wrenched it. Her a.s.sailant's knife flew in one direction while he flipped in the other, arms and legs flailing.

His waving hand caught her scarf and ripped it free. He hit the floor hard, and the fabric slithered down on top of him, covering his face-but leaving Ashi's bare, the vivid patterns of her dragonmark exposed.

CHAPTER.

7.

Singe saw the shock that pa.s.sed across Ashi's face, but the damage had been done. Still leaning against the counter, Mithas's eyes bulged even further as he stared at the complex lines of color that rose along Ashi's neck, swirled across her cheeks, and vanished beneath her thick, golden hair. His mouth worked in astonishment. "Sib ... Sib ... Siberys!" he croaked.

Outrage and alarm churned inside Singe. He grabbed Ashi and dragged her to the door, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the scarf in pa.s.sing.

The outer door of the hall opened, and the guard who had stood outside came charging through the foyer, maybe alerted by the sound of the thug's attack and defeat. His gaze darted from Singe and Ashi, running toward him, to the fallen thug, groaning on the ground, and his hand went to his sword with the precise discipline of Blademarks training.

"No!" Mithas shouted. "Alive! Take them alive!"

The guard hesitated. Singe ripped his rapier from his scabbard and swung it high, screaming the first battle cry that came into his head. "Frostbrand!"

Confronted with the screaming warrior and Ashi's deadly grace, the guard very sensibly leaped aside even as he drew his sword. He tried to strike as they swept past him, but Singe beat down his sword and slashed at him. His rapier sliced into the guard's blue jacket, and the wizard felt the tip of the blade cut flesh. It wasn't a pretty defense, but the guard stumbled back and they were past him. Singe heard exclamations, footsteps, and orders from Mithas. He risked a glimpse back and saw more mercenaries pouring out from the door behind the counter with the duty officer at their head.

They must have been the reason Mithas had been trying to delay him, he guessed. If they were though ...

He looked ahead as he and Ashi pa.s.sed into the foyer. The outer door stood open, but Singe could hear running footsteps from that direction too.

"Look away, Ashi!" he said, then focused his will on the door and spat the word of one of the simplest spells he knew.

Just beyond the doorway, flame leaped in brief, intense flare. It lasted only an instant, but for that instant it was dazzling-and its sudden appearance was just as startling as he'd hoped. Running footsteps stumbled, voices rose in surprise, and bodies thumped together in confusion. He and Ashi burst out of the doorway and past the mercenaries that had been closing in on either side.

Singe picked the busiest of the streets coming off the square in which the Deneith enclave stood and sprinted toward it. Mithas's voice followed them in frantic orders to the mercenaries. "Follow them! Bring them back! Alive, d.a.m.n you, alive!"

A ripple ran along the edge of the crowd as people turned, then drew back at the sight of a naked blade, though more than a few men and women reached for their own weapons, either in self-defense or greed at the possibility of a reward from House Deneith for capturing the fugitives.

"Fight?" asked Ashi at his side.

The hunter had one gloved hand over her face, trying to hide the telltale lines of her dragonmark. Singe thrust her scarf at her. "No," he said. "Just follow me."

He didn't slow down as he plowed into the crowd and made straight for the biggest, drunkest man he could see: a red-faced brute with muscle-corded arms.

As luck would have it, he was busy tipping a tankard to his lips. Singe slapped at the vessel with his free hand, and beer cascaded over the man's face. Wet and reeking, the man roared in fury and grabbed for him, but Singe skipped aside and stuck out his foot. The man went sprawling into another knot of merrymakers, who also let out furious roars. Singe didn't wait to see what happened but whirled to two hatchet-faced women who had draped themselves in the colors of Karrnath, raised his rapier, and shouted "Graverobbers! Aundair is the true heir to Galifar!"

Sharn might have been set to celebrate Thronehold and peace, but the wounds of the Last War were still fresh, and it didn't take much to tear them open again. The Karrn women howled and sprang forward.

And were met by a trio of Aundairians leaping to Singe's defense with nationalistic pride. "For the Queen!"

Singe slipped back behind the other Aundairians, letting them take the edge of the Karrns' attack. Or tried to. Abruptly, he felt the p.r.i.c.k of dagger on his side, and a man's voice with the accent of Cyre murmured in his ear. "Slick as the Traveler, my friend, but what do you say to going back to the Deneith enclave. Whatever they want you for, I could use the rew-agh!"

His words ended in a straggled sound as he and his knife were ripped away. A moment later, he went reeling past Singe toward the battling Karrns, propelled by Ashi. One of the women turned with lethal instinct and buried the hand-axe she fought with in his shoulder. The Cyran's scream was gruesome, and some of his fellow countrymen rushed to his aid, turning indiscriminately against Karrns and Aundairians alike.

The beads woven into her hair sliding and clacking, Ashi whirled back to Singe, and although her scarf was once more tied firmly over her face, he could tell she was smiling. "I like Deathsgate much better than Overlook!"

Singe looked around. In a matter of moments, a wide swath of the crowd had been transformed into churning chaos as drunken brawl merged with patriotic violence. The people in the street who weren't already embroiled in the fighting were in retreat, pushing and shoving to get away. The mercenaries from the Blademarks hall hadn't even made it across the square yet.

He jammed his rapier back into its sheath and pulled Ashi along with the moving crowd. In moments, both fighting and mercenaries were lost to sight. Singe turned down another street, then another, finally stopping on the edge of a courtyard where the only hint of violence was a loud argument about a game of sundown. He leaned against the wall of a tavern with one hand and beat the other against his forehead. "b.l.o.o.d.y moons!" he cursed. "Twelve b.l.o.o.d.y moons! Of all the times to lose the scarf ..."

"It wasn't my fault," Ashi said. "At least we lost the Deneith guards."

Singe drew a deep breath and tried to rein in his anger. "We lost the guards. We won't have lost Mithas-he's going to be looking for you now. You heard him. He recognized the Siberys Mark of Deneith."

Ashi's eyebrows drew together. "He only saw my face."

"That would be all he needed. He knows what he saw. I told you, he's ambitious. He knows what bringing you to the lords of Deneith would do for his status in the house."

"You know a lot about him."

Singe let out a sigh. "When I first joined the Frostbrand, he was Robrand d'Deneith's lieutenant. Robrand dismissed Mithas when his gambling nearly put the company in danger-and not long after that, he made me lieutenant in his place." He pushed himself upright. "I suppose we were rivals before that, though. Sorcerers and wizards don't always get along. His magic is instinctive. I had to work at mine, but I surpa.s.sed him. Mithas is the kind of person who doesn't like seeing anyone get ahead of him."