Will Power Part 2

"You have got to be joking," growled the unseen soldier, inches from my right ear. I sat very still, muscles tight and bowels clenched.

There was one of those half-decade pauses that actually lasts about three seconds. Then we heard the sibilant hiss of exasperation that can only come from an Empire sentry foiled by red tape. The papers were stuffed back through the window in a fist that didn't care if it caught one of the pa.s.sengers on the jaw. Then it was gone, and a voice commanded the driver to "Move on" in a tone that left us in no doubt as to what the speaker thought about diplomatic immunity.

In a spasm of relieved joy I contemplated leaning out of the window and shouting something witty as the carriage rolled off. Something told me, however, that the one thing the guards would thank me for now would be the word or gesture that would lead to one of those unfortunate incidents which leaves huddles of troops standing over civilian corpses and muttering to their knowing superiors about how one of them had seemed to be brandishing some lethal, garrison-leveling weapon that had turned out to be a salt shaker. ...

I considered Mithos, who was sitting silent as the grave in the darkness opposite me, and wondered if the guards would have had the chance to finish me off. He probably had his sword point poised for a discreet lunge at my liver in case of precisely such an eventuality. I figured I'd stay where I was and keep my mouth shut for once. We rolled off, smooth as ever, and I swallowed hard. Behind us the voices faded and we headed north.

"There now," said the amba.s.sador, as if he did this every weekend, "that wasn't so bad, was it?"

If it was a real question, no one treated it as such. There was another long silence and then the amba.s.sador added, in the absent tone of one remarking on the chance of rain, "You gentlemen seem to find danger wherever you turn."

"Thus far our luck seems to have held out," said Mithos. It was one of his usual faintly grim but otherwise toneless remarks, but the impenetrable darkness of the carriage lent it a certain low hostility.

"Indeed," replied the elderly man, and his voice matched the other in its steely but otherwise unreadable quality. "Thus far."

It could have been just the oppressive and disorientating blackness of the carriage, but, for whatever reason, I realized that my body had not relaxed one iota since we left the Empire guards and territories behind us.

SCENE III

The Only Way to Travel

We sat like that, silent and edgy, for about two miles. The darkness in the carriage was thick and liquid, giving the slightest rustle of clothing or creak of its steel spring suspension an immediate and unnerving resonance. I almost leaped out of my seat several times at the sound of someone shifting fractionally in theirs. Eventually, I mustered the courage to squint through the window blind, only to find that the land beyond it was almost as dark as the inside of the coffin on wheels we were riding in.

I could just make out a line of tall and narrow trees running alongside the road and pointing up into the heavens like spear tips. Cedars, perhaps. A quarter moon had just begun to rise, casting no useful light, so even the trees had a slightly sinister aspect that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. I noticed-from outside myself, as it were-that I was clinging to the edge of my seat with one claw of a right hand while the fingers of my left drummed silently, obsessively, on the seat cloth.

Mithos, his sheer grimness rivaled for once by Amba.s.sador Death's, reached across to hold the shade open. What little light there was fell on his dour features as he gazed out into the pa.s.sing trees. "This is the Vetch road?" he said.

"Yes," said the amba.s.sador. "There is an inn where we can rest before we reach the village."

"The Black Horse?" Mithos asked, turning from the window. "Good. We have companions to meet there."

"That is most convenient," said the amba.s.sador. "Our roads lie together."

Convenient indeed, I thought to myself uncomfortably. Everything about this little jaunt was extremely convenient, as if it had been arranged weeks ago. The idea that it was all coincidence seemed no more plausible to me than the tale of Dantir, renowned rebel-drunk and gypsy wanderer. I was wary of getting caught out twice.

"Perhaps your friends can join me on my road north," ventured the amba.s.sador.

Perhaps not. The sooner I got out of this mobile graveyard, the better.

"What is your destination?" asked Mithos, casually enough, though I guessed he was probing.

"North," he said simply.

"Specific!" I muttered, my discomfort switching suddenly into irritation.

"No," agreed the voice of the amba.s.sador, calm and unoffended. "But accurate."

"Just not very helpful," I persisted.

"The amba.s.sador has a right to keep his own business to himself," Mithos remarked coolly.

"I can't say it fills me with confidence, that's all," I said sulkily into the blackness. The hint of skeptical hostility this remark contained had not really been intended, but I was wound as tight as a Dranetian merchant's purse and in such situations tended to be the tool of my words, rather than the other way round.

The amba.s.sador chuckled invisibly, a rich and throaty gurgle of a laugh that raised the hair on the back of my neck.

"Ever the realist, eh, Mr. Hawthorne?" he said when his amus.e.m.e.nt had pa.s.sed. "Will Hawthorne the pragmatist. William the cynic, Bill the perceptive. A man who knows the world and sees through its various sh.e.l.l games as if they're made of gla.s.s. A man too shrewd for principles, too practical to be distracted from the truth. ..."

This was an alarming speech, particularly for someone who had never set eyes on me before. He had pigeonholed me a little too accurately. It was like he had somehow seen into the way my head worked and seen the way I-in my less humble and bewildered moments-tended to see myself. I shifted in my seat.

Suddenly there was a flash of light and the inside of the carriage flickered into the shifting radiance of a greenish flame. It sprouted and guttered from the tip of the amba.s.sador's right forefinger. As my jaw fell open, he spoke again, looking me squarely in the face with an odd smile. "But what is is real, Mr. Hawthorne? What is true?" real, Mr. Hawthorne? What is true?"

His bright eyes fastened on mine and held them for a moment, then his face loomed large, as if it had swelled to a great size, and filled the carriage, dwarfing me beneath it. I cried out and looked to Mithos, who sat in the strange light, his head lolling with sleep. The vast face of the amba.s.sador hanging over me split into a broad grin and he began to laugh.

With a start I awoke to find myself sitting in the darkened carriage as before. There was no sound or movement from my companions. As my heart slowed to normal again, I laid my head on the rest behind it and watched the trees pa.s.s until I slipped into more restful slumber. It took some time.

It was still dark when we reached the Black Horse, tired and cramped from sitting. The motion of the carriage had caused a dull nausea to settle in my gut like some sp.a.w.ning sh.e.l.lfish. I found an outhouse and splashed some water on my face, though the predawn air was cold and damp. Then the stench of the toilet overwhelmed me quite suddenly and I vomited into the foul pit below, my stomach wrenching in great, painful waves till my eyes watered and I swore I'd never eat, drink, or travel again.

I groped my way across the courtyard to where a boy, bleary-eyed and yawning, helped our silent coachman to unyoke the horses by the light of a lantern. He gave me a sullen glower as I pa.s.sed. Given the fact that we were responsible for dragging him from his bed at this unG.o.dly hour, I could hardly blame him, especially since it was often touch and go whether I'd be up in time for lunch. Still, empathy didn't improve my temper. I returned his scowl with interest.

The inn staff were already up, or some of them, at least, and they were busying themselves with the preparation of breakfast. I requested a mug of water and swilled it down hurriedly, as if we'd just emerged from the Hrof wastes, rather than the elegant sophistication of Stavis-by-the-Sea. A fire was burning in the hearth of the main bar room. Sitting in front of it, silently warming their hands, were Orgos and Renthrette. I joined them hesitantly, expecting the usual torrent of abuse, but Renthrette was too tired to bother. I quickly realized they were also anxious. Lisha and Garnet had not yet arrived.

"Bacon and eggs, sir?" inquired a far-too-perky maid as she skipped toward the kitchen.

"G.o.d, no," I managed.

"Rough trip?" inquired Orgos, observing this rare instance of non-gluttony.

"Grim," I said, and left it at that. The three of us returned our eyes to the fire, lost in our own thoughts.

Mithos joined us and announced that he had got us a pair of rooms. "You can rest for a while if you like," he said.

"I'll stay down here," said Renthrette, "in case the Empire comes looking. ..."

"They won't," said Mithos. "They lost interest in us the moment we left their territory."

"Still," said Renthrette, ignoring him. "I'll wait here."

Mithos nodded minutely, understanding, and walked away. It was unlike her brother not to be here first, raring to go with his axe at the ready, and I had just a.s.sumed that we would find Lisha silently studying maps at the breakfast table. Their absence was worrying.

I followed Mithos, chose a bed, lay down, waited for the room to stop spinning, and, as dawn was breaking with an irritating flurry of birdsong, fell asleep.

I awoke to find some kind of meeting going on around me. Actually, "shouting match" might be more accurate, and that despite the fact that I had been snoring away pleasantly.

"We can't just leave them behind!" Renthrette was shouting, her face as strained as her voice. "We have to go back."

"If we go back," answered Orgos, "we endanger them far more than we help them, as well as putting ourselves at risk."

"Is that the issue?" Renthrette snapped. "Are we just going to abandon them to protect our own skins? If Garnet and Lisha had got out and we hadn't, I think the situation would be a little different."

"Are you listening to me, Renthrette?" Orgos said, biting off the words. "By themselves they might lie low and then slip out of the city unnoticed. If we go back we will only make them fifty times more visible, more recognizable. Lisha, of all people, would understand that. And your brother would be the last person to endanger the whole party unnecessarily."

"Then why don't we just stay here and wait?" she retorted. "You said yourselves that the Empire won't stray out of its own lands to look for us."

Mithos, who had been sitting silently in thought thus far, turned and said, "They might if they know we're still here. There are travelers pa.s.sing through this place on to Stavis all the time. The Empire won't pursue us if we're moving away, but if they know we're sitting less than a day's ride away ... who knows?"

Renthrette dropped angrily into a chair and sighed. Seeing what looked like a convenient break in the conflict I sat up and said, "I could murder that bacon now."

"I could murder you, Hawthorne," snarled Renthrette, "very easily. This is all your fault. As usual."

I thought that a little uncalled for, but I knew better than to get in the way of the tigress protecting her cub. Well, sibling, actually, but you take my point. Her pale cheek was flushed and hollow, her eyes cold and hard, her slim lips tight, and there was a strand or two of golden hair straying unheeded into her face: appealing, in a homicidal kind of way.

"Do I smell sausage?" I muttered, attempting to slink out of the room with a semblance of preoccupation.

"Whether you do or not, you aren't getting any," Orgos remarked, his eyes still on Renthrette. "You're getting fat again. And we're moving out in ten minutes."

"What?" I exclaimed, almost as outraged as Renthrette. "I'm starving!"

"If you ever had been," the black man responded, "you wouldn't toss that expression around so casually."

"I have!" I shouted. "Almost."

"Do you ever think with anything other than your gut?" Renthrette spat.

I started to giggle uncontrollably.

She just shook her head with the kind of disgust that took me right back to when we first met. As she stormed out and down the steps to the bar, I couldn't help wondering how I had managed to dispel that mood for those few weeks in Shale when we had almost been friends. Ah, well. What goes around comes up short, and a st.i.tch in time is worth two in the bush. But life goes on, and on, and on ...

Mithos and Orgos merely looked at each other and then set to packing their things.

"So where are we going?" I grumbled.

"North," said Mithos.

"Not with Mr. Cheery and his traveling clownschool?" I bawled.

"What?"

"What's-his-name: Diplomat to the d.a.m.ned."

"Amba.s.sador Lina.s.si?" said Mithos expressionlessly. "Yes. He has asked us to serve as an armed escort for him on the road, and has purchased a horse to the purpose."

"He will buy us some basic weapons in Vetch," added Orgos, "for those of us who came unprepared," he added with a glance in my direction.

"And in the meantime," I muttered, "I'll just bite the arms off any bandits who attack us. After all, I'd risk everything for a total stranger."

"Who saved your neck when it was on the block," Orgos concluded.

"I'll sacrifice my firstborn child in his honor," I responded, bitterly.

"How about doing the world a real favor and just not having any children at all," said Orgos.

The amba.s.sador oversaw our final preparations in silence. I'd say he was dour, but there was always that touch of sparkle in his eyes that suggested a disarming private amus.e.m.e.nt, so I did my best to stay out of his way. Since I was also keeping clear of the more definitively dour Mithos, and Renthrette had reverted to treating me like a mangy and probably rabid dog, that left Orgos. As ever.

I found him sitting on the carriage's driver's plate, testing the edge of his sword with his thumb.

"I hate fighting with only one sword," he remarked. "The balance is all wrong. Perhaps I am getting too set in my ways."

"Change isn't always good," I said, thinking ruefully of our trip into "the North," whatever that meant.

"I'm not sure," he answered, looking up into the morning sun. "I was beginning to feel hemmed in in Stavis. A spell on the road will be pleasant. Invigorating."

In Orgos's mouth, that last word had an ominous feel. It was like "excitement." For years "excitement" had conjured serving maids divesting themselves of unwieldy apparel, but when Orgos said it I shivered at the blood-smeared images charging through his head, lances poised to skewer the unrighteous. A spell on the road may indeed be pleasant, but if things got invigorating, according to Orgos's definition, I might find myself looking for a way back to Stavis. Or somewhere else. Somewhere quiet and peaceful, where adventure means a new kind of beer and excitement follows you upstairs by candlelight. ...

"Are you driving?" I asked, changing the subject. The black man nodded.

"The other driver was hired here two nights ago," he said.

"What was the amba.s.sador doing in Stavis for so short a time?" I asked.

Orgos shrugged. "Why so suspicious?" he said.

I shaded my eyes from the sun to see if this was a serious question. Apparently, it was.

"He just seems to have been exactly what we needed exactly when we needed it. Plus," I added, as a slightly embarra.s.sed afterthought, "he bothers me."

"Bothers?"

"You know," I hissed, glancing around as if he might be behind me, listening with that oddly watchful mirth of his. "He seems so ... I don't know, calculating. Deceptive? No, that's too strong. He looks at me like someone looking at a kind of ape, you know? Something that is intriguing and kind of funny because it is almost-but not quite-human?"

"Renthrette looks at you like that, too," he grinned.

"She's better looking," I returned. "But it's different. She's obviously revolted by what she sees. He's just fascinated fascinated. It's like he's joining in a child's game, you know? He's involved, and yet he isn't."