Forging the Sword (The Farsala Trilogy) (40 page)

Jiaan was almost startled when they came around a bend and saw the bronze-sheathed door to the vault … with one guard standing before it and the other half a dozen yards farther down the tunnel.
Curse Hrum discipline.

Jiaan marched toward the first guard without slowing, but his mind raced faster than his pounding heart. Would the third password work on these men? Probably not. The vault was far more important than the wine cellar.

This was the point where he’d told Nadi he’d think of something. At the time, safe in the laundry’s warm darkness, Jiaan had imagined himself sweeping forward in a burst of action, taking out the farther of the surprised guards while his men leaped to subdue the other. But the tunnel was too narrow for him to pass the first guard without alerting the second, and both guards were as well armed as Jiaan, and proba bly better trained. As he drew nearer, Jiaan saw another of the side tunnels that led off toward the sewer, almost between the two guards, but he couldn’t think of any way to use it.

It was too late to go back; he had to try. Maybe if he told—

“Halt and state the password,” said the first of the two guards. He was frowning, clearly wondering why anyone would bring a prisoner through the vault.

So tell him
. “We’re taking the prisoner to the cells through the wine cellar.” Jiaan slowed his pace, though he didn’t actually halt. He had to get both himself and his men nearer to the guards if they were to accomplish anything. His pulse thundered in his ears. He was ready for action, ready for violence—but the moment they attacked, the alarm would sound!

“Halt,” said the guard again. “Why would you take a prisoner through the vault instead of through the armory? That doesn’t make sense.”

Jiaan paused for a moment. “I know that,” he said, wishing his
Hrum were fluent enough to sound casual. “Governor Garren doesn’t want the committee to see her.”

A puzzled scowl crossed the guard’s face, but the hand that rested on his sword hilt relaxed a bit. Had he been about to draw it?

“Why does he care if the committee sees her? She’s just a slave who came into the
regios
to spy.”

Jiaan was so startled, he almost stopped walking. But of course Soraya might be recognized. She’d been held prisoner by the Hrum before—it was probably sheer luck, and the fact that all the experienced staff were helping with the feast, that she had passed through the kitchen without seeing anyone who knew her.

“I don’t know why,” said Jiaan. “I have my orders.” He strolled nearer, slow and casual, almost there, almost within reach. He could feel the tension, the readiness, of the men moving quietly behind him.

“She was made prisoner today,” he said, as the guard opened his mouth to ask for the password again. “In Setesafon. I don’t know what she does there.”

The clumsy, simple speech had tweaked the guard’s suspicions. “Password,” he demanded. “And halt there.”

Jiaan stopped—still not close enough. “Mi-”

The lady Soraya slipped past him and bolted toward the guard. He made a grab for her, his hands closing on the strong silk of her
overrobe-but she must have unfastened it as they walked, for she slid out of it like an eel and raced down the corridor toward the other guard.

“Stop her!” Jiaan yelled, leaping past the guard after his quickwitted prisoner. The guard swore, cast the heavy robe aside, and joined Jiaan in the chase.

The second guard moved forward to trap her, but she still ran toward him, seemingly oblivious to his outstretched arms … until she reached the side passage and darted into it.

“Get her!” Jiaan commanded. “If she reaches sewer she can escape!”

Even Hrum discipline wasn’t proof against a prisoner escaping right under his nose. The second guard followed her into the narrow passage, Jiaan and the Farsalans on his heels. The first guard was right in their midst now, and could surely be taken as soon as—

Jiaan hooked a foot around the first guard’s ankle—easier in this narrow tunnel than it would have been in the open, for here only one could pass at a time, and the rough floor slanted down.

The guard fell forward with a startled cry. Jiaan reached down, pulled off his helmet and struck the man’s temple with his dagger hilt, in the exact place his father’s arms master had shown him only a few years ago, though it seemed like another lifetime.

He didn’t strike hard enough to knock the man unconscious,
but he was sufficiently stunned for Jiaan to bind his wrists and gag him. Jiaan heard the commotion as the other guard was overpowered, but after one quick glance he left that to his men. He’d almost finished binding his prisoner when Soraya returned.

“Bring them this way,” she said. “There’s a wider place ahead where they won’t be found.”

“That was brilliant,” Jiaan told her sincerely. “Brilliant, and brave, and wonderful enough—”

“I don’t want to be their prisoner again,” said Soraya, though she smiled at his praise. Perhaps it was as well that she cut him off before he finished, though the words echoed in his mind:
wonderful enough to make me proud that you’re my sister.

“Bring them along,” said Jiaan, and followed the lady Soraya down the passage. Away from the main tunnel there were no lamps, and he had to grope his way forward, but when they reached the sewer they found that someone had placed a dimly glowing lamp in one of the niches—probably to stop people from walking out of the passage and into the water.

It flowed swiftly down the stone canal just a few paces from the end of the passage. It didn’t smell as bad as Jiaan had expected, perhaps because the current was so fast, and, as far as he could tell, the water was deep.

“Over here,” said Soraya, gesturing toward a place where the ledge that bordered the flowing water had been widened. “You can
tie them to that pillar. Even if they make some noise, it shouldn’t carry too far—not if they can’t shout.”

“Especially,” said Jiaan, “if we take these.” Reaching down he pulled the whistles from the guards’ belts. Both of them were at least semiconscious, but they appeared to be too battered to care what he did—in fact, Jiaan wasn’t sure the second guard even noticed.

Jiaan handed the whistles to two of his men who spoke better Hrum than the rest. “Go back to the corridor,” he told them. “Take the guards’ places.” He hoped no one would approach them, but even if someone did come down to the cellar, it didn’t take much Hrum to say, “Halt. Password.”

“What now?” the girl asked.

Jiaan grinned. “Now the gold.”

It took time to get back to the great bronze door, realize they needed a key, go back and search the second guard’s clothing, and get into the vault itself.

There were, Azura be praised, no guards inside. Understandable, since not all the treasures were locked up in chests. That carved lion with the emerald eyes, that graceful gazelle with the gold-plated—solid gold?—horns … both had surely graced the gahn’s palace. Jiaan was surprised they hadn’t been shipped west with the rest of Farsala’s wealth—perhaps Garren intended to bring them out when he was lord here. The small chests that contained Garren’s bribe were highly visible among the larger
chests and crates stored in the vault. Small because their contents were so heavy that a man could barely carry one. The girl, for all her strength, couldn’t lift any of them.

It took even more time to bring the gold back to the sewer outlet, to bring in the wine casks and empty the wine. Time to break the locks on the chests, to figure out how much gold a cask could carry and still float without rising to the surface.

By the time they finally had the weight right, Jiaan and several of his men were thoroughly soaked. The sewer water was cleaner than he’d expected, but it still smelled. Once they knew the correct measure of gold to a cask, the work went more quickly.

Not so long after that, Soraya tipped the last cask into the water. She had retrieved her overrobe from the corridor, and her underrobe wasn’t too wet.

Jiaan, who by this time was standing waist-deep in the sewer, tested the cask’s buoyancy. It sank to the bottom, but so lightly that he knew the current would carry it downstream with no more than a bump or two. He gave it a kick to set it on its way and hauled himself out of the water.

Soraya stepped back from the splash, but her eyes were shining. “That’s it,” she said. “More than thirty chests of gold and silver coin. All we found in the vault.”

Jiaan smiled at her, at his waiting men. “It feels kind of good to throw away that much gold, doesn’t it?”

“Speak for yourself, young sir,” said one of his Farsalan veterans. “I want the fisherfolk to be giving us a share!”

Their laughter echoed in the tunnels, and Jiaan started to motion for silence and then desisted. He didn’t think the sound would carry far, but even if it did and some guards posted further down the sewer heard it, it shouldn’t make them suspicious of the occasional scrape or bump coming from the murky water. If anything, it would make them suspect some practical joke, and they’d be even less willing to investigate.

Jiaan was still smiling when they went back to the vault, but humor vanished when they finally examined the metal-clad door on the far side of the vault and found that it couldn’t be unlocked from the inside.

“That makes sense,” Soraya whispered. “No one needs to lock themselves into a vault. And there’s no guarantee that the key from the other door would work in this lock anyway.”

Jiaan dropped to the floor, where a faint glow illuminated the stone, and peered under the door. All he could see were the heels of two Hrum boots, presumably containing two Hrum feet.

It wasn’t likely that quiet sounds would penetrate the door, but Jiaan signaled the others to move away for their murmured conference.

“There’s a guard there,” he told them. “And I couldn’t see him, but I’m sure there’s another guard down the corridor.”

“Maybe several guards,” said the lady. “This is the vault’s main entrance; we came through the back door.”

“So when we knock on this door, they’ll be surprised,” said Jiaan. “And a bit suspicious. And they’ll ask for a password before they open it.”

There was a long, grim silence.

“So we’ll go out the way we came in, and try to get to the cells through the armory, like we planned in the first place,” said Soraya.

Jiaan winced, but the thought of explaining his business to an officer wasn’t quite as intimidating as it had been. It was worth a try.

“We can say that the governor has returned from the city and wants to question you tonight,” he told Soraya. “We’ve been down here long enough that it shouldn’t sound too odd. I’ll bet he is back by now, or he will be shortly.”

“We’d better not meet him,” said Soraya. “Kavi’s not the only one he’ll recognize.”

“So what?” said Jiaan. “We’d just be told to wait till he’s finished with you and then escort you to the cells. Someone might even give us the passwords to get there.”

Which reminded him that they didn’t have those passwords, so getting to the cells was an enormous risk. They’d already stolen the gold. They’d done what they’d come for. On the other hand, he’d promised Nadi he’d try.

Out of the vault, down the corridor, picking up the two men
he’d stationed there—to no purpose, it turned out, since no one had tried to pass. Jiaan ordered those two to the front of the troop; they were cleaner than the rest of his men, including Jiaan himself, though his tunic sleeves and trousers were beginning to dry. The body of his tunic, which was covered by his breastplate, would probably stay wet till he took off his armor. With any luck no one would be able to tell where the smell was coming from.

Soraya coached him as they walked, and on the far side of the wine cellar Jiaan rapped boldly on the door.

“Mile,” he said. “Let us out. Now the governor wants to see the prisoner.”

The door opened on the guard’s surprised face.

“That didn’t take long,” he said. “You
dicedus
just a few
jaur mar
.

Jiaan hoped he didn’t need to answer that—probably not, for the girl was silent.

“The governor sent word he was returning,” said Jiaan, using the Hrum phrasing they’d agreed on, which would cover them whether Garren was back now or not. “He wants to see the prisoner before he retires.”

“Good
ariss
,” said the guard, opening the door.

He saluted as Jiaan passed, though his nose wrinkled. Jiaan didn’t dare look back, but Soraya did, and she choked down a laugh. Jiaan waited till they’d passed the second guard and were well into the long tunnel before he whispered, “What?”

“After we went by, he smelled his armpits.”

Jiaan grinned and his spirits rose. That was the normal reaction to an odd smell-not instant suspicion that the people you were looking at had been throwing gold into a sewer. The Hrum were human, after all. Jiaan was starting to think they had a chance.

The tunnel that had seemed so long miraculously shortened itself on the way back; in no time at all they were climbing the stairs to the kitchen. The guard who opened the door stared at them.

“What are you doing here?”

“The governor wants to question this prisoner before he retires,” said Jiaan.
“Salute”
he added pointedly.

“Yes, sir,” said the guard. “But I recognized you.” He was frowning.

Jiaan wanted to deliver a lecture about always asking for passwords, but he knew his vocabulary would fail him.

“I’ll tell the governor what you said about me,” said Soraya in Hrum. “And he’ll be shamed before the committee by the manners of his pigs of guards.”

The guard flushed. “You can tell him what you like,” he said in Faran almost as fluent as Soraya’s Hrum. “I do my duty.”

“She won’t see the committee,” said Jiaan in Hrum. “Governor Garren’s orders. We go now.” He gave Soraya a push and nodded acknowledgment of the guard’s salute, which was slower and more
thoughtful than the usual brisk gesture. Had Jiaan strayed too far from his lines and made the man suspicious? At least he hadn’t sounded the alarm.

Jiaan walked away, not too quickly, since his men were still emerging from the passage. Soraya went with him perforce, for he gripped her arm, but perhaps she too sensed the guard’s suspicion, for she turned and called back, “No woman, Hrum or Farsalan, would ever marry a pig like you! Men only insult women because they can’t attract them! Sometimes because …”