A Dance of Cloaks (6 page)

She heard shouts behind her, followed by a cry of pain. Knowing her time was short, she pressed an attack on the wounded soldier. He parried a couple of her stabs, but he was woozy from the loss of blood, and his movements awkward from still clutching his face with his other hand. Kayla curled about him, always drifting to his wounded side, and then one of his blocks came in too soon. Her daggers sunk into the flesh of his throat and stomach. Gasping, he fell and died.

Feeling certain the boy was dead, she spun around and brought her daggers up to defend herself. Instead, she saw Haern dancing between the two soldiers, his dagger a blur of steel. Both soldiers were bleeding, and one in particular was soaked with blood from a gash underneath his arm. She watched as the boy ducked a sideways slash, spun on his heels, and then lunged to the side of a thrust. The sword pierced the air inches from his face, but he seemed not to care how close he came to death. His dagger punched underneath the breastplate, slicing open the flesh and spilling intestines to the cold dirt of the alley.

He never hesitated, not even after such a cruel killing. The other soldier’s strike would have severed his spine, but instead it clacked against the ground. Haern slashed his wrist, danced about, stabbed his side, and then as the guard turned he continued dancing, continued twirling. His dagger buried into flesh, finding two more exposed slits in the armor. Blood ran freely, and when the boy kicked out his knees, the guard fell without the strength to return to a stand.

Kayla shook her head in amazement. He would not one day learn to kill as well as her. He already did.

Haern sheathed the dagger and joined her side.

“Your limp,” she said, realizing he had shown no hint of the injury during battle.

“I hurt it worse,” he said, wrapping his arm around hers. “But I’ve been shown how to ignore such things. Better to live torn and in pain than die in perfect health.”

He spoke as if the saying were memorized, and the gasps of pain he made with each step of his wounded leg seemed to mock him.

“We’ll never escape,” she said as they turned down a small alley between rows of houses that stank more like a sewer. “Not leaving a trail of bodies behind us.”

“We just need to keep going,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where.”

“Why not,” she asked.

“Because my father’s eyes are in all places. Once we are seen, he’ll come for us.”

Kayla smirked.

“Can’t rely on your father like that. He’s not the Reaper, able to see out of all shadows and end your life with a kiss of his scythe. The night is deep, the soldiers are about, and if we’re to see the dawn we’ll need to hide.”

Haern looked upset at her dismissal of his father, but he refused to argue the point.

Kayla scanned the houses she passed, hoping to recognize one. Considering how she prided herself on information, she realized just how little she knew her surroundings. She was friends with the scum of the streets, but the eastern district was home to the rich and influential. She might know her way around, and list many names useful to blackmail, but not one could she count as a friend. Out of all of Veldaren, this was most definitely farthest from home.

“Wait,” Haern said as they passed by a wide mansion surrounded by a thick fence. Its bars were made of dark iron, their spiked tops over ten feet tall. Behind them, oak trees with interlocking branches surrounded the building, giving privacy to the mansion with their beauty.

Haern pointed. “We can hide here.”

It took a moment for Kayla to realize where they were, but when she did her eyes widened.

“Are you daft, boy? This is Keenan’s estate.”

“Exactly,” Haern said, a bit of a smile curling his lips. “The one place no one would dare look for us.”

The reasoning was sound, but looking at those enchanted bars, she wondered how in the world they would cross.

“Follow me,” Haern said. Instead of climbing the bars, though, he turned and shimmied up the wall of a much more modest dwelling on the opposite side of the road. He clearly favored his right leg, bracing his weight on it as often as he could. It seemed there was no way up, but his feet and hands found crevices, windowsills, and indents in the plaster.

Kayla knew she was good at climbing, but she doubted her ability to follow. Still, the shouts of guards chased after them, so she had no choice but to try. She made it halfway up before her foot slipped. The windowsill cracked and broke. Her hands flailing wildly, she grabbed the first thing she could: Haern’s leg. The boy hung from the roof by his hands, and though his grip seemed like iron, she could hear his grunts of pain. She swung her foot further to the side, on what remained of the windowsill. When she let go of his leg, she heard him exhale slowly, as if he fought to control his pain. A moment later, he was back atop the roof and gone from her sight.

The rest of the way up was easy, and when she got there she found Haern lying on his back, tears running down the sides of his face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We can hide here, surely the guards won’t look…”

“They will,” Haern said. “They can see us from the street. Even if it takes all night, they’ll find us.”

Kayla sighed. He was right, of course. The roof was not perfectly flat, but instead sharply angled, with sharp triangles rising up to make a space for windows. If they hunkered down, they might go unnoticed, but any searching eyes would eventually spot them. Slowly, Haern shifted all his weight to his left leg and tried to stand. Kayla gently put her hands underneath his elbows and helped him.

“I’ll scream when I jump,” he said. “Ignore it. I’ll be fine.”

And then he was off, showing no sign of his injury. The roof, while angled, was still wide and offered plenty of room for a running start. In between the spikes of the gate were thick stripes of the dark iron, and it was for them he dove like a swan. With both hands he latched on, and when his body swung downward, he kicked off the bars with his good leg. Feet in the air, he vaulted over the spikes and landed on the smooth carpet of grass on the other side.

True to his word, he screamed in pain the whole while.

Kayla felt her lips tremble at the display. Perhaps it would be better to remain on the rooftop, hoping the guards would miss her. They weren’t searching for her, after all, just the boy. The strange, incredibly trained teenage boy who fought like an assassin. She couldn’t possibly mimic his act, could she?

She made her decision. With her longer legs, perhaps there was another way…

In a single quick motion she unbuckled her belt, counted to three, and then ran off the side of the house. When the fence neared, she looped the belt around one of the spikes and then did her best to hold in a shout of pain as her body rammed into the bars. She started to fall, but then the belt tightened. Using a similar technique, she kicked off the bars and somersaulted. Her breath caught in her throat as she passed over the incredibly sharp tips. She pictured herself impaled, her corpse upside-down like some grotesque ornament.

Then she was over, and the blessed ground met her feet. She rolled along, then scrambled toward the nearest tree. Compared to the house, it made easy climbing with its many shoots and branches. Haern was waiting for her among the leaves.

“Keep quiet,” he whispered. Tears ran down his face, but he kept the sobs out of his voice. With a slender hand, he pointed through a gap in the leaves where the street was visible to them both. Soldiers ran past, torches in hand. They scoured the area, but not once did they inspect the land behind the walls.

“Laurie Keenan’s property might as well be a foreign nation,” Kayla whispered. “A smart call, though you have the courage of a lion to leap like you did. If your knee had buckled…”

“It didn’t,” Haern said. “Not until I landed.”

She pulled up his pant leg and looked. His knee had already turned a shade of blue, with the very center an ugly brown. When she touched it gently with her fingers, she could tell it was badly swollen.

“We need it wrapped and iced,” she whispered. “And you need to give it rest.”

Haern nodded.

“How long can we hide here?”

Kayla shrugged. “We pressing our luck as is, but if we stay away from the mansion we should be safe. I hear all his traps are within its halls.”

Haern leaned his head against a branch and closed his eyes.

“Don’t let me fall,” he said. “Please?”

“Sleep if you must,” she said, reattaching her belt. “I’ll keep us safe.”

Several hours passed. If she had any doubt to the boy’s identity, the tenacity of the soldiers’ search erased them. Carefully she pushed the blonde hair off his face and looked at his soft features.

There was no doubt he was Aaron Felhorn, and by his actions and his skill, he was most certainly his father’s son.

When the sun finally began to creep above the city walls, Kayla nudged him awake. He snapped his eyes open and stared at her without a word. It was as if now the danger was passed, he had grown inward and shy.

“Come, Aaron,” she said. “Let us get you home.”

“Haern,” he said, his voice just above a whisper. “Call me Haern.”

“Why?” Kayla asked. “I know who you are; there is no need for pretenses.”

“Because when I am Haern…” He stopped and looked away. “When I am him, he is everything I am not.”

She wasn’t sure she understood, but she had a lot more pressing things to worry about than what name the Felhorn whelp wanted to be called.

“Should we head west?” she asked. He nodded. “I thought so, but we have a slight problem. How do we get over the gate?”

He didn’t know. It seemed when the hounds were at his heel, he was a fountain of ideas, but when things quieted down, the fountain ran dry. She almost smacked him upside the head and threatened to cut his throat if he didn’t produce an idea, but the thought was so absurd she laughed.

“I guess we wait,” Kayla said. Her stomach was rumbling, and she badly wanted someone to look at Aaron’s knee…Haern’s knee, she corrected. When she glanced about, she had little faith in the tree’s cover once the sun reached its fullest. If discovered, she would probably wish for the comfort of the noose. Keenan’s cruelty was legendary throughout not just Veldaren but all of Dezrel. Inside his compound, he ruled, not the king.

“What if someone else opens the gate?” Haern whispered. “Maybe we can run through.”

“Maybe,” she said absently. Maybe if whoever it was didn’t notice them hiding in the tree. Maybe if they weren’t stopped by guards on their frantic dash to the street. Maybe if archers located in windows didn’t feather them dead. If they were to do something, she realized, she needed to do it before the rest of the estate began their daily routines. If spotted, they didn’t have a beggar’s chance of convincing anyone they weren’t pawns of the thief guilds, sent to kill yet another lackey of the Trifect.

Kayla looked to Haern and held in a smile. Maybe if they were found, the boy might reveal another amazing skill. The kid could pull out nails with a thin knife and vault over fences like a mummer’s monkey. Who knew what he could do when cornered behind a locked gate.

Locked?

“Haern, look at me,” she said. “Can you pick a lock? Not some apprentice’s creation, I mean a true smith’s lock. I’ve never had the fingers for it, but could you?”

He looked away from her, angling his head so the sun no longer reached through the leaves to light his face. In the shadows, he seemed to grow more confident.

“Your daggers are thin, and I could try. I’d need something else, though, something even thinner.”

She handed him a dagger, then reached into her belt and pulled out a small spyglass. She used it when she needed to be absolutely certain who a person was, when guesswork and reliance on body structure, walk, and clothing would not be enough…or when naming the wrong name could get her killed by all parties involved.

The spyglass wasn’t what she wanted, though. What she wanted was the cord of wire wrapped around the middle to reinforce the fragile creation. Haern saw and nodded happily. He snatched the spyglass from her hands, unwound the wire, and handed the spyglass back.

“How long?” she asked.

“Master Jyr was my teacher,” he said. “When he left, he said I was his fastest student ever.”

Kayla shook her head.

“Not good enough. Tell me, how fast?”

Haern shrugged.

“Two minutes? Three if it’s expertly made.”

“Expect three minutes,” she said. Her blue-green eyes darted about. It wouldn’t be long before a servant or two headed out for the market to fetch fresh eggs and warm bread for when their master broke his fast. The sun had barely risen, perhaps they could go unnoticed. She had seen no guards, but that meant nothing. After five years of warfare, there were always guards.

“Pick the lock as fast as you can,” she told him. “If anyone tries to stop us, I’ll kill them.”

Haern nodded.

“I’ll do my best.”

The ground wasn’t far, but Kayla worried about Haern’s leg. Once they made it to the streets, they could lose themselves in the sea of merchants, tradesmen, and common folk that always swelled in the morning hours. Until then, they’d be horribly vulnerable.

“I’ll help you down,” she said. “Hurry, but don’t injure your knee any further. An open gate does us no good if you can’t walk through it.”

She guided him gently down to the grass. Limping like an old man, Haern approached the closed and barred front gate. Kayla remained hidden in the tree. She was close enough to intercept any guards that might spot him, and she hoped to surprise the first few that might try to stop the boy.

When Haern reached the gate, he knelt down on his good knee, cupped the lock in his hands, and examined it. After a moment, he glanced back to the tree and smiled.

Two minutes,
she thought.
The gods are kind.

She began counting in her head. At seventeen, she heard a cry of alarm. By twenty-nine, she saw several men run around the side of the estate, all wearing brightly-polished chainmail and brandishing curved longswords. They were five in all, and glumly Kayla checked the daggers at her belt. She had only three left. There would be no whittling them down before they reached her, and she knew veteran killers were underneath that armor.
Not good,
she thought.