A Warrior of Dreams (18 page)

"I'm sure your cloth is the best," Ghost said, "but all we really need are directions."

"People here know where things are, for all the profit in it," she said without looking at him. "If you're strangers, you'd best ask directions to some place else."

Joslyn lost patience. "I'd like nothing better, but the person we seek is here in Darsa. If you're not going to help us, say so and we'll find someone else."

"Who would no doubt oblige," the cloth
-
lady sighed, "A Darsan is nothing if not generous."

"Then a Darsan is nothing!" Joslyn regretted it, but only a little. The odd city was working on her nerves.

The woman brushed the insult aside like a fallen eyelash. "Girl, to help you might be to harm someone else. Does this person wish to be found?"

"We're friends," Ghost said, "or at least sent by a friend. We're trying to find a woman named Daycia."

The woman did look at them then
—
slowly, methodically. Joslyn didn't like the scrutiny at all.

"Who sent you?"

"Musa of Ly Ossia. We have a letter..."

The woman raised a finger to her lips in warning. "I advise you not to name that cursed place here... Musa, you say? The seller of nightmares and sweaty delusions?"

Joslyn couldn't stop a smile. "The same."

The woman put her last bundle in its place and jerked the supports from beneath the awning. It settled over the cart with a whisper of escaping air, and she tucked it over her wares. "I'll take you to Daycia," she said.

Joslyn frowned. "Why? Assuming you really know where she is."

"Because I choose to. But I tell you here and now you'd best be telling the truth about that letter."

"We mean her no harm, I assure you," Ghost said.

The woman laughed. "If you're not who you say you are it won't make any difference."

*

To Joslyn, whose legs were already sore, it seemed as if they'd followed the old woman for hours. The streets had turned narrow as they walked, and most were half
-
choked with debris from crumbling buildings. The look of the city was becoming more and more unfriendly, if that was possible. Joslyn found her fingers inching toward the etched dagger Deverea had given her when they parted
—
"Two things worthy of trust, city girl: Yourself and a good knife." Joslyn was grateful now. This part of Darsa was in total ruin, and the shadows were gathering in all the deep places.

One of them moved.

Joslyn tugged at Ghost's sleeve. "We're being followed."

Ghost looked where she pointed. "I don't see anything."

"Because Kessa doesn't wish to be seen," the woman sighed, "though I must compliment you, girl
—
I can't see her myself most of the time."

"A friend of yours?" Joslyn asked.

"Sort of... and keep your hands were she can see them. The dear is very protective of me and might misunderstand."

Joslyn took her hand away from the knife, where it had strayed again. The figure held something in raised hands, and Joslyn had a pretty good suspicion that it was a small crossbow.

They took an abrupt turn at what had once been a magnificent structure. It was broken and covered with vines now; birds nested in the branches of young trees that thrust up through gaps in the dome. Their guide pushed her cart through a gap in the courtyard wall, then down a ramp that led to a fissure in the massive foundations. "Follow me, please."

Joslyn was guided more by touch than sight in her first few steps into the darkness. They passed under what must have been the roof; light from the setting sun filtered down into the passageway in narrow, dusty beams. The woman never broke stride; she pushed the cart briskly down the corridor until sunlight was lost again, and Joslyn felt the floor sloping under her feet. They passed empty doorways cut into stone on either side
—
some showed bare rooms; others were clogged with trash and stone debris. Their guide finally reached an intact door. She opened it with an iron key hanging from her belt, shoved the cart inside, and locked it again. Now free of her burden, she picked up the pace. Ghost and Joslyn almost had to trot to keep up.

For a limping old woman she moves well enough
, Joslyn thought.

Joslyn looked behind her from time to time but saw nothing. It didn't matter; she knew they were still being followed.

They passed through a patch of greater darkness under a massive lintel, and in a moment emerged again into weak light, but in that moment Joslyn felt a furtive touch. She recoiled and reached for her knife. It wasn't there. She leaned close to Ghost. "My knife is gone!" she hissed.

"Perhaps you dropped it."

"And perhaps it fell on a silk pillow so I wouldn't hear the clatter. I don't think so."

The old woman's hearing wasn't bad either. "Don't worry. You won't need your weapon here."

Joslyn remembered the shadow behind them and kept quiet. The corridor finally dead
-
ended at a massive door bound with iron. The woman didn't produce a key for this one. She rapped sharply and the door swung outward just a crack, just enough to let them in. She waved her hand. "After you."

"Wouldn't hear of it," Joslyn replied. Ghost gave her a sharp glance but she held her ground. They were taking enough of a risk; no sense walking in blind. The woman smiled and stepped through the opening. Joslyn followed close.

"Here we are."

The chamber was about seventy feet across, shaped like the inside of a jug. Joslyn guessed that it was once used for storage, but now patches of black high in the walls were linked to a narrow spiral stairway that wrapped three times around the inside of the room, and a crack in the domed roof let smoke from the central hearth escape.

Three people were gathered around the hearth: a young man, a woman, and a child. The man's neatly trimmed hair and beard were red, his face lean and angular. He wore a loose fitting tunic and breeks of black leather. The woman was a few years older than Joslyn, handsome except for a scar that began under her hairline, crossed her right eye and ended on her cheek. The eye was a milky blank. The child was little more than a toddler, and the woman kept her good eye on him as he played near the fire.

Joslyn stepped forward. "Daycia?"

The woman glanced at their guide.

Of course. How stupid of me
.

But the surprises weren't quite over. First the cloth
-
seller straightened, and the aged stoop was gone. She stepped briskly into the room, and the limp was gone. She pulled off her kerchief, and her hair fell in shining yellow waves to her shoulders. There was the barest hint of gray.

I thought it was all gray
...

Just so. She had assumed. The disguise was half real, half imagined, and all the more effective. Ghost gave a little bow. "You are Daycia, I gather?"

She nodded. "Now we'll see who you are. Tolas?"

The young man smiled, reached into his tunic, and pulled out a small role of parchment sealed with blue wax. Joslyn needed barely a glance to recognize Musa's letter. "I suppose you have my knife, too?"

He produced it with a flick of his wrist. Another and it was gone again. Joslyn was impressed despite herself. In her time on the street she had seen many pickpockets and cutpurses at work, but none with the skill and finesse of a conjurer.

Daycia took the letter, broke the seal, and unrolled the parchment. She read slowly, and Joslyn saw her eyes drift back to the beginning of the note more than once. When she finished Daycia dropped the letter into the fire. It flared and then fell to glowing ashes, done before Joslyn could react.

"Our letter
—
!"

"
My
letter," corrected Daycia. "If Musa had meant you to see it, she wouldn't have used a seal. I respect her wishes and trust you won't ask." Daycia spoke as one used to obedience
—
neither arrogant nor insulting, merely in a tone that didn't invite discussion.

She sounds like the Dream Master
. It didn't exactly endear her to Joslyn, but Daycia didn't seem concerned about that. She looked them up and down as if they were two odd bookends she couldn't decide just where to fit.

"You're Joslyn," she said and moved on. She stopped in front of Ghost. "And you're... well, man, how shall we call you?"

"'Ghost' will do," he said. "Did Musa explain?"

Daycia nodded. "Though I'll admit I don't understand it all. No matter, Musa is an old friend and we'll do what we can. You're welcome to stay so long as you don't make nuisances of yourselves."

"You're most kind," Joslyn said. She didn't like the way her own voice sounded, but she was more than a little tired and the folk in Darsa hadn't done much to soothe her nerves.

Daycia shook her head. "Joslyn, I am not. Not at all. The folk here are all the family I have, and these are dangerous times in themselves. Never mind that the Imperials and the Temple will be looking for you, as well. All I ask is that you don't make the situation any worse than it is. Do you understand?"

Joslyn nodded. She did understand the risk Daycia was taking for what she offered them. And if Daycia wasn't overjoyed at the prospect she didn't run from it, either.

"I'm sorry. I'm also tired and irritable. I ask your pardon."

Daycia smiled then, just a little. "Freely given. But I think a bit of supper and a place to rest would suit you better."

Chapter 9
—
Ruins

Kessa blended well with the shadows. Her blouse and breeks were the same dark shade as the stones in the corridor. Her hair was a problem
—
it was so fair as to be nearly white, but a dark scarf took care of that. She waited until the door closed behind Daycia and the strangers, then stepped out into the open. She listened for a moment. Voices were distant murmurs, none raised. Kessa didn't really expect trouble. Still...

The girl slipped into one of the many broken places in the old temple and found a ruptured vent. It was narrow enough, but then so was she. Kessa wriggled through the break and crawled upward on her elbows and knees, her arbalest cradled in her arms.

There was something afoot; she could sense it. When Daycia first appeared with the strangers, Kessa had kept close, waiting for some sign. It hadn't been the first time: twice before Daycia had brought strangers. One time a wizened little thief had followed Daycia from the market; he was easily dealt with. The next time wasn't so simple.

An Ender
.

Kessa remembered the fear when Daycia returned that day with the follower of Malitus at her back, his rusty knife at her throat. The knife didn't worry Kessa as much as his eyes: wild, staring eyes, like a dead man's. He looked and could not see, even when Tolas stepped out from the darkness in front of him. "A witness! See! See this woman die! Remember the madness of the dream
—
" He didn't get any farther because Kessa's bolt pierced the base of his skull, freezing the knife and the smile and the eyes like some obscene parody of a statue of Malitus himself. And when the Ender finally slumped down and lay dead on the floor his eyes had still not changed
—
wide open, staring. Kessa shivered.

But this time Daycia signed her instructions with small gestures the strangers missed
—
Wait. Follow. And something else to Tolas that Kessa hadn't quite caught. The pair didn't look dangerous, but that impression and a seed would make a decent flower in time. Daycia was almost never wrong, but one time might be enough.

The vent ended high on the wall in the common room. Kessa stifled a sneeze as smoke from the hearth tickled her nose, and she peered down at the little scene below: Daycia sat in her tall chair just beyond the fire, Tolas off a bit to one side looking serene but watchful. Meleay bounced her child on her knee, apparently oblivious, apparently mad. Kessa smiled, wondering if the strangers were being fooled as completely as she herself had been.

The strangers... Kessa turned her attention to them. The man, graying but with a youthful face, and so damned calm. Knowing that they were observed in the corridor, not knowing what might wait for them at the end of the journey, and through it all he was so distant, so... cold? No,
uncaring
was the word. Kessa had seen the same look, the same manner in the streets of Darsa. His was the face of one who had lost too much, endured too long. Almost like one of the Enders, though one driven by despair, not blind viciousness. Kill or be killed, it was all the same to them. That made them dangerous, and Kessa was convinced that the man, too, was dangerous. Whether he brought the danger or was the danger himself was a question she would have to consider later.

The voices rose to Kessa's hiding place, but not the words. She tried to listen but could not make them out.

Should have gotten closer
.

There hadn't been time, not if she wanted to observe from the most strategic point. And she did want to observe, especially the girl
—
a little older than Kessa and someone she understood. The girl had been afraid when the entered the temple; she cared what happened to her. And still she came, which implied a reason. But what sort of folk sought out Daycia, even knew she existed?

Possibly the kind that Kessa desperately needed.

It was forbidden, but in this one thing Kessa was quite prepared to disobey Daycia if the chance came; all that remained was to find out if that chance had come. Kessa quietly backed away into the broken places of the temple that seemed made for a small, slim girl to travel.

*

At the evening meal Daycia carefully controlled what conversation there was, asking about Musa and the state of Ly Ossia and rumors of the Imperium and dozens of other things that didn't even nick the surface of the questions Joslyn wanted answered. It was soon clear to Joslyn that Daycia wasn't ready to speak of anything important, so she let Ghost carry the burden of empty words and turned her attention on the others.