Assail (21 page)

‘Very well. I accept payment by trial.’

Luthal waved his guards forward and they took hold of K’azz. Shimmer felt just as confused as Ghelath. ‘K’azz, what is this?’ she demanded.

He glanced down at her. ‘Do not interfere.’ Then his face softened and he added: ‘Promise?’

She grated her teeth as she watched the guards yank him away. ‘If I must,’ she murmured savagely. Infuriating! She had thought that after Jacuruku all his secrecy would be done with. But it seemed that after all nothing had been resolved. What had he gained from Ardata in any case? A name. A location. Nothing more. Assail. A place he was then seemingly completely unwilling to travel to. And now that he was so close – despite his every effort! – he would rather indulge this pompous Letherii merchant.

Someone was laughing and she spun to see the scarecrow figure of Cowl approaching along the beach. He was clapping silently and chuckling his eerie unnerving laugh. It was all Shimmer could do to restrain herself from slapping the man. She looked to Bars, who was frowning as he watched K’azz being marched off. ‘You know what’s going on,’ she accused him.

Grimacing, he lowered his gaze and nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Well?’

He glanced up. His lips were pressed tight but he eased them, sucking in a breath. ‘Seen one of these trials while I was in Lether.’

‘Yes?’

He cleared his throat and dragged a hand across his chin and his growing russet and grey beard; he appeared to be searching for the best away to present what he’d seen. ‘They load the debtor up with chains and weights and drop him into one of their canals. If he’r she can walk the canal, then they’ve discharged their debt.’

Shimmer felt her brows rising in growing disbelief and horror. ‘And has anyone ever managed this feat?’

‘Ah – only one, as I heard tell.’

‘This is absurd.’ Shimmer dismissed him to chase after K’azz.

‘You swore to obey,’ Cowl called in warning.

Shimmer felt again the grating jagged blade the man’s voice drew down her spine. She slowly turned to face him. ‘You would have him killed?’

Something strange crossed the man’s features, almost a secretive knowing amusement, and he chuckled anew. ‘I would have his orders followed,’ he said, still laughing.

She looked to the knot of Lether soldiers escorting K’azz, and Luthal following after, his hands clasped behind his back. ‘Well,’ she murmured. ‘There’re no canals here.’

Bars cleared his throat. Having her attention, he motioned to the waters of the lagoon beyond where the Lether ships rested at anchor.

‘Oh, dammit, no …’

Indeed, the soldiers were taking K’azz to the launches drawn up on the beach. ‘What do we do?’ she asked.

The big man hunched his rounded shoulders, considering. ‘Well,’ he ventured at length, ‘I believe you can request to witness the trial.’

It turned out that Letherii law allowed two individuals, relations or acquaintances of the accused, to witness their trial. Shimmer and Blues attended. Avowed brought Blues to the island and rowed them across to the flagship of Luthal’s merchant flotilla. To Shimmer’s eyes the proceedings in no way resembled a trial as she knew it. K’azz stood bound while stone weights were hung upon him by way of stout rope. No questions were posed. No charges were read. No opportunity was given for a response from the accused. She supposed that being away from civilized lands, Luthal had dispensed with such finer points of the law.

All the while she held K’azz’s gaze. She knew her expression conveyed her questions, doubts and fears. He answered with calm forbearance. He even raised a bound hand, as far as he could, to further reassure her.

Meanwhile, Blues at her side was seething. ‘What is this Togg-forsaken nonsense?’ he muttered. ‘We should step in …’

‘He doesn’t want any bloodshed.’ And she noted the many Letherii soldiers about the deck, all with crossbows cocked and readied.

‘No bloodshed in drowning, that’s certain,’ he growled.

‘Those are his orders.’

‘Seems he really does want you in command, Shimmer.’

She glanced to him, the grey-blue hue of his face even darker in his anger, and had opened her mouth to dismiss such a thing when Luthal spoke.

The guards turned K’azz to face the ship’s side, out over the water of the lagoon, towards the shore. ‘The indebted has chosen a trial,’ Luthal began. ‘In order to win free of his obligation he merely has to carry his burden underwater to the shore. It is his free choice. No one forced the accused to take on these debts and burdens. The lenders and creditors are the innocent aggrieved parties in this exchange.’

Luthal coughed into his fist and nodded to the guards. Seeing his expression of untroubled solemnity, it occurred to Shimmer that the man actually believed the nonsense he was spouting. As if watching one’s children starve, or struggling to salvage a lifetime of work, wouldn’t force anyone to do anything. No, there was no coercion at all in the battle to keep a roof over one’s head and survive in this world. Such a belief – and the circumstances that allowed it – must be a convenient and soothing balm indeed.

‘Let the trial begin,’ Luthal announced, and the guards pushed K’azz over the side.

Shimmer and Blues lurched forward, but K’azz shot them a glare over his shoulder as he slipped from sight and shouted, ‘No!’

The pair halted, exchanging looks of disbelief and horror. It was as if both had fully expected that somehow K’azz would escape, reverse the proceedings, or otherwise win through as he always had in the past.

Flanked by his guards, Luthal approached them. His expression was sad, but behind it Shimmer read satisfaction and an untouchable smugness that almost tipped her into a blind fury. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, obviously not sorry at all. ‘However, justice had to be done. The dept is now abrogated and discharged. You and your crew are free to land on the beach – though fees must be levied for such occupation, of course.’

Shimmer stared at the man, stunned by his false assurances of sympathy, his lofty, breathtaking arrogance. Free to land on the beach! Oh yes, quite free. Or equally free to stay on their slowly sinking vessel and drown. Obviously, they were free to choose! No possible coercion here at all.

She longed to stab the man through his uncomprehending skull, but then they’d be forced to kill the rest of them as well – which was clearly what K’azz had wished to avoid. She’d even moved her hand to the worn grip of the dirk at her belt when shouts of disbelief and alarm sounded from the ship’s side.

Luthal’s sailors and soldiers crowded the rail. Shimmer was hardly paying them any attention. She’d already decided to return to
Mael’s Greetings
and from there launch an attack upon one of the Lether vessels, sinking all the rest as well if it should prove necessary.

Which was what they should have done in the first place! She glanced to Blues and the man edged his head up and down in the slightest of nods. So it was decided, without any words, as only two who had campaigned side by side for years could decide.

As for K’azz and this absurd manner of throwing away his life … what could he have been thinking? Had he hoped for a different sort of trial? That Luthal was bluffing? She had no idea – she only felt tired by it all. Now she wished he hadn’t come with them after all. If the man had wanted to kill himself, he should have simply gone ahead and thrown himself into Lake Jorrick.

Luthal suddenly pushed himself back from the side and hurried to her. Anger darkened his features and he jabbed a finger out over the waters. ‘What trickery is this?’ he demanded.

She blinked at him, her brow crimping. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Do not play coy – you outlanders with your magery and magics. This is simply unacceptable.’

She and Blues brushed past the man. The crossbowmen tracked them with the iron tips of their quarrels as they crossed to the side. Rather reluctantly, she glanced down; she had not wanted her last vision of the man to be of him drowned under fathoms of water.

The lagoon, or stretch of shallowing water, was a clear pale turquoise over the rising slope of the beach, probably because of the sand floor. Shimmer imagined that slope to be quite steep beneath the vessel as it dropped off precipitously into deep midnight blue. Far below there appeared to be a dark figure struggling, moving side to side with a kind of exaggerated gait. For lack of anything else it resembled some sort of monster of the deep making its ungainly way to the land. Yet she wasn’t absolutely certain: the motion of the waves partially obscured it, as did the sunlight glinting and glimmering from the surface.

‘I dismiss this trial as a corrupted test,’ Luthal announced.

Shimmer continued to watch the dark wavering figure as it made its slow laborious way up the white sand slope. To one side lay the half-buried rotting hull of a wreck. Peering down, she noted a number of other such skeletal remains littering the deep lagoon bottom. ‘You mentioned no such provision in the trial,’ she answered, rather distractedly. She fought to keep a smile from pulling at her lips: why hadn’t he told her? Obviously he’d worked out some sort of solution with Gwynn, or Petal, or perhaps all the company mages combined.

‘It is understood,’ Luthal huffed. ‘Everyone knows this.’

‘Sadly, we outlanders are ignorant of such niceties. Everyone knows this.’

Luthal peered over the side and his eyes fairly goggled at the progress the figure below was making. ‘You cannot mean to hold to such an absurd demonstration!’

‘I agree that your practices are absurd. But you insisted.’ The merchant adventurer appeared ready to order his crossbowmen to fire upon her. ‘Perhaps we should take the boat to shore,’ she suggested. ‘To see how the trial ends.’ Luthal snarled under his breath, but he snapped an order to the sailors and they set to lowering rope ladders to waiting launches.

Shimmer found it uncannily odd to find herself floating over her commander’s head while he struggled below to heave his load of stones up the submerged slope. Who was aiding him? she wondered. Could it be Petal on
Mael’s Greetings
? Or Gwynn? Yet neither of these had ever confessed to any knowledge of Ruse magics. It certainly was not Blues here beside her, frowning down at the water, apparently as completely perplexed as she. However, it occurred to her that the Warren of High Denul, the healing and manipulation of the flesh, could also serve to sustain K’azz. And every Crimson Guard mage, out of necessity, possessed some familiarity with the healing magics of Denul. Perhaps Petal was even now completely engrossed in maintaining K’azz’s breath. This must have been what K’azz had in mind from the beginning; why the man had pressed so hard for a trial. He’d worked it out with the company mages but had not included her. She had to admit to feeling a touch put out.

Didn’t he trust her?

The boat ground ashore and Luthal and his escort of six guards clambered out. She and Blues followed; the guard kept a steady bead on them with their crossbows as if they would throw themselves upon Luthal. She ignored them. Together they all awaited K’azz’s arrival. Other than they, the beach was deserted. When she and Blues had headed out, Ghelath and the rest of the Avowed had returned to the
Greetings
, there to await the outcome of the trial – and to avoid any further fees the Letherii might invent to level upon them.

Out of curiosity, Shimmer peered about at the so-called ‘establishment’. What immediately came to mind was an impression of general shabbiness. That, and the temporary, transient character of everything. No buildings of any sort had been erected. Canvas tents, pole-framed, stood here and there. Fire pits were in evidence everywhere. The Letherii soldiers – private hired guards, she corrected herself – lounged about in the shade of the tents, all but those manning the palisade that ran across the inland edge of the beach. The entire band appeared scruffy, ill-fed, and lacking in any discipline.

They would prove no challenge should Shimmer choose to act.

K’azz, however, held his company to a higher standard. No mere brigands were they to simply take what lay within their power to take. And Shimmer found that she agreed, though it galled her to have to endure the smug self-righteousness of Luthal.

The palisade troubled her. Clearly they were not alone on the island. Who were the locals? Hostile in any case, she assumed. And the palisade itself was not built simply of logs. It was an uneven mishmash of adzed timbers and sections of what appeared to be decking and hulls of ships. The entire construction was made up of bits and pieces of salvage from many wrecks.

She studied the rising pillar-like slopes above and noted that while grasses and low brush covered the rock, anything larger was entirely absent. Not one tree grew here – or they’d all been harvested for cooking or building. Had K’azz seen this earlier when he’d been studying the island?

A grunt of outrage from Luthal drew her attention to the lagoon. A dot had emerged from the waves: K’azz broaching the surface. Hunched forward, the man doggedly carried on, step after laborious step. And the shifting sands couldn’t be helping.

His shoulders emerged, each looped by the numerous ropes supporting his load of stones.

‘Impossible …’ Luthal murmured at Shimmer’s side. His voice, she noted, held a touch of awe. He turned to her, now scowling. ‘This is your foreign Warren-magic.’ He swept a hand down in dismissal. ‘This is illegal. You are forfeit.’