Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3) (55 page)

“Holy gods,” Tank muttered under his breath. Then, louder, “I’m
sworn,
with the Bright Bay Freewarrior’s Hall.”

“You work with
Yuer,”
the lead guard said. “That’s a name as been raising some caution of late. Lots of strange southern folk passing through of a sudden, since Ninnic died; and an awful lot of them are invoking that name as protection. Starting to wear
thin,
round here, and after such a dreadful murder as this, well—” He spat to one side. “We’re not allowing no southerners in our streets for a few days, until things settle down.”

Tank nearly snarled aloud. He said, brutally, “Half the traders driving along this strip have a heavier accent than I do, and don’t come from any more south than Bright Bay itself, or Sandlaen. And whoever tore your people apart—if it
was
a person, and not an animal—is probably long gone up the road and laughing by now. You’re doing yourselves no good by this stupid barricade.”

They glared, their own tempers rising; polearms shifted to a distinctly readier slant, and the bowmen were fingering through the shafts in their quivers.

“He’s got the arrogance of all the barbarians,” one of the bowman muttered. “Be just like them to do something vicious and then come back and laugh at us in our misery.”

“Be just like Yuer to hire it done,” someone else said, and the mood darkened further.

“That’s enough,” Tank said sharply. “I understand your fears, but you’re jumping at shadows, and I’m too godsdamned tired to put up with your idiocy. Let me through to an inn, if you don’t have any horses to lend; I’ll sleep as quick as I can and be on my way without asking more favors. My message is
urgent.”

“Urgent or not,” the leader said obdurately, “we’re only bound to let News-Riders through, not southern redling trash.”

Tank’s temper strained hard at that; he was anxious, and exhausted, and out of patience with these damn fools. But riding over them—or trying to jump the barricade, tempting and showy as that would be—risked injuring the horse and slowing him further. All things considered, the best option was to hang on to the last threads of his self-control and make them deliver the first blow.

When do you fight? When you have no other choice.
For once, this really wasn’t the time.

“If you’re going to attack innocent travelers,” Tank said, “may as well start with me. But you’d best kill me in the doing, because one
scratch
and I’ll have the lot of you up in front of the King himself for unprovoked attack on a Hall-sworn freewarrior.”

He nudged his horse into motion; bows and polearms went to the ready immediately. His jaw taut, he kept his hands relaxed on the reins and guided the beast off the road and around the barricade, leaving a wide gap between himself and the guards.

One of the guards stepped in his way, polearm held at a forbidding angle. Tank stared straight at him and kept the horse moving. As his teeth began to creak from jamming them together and it seemed that the tip of the blade would pierce the horse’s neck at any moment, the guard swore and dove awkwardly out of the way. The polearm thudded to the ground, the man rolling to avoid catching up against the sharp edge.

Tank heard the sounds of rapid, muted argument from the other guards; a moment later, in peripheral vision, he saw the remaining polearms and bows waver and droop. He let out a long breath and went on without looking back.

The narrow-faced innkeeper squinted at the small golden rose in Idisio’s hand, pursing his lips. “And for that?” he said.

“Five days’ lodging and your silence on our presence here,” Idisio said. While the latter request was probably far too late, given the scene at the Black Horse Tavern, Idisio
really
didn’t want Yuer to get involved. He thought it more than a little likely that Yuer would find this situation rife with potential.

He rubbed at his eyes, wondering if that was his own cynicism emerging or his mother’s paranoia. They felt uncomfortably similar, at the moment.

The innkeeper looked at the unconscious woman laid out on the fireside bench, frowning. The commons room was otherwise empty, as was—Idisio blinked, feeling momentarily dizzy—as was the inn itself. Three other rooms on the ground floor around him had occupants booked in, but all were elsewhere at the moment.

Idisio put out a hand to steady himself against the wall, trying to make the movement a casual one. Fear skittered up and down his spine like a icy-cold spider.
How the hells do I know which rooms are empty?

It had made perfect sense for him to know things like that at Scratha Fortress: there was a ha’rethe there to feed him the information. Like a whisper in the back of his mind, he remembered Deiq saying: Y
ou’re still developing.

But what am I developing
into
?

Idisio bit back a whimper, wishing Deiq were around to explain; wishing his own mother could be trusted to deliver reliable information. He’d already tried reaching out to Deiq, in case he could speak to the elder ha’ra’ha over significant distance, and been met with a blank grey haze that muffled and dissolved the effort every time. Whether that came from something his mother had done to him, or whether the distance was after all an impenetrable barrier, he couldn’t tell. The effect was the same, in the end: Tank was his only hope of getting a message through that he was still alive—and still
badly
in need of help.

“I don’t need no trouble here,” the innkeeper said, bringing Idisio back to the moment.

“No trouble,” Idisio said. “Just lodging and peace for a few days.”

“Someone attacked your friend there,” the innkeeper said. “That sounds like trouble to me.”

“No trouble. She’s been ill. She’s not quite herself,” Idisio said steadily. “She needs to rest. She’s no danger to you.” He caught the man’s eye and held it. “Just lodging and peace for five days,” he repeated softly. “Please. Give us an east-facing room and keep your silence as to our presence.”

The man blinked and ran a hand through his thinning, lank grey hair. “Take the room down the right hand hallway there, last door on the right. There’s no key. Most of these rooms bolt from the inside, is all you get.” His gaze went to Idisio’s unconscious mother again. “Sunrise rooms always go first. You’re lucky to get that one. If business was better—but it’s been a bad stretch. Pack of unsworn been driving regular guests away.” He looked to Idisio. “I’d say get her under cover afore they come back from their drinking night,” he added. “They’re not picky about awake or asleep.”

“Which room are
they
in?” Idisio said.

The innkeeper opened his mouth. In the fractional moment between that and speech, words spilled into Idisio’s mind:
The west side/hope they leave soon and take broken collarbone with them/mannerless pigs/what they did to Neda/but I’m the only one believes her—

“They’re on the other side of the inn,” the innkeeper said. “You shouldn’t run into them. Are you all right? You look ill of a sudden.”

“Fine,” Idisio said through his teeth. He handed over the rose, suppressing a surge of guilt: he would have to send compensation to Alyea for what he’d stolen—no. He had the right to take anything he wanted; she was a desert lord; she would understand—and Deiq would make sure of that, if the issue came up. Still, it put a hard knot in his stomach, to rest on that
right:
he hadn’t taken the items as part of his due, he’d taken them as a thief fleeing the premises with filled pockets, and that distinction made all the difference.

A sly line came to the innkeeper’s expression as he examined the small metal flower.
Nice piece here/worth more than a few days lodging/wonder what else they have/strange sorts too/bet Yuer would like to know about them/if they’re fugitives he might even give a reward—

Idisio said, sharply,
“S’e—”

The man jerked a startled, suspicious glance at Idisio.

Idisio bit his lip, then forced his voice to soften. “Thank you for the room. For your graciousness. For
leaving us alone
for the next five days. For
not telling Yuer
anything about us being here.”

The man stared, seeming bemused, then shrugged, sketched a lazy farewell with one hand, and turned away. Idisio scooped up his mother and headed for their room.

Once inside, the door safely bolted and his mother laid out on the single, wide bed, Idisio sat down on the floor and let himself shudder all over for some time. He blinked in and out of complete darkness, his eyes flooding with tears every time the black returned; going dry with each phase of grey clarity.

That in itself was disconcerting enough to make him want proper light. He rocked onto his knees, then tried to stand up: folded back to the floor in a graceless sprawl. He rolled back to his knees and stayed there, hands on his thighs as he tried to calm himself.

“I’m tired,” he muttered, not believing it for a moment. “I’ll be all right with some sleep. But I can’t sleep, can I? Because if she wakes up—”

He rubbed his eyes, swearing under his breath, trying to think through what to do next. Light seemed like a good idea no matter what the other choices wound up being, but he didn’t have a tinderbox with him and it was unlikely the room offered one. For that matter, he didn’t remember having seen an oil lamp in the room. He glanced around, squinting a little, and found a single fat, half-melted candle on the small bedside table.

“Great,” Idisio muttered. “Now I have to figure out how to
light
the damn thing—What did Deiq say?
See it lit—”

With a sharp, crackling hiss, the wick burst into flame.

Idisio stared, his mouth slightly open; patted the side of his own face a few times to check that he wasn’t dreaming, then staggered to his feet.

“Developing,” he said under his breath. “Right.”

Remembering that conversation with Deiq put him in mind of another trick he’d seen the elder ha’ra’ha pull off ever-so-casually:
Wards, to ensure our privacy. They’re fairly simple... I’ll teach you.
But he’d never gotten around to it, of course. Trying to explain how to light an oil lamp and steady his body temperature had been all the instruction Deiq had really offered; but if it was simple, perhaps Idisio could figure it out on his own.

What had Deiq done, exactly? Idisio remembered him walking around the area, passing his hand along each entrance—pointing when he couldn’t quite reach a spot—and an odd shimmer had followed his fingers, settling into the rock and fading away almost immediately.

Idisio began to raise his hand, then stopped and lowered it again. He’d been out on the streets long enough to know that anything dangerous was best attempted with absolute confidence; from picking a pocket to making a chancy jump, uncertainty almost guaranteed failure.

He drew a deep breath, then another, summoning up the old street-thief brashness; sauntered over to the door and traced his hand along the frame, thinking:
Privacy. Leave us alone. Nobody here. Go away.
Idisio had no doubt that Deiq would walk right through, but hopefully those less skilled—all right,
humans—
would be turned away.

A pale blue line ghosted behind his fingers, sinking into the worn, gapped wood so quickly that Idisio wondered if he’d imagined even seeing it. Setting aside doubt, he went to the single wide, low window and traced the frame of that as well. This time he made sure of what he was seeing. The ward line seemed hazy, compared to the hard golden sparkle of Deiq’s wards; Idisio set that aside as something to puzzle over later and turned to check on his mother.

She lay still, breathing shallowly but evenly. While blood matted her hair, the wounds beneath had almost completely disappeared. Idisio rubbed his hands together, considering, then frowned and leaned in to study her more closely: the dress she wore looked oddly familiar.

A faint waft of sweetened ginger rose to his nose.

He straightened and backed away from the bed a hasty step, his pulse thundering in his ears. “Oh, gods,” he said, one hand over his mouth. “Oh, gods,
no.”

He looked down at his own clothes, nausea rising in his throat: a maroon peasant shirt and dun trousers, the latter almost more patches than original cloth. He couldn’t remember having seen anyone wearing the outfit in Obein, but that dress hadn’t been a voluntary gift—and his mother wasn’t the type to simply steal a garment.

Unless the shirt and trousers were the serving girl’s spare clothing, which seemed unlikely, he had to believe that his mother had killed two people in Obein: the serving girl and whoever was with her at the time of Ellemoa’s attack.

She’s killed before,
Tank had said.
Doesn’t regret it one bit.

Idisio’s certainty that his mother wouldn’t hurt him wavered like the smoke curling from the candle flame. He looked at the door and the window, considering; thinking through implications. If he could set wards to stop people getting
in,
surely he could set wards to stop someone getting
out.
That seemed only reasonable.
How
was another matter, especially as she, like Deiq, would probably walk right through any attempt of his to hold her.

But then again, she’d admitted he was stronger than she’d expected. She’d used reason to convince him to go with her voluntarily, because forcing him to move along was tiring her. So maybe she would have some trouble, after all; enough that the ward might alert him, wake him, if she tried to pass them.

He had to try. He could feel exhaustion racking aches up throughout his body, and didn’t dare risk falling asleep without at least some effort to contain his mother from seeking out another victim—or unleashing her frustrated rage on her own son.

Please, gods, let Deiq get here soon,
he thought, and began tracing ghostly blue lines around the bed.

Tank paid a half silver round for the stableboy to take care of his horse, flopped down across a line of hay bales and fell asleep instantly. Before noon he was awake and saddling the horse again; it stared at him with what might have been reproach but proved energetic enough for a steady canter once they cleared town.