Darkened Blade: A Fallen Blade Novel (24 page)

“It’s not suicide,” said Kelos. “Not if we’ve got the Signet’s ring and finger,
and
it still works for most of the wards. Not if we can move fast enough once the alarm sounds. There are places where we’ll have to take to the rooftops and brave the direct light, but fewer than you might think. There are shortcuts between many of the loops, narrow gates and deep tunnels known only to a very few. The Signet’s ring of office opens most of them. Or, at least, it used to.”

Faran spoke. “You just said, ‘once the alarm’ sounds. Does that mean you’ve given up on our getting in and out without being caught and killed?”

“No,” said Kelos. “I think our chances of making it all the way in without setting off the alarms is pretty close to zero given the things Siri and I have been able to learn in the past few days and the risks that a sunside approach are likely to add to the endeavor. That’s why
we’re
not going to be the ones triggering the alarm. But that’s Siri’s show, and I’ll leave her to explain it after I’m done.”

Kelos continued, “Once the alarm sounds, things will get hairy everywhere, but if we do this right the pressure will actually be lightest in the heart of the temple. If we strike fast and kill the Son of Heaven before what risen are there can swarm us, the resulting chaos when three-quarters of the curia and nearly all the inner temple guards die with him, should provide us more than enough cover to get back out.”

I rolled the finger in its box. “And if this thing
doesn’t
work anymore?”

Kelos smiled grimly. “Then we might as well go home, because we are well and truly fucked, and the Son of Heaven will soon become the uncrowned emperor of the eleven kingdoms. And since his life is tied to the life of the curse that is his familiar, he might reign for a thousand years. I think we have to try this, and I believe that we can succeed.”

“Why am I not reassured?” said Faran.

“Because you’re a hopeless cynic?” I asked.

“Yeah, that’d be it. Well, I know this isn’t going to fly, but I’m going to vote we fix Aral’s problem now, and leave the Son of Heaven for another day. Any takers?”

Silence.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Faran sighed. “Moving along, when do we go after the Son of Heaven?”

“Given how fast the rot is traveling,” said Kelos, “
and
that we have no idea what will happen when it gets to the base, or even what the mechanism of the spell is, I’m thinking that as soon as humanly possible is the only sane answer.”

“Is that because you’re worried about Aral?” Faran asked bitterly. “Or is it because you’re afraid the key will stop working and ruin your chance at starting this glorious revolution of yours?”

Kelos frowned at Faran. “You’re smarter than that, girl. It’s not an either/or situation. I’m obviously concerned about both, if not in equal measure.”

“Faran,” I said quietly. “Let it go. Kelos, Siri, it sounds like you put together quite a detailed plan while you were poking around. Let’s hear what you’ve got.”

“Well,” said Siri, “it starts off with us violating the hell out of Jax’s desire that the youngsters remain in the background. They’re full Blades now and I think we should treat them as such. I love Jax, but she’s wrong to coddle them.”

“Damned right she is,” said Roric. “It’s about time we got invited to sit at the adults’ table.”

“Not,” said Ssolvey, from his shadow, “that we weren’t going to just go ahead and move up on our own if we didn’t get the nod.”

“What’s our role?” asked Maryam. It was the first time she’d spoken in nearly an hour, and I was surprised at the obvious eagerness in her voice. I’d expected her to back Jax, but maybe she was tired of being treated like a kid, too.

Siri continued. “While it’s possible I would be able to function in the depths of the temple precinct, we’ve decided to assume that I can’t. That means I’m stuck in the outermost
loop, and it would be foolish not to do what we can to take advantage of that.”

“Like what?” asked Faran.

“The temple of Zhen-Ki is in that outermost ring,” said Siri.

“Now I’m confused,” replied Faran. “What does the Binder of Demons have to do with anything?”

“In this case, everything,” said Kelos. “Heaven’s Reach is a church-state, and it has to fulfill all the functions of any government. That includes having someplace to put people who break church law. Mostly, they go to a stand-alone prison fortress operated by the Sword of Heaven at the far end of the great valley. But prisoners of the Hand stay here in the city, in a small dungeon below the temple of Zhen-Ki.”

“So, right before dawn,” Siri said, taking the lead back from Kelos, “I intend to lead our three observers here in to free as many of the prisoners as we can.” She nodded to Maryam. “I don’t know who’s in the dungeons there at the moment, but I’m certain busting them out will provide Aral’s crew with a hell of a distraction. If we’re lucky, it will provide us with some allies, too. I don’t know what their quality will be, but if the Son of Heaven has chosen to jail dissident members of the Hand and the Shadow instead of simply liquidating them, we might produce some major fireworks once we crack them loose.”

Kelos spoke again. “Then, after Siri starts making noise and calling down hell on the prison right as the sun comes up, you and Faran and I will make our run at the inner temple.”

“I really don’t like the idea of working in daylight.” Ssithra spoke from her perch on Faran’s shoulder.

“No Shade does,” Malthiss replied, without lifting himself free of Kelos’s tattoos, “but I don’t think we have any choice in the matter this time. There are simply too many of the risen in the temple precinct right now for us to do anything else.”

“Is that it?” I asked.

Siri shrugged. “Pretty much. There are a lot of details
that we simply can’t plan in advance on this one given the time constraints imposed by that”—she pointed at the finger—“and the way the risen are swarming all over everything. Kelos has some very detailed maps of the precinct in general and the targets in specific. Looking over those, I haven’t seen any other good options.”

“Sewers?” I said. “I’m asking because I want to be thorough, not because I think you haven’t considered it.”

Kelos shook his head. “They’re kept brimful all the time, and even the best spells for breathing water won’t work in sewage. There’s just not enough of what we need to breathe in the stuff to start with. That’s a problem the risen don’t have, which makes it a perfect place for the Son of Heaven to hide an army. There are thousands of them down there.”

“What about the clean water supply?” I asked without much hope.

A city this size needed a lot of water, and being in a valley meant it would come down from the hills. Usually, in situations like this, water was brought in through stone-walled tunnels that mirrored a sewer system. But anyone with any sense of security made sure that wards against water-breathing were built deep into the stones of the walls wherever the channels passed under protected areas. Such things could be broken, but it was long, slow, tedious work and it didn’t buy you much even if it didn’t trigger alarms. While the main arteries of an aqueduct might be big enough to pass a man, well shafts were always heavily guarded, or made too small for a human to move through.

“The supply channel wards are even nastier than usual,” answered Kelos. “Some previous Son of Heaven convinced the Queen of the Waters to reinforce the wards with god-magic. They are completely unbreakable.”

I nodded. “That’s more or less what I figured. Let me think for a moment.” I got up and walked away from the others. I was First Blade now, and the call was mine. I wouldn’t make it lightly.

Well?
sent Triss.
What
do
you think about all this?

I think I want to go in and properly game the whole thing
out myself and make my own damn plan. I also think that would waste time we don’t have given the way the spell on that finger is going bad. Besides, one of the key things I’m going to have to learn if I’m going to become a good First Blade is to trust other people to know their jobs. Siri and Kelos are both at least as good at this stuff as I am. Second guessing them is a waste of time we don’t have.

Truth.
He gave a little mental sigh, and I could feel him working himself up to tell me something he didn’t think I’d want to hear.
You do realize that if we go all the way in and
don’t
kill the Son of Heaven, getting out will be a major problem?

It’s occurred to me, yes. But . . .
But what? Really?
I know that he deserves death, Triss. I know it all the way down to my toes, but I still can’t bear the idea of all the other deaths his will bring. That’s part of why I have to go in regardless of my misgivings. If I don’t actually face him, I will never be able to make the decision to kill him.

You’re trying to force your own hand—give yourself no choice but to kill him.

Maybe I am.

What will that do to you? And what if it doesn’t work? What if you get in there and you can’t kill him?

I don’t know, Triss, I really don’t know. But this is the only way I can see forward. I just wish I could leave Faran with Siri.

Absolutely not!

What? Why?

Because I won’t see you commit suicide. If you left Faran behind I would know that you had no intention of coming back, whatever lies you might tell yourself about the thing. I’ve seen you give up on yourself, but never on her. No. Faran comes, or we don’t go in at all.

Maybe you’re right. Will you back me?

You know I will. Always and to the end.

Then I guess it’s time we put the play in motion.

I walked back to the others. “So, when do we hit them?”

“I vote for tomorrow night,” said Siri. “I wish we could
go now, given the rapid decay on that thing, but it’s late, you’re visibly exhausted from your travels, and the rest of us need a good day’s sleep before we’re in top form, too.”

“Siri’s right all around,” said Kelos. “We need a break, but we can’t afford to wait even a minute longer than we have to after that.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right, people, get some sleep. Tomorrow we face the Son of Heaven.”

“Y
ou
played me?” I demanded. “Again?”

“You say that like you’re surprised,” said Kelos. “Now, are you going to take advantage of the opportunity I’ve opened up, or are you going to let hurt feelings make you throw away the one good chance we have at the Son of Heaven?” Then he ducked back through the hole in the wall.

Step back a moment in time to Kelos leading us to an air shaft on top of a poorly cared-for shrine built to propitiate the Spirit of Jealousy. . . .

Where the High Lords and Ladies of Heaven like Shan or Athera had mighty temples in the heart of the precinct, the more minor inhabitants of the Celestial Kingdom had to settle for lesser placement and inferior shrines. Some of them weren’t even granted the courtesy title of “god” though they were said to come of the same stock as their more powerful peers. Jealousy, with his hideously painted face and furry back, was such a one.

“This will be the perfect place to hole up for a few hours.” Kelos gestured for us to precede him down the air shaft. “It’s exceedingly rare for any but the priests to make
offerings to Jealousy. The shrine would have made a good secondary fallback but for one thing.”

“What’s that?” I asked a few moments later as he joined us in the circular room below.

An apelike stone idol hunched in the center of the floor, glaring enviously toward the door and the deeps of the precinct beyond. We had all lowered our shrouds far enough to expose our faces, but Triss remained in his dormant state for the moment. There was no point in waking him up until I was sure we had a secure place to settle in and wait out the hours till dawn.

“Let me show you.” Kelos reached for the low pedestal beneath the crouching Spirit of Jealousy.

With a shove and a back-punishing twist, he forced the idol aside. Before I could say anything, he dropped through the hole he had exposed.

“There’s something fishy going on here,” said Faran. “I don’t like the smell of it.”

Neither did I, but I didn’t want to risk the mission either, so I just sighed. “Not much to do about it now but follow him.” Then I dropped into the hole myself.

Below, a second circular chamber echoed the room above. Only this one was half-full of the bones of sacrifices—mostly goats, but here and there I spied a human skull. They covered all of the floor except for the space directly under the trapdoor and a path that had been forced through the bones to a rough hole punched through the back wall.

“What is this place?” I whispered—I’d never heard of Jealousy having the kind of following that would have produced such offerings.

“Trappings of a secret cult a thousand years old,” said Kelos. “A hidden priesthood concealed within the greater practice of the Spirit Fellows.” The Fellows were the priestly hierarchy devoted to serving all of the lesser denizens of Heaven—a motley bunch looked down on by the rest of the church.

“I’ve never even heard of anything like a separate cult of Jealousy,” Faran said as she joined us.

“No surprise,” replied Kelos. “It died here about the time you were born. That’s when I strangled the last of Jealousy’s exclusive priests.”

“Why do I think that I’m going to hate where this is going?” I said.

“Because you’re a soft-hearted soul, and occasionally a fool.” Kelos ducked through the low hole in the back wall. “You’ve never liked the expediencies of the job, and these people were an expediency, if a necessary one.” He stuck his head back through the gap. “You’re lagging, and you’re sentimentalizing. Needlessly, I might add. The followers of Jealousy were as nasty a set of bloody-minded old murderers as you could ask for, and they needed killing for plenty of reasons beyond mine.”

“How reassuring.” I sighed. “Given all the preparations here, and the fact that you didn’t mention any of them to anyone when we were gaming out our play yesterday, I have to assume there’s more to this visit than holing up and waiting for sunrise and Siri’s distraction?”

“Of course there is.” Kelos barked a sharp word of command then and spell-light flared beyond the arch. “I’ve just started the aqueducts draining. It’ll take some time and, flow rates being what they are, they’ll likely start to fill again before they finish emptying. In the brief window before that happens we have a clear road to the Son of Heaven’s palace and one chance to take it.”

Which brought us full circle to my, “You played me?” and Kelos’s response before he ducked back into the passage beyond the hidden chamber.

As soon as Kelos was out of sight, Faran whispered in my ear. “I’m going to kill him.”

“Fair enough,” I whispered back.

“But not till afterward, please,” Kelos called back. “The waterways are a maze, and I’m the only one who knows the way. You’ll need my help to get to the Son of Heaven.”

“Fine,” said Faran, no longer trying to avoid being overheard. “I’ll wait.”

“Deal,” said Kelos.

Beyond the rough hole, a short passage led maybe ten feet forward and three down before ending at a circular opening in the floor like a well. Jealousy’s shrine was built up against the outer wall of the temple precinct, which meant the well-like opening lay just inside the magical boundary of the precinct. Kelos was nowhere to be seen, but a rope ladder led downward. A glance over the edge showed a crudely dug shaft leading into the top of a vaulted channel nearly full of water. I started down the ladder.

“There’s about three inches of air clearance at the top of the channel now,” Kelos called up from below. “It’ll get bigger as we go along, but that’s enough to get started. We should be more than halfway to the Son of Heaven by the time Siri starts her diversion.”

I wanted to scream and rant, or simply call off the mission. Instead, I eased myself down into the chilly water. I had no doubt that Kelos was telling the truth about this being a one-time opportunity, and I wondered idly how long ago he’d set it up. His mention of strangling the priest around the time that Faran was born, suggested that parts of it went back many years. But that wasn’t all that important, so I pushed it aside. I might not
want
to deal with the Son of Heaven, but I knew that I had to face him, and this might be my only chance.

And, honestly, where we were when Siri started her diversion didn’t really matter. It wouldn’t affect her choices at all. I ducked my head under the surface and looked around. Kelos was perhaps ten feet ahead of me, unshrouded and pulling himself along the roof of the broad tunnel—easily visible because of the bright magelight dangling from his belt. The water was so clear that he seemed to be hanging in empty space, or clinging impossibly to the roof of the tunnel. The stone of the walls was the color of clover honey and rough cut. It also glowed very faintly golden with spell-light. I released Triss then, since we apparently weren’t worrying about light or being seen.

What’s going on?
he asked.

Kelos is playing us again. I’ll tell you about it as we go.

Of course he is.
Triss continued to whisper into my mind for several long seconds after that, but he shifted to the language of the Shades, and all that I could tell was that he was swearing calmly and at length. I felt the same way.

“Do we even need Siri’s diversion anymore?” I asked as I began to pull myself along behind Kelos—a faint but distinct current helped me along.

“Of course we do,” said Kelos. “That’s always been part of the plan if I could manage it. It’s why I convinced Roric that he should talk Jax into sending along some of the youngsters as ‘observers.’ Though, honestly, I’m not sure whether the risen will be more or less susceptible to the call of distraction than the Hand and the Sword would have been.”

“Always?” I said, rather shocked at the lack of any heat to my anger. I was more tired of Kelos’s shit than anything.

“Well, since Chomarr told us about the new arrangements and I had to recalculate this version of the plan as a group effort, anyway. More recently, the water entrance was a third-order backup plan involving just you or Siri, with me trailing myself through town as bait to distract people from noticing the falling wells. But then you didn’t kill the Son of Heaven, and I had to bump it up the list.”

“I thought you said the wards down here were unbreakable,” Faran called as she caught up to me.

“They are,” replied Kelos. “That’s why I had to get my Durkoth Uthudor to create a temporary way to rechannel the system inflow here. That’s what I triggered with that spell, by the way. Without the air pockets created by diverting the water, this approach would be utterly impossible. That’s why I’m so sure the Son of Heaven won’t have bothered to rekey the wards on the gates down here. There is no good way for him to drain the aqueducts and access them without a massive investment of time and magic. He has plenty of the former, but has become ever weaker in the latter.”

“Why are we using a light?” grumbled Ssithra. “Especially such a bright one?”

“Risen,” replied Kelos. “The Son of Heaven has kept a few of his nasties down here since the beginning.”

Faran made a face. “Ewww, what does that do to the water?”

“Nothing too horrible as long as he keeps the number small,” said Kelos. “The only disease the restless dead carry is the curse itself, and they mostly stop losing bits after a while. Especially if they’ve been dry cured and then limed and pickled. It’s not like wild water, so there’s no conflicting elemental magic to wear them away.”

“I know I’m going to hate myself for asking,” said Faran, “but, dry cured? Limed and pickled? I’ve never heard of either of those things before, at least not with regards to the restless dead.”

“I think the Son invented both techniques. For dry curing, he takes a risen and packs them in a barrel of salt for a few months. At the end of that time, their flesh is essentially the texture of jerky. Liming and pickling are a part of the tanning process, and comes after dry curing—he needs to get most of the moisture out of the flesh first. I believe that he has also tried smoking them, though that was less effective. And the natron method rendered them incredibly vulnerable to any kind of open flame.”

“Is it my imagination,” I asked then, “or is the current slowing?” I really didn’t want to hear any more about the Son of Heaven’s restless dead experiments and a change in current could be a serious issue if it wasn’t in the plan.

“Not your imagination,” replied Kelos. “The current should come to a stop in about a half hour, and then it will reverse for a while. At that point, the water will start to drop much faster. The mechanics aren’t worth going into, but I needed a delay to allow whoever ended up making this approach to get clear before the big drain opened up. Without that, we’d be sucked right down into the deeps and drown there—because of the god-magic reinforcing them, the effects of the wards against water-breathing extend some hundreds of feet down and out from the temple precinct.”

I don’t like the sound of that,
sent Triss.

Neither do I.

The water had come down another three or four inches
by now, making it much easier to carry on a conversation. The clarity of the water was kind of eerie. With Kelos’s light carried below the surface you really couldn’t see it at all, only feel it buoying you up. Any time I looked down, it felt like I ought to be falling.

“How far in do we have to get to prevent that from becoming an issue?” I asked.

“Beyond the first of the gates, at least,” said Kelos. “It shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Why is it that I don’t trust a word you say?” I grumbled.

“Because you’re finally learning?” answered Faran.

Kelos laughed aloud—a growly sort of laugh. “Point. Though, to be fair, I am telling the truth this time.”

“Of course you are,” said Triss. “We have your word for it, right?”

“Of course.” Kelos laughed again. “You should never trust me to tell you everything, but you can always trust me to tell you everything you need to know. How to avoid drowning while you’re doing what I want you to do is definitely something you need to know.”

“That’s so very reassuring,” said Faran.

“Don’t let it get you down,” said Kelos. “You’re going to kill me when we’re done here anyway, so what does it matter?”

“That’s the plan, yes,” she agreed. “But I’m pretty sure I’m not the first person who had that on their agenda, and you’re still here. So you’ll forgive me if I wait to put a mark on my hilt for you until after I see you bleed out.”

“True, and fair enough, though you
will
have one decided advantage over every previous attempt.” Kelos’s tone became much more serious then, as he turned through an arch on the left—it was the third on that side and fifth overall, and I couldn’t see anything to distinguish it from the others. “Once the Son of Heaven is dead, my job is done. I’m a tired old man, and at that point I shall be quite ready for my final rest.”

Do you think that’s another play?
asked Triss.

I don’t know anymore.
I sent a mental shrug.
We were
certain he wanted me to kill him back at Ashkent’s castle, but he’s still here. Is that because we outplayed him then? Or is it because we did exactly what he wanted us to do?