King of Assassins: The Elven Ways: Book Three (47 page)

He didn’t follow the movement with his gaze as she’d wanted him to. He’d seen her do it before, and this time with her foot lashed out in a vicious arc aimed at his temple, he ducked under it, her leg now thrown over his shoulder, and dumped her onto her back. He twisted her over onto her face and jumped with both knees to her kidneys, to a choked squeal of pain. Vicious, low and necessary, for Bretta had made it plan she would not stop at halting him in his tracks. She intended to kill him. To defeat her, he’d half-killed her.

Bretta let out a tiny whine as he crossed her arms behind her back and used the blood-soaked rag of her sleeve to bind her hands together. She kicked viciously at him as he stood up, grazing the knee she’d damaged, but he danced back to look down at her as she rolled to her back, glaring up at him.

He turned on heel and resumed his walk to the waiting guide who knelt even more hunched upon himself, muttering or incanting below his breath. Not Kobrir, maybe not even human at all, a wretched being curled up and ranting in a broken, barely audible voice. Sevryn thought it a bad joke.

Tired of games, bruised and hurting, Sevryn made short work of the two Kobrir who jumped him just short of his goal. He heard bones crack and sinews tear as he thrust them aside and knew a moment of fleeting regret as he passed over their writhing forms in the dirt.

One stride away from his guide, he turned. Kobrir filled the far end of the roughly circular arena where he’d started his journey. Did they ready themselves to rush him one last time?

He lifted both hands. “Are we done now?”

The herbalist materialized from out of the rock shadows and tossed him a small, closed pouch. It landed with a thump at his feet. “We are done. You are just beginning.”

Sevryn slid the toe of his foot under it, kicking it into midair where he caught it and tucked it inside the fold of his shirt after feeling its contents. Two hard vials lay within: the king’s rest, as promised. And the cuffs they’d given him originally, taken back and now restored, as well as the marked dagger.

He turned back to the guide. The man, if it was a man, stank, sweating out booze and bad food and little sleep. A stream of low and muttered nonsense issued from the filthy bag over its head, its edges damp with spittle.

He bent and pulled the hood off.

Bregan Oxfort babbled up at him, blinking blindly into the light.

N
UTMEG SAT AT HER LOOM, working at creating a fabric she intended to use for the baby’s winter season, to sew a sleeping bag against the drafty cold. She worked steadily, hands and feet moving in concert, the old wooden loom somewhat noisy as she moved it in a steady rhythm, her thoughts drifting far away. The mild thump and creak of the wood and the noise of fiber upon fiber as she passed the shuttles back and forth and corrected her tensions from time to time occupied her. It did not compare with the two great looms at her mother’s shop, with treadles and tension bars and the ability to create not only more intricate patterns but also finer cloth, but she’d grown up with a loom much like this one and it granted a certain serenity with its working. She listened to the muted clatter and tried to ignore the thoughts beating on the inside of her skull. Where was Rivergrace? Why did her Vaelinar guards seem intent on knowing if she had heard from her sister? What was happening at Ashenbrook? She had caught them talking about wanting to join their fellows there but they quickly stopped speaking if she drew near, thinking she had not heard them. If asked, they closed their lips mutely. Her Vaelinar guards saying little made Nutmeg more than suspicious at their tight-lipped demeanor.

She sat up, arching her back and shoulders to ease the tension. A hard thump somewhere deep in the house made the timbers vibrate and a muffled shout followed. She stood abruptly. Shadows swept over the windows, darkening the room, and she could hear thunder rolling from far away, gaining on Calcort even though she couldn’t see lightning striking. The walls shuddered. Bric-a-brac on shelves about the room danced in place uneasily. She put her hand out to steady herself, but it wasn’t a quake. The shaking came with the low rumble, a vibration that seemed to sink all the way into the bedrock below Calcort’s foundations. The whole city trembled at it. A wind came up with a sound like the rushing of a river at full flood tide, and the air filled with a salty musk. She could hear the sharp, piercing shrieks of birds as they flew past the farmhouse, fleeing. Then, all went silent except for that rumbling which grew ever steadily louder and nearer. The sun fled, a dark curtain dropping over the house.

Nutmeg lifted her chin in wonder and a bit of fear. She patted her thigh, where she kept a scabbard strapped, a thin but deadly blade inside it. She even slept with it now, when she could sleep. Her gaze darted to the short sword leaning against the wall nearby. Better the sword.

She could hear the rain start, heavy thudding drops that gave way to a cascade of water. She stepped to the window, and all she could see through the breaks in the shutters made it look as if she stood under a waterfall. The roof groaned with the weight being deluged upon it. Hard thumps fell onto the roof, and the house continued to shudder under the assault.

She stepped back abruptly as the door to the room banged open, Dayne filling it.

“We’re under attack.”

“Who?”

“Raymy. They’re dropping from the sky like hailstones.”

She went to the nearest cloak peg and grabbed her sword and harness strap from it. No more going about the waist, she thought ruefully, and simply slung it from her shoulder. “Where are we going?”

“Wherever we can,” he answered grimly.

Garner met up with Verdayne in the hall.

“When did you get home?”

“Late last night.” He looked rumpled and tired, but he wore rings on his fingers and a heavy gold chain about his neck. Gambling evidently agreed with him. He looked at Nutmeg and back to Bistel’s half-Dweller son. “Can you use those?” His gaze fixed on the sword and dagger in Verdayne’s hands.

“Quite well, actually.”

“Then you stay with her.”

“I have no intentions of going elsewhere. You?”

“With my father and brothers, at the yard. There’s attackers among the Raymy. We’ll be fine as long as they don’t use fire.” Garner made a face. “Even this rain can’t hold, and the timbers here are old and dry.”

“If they do use fire?”

“Get down in the root cellar and have Nutmeg show you the tunnel. It heads into the fields.”

She felt the blood drain from her face. “Garner, I can’t get through the tunnel in this condition.”

He looked upon her, seeing what he’d missed in the season he’d been roving. “Tree’s blood. Then get out the back through the vineyards, and to the caves beyond. Just get there, however you can. I’ll hold them off.”

“We’ll manage,” Verdayne said firmly, putting his hand on Nutmeg’s wrist. “I understand you’re a betting man. Odds?”

“Odds are it’s Nutmeg they’re after, driving the Raymy before them as a decoy.”

“I’ll take that bet.” He pulled Nutmeg toward him firmly. “They’ll have to get through me.”

“They?” Nutmeg looked from one to another.

Her brother took her hand a moment and squeezed it. “I understand they’re wearing the black and silver.”

No disguise for the murderers this time. She bit her lip and then took a brave breath. “I understand.”

Garner gave a sharp nod, darting away toward the front of the house at Tolby’s bellow.

Nutmeg hated that her heart pounded. She wanted to go back to her room and retrieve those things she couldn’t be without: the shawl that Rivergrace had woven to be a baby blanket, the small ring Jeredon had given her without ties, Bistel’s journal. The journal she’d tucked in its secret spot in the adobe foot of the bedroom wall where it would most likely survive any fire, the mud bricks as thick as two feet, but flame would destroy her other memories to ash left out in the open as they were. Still, only things. She told herself that as she could hear Vaelinar high cries and taunts over the clash of weapons.

She pulled herself together. “This way.”

“The cellar?”

“I thought we discussed that? I’d never get this great belly through th’ kitchen door and down the ladder. No, the backdoor to the yards is this way.” She shuddered as something screamed. “We may have to fight our way through, but once we hit the maze of the vineyards, we’re free.”

“Or trapped. They can burn through those vines if they know we’re in them.”

She threw him a look, knowing her face must have paled for she felt the warmth leave her cheeks. Then she shook her head vigorously. “Let them. They’re green enough, it’ll be hard to spark them and that should slow ’em down. The grapes will regrow, but they’ll not catch us.” She did not say that rebuilding the vineyards would take years, but Verdayne undoubtedly knew that and that if Tolby Farbranch had a choice between sacrificing the vines or his daughter, he’d pick the vines. She pushed her way outside into a nearly black wash of rain and cloud that pummeled her so that she ducked her head and hunched over in an effort not to be beaten to death. She could almost hear Verdayne follow her out, but only because the door made a muffled bump at his heels. The thunder had slowed to a vibrating growl, low and hard to hear but pressuring her ears all the same. She could smell the fish-and-salt odor of the ocean; it dwarfed her other senses, and she could taste the salt with every breath as it filled her nostrils and coated her lips. The brine made her almost instantly thirsty, and they’d left with nothing but weapons.

She scurried across the herb garden and through the flower beds, knowing the pelting rain would hide their footprints in mere moments as mud and water splashed about her ankles. Behind her, Verdayne let out a muffled curse and then a grunt as if he hefted something off his blades. She threw a look back over her shoulder and saw two dark figures behind her, one tumbling to the ground. She ran faster.

Something splashed at her heels. “Verdayne?”

“Behind you. Keep going.”

That was the nut of it, though, wasn’t it? The baby crowded her lungs and her stomach. She waddled, rotten apples, like an old biddy. She could hardly eat or breathe deep some days, and now, gasping for air already and hardly running faster than a crazed turtle, she didn’t know how far she could go. But there wasn’t a question in Nutmeg’s mind that she stop. Tressandre ild Fallyn’s men would rip this child from her body, killing it and her in the process. She had not a doubt that those were the orders. She crouched over, for the vines were only now reaching toward the sky with their creepers and would grow much higher. Now she had to bend and shuffle as fast as she could. Mud pulled at her steps, weighing her feet down, as the pouring rain made it difficult to even see her way—but she opened her newly made Vaelinar sight, and the green threads of the growing fields caught her eye and tugged her way to them. And, to her astonishment, the rain tasted of salt, as though the skies wept heavily upon Calcort. Pray it did not last long, or the salt would kill the vines without any other help.

Nothing else jumped at them as they entered the vineyard. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath and scan their path. The terraced fields need not be a one-way trap. She could take him to the stone door where she’d taken Rivergrace and Sevryn and hope that one of the two of them could get it open. Once inside, the tunnels would take them through the stony hills to the river on the other side or, if they stayed to the tunnels, farther beyond. And, more importantly, it would be a locked stone door between them and pursuers.

She caught the sense of the door, hidden up the hill and over a terrace or two, like a beacon shining at her. Nutmeg had never seen it in that light before, but then . . . she brushed her hand over her face, trying to dry it a bit. She hadn’t had eyes like this before either.

Verdayne hovered at her shoulder. “My lady?”

“I’m fine. Just a bit winded. Stay close.” She took off toward the tunnel door, not running, but settling for a jog, and put her hands to her sling, tightening it a bit, so her stomach wouldn’t jostle about, stretching her skin painfully and making things even more uncomfortable. Halfway up the steep terrace, she felt Verdayne’s hand against her lower back, pushing ever so slightly, helping her make the grade.

They reached the top as the darkness of the clouds began to part, the wind tearing them away in long, black wisps, and she went to her knees.

“Nutmeg!”

“Hush and get down! You’ll be seen.” She yanked at his knee; he fell beside her in a rough kneel. Her skin stung from the hard rain, more so now that it had begun to let up and she could feel something beyond burning numbness. She wondered if her face would have bruises, tiny purple dots all over it as if she’d been in a hailstorm, when this was all over.

“What did you kill back there?”

“Raymy. It sort of fell off the roof behind us and came up fighting.”

Nutmeg wiped her eyes dry. “I’ve heard of toads being carried in the rain and then dropped far and away from their pond, but not lizard Demons.” She inhaled deeply. “At least the rain up here has lost its salt or the grapes would be done for, anyway.” She tapped a bunch hanging near her face, little green globes not yet swelled with juice and flavor. She pointed out the direction she intended to take and began to creep that way, not standing until they went over the stony ridge. Mud-caked, she stomped her boots once or twice and watched the sludge slowly run off her clothes.

“I’m going to need a bath.”

Verdayne laughed softly. “At the very least. What other plans do you have?”

“There’s a door that way, cut into the stone. There are limestone caves and caverns that run under these hills, although most have been deliberately shut off. This one hasn’t.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Something left of the Mageborn?”

“Probably. Or just smugglers looking for a back way into Calcort. More likely smugglers. Th’ city has a history of them as any river or port city has, eh?”

He straightened to his full height behind her, eyeing the horizon they’d just left. “Seems too quiet.”

“Because of the storm. They’ll be dazed for a bit, uncertain.” She followed his line of sight. “Do you think they held the house?”

“Not for lack of trying. Tolby knows how to handle himself and your brother Garner has used the pointy end of a sword more than once, I think. And Hosmer, certainly.”

“Against Vaelinars.”

“Better Vaelinars than Kobrir.”

She blew a breath out at that. He was right, of course, too right. “Do you think they knew that the Raymy would drop like that? How could the ild Fallyn have guessed that?”

“It’s possible. I haven’t seen it, but it’s said there’s been Raymy sightings all up and down the coast. Clouds come in, and Raymy drop from the sky. They might have already been here, planning their move, and saw the storm coming in.” Verdayne paused and then put his hand to her cheek, gently. “Enough talk. Voices carry on a wet day.”

She nodded then, and strangely missed the warm strength of his fingers upon her face as he took his hand away. With a kick to her ribs from the inside, she began to make her way to the corner of the vineyards where stone met the soil.

When they finally arrived, she was too out of breath to do more than point at it, bend over, and attempt to catch up.

Verdayne brushed past her, his back to her, as he examined the door closely. “Smugglers might have used these caves, but that carving should tell you it wasn’t made by them.”