Lady of Mercy (The Sundered, Book 3) (16 page)

And the worst thing about it was that he was probably right. If he knew the city, and could find any information about the occupied state of Culverne, the stopover would be very valuable.

If he knew the city.

But if he didn’t ...

“All right,” she heard herself saying. “We’ll enter the city.”

“Good. I have to leave for the moment to procure supplies. Never fear, though—I shall return in due haste. I never keep a pretty woman—uh, never mind.” He walked out of the study in the wake of Erin’s silence.

 

Erin waited in the dying warmth of the room, with fire as her sole companion. She listened for the jaunty step in the hall that would sound his return as he brought those supplies so necessary in the growing cold. Supplies, she mused bitterly, that she herself couldn’t safely provide.

She watched the flicker of firelight. It was red, almost too red, as it dwindled. She remembered and shivered abruptly, drawing her arms close. Red was the color of pain, the color of his eyes. It was the color of the blood that bound her life. Beyond her, through the wide slit of heavy open curtains, darkness beckoned, all cold winter night, devoid of the sounds of motion.

For a moment she saw undulating just to one side of the glass the writhing landscape of the Dark Heart.

The door to the suite burst open and Erin flew from it, a pale, half-ethereal shadow. Her feet felt less solid, and they made no noise as they struck ground that seemed shaky and treacherous. She ran to the room that Darin shared with Trethar, and with trembling hands knocked on the door.

Trethar opened it and frowned. “What’s happened?” he asked softly. She made no answer.

Darin sat in the center of his cot. The sweat beading his forehead was the only thing that made Erin certain he was still alive. With a wordless little cry she started forward. The motion seemed to pull some invisible string, and Darin’s eyes, circled with shadow, fluttered open.

He gave her a wan, happy little smile. “Look, Erin,” he said softly. “Look at what I can do.”

He raised his hands from their resting place in his lap; cupped between them, like a frail blossom, was a tiny red flame. She stared at it, transfixed.

“Erin? Erin, are you all right?”

Verdann loomed in the distance, sprawling beyond the open
ground of blanketed farmers’ fields, rising steadily upward in a vain attempt to dominate the sky as it did the countryside. The walls of the city were high. From a mile off, they could be seen standing out against the flat farmland; what remained of the city inside, only approaching it would reveal.

“This,” Robert said conversationally as he picked up his pace, “is the evidence of the effectiveness of Marantine. It is the only city thus walled in the Empire. The border city.” He looked irritably back when Darin failed to respond.

Trethar murmured something quietly, and Darin looked up.

“Sorry, Robert. What were you saying?”

“That you spend altogether too much time with that ill-tempered old man. Never mind. It isn’t important.”

Darin wondered how a grown man could sound so petulant.

“Robert?”

“lady?”

“Will it be hard to gain entrance?”

“Not now. It’s been a number of years since Marantine was a threat, and besides, I came prepared for this.” He fingered the collars of a jacket that was still fine and noble, even if it had seen an extraordinary amount of use in the past month.

She nodded and fell silent. Robert stared at her a moment and then walked briskly toward the city once more, leaving his imprint in the powdered snow.

 

True to his word, Robert had come prepared. When the guards at the gate—and the term
guard
was to be applied advisedly—
stopped them, he walked quietly to where they stood. His hands flew around the air, and from the angle of his chin, Erin knew that he was aggrandizing himself. She was thankful she couldn’t hear the words, although the mixture of tone and temper carried quite well.

Biting her lip, she forced her hand away from the sword hilt, wondering exactly how it was that Robert had survived his personality. She was certain that every guard on the curtain wall was now staring pointedly at their heads, and she barely managed to maintain an aura of indifference to match her lord’s. But as she heard the trill of his annoying, flowery speech lengthen on into a quarter of an hour, she made a note to speak with him. Next time, they would follow her lead.

“Very well, my good men,” Robert said loudly, in a tone that conveyed anything but respect, “if you would be so kind?” He brought something out from under his cloak and passed it quickly into the outstretched hand of one of the guards. The clinking of metal against metal was audible, even over Robert’s huffing.

The guards nodded in bored indifference and stood aside.

“Don’t just stand there gawking,” Robert said, irritable once again. “Come on. We’ve little time to reach an inn before they close the quarter down for the evening.”

Erin stood-back and let Darin and Trethar precede her.

“And I don’t need to say—” Robert began.

“Good. Don’t.”

The look that passed from Robert to the brown-robed mage was sharp and clear. “—that I can’t very well afford to buy off any more of these detestable guards. So we don’t want to be caught out past curfew.”

“Where are we going?”

“Talking,” Robert replied, as Trethar listened expectantly, “will only slow us down.”

 

“Robert, where are we going?”

“Now now, Darin.” Robert glanced nervously at the sky; it was already a deep blue.

Darin’s eyes darted from building to building, catching the lengthening shadows of garbage and snow in the alleyways. “I lived in Malakar for four years. I know the cities of the Empire. Where are you taking us?”

“Darin, really, I—what are you doing? Twin Hearts, Darin, is that necessary?” He eyed the staff of Culverne with some distaste as it slid out of the restraining strap at Darin’s back. With exaggerated care, the slight man brought his fingers up to massage his dimpled forehead. Behind Darin, the sound of metal’s hiss could be heard, and Robert wheeled almost too quickly and overbalanced on the ice. He prevented himself from falling.

“Lady, please.” His eyes fell to the shimmering blade of the unsheathed sword that adorned Erin’s hand. “I assure you, I know this city. Would
I
lead you into danger?”

Erin’s wary turn of the head was all the answer he needed—and all the answer she gave. He sighed.

“I realize that this is not, perhaps, the most savory part of the city, but I—”

“Where are we going?”

Darin, he might ignore; Trethar he might annoy. To Lady Erin, he gave an answer. “The Red Dog Inn.”

“Lead,” Erin said softly; the name meant nothing to her. “Lead quickly. We’ll follow.”

To Darin’s surprise, Robert did as bid without a single word. His expression spoke volumes—but Robert rarely left anything to the subtlety of expression alone.

After another ten minutes, no one was concerned with Robert. The buildings around them grew taller and less well kept; the alleys between these buildings grew darker and more frequent. All of the city’s shadows seemed to gather here; the stretch of buildings in the dying sun seemed the perfect harbor for them. There was no pretense of civility or finery anywhere in sight, and a soft breeze moved through the streets, carrying with it a smell of old garbage, urine, and decay.

Trethar mumbled a few sharp words to himself—nonmagical words, to Darin’s ears, that he wasn’t particularly interested in hearing fully.
If we get where we’re going safely,
he said to Bethany, as she thrummed in his gloved hand,
I’m going to kill Robert.
Bethany made no response.

Robert stopped abruptly in front of one of several alleys. “Here.”

“Here?” Trethar asked, with narrowed eyes. “You lead.”

“It’s perfectly safe. It will get us out of the streets more quickly; if we don’t take the short cut, we’ve got to circumnavigate another four blocks.”

“You lead.”

“Nothing is going to happen, old man. Trust me. I’ve gone through this alley literally hundreds of times.”

A small red glow started in Trethar’s cupped hands.

“All right,” Robert said tartly, “if it makes you feel better, I’m perfectly willing to lead.”

The light in Trethar’s hands dimmed as Robert stepped into the alley. Erin followed at his heels, brushing past Darin so deftly he hardly had time to misstep. As he recovered, Trethar also dodged in front of him.

“Watch our backs, Darin.”

Darin drew his staff closer to his chest and followed his companions. They kept quite close together; if Darin had reached out with his staff, he would have been able to touch Erin’s stiff back just beyond Trethar’s chest.

“You see?” He heard Robert hiss. “No one’s—”

“Evening, Your Lordship.”

As one person, they froze. A shadow detached itself from the wall a few feet ahead of Robert. Then another joined the first, and another, and another.

“And what do we have here?”

Robert muttered something quietly.

“Tsk, tsk, Your Lordship. Language like that sets a bad example for us all.” The shadow stepped forward, and Darin leaned around Trethar’s broad back to try to get a better view. He could make out the outline of a slender man, no more.

“We’re on our way to the Red Dog.” Robert’s voice was subtly changed. “We want no trouble.”

“The Red Dog?” The man barked out a terse laugh. “And you don’t want trouble?” The laughter, forced, died. After a significant pause, the man’s voice became less friendly—and infinitely more honest. “Appears you’re in the wrong section of the city.”

“Nonetheless,” Robert replied, a sudden edge to his voice, “that is where we are headed. I’d suggest that you step out of the way.” There was nothing at all flowery in the words; no exaggerated politeness, no aggrieved complaint. He was cool and still—economy had replaced theatrics. For the first time in weeks, Darin remembered clearly how they had first met.

“Not very friendly, is he?” another voice said. A fifth
shadow joined the four. Darin heard the sharp intake of Erin’s breath. Frustrated, his fingers tensed around Bethany.

Light?
her voice whispered, startling him. He nodded, and a pale green glow filled the alley, robbing it of shadow, but not of menace. He could clearly see that the foremost of their enemies was obviously the leader; his style of dress, while somewhat dirty, was whole and a cut above the rest. Dark leather over the edge of a sweater fell to his midthigh; breeches trailed into worn boots. The man’s face was thin, a crescent of white, sided by shadows and hair, as the moon on low ebb. Of the four men, with their scarred, emaciated faces, only one other caught Darin’s attention, and held it: the thin, tall man, shivering slightly in the cold, who held a crossbow.

“Isn’t that a bit fancy for your line of business?” Robert asked, casually letting his hands fall to his hips.

“Whatever works,” the man holding it replied. He lifted it, just as casual in the motion as Robert had been in his shift of position, and centered it on Robert’s chest.

“Now, Your Lordship,” the leader said, “you should take a lesson from all of this. Wandering the streets of Verdann ain’t safe after curfew.” His voice lost banter and cruel mirth. “Drop the sword, Lady.”

“Why should I?” Erin asked, in a flawlessly reasonable voice. The light in the alley played at her back; Darin could not see her face, but her hair shone like wire in the warrior’s braid.

The man holding the crossbow swiveled slightly. His mouth was turned up in a smirk, and one thin brow was raised, almost in disbelief.

She returned his stare. Her grip on the sword slackened. Crouching down, she let the edge of the blade strike the cold ground; it seemed suddenly so sharp it might cut snowflakes.

The man nodded; he had expected no real resistance.

Erin raised her face suddenly, to meet his gaze again. “Not good enough.” Her voice was cold and hard. A sudden light burned white in the alley, starting directly in front of the crossbowman’s eyes and spreading outward in one brief flash. Darin had time to see the color of the man’s eyes—brown—before the light became too harsh and too painful.

For the brief seconds that sight was lost to him, he concentrated on the cries—the screams—of the men who had thought
to attack them. They danced around the scuffle of bodies and the sound of metal against metal.

Robert was nowhere in sight. Trethar stood, completely still, his back to one wall. Gripping Bethany tightly, Darin brushed past the older man, shaking off the brown-robed arm that tried to restrain him. He had to reach Erin. He had to help her.

Light called its own. “Erin!”

She didn’t answer, and the trail of Bethany’s gentle green light became just another component of shadow. A loud scream filled the alley. Male. Not Erin’s. Darin stepped forward and stumbled over a body that lay facedown in the crushed snow. A foot away from its outstretched hand was a crossbow, the string slack.

“Erin?” Using Bethany as support, he struggled forward again. When he stopped, Bethany supported the whole of his weight.

Even in the darkness, he could see her clearly. There was no one left standing to block his sight. Around her feet, like a terrible tribute, bodies lay at odd angles. Darin was grateful, then, that the light still burned at his vision. He saw no details.

Trethar came to stand behind him. He touched Darin’s shoulder with one hand, as if to assure himself that his student was whole. That hand shook. “Did you kill them all?” he asked softly.

Erin turned to face the two of them, her eyes glittering in darkness, all deep and green and light. Darin shuddered, struck suddenly by the wrongness of it—that light, in this place. She walked forward to the body of the man who’d held the crossbow. With one foot, she rolled him over. “Not all.”