Moon's Artifice (17 page)

‘Irato ?’

He looked up. The man with the strange pulsing device was staring straight at him, but Irato was more interested in what he held in his remaining hand. Whatever it was, it had apparently drained the light from the room and blinded Narin and Kesh. He’d almost felt the change in his eyes as the sceptre had activated ; every corner, fold and seam picked out in the perfect black and white of some arcane night sight. Part of him wanted to marvel at the beauty of it, to wonder at this next mystery of his life, but a deeper instinct took over.

Against the shades of greys and star-lit edges of everything in the room, the head of the object was a black hole in the world. No texture or depth, he could see nothing except an empty space on the end of a length of wood carved with some sort of swirling script or decoration. To look at its head made his eyes swim and ache, but a hungry fascination had taken hold of him and Irato found he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

I’m one of them. I see as they do – I really am a killer.

‘Traitor !’ the man barked and Irato could hear his sudden fury over the clatter of Enchei’s continued struggle.

Irato looked down at the knife in his hand as Enchei grappled with another goshe, turning in a circle as though performing a frenetic dance before his partner crumpled and another took his place. He had the knife back behind his head before he’d even thought about what to do next.

I’m a killer,
he thought distantly, the rush and chaos of the fight pushing the horror of that realisation to the far recesses of his mind.
I was just like them, a murderer in the night.

He threw the knife with a strength he didn’t know he had and it thudded into the goshe’s throat before the man could react.

But even a killer can choose,
Irato thought as the goshe slumped back against the far wall.

For a moment the goshe was propped up, then his knees folded and he sank, sceptre slipping from his fingers. It fell awkwardly ; the butt thumped against the floor and tipped to one side, the head falling with the crack of breaking glass. In an instant the darkness was gone, sucked back into the night as though the Gods themselves had wrenched the veil away.

There was a strange still moment as the remaining goshe hesitated. Enchei didn’t. He whirled with his knife leading the way and took down the two inside the door, then stood stock still in the centre of the room as those remaining outside fled. With blood spattered down him and ragged tears in his sleeves where blades had sliced through the leather, Enchei finally relaxed and let his weapon lower as the sound of running feet clattered away outside.

Blood pattered from the blade to the floor as two still-living goshe squirmed and wheezed at Enchei’s feet. He assessed them with a glance and crouched beside one, pushing back the man’s cloth mask for a moment to inspect the injury underneath. After a moment he shook his head and, with a perfunctory motion, opened the man’s throat the rest of the way.

He looked up as Narin and Kesh drunkenly got to their feet. The pair were still disorientated by the unnatural darkness that had enveloped the room, but Enchei ignored them as he cleaned his blade. Irato looked at the scene of carnage that now surrounded them. In a matter of seconds it had become a slaughterhouse. He did a quick count and saw eight dead, maybe more hidden by the open doors.

So I’m not the only one with secrets,
Irato thought as Enchei sheathed his knife and picked up the strange sceptre.

‘Well,’ Enchei declared, a fierce grin on his face as he sucked in air to catch his breath, ‘that was interesting, wasn’t it ?’

‘Interesting ?’ Narin said in a choked voice, staring at the blood on the end of his stave. ‘That’s what you’d call it ?’

Enchei shrugged and turned the sceptre over in his hands. Irato heard the chink of glass within the dull iron-like orb on the end and a few pieces dropped onto the floorboards at Enchei’s feet.

‘Different, then,’ Enchei countered. ‘We certainly learned a thing or two.’

‘Stars above !’ Kesh exclaimed. ‘You sound like Jester’s very own.’

Enchei gave a dismissive shrug. Once adviser to the first Emperor, Lady Jester had been a master politician renowned for her callous and dispassionate advice. The expression was used as a rebuke, but clearly Enchei didn’t object to the comparison.

Irato saw Kesh’s hands were shaking, Narin’s too. The Investigator in particular had paled, as though most likely he’d not killed anyone before. It was probably the most violence Narin had ever witnessed and all the more shocking for the speed of it.

Irato looked down at his own hands, one still in a sling and the other empty after he’d killed a man from across the room. The rough, broad palms and blunt fingers seemed perfectly still.

I really am a killer – but I can’t even bring myself to care about that.

The weight on his mind returned and Irato awkwardly eased himself back down into a chair as the first shouts of alarm echoed up from the courtyard below.

What sort of man was I ? Do I even want to know ?

Narin emerged onto the walkway and looked around the courtyard. Lamps shone from the windows that opened onto it and someone had lit the large iron lanterns on the courtyard wall. He’d had to pick his way over the smears of blood that now stained the wood underfoot, each one of the dead goshe having been dragged out into the courtyard. On the roof were Investigators with crossbows, watching for more goshe, and a half-dozen more stood at the gate keeping the curious faces of locals away. The men and women at the gate carried halberds – none looking comfortable with weapons they rarely trained with, but the threat was enough for the moment.

White figures stood over the bodies of the goshe ; Lawbringers of various ages with Rhe and a bald, grey-bearded man at their centre. The two were talking quietly, Rhe pointing at something on one of the bodies. When the other man glanced up towards Narin, he realised with a jolt that it was Law Master Sheven – a member of the Lawbringer’s Vanguard Council.

The Law Master motioned for Narin to join them and he felt a sinking feeling. Casting around for an excuse to put off the inevitable questioning, Narin alighted upon the blood staining his sleeve. It hadn’t been there after the fight, but Enchei had shown no interest in being the hero of this savage little event and again staged matters to cast Narin as the lead.

He gestured to the stained jacket and Sheven nodded, dismissing him with a curt hand motion. Relieved, Narin escaped inside – back to the relative safety of his bloodied and wrecked rooms, where Irato and Kesh had been ordered to remain.

‘They want to question me,’ he hissed to Enchei.

The tattooist was sat at the table, ignoring the mess as he calmly stitched one of the gashes in his coat’s sleeve. Enchei’s knuckles were scraped raw with a neat cut between the middle and index, but he still worked the fat needle comfortably enough. Through the damaged leather Narin could see the dull gleam of steel, metal plates sewn into the material to serve as armour.

‘Of course they do,’ Enchei said, not looking up. ‘You just fought off two teams of goshe, no surprise they’ve got questions.’

‘So I just pretend, yet again ?’ Narin slammed his palm down on the table to demand Enchei’s attention. ‘I can’t keep doing this ! You can’t keep asking me to lie to my superiors !’

‘Why not ?’ Enchei said in a mild voice. ‘Where’s the harm ?’

‘Where’s the harm ?’ Narin gasped, ‘I’m pretending to be a hero ! That first time I explained it as luck – we took them by surprise and got lucky, but Rhe’s been training me hard this past year. He knows exactly how well I can fight and he knows damn well I’m not this good.’

He looked back to where Kesh and Irato both watched them. The young woman had calmed after the fight, had recovered from the shock better than he had, if Narin was honest, and Irato seemed unaffected by the violence. Neither was looking forward to the interrogation they’d be getting, however.

‘First things first,’ Enchei said. ‘Practice is different to a fight to the death and Rhe knows that too. Secondly, you didn’t do it alone. We all four of us took them down one by one – working together and restricting how many got in the room at any one time. That’s plausible enough ; you’re an Investigator, I’ve had a term in the army and so has Irato, according to his tattoos. They weren’t attacking novices here.’

‘And it’s better than the alternative,’ Kesh said, joining them at the table.

‘Which is ?’

She gave him a look as though he was simple. ‘Them killing us all. I’m happy with a bit of lying compared to that.’

‘I still have to explain it, though,’ Narin insisted. ‘That’s not an easy thing when they’re trained to catch out liars.’

‘So deal with it,’ Kesh said with a fierce look. ‘You want to swap problems with me, fucking help yourself and I’ll tell the old men what they’re expecting to hear.’

Narin didn’t reply as her eyes glistened with tears. Kesh refused to submit to them but he could see the fight in her face, and it wasn’t one she was willing to lose.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to …’

‘I know,’ she said in a small voice, ‘I wasn’t blaming you, but please – I’m exhausted. I need to sleep ; I need to see the morning and my mother safe. I can’t mourn Emari here, like this. I can barely stay on my feet.’

He ducked his head in acknowledgement. ‘You’re right. Enchei, you sure we’ll be safe here ?’

The tattooist glanced towards the bedroom where he’d secreted a few choice items from the goshe before the first Investigator had a chance to search the bodies. There wasn’t much, but the strange sceptre and a bag of some unknown powder he’d pronounced worth hiding were now safe inside a drawer. Safer for all involved if there was no word of dangerous magics that might reach Astaren ears, and a pinch of the powder burned in a pan had showed it wasn’t mere illegal gunpowder the goshe carried.

‘Sure ? No, but compared to you walking the streets to get back to the Palace of Law, I’d risk it. They won’t try again – they don’t have the capabilities to attack us here. Well, maybe they do, but I doubt there’s many like Irato and our friend Perel. This lot certainly weren’t. For all that they recognised Irato, they didn’t fight like elites with sorcery at their fingertips.’

‘They wanted to do it quietly and had the fire-powder to hide any evidence,’ Kesh said with a nod. ‘They’re still scared of attracting the wrong attention.’

‘As are we,’ Enchei said, staring meaningfully at Narin. ‘More’n a few of us have secrets to keep hidden, so go and tell some pretty lies, Narin.’

‘I, ah, dammit. You’ll be the death of me yet, old man. Okay, I’ll go, I just need to change my jacket first,’ he muttered.

Narin went into his bedroom and looked around at the broken remnants of pots on the floor, shutting the door behind him out of instinct. After the evening they’d shared, he felt ridiculous wanting privacy as he changed clothes, but it had been half a decade since he’d last shared quarters with anyone.

He was a man of few possessions and the room, though modest in size, was all the more empty without a bed. The shutters had been boarded up, despite the fact he knew there were guards in the street beyond, but there were still broken fragments of porcelain scattered across the floor. Looking around him he felt the sudden warmth of relief that he hadn’t died leaving such a small impact on the world.

The sum total of my possessions,
he thought sadly,
a handful of broken cups and a few stained jackets. The one good thing in my life is a child I can tell no one about.

Orphaned towards the end of his childhood, Narin had been an outsider among the novices when he’d entered their dormitories – caught at an age between foundlings and those high-castes who’d chosen the calling as they came of age. Being half a step out of place was an old and familiar coat for him, the fact that he might die unremembered by all a long-feared thought.

Unexpectedly, his strength seemed to abandon him and Narin sank to his knees. A sudden chill ran through his body and he wrapped his arms around his belly.

‘Lord Shield,’ he whispered, too quietly to be heard in the other room, ‘do you know you’ve entrusted this to a fraud ?’

Narin bowed his head, not praying exactly but for once hoping fervently the
Gods were listening to him.

‘I don’t have the strength for this ; I can’t even fall in love without screwing it up. How am I supposed to claim I’m a hero now ? How am I supposed to uphold the law and oaths when my whole life is a lie ?’

He knelt there a dozen heartbeats or more before the mantle of despondency lifted slightly. Narin looked up at the faint trace of starlight creeping through the boards over the window. His thoughts went inexorably to Kine, the flash of white teeth when she smiled – as secret as the starlight through those boards, for Wyvern women would always hide a smile from their prideful menfolk.

We argued about it once,
Narin recalled.
That first time I realised I loved her. She smiled and turned away, hid her mouth. I could hear her laugh and I wanted to see her smile. I took her hand to pull it away and in that first touch I knew.

He looked around at the room again. Now it was just a room to him, familiar perhaps but it told nothing of who he was, of the life he led. The realisation gave him strength again – these meagre possessions couldn’t sum up a life. Perhaps some lord or merchant prince could see their life in their estates and goods, but it was not the Lawbringer way.

I am my oaths and the love I bear,
he declared in the privacy of his mind,
those I protect by my duty whether or not I ever know of them.
No one can take that from me. If I could leave all this behind, have my memory cursed for the liar I am but run away with Kine, would I ?
He nodded.

The merchant warrants across the sea, the trader towns and trade corridors where no Great House ruled
–
someone there would value his training and not care about scandal. There he could still serve the Emperor’s law and build a life of his own.