The Great Rift (28 page)

Dante stood, sleeves foamy with blood. "This man attacked us."

The guards' faces were drawn with angry caution. On seeing Dante, the expression of the man on the right shifted to relieved recognition. "Are you all right, my lord?"

"I'm fine." Dante nodded to the knife Lira had knocked down the planks. "Be careful with his blade. It may be poisoned."

Another pair of guards arrived to handle the crowds and the corpse. The first pair led Dante and crew through the holiday-busied streets to the nearest guard station, a tight-quartered space inside one of the three-story towers that rose at intervals from the Pridegate. There, Dante answered questions (which he mostly ducked; he'd pass his suspicions about Cassinder along to Cally during his dressing-down) and waited around for a half hour until yet another guard arrived to inform Dante and Blays their presence was required at the Sealed Citadel. As if fearing they'd attempt to flee, this latest guard accompanied them from the tower into the rising hills beyond the Pridegate.

Children wove through the crowds, their dark hair threaded with grassy crowns. Men stopped at public houses while their wives eyed bright fabric and bought pies stuffed with the first and hardiest harvests—frostpeas, Gaskan squash, turnips. Most of the buildings here had been occupied and maintained even during Narashtovik's leanest times, and showed little of the recent patching and reconstruction that dominated the structures beyond the outer wall. Stone gargoyles guarded the rooftop gutters, silently judging the boisterous humans below.

"Thank you," Dante said to Lira. It was the first moment of semi-privacy they'd had since the attack. "I suppose that makes us even."

She shrugged, gazing across the revelers. "An action done in the name of duty is never the equal of one taken freely."

He gave her a long and skeptical look. "Are you talking about snagging you from that boat? We did that to find out where the Bloody Knuckles had gone. Saving you for information is no different than you saving me because of some crazy debt."

"What if I walk away and you're killed five minutes from now? My debt wouldn't look so repaid then."

"It's no fair if you keep changing the rules."

They passed under an arch of the Ingate, a second ring of solid stone which had separated nobles and well-landed merchants from the decay that beset the city for so long. Inside, the streets were rather more subdued; families strolled together between the bright tarps shading the stalls and carts gathered at every intersection and plaza. Dante could have differentiated the traders past the Ingate from those outside it even without the fine dress and casual pace of their clientele. Outside the Ingate, carts were piled high with cloth and toys. Inside it, velvet-topped displays held a bare sprinkle of goods—a half dozen rings, say, gleaming amidst the empty space of their surroundings.

A wide stone avenue climbed the city's central hill. The endless shadow of the cathedral fell over Dante's face. Across from it, a towering citadel gazed down from behind its unscratched walls. Dante wore none of the trappings of his station, but before he could introduce himself at the Sealed Citadel's iron gate, it raised with a series of heavy clanks.

"What, they don't even ask your name?" Blays said as they crossed into the courtyard. "If I'd arrived by myself, I'd be waiting until the walls fell down."

Gant waited just inside the courtyard, pale enough to look as though he walked between sunbeams and narrow-shouldered enough for Dante to believe he did just that. The majordomo bowed, back curved in that particular Narashtovik fashion.

"My lord Dante. It's been too long."

"I know, Gant," Dante said. "Hello and goodbye."

Gant tilted back his face. "Goodbye?"

"Figured I'd better say it now, since Cally's about to murder me. Is he up in his chambers?"

"I believe so. And I don't believe he will murder you, my lord. No matter what you've done this time."

"Oh, I don't know." He gestured to Lira and Mourn. "I've got two guests, as you can see. Will you find lodgings for them?"

"At once." Gant bowed and bobbed his head in a fashion that perfectly intimated Mourn and Lira should follow him up the stairs into the keep. Dante followed, too, but as Gant swept the others through the quiet foyer on his way to the guest rooms at the rear, Dante and Blays curled up the main stairwell instead.

"Well," Blays said, the single word echoing up the stone steps.

"Well," Dante agreed.

"You don't
really
think he could..?"

"No, I don't think so. Cally's a tyrant, but generally not a violent one."

"That's a relief," Blays said. "Except for the fact that means we have no idea who just tried to kill you."

Dante saved the rest of his breath for the stairs. Cally kept his quarters at the very top of the keep. Dante had no idea how the old man managed to climb up and down the stairs all day long. It probably involved demons. Big ones.

At last they reached the upper landing. A black carpet striped the hall. Tapestries illustrated and insulated the walls, weavings of Arawn at his mill and the starry arrangement of the heavens. Cally's double doors were closed but unlocked. As Dante opened the door, a wintry breeze knifed from the open balcony and cut past his face. Dante's boots sunk into the cushy black rug. The woman to occupy the room prior to Cally had busied it with pious marks of her station as High Priestess of Arawn: holy books, candlesticks, intricately illuminated parchments, and silver statues of the White Tree. On moving in years back, Cally had hollered "Lookout below!" from the balcony and then flung most of the room's contents straight out the window. Now his chambers most closely resembled a scribe's den—bookshelves along both walls, black grenados of ink gleaming from the door-sized desk, great nests of parchment and quills and quill-snips and jars of white blotting-sand. That left the room's center quite empty. So, too, was the stuffed red chair at the far end of the room. The fireplace was cold and dark.

"Suppose he's invisible?" Blays said.

"No, I suppose he's quite visible. In a place that isn't here."

Dante left to track down a steward. The third man he found knew where Cally was—among the ruins on the outskirts of town—but balked at leading them there until Dante reminded him that dusting the mantels was several rungs less important than a direct order from a member of the Council of Narashtovik. After that, the man led them back downstairs and into the streets in a southerly course. Past the Pridegate, as many houses were ruined as intact. Many lots were nothing but snow, grass, and mounded stone. Twice, explosions boomed through the ruins further to the south.

"That's him, isn't it?" Dante said.

The servant didn't glance over. "I couldn't possibly say, my lord."

"That's definitely him," Blays said.

The steward led them into a patchwork field of snow and grass. One wall of a farmhouse stood between a slew of old stones and rotten timbers. Beside it, a solid chimney rose thirty feet into the sky, freestanding and intact. The servant led them toward its massive hearth. The ground around it was scorched. The cold wind stirred the scent of something burnt and sharp. A hinged door of iron had been bolted to the base of the chimney. It was also scorched.

"My lords," the steward said.

"Yes?" Dante said.

"I have taken you to Callimandicus. May I return to the Citadel now?"

Blays knelt and touched the patina of charcoal around the chimney. "Ye gods, we're too late! He's blown himself to hell!"

Two skinny legs thrust from the entrance to the chimney, wrinkled and bare. They were accompanied by a muffled, echoing voice. "Who goes there?"

"A confused person," Dante said.

"Two confused people," Blays said.

"Oh," the voice said. "You two."

The legs kicked, toenails scraping soot from the chimney walls. Ash sifted to the blasted ground at the chimney's base. The old man tumbled to the ground with a grunt. Cally blinked at them in the overcast sunlight, soot smearing his cheeks and his tangled beard. Between the black of the ash and the white of his beard, his eyes gleamed from his cheeks like captured sky. His bare legs sprawled, liver-spotted and hairless. A long shirt draped past his loins.

"What happened to your pants?" Blays said.

"My—?" Cally glanced down at his legs. "Oh. Lost those about an hour ago."

"Doing what?" Dante said. "Or is that a question I should leave in peace?"

"Doing this." Cally collected himself from the fireplace, careful not to bang his head on the brick of the overhanging hearth, and padded to a cart parked halfway across the field. There, he loaded a wheelbarrow with two sacks; one small and shifting with something like sand, the other big, clanky, and bulging with what sounded like crockery.

"Wheel this over for me, would you? Crawling up chimneys is hard work."

Dante muttered and leaned into the wheelbarrow. Back at the chimney, Cally tossed the small sack into the soot at its base, then gestured at the bag of dishes. "Get those out and pile them up, would you?"

Dante tore open the sack, which was indeed full of dishes, and began placing them atop the smaller bag, stirring fine clouds of choking dust. He dropped his third handful, shattering crockery over the brickwork. He swore.

"No matter." Cally flapped his hand as if to wave away the dust. "It'll all be like that in a moment."

Dante shrugged and returned, with considerably more roughness, to loading up the dishes. Cally swung the iron door closed and clamped it shut with several locks, sealing the hearth.

He batted cinders from his beard. "You might want to step back. Unless you would prefer to be flung back instead."

Cally turned and ran, shirttails flapping. Dante and Blays followed. Some fifty feet from the towering chimney, Cally hunkered down in the snowy grass. Nether roiled around his hands. His tongue poked from the corner of his mouth. Shadows flowed in a river from his hands, gushing under the iron door and disappearing into the chimney.

A tremendous bang rattled the chimney, the door, and Dante's teeth. Black smoke plumed from its mouth. An upward hail of crockery vomited into the sky.

"Taim's virgin daughter!" Dante hollered.

Cally chortled, pointing at the soaring debris. "You see?"

"Very good," Blays said, rubbing his ear. "You've discovered the world's worst way to clean a chimney."

Dante goggled up at the tumbling specks. "What was in the other sack?"

Cally shrugged his bony shoulders. "Dried urine. Black sand. A few other things. That just gives it an extra shove. Most of the force came from the nether."

"What happens when it comes down?"

"Oh, yes. Well, we should probably run again before that happens." Cally took his own advice, dashing across the field with considerable speed for his advanced age. A stand of pines flanked the dilapidated farmland. Before they'd crossed half the distance to the shield of trees, jagged flecks of dishes rained down to earth, pattering the snow and plinking from stones. Cally flung his arms over his head and laughed.

Dante reached the pines and hunkered under the branches to catch his breath. Black smog drifted south on the bay-birthed wind. "What's all this about? A crusade against crockery?"

"Imagine if you aimed that chimney at, say, thirty degrees." Cally sketched its angle through the air. "What if you fired it at a formation of enemy troops? Or a fortress' walls?"

"How much nether does it take?"

"Lots. A lot of lots."

"Why not aim the nether directly at the enemy instead? A lot fewer things can go wrong then."

Cally rolled his eyes in disgust. "Except if they have sorcerers of their own. Then they snap their fingers and your big ball of nether fizzles away like dandelion seeds in the gale. But I suppose you didn't think of that."

"I suppose I didn't."

"Anyway, this is just the theoretical stage. A perfected model would be much more effective." He clapped his knobby hands. "Want to fire it again?"

"Yes, but we need to talk first." Dante blew into his hands. "Listen. Have you heard? About what happened?"

Cally's white brows shot up. "That you burned down the ancestral manor of Cassinder of Beckonridge? And he's going to talk the king into declaring war on us? Why the fuck do you
think
I'm out here blowing stuff up?"

Dante laughed hollowly. "Oh."

"His Highest Kingship Lord Moddegan has already levied a new estate tax, you know. It's enough to think he plans to pay for several thousand men to march across several hundred miles."

"It's his fault." Blays pointed at Dante. "He was chasing down the infamous Quivering Bow."

Dante whirled. "What the hell?"

"What? You'd rather he hear it from someone else?"

"I was going to ease him into it!"

"How were you going to ease me into explaining
that
?" Cally snarled. He drew himself to his full gangly height, his elbows as swollen as the gut of a freshly-fed snake. Beneath the soot, his hair and beard hadn't been combed in days or cut in months. "Well, did you find it? Or did you get diverted by a herd of snipes?"

"Regrettably," Dante said, "we discovered that it doesn't exist."

"Do you know what you've done?"

"I thought it could win the war before it began. We made contact with the Clan of the Nine Pines. They promised it was real."

Cally ran his hand down his snarled white beard. His eyes were closed, as if he were weathering a cramp. "Within the next few weeks, the king is going to issue an ultimatum. It's going to be outrageous. Possibly so much that the Norren Territories, if they accept, will wish they'd simply gone to war instead."

"I thought war was the plan all along."

"Years from now! When we were ready! When our position would be so strong even the clowns in Setteven would rather let the norren go than try to march against them."

Dante stared at the grass. Beetles crawled between the blades. "I thought I could help."

"The norren won't back down from this. Not all of them. They're too fractured." Cally turned away from the city. Bitter wind whipped his beard. "People are going to die, Dante."