The Great Rift (30 page)

The servant returned with several miniature bones and three intact skulls, one of which was still wrapped in withered flesh, its hair like dried seaweed. Cally picked the bones apart with scalpel and tweezers and quickly bundled them into two new loons. After some fiddling, he sent Dante to the balcony. With the loon pressed to his ear, Dante heard Cally's voice as a low murmur. On attaching bits of scrap silver, the old man wrangled two different sheaths, one ether, one nether. He and Dante spent a half hour running through the keep like children, loons pressed to their ears as they exchanged insults, commands, and cryptic aphorisms. Early morning sunlight splashed through the curtains. Still, Dante could hardly sleep. By the fourth time he woke, he didn't bother trying to lie back down. He dressed, dashed up to Cally's room, and knocked softly. Cally replied at once, clear-voiced, to call him in.

Dante slammed the door behind him. "Well?"

Cally grinned, blue eyes flashing. "I think I'm going to declare a holiday in our honor."

"They still work!"

"And now comes the hard part: we can't tell a soul about our godlike greatness."

"To be perfectly frank," Dante said, "I don't understand why this is a secret in the first place."

Cally raised the thickets of his brows. "Are you kidding? This is a highly sophisticated concept. Few enough know how to animate the dead, let alone sense through their senses."

"Variations of the idea, then. Like what if I killed a bunch of eagles, then returned them to the sky with a red cloth in one claw and a white cloth in the other? They could pass a message to everyone watching them in moments. Or I could park a dead rat in your room, go to the palace in Setteven, spy on the king, and then have the rat tap out exactly what the king was saying."

The old man chuckled. "Have you ever tried to make a dead bird fly?"

"Well, no."

"It works exactly as well as when a normal person tries it. As far as commanding a rat from five hundred miles away goes, have you ever tried
that
?"

"I've commanded them two or three miles from me," Dante said. "I didn't notice any loss of control or need for additional focus."

"Try it at ten miles sometime," Cally said. "Or twenty. Anyone can waggle a three-foot stick. Try holding up a fifty-foot branch sometime. Building such a speech-web would require an army of nethermancers dedicated to nothing but making rats tap-dance 'Yes' or 'No' to other nethermancers. There aren't enough sorcerers in all Gask for that."

"Then why do the loons work at such long range?"

"Those rats of yours tax your hold on the nether at every moment of the day. It's the same way it taxes a warrior to wave around his sword. Most of the time, the loons are sheathed. A sheathed weapon draws no strength from the wielder."

"I get it, more or less," Dante said. "So we've got the loons. What's next?"

"We plan your next trip," Cally said.

"I don't know about that," Dante frowned. "The last time I was let out of the house, I accidentally touched off a war."

"That's precisely why I'm sending you out to undo it. Not for a couple of weeks, of course. I'd like to let tempers cool before we throw you back into the field."

"Well, that should give me plenty of time to figure out who tried to kill me yesterday."

Cally drew back his bearded chin. "Someone tried to kill you?"

"You didn't hear? When I got off the boat. They were expecting me."

"Well, I can't say I blame them." Cally beckoned toward the door. "Now go get ready for diplomacy. Bathing was a good start."

"No sense going to the tailor just yet," Dante said. "Not before I know whether I'll need new clothes for the bluebloods, or to wear at my own funeral. Speaking of which, I'd like you to take a look at something. It might be poison, so don't eat any of it unless you'd like to make my day."

He brought Cally the vial of black-brown liquid, then found Blays eating toast and bacon and dried peaches in the dining hall. After querying two servants and a blacksmith, he tracked Mourn down in the armory, where the norren was discussing serration with the house arrowsmith. Lira took somewhat longer to locate; she had taken to the gymnasium of the auxiliary barracks, which was presently empty. Dust motes swirled in the sunlight slashing through the empty windows. Cobwebs strangled the exposed rafters. Lira practiced in the space at the far end of the barn-like barracks, short sword in her left hand, her right hand empty. She moved as slowly and fluidly as cool honey, her blade tracing crisp patterns while her free hand moved in concert, clawing, grasping, and twisting imaginary foes. At times, she exploded into furious motion, hand and sword flowing through combinations far too fast for Dante to follow. After one of these flurries, she sensed him and turned, lowering her arms to her side. She wore a light and simple shirt and sweat shined from her temples and neck.

"What are you doing with your off hand?" Dante said. "That seems pretty intricate for shield-work."

"There's no shield."

"But a lot of the time you were
leading
with it. I'll admit I'm an amateur, but that looks like the First Form for Loss of Unwanted Hands."

She sheathed her sword and ran the fingers of her left hand from elbow to wrist of her right. "Armor goes here. You need the fingers free. Combat is sensitive."

"Not in my experience. Anyway, I don't see how you'll ever get close enough to use your bare hand."

She gave him a look, then went to the wall where the wooden swords were racked. She handed one to him hilt-first. "Come at me."

He took two steps, then lunged, his longer blade keeping his body well separated from hers. She shifted her heels, thrusting her short sword left-handed over top of his. As it slid harmlessly past her side, she grabbed his wrist with her empty right hand and collapsed into the gap between them. Her sword pressed against his gut, its short length a sudden advantage.

"That's how it works." She held the pose, steel tapping his stomach, then withdrew.

With a hollow clatter, he returned the sword to the rack. "Very clever. Unless they come at you with two blades."

"Then my bare hand takes one of the knives from my belt." She swept her arm across her sweat-smudged forehead. "I'm not making this up as I go along. I spent my youth in the Carlons. Their warriors have been dealing with Anyrrian pirates for 800 years."

"I'm going to speak to the guards again about the assassin. I'd like you to come with me."

"Afraid to walk the streets alone?" she said, perfectly expressionless.

He narrowed his eyes. Was that a joke? "No, I thought I'd do the right thing and turn you in for assault. Come on. The others are in the courtyard."

He stepped into the cold sunlight while she toweled off and dressed for the wintry air. The gate cranked open as they approached. The streets were subdued; the rowdiest revelers were sleeping it off, regrouping their strength for another afternoon of beer and a long evening of whatever drinks were set in front of them. Dante caught a whiff of vomit. Urine, too, but it always smelled like that.

The guards who'd taken the body were out on rounds. The attendant in the short stone tower told Dante the body had been moved to the carneterium for storage and study. Figuring it would be faster, Dante climbed the tower stairs and set out across the top of the Pridegate. Exposed atop the stone, the bayward wind streamed across his faces.

"The carneterium?" Mourn asked.

"Don't worry," Blays said. "It's just as bad as it sounds."

"Only if you have the constitution of a daisy," Dante said, mildly insulted: the establishment of the carneterium had partly been his doing. Four-odd years back, city guards had been dying in the streets at night. Throats torn. Bodies clawed bloody, hearts torn from their chests. Witnesses confirmed the attacker had been a great shaggy beast. For a few weeks, there had been something of a werewolf panic. Dante didn't buy that for a second, even after he and Blays had taken on the case and seen the shredded dead for themselves, and he had been vindicated after discovering the culprit was nothing more than a vengeful sorcerer and his undead dog.

The citizenry were glad enough, naturally, for the panic to be put to rest. What caught Dante off guard were the scribe-written letters and visits from the families of those the sorcerer and his dog had killed. Their gratitude wasn't driven by the satisfaction of vengeance or justice, but from simply knowing
what
had killed their sons and husbands. With the support of Tarkon and Merria, and aided by volunteer monks from the Cathedral of Ivars, Dante cleared the catacombs beneath the cemetery on the hill and installed equipment and storage. A small crew of willing monks was trained for a simple purpose: to investigate any strange or suspicious deaths brought to them, primarily via whatever clues could be discerned with the nether.

The "carneterium" had not been his idea for the name.

Laughter and the clatter of hooves filtered from the streets. They passed through the upper floor of a guard tower every quarter mile, where guards glanced at Dante's sapphire brooch and black cloak and waved them on. Once the curve of the Pridegate took the wall east-west, Dante descended at another tower and strode through the quiet streets. Weedy yards separated the modest houses. A high hill rose ahead.

There were no words carved above the door in the foot of the hill. Instead, a stone plaque bore the image of a millstone pierced by an angled pole. The pole's tip was astered by the four-pointed star of Jorus.

"Why do you humans insist on putting your dead in their own little holes?" Mourn muttered.

"What do you do?" Blays said. "Prop them up at the table?"

"We've seen their funerals," Dante said. "They leave the bodies on the oldest hills. If there's more than one, they pile them up in one big grave."

"I thought that was just for the people they don't like."

"We don't think our dead should rest alone," Mourn said. "If you belong to a clan in life, why should you be isolated in death?"

The dim tunnel swallowed them up. A flicker of decay wafted on the breeze. Torches burned from the rough limestone walls. A short, gritty walk took them into a foyer furnished with a handful of chairs and an end table with a small gong on it, which Dante struck. A bald monk padded into the room, nose lifted as if he smelled a pie.

"My old student," Nak smiled. "Come to lord over me with your latest promotion?"

"Someone tried to kill me yesterday," Dante said. "I'd like to see the body."

"Right this way." Nak padded down the stone halls, exchanging pleasantries. The smell of rot thickened on the cool cavern air. Nak led them to a small room; the dead assassin rested on a stained table, body stripped bare. Nak frowned sharply. "I'll fetch the natriter."

He padded off, leaving the four of them with the body. Blays sniffed. "Doesn't look so tough now."

"Nobody looks tough when their balls are hanging out," Dante said.

Lira shrugged. "People who fight naked are more frightening than those in full chain."

"I have my doubts," Blays said. "Let's put this to the test."

They were interrupted by the arrival of the natriter, a man with dark circles around his eyes and an expression chilly enough to preserve the flesh of any corpse he glanced at. Which made sense. It was his job, after all, to decide how the dead had died.

Dante nodded at the body. "What can you tell me about him?"

The man gave him a level look. "The stab wound tells me he died of a stab wound."

"Any indication where he came from?"

"A womb, most likely."

Blays paced around the body. "Look, this justifiably dead person tried to kill my friend here. Anything you can tell us about him would do wonders for our ability to continue going unassassinated."

The natriter sighed through his long nose and closed on the corpse in a single stride. He pushed back the dead man's lips. "He still has most of his teeth. Unlikely to be a sharecropper. But his hands are awfully rough to be a lord."

"Excellent," Blays said. "So he could be anyone but the poorest of poor or the richest of rich."

The man didn't acknowledge this. "The hem of his cloak smelled like wintrel."

"What did the nether show?" Dante said.

"Nothing abnormal. You're welcome to check for yourself."

Dante shook his head. "Please hang onto the body for now. Once it turns, I'd like the skull preserved. Just in case."

"Whatever you say."

Dante waved to Nak on their way out of the catacombs. Outside, the sun felt hard, the air gentle and pure.

"That wasn't half as bad as you made it sound," Lira said.

Blays rolled his eyes. "That's because we didn't go to storage."

"Did we just learn anything at all?" Dante said.

"I don't think wintrel grows anywhere but the Gaskan interior," Blays said. "So that rules out old enemies from Mallon. Or pirates."

"Not river-pirates," Mourn said. "Or land-pirates."

"Another finger pointing Cassinder's way." Dante glanced up; dark clouds mounded in from the bay, low and fast. "Or anyone who wants to get in his good graces. Which describes nearly everyone in Gask."

Perhaps it was the comfort of being home after a long journey, but Dante didn't feel all that concerned that an unknown enemy had recently tried to take his life. Then again, this wasn't the first time he'd been attacked in the street. He had a full flask of experience to draw on in comparison. The fifth strawberry never tastes as sweet as the first.

So he didn't think much about the dead man as he led the others to the Ingate tailor who handled the Citadel's ritzier garb. The sharp-eyed proprietor closed her shop and led them upstairs to a world of fur and silk and cotton. Pins and swatches and cloth tape flew as she and her two assistants fitted them for travel and court. The old woman took Mourn's fitting as a special challenge. Mourn appeared to feel the same challenge about her measuring tape sliding under his armpits and around his groin. When they left late that afternoon, snow whorled down from the clouds. In protest, the Thaws-days revelers burnt all the moths they could find—traditionally, the last days of Urt were associated with cicadas, but Dante hadn't seen a one of those since leaving Mallon—and smashed snowmen with axes and hoes.