Warrior (36 page)

“You killed him!” Wrayan repeated incredulously.

“Not often enough,” she replied, jerking the dagger free.

Wrayan had no idea why he’d just witnessed a murder, and it wasn’t the careless ease with which this woman had killed Danyon that shocked him. He lived on the darker side of human society and knew how cheap life was among thieves and whores. For that reason, there were rules governing meetings such as this and a guarantee of safety was foremost among them. What chilled him to the core was the realisation that if Danyon Caron had let it be known in Qorinipor that he was coming to Westbrook to meet with Wrayan Lightfinger of Krakandar, that made Wrayan the most likely suspect in Danyon’s murder. Finding himself accused of killing the head of a guild of another city was something Wrayan could well do without.

“I’ve got a message for you from someone called Brak.”

The name pierced through the shock enough to get Wrayan’s attention.
“What?”

“Your friend, Brak. He said to meet him outside. He has horses waiting for us.”

“Us?” Wrayan repeated blankly.

“I’m coming with you.”

“You just killed the head of the Qorinipor Thieves’ Guild.”

“Pretty good reason for not hanging about here then, don’t you think?”

Wrayan couldn’t argue with that. The need to get out of the hall, out of Westbrook, was suddenly his most urgent priority, with or without Brak’s lost Fardohnyan child. He looked towards the door. The bulk of the soldiers were pursuing the escapees into the yard, and everyone else was racing outside to watch the fun and games. Without waiting to see if the woman was following, Wrayan headed for the door at a run.

The bailey was in chaos when they finally managed to push their way outside. Not only had extra guards been called up, but the gate was half-open and one very angry and loud Kelesan Hull was standing there, arguing with the officer on duty about whether or not he should be allowed to come in.

The prisoners, realising the gate was unsecured, had surged towards it while the soldiers tried to get it closed again, but Kelesan’s wagon was blocking the gate and he was refusing to budge, so there was little hope of them getting it shut in time.

Wrayan hesitated on the top step, taking in the scene with a glance.

“They’ll never get it closed again,” the woman chuckled, coming up beside him. She seemed singularly unperturbed by the fact that she had just committed cold-blooded murder.

“And we’ll never get through it,” Wrayan pointed out, frowning at the crush of people heading for the gate. “Where’s Brak?”

The woman spotted him first. “There!”

Brak was running towards the stables from one of the buildings off to the left. Over his shoulder was a limp, ragged bundle. They ran down the steps and pushed their way across the yard, catching up with him as the stable boy brought out their horses.

“Mount up and take him,” Brak ordered as soon as he spied Wrayan.

Wrayan snatched the reins from the stable boy and swung into the saddle. He barely had his feet in the stirrups before Brak was handing the limp child up to him. “He’s been drugged,” Brak explained.

“All part of the evening’s entertainment,” the woman remarked sourly, climbing into the saddle of Brak’s gelding. “We’re never going to get through that gate, Brak.”

“No need. There’s another way out.”

“How do you know?” Wrayan asked, adjusting his grip on the boy for fear of losing him. He wasn’t too thrilled about the woman joining him in their desperate escape, either.

“I was here when the Harshini built this place, Wrayan. Follow me.”

Brak led them away from the stables and further from the gate and the riot, the noise fading a little as they rounded a corner and rode down a lane between two of the outbuildings on the eastern wall, which finished in a dead end.

“Oh! A dead end!” his new companion remarked, when she saw they were trapped. “This plan just gets better and better, doesn’t it?”

“Have a little faith,” Brak said, and then turned to face the wall. Wrayan felt the Halfbreed drawing on his magic and suddenly the wall faded to reveal a postern gate tall enough for them to ride through. The woman stared at it with the same sort of stunned surprise that Wrayan imagined he must have showed when she so coldly rammed a knife into Danyon Caron’s back.

Wrayan shook his head in wonder. “They built a secret gate.”

“The Harshini might be naive, Wrayan, but they’re not stupid.” Brak opened the gate, which apparently wasn’t even locked. “Now get out of here. And don’t stop at Winternest.” Brak reached into his vest and pulled out something, which he handed to Wrayan. It was a cube of transparent material showing a dragon clutching the world in its claws, attached to a fine gold chain.

“What’s this?”

“If things get desperate,” Brak told him, glancing back down the lane to ensure they were still unobserved, “and I do mean desperate, Wrayan, call them. Someone will come.”

Wrayan looked at the pendant in shock. “But they can’t leave—”

“They can leave Sanctuary any time they want, Wrayan. They just choose not to. Now go!”

“But . . . what are
you
going to do?”

“I have to stay here and close this gate behind you.”

“Can’t you do that from the other side?”

“No. Now leave! You don’t have much time. Take care of the boy and don’t get yourself killed any time soon, all right?”

Wrayan had a dreadful feeling that Brak was saying good-bye, but before he could reply, shouts at the end of the lane made him look around. Soldiers were charging down between the outbuildings, waving torches and swords with equal menace.

“Go!” Brak cried, slapping the rump of Wrayan’s mare. The horse surged forward through the hidden gate, followed a moment later by the Fardohnyan woman on Brak’s gelding. No sooner were they through the gate than it vanished and the wall behind them changed back to the appearance of solid rock.

Brak’s horse reared. The woman fought to control it as Wrayan stared at the wall, the shouts and cries of the guards on the other side leaving no doubt about Brak’s fate. He wouldn’t have had time to close the gate and draw a glamour around himself to hide from the oncoming soldiers.

“We need to get out of here!” the woman reminded Wrayan urgently.

He was still staring at the wall, his eyes misted with tears.

“Hey! Lightfinger! Can you hear me?”

Wrayan forced back his shock and grief to look at his new travelling companion. The child in his arms showed no sign of regaining consciousness. “I hear you.”

“Then let’s ride, my friend,” she advised, “because it’s not going to be long before they decide that secret gate your friend conjured up for us might not have been a figment of their limited but collective imaginations.”

“But Brak—”

“He’s probably dead.”

Wrayan glared at her, wishing this woman, whoever she was, would not deal with death quite so casually. Her expression softened a little when she saw his grief and she smiled. “He said he was here when they built this place. I suppose that’s how he knew about that gate.”

Wrayan nodded mutely, still trying to deal with the notion that Brak might be dead.

“That would make him what? Over six . . . maybe even seven hundred years old?”

Wrayan nodded again, but remained silent.

“He knew how to open it, too.” The woman gathered up her reins and shook her head in wonder. “By the gods . . . he really was the Halfbreed, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” Wrayan replied, pulling the unconscious child a little closer to him. “He really was.”
And
someone
, he thought, numbed by the very idea,
is going to have to tell the Harshini that Lord
Brakandaran té Carn is dead
.

But that was something he could deal with later. First, he had to get out of Fardohnya in one piece. In light of the company in which he suddenly found himself, that might prove more difficult that he’d anticipated. He stared at the woman, wondering what he’d done to deserve being burdened with such a dangerous liability.

“Do you have a name?” he asked, turning for the Widowmaker Pass.

“Kantel,” the woman replied, kicking Brak’s mount into a canter with the awkward seat of one unfamiliar with horses. “My name is Chyler Kantel.”

Wrayan rode through the Widowmaker Pass almost without stopping, anxious to put as much distance between himself and Fardohnya as possible before dawn. He wanted to get past Winternest, too, before the Hythrun fortress came awake.

Chyler Kantel deserted him even before they were over the border. As soon as they reached the first of the bandit trails in the pass, she hauled Brak’s horse to a stop and dismounted. Wrayan turned to find out what she was doing.
Perhaps she needed to relieve herself
, he thought. She shouldn’t need a rest. They hadn’t been on the road long enough for that.

“This is where you and I part company, Wrayan Lightfinger,” she announced, handing him the reins of the gelding.

Wrayan glanced at the trail winding up the steep slope into the forest and nodded in understanding. She was a bandit, an accomplished killer, and a Fardohnyan at that. There was no reason for her to go to Hythria. And then it came to him. “Chyler’s Children,” the customs man had called the Fardohnyan bandits.

“Back to work, eh?”

She shrugged. “I’m a follower of Dacendaran. I prefer to think of it as a divine calling more than a career.”

He accepted the reins of the other horse, wondering if he could risk putting the child on it, but the boy was still unconscious. “You know, in Hythria they believe you’re in the pay of the Fardohnyan king.”

“Hablet doesn’t pay for anything,” Chyler scoffed.

“So it’s just chance that you target the Hythrun caravans and leave the Fardohnyan merchants alone?”

She smiled. “One can be a thief
and
a patriot, you know. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“Will you answer one more question before you go?”

“You want to know why I killed Danyon Caron?”

“Yes.”

Chyler pointed at the ragged, limp bundle Wrayan was holding. “That boy you have there? He almost met the same fate this evening as my nephew did a year ago.”

Wrayan’s expression must have been sufficiently confused that she felt the need to explain further.

“Most of my people have families in the area, Master Lightfinger, either living at the fort or working as trappers and loggers in the mountains around here. Danyon Caron paid a visit to the village where my sister lives a bit over a year ago. He was just passing through. But one night was all it took.

Poor Odie . . . he’s not spoken a word since that night. He just stares into the distance, wasting away before our very eyes.” Chyler’s expression hardened. This was not a woman to be crossed lightly.

“Anyway, I passed through the village a couple of weeks later and my sister told me what had happened and who’d done it. I’m not stupid enough to try to take down a Guild man as highly placed as Danyon Caron—not on his turf, at any rate—so I sent him a message. I warned that sleazy little bastard that if he ever came near Westbrook again—my turf—I’d have him for what he did to my nephew.”

“How is it that you wound up in the dungeons?”

“He had a meeting with some big note from one of the Hythrun Guilds. The Wraith, his name was, so I hear. Apparently, he insisted they meet at Westbrook. Danyon knew I’d kill him the first chance I got, so he lured me into the fortress on the pretext of shifting some stolen goods. I should have known just from the price they were offering for the stuff that it was a trap. I was arrested the day he got here.”

Chyler studied Wrayan for a moment in the starlight and then swore softly. “I’ll be damned! I suppose you’re the big note from Hythria?”

“Not a title I’d usually grant myself.”

“Wrayan the Wraith, eh? I’ve heard about you.”

“Have you now?”

“I heard you single-handedly lifted the entire contents of the Sorcerers’ Collective museum in Greenharbour a few years ago.”

“That’s a gross exaggeration.”

She seemed amused. “In my experience, most claims to fame usually are. But thanks, anyway.”

“For what?”

“Your visit to Westbrook gave me a chance to even the score with that prick, Caron. And the best part is—nobody will even know it was me who did it.”

“No,” Wrayan agreed. “They’ll probably blame it on the ‘big note’ from Hythria that Danyon Caron came to Westbrook to meet.”

That seemed to amuse Chyler Kantel rather than worry her. “Good thing you’re headed home then, eh? Not planning to come back this way any time soon, I hope?”

“I’m not likely to now that I’m probably wanted by the Qorinipor Guild for murder.”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to clear up any misunderstanding in the Guild. You being a ‘big note’ and all.” She reached up and patted Rory’s shoulder in farewell. “What’ll happen to him now?”

“He’ll be safe with me.”

“They thought he was a sorcerer, you know. Claimed he killed a man in Talabar. He’s a brave kid—surrendered himself so he wouldn’t freeze to death in the mountains. That takes real guts when you’re wanted for murder. You could tell he was scared, but he was convinced help was on the way.”

Chyler smiled. “The Halfbreed coming for him is proof enough he’s what they claimed, I suppose. You one of them, too?”

Wrayan shrugged, not exactly sure what
one of them
was supposed to mean. He guessed she meant someone with magical talent. “Sort of.”

“You’ll see him safe then. In Hythria somewhere? Somewhere they won’t find him?”

“Yes.”

She hesitated a moment longer, then turned suddenly and took the steep path into the forest without looking back.

And that was the last Wrayan saw of Chyler Kantel.

He stopped several hours past sunrise in a small copse of trees by the roadside some twenty miles south of Winternest. The horses were exhausted and Wrayan’s arms felt as if they were made of lead after carrying the weight of Rory all night while towing Brak’s horse behind them. He lowered the boy to the ground and groaned as his stiff muscles protested their sudden release. Wrayan let the horses drink their fill while he checked on the boy. He was becoming increasingly concerned that the child was showing no signs of life yet. And all he could do about it was worry. He had no idea what he’d been drugged with and no healing talent to do anything about it anyway, even if he’d known. The child was thin and, surprisingly, as fair-haired as any Hythrun child. His skin was pallid, his lips pale and tinged blue, but whether from the cold or some side effect of the drug he’d been given, Wrayan had no way of telling. But the child’s breathing seemed even enough and the pulse at his neck was strong and steady.