Lynn Abbey - The Brazen Gambit

"Urik. Urik's here. Urik's unique."

Pavek stood up. He pressed his palms against the wall of House Escrissar and closed his eyes. The presence was there: Urik, far older than the sorcerer-kings-massive, and powerful. It rose to meet him, and he stepped back, letting the power subside once he had sensed what he needed, and nothing more.

"She is here."

The smoothed and painted plaster of the templar quarter facades did not extend to the midden shafts, where unfinished brick provided a multitude of handholds for three men climbing to the roof. Like most wealthy Urik residences, House Escrissar was built around a courtyard filled with fruit trees, fragrant flowers, fountains, and pools, and lined from ground to roof with an arbor of berry-vines. The courtyard was quiet except for the fountains. It was dark, too, with only a faint dappling of light seeping through the tracery of a few of the many rooms that faced the courtyard. It was also deserted-or so Pavek devoutly hoped. Neither experience nor logic suggested where they should lower themselves from the roof to the upper story of living rooms, but, having come further and survived longer than any of them had expected, they grew more cautious with each passing moment.

"Are you certain?" Yohan asked when Pavek hoisted his leg over the balustrade.

"I think she's here. I think she's alive. I think this is the way. But I'm not certain of anything. Pick some other place, if you want. This is the way I'm going."

And the way Ruart and Yohan followed: swinging down from the roof into the vine arbor whose support slats sank ominously beneath both him and the dwarf. For several moments, they paid more attention to their footing, then Pavek heard an all-too-familiar voice:

"... Now or later, my dear lady, dead or alive. It makes no difference to me, but I will have your secrets. Your guardian can protect your past; I possess your present and your future. Remember that each time you resist."

Silence followed and a sense that the night had become darker. Pavek caught Yohan's arm as he surged toward the voice they'd heard.

"She's there. I have to go to her-" Yohan's tone was urgent, mindless.

Pavek could scarcely restrain him. "Do you want to get us all killed? Or die in front of her? Or do you want to get her out?"

The dwarf relaxed. "Get her out."

"Then we've got to wait."

Yohan seemed resigned until Akashia screamed. "I can't wait. He's hurting her. I can't resist-"

"She is. She's resisted since you left her, and she'll go on resisting until we get her out!"

"It's that window, there," Ruari softly interrupted them. "I can climb and look through the tracery and see what we're up against. I'm light enough."

"Go ahead," he said, giving Ruari's arm a light, well-meaning nudge for confidence's sake.

"Go with Rkard," Yohan said more soberly. The next moments were the longest of Pavek's life. Akahia moaned, Escrissar taunted, and Ruari had completely disappeared. Someone wearing a yellow robe and carrying a lamp came and stood not an arm's length away in a corridor in the other side of the tracery that supported the berry arbor. Pavek held his breath until his lungs were burning.

The templar went away. Ruari returned.

"It's a small room with one door," he whispered. "Kashi's bound on a bench with cushions. He doesn't touch her, just stands there behind his long black mask, clicking his long black claws against each other-"

"He's an interrogator," Pavek interjected. "He doesn't need to use his hands."

And Yohan quietly swore a bloody vengeance.

"There's someone else in the room. Shorter and standing in the shadows. I couldn't see him clearly. But I think he's wearing a mask, too."

"The halfling. His face is covered with scars; it looks like a mask. Anyone else? Any guards? Templars?"

"Kashi and two men wearing masks. That's all I saw. What do we do now?"

"We wait. He's an interrogator, one of the best. They make the prisoners do the hard work. He'll leave her alone so she can think about what he's done, and what he's going to do. We'll move while he's resting, and she's helpless."

"You're beasts, all templars, every last one of you," Yohan murmured. "Worse than beasts. You've got no conscience."

Pavek didn't argue.

They waited, listening, hoping Escrissar would end the torment for the night, and expecting that the midnight gong would strike at any time. Getting through the streets to the wall-passage would be much more difficult and dangerous after curfew. Then, without warning, the moment came: the light in Akashia's prison dimmed through the tracery and two black-robed men, one quite tall, the other noticeably shorter, came along the corridor. They held their breaths and looked away, lest a flash of light reflecting off an open eye would give them away.

"Let's go."

The lightweight tracery panels of precious wood came out easily. They moved into the corridor. Pavek and Yohan unsheathed the long obsidian knives Telhami had provided for them. Ruari, who admitted no skill with edged weapons but claimed to have learned something about picking locks from his elven relations, went a half-step ahead. The mechanical lock was simple and the door flimsy enough that they could have battered it down with little trouble, but Ruari was quieter and almost as quick. Using a fragile contraption of straw and sinew, he eased the bolt free. It struck the floor behind the door with a thunk that common sense insisted was no where near as loud as it seemed to three jittery men in the corridor.

Ruari reached for the handle. Both Pavek and Yohan grabbed him before he clasped it and pulled him aside. The door swung toward them of its own weight. Standing out of harm's way, Pavek caught the handle with the tip of his knife. He let it swing open.

"Kashi?" he whispered.

"Pavek!"

The voice was feminine, but the woman who came out of the room with a short-sword in her hand wasn't Akashia.

"Dovanne." The only light came from a oil flame inside the room, but Dovanne with her cropped hair and serpent-circled arm was unmistakable.

She'd been the lamp-bearing templar who'd gone down the corridor. He hadn't seen her face or her arm. Still, if they had to face a templar guard, she was the best they could have hoped for. Dovanne took one look at him and came on guard behind her sword. She didn't care about Ruari and Yohan dashing past to rescue Akashia. She didn't care about anything except spilling his guts on the floor and wouldn't sound an alarm or call for help until she was finished with him.

Dovanne, being smaller, had a slight advantage in the confined space of the corridor, but otherwise they were evenly matched. Her iron sword had a guard that offered some protection for her wrist. It also had a curved blade and had been sharpened along the outer edge only. His obsidian knife was a composite weapon, cheaper than metal, but every bit as deadly, with curved wedges of sharp black glass carefully fitted into a straight, laminated wood-and-sinew blade. It was long as her short-sword, had a naked hilt, and was razor-sharp along both edges and at the point.

She feinted first, a probing cut toward his weapon-side wrist. He parried and she withdrew. The blades sang-gray metal against glassy stone-but softly: neither of them wanted to attract attention. He dropped his guard two hand-spans, inviting an attack. She remembered that move from the countless times they'd bouted against each other while they were friends.

"Take a chance," he taunted in a hoarse whisper. "You always said I was slow."

Yohan and Ruari had gotten Akashia unbound and were trying-without much success by the sound of it-to get her on her feet. Dovanne heard the same sounds and belatedly realized what was happening in the room, what would happen to her if she failed her duty to Escrissar.