James Clemens - Shadowfall

Pounding continued behind them. The characteristic chop of an ax echoed. Could Tylar stall Darjon enough for the others to break through?

“No more talk,” Darjon said, as if reading his thoughts. “You have until the count of ten to hurl yourself over the railing, or I’ll kill this woman.”

“You made one mistake, Darjon,” Tylar said coldly.

“And what’s that?” he said with a sneer.

“You assumed I still have a fondness for this woman.”

The satisfied sneer faltered.

“This is the woman who damned me with her own testimony,” Tylar said, putting steel into his voice. “She broke her marital vow to me. She swore against me. Upon her words, I was broken on the wheel and sent into the slave circuses. She means nothing to me.”

“You lie.”

“Words are breath,” Tylar conceded. “But actions are flesh.” He turned the dagger in his hand and threw it with all the force in his arm.

Darjon shielded himself with a ward of shadowcloak, but the knight had not been Tylar’s intended target. The blade struck Kathryn in the hollow of her exposed throat, burying itself to the hilt. A killing strike.

The force of the blow threw her back. Darjon held her up by a fistful of hair. Kathryn’s eyes were wide with pain and shock. She gasped like a fish flopping on the bottom of a boat, soundless, yet agonized.

Darjon dropped her with disgust.

Tylar stood. He sidestepped to the first knight he had dispatched and collected the man’s abandoned sword.

Darjon billowed out his cloak, folding darkness into shield, drawing power and speed.

Tylar widened his stance. Blood flowed from the two impaled bolts. He tasted and smelled it with every agonized breath. He was no match for Darjon. Still, he lifted his sword.

“Let’s end this.”

Dart stepped from the carriage. Laurelle followed. Both girls kept behind Yaellin. He paid the coachman and spoke in low tones, menace and warning inflecting his quiet words. The man nodded and remounted his carriage seat. As the horses set off down the street, Yaellin’s cloak soaked up the shadows in the alleyway, stirring the darkness like water.

“Will he tell anyone about us?” Laurelle asked.

“Gold will quiet a tongue for only so long,” Yaellin said. “And fear of reprisal for aiding us may buy us another day. But I expect the bounty on the three of us will be high. The lure will draw him out. Before that happens, we must clear the upper city.”

Dart, like the others, had noted the number of castillion guards out on the street, easy to spot in their gold-and-crimson livery. They were knocking on doors and questioning every wagon. Their own carriage had taken this alley to avoid a patrol. Chrism would soon have every garrison alerted from one end of Chrismferry to the other.

“What now?” she asked. Her eyes stared at the two towers of the Conclave. Yaellin had them dropped off several streets from its doors.

“We go on foot. We move swiftly. We stick to shadows.”

Yaellin drew them across the street and down an alley. Dart ran to keep up. She still ached deep in her belly, her head raced with a thousand questions, and her heart pounded in terror and worry. She wanted to lie down, cover her face, and cry. But Yaellin’s earlier words kept her moving.

And you, little Dart, may be the key all seek.

She prayed it wasn’t so.

And what of Pupp? Where was he? He must be terrified, all alone. Was he suffering from their separation, too? Love for him welled through her, gave her some strength to continue running. The three of them, while heading toward the Conclave, were also moving in the direction of the walled Eldergarden. Each step helped steady her. She would find Pupp. He had protected her at her most dire moment. She could do no less for him, regardless of the risk.

They fled down another street, staying on the shadowed side. Gates to the Conclave lay around the next corner and down a block. “Not much farther,” Yaellin promised them.

The pound of boot steps on cobbles sounded from ahead. The churlish voice of a captain reached them. “Check every doorway, every home, every stall.”

Yaellin searched around them. The street offered no hiding place. “Back,” he said with hushed urgency.

Dart turned around. The closest alley lay too far away. They’d never escape in time.

“Hurry,” Yaellin urged.

“No,” Laurelle said. “This way.”

She ran ahead, toward the nearby corner, toward the approaching guards. Dart hesitated, then raced after Laurelle. She had lost one friend this morning. She’d not lose another.

Yaellin followed with a grumble.

Laurelle reached a shop at the corner and ducked inside. Dart knew the establishment. A wooden rolling pin hung above the lintel. It was Havershym’s Bakery and Sweets. Girls and boys had been coming here for generations to buy or pinch bits of brittlesyrup, gingersnaps, or honeycakes. Laurelle was seldom without a bag of sweets from the shop, passing them out to her dearest friends.

Dart had never been the recipient of such largesse. In fact, she had been in the shop only once, when she was awarded two brass pinches for helping Mistress Grannice spin some raw wool. She had bought four pieces of karamellow, doling them out as a treat to herself once a month.

The brass bell rang as they rushed inside. The smell of sugar and rising bread filled their noses. The heat from the fired ovens in the back room warmed the chill of the streets off them.

The portly baker, Havershym himself, yelled from the back. “Bread’s a-baking. Hold fast. I’ll be up in a breath.” Dart caught a glimpse of his backside as he bent with a long wooden bread peel. The knock and block of pans and utensils echoed from farther back, apprentices mixing and kneading. Laughter chimed out.

Laurelle did not stop. She ducked under the counter and ran past the short rows of sweets and alongside the steaming baskets of loafed breads. She reached a low, narrow door and pushed inside.

“Quickly,” she said.

The space was filled with barrels of dry flour and casks of rock sugar. Bags hung from the rafters on iron hooks, smelling of seed and yeast.

Laurelle stooped under the bags and hurried toward the back door. She yanked it open. A dark alley lay beyond it. Dart and Yaellin caught up with Laurelle, and they headed down the alley to where it crossed with another. Dart suddenly knew where she was. She stared up. The towers of the Conclave climbed into the morning sky. They were in the back alley behind the school’s courtyard.

Yaellin had the same realization. “We’re here.”

Dart glanced to Laurelle.

Her friend shrugged. “I spent so much time going to and from the shop, spending fistfuls of coin, that Havershym eventually allowed me to shorten my steps by using his back door. And I knew at this hour they’d still be busy with their ovens. If we moved swiftly enough, we could pass through their shop unseen.”

They approached the back gate to the school’s courtyard. Mostly used by carts and wagons to deliver goods, seldom did anyone give it any attention.

“Keep with me,” Yaellin said as they neared the ironwork gate. He swept out his cloak and helped hide the girls. “Surely Chrism has sent ravens throughout the city to warn all to watch for us. He wouldn’t have neglected the Conclave.”

“Then where are we to go?” Dart asked.

“To whom we were called to meet. We’ll hole up there until the others arrive.”

“Hole up where?” Dart pressed.

Yaellin nodded to the open gate, sweeping shadows over Dart’s head like gigantic raven’s wings. “With Healer Paltry.”

Tylar waited for Darjon. The knight circled him, clearly suspicious. Or perhaps the knight was simply allowing Tylar to weaken further from his wounds.