Chris Northern - The Last King's Amulet

“Where is Tahal Samant?” Sapphire hissed the question fiercely in the man's ear. “Tell me and live, keep silent and die. Where is he?”

“Vaults,” the Alendi squeezed the words through his closed throat, “In the vaults.”

Instantly Sapphire release his grip, hands moving with smooth precision, one hand cupping the Alendi's bearded chin, the other coming to the back of his head. He wrenched fast and hard and a sound like a green branch breaking rang out, echoing dully from the walls. Sapphire caught the man as he fell and dragged him a few yards to the bottom of a stair well and dropping the body. Grabbing the lolling head he smashed it three times in quick succession against the stone floor. Despite myself, I winced, stalled where I had been following. I shuddered at the calm indifference with which Sapphire handled the body and I reached for the bottle. As I downed a good swallow of the fiery liquid, Sapphire briefly examined his handiwork; satisfied he grabbed the man's legs and heaved the body into the stairwell, leaving it looking as though the man had fallen, legs and arms twisted randomly awry.

“Sheo is here. He saw me,” I remembered to say. It was important, though I didn't know what we would do about it.

Shadows danced across Sapphire's face as he looked at me, face calm as stone, cold gaze locked on mine. “We split up,” he told me. “Look for the vaults. If you are captured I'll get you out.”

He snatched the bottle from my hand, poured some grotesquely into the corpse's mouth and ghosted up the stairs. After three steps he dashed the bottle on a stair, discarding it and its contents, and then was gone.

I stared in shock at the broken bottle, glass shards winking in the wavering light and precious liquid dripping on the stairs. He'd broken it. He'd thrown away my whiskey. And it was the last bottle. What had he said? Find the vaults. Right. I looked at the corner round which I had come, then turned away and lurched down the corridor. Easy to say, find the vaults, but what was I going to do? Ask someone? Well, I thought, why not? Barbarians would need to know the way more often than spies and infiltrators, surely?

If only I could remember what clan we were, just in case I was asked.

A drunk can get away with anything, I decided. No one expects them to be coherent or sensible. All they saw was a wasted Alendi about some business he was not fit to complete. They smiled in sympathy or snorted in derision, either way not seeing me as a threat.

I'd grabbed a door frame, leaned drunkenly into a room full of men taking their ease, lifted a jug of ale and taken a swig while the owner protested, then asked where the vaults were.

“If you're going to the vaults, you can get your own beer,” one of them told me.

“Under your feet, where do you think?” Another had called, contemptuously.

“Get off my beer,” The nearest had growled.

I nodded sagely, let him have the jug, wiped my mouth with one hand, feeling the beard growing there, and straightened up. “I will,” I said with exaggerated care. Beard, I thought. When had that happened? I couldn't remember the last time I had shaved. How drunk had I been? I'd grown a beard and not noticed. I was looking up and down the corridor, still leaning on the door frame.

“That way,” one of them said, spacing the words as though talking to a drunken fool, which I suppose he was.

I nodded sagely and went.

“Vaults?”

The Alendi jerked his thumb over his shoulder and carried on walking, his companion eying me in disgust. I nodded thanks and carried on walking. Next set of steps down, I decided.

It wasn't far to the stairs.

I found Sheo and four Alendi at the bottom and froze.

“You're drunk,” he said, seeming to appraise me.

I guess I just hadn't decided what to do. I had a sword, but I didn't reach for it. Doubtless Sapphire had a plan, but I didn't. I hadn't thought it through, so I just stood there at the bottom of the stairs, gaze locked on Sheo as he looked me up and down as I stood there wavering, his four companions unmoving but alert.

“Are you alone?”

I shook my head, then tried to make it look like I was just confused. Not too difficult under the circumstances.

He shook his head, his expression disappointed.

“Come with me,” he said.

So I did.

As the guards moved close around me and reached for my sword I acted, but it was far too late. There were four of them and they were not surprised or unready or drunk. They overpowered me, took my sword and dragged me after him. I struggled and fought and cursed to no avail. Part of me couldn't believe they had taken me so easily and part of me was defeated and not surprised in the least by my abject failure.

“Whose side are you on?”

Sheo looked at me as though trying to assess my sanity but didn't answer.

He stopped before a door, one of the four, unlocked it and they threw me in.

“Stay here,” Sheo told me, as though I had a choice.

Doubtless Sapphire would have sprung into action at once, effortlessly killed all five and moved on rapidly to find our target, picked the lock that held him captive, clothed him in barbarian gear and escorted him promptly from captivity with the minimum of fuss. I wondered why I had not? Why had surprise shocked me into inaction? How drunk was I exactly?

I stood there staring at the door as it closed and locked, knowing that part of my inaction was the result of not knowing if Sheo were ally or enemy. I still didn't know. The door had a small grille and I pressed my face against it shouted, “Sheo, he has the last King's amulet!”

His voice drifted back down the corridor, mildly irritated. “Shut up, Sumto.”

So, I thought to myself, my face pressed against the grille, now what?

I stood still for what seemed a long time, still a little bewildered by the ease with which I had been captured, disarmed and thrown into a cell. I hadn't been ready to act, not ready for violence. I reasoned that it was because I knew I was surrounded by hundreds of Alendi in the keep and thousands outside it. Violence wouldn't work, I had assumed. Guile and stealth were the way forward. An image of the Alendi lying on the stairs, his neck broken, flashed in my mind. Violence worked well enough for Sapphire, I thought.

“Yes,” I said to myself softly, “but I'm not Sapphire.”

“Who are you then?”

I started, banging my head on the door and spun around. I had not realized I was not alone. There were two beds in the cell and on one of them, sitting with his back against the wall and looking at me with mild curiosity, was a man of the city. He studied me with casual indifference, as though he had been waiting for a servant to bring him a plate of tidbits and was mildly puzzled as to why I had been brought instead. I could tell that he was a patron by his dress, by the fact that he was clean-shaven, and that he was looking at me in contempt and had asked the question with the mild curiosity of one who does not really care to hear the answer, as I was bound to be a social inferior and therefore beneath notice.

“Tahal Samant,” I said.

“No, that's me.” He sighed when I did not respond, judging me a man of little wit no doubt. “I asked you first.”

“Sumto Merian Ichatha Cerulian,” I said.

“The drunk,” his lips curled in mild contempt. “Just as I imagined you.”

“I came to rescue you.”

“Oh, thank the gods, I'm saved,” he gestured airily, looking to the heavens.

He was beginning to irritate me. “Orelia asked me to come and get you.”

He sighed. “How like her. And what are you going to do now you have found me? Pour me a drink? Sing me a song? Dance a drunken reel? Tell me a ribald joke and laugh uproariously at your own surpassing wit?”