Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

Sallax struck while Brexan was still caught in her crisis of conscience, slamming his own knife into Jacrys’ chest. He held it for a moment as the spy woke with a gasp and stared, eyes wide in horror, into the faces of his killers. Sallax lowered his face and growled, ‘This is for Gilmour.’

Jacrys’ mouth moved, but he couldn’t manage to make a sound. His eyes fluttered and his nostrils flared with his efforts to breathe, and then he tensed as his body went into spasm. As consciousness fled, so the rigid tension dissipated.

Sallax released the bloody hilt, leaving it standing erect in the spy’s chest. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Brexan nodded, staring down, waiting for Jacrys’ eyes to close. She was remotely aware of Sallax crossing the room to retrieve the torch and then coming back.

He bent to examine a stack of papers spread across a wooden table. ‘Come look at these,’ he called in a whisper.

‘What?’ She watched Jacrys’ eyes catch the firelight, his mouth still stuck somewhere half-open and half-closed. A trickle of bloody saliva drooled down his chin as he fought to stay alive. She wondered if he could see her, if he recognised her, or if he was just staring at the faded tapestries that hung around the walls.

‘Over here,’ Sallax interrupted. ‘Do you recognise these?’

She pulled herself away from the dying man and, gathering her wits, moved to stand beside Sallax. ‘They’re maps.’ She bent over the table to look at them more closely. ‘This is Pellia.’

‘And these?’ Sallax shuffled two or three others to the top of the stack.

‘That’s the river, and these are the heights above Welstar Palace. That mark right there must be the keep.’ She ran her finger over a semi-circular area around the castle. All this is a Malakasian encampment. It’s the biggest army I’ve ever seen.’

‘Good rutters,’ Sallax said under his breath. ‘We have to take these. Look at the marks on there. These are maps of the river. Look at these boxes and circles. They must be places along the waterway for barges to load and unload whatever it is that Carpello is shipping – was shipping – from Strandson and Orindale.’

And look here,’ Brexan pointed to another map. ‘This is the Great Pragan Range, the mountains on the southern border. I wonder what’s happening down there.’

‘I don’t know, but let’s take them all; we can study them as closely as we like later. But for now, let’s-’

A clamour rose from a lower floor, a wildly ringing bell, as if someone was trying to rouse the entire city against a pending invasion.

Sallax and Brexan stopped, their eyes meeting across the wooden table. ‘What’s that?’ she asked nervously.

Sallax turned back towards the spy and over his shoulder, Brexan could see what Jacrys had been staring at. A trail of blood, viscous, black in the half light, led from the spy’s empty bed to the wall, where, in front of one of the ancient tapestries, hung a bell rope, dangling from an old system of pulleys and cables that obviously ran to the servants’ quarters and the scullery below.

Jacrys tugged the rope with all his remaining strength, sitting with his back propped awkwardly against the wall. A grim smile split his cadaverous face: the triumphant grin of one who has emerged victorious despite overwhelming odds. He twitched as waves of pain assailed him, but it didn’t change the smug assurance that, try as they might to escape, there would be no leaving the palace alive.

‘Come quickly!’ Sallax barked, no longer trying for stealth. ‘We have to get below the first level before anyone gets to those stairs.’ He scooped up as many of the maps as he could, folded them under his arm and charged through the door into the hallway.

Brexan considered crossing the room to cut the spy’s throat, but shrugged and hurried out behind Sallax. She ran back to the small landing and headlong into Sallax, who had stopped. Brexan stepped back. ‘What is it? Let’s get going. Are they already on the stairs?’

Sallax didn’t answer as the maps slipped from beneath his arm and spilled down the stone stairway.

‘What is it?’ She pushed past him onto the landing.

The lone sentry was lying with his legs hanging off the first step, his torso propped up between the door and the wall. Sallax staggered and fell to his knees and Brexan managed to slip past him, over the dying guard, to grab the torch Sallax had dropped. Brexan picked it up, fanned it back to life and propped it between the fallen man’s legs.

The flickering glow illuminated the rapier protruding from Sallax’s chest, the last attack of the dying guard. A long, wheezing rattle came from the sentry’s chest. Brexan gasped and reached for Sallax.

‘I’m dying,’ he murmured. ‘I’m dying.’

‘No, you’re not,’ she said firmly, ignoring her tears. ‘Come with me. We have to hurry.’

Below, the incessant ringing merged with the groaning and shuffling of soldiers rousing themselves from sleep. From the annoyed sounds that filtered upstairs, the groggy guards thought some gods-forsaken officer had spent too long with his head dipped in a wine cask and was now mustering them all for a late-night inspection. Thankfully, none of them appeared to be coming up the stairs, not yet.

Sallax fell forward, and Brexan caught him beneath his arms. As she hugged him close, she flashed back to Versen, and how heavy he had been that day she’d tried to keep him afloat in the Ravenian Sea. ‘Please, Sallax, please,’ she cried softly, ‘you can do this. You’re so strong and it isn’t far, just a few stairs. Come on; we can make it.’

‘Leave me here, Brexan,’ Sallax whispered. ‘You can get out.’ He struggled to lift himself off her and fell back against the door, slamming it shut with an echo that rolled down the stairs. ‘Hurry now; you can make it.’ He reached for her with a bloody hand, and she held it in both of hers.

He wriggled his hand free and reached for her again, stretching. She tried to take his hand, but he shook her off. ‘What is it?’

‘You can make it out,’ he said, ‘but you need-’ Gripping her tunic belt, he pulled on it, his strength failing, until the tongue was drawn back through the buckle.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I want you to get out, but you have to make it look like-’ Again he tugged at her belt. Suddenly Brexan understood.

‘No, Sallax, I’ll stay here and fight beside you.’

He ignored her. ‘You can do this.’

Brexan angrily fought back tears as she unfastened her belt and untied the strap holding her cloak closed. Dropping the belt and her weapons, she pulled the tunic over her head.

Sallax looked away, with a hoarse laugh. ‘I’m not supposed to peek,’ he murmured.

Now she did cry. She gave him a long kiss on the temple, hugged him to her naked torso until enough blood smeared her body, then picked up her cloak and screwed it up into a ball. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, a sob in her voice.

Sallax looked at her, his eyes glassy in the torchlight. ‘Tell Garec the truth about what happened. Make sure he knows.’

Brexan sobbed, ‘I will. I promise. I will find him.’

The bell rang on into the night and Brexan cursed Jacrys, wishing with all her heart he would die before Sallax, so her friend would hear the bell fall silent, but it didn’t happen. Sallax’s eyes fluttered open several times, then his head slumped on his chest, and Brexan watched as his final breath sighed from his body.

‘Oh gods,’ Brexan started quietly, then, fulfilling her promise, allowed her cries to grow in volume until they were enormous, great heaving sobs that echoed through the upper floors of the old residence. ‘Oh gods, oh gods!’ Holding her cloak and tunic, Brexan ran, half naked and splattered with blood, down the stairs and into the midst of the confused platoon milling about below. ‘Oh gods!’ She grabbed the first soldier she encountered, ensured he took a long look at her body, and then shouted, ‘They’re killing him! Please help, upstairs, please help! They’re killing him!’