Rob Scott - Lessek_s Key

Steven said, ‘Your great-great-great-grandmother was from Rona.’

‘I don’t know,’ Mark sighed. ‘I know it’s crazy – but Lessek is trying to tell me something; he’s been trying since my first night here, on the beach near Estrad. I just haven’t been able to figure out what it is, and this is the only thing that makes sense.’

‘If you’re right, how would Nerak know?’

‘I have no idea,’ Mark answered. ‘Unless he knew the key would have pulled me to Idaho Springs, and your bank.’

‘What about me? He doesn’t seem to know anything about me, and I worked in the damned bank for three years – and we share the house. If what you say is true, I’ve been a victim of Lessek’s key as well. Why doesn’t Nerak know who I am?’

‘I can’t begin to say, but if the opportunity ever arises, we should definitely ask him.’ Mark walked over to where Rodler slept and, kicking the smuggler a good deal harder than he had his roommate, said sharply, ‘Wake up, asshole.’

Rodler was up like a cornered animal, a thin dirk held tightly in one fist, no trace of sleep in his sharply focused eyes. ‘What’s happening? Is it a patrol?’

For a moment, Mark was impressed with the man’s response, though sleeping with one eye open was most likely a necessity for him. Still, he didn’t like Rodler and didn’t approve of his business. He had decided he would kill Malakasians without guilt, his way of dealing with the helplessness he felt in the wake of Brynne’s death. Mark might not like war, but he recognised there were times when it was inevitable. Diplomacy in Eldarn had died the night Nerak killed Prince Markon at Riverend Palace and he had taken up arms for the oppressed. He might kill, but he would never deal in drugs, no matter how lucrative it might be.

Now grinning at Rodler, Mark asked, ‘You wouldn’t happen to have been in Colorado Springs last winter for the Colorado State Swimming Championships, would you? Maybe sitting next to a man from Fort Collins? He had on a green sweatshirt.’

The man blinked several times in confusion, then sheathed his dirk. ‘Mark Jenkins, I don’t even know what most of those words mean. But no, I was not in Color-ado last winter. I have never heard of that territory. Is it in Rona?’

‘I’m relieved to hear that – but I woke you up to make certain you understand that if you ever disparage me, my skin colour or my race again, I will kill you. All right?’

‘Gods rut a mule, Mark, but I thought we were already beyond this.’ He shook his head in disappointment. ‘I was doing my own thing, when you appeared and started shouting. I would have been very happy to have missed the four of you by a thousand paces, believe me.’

‘Just so you understand – and Rodler, I truly am glad that you weren’t in Colorado Springs last winter.’

‘And why is that?’ The younger man sighed.

‘Because you would be dead already.’ Mark turned back to his blankets. ‘Good night.’

‘Wake up,’ Brexan whispered, ‘Sallax, wake up. It’s another raid.’ She rolled to her feet. Her back ached from eight nights of sleeping on a hard wooden floor, but she ignored it and squirmed into her tunic.

From the bed, Sallax groaned and opened his eyes.

‘No peeking, you rutter!’ She turned towards the wall, then said, ‘No, never mind, just get up – hurry! I can hear them, maybe two doors down. We have to get you down the back stairs.’ Her hair a tangle and her tunic unbelted, Brexan rushed to his side and began unwrapping his injured shoulder. It was healing; Jacrys had done an admirable job of rebreaking and setting the bones, but it should have remained bound, without interruption, for the next Moon.

Sallax winced.

‘I know. I know,’ she whispered. ‘We have to, just until they’re gone.’ The Malakasian soldiers and their Seron escort (Prince Malagon’s Seron warriors were brutal and efficient, but not adept at espionage) were searching for a woman travelling with an injured man who was addled, and nearly incoherent in his speech. The raids had started two days after she and Sallax fled Carpello’s warehouse. She thought she had left Jacrys dead, but when the searches began she realised that somehow the resilient bastard spy had survived Sallax clobbering him with the wooden table leg. Now Jacrys was obviously directing the periodic raids – maybe even from his hospital bed – as the soldiers and Seron crawled into every cabinet, beneath every building and inside every cargo hold.

They had her description; of that Brexan was certain, so she sheared off her hair – and nearly burst into tears when an emaciated, cropped-haired ghost stared back at her from the mirror. But what Jacrys had planned for her would be far worse than a tragic hair-cut.

‘Come on,’ she said, ‘they’re close this time.’ From outside the window, Brexan heard the screams of those Orindale citizens unfortunate enough to be the search subjects this pre-dawn aven. The shouting was more a warning that a raid was coming than the city folk being badly injured by the searchers.

Sallax was up and dressed when she heard the front room door burst open, kicked off its hinges as the first of the Seron made their way into the inn. ‘Pissing demons,’ she said, ‘they’re here already. Come on. Down the back stairs, right away.’ She hurried Sallax out the door and along the darkened hallway, careful not to touch his shoulder, waiting to hear a barked command to halt at any moment. In her haste, she had forgotten her belt; now she scurried downstairs without any weapons.

‘Trenchers again?’ Sallax drawled.

‘Is that all right? Can you do trenchers this morning? I will get you all the trenchers in the kitchen if you promise not to say anything to anyone but me.’

‘Trenchers, yes,’ Sallax said, ‘and he won’t say anything.’

‘Good job. Outstanding, and you just wash the trenchers until I come back for you. It will be just a few moments, all right?’

‘Trenchers, yes.’

They reached the service entrance and Brexan hurriedly lit several paraffin tapers from coals still burning in the fireplace. Illuminating the small room, she positioned the big Ronan at a tub of water, pushed a cloth into his hand – and then discovered that every trencher in the scullery had been scrubbed clean and stacked neatly beside the hearth. From the front room, she heard the sound of heavily booted feet stomping up the stairs to the guest chambers. ‘Bleeding whores,’ she said, sweating, ‘every rutting dish is already clean.’ She sidled across to a large pot of leftover stew, ladled some into as many trenchers as she dared and piled the soiled dishes beside the tub. ‘Can you clean these?’

‘Trenchers,’ Sallax said, hefting one to eye level and watching as bits of stew dribbled down his wrist to the wooden tabletop.

‘Excellent,’ she said, kissing him quickly on the cheek. ‘You clean up. I’ll be back.’

She had paid the tavern owner an extra silver piece to be permitted to secrete Sallax into the kitchen whenever the Redstone was searched. This was the third time in eight days. She worried that some smart officer might wonder why a scullery worker would be cleaning trenchers during the overnight and predawn avens, but thus far, her luck had prevailed: the raiding parties stormed through the inn, searching every room, including the kitchen, and left without a second glance at the big simpleton.

Hiding herself the first night had been challenging: at a loss for any other option, Brexan had slipped into the squalid chamber where the tavern staff bedded down and, stripping off her tunic and leggings, she had dived into bed with that same waiter who had been her antidote to loneliness: too much wine and sex with a stranger. She shocked the young man near to death as she helped him out of his bed clothes and began fondling him beneath the blankets, but when the soldiers burst into the room and she had feigned shock and terror along with the others, they were in no doubt about what the kitchen maid and the waiter were up to.