Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

Hitched up, her shift showed a painfully thin rump and legs barely more than skin and bone. That starveling little lass wasn’t eating her fill of fishy-tasting birds or meaty seabeasts and sneaking in through a window suggested she was up to no good. Neglected like this, all she’d have to fill her belly was resentment. If I could catch her, I might be able to tempt her to tell me some less pleasant truths about this place.

There was no one in sight but I still kept up the charm as I squeezed myself through the narrow window. I could hear the lass’s breathless running up the stair, bare feet whispering on the stone. She didn’t halt at the floor above the great hall, nor yet at the next, hurrying on up. I kept pace with her, flattening myself against the wall and peering around the corner to see her meet another of those iron gates. Which were all very well, unless you were thin enough to squeeze through the bars. I watched as the child threaded herself carefully through, the fattest thing about her the woolly animal she clutched by one leg. That was easily squashed and pulled after her. She paused to reshape her treasure, kissing the nameless beast with passionate apology before disappearing up the stairs.

A memory struck me with all the force of a blow to the head. I’d seen that woolly beast before now and I could recall exactly where. That little girl had been barely walking but she’d carried it through the halls of the Shernasekke house that we’d seen reduced to ruins. How had she escaped that destruction? If Olret had saved her, he wasn’t taking particularly good care of her now.

What else was he keeping behind lock and key? I crept cautiously down to the corridor where Olret’s mutilated son had his room. That was empty so I ran lightly down the next flight and ducked into my own cubbyhole. The bed bore no trace of our passionate exertions the previous night, coverlets straight and smooth. My bag hung on the footboard and I saw that the hair I’d left in the buckle apparently caught by chance, was now snapped. No matter; I didn’t keep anything of interest or value in there. I sat on the bed and opened my belt pouch. Slipped into the stitching of the inner seam was a fine steel picklock and I patiently teased it free, tucking it into the sheath of the dagger I had strapped on the inner side of my forearm. I also took out the parchment bearing my scant knowledge of Artifice and smoothed it flat. That in hand, innocent face all eagerness to help, I marched boldly up the stairs to the floor above. There was still no one around, so, tucking the parchment back in my pocket, I disappeared up the curve of the stair.

There was no way I could squeeze through the bars so I knelt by the locked gate. I could have opened most locks in these islands with a piece of wet straw but this was different. As I probed its hidden working, I wondered where Olret had got such a thing. There wasn’t enough metal hereabouts to give any Elietimm the chance to hone such craftsmanship. No matter, it wasn’t as complex as the Mountain-crafted locks Sorgrad had trained me on. It yielded with a softly rolling click.

I went cautiously up, low to the ground to look over the topmost stairs since any guard would be keeping watch at head height. There was no one there but a rank smell like a stable drain wrinkled my nose. I stood up and walked softly down the corridor. Doors ajar on either side opened on to unfurnished rooms, bare walls, scrubbed floors and no sign of the little girl, not even cowering behind a door. After checking every room, all I was left with was one shut up and, unsurprisingly, the source of the stench. The door wasn’t locked but bolted high and low.

What was inside, besides the little girl? Whatever it was, it was something Olret kept safely locked away and that meant it had to have some value. I reached up to the top bolt and then stopped. How had the child got in here and then bolted the door after herself? No, she must be cowering in the other stairwell. I lowered my hand and was about to turn away when both bolts began to move of their own accord. They glided smoothly through the hasps and the latch lifted. A frisson ran through me.

The door stayed shut though. Opening it would have to be my choice. Where had that notion come from? I studied the blank timber. Could I walk away and not know what it concealed? Curiosity got Amit hanged, as my mother used to say. Perhaps, but that had never stopped me before. I pushed at the door and it swung open on well-oiled hinges. I managed not to choke on the stink it released.

The room was the biggest I’d seen on the keep’s upper levels and it was full of cages. In a land so poor in metals, I was looking at a fortune to choke the greediest merchant back home. Still, I didn’t imagine the women looking through those bars appreciated being surrounded with such wealth. They ranged from a frail-looking grandmother to two maidens barely blooming into womanhood. The other three were much of an age with myself and one held the fugitive child close to her skirts. All were Elietimm by their colouring and features and, by local standards, their gowns were well cut and expertly sewn. But the clothes hung loose on them, gaping at the neck and slack in the waist. All the captive faces were drawn with hunger kept just short of starvation by a prudent jailer.

The little girl looked at me, hugging her woolly animal. Her mother’s sage dress was stained and creased with wear, the hems dirtied where she’d been unable to avoid the spreading pile of ordure she’d done her best to keep in one corner of her prison. Could Olret not even grant his prisoners a chamber pot? Or was that the point? How better to humiliate these women than by denying them even the most basic dignities? All had fingernails rimed with black, fair hair lank with dirt, filth engrained in the creases of faces and necks. They had nothing to sit on, not so much as a blanket to soften the iron bars beneath their feet. Only a crude hide spread out below each cage, edges curled and tied into corners to catch the soil before it reached the floorboards and threatened the ceilings below.

I hadn’t exactly decided to leave but was considering backing out of the room when I realised I couldn’t. Nothing hindered my feet but I knew for a certainty that the only way I could move was forward. All the women watched intently. It was a fair bet one of them was using Artifice on me but, oddly, I didn’t feel particularly threatened.

“Good day, ladies.” A step forward was easy enough but I knew instantly I still couldn’t take it back.

“Please come beyond the door.” The mother spoke urgently, her Tormalin as good if not better than my Mountain speech. That was a fair point. I moved and the door swung closed behind me, bolts sealing me in with a soft rasp as the grandmother muttered a rapid charm.

“Who are you?” the mother demanded. Locked in a stinking prison, I wouldn’t have bothered with niceties either.

“A visitor, from over the ocean.” It may be mere childhood myth that giving the Eldritch Kin your name hands them power over you but I wasn’t taking any chances with unknown practitioners of Artifice. “Who are you?”

“I was wife to Ashernan, master of Shernasekke.” The mother wasn’t bandying words with anyone who might help her. “We are all of that clan; my mother, my sisters and their daughters.”

“I thought Ilkehan destroyed Shernasekke.” I matched her directness, aware someone might interrupt us at any moment. Then I’d be in trouble but we’d deal with that as the runes fell.

“Ilkehan with Olret yapping at his heels.” The grandmother spat copiously in wordless disgust.

Her back against her bars, one of the sisters sat with coppery gold skirts rucked up to pad her rump. “What Evadesekke sees, he covets. What Evadesekke covets, Kehannasekke steals. What Kehannasekke steals, Rettasekke hides.” The obscure pronouncement had the bitter resonance of old, acknowledged truth in the Elietimm tongue.