Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

“How do you come to be here?” I asked the lady of Shernasekke.

“Olret stole us out from beneath Ilkehan’s nose.” She waved a disdainful hand at their foul prison. “He offers us a choice: marriage with his blood or this squalor.” Her mother barked with weary laughter.

“Marriage will give Olret a claim on Shernasekke land to rival Ilkehan’s right of conquest?” I guessed, glancing at the two nubile girls. Marriage by rape is a long and dishonourable tradition in Lescar, where inheritance squabbles fester from generation to generation and more than one duchess took her wedding vows with a dagger at her throat.

“He will only have a claim when the bloodlines are joined by a child.” The other sister scowled from her foetid cage, twitching her mossy green skirts as she stood.

The lady of Shernasekke smiled. “He may have cut us off from home and hargeard but we can summon power from our common birthright to rule within this room.”

So this neglect might be more precaution than calculated torment.

“It is both,” the woman in green told me.

“Are you reading my thoughts?” I asked warily.

She shrugged. “A simple enough trick.”

“One that Olret cannot master.” The grandmother came to the front of her cage, eyes webbed with age and sunk deep in her wrinkled face. “That’s the other reason he risks Ilkehan’s wrath to keep us in this captivity. We hold all that remains of Shernasekke’s lore and Olret would dearly love to add that to his own.”

“Mother!” protested the sister in the green gown.

“Why dissemble?” argued her other sister. “Olret condemned our clan to be crushed beneath Ilkehan’s heel without us to defend Shernasekke.”

“This one is no friend to Olret.” The old woman stared at me. With her clouded eyes I doubted she could see much beyond the length of her arm but something was giving her uncomfortably accurate insight. She grunted with satisfaction. “Nor her friends.”

“You’re here with others?” One of the young girls spoke for the first time, hope naked on her face.

“Can you get a message to Evadesekke?” The woman in gold scrambled to her feet. “We have ties of kinship there.”

“Dachasekke will help us once they know we are still alive,” her sister in green insisted. “Froilasekke too.”

“Our quarrel is with Ilkehan,” I said carefully. “We’ve little interest in involving ourselves in strife we have no part in.” If you can’t see the bottom of the river, you don’t start wading.

“Olret will trade us to Ilkehan if some turn of fate makes that worth his while or if our surrender proves the only way to save his own skin.” Shernasekke’s lady looked at me and I knew her words for simple truth.

These women had some powerful Artifice among them and, like Guinalle, the skills to work their enchantments without constant incantations. It was also a relief to know Olret wasn’t able to look inside my head and learn I’d been up here. This wasn’t the brutal, damaging enchantment that Ilkehan had wrought on me and around me but all the same, none of these women were showing any qualms about taking what they wanted from my thoughts or imposing their will on my body. Was that the resonance of undeniable truth I heard in their words or treacherous magic convincing me of their lie? There didn’t seem to be any of Guinalle’s ethical tradition in Elietimm Artifice; it was either brutal or insidious.

“Are you truly speaking honestly?” I raised my eyebrows at Shernasekke’s lady.

She shrugged. “You can only decide such things for yourself

“When I’ve done so, I’ll come back.” I found myself unhampered by enchantment as I turned to leave. The bolts slid back at a whisper from the younger maiden. As I slid through the door, I saw her looking at me with a misery that her elders refused to admit.

I hurried along the corridor. Those women were getting food and water, however inadequate, and I didn’t want to meet whoever was bringing it. Slowing on the stairs, I dug a vial of perfume in my belt pouch and dabbed a little in the hollow of my throat. The scent cleansed the prison stink from my nostrils and hopefully masked any clinging to my clothes. Then I heard steps in the corridor where Olret’s son slept his fevered dreams and froze. Creeping silently down, I stole a glance around the corner and saw the nurse walking away from me. I hurried on down but heard boots coming up below me. Turning, I fished my parchment out of my pocket and walked back up as if I had every right to be there.

There was no answer when I knocked so I waited by the door for the lad’s nurse. Olret’s son wouldn’t be joining his bloodline with either of those lasses up above. Presumably that was Ilkehan’s excuse for cutting his stones like some colt not wanted for stud. Did Shernasekke’s lady know that had happened?

Was I going to tell the others what I’d discovered? How would they react? It was easy to see ’Gren could no more leave something like this alone than he could keep his fingers out of a tear in his breeches. He’d be all for storming the upper floor and setting the captives free. Come to that, Sorgrad would need some convincing reason why we shouldn’t.

Ryshad might consider losing even a distasteful ally like Olret too high a price to pay for the women’s freedom. Our purpose here was killing Ilkehan, not involving ourselves in wider dissensions. Ryshad would certainly find their casual domination of unknown Artifice sufficient argument to mistrust the women and leave them be, at least until we knew them to be friend or foe.

But Shiv would surely argue we needed any and all aetheric lore working for us and against Ilkehan. Would the mage be wrong? Could we have this out among ourselves without Olret getting wind of it?

I’d jotted a few scores from a meaningless game of runes with ’Gren on the back of the parchment. Just what kind of game was this three-cornered strife between Ilkehan, Olret and the lady of Shernasekke who seemed to have taken her dead husband’s seat at the table? I didn’t owe her any more than I trusted either of the others. Would stepping up and making my own random throw pay off handsomely for us or not?

“What do you want?” It was the nurse come back.

I flourished my parchment. “My people, we of the Forest, we have songs to soothe the sick and injured.” I wasn’t going to claim aetheric skills, not when I couldn’t be certain I’d be able to help the lad.

The woman considered this. “For a little while.” Her face said as plainly as speaking that if I couldn’t do any good, I couldn’t do any harm and there was little enough hope for her charge in any case.

The room was still dim and the sour sweetness of corruption was stronger than before. The lad lay motionless on his back, an unhealthy flush on his cheeks below his bandaged eyes.

I cleared my throat and began to sing softly. Guinalle reckoned ‘The Lay of Mazir’s Healing Hands’ had Artifice hidden in its jalquezan refrain and I’d seen a wise woman of the Forest Folk sing it over a half-drowned girl who’d certainly recovered faster than she’d any right to. The nurse sat at her window sewing and I caught her smiling at the tale of Kespar who’d lost a wager with Poldrion, that he could swim the river between this world and the Other faster than the Ferryman could row his boat across. He’d paid the price in blood when the god’s demons caught up with him. Mazir had healed her love with herbs and wise words, all the while teasing him for his folly. As I sang, I wondered if this poor lad had anyone to love him and comfort him. We’d seen no sign of any wife or mistress to Olret, nor yet any other children. Still, as Sorgrad would say, that was none of our concern. Ever softer, I drew the final refrain to a close. It may have been my imagination but I thought the lad’s breath rasped less fast and desperate in his throat.