Janny Wurts - To Ride Hell’s Chasm

He turned his head and regarded Jussoud, his pupils distended and black as sky on a starless night. ‘Assassins come sometimes to strike balance for the dishonour of my broken oath. Either they die, or I do. There’s no ground for compromise. Next time you waken a man with my history, call him by name before you toss stones. Much safer, that way. Unless you are addicted to thrill, and like taking an idiot’s risk?’

‘I was bred from wild stock,’ Jussoud reassured him, smiling.

Mykkael burst into sudden laughter. ‘Bright truth, like a spear point,’ he agreed, the idiom taken from Jussoud’s birth tongue. Indeed, every steppes nomad he had ever encountered seemed to court peril as an insolent pastime.

Embarrassed all at once by an unexpected intimacy, Mykkael glanced down at the steam that twined off the filled tub. ‘You want me in there?’

Before Jussoud’s reply, the captain peeled off his smallclothes. Naked, he made a desertman’s sign against sacrilege before he stepped into the bath. ‘That, for a man’s urgent impulse to rut, that bequeaths us the ties to our ancestry.’

Jussoud untied his sash, and hung his silk robe. Stripped to the waist, he settled to work with his remedies. Immersed in warmed water, soothed under his skilled hands, Mykkael slept, slack and trusting as a baby. Later, gently roused and moved to the cot, he listened with half-lidded eyes as the nomad scolded over the scalds on his skin left by the beast drover’s liniment. He slept again, under Anja’s painted eyes, but this time his dreams brought no nightmares: only the soft burr of curses spoken in eastern dialect, and the mingled, sweet scent of medicinal oils.

Roused at length by an officer’s tap at his door, the captain lay flat on his back and heard through the brisk list of the morning’s reports. Jussoud tucked his knee into a support wrap of clean linen, then sewed the ends taut with silk thread. ‘No more stupid doctoring with unguent for camels!’ he snapped as he packed up his needle.

Mykkael flicked one finger, curt signal to excuse his diligent officer. Then he cocked himself up on one elbow, the damp ends of his hair slicked above the eased muscles of his shoulders. ‘Thank you for your care of me,’ he said, his gratitude left unadorned.

Jussoud towelled the excess oil off his forearms, washed his hands, then recovered his robe and adjusted the fall of his waist-length braid. ‘I’ll consider myself thanked if and when you respect yourself enough to spare that knee from further trauma.’

‘What price, for the life of King Isendon’s daughter?’ Mykkael stated as he rolled on to his feet.

Jussoud paused, his hands burdened as he stoppered his oil jars and loaded them back in his basket. ‘You know she’s in danger.’

Mykkael nodded, unwilling to divulge the uncanny chill that witch thoughts had strung through his gut. ‘When you see Taskin to account for my treatment—yes, he gave such orders! Don’t insult that man’s competence with denials. When you call on the tyrant to give him your gleanings, could you pass on the gist of my officer’s report?’

Granted the willing assent he expected, Mykkael pawed into a clothes chest for a fresh pair of breeches and clean shirt. He dressed, still speaking, despite the discordant clamour of voices arisen in the downstairs wardroom. ‘Relate the details you recall, as you wish. But the particulars I insist on are these: the Falls Gate seeress was murdered by drowning. The flower girl who sought her fortune knows nothing. My informers drew blanks. The streets show no sign of suspect activity.’ He moved to the cot, retrieved mud-crusted boots. ‘I have three lines of inquiry yet to pursue, and one more point I plan to tell Taskin in person. He can expect me. I’ll be at the Highgate to meet him in three hours.’

The argument below subsided to grumbles, cut by the thump of someone’s feet, climbing the inside stairwell. Mykkael registered this as his fingers threaded the buckle that fastened his sword harness. Armed, now all business, he rebounded off his good leg, hooked the satchel of remedies from his path, and relinquished the obstruction into Jussoud’s startled hands.

That forthright flow of urgency saw the captain through the doorway, a moving flicker of pale shirt doused into the shadow beyond.

What happened next, no man saw.

Jussoud’s more orderly exit followed at Mykkael’s heels. Bearing satchel and basket, the nomad began his descent of the spiral stair. He gained no more warning than a sigh of stirred air, then an indistinct sense of blurred movement. At the next step, he blundered into the falling, limp bulk of a sandy-haired palace guardsman. The wretch was unconscious. His unstrung frame crashlanded into Jussoud’s dumbfounded embrace. The healer staggered. Half turned to save his precious oil jars from smashing against the stone wall, he narrowly managed to salvage his balance and sit with the dropped body sprawled in his arms.

‘Jussoud, he’s not harmed!’ Mykkael assured him from below. Unrepentant, he spoke in low-voiced eastern dialect, as direct and brutal an admission of fact that his pre-emptive strike was deliberate.

‘I’ll have to tell Taskin,’ the masseur warned, also using his native language.

‘Your loyalty demands that,’ Mykkael agreed. He stood his ground, all brazen, cold nerve, and sustained Jussoud’s glare without flinching. ‘Serve as my witness with the same honesty. You received my report, and heard out my intentions before this palace guardsman made his way over my threshold. Please see the fellow is properly cared for. My men downstairs will assist you. They’ll dispatch a litter, as needed, to bear him in comfort through Highgate.’

Under his healer’s questing touch, Jussoud felt the vigorous signs of an angry victim starting to rouse. ‘I will pray to my gods that you are a man who knows the full measure of trouble you stir. Little good comes of taunting the tiger.’

Mykkael spun without words. His step in departure made not a sound, a rare feat for a man who was crippled.

Jussoud sighed. As uneasy as though he had just sampled poison, he restrained the stunned guardsman’s thrashing. He could not regret leaving the captain at large. No safe method existed to detain Mykkael. As a killer, the man was chilling, for his speed and his unrivalled competence. He might be the linchpin the crown required to save Sessalie’s princess from danger. Yet if the contrary proved true: if the desert-bred was a traitor immersed in a covert conspiracy, the game piece haplessly caught in his path must survive to bear Taskin fair warning.

Prince Kailen suffered his punishing hangover immersed in his bath, the soaked hair at his nape crushed against the bronze rim, where he rested his pounding skull. Tendrils of scented steam rose about him, running sweat in rivulets down a complexion tinged greenish from nausea. When the crisp knock rattled the chamber door, Kailen whispered a curse. A crease stitched the corners of his shut eyes. Though he was in a sorry state to receive, the noise pained him worse than the prospect of unwanted company.

A dispirited flick of his Highness’s finger dispatched his hovering valet.

The manservant deferred to the prince’s condition. He moved on stockinged feet, and admitted the caller with hands that did their utmost to muffle the strident plink of the latch.

Cool air winnowed in. The draught puckered Kailen’s flushed skin, bearing the fashionable hyacinth perfume used by Devall’s court lackeys.

The Crown Prince of Sessalie decided his head ached too much to endure any lowlander’s penchant for ceremony. ‘The heir apparent of Devall may enter, as he pleases.’

The draught became a breeze as several bodies filed in.