His dark face turned downwards, unreadable, Mykkael stated, ‘We all tread upon dangerous ground.’
‘Then are you the snake set into our midst?’ Taskin ripped back in blunt challenge. ‘Have you failed to notice that’s what the court factions are claiming? No one holds any scrap of hard evidence against you. But you realize, at this point, that’s not a clear-cut reason for me to stand down the outcry for your arrest.’
Mykkael snapped an oath in some guttural dialect that ground on the ear like scraped gravel. ‘Let me say what I know. Your princess is in dire peril this moment. For her sake, hear me through. As we go, you can ask me whatever you wish. I will answer as your subordinate.’
‘You can spare me my reasonable doubts on that score!’ Yet Taskin stepped back. He braced his squared shoulders against the brick wall, still flushed with fury. Only his gesture suggested the chance he might balance his options by listening.
‘All right.’ Mykkael expelled a stiff breath. ‘Protections, first.’ He shut his eyes, turned his face away to disarm any inference of threat. With placating, slow movement, he untied a wash-leather bag from his belt, then removed something strung on a stained rawhide tie. He dropped the object with a metallic clink on the platform at Taskin’s feet.
The commander dragged the thong close with his boot toe. Still without touching, he examined the queer pattern of geometry etched into the green copper disc. ‘What’s this?’
‘A talisman,’ Mykkael answered. ‘You’ll wear it next to your skin night and day, do you hear? Ignore what I’ve said at your peril.’
Taskin looked up, his eyes like forged steel. ‘Where did you get such a thing? Whose hand made it?’
‘That’s the vizier Perincar’s working.’ Mykkael swallowed. As though the words burned him to undying bitterness, he answered as he had promised. ‘The artefact came from the wars with Rathtet.’
Taskin raised startled eyebrows. ‘But I thought no survivors—’ His breathing hitched through a disastrous pause, as the most likely bent of plausibility ran a grue of dread straight through him.
‘No!’ Mykkael shook his head, looking anguished. ‘I never fought for Rathtet! No mercenaries did.’ Again, he closed his eyes; not to blunt hair-trigger reflexes, this time, but visibly wrestling an unutterable weariness. As though the forced explanation seared him to inward pain, he met Taskin’s bidding and qualified. ‘Eighteen of us lived. I fought at the side of Prince Al-Syn-Efandi. He died with his head in my lap.’
Merciless, the commander snatched the opening to interrogate. ‘If that’s the truth, then what were his last words?’
Mykkael stared back, outraged and unblinking. ‘A royal command, to flee the country bearing his daughter to safety. That’s why what remained of my company survived. We ran, while the rest of the defenders manned the walls until the capitol was overcome.’
Such simple phrases, to map an abyss of sheer horror; the nightmare weeks of privation and flies; the days that came riddled with traps that ripped men into screaming fireballs and husked them to twitching, seared meat. The harsh facts of geography, which a man born in Sessalie might not know, that such a flight had to forge a path through Rathtet’s battle lines, and cross the city of tents that encompassed the sorcerers’ encampment. The very ground underfoot had been shackled in conquest, rock and soil laced through by a morass of vile craft that opened the earth as the conduit for demonic powers. Even years later, bathed in clean, alpine sunlight, Mykkael’s shadowed eyes masked the terror endured through that flaying line of retreat.
And still, Taskin tested him. ‘What became of the daughter, the Efandi princess?’
‘She still lives,’ Mykkael whispered. ‘Don’t ask me to name her, or say which country has sheltered her. The Rathtet sorcerers would kill to extinguish her bloodline, and they have a powerful, long reach.’
Frost-sharp from the dimness beneath the stilled bells, the commander’s inquiry pursued him. ‘Perhaps long enough to have trailed you to Sessalie?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Mykkael shook off the grip of untenable memories to outline his reasonable certainty. ‘They won’t know my name. I didn’t experience the mark which killed Beyjall. Without seeing, I couldn’t hazard the first guess as to which demon’s sorcery made it.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Taskin pounced. ‘The Cultwaen apothecary, that your message bearer explained was struck down. We’ll get to him, later. I have accusations already in hand. They insinuate you killed the palace drudge with that mark in the cellar, a working made with intent to conceal the princess’s clothes.’
Mykkael frowned. ‘I already told you the mark was a fake!’
Taskin nodded. ‘You did. But how do we know you’re not lying?’ He pinned the copper talisman under his boot, not yet convinced he should wear it. ‘The woman lies dead. Not from poison, although she had no sign of violence upon her.’
‘A craftmark won’t kill that way,’ Mykkael said, distressed. ‘They burn. Never consume tinder like a natural flame, but destroy all that lies in their circle of reach. You can see for yourself, if you care to inspect the damage done to the house where Beyjall met his end this afternoon.’
‘But we saw no smoke from our watch towers here,’ Taskin persisted, relentless. ‘My guard heard no cries of fire and no alarm bells in the Lowergate precinct.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ Mykkael agreed. ‘There’s no smoke to be seen. A mark raises a conflagration no dousing by water can quench. Once unleashed, their spelled forces burn unchecked, igniting all things in their path, even metal and stone. They rage until they have consumed everything within the range of their pre-set intent. Such death is ghastly, beyond all imagining. Must I plead? Commander, for love of your king, accept the grace of that talisman!’
Taskin left the disc where it lay and relentlessly stabbed his point home. ‘I don’t see you wearing one.’
‘Fair enough.’ Mykkael forcibly curbed his raw nerves. He bent his neck, and regarded his hands, while the breeze fanned across the mouths of the bells, and brushed their resonance to an atonal whisper. ‘Do you trust Jussoud?’ Shown his adversary’s startlement, the southland captain might have laughed, had the straits not been volatile between them. ‘If you don’t, you should. He was born to an ancient and honourable line of eastern princes.’
‘What nonsense are you talking about?’ Taskin huffed, thrown off balance. ‘The man’s a masseur, a paid healer, if one with exceptional skill. I agree he’s well educated. But royal?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Mykkael smiled. ‘Jussoud is the son of a noble, old house. The nomads of his homeland don’t teach commoners literacy. Among their close society, the use of the ancestral ideographs is a time-honoured secret.’
Odd knowledge, for this upstart desert-bred to cast at large without thought. Yet its edge set a sting that jabbed through to the commander’s well-guarded heart. As long and as well as Taskin had employed Jussoud, as often as he had divulged the rare gift of his personal confidence, the healer had not shared any such fact from his nomad parentage.
‘He didn’t tell me, either,’ Mykkael ventured, unasked. ‘Except to admit, when I pried, that he knew how to write his birth language.’
Shadow flickered, from behind.
Mykkael whipped taut, head turned sharply, then subsided as a pigeon flew through the arch. It settled to roost in the rafters, cooing to a dusty flutter of wings. Lit by the last, dying rays of the sun, Mykkael probed, still more gently, ‘My question remains, do you trust him?’
‘More deeply than most,’ Taskin admitted, nettled to reveal even casual intimacy.
Perhaps eased by the grit of that honest reluctance, Mykkael shifted position, his back angled against the stepped brick of the arch. ‘Then ask Jussoud what he might know of the marking tattooed under the hairline above my nape.’
‘A talisman?’ Taskin asked, well aware that an arc shot tried now would not ensure a fatality.
‘Better. A warding. Done by Eishwin, first, then augmented later
by Perincar for my defence of the Efandi prince.’ Mykkael averted his face and shoved up his cropped hair to expose an uncanny pattern of geometry, thin lines overlaid by a sequence of indigo curves that twisted into a spiral. ‘I have another mark laid into my sword. Yet I could not bear the weapon in King Isendon’s presence. A mistake. Last night, no one realized the dread powers possessed by the princess’s enemies. I had no sense of forethought to guess how significant the oversight would become.’
More pigeons roosted. This time, the desert-bred captain did not flinch. Arms folded, set against the lucent backdrop of sky, he held himself still as struck bronze, and as silent. Taskin stared back at him, forced to measure that razor-cut face through the golden blaze of the afterglow. He quelled a brisk shiver; vainly prayed the effect was no more than the chill of the breeze blowing down off the glaciers.
‘Oversight?’ he pressured at careful length. ‘I’d have you define that.’
Mykkael spoke, his turned profile expressionless. ‘The warding tattoo will protect me, even make me invisible to a scryer. But without the mark on that sword hilt beside me, I’m exposed. A sorcerer, or his minion planted in Sessalie’s court, will have seen everything that I am.’
‘We don’t know what you are,’ Taskin snapped. ‘That’s the stinging thorn at the heart of the problem!’
‘But that thorn is your dearest advantage, perhaps.’ Mykkael’s quiet laughter held startling warmth across the gathering darkness. ‘Blinding powers of daylight! How you hate to sully your immaculate resource with the wildcard tactic of chaos!’
Taskin smiled also, surprising himself. ‘Yes, you rankle. If I don’t give the court your axed head on a plate, you’re going to have to convince me. Very well. I am listening. Speak your mind, Captain. Start to finish, with no wretched detail left out.’
‘Trust first,’ Mykkael insisted. ‘Or else call on your archers, or better, step back and release me. My first obligation is to the king’s daughter. I can’t risk what I know falling under the sway of a sorcerer.’
‘Demon!’ Every inch as exposed as the creature he held under ruthless threat of his bowmen, Taskin bent down and snapped the artefact up from the planking. He slipped the knotted thong over his head with brusque warning. ‘If you’re playing me false, you’re a dead man.’
‘We could all wind up dead men, or something much worse.’ Yet Mykkael accepted the capitulation as genuine. He vacated his reckless perch in the archway, and swung down from the dusty crossbeam, his balanced landing on to the platform slightly marred by his damaged knee. He adjusted the jostled weight of his sword. Then he sat down, one leg folded beneath him, and the other extended to ease the strain of his injury. Shoulders hunched, both hands busy kneading cramped muscle, he launched into clipped recitation.
‘First of all, I don’t think your princess was abducted. Something she saw, perhaps something she heard, made her realize there were enemies at court, poised with intent to cause harm. I believe she grasped the severity of her danger, and arranged her own flight in secret.’
‘The obstacles ranged against such a feat would have been close to impossible,’ Taskin said. True sorrow chafed through as he agonized, ‘Why would she bolt and tell no one? Merciful glory! I’ve guarded that girl, and protected her family for more years than she’s been alive!’
‘I realize that much.’ Mykkael loosed a hissed breath and resettled his game knee, unable to make the limb comfortable. ‘Why, I don’t know yet. How, I hope to ascertain tonight.’
‘She’s alive?’ Taskin slipped the talisman under his surcoat, disliking the uncanny warmth of the thing as it nestled against his bare skin.
Mykkael replied through the gathering gloom, while the sky past the cupola deepened from aqua to indigo. ‘With reasonable certainty, I expect so.’
Taskin dogged him, relentless. ‘Witch thoughts or hard facts?’
‘No hard facts,’ said Mykkael. ‘As yet, nothing more than a string of probabilities that point in a similar direction.’ Whiplash-curt, he cut off the commander’s immediate demand. ‘But I will pursue none of them! Not now! Until we expose just what drove her Grace to flight, she’s far better protected if no one knows where she’s gone to ground.’ He shifted again, needled by the incessant pangs of his leg. ‘The double-edged question, whose answer will kill without hesitation or mercy: find out why she ran, and roust up a snake’s nest of danger.’
‘Go on,’ Taskin said, as the stillness spun out. ‘You still have three deaths to account for, and an alibi to explain your foray in the moat.’
‘The apothecary was eliminated because he owned the skilled knowledge to track sorcerers. The seeress and drudge both died of drained minds. A sorcerer or his bound minion can do that. They don’t always kill by it. When the damage left by their prying is minor, their victims will sometimes seem drunk. If a sorcerer wants her Grace flushed out of hiding, I believe he’ll suck anyone dry, seeking leads. The seeress was a clairvoyant who haplessly picked up the wrong scrap of vision. The drudge would have been the most likely to encounter the princess’s clothing. Presupposing her Grace stashed a change of plain garments well in advance of the feast, the rag barrel had to be guarded. The princess may have scratched the fake sorcerer’s mark herself, both as warning to us, and as a decoy to scare passing servants away from the closet. The drudge didn’t know anything. If she had, she would surely have told me when we exchanged words in the street. I think the enemy drained the poor woman simply because he was desperate.’
The desert-bred captain abandoned the effort to ease the complaint of his leg. He regarded the crown commander who loomed over him, arms crossed at his chest as though his clamour of doubt might be stifled by physical pressure.
‘I don’t like the deaths, either,’ Mykkael stated outright. ‘But they have served your king. Those murdered are the one best assurance you have that your princess is alive and still running. No conspirator slaughters with such wanton callousness! Not unless he is caught in extreme disarray. Your princess has quite likely upset his plots and thrown him into scrambling disadvantage.’
Taskin seized on the detail left dangling. ‘Then what of your swim?’
‘No, Commander.’ The words, velvet-soft, held an adamance no posed threat of violence could gainsay. ‘I’ve said all I can without compromise to her Grace’s safety.’
The explosion which followed was silent. Taskin slipped a fluid step back, passed through the open belfry door, then returned with the canvas bag and steel shackles. Smoothly as he engaged his next tactic, Mykkael moved faster, uncoiled to his feet in a lightning surge of reaction.
Hands up, backed against the platform railing with the bells cloaked in dark at his back, he measured the commander who advanced to restrain him. ‘No. I ask you, don’t do this.’
Pinned like prey under that lion-fierce stare, Taskin felt the hair rise at his nape. ‘Give way. At once. You do realize, you cannot run.’
Mykkael tested his footing on the gapped planks, taut as a coiled adder. ‘I will kill any man who lays hands on me.’
‘Stalemate. In the event my orders fail to constrain you, my archers will shoot you on sight.’ No fool, Taskin realized he could be dead in an instant. He sustained the dread crux, as the desert-bred captain faced the sure prospect of capture. As well, he recorded the slight, warning flicker that whipped through taut muscle in rebellion: Mykkael was not going to back down.
Taskin risked all and pressed for full forfeit. ‘Submit, soldier. By crown law, I command you.’
Well braced for the blow, hand poised at the sword he would likely have no chance to draw, Taskin saw Mykkael’s features twist with horror and despair. ‘Forgive, oh, Mehigrannia, forgive!’ And that cracked cry of entreaty to a foreign goddess woke the king’s commander to fear beyond measure.
Taskin dropped the shackles. ‘Mykkael! Submit.’
That stopped the spring of the tiger, just barely. Mykkael’s dilated eyes still searched his adversary’s pale face; staye
d fixed there, unblinking, while his mind wrestled to gauge the significance implied by that impulsive shift to correct accent. He fell back on hair-trigger caution, and rechannelled his response into speech. ‘This is not an arrest?’
‘Right now, a just detainment for punishment.’ Taskin loosed an explosive, pent breath and unleashed the full force of his strained exasperation. ‘I owe you a lashing for last night’s insubordination, and another for a formal complaint made to the king under Devall’s royal seal. Powers above, man! You’ve made damned sure by your fractious behaviour that I’d have no choice but to handle you!’
Mykkael’s taut expression changed from shock, through astonishment, to a look of flat set distaste. ‘All right. But no cuffs. I will stand for it.’
Taskin stayed unmoved. ‘You object to restraint?’
That elicited fury. ‘I’m a foreigner, not an animal!’
‘A good soldier,’ Taskin allowed. ‘But I’ve checked the more striking details of your background. My fears are well founded. The reflexes ingrained by your barqui’ino training do not answer to your humanity.’
‘They can,’ Mykkael argued. ‘Otherwise, I would be nothing more than a dangerous beast.’
‘Then you do see my problem.’ The commander continued to haze him, ungently ‘Men with your skills have turned on their masters, before this. Should I entrust my life to your cocky self-confidence? Should I risk King Isendon’s daughter’s?’
Mykkael laughed. He lowered his hands, a blurred whisper of movement in darkness. ‘Commander, you already have.’
A stinging, fierce truth; the archers set in the embrasure earlier had not been ordered to fire. Neither had the desert-bred struck down the man who provoked him with such savage adherence to principle.