Traitor''s Knot (epub)

  'Ladies!' The madam shouted upstairs, 'Come down! The hand of fate has dealt us the trump to enact Dharkaron's sweet vengeance!'

  Outside, in accord with Arithon's scripted plan, the driverless wain with the lust-driven bull and the barrels now careened through the sea-quarter market. Traffic suffered. The town watchmen, absorbed in their dice, dropped their game as two on-coming wagons swerved into collision. The crash and the shouting compounded the trouble. The loose team of oxen panicked. Tails curled, they charged, pounding through the rowed stalls with the levelling force of a battering ram. Baskets flew air-borne. Fruit and wares crashed and burst. Cries of outrage followed the beasts' zigzagged course, then outbreaks of curse-ridden screaming. A wealthy merchant's carriage was wrecked. Trailing peacock-fans and strings of glass beads, the yoked oxen galloped amok. Citrus crates squashed. Poultry flew squawking. Iron-rimmed wheels smashed crockery. More stalls were swiped flat. A livestock man's string of young horses tore loose, and the tumult gained force like the tumbling thrash of an avalanche. By the time the rampaging team was waylaid, the authorities yelled to make themselves heard through the irate howls of the vendors. Footmen from the splintered carriage pushed in to fight for their master's claim to charge damages. No teamster appeared to collect his marauding beasts or set right the offending wagon. Which faced the Innish town-guard with a choice: they could draw steel, or assess the dray's contents before the brangle devolved into fisticuffs and knifing bloodshed.

  One gin barrel was broached to cool ragged tempers. Since no one seemed interested in resuming business over their torn tarps and splinters, a second cask was opened as consolation, then a third, for sheer joy and devilment. An impromptu holiday bloomed on the spot, as the crowd in the market immersed itself in jocular commiseration.

  The celebration was just reaching stride when the unloaded dray with its two unscheduled passengers ground away from the Bower of Bliss. Turned downhill again, it creaked through the sea-quarter tenements and briefly stopped in another by-lane. There, the errant driver made rendezvous. He climbed aboard, emerged from the arms of his trollop with cleaned hair and fresh clothes, and equipped with a satchel bearing the respectable tools of a tailor.

  'We need to visit the shoreside warehouse,' he announced to his disgruntled henchman.

  'That stop's not in the plan,' Kyrialt hissed. 'My knife says you stay with your orders.'

  'Well, who put the snag in the schedule, first?' the grizzled head driver protested. 'Carve me up, you'll be dead on the scaffold by noon. Stay quiet, or walk, since I don't take guff from savages riding as contraband.'

  The wain trundled under an overhead foot-bridge, as Kyrialt reached for his dirk. Cat-fast as his forest-bred instinct reacted, the sheltering tarp foiled his reflexes. The lead-weighted fish-net dropped from above snagged and bound over his head. Aware, far too late, of more racing footsteps, he struggled to cut himself free. Glendien's frantic scuffles beside him only tightened the mesh on his shoulders. He managed to kick off someone's gauntleted grasp. Then another thug with a fist like a truncheon cuffed the back of his neck. Kyrialt slumped into wheeling dizziness, fast followed by starless oblivion.

  The ache as he woke all but shattered his skull. His outcry jammed against the tight cloth of a gag. Queasy with sickness, Kyrialt peered through cracked lids at the dim, mouldered boards of a warehouse. Crates and boxed stores hemmed him in on all sides, and the light in his face was a reeking flame cast by a fish-oil wick. The smell turned his stomach. He moaned, discovered his bound wrists and ankles, then shut his eyes in wracked misery.

  Someone's hand pressed a cold compress at his nape, and Glendien's voice said, 'He's rousing.'

  'None too soon, the damned fool,' snapped a deep, gravel voice bearing an East Halla inflection. 'Lucky he's alive to feel queasy, and not staring at his own unwound tripes in the hands of the mayor's executioner.'

  Someone's biting grip closed over his shoulder. The chill blade of a sword sliced the gag, after which the rough benefactor wearing a steel-studded bracer hoisted him like a limp kitten.

  Kyrialt swore. His revolted stomach barely under command, he was shoved back with his shoulders braced against the splintery slats of the packing-crates. His legs were spilled jelly, extended before him. Sea-humid air jammed his throat like hot glue and threatened to black out his senses.

  'Who are you?' he slurred through his unruly tongue, while Glendien's touch nursed a bruise on his jaw he did not remember receiving.

  'Friends,' said an accentless, baritone voice, 'though at the moment, you might not think so.'

  Through swimming vision, Kyrialt picked out two forms: an armed, grey-haired man with the build of a mercenary whose sleeve bore a factor's insignia, and a slight, refined blond, who filled his lace and prime velvet with the poise of a merchant who knew the price of the dye in each elegant thread.

  Brows raised, the town-bred pronounced with freezing asperity, 'The man would not be here, who thought today's plan could succeed in the face of a fool's interference. Did nobody warn you? Lysaer's new acolytes are hand-picked for keen talent. The wise of your kind would steer clear of them.'

  Flushed anger burned through Kyrialt's clogged senses, that his wife had snatched her ill-gotten triumph. The band that had netted them out of the street had been dispatched by no less than Prince Arithon's shoreside factor. The warehouse guard would be the man's stepfather, Tharrick, a former captain at arms who had trained for the sword at Duke Bransian's citadel. The towhead had to be Fiark himself, a rank embarrassment, since Glendien would spit nails before she confessed that her wiles had landed him here in the first place.

  Nor was her rampant curiosity abashed. 'Talent? Do you say these new zealots are clairvoyant?'

  Fiark sighed, sparking light through his sapphire earring. 'Past doubt. They'd have noticed the taint of your ancestral lineage and seen you skewered on faggots by sundown. If you crashed the gates as a prank, let me tell you, the by-play is serious.' His chill frown scarcely thawed, he watched Kyrialt's wince. 'Do you ache? I hope so! That's no less than your folly deserves.'

  'Well, your thugs might have spoken before they attacked.' Kyrialt pushed to rise, grimaced, then fell back as the move spun him dizzy.

  'Should I take such a chance?' Fiark looked outraged. 'Tharrick's men are not thugs, and I dare not allow my affairs in this town to be compromised. Too many innocents stand to be hurt if the wrong faction suspects my loyalty. May I ask what mad impulse possessed you?'

  Kyrialt shot a venomous look towards his wife. 'Curiosity was the mistake that got the cat skinned.' Fiark's quick perception caught the exchange. Insight shattered his mood to an outburst of laugher. 'My dear man,' he said, all at once gently cordial, 'Let's make sure your woman never meets my twin sister, who is thankfully not in home port.'

  That moment, yanked from their slow toil uphill, the yoked oxen dragging the remaining wagon were seized by a uniformed guard and two fellows bearing halberds. 'No drays pass up-town.'

  The cheeky, fat driver reshuffled his reins. 'We're turning,' he stated, head jerked to the left. An avenue branched alongside the spiked wall, lined with the white pillars and neat courtyards of the quarter's pastel mansions. 'This lot's for their excellencies o' the Light, under high town, an' they'll not tip me a penny for lateness.'

  The guard waved them on. The dray ground across the scored cobbles and passed the servants who polished the street-lamps. The air wore the syrupy scent of gardenias, tanged with the birch coals the wealthy preferred to brew their tea at mid morn. The corpulent carter reined his team beneath a raised gateway hung with a sunwheel emblem. Stopped, he placidly tied off his reins. Jumped down from the box, he strode to the painted doorway and banged to announce his arrival.

  The liveried servant who cracked open the panel was displaced by an irritable head priest. 'The kitchen entry is around the back,' he began, then noticed the tailor, untying the tarps protecting a load of sparkling, damascened cloth.

  'But this
is a mistake!' the priest pronounced with asperity. 'These are uncut bales of white silk you have brought. We expected to have finished vestments dispatched from the shops of the Capewell craft-guild.'

  The carter returned a disinterested shrug. 'Not my problem, your Splendid Eminence. Check the tags for yourself. The seals are Avenor's, and genuine.'

  The cleanly fellow with the tailor's kit stepped forward and bowed at the waist. He assured that his services had been procured to begin the initial fitting. A busy fellow, not minded to wait, he raked a glance of haughty contempt over the crude, ochre emblem painted over the chest of the florid priest's current tunic.

  Plainly anxious to have his promised silk and gold thread, the religion's new envoy wrestled his irritation. 'By grace of the Light,' he complained, 'This is bothersome! We've had our measurements taken once over, already.'

  The tailor backed down with a charming smile. 'Then would your Excellency care to inscribe a clear statement cancelling Avenor's commission?'

  'No, no.' The priest waved the man through the door. No help for the mishap, he directed his anxious servant to help carry the baled cloth inside. Meantime, the housemaid scuttled to retrieve the rest of the Light's enclave from their leisurely breakfast.

  The emptied ox-wain rolled on its way, while the tailor unpacked pins and measure. He had just set to with his shears and chalk when the eager acolytes jammed into the parlor to claim their promised new vestments.

  They encountered, instead, their red-faced superior, draped like a ghost on a kitchen stool. Arms outstretched, he endured the stiff tedium of a first fitting, barely in progress. The garments just hacked from a raw bolt of silk draped his pink form like a tent.

  Innish's devotees stopped short in dismay. 'By the Light Everlasting!' cried one. 'You look like my grandame's best table-cloth!'

  'Must match the bias,' mumbled the tailor around a mouthful of pins. His impatient beckon prompted the servant to procure additional stools. His Excellency's valet was commandeered to fold up each set of doffed clothes. Soon a pedestalled row of naked young men stood regaled in tucks of pearl silk. The tailor's shears clacked. The carpet lay strewn with a welter of clippings and scraps. While his victims posed in statuesque helplessness, raw hems and pinked seams stitched with pins, the tailor ransacked his satchel.

  'I plead your forbearance,' he murmured, contrite, 'I'm afraid I've mislaid my thread.' He bobbed with apology. The error would be rectified. On the promise of just a moment's delay, he nipped out through the back pantry.

  The abandoned priests grumbled sour complaints. They ground their teeth, and waited. Stiff as draped fence-posts, shiny with pins, they fidgeted in then-welter of darts, while the Innish day heated towards noon.

  The obsequious tailor never returned. Worse, their piles of shed clothing had been removed by the overly efficient housemaid. Plaintive shouts towards the kitchen failed to roust any servants to remedy their foolish predicament.

  Incandescent, the head priest became first to crack. 'How can the laziest servant we have be sleeping, amid all this noise?'

  For in fact, the street beyond the dagged curtains suddenly seemed to be packed full of hooting revelers. The commotion masked worse: in brazen fact, the waylaid house-staff had been tied up and gagged by a foray launched through the garden.

  Cautious of his pins, a pudding-faced acolyte waddled onto the balcony. There, yanked up short and yowling with fury, he backpedalled, tripped, and sat on his unfinished hem-line. Torqued around to nurse his stabbed arse, he yelped again as he skewered his armpit.

  Through the subsequent stream of unlovely language, his fellows deduced that the lower-town whores had broken the record for outrage. The head priest ventured a tender descent from his perch. Trailing pale silk and a scatter of pins, he reached the casement and parted the curtains. The view dropped his jaw. Dancing on rouged feet, a parade of belled harlots regaled him with blown kisses and smiles. Covering each splendid, seductress's curves was a sunwheel robe, its emblem jiggling against unbound breasts, while the trade-quarter shopkeepers, reeling drunk, clapped and shouted to cheer on their antics.

  One of the prostitutes screamed in delight. 'Dharkaron bear witness, you fat, pious saint!' Bosom out-thrust, her attire skirled above lissome thighs, she ran on, 'Here's Ath's perfect justice! We're twins!'

  The priest flushed puce and roared, indignation drowned under the roisterers' shrieks of hilarity.

  There followed an infamous chase through the streets, in which eight naked priests in flapping silk held by pins bolted outside to fetch the town-guard. Armed men were conscripted in the cause of the Light, then dispatched to wrestle the belled tarts of Innish to recover their desecrated sunwheel finery.

  The ladies wore nothing but paint underneath. Amid the rough play and licentious jokes, all of Innish dropped prostrate with laughter.

  From the safe seclusion of Fiark's locked warehouse, Kyrialt heard the wild tale of the fisticuffs to stand off the embarrassed town-guard when the perfidious tailor came to report. Since the clansman ached too fiercely to roll on the floor, he buried his chuckles against his wife's neck until he was gasping and paralysed.

  This was the southcoast, where scandalous gossip was awarded the status of legend. Years might pass before any priest in white robes would escape being the butt of snide comments. The water-front tarts would wage their mean feud. For the suppression of trained herbalists, they would seize the incentive to re-enact the obscene celebration at each anniversary.

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  Early Summer 5671

  Links

  Arrived with all speed at the hidden encampment tucked in the Thaldein Peaks, and scarcely able to pause to acknowledge a home-coming deferred for sixteen years, Ianfar s'Gannley relates the urgent word sent by a Fellowship Sorcerer: 'Forge an iron blade for a ritual death. A sunwheel priest rides the trade-road from Erdane who's become the slaved shell for a necromancer . . .'

  Late night, at Avenor, a breathless courier disembarks from an inbound ship and demands an immediate audience with the Blessed Prince; the sealed casket he bears holds the packet of dispatches rushed at speed from the far east, to be opened in private by no less than the hand of the avatar himself . . .

  Awake in his chair under soft summer moonlight, Sethvir of Althain senses a wrongness with the pulse of the stone near Etarra, and again tastes the tang of an innocent's let blood; as a shudder of horror disturbs his gaunt frame, the adept by his side overhears his grim plea, 'Let Asandir achieve his swift return from resetting the grimward at Scarpdale . . .'

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  Summer 5671

  XI. Confrontations

  Under the sheer blue sky of summer, the noon sunlight beat down, burnishing the raw gold of Lysaer s'Ilessid's blond hair. The black rag he wore tied over his eyes wicked up a darkening ring of perspiration.

  'You look hot,' Sulfin Evend observed, prepared to stand down and unstring the long-bow gripped in his hand.

  For answer, the Blessed Prince snapped his fingers in peremptory command to fire off another arrow.

  No straw target had been set up on the greensward that sweltered beneath the gauze film of the midday haze. The shots dispatched throughout the morning had been random, each shaft launched to a different point of the compass. They hissed in flat arcs, or sailed into slow volleys, all directions including straight up.

  'You've only missed eight out of ninescore and six,' the Lord Commander pointed out with dry irony.

  Lysaer's head turned. The bright hair that wrung longing sighs from the maidens lay wilted against the drenched blindfold. 'That's eight times dead by some wretched clan marksman, should I show myself in the free wilds.'

  Sulfin Evend dutifully hefted the bow. He yanked a fresh arrow out of the sand bucket and set the fletched nock to the string. 'You might not be tired; but the sweat and the blisters aren't serving a thing but your angry, perfectionist pride.'

  The sealed dispatche
s just arrived from the east an on-going bone of contention between them, he drew and released. The shaft leaped out, its whining flight intercepted by a needle-thin flare of sent light. The wood lit incandescent and burned, trailing an acrid taint of scorched feathers on the sluggish stir of the sea-breeze.

  Today's show of inexhaustible accuracy gave Avenor's ranking war officer little cause for celebration. Not while his piercing inquiries kept on being deflected with oiled consistency. Years of experience in s'Ilessid service left Sulfin Evend ice-cold: he well knew when that charmed pattern of reticence brewed up the most wrenching campaign surprises.

  Balked on one front, he turned his assault against the more volatile impasse. 'If you won't restore trust with the Fellowship Sorcerers, or try other means to engage the latent talent passed down through your mother's lineage, trust me. The safest course would be to return to Hanshire and drive through a brutal bargain with the Koriathain.'

  'Filthy tactics!' Lysaer s'Ilessid declared. 'You won't cozen me to soften my stance. The ladies can brood on their sour disappointment. I will not let them barter my sworn men for studs or play with lives as political bargaining chips.'

  His stilled pause served back as an ominous warning, Avenor's Lord Commander at Arms had made no move to string the next arrow.

  Beneath the soaked rag, Lysaer's abrupt smile held a poignancy to seize mature heart-strings. He forewent his ill humour, aware that beguiling charisma could not soften resolve: the past months had proven he could not bend the will of his adamant, right-hand retainer.

  Day upon day, they clashed verbal horns. The need to confront the incur-sive corruption that endangered the Light's governorship of Etarra also blazed into fierce disagreement between them. More than once, they had bruised themselves sparring when the sore issue edged onto the practise floor.