City of Bones (8 page)

Finding it, the hand dropped away, and the voice said, “Pardon me, but I had to be sure. My enemies wouldn’t employ a krismen. But there is this …”

Elen’s painrod appeared in the corner of Khat’s right eye. Being struck in the head with it would kill him instantly, but maybe this madman didn’t know that. It certainly hadn’t affected him much. Khat said, “I’m borrowing it from a friend.” The hold on his arm had loosened, just a little. Perhaps just enough. And the force holding him against the rock was not quite so strong.

Amused again, the voice said, “Are you?”

As Khat drew breath to answer there was a rush of cool air directly overhead and an eerie whistling. In another instant it was gone. It was an air spirit, brushing dangerously close to them and lifted almost immediately away by a gust of wind. Khat felt the man behind him jerk in surprise. He took advantage of the instant of distraction to shove away from the wall, spinning out of the painful hold and freeing himself. He dived and rolled to put some needed distance between himself and his larger opponent, and came to his feet in a crouch with his knife ready.

The man was across the little gorge already, back by the pirate’s body. He was a big, shapeless figure in dark robes, featureless at this distance. He said, “You will have to tell your friend you lost it.”

“Fuck off,” Khat suggested, still furious, knowing he had been intentionally released.

The other man chuckled, and disappeared back into the rocks.

Khat waited until his heart stopped pounding, afraid the blood rushing in his ears would affect his hearing. He didn’t like surprises and meant to do his best to avoid another one tonight. Then he found his bag, added the pirate’s broken painrod to the collection, and made for the dubious safety of the Remnant.

Elen woke suddenly and sat bolt upright. It was a moment before she remembered where she was, that the heavy stone walls stretching up in the flickering firelight were the walls of the Remnant, that the strange shapes the flames cast against them were only shadows. She leaned back against the side of the pit, grimacing as she stretched out her injured leg. The spider bite felt as if a coal from the fire had been buried in her flesh.

Then she remembered again that Jaq and Seul were dead, and forced back the shame with a Discipline of Silence. She needed to make herself think constructively, not wallow in self-recrimination. Seul, at least, had known the danger, and it had been partly his idea to bring the relic here. But Jaq had come only out of loyalty to her, and his death was on her head alone.

A fine Warder I am
, Elen thought, disgusted with herself. The strip of knotted cloth should have kept Khat from crossing the threshold back into this room. She had meant to weave a structure of avoidance into each knot, and it had worked no better than a street fakir’s love simple. She sighed and rubbed her eyes. It was only fortunate that she hadn’t needed it to protect herself. Or not from Khat, anyway.

She had never been that close to a krismen before. She had studied what little was known about them, as Warders were required to do. They were, after all, the creation of the Ancient Mages, though it was accepted now that they were a faulty creation. But she had never met one before.

His skin was a golden brown, and the flicker of the fire had brought red highlights out of what should have been ordinary brown hair. She had heard stories that everything about the kris altered with the sunlight, or lack of it, but the only change she had noted was in his eyes. The odd color transformations weren’t too noticeable, unless you looked for them, but the canine teeth that were just a bit too pointed were a disturbing reminder of otherness, of the Waste and its intrusion into the world. And when he smiled wide enough for her to see them, she didn’t think the expression was meant to be taken for a smile anymore. That hint of danger combined with a form that was all lean muscle and cheekbones the palace artists would have sighed over made an intriguing combination, despite the fact that his nose had obviously been broken at some point in his youth. One of the stories said the Mages had bred their creations for beauty, though in Khat’s case it wasn’t so much beauty as a very masculine sort of handsomeness. Elen sniffed disdainfully. From what she could tell, they certainly hadn’t bred them for an engaging personality.

She caught herself chewing nervously on a fingernail, and winced. The worst part was that his mind was entirely closed to her. When he had been sitting across the fire from her, she had felt nothing, and she couldn’t even sense his presence in the Remnant now. She had known it would be that way, of course. It was one of the reasons the Warders were so certain the Ancients’ experiment had failed. If Warders couldn’t sense the thoughts and emotions on the surface of the krismen’s souls, then they must be without souls at all.

It’s a theory
, Elen decided. She wasn’t sure how much credence she gave it. One of the earlier Master Warders, who had lived a few hundred years after the Survivor Time, had declared that women had no souls, because they had no power. His son, who had succeeded him and undoubtedly had his own set of grievances against the old bastard, had widened the search for female Warder candidates, and trained the first one himself. But even now Elen was the only one of her generation. She suspected it depended on the Warders who did the searching, for if they had done their job thoroughly, they would have found more female candidates.

And a day’s acquaintance with Khat had increased her doubt in the theory. Anyone with quite so much … personality must have a soul, or some equivalent.

And where is he
? Elen wondered. She had assumed he was somewhere else in the Remnant, but it felt so silent, so empty. Human souls left traces on physical objects, on the stone walls of long-used homes, on jewelry worn next to the skin. Even with her poor skill Elen could sense these faint traces, especially in the homes of Warders. But the Remnant held no traces at all, not even from her presence. It was as if that strange golden stone reflected souls as well as it shielded against the heat and light of the Waste. It made the place feel bare and isolated and, curiously, as if it were waiting for something to fill it up …

No, that was only her imagination at work, surely. Elen peered at the wall where the door to the ramp was, but it was lost in shadow, and her Sight was useless with the firelight blinding her. She considered searching for Khat, but the bite wound was making her leg ache all the way up to the hip, and what would she say when she found him? That she was lonely? He wasn’t terribly impressed with her competence as it was.

She leaned her head back against the stone and closed her eyes, clearing her mind for one of the Disciplines to banish pain, and shutting out the aching emptiness of the Remnant.

Her brows drew together. As she focused her thoughts, she could sense something outside the thick stone walls. Something foul, like an untended sewer, like the miasma of despair and rage and desire that hung over the Eighth Tier. Like the miasma that had enveloped the trade road, just before the pirates attacked, that either she or Seul should have recognized.

Something thumped against the thick stone that closed the entrance, and Elen started. The thump was repeated, and she struggled to stand, wishing she had something to use as a crutch. Now she had to find Khat.

Too tired to make the precarious climb down into the well chamber unassisted, Khat used the rope. As he dropped the last few feet, a voice said out of the darkness, “Where were you?”

Khat spun to put his back against the wall before he realized it was Elen. Recovering his breath, he said, “You wouldn’t believe what’s going on out there. It’s as crowded as the Arcade on Tax Day.”

“That’s why I was looking for you,” she said, her voice sounding worried and reassuringly normal after everything else. “The pirates are trying to get in down below. They’re forcing the block up.”

“It’s about time.” Pushing off from the wall, he handed his bag to her. He had left the dead pirate’s painrod on the roof, under the rope’s oilcloth.

“What’s in here?” Ellen had presumably opened the bag and was peering in. “Something dead,” she answered herself.

This near to the door of the antechamber the walls were blocking out much of the moonlight, and Khat could see nothing more than her vague outline. He said, “The leather packet’s for you.”

“Um, what’s in it?” Elen asked cautiously, evidently reluctant to reach into the bag.

“Dried dates and bread, courtesy of one of the pirates,” Khat said. Elen could have used a stick as a torch to light her way up here. Instead she had limped up the pitch blackness of the ramp and identified Khat climbing down the rope in the deep shadow of the well chamber.
And she can see inside that sack
.

“Oh.” Without having to feel around for it, Elen found the packet and freed it from the folds of the robe. “What about the pirates?”

They were walking back toward the door of the antechamber and down the ramp. Khat found his way by knowledge of the route and a natural feel for distances and where things were in the dark. Elen walked as if it was broad daylight.
So Warders can see in the dark, or at least Elen-the-Warder can
. Was that one of the mysterious abilities they were supposed to have? The maniac out on the Waste had had excellent night vision as well. He had taken Elen’s painrod, but hadn’t bothered to stop for the pirate’s because over Khat’s shoulder he had seen that hairline crack in the metal. So
maybe it’s a mad Warder loose outside. There’s a happy thought
. “We have to convince them there isn’t any reason to loiter around here.”

“Huh.” Elen sounded skeptical. “You used that rope to climb down from the roof? What were you doing up there?”

“Looking around. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea.” He darted a sideways look at her, useless in the dark. “There’s someone else out on the Waste distracting our friends. That’s why they haven’t tried to break in before. They must have thought we were safely penned up, then …”
Then I gave in to nerves and warned that bastard out there, letting them know some of us at least weren’t as penned up as they liked
.

“Then they saw you,” Elen finished. “It doesn’t matter. They would have come after us anyway.”

They reached the central chamber. The fire had burned low, an orange glow in the pit. The grinding that must have woken Elen was loud to Khat’s ears too, the grating protest of the block mechanism as the pirates tried to lever it up from the outside.

This Khat was prepared for. “You’ve got the relic with you?” Elen clutched the inside pocket of her robe protectively. “Then kick out the fire and get back up to the well chamber.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re giving them what they want. We’re letting them in.” He went to the door block, laid a hand on it, and could feel the faint vibrations from their efforts on the other side. They might not lift the block on their own, but they might break the hidden mechanism by trying to force it. If it broke, he knew the block would slide upward. Apparently the Ancients had meant for no faulty works to trap anyone inside.

“I think I see.” Moving awkwardly, Elen scattered the coals and stamped them out. “But they’re going to know we’ve been here from this hot ash.”

“I’m not trying to convince them that we were never here, just that we’re not here now.”

The last sparks died, and he heard Elen’s footsteps on the other side of the chamber. Khat gave her a moment or two, then kicked out the rock preventing the peg from turning and ran to the ramp, keeping one hand on the wall to guide himself.

He reached it as the block started to rise, caught up with Elen at the top. In the well chamber he held the rope steady while she climbed it, then swarmed up after her. He pulled the rope up and bundled it out of the way, motioning Elen to back away from the edge. Then he lay flat on the warm stone.

The pirates rushed into the well chamber, halting in confusion when they confronted an empty room. In the yellow light of the battered oil lamps they carried, Khat could see they were a motley assortment. Their robes were dirty and stained enough to have been looted from the dead, and he could smell the bodies underneath from up here. The Tradetongue they spoke was so pidgin it was difficult for him to understand them, but their anger and confusion were evident. One bright lad stood on the rim of the cistern and held his lamp high to look under the water, and Khat eased cautiously back from the edge to where Elen waited.

There was some arguing below in muted voices; then the light faded as someone carried the lamps back into the antechamber. Khat went to the outside edge of the Remnant above the door slab, dropping to his belly before he reached it so as not to silhouette himself against the skyline. The moonlight was bright against this side, and he easily counted nine figures crossing the base back toward the cover of the Waste. Nine. There had been at least twelve in the well chamber.

As he turned back he heard Elen’s warning cry. The missing three pirates were climbing the well chamber wall to the roof.

Elen ran forward and kicked the first in the chest. The blow wasn’t strong enough, and the man caught hold of her foot. Khat expected to see her tugged over the side, but instead she dropped down and used her other foot to smash the pirate solidly in the face. He released her with a strangled scream and fell backward into the well chamber.

The second had already scrambled over the edge before Khat tackled him. An elbow smashed into his face as they fell, and they rolled dangerously close to the well chamber’s drop-off. The pirate made the mistake of trying to lever himself away from the edge, and Khat managed to drive his knife into the man’s breastbone. The pirate flung himself away with a cry, only to fall forward, forcing the blade in deeper. Khat looked for the other one, then saw he could take the time to free his knife.

The third pirate lay sprawled on the stone moaning. He had obviously made the mistake of trying to ignore Elen and take Khat from behind. She must have struck him in some vulnerable spot in the neck or spine, Khat decided. The man barely struggled when he finished him off.

Khat glanced down into the well chamber then and saw the first pirate had tumbled backward into the cistern. Either he had hit his head on the edge or the water hadn’t been deep enough to cushion his fall; he floated facedown, lifeless.

He looked for Elen then, and saw she was curled into a ball, clutching her calf where the spider had bitten her and rocking back and forth. He crouched next to her and said, “Are you all right?”

“Of course. I’m a trained infighter. I don’t lie around by a fountain all day like—”

“Prove it. Stand up. Walk, or dance.”

“Stop making fun of me,” she snarled.

“I’m not making fun of you, you oversensitive bitch. Let me see your leg.”

She pulled her pants leg up with a sob of pure frustration. He felt the area of the spider bite gently. It was swollen and hot to the touch, and he could tell it hurt her, though she wouldn’t make a sound. The venom remaining in the bite had formed a lump just under the skin. To hide it, to limp around painfully, and to fight the pirates had taken substantial determination. “The poison’s taking on badly. It does that to some people. Why didn’t you say something?”

“There was nothing you could do. Poison is a force. I should be able to … purge myself of it with my power …”

Now she was babbling. “Know everything, don’t you?” He couldn’t use his knife; it would have to be cleaned in a fire after having dirty pirate blood all over it, and he didn’t want to reveal their position to the rest of the world by building one up here. And there was no knowing how long they had before the other pirates returned. He would just have to do it the traditional way. He took a firm grip on the underside of her calf. “Don’t scream.”

Before she could react he bit through the skin over the distended lump, then pressed it to let the poison flow out. Elen did scream, but deep in her throat, without opening her mouth.