City of Masks (34 page)

“Yes, Hallmaster,” Falor said. The young woman put down her spear and handed Corix another strip of torn blanket.

“Don’t call me Hallmaster, Green. I left Choan in charge at Old Torrick. He’s Hallmaster until we return. If we return.”

Falor paled at that and said, “Yes, Master Corix. Are the wrappings tight enough?”

Corix nodded. She stood and ran a hand through her short grey hair.

Cernot looked at her, swallowed, and spoke. “Perhaps we should go forward on the road, Master. That’s the only place I don’t feel the fear.” He was a big lad, helpful in carrying the litter but too eager to act.

“No,” Corix said, and then reluctantly explained her decision at the sight of his worried face.

“You heard what she said,” Corix reminded him, and pointed at the unconscious woman on the litter. Her clothes were bloodstained, and one arm was roughly splinted. “Between what she reported and what we have seen and felt, I don’t trust an easy escape. It might be a trap that closes its claws on us just as we think we’re safe.”

Falor stood up, gripping her spear. “So it’s true then? It’s the Caller Demon we heard of from Shirath?”

“Or something worse,” Corix said. “Something much worse, I fear. Give me your pickaxe, and you, tie your spear to the litter. We’ll cross the river here, where the current slows a bit.”

A very little bit, thought both Falor and Cernot, but Master Corix was not a Bane to be denied. They picked up the litter, and the woman moaned.

“Will she live, Master?” Falor asked. Corix turned back from where she stood at the bottom of the bank, one booted foot in the current.

“Ask me when we get to the other side, Green,” she said.

“
WE CAN’T WIN
,” Bixa said. She was coming up from the Palace cellars, Garet at her side. It was late, and they had just seen the last of the Masks, twenty-six in all, chained and locked away. Two of the ex-Duelists had died in the fight at the warehouse, and a third was under the watchful eyes of both physicians and guards in a separate room.

Bixa continued her analysis as they climbed. “If we break down the gates of those two Wards, the people will despise us as invaders. But how can we ignore the actions of their Lords? If we do, certain other Wards will see it as an opportunity to defy the King and push for Heaven knows what powers for themselves, even if they come at the expense of the whole city.”

Garet nodded. He was sure Ward Lords like Sacourat were watching to see how much they might gain from this defiance. They turned left at the top of the stairs and came into the Palace proper. Bixa signaled to Shula and Cheza, who waited by the main doors, and the agents followed them into the Shouting Room.

Trax looked up from the map set into the table. Pieces from a surround game were placed here and there on the surface.

“Good, I need you to show me where our guards are, Bixa,” the King said.

The Captain looked over the map. She moved several harrier pieces in front of the Inner Gates of Wards Twelve and Thirteen. The hunters she placed just beyond the Outer Gates.

“The ones in the fields are on horses and have bows, in case someone tries to break out,” she said. “The ones inside are mainly armed with pikes and swords, for we don’t have enough bows to give to both.”

Shula pointed to the Sixteenth Ward and then the Sixth. “These two Wards have archers among their guards. I’ve seen them shoot in contest with the King’s Guard.”

Bixa nodded, and the King said, “Good! Send word to them at once. Braxa and Tortal are loyal. They’ll not refuse me.”

Shula bowed and left the room. Trax looked at the remaining three.

“This looks too much like a stalemate in surround. Gost controls his side of the board, and we control ours. But we can’t leave this at a draw. So tell me, all of you, how will the people of these Wards react if we break through the Gates and take their Lords and that rascal Gost by force?”

There was a silence as the others considered this.

Bixa spoke first. “You know how I feel, Your Majesty. I think it will be our downfall if we attack. The city will be as torn as it was two centuries ago. And what if the beasts return while we fight among ourselves?”

“Indeed,” said Trax. He turned to Cheza, who looked back with his one eye.

“Your Majesty,” the agent said. “I agree with the Captain, but what else can we do? We’ll never win the people over now, for who knows what lies they’re being fed by Gost and Sharock?”

“So tell them the truth,” Garet said. “Give them all the facts, and they might open the Gates themselves.”

Cheza sniffed. “A clever plan, if it would work. How will you get that message through a locked gate?”

Garet looked at the King, but Trax said nothing, so Garet thought of how his idea could be accomplished.

“If we get more bows, the messages could be tied to arrows with their points cut off. We could shoot them over the Wall.”

Bixa shook her head. “We couldn’t cover a whole Ward, let alone two. Their guards would only have to clear a small area to get to the arrows before your message could be read and passed around. We need a way to shoot in or sneak in messages all over the Wards and all at once!”

“Impossible,” Cheza said. He folded his arms and glared at Garet.

Trax smiled, chuckled, and then began to laugh. His mirth grew until he was bent over with it, shaking. After some little while, he sputtered to a stop.

“Forgive me, friends, but I know of two people who specialize in the impossible. It’s only that this is the most inopportune time to ask for their help.”

Bixa looked at him, understanding slowing dawning in her expression. Cheza and Garet, however, were still confused.

“It is a bad time, isn’t it?” the Captain said with a wicked smile. “But I fear we must insist.”

Trax shook his head. “I’ll pay for this offense to love. Heaven will find a way! Captain, could you send Garet on this sensitive mission? A friendly face might take some of the sting from the timing of our request.”

IT WAS AN
odd time to be practicing in the Baneahall, and Salick hestitated in the hallway, seeing someone had come before her with the same intent.

“So, yet another Bane fails to find sleep this night,” Tarix called out. She put down the trident she was swinging through wide circles and smiled at the Gold who stood in the training room door.

“I’m sorry, Master,” Salick said. “I’ll use the other room or perhaps the kitchen yard.”

She had come down for some respite from turning and twisting in her bed. She could not sleep for thinking of Garet. With the demons still absent and patrols reduced to a minimum to allow the overstretched Banes to recover, it seemed there was nothing to do but wander the Hall, regretting the words she had said to him—and not said.

“No, stay Salick,” Tarix told her. “I’m sorry if I’ve been cross with you. It’s my worries that make me so stiff-necked! Come, I’d like to see how far you’ve progressed in your training, if you don’t mind?”

She tossed the trident to Salick, who caught it automatically. Tarix picked up two of the clawed batons and readied herself.

After a moment, Salick dropped into a crouch, trident head down and the shaft held above her head. She slid forward, keeping the points of her weapon fixed upon Tarix’s legs.

“An invitation for a high attack,” said Tarix, and struck at her head.

The Gold reversed the height of her hands, the left going high and the right low. She snapped her hips into the move, and the baton went flying from the Red’s hand to bounce off the wall.

“Well done!” Tarix said and launched a flurry of feints and strikes against Salick with her remaining weapon. Salick blocked them all, letting the anger and frustration of the last days fuel her defense. When Tarix slowed, Salick forced her to retreat with jabs at her legs and head, then caught the baton between the trident’s tines and forced it to the floor.

“Hah! Enough, Salick, You have improved this past year. How old are you now?”

“Almost nineteen years,” Salick said, then added, “A year older than Garet.”

Tarix smiled. “So you are. A shame you weren’t older. You could be a Red with your skill level and experience. But it’s always said, ‘never a Red before thirty’ or some such nonsense.”

“How old were you when you became a Master?” Salick asked. She placed the trident in the weapons rack and accepted a ladle of water from Tarix.

“Twenty-eight,” the Red said with a wink, “but I lied about my age.”

“Maybe I should,” Salick said. She sat down, weary to the bone but unwilling to go back upstairs and fail again at sleep.

“Do you want a Red Sash so badly?” Tarix asked. She sat down beside Salick.

“I used to,” Salick admitted, “but now I don’t know. The Hall is my life, Master. I never thought of any other life, but what if the demons are truly gone?”

Tarix shook her head. “They’re not. I know that in my oft-broken bones! But listen, Salick,
life
is your life, not this Hall, and you can live as well outside of it as in. What about those you care for? I know that you and Garet have fought, but you may yet reconcile. If not, there will be someone else for you . . .”

“I don’t want anyone else!” Salick said. She stood up and clenched her fists. “I want him to come back and everything to be the same.”

Abruptly, she sat again, and Tarix laid a gentle arm around her shoulders.

“You’re shaking, Gold! Ahh, I know that you want him to return, but even if he came back, the Hall’s changing now. Maybe we all thought things were back to normal after last winter, but we were wrong. Come now, stop crying and think.”

Tarix pulled off a strip of bandaging cloth from the roll hanging on a peg. She handed it to Salick to wipe her eyes.

“Change there may be, but much good remains. You are part of that good, and so is Garet. The way I see it, the both of you will always try to do what is right. You just have to find a way to do it together.”

“Like you and Relict?” Salick asked. She wiped her nose and took a deep, shuddering breath.

Tarix laughed and stood up. “Well, we make our mistakes together, and that seems to be enough for us.”

She pulled up the Gold and gave her a brief hug. “Now go and rest. Who knows what else this night will demand of us?”

“
NO, WE CANNOT
stop in this dark,” Corix said. “There might be more.”

She stood by the corpse of a Racer Demon barely visible in the light of a quarter moon.

Cernot pulled his pickaxe out of the beast’s back. He looked down the trail, straining his eyes to catch any movement. It was no good tracking the fear, for that was everywhere.

Falor looked up from tending their patient. “Surely there can’t be more than four, Master. Two Shriekers, a Catcher, and this one: there can’t be more!”

“The Master’s right, Falor,” the Gold said, wiping the pick’s point on the mossy side of a tree. The trail was so narrow, it had forced the Racer into a straight-line charge. That had made it easier to kill. All Cernot had needed was proper timing, and Corix ran a well-trained Hall.

“I wouldn’t have thought that we’d be attacked by two demons, let alone four,” he told her. “We have to keep going, so chin up, Green. You stuck that second Shrieker like a Gold. It was a good kill.”

Falor smiled, but flinched when a distant howl sounded from the east.

“Well, at least they’re not surrounding us on this side of the river,” Corix said. “This old trail is too overgrown with brush to let them flank us. Falor, you take the litter again, I’ll guard our backs.”

“Do you want my spear, Master?” Falor asked, but Corix shook her head.

“No, in this light, or lack of it, I’ll need to get close,” was all she said. Cernot took the pack off his back and handed it to Corix. She removed two metal gauntlets and slid them onto her hands. Cernot tightened the straps for her, and the Red lifted them into the weak moonlight.

Metal bands protected her arms from wrist to elbow. A steel plate on the back of each hand stuck out beyond her knuckles as a wide and sharpened dirk.

Cernot and Falor picked up the litter and stumbled off in the direction of Shirath. Corix tapped the two blades together before following.

“If you want a feast, demons, we’ll make you sing for it first,” she said to the night.

“
COME IN, GARET
, come in out of the dark!” Andarack shouted over the singing. “I’m glad you could make it to our wedding feast. Where is my bride? Dasanat, see who is here!”

Garet had come to Lord Andarack’s house in the Eighth Ward not knowing what to expect. Bixa told him that the couple had moved their wedding date up as the Astrologers had declared these demon-free days very lucky indeed. The Captain had no idea if a wedding feast was still planned, but ordered Garet to find Andarack even if he had to pound on the door of the Lord’s bedchamber.