The Clandestine Circle (28 page)

“Drego!” he suddenly shouted. “What’s taking you so long? Get your carcass back in here and load up these wine bottles.”

Linsha saw a stool lying on the floor, probably kicked aside by the looters. She noiselessly picked it up and pressed back by the door to wait. The sound of splintering wood came from the storeroom, followed by a chuckle of glee.

“Hey, Drego, I got it.” The voice approached the door.

Linsha mentally counted the paces to the door—one, two, three—and out of the room he stepped, just as she swung the stool around, aiming for his head.

But the intruder was as fast as she feared and suspicious of his friend’s silence. He had already drawn his knife and came out the door looking for trouble. He saw Linsha before he saw the stool, and he instinctively twisted aside and flipped the knife in her direction just as the stool caught him on the shoulder. The stool and the looter fell to the floor in a heap.

A tearing pain caught Linsha in the muscle between her neck and shoulder just above the collarbone. She started to reach for the embedded knife, but the intruder, although dazed by the blow, squirmed to his knees and threw himself at her. Linsha barely managed to fend him off with a kick to his face. The effort cost her balance, though, and she crashed into the wall and slid to the floor. She cried out as the impact jarred her wound.

Her opponent was tough and furious in spite of his pain. Blood streamed from his broken nose, and he favored his left arm where the stool struck him, yet he pushed his body up and dived after the knife stuck in Linsha’s shoulder. His weight fell on top of her, pinning her to the floor. His fingers snatched for the knife, causing it to tear deeper into the muscle.

Linsha gritted her teeth. With one hand, she struggled to fight him off, and with the other, she groped for her own blade in its sheath at her waist. They writhed, tangling their legs and banging into the wall.

Someone stamped loudly into the hallway. “Lynn!” Mica snapped. “What are you doing? Quit fooling around and subdue the scum.”

The looter lifted his head in surprise and saw the stocky
dwarf standing a few feet away with a large cudgel in his hands. He hesitated, and Linsha could imagine the thoughts running through his head: take his chances with two opponents here or be hanged by the City Guard for looting. She recognized the flickering change in his eyes and sensed the abrupt tensing of his body just before he struck. This time she was ready for him.

She threw up her arm and blocked his second grab for the knife. Giving a tremendous heave with her lower body, she threw the man off-balance enough to give her a chance to wrench her own blade out.

He grabbed her hair and slammed her head into the wall. His fingers closed about the leather handle of his knife and wrenched it out.

Burning pain seared across her neck and chest. Furiously Linsha brought her dagger close by her side and drove it upward. She felt the blade puncture flesh, glance off bone. Hot blood spilled over her. The man’s weight sank slowly down on top of her until she couldn’t breathe.

Suddenly she was free of the looter’s weight. Mica heaved the body off her.

“Are you hurt? Dragon’s bones, answer me.”

Linsha tilted her eyes down to looked at the tears and the blood soaking into the scarlet and gold tunic. “Damnation. Look at this. Another uniform ruined. They’re going to start making me pay for these.” Frowning, she pushed herself up the wall to a sitting position. “Oh, and thanks for your help,” she added sarcastically.

The dwarf leaned his cudgel against the wall. “You’re the sell-sword bodyguard. You’re the one paid to do the fighting.”

“Why are you so bloody patronizing?”

“Why are you so self-serving?” he retorted.

“Arrogant!”

“Insolent!”

“Sulky, grouchy, and a pain in the butt.”

“Shallow, meddlesome, and a pain in the butt.”

The absurdity of their argument suddenly struck Linsha, and she began to laugh. “See? We do have something in
common,” she said before her laughter turned to a grimace of pain and fresh blood darkened her scarlet tunic.

Mica shook his head. “Here. Let’s get you cleaned up. I’ll take care of that wound,” he said gruffly.

He gently pulled away her tunic and the cotton shirt beneath to reveal the wound on her neck and shoulder. The wound was messy and deep but mostly superficial, and he quickly cleaned it and pressed a soft cloth against the torn skin and muscle. He paid no attention to the gold chain about her neck.

“You saw me heal Commander Durne’s head wound. I’ll heal your injury the same way.”

“I may be a sell-sword but I’m not stupid. I know the mystic power of the heart,” she murmured irritably.

“Good.” He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers against her skin. Humming to himself, he concentrated to draw his power from his inner being through his arm, his hand, his fingers and down into Linsha’s knife wound.

A tingling heat spread over Linsha’s shoulder. It warmed her blood and went tingling up her neck, along her arm, and over her breast. The pain retreated until it was little more than a gentle ache. She relaxed, musing over the unique feeling of someone else’s power healing her body.

Mica blew out a long sigh and sat back on his heels. “There. The skin is closed. The muscle will be sore for a few days and you’ll have a scar, but it’s healing.”

“Thanks, Mica,” she said. She sat for a few more minutes and drank a cup of water he brought her, then she climbed carefully to her feet. The loss of blood made her weak and a little dizzy, but she pushed the fatigue aside and went to work. While she searched the house, Mica dragged the looter’s body outside, where the guard patrol could pick it up. They met back in the front room where the old priest sold his work.

Silently they looked around at the devastation. The room had been trashed by the looters as they searched for things of value. Scrolls, parchment, vellum, and delicate sheets of handmade paper lay strewn everywhere, torn and shredded
or lying in pools of spilled ink. Quill pens had been torn and bent and scattered over the counter. Old maps were ripped from the walls and torn to pieces. A broken shelf spilled its books on the floor, and a smashed lamp lay in a puddle of oil that seeped into the wooden floor.

“Well,” said Linsha, gazing at the mess, “I hope his records weren’t in here.”

“I doubt it. They’re probably with his personal things. So where is he?”

The lady Knight grimaced. “In his bed. He’s been dead for a day or two. The entire place is a wreck. The looters have been here for a while.”

Mica snatched a broken quill off the counter and tossed it to the floor. “Blast it! I really needed to talk to that priest.”

“I’m sure he would have preferred that, too,” Linsha said dryly.

Ignoring her remark, Mica left the shop to search the rest of the priest’s residence. Linsha went outside to bring their two horses into the shaded alley. She took off her blood-soaked tunic and tossed it over her saddle horn. Her shirt was bloody as well, but not as bad, so she dabbed it off as best she could with some muddy water from a public pump and left it to dry. Unwilling to listen to Mica’s irritations, she started to straighten up the shop. Ostensibly she did it to look for the records. Internally she wanted to do something for the dead scribe within. She didn’t know him, had never been in his shop, yet he had died alone and lay unburied and vulnerable to scavengers. The least she could do to honor the dead was fix some of the dishonor done to him.

For nearly an hour she labored to clean the floor and counter and put things back in order. She was kneeling beside the counter, picking up broken glass, when the sound of heavy boot treads interrupted her quiet thoughts.

“On your feet! Who are you, and what are you doing in here?” demanded a harsh voice.

Linsha snapped out of her reverie and came alert. As she slowly stood upright, her sharpened attention picked out something in the big wooden counter she hadn’t noticed
before. But there wasn’t time to investigate. Two City Guards, both dwarves, stood by the door, their swords pointed unwaveringly at her. She saw with some amusement that their eyes widened at the sight of the bloodstains on her shirt.

“I am Lynn of Gateway,” she answered. “Squire in the service of the lord governor. I am, as you can see, trying to clean up this mess.”

The second dwarf started forward. “Lynn. I’ve seen you before.” He lowered his sword. “She was in the guards until the governor picked her out,” he told his companion.

The first guard sheathed his weapon. “Sorry. We’ve had reports of looters in this area. We saw the horses and the wagon—”

“And the man tied to the wagon wheel,” added the second dwarf. “That got our attention.”

“I would worry if you didn’t investigate,” Linsha said. She explained her mission to the shop with Mica and told the guards briefly what had happened. Mica, hearing the voices, came out to join her. He was empty-handed.

The guards stayed for a few minutes then left, taking the prisoner and the wagon with them. The dead priest and the looter they left for the dead wagon to retrieve.

Mica took in the changed state of the shop. “Looks better,” he admitted.

“Did you find anything?”

“Not yet.”

“Then look at this.” She bent over and pointed under the counter. The counter was a large, heavy fixture made of oak stained and aged to a deep, rich brown. The front, facing the door, was trimmed with simple panels; the top was flat and featureless, save for the nicks and stains of steady use. In the back lay a trove of shelves, cupboards, drawers, and slots. Linsha had already refilled some of the shelves with the salvageable parchment, scrolls, and sheets of valuable paper. But on the end abutting the wall was a narrow drawer built into the bottom of the countertop. Linsha hadn’t noticed it until the guards disturbed her and she looked up at just the right angle. It didn’t have an obvious handle or lock, only a
finger-sized indentation at the top edge. When Linsha tried to pull it open, it remained firmly in place.

Intrigued, Mica moved in for a closer look. He poked and prodded, tested every inch of the visible drawer front, thumped and pushed until at last a pleased smile creased his bearded face. He pulled a slender silver pin out of the side of the drawer, slid the top panel sideways out of its slots, and pulled out a drawer. The compartment within was deceptively large and, to the delight of both Linsha and Mica, it was filled with four large folio books, leather bound, hinged with steel, and embossed with symbols of the god, Mishakal.

Mica grinned in delight as he reverently lifted the books from their storage place. “Nice work, squire,” he told Linsha. He laid the books side by side on the counter and opened the first one. “These are records from a temple here in Sanction. They begin before the invasion by Highlord Ariakas and the dragonarmy. Apparently the priests taught minor healing arts there.”

“Would they have known of a plague up near Kalaman?” Linsha asked, eyeing the books dubiously.

“Maybe. If it was brought to their attention in some way. Hmmm … this is interesting.” The dwarf’s attention became locked on the book before him.

When he made no effort to share his observations or invite her to look at one of the books, Linsha drifted away. She was too tired to make the effort anyway. Working so hard in the heat of the day combined with the effects of her blood loss had sapped her strength away. She felt like a candle left too long in the sun. She wandered over to a corner away from the spilled pools of ink, propped her back against the walls, and slowly let her knees bend until she was sitting on the floor. Her head sank back and her eyes closed. Exhaustion overwhelmed her.

She lost track of the time as she dozed. Dreams came and went, fleeting images plucked from her subconscious that tickled her fancy or tore at her emotions. They came and went and came again, whirling around and around, like her juggling balls, in an endless circle. She dreamed of a strange
orange cat and a black dragon, of a ship that burned without being consumed, of her mother dying of the plague while she sat helplessly by. She saw Varia’s moon eyes staring at her from the night and she heard the owl say, “You will follow your heart.” The words echoed and reechoed into another vision of Lord Bight, laughing softly at her in the darkness, “Which will you prove to be when the time comes?”

She heard more voices: Sir Liam Ehrling, the Grand Master of the Knights of Solamnia, whispered the Oath in her ear; a faceless Knight of the Clandestine Circle repeated over and over, “At all costs,” until she thought she would scream. Other voices came, voices she did not know, and they talked over her and around her in an endless bedlam of sound that thundered in her head and drove all the other dreams back into the dark recesses of her mind.

All at once one familiar voice called her name softly, insistently. The tones titillated her heart, sending it tripping over its own beat. The nuances of his words warmed her with pleasure. The other voices faded into reality, and Linsha realized she was awake. There were other men in the shop, and one in particular was very close to her.

She opened her eyes, looked up, and fell into Ian Durne’s blue gaze. Without conscious effort, her face ignited in a dazzling smile that warmed her skin to roses and lit her eyes like jade touched with sunlight.

She saw him respond in kind, simply and with delight. Their eyes locked in a rapt gaze that excluded all but the tantalizing attraction they saw in each other.

Neither one of them realized how long they stayed there, staring at each other, until the two Governor’s Guards who came with the commander elbowed each other and loudly cleared their throats.

Commander Durne stood up and quelled them with one raised eyebrow. He offered a gloved hand to Linsha to help her up.

Trembling inside, she took it and let him pull her to her feet. She wasn’t certain she had the strength to make it on her own anyway. Her knees felt wobbly and her heart was
pounding. But whether it was the waking from her dreams or the unexpected presence of Ian Durne that caused her weakness, she did not know.