The Hollow Queen (43 page)

The trace odor was extraordinarily faint, a mere whisper of the fetid smell of demonic spirits, the F'dor specifically, but even just a hint of it was enough to fill his Dhracian sinus cavities with the stinging indication of the presence of ancient evil that his blood screamed to stamp out.

The long journey across the massive canyon followed by the extraordinary climb he had undertaken had stripped him of more of his strength than he had expected. The life he had lived prior to coming to the new world had kept him fit and wiry; while he still kept himself in trim, there was no denying the softening of his hardness, the diminution of his ironlike grip. The hard vitality that he had always counted on, while still mostly present, was not something to take for granted, he had learned.

So he pressed himself up against the corner behind the stairs in the tower room overlooking the vast vista, much of which he had traveled through, and waited, willing his heartbeat to slow and his breath to be silent. He held Rhonwyn's compass in his right hand and, with caution that surpassed extreme, waited for the emperor to come into sight.

And it almost worked.

*   *   *

Talquist was humming as he climbed those stairs, drying his hair, wet from the scented bath he had just taken, with a thick, small towel.

The routs of Avonderre and Tallono had established an impressive foothold along the eastern coast of the Middle Continent; the international network of slave traders and armed merchant vessels, cleverly hidden for so long by the blue scale that Faron had employed, still seemed to be maintaining control of the seas, even now that the magical occlusion was no longer present; armaments of all kinds were being produced at record speeds by his slave factories; and, by far his favorite bellwether, word had come from Navarne that the Lord Cymrian was, in the words of the scouts, “dead or fled.”

He could not be happier.

Granted, there had been losses as well. The Great Forest to the north and Tyrian to the south had proven thus far impervious to the tests for widespread burning with the long-smoldering ores the slaves had accidentally discovered in the mines of Jakar, where seven hundred of them had inhaled the toxins, only to breathe out increasingly heated blood with each exhalation. By now he had anticipated occupying the western forests from his own borders to those of the Hintervold in the north.

But it was coming, he knew.

All in good time.

He was almost at the top of the stairs leading to the tower room when the mirror placed unobtrusively in the corner caught a flash of movement, ever so slight, behind the tower staircase.

Talquist froze on the stair.

*   *   *

Hrekin, Achmed thought.
He's seen me.

He glanced out the stairway door to the place where the string of an alarm bell hung.

He had not yet caught sight of Talquist himself; the emperor had come to a halt just beyond the range of his vision from beneath the staircase above him. But he had been a student of human behavior long enough to recognize the signs of being seen, had been able to detect a change of heart, plan, or mind, knew the sound of the quick intake of breath or the expulsion of similar air that indicated an unseen person knew of his presence.

One thing that cheered him somewhat was the fact that the odor of F'dor did not grow stronger as the emperor stopped. Achmed had been around enough targets with whom the ancient demonic race had interacted that, while he could not always catch a trail of a demon, he could usually gauge the level of its connection to the human host. Whether a person had come into the most distant of contacts and was therefore only under the slightest of suggestions, or the full-fledged host of the demon itself, Achmed could never be certain, but he had come to be able to often weigh the density of a demonic presence.

And, though he silently acknowledged that he could be wrong, he decided the likelihood that Talquist had either been taken against his will or, a little more nerve-racking, had offered himself as the demon's actual host, was minimal.

Or at least he prayed it was.

Come on, you demonic knob,
he thought.
Come out and play
.

*   *   *

Exhaling quietly, Talquist drew the violet scale of the New Beginning from the folds of his robes of state, garments of the finest bleached white Sorbold linen, trimmed with gold.

And held it up in the moonlight streaming through the window.

He watched as it cleared to almost an outline of itself, the violet hide and primitive scratching of the image of a throne inscribed on its surface fading until nothing but the outline remained.

Talquist waited patiently, listening for sound from beneath the stairs, but hearing none. He glanced without moving his head into the stairway mirror again and saw nothing.

Much the way he had as a child in the orphanage when he had heard footsteps or a sudden bump on the stairway, potentially indicating the approach of the despicable bastard caretaker who gleefully used the penniless children in his care for his own nefarious purposes, he suppressed the urge to scream threats or issue commands—
Leave here now! Leave us alone! I have a knife
—and waited until his own hand and forearm went clear as the scale did.

The moonlight being as strong as it was that night, it only took a moment.

As Talquist felt the density of his body change, he smiled with the irony of what he had just undertaken. It was this scale, this precious object he had found in the sand of the Skeleton Coast a lifetime ago, that had allowed him to walk through the streets of Jierna'sid in the dark of night, to enter both Crown Prince Vyshla's bedchamber and the royal suite of the Empress Leitha and absorb into the carapace of the scale all of their Right of Command, all but dissolving the prince and desiccating the empress almost immediately.

And, with the removal of the Ring of State from the dead empress's hand, giving him the object he needed, drizzled with a few drops of his blood and placed on the Weighing plate of the great Scales of Jierna Tal, to take the throne for himself.

Just one more time,
he thought as he watched the rest of his body turn clear and vanish.
Please, please. I will never leave the tower window open again if you just assist me in this, please
.

And smiled, knowing that he, one of the true disbelievers in the world, who had chosen to publicly worship the old animist gods that he didn't believe in rather than acknowledge the Cymrian deities he didn't acknowledge either, he, the Royal Cynic, had just uttered a bartering prayer.

If it wouldn't lead his predator to him, he would have laughed aloud.

If there is anyone there, it must be the second assassin that Faron's augury spoke of
, he mused.
Fhremus was right; that second fellow with Dranth could hardly have been mistaken for an actual assassin
.

Fortunately, the moonlight was bright that night.

He tucked the violet scale into the pocket in the folds of his robe.

*   *   *

Achmed did not know why he was certain, but somehow he knew that Talquist had stepped off the stair.

One of the reasons he knew was that when he leaned incrementally farther out from behind the corner of the staircase, he could no longer see the emperor's stout belly as he had a few moments before.

Hrekin, he thought to himself.
He's got something that hides him from sight
.

He set about moving the cwellan forward with motions that were agonizingly slow, tasting the air in front of him to see if the flavor changed.

And in a moment, it did.

*   *   *

Talquist stepped off the stair.

He came around the corner as slowly as he could, holding the dragon scale in front of him.

And silently drew the blade that he always kept in a sheath on his lower leg, even now that he was the emperor of the Known World, with the greatest soldiers on the continent protecting his every breath.

I will have to discipline Fhremus for allowing this breach in security
, he thought, highly displeased.

He stopped and took a breath.

Crouched behind the stair was a man in black garments, simple trousers and a shirt, with a hooded scarf that covered his neck.

Talquist's blood ran cold.

He had seen this man before, at the funeral of the empress and her son, as well as his own coronation.

He thought of curses vile and vulgar that had been part of the world he had inhabited for most of his life and decided that none of them were even vaguely sufficient.

Well,
he thought ruefully,
if someone is going to try and take the emperor of the Known World down, at least it's appropriate that it's the king of assassins
.

He stood, not breathing, for the span of eighty heartbeats, then gingerly stepped forward.

Only to have the man beneath his staircase swing his strange, crossbow-like weapon around and point it squarely in his direction.

Talquist's throat ran dry.

And yet, even as his heart pounded heavily and his blood ran faster, he had the innate understanding, though he was not certain why, that the gifted killer did not see him.

At least not yet.

He's following his nose,
the emperor thought, judging by the angles at which the veiled man aimed his weapon, and glanced about. He regretted immediately the salt bath he had enjoyed that morning, perfumed with sacred oils and ambergris from across the sea that was now plied by ships flying his colors.

The assassin's eyes were not aligned with him.

He lifted his dagger and positioned it for a killing strike.

*   *   *

Achmed knew that he could only take one cwellan shot, and if he missed, it would give the invisible emperor a clean shot with his blade at him.

When the thought occurred to him he couldn't decide if he was amused by it or horrified.

Indeed, were the tales of his life to be written, it would be embarrassing beyond belief to have met his end at the hands of such an utter imbecile.

At the same time, the potential of that happening was far stronger than he was comfortable acknowledging.

His sinus cavities stung slightly, and Achmed put his finger to the side of his nose.

And, in doing so, felt the compass that he had placed in his sleeve shift slightly.

Rhonwyn's compass.

Or, more correctly, Merithyn's.

With some effort he slid the ancient artifact from his forearm into his hand without moving otherwise. The tool felt warm, probably from being up against his bare skin, but once it was in his hand he saw a vision ripple through his mind.

It was the quick, evanescent picture of himself in the tower stairway room.

As if it were reporting to him about his own whereabouts.

Where is Talquist?
he thought quickly.

The image changed to a picture of himself from a much closer angle.

Achmed turned to align himself with the space that he had seen a few seconds before.

And felt the odor he had identified move rapidly to his right.

Achmed fired his cwellan.

To his shock, the three sequential disks went wide, all except the first one, which cleanly bisected a small, thick towel that lay on the ground at his feet.

His reflexes, reputed to be some of the quickest in the Known World, noted the absence of the familiar scent.

Talquist was gone.

*   *   *

The Merchant Emperor had made a decision at the very last moment that made use of good common sense, an attribute he had relied on all of his life, particularly during his days plying the trade.

While the dagger in his hand might work once he got around behind the Assassin King, there was no possible way that he could make a successful strike against Achmed from the front.

Unless he wanted to be shot at point-blank range before he drew his next breath.

So he tossed the towel and bolted.

He had managed to get almost to the door of the tower room when a hail of disks whirled past him in an arc, whistling through the air and spinning out into the stairway beyond, where they clinked upon falling to the floor.

“Coward,” murmured the Bolg king.

Talquist felt his face go hot.

Perhaps,
he thought grudgingly.
But we will see who lives to hurl the next insult
.

He remained, still as death and as invisible as the Afterlife, exactly where he had landed.

*   *   *

Where is Talquist?
Achmed silently asked the compass again.

This time, he saw himself from a completely different angle and distance, far closer than he had imagined.

Too close for a cwellan shot.

He dropped his weapon and lunged.

And connected with Talquist's soft stomach, driving his shoulder into the Merchant Emperor's chest.

*   *   *

Taking Talquist's breath from him.

The moment the connection was made, the emperor appeared on the floor beneath him.

A blade hovering in his hand, close to Achmed's throat.

The Bolg king seized the emperor's wrist and squeezed with as much crushing force as he could manage, shocking himself at how weak he had become in his travels across the twenty-one-mile-wide canyon and the tower climb.

Talquist, a man of many streetfights and tussels in the course of building an empire of merchants, gasped and twisted, managing to pull his shoulder around but not to free himself. He struggled to shout for help, but the pressure of the Bolg king's shoulder against his chest just below the heart was beginning to interrupt his breathing, making him woozy.

“Help,” he gasped quietly, not even loud enough for the word to leave through the tower window where high-flying birds might hear it. “Help me.”

“Oh, please,” the Bolg king said disdainfully. “Surely you can do better than that.”