The Infernal City (19 page)

Radhasa stepped back.

“Want to try again?”

Growling, he once more took up the blade and came at her with his famous six-edge attack, but halfway through it her point was at his throat.

“Again?” she asked.

Enraged, he flew at her with everything, but almost without seeming to work at it she had him disarmed and on the ground once more.

“You—You lost on purpose, when you were applying,” he said.

“You think?”

He climbed back to his feet. “You’ll have to kill me,” he said.

“No I won’t. I’ll just knock you out again.”

“Why did you do this? For entertainment?”

Her usually beautiful face twisted into something rather ugly.

“I wanted you to
know,”
she said. “I hate losing, and I hate pretending to lose.”

“Then why did you? Back at my villa?”

“Orders, Prince.”

“From your employer? To get me to let my guard down?”

She rolled her eyes. “From Gulan, you idiot. Don’t you understand yet? You’re a worse than mediocre fighter. You’ve never fought a fair fight in your life. You’ve never been in a battle that wasn’t a rigged, foregone conclusion. Until now.”

Attrebus suddenly realized he’d missed something about Radhasa; she wasn’t merely deceptive, treacherous, and greedy—she was completely insane.

“Sure,” he said. “Whatever you say. Clearly you hate me, although I don’t know why. I was nice to you, took you into my guard.”

“I don’t hate you as such,” she said, “I just hate what you are. It’s not your fault really—this was done to you. Yet I can’t help
feeling that if you’d ever used your brain just once, if you had the slightest ability to step outside of your narcissistic little world—”

“You’ve been with me two days. What do you know about me?”

“Everyone interviewed for your guard is told, Attrebus. And they all talk, don’t they? How could they not? The way you blustered about as if they were your friends, the casual, everyday condescension—I don’t see how any of them stood it for more than two days. I mean, yes, the pay is good, and in general you’re assured fairly safe situations, but Boethiah’s ass, it’s annoying.”

A slow, gentle cold was working its way up from his belly.

“This isn’t true,” he said. “My men loved me.”

“They mocked you behind your back. The least of them was worth three of you. Did you really think you’re the hero in the songs, in the books? Were the odds really ten-to-one at Dogtrot Ford?”

“Some authors tend to exaggerate, but it’s all basically true. I can’t help the mistakes some bard in Cheydinhal makes. But I
did
those things.”

“At Dogtrot Ford you faced half your number, and they weren’t insurgents, they were condemned criminals told that if they survived, they would be freed.”

“That’s a lie.”

He felt dizzy, very dizzy. He leaned against a tree.

“You’re starting to see it, aren’t you? Because somewhere in that skull of yours you have at least half of your father’s brain.”

“Just shut up,” he said. “I’ve no idea why you’re saying this, but I won’t listen to it anymore. Kill me, tie me back up, but just shut up, for the love of the Divines.”

She wrinkled her brow and leaned on her sword. “Are you really that dense?”

He charged at her, howling. A moment later he was on the ground again.

“If it’s any consolation,” she said, placing her foot on his
throat, “even if by some fluke you managed to kill me, Urmuk and Sharwa have been watching the whole time.”

As she said it, he saw the orc and the Khajiit appear from behind a copse of bamboo.

The boot came off of his neck. He turned his head and saw someone else—a lean, hawk-nosed man with charcoal skin and molten red eyes striding purposefully into the clearing. Had he missed someone?

“You there!” Sharwa shouted. “What do you—”

The man kept coming, but he thrust out his arm, and his hand flashed white-hot. Sharwa’s hideous yowl was like nothing Attrebus had ever heard before.

Radhasa kicked him in the head, and he rolled, groaning, sparks flashing behind his eyes. Sobbing in pain, he came to his feet and rubbed the tears from his eyes.

He was just in time to see the orc lose his other hand, making him—presumably—Urmuk the Handless. The newcomer’s long, copper-colored blade pulled right through his wrist, then angled up to deflect a murderous head blow from Radhasa. Urmuk stumbled back and tripped over Sharwa, who seemed to be trying to stand, despite the smoke rising from her chest.

Radhasa jumped back and continued to retreat. Attrebus didn’t blame her. This wasn’t a man—this was some daedra summoned from the darkness beyond the world, a fiend.

“What do you want?” Radhasa screamed. “You’ve no business with us.”

The fiend didn’t say anything. He just picked up the pace, half running toward Radhasa, and then suddenly bounding forward. She planted herself and then danced nimbly aside as his blade soughed by her, and her own weapon came down two-handed toward the juncture of his neck and shoulder.

He caught her blade with his off-weapon hand. Attrebus saw Radhasa close her eyes, and then his blade went in through the pit
of her left arm so deeply the point came out through her ribs on the other side.

He withdrew the weapon and stalked toward Urmuk, who was holding the bleeding stump of his wrist. Whatever Urmuk was, he wasn’t a coward, and he hurled the massive weight of his body at his attacker, clubbing at him with the iron ball he had fixed to his left hand. Sharwa was crawling away on her belly.

Urmuk fell and the fiend turned on Sharwa.

“You can’t,” Attrebus managed. “She’s injured—”

But her head was off by then.

And now the fiend turned on him.

Attrebus snapped out of his paralysis and ran toward his sword, but when he had it, he saw the killer was merely watching him.

Attrebus brought his weapon to guard.

“I killed a Bosmer back in the hills and a Breton on the ridge back there,” the man said. His voice was hard and scratchy. “I make there are two more—Khajiit. Where are they?”

“They went to some village,” he replied. “To change the horses for slarjei, whatever they are.”

“Slarjei are better in the desert than horses,” the man said. “How long have they been gone?”

“An hour, maybe.”

“Well, Prince Attrebus, we ought to be going, then.”

“Who are you? How do you know who I am?”

“My name is Sul.”

“Did my father send you?”

“He did not,” Sul replied.

Now that he was closer and not in constant motion, Attrebus had a better look at him. He was old, his dark skin pulled in tightly against his bones. His hair was black and gray and cropped nearly to his skull.

“Who, then?”

“My reasons are my own,” he replied. “Would you rather I hadn’t come?”

“I don’t know the answer to that yet, do I?” Attrebus said.

“I’m not here to kill you,” Sul assured him. “I’m not here to hurt you. We have a common destiny, you and I. We both seek the island that flies.”

Attrebus blinked. He felt as if the earth kept shifting beneath his feet. “You know of it?”

“I just said so.”

“And what is your concern with it?”

“I will destroy it or send it back to Oblivion. Isn’t that what you want?”

“I … yes.” What was happening?

“Then we are together, yes?” Sul said. “Now, should we go or wait around so that I have to fight the other two as well?”

“You didn’t have much trouble with these,” Attrebus noticed.

“Most men die surprised,” Sul said. “One of those two might have a surprise for me. I don’t fight anyone without a reason. I have you, and I don’t want slarjei unless we need to go south into the desert. Do we need to go south?”

“No.”

“Well, pick the direction, and let’s be off.”

Attrebus stared at him, teasing that out. Then he understood. “You don’t know where Umbriel is.”

Sul barked out something that might have been a laugh. “Umbriel. Of course. Vuhon …” He trailed off. “No, I don’t know where it is.”

“How do I know you won’t kill me as soon as I tell you?”

“Because I need you,” Sul said.

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. But I know I do.”

Attrebus considered his reply for a long moment. But really, what did he have to lose?

“East,” he said. “It’s over Black Marsh now, heading north.”

“North toward Morrowind,” Sul sighed. “Of course.”

“Does that mean something to you?”

“Nothing that matters right now. Very well. East we go, then.”

“Let me get my things,” Attrebus said.

“Hurry, then.”

Attrebus was glad Coo was in Radhasa’s haversack and not on her body. The idea of approaching her, seeing what Sul made of her, made him sick. True, she was a lying traitor, but she had been warm in the bed with him not long ago. Alive and beautiful, sweaty, enthusiastic—or so she had seemed. Of all of the women he’d been with, she was the first to be—well, dead. At least so far as he knew. It was upsetting.

Sul gathered a few things from the bodies, then led him upstream among the trees for some distance until they finally came to three horses—two roan geldings that looked as though they were from the same mother and a brown mare. One of the roans was packed up, the other two horses were saddled.

“Ride the gelding,” Sul said.

Attrebus sighed, feeling that was somehow fitting. A few moments later he was riding east with the man who had saved his life, wondering what would happen if he tried to run north, to Cyrodiil, to home.

And he had to admit that at the moment he didn’t have the courage or the confidence to find out.

Colin curbed the impulse to pace, but although he had walked into the room of his own free will—and there was no evidence that he couldn’t leave it—he felt caged somehow. But his mind had been spinning for two days now, and the thread it turned out was beginning to look more like a garrote.

The vanishment of Prince Attrebus wasn’t his first case—it was his third. The first had been simple enough; he’d planted spurious intelligence in the minister of war’s office and waited for it to come out somewhere. When one of their agents in a local Thalmor nest reported it, he easily backtracked the leak to a mid-level official who was apparently hemorrhaging information to a mistress who was—as it turned out—a Thalmor sympathizer. It was simple, clean. No arrests and no bodies. Once the leak was known, it was more useful to leave it in place.

His second assignment had been to discover the whereabouts of a certain sorcerer named Laeva Cuontus. He’d found her without ever knowing why he was looking for her. He didn’t know what happened to her after he reported her location, and he didn’t want to know.

When he’d been sent out with the patrol to locate Prince Attrebus, it hadn’t seemed that odd. Apparently the prince often had to be shadowed, and it didn’t require a particularly senior member of the organization to do the job of what amounted to a bit of tracking, questioning, and bribing.

But now he was in the middle of something pretty bad, and a sensation between his sternum and his pelvis told him that it hadn’t been an accident that such a junior inspector had been sent to discover such nasty business.

He didn’t have any proof of that, of course. Just that feeling, and the certainty that he was missing some piece of the puzzle. And now he was in a well-furnished room on the second floor of the ministry, which was apparently the office of no one.

He turned as Intendant Marall entered the room, followed by two other men. One was Remar Vel, administrator of the Penitus Oculatus. The other …

“Your majesty,” he blurted, taking a knee. He felt suddenly in awe, an emotion he hadn’t experienced in a while. As a child he’d worshipped this man. Apparently some part of him still did.

“Rise up,” the Emperor said.

“Yes, highness.”

The Emperor just stood there for a moment, hands clasped behind his back.

“You were there,” he finally said. “Is my son dead?”

Colin considered his answer for a moment. If anyone else had asked him … But this wasn’t anyone else.