The Sea of Time (45 page)

Here was the place where she had last met Dorin, son of Denek, son of Dinnit Dun-eyed, next to the broken foundation of the tower that had contained the Kencyr temple. Rubble still loomed dark in the predawn light. However long she had been gone, no one had yet done anything about it.

Jorin pressed against her leg, growling. Three dark figures had emerged from the shadows and were silently approaching. Karnids, for certain. Jame might have run, but she had unfinished business here. She slid into fighting stance. Then someone stepped between her and the advancing men.

“Don’t look,” said the Earth Wife’s red-haired Favorite to Jame over his shoulder. Then he spread wide his coat.

A blinding flood of light emerged, fiercer than it had been for his predecessor when he had appeared as the sun at the summer solstice. It painted the inside of Jame’s eyelids crimson as she turned her face away and shielded it. She heard the Karnids cry out and smelled something burning. They stumbled away, their faces seared, their eyes, burst, streaming down into their beards.

The Favorite closed his coat and buckled it, although light still shone through the seams. He turned back to Jame. “What are you doing here?”

“I have something to return.”

She drew the miniature temple out of her pocket, where its sharp edges had been bruising her hip all night, and carefully placed it on the road near the entrance to the step-forward tunnel. Tiny, outraged voices piped up inside it. It pulsed and grew, making Jame and the Favorite hastily retreat, but stopped when it was only three feet high. One side opened like a door and a crumpled figure forced its way out. The high priest straightened up and shook out his robes.

“Well?” he demanded, blind eyes fiercely aglare. “Are you quite done shaking us around like dice in a box? Answer me, whoever you are!”

“Will the temple keep growing?”

“In its own good time. I know your voice. You’re that wretched girl who calls herself the Talisman. Where is my grandson Dorin?”

How best to answer that?

“I’m afraid,” said Jame carefully, “that he died trying to save you from the Karnids.”

“What, here? Oh, never mind. Somehow, you’re to blame. Ishtier warned us that you were trouble, and he was right.”

He reached out to grab her, but she dodged away. His clawlike hands flexed, trying to pull in the power with which to strike her, but the temple was still too small.

“Later,” he panted. “Now, go away!”

“What an unpleasant old man,” remarked the Favorite as they left, not quite at a run.

“You understood him?” The priest had been speaking in Kens.

“No, but ill will translates itself.”

“What’s going on in the city?”

“We are hunting, as you see.”

They paused to let a swarm of frogs hop past in formation: “GEEP,
geep
, geep . . .”

“But there are fewer Karnids than we expected. Meanwhile, Master Needham and his followers are storming the treasure towers, but I think they will hold. Then there are Prince Ton’s bully boys, defending the Rose Tower against the Armorers’ Guild.”

“King Krothen is still there?”

“At the top, with Prince Ton and Princess Amantine. Ton wants his uncle to abdicate. He’s afraid, if he commits regicide, that the white won’t come to him. They’ve been at Krothen all night. The king must be tougher than he looks.”

He paused and gave her a sidelong glance. “I’m right, aren’t I? You were once a Favorite.”

“How d’you know that?”

“Odd thoughts come to me, since I won the red. So tell me: how did you manage all of those women? They line up outside my door every night. I hardly get any sleep at all.”

III

AFTERWARD, trotting through the streets with Jorin at her side, Jame decided that the Favorite hadn’t really believed her tale of the Four as worshipped by the Merikit. He seemed to think she had some as yet undisclosed secret that would make his own life more bearable. In that, she was sorry to disappoint him. It occurred to her that she had been lucky in her own experiences. That in turn made her wonder, yet again, how her growing family in the hills was doing.

She also thought about what the Favorite had said regarding the Karnids in Kothifir, that there were fewer of them than he had expected. When she had left Urakarn—Trinity, had that only been a few hours ago?—it had seemed to be deserted. If its residents hadn’t used the step-forward tunnel to flood Kothifir, where were they?

To the northeast, firelight bloomed out of the streets accompanied by distant shouts. Master Needham was trying to breach the treasure towers with flame. Jame had seen them. They had no lower windows, iron doors, and granite walls. All in all, they hardly required guards. Needham’s chances of sacking the treasuries without inside help didn’t look good.

She stopped on the edge of the central plaza. There was the Rose Tower, twisting up into the sky like an inverted tornado. Its outer spiral stair swarmed. A handful of Prince Ton’s militia held the top of the steps. Jame recognized the bully whose head she had set on fire before Paper Crown’s tower. Half the Armorers’ Guild assaulted from below, led by Gaudaric and Ruso. The militia had made a barrier of furniture at the level of Krothen’s apartment that functioned like a cork. Despite superior arms, armor, and numbers, Krothen’s would-be rescuers were making little progress.

Black-clad figures slipped out of the mouths of surrounding streets, intent on taking the attackers from behind. As Jame drew breath to shout a warning, however, a gray form materialized in front of the foremost Karnid. Smoke issued from its hooded cloak. It spread wide its arms and enveloped the oncoming man. The cloak momentarily bulged with its thrashing prey and then dissolved into a sooty cloud. A second later it rose again behind another Karnid who, in swerving to avoid the greasy spot on the paving where his mate had disappeared, ran full into its arms.

Poof, poof, poof . . .

Then it reared up before Jame.

There was no face within the hood, only churning ash, and it stank of charred flesh.

“Burnt Man . . .” she gasped.

But guilt and grief choked her. Never mind that she seldom killed; how many had died because of her? Faces swirled in the ashen flakes: Dally, Theocandi, Vant, Bane . . .

“Father!”

Child of Darkness, where is my sword? Where are my . . .

He had meant to say “my fingers,” for they had broken off when she had pried Kin-Slayer out of them, and she had carried away one of them with his signet ring still on it—all for Tori, who hadn’t known what to do with either.

Accept my judgment.
That was the voice of the blind Arrin-ken who called himself the Dark Judge, whose precinct was the Riverland.
You know your guilt.

 
. . . yes . . .

“No.”

A hand grabbed her by the collar and jerked her back. Jame landed on her butt, shocked to feel real pain.

Brier Iron-thorn stood between her and the hooded figure who might or might not be the Burnt Man. It coughed in her face. The image swirled on its breath of a stern-faced woman who looked much like Brier herself.

 
. . . my daughter . . .

“No,” said Brier. “I was a child when you died, not to blame for your death, nor would you want me to feel that I was. Go away.”

The gray form writhed within its cloak as if trying to strike out, but the Kendar faced it down, glowering. With a groan, it melted into the pavement.

Brier turned to Jame.

“I had a feeling that you were back,” she said gruffly. “D’you know that you’ve been gone twenty days?”

Jame got gingerly to her feet. “I thought as much, if not worse. For me, it was yesterday.”

“Huh.”

“Anyway, why aren’t you with the Host outside the walls?”

“No cadet is.” The Kendar glanced to the west. The growing glow of the eastern dawn tinged her red hair with smoldering accents. “Only so many could take the lifts Overcliff in time for the general engagement, which happened last night. As far as I can make out, the Gemmans arrived at dusk yesterday and settled into camp for a dawn offensive. They didn’t reckon with our ability to see in the dark, which it wasn’t anyway with a nearly full moon. The rest of us stayed in camp to defend it, don’t ask me against what. The last I heard, the Host was still sweeping the last of the Gemmans back.”

So much, then, for one foreign threat.

Jame looked across the plaza to the struggling figures on the stair, who had so conveniently been left to strive on their own, without Kencyr intervention.

“Krothen is in trouble,” she said. “We need to help him.”

“How?”

Jame paused to think. “Everyone is focused on the outer stair, but there must be a way up through the interior.”

They circled the tower. At its foot stood a gleaming mechanical dog the size of a small pony. Ruso had been busy. Two apprentices were struggling to wind up the metallic beast with a thin iron rod thrust through the bow of a key set between its shoulder blades. With each jerk, its head rose a notch and flanges twitched lips back from iron teeth.

Beyond that, they found a side portal that opened into the servant quarters. These were deserted, everyone either apparently having run away or been driven out. There was indeed an internal stair, spiraling up the center of the tower’s shaft. They climbed, all the time hearing the muffled shouts of battle outside the walls. Past guard rooms, kitchens, offices, the chambers of royal ladies. . . .

Here was Krothen’s apartment, once so elegant, now ransacked to provide material for the barrier raised on the landing outside its door where Ton’s militia swarmed. The inner stair went no further.

Someone was sobbing. Jame circled the ruins of a massive bed and found Lady Cella crouched on the floor in the crimson pool of her skirts, cradling the body of her handsome boy toy. His head lolled over her arm, a swathe of golden hair hanging over his eyes. Someone had broken his neck.

“He tried to defend my cousin Krothen,” she wailed. Tears had soaked her veil so that it clung unflatteringly to her nearly chinless, middle-aged face. “Oh, I should have taken him away before Prince Ton’s bullies burst in! Ton never understood about us and, when he was dead, Princess Amantine only laughed. Gods damn her!”

“I’m sorry,” said Jame. What else could one say? “How do I get to the top?”

Cella gulped, trying to compose herself. “Krothen’s dais rises and falls. Right now, it’s stuck in the throne room.”

Outside, someone shouted a warning. Jame heard the scrabble of steel claws on the stair, circling the tower. Rotating, she followed the silver body as it surged up the steps. Gaudaric’s men hastily made way for it. The mechanical hound slammed into the barricade raised by Ton’s followers and shattered it. Debris hurtled into the room and out over the balustrade, likewise most of the militia. Cella screamed. Then someone caught the dog in midstride, off balance, and tipped it sideways. It hit the railing and bumped along it from baluster to baluster, legs churning, until stone gave way. The metal dog flew out into space and down, to a cry of protest from Ruso.

“No,” said Brier, as if echoing him, but her attention was fixed on the one who had destroyed his creation. “Amberley.”

She stepped out onto the stair to confront her former lover.

“Why?” she asked.

Amberley tossed back honey-gold hair and smiled at her. “Sweet, sweet Brier Rose. You always have to be right, don’t you?”

“Have I said that?”

“Not in so many words, but I watch rather than listen.”

She began to circle the other Kendar, who stood rigid on the landing. Her fingers slid under Brier’s hair to caress the nape of her neck. Auburn hair rippled at her touch. Brier shivered.

“Was it your fault, though? The Knorth tempted you, and you fell, like your mother before you.”

“Rose Iron-thorn never swore to the Knorth.”

“She might as well have, after what happened at Urakarn and in the Wastes.” Amberley flicked Brier’s hair and stepped away. “Lord Caineron never forgave her for that, or you, by extension. It was clear enough that he meant to break you to his service. That’s why I didn’t want you to go to Restormir to become a cadet. And I was right, wasn’t I?”