Vengeance of the Hunter (19 page)

She strode to him, setting the lamp she’d brought on the writing desk and studying him all the while. Yet she added nothing else at first, and so Kestar had to prod, politeness wearing thin, “So how may I help you,
akresha?
Is there something to which I owe the honor of this visit?”

The duchess chuckled, a low, lush sound not without beauty, and he thought he saw her smirking behind her smoky veil. “To answer the first question, that remains to be seen. To answer the second, yes. I wanted to lay eyes upon the man who helped put my husband on the path to his death.”

“If you’re here to make accusations, I’d like to point out that I didn’t kill him,” Kestar said. “At least, if it would do any good.”

“Ha! Don’t concern yourself, young man, not over that at any rate. I’m not here to accuse you. Your own Order has that well in hand.”

“Then if I may, why
are
you here?”

She didn’t circle him as the Hawk captain had done; she offered him no blows, no hand or foot raised against him. Nor did her hands seem poised to draw a weapon, for Kestar had no illusions that the elegant mourning gown couldn’t hide weapons somewhere within its sable folds. She simply stood just outside arm’s reach, her chin lifted, her dark eyes taking his measure. “I’m told they will convene your tribunal as soon as enough priests and priestesses report to the cathedral.”

“
Akresha
, you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not in a mood to discuss how tribunals and Cleansings are conducted. Can you consider getting to the point?”

“The point is that while I’ve come to Shalridan for the reading of my lord husband’s will, I’ll also be called upon to give testimony at your tribunal. And it’s within my power to make certain that you survive it.”

Kestar started, certain he must have misheard the woman, but her attention on him never wavered—and he couldn’t miss the expectation in her gaze.
I
beg your pardon?
and
You can’t possibly be serious
flashed through his mind, but he discarded both replies; her expression was too set and resolute for such banalities. “I can’t see how you might achieve that,” he said, “short of riot, flood or earthquake.”

“To be sure, no one except perhaps the Anreulag Herself can call the waters or shake the earth.” She leaned closer to him, adding in a soft murmur, “Ah, but a riot? That’s another matter entirely.”

Kestar went cold. “Do you know something of what happened in the streets tonight?” He kept his voice as soft as hers, for there was no way to know if other ears listened beyond his cell’s walls, or how much the Hawk outside his door could hear. “Are you telling me you arranged it?”

“I know that many of the people of this province are tired of the rulers from the east who conquered their forefathers—and that with the right provocation, they will rise against them. I saw it begin as I came into the city, when the people took up swords and guns. I saw them this morning, joining together in their numbers, chanting and singing forbidden songs in the streets. You can join them if you wish it, Kestar Vaarsen. I can help you.”

Something surged in the young Hawk’s heart. He’d heard the people calling out in Marriham. Here in Shalridan, he’d heard what the rioters had shouted before they’d overrun their carriage—
Nirrivy
,
Nirrivy
, as if by chant alone they could summon a long-dead nation back to life. His own family, his own people, had come from that nation. The heavy hand of the Church upon those of Nirrivan blood had always galled.

Yet he’d told Captain Amarsaed he was no insurrectionist. All his instincts screamed in warning now, waiting for the Hawk in the hall or the captain himself to come charging through the door. “What would you expect of me in return for your help?” he asked, his throat going dry.

“Nothing more than information. I want the girl who served my husband, sir, and if you can tell me where she is, you, your mother and your partner will leave this place alive and free.”

“Why, so you can enslave her again?” Kestar hissed, fighting to keep from raising his voice. “What kind of traitor do you take me for,
akresha?
If Captain Amarsaed sent you in to entrap me, find yourself another pawn for your game. I won’t play.”

Black brows with the faintest touch of silver rose above the duchess’s veil. “It may surprise you to know that I have no intention of enslaving her again. Her potential is far, far too great for that.” Her mouth curled. “Or hadn’t you heard,
akreshi
, that the people also begin to spread the word of the young saint who turned aside the Anreulag Herself?”

He hadn’t, of course; the Hawks had let nothing reach their ears but what Bron Wulsten had conveyed, all the way into the city. But he didn’t even need to seek the truth of it in his visitor’s face, for by no means had he been the only one to see what Faanshi had done. There was no way on earth or in the heavens that it could have stayed a secret.

And once the Hawks heard, he could foresee only one outcome. They would hunt her, even more ardently than before, for challenging the Voice of the Gods.

But what could he do to help her?

He could trust this woman who’d come to him in the night, and admit that he knew Faanshi was somewhere in the city—and risk alerting all of St. Telran’s to her presence if they didn’t know already. Or he could keep his counsel and risk losing any chance of saving his mother, Celoren and himself. Both options appalled him.

Gravely, with the voices of Ganniwer and Darlana both in the back of his mind, Kestar made his choice.

“I don’t know where she is,
akresha.
I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

Chapter Seventeen

Shalridan
,
Kilmerry Province
,
AC 1864

The opportunity Jacob offered to Julian turned out to be that of thievery.

It should have surprised him. It should have appalled him. But Julian’s capacity to be appalled had been broken and burned out of him, and its last few shreds had little strength against ongoing pain where his eye and hand had been, or against the laudanum he had to take to sleep. Yet he could muster bitter amusement of a kind. His own House had cast him out and rendered him unfit to seek out honest physical labor to earn his bread—even if he’d had the faintest idea how to do any such thing in the first place. Likewise, he couldn’t begin to consider pursuing a trade. Even under an assumed name, even in the westernmost province in the realm, he didn’t dare risk discovery by anyone who could connect him to his brothers.

Beneath the laudanum and the pain, a dark little voice whispered,
Why not be a thief?
After what you did
,
are you worthy of anything else?

He couldn’t argue with the voice, though one last struggling part of him thought that he should. But he needed food and shelter, and he needed to disappear to where no one in the noble Houses of Adalonia could find him. And so he took Jacob up on his offer, and vanished with him and his son into the tunnels beneath the city.

From Jacob, he learned to change the cadences of his voice, how he moved and how he walked, all in the name of disguising himself. From the boy Rab, he learned all the best hiding places in the tunnels and on the streets of the city—and in the eager boy he felt as if he’d found a truer brother than either of the men who actually shared his blood. Jacob taught them both how to move swiftly into a crowd, strike deftly at a pocket or a purse and hasten off again with no one the wiser.

From his own surreptitious observations, though, Julian learned that Jacob had rivals.

The folk of the tunnels were as close-knit a community as Julian had ever seen, close enough that it stunned him that they managed to share their hidden warren without killing each other. But not every thief in Shalridan chose to dwell in the tunnels, and therefore to live by the tunnels’ rules. Every last thief in the city was jealous of the territory he or she had chosen. And Jacob, with a growing boy to feed, didn’t always scruple to stay within the parts of Shalridan claimed by the tunnel folk when he was on the hunt.

Julian deemed it wise to learn to defend himself as well as to steal. He’d been taught to box and shoot a pistol as well as any other young gentleman, but neither were an option for him anymore. At Jacob’s urging he took up the knife instead, learning to wear blades where he could still reach, how to draw them and how to fight with them. They were no substitute for the hand he’d lost. But in the hand he retained, weapons began to feel right.

Even when Jacob wasn’t training him, Julian practiced with his new weapons. He took many hours to learn to compensate for the loss of his eye, hours in which he honed his aim and his dexterity—and in which, over and over, he imagined his brother Erasmus under the edges of his blades.

After many weeks of hard practice, one night while young Rab slept under the watch of the tunnel folk, Jacob took him up into the streets. They were to hunt more challenging game than what could be won from the pockets of artisans and tradesmen and laborers. Not the mansions of the greater Houses of Kilmerry Province, for those were beyond the powers of one man and his apprentice, no matter how determined the apprentice might be. Certain inns and taverns, on the other hand, were not. Jacob had contacts at three, where well-placed bribes could get him access to far fatter purses than could be pilfered on the streets.

The tavern they infiltrated that night, though, lay within the working territory of one of Jacob’s rivals. They made it out of the tavern with their prize, a purse full of enough banknotes to feed themselves and Rab for weeks, along with several others in the tunnels. But the thief Southpaw Rolf, with a muscular compatriot at his side, ambushed them before they could get more than two streets away. Had Jacob been fifteen or even ten years younger, it might have been a more even fight.

As it stood, Julian had to put his hard work with his blades to the test.

Jacob went down quickly, stunned and breathless and bleeding, and their two attackers turned with mocking grins upon Julian.

That, however, put their faces into Julian’s line of sight.

One of his knives caught Rolf’s accomplice in the neck, and the man collapsed in a gurgling heap. Julian had his second knife drawn a moment later, yet by then, Rolf closed in on him. Southpaw Rolf topped him by at least two inches in height and a stone in weight. He was ruddy-faced and blond as well, reminding Julian sharply of Cleon. Which all by itself was enough to goad him to fury—but what pushed him past that and into cold wrath was the thief’s assessment of him, in a sneering tone that hearkened far too keenly back to Erasmus.

“What gods-benighted hole did Jacob pull you out of, rookie? Do you think this is ending anywhere except with your blood all over the cobblestones?”

Julian couldn’t spare a breath for a reply. It took everything he could muster to dodge the other man’s swings and keep him off his blind side, and it didn’t work, not entirely. Rolf was faster and more skilled, but even so, Julian kept him occupied for enough few precious seconds to let Jacob surge back up off the ground and stab him from behind.

Then, at last, Julian slashed his throat. “Yes, actually, I do,” he said, panting, as Rolf crumpled.

His mentor looked every bit as exhausted as he felt, yet Jacob cracked a grin at him nonetheless—and promptly hustled them both out of the alley, snatching up the purse of banknotes as they went. Tired and wounded though they both were, it wouldn’t do to linger over the bodies of two freshly dead men. As they ran, though, he said, “Richard, son, you’re taking well to the thieving and all, but I begin to think we’ve just found you a truer calling. If you can do that in the shape you’re in now, I can’t wait to see what you’re going to do in better form.”

Pride blossomed in Julian, the first he’d felt in weeks. “Does this mean I get to have a name like our left-handed friend back there? I don’t particularly care for
rookie.
”

“You’ve earned it,” Jacob said, laughing out loud. “And I think Southpaw Rolf may have had the right idea, but I never was a man for extra syllables. I think you’ll make an excellent Rook.”

* * *

Shalridan
,
Kilmerry Province
,
Jeuchar 3
,
AC 1876

Dulcinea came to them not at night, not in secret, but in the first waking hours of the morning. It was the last thing Julian had expected, and he was torn between admiring her bravery and cursing her foolishness. He and Rab had enough funds for the time being to ensure that their landlord would look the other way no matter who came calling for them—but there was no way of knowing who might have tracked the route she took to seek them out.

Which didn’t stop him from receiving her and her maidservant in their flat, nonetheless.

It was Rab who let them in, and Rab who gave fulsome greetings before Dulcinea finally waved him into silence. Her gaze barely lingered on him, or on the appointments of the room; it went straight to Julian the instant she crossed the threshold. “Well, I’ll take the liberty of assuming that you never did find the dog.”

“Told you there wasn’t a dog, milady,” said her maid.

“And I will duly pay you the terms of our wager, Moirae. Later.”

Moirae. Julian remembered that name now, and in the stolid-framed woman could see the girl who’d helped him escape Dareli, along with her brother. She looked older and wearier now, not untouched by grief, and he had to think well of her if she was still serving Dulcinea. But he couldn’t pay her much attention now, not when Dulcinea herself was here, his past made flesh come to haunt him, just as he’d hoped and dreaded she would. “Rab, take Miss Moirae down into the common room and make certain she has refreshments, won’t you? They’ve come all this way. We shan’t be inhospitable.”

Rab didn’t visibly balk though the rebellious gaze he flashed Julian spoke volumes. “I’m not sure you should be holding this conversation alone—”

“I am.”

“Go with him, Moirae,” Dulcinea added.

“But, milady!”

“Do it.”

Rab and the maid Moirae, with identical scowls upon their otherwise entirely dissimilar faces, duly exited the flat. Julian didn’t move until after they were gone, and even then, he stood transfixed for several seconds by the woman before him. Dulcinea stood there, her features pale against the rich blues and greens of her dress and the small hat that crowned the elegant arrangement of her hair. When he made no move toward her, she finally lifted her chin and ventured, “Well. You’re rather less...damaged than I would have expected.”

“And you were married to my other brother, last I checked. Evidently we’ve both had room for growth in our lives. Did yours happen before or after Cleon died?”

Distress flashed in her eyes at his question, though she pointedly avoided answering it, as though he hadn’t spoken at all. Instead she studied him with fierce, almost desperate intensity. “Do I want to know how this was accomplished?”

“It’s best that you don’t.” Julian didn’t press her, and didn’t bother to explain; magic of which she had no knowledge was magic about which she could not be interrogated by even the most dedicated of Hawks. Beyond that, though, he found himself strangely loath to give her any knowledge of Faanshi at all. Something in him balked at the notion, and he didn’t dare examine his motives too closely.

Dulcinea, however, stepped deliberately closer. “Either you’ve found a surgeon of incredible skill, in which case it would be a crime against the realm to withhold his or her name. Or else you’ve found a mage, in which case you’re correct. I don’t want to know.” When she reached him, she lifted a white-gloved hand to the side of his face, touching the traces of scarring that still lingered around his right eye. “Either way, I’m grateful. I never wanted Cleon to do what he did to you.”

He inhaled at her contact, more sensitive than he wanted to be to the touch of her fingers. Part of him protested that it was the wrong hand—that there should have been magic glimmering in them. Part of him, just as deep, roiled at the evidence that this hand could still affect him too. “That’s surprisingly gracious of you,” he rasped.

Stepping back, her eyebrows rising, Dulcinea canted her head. “Why? I am not and never have been without compassion.”

“Maybe in my case you should be.”

That she didn’t immediately flinch both relieved and surprised him. But she did turn away, directing her hooded, wary gaze out the window in a manner Julian knew all too well.
She’s looking to see if anyone’s watching this place.
He approved, for he was watching the street himself. Yet then she closed her eyes and said wearily, “You wrote an apology on the calling card. Did you come to Shalridan just for this?”

“No, but once I discovered you were here, I...” Julian paused, aware of a growing tightness in his throat, and forced himself to speak through it. “I had to see you and set things right between us if I could.”

Dulcinea wasn’t done surprising him. All at once she laughed, sharp, strained little outbursts of noise too choked for proper mirth. Bowing her head, she swiped a finger across her eyes and pressed that hand, balled into a fist within its glove, against the window before her. “Mother and Daughter give me strength,” she muttered, and added more loudly, “Julian, there is nothing on your part that needs be set right.”

“Nothing?” He wanted to embrace her and didn’t dare, and so he had to shout instead. “Damn it, Dulcinea, I assaulted you!”

Her head came up again, and the eyes that sought his were gleaming with tears. “Oh, you fool, did you never figure it out? You were
drugged.
”

* * *

“So, Miss—Moirae, is it? Can I interest you in tea, or perhaps coffee? Our landlord’s wife keeps an excellent assortment of blends imported from Tantiulo. How she affords the expense I couldn’t say, but, well.” Rab flashed his best ingratiating smile as he escorted the maidservant into the common room. “We
are
paying a considerable amount of rent.”

The woman in service to Dulcinea Nemeides radiated suspicion from every line of her face and frame, but her demeanor fractionally eased at the prospect of being waited on, as Rab thought it might. “Drink what you want, but good Adalonic tea is fine for the likes of me,” she said gruffly, while he escorted her with a flourish to one of the nicer chairs in the room. “As long as you’re asking.”

“Say no more.” Rab rang the bell on the sideboard. When one of the boardinghouse’s staff came scurrying in to answer the summons, he made a point of saying as grandly as possible, “Tea for the lady, if you please—how do you take it, Miss Moirae? Ah yes, with milk and sugar. Coffee for myself with the same. We’ll be right over here.” As the kitchen girl bobbed her head and scurried off again, he turned his attention to the maid Moirae.

“Just so that we’re clear, sir,” she said primly, “I knew there wasn’t a dog.”

“Not the slightest hair of one,” Rab agreed, settling easily into the chair that faced her.

“And you’re no lord’s boy either, even if you talk like one. Not with the way the bloke upstairs sent you packing off down here with me.”

“You don’t miss much, do you?”

“Somebody has to look out for milady, and that somebody is me. Who’s the upstairs bloke?”

Rab considered her, reevaluating the strategy of wearing her down with charm. With that gimlet gaze she’d fixed on him, she didn’t seem as if she’d succumb anytime soon. But that didn’t mean it was safe to be truthful with her either. “Why don’t you tell me who you think he is? A clever woman like you must have a theory already.”

Moirae snorted, and that gimlet gaze of hers narrowed. Taking his measure, just as he was taking hers. “I know this much. The House had three sons once. The first one’s dead. The youngest holds the House now. And the middle, ha. I was a little snip of a thing when
he
was banished, but I remember it all the same. That upstairs bloke of yours, he’s got the look of the old earl about him even with that black hair of his and the other sons being blond. Last I saw Mister Julian, though, milord Cleon had made a right mess of him. And this bloke’s still got both his eyes and hands.”