Well of the Damned (37 page)

“Did
my disguise fall while I was soaring about?”

She
nodded. “I suppose you can’t use your hidden eye and keep
up the disguises at the same time.”

“Damn.
Maybe with practice I can do both. It’s good we found this out
now instead of in the middle of a crowd o’people.”

They
left their horses with two of the armsmen and wove their way through
the crowd to watch Feanna with a half-dozen orphan children as they
went about their shopping. She wore a genuine smile, and Gavin knew
she was enjoying the outing as much as the children were. He admired
her ability to lose herself in pleasant activities. He hoped for a
day when he would have few worries to plague him. Life was supposed
to become easier with wealth and power, but so far, he thought that
to be a myth.

Around
him were normal people, happy to have a glimpse of the new queen
while she did her charity. They spoke kindly of her to each other,
even spoke well of the king, whom they believed wasn’t present.

“He
should’ve come too,” one woman said. She rose on her
tiptoes to see the queen while patting the back of the infant in her
arms. “What could he possibly have to do in that big palace all
by himself?”

Gavin
snorted. He supposed he might have wondered the same thing if he’d
worn their boots. The lordovers didn’t always appear to do much
but dine well and dance, at least from the perspective of a peasant
trying to feed his family.

The
baby was looking up at him with interest. With one chubby finger
pointed at Gavin’s face and then touched her own cheek. Could
she see through his disguise? He grabbed Daia’s elbow and moved
her away, just in case. “Let’s move that way to get a
better look.” The infant was too young to report what she saw,
but he didn’t want any attention drawn to him.

The sun was low in the sky when
Feanna returned to the orphanage. Gavin and Daia retrieved their
horses and followed her. They waited for an hour outside while dusk
settled. While they’d made no plans to dine together, Gavin had
assumed they would. He needed time alone with his wife, and he hoped
she wanted to talk through their differences.

He
and Daia returned to the lordover’s guesthouse and waited in
the common room, Gavin in brooding silence. When he heard a pair of
footsteps approaching, he stood, expecting Feanna. He was
disappointed when Calinor and Brawna entered, but he put his feelings
aside for the time being. “She’s dead?”

Brawna
shook her head, but it was Calinor who explained, “We didn’t
find her. When we got to the inn, her room was empty, but she left my
horse there. We searched the streets, asked everyone we saw. Brawna
talked to someone who seen her.”

All
eyes turned to the young blonde battler. She swallowed and
straightened her shoulders. “A woman said she saw a dark-haired
First Royal carrying a knapsack. She only noticed because the battler
was on foot, walking down the street as though she had somewhere to
go, not on horseback. From her description, I’m sure it was
Cirang.”

“She
didn’t say where the battler went?”

Brawna
shook her head. “I searched in the direction she said, but
nobody else remembered seeing her.”

Gavin
pondered the news. “Maybe the lordover’s armsmen killed
her for some crime. What else could explain why she’s gone from
my sight?”

“Is
there a way she could hide from your hidden eye?” Daia asked.

“Underground?”
Brawna asked. “There’s an old mining tunnel in the south
part of Ambryce. Maybe if she’s in there, you can’t see
her?”

Everyone
turned to look at her, and a blush flooded her face. “That’s
a very good question,” Gavin said. “It’s worth a
look. We’ll go at first light.”

“How
come we don’t go now?” Brawna asked.

“If
she’s hiding in there,” Gavin said, “she’ll
come out at night to get food. She might see us afore we see her.”

Daia
nodded. “If we go during the day when she’s hiding, we
have a better chance to catch her.”

“No,”
Gavin said. “There’s no catching her. She dies on sight.”
He looked at each of them in turn. “Agreed?”

They
all did.

Chapter 42

Cirang
awoke to the rattle and clang of metal, followed by the creak of the
cellar hatch opening. She leaped to her feet and pulled the bag of
powder from her boot.

A
robed figure climbed down the ladder carrying a flickering candle.
The hood and veil had been pushed back to reveal the fresh face of a
young girl, perhaps sixteen, probably the one who’d been
filling the cups at the sacramental font. Her white robe had not even
a single cuff band, indicating she’d only recently taken her
vows.

The
girl reached the bottom of the ladder and took a step forward before
stopping short. She gasped. “Who—who are you? What are
you doing here?”

Cirang’s
gaze was drawn to the rounded bump of her belly beneath the robe. She
smirked. The nun’s story was a cliche — unchaste, unwed,
unwanted, and now unloved except by her god. “I’m First
Royal Guard Cirang Deathsblade. What’s your name, Doma?”
The girl probably hadn’t been conferred the title of Doma yet,
but Cirang had found that overstating respect, even falsely, was more
disarming than showing the proper level of deference.

“Altais,
named for the dragon’s head constellation.”

“I
need your real name, not your acolyte name. I have a message.”
She tapped a little powder into her left palm.

“Oh!
Is it from Dafid? Please tell me.”

Cirang
gestured at the woman’s swollen belly. “I’m sure
you can understand the personal nature of the message. Tell me your
name so I don’t reveal secrets meant for another.”

“It’s
Marita. Marita Sorae.”

“Marita,
yeh. You’re the one. I need to tell you this...” Cirang
lifted her hand and blew the powder into the nun’s face.

The
girl staggered and darted out both hands, one still holding the
candle, to steady herself. Cirang took the candle from her, turned to
set it on the crate, and then stepped in with her left foot and threw
a right punch, twisting her hips to drive more power into the blow.
She felt the pain in her knuckles as they met the flesh and bone of
the girl’s left cheek.

The
acolyte’s head snapped back, and her feet flew out from under
her. She landed hard on her back with a grunt.

Cirang
fell to her knees atop the girl, grabbed her head and twisted. When
she didn’t hear the crack she was expecting, she did it twice
more, and then pressed her forearm across the soft throat until there
was no pulse. The last thing she wanted was to have to use her knife
and get blood on the acolyte’s clean robe. Or the final death
shit and piss, for that matter. She quickly pulled the girl’s
robe and shift off to keep them from getting soiled.

Damn
it
, she thought, clutching her injured side. She really needed to
rest for a few days to give her body a chance to heal.

She
looked down into the staring eyes and gaping mouth, smirking. “I’m
Altais now, named for the dragon’s head.” After taking a
moment to catch her breath, she dragged the naked body to the corner,
thinking she could use the darkness of night to find a place to hide
it.

The
temple’s bells tolled twelve times, the last chime for the
night. Soon the bell-ringer would find his bed, and the temple would
be dark and quiet.

Cirang
removed her sword, mail, and clothes, changed her wound’s
dressing, and pulled on the acolyte’s shift and robe. She
pulled the lace veil down over her face, placed the hood atop her
head and looked at herself in the sliver of mirror. Though she was
confident she couldn’t be identified, she wasn’t
pregnant. She thought about wadding up her own clothes to make a
false belly, but she didn’t have a way to strap it to her
abdomen. Well, she had bloody rags. If someone asked, she could say
she miscarried.

She
took the candle and waterskin, and climbed the ladder.

The
temple was dark. The candles on the altar had been extinguished.
Cirang stood in the doorway and listened for someone moving about.
All was quiet.

She
went up the steps of the dais, cursing softly when she stepped on the
hem of her robe and tripped. Because Asti-nayas didn’t strike
her down for cursing in the temple, she made a rude gesture at the
statue and laughed. “Nasty-Eyes, hah! You’re a weak,
pitiful god unworthy of all this adulation.” Standing before
the font, she raised the candle to get a better look at the
embodiment of Asti-nayas.

The granite statue was about twice
the height of a man, with amazing detail on its angular face and
slender hands, down to the ridges on the knuckles and line of cuticle
at the base of each fingernail. The gold skull cap atop the smooth
head was reputed to provide the means for Asti-nayas to energize the
statue with His holy power, thus blessing the water in which it
stood.

That
gold cap would buy her passage to Nilmaria and then some.

A
stone ledge atop the font’s retaining wall was about the width
of a hand and roughly the height of her knee.

She
set the waterskin on the floor and the candle on the edge of the
font. With one foot on the ledge, she placed her other foot on the
knee of the granite god, grasped its elbow, and tried to step up. Her
higher foot slipped off the smooth knee and splashed down into the
water, wetting her boot and the bottom of her robe. “Shit!”
Now that the sole of her boot was wet, she couldn’t get
purchase on the god’s knee at all. She tried switching legs,
but her left leg wasn’t as strong because of the injury to her
hip. The hat was out of reach unless she used the cellar’s
ladder. First things first.

She
climbed back down and picked up the waterskin. The pious people of
Ambryce would soon commune with their god in a way they’d never
imagined.

She
uncorked the skin and emptied its contents into the sacramental font.
The sound of the water falling into the font reminded her she needed
to piss. She couldn’t wait to hand cups to worshipers the next
day and then watch their faces when they drank the water of the
enlightened, changing their lives forever.

When
the waterskin was empty, she replaced the cork and put it back into
her bag. She lifted her robe and the shift underneath and sat on the
edge of the font. As she let more water trickle into the font, she
wondered how long Kinshield would stay in Ambryce searching for her.

News
of the twice-blessed water at this temple would spread quickly, and
if the king were still here, he would know where to find her. Perhaps
she should have waited until he was gone, but it was too late now.
With the help of some indebted worshipers, she could trick him into
riding to some faraway city, like Keyes, leaving her free to return
to the site of the landslide to fill a few dozen skins. She could
travel to other cities, negotiating with High Clerics across the
country for their temple to become so blessed by their esteemed god.
Soon, it wouldn’t be a blessing from Asti-nayas but from
Altais, a god in her own right.

Chapter 43

Gavin
spent the night with his wife, both overlooking their disagreements.
When she brought up her concerns about the children being alone, he
reassured her they would survive in the palace for a few more days.
“You’re leaving tomorrow, aren’t you?” he
asked her. She lay with her back against his front, wrapped in his
arms.

“No,”
she said, “I want to visit with the children once more and pay
my respects to Asti-nayas before I go. I’ll leave first thing
the next morning. What about you? When will you be home?”

“Hopefully
a few days after you. I don’t want to leave afore I find Cirang
or her corpse.”

“Hurry,
Gavin. We need you home.”

He
smiled in the darkness and kissed her neck. “As soon as I can.
I promise.”