Page 22 of Fate of the Argosi

Not that this situation required a whole lot of cunning.

‘We’ll never get a better chance,’ Arissa whispered.

I shot her an angry glare to remind her that none of this was what I’d intended when I’d busted her and Chedran out of Soul’s Grave. She shot one right back to remind me it hadn’t been her idea to free him in the first place.

‘It’s perfect,’ he said, looking down at those sleeping, stupid,stupidmages.

The hazy mist was catching the dim beams of moonlight, filling the tower with an eerie yellow glow. I could see just fine, but everything seemed blurry to me somehow. Even without the advice of the Scarlet Verses, my own arta tuco was showing me the dozens and dozens of ways to get down there before the mages noticed us, along with which one we should kill first, which one second. I saw all the spots to hide if one woke up, where to take cover if any of them happened to be sharp enough to fire off an ember spell so soon after waking. A hundred paths were open to us. It was almost like these Jan’Tep were already dead and all that was left was for us to go through the motions of murdering them.

‘Ready?’ Chedran asked quietly.

I wiped my brow, expecting to find sweat from the climb. My fingers came back bone dry. My muscles were limber, my mind sharp. I was breathing slow and easy. Chedran stripped off his shirt to eliminate even the faintest rustling sound when he moved. He looked ready for a fight. So did Arissa, who I’d worried about far more. A few weeks of freedom and good meals can’t make up for a year of deprivation. She’d always been strong though. Balanced precariously on one of the rafters as she prepared to vault down to one of the wooden beams below, Arissa looked like the fearless, reckless thief I’d met years ago: tough, graceful and utterly lacking in self-doubt.

Maybe that should’ve been the warning. I’ll never know, I guess, because by then Chedran had already started leaping down from one cracked rafter to the next, landing quiet as a cat. Arissa followed, and the only decision left to me was whether to kill those mages or watch as they killed my friends.

I chose wrong.

14

The Red Path

Blood spattered against the wall, the streak so straight and true that I couldn’t stop staring at it. The edge of the steel throwing card in my hand dripped more drops onto the white silk robes of the mage pinned beneath my knee. He – was it even a he? I hadn’t looked – gurgled up at me, the sound as familiar and reassuring as the babbling of a brook as you dangle your feet in the water. Hands clutched at the front of my shirt, grasping nothing, the fingers having lost all their strength. If there was such a thing as a perfect murder, I had just committed it. And still I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes away from that spray of blood along the tower’s curved wall.

‘Quit dawdling!’ Arissa shouted.

It was the first sound any of us had made. We’d climbed down the sides of the tower, quiet as shadows, and crept towards the six slumbering mages so lightly our footsteps were drowned out by the whispers of their breathing. The three of us moved with such practised ease it was almost as if we’d done this a hundred times before. Not once did any of us block the other’s sight lines even as we pointed out unseen obstacles and loose boards that might give us away. The only hitch had been when Chedran had slit the throat of the first mage before Arissa and I had gotten into position. Even then, the fellow died without a fuss, his passing marked only with a sigh as his spirit fled to wherever Jan’Tep mages meet their ancestors.

I’d expected more trouble with my target. Maybe it’s more accurate to say I’dhopedit would be harder. If only my hand had been less steady, the edge of my steel card not so hideously sharp as it drew a red smile across the mage’s neck. Had he opened his eyes at the last instant, seen the cold stare of his killer before everything went dark for him? It had all happened only a couple of seconds ago, so why couldn’t I remember?

It was that damned spray of blood on the wall. The light from the fire made it gleam like a necklace of rubies. So familiar, somehow, like I’d seen that exact same trail of red before.

‘Damn it, Rat Girl!’

A harsh murmur of guttural syllables set off a sizzle in the air right behind me. Whatever spell had been about to end me died with a scream and a warm splash of blood against the back of my neck.

‘You made me kill three of them,’ Arissa said, shoving me forward. She sounded like a Daroman prosecutor reading out an indictment in court.‘The defendant’s inaction forced me to kill three of the victims myself, your worship. Murdering two would’ve been fine, but three? I demand restitution!’

‘It’s over,’ Chedran declared, sounding far too pleased with himself and far too close to me. He must’ve been looming over me, yet still I couldn’t tear myself away from the blood of my victim sprayed along the wall, mesmerised by its flawlessness. ‘You hesitated,’ Chedran accused me.

‘Indeed, your worship, I, too, demand restitution, for as we callously slaughtered those sleeping men and women, the defendant hesitated in a fashion most discourteous.’

‘Don’t listen to him,’ Arissa said, shoving him away. I felt a cloth wiping the blood off the back of my neck, soft and smooth as silk bedsheets. I supposed she was withdrawing her indictment.

With far more effort than I would’ve thought possible, I finally tore myself away from the wall to survey our righteous victory. Neither Chedran, Arissa nor I had suffered so much as a scratch. Our enemies though – had to call them ‘enemies’, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to breathe – had all died on their backs. Most still lay underneath their blankets, like weary codgers who’d been awaiting death all this time, waiting for us to come and grant it to them. Only, five of the faces peeking out of those blankets weren’t old at all. They were . . .

‘Teenagers,’ I tried to say, but no breath came with the word. I made myself try again, then a third time until at last my confession found its voice. ‘Most of them were just teenagers, no older than us.’

‘Jan’Tep,’ Chedran corrected as though their people were somehow incapable of anything so innocent as youth. He dug his toe into one of the bodies and rolled it over so we couldn’t see her face. ‘No more deserving of pity than they were of mercy.’

No!I screamed inside my own head, though I had no more business shedding tears for a girl my own age than I did for the old lord magus who’d died next to her. I looked down at the other faces, determined to burn every detail of their features into my memory, yet unable to make myself see them as anything but the evidence we would leave behind to rot unburied amidst the ruins of this place.Please, Pappy. Please, please come find me so you can tell me I didn’t do this awful thing!

‘We can free you from your pain,’the Scarlet Verses whispered in a soothing, slithering lullaby.‘Let us out. A few dozen words from your lips and we will carry away all your suff—’

‘No!’I shouted back at them.‘I don’t want you! I want Durral. I want his teachings, his love, his forgiv—’

‘My teachings?’I heard him say. There was more than a touch of annoyance in that smooth drawl of his.‘Grand word for somethin’ that never seems to stick with you, teysan. But since you asked so sweet and all, how about this old chestnut: shame ain’t the Argosi way. So how about you quit starin’ at them faces and get to work?’

‘What work? What’s left to—’

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