City Under the Sand

XV Flight

He finally gave in again.

He went back once more to the elven market, just as day inevitably gave way to night. The sun set, the wind rose, the cold began to settle in around the bazaar like an unwelcome guest who would stay too long. He intended just to watch, not to take any action.

And yet there was an elf woman there with long hair of the brightest copper, some of it piled on top of her head and held with jeweled pins, the rest cascading down her shoulders and back. In spite of the fur wrap she wore against the chill, the man could see that her body was lithe and strong. She stood at the end of the market where men met the elf women, in the glow of lanterns mounted on posts, and a human man leaned toward her, saying something. She smiled enticingly and responded, brushing his arm with her slender hand. After another couple minutes of back-and-forth, they walked away from the market, arm in arm.

The man couldn’t take it.

Once more, he raced up streets running roughly parallel to the route he knew they would take. He fingered the handle of the sharp knife he carried—the knife he had promised himself he would not use in this way again. His heart raced, and the cold air he breathed seemed to sear his throat and lungs.

The road he was on curved around and intersected the one they had taken. He reached the corner before them and stopped, breathing hard, leaning against the building. He panted and peered around the corner, watching their approach. They strolled together like long-time lovers, even though they had just met. The street was empty, but for them.

Go home, he told himself. Leave them alone. You don’t need to do this.

He had almost convinced himself of that when the human traced the elf’s cheek with his fingers, then kissed it.

A red screen seemed to descend over the man’s vision. He drew the knife. The thudding of his heart slowed and a strange calm enveloped him. He waited at the corner until they passed him.

Then he struck.

He drove the knife through the fur wrap and into the center of the elf’s back. She cried out in pain. The man dragged the blade down several inches, releasing blood in a steady stream, and yanked it out. By then the human was spinning around to face him, pawing for a weapon under his cloak. The man’s arm snaked out quickly, drawing the sharp blade across the human’s throat. Again, blood splashed his hand and the street.

A moment later, human and elf were both down, their limbs entwined, the man standing over them, wiping blood from his knife blade with his fingers.

“Murder!” somebody screeched. “Murderer!”

The man looked up and saw a woman staring at him from an open window. Before he could react, there were more shouts, and the thunder of running feet.

He would have liked to stay longer, make a few more cuts. That elf face, as pretty as birdsong … But he didn’t dare. Instead he took flight, racing back down the curving road he had taken to the intersection. At the first corner, he turned, slowed long enough to sheath the knife, then sped back up to a sprint. Another corner, and another.

The voices continued, though, screaming into the night, calling out his route. The pounding of footsteps didn’t let up. In the anxious cries he heard the news—not just an elf, but a human. Someone even mentioned the human’s name. It was a name the man recognized, not someone he knew by sight but by reputation. Ta’ak Enselti. An important person in the city.

The man had been seen, but not recognized. He was certain of that. Had his name been spoken aloud, he’d have heard it.

By a roundabout route, he headed for home. He managed to stay ahead of his pursuers, far enough ahead, he believed, to risk going there. He had to go there. There was nowhere else, nowhere safe. If the mob ran him down they would tear him apart. No one complained too much about the deaths of a few elves, but when someone of Enselti’s stature died, even the Nibenese authorities might get involved.

He didn’t dare get caught, or let himself be seen.

He ran.

He went in there!”

A woman had stepped from her home with a pail, intending to fill it from the nearest public cistern. Her infant son needed to be bathed, and she already had a fire going, tended by her oldest daughter, to warm the water. A shadowy form racing past her front door almost knocked the pail from her hands. “Hey!” she called after him. “Watch where you’re going!”

The man—or so she believed it to be, although he was draped in so much clothing she couldn’t be sure—just kept running. He appeared to be panicked by something. He reached the Serpent Tower, and she could hear his footsteps as he raced up its circular staircase. Then she heard other sounds, the drumming of hurried footfalls, and shouts, angry and alarmed.

She was still standing there when the man emerged from the tower. Here he slowed to a walk, adopting a patrician air. He went to a gate, where a guard met him with obvious respect and opened the way for him.

A moment later a crowd of people rounded a curve, running in the same direction the man had. A woman saw the woman with the pail, staring at the cliff side dwellings. “Which way did he go?” she asked. “He killed someone!”

“There,” the woman said, pointing at the gate through which the person had passed. She had only recently moved to this place, after her son’s birth, and she didn’t know the wealthy people who lived in the cliff walls. “He went in there.”

The people in the mob stopped, staring at the Serpent Tower, the estates dotting the cliff’s face. “In there?” someone repeated.

“The House of Thrace!” another called.

“It’s that boy,” another one shouted. “That boy, what’s his name? The crazy one!”

“Pietrus!”

“That’s right, Pietrus!”

“I heard he killed three people!”

“Just two,” another answered. “And one was an elf. But one was Ta’ak Enselti.”

“Enselti? I’ve heard of him!”

“He’s a landowner, a merchant. He’s well known.”

“I met Enselti once! He was so nice to me.”

The woman with the pail really needed to get some water. Her daughter was inside with the fire and her baby. She wanted to get back. “Well, that’s where he went,” she said. “If you say that’s the estate of the House of Thrace, then that’s who it is. I don’t know this Pietrus, but if he’s crazy, then perhaps he’s a killer.”

“Come on!” someone called. “Let’s get him! Let’s get Pietrus of Thrace!”

Rieve was working with her sword, performing exercises Corlan had taught her, when she heard the commotion outside. Shouts and hands slamming against the outer walls. She hung the sword up on the wooden rack her father had commissioned just for that purpose and went to see what all the noise was.

In the courtyard, she met her mother, father, and grandfather. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“I just spoke to Bryldun,” her mother said, naming one of the family’s guards. Her cheeks wet were wet with fresh tears. “There are people outside, demanding that we send Pietrus out.” She buried her face in her hands. “They say he killed someone! They claim he killed Ta’ak Enselti, and some elf woman Enselti was with.”

“But he didn’t! Of course he didn’t.” Rieve said. “Where is he?”

“In his room,” her father said. “I just saw him there.”

“Then what are they talking about?”

Father reached over, touched her mother’s shoulder. His face was grim, his cheeks flushed with anger. “They’re just mistaken, that’s all. That’s what mobs are like, Rieve. They get an idea, never mind if it’s right or wrong, and they convince one another that it’s true. Then they become certain that this thing, this idea, is what they saw. They believe it. Even if it’s not true. By now, if Ta’ak really was killed, half those people out there probably believe they saw it happen.”

Fear swelled Rieve’s heart, like a bladder too full of wine. She could barely swallow around it. “But, if they report it to the city guard, to the High Consort of the King’s Law, she’ll have to take action, won’t she?”

“It’ll be fine, Rieve,” her mother said. “We’re in good standing with the Shadow King. We’ll simply explain that Pietrus was home with us the whole time.”

“No,” Rieve’s grandfather said. “The girl is right. High Consort Djena has long hated this family, hated me. She would love an excuse to break us up, to enslave us. Only my relationship with the Shadow King has kept her from moving against us thus far, but an event like this? True or false, this will give her just what she needs. It’s not just this killing, there have been many over these past months, always human men in the company of elf consorts. They’ll blame Pietrus for them all, soon enough.” He stood solemnly in the center of the courtyard, regarding his family. “Pack what you can carry easily,” he said. “I hate to say it, but we have to leave. Within the hour.”

Rieve had seen the pain on her grandfather’s face when he told them they would have to leave. He had spent his life in Nibenay, built his fortune here. But one didn’t make a fortune without also making some enemies, and although her grandfather had tried to protect his family from it, she knew that it had often troubled him.

He would go to any lengths to shield them, and running—much as he would hate it—would not disturb him as much as staying here and letting Djena tear them apart.

She, however, was not ready to leave Nibenay.

While the others packed, she took a candle and left the house through the secret exit. Every one of these cliff-built estates had one, a second way out, bypassing the Serpent Tower. The exits weren’t guarded, because no one knew where they were, and if they found one they wouldn’t know where it led. With the candle’s light, she followed a narrow, winding tunnel that gradually took her down and down.

At the tunnel’s end was a heavy wooden door, barred from the inside. Rieve took down the bar and slipped through, pulling the door shut behind her. She came out in a dark cave. From here there was only one path, but it was a long one. Had anyone ventured so far into the cave, they would only have discovered doors through which they couldn’t pass.

When she neared the cave’s opening, she blew out the candle and set it aside. She emerged a good distance from the Serpent Tower, out of sight of any of the cave dwellings. No one was there to see her. If Pietrus had really killed someone, wouldn’t he have returned the way she had left? she wondered. So that he wouldn’t be observed?

But if a mob was chasing him, he might not have had a chance to. Any safety would have felt better than continuing to run, possibly being caught here in this unpopulated neck of the city. And Pietrus—well, he wasn’t like other people.

She didn’t want to believe her brother was a killer. She didn’t understand the way he thought, though. He could demonstrate great cruelty, she had seen that. Emotional and physical cruelty, toward small animals, insects, birds. Her mother had told her that he was just trying to figure out the world in his own way, that he meant no harm. What if she’d been wrong?

From here, it was fifteen minutes to Corlan’s home. She didn’t want to disturb his family, so she spoke to one of the guards at his front gate, who knew her from previous visits. “I need to see Corlan,” she said. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you why. And I know it’s late. But it’s very important.”

The guard looked down at her, as if she were the crazy one. “You sure it can’t wait until tomorrow?”

Rieve resisted the impulse to remind him of her social status, to point out that for him to question her like that was the ultimate in bad manners. “Please,” she said. “Just fetch him for me. I’ll wait here.”

The guard looked this way and that, as if she might be trying to make him leave his post so an invading army could sneak in. He gave a shrill whistle, and another guard hurried over to the gate. “Fetch the young master,” the first one said.

“Corlan?”

“Of course, Corlan!”

“Right,” the second guard said. He dashed off into the interior of the Tien’sha estate. The first guard waited with her, not abandoning his post after all.

A few cold minutes passed, during which Rieve paced impatiently, aware of time slipping away, and then the gate opened again and Corlan came out with a look of concern on his face. “Rieve? What are you doing here?”

She took him by the hand and drew him away from the gate. “Over here,” she said quietly. “I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

When they were out of the guard’s earshot, she stopped and put her mouth close to Corlan’s ear. “I’m leaving Nibenay,” she said. “The whole family is.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s … it’s the most ridiculous thing. Someone claims to have seen Pietrus murder somebody. Ta’ak Enselti, the Merchant. They say Pietrus killed him and some elf he was consorting with.”

“Consorting with an elf? That’s terrible!” Corlan said.

“I know. Like I said, it’s mad. Pietrus would never harm a living soul.”

“I … are you so sure of that, Rieve?”

“What do you mean? You know Pietrus! He’s the most gentle person.”

“Sometimes he is,” Corlan agreed. His face was crisscrossed with deep shadows, the ridges in his forehead and the planes of his drawn cheeks pronounced. “But you’ve seen him when he gets angry, Rieve. Those rages that beset him … they frighten me. I don’t know what he might be capable of. I don’t think you do either. He’s not right, you know that.”

“Corlan, he’s my brother!”

He pressed his hands against her back, trying to soothe her. “I know he is, Rieve. And I know you love him. But you can’t let that love blind you to the possibility.”

“There is no possibility!” She recoiled from his touch, and he, sensitive to her mood, drew his hands back. “He wouldn’t hurt anyone!”

“I wish I could believe you, Rieve. It’s just … like I said, no one can know Pietrus’s mind. If there were witnesses …”

“There were, but they lie,” Rieve insisted. “Or they’re wrong. They’ve got something against my family, I don’t know. But it wasn’t him.”

“Don’t you hear yourself, my love? It’s all their mistake, their treachery. You’re not even considering the possibility.”

“Because it’s not possible.”

“But it is.”

Rieve whirled away from him. “No! No it’s not, Corlan! And if you don’t see that, then I must have been wrong about you all along. I must have been wrong about many things!” She broke into a run, heading back toward the cave. She had to get home before the family met to leave. She still had to pack.

She was surprised that no tears stung her eyes, but instead of sorrow she felt the hot burn of rage. Anger at Corlan, for doubting her brother. Anger at the city for putting her family in this position. Anger at whoever had really killed that man.

Behind her, she heard Corlan calling her name. He shouted it several times, then stopped. She thought she heard the gate guard say something, which might have been, “Let her go, son, she’s not worth it.” She didn’t know what Corlan said in reply, if anything. By then she was gone, out of hearing, on her way back to her home.

Or to the place that had been her home, but would no longer be. Not after tonight.

After tonight, the House of Thrace would have to find its way in some other city-state, under some other sorcerer-king.

Nibenay was done, for them.