Lessek's Key

THE BARSTAG RESIDENCE

When Orindale fell to Prince Marek, the imperial gardens surrounding the Barstag family residence became a tent-camp for the occupation forces maintaining order in the city. Tidy rows of delphiniums, larkspur and hollyhocks were trampled to the ground; lilac and buddleia bushes, full to bursting with sweet-smelling blossom, were chopped down for the watch-fires, and thousands upon thousands of rosemary and lavender plants were used to soften the ground beneath many a soldier’s blankets. The fragrance of the bruised stalks perfumed the air for weeks.

The civil unrest that marked the early Twinmoons of Marek’s dictatorship gave way to a more prosperous era. The busy seaport saw a decrease in Malakasia’s military presence, especially as commerce and trade recovered. For hundreds of Twinmoons following Marek’s takeover the imperial palace served as a barracks for the soldiers charged with patrolling the city and overseeing customs and shipping along the wharf.

Orindale was the natural choice for those supervising the steady export of goods and taxes to Malakasia, and most of these officials chose the upper floors of the opulent Barstag family palace for their private quarters. On the few occasions when a significant threat to the Malakasian hegemony rose in the east, the old structure became a command centre for the officers deploying troops to put down whatever grass roots uprising was taking shape in the Eastlands. When civil war broke out, the imperial gardens – a city park in more peaceful Twinmoons – reverted to its former guise as an encampment for foot soldiers securing the city and once again whatever flowers and shrubs had reclaimed the greensward were trodden into the mud, burned in campfires and used to soften the ground where soldiers slept.

Sallax, approaching the imperial grounds from the south, noticed that the broad, tree-lined park was full of square eight-person tents, wooden carts, fire-pits and buried latrine trenches. A half-rotten, half-eaten mound of hay lay abandoned beside a ramshackle corral, though none of the soldiers still quartered on the palace grounds appeared to have been assigned horses, and the army’s work-horses were stabled in a far larger enclosure out near what remained of the eastern pickets.

‘A Moon ago, this whole park was tents,’ Brexan said.

‘They don’t know what they’re doing,’ Sallax replied. ‘Malagon’s carriage hasn’t moved all Twinmoon. Most of the generals probably think he died in the explosion.’

‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’

‘They must be bickering about what to do by now.’

‘But surely it must be obvious to them that no major attack is coming?’ Brexan wondered. ‘Why stay dug in now that it’s so cold?’

Sallax knelt to slip through a breach in a hedge that looked like some enterprising squaddies had enlarged a natural break to gain easier access to the street. ‘There was an assault on the lines not too long ago,’ he said. ‘At the docks Sallax heard them saying several thousand partisans threw themselves on the Malakasian lines, after word spread that the prince was en route from Pellia.’

Brexan stopped. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes – why?’

‘You said Sallax.’

‘Never mind that.’ He thumped the side of his head. ‘I think I’m going to be just left of centre for a long time. I need to learn to live with it.’

‘What happened to the partisans?’ Brexan slipped through the hedge behind him.

‘Torn to ribbons, by Seron mostly, but there were rumours of worse: killer winds or rains, or something weird. It sounded bad.’

‘They were routed?’

‘I don’t know even if it went that well. I wasn’t terribly healthy at the time. I think I remember hearing that calling it “driven back” was too generous.’

Brexan looked pale in the moonlight. ‘There were many more soldiers here then, though.’

‘True. Actually, I’m surprised. I expected we’d have to work our way past more than this crew to reach the palace tonight. I’m glad many of these divisions have moved on.’

Brexan ducked behind a stack of hay bales near the first of the tent-camps they had to pass on their way to the palace’s southern gate. ‘More than this?’ she whispered. ‘I think there are soldiers here enough to capture, torture and hang us if we’re caught.’

‘We won’t be,’ Sallax said. ‘Jacrys can’t be planning on staying here much longer. Sallax hit him – there, I did it again – I hit him hard, but he’ll be recovered by now, and if we let him get back in the field, we’ll never find him again. He’s a ghost; you know that.’

‘I suppose you’re right.’ She craned her neck to see over the bales. No one moved inside the encampment. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’

Skirting the silent tents, avoiding the token guard posted near the watch-fires, they ran along the tall hedge that enclosed the park and closed out the noise and crowds of the city beyond.

‘At least we’re already inside,’ Brexan said when they slipped behind an enormous old oak tree that looked as though it had been there long before King Remond started construction on his Orindale home.

‘I didn’t think they’d have much of a guard posted, especially at this aven.’ Sallax pointed towards the south entrance. ‘They’ll have guards at the gates, and again at the doors, but from here we may only have to pass one sentry.’

‘Because no one would be stupid enough to plan an assault on the palace that meant getting through the entire Malakasian Army first?’ Brexan’s voice rose with her anxiety.

‘Crafty and brave enough, you meant to say.’

‘That too.’

‘When we get up there, we have to take the guard out silently. If there are two, we’d better do it together. Remember to be quick and quiet.’

‘What if there are three?’

‘Then we’re dead.’ Sallax crouched low to the ground and disappeared, soundless and deadly, into the shadows.

He was wrong. There were several guards posted along the stone walk running between the south gate and the tent-camp. Young, tough-looking, the three men and two women paced back and forth, talking amiably. Some smoked pipes, while others ate from a canvas bag open on the ground between them, fruits or nuts, maybe. The south entrance to the palace was well secured: they were obviously on watch duty for the night; despite whatever disagreements Prince Malagon’s generals might be having, this group were taking their night watch seriously. None of them even looked tired.

As Brexan watched them from behind a holly bush, she scowled. ‘We can’t go in here,’ she whispered.

‘That window near the back,’ Sallax answered, ‘that may be our only chance. We can worry about getting out once we’re inside.’

‘This is insane,’ Brexan said. ‘There has to be another way.’

‘We’ll be fine. This is the hard part. No one will expect us to be inside, because no one can get in. Once we’re in, we’ll be able to move about easily.’ He reached over and squeezed her shoulder. ‘Trust me.’

Brexan stifled a giggle. ‘We’re going to die.’

‘Someday, and far from here.’

‘Promise?’

‘As absurd a request as that is, I will grant it.’ He placed a hand over his heart, ‘I promise.’

‘How do we get in the window-? Stay put,’ Brexan said suddenly. ‘I have an idea.’ Without waiting for him to answer, she slipped away.

Sallax waited, straining to see back the way they had come. Save for the watch-fires, spaced unevenly where islands of tents remained after the mass military exodus, the park was in darkness. He could see no movement, and he couldn’t find Brexan in any of the shadows. ‘She has learned to vanish when she needs to,’ he said to himself. ‘A very talented spy.’

Soon Sallax began to grow uneasy. He had just about decided to go back and look for his wayward partner when he thought he saw a glow brighten the near side of the park, behind the first row of tents. He thought perhaps his eyes were fooling him, too much straining to see things that weren’t really there, and he shook his head and turned back to trying to work out a path between the sleeping soldiers – then Brexan was beside him.

‘Great whores, but you scared me,’ he whispered, certain the hammering of his heart was loud enough to wake the entire camp.

Brexan grabbed his wrist. ‘Back to the holly bush, quickly,’ she ordered.

Sallax didn’t argue, but followed her silently back to their vantage point. He looked at Brexan expectantly.

‘Just another moment now,’ she whispered.

‘What did you do?’

‘Hopefully, I managed to get us inside. The last sentry we passed, I think that’s him over there; he left his post back near that first row of tents to come up here and eat whatever that stuff is they’re gobbling down. He left that near patch of tents unguarded.’ Brexan looked back over her shoulder.

Sallax saw it now, an orange glow, only a few paces from where they lay nearly face down in the snow and mud. ‘You started a fire?’

‘I had a taper in my pack. I was worried that it might be dark when we got inside the palace. I went for one of the big tents,’ Brexan whispered, keeping as low to the ground as she could. ‘I tried to make it look like an accident-’

She was cut off by the first of many shouts from inside the tent; pandemonium followed. Soon the entire encampment was alive with soldiers rushing here and there, some carrying water and others simply moving about, uncertain what was happening and whether they should put out the fire or prepare for battle.

Is it an attack?

Where are they?

Partisans?

The fire, fools, the fire!

Over here, we need water over here!

The cries overlapped, creating a nearly incoherent wall of noise. Sallax watched, enjoying the fiery carnage, especially when the big tent finally toppled and ignited its neighbour. ‘You got two.’ He elbowed Brexan in the ribs, but the young woman ignored him; her attention was focused on the guards posted beside the south gate. Three had already dashed back into the camp to assist their comrades.

‘Two more to go,’ she said to herself. ‘Just another moment-’ She rose up on her elbows. ‘Now,’ her voice was harsh, ‘let’s go.’

Sallax was surprised when Brexan stood up and began running towards the palace gate. An iron fence, rusted nearly through, separated them from the stone archway and the shadowed doors beyond. If they could get inside the gate, the darkness beneath the arch would hide them until they determined if the door was unlocked, or if they had to try the window near the back of the building. Without slowing, Brexan pushed on the gate with all her strength, praying it wouldn’t creak and give them away – but it did grate, a long, whining squeal that made Sallax hold his breath. ‘Pissing demons, Brexan, stop!’ he whispered. ‘We don’t have to fit a grettan pack through here, you know.’

She stopped pushing, let him step through and then closed the gate, clenching her teeth at the piercing creak that rent the night and cried out for them to be captured and hanged right then and there. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered.

‘No matter,’ he said, ‘none of them heard it. Look at them, scurrying about like mice!’ Some fought the burgeoning fire, while others brandished weapons and crept warily from shrub to shrub. ‘We’ll have to stay inside until all this quietens down again,’ he said.

‘We have about an aven before dawn,’ Brexan said. ‘That should be enough time.’

‘Let’s hope no one is posted inside the door.’ Sallax moved past her.

‘Why would there be with five standing sentry out here?’

‘To ruin my night.’

‘Try the latch,’ Brexan forced herself to whisper.

Silence. Then ‘It’s unlocked, thank all the gods of the Northern Forest.’ Sallax pulled the door open a crack and slipped through. Brexan followed. No one guarded the foyer.

They could see five smoothly worn stone steps leading to a landing and a second door, but there were no windows and when Sallax pulled the door closed behind them, they were left in total darkness. He felt his way up the steps and across the landing. ‘This is unlocked as well.’

A leather strap threaded through the door released the latch with a click! that echoed through the chamber. Brexan held her breath, waiting to hear the sound of boots clacking on the floor as guards came to investigate the noise.

Nothing.

Sallax opened the door just far enough for them to slip through into a long chamber with high buttressed ceilings and wooden support beams. The smooth floor was carpeted in places with the remnants of old rugs and tapestries the Barstag family had imported from Praga, though not nearly enough of them to mask the sound of two intruders moving through the hall. A lone torch burned in a sconce at the base of a stairwell.

‘That must lead up to the south wing,’ he breathed into Brexan’s ear.

‘Where Jacrys is staying,’ she answered.

‘It’s a good place to start looking.’

‘How are we going to get out of here afterwards?’

‘I’m working on it.’ He was already creeping on tiptoe towards the pool of light and the stairs to the upper floors of the south wing.

The wide stone stairs, like the main floor, were polished smooth from use, carpeted down the middle with a thin layer of woven wool. Brexan kept to the carpeted pathway, imagining generations of King Remond’s descendants walking up and down this same ribbon of fabric.

At the first landing a torch illuminated a few paces in either direction along a corridor lined with wooden doors. Sallax mimed soldiers sleeping in awkward gestures and Brexan nodded. Anything they did to call attention to themselves meant they would have to make their way down through a full platoon of groggy, upset soldiers. As if reading their minds, one of the far doors opened, and a half-dressed young man emerged carrying a chamber-pot.

They fell back into the shadows, watching as the soldier walked to a window at the end of the hall, opened it with a shoulder and emptied the pot into the shrubbery below. As soon as he disappeared back into his room, Sallax turned the corner and started up the next flight of stairs, which narrowed into darkness.

Uneasy at the sight of the narrow passageway, Brexan slipped back to the landing and lit her taper from the torch; it wasn’t much light, but it was better than nothing. Sallax nodded thanks and gestured that she lead the way upstairs.

As Brexan sidled past, she heard him slip his knife from its sheath. Sallax wore a rapier, compliments of Carpello, but that remained in its scabbard for the moment. Neither of them were keen on a sword-fight with Jacrys, who was obviously well trained with blade. They would be quite content just to knife the spy in his sleep, if only they could find him without waking the entire residence.

Brexan felt her pulse begin to throb in her temples. She had been nervous coming through the Malakasian encampment, nervous enough to make a potentially costly mistake with the wrought-iron gate, and although they’d been lucky, her failure to think of the rusty hinges haunted her. How had she been so stupid? Were her nerves clogging up her brain? She was desperately worried that she might be overlooking something lethal, right now.

She couldn’t hear anything above her heartbeat; she hoped Sallax wasn’t whispering anything to her. Even though he was just a pace behind, she was certain this was the loneliest she had ever felt. Despite the chill, Brexan started to sweat.

She turned the corner at the next landing and started up what she hoped was the final set of stairs. Ahead, she could see light from another torch illuminating a tiny landing, just wide enough for two or three people to stand together, with a wooden door at the back. Brexan hoped it led into Jacrys’ quarters.

She couldn’t see the torch, but assumed it was suspended above the stairwell – until she heard the sound of a wooden chair sliding across the floor above. Oh gods, a sentry! She held her breath; every muscle in her body was poised to take her back, but instead of bolting for the lower level, she stood frozen, paralysed by fear.

‘Who’s there? Who is that?’ The man had obviously been drowsing at his post and was fighting to sound official. The yawn ruined the effect.

Think of something. Think of something. Think of something. She opened her mouth, but nothing emerged, she couldn’t even gasp with any authority.

Then she felt Sallax reach for her, his hand firmly on her back. His touch calmed her enough that she was able to draw a stabilising breath.

‘Who is that?’

The torchlight flickered and the ancient sconce creaked as the sentry withdrew the burning bundle and brandished it down the stairwell.

‘Riders,’ she croaked and cleared her throat, feigning a coughing fit. ‘Who?’ the soldier interrupted.

‘Riders,’ she said again, ‘from General Oaklen.’ The old general’s name had stayed her execution once before; she prayed it would work again.

‘General Oaklen?’ the sentry asked, ‘he was just here a few days ago. What does he want?’

‘That’s none of your concern, you dumb rutter.’ Brexan would have welcomed a swift death at that moment. ‘We have a message for the spymaster Jacrys. We’ve been riding for two days.’ She was glad that they were both thoroughly covered in mud.

‘Why are you out of uniform?’

‘Good rutters, but they do station the dumbest soldiers here, don’t they?’

Sallax nodded in agreement.

‘We can’t ride through Falkan alone in uniform, you mule-kicked idiot!’ Brexan barked. ‘Now, are you going to stand aside and grant us entry, or shall we just wait here while you fetch your superior and explain to him why I have been delayed from carrying out the general’s command by some jumped-up little squaddie’s inability to UNDERSTAND ORDERS?’

The guard shuffled his feet; this would not look good on his record. The spymaster would be angry that someone had been allowed to reach this floor in the first place, and Captain Thadrake would slice him from groin to gullet if he knew that he’d fallen asleep at his post. The spy was already furious with the captain for allowing the partisans to escape; the captain had, in turn, taken his anger out on the entire third platoon, which was now reassigned to guard duty here. Any one of them would rather have been ordered to scrape the hull of every ship that passed through the harbour than take guard duty – and he’d had fallen asleep! Bleeding whores.

‘Well?’ The woman’s impatient voice came from the stairwell again.

‘What’s the pass?’ he asked, trying to match the woman’s irritated tone.

Brexan felt the wind go out of her lungs. A password? Three floors up in the most secure building in the Eastlands and you have a whoring password? She would have to distract the sentry and give Sallax an opportunity to knife the soldier and end this absurd exchange.

She took a wary step forward; the guard drew his sword and Brexan stopped.

‘What’s the pass?’ he called down at them again, louder this time; Brexan worried he might start shouting and alert the entire building to their presence.

She’d take an educated guess; she’d been a soldier long enough. If it failed, she’d make a run for him and try to get a blade in his throat before he could scream.

‘Lafrent,’ Brexan said, the spy’s other identity, the name he was using when first she met him. It was the only one of millions of possibilities racing through her mind that had any chance of being correct. She grasped it in desperation.

Miraculously, the soldier lowered his sword. ‘Come on up.’

They climbed the rest of the stairs.

‘What’s happening outside?’ the guard asked. ‘If he’s awake and I went off for a look, he’d have my guts for breakfast…’

‘Oh, the commotion? Someone’s tent caught fire. Half the rutting camp was sleeping, and someone thought it was an attack; people kept tripping over each other trying to find water. It was a mess.’ Brexan remained in front of Sallax, effectively blocking the guard’s view of the big Ronan. ‘What room is he in?’

‘It’s just through here, the second door on the left. I have to walk you down there. He’s a bit tiresome about procedures. You know the type. I just wish-’

His final wish drowned in a gruesome rattle as Sallax’s blade took him in the throat. He fell to his knees, blood staining his hands as he clutched at the wound, and tried to swear at them, instead choking and coughing up blood that splattered their cloaks and stained the darkened stairwell. When he finally collapsed, drowning in his own blood, neither Brexan nor Sallax gave him a second glance.

‘Through here,’ Sallax said, opening the hallway door. ‘There’s no one, just an empty hallway.’

They hurried to the door the guard had pointed out. After checking to see if it was locked, Sallax leaned against it as gently as he could, sliding it inwards a crack, careful not to allow the leather hinges to creak as the door swung open. Brexan followed him through.

Jacrys’ bed was positioned in the centre of what was still, even after Twinmoons of neglect, an opulent apartment. Sallax left the torch hanging in a doorway sconce and they moved stealthily across the floor.

For a moment, Brexan feared they would find the chamber empty and Jacrys, somehow warned of their approach, vanished down a hidden stairway, but as they reached his bedside, she saw that he was there, snoring away, sleeping the deep sleep of one who felt safe. Jacrys didn’t stir, even as Sallax gestured that Brexan should kill him without further delay. In the torchlight, she could see the sentry’s blood drying on the big man’s fingers.

She drew her knife and checked her position. She thought briefly of Versen, and Lieutenant Bronfio, whose murder had started this whole adventure for her, and drew a breath to strike. It had to be deep, into the heart, and enough to shock him awake for long enough to see his killer – but not give him time to cry out. Use two hands, she thought, and squeezed the wrapped leather grip with all her strength. Do it now, Brexan, she thought, just do it – but then she hesitated, backing away a step and staring down at the sleeping man’s face. What’s the matter with you? she asked herself. Just kill him and go home. This man is a monster, the reason Malagon knew where to send the Seron who took you prisoner and broke your cheek. He killed Bronfio and made sure Versen was delivered into enemy hands. Just kill him!

Sallax struck while Brexan was still caught in her crisis of conscience, slamming his own knife into Jacrys’ chest. He held it for a moment as the spy woke with a gasp and stared, eyes wide in horror, into the faces of his killers. Sallax lowered his face and growled, ‘This is for Gilmour.’

Jacrys’ mouth moved, but he couldn’t manage to make a sound. His eyes fluttered and his nostrils flared with his efforts to breathe, and then he tensed as his body went into spasm. As consciousness fled, so the rigid tension dissipated.

Sallax released the bloody hilt, leaving it standing erect in the spy’s chest. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Brexan nodded, staring down, waiting for Jacrys’ eyes to close. She was remotely aware of Sallax crossing the room to retrieve the torch and then coming back.

He bent to examine a stack of papers spread across a wooden table. ‘Come look at these,’ he called in a whisper.

‘What?’ She watched Jacrys’ eyes catch the firelight, his mouth still stuck somewhere half-open and half-closed. A trickle of bloody saliva drooled down his chin as he fought to stay alive. She wondered if he could see her, if he recognised her, or if he was just staring at the faded tapestries that hung around the walls.

‘Over here,’ Sallax interrupted. ‘Do you recognise these?’

She pulled herself away from the dying man and, gathering her wits, moved to stand beside Sallax. ‘They’re maps.’ She bent over the table to look at them more closely. ‘This is Pellia.’

‘And these?’ Sallax shuffled two or three others to the top of the stack.

‘That’s the river, and these are the heights above Welstar Palace. That mark right there must be the keep.’ She ran her finger over a semi-circular area around the castle. All this is a Malakasian encampment. It’s the biggest army I’ve ever seen.’

‘Good rutters,’ Sallax said under his breath. ‘We have to take these. Look at the marks on there. These are maps of the river. Look at these boxes and circles. They must be places along the waterway for barges to load and unload whatever it is that Carpello is shipping – was shipping – from Strandson and Orindale.’

And look here,’ Brexan pointed to another map. ‘This is the Great Pragan Range, the mountains on the southern border. I wonder what’s happening down there.’

‘I don’t know, but let’s take them all; we can study them as closely as we like later. But for now, let’s-’

A clamour rose from a lower floor, a wildly ringing bell, as if someone was trying to rouse the entire city against a pending invasion.

Sallax and Brexan stopped, their eyes meeting across the wooden table. ‘What’s that?’ she asked nervously.

Sallax turned back towards the spy and over his shoulder, Brexan could see what Jacrys had been staring at. A trail of blood, viscous, black in the half light, led from the spy’s empty bed to the wall, where, in front of one of the ancient tapestries, hung a bell rope, dangling from an old system of pulleys and cables that obviously ran to the servants’ quarters and the scullery below.

Jacrys tugged the rope with all his remaining strength, sitting with his back propped awkwardly against the wall. A grim smile split his cadaverous face: the triumphant grin of one who has emerged victorious despite overwhelming odds. He twitched as waves of pain assailed him, but it didn’t change the smug assurance that, try as they might to escape, there would be no leaving the palace alive.

‘Come quickly!’ Sallax barked, no longer trying for stealth. ‘We have to get below the first level before anyone gets to those stairs.’ He scooped up as many of the maps as he could, folded them under his arm and charged through the door into the hallway.

Brexan considered crossing the room to cut the spy’s throat, but shrugged and hurried out behind Sallax. She ran back to the small landing and headlong into Sallax, who had stopped. Brexan stepped back. ‘What is it? Let’s get going. Are they already on the stairs?’

Sallax didn’t answer as the maps slipped from beneath his arm and spilled down the stone stairway.

‘What is it?’ She pushed past him onto the landing.

The lone sentry was lying with his legs hanging off the first step, his torso propped up between the door and the wall. Sallax staggered and fell to his knees and Brexan managed to slip past him, over the dying guard, to grab the torch Sallax had dropped. Brexan picked it up, fanned it back to life and propped it between the fallen man’s legs.

The flickering glow illuminated the rapier protruding from Sallax’s chest, the last attack of the dying guard. A long, wheezing rattle came from the sentry’s chest. Brexan gasped and reached for Sallax.

‘I’m dying,’ he murmured. ‘I’m dying.’

‘No, you’re not,’ she said firmly, ignoring her tears. ‘Come with me. We have to hurry.’

Below, the incessant ringing merged with the groaning and shuffling of soldiers rousing themselves from sleep. From the annoyed sounds that filtered upstairs, the groggy guards thought some gods-forsaken officer had spent too long with his head dipped in a wine cask and was now mustering them all for a late-night inspection. Thankfully, none of them appeared to be coming up the stairs, not yet.

Sallax fell forward, and Brexan caught him beneath his arms. As she hugged him close, she flashed back to Versen, and how heavy he had been that day she’d tried to keep him afloat in the Ravenian Sea. ‘Please, Sallax, please,’ she cried softly, ‘you can do this. You’re so strong and it isn’t far, just a few stairs. Come on; we can make it.’

‘Leave me here, Brexan,’ Sallax whispered. ‘You can get out.’ He struggled to lift himself off her and fell back against the door, slamming it shut with an echo that rolled down the stairs. ‘Hurry now; you can make it.’ He reached for her with a bloody hand, and she held it in both of hers.

He wriggled his hand free and reached for her again, stretching. She tried to take his hand, but he shook her off. ‘What is it?’

‘You can make it out,’ he said, ‘but you need-’ Gripping her tunic belt, he pulled on it, his strength failing, until the tongue was drawn back through the buckle.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I want you to get out, but you have to make it look like-’ Again he tugged at her belt. Suddenly Brexan understood.

‘No, Sallax, I’ll stay here and fight beside you.’

He ignored her. ‘You can do this.’

Brexan angrily fought back tears as she unfastened her belt and untied the strap holding her cloak closed. Dropping the belt and her weapons, she pulled the tunic over her head.

Sallax looked away, with a hoarse laugh. ‘I’m not supposed to peek,’ he murmured.

Now she did cry. She gave him a long kiss on the temple, hugged him to her naked torso until enough blood smeared her body, then picked up her cloak and screwed it up into a ball. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, a sob in her voice.

Sallax looked at her, his eyes glassy in the torchlight. ‘Tell Garec the truth about what happened. Make sure he knows.’

Brexan sobbed, ‘I will. I promise. I will find him.’

The bell rang on into the night and Brexan cursed Jacrys, wishing with all her heart he would die before Sallax, so her friend would hear the bell fall silent, but it didn’t happen. Sallax’s eyes fluttered open several times, then his head slumped on his chest, and Brexan watched as his final breath sighed from his body.

‘Oh gods,’ Brexan started quietly, then, fulfilling her promise, allowed her cries to grow in volume until they were enormous, great heaving sobs that echoed through the upper floors of the old residence. ‘Oh gods, oh gods!’ Holding her cloak and tunic, Brexan ran, half naked and splattered with blood, down the stairs and into the midst of the confused platoon milling about below. ‘Oh gods!’ She grabbed the first soldier she encountered, ensured he took a long look at her body, and then shouted, ‘They’re killing him! Please help, upstairs, please help! They’re killing him!’

He turned and ran, followed by others, taking the stairs three at a time; then Brexan heard shouts echo down from the landing.

Come quick!

Bring weapons!

We need a healer up here!

One soldier walked her to the top step of the lower stairway. ‘You wait here,’ he said gently, helping her pull her cloak about her shoulders. ‘I’ll be right back; you can tell the lieutenant what happened.’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ she wailed, ‘please. I was just – you know, working.’

‘I understand, and I don’t want you to worry. You’ll be fine.’

In a moment he was gone and Brexan, still crying, slipped down the stairs and across the main hall.

At the front entrance to the palace she was able to lose herself in the noise and bustle, slipping behind the tall hedge that encircled the grounds, where she pulled on her tunic and cloak and disappeared into the city. As she rounded a corner into an alley off the main thoroughfare, weeping and furious with herself for leaving Sallax alone, she could still hear that wretched little bell jangling. Jacrys was still alive.