Shadowblood

Chapter Thirteen

Tamara slumped down in the chair in her father’s old study, and let the servants bring her herbal tea. She wondered about what Arachne had told her, and whether she had been wise to agree to aid the Empress against Xephan. For all she knew the two were in league and this was a test that Tamara had failed. Her instincts told her otherwise. She believed that, at least as far as ridding herself of the Prime Minister was concerned, Arachne was sincere.

Tamara picked up Xephan’s letter and opened it, more for something to do with her hands than because she wanted to read it. As she suspected it was a summons, telling her to report to the Prime Minister’s Office tonight. It appeared he was sincere about initiating her into the mysteries of the Black Mirror, and she suspected that this was not for her own good. She very much doubted that she would walk away unchanged from that experience. Just the thought of looking into the Black Mirror and of becoming like Xephan and Rik and her father filled her with dread.

She forced those thoughts aside. There were other things to consider. If Xephan was to be killed she would most likely have to do it herself. The sorcerer would be too well-guarded for any one lacking her special talents to have a chance. If she were desperate she could go to his office as she had today and use a concealed weapon, but that would be an obvious assassination, and the Empress could not shield her from the legal consequences of murdering the Prime Minister, even if she wanted to. Tamara might find herself a convenient scapegoat, and the Empress might rid herself of two troublesome subjects at the same time.

Such a direct assault was the option of last resort anyway. Perhaps she could find a tool who would do the deed, a lover who could be convinced the Prime Minister had grievously wronged her and would act to avenge her honour, or some youth who could be goaded to murder in return for the promise of her favours. She had done such things before, but they took time, and were always uncertain and she seriously doubted that any normal mortal would be able to kill Xephan.

No, she would most definitely have to do this herself, if she was to do it all, and it would have to be done out of the public eye. She could not help but feel that time was running out.

The obvious time would be during the ritual of the Black Mirror. Xephan was not about to advertise his presence at a coven meeting and could hardly take Imperial troops along to act as his bodyguard. The disadvantage of this would be that the coven would be there, and would have enacted their own precautions.

She considered killing them all. There were methods that would work- a bagful of the pollen of the Black Lotus tossed into the ritual chamber might do the job. Then again, there would be people present whose support she might need herself. Still it was something worth considering.

A maid brought in some more tea and placed it on the table in front of her. Tamara dismissed her and took a sip. Many of the coven were first rate mages and would carry talismans of protection against poison or know spells to neutralise it. Xephan himself almost certainly would. A deadly drug might slow them but it would not kill them. She needed something swift and certain, and sure to work even against strong protective magic. That meant either a dire blade or truesilver.

They would be suspicious of either. A dire blade would register on wards or divinatory enchantments, and if she was searched a truesilver blade was sure to excite suspicion. They were not the sort of things that you brought to a ritual. The eddy currents caused by the presence of truesilver could disrupt sorcery or cause spells to go awry. These were things that might have catastrophic consequences when powerful magic was involved. And she would not be able to shadow-walk bearing a true silver weapon which might be a fatal disadvantage.

Poison might be useless and truesilver or magic weapons would tip off her targets. They would be shielded against most forms of inimical sorcery. Indeed most of them were better at it than she was. That left main force. She could kill Xephan, with her bare hands if need be. The question was whether she could overcome the rest of the coven and any guards they might have present. She doubted that they would use a Nerghul or a demon but you never knew.

And the whole process raised other questions. Killing Xephan would have consequences. Xephan’s followers would not forgive her for it, if they discovered she had done it, and they were powerful enemies with a very long reach. And Xephan would simply be replaced by someone most likely just as bad, and the Empress would be removed or cowed as before.

In reality Arachne was asking her to destroy the organisation her father had spent so long creating. She did not have much choice in the matter if the Brotherhood were serious about this scheme of killing all the humans. It was the sort of thing her father would have considered in the final days of his madness, and if for no other reason than that, Tamara would oppose it. Perhaps this was one of her father’s schemes and Xephan was merely implementing it. Just thinking about it made her flesh crawl.

She was a killer, pure and simple, but she killed quickly and cleanly and for a reason. The notion of indiscriminate slaughter on so massive a scale not only sickened her, it offended her. It was unworthy of the sophisticated Terrarch intellect. There was no art to it. It was a brutal, brute force solution, the sort of thing that her father would have expected from humans, not his peers, at least back when he had still been sane. She thought of the humans she had known, of her servants, and her lovers, and tried to imagine them as the walking dead. Even if Xephan could protect them, others just like them would die.

And for what — to keep alive the Terrarch dream of dominating a world? The cost was too high. It would break her own people in the end, the knowledge of what they had done, or what had been done in their name. It was one thing to cow a population into submission. It was another to slaughter them in their entirety.

The plan did have merits. She was prepared to admit that. No doubt the human survivors would gain a new respect for the potency of Terrarch sorcery, and another thousand years of Terrarch rule would be guaranteed. But so much could go wrong. Maybe Xephan could not control the walking dead. Maybe the plague would cause the collapse of both nations, and the entire Terrarchy. The whole economy was based on human labour. They tilled the fields. They made the beds, and the clothes and the weapons. It was madness to think that animated corpses could be used as a substitute for skilled labour. If the plague ran out of control, Xephan was unleashing an age of barbarism for the Terrarchs as well as the humans. Surely he could see that?

Maybe Xephan was completely aware of what he was doing. Perhaps it was all part of his plan. In an age of chaos, the whole structure of Terrarch society could be overturned. They would be back in the days of the Conquest when it was the Terrarchs against the world. Maybe that was what he wanted, a rebirth, a renewal of the old ways, an end to decadence. She knew enough of him and his faction to know that such a thing might be possible. They were that ruthless, and wanted to see a return to the ancient martial virtues of the Terrarchy.

There was the Black Mirror to consider — what if the Brotherhood had found a way to open the Gates to Al’Terra? It would not be long before the Princes of Shadow were among them once more. If they weren’t already. It was not a thought that bore considering. Perhaps all of this was merely to pave the way for the Enlightened Ones.

In any case, she had decided to oppose Xephan, as much because he was her rival, as because she considered his plan insane. If she wanted to take on her father’s mantle and stake out a place for herself in the hierarchy of the Empire, Xephan would need to be removed. The only question remained was how she was going to do it.

The best time to strike would be tonight. He had summoned her to his office. It was the place where he would feel most secure. There would be guards outside but she doubted that there would be anyone with him. He would want to discuss Brotherhood business with her in private — she was probably never going to get another chance like this. She did not want to look into the Black Mirror and if she refused, she would instantly come under suspicion.

She considered the advantages. If she did the thing right she would have the advantage of surprise. She doubted that Xephan had any idea of her true capabilities. Of course, she could say the same thing about him. He had changed and doubtless possessed great sorcerous power. Perhaps she would be unable to kill him. On the other hand, it was not going to get any easier if she gave him time to prepare.

She did not like rushing things, haste breeds mistakes, but she could see she was going to have to. She also needed to have a contingency plan in place, in case things went wrong.

She laughed softly. If things went wrong the most likely outcome was her death, but such thinking was neither constructive nor helpful. She needed to have an escape route in place, and a method of getting beyond Xephan’s vengeance. The more she considered it, the more it occurred to her that there really was only one option, the place where she had just come from, the West. She would need to hide herself in the shadow of the only person powerful enough to protect her from the revenge of a cabal of sorcerers, Asea of the Selari.

Tamara lay flat on the roof of Lord Lichtenhau’s mansion and stared at the Palace. She was garbed in tight-fitting black. Soot smudged her face. She checked her gear one last time to be sure everything was in place; poisoned shortsword, throwing knives smeared with magebane, dagger, a garrotte wound around her waist. In the small carryall on her back she had a spidersilk rope and a silence enspelled grapnel, along with a full collection of combat drugs and medications.

Doubts nagged at her. She was not at all sure that killing Xephan would change anything. Another member of the Brotherhood would step up and take his place. There were any number of ambitious politicians and mages among them. Killing one and thinking the matter was over was like stamping on an ant and thinking you had wiped out a whole nest.

But she had to start somewhere. She would kill Xephan, and if need be she would kill his successor, and any successor after that, until eventually they got the message. The slaughter would unbalance the Brotherhood, slow their plans while they investigated, keep them off-balance and nervous. If things worked out right she could implicate other members in the assassination and perhaps trigger an internal war.

As long as they did not suspect what she was about, she could get away with it. Of course, they might work out what she was up to and take steps to eliminate her. She wondered if any of them had known what her father really was, and what she had turned into. She had to trust to the fact that Malkior had been a very secretive Terrarch, and very good at keeping his secrets. Many had died to make certain of them.

She was only putting things off. Procrastination never solved anything. She opened the shadow-path. Reality split in front of her and she stepped forward into the gap. Cold enveloped her. Chill presences surrounded her and she felt as she sometimes did in dreams, as if she were falling endlessly with no hope of being bumped into wakefulness.

A moment later she was on the walls of the Palace, looking back and down over the cliffs onto the slate-tiled roofs where she had been heartbeats before. She breathed hard and took a mouthful of sorcerer’s cordial from her flask to rid herself of the feeling of being drained that shadow-walking always gave her.

She moved along the side of the building, till she was above and just to the right of the window of Xephan’s apartments and looked around for sentries. There were none.

Slipping the grapnel into place, she paid out the line, and then abseiled down, like a spider dropping on a thread of web. It was cold, and the ground was a long way below her. One slip would send her to her death.

The night was pregnant with the possibility of doom. So much could go wrong, and all of it could be fatal. A thrill jolted her body. She loved this. There was no sensation comparable to taking your life in your hands, and measuring your skills against whatever fate might throw at you.

A light glowed through the leaded panes of the window. She swung gently sideways and looked through it. There was nobody within. Coals still glowed feebly in the fireplace. Using her tools she opened the window and entered the room, pulling it closed behind her.

The office looked smaller than it had when she visited previously, presumably because of the gloom and the shadows. Silently she moved over to the door and listened. She could hear voices talking in the antechamber. She put her ear to the keyhole and listened carefully, trying to work out how many of them there were. It would not do to have witnesses. Possibly if there were enough of them, and they had sorcerous enhancements they might even be able to overcome her. To be on the safe side she drew one of her envenomed daggers.

“It seems Azaar’s army has orders to invade Sardea,” said a voice she recognised as Xephan’s.

“Is he mad, to march on the Empire with so small a force?” said Ryzarde. So there were at least two of them. That made things more complicated but only a little more so. She did not find Ryzarde nearly so fearsome as the Prime Minister.

“The First Blade was always over-confident.”

“Perhaps he knows something we don’t. Perhaps the Great Bitch has some new trick up her sleeve. So far she has managed to foil all our best laid schemes.”

“Yes,” said Xephan. “I find that very suspicious. It’s almost as if she had a spy among us.”

“That is not possible.”

“It was impossible to destroy the Serpent Tower but she managed it, while avoiding a Nerghul and the best efforts of Jaderac and the luscious Tamara. Malkior’s plan to kill Kathea was supposed to be fool-proof as well, and now he is dead.”

“It does not matter. Once the Ritual of Death is complete we will have an invincible army at our disposal.”

Tamara froze. It sounded like she was eavesdropping on a council of war. Possibly she might overhear some useful information if she kept listening.

“The plagues have killed many. Soon the dead will outnumber the living, and we will be invincible.”

“This world will change.”

“It will be ours again. The humans will know their place. We will have an obedient army as great as anything they can field.”

“I am almost sorry that Malkior is not here to witness this. The secrets were in his books. Using the spell with the power of the Black Mirror behind it was a stroke of genius if I say so myself.”

The mention of her father froze her. She knew her father had a library of ancient sorcery in a secret chamber in the mansion. Had Xephan and his cohorts managed to plunder it, or had Malkior given them the book willingly when they were his pupils?

Glasses clinked, and wine was sipped. Good, she thought, the two were relaxed. She tested the door gently. It was not locked. She loosened another dagger in its sheath and pulled the door open, taking in the chamber at a glance.

Ryzarde sat in the nearest chair. Xephan stood in the corner with a decanter in his hand. She threw the dagger at him. It flew true and buried itself in his eye. She ripped her second blade clear of its sheath and lunged at Ryzarde. Her spell-enhanced speed carried her across the room, and she buried the blade in his heart.

Even as it went in she knew that something was wrong. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Xephan was still standing. He threw the decanter at her with such force that she could not avoid it, only managing to twist her head so that it did not catch her full on. It glanced of her head, and hit the wall, shattering and spraying glass and brandy over Ryzarde.

She rolled, blanking out the pain as she had been taught and tearing her shortsword from its sheath. Xephan stood there, the poisoned dagger protruding from his eye, seemingly unscathed. She saw no weakness in his stance, no sign that his throw had been some sort of last-gasp reflexive spasm.

“What have we here?” he asked, amusement in his voice. “A would-be assassin?”

He tugged the knife from his eye. It came free with a slurping sound, and the gel of his eyeball flowed back together.

A sudden whiff of alcoholic fumes warned her, and she sprang to one side as Ryzarde pounced. He was slowed down no more by her attack than Xephan had been by the one in his eye. It appeared she had been over-confident.

Powerful hands clasped her arm with numbing force, in a grip far stronger than any Terrarch should have possessed. She twisted and slashed down with the blade, aiming for the wrist. The knife’s edge cut flesh but no blood flowed. The cut healed as swiftly as the blade bit. A fist smashed into her with the force of a horse’s kick, sending sparks flying across her field of vision. She speared at her attackers eyes with her fingers and felt them bite home. Her foe gurgled and fell back, leaving her free from his punishing grip. At very least, she had caused him some discomfort.

Things were happening too fast. She had hoped to take her assailants by surprise, but instead she was the one who had been thrown off-balance by their unexpected abilities. Xephan drew a long blade and lunged at her face. She threw herself to one side but it caught the scarf around her face and jerked it free.

“Why it’s the lovely Tamara,” said Xephan. “Did Arachne put you up to this? Was that what your little chat was about? I believe I shall have to show our beloved Empress who is the real ruler of Sardea. Perhaps your corpse will demonstrate that sufficiently.”

The insanity of the situation hit her. Xephan was speaking in perfectly measured, perfectly reasonable tones. He did not look like a Terrarch who had just had a dagger plunged through his eye and into his brain. Ryzarde paid no attention to the poisoned dagger sticking forth from his ribs. Both of them looked amused.

“What has happened to you both?” she asked to distract them as she lunged at Xephan with her shortsword. The blade slashed his face, revealing something black that reminded her of the underside of a woodlouse before the flesh knitted cleanly together again over it. She remembered where she had seen its like; in Jaderac’s alchemical laboratory, when he had created the Nerghul. Had this pair been turned into unholy necromantic monsters? She did not see what else it could be.

“We have been remade,” said Xephan. “As you might have been if you had remained loyal to the Brotherhood. We are immortal and invincible. But really you are the surprising one here, little Tamara. You are impressively skilled.”

He attacked on the last word, and it was all Tamara could do to keep clear of his grasp. Her rolling leap carried her back into the office. Ryzarde came in on her heels, still stinking of brandy. Tamara’s fingers clasped on the coal shovel. She reached into the fire with it, and scooped out the last of the glowing embers, sending them showering over her pursuer. The brandy caught fire, burning in blueish flames, scorching flesh and cloth. Ryzarde reeled back, proving once more the old adage that fire was no friend to the undead.

She considered her options. Soon guards would come to investigate and there was no sense in sticking around for a fight she could not win. She had made enemies tonight she doubted that even the Empress could protect her from. It was time to make a run for it, to get away if she could. She sprang for the window and grabbed the spidersilk line. Momentum carried her out into the night. She let it carry her back to the wall and scampered up it.

She saw Xephan stick his head out the window, not knowing immediately where she had gone. In the darkness the line was almost invisible. Not that it mattered. They would soon have agents looking for her. It would be better not to go back to the mansion.

She felt a brief surge of regret. She would have liked to have found the books they had referred to, but there was no guarantee those were still in the library, or that they would be of any use even if she could find them. No, it was time to flee into the night and hope she could outpace the hounds that would inevitably follow her. There was really only one place for her to go now.

Back to the West, if she could make it.