The Alabaster Staff Read online

  Tharrad glanced at the messenger’s fingers drumming on the door. “And?” he asked.

  “Well, there’s kind of a lot of them, and she’s not with them.”

  “Tell them I’ll be right up,” Tharrad said with a frown.

  The archer left, and Tharrad rose and crossed to a small end table.

  “Who’s not with them?” Kehrsyn asked.

  “Tiglath, their high priestess.”

  “Oh, I know her,” said Kehrsyn.

  Tharrad’s eyes narrowed as he turned back to look at Kehrsyn.

  “Do you?” he asked.

  Kehrsyn wasn’t sure why her acquaintance with Tiglath was cause for concern, though their coincidental appearance half a watch after her arrival might trigger some suspicion. She pinched herself to quell an onrush of nervousness and continued chatting casually, embellishing on the truth.

  “Yeah, I ran into her and her thugs on the streets,” she said, using choice words to distance herself from them. “I fair angered them, but she managed to keep her rabble in check.”

  Tharrad laughed as he said, “It’s good to see that she still does.”

  He pulled two long, thin daggers from the end table’s drawer and slid them into the leather wrappings that bound his forearms, then pulled a small vial from a padded case and concealed it in the palm of his left hand.

  “You look like you’re expecting trouble,” observed Kehrsyn, by way of broaching a potentially sensitive subject. “I thought you said the Tiamatans were our allies.”

  “For a long time they have been,” he said, grimacing, “and I hope they still are, but as we’ve drawn closer to power in Unther, they’ve gotten more … testy. More demanding. Furifax and Tiglath always kept things smooth, but since the war began, our relations have become more … strained. All the changes, everyone moving into Messemprar … the treasure’s all in one chest now, and everyone knows it.”

  “And everyone wants to be the one with the key.”

  Tharrad winked at her and said, “Let’s see what they want, shall we?”

  Kehrsyn followed Tharrad up the central staircase but hung back as he approached the Tiamatan delegation arrayed in their distinctive red robes. Concerned that she might be seen and recognized, for she had no idea what complications that might bring, Kehrsyn loitered in the background, keeping her face concealed by shadows and obstructions.

  She saw that the Tiamatan speaking for their delegation was the same bulbous-nosed, high-browed, arrogant cleric whom she’d begged for help when Demok and his thugs had first caught her.

  She tried to eavesdrop on the conversation, but, as Tharrad faced away from her, his words were swallowed by the muffled roar of the crowds outside. Many of the Tiamatan’s words were inaudible, as well. Their body language, however, told Kehrsyn that the meeting was not congenial: clenched fists, narrowed eyes, mouths drawn into snarls, accusing fingers thrust forward like swords.

  The Tiamatan raised his voice, cutting through the ambient noise as he said, “How dare you undertake that theft without us! And including the Red Wizards is unthinkable. You have no idea the damage you’ve caused!”

  Kehrsyn, her heart beating rapidly, ducked through a doorway and out of sight. How had the Tiamatans known? How had they found her? And, since they surely knew, would Furifax’s gang turn on her?

  The Tiamatan yelled, “Give us the staff! Now!”

  Kehrsyn twitched toward the dagger in her boot just as one of Furifax’s rebels stumbled backward through the doorway, an arrow sticking from his chest. Kehrsyn saw him pull it out. The shaft trailed the oily glint of poison, and the arrowhead remained in the wound.

  Kehrsyn hazarded a glance around the door and saw the two groups locked in vicious, hand-to-hand combat. She had seen some of the battles against the pharaoh’s army, but that was something different. Kings’ battles were filled with crashing, shouts, roaring charges, trumpets, drums, and thundering chariots. The fight was between shadow factions, conducted with brutal silence to avoid the unwanted attention of the city guard. She heard the swipe of steel through flesh, gasps of pain, the twang of bows, and the murmur of spells. The loudest noises were not the sounds of blazing rocks plowing through massed formations, but rather crockery being upset and smashed, chairs buckling under the weight of wrestling bodies, and the cracking of bones.

  Kehrsyn ran through the building, raising the alarm first on the top floor, then down the staircase to the rooms below. She remained below, fearful of both sides, for indeed it was likely that in the heat of combat, those who followed Furifax would consider her, a stranger, to be an enemy.

  Not knowing what else to do, she remained under the stairs, trembling with fear as the battle developed above her. She feared such combat—mindless savagery in dense groups—where her only advantages, speed and agility, would avail her little when there was no room to escape.

  She wondered if there was another exit, a secret underground tunnel, something that might help her escape the danger. She made an effort to locate a trapdoor, quickly poking from room to room, but nothing was easily seen, and the sounds above troubled her. She heard the Tiamatans pressing the advantage, driving the bandits farther back into the building. Their footsteps moved across the wooden floor above her head, the beams creaked with the weight of the assailants, and dust fell from the trembling planks as bodies dropped for the final time. She heard grunts, curses, bottles rolling across the floor, and the strange, whetstone sound of spells being cast. Fear that the Tiamatans might charge downstairs kept drawing her eyes back to the staircase, and she awaited her fate uneasily, wondering whether she could bluff or bargain her way to safety.

  A small rivulet of blood began dribbling through a crack in the ceiling, and Kehrsyn recoiled in disgust. She drew back to Tharrad’s office, but then thought better of it and moved into one of the other rooms, a bunkroom apparently shared by a pair of Furifax’s followers. The room had three beds, but one was covered by assorted pieces of armor and the bare mattress had grease and oil stains all over it. Kehrsyn closed the door most of the way and peered out the gap on the hinge side to keep an eye on the staircase. A few stray shafts of light speared through the boarded-up windows, their occasional fluctuations hinting at the movements of the crowd outside.

  After a few long, heart-pounding moments, she saw someone tumble backward down the stairs. She had no idea who it was, though the nondescript attire proved it was not one of Tiamat’s people. The unfortunate landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, limbs and neck at awkward angles that Kehrsyn had previously seen only at public executions.

  A few scant heartbeats later, a Tiamatan stepped down the stairs hefting a pick in his hands, his red-and-black robes tied back for combat. The pick was small enough to be of use in such close quarters, but solidly built, with its head fashioned in the shape of a beaked dragon. Blood dripped from the dragon’s vicious, fanged mouth. The pounding in Kehrsyn’s ears competed with the crowd noises filtering through the building’s walls as she watched the man—cruel-looking, with a pale, sallow face and black hair pulled back into a ponytail—probe his victim for any signs of life. He raised his head and scanned the downstairs for further opponents.

  Kehrsyn pulled back from the door and used a trick she’d learned as a child, based on the fact that people almost never look up. She climbed up the corner of the room, using the corner itself as well as the top of the door for her hand- and footholds. She pushed herself into as small a space as possible in the upper corner, hoping that her dark clothes would help her escape notice. Two hands pushed out for support against the ceiling beams, one foot was flat against one wall, and the other foot found a precarious toehold on the hinge of the door for extra balance.

  She heard the man stalking around the lower level. Upstairs, it sounded like the Tiamatans were pressing the Furifaxians into the rear portions of the building.

  Kehrsyn heard doors creak open and heard the man’s footsteps and the swish of his robe as he searched the area
. He was breathing hard and occasionally sniffling, recovering his oxygen from the combat he’d just fought. He searched room by room, swinging doors to check for people in hiding.

  He glided into the room, pick held high in one hand. He scanned the room, then turned toward the door. Kehrsyn held her breath and tried to think small and invisible thoughts. Following an old Untheric superstition, she stared at a nail in the base of one wall. The man swung the door open, ready for combat, but saw no one hiding behind it. He exhaled sharply, a mix of relief and disappointment, and started to leave the room.

  For some reason—to eliminate hiding places, Kehrsyn assumed—the man pushed the door all the way open. The movement caught her by surprise. Though she tried to pull her toe up from the hinge, she was not fast enough. The door pinned her foot between it and the wall for the merest instant before her foot pulled free. The man stopped, then quickly shifted back into the room, pick at the ready. He edged the door open again, squinting into the darkness, until his gaze rose to spot Kehrsyn up in the darkened corner.

  “I have protection,” blurted Kehrsyn, wracking her brain for the name of the priestess.

  “Not from me,” the man replied.

  “I have the sufferance of Tiglath,” blurted Kehrsyn with relief.

  “Oh, you’re one of Tiglath’s, eh?” He hefted his pick with a smile. “Horat will be most interested to know you’re here. You’d better hope Tiglath’s protection goes a little farther for you in the afterlife.”

  “You can’t harm me!”

  “Watch,” he replied.

  “She’s your high priestess! Doesn’t her promise mean anything?”

  “Not any more,” he said.

  The Tiamatan started to reach for her with the head of his pick. It looked like he intended to hook Kehrsyn, pull her down, and capture her alive.

  Rather than fight it, Kehrsyn leaped. She pushed off with her arms and one foot. The other foot she extended to push the pick’s head aside, just a matter of getting her shin inside the man’s extended arm. As she leaped, she pulled her one foot back in so that her knee impacted the man’s nose. She landed on top of him and heard the cartilage of his nose crunch beneath her weight. As they landed on the floor, Kehrsyn shifted as much of her momentum as possible into a roll. It wasn’t enough, and her landing was hard, but judging by the throbbing in her knee, it was better than what her foe suffered. Kehrsyn rolled over and scrambled to her feet, drawing her dagger as she rose.

  The man rolled onto his hands and knees and shook his head to clear it. Blood slung in a veritable fan from his injury, his ponytail moving in counterpoint. Kehrsyn jerked back from the spray. The man got one knee in under him and wiped his eyes with his free hand.

  Kehrsyn saw her opportunity and stepped on the head of the pick where it lay on the ground. She drew her foot back, flipping the handle into her waiting hand. She hefted the pick and slung it inexpertly but with as much desperate force as she could muster. The cruel dragon’s muzzle arced in and cracked the man’s shoulder blade, driving him back to the ground. Kehrsyn dropped her dagger and swung again with both hands. The point slid between his ribs and buried itself in his chest. The man’s back bent backward reflexively, then he shuddered twice, and save a freakish periodic twitch of one wrist, lay still.

  Kehrsyn trembled. She hadn’t killed anyone before—hadn’t had to, because she’d always had a means of escape. Her heart thundered, and tears clouded her eyes. She felt as if she would be violently ill. Her mind raced with the fact that she had killed one of the cultists and that the others would soon ferret her out and take their revenge. Past the pounding blood in her ears, she could hear that the fighting upstairs had all but stopped. She forced herself to focus, to find a way out of her situation, a means of escaping those who hunted her.

  She left the pick in the man’s corpse and dragged him by the ankles to the foot of the staircase. There she heaved him on top of the man he had killed, placing him in such a position that, with luck, it would be assumed that he died either just before or during the fall down the stairs. As she stepped back, the heavy pick slid its way out of the man’s back and clattered to the ground. Kehrsyn shuddered. Her hands felt greasy and unclean. It unnerved her to have handled—desecrated, her mother might have said—a dead body, still warm with the memory of its lost life.

  What to do about herself? Kehrsyn cast about, looking for hope and finding little in the ill-lit lower story. She heard footsteps above, heading in her direction—for the staircase—then she saw the puddle of blood that had dribbled down from above. It had grown to be quite sizeable, even alarming. Kehrsyn lay down at its edge, curling up in a halffetal position so that it looked like the blood pooling in front of her was hers. She buried her face beneath one arm, clenched her teeth in nausea, and hoped the trembling from her revulsion at the cold blood wouldn’t give her away.

  She waited. The footsteps of the Tiamat cultists ranged back and forth upstairs for an eternity before they came down.

  Kehrsyn’s throat convulsed. She wanted to whimper in fear, wanted to run away as fast as she could. They talked in casual voices, mercifully drowned by the ambient noise of the crowd. Kehrsyn could only presume they were inspecting the bodies at the foot of the stairs.

  “Well,” said one, more loudly as he walked closer, “at least he took out two of them.”

  He stopped next to Kehrsyn, his robes rustling.

  Kehrsyn tensed as his feet shifted on the dirty floor. Would he stab her to ensure she was dead? The very thought was mortifying. He’d stab her in her back as she lay there. She could see the blade in her mind’s eye. It felt like her kidneys were trying to crawl up her spine to hide beneath her ribs. She could feel them crying out as the Tiamatan speared them, time and again, in her imagination. She tried to relax and be limp, but couldn’t, and finally she wondered if she was supposed to have rigor mortis.

  Why was he standing there for so long? she wondered. Please, go away!

  “Pity she got butchered,” the Tiamatan said. “That’s a nice head of hair.”

  “So scalp her later,” said a companion.

  The man standing over her nudged her with a boot, and an involuntary squeak escaped her throat. His feet shifted again, and her heart stopped, knowing her ruse had been betrayed by her surprise.

  A voice called down from the top of the stairs, “All clear?”

  “All clear,” echoed one of the Tiamatans.

  “Very well,” said the one upstairs. “Tear the place apart. I want it found!”

  The man over her stepped away, and he and the others began rummaging through the rooms. They talked and joked, banged drawers and doors, slit mattresses and tapped the walls for false panels, unafraid of being overheard for the noise of the crowds outside. They strode past her time and again as they tore the place apart.

  While death stalked around her, she clung to the advice in one of the ancient tales of her people: she never once opened her eyes to see the danger.

  After what seemed an eternity, Kehrsyn heard the last of the Tiamatans leave. Just to be safe, she lay there for what seemed another two or three hundred years, hearing nothing but the thudding of her heart. She soon arose, slowly, quietly, looking all around for signs of threat, but every body she saw lay still. Even the twitching of the dead Tiamatan’s wrist had subsided.

  She removed her cloak, meticulously avoiding the blood as much as possible. In Tharrad’s office, she was relieved to find her rapier had been overlooked or ignored, and she retied it to her belt. She recovered her dagger, then sneaked throughout the house, weapons in hand, searching each room for loiterers or survivors. There were none. Even the dog was dead. She found the sorceress in the front room, empty eyes staring at the ceiling, snarling mouth left devoid of threat. Blood soaked her torn jersey, testament to the blows that had killed her. Curiously, her left middle finger had been cut off.

  Part of Kehrsyn’s mind wanted her to kick the vile woman in the head or spit on her corpse, but her
heart could find only relief and some small pity within. No venom remained for the dead.

  She brooded as she stared at the slowly cooling corpse. It was frustrating to have her revenge cut short, to be sure, but at the same time she wondered if she weren’t better off as a result. She had a job and a place to stay, and she was cleaner and better fed than she had been for months.

  The only catch, Kehrsyn thought as she stared at the sorceress, is that if I’m not careful, I’m more likely to end up like you.

  Even as she thought that, she heard a creak on the ladder outside the front door. Glancing through the gap in the curtain, Kehrsyn saw the telltale colors of red and black looming to fill the window.

  The visitor knocked on the door and started to open the latch. Kehrsyn had but a moment to react, so she leaped behind the door, her light frame landing silently and smoothly like a cat on the prowl. The door swung open, sweeping away her elbowroom, yet she concealed her rapier and readied her dagger, making no noise.

  A large figure dressed in rich red-and-black robes entered the room and drew up, heavy, wide hands pushing the door closed again.

  Kehrsyn heard the intruder gasp at the carnage. Nervous, but confident enough being both behind the newcomer and close to the exit, Kehrsyn stepped forward and placed the tips of her blades firmly into the intruder’s back, dagger just behind the left ear and rapier pointed at the right kidney.

  The intruder stiffened.

  “I see you are a student of anatomy,” the woman said in a firm and steady tenor, though the words were spoken softly and inoffensively.

  “I discovered many years ago that a good knowledge of anatomy can get you out of a great deal of trouble,” said Kehrsyn.

  “I came to see Tharrad. Is he …?”

  “Don’t lie to me,” demanded Kehrsyn. “Why did you do this? Answer me, and perhaps I’ll spare your life.”

  She had to hope that her threat carried adequate menace. Kehrsyn knew she couldn’t just skewer someone through the back, even if that someone worshiped Tiamat.