[Lyra 05] - The Raven Ring Read online

  The thief winced. “Ah, yes, of course, all right, anything you say. Couldn’t you move that knife back, just a little? Say, two or three feet? You might slip, you see, and then where would I be?”

  “I won’t slip,” Eleret said, but she lifted the dagger half an inch.

  “Thank you,” the thief said in tones of heartfelt sincerity.

  “Call a guard and turn him over,” Daner said. “We’re attracting attention.”

  “No,” Eleret said.

  Daner stiffened. “Eleret—”

  “I knew you were a person of taste and discrimination,” the thief said to Eleret. “And you can’t think how much I appreciate it. City guards are so… inflexible about little misunderstandings like this.”

  “Be quiet.” Eleret glanced around and spotted an alley between two solid-looking stone buildings. It was not much in the way of cover, but it would be better than the street. “Over there, thief. Slowly, and no tricks.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” the thief said, rolling his eyes down toward her knife hand.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Daner said as he followed Eleret and her prisoner into the relative shelter of the alley. “And what are you going to do with him, anyway?”

  “Yes, what are you going to do with me?” the thief said. His hat had slid to one side, revealing an unruly mop of hair the color of a wet fox. “I have a great personal interest in the answer, you understand.”

  “I’m going to ask questions,” Eleret said. She smiled slightly and moved her dagger hand a fraction of an inch, her eyes fixed on the thief. “And you’re going to answer them. After that, we’ll see.”

  “Naturally.” The thief kept his attention on the dagger. “What was it you wanted to know?”

  “He’ll only lie,” Daner said.

  The thief looked indignant. “There’s no need to be insulting! What do you think I am, stupid or something? Besides, I have a low tolerance for pain. Particularly my own.”

  “Prill says you’re a wizard,” Eleret said to Daner. “Can you put a truth spell on him?”

  “A wizard?” The thief looked appalled. “I was trying to rob a wizard? Sweet snakes, I’ll never hear the end of this one.”

  “If you’re going to babble, at least tell us something useful,” Daner said. “Who are you?”

  “Karvonen Aurelico, sometime thief, at your service,” the man replied promptly. “I’d bow, but I’d hate for the gentle lady to misinterpret the gesture.” He smiled at Eleret over the knife blade, and Eleret almost smiled back in spite of herself.

  “You’re not a very good thief, from the look of things,” Eleret commented. “Why’d you pick us to rob?”

  “I don’t suppose you’d believe that it was your beauty? The challenge? Something in his attitude?”

  Eleret shook her head and wiggled her knife. Karvonen sighed. “I didn’t think so.”

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Daner muttered.

  “It might if you’d stop interfering,” Eleret said, annoyed.

  Daner stiffened. “Freelady Salven, I am supposed to—”

  “Freelady?” Karvonen interrupted, his eyes widening. “You’re not—do, please, tell me you’re not—from the Mountains of Morravik, are you?”

  “Don’t tell him!” Daner said quickly.

  “That means you are.” Karvonen slumped, ignoring Eleret’s dagger completely. “You’re Cilhar. Oh, shit. I’m going to get kicked out of the family for sure. No, they’ll probably kill me first and then kick me out. Wizards and Cilhar! Why do these things always happen to me?”

  “What are you babbling about now?” Daner demanded.

  “He’s not Cilhar,” Eleret said. “I am.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s something.” Karvonen’s gloomy expression did not improve noticeably. He frowned, then glanced searchingly up at Eleret’s face. “I don’t suppose—” His eyes slid past her and widened. “Uh-oh.”

  “Don’t take your eyes off him, Eleret,” Daner warned. “He’s trying some kind of trick.”

  Without bothering to answer, Eleret took a tight hold on the thief’s tunic and threw herself to one side, pulling Karvonen along with her. They fell against Daner’s legs, knocking him out of the way as they went down. An instant later, something whizzed through the space where they had been standing and struck the wall of the building with a metallic clang.

  Eleret twisted her shoulders to face the unexpected attack. Three hard-faced men blocked the entrance to the alley. One had a bow; the other two held drawn swords. The bowman had a second arrow already nocked. Eleret let go of Karvonen and rolled, making herself a moving target that would be more difficult to hit. The unaccustomed folds of the skirt tangled her legs and made her clumsy, and in the instant of hesitation, the bowman let fly.

  The arrow whispered past Eleret’s shoulder. “Stay down, Eleret!” Daner shouted, flinging his cloak back and throwing both kit bags aside as he reached for his sword.

  Eleret ignored him. Behind her, she heard a scuffling noise; Karvonen was probably escaping. She finished her roll and came awkwardly to her knees. The bowman was reaching for another shaft, but he was too slow. Eleret flipped her dagger end for end, aimed, and threw.

  The bowman dropped his bow and staggered, clutching at his chest. Daner ran forward, sword in hand, to meet the other two, and Eleret cursed mentally as she scrabbled in her pocket for her raven’s-feet. The noble Ciaronese idiot was blocking her throwing lines. As she stumbled to her feet, cursing the skirt and Daner impartially, the bowman fell, twitched once, and lay motionless.

  Swords rang, scraped apart, and rang again. Daner was every bit as good as Prill had promised, but he was still blocking Eleret’s sight lines. She moved left, searching for an opening, and saw Karvonen gliding to the right under the cover of a couple of barrels. At least he was out of the way.

  A movement at the end of the alley, beyond the sword-fight, caught her eye. She glimpsed a lean, angular face, half-hidden by the hood of a cloak, and saw a hand rise to point at the combatants. Simultaneously, something pricked sharply at her right index finger, where she wore the raven ring.

  Daner stumbled, leaving himself wide open to his two opponents and clearing Eleret’s throwing lines. With two quick flicks of her wrist, Eleret threw a raven’s-foot at each of the hard-faced swordsmen. The missiles struck badly, leaving a shallow slash across one man’s cheek and rebounding off the other’s leather shoulder strap, but they distracted the men long enough for Daner to recover. Almost too fast for the eye to follow, his sword flicked up, left, and out, and one of the men was down. The other turned to flee, and Daner ran him through the shoulder. His weapon clattered to the pavement, but the only sound he made was a small grunt of pain.

  “Now, sirrah,” said Daner as the lone survivor turned and held out his good hand, palm up, in a gesture of surrender, “explain the meaning of this attack.”

  “Kovinsuy Cilhar,” the man said, glaring, and spat.

  Someone shouted outside the alley, and Eleret glanced toward the entrance. The cloaked man was gone, but she could see people running in the street beyond. “Let’s get out of here,” she said to Daner. “We’ve attracted too much attention already.”

  “My sentiments exactly,” said Karvonen’s voice from behind them.

  Eleret and Daner turned. The thief grinned at their startled expressions and bowed extravagantly, gesturing down the alley. “This way, my lord and lady, if it please you. Shall we go?”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  Giving Karvonen a glance of mingled contempt and distrust, Daner turned back to his prisoner. The man had had sense enough to stay where he was, though his eyes were full of hate. Eleret did not bother to return his glare. She was all but certain, now, that he was a Syask, and probably his two companions as well. Hatred was the best a Cilhar could expect from the people who had tried time and again over the last two centuries to forcibly occupy the Mountains of Morravik. But how had they known
she was Cilhar? Frowning, she fingered her skirt. She had thought she was being careful.

  The shouts in the street sounded closer. Eleret shook off her preoccupation and ran forward to jerk her knife from the dead bowman’s chest. She gave the blade a quick but thorough wipe with a corner of the man’s cloak, then thrust it into her pocket. A proper cleaning would have to wait for later, when they were safe. “Come on, Daner,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Not before I find out the truth about this attack,” Daner said without taking his eyes off the wounded man.

  “Then I wish good luck to you.” Eleret scooped up the two kit bags, hers and her mother’s, from the pavement where Daner had dropped them, and started toward the far end of the alley. If the stubborn Ciaronese nobleman couldn’t see that they’d be better off elsewhere, he could stay and welcome.

  She had not gotten three steps when a new voice said, “Stand and lower your weapons, in the name of the Emperor!”

  With a grimace, Eleret turned. A brown-haired woman and a stocky, long-faced man, both dressed in maroon-and-indigo uniforms, stood at the entrance to the alley, their swords ready and their eyes moving constantly up and down and across the open space, checking for more trouble. Eleret cursed under her breath, but did not try to continue her retreat.

  “Your arrival is most timely, guardsmen,” Daner said, lowering the point of his sword perhaps an inch. “I am Lord Daner Vallaniri, at your service and the Emperor’s, and I wish to lodge a complaint against these three men.”

  The man glanced down at the pavement and raised a thin black eyebrow, making his long face appear even longer. “Looks to me like it ought to be the other way around.”

  “What sort of complaint, my lord?” the woman guard asked Daner. She nodded toward the two bodies and added, “Bearing in mind that by the look of things there’s only one of them left to answer it.”

  “This offal attacked me, three to one, without reason or provocation,” Daner replied. Eleret stared at him. Three to one? Hadn’t he noticed her dagger in the first man’s chest, or the raven’s-feet that had distracted his opponents for a crucial instant when he stumbled?

  “No reason,” the stocky guard said. “Sure. Happens all the time. People wander the streets every day whipping up fights for no reason.”

  The woman guard cleared her throat and frowned at her companion, but he took no notice. Daner’s face stiffened. “They had no reason that I know of,” he said with cold politeness. “And they meant to kill.”

  “That’s what they all say.” The man walked over to Daner’s side as he spoke. He inspected Daner and the injured attacker with the same air of mild skepticism, then took hold of the prisoner’s good arm. With his own sword, the guard nudged Daner’s weapon. “Now, you just put that—”

  “Sunnar.” The woman’s voice held a warning note. “He’s telling the truth. Don’t put your foot in it, or I swear I’ll get another workingmate before the day is over.”

  Sunnar paused. “How do you know?”

  “That it’s Lord Daner? I saw him in an exhibition match with Reva Dario a couple of months ago. Sword and dagger. He won, too.”

  “Against Reva?” Sunnar pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “No wonder you remember him. Your pardon, my lord. We hear a lot of tall stories, and most of ’em are no more real than a Rathani whore’s jewelry.”

  “Sunnar!” The other guard rolled her eyes in exasperation.

  Daner’s angry look vanished and his lips twitched. He bent forward, hiding his face from the two guards, and wiped his blade on the shirt of the nearest dead man. When he straightened, his expression was under control once more.

  Both guards watched him narrowly until he sheathed his sword. Then, apparently satisfied that no one would make any more trouble, they put their own weapons in their scabbards.

  “So what do you want done with this catch?” Sunnar asked Daner casually, oblivious to his companion’s glare. “Two beached and dried, one hooked alive for the pot, and—What about the girl, there?” He gestured at Eleret.

  “She’s with me,” Daner said. “You’d better bring the other man along, though. I’ll have a complaint against him, too; he's a thief.”

  “What other man?” the female guard asked.

  Eleret glanced back over her shoulder. The alley was empty. Involuntarily, she looked at Daner, and saw his mouth twist in a rueful response. She gave him a faint smile in return, feeling obscurely pleased. She had almost liked Karvonen, even if he was a thief, and while she’d still had some questions for him, she could not help being glad that they would not have to turn him over to the City Guard.

  “He seems to have gone,” she said to the guards.

  “That’s one less to worry about, anyway,” Sunnar muttered, barely loud enough for Eleret to hear. He gave Eleret a speculative look that she did not quite like, then turned to Daner and raised his voice. “You’d better come along to the duty hut, my lord, and make your complaint there. It won’t take long, I promise you.”

  Daner scowled. “I have wasted enough time on these scum already. I do not intend—”

  “Let’s go, Daner,” Eleret interrupted.

  “What? But I thought you—Oh.” Daner followed Eleret’s glance and broke off in mid-sentence. A crowd of curious passersby had formed in the mouth of the alley. The throng kept a respectful distance behind the two City Guards, but Eleret could almost feel the intensity of the gazes focused on her and her companions. There was no hope now of staying out of sight, and no telling who might be concealed among the inquisitive people jostling each other in search of a better view. The safest course would be to go with the guards, and slip away once they had left the crowd behind.

  “If you’ll come along then, my lord?” Sunnar said. “Charis, you take a look around here, and get some of these carp-faced loafers to clear up when you’re finished.”

  “Worry about your own job, and stop telling me how to do mine,” the woman guard told him without rancor. “Go along.”

  Sunnar motioned for Daner and Eleret to precede him. As Eleret moved forward, the prisoner, who had been standing in sullen silence, sprang toward her. The unexpected move broke Sunnar’s hold, and the prisoner swung an open hand at Eleret’s head. The crowd gasped. Without thought, Eleret took a half-step backward and brought her hands up, catching his wrist and arm. She pulled, using the force of his own lunge to send him stumbling on past her. As he went by, she got one glimpse of the man’s face, twisted with hatred, and saw the glint of metal between his fingers; then she released her hold and kicked at the back of his knee.

  The man’s legs buckled and he went down, landing clumsily on one knee and his injured arm. As Eleret stepped forward and pivoted, bringing her leg around for another kick, his weakened arm gave way. Instead of sending him sprawling onto his back, her foot hit high and awkwardly, knocking him forward onto his face with both hands hidden under his body.

  Eleret bounced away from the fallen man and skipped back two paces. Her hands were already in her pockets, feeling for her dagger and her raven’s-feet, but it was not necessary. Daner and the guards had their swords out, and their expressions made it clear that the prisoner would not have another chance to attack or escape.

  “Eleret! Are you all right?” Daner said.

  “Yes,” Eleret replied, slightly puzzled by the evident concern in his voice.

  “Neatly done,” Charis said to Eleret. “Where’d you take your training?”

  “At home,” Eleret answered. Feeling that something more was called for, she added, “In the mountains.”

  Charis shot her a startled glance, but returned her gaze almost immediately to the prisoner lying facedown on the pavement. Daner also looked her way, but his expression was more bemused than surprised.

  “Now, you,” Sunnar said. “On your feet, and no more tricks.”

  The man did not move. Sunnar exchanged looks with his partner, then stepped closer and nudged the man with his foot. When he still di
d not respond, the guard motioned to Daner to keep close watch and bent forward. As he seized the man’s shoulder, his expression changed.

  “The blasted cod’s-head’s gone and died on us, Charis,” he said in tones of deep disgust.

  “How? She took him down nicely, but it didn’t look to me as if she hit hard enough to break his neck.”

  “I didn’t,” Eleret said. “I got a clean strike on the back of his knee and a bad kick on the same side, but neither one would have done more than bruise. I wasn’t aiming to kill.”

  “I see.” Charis gave Eleret a long, measuring look.

  Sunnar, who was examining the dead man, gave a sudden exclamation. A moment later, he pulled a small metal implement gingerly out of the dead man’s hand. Eleret leaned closer to get a better view. It was a narrow band of metal, just long enough to span the width of two fingers. The ends curved up and around the fingers, holding the strip in place. From the outer surface projected two needlelike prongs an inch long, coated with something black and shiny.

  “Stupid of him to wear it on the palm side,” Sunnar said, grimacing. “Got a bag for this, Charis?”

  Daner stared in fascination. “What is that thing?”

  “An assassin’s weapon called a viper’s tooth,” Sunnar said, sitting back on his heels. “They wear it like so.” He held the wicked-looking object up so that the prongs stood out from the backs of his fingers. “The teeth are poisoned; it only takes a scratch to kill.”

  Daner stiffened and stepped protectively between Eleret and the dead man. For once, Eleret did not mind. No Cilhar would ever use a viper’s tooth, but in the Mountains of Morravik even the youngest children had heard of them. There had been a time when half the Syaski raiders who invaded the lower passes had carried the deadly little tools. She turned away, feeling a need to put more distance between herself and the body of any man who would employ such a weapon.