Page 48

Chapter 48

The king’s hall of Yarrow was a ghost of a place compared to when I’d seen it last. All its torches and bonfires were dark, and its many passageways seemed far emptier. As I walked the palace, I consulted my memories and gauged that nearly half the guards had fled. Had so many of the king’s guard truly been under Darhi’s influence? I found the idea unsettling, but I still seemed more composed than Malo and Sabudara: Sabudara appeared especially unnerved to dwell in the palace of her realm’s autocrat and clutched tight the large leather box she carried, while Malo whispered comments to calm her as they walked behind me.

“I’ve…I’ve no idea what to do now,” said Prince Camak as he wandered before us. “I have nothing now. No crown, nor throne, for I’ve not yet been formally declared regent. But neither do I have much of my treasury, nor many of the High City guards! Dozens followed Darhi to wherever he has gone, and the others fled in fear. And such is the amount that Darhi stole that I cannot afford to purchase more!”

“You’ve no word of where he’s fled to, sir?” I asked him. “You’ve done no searches, heard no news?”

“Jari Pavitar advises silence,” sighed the prince. “If word were to get out that I’d been so taken by Darhi, I’d never regain a steady hand upon the throne. Instead, he has insisted he go to his own allies in the kingdom and seek the traitor secretly. But…that will take time. Time I do not have. But I…I received your notice about what you require to find Darhi. I hope what we gathered may suffice.” He shot me an uncertain glance. “But you’re sure this will work, Signum?”

“I am told it will, sir,” I said. “But I’ve not a nose like my peers here.”

His gaze lingered on Malo and Sabudara. He made a disdainful pout, as if the sight offended him, and turned away.

We came to the same trophy room where Gorthaus had perished not more than two days ago. Now it contained a large table, and there upon it were the personal belongings that Satrap Darhi had left behind: scarves, robes, belts, jewelry, soaps, trousers, leggings, and other attire of a kind I did not know but guessed were Yarrow undergarments.

“Which piece would you, ah, prefer, Signum Kol?” the prince asked me.

I stepped back and gestured to Malo and Sabudara.

The two wardens sauntered up to the table and reviewed the garments like a carpenter might study planks of wood, estimating their grain and quality. Sabudara placed her leather box on the ground, and then the two of them went to work, plucking a few garments from the table and tossing them aside—rejects, I supposed. Then the prince and I were treated to an unusual sight: the two wardens began stooping and rigorously sniffing each remaining garment, swallowing occasionally as if they could taste the aromas on their tongues.

“Is such an act…common in the Empire, Signum?” the prince asked.

I watched as Malo came close to burying her face in a pair of leggings. “I do not know, sir,” I said. “But it is quite uncommon to me.”

Malo and Sabudara then stood and made hand signals to one another: speaking in a silent language of gestures, I reckoned, for they knew the folk about them spoke Pithian. It appeared to be a debate of ferocious belligerence, but finally Malo yielded and gathered five of the remaining garments from the table.

While she did this, Sabudara opened the leather box. Within lay a strange contraption, consisting of a small bronze barrel, lined with glass on the interior, with a crank jutting out from one side. Sabudara took the barrel out and opened it at one end, and Malo dropped the garments inside. Malo then rummaged about within the box and produced a small vial of reagents, uncorked it, and dribbled it over the clothing. Then she corked it again, closed the barrel, replaced it, and began vigorously turning the contraption’s crank. The barrel spun within the box, whirling like a top. She spun it until her arm was exhausted, then let Sabudara take over.

When the two wardens had cranked the apparatus for nearly ten minutes, they removed the barrel from the box, popped the crank from one end, and placed it into a new notch on the box’s side. Malo turned the crank once more, but now the top lid of the barrel descended on a little track, squeezing the fluid-covered garments tight. When Malo could crank it no more, Sabudara produced four empty glass vials and held them out. Malo opened the contraption and, like a vintner doling out a precious liquor, tipped the barrel over. A tiny thread of umber fluid came dribbling out, which Sabudara quickly collected in the vials. Sabudara corked three of the vials, then held up the final fourth, shot Malo a loathing look, and took a sniff.

Sabudara then exploded into an attack of sneezes and coughing, but then she recovered and gestured to Malo— Yes, yes.

“It works,” sighed Malo. “We have distilled Darhi’s scent, unpleasant as it is. It is a horrid thing, to sniff at such a distillation, but it is our best hope. We shall disperse this to our wardens and be off.”

“Then you can track him?” said the prince. “And return all he stole?”

“We shall follow the scent as far as it goes, sir,” she said. “Beyond that, I can say no more, besides that the longer we wait, the more the scent shall fade.”

“Then by my father’s blood, go!” said the prince. “Find this traitor, and return my kingdom to me, I beg of you!” Then he sat down in a chair, buried his face in his hands, and began to weep.

—

As we left the king’s hall we were joined by six of Malo’s wardens. Eleven more watched from the wood, I knew, silently moving with us. I was unsure what kind of resistance we’d be met with, but given how I’d seen them perform in the jungles, I felt that seventeen wardens would be enough to overcome nearly any Yarrow force; or so I hoped.

When we left the High City, both Malo and Sabudara took another great sniff of the vial of Darhi’s scent. Muttering discontentedly, they then put pads upon their knees and thick gloves upon their hands, and then fell to all fours and crawled upon the earth, sniffing the wet grass as if they were hounds. Then Malo rose, pointed, and said, “That way. I catch it bright now!”

“Are you going to crawl the entire way?” I asked.

“You’d catch more scents, too, if you put your nose to the earth,” she snapped. “Try it sometime!”

We went west, slipping down the carriage paths of the rolling hills and off into the trees as the sun met the horizon. The rest of the wardens rejoined us, silently emerging from the jungle like spirits. The vials of Darhi’s scent were shared among them, and they prowled through the leaves, occasionally dropping to the ground to sniff the soil or the base of a tree.

At one fork, Sabudara paused, sniffing a patch of clay quite hard, and arose and said, “ Gora. ”

“Horses,” explained Malo. “She catches their scent here.”

“He fled on horseback?” I asked. “Not with all that gold, surely.”

“Let us assume, then, he fled in a litter,” said Malo, “moving as quickly as horses can pull such a load over poor roads. I gauge they must have moved some ten or fifteen leagues since last night. We shall have to hurry. Are you ready for a dose of kinephage?”

I pulled a face. “How I detest that stuff. Not just the taste, but I shall be hungry for days after…”

“Yes, but we will feast and be merry if it helps us catch our prey!” She gestured to her wardens and hissed, “ Sapida posana! ”

Then we stopped, pulled tiny black bottles from our packs, uncorked them, and took a great draught.

I shuddered as the acrid, black substance dripped down my throat. Yet the second it struck my stomach, I felt a brightness in my arms and legs as if my veins had flooded through with fresh mountain water, and the world grew still and clear about me. I had the sudden, flighty urge to laugh and jump and twirl.

“Let us move,” said Malo. “And stay close, Kol! We shall cut across country, and it may be hard to spy my folk in the trees as the sky grows darker.”

—

The Empire had long struggled to produce unnaturally fast forces that could live tolerable lives, and the effort had eventually proven so difficult they’d abandoned it. Instead, they either opted for imbuing some soldiers with unnaturally powerful stamina or, preferably, dispensing a graft like kinephage, which granted folk a temporary aptitude for speed and endurance. A soldier with a belly of kinephage brewing about in them could run all day and night and never tire.

Run we now did, the wardens and I, sprinting through the darkening forests of the Elder West, dodging between towering trees and dancing through the ferns. Our passage was speedy, shadowy, and nigh silent; and though our mission was fraught, the graft made my heart glad and sprightly, and I bounded along like a hind romping on a dewy morning.

Hours passed, and I lost all concept of how far we’d traveled. I occasionally caught a glimpse of torchlight amid the darkening hills: perhaps a noble’s distant estate, or maybe the lanterns of Darhi’s litter. I did not know.

Our trail led us along a babbling stream, and there Malo raised a hand, and we slowed. It was deep night now, the stars glimmering greedily above. She whispered with her wardens, then said to me, “Few of us know this part of the Elder West well, but we know we are now on the River Kanda, which runs parallel to the Bunti Road to the north.”

I wiped a rainstorm of sweat from my brow. “All right?”

“It used to be an estate road, where many noblemen once lived. But as the Elder West has declined, many of these estates are now abandoned. Or so we thought.”

“You think Darhi has gone to one of these abandoned estates?” I said.

“Yes. His escape has been well-prepared, so I assume he prepared this place for his flight. He has been wise enough to take this back path rather than the main road, as well. We must catch him before he gets to where he is going, for he shall surely get fresher horses, and perhaps more troops. We will have a fight ahead of us, regardless! Prepare yourself.”

—

We sank low and continued our run along the river. After another three leagues, Sabudara raised a hand and pointed off into the ferns north of us. We slowed and studied the hills before us, and Malo spoke so quietly that only her wardens could hear her, and many began creeping off into the foliage, vanishing like eidolons into the night mist.

“You will stay with me,” she whispered to me. “We find many ill signs about us now—torch smoke on the wind, many boot prints in the soil, and more. We are close to Darhi, we think.”

I followed her up through the ferns as more of her wardens left us, melting into the night. Then I spied torchlight and lamplight filtering through the trees, and occasionally heard the call of a man’s voice.

Finally Malo and I stopped behind the trunk of a large tree and peered out. A low, sprawling clutch of buildings was arrayed before us, all built of wood, and most rather crudely. Many of them had been intended for the sheltering of animals or harvests, though at the center of their constellation was a large house, sporting two stories and a wide, sloping roof: the house of the master, I assumed.

Positioned before the house was a long litter of soldiers and horses and carts, bedecked with many boxes and crates and trunks. I squinted at them but could not make out much besides the glint of armor and iron about them.

“Nigh thirty soldiers,” Malo whispered. “Well-armored, and all of strong make. Darhi bribed the best of the lot.”

“A wise choice, if so much Yarrow treasure is on that litter,” I said.

“True. We shall kill the soldiers but take Darhi alive, if he lets us.”

“I assume we cannot attack to disable,” I said.

“This is no arrest, Kol. An injured Yarrow soldier will still struggle to strike us down. When we attack, we mean to kill. My folk will surround this place and signal when they are ready—a soft frog’s call. Then I will give another signal and launch the attack.”

I gazed at the troops gathering about the master’s house. “The soldiers are well-clad, though, in mail and helm.”

A soft snort. “That will not be an issue. When enough have fallen, go and secure the litter. I will not have some bastard filching a chest and cause Pavitar to bellow that we stole his kingdom’s filthy money.”

We watched the Yarrow soldiers milling about, some going to and fro to fetch new horses, or water, or other materials. The wait was nothing short of agonizing, and I fought not to jump at every sound or movement, for the woods were alive with the cheeping of frogs and the fluttering of errant moths.

Then Malo hissed beside me. I glanced at her and saw that her eyes were locked on something ahead.

One of the soldiers was ambling along the estate houses with a low form at his side: a hound, large and well-muscled, its pink tongue dangling cheerfully from its mouth. Both of us sank lower as the soldier and hound walked the tree line. For a moment I felt sure we had not been spotted, and my belly flooded with relief.

Then the hound stopped. Its ears pricked up, and its pink tongue retracted. It gazed at the tree line where we crouched and took a cautious step forward.

There was a long, frozen moment as neither we nor the hound moved; then it erupted, baying at the trees, leaping back and forth, its nose pointed in our direction.

Another hiss from Malo. Then a soft click as she nocked an arrow.

The beast’s master approached and chided the hound in Pithian, as if to say Enough! Calm your noise. Yet though he tried to restrain it with a lead, the hound resisted violently, baying at where we lay.

Finally the soldier paused and peered into the trees. His body tensed, and one hand slowly moved to the hilt of his sword. The hound continued howling at his side, and two more soldiers emerged from the houses. One called a question, and though I knew little Pithian, I knew he said, What’s wrong?

The guard with the hound responded uncertainly, I’m not sure. Then he drew his blade and began to advance toward the trees.

I swallowed, and gripped my sword. Then I peered through the leaves and counted our foes: three soldiers, one hound. Yet the soldier at the back was of most danger: he bore a shortbow with him, and from his handling of it, he was well-familiar with the weapon.

Stay low, I told myself. Defend Malo. Low strikes. Make yourself obscured in the dark.

I steeled myself as I heard the crunch of the soldier’s footsteps in the leaves.

Then several things happened at once.

First, there was a series of curious clicking calls from the forest about us. Then Malo pressed her hand to her mouth and made another sound, this one higher and warbling, like that of a dove.

Then she sat up very slightly, drew her bow, and fired.

The soldier with the shortbow made a low, gurgling cry, and he fell to the ground, thrashing wildly. The hound ceased its baying and whined. The two remaining soldiers jumped and turned to stare at their fallen comrade: Malo’s arrow was now protruding from the base of his throat, and he pawed at it uselessly before going still.

Then the night lit up with screams as the many wardens in the trees loosed their arrows. I drew my blade and leapt forth, my muscles filling with memories, my blood hot with violence, my bones like ice within my flesh.

The two soldiers fell easily to me. The first was still gazing at his fallen comrade when I struck him down; the next was struggling to unsheathe his sword when I fell upon him. The hound proved a coward, thankfully—I had never fought a dog before and did not know the nature of it—for it barked twice before whining and slinking away. The screams in the night grew louder and wilder, and I darted back to the cover of the trees and knelt beside Malo.

“Shall we stay or move in?” I panted.

“We move in!” she snapped. “But I could have killed them faster had you not leapt before my aim! Do not be so eager in the next fight, or I might accidentally shoot you in the fucking back!”

I rolled my eyes and helped her to her feet. Then we joined the battle, I leading with my sword, she firing arrows over my shoulder.

I had drawn my blade several times in my service for the Iudex and felled a fair few foes who’d been a deathly hand with a sword, but this was my first time taking part in a battle of such scale, with over a dozen allies fighting with me and the enemy emerging from all about us. It was a mad, wild, confusing thing, all the night screaming and surging. I had no time for clarity or conscience: my body thrummed with all the memories of so many movements, the way I’d trained my flesh to respond to threats, and I felt myself pulled through the night, hacking and feinting and dodging, while Malo hissed, “Calm your blood! You shall get us both killed with your frenzy!”

I tried to do as she bade, and as I did, I realized I now saw unfamiliar faces among the fray: not Yarrow soldiers, nor wardens, but skinny, starved Pithian folk, wielding clubs and knives and ropes, and farm tools and cooking blades. They did not attack me but instead fell upon the Yarrow soldiers, beating them or choking them or stabbing between their armor with what appeared to be kitchen knives, screaming howls of unbridled hate.

Naukari, I realized. This estate had housed servants, and now that they had an opportunity, they rose up against their masters.

“This sight cheers me!” Malo shouted. “But it is not what I wished! They could spoil all if this goes awry!”

“You seek out Darhi,” I said. “I shall secure the litter—that clear?”

She nodded and cried out to the naukari in Pithian. I raised my sword and dashed off into the night.

—

The fight went quickly after that, but to my battle-crazed mind every second was an hour. I raced to the litter and found one soldier standing at the back, unsure whether to fight or flee. When he realized I was running at him, he raised his sword and cried out, but I cut him down easily, wounding him in the thigh, then the arm. He lay on the ground, screaming in pain, but I ignored him and focused on securing the litter.

The train of carts stretched before me. To my eye, most of its burden was the treasure of Yarrow, yet as I walked the litter, I spied a few boxes that looked unusual.

They were crates of an imperial make, for only imperial shipments used fretvine in such a way. I stepped closer, squinting in the dim light, and saw a symbol imprinted on the sides of them: the sigil of the Apoths, the drop of blood set in a hexagon.

I stared, nigh overcome. Then I stepped closer and took a mighty sniff. A powerful, acrid scent hit my nostrils: the unmistakable aroma of reagents.

These were reagent crates, almost assuredly robbed from the Apoth barges on the canals. I’d never expected to find them here among Darhi’s stolen treasure, but it did make a crude sense: reagents were some of the most valuable things in all the Empire, and a greedy soul like Darhi would ensure he got a price for them, wherever he might flee.

Yet were these the reagents Pyktis needed to make his weapon? Had Darhi been hiding them the entire time, here at his secret estate? I was no Apoth and could not tell. I returned to the front of the litter, to guard it and wait for the battle to end.

After what felt like an eternity, Sabudara emerged from the night and gave me the report: twenty-six Yarrow soldiers dead, with three wounded, unlikely to survive, including the one I had just cut down. All the wardens had survived, but four naukari had fallen as they’d fought against those who had enslaved them.

“And Darhi?” I asked.

Sabudara shook her head. “Of him, nothing.”

I cursed. “Tell Malo I need her!” I said. “Tell her I have found something important among the litter here, and to come when she can!”

Sabudara nodded, then vanished back into the darkness.

—

An hour later I heard Malo calling my name. I ventured into the clutch of buildings and found her standing with her wardens over five bodies that had apparently been dragged from the houses.

She pointed at one. “Take a look.”

I did so and moaned in dismay. I did not need to consult my memories to recognize that green-painted face or those cold, cutting eyes, indifferent even in death. Satrap Darhi’s throat had been viciously slashed open, it seemed, and his chin and chest were soaked in blood.

“How did this happen?” I asked.

“One of the naukari cut his throat,” said Malo. “And she got run through for trying. Poor girl is dead, and didn’t even see the age of fifteen, I wager. A cruel thing. I wish they had all waited. We would have gladly freed them!”

I fell to my knees, struggling with the weight of it. “So,” I said softly. “The one man who knew Pyktis most is now dead, and we shall get no help from him.”

Malo spat, and bitterly said, “So it seems. He cannot tell us where our foe hides now. A black fate, this is, and I curse it gladly. But…what is this important thing you wished me to see?”

I shot back up, remembering. “The reagents!”

“Reagents?”

“Yes! Darhi had many crates of stolen reagents on his litter—perhaps the stolen reagents!”

She stared. “Then not all is lost?”

“Perhaps! Let us go see!”

—

I helped Malo’s wardens sort the reagents crates from all the chests of Yarrow treasure. Rather than open them one by one, Malo and Sabudara sniffed them, claiming that they knew well the aroma of the fertilizer they sought. “We have sniffed the jungle for it for weeks on end!” said Malo. “I smell it even in my sleep.”

At first, they frowned and grimaced as they crawled over the crates. Then their expressions brightened, and they became overcome with excitement.

“It’s here!” cried Malo. “By the titan’s taint, it’s here!”

I hauled the crates away from the litter, whispering “Thank Sanctum, thank Sanctum,” again and again, for I myself had never quite believed that Darhi had possessed it all.

First we found four, then five, and then after some searching, we found the sixth crate of reagents, hidden in the back of one of the barns.

“That’s all of them, yes?” said Malo. “Your immunis said there were six crates missing of this fertilizer, true?”

“Six, yes,” I sighed, wiping my brow. “But let’s open them to confirm it.”

We did so, prying off the lids with spears taken from the dead Yarrow guards. Each of the six boxes contained wax-wrapped bundles of a deeply black, soil-like substance that smelled powerfully of rotten eggs.

“That’s it,” said Malo. She almost began to weep. “That’s it! That’s the damned stuff, it’s all here! Darhi surely didn’t know what he had, but he’s kept it out of Pyktis’s hands and brought us to it!”

My legs began to quake, and with a deep sigh, I sat down in the wet grass.

—

As the rush of combat drained out of me, the rest of the night passed in a torpid stupor. The wardens tended to the naukari, sharing water and food and applying healing grafts. One warden went to a high hill to fire off a rocket for Yarrowdale to see; the rest of us went about opening the remainder of the crates to take inventory, yet we did so lazily, and without panic.

“You are decent with a sword, Kol,” said Malo. She grunted as she cracked open another crate. “Almost as good as I am with a bow.”

“Thank you,” I said politely.

“If only all fights were so courtly as to allow you to get so close,” she said, “and engage in single combat! Then you might actually be useful.”

I smirked, happy to hear her jibes again. “That was not single combat,” I said. “There were two of them, at least at the start.”

“Well, yes, after I shot one in the neck. You’d have had none at all if you’d just stayed low. But…” Then she trailed off, her face troubled.

“What is it?” I asked.

She glanced about. “I smell something…rotting.”

“So? There are over thirty corpses just a few span away.”

“Yes, but those corpses are freshly killed, and not yet rotting! I smell flesh that has been putrefying for some time. I could not smell it at first, because of the aromas of these reagents, but…something is dead here, Kol.”

Malo began to dart about the crates upon the litter, sniffing the air. Then she pointed to one—this one a large chest of Yarrow treasure—and a warden hurried over and pried the lid open. They peered down into the crate, and their expressions changed to utter shock.

I staggered to my feet, leaning on my own stolen spear. “What?” I said wearily. “What is it now?”

“Kol,” said Malo slowly. “Come and see this.”

“If it is ill news, can you at least give me a hint?”

“No! Just come and see!”

I limped over to them. The smell of rot was indeed terrible, and I covered my nose with my sweat-soaked shirt and peered inside the Yarrow chest.

A body lay within: the body of a man, lying on his side and bunched up like an infant in slumber. He was rather small and dressed in rags, but most notable was what was placed beside him.

A warding helm, painted white. In the faint light of the fading moon, it almost resembled a skull.

I gazed at the body of the little man, and the white-painted helm beside him, my pulse thudding in my ears.

“No,” I whispered.

“I know,” said Malo.

“It can’t be…”

“I know! Let’s get him out and look him over.”

We pulled the body out of the chest and placed him on the road. He had perished of a stab wound, I saw, just under his heart and placed between the ribs: an expertly given wound if ever I’d seen one. His face was distinctly Rathras, with a thin nose and rather small eyes, though his eyes were faintly green, and he had a rather starved look to him, much like one might expect from a man who’d been surviving in the wilderness for months on end.

But more, he looked exactly like the drawing Malo and I had studied: the sketch of the man who had come to the Treasury bank and opened the Apoth’s box.

Malo sniffed the air. “Been dead about two days,” she pronounced. “Perhaps more.”

I stayed silent, my mind whirling.

“Could…could it truly be him?” asked Malo.

I knelt and pulled his shirt up to his collar. There, in ghostly imprints all across his belly and chest, were dozens of rounded, puckered welts, the imprints of tiny insects that had once fed upon his flesh—or, perhaps, leaked stolen blood into his veins.

“Blotley welts,” I said quietly.

“Fucking hell,” said Malo. “Exactly as your immunis said. He set many blotleys to Sujedo, then to himself, to draw the proper bloods into his flesh. By the bloody eyes of the fates…it looks like Darhi finally got hold of our friend Sunus Pyktis and killed him before this devil betrayed him in turn! What a shameful way for his miserable life to end. At least it is done—true?”

I gazed at the corpse and said nothing.