She joined the rest of the crowd on their knees, reaching out as though for alms, droning their nonsensical prayer for intercession.
Ardela was furthest from the carriage when it stopped, but then the object of their worship stepped down and advanced towards them, his big bodyguard close behind. Ruhen wore a long white tunic and a single pearl at his throat. He looked to be ten or eleven winters, but Ardela knew from King Emin’s intelligence that he was far younger — and yet he surveyed the people of Byora with a king’s distant composure rather than a child’s curiosity.
Right then Ardela saw why they all believed, or hoped to believe: Ruhen looked both ethereal and immortal, a child apart from the rest of humanity, and he commanded their attention as easily as the grey-skinned Demi-God Koteer, who formed part of his retinue.
Let’s see how lasting their belief is, she thought cynically.
As the six- or seven-score beggars started forward towards Ruhen, the child’s bodyguard raised a hand before they could reach him and called, ‘Clear the road!’ One hand rested on his sword-hilt. ‘Make way!’
He wore a Ruby Tower uniform, but to Ardela’s practised eye it had been modified for combat, despite the gaudy gold buttons. While he wore a beautifully worked bastard sword on his hip there was another secured on his back, wrapped entirely in cloth.
Instinctively the beggars shrank back and retreated off the road. Ardela pushed her way to the front of the group and sank to her knees, ignoring those who tried to jostle her out of position. Ruhen approached them with a small, indulgent smile that had no place on a child’s face. Ardela felt her hand twitch as he came less than a dozen yards from her, but she made no other move. The renegade man of the Brotherhood, Ilumene, was too close for her liking, so she did nothing but mimic the others as they basked in his attention.
Somewhere off to her right she became aware of voices, breaking this moment of calm. Further down the road people on foot were heading towards them. The voices grew in number and volume while she strained to see past those with her at the roadside. Folk started to drift over from the market in the square, obscuring her view further, but Ardela couldn’t be seen to be impatient, so instead she watched those around her, the slack-faced addicts and haggard survivors of a region at war.
On the other side of the road was a group of labourers and shopboys. Most were looking down the road at whoever was coming, but a few stared at Ruhen still, and Ardela felt a prickle run down her neck. Once a devotee of the Lady and now confidante of her Mortal-Aspect, Legana, Ardela knew in an instant something was coming, some twist of chance she might yet be able to exploit.
She turned her attention back to the newcomers as folk began to gasp and exclaim, her hand automatically tightening when she saw who was approaching. A group of eighty or ninety people had entered the square and were marching towards Ruhen, not quite in military order, but still in three distinct columns. At their head was a man in black, but the bulk of the rest were far more colourful and instantly recognisable, dressed identically to the man and woman she’d personally murdered in Tirah on Midsummer’s Day.
In a crowd the Harlequins would have looked almost comical, dressed as they were head to foot in diamond- patchwork clothes, but for the blank expressions on their white masks, each with a bloody teardrop under the right eye and slender swords crossed on their backs. They walked with an effortless gait that made their companions look awkward by comparison, but even they had an athletic aspect to them that suggested they were also of the Harlequin clans.
Ardela slowly forced herself to unclench her fist. Here at last was evidence that the murders King Emin had arranged on Midsummer’s Day had not been senseless. It made little difference to the weight on her soul, but any small comfort was not to be rejected.
Ruhen started forward to personally greet the Harlequins’ leader, the man in black, who Ardela remembered was named Venn. He dropped to one knee, head bowed low before his master. In the next instant the rest of the Harlequins did the same and a collective gasp ran through the crowd: the Harlequins, who served no master and bowed to no authority bar Lord Death himself knelt to Ruhen.
The power of that symbol was clear for all to see. They knelt to a child whose followers preached a new way of worship, free of the burdens and strictures of power-maddened clerics. They made obeisance to the promise of peace in a Land beset by war, and in that moment the watching people of Byora felt the blessing of the Gods upon them all.
‘Heretic!’ came a sudden cry from across the road, and a man started running towards Ruhen, who had moved ahead of Ilumene and was momentarily out of reach of his bodyguard. A second man started forward in the next instant, a knife in his hand, and two more broke from left and right to cover their fellows. Screams rang out from the beggars and Ardela wasn’t alone in starting forward, but before any of them could reach Ruhen Ilumene was there.
Ardela watched Ilumene explode into movement, thin knives appearing in each hand. Unable to get in front of Ruhen in time, he barged forward at the first ambusher and kicked him in the side. The man was knocked sideways by the blow and before he’d hit the ground Ilumene was turning away the second’s blade, then in the next instant swinging around to stab him in the kidney. He whipped his other knife up across the man’s throat and slashed it open before returning to the first.
Ilumene’s kick had knocked the man right over, but he found himself on his hands and knees only a yard or two from where Ruhen stood motionless. He lunged forward at the child, but Ruhen finally moved, stepping neatly away from the reaching weapon and into the protective lee of the Harlequin Venn. Ilumene pounced on the man and stabbed him in the neck, even as the crowd of beggars had started rushing forward, intent on reaching the remaining two attackers following close behind. Ardela’s hand was inside her cape, her fingers closing around a dart tucked into the waistband of her dress, before she’d even thought.
She gave a practised flick of the wrist as she passed Ruhen and threw the dart. There wasn’t time to watch it strike; her attention was already on the remaining ambushers, but amidst the chaos of voices and running feet she thought she heard a yelp from the boy. Ardela continued on, side by side with a thin man whose arm was covered in weeping sores.
She let him reach the last of the ambushers first. The man did not check his pace as he shrieked with rage and clawed at the man’s eyes. The first knife-blow to his stomach he appeared not to notice; the second was hard enough to drive the wind from his lungs, but then Ardela leapt on the ambusher.
With one strong hand she gripped the man’s wrist to keep his knife clear as she used her own bodyweight to bear him to the ground. She sank her teeth into his cheek for good measure, biting deep and shaking her head like a terrier, tearing a chunk of flesh from his face. The man shrieked as she pulled back. By now others had arrived and were kicking and stamping at them both in their frenzy. She felt him release his grip on his knife and she deftly scooped it up, and stabbed down furiously.
It was a killing blow, she knew that, but she kept going, artlessly slashing and stabbing until she was dragged off the brutalised corpse. She fell to the ground and let the knife fall from her hand as she looked around. There was fear and anger on the faces of the beggars around her, but more than a few looked back at Ruhen with concern. No one looked at all concerned with Ardela’s savage killing of the man and she breathed a sigh of relief. She’d just been quicker than the rest — they would all have done the same for their saviour.
She kept on her knees, fighting the urge to run before her assassination attempt was discovered. No venom was instantaneous, and once he saw the dart Ilumene would be on the lookout. All around them the Harlequins were spreading out, their swords drawn, and the crowd withdrew.
Then Ardela saw Ruhen hold something up to his bodyguard. Ilumene took it and inspected the dart quickly. ‘Wait,’ he called angrily, ‘check them all! One of them has a blowpipe!’
Ardela was careful to look around in bewilderment with the rest of Ruhen’s Children as the Harlequins converged upon the crowd. She knew it wouldn’t be long until they started to check the beggars too, and in the meantime anything suspicious could mean her death, but the longer the confusion took, the longer the venom would have to work.
After Aracnan’s poisoning had been exacerbated by his attempts to heal himself with magic, they would be hesitate before running to the nearest mage. Ruhen was a little boy, and ice cobra venom was fast-acting. It could be as little as five minutes before his throat closed up and the little saviour of Byora breathed his last.
A pair of Harlequins started directing the disordered crowd, and at last Ardela stood up and joined them as they began to stumble away from Ruhen. She saw Venn kneel, concern abruptly flourishing on his tattooed face.
