you’ll let me pass, sir,” Emancipor said, moving to step past. There was no one else about, and dawn was still a quarter-bell away.
The stranger giggled again, then said, “Such a mark, saving. You felt the chill, then?”
Damned strange accent. “It’s a hot enough night,” he mumbled as he hurried by. The stranger let him go, but Emancipor felt cold eyes on his back as he walked down the street.
A moment later he was surprised to see a cloaked figure hurrying its way down the other pavement-small, feminine. Then he was further startled by the passage of an armoured man, rustling and softly clanking, moving along on the woman’s trail. Hood’s Herald, the sun’s not even up yet!
He suddenly felt very tired. Somewhere ahead, he now saw, was a commotion of some kind. He saw lantern lights, heard shouting, then a woman’s scream. He hesitated, then took a side route that’d take him around the scene, and back onto more familiar ground.
Emancipor felt clammy under his clothes, as if he’d just brushed… something unpleasant. He shook himself. “Better get used to it, working nights and all. Anyway, I was safe enough-no chance of laughing this damned night, that’s for sure.”
“A messy one,” the chalk-faced guard muttered, wiping across his mouth with the back of his hand.
Guld nodded. It was the worst he’d seen yet. Young Lordson Hoom, ninth-removed from the throne’s own blood, had died ignobly, with most of his insides strewn and smeared halfway down the alley.
And yet no one had heard a sound. The sergeant had come upon the scene less than a quarter-bell after the two patrol guards had themselves stumbled onto it. The blood and bits of flesh weren’t yet cold.
Guld had sent off the tracking dogs. He’d dispatched his corporal to the palace with two messages-one to the king, and the other-far less softly worded-to Magus Stul Ophan. With the exception of his squad detachment and a lone terrified horse still hitched to the Lordson’s overturned carriage- overturned. Hood’s breath! — there was only one other person present at the scene, and that presence had Guld deeply, profoundly, worried.
He finally turned his gaze from the carriage to study the woman. Princess Sharn. King Seljure’s only child. His heir, and, if the rumours are true, a real dark piece of work in her own right.
Though it would mean trouble later, Guld had insisted on detaining the royal personage. After all, it’d been her screaming that had drawn the patrol, and the question of what the princess was doing out in the city well after the night’s fourth bell-with no guard, not even her maid-in-waiting-needed answering.
His eyes narrowed on the young girl. She was wrapped in a voluminous cloak, hooded with her face hidden in shadows. She’d regained her composure with alarming ease. Guld scowled, then approached her. He jerked his head to the two guardsmen flanking the princess, and they moved away.
“Highness,” Guld began, “your calm is an impressive example of royal blood. Frankly, I’m awed.”
She acknowledged this with a slight tilt of her head.
Guld rubbed at his jaw, glancing away for a moment, then swung upon her an intense professional expression. “I am also relieved, for it means I can question you here and now, whilst your memory remains fresh, unclouded-”
“You are presumptuous,” the princess said in a light, bored tone.
He ignored that. “It’s clear you and Lordson Hoom were involved in a clandestine relationship. Only this time, either you came later, or he came early. For you, then, a pull of the Lady. For the lad, a push of the Lord. I can imagine your relief, Princess, not to mention your father’s-who will have been duly informed by now.” He paused at hearing her quickly drawn breath. “So, what I need to know is what you saw, precisely, upon arriving. Did you see anyone else? Did you hear anything? Smell anything?”
“No,” she answered. “Hoomy was… was already, uh, like that,” she gestured toward the alley behind Guld.
“Hoomy?”
“Lordson Hoom, I mean.”
“Tell me, Princess, where is your handmaid? I can’t believe you would come here entirely alone. She’d be your messenger in this affair, obviously, since I imagine the secret love notes flew fast and often-”
“How dare you-”
“Save that for your cowering underlings,” Guld snapped. “Answer me!”
“Do nothing of the sort!” a voice commanded behind the sergeant.
He turned to see Magus Stul Ophan pushing his way past a line of guards at the alleymouth. It was nearing dawn, and the fat man’s arrival was peculiarly accompanied by the day’s first birdsong. “Highness,” Stul said, inclining his head, “your father the King wishes to see you immediately. You may take my carriage.” Stul turned a dagger glare on Guld. “The sergeant is, I believe, done with you.”
Both men stepped back as Princess Sharn hurried past and quickly disappeared inside the carriage. As soon as the door closed and the driver flicked the horses into motion, Guld rounded on the Magus. “Now, I gather that Lordson Hoom was anything but an appropriate hay-roller for the precious princess, and I can imagine that Seljure wants to bury any royal involvement in what’s happened here-but if you ever again step between me and my investigation, Ophan, I’ll leave what’s left of you for the crabs. Understood?”
The Magus went red, then white. He spluttered, “The King’s command, Guld-”
“And if I’d found him standing here over the lad’s mangled corpse, I’d be no less direct in my questioning. The king is one man-his fear is nothing compared to the city’s fear. And you can tell him, if he wants anything left to rule, he’d best stay out of my way and let me do my job. Gods, man, can’t you feel the panic?”
“I can! Burn’s Blood, I damned well share it!”
Guld took a handful of Stul Ophan’s brocaded cloak and pulled the man to the alley. “Take a long look, Magus. This was managed in silence-neither estate to each side awoke-even the garden hounds remained silent. Tell me, what did this?” He released Stul Ophan’s cloak and stepped back.
The air turned icy around the magus as he hastily cast a series of cantrips. “A spell of silence, Sergeant,” he rasped. “The lad screamed all right, gods how he screamed. And the air itself was closed, folded in on itself. High sorcery, Guld, the highest. No smell could escape to afright the dogs on the other sides of these walls-”
“And the carriage? It has the look of having been rammed, as if by a mad bull. Scry the horse, dammit!”
Stul Ophan staggered up to the quivering, lathered animal. As he reached up one hand the horse reared back, eyes rolling, ears flattening against its skull. The magus swore. “Driven mad! Its heart races but it cannot move. It will be dead within the hour-”
“But, what did it see? What image remains behind its eyes?”
“Obliterated,” Stul Ophan said. “Wiped clean.”
They both turned as the fast-approaching sound of shod hooves on the cobblestones. An armoured rider appeared, boldly pushing his white charger past the guards- Hood, what’s the point of having a cordon of guards? The newcomer wore a white fur-lined cloak, a white-enamelled iron helm, and a coat of silver mail. The pommel at the end of his broadsword looked to be a single polished opal.
Guld cursed under his breath, then called out to the rider. “What brings you here, Mortal Sword?”
The man reined in. He removed his helmet to reveal a narrow, scarred face and close-set eyes that glittered black. Those eyes now turned to the lantern-lit scene in the alley. “The foulest of deeds,” he rasped, his voice thin and ragged-the story went that a Drek assassin’s dagger had come near to opening the man’s throat a dozen years back-but Tulgord Vise, Mortal Sword to the Sisters, had survived, while the assassin hadn’t.
“This is not a religious matter,” Guld said, “though I thank you for your vow to scour the nights until the killer is found-”
“Found, sir? Carved into pieces, this I have sworn. And what do you, cynical unbeliever, know of matters of faith? Do you not smell the stench of Hood in this? You, Magus, can you deny the truth of my words?”
Stul Ophan shrugged. “A necromancer-most certainly, Mortal Sword, but that doesn’t perforce mean a worshipper of the God of Death. Indeed, the priesthood disavows necromancy. After all, those dark arts are an assault on the Warren of the Dead-”
“Political convenience, that disavowal. You are a spineless, mewling fool, Ophan. I have crossed swords with Hood’s Herald, or do you forget?”
Guld noted one of his guardsmen flinch at that. “Tulgord Vise,” the sergeant said, “Death was not the goal here-hasn’t been all along.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
