The last I saw was his face. There was no fear in it, no anger even — just a look of the most profound frustration.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I couldn't pretend I'd felt the slightest affection for Synza. I certainly hadn't wanted him to kill me. Yet, as the last skittering of falling pebbles subsided, I couldn't but feel a little horrified by his abrupt vanishment from the world.
I fell back against the trampled grass. My struggle with Synza had drained what little strength I'd managed to recover. The possibility of staying conscious was as remote as the likelihood of my climbing onehanded back up to the forest edge above.
One thought, however, rattled in my brain, even as it sank into welcoming darkness. Synza had defeated Stone, reputedly one of the greatest killers in the land. I in turn had played a part, more by luck than intent, in Synza's demise. Perhaps I'd never been much of a thief, but my ranking as an assassin had just gone through the roof.
I almost wanted to laugh. Knowing how much it would hurt, I passed out instead.
I dreamed someone was shouting my name. Every time they called, they kicked my head — inside my head, somehow, with a boot covered in hot pins.
It didn't take much of that to make me open my eyes. The light had changed; it was softer, yellowed like new butter. The kicking, however, continued unabated.
'Damasco!'
I was curled over, feet towards the brim of the ledge. Alvantes's voice came from behind me and above.
Where was the crown?
If he saw it, it would mean more explaining than I could even begin to contemplate. My eyes flitted desperately across the narrow outcrop. There — a clump of tall grass close to the edge, and stripes of gold amidst the green. It must have rolled from my fingers when I blacked out. I made it to all fours, though the rush of pain through my hurt arm made me want to weep. Now I could see Alvantes, peering down. He, too, was hurt. A gash in his forehead was bleeding liberally, staining the left side of his face a rich, moist crimson. Another cut on his arm had clotted but looked, if anything, deeper and more unpleasant.
'What are you doing down there?' he called.
I crawled forward, placing myself between Alvantes and the crown. 'I used to be a thief. Now I mostly seem to fall off things. It's not a change I much planned.'
Alvantes's gaze wandered further down the cliff face. His face showed faint surprise. 'Is that Stone?'
'Yes.'
'And…?'
'Next to him? That's Synza.'
I might have expected admiration or at least approval, but Alvantes's tone was lifeless as his expression. 'How?'
'Long story. I've lived through it, and you don't want to. Any chance of a rescue?'
His only response was to disappear from view.
Alvantes was gone for almost an hour — ample time for me to recover the crown, wrap it once more in my cloak and cram both into my pack. That done, I propped myself against the rock wall to try and recuperate a little. When he returned, it was with a bundle of knotted creepers, presumably gathered from the strip of forest. Tied together, they made a length of rope just long enough to reach me.
It was a sound enough plan in theory, utterly hopeless in practise. Between Alvantes's single-handedness and my recent injury, it wasn't long before his rescue attempt had come to seem like a particularly bad joke.
How did the one-armed man help the other one-armed man climb the cliff?
Very, very slowly.
Eventually, after colossal discomfort and much cursing, I caught hold of a tree perched on the ragged rim of the cliff and hauled myself up, to lie panting in the long grass before the woodland.
Once my head had stopped swimming and my eyes had uncrossed, I took a moment to consider Alvantes's latest injuries. The blood on his face had dried now, a grotesque half-mask of gore. He'd made no attempt to clean himself, which probably made the wounds appear worse than they were — but they certainly looked bad enough.
'You got him?'
Alvantes didn't answer. For a moment, I considered pressing the question, pushing to discover how he'd single-handedly dispatched one of the most notorious killers in the land. It took me that moment to realise I really didn't want to know. There was something behind his eyes that told me all I needed and more.
Instead, I asked, 'Do you think it was him? I mean, was he the one who…' Even that sentence wasn't worth finishing. 'Either way,' I finished lamely, 'they're both dead now.'
I almost added something like, Your father's death is avenged. However, I could read Alvantes's face even through its half coat of red — and for all my occasional tactlessness, even I could see that the grief ingrained there could never be cleansed by anything as simplistic as revenge.
If I'd ever felt real sympathy for him, it was then. Yet it wasn't quite enough to make me forget my own misfortunes. After all, I'd just tumbled down a cliff, nearly been assassinated, nearly been assassinated again and then been dragged back up that self-same cliff — all with an arm that, medical opinions of recently deceased assassins aside, certainly felt broken. Nothing I said was going to make things better for Alvantes. Platitudes would only waste the strength I needed to endure the next few hours.
We were, after all, still fugitives. Sooner or later — likely sooner — Stick and Stone's absence and therefore the possibility of their failure would come to the royal attention. Given the King's penchant for lunatic overreaction, it was hard to imagine what forces he'd marshal against us next. If we had the faintest hope of survival, our only hope lay in not waiting to find out.
We had one thing in our favour, at least. Alvantes had managed to hang onto his mount, and to recover mine as well. They were tied to a spindly aspen near the verge of the forest, watching us steadily.
I walked to my horse and patted his nose. 'So what's our plan?' I asked.
'Plan?'
'How do we get out of here? Back to the Castoval?'
'What does the Castoval matter?' said Alvantes, without interest.
I could have argued, could have mentioned Estrada or the Altapasaedan guardsmen he'd left in jeopardy. But I knew enough to recognise a man who was beyond the point of being reasoned with, not even by himself. If I was going to get through, I'd need to keep it simple.
'Have you forgotten what your father told you?'
Alvantes's dark eyes flashed like embers in his halfbloodied face. 'I haven't forgotten.'
'Then what's the plan?'
'An acquaintance I met in Aspira Nero mentioned he'd be stopping near here,' he said. 'If we ride fast, we might catch him.'
I wasn't convinced either of us could ride at all, let alone fast. I wasn't about to tell Alvantes that. 'You'd better pick our route,' I said. 'I haven't had much luck in that department so far today.'
We travelled westward at first, towards the distant mountains, following the line of the cliffs below and the edge of the forest to our right.
Eventually, the dense trees petered out, revealing plains much like those we'd crossed outside Pasaeda. Soon after, a way downward presented itself; the cliffs to our left became broken ground, then steep slope, and finally a steady decline to another vast swathe of grassland.
The ground was still uneven, though, littered with blunt protrusions of rock as though the sward was flimsy fabric tearing around the contours of the Earth. It was sheer in places, and slow to navigate. To our left I could still see the cliffs, descending in jagged tiers. On one of those lay Synza. I had no reason to feel guilty for my part in the
