Huerc described the preparations for the trip in detail, and it became clear to him that she thought the Emperor, at least, was aware of the trip. Hierem had explained that the secrecy and misdirection were to avoid any of the Emperor’s enemies learning what he was about. She hadn’t been privy to the meeting with the An-Xileel, but worked out that some agreement had been reached. She’d been led to believe that Hierem was there to propose an alliance against the Thalmor. But he was vague about what the negotiations actually entailed. Most interesting, the agreement involved Hierem performing some sort of ritual at the City Tree.
She had written: The tree is enormous. The only one I have ever seen taller was in Valenwood, but the Hist was more massive, more spread out. And I could feel a palpable presence in it. I had never quite credited the Argonian claims that the trees are intelligent, but when I stood in its presence, I could no longer doubt it. Further, I thought I felt a certain malevolence in it, but that might well have been my imagination, for the whole situation was anything but friendly. The An-Xileel have been uniformly rude and arrogant, the city itself is a festering, putrid place. From the moment I entered Lilmoth, I have wanted nothing more than to leave it. The minister, on the other hand, seems quite excited, almost jubilant. The An-Xileel sang to the tree, an awful cacophonous chant that went on so long that I might have drifted off a bit. At some point, Hierem added his voice to theirs, but in a sort of counterpoint. He lit a brazier, and I’m sure he did some sort of sorcery. In his younger years he was in the leadership of the Mages’ Guild, before that organization utterly collapsed, and so I know him capable of these things, but I was still somehow surprised. It was my impression that he was calling something, for he repeated the word “Umbriel” many times. It seemed like a name, although the language he spoke was not one I knew, and so I may have been mistaken, for nothing came, although everyone seemed pleased anyway. Tomorrow we sail for home, and I could not be happier.
He read on, but the only other passage of interest to him was one in which she began to question whether the Emperor had authorized or was aware of their trip, and she had determined to ask Hierem about it.
He read the final few sentences with a little chill: At lunch today Hierem repeated his assertions, but I still have my doubts. I have a meeting with the Emperor tomorrow. I will ask him myself. I hope I shall feel better. My stomach is unsettled, and there is pain in my joints. Perhaps the soup did not suit me.
Colin thumbed back through earlier parts of the book, but it was dark now. He settled against a chimney, watching Arese’s unlit window. Neither moon was in the sky, but there were no clouds, and the stars were glorious. He rested there, letting the fall of night ease into him; first the swifts, then the fluttering of bats, the lonely imprecation of a barn owl. Tree frogs chirped and insects whirred. A dog barked somewhere in the Market District and was answered nearby, which set off a chorus of canine comment from all quarters of the city. A couple argued not far away about what the proper price of the cockles for dinner might have been, and the strains from a lute drifted along in the breeze.
Arese would be with her sister now. He had a few more hours to wait, a little more time to decide what to do, whether to show Arese the journal or not. Was she really an agent of the Emperor?
He’d been assigned to find Prince Attrebus. The prince had gone, against his father’s wishes and in secret, to find and fight the menace of the flying city. He hadn’t gotten far; Colin had found his entire bodyguard slaughtered- and it seemed, at first, the prince, too. Attrebus, it turned out, was a careful creation of his father and his ministers. All of the battles and duels he had won were set up that way, and the bards and authors who sang and wrote of him were heavily subsidized by the court. The prince himself hadn’t known this; few outside his guard had. Whenever the prince decided to go off on some sort of adventure, his right-hand man Gulan always reported it to the office of the Prime Minister, and it had been handled.
But not this time-or at least not the way it usually was. This time the prince had been ambushed. That was what had led Colin to investigate Arese; he knew Gulan had gone to her, as usual. He discovered that she had set up the attack on the prince herself, and later followed her to a house where-as he listened-she killed the crime boss who had facilitated it, along with all of his guard and household. He still didn’t know if she had summoned something or transformed into the nightmare that had turned the house into an abattoir.
And yet, Arese had admitted this to him. She had offered an explanation for it.
Most traps are simple.
He sighed, ran his hand through his hair, felt the breeze on his face.
He heard a faint noise that seemed somehow out of place and opened his eyes.
Fifteen yards away he saw the shadowed figure of a man, dressed in the black quilted jerkin so many of the Dark Brotherhood affected these days. The fellow was in profile, kneeling on the roof of the building across the alley. As Colin watched, he slipped like a spider down a rope too dark and thin to make out from his vantage point. He settled, still like a spider, on the casement of Arese’s window. After a moment Colin saw the window reflect starlight as it swung open, and then, a few heartbeats later, shut again.
The breeze picked up. It felt cool, and Colin realized he was sweating.
Someone wanted Arese dead.
He hesitated long enough to feel ashamed, trying to sort out what the smart thing to do was. If she died, he could step out of this whole thing.
But then he would never know what was going on, and maybe he would have to watch the Empire collapse knowing he might have done something.
But it was more than that. There had been something about her, brittleness, vulnerability…
He recognized her, he understood in that moment. She was what he might become after a few years of this. He had seen, however briefly, the hollow place in her, the weariness. He still wasn’t sure if he believed her or if they were on the same side.
But he didn’t want her to die.
He looked back up at the sky. Almost time for her to come home, of course. The assassin would know that, too, wouldn’t he?
He didn’t have any rope or cord. He could make the jump to the window, maybe, but the odds were against it, and it wouldn’t be quiet. But he could jump to the next building, get to her front door before she did, and avoid the whole confrontation.
But then he saw light in the window-not in the room itself, but diffuse light, coming from another room.
Muttering a curse, he stepped back a few paces, assessed the distance, and leapt.
His toes hit the window ledge and he curled forward, elbows over his eyes. Glass panes shattered but the wooden frame did not, and so he bounced back, spine toward the street thirty feet below. He kicked a foot through one of the broken panes and managed to hook it on the wood, which swung him back and smacked his shoulders into the brick. Gasping, he jerked up, tightening his stomach muscles, and drew himself up to the window.
By the time he got it open, of course, someone was coming for him.
He dove past and to the side of the dark blur and rolled toward the lantern-lit room farther in, drawing his knife. He absently noticed that his hands were slick with blood.
A knife thudded into the floor next to him as he scrambled up, and the assassin was close behind; he had a dark blade in his left hand and was drawing a bright one with his right from beneath his jerkin. Colin’s breath rushed in, and for an instant everything slowed and golden light seemed to infuse the room. His arms moved but he seemed outside of it. The next thing he knew, he hit the wall hard, pain trying to make him scream as he fell, but his throat wouldn’t open to let it out.
His attacker was leaning against a bookcase across the room. He made a sort of snarling sound and took one, two steps toward him. With the third step his knee kept bending and he slammed face-first into the floor. Colin could see the bloody point of his knife standing out between the downed man’s shoulder blades.
Groaning, he pushed himself to his feet, feeling them wobble beneath him. Under his breath he said a little prayer to Dibella, but he couldn’t tell if she heard. He wasn’t sure how long he could stand. He made it to the fallen man, though, and took the black knife from his hand. He stuck it in between the first two vertebrae below the skull and wiggled it. Then he had a look at himself.
His arms were cut up from the window, nothing so deep as to be dangerous. The assassin’s other knife had driven through the pectoral muscle where it stretched up to meet his shoulder. The feeling of the impact came back to him, and he realized the blade must have hit a bone and skipped up instead of slipping through to his heart. In any event, if the dagger hadn’t been poisoned, he was probably going to survive.
Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a second man, coming from the direction of the window, and he tried to turn, far too slowly.
But there was a clap like thunder, and the man went staggering back, and in the next instant something
