A woman’s voice-a familiar one, though Amara couldn’t place it immediately in the echoing tunnel-answered him. “It doesn’t matter to me either way. He’ll kill the two of you. I have something else to offer him.”
“Whore,” spat the second man.
“One can retire from whoredom,” the woman replied, her tone cool. “Idiocy is for life-which, in your case, is probably about thirty minutes.”
“Maybe I should just enjoy myself in the time left to me, then,” the man said in an ugly tone. There was the sharp sound of an open-handed blow on skin, followed by scuffling feet and tearing cloth.
“Ranius!” barked the first man, his voice high and panicked.
“She’s just a whore,” Ranius growled. “One who needs to be put in her place. You can have a turn after I’m d-”
There was the sharp, sudden sound of snapping bone.
It was followed instantly by a heavy thud.
“Oh,
“Apparently he’s done, Falco,” said the woman, her voice perfectly calm and polite. “Do you want your turn?”
“No. No, no, no, look,” Falco babbled, his voice quick and shaking. “I never had a problem with you. Okay? I never tried to lay a hand on you. I never said a thing to you while you were… questioning the prisoners.”
The woman’s voice took on a hard, contemptuous edge. “Those people died for Alera. The least you can do is say the words. Ranius and I weren’t questioning them, Falco. We were torturing them to death. And you did nothing. Bloody crows, you’re gutless.”
“I just want to live!”
“Everyone dies, Falco. Scramble all you want, but in the end you wind up like Ranius, there, no matter what you do.”
“You shouldn’t have killed them,” Falco said. “You shouldn’t have killed them. He’s going to be furious.”
“They died hard,” the woman said. “But it was a cleaner death than they would have had if we’d brought them back. Cleaner than we’re going to get.”
“Why didn’t you stop Ranius?!” Falco whined. “You could have stopped him. You know what’s going to happen to us when we tell him what happened to the Cursors. You’re smart. You knew…”
Falco’s voice trailed off into tense silence.
“You’ve still got half an hour,” the woman said in a level tone. “You want to be quiet now.”
“You did it on purpose,” Falco blurted. “You wanted the Cursors dead. So they couldn’t talk. You’re betraying him.” He drew in a breath and his voice turned horrified. “You’re betraying
There was a low sigh from up the tunnel. “Crows take it, Falco…”
“You lied to him,” Falco continued in a dazed voice. “How the bloody crows did you lie to him?”
“Lying is easy,” the woman replied quietly. “Getting people to believe what you want them to believe is considerably more difficult. It helps to be able to distract them with something.”
“Oh,
The woman’s voice was calm-almost compassionate-and Amara finally placed it. “He isn’t going to find out.”
“The crows he won’t!” Falco retorted. “They’ll know. They
“No,” she said. “You aren’t.”
Falco’s voice turned panicked again. “Get away from me!”
There were running footsteps. Then a hissing sound-a knife’s blade cutting the air as it was thrown, Amara judged. Falco let out a scream of agony and, from the sound of it, stumbled and fell. There was the sound of quick, light footsteps, then a gurgling sigh.
Amara moved forward until she could see the woman clearly.
She wasn’t pretty, precisely, but she was fit, her features strong and appealing. She wasn’t particularly tall, but her stance was confident, her motions brisk and sure, blending into a sense of competence that permeated her entire presence. She wore leather flying trousers and a dark blouse. The latter was silk, and it was torn, revealing a swath of smooth skin. Her eyes were the color of rich earth after a rain. Blood speckled her face.
A large man’s body lay on the tunnel floor, his head twisted at a grotesque angle, his tongue protruding from between motionless lips: Ranius. A second man lay prone at her feet. He wasn’t dead yet, technically, though the blood pumping from his slit throat into a pool on the stone floor was beginning to slow. A small throwing knife protruded from the hollow of one of his knees, precisely centered, sunk to the hilt.
The woman crouched down over him and smoothed the man’s hair with her hand. “I’m sorry, Falco,” she said quietly. “I can’t let you give me away. I’m sorry you had to be afraid for so long. But your life ended weeks ago.”
The man on the floor let out a small moan that ended in a little rattle. There was a terrible finality to the sound.
The woman bowed her head for a moment, then took her hand from the man’s hair and spoke, her tone a quiet eulogy. “There are worse things to be than a coward. It was cleaner than anything they’d have given you.”
She then began cleaning the bloody knife in her hand on his clothing. Once that was done, she jerked the throwing knife from the corpse’s leg and cleaned it as well. She rose, her motions still brisk-then froze.
Amara hadn’t made a sound or moved, but the woman shifted her grip on her knife and turned to face back down the tunnel, toward her, her body moving into a ready crouch, one hand held out in front of her, the little weapon lifted and ready to be thrown. Her eyes were narrowed, questing up and down the hall, her head tilted slightly, one ear a little forward, and her nostrils were wide as if questing for a scent.
Amara felt a second of sharp amusement. In any tunnels other than those leading to slave pens, she supposed her odor, anything but charming after weeks in the field, might well have given her away.
She put a hand on her husband’s chest to warn him back, and took two steps forward, letting her feet strike the stone, slowly lowering the veil around her as she did.
The woman froze for a moment, then her eyes widened in recognition. “Countess Amara?”
“Hello, Rook,” Amara said quietly. She stepped forward, lifting her empty hands, and faced the former head of the late High Lord Kalarus’s Bloodcrows, the mistress of his personal assassins. Rook’s defection and subsequent cooperation with the Crown had been responsible, as much as anything else, for Kalarus’s downfall.
After a moment, Amara asked, “Are you going to throw that knife?”
Rook lowered the weapon at once, rising out of her crouch a bit more slowly, letting out a long, steady exhalation. Then she slipped the weapon away and averted her eyes. “Don’t talk to me.”
“It’s all right,” Amara said slowly. “I’m a Cursor. I understand what you did. I know you aren’t the enemy.”
Rook let out a low, bitter croaking sound that might have been intended as a laugh. Then she lifted her chin, still without looking at Amara, and tugged the collar of her torn blouse back from her throat.
A simple steel band gleamed there, a familiar slaver’s device.
A discipline collar.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Countess,” Rook said quietly. “I am.”
CHAPTER 28
Isana met the tribal chiefs of the Icemen two days later, at the same place she had spoken with Big Shoulders.
“This is ridiculous,” Lady Placida said, pacing back and forth in the new snow. She was huddled beneath layered cloaks and shivering. “Honestly, Isana. Over the centuries, don’t you think someone would have noticed if the Icemen were watercrafters?”
