CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE double doors swung open, a burst of heat and noise spilled onto the street and the cool night air washed over them. Derkh drank it in gratefully; he had not realized how close it had become inside.

“We’ll walk you to your rooms,” announced Tristan. Danaïs and Derkh had been housed in a comfortable inn not far from the castle, as the king’s hospitality was stretched to the limit by official delegates to the talks. “C’mon, Rosie girl, the walk will do you good.” Tristan hitched a firm arm about Rosalie, who was distinctly unsteady on her feet, and set a careful pace across the treacherous cobblestone paving. Derkh dropped back a bit from the chattering group to savor the quiet.

As they ambled by, he spied a bundled shape slumped in the gap between two buildings—the same ragged fellow he had seen in the pub, perhaps, or some other homeless beggar. The cloak certainly looked as filthy and ill-used. The man did not stir or raise his head from his bent knees as they passed, and the others, absorbed in talk, took no notice.

Derkh, lost in his own thoughts, soon forgot the unfortunate fellow. He was working on a future Gabrielle had suggested to him back in Verdeau, a future as a skilled craftsman. It had seemed impossible then, but now... Derkh cast his mind over the array of trades he had seen plied in the streets of Gaudette. Would the Maronnais prove accepting enough to take on a foreigner as a prentice? Or would they keep the Greffaires firmly on the margins, eligible for only the unskilled seasonal work? He couldn’t predict. Too much about these people had surprised him already.

The streets were dark and silent, sparsely lit and nearly empty. Derkh’s inn was situated away from the busy center of town, chosen by its clientele not for liveliness, but for undisturbed sleep and access to royal doings. Derkh looked ahead at his friends—Gabrielle and Féolan arm in arm, their voices a quiet murmur, Danaïs pacing at their side. Tristan and Rosalie next, Rosie a little steadier now but still walking with the cautious, over-deliberate steps of the unaccustomed drunk. Affection washed through him, and he shook his head, not for the first time, at the unlikely friendships he had made.

How fares my family now? he wondered. Worse than he himself, that was certain. Derkh raised his head to the glittering stars, followed their sweep north, wishing he could send his mother some reassuring message on their wings.

Movement in the corner of Derkh’s eye snapped his attention back to earth. A flapping apparition launched itself toward them from a side street, a confusion of dark speed. At first his fuddled eyes thought he was still in the clouds, his star messenger taking ghastly shape before him. Then, as the black figure hurtled into the street ahead of him, the details crystallized into meaning: a shredded black cloak, flying behind a racing man. He caught a flash of teeth, bared in terrible effort. The silver gleam of—

A knife. The nightmare figure brandished a knife as long as Derkh’s forearm.

Derkh was airborne before his conscious mind knew what he was doing. Had he not practiced long hours with Col’s own bodyguards against just such a moment? Arms outstretched, head tucked, he propelled himself forward with all the force his legs could give him.

And came up just short. Instead of crashing into the assassin’s—for so, surely, was the man’s intent?—legs and flinging him to the ground, Derkh caught a boot in the chin not a breath before sprawling into the cobblestones himself. Pain jolted through him, shattering in his right knee, merely brutal everywhere else, but he had the boot in his grasp and nothing now would loose his grip. Just as the foot lashed out to kick free, Derkh twisted it, hard, flipping himself over to get a full rotation. He felt the torque on the man’s knee, heard the grunt of pain, and the cloaked body hit the ground with a thud.

Derkh’s first shocked sight of his opponent’s face was paralyzing. Once down, the man had twisted around and launched himself on Derkh with the speed of an adder strike. Now Derkh stared up into an expression so bestial with rage, on eyes so blind with madness that there seemed nothing human there at all. The man’s full weight was across his chest, his knife raised high, and all Derkh could do was stare, sickened, understanding that he had become the assassin’s victim.

MOVE, BOY! Col’s voice boomed, and Derkh was back in the grappling ring. Greffaire soldiers faced combat in armor, but Col had insisted Derkh also learn hand-to-hand fighting from the best trainers in the country—as much for protection against fellow soldiers who might find a scrawny adolescent an easy target, as against hypothetical enemies of the state.

His left leg whipped up, and with that move he understood that his assailant had more conviction than technique. Not only were his legs unpinned, but the dramatically raised blade gave him an obvious opening. Hooking his leg up and around the man’s raised arm to block the knife thrust, he also managed to rock the heavy body back enough to free his left arm.

Derkh groped for the knife sheath at his waist, found it, and had his own blade sunk into the assassin’s neck in one swift upward thrust. With a gurgling cry, the man fell heavily against him, his long blade ringing against the stone beside Derkh’s ear. Gods, where are the others? he wondered wildly, not realizing they had barely had time to be aware of his struggle before it was over. They were at his side even now, though he could not see them. His senses were blotted out by the dying body pressed against him. Hot blood flooded over his face and glued clingy webs of hair against his cheeks and eyes; the stench of filth wrapped about him like a poisonous cloud.

As the sickening weight was dragged off him, Derkh rolled to his hands and knees and vomited onto the blood-slick stones.

IT WAS FÉOLAN and Danaïs who pulled LaBarque off of Derkh.

Gabrielle waited in an agony of impatience, desperate to get to him. Then, just as she reached out to him, he shuddered and lurched up onto his knees. She understood then that Derkh was all right. No mortally wounded man cares where his vomit lands.

Though she longed to stay and comfort him, she forced herself to follow the bonemender’s protocol: the greatest need first. She turned to the cloaked figure, now lying spread-eagled some distance from Derkh. A terrible scarecrow, his features frozen in a snarl of hatred. Gabrielle swallowed, fighting her own revulsion. She forced herself to approach, to kneel beside him, to check for pulse and breath. There was none.

Backing away in guilty relief, she turned and looked for someone to tell. Tristan was occupied with Rosalie, who was sobbing uncontrollably. She caught the words, “It’s over now, Rosie. Finished for good, now,” and finally grasped what had happened. She tried to match the ruin that lay before her with the rich merchant Tristan had described and could not. He had been burned away, consumed by his own malice.

Féolan and Danaïs were with Derkh. They had steered him to a clean patch of road, wiped his face and hands and wrapped him in Féolan’s cloak. Now all three looked a question at her. She shook her head. “He’s dead,” she said.

Derkh flinched at the words, his shoulders hunching as though against a blow. Gabrielle was pierced with pity for him, pity and anger too at the injustice of it, that one boy should have to suffer such a relentless string of terrors. Her eyes prickled and then swam with tears as she made her way to him.

“HE’S DEAD.”

Gabrielle’s eyes filled with tears. She walked toward him, her face stricken, and if Derkh could have cast himself into the black pit of his own misery and disappeared, he would have done so.

What have you done? he accused himself. He could barely remember what had triggered the incident. You tackled some crazy old bugger who maybe didn’t even know you were there, terrified him into fighting for his life and killed him. All his good resolve had come to nothing. He had hurt her again. It was hard to imagine how one could repay a healer’s kindness more cruelly than with a corpse.

He couldn’t face her.

Nevertheless she stood in front of him, bent before him, searched for and found his blood-sticky hands, grasped them and pulled him gently to his feet. And because he was beholden to her, because he deserved whatever she wished to say to him, he met her eyes when she spoke his name.

To his confused astonishment what he saw there was not disgust or anger at all. She was smiling through her tears, and her hands cupped his face the way the seskeesh had when they said farewell.

“You saved him, Derkh. You saved my brother’s life. If you hadn’t... If he had...” Sobs overtook her, and oblivious to the bloody mess down his front, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him against her.

Derkh held her waist gingerly. Too much had happened, too fast; he seemed to have missed something important.

Click, click. Pictures flared into focus in his head, like the tumbles falling into place in a lock: the ragged old man at the pub, the derelict slumped over in the street. It was him. He followed us.

Click. Rosalie—Rosalie who by all accounts knew how to keep her head in a crisis—crying like a terrified child in Tristan’s arms.

Click. LaBarque, escaped from his guards far to the south.

He knew now who he had killed. His instincts had been right, after all. Tears of relief welled up in his own eyes. He closed them, tightened his grip on the best friend he had ever had and thanked every supernatural being he could think of that this time he had managed to avert, not cause, disaster.