XVII. Sunrise
SOUND CARRIED WITH BRUTALLY MAGNIFIED CLARITY, UNDER THE STRANGLING MIST. THE SHRILL CLANG OF STEEL MEETING STEEL IN CLOSE combat rang over the oncoming hooves of the destriers. Fist closed on his lance, the wet sting of his horse’s mane lashing his wrists, the guard captain urged his troop on at a gallop. Though Taskin’s skill as a swordsman was legend, the fast-paced exchange veiled under the fog bespoke a ferocity that outmatched every gift of trained reflex, and defied every skilled trick of intellect.
The select troop of guardsmen racing to intervene heard crossed blades scream, again and again, without let-up. Blow met tortured counterblow at breathtaking speed. The clamour of stressed steel left no opening for mercy. The desert-bred creature who attacked their commander was barqui’ino‘-trained, a war-hardened butcher without conscience. Ten men-at-arms spurred their mounts with one thought: to cut the cur down without quarter.
‘The mongrel foreigner’s got a lamed knee,’ gasped the rider alongside the lance captain. ‘Taskin will take him, he’s bound to!’
Yet the belling fury of each passage described nothing else but a ruthlessly desperate contest.
‘Hyaa!’ screamed the captain, and drove his mount harder. But the horse underneath him jibbed and broke stride, forced to swerve to avoid a diabolical array of placed stakes. The air smelled of char. Through veiling grey, a sullen flicker of orange shone where a grass tussock had been set burning. Chilled by the thought he might ride over ground worked by a sorcerer’s lines, the lance captain bellowed a terrified warning.
As he grappled the agonized question of whether or not to rein up, he heard, close at hand, the dissonant scrape of a blade yanked clear of a bind. There came no following chime in riposte. The mist cloaked a field draped in terrible silence, ripped across by advancing hoof beats.
One man would be down. Not knowing which of the two fighters had fallen posed his lancers a lethal danger.
The troop captain shouted the order to halt. He dragged his mount, sliding, on to its haunches, only to feel the reins give way in his hands. He yelled for back-up, already too late. Emerged from the fog, a shadow wearing the king’s falcon surcoat had sliced the strap leather clean through. While the captain rocked, off balance, and clawed to grasp mane, an iron grip closed over his wrist and jerked him headlong from the saddle.
Spun, reeling, then thrust with brute force to the ground, he fell sprawling across a limp body.
‘Stanch his wound!’ snapped a voice from the air just above him.
Stunned breathless, the lance captain realized the sodden, warm bundle beneath him was none else but the crown’s first commander.
‘Taskin!’ He groped, felt the hot gush of blood drench his hands. ‘Merciful powers, he’s killed you!’
Yet the commander’s tortured breathing rasped on. The blue eyes stayed open, demanding. Alive, he still fought. The strong flood of bleeding affirmed a vitality fast ebbing with every rushed heartbeat. ‘Taskin, hang on! We’ll fetch Jussoud.’
Yet the toll of inflicted damage wrecked hope. The lance captain snatched the long hem of his surcoat in desperate fingers, and crushed wadded cloth to the gash that had all but severed the commander’s right arm at the shoulder. Then he shouted to order his company. ‘Grigori, Mistan, to me! I have Taskin. He’s down and in need of a field dressing! You others, ride! The traitor’s on foot, running east!’
Through the mazing impediment of mist-cloaked stakes, amid confusion and yells of disbelief, the lance company wheeled and gave chase. The two men singled out spun their horses and came. They stripped off their surcoats with hurried hands, and took over the grim task of bandaging. Taskin shivered, not lucid, then lay slack and chilled. While day brightened the fog to a tissue of silver, the surge of his pulse turned erratic and shallow.
‘Powers that be damn that murdering desert-bred!’ Mistan cursed in frustration. ‘We can’t lose the commander, not now!’
‘We won’t,’ murmured Grigori, determined. Against daunting odds, he wiped scarlet hands and bent to the grim work of necessity.
Beneath his frantic efforts, the laboured draw of Taskin’s breathing sawed on, the rushed blood flow contained by hard pressure. While the pound of galloping hoof beats receded, and men’s shouts diminished with distance, the ugly, deep wound was strapped in tight bindings.
‘Stay with him. Don’t quit! Mistan, go. Get Jussoud down here fast as possible.’ The lance captain left the fate of his fallen commander in Grigori’s capable hands, and plunged into the white pall of mist. He caught his loose horse, unbuckled both stirrups, then fixed the stripped leathers to the bit rings to replace the slashed ends of his reins. Remounted, he charged in pursuit of his company, heartset to ride down the criminal foreigner who had spurned his crown oath.
He found bodies, first off: three fallen riders cut all but in two, and past help, where they sprawled in pooled blood and the stink of rent bowels. The steaming, spilled viscera flung over drenched grasses became graphic evidence of the violent stroke that had dropped them. Lashed to wild rage, the lance captain raked his mount with spurred heels. He pelted ahead through the cotton-thick mist. Across the verge of the tourney field, he crashed into a stand of woods, a brush-choked windbreak that bordered a village steading of hamlets and farmland. The next lancer he encountered was limping on foot. He reined in and called him by name. ‘Ebron! Where’s that fugitive desert-bred?’
‘Gone for the low road, flat out like a fox. The pace he’s set’s likely to run the horse underneath him to blazes.’ The lancer managed the rest in harsh gasps, his forearm pressed against four cracked ribs from the drubbing blow that had felled him. ‘Kills like a fiend. Nobody gets near him. He ducked under Kevir’s lance, the damned spider. And he’s riding that ugly hammerhead chestnut. Our horses know that brute’s heels much too well. Spurs or not, the creatures refused to close in, or stand their staunch ground when we cornered him.’
‘Your mount?’ snapped the captain.
‘Dead,’ Ebron said, heartsick and furious. ‘Slaughtered from under me like worthless meat. I was lucky not to be crushed as she crumpled.’
‘How many of ours are left standing?’ the lance captain snapped.
‘At best count?’ Ebron’s voice broke. ‘Maybe none. Under mist, we’re blind targets. The murdering creature still wears the king’s surcoat. He can’t be marked out unless he’s on top of us, and nobody realized until much too late: he carries a desertman’s blowpipe and darts, and shoots tips that are certainly poisoned.’
‘Go back!’ cried the lance captain. ‘Take Grigori’s horse and ride for the garrison. I want reinforcements. Trackers and dogs. Get a runner to Highgate. Have Bennent send archers. Mistan’s already gone for Jussoud to do what he can to save Taskin.’
‘You’re pressing ahead?’ Ebron asked, his concern overriding the misery of grief and the seizing pain as his chest cramped.
‘No choice for it.’ The lance captain wheeled his mount onwards, his last words hurled over his shoulder. ‘The desert-bred wretch has now shown his true coat. I’ll enlist help from Devall’s guard, if need be, and see him chased down like hazed vermin.’ A prodigy blessed with keen judgement, Vensic had Jedrey confined under house arrest, with four unflappable garrison men dispatched to stand by his door as enforcement. Then he sent a messenger sprinting to Cade, bearing the summary report of the night watch’s worrisome developments.
That insightful forethought brought the day sergeant in early. He strode through the keep gate, his sheathed sword in hand, along with the belt that had not yet fastened his billowing surcoat. Though his mood seemed disgruntled, only the foolish presumed that the same disarray ever clouded his mind in a crisis.
The guard lancer, Ebron, encountered this fact at first hand, arrived aching and hot from his savage ride in from the tourney field. Used to Taskin’s brisk handling, he delivered a terse account of Mykkael’s defection. Then, lulled by Cade’s laconic quiet, he tried imposing his lance captain’s demands for trackers and dogs, and armed search parties.
‘Soldier,’ Cade stated, unmoved as fixed stone, ‘this is Lowergate’s garrison. By rank and crown standing, I am the watch officer. If Mykkael is disgraced, I don’t see lawful discharge. If Taskin fell to his sword, who stood witness?’
The Highgate man stiffened in outraged disbelief. ‘Powers preserve!’ He suppressed a pained cough, his discomfort made worse by the fumes from the garrison cook’s insane practice of burning evergreen under his stewpot. ‘Are you daring to shield a proved felon? Most of my mounted company are struck down! Three were just gutted by your murdering desertman’s sword. Three others lie paralysed, dart-shot. I’ve got broken ribs, at your captain’s hand. His was the blow that unhorsed me. If that’s not firm evidence, you all risk your necks as a sorcerer’s willing collaborators.’
Sergeant Cade sheathed the knife he had just inspected for sharpness; went on to fasten the baldric that hung his well-used, classic broadsword. ‘But Mykkael’s no sorcerer. Quite the opposite, in fact.’
Ebron sat, shocked, by that quiet delivery. The wardroom bench was too hard to ease him, and the noise of the dawn watch arriving, too disruptive to let him field setback with equanimity. ‘You’ve been duped by witchery,’ he accused, his voice rising.
‘You’re an expert with spell lines? How amazing. Where in Sessalie did you find the experience?’ Bald, stolid Cade stared Ebron down. He seemed not to care that any man in the garrison might overhear such a sensitive confrontation. ‘Before you spout off your pig-ignorant hysterics, you might wait to see how Captain Bennent weighs up the facts.’
‘Mykkael has fought sorcerers three times before this,’ Vensic filled in from the sidelines. He stepped back, making way as the cook’s boy shoved past, arms laden with more fronds of cedar. ‘He’s taught us the means to lay down tight banishings, and left instructions to safeguard this keep. Has the guard above Highgate taken similar precautions? No? Then who’s to say, but an expert, that your high council, and even your lance captain, weren’t suborned?’
Ebron shoved to his feet, drawing stares from the men who snatched breakfast before they marched out for duty. ‘I have comrades cut dead! Some were wretchedly poisoned. And Taskin’s down, gravely hurt with a wound that might kill him, or worse, cripple his sword arm past mending.’
Cade took that ugly news in stiff stride. ‘Vensic will appoint a task squad to bear litters. They’ll take up your fallen and assist with the living. Oh, yes,’ he resumed, before Ebron’s hackled startlement. ‘We’ve been well versed, and by Mykkael himself. Your dart-shot companions could pull through and survive. Not every nerve poison is fatal, and of those that are, all but the worst ones have antidotes.’
The lancer’s enraged protests were strangled mid-word, as Sergeant Cade gave the matter his adamant dismissal. ‘You’ll have a fresh horse to ride up to Highgate. Make your report in due order. Until Captain Bennent responds with a direct command, my obligation to the crown of Sessalie is quite clear. Every man in this garrison will secure the city gates. If, as you say, Captain Mykkael’s a turncoat, he’s already outside and running. Inside keep walls, the safety of the king and his lawful subjects must claim my highest priority.’
Cade called for a groom to saddle a remount. Next, Ebron was hustled off to the stables, still viciously fuming, his arms clamped to brace his cracked ribs.
For one stricken moment, amid the purposeful racket brought on by the change in the guard, Vensic and Sergeant Cade shared a deep glance of frustration.
The older man, as senior officer, was the first one to speak. ‘Your take and mine would appear to agree.’
Vensic’s frown remained grim. His reply rang with venomous irony. ‘That Taskin’s not dead outright must mean that Mykkael thought the guard was misguided, and not suborned by the enemy. He would have counted the princess’s safety over everything else. How much time can you give him? And how long do we have, before we might face a sorcerer attacking our flank?’
Cade rubbed his pink head, uneasy as he measured the desperate pitfalls that mired the course of the future. ‘I can send out green trackers. Mykkael won’t be found right away, at least by any of ours. If Devall’s men ride, they won’t know the country, and they’ll be several hours behind him. No more can be done, beyond minding the walls. Here’s acting orders, on behalf of this garrison. You’ll accompany the litter-borne lancers past Highgate. Find Bennent. Be sure, if you can, that Taskin stays under warded protection. The commander alone holds the power to muzzle the guard, and unconscious, he’s desperately vulnerable.’
‘I’m away,’ Vensic answered, cued at last by the nod from his staffer that his picked squad of bearers were assembled and ready to march. ‘Stay firm. We’ll survive this.’
The careful, strong sergeant who handled the day watch arose, all his gear set to rights, and his manner as stern as forged iron. ‘Powers keep you close, man, and save your damned prayers. It’s your captain’s survival that’s cast into jeopardy. The only way he can clear his name, now, is to deliver King Isendon’s daughter alive, and keep faith that the crown doesn’t fall in his absence.’
Flat on his belly in dew-drenched brush, Mykkael crumpled up the tail of his surcoat and muffled the frantic rasp of his breathing. He had two darts left. Around him, the mist swirled in heavy white billows, that soon would disperse under sunlight. His bad knee shot fire down the nerves of his leg. Without the chestnut just turned loose as decoy, he had no chance at all of outrunning the lance captain’s rabid pursuit.
Worse still, Taskin’s sword had left him well blooded. An ugly stab wound punctured his thigh. His right knuckles were opened, a surface gash that promised to stiffen like vengeance as swelling impaired the tendons. Altogether too many hurts marred the focus of his attention.
Eyes shut, shaking through the whiplash reaction from use of his barqui’ino reflexes, Mykkael strangled back the distraction of grief. He could not change fate, must not torment himself with the useless wish, that the commander’s skilled swordplay might have left him one opening for a less drastic response. Remorse did not ease the demands of necessity. Ahead, Mykkael measured the daunting odds set against Princess Anja’s survival.
Behind, first of the unpardonable string of casualties, the crown’s most loyal defender was down with a crippling wound, and in peril of losing his life.
Stretched out in damp leaves, the desert-bred captain marshalled the cold force of his discipline. He breathed until his raced panting and pulse rate subsided. Subservient to his mind, his stilled body melded into the natural landscape. Overhead, a foraging sparrow flitted through interlaced branches. Patient as a stalker, Mykkael eased the cloth away from his face. He grasped the blow tube, then drew out his last darts. These had been simply fashioned, no more than a tinker’s needle fixed into a dowel plug, with a wisp of fletching attached. Since the sparrow showed no sign of alarm, he snatched the moment to his advantage. With the needle of one dart used as a stylus, he scratched a row of small characters into the wood stock of the other. Chance stayed in his favour. His tremors had steadied enough to allow his rushed hand to stay legible.
Then he dipped the point of the marked dart into the phial of poison tucked into the flap of his scrip. No instant too soon; after he loaded the blow tube, the sparrow spread slate wings and flew. Mykkael waited, listening. This thicket masked him like countless others, snatched as havens in enemy territory. As he had through defence of the Efandi princess, he sensed the live thrum of a sorcerer’s lines course through the earth and the air. That uncanny, sawing awareness flicked and snapped at his sensitized nerve ends. Mykkael held, touched by witch thoughts, and racked into sweat by the brushed sense of Anja’s raw fear.
Too late for regret that high council politics had sparked the fire to precipitate crisis: his choice to escape for her Grace’s survival was a cruel, two-edged bind that must raise the stakes and cause Sessalie’s enemies to unmask.
The garrison, the royal guard and the failing old king would all too likely become torn apart by that consequence.
Mykkael strangled the ghosts of old sorrows, along with new ones that cut him as fiercely. As he once had, bound by Prince Al-Syn’s death wish, he took charge under ruthless priority. He shifted his breathing, as he had trained, and suspended his mind, a heartbeat removed from the primal state of trance that would unleash his volatile reflexes.
The crackle of disturbed brush that had startled the bird approached the thicket, moving uphill. An equine snort tagged the determined last guardsman, pursuing his quarry, alone. Mykkael poised the blow tube against his lips. His motionless body went nerveless. Fixated, he watched the drift of the mist.
The lancer came on as a stalking shadow, blurring the gapped trunks of the aspens. Mykkael hung back. Shoot too soon, and his dart might bounce off the man’s armour, or snarl amid the bunched folds of surcoat or cloak. The desert-bred waited, unmoving, until the horse was all but on top of him, and the man’s florid face plainly showed through the film of the fog-bank.
The mind, stripped of reason, recorded details: fair moustache, blue eyes, a lance captain’s insignia above the crown’s falcon blazon on the breast. Highgate ignorant, or else sheltered by parade ground arrogance, the officer had couched his pennoned lance forward, ready to charge. The hunter lying in ambush weighed out the pitiless odds, knowing the unwieldy length of the weapon would hamper the horse’s instinctive evasion. Attuned into passionless, barqui’ino reflex, Mykkael spat the dart at the optimal moment.
The lancer flinched, slapped his neck where the sting bit. That unthinking response drove the needle point home. Not entirely foolish, as he reeled in his saddle, he reined left, towards the source of attack.
Moving already, Mykkael launched from cover, the snatched length of a stick deployed like a short staff between his spread fists. He hammered the braced wood into the rider’s upper arm, backed by the hurled weight of his body.
Shocked nerves threw the lancer’s muscles into spasm. He toppled, while the horse kited sideways and bolted, emptying him from his saddle. Mykkael pressed his fallen prey flat in the bed of soaked leaves. Throughout the bucking throes of locked struggle, he jammed his palm over the dart embedded in the lance captain’s neck. The moment the rider’s downed bulk ceased from thrashing, he eased up. He jerked out the needle, and left the point nipped like a pin through the collar of the man’s surcoat.
‘Mehigrannia forgive,’ Mykkael whispered, then arose, skinned moss and dead leaves stuck to his gore-splashed surcoat. ‘Let Jussoud find you in time.’
Campaign warfare had tempered all of his skills. Sessalie’s guard scarcely tested his ruthless experience. Eight men down had bought him the narrowest interval to outpace the roused wrath of a sorcerer. Mykkael recovered the fallen lance, used the stout shaft to brace his bad knee. Later, if he lived, he could attend to the puncture Taskin’s sword had jabbed through the meat of his leg. For now, stark necessity forced him to take flight. If he could, he would have to catch the loose horse, and use it to lay a false trail.
The morning mist lifted. While the valleys lay cloaked, the shimmering snow of the peaks etched a flawless blue sky, and cleared sunlight streamed into lace-curtained windows. Rainbow refractions shimmered through a crystal vase of cut flowers, except as the shadow of Taskin’s daughter swept past. Her fretful pacing had not eased since Jussoud had arrived to discover his promised conference at breakfast would be deferred. Though her teething infant at last slept in peace, the young mother could not bear to settle.
Not after seeing the healer’s anguish on the moment he learned Commander Taskin had ridden out before dawn with a sealed writ for Captain Mykkael’s arrest.
The household had been upended by the nomad’s agitated demand for a horse.
‘Bridle only!’ he had shouted after the servant who raced for the stables to comply. ‘Don’t waste one second for a cloth or a saddle!’
When, minutes later, the clatter of hooves by the entry informed of the horse’s arrival, Jussoud had given the daughter’s alarmed questions no satisfactory answer. ‘Just pray to your trinity that I’m not too late.’ He squeezed her hand, an inadequate comfort, then thanked the plump steward, and breathlessly sprinted outside. The sleepy groom who led in the gelding was shown an astonishing display of steppeland horsemanship as Jussoud vaulted astride in a whirl of silk and pitched the horse to a scorching gallop.
Early morning wore past. Under the dappled shade of the cherry trees, the great house lay in wait, secluded from the palace precinct and the wildfire eruption of rumour.
The knock, when it came, was loud and direct, not the tap of a genteel visitor. Too anxious for restraint, Taskin’s daughter entered the carpeted hall as the steward opened the door. Outside stood a distressed man-at-arms, wearing the plain linen surcoat of the garrison. He did not shove inside, or display uncouth manners, but bent his blond head and broke his news with straightforward gravity. ‘Your king’s first commander has been grievously wounded, a sword cut in the right shoulder. He’s alive, though not conscious. Jussoud is bringing him up in a litter. I’m here to ask, can a room be made ready? With him, as well, are four fallen lancers, including their ranking officer. For expediency, is it possible to ask whether the healer can treat them together under this roof?’
The door steward deferred as Taskin’s daughter stepped forward. Her blue eyes reflected her terrified anxiety. Only the steel of her family heritage sustained her steady reply. ‘You require four additional beds? The servants will provide for the wounded as necessary.’ Her graceful gesture excused the steward, who departed on hurried feet.
The lady was left with the Lowergate messenger, to master the hurdles of courtesy. ‘Taskin would make you welcome inside. In his place, what can I offer to ease you?’
The young officer surveyed her imploring expression, then answered the cry of her heart. ‘I have seen your father. He is in the best hands. I’m sorry I can’t offer more hope.’
Tears trembled, unshed, on her lower lashes, though her remarkable voice scarcely wavered. ‘You are called—?’
‘Vensic, my lady’ He came in, braced her arm, and eased her into a nearby chair. ‘I am here on garrison Sergeant Cade’s direct order to stand guard by Lord Taskin’s bedside. Will you allow me?’
She stared at him with her father’s eyes, the granite behind unmistakable. ‘You are Mysh kael’s man, Vensic? And Mysh kael’s sword struck my sire down?’ She had not missed the demeaning detail, that the tall man before her was weaponless. Assumption followed, that the Highgate guards must have disarmed him as a precaution. ‘Why should my father require protection from such as you, in the security of his own house?’
The officer gave his pained effort at truth. ‘The one man who might have answered that question is now set on the run as a fugitive.’
She said, ‘Who are Sessalie’s enemies, then? Has her Grace fallen foul of a sorcerer?’
‘I fear so, my lady’ Where her father had been haggardly reticent to speak, Vensic faced worse without flinching. ‘Men have died out of ignorance, with the king’s council backing the wrong side to fulfil their self-righteous need for a scapegoat.’
‘Bold words, with no proof,’ said the lady, her lace collar trembling to the raced beat of her heart. ‘Bold man, to expect I should trust you.’
Vensic bowed his head. ‘You are Lord Taskin’s daughter. I am Mykkael’s loyal officer, sworn, as he is, to uphold an oath to the king. The same as your sire, you’ll have to choose.’
Her grief all but broke her. ‘If your father lay dying, how could you?’
The young garrison man looked away, anguished, all of a sudden flushed with the unease of a hamlet-born farmer thrust into a setting of titled wealth. His hobnailed boots held their stance in the hallway, heedless of the priceless carpet. ‘My lady, I could not speak for my father. His spirit already rests with the trinity. For yours, since he still clings to life, I will beg in the name of my captain. Don’t repeat the mistake that might kill him.’
Silk slid with a sudden, whispered scream as the lady covered her mouth with taut fingers. Then she gathered her courage, gripped the shreds of her dignity, and questioned with crisp asperity. ‘Jussoud was the one who sent you as messenger?’
Vensic affirmed, straitly still.
‘Then you’ll answer to Captain Bennent on the matter,’ the lady said in conclusion. ‘In the event of Mysh kael’s defection, or in his blameless absence, the Highgate’s second in command becomes your acting officer.’ She arose, forewarned by the uproar outside that the litter-borne wounded were arriving. ‘For now, I expect you’ll stay busy as the rest of us, nursing your desertman’s rough handiwork.’
The front door cannoned open. Bearers streamed in, directed at once by the cohort of house servants sent by the steward to accommodate them. Jussoud’s towering frame ploughed through their midst, the sleek tail of his braid striking as midnight amid the sunny preponderance of towheads. He saw Vensic first, then the strained presence of Taskin’s daughter.
His compassion answered her desperate composure without a second’s delay. ‘My lady, your father still lives. The litter that carries him follows, more gently. Join the bearers, as you wish, even walk at his side. He’s not conscious. Please don’t try to rouse him. He’s at worst risk from blood loss, and must be protected from jostling.’
As Taskin’s daughter broke and ran in a flutter of marigold skirts, Jussoud’s next order was addressed to Vensic. ‘Sergeant! I want this household set under the same protections your captain detailed for the garrison.’
‘Done!’ Vensic surged forward, collared a servant, and listed his urgent requirements.
Milling chaos resolved into industrious order. The stricken were installed in the parquet ballroom that Taskin kept unfurnished to practise his sword forms. The steward had already brought cots from the servants’ wing. Staff from the kitchen trooped in with braziers and pots. These were trailed by three red-cheeked laundresses, bearing the linens the housekeeper’s thrifty eye had culled from the closets for bandaging.
Candles were lit. Piled blankets were unfolded. Hands shifted the prostrate men from the litters, while Taskin’s taciturn valet gathered cloaks and unbuckled spurs, and pried off four pairs of boots.
Jussoud himself knelt at the lance captain’s side, dictating symptoms to the house’s elderly secretary, who set fast-paced notes down in ink. When Vensic returned, wafting a torch of lit cedar, the huge nomad looked up, his hand still clasped to the guardsman’s slack wrist, and his grey eyes sharply beseeching. ‘Which nerve poison did your captain use on his darts?’
Chilled despite the close heat of the flames, Vensic recognized the flaccid pallor of a man unmistakably dying. ‘Mykkael knew them all.’ Undermined by a surge of terrible doubt, he forced the discouraging answer. ‘How can I guess? The fast-acting ones were most fatal.’
Jussoud swore, turned back to his work, and addressed two hovering houseboys. ‘Get this man stripped. The last hope I have is to force him to sweat. The effort won’t save him. But heated towels may ease the rictus that’s starting. He surely can’t die any faster.’
The healer’s rapt face showed compassionate sorrow, seared through by self-poisoned regret. Even still, his care did not falter. Working to loosen the victim’s tight collar, the nomad encountered the minuscule dart, deliberately pinned through the fabric. ‘That torch! Vensic, hurry! Bring the light closer.’
Under the flood of illumination, the line of tiny characters showed clearly, scratched into the stained wood of the shaft.
‘What do you make of this?’ Jussoud’s urgent gesture invited the secretary to lend his considered opinion.
The wispy man traced the letters, lips moving. ‘Fane Street.’ He blinked and looked up, his pouched face apologetic. ‘But I don’t know the foreign symbol that follows.’
Vensic expelled his stopped breath, hope revived. ‘A physician from Fane Street sometimes serves the garrison. He could read that, I’m sure! Powers preserve! You’re probably holding Mykkael’s coded key to the antidote.’
‘I know that fellow. He’s a worldly, learned man.’ Jussoud surged to his feet, his voice raised like a storm over the bustle of activity. ‘I need a groom with your fastest horse for an errand down to the Falls Gate!’