Alliances

Kerian dragged him aside as more bolts whizzed down the hall. Behind her, Nalaryn had glimpsed the bowmen. With silent gestures, he dispatched four of his people down the side corridors to deal with them.

“You’re too bold for your own good,” Kerian told Porthios tartly. “This revolution will come to a sudden end if you stop an arrow.”

“You’re wrong. What has started cannot be stopped by a single arrow.”

He entered, striding down the center of the ornate hail, calmly examining the bas-reliefs that depicted the rise of the Qualinesti nation. The hall had been defaced by Olin’s men. Statues had heads and limbs hacked off, and the travertine floor showed deep scratches where hobnailed boots and spurs had scored the stone.

They investigated the entire palace, flushing out a few hidden bandits, who died fighting. When they reached the lord mayor’s audience hail, they found a crowd of servants huddled behind the sky-blue and gold tapestries. Kerian drove them out from concealment at sword point. There were eleven, five women and six men. All wore Olin’s livery, a dark green tabard with a triangle of silver daggers.

“Please, good lords, don’t kill us!” one quavered. “We’re humble folk pressed to duty against our will!”

Porthios would’ve dismissed them, but Kerian did not waver. Something didn’t feel right, she said. The servants could have fled at any time, and why were they still wearing Olin’s colors, unless they were supposed to be found so dressed?

She told the archers to keep them covered and grabbed the closest servant, a middle-aged woman with brindled hair. She turned the woman’s hand palm up then sniffed her sleeve.

“Kitchen. Scrubwoman,” she announced and pulled the tabard over the woman’s head. “Go on, get out.”

She repeated this performance for each human, announcing their place in the household by the marks on their hands and the smell of their clothes: baker, wine steward, scullery maid, keeper of hounds.

The sixth, a man, revealed a pair of callused palms with clean, well-trimmed nails. It didn’t take a sensitive nose to notice he was wearing scent. She laid her sword on his shoulder.

“Who are you?”

“Theydrin. Lord Olin’s valet.”

“Where is Olin?” Porthios demanded.

The man glanced at his masked captor with curiosity. “I don’t know, sir. May I go?”

In response, Kerian slashed hard across the man’s chest. His green tabard fell away, showing them a close-fitting shirt of fine mail.

“It’s Olin!” Kerian shouted, leaping back.

The fellow’s reply was to take hold of the female servant closest to him and put a curved dagger to her throat. “I’ll slit her gullet if you try to stop me!”

Porthios shrugged. “So? One less human will hardly distress me.”

“Wait.” Kerian spoke as much to the Kagonesti as to Olin. Nalaryn’s band had nocked arrows and was preparing to draw.

“Kill them both,” Porthios ordered.

Bows creaked back to full stretch. The implacable faces of the Wilder elves were too much for the bandit lord. He released his hostage. Kerian pulled her out of the way. Olin dropped his dagger and held out his hands.

“I have treasure! I’ll pay a ransom! You’ll all be rich!” he babbled.

“Treasure stolen from the people of Qualinesti.”

So saying, Porthios lifted a hand, and two of the Kagonesti loosed. They aimed low, and their arrows took Olin from opposite sides. He shrieked in agony and slumped to the ground. Another Kagonesti finished Olin with a blow from his maul. Horrified, the last weeping servants fled.

Kerian returned her blade to its sheath. “Is this how it’s to be?” she asked. “No quarter?”

“You would show mercy to the man who ordered you flayed alive?” Porthios stared up at the ornate ceiling. “Olin was a brutal killer. All murderers can expect the same. Does that trouble you?”

Kerian knelt by Olin and took his purse. It contained steel coins, several large gems rolled in a silk scarf, and a ring with a dozen iron keys. She shook the ring of keys.

“We should see what locks these open. Prison cells, or treasure rooms, as he said.”

“Free the elf prisoners. I don’t care what you do with the rest. Let the people of Bianost have his stolen hoard.”

His continuing distracted study of the ceiling caused Kerian to look up. The arched ceiling of the audience hall was covered by a mural depicting Kith-Kanan flying on Arcuballis, his famous griffon. The pair soared across a blue sky dotted here and there with puffy white clouds. The painting was well rendered, but the scene was a common one in official Qualinesti buildings. Testily, she asked whether he was enjoying the artwork.

“Very much,” he murmured. He told them of Kasanth, the councilor he’d found being tortured for not revealing the whereabouts of a royal trove.

“He said the treasure was in the sky. I think Olin was closer to it than he ever imagined,” Porthios said, pointing upward. “We must get up there.”