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  The Assassin's Edge

  ( Tales of Einarinn - 5 )

  Juliet E. Mckenna

  THE UNKNOWN TERROR

  After a long winter spent in the Kellarin colony, the crafty and beautiful Livak is anxious to move on. Now an opportunity is on the horizon. The reclamation of a lost southern settlement is in the offing, but those involved, Livak included, must await the spring arrival of the first ship from the mainland — an event that will never take place. Unbeknownst to all, the vital trading route to Tormalin is no longer secure. A dire new threat to the colony's survival has arisen. A final battle of strength, cunning and courage challenges Livak and her devoted swordsman-lover Ryshad, one that will force them to take up arms to confront a merciless, many-faceted evil.

  The Assassin’s Edge

  The Fifth Tale Of Einarinn

  Juliet E. McKenna

  For Marion and Michael, Corinne and Helen, Rae and with fond memories, George.

  So much support, in so many ways, for so many years.

  Acknowledgements

  The truth always bears repeating, so once again, I am grateful to Steve, Mike, Sue, Helen, Robin, Lisa, Penny and Rachel, for ideas, criticism, encouragement and forbearance over ever-extending book loans. In addition to her wider contribution, Liz deserves special mention for serving as on-call plants-woman as does Louise for the medical notes. Thank you, Tanaqui, for the photos, most useful and much appreciated. Angus, thanks indeed for reminding me about Otrick’s ring.

  The support network continues to evolve and Gill and Mike have proved true friends time and again. As always, I remain indebted to Ernie and Betty for their help beating the tyranny of the working diary over the domestic one.

  I couldn’t wish for better than the teams at Orbit, in sales, publicity and most of all, editorially. Sincerest thanks go to Tim, Simon, Ben and Julie, Kirsteen, Adrian, Richard, Bob and Nigel. There isn’t space for me to list all the booksellers who’ve impressed me with their professionalism, nor yet all the readers who’ve brightened up my day with a few lines of appreciation, either personally or in a review. That doesn’t mean I’m not grateful, because I most certainly am.

  Finally, I would like to thank all those curators and custodians of museums, stately homes and assorted castles who’ve answered my questions, offered up fascinating extra snippets and been intrigued rather than baffled when I explain just what it is that I do.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Notice from the Prefecture of the University of Col

  To all Resident Mentors and Scholars

  By long tradition festivals at the turn of every season are a time for this university to welcome visitors from other seats of learning. We are accustomed to do so with every courtesy and luxury afforded by this city’s extensive trade, our contribution to the commerce that is Col’s lifeblood. Students and scholars alike mingle with visitors and townsfolk, broadening their experience of life. Accordingly, the Prefects of this university will not tolerate any repetition of the incidents disgracing this most recent spring Equinox.

  In choosing a life of study, we all suffer accusations of idleness, and rebuke for perceived failure to produce anything of tangible worth to the unscholarly mind. We rise above such taunts, secure in the knowledge that learning outlasts any achievements of merchants and architects, artisans and their guilds. All of which tolerance is rendered worthless when students, scholars and even several mentors are clapped in irons by the Watch for brawling with visitors from Vanam’s university in taverns frequented by common dockers.

  Worse, word now circulates that these arguments were not over money, some business disagreement or a lady’s favours, but over points of scholarship. This university has become an object of ridicule among the populace. The Prefecture considers this an offence graver than all of the damage done around the city. Broken windows, doors and wine bottles may be redeemed with gold. A reputation once tarnished may never recover its lustre.

  To obviate any recurrence of such offences, the Prefecture offers the following for the immediate consideration of mentors and scholars and the judicious guidance of students.

  Denying Temar D’Alsennin is who he claims to be is as irrational as refusing to accept the accounts of that restoration of him and his people through the offices of Archmage Planir of Hadrumal. It is equally nonsensical to claim this is all falsehood in service of some all encompassing yet curiously ill-defined conspiracy involving the Archmage, the Mentors of Vanam and even Emperor Tadriol himself Such foolishness does this university’s standing immeasurable harm.

  However, and notwithstanding the overweening arrogance of certain scholars of Vanam, the return of Temar D’Alsennin to Tormalin will not answer one hundredth of the questions as to why the Old Empire collapsed. He cannot tell us why the dethronement of Nemith the Reckless and Last precipitated the Chaos rather than orderly transition to a new Emperor and dynasty. D’Alsennin’s attempt to found his colony has no bearing on any of these events. It was a minor undertaking compared to other ventures the Old Empire was then engaged upon, most notably the ultimately fruitless conquest of Gidesta. That this colony was of little or no consequence to the Convocation of Princes is plain. Rather than divert resources to helping D’Alsennin, the Annals record every House turning its efforts to quelling secessionist revolts in Caladhria and opportunist uprisings in Ensaimin.

  D’Alsennin can offer only a limited account from a very partial perspective as a young and untried esquire of a minor House long distanced from the councils of the powerful. He had already crossed the ocean to Kel Ar’Ayen before the final, crucial years of Nemith’s reign and had long been rendered insensible by enchantment before the most violent period of warfare between the Houses of Aleonne and Modrical. While his reminiscences may offer some interesting sidelights on those momentous events, they are insignificant in the wider context of the established historical record.

  Granted, it seems likely that the as yet only partially explained deterioration in the usages of aetheric magic contributed to the collapse of the Empire. Judging the impact of such a blow, set alongside the attested assaults of famine, civil strife and the recurrent devastation of the Crusted Pox will certainly be a fruitful area for study. Similarly, a full assessment of the role of this aetheric magic in the governance of the Old Empire must now be made. We of Col should not be laggard in undertaking such enquiries. We need not concern ourselves with boasts from Vanam that their mentors’ links with Planir’s expeditions to Kel Ar’Ayen give their scholars unassailable superiority tn such studies.

  Col is the main port through which travellers to and from Hadrumal pass. We should set aside our habitual reserve in dealing with wizardry and invite mages to refresh themselves in our halls and join in our debates. We may usefully encourage our alchemists to correspond with those wizards studying the properties of the natural elements. This university was founded by those scholars who salvaged all they could from the burning of this city’s ancient temple library during the Chaos. It is now evident that such temples were centres of aetheric learning in the Old Empire. Resident scholars and mentors must seek out such valuable lore hidden in our own archives. We can claim more peripatetic scholars than Vanam and many now tutor the sons and daughters of Tormalin Houses as well as the scions of Lescari dukes and Caladhria’s barons. All such archives may yield invaluable material for further study and this prefecture is writing to enlist the aid of all entitled to wear this university’s silver ring.

  Rather than wasting time and effort in vain attempts to prove this university’s supremacy over Vanam through fisticuffs, it is the duty of every mentor, scholar and student to establish our preeminence through the ineluctable authority of our scholarship.

&n
bsp; Vithrancel, Kellarin,

  15th of Aft-Spring, in the Fourth Year of Tadriol

  the Provident

  In that instant of waking, I had no idea where I was. A crash of something breaking had stirred me and the muttered curses that followed took my sleep-mazed mind back to the house of my childhood but as I opened my eyes, nothing seemed familiar. Insistent daylight was entering unopposed through a door in an entirely unexpected wall. Come to that, when had I last slept with a heedlessly open bedroom door?

  Wakefulness burned through the mist of sleep. I wasn’t back in Ensaimin, for all that someone outside was muttering in the accents of my childhood. This was half a world away, clear across an ocean most folk would swear was impassable. This was Vithrancel, newly named first settlement of Kellarin, a colony still finding its feet after a year of digging in its heels and setting its shoulder to hacking a livelihood out of the wilderness.

  Well, whatever was going on outside, it could happen without me. I wasn’t getting out of bed for anything short of a full-blown riot. Turning over, I pulled the linen sheet up around my shoulders, pushing my cheek into the welcoming down of the pillow, plump with my spoils from the festival slaughter of geese and hens. How many more days up to my elbows in chicken guts would it take before I had a feather bed, I wondered idly.

  No, it was no good; I was awake. Sighing, I sat up and brushed the hair out of my eyes to survey the little room. I’d slept in better, in stone-built inns with drugget laid to mute the scuff of boots on polished floorboards, tapestries on walls to foil stray draughts and prices just as elaborate, never mind the extra copper spent to keep the potmen and chambermaids sweet. Then again, I’d slept in worse, down-at-heel taverns where you were lucky to share a bed with strangers and picking up whatever vermin they carried was all part of the price to pay. The most wretched inn was better than a freezing night beneath a market hall’s arches, giving up my last copper to persuade a watchman to look the other way.

  I went to open the shutters to the bright midmorning sun. No, I wasn’t about to complain about a warm, clean room, floor newly strewn with the first herbs of spring. The breeze was cool on my bare skin and I looked for a clean shirt among clothes and trifles piled on my fine new clothes press. Ryshad had bought it for me with three days trading his skills with plumb line, mallet and chisel to a nearby carpenter. My beloved might have decided against his father’s trade in the end but he’d not forgotten his lessons. I really should tidy up, I thought, as I sat on his old travel chest pulling on my breeches.

  The bright leather of a newly bound book caught my eye among the clutter on my press. It was a collection of ancient songs that I’d found the year before, full of hints of ancient magic. In an optimistic ballad for children, there’d have been some charm within it to summon sprites to do the housework for me. I smiled, not for the first time, at the notion. On the other hand, any number of darker lyrics warned of the folly of meddling with unseen powers, lest the unwise rouse the wrath of the Eldritch Kin. I’m too old to believe in blameless strangers turning into blue-grey denizens of the shadow realms and turning on those who dishonoured them but there were other reasons for me to shun some of the more tempting promises of Artifice. If I used aetheric tricks and charms to read an opponent’s thoughts or see their throw of the runes ahead of time, I’d blunt skills that had seen me through more perils than Ryshad knew of.

  Chinking noises outside drew me to the window instead. A stout woman in practical brown skirts bent to retrieve shards of earthenware scattered on the track between our house’s ramshackle vegetable garden and the neater preserve over the way. A spill of liquid darkened the earth at her feet.

  “Dropped something, Zigrida?” I leant my elbows on the sill. She straightened up, looking around for who had hailed her as she brushed a hand clean on her dress. I waved.

  “Livak, good morning.” A smile creased her weathered face agreeably. “It’s Deglain standing the loss.” She sniffed cautiously at the base of the pitcher she’d been stacking the other pieces in. “It smells like the rotgut that Peyt and his cronies brew.”

  I frowned. “It’s not like Deg to come home drunk, not at this time of the morning.”

  “Swearing fouler than a cesspit and throwing away good crocks.” Zigrida’s voice darkened with disapproval. “But he’s a mercenary when all’s said and done.”

  “Not like Peyt,” I objected. Granted Deglain had come to Kellarin paid to stick his sword into whoever might wish this colony venture ill, but a year and more on he’d returned to skills learned in some forgotten youth and half the colonists simply knew him as a tinsmith.

  Zigrida grunted as she tucked a wisp of grey hair beneath the linen kerchief tied around her head. “I can’t see any more pieces.”

  “There aren’t many passing hooves to pick them up,” I pointed out.

  “That’s not the point, my girl.” Zigrida looked up at me, shading warm brown eyes with an age-spotted and work-hardened hand that brushed the lace trimming her kerchief with a hint of frivolity. “It’s time you were out of bed, my lady sluggard. You can get a bucket of water to wash this away.” She scraped a stoutly booted foot across the damp ground before glancing towards the steadily retreating trees that fringed the settlement. “I don’t care to know what the scent of strong liquor might tempt out of that wildwood.”

  I grinned. “At once, mistress.” I’ll take Zigrida’s rebukes as long as a twinkle in her eye belies her scolding and besides, doing her a favour always wins me some goodwill.

  Tidying up could wait. I dragged the sheets across the mattress brushing a few stray hairs to the floor, bright auburn from my head, curled black from Ryshad’s. Our bed was a solid construction of tight-fitted wood finished with golden beeswax and strung with good hemp rope. Ryshad wasn’t about to sleep on some lumpy palliasse or a box bed folded out of a settle. Lower servants slept on such things, not men chosen for preferment out of all those swearing service to the Sieur D’Olbriot, nigh on the richest and most influential of all Tormalin’s princes.

  Then I looked rather doubtfully at the sheets. The mattress was still fragrant with bedstraw gathered in the golden days of autumn but the linen wanted washing, if not today then soon. I had a nice wash house out behind the house but spending the day stoking the fire to boil the water in the copper and poking seething sheets with a stick was scant entertainment. Before I’d come here, laundry was always someone else’s concern as I’d moved from inn to inn, earning my way gambling and with the occasional less reputable venture.

  I pulled the top sheet free of the blanket and dumped it on the battered chest at the foot of the bed. Ryshad stowed his possessions inside it with neatness drilled into him from ten or more years of barracks life. He deserved a clothes press like mine, I decided. Ryshad’s help had set Kerse up with a better workshop than any of the other woodsmen of the colony. They were all turning to joinery now they could spare time from shaping joists and beams. Now spring Equinox had opened the sailing seasons, Kerse needed to consider the markets for work this fine right across the countries that had once made up the Tormalin Empire. I knew quality when I saw it; in a girlhood seeming even more distant than the lands we’d left behind, I’d been a housemaid polishing up prized pieces not worked with a fifth the skill of our new bed.

  But Zigrida had asked me to fetch some water. I’d better do that before thinking about laundry. I abandoned the sheet and went down the cramped stair boxed into a corner of the kitchen that took up the back half of our little cruck-framed house. Using the belt knife laid on a stool with the jerkin I’d discarded the night before, I carved a slice from the ham hanging by the chimneybreast, savouring the hint of juniper and sweet briar that had gone into the curing. Chewing, I went in search of a bucket in the tiny scullery that Ryshad had screened off from the kitchen. I ignored the flagon of small beer keeping cool in the stone sink my beloved had painstakingly crafted. If I was going to the well, I’d make do with water. Ale was never my first choice for
breakfast, nor Ryshad’s, but the winter had seen supplies of wine from Tormalin exhausted.

  As I opened the kitchen door and crossed the rudimentary cobbles Ryshad had laid to get us dryshod to the gate, a girl came running up to Deglain’s house, across the track. It was twin to our own, sunlight white on lime wash still fresh over the lath and plaster solidly walling the timber frame. It had been interesting watching them being built; Ryshad had explained exactly how the weight of one part leant on another that pulled something else, the tension keeping the whole house solid.

  The buttercup yellow shawl over the girl’s head gave me a moment’s pause but then I recognised the lass. “Catrice! Is everything all right?”

  She ignored me, hammering on Deglain’s door. Deg opened the door, only a crack at first. Seeing Catrice, he flung it wide and tried to fold the girl into his arms.

  She resisted his embrace with a forceful shove. “You stink!”

  Deg’s reply didn’t have the piercing clarity of Catrice’s outrage so I couldn’t make out his words but his blinking eyes and unshaven disorder were eloquent enough.

  “I’ll not sleep in the bed of any man who falls in it half dressed and full drunk,” she shrilled, hysteria sharpening her tone.

  “Do you suppose her mother knows she’s here?” Zigrida came to the fence on her side of the precisely delineated alley separating our two properties. With a whole continent to spread ourselves over, there would be none of the squabbles over boundaries that plague the higgledy-piggledy burgages of Ensaimin’s close-packed towns.

  “She’ll be none too pleased when she finds out,” I commented. Catrice was the only and much cherished daughter of one of the southern Tormalin families come to make a new life in this untamed land the year before. They were still apt to take their consequence rather too seriously for my taste. Zigrida was from the north, close to the Lescari border and, as such, considerably more down to earth.