III
It was her own fault, Jame thought, as she sat a virtual prisoner in the Caineron's second floor guardroom.
Of course, since Ganth's fall the Caineron had tended to treat all surviving Knorth as only temporary inconveniences. That Caldane hadn't seized power yet said more about Torisen's unexpected qualities as a leader than about any slackening of Caineron ambition. Jame realized now, though, that she hadn't helped by letting Kallystine treat her all winter as a servant. No wonder these Kendar showed her so little respect.
Worse, they had brushed aside her talk of assassins as pure hysteria. What else could one expect from the crazy Knorth? Not even the mere hood of the dead boy had impressed them, looking as it did only like a blood-soaked scrap of cloth. The Caineron captain had dismissed it with a glance: "That time of month, is it?"—as if some suspicion of hers had been confirmed.
Jame had seen no point, after that, in mentioning Bane.
At least the Brandan Matriarch knew about the assassin in the arcade. Even if she didn't realize that his brethren were abroad tonight, surely she would have her guard deal with the one they had captured. How frustrating that Jame hadn't been able to tell Brenwyr about her captain, incapacitated in the night nursery. Of course, the Kendar maid knew. Perhaps even now the alarm was spreading . . . but so far she heard no sound of it.
Meanwhile, the Caineron ten-commands sent out to search for the Knorth runaway began to check back in. The first report came from the Brandan compound. The Caineron still hadn't been permitted to enter there, but a Brandan guard on the northern perimeter spoke of cadets lured away from their posts, locked on the wrong side of doors, tripped by wires, and in general victimized by tricks ranging from the silly to the malicious. Several Kendar had been slightly injured and a maid had been knocked unconscious by a tumble downstairs. It was all a damn mess, the guard had said in disgust, like an exercise in disruption or an assault by bogles.
"At least we've put a stop to that," the Caineron captain remarked, and shot a glance at Jame.
But it didn't stop.
"Lights, moving in the Ghost Walks," reported a ten-commander. "Wills-o'-the-wisp, like the old days when the Ardeth kept us out. This time, we investigated. Nothing. Ruin and shadows."
Shadows also figured in the next reports, coming mostly from the Edirr compound but spreading southward into the Danior. They seemed to be creeping everywhere, terrorizing whomever they met but as yet doing little harm. The only things which kept them out were bright lights or the wind, which had begun a restless prowl of its own inside the halls.
They're looking for me, Jame thought.
If she hadn't been in odd places all night, dodging Kallystine, the assassins would have run her down long ago. Now they were trying to flush her out. If she really was the only one at risk tonight, perhaps she had better stay in this brightly lit room, away from shadows of all sorts. Let Bane hunt the hunters, if he chose. Thanks to the Caineron, she was out of the game, safe.
But still her gloved fingertips drummed on the chair's arm, quieted themselves, and drummed again.
The captain was also beginning to lose patience. Word had come earlier that, in a final act of defiance, M'lady's servant had hanged herself with her own braid. Oddly enough, though, Kallystine seemed to blame the Knorth Jameth for all the evening's misadventures. On first hearing of Jame's capture, she had furiously demanded that the truant be delivered to her quarters, along with any instruments of torture which her guards might have on hand. The captain had blandly suggested that M'lady meet her errant charge here, on more neutral ground. This, however, Kallystine had so far refused to do. It wasn't clear to Jame who would win in such a tug-o'-war, randon Kendar or lord's daughter, training or raw power. She felt like a bone between two dogs.
Meanwhile, the captain's latest, carefully worded message had as yet gone unanswered. "What," she grumbled, "no more threats to tell daddy? Our runner must've fallen into a hole somewhere. Cadet, go see."
But it was no hole down which the messenger had tumbled.
"I found her at the foot of the privy stair, and another of those damned trip-wires at the top," the second runner reported, white-faced. "She's dead."
The captain turned on Jame with an oath, but the runner caught her sleeve, fingers leaving bloody prints.
"Ran, it wasn't the fall. Someone cut her throat."
Just then, the Tishooo found the guardroom. It flowed in past the captain and cadet, making the candle flames dance, stirring the arrases. These latter surrounded the room, enlivening it with their bright depictions of randon life, stitched in their off-duty hours by generations of Caineron guards. The hangings served the practical purpose of stopping drafts and, like most Kendar work, were peculiarly effective. Thus the Tishooo found itself trapped behind them. Jame marked its approach by the rippling of the tapestries until it slid out between two of them to tweak at her skirt.
Come out and play, it might have been saying. Come out and play.
The room had filled with sharp orders and activity, the prisoner forgotten. Jame slipped between the tapestries, edged her way behind them to the door, and darted out into the hall, still unobserved.
If she was the prime target, why this other slaying? From what she had heard, the Shadow Guild considered it unprofessional to kill without a fee. However, given the age of these would-be assassins, perhaps this was more than the settlement of an old contract: perhaps this was a blooding mission. If so, each of the thirteen might intend to claim a kill tonight in a kind of limited open season on Gothregor. Still, wouldn't they want to be sure of her before announcing their presence too openly? Logically, yes; but despite all their advantages, these were boys, off the leash for perhaps the first time, running wild. While she had sat safe in the Caineron guardroom, one of them had lost patience and bagged a cadet, not realizing how quickly the body would be found.
Damn. She had to do something about this after all.
What she did first was to descend to the ground-floor cubbyhole which Kallystine had assigned to her. If these brats liked sharp toys, she had one too . . . except that someone had beaten her to it. The tiny room had been torn apart. The Ivory Knife was gone.
DAMN.
Objects of power certainly fell into and out of her hands with unnerving frequency. Worse, if the Shadow Guild was behind this ransacking (and how unlike it to stoop to theft), it meant that someone had told the assassins exactly which out-of-the-way broom closet was hers.
Betrayal.
She remembered Ganth raving about it in the Haunted Lands keep on those nights when no one slept. The stupid Caineron, the scheming Ardeth, the ambitious Randir, the whole bloody web of friends and foes who had entangled his house in such ruin. Now, thirty-four years later, who out of that snarled past wanted his daughter dead?
She could stay here, where the hunters had already searched, or flee into the empty halls as Tieri had . . . .
Run. Hide . . . .
No. Since when had she let good sense dictate to her or hesitated to act, however stupidly?
"I'm losing myself," she said out-loud to the stranger who stood, fragmented, in a broken mirror. "I'm half lost already."
Then stop hiding, lass, she could almost hear her friend Marc say. Take off the mask.
Well, yes: Although the matriarchs had forced it on her, she had used it quite literally as a way not to face life in the Women's Halls. Behind it, she had pretended to be someone else, a nameless seeker lost in a game whose rules no one would explain. But she had been told, repeatedly, that the girl behind the mask was ignorant, clumsy, and altogether hopeless. If that was true, the assassins' work was as good as done.
Why should she make things easy for them?
Jame dropped the mask. The face in the shattered mirror looked back at her, one brow raised and the other askew. Wise Marc. So there she was after all, cockeyed as ever. Time to gird up what was left of Aerulan's skirt, braid her hair, and get on with it—quickly, before good sense returned.
Out again in the hall, she paused to listen. The Caineron quarter was beginning to seethe. The guards' harried effort to find her would be nothing compared to the cold ferocity with which they would seek their comrade's blood-price. They were a self-absorbed house, though, intent on private vengeance; so far, no general alarm had been raised. Good enough, for her present purposes.
She drew a deep breath and let it out in a loud, long whistle. The single note hung in the air like an exclamation mark, as it had in the Forecourt and again in the arcade.
Here she is! Jame was almost sure it signaled. Here, here, here!
No answer. Had the killer already left the compound?
No. There came the reply, from some distance to the east, a warbling, inquisitive note which might have been dismissed as a trick of the wind.
Where? it trilled. Where?
Here! Jame whistled again, peering down the corridor toward where moonlight flooded into it through a set of arched windows.
The question came again, closer and more complex, as if demanding further information.
A shadow started across the moon-washed flagstones, then hesitated. Jame could almost see the boyish, mere-clad figure who cast it. Because her night vision was almost certainly better than his, she stepped into the light to give him a good look. With a muffled exclamation, the shadow darted toward her. She turned and ran, quick footsteps close behind her.
Among these intruders' disadvantages was not only their night vision but also their age: what boy could resist a really good game of hare-and-hounds? Now, to whistle up the rest of the pack and then . . . and then . . . . Well, she would think of something.
The assassins had apparently looked for her first in her own room, then fanned out to search the Ghost Walks, the Brandan compound, and the Caineron. Now most of them seemed to be moving southward. Consequently, Jame raced in that direction, through the dark corridors of the Edirr and Danior, hearing first the excited whistle of her pursuer, then answering signals ahead. Each trill seemed to convey complex information—more than she could decipher on short notice. Instead, she concentrated on pinpointing the position of each whistler, down what hall, around what corner, up what stair. In her mind's eye, she saw a complete floor-plan of the halls, in far more detail than anyone could who hadn't once been obliged to memorize an entire city. She used her training now to slip past the assassins ahead as they tried to intercept her, once cutting it so close that she heard two of them collide on her heels.
From the locked doors which she passed, Jame concluded that the inmates of the halls had finally realized that something was afoot. So much the better, if it kept them out of her way. Unfortunately, the closed doors also impeded the Tishooo, which was soon left behind. A pity, since she had hoped it would make shadow-casting too risky, as it apparently had in the arcade.
At least seven of the pack were on her heels by the time she was half way through the Danior compound. She was wondering, rather breathlessly, where the rest were and what to do with the ones she had when ahead voices warned her that she was about to run into a guard patrol.
One cadet dead tonight was more than enough.
She swerved aside and plunged down a stair into the sublevels, whistling to draw her deadly tail after her. Below, she went on as quickly as she could through the unlighted passageways, forced now to rely entirely on memory to avoid running into walls.
At the end of this long corridor should be the entrance to the subterranean levels of the Jaran compound. Jame was so sure of this that she ran into the closed door at a brisk trot, nose first. It took her a dazed moment to remember that there was indeed a door between the Danior and Jaran compounds, but she had never before found it shut, much less locked. Extending a nail through the tip of a ruined glove, she began to pick the lock.
The door swung open. On the threshold, in torch light, stood a tall woman with eyes full of reflected fire: Trishien, the Jaran Matriarch.
"Er . . . " said Jame, hastily putting her hands behind her back. "Hello."
"Good evening," said the scholar matriarch, as calmly as if every day she opened her cellar door to a Highlord's sister dressed in rags. "Is there, perhaps, a problem?"
"A bit of one, yes. Shadow Guild assassins are after me."
"Ah. You had better come inside, then. With the relocking of this door, the Jaran and Ardeth compounds will be fully secured." She smiled faintly at Jame's surprise. "Like me, many Jaran ladies are scrollswomen, and so are many retired randon. Our guards listen to us, and we listen to the Ardeth Shanir when they have nightmares."
The offer of sanctuary was tempting. A shadow might slip under a door, but if the assassin who cast it couldn't follow, surely it could do little harm. Never mind that the mere-tattooed masters of the Guild could reputedly walk through solid walls. These were only apprentices. Nonetheless, if she was right, there were at least ten more bloodings to prevent.
"Somehow, Matriarch, I've got to draw them off. All of them, including the three or four more who must be in the Coman or Randir quarters, if they aren't here. There isn't time to backtrack, either. I've got to cut through your compound."
"I . . . see. Child, are you quite sure you know what you're doing?"
"Very seldom," said Jame with a sigh. "Tonight, maybe. Lady, please. I-I can't explain it, but somehow this sort of thing is my job, my . . . responsibility."
"I see," said the Jaran Matriarch again, after a pause. "In that case, it would be more dangerous to get in your way tonight than in theirs. This corridor leads straight under the compound. We will clear it."
She departed with her escort, taking the torches with her. Jame waited in the dark, wondering how far a shadow might be cast in absolute darkness, if at all. Side doors closed, farther and farther away: the Jaran, sealing off the passage. For a moment, she wished very much that Trishien hadn't taken her at her word. Maybe it was mad to claim such a task. If there had been anyone else to deal with the situation . . . but no: somehow, there never was.
A glimmer appeared at the other end of the hall down which she had come—one, two, three . . . seven wills-o'-the-wisp, as the Caineron guard had described them. As the ghost lights bobbed closer, Jame felt her spirits bob up with them. Insane or not, this was still much, much better than practicing knot-stitches.
"Calli-calli-catch-me-if-you-can!" she shouted down the hall, spun, and darted away.
Swift feet followed.