darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,126
vulnerability of putting my shirt back on now. With each minute that passed the sun would rise higher, weakening our shrouds and posing a greater danger to us and our mission. I sent a faint tickle of orange pink magelight down the hole as I moved aside.
Faran appeared a moment later—a blot of deeper darkness in the shadow under the brush, identifiable mainly by the sword rig she pulled behind her. Kelos took longer and had a hard time of it. Even after leaving shirt and pants at the bottom of the well and greasing his shoulders, he ended up with deep and bloody scrapes on his right arm and down his left shoulder blade—exposed to sight briefly when he lowered his shroud to check the injury.
“One of the many reasons I’d intended this route for you or Siri.” He rubbed a bit of blue black ointment into his scratches—the bleeding slowed immediately, but his sharply indrawn breath suggested the effect came at some cost. “Damn, but that hurts. It’s a Kadeshi recipe made from manticore chitin among other things. It stings like a whole swarm of wasps, but it’ll keep me from leaving a blood trail.” He hadn’t bothered to reclothe himself, so he was wearing little more than boots and a loincloth as he slid to the edge of our little copse.
“The lights are burning bright in the Son’s apartments despite the morning sun,” he whispered after a long moment of looking and listening. “Judging by the shadows playing across the windows, there’s a lot of activity within, too. I suspect that Siri’s raid is having at least some of the desired effect. I hope she finds Chomarr out there and nails his hide to the wall.” He started to edge forward. “We should move quickly.”
“Wait,” whispered Faran. “Do you smell that? There’s rot under the blossoms.”
“Fresh turned earth, too,” I added after taking a few deep sniffs myself. “A lot of it. I wonder . . .” A thought occurred to me. “He’s very image conscious, this Son of Heaven. Even if everyone this deep into the complex knows what he is now, I bet he doesn’t want the risen making an eyesore of themselves.”
“You think he’s buried them all through the garden,” whispered Faran.
“It’d be the best way to keep them close but out of sight,” I replied.
“That changes things,” whispered Kelos. “I’d intended for us to go straight for his apartments from here, but there’s a lot of garden between us and it, and much of it shadowed enough for the risen to brave the dawn. Let me think. . . .” A brief silence followed. “Right, we’ll go in via the gallery. It’s much closer, and the Son had a door knocked through from there to his playrooms.”
“Playrooms?” asked Faran.
“He’s almost half-risen himself,” said Kelos. “He shares their blood hunger, even if it’s expressed somewhat differently. He ejected his chief aide and several other members of the curia from the suites below his own and had the whole place made over so that he could indulge himself.”
“Torture chambers,” said Faran.
“And more,” he replied. “Come on, the wall of windows directly across the pond opens into the gallery. They’re east facing and that whole section of garden catches the morning light, which will help keep the risen off us if they sense our passing. I presume I don’t need to remind you to walk extra light and—”
“Watch for fresh turned earth,” finished Faran. “No, you don’t.”
“I didn’t think so.” The dark blot that was Kelos slid back into the heart of the little copse and out the other side heading for the small bridge.
The sun started chewing painfully away at my shroud the instant I cleared the shadow of the shrubs, blinding my darksight and forcing me to peel back the shadows across my eyes. Operating in bright daylight came at a heavy cost in both efficiency and magic as I fed nima to a sleeping Triss to hold the shroud in place. But we didn’t dare rush or cut corners.
Even on the shorter route we passed four or five carefully concealed disturbances in the earth, like shallow graves . . . rather exactly like. But nothing popped out at us. By the time we reached the windows, I was soaked in sweat. The fluttering of my heart in rhythm with the failing spells on the finger of the