To Ride Hell’s Chasm

Mykkael, at that moment, had not answered the thunderous knock that pounded the door to his quarters.

‘He won’t trust a lock,’ admitted the fresh young officer standing watch as Vensic’s relief. ‘No bar, either. The latch should open without forcing.’

‘That’s just as well,’ Jussoud answered, ‘since I dislike having to break things.’

The steppelands-bred foreigner seemed not to mind, that Highgate orders had assigned him to handle a demeaning round of service at the garrison. Nor had he asked for a lackey’s assistance. His huge frame was still burdened with his basket of oils, a satchel of strong remedies, and the round, wooden tub the keep laundress used to wash surcoats. With unruffled dignity, he nodded to the stableboys strung out behind, who carried yoked buckets dipped from the horse trough. ‘Open up, lads. We’re all going in.’

The ragged boys shrank back in wide-eyed hesitation, less afraid of the easterner’s slant, silver eyes than of the dire prospect of disrupting the captain’s peace.

‘Damn you for a pack of cowards, boys!’ snapped the officer to the column, that snaked halfway down the dim stairwell. ‘Captain’s not in, or quite likely asleep. And no wonder it is, if he’s out like the deaf. Crazy desert-bred hasn’t been off his feet for all of three days and two nights.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ the head stableboy sniped as his fellows jostled on to the landing behind him. ‘You’re not in front, and anyway, you were off duty the last time a man tried his luck barging in on the captain.’

Jussoud bared his blunt teeth in a grin. ‘He got Mykkael’s knife at his throat for presumption?’

The stableboy scowled. ‘No knife. No sword, either. Just the heel of a hand, fast as lightning. Broke the man’s nose all the same. Captain Mykkael didn’t waste words, wasn’t sorry. “Here’s a rag for the bleeding,” he said, “and what did the brainless grunt think he deserved, for crossing a doorway without taking soldier’s precautions.”‘

‘Here’s proper precautions,’ Jussoud said, agreeable, and offered the base of the wash tub as a shield.

Moved to awe, the skinny stableboy ducked inside the massive nomad’s protection. At Jussoud’s sly urging, he tripped the latch, and breached Mykkael’s guarded privacy.

The captain was asleep, his lean form sprawled like a tiger’s over the blanket that covered his pallet. His sword harness lay flat, at hand’s reach on the mattress beside him. Surcoat, shirt and trousers were cast off on the floor, the heaped cloth exuding the ripe odour of bog slime through a lingering fragrance of hyacinth. Stripped down to his smallclothes, Mykkael had flouted the customs of his forebears and used fresh water to wash. Even there, field habits had trampled over nicety: the grime had been sluiced off with a rag and bucket, left standing in the bar of sunlight that shone through the arrow slit.

Propped at his bare feet, unwrapped, the princess’s portrait regarded him.

Her exquisite likeness struck a note out of place in that rudely furnished chamber. The lush splendour of the oil paint glowed: the lucent sparkle in each rendered jewel, and the rich, velvet fall of her forest-green riding habit set into jarring contrast. Sessalie’s court painter had done the young woman’s grace more than justice; had captured the tilt of her refined chin, triangular as a waif’s beneath her netted blonde hair. The jade eyes all but breathed with inquisitive mischief, the glint that peeked through her midnight-dark lashes seeming entranced by the subject of interest—just now, a fighting man’s sculpted muscle, disfigured where mishap and the ravages of war had imprinted a uniformly brown skin.

The boys bearing the buckets stared agog. Then they elbowed and scrapped to claim the best view, amazed by a breathtaking display of scars no man born in Sessalie could imagine.

Unfazed, Jussoud set down the awkward wooden tub. He flipped back his long braid, shed the straps of his satchel and basket. As though he had ministered to lamed men all his life, he lowered the tools of his trade to the floor, not arousing a single plink from the glass. With the unhurried eyes of a healer, he read every sign of a man dropped prostrate from exhaustion. ‘You say your captain has not slept in three days?’

‘Near enough,’ the duty officer allowed. ‘The drunk and disorderly kept our hands full. We’ve been worked to the bone every watch, a night-and-day grind since the hour of Devall’s arrival. Here, let me.’ He pushed past, insistent. ‘I should rightfully be the one to try waking him.’

Jussoud’s huge hand shot out and caught the officer’s shoulder. ‘Not this way, you won’t. The wrong move with that man could get us both killed.’ Not pleased, as the stableboys burst into giggles, he took brisk charge and gave orders. ‘Set down those buckets. Quietly, mind! Then I want every one of you down those stairs, quick! Tell the cook to brew me a cauldron of hot water. After that, get on back to your chores.’

As the boys shed their burdens and bolted, the nomad steered the duty officer back towards the doorway. ‘When the water boils, you’ll bring it, alone. I’ll fill the tub and make ready, meanwhile. Best we let Mykkael sleep while he can. When the time comes, I’ll waken him wisely, from a distance with a tossed pebble.’

VI. Morning

FALLEN ASLEEP UNDER THE BLACK-LASHED STARE OF THE PRINCESS OF SESSALIE’S PORTRAIT, MYKKAEL LAY IMMERSED IN THICK DARKNESS. HE forgot he still breathed. Hurled beyond mere exhaustion, his clogged senses felt sealed in a deadening field of black void. The featureless stillness did not last, but quickened to the unruly prompt of a witch thought. An uncanny movement twined through his mind and unreeled a ribbon of dream…

He knew her, felt the pounding race of her heart. His awareness flowed into the well of her most intimate self, until he felt the raw skin of her heels, chafed to burst blisters through the exertion of her headlong flight. Emotionally buffeted, he rode the crest of her terror, then shared her mind through a breathless interval as she snatched shelter in a hidden glen, touched gold under east-slanting sunlight.

The moving tableau of her thoughts spun and circled, flinching back from examining the grievous discovery that had shattered her life like a flung stone. Threat to Sessalie drove her beyond care for herself. Although sorrow knifed through her, vivid enough to sap her will to keep living, she battled its cry of futility. Through the salt sting of tears, and the ache in her chest caused by hours of running, she laid her head against the sweated neck of the mare who nuzzled her, begging for sweets.

Throughout, the horses surrounded her with their inquisitive warmth. Missing their accustomed ration of grain, they demanded, exploring her with the hay-scented puffs of their breath.

‘You’ll want for nothing,’ she soothed, though her voice cracked.

The horses forgave the actual truth, that she had no such assurance to give. Their empathic herd sense stood as her mainstay against overwhelming despair. All three pairs, the horses’ innate nobility gave her a gift beyond price: the generous trust of their confidence. She bespoke them by name to steady herself Bryajne, the tall buckskin, who tucked his blunt, hammer head over the refined crest of Covette. She, a petite chestnut who flaunted the sculpted grace of her desert breeding; Vashni, the grey who carried on like the stud he was not; and Fouzette, whose stout forelegs still dribbled blood from a recent plunge through the briar; Kasminna, who delighted in nipping any creature caught unsuspecting, and Stormfront, whose dark coat gleamed with a silvery tarnish of dapples under the glare of the sunlight…

Then the flick of a pebble stung Mykkael’s exposed side. Witch thought and dream shattered like glass, hammered through by the prompt of blind reflex. From his prone state of oblivious sleep, an explosion of ingrained physical instincts hurled him half dazed, not yet wakeful, through the practised response of a consciousness tuned by barqui’ino.

He grabbed and threw in one sinuous move, his raw senses reacting without the encumbrance of intellect. Sword and harness flew. Sheathed steel and strap leather scythed with deadly force back along the pebble’s trajectory. The entangling missile slammed into the fast-closing wood of the door, followed hard by the throwing knife Mykkael always kept at close reach under his pillow. His schooled body hurtled after. Knuckles clenched and palms open, he poised the heel of his hand and the bone edge of his forearm to strike, while his bare skin sampled the flow of the air for the slightest warning of movement. He would kill by touch, his eyesight centred with absolute focus on the obstacles that could impede him.

He leaped the filled wash tub, one-footed, and landed without missing stride. Drill after drill, the brute course of his training had aligned his primal nerves to respond to what was, not what should be. Expectations were wrung still. The ferocity that propelled him was a high art: the unswerving clarity of an existence honed down to the pinpoint frame of the moment.

Mykkael reached the door, shoulder tucked to smash planks with a strength of will that ranged beyond flesh and muscle; and stopped. A hairs-breadth shy of destructive impact, hard breathing, he rocked on his heels and went still. The cold, feral force of his being became leashed. The change was distinct, as he released the taut stream of barqui’ino awareness and reclaimed the dropped thread of his reason.

The panel cracked open. Jussoud’s silver eye dared a cautious glance through, followed by white teeth as he managed a smile of shaken appreciation. ‘Two masters?’ he said. ‘I’d heard of one man who could claim that distinction.’

Mykkael pulled in a deep breath to arrest the jolting flash of adrenaline; his move almost casual as a sleeper just roused, but far too precise to seem ordinary, he braced a hand on the doorframe. The fingers, rock steady the instant before, now jittered with backlash withdrawal. ‘To my shame,’ he admitted.

‘I could guess?’ Jussoud dared. ‘The one who first schooled you was better, in name. But he could not teach the technique you just used to cut short an entrained attack.’

‘Certain steppelanders might suppose that.’ Mykkael stepped back, bent, hissed a breath through shut teeth as he grasped at his spasmed muscle and tried to limber the seized joint of his knee. When that effort failed, he uttered a curse, gave in to necessity and hobbled. He raked up his thrown sword and harness from the floor, and released the jammed swing of the door panel.

Touched sober, Jussoud stepped inside. The trailing sleeve of his robe fluttered as he reached out and freed the stuck knife. He handed the blade back. Then he paused. Cool in the pale silk of his eastern dress, he provoked with no more than his patient stillness.

Mykkael’s sultry glare met his silence like a slap. ‘You want to know, truly? I wouldn’t tell Taskin.’

‘You don’t have to tell me.’ Jussoud’s equable nature stayed limpid with calm. ‘Your privacy is your own. No one else needs to know you. I don’t give any man orders, whether or not he’s hell-bent to destroy himself, body and mind.’

‘I’m a practised survivor.’ But the admission rang bitter. A disjointed backstep saw Mykkael to the wash tub. He caught the rim, now trembling like hazed game, and managed to brace his rocked balance before he fell over. Pinned down throughout an obstinate pause, he stared in fixed quiet through the arrow slit. Then he said, ‘A beggar child wandered into the camp. One of the advanced aspirants was caught unawares. He reacted on reflex, and brained her.’ Mykkael swallowed and stared down at his hands, as though they belonged to a stranger. ‘I could not live with a memory like that. The shame of abandoning tradition was much easier. I broke oath and changed masters, left the first without asking permission for release, then spun lies to gain sworn acceptance with the second. I started again, on false pretext, as a novice. My first defection was found out, of course. Though I shared no secrets between the two do’aa, my name is still sealed with a death threat.’

He turned his head and regarded Jussoud, his pupils distended and black as sky on a starless night. ‘Assassins come sometimes to strike balance for the dishonour of my broken oath. Either they die, or I do. There’s no ground for compromise. Next time you waken a man with my history, call him by name before you toss stones. Much safer, that way. Unless you are addicted to thrill, and like taking an idiot’s risk?’

‘I was bred from wild stock,’ Jussoud reassured him, smiling.

Mykkael burst into sudden laughter. ‘Bright truth, like a spear point,’ he agreed, the idiom taken from Jussoud’s birth tongue. Indeed, every steppes nomad he had ever encountered seemed to court peril as an insolent pastime.

Embarrassed all at once by an unexpected intimacy, Mykkael glanced down at the steam that twined off the filled tub. ‘You want me in there?’

Before Jussoud’s reply, the captain peeled off his smallclothes. Naked, he made a desertman’s sign against sacrilege before he stepped into the bath. ‘That, for a man’s urgent impulse to rut, that bequeaths us the ties to our ancestry.’

Jussoud untied his sash, and hung his silk robe. Stripped to the waist, he settled to work with his remedies. Immersed in warmed water, soothed under his skilled hands, Mykkael slept, slack and trusting as a baby. Later, gently roused and moved to the cot, he listened with half-lidded eyes as the nomad scolded over the scalds on his skin left by the beast drover’s liniment. He slept again, under Anja’s painted eyes, but this time his dreams brought no nightmares: only the soft burr of curses spoken in eastern dialect, and the mingled, sweet scent of medicinal oils.

Roused at length by an officer’s tap at his door, the captain lay flat on his back and heard through the brisk list of the morning’s reports. Jussoud tucked his knee into a support wrap of clean linen, then sewed the ends taut with silk thread. ‘No more stupid doctoring with unguent for camels!’ he snapped as he packed up his needle.

Mykkael flicked one finger, curt signal to excuse his diligent officer. Then he cocked himself up on one elbow, the damp ends of his hair slicked above the eased muscles of his shoulders. ‘Thank you for your care of me,’ he said, his gratitude left unadorned.

Jussoud towelled the excess oil off his forearms, washed his hands, then recovered his robe and adjusted the fall of his waist-length braid. ‘I’ll consider myself thanked if and when you respect yourself enough to spare that knee from further trauma.’

‘What price, for the life of King Isendon’s daughter?’ Mykkael stated as he rolled on to his feet.

Jussoud paused, his hands burdened as he stoppered his oil jars and loaded them back in his basket. ‘You know she’s in danger.’

Mykkael nodded, unwilling to divulge the uncanny chill that witch thoughts had strung through his gut. ‘When you see Taskin to account for my treatment—yes, he gave such orders! Don’t insult that man’s competence with denials. When you call on the tyrant to give him your gleanings, could you pass on the gist of my officer’s report?’

Granted the willing assent he expected, Mykkael pawed into a clothes chest for a fresh pair of breeches and clean shirt. He dressed, still speaking, despite the discordant clamour of voices arisen in the downstairs wardroom. ‘Relate the details you recall, as you wish. But the particulars I insist on are these: the Falls Gate seeress was murdered by drowning. The flower girl who sought her fortune knows nothing. My informers drew blanks. The streets show no sign of suspect activity.’ He moved to the cot, retrieved mud-crusted boots. ‘I have three lines of inquiry yet to pursue, and one more point I plan to tell Taskin in person. He can expect me. I’ll be at the Highgate to meet him in three hours.’

The argument below subsided to grumbles, cut by the thump of someone’s feet, climbing the inside stairwell. Mykkael registered this as his fingers threaded the buckle that fastened his sword harness. Armed, now all business, he rebounded off his good leg, hooked the satchel of remedies from his path, and relinquished the obstruction into Jussoud’s startled hands.

That forthright flow of urgency saw the captain through the doorway, a moving flicker of pale shirt doused into the shadow beyond.

What happened next, no man saw.

Jussoud’s more orderly exit followed at Mykkael’s heels. Bearing satchel and basket, the nomad began his descent of the spiral stair. He gained no more warning than a sigh of stirred air, then an indistinct sense of blurred movement. At the next step, he blundered into the falling, limp bulk of a sandy-haired palace guardsman. The wretch was unconscious. His unstrung frame crashlanded into Jussoud’s dumbfounded embrace. The healer staggered. Half turned to save his precious oil jars from smashing against the stone wall, he narrowly managed to salvage his balance and sit with the dropped body sprawled in his arms.

‘Jussoud, he’s not harmed!’ Mykkael assured him from below. Unrepentant, he spoke in low-voiced eastern dialect, as direct and brutal an admission of fact that his pre-emptive strike was deliberate.

‘I’ll have to tell Taskin,’ the masseur warned, also using his native language.

‘Your loyalty demands that,’ Mykkael agreed. He stood his ground, all brazen, cold nerve, and sustained Jussoud’s glare without flinching. ‘Serve as my witness with the same honesty. You received my report, and heard out my intentions before this palace guardsman made his way over my threshold. Please see the fellow is properly cared for. My men downstairs will assist you. They’ll dispatch a litter, as needed, to bear him in comfort through Highgate.’

Under his healer’s questing touch, Jussoud felt the vigorous signs of an angry victim starting to rouse. ‘I will pray to my gods that you are a man who knows the full measure of trouble you stir. Little good comes of taunting the tiger.’

Mykkael spun without words. His step in departure made not a sound, a rare feat for a man who was crippled.

Jussoud sighed. As uneasy as though he had just sampled poison, he restrained the stunned guardsman’s thrashing. He could not regret leaving the captain at large. No safe method existed to detain Mykkael. As a killer, the man was chilling, for his speed and his unrivalled competence. He might be the linchpin the crown required to save Sessalie’s princess from danger. Yet if the contrary proved true: if the desert-bred was a traitor immersed in a covert conspiracy, the game piece haplessly caught in his path must survive to bear Taskin fair warning.

Prince Kailen suffered his punishing hangover immersed in his bath, the soaked hair at his nape crushed against the bronze rim, where he rested his pounding skull. Tendrils of scented steam rose about him, running sweat in rivulets down a complexion tinged greenish from nausea. When the crisp knock rattled the chamber door, Kailen whispered a curse. A crease stitched the corners of his shut eyes. Though he was in a sorry state to receive, the noise pained him worse than the prospect of unwanted company.

A dispirited flick of his Highness’s finger dispatched his hovering valet.

The manservant deferred to the prince’s condition. He moved on stockinged feet, and admitted the caller with hands that did their utmost to muffle the strident plink of the latch.

Cool air winnowed in. The draught puckered Kailen’s flushed skin, bearing the fashionable hyacinth perfume used by Devall’s court lackeys.

The Crown Prince of Sessalie decided his head ached too much to endure any lowlander’s penchant for ceremony. ‘The heir apparent of Devall may enter, as he pleases.’

The draught became a breeze as several bodies filed in.

Kailen cracked open bloodshot eyes. Through parted lashes, he sorted the blurred but sparkling impression of Devall’s maroon and gold livery. To the one pricked by the costly glimmer of rubies, he said, ‘They haven’t found any sign of her, yet. Not even that busy cur of a desert-bred, though he’s got the whole lower garrison scouring the town. All the inquiries they’ve run down, every whisper they’ve culled from the streetside gossip has drawn nothing but blanks.’

The Prince of Devall looked haggard, as though he, too, had not slept through the night. Composed by the grace of iron will and state poise, he inclined his groomed head to request the dismissal of the valet. ‘Might we speak of this privately?’

The fair royal in the bath tub shrugged streaming shoulders, then winced as his headache rebelled. He said testily, ‘What’s to hide? Every servant at court knows the details already. The kitchen maids bring back the lower town gossip on their return from the market.’

‘Even so,’ said the High Prince of Devall, his consonants considerately muted. ‘My words, and yours, bear more weight than a commoner’s.’ He waited, smiling in gracious tolerance, until the red-faced valet accepted the hint, and bowed himself out of the chamber.

The Crown Prince of Sessalie surveyed his immaculate counterpart, his inflamed eyes a troubled china blue, and his clenched fists couched in soap suds. ‘That’s all I know, in my servant’s hearing, or out of it. Nobody has a clue where my sister has gone, or what fate may have befallen her. We have no enemies, and no political significance to draw the interest of other nations. No one could have spirited her away without trace! Anja’s much too resourceful to pack up her nerve and submit. It’s not canny, to suppose she could have been kidnapped. Not in front of the nosy eyes of Sessalie’s inbred society.’

‘For myself, I prefer not to stand on presumption.’ The High Prince of Devall gave way to his frustration and paced, fastidiously skirting the puddles splashed on the marble-tiled floor. ‘Lady Shai is the princess’s closest confidante. Some change in habit, or a detail of Anja’s dress or mood may have caught her notice. An astute line of inquiry might prompt her recall. I wish, very much, to pay a call on her. Yet I need you along with me to observe propriety, do I not? Since the lady’s a maiden, titled and wealthy, and not yet promised by handfast?’

Given Kailen’s enervated sigh, the high prince’s manner turned pejorative. ‘You must come as I ask! I will not risk the least insult to Anja, or lend your court the mistaken impression that I would flatter another young woman with a visit in private company’

‘As if the sour opinion of Sessalie’s matrons could tarnish Devall’s reputation!’ Kailen managed a lame grin. ‘That’s laughable.’

The heir apparent stopped, his regard sharpened by a turbulent mix of sympathy and censure. ‘Her Grace is your sister, and the joy of her father’s old age. She is also the paragon of wit and good character I have chosen as our future queen. For my sake, and for the pride of my realm, you will honour her by maintaining appropriate form.’

‘Well then,’ Kailen sighed, his puckered fingers clenched on the tub rim as he arose, streaming soap froth in a cascade down lean flanks, ‘since I’m still too sotted to fasten my buttons, and you’ve excused my valet, your servants can kindly assist with my dress.’

Informally clad in his loose, white shirt, his sword harness and a labourer’s knee-length trousers, Mykkael threaded a determined course through the late-morning crush in the streets. Though the thoroughfares under Middlegate were narrow, the traffic parted before him. Passersby always stared at his back, no matter what hour he passed. Even lacking his blazoned surcoat, he drew notice, surrounded by fair northern heads and pale skin.

He met that difference straight on, and nodded a civil greeting to the matrons out shopping with cloth-covered baskets. He asked the foot traffic to pause, allowing the straining mules of an ale dray smooth passage as they toiled uptown. By the public well, he caught the scruff of a sprinting urchin to spare an aged man with a cane.