SWNOVELS Shadowblade: (A Dance of Fire and Shadow Book 1) – Chapter 14
M, I SHOULD NOT NEED to remind you of your solemn oath to uphold the laws of Samaran.
I understand that you have failed in this out of your desire to save your country.
As well as the other kind of desire.
But if innocents are killed by a Blade adept allowed to go free, these deaths will be on your head.
If she should fail the test you set, you already know what you must do. J
.
.
Alina’s room is empty. With a painful mix of relief and disappointment, I look around for clues that my sister was here recently. Compared to the simple wood-lined interior of our cottage in Caerlen, this place is luxurious. Crimson velvet drapes hang at the window and more are tied back at each corner of the huge four-poster bed.
The floor is covered with even softer carpets than the ones in the corridor outside, while several carved tables are loaded with vases of flowers and bowls of fruits and sweetmeats. A glass-fronted cabinet holds bottles of wines and spirits as well as elegant glasses in which to serve them.
But none of the grandeur changes one fact. This is a velvet-lined prison where young girls are forced to give their bodies to anyone with money to pay the owners of the Rose Mansion. I would give anything right now to somehow transport both of us back to our cottage––before I remember that our village lies abandoned on the route of search parties already pursuing escaped slaves.
Out of the corner of my eye I see an internal door start to open and swing round to face it. Then Alina is standing in the illuminated doorway, pushing a few still-damp tendrils of hair back from her face and staring at me as if she’s looking at a ghost.
“Ariel!” She runs towards me, arms open for one of our habitual sister-hugs. Then she stops short, staring. “What happened to you?”
I look down. The borrowed pink cloak has fallen open revealing the full extent to which my tunic and leggings are generously splattered with blood from the fight at the slave-pen mashed in with a liberal application of burnt oil and mud, legacy of my escape from the city.
“Ran into a spot of trouble on the way here,” I mutter lamely. “I’ve come to rescue you.”
A dozen thoughts reveal themselves in sequence on her astonished face as she searches for a response, and for the first time I really take in how she looks. If I have transformed into a scrawny blood-soaked warrior, she has gone the other way. Her hair is elegantly styled into a cluster of ribbons at her crown before dropping in glossy ringlets around her ears. Her tight-fitting red dress shows off her perfect figure––as well as revealing rather more of it than I feel it should. A cloud of expensive perfume clings to her and is finally getting past the less attractive aroma of burnt oil and grimy back alleyways that I have brought in with me.
“Ariel? Where exactly are you going to rescue me to?”
“I’ve been hiding in the forest with… some other friends.” I don’t feel I really have time to explain all of it.
She shakes her head. “But half the people from our village are dead! Caerlen won’t be safe for ages. It lies right on the main route the Rapathians are using from where they moored their ships.”
“We can survive in the forest. Anything is better than staying here!”
“Is it?” She is almost whispering now, afraid big sister will disapprove. I try to keep the frown out of my question.
“What do you mean?”
“Ariel, I’ve never been as tough as you. I can’t imagine living out in the open, constantly looking over my shoulder in case the guards have caught up with us. And… it looks like you’ve gone beyond hunting animals.” Her gaze rests once more on my bloodstained clothing. “I don’t think I could learn to fight. To kill people.”
I don’t know what to say. I haven’t thought this through at all. What was I planning? Murder a couple more guards for the blood-price to drag her off to the Shadowblade? She will never survive without the kind of extra strength and skill that I have acquired.
“Sissy, we would only be living rough for a few days. Then I’ll find someone to take you in.”
I can’t understand why her beautiful violet eyes are filling with tears.
“Ariel, they think I’m a prize catch. Very popular already with the Rapathian generals and aristocrats. If I disappear they’ll throw everything into tracking me down. I can’t put anyone in the kind of danger they would be in if they shelter me.” She hesitates, then jumps nimbly onto the bed and reaches up to the top of one of the carved corner posts.
“Here.” She holds out a folded piece of paper. “I’ve been doing the best I can with the situation I’m in.” She watches while I scan the neat, compact writing. “I have been collecting names and plans. Which of our army commanders and government ministers were already in league with Farang and which ones have allied with the Emperor since our defeat, but are probably only doing so to save their heads from the block.”
I look up from the paper, staring at my innocent little sister suddenly turned courtesan and spy.
“You mean they have a few drinks and twenty minutes of––” I can’t say it, just wave vaguely towards the bed. “And they spontaneously start confessing?”
She gives me such a mischievous smile I almost can’t believe what I’m seeing. “Not confessing. Bragging. Gossiping. Showing off.”
“Sissy, have you any idea the risk you’re taking, doing this?”
“No more than the risk you took doing whatever got you into that mess.” She waves a manicured and perfumed hand at my disreputable attire. “Spying is what makes being here just about bearable, feeling that I’m doing something to save our country.” She gives a self-deprecating shrug. “Even if it might take a while. All I needed was a courier––and then you arrive!”
My face must be giving away my feelings about her arrangement. She lays a tentative hand on my arm.
“Ariel, it’s not that bad considering all the terrible things happening to everyone else in the country. We are supposed to stay beautiful, so they are not allowed to hurt us. There’s another house somewhere near here where they have slaves for that sort of thing but I don’t know where it is. If you’re going to rescue anyone, it should be them––”
She turns to the outer door. The squeak of one of the loose boards outside is unmistakable.
“Quick, in there! I’m supposed to be getting ready for General Akadian. Stay under the water till he’s… occupied, then get out of the window.” She pushes me through the inner door and closes it behind me.
I’m in a luxurious bath annex, with the steaming, bubble-filled tub in the middle of it that Alina had presumably been soaking in shortly before I arrived. A small table sits by the wall, packed with bottles of perfume and cosmetics. It hurts to hear her voice through the door, greeting her visitor with the enthusiasm of a passionate lover.
I tell myself furiously that he must be completely stupid if he believes her act is genuine. Perhaps he doesn’t care whether it is or not. Then I focus on the need to hide in case he looks through the door.
I tuck the precious piece of paper under a box of lip-gloss, fold the borrowed cloak and drop it in the corner, then slip into the steaming tub of perfumed water. This is the first time I have ever taken a bath together with all my clothes and half an arsenal of weapons, but it has to be effecting an improvement on the sorry state I arrived in. I hear Akadian’s voice approaching the door and slide under the concealing bubbles.
The problem with hiding under water is that your ears fill up and you can’t hear whether the danger has removed himself or not. I grip my dagger close to my chest, ready to lash out the second I feel a hand grab my body. My heart pounds against the matching pulse in my wrist. If I kill Akadian the military will blame Alina unless I can get her out…
My lungs are bursting. I surface as quietly as I can. Once the water is out of my ears I can hear that Alina has managed to get her visitor interested in drinking brandy and flirting instead of sharing a bathtub with her. I’m starting to wonder whether the frisky sergeant I spent so much time distracting a few months ago might have been getting some encouragement from my sister when I wasn’t looking. She can’t have learned all this clever enticement in three days.
Can she?
I make the decision that Akadian is now too absorbed in Alina’s charms to hear me leaving but I’m cautious as I make my way to the window, dripping pale pink drops onto the pale blue floor tiles. There must be a reason she told me to hide first.
There is. The window hinges squeak. A generous application of rose-scented body oil from the dresser helps. I listen again. No indication Akadian has heard anything but Alina’s endearments.
The window is very small and I have to remove my harness in order to get through it at all. Thank the stars for Samarian architecture with longstanding fashions for window ledges, or it would be even more awkward climbing back onto the roof. I stick to the ridges for a while, heading towards the city wall, hoping Alina will feel all the love I poured into the two orange flowers I left on her dressing table when I collected her carefully-written message.
Harsh voices and the marching feet of Rapathian patrols are everywhere in the streets below. So much for the opportunity of having them all outside the city hunting for escaped slaves. There seems to be even more of them than when I first came over the wall with Deris.
At last I find a quieter street and shim down a gutter-pipe to the cobblestones. I’ll have to risk the tunnel to get out again. The wall will be impossible in reverse. I start heading more or less in the right direction but find it tedious work with constant detours to avoid patrols.
It seems an age before I am back in the cobbled street where Deris cheated me out of those two Rapathian guards––
Suddenly I’m tangled in a heap on the ground, thrashing to reach my knives through the web of weighted net wrapping itself around my limbs. The harsh tones of Rapathian accent come from above.
“Got one! Go and collect. My crossbow is aimed at him.”
From the muttered expletives of the two figures bending over me I guess the guard above me on the roof is controlling a crew of Samarians conscripted into the riskier work of capturing a very annoyed victim trapped in a net. Even if I could reach my knives I don’t want to kill my fellow countrymen acting under duress. I try to work out how to just wound them enough to escape, as rough hands drag me to my feet and slam me against the wall.
Hell’s gates! A team of six. It looks like it will be a case of them or me, even if I can escape the crossbow aimed at me from the roof––
Maybe not. A choking cough comes from somewhere above me and the Rapathian’s heavy body crashes to the cobbles beside the men still holding my arms while they peel away the tangled net.
A blur of movement crosses the dark space above as a familiar muscular figure drops gracefully to the ground, landing a fist in the face of the biggest of my captors. The grunt hits the pavement with the net still clutched in his lumpy hands. Then the man beside him doubles over from a punch in the belly. The others release my arms and run for the safety of the shadows. My guess was probably right then. Samarian conscripts, compelled by their overseers’ weapons.
Marin grabs my arm, his voice tight and angry.
“This way.”