Chapter 14 - Footsteps in Red

Scrape of a striking match. Flash. A small bulb of yellow in the dark. The bowl of a pipe, lit. Slow inhale. Long silence. Slow exhale. A wave of a hand. Flicker. Darkness. All around, the musty hollow silence of old death and dry mold. Sporadically; inhale, then exhale.

Another light struck suddenly into the dark of the tunnel’s distance. It began as a faint glow, more of a difference in the gradation of the absolute blackness, which gradually resolved itself into a shade of grey, then a definite yellowing which contoured the round, gritty, stained stone of the tunnel. Footsteps, soft and muffled but still reverberating in the enclosed atmosphere, distinguished themselves gradually with the coming of the light. The rats began to scurry. Coming at the rear, behind the footsteps and the scurry and the glow that could now be seen to originate from around a curve where the tunnel split in two, there pressed upon the ears of any who might listen, the low and hollow hiss of an oil lamp.

The inhale and exhale ceased.

Kloe of Teiron marched around the bend of the tunnel, hood drawn back to display a short crop of yellow hair, and a blank but fair face. She held her hand forward to cast the cone of the lantern’s light ahead into the darkness. Before her road sandals, the rats of the Aster-Szem sewer ran along the dry sediment of the tunnel floor.

Kloe’s footsteps stopped before the shallow precipice of a cistern. She swung her lamp in an arc across the space. Here her own tunnel emerged onto the risen ledge of a longer and broader thoroughfare. The chamber, which was not high above her head, but spread wide on either side beyond the reach of her lamp, was held up by a lone colonnade of square stone supports. The mold and rot had crept up to the ceiling on each of these and dried long ago, so that the chamber appeared painted in flaking, dark-brown color. Piles of driftwood and ancient cloth lay in heaps along the walls and reached up the bases of some of the pillars. Ancient excrement cemented the debris together, dry now for as long as the river that no longer flowed through Aster-Szem.

From around the back of one painted brown pillar and its garnish of debris, Ostok Horksog, bountyman for The Kingdom of Ahn, stepped. He held his pipe in one hand, and his writ of capture in the other. He made not a sound as he moved, his grandfather’s bones did not cluck within their bag.

Kloe spotted the movement and swung her lamp onto him in an instant. The bountyman carried no weapon.

“Dear mell, don’t be-” Ostok began to say as he raised his pipe and waved it overhead in a gesture of peace.

The girl let her arm drop and released the lantern from her grasp. It hit the packed dirt floor with a dull thud; the light fluttered but remained lit. In one fluid movement Kloe whipped both halves of her myrtle-colored cloak open, plucking and unspringing a switchknife with her right hand. With her other, she reached into a tinkling sackcloth bag and drew forth a fistful of broken pottery shards. She leapt the short drop from her ledge and took a quick step toward the bountyman.

All this happened before Ostok had managed to do more than drop his arms and retreat a pace. His eyes grew wide. The words of Kloe’s chant had already begun to spill from her lips in an almost musical, thrumming voice:

“What am I supposed to do when the snake slides counterclockwise and my spear is the only protection-”

“Stop mell!” said Ostok. He stumbled backwards over a protruding shingle sticking from the pile around the nearest pillar. He fell, hitting the dirt on his hands and rump. Kloe advanced. The shards in her hand quivered. The look in her eyes was narrow and ready for the shedding of blood. She looked down upon the fat muira bountyman without the smallest hint of remorse. She stepped within range of her vortex, and let the first vibrating shard drop out from her finger. At the same time she tucked in her switchknife arm, bringing the elbow in close for a punch through the whirling shards.

A shadow threw itself toward Kloe. It rushed out of the dark periphery created by her lamp. As it flew into the light, the shape resolved into Hearn.

Hearn slammed Kloe’s left flank just as she turned to him. The first shard came circling around her back - arrow swift - and slashed across Hearn’s shoulder. But Kloe’s chant was jerked from her mouth and her switch from her hand as Hearn’s larger frame struck. The two toppled. The chant died, its echo fading into the tunnel.

“Stop,” said Hearn. He brought his arm down to block Kloe’s neck. But the girl struggled. She caught her breath almost instantly after striking the ground. The finger still holding her amphorae shards tossed them aside, curled into a fist, and flew up to box Hearn in the ear. Hearn yelped. He threw his weight atop her before she could wriggle back. She tried to throw a second punch, but Hearn blocked it with his arm and caught her wrist in his grasp. Larger, stronger, Hearn nevertheless struggled to keep Kloe pinned. He tried again to bring his left arm down over her collar and neck to close off her trachea, but she tucked her chin in and bit down on his forearm. Hearn roared. Blood oozed between her white teeth.

Ostok picked himself up off the ground. He goggled at Hearn and Kloe as they struggled on the ground. Then he spun and dived for his carry bag, where he had brought a length of rope for the purpose.

Kloe brought her knee up hard. Hearn tried to roll her and pin her on her stomach. She brought her knee up again. And again.

“Cursed-” Hearn groaned.

Kloe spit and smacked him again on the side of his blackened eye with the knuckles of her fist.

Wrath reddened Hearn’s vision. Adrenaline stabbed through him, needles prickling up and down his body. Kloe threw another fist. Hearn blocked it, slammed it back on the ground. He dropped all attempt to restrain Kloe. He released her, leaned back, grabbed her by her neck, and slammed her back against the ground. Kloe let out a gasp, the breath knocked from her again. She raised her arms, but Hearn pinned her to the ground with a knee. He slammed a fist across her jaw with a crack. She tried to swing again. Hearn’s other fist drummed her in the breast. Hearn swung again. A fourth time. A fifth.

The fight was over.

Hearn swung a sixth time, a seventh, an eighth. Huge haymaker swings, full of momentum. Blood tinted Kloe’s lips and nose. Her face began to swell.

“Hearn stop!” Ostok cried from behind. He caught Hearn by the shoulder. Hearn swung again, a glancing blow with his knuckles across her mouth that knocked a tooth loose. Ostok tried to drag the larger human. “She needs to be alive, that’s enough!”

Hearn rolled back from the prostrate woman. “Bitch,” he said hoarsely, clutching at his crotch.

“Hold still, mell. I’m going to tie your hands. It’ll be a tighter knot for all you struggle.” Kloe, dazed and barely conscious, said nothing. She moved not at all. Ostok trussed her hands together, then around her back - a practiced knot.

Hearn staggered to his feet. He picked up first the switchknife, then the amphorae pieces that Kloe had dropped. “Should have let me bring the saber,” he said in a thin voice.

“She needs to be alive.” Ostok looked at Hearn. “Now just hand over that switchknife, Hearn. And the amphorae too I suppose. Those are evidence.”

“She’ll steal it off you, easy as a breath.”

“My good fellow, please don’t make me lament that I brought you. Against lawful obligation.”

Hearn handed Ostok the blade and the shards. Ostok carefully pressed the blade down so that it was sheathed in its handle, then tucked everything into his bag. Hearn slowly unhunched his abs, rubbing at the bruise on the side of his face. He walked over and picked up Kloe’s lamp, though he never took his dark look off of the woman herself. “Did you ever pause?” he asked her.

Ostok returned to Kloe’s side and helped her to sit up. “Mell, my ancestors, you’re a mess. Hold still. Let me wipe your face with this water and cloth.”

“Ever think,” Hearn went on, “how the muira would take the murder? What about human lives lost if a war were to start?”

Though one of her eyes had swollen shut, Kloe fixed the other on Hearn. A glint of recognition shone there. “Betrayer,” she said through her bloody mouth.

Hearn tore a piece of cloth from his shirt sleeve and approached. Ostok said, “Hearn, don’t.”

“I’m going to gag her.”

“Are your ears so fragile?”

“She’s a chanter.” Hearn frowned.

“Ah, that does make some sense,” said Ostok. He pulled the girl to her feet while Hearn wrapped the gag around her face. Kloe resisted, twisting her head from side to side. Hearn forced the cloth around her mouth, tying a tight knot around the back of her head.

Ostok held Kloe by her upper arm while Hearn retrieved the lantern. “Back to the Villgoranian Embassy,” said Ostok.

They stepped up to the tunnel Kloe had entered from. Darkness, then silence, succeeded to the sepulcher.

Some moments after they had gone, from the street above, there sounded a rumble.

---

Hearn lifted the square grate of the sewer-door. Ostok, pushing Kloe ahead of him, emerged into the moonlight. “Shut it down gently,” he whispered.

Hearn laid the grate slowly back over the tunnel entrance. “We’ve been turned around,” he said as he started up the stone steps leading from the sunken street ditch. “We’re in Aster.”

“We must get her off the street as quickly as possible.”

“Where?”

“Take me back into Szem by ways which will not be seen.”

Hearn thought for a moment. “The Longclasp. It’s unlit, this time of night. Follow close and keep her quiet.”

As they emerged from the sewer ditch onto a narrow alley between two Aster homes, they spotted an incongruous glow over the rooftops. “Is it near dawn already?” Ostok asked.

Hearn already had his pocket clock out, but spoke before he had opened it. “That’s west. And it’s only a span before fulldark.”

“Fire?”

Hearn frowned. He doused the lantern. “Come. The bridge is not far.”

Kloe dragged her feet. She squirmed in the bountyman’s grasp and tried shouting through her gag. Ostok said, “My dear, struggling will only make it worse for you.”

Kloe tugged away from Ostok’s grasp as they neared where the alley joined to a more-open boulevard. She turned to run back, but tripped. She fell. Before she could get back to her feet, Kloe felt something cold and thin against her throat. She held still. Hearn, who had taken the switch back from Ostok, whispered in her ear. “You’d love to die for Teiron. I know. And I know also that among Ahn’s chanters, there are those who can make the bones of the dead speak, telling secrets they might have kept in life. So by all means, struggle.”

Hearn released the blade from her neck. She did not resist when he pulled her back to her feet. Ostok raised an eyebrow at his companion. The bountyman nevertheless offered no correction nor any other word as they moved into the street.

Choppy and uneven mud - a top-layer of sediment from the recent traffic of animals - overlaid the cobbled surface of the boulevard. Hearn looked west. He saw a few persons moving toward them on the opposite side of the road. “Keep her between us,” said Hearn. He took a slight lead and put his body partially between Kloe and the two or three pedestrians across the way. “Pull up your collar. The Longclasp is there, just ahead.”

“It is fire,” said Ostok as they approached the bridge. “There’s fire in Szem tonight.”

Kloe grunted. “Keep moving,” said Hearn.

They stepped out into the broad expanse of road abutting the dry bed of the river. Hearn spotted danger at once. A crowd of Teironians had gathered to watch the light and smoke that rose over the opposite side of town. They stood only a few arms off from the wingwall of The Longclasp. Hearn cursed. “Too near the crowd.”

“We must cross,” Ostok argued.

“We’ll go back into the alleys and cross farther south, over the Bad Tavaszi.”

“The delay will only grant more chances for us to be seen in Aster.”

At that moment Kloe screamed through her gag. She jerked her arms free from both their grasps and threw herself forward, tumbling over the uneven mud in the road and scraping her knees in the dirt. Several of the crowd turned their way. “Pick her up,” said Hearn quickly. “Pull her back.”

Kloe - with a control of breath and voice stronger than anyone untrained in chanting could ever realize - released another scream through her gag as they lifted her up. “What’s going on over there?” someone from the crowd called.

“Shine a light,” someone else remarked.

The Teironians approached. Hearn and Ostok tugged Kloe back toward the alley. She resisted. The beam of a lamp fell on them as they struggled with her.

“Blessed wind, they’ve bound her!”

“Citizens,” Ostok said, raising one hand while struggling to hold Kloe’s arm with the other, “I’m a bountyman, a man of law-”

“Ahn’s agent,” someone spat. “They’re abducting one of ours.”

“Stop them!”

Two dozen human beings - the largest, the men, leading - rushed Ostok and Hearn. Ostok took his hands from Kloe and raised them in a placating gesture, but his words were lost to the ears of the crowd. Hearn grabbed Kloe to stop her from fleeing. In a louder voice than the bountyman’s he shouted, “She’s a murderess. Keep back.”

“Hearn?” He heard his own name called, one voice in the crowd. Some small acquaintance in the city, no doubt.

The voice was lost in the tumult. “He’s a conspirator,” someone else cried.

“Capture them.”

“Get her loose.”

The men closed in. Someone threw a glass jar; it missed and shattered behind them. Kloe’s struggling meant that Hearn struggled in turn to pull her back. Seeing the crowd circling out to cut off escape, he reached down and pulled the switch from his hip pocket. Ostok saw the motion though, and stepped in and wrestled for the weapon. “We can’t afford a scene,” the bountyman hissed.

Someone’s sandal crunched over the broken glass jar. Hearn felt a strong set of fingers grab him by the shoulder. They pulled him back. Two more grabbed him and separated him from Kloe. Someone pulled the switch from his hand. “She’s a kil-” Hearn tried to say, but someone’s arm wrapped his mouth and muffled him.

“She killed Srik Tillich!” Ostok yelled.

A pause. The three restraining Hearn relaxed their grip, though not enough for him to break free. Another held Ostok, who offered no resistance. One man had taken Kloe by the arms but had not yet tried to free her. “She, a killer?” One woman asked from the back of the crowd.

Someone spat. “Baseless. Course the marbleskin would say that.”

“Look how she’s been bloodied…”

“Ungag her. Let’s hear her side.”

The man holding Kloe reached up to untie the knot at the back of her head. “You mustn’t do that,” said Ostok. He squirmed. “She’s a chanter.”

The man continued on the knot. Hearn threw his head abruptly back, smashing the nose of the man who held him by the neck. The man fell back. Hearn ripped his arms free of the loose grip of the other two. He lunged for Kloe.

One man stuck his foot out. Hearn tripped. He hit the dry uneven mud and paving stones of the Aster street. The breath was blasted from his chest. He immediately pushed himself up.

A sandal kicked down on Hearn’s spine and slammed him back to the ground. He raised his neck as he felt the thin, cold edge of the switch pressed under his chin.

“Cut his throat,” some called. Hearn felt the skin on his neck begin to separate.

“STOP!” The command had come from a voice behind Hearn, from the Aster road, beyond the ring of the crowd. The knife held firm against his skin. “Open a way.”

The people parted with a grudging and slow grace. As the laboring-men in the inner circle broke apart, a trio of soldiers in the blue-and-silver, studded-leather armor of Barthos stepped in. The man keeping Hearn pinned took the knife from Hearn’s throat, but held his knee against Hearn’s spine. Hearn felt a wetness on his neck.

“What is this fighting about?” asked a cold voice behind the soldiers.

“Ah, setter Odden,” said Ostok. For, the cold voice had belonged to no other man. It was Odden of Barthos, grimmer-of-face than usual and flanked by Barthan soldiers, who had come upon the gathered crowd. Ostok went on, “You’ve shown up at an opportune time. Hearn and I were just heading to the Villgoranian embassy with this young lady. Perhaps you’d be so good as to accompany us there? And please, stop that man from ungagging her. She’s the assassin.”

“They can’t drag a lawful Teironian-” one of the crowd had begun to protest. A thud interrupted the man, one of the soldiers had thumped the civilian with the butt of his spear.

“I see,” Odden said after a moment. “Release these three. We’ll take them now.”

There was a chorus of boos and protest, but Odden had enough soldiers with him to deter any act but grumbling. Hearn felt the knee removed from his back, and was helped to his feet.

---

The chief knight of the Villgoranian Embassy’s local guard passed a long, unfavorable look over Kloe from her hair to her toes. “This killed our elder?” he asked.

“Happily,” Kloe answered for herself. She spoke before either Ostok or Hearn, standing a little back in the embassy foyer, could raise their voices. Her hands were still tied behind her, and her voice was slightly slurred from the swelling on her face. Even so, those present could hear the strength in the chanter’s tone.

The knight sniffled. “She’d be pretty if she weren’t so shabby.” He glanced at Hearn. “You’re doing?”

Hearn nodded. Ostok raised a finger and said, “Please, Sir Lince, is the gorvoid present? Time presses.”

From beyond the high stone walls of the Villgoranian embassy’s training yard, they heard the cheering of a crowd. Szem had gathered. While the faces of Ostok, Hearn, Kloe - even the knight captain and his royal army soldiers and the Barthans as well - were set grimly, the air beyond the walls seemed almost festive.

Sir Lince took one last, contemptuous look at Kloe of Teiron. Then he glanced down, rubbing a spot on his armor with a bit of oilcloth. “He’s busy getting his speech set. I’ll see.”

The knight turned a stiff about-face and marched across the yard, entering the embassy by way of a short square door under which he had to duck. Kloe, meanwhile, looked at Hearn. “You’ve betrayed your species,” she said.

Hearn ignored her. He turned to the Barthan Ambassador beside him. “Setter Odden,” he said, “what’s the fire we saw over Szem?”

Odden replied, “There appears to have been arson of some of the Szem hearths near the Gate to the West.”

“Muira or humans?”

“I am not well enough informed on the situation to give an account,” he said. His flat look suddenly sharpened, his right hand ducking into a pocket to mirror his left. “Setter Hearn, your face is bleeding.”

Hearn took the embroidered silk kerchief which the Barthan ambassador offered him and daubed at the side of his face, at the edge of his blackened eye, where a small cut had opened and bled. He wiped away the crusted red line along his neck as well. He returned the silk to Odden. The ambassador took it and set it back in his pocket. They all stood silent, Hearn, Odden, Ostok, the prisoner Kloe, the soldiers of Villgorania and Barthos, all sullen and awkwardly silent. Hearn checked his pocket clock.

Sir Lince returned after several moments. “Bring the girl,” he said to his two army soldiers. He waved in the direction of Ostok, Hearn, and Odden. “Ambassador, setters Hearn and Horksog, the gorvoid will see you at the same time.”

Kloe struggled against the two guards who pressed her - not gently - through the same low door which Sir Lince now held open. The Barthan ambassador, Ostok, and Hearn followed close behind. They stepped down the servants’ corridors at the back of the embassy, where an open window high on the wall to their left let in both the burgeoning light of dawn, and the rising volume of a mass crowd standing below the embassy balcony. They climbed a stair to the second story. Then the third. Hearn heard an incongruous husking sound. He turned around as they walked up the stairs and glanced at Ostok. “What?” the bountyman asked.

“What’s that sound in your bag?”

Ostok shook his bag and then noticed the noise as well. He opened it and reached a hand inside. He winced, then drew out a long, jagged shard. “My seeing glass,” he said ruefully. “It must have shattered in the scuffle.”

“Come along, setters,” said Odden of Barthos above them.

They were quickly led into a private chamber of the Villgoranian Embassy, all decorated in the rich black velvet of Villgorania. Kloe stood in the center of the room, on a circular pure black rug that seemed specially set for the purpose of singling out a subject for interrogation. She had begun to mumble some words, but one of the black-armored Villgoranian soldiers dealt her a blow to the kidney that produced the desired quietude. Sir Lince stood in his own oily armor beside the gorvoid himself, Vilniver Varadi. The gorvoid wore a doublet of the richest, darkest satin, with golden pauldrons, and his helmet tucked in the pit of an arm. In one hand he held a sheaf of parchment, but as he scanned Kloe up and down by the multicandle light, he set these back on his desk, face down.

“Do you know who I am, mell?” asked the gorvoid. He held his face in a stoic expressionless mask.

“A barbarian,” Kloe replied.

“I am the gorvoid of the principality of Villgorania, descendent by bloodline of Hoskas Varadi. My ancestors fought back The Doomed that would have swept across all Leeges, while the volon counties cowered on your side of the Mantes. My great grandfather Hoskas helped establish the first migrant forts, when your human cousins of the southern shelves began sailing north to Leeges. Ever since, there has been a deep partnership between the Elder Migrant of Ahn’s council and the gorvoid of Villgorania. For you to have slain Srik Tillich - it is as though you’ve slain my brother.”

“If I could,” Kloe answered slowly, in a controlled voice, “I would pull your family from the soil of the cylinder, from the bones of your ancestors to your children. You muira are like ticks on our country; parasites that drink the blood of-”

“Wrong, wrong, wrong!” The gorvoid composure evaporated. His face twisted, his mustache and eyebrows bristling with fury. “It is we who are drained and fed upon, our croplands burned, the land we took from witches and chimerics stolen from us in turn.”

“Setter Varadi,” interrupted the knight, Sir Vince.

The gorvoid had raised his helmet overhead in both hands as if to strike Kloe. He stood in that posture for a minute, as if indecisive. Kloe of Teiron only smiled through her swollen, bloody face. Finally Vilniver huffed, and settled his helm back under a shoulder. “Bah, enough. I would only put a second dent in it by striking your thick skull. Take this murderess to our prison. We shall decide what to do with her before the day is spent.”

The soldier on Kloe’s left judiciously clasped a palm over Kloe’s mouth before she could speak further. She had time for one final, hateful look in Hearn’s direction, before the two soldiers pulled her from the chambers. They shut the door behind them as they left.

“How did your helmet get its first dent, gorvoid Varadi,” asked Ostok when no one spoke.

“What?” Vilniver glanced down at the double-ridged, steel headwear in his arm. “Oh, some Teironian dog hurled a stone at me as I crossed the street last evening.”

“Ah.”

Odden of Barthos said, “It will be in accord with right diplomacy that Kloe of Teiron’s trial and justice is decided upon through a meeting with Teironian leaders.”

“Don’t equivocate now,” said Vilniver. He picked up his sheaf of speech papers and waved them for emphasis. “We’re too far for debate. You’ve chosen continental struggle over peace. On with you then, I have a people to rally.”

Odden bowed. “In response to Villgorania’s declaration of war on Teiron, jointly with the aid of her parent nation The Kingdom of Ahn; the Barthan Tyrant and his archons have entrusted me to deliver your embassy a notice of Barthan intention. Here is the letter for-”

“Hold on,” said Hearn and Ostok together. They glanced at one another; Ostok waved for Hearn to speak. “Kloe is the assassin. Setter Horksog has evidence. Let a trial unfold first, at least.”

Both Odden and the gorvoid looked at Hearn. Odden’s look seemed blank to the others in the room, but the men who knew him better would have recognized a certain sadness in the ambassador’s expression. He said, “It is too late, Setter Hearn. Ahn declared war last evening. Both Villgorania and Teiron gave the order for mobilization two mornings past. A Teironian frigate has been commandeered in Ahn’s port of Norvak.”

“There must be some temporary hold which can be established,” said Ostok.

“There isn’t,” said the gorvoid gruffly. “The schedules are fixed. My knights and army are already mobilizing.”

“Send out birds.” Hearn gestured toward the open window, through which the smell of smoke, and anxiety like sweat, filtered from the chattering crowd. “The weather is fair for flight.”

“Can’t be done.”

“Dawn has not yet risen on the sixth Day since Srik’s murder.”

“It’s the schedules, man. Your Tyrant has fixed them in tablets of stone. The plans are drawn.”

“Think of the sons and daughters in this city. Think of them on both sides of the Mantes. A trial brings justice on the head of one; the one who started-”

“Listen to this Teironian!” The gorvoid stormed back and forth before the desk, his face flushed. “Still pressing with philosophical zeal for a trial, for city law, yet to recognize that those have as much relevance now as syllogisms. The murder doesn’t matter now.”

Hearn’s mouth hung slack, the cut at the corner of his lip making it seem as if he were smiling, while his eyes expressed disbelief. Ostok said, “Gorvoid, setter, please. Ahn has had enough of war.”

This time it was Odden who shook his head. “The diviners have read the smoke already, setter Horksog. People are leaving the city.” He turned to the gorvoid and passed him the missive. “Here is the Barthan response. We shall take our leave now.”

“Wait,” said Hearn. Ostok shook his head sadly and tugged on the human’s shoulder, but Hearn stood statue-stiff. “What punishment will befall Kloe of Teiron?”

The gorvoid looked up from his speech papers, eyes narrow, face still flushed. “The appropriate punishment shall be administered under the laws of muira, gods, and kings.”

Hearn cast a glance at Odden. “It would be better for the Barthan ambassador, as an impartial party in-”

“Impartial?” Vilniver stared at Hearn with frog-eyes, seeming almost to bulge from the sockets. After a few heaving breaths, he turned slowly to face Ostok. “Bountyman Horksog, do you have anything further to report on your bounty?”

“At this time…” Ostok rubbed the bald, freckled dome of his head. “No, setter Varadi.”

Vilniver Varadi huffed and returned to his speech papers. Odden of Barthos opened the door to go. Sir Lince said, “You two shall accompany me. I’ll see to it that your bounty is awarded, and your agency fee is paid. After that, setters, my advice would be to put an immediate and sizeable distance between yourselves and Aster-Szem.”