02 The Walls of Air d-2 Read online

  But since that time, she had come to other knowledge.

  She stepped silently back into the blackness of the gateway. Putting her shoulder to the massive iron bindings of the door, she pushed it to.

  The guttering light of her torch threw a fitful and tarnished gilding over the rings and levers that operated the locks. She heard the muted click of the mechanism, deep within the tons of poised iron, and, as if hastening to escape from what she had done, she took her torch from its wall holder and hurried back up the passage. She walked soundlessly, all her senses keyed. It was not impossible that the Dark had slipped through the open gates and were lurking somewhere in the darkness of the Keep. Above her own fear, she felt fury at the irresponsibility of the men who had done it who had risked not only their own lives but the lives of everyone in the Keep and the integrity of the last sanctuary on earth for money.

  In the weeks since the Guards had asked her to become one of them, Gil had killed dozens of the Dark Ones. The Icefalcon had said she was a born killer, a creepy sort of compliment that she wasn't sure she wished to accept. Maybe it only meant that she was naturally cold-hearted and single-minded and that she would, if put to it, rather kill than be killed. But she felt now as if she had cut a lifeline and let three men drown. She was glad she had not seen their faces and did not know who they were.

  She never clearly identified the sound as she stepped out of the inner gates. It might have been cloth swishing, or the whine of something hard and heavy whistling through the air. But weeks with the Guards had given her hair-trigger ' reflexes, and the leaded stick meant to crush her skull cracked instead on her shoulder with splintering pain, throwing her forward to the floor. The torch skidded from her hand, and darkness seemed to swim down over her eyes, even as she rolled. Feet approached at a run, and she drew her sword with a long sideways hack at floor level, bracing her body as best she could against the impact. One of the looming figures in the darkness above her jumped. The other one screamed and fell on her, kicking and writhing in agony and screaming with a voice that rang in the hollow enormity of the vaulted Aisle. The weight of him crushed on Gil's injured shoulder, the screaming rang in her ears, and hot, slimy wetness gushed over them both.

  Irrationally furious at him for wallowing over her like that, Gil twisted out from under, pain ripping through her shoulder as she moved. Her eyes cleared. A bearded man she vaguely recognized hopped around on the outskirts of the encounter, a short sword in his hand. There was another man in the shadows behind him, also armed with a sword, his fat face pallid with nausea. Without stopping to wonder, Gil tried to get to her feet, but the bearded man, taking his chance, stepped in on her with a brutal downward swing of his blade. Through a welter of pain and darkness, Gil recognized

  the blow as 'coffin bait,' a fool's move, and her reaction was as automatic as a blink. She took him under the sternum with a two-handed thrust of her longer blade and saw blood burst simultaneously from chest and mouth. His eyes glazed with shock and with the amateur's almost comical astonishment at death. The fat little man dropped his sword and fled. On her knees, her head reeling, Gil watched him run all the way down the Aisle; she felt nothing but a cold, queer detachment, mixed with a little contempt for his cowardice. The man behind her was still thrashing on the floor, still screaming wildly on that same high note, still clawing vainly at his leg. Gil turned her head slowly and saw she'd cut his left foot off at the ankle. It was lying, still in its gold-stitched slipper of green kid, about four feet away. Then she fainted.

  'She be all right?'

  The voices around her were fuzzy and confused. Gil whispered, 'Ingold?' through cottony lips, blinking up at the hovering shadows.

  'You'll be fine, Babydove,' Gnift's soft, hoarse voice said, and an encouraging hand patted her hair. 'Just fine.'

  Gil sighed and shut her eyes against the smoky hurt of the dim lights. I guess the Icefalcon was right after all. So much for queasy considerations about closing the gates on those three poor thieves who'd got left outside and all that eyewash about the value of human life. Put to the test, she'd killed a man without so much as a token what am I doing?

  Gil knew that at the time she had known perfectly well what she was doing. She was saving her own life.

  Absently she thought, Four for sure and one maybe, if the poor bastard bled to death.

  And she began to cry, as she had done when she had lost her virginity. She had crossed a line that could never be recrossed. It was no longer possible for her to be what she had been.

  'Hey, Angel Eyes,' Gnift's voice said again, and the sword-calloused hand wiped the tears from her cheek. 'It's all over. Just a little broken collarbone. Nothing to that.' But she could not seem to stop herself and wept, not for the pain, but out of a sense of loss and an understanding of herself.

  The world returned slowly to focus. She lay on her own bunk in the barracks, the narrow room jammed with her fellow Guards in the blurred yellow glare of the grease lamps. Her shoulder was strapped and braced, and Gnift was wrapping up his crude surgical equipment on the next bunk, his elf-bright eyes kind. Melantrys was standing next to him, a bloody towel dangling from her hand. Caldern, who had replaced the Icefalcon as captain of the deep-night watch, towered over them both.

  Melantrys glanced over at her. 'You did nicely,' she said. 'Clean. I told you she had a strong side-cut, Gnift. Took the foot off through both bones and halfway through the other ankle.' Her cold, careless eyes returned to Gil. 'Was that a one-handed cut?'

  Gil drew a shuddering breath and nodded. She wondered if her father had cried the first time he'd killed some Japanese he didn't know. In a voice that sounded hideously matter-of-fact, she said, 'Yeah. What happened to you, Caldern?'

  The big captain scratched his head. 'Were had for chump,' he drawled in his north-country accent. 'Chappy come yellin' murder down the way, and 'twere no others to call. I followed, and a pretty chase he led me; and lost of him after a'. Sorry it is I am, lass.'

  Gil shook her head, closing her eyes again against the light. 'You couldn't have known.'

  'Not something anyone would have guessed,' Janus' voice said, and the Commander loomed suddenly from the darkness. 'We never thought to be posting guards on the gate to keep folk from throwing them open at night.' He elbowed his way through the press to stand behind her, as large and solid as a Mack truck. 'Are you well, Gil-Shalos?'

  'Fine,' she said quietly. The one person who could have comforted the pain in her soul was camped somewhere in the middle of the plains; she wanted only to sleep.

  She heard Janus say to the others, 'Show's over for the night, children; time to clear out the College of Surgeons. The alarm's out - there's probably not a Dark One in a hundred miles, but it's an all-troops patrol of the Keep, just to be sure.'

  There was scuffling, moans, chaff and vivid curses in the pungent tongue of the Wathe. Through her closed eyes Gil heard them leaving, Gnift flirting outrageously with Melantrys, and Janus and Caldern conversing in their unintelligible north-country dialect. The noises faded, amid a jangle of sword belts and mail. Lonely darkness returned. 'Can I get you anything?'

  Gil opened her eyes again, surprised. In her thin peasant skirts and black cloak, Minalde sat on the next bunk.

  'You can get me some water, if you will.'The girl turned away to dip some out of the communal tank. 'What are you doing here?'

  'They told me you'd been hurt,' Aide said simply. 'They woke me to sign the papers to arrest Parscino Pral.' She came back with the dripping cup in her hands. 'Can you sit up to drink?'

  'I think so. Who's Parscino Pral?' 'The man whose foot you cut off.' Aide spoke very matter-of-factly as she helped Gil sit up a little further against the collected pillows of the entire barracks. The slightest movement ground the broken ends of the collarbone together in the bruised mess of the torn flesh. 'He was one of the wealthiest merchants in Gae. The man you killed was Yard Webbling, his partner. Pral says the third man was Bendle Stooft.'

  '
He was.' Gil remembered now, the faces falling into place. Pral had been a member of Alwir's coterie of merchants, the day Janus had been released by the Penambrans. Bendle Stooft had been there, too, dressed in green velvet and ermine. She didn't remember Yard Webbling at all. But already it was only a matter of

  academic interest. Aide certainly didn't look upset. But then, Gil thought, Aide has seen far more men die than I could ever imagine. Since the fall of Gae, her life has been nothing but a wilderness of flight and horror. She was certainly less than likely to waste good guilt over a man or two killed and a shut door that condemned three others.

  'Could you identify him before a tribunal? Aide asked.

  'Sure,' Gil said, 'no problem.'

  Aide blew out two of the room's three lamps. 'Would you like me to stay for a while?' she asked.

  Her eyes closed again, Gil said quietly, 'No. Thank you, though.' She heard the girl hesitate; then quick, light footfalls pattered through the empty barracks and out into the Aisle beyond.

  Bendle Stooft was brought to trial late the following morning, in the big cell Alwir had taken over for his audience hall in the Royal Sector. Gil recognized him immediately. The soft, slack face and receding button chin had swum through the confusion of last night's dreams. He sat now in a carved chair, nervously fiddling with the jewels in his rings, so that his hands glittered with a fireworks display of topaz and green in the warm gold of the candlelight. It was a formal occasion; candles banked the long and strangely carved ebony table at which the tribunal sat, giving them the curious appearance of holy statues enshrined in votive light. The fire of bullion embroidery rippled and flickered over Alwir's breast and sleeves and wound like tattoo-work around the knuckles of his black kid gloves. The flame caught in a hard glint of hot red-purple in the amethyst of Bishop Govannin's episcopal ring and glowed in the crimson of her habit. Between them, Minalde looked very pale and composed.

  Gil stood behind the prisoner, flanked by Janus and Caldern. She was exhausted from the walk here, and her head buzzed with fever. The room around her had a two-dimensional quality, unreal to her tired eyes. Colours seemed to drip as vividly as blood against velvet darkness, and sounds changed their quality, either louder than they should be or humming and distant.

  Her own voice echoed strangely in her ears as she said, That is the man.'

  'Are you sure?' Alwir asked. Beside him, the Bishop unstacked her long, fragile fingers and stacked them together differently, as if observing the patterns made by the shadows of those bony knuckles.

  'Yes,' Gil said. 'Of course.'

  'You understand the severity of the charge?' Alwir asked in that soft, melodious voice. 'You must be sure there is no mistake.'

  Gil frowned. 'He and his friends tried to murder me,' she said. 'It isn't likely I would forget him.'

  'And,' Janus said quietly at her side, 'if the charge is severe, the consequences of

  leaving the Keep doors open after dark are more so.'

  'Even so,' Alwir agreed gravely. 'And indeed, some kind of punishment is certainly in order.'

  'Some kind? Govannin purred, her eyes slipping sideways at him, as dark as smoky agate. 'By Keep Law, there is but one punishment.'

  Candlelight glittered a thousandfold in the dark-blue eyes. The Chancellor made a deprecating noise of general agreement in his throat, and Stooft turned fish-belly white. 'Nevertheless,' Alwir went on, 'since there was no clear evidence that the Keep was in danger -'

  'My lord,' Janus broke in, 'we found the bones of Stooft's three helpers outside the food compounds this morning. It's sure that the Dark were in the Vale last night.'

  'But at what time, my lord Commander?' Alwir asked. 'It may not have been until hours later. We want to see justice done here.'

  Justice? Gil felt the rush of anger heat her as the broken ends of her collarbone ground together. That man tried to kill me. And she looked over at Stooft in time to see him settle back into his chair; a just perceptible movement of relaxation told its story. He had spoken to Alwir beforehand. He knew he was not going to die. Rage went through her like a river of blood, rage greater than what she had experienced in the fight at the gate. She knew exactly what policemen felt when they heard a junkie or pimp or mugger they'd hauled in get off with a suspended sentence. Janus' fingers tightened over her good arm to remind her she was still in the presence of the Council of Regents.

  'Indeed,' Alwir continued smoothly, 'I think the whole question of food theft and hoarding can be resolved by consolidating the stores under a single proprietorship. With Maia and his people coming within our walls, the danger of black marketeering is doubled. Proper guarding can nip the problem in the bud, and we will have no more troubles of this kind.'

  'Consolidation?' The Bishop's fine eyebrows rose, but her eyes remained like wet pebbles in a stream bed, as emotionless as a shark's. 'Under the wardship of the Council, with yourself at its head, my lord Chancellor?

  Alwir's shoulders stiffened. He kept his voice suave. 'Surely you can see that it would be better than the present chaos...'

  'I cannot say that I do.' The wind-dry whisper of her voice was mild, considering. 'But if a consolidated storage of food appeals to you, my lord, what better centralizing agency can we find than the Church, which has a far larger and better-trained clerical staff than your own, as well as its own body of troops?

  'Out of the question!' Alwir snapped furiously.

  'Then it isn't really consolidation you seek, is it?

  'We have been through this before,' the Chancellor said, his voice suddenly tight.

  'With proper regulation...'

  'By whom? the Bishop rapped harshly. 'People like Bendle Stooft, your good old friend from Gae?

  'In times past we have been friends,' Alwir said stiffly. 'But in no way will I allow his friendship to affect my judgement of this case.'

  'Then follow Keep Law,' she said, 'and leave him in chains at sunset.'

  'My lord!' Stooft croaked leaping from his chair with, Gil thought detachedly, remarkable agility for so pudgy a man.

  'Be still!' Alwir snapped at him.

  The merchant flung himself to his knees in front of the ebony table. 'My lord please I'll neverdo it again. I swear it. The others made me. I swear, it was all Webbling's idea, it really was, Webbling's and - and Pral's - they forced me to go along...' His sparkling hands groped over the polished surface, the gold of his rings rattling on the gleaming wood. His voice babbled on, rising in pitch like an old woman's. 'Please, my lord, I'll never do it again. You said you wouldn't let anything happen to me. I promise I'll do whatever you ask...'

  'SILENCE!' Alwir roared.

  The two Guards, coldblooded automatons, stepped forward in unison to take the man by the arms and set him bodily on his feet. Gil could see that he was trembling in the soft lamplight, sweat running off his face as if he were melting in the heat. Hestood hanging on to the Guards, weeping.

  Alwir went on, more calmly. 'Now, there has been no talk of an execution, though of course some form of severe punishment is in order.'

  Govannin looked at her hands. There is only one punishment.'

  'Really, my lady Bishop,' Alwir said, 'we do not wish to set a precedent...'

  She glanced up. 'I think it an admirable precedent to set.' In the jumping light, her ageless face resembled that of some archaic vulture-god. 'It will certainly cause like-minded thieves to reconsider their actions very carefully.' The long, cold fingers smoothed a wrinkle from her scarlet sleeve.

  'If the food supplies were consolidated...'

  'Confiscated, you mean? Her black eyes glittered maliciously. There are hundreds of little entrepreneurs throughout the Keep who managed to haul grain and stock and dried goods down from Gae. There are others planning to execute forage missions of their own. How many would show that kind of initiative if it were all going to people like Stooft here? If, after their trouble, they found they would be robbed of what they already have, they might even fight.'

&
nbsp; 'Fighting would be madness!'

  She shrugged her angular shoulders. 'So, in my opinion, would be confiscation.'

  'It is not confiscation!'

  'A play upon words, my lord,' she said disinterestedly.

  With visible effort, Alwir got a grip on himself. The Bishop looked down at her hands with that little ophidian smile and said no more.

  'I suppose it is a coincidence that the largest of those -entrepreneurs, as you call them - is the Church itself? That for all your pious talk about the care of souls, your real concern is with the wealth of the Church?'

  'Souls inhabit bodies, my lord Chancellor. We have always cared for both. Like you, we seek only the greatest good for those whose charge God has given us.'

  'And is that why you, the representative of the God of mercy, demand this man's life?"

  She raised her head, flat black eyes under heavy lids meeting his with self-evident calm. 'Of course.' Stooft made a desperate little crying noise in his throat. 'And that is my final vote, as member of the Council.'

  'And my final vote,' Alwir grated, 'is that the merchant Bendle Stooft be publicly flogged with thirty lashes and imprisoned upon bread and water for thirty days. Minalde!' He glanced sideways at his sister, who had sat all this while in perfect silence, watching everything that had passed between the merchant, the prelate, and her brother.

  She raised her head, dark, jewelled braids swinging against cheeks that had gone as white as paper in the reddish shadows. 'I vote death.'

  'WHAT?' Alwir half-rose, speechless between shock and rage.

  Stooft made an inarticulate whimpering cry and would have thrown himself to his knees again, had not Janus and Caldern prevented him. He began to sob. 'My lord! My lady!' Tears streamed down his trembling cheeks. Aide raised her eyes and regarded him with desperately held calm, her full lips taut and grey, as if with nausea.