It had just been a dream. Not a premonition, or even a memory. Just my mind tormenting me. Nothing new there. But it had left me with a shameful desire to flee the city, forget risking our lives defending it, forget about poisons, assassination attempts, political machinations, and everything else. Kalina and Tain and I together somewhere else, somewhere safe.…
Unable to tolerate stewing in bed anymore, I dressed and went outside into our grounds. We had buried Etan here on our own property, but visiting the spot gave me no peace; I felt my failure of our duty too intensely, as though he reproached me from the earth. Still, I could imagine I felt his presence and try to speculate about what he would do if he were here.
It had been a frustrating evening, going over supply lists and sewage management with several Councilors and then preparing the next day’s food for Tain in the Manor kitchen after everyone else had left. I’d found Kalina deeply and troublingly asleep when I finally returned. Carrying her to her bed had not even woken her, and the heavy lines around her eyes and forehead had not eased even in her supposed rest. I felt helpless in my worry for her.
Something had bothered me at the meeting, and if it had taken anxious dreams to rouse me then so be it.
There had been no attack on Tain, and I had kept my word that I would not bring up my suspicions about his Council. Either he did not truly believe there was a conspiracy or he did not want to be burdened with the doubt and suspicion that haunted me. I understood the desire to believe those in power could be trusted. Sniping and self-interested though they were, and while they still jostled to influence or manipulate their new Chancellor, it would make all of our lives easier if we at least knew they were not working with an enemy of the city. Yet while Tain had ever been capable of abandoning grudges and hurts and ill thoughts of any kind, I did not share that skill. Every instinct I had told me one of the Councilors, or more, was working against at least Tain’s family, if not the entire city.
Tonight it was Javesto who had troubled me, even if it had taken some time to process why. His keen interest in the food store levels could simply have been the same interest and concern we all shared. But his gaze had lingered too long, and too often, on the roster pages and distribution lists Marco had been sharing with Eliska, whose sector included the warehouses. Perhaps it was paranoid to worry, but perhaps not. As if the silence from my uncle’s grave were an endorsement, I decided I would go. At worst, visiting the warehouses would be a good stretch of my legs and a chance to think.
The darkened streets, empty except for the hollow, distant sounds of the night patrols on the walls, were gray ghosts without merry revelers, acrobats, or poets. The teahouses and kori bars were silent shells, the theaters empty of crowds that should have spilled from their doorways. Now, the late summer air close around me, I passed under archways absent lanterns and shop doorways locked tight. Those few people who were around scurried past without raising their faces in greeting. The smooth, silver-veined azikta of the elegant buildings glowed softly in the moonlight, lighting my way as I walked down the streets past the great theater, the old academies, the original Guildhalls … three hundred years of history speaking to me through the architecture.
As I worked my way down toward the lake, my anxiety slowly calmed. I walked faster, steps punctuating my breathing. Sound carried oddly across the lake as I crossed Trickster’s Bridge, so the crunch of pacing footsteps echoed down from the wall and muffled activity sounded from the lower city. The Builders’ Guildhall and some of the surrounding buildings rang with the distant song of industry.
I traced the path of the lake, past the harbor, by the great warehouses. This close to the deep, still waters, the air temperature had dropped. Rubbing the raised hairs on my arms, I steered between one of the granaries and a warehouse, heading toward the center of town. During the day this area was bustling; now, only a few people trailed between the warehouses and the road, delivering supplies to the stations in each segment. Soon, wandering through the maze of alleys between the buildings, I lost sight of any other life.
I had taken two steps into the next passage when a sharp sound startled me. Tile fragments shattered on the floor a few paces away. I looked up. There, on the roof of the warehouse, silhouetted against the night sky, a figure froze, half-crouched. For a moment neither of us moved. Then the figure sprang to its feet and ran.
Without thinking, I followed.
The moon gave enough light for me to track the figure as it scrambled across the roof and then leaped to the next. I sprinted down the alley, my eyes fixed on the rooftops, and skidded around the side of the next building in time to see the person nimbly dropping from the eave. The jump slowed him enough to close the gap and by the time we rounded the next corner I caught him. My first thought on grabbing his shoulder and spinning my quarry around was that the shoulder was quite a bit higher than mine.
The second was, Oh shit.
He struck me in the stomach before I could react, and the blow sent me flying backward with a grunt. Luck more than instinct helped me duck under the follow-up punch to my head, though it came close enough that his forearm scraped my hair as it hooked past. I’d no hope in a fistfight with this man, so I stayed low and launched myself at him instead.
I hit his midsection with my shoulder and scooped up his legs with both my arms, driving in and up. We both hit the ground, me on top. But my opponent was a far superior fighter, and bucked and twisted, so suddenly it was me on my back. I tried to protect my head as the blow came down, but instead his mallet hands struck either side of my ribs with force enough to knock the wind from my lungs. He grabbed me by the hair and pounded my head back. In that one moment before my head made contact with ground, I saw the charm necklace dangling from his neck.
It seemed like only moments later my eyes opened, but even as my shaking hands checked the damage to my head I knew time must have passed. The sky above me had turned the rich indigo of predawn. I tried to sit up, but the attempt sent waves of nausea and pain down my body. Breathing in, my chest exploded with fiery splinters as though my ribs had been shattered. I lay still, trying not to move any part of my body, and looked around me as best I could. At least my eyeballs didn’t hurt.
The low branches of a tree hung over me from one side, the broad flat leaves forming patterns over about a quarter of my vision. At the other side I recognized the edge of the tiled warehouse roof. Grass tickled the sides of my cheeks and the greasy scent in the air suggested proximity to the docks.
Moving slowly, I tried again to sit, and made it about halfway to vertical before the nausea hit again. There was just time to turn my face before throwing up, to avoid ending up covered in vomit. Minor victories.
After a while, I managed to get to my feet with help from the overhanging tree. It looked as if my attacker had dragged me to the grassy embankment on the lake side of the road, near the food storage warehouses, and left me there. Why beat me unconscious then take me somewhere to recover safely?
My gaze rested on the storeroom roof I’d first seen him on. The door was locked. Obviously the first load of deliveries hadn’t started for the morning yet. Clutching my head as a wave of dizziness made my legs wobble, I walked toward the nearest ration station, where a thin man regarded me warily with bulging eyes. I must have looked a sight, battered and dizzy, but once his fishy gaze took in the tattoos on my arms he agreed to follow me back with the key to the warehouse.