Shadows Return - Lynn Flewelling [117]
“Yes, but it’s dangerous.”
He grinned as he changed his slave robe for the clothing she’d brought him. “At this point, what isn’t? I’m not going without him.”
“I know. But we must go quickly!” She pulled back her cloak to show him a satchel she had over one shoulder. “See? I have food, water, a flint, and the rest you asked for.”
She took him by the hand and led him down a narrow stair and through several turns of a narrow passageway. He smelled dust and mice—a back passage, one that let servants move through the house without offending the eyes of the master and his household.
They came out in a shadowy room full of bulky furnishings. At the far end a set of double doors stood open. Seregil stole up to the edge of the doorway. It was a crisp, overcast night, with no moonlight to betray them. Intentionally or not, the Khatme had chosen her moment well.
Peering cautiously outside, he froze as he made out a line of figures outside. As his eyes adjusted to the light, however, he realized that they were only statues, lined up along the sides of a long fountain pool.
I’ve been here! He recognized the black-and-white mosaic paving. It was all he did remember, having been drugged to the gills the only other time he’d been here.
Overhead, there was a second-floor gallery, with doorways and lots of darkened windows.
“There, the watchman,” Rhania whispered, pointing out a dark figure slumped on a stool near an archway to their left. An overturned cup lay at his feet.
“Drunk?” asked Seregil.
“Dead, I hope. He helped himself to me once too often, so I gifted him with a bit of one of the master’s special elixirs in his wine tonight.”
“You were planning this long before I ever showed up.”
“Yes. Aura sent you, and I am ready.”
“Take what the Lightbearer sends and be thankful, eh?” Seregil shook his head, wondering how a woman like her had ended up a slave in the first place.
Rhania pointed to an arched gateway at the far end of the courtyard. “Through there. Your friend is in Ilban’s workshop.”
“Good. Stay close to me.”
Keeping to the shadows under the gallery, he started for the gate.
Suddenly someone on the gallery overhead shouted, “There they are.”
Rhania cowered back against the wall as the sound of running feet came from all directions. “That’s Ilban!”
“There!” a woman screamed, and Seregil prayed it wasn’t Zoriel.
“No!” Rhania gasped, looking around wildly. “No, I can’t…I won’t!”
Before Seregil could stop her, she clasped the carving knife in both hands and drove it deep into her breast. She fell without a cry.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Seregil bolted across the courtyard, dodged between two startled guards coming the other way, and dashed into the garden beyond. The workshop Rhania told him about was right there in front of him, but it might as well have been on the moon for all the good it did him right now.
A pursuer caught him by the shoulder. Seregil paused just long enough to plunge his poniard through that man’s throat and into the chest of the one who’d come with him, then ran across to a large, ornate fountain on what appeared to be an outer wall. Using the carvings for purchase, he scrambled up. At the top, somehow still clutching the bloody poniard, he looked over and saw a shadowed fold of ground below. Ditch or gorge, it was impossible to tell.
He kept low and ran along the top of the wall, trying to find a better place, but the declivity followed this side of the house.
If he did jump and didn’t break his neck, he still might not be able to get back inside easily for Alec. And just where exactly was he going to go if he did run—branded, dressed in stolen, ill-fitting clothes, with blood on his hands, and no knowledge of the countryside?
He followed the top of the wall past the workshop and around the smaller garden with the covered walkway and the fish pool. He caught sight of movement below just in time to flatten himself into the angle between the wall and the tiled walkway roof.
“What are you doing in here?” a man demanded.
“The master said to