The Oathbound Read online

  “I’d ask if you had too much wine, except that I didn’t see you drink more than a mouthful or two before you left the room,” Justin spoke quietly, for her ears alone, as he added his support to that of the lintel. “Something’s wrong?”

  “Keth—something’s happened to Keth—” Tarma gasped for air.

  “I know she’s late, but—”

  “The—bond, the she‘enedran-oath we swore to each other—it was Goddess-blessed. So if anything happens to one of us—”

  “Ah—the other knows. Ikan and I have something of the kind, but we’re spell-bound and we had it done a-purpose; useful when scouting. Sit. Put your head between your knees. I’ll get Ikan. He knows a bit more about leechcraft and magery than I.”

  Tarma let him ease her down to the ice-covered doorstep, and did as she was told. The frosted stone was very cold beneath her rump, but the cold seemed to shake some of the dizziness away, getting her head down did a bit more. Just as her head began to clear, there were returning footsteps, and two pairs of booted feet appeared beside her.

  “Drink this—” Ikan hunched on his heels beside her as she cautiously raised her head; he was holding out a small wooden bottle, and his whole posture showed concern. “Just a swallow; it’s only for emergencies.”

  She took a gingerly mouthful, and was glad she’d been cautious. The stuff burned all the way down her gullet, but left a clear head and renewed energy behind it.

  “Goddess—oh, Goddess, I have to—” she started to rise, but Justin’s hands on her shoulders prevented her.

  “You have to stay right where you are. You want to get yourself killed?” Ikan asked soberly. “You’re a professional, Shin‘a’in—act like one.”

  “All right,” Justin said calmly, as she sank back to the stone. “Something’s happened to your oathsister. Any clue as to what—”

  “—or who?” Ikan finished. “Or why? You’re not rich enough to ransom, and too new in Mornedealth to have acquired enemies.”

  “Why and who—I’ve got a damn good idea,” Tarma replied grimly, and told them, in brief, Kethry’s history

  “Gods, how am I to get her away from them? I don’t know where to look, and even if I did, what’s one sword against what Wethes can hire?” she finished in despair. “Why, oh why didn’t I listen to her?”

  “Kavin—Kavinestral—hmmm,” Justin mused. “Now that sounds familiar.”

  “It bloody well should,” Ikan replied, stoppering his precious bottle tightly and tucking it inside his tunic. “He heads the Blue faction.”

  “The—what?” Tarma blinked at him in bewilderment.

  “There are five factions among the wilder offspring of the Fifty; Blue, Green, Red, Yellow, and Black. They started out as racing clubs, but it’s gotten down to a nastier level than that within the last few years,” Ikan told her. “Duels in plenty, one or two deaths. Right now only two factions are strong enough to matter; Blue and Green. Kavin heads the Blues; a fellow called Helansevrith heads Green. They’ve been eyeblinks away from each other’s throats for years, and the only thing that has kept them from taking each other on, is that Kavin is essentially a coward. He’d rather get his followers to do his dirty work for him. He makes a big pose of being a tough, but he’s never personally taken anyone out. Mostly that doesn’t matter, since he’s got his followers convinced.”

  He stood up, offering his hand to Tarma. “I can give you a quick guess who could find out where Kethry is, because I know where Wethes won’t take her. He won’t dare take her to his home, is servants would see and gossip. He won’t risk that, because the tale he’s given out all these years is that Kethry is very shy and has been staying in seclusion on his country estate. No, he’ll take her to his private brothel; I know he has one, I just don’t know where. But Justin’s got a friend who could tell us.”

  “That she could—and be happy to. Any harm she could bring that man would make her right glad.” Even in the dim light from the torch over the door Tarma could see that Justin looked grim.

  “How do you know all this about Wethes and Kavin?” Tarma looked from one to the other of them.

  “Because, Swordlady,” Ikan’s mouth stretched in something that bore very little resemblence to a smile, “my name wasn’t always Dryvale.”

  Kethry had wedged herself back into a corner of her barren, stone-floored cell. Wethes stood over her, candle-lantern in one hand, gloating. It was the very worst of her nightmares come true.

  “What’s mine remains mine, dear wife,” he crowed. “You won’t be given a second chance to escape me. I bought you, and I intend to keep you.” He was enjoying every moment, was taking pleasure in her fright, just as he had taken pleasure in her pain when he’d raped her.

  Kethry was paralyzed with fear, her skin crawling at the bare presence of him in the same room with her. What would she do if he touched her? Her heart was pounding as if she’d been running for miles. And she thought wildly that if he did touch her, perhaps her heart would give out.

  He bent and darted his hand forward suddenly, as if intending to catch one of her arms, and she gave a little mew of terror and involuntarily kicked out at him with her bound feet.

  His startled reaction took her completely by surprise.

  He jumped backward, eyes widening, hands shaking so that the candle flame wavered. Fear was a mask over his features—absolute and utter fear of her. For one long moment he stared at her, and she at him, hardly able to believe what her own eyes were telling her.

  He was afraid of her. For all his puffing and threatening, he was afraid of her!

  And in that moment she saw him for what he was—an aging, paunchy, greedy coward. Any sign of resistance in an adult woman obviously terrified him.

  She kicked out again, experimentally, and he jumped back another pace.

  Probably the only females he could dominate were helpless children; probably that was why he chose them for his pleasures. At this moment he was as terrified of her as she had been of him.

  And the nightmare-monster of her childhood revealed itself to be a thing of old clothes stuffed with straw.

  Her fear of him evaporated, like a thing spun of mist. Anger quickly replaced the fear; and while fear paralyzed her magecraft, anger fed her powers. That she had been held in thrall for seven long years by fear of this!

  He saw the change from terror to rage on her face; she could see his realization that she was no longer cowed mirrored on his. He bit his lip and stepped backward another three or four paces.

  With three barked words she burned through the ropes on her hands and feet. She rose swiftly to her feet, shaking the bits off her wrists as she did so, her eyes never once leaving his face.

  “Kidnap me, will you?” she hissed at him, eyes narrowed. “Drug me and leave me tied up, and think you can use me as you did before—well, I’ve grown up, even if you haven’t. I’ve learned how to deal with slime like you.”

  Wethes gulped, and backed up again.

  “I’ll teach you to mend your ways, you fat, slobbering bastard! I’ll show you what it feels like to be a victim!”

  She pointed a finger at him, and miniature lightning leapt from it to his feet.

  Wethes yelped, hopping from one foot to the other. Kethry aimed her finger a bit higher.

  “Let’s see how you like being hurt.”

  He screeched, turned, and fled, slamming the door behind him. Kethry was at it in an eyeblink, clawing at it in frustration, for there was no handle on this side. She screamed curses at him; in her own tongue, then in Shin‘a’in when that failed her, pounding on the obdurate portal with both fists.

  “Come back here, you half-breed son of a pig and an ape! I’ll wither your manhood like a fifty-year-old sausage! Coward! Baby-raper! If I ever get my hands on your neck, I’ll wrap a rope around it and spin you like a top! I’ll peel your skull like a chestnut ! Come back here!”

  Finally her bruised fists recalled her to her senses. She stopped beating senselessl
y on the thick wood of the door, and rested for a moment, eyes closed as she reined in her temper. Anger did feed her power, but uncontrolled anger kept her from using it. She considered the door, considered her options, then acted.

  A half-dozen spells later, her magic energies were becoming exhausted; the wood of the door was blackened and splintered, and the floor before it warped, but the door remained closed. It had been warded, and by a mage who was her equal at the very least. She used the last of her power to fuel a feeble mage-light; it hovered over her head, illuminating the barren cell in a soft blue radiance. She leaned her back against the far wall and allowed herself to slide down it, wearily. Wrapping her arms around her tucked-up knees, she regarded the warded door and planned her next move.

  If Wethes could have seen the expression on her face, he’d have died of fright on the spot.

  Tarma had been expecting Justin’s “friend” to be a whore. Certainly she lived on a street where every other door housed one or more who practiced that trade—and the other doors led to shops that catered to their needs or those of their customers. They stopped midway down the block to tap lightly at one of those portals that plainly led to a small apartment, and Tarma expected it to be opened by another of the painted, bright-eyed trollops who bestowed themselves on doorways and windows all up and down this thoroughfare. She was shivering at the sight of most of them, not from dislike, but from sympathy. She was half-frozen (as usual), and could not imagine for a moment how they managed to stay warm in the scarves and shreds of silk they wore for bodices and skirts.

  She didn’t hold them in low esteem for selling themselves to earn their bread. After all, wasn’t that exactly what she and Keth were doing? It was too bad that they had no other commodity to offer, but that was what fate had dealt them.

  But the dark-eyed creature who opened her door at Justin’s coded knock was no whore, and was unlikely to ever be mistaken for one, no matter how murky the night or intoxicated the customer.

  In some ways she was almost a caricature of Tarma herself; practically sexless. Nothing other than Justin’s word showed she was female—her sable hair cut so short it was hardly more than a smooth dark cap covering her skull; the thin, half-starved-looking body of an acrobat. She wore midnight blue; the only relief of that color came from the dozens of knives she wore, gleaming in the light that streamed from the room behind her, the torches of the street, and the lantern over the door, which Tarma noticed belatedly was of blue glass, not red. Two bandoliers were strapped across her slim chest, and both housed at least eight or nine matched throwing daggers. More were in sheaths strapped to her arms and legs; two longer knives, almost short swords, resided on each hip. Her face was as hard as marble, with deeply etched lines of pain.

  “Justin, it’s late,” she said in a soft voice, frowning a little. “I take my shift soon.”

  “Cat-child, I know,” Justin replied; Tarma realized in that instant that the hard lines of the girl’s face had deceived her; she couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. “But we have a chance to get at Wethes Goldmarchant and—”

  The girl’s face blazed with an unholy light. “When? How? I’ll have somebody else sub for me; Gesta owes me a favor—”

  “Easy, girl,” Ikan cautioned. “We’re not sure what we’re going to be doing yet, or how much we’re going to be able to hurt him, if at all.”

  She gave Ikan a sidelong look, then fixed her attention again on Justin. “Him—who?” she asked, shortly, jerking her head at Ikan.

  “My shieldbrother; you’ve heard me talk about him often enough,” he replied, interpreting the brief query, “And this swordlady is Tarma shena Tale‘sedrin, Shin’a‘in mercenary. Wethes has her oathsister, a sorceress—it’s rather too long a tale to go into, but we know he took her, he’s got his reasons for wanting her and we know he won’t be taking her to his house in the District.”

  “And you want to know if I know where his latest pleasure-house is. Oh, aye; I do that. But unless you swear to let me in on this, I won’t tell you.”

  “Cat, you don’t know what you’re asking—”

  “Let her buy in,”“ Tarma interrupted, and spoke to the girl directly. ”I’m guessing you’re one of Wethes’ discards.“

  “You’re not wrong. I hate his littlest nail-paring. I want a piece of him—somehow, some way—preferably the piece he prizes the most.”

  “That’s a reasonable request, and one I’m inclined to give you a chance at. Just so long as you remember that our primary goal is the rescue of my oathsister, and you don’t jeopardize getting Keth out in one piece.”

  “Let me roust out Gesta.”

  The girl darted between Tarma and Justin; ran up the staircase to the second floor to knock on another nondescript door. The ugliest man Tarma had ever seen in her life answered it; Cat whispered something inaudible. He grinned, pulled a savage-looking half-ax from somewhere just inside the door, and sauntered down the stairs with it, whistling tunefully. He gave all three of them a wink as he passed them, said shortly, “Good hunting,” and passed out of sight around a corner. The girl returned with a thoughtful look in her eyes.

  “Come on in. Let’s sit and plan this over. Being too hasty to look before I acted got me into Wethes’ hands.”

  “And you won’t be making that mistake a second time, will you, my girl?” Justin finished for her.

  They filed into the tiny room; it held a few cushions and a pallet, a small clothes chest, more knives mounted on the wall, and a lantern, nothing more.

  “You say your friend’s a sorceress? The old bastard probably has her under binding from his house mage,” she mused as she dropped down cross-legged on the pallet, leaving them to choose cushions. “Think she could break herself free if we gave him something else to think about?”

  “Probably; Keth’s pretty good—”

  “The mage isn’t all we have to worry about. Kavinestral’s crowd is bound to be hanging around,” Ikan interrupted.

  “Damn—there’s only four of us, and that lot is nearly thirty strong.” The girl swore under her breath. “Where in sheva are we going to get enough bodies to throw at them?”

  Whatever had been in that drink Ikan had given her seemed to be making Tarma’s mind work at high speed. “ ‘Find your enemy’s enemy.’ That’s what my people would say.”

  Ikan stared at her, then began to grin.

  The last explosion from the sealed room below made the whole house rattle. Wethes turned to Kavin with stark panic in his face. “What have you gotten me into?” he choked hysterically, grabbing Kavin by the front of his tunic and shaking him. “What kind of monster has she become?”

  Kavin struck the banker’s hands away, a touch of panic in his own eyes. Kethry wasn’t going to be any happier with him than she was with Wethes—and if she got loose—“How was I to know? Magecraft doesn’t breed true in my family! Mages don’t show up oftener than one in every ten births in my House! She never gave any indication she had that much power when I was watching her! Can’t your mage contain her?”

  “Barely—and then what do I do? She’ll kill me if I try and let her go, and may the gods help us if Regyl has to contend with more than simply containing her.”

  He might have purposefully called the sounds of conflict from the yard beyond the house. Shouts and cries of pain, and the sound of steel on steel penetrated the door to the courtyard; mingled in those shouts was the rally cry of the Greens. That galvanized Kavin into action; he started for the door to the rear of the house and the only other exit, drawing his sword as he ran, obviously hoping to escape before the fracas penetrated into the building.

  But he stopped dead in his tracks as the door burst inward, and narrowly missed being knocked off his feet by the force that blew it off its hinges. His blade dropped from numb fingers, clattering on the slate-paved floor. His eyes grew round, and he made a tiny sound as if he were choking. Behind him, Wethes was doing the same.

  There were five people s
tanding in the doorway; whether Wethes knew all of them, he didn’t know, but Kavin recognized only two.

  First in line stood Kethry. Her robes were slightly torn and scorched in one place; she was disheveled, smoke-stained, and dirty. But she was very clearly in control of the situation—and Kavin found himself completely cowed by her blazing eyes.

  Behind her was the Shin‘a’in Tarma; a sword in one hand, a dagger in the other, and the look of an angry wolf about her. Should Kethry leave anything of him, he had no doubt that his chances of surviving a single candlemark with her were nil.

  Next to Tarma stood a young girl in midnight blue festooned with throwing daggers and with a long knife in either hand. She was the only one of the lot not dividing her attention between himself and Wethes. Kavin looked sideways over his shoulder at the banker, and concluded that he would rather not be in Wethes’ shoes if that girl were given her way with him; Wethes looked as if he were as frightened of her as of the rest combined.

  Behind those three stood a pair of men, one of whom looked vaguely familiar, although Kavin couldn’t place him. They took one look at the situation, grinned at each other, sheathed their own weapons, and left, closing what remained of the door behind the three women.

  Kavin backed up, feet scuffling on the floor, until he ran into Wethes.

  “Surprise, kinsmen,” Kethry said. “I am so glad to find you both at home.”

  The Broken Sword was the scene of general celebration; Hadell had proclaimed that the ale was on the house, in honor of the victory the five had just won. It was a double victory, for not only had they rescued Kethry, but Ikan had that very day gotten them a hearing and a highly favorable verdict from the Council. Wethes was, insofar as his ambitions went, a ruined man. Worse, he was now a laughing-stock to the entire city.