Meek

Chapter 27: Cistern

The guards reacted to the alarm bell as if stung by wasps. Someone had stolen the body. Someone had snuck into the Keep, defeated the security perimeter, and stolen the corpse.

"And why do you think they bothered?" one of the ones inside the clinic asked, while the search raged outside. "It's obvious. The body was marked."

"You figure the rat was an Usher?"

"Course he was."

"The Ushers don't mark their assassins," a third voice said. "How stupid would that be? The assassin's guild, making their members easy to identify?"

The first one snorted. "They caught an Usher with a brand, back when I was a lad."

"Maybe they caught someone with a brand. If I'm an Usher, I brand an enemy and let the Watch kill them for me. I ain't even sure they exist. The Society of Goodly Ushers, my left ass."

"Just think." The second one whistled softly. "An assassin, standing as close to Lady Pym as I am to you."

"Lady Pym? She wasn't here till after after he was dead."

"On the mountain! She talked to him. Says she'll never forget those eyes, neither."

"Well, if they find him and dig him up, maybe she'll see them again."

"My brother knows a guy who met an Usher, once ..."

A wave of fatigue prevented Eli from following the rest of the conversation. He drifted into a painful daze and spent the night partially-conscious and submerged to his waist. His back scraped against the cold wet stone of the cistern wall. The sparks drifted above, but he kept losing track of them.

He dozed, woke, healed, then dozed again, only dimly aware of the activity in the clinic.

He snapped to full awareness only once, when a clinic assistant drew water from the cistern. His heart pounded with the fear of discovery, but he managed to send a spark to hover directly in front of the woman's face, so he could see whatever she saw. Except clearer, because darkness didn't affect the sparks much.

What he saw, from her perspective, was a shape in the water. His own right foot. He drew it slowly closer and watched the bucket lower in the water, fill, then rise again.

An hour later, he felt ... better. Not good. There was something wrong with his breathing, a thickness in his chest, but his body felt stronger and his mind clearer. He squatted on the angled floor, cupped his hands and drank. The water came away tinged pink with blood. He checked the main room with the sparks. Looked like a few guards outside, a few inside... and civilians, too.

Eli watched while he rested and planned. Though there wasn't much to plan. They were on guard now. He'd lost the element of surprise. He needed to retreat, heal fully, then try again--somehow.

When the shift changed, he used the jangle of armor to cover the sound of washing the blood from his skin. Could he stay here for a few days? Then climb from the cistern and hunt the marquis?

He almost snorted. Sure, and cross the Keep grounds toward the noble wings, naked and dripping and unarmed. No. He'd blown his first chance--or that mage had blown it for him--and he couldn't rely on luck again. Crossing into the Keep proper would be impossible, but he could reach the edge of the plateau if he chose his moment, and flee. Which meant the darkest hour before dawn, probably.

At least by that time maybe he'd feel like himself again.

So he closed his eyes. Surrounded by stone. Groping for his memory of the mountain and watching the visitors and servants. The marchioness arrived, with less fanfare than he'd expected. She was a handsome woman with the same nose as her daughter, dressed religious: necklaces, bracelets, anklets, in honor of the Angel's chains.

When the twins visited, their fury was something to behold. Lady Pym blamed herself--hated herself--for not somehow detecting Eli's intentions and killing him on the spot. She kept saying she'd never forget his eyes, too. Good thing they thought he was dead.

After they left, various officials streamed through, while the physician-mage monitored the marquis's health. Eli eavesdropped on dozens of conversations and learned nothing of note.

Not until a dumpy middle-aged woman arrived with a hamper of food. The secretary announced her as 'Cousin Ugenia' and while she fussed with the contents of her hamper, Eli heard the marquis, in his recovering room, dismissing the secretary and the mage.

"Enough!" he barked. "Let a man have a bite in peace."

"You are still unwell--" the mage began.

"It's not a request! There are a dozen guards, and you'll be ten paces away."

"Very well, m'lord."

"Are you sure?" Cousin Ugenia asked, in a fluttery voice. "I don't mean to make trouble. I just knew that peach biscuits are your favorite so I baked a few--and spiced wine--very good for the blood--I'll leave them here, don't mind me, I'd hate to--"

"You stay!" the marquis's voice said.

Cousin Ugenia gazed wide-eyed at the guards then toddled into the recovery room while the guards and courtiers and physicians retreated. Some of them lingered uncomfortably near the cistern, but most stayed around the door.

For no reason other than boredom, Eli sent a spark to the limit of his range, a finger's-width inside the recovery room. He watched the woman fuss in her hamper, babbling inanely ... while the marquis's face turned hard.

As did hers, a moment later.

Huh, interesting.

Eli closed his eyes, brought the other spark beside the first, and concentrated.

"... are my spymaster ... " The marquis murmurred, barely audible through the woman's chatter. "It's your job to know."

"And now, let us pray," she said loudly, before whispering: "There was no chatter, no warning. No informant ..."

"... behind this? The capital?"

"Who else have you pissed off?" the woman asked quietly. Then, louder: "Oh! Do try the plum pudding!"

"Nobody recently. At least nobody with these kind of resources."

Eli missed what Ugenia said after that.

"... stole the angeldamned corpse right under my nose. Need to hit back harder."

"At whom?"

"Pick a target ... Leotide City," the marquis said. "If we're wrong, at least ... teach a lesson."

The woman said something like 'sheaf at low.'

"... don't pay him to lounge around Beren Manor ... tending he's a playwright ..."

"I'll send him ... target."

"No," the marquis said. "I will see him first. Once I'm ..."

"In person? ... that wise?"

"--talk to him myself. ... once I'm able ... attacking me from the shadows?"

The two of them continued to argue in undertones while the woman made inane comments to cover the conversation.

Eli didn't hear anything else, but he understood the basics: Cousin Ugenia was the marquis's spymaster. The two of them assumed that Eli had been sent by a political rival, which made sense. And an agent on their payroll lived at a place called Beren or Palen or Tarrant Manor, where he pretended to be a playwright.

Plus the marquis planned to meet the agent in person--in secret.

Which sounded like an invitation for an ambush.

That afternoon, the physician-mage agreed to return the marquis to his quarters, and helped him practice walking--while guarded--around the clinic.

Eli felt a certain brutal satisfaction at the fact that the marquis still couldn't stand unaided. He enjoyed watching him suffer and struggle and shuffle. The physician had brought him back from what should've been a fatal blow, but there were limits to how quickly a non-mage with human blood could recover.

After the marquis left, the activity in the clinic subsided. And that evening, Eli climbed to the mouth of the cistern. His sparks couldn't reach beyond the clinic walls, but he tracked the patrols using the jingle of gear and flashes of motion through the shutters and doors.

That night, he shook himself dry and emerged from the cistern like--like his third birth. Naked and dripping again. He needed a new hobby. He wiped his feet on the dry stone and then, straining his senses, he padded to the window.

He crouched there.

Despite monitoring the patrols, despite his extended vision and hearing, he had a bad feeling about this. A knot tightened in his stomach, a pulse galloped in his throat. He couldn't shake an intuition of impending disaster.

Still, he didn't have a better choice.

He climbed through the window into the cool night air. No reaction. He closed the shutters behind himself. Still nothing. He took a slow breath, then crept among the shadows toward the edge of the plateau.

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