Chapter 33 – Shallo
Rats ran among the rafters, dozens of long grey rats, keen to get out of Shallo's way. Clever creatures, rats. They run when they have to, eat shit when they have to. When their neighbour dies, they eat him too. You won't find anywhere without rats, not palace nor temple.
The night-kelp Shallo swallowed before the climb now worked its magic inside her. The weed, gathered by dredge-net from the Marro trench, made her throat sore and her tongue black, but it saved its wonders for the eyes. Where wertweed turned her eyes from the palest blue to the brightest green, night-kelp left them wholly black and keen as a cat's. With the night-kelp in her Shallo felt blinded by the moon. In the lightless attic she saw every detail, only colour escaped her.
Shallo made her way unhurriedly, moving from one pile of dusty documents to the next. All this parchment, all these words. For what? Should I keep every word I've ever spoken in a bottle? Who would ever listen to them - who will ever read this rubbish? Better to let it burn. Give it to the wind. If I could lose the past so easily...
The attic seemed empty enough, but sooner or later Shallo would meet a guard. Better to start being cautious too early than too late. Watch a rat, he's always cautious. Leave him food and he'll sniff the air first. He'll circle around before tasting. All the stupid rats died a long time ago.
The lock on trapdoor to the top floor looked formidable. Grethan had explained to Shallo that the Red Priests kept their prisoners on the top floor of the Cloister.
"Not in the dungeons?" she had asked. "I'd keep my prisoners in the dungeons. When I wasn't using them." She had coiled her fingers in his beard.
But no, apparently the Red Priests had better use for the subterranean levels beneath the Cloister. Even Grethan had never been there. As Grethan told it, the founder of their order, a priest named Grenaroth, went so far as to kill every mason who worked to build the under-levels. A policy as effective as it is unoriginal.
"So if they asked me to work there, I'd run for Sark, pretty-one. Same as I would if anyone asked me to delve into the Rock. The Red Priests don't like anyone chipping at the Rock."
Shallo took a small vial from an inner pocket. She tore away the wadding around the glass and broke its seal. The contents steamed as they dripped into the lock. It took only moments for the acid to eat away the mechanisms within. Shallo kept pressure on the door and hauled it open as soon as the lock gave. There were too many possible giveaways now that might alert anyone below. She no longer had the luxury of further caution. The low fizz of the acid would alert only the most perceptive of guardians, but the acrid scent could draw attention, and if a droplet escaped to fall on the floor... Shallo jumped through the hatchway.
The drop of ten-foot or so drove Shallo's knees to her chest. She crouched on the boards for an instant, coiled like a spring, then leapt at the figure before her. She brought the man down. A tray clattered, spilling bowls of slop. They hit the ground together, and only Shallo rose. She tugged her knife from the man's throat and wiped it on his jerkin. He had red hair, boils on his neck, they wouldn't bother him again. The keys on his belt jangled when he hit the floor. Shallo took them.
The man's lantern lay on its side, unbroken. Its light felt like needles in her eyes. She trimmed the wick and looked around. Cell doors! As Grethan promised. To the righthand side of the corridor, heavy wooden doors, each with a small barred window and a slot at the base through which food could be passed. The stench caught at Shallo's throat, the stink of shit, and worse than that, it smelled as if a prisoner had died here, a long time ago.
Footsteps on stairs! Somebody coming, more than one. Shallo plucked two cross-knives from the belts over her chest. The first man to turn the corner fell backward with a cross-knife in his throat. The second man came on at a run. His sword cleared his scabbard in an arc of glimmers before the beam of his lantern. The heavy steel cross-knife left Shallo's fingers at blinding speed, shaken free with a cracking flick of her wrist. It hit the man in the forehead and punched through his skull. He fell thrashing.
Shallo plucked two more cross-knives from her belts. Each knife fitted neatly in her hand, little more than two inches across, four points, sharp as sin. In the Sister-Halls nobody had ever surpassed her with the cross-knives. No sister living, and none in the dusty archives - held in the attics for the rats to read.
The first cross-knife came easily from soft flesh. The second required the application of her dagger as a lever before she could pry it from the bone. She replaced them on her belts. Twenty-four knives, twenty-four lives.
No noise from the cells, snoring from the end of the passage. The prisoners slept on. Shallo considered her options. She let the prisoners live. On cat-feet she found her way along the corridor. Where the stairs led down, a door stood open. Shallo peered through the crack by the hinges. A fat man lay sleeping on a cot, a tin plate with a heel of bread and a few stray beans rested on his belly. A heavy sleeper. He'd have to be, to sleep through his own snores. Shallo stepped into the room, kill-spike folded in her palm.
A few chains and manacles hung from pegs on the walls. Some leather hoods. On the table by the bed, an unlit lamp, pincers, a hammer, a wedge of hard cheese. Not instruments of torture, just the tools of the trade, for adding and removing chains. Shallo stopped the snoring. In one of the cells someone woke with a jolt and a clatter of chain. Sometimes it's the absence of a sound that wakes us. Sometimes horror comes in the night, sometimes it's only death; tonight I'm death.
Shallo left the room and started down the stairs. Every nerve alive. She could feel her heartbeat, slow and clear. She felt coiled like a spring, wound exquisitely tight.
The men who ran up the stairs and now lay dead behind her had been stationed in the room below. A fire burned in the hearth, dice on a small table, a jug of wine. The archway commanded a long corridor from which many doorways led. Shallo moved on, passing each door with a momentary pause. Grethan spoke of a hole, a pit with steps. All that really matters lies below. Ingold will go down the pit, Ingold will come up the pit. Do you think you can just wait there for him? Yes. And the guards? The Blood Guard? The Red Priests? They won't stop me. What, you think you can kill a Blood Guard? I'll kill them all if I have to. You're insane. Let me show you how insane. Grethan did not die clean or easy, for him horror came in the night.
Left, first right, another stairwell. Three guards, non-bloods, the Blood Guard are in the streets. An older man, thin, with pouches beneath his eyes, a thickset fellow with black stubble and a low forehead, and a boy, blond and slim. Shallo threw two cross-knives as she stepped into view, one from each hand. An eyeball exploded around one sharp metal slug, the second found a soft throat. She ran, dived, rolled head-over-heels beneath a wild swing and rose with dagger in hand. Three more guards came running up the nearby stairs as the boy fell from her. Blood sprayed from his neck around the hilt of her dagger.
The first two stumbled over the boy, their swords clattering on the stone. Shallo vaulted over them, hands on their backs. Her heels took the third man beneath the chin. She landed as his head hit the edge of a step. Should have worn a helmet. She pivoted. Two cross-knives spat from her hands, killing the two surviving guardsmen as they rose.
Do you know how many men serve in the Cloister? I'll kill them all if I have to.
Shallo set to the gory business of retrieving her cross-knives.
Ten doors, turn left, on to the next turning, turn right. Walk the path cold. More stairs. Guardsmen coming. She ducked through the half-open door of a room she'd checked. The footsteps retreated. Shallo slipped out again, and moved on. Another flight of stairs. The place is all stairs and corridors, never a window.
Shallo reached the ground floor and slipped into an empty room. A thick carpet reached from wall to wall, an intricacy of black on green, lost even to her night vision. Three chairs, upholstered in leather, sat at careless angles. On a wide teak desk, three snuffed candles, a gilded skull and a scroll sealed with wax. Shallo stripped off her blood-soaked cloak and under-tunic. She stuffed the garments into a drawer on the desk and took a clean top from the bag at her belt. No point hiding if you stink of slaughter and leave red smears to mark your hidey-hole.
The ground floor proved more lively than the floors above. Men hurried one way, then the other, bound on urgent missions. Red-crested guards in crimson cloaks stood at key points. Shallo moved in short bursts, interspersed with waiting. A red-crest died, swallowing a cross-knife as he coughed. Keep your mouth closed, it's polite. She hid his body in a cupboard stocked with buckets and mops.
The door the red-crest guarded proved to be locked. Shallo looked back down the corridor. She pressed her ear to the wood. Nothing to hear - probably three inches thick! She slipped two slim picks from her wristband and set to work. Complicated locks are the easiest, it's the brutal heavy ones that need a sledgehammer. 'Click'.
She pushed the door an inch and peeked through the crack. The chamber beyond arched through two stories, vaulted to thirty feet. In the shadows above, a giant candelabrum hung, roped with dust. The light came from torches bracketed low on the walls. Two men stood close by the opposite wall, in front of a tall iron door. Two men between her and the object of her search. Ingold will pass through this door, and when he does, I'll kill the bastard.
One man dwarfed the other. He stood well over six feet in height, but his width marked him out. Two normal men, shoulder to shoulder, could stand in his shadow. The muscles on his arm heaped into unlikely mountains beneath short chainmail sleeves. He wore a breastplate sporting two crimson stripes, his face hidden behind the perforated visor of an iron helm that reached down to his gorget. The Red Priest behind him wore the scarlet robes and passive mask of his order. Let it be that vermin from the burning. Let it be the priest from Glorsa. Jedax – that was his name.
Shallo stepped into the room and shut the door behind her. Can you kill a Blood Guard? I'll kill them all if I have to, Father. I'll kill them all, and the Black will give me what I need to set things right.
Time slowed for the attack, just as it always did. The huge Blood Guard launched himself toward her like a runner from his blocks, tearing a roar from his bull throat and a brutal sword from his scabbard. The first cross-knife bedded in the visor, the second in his right bicep, almost lost in all that meat.
Fire blossomed along the man's sword. His boots pounded the stone-flagged floor, building momentum. He swept the burning sword high and a cross-knife vanished into his armpit. Another hammered into his left thigh, just above the knee.
As fast as the man ran, the line of flame before him ran faster. Shallo flung herself to the right. Cross-knives flew from her hands. One buried itself in his knuckles, the other scored a bright line across his breastplate. Careless. The fire splashed against the door where she had been. Terrible heat reached for her, blistering pale skin. The light clawed at her eyes.
Close now. A mountain of metal and muscle, with a burning sword. Shallo rolled to her feet, plucking two more cross-knives from her belt. One to the inside of the left wrist, one to the back of the right. The fire dazzled her, but the sword marked her target.
The Blood Guard swung, shouting in rage or pain, or both. They heal fast, these Red-Bloods, but you can't heal while the knife is still in. Shallo dived over the flaming arc of the sword, tucking her feet beneath her. The man's shoulder caught her legs, but the sword cut only air. He crashed into the wall and the blade slipped from his bloody fingers. Shallo rolled, rose and hit him with cross-knives whilst he struggled up. Both found the back of his neck, and he slumped bonelessly to the flagstones.
The low chant revealed itself after the din of the attack. Shallo spun toward the priest, or at least she tried to. Pale violet flames lit across her body, as though she were an oil-soaked torch set to fire. A soft but inexorable grip folded around her. The flames held no heat, rather they stole her own, they burned cold on her flesh, numbing her to the bone.
The Red Priest left the door now. His approach cautious, his slippers making no noise. He paused to peer at the fallen guard.
"I never thought to see Bremol fall to a woman. I never expected to see him fall at all." He poked the guard with his toe. "I'll admit I was expecting trouble tonight, but not woman trouble."
Shallo's fingers held a cross-knife. She willed them to move. Violet flames danced across her knuckles. Move! Her mind screamed.
The priest walked around her, a short man, his movements jerky, quick and full of nervous energy. She could move her eyes. His adam's apple bobbed beneath blotchy skin.
"And what a woman." He came before her again. "So tall and pale. A Sarkasian? But your eyes are like inkwells, and Sark girls are blonde?"
Move! The fire flared, burning away her strength.
He reached to touch her, his hands like wary birds, diving in, pecking, plucking. "What a woman. I'll have you taken to my chambers."
"I'll see you die." She could move her tongue.
"Oh I don't think I'll keep you that long. A little experimentation perhaps. We'll find out what you've taken to make your eyes so black. We'll see if we can't unlock the riddle of your hair. Mmmm, yes." Again the swallowing.
Move you bitch! Violet fire engulfed her arm to the elbow. Her hand trembled slightly and the cross-knife fell to the ground. The priest bent to retrieve it.
Shallo's tongue worked along the inner edge of her teeth. She ran it over a familiar ridge.
"What an interesting little knife. So symmetrical. We'll play with these too. I'll keep you a week or two, but in the end you'll have to stand trial for your crimes."
No I won't. The ridge came loose beneath Shallo's urgent tongue. She manipulated it further back, scraping the waxy covering away on her teeth, tasting the poison. I can escape you, you stupid little man.
Thepriest leant in close, his hands on her again, pinching and stroking. "PerhapsI can manage a month." The sound of his swallowing turned her stomach.
She spat the quill from her rolled tongue. It hit the side of his throat, and stuck just deep enough to hang there. The priest slapped his hand to his neck, driving it a little deeper. Stupid.
"Bitch!" He staggered back. "What did you do?"
"I kept my word." Shallo didn't smile.
She spat out the taste of the Cho venom, and watched him die. A bad taste on the tongue, but fatal in the blood.
When the priest's heart stilled, the pale fires fled and Shallo could move. She went to the wall and began to climb.
The rust from the support chain crusted Shallo's hands by the time she reached the candelabrum. Walk the path cold. She spread her weight out across the candelabrum's wheel. Ingold will come.
When the guardsmen arrived none looked to theshadowed ceiling. They looked to the dead and shouted the name of Stannith.
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