* * *
Shimmer did not want to do it, but two months after returning from Jacuruku and the harrowing though successful expedition to that cursed land, she requested a select few of the officers of the Crimson Guard meet her in the forest just north of Fortress Haven, Stratem.
She realized that this decision had been some time in coming. These last months of indecision and inactivity on the part of K’azz had merely provoked it. Cal-Brinn and the Fourth remained trapped in Assail and still no steps were being taken to organize their rescue. K’azz had even been told that answers to what awaited the Guard in the future lay in those lands. Yet he did nothing. No vessels had been hired nor were efforts being made to begin construction. K’azz had simply disappeared once more into the wild tracts of Stratem’s interior.
It was infuriating. And it was saddening. He was allowing her no choice. She had to act. It was in the best interest of the Guard.
Yet she was also self-aware enough to reflect: or so I tell myself.
Even so, it cost her a full month of sleepless nights. The doubts and self-recriminations would not go away. Was she no better than Skinner? He too had expressed his dissatisfaction with K’azz’s leadership – though in a far more direct and decisive fashion.
He’d buried his old commander alive to keep him out of the way. Yet she wondered whether what she intended was any gentler. Usurpation is still usurpation, she told herself. She’d finally decided: look on the bright side … they might run me through the minute they realize what I am proposing.
When she entered the glade Blues was already present, standing among the tall weeds. It was a clear night. The sky was dark once more. The Gods’ Road arched across its spine as it always had before the invasion of the Visitor with its long arching tail of flame. A weak wind stirred the dry grass and sent a whispering and brushing among the leaves.
Not only worry pinched Blues’ namesake Napan features. The man had lost weight. The mission to Korelri had been a particularly trying one. Though it too had met with success: Bars had been found and returned to the fold.
And the man brought further news of Assail. Cal-Brinn and the Fourth had been fleeing north when they parted ways. Fleeing. Cal-Brinn, one of the strongest mages of the Guard. An adept of Rashan and a fearsome swordsman, together with some thirty Avowed. Fleeing for their lives.
The man said nothing, though he did nod a welcome. He suspects, she saw. Will he challenge? A caustic smile twisted her lips as she realized that they’d both come armed. He with the multitude of weapons he habitually carried: sticks, knives, twinned longswords, and who knew what else hidden away. Gods, he was the Guard’s weaponmaster. A fish would be deadly in this man’s hands.
She, of course, wore her whipsword sheathed at her back, its two-handed grip extending up over her left shoulder. The one weapon she might be the last living master of, she reflected.
Petal entered next and his appearance did nothing for Blues’ sour expression.
She knew Blues saw Petal only as a mage loyal to Skinner. Blues had been on his own mission. Hadn’t walked the jungled paths of Jacuruku with them. He had not shared all that Petal and she had shared. The brothers and sisters who walked into exile under Skinner would listen to Petal. She must bridge this gulf of suspicion between him and Blues.
Tarkhan arrived next and it was Shimmer’s turn to clench her lips.
Always a creature of Cowl. She’d never liked this one. And now Cowl had returned … if in body only. For Hood’s sake, the man had been captive of an Azath House! Who knew what was going on in his crazed mind? Yet Tarkhan carried the loyalty of the First company. She must win him.
The squat Wickan paused at the edge of the glade. His broad dark face was unreadable in the dimness. His eyes glittered as they shifted from her to Blues and Petal. He too had come armed: the traditional Wickan curved knives rested on his hips.
Steeling herself, Shimmer advanced into the glade. Fieldmice scurried from her boots as she pushed through the thick grasses and thorn bushes. Among the trees an owl gave an excited hoot at this rousting of prey.
When the four met at the centre of the meadow, none spoke. There was no need. Shimmer read in their expressions that all had deduced why she had called them here this night. She was pained to see disappointment in Blues’ frown, while Tarkhan carried a sort of smirk that seemed to say: and you were doubting of my loyalty? Petal held his hands clasped before his wide stomach and his eyes were downcast; it seemed he could not meet her eyes.
Damn. Had she lost them already? Would none support her? What then was left? Exile?
She almost wavered then. The option remained to travel half the path. Voice mere concerns. Play the worried subordinate.
Yet they would see through that and know her failure of nerve here, now, on the cliff’s edge. She would lose any remaining shreds of their respect: not only disloyal, but a coward as well. Imagining such a loss stung her to draw breath, but she caught sight of a fifth, uninvited, figure entering the clearing and clamped her lips shut.
It was Cowl in his tattered finery. He came swaggering up with his maddening knowing grin. The scars across his throat – put there by Dancer himself – seemed to glow in the darkness. His unkempt black hair fell across his face like deeper shadows of night. He offered his manic grin to each.
‘You have no part in this conclave,’ Shimmer ground out. ‘Be gone.’
The High Mage and master assassin of the Guard appeared not to hear. He continued to cast his gaze about the meadow as if he were out for a mid-night stroll.
‘There is poetry here,’ he suddenly announced, seemingly apropos of nothing.
The sensation of things crawling upon her skin that always accompanied this man’s presence returned to Shimmer. ‘What do you want?’ she growled. She was emboldened – and encouraged – to see even Tarkhan shift uneasily and rub his arms in discomfort in the presence of his old master.
‘It was not so far from here that other masks were removed,’ the man said airily, as if this fully answered her demand.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, dearest Shimmer, that this is not far from the spot where Skinner and I abandoned the pretence of searching for K’azz and he stepped forward to claim command of the Guard.’
Shimmer’s throat clenched far too tight for words. Bastard! What was he trying to do? Might as well stick the knife in and be done with it!
‘I don’t believe Shimmer here means to try anything that radical,’ Blues ground out, an unspoken warning in his voice. He turned his narrowed gaze upon her. ‘’Least not the Shimmer I knew.’
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘But I cannot stand silently by either. Duty and loyalty drive me to call attention to K’azz’s neglect of his responsibilities.’
Cowl brayed a mocking laugh and Shimmer fought down an urge to yank her whipsword free and add to the scars across the man’s neck.
‘Quiet,’ Blues growled. To Shimmer: ‘I share your concern. What of you, Tarkhan?’
The Wickan inclined his head in agreement. ‘I, too, am concerned. We are an army yet we pursue no contracts. We are idle. What, then, are we?’
‘And you Petal?’ Shimmer asked.
The giant was pulling thoughtfully on his fat lower lip. He blushed beneath their attention and dipped his head, murmuring, ‘I am come merely as an observer – I have no standing to vote on any of this.’
‘We ain’t voting on anything,’ Blues was quick to answer. ‘’Least not yet, anyways.’ His gaze fixed upon Shimmer. ‘What do you propose?’
The weaponmaster’s gaze flayed her to the bone and she drew a steadying breath. It was as if the man were waiting poised for one misstep from her, one wrong word, and she would feel his blade in her heart before she sensed his move. She found her throat had gone quite dry, and licked her lips to wet them. Even though she felt as if she were declaring her own death sentence, she began: ‘I must formally question K’azz’s fitness to command.’
Blues’ hands did not rise from where they rested close to the sticks thrust through his belt. Tarkhan’s dark eyes, like glistening obsidian, shifted from her to Blues while he brushed his fingertips across his belt. Petal had stopped pulling at his lip and now stood motionless with it pinched between his fingers.
A long slow mocking laugh echoed through the clearing and Shimmer, as did the rest, shifted her gaze to Cowl, High Mage of the Guard.
‘Quiet from you,’ Blues warned again.
The man bowed. ‘My apologies. Please, do continue, dear Shimmer. Do go on. You now propose yourself as acting commander given K’azz’s, ah, desertion of his duties. Yes?’
‘I propose no such thing.’
The man’s acid smile slipped away and he tilted his head in puzzlement. ‘Oh? You do not?’
‘No. I propose Blues as acting commander.’
The Napan swordsman’s brows shot up. ‘Now wait a Trake-damned minute.’
‘I have no objection,’ Tarkhan put in quickly, and he smiled evilly as if taking enormous pleasure in Blues’ discomfort.
‘Well I do,’ Blues growled. ‘I decline. And anyway, it makes no difference either way.’
Shimmer frowned, not certain what he meant, but sensing the truth of the man’s words. They carried an echo of something out of Jacuruku. ‘What do you mean?’ she said slowly, almost in dread.
He waved to Cowl. ‘What this jackal’s laughin’ about. You’re not a mage, Shimmer. You don’t understand. Makes no difference who we put forward to take over. Can’t be done.’
‘As I now have come to see,’ Cowl whispered, and his toothy white smile broadened once again. ‘The Vow is binding.’
What of the Vow? she wondered. Whatever did the man— Damn! We swore to K’azz! He commands … until we are all gone? No escape? We are … helpless? A strange dizziness assaulted her and her vision darkened. A hand steadied her – Blues – and she nodded her thanks. ‘Then there is nothing we can do,’ she barely said aloud. The words sounded desolate to her ears. There was no hope for them.
‘Make the arrangements, Shimmer,’ Blues said gently. ‘Just go ahead. We will go to Assail.’
‘Who should come?’
‘I must,’ Cowl said, and his manic smile returned.
‘Then I will,’ Blues answered, glaring at the mage.
‘And myself,’ Shimmer answered. She cast an invitation to Petal.
He raised his brows, quite surprised. ‘I would – if I may. And I suggest Gwynn.’
‘Bars must come, of course,’ Blues added. ‘What of you, Tarkhan?’
The plainsman shifted his broad stance, uncomfortable. ‘If you lot are going then I am certain K’azz will once more leave command of Stratem to me.’ He smoothed his moustache and scowled his disgust. ‘There you are. Neither Shimmer nor you get command. It comes to me, unwanted and unasked for.’
‘I am sorry, Tarkhan,’ Shimmer offered. ‘But I am also relieved.’
The man snorted.
‘We must go in force,’ Blues continued. ‘At least ten more swords.’
Shimmer nodded her assent. ‘Two Blades, then. You take one, I the other.’
‘Very good.’
‘And K’azz?’ Petal asked, his hand at his lip.
Blues waved the question aside. ‘He can come or not. His choice. We aren’t leaving Cal to rot.’