Kingdom Of Argylle - A Sorcerer And A Gentleman Part 35

"Please work," he heard her breathe. She took something from a bag at her feet.

Dewar smiled still, and weighed his next move. He could help her. He could not help her. On the whole it would be more amusing to help her. Her industry and determination in making her way here were admirable; it was the sort of thing that his acquaintance Lady Miranda of Valgalant would do. Dewar whispered the sibilant words which put aside the air and darkness around him; the woman turned and lifted a c.o.c.ked crossbow, pointing anxiously at nothing, resigned fear in her face.

"Don't shoot!" Dewar hissed as he became visible and the bow swung to aim at him.

Her finger tightened on, but did not close, the trigger. "You," she said, not moving the bow.

"I think we have a common goal, to open that door. Am I right?"

"You're the Emperor's man."

"I certainly am not. I'm freelancing. I have personal business with the fellow in there."

She swallowed, nodded, lowered the bow. "You have a key?"

He sprang lightly up the stairs. "No. I work other ways. Let me see the lock."

She moved aside. "Hurry. The sentries go round and they'll raise an alarm as soon as they find the guard missing," she whispered.

Dewar made no answer to this, but knelt at the door as she had. She had been trying to force the lock with a small knife. As he lifted his hand to the lock, something cold touched his throat: a line of steel.

"I know you're one of them. Any tricks, you're, you're dead," she whispered.

302.

t&zaBetfi Wittey The crossbow was b.u.t.ting against his back.

It was best not to argue. "Understood."

"Open it."

He did. He took the broken-bladed knife from the lock and put a square iron nail from his bag into it. Lighting a match at the nail's flat head, which protruded from the lock, he chanted the low, singsong rhyme for copying the key which had last been in the lock: the lock was utterly unprotected from sorcery. These people were fools, he thought, and fell the iron move and flow in his gloved fingers. It was hot, but he turned it in the lock and the lock gripped it and tumbled.

"Ohhh," she breathed at his neck.

"May I stand."

"Yes. Slowly."

"Your servant," Dewar whispered.

Her knife left his throat; the crossbow stayed in the small of his back. He pushed the door open and got up in one movement. The woman had picked up her saddlebag and was on his heels as the first shout came up the stairs.

"h.e.l.l's bells!" she said, and the crossbow left his spine.

"Get in!" Dewar grabbed her and pulled her in, turning; he closed the door, taking his magical key from the lock and letting it latch again. The room was not-lit by a faint greenish line of light in a circle on the floor. The place was freezing cold.

"Prospero!" she called softly.

No answer.

"Make a light!" she hissed.

"Should have grabbed the torch."

"Prospero! It's me!"

No answer.

Dewar felt nothing alive in the room. He said, "No, stay here, don't move, it might be a trap," and the woman, who had been stepping forward, stopped and returned to his side. Murmuring the Summoning under the shouts and clangor outside ("Send for the Captain! Get Captain Van-del!"), he invoked an ignis fatuus, which popped rosily into sight and hovered in midair.

R Sorcerer and a QentCeman 303.

The circular room it showed was empty. A bizarrely boiled-looking opening was seethed through the meter-thick stone wall, melted as if the stone had become taffy and run.

Dewar tsked softly. Elemental work.

The circle of foxfire on the floor was broken by similarly boiled stone. Inside was nothing but a wooden plate and a bucket.

"He's gone!" the woman cried. "Prospero!" She ran to the opening in the wall; Dewar followed her. It let on the sheer side of the tower which rose over the less-regular but equally straight cliff. "Prospero!" she shouted out.

"It appears he has rescued himself," Dewar said.

The guards were battering at the door. Dewar crossed to it, to close it more permanently.

"We're caught!" she said, turning and staring at the door, and added, "At least, you are." Leaning from the opening, she put her fingers in her mouth and whistled.

Dewar was fusing the door to the wall, sealing it with an affinity-spell only axework or fire could defeat. It would do for now. Someone was trying a key in the lock.

He looked round at the woman, who was still whistling. "What are you about? Calling a wind?"

The lock rattled and stopped. The door bounced, held; a crack appeared at its top. Dewar glanced at it. It wouldn't endure long. He'd have to make a Way, fast-but there was nothing to burn.

Something vast and dark occluded the stars beyond the hole in the wall, then pa.s.sed again, then returned and blocked it completely. Dewar saw a huge hooked beak, feathers, claws; there were scrabbling noises from the stone outside. The young woman climbed into the opening and looked back at him. "Good luck, sorcerer," she said, and put a leg out.

"Don't jump!" he cried.

"I'm flying." She slipped out, sideways, and the opening was cleared. He heard shouting from the battlements below.

An axe-blow split the door from top to bottom; Dewar glanced around and realized he was in a bad spot. It was a $Q4 -:> 'Elizabeth 'Wittey single-panel door, not cross-grained; the next strike took out a plank of wood, sending it bouncing into the room. He ran to the hole over the cliff to see if he could scale it, as Prospero must have done, and the dark shape returned, hovering in the tower's shadow.

"Stuck?" she called.

"Yes!" he screamed.

"Are you sorry?"

"For anything! Yes!"

"Jump, and we'll catch you!"

He stared at her. The door lost another plank, behind him. Someone shouted, "There he is!"

"Catch me?"

It was a long way, straight down. Half a mile? Far enough, in the faintly silvered darkness. He felt, rather than saw, the dead stone below.

"Jump, fool! Now!" she cried.

The third plank on the door gave, and Dewar, by his ignis, saw a guard duck in, waving a glaive.

He had no time to do anything; he hopped up to the hole in the wall, put his legs out, and dropped. He closed his eyes. Ice-thin air rushed past him, filling his cloak and tossing him around. It was an undignified and untidy way to evade capture, a desperado's end rather than a gentleman's.

If he died, he thought, it would be fast. If he died, it would hurt, for only a moment, and then all's done. d.a.m.n, he did want to solve the Third-Force problem, and he was so close now; he supposed he'd know, when he died. If he didn't die, he'd rather- Something slammed into him from the side and clutched him.

"Gotcha!" shrieked the woman.

Dewar opened his eyes, swinging head-down under a gigantic bird, and vomited.

The ignis, faithfully stupid, had plummeted harmlessly from the window with him (though not so swiftly) and now hovered a few feet away, pacing them through the air. The bird's talons were tight on Dewar's legs and midriff, and he was short of breath. It plunged downward still, downward Sorcerer and a gentleman 305.

and sideward, and he was buffeted and battered by wind, his cloak, and gravity. Wrenched and sick, Dewar considered what he could have done, had he not let the woman divert him from thinking: Summoned a Salamander to keep the guards back while he made his Way out of there, for example, or collapsed part of the tower.

He vomited again.

"Landing!" shouted the woman.

The bird drew him up, toward its musty body, and with a turbulent backflutter of immense wings came down. Dewar was dropped inelegantly and the dark body of the bird went over him with a bound and a stinking draft. He lay unmoving, face-down, wondering if he had lost his wits or died after all, or was dying: hallucinating rescue.

"Are you all right?" came a soft voice a minute later.

"No."

"Drink some water. It will settle your stomach." She hauled him onto his back. The ignis showed him her solicitous expression and the round leather-covered canteen she held. "I'm sorry it was rough. It's difficult when she's carrying things." She uncorked the canteen and put it to his lips.

"Ech," Dewar agreed. He sipped the cool water. "I think I'll just lie here a moment."

"All right. Here's the water." She got up and walked away. He heard her talking to the bird.

Dewar closed his eyes and breathed deeply and regularly, holding each breath and releasing it slowly. He might be bruised, but he wasn't gravely hurt, and his stomach settled as he swallowed more water and drew on the Well to stabilize himself.

Feeling better, he sat up and looked around. The ignis illuminated the stony slope.

The bird was about ten paces away; its head snapped round as he stood slowly. He saw that it wore a kind of harness and that its wings were set farther back on its shoulders than- Dewar blinked again. Four legs not two; and a tufted tail swung from its oddly-made hindquarters. The woman walked around the big, hook-beaked head and smiled 306.

*EfizaBetfi 'Wittey slightly at him under her leather-and-melal helmet.

"Interesting animal you have," he said.

She lifted her eyebrows and nodded, the smile gone.

"Does it have a name?"

"She's Trixie. A gryphon."

"h.e.l.lo, Trixie." The big head's black eyes watched him intently.

"Don't get too close."

"I won't."

There were dark stains on the bird's feathers.

"Is she hurt?"

"No, she killed something, I think."

They regarded one another. Their prior acquaintance made this more like a meeting of friends than enemies, though they had little basis to be either.

"So..." Dewar looked around them, paused as he recognized the moon-gleamed bulk of Malperdy five or more miles away from them, silhouetted against the sky. "... ah, what's a nice lady like you doing in a place like that?" He looked back at her in time to see her head tip skeptically to one side, to see the smile struggle onto her mouth, and to see that he had judged aright: she laughed, light and delight in the sound. Dewar had only made her laugh once before, in Chenay; he felt a curious sense of pleased accomplishment at doing it now.

"I'm not a lady," she replied, shaking her head.

"I mean, you were there to help Prince Prospero, correct?"

"Yes. Unfortunately he has helped himself, or so it looked to me. He is very bad at letting people know what he's about."

"Yes, he could have left a note. 'Stepped out.' "

She laughed again, and Dewar laughed with her.

"And you?" she asked.

"Obviously, much the same."

"Obviously? Hardly." Her smile and amus.e.m.e.nt vanished and she was quite serious. "You say you're not the Emperor's-"

"I'm not. In fact I am wholly uninterested in that tedious fl. Sorcerer and a (jentkman 307.

war between them. My business with Prospero is personal."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I wonder where he's got to."

She shrugged, shook her head. Absently, she stroked the throat of her gryphon. Dewar watched Trixie extend her neck; she hadn't taken her eyes from him.

The conversation had taken on an awkward feel.