Meek

From a window in Chivat Lo's apartment, Eli watched the sun touch the horizon. As the sky darkened, the silvery outline of the bone moon--the rarest and most ominous moon--took shape. Only a crescent, thank the Angel. And the rust moon wasn't visible, so there was little danger of angelbrood seeping through a weakening Ward ... at least not tonight.

In a few months, though, according to the selenologists, there might be at least a partial 'concomitance', when all three moons appeared simultaneously. Depending on the phases, that could lead to isolated outbursts of danger or terror--or widespread catastrophe.

On the other hand, Eli's after-hours consultations with the archives had led him to doubt the ability of the skygazers to predict the notoriously erratic lunar periods. He suspected that they were better at trumpeting their successful forecasts and dismissing their failures than at actually predicting the future. Still, the broadest strokes of the cycles when the Ward weakened were clear: the angelbrood possessed a small number of victims every few months, usually far from densely-inhabited locations. A handful of brood might massacre an isolated farmstead. Every few years the moons shone down upon a more widespread infestation, which wiped out small towns or outposts or even neighborhoods. And several times a generation, a true concomitance soaked the valley in blood.

Eli had survived two concomitances, as had everyone his age. And like everyone--almost everyone--he tried to lock the memories away. You couldn't do anything about the horrors that the Celestials wrought except try to endure them.

Still, at the moment, the sight of even a sliver of the bone moon was omen enough for him.

He shivered in the night air, and pulled Chivat Lo's ornate hooded gown tighter around his body. Well, he couldn't back out now. Not that he wanted to. He didn't. Yet he couldn't lie to himself: he wasn't ready for this.

He frowned at the bone moon. Ready or not, he was committed. And he'd prepared as much as he could, given the time limit. And given his own limits. He'd run through scenarios in his mind, various excuses and lies and contingencies, but there was just too much that he didn't know. Dropping a ceiling on the marquis and his entourage would've been much easier.

Still, everything was in place. Nothing to do now but wait until the--

There!

His farther spark, hovering in the landing, caught the faint squeak of a stair.

Then a creak, and a groan.

People were climbing the stairs.

Eli's heart thumped in his chest. He stilled himself for a heartbeat, trying to remember the weight of the mountain. Then he crossed toward the front door, passing the desk he'd dragged into the front room. He'd stacked important-looking papers on top, along with pitchers of ale and bottles of hard liquor and a bowl of fragrant durinberries. Using the odor to cover a scent of his own, though not Chivat Lo's narcotic fumes.

He probably would've tried to poison the marquis if the girl hadn't destroyed everything sufficiently toxic. Another reason to mistrust her.

Finally, he checked that the lanterns on the walls and desk and tables were flickering with merry, welcoming light. He would've preferred darkness, given the advantage of his vision--and his sudden, powerful urge to hide--but that wasn't possible.

He threw the front door open and stood there, backlit by the bright light, his face in shadows but his colorful robe eye-catching.

"I wasn't expecting you so early!" he sang out, exactly as the girl had instructed him.

Apparently if he'd said, 'you're right on time,' that would've signalled trouble and the guards would've hustled the marquis away. Unless the girl had lied to him, in which case he was about to be skewered with arrows.

Yeah, he would've felt far more confident if this involved indexing instead of assassination.

"We're not early," a woman's gruff voice answered, from just out of sight in the stairwell.

No arrows. No shouts, no swords. He didn't let his relief show in his posture or his voice as he finished the unlikely catchphase: "Well, you know what they say about the worm."

"We're good here," the woman announced, and a man stepped onto the landing.

Big man. At least a hand taller than Eli, and a good deal broader. He was wrapped in a peasant's cloak, a dingy patchwork affair with a tattered hem, but the cloth snagged on the lumps and lines of the armor beneath. Which made it pretty obvious that he wasn't just some peasant. Still, what the guy lacked in subtlety he made up for in intimidation. Especially considering the sword hilt near his gloved hand.

A big sword for a big man; much too cumbersome for fighting inside a building, so Eli figured he was carrying shorter blades in there somewhere. The sword was probably for protection in the streets and parks they'd crossed on the way to the Manor.

Then the woman slunk into view from behind the man. She was doing a better job at playing her part, wearing stained trousers and a baggy shirt beneath a lumpy jacket. The whole outfit looked like a hand-me-down from an older, more-slovenly brother. Also, she was absently holding a strap of leather and a handful of rocks that--oh!

A sling. She was a sling-woman, though the view from one of the sparks suggested a short sword strapped beneath that lumpy jacket, too.

Eli spread his arms widely, to show that he was unarmed. "Come in, mirs, come in!"

The man shoved past him without a word or a glance, then started stomping around the apartment, checking for trouble before the marquis approached.

The woman, on the other hand, lingered a moment. She looked at Eli briefly, and his heart stopped. Then she looked past him, and her sharp gaze probed every corner of the landing.

"Clear," she said to someone behind her.

She slipped past him into the apartment, tucking her sling into her jacket and leaving her hand out of sight. Probably on the hilt of a weapon.

Eli monitored the interior of the apartment with one spark while the other watched two more people climbing the top flight of stairs ... and something tugged at the fringes of his senses. Five or six more guards were farther down in the stairway. Judging from the sounds, they were stepping lower to control the entrance and exit.

Not good. He'd only expected a few soldiers, not a whole blessdamned squad.

The marquis stepped onto the landing, dressed as a merchant, limping and using a walking stick. His companion wore a matching tunic, an older man with a red-gray beard who--

Who was the mage.

Even worse. This was the two-fold mage who summoned shields strong enough to defeat trolls, and who blasted holes in rock with his projectiles. So much for the marquis wanting to keep his spies and his mages apart. What was the man's name? Mage Crough? Something like that. Well, halo. If he fired a pebble at Eli, the impact would blow a hole in his chest. He couldn't survive that.

Yet he also couldn't hesitate, or show any fear, so he kept talking: "M'lord, I hope you'll forgive my humble abode." He retreated backward, through the doorway into the apartment, making an ornate gesture of invitation as he turned his face away. "I would've happily waited on you at the Keep."

The marquis stepped inside, his walking stick rapping against the ground. "That would've made one of us happy."

"Yes, m'lord," Eli said, turning to the desk, his back to the door--and the marquis and mage. His pulse thundered in his ears but he forced his hands steady as he reached for a pitcher. "May I offer you ale, or something stronger?"

"Begging your pardon, my lord," the mage said. "It would've made two of us happy."

"Don't be a nervous old hen, Hrough," the marquis said.

The mage harrumphed as the two soldiers returned to the front room after having surveyed the apartment for threats.

"We're feeling some urgency to strike a target in Leotide City, m'lord?" Eli asked, filling a tankard with ale despite the lack of a response to his question.

"Why do you say that?" the marquis asked.

"Aggression against your lordship cannot long remain unanswered."

"And why the provincial capital instead of the true capital? You're wary of acting in the shadow of the Hyssop Throne? The presence of the monarch is too strong a deterrent?"

Eli returned the pitcher to the desk. "We can't repay a spear to the gut with a punch to the face. We need to strike back harder than we were struck, and acting in the provincial capi--"

"This man isn't Chivat Lo," the mage said.