Chapter 26
“How the hell do you know that?” the Dervish asked, daggers already clearing their sheaths.
“Whoa! It’s nothing bad, I swear.” Zale took a step back, hands held up. “We have a mutual friend. A man named Sarkis?”
Edmund winced.
Red washed over the Dervish’s vision. He heard his voice, a long way away, saying, “Sarkis is alive?”
“In the same way you are, so … not exactly?”
Sarkis. Sarkis was here. Or if not here, at least had been here recently enough that this person had met him. The three swords had been split up centuries ago, but if you waited long enough, things had a way of coming back around again.
He’d spent so long thinking of ways to punish the commander for what had happened to the three of them, and now, unlooked for, it might be within his grasp.
“Dervish,” Edmund said. “Dervish, it’s all right.”
“It’s not all right,” he said, but the words steadied him nonetheless. The red started to recede, leaving rage that burned like a hot coal under his heart but was small enough to contain. “Where is he?”
“Errr…” Zale had taken several more steps back and was eyeing the daggers. “I’m afraid that’s covered under attorney-client privilege.”
The Dervish considered putting the point of a dagger against the lawyer’s throat and seeing just how strongly they believed in attorney-client privilege. Edmund probably wouldn’t like that, though. He picked his words carefully. “Am I going to encounter him in the next few minutes?”
“Oh heavens, no. Nowhere near here, I can tell you that much.” The priest paused. “Um … do you suppose you might feel comfortable putting your knives away? And we could talk about it?”
He did not want to put his knives away. He did not want to talk about it. He wanted to find Sarkis, who was apparently somewhere in this part of the world, and cut him into tiny pieces, then do it again, several times. Then stomp on the pieces. Then piss on them. Then stomp on them again.
Edmund gave him a pleading look. The Dervish slammed the daggers back with an audible click.
“Now,” said Zale, “perhaps we might all sit down?”
Zale sat. Edmund sat. After a moment, the Dervish sat.
“I’m so sorry,” Edmund said. The Dervish wasn’t sure who he was apologizing to, and judging by his expression, he wasn’t quite sure himself. “I had no idea.”
“No,” the Dervish said. Rational thought was crowding back, much to his annoyance. “No, you couldn’t have known.”
“Perhaps we might have some tea,” said Zale, smoothing back strands of silvered hair that had worked loose from their braid.
“Tea is good,” said Edmund, watching the Dervish as if he were a previously tame animal who had suddenly tried to bite.
I told you I was a bad person, Edmund. I told you and told you. It’s not my fault you forgot it.
And yet … and yet …
He didn’t want to see that wariness in Edmund’s eyes.
His friends shouldn’t ever be afraid of him.
Angharad would have smacked him on the back of the head and asked him what he thought he was doing, but she wasn’t here and the Dervish was going to have to consult his own stunted conscience instead of using hers.
So he sighed and accepted the tea that the lawyer sent for and said, “I’m sorry. That was badly done of me. You have to understand, the last time I saw Sarkis, I was being run through with a sword.”
“And it was his fault,” Zale said, nodding.
“He told you that?”
“Of course. He’s extremely aware of it. It’s his greatest regret.”
That shouldn’t have come as a surprise. The commander had always taken responsibility for his decisions. It still felt as if he’d been punched in the sternum.
The Angharad in his head rolled her eyes at him. What did you think he’d do, laugh maniacally for having gotten away with something? They killed him too, and stuck him in a sword. And how many times did he apologize, while we were chained up and waiting to see what happened?
This was all true, of course. But on some level, for so many years, he’d felt that if he could just tear Sarkis apart with his bare hands, everything would be better. Everything would be fixed.
And here was this calm, urbane lawyer explaining that Sarkis was alive. And if the Dervish tore him apart, all that would happen would be that Sarkis would be stuck in a sword for a fortnight or two, and then would come back. And nothing would change. And it wouldn’t fix anything.
The Dervish stared into the tea. Some people said you could read the future in tea leaves, but the only thing that the Dervish had ever seen in them was overstewed black blobbiness.
“Five hundred years is a long time to hold a grudge,” Zale said gently.
The Dervish’s head snapped up. He might have said something very unwise, but Edmund plowed into the opening. “Five hundred years? Is that how long it’s been? We couldn’t quite figure it out. How did you calculate it? Was it with star charts? Did you account for precession?”
“Ah…” Zale clearly hadn’t expected a math quiz where they’d have to show their work. “Four hundred and fifty, I think? As I understand it, they worked out the date of the battle where the mercenary company was … ah…”
“Wiped out to the last man,” said the Dervish. Five years or five hundred, it didn’t much matter to him. Everyone he loved had died before he had, or five minutes after. That had been few enough people, all told.
“Well.” Zale shuffled some papers on the desk, looking more as if they wanted something to do with their hands than as if they expected to actually clear a space. “Two enchanted swords in one lifetime. I wonder what the odds are of that.”
Edmund shook his head. “The hell of it is that I didn’t come here about the swords. I had no idea you knew about them. I need the Rat’s help to … sort of … rescue a scholar. Of sorts.”
“Who also happens to be an ambassador of sorts,” the Dervish put in.
Zale propped their elbows on their desk and leaned forward. “I can see you have a very complicated story to tell me.”
“Right. Well, it started a few days after I left the temple, when I was set upon by bandits…”
By the time Edmund had finished the recitation, aided by frequent commentary from the Dervish, Zale looked as if they’d been hit on the back of the head with a board. “So you came to me to ask for help smuggling a giant talking pillbug into the city.”
“Yes.” Edmund rubbed the back of his neck. “I couldn’t really think of who else to ask? And Francis is very important. She’s the first delegation—what’s left of the first delegation—from their people to this entire region. Nobody outside their homeland even knows they exist.”
“Oh, no question of that. She’s already suffered a dreadful diplomatic incident.
And I’m sure the city scholars would give their eyeteeth to be able to talk to her.
” Zale reached for their teacup, found it empty, then reached for the teapot and found it cold.
“I’ll need to speak to the bishop, but we’ll manage something. ”
“There’s also the dragon,” the Dervish said helpfully.
“And the dragon, yes, of course, can’t forget the dragon.” Zale put their face in their hands. Their laughter had a definite edge of hysteria. “Rat’s tail and whiskers. Does this sort of thing happen to you often?”
“Definitely not. I’ve made the trip here and to Anuket City multiple times and nobody tried to kidnap me at all.”
“Thank goodness. Otherwise I was going to suggest you find a nice position as an anchorite.” They stood up. “In the meantime, if you don’t have anywhere to stay, you’re welcome to stay here. There are guest rooms for important visitors, and I’d say you qualify.”
“Do we? I’m just a former dedicate.”
“Yes, but you’re…” Zale waved their hand dismissively. “I don’t know, acting as a temporary adjunct for the Pillbug Diplomatic Mission. Also you’re my friend. I’d offer to let you stay in my quarters, but if I move any of the papers, I’ll be done for.”
Edmund and the Dervish also rose. “I didn’t congratulate you,” Edmund said. “On being made solicitor-sacrosanct. I was sure you’d be able to do it.”
Zale flushed and ducked their head. “I certainly wasn’t.”
“There are only six solicitors-sacrosanct in the entire city,” Edmund told the Dervish. “It’s the highest rank of the White Rat’s legal arm.”
The Dervish’s eyebrows went up. He’d assumed Zale must be some low-level functionary. Now why did I assume that? Because they’re self-effacing or because they were Edmund’s friend and it didn’t occur to me that Edmund might be pen pals with a high-level official?
Or possibly because I didn’t want to think about the fact that I drew steel on said high-level official in the middle of their own office?
He decided that extra charm couldn’t hurt. “Thank you for seeing us on such short notice,” he said. “And I apologize again for my reaction. I really wasn’t expecting to hear that name out of the blue.”
Zale studied him with cool gray eyes the color of a summer thunderstorm.
“No, that had to come as a shock. Think nothing of it.” But even after the lawyer handed them over to a housekeeper and moved off, the Dervish couldn’t shake the feeling that Zale had recognized his charm for exactly what it was, and had merely chosen, for the moment, to withhold judgment.
The room that they were shown to was in the complex of buildings at the back of the compound, which seemed to be a combination of office and living space.
There was a tower in the middle, looking a trifle out of place, with barred windows.
The Dervish was glad that their own quarters did not have bars, only wooden shutters and windows of bubbled, slightly bluish glass.
The room itself was not luxurious, but it was better than the inns they’d stayed at and certainly a lot better than a blanket on the ground.
There were two beds. When they went to the stables to check on the horses, Dog Violet said she had met some gnoles who worked for the temple and had chosen to stay with them, so the men had it all to themselves.
The Dervish sat down on his bed, sank into the mattress, and suddenly nothing, not sharing a room with Edmund, not even the possible proximity of the man he hated most, mattered in the slightest.
He was vaguely aware of Edmund saying something, but before he could work out what it was, sleep crept out from under the bed and hit him.