Chapter 35
The Dervish came out of the sword and very nearly banged his head on the ceiling. He was in a low stone run with a wooden half door leading onto a corridor, like a horse stall for very short horses. Dog kennel, he thought. Hot damn, it worked!
Something behind him growled.
It was a growl that said he was a stranger and domestication was more of a suggestion than a hard-and-fast rule. The last time that the Dervish had heard a sound that dreadful, it had been attached to a bull who was charging across a field that the Dervish swore was supposed to be empty.
He turned around.
The only reason that he knew the animal in front of him was a dog was because people don’t usually put collars on wolverines.
It had a broad, blunt head and yellowed teeth.
He could see stretched out dugs, which made him fear instantly that it—she—would be protecting puppies, but there was enough white on her muzzle to make him think those days were behind her.
He shuddered to think what she must have been like in her youth.
She had one paw on his sword. Most of the bacon had been ripped off, and she must have grabbed the hilt to pull more loose.
Which was exactly what he’d hoped would happen, and had been the keystone of the plan, except that it hadn’t occurred to him that whatever dog claimed the sword and dragged it away would, of necessity, be the meanest dog in the yard.
“Nice doggie?” he said.
The growl intensified. This was not an animal who suffered existential angst about whether she was a Good Dog.
He didn’t want to fight her. Killing dogs felt like a betrayal of an ancient treaty, even if this particular dog had not been a signatory.
He also did not particularly want to be mauled.
“I don’t have time to wait ’til you’re finished,” he told her. “That much raw bacon can’t be good for you anyway. Your master will come around to feed you, I’m sure, and I’d rather he didn’t find me here.”
The dog gnawed on the hilt of the sword, never looking away from him. The Dervish was suddenly glad that it was indestructible.
“Drop it?” he tried.
Yellow eyes burned sulfurously in the gloom. She took another bite. Her jaw muscles moved like hungry cantaloupes.
“Sit? Roll over?”
Another bite.
The Dervish drew his daggers and took a step forward. Her growl deepened into an earthquake rumble.
Well, the good news is that the cult’s not getting my sword back anytime soon?
The Dervish took another step forward. Don’t show you’re afraid. Exert dominance. “You’re going to give me that sword.”
The next thing he knew, he was on the other side of the stall door with a snarl ringing in his ears. He did not have the sword. He was also missing a few inches of trouser leg. Apparently his body had moved without bothering to consult his brain. This had been a very good decision on its part.
He looked down and discovered that he still had a dagger in each hand, which meant that he’d cleared the stall door from a standing start without using his hands. Amazing what the human body can do when it thinks it’s about to be dismembered.
He wondered briefly why she wasn’t barking, then remembered Father’s Brother telling him that dogs barked to summon other members of their pack for help. This animal did not require anyone’s help. Also she probably didn’t want to share the bacon.
It would be entirely typical for his rescue attempt to founder on one elderly fiend masquerading as a dog, but fortunately for the Dervish, he was in a kennel and the houndmaster knew exactly what he was up against. The hallway was dimly lit by oil lanterns, and there was a rack partway down its length, holding long poles with loops of rope on the end.
The Dervish selected two and returned to his nemesis.
Getting a loop around the dog’s neck and leading her to one side wasn’t difficult.
The hard part was holding her there with one hand while getting the other loop around the sword.
It took long minutes, during which she never stopped growling and he never stopped swearing.
But at long last, he had the sword in hand and was able to let the beast go.
He hastily peeled the remaining bacon slices off the sword and dropped them over the stall door, then slung it from his belt, grimacing at the greasy feel. Eating sounds followed him down the corridor as he fled.
The Dervish had no internal map of the cult compound, but was unsurprised to find that the kennels came out very close to the kitchens.
The door stood open and despite the late hour, light spilled from inside and he could hear people moving around.
The Dervish passed quickly in front of it, moving with the businesslike stride of someone who knew where they were going, and heard no alarm raised inside.
No light shone under the next door. The Dervish opened it and slipped inside.
Cool damp air led him to think it was a well room, which would be a very useful thing to have inside and close to the kitchens, and also not the sort of place people usually slept.
He fumbled by the door and found a shelf with a lamp and tinder and flint, proving that even obsessed cultists could observe basic safety precautions.
Shielding the light with his body, the Dervish looked around the room. The well stood in the center and there were troughs of cold water along the back, presumably for storing any food that needed to be kept cool. A rack of waterskins lined the front wall.
Someone was coming along the corridor. The Dervish set the lamp down in the corner, where the light could not betray him, and took up a post behind the door.
The young man who entered the well room probably did not deserve what was about to happen to him, even if he was whistling off-key. He set his lantern down and began turning the crank on the well as the Dervish shut the door noiselessly behind him.
The sensation of a blade snugged up under the left ear tends to focus the mind enormously. The whistling stopped.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now,” the Dervish hissed in his ear.
“Um … um…” The young man gulped, his skin scraping against the knife blade. “I send money back home to my sister and she can’t work and I don’t want her to be sad?”
That … yeah, that’s actually a pretty good reason. Dammit. “Fine,” said the Dervish, moving the knife a quarter inch away so that his prisoner wouldn’t start crying and accidentally slit his own throat. “If you don’t want your sister to be sad, I suggest you tell me what I want to know.”
“Yes. Absolutely. Anything. Everything. Uh, my name’s Anthony, I’m seventeen years old and I live in Badger’s Throat—”
“What the hell kind of name is Badger’s Throat?”
Anthony, already stiff as a board, went slightly stiffer. “I don’t know, I never heard, it was named that when I got there. If that’s what you want to know, I’m very sorry. Uh, I could go and ask my gran, she lives over in Whistlepig—”
“What the hell kind of name is Whis— No. Forget it.” The Dervish realized that he was getting off track, and also that Edmund would undoubtedly be very curious about why a town was named Badger’s Throat. “I’m looking for a prisoner.”
“Okay. I’ll be a model prisoner, I promise.”
“Not you. Someone being held prisoner here.”
“Oh.”
Under normal circumstances, the Dervish would have perhaps applied a little pressure to indicate the enormity of the situation, but he was fairly sure that Anthony wasn’t trying to be funny. “Do you know where the prisoners are kept?”
“I didn’t know we had any?”
The Dervish entertained a brief fantasy of telling Anthony to go back to the kitchen and send someone else. “Where would prisoners be kept?”
“Oh gosh. Um. Uh. There’s nobody in the wine cellar, because I was there just a few hours ago. Maybe the private rooms? Where the scholars live?”
“Very good,” the Dervish said. “Where are those?”
“Upstairs. Go out, turn left, and you come to a hallway with a staircase on each end. Take the one on the left.”
“Are there any guards?”
“No? Why would there be guards? Nobody ever—oh, hmm, you’re here, so I suppose somebody did, but this is the first time, I think?”
The Dervish was unable to repress a sigh.
And then Anthony helped.
“Be sure it’s the staircase on the left,” he said. “If you go right, that one just goes up top to where they keep the fire going, it doesn’t go by the scholars’ rooms at all.”
“Up to the top?”
“Yes? It’s very tall. They only light the fire in winter, though, something to do with ventilation. You’ll know right away that you’re in the wrong one, though, it just keeps going up.”
The Dervish grinned, although Anthony couldn’t see it. “I’m going to tie you up now,” he said. “Please give my compliments to your sister. And I suggest you get another job.”
“I’m thinking about it really, really hard, sir.”
Anthony was very polite about being tied up. The Dervish frowned down at him. “Do I need to stuff a gag in your mouth, or are you going to start yelling?”
“I’d prefer you didn’t, sir.”
“If you yell, I will come back and stab you.”
“Yes, sir. I promise I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”
“Good. Don’t make me regret this.”
“But sir—”
The Dervish glared. Anthony said meekly, “Could you give me a little water before you go? Only nobody goes to the storerooms in the middle of the night, so it could be quite a while, if I’m not supposed to yell.”
Ancestors, I must be getting soft. The Dervish grabbed a waterskin dangling from the rack by the door and directed a stream of water into his captive’s mouth. Anthony gulped, sputtered, coughed, and then said, “Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t mention it. Ever.” The Dervish slung the waterskin over his shoulder, opened the hall door, and went to find his wielder.