Crowchanger (Changers of Chandris) Read online

  The smell of fresh-baked pies drew him to a small stall set away from the main throng. The pie-man was doing good business, even off the main thoroughfare.

  “I didn’t fancy my chances out there,” the man commented. “If my stall wasn’t overturned in the press, I’d have lost pies left and right to the street children instead. The little buggers are quick enough to dart in and take one while my attention is with a genuine customer. At least this way my proceeds feed my own children, not some guttersnipe.”

  Street children? Among the Chesammos even the poorest were cared for. Even in the worst of times, none need steal or beg to support themselves. Sylas munched thoughtfully on his own pie, good and hot and spicy, with a flavour he thought he should know but was unable to identify. He wondered if Jaevan knew that children right on his father’s doorstep were having to steal to eat.

  A hubbub from the main road announced the approach of the procession. Soldiers beating drums marched ahead of the parade to clear the way and streets that had already seemed crowded to Sylas became more so as people squeezed to the sides to let the carriages through.

  Clashing cymbals and blaring trumpets preceded the king’s carriage, and then Sylas could see him. Jaevan stood at his father’s side, resplendent in red robes and with a circlet around his head, a linandra stone in the centre of his brow. Deygan wore the king’s coronet—a more ornate version of the one Jaevan wore, set with the biggest linandra Sylas had ever seen. The two younger boys must have been perched on stools to see over the sides. Their white-blond heads were bare, but they wore the same red robes as their father and brother. The king and the three princes dipped time and again into the baskets of coins. Deygan’s arm arced outward like a farmer sowing seed and people plucked the coins from the air or scrabbled for them on the ground. Jaevan and Marklin copied Deygan, and little Prince Rannon did his best, although his coins dropped far closer to the carriage than those of his brothers.

  Jaevan’s eyes seemed to search the crowd. Not looking for Sylas—he could never have spotted Sylas in all these people—but as if he sought the neediest. The king’s blessing, they called these alms, and people snatched the coins from the air, clutched them in their fists and kissed their fingers. Sylas’s heart swelled with pride watching Jaevan. He would make a fine king one day and maybe, if Sylas succeeded in his training, he could be court healer. Then they could be friends always. His determination flared into passion. Whatever it took for him to succeed, he would be a healer and serve Jaevan.

  An instant later, Sylas noticed stones flying towards the carriage from all directions. The street here was narrower than most other roads in Banunis—the perfect place for an ambush. The stones flew so fast that no arm could have thrown them. They had come from slings: the weapon of the Chesammos.

  The two guards riding on the back of the carriage leaped in beside Deygan and his sons, pushing them to the floor and protecting them with their bodies, but not before Sylas saw one of the younger boys fall under a stone and Jaevan with blood streaming from a wound to his forehead. Sylas’s stomach lurched. He could help; he was a healer. But the carriage driver whipped up the horses, and the soldiers in the front of the procession pushed the crowd out of the way to get the carriage back to the safety of the castle walls. People screamed. It seemed the carriage driver was not too particular about people being out of his way as he whipped the horses forward. Sylas wondered how many were being brought down beneath pounding hooves.

  Sylas scanned the crowd. One attacker was behind and to the right of him. He caught a glimpse of golden brown skin and dark hair as the man turned to flee. Elsewhere, others were overcome and handed over to the king’s guard. Sylas tried to push through the throng to the man who had been behind him. He had hurt Jaevan. He could not be allowed to escape.

  “Here’s another. Take him.”

  Rough hands grabbed him, pinning his arms to his sides. His first instinct was that of a wrestler. He broke the hold, taking a grip on his assailant’s shoulders in turn. In a fair fight, one on one, Sylas would have had the measure of this man. He was no wrestler; he stood too heavily on his feet. Sylas turned, tripping the fellow, who landed on his back in the dirt. Another man grabbed Sylas’s shoulder and he whirled, landing a punch to the second man’s chin. By the Lady! A healer should not be brawling in the streets. The thought had barely crossed his mind before a blow to the small of his back from a third man dropped him to his knees, sobbing for air, streaks of light splitting the blackness that gathered before his eyes.

  Sylas was hauled to his feet, one man twisting his arms behind him and another holding a knife to his throat. The man he had dumped in the ash took the opportunity to exact his revenge. A punch to Sylas’s gut doubled him over as best he could under restraint, coughing and wheezing as the breath was knocked out of him. The man rubbed his knuckles grimly and looked to be considering which part of him to hit next.

  “Leave him be.” A man wearing the livery of the city watch strode forward and the two men not holding his arms fell away, abashed. “We’ll take it from here. All the bastards who attacked His Majesty have been taken. Next you’ll see of this fellow, he’ll be swinging at the end of a rope.”

  Sylas tried to protest. He was no rebel. He was a changer of the Aerie. A healer. A man was allowed to protect himself, wasn’t he? A few of the city folk spat at him, but mostly he heard voices muttering “Chesammos scum” and “hang the filthy bastard.” They would listen to him once he was back in the castle. There they must recognise him for who he was and release him.

  He was bound, hands behind his back, and bundled like a sack into the back of a wagon with four other men. He knew one by sight: Neffan, a wrestler from Cellondora. One of the men had taken a wound to his right side, and blood soaked through his homespun tunic. He looked about Sylas’s own age, with his beard only soft fuzz on his cheeks. Sylas kicked the driver’s platform to attract attention.

  “Guard, there’s a man hurt back here.”

  “Keep it down, you.” A soldier leaned from the bench and jabbed Sylas with the butt end of his spear.

  “What will happen to us?” He was sure he knew the answer.

  “You’ll be imprisoned, tried, and then strung up by the city gate, as you deserve. Your filthy Chesammos heads’ll be stuck on pikes as deterrent for any of the rest of you who crawl out of the desert to threaten the king.”

  “I’ll not be hanged,” said Neffan grimly. Sylas saw that Neffan’s hands were bound in front of him, not behind, and that he had managed to work his pouch free of his tunic. From the pouch he drew a stone, all sharp edges like a flint, and drew it across his wrist. Fool man. He would not draw enough blood like that to kill himself. Droplets of blood formed on the golden skin, and the man smiled with satisfaction. His friends stared in horror at the welling blood.

  “By the Lady, Neffan, you know what you’ve done?” One of his fellows hissed at him, his face drawn.

  Neffan nodded. “Four hours, maybe five. But a death of my choosing, not of the king’s.”

  Sylas stared from one to the other. They knew something he didn’t. The man tried to throw the stone at one of the guards, but with his hands bound he could get no force behind it. It bounced harmlessly off the guard’s boiled leather jerkin and out of the wagon.

  “What is he talking about? What has he done?”

  But none of the men said a word. The wagon shuddered to a halt, and they were manhandled out into the courtyard of Banunis Castle. The guards were none too gentle, and the occasional fist or boot found flesh if the prisoners did not move fast enough for their liking. Sylas found himself in a part of Banunis he had never seen, nor ever thought to.

  The castle prisons.

  The prisons were as grim as Sylas might have expected. The smell of a thousand men held there over the years made him gag—the combined stench of sweat and vomit and huma
n waste. A few handfuls of straw had been tossed on the stone floor, and the only light came from a barred window high above. Around the walls, metal rings hung at intervals. Either he and the others were too unimportant to be shackled, or the soldiers didn’t expect they’d be there long enough to warrant the effort. Sylas wasn’t sure which option was preferable.

  The injured young man’s legs gave out once they were through the door, buckling under him so that he dropped as if felled. Sylas crawled to him, pulling the fabric away from the dark stain on his tunic. A knife or sword had pierced his side, beneath his ribs.

  Sylas went to the door. Made of stout wood, it had a small, barred observation window. He shouted between the bars, “Hey! We need help here. One of these men is injured.” There was no response. He shouted again.

  “Don’t care, as long as he lives long enough to be hanged,” came the answer from outside.

  “I need a message taken to Mistress Ayriene.”

  “Mistress Ayriene? The changer?”

  “That’s right. I’m her apprentice.”

  Sylas could hear footsteps along a flagstone corridor. The gnarled face of a man with close-cropped greying hair and several days’ growth of stubble glared through the window. When he spoke, Sylas could see gaps where teeth had been, and smell the rankness of his breath.

  “You a changer, boy? Turn into a bird and fly away, then. You could get through the bars up there, I reckon.” He cackled unpleasantly.

  It came as no surprise that the jailer didn’t believe him. With dirt on his clothes from the street, muck from the prison floor and stains on his tunic, he looked every bit the Chesammos criminal.

  “I can’t change, but I swear to you I am her apprentice. My name is Sylas. Please, you have to tell her I’m here.”

  The man spat between the bars. “Don’t have to do nothing. Just take you to the king’s justice when I’m called to, and with a bit of luck get to help with the stringing up too. You had a bit of sympathy up to now. Stoned the king and his boys, and you lost it. Who uses stones, unless children pelting rats and dogs in the street?”

  “At least bring me water and bandages, and untie my hands so I can tend him. If one of us dies then that’s one fewer trapdoor for you to open beneath our feet.” It made Sylas sick to his stomach to think of the five of them hanging from ropes, but the fellow needed convincing.

  It worked. The bandages the guard passed through the door soon after had been used and washed many times, but at least they were clean. The water smelled of the taint of the Lady’s breath, so it had come from the common well, not been filtered through sand, but it was better than nothing. For a moment, while the door was open, Sylas was tempted to run. If he took the man by surprise, landed a lucky blow or two, he might make it—to the next locked door at least. He didn’t want to think what would happen if his way was barred. The man didn’t seem the type to laugh off an escape attempt. And that would leave the wounded man with no caregiver. Sylas sighed. He had to do his duty.

  “Please send word to Mistress Ayriene. I’m telling you the truth.”

  The man grunted (or it might have been a short laugh—Sylas wasn’t sure) and turned the key in the lock. His footsteps faded along the corridor, and Sylas dampened one of the cloths and wrung it out. If he was lucky, he might keep the man alive long enough to be hanged. The thought gave him no comfort.

  Chapter 22

  Sylas did what he could for the injured man, washing and binding the wound and using what water was left to sponge his face to make him more comfortable. Soon after, it became clear that Neffan was also sick. Sylas could not understand how or why. He was uninjured, apart from the scratch from the flint. The conditions were bad, certainly, but the stale air and stench would take several days to make any of them unwell. Neffan had not been here long enough for the watch bell to sound, far less sicken with anything.

  His words ran through Sylas’s head.

  Four hours, maybe five. But a death of my choosing, not of the king’s.

  Sylas took Neffan’s hand and turned it wrist up. Around the scratch the skin had bruised, a livid red-blue clearly visible on the golden-brown of the man’s skin. He felt Neffan’s forehead. The man was feverish, but how had he become ill so quickly?

  “What have you done?” Sylas grabbed Neffan’s shoulders and shook him. “The princes—two of them were hit. Will they be sick now, too?”

  Neffan said nothing, but a smile curled the corners of his mouth and his eyes took on a satisfied gleam.

  Deygan would have called for Ayriene as soon as he and his sons reached the safety of the castle, of that much Sylas was sure. Even sick herself, Ayriene would heal the boys’ wounds. Sylas wondered how long it would take before someone noticed that the princes were not recovering as they ought. They were probably getting worse by the minute, if Neffan’s symptoms were anything to go by. Ayriene would have sent for Sylas by now, particularly if she was no better than she had been in the morning. But when he was nowhere to be found, she would assume that he had stayed in the city. Celebrations would go on well into the night, and the taverns and brothels did a roaring trade on feast days. She probably thought he was out drinking or whoring; there were men as well as women to be had, if you knew who to ask. The castle dungeons would be the last place she would think to look.

  Think, Sylas, think! He sat where floor and wall met, knees drawn up to his chest, hands in fists on either side of his forehead. He was missing something. They had chosen slings over daggers or swords or bows. He would bet that Chesammos entering the city for the feast had been searched at the main gates, so they could not have brought in anything larger. That made slings the obvious weapon choice for the would-be assassins. But over those distances, through a crowd, a man would have to be inhumanly accurate or have the Lady’s own luck to land a killing blow. And Neffan was dying from a scratch.

  He rolled to hands and knees and crawled across to Neffan, whose cut arm was now covered with bruises. Despite the man’s protestations Sylas investigated further, finding the first pale purple splotches oozing into the skin of his chest.

  “It’s poison, isn’t it?” he said, his face close to Neffan’s. “You coated the stones with poison. That’s why you threw stones, hoping to break their skin.” The image of Jaevan with blood running from a wound on his forehead haunted him. “What did you use, damn you?”

  Neffan refused to speak—or could not.

  Sylas settled back against the wall once more. Ayriene had taught him about the poisons which were toxic at a high level but had healing properties in smaller quantities. He thought he could ignore those. Poison on a flint would deliver too small a dose to be effective. That left three that he knew of, none of which Mistress Ayriene had ever mentioned. She might know of them, but two were from plants found largely in the desert, and which had no medicinal uses.

  He could eliminate the one that killed in minutes—Neffan had already survived longer than that—which left kaba sap and esteia. They had similar symptoms, both starting with a fever. Kaba sap caused bleeding from the eyes and nose and mouth in its later stages, but by then the patient was too far gone to save. He could not afford to wait that long. Esteia was eaten by people tempted by the nut-like seeds. Then another thought occurred to him. Irenthi were immune to the effects of kaba sap. Well, not immune, exactly. It would give an Irenthi an unpleasant stomach upset, but not kill him. So if it was kaba sap, then Jaevan was safe, but he couldn’t imagine that Neffan and his gang would have made such an elementary mistake.

  Most cases of esteia poisoning were by ingestion of the seeds, but Neffan had not eaten anything—just scratched himself. Unless they had found a way to extract the poison from the nuts. Could they be ground up, maybe boiled to make a liquid poison with which to coat the flints? He had never heard of it being done, but that didn’t mean it was impossible. Skin contusions we
re a symptom of esteia poisoning, and as far as he remembered, kaba sap left no marks. A better death than the rope? Maybe. Neffan had chosen his own way to die, but Sylas did not intend for him to choose Jaevan’s. How long had it been since the parade? How long did Jaevan have before the antidote would be futile?

  Sylas went to the door, banging with his fists, yelling as hard as he could manage. He heard grumbling. The guard who had brought the bandages shambled his way to the window and scowled through.

  “What’s the matter? Your friend died, has he? Can’t say I’m sorry.”

  “He’s not dead, but another is sick. Very sick. And Prince Jaevan will be soon, if he isn’t already. The stones were poisoned. You must get word to Mistress Ayriene.”

  The guard scratched at his scalp. His hair was close cropped, a precaution against the lice that were surely rampant in the cells. He didn’t look to Sylas as if he was very bright, and Sylas fretted at any delay.