The Thief Lord's Son (The Eastern Slave Series Book 3) Read online

  THE THIEF LORD'S SON

  Victor Poole

  Copyright © 2017 by Victor Poole

  All rights reserved.

  CONTENTS

  1 The Aftermath

  2 Leed is Sent Away

  3 The Bones of the Poison Tree

  4 Bakroth's Wife

  5 The Secret Passage

  6 The Dragon Temple

  7 Ocher Pays a Visit

  8 Clare is Caught Kissing

  9 A Disrupted Journey

  10 Delmar's New Clothes

  11 In Preparation for the Master

  12 Delmar Makes His Move

  13 The Old Witch

  14 Ullar, Mother of Bain

  15 The Magic Knife

  16 Ocher's Warning

  17 Delmar's Mother

  18 Bain Sets a Trap

  19 Ajalia Stages a Rescue

  20 Simon

  21 A Strained Meeting

  22 The New Thief Lord

  23 A Temporary Arrangement

  24 The Return of Bain

  25 The Screeching Metheros

  26 The End of Lilleth

  THE AFTERMATH

  Ajalia screamed like a dying animal; the light from Delmar's fist sank into her side, and she felt as though a great mountain was resting on top of her, crushing the air out of her body, and squishing away the juices in her organs. She was beyond the pain of death; she wished that she had never existed at all.

  Delmar withdrew his hand. He jammed his fingers into the earth again, deeper this time. Ajalia could see a radiance, like the shining of a sun, crackling from inside the hole Delmar had dug.

  "Don't," she gasped. "Delmar, don't, I—"

  Delmar had a look in his eyes like a bear hunting fish. He did not look at Ajalia, or seem to see her desperate and flushing face. Before Ajalia could finish her sentence, he withdrew another ball of shining white from the dirt and put it straight against the hole in her side. The mud he had packed there exploded outward, carrying flecks of blood and slimy green goo. Ajalia fainted, but before her consciousness wiped away, she saw Delmar's face, anxious and intense, hovering over the pulsing pain in her side.

  Ajalia did not wake up for a long time. After a while, she came to herself, enough to recognize that she was herself, but she could not open her eyes. She was trapped in a kind of endless black prison; faintly, as from a distance, she could feel the tremors and quakes in her body. Her arms she saw as pulsing orange sticks of angry fire; her side was a purple whirling hole of painted water. She had forgotten about Delmar.

  All the past, all her pain and her memories, were swirling inside of her like a kind of panorama of terror. She saw her father's face, and heard her mother's shrill screaming voice. Her bother was there, a thing in the background, present and unforgettable, like gnats in her eyes. Her brother's face was turned up to her, and his mouth was half-open. She thought that he, her brother, looked like a wolf puppy who was staring up at her, and waiting for her blood to drop down into his mouth.

  Ajalia heard again the chants from the priesthood, and the high, quavering voices of the children her father had taught there. Her father was at the head of a class of boys; they were seated on long benches made of gray wood, like shaped ash. Ajalia saw herself standing at the back of the room, watching the image of her father's body shake in the air like a flame. Her father was like a reflection of herself; she saw herself in his eyes, and in his cheeks. A quiver of revulsion shuddered in her ribs; she told herself that what she saw was not real, but she did not believe what she told herself.

  Her father was facing the class, his arms stretched out to each side, his eyes calm and serene in the afternoon sunlight that streamed into the room. Her father was speaking in the old tongue of the priests; Ajalia could hear the scratch of pencils against the wooden benches the boys used as desks.

  She wanted to run away, but her legs would not move.

  "Delmar," Ajalia said. "Delmar, where are you?" She could not remember who Delmar was, or why she wanted him.

  "Delmar," she said, and the pictures around her faded away. Philas was sitting against the narrow hollow, the special hollow that Delmar had found as a child, when he had run away from home. He had told her that, she remembered.

  I ran away from home, Ajalia told herself. Her mouth smiled without her permission. Philas was watching her.

  "We haven't sold the yurl," Ajalia told Philas. "Raephos wants to buy him. You haven't met Raephos," she added. "His real name is Rosk. You'll like him, though. If we could steal his way of making armor, we could set up business for ourselves here in Talbos."

  Ajalia remembered then that she was not in Talbos, or in Slavithe, either. She was in the woods, in the hollow formed of tree roots.

  "Where is he?" she asked Philas, meaning where is Delmar. Philas was looking at her. Ajalia realized too late that her lips had not moved; she had imagined saying all those things. She tried to speak again.

  "Is Delmar around?" she asked. A graveled whisper of sound came out from between her lips.

  "Jay's waking up," Philas called, standing up and leaping over the edge of the hollow. The twisting tree roots lay over the rise in the forest like a folded cloth; the boughs of the two trees that formed the hollow spread wide and green over Ajalia's head. She opened her eyes, and the light blinded her. She blinked, and turned her face into the darkness of the rough bark. She realized that she had been looking out at Philas, and at the trees, between barely-open eyelids.

  "I don't want to be here," she whispered into the bark. Her nose was pushed into a harsh fold of tree. She tried to look down at herself, but her neck was stiff. Ajalia sighed. She was tired of being blind; she was tired of holding still. She wanted to stand up and run away.

  Ajalia, emitting a groan, rolled onto her side. She moved her wrists. Gasping tremors of pain and throbbing fire came sprinting up her elbows to her spine. She began to cry.

  Delmar appeared over her.

  "You're not dead," he observed. Ajalia laughed. Delmar made her feel somehow better; his face was shining like a dying star; he had black bruises under his eyes, and his cheeks looked harsh and hollow. He looked as though he had been kissing his life away in death's embrace.

  "Where is Lim's body?" Ajalia asked. A squeak came out instead of words. She moved her fingers, laboriously, to her waist. Her knife was still in the waist of her pants, but Lim's wickedly long blade was gone. She forced her eyes open another crack, and examined Delmar's side. She could not see beneath his bloodied shirt, but a long lump was pressing against his hip. She knew he had the knife, and she smiled. Delmar, she told herself, was coming to terms with reality.

  "Why is Philas here?" she asked. This time, the word "Philas" came out all right.

  "He came to see your man," Delmar told Ajalia, "about the yurl. He brought your black horse."

  Ajalia turned her head, as though if she glanced to the side, she would be able to see her scruffy black horse standing right there in the hollow. She saw nothing but trees and leaves.

  "Where?" Ajalia croaked.

  "Out farther, by the road," Delmar said. He put his hand against her cheek. As ever, his touch relieved Ajalia's pain somehow; she sighed.

  "Keep touching me," she said, and closed her eyes.

  "You're turning sentimental," Delmar informed her. She breathed in the smell of his palm. An acrid scent, not like Delmar's own musk of sunshine, tickled her nose.

  "What happened?" she asked him, her eyes shut fast. Delmar crouched down, and kissed her. Ajalia felt a difference in his skin at once. Before the incident with Lim, and with the white magic, and before even the
kiss Delmar had given her before she had blacked out, his kisses had been like flower petals pressing lovingly over her face. Now his mouth was like fire that licked the life out of her mouth; she felt a curdling burn in her heart, and between her legs. She pulled away from him with a gasp.

  "What happened to you?" she demanded. Delmar's kiss had quite woken her up. She realized that she was wearing clothes again; her cream outer robe, the robe Delmar had folded away into the bag, was creased over her chest. Her arms, she saw, were still bandaged. She did not know how long it had been since she had killed Lim.

  She examined Delmar's face. She had thought, at first, that the bruising and dark marks she had seen there were a creation of her dreams; she saw now that he was, indeed, roughed up considerably. He looked as though he had had an encounter with death.

  "What happened?" she asked, touching his hollowed cheeks. Delmar laughed; his laugh was clear and strong.

  "You passed out for a while," he told her. "Leed brought Philas down the road, and then Philas followed Lim's tracks through the trees. Lim was clumsy. Philas helped me," he added, "with Lim. He showed me how to empty the clothes."

  Ajalia knew what Delmar meant; Philas would have taken apart the clever seams and the second pockets. Most of the slaves from the East imitated the same hiding places. Philas was senior in experience to Lim, and it was unlikely that Lim would have tricks Philas would not know. Ajalia noticed that Delmar had a curiously fat look about him; she recognized that look. It was the way poor slaves looked when they first realized how to obtain their own money. She smiled at him weakly.

  "You are a grave robber now," she said.

  "Hardly," Delmar said. "And they were my mother's things, anyway. She'll be glad to have them back."

  Not quite like a slave yet, Ajalia reflected. A true slave would never think of returning found spoils.

  "Where's Philas?" she asked. She had thought that she had imagined him; she was not sure where in her waking her memories had changed into reality. She half-looked around to see if her father was crouched within the hollow as well. Delmar followed her gaze, but he said nothing of the ghostly pallor that creased her cheeks, or the shiver that passed over her arms.

  "Philas is gone to see about the horse," Delmar said, "and Leed. Card's made a deal with Philas about some of your young women, your slaves."

  "They're servants," Ajalia said wearily, closing her eyes again.

  "Not anymore," Delmar told her. "Card sold them all for you. You have money for them now, I guess."

  "What?" Ajalia snapped. She sat upright, and fell over hard. An immediate line of breath tangled out of her lungs. She began to cough. Delmar waited patiently, and stroked her back.

  "Stop touching," Ajalia said peevishly. "You make me feel better."

  "I like making you feel better," Delmar said peaceably, but he withdrew his hand.

  "Slaves?" Ajalia asked. She kept her eyes closed. A horrific pounding was in her skull. She wanted to lay quietly again, but it was too late; she had shaken loose a tumbling avalanche of unbearable pressure, and it was winding all through her torso and her neck. "Oh, good grief," she said between her teeth. She breathed in slowly, and blinked away the tears of pain that raised up behind her eyes. A sickening nausea reared up in her throat; she swallowed.

  "How long have I been like this?" she asked. Her face was pressed into her legs.

  "A few weeks," Delmar said seriously. Ajalia made such a dreadful face at Delmar that he laughed out loud. "I'm kidding," he said. "Only two days," he amended, and kissed her again.

  Ajalia had every intention of pulling away, but Delmar's mouth relieved the pain in her head so thoroughly that she wound herself willingly into his embrace. Delmar made a species of grunt, and slipped his hand more deeply around her ribs.

  "Hello," Philas said loudly. Delmar ignored him, and finished kissing Ajalia. Ajalia pushed at Delmar's neck; he bit gently at her lip, and let go of her. "He can't marry you," Philas told Ajalia. She closed her eyes, and settled into Delmar's lap.

  "Why aren't you in Talbos?" she asked Philas, her eyes open a crack.

  "Yurl," Philas explained. Ajalia sighed.

  "I was about to take care of that," she admitted. "Things happened."

  "I can see that," Philas said, looking with benign interest at the two of them.

  "Oh, stop," Ajalia said wearily. "You can see that I am having a difficult time." The long bandages on both of her arms were stained black and red with earth and blood; her hair was loose and wild around her cheeks. She could feel the pallor in her face, and she knew that her lips trembled when she spoke.

  "You killed Lim," Philas said.

  "He started it," Ajalia said, dragging herself into a sitting position. The world spun around her briefly, and then settled into a slow burn of incessant discomfort. The place in her side where the poisoned rod had pierced was glowing inside of her; she could feel a kind of loud white light emanating internally from that place.

  "What did you put in me?" she murmured to Delmar. Delmar moved his head sharply to the side.

  "You've had a lot of mush," he said. Ajalia did not know why he didn't want Philas to know about the magic, but she accepted his excuse without protest.

  "I had a buyer," Ajalia told Philas. "A man from the wild places in between Talbos and Slavithe. His name is Rosk. Leed knows of him."

  "All right," Philas said. He was watching her with a careful expression in his eyes. "I want to talk to Jay," Philas told Delmar. "Go away."

  "No," Delmar said.

  "Fine," Philas retorted, his lip curling, and switched into the Eastern language. "Do you want me to kill him?" Philas asked Ajalia, nodding to Delmar. Ajalia breathed carefully; she could feel a tearing movement through all of her ribs; when she breathed deeply, her insides made an unpleasant sloshing motion.

  "No," Ajalia said in Slavithe. "And don't call me Jay."

  "You're coming back with me," Philas said in the Eastern tongue. "I'm waiting until you're strong enough to take you with me. That's why I brought the horse." Philas glanced with dislike at Delmar. "He's a disaster," he said. Delmar was sitting near Ajalia, his body half curved around her, his shoulders turned towards her. He was like a stone statue, a living carving of a lion. Delmar watched Ajalia; she could feel his gaze on her cheeks, and the blood came into her face. She could see that Philas wanted to come nearer.

  She watched Philas's face, and wondered if he had changed. She was sure he had been drinking again; the liquor hung about him like a great cloak. His eyes were sharp, the way that his eyes had been before Slavithe. Philas had run dry of his own private store of potent concoctions a few days before the caravan had finished coming through the desert to Slavithe; Ajalia knew he had been nursing his alcohol through the long journey, relying on the city to be plenteous with taverns. She had never seen him as he had been in Slavithe, deprived of drink. For a while she had wondered if he would change, but now the shield of inebriation was against Philas's eyes, and she no longer trusted him. She saw that he saw this; a particular hardness in his jaw told her he knew her thoughts. Philas glared at Ajalia, his lips pressed together. The slave glanced at Delmar. Distaste and dislike were creased between Philas's eyes, and his nose was wrinkled. Delmar could not follow the words Philas had said to Ajalia, but the slave's meaning was clear enough. Delmar moved closer to Ajalia, and put his arm protectively around her waist.

  "Can I beat him?" Philas asked her quietly. Gingerly, she shook her head.

  "I need him, Philas," she said in Slavithe. Philas's mouth turned down in anger.

  "Speak to me," he demanded in the language of the East. "You owe me that."

  "I owe you nothing," Ajalia snapped in the Eastern tongue. A sharp throb stabbed into the top of her head when she spoke; she ignored the discomfort. Red lights were beginning to flash at the back of her vision. "I promised master a trade route," she began to say.

  "Again, with the trade route," Philas exploded. "If master cared so much about Slavi
the, he would have sent—" Philas broke off, his face changing, an ashen tint creeping into his cheeks. "No," he said, his eyes digging into Ajalia, searching through the depths of her eyes. Desperation moved gradually up his face until it settled into his eyes. "No," Philas said. The slave's eyes flicked to Delmar; Ajalia saw that Philas did not trust Delmar not to understand, or not to remember the Eastern words he used next. Philas looked back to Ajalia. "Tell me master did not send you for that," Philas pleaded, his voice urgent and unhappy.

  Ajalia gazed on Philas without answering. A regal expression, as though she were a friend to death and feared nothing, was in her eyes.

  "What?" Delmar asked, looking back and forth between the two of them.

  Philas swore violently in the Eastern tongue, and then again, more vehemently, in a language Ajalia did not know, the same language he had used before, to teach her the old sailing song about the lost prince. Ajalia watched Philas swear; the tall slave stormed out of the hollow. She could hear him ripping at grass with his hands. The swearing petered out into silence, and the flinging of torn verdure stopped. After a moment, Philas appeared again at the edge of the hollow. His face was white, but his eyes had turned hard, and his mouth was determined.

  Philas climbed into the hollow. He came near Ajalia; Delmar tightened his grip on her, and Philas cast a scornful look at Delmar.

  "Filthy foreigner," Philas spat in the Eastern tongue.

  "Well, you're a liar," Delmar said viciously in Slavithe. Philas's eyes burned. He looked at Delmar, whose eyes were narrowed, his wan face drawn with suspicion, and the tall, dark slave barked with laughter.

  "Fine," Philas said. "Fine." He stared at Ajalia. The intensity of Philas's gaze made a cascade of tiredness crest in her heart. She felt as though she could not breathe.

  "You knew this trip was different," Ajalia said. She closed her eyes, and waited.

  "We all knew it was different," Philas said, and it was true. The slaves had all been prepared for a strange trading journey on this caravan; no complete group of slaves and beasts, together with their goods, and packs, and fine clothes, had ever made the sojourn across the wide deserts of Leopath to meet with the legendary and reclusive people of Slavithe, the people of the rocks, who clung to life on the bare edge of the continent.