Vile

by Keith Crawford

  “What happened?” Tannyr said, his maw to Dale’s face.

  Dale opened his eyes. “Mama?”

  His pupils rolled back in his head. Tannyr grabbed his son’s face in both hands and lifted it up from the table.

  “Where did they take it?” he snarled. “Tell me!”

  Dales eyes snapped back open.

  “The mines,” he choked. “They took it to the mines.”

  Tannyr let go and stepped away from the table.

  “Uwen?”

  “Da?”

  Normally I’d be taller than him, Tannyr thought. It must just be that I’m tired.

  “I’ve waited thirty years for this chance. Attacking one of my boys is an act of desperation. Gwyion knows a Magistrate can pull everything down around his ears.”

  He stepped up to Uwen and put his hands on his shoulders. His son was so large that Tannyr barely noticed Eira hiding behind her brother.

  “I have a job for you,” Tannyr said. “You’re the only one I can trust to get it done right.”

  Dale let his head fall back to the table with a thump.

  “Anything, Da,” Uwen said, voice as flat as stone.

  Chapter 22

  Elianor, Nathaniel and Rees rode towards Shadowgate Town at a canter. The sun was high in the sky and the air almost warm. White snow gave way to green fields and clusters of farmhouses. Then the town formed, moss on the underside of a boulder, an indistinct flood of habitation that had clawed its way up from the foothills. The Last Chance tavern was the final stop between the castle and the town. The very place Derec Garn had offered as shelter the night the Black Dog attacked. They would be there shortly.

  “Back at the Brek farm, were you using Truthsense? When you asked Ifanna about the laudanum?”

  Nathaniel rode close, so they could hear each other over the sound of the horses.

  “Why? Was she lying?”

  “I…since I left the Magistry, I’ve found the Truthsense less reliable than it used to be.”

  Interesting. What could that possibly mean?

  “That room was awash with emotion. It was like looking at a painting by putting your face up to the canvas. And you remember how it is; sometimes the Truthsense is just there, like seeing colour or feeling warm. Other times we have to improvise,” Elianor said. “Why did your brother and sister not attend the Academy? The ability tends to run in the family.”

  She hated saying that. All these aristocracies, ingrained in nature, emerging from every cultural nook; the power runs in the family, father to son; born to rule; born to lead; trapped in your story from the moment of conception. But you couldn’t be a Magistrate and deny evidence you don’t like. For whatever reason, Truthsense appeared to run in the family. Nathaniel didn’t notice her distraction.

  “Father used to think that the only suitable way to raise an heir was to train them himself and send them off to the army. Then, after what happened to Anton, I guess he figured I was worth a gamble on the Magistry. He doesn’t…He doesn’t pay much attention to Persephone.”

  “Your father trained you?”

  “To fight, mostly, but Anton was a good swordsman before…he was hurt. And Persephone is the only person on the mountain who can pick up her sword, never mind fight with it. She worries about size. It’s a woman thing.”

  “A woman thing?”

  Rees laughed, apparently close enough to have heard. Nathaniel stammered excuses, then shook his head and laughed at himself.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was trying to show off with a joke and I’ve made a fool of myself.”

  His apology was so immediate and disarming that Elianor smiled back at him. Getting him away from the castle seemed to have removed an invisible ton of bricks from his shoulders.

  “I wouldn’t use a sword like Persephone’s either. But first impressions can be half the fight. That’s why we aren’t riding at a gallop and why we didn’t bring more soldiers: I want the Garns to know I don’t need them. And it’s why your sister uses the biggest sword she can find. It’s the same with the Truthsense. We don’t just see truth; we project it as well.”

  A kilometre away from town, the road divided. Nathaniel had explained the geography on their way. The high road ran up and around the town, along a ridge in the hill, then on the most direct route to the mines. The low road dipped first through the old town, past the church, then through a grubby collective of miners’ shacks and terraces that eventually hiccupped up to the establishment everyone but Anton Vile called a brothel: the second of the Garn’s hostelries, Nana Haf’s.

  It was into The Last Chance tavern, here on the north side of town, that Gwyion and Haf Garn had first sunk her dowry. It had become a thriving business, popular among farm workers who should be home with their spouses and tradesmen who should be pressing on to their next destination. When the Garns had purchased the dried-up mines, the security for the bank loan taken on the tavern, their investment was deemed utterly foolish. Foolish until Anton’s expertise and Gwyion’s logistics had drained the mines of the flood water that blocked the lowest levels and had made them the richest people in town.

  “You said your father wants to train his successor. Isn’t Anton next in line to be Lord of Shadowgate?”

  “The revolutionary code still applies, even here; my father can choose his heir as he pleases.”

  “Not everyone agrees with that interpretation of the law. Besides, your father seems the type to follow tradition.”

  “Does he? Does Truthsense improve, during pupillage? Can you always tell when someone is lying?”

  “Yes,” she said. Then, after a pause, “Eventually. It takes practice.”

  “And that’s why Magistrates never lie?”

  “Yes,” she lied.

  Training in the Truthsense started the day you walked through the Academy door. New cadets were herded beneath the tall arches, knees trembling. Magistrates in long dark ceremonial robes glared down at them. What secrets could a thirteen-year-old hide that were deep and dark enough to fear exposure? The cadet’s mouths were so dry they struggled to speak when asked their name. The training Magistrates carried long leather belts. One by one the cadets were peered at, questioned, and told not to lie. They knew when they had told a lie because they were struck when they did so.

  “I wish it had been as clear for me,” Nathaniel said.

  Every Sunday, in a building that had once been a church, the cadets were presented with a criminal lifted from the cells. It might be a snivelling baker, terrified of the punishment she would receive for stealing her own bread, or a braying Lord, convinced his confidence and status would protect him even now the guilty verdict was due. The instructor asked questions and the cadets were told to watch for the lies. Not the banal lies that always surfaced: “I’m not guilty” or “I didn’t do it.” Lies only Truthsense would show, shown in the way only Truthsense could.

  Cadets at the Academy could not pass out from the first phase of training until they had successfully used the Truthsense. If you got it wrong, it was over. Your bag was packed by the time you returned from the punishment room. Wherever you came from, be it the noblest seignior or the basest peasant, you returned there in disgrace. So, the students stayed staring, knowing the speaker was a liar but unable to see it, exhausted from training and sleep deprivation and desperately praying for a miracle. You focused, and you focused, you strained, and you strived until, one day, right there, you saw it: the distortion in the air, the cracked glass panel of an approaching migraine, which told you the speaker was lying.

  “Did you see that, my lord?” Rees said.

  The Sergeant calls Nathaniel ‘lord’, Elianor thought. Could Senator Vile seriously consider supplanting his eldest son?

  “The three men in armour?” Elianor said. “They’ve been following us for the last fifteen minutes.”

  “Are they the same ones who attacked Brek’s boy?” Rees said.

  “Let’s find out.” Nathaniel drew his sword, bu
t Elianor stopped him with a short chopping motion of her hand.

  “No need to chase them; they’re following us.”

  “What if they ambush us at the tavern?”

  “Let’s find out,” she said.

  Chapter 23

  The Last Chance tavern was a picturesque four-storey building stood alone at the side of the road. Elianor eased up her horse, allowing the others to form an arrow with her at its peak. She looked along the road as it stretched to the town, still several kilometres away, and watched from the corner of her eye the three armoured men following them, hanging back along the ridge.

  “Dismount and walk,” Elianor said.

  She grimaced as she landed, the pain in her side masked but not disguised by Lena’s black cream. Elianor adjusted the bandage and tightened her jacket. This time, neither man offered to assist with the reins or asked if she needed help. They tied their horses to a tree and walked across an open stretch to the tavern. There were tables and chairs in the yard, the grass worn by the tread of visitors coming in from the snow and the regular passage of wagons and horses. A mop and bucket stood on the recently scrubbed porch, where the door still swung on its hinges. Elianor stepped up onto the wet stairs. Meticulously reworked carpentry shone with white paint less than a year old.

  “Sergeant, follow us in but watch out of the door,” Elianor said.

  In the main hall were clusters of tables and chairs, private booths that offered no privacy and a dance floor that offered little space to dance. Balconies on each of the three levels peered over a stage that strutted past the bar and a piano someone of questionable taste had painted pink. High above it all dangled a chandelier of sparkling cut glass. The place smelled sour, soap covering up the residue of sweat and other bodily fluids, but at night—at night it would smell of perfume and cigars and suggestion.

  A striking woman sat at a table near the piano, dressed in a red velvet robe and a corset that would not have looked out of place in the capital. The streak of grey in her black hair curled past her impeccably made-up face; the suggestion of crow’s feet highlighted eyes that, Elianor imagined, had always held the edge of determined fervour. Hard to believe this was a woman who would paint a piano pink.

  “Your honour, I’m Haf Garn,” she said. “I’m so glad you came in person.”

  Elianor stayed by the door. She looked Haf up and down and then directed her eyes towards the door behind the bar, which she presumed led to the kitchens. Haf kept her hands on the table.

  “Olwen,” Haf called. “You can come out now.”

  The shadow Elianor had seen behind the kitchen door moved. The woman who slipped out was younger than Haf and gripped a broom as if it might protect her. Haf held out her hand. When Elianor didn’t come to take it, Haf sat back down.

  “Your honour, my daughter.” Olwen put the broom neatly in the corner of the bar then stood behind her mother. Haf put her hand on Olwen’s wrist. “How may we help you?”

  “Is there anybody else here?”

  “Olwen’s baby Zach. He’s only two, and he’s taking his nap.”

  Nathaniel nodded, once.

  “And the men outside?” Elianor said.

  “We get all sorts passing through,” Haf said. “Can I get you anything to drink? Nathaniel? Rees?”

  Rees stayed by the door with his hand on his sword. Elianor took three paces forward, Nathaniel at her shoulder. She could not see to the back of the balconies. Crossbowmen on the first or second floor could make short work of them; the men outside could bar their escape; there could be more fighters in the kitchen. Haf hadn’t explicitly denied the presence of others beyond her grandson, but Elianor could not detect any deception. She eased her hand to her side and considered who she would shoot first.

  “You know why I’m here,” Elianor said.

  “Yes. And I’d like to apologise, on behalf of my son Derec.” Haf looked pointedly at the bruise on Elianor’s face before she continued. “I hope you understand why he did what he did.”

  “You have some things that belong to me.”

  “We would like to return them to you.”

  “Are they here?”

  “No. And neither is Derec.”

  “Dale Brek has been injured,” Nathaniel said. “He says it was your soldiers that did it.”

  Why was he lying? To test Elianor? Because Citizeness Garn would presume nobody was so audacious as to lie in front of a Magistrate? Dale had been asleep when they left, and all they’d been able to get from Brek’s boys was that he had been attacked by a group of men equipped as soldiers.

  “Tannyr would blame the revolution on us, if he could.”

  “He says your brothel is the reason young women have been disappearing,” Elianor said.

  “We don’t run a brothel,” Haf said. “And we don’t have any soldiers. There are the men and women who work in the mines, others in the hostel and here in the tavern. We’re the main employer in Shadowgate.”

  “But that’s not all, is it?” Elianor said.

  “We need protection. It’s not a coincidence that a Magistrate only came to investigate after one of Tannyr’s people went missing. We must look after ourselves. Tell her, Nathaniel.”

  “Seren, the last woman to go missing, is Ifanna’s niece. Seren’s father Hodri is Tannyr’s brother-in-law.”

  “But nothing for Fianna, or Bethelie, or Sara; as far as the Mountain is concerned, my girls don’t deserve investigation by the Magistry. Tannyr thinks any unmarried woman who works for a wage must be a whore.”

  “So, you hired security, and they attacked Dale?”

  “I don’t know what happened to Dale,” Haf said.

  Not exactly a denial, but Elianor did not want to push her into suppositions.

  “When your son betrayed me on the mountainside, he came here first. Why didn’t he stay here to surrender my possessions?”

  Nathaniel took a discreet step to the left, as if Haf might bolt and run.

  “I thought it best if we talked things out face to face,” Haf said. “We are a law-abiding family.”

  “Your son disobeyed the law the moment he disobeyed me.”

  “He didn’t steal your rifle. He has no intention of keeping or exploiting your possessions.”

  “But he did come here, last night, with the property of a Magistrate. And when he explained what he had done, instead of sounding an alarm or sending for help, you hid him and stashed my property at the mine.”

  “We have no intention of keeping it.”

  “Was your husband Gwyion here as well?”

  “Derec didn’t mean to do any wrong. We prayed that the Magistry would come to help us.”

  Elianor thought back to Derec pleading in the cart, her pistol pointing at his head. The Citizeness was lying. Haf Garn had never prayed.

  “Your son will be treated fairly. Once you tell me where he is.” With slow deliberation, Elianor withdrew her pistol and walked up to the Garn family matriarch. “Don’t make me ask your daughter these questions.”

  Haf Garn gripped the table. Elianor placed her pistol between them and took a seat, her fingers still on the grip. Olwen stepped farther behind her mother. Elianor straightened the line of her jacket with her free fingers, sliding them from one button to the next.

  “He panicked,” Haf said. “We panicked. I want to make this right.”

  “So, make it right.”

  Haf’s knuckles turned white. She bowed her head.

  “Derec will be at the mine sunup tomorrow morning. He will return your property in person.”

  Elianor re-holstered her pistol and got to her feet. She controlled the smallest of smirks as she carefully formulated her next few phrases to contain no lies.

  “The Magistry was asked to investigate several days before Citizeness Seren’s disappearance. We don’t take sides and we don’t play favourites in local disputes. I will expect your full co-operation in my investigation. Have Derec ready to turn himself in, or I will judge you al
l for obstruction.”

  Elianor let the chair fall to the floor as she walked away.

  “My lady, please don’t kill my son.”

  Elianor stopped at the door and looked at Sergeant Rees.

  “The men who were following us have left?”

  Rees nodded. “I can’t see them anymore. They could still be close.”

  From somewhere upstairs a small child began to cry. Elianor pushed open the door and stepped outside.

  “Sergeant, bring the horses.”

  The snow had long stopped falling and the mountain air was incredibly fresh. The unknown soldiers might still be close, even hiding in the bushes or behind the trees. Something at the centre of the yard caught her eye. Shiny and metallic. Trodden into the mud, still moist from the melted snow, was a foreign coin. She knelt and picked it up. A ship on one side, the head of a bald man on the other. Serrated swords, dragon helms, foreign coins: mercenaries from the southern archipelagos, she imagined.

  “They ran?” Nathaniel asked, coming to stand next to her.

  She tossed him the coin. He caught it easily.

  “They were scouts. Is Gwyion Garn the sort to do business behind his wife’s back?”

  “Outside the normal stuff, no. Gwyion’s too smart to waste his best resource.”

  “Nathaniel, what did the Citizeness mean when she said the Mountain didn’t think they deserve investigation? Who is the Mountain?”

  “It used to be what they called my father. Now the townsfolk use it to describe anyone who lives in the farms beyond the high road. Understand the differences between the Mountain and the Town, and you’ve understood half the problems here in Shadowgate.”

  Rees, who had returned with the horses, snorted, hawked and spat. Elianor brushed the mud from her trousers. Nathaniel tossed the coin back to her.

  “My possessions are at the mine,” she said.

  “How did you figure that out?”

  “Citizeness Garn told me. When I said she should have sent for help.”

  She watched Nathaniel digest this. As he thought back through the conversation in the tavern, she took her horse and hiked her way up onto its back.