Good Company

by Dale Lucas

  Maybe that’s for the best, Rem thought as he ran. This is foolish. You’re already soaked to the bone. Depressed. Angry. Just stop. Let him go. There’s no point in—

  Just as his quarry made the corner and started to turn, something thick and muscular leapt from the shadows and collided hard with the fleeing thief. He gave a shout, then hit the mud with stunning force. Rem wondered what had just thrown itself at the man. He found out when another flash of lightning gave him an instant of slanting light in the alley.

  It was Torval. The dwarf sprawled atop the fallen thief, having tackled him full force. He must have circled around the opposite side of the warehouse. The old stump now struggled to set himself upright while keeping his considerable weight on the fallen burglar’s back. Rem slowed, struggling to catch his breath. He wished he had Torval’s night vision. At present, all he could see was an airy, murky darkness, a pair of forms squirming just a few feet away from him, their visibility more dependent upon their movement than upon anything Rem could clearly make out.

  “Good watchwardens,” the thief said from the ground, “how fortunate! I was just in pursuit of some offending footpad who’d absconded from my rooms.”

  “Nice try,” Torval said. Rem heard struggles and grunting. He assumed Torval was tying the thief’s hands behind his back before yanking him upright again.

  A flash of lightning. Rem had an instant to study the man’s face: unshaven, vaguely handsome, long dark hair, anywhere between thirty and fifty. Torval was, indeed, binding his hands.

  “Let me guess,” Rem said. “You don’t normally traverse rooftops, but you were so concerned about this burglar’s spoils you were willing to risk it all to get them back.”

  “Exactly,” the man said. “Personally, I’m terrified of heights.”

  Rem heard grunting and knew that Torval was now pulling the man to his feet. He saw the blotted forms of their prisoner and Torval coming toward him. He fell in step beside them as they headed back for the mouth of the alley.

  In moments they were back on the street, and Rem and Torval were better able to see their new prisoner by the dim light of a few nearby post lamps and from the secondhand glow of lit windows on the street around them. The man was strangely calm, even his attempts at an explanation sounding like rote banter instead of true, well-intended excuses. Clearly he’s done this before, Rem thought.

  “It’s been my experience,” Torval said to the thief, “that no one goes for a midnight stroll on a rooftop without considerable practice and a definite aim. Whether that aim is murder or just plain thievery remains to be seen.”

  “Look, gents,” the man said, sounding eminently reasonable, “I’ll only say this once: let me go, forget you ever saw me. You’ll be happier if you do so, trust me.”

  “Listen to this prat,” Torval said, shaking the bound prisoner a bit. “Only our well-being at heart, eh?”

  “Forgive us,” Rem said to the prisoner, “we’ve heard better excuses offered with greater sincerity. I’m afraid it’s the watch-keep for you, my friend.”

  “Honestly,” the man said, and he almost sounded sad about it, “you’ll be sorry.”

  “We’re already sorry,” Torval said at his elbow, then shoved him along the street. “It’s been a shit night and we’re both soaking wet. Nabbing you might be the only bright spot in our evening, truth be told.”

  “Just remember,” the man said as he began his walk through the rain back to the watchkeep. “I warned you. You could’ve saved yourselves.”

  Rem wanted to laugh off the man’s bravado as pure claptrap, but there was something in the man’s voice—an earnest regret—that put him on edge. Rem didn’t voice his concerns, but he failed, no matter how he tried, to wholly banish them.

  CHAPTER THREE

  They found a livery stable wherein the owner was hard at work forking hay into the stalls and getting his beasts bedded down for the night. There they sheltered until the rain subsided and they could carry on to the watchkeep. For the hour or so that they passed there, hunkered around a fire in a brazier, trying to warm themselves despite being waterlogged, they shared few words with their prisoner. More than once, in the flame-burnished near darkness, Rem stole glances at the mysterious thief, tied to a post just a few strides away. Who was this man, espied on a rooftop and captured as he fled the scene?

  “You’re staring,” Torval said.

  “Does he look familiar to you?” Rem asked, voice barely above a whisper.

  Torval studied their quiet prisoner and shrugged. “Something in his face rings a bell,” Torval said, “but damned if I can work out what it might be.”

  Rem regarded the bound man. He’d stood there, without a word of complaint, for the whole time they’d been sheltering in the barn, as patient as a man on a street corner hoping to cross after a tide of heavy traffic.

  “Would you like to come closer to the fire?” Rem asked.

  “Thank you, no,” the thief said. “I’m just peachy where I stand.”

  Torval shot Rem a doubtful glance. What was this sneaky bastard up to? His demeanor, his calmness—they were all wrong.

  “Care to tell us what you were doing on that rooftop?” Torval asked.

  The man shrugged. “I already told you. You didn’t believe me.”

  “We still don’t,” Rem said. “That surcoat—aren’t those noble colors?”

  For the merest instant, the prisoner looked profoundly annoyed, as though Rem’s eye for heraldry presented an unexpected obstacle. Then his resigned smile returned and he gave an offhand shrug.

  “I was caught unawares in a boardinghouse. These were the only clothes at hand.”

  “Right,” Torval said. “Good boots, well-sewn breeks, a nearly full suit of chain mail, and a surcoat denoting service in the house of some duke or another—just lying around, easiest thing to slip into when chasing a burglar over rooftops.”

  The man nodded, as if resigning himself to something. “Very well, then. This is what is called an impasse. If you do not believe what I tell you and I cannot convince you otherwise, there’s no point in talking. I’ll just stand here and keep myself to myself, thank you.”

  The stabler joined them now, tossing aside his pitchfork and studying the bound prisoner for himself. He was a leather-skinned, stooped old man, face so lined it appeared to be carved from tree bark, a wild tangle of white curls on his head. Despite his advanced age and bent back, there was yet an air of confidence and command about him—as if he had once been a man of importance and was now struggling mightily to ignore the march of time as it gnarled his body and carved ravines into his countenance.

  “Funny sort,” he said, making an appraisal of his own. “Looks all rough spun, like a woodsman or road agent, but talks all fancy, like someone highborn.”

  Again Rem caught that fleeting, barely perceptible annoyance on the prisoner’s face. Just as before, it was erased by a forced smile and another resigned shrug. “Now the stabler’s an expert in linguistics,” he snorted. “Rich.”

  “He’s right, though,” Rem pressed from his place beside the fire. “You talk like someone raised in a lord’s house. I should know—I was myself.”

  “Groom’s son,” Torval said, and Rem caught the unmistakable note of incredulity in his voice. He turned to his partner, and the dwarf gave him a challenging look. Rem had told Indilen the truth months ago, but he’d left Torval in the dark. Clearly he wasn’t fooling anyone . . .

  “My, my,” the prisoner suddenly said, glancing toward the half-open door of the stable. “Looks like the rain’s subsided. What say we carry on to the watchkeep, gents? Leave this poor sod and his horses alone for the night?”

  Rem and Torval looked toward the stable door. He was right. The rain was barely a trickle now, its roar on the roof having abated and made the world quieter. In one of the nearby stalls, a horse whickered. An ox bellowed sleepily in answer.

  “Well, then,” Torval said, “I guess it’s time to press on.”
>
  Rem moved for the prisoner and began the quick work of untying him from the post that he’d been bound to. As he did so, he looked into the man’s eyes. The prisoner stared back, unafraid, unaffected, unmoved. His cordiality and self-control, far from making Rem feel at ease, put him on edge. Clearly the man knew something—planned something—that Rem and Torval had no reckoning of.

  “Thank you for the use of your barn,” Rem said as he led their prisoner by his rope lead toward the stable door.

  “Anytime, watchwardens,” the old stabler said, raising a hand. “Appreciated the company.”

  The prisoner turned and spoke to their host as he was led toward the door. “Check that dappled mare in the last stall, old man,” he said. “She favors her hind right when she’s shuffling about. Might be stone bruised. The shoe might even be loose.”

  Rem froze in his tracks and studied the man. The prisoner’s face was implacable, as though he’d said nothing unusual, offered nothing out of character for a roof-dancing sneak thief.

  “Know something about horses, do you?” Rem asked.

  The man shrugged again, a practiced gesture. “A little something,” he said, then smirked, ever so slightly. “Though a groom’s son from the north probably knows far more than a simple woodland boy like myself.”

  Rem looked to Torval, wondering if he’d caught the veiled insinuation. You’re no groom’s son, the man seemed to say, just as I’m no simple woodland boy.

  The dwarf had stopped. He scowled at the prisoner, then turned his scowl on Rem, as if awaiting an answer.

  “I didn’t tell you I was from the north,” Rem said.

  “The Marches are in your every word,” the prisoner said, “groom’s son.” He snorted a little at those last words, as if they were a fine joke.

  “Come on,” Torval said from the doorway. “The sooner this one’s in the lockup, the sooner we can call it a night.”

  Four bells rang from the Tower of Aemon in the city center when they finally reached the watchkeep off Sygar’s Square. True to form, their headquarters was pleasantly disordered, even at such an oppressive hour. As they led their prisoner in through the vestibule and down the length of a side aisle in the administrative chamber, Rem took in the familiar sights and sounds that greeted them almost every evening and early morning.

  There were Firimol and Pettina, trying to corral an unruly mob of underage pickpockets and footpads, all tied together in a long line to discourage flight. At a nearby desk, the barbarian Hildebran loomed large in the vision of a big, wide-shouldered bruiser—a Kosterman, just like Hildebran himself—while Hildebran’s partner, Blein, scribbled a hasty report nearby. A female dwarven watchwarden, Gnupa, played referee between a cursing, infuriated prostitute and her belligerent, wheedling pimp, while partners Sliviwit and Demijon argued in front of their tired-faced prisoners regarding who should do the questioning and who should have to write the report for the prefect.

  Nothing out of order, except everything; it was the friendly, familiar chaos that Rem had come to know and love during his year on the force.

  Their favorite desk—at the end of the row, nearest the back corridor that led to the dungeons—was occupied, currently hosting old Blotstaff and Pello as they put the screws to a swarthy Magrabari merchant whose florid insistence upon his own innocence was matched only by the colorful motley of silks and jewelry he wore. Rem marked most of the man’s glitter as fake—pure costumery—and guessed that his arrest probably had something to do with just such pretense. With an impatient sigh, Rem searched the chamber, found them another desk—on the opposite side of the aisle, back the way they’d come—and led Torval and their prisoner along to it.

  Rem offered the prisoner a stool, which the man took with a muttered thank-you. He sat there, straight backed, tied hands in his lap. Rem fished about for some parchment, a quill, and an ink pot. Torval mounted the nearest desk and sat upon it.

  “Sundry hells, old stump!” Cumenia, the female watchwarden at the desk, protested. “I’m working here!”

  “Not on this very corner you’re not,” Torval snapped. “Carry on.” With an irritated shake of her head, Cumenia did just that, doing her best to ignore the dwarf sitting just a foot away from where she scratched out her narrative.

  Rem dipped his quill and set it to the page. He looked to their prisoner. “Have you a name?”

  “I do, yes,” the man said.

  Rem waited. The prisoner offered nothing.

  “Is this how it’s to go?” Rem asked.

  Torval smacked the man’s skull. “He asked you a question,” Torval said.

  The prisoner looked as if he was fighting down the urge to answer that strike. Instead he simply straightened up again and drew a deep breath. “Indeed he did. And I answered it. Yes, I have a name.”

  “What is it?” Rem asked.

  “I’d rather not say,” the man answered curtly.

  Torval scooted off the desk and lunged into the man’s smug, serene face. “I’m warning you—”

  “What difference does it make?” the man asked, and for the first time, Rem thought he heard something like annoyance in his voice. “Just lock me up, will you?”

  Rem put his quill back in the ink pot. He studied the prisoner again, now in the far steadier light of the administrative chamber, provided by a wealth of hanging and standing lamps. Again Rem was overtaken by the sense he’d seen the man before, that his face was somehow familiar. But from where? That small fact eluded him, and the constant sense that this man was known to him, coupled with his inability to wriggle out just how, was driving him mad.

  Try deduction, then, Rem thought. You’re a watchwarden. This is your job.

  And so he studied the man. Studied him very carefully and took all that he observed and piled it together with all that he’d already deduced from the man’s speech and manners.

  He was highborn—or, at the very least, raised in a lord’s house. His polite demeanor and self-control suggested that. If he was not, then he was the most effective autodidactic street urchin Rem had ever encountered.

  His accent was urban and courtly, but not precisely Yenaran. There was a slight lilt to his words, to the rhythm of his speech, that suggested he had been raised in some other clime. Perhaps farther inland, nearer the foothills or the mountains? And definitely a little farther north than Yenara—though not so far as Rem’s own homeland in the Marches.

  “What are we waiting for?” Torval asked.

  “Indeed,” the man said, “I’d really like to see a cell now.”

  Rem held up a hand. “Just give me a moment.” He continued his study.

  So he had a man who spoke in a courtly manner, seemed to be of other than Yenaran birth, and yet . . . he looked like a road agent or a turnpikeman just out of the wilds. His hair was long, almost to his shoulders, and, although he did not wear a full beard, his face was clearly unshaven, showing off a growth of several days at least.

  Then there was the mystery of his dress: ducal livery, chain mail, and good boots, a combination that suggested he was a house guard for someone of importance—or, at the very least, masquerading as one.

  “Rem,” Torval began again, clearly impatient.

  Rem held up his hand. “Just . . . wait, will you?”

  The prisoner looked to Torval. “Does he do this all the time? Gawp at strangers sitting right in front of him, not saying a word?”

  Torval leaned into their prisoner’s face. “Maybe he does, you prat. Just keep your gob shut. We’ll tell you when to speak.”

  Courtly in character, yet rough in appearance. Dressed in house livery, but not possessed of the natural discipline or manners befitting a well-trained, well-clothed professional guardsman. And yet they’d found him traversing a rooftop. That took some sort of courage, didn’t it? Some sort of confidence and daring?

  Then understanding dawned in Rem’s whirling brain like a sudden sunrise.

  “Gold and white on blue,” Rem said. “That’s
the livery of the Duke of Erald, isn’t it?”

  The man made a show of studying his own garments, then looked to Rem as if quite puzzled. “I’m not sure, is it? As I said, it was the nearest thing at hand—”

  Torval drew back a fist in threat.

  “Answer his questions,” the dwarf said slowly.

  The prisoner’s gaze met Torval’s and never wavered. “If you strike me,” he said quietly, “I shall give as good as I get. Do you understand?”

  Torval shot a fell glance at Rem—Did you hear that? He threatened me!—then returned his attentions to their prisoner. “You’re in no position to make threats, you whoreson. Now answer this young man’s questions, or I’ll see you hung on a rack for days to come before ever you stand before the tribunal.”

  The prisoner straightened up. He leveled a hard gaze of his own at Torval, then said, quietly and without enmity, “Just remember what I said.”

  Rem thought Torval would surely cuff the man then, so he interrupted, eager to get back on their questioning. “You’re no house guard,” Rem said. “Your lank hair and unshaven face tell me that. But you’re highborn. I can hear it in your speech.”

  “As I can hear it in yours,” the man said, finally losing his patience again. “What’s the point of all this? Just lock me up, will you? I’m tired and I could use a good piss—”

  Torval struck—or tried to, anyway—a loose-fisted, backhanded strike.

  But it missed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It happened in seconds, before Rem could even spring up out of his chair. Their prisoner leaned backward, avoiding Torval’s whizzing fist, then launched from his sitting position. In a single breath, Torval was flat on his back, the prisoner kicking him hard to keep him stunned, then laying one boot on Torval’s throat. By the time Rem had risen and lunged to Torval’s aid, by the time he saw other watchwardens closing from all sides to drag the prisoner off the fallen dwarf, the man had already removed his boot from Torval’s throat and withdrawn of his own accord.