by Kevin Hearne
Another clang. The Kosterman’s body seemed to sag beneath Rem.
Then the sagging body began to topple backward.
Clinging high on the great, muscular frame, Rem realized that he was overbalanced. He lost his grip on the cell bars, and the towering Kosterman beneath him fell.
Rem tried to leap free, but he was too entangled with the barbarian to make it clear. Instead, he simply disengaged and went falling with him.
Both of them—Rem and the barbarian—hit the floor. The Kosterman was out cold. Rem had the wind knocked out of him and his vision came alight with whirling stars and dancing fireflies.
Blinking, trying to get his sight and his breath back, he heard the whine of rusty hinges, then footsteps. Strong hands seized him and dragged him out of the cell. By the time his vision had returned, he found himself on the stone pathway outside the cell that he had shared with the smelly, unconscious Kosterman. The prefect and his two watchmen stood over him.
“Explain yourself,” Ondego said. He was a little disheveled, but otherwise, the Kosterman’s attack seemed to have left not a mark on him, nor shaken him.
Rem coughed. Drew breath. Sighed. “Just trying to help,” he said.
“I’ll bet you want out now, don’t you?” Ondego asked. “One good turn deserves another and all that.”
Rem shrugged. “It hadn’t really crossed my mind.”
Ondego frowned, as though Rem were the most puzzling prisoner he had ever encountered. “Well, what do you want, then? I can be a hard bastard when I choose, but I know how to return a favor.”
Rem had a thought. “I’m looking for work,” he said.
Ondego raised one eyebrow.
“Seeing as you have space on your watch rosters”—Rem gestured to the spot where they had been beating Kevel in the torture pit—“perhaps I could impress upon you—”
Ondego seemed to appraise Rem honestly for a moment. For confirmation of his instincts, he looked to the elf.
Rem suddenly knew the strange sensation of another living being poking around in his mind. It was momentary and fleeting and entirely painless, but eminently strange and unnerving, like having one’s privates appraised by the other patrons in a bathhouse. Then the elf’s probing intellect withdrew, and Rem no longer felt naked. The elfmaid seemed to wear a small, knowing half smile. Her dark and ancient eyes settled on Rem and chilled him.
She knows everything, Rem thought. A moment in my mind, two, and she knows everything. Everything worth knowing, anyway.
“Harmless,” the elfmaid said.
“Weak,” the stubble-faced guardsmen added.
The elf’s gaze never wavered. “No.”
“You don’t impress me,” Ondego said, despite the elf’s appraisal. “Not one bit.”
“No doubt I don’t,” Rem said. “But, by Aemon, sir, I’d like to.”
The watchman beside Ondego leaned close. Rem heard the words he whispered to the prefect.
“He did get that brute off you, sir.”
Ondego and the big watchman continued to study him. The elf now turned her gaze on the boisterous prisoners in the other cells. A moment’s eye contact was all it took. As the elfmaid turned her stone idol’s glare on each of them, they fell silent and withdrew from the bars. Bearing witness to the effect the elf’s silent, threatening stare had on those hard, desperate men made Rem’s skin crawl.
But, to his own predicament: Rem decided to mount a better argument—he certainly couldn’t end up in any more trouble, could he?
“You’re down two men,” Rem said, trying to look and sound as reasonable as possible. “That man you were beating and the partner he murdered. Surely you can give me the opportunity?”
“What’s he in here for?” Ondego asked the watchman.
Rem prepared himself to listen. He was still trying to reason that part out himself.
“Bar brawl,” the stubble-faced watchman said. “The Bonny Prince here was casting dice with some Koster longshoremen. Rolled straight nines, nine times in a row. They called him a cheat and he lit into them.”
It was coming back now. Rem remembered the tavern. He’d been waiting for someone. A girl. She hadn’t shown. He’d had a little too much to drink while waiting. He vaguely remembered the dice and the longshoremen—two tall fellows, not unlike the barbarian he’d just tussled with in the cell.
He couldn’t recall their faces, or even starting a fight with them … but he did remember being called a cheat, and taking umbrage.
“I wasn’t cheating,” Rem said emphatically. “It was just a run of good luck.”
“Not so good,” Ondego said, “seeing as you’re here in my dungeon.” To the guardsmen beside him: “Where are the other two?”
“Taken to the hospital, sir,” the big man said. “Beaten senseless by the Bonny Prince here.”
“And a third Kosterman, out like a light on my dungeon floor. What is it with you and these northerners, boy?”
Rem shrugged. “Ill-starred, I guess.”
Ondego seemed to appraise Rem anew. Three Kostermen on their backs was bold, and he couldn’t deny it. “Doesn’t look like much,” the prefect said, as if to himself, “but he can hold his own in a fight.”
Ondego was impressed with Rem—no thanks to the stone-faced watchman laying that damned “Bonny Prince” label on him. Rem guessed that Ondego’s grudging respect might work in his favor.
“I don’t like being called a cheat,” Rem said, “first and foremost because I don’t cheat. Ever.”
Ondego nodded toward Kevel, limp in his chair. “Neither do we,” he said.
“So I see,” Rem answered.
A long silence fell between them.
“Get him on his feet,” Ondego said. “We’ll try him out.”
Without another word, the prefect left.
Rem looked to the tall man. He felt a smile blooming on his face, then suddenly felt the pain of his brawl the night before. A swollen, split lip; a bruised nose; at least one missing tooth, far back in his mouth; the taste of old blood.
The big man offered a hand and yanked Rem to his feet. Upright, Rem swooned for a moment, his vision briefly going black again before finally clearing.
“Don’t look so pleased with yourself, my bonny boy,” the stubble-faced watchman said. “You’ve no idea what you’re in for walking the ward.”