The Sword Saint

by C. F. Iggulden

  ‘Is this blackmail? You think you have me at a disadvantage?’ she said.

  The golden flecks in her eyes seemed to deepen as she spoke and Lady Sallet had to steel herself not to lean away.

  ‘Your own incompetence is disadvantage enough, I should say. What do you know of double-entry book-keeping, of allowable expenses? Of company law and dividends? What events have you planned in this street to introduce people to the shop? That is, if it is worth saving. I don’t see how you could ever advertise a place so full of random objects.’

  ‘So you came here to insult me? To tell me I can’t run a business? Well, thank you, my lady. Now get out of my shop, while it is still my shop.’

  The last was an admission and Lady Sallet saw tears sparkle in the younger woman’s eyes. Yet she had seen tears before and produced them herself enough times to strangle her first impulse to embrace and reassure. Instead she shook her head, slowly.

  ‘I came here because we need you, as I’m sure you have already surmised. And no, it was not for your business acumen. We believe the city will be attacked by an army coming south to take every stone from every other stone. I want to stop that army in its tracks, before it even sees Darien. Is that clear enough for you? If you agree to this …’

  The tears seemed to have vanished as Nancy listened, Lady Sallet noted. The younger woman nodded and raised one hand. Win Sallet tensed, but she did not flinch back, making Nancy smile at her bravery. Slowly, Nancy raised finger after finger, counting off her points.

  ‘One. I want a hundred-year exemption on my business, from all taxes. Two – I want an accountant to visit each month, his salary paid by you, or House Sallet. Thank you for that suggestion. Three, I will also need a sign-maker and glazier … as well as a monthly stipend for cleaning and repairs.’

  ‘Done,’ Lady Sallet said.

  Nancy shook her head and smiled.

  ‘Not yet, no. If you need me, you’ll set me up without a word of complaint. I find I like being a shop-owner, Lady Sallet. Setting my own hours, pottering about, searching through the markets for interesting things. And I have sold a few, whatever you may think. But not enough to keep me in good style. I heard about that gambling place in the north of the city. The Darien Lion? I want a share in that.’

  ‘I cannot …’ Lady Sallet began, then paused. Her instinct was to negotiate, but the price was low, considering what they would get in exchange. She sighed as if defeated, lowering her head to hide any sign of satisfaction. ‘Very well. Five per cent of all profits, taken from the council’s share. I will win a vote on it, or pay it myself from Sallet funds.’

  ‘Twenty per cent,’ Nancy said, her eyes bright.

  ‘My dear, I might manage ten – and that is a fortune. You would not believe what that place makes in a month. The Twelve Families own half the establishment in common, so I suppose you could say each of us has four per cent or a little over. I might be able to bargain my share up to ten, but twenty would be beyond me.’

  Nancy put out her hand.

  ‘Very well, ten per cent, without taxes.’ She noticed the way Lady Sallet winced at that and smiled at scoring a hit. ‘And my other terms?’

  With a twinge of genuine regret, Lady Sallet took Nancy’s hand in her own gloved one. Tellius would think she had gone mad, but who knew how long they had? They needed to get the team together and Nancy was key to that. She just hoped he was having as much luck with Elias Post.

  ‘Your terms are acceptable. I have a clerk in my coach, with all he needs to write it up for us to sign. You haven’t asked the details of the work, dear.’

  Nancy’s grip was firm before she let go, hinting at strength.

  ‘You said you want me to stop an army. That’s clear enough. Lady Sallet, look at me for a moment. Tell me what you see.’

  ‘My dear, I see a young woman in a difficult position, who has worked hard to find a way …’ Lady Sallet broke off in confusion as Nancy laughed and shook her head.

  ‘You might have said you see the woman who destroyed Sallet Greens, who stood in a fighting line and poured fire into the night. You might have said you see a killer, Lady Sallet. You make my point for me. I’ll say this to you, because you are the only woman on the council and perhaps the only one who can understand this. Men think we are marked by what we do. They truly believe it. They think you can look in a woman’s eyes and see how many she has slept with, or if she was … harshly treated. Or whether she has killed, even. It is an error, but they don’t know it. You know, though. A woman isn’t truly marked, not by anything that doesn’t show – and bruises fade and cuts scar to pink lines. So when you look at me, you see a dusty young woman, managing a shop. Even though you were there that night, four years ago, it’s hard to remember that I killed men. They came to attack my city and I stood in their way. Or they tried to hurt me and I burned them where they stood. And the truth is that I haven’t lost a night of sleep, or worried overmuch about it since that day. So if I can win a quiet life for myself, with funds enough and time enough for peace, yes, I’ll do it again. I’ll burn the world for that. If they are on their way to Darien, maybe I’d have done it anyway, though I suppose we’ll never know.’

  ‘You’ll need the Sallet Stone,’ Win Sallet said softly. She did not know what to make of Nancy’s words, not then. It would take time to sift them, like flour. ‘We have a better idea now of what the family stones can do, since … we crossed paths. They have a store of magic in them, as much as you’ll need.’

  Two years before, Lady Sallet had watched the Bracken Stone dissolve into dust as its reserves were drawn into the Shiang swordsman known as Taeshin. The power had dragged his soul back and healed his body, but at the cost of the stone. The thought of losing the symbol of the Sallet house was a wrench that almost brought tears to her eyes. Her parents had touched it, as had her grandparents and every generation, back to the beginning of recorded time. Nothing Nancy asked could possibly have been the equal of the Sallet Stone, but it would still be a price worth paying to save the city. If it came to it.

  ‘Bring in your clerk, Lady Sallet. I’ll make tea for us all – and there is a very sweet ginger cake upstairs, in my parlour.’

  Nancy seemed lit from within, her hair more lustrous, though it was tied back in a long tail. Lady Sallet turned to signal her people and closed her eyes in a moment of relief. They needed Nancy to have a chance of success, in the way a stonemason needs his hammer.

  Taeshin sipped pale green tea and stared gloomily out of the tiny window in the garret room above a laundry that he shared with Marias and the man they called the Fool. He and Marias were no longer master and slave. Darien had no slaves, Marias had told him firmly, watching for some objection. He had still been coping with a transition from something like a grey afterlife at the time. The details had faded quickly as soon as he was back in the world, with a purple stone crumbling to dust on his chest. The exact nature of servitude in a strange city thousands of miles from home had not been his primary concern. Perhaps it should have been, he thought.

  He had resigned himself to death back in Shiang, just about. He still remembered the way the burden had seemed to lift as he’d made the decision to settle himself on a quiet hillside and put his sword through the cancerous growth in his side. It had seemed like sense, though when he had confided the memory to one of the Darien swordsmen in training, Micahel, the man had seemed coldly furious. Micahel had been brought up in poverty, without parents to keep him safe. Yet he had told Taeshin that every damned day had been worth knowing, that no matter how terrible things seemed, a man could sleep and wake refreshed and continue chipping away at his problems and his failures. That all men could be reborn, and all men forgiven. It had been an extraordinary lecture and Taeshin had withdrawn from it. He’d needed more time – to fit into a new city, to understand a culture that was radically different from the one he had known. Not that he had travelled to Darien! That was part of the strangeness he saw on all sides. If he had chosen to
leave Shiang and cross the mountains, plains and forests, he would have had months of anticipation to prepare himself. He would have said a formal goodbye to everything he knew and loved, all the while welcoming his new home as it grew closer, step by step. Instead, he had been no more than a blind passenger as another man used the power of the Aeris Stone to take over his body. He still woke in the night sometimes, wet with perspiration, with the smell of acids and the touch of leather straps holding him down.

  As a prisoner, Taeshin had been given glimpses of what was happening, no more than fragments. In the end, when the thief soul had been torn back to … wherever … he shook his head at wisps of memory. In the end, Taeshin had found himself on the street, as if he had woken from unconsciousness. He’d drawn in his first breath in months and the pain had been appalling. His body had been battered and scraped and broken, then healed and broken again, over and over. He had been strong and fit, but ruined, with a great eye-shaped scar on his chest. There, in the rain, he’d felt a stone pulsing through him, pouring in power until there was nothing left but a smear of colour on his skin.

  Marias had been there – and the Fool who had crouched at her side, beaming. The two of them had kept him alive even, while those around still thought he was the enemy. In those moments, Taeshin knew he had been like a child, utterly helpless. It still rankled. He remembered a married cousin who had lost a leg in an accident. The man had murmured to Taeshin that it was not that he resented his wife learning all she could do for herself. It was that he’d hoped she would never have to find out. While Taeshin had been swallowed up and lost, Marias had been forced to learn.

  He sipped his tea. A stranger looking in would have seen a young man, strong and taller than most of his people, with black hair cut short, black eyes and high cheekbones that gave him an aquiline look. Taeshin sipped again, breathing in the scent that was not quite as he remembered it. He had fallen back on work, building and maintaining the walls of Darien, leaning out on ropes high above the ground for danger pay, to repair cracks or loose stones. When that had dried up, he’d found a place as an instructor at the Mazer school. That had been good for him, after he’d got over the shock of seeing strangers not born in Shiang learning the Mazer dances that strengthened every joint and bone. He suspected the one called Tellius had been behind the offer. Taeshin was grateful for that, though he knew better than to believe the man was truly related to the royal family of Shiang.

  For months, Taeshin had kept his head down, making sure he was the first to arrive and the last to leave as he and Marias made a refuge for themselves. Or a home, he was not sure yet if it qualified. They were not master and slave. Nor were they husband and wife, though they lived in the same two rooms, with the Fool curling up by the fire each night. He at least seemed happy, though Taeshin was never sure how much he understood. No one had called the Fool back, perhaps because his name had been lost.

  Taeshin knew Marias hoped for something more. He would have had to be blind not to see it. Her glances and her touch had lingered as he healed over the first year. Yet he had lived as a puppet or a tool of another and he found his temper surging at odd moments, clattering around the place and kicking a door off its hinges. In some ways, he was like a child again and he had been wary of this woman who had so clearly grown to love him. He owed her a great debt – and he was not sure that was enough. Taeshin had died. He was not yet sure how to live, or if he had missed the chance to try again.

  He drained the cup. He grieved, he knew that much. For the loss of his home or the life he had known as a personal guard to Lord Hong, it was not easy to say. When his parents had died, life had gone on, but under a weight. It had taken years before he noticed it had eased. Not gone, but lessened enough for him to live and laugh once more. How he felt around Marias felt much the same, and completely different. He had been smashed and repaired. He had known agonies he was grateful not to remember. He had been to a grey land and been made to fight, over and over. He knew the heroes of old would have laughed off their trials. Hercules had gone into the afterworld to steal a dog – and when he returned, it had been the same dark and driven young warrior, strolling through the markets of Greece.

  Such thoughts shamed Taeshin. He knew he had withdrawn from Marias, that her eyes filled with tears when he would not answer. His body had healed and he could not recall how many of the scars had even come to be. Yet she would not entertain the idea of going home, even when they saw the new road Tellius was building and Taeshin had walked a mile from the city with her, looking at the rising sun.

  Rain lashed the windows as he stood there, so that he could no longer see the city around them and only the pattern of drops moving on the glass. The truth was that he wanted to go home, to where he belonged – and Marias did not. Yet he would not abandon the woman who had travelled half a world to save him. He owed her more than that and his sense of duty was one thing he had not lost. He nodded a fraction at the thought.

  He jerked at the sound of knocking on the outer door. Marias was working with the Fool in the laundry down below. Neither of them would knock, surely? He frowned as he crossed the little room, stepping around the table they put out whenever the bed was leaned against the wall. He slept in the other room, on a mattress of two folded blankets.

  ‘Who is it?’ Taeshin said. He had left a training sword by the door. Though it was a crude thing compared with the ones he had known in Shiang, it was nonetheless sharp and well oiled. There was more crime in Darien than Shiang and he was annoyed with himself and the city for the urge to answer a door with a blade to hand. He flung open the door with more force than was necessary.

  Tellius met his gaze and Taeshin could only gape at the older man. Micahel stood to one side and Captain Galen of the Sallet guard looked on. The three were crammed into the tiny hallway, their shoulders touching.

  ‘Good evening, Master Taeshin,’ Tellius said. ‘I am here as Speaker for the city of Darien. The city that saved your life at huge cost to us. There is an enemy coming and I need your help.’

  15

  Shield

  Lord Regis used his sword hilt as if it was a walking stick, bracing his right arm straight. In his fifties, he was still a massive physical presence, though his breathing suggested the climb to the top of the city wall had not been without cost. The younger man at his side eyed him with his usual mixture of awe and exasperation. They stood together on the crest walkway, looking down on the snake of refugees entering the north gate.

  It had started a fortnight before, with farming families abandoning their homesteads and villages and heading south to the city. Those first few had come with stories of ranks of Féal soldiers trudging through the night, of banners gold and black.

  The numbers had grown considerably since then. Both Regis and De Guise looked down on a stream of hundreds, possibly thousands, stretching into the shadowy distance. Exhausted, stumbling, like cattle driven before whips. It was a troubling thought for the younger lord. De Guise frowned as he stared into the gloom.

  ‘And still they come,’ Regis murmured to himself.

  ‘Do you think all this could be part of the Féal king’s plans?’ De Guise said after a time. He went right to the edge and leaned over, looking down at miserable families begging for admittance.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘All these people. Adding to the mouths we have to feed.’

  Regis shrugged.

  ‘They can’t lay siege to Darien, not while we keep the river access open. Not while we have warships patrolling, either – and trading partners only too happy to pay war prices on grain. We can’t be starved out, Geese. And some of these angry farmers will be willing to take up a sword to defend themselves, I should think.’

  ‘And how do we know they are all our people?’ De Guise said.

  Regis peered down at the trail of misery below.

  ‘You mean there could be traitors among them?’

  ‘Or assassins.’ The younger lord saw the beginnings
of a smile appear on Regis’ wide face. ‘Why not? Is it so hard to believe? The last time an army attacked this city, the king was killed first – to cause chaos. The enemy saw value then in trying to undermine order, in breaking the chain of command! Is there truly no danger of that now? I look at these people, Regis, and I see hungry mouths. Who knows who hides among them? We offer safety, but they bring us only risk.’

  Regis looked at the man who had inherited the De Guise family sword. The previous owner had been his greatest friend – his only friend, in all honesty. It had not been so strange for Regis to hope for something of the same comforting relationship with the younger relative. The obstacle was that Robert De Guise had a sort of callous disregard that made him, in his own judgement, superior to everyone he met. The young lord was healthy and fit. He was agile and as slim as a reed. He seemed to believe those who had grown weak or aged past forty were somehow worthless.

  Regis eyed the younger man’s cold expression and wondered if it would survive the army of Féal. War hardened some and broke others. Regis knew decisions had to be made, obviously – a man could be too much a weeping ninny, useless to all and worse than a woman. Yet there was such a thing as too cold-blooded, as well. It made the older lord think of the Canis family and their stone. Young De Guise needed to wince at the sight of those who walked on bloodstained rags, starving and dull of eye. Until he did that, he would be a royal pain to endure.

  Though it was growing dark, Regis could still see the stain of villagers and carts coming in, always retreating, looking over their shoulders for something beyond the horizon. Each group of villagers that piled belongings on carts and abandoned their homes took the fear on to the next, like a carpet being rolled up for hundreds of miles. It was its own wave – and behind them, an army marched in sullen rage towards Darien.

  Regis realised he had not replied. No doubt De Guise would think he had dozed off or something. What had he been saying? Assassins? He shook his head.