by Kim Fielding
In any case, she continued to chant, but more quietly. Almost a lullaby. Then she spoke instead. “Tell me why your week has been so terrible.”
“The Undercouncil has been in session. A bunch of old men and women droning on about the same nothings they’ve been complaining about since the city was built.”
“Tedious I’m sure. But it’s more than that. You’re very tense.”
“I— Give me some more wine first.”
If she was offended by his abrupt manner, she didn’t say so. A brief pause ensued, during which I assumed she poured and he drank.
“I was supposed to have some work begun on my palace this week. I want a new pavilion in the gardens. A quiet place to take breakfast, you know, or reflect on my day in the evening. But the woman I hired showed up late on Rootday, and she brought entirely the wrong materials. I wanted charwood, not golden fir! She said she’ll have to find a charwood supplier from outside the city and that will take another week or two.” He sighed theatrically.
I’d spent a bit of time among noblemen while I was a guard, and I’d never understood the depth of their petty complaints. So his pavilion was delayed. What a tragedy. I’d spent part of my life without a roof to sleep under, as had many Lowlers. Even when I’d had a home, I’d certainly never had a garden, or even access to one. There were none in the Low. The Royal Quarter, though, had pretty little parks, tranquil spaces that smelled of flowers and clean earth, where fairies and birds flitted among the trees and marble fountains tinkled merrily. But residents of the Royal rarely used the parks since most had private gardens.
Lord Uren continued to grumble about his pavilion, as if he hadn’t been responsible for killing people this week. As if he wouldn’t happily see me and Jory dead.
The Finch murmured something that sounded sympathetic. I couldn’t catch the words. But I heard Lord Uren when he yelped.
“Sorry,” she said. “Very tight muscles. Turn over.”
He must have obeyed, because a moment later she resumed her chanting. All hells—was I going to have to wait through this again? Apparently so. His moans were more subdued this time. I couldn’t tell whether that was because he was depleted or because his position on the bed muffled him somewhat.
“I assume it’s not your pavilion problems that have brought guards with you today,” said the Finch.
“No, although I’m half tempted to send them after the woman I hired. I— Yes, right there.” He gasped and mewled, and I gave up hope of the conversation proceeding favorably.
But I’d underestimated the Finch. She resumed her chanting, louder and faster than before, and had him howling within two minutes. He sounded out of breath when he spoke next. “Gods, you’re good.”
“I do my best. Even when I’m being stared down by guards.”
“Ugh. I’d prefer them out of my hair too. But needs must, and I’ve been thrown into some nasty business of late.”
“Oh?”
“I tried to do a favor for a distant relative. He didn’t deserve it—disgraced the entire family with his filthy habits. And even being disowned didn’t teach him anything. He made himself into nothing but a filthy whore, letting the lowest scum in the Low fuck him for a few briquets.”
I’m usually slow to anger. There are far too many things in this world to enrage a person, and fury generally robs a man of reason and caution. But Lord Uren’s contemptuous words made me seethe. He was insulting almost everything that had ever mattered to me. My mother. The Low. And Jory, who had somehow come to matter to me as well.
I tried to slow my racing heart even as my grip on the knife tightened. I needed to wait. Needed to hope that Lord Uren would tell a little more on his own. But when I wiggled my free hand underneath me to check on the other knife—an old, wise habit: always test your weapons before battle—I couldn’t find the hilt. The sheath was empty.
Biting my lip to hold back blasphemies, I nearly missed what Lord Uren said next. Which would have been a shame since it was about me. “Do you know what else that little piece of shit did to me? He attached himself to something even cruder than he is—a thieving, murderous Lowler who was once given a chance to redeem himself and responded like the shameful filth he is.” He sniffed. “Doesn’t matter, though. I’ll have them both castrated and quartered before the new week begins.”
Something roared and thumped. Even before the shouts erupted, I knew what was happening and burst out of the trunk, knife in hand.
I tried quickly to make sense of the chaos. Jory was fighting with a man in a corner of the room, while Lord Uren stood naked near the table, shouting unintelligible commands, a woman with a short blade beside him. The Finch, looking horrified, had pressed herself up against the wall.
The female guard rushed toward me, and I took advantage of my greater height and good boots and kicked her hard, driving her back against the table. Not pausing to see whether she’d come after me, I responded to Jory’s sudden scream and threw myself at his assailant, who was trying to wrench his knife free from Jory’s body. The sight of it sickened me. Worse was when he shoved Jory, who hit his head against the corner of the trunk as he fell. He didn’t move after that. I wanted to see if he still lived but couldn’t spare the time. Instead I pressed my advantage by stabbing the guard hard, right at the base of his neck. He fell without a sound.
“Stay down!” I yelled at Jory, in case he could hear. The female guard came at me again, and I turned as she slashed at my belly. The tip of her blade skimmed my tunic but didn’t break the skin. I countered with an immediate lunge, but she quickly danced out of range. She hadn’t spent the past hour or so cramped in a box.
We faced each other grimly. It’s an odd thing to look into someone’s eyes, both of you knowing only one of you will survive. It can create an odd kinship even as you continue the fight. Her eyes were a muddy green like the river Tangye and held as little sympathy as those cold waters. She was younger than me, not past her midtwenties, but weathered and hardened. A Lowler by birth, I guessed.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said to her in as reasonable a tone as I could manage. I didn’t know if Jory was dying behind me, but I couldn’t dwell on that now. “Listen first to the real tale.”
Instead of answering, she struck at me quick as a fire serpent. She was a smart fighter and aimed for the hand that held my knife. Her blade scored the back of my wrist, numbing my fingers at once, but I grasped the knife with my other hand.
I countered with a blow of my own and stabbed her shoulder before she hopped back. If I’d had both of my knives, I would have thrown one of them. But she bobbed and weaved, and I didn’t want to risk wasting my only weapon with a bad throw.
She was good. I was much taller and had greater reach, but she moved almost too fast for my eyes to follow. I was fortunate she didn’t have a sword, but her knife was much like mine, medium-sized and narrowly pointed. An all-purpose weapon suited for slashing, stabbing, or throwing and light enough to wield for a long time.
“Tell her!” I yelled at Lord Uren, who was now crouching protectively by the table. “Tell her who killed Arthyen!”
Lord Uren squawked, but I couldn’t understand what he said.
“Tell her, you miserable worm!” I shouted, adding a fast kick to his side for emphasis.
He scuttled away from me like a crab and headed toward the protection of his remaining guard.
She reached down, yanked back his head by the hair, and ripped his throat open with her knife. Then she threw him at me.
I gasped and jerked out of the way.
The guard dashed toward the door but slipped in Lord Uren’s blood, and my longer legs carried me to the threshold first. I stood there panting, blocking her only exit and trying to get my overtaxed brain to work.
“Why did you kill him?” I demanded.
Instead of answering, she darted over to the Finch and dragged her close, holding the tip of her blade to the Finch’s chest.
“Leave,” growled th
e guard. “Leave or I kill her.”
“She’s a Finch! She’s harmed nobody. Your fight is with me.”
The first true emotion settled on her face, and it was hatred. “My fight is because of you. You’re nothing but fucking river slime.”
Why in all hells did this woman despise me? I’d never met her. Yes, I’d just murdered her partner, but I was only defending Jory. And she’d barely given the dead guard a glance, so I didn’t think she particularly cared about his fate.
“Fine. I’m river slime. I never claimed to be anything lofty. But I’d like to get out of this alive—wouldn’t you? And I need the truth to come out.” Although with Lord Uren now a twitching corpse, things looked pretty bleak. “Tell me why you killed him.”
“Human garbage,” she spat. I wasn’t sure whether she meant me or Lord Uren. She dug the point of her blade slightly into the Finch’s chest.
It was a desperate situation. If I left, my last hopes of solving the puzzle would be as dead as Lord Uren and his guard. If I didn’t leave, if I pressed her to explain her actions, she’d kill the Finch. And this entire time, Jory was slumped motionless. Perhaps he was dead as well.
Gods and goddesses, why was Lady Death so fond of everyone who came near me?
I dropped my left hand to my waist and started to step away from the door.
But the Finch locked eyes with me and shook her head. “No,” she said firmly. “Not yet.” And then she wrapped her hand around the guard’s and plunged the knife into her own heart.
While I stood stunned for the second time in minutes, the guard growled, wrenched her knife free, and attacked.
I ducked around her blade, aiming mine toward her neck. I only nicked her, and she struck again, cutting a shallow slice into my belly. It stung. When I made my next attempt to slash at her, she easily darted out of range. We could have parried like this for a long time, but I didn’t have a long time. Jory lay in the corner, and eventually someone else was going to show up. The Finch’s next customer, perhaps, or city guards, or Lord Uren’s people arriving to search for him.
I let her take another swipe at me, and as she moved forward, I fell to my knees. Her blade scraped my wounded shoulder—cutting through my cloak again—but that didn’t matter. I grabbed her shins, brought her down to the floor, and immediately scrambled on top of her. She bucked and snarled and waved her knife, but I kept her down using my considerable weight. I hacked at her right hand, nearly severing it, and as soon as her weapon clattered to the floor, I struck again, this time into her heart.
She gasped and went still, staring at me as she died, hating me.
I raced over to Jory, kicking the other dead guard out of the way. When I finally knelt before Jory, relief flooded me—he was unconscious but breathing. He wasn’t bleeding heavily, and as best as I could tell, his worst injury was the knock on his head.
He’d stolen my knife, dammit, and his rash actions had doomed our sliver of hope. In my place, some would have finished him off, or at least left him there to face the consequences.
Instead I gave him a gentle shake. “Jory? Wake up, Jory. I’m not carrying you around the damn city.”
His eyes fluttered open. At first his gaze was unfocused, but it sharpened quickly and he tried to stand. “What’s—”
I held him in place. “How badly hurt are you?”
“I’m…. Head hurts.” He glanced at his leg. “And my thigh. But gods, Daveth, you’re a mess! Let me see.”
He reached for me as if he intended to check one of my wounds, but I pushed his hand away. “I’ll live. Can you walk?”
“I think so.” With my help, he rose and looked around at the small room, a gory sight with four corpses strewn about. “The Finch!” he exclaimed.
“Yeah.”
“And— Why did you kill Uren?”
“I didn’t. She did.” I pointed at the female guard.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. And we don’t have time for that new puzzle now.” I shook my head to clear it. “Let’s see if we can find some clothing that’s not ruined.”
Among the Finch’s cupboards, we found expensive tunics and chausses to fit us both, although we had to cinch the waist laces tightly. We washed up a bit before we put them on, and Jory insisted on wrapping cloth around my wounds to prevent me from bleeding through the new outfit. I wondered why the Finch possessed these clothes. I’d seen the sisters wear only identical long tunics, royal blue with white embroidery. Maybe they wore other things during their private times.
“We’re stealing,” I said unhappily after I dressed.
“She doesn’t need these things anymore. You didn’t kill her, did you?” He frowned at me.
“No. She did that to herself.”
“Why?”
I grunted impatiently. “I don’t know. I don’t have any idea what the fuck is going on. I came here for answers and now all I have is more questions. And four more deaths. And with Lord Uren gone, I’ll never solve the riddle.”
Lord Uren was a pathetic sight, naked, bloody, and hunched belly-down on a sticky floor. I didn’t feel sorry for the bastard, though. He’d brought this on himself.
Jory squinted and rubbed his head gingerly. “Where will we go now?”
I paused as I carefully wiped my knives clean, then glared at him. “I have no idea. This was my only plan, and now it’s gone to shit. Why in all hells didn’t you stay in that trunk?”
For a moment Jory stared silently at his feet. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “There were two guards. I knew it was at least two because the Finch used the plural.”
“So?”
“So I wasn’t sure you’d be able to take them on after you emerged from your box. And Uren was saying those things about you….”
“A thousand people have said worse than that about me. I don’t care.”
“You should. It’s not right.”
I snorted. “Not right? Hardly anything’s right about this world, sweetheart. I thought you’d figured that out by now.”
Jory shrugged slightly. “Anyway, I didn’t want you to face all the guards single-handed. I wanted to distract them.”
“You distracted them all right—by getting yourself stabbed.”
“I’m not hurt very—”
“And maybe I could have talked our way through this. Maybe between us we could have persuaded Lord Uren to tell the truth, even with his thugs here.”
“I didn’t expect him to be murdered by his own guard,” he said with a pout. “How could I have expected that?”
“Because you’re with me, and when I’m around, things go to shit.” I checked my knives to make sure they were clean before slipping them into the sheaths. They’d seen considerable use over the past two days, and I wished I was able to sharpen them….
Maybe it would be wise to arm Jory so he wouldn’t be tempted to steal my knife again. I didn’t know if he still carried the stiletto, but it wasn’t as useful as a larger blade. Avoiding the puddled blood, I stepped over to the second guard I’d killed and unbuckled her knife-belt. This was a theft that didn’t bother my conscience in the least.
I handed the belt to Jory. “Wear this.” While he obeyed, I fished her knife out of the gore and carried it to the bed, where I began to wipe it clean.
“Fuck!” I exclaimed. Seeing the letters inscribed in the steel, I wished I knew how to read.
In case I had misrecognized the pattern of marks, I turned to Jory. “What does this say?”
He stepped around two of the bodies to get to me, picked up the knife, and peered closely at the blade. “Uh, it’s the Old Tongue. Akoni ti farame. That means, um—”
“Valor and fidelity.” When he looked at me in surprise, I rolled my eyes. “It’s the motto of the city guards.”
“Oh,” he said, eyes wide.
Yeah. Oh. I tried to wrap my head around what this meant. One of Lord Uren’s private guards had most likely worked for the city g
uard. But had she left the city guard at some time in the past and then took up employment with him, or had she been working for both at the same time? Either way, her connection to the city guard opened up a whole new line of possibilities as to why she murdered Lord Uren. I had the feeling that none of those possibilities meant anything good.
Growling with frustration, I nearly attacked Lord Uren’s corpse. I kicked the bed instead. “What in all hells is going on?”
While I had my small tantrum, Jory walked over to the first dead guard and retrieved his knife. He wiped away the blood with a cloth and then shook his head. “No inscription.”
I took the weapon from him, gave it a quick inspection, and tossed it aside. “Take this one,” I said, handing him the one with the motto. “It’s better quality. And it fits the sheath.”
He looked thoughtful as he put the knife away.
I rubbed my head hard, as if that would produce a solution to our dilemma. When that didn’t work, I banged my skull with my palm instead. I’ve never claimed to be clever, and the gods know I’m uneducated. I have two things going for me: I can fight, and I’m damned stubborn. What if that wasn’t enough to get us out of this mess?
Jory surprised me by crouching over the Finch and rearranging her into a more comfortable-looking position. Not that she was feeling any discomfort now. Then he began to sing, which I thought was odd until I realized it was a prayer, an old one that invoked several deities, begging them to safely transport the deceased to the afterlife.
“That was nice,” I said when he finished. “The gods might listen to your voice. Hmm. I don’t suppose you know how to gain the favor of Bolitho.”
“You think we’re a lost cause?”
I raised my eyebrows and jerked my chin in Lord Uren’s direction.
“The other Finches could tell people what happened here today, couldn’t they?” He looked doubtful over his own suggestion, however.
“They might blame us for her death. Or we might put more of them in danger. And even if they stayed safe and cooperative, I’m not sure whether the others are aware yet of today’s events. Have you ever heard of case where they’ve given evidence of the death of one of their sisters?”