A Discourse in Steel

by Paul S. Kemp

  “So if there was ever a loose tongue about this here, well, then the person without the loose tongue would know it was the other of the two was yapping, yeah?”

  “I don’t yap, Channis. And even if I did…”

  “Even if you did,” Channis said, his voice like a blade over a whetstone. “I’d deny everything and there’s no evidence and you’d go visit with Zren for…discipline.”

  “Right.”

  “Right, then.” Channis put one of his huge hands on Rusk’s shoulder, squeezed, then turned and walked away. “That’s clear as good glass, then. We can help each other, you and me. I’ll be calling the Committee together later, then we’ll have chapel down below, say thanks to Aster, throw a few prays. I’m just waiting for Trelgin to show. He shoulda sprouted a seventh blade by now. He’s not going to be happy how this goes for him.”

  Rusk winced. “About that…”

  Channis turned to face him, his right eye half closed due to scarring, and so stuck in a perpetual glare.

  “There was a problem,” Rusk said, and shifted on his feet. “Well, two. Though one is not so much a problem as a surprise.”

  Channis took a couple steps toward him, stopped, and stared. “Keep on.”

  “The faytor in the tent—”

  Another step toward him and the other eye joined the first in the glare. “She saw you?”

  Rusk shook his head. “No, no. But she…went down when he went down.”

  “You clicked her, too? So?”

  “No, I didn’t. She just went down, grabbing at her head, shouting things.” He looked meaningfully at Channis.

  Channis’s voice was a low rumble. “What kind of things?”

  Rusk swallowed. “Things she shouldn’t know. Guild things. Things only the Upright Man—the old Upright Man—should have known. It was like it poured out of his head and into hers.”

  Channis stared at him a long, uncomfortable while. “Why didn’t you click her?”

  “I couldn’t. It happened fast and by the time I made sense of her words, the Bazaar slubbers were coming.”

  “So maybe she knows guild business but she didn’t see you?”

  “She definitely didn’t see me. I had some of our streeters follow her out of the Bazaar. She was unconscious, taken in a wagon with the other faytor. They went to a joint called the Slick Tunnel. Live there, I think.”

  Channis visibly relaxed and Rusk let himself breathe. “That don’t sound like a problem. That sounds like a nuisance. What’s the surprise?”

  “What?”

  “You said you had a problem and a surprise. The problem we discussed. The surprise?”

  Rusk could think of no good way to say what he needed to say, so he just said it. “I’m, uh, not Sixth Blade.”

  Channis’s eyebrows rose in surprise, at least as far as the scars allowed. “No?”

  Rusk held up his hand, showing Channis his tat. “No.”

  Channis’s eyes lingered on Rusk’s tat and its seven blades for a while before returning to Rusk’s face.

  “I guess Trelgin’s not coming then,” Channis said.

  “I guess not.”

  Channis smiled, a predatory look. “I ever tell you how I came by all these scars?”

  Rusk shook his head.

  “These have come from men trying to do me ill, sometimes during a regular scrum, sometimes during guild business. All those men have a home in the ground, now, Rusky. You follow? You clear?”

  Rusk kept his face expressionless. “I ken the game, Channis. I’m a loyal guildsman. And you’re the Upright Man.”

  “What’s loyalty got to do with it? Seventh Blade’s a shite job, and I oughta know.”

  To that, Rusk said nothing.

  Channis donned a softer smile, about as genuine as a whore’s moans of pleasure. He came to Rusk’s side. The man had a smell about him, an animal stink. He took Rusk by the arm, put it beside his own so the tats on the backs of their hands were side by side.

  “Aster’s a funny bastard, ain’t he, Rusky?”

  Funny wasn’t the word Rusk would’ve used. “Aye.”

  Channis released Rusk’s arm.

  “Gonna stay a shite job. I got plans for the guild and making the Seventh Blade happy ain’t part of ’em. I thought it’d be Trelgin, but it looks like ol’ Aster sent it your way. So be it. I ain’t the forgiving sort, Rusk, but you know that already.”

  “Yeah, I know that.”

  “Good. You be a good boy now, Rusky. A loyal boy, like you said. And we’ll see how things go, yeah?”

  Rusk swallowed bile. “Yeah.”

  “Now here are the first couple things you’re going to do, Seventh Blade. Get the Committee together so I can let them know how things are gonna be. And the second thing is, you’re gonna send a group of men to go to that inn. They can pull from the guild’s store of enchanted gear, if you think it’s necessary. Anyway, they’re to burn it down with that faytor in it. She knows guild business—”

  “Maybe knows,” Rusk said.

  “Maybe’s all I need. You questioning me already, Rusky?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  Rusk nodded. “I heard that place is part-owned by some hard fellows, though.”

  Channis said, “They ain’t hard enough. Get it burnt. Clear?”

  “Clear,” said Rusk.

  He had some men in mind, and he didn’t think they’d need to pull on the guild’s store of enchanted items. Rusk disliked relying on sorcerous shite.

  Egil and Nix spent the evening worshipping at the altar of Gadd, while the tattooed easterner tended his congregation of hogsheads, taps, tankards, cups, and drunks. The buzz of the Tunnel went on behind them, laughter, conversation, occasional whoops and shouts. They checked on Rose from time to time, but there was no change.

  Serving girls weaved deftly through the crowd and smoke, tankards and platters clutched in their hands. Tesha’s men and women lingered flirtatiously on the sweeping central stair until patrons purchased their time and bodies, and they disappeared into the rooms upstairs.

  Kiir and Lis spent some time at the bar—both lovely in their bodices and flowing dresses—but Nix and Egil made such sullen company that they soon drifted away. By the eleventh hour, Nix and Egil sat at the bar alone, their only company Gadd and his pipe. Hyram Mung and his chins stared down at them from the portrait behind the bar. Nix toyed with the idea of putting another dagger in Mung’s face but resisted, and instead went upstairs again to check on Rose. He ignored the sounds of sex coming from many of the rooms, and adamantly refused to think of Kiir in any of them.

  He knocked on Rose’s door, entered, and found Merelda and Tesha sitting at Rose’s bedside, daubing her forehead with a damp cloth.

  “She’s still asleep,” Merelda said to him softly. “We’ll know more when she wakes.”

  “How’re things downstairs?” Tesha asked.

  “Same as always,” he answered. “Can I bring anything?”

  “Thank you, no,” Mere said. “Tesha’s taking care of everything.”

  Nix smiled at Tesha. “I think Tesha could take care of all of us, had she a mind.”

  Mere smiled. She looked back at her sister, asked almost coyly, “Where’s Egil?”

  Tesha shot Nix a meaningful look and he took the substance of it.

  “At the bar,” he answered. “He has…things on his mind.”

  “I see. Well, tell him to come up and check on Rose. If he wants, of course.”

  Nix shared a look with Tesha, said he would, and went back downstairs, sidestepping out of the way for Lis and a short laborer as they came upstairs, she with a professional smile, he with a face and expression flush with excitement. Lis rolled her eyes as she passed Nix.

  He returned to Egil’s side at the bar. Gadd had refilled his tankard.

  “You know Mere fancies you, yeah? Though not even the gods themselves know why.”

  “Bah,” Egil said. “She’s just a girl, Nix. Sh
e’s like a…”

  He trailed off, his expression falling, and put his face in his tankard.

  “She’s not a girl. She’s a young woman, and she most surely doesn’t think of herself as your daughter. She fancies you and that’s through no fault of yours, but you’ll hurt her if you don’t take care. Yeah?”

  “I’d never hurt her, Nix.”

  Egil’s eyes welled at some memory. Nix pretended not to notice.

  “Not on purpose, I know.” He put a hand on Egil’s mountainous shoulder. “Just have a care, yeah? It’ll probably pass, but be mindful so you don’t encourage it.”

  Egil nodded. Nix said nothing for a time, giving Egil time to gather himself and divert his thoughts from his lost wife and daughter.

  Nix asked, “Did you have a chance yet to talk to Enora? How’d she take the news about Drugal?”

  “As well as she could.”

  “I suspect she’ll get disciplined by the High Magister.”

  “Aye.”

  “She ask about Blackalley?”

  Egil nodded.

  “What’d you tell her?”

  “I didn’t tell her anything. Just that Drugal was already dead.”

  Nix flashed on Drugal’s black eyes, on the way he’d been stuck to the ground, as if being absorbed or slowly devoured. He cleared his throat and his mind.

  “Anything there? Between you and Enora?”

  “Not anymore,” Egil said, and left it at that.

  They drank another tankard apiece before Nix said, “I don’t remember us being such a somber pair of slubbers. How’d that happen?”

  Egil grunted.

  “Maybe we’re more amusing when we’re drunk?”

  “Probably.”

  Nix planted a fist on the bar. “Then I say that we aren’t drunk is an unpardonable transgression. Gadd, you’re the priest of this temple. You’ve failed us.”

  The easterner looked a question at him, smiled tentatively.

  “But the failure can be rectified, by the gods,” Nix said. “Drinks, Gadd, and quickly, that we might exorcise with spirits the spirit of sober reflection that vexes us currently.”

  Nix eyed Egil. Not so much as a grin.

  “You’ve got to play along here, priest.”

  Egil offered a rueful smile. “I know what you’re doing. It’s appreciated. I’m fine, though.”

  Nix wasn’t so sure. He thumped Egil on the shoulder. “I’m serious about the drinking, though. But that’s the only thing I want to be serious about. Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Seen enough shite in the last few days. We deserve a drink.”

  They tapped mugs and set to it.

  —

  Nix awoke later, head down at the bar, his face buried in his crossed arms. He blinked away the film coating his eyelids, glanced blearily around. Egil sat on the stool beside him, his huge arms thrown over the bar as if embracing it, the side of his face to the wood, snoring heavily, a small pool of drool collecting under his cheek. A single clay lamp flickered on the bar and dying embers glowed in the large central hearth. Nix had no idea of the time, though the hours had to be small. The common room was empty.

  He smacked his lips, mouth dry, head muzzy. He needed a drink of something. Ale probably. He slid off the stool, wobbled, looked around for a hogshead. Nothing. From his portrait behind the bar, Mung smiled down at him. Nix offered the Lord Mayor’s image a fak-you finger.

  He reached over and shook Egil. It wouldn’t do to sleep the whole night at the bar. He could imagine Tesha’s frown.

  “Egil. Egil.”

  A grunt, more snores, a clumsy attempt to push Nix’s hand away.

  “Egil. Go upstairs to your room.”

  The priest sat up, looked at Nix, blinked, grumbled something unintelligible, and put his head back down, face turned away.

  Nix regarded him for a moment and shrugged. “As you will.”

  He turned to regard the central stairway. It didn’t usually seem so far away or so high. He stared at it for a time, shaky on his legs, trying to work up the confidence to ascend it. He decided it was too much work. He slid back onto his stool and rested his head on the bar.

  Sometime later a scraping sound from the rear of the inn, behind the bar, pulled him back to alertness. He sat up, cursed, listened, blinking, but it did not recur. A dog or cat must have gotten inside the fence. Or a rat, maybe. He put his head back down.

  He heard a similar sound, but this time from the front doors of the inn, and it pulled him fully to wakefulness. He turned on his stool, head cocked. He heard whispers from behind the door.

  “The fak?” he muttered.

  He rose from the stool, in the process toppling it. It hit the floor with a crash that sounded loud in the silence. Egil stirred, lifted his head.

  “What’s this, now?”

  Nix ignored him and picked his way through the tables, past the fireplace, to the front double doors. He stood there a moment, listened, thought he heard the soft sound of stealthy movement on the other side.

  “What is it?” Egil called from the bar.

  Nix held up a hand for silence, slid the bar out of the doors, and tried to jerk them open. But the doors gave only a finger’s width and he jarred his shoulder in the effort. Something had been wound through the two handles on the other side—a chain or rope—preventing them from opening it.

  He heard a soft, menacing chuckle from the other side of the doors and put everything together in a rush. The sound he’d heard coming from the back hadn’t been an animal. It’d been someone barring that door, too. And he knew of only one reason to seal people into a building. Adrenaline flushed the drunk from his system.

  “Fak! Everyone up!” he shouted. “Up! Up!”

  Egil was on his feet, a bit wobbly but a hammer in each hand. “What is it?”

  “We’re locked in.”

  Egil’s eyes widened. He understood the danger, too. “Fak!” In his deep, booming voice, he shouted, “Up! Tesha, get everyone up! Now! Right now!”

  Nix’s eyes went to the metal frame windows. The Tunnel had once been the house of a noble before the rich had moved across the Meander to the west side of Dur Follin, so it featured tall, narrow leaded glass windows. They’d provide egress only to brooms.

  Glass shattered in one of the windows facing Shoddy Way. Another broke on the other side of the common room. Nix saw movement and a dancing flame through the greasy, murky glass of the remaining panes.

  He drew and flung his hand axe through the broken pane of one of the windows, just as the man outside tried to toss a bottle of what Nix presumed to be alchemist’s oil into the Tunnel.

  The throw was off and Nix’s axe shattered another pane, but it sprayed the man with glass and he shouted, staggered back, fumbled the bottle, and leaked oil all over himself. Instantly he burst into flame, screaming in agony, staggering, flailing. The stink of burning flesh poured through the broken window.

  Through the other window came a second bottle of alchemist’s fire and this one made it inside. It hit a table and shattered, the oil spraying table, floor, and nearby chairs, bursting into flames.

  “I got the doors!” Egil shouted. “Get everyone out!”

  Without waiting for a reply, Egil sprinted across the common room toward the front doors, chin tucked, shoulder braced for impact. He hit one of the double doors like a battering ram. Wood splintered and metal shrieked as the impact cracked the door, the frame, and pulled the hinges out of the jambs. The door and priest slammed into a man on the other side of it and all went down in a jumble.

  Egil punched the man in the face, as good as a hammer blow, and the man went still. Nix supposed they could kill him later.

  “Go!” Egil shouted back at Nix, as he scrambled to his feet, kicking the downed man as he rose. “I’ll get water!”

  Nix nodded and bounded up the stairs. Already several of the workingmen and -women had their doors open and stood sleepily in the doorway. Smoke was leaki
ng up from the common room, fogging the corridor.

  “Fire!” Nix said. “Get out!”

  Nix’s words spurred them into motion and most of them hurried directly downstairs in their nightclothes, wide-eyed and muttering in alarm. Some turned as if to go back into their room.

  “No!” Nix said. “There’s no time to grab anything!”

  Nix sprinted down the hall, slamming his fist on doors, shouting.

  Kiir and Lis and Tesha came out of their rooms in their nightdresses, coughing, hair mussed.

  “Fire!” Nix said, to head off questions.

  “Gods!” Kiir said. She clutched the small harp charm of Lyrra she always wore on a chain around her neck.

  “Get out!” Nix said. “Right now!”

  Kiir and Lis ran past him, Kiir brushing his hand with hers as she went.

  “I’ve got to check the rooms,” Tesha said. “Make sure everyone is out.”

  “Hurry,” Nix said.

  While Tesha started throwing open doors and shouting into the rooms, Nix ran to Merelda and Rusilla’s room. Before he reached it, the door opened and Merelda emerged into the hall, her eyes frantic. She saw Nix and her shoulders sagged with relief.

  “I can’t lift her, Nix!”

  “Aye.”

  Nix ran past her and into the sisters’ room. He scooped Rose out of the bed and carried her out. He came out into the hall to find Tesha still checking rooms.

  “Tesha!”

  “A few more,” she said. Sweat pasted her dark curls to her forehead.

  “I’ll help her,” Mere said. “Get Rose out. Go.”

  Nix hesitated, but went. He couldn’t do much with Rose in his arms and he couldn’t put her safely down. Smoke rolled up the stairway. The common room glowed orange with flames. He heard shouts and exclamations from below. Coughing, he staggered down the stairs.

  He reached the bottom just in time to see Egil bull his way through the front doors, each of his arms wrapped around a catch barrel of water. Lis and Kiir and one of the workingmen whose name Nix didn’t know lurched out from behind the bar, each holding a sloshing hogshead of ale.

  The fire had consumed two tables and chairs but hadn’t yet spread all that much. Egil tossed one barrel of water onto the blaze, then the other. Flames hissed and died. Smoke filled the room. Kiir, Lis, and their co-worker heaved their hogsheads onto the flames, killing even more of the fire.