by A Van Wyck
“I’m sure I could but then I wouldn’t have the pleasure of your company every now and again.”
“Hah!” Olidus scoffed, “s’not my company you’re after, I’ll wager. I still say it’s a girl you’re playing against, my boy. That’s why you always lose. Take my advice, don’t hold the board between you two. You’ve taken no vows yet. Go find her! Old Plunket will let you go, I’m sure.”
“Maybe one day, Oli.”
The old man rasped a laugh. “Oh, I know all about ‘one-days,’ don’t I just! Well, you know where to find your bird. Help yourself. They like you well enough. I’ll find you a mug.”
He did indeed know the cage he sought and the bird too. He coaxed the feathery creature to full wakefulness in his hands while he tied the missive to its leg. But these were not moves for a game of sidestep. In a few terse words, he’d described Olu, the secrecy of Neever’s escort and their direction of travel, all properly ciphered.
“Tea’s ready!”
Joss launched the bird out the wide window, watching it wheel across the sky and toward the far off city.
* * *
It might have been a prosperous bar at some point in the distant past. But the floorboards hadn’t been swept in forever and debris that didn’t bear too close an examination clogged the space between the warped and lifting planks. Cheap lanterns cast their feeble light on faded walls of indistinguishable color. Tracers of oily smoke crawled up the peeling paint to gather in a hollow in the low ceiling. The place stank. He didn’t think people normally ate here. The proprietor had been taken by an astonished coughing fit, sounding like he might lose a lung, when Neever had ordered them each a plate.
A rat scurried past their table and he chucked a partly chewed bone at it. The rat cringed at the morsel’s sudden appearance but didn’t scurry away. He watched in fascinated horror as it sniffed at the bone tentatively, whiskers bobbing, before dragging it off into the gloom. Bile rose in his throat and he wasn’t certain it had anything to do with the rat. The cook had obviously never heard of shaving his meat. His bowl of watery stew had sported a beard that would have put a caravan captain to shame. He swallowed hard as it tried to fight its way up his throat a third time.
“Something the matter?” Neever enquired companionably from across the table. The man had eaten the meal without complaint.
“I’ve had better food in some of the gaols I’ve been in, Neever.” He gave the decrepit, one-room tavern another quick study. “Better accommodation, too.”
The soft-spoken monk smiled an easy smile.
He kept the frown from his face. For all that his every instinct screamed that Neever was dangerous, he’d yet to see a smidgen of proof. There was nothing to suggest the man was anything other than he appeared: a gentle-minded, kind-souled man who sang in a choir. But the conviction persisted.
Heeding his instincts, he’d quietly made up his mind to sneak out of Sutlam before the scheduled departure – and sand swallow the temple and its schemes. The morning of his intended escape, he’d found Neever outside his door, fist raised as if to knock despite the sun being a good few glasses from rising.
“Oh,” the man had said in evident surprise, a heavy traveling pack snuggling his sandaled feet. “I see you like to get an early start as well. Good. I was afraid I was going to have to wake you…”
In the face of the man’s expectant smile – and the subtle threat of having his escape thwarted – he’d had no choice but to go along. He now knew why monks called their rooms cells. No bloody windows. After that, Neever had watched him like a hawk – provided there existed hawks who watched things in a kindly, inconspicuous fashion.
Hawk or no, he could have seized any of myriad opportunities since then to slip away. The pragmatist in him could think of a couple of good reasons why he hadn’t. For starters, Neever knew where they were going (and where they were) and he didn’t. Secondly, so far Neever and this temple had been funding the entire trip. Why spend his own coin if he could spend theirs? Plus, the professional in him was curious. They hadn’t told him what they needed him to steal yet.
He’d be the first to admit those two and a half reasons did not outweigh the danger posed by all the unknowns in this little venture. And yet here he was. He studied the man across from him minutely, as he always did, looking for some subtle clue to substantiate his suspicions. A lifetime of experience didn’t lie.
“And that’s saying something,” he added to his previous statement, ruminating on some of the cesspits he’d – so very briefly – been incarcerated in.
“And what does that tell you?” Neever asked in a soothing voice. The only one the monk ever seemed to use.
Questions. Always questions. He doubted he’d heard a single answer pass the man’s lips on any subject weightier than the weather or the distance to the next town. Their week traveling together, sharing the same road, the same company and the same campfire – on those occasions they didn’t reach the next temple before sunset – had done little to illuminate the dim picture he had of the man. Neever seemed able to wrap himself in a cloak of companionable silence that completely disregarded expectant silence and discouraged any conversation. You could ask him something personal, if you dared, and he would even begin to answer readily in his easy, unconcerned manner. But before long you’d realize – somehow the conversation had turned to you and you’d been telling him about you for the last half a glass. He’d fallen into that trap twice before opting to buy into the companionable silence thing.
“I don’t know,” he answered the man’s possibly rhetorical question. “That I’d rather be in jail?”
“We are all prisoners to our own natures.”
He blinked at that. It was something else he was still getting used to, these profound observations to counter his flippant remarks. It never sounded preachy but how else were you supposed to take it?
Religion. Spirits take it.
“Maybe,” he grunted, unwilling to give any ground to all this deep reflection. In his experience all philosophical debates could be speedily unraveled at knife point. “But at least in lock-up I always had a pretty good idea what I was in for.”
He let that hang there. He had no expectation that the otherwise accommodating monk would rise to his baiting. He’d been trying to fish the details from Neever all week and he wasn’t about to let the monk’s tide of reticence dissuade him.
“What were you in for? The last time?”
The genuine interest in the monk’s eyes, evident as the man leaned toward him across the table, almost had him. He strangled his impulse to answer truthfully. This was the part where he was supposed to start talking about himself. He wasn’t falling for that again.
For drowning a miserly monk in a bowl of hair soup.
He felt the eager words, along with his reluctant dinner, rise in his throat and swallowed them back. A childhood spent in the Oaragh slums had ingrained the compulsion to test people. But he was too wary of the unknowable man opposite him. Survival was another instinct that had been deeply ingrained.
“This and that,” he drawled.
The monk smiled disarmingly in response, as if to say he needn’t discuss anything that might discomfit or embarrass him, and sat back.
He scowled. How did the man always manage to come out on top? And on the moral high ground, at that?
Abandoning guile for the moment, he asked the direct question.
“So where are we headed tomorrow?”
The monk answered readily as always.
“West, down to Marvellack Post. It’s a sizable town and there’s a Temple there where we can spend the night.”
That was good news at least. This little rat-infested mud-hole of a village didn’t have a temple. He’d have slept under the stars before he’d sleep in this deathtrap. And that was saying something: he’d once spent a week in Oaragh’s sewers while the blackeyes up top scouring the city for him.
But there was a rainstorm brewing outside and he’d rather be dry and flea
bitten than wet and freezing.
“And after that?” he wheedled, taking advantage of the priest’s generous mood.
“Oh, we’ll keep heading west.”
“Right,” he baited, “West. Until we get to…” he left the sentence hanging purposefully.
“To where we’re headed, of course,” the accommodating priest finished for him.
He sighed.
“Well,” Neever declared as the proprietor passed, dousing the rank lanterns. “I suppose we’d better turn in.” The monk had to raise his voice to be heard above their host’s hacking. “We’ve got another early day tomorrow.”
He eyed the littered floor with distaste, wondering which corner held the fewest fleas.
“I won’t sleep a wink,” he predicted dismally. He was truly miserable. The fitness he’d begun building on the Isis Spear – the most manual labor he’d ever done – had quickly dwindled during his leisurely travel with the lepers. Neever set an even, yet grueling pace and the monk’s hardy sandals were much more suited to the terrain than his soft moccasins. His legs ached. His feet were sore.
Neever chuckled good naturedly, as if he’d told a joke.
Sighing, he got up to spread his blanket on the floor. He kept a wary eye out for the rat that’d made off with the bone.
True to his word, Neever roused them early the next morning and though he’d gotten even less sleep than he’d predicted, he was happy enough to leave the disgusting tavern. Late morning found them walking the rutted road westward, their feet clumped with the red mud the night’s rain had stirred up. They made a brief stop at midday to eat some cold sausage and hard bread and were climbing the hill toward the walled town of Marvellack Post just as the sun started to dip toward the horizon.
It truly was a sizable town. The buildings were stone, not wood as most of the other villages and towns had been, and roofed in pale slate. The gate was a sturdy affair with uniformed guards on either side, lazily nodding travelers through. The sight of any type of law enforcement made him nervous but, he reminded himself, he’d left most of his crimes half an ocean away.
Well, except for a couple of recent murders in Genla. But that had been self-defense. Pre-emptive self-defense. The best kind. Although, city guards and magistrates were notoriously hard to convince on this point. He dropped back a pace as they approached the gate anyway, putting himself slightly behind Neever. He tugged at the hood of his borrowed cloak. It was close enough to the cut and color of Neever’s own that it should afford him some reflected reverence. He dropped it low over his face and dropped his eyes for good measure. They passed through without being hailed, though Neever nodded jovial greetings to the guards.
He only released his held breath when they’d passed under the shadow of the arch and were walking down the main road.
“Which way to the temple?”
Neever pointed. “Over that way.”
They seemed to be walking in the opposite direction.
“And we’re going…?” He almost didn’t expect the tightlipped monk to answer.
“It’s harvest month,” the smiling man said, as if that were an explanation. The monk seemed to hear the question in his silence.
“Nothing but oats for dinner that way,” the man expounded, nodding toward the unseen temple. “After last night’s tribulations I don’t expect the Temple will begrudge us a real meal.” The smile the man threw over a shoulder, as they trekked deeper into town, was trust-inspiring.
He had a natural distrust of all things trust-inspiring.
“Now you’re talking!” he enthused anyway, keeping pace with the monk. And keeping the man where he could see him. Not that he wouldn’t love a meal that didn’t look like it had crawled into his bowl to spend the winter. Possibly he’d been right about developing paranoia. But if paranoia kept him alive, he’d suffer it gladly.
Neever seemed to be in an unusually loquacious mood, pointing out buildings and landmarks and providing a brief history on each. For all he knew, the man could have been born here.
He weathered the monk’s evident small town pride in silence. If the lack of appreciative ooh’s and aah’s were a disappointment, Neever didn’t let on, continuing to spout volumes of pointless drivel.
An inn next to a dry bridge had used to be a mill. See the windmill blades that were still attached? This block of town houses used to be a stable for the barracks’ soldiers before being bought up by a mercer chapter who’d rebuilt it from the ground up. Very nice. See the way the hill kind of ends abruptly just there? That’s where they originally quarried the stone that built the outer wall. It’s a park now. This big, walled building here? The governor’s house. Used to be the garrison commander’s home but that was during the settlement campaigns. Neither the fort-like manor nor the high town walls were likely ever to see service again, Helia willing.
On, and on.
He suffered in silence but told himself, after all of this, he was demanding steak.
The sun had already passed behind the central hill – the strategic high-ground that had defeated Neril cavalry charges, Neever informed him. Darkness was beginning to creep up from the east before Neever ran out of tourist trivia. The inn they finally stopped at was quite a change from the pigsty they’d left this morning. The common room was airy and well lit. More than half the tables were already occupied. Smiling barmaids made their way among the patrons, carrying trays that steamed. The hearty aroma of good food mixed with the cheerful hum of conversation and the comfortable billow of pipe smoke. A party reclining by the hearth exuded a homey atmosphere.
Feeling himself relax slightly, he scowled. Rooms could be just like people, lulling you into dropping your guard.
Neever led the way to an empty table, depositing the heavy backpack beneath it.
He pulled up a chair.
“Nice place,” he commented grudgingly. “You come here often?”
“When I get the chance,” the priest answered simply, putting a hand in the air to attract the attention of a nearby barmaid. She smiled at them as she came to stand by their table.
“What will it be?”
“Two beers and two of your famous kid pot pies, if you please my dear.”
“I’ll be right back with that,” she smiled, wading back among the tables.
“Beer?” he raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Fresh from the Temple brewery,” the monk nodded without missing a beat.
“Your temple brews beer?” He couldn’t quite keep the surprise from his voice.
“It is harvest season.”
He shook his head in wonderment.
“Yours is a strange priesthood, Neever.”
In the desert cities, there was no such thing as a central religion. Every city had its cults, ever changing like the desert winds, supposedly slaved to some spirit or another. Sometimes these were no more than gangs for the more inventive or insane criminals. It was not uncommon for their adherents to be ritually separated from fun things like drink, money, women or, in some extreme cases, their own balls or pinky toes or some such.
“It is not for us to turn away the gifts bestowed by the goddess.”
He digested that.
“Your goddess wants you drinking beer?” he asked, wondering if it weren’t perhaps dangerous to tease the man on this subject. People could be touchy about their religion. And especially about their missing balls or pinky toes and such.
“Our goddess wants us to be happy and live good lives, to work hard and enjoy the fruits of our labor,” the monk countered without seeming to have taken the comment the wrong way. A smart man would have left well enough alone, but he wouldn’t feel like himself if he didn’t try to push a little.
“And conquer the odd continent,” he added wryly. Which was only fair to say.
Neever just smiled good naturedly again. “That,” the monk said, “might have less to do with what the goddess wants and more to do with what her worshippers want.”
The arrival
of their beer forestalled any reply. Neever motioned invitingly for him to try a sip. It wasn’t strong but it was smooth and heavy. Neever sat, waiting expectantly.
“Well,” he said after his first mouthful, “I’m not ready to convert just yet, but your goddess certainly brews a beer fit to save a man’s soul.” He watched Neever carefully for an adverse reaction but the monk smiled as if he’d been paid a personal compliment, sitting back to enjoy his drink. Did nothing get under the damned man’s skin?
Their pot pies arrived not long after. They ate in silence, of course, and he was well on his way to forgiving Neever for the previous evening before he’d gotten halfway through the thick crust, tender meat and exquisite sauce. Despite his earlier misgivings, he’d gotten so comfortable the unexpected voice at his shoulder startled him.
“May I join you?”
He looked slowly up from his meal.
The newcomer was a nondescript, clean shaven man with a polite smile and shoulder length hair. One hand rested on their table top as if it had landed there by accident. An opal ring – a single point of ostentation – winked.
His chewing slowed as he looked the man up and down. By the cut and quality of the clothes the man could have been a lesser merchant or tradesman. He was neither of those things.
This man belonged to his world, not Neever’s. Though he’d never seen the newcomer before, he immediately put him in the category high-end fence and / or pimp.
He cut his eyes in Neever’s direction, waiting to see how the monk would play this. If he were right and Neever’s innocent choirboy routine was a sham, the monk would see the newcomer clearly too. Neever looked characteristically unconcerned.
“Certainly,” the monk invited. “Find yourself a seat and be welcome.”
“Thank you.”
The man lowered himself into a chair, stopping a passing barmaid with a light touch to order himself a glass of wine.
“Olu,” Neever said, reclaiming his attention, “this is Breese. Breese, meet Olu.”
“Pleasure,” Breese purred.
He downed his utensils, appetite fled, and leaned back in his chair. He regarded the two men in silence, his eyes darting back and forth. Yes, they did know each other. He’d guessed Neever was dangerous and this confirmed, at the very least, that the mild-as-milk-water monk was a pretense.