A Clatter of Chains

by A Van Wyck

  He’d been twenty, and teaching, when the princess found him. The fourteen year old girl had seen through to his carefully concealed boredom at a glance. Undefeated in countless duels, he’d never sparred as hard as he had against the serious little girl and her cogent arguments.

  Even so, bodyguard was only his official title. His real role was as the princess’s audience of one, playing silent witness to all her brilliance – and she was a master in her own right. She’d done the one thing no one else could: she’d rescued him from his chronic boredom.

  Whatever else today had been, it certainly hadn’t been boring. At first he’d spent fruitless turns of the glass visiting every dive, den and dark corner he knew, collecting on a host of illicit favors, greasing already greasy palms and threatening some very threatening people. None of which had brought him any closer to the location of the assassin who’d abducted the empire youth.

  He’d been just about ready to don a cowl-and-mask himself when the bowlegged little man had physically bumped into him on the street. He should have suspected something then already. People simply didn’t get that close to him without him noticing.

  “Oof!” the man had said. Said. The word, not the noise.

  A rare moment of irritation – with himself, not his accoster – had followed. Finding itself out of place in his well ordered mind, the emotion skittered briefly lost and confused before dying of embarrassment.

  Even now, he’d be hard put to describe the man.

  But the hat had been enormous, frilled and sewn in every color he could name, including some he couldn’t. The wide brim had draped over the strange man’s shoulders. The crown – a decadent piece of eye wrenching puffery – had stood a hand’s breadth taller than he, bobbing with dyed feathers. It had looked like something a mad court jester’s pantaloons would throw up.

  “Pardon you, sir!” the fellow had said. “You didn’t see me there!” And then, in an aside, added: “But I see them! Oh, yes, I do!” The puffy hat, weaving dangerously in response to its wearer’s sudden outbreak of giggles, had swung towards him, forcing him to lean away.

  “Excuse me,” he’d been about to mutter, when the hat had bobbed into his path to rake a downy feather between his teeth. Unprecedentedly caught off guard, he’d sputtered, chocking on bits of purple plumage.

  “Perhaps you can help me,” the peculiar man had pressed, stepping close. Overly familiar hands had come to rest on his chest. The gesture was a shocking invasion, made worse by the musk of cow dung that had accompanied it.

  “I’m looking for a black tufted duck,” the man had confided, whispering as if afraid the bird in question might hear him. “Have you seen one?”

  For him, the black tufted duck was the subject of a private joke. The princess – threatening him with knighthood – had undertaken to force the black tufted duck upon him as his crest. The solitary, drab bird was uniquely incapable of sound. Most notably, despite its small stature, it was fierce to a fault. It had been known to defend its nesting area from large predators at the cost of its life. Even if its nest was empty.

  Immediately alarmed, he’d grabbed for the man’s wrist with one hand and for his sword hilt with the other – only to find neither were there. A desperate skip backward had towed the man and the hat along as if they were tied to him with a string.

  “Oh, wait,” the hat had gasped in sudden recognition, “I see you are on a quest of your own! I knew you were a fellow birdwatcher the moment I hat clapped… clapped hats… clapped eyes on you! What are you on the prowl for? The mantled raven, perhaps, yes?”

  Hands readied to deliver lethal blows, to an offensive article of clothing, had hesitated.

  “Yes, I knew it!” Bouncing slightly away from him, the hat had done a victory twirl, blinding him with a kaleidoscope of color. “A worthy quest, sir!” the voice had continued, the hat executing another half-spin before jerking back to face, presumably, the same direction as its wearer. “Rarely seen, they are! Fond of carrying off shrine mice, you know,” the voice had said, the hat bobbing agreeably. “Roosts up white oak trees. Playful birds, when all is said and done!” And the man had launched unexpectedly into song.

  “Wheatlips! Daisies! Sickle and twine!”

  “You,” he’d observed, fighting some kind of unnatural stupor, “are mad.”

  “Is it obvious?” the hat had tilted inquiringly to one side. “I would have said only slightly miffed!” Grimed hands had appeared from beneath the encompassing brim to point at the hat. “Do you know they wanted fourteen silvers for this? Fourteen?! That’s mad! But not as mad as they were! Ha! It was daylight robbery!”

  And the invisible man had whirled, the hat half a step behind, to dart into the crowd. The children’s song had stained the air in its wake.

  “Greencorn! Vainleaf! Say you’ll be mine!”

  He’d grabbed at the disappearing wearer but had missed, made slow by the hypnotic spell the man had woven with his words. He’d given chase, plunging into the crowd. Only to discover that a superbly hatted man was, more or less, unrecognizable once divested of said hat.

  His sword he’d found somehow moved, scabbard and all, to his opposite hip.

  He’d stood in the press, feeling outwitted. A novel experience he was not anxious to repeat. Nonetheless, the riddle had been brilliant. The mantled raven preferred the vantage of tall roosts, swooping down when it spied live prey. It was casually referred to as the ‘little executioner’, for its black hood. The little executioner was an analogue for his assassin, so it was not hard to deduce who the shrine mouse must be.

  The hat-man had also mistakenly – and as it turned out, purposefully – mentioned white oak as the little executioner’s preferred roost. The white oak wasn’t an oak at all but a species of eucalyptus, also called ‘tunnel timber’ and prized for its uncanny resistance to damp and rot. It hadn’t been a great leap from mines, to stones, to masons. Especially after he’d recalled the main artery down the abandoned stonecutter’s quarter was called White Oak Way.

  So, he’d started at lower White Oak and worked his way up the deserted street. These were home now to rats, pigeons and the city’s more desperate destitute. And, apparently, an assassin gone to roost.

  It had been a sizable quarter in its day. Before the runoff from its slagheaps had poisoned the groundwater its many public pumps drew on. He’d wandered down the old thoroughfare until he’d caught sight of an old sign. It had hung, faded and peeling, above one building in particular.

  Daisy’s, it had read.

  Wheatlips. Daisies.

  He’d made for the decrepit shop, abandoned these past years. Even the planks boarding the door and windows had been sun-bleached and warped. He’d inspected it, finally turning around to peer down the side street, reciting the ancient harvest song to himself.

  Sickles and twine…

  All kinds of cutting tools had needed sharpening in the quarter. He’d set off toward a shop, visible further down, where peeling paint promised all kinds of whetstone.

  Greencorn, vainleaf – say you’ll be mine…

  Greencorn was a decorative plant and traditional in the making of funeral wreathes. He’d continued until he came to the abandoned premises of a carver of decorative funerary urns. He’d turned the corner, keeping his eyes open.

  Vainleaf. A climbing vine, also called stoneskirt, was often found covering the nakedness of the type of statuary that had fallen out of favor in these conservative times. The defaced statue, lying prone in the sculptor’s courtyard, had pointed a vainleafed finger up a crossroads. He’d left the graffiti riddled showpiece where it lay.

  The crossroads had dead ended, the little cul-de-sac presided over by a decrepit mason’s shed. The children’s song had continued to wind through his mind.

  Mother will smile

  Father will frown

  Crops will all lay down and drown

  Opting for the direct approach, he’d cut the rusted lock off the doors and thrown them wide,
revealing the darkened interior. His sharp eyes had noted scuff marks in the dust, betraying recent occupation. The last two lines of the song, winding through his head, had given him pause.

  But you I will love

  Till death from above

  Forewarned of the mantled raven’s habits, he’d noticed the dust sifting down from the beam over the doorframe, dislodged by someone’s weight. A pair of woman’s shoes, discarded by a barrel inside the shed and too new to belong there, had given him his assassin’s gender. He hadn’t been certain the shrine-mouse was alive until he saw the sheet at the back of the shed twitch.

  He’d set events in motion. Now, winding his way back toward his princess, he wondered whether he’d made a mistake in letting the assassin live. Fate would decide whether or not they faced war.

  He thought of his hatted assailant as he made his way back toward the palace. How could he have let himself be taken in by such an obvious ruse? More importantly, who had the hatted man been and what were his reasons for aiding them? But mostly, he wondered how in the world he was going to explain the unusual encounter to the princess.

  * * *

  “I demand to speak to the invigilator!” Christian struggled to keep his voice from filling the spacious office. He’d met commander Fermont before, on their journey from the Renali border to its capital. They’d spoken half a dozen times and he’d thought he might come to like the man, despite the distance their differing loyalties demanded. But Fermont was all distance now, the desktop a deep ocean of disinterest between them. So far the man had not spoken a word. At least he’d finally managed to gain an audience with their ‘host’. He’d been marched in ‘under full diplomatic escort’, a little while ago. The escorts in question now hovered by the door, frowning disapproval at his tone and fondling their sword hilts.

  The commander was letting his aide (as Lieutenant Heiss had introduced himself) do all the talking.

  “The invigilator, as you may imagine,” Heiss informed him with near undetectable glee, “is currently occupied with this investigation and cannot be spared.”

  Creatures like Heiss were common to all authoritative bodies. They took great pleasure in pressing their paltry power to its limits – and beyond, when they thought those with greater power would neither notice nor intervene.

  “I’ll speak to the ambassador, then,” he amended.

  “The ambassador has been informed of your request,” Heiss assured. “Since he has sent no reply, we can only assume he is, at present, unable to attend to you.”

  “Then let me go to him,” he rejoined, perhaps a little loudly. He felt the two ‘diplomatic escorts’ behind him shift their weight.

  “That is quite out of the question,” Heiss informed him with overdone sternness.

  “And yet you insist we are not under arrest?”

  “You are not,” Heiss promised. “However, it is possible that your unchecked movement may unintentionally interfere with the invigilator’s efforts. To this end, your ambassador Malconte has already graciously agreed that the… nanna’na–” no way to tell whether the mispronunciation was on purpose, “–will confine themselves, voluntarily, to your embassy.”

  The ‘embassy’ was newly come to its role and had, mere bells ago, been a dormitory in the windowless basement of the Royal Guard barracks. It measured six by eighteen paces and contained twelve bunk-beds, smelling of recently vacated occupants. A long, trestle table with benches ran down the middle. Thirteen irate masha’na filled the rest of the space admirably.

  And it was situated in the very heart of the Royal Guard compound, with scores of the Guard roaming the halls and manning the gates and walls.

  “Your ‘embassy’ is a prison.”

  “Certainly not,” Heiss disagreed, a sadistic shimmer beneath the somber façade. “No doubt the appointment of the specific apartments was an oversight, soon to be corrected. You need only be patient a while longer.”

  They’d been counseled patience since this morning and the day was on its last legs. Completely cut off from the outside, they’d had no word of either the keeper or Marco. Waiting was excruciating.

  “But otherwise,” Heiss continued, “everything is to your satisfaction, yes?”

  The innocent inquiry was so genuine you had to look deep in the man’s eyes to see the malice. The idea of breaking Heiss’ fool neck seemed suddenly appealing.

  Something of his thought must have betrayed itself in his posture for his escorts stepped forward unbidden to place restraining hands on his shoulders. Heiss didn’t even have the good grace to look threatened, a merry cast coming to the moron’s mien.

  He appealed to the commander with a glance but Fermont sat like a stone, scowling into a corner of the room and refusing to meet his eye.

  “If there was nothing else…” Heiss drawled in clear dismissal, enjoying the power to have him thrown out. Biting down on his temper he allowed them to steer him, none too gently, from the office and down the hall, down three flights of stairs and to the dormitory. The ‘voluntary’ confinement the ambassador had volunteered them for involved a double locked and double guarded door. His escorts spoke to the guards, their words flowing too fast for him to comprehend more than one in three.

  Heads rose as he was ushered back inside, voicing a silent query.

  He shook his head minutely as the door closed behind him. The click of the lock was loud punctuation to his failure.

  “Well, this is a fine mess,” Bear opined at length. Blank faces gave agreement.

  Merciful goddess, what a mess indeed!

  Their charge missing, one of their own charged with attempted regicide, the summit charging downhill like a haywain on fire… And where were the mighty masha’na? Staying put like good hounds.

  But he could not let his men see his despair. Morale was suffering enough as it was.

  “Take heart,” he encouraged. “The ambassador will straighten all of this out soon.” But these men had traveled with the ambassador and knew they stood a better chance of getting goodwill from a garden snake. “And they haven’t found Marco yet,” he added.

  Helia please let them not have found him yet…

  “And, by my blade, Helia’s hand guides that boy’s steps.”

  As far as hope went, it wasn’t much to hold onto. But here and there a back straightened or a chin lifted. Marco was one of them, a child of Clatter Court, no matter what else – he couldn’t help recalling the boy’s uncanny ability – he may be.

  “With Helia’s mercy and a little luck, the boy’s probably on the keeper’s trail already.”

  A spate of doubtful nods greeted this pronouncement. Several closed their eyes in prayer.

  “He’d better not be,” a woman’s voice spoke from directly behind him. “I told him to wait right outside the gate.”

  Startled oaths fell from lips as masha’na jumped to their feet, eyes hunting for the unseen speaker.

  Christian stared. Above him, where the walls and ceiling met, the grain of the wood crawled as though seen through running water. He skipped back, hand slapping at his sash where his sword should have been. They watched in unarmed frustration as a whirlpool of black blossomed. Roiled. And shredded away into nothingness. Impossibly upside down, a dark figure crouched on the ceiling.

  “You would be Christian,” the figure identified, unfolding from the rafters and twisting lithely to land almost within arm’s reach. Dark eyes in a fitted mask and cowl examined him from toe to crown.

  “I would kill for curls like those,” it said.

  Furwood leaned against the wall, trying his best to block his ears without recourse to his hands. He’d been with the Royal Guard eleven years. He’d stood guard to kings! Well, only the one if he was being honest. And yet, here he was, standing guard like a pigherd to Imperial swine. He’d left the farm to get away from shite jobs like this.

  He cast a glance at the locked dormitory door. They’d never get the stink out of the place, he reflected. They’d have
to burn it. Preferably with the Imperials still inside.

  And to make matters worse, he’d been partnered with Bentrun. The simpleton-nothing-could-silence. He glanced across at the straw-haired man and, not for the first time, wondered whether he might not be simple. That earnest regard and honest smile never belonged on a right-thinking person. The most banal things had the power to completely astound Bentrun. Lame goats and lowly snails were worthy of being immortalized in ballad. The simpleton had been jabbering non-stop for the last turn about some supposedly marvelous thing he’d seen at the north gate today.

  Furwood had pulled enough north gate duty to know nothing marvelous ever happened there.

  “…and then,” the moron gushed, eyes bright on the opposite wall (the only audience to this monologue), “we hears a commotion! Then, from out of the crowd, comes a fruit stall! You know them ones like big wheelbarrows with coverings over top? And people are scatter’n and divin’outta the way cause it’s movin’ at a good clip? And…”

  Oh, how he longed to just hit the idiot! But you didn’t get into the Royal Guard without good reason. Bentrun – bless him – could only do one thing at a time. The dolt attacked fighting with the same single minded zeal he attacked everything else with. It made him right dangerous.

  Furwood glanced at the door behind him. He wouldn’t mind a go at one of these empire types though. They weren’t even really human. They’d mate with anything with a heartbeat – and some things without – if the rumors were true. And their women pissed standing up. And their brains were so addled by generations of magic that they let women – women! – fight in their wars! Honestly he didn’t know why the King was bothering to negotiate peace. They’d be better off just invading. Crush the empire underfoot!

  “…so the merchant – whose stall it was? – he’s running behind it, yellin’ and wavin’ but he can’t catch up, right? And the stall’s wheels is kicking up sparks from the cobbles and…”