The Mark of Ran

by Paul Kearney

  A manservant there was also, thin as a fish. His name was Quare and he had long white fingers that left moist tracks on everything they touched. His black hair was greased back from his brow. Clad in sable hose, he padded about the stairways of the Tower as noiselessly as a spider. Rol learned early on to avoid meeting him alone, after a groping encounter in the wine cellars. Quare held a privileged position in that he had access to the Master at all times of the day and night. He was Psellos’s ears and eyes in the lower quarters and was cordially hated by everyone.

  There were other servants in ever-changing numbers. Valets, grooms, seamstresses. Maids who would arrive winsome and merry, and over time would become haggard, with haunted eyes, before disappearing to be replaced by yet more. And every week associates of Psellos (their own word) would come and go, uniformly obsequious to him and contemptuous of everyone else. A rigid hierarchy existed in Psellos’s Tower, and though to all intents Rol was at the bottom of it (he slept on a pile of rags on the hot flagstones of the scullery) he was nonetheless marked out as different. Quare’s attentions abruptly ceased after the first few days, and he regarded Rol with a mixture of wariness and hatred thereafter.

  How Rowen fitted into the household Rol could not quite make out. Everyone deferred to her—out of fear if nothing else—but at the same time gave the impression that they despised her. Only Gibble was different. He treated her almost as a daughter and was always awake, if not entirely sober, when she returned from her nocturnal assignations. He would have food and hot water waiting for her and would see that she wanted for nothing before tottering off to his own bed. As for Rowen, she had a suite of richly appointed rooms in the upper third of the Tower and was often called to join Psellos at table, especially when he was entertaining, but she ate in the kitchen whenever she could and would often take some mundane chore upon herself on a kind of dark whim, working at the long oak table while Gibble clattered pans and chattered to her from the blaring heat of the stoves. She seemed to find the hot semidark of the kitchens soothing, and would sometimes stay there until dawn, sharpening Gibble’s knives and skewers, boning joints with the deftness of a surgeon, or simply staring into the fire. No one but Gibble ever dared to address her.

  One night, though, when the entire household was abed, Rol watched her through the scullery door as she stood drinking wine at the kitchen fire. She had just returned from one of her usual forays and was dressed mannishly, in breeches, doublet, and short cloak. Her hair was bound up and she looked almost like some delicate-featured boy. But there was a stiffness about her that marred her usual grace, a care in movement which spoke of some concealed pain.

  Rol’s breath stopped in his throat as she began to undress there and then, unaware of his wide eyes watching her. The raven hair was pulled out of its tight coiffure first, falling down onto her shoulders, and then the clothes were discarded with something akin to distaste. Her white skin was washed scarlet by the light of the dying fire, and the taut muscles moved in her thighs and calves, and along the curve of her back, as she examined herself. There was a series of vivid welts and what looked uncannily like bite marks running down her side and flanks, and she bathed them in Gibble’s steaming water, wincing, her face drawn. The vision haunted Rol’s dreams for weeks.

  The Tower extended underground for almost as far as it loomed skyward. Days would go by when Rol would not even glimpse sunlight, his work confining him to the kitchens and cellars, the innumerable storerooms and pantries and workshops which were tunneled deep into the hill. He helped unload tall-sided wagons, which came in regularly, loaded with all manner of fruit and vegetable and game and barrel upon barrel of wine, brandy, and beer. These, he learned, were the produce of Psellos’s own estates, vast tracts of arable land and pasture and hunting preserve lying farther inland beyond the Ellidon Hills, farmed by tenants, culled by gamekeepers. A private kingdom over which Michal Psellos was absolute monarch.

  In quiet moments Rol would question Gibble and the longer-serving maids about their master and the Tower, but they were not forthcoming. To a man and woman, they were terrified of him, and yet something held them in thrall there, bound them to his service. Rol did discover that Psellos was not of noble blood. And though he speculated in various commodities and had cargoes in many a tall ship up and down the Twelve Seas, he was not a Mercanter. Where then did his immense wealth come from?

  Often Rol thought of simply walking away, strolling down to the busy wharves of Ascari and hiring out to some skipper who needed an extra hand. He had recovered some kind of equilibrium now, and he had learned something of the wider world—it would not be difficult. But two things held him back.

  Psellos knew his family, the story behind Rol’s own origins perhaps. If Rol left, he might never find that out by himself no matter how much of the world he wandered.

  And Rowen. There was something about her that drew him—not just her beauty, but a sadness sensed beneath the chill exterior. If Rol needed to know his own story, he hungered to discover hers.

  After the initial few days there was little contact with the Master. Rol saw him often but never spoke to him, nor was he ever addressed. Both Psellos and Rowen seemed to have utterly forgotten his existence, and for the first few months of his new life, Rol did not especially mind. There was much to learn and see, other people to get to know. A routine to master, petty domestic politics to tax the brain with their real and imagined slights, their guessings and whisperings and petty baffling rules.

  A couple of brief skirmishes with the other kitchen scullions soon established his physical superiority. Though they were older than him, Rol topped most by half a head and could crack their skulls together even when they came for him three at a time. The smallest and grimiest of them, Ratzo, then offered him a truce.

  “There’s one boat here, and we’re all in it,” he said, the sibilants lisping over the gap where his front teeth should have been. “It may be we could carve your guts for you in your sleep, but rumor has it the Master has took a special interest in you, so we’ll forbear. You’re on probation, mind, Fisheye.” They had spat on each other’s palms and shaken hands, and after that Rol was more or less accepted as one of them. The nickname stuck, and much though he hated it, Rol finally accepted the label. He had that in common with Psellos and Rowen, he realized: something in his eyes that made other folk uneasy. A strangeness.

  Like all the other scullions, Rol tried to befriend Gibble, but unlike them he had some success, both because he was genuinely uninterested in cadging more kitchen scraps (life in Eyrie had always been frugal), and because he was unfazed by hard work, did not complain, and carried out his chores promptly, taking a perverse pride in performing the meanest of them to perfection.

  One night, some two and a half months after he had joined the household, he sat up with Gibble as the stout cook cracked open his nightly bottle of aguarputa—the cheap but potent spirit of Ascari’s slums—and listened patiently to his well-worn and oft-heard complaints about the poor quality of his underlings, the rapacity of the merchants in the upper city, the declining quality of imported nutmeg. Rol was only half listening. It was a spring night outside, under the open sky. Even here in the dungeonlike confines of the kitchens it was possible to sense the turning of the year. Rol was thinking of Gannet, wondering if she floated yet, and if her new owner had repainted her sea-eyes and anointed her bows as Grandfather had once done every year with the first primroses. And he was absentmindedly poking at the red hell of the fire in the immense black iron range which extended clear across one wall of the kitchen, keeping the coals bright to heat Rowen’s water. As the hours passed Gibble grew drunker, and his rambling talk turned to subjects other than the matters of the kitchen. He described with great relish just what he had been doing to Mina, the oldest of the serving-maids, the night before in return for the princely bribe of one roast game hen. Generally a good-natured man, Gibble nonetheless felt the need every now and again to fathom the limits of his authority. The r
eluctant (but hungry) girl had succumbed, and that was that—his faith in his own place in the world was vindicated, and he would molest nothing more animate than a bottle for weeks to come. In truth, the maids did not much mind Gibble’s advances, at least compared to Quare’s. The bodyservant’s attentions would leave them bruised and weeping for days, unable to speak of what had been done to them, unable to forget it either. Gibble at least tried not to hurt them.

  Rol they had all swooned over from the beginning, and he had had his pick of the litter. He had lost his virginity in the first week, pumping the insistent girl hard up against a dark wall in the cellars, surprised by how little it meant to him. From time to time he had been importuned again, and had obliged. But every time he thrust into some squealing girl he was seeing Rowen in the kitchen that night, before the fire, and was imagining her dark lips pressed hungrily against his own.

  Gibble moved on from his lecherous reminiscing. As he became drunker he grew more morose. He checked the dripping water-clock and seemed troubled. Rol dozed for a while—it was several hours past the middle of the night and his day had started before dawn. When he nodded out of sleep he found Gibble still talking, half to himself.

  “It’s not right what he makes her do—it’s not as if the Master needs the money. No, he does it to shame her, to keep her in her place. And those creatures he makes her—” He stopped, stared down at a yawning Rol. “And you too. It’s plain as a pikestaff all over your face, but he thinks he’s the only one who notices. He’s getting careless, is what.” Gibble swallowed hard from the neck of his denuded bottle and wiped his mouth with one meaty forearm.

  “What’s plain on my face?” Rol asked softly.

  “I’ve been here longer than anyone—eighteen years. I’ve seen it all. Two more and my time is done—he told me so. Two more and I’m free again. Not that it wasn’t worth it, to see those whoresons choke on their own offal.” Here Gibble grew maudlin, and began to weep. “So beautiful, she was. That was why. It’s said they can’t suffer after death. Gods above us, I hope it’s true. True for her. But the Master put it to rights. He always keeps his word. He promised they would die slow, and they did. Twenty years. Half a life. She was nineteen when she died.” Gibble began to sob quietly.

  The door to the kitchens slammed back against the wall. Gibble and Rol both jumped. The bottle slipped through the cook’s thick fingers to smash on the slick flags of the floor.

  It was the Master himself, with Quare at his side. Psellos looked about the room, his gaze lingering on Rol with a frown, as though the boy’s presence reminded him of something he would have sooner forgotten.

  “Where is Rowen?” Psellos demanded. “Not back yet?”

  Gibble was trying to stand up and failing. Psellos never came down here. “No, my lord. No sign of her—and she’s hours late. I have her water ready here. I sat up waiting—”

  “I can see that. Quare, go fetch Skewer, and a lantern. Be quick.”

  The bodyservant took off in silent haste.

  Psellos stood looking into the flame-light of the range’s open door. Taking a pair of gloves from his belt he drew them on thoughtfully, tugging the calfskin snugly over each knuckle. There was a dangerous light in his shifting eyes. Rol sat silent and still with the reek of spilled aguarputa all about him, watching.

  “My beautiful young apprentice has grease in his hair. How does he find life in Psellos’s Tower?” The Master did not look away from the fire as he spoke.

  “No worse and no better than in other places,” Rol said, and he received a thump on the shoulder from Gibble.

  Psellos smiled, and turned to regard him. “I have had men flayed for turning the word on me, boy.”

  “Why ask a question if you do not want to hear an honest answer?”

  “Men rarely ask questions out of genuine curiosity. They want what they already know to be confirmed. Or they want the answer to the question they have not asked. It is good that you have spirit, boy, but be careful to whom you reveal it. Not all men of my station are as indulgent with their inferiors.”

  Rol was about to retort, but Psellos’s eyes stopped him. The dark man smiled again, silver glimmering in the corners of his mouth. “That’s better.”

  Quare returned, high forehead shining. “My lord.”

  Psellos took from him a long, slim sword with a guarded hilt. The scabbard was worked with silver and obsidian. He buckled it to his belt unhurriedly.

  “Come with me,” he said to Rol.

  Psellos, Quare, and Rol took to the winding stairs that led up to ground level. They came out in the wide circular atrium which took up almost an entire floor of the Tower. Here Quare lit the lantern from a candle-sconce in the wall. Psellos spoke to Rol. His voice was cold and grim.

  “You will stay here by the door and watch for our return. If any others seek to enter you must bar the door in their faces. Open for no one except me—not even Quare here. Do you understand?” Rol nodded dumbly, wondering what had happened.

  The Master and his bodyservant slipped out of the postern Rowen had once opened to Rol, and quickly made their way down the winding street toward the lower city, the lantern throwing bars and wands of light about their feet.

  Just before they disappeared, Rol stepped out of the postern himself. Motivated by he knew not what, he pulled the door to behind him, but did not let the big latched lock snick shut. Then he set off at a run in the wake of Psellos and Quare.

  Five

  THE KING OF THIEVES

  IT WAS EXHILARATING TO BE OUT OF THE TOWER, TO BE running under the bright stars on a warm spring night, and Rol’s feet fairly sped over the cobbles. He followed the fitful flash that was Quare’s lantern, dodging behind corners and rain barrels when he thought that they were looking back. As they traveled further down into the city, the streets began to fill up with people, and he had to draw closer to Psellos so as not to lose sight of him in the nighttime throng.

  Ascari, with spring unfolding about it, was like some noisome and garish flower. Every house in the city, it seemed, had disgorged some capering form of sprightly life upon the streets. The night seemed like exercise hour in some gray prison, when the inmates grasped the free air and bit off chunks of it with laughing mouths. A milling chaos, good-humored and dangerous, fascinating and repulsive. But after a time Rol wearied of the stopping and starting, the breathless push through the milling streetwalkers and beggars and drunks and peddlers. The streets stank of spilled wine, of spiced cooking and ordure and pulsing, crowded humanity. He began to wonder what mad notion had brought him here. Psellos and Quare showed no signs of halting, until at last Rol could see ahead of him the masts and yards of ships tied up to the wharves. They had come clear down to the seafront, a good half league from the Tower as a bird would fly, though their feet had walked twice that.

  Finally the Master and his companion halted before a series of tall warehouses right on the wharves. There were fewer people abroad here, some drunken longshoremen and forlorn whores. Psellos drew his sword, and kicked open the side door of one of the buildings. There was a dim light within. He and Quare entered, shutting the door behind them.

  Rol’s curiosity peaked again. He dared not try the same door, but went round the back of the warehouse and clambered up a mound of junk: discarded barrels and crates, rolls of sodden canvas, frayed ship’s rigging rotting in mounds. He was able to haul himself upon a sill and peer in a grimy window. He had to spit on the glass and wipe the filth off it to see through it. But it was dark inside. He swore softly to himself, hesitating, and at last tried the window. After a couple of sharp thumps it opened inward in a spray of rotten splinters and insect husks. Gulping at the noise, Rol crawled through and let himself down inside.

  He was afraid now, and yet there was a bloody-mindedness at work in him too. All this had something to do with Rowen’s lateness, he was sure.

  He had an impression of thick beams rising above him. Stone under his feet, and dust hanging in the air. He
stifled a sneeze. The warehouse seemed disused, partly derelict—he could see the stars through chinks in the roof—and there was all manner of rubbish strewn about it and heaped against the walls. Rol fumbled through the debris, disturbing a nest of mice, exploding a tight knot of cockroaches, until finally his fingers fastened on a length of wood that seemed free of worm. A belaying pin. It had all the satisfying heft of a club, and he slapped it into one palm with a little more confidence.

  He was sure he could hear raised voices now, and he picked his way to a brightness by one wall: a passageway that led to some light source, and the reek of smoke. He crept along it as silently as if he were hunting quail up on the headland on Dennifrey.

  And stopped. Somehow his eyes had caught the steel glitter and his legs had halted of their own accord before the import even registered with his brain. Now he crouched and studied intently the second’s glimpse that had brought him up short. Two wires strung across the passageway at shin and neck height. He followed them to the walls and found they were wound about iron hooks set into the crumbling masonry. Before they reached the hooks, their steely length was hung with a row of small silvery bells.

  Rol breathed out slowly. After a moment he mustered up the courage to move between the wires, and continue on his way—more slowly now, his eyes scanning the very air in front of him.

  The passageway opened out onto a gallery that ran all the way round the walls of a long chamber, some ten feet from the ground. The wood of the gallery was crooked and worm-eaten, and Rol dropped to his belly and crawled out upon it gingerly. Finally he was able to look down on the space below.