The Mark of Ran

by Paul Kearney

  A fire burned there on the stone floor of the chamber, the only illumination in the room, and the smoke of it smarted Rol’s eyes. About it a tatterdemalion band of strange figures were warming their hands and passing an earthenware jug between them. They were clad in rags and oddments of leather byrnies, oilskin cloaks, even the tattered remnants of women’s skirts. Some wore caps, others had grubby scarves tied about their heads, but all had feathers jutting from their headgear. Their faces were black with filth, eyes white in the midst of it, mouths like red laughing holes. They were jabbering to one another in a language Rol did not understand, but as he listened, he thought that now and again he caught a gist of the meaning behind it—as though it was not an entirely foreign language but a debasement or dialect of one he knew. Gascarese was the common tongue of the Seven Isles, and this was an offshoot, or a corruption of it.

  The men’s talk died away as Psellos and Quare entered the chamber by a ground-level door. Rol shrank back into the shadows, and the rotten wood of the gallery creaked under him.

  Psellos held up one empty hand in greeting, though his rapier was naked in the other. The lantern was shaking in Quare’s fist, and the bodyservant’s face was white as old ivory, ashine with sweat. Psellos appeared wholly at ease, except for the concentrated glitter of his eyes.

  The raggedly caparisoned figures about the fire spread out at once, and from hidden places in their clothing they drew out knives and hammers. Psellos grinned.

  “Canker! Is this the way to greet an old friend?”

  One of the ragged men stepped forward. He had a mouth full of yellow teeth and his feathered cap was set at a jaunty angle on the back of his head. He held a long, slim knife.

  “Well, well,” he said in accented Gascarese, “the lordship himself. To what do we owe this honor?”

  “You have something of mine here, Canker. An entire night was not in the deal.”

  Canker smiled, and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “What can I say, my lord? We are bewitched, enthralled. And not all of us have had a turn yet.”

  Psellos looked about the chamber, as if counting heads. A flicker of distaste passed his countenance and was gone. He sheathed his sword. “Tell me you have some decent drink in this louse-hole.”

  Canker laughed, and the men in the chamber seemed to relax, their weapons sinking by their sides.

  “The King of Thieves may be many things, but he is no barbarian. There is Bionese here, for those of discernment. If one so grand will deign to drink with the dregs of this world.”

  “I’ve drunk with worse,” Psellos said, and stepped forward.

  From somewhere a silver goblet inlaid with gold and set with lapis lazuli was produced. Canker waved a filthy hand and one of his subordinates filled it from a bulging wineskin. Psellos studied the proffered goblet with a connoisseur’s eye, and drank deeply.

  “Exquisite,” he said. “The vintage of the year before last, and the skin has treated it surprisingly well. I congratulate you, Canker. I had no idea your cellar was so good.”

  “Not my cellar, my lord Psellos, but that of Lord Perrivale. Congratulate him if you must.”

  Psellos raised an eyebrow. “Well, I am doubly impressed. Perrivale is not the easiest mark on the street. They say his manse is a veritable fortress.”

  “Even a fortress must have a door.”

  “Indeed. In the midst of stealing fine wines and heirlooms I trust you have found time to attend to my errand. I do not usually make down payments in advance.”

  Canker bowed. From the breast of his ragged apparel he produced a scroll wound about a wooden spindle and sealed with black wax. He handed it to Psellos with something of a flourish.

  Psellos’s face did not change, but something came into his eyes, a blaze of hungry triumph. He held the scroll as though it were made of thousand-year-old glass. “Ah, Canker,” he murmured, “you are an artist.”

  “The down payment is being enjoyed as we speak,” Canker said. “When will the balance of the fee be delivered?”

  Psellos’s eyes did not leave the scroll. “Quare,” he snapped.

  The manservant came forward, reaching into a belt-pouch. He produced a slip of paper. “Remius and Midd, on Pandreddin Street. You may have it in credit or in gold. They are expecting you.”

  Canker did not deign to read the paper. He stuffed it negligently into his tattered robe. “As always, a pleasure to do business with a professional,” he said.

  Psellos was wrapping the scroll in a lace handkerchief. “When will the down payment be available for other work?”

  Canker shrugged. “My subjects are hale and hearty men beneath their rags. You are satisfied with their work, why not let us have her for another day? Call it a bonus.”

  Psellos was clutching the scroll to his bosom as though it were the holiest of relics. “Why not? But do not break her, Canker. She has sweetened many a deal for me.”

  Canker grinned. “She is perhaps a little bent, but nowhere near broken yet, never fear. Have some more wine, my lord. Perhaps we can discuss a little business.”

  Rol eased himself backwards off the wooden gallery inch by agonizing inch. The creaks and groans of the rotten wood were masked by a raucous babble of talk and laughter from the gathered men below. At last he reached the passageway behind him and was able to rise to his feet. He heard Psellos laugh, and for some reason a hot blaze of hatred rose up in his heart. He dodged the strung wires with supple swiftness, and clutching his makeshift club, he padded back into the darkness of the abandoned warehouse, his mind full of what he had seen and heard. Not even in his own thoughts did he admit or analyze what he intended to do. His heart knew without being told.

  He circled round the firelit chamber wherein the King of Thieves entertained Psellos. The warehouse had been subdivided by moldering timber partitions and piled mounds of rubbish. Here and there pallets of straw lay upon the stone, little heaps of belongings, a dying fire aglow in a crudely made rock hearth. But there was no movement save for the small scurrying life of half-glimpsed vermin. It would seem that all those who made this place their home were drinking with their king and his guest.

  Almost all. In the quiet dark Rol could still hear the buzz of talk from the firelit chamber, but he had grown accustomed to that. Now there were noises nearer at hand. Men gabbling, a snorted laugh, a beastlike grunting.

  It was pitch-black, but Rol had not thought to wonder why it was he could see quite clearly. He followed the noises down a series of passages, and the gleam of the wires brought him up short again. Three of them this time. He held his breath as he twisted through them, and then went on.

  Candlelight flickering out of an opening to his left in the passageway ahead. An odd smell, like that of a moldy herb being burned. He glided forward, drew a deep breath, and then risked a split-second glance round the corner.

  He leaned back against the rough wall again, exhaled. In his mind’s eye the picture was bright and hard and clear. Once again, his body knew what it would do with no prompting from his will. He closed his eyes for a second, evened out his breathing, then nodded once, and turned the corner.

  Three men, one on the bed, another at its foot, the third at its head. The belaying pin cracked off the skull of the nearest before he even turned round, the noise sharp and startling. Not all Rol’s strength had gone into the strike; he remembered Grandfather teaching him how to kill a pig. The placing of the blow was more important than the force.

  As his striking arm completed its arc, snicking off the broken bone of the man’s head, so Rol stepped forward alongside the bed. The second man was naked from the waist down, his member jutting out from under his ragged shirt. Rol reached below it, found the testes in their soft bag of skin, and clenched his fingers about them, squeezing with all the strength in his fist. He felt them squish and pop. The man’s mouth opened in an O of agonized astonishment, but before a noise could issue from his throat Rol had thrust the blunt end of the belaying pin in over h
is teeth, breaking them, hammering through to the back of his throat.

  He turned then to the third man who was disentangling himself from his activities on the bed, a blade naked in his hand. This one had had a moment more to collect his wits. The knife stabbed out for Rol’s side but Rol was already turning, and the blade buried itself in his forearm instead. The belaying pin swung round and took the fellow under his left ear. The blow staggered him long enough for Rol to bring a final swing down on the top of his forehead. This last was delivered with every ounce of strength he had left. The front of the man’s face caved in, nose and eyes destroyed as the hard wood went through to the brain.

  A gurgling squeal from the floor from the wretch who lay cupping his genitalia. Rol stamped a boot down on the side of his neck, breaking the vertebrae there with an audible snap, and he was still.

  He stood breathing evenly, the pain in his forearm beginning to make itself felt. Perhaps eight seconds had gone by since he had entered the room, and the noise of the fight had been no louder than the groans and grunts that had preceded it. There was no sudden uproar. Rol stared down at the bed, at Rowen, and something went out of him, some calm exaltation. He bent over, gasping, and was sick in a corner of the filthy little room.

  Her body was very white in the dim candlelit gloom, which meant that the bruises and welts stood out on her skin all the more starkly. She was watching him, but there was a dulled detachment in her gaze he had never seen before. He had dreamed of her nakedness for weeks, but seeing her like this roused only pity in him, and outrage. He untied her arms and closed her legs to hide the glistening darkness at their crux, wiped some of the filth off her skin with the corner of a less-filthy blanket. She lay unresisting and limp, and he wondered what they had done to her, besides the obvious.

  That smell in the air. He traced it to a small brass dish by the side of the bed. Within it were a number of tiny black cubes. As he touched one, part of it crumbled into powder and he coughed at the fragrant little cloud it produced. His head swam momentarily, and he spat to get the taste out of his mouth.

  He stepped over the bodies on the floor. His forearm was dripping and numb, his left hand close to useless. He tore strips off the coverlet and tied them tight about the wound. Rowen’s eyes followed him but she made no sound. He found her clothes to the right of the bed and set them on her stomach. “Get dressed. We have to go.” This last in a racked whisper. Fear was rising up in his throat, the thought of what he had just done, the sinking realization that there would be consequences.

  Rowen’s hands twitched. Her mouth opened but only an inarticulate groan came out. He bent over her face and took her restless fingers in his own.

  “What? What is it? Tell me.”

  A tear fled from the outside corner of her eye and trickled down to her neck. Rol leaned farther, until they were sharing each other’s breath and he could feel the butterfly-kiss of her eyelashes on his cheek.

  “Fool,” she said, and pushed him away.

  He straightened, looking down on her in bewilderment. “Get dressed,” he repeated mechanically.

  “Go,” she said, baring her teeth.

  “I came here to—to help you,” he whispered. “Look what they were doing to you. He was going to let them have you another whole day.”

  That made her pause. They stared into one another’s eyes, burnished steel meeting a sea-storm. At last her fingers fastened upon the garments he had set atop her abdomen.

  “Help.”

  With one hand at the back of her fluted neck, he raised her up and began to dress her. As they wrestled with her shirt his wounded forearm bled down her stomach, the blood trickling into the matted hair between her legs. With the shirt on he set his arm behind her knees and swung her feet over the side of the bed. She could sit up by herself, though her head still lolled forward, the magnificent black mane of her hair falling down over her bruised breasts.

  Rol stopped to listen. Still that murmur of talk and laughter from the main chamber. But it would not be long before others came down for their turn at the night’s sport.

  He bent and retrieved the knife that had scored his forearm. It was a thick-bladed, slightly curved weapon with an ivory grip, well made and wickedly sharp. Tucking it into his belt, he took Rowen’s arm and hauled her to her feet. “Come. We must go now, right now.”

  She demurred, mumbling, but he dragged her out of the room as a man might support a drunken comrade. She was not heavy, and he swung her up into his arms, some part of him relishing even at that moment the taut feel of her flesh under his hands. She stank of the men who had been abusing her, and of the drug by the bedside. For a moment she struggled in his grasp, trying to make him set her down. Then she gave up, and put her white arms about his neck, hiding her face in the hollow of his shoulder like a child afraid of the night. With that, something of his earlier detachment and calm returned. His heart slowed, and he seemed to see more clearly in the guttering dark beyond the candlelight. He walked along the passageway as sure-footed as a prowling cat, bent under and stepped over the warning wires as though performing part of some slow-stepped dance, and then picked up speed.

  The warehouse was tall, echoing, and it stank with the debris of decades. Rol picked his way like a dancer, some adrenaline still singing through his blood. But after a while the reaction began to set in. Away from the voices, in a corner of the evil-smelling blackness, he went to one knee and set Rowen’s weight atop the other to rest his injured arm, his heartbeat a rushing susurration in his throat. She raised her head, her mouth tickling his ear.

  “Put me down. I can walk.”

  He let her slip out of his arms with an odd reluctance.

  “Do you know a way out?” Her eyes seemed to shine faintly in the dark as she regarded him. Her speech was slow but clear, as though it was an effort for her to make each word distinct.

  “Yes. A window. Not far now.”

  Kneeling, she swayed and leaned against him. Then she turned and vomited. He felt warm liquid spatter his boots. She wiped her mouth on the shoulder of the short-sleeved shirt he had put on her. Only three or four buttons held it closed over her breasts—the rest had been ripped away. She spat, then straightened, and began tying her long hair back from her face.

  “Let us go, then.”

  He rose to his feet. She climbed up him as though he were a ladder, still unsteady. He put an arm about her waist and drew her along, sometimes taking all her weight when her knees buckled. She said no word, but put her left arm about his shoulders and her right hand on his where it gripped her hip.

  Somehow he remembered the way he had come, and they staggered back through the blank darkness, the rats scurrying out from under their feet. Finally he saw starlight through the windows near the eaves, and sensed the greater height over his head. They were back in the rubbish-mounded space where he had made his entry.

  A clamor. Shouting in the night, echoing behind them. Rowen looked at him. They nodded to each other without a sound, and began scrabbling up toward the grimy windows, Rol thrusting her ahead of him with his good hand. In his growing panic he could not see or remember which one he had come through. Rowen pounded at the stiff frame of the nearest with the ball of her fist, and there was the bright smash of breaking glass. He heard her curse under her breath, and then he was staring at the pale length of her legs as she went through the broken window headfirst. He followed her, the teeth of the broken pane ripping the belly of his tunic, tearing at his breeches. Then he was through, and fell down several feet to land on his shoulder and side. He lay winded for a second, until she gripped his collar and pulled him to his feet. They half ran, half tumbled down the midden of junk that was piled up against the high wall of the warehouse, and at last Rowen’s bare feet were slapping on cobbles. It was raining, and the night air seemed clean and sweet and cold in their lungs. Rol turned inland, to where Ascari rose out of the bay in lamplit disorder, but Rowen took his hand. “No, not that way. They’ll go there first. Co
me.”

  She was bleeding from glass-cuts across her belly and thighs, but she pulled Rol after her with some of her old strength until they stood at the edge of the wharf and were looking down at the black water. Without hesitation Rowen jumped in. He saw the white flash of foam as she went under, and stared half in disbelief. It was a few seconds before he could bring himself to dive in his turn.

  The water was bitter, icy, and foul, its swells awash with the detritus of the port. Rol broke the surface and looked around.

  “In here.”

  She was under the wharf, in among the enormous supporting timber piles. He swam to her, teeth chattering, and scrabbled through the slime and barnacles until he had ahold of the wood beneath. Rowen’s face was livid, her eyes black holes. He could feel her shuddering against him in the water but as he tried to speak she slapped a palm over his mouth.

  They raised their heads as one. There were boots clumping on the wood of the wharf above them, terse voices. Then the boots broke into staccato thumping as their wearers took off at a run, scattering.

  Rowen eased Rol’s newly acquired knife out of his belt.

  A silent shadow was climbing down among the pilings. It was noiseless, sure-footed as an ape. Rowen’s fist cocked back with the knife blade between her fingers. Her shivers stilled. She braced one foot against the timber pile they floated alongside.

  The shadow drew closer. Rowen’s arm snapped forward in a white blur. There was a solid, meaty chunk, and without a sound the shadow tumbled into the water headfirst. The splash seemed very loud in the night, and Rol and Rowen tensed against each other, waiting for some cry of inquiry. But nothing came, no sound, no curious comrade-shadow. Rowen began shuddering again.

  “Can you climb up?” Rol whispered.

  She shook her head. “Must swim farther along. Too close here.”

  They struck out together. Rol kicked off his boots. He felt as though he were swimming through soup. His entire body was shaking with cold and delayed reaction to the violence of the night. His left arm was a throbbing, swollen lump of meat. Looking up, he saw that the sky was lightening out to sea. Dawn was approaching. He had no idea what the coming day held for him, but he more than half wished he had never followed Psellos and Quare out of the door, and had merely done as he was told. He was no longer possessed of the calm certainty that had enabled him to kill three men in cold blood. And Rowen seemed untroubled by gratitude for her rescue.