by Paul Kearney
He took to the streets in his journeyman attire. A shirt of unbleached wool, canvas breeches, high boots, and a comfortable sleeveless tunic of soft leather with large pockets. From his belt hung a stout hide purse, a double-edged dirk, and the scimitar in its ancient-looking scabbard. Over all he had thrown an oilskin cloak, black with age and long use. He would spend Psellos’s minims like a gentleman. He would get drunk and pick a fight and make a whore moan. Or pay her to moan at least. He would . . .
He would do whatever it took to stop thinking of Psellos and Rowen making the two-backed beast. And he would give ear to the comforting whispers of his new sword.
No—was he drunk already? Or not drunk enough. “Iron does not speak,” he said aloud, and for some reason the thought pleased him. He strode down the hilly streets of lamplit Ascari with the brisk pace of a man lucky in love.
Eight
NAMING A BLADE
HE HAD BEEN TAUGHT TO BE CAUTIOUS IN ASCARI, TO fade into the background. It had been part of his training. He and Rowen had slipped about a score of taverns and slop-houses up and down the city, their task to blend in, to remain so unnoticed that the other customers would not even spare them a comment on the weather. Rol had thought it an impossible feat, for Rowen was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he himself was not so unremarkable.
“We use disguises, then,” he had said to Rowen, “hooded cloaks and false beards and the like?”
“No. We go in as we are.”
“Then it’s impossible.”
“Watch me first.”
And she had glided into the Merry Leper, as quick and sure as an otter hunting eels. He had followed after, and the heads that had not turned at her passing now swiveled to regard him at once with a mixture of suspicion and hostility. No one drank in the Leper who was not a mariner or a longshoreman.
“How is it done?” he had asked her later, when she had extricated him from an ugly scene.
“It is in the mind, like a fence you put round yourself—or better yet, a veil of shadow. It blurs men’s minds, turns them aside like a buckler turning the point of a sword.”
“Yes, but how is it done?”
One of her priceless smiles. “That is something you will have to find out for yourself. It is enough to know that it can be done, that it is in you to do it.”
Well, he had done it, on occasion, or thought he had. It was a case of visualizing that veil of shadow, and then seeing men’s regard turn toward it like bright spears of interest. When that happened, the shadow hardened, and rebuffed them, and they slid away. Easier when the watchers were drunk, or when they came one and two at a time. What he had not yet mastered was the concentrated regard of an entire roomful of people turning to look at the latest incomer. All men did it; it was a habit of nature. The only way Rol could defend himself against that many eyes was to enter directly behind someone else, and let them take the brunt of the drinkers’ curiosity.
But tonight he did not give a rat’s behind how many men and women noted his coming and going. The sword was a comforting weight at his hip, and he could feel the eagerness in the blade, the hot desire to leave the scabbard. He laughed aloud for he knew not what, whilst the folk on the streets looked askance at the tall youth and his strange eyes, the black cloak rising in his wake.
A soft rain had come in off the sea so that the cobbles were shining at Rol’s feet, but the street traders merely moved beneath their striped and checkered canvas awnings and the rest of the traffic ignored it. Cartsway, the main thoroughfare, wound through the hills like a silken sash abandoned on a rumpled bed. At the main crossroads iron braziers were flaming with charcoal, and the City Watch stood yawning and grumbling among themselves. The Watch had just changed, and these were the Nightmen. Higher paid than the Daywatch, they were also of more dubious character, and it was best to steer clear of them. Their captain was in Psellos’s pay, but his hold over his subordinates was often tenuous.
They knew Rol, had been apprised of his identity by Psellos six months before. They watched him as he passed by, and Rol saw them spit, out of the corner of his eye. He smiled, the strange, fey mood still upon him.
He turned off Cartsway as the rain grew heavier. Crowds of cloaked, ill-smelling townsfolk jostled and cursed amid the narrower streets, all trying to steer clear of the open central drains which ran with ordure and were alive with rats. It was spring, and in the woods up in the foothills the primroses would be out, but here in the city the seasons counted for less. One could drink beer in the street in comfort if it was summer, and on the coldest winter nights many taverns charged an entrance fee for those desperate for warmth, but that was all.
A beggar, his eyes mere shriveled raisins in his head, held out a yellow-nailed hand in blind hope. Rol dropped a minim into it, and the beggar gaped, feeling the rare weight of silver. “Thanks to your honor! A blessing on your house!” He would be lucky not to be killed for it before the night was out.
Eastside, the lower quarter of the city that faced toward Dennifrey. Rowen had taken him here a few times, to let him grow accustomed to the brash streetlife, the insistent hawkers, the predatory gangs, the confidence tricksters. It seemed amazing sometimes that ordinary, honest traders and businessmen could operate in Ascari, but of course that was all down to the King of Thieves, and the price of his protection. A feather pinned above the doorway of a shop meant that no footpad or urchin would trouble the place. If he did, he would be found with a slit throat in short order. Some of the older establishments, such as inns, had been under the Thief-King’s protection so long that the feather had been carved in stone or wood, and was placed above the entrance as a badge of pride, a guarantee that no one within would be smothered in his bed. The Feathermen, as common folk often called those of the Guild of Thieves, could drink their way from hilltop to harbor (it was said) and never pay for a drop, such was the power of their patronage.
If Rol had known then what he did now, he would never have dared to follow Psellos and Quare out of the door that night. But then he might still be a scullion, kept only to be periodically milked of his blood.
He and Rowen both gave their blood to Psellos once a month. Their bed and board, the Master called it. He took it to the apothecary, Grayven, who had his shop here in Eastside, and it was auctioned off in secret. Thus the rich and noble of Ascari prolonged their lives, drinking the blood of those they secretly regarded as monsters. It was an odd world, odder than Rol would ever once have believed, for all his grandfather’s tall tales.
He approached a fight in the street, and studied the combatants with some interest. Three footpads had set upon a scrawny man of middle years whose bald head was already speckled with his own worthless gore. The footpads wore blue rags about their necks which meant that they were licensed, and thus the Watch would leave them be—not that there were any of the Watch down here in Eastside after dark. The footpads were trying to be reasonable with their victim.
“Just give us the bloody purse, and you’ll have nothing worse to show for it than a bump on the skull, mate.”
“You’re only making it worse for yourself,” another said with an aggrieved air.
The little bald man was clutching his purse to his chest as though it were a child. His eyes were tight shut and his widely spaced teeth were clenched.
One of the footpads rose and produced a long knife. “Have it your way, then, you little bastard.”
“Hold on there, lads,” Rol said, prompted by he knew not what. The hilt of the scimitar was vibrating under his palm. He felt he must almost hold it down in the scabbard.
The quartet of struggling figures paused and looked at him. They saw a tall man—no, not much more than a boy, at second glance, but big for his age, and with oddly unsettling eyes. A worn cloak only partially concealed the fact that the rest of his clothes were of good quality. And a plump purse hung from his belt.
The three footpads released the little bald man and he slumped into the mud. A ribbon of blo
od coursed steadily from his crown, sealing one eye shut, dripping off his unshaven chin.
The one with the drawn knife grinned. “Slumming it tonight, are we, my young cock? Come to see how the lower half live? I’ll wager it’s silver that plumps out that purse of yours. No copper minims for the likes of you. Maybe even a gold ryal—ah, it’s been a long time since Snick has seen the gleam of gold!”
The other two drew their knives also, though knife was an inoffensive term for a length of cruelly sharpened iron a foot long. Rol’s heart began to throb in his throat. He was not afraid—there was a kind of gladness in him. He drew his sword, and it leaped up like a pinion of brightness in the street. The cloak he whipped round his left arm. He realized he had been looking for this, or something like it.
All about them the passersby were stopping to watch, and had begun to crowd against the walls of the nearby houses. It was an ancient form of entertainment, free to those who were not involved. Other folk were leaning out into the street from upstairs windows, crowing and clapping their hands and telling their children to come see.
Snick’s eyes flicked to the blade of the scimitar. A moment of doubt, followed by a kind of lust. He and Rol smiled at each other in perfect understanding. Then the footpads moved.
Two to his front, one circling round to find his rear. Without conscious volition, Rol blocked two leaping thrusts of the knives, clashing them aside with little explosions of sparks. He moved in fast, following up. His left elbow caught the footpad leader below the nose, breaking teeth, snapping cartilage. The arm moved on, swooped over the thrusting blade of the second, caught the man’s wrist. At the same time Rol was aware of the man behind him coming in for the kill, like a cloud sensed behind his shoulder. He spun the scimitar without looking back, felt it cut through something as yielding as clay. Attention back to the second man. He twisted the wrist, broke it with a loud snap, released it with the fellow yelling in his face, and sidestepped another stab from the third at his rear.
He was out of their circle. The leader was holding his face, blood pouring over his fingers. The second was retrieving his knife, one hand hanging useless and limp. The third was gasping, his hands pressed to the red rent where Rol had slashed open his bowels.
A smattering of derisive applause broke out around them. Someone threw half a cabbage head at the leader of the footpads, and there was hooted laughter. The two men who could stand helped each other away whilst the folk in the street bombarded them with catcalls and refuse. The third had collapsed, fists clenched in his lacerated intestines. He drew his legs up like a child going to sleep, and died there in the mud. Rol looked down at the blade of his sword. There was no blood thereon—it had cut too swiftly for that. He thought of the bright tool that Psellos used to draw blood every month.
“I shall call you Fleam,” he said, and the sword seemed to dip in his hand in answer. He sheathed it, unwrapped his cloak from his left arm—there was a rent in the oilskin—and looked about himself like a man waking from sleep.
The little knots of bystanders were unclotting already, going about their nightly business. Though the street was crowded, they made a space around Rol as though he had an unseen wall about him. He rubbed his hand over his face and bent over the little bald man who lay bloody-faced, still clutching his purse. He was grinning.
“That was as good as a play, my lad. Here, help me up.” On his feet, he shook Rol’s hand like a man pumping water. “Come with me and I’ll buy you a drink—I can do that at least. I have never seen such swordplay. Come now—I have friends waiting for me.”
Rol was about to refuse—the fey mood was gone now, and in its place was sinking the sick cold reaction. But then he thought of the Tower, and what was happening in there tonight, and he nodded. He was content to follow now, his passion spent.
The small man’s name was Woodrin, and he was purser and part owner of an Andelysian brig which was bound for Osmer, far to the southwest of the world, beyond the Seven Isles. They had made landfall in Gascar to off-load half their cargo of walrus ivory and to let the ship’s company cry a little havoc in the famed taverns of Ascari. The purse he had fought so recklessly to retain contained the proceeds of their cargo’s auction, which in turn represented most of the sailors’ pay for the outbound voyage.
“I am not the only one of the company who will be glad to buy you a drink, I am sure.” The little man laughed, wiping the blood out of his eye with a spotted bandanna.
The Merry Leper. Rol had to smile as Woodrin clapped him on the back and ushered him in.
The place was low-beamed, foggy with whitherb smoke, close and hot as a steam room, and fetid with the smell of spilled beer, ill-washed men, and stale food. The roar of noise from the motley throng within struck Rol like a wave as he entered, but it subsided somewhat as he was studied closely by those whose noses were not too deep in their tankards. No veil of shadow here. He stood an ordinary man amongst men, returning their stares warily.
A huge, startling shape rose from beside the fire, where it had been turning a spitted pig. “Woodrin—what’s this with the blood and the shit and all? I told you I should have come with you.”
The speaker was a thing the like of which Rol had never seen before. Some fathom and a half tall, it had to crouch under the beams of the Leper, its knotted knuckles resting on the flags of the floor. In its head burned two green lights which blinked under a frowning crag of bone, and blunt tusks arced out above the lower lip. Its flesh was a mottled olive, lighter on the chest, darker on the forearms and face. It wore loose cowhide breeches with the hair left on, and a hide waistcoat. The creature’s great, splayed feet were bare, each toe as wide as Rol’s wrist.
“Fear not, Gallico; I had an angel guarding me. This is—a man of the city—who saw fit to preserve me from some overfriendly footpads.”
The thing called Gallico lumbered forward, rocking on its fists like a boat chopping through swell. Bent though it was, its eyes were on a level with Rol’s. The light in them moderated somewhat, and Rol could see that there were golden flecks in the green, and black pupils which were not round, but lozenge-shaped. Surrounding the eyes was a massive frame of bone, the olive skin stretched tight across it, speckled with tiny golden hairs. The thing’s scalp was entirely bald, but it had grown a sparse goatee on its chin, and there were gold rings in its earlobes, wide enough to settle comfortably about a man’s thumb.
The creature raised its arm (thicker than Rol’s thigh) and set a hand on his shoulder. “Well, now,” it said, and its voice was low, like a bass lute. “What might this man of the city’s name be?”
“My name is Rol, Rol Cortishane.”
“Rol Cortishane, I am Peor Gallico.” The thing grinned horribly. “I believe I shall buy you a beer.”
The fight in the street was a story now, which found a worthy teller in Woodrin, once his comrades had stopped up his broken head and wiped the worst of the filth from his clothes. Rol drank the good beer that came foaming up from the cellar below in tall wooden pitchers. In Psellos’s Tower the Master and Rol and Rowen drank wine, and beer, suitably watered, was the preserve of the lower orders. It tasted nothing like this.
Gallico was watching him, one paw turning the pig on the spit as easily as if it were a chicken.
“Why, Woodrin, he’s naught but a boy. Are you sure it was three desperate thieves, not just some shirttailed urchin who caught you unawares?”
A gale of laughter met this sally. Woodrin was indignant. “I tell you it was three professionals, licensed and all. This boy took them on cool as you please, slew one and sent the others limping off with broken bones and busted noses.”
“He’s somewhat young to be a killer of men,” Gallico said, but there was no humor in his voice now. The green glitter of his eyes had sharpened. “But, yes, I see it. I see—” He stopped, and supped mightily out of a wooden tankard which seemed small as a thimble in his fist. “I need some air, and to stretch the kinks out of my backbone. You there, our heroi
c rescuer, lend me a hand out of the door.”
The talk and laughter fell, and Gallico looked round, smiled. “Why the long faces? I will not bite him. Come, Rol Cortishane. Bear with me.”
For the first time in his life, Rol was reluctant to leave a tavern. It was something to be a hero, or at least it was something to be accepted, and brought into the edges of a brotherhood. It was new, and he liked it.
The streets were black and full of running water, but the rain had stopped, and in this lightless corner of the city it was possible to look up and see the stars. Gallico straightened to his full height upon leaving the tavern, and Rol stepped back a pace, shocked by the sheer bulk of the creature. His hand went to Fleam’s hilt, naked training kicking in.
“Na, na,” Gallico said equably, “you need not fear me. We are all in your debt, and mariners do not forget. Keep your sword blade hid.” His nostrils widened as he sniffed the air. “A change is in the wind. It will have backed round to due east by morning. We will have it on the port beam.”
“You sail tomorrow?”
“We sail today, youngster, at dawn.”
“For Osmer.”
“Yes, sunny Osmer of the Singers. A twelve-day trip, if Ran is kind.”
“And where then?”
“Wherever our next cargo takes us, wherever the wind suffers us to go. Wind, cargo, and the thews of men, that is all a good ship needs, if it is to make a profit in this godless world of ours.”
There was a sudden painful yearning in Rol, a desire to take ship with this thing and this company whose fellowship had blossomed all around him back in the tavern. To tread the seaways of the world and leave behind the Tower of Michal Psellos, the unending training for an unknown purpose. Rowen. To be clean and free and at sea again.