Serpentine (The Beggar's Ride Book 1)

by Tim Stead

  “Here,” she said, offering one. Callista took it. It amazed her that this woman seemed to carry so much with her – all the necessaries of a comfortable life. She ate her portion in silence.

  “It’s only three hours ride,” the woman said, gesturing at the distant shape of Col Boran. “You can jump up behind if you don’t mind that.”

  “Thank you.”

  The woman cleaned the plates and began to make tea. She was clearly in no hurry to begin the journey. Callista watched her. Everything she did was graceful. It seemed that every motion, from taking a pot from her saddlebag to crouching down in front of the fire was smooth and perfectly balanced. She had tied her hair back, and that exposed more of her perfect skin.

  A movement out on the plain caught her eye. Two riders were approaching. She felt a knot form in the pit of her stomach.

  “No need to fret,” the woman said. “There’s a lot of traffic hereabouts, and most of it has nothing to do with you or your uncle.”

  Nevertheless, she watched the men, and saw them turn from their course and ride towards the fire. It struck her that riders who were up this early and already on the road must be in a hurry.

  The men rode up to their camp and reined their mounts to a standstill. The woman rose from beside the fire.

  “Can I offer you tea?” she asked them.

  The men ignored her.

  “You’re Callista Dalini,” one of them said.

  Callista heard the woman sigh, which she thought an odd reaction. The woman walked over to her horse and took something off the saddle. As she walked back the same man spoke again.

  “You’re coming with us,” he said. “Your uncle wants you back.”

  “No.” It was the woman who spoke.

  For the first time the men looked at her.

  “None of your business, my lady,” the first man said. “We’re acting in accordance with the law.”

  “Afaeli law,” the woman said. “Does this look like Afael?”

  “We’re law hunters from Afael,” the man said. “We’ve been trailing this one for over a week. We’re taking her back. I’d advise you not to interfere.”

  “You’re not taking her back,” the woman said. “She has no wish to go.”

  “She’s not adult,” the man said. “She has no say.”

  “But I do.”

  “Are you her appointed guardian?” the man asked.

  “Yes. I appointed myself.”

  The man grimaced. “That doesn’t count. Look, we don’t want to hurt you, but we have a job to do, and we’re going to do it.” He slipped from the saddle. He was a big man, tall and broad, and he carried a long blade. He put his hand on the sword’s hilt.

  “We’ll take the matter before a dragon,” the woman said. “Or Wolf Narak.”

  “It’s none of your business,” the man said. He was getting annoyed.

  “I’ve made it my business,” the woman told him. “And if you draw that blade you’ll loose your hand.”

  Callista supposed that it was anger that drew the sword, and she couldn’t really see what happened next, but something flashed across the distance between the woman and the law hunter, and the sword flew from his hand. There was blood, too, a lot of it, and the man screamed.

  “Told you,” the woman said.

  The other man, still seated on his horse, didn’t move to help his companion. He looked scared.

  Callista looked back at the woman and saw that she was holding a whip. Her arm was cocked and the length of it stretched out behind her, ready to strike again.

  “Go home,” she said. “And tell the man that hired you that Sithmaree, Benetheon god of snakes, has assumed guardianship of Callista Dalini, and she is my guest at Col Boran.”

  5 Dock Ward

  The city bore the scars of the folly of kings. It had an air of damage about it, as though the place had been hurriedly put back together again after an accident. In a way this was exactly correct. Afael had never fully recovered from the First Great War, and that had been five hundred years ago.

  Francis Gayne made his way past the patched up buildings of the port quarter down to the water’s edge. Francis was not of Afaeli stock, but he thought of himself as a native. His grandfather had made his home in the city after the Second Great War, and both Francis and his father had been born here. Even so, there were some in the city who resented a man with an Avilian name.

  He walked along the dockside and came eventually to his destination, The Burnt Ship, a tavern whose name celebrated the very war that had brought Afael low. The irony was not lost on him.

  He went into the tavern. It was not busy at this time of day. The one thing that still thrived in Afael was the shipping business, but this early in the morning the sailors who crowded such taverns were still working, loading and unloading. It was after dark that the underbelly of the city came alive.

  He stopped at the bar and nodded to the barkeep, who knew him.

  “Upstairs,” the man said. “Room seven.”

  It was the room they always used – the one on the end with a store cupboard next to it so there was almost no chance of being overheard.

  Francis climbed the stairs. He knocked on the door of room seven, knocked twice, paused, three times, paused and once more.

  “Who is it?” The voice was muffled, but he recognised it.

  “It’s Francis, Carillo,” he said.

  The door opened a crack, he was inspected, and then it opened fully.

  “You’re late,” Carillo said.

  “The forge is busy,” he said. “Every man in Afael seems to want a sword beaten or a horse shod.”

  He went in and Carillo bolted the door behind him.

  There were four other men in the room besides himself and the man who’d admitted him. He knew them all. Johan Paritti sat on the far side of a table, leaning back in a hard wooden chair. He was supposed to be the clever one. He was certainly older than the rest of them, grey haired and thin with pale blue eyes. He had a habit of rubbing his clean shaven chin when he was thinking, or pretending to think.

  Keron Silsila sat on his left. Keron was a man of action – any action. If there was a bar fight somewhere in the city Keron would most likely be part of it. Francis thought him reckless, but there was no doubt that he was a good man to have beside you when things went wrong. He was big, strong, and quick with those fists. Otherwise he had the appearance of a bear in human form – a thick beard, hairy arms, and that slightly bow-legged gait that some truly big men possess.

  These two, Johan and Keron, Francis counted as friends. The others, Disal and Shalinan, he knew, but not that well. One was a shopkeeper and the other a fisherman, but he could never remember which was which.

  “What news?” he asked.

  “Our friends in the south ward are afraid,” Keron said.

  “With some reason,” Disal added. “Ten dead last week. They won’t be on the streets again this month, nor next.”

  “We must gather our strength,” Johan said. “It is obvious from last month that Casraes will resist the inevitable. He is being pushed too hard from the other side. We cannot expect any change to come from the king.”

  “So we kill the king?” Keron asked.

  There was a moment of silence. As far as Francis knew this was the first time this particular treason had been voiced at a meeting of the dock ward committee, or anywhere at all.

  “It would achieve nothing,” Johan said, stroking his chin. “Kill one king and you get another. Kill his whole family and you’ll get one of the hard-line dukes grabbing power.”

  “Then what? We just wait?” Keron obviously wanted to do something. Johan put a thin hand on Keron’s massive forearm.

  “Patience,” he said. “We must plan carefully. If we make a precipitous move we may end up with a civil war that we cannot win.”

  “So we need an army,” Keron said.

  “The army is the army,” Johan said. “There are some who are sympathetic to
us, but not many in the ranks of the lords’ regiments.”

  “You want to turn the army? It’s not possible.” Disal was aghast.

  “It’s the only way,” Johan insisted. “And not all the army – just enough of the city regiments that the others will think twice.”

  Francis studied his friend’s face. He was certain now that Johan had never expected their street protests to achieve anything. It had been a prelude to civil war. He had insisted that they should be unarmed, and Francis saw why. People had been killed, and many of the soldiers who had been ordered to do the work, and just as many of those who had watched would have had misgivings. Afaeli soldiers had no wish to kill their own people over a difference of opinion. It was a first step, a wedge that could be hammered between the troops of the city regiments and their loyalty to the king.

  He wondered how long it would be.

  Carillo had been at the door all this time. Now he stepped into the room again.

  “There’s noise downstairs,” he said.

  “Noise?”

  “Trouble,” Carillo said.

  Keron was on his feet in a moment, a knife appearing in his hand. He pressed an ear to the door.

  “Duke’s men,” he said. “We must have been betrayed.” He pulled the door open to reveal an empty corridor. Because it was an end room, room seven was a trap, but the landlord had delayed the men below, and they had a chance. They rushed down the corridor, Francis following Disal and the others close behind. Keron stopped at the head of the stairs.

  “No time for that,” Francis said.

  “It’ll buy time,” Keron replied. “Go. I’ll catch up.”

  Francis went. They ran into the room at the other end of the corridor, which was thankfully empty, and Disal opened the window. From here it was a short drop down to the stable roof, then beyond that into an alley that ran north into the heart of dock ward. There they could vanish, be just a few more citizens out in the early morning, which is exactly what they were.

  Francis pushed Johan ahead of him and watched Disal run across the stable roof and vanish over the edge. Carillo followed, and Francis swung a leg over the sill and looked back.

  Keron was throwing furniture down the stairs. He’d forced the door on the room opposite the steps and was emptying it down the stairwell.

  Francis landed on the roof and looked up. A moment later Keron appeared above him and jumped through the window. They ran together to the end of the stable and jumped down into the street. Already there was no sign of the others. Keron grinned.

  “Be a while yet before they get past that lot.” He laughed, and they ran together into the waking city.

  6 Bas Erinor

  Cain waited patiently. He had grown used to waiting over the years. He remembered this room from a time when Quinnial had been duke and Maryal his wife, but that had been decades ago, and they were all dead and half forgotten. The current duke was Quin’s great grandson, and lacked both his illustrious ancestor’s sense of decorum and much of his intelligence.

  It seemed foolish for a mortal prince to keep a Farheim lord waiting.

  A step turned his head, and he saw that a functionary of some kind had entered the room. He looked hesitant and kept his distance as though unsure how dangerous Cain might be.

  “My lord, the Duke will see you now.”

  Cain stood without a word and followed the man through a doorway and past a clutch of armed guards until they came to the Duke of Bas Erinor’s door.

  Cain knew that the Duke was technically more powerful than the King of Avilian, his nominal lord. This was because he commanded the army – a hereditary role. Even so he was surprised when one of the guards asked for his blade.

  He could have chosen to take it as an insult, and there was no way these men could take his blade from him. That was one benefit of being Farheim: the death-born were quicker and stronger than ordinary men, and Cain could have killed everyone in the room if he’d been the sort of monster they seemed to believe he was.

  Instead he meekly handed over his blade. The chief guard looked relieved.

  Pointlessly disarmed, he was shown into the Duke’s presence.

  Cain studied the man who ruled the city of the gods. He was tall and thin, and probably good looking, though Cain would not have admitted to being a judge of such things. The Duke’s pale hair was tied back in a fashionable tail and his clothing was ornate, too much for Cain’s taste.

  “Cain Arbak,” the Duke said. He smiled, but the smile didn’t seem more than skin deep.

  “You summoned me,” Cain said.

  “I did,” the duke confirmed. “I summoned you because I want to know what Col Boran is going to do.”

  “Do?”

  “About our fractious eastern neighbour, Afael.”

  Cain considered this for a moment. He knew that there had been trouble in Afael, riots in the streets, but beyond that he was ill informed. He had received no word from either Pascha or Narak in the last two weeks, so he had no idea what they might intend. He could guess, though. Neither of the powers at Col Boran saw it as their place to interfere in the kingdoms.

  “I haven’t spoken to Col Boran in a while,” he said. “But I don’t expect them to interfere in the affairs of Afael any more than I would expect to see them take a hand in Avilian.”

  “But Wolf Narak has always been a friend to Avilian,” the duke said. “And besides, there is no problem here.”

  “A matter of opinion,” Cain said. The comment did not endear him to the duke, who grew slightly red and looked away for a moment. It had not been a clever thing to say, but Cain did not think Avilian was prospering. There had been a general decline since the second war and a noticeable increase in beggars on the streets of Bas Erinor that coincided with greater displays of excess on the part of the nobility. The same sickness existed in Afael, though not, he noted, in Berash or Telas. The kingdoms to the west of Avilian had thrived in the new age.

  The duke adopted a new approach.

  “If nothing is done Afael will descend into chaos. Innocents will die. Surely Col Boran does not want that?”

  “The affairs of the kingdoms are the affairs of the kingdoms,” Cain replied. “If Eran Pascha stooped to every misdeed, sought justice for every wrong she would never be at Col Boran.” He looked at the duke. The man was in need of some gesture or he might be inclined to do something really stupid – such as involving Avilian in Afael’s mess. Cain could see that the duke was afraid. The idea that Afael’s troubles would spill over into Avilian terrified him. Cain decided to throw him a bone. “However, if there is some special plea you wish to make I will travel to Col Boran myself and deliver your message.”

  It was enough, apparently. The duke smiled again. “I will draft a letter and have it ready in the morning,” he said. “You will deliver it personally?”

  “I will, and I shall voice your concerns to Eran Pascha and Wolf Narak face to face. I cannot promise more.”

  “No, No. That is good.” The man now seemed pleased. “I could not ask for a better messenger.”

  “Then I will await your word,” Cain said. “Your men can find me at The Seventh Friend.”

  It was about time he travelled back to Col Boran anyway. He had gathered a lot of information in Avilian that Pascha and the Wolf should know. The political situation here was headed down the same road as Afael, but a year or two behind. The duke’s fears were not without foundation, but he seemed to have no idea of the remedy.

  He retrieved his blade from the guards, left Bas Erinor castle and walked alone down the Divine Stair. He trekked across the low city by the most direct route, cutting through alleyways, going through the dark places that gentle folk avoided.

  At one point he met a pair of cutpurses, but they knew him at once and fled down a side alley.

  It was a melancholy thing, but it reminded Cain of the first time he had walked this way, the day he had met Tane Bargil. Tane had been a loyal employee and friend for half a centu
ry. Cain had gone to war in his company, trusted the running of The Seventh Friend to the big man, and had owed him his life. But Tane was long gone. He’d died while Quinnial was still duke, and peacefully at a good age. He could not have asked for more, yet Cain missed the man. Every time he was in Bas Erinor he remembered him and felt a wistful longing for those days when he and Tane and Sheyani had been in The Seventh Friend and it was all they had.

  Sheyani, of course was still with him. They had been wed longer than most folk could expect to live, and it had all been good. He had never regretted it.

  The inn was quiet at this time of day. It was still popular, and on the rare occasions when Sheyani played her music they still needed doormen to keep out the crowds, but the mainstay had been old soldiers from the regiments of The Seventh Friend, and after the war one regiment had been stood down, the other reduced to part-time volunteers and the Inn’s name had lost some of its meaning, though history still clung to the place like an old cloak.

  Cain stepped through the door.

  There were fifteen or twenty customers scattered about the public room, and a gentle buzz of conversation. The barkeep nodded to him and he went through, past the private rooms and up the stairs to the small apartment he used when in the city. This place was the main reason he kept the inn. He no longer needed the money it generated but the inn had such sentimental value, and the apartment was so comfortable that he was loath to part with it.

  Sheyani was going through the accounts, crouched over a table, tracing figures with an extended finger. She held up a hand when he entered to keep him from speaking and he waited while she scribbled a note on a scrap of paper.

  “There,” she said. She looked up and smiled.

  “I don’t know why you bother,” Cain said. “Fal has never tried to cheat us, and he runs the place better than I ever did.”

  “He likes me to check,” she said. “He likes it because he knows he runs the place so well.”