Serpentine (The Beggar's Ride Book 1)

by Tim Stead

  Francis did his best. “Most of the city is neither ward-sworn folk nor did they side with the dukes. They just tried to live their lives. They’re not our enemies.”

  “So we bleed and they benefit?”

  “We bled for them, for the right of the people to choose their own leaders.”

  “Is that what we were doing?” the big man seemed unimpressed. “I thought we were fighting to rid ourselves of the dukes, and the king, for us to rule in their place.”

  “We’d be no different if we did that, Keron. This was Johan’s vision, to see the people of Afael as a free, united folk. If everyone rules there’s no call to be overthrowing anyone.”

  “Aye, I heard Johan talk often enough, but they haven’t earned it, Francis. We have.”

  Keron wasn’t alone in thinking this way. The men who’d worked for this in the wards thought themselves better suited to the new world and more deserving of its benefits, and Francis had some sympathy with the point of view, but he couldn’t permit it to take hold. He understood why Johan had held the views he’d held, and he shared them. There was no point in replacing one elite with another.

  Francis co-opted the taverns, some of them unwillingly. They would be the places where the choosing would happen, and the ward men would do the counting. People from all walks of life put themselves forwards and, for Francis, that brought the first signs of trouble.

  He moved around the city, sitting in taverns listening to the talk. It gave him an understanding of what was on the people’s minds, and it was on a visit to North Ward that he encountered his first persuaders.

  He was sitting at a back table alone, nursing a modestly flavoured ale when two men pushed their way through the tavern door. They were big men and the tavern, which was quite sparsely patronised at this time of day suddenly seemed more crowded. Francis noted that the barkeep stepped back from the counter.

  The men were carrying sticks, or clubs, or something in between. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, and called for two ales.

  Drunk, Francis thought, and used to getting their own way.

  They leaned their elbows on the bar and faced the room. One of them spotted Francis sitting at the back and nudged his fellow. They brought their ales and sticks over to his table and sat down opposite.

  “Don’t mind, do you?” one of them said in a tone that suggested he’d better not.

  “I don’t mind,” he told them.

  “You’re new here,” one of them said. “You a North Ward man?”

  Francis considered answering truthfully, that he was Dock Ward, and then they would probably leave him alone, but he wanted to see what they would do.

  “North Ward,” he said. “Aye.”

  “And who are you going to write your name by in the choosing?”

  Francis didn’t know the names in North Ward. “That’s my business,” he said.

  One of the men picked up his stick. “That’s not very friendly, citizen,” he said.

  “I’m not obliged to be your friend,” Francis replied.

  The two men glanced at each other. Francis was a big man, being a smith, but these men were bigger still, and they looked hard. The man with the stick reached over and poked Francis in the chest.

  “Who do you favour?” he asked.

  “Who do you want me to favour?”

  The blow was half expected, but it still hurt – a sharp rap on his shoulder. Francis rubbed the spot. “There’s no call for that,” he said. “Every man is free to choose. That’s the new law.”

  The man hit him again, this time on the ear. It hurt a lot, and Francis realised for the first time that he would have a choice between taking a beating and using his gift.

  “There’s a newer law,” the man with the stick said. “You tell us or we hit you again.”

  Francis chose not to take a beating. He could hardly name a candidate from North Ward because he didn’t know any. Instead he reached out and stole a handful of the man’s life. It felt more controlled than the first time, even more than when he had humiliated the general. The club fell from the man’s hand and he pitched forwards, knocking his beer aside and clutching at his throat.

  “The old law stands,” Francis said. He stood up. “Who do you work for?” he asked.

  The second man stood and faced him. “What have you done?” Francis could see the fear in his face, and fear would mean he would either run or strike.

  “Who do you work for? Tell me and you might still get out of here alive.”

  The man wasn’t brave. Francis had seen his kind before. He was tough enough faced with a smaller man, or among friends, but faced with real power he crumbled.

  “Chaini,” he said. “We work for Tollen Chaini.”

  Francis had never heard the name, which wasn’t surprising.

  “We’ll go and speak with him,” Francis said. He allowed the life to trickle back into the man he’d felled. “Help your friend,” he said. “And pay for your ale before we leave.”

  They went out into the daylight of an overcast afternoon. The man who’d named his employer helped his fellow along the street, though the latter stumbled a few times and seemed confused as they made their way north, out of the poorer streets and into better.

  Money, Francis thought, was at the root of this. This man, this Tollen Chaini, was a man with money and no name. He was trying to buy power – not with promises, but threats.

  The house confirmed it. It was a big place set back from the road, mullioned windows, a large oak door, a gravelled courtyard big enough to allow a coach to pull up to the entrance.

  Francis’s escorts were beginning to look nervous, which meant that they were almost as afraid of Chaini as they were of Francis. He was tempted to let the two men go, but thought he might learn more watching them face their master, so he bade them knock on the door and waited just out of arm’s reach for the house to open.

  A servant greeted them, immaculate in dress and rigidly cold towards the pair of thugs.

  “Yes?” He was a small man, but blocked the large doorway with confidence.

  “To see the master,” the upright thug said, glancing back at Francis who bore the servant’s scrutiny with indifference. He knew he didn’t look like much.

  “Francis Gayne,” he said, and seeing that the servant didn’t know the name he added: “Ward Master of Dock Ward.”

  That brightened the servant’s face a little. He managed a tight smile. “I will see if the master is receiving,” he said. “Wait here.”

  Francis waited. There was no point forcing his way in unless he was denied entry. It took less than a minute. The servant returned to the door and looked past the two big men as though they were not there.

  “The master will see you,” he said to Francis. It seemed that the bully boys were not going to be admitted after all, and Francis thought that a mistake, but he walked past them and followed the servant into the heart of the house.

  If the general lived well, then this Chaini lived better. The man favoured painted canvas over the more usual tapestries, and the floor was plain wood, polished to an almost metallic sheen. It looked more austere that Derali’s house, but smelled better – camphor and roses – and looked clean in a way that Francis had never seen in a dwelling.

  He was shown into what he assumed was the main living room of the house, and again was impressed by how tidy and clean it seemed. Chaini rose to greet him.

  Francis was surprised. The big men from the tavern had feared Chaini, and so Francis had expected him to be a bigger man, but Chaini was small, dapper, dressed in soft greys and greens.

  “Ward Master Gayne,” Chaini said. There was something that might have been a smile on the man’s face, but almost at once Francis got the distinct impression that Chaini was a man who never smiled, not truly. He accepted Chaini’s hand and found his grip firm, his hand smooth and dry. There was none of the crushing pressure that he would have expected from the thugs they had left outside. He waved at a seat, and
Francis sat.

  “Wine?” Chaini asked. Francis shook his head and watched while the man filled a cup and sipped it. “How can I help you?”

  “I came here with two of your men. I ran into them in a tavern.”

  “Ah,” Chaini almost smiled again. “How unfortunate for them. You have quite a reputation, Ward Master. If half of the rumours are true you are a man to be feared.”

  “Your men are unharmed,” Francis said. The implication, quite deliberate, was that he could have harmed them had he wished to.

  “It is my methods that you disapprove of,” Chaini said.

  “A man who employs such methods is not welcome among the city’s elected,” Francis said.

  “I see.” There was a flash in Chaini’s eyes. He was not a man accustomed to being denied, that much was obvious, but his anger was quickly back under control.

  “You will withdraw from the choosing.”

  “And if I choose not to?”

  It was Francis’s turn to not quite smile. “You will withdraw from the choosing, one way or another.”

  “They say you killed Falini,” Chaini said.

  “Both of them.”

  Chaini leaned back in his comfortable chair. “I am a very wealthy man, Ward Master Gayne. Is there no way this can be overlooked?”

  “No.”

  He was being deliberately blunt, waiting for Chaini to try something – most men he knew would have – but he’d never met anyone like Chaini before.

  The man rubbed his chin in mock thoughtfulness. “As I said, I am very wealthy. I could hire a troop of assassins to see you out, but if half the rumours were true they would probably fail and then you would come calling again. I don’t think I’d like that.”

  “You would not.”

  Another half smile crossed Chaini’s face, the closest to the real thing Francis had yet seen. “I am a patient man, Ward Master. I do not mind if the road to power is longer than I anticipated. I will withdraw from the choosing, but before you go I will say one thing. It is a sham. You will rule because you have the power. It is inevitable, and if you need anything – be it something as crude as muscle or money or as rarefied as my advice, come back. I will help you.”

  Francis was surprised. An offer of help was the last thing he had expected. The strangeness of it convinced him that he was dealing with a man of rare intelligence, if less uncommon morality.

  “You are wrong,” he said. “I have no intention of ruling Afael. We are done with kings here, and I will not come back, unless your actions compel it.”

  He stood and left, almost stepping on Chaini’s servant outside the door. He pushed his way out into the street again, feeling cleaner to be out of that clean house and somehow safer on the unprotected street. As he’d left he had seen Chaini smiling again, or felt it, and it was like poison in his mind.

  *

  The following day he awoke from an uneasy sleep and made his way to the tavern that had become the home of Dock Ward. It was a spacious and otherwise unpopular place close to the gutting sheds where the fishermen brought their catch every day. The geography and the lack of clientele were not unrelated, but Francis was willing to put up with the smell because of the space.

  Keron was already there, sitting by the fire with a mug of hot tea in one hand and half a loaf in the other. Francis helped himself to a steaming mug and dosed it with honey before taking a chair.

  Keron pushed his seat back, balancing it on the back two legs and resting his feet on a table.

  “You’re not going to like this,” he said.

  Something else? “What?” Francis asked. Keron didn’t reply, but passed him a thin sheet of paper. “What is it?”

  “They’ve been handing them out all over River Ward,” Keron said. “Read it.”

  Francis could read – it was important for a master smith to have letters – but he wasn’t fluent. He fumbled his way through the words and as the sense of them became plain he felt growing exasperation.

  “They can’t say this!” he said.

  “All over River Ward,” Keron repeated. “They’re pinned up in taverns, pasted onto walls. You have to see it to believe it.”

  “But it’s nonsense,” Francis said. “You can’t stop taxing people. The city will fall apart. Who’ll keep the roads up? Who’ll dredge the docks?”

  “Read the tenth line,” Keron said.

  Francis read it.

  “Slaves?”

  “Criminals. It’s an old tradition. A lot of people will see the sense in it.”

  Francis sipped his tea. He would have to go to River ward and straighten this out. He wasn’t going to stand by and see Afael become a slave city. It was a monstrous idea. His Afael was to be a city of free men, all sharing in the wealth of the city.

  But he had been a fool. He saw that now. First Chaini and now these reckless idiots in River. Even with slaves they would need money to pay the slave masters, and if they had no taxes they would be reduced to selling slaves for income, and they would need a lot of slaves. He should have kept his eye on the ball. It seemed the city had gone mad while he was watching Dock Ward. He had not intended to stand for the Ward. He would have sat back like any proud father and watched a free Afael go from strength to strength, setting an example for the world to follow.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. Not like this.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” he told Keron. “I’m going to stand in the choosing.”

  “Good,” Keron said.

  “But first I’m going to visit these people in River Ward.”

  “Have breakfast first,” Keron said. “You’ll be in a better mood. You don’t want to kill anyone.”

  Francis wasn’t sure that Keron was right, but he was hungry, and a few slices of bread and bacon wouldn’t stay his hand.

  58 Mordo’s Trick

  Josetin wasn’t the first man that Mordo had killed, and he wouldn’t be the last. He was convinced that one of the Durander mages had guessed his secret and was only holding his tongue because he wanted more proof. It was a weakness with mages. They sought to be better, to know more, to tidy their minds with evidence. Mordo didn’t need evidence. A guess was good enough.

  On the other hand mages were not entirely stupid. If he killed the man there would be evidence somewhere that he had done it. That meant he was down to days, perhaps hours before his dark deeds saw the light of day, and he didn’t expect the god mage to be merciful. He had deceived them all, sown discord throughout the kingdoms, and murdered a man.

  Now was the time.

  He didn’t know how close to the truth the Duranders were, and he needed a day a least, perhaps two, to finish his work and get far enough away that he would be hard to find.

  The man’s name was Boragis. He was a Haile, a light mage, and he had been muttering his spells about the roof garden, where Josetin had died, for more than a week. Light mages were rare, and that meant that Mordo was unsure what the man could actually do. The stories about such men were wildly inconsistent. Some said that they could draw images of past events from the stones themselves, and others that they were little more than Durander lamp lighters. Mordo had caught the man staring at him several times, and the last time the mage had smiled and turned away.

  That smiled had damned him.

  Mordo had to be careful. If he was going to kill Boragis he would have to do it in such a way that the mage would not think it possible and it would have to be done quickly, and in private.

  He dismissed the use of a blade, or arrow. Such killings were too messy. He had been moved to kill Josetin out of desperation, but this time he had the luxury of planning a man’s death. Mordo was good at planning, and his knowledge of poisons was extensive, so poisons it would be, but for Boragis it would have to be something exotic. The mage would not simply accept a cup of wine from him.

  He spent an hour in his private room concocting the tool he required, and when he was done he sent a clerk to Boragis with a message to meet him in
the god mage’s vault.

  It was a double trap. Not only would the mage’s suspicions be allayed by the use of a messenger – an obvious witness if Mordo intended foul play – but anything to do with the god mage was catnip to these people, and drew them like honey drew wasps.

  He went to the vault and waited, and while he waited he thumbed through the god mage’s books for a final time. Now he had his own copies, safely packed away in saddle bags, and most of it even more securely packed into his excellent memory.

  A knock sounded on the door.

  Mordo closed the book and prepared himself, placing a small capsule that he carried into his mouth and pouring a cup of water from the jug he had brought. He went to the door, drew back the bolts and opened it.

  “Come in, come in,” he said, waving Boragis through the door as though it was the most natural thing. The man entered, looking around him like a child at the secrets within. In truth Mordo thought it would be disappointing. Pelion’s crown rested in its box, hidden from casual eyes, and apart from that there was one table with a few books upon it. It was hardly a fabled treasure vault.

  Nevertheless, it seemed to impress Boragis.

  Mordo took the box down from its shelf. “You’re a Haile, are you not?” he asked.

  “Indeed.”

  “You know that Pelion’s crown emits light?”

  “I had heard it, but of course I have never seen…”

  Mordo opened the box.

  He supposed the crown was a pretty thing, the shining strands of wire and the single pale jewel set in the front. It looked delicate, but it was no more than a means to an end.

  “It is the stone that emits the light,” Mordo said. He took a deep breath as he leaned forwards, bringing his head within inches or the mage’s. This was all about timing, and he watched as Boragis exhaled, and as that breath neared its end he cracked the thing in his mouth and sighed, expelling the invisible, odourless vapour into the air for Boragis to inhale. He picked up the cup and swilled out his mouth, holding his breath all the time.

  He spat the water out.

  Boragis stared at him. “What are you doing?” he asked.