by Tom Lloyd
Lynx nodded. He’d been told a birching wasn’t always the only option for a man caught out under moonlight without a female escort, even if it wasn’t fully in the spirit of the festival. A purse full of coins and no irate drunks to deal with would no doubt be preferable to most of those carrying a switch.
‘I’d hope the pleasure o’ your company would be nothing less.’
‘What did you have in mind then?’
‘I need an escort,’ Lynx said. ‘I was late meeting a friend, seems she’s gone on without me.’
The woman took a step closer. ‘Give me ten minutes and I’ll make you forget all about her.’
‘I’ve no doubt, but I need to be somewhere too, so I’ll just have to settle for a beauty on my arm while we parade through the city.’
She inclined her head, clearly far from unhappy at the idea she’d be getting paid just to walk. Lynx was a big, armed foreigner with a tattooed face – probably not the girl’s ideal customer. She reached out and slipped her gloved hand under the arm he presented.
‘Where to, then?’
‘Day-side, I’m lodged at a tavern in the Fields district.’
‘Fields? That’s more’n a knee-trembler’s worth.’
‘I’d not want to insult a lady’s charms by suggesting I enjoy her company for so short a time.’
‘Sometimes a lady don’t mind a man getting finished quick,’ she said darkly, before brightening. ‘Still, if we’re just walking like a couple in love you can take all night, big fella. Let’s start with a silver Pebble and see where we go from there.’
‘Done. What’s your name?’
‘What do you want it to be?’
‘Don’t care. What do you want it to be?’
She paused a moment and looked at him. ‘Sitranille,’ she said eventually, ‘the Lady o’ Birds, right?’
‘Dunno. Who?’
‘One o’ the pagan spirits o’ the city, before the shattered gods came.’
Lynx shrugged. ‘Sitranille it is then.’
The shattered gods had existed long before human civilisation, but he knew lots of places that had their own myths about what other gods had once existed – before the predecessors of the Militant Orders discovered the first god fragments and communed with their spirits. Folklore rarely died out entirely, so the old pagan gods became a lesser superstition – beings that were neither god nor demon but something rather less terrifying all round.
Before they left the street, Lynx bought them both a cup of warmed wine – the flavours lost on him for once as he used the moment of distraction to scout around behind them. There was a mass of masked figures in most directions, but none dressed like the assassins so far as he could see. Just as they set off, however, he thought he glimpsed a flash of movement on a rooftop. By the time he could look properly there was nothing to see, but it was enough to make him up their pace and hurry his escort away.
Let’s just hope the rest of the company aren’t already out or drunk as judges. Not sure my girl here would be much use in a fight, even if I could afford to keep her around all night. If there are more of them hunting me, I’m gonna need help myself, let alone what Toil’s got into.
4
‘So whas happen?’
‘No idea. But it can’t be good.’
Sitain squinted up at him from under a ridiculously large blue hat that seemed to be her concession to the festivities. That and having drunk enough to already be struggling to stay upright in her chair. She had put a thick woollen skirt on over her trousers, presumably for when she went outside with her birch cane, but it was the hat drooping down over each shoulder that caught the eye. It had been folded back and pinned up to allow her to see, but still she seemed to hunch and squint. One look at Sitain and Lynx’s escort, Sitranille, had decided to collect her money and go. A part of Lynx was already regretting not accompanying the woman.
‘Girlfriend got herself in trouble, eh? Ah well, fuck her.’
‘Sitain!’
‘Wha? She fuckin’ crazy that woman, remember? Throws people out windows? Wakes up shitting DEMONS O’ THE DEEPEST BLACK?’
Lynx winced at her shout, but he couldn’t argue with her. Toil was certainly eccentric in her views of other people, bloodshed and personal safety, let alone perilous underground ruins and the bed-wettingly-terrifying monsters that lived in them. But still, he couldn’t just abandon her to her fate. Even if he wasn’t irresistibly drawn to her and the dangerous little smile she wore, she was someone in need of his help.
‘I know all that. Still, she’s one of us.’
‘Not one o’ mine,’ Sitain said moodily. ‘Not ’less it suits her.’
‘But she’s not been here?’
‘Told you already, didn’t I? Prob’ly half the room’d be dead if she’d been by. Shit like that seems to happen round her, right?’
‘What’s got you so riled tonight?’
‘Nothing.’
Lynx ground his teeth in frustration. Sitain wasn’t quite his ward within the company, but he was considered responsible for her in some nebulous fashion after saving her from slavery in the service of a Militant Order. That point no one objected to, but risking all their lives in the process had been mentioned as an unpopular detail. And he knew Sitain resented the fact she was under his wing.
‘Where’s Kas?’
‘Dunno.’
‘She out with Payl and Estal?’
‘Probably.’
‘Did they not invite you along?’
‘’Course they did. Just din’t fancy it.’
Lynx paused. Oh. ‘Is, ah – is she in a costume?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Looking heart-breakingly beautiful, is she?’
Sitain scowled at him. ‘Thought you’d a thing for Toil?’
‘Wouldn’t stop Kas looking gorgeous,’ he said gruffly, meaning what he said but aware it’d look like protesting too much.
It had become a running joke within the company that ever since they’d met Toil, Lynx had hardly been able to keep his eyes off her. He’d tried, shattered gods how he’d tried, but there was something magnetic about her presence that left him tongue-tied and stumbling around her.
Lynx had tried not to think too hard about exactly why she had that effect on him, but he had few illusions about his personal demons and inclinations. It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that a beautiful, distant and half-mad professional spy might fit in with them all too neatly. He’d managed to undermine every relationship he’d ever had, any whiff of normality and stability seeming to trigger a brooding restlessness inside him.
The last few weeks he’d hardly seen Toil – they’d not even eaten a meal together, let alone slept with each other, for Ulfer’s sake – but he seemed to faintly catch her perfume on the breeze wherever he went. When he did he had to fight the urge not to follow it like a dog.
‘She likes you. You know that, right?’ Sitain said eventually.
‘Who? Kas?’ Lynx shifted uncomfortably. ‘Aye, well. Not spending every day trying to be an arsehole makes a man stand out in the Cards.’
‘Yeah? When you see that man, you point him out to me, okay?’ She heaved herself upright and picked up the fresh-cut switch from the table. ‘Now I’m goin’ out for another drink, see if I can find some bastard to use this on.’
‘How about you come with me and I buy you that drink?’
‘Where?’
Lynx looked around but the few patrons left at the tavern were well into their cups by that point. Despite the chill most people would be outside. He could see no other women he knew. It was only Sitain’s maudlin mood that had made her linger as long as she had.
‘Where I might find her. I went to pick her up at her apartment and found a few dead assassins, then had to kill one myself.’
Sitain burped and nodded. ‘Yup, figures.’
‘Someone’s hunting Toil; I can’t just leave her to her own devices.’
‘This her city, she got fri
ends here.’
‘A team of assassins is after her – how sure will she be of her friends? Even if she can trust them, they could be being watched. The assassins found where she lived and I doubt that’s so easy, might be they’ve been watching her a while.’
‘So where?’
‘The ball.’
‘Eh?’
‘She fled through a hidden tunnel of some sort, but she stayed long enough to put a dagger through the badge of her costume hanging on the wall. It had to be a message for me.’
‘Why?’
‘It was too deliberate – didn’t happen in the fight or anything and she knew I was turning up later. Not like she could leave me a note.’
‘But it’s …’ Sitain tailed off and she peered up at Lynx. ‘Don’t matter, does it? You’ll go on the off-chance. Just in case that woman needs you, she’s so under yer skin.’
‘Will you help?’ Lynx asked stiffly.
‘Sure,’ she said with a shrug, tapping the birch cane against his tattooed cheek in a way that was probably intended to be playful. ‘You’re buyin’, I’m walkin’. Probably time I did you a favour, in return for that whole rescue from kidnapping and slavery thing.’
Despite himself Lynx forced a smile. ‘Sure, this makes us even. Now where’s your coat?’
It took him a little while but Lynx eventually hustled Sitain outside and to the nearest stand selling warmed wine. Each had armed themselves with a pewter mug from the tavern so in short order they were weaving their way through the crowds towards the higher levels of the city.
Amid the sprawl of warehouses and offices among the north wharves of Su Dregir harbour, there was a gaming house notorious throughout the shore side of the city. It was a large U-shaped building on a man-made island, sheltered by a narrow snarl of warehouses on all sides and overlooked only by the fluted spires of the nearby Water Temple.
The Water Temple itself was dedicated to Ulfer, God of the Earth and Seasons. The inland sea of Parthain might be less treacherous than the oceans surrounding the continent, but it was far from sedate. The magnificence of the great square temple attested to the need to afford the god the proper respect.
Sharp spires rose from the corners of the temple, each one housing bells that rang out every day. The dawn spire contained an array of fifteen bells that would peal out the dawn chorus each morning. Diagonally opposite it was the dusk spire where a single, huge bell was housed. The other two spires contained smaller bells; the three sweet chimes of the zenith spire declared midday, while a priest would soon be ascending the midnight spire to ring the ancient ship’s bell there.
A woman slipped over a stone wall of the rear garden where shrines overlooked neat rows of crops. She crouched in the shadow below it for a while, grimacing as she took long slow breaths. One hand was clamped over a bandage on her thigh, fighting the urge to howl after the drop down from the wall. Finally the pain subsided and she moved into the pale light of the moon and the Skyriver to negotiate the paths across the garden to a ground floor window, covered by shutters against the cold.
The priests would be abed – their festivities less wanton than the rest of the city’s, their duties unaffected by the public holiday that would follow the Skyriver Festival. There were no striated banners hung here, no coloured lanterns or blazing bonfires. When she tapped on the window, once then a second time, it took a long while before a sleepy grunt came from within.
The window opened at a whisper from her and a man with tousled hair peered out.
‘Toil?’ he hissed eventually. Without a reply he gestured towards the door and went to let her in, keeping quiet until the door was shut again.
Dismissing concerns, ignoring questions, Toil helped herself to a spare robe and ushered the priest back to his bed. Looking like any other priest there, she made her own way to the dawn spire, shuffling down corridors in the pitch black. She paused at the bottom to tighten her bandage and get her composure then forced herself to walk steadily up the stairs, ignoring the noise of her feet on the stone steps.
Near the top she paused, listening for a short while before moving on again. Just above her was the bell platform, a black void slashed by strips of moonlight through slanted wooden slats. There was an open doorway to the roof on the far side of the platform and she headed towards it, hands almost quivering under the folds of the robe as she fought to control her instincts.
‘Sorry, Brother,’ said a voice from the darkness, accompanied by a blur of movement.
Toil spun and dodged the lunging blade, prompting a grunt of surprise from her attacker. Her hands flashed in the moonlight as she punched her attacker in the face and bought herself the second she needed. Her dagger slid home and the attacker went rigid, heels thumping once on the wooden platform.
She eased the impaled body down and left the knife in the wound so the blood would not pour out. She checked around the platform and the section of roof outside it then searched the body. The costumed and masked assassin carried two blackened knives, one of which she took. There was also a crossbow propped by the window and he had a mage-pistol wrapped in cloth – by feel alone Toil could tell there was a burner loaded. It was a man, she now realised, young and wiry, with a badge bearing the number 8.
She crossed to the northernmost window-slit and looked out. The roof of the gaming house lay in plain sight – not thatch at least, but the wooden walls and beams would burn all too easily nonetheless. Only two entrances to the building, to discourage competitors and cheats alike, meant only two exits. On festival night it would be closed to the public, but that just meant a dozen or more families were celebrating inside along with the various employees and allies of the city’s principal smuggling ring.
She checked her bandage once more and settled down on a small stool, likely left up here by a priest with a fondness for solitude. There were a half-dozen hiding places closer to the gaming house, but from here she could see almost all of them. Despite the insistent throb from her wound, no more blood seemed to be seeping through the bandage. The light-headedness, the pain and the fatigue Toil could ignore for now, commencing a vigil any priest would be proud of as she waited and watched for movement in the shadows beneath her.
Up on the city’s highest hill, just short of the lighthouse that stood as the peak of Su Dregir, stood the Palace of the Elect. A great wall of stone and packed earth penned a large tract of land and sheltered the three great wings of the palace from the breeze coming in across Parthain. Lynx and Sitain kept to the main streets, not wanting to find themselves alone somewhere dark in case Lynx had been followed all the way. The Skyriver, moon and stars illuminated drifting ribbons of cloud, while lanterns and bonfires picked out the lines of every city district below.
As they walked, they spied small pockets of night-time revelry in almost every street – heard bursts of laughter, strains of song, moans and cheers. Lynx found himself watching the shadows rather too obviously as they went. There was movement everywhere despite the hour, small sounds and footsteps echoing through the streets. The myriad lamps and lanterns seemed to cast a confusing, contrary tangle of velvet darkness over the city. Scraps of colour jumped out at him, flashes of cloth and glittering glass decorations that all had him imagining glimpses of Toil’s dark red hair at the corner of his vision. Whenever he turned to search they were gone, but the phantom images lingered long in his mind and he could not drive them from his thoughts.
As the night swept by, the appetite for birching had steadily waned. By the time they reached the small night market that flourished outside the palace gates, Lynx doubted many would have bothered challenging him here.
The Skyriver Ball, like many such events, only reached its peak at midnight so guests were still filtering in through the palace gates, under the watchful eyes of soldiers manning the guardpost and on the wall above. They wore the grey and green uniform of the Archelect’s personal troops, the Lighthouse Guard, and despite the hour looked alert and efficient. Lynx spotted more than one
pick him out of the crowd. His costume and guns were always likely to be noticed, but he wasn’t the only armed visitor and none intercepted him as Lynx headed for the market stalls.
They found themselves more wine and some steamed-pork buns to eat while they inspected the crowd. A varied cross-section of the city’s better-off inhabitants clustered around the three focal points of the entertainment there – a group of musicians, a bawdy puppet show and a bard in the process of recounting some epic tale.
‘Is that her?’ Sitain asked, pointing with her mug.
Despite the wine, the night air had sobered her up a touch and Lynx hadn’t had to guide her during the last stretch. She had eaten her food even faster than Lynx, keen to have something other than wine in her stomach while the night was still young, but now attacked her replenished cup enthusiastically.
‘Where?’
‘Black cloak, red hair.’
Lynx finally saw who she was talking about and shook his head. At a distance there was some similarity and Toil’s hair was unusual enough in the city, but he could tell from the way she stood that it wasn’t Toil, despite the mask. Even as he did so, however, the woman turned their way and he felt her gaze close on them. After a moment the woman started to weave a path towards them and he felt a moment of realisation.
‘Messenger?’ he wondered, receiving just a grunt from Sitain as she broke off in search of more wine.
The woman was dressed gaudily under her cloak. Lynx got enough of a glimpse as she walked to see a bright costume of some sort underneath. Bright green and yellow cloth, not so expensive compared to many here, but a pattern of birds in flight had been carefully stitched on to the bodice. Her mask covered her entire face bar the eyes and mouth, white with a swirling damask pattern and studded with green glass.
As she reached him, Lynx saw she was nervous – footsteps hesitant, lips pursed, eyes darting. He gave as courteous a bow as he could manage to try and put her at her ease. The effort was slightly marred by Sitain’s return, however, as the young woman lumbered back, barging into Lynx and spilling wine over his boots.