The Seventh Sentinel

by Mary Kirchoff

  The dispute had arisen just as the Kingpriest of Istar commenced his systematic persecution of the Orders of Magic. The Council, wanting to devote all their attention to that fateful confrontation, had opted to sign a treaty with Qindaras, at worst a minor irritation. In it they stipulated that the Council of Three would not interfere in any way with the internal workings or citizens of the city, provided that Aniirin and his successors did not try to extend their influence or affect matters beyond the immediate area.

  Lyim had found the discovery interesting initially, but its recollection was potentially lifesaving. There was a place on Ansalon where a renegade mage could be safe—safe to plot the downfall of the magic he felt had betrayed him.

  Lyim had already decided that the spell he cast to escape from Bastion would be his last. His final conversation with Guerrand DiThon had made him see his life clearly for the first time. It was not the canvas Lyim had intended to paint.

  He’d always prided himself on the way he controlled his life. But Guerrand had forced him to see that he’d only been magic’s pawn. Magic had its rules, and Lyim had been compelled to abide by them. Every waking moment had been spent learning the Art, acquiring it, trying to bend the forces of magic to his will.

  Now he knew that the Art had conquered his mind, obsessed him like drink or the weed many degenerate elves in the theater district smoked. Spellcasting was not a skill, but a living, breathing creature that drained the life from any mortal fool enough to think himself its master.

  Lyim had left for Qindaras that very day, taking nothing with him from his former life. He vowed never to wear a robe of any color again, lest it remind him of his days as a wielder of magic. No one would mistake him for a mage today. His amir’s attire was nothing like his old garb.

  “Assume standard positions,” Lyim barked to his contingent of bodyguards.

  Rofer and Lorenz, two burly humans who had proven themselves to be loyal, hustled into place to Lyim’s right, one ahead and one behind. Four equally large gnolls took up parallel positions, forming a rectangle around the amir.

  The gnolls resembled human-shaped hyenas and possessed the scruffy, vicious look typical of their race. Lyim didn’t know their names. He found them difficult to tell apart under the best of circumstances and probably could not have pronounced the abominated syllables of their language anyway. Though intelligent enough to be trained, gnolls were too uncivilized to reside within the city. Lyim had recruited a handful of them from the small, barbaric clans that lived as nomads in the Plains of Dust. Their fierce appearance and evil reputation was enough to keep most people in line. When it wasn’t enough, the brutes were always willing to live up to the stories told about them.

  Lyim didn’t need the bodyguards to protect him from the citizenry. The clumsy assassins sent, with the regularity of seasons turning, by the Council of Three made them necessary. Lyim hadn’t been surprised when the first arrived; he was still considered a renegade by the Council for his presence at Bastion and entrance into the Lost Citadel. He was an outlaw to the magical society, a criminal and pariah to be hunted and killed. Neither was he surprised that the Council proved ignorant of the treaty drawn before their time. He would make them aware of it in due course, when he held a position of sufficient power to invoke its protective clauses. Until then, he had taken adequate precautions to fend off the Council’s attacks.

  Lyim snickered now, recalling their attempts to kill him. If they thought he was a threat before, he couldn’t wait to see them reduced to less-than-ordinary mortals without their beloved magic. Then everyone would recognize the worthlessness of magical power.

  Lyim was anxious to be off on his tax rounds, but he had learned patience. And stealth. And a whole host of survival techniques since the day he had emerged from the Lost Citadel with his hand intact. Looking for his assistant, Salimshad, Lyim’s glance moved past his bodyguards to the black- and white-tiled foyer of the borrowed town house he would stay at through tonight. Lyim never resided in any one place for more than two days. Tomorrow the owner and his family would return from the streets, or wherever they had found shelter. It was Salim’s job to secure the houses and displace the owners. Lyim gave no thought to them.

  Where was Salimshad? Lyim looked to the door again. He was loathe to leave without his wily elf assistant to log the taxes. Salim had left the town house just after breakfast, headed for the potentate’s palace to deliver last week’s taxes to the royal treasurer—another of the day’s traditional events. It was not like the elf to keep his master waiting.

  Still, if Lyim didn’t get on with the collection, he would be late for the least tolerable of the day’s events: the afternoon soiree with Potentate Aniirin III and his amirs. He couldn’t afford to offend Aniirin, which meant he couldn’t wait for Salim. The elf would pay; he was just fortunate Lyim still had use for him.

  Lyim peered between two guards to check himself in an oval of polished metal hung by the door. Gone was his trademark flamboyant clothing, in favor of the subtle amir attire. His once long, dark tresses were shaved weekly to shadowy stubble. His face was still smooth and unlined, which he ascribed to the fact that he no longer drank stimulants of any sort.

  Satisfied, Lyim slipped his head through the strap of his cash pouch and signaled his retinue of guards to depart. “And this time,” he admonished them, “exercise some restraint. I will not tolerate a repeat of last week’s incident. No one is to be killed unless I order it.”

  “Yes, Amir!” Rofer and Lorenz swore in unison.

  The gnolls bared their fangs and nodded. Lyim motioned to the door. Surrounded by his paid protectors, he walked into the side street beyond. Outside, they were joined by six more armed humans, who fell into step behind the others.

  The thoroughfare was a small alley, just a single cart’s width. The intersection at one end sported a recently restored public fountain. The crossing at the other end was home to a farmers market where conscientious shopkeepers, fearful of their amir’s displeasure and his thugs’ correction, swept the frontages twice daily.

  Lyim had done much to improve the quality of life in the district. Chamber pots were no longer emptied from upper windows into the streets, at least not without severe fines. Neighborhoods were organized to fight fires and control crime.

  When Lyim arrived in Qindaras three years past, the merchant district had been a den of corruption. The previous amir had taxed legitimate businesses so heavily that they could scarcely operate. Amir Bagus had encouraged gambling and prostitution, among other vices, but still the people of the district starved. When he was stabbed in an alley by a mob of overtaxed citizens, no one mourned—least of all Lyim, whose part in that event had gone far toward establishing his name in the district.

  Lyim had nothing against vice, but he recognized that it needed to be conducted in a safe and profitable manner. Among his first acts was to crack down on usury. He then established his own moneylenders to replace the violent mob he’d driven out. He designated vice-free blocks, where the gamblers and prostitutes who provided him with the greatest income could raise their families and where ordinary shops could operate.

  In two short years, Lyim had turned his riverfront district from the most decrepit to the most profitable. Only one other district provided the potentate with more coin per week.

  Patience, Lyim reminded himself, feeling his irritation at the other amir’s success. Before very many more days passed, Rusinias would no longer be an amir and Lyim would have the most profitable district in Qindaras. Without an heir to his title, the potentate would surely recognize Lyim as the logical choice for succession. As basha of Qindaras he would be in a position to remind the Council of Three of the treaty, and he would be safe from their attacks.

  Lyim’s popularity in his district had been greatly aided by the fact that the current potentate of Qindaras was universally disliked. The direct grandson of the powerful wizard who established the city many centuries before, Aniirin III was the unfortunat
e result of a policy that forbade marriage outside the family line. All who knew Aniirin thought him decadent, foolish, and easily distracted by simple pleasures. Half of his day was spent in his nightclothes, fiddling with new toys or magical devices.

  The rest of the potentate’s time was spent deifying his paternal grandfather. Aniirin III was haunted by the image of his dead ancestor. He ascribed achievements to his beloved grandfather that no human could have accomplished. Lyim had been with the potentate when, after several goblets of wine, he’d spoken of his grandfather in the present tense. Lyim sometimes wondered if Aniirin didn’t believe his ancestor still lived and was running the city, since he himself did little toward that end himself.

  One accomplishment Potentate Aniirin III could have correctly attributed to his ancestors was their devotion to repairing the damage caused to Qindaras by the Cataclysm. Unfortunately, this had been corrupted into an official doctrine denying that a Cataclysm had ever occurred. Only preCataclysmic maps could be found in the city. Kender, whose stock-in-trade was selling obsolete maps, did no greater business than in Qindaras.

  One of those top-knotted pilferers crossed Lyim’s path as he entered a section of the city overhung by perilous balconies. Clothing draped to dry waved overhead like tired old flags. Scrappy dogs raced along in the gutter, followed by laughing children who called after them.

  “Dogs must be leashed in this district!” Lyim shouted.

  Even the dogs seemed to slow at the sound of his voice. The children stopped and turned. Spying Lyim, they bowed their heads in fright. “Right away, Amir!” they vowed, then scurried off, dragging their yelping hounds by the ears.

  Lyim and his retinue rounded the corner and came to the main thoroughfare, River Avenue. Both sides of the street were lined with all variety of merchants: locksmiths, bakers, potters, cutlers. Between each building was an open stairway to the apartments above and a passage to the first-floor accommodations that lay behind the shops.

  Lyim looked to the position of the sun and cursed openly. Damn that elf! There wasn’t time to collect from every establishment today; now he would have to return on the morrow to some of the lesser shops. He hated for any of them to keep a single one of his coins for a moment longer than necessary.

  Lyim mentally reviewed the shops along the route. Which one would give him the greatest joy to relieve of its earnings? He sniffed the air, detecting the strong scent of hot sausages; it gave him his answer. Adjusting his tax pouch, Lyim directed the guards to lead the way into a narrow, two-story stucco building with a central belvedere overlooking the wide, colorful avenue.

  Lyim frequently made the sausage merchant his first stop. Piepr made the best sausage in Qindaras. His business had done better than most under Lyim’s predecessor, though not nearly as well as now. Considering that, Piepr was not obsequious enough to satisfy the new amir. Further, Lyim resented that Piepr’s shop had an excellent view; the man had inherited it, not earned it. Lyim’s goal was to fleece Piepr of enough money so he’d have to rent out the second story and its vista to someone else.

  The air in the shop smelled strongly of garlic and sweat. Piepr stood behind the wooden chopping block that served also as a sales counter. The middle-aged man wore the usual short-sleeved workman’s tunic. Two large hairs sprouted from a mole on his chin. He had the whimsical, slightly tired expression of a man who is brighter than his trade requires.

  “Tax day again?” Piepr asked calmly. “Or have you come to buy my delicious sausages, Amir?”

  Lyim slipped a stringed sausage off its drying rack and nibbled it without paying. “A particularly good batch, Piepr,” he said, saluting the man with his half-eaten link.

  Piepr bowed his head. He waved a young girl forward from behind the counter. Lyim knew Piepr’s daughter, Yasmi. The sausage-maker was teaching the girl, his only child, the trade. Yasmi stepped up to Lyim and knelt as required. Still on her knees, face averted, the girl held a jingling cloth bag high over her head. Lyim took it, loosened the drawstring, and retrieved a handful of steel coins. They reeked of garlic, as did Yasmi. Lyim nodded his approval of the amount, though his nose wrinkled in distaste at the smell. Yasmi skittered back behind the counter to her father’s side.

  Without a word, Lyim dropped the sack into his tax pouch. He was turning to leave with his retinue when Piepr’s voice stopped him. “With all due respect, Amir, will our taxes be lessening anytime soon?”

  “You are not doing well, Piepr?” Lyim asked with perfect pleasantness. “Perhaps you need to raise your prices.”

  Piepr looked at the sausage in Lyim’s hand. “I am selling more sausages than ever, but have no more to show for my efforts.”

  “Perhaps you should consider renting out your second story to bring in extra income,” Lyim suggested.

  “I would not need to consider moving my family into the back room,” said the sausage-maker, “if I could keep more of what I earn.” Piepr looked uncomfortable, then plunged on. “I have spoken to my neighbors, Amir. The percentage of tax they are required to pay is significantly lower than mine.” Behind him, the man’s daughter gasped at his temerity.

  “Your neighbors’ businesses are not the same as yours,” Lyim said, his tone unexpectedly reasonable. “You have safety hazards that many of them do not. For your tax money, you get excellent protection against fire, vandalism, theft, and harassment.” Light-hearted music passed in the street outside the shop, a contrast to the serious conversation.

  “Still,” Lyim continued, “if you feel you are not getting your money’s worth, I can ask a number of my associates—” he looked to his bodyguards “—to stay behind and discuss the matter privately.” Lyim smiled.

  Piepr bowed his head. “That will not be necessary, Amir. Thank you for your kindness.”

  “You must feel that you can come to me at any time with these concerns,” Lyim said kindly, making a mental note to squeeze all of Piepr’s neighbors, guilty and innocent, for having revealed the details of their arrangements. None of them would be so foolishly loose-lipped again.

  Lyim nibbled the sausage as he strode down the avenue; passing citizens bowed when they recognized their amir. At smaller shops, Lyim sent two guards inside. After several moments, his guards would return with the requisite money, which Lyim would add to the pouch strapped across his chest. Licking the grease from his fingers, Lyim reflected there was little about tax collection that he didn’t enjoy.

  He waited outside the bakery, seated on the edge of a gurgling fountain. A sizable crowd had gathered, despite his bodyguards’ best efforts. Most were respectful enough, stopping briefly to thank Lyim for the rebirth of the merchant district. Abruptly, a man with spindly arms and a wispy mustache ran up to the guards, begging to speak with the amir, but Lyim’s thugs pushed the man back.

  Lyim eyed the watching crowd and recognized an opportunity. “Let him speak,” he commanded.

  The man bowed and dropped to his knees, panting. “Bless you, beloved Amir! I have a modest shop on the eastern edge of your district, a small apothecary,” he explained breathlessly.

  The location told volumes; the east end included the blocks sanctioned for vice. “Ruffians have been vandalizing my business for months. Today they beat my son in the alley outside our shop!”

  The man’s business must have been small. Lyim didn’t recognize him. “Do you pay your taxes, man?”

  “Faithfully, Amir!”

  “And your name is?”

  “Ovanes.”

  Cursing Salimshad again for his absence, Lyim stumbled his way through the logbook for the previous week’s payments. Sure enough, the man’s taxes were up-to-date.

  The amir reached into the pouch for a fistful of coins. He held them out to the wide-eyed citizen. “You paid for better protection. Take these coins for the damages you and your son have suffered. Can you identify those responsible?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Two of my own guards—” Lyim waved Rofer and one of
the gnolls toward the man “—will return with you to your shop. There they’ll remain until you are able to point out the ruffians. Affairs can be set right. Rest assured that, henceforth, I will increase patrols in your area.”

  The man was so grateful he bowed his way out of Lyim’s presence—just what the amir had hoped the crowd would witness. Lyim was absorbing the adoring stares and waiting for a duo of his guards to return from the basket-makers when Salimshad pushed his way through the guards clustered around Lyim.

  “A little late, aren’t you?” The amir fixed the slight elf with a glare.

  Lyim and Salimshad had been together two years now. It had taken very little to persuade the elf to work for him: one moldy biscuit and an undisturbed night on the straw-covered stone floor of the room Lyim had first occupied in Qindaras. The Kagonesti elf had been near death from starvation and exposure.

  Lyim had first noticed Salimshad in a dim and smoky inn in Qindaras’s riverfront district. The slight, beggarly elf would have been indistinguishable to Lyim from the thousand others like him if not for his hand. Or rather, the lack of it.

  Lyim noticed physical deformities like other people noted hair color. Savoring a tankard of his favorite purple Shalostian springwater, he spotted the elf working the crowd with a shell game. Salimshad was spinning the cups with lightning dexterity with his single hand. Lyim admired the elf’s temerity and chuckled to himself with uncharacteristic good humor when the sharp promptly skunked the other patrons of their coin in a most expert manner. They’d all turned away, disgruntled but none the wiser. Apparently they didn’t believe a one-handed man could cheat at the shell game.

  Lyim had been in Qindaras for nearly a year on that night. He’d made less progress in that time than he’d hoped toward his short-term goal of securing amirship of the merchant district. It came to him in a flash, when Salimshad’s dark, sly face, with its menacing tattoos, caught the firelight. Lyim knew in that instant what he’d overlooked in his efforts to take over the toughest and most beleaguered district in a city of poor districts.