The Black Knife

by Christopher Nuttall

  Eleanor looked up at him in surprise. “How was this even kept a secret?”

  “The wards around the building are keyed to the Knights only,” Sir Pellaeon admitted. “Anyone else wouldn't have seen the building, let alone been able to enter...”

  He was digging through one of the chests when he paused. “Here,” he said, passing Eleanor a long outfit. “You two are going to be my squires for the journey. Hide your hair within the helmets and pull the outfit tight. If I wear the armour of a Knight of Brass, people will understand a female squire, but try not to call attention to your femininity. It will only give people ideas.”

  Sir Pellaeon turned his back as the girls dressed and then, when they’d finished, inspected them carefully. “The armour should provide some limited protection against enemy attacks,” he added, as he piled up preserved food and drink. “Even so, it’s best not to rely on it completely.”

  He was still issuing orders when they headed back outside and remounted the horses. “Tell me something,” Eleanor said, slowly. “How did you get the horses?”

  Sir Pellaeon winked at her. “I won them in a dice game,” he said. “You can win anything if the person you’re playing against is drunk enough not to realise what he’s betting.”

  Eleanor was still laughing as they found their way down to the main road and resumed their journey.

  Chapter Forty

  Hind felt the sunlight burning into her room, streaming into her eyes until she lifted her hand and performed a minor spell, creating some shade that allowed her to close her eyes again and think of sleep. Eric shifted beside her and she grinned, another idea coming into her mind. She pulled herself up, climbed on top of him and kissed his lips, feeling them brushing against hers. His eyes opened in surprise and saw her grinning down at him.

  “Time to get up,” she whispered, and kissed him again. This time, he responded to her, pulling her down for a third kiss. “We’ve been sleeping for hours.”

  Eric kissed her again, his hands running down her back to her buttocks and slipping inside her pants. “It looks like midday,” he said, deadpan. Hind felt her grin deepening as his hands started to perform magic against her bare skin. “I think we overslept.”

  Something else shifted and they both glanced over towards the smaller bed in the corner, and then looked at each other. Hind tried to tell herself that Branet would have seen people making love before, particularly since she’d shared a caravan with her parents, but somehow she didn't want to make love in front of the child. Let her keep whatever innocence life had left her. Eric stiffened against her and then they both burst out laughing, tasting the other’s frustration through the ring.

  Hind pulled herself off him and stood up. “What’s so funny?” Branet demanded, as she opened her eyes. “What are you two laughing at?”

  “We were just remembering the time that we slipped one of the tutors a potion before he started to teach us,” Eric said, mischievously. “The poor man got through ten minutes of instructing us on how we were to deal with the test and then starting signing sad songs to himself and making eyes at some of the students. They had to cancel his classes and send him to the Healers for treatment.”

  “Oh,” Branet said, as if she didn't believe them. “What did they do to you when they found out?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Eric said. “Let’s just say that my poor left buttock was never the same afterwards.”

  Hind elbowed him and walked over to the window, peering out over Lawless. “It’s definitely midday,” she said, as she dispelled the charm providing them with a little shade. “Eric...when did you want to leave this city?”

  “This morning,” Eric said, ruefully. He stood up and stretched. “I suggest that you two go wash first, while I order some breakfast – or lunch – and then we’ll go out and try and find a boat.”

  The inn, whatever other amenities it possessed, didn't possess much of a washing room. Hind had to heat the water using magic and then spray it over her body, rather than simply getting into a bath and allowing it to wash her clean. The dust from the mountain had so deeply embedded itself into her garments that she was reluctant to try to wash it for fear that the garments would simply disintegrate. She used some additional magic to create a spray of water for Branet – oddly, unlike many other children her age, Branet seemed to like to bathe – and took the opportunity to heal some cuts and bruises that had appeared on her body. The trip through the mountains had been hard on all of them.

  Eric had convinced the innkeeper to send up a tray of food – probably by waving money under his nose – and the smell greeted Hind when she stepped back into the room, after using magic to warm the air and dry herself. She took a piece of bread and meat and ate it slowly, savouring the taste, before drinking some of the mead that the innkeeper had included in the meal. It wasn't a good vintage, but she was past caring.

  “You look wonderful,” Eric said, as he came back from washing himself. “I wish, you know, that things were different.”

  They shared a smile. “I understand,” Hind said, sincerely. “I wish that too.”

  Afterwards, they left the inn – after paying the innkeeper enough money to get him to keep the room reserved for several days – and headed out onto the streets. Lawless looked...lawless to her, with private guards everywhere and people casting their eyes around, as if they expected to be mugged or worse at every opportunity. Eric kept one hand very obviously on his sword and no trouble materialised, but Hind was aware of cold eyes following them, wondering if they had anything worth stealing.

  The city itself was odd. Parts of it were clearly as nice as the Golden City; parts of it were nothing more than slums, with massive rickety buildings housing thousands of desperate citizens with nowhere lower to go. Hind suspected that the nicer parts of town belonged to the criminal lords who effectively ran the city, while their servants and gangsters hailed from the lower parts of town. Everywhere she looked, there were signs of the bizarre contrast between hope and despair; children went to school, passing street children who alternatively begged for handouts or tried their hand at pick-pocketing. Ladies wearing fine clothes and confident smiles walked past ladies of the evening, who managed to show off their wares and their desperation, watched over by pimps with calculating eyes. Hind felt one of the pimps looking at her and shivered, barely able to resist the temptation to turn him into something small and nasty. Only the certain knowledge that someone else would take his place held her hand.

  She looked away from the whores and down towards a set of houses surrounded by powerful wards. The signs on the doors stated that they were owned by sorcerers, who were clearly selling their services to the highest bidder; not something that uncommon on Touched, but it was unusually blatant in Lawless. She saw a sorcerer offering cosmetic transformation – ranging from altering a nose to a complete gender transformation – and another offering magical artefacts and potions, even dangerously strong love potions. The Academy should be preventing sorcerers from selling such wares, but the truth was that the Academy couldn't hope to prevent it, or even reduce it. There was just too much demand for such services.

  “Down there, I think,” Eric said. “Coming?”

  Hind followed him down a road towards the massive river. The Shining River originated up in the mountains and flowed down past Lawless towards the sea. There were all kinds of legends surrounding it, but it didn't look that impressive to her eyes, even when they were standing in the harbour looking at the boats. There were dozens of boats on the river, making their way down to the sea or up to the higher settlements, for it was quicker and easier to use water transport than carrying cargo overland. A city like Lawless, with few laws and even fewer people interested in enforcing them, was a natural port of call for smugglers. As long as they paid the – tiny – tax, the city’s rulers weren't interested.

  Eric walked from boat to boat, inspecting them with a knowing eye. Hind hoped he knew what he was doing, for she knew nothing about
boats or sailing. A mermaid Captain sitting in a wheelchair – of all things – caught Eric’s eye and he strolled over to greet her, with Hind following in his wake. Up close, the mermaid smelt of rotten fish and her green scales looked slimy, but Eric showed no sign that he’d noticed. It was possible that he hadn't; while human men found mermaids attractive, even desirable, human women tended to detest them, for they had a habit of seducing human men. Even so, the mermaid was way out of place so far from the sea. Very few mermaids could be convinced to even swim up a river.

  “Captain,” Eric was saying. “I require transport down to Candleford. Can your ship take passengers?”

  “Of course it can,” the mermaid said, impatiently. That too was odd. Mermaids were normally playful, rather than blunt or direct. “It is a three-day trip to Candleford, unless you want to hire the entire ship and save me from finding a cargo.”

  “Three days would be fine,” Eric said. He smiled down at the mermaid, whose bare breasts seemed to strain right at him. Hind felt an odd burst of jealousy that she swiftly suppressed. “When can we come onboard?”

  “Now, if you like,” the mermaid said. She held out one oddly inhuman arm. “My name is Sane, Captain Sane. Disobey my orders on my ship and you’ll be swimming with the fishes. My husband will show you to your cabin.”

  Hind’s eyes went wide as she heard the sound of cantering hooves, just before Sane’s husband came into view. The centaur grinned at her, a grin that would have melted her if she hadn't known the truth about such creatures and bowed to his wife. Hind fought down the urge to giggle. A mermaid and a centaur as a married pair? No wonder they operated so far from the sea, for neither the mermaids nor the centaurs would approve of such a pairing. Normally, both races were parasites on humanity, needing humans to help with their reproduction. There were no male mermaids and no female centaurs.

  “It’s a long and complex story,” the centaur said, as he led them down into the interior of the ship, which smelt faintly of old wood and the sea. “Let’s just say that it was love at first sight and leave it that way, shall we?”

  Hind said nothing, but she thought hard. Centaurs bred by finding a human girl and seducing her, impregnating her with a centaur baby. The child would kill its mother when it kicked its way out of her womb, leaving a dead girl behind. Hind had seen the aftermath of one of those births and had never forgotten it, yet despite all the warnings, there were girls prepared to copulate with creatures that were a cross between a man and a horse. There were places in the Empire where centaurs were not welcome, yet there were too many places where they were helpful and even willing to trade, in exchange for mates. If the whole race had started as the result of a curse, as some had suggested years ago, the curse was still going strong today.

  “Branet,” she said, once they were shown into their cabin. “Whatever you do, do not get close to the centaur. It could cost you your life.”

  Several hours later, the boat – which turned out to be called the Fish Out Of Water, a joke that made Hind smile – pulled away from the pier and headed down the river. Once they were undocked, Sane called them up on deck and invited them to watch as they sailed, allowing the current to pull them into the centre of the massive river. Other boats, including a massive warship from one of the larger kingdoms, went past them, ignoring the tiny transport ship. Hind found a place to sit and concentrated on rebuilding her wards after all she’d been through, regenerating her magic and checking her health. Even if she couldn't go into a proper healing trance on the ship – she had no idea if they could trust Sane and her rather odd crew, which seemed to be a picture of interracial harmony – she could at least make a start.

  She watched as Eric joined the fishers, trying to bring up something apart from dry rations to eat. They caught several large fish and threw the smaller ones back into the water. Hind watched in mild horror as the two goblins on board devoured their fish raw, bones and all, before teasing the other crew members about having to cook their food before they ate it. The goblins, who normally lived in the mountains and were rarely seen by humans, shimmied back up the mast when Sane bellowed orders at them, watching out for possible trouble in their path. The single dwarf – she couldn't tell if it was male or female – waved his axe after them threateningly, before returning to the task of skinning, deboning and cooking the fish.

  “We tend to do as much fishing as we can up here,” Sane explained, at Hind’s look. “The waters lower down tend to belong to various kingdoms and not all of them are happy with us fishing there, particularly the Screamers of Rockall. They don’t like me personally, you understand.”

  Hind nodded. The Screamers of Rockall were one of the mermaid kingdoms, one of the very few that had any contact with humanity. It was generally assumed that there were other kingdoms deeper in the oceans, but none of them had any contact with humanity. The Screamers – so called because they sang mermaid music, which they thought was wonderful and united all of the other races in screaming horror – were also the most prideful mermaids and wouldn't take kindly to a mermaid who was actually married, let alone married to a centaur. They had plenty of ways of discouraging people from fishing in their waters, from using their voices aggressively to simply swimming under the boats and boring holes in the bottom. Very few fishermen would irritate them twice.

  “I understand,” she said, as the cook finally started serving bowls of fish stew. “And...”

  “Perhaps, as a magician, you could work some of your passage,” Sane added. “We could do with some healing and basic wards, if you were interested.”

  Hind exchanged a glance with Eric and then nodded. “I don't see why not,” she said, as she took a sip of stew. It tasted surprisingly nice, for she had never been fond of fish stew before. “What do you want me to do first?”

  The three days of the voyage passed quickly. Hind spent most of them healing a number of tiny aliments, serious enough to need Healing magic, yet not serious enough to justify spending the crew’s hard-earned gold on a sorcerer. Lawless, it seemed, had very expensive healing magicians, even though most Healers were ethical enough to spend some of their magic on the poor and penniless. The Healing arts required a certain empathy, which was probably why – at least in her opinion – there were few Healers from the noble-born.

  Eric spent them pacing the deck, working with some of the armed crew on battle drills and watching nervously as they called in at various tiny harbours, trading small goods for food, spices and other items that might be saleable at their destination. Hind sensed his impatience as the trip progressed and his growing nervousness as they came close to their final destination. They managed – by means of allowing Branet to learn from the Captain and some of her crew – to find some time alone together, yet they had also come to an unspoken agreement not to speak of the future. Once they reached Larkrise, they could run no further and would have to fight to defeat Herod.

  Candleford itself was a harbour city, situated on one shore of the Great Darth’an Ocean. Hind had never visited it before and would have liked to spend a couple of days exploring it, but Eric was determined to find another boat to take them to Larkrise. She couldn't blame him, for she’d picked up a broadsheet that had informed her that Herod’s army was on the march, even though no one seemed to know where it was going. There were so many rumours that it was impossible to sort out truth from falsehood. Herod, she suspected, was probably spreading as many rumours as he could, even though the nobles had hated the idea of the printing press and broadsheet writers and – if Herod won – they’d probably all be executed post haste. The concept of allowing knowledge – and news of their betters – into commoner hands would worry the aristocrats, if only because it might give their social inferiors ideas.

  “I found us a ship,” Eric said. The new ship was larger than the Fish Out Of Water, an independent trader that moved from harbour to harbour. “They’ll take us to Larkrise in five more days.”

  Branet behaved herself very well as they board
ed the new ship – all human this time, much to her disappointment – and they sailed off into the ocean. Hind found the journey upsetting – the open sea was far less calm than the river – and ended up having to brew a potion against sea-sickness, something that the crew seemed to find hilarious. A school of mermaids followed them as they left harbour, singing songs that sounded like a swarm of mosquitoes buzzing against Hind’s ears. The mermaids laughed and catcalled at the shouts and insults from the crew, taking them as compliments. Hind saw one of them flip into the air, present herself for the men and slip back into the water, followed by a hail of wolf-whistles. If she knew mermaids, and she knew some of them, they were probably luring the sailors into their clutches. After all, they needed the human men to reproduce.

  At least it’s not as fatal as the centaurs, she thought, as the mermaids seemed to slip away from the ship, their last songs hanging in the air. She looked over at Eric, who was staring wistfully back towards the harbour they’d just departed. Hind stepped over to him and put her arm around him, inviting him to relax. In five days, they would be in the one friendly kingdom, the only one that would take them in.