The Throne of Amenkor

by Joshua Palmatier

  “It makes you a target,” I said.

  Borund did not respond, turned his attention toward the ring of spilled ale the cup had left on the table instead, began spreading the ale around with one finger in small circular motions.

  “You would no longer live on the wharf, of course, in your little pile of traps. If you came to work for me.”

  My eyes narrowed, a pulse of anger uncoiling deep within.

  He glanced up briefly, then continued playing with the ring of ale. “Yes. I had you watched. I had to make certain you were trustworthy. That you weren’t sent by one of the other merchants, as a spy perhaps.” He sighed. “If you are interested, you would have to live in my house in the inner city. Sleep there, eat there. My schedule is not fixed, so I’d need you close, in case I had to leave quickly. I would provide everything you needed, within reason.” The small circular motions stopped and he lifted his finger from the ale, lifted his eyes to me. “It would be a much better life than stealing what you can from the wharf.”

  I hesitated. The anger that he had followed me, had watched me—that he had done so without me noticing—felt raw and hot inside me. I should have seen them, should have noticed whoever had been sent to stalk me.

  And that’s exactly how I felt. As if I’d been stalked.

  Suddenly, the bread and meat and butter felt heavy and sour in my stomach. I felt sick, the air inside the tavern too close, stifling. The noise and motion of the people began to push forward again, overpowering, like when I’d first stepped into the room.

  Feeling feverish, I stepped away from the table. “I don’t know.” I took another step, the urge to run creeping up slowly from inside, tingling through my arms, even though there was no warning from the Fire inside me, no hint of danger.

  Borund stood as well, sharply, frowning, one hand slightly outstretched as if to catch me before I fled. He seemed about to protest, but then he stopped, let his hand fall back to the table.

  “Perhaps this was a mistake,” he said.

  And then the pressure of the room became too great, the noise and scents too harsh.

  I turned, hesitated. . . . But in the end I slid through the crowd to the door and out into the new-fallen night.

  * * *

  Once outside the stifling tavern in the night air, I moved swiftly toward my niche, past people I barely saw before swerving around them. My mind was blank, empty. There was nothing to feel except the heavy weight of food in my stomach, nothing to taste but a strange fear tinged with a sickening excitement, all flavored like butter, smooth and slick inside my mouth. . . .

  I stumbled over a trailing length of rope attached to a crab trap, caught myself against a wall. My heart thundered in my chest, so hard it hurt just beneath my breastbone. I coughed roughly, then straightened.

  Drawing in another deep breath, I leaned my head back against the stone of the wall behind me.

  I could still smell oranges.

  I drew in a few more deep breaths, coughed half-heartedly, and sank down into a crouch, weight on my heels. On the street before me, a few people moved. Some slowed, watched me warily. No one came close.

  I closed my eyes. Against the darkness, I thought about William grabbing my arm, felt the instant surge of fear, of desperation, of dread that this was another rapist like the first man I’d killed . . . or another Bloodmark.

  But William wasn’t one of those men. I could see it in his eyes, in his confused expression, in his mussed, clean hair. I could see it in the way he’d held out his hand to stop me from attacking a second time. And it was in his smile.

  I shifted uneasily, feeling again that trembling sensation deep inside, somehow warm and tense at the same time, and strangely guilty.

  I turned away from the sensation, thought about Borund instead, about how he’d offered the food, about his eyes. He’d been wary, reluctant at first, the wrinkles near his eyes tight. But then he’d relaxed, smiled, put the butter on that first slice of bread. Not the slow smile of Garrell Cart before he’d taken the girl on the Dredge, before he’d killed her. No. Borund’s smile had been amused as he watched me take that first uncertain bite, as he watched me slather the butter onto the second slice myself.

  But he’d also had me followed, watched, stalked. Like I imagined that ex-guardsman I’d killed had stalked me, or like Garrell Cart had watched the girl with the green cloth. Predatory.

  Wariness twisted my stomach, made worse by William’s confused eyes, by Borund’s smile.

  And by the oranges.

  Erick had given me oranges. I’d trusted him. I trusted him still, even though I felt that I’d betrayed him in some way by killing Bloodmark. Even though that last image of him, at the edge of Cobbler’s Fountain, before we’d found Mari, had been gray mixed with red. I didn’t know what the red mixed with gray meant exactly, but I still trusted him.

  I squeezed my eyes tighter, felt tears near the edges, felt them burn.

  I suddenly wanted Erick back, wanted him there, at the edge of Cobbler’s Fountain, waiting. I wanted to see his hard expression, his dark eyes, his scars. Even if it meant that the moment he saw me, the moment he laid eyes on me, he denounced me. Even if all he did was cast me out.

  But I couldn’t get Erick back. Not now. I’d made my choice.

  I opened my eyes, wiped at them forcefully, then glared at a man who’d paused on the far side of the street.

  He turned quickly and moved on.

  I glanced around, dipped beneath the river briefly but saw no red, then stood and began moving toward my niche.

  * * *

  Sunlight glared off the rolling waves of the harbor in flashes, forcing me to squint and raise a hand to shade my eyes. At the end of the dock, a ship with three masts creaked against its lines as workers—Zorelli and Amenkor natives alike—hauled boxes and barrels down the ramp to the dock itself. It was the usual chaos that normally kept me enthralled with a strange tingling excitement deep down inside my stomach, but today I wasn’t interested. Today, only William and Borund held my attention.

  Both stood at the end of the plank that led to the deck of the ship, Borund dressed again in the red coat. William stood back and to one side, in a white shirt with ruffles down the front and brown breeches tucked into boots. Both were frowning in thought as the captain of the ship talked. I could only catch a few phrases of the conversation at this distance, and none of those phrases made sense. But I couldn’t get any closer without revealing myself. I wasn’t well hidden as it was.

  Borund’s frown turned grim and he shifted so that he was looking out toward the sea, toward where the two promontories of land to the west of the city jutted out and curved toward each other, forming a narrow inlet into the bay.

  The captain of the ship finished his report and even through the chaos of the unloading around them, I could sense the silence between the three men growing. The shipmaster’s fingers nervously kneaded the edge of the hat tucked under one arm as he watched Borund’s face.

  Finally Borund sighed and turned away from the sea. Forcing a smile, he gripped the shipmaster’s arm at the elbow, squeezed once as he said a few words, and then the two nodded to each other, the captain donning his hat as Borund and William turned away.

  I pulled back behind the stack of crates and waited, breathing in the salt air and looking up at the blue of the sky, the bustle of the wharf a few paces away.

  When William and Borund passed by, I waited until they’d moved twenty paces farther on, then slipped into the flow of the wharf traffic behind them, close enough to hear what they said, but far enough back they wouldn’t notice me. I’d been following them for the last week, whenever I managed to catch them on the wharf.

  “. . . getting worse,” Borund was saying. The grim expression I’d seen on the docks had returned. “Mathew says that all the ports are as bad off as we are. He’s barely finding enough to tra
de and still keep his ship. If it doesn’t pick up soon, he’ll have to ground her or sell her.”

  “Perhaps you could buy it from him,” William said. “Keep him on as captain.”

  Borund grunted. “Not if we can’t get more trade going through the city. We’ve had to start cutting into the reserves as it is. There’s just nothing out there. Too dry to the north, too wet to the south. And I don’t know what the hell happened to the spice and silk routes through Kandish. The entire nation seems to have vanished. Avrell announced to the guild that nothing’s come through the mountains in the last three months—no emissaries from Kandish, no caravans. He hasn’t even heard from his own diplomats, and you know how widespread his network is.”

  He glanced toward William. “Something is happening, here along the Frigean coast and on the other side of the mountains. We have to find another source for our staples. Mathew says that he grabbed the last of the wheat in Merrell, and nearly all of the barley—as much as he could load into the ship without foundering. He paid a hefty price, but I think it was a wise choice.”

  “Should I send it on to Richar in Kent? Raise the asking price to compensate?”

  Borund hesitated, then halted, his gaze once again turning toward the harbor. The flow of people on the wharf parted around him, like water around a dock support.

  Twenty paces back, I slid into place beside a cart loaded with dead fish, their mouths open, eyes filmed with white. The hawker glared at me a moment, then turned back to the passersby, shouting with a startlingly loud voice, “Fresh fish! Just from the ocean! Fresh fish!”

  At the center of the flow of people, Borund turned from the sea, his gaze traveling over the city of Amenkor itself, taking in the far side of the bay, where the buildings at the edge of the bluff rose to the mismatched angles of the roofs behind. It created a strange pattern above the slate of the water, and as I followed his gaze I suddenly realized with a sickening twist in my gut that there, among those roofs, across the bay on the other side of the River, lay the Dredge. And that on one of those roofs, almost six years ago, I’d watched the Fire emerge from the west and cut across the harbor, consuming everything.

  And then I’d killed a man.

  “No,” Borund said, and I tore my gaze away from the buildings and from memory to see that Borund was now staring at the people moving about him, watching them as they haggled and cursed and rushed along the wharf. His voice had sharpened somehow, and his gaze flickered from face to face. But he didn’t turn toward me. “No. Don’t send the grain on. Tell Richar we have none to spare. And tell Mathew to purchase whatever he can find, no matter the cost.”

  Borund caught William’s eyes and something passed between them, William’s back straightening.

  “Very well,” he said.

  Borund sighed and glanced up at the sun, the skin around his eyes wrinkling as he squinted. “I feel the need to check the warehouses suddenly. Take inventory. See exactly what and how much we have in stock, ready for use.”

  William stepped forward and they began walking away. I stayed behind. I’d followed them to the warehouses once before. There were no people around, no places to hide. And both William and Borund had disappeared into a single building for four hours while I waited in the rain.

  I glanced down as they vanished into the crowd and caught sight of a small fish at the edge of the cart, its one eye slightly sunken into its head. Its scales had dried in the sun.

  I cast a quick look toward the hawker.

  Five minutes later, I was deep in the back streets, headed toward my niche, the dry fish held loosely in one hand.

  * * *

  Two days later, I settled into the edge of an alley across the street from the inn where William had first taken me to see Borund. It was early yet, the sky still blue, with thin bands of clouds, but within the hour it would be dark. I stared at the door to the inn, listened to the noise from inside spill out when someone entered, and tasted butter. Tasted it so badly I had to swallow.

  I couldn’t see far inside the inn, but Borund and William never showed up this early when they came. After a moment, I sat back on my haunches, leaned against the alley wall, and waited, closing my eyes.

  William instantly rose to mind. His black hair, tugged by the wind coming in off the sea. His green eyes.

  The liquid guilty sensation returned in the pit of my stomach, but this time I didn’t force it away. It was strangely exciting. Different.

  I found myself smiling for no reason.

  And then the scent of oranges intruded.

  I opened my eyes and sat forward. Twilight had settled onto the street, the sky gray now, the clouds tinged with the last of the sunset. Even as I inched forward, catching sight of Borund and William moving toward the door to the inn, the deep sunlight faded and died.

  Borund halted at the door to the inn to talk to someone—another merchant by the man’s dark green jacket, the amount of gold embroidery on his sleeves roughly equivalent to Borund’s. But this merchant was accompanied by two other men. The merchants clasped arms, hands gripping forearms, and nodded to each other. William kept back a pace as they talked, but his attention was on the conversation. I watched him as he scanned the street around them, keeping a careful eye on the two men with the other merchant.

  Perhaps I’d refused Borund’s offer too quickly, I suddenly thought. I’d followed them for days, watched carefully to see if I was being followed still, tracked. But there’d been nothing. Neither Borund nor William had done anything aside from checking the docks, checking their warehouses, meeting with other merchants and with shipmasters on the pier.

  I almost stood and moved across the street, moved to catch William’s attention, but Borund ended the conversation with the merchant. He turned and motioned William inside, rough laughter breaking out from inside the inn as William opened the door. Borund nodded once toward the merchant with the green coat, who smiled and nodded back, and then the door closed and the laughter cut off.

  I was just about to settle in and wait for Borund and William to leave, when the green-coated merchant turned.

  The smile had vanished. In the last of the fading light, I saw the merchant’s eyes narrow, his face harden with hatred.

  A shudder slid through me and without thought I dipped beneath the river. In the rushing noise of the street, the merchant was mostly gray, but with faint traces of red at the edges.

  Like Erick had been the last time I’d seen him.

  I pulled back sharply, stared wide-eyed at the merchant across the street. For the first time since I’d killed Bloodmark and fled to the docks, I wondered what it meant. There’d been no need to wonder; I never expected to see Erick again, and I’d met no one else with the strange mix of red and gray.

  But now . . .

  I shifted forward, watched the merchant intently. He had a thin face, but soft somehow, not gaunt. His eyes were dark, but in the light I couldn’t tell what color they were. His hair was dark as well.

  For a moment, he searched the street, his eyes halting as he caught sight of a thin man leaning against a wall close to where I crouched. He pressed his lips together as if considering, then nodded once toward the thin man before turning away.

  With a sharp gesture, the green-coated merchant called the other two men to his side. They left, moving swiftly.

  I turned my attention toward the thin man leaning against the wall.

  For a long moment, he did nothing but stare down at the cobbles of the street. Then he smiled and pushed himself away from the wall, moving sedately toward the inn. As he moved, he pulled a slim knife from his belt and tucked it up one sleeve of his shirt.

  A shiver sliced through my gut, but before I could react, the man had opened the door to the inn, some type of music now mingling with the sound of voices spilling out. Then the door shut and the man was inside.

  With Borund. And Wi
lliam.

  I hesitated at the door to the inn, barely conscious of the fact that I’d crossed the street at a dead run, or that I’d slid beneath the river, deep. I shuddered at the memory of the last time I’d entered the inn, of how the people and voices and scents had overwhelmed me. But the memory lasted barely a breath before I pulled open the door.

  It was as bad as the last time. Music, laughter, voices, belches, clattering pottery, creaking benches, all of it crashed into me, surged forward like a rolling wave on the bay, slapping into one of the dock’s supports. And with it came the instant disorientation of the crowd, movement without purpose, without order, and the strong blanketing stench of sweat and smoke and ale.

  But this time I forced everything into the background with a mental shove and focused, sifting through the noise and chaos.

  The entire room . . . solidified. The blur of motion became bodies, servers weaving through the patrons with trays aloft, patrons clapping each other on the back or tossing back drinks. A man with garish clothing belted out a song while playing a strange instrument, and two women dressed like prostitutes but who weren’t wove through the edges of the crowd, trailing filmy cloth, dancing. All noise bled into the background wind, making the foreground eerily silent. And the stench was damped, as if it had been shoved close to the floor—still there, lingering, but not strong.

  A man staggered toward me and I stepped out of the way a second before he would have jostled into me. A look of annoyance crossed his face for a brief second, but he bumped into the next man through the door and stole that man’s purse before leaving. My movement placed me in the midst of the crowd.

  I spat a curse. I could no longer see, the people too close, blocking my view.

  But I caught the scent of oranges.

  Focusing on that, I sifted through the crowd, barely touching anyone. But the deeper I moved into the room, the greater the cold sense of urgency in my gut grew. I remembered the man’s knife as he slipped through the door of the inn, could see his slow smile as he pushed away from the wall.