The Merchant of Dreams

by Anne Lyle

  “I should warn you,” he said slowly, “when we get to England, we’ll be staying in Ned Faulkner’s house.”

  Sandy’s eyes narrowed.

  “I know that name.” His expression hardened. “He delivered me into the hands of our enemy.”

  “He was forced into it,” Mal said.

  “So many men claim.”

  “Do you remember the others who took you from Bedlam? It was they who forced him.”

  “My memories of that time are unclear,” Sandy replied.

  “But you remember me.”

  “We share a soul. I cannot forget that.”

  “Then you know you can trust me,” Mal said. “And I trust Ned.”

  Sandy bent his head to his breakfast, though Mal could tell from the set of his brother’s shoulders that the discussion was not over yet. He looked over at Coby, but she was licking the fish grease from her fingers and studiously ignoring both of them. Perhaps they should take lodgings elsewhere, despite the expense. He wondered if he could persuade Walsingham that news of the skraylings’ voyage was worth a pound or two of the Queen’s money. Probably not.

  They were just tidying away the remains of breakfast when Kiiren appeared at the lip of the dell. His expression was as guarded and inscrutable as Mal had ever seen it. Mal braced himself for an argument over Sandy’s leaving.

  “I have spoken with kin of those who died,” Kiiren said, when he had joined them by the hearth. “They have sung mourning, and will take news back to our homeland.”

  “And the bodies?” Coby asked.

  Kiiren sighed. “It is unfortunate. But many die far from home; it is our fate.” He glanced at Sandy, and his brow furrowed.

  It was something Mal had never considered before. What had happened to Erishen’s previous body, or to the unfortunate skrayling he and Sandy had seen murdered that night over a decade ago? Was Europe strewn with the lost bones of Kiiren’s people?

  “Sandy has asked to come to London with me,” he said, wanting to get this over with.

  “Very well,” Kiiren replied.

  Mal stared at him, all arguments dying on his lips.

  “Mourning is private time,” Kiiren went on. “It is best if you leave as soon as possible. One of our ships will take you over to France; we cannot spare time for journey to England.”

  Sandy hugged the skrayling, grinning at Mal. “Of course. Thank you, amayi.”

  Mal quickly retrieved his and Coby’s packs from the tent.

  “Let’s leave them to say their farewells,” he said, and ushered her up the path out of the dell.

  “Lord Kiiren gave in very easily,” Coby said when they were out of earshot.

  “Too easily. If I were of a suspicious turn of mind, I’d think he wants to be rid of us for reasons of his own.”

  “Such as?”

  “Now that is the question. And unfortunately, on an island inhabited by none but skraylings, we have no means of spying on him to find out.”

  “What if Kiiren changes his mind about Sandy coming with us?”

  “Then I will go back down there and beat some sense into him.”

  Coby broke into a grin and he smiled back, not certain how seriously he meant it. To come this close to getting Sandy back, and then fail? No, he would not accept that. His left hand strayed to his sword hilt, thumb rubbing the pommel absentmindedly as they walked back towards the main camp.

  Erishen ducked into the tent and scanned its contents. Apart from his clothes, everything here belonged to Kiiren, or was shared between them.

  “You must take silver, to buy new garments,” Kiiren said, entering the tent behind him. “The less the humans notice you, the better. And you must remember to call yourself by your English name.”

  “Sandy. Short for Alexander. I will remember.”

  Kiiren squatted in front of the chest and lifted the lid. For a moment he just crouched there, his hands grasping the front of the wooden box tightly, then he moved a pile of linens aside and pulled out a string of silver ingots. They rang like festival chimes, a cheery sound at odds with Kiiren’s solemn mood.

  “You can exchange these for English coins at the guild-house,” Kiiren said, handing them over.

  Erishen looped the cord over his head and tucked the ingots inside his doublet.

  “You will also need to cut these.” Kiiren reached up and touched his braids. “Sit down, I will see to it.”

  Erishen knelt on a mat whilst Kiiren fetched an obsidian blade from the chest. Skraylings had little need of razors, since they grew no facial hair, but their healers had many uses for the slivers of black stone and Kiiren had been obliged to trade for one after he complained once too often about Erishen’s beard. Erishen winced at the tearing sound as each braid was severed. It felt like Kiiren was cutting them close to the scalp; he would be as crop-headed as a girl at this rate.

  At last it was done, and Kiiren put the severed locks aside.

  “Will you burn them?” Erishen asked, running his fingers through his shorn locks. He felt naked with his head so bare.

  “I thought I might make a keepsake from them, as humans do,” Kiiren said softly. He went back to the chest and took out a small leather pouch decorated with tiny white shell beads. “Take this also.”

  Erishen took the pouch from him, loosened the neck-strings and peered at the contents. His eyebrows rose.

  “Use it only at need,” Kiiren said. “I had hoped to keep you here until all danger was past, but–”

  “You think Jathekkil was not working alone?”

  “I think it is best not to make assumptions.”

  “Thank you, amayi.” Erishen pocketed the pouch.

  They stood awkwardly for a moment, then Erishen held out his arms and enfolded the skrayling in a gentle embrace. This was not the first time they had been parted, nor would it be the last. He laid his cheek against Kiiren’s hair, which was nearly as short as his own.

  “You’re leaving the island too,” he murmured.

  Kiiren shifted in his arms and looked up. In the dim light of the tent, his eyes were like a hunting cat’s: pupils round and black as obsidian spheres, irises topaz-dark. “How did you know? Did you spy on the qoheetanishet?”

  “No,” he said with a smile, “but you would not give me up so readily unless you had plans that did not include me.”

  Kiiren looked abashed. Erishen bent to kiss his brow. Dear, innocent boy. It is always so easy to get the truth out of you.

  “How long will you be gone?” he asked, letting a plaintive note creep into his voice.

  “All summer, perhaps.”

  “You are going home?”

  “No, not so far.” Kiiren stood on tiptoe and whispered a name in Erishen’s ear.

  “I do not know the place.”

  “No, but your brother does.”

  Erishen grinned at him. Perhaps his amayi was not so innocent after all.

  England was still in the grip of winter when they arrived in Southampton. Mal, never the best of seafarers, hired horses for an overland journey to London rather than spend another day on a cramped and freezing ship. At Coby’s insistence he bought a cloak for Sandy and riding gloves and woollen caps for them all in Southampton before they set off, and was vastly grateful for them himself before they were halfway to Winchester. Even at noon, patches of hoar-frost lingered in the shade, and the horses’ breath steamed in the still air.

  They spent their first night at the Dragon in Petersfield, after a gruelling day’s ride along roads slick with ice-puddles. In the inn yard Mal dismounted stiffly then held the reins of Sandy’s horse, ready to catch his brother if he fell.

  “I was riding horses long ere you were born,” Sandy muttered. “Though this body is out of practice, I confess.”

  “Hush!” Mal stepped closer. “Do not let anyone hear you talk like that. Or do you wish to be locked up in Bedlam again?”

  Sandy narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. Mal suppressed the urge to cross himse
lf. Back on Sark he had begun to hope that Kiiren was wrong and Sandy was cured after all, but this was almost worse than the raving. At least in Bedlam he had been his old self between attacks. This Erishen was a stranger in his brother’s skin.

  When they entered the inn, the locals stared and muttered into their ale. Mal hoped it was only surprise at seeing identical twins, and not darker suspicions. Both he and Sandy favoured their French mother too well in their looks: an advantage for an English spy in France, a liability here in England.

  Mal paid for a private room on the upper floor, big enough for the three of them. There was one large bedstead and a servant’s palliasse, a wash-stand with a cracked basin, and a couple of pisspots.

  “Not exactly the best welcome back to England,” Mal said.

  “We’ve stayed in worse,” Coby said, peeling back the bedsheets. “That inn outside Paris, for one.”

  “Don’t remind me. I think I was picking lice out of my breeches for a week.”

  He threw his saddlebags down and sat on the edge of the bed to let Coby pull his boots off. She wrinkled her nose at the state of his stockings.

  “I’ll go and ask for hot water to be sent up, shall I, sir?” she asked, setting the boots to the floor.

  “Aye. And order supper, if we’re not too late.”

  After she had gone, Sandy rummaged around in his saddlebag and produced a small leather pouch. By the way he handled it, Mal guessed it contained something heavy and perhaps fragile. Sandy sat down on the end of the bed and stared at it, a frown creasing his brow.

  Mal leant on the bedpost and cocked his head on one side in a silent question. Sandy looked up.

  “A gift from Kiiren,” he said, tipping the contents onto the worn coverlet beside him as if reluctant to touch whatever it was.

  Kiiren’s gift turned out to be a string of the same beads Mal had found beside the road on Corsica. Perhaps larger, and certainly rather more of them, enough to go right round a man’s neck. A spirit-guard.

  “I thought wearing iron made you soul-sick?” Mal forced the words out.

  “It does, in time. But I must wear it, or leave myself defenceless.” Sandy sighed and prodded the necklace with a fingertip. “I do not think Jathekkil was the only guiser in England, do you?”

  It was something Mal had thought about a lot in the past year and a half. Particularly in the small hours, when he couldn’t sleep.

  “You didn’t put it on when we landed.”

  “I doubt there are any guisers this far from London. Nor are there enough dreamers in these small towns to disturb my own sleep. But in the city… How soon will we be there?”

  “At this pace? Perhaps the day after tomorrow, if we suffer no mishaps.”

  “Then I should get accustomed to the feel of it, at least when I sleep.”

  “You expect something… bad?”

  “It has been a while. I really do not know.” He unbuttoned his doublet and loosened the drawstring on the neck of his shirt. “Will you help me? I am afraid I…”

  Mal picked up the necklace. The metal beads were ice cold after the journey, and he breathed on them to warm them a little. Sandy pulled the neck of his shirt open, and Mal knelt on the bed behind him and slipped the loop of beads over his head. His brother flinched and his breath caught.

  “Sorry! Did that hurt?” Mal asked, fastening the catch.

  “No,” Sandy replied after a moment, and with a flush of joy Mal recognised something different in the timbre of his voice, something more like the brother he knew.

  “Alexander?” He scrambled off the bed and moved round to get a clearer view of his brother’s face. “Is that you?”

  “Of course it’s me,” Sandy replied with a smile. “Who were you expecting?”

  “But… Erishen…”

  “He is still inside me. He… we are still me.” He grinned at Mal’s puzzled expression. “You remember when we were fourteen? We broke into the cellar and drank father’s best muscat until we were sick.”

  “Do I ever!” Mal laughed. “Between the hangover and father’s beating, I thought I was going to die.”

  “And you know how, when you’re drunk, you say and do things… things you would never dream of when you were sober?”

  “Aye.” All too well.

  “It’s like that. I remember saying and doing things, but it doesn’t feel like it was me who did them. And yet it was me. Well, that’s what it’s like. Being Erishen.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I’m sober, for a while. Until I take the spirit-guard off.”

  “Then he comes back.”

  “No. Then I am him again.”

  “How is that different?”

  “I don’t know. It just is.”

  “I don’t understand, and I’m not sure I want to. As long as you’re back…”

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor, and a moment later Coby came in, carrying a jug and three leather tankards.

  “Supper is on its way, and hot water in about an hour.” She rubbed her arms. “It’s a bit cold in here, isn’t it? Why don’t we go back down to the common room?”

  “No,” Mal said, as she turned to leave. “Sandy’s not in the humour for company. Are you, Sandy?”

  Sandy appeared about to say something, but shook his head.

  “Very well,” Coby said, and set about filling the tankards.

  “I suppose,” Sandy said, when they were all settled on various corners of the bed, “you want to know what the skraylings were up to, on that ship you found?”

  “You know?” Coby asked, leaning forward. “Why didn’t you say sooner?”

  Mal hushed her. “Go on.”

  “They were sailing to Venice.”

  “Venice? Why Venice?”

  “I don’t know. Something to do with a new alliance, I think.”

  “But the Vinlanders are allied with England,” Coby said.

  “Those you know as Vinlanders consist of many clans. Kiiren and the merchants in Southwark come from the same clan, the Shajiilrekhurrnasheth, but there are others on Sark now. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

  Mal snorted. “I can barely tell one skrayling from the next.”

  “Is that why there was another outspeaker there?” Coby asked. “The one we found–”

  “Dead? Yes.”

  “And these other clans,” Mal said. “They want an alliance with Venice?”

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “But their outspeaker is dead now, so there’s nothing to worry about,” Coby said. “Is there?”

  Sandy pulled a face. “They have requested Kiiren’s services as outspeaker, so they can mount another expedition.”

  “But he isn’t a member of their clan.”

  “No,” Sandy said, “but as an outspeaker, it is his duty to–”

  “–to be a ‘vessel for words, nothing more’,” Mal said. “Yes, I remember.”

  “So what do we do?” Coby asked.

  “We tell Walsingham and let the Privy Council decide,” Mal said. “We are intelligencers, not politicians. Like Kiiren, we are simply vessels for words.”

  CHAPTER IV

  Ned stirred the pottage again and lifted the ladle, blowing away the wisps of steam that rose from the surface. After a moment he took a cautious sip and grimaced. Too much rosemary, his mother would have said, but at least it gave the thin broth some flavour. He put the ladle down and set about laying the table. Gabe would be back from Shoreditch soon, and he was always ravenous after a day’s work. Ned smiled to himself. They’d settled into quite the domestic routine in the last two years, like an old married couple. It was a reassuring counterpoint to their other, secret lives, as informants in the pay of Sir Francis Walsingham.

  Footsteps sounded on the garden path and Ned looked up, expecting the door to be flung open by a bright-eyed but weary Gabriel. Instead the owner of the footsteps halted and knocked, in a pattern he had not heard in many months. He all but ran to the door.

  �
��Mal!”

  His old friend grinned back at him, then engulfed him in a rib-crushing, horse-stinking embrace. Memories stirred, and old desires with them, but Ned pushed the thoughts aside. Their lives had gone separate ways long ago.

  “God’s blood, it’s good to see you again,” he said when Mal finally released him. “What are you doing back in England, anyway?”

  “Someone’s got to keep an eye on you. Sandy, you remember Ned, don’t you?”

  “Ned Faulkner. Good to see you again.”

  Mal’s brother bowed in that stiff way the skraylings had. Still as mad as a March hare, then, but not by the looks of it in a vengeful mood. And at least he was speaking English again.

  “And my servant, Coby Hendricks.” Mal gestured to the slender figure at his side. The boy had grown, but was still as beardless as a eunuch. Perhaps he was a eunuch. That would explain a lot.

  “How could I forget?” Ned replied. “Well met, Master Hendricks. So, how long are you here for?”

  “Not long.” Mal took a coin out of his purse and tossed it towards Hendricks, who caught it with practised ease. “I don’t suppose Ned here made soup enough for five. Get a pie from Molly’s ordinary; I doubt she’ll have any meat this time of year, but ask anyway. And don’t eat it all on the way back, hollow-legs.”

  The boy grinned, sketched a bow to his master and left.

  “So…” Mal swung one long leg over the kitchen bench and sat down near the fire, “what’s the latest news from London?”

  Ned stood with his back to the hearth, hands clasped in the small of his back like a boy reciting his lessons.

  “Frobisher’s dead; caught a bullet besieging some Spanish fort in the Netherlands. They brought him home, but he died in Southampton.”

  Mal nodded.

  “You knew him?” Ned asked.

  “Only by reputation. Go on.”

  “Some Jesuit fellow, Southwell, was arrested late last year.” Ned watched his friend for a reaction, but saw nothing suspicious. Not that he was about to betray Mal’s Catholic sympathies to Walsingham, but it never hurt to keep your eyes open. “Been in the Tower since then, under Topcliffe’s tender care–”