A Gathering of Fools (Vensille Saga Book 1)

by James Evans

  He waited for long minutes, frozen in the gloom, then gently searched the area around him for charms or people. Again, nothing, so he crept over the floor, between crates of old clothes and pieces of broken furniture, until he reached the door. It opened onto a tiny staircase that led down to a large, dimly lit landing with two doors and a second staircase leading down to the first floor. Marrinek reached out, trickling power outward toward the doors in search of charms and this time he found one, a trap, on the left-hand door. He moved to stand before the door and carefully sent delicate tendrils of power into the room beyond; nothing. It seemed that everyone was still downstairs in the common room.

  He focussed on the trap, a cunningly wrought fire charm, powered by a lead reservoir, that would have been triggered if he had opened the door. He trickled power out and around the charm, isolating it and temporarily disabling it, then he checked the floor, ceiling and walls, just to be sure. Again nothing, and he was just about to open the door when he felt a second, far more subtle charm hidden in the woodwork near the hinges. This one wasn’t a trap but an alarm, linked to some other object, that would have sounded silently if he had opened the door and somehow avoided the trap. He stepped quietly away from the door and turned down the landing to the second room. There were no traps or alarms on this door and he quickly opened the door and stepped inside.

  A store cupboard, shelves lined with candles, linen and other practical items necessary for running a home within an inn. Safe, but not very useful. Marrinek reached out toward the other door, trickling power towards it, then he twisted sharply and triggered the alarm. He settled deeper into the store cupboard and pulled the door closed, waiting.

  The response was rapid. Hitton came quickly up the stairs, sword in one hand, charm in the other, and went straight to the door. Marrinek, watching through a gap between the warped cupboard door and its frame, saw Tam following a few paces behind, also with sword drawn. Interesting that they both led with swords, he thought.

  Hitton stopped in front of the door, clearly confused, having expected to find someone caught in his trap.

  “What the...” he muttered, “what tripped the alarm?” Tam said nothing, sheathing his sword and turning to go back downstairs. Hitton stood a few seconds longer before sheathing his own sword. He checked the alarm again and the trap, then he muttered to himself and stood there, shaking his head. Still muttering, he followed Tam back down the stairs to the first-floor gallery. Marrinek waited a few minutes then triggered the alarm again.

  Again, Hitton came quickly up the stairs, still leading Tam, both with swords drawn. Hitton stood again outside the door, frowning, but Tam just shook his head and went back downstairs, leaving the confused Hitton to stare at the door frame on his own. After a few seconds Hitton disarmed the trap and opened the door. He stood in the doorway with his back to Marrinek’s cupboard, inspecting the alarm.

  Marrinek nudged his door open a few inches, pointed the shock cannon at Hitton and pressed one of the trigger buttons. The shock blasted Hitton him from his feet and through the doorway. Marrinek charged out of his cupboard and into Hitton’s room, cannon held before him ready to fire again, but Hitton had struck his head on the floor and was out cold. Marrinek rolled him onto his back, checked that he was still breathing, then quietly closed the door and reactivated the trap with a trickle of power. Then he looked around the room for something he could use to restrain Hitton, settling on a sheet and a heavy Captain’s chair. He manhandled Hitton into the chair and tore the sheet into strips to secure his wrists and ankles then added another length around his head as a gag. He set a second chair opposite the first and began to search the room.

  In a small chest, hidden beneath a false base in the wardrobe, Marrinek found Hitton’s stash of silver and a few modest gem stones. He stuffed them into his pack, put the chest back in the base of the wardrobe and continued searching. In the trunk beside the bed, under a pile of heavy winter clothes, he found a bag with almost an ounce of gold and maybe four ounces of tungsten. Marrinek raised his eyebrows, surprised that someone with Hitton’s relatively modest talent would have been able to gather such expensive materials. Then he wrapped the metal in the remains of the sheet and put it in his pack next to the silver. He was searching under the bed and probing the floorboards when Hitton groaned from behind his gag

  Marrinek walked back to the empty chair and sat down, facing Hitton but with the back of the chair between them. The shock cannon he held loosely in one hand and with the other he reached out to slap Hitton once, twice, then a third time. Hitton jerked awake, eyes going wide as he realised that his hands were tied to the chair. He looked down, trying to work out what was going on, trying to pull away from the chair, then he looked straight ahead and Marrinek felt him begin to gather power.

  “Don’t,” said Marrinek, slapping him hard enough to break Hitton’s concentration and waving the shock cannon in his face, “just don’t. Let’s talk about your two thugs, Gander and Pratek and how much you’re going to pay me in compensation for their offence.”

  Hitton struggled again, pulling on the ties, then tried to shout through the gag. Marrinek slapped him again, then again, quick, hard blows that stung his hand. Hitton’s head lolled but he stopped struggling, blood trickling down his chin. Marrinek pulled the gag down roughly and Hitton spat blood on the floor.

  “You don’t know what you’ve got yourself into, boy, I’ll...” but Marrinek slapped him again.

  “No threats, just answer my questions. Your men stole my apprentices and sold them to a whorehouse. I’ve taken your silver and your heavy metal. Is that enough, do you think? Hmm?”

  Hitton stared at him as if he had gone mad.

  “Enough? What the fuck? I’ll kill you, you fucking shit, you’re dead, do you hear me? Dead!” and he threw himself to the side, toppling the chair onto the floor and shouting at the top of his voice. Marrinek kicked out, catching Hitton in the chest and winding him. Hitton stopped shouting and focussed on trying to draw breath as he lay on his side, hands still tied to the arms of the chair.

  Marrinek stood up and moved his chair to one side, then squatted beside Hitton and placed the shock cannon against his temple, pressing down gently, forcing the man’s head down against the floorboards.

  “I said ‘no threats’. Where do you keep your charms? I think I’ll take those as well.”

  “I’m not fucking telling you anything,” said Hitton through gritted teeth. He spat blood onto the boards again and coughed.

  “Really? Nothing at all? Well, sorry, but that’s not going to be good enough. I’ll need...”

  There was a sudden creak on the landing outside the room. Marrinek slapped his hand over Hitton’s mouth as the gangster tried to shout.

  “Boss, are you in there?” said Tam from the landing, knocking on the door. Hitton struggled violently, screaming incoherently from behind Marrinek’s hand.

  Suddenly the door crashed open and Tam charged into the room, sword drawn. Marrinek dropped to the floor, shock cannon still resting against Hitton’s head, but he needn’t have worried; Hitton’s trap, triggered by the opening of the door, fired as Tam crossed the threshold. There was a violent flash of yellow light, a great wash of heat and a soft fleshy thump. Tam’s momentum carried him into the room but his eyes were glazing even as he stumbled to a halt, the sword falling from his hand. He turned his head toward Marrinek with a confused look on his face then, with blood bubbling from a fist-sized hole in his chest, he collapsed next to Hitton and lay still. Hitton and Marrinek stared for a moment, then Hitton drew breath to scream and Marrinek fired the shock cannon, punching a neat hole right through Hitton’s head and the floorboard beneath him.

  For a few seconds, Marrinek lay next to the two corpses. Then he pushed himself to his feet and stuck his head around the doorframe, peering at the stairs and along the corridor. There was a lot of noise from the floors below but nothing more than the normal sounds from an inn full of drunk people; nobody moved on
the stairs down to the next floor or on the landing below. Marrinek pushed the door closed and looked around the room. He searched Hitton’s jacket quickly, relieving him of a purse, some rings and a few small charms. There were probably others hidden somewhere in the room but the opportunity to search for them had passed and in any case the smell of burnt flesh was nauseating. Time to move.

  Marrinek threw everything into his pack, slung it over his shoulders and stepped back out onto the landing. He thought about taking the trap - the lead could be reused in his own charms - but it would take time to dig it out of the wall and he had a feeling that time was now in short supply.

  He closed the door behind him. The trap was old and inefficient and it took a few tense moments to focus enough power into the reservoir to reset the trap and charge it for another blast. Then he climbed the narrow stair back to the attic and picked his way carefully across the floor to the shuttered window.

  Marrinek had reached the roof and was closing the window behind him when there was a scream from the floor below Hitton’s rooms. The words were lost, muffled by the walls and floors, but it sounded like blood had been noticed as it dripped from the ceiling into the room below. Oops.

  Heavy boots pounded up the stairs to Hitton’s floor. Several men, lots of shouting from the landing. They called out to Hitton and Tam, then one of them pushed open the door and triggered the trap.

  More screaming, more shouting. Someone said something about the roof and then there were more boots on the stairs to the attic. Marrinek moved up the roof till he was behind the dormer then paused, waiting, shock cannon in hand. More voices from the attic and the landing - this was becoming a bad place to be - then someone shouted again, clearly this time, “Just get out on the roof and check. Stop fucking around, just bloody do it!”

  Marrinek tensed as the window was thrown open and someone climbed out nervously onto the roof of the inn. A man shuffled out and stood carefully, holding the edge of the dormer with his left hand and peering gingerly over the edge of the building toward the street three floors below. Marrinek paused, waiting for the right moment, then he thumbed the low power actuator on the shock cannon and blasted the man’s leg.

  The man yelled in shock and stumbled as his leg gave way. His fingers lost their grip on the dormer and he scrabbled desperately as he slid down the roof. Then he rolled over the edge and disappeared from view, screaming all the way to the ground.

  There was more yelling from the attic and someone peered out of the window.

  “Fuck! Shank! What happened? Fuck, he’s fallen off the roof!”

  The shutter slammed closed and the boots charged back across the attic and down the stairs.

  Time to go. He edged carefully around the roof of the inn, back toward the stable. More people were shouting now, the clamour growing as the news spread. Marrinek hurried down onto the roof of the stable and, crouching low, made his way back to the tenement. He stepped onto the roof but noise from within the attic made him pause; he would need another way down. He circled around the roof, listening for signs of life, until he was able to step across another alley onto the roof of the next building, some sort of storehouse. From there he dropped down onto a walkway around the edge of the building where he finally paused to let the trembling in his legs subside.

  By the gods, he was tired. Too much time spent locked in a small room with bad food and not enough exercise. He shook his head and vowed to spend more time training.

  While he rested he slowly pushed power into the shock cannon’s reservoir, filling it so that it was ready to be used again. By the time it was full, his legs had recovered some of their strength. He lowered himself quietly down into a narrow side street, straightened the pack on his back and tightened his cloak.

  Then he walked calmly away from the Snarling Goat on a circuitous route back to the Jewel.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE ROAD FROM Esterengel went due west for many miles, a great stone highway that climbed hills and cut through pasture and forest. The Imperial engineers had built stone bridges along the route of the road, elegant structures that carried the road across the rivers of the western province in graceful soaring arches. The network of roads that criss-crossed the Empire was one of the wonders of the age but few travellers appreciated the efforts that had gone into its construction. Fewer still, as they made their way slowly along the road from Esterengel in a great stream of people and carts and animals, felt the sheer majesty and power of the road network and most simply didn’t think about the road at all, except maybe to curse the odd pothole or missing cobble.

  Ezbedah Krant, newly elevated personal envoy of the Lady Camille, Governor of the Western Province, certainly didn’t see much appeal in the stone road. He didn’t see much appeal in the horse he had been given either, still less in the quiet companion that Rincon had foisted upon him. In fact, there was almost nothing about his current situation that pleased Krant, whose comfortably anonymous position within the Traebarn Palace had been rudely disrupted by the untimely arrival of the Heberon courier. To Krant, the unfamiliar road was a cruel and unusual form of punishment that continued unabated as it carried him ever further from his peaceful existence in the city into the wilds.

  “Nothing urgent ever comes from Heberon,” he had said to the courier, naively, and he had always believed it to be true. He was forced to admit, however, that the news of the escape of the traitor Marrinek was, if not important to Krant himself, at least of urgent importance to his masters. He couldn’t really see the point in travelling to Vensille to deliver a message that could have been sent far more quickly, and with far less disruption, by courier.

  He shifted in the saddle, trying to find some way of sitting that would relieve the pain in his lower back and relax the cramping in his legs. He scratched at his neck, loosening his collar in a vain attempt to circulate some air in the unrelenting heat of the mid-summer sun. He switched the reins from one hand to the other and back again, stretching his fingers and rolling his shoulders, but he couldn’t work the stiffness from his arms. He looked over his shoulder, past his new servant, and back down the road they had travelled from Esterengel but the city was still there, only a few miles away as they climbed the low hills that covered much of the western province. He sighed and resigned himself to a long, uncomfortable, profitless, unnecessary journey.

  At some point, and without stopping their slow plod westward, they ate a meagre lunch of bread and cold meat washed down with a thin beer that had grown warm in the sun. Krant’s servant, Gavelis, doled out the food from a bag on his saddle having apparently decided that it was time to eat. He had then re-packed his bag, again without stopping, and fallen in behind Krant to follow at a respectful distance.

  Around them the caravan they were following trundled slowly westward at the speed of the slowest animals. Krant counted the milestones and estimated their speed at no more than three miles an hour. He wasn’t a keen horseman but he was finding the journey tedious, even on the first day, and he was beginning to wonder if they might not move rather faster, and thus get home rather sooner, if they rode ahead at their own pace.

  Three milestones later, as they finally crested the hill and left the valley of Esterengel behind them, he was sure that he would die of old age before they reached Vensille and that something had to be done. He steered his horse to the side of the road and slowed until Gavelis came alongside.

  “It’s slow going, Gavelis, very slow.”

  “Yes sir. Very slow.”

  “Well, let’s hurry things up a bit, shall we? I would like to get to the next town in time for supper.”

  “I can’t advise it, sir. Two men alone in the countryside with horses and travel gear would be tempting targets for bandits or highwaymen.”

  Krant gave him a look.

  “Surely we are safe here, barely twelve miles from Esterengel?”

  Gavelis smiled but did not seem happy.

  “I fear not, sir. The people travel together for s
ecurity, sir, not entertainment. When we get closer to the town I will ride ahead to secure lodgings for the night, sir, and you should be safe to follow with the packhorse when you see the spire of the town’s temple.”

  “The spire of the temple? But that could take hours!” Krant was indignant. If there really were bandits in the countryside then Gavelis was probably right to be cautious but would they really be so bold as to attack the Governor’s envoys so close to the city? He doubted it and said as much to Gavelis.

  “I think, sir,” said Gavelis in a low voice, “that even the Governor’s envoys, if they were in fact travelling this road,” he paused, meaningfully, and raised a cautioning eyebrow, “would ride with a caravan amid a cloud of anonymity.” He looked around, checking for accidental eavesdroppers, then added, “And I think, sir, that we should stick to our cover story for as long as possible and remember the instructions given to us by ‘your father’ before we departed.” He gave Krant a meaningful glare from beneath raised eyebrows.

  Krant sighed. He had not forgotten the lecture that Rincon had delivered that morning but he had hoped to find a little more leeway in the interpretation of its contents. Gavelis seemed to have a different idea, apparently intent on following the instructions closely despite being merely servant employed to help facilitate Krant’s mission.

  The road took them past another village and Krant spent a few minutes watching the peasants weeding the fields and tending their animals. Theirs was a dull life, miles from the nearest town in a village with neither inn nor bath house. Krant couldn’t imagine ever choosing to live in a rural village but he supposed that maybe some people liked it. He shuddered at the thought of giving up his familiar city comforts, then groaned with self-pity because that was exactly what he had done when he agreed to act as the Governor’s envoy.