The Hawk and the Falcon

by Benjamin Corman

  “You’ll go then?” he asked, softly now.

  “I have to.”

  He came around to face her and knelt down. “You don’t have to. We can leave. I have some coin, it’s not much, but it will get us supplies enough to go off, to go–”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know, anywhere.”

  “I can’t, Will.” She took his hands in hers and stood. “I’ve given my word.”

  “What of your father’s funeral?” He pulled away. “Will you leave before he’s buried? Didn’t you at least have feelings for him?”

  Alaina slapped him across the face before she realized she had moved.

  Will stood, in the aftermath, his cheek turning a bright shade of red, fire burning in his eyes. “You’re all I have,” he said, at last.

  She collapsed inside when she heard that, and moved into his arms as if by instinct, delicate fingers moving to his face. “You have Byron,” she said finally, tears rimming her eyes.

  Will trailed a hand down the small of her back and held her close, her head finding a spot, so naturally, upon his chest. “Byron is a poor substitute for you on a cold winter night.”

  Alaina smiled at that, despite herself. Will began to smile too, she could tell, and then the two of them laughed.

  “He’ll be King soon, anyway,” Will went on, when the mirth had died down. “He’ll have no time for me.”

  Alaina swallowed and pushed away from him. She traced light fingertips over the cloth of his tunic and stared up into his eyes. “I know what I saw in Father’s bedchamber that night. And Robert’s death was no accident.”

  “We’ll convince Byron. He’ll send scouts to the east, raise a host if that’s what it takes, just don’t–”

  “If I can prove the Casterlins are behind all of this, there will be no wedding to worry about. I have to go, Will. I have to.”

  It was almost a week before she saw him again. The days had gone by too quickly, and there had been little time to find him, what with all the preparations for her departure. It seemed as if he was avoiding her, anyhow. She went to the garden each evening, but Will hadn’t shown up.

  Now, Alaina stood at the bow of the ship that would take her east, the wind pulling at her hair, the dark, gray castle she had grown up in, with its square towers of varying heights, and tall central keep, growing smaller and smaller on the horizon as the vessel moved out into the dark waters of the bay. Lyle itself was fading from view.

  Will stood next to Byron on the large, open pier, with the rest of the lords and ladies, and a crowd of common folk. He was the only one who wasn’t waving or trailing a cloth of white through the air. She saw him move forward, and her breath caught in her throat, but he stopped and just stared at her, his eyes locked with hers. She thought she saw him mumble something, but he was too far away to make it out.

  Halster Brighton stepped up to the ship’s rail, moving beside her. He was one man of the many that would accompany her east, forming her royal retinue. “No tears, my dear,” he said. “You’ll see Lyle again, I am certain.”

  Alaina was suddenly taken back to a bright day in the yard behind the castle, when she was young. She had fallen and scraped her knee and was crying. Her father appeared as she sobbed and had taken her in his arms. He had said something then, something that came back to her now, winding through the years.

  “You don’t cry when you’ve fallen,” she said, not turning to Halster. She fought back the tears that were threatening to stream from her eyes. Staring at the dwindling spire of the keep’s tallest tower, she watched as it winked out of view. “You push your fists into the earth and rise again.”

  Chapter Four

  MARTIN

  Every city had its slums. It didn’t matter the grandeur of the palaces, or the silks and gems the nobles wore. Walk a few paces outside the castle walls, wander a bit too far from the estate district, and you soon found the dirt and grime.

  The only difference with Durett, Martin Krye thought as he stepped off of the ship onto a long wooden plank, was that it didn’t have the grander places. He was born amidst the blood and entrails of a slaughterhouse not more than a few blocks from the small dock he now headed toward. He knew the place well.

  The ship had come into a private port nestled between two tall, granite buildings, lined with cracks and pale lichen. They were old tenements, with carved moldings and narrow windows. The foundations sunk deep into the murky, green waters of the bay, where algae clung to the mortar and bricks.

  It was an appropriate berth for a man of his stature. His father had been a distant cousin of the now deceased Duke Leyton Casterlin, his mother, a butcher’s daughter.

  But it was because of the former relation that he was entrusted with the scroll he now clutched in his hand. He had been tempted to break the seal all the way on his voyage across the Kaspen Sea, to crush the Falcon crest pressed into the dark blue wax and read the contents of the letter.

  Gregor Hake would skin him alive if he showed up with the scroll disturbed. It would almost be worth the beating he’d receive, to know what it said before the other man did.

  Hake’s office was a few blocks to the east, off Lynchpin Alley. Three years away from Durett didn’t stop his muddy, cracked boots from taking him there, as if of their own accord.

  Despite his familiarity, he almost wondered if he had chosen the wrong path as he went. Only a block away, he found wide cobblestone streets lined with tall buildings with carved, wooden trim. From the supports hung several long banners of green, stitched with the profile of a dogfinch. They billowed in the winds, unimpeded.

  When he reached the steep staircase that led up to Hake’s office, he found it oddly bereft of guardsmen. So, he climbed slowly, looking about, and then headed through the old, worn door at the top landing.

  Only a solitary hulk sat inside the small hallway, dozing on a chair. When Martin was nearly upon him, he shook to life and stood, barring the way.

  “Hello,” Martin said, and went to move past him. The man grabbed him by the tunic, the muscles of his large arms tightening, and threw him backward.

  With a flick of his wrist, Martin dusted his shirt off and then put the heel of his hand into the man’s throat. The hulk fell to the floor gasping and Martin stepped over him, through the door ahead.

  Gregor Hake didn’t look up as he entered. He sat at a small, mahogany desk, in the cramped room, parsing through a stack of papers. After a few moments passed, he called, “Jonns?”

  A wiry man dressed in a studded leather jerkin poked his head into the room, from a rear chamber. “Yeah?”

  “See to Merr, will you?”

  “Yeah.” The wiry man moved into the hall, and started to help the fallen, gasping man to his feet.

  Martin grinned and pushed the door closed. He studied Hake as he continued to read. He had a wide brow, and his fair hair was mostly grey now. He wore a quilted shirt of green, and had a short, bronze bracer on each wrist.

  It occurred to Martin that he could vault over the desk with ease and plant a dagger in the man’s skull. Though he had to remind himself, with Hake, nothing was ever exactly as it appeared.

  “I saw the Dogfinch of Kardiff flying not a block away,” Martin said, as he pulled up a chair in front of the desk.

  “Did you?” was Hake’s only response.

  “Was a time we wouldn’t have let western scum like that, settle so close to our territory.” House Kardiff was a wealthy merchant family, who hailed from lands in Myren, but had been buying up parts of Durett for years. They demanded to pay their tributes to the Duke of Lyle, even those on income earned in Kyres. They used longtime ties with the Throne to ward off retaliation.

  “Things change. Though not all, it seems. According to my reports, you got into some thirty duels while you were in Lyle. Left several husbands for dead.”

  Martin ground his teeth at the mention of someone keeping tabs on him, though it was no doubt the vigilance of Hake, and his connection t
o House Casterlin, that had kept him out of the stocks.

  Hake folded his hands and looked up for the first time. He bared yellow teeth in a tight smile. “Still paying back Aldrin Lorring one Myrenese at a time?”

  Martin fought to control himself, wavering between fear and rage. As a boy he spent summers as a ward at Lorring’s Keep in Hamsted, in the west. It was one of the reasons Hake chose to send him to the court at Lyle, to gather information. It was common knowledge, but what only a select few knew was that the eldest son, at the time a boy only a few years older than Martin, made it a regular habit to use him as a practice dummy and found no end to the delight of abusing him in other ways, as well. The brute had left him with bruises from head to toe, more than once, and had visited more cruelties upon him then he cared to count.

  It was Hake who had sent him there, Hake who had seen to him, after his mother died of the flux, and his father wanted nothing to do with the byproduct of his dalliance.

  “I have something for you,” Martin managed from between clenched teeth. He pulled the scroll from inside his tunic and tossed it on the table.

  “Ah,” said Hake, as if he hadn’t been expecting it. He took the small scroll in hand, and held it up, studying it in the light. A thin finger traced the edge of the parchment, circled the seal of wax. “You know what it says?”

  Martin was forced to shake his head. He sunk in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest.

  Hake grinned and called for Jonns again. He placed the scroll in a bony hand. “Our best rider. Ten crowns to the man that puts it in Duke Casterlin’s hands. I’ll make a eunuch of anyone who dares break the seal.”

  Jonns nodded and left the room with the scroll.

  “As for you, Krye,” Hake said, standing. “You’ve your usual duties to see to. I have no need to send you back to Lyle, just now.”

  “Fine.” Martin stood and moved toward the door.

  “Oh, Martin?”

  “Yes,” he muttered, not turning back.

  “Keep out of trouble. I have plans in the works, and you may find the streets changed.”

  Martin slammed the outer door shut behind him, as he left, and nearly took the post off the rail, when he reached the bottom of the stairs. Bloody Hake, and his bloody plans. As a child he had spent days in the alleys and gutters, and nights in the taverns and on the rooftops. Let Hake try and tell him of the streets.

  He found the warehouse district with ease, and marched up the stairs of a long, squat building he knew too well. The triangular roof was falling apart, and the wooden steps still creaked and wobbled as they had when he was young. This, more than any place, was home.

  As he made his way down a hall, he came upon a small boy, of no more than six. He had a mop of dirty hair and worn roughspun clothes. “Oy, stop there,” said the boy, as he approached.

  Martin chuckled. “Stand aside, boy.”

  “Do you know where you’re at, fancy man?”

  The tunic and breeches he wore were of a more expensive, western cut, than when he was last here, but they were far from decadent. “Don’t make me angry, boy.”

  In a flash the boy had kicked him in the shin, sending Martin to his knee. He circled around and took Martin by his neck, putting a rusted dagger to his throat.

  Martin yanked at the boy’s arm. “Get off of me.”

  “Codswallop. Move on.”

  The boy took him, crawling, into the main room. There, they came onto a wood planked landing, with a few tables and some chairs, after which was a long, wide room filled with ironbound barrels, and crates of a dozen different shapes and sizes. The walls were of cracked, white plaster, and wide windows, cut near the roof, allowed afternoon light to stream in. The place had a musty, stale smell to it.

  At the tables sat a dozen men, playing cards and taking long draws from pewter mugs. He recognized only Roald Casterlin, his cousin, who sat picking his nails with a dagger. Dark eyes and clothing contrasted with his blonde hair and goatee. He didn’t look up as they entered.

  “A little help,” Martin said.

  “Found this Myrish cud,” the boy reported, “toddling in as if he owned the place.”

  “Throw him to the fish, Breck,” said a tall man, who made his way forward. Martin knew that thin face, large smile, and halo of brown curls. “Ciaran Smythe. Call off your cur.”

  The boy, Breck, tightened the dagger at his throat. He could feel a thin trickle of blood start to drip down his neck.

  “Don’t move,” said Roald, still picking at his nails.

  Ciaran turned to the other man. “Roald–”

  Roald slammed his dagger into the table. The motion had caused him to nick his finger, which started to bleed. He put the wound in his mouth and sucked. “Gorett,” he mumbled.

  Another man stood up and moved to a door at the end of the landing. He knocked. The door opened and a giant stepped out. He was easily over six feet in height, with a chest like a barrel, and arms as thick as a ship’s mast. Gorett had grown up.

  What’s worse, he had connections with the Kardiffs, was a son of one of the family’s moneylenders. Why would Hake let this man among them? Why would any of the men in this room take orders from him?

  “Let him up, Breck,” said Gorett, as he marched forward.

  The boy and his dagger were gone without another word. Martin fell to a sitting position and wiped at the cut on his neck.

  Gorett towered over him, narrowing his eyes, which caused his single, thick brow of dark hair to twist inward. “Martin Krye?”

  Martin nodded, managed a smile.

  “Martin Krye, who used to hit me and kick me as a boy, when he didn’t like what I’d nicked from the docks?”

  “Now, Gorett–”

  “Martin Krye, who left three long years ago, telling us all to piss off?”

  Martin got to his feet. “Listen, Gorett, fellows–”

  The brute stopped his words with a fist to his mouth.

  He hit the ground and spit out blood. “I’m s-sorry, Gorett,” he said, as he struggled onto his hands and knees.

  “Sorry, he says.” Gorett drew a shortsword from a sheath at his side. He rested it on Martin’s shoulder, and then pulled the sharp steel along his ear, drawing blood.

  Martin winced, using the motion to cover fishing a hand inside his tunic.

  “Little Martin Krye, asks us for forgive–”

  Martin sprang to his feet and planted a dagger into Gorett’s side. The giant roared, and clutched at the wound, before falling to his knees.

  “Smythe, sword,” said Krye.

  Ciaran Smythe drew the rapier from his belt and threw it to Martin, who caught it in the air. He leveled the blade at Gorett’s throat.

  Gorett tried to get to his feet, but Martin held the sword steady.

  “Gods have mercy!” the brute cried.

  Martin leaned in toward the man and whispered, “What if there are no gods?” Then he shoved several inches of steel into the giant brute’s throat.

  Chapter Five

  JETHRA

  Death is painless. That’s what a Priest of Varanka spat at Jethra, moments before she slit his throat. She knew that he was wrong. She had felt the sting of death, it's cold, raking, fingers tearing over her, limbs growing weak, mind numb. She was pretty sure the priest realized it, too, as the blood ran out of him, onto the cobbles of that dark alley in Laire. Death wasn’t painless, it hurt like hell.

  But the easterners loved their gods, no matter how much their popularity waned in the west, and so they said their mantra, over and over again, until they believed it, no matter how ridiculous it was. Jethra had her own mantra: death is release.

  She said it to herself now, under her breath, as she climbed the dirt path to the gates of Durett. In the moments before her work began, she always experienced pangs of doubt. She could see them in those moments. Running toward her amidst long blades of swaying grass… so small, so young… smiles on their faces, laughing… but then the horsemen cam
e, and the laughter was gone, replaced instead by screams…

  So, she said it, mouthed the words, “Death is release, death is release…”

  When she reached the top of the hill, he was waiting for her. A skinny fellow, with an over-sized shirt of chainmail, conical helm tilted to one side, and a spear resting, slanted, in loose fingers. He leaned against the rusting, iron gate, staring inward, toward the city. She could smell the stink of manure on him from the bottom of the hill, a farmer perhaps when he wasn’t an inept guardsman, and yet it didn’t seem like he knew she was coming.

  He turned slowly when she stopped in front of him and began kicking the dust from her boots. “It’s you.” A jagged, yellow, grin from beneath a sharp nose bent to one side.

  She nodded and withdrew a scroll from a pouch at her waist and handed it to him. “As promised. Twenty acres in Novak.”

  He scratched at the dark scruff on his cheek, as he opened the deed. “Good farmland?”

  “None better in all Kyres. A little rain, plow it well, anything will grow.”

  The guard grinned again and rolled the parchment back up. He took it in a fist and pointed it at her. “You must be pretty well connected, to land something like this.”

  “Never mind about me. Worry about your part. Entrance now, and blind eyes in the western quarter tonight.”

  “Alright.” He ran his tongue across his teeth. “Alright. But what say when you’re done with what you got to do,” a grubby hand went to her arm, a thick thumb ran back and forth over her bicep, “we do a little plowing of our own.”

  Jethra stepped forward, got in close to him. One hand moved up his chest, while the other snaked behind her back, under her shirt, to the hilt of the dagger tucked at her waist. Her fingers closed around it, tightened, all the while her other hand stroked him gently. A fire raged in her mind, but she gritted her teeth and swallowed it. Now was not the time. The setting sun was still bright yet, and there was work to be done. “Do your part,” she purred, trying her best to keep the venom out of her voice, trying her best to stay the hand behind her back. “Do it well, and perhaps, I’ll find you when I’m done.”