Ellana Kardiff was running the family business, it was said, now that her husband was dead. Merchants, perhaps, but the shish dens were one of their most lucrative enterprises, considering the Order Aves, the governing body of High Houses, had outlawed its sale or consumption a number of years ago. Martin scoffed and took another gulp of his ale. “What, is Hake bedding the woman? He’s growing weak in his years.”
Martin had visited Hake’s offices again at first light that morning, and, again, Hake would give him no indication of this larger plan, he kept on about. Martin had practically begged the man despite himself, but Hake had only grown darker, glaring in that way he did, threatening with a look, silencing with his eyes. Then he had said only, “Know your place, Krye.” The look, the words, it made Martin feel afraid, and that was not a feeling he enjoyed.
So, Martin stood, wincing with the pain that came from being on his feet again, and turned toward the Kardiff pair. “Hake is a fool,” he said. “We’ll lose all we fought for.”
“Hake says to wait,” Roald said, with little emotion. Martin patted the other man on the shoulder and moved toward the Kardiff table. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ciaran loosen his sword in its sheath, and he smiled to himself.
“Well, my friends,” Martin said, with a face-splitting grin, to the two men in dogfinch tunics, “what is Myrish scum doing in a Kyresi tavern?”
The two men were quick to their feet, braver than Martin would have given them credit for a few moments before. “This place doesn’t belong to you,” the dark-haired one said, with the jab of a gloved finger.
“Oh, I disagree,” said Martin Krye, and his own sword was out in a flash. The two men drew their swords, and another fight was on. Ciaran came to his aid, and the two went at it with the Kardiff men, blades ringing off one another. Even with Martin in his current state, he was their better with a sword than they. His proximity to nobility, scant as it was, had afforded him a certain amount of tutelage from true masters, and he enjoyed holding this power over them.
With Ciaran’s aid they had the two other men quickly bloodied. Martin did manage to lose his sword in the fray, owing to his battered condition, and had to resort to bludgeoning the fair-haired man with his fists. That man was soon dazed and on the floor, near unconscious, before his friend disengaged with Smythe, and was helping him up. The pair fell back, the dark-haired man’s sword held in front of them to ward off further attack, as they backed toward the exit. He threw the door open, and they ran, escaping to the streets.
Martin followed them to the door, standing in the frame, while he held his side, now in agonizing pain once again. “This is Kyres land,” he screamed after the running forms. “Tell your friends. Tell the widow. It’s ours.”
The two men didn’t look back, but Martin grinned, satisfied. He managed to make his way back to the bar and resumed sitting on his stool. He was intent to drown his pain once again in ale, so he might as well get started.
Suddenly, Roald was standing at his side. Martin glanced at him from the corner of his eyes. The blonde, goateed man held his dagger in a white-knuckled grip, and he looked angry. Martin’s hand went to the pommel of his sword, now sheathed again at his waist.
“Hake said not to make trouble,” Roald said, through gritted teeth.
“Know your place, Roald.” Martin said, raising his tankard of ale. “Know your place.” Then he downed half the tankard in one gulp and put the mug down. When he had swallowed his fill, he looked again at his hands, covered now in nicks and cuts from this latest fight, bruised and bloodied. Are these the hands of a butcher? He did not know.
Chapter Nine
JETHRA
Novak was a large city by all measures, and affluent. The city walls were some two stories high, and comprised of large blocks of white granite, peppered with flecks of black, and lined with tall arches. The domed Council Hall in the center, and the keep on the hill overlooking it, were of white marble, swirled with gray. The dome itself was polished bronze, and there was bronze ornamentation underlying the dome in the manner of the phases of the moon, oiled and polished to a shine. The city rivaled the wealth, artistry, and craftsmanship, of the city of Valis, though Novak drew its influences from its Imperial heredity, as it started as an early outpost of the Mandren Empire, whereas Valis was a city that predated the Mandren expansion into Hyrel, centuries before a king sat any throne in Myren or Kyres.
This, at the least, Jethra had learned from her many travels through Hyrel, in the time since her life, everyone and everything she had known and loved, was taken from her by the edge of the soldiers’ blades. The small cabin of rough-hewn boughs, the lopsided roof, sloped on one side to let the rain run off, the green grass, and tall trees, my love with the raven-dark hair… the children… all gone… she gritted her teeth and dragged the knuckles of one hand across her face, dashing tears from her eyes, and then headed through the gates of the city.
The iron gates of Novak were tall and wide, allowing four wagons, laden high, to pass abreast or in opposite directions. No questions would be asked here, the city was too busy, the guards had better things to do. There was no need for bribes, or false commissions, or forged bills of lading. They wouldn’t even question the quiver and bow on her back, or the dagger at her belt. Novak remained a hub of commerce in the east, and there were too many coming and going to sort them all out at all times. House Bardow had grown rich from this fact, but so too did they grow charitable. The blue wren on black flew from theatres, arthouses, bathhouses, and soup kitchens. There were hospitals and menageries. The grandfather of the current earl had been a generous man, and although his son had not been quite so hospitable, Rolan Bardow, sixth and current Earl of Novak, had shown to have been influenced more by his grandfather than his father.
At least that’s how the stories were told. Jethra, though, had lived a different tale. As she wound her way down the cobblestone avenues, by tall stone buildings housing shops, and taverns, and warehouses, she made her way to her current employer’s office. It was a relationship not made by choice, to a man close to House Bardow, a man who at current drew her leash, like some sick master of a beaten, broken, hound.
Jethra entered the warehouse district, an area of narrow cobblestone pathways and close buildings, that reached three or four stories in height. The walls were made of fieldstone and mortar, and small arches of stonework often ran overhead, at the point where two paths crossed. Jethra took one such path and then headed to her right, stopping at a wooden door, lacquered and studded with iron nails, small, but arched at the top.
Jethra stopped for a moment, eyeing the portal, and then felt for the iron medallion that hung from a string of leather around her neck. She pulled it out, and held it up, dangling it before her, the disc turning back and forth with its own weight. A circle divided by two parallel lines, with two dots in the center of each half. A symbol of balance, a symbol of her order. Putting the medallion back beneath the folds of her tunic, she gripped it through the cloth as she stepped forward, pushed the door open, and stepped through.
Inside three men were visible behind a large, wooden desk, two seated and one standing. The man standing was tall and dressed in a leather jerkin and pants, high boots reaching his knees. He had light hair, straw-like, and when he looked up to study Jethra, she felt as if his gray eyes were probing every facet of her body. He pointed at a parchment of some type on the table and said a few soft words to the others in attendance, before straightening and putting a hand to the dagger at his waist. He looked Jethra up and down again, before pursing his lips and heading past her and out the door through which she had just entered.
The man seated in the center wore a tunic of black and leather breeches, over a portly frame. He had no discernible chin, though he did have a gray beard and mustache, and thinning hair that was cropped close in the style of an infantryman. This was Marsen Crake, the man she had come to see, out of no choice of her own, and he was staring at the document before him, having
not looked up since she entered. To his right was a man rivaling his size named Leiron Denirr, who had an unshaven face of dark whiskers, and a mop of black hair. He licked thick lips as he eyed her and then coughed. Crake looked up, briefly, then back to the parchment. At a few moments past he rolled it up, set a steel ring around it to hold it together, and then set it aside on his desk.
“You took some time in returning,” he said, when he was done.
“Careful work takes careful planning,” Jethra responded.
Crake grinned, studying her, and then sat back in his chair. He ran a hand down his stomach, and then rested his fingers in the waist of his breeches. “So it does. But I told you, haste. Many things are in motion, and if you want what you are after, you must do as you are told.”
“I want what I am owed,” Jethra corrected.
Crake snorted and leaned forward then stood up. He turned to an iron-bound wood chest behind his desk and lifted the heavy lid. He took something from inside, and then let the lid slam shut.
Jethra instinctively took a step back as the lid banged, but then rocked forward on her heels, and moved back to where she had begun. Again, a smile from Crake, as he turned around, and put a small cloth pouch down on the desk between them.
Jethra picked up the bag and felt the weight in her hands. Then she opened the folds of cloth and counted out five silver coins. Inside were at least a dozen others, but she left these untouched, instead refastening the pouch and tossing it back onto the desk before him.
“You know what I want,” Jethra said, staring into Marsen Crake’s eyes.
“You haven’t earned it yet,” Crake replied, matching Jethra’s stare with an intensity that nearly made her knees buckle. It was a look that announced that he was a man of power, not afraid of anyone, let alone the woman before him. There was a threat in those eyes as well, one born of the knowledge that he could have Jethra in shackles with a word, and dead with the exchange of a few simple coins no different than those she now held in the palm of her hand.
Jethra held two of the silver coins up before Crake. “A life for a life.”
In one fluid motion she tossed the two coins into the air, palmed the others, brought her longbow to the fore, drew two arrows and sent them flying through the air, one after the other. Crake ducked and Denirr fell out of his chair as two successive thuds sounded. At the end of both shafts each of the two coins sat nailed to the wall behind them.
Crake gulped deeply, looking at the quivering arrows shafts, then turned and glared at Jethra. He straightened, regaining some amount of his composure, and said, “That’s two.”
Jethra took the three remaining coins and fanned them out before her, before putting them in a pocket. “Well, what’s next then?”
Crake swallowed hard, eyeing her, the grins and smiles of earlier long gone. “You’re to meet a man in Rathborne, to the south. You’ll get your information from the usual place.”
Jethra nodded to the man, her eyes trained on his, as she slung her bow back over her shoulder. Finally, she broke the stare, and then turned away and departed.
After Crake’s she went to the market district. There were things she would need for her travels, and her next engagement. First, to a glassblower she knew, who owned a small hovel of a shop a few streets over from the market center.
Gell Tolivas was an aged man, slight and hunched, who wore a thick leather apron, gouged and stained. He did not wear gloves when he did his work, and instead bore large hands that were scarred and blistered, over and over again. He was peculiar, but he was a master at his work.
When she arrived, Gell was firing a small glass globe in a brick kiln on the end of a steel rod. He turned it beneath a glass lens that amplified its size, inspecting every detail and rolling it about in blue flame as he went. All around him was glasswork of various sizes on rough-hewn shelves, and makeshift tables. A fire was roaring in a hearth to his left, and he sat at a deeply scarred bench of thick wooden beams. He didn’t stop when she entered and waited until his current task was finished and cooling, before looking up at her.
“Is that mine?” Jethra said, when he had finished.
Gell shook his head and set his latest work to cool, then went to a tall cabinet in the rear of his shop and opened the doors. “Nay. A trinket for a local lady of some repute. A bauble, really. Now, these,” he said, turning from the cabinet as he talked, with a small chest of black leather now before him. He placed on the workbench in front of her and continued, “these are a work of a greater artistry.”
Jethra opened the chest and revealed inside a dozen palm-sized globes of glass, set in velvet. They were comprised each of two separate halves and Gell took one out and twisted the two halves in opposite directions, before pulling them apart to reveal each side. There was a small hole the size of her little finger that led to a hollow interior chamber on one half, and a small depression on the outside of the other half, again about the size of her little finger, knuckle deep.
Jethra nodded, and took the two halves from the old man, inspecting them, and then twisting them back together, where the pressure of precise craftsmanship held them in place.
“As you wanted?” Gell asked.
Jethra the of the globe about in her hands, inspecting its clear, crystalline construction. “And more,” she said.
The old man seemed to beam at the comment, and a smile split his face. “Better now, as you asked, not so thick as last time, so the breaking comes easier, but not so thin as to have you ending up with shards in your pocket. Just right I’d say. Time only, that’s all it takes.”
Jethra nodded, and put the globe back in its box, and closed the lid. There was no need to inspect them all, like her, Gell was a craftsman, who was serious about his business. She retrieved a pouch of coins from her waist and put four golden crowns in Gell’s scarred hand. He smiled and nodded, and then Jethra was on her way, the black chest in the dark cloth pack on her back.
Next, she visited an alchemist of some repute, who Crake had connected her to, at her request. Crake didn’t like that she wouldn’t tell him why she wanted to talk to such a person, but then, Jethra knew whatever she discussed with him would get back to Crake anyway.
The alchemist looked like someone out of a story. His name was Aralli, and he was old, with long, frazzled, gray hair and beard, and a flowing blue robe and cap. His small candlelit shop of stone walls and earthen floor held all manner of tins and pottered jars, glassware tubes, and glowing furnaces.
It occurred to Jethra that he appeared almost to be one playing a part, a role that would, no doubt, help him fleece coin from naive nobles wanting miracles, and ladies who sought to know their futures. But then, when she described her need, he did deliver what she was looking for in neat script on a thin piece of parchment.
It was a formula for something she read about in an old book of spells, which she had managed to acquire earlier that year. The book was another thing that went back and forth between fancy and reality, but she had a hunch based on her research that this was the key to something very powerful, not but a story.
When she had what she needed from the alchemist, she brought a dagger across his throat, and left his shop. Let Marsen Crake try to get what he wanted from the man now. She would almost like to see the look on his face when he heard what had happened.
After she left the alchemist’s shop, she went to a small clay hut that housed the apothecary that Crake had given enough coin to, to see that she got whatever she needed. Narud was his name, and he was a man with curly black hair and beard, a sharp nose, and dark eyes, who wore a robe of purple silk, sashed at the waist.
Narud was too inquisitive for her liking, but the deal had been struck, and she wished to take no more of Crake’s coin and favor than was necessary. He produced for her a small wooden canister of a dark powder, “rare, from across the eastern sea,” he said, moving his hands over it ominously. Then he placed a wooden box carefully before her, which she opened to reveal six glass via
ls of a yellow oil, corked at the top. Of this one he said, “from strange trees of the south.” More theatrics that made Jethra want to place a dagger in his eye, but then, she had need of him yet, and so she would have to endure his inanity. The box and canister also went into her pack, and then she was on her way.
As the sun was setting in the sky, she headed to the tavern district, and there found The Drowning Goose, a place marked by a sign over the door that showed such a long-beaked bird, its head planted in water, bubbles gurgling from the depths. She always sort of felt bad for the thing, thinking that someone should put it out of its misery, but tonight she didn’t dwell long on it and headed inside.
A small place, dim-lit, with small glass windows, and three stone hearths roaring with flames, which cast a reddish pall over everything inside. The tables and chairs were of thick wooden boards and dowels, crudely formed and constructed, the floors of wide pine boards, worn by boots, and stained with ale. At the bar stood a small man in his late thirties, short of stature, with a round belly, and thin, closed-cropped hair, rosy cheeks, and a small tongue that sat most often protruding from his lips, probing the air. His ears were small and red, and his eyes were a bit too close together.
When he talked, it was as if his tongue was too large for his mouth, a fact which Jethra no longer noticed. He was one of the few remaining people she had any affection for, left in the world. He was kind to her, despite the fact that his differences made him hardened to the world. They had only chanced to meet at this very tavern some years back, and their mutual interests had made them fast friends. Pedin was his name, and he worked long hours for the tavern owner, fetching tankards of ale for the men and women who found their way inside.
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