A Game of Three Hands

by Tim Stead

  Bren Portina talked as they rode, naming the streets, the districts, the canals. He waved back to the people. He told her stories, stories about the building of the canals, the founding of the city, the making of its traditions, and she realised that they were not merely stories, they were the blood of the city, its history, the things that made Blaye different.

  They came at last to a grand house that stood close to the river on the northern edge of the city. Like everything else it was brick-built, but here there were guards on the gate, and beyond the modest formal gardens a vineyard stretched away, tracking the river on a slightly elevated terrace.

  “My home,” Portina said. He sat and looked at the house with evident affection.

  “So the tales of the vintner king are true,” Calaine said.

  “Oh, completely,” Portina agreed. “We’ve grown our own grapes for a thousand years. King Telarian started it. He was so affronted by the poor quality of Blaye wines that he established a vineyard and a licensing system. He closed down two thirds of the vineyards in the city because they produced such poor wine and forced the others to improve on pain of closure. Our vineyard has been the exemplar ever since.”

  “And the Faer Karan did nothing to stop you.”

  “Nothing. The real power in Blaye resides with the great council, which they disbanded by force. We were just wealthy grape growers after that, though we continued to serve the city in any way we could, and so our wealth has been somewhat diminished over the centuries. The people have kept us going, though. A bottle of the royal wine served at table is seen as an act of loyalty, the mark of a good Blaye family.”

  It was similar to the house of Saine in Samara, Calaine realised. Corban’s family had served the city, spent their money to help those in need. It had not been pure altruism, of course. A tree cannot stand without the soil that feeds it.

  “How fortunate that loyalty should be so enjoyable,” she said. It was the sort of thing that Corban would have said. Portina laughed.

  “Wait until you taste the family reserve,” he said. “You see, the soils along the river are perfect. You can’t see it, of course, but we have gravels and the river bends to the west, so the terraces a little further up get more sun. It is the very best place for vines.”

  “I will take your word for it,” she said. She knew nothing about wine, apart from the taste of it. She had imagined that rich soils were needed to grow fat grapes, but apparently it wasn’t so.

  They abandoned their horses to a small army of polite grooms and went inside the house. The interior was, perversely, exactly what she had expected. It was homely, and yet managed to be so in a grand manner. The ceilings were high, but not high enough to be intimidating. The rooms were large, but not so large that they were not liveable. The place signalled wealth and good taste without boasting about it.

  They toured the house much as they had toured the city. There were stories for every room, names from a history that was gloriously intact.

  “How did you keep all this?” Calaine asked.

  “What? The house?”

  “No. Everything. The history, the city. Blaye is unbroken.”

  “We saw the pointlessness of fighting, so we didn’t. The Faer Karan couldn’t be bothered to spend their time subjugating a people who simply acquiesced to be ruled.”

  “You surrendered?”

  “If you want to put it that way. Does a ship’s captain surrender when he puts into port to avoid a storm? Does a woodsman surrender when he dodges a falling tree? You know the fruits of resistance. Were they better than this?”

  “Our pride is intact,” Calaine said, a touch of scorn creeping into her voice.

  Portina smiled. “We were never proud people, except for the wine of course, and the Faer Karan didn’t understand or care about that.”

  “It’s cowardice,” Calaine said.

  “It’s common sense,” Portina replied. It wasn’t his answer that annoyed her. It was that he shrugged off her accusation as though it didn’t matter. “We did what we thought was best for the city, and I can’t regret a decision made four centuries ago.”

  Calaine knew that he was right. She had cause to regret her own family’s decision to resist. It had gained them nothing but pride in their own stubborn will. Samara had suffered for it. Her own brother had thrown away his life because of it. She bit back a stinging reply and simply looked at the polished wooden floor.

  “I’ll show you your room,” Portina said. It was a diplomatic thing to say. Calaine had let her pride trap her again. She nodded and followed the King of Blaye.

  25 The Poisoner

  Arla stepped gingerly onto the soil of Cabarissa. Where the dock met the land there was a small cluster of Shan. Someone had seen their contest, she guessed, and word was beginning to spread that one of the race of men would be permitted to step on the sacred soil.

  She wasn’t worried. The Shan, even a large number of them, were no physical threat and besides, she had a fearsome escort.

  The Kastan Delor called Jat walked ahead of them, and Seer Jud seemed untroubled – almost smug in fact.

  They did not pause, but walked directly into the city, passing from the open sea air of the great pier into narrow streets lined with neat, whitewashed houses that seemed impossibly small. She could have put her hand on the roof of many of them.

  They were followed. An increasingly large crowd of Shan trailed behind them, mostly curious, but Arla heard the odd angry voice. She was impressed that she had been permitted to keep both her bow and sword, even though they were useless against the creature that walked in front of her. The weapons made her feel more secure.

  They turned several times, and the flat road bent upwards into the low hills behind the harbour district. The houses here became rather grander. They were two stories high, boasted gardens thick with herbs and low trees. There were no blooms to be seen – nothing that might be called ornamental.

  They came at last to a house set in a full acre of land, and here they stopped. Seer Jud turned to her.

  “Before we go in there are things that you must understand,” he said.

  “Tell me.”

  “Almost everything in the house may kill you. Wear gloves, but still touch nothing. Do not brush the furniture, do not sit. Drink and eat nothing, and do not allow the sage or his servants to approach you. If they try, you are at liberty to kill them. Do you understand?”

  “That sounds extreme,” Arla said.

  “You cannot over-estimate Sage Dahl’s talent as a poisoner. He is one of the finest in Jerohal. If he wants you dead it will be difficult to survive this visit. Our hope is that he has nothing that he wishes to conceal.”

  “This is crazy,” Arla said. “How does anyone visit him?”

  “Those few that do so will follow much the same precautions that I have outlined.”

  “Perhaps we should insist that he meet us elsewhere,” she suggested.

  “He will not come. We have nothing to offer him.”

  “If this were Samara…”

  “But it is not,” Seer Jud said. “Do not forget that for an instant. Now, do you wish to question him or not?”

  “It’s why we came here.” Arla was beginning to feel that it might have been a mistake coming here at all, but it was too late now. She could hardly walk away after all they had been through to stand here on Dahl’s threshold.

  Jud stepped through into the garden – there was no gate – and walked up to within a couple of paces of the door.

  “Sage Dahl!” he called out. “We would speak with you.”

  There was a long pause. Arla was beginning to think that Jud’s voice had not been heard when the door swung open and a figure appeared. It was a Shan, simply dressed in black. Arla noticed that it wore no gloves.

  “Who wishes to speak with the Sage?” it asked.

  “I am Seer Jud,” Jud replied. “And this is Commander Arla Crail, chief investigator for the lawkeepers of Samara.”

&nbs
p; The Shan stared at Arla as though she were a blue tree suddenly sprouted from the ground. “A man? Here?”

  “I permitted it,” Jat said. “I wanted to see what would happen.”

  The servant stood for a moment, assessing the situation, or maybe just coming to terms with what it saw before it.

  “I will ask,” it said, and vanished back into the house, closing the door.

  “What now?” Arla asked.

  Patterns

  “We wait,” Jud said. “Maybe curiosity will get the better of caution.”

  “We’ve come all this way and he can just say no?”

  “Of course. You cannot force someone like Sage Dahl to do something against their will. Well, you can, but a lot of people will die.”

  “Isn’t there law here?”

  “Not in the way that you know it. There are rules, of course. We call them the standards of true conduct, and anyone who flagrantly ignores them is likely to end up dead. There’s more than one master poisoner in Jerohal.”

  “If I’d known that I’d have brought something he wanted.”

  “You know what a poisoner wants?”

  Arla would have answered, but the door opened again.

  “Sage Dahl will see you,” the servant said.

  Jud grabbed Arla’s hand.

  “Remember what I told you. Put your gloves on and touch nothing. Do not let them get too close to you.”

  “I heard,” Arla said. “I will.”

  She put on her gloves before crossing the threshold of Sage Dahl’s land, and Jud’s words made everything seem sinister. The neat rows of green plants in the garden, the handle of the open door, the door jamb itself, she slipped past them all, touching nothing. Arla stepped into the house, stooping below the lintel to find that the hallway within barely accommodated her. She looked up. The servant was standing at a doorway some twenty feet away.

  “In there,” it said, and promptly walked down the hall, turned a corner, and was gone.

  “I will enter first,” Jud said.

  Arla followed, stooping once more into the room the servant had indicated. She found herself in a comfortable parlour. The stone floor was mostly concealed beneath carpets of an unfamiliar design. They were predominantly blues and greens, and the patterns were fish and leaves, all different shapes and sizes and worked into an intricate lattice. There was only one chair, only one table, and shelves that held hundreds of leather bound books.

  Sage Dahl sat in the chair, a glass of milky liquid on the table before him. He was wrapped in something that could have been a shawl or a blanket.

  “I am curious,” the sage said. “A graduate of the great college and a lawkeeper from Samara. What can it mean?”

  Seer Jud executed a polite bow.

  “Sage Dahl, we have come with questions.”

  “Let the lawkeeper speak,” Dahl said. “I want to hear it from her.”

  Arla resisted the urge to step forwards.

  “Sage Dahl,” she began. “We wish to speak to you about the client who came to Jerohal to meet with you perhaps three weeks ago. He stayed for three days.”

  Dahl smiled. “Ah yes,” he said.

  “Do you know his name?”

  “He called himself Jon,” the sage said. “He did not confide any other name or personal information.”

  “And his appearance?”

  “Tall, thin, pale. He had dark hair. I am not familiar with the physiognomy of men, but it seemed he had a large nose, even larger than usual.”

  “You’ve seen other men?”

  “Only those on the ship, and you.”

  “And what did he want of you?”

  Sage Dahl smiled again. “It was quite extraordinary,” he said. “The man wanted a game of three hands. I don’t think it’s been done before, or only once or twice. There’s hardly a point to it. Two hands is subtle enough for anything I can imagine.”

  “But he insisted on three?”

  “Yes, and paid for it handsomely.” Dahl leaned forwards and picked up his glass, sipped at the liquid.

  Jud glanced back at Arla, frowning. He spoke. “Are you well, Sage Dahl?”

  Dahl chuckled, an odd sound in a Shan. “How observant you are, Seer,” he said. “It is often said that secrets reveal themselves to the masters of the path. I am dying.”

  “Dying?”

  “I have been poisoned,” Dahl said.

  Arla could think of nothing to say.

  “You? Poisoned? Surely you have a cure?”

  “I have no idea what it is,” Dahl said. “I know seven thousand compounds that can be used singly or in combination to end a life or sicken a Shan. I know their symptoms and their antidotes, where they exist, but I am at a loss.”

  “A master poisoner, then,” Jud said. There was no real sympathy in his voice.

  “It was the man,” Dahl said. “The man who called himself Jon. It could only have been him. I’m always careful, always on my guard, but a man?”

  “That’s why you’re helping us,” Jud said.

  “Of course. Why else? I want him caught and executed.”

  “What did you give him?” Arla asked.

  “The poisons? I’ll not tell you that. Those are my legacy, my family’s wealth. But I’ll tell you how they work. The first was a contact poison – a thing to be rubbed on a handle, a baluster, a book, perhaps. It has a life of three days once deployed, and an endurance of a year in the body. The second was similar, a contact poison, but much more robust. It has a life of many years, but an endurance of only a month or so. The third, the finisher, is to be ingested. It has a life of one day.”

  “And the victim must take all three?”

  “Of course. Hence the name, though the order is unimportant.”

  “And who is the intended victim?” Arla asked. This was the key question.

  “He was surprisingly talkative about that,” Dahl said. “It was meant for royalty, he said. He seemed proud of it. I got the definite impression that more than one person was going to die.”

  “And you didn’t have a problem with that?” Arla asked.

  “Of course not. Why would I? It could only enhance my reputation.”

  Arla reminded herself that this was not Samara. They did things very differently here. She resisted the urge to do something to the sage that might prove fatal.

  “Did he happen to mention which royalty?”

  “Not precisely, but he did say something about a marriage, and you’re here, aren’t you?”

  A marriage. That would be Calaine and Bren Portina. She tried to remember the symbols on the scrap of paper that had been found in Captain Silman’s boot, but they refused to be recalled. There had been a crown, a dagger, that was all that came.

  “Is there anything else?” she asked.

  “Be specific,” Dahl said. He reached out for his drink, but his hand shook and he pulled it back again, hiding it in his sleeve.

  “You spoke with him twice. Did he say anything else that might signal his intentions – when or where he intended to act?”

  Dahl leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “I have a very good memory," he said. “But this…” he waved a sleeve at his body. “It weakens me. It steals my memories.” He reached for the drink again, and now his hand was firmer. He sipped. “There was one thing,” he said. “Two things. He said that he must complete his task before the wedding vows, and he said that it was not the killing that mattered, but what came after. I’ve never had a client who talked so much about his business.”

  That was all. Dahl seemed to weaken again, as though the effort of remembering had cost him. He slumped back in his chair.

  They left him like that. Jat was waiting outside with a throng of curious Shan.

  “Back to the ship,” Seer Jud said. So they were escorted once again through the unfamiliar streets of Jerohal. Half way to the ship Arla was struck by a strange thought, and the more she thought it, the more true it seemed.

  “Is he wo
rth saving?” she asked.

  “Who? Sage Dahl?”

  She nodded.

  “If you saved his life he would owe you many great favours. That could be very useful. Why do you ask?”

  “I think I know what Jon did to him. I think I know who can save him.”

  “Truly?”

  “Poison is not a man’s weapon, Seer Jud. Men use swords and bows to kill, and failing that they use magic.”

  “Magic? Can magic sicken a Shan so?”

  “I’ve no doubt it can, and did. The mage lord could save him, I suppose, if he wished, if he knew.”

  “Perhaps someone should tell him,” Jat said. Arla was surprised he had heard her speak. His ears must be very sharp.

  “The mage lord is in White Rock, as far as I know,” Arla said. “It’s a long journey.”

  “He will come if I call,” Jat said.

  “Call?” Arla stopped and stared at the monster. “You can call the mage lord?”

  Jat bared his many sharp teeth. “He is tribe-friend to all the Kastan Delor,” he said. “And he is my friend also.”

  “Well, then,” Arla said. “You call the mage lord and see if he wants to save a famous poisoner. We have to get back to Samara.”

  26 The Storm

  Taranath piled on the sail. There was nothing else he could do. With a south-wester blowing he could hardly beach the ship back in the bay and it didn’t make any sense to dawdle. His best strategy was to get as much sea room as he could before the storm hit.

  He steered south east, taking the wind on the beam, and that caused the ship to heel over, which discomfited his green crew. Add the deep swells, the Gull’s rolling and bucking across them, and they were truly looking green.

  That could be a problem.

  Three of the men and three of the soldiers were hardly affected by the motion, and Taranath quickly rounded them up and spoke to them.

  “It’s probably going to get worse,” he told them. “Some of the others may not be much use. I’ll have to count on you.”

  “Don’t know nothing about ships,” one soldier said. There was a spark of panic in his eye.

  “Can you stand and pull a rope?” Taranath asked.