A Game of Three Hands

by Tim Stead

  The King appreciated Darius’s straightforward manner. He was not hiding anything, but Portina was keen to see Calaine for himself. He didn’t want anything to delay their betrothal.

  He allowed himself and two of his own men to be led into the boat and sat on a cross-plank while the oarsmen rowed. He wasn’t especially comfortable in boats, though of course he knew Samara well, having served here as part of the Ocean’s Gate guard.

  “Was she visiting the Saine house?” he asked.

  “Aye, she was,” Darius confirmed. He sounded surprised that he should guess the truth, but Portina knew that Calaine was great friends with the traders, that she had lived there for a time. How like her to risk her life for the sake of friendship. Indeed, how like her to discount personal risk altogether.

  They arrived at the dock and arms reached down to pull the general and then Portina up onto the stone walkway. He followed Darius along the path and up into the citadel, men marching in after them, clearing the dock.

  Darius led him within the fortress, up a broad flight of stairs and into a suite of chambers that had obviously been decorated for the occasion. They were airy and extensive, and the only view was of the sea, and a short distance away the Western Sun riding at anchor.

  “There will be four of the king’s men on your door at all times,” Darius said. “If you want to go anywhere please take them with you, and I beg that you remain within the citadel until we have eliminated the threat to your life.”

  Portina picked up and examined one of a crowd of wine bottles that stood on a table in the corner. “How is that going?” he asked.

  “Our best people are pursuing the matter,” Darius said. “I can have them report their progress to you if you wish it.”

  “No. Let them do their work, but I’d like to speak to Calaine.”

  “I’ll speak to her,” Darius said. “Ask if she feels well enough.”

  He left and Darius was alone with his own men. He had brought two with him. Unlike Samara, or even Sarata, Portina had revived the nobility in Blaye. He had chosen men and women with lands and wealth, and what he considered good character. The two with him were Jon Gerat, the Earl of Carindo, and Per Faris, Earl of Sonnisand. Both were young men, fiercely loyal to Blaye and more than useful with the blades they carried.

  “You truly trust these people?” Jon asked.

  “The General? With my life. Of the others I cannot be so sure. Calaine would not harm me, and the House of Saine has always been honourable, but there are many here that I don’t know, and much has changed since I knew the place.”

  “Then we must be careful,” Per said. “Under the circumstances it might have been better not to come at all. We should bring more men from the ship.”

  “As for not coming at all – I am here to pledge Calaine, and nothing short of death will keep me from it. Apart from the political advantage – you’ve seen her, Per. Could there be a more fitting queen for Blaye?”

  “Aye, she’s all that,” Per said.

  “But you’re right,” Portina said. “Send for more men. Half a dozen should be enough.” He picked up a bottle of wine and opened it carefully. He poured three glasses. “But now a toast. Would you believe they’ve put wine from my own vineyard in the room?”

  “Truly?” Jon picked up the bottle and looked at the label. He sniffed at the wine. “Truly! Well, at least they have either taste or courtesy – perhaps both.”

  Portina opened the door that led out onto the balcony and stood looking at the endless sea and his ship that rode upon it. He raised his glass. “To Blaye, to Samara, and good fortune to us all,” he said.

  43 The Hunt

  “I don’t have enough men. I don’t have enough time,” Arla said. She was sitting in Sam Hekman’s office with the chief and Gilan.

  “I can’t spare more than twelve,” Gilan said. “It’s mayhem out there – like a summer fair every day. You’ve never seen so many pocket pickers and sneak thieves. We pulled in twelve yesterday, and that’s not counting Gulltown.”

  “I need more,” Arla insisted. “The Do-Regana’s life is threatened.”

  The chief leaned forwards. “If we gave you twenty could you guarantee to catch them?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Fifty?”

  “No. Not for sure, but I’d have a damned sight better shot at it. There’s over a hundred and fifty thousand in the city. The taverns are full, the streets are flowing like rivers, and I don’t have a name, a description, even a number.”

  “Arla, it’s safer to plan for failure and hope for success,” the chief said. “We only need to keep them safe for a handful of days, and then you can have as many as you want. Guarding them makes more sense.”

  Arla sat back in her chair. She’d lost the argument. The hunt would have to proceed with the handful of men that she had already prized out of Gilan. Not that she blamed either of them. Hekman was right. In five days Portina would be gone back to Blaye and they could keep Calaine safe in the citadel while the hunt intensified. Every man Arla had was out in the city now, knocking on doors, talking to people, trying to find some clue. The problem was, of course, that they didn’t know what it was they were looking for. It could be people who’d lived all their lives in Samara. It could be strangers. It could be a group of men and women, or individuals. It could be anyone.

  She left the meeting with a feeling of frustration, but she could work that out. She walked down to the stables on Yarrow Street, looking around her at the seemingly innocent people of Samara that filled the lanes of the city with ever more sinister seeming crowds. Arla was seeing ghosts, threats that weren’t there. She needed a break, and fortuitously she had promised herself that she would bend her bow for an hour every day – no excuses. She had felt the lack of practice on Cabarissa, and would not allow herself to feel it again. She might no longer be a guard, but her skills were all she had.

  The stables housed the archery butts. The area behind the building was walled, and so enclosed a strip of cobbled land no wider than five paces and at least fifty long. One end held three targets, two at twenty-five paces and one set long against the far wall. They were hay bales with painted cloth pinned to them. Simple things, but the hay was baled tight enough that a good arrow stuck firmly.

  There was nobody there but the stable lads and the master groom, a man called Purpose. That wasn’t his real name, but it seemed to be his favourite word and all the lads used it behind his back and many lawkeepers to his face. He had vowed that he didn’t object.

  “You come to shoot a few, Arla?” he asked when he saw her.

  “A few.”

  Purpose nodded. “I’ll come and mind the range,” he said.

  “Purpose, it’s only me.”

  “Aye, but it’s a necessary duty, and besides, I like to watch you shoot.”

  Arla led the way around to the shooting mark. She’d start on the twenty-five pace targets, try for speed more than accuracy. She moved the quiver around and secured it in the best position for quick retrieval. She squinted at the target. Some wag had painted a face on the gold, eyes, a mouth and a broad moustache.

  Purpose stood behind her to one side as she eyed up the mark. She plucked an arrow from the quiver and set it to the string. Ten arrows, she thought, fast as I can. She took three deep breaths, pulled back the string to her ear and released.

  “Gold,” Purpose said. “Gold… red… gold… blue… red… gold… gold… red… gold.”

  Arla paused, flexed her fingers. The trace of stiffness that had been there several days ago had gone. The fifth arrow was a little disappointing. Dropping out of the red on the target would probably have lost her the fasthand crown at Ocean’s Gate, but she was doing better than a week ago.

  “Good shooting,” Purpose said.

  “I dropped five points,” Arla said. “I used to be better than that.”

  “We all used to be better at some things. Now we’re better at others,” Purpose said.

&nb
sp; She walked down to the target and retrieved her arrows. Shooting cloth and straw didn’t damage them. Missing the target, on the other hand meant you were shooting cobbles and wall – an expensive pastime.

  “Perhaps you could put a wall of bales behind the targets,” she said. “It’d save arrows.”

  “But you never miss,” he said.

  “I’m not the only one who shoots here.”

  Purpose nodded. “As you wish.”

  “I’ll shoot long now,” she said.

  One of the advantages of shooting long was that it was a slower and more deliberate. It gave her time to think. Fifty paces wasn’t a difficult shot, but it warmed her up for the harder discipline of double distance – shooting alternate long and short arrows at speed.

  She drew the string back and let fly.

  “Gold,” Purpose said.

  So what did the attack on Calaine mean? It was an opportunistic move, for sure. If they’d succeeded there would have been no chance at Portina. The King of Blaye would have got back on his ship and sailed away. There would have been no alliance, but beyond that the plot would have succeeded only in cutting the royal line of succession in Samara. Maybe that was enough. It seemed monstrous to Arla.

  She drew back another arrow and loosed it.

  “Gold,” Purpose said.

  Was Calaine the principal target, or had the attack been ill-advised? She did not doubt that the whole edifice of the plot had been carefully constructed by a capable mind, but did that extend to day to day control in Samara? It could have been a rash act, a deviation from the plan.

  Arla tapped the third arrow against her wrist, fitted it to the string and drew back. Could it have been a ruse?

  “Gold.”

  No. Either arrow could have killed Calaine if she’d been less well protected or unusually unlucky. Arla had stood where the archer had stood and estimated the shot. It had been a good one, and in the dark at seventy paces nobody was good enough to make those shots fail and still look like there was deadly intent. It had been a serious attempt to kill.

  She drew out another arrow and ran her tongue along the fletching on one side. She fitted it to the string, pulled, and released.

  “Gold again.”

  So how could they find them? That was a difficult problem. She was still inclined to believe that they were foreigners. What Felice Caledon had told her led Arla to believe that most of the Free were rural folk from White Rock. If the assassins were such then they would go where they would be least noticeable. There were a couple of districts in the old town with sizeable northern populations. One of them was based around a tavern called The Kalla Tree, and the other close to the docks at the eastern end.

  “Gold. That’s five.”

  She had to narrow things down. She couldn’t search the whole city, but every guess made her most likely scenario less likely, and she had built quite a chain of assumptions. Yet it was the best she could do. She would have to seek out northerners, probably from White Rock, who had come into the town in the last couple of weeks and were staying in areas where they would fit in. But even if she found such people they might not be culpable.

  “Gold again.”

  The Shan. She could use the Shan. They would round up anyone who fitted her rather dubious profile and ask them if they belonged to the Free with Seer Jud on hand. He would know if they lied, and she could release the innocent almost at once.

  “I think that’s enough for today,” Arla said. She was well short of her hour, but she promised herself that she’d make it up tomorrow, or after the betrothal when she had more time.

  “You hardly need the practice,” Purpose said. “I’ve never seen a finer archer.”

  “Seen many, have you?” Arla asked. She softened the question with a smile, but it was a fair one. There were a dozen at Ocean’s Gate in the old days that could have done as well, and many more at White Rock, Sky Cliff, High Green, Stone Island and all the other places that held guard regiments.

  “Only those that come here,” Purpose said.

  “And how many do come here?” Arla asked.

  “Not many. You’re the first for three days.”

  She was shocked. Where did they practice? Did they practice at all? She’d have to speak to Hekman about that. And if so few practiced with the bow, how many still did their sword drills? Without practice an archers eye grew lazy, her arm weak, and the same went for swordplay.

  She slung her bow and left Purpose to his stables. She walked back up towards the Law House. She would have to call them all back and start again.

  *

  Radiant Taranath was making himself unpopular. It was a novel experience for the big High Greener. He had made his base in the Kalla Tree, a tavern on the northern edge of the old town much beloved of northerners. To be more accurate it was held in great esteem by folk of the North West, from White Rock and all regions north of Stone Island and west of the Great River.

  He had been given six of Gilan’s patrolmen, though not yet a replacement for Ansel, so he took shifts with them knocking on doors around the district, looking for rooms recently let and checking the men and women who’d taken them.

  It started when the city woke up. Taranath and his band of seven lawkeepers interrupted the folk breaking their fast in The Kalla Tree. Just about everyone stopped eating and stared at them, except for one young man in the corner who carried on stuffing his face with bread and cheese.

  Taranath went up to the bar, nodded to the landlord and turned to face the customers.

  “This is important,” he said. “There’s bad men in this city come to kill folk, and we think they’re staying somewhere hereabouts. We could be wrong, we could be right, but I’d be obliged if you could search what you know and tell me where folk might stay around here if they were in town for a short while. Better yet, if you know folk just moved in, we’d like to know where and when. Now get back to your food, and we’ll be here listening if anyone wants to talk.”

  A few went back to eating, and some started talking to each other, pointing at the lawkeepers. One man, a portly figure dressed in a baker’s apron, came up to where Taranath slouched against the bar.

  “What’s this all about?” he asked.

  “What I said.”

  “Killers? Who’ve they come to kill?”

  “Matters, does it?”

  The baker scratched his head. “Might do, I suppose,” he said.

  “Well, that’s an interesting answer,” Taranath said. “And who exactly would you like to see dead?”

  The baker swallowed and looked at the floor. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said.

  “So what did you mean to say?”

  “Ima Kinter, over on Handiron Lane, she’s been taking in lodgers,” the Baker said. “And there’s rooms to be had over the Blackbird Tavern, though he hasn’t a licence for it.”

  Taranath beamed. He slapped the baker on the shoulder. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s very helpful.”

  He sent one group of lawkeepers to Handiron Lane and another to the Blackbird with strict instructions not to act on the missing licence. A quiet word in a few days would solve that issue, but now they could not afford to be sidetracked.

  Others came forwards over the next few hours and Taranath sat at a table in the Kalla Tree and wrote down what he was told, sending teams out as they returned. Sometimes they brought back confused northerners who were promptly taken back to the Law House for questioning, but mostly they came back empty handed, perhaps with the name of another boarding house to check.

  After a few hours he tired of sitting and set one of the officers to writing at the table and went out into the streets himself.

  It was slow work. Most folk were out during the day and he was forced to rely on descriptions, and Samaran judgement of foreign accents was execrable. A few of the Samaran-born folk he spoke with thought that he was northern himself, which was ridiculous.

  It was all threes for lawkeepers. Each group h
ad a bow, a sword, and an officer. Taranath was down a bow, so he and Worrel went about as a two. It made him think of Ansel. Worrel seemed quiet as well, but Worrel was always quiet.

  It was the middle of the afternoon, and a hot day, but Taranath kept telling himself that maybe this door would be the one, this boarding house, this inn, these rooms.

  They came to a narrow house on Seaview Street, which, of course, had no view of the sea. He rapped smartly on the door. It was not a poor street, but old, and the houses were old. This one looked like it had once been wider, but had been squeezed by its neighbours. It was an illusion, he knew, but perhaps it had been built to fill in a gap. The whole street was made of grey brick and tile, but had been brightened by window boxes full of orange, red and yellow flowers. This floral conflagration made it seem at first glance that the whole street was ablaze.

  The door opened. The woman who stood there was short, thin, somewhere in her twenties and quite pretty to Taranath’s mind.

  “Lawkeepers,” she said. “What do you want?” Her tone suggested they were not welcome.

  “We heard you were letting rooms,” Taranath said. He used his most mild and pleasant voice.

  “Aye. What of it?”

  “Are they rented out at the moment?”

  “They are.”

  “And who has rented them?”

  “There’s four northern gentlemen,” she replied. “But they’re not at home.”

  “Northerners, you say? Did they confess it, or are you guessing?”

  “No guessing about it,” she said. “My da moved us down from Sorocaba in White Rock twenty years back, and they sound just like him. They’re northern or I’ll eat my doormat.”

  “What manner of men are they, these northerners?” Taranath asked.

  “Polite. Quiet. Good payers. I don’t want you disturbing them.”

  “But they’re not at home,” Taranath said. “So it won’t be a problem if we have a look at their rooms.”

  She was reluctant, Taranath could see that. Even faced with two big men she blocked the door and set her jaw.