by William King
“Not if there is an easy explanation of why we are dead. Not if we show up with our dicks chopped off and stuffed in our mouths.” Rik had just spinning out his excuses but he was surprised with how much sense he was making. These were things worth considering.
“How would Bertragh know to do that?” Weasel replied.
“Doesn’t it strike you as slightly suspicious that you hear about a potential buyer for our books about the same time as friend Vosh got a mouthful of himself?”
“Coincidence.”
“Willing to bet your life on that?”
The former poacher appeared to come to a decision. “We’ll change the meeting place to somewhere of our choosing. If Bertragh is as keen as appears, he’ll go for it. We’ll have some of the lads on hand just in case.”
“Where?” Rik said.
“Here’s as good a place as any. We can rent a room. Nobody will be the least suspicious if some Foragers are in here.”
“Makes sense.”
“But we still need your share of the books, Rik. And you need to go get them. I say we both go together. Hopefully we can slip in and out of the camp without anybody noticing us.”
“What if we can’t?”
“We’ll slip out again after drums roll. It won’t be too difficult to do after dark. We’ve done it before.”
“We’ll get going as soon as I say goodbye to Rena. We should pick up some other stuff too. I have a plan, just in case things go sour.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Sardec allowed the Inn’s servants to dress him. They pulled on his boots, adjusted his jacket, held the mirror so he could make sure he looked immaculate. As he dressed he dealt with various small bits of business that had arisen. His costume for tonight’s Solace mask had arrived from the boutique. There were various small matters of bills due that he was required to sign for. There was a request for his attendance on the person of Colonel Xeno as soon as he had breakfasted.
After breakfast he visited the Colonel at his office in the Redoubt.
Xeno studied him as he entered, rose, bowed slightly and then returned to his desk. He finished signing some documents and said; “You visited Lady Asea yesterday.”
“I did, sir. You gave me permission.”
“And you discussed your recent mission with her.” Sardec saw where this was going now.
“Lady Asea is one of the First, sir, and she was curious.”
“So you told her what she wanted to know.” Xeno’s tone was silky. Sardec sensed the danger in it. He remembered some of the rumours that had flown around the officer’s mess about Xeno and Lady Asea. There was some long-standing animosity between them, over what no one seemed to know. Sardec guessed it was political. In politics Xeno was so conservative he was almost purple.
“I told her what seemed reasonable to tell her, sir.”
“And what was that?”
“I told her about the Ultari. I was hoping she could throw some light on the matter.”
“She certainly seems determined to. She has a ripjack in her cage about Uran Ultar and someone trying to reawaken him. She sent me a message about it this morning.”
“Perhaps someone is, sir.”
Xeno steepled his fingers and looked up at the ceiling. He let out a long sigh. “Yes, Lieutenant, perhaps someone is. That is why you shall be accompanying the Lady Asea back to the ruins of Achenar as soon as she finds it convenient.”
“Sir?”
“The Lady Asea requires an escort into the mountains. You and your men were the last ones at the site she wishes to visit. It seems logical that you should be the one to accompany her. Don’t you agree?”
“Indeed, sir, but we are mobilising for intervention in Kharadrea.”
“A trip into the mountains will not take too long, I hope. We can’t have one of the First wandering around on her own in such dangerous territory, not with the hill-men all stirred up now, can we?”
“You are correct, sir. When must my men be ready?”
“She is hosting her famous Solace Ball this evening, so I doubt the Lady Asea is going to be ready to travel before tomorrow. The men can have their Solace leave. After that, be ready to go.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Lieutenant Sardec…”
“Sir?”
“Next time please be a little more careful before discussing your duties with anybody not in this regiment. No matter who they are.”
“I will, sir.”
“That will be all, Lieutenant.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Getting in and out of the camp proved easier than Rik had expected. No one had stopped them from getting back to his bothy and claiming his rucksack. A quick check to make sure everything was still in place, to pick up some of his special gear and they were ready to head back.
At the gates the sentries had checked their passes with a mixture of resentment and envy but they had done nothing to stop them. Now they were back in Mama Horne’s, drinking deep and preparing for tonight’s meeting. Weasel had booked the room. Rik had written a note concerning the new arrangements to Bertragh and read the merchant’s tetchy reply to his compatriots. There was not a lot else they could do now except wait.
“That should be the last,” he told Weasel and the Barbarian, pointing to their full wine cups as he rose to seek out Rena. “You’ll need your wits about you tonight.”
“My wits are always about me,” said the Barbarian.
“Half of them anyway,” said Weasel. Rik was disconcerted, though, that they paid attention to him. Weasel gulped down his goblet’s contents and then shouted for chai. He was obviously more nervous than he looked. Rik was not surprised. Not only was he looking forward to taking possession of a small fortune, he was anticipating getting rid of something that could get them all burned at the stake if the Inquisition caught them.
Outside in the street, preparations were well under way for the Solace carnival. From a hundred households came the smell of frying fish and cinnamon scented wine. Children ran everywhere wearing masks of beasts and monsters and demons. Incense burned in the small shrines in every shop front. People flowed past in their temple best, heading for the mid-day service. At moonrise, Mourning would officially be at an end and the food and drink would flow. For quite a few people staggering out of the grog-shops, it looked like it had finished already.
“Do you want to go to temple?” Rena asked.
Rik shook his head. “I stopped going a long time ago when Leon and I busted out of the orphanage.”
She gave him a sidelong glance then returned to looking at the children skipping in a ring around the pig rummaging in one of the garbage mounds. “You never knew your mother and father?”
“No.”
“You know anything about them?”
“They said my father was an Exalted and my mother was a street girl but how could they know. I talked to one old woman who remembered my mother being brought to the poorhouse. She claimed she gibbered something about a Terrarch and blasphemy as she gave birth.”
“Couldn’t you ask your mother?”
“She died while I was being born. Or so they said. You never know. Maybe she ran off afterwards. These things happen.”
“How can you think that of your own mother?”
“I was born in Sorrow, remember? A hundred worse things happen every day.”
She reached out and took his hand as though in sympathy. He wanted none of it, and let her hand go. He found himself oddly angry without knowing why. He thought he had come to terms with this all a long time ago.
“You’ve known Leon a long time then,” she said, obviously trying to change the subject. A young boy in an angel mask fled screaming from two girls garbed as demons. He bounced off Rik as he raced passed. Automatically Rik checked his purse, but nothing was taken. Rena noticed the action.
“You’re very suspicious.”
“I’ve known Leon since we both could walk,” said Rik choosing to ignore the st
atement. Somewhere in a side street someone was banging on some drums. Someone else was tuning up a fiddle. People were getting ready to have a party. They turned down another narrow alleyway. A man screamed at Rik and came straight at him with a hatchet. He stepped to one side and the man raced passed chasing a chicken down an even narrower alley. It looked like someone’s feast day meal was making a break for it.
Rik glanced around warily, keeping his hands near his weapons. He felt at home here in the maze of the Pit, in the way he did in Sorrow but this was not his home. The bully boys did not know him. The pickpockets would still chance their hands. It did not matter that it was Solace to them. The predators were always hungry. He half expected some of the Agante hill-men to come out of the side alleyways but they did not.
Ahead of him, he could smell the river, murky water and sewage flow mingling with the smell of plants and cooking food. They emerged onto a small muddy bank. On one side of them was a tavern built on a stilt-borne platform over the river. It was an extension of a stone building on the riverside, and some of the stonework flowed onto the platform itself. Rik had seen such buildings before. Inevitably they crumbled into the water.
On the other side of the river, he could see warehouses and wharves and barges tied up on the waterfront. Most of them were occupied only by skeleton crews and watchmen now. By nightfall even those would be drunk, and then the river gangs would come out. From here he could see Bertragh’s go-down. He wanted to get another look at it while there was still light. Later, he thought, they would take a walk by the place. It never hurt to take a second look.
“Let’s have a drink here,” said Rik leading Rena into the bustle of the tavern. The men here were poor and hard-faced, mostly dockside labourers and the sort of scum who scavenged a living by the river banks. Their clothes had a damp, sodden look, and mud trailed from the cuffs of their trousers. They were not used to seeing a young and pretty girl. Some of them licked their lips appreciatively. Rik grinned nastily and placed his hands ostentatiously on the hilt of his weapons. The tavern goers swiftly looked away.
They took a table on the platform overlooking the river, and Rik called for grog. Rena declined asking for small beer. Rik paid for both and told the tavern-keeper to leave the bottle. Coin changed hands.
“What are you thinking?” asked the girl.
Why did women always ask you that, Rik wondered? “I was thinking about those boats. A lot of them are going to be robbed by dawn tomorrow if there’s anything worth taking on them.”
“Why do you always think about such things?”
“Upbringing, I guess. I saw a lot of that stuff happen in Sorrow.”
“There are poor people everywhere. Desperate enough to steal.” She said it as if it were somehow worse than selling your body on the street. Certainly it was in the eyes of the law. Property was a sacred thing to the Exalted and those who aped them. Crimes against property were treated with the same severity as heresy.
“Yes, there are,” said Rik.
“Is that why you became a soldier?” Rik did not want to explain to her the whole business with Antonio and Sabena. It was too depressing to recount, and you never knew, word of his presence might even reach the gang lord from here. Hopefully by now he had long forgotten Rik but it was never good to take chances with these things.
“No.”
“Why then?”
“I needed a job.”
“A job that could kill you?”
“You can get killed crossing the road. You can get killed by robbers. You can get killed by the plague.” He saw by the way she winced that he had opened an old wound. “Sorry.”
“No matter.”
“It’s better to be the man carrying the gun, than the man whose pig is carried away by the man with the gun.”
“So I have heard.”
“I’ve gone hungry a lot less since I became the Queen’s Soldier.”
“Is that all that matters to you? Aren’t you proud to serve the Queen?”
“Not particularly.” He realised he was being disagreeable to her, was challenging the things she believed in, and he wondered why he was doing it? The answer came to him quickly enough. She was judging him for not living up to her ideals, and he did not like being judged. He fumbled for something to say. Before he could think of anything, she said:
“I heard a preacher once. He said we were all soldiers. He had been one himself. You could see. His leg was wooden. His hand was a hook. I don’t want you to end up like that.”
“He was one of the lucky ones,” Rik said, and regretted it at once. “He wasn’t a beggar.”
“Lucky?”
“What did he say?” Rik asked to distract her.
“He said we were all soldiers in the war between good and evil. Do you think there is such a war?” She made it sound like it was a very daring question. He supposed it was to her.
“The temple says so.”
“I do. He said that since the worlds were created, God has fought with his Shadow. The preacher said they have fought since the dawn of time and will fight till Worlds’ End. Each of us is a soldier in that struggle. Every good word, every good deed, every pure thought is a bullet fired for the Lord. Every bad word, bad deed, bad thought is a sword wielded for the Shadow. The battle is very close. Each of us can make the difference.”
“That sounds very close to heresy. Doesn’t the temple predict the Light’s inevitable victory?”
“He said that the Light would win, but it would only do so when the balance was tipped ever so strongly in its favour. And he said the Shadow would triumph many times only to have the Light shine again. He said there had been many such times in the past. Like before the Terrarchs came with the Truth.”
“Is that what they came with?”
“Oh yes, it is. But the thing that has always stayed with me is this. The preacher said that on the last day we will all be judged. All our good deeds and all our bad deeds will be weighed by the Angel of Justice. Those of us whose good deeds outweigh the bad, will be reborn in Light. Those of us who were soldiers of the Shadow will go to the Pit.”
“I thought we were already there,” said Rik. She looked terribly serious and he wanted to distract her.
“He meant the Bottomless Pit, the Place of Torment.”
“I was joking.”
“I sometimes think I am going there. I have been very bad. Look where I work. Look what I have done.”
She looked as if she were about to cry. He touched her hand. “What choice did you have?”
“We always have a choice, the preacher said. Always.”
“Sometimes all our choices are equally bad. Trust me, I know.”
“If God is so good, why is this world so wicked?” she asked.
“I asked a priest at the orphanage the same thing once,” said Rik.
She looked at him curiously. “What did he say?”
“He beat me with a stick.” He tried to smile, but he felt it slipping. At that moment he felt as if his face was melting and resetting into something strange and unnatural. He glanced away because he knew her smile was a mirror of his own.
A barge drawn by a wyrm and decorated in the most ornate fashion came round the bend in the river. It had been chartered by a party of Terrarchs or perhaps it belonged to one of them. It was a big craft with a small orchestra playing at the prow and a group of masked and costumed Exalted chatting and drinking in the rear. Armed guards watched from the bow. A smaller barge with more armed men aboard followed.
“They’ve started early,” he heard someone say.
“It would be lovely to be one of those ladies,” said Rena. She seemed entranced by their appearance. Her smile looked more natural now. “Look at those gowns.”
He felt a sudden unexpected surge of tenderness for her. He was not sure why. Perhaps it was because she looked vulnerable and eager and at once frightened and excited by life. Perhaps it was just the grog. He reached out and touched her hand.
; “It would be lovely to live like them,” he said, the thought of his unknown father and the birthright he had never known making his expression bitter. “But we cannot. The Terrarchs rule. We are the ruled. They own this world.”
Not for the first time he wondered what it would be like to live in a place and time where that was not the case. He tried to picture a world where he ruled. That was easy enough. All he had to do was imagine living like the Terrarchs. He tried to imagine how the world could become like that and his imagination failed.
The Clockmaker had dreamed that dream too, and look what had happened to him. Perhaps the books held the secret. But he was about to lose those, and even the heavy pouch of money he would get in return did not seem like adequate compensation for the loss of that pitiful dream.
“I wish I had a gown like that,” she said.
“Maybe one day you shall.” Doubtless one day soon those discarded gowns or the fabric from which they were made would show up in the second hand shops.
“Do you really think so?”
“It’s possible,” he said. It was always better to err on the side of caution he had found. Hopes were easily dashed.
He drank some more grog and watched the boat disappear behind the bend in the river. The temple bells rang once more. It was time to get back to Mama Horne’s. There was a deal to be done, or spoiled if he could. And failing that there was the backup plan.
He made sure their route back took him by Bertragh’s house.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The costume was a good one, Sardec thought. The mask was one of the ancient hero masks, sculpted from greystone, and depicting the blade-dancer Xeimon. The robes were a formal court duellist’s such as the hero had worn before the Ten Towers Fall and the coming of the Princes of Shadow. It was an appropriate costume for Solace. Xeimon had been one of the Three Hundred and died heroically guarding the entrance to the Dragon Vale.
The coach brought him to the entrance of Asea’s mansion. He emerged along with several of his brother officers. Jazeray was garbed as a Temple River Pirate. Sardec hated to admit that its dandified swashbuckling appearance suited him but it did. The small domino mask allowed his handsome face and tiny perfectly sculpted chin-beard to be seen to best effect as well. Marcus and Paulus swapped jokes with him whilst sipping spirits from small silver hip-flasks. They were garbed as the Dragon Lords Wesalas and Arene. Both wore bronzed and verdigrised Dragon masks and long green robes. On their backs were representations of the mighty two handed runeswords the brothers had carried.