“The day you mutiny and take the company?” Marcus murmured.
“Not today, sir.”
The caravan master was shouting now, and the false knight’s face was taking the green-bronze cast that spoke of rage among the Jasuru. Marcus slipped off the wagon and walked forward. The men on horse didn’t seem to notice him until he was almost even with the ’van master’s mare.
“How much do you want?” Marcus said.
Timzinae and Jasuru both shifted to stare down at him with equal anger.
“Pardon my interrupting your fine and spirited debate, but how much do you want?”
“You should show me some respect, boy,” the Jasuru said.
“How much do you want, my lord,” Marcus said. “Because if you’ll look at the ’van here, we don’t have much. Unless his lordship and his lordship’s noble compatriots are willing to accept tribute in tin ore and iron, there may not be a great deal we can offer.”
“Don’t speak for me,” the Timzinae hissed.
“Don’t get us killed,” Marcus said, equally softly.
“And who are you, Firstblood?” the Jasuru said.
“Marcus Wester. I’m guard captain of this ’van.”
The laughter this time was less forced, and the men on the other horses joined in. The Jasuru shook his broad head and grinned. His tongue was black, and his teeth needle sharp.
“You’re Marcus Wester?”
“I am.”
“Ah. And I suppose that one back there is Lord Harton returned from the dead. Tell you what, I’ll be Drakis Stormcrow.”
“No less likely than Lord Knightly Whatever-it-was,” the ’van master said.
Marcus ignored him. “You’ve heard of me, then.”
“I was at Wodford, and I am about done being insulted,” the Jasuru said. “All your coin. All your food. Half your women. The rest of you can crawl back to Vanai.”
“Eat shit,” the ’van master said.
The Jasuru reached for his sword, and a new voice boomed out behind them.
“We. Shall. Pass.”
Master Kit stood on the top of the feed wagon. The black and purple robes of Orcus the Demon King draped from him like shadows made solid, and he held a staff with a skull on its end. When the actor spoke again, his voice carried to them all as if it came from the dim air.
“My protection is on these men. You cannot harm them.”
“What the sweet hell is this?” the Jasuru said, but his voice had taken a worried tone.
“You cannot harm us,” Master Kit said. “Your arrows will stray from us. Your swords will not break our skins. You have no power here.”
Marcus turned back to the Jasuru. Confusion and anxiety twisted the bandit’s face.
“This is shit,” one of the three behind him said, but his voice lacked conviction.
“Who is that?” the Jasuru said.
“My cunning man,” Marcus said.
“Hear me,” Master Kit shouted, and the forest itself seemed to go quiet. “The trees are our allies and the shadow of oak protects us. You cannot harm us, boy. And we shall pass.”
A chill ran up Marcus’s spine. He could see that Orcus the Demon King was having much the same effect on the bandits. He felt a small, tentative hope. The Jasuru pulled his bow from its sling and nocked a vicious-looking arrow.
“Say that again, you bastard!” the bandit captain shouted.
Even in the dimness, Marcus saw Master Kit smile. The actor raised his arms, the dark folds of the costume seeming to twist on their own accord, just as they’d done during the play in Vanai. It was something to do with uneven stitching, but with Master Kit’s sepulchral voice and defiant posture, the effect was unsettling. Master Kit spoke again, slow and clear and utterly confident.
“You cannot harm me. Your arrow will miss its mark.”
The Jasuru scowled and drew back the string. The horn bow creaked.
Well, Marcus thought, it was worth the try. And then, a second later: God damn. He is going to miss.
The arrow sped through the gloom. Master Kit didn’t flinch as the shaft flew past his ear. The Jasuru licked his lips with a wide, black tongue. His gaze shifted from Marcus to Master Kit and back. There was real fear in his eyes now.
“And for what it carries, I really am Marcus Wester.”
The silence lasted four long breaths together, before the Jasuru turned his horse to the side and raised his arm. “There’s nothing here, boys,” the bandit shouted. “These little turds aren’t worth the effort.”
The horsemen sprang away into the forest. Marcus stood in the road, listening to their hoofbeats fade and realizing that he wasn’t going to die today after all. He clasped his hands behind him to keep them from trembling and looked up at the ’van master. The Timzinae was shaking too. At least Marcus wasn’t the only one. He stepped to the side of the road, leaning to see that the bowmen at the treeline had also vanished.
Yardem walked to him. “That was odd,” the Tralgu said.
“Was,” Marcus said. “Don’t suppose we have a winch? We’re going to have to move that tree.”
That night, the ’van master’s wife cooked meat. Not sausage, not salt pork, but a fresh-killed lamb the ’van master bought from a farm at the forest’s edge. The meat was dark and rich, seasoned with raisins and a sharp-tasting yellow sauce. The carters and drivers and most of Marcus’s guard sat around a roaring bonfire at the side of the road. All except the wool-hauler, Tag, who never seemed to eat with anybody. And sitting at a separate fire away from all the others, Marcus ate with Master Kit.
“It’s how I’ve made my living since… well, not since before you were born, I suppose,” the actor said. “I stand before people, usually on a wagon, and I convince them of things. I tell them that I am a fallen king or a shipwrecked sailor on an unknown shore. I presume they know it isn’t truth, but I see my work as making them believe even when they know better.”
“What you did back there, then?” Marcus said. “Talking the bastard with the bow out of his confidence? It wasn’t magic?”
“I think talking a man into believing in his own failure is close enough to magic. Don’t you?”
“I don’t really, no.”
“Well, then perhaps we disagree on the point. More wine?”
Marcus took the proffered skin and squirted the bright-tasting wine into his mouth. In the light of the two fires—the small one at their knees, the large one fifteen yards away—shadows clung to the old actor’s cheeks and in the hollows of his eyes.
“Captain. If it’s any comfort to you, I’ll swear this. I can be very convincing, and I can tell when someone is trying to convince me. That is all the magic I possess.”
“Cut thumbs on it?” Marcus said, and Master Kit laughed.
“I’d rather not. If I get blood on the costumes, it’s hard to get out. But what about you? What exactly did you intend, facing the man down like that?”
Marcus shrugged.
“I didn’t intend anything. Not in particular,” he said. “Only I thought the ’van master was going about it badly.”
“Would you have fought?” Master Kit asked. “If it had come to swords and arrows?”
“Of course,” Marcus said. “Probably not for very long, given the odds, but I’d have fought. Yardem too, and I hope your people along with us. It’s what they pay us for.”
“Even though you knew we couldn’t win?”
“Yes.”
Master Kit nodded. Marcus thought a smile was lurking at the corners of the actor’s lips, but in the flickering light he couldn’t be sure. It might have been something else.
“I want to start drilling your people,” Marcus said. “An hour before we ride in the morning, and an hour after we stop. We can’t do much, but they ought to know more about a sword than which end to hold it by.”
“I think that’s wise,” Master Kit said.
Marcus looked up at the sky. The stars glowed like snowfall, and the moon, newly risen, sent long, pale
shadows across black ground. The forest was behind them, but the air still smelled like weather. Rain, Marcus decided. Most likely it would be rain. Master Kit was chewing his lamb, his eyes on the little fire and his expression distant.
“Don’t worry. Today was the worst of it,” Marcus said. “We’ve got our excitement behind us.”
Master Kit didn’t look at him, making his polite smile to the flames instead. For a moment, Marcus thought the old man wasn’t going to speak. When he did, his voice was low and abstracted.
“Probably,” Master Kit said.
Geder
Geder had imagined Vanai would be more like Camnipol or Estinport: a great city of stone and jade. The close-built wooden structures and wide canals felt both smaller than he’d expected and larger. Even the Grand Square of the conquered city was small compared to the wide commons of Camnipol, and the richest sections of Vanai were as thick with humanity as the better slums at home. Camnipol was a city. Vanai was a child’s scrapwood playhouse that had spread. It was beautiful in its way, strange and foreign and improbable. He wasn’t sure yet whether he liked it.
He limped down the rain-darkened streets of occupied Vanai, leaning on the blackwood-and-silver walking stick with every step. Lord Ternigan’s address was to begin soon, and while his wound would forgive his absence, Geder had missed too much already. The prospect of going home to regale his father with stories of how he’d collapsed in the battle and spent the two-day sack with a cunning man tending his leg was bad enough.
The canal on the eastern edge of the modest Grand Square was choked with fallen leaves, gold and red and yellow remaking the surface of the dark water. As Geder watched, a turtle rose from below, its black head sticking out of the water. A single bright red leaf adhered to its shell. The turtle made its stately way past what looked at first like a log, but was in fact a corpse wearing the drenched colors of the former prince: a soldier of Vanai hauled in a cart from the battlefield and dropped in the canal as a message to the locals. Other bodies hung from the trees in the parks and along the colonnades. They lay on the stairs of the palaces and the markets and the square of the public gaol where the former prince now ate and shat and shivered before his subjects. The smell of rotting flesh was only kept in check by the cool weather.
Once the prince entered exile, the dead would be gathered up and burned. They had been men once. Now they were political sculpture.
“Palliako!”
Geder looked up. From halfway across the Grand Square, Jorey Kalliam scowled and waved him on. Geder turned away from turtle and corpse, limping manfully across the pavement. The nobles of Antea stood in martial array, waiting only for the few stragglers like himself. Before them, on the bare ground, sat what high officials of the city had been spared. Timzinae merchants and guildsmen, Firstblood artisans and pragmatic noblemen. They wore their own clothing—much of it with a notably imperial cut—and held themselves more like the polite attendees of a religious function than the debased and the conquered. Sodai Carvenallin, the secretary to Lord Ternigan, stood alone on the stone platform they all faced and looked forward with folded arms. Geder hadn’t seen the man to speak to since the night they’d gotten drunk together. The night Klin had burned his book. Geder shook the memory away and took his place.
He tried not to notice the new finery around him, but it was impossible. Sir Gospey Allintot’s cloak was closed with a broach of worked silver and brilliant ruby. Sozlu Veren had his sword sheathed in a scabbard of dragon’s jade and yellowed ivory that could have been made a thousand years before. A chain of gold looped around Jorey Kalliam’s neck that looked to be more than a month’s rent from all the holdings of Rivenhalm. Their clothes were freshly laundered, their boots shone even in the grey overcast light. The warrior aristocrats of Antea wore their conquest proudly. Geder looked down at his little walking stick. It was the nearest thing he had to spoils of war, and he tried to be proud of it.
“Quite a day,” Geder said, nodding toward the low grey clouds. “It was snowing for a bit this morning. Glad we aren’t marching in this. Though I suppose we will be soon, eh? Taking tribute to the king.”
Jorey Kalliam made a low, affirming sound in his throat but didn’t meet Geder’s eyes.
“My leg’s doing well. All laudable pus,” Geder said. “But you heard about Count Hiren? Cut to the arm went septic. He died last night when they tried to amputate. Damn shame. He was a good man.”
“He was,” Jorey agreed.
Geder tried to follow the man’s gaze, but Jorey seemed focused on nothing. Or, no. His eyes moved restlessly, searching for something. Geder searched too, uncertain what he was looking for.
“Something wrong?” Geder asked, his voice low.
“Klin’s not here.”
Geder looked through the crowd, his attention more focused now. There were gaps in the form, men killed or injured or called away on the Lord Marshal’s business. Kalliam was correct. Sir Alan Klin should have stood at the head of the group, the men under his command arrayed behind him. Instead, Sir Gospey Allintot had the place, his chin held high.
“Ill, maybe?” Geder said. Jorey chuckled as if it had been a joke.
The drums announced the Lord Marshal. The collected nobility of Antea lifted their hands in salute, and Lord Ternigan let them remain there for a moment before he returned the gesture. Between them, the powerful men of Vanai accepted their ritual humiliation with polite silence. Jorey grunted, his expression sour. He wasn’t searching any longer. Geder followed his gaze, and found Klin standing at the rear of the platform beside the Lord Marshal’s secretary. Klin wore a silk tunic and hose of somber red and a black-dyed woolen cloak. The cut spoke less of blades and battle than governance.
Geder felt his belly drop. “Are we staying here?” he asked quietly. Jorey Kalliam didn’t answer.
“Lords of Antea,” Ternigan said, his voice echoing through the square not quite so loudly as it might have. The Lord Marshal appeared to be coming down with a cold. “I thank you all in the name of King Simeon. Through your valor, the empire has been made again secure. It is my decision that we return now to Camnipol with the tribute which Vanai owes the throne. It’s late in the season, and the march is a long one, I’d rather we didn’t spend all week getting our boots on. I have asked Sir Alan Klin to remain as Protector of Vanai until such time as King Simeon names a permanent governor. All of you who followed him in battle will follow him in this as well.”
His orders given, Ternigan nodded to himself and turned his attention to the men seated on the pavement. As he retold the history of Antean claims upon Vanai, justified the occupation in terms of wars and agreements made six hundred years before between dynastic lines and independent parliaments long since dissolved, Geder’s mind stumbled through what had just happened to him.
There would be no return to Camnipol for him, not this season. Possibly not for years. He looked around at the close-built wooden buildings with their steep-pitched roofs crowding the narrow streets, the grand canal where barges and boats made their way through the city and back out to the river, the low grey sky. This wasn’t an exotic adventure any longer. This was where he would live. A thousand half-formed plans for his return to Camnipol, to Rivenhalm, to his father’s hearth fell apart before him.
Ternigan stepped back from the platform’s edge, took a sealed letter from his secretary, and presented it to Alan Klin, Protector of Vanai. Klin stepped forward, opened the letter, and read his charge from the Lord Marshal aloud. Geder shook his head. The despair that grew with every phrase showed him how deeply he’d been anticipating the campaign’s end and his freedom from Alan Klin.
The ache in Geder’s leg throbbed as Klin assured the men of Vanai that he would treat all races with equanimity, that loyalty to Antea would be rewarded and treachery punished swiftly and terribly. The glory of King Simeon in particular and Antea in the large took up the better part of an hour. Even the others in Geder’s cohort were growing restless by the end. Then
Klin thanked the Lord Marshal for his service and formally accepted this new charge. His salute was met with a rousing cheer, the men pleased as much that the ceremony had ended as with anything Klin had said. The citizens of Vanai rose to their feet, shaking limbs gone numb and talking among themselves like merchants at a fresh market.
Geder saw mixed reactions among the men of the empire. Some envied Klin and his men their new role. Sir Gospey Allintot was grinning so widely, he seemed to glow. Jorey Kalliam walked away with a thoughtful expression, and Geder struggled to keep up with him.
“We’re exiled,” Geder said when they were away from the greater mass of their companions. “We won the battle, and in return they exiled us just as sure as the damned prince of the city.”
Jorey looked at him with annoyance and pity. “Klin’s been aiming for this from the start,” he said. “This was always what he hoped for.”
“Why?” Geder asked.
“There’s power in being the king’s voice,” Jorey said. “Even in Vanai. And if Klin makes himself useful, when the time comes to trade the city away again, he’ll have a place at that table as well. Excuse me. I have to write to my father.”
“Yes,” Geder said. “I should tell my family too. I don’t know what I’ll say.”
Jorey’s laughter was low and bitter.
“Tell them you didn’t miss the sack after all.”
If there was any question of who among Alan Klin’s men were favored, it was answered when Lord Ternigan left the gates of the city. Klin’s new secretary, the son of an important Timzinae merchant, took Geder from his bed in the infirmary to his new home: three small rooms in a minor palace that had been storage and still smelled of rat piss. Still, there was a small hearth, and the winds didn’t blow through the walls the way they had in his tent.
Each day brought Geder a new order from Lord Klin. A channel gate that was to be locked and disabled, a marketplace in which each of the merchants was to pay for an Antean permit to continue their businesses, a loyalist of the deposed prince to be taken to the jail cells as an example to others. It might be common soldiers who announced the demands and enforced their execution, but a nobleman’s presence was required; a face to show that the aristocracy of Antea was present and involved with the business of its new city. And given the tasks assigned him, Geder suspected that he’d be the most hated man in Vanai before the winter passed.
Leviathan Wakes: Book One of The Expanse Page 63