Leviathan Wakes: Book One of The Expanse

by James S. A. Corey

  “All right,” Marcus said. “Next problem.”

  Master Kit turned back toward him. There were tears in the man’s eyes, but otherwise his expression was calm.

  “I have five corpses,” Marcus said. “Maybe three hours to first light. If I go to the queensmen, I have to explain what happened, and what we’ve got in those boxes that’s worth killing over. Any hope of keeping quiet’s gone then. Add to that, we’ll have to move just in case any of Opal’s friends have friends of their own. We’ve sold the cart. You still have one.”

  The cut in his shoulder had gone an uncomfortable sort of numb, but the scratch across his ribs tore open each time he took a deep breath. He knew that this was the point at which Master Kit might balk. Marcus had hoped he could avoid a long negotiation. He watched Master Kit’s dark eyes as the man weighed his unpleasant options.

  “I feel the company owes you something, Captain Wester,” he said at last. “What would you have me do?”

  An hour later, they were back in the small rooms of the salt quarter. The dead man had been pulled from the grate, and a new fire stoked. Hornet and Smit were somberly pasting lengths of cloth over the rips in the parchment while Cary, Sandr, and Mikel looked at the bodies piled like cordwood against the wall. Master Kit sat on an overturned handcart, his expression grim. Cithrin sat on the cot, her legs drawn up to her chest, her eyes empty. She didn’t look at Opal, and Opal didn’t look back. The room, small to begin with, felt dangerously crowded.

  “There’s an opening in the eastern seawall, not far from baker’s row,” Master Kit said, thoughtfully. “I don’t remember much cover, nor any way to explain being there, but I think I could find it again.”

  “Even in the dark?” Marcus asked.

  “Yes. And if there’s no reason for us to be there, I think there’s little reason for anyone else either.”

  “They look peaceful,” Mikel said. “I didn’t think they’d look peaceful.”

  “All dead men are at peace,” Marcus said. “That’s what makes them dead. We’ve got five of these bastards to get rid of. We don’t have much time. How far is this place?”

  “We’ll be seen,” Cithrin said. “They’ll find us. Ten people carrying five bodies? How does that…?”

  The girl shook her head and looked down. Her face was paler even than usual. The others were quiet. If things had gone otherwise, there would only have been three bodies, and hers among them. Marcus could see the knowledge etching the girl’s soul, but he didn’t have time now to fix that, or any idea how he would have.

  “Master Kit?” Cary said thoughtfully. “What about the festival scene in Andricore’s Folly?”

  “You can’t be serious,” he said.

  “I think I am,” Cary said. She turned to Yardem. “Can you carry one by yourself? Over your shoulder?”

  The Tralgu crossed his arms, frowning deeply, but nodded. Master Kit’s face was still pale, but he rose and turned the handcart back onto its wheels, considering it. By contrast, Cary’s face was flushing rose.

  “Yardem takes one,” she said. “Smit and Hornet can take the small one there. Sandr and Cithrin, the poor fellow with the beard. That puts two on the handcart. Mikel can steady them, and you and the captain haul. Then Opal and I take torches and—”

  “Not Opal,” Master Kit said. “She stays with us.”

  “I’ll take Cithrin, then,” Cary said, hardly missing a breath. “Opal can help Sandr.”

  “You’ll take Cithrin where, exactly?” Marcus said, his voice low.

  “To make sure no one is looking at you,” Cary said, and she stepped over to the cot, lowering herself beside Cithrin’s slight frame. The dark-haired woman put an arm across Cithrin’s shoulders and smiled at her gently. “Come on, sister mine. Are you ready to be brave?”

  Cithrin blinked back tears.

  “Kit?” Marcus said.

  “Andricore’s Folly. It’s a comedy from a poet in Cabral,” Master Kit said. “The city prince dies in a brothel, and they have to smuggle his body back into his wife’s bed before she wakes.”

  “And they manage it how?”

  “It’s a comedy,” Master Kit said, shrugging. “Help me with this cart, won’t you?”

  There were no torches, but two small tin lanterns in the back room came near enough. With a few pins and Cary’s direction, their dresses had grown short in the skirt, and half undone at the neck and back. Their hair hung in loose curls, threatening to fall at any moment, like the ruins of some more respectable arrangement. Cary rouged Cithrin’s lips and cheeks and the swell of her breast, and in the darkness of the night the pair seemed carved out of sunlight and the promise of sex.

  “Count three hundred,” Master Kit said to Cary. “Then follow. If I give the sign…”

  “We’ll start singing,” Cary said, and then, to Cithrin, “Shoulders back, sister mine. We’re here to be seen.”

  “Yardem?” Marcus said as the Tralgu hefted a dead man.

  “Sir?”

  “The day you throw me in a ditch and take the company?”

  “I am the company, sir.”

  “Fair point.”

  They slipped into the darkness. The cold was bitter, and Marcus’s breath fogged before him. The cobbles seemed made from ice, and the smell of death came from the cart, low and coppery and familiar as his own name. At his side, Master Kit pulled, the man’s breath coming fast as panting. The living carried the dead through the black streets, guided by starlight and memory. Drying blood caked Marcus’s side, plucking at his wounds with every step. He pressed himself forward. It seemed like a slow eternity, pain in his fingers giving way to numbness, and then pain again. Behind him, he heard Cary’s voice suddenly rise in bawdy song, and then, like a river reed playing harmony to a trumpet, Cithrin’s voice with hers. He looked over his shoulder. A block behind them, their lanterns held high above them, two scantily dressed women faced a patrol of queensmen. Marcus stopped, the handcart slowing as he dropped from the lead.

  “Captain,” Master Kit whispered urgently.

  “This is idiocy,” Marcus said. “This isn’t your comedy, and that street’s not a stage. Those are men with swords and power. Putting women in front of them and hoping for the best is—”

  “What we’ve done, Captain,” Master Kit said. “It’s what we’ve done, and this is why. You should pull the cart now.”

  In the light of the lanterns, Cary twirled once, laughing. One of the queensmen draped a cloak over Cithrin’s shoulders. Marcus realized he’d drawn his knife without knowing it. They can’t be trusted, Marcus thought, looking at the guardians of civil peace in their cloaks of green and gold. You can’t trust them.

  “Captain?” Yardem asked.

  “Go. Keep going,” Marcus said and forced himself to turn away.

  The break in the seawall was on the far eastern edge of the city. A stone walkway white with snow and gull droppings and black with ice and night looked out over an invisible ocean. Gulls nested in cracks in the walls around them and on the cliffs below. And there, a single crack, no wider than a doorway where the city had constructed a siege weapon long since turned to rust to defend it against an enemy as dead as the bodies Marcus hauled.

  They moved quickly and in silence. Yardem strode to the edge and lofted the corpse from his shoulder and into the grey predawn mist. Then Smit and Hornet, like men helping a drunken companion over the threshold. Then, together, the handcart with its human cargo. And last, Sandr and Opal, the woman limping under the weight of her burden, came to the edge. The last of the knife men vanished. There was no splash. Only the hush of the wind, the complaints of the birds, and faraway muttering of the surf.

  “Yardem,” Marcus said. “Get back to the rooms. I’ll find Cithrin.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Tralgu said, and vanished into the gloom.

  “We’ll need money to pay their fines,” Smit said. “Can we afford that?”

  “Seems wrong to charge them for public lewdness,” Sandr sa
id. “Most places you have to pay extra for it.”

  “I think we can do what we must,” Master Kit said shortly. “You all go back to the cart. I believe the captain and I have some last business. Opal, please stay with us.”

  The players stood for a moment and then walked slowly away. Marcus listened to their footsteps fade. Sandr said something, and Smit replied darkly. Marcus couldn’t make out the words. Master Kit and Opal stood, deeper black in the gloom all around. Marcus wished he could see their faces, and was also glad that he couldn’t.

  “I can’t take her to the queensmen,” Marcus said.

  “I know,” Master Kit said.

  “I didn’t tell anyone else,” Opal said. “The only people who know about the banker girl’s fortune are the ones who knew before.”

  “Unless one of your swimming friends down there told someone,” Marcus said.

  “Unless that,” Opal admitted.

  “It seems to me there are only two choices here, Captain. You won’t appeal to the city’s justice. Either Opal walks free, or she doesn’t.”

  “That’s truth,” Marcus said.

  “I would very much like you to let her walk away,” Master Kit said. “She’s already lost her place with me, and we’ve helped protect your work here. You’re hurt, but Yardem Hane isn’t. Or Cithrin. I won’t say there’s no harm done, but I hope there’s room for mercy.”

  “Thank you, Kit,” Opal said.

  Marcus squinted up. The eastern sky had begun to show the first faint lightening of dawn. The stars in the great arch above him still glittered and shone, but the faintest of them had vanished. More would go out in the next few minutes. He’d been told that, in truth, the stars were always there, only during the day you couldn’t see them. He’d heard the same thing said about the souls of the dead. He didn’t believe that either.

  “I’d need to know she wouldn’t come after us again,” he said.

  “I swear it,” Opal said, jumping at his words. “I swear to all the gods that I won’t make another try.”

  Master Kit made a sudden, pained sound, as if someone had struck him. Marcus took a step toward him, but when the man spoke, his voice was clear and strong and unutterably sad.

  “Oh, my poor, dear Opal.”

  “Kit,” she said, and there was an intimacy in the way she formed the word that made Marcus reassess everything he thought he knew about the two and their past.

  “She’s lying, Captain,” Master Kit said. “I wish that she wasn’t, but you have my word that she is. If she leaves here now, it’s with the intention to come back.”

  “Well, then,” Marcus said. “That’s a problem.”

  The shadow that was Opal turned and tried to bolt, but Marcus stepped in front of her. She clawed at his eyes and made an inexpert try to knee his groin.

  “Please. He’s wrong. Kit’s wrong. Please let me go.”

  The desperation in her voice, the fear, made him want to step aside. He was a soldier and a mercenary, not the kind of feral thug who killed women for the joy of it. He moved half a step back, but then remembered Cithrin again, sitting on the cot with her legs drawn to her knees, facing the swords of the patrol with awkward song. He’d promised to protect her if he could. Not only when it was pleasant.

  He knew what had to happen next.

  “I’m sorry about this,” Marcus said.

  Geder

  Geder had known, of course, that Klin’s favorites had been given the better accommodations, and that men like himself had taken the leavings. The scale of the insult, however, hadn’t been clear. He sat on a low divan upholstered in silk. High windows spilled light over the floors like God upending a milk jug. Incense touched the air with vanilla and patchai. The goldwork and gems that glowed over the fire grate hadn’t been wrenched apart in the sack. Even before the soldiers of Antea had taken the streets below, it had been understood that the prince’s house was sacrosanct. Not because it was the prince’s, but because it was Ternigan’s. And then Klin’s. And now, unthinkably, his own.

  “My Lord Protector?”

  Geder jumped to his feet as if he’d been caught touching something he shouldn’t. The chief of household was an old Timzinae slave, his dark scales greying and cracked. He wore the grey and blue of House Palliako now, or as close to them as could be scrounged.

  “Your secretaries await, sir,” the Timzinae said.

  “Yes,” Geder said, plucking at the black leather cloak he’d brought from his old rooms. “Yes, of course. Take me there.”

  The orders had come three days before. The Lord Marshal had called Alan Klin back to Camnipol, to the despair of some, the delight of others, and the surprise of no one. The astonishing development was who Ternigan had chosen as his replacement until such time as King Simeon named a permanent governor. Geder had read the order ten times at least, checked the seal and signature, and then read it again. Sir Geder Palliako, son of Viscount of Rivenhalm Lerer Palliako, was now Protector of Vanai. He had the order still, folded in a pouch at his belt like a religious relic: mysterious and awesome and entirely unsafe.

  His first thought after the first wave of raw disbelief had passed was that Klin had discovered Geder’s betrayal, and that this was his revenge. As he stepped into the meeting chamber, Klin’s appointees peopling every seat except the one on the dais at the front reserved for himself, Geder had the suspicion again. His belly sloshed and he felt his hands trembling. His blood felt weak as water as he took the two steps up and lowered himself uncomfortably into the presentation seat. Once, the room had been a chapel, and the icons of gods in whom Geder didn’t believe surrounded him. Unsympathetic eyes gazed up at him, expressions blank at best, openly contemptuous at worst. A handful of seats were empty. Loyalists of House Klin who had chosen to resign commission and return with him to Antea rather than submit to the new order. Geder wished he could have gone with them.

  “Lords,” Geder said. He sounded like someone was strangling him. He coughed, cleared his throat, and began again. “My lords, you will have read by now the orders of Lord Marshal Ternigan. I am, of course, honored and as surprised as I’m sure all of you are as well.”

  He chuckled. No one else made a sound. Geder swallowed.

  “It’s important that the city not suffer from a sense of unease during this change. I would like each of you to continue on with the directions and orders given by Lord Klin so that the… ah… change that we are—”

  “You mean the policies that have him pulled back to Ternigan?” The questioner was Alberith Maas, eldest son of Estrian Maas and nephew of Klin’s close ally Feldin.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The orders,” the young man said. “They’re the same ones that put Lord Klin in the crown’s poor grace, and you want us to keep to them?”

  “For now,” Geder said, “yes.”

  “A bold decision, my Lord Protector.”

  Someone sniggered. Geder felt a rush of shame, and then anger. His jaw tightened.

  “When I order a change, Lord Maas, I’ll see that you know of it,” he said. “We will all have to work to raise Vanai up from its present disorder.”

  So don’t cross me, or I’ll put you in charge of cleaning weeds out of the canals, Geder thought, but didn’t say. The young man rolled his eyes but kept silent. Geder took a deep breath, letting the air curl slowly out through his nostrils. His enemies sat before him, looking up. Men of greater experience, with greater political connections, and who had not been given the power that Geder now held. For the most part they would be polite. They would say the right things, though often in the wrong tone of voice. In private, they would shake their heads and laugh at him.

  Humiliation fueled his rage.

  “Alan Klin was a failure.” It was nothing he’d meant to say, and he threw the words out like a slap across the jowls. “The Lord Marshal gave him Vanai, and Klin pissed it away. And each of you were part of that failure. I know you are going to leave here and share your jokes and roll your e
yes and tell yourselves it’s all a terrible mistake.”

  He leaned forward now. The heat in his cheeks felt like courage.

  “But, my very good lords, let me make this clear. I am the one Lord Ternigan chose. I am the one he picked to turn Vanai from an embarrassment into a jewel in King Simeon’s crown. And I intend to do so. If you would rather make light of me and of the duty we are given, say it now, take your things, and crawl back to Camnipol on your bellies. But stand off my path!”

  He was shouting now. The fear was gone, the humiliation with it. He didn’t remember standing, but he was on his feet now, his finger pointing a general accusation at the group. Their eyes were wide, their brows risen. He could see unease in the angle of their shoulders and the way they held their hands.

  Good, he thought. Let them wonder who and what Geder Palliako is.

  “If Lord Klin has left pressing business, I’ll hear it now. Otherwise, I will have reports from each of you by tomorrow on the state of the city in general, your particular responsibilities within it, and how you propose to do better.”

  There was silence for the space of four heartbeats together. Geder let himself feel a trickle of pleasure.

  “Lord Palliako?” a man said from the back. “There’s the grain taxes?”

  “What about them?”

  “Lord Klin was entertaining a proposal to change them, sir. But he didn’t give a decision before he left. You see, fresh grain coming in from the countryside is taxed at two silver to the bushel, but sold from storage in the city runs two and a half. The local granaries appealed.”

  “Put them all at two and a half,” Geder said.

  “Yes, Lord Protector,” the man said.

  “What else?”

  There was nothing more. Geder stalked from the room quickly, before the heat of his temper could fully cool. When the brief certainty of anger passed, it passed completely. By the time he returned to his drawing room—his drawing room—he was shaking from head to foot. He sat by the window, looking out on the main square of the city, and tried to guess whether he was on the verge of laughter or tears. Below him, dry leaves skittered. The canal lay bare and dry, a team of slaves of several races hauling armfuls of weeds and filth out of it. A handful of Firstblood girls ran across the square, screaming in their play. He told himself that they were his now. Slaves, girls, leaves. All of it. It frightened him.