by Brent Weeks
The man walked out of the brothel, smiling and winking at the whores who seemed disappointed to lose his business. He wore his charm like a mask, Durzo saw.
The masks change, but the masquers remain the same, don’t they? Durzo had lived with the bilge waste of humanity for so long, he saw filth in every heart. He knew the filth was there; he was right about that. Filth and darkness were even in Rimbold Drake’s heart. But Drake didn’t act from that darkness, did he? No. That masquer—if only that one—had changed.
Fear isn’t enough to motivate me, he’d said—while planning to murder a child. What kind of a monster am I?
He was caught now. Truly and desperately caught. He’d just killed Corbin Fishill. The man’s death had been sanctioned by the Shinga and the rest of the Nine. Corbin had been managing the guilds as if he were in Khalidor, setting guild against guild, encouraging open war between them and doing absolutely nothing to regulate brutality within the guilds. Khalidorans did such things in the belief that the best would naturally rise. But the Sa’kagé wanted members, not monsters.
Worse, they now had some indication that Corbin actually had been working for Khalidor. That was inexcusable. Not taking the work, but taking it without reporting it to the rest of the Nine. Loyalties had to be to the Sa’kagé first.
The kill had been sanctioned, and it had been just. That didn’t mean that Corbin’s friends would accept it. Durzo had killed members of the Nine before, but he always took extra care to conceal whose work it was. Now Azoth had tromped around his killing grounds for hours, a little before the job was done and a lot after. Enough people knew or guessed Durzo had taken Azoth as his apprentice that they couldn’t fail to link the two. It was sloppy wet work, they’d say. Maybe Durzo Blint is slipping.
Being the best made him a target. The appearance of weakness gave every second-rate wetboy hope that they could move up. Azoth couldn’t have known, of course. Still didn’t know so many things. But in that flash of blue light from Retribution’s blade, Durzo had seen his own death. If he let the boy live, Durzo would die. Sooner or later.
And there it was. The divine economy. For someone to live, someone had to die.
Durzo Blint made his decision, and started drinking.
“Master Blint hasn’t come to see me.”
“No,” Momma K said.
“It’s been four days. You said he wasn’t mad anymore,” Azoth said, making fists with his hands. He thought he had cut them, but they were fine. Lots of other places on his body hurt, so he hadn’t just imagined being beaten, but his hands were fine.
“Three days. And he’s not mad. Drink this.”
“No. I don’t want any more of that stuff. It makes me feel worse.” He regretted the words as soon as he said them. Momma K’s eyebrows went up and her eyes went cold. Even huddled in warm blankets in a spare bedroom here in her house, when her eyes turned frosty, nothing could make you feel warm.
“Child, let me tell you a story. Have you ever heard of the Snake of Haran?”
Azoth shook his head.
“The snake has seven heads, but each time you cut one head off, two more grow in its place.”
“Really? There’s really such a thing?”
“No. In Haran they call it the Snake of Ladesh. It’s imaginary.”
“Then why did you tell me about it?” Azoth asked.
“Are you being deliberately obtuse?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “If you’ll let me finish, you’ll see the story is an analogy. Analogies are lies grown-ups tell.”
“Why?” Being stuck in bed was making Azoth petulant.
“Why does anyone tell lies? Because they’re useful. Now drink your medicine and then shut your mouth,” Momma K said.
Azoth knew he was pushing it, so he didn’t ask any more. He drank the thick mint-and-anise-flavored brew.
“Right now the Sa’kagé has its own Snake of Haran, Azoth …Kylar. Do you know Corbin Fishill?”
Azoth nodded. Corbin was the handsome, impressive young man who had sometimes come and talked to Ja’laliel.
“Corbin was one of the Nine. He ran the children’s guilds.”
“Was?” Azoth almost squeaked. He wasn’t supposed to know Corbin was even important, much less how important.
“Durzo killed him three days ago. When the baby farms were shut down, the Sa’kagé was given a chance to literally raise its own army. But Corbin was allowing or encouraging guild war that was wiping out the slaveborn. And he was a spy. The Sa’kagé thought he was a Ceuran spy, but now they think he was taking money from Khalidor. The Khalidorans paid him in Ceuran gold, probably in case he was found, and also so he wouldn’t start spending the money immediately and bring attention to himself.
“Now that Corbin is dead, his things have been searched, and unfortunately, there hasn’t been any clear answer. If he was Khalidoran, he was far more dangerous than we had thought, and the Sa’kagé should have brought him in and had him tortured until they knew for sure, but at the time, they thought it was more important to set a graphic example of what happens to those who mismanage Sa’kagé endeavors. The problem now is bigger.
“We don’t think Corbin was in place long enough to cultivate any loyalty to Khalidor among the guilds—street rats don’t care much where their meals come from—but the fact Khalidor would work on taking over the guilds tells us that they are thinking long term.”
“How do you know he wasn’t just the easiest person they could get in the Sa’kagé?”
Momma K smiled. “We don’t. Khalidor is putting down some rebellions right now, and it’s not going well for them. But the Godking has earned a reputation as a man who plans for victory, and my guess is that he thinks it may be years before he’s ready to march south, but he wants Cenaria to fall at the slightest blow when he does. If he controls the Sa’kagé, taking the city will be easy. Our problem is that if he was able to get a man as highly placed as Corbin, then there may be dozens of others. The other heads of the snake may show up at any time. Anyone we trust may be working for Khalidor.”
“Why’s that your problem?” Azoth asked.
“It’s my problem because I’m one of the Nine, too, Kylar. I’m the Mistress of Pleasures.”
Azoth’s mouth formed a little O. Always before, the Sa’kagé had been something dangerous, huge, and distant. He supposed it fit—everyone knew Momma K had been a whore and that she was wealthy—but he’d never even thought of it. Being the Mistress of Pleasures meant that Momma K controlled all of the prostitution in Cenaria. Everyone who plied the pleasure trade ultimately answered to her.
She smiled. “Aside from my girls’ more …strenuous duties, they also keep their ears open. You’d be amazed at how talkative men can be in front of what they think is just a dumb whore. I’m in charge of the Sa’kagé’s spies. I need to know what Khalidor is doing. If I don’t know, the Sa’kagé doesn’t know, and if we don’t know, the country may fall. Believe me, we do not want Garoth Ursuul as our king.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Azoth said. “I’m nobody.”
“Azoth was nobody. You about to become Kylar Stern,” she said, “And I think you’re smarter than Durzo gives you credit for. I’m telling you because we need you on our side. Azoth was stupid to go wandering the other day, and it may cost you or Durzo your lives. But if you had known what was happening, you wouldn’t have gone there. You did the wrong thing, but Durzo shouldn’t have beaten you for showing initiative. In fact, I’m sure he’s sorry for beating you, though he’ll never apologize. It isn’t in the man to admit he’s wrong. We need you to be more than an apprentice, Kylar. We need you to be an ally. Are you ready for that?”
Azoth—Kylar—nodded slowly. “What do you want me to do?”
17
Kylar tried to gawk at the right things as he was ushered through the Gyre estate. Azoth, Momma K had told him, would gawk at anything big or gold. Baronet Kylar Stern would gawk only at things that were both—and the art. Logan ha
d invited him to visit to make amends for hitting him, and Kylar’s first job for the Sa’kagé was to make sure they became friends.
The porter escorted him to another, better-dressed man—Kylar almost greeted him as Duke Gyre before realizing he must be the Gyre’s chamberlain. The chamberlain took him through a vast entry hall with dual stairs that climbed three stories flanking an enormous marble statue of two men, twins, facing each other in battle, each seeing the same opening in the other’s defense, each lunging. It was one of the most famous statues in the world, Momma K had told Kylar: The Grasq Twins’ Doom. In history, Momma K said, the Grasq twins had been heavily armored and during a long battle each had lost the thin tabards that at the time were all men wore over plate mail and all that identified them if they were separated from their standard bearers. They had indeed killed each other, though each had avoided the other in earlier battles. Here, the men were naked except for a shield and sword. Because of the shields’ placement, each was seeing his twin’s face for the first time even as he struck the death blow.
The chamberlain took Kylar up the stairs and down one long wing of the estate. The hallway was wider than most of the alleys in the Warrens. Both sides were crowded with marble busts and paintings of men speaking, men fighting, men seizing women, families moving, women mourning, the aftermath of battles, and horrible monsters boiling out of gaps in the ground. Every picture was framed with heavy gold leaf. Most were big. Walking behind the chamberlain, Kylar could gawk as much as he wanted, and he did. Then they stopped at a huge door. The chamberlain rapped on it with the staff he carried and opened the door to a library with dozens of shelves in orderly rows and the walls lined with books and scrolls to a height of two stories.
“My lord, Baronet Kylar Stern.”
Logan Gyre rose from a table with an open scroll laid across it. “Kylar! I was just finishing—I borrowed this scroll from—oh, never mind. Welcome!”
“Thank you for inviting me, Duke Gyre; your estate is beautiful. The statue of the Grasq twins is breathtaking.” He was reciting it the way Momma K had taught him, but now he meant it.
“Please, Logan. You’re most kind. You really like it?” Logan asked.
The “you’re most kind” gave him away. Logan was trying as hard to be an adult as Kylar was. Kylar was nervous because he was a fraud, but “Duke” Logan felt like a fraud, too. The title was too big and too new for him to feign comfort convincingly. So Kylar answered honestly, “Actually, I think it’s amazing. I just wish they weren’t naked.”
Logan burst out laughing. “I know! Most the time I don’t notice it anymore, but every once in a while I come in the door and—there’s two huge naked men in my house. Because of my new duties I’m meeting all of my father’s retainers and friends, again. Really it’s a chance for ladies to introduce their daughters and hope I fall madly in love. I was greeting a lady and her daughter, I won’t name names, but they are beautiful women and very prim, very modest. So I’m pretty tall, right? and they both have to really look up to look me in the eye, and as I’m talking and I’m in the middle of a story and the mom is tittering and the daughter looks utterly captivated, and I start to wonder if I’ve got something in my hair or on my ear or something, because they both keep glancing just a bit to the side.”
“Oh no,” Kylar said, laughing.
“I glance over my shoulder, and there’s …well, there, three times life size, is marble …genitalia. And there’s this moment where they realize that I’ve noticed that they’ve been looking over my shoulder the whole time, and I realize this is the first time that the daughter has ever seen a naked man—and I totally forget what story I was telling them.”
They laughed together, Kylar desperately thankful that Logan had given enough context so he could figure out what “genitalia” meant. Did all nobles talk like this? What if next time Logan gave the punch line without the context? Logan pointed to a portrait on the library wall of a square-jawed bald man dressed in an unfamiliar style. “I have him to thank for that. My great-great-great grandfather, the art lover.”
Kylar smirked, but he felt he’d been slapped. Logan knew things about his great-great-great grandfather. Kylar didn’t even know who his father was. There was a silence, and Kylar knew it was his turn to fill it. “I, uh, heard that the Grasq twins actually led like six battles against each other.”
“You know their story?” Logan asked. “Not many people our age do.”
Belatedly, Kylar realized the risk of posing as a story lover to this man who loved books—and could actually read them. “I really like old stories,” Kylar said. “But my parents don’t really have any use for me ‘wasting my time filling my head with stories.’”
“You really do like stories? Aleine always starts pretending to snore when I talk about history.” Aleine? Oh, Aleine Gunder, Prince Aleine Gunder X. Logan’s world really was different. “Look at this,” he beckoned Kylar to the table. “Here, read this part.”
Be happy to, if I could read. Kylar’s heart seized up. His disguise was still so fragile. “You’re making me feel like my tutors,” he said, waving it off. “I don’t want to read for an hour while you’re twiddling your thumbs. Why don’t you tell me the good parts?”
“I feel like I’m doing all the talking,” Logan said, suddenly awkward. “It’s kind of rude.”
Kylar shrugged. “I don’t think you’re being rude. Is it a new story, or what?”
Logan’s eyes lit up and Kylar knew he was safe. “No, it’s the end of the Alkestia Cycle, right before the Seven Kingdoms fall. My father’s having me study the great leaders of the past. In this case, Jorsin Alkestes, of course. When they were under siege at Black Barrow, his right hand man, Ezra the Mad—well, it wasn’t Black Barrow yet, and Ezra didn’t go hide out in Ezra’s Wood for another fifty years or something—anyway, Ezra’s maybe the best magus ever, behind Emperor Jorsin Alkestes himself. They’re under siege at what’s now Black Barrow and Ezra starts making the most amazing stuff: the war hammers of Oren Razin; fire and lightning traps even un-Talented soldiers can use; Curoch, the sword of power; Iures, the staff of law; and then these six magic artifacts, ka’kari. They each look like a glowing ball, but the Six Champions can squeeze one and it melts and covers their whole bodies like a second skin and gives them power over their element. Arikus Daadrul gets this skin of silver liquid metal that makes him impervious to blades. Corvaer Blackwell becomes Corvaer the Red, the master of fire. Trace Arvagulania goes from grossly ugly to the most beautiful woman of the era. Oren Razin gets earth, weighs a thousand pounds and turns his skin to stone. Irenaea Blochwei gets the power of everything green and growing. Shrad Marden gets water and can suck the very liquid from a man’s blood.
“The thing that has always made me curious is that Jorsin Alkestes was a great leader. He brought together so many talented people, and lots of them were difficult and egotistical, and he put them in harness together, and they worked. But at the end, he insults one of his best friends, Acaelus Thorne, and gives a ka’kari to Shrad Marden instead, whom he doesn’t even like. Do you know Acaelus Thorne?”
“I’ve heard the name,” Kylar offered. That much was true. Sometimes the guild rats would huddle around a window to one of the taverns when a bard visited, but they could only hear bits and pieces of the stories.
“Acaelus was this amazing fighter but a noble fool. No subtlety. He hated lies, politics, and magic, but put a sword in his hand, and he’d go charging an enemy force solo if he had to. He was so crazy and so good that his men would follow him anywhere. But he was all about honor, and seeing lesser men honored before him was a huge insult. It was that insult that led Acaelus to betray Jorsin. How could Jorsin have missed it? He had to have known he was insulting him.”
“What do you think?” Kylar asked.
Logan scrubbed a hand through his hair. “It’s probably something boring, like that there was a war going on, and everyone was exhausted and starving and not thinking clearly and Jors
in just made a mistake.”
“So what does that teach you about being a leader?” Kylar asked.
Logan looked perplexed. “Eat your vegetables and get enough sleep?”
“How about ‘be nice to your inferiors, or they might kick your ass’?” Kylar suggested.
“Are you asking me to spar, Baronet Stern?”
“Your exalted dukeliness, it will be my pleasure to take you down.”
18
Kylar stepped into the safe house, flushed from his victory. He’d got three touches to Logan’s two. Logan fought better, but as Momma K had told Kylar, he’d also grown a foot in the last year and hadn’t adjusted to his new height yet. “Not only did I just make Logan Gyre my friend,” Kylar said, “I also beat him in sparring.”
Durzo didn’t even look up from the calcinator. He turned the flame up higher beneath the copper dish. “Good. Now never spar with him again. Hand me that.”
Hurt, Kylar took a flask from under the whirling tubes of the alembic and gave it to him. Durzo poured the thick blue mixture onto the calcinator. For the moment, it sat there, still. Small bubbles began forming and within moments the mixture was boiling rapidly.
“Why not?” Kylar asked.
“Get the slops, boy.” Kylar grabbed the pig’s slop bowl and brought it to the table.
“We fight differently from what any of this city’s sword masters teach. If you spar with Logan, you will adopt his by-the-book style and become a worthless fighter, or you’ll give away that you’re being taught something utterly different, or both.”
Kylar scowled at the calcinator. His master was right, of course, and even if he weren’t, his word was law. The blue mixture was now a dark blue powder. Durzo lifted the copper plate from the flames with a thick wool pad and scraped the powder into the slop bowl. He grabbed another copper plate and poured more of the blue mixture into it and put it above the flames, setting the first aside to cool with a heavy mitt. “Master, do you know why Jorsin Alkestes would insult his best friend by not giving him a ka’kari?”