The Briar King

by Greg Keyes

  Cazio pulled off the medallion and tossed it to the man. “You seem an honest sort,” he said. “Or at least you will be, as a corpse, for all the dead are stiffly honest. They lie, but they cannot lie, if you understand me.” He drew his sword. “Meet Caspator,” he said. “Between us, we are happy to teach you the art of dessrata.”

  The man drew his own weapon. Like Caspator, it was a rapier, with a light, narrow blade and half-basket hilt. “I do not bother to name my swords,” he said. “My own name is Minato Sepios daz'Afinio, and that is quite enough.”

  “Yes, what need have you of a sword, with a name like that? Repeat it often enough—say, twice—and your opponent will fall straight to sleep.”

  “To guard, you,” daz'Afinio said, taking a stance.

  Cazio frowned and waggled a reproving finger. “No, no. Lesson one: stance is everything. See? Yours is too narrow, and too forward facing, unless you plan to use an off-hand bodkin. Point your front toe like so—”

  Daz'Afinio roared and lunged.

  Cazio danced to the side. “Ah,” he said. “The lunge. The lunge is properly executed thus.” He feinted with his shoulders, hopped to his left, and when daz'Afinio jerked his blade up to parry the nonexistent attack, flicked his blade out and kicked his front foot forward. The tip of Caspator pricked lightly into daz'Afinio's arm, not deeply enough to bring blood.

  “You see? You prepare the ground with some other movement, then—”

  Daz'Afinio just set his mouth grimly and came forward with a flurry of hard blows, shallow thrusts, and poor attempts to bind. Cazio laughed delightedly, parrying each or sidestepping, dancing clockwise around his opponent. Suddenly daz'Afinio lunged deep, his point aimed straight at Cazio's heart. Cazio ducked, so the steel went right over his head, extending his own blade as he did so. Daz'Afinio, still moving forward with the momentum of his attack, impaled his shoulder on Cazio's point—again, not deeply, but this time the tip of Caspator had a bit of red on it that wasn't velvet.

  “The pertumum perum praisef,” Cazio informed his foe.

  Daz'Afinio threw a draw cut to Cazio's hand. Cazio caught the blade with his own, captured the fellow's weapon with a quick rotation, and then drove through. Daz'Afinio had to scramble backwards quickly to avoid another cut.

  “The aflukam en truz.”

  Daz'Afinio beat his blade and lunged again.

  Cazio parried, paused, and skewered him through the thigh.

  “Parry prismo,” Cazio said, “com postro en utave. A difficult riposte, but it pleases.”

  He watched as daz'Afinio dropped his weapon and crumpled to his knees, clutching his freely bleeding leg.

  Cazio took a moment to bow toward the applause from the shaded spectators around the piato, noticing with interest that one of them was Braza daca Feiossa. He winked at her and blew her a kiss, then turned back to his fallen opponent.

  “I believe, sir,” he said, “that my lesson is concluded. Would you care to teach yours now? The one about begging?”

  The door shuddered, uttered a rusty protest, and sagged on its hinges as Cazio tugged it open. Something—a rat, most likely—scurried along the cracked pavement in the darkened portico beyond.

  Ignoring both, Cazio strode through the covered way to the inner courtyard of his villa.

  Like the rest of the place, it was a mess. The garden had gone to weeds, and grapevines crept out of control on casement and wall. The copper basin and sundial that had once marked the center of the yard was lying on its side, as it had been for two years. The only orderly element of the house, in fact, was the small area set aside for the practice of dessrata— a cleared place on the flagstones, with a small ball dangling from a string, a battered practice mannequin with the various humors and crucial points of the body marked in faded ink. Near that, stretched out on a marble bench, a man snored fitfully.

  He was perhaps fifty, his face covered in coarse black and gray stubble, save for a long white scar that marred one cheek. His long hair was an unruly mess. He wore a tattered brown jerkin stained copiously with red wine, and no pants at all. An empty carafe of wine lay near his half-opened hand, which rested on the floor.

  “Z'Acatto.”

  The man snuffled.

  “Z'Acatto!”

  “Go, or I kill you,” the man snarled, without opening his eyes.

  “I have food.”

  He cracked his lids, then. The eyes within were red and watery. Cazio passed him a hempen bag. “There is cheese, and bread, and cloved sausage.”

  “And what to wash it down with, then?” z'Acatto asked, a murky spark appearing in his gaze.

  “Here.” Cazio handed him a ceramic carafe.

  Z'Acatto immediately took a deep drink. An instant later he spat, howled like a damned soul, and hurled the container against the wall, where it burst into a hundred pieces.

  “Poison!” he shrieked.

  “Water,” Cazio corrected. “That substance that falls from the sky. The grass finds it most nourishing.”

  “Water is what they drink in hell,” z'Acatto groaned.

  “Well, then you should begin building up a tolerance now, for there is no doubt that you will be the guest of Lord Ontro and Lady Mefita in the next life. Besides, I had no coin for wine.”

  “Ungrateful wretch! You think only of filling your own belly.”

  “And yours,” Cazio corrected. “Eat.”

  “Bah,” he groaned, levering himself slowly into a sitting position. “I—” His nose suddenly twitched, and suspicion knotted his forehead. “Step closer!”

  “I don't think I will,” Cazio told him. “Water can also be used on the outside of the body, you know,” he added.

  But z'Acatto stood and advanced on him. “I smell wine on your breath,” he accused. “Last year's vino dac'arva, from Troscia.”

  “Nonsense,” Cazio replied. “It was from Escarra.”

  “Hah! It's the same grape!” z'Acatto shouted, waving his arms like a madman. “The blight destroyed the Escarran vines ten years ago, and they had to beg their cuttings from Troscia.”

  “Interesting. I'll try to remember that. In any event, the wine was not mine; it was Alo's, and it is gone, now. Eat something.”

  “Eat.” He frowned again. “Why not?” He returned to his bench, fumbled in the bag until he brought out the bread. He tore a hunk and began chewing it. Speaking through the paste thus formed, he asked, “How many fights did you get into today?”

  “Duels, I take you to mean? Only one, that being the problem. It was too hot, I think, and there weren't enough strangers. So not enough coin.”

  “You do not duel,” z'Acatto grumbled. “You brawl. It is a foolish waste of the art I teach you. A prostitution.”

  “Is it?” Cazio said. “And tell me, how should we live, if not like this? You scorn the food I bring, and yet it's the only food you are likely to see. And where does your wine come from, when you get it? You buy it with the coin you filch from me!”

  “Your father never stooped so low.”

  “My father had estates, you fool. He had vineyards and orchards and fields of cattle, and he saw fit to get himself killed in one of your duels of honor, and thus pass his property to his killer instead of to me. Besides his title, the only thing my father left me was you—”

  “And this house.”

  “Yes, and look at it.”

  “You could make income from it,” z'Acatto replied. “It could be rented—”

  “It is my house!” Cazio shouted. “I will live here. And I will make my money as I please.”

  Z'Acatto wagged a finger at him. “You will get killed, too.”

  “Who here can best me at swordplay? No one. No one has even come near in nigh on two years. There is no danger in this, no gambling. It is pure science.”

  “I am still your better,” z'Acatto replied. “And though I am perhaps the greatest master of dessrata in the world, there are those who approach me in skill. One day, you will meet one of them.”<
br />
  Cazio looked unblinkingly at the old man. “Then it is your duty to make certain I am ready when they arrive. Or you will have failed me as you failed my father.”

  The old man's head dropped then, and his face pinched ever more sullen. “Your brothers have put it behind them,” he said.

  “I suppose they have. They would let our good name blow away in the sea wind to which they've fled. Not me, not Cazio. I am a da Chiovattio, by Diuvo!”

  “I do not know the face of the man who killed your father,” z'Acatto said softly.

  “I care little about that. My father dueled the wrong man, for the wrong reasons. I will not make that mistake, and I will not mourn him. But neither will I pretend to come from common birth. I was born to fight and to win, to reclaim what my father lost. And I will.”

  Z'Acatto grabbed him by the sleeve. “You think you are wise. You think you know something of the world. Boy, Avella is not the world, and you know nothing. You would rebuild your father's estates? Start with this house. Start with what you have.”

  Cazio brushed the hand from his sleeve. “I have nothing,” he said, rising.

  Z'Acatto did not reply as Cazio went back outside.

  Once back on the street, Cazio felt a pang of regret. Z'Acatto wasn't much, but he had raised Cazio from the age of five. They had had their share of good times.

  Just not lately.

  Avella at night was darker than a cave, but Cazio knew his way around it well. He found the north wall as easily as a blind man feeling about his own house, and after ascending the stairs stood in the night wind looking out over the moonlit vineyards and olive groves, the gently rolling hills of the Tero Mefio, the heartland of Vitellio. He stood thus for more than a bell, trying to clear his head.

  I'll apologize to him, he thought to himself. After all, there are secrets of the dessrata he still holds to himself.

  Returning to his house, Cazio felt an odd prickling at the back of his neck, and his hand strayed to Caspator.

  “Who's there?” he asked.

  All around him he heard the soft kissing of leather on brick. Four, maybe five of them.

  “Cowards,” he said, more softly. “Lord Mamres spit on you all.” Caspator made no sound as he slid from his sheath. Cazio waited for the first rush.

  CHAPTER THREE

  FLIGHT AND FANCY

  ANNE PUSHED OPEN the wooden shutters, wincing as they squeaked faintly. Outside, the night air was warm and strong with the scent of woodfire and the stink of horse manure. The moon wore her scantiest gown and fretted the slate rooftops of the hamlet with dull pearl light.

  Anne couldn't see the ground—the street below was sooted with shadow—but she knew from earlier that it was only a single story down, that just beneath her window a narrow eave jutted, and under that was the front door of the small inn. She had jumped from higher places, in her life.

  Twenty long days had come and gone since they left Eslen—Austra, five Craftsmen, and she. Anne didn't know where they were or how far they had to go, but she knew her best chance to escape when she saw it. She had been able to lay aside enough hard cheese and bread to last for a few days. If she could but find a bow and a knife, she was certain she could live off the land.

  If only she had better clothes for riding—but she could find those, too. Saint Erenda would surely smile on her and bring her fortune.

  Anne cast a glance in the direction of Austra's regular breathing, and repressed a pang of regret. But she couldn't tell her best friend what she planned; it would be better for Austra if she knew nothing of this, if she was just as surprised in the morning as Captain Marl and the rest of her escort.

  Taking a deep breath, Anne sat up on the windowsill and felt for the eave below with her stocking feet. She found it—farther down than she had hoped, and more sloping than she remembered it. Fear of falling held her for a moment, but then she eased her weight on down.

  And promptly slipped. Her hands scrabbled wildly as she slid forward. At the last moment she caught something—and held it, breath coming in gasps, her feet dangling over the unseen ground.

  By its feel, she had grabbed the wooden gamecock that peered from over the doorway of the inn.

  Nearby, harsh laughter suddenly cut through the darkness. At first she thought someone had seen her, then two men started talking in some language she didn't understand. Their voices passed under her as she held her breath, and continued on.

  Her arms began shaking with the effort of holding herself up. She had to either drop or climb back up to her window.

  She looked down, though she couldn't see even her feet, and after another quick prayer, she let go. Air seemed to rush by for much longer than it ought to, then she found the ground. Her knees buckled, and she fell face first. One of her hands went into a pile of something that gushed, and she recognized the smell of a fresh horsecake.

  Trembling, but with a growing feeling of triumph, she came to her feet, shaking the wet dung from her hand.

  “Anne!” A desperate voice from above, cracking with the attempt to whisper as loudly as possible.

  “Hush, Austra!” Anne hissed back.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don't know. Go back to sleep.”

  “Anne! You'll get killed. You don't even know where we are!”

  “I don't care! I'm not going to any coven! Farewell, Austra— I love you.”

  “This will be the end of me!” Austra gasped. “If I let you go—”

  “I slipped off while you were asleep. They can't blame you for that.”

  Austra didn't answer, but Anne heard a scrabbling from above.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Coming with you, of course. I'm not going to let you die alone.”

  “Austra, no!”

  But it was too late. Austra gave the briefest of shrieks. Her passing made a slight breeze before she hit the ground with a pronounced thud.

  “Her arm is badly bruised, but not broken,” Captain Marl told her, very matter-of-factly. He was that sort of man, taciturn and plainspoken. His manner went well with his pitted, homely face.

  “I want to see her,” Anne demanded.

  “Not just yet, Princess. There is the matter of what you two were doing.”

  “We were being silly. Wrestling near the window, and lost our balance.”

  “And how is it you aren't even bruised, when she was hurt?”

  “I was lucky. But I did soil my gown, as you can see.”

  “There's that, too. Why were you fully dressed?”

  “I wasn't. I didn't have my shoes on.”

  “Your maid was in a nightgown—as you should have been.”

  “Captain, who are you to presume how a princess of Crotheny ought to be dressed? You treat me as if I'm a captive of war!”

  “I treat you as what you are, Princess—my charge. I know my duty, and I take it seriously. Your father trusts me. He has reason to.” He sighed and folded his hands behind his back. “I dislike this. Young women should have their privacy, away from the company of men. I thought I could afford to give you that. Now I see I was foolish.”

  “You aren't suggesting that I share my room with one of your men?”

  “No, Princess. None of my men will do.” His face pinkened. “But when I cannot find lodging that precludes escape, I must stand watch in your room myself.”

  “My mother will have your head!” Anne shouted.

  “If that's so, that's so,” Marl replied obligingly.

  She had learned not to argue with him when he adopted that tone. He had made up his mind and really would take a beheading before changing it.

  “May I see Austra, now?” she asked, instead.

  “Yes, Princess.”

  Austra's face was white, and her arm bound in a sling. She lay on her back and wouldn't meet Anne's gaze when she entered.

  “I'm sorry,” Austra said, voice curiously flat.

  “You ought to be,” Anne replied. “You should ha
ve done what I told you. Now Marl will never let me out of his sight.”

  “I said I was sorry.” Tears were streaming down Austra's face, but she made none of the sounds of crying.

  Anne sighed and gripped her friend's hand. “Never mind,” she said. “How's your arm?”

  Austra set her mouth stubbornly and didn't reply.

  “It's all right,” Anne said, more softly. “I'll find another chance.”

  Austra turned to her then, red eyes glaring and angry. “How could you?” she said. “After all the times I've watched out for you, lied for you, helped you play your stupid games. Your mother could have sent me to work with the scouring maids! Saints, she could have had me beheaded, but I always did what you said anyway! And for what? So you could leave me without a second thought?”

  For a moment, Anne was so shocked she couldn't say anything.

  “I would have sent for you,” she finally managed. “When I was safe, and—”

  “Sent for me? Do you have any idea what you're planning?”

  “To run away. Seek my love and destiny.”

  “The destiny of a woman, alone, in a strange country where you don't even speak the language? What did you think you would do for food?”

  “Live off the land.”

  “Anne, someone owns the land. People are hanged for poaching, do you know that? Or rot in prison, or serve as slaves until their debt is done. That's what happens to them who ‘live off the land’ in your father's kingdom.”

  “No one would hang me,” Anne replied. “Not once they knew who I was.”

  “Oh, yes. So once caught, you would explain that you are a very important princess, and then they would—what? Let you go? Give you a small estate? Or call you a liar and hang you. Of course, since you're a woman, and pretty, they wouldn't hang you right at first. They'd have their pleasure from you.

  “Or suppose you could somehow convince them of who you are. In the best case they would send you home, and this would all start again—except for me, for I'll be carrying charcoal on my back up from the barges, or something worse. Worst case, they would hold you for ransom, maybe send your fingers to your father one at a time, to prove they really have you.”