Hell's Pawns

by Dave Gross

  All the pain of my past few days washed over me then, and I felt as drunk as Jeggare looked. I stood and walked unsteadily out the door. Jeggare said nothing as I left. I figured if he needed me, he'd call for me.

  Outside I walked away from Greensteeples without looking back. I had no destination in mind, but somehow, after threading the blank-faced crowds of Bilgetown and Dice End, I ended up at my flat and collapsed on my mattress.

  I didn't want to know, but there was no avoiding the word on the street once I emerged from my room. The Scions Academy had closed, and after a tragic fire on a pleasure barge took the lives of nearly two score young scions of the nobility, the other families of boys from the Scions Academy quietly announced that their sons had departed on tours to distant lands, gone away to wait on the pleasure of country relatives, or had contracted sudden incurable illnesses. I didn't need Jeggare's high-society contacts to know those children were quietly murdered by the fathers who learned that their sons were the bastards of an ambitious devil planning to supplant the nobility of Cheliax with his own offspring.

  I wanted more information, but I didn't want to ask the boss for it. He'd call if he needed anything.

  Against all hope, I combed the Cheapside districts for word of Pavanna. Maybe Jeggare was wrong, I told myself. Or more likely the Hellknights had lied to him. That would be just like Elliendo, to make us writhe with a lie. I tried the gambling dens, the flophouses, the taprooms, the cathouses, every filthy little safe room I had ever known. Nowhere could I find someone who had seen Pavanna arrested. Eventually I had to admit to myself that Elliendo was capable of any cruelty, but a lie was beneath his dignity.

  "Mercy is rarely an asset for executioners."

  Still no word from Jeggare.

  I tried to put it out of my mind, but it wouldn't go away. I checked on my caches throughout Dice End, put my saved money in three big purses and carried them with me. On the docks I watched the merchant vessels come and go. Just one of my purses would get me passage to a distant city and keep me there for months, but I'd never been outside Egorian. Were the people of Korvosa and Riddleport more human than those in Egorian? Or were we all damned no matter where we lived?

  As the sleepy days passed, the sky pulled the sheets over its head, and the sun turned into a tiny silver coin. I stayed restless, but I stayed out of trouble. Every once in a while I'd spot one of the Goatherds on the street, but they turned away instead of shooting me the Tines. Whatever they heard about the Henderthane business, they didn't want any of it to rub off on them.

  Going to the Palace and demanding to talk to the emissary was a crazy idea, but it kept me up at night, and there was no one to talk me out of it. Once I went

  to stand outside the Palace, and the guards—brutes bigger than Hellknights—came for me before I was within a hundred feet of the gates. I did not wait to explain myself.

  The thought of approaching Elliendo to beg for Pavanna's life was even more forbidding, but then I realized what had to happen, when my one chance would come. Just knowing that gave me the courage to stay in Egorian a little longer. I spent the days walking the city, eating when I was hungry, going back to sleep when I was tired. The count sent no word to me. Nothing could change until Judgment Day.

  There was still frost on the streets by the time the spectators gathered. All the pretty dresses of the previous month had turned to cloaks and coats the color of loam and manure. Their diminished nobles left barren patches in the stands, giving it the aspect of a harvested cornfield. There was no such dearth among the groundlings, who never mind a cold day at the scaffold if it means a few hours away from their labor.

  The Sarini Fool appeared in harvest theme, with bone-white gloves and a long scythe. He joked about the bountiful harvest, for there were many hooded victims that day. I pushed to the edge of the scaffold and searched for a familiar figure. Then I spied those curves I had caressed for only an hour in what seemed like a distant memory.

  "Pavanna!" I called. The hooded head moved, and I knew I had found her. She called my name, but I didn't know what else to say. I had come with no plan except to find her. And then what? Save her? There was no way. Or was there?

  I searched the crowd for Elliendo. He was not mingling among the stands as was his custom, basking in the appreciation of the law-abiding citizens he protected from villains like me. I pushed through the groundlings and didn't hesitate to use my elbows when they were slow to make way.

  "Elliendo!" I shouted. "Where are you?"

  I couldn't see him anywhere, but I pressed through. A heavy hand fell on my shoulder, and when I whipped around to see a big guard standing over me, the butt of his companion's halberd caught me in the stomach. They dragged me out of the crowd as I tried to catch my breath. Just as I did so, Ivo Elliendo stood before me. He did not wear his uniform. Instead he was dressed from sole to crown in mourning black, and his steel gray hair showed more flecks of white than I remembered.

  "If you dare disrupt the solemnity of today's proceedings," he began.

  "Please," I interrupted him. "Let her go."

  He looked back at me, uncomprehending.

  "You don't want Pavanna," I said. "You asked me to leave Jeggare, and I will. I'll be your informer, your spy, whipping boy, whatever you say. Just let her go."

  Elliendo stared back with a look of cold astonishment.

  "I'm begging you," I said, surprised to find that I'd dropped to my knees voluntarily. I reached and almost touched his leg before I stopped myself.

  He looked down with the cool indifference of a man who watches a centipede crawl across his boot. He leaned over and hissed in my face, "How closely did you observe the condemned?"

  I had looked only for Pavanna, forgetting who else might have been condemned to death this Judgment Day. I recalled that many of the condemned were rather short and slender, the size of boys the age of Elliendo's son.

  "I—" was all I could spit out before he slapped my face hard.

  "Be silent and watch," he said. "I will not be the only one to suffer." With a gesture he ordered the guards to drag me back toward the scaffold's edge. There they held me as the Fool took his bow and the executioners began their work.

  "Radovan!" cried Pavanna. I called back to her, but I couldn't think of anything to say but her name.

  "Stay with me," she called. All my blood turned to cold water, and I couldn't have moved even if the guards had released my arms. "Are you there? Radovan?"

  "I'm here," I croaked, but my words were drowned by the roar of the crowd. Another noose dropped, another neck snapped, another cheer erupted from the crowd, and Pavanna was a step closer to death. "I'm here!" I shouted, and something hot slid down my face. "I won't leave you."

  We called out to each other that way for the time it took to hang and draw fourteen men and boys. Then it was her turn, and she called out one last time, "Don't leave me!"

  "I won't!" I called as the platform dropped out beneath her.

  Gruck was waiting for me outside the Plaza of Flowers. He had watched it all, and I saw the paths where tears had cleaned his dirty face. He didn't need to explain. I knew he must have scarpered as soon as he saw the Hellknights coming for him and Pavanna, and I didn't blame him.

  He murmured, "I'm sorry." I pulled him away from the jabbering onlookers, all dispersing to their daily work after the spectacle. He followed me all the way to the Bunyip Dock, where I made a deal with the first ship captain who was leaving port. "Passage for the boy," I told him. I watched his face as he considered my request. "Unmolested passage," I said, looking at his crew of rough men and half-breeds.

  If I'd offended him, the money smoothed it over. We clasped hands, and it was a bargain. Gruck was frightened, but I slipped him the purse from which I'd paid the captain, and he was clever enough to make it disappear before any of the sailors saw it. There was eno
ugh there for him to live for a couple of years, if he was frugal; enough to buy an apprenticeship, if he was smart. I told him as much.

  "I'm afraid," he said. "Can't you come with me?'

  And now I'm thinking about it. There's enough money to get us started in any kind of plain, decent life, if we keep our noses out of the gutter. There's no reason for either of us to stay in this city sworn to Hell, this city full of hypocrites who hate bastards more than they hate their own sins. Nothing here loves us, and nothing here needs us.

  The red carriage pulls up at the end of the dock, and I hear the slip driver whistle to me. The carriage door is closed, but the curtain moves and I see a pale finger holding it open for a peek.

  Behind me, the sailors are casting off, and the captain wants an answer. I throw him the pouch of money I promised for Gruck's passage.

  I weigh the other one in my hand.

  Appendix: The Infernal Compact

  It's common knowledge in Cheliax that, in their rise to power, the diabolical nobles of House Thrune signed a contract with Asmodeus himself, binding his minions to their service in exchange for the worship of all Cheliax (and, some whisper, even more insidious prices).

  Among other things, the Infernal Compact stipulates that the House of Thrune and its associated noble families shall receive Asmodeus's aid to the end of their bloodlines. While Orxines' insertion of his own fiendish taint into those family trees might be viewed as breaking the contract if conducted with Asmodeus's knowledge, if all known heirs to the ruling families were hellspawn, the result would be either a nation that served Hell rather than bargaining with it, or else an acknowledged end to the bloodlines in question—either of which might void the contract and allow Asmodeus to alter the deal as he sees fit. And while the Prince of Lies is rarely pleased with rogue agents and third parties meddling with his work, if Orxines succeeded, he could likely look forward to a princely reward—or a nation loyal to him alone.

  About the Author

  Dave Gross was born in Michigan and grew up in Virginia. After grinding out a Master’s degree in English, he worked as a technical writer and teacher before editing magazines for TSR, Wizards of the Coast, and Paizo Publishing. He’s been writing short stories and novels on the side since 1995. His other adventures of Varian Jeggare and Radovan for Pathfinder Tales include the novels Prince of Wolves and Master of Devils, as well as the short story "The Lost Pathfinder" and several upcoming stories and novellas. In addition, he’s also co-written the Pathfinder Tales novel Winter Witch with Elaine Cunningham.

  Dave lives in Alberta, Canada with the best things in life, his wife and their small menagerie.