The man he found himself sitting next to leaned over and spoke from the corner of his mouth. “Clever boy you are, not looking scared, not looking too long. Sign of weakness in here is a death sentence. Best leave it to the magistrate to dish those out.” Beneath the grime and the crusted clothes the man had the light blue skin of an Amarand. “Don’t expect to find the likes of me in here, do you? Not quite what you think of us, is it?”
The man elbowed Tuvacs in the side. Tuvacs leaned back. The man on the other side of him pushed hard back.
“Watch it,” he growled.
“Be careful in here boy,” said the Amarand. His breath was rotten with bad teeth, overlaid with the sweet smell of poppy. “Get yourself killed.”
Tuvacs said nothing. He gave the Amarand a hard stare, then found a patch of wall to stare at, surreptitiously examining the men in the room from the corners of his eyes. There were seven of them. Most from the very lowest levels of society. One had the flat stare of a real killer, and wore better clothes than the rest. A mercenary, he thought, or gang muscle. No one bothered him. A small man in the corner looked out of place, a baker or something similar. Two other men menaced him with harsh whispers, slapping and poking at him.
“Look at them boy, itinerants, robbers, thieves, cutthroats. You’ve found yourself in a right fine place and no mistake.” The Amarand’s hand found its way onto his upper thigh. “You stay close by me, and I’ll see you right.”
Tuvacs looked at the hand, then at the man’s face. The Amarand withdrew his hand, and held both up. “No hard feelings, eh? Can’t blame a fellow for trying eh, pretty thing like you. Shouldn’t be in here. If you were mine, I’d treat you right.” He nodded as if this statement was a high truth.
“I am not anybody’s mister,” said Tuvacs.
“Oh ho ho? That right?” The Amarand sat back. “Immigrant. Street kid by the look of you. All street kids belong to someone at some point. It’s a hard world boy, or ain’t you heard?”
“Not me.”
“We’ll see.”
“Leave him alone, you fucking outland queer,” growled another. He looked directly ahead, not at the Amarand at all.
“Just being friendly.”
The other man glared at him. “Your kind of friendly is fucking disgusting. Lay off him or I’ll tear your cock out at the root.”
The Amarand laughed.
“I ain’t seeing nothing funny.”
In the corner the baker was whimpering out pathetic words. “Please, I don’t want no trouble, leave me be, I’ll call the guard.” The slaps and pinches became harder.
“Touch me and you’ll get the joke,” said the Amarand. “I got the eye.” He pulled down his lower lid, exposing his conjunctiva. A startling pink against the blue. “Mageborn, ain’t I?”
“Ain’t got no magic, blueskin. If you were mageborn no way you’d be in here,” the man harrumphed, but went back to staring at the wall.
Five minutes later, the baker was screaming. The men beating him grunted with the effort of their blows. The other prisoners studiously ignored the attack, moving as far away as they could. No one came. Eventually, the baker stopped crying out. His tormentors kicked a few times at his limp body then lost interest. They sat down, panting.
Tuvacs made himself stay awake.
Time was difficult to measure. The lights of the torches never changed. He could have been there five hours or five minutes when the door slit slammed back and a watchman looked through.
“You!” he said. “Oi! You Mohaci!” He meant Tuvacs.
“What?”
“Your lucky day.”
The door opened. Three watchmen stood outside, clubs and shortswords of dull steel in their hands. “Come on then,” said the speaker. “Get out now or take your chances with the magistrate.”
Tuvacs got up.
“What happened to him?” said the guard, jutting his chin at the baker.
“He slipped,” said one of the men who had beaten him. He and his partner laughed.
The watchman’s face clouded and he turned to one of his colleagues. “Get him out of here and up to the physic.” He pointed his shortsword at the baker’s assailants. “I’ll be reporting this to the magistrate. You have anything to do with it?” he said to Tuvacs.
“No,” he said.
“Right answer. Out you come.”
Tuvacs was marched up two flights of stairs, into a cleaner part of the building. A door was pushed open, and he was shoved into a room.
“Here he is,” said the watchman. Thin windows showed glimmer-lit streets. The dead of night.
A man in a long blue coat stood at the other side of a table. His coat had no sleeves, and was trimmed with white fur on the front and around the arm holes. A rich man’s coat. “A fine looking lad. Well fed. Good, good.” He smiled and spoke directly to Tuvacs, somewhat slowly, as if Tuvacs were an idiot.
“Do you speak Karsarin?”
“Yes,” said Tuvacs. “I’d be a fool if I couldn’t. We are in Karsa City, are we not?”
The man laughed, three distinct noises like soft barks. A neatly trimmed beard framed unbelievably white teeth. His face remained wide-eyed, somewhat fixed, a mask he hid his true self behind.
“And Mohaci? You are a native of that land?” he said. “You speak the tongue?”
“Yes,” said Tuvacs. “Mohacin, good Low Maceriyan, a little High, a bit of Makar, some Khushashin, twenty words of Otzerk, and the secret tongue of the Gravo gleaning gangs.”
“Excellent!” the man slapped gloved hands together. “How old are you?”
“As old as I need to be to get out of this place.”
“A little insolent too. Very good. I’ll need a bit of that. Now,” he said, harder, “how old?”
“Sixteen,” said Tuvacs. He paused. “I think.”
“Why are you in here?”
“I was unlucky.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I robbed an engineer in the Off Parade, and got caught.”
“No murder, rape, larger thefts?”
“I do what I need to survive, that is all. I am not a criminal.”
“Courts say otherwise, boy,” said the watchman.
“Good, good. Very well, I’ll take him. Marvellous.” He looked Tuvacs up and down with a gleam in his eye. “I’d quite given up hope. A lot of the Mohaci in Karsa are a little reluctant to go back, got too much invested here, but you, well, I suppose you don’t have much choice, eh?”
“I don’t understand,” said Tuvacs.
The guard took a purse from the man, counted out fifteen silver thalers.
“He’s bought out your conviction, boy. You’re his now.”
“What?”
The guard ignored him. He produced a document, a wooden pen, a pounce shaker and ink from a drawer. “You swear to guarantee his good behaviour, provide food, lodging and apprenticeship for seven years?” he said to the man.
“That I do, that I do,” said the man. He signed with a flourish.
“You’re off out to the Black Sands then?”
“A lot of money to be made out there,” said the man.
“Glimmer trader?” said the guard. He shook pounce over the ink after inspecting it, and blew it off.
“No, goodman. Glimmer prospecting provides only a chance of wealth. Servicing the prospectors, on the other hand, is a guaranteed source of income.”
“You need him to trade for supplies then?” said the guard. The man seemed not at all bothered by the guard’s curiosity.
“Buy it out there? Are you mad? Shoddy foreign rubbish. I’m taking Karsan-made with me. Karsan’s got a fine reputation. There’s quite the premium.”
“But the cost of transportation...”
“My my,” said the man, taking a keener look at the guard. It was not an entirely friendly scrutiny. “Quite the drawing room merchant, you are.”
The guard shrugged. “I don’t want to be minding the likes of this scum for
the rest of my life,” he said defensively. “Man’s got to have ambition.”
“Indeed he has, indeed he has. Well. There is no great cost. We shall hire two box cars, one for my merchandise and men, the other for more merchandise, my lead dog and her mates.”
“Four week’s travel. A long time on a train.”
“If we’re lucky. These things do stop, you know. We’ll be fine.”
“I always thought of going out there myself.”
“Look at this, boy,” said the man.
Tuvacs, who had remained silent throughout this exchange, looked back. “He was doubtless desperate to come all the way across the whole of Ruthnia to this city. You have to ask yourself, if the Black Sands are such an easy place to make money, why did he not go there? The eastern deserts are much closer to Mohacs-Gravo than to Karsa.” He mangled the name of Tuvacs’ home in that way all Karsans did. “I’d consider that carefully before you enact your career change.” He flicked a copper bit at the man. “With gratitude for your help.”
The guard caught the coin and secreted it as quick as a conjurer. With the coin came a hint, and it was taken as deftly. “Right then. Thank you, sir. You,” he said to Tuvacs, “are free to go. Stay out of trouble. You break this contract, you break the law and then you’ll hang for sure.”
Tuvacs stared at him.
“Charming. I’ll be pissing off now. Way out’s that way.” He pointed at a door on the far side of the room.
When the guard had gone, the would-be merchant drew in a happy breath and rose up a little on his toes. “Here we are, here we are!” He stuck out his hand. “I am Mather Boskovin.”
Tuvacs hesitated. Just like that, he’d gone from free man to serf. His heart skipped a beat. What about his sister?
“What is happening here?” he said. “One man cannot buy another.”
“Indeed no, because that is slavery, and bondage of that kind is quite illegal. I have bought your crime, you just happen to come with it.” Boskovin’s hand remained extended.
The Amarand’s words returned to him.
“I’m fucked, aren’t I?” said Tuvacs. Boskovin’s smile tightened a little at the profanity.
“Now now, no need for such language. I suppose you are, from a certain viewpoint. But I can provide you with food, shelter, training, and adventure. What lad would turn that down?”
“I have a sister. I can’t leave her behind.”
A small ‘v’ developed between Boskovin’s eyebrows. He could have been putting it on, but he looked concerned. “Regrettable. Nothing to be done for it. She is better off with you alive and distant than you swinging from a rope, and believe me boy, you would have been swinging come the noon. You have time to send her a letter. Is she safe for the moment?”
“More or less,” Tuvacs said.
“I can get her employment.”
“She’s no whore. She’s pure. She’s too young. I won’t let it happen.”
“My boy, there is no such things as pure or too young. There are beasts that walk on two legs everywhere, and I refer not to the dracons. No, nothing like that. Millwork. A cousin has a small mill. Dice maker, would you credit it. Best I can do.”
“No deal,” said Tuvacs.
“Deal? Deal?” scoffed Boskovin. “There is no deal, I am doing you an immense favour! I am well within my rights to do nothing at all. Do you want me to do nothing at all? That way is a sure way to the brothel for your sister.”
Tuvacs shook his head.
“Good lad. Now shake my hand.”
“Tuvacs,” said Tuvacs. “That is my name.” He shook Boskovin’s hand.
“Tuvacs,” Boskovin said his name like he had tasted a delicious sweet. “Do you have a given name?”
“Alovo. No one calls me that.”
“Tuvacs it is then, my lad. Look at it as an apprenticeship. The terms are the same, although I admit the penalties are harder. Your time with me will soon be done and you will be a better man for it.”
“Seven years? And then I am free?”
“And then you are free, and accredited, and what’s more paid, my boy.”
Tuvacs’ expression said he did not believe this.
“It is true, I promise. The money is not quite so good as if you were a... aha... crime free apprentice, half, in fact. But you will leave my service one hundred thalers richer.”
A hundred thalers for seven years of his life. A pathetic sum.
“If you can read,” went on Boskovin, “you are free to read the documents yourself. Perhaps on the train? It is a long way. Now come along, it has taken me an age to find an agreeable Mohacin speaker. We leave this morning, and I am quite late already.”
CHAPTER TEN
The Hospitality of the Third Dragoons
DAWN WAS AN hour gone and so was the sun. Garten and Trassan arrived at the gates to the barracks of the Third Dragoons. The city streets were already busy. Light drizzle fell, pulling acrid pollutants from the sky.
The barracks were new. High walls of heavily rusticated stone blocks in the Maceriyan revival style enclosed the parade yard. The gates in the tall gatehouse were vulgar, cast-iron confections of twisting heraldic beasts. Prince Alfra’s coat of arms was mounted in the middle of the gates, and repeated on the top of the building in stone: two dracons rampant, holding a shield emblazoned with a single scallop shell. The gates were chiefly ceremonial, a display of power rather than a defence. But they still needed opening, and Trassan and Garten were kept waiting for five minutes after knocking until they were.
A cheery guard in the burgundy jacket of the Third, heavy with gold frogging and buttons, checked their papers. He smiled, and opened a smaller gate to the side of the main. The brothers were led across a courtyard far bigger than the circuit of the walls might suggest. The outer edge was cobbled, the middle sanded for cavalry drill. Kennelled dogs bayed for their breakfast. The sharp, reptilian smell of dracons emanated from stables in the arched cloisters to the north and south sides of the square; their heavy doors were all shut. The dragon-kin slept late.
“Captain Kressind already has a visitor,” said the dragoon, a cheery sort given to smiling.
“Aarin,” said Garten.
“A death talker,” said the guard.
“A brother of ours,” explained Garten.
“They come in all types in your family, don’t they, goodfellows?”
“That they do,” said Trassan.
The guard walked them to an ironbound door where another dragoon stood at attention. He stared ahead, ignoring them.
The gate guard reached for the ring of the latch. “Captain Kressind’s a popular man with most here, goodfellows, we’ll be sorry to see him go. He and the colonel don’t see eye to eye, that’s for sure, but we men are fond of him.” The guard swung the door wide. It opened onto a flight of stone steps leading under the building. “Careful now, they are steep. Captain Kressind is in the cell at the end.
Trassan and Garten went down. Trassan ducked the low arch of the staircase to save his hat. Garten still missed his.
The gaol was clean and cool, a relief to Garten’s throbbing head. The odour was of straw and cold stone. It was brighter than they expected, with slanted lightwells leading up to barred windows either side of the staircase, and oil lanterns hissing every five feet on the walls. The cells were cages with gridded bars for walls and a door, but each had its own window high in the wall.
Rel stood with his hands resting on a crossbar. His wrists were manacled. He wore his riding boots, regimental grey trousers and a white shirt. He was dirty, but unharmed. Aarin was talking quietly with him. Rel caught sight of his other two brothers and his face lit up.
“Brothers.” Aarin nodded in greeting.
“You came to see me off then?” Rel said.
“We’re your brothers, aren’t we?” said Garten. “And please, not so loud.”
“Out with Trassan?” said Aarin.
Garten nodded with a wince. Rel smiled.
“Lucky. I’d kill for a decent beer. The stuff they give us down here is sour and turns your stomach.”
“You have found yourself a fine palace,” said Trassan.
“Believe me, this is a lot nicer than the other cells I’ve been in,” said Rel.
Garten shook his head. “Never say that in front of mother.”
“Where’s Guis?”
“Sulking,” said Trassan.
“Typical.”
“Still, we’re all here, aren’t we?” said Garten.
“So, what is it this time?” said Trassan. “I heard you tumbled some old money aristo’s wife.”
“Well, yeah, yeah I did,” said Rel. “But that’s no reason for this!” He shook at the bars. They did not budge. “Bastard couldn’t even let me wait fifteen days for Katriona. I can’t believe this. I’ve done nothing to Colonel Alanrys. He’s always had it in for me. He’s been waiting for me to screw up, and I did.”
Aarin raised his eyebrows. “With your predilections, little brother, he was never going to have to wait forever.”
“One rich man’s wife!” protested Rel.
“The wrong rich man’s wife,” countered Aarin.
“I don’t even get to cross the Neck when the Great Tide is in. Do I get to see the sun setting as I bid farewell to my homeland? Whitecaps crowning the turbulent channel, picking out the whirlpools Gorgoantha and Sryman either side? Do I bollocks. Just miles and miles of sucking mud. He waited on purpose for after a Great Tide. He’d be here crowing now if it were the done thing.”
“I hear the Maceriyan Channel stinks when the tide is out,” teased Trassan.
“That was terribly portentous and dramatic,” said Garten. “You should be the playwright, Rel.”
Rel looked down at his feet glumly. “And the least that sod could have done is turn up. I might never see any of you again.”
“Don’t be like that,” said Garten. “You’ll be home soon. You’ll see. One big adventure and you can bore us all with it until we’re all fat and old, and then start on our grandchildren.”
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