by Mark Smylie
Stjepan watched them go until he couldn’t see them anymore, and he surveyed the horizon with his sharp gaze for several long moments. He listened to the wind, to the faint jangle of unseen bells, to whispers and wails and the distant sound of brazen horns and howling wolves coming closer and closer. He sniffed the air, smelt dry earth and old stone, grass and rotting wood, acrid smoke and burning flesh, bile and blood, sun-burnt leather and rusted iron, horse sweat and horse shit and polished steel and the strong, clean scent of someone he loved and trusted.
His sharp, hard gaze returned to stare at the rising heat and the flames flickering up before him.
“Fuck it. You know the way,” he said finally.
And then he turned and walked away from the burning pyre.
Gelber Woat stood behind the long wooden bar at Woat’s Roadside Inn and slid a flagon under the valve tapping one of the long line of casks arrayed on the back mantle. The old man poured a heavy amber ale into the flagon, turned and set it down on the bar before looking up to eye his customer.
“And you’re the only survivor,” he said with a raised eyebrow.
The customer on the other side of the bar lifted the flagon in a toast to himself and slowly drained it dry. He licked his lips and wiped them clean with the back of his sleeve. He wore a fine, dark brown doublet with a touch of red in it, and had bought new breeches and leather boots as well along the way, but despite the expensive quality of his new clothes there was nonetheless a familiar, ragged quality to his appearance. His damp, unkempt hair, the rough stubble on his chin and mouth, and the dirt under his fingernails gave him away. “Admit it, you’re glad to see me,” Godewyn said with a grin, setting the empty flagon back onto the bar.
Behind him at a nearby table sat the beginnings of his new crew: a young Danian man, Moris Quinn, not nearly as scarred nor as handsome as his older and now deceased brother Pallas, and a Mael lad, a deserter from the ranks of the Watchtowers named Dyver Bragoss. They surveyed the nearly empty great hall of the Inn with quick eyes that took in every detail, pretending a jaded look as they reveled in their new adventure. Sunshine trickled in through the shuttered windows and the holes in the patched walls. A few passed-out patrons were scattered about, and a few tired dancers either wandered aimlessly or clustered at their own table on the far side of the room.
Gelber Woat grinned slyly as he refilled the flagon, and indicated a bag on the bar in front of Godewyn, overflowing with barrow treasures. “Well. I’m glad to see all that, at least,” he said. He set the ale-filled flagon back on the bar.
“Look, I’ll cut you a good deal on these pieces, it’s the least I can do,” said Godewyn. “I was sorry about your crew, but we never had a chance to weigh in on it. I mean, they never even got to us. Prince Fionne’s men, was it?”
“Aye, and now their corpses help feed the flowers,” said the Woat Elder quietly, his hands idly sorting through gold jewelry and small figurines and gem-encrusted cups. “Such is the way it’s always been, that we are merely hunting sport for land lords and princes. Quick enough to come in and drink our ale and fuck our women when the mood strikes them, and just as quick to cut our throats because we got the wrong blood.”
“Well, perhaps I can go a ways toward changing that,” Godewyn said with a laugh. “Oh, I have such plans, you’ll see! I’m a changed man, I am, I seen things no man should ever see, looked upon the body of Azharad in the dark beneath the earth, dueled a champion of the Tourneys over a sword with a curse on it, escaped corpse-eaters, the unquiet dead, and an arrow in the back to walk out of the Bale Mole, the last man standing! You don’t go through all that and not be a changed man!” He raised the flagon in the air. “To Stjepan Black-Heart!” He took a huge gulp of ale and laughed. “To think it’s all thanks to that dumb heathen bastard.”
Gelber Woat’s eyes narrowed a bit. “Shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” he said.
Godewyn looked up, catching something in his tone. “Well, I don’t know he’s dead,” he said defensively. He shrugged. “Sure, I left him tied up in a dead wizard’s barrow with some lunatic magician and an army of walking corpses running around in it, but he could be alive.” He turned and indicated the front door to the Inn with a broad, regal sweep of his arm. “He could walk through that door at any moment.”
“Yeah, right,” said Gelber Woat.
They started to laugh together, harder and harder, as Godewyn threw back his drink.
But the laughter didn’t quite reach Gelber Woat’s eyes.
On the morning of the 18th day of Ascensium, the old man using the name Sequintus Eridaine rose in his small rented chambers on Murky Street in the eastern end of the Public Quarter, practically in the shadows of the great hill upon which the High King’s Hall was raised. He used the chamber pot and unceremoniously dumped it out the window onto the street below, to a shout and curse from an unfortunate passer-by. The building he had found was too old to have the more modern attempts at plumbing installed within it that could be found in some parts of the city, and not old enough to have the pipes and waterworks common to cities built during the Great Palace period of Düréan expansion. But beggars can’t be choosers, he thought to himself. And, he supposed, he should probably count himself lucky to be alive and able to rent rooms at all. Many of those who had been privy to the darker parts of Gilgwyr’s affairs had met with much more permanent ends than the state of limbo in which he found himself.
After eating a light breakfast of fruits and stale, days-old pastries, he had dressed and prepared himself for his interview. He checked briefly on the condition of the various brewings and concoctions ongoing in his small workshop and allowed himself to leave only when he was satisfied that all was proceeding according to direction.
Given his age, Sequintus could at best manage a slow mosey through the city. The faces he passed on the street bore about them the downtrodden look shared by the poor and the desperate everywhere, and they took on an even more subdued and dour undertone as he slowly turned into the Plaza of Ergist. The six handmaidens of the notorious witch Annwyn Orwain had been burned at the stake only several days before in the center of the square. Justice had been swift; the Grand Duke, his personal household knights, and a company of Templar knights and priests of the Inquisition had returned to Therapoli from Araswell with the women in custody on the 4th of Ascensium, and in under two weeks they had been tortured, broken, tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and executed. Their burnt cadavers, still lashed to blackened stakes, were to be left on display for a month by edict of the Inquisition as a warning and a reminder to the public at large of the ever-present danger of the enemies of the Divine King. The women had confessed to aiding and abetting the witch in her necromantic rituals, placing curses upon the High King and his Court, casting spells to divine the future, and engaging in sordid sexual practices with Lady Annwyn and her brother Arduin in their worship of the Devil. They had confessed that the beauty for which the Lady Annwyn had been famous had been an illusion, fabricated by the foulest black magic, and that the Lady was in reality hideous and deformed.
Thankfully for all concerned, the witch’s influence had not extended beyond her handmaidens and her unfortunate and murderous brother, and the Inquisition had proclaimed the Baron of Araswell and the rest of his family and household above reproach, victims of the terrible monster that had hidden itself in their midst. But Baron Leonas and his remaining sons and knights remained in self-imposed exile at their country estates and had not yet returned to the Court; their house in the High Quarter of Therapoli remained a burnt shell. The arrest warrant for Lord Arduin for murder remained standing, as did that for Lady Annwyn Orwain for witchcraft, though as both were thought to have absconded into the Manon Mole where they were expected to spend the rest of their days in hiding, it was not considered likely that anyone would claim the rewards for their capture and confinement anytime in the immediate future, until perhaps the Grand Duke’s highly anticipated campaign against the Rebel Earl that com
ing summer.
And so the High King’s Court had initially considered the matter closed and sufficiently resolved.
On the streets of the city, however, a great deal of anger still festered, and tensions between the city’s ruling classes and its teeming urban masses had slowly risen in the weeks since the death of Rodrick Urgoar and what had now come to be called—in the popular ballads that circulated the city’s taverns—Lord Arduin’s Midnight Ride. Almost five thousand people had turned out to watch the burnings of Lady Annwyn’s confederates, and while many of them were the Divine King’s faithful there to cheer the Inquisition on, a sizeable portion of the assembled crowds had watched in silent disapproval. The enthusiasm of some of the faithful had even dampened a bit when the women were brought out and unveiled, as two of them appeared to have been rendered insensible by the tortures and beatings inflicted upon them; three of the others had wept and cried in a most piteous manner, which seemed to confuse some in the crowd even as it excited others to louder cheers; and one went to her death with a serene calm that many remarked on as being uncanny. A witch hadn’t actually been publicly burned in the city for over a hundred years, so the reality of it might have caught some of the assembled masses by surprise, despite their general familiarity with public executions and torture.
As he passed through the plaza that morning, Sequintus noticed that someone had left fresh flowers by the pyres of each woman overnight, in clear violation of the law and as yet unnoticed and untouched by the City Watch. Unrest had swept the Middle Kingdoms repeatedly in the last few years, even after the Inquisition had been brought to heel back in 1462 and its previous spate of witch burnings ended. The High King’s imposition of special taxes in 1464, the poor harvest of 1467 leading to a three-fold rise in the price of bread, an increase in the poll tax in 1469; all had led to riots, unrest, and minor rebellions in one corner of the Kingdoms or another. And in the few days since the executions, the city had seemed be walking a razor’s edge. In his slow walks across the city Sequintus had himself witnessed several men beating the priest Garin Urgoar, a distant cousin to the deceased Rodrick, almost to death; seen an irate mob pelting a squadron of Templar knights with eggs and stones, until the knights responded by killing several of their attackers; and stumbled across the City Watch investigating the murder of Colin Rowain, a wealthy merchant well-known for his piety and support of the Urgoar family, who was found in an alley with the words “Arduin’s Revenge” scrawled on the wall nearby, leaving the constables bewildered and hard-pressed.
Once he was within the throngs on the Grand Promenade his pace slowed even more, and he found he was bumped, jostled, and cursed virtually the whole way down to the Forum. It seemed to him that the tension on the streets was approaching the level right before the bread riots of ’67. And it was still just spring.
It’s going to be a long, hot summer, he thought.
Once inside the Forum the general mood improved a bit, but even there it was obvious that there were fewer buyers about than would have been considered normal for a sunny Septtum morning. He slowly worked his way to one of the quiet corner meeting houses that had sprung up throughout the city in recent years offering addictive spiced drinks from Sabuta. And at the rear of the meetinghouse, past Danian and Amoran toughs who clearly did not care for the way he looked (or perhaps smelled), he found his appointment. Sequintus gave a short half-bow and then slowly eased himself into the seat across from Guizo the Fat as sparrows fluttered from perch to perch above them on the high walls.
“Ah, Master Sequintus!” Guizo breathed as he peeled an orange. A slight sheen of sweat shone on the black skin of his forehead. “I trust that the morning has treated you well.”
“Ah. I think as well as can be expected in this city, my Prince,” said Sequintus. “I fear that tempers are generally short.”
“And I would agree,” said Guizo. “Murders and strange deaths, witch burnings, brothel closings, the Grand Duke’s preparations for war, the War Star and the Eye of Ishraha in the night sky, and now even rumors that an envoy of the Emperor is on his way to speak to the High King. It’s enough to put everyone off their breakfast.” He popped a slice of the orange into his mouth. “And you, Master Sequintus, how is your appetite these days?”
“Ah. Yes, well, I admit that I stand somewhat in suspense. I await your word, my Prince,” said the old man. “I gather that I am the last of the household of the Sleight of Hand that has not been taken on by a new employer. Well, except those that are dead, of course. I do think my knowledge of aphrodisiacs alone would make me of use to any brothel house in the city. Have I been black-listed by the Guild?”
Guizo studied him in silence for a long moment, long enough that Sequintus was surprised to find he was growing uncomfortable. The old man shifted in his seat. “You were not simply an employee of the Sleight of Hand,” Guizo said to him finally. “You were, as far as any of us can tell, Gilgwyr’s confidante and closest aide. If the mark of Ligrid had been found upon you, you would have met the same fate as the others at the Sleight of Hand who were revealed to be amongst the coven. Indeed, if there had been the slightest suggestion from anyone else at the brothel that you had been a Ligridist, your fate would have been sealed.” Guizo looked back down to continue with his orange. “But you have only received the kindest of words. What was it, that most of the women at the Sleight of Hand called you? Little Grandfather.”
“Ah,” said Sequintus. “I do understand. Completely. How could a man serve one of the Nameless as closely as I have served Gilgwyr and yet not know that he is one of the Nameless? I have wracked my own thoughts and memories, faulty as they may be, and cannot offer an explanation, other than to say that I have reached an age where I think of little more than the task in front of me. If Gilgwyr said make this potion, I made the potion. If he said send this message, I sent the message, not thinking of what it might mean or to whom it was going. I think that is why he trusted me so much. While I was not privy to all of his doings and dealings, I do indeed have a considerable amount of knowledge about Gilgwyr’s operations and plans, at least where he had deigned to include me. All that I know is at your disposal while my faculties remain.”
Guizo popped another slice of orange into his mouth. “A most generous offer,” he said. “We already know about most of his blackmail, which seems to have been pretty pedestrian stuff and well within the rules of the Guild. And we have learned a great deal about the coven of Ligrid to which he belonged, and the ways that they had sought to corrupt their targets at the Court and in the citizenry, which is without question Forbidden by Guild, Court, and Temple.” He tilted his head. “But there are still a few things that we are uncertain of. For example, why did he choose now to leave the city and go with Black-Heart?”
“Ah. Well, that was Gladringer, of course. They had a map, you know,” said Sequintus. “I believe he had wanted to come to you about that, but then the Guild had black-listed Black-Heart. Too much at stake on that one not to go himself.” He allowed himself a look of sadness. “But the Readings have come black and dim; Gilgwyr will not be returning, neither with the lost sword nor without it.”
If Guizo was surprised to learn of Gladringer, he did not show it. “A fine enough reason to leave the city, I suppose,” he said with a shrug. “Here’s another. One of the dancers at the Sleight of Hand told us that Gilgwyr had hinted at something interesting coming up. He had suggested that she would be richly rewarded, as much as she could earn in a year on her back.”
Ah, the fine Palatian, Sequintus thought. He paused, weighing the options. “Ah. Yes. That. Tell me, my Prince, what do you know about the history of the Festival of Herrata?” asked Sequintus.
Guizo raised an eyebrow, his face a mask.
Well, the door has been opened, the trap laid, the old man using the name Sequintus Eridaine thought as he slowly walked out of the Forum. He did not know if the rest of the coven would approve of the risk he had just taken, as the Black College preached and ta
ught patience above all else, and moved with such care as to almost not move at all. But to lose so many of his best and brightest pupils in such a short span had been such a heavy blow—first Harvald, then if the Readings were correct Leigh and Gilgwyr at the same time, so close to victory—and so perhaps he was feeling a tad desperate, a tad dangerous. So close, so close. Closer than anyone has come in centuries. And we got that close by rolling the dice, not by playing it safe. Screw the College.
He stood on the steps of the Forum, looking out at the sea of people sweeping to and fro in front of him. We will get our chance again soon, and next time we will not fail. Next time we will bring the Middle Kingdoms to wrack and ruin, he thought. A great day is coming.
And then he wandered off to get some meat pie.
It was rare, Guizo mused, to meet genuine, true evil. He had thought he had seen enough of it in Gilgwyr when he finally knew him for a Whisperer, a worshipper of Amaymon, the Prince of Intrigue and Secret Power who dealt in secrets and corruption. To discover that he was also a worshipper of Ligrid was hardly a surprise. But as he had listened to Sequintus calmly and quietly lay out Gilgwyr’s involvement in the perverse plans of a cabal within the Inquisition, Guizo feared he had underestimated both the depths to which Gilgwyr would sink and also the nature of the man who sat before him.
He had strongly suspected that Sequintus was one of the Nameless, and his suspicions had grown stronger the closer he’d looked, for he could find no trace of the man or his name before he had come to the Sleight of Hand as an enchanter back when Gilgwyr had opened the brothel. And what he’d told Sequintus had been true; none from the brothel had a bad word to say about the old man, none save Ariadesma, who had given him his first warning. He enjoys himself too much, and too secretly. It is in his eyes, and in his fingers, she had said. And now he feared he had suddenly seen something much worse than even the Nameless in Sequintus: a man who through age or experience or disposition had passed beyond caring about what was right and wrong into a jadedness so thorough that nothing in the human imagination remained that could stir in him repulsion or regret. Is there any atrocity dark enough and perverse enough to move that man to say: this cannot stand, this cannot be allowed? Guizo wondered. He suspected the answer was very much a no.