by Adrian Selby
“How do you come by this? What business have you with my homeland that I do not know?”
“Many of our caravans, our merchants, explore supply up through Donag and Hope, turning Post merchants themselves on the make. They would not be doing their job if they did not listen to these merchants and the traders coming south with whale bone and oil. I would prefer, now that this Kailen is dead, and this mystery assassin of yours is taking care of the rest, you focus on your homeland, your birthright. I am in a position to help you significantly more with the political matters of Argir.”
“And when did you imagine you’d tell me all of this, husband?” I admit I was angry. I was perhaps still overcome by seeing Kailen again, the man who did so much to influence my father to keep the Twenty by his side, bleeding us dry. Now my husband, my dear Alon, talking politics when he had only previously talked of profit.
“You are adept at multiplying coins, Alon, but affairs of state, the court and nobles, they speak a quite different language.”
“All language, however decked in the blossoms of honour, right and wrong, all is reduced in the end to commerce. The latter begets the former. You need to put down your sword and let me help you. You told me the Post was likely to have been behind the coup that saw those other Citadels and Argir’s guilds remove your family, the line of Welvale. The Post wanted control of the North Passage and its trade; Argir was key to it. The agreement must have favoured them then but they and their allies in those guilds have been abusing it since. I know well the dissatisfaction with the Post and those it has placed in the administration there.”
“They must believe that Petir and I are dead, after so long.”
“There are rumours to the contrary.” He looked satisfied with himself, as men often do when they believe themselves to be in control.
“I asked you once and I’ll ask you again: when were you going to tell me that you were speaking of these things? Of my life and my people? Because you certainly did not speak of them over our cups, as much as you like to think I’m bored by you.”
“I imagine, Gala, you were preoccupied with planning your adventures in the Virates, or in the Red Hills and Ten Clan, sleeping rough with your mercenary friends. You chase a bunch of old men while your kingdom is being torn down from within and without. Incursions from Upper Lagrad are making things worse.”
“It was what was done to my family by this council, my being left for dead, these things have been unpunished. If I cannot have justice for myself, how can I seek it for my people?”
“Now there’s a fine sentiment, there’s the princess that would be queen.”
“What did you marry me for, Alon? Was this commerce? This vatch, this bosom?”
His teeth clenched and he stood up. “You know full well. We will need to discuss how we should proceed, because I can no longer support your pursuit of these mercenaries, not after today, and certainly not if this assassin is going to kill Laun’s crew, paid to protect you, without any even remotely effective retaliation. I can and will support your return to the throne of Argir and my guild are working to that end with allies in Argir, some within the council itself. Laun, we’re leaving, I don’t wish to be in this slum any longer than I have to be. Enough of these people have died over this foolishness, enough of ours as well.”
Laun kept her head in her cup a moment before looking at me. Alon knew I had little time for these displays of his. I knew him well enough that the answer wasn’t a confrontation. It would be more wine, a show of contrition, a fuck and then the application of reason when he was clear. I would have to tease out what he knew of Argir. I admit I was surprised by how I felt to hear that the Citadel and its people were struggling. Alon couldn’t have been more surprised than me to hear me say “my people”. It was all I could do to manage the swell of feeling that came with those words, but I wasn’t ready to admit that to him, I needed time with it. Strange how the one memory of my mother comes back when I think of home.
I gave my husband a smile, affected some humility and stood to leave with him.
Across from our booth, through the militia getting rowdy with their ales, sat the assassin. He was smiling, waiting to catch my eye. There was no mask or leathers, just a filthy apron, such as a blacksmith would wear, over a vest and a skirt. His eyes were almost fully amber, warm and distant as the sun, his colour an exotic mix of blue and red and only a fuzz of grey about his head.
“Laun!” I hissed. Just then a group of men came in, a couple of them with their arm around one that must also, like the lad serving, have lost someone he loved. I lost sight of the killer.
“What is it, Gala?”
“The assassin, he’s over there.”
She stood up, hand on her sword hilt.
“Where?”
“Blacksmith’s apron, blue and red colouring.”
She stepped forward, sword now free of its sheath, its poison dripping on the floor. The bar went quiet, the men that came in parting before her. I stood, looking through the gap she’d created, but he’d gone, of course. I looked about, ran to the shutters and looked out into the street, but there was still smoke, and a mist rising with the evening that obscured the world outside.
Chapter 6
Gant
Looked like miserable work. Raining, and the militia and some Reds were cussing as they were raking the mud. They were digging up blades and caltrops and such, and we guessed it must have been Kailen what had set it up for a siege. They had stretchers out and there was a fair mob what were mouthing off at the militia as they made the streets safe to walk down.
Rain was good, an excuse for our hoods and so our colour wouldn’t be too plain.
We found a woman and a dut in her arm, head down and trudging through the mud, no shawl on her but on her baby and it crying.
“Silver piece fer the whereabouts o’ The Riddle?” asked Shale.
She looked up, put her hand to her baby instinctively. Happens a lot with us if we surprises people, and she took the silver piece with some wonder in her eyes, pointing then to a building we couldn’t quite see for people, the edge of it in view, lit up and busy for the middle of the day.
There were arguments about. Merchants had moved in with their carts to sell to those who had suffered or lost from what had gone on. We hung about a bit, listening to what the poor were telling the guards of their sorrow and we bought some of what the merchants had brought to give out to those who looked desperate, and we learned more of what had just happened the previous day. Someone called a scapo had been arrested and some other scapo was giving out blankets and food about the Indra Quarter. Seemed scapo was their word for one what led a crew of gangers.
Achi was right that Kailen was in trouble, but trouble had arrived before we did, Agents and Reds and the militia here killing more than a hundred and losing at least half as many it seemed, which give us a clear understanding of which side Kailen must have been on, for if he was on the militia side, there would have been no losses to speak of, given their other advantages.
The rain got a bit heavier then so we made for The Riddle, splitting up and approaching from two ways to better cover the lie. I tagged on the back of a crew that must have worked on the river, heading to the inn for a soak. Inside were a good number of men, must have been up all the last night with whatever work had to be done. There was the usual big fug of smoke from some cheap hemp, probably cut plenty to fit the purse of a tenter or waterman.
We got service quick when they saw our skin and scabbards and they moved away from the serving table.
“We’re here about a man stayed a while a few weeks back,” said Shale to the barkeep.
He give nothing away.
“Enough fer a room fer a few days?” Shale flashed the edge of a gold coin at him.
The man was shrunken, wiry and tired, eyes furtive, no doubt with years of smuggling and barfights. Gold coins didn’t drop in his pocket as a rule.
“Em! Get these two boys some ale. You’d best c
ome through, gents, ’e said there might be a pair of you, what knows the Ditty of Wild Kitty?”
Shale cleared his throat and surprised us both with the rendition:
All sing for Wild Kitty, those heaving titties that ’braced us in the Hogger’s Red.
A brewer’s daughter she drank what Gant bought her and pissed over his sleeping head.
“Hogger’s Red’ll do,” said the barkeep. Must have been the words Kailen needed him to hear, but to hear it again reminded me of the state I was in when I woke with that girl gone the following day.
“I’m Robbo, follow me.” Up some sticky, smoke-blackened stairs we were led along to a door.
I looked at Shale as we got to the landing over the stair and he shook his head. Kailen would have been out to us by now.
“This was ’is room. Been aired, all of it washed down.”
“Aconite,” said Shale, “in the air.”
He was right and all. This was a fierce and pricey mix to be on the air now. The base would have masked it for Kailen not to know it, but even so, the room had been aired.
“He die in this room then?” I asked.
“He did, but it weren’t the aconite, was a poison he took ’imself to avoid bein’ caught.”
Shale shook his head and I was the same.
“I’ll leave you two then, Em’ll be up with what ’e left in the event ’e didn’t get to see you or Achi again.”
“Kailen kill himself? I’m not buyin’ it,” said Shale, after Robbo left.
I didn’t know what to say. I was angry at us arriving so late, and uneasy with how we were due to be killed but for him, sending his men and saving our lives though his was in a danger he couldn’t get out of. I wasn’t buying it either, Kailen killing himself, but the ’keep had said what he said and it was as plain as that. It was still as though I’d been punched, and we both needed a moment.
“I need to get out of these leathers, Shale, wound’s playin’ up an’ I want to go see where they put him.”
Shale went and stood at the open shutters, beyond which were the big storage sheds on the edge of the docks. Smoke from the buildings that burned down with the brothel was still on the air, whole place felt agitated, bruised.
I give him a moment as I could see he was struggling with the news of Kailen.
Em came in then, a tray with some fresh bread on it, pot of butter and a bottle of brandy. On her shoulder was a big satchel, which she let down to the floor surprisingly easy.
“His things.”
“What were his body like?” I asked.
“He was just lying there, like he was asleep. He had this with him too, didn’t want to drop it in the satchel.”
It was a necklace, a fine rope of silver and a mottled jade stone polished up. Etched in it was an acorn. Not something of Harudan, an oak. I was always curious about it.
“We’d like to see where you put him,” I said, “pay our respects.”
“You go, Gant, I needs a drink. Can we ’ave this room, lovely girl?”
“Welcome,” she said.
We ended up getting some potatoes and onions with a bit of gravy before I got Em to show me where Kailen was put in the world. She led me out past the city wall the slum was against and there were a lot of pits dug up on a hill around there. Where they put him was still raw earth waiting for grass, like a patch dug for a garden.
“What was he like, the time he were here?” I asked her.
“He was good to us, me dad and me. Seemed to care about the people in our quarter. The scapo we had that run it all, Ostler, he was a bit useless, but Kailen would just work with his captains an’ they would soon come to him for advice an’ though he kept himself hidden, he helped sort out their disputes an’ problems wi’ the militia and such. He had me runnin’ about, and a few others, as he was looking for you an’ those others he said he used to go to war with. He had the colour like you an’ all. Handsome.” She smiled awkwardly and left me on this shallow slope that give a look over the Crag to the falls beyond it, leading to highlands too dark to see as the light faded. Lampers were out lighting up the main avenues and the docks below.
Nobody about knew the man lying here and what he did. For all he took purse as a merc he changed the fortunes of kings across most of the Old Kingdoms and some part of the world over the Sar. I seen so much because of him, though it was a tough life few would look in on kindly. He was fair, and he give us reading and writing and gold beyond the reckoning of all but the highest, more than a generation of all those living hereabouts would ever see, whose dead he lay among. Me and Shale would do right by him, and in what followed I hope he would think we did.
I got back some hours later, as I’d had a couple of pipes where he was lying, and thought about what become of us, and about the crew we were. It was the only family I had bar Shale and my sister, and I wondered about what had happened to the others.
Shale was sitting on a chair in the corner by the shutters when I got back to the room, pipe in his teeth and a strong kannab mix on the air while he played with the satchel straps of Kailen’s pack on his lap.
“Not opened it then?” I said.
“Din’t want to open it without you were here,” he said.
“Perhaps we don’t touch it till we get to his estate and his woman Araliah.”
He took a long draw at that, nodded some moments later and let the smoke rise over his face. “Would be right she opened it, not us,” he said.
I didn’t sleep that night, my guts were hurting and I was cussing for finding myself being on the run again after all these winters, when I was too wasted and old for what it was going to mean, leaving false tracks and sentrying half the night wherever we went from now on.
“We need to see who’s behind this,” said Shale, supping a tea and pushing some cheese and a bit of cooked fish under my nose to wake me the next day.
“Lot o’ Post about. Don’t know if Gilgul an’ his boys are goin’ to come back here.”
“Bin down the lanes and over dockside, takin’ a look about while you were sleeping. There’s these scapos, gangers that control bits of the Crag, rackets, all the usual, an’ their crews bin gettin’ taken down a few nights back, some Reds an’ all, bein’ killed by someone who was after Kailen. Odd thing was that all these Agents got involved, Reds come in from the districts about as well. But if they were gettin’ killed, two Agents were butchered I heard, then who is after who?”
I pushed myself upright on the bed and drank down the tea what he’d brought me, cold and sweet as I preferred it.
“I’m still tryin’ to figure out why he’s killed himself, why he din’t figure a way out when he always could and did no matter what the odds. He lose his flint?” I said.
Shale was making a circle with his shoulder, trying to loosen it. We needed to put our compounds on and get set for the day.
“Flint in’t something I’d say Kailen could get or lack. He was different to us, no highs or lows you could see, no more than a night on the soak before you’d catch him draggin’ The Prince off with him fer the next purse.”
“Strikes me there’s a scapo that’s making a noise in this quarter a day after its scapo got put in jail and no other scapo comin’ in for a piece either. Has to have backin’,” I said.
“We should go see this scapo then, ’ave a word.”
“We’ll need a dayer brew. If he got any sense right now he’ll have his crew about him while he gets this quarter under control.”
“Leathers then, let’s get us set.”
Day brightened a bit as we headed west of the Indra, away from the river. Em told us that was Darin’s quarter, fair few guildhalls there, a few proper houses for those that were running the Crag. Lot of riverwives and alms houses, droop joints and the like were in his slums and it wasn’t long before we decided to take a cup of ale in a sorry-looking tavern. It went quiet as we went in there, a few looking at us wondering what we were about I’m sure, khaat chewers and a number with p
ipes. We drank slow.
Em had told us to look out for anyone what wore a tat of a tusk, guessing a boar’s tusk, and that would be one of his men.
Whores come onto us of course, once it got into evening proper. Mercs with our sort of colouring were usually good for a few silver if the service was right, and, as we expected, it was getting the locals uneasy. We made a bit of a show of it, to make things worse, squeezing coins into their cleavage and being easy with the slivitz, a liquor what was popular in this part of Hevendor and a bit sweet for me.
Then a fine-looking woman come over, black gown cut a bit more sensible than the whores with their tits done up too tight. Her collar was open and we saw the tusk on her neck.
“You got these girls all randy with your purses. You’ve not visited the Crag before?”
“No,” said Shale.
“Men of your colour, with the greatest respect to my girls, could be tasting the far sweeter fruit I have in the High Sevens.” She leaned in to whisper. “You might be upsetting the local boys a little less, who object to the show of wealth. You’re bringing trouble.” Then she froze, saw our eyes, felt the heat we were giving off. “You are trouble, you’re brewed.” Shale held her arm to keep her close. The two girls with us eased themselves up and went to the bar.
“You work for Scapo Darin. We’d like to meet him.”
“They causing you trouble, Aniy?”
She looked behind her to one of the boys at the serving table, off-duty militia, still in his chains.
“We’re fine, Amz.” She turned back to us. “You know I can’t just walk up to Darin, I don’t know where he is, that’s how it works.”
“Everyone’s a bit, what’s the word, Gant, on edge? On edge wi’ what seems to have happened in the Indra Quarter. All we wants Darin for is a few words on who was causin’ the trouble. Don’t worry, lovely, we couldn’t give a shit about Darin himself, it’s just what he knows. Then we’re gone.”