Snakewood

by Adrian Selby

  Snakewood.

  Chapter 10

  Galathia

  Another letter from Galathia to her brother.

  Goran

  The assassin sat on the floor at my feet, his head on my thigh, a tear tracing a cold line down to the back of my knee. Out of his leathers he was indescribably beautiful, broken and mended many times over, scars like ridges of sand, lumps like grapefruit seeds left from the poisons he’d been subjected to. Small patches of skin were now cork, a shining purple unlike any bark I’d seen knitted to a soldier, the rest of him a dawn blue bruised with red over stony arms and back and chest.

  I could not bear how much I needed him when I saw him, he crying to see me, his first words that he was betrayed and he had come back to find me, to keep the purse fifteen winters later.

  They called him Sand. He had forgotten everything, Petir, and everyone but us. He has been tortured and he still seems maddened by it, a slave too at some point. At times he whispers to himself and forgets or does not realise he is doing it, but he is here with me and he’s explained everything, he told me what happened at Snakewood.

  Last I wrote to you was from the Crag, where we found Kailen dead. We left there to go south to an agreed rendezvous with Agent Gilgul and his men, who had reported having custody of Gant and Shale. They were not there, but had been waiting for us at our estate as they believed they’d been instructed to do. Laun was furious, as was Alon, at least until they saw the scroll presented by the men posing as Agents, and realised the quality of the subterfuge.

  When a ganger, Lokio (a loathsome little man who protects my husband’s interests on the docks), notified us of Gant and Shale’s visit, Laun and Gilgul marshalled all the Reds they could. It had been agreed Lokio would tell them Alon was at the vineyard. There Laun and Gilgul would direct an ambush of them.

  When Lokio informed us that they hadn’t turned up to meet him as agreed, and one of his own men was missing, we rode for the vineyard with a number of Ithil Bay’s militia and the High Reeve, presuming that they’d extracted from his man word that Alon would be at the old vineyard.

  Upon our arrival, Laun was stood with the man who had killed many of her crew, both in Iltrick and then the Crag. They stood with arrows pointed at his head but the man made no move to escape.

  “He calls himself Kigan,” she said. “He says he’s been looking for you for a very long time, that you will recognise him despite the changes the years have wrought. He says he did not betray you, but that he himself had been betrayed.”

  He began crying then, trembling as I approached them, and he held out his arms to me. It was a shock to see him, now without his mask, but it was him. I was going to draw my sword, the memory of his leaving us, the days waiting and looking for him and that desperate anger coming back strongly, but her words stalled me, his tears stalled me, his breathing catching, overcome with emotion. I ran to hold him and he squeezed me to him, muffled words as I pressed against the belts and felt his face against my neck. “I had lost hope,” he said.

  We stood together drenched in a warm fog of rain, barely an hour later. We were looking at the aftermath of a massacre. What could be salvaged of the Agents’ fieldbelts and weapons was being packed onto a wagon. The High Reeve of the Post for Issana, Jua and Harudan shivered with rage at the bodies piled before him, a cloth at his nose to fend off the stink of the burned skin. Our retinue of forty men filled the vineyard that was blackened and shining like wet coal.

  Laun and her crew were digging the graves of their brothers. They would permit nobody else do it. I felt no less anger than either the High Reeve or Laun at this turn of events but could not betray it.

  “Reeve Fisker of Issana shall become Reeve Fisker of Northspur, in whose icy arms he will learn a lesson about the conditioning of soldiers,” said the High Reeve, a look of disgust on his face. “Two mercenaries did for ten of his Agents of the Post and all our brothers here. Thirty Reds you trained, Captain. Do you think you should join him? And Laun over there, a Marschal with a handful of the crew she ought to have.”

  Laun looked up at that, having heard him, and glared at Kigan and I before returning to her work with a mounting fury.

  The captain stood to attention in armour blackened with fire, struggling to contain the shakes as he paid the colour, probably unable to do more than nod to his master.

  The High Reeve had the look of a man once fat, now hollowed out by age so that the spare flesh gathered at his middle like a soft coiled snake beneath his crimson waistcoat and embroidered dress.

  “With respect, High Reeve Albin,” said Kigan, stepping forward to better address him, “ten or so Agents and the rest Reds was a reasonable number for two mercenaries of this quality if they had softened somewhat. However, they are still sharp, clearly close to the soldiers I knew of old. You underestimated them.”

  “With respect, Kigan, thirty men and women of the Post should be enough for two no matter who they are or were.”

  Kigan gestured to the pile of blackened bodies as a reply, many contorted, limbs spasmic with the poisons they’d been subjected to.

  The truth was that I recalled nothing directly of Gant or Shale, though Kigan told me that legend considered both very fine swordsmen.

  “We will find them,” I said.

  “You may indeed find them, my dear, but not with the Post’s help,” said the High Reeve.

  “I have a right to expect more for my gold!” said Alon. “The purse is yet to be earned.” My husband stepped forward then, a sweep of his fur-trimmed robe performed without thought, some reflexive assertion of his status. The pursed lips and smirk of a guard stood behind him was ample indication of a terrible misjudgement. My husband has many things, Petir, but culture is not one of them.

  “Your Marschal instructed the ambush, Guildmaster Filston. The considerable expense and your influence in these parts allowed you the privilege of such a request,” said the High Reeve. “Yet your hundred gold pieces for Marschal Laun and her crew’s services will yield the Post no profit. I instead must sink that coin into finding, training and paying for replacements for these men while somehow making sure that the operations they would have otherwise been engaged on do not lose us further income. Eighteen caravans are now without the Agents or Reds that were paid for, on the assurance that so many would make quick work of these greying mercenaries. What must those mercenaries have that warrants such expense?”

  “Nothing that would interest the Post High Reeve,” said Alon, who knew then he’d erred in challenging him.

  “Information is always of interest to the Post; nothing else can be worth the gold you paid. You there, Prennen, you’re Laun’s man. What names have you been given by your purse to pursue; who are they?”

  Prennen stood up from digging and took a breath. “Yes, Reeve. These two were Gant and Shale. The only other names I recall are Valdir, Bense and Mirisham. We seek an old mercenary crew, Kailen’s Twenty.”

  “The name tickles my tongue; I wish I could remember why. Guildmaster Filston, the Post’s interests in Issana have been severely harmed by the events here. These men, Gant and Shale, will not face your own wrath unless you deem it greater than that of the Post’s. I shall be sure to tell you of their fate, along with whatever information you require of them. Are you sure it would not help you to share this now, in the event of our successful hunt?”

  “No,” I said. “Goodbye, Reeve, we are most sorry to have caused such trouble to the Post.”

  “Alon, you would do well to ensure your wife understands the protocols regarding one’s engagement with a High Reeve.”

  “My apologies, High Reeve, she is of a noble family, it is something she grew up accustomed to.”

  The Reeve looked me over, like a tutor facing the latest in a long line of troublemakers. He affected an air of superiority, but a little wealth and reputation was in his case no more than the sheen on shit. His retinue soon assembled and a guard led him to his horse, helping him up to the saddle
with discreet difficulty. Once mounted he spent some moments in reflection.

  “Guildmaster Filston, a new Reeve Issana arrives in three days. The Post is always willing to recognise loyal and experienced merchants and I am assured this Reeve will look to continue our good trade with your support. You must consider this purse fulfilled, or else the Filston-Blackmore guild will find the cargo levies and port duties its own to negotiate through Jua and Issana.”

  A blackwing had arrived at his birdman. Its message was passed to him and his attention moved on in a moment from the yard around us to some new matter.

  Alon bowed and turned away from me, squeezing with rage the gloves in his fists, to manage himself in sight of us all. We had learned an expensive lesson regarding these mercenaries who were still paying the colour, still potent with the vigours of battle.

  After the High Reeve had left us my husband turned back to Kigan and I where we stood.

  “Well,” he said, “you are the man my wife has been hunting all these years, the one she said betrayed her.”

  He muttered for a moment, then spoke.

  “I did not. We were both betrayed and I know…”–again he seemed to speak to himself–“… I know what they did.” He looked at Alon and me then, before addressing the soldiers and Reds with us.

  “We need to speak alone.” He led us away from the others.

  We walked the bank of the river that edged the vineyard, smoke rising from the blackened vines still. I confess I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It is hard to describe, brother. Everything from his colour to his fieldbelt, its loops, bags and tools, but more how he moved, something I would never have noticed had I not had some schooling from Laun in balance. If he were a crossbow he would be fully notched, his eyes flicking to each crack of a twig or sudden chip of a bird in the trees about us. A terrifying vigour seemed to be a breath away from being unleashed.

  “When Laun’s soldier, Prennen, spoke the names of those Twenty we have left to seek, I was watching the High Reeve,” he said. “For only a heartbeat the final name, Mirisham, stalled him. I’d have missed the tell if I hadn’t been considering what mix could improve the blotched skin of his cheeks and how much I could charge him for it.”

  “Wait, Kigan, you’re not telling me why you are also killing the Twenty. These were your crew for so many years.”

  We stopped walking and he continued talking, though never looked either of us in the eye throughout.

  “They betrayed me, it was them, it was… it might not have been all of them, but they were there, at the inn, in Snakewood. I met them, then I cannot remember…”

  He was whispering now and seemed lost to us for a moment, then he continued regarding the Reeve’s reaction to hearing the name “Mirisham”, as though I had not asked the question.

  “Intentions are very hard to conceal on this brew I take. I could hear the Reeve’s heart beat more quickly, see the hint of warmth from that blood on his cheek, the eyes lose focus momentarily as he planned a retreat from the conversation, all upon hearing the name Mirisham.”

  “That would be a brew, if you speak truly, Kigan, which could make us all very rich.”

  He shushed my husband, annoyed with him, and continued.

  “What could that High Reeve know of Mirisham? Whatever he knew of him it wasn’t worth your purse to reveal it. If Mirisham’s whereabouts were not a confidence the High Reeve wished to share with you despite your widespread use of the Post to find us, then Mirisham must be somehow connected to the Post or its more important interests. It means Mirisham has become somebody important himself, more so than you.”

  “Do you know where the others are?” I asked.

  “I have Bense. He is on a betony mix I have refined enough that there is no question of his loyalty. His lord saw fit to put him in a jail for a spell at Cusston, in Jua, presumably to wean him off it, but not before he gave me Stixie. It was Bense also that told me of Kailen’s last visit, the one that got him imprisoned.”

  “If you have Bense in your pocket,” I said, “we should head there immediately; he may know something more of the others.”

  “Bense isn’t our next move.”

  “Then we must find a way to persuade that awful Reeve to tell us what he knows of Mirisham. You, well, you seem able to do as you please, Kigan; would you do it for me?”

  “I cannot countenance it, Galathia,” said Alon. “Assault on a High Reeve, if I am in any way implicated, is the end of me, and I trust you, like me, do not wish to go back to a life without coin.”

  “He is right, Galathia, it is not the next move. Kailen had somehow managed to warn Gant and Shale that the Twenty were being killed. He had warned Bense. His knowing this would explain why he organised their kidnap from the custody of Agents with a fine subterfuge, according to Laun.” He clasped his hands behind his back and breathed deeply.

  “Kigan, are you saying there are more of the Twenty dead? Digs spoke of this being so.”

  “Oh yes. I’ve killed every one I could find.”

  I could barely catch my breath, a thrill overcoming me.

  “Why, because they… you said they betrayed you?”

  He looked at me knowing I was expecting a response but I could see from his glassy stare and lips barely moving he was somewhere inside himself.

  “How well do you know the Chief Levyer of Harudan?” he then asked.

  “Kigan, I…” I began, but he held up a hand. I wanted desperately to know who he had killed.

  “We have time, Gala.” He paused, waiting for me to acknowledge this, before continuing. “Alon, the Chief Levyer of Harudan?”

  “How is that relevant?” asked Alon, now frowning at the filth on his suede boots and robe from the wet ground.

  “Gant and Shale came looking for you, according to this ganger Lokio. They knew they were being hunted, and I believe Kailen told them it was you that was behind the killings.”

  “Do continue, Kigan, I’m afraid I do not yet follow the thread of your thought.” He looked at me in a way affecting weariness. It was his way of hiding annoyance or unhappiness.

  “Laun told me you and Kailen had made contact at the Crag, but Kailen had set an elaborate trap. He either knew or suspected your true purpose.

  “Now he’s dead we must make contact with Kailen’s father, the Chief Levyer or Kailen’s wife. One or both may be persuaded to help us understand what more he knew of those that still live.”

  “Should we ride for Harudan tomorrow? To see Kailen’s family?” I asked.

  “Yes, my dear,” interrupted Alon, “I have plenty more coin for you to spend pursuing this. Your revenge has cost a mere hundred gold coins so far and I’ve learned only that the Post’s Agents, a Marschal even, are nowhere near worth the price I or any of my guild have been paying all these winters. Thirty men and women, as Albin said, should have been enough and any right-minded man assessing the risk would have agreed.”

  “My husband, I’m only glad that Laun did not hear that. You might then have learned what a single Agent can do to a man.”

  I know what you must think, Petir; I have wed badly. His wealth has been useful to me, he is soft with me, supports me, but it isn’t love. How could we expect that after Snakewood, let alone before?

  Kigan revealed much of what happened to us, and what happened to him, as we rode south to Harudan. Something isn’t right with him, he’s paid the Drudha’s Share, and with the Droop and the torture he is… it’s hard to find the phrase… he is like a player, convincing enough in his part, but it is an eggshell, with something dangerous tapping at it from the inside.

  I put here an extract of a conversation Galathia had with me, of this time immediately after seeing Kigan again, for it reveals much of what had become of Kailen’s Twenty, and what Kigan remembered.

  Goran

  “You have changed,” he said, the following night at my estate in Issana. I sought him in his room, while Alon was away at the docks on guild business. I did not want to
be away from his bed. Now he watched me from his pillow.

  “In the memories kept from me, the images I questioned for truth or dream, you had hair like a gorse bush as a girl, a thicket of orange, every strand stood outwards as though straining for the sun. Now they are becalmed to curls. Still those violet eyes.”

  “Supposedly lucky, violet. Yet all these winters later I am Alon’s trophy.”

  “It is a contract to both your benefit, and I did not see a mere trophy in the alley at Iltrick.”

  “Tell me about my father. You say your remembering Snakewood brought it all back.”

  “Gala, how sure can I be that it is all true when so much of my life I cannot recall, not family or even name until I confronted and killed Harlain in Tetswana. Yet I feel as sure of these memories now as I do of my senses, and that has been a sadly rare feeling these winters.

  “I saw your father last the day Kailen disbanded the Twenty, the day we left. I realised at the same time as him that we were ruined and the Twenty finished. I woke up, and the marble floor was so cold it numbed my face, only my cheek warm with my drool. I’d cooked up from a wormwood and poppy oil press. Three measures of leaves to the splash and cut in with raw threaded kannab, a soft three-one twist I was as proud of then as I am scornful of its vulgarity now.

  “Around me were Kailen’s Twenty. A roomful of mass murderers, naked or else lumbered with whores. They were smiling or drooling in their dreams, bodies of smoke and pleasure as the poem goes, flattened by my mixes. I made little else, and cared nothing for the fact.

  “My head still pounded and my muscles and bones woke sharpened, stabbing me all over. I got to my knees and felt around the sheets and cushions littering the filthy floor for my belts, for my nerves. I was paying the Drudha’s Share, a lifetime of mixing, testing and drinking fightbrews and other experiments. I had to whisper to my hands, coax them to achieve my goal, the clumsy unknotting of a drawstring and the rub of the betony on my gums and under my tongue bringing me some clarity.