The Iron Ring

by Auston Habershaw

  “I’ve got an added stipulation,” the young man said, “Mr. Jaevis, it is my understanding that you were recently contracted by the Defenders to apprehend Reldamar, is this not correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I would like my contract to supersede that contract. Get him before the Defenders do, before Hendrieux does, and definitely before Sahand does. My Esteemed Colleagues would be most grateful.”

  “Jaevis will see it done,” the bounty hunter said.

  “If you are interested in paying an additional fee,” the first man said, “I know where Reldamar will be, and I know that a fourth party is already interested in getting their hands on him—­she is your chief competitor in this region, I believe.”

  The young man grunted. “I can’t say I’m surprised—­you can never trust the Kalsaaris.” He laughed. “Listen to you—­in bed with everybody. To think I once thought you and Reldamar were friends!”

  “Of course we are,” the man said, “This isn’t personal, it is strictly professional. Reldamar will understand, I’m sure . . . well, eventually, at any rate.”

  The revelation hit Artus like a pitcher of cold water: the man was Carlo diCarlo, Tyvian’s friend. Tyvian’s friend who had just acted as a broker between Hacklar Jaevis and some creep who wanted to “study” Tyvian. Artus didn’t know what that might entail, but it sounded pretty awful.

  The coach hit a large bump, causing Artus to thump up against the back of the cab with an audible grunt. The three ­people inside immediately fell silent. Artus crouched down in the luggage rack, holding his breath.

  There was a trio of thumps on the roof of the coach, and Carlo yelled out the window, “Stop the coach!”

  Ozmar brought the coach to a halt, but even before it stopped moving, Jaevis opened the door and leapt out. Artus took a leap off the back and tumbled in the mud. Scrambling to his feet, he heard the bounty hunter draw his blade and bellow, “Spy!”

  Artus ran full tilt down the road, his feet slipping and sinking in the mud. He heard the young man yelling, “Don’t let him escape! Kill him!”

  Artus darted sideways down a narrow street just as Jaevis made a quick slash where his ankles had been. This bought Artus another two paces on the angry Illini, but he didn’t need to look back to know how close his pursuer was—­he could hear the bounty hunter’s armor jingle and could feel his massive frame barreling after him. Artus made another turn and another, and another, but Jaevis didn’t fall behind; the weight of his armor didn’t seem to be slowing him down by much.

  Artus didn’t know the layout of Freegate well—­it was not a very logically planned city, and he had spent a collective six days here in his life. What he did know was that the coach had been skirting the edge of the city, where the Horse District had the room for its more space-­intensive businesses. If he turned right, he figured it would take him closer to the center of town, where things were more congested and the chance of finding help or a place to hide would be greater.

  Turning himself in the proper direction, Artus passed by a series of butcher shops, slaughterhouses, and abattoirs. The smell of blood and raw meat was thick in the air, but the road quality improved from mud to cobblestones. Behind him, Jaevis was puffing air like an angry beast. “You . . . will . . . die . . . boy . . .”

  Artus ducked down an alley that dead-­ended in a high fence. He leapt, caught the edge, and swung himself over just before the bounty hunter’s sword embedded itself in the top beam. Jaevis’s roar of rage was enough to keep Artus running, even though he felt safe.

  It was a good instinct, since barely a moment later, Jaevis literally shouldered his way through the fence, the thin plywood splintering around his armored form. Artus gasped at this and picked up the pace again. At least, he reasoned, the guy’s lost his sword.

  He made another turn toward the center of the city, this time taking him down row after row of bakeries. This street was broader than the others, and clean, too, leaving him little to dodge around or throw in his path behind him. Jaevis was winded now, the weight of his armor finally taking its toll, and Artus began to pull away.

  Then he heard Jaevis utter, “Enough,” and the bounty hunter came to a stop.

  Artus, smiling at his victory, looked over his shoulder . . .

  . . . in time to see the Illini’s dagger slam home in his back. Searing lances of pain radiated out from just below his left shoulder blade and he tripped, sprawling forward on the cobblestones. He tried quickly to rise, but the white-­hot agony in his shoulder and arm made him swoon and fall back onto the ground.

  Jaevis, breathing heavily, walked up to where he had fallen and put a boot in the center of his back. “End of road, boy.” He yanked the dagger out with a savage twist, making Artus scream and almost pass out.

  This prompted a grunt from Jaevis, who knelt next to him and cleaned his blade on Artus’s shirt. “You are lucky, boy. If you did not look just now, dagger would have hit you in spine.” He nodded solemnly. “Then you would be dead.”

  Artus tried rolling away, but Jaevis jammed a thumb in his open wound, making Artus again go pale with pain. “Hit bone. Boy should know that knife was poisoned. Jaevis could leave you here to bleed, and you would die. Maybe from blood you lose, maybe from poison, maybe from infection. Very painful death.”

  Artus tried to manage something pithy, or maybe just spit in the man’s eye, but he couldn’t get anything out. He wasn’t Tyvian, after all—­he was just a street rat.

  Jaevis took a deep breath. “You are lucky boy, though. Jaevis has nephew, about your age. Would not want him to die so painfully. I will do you favor, for him.”

  Artus felt the tip of the dagger at the back of his skull. He said his good-­byes to his family, and realized, with a profound sense of appropriateness, that he was just another son that wasn’t coming home.

  “Oi, you!” he heard a man yell, and felt the dagger withdraw.

  “Boy is thief. I take my due,” Jaevis said, standing up.

  Through his tear-­filled eyes, Artus could just make out a pair of men coming up the street, arm-­length, spiked cudgels dangling from their hands. They were followed by the floating, glowing tattlers common to all watchmen. One of their tattlers flew over near Artus’s face and the other circled Jaevis. The second watchman whistled. “Lookee here, Martus—­some Illini hick murdering a young boy in the street.”

  The first watchman nodded. “Shame what the world is comin’ to, Toffer. ’Ere now, you—­drop the pig-­sticker, eh?”

  Jaevis grumbled, “I pay three marks, you leave. Deal?”

  “My my, Martus,” Toffer said, “looks like this noble fellow has rid our fair city of another thieving soul.”

  “Hann bless his stalwart heart, Toffer,” Martus replied, holding out his hand.

  Artus, struggling through the pain, managed to wrestle his small purse from his belt and cast it on the street. “Seven marks,” he gasped.

  Martus and Toffer both whistled in unison. One of the tattlers illuminated the coins where they had spilled on the cobblestones. “Well now,” said Toffer, “looks like we have a bit of a difference of opinion.”

  “He pays with my money,” Jaevis growled. “He stole from me.”

  A tattler sank to Jaevis’s large purse and illuminated it clearly for the watchmen. “And I suppose,” said Martus, “that this thoughtful little pickpocket here took it upon hisself to leave you unrelieved of all that?”

  “Do you happen to carry a small purse and a large purse at the same time, mate?” Toffer asked, grinning broadly.

  Jaevis stewed for a moment and then said, “I give twenty-­five marks—­triple what boy is worth.”

  Artus tried to rise but was beaten down again by his injured shoulder. He instead rolled onto his good side. “You’ll get . . . four times what I got if you . . . if you take me to Top Street.”

&nb
sp; “Why Martus,” Toffer said, “how much did the little urchin just offer us?”

  “Allow me a moment to make me calculations, Toffer,” Martus said, and then added, “seven four times is twenty-­eight, plus this seven here is thirty-­five.”

  “He has not such money,” the Illini countered.

  “Tyvian—­” Artus began, winced, and then started again. “Tyvian Reldamar’s got it. He’ll pay you.”

  Toffer and Martus exchanged glances. Martus whistled again and hissed, “Reldamar paid Captain Strayther two hundred today to stay clear of Imar’s.”

  Toffer nodded. “So he’s got the money, then.”

  Jaevis scowled. “Fools.”

  “What’s that?” Martus thrust the end of his cudgel into Jaevis’s gut, all traces of whimsy gone from his tone. “You want to be a toughie, eh? Think ’cause you got yourself some armor and a tough face you can just flap your gums at anyone you please?”

  “Boy is good as dead. I will—­”

  Martus struck Jaevis in the solar plexus with the butt of his cudgel, causing the bounty hunter to stumble back. Toffer moved in and brandished his weapon in the Illini’s face. “You listen here, you Kroth-­spawned tit—­I don’t care if you work for the bloody Nine Queens of Kalsaar, Freegate belongs to us, and we don’t take orders from nobody, got it?”

  Artus knew Jaevis could kill both the men without much trouble—­he’d seen him fight Tyvian on the barge. Still, the bounty hunter put up his hands and backed away, his coal-­black eyes fixed on him. Even as the world began to spin, the eyes remained steady—­the axis around which Artus’s delirium rotated.

  Martus helped Artus to his feet. “Well, lad,” he said with a wink, “let’s see if your friend Reldamar can pay up.”

  “Otherwise,” Toffer chuckled, “we dump you in Arble Brook and see if you can swim with one arm, eh?”

  The two watchmen laughed, and Artus saw their faces falling away from him. He found himself looking up at the black sky, and then remembered nothing else.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MAN OF MERCY

  “Forty bloody marks,” Tyvian growled. He was sitting in a high-­backed armchair and glaring at the fireplace in his second guest room. Behind him, his face ashen pale and slick with sweat, Artus lay facedown in the bed, a mass of bloody gauze pressed against his wound by a scowling Myreon Alafarr.

  “This boy needs a doctor,” Myreon stated simply as she set about changing the bandages. “The bleeding’s stopped, but it’s a deep wound.”

  “Should have left the runt on the doorstep to blee—­ Ow!” Tyvian grabbed his hand. “Bloody hell!”

  Myreon chuckled to herself. “That ring is the best thing that ever happened to you, Reldamar.”

  Tyvian rolled his eyes. “Oh yes, what an improvement. I’ve gone from being a wealthy independent gentleman to a boarder for the inept.”

  Artus moaned. “Rel . . . Reldamar . . .”

  Myreon touched his forehead. “He’s burning up, suffering from shock, who knows what else.”

  “Can’t you do some kind of Lumenal healing transmutation or something? We can’t stay here for long, you know. I’m expecting more assassins at any moment.”

  “My fingers are still too weak, no thanks to you. If you don’t do something, the lad is going to die.”

  “I already gave him a bloodpatch.”

  “I already told you that the bleeding isn’t the problem—­I think the wound is infected or possibly poisoned.”

  Tyvian scowled. “How long?”

  Myreon shrugged, a look of disgust on her face. “Without treatment? A few hours, maybe. Are you so coldhearted that you’d let a boy die of infection in your own home?”

  Tyvian didn’t say anything, stuffing his hands in his armpits. He pursed his lips like a petulant child.

  “Just call a bloody doctor!” Myreon snapped. “I know that ring of yours must be torturing you about it—­just do it!”

  “I won’t let some trinket run my life,” Tyvian snarled.

  Myreon threw the spent gauze in a wastebasket and sat across from Tyvian. “Don’t do it for the ring, you stunted human being! Do it for the boy!”

  Tyvian’s teeth were clenched. “What’s the boy to me?”

  “For the love of Hann, man! Have you no soul?” Myreon pointed to the suffering Artus. “This boy needs your help. He stuck with you all the way to Freegate, despite your treatment of him. He’s the closest thing in this world you have to a bloody friend, and you’re just going to let him die?”

  “The boy’s a street urchin, Myreon!” Tyvian shot back, his face red. “He’s like a stray dog—­he’ll attach himself to anyone who feeds him! He doesn’t give a damn about me. He stuck with me for the pay, and when he was injured and bleeding on the street, he thought he could just show up and I’d keep paying his way. If it weren’t for this,” he held out his ring hand, which was contorted in agony, “I’d have ditched the little freeloader weeks ago!”

  Myreon shook her head and leaned back in her chair. “You’re a monster. I don’t know why I expected any different from you.”

  “Neither do I. Are you done with him?”

  Myreon nodded, not looking at the smuggler.

  “Back to your cell with you, then.” Tyvian clapped his hands and the house specters seized Myreon by the elbows and escorted her back to her own room.

  As soon as the door closed, Tyvian stood up and screamed. The fire in his hand was unbearable. Just like in the river-­inn, he felt like the skin was blistering and peeling off his fingers, exposing the bone to the white-­hot fire of the ring. Holding his hand by the wrist, he slammed it against the mantel, the end-­tables, the walls—­anything in reach in an attempt to stop the horrible pain. He doused it in the basin of water Myreon had brought for Artus, but no relief was to be had. He scratched and pulled at the ring in the water, but as ever, it didn’t move.

  “I won’t do it, you bloody ring! Not now, not ever! YOU DON’T CONTROL ME!”

  The pain intensified even more, and Tyvian fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. He hissed at his hand. “No . . . bloody . . . way . . . in hell!”

  Not knowing how he did it, nor remembering why, Tyvian found himself on the street, a heavy red cloak wrapped around him to fight the cold mountain winds. He had Chance at his side, at least, and the sun was rising over the Dragonspine, bathing the streets of the Cliff District in equal parts golden light and blue shadow. His hand still blazed with unbearable pain, but he had the wherewithal to check to see if he was being followed—­he wasn’t, or at least not by anyone he could spot.

  He stopped walking. He had to be followed. He couldn’t conceive of a circumstance where he wouldn’t be followed. He shook his head, trying to clear it of the fiery pain that still crippled him. Ducking into the shadows of a restaurant doorway, he pretended to peer through the windows as though inspecting the place. From his angle, the reflection in the frosted glass of the door gave him a foggy glimpse of the street behind him—­nothing but silhouettes and amorphous blobs of light, but it would be enough to detect movement.

  A shadow shifted from one side of the street to another and vanished in a distant alley: his follower.

  The ring burned him, making his eyes water. “Not now, damn you! Not . . . bloody . . . now!”

  Tyvian’s instincts dictated getting off the street—­perhaps breaking into this restaurant and maybe ducking out the back. The ring wouldn’t permit it, though. The agony overcame his better judgment, forcing him from the doorway and back along the street, his feet dragging.

  He tried to think, but all the ring wanted was for him to press on, to stagger forward to whatever nonsensical mercy mission it had in mind for him. The experience was not unlike that of being drunk, except instead of the pleasant, numbing cobwebs of alcohol, he was afflicted with mind-­blanking ag
ony.

  He looked behind him, blinking away tears. Nothing. Whoever was back there was good—­it was no mean feat to shadow a man on an empty street at dawn, especially a street so clean and so sunny. Pleasant three-­story town houses built in the stone-­and-­plaster Saldorian style lined both sides, each one with a small plot of lawn or a squat little tree out front. Between these were commercial properties of the highest caliber—­hotels with flower-­rimmed balconies and bars with rooftop decks that overlooked the entire city. The watch was paid well to make regular sweeps in this part of town, and anybody who didn’t “belong” would be summarily tossed headfirst down the Stair Market and into the Chamber Pot.

  ­People in dark cloaks darting from alley to alley certainly didn’t belong, and tattlers were very hard to hide from. This fellow was either a recent arrival in this area or he had a special talent for avoiding notice. Or both.

  Tyvian kept onward, clutching his hand to his chest but keeping his cloak over his shoulders to conceal his weakness—­his tail was being wary, and he wanted the tail to stay that way until he could think of a plan for shaking him or her while being dispatched on a damned errand by a piece of cheap jewelry.

  There was a break in the street—­a canyon had been dug out by water cascading over the lip of Dain’s Lake, splitting the Cliff District in two before vanishing into a dark crevasse some thirty feet below. There was an elegant bridge of gleaming birch railings and mageglass supports arching over the gap, and some ten or fifteen feet to Tyvian’s right, twenty feet lower, another bridge spanning it for the next road down. The upper bridge, where Tyvian now found himself, was lined with tall wooden flagpoles flying the colors of the various guild members and wealthy merchants who paid to have the bridge maintained—­advertising to the rich was worth more than any toll income.