by J. M. Martin
~
If any hierarch, priestess, monk, or practor were to ask me where I choose to worship my gods, I would have to say a friendly sop-house. I take no preference among the Elder Gods, the Karish upstart Iero, or anyone else’s divinity, offering libations, prayers, and oaths equally to them all as the occasion demands. But in all this wretched world there’s naught to compare with a fine bath, a barrel of mead, and a merry melee of pipes, dancing, and new friends to put me in mind of the sacred.
The piper gave a final flourish to the galliard just as I led the chain of dancers in a leap from the trestle table nearest the fire.
“Don’t weaken,” I yelled, heat pulsing in my blood, the world spinning cheerfully as I clamped my hands atop those at my waist to ensure the rosy-breasted girl followed me. Or perhaps it was the delicate young man with perfect skin that stank of a tannery had ended up my choice of second for the dance. Five years on the run had taught me that delights could be found in all sorts of interesting forms.
Alas, the piper yielded to a boy with a soft-strung lute, and the chain broke and scattered. Some dancers collapsed on the floor. The sop-house girls filled cups from the casks or dragged partners up the stair. A man in a swirling black cape danced his partner into a dark corner, where they appeared to be continuing the dance. Or wrestling. Or finding more serious amusement.
I grabbed my second’s wrists and sagged onto a bench by the door, twirling her around and pulling her onto my lap. It was neither the rosy girl nor the delicate, stinking young man, but the tall, bony girl with teasing eyes.
She pecked my cheek and pulled away. “Do come again morrow-night, sweeting. ’Tis fine to dance with such a long-legged fellow instead of the runts grown up around Wroling.”
I plunged fingers into her oat-hued curls and drew her back for a better kiss. Her lips were not at all bony and her breath was sweet. “But the night’s not half gone,” I whispered, “and winter’s come early again. How’s a lone soldier to stay warm?”
Her fingers traced my bristly chin and I took advantage. They tasted of honey.
“Oh, that I could,” she sighed. “But I must be off to my mam. I could ask her could you sleep in the byre…”
Few offers could so chill a man’s parts as aught to do with mothers and cows. So I let go. “The goddess mother bless your mam, but straw gives me sneezing fits. We’ll dance again tomorrow.”
My turn to sigh. I’d hoped for a hearth fire and a night’s companionship. Though to be honest, I shouldn’t complain. For a man released from the king’s legion only that morn, with three coppers to his name in a town where he knew not a soul, I’d had a most exemplary day. This holy sop-house had provided me a mutton pie as I’d not seen in half a year, a merry evening, and, less delightful but more important, another few months before I disintegrated into a pain-wracked lunatic.
The man who had solved my annoying problem was yet hunched over the little table in the shadows. A slight fellow with a dark greasy tangle of hair, and eyes like burnt-out hollows. The tremors in his hands had drawn me that morning, as I sought the means to soothe my perverse affliction.
A fumble in my waist pocket retrieved not three but only a single coin—the last copper from the year of soldiering for good King Eodward. I flipped it to a passing girl—the rosy one with a sheen of sweat glistening on her skin. “Fill that fellow’s cup, Katie. I think he needs it more than I do.”
“Bek the corpse-cutter?” Her shudder chilled my own skin. “Wish he’d drink somewheres else. Were my own arm dangling off, I wouldn’t have him sew it back on. Not when I know what he does with those hands. At least he don’t try to touch the girls no more. We taught him that right off.”
She tucked the coin between her rosy breasts and bustled off to fill the man’s cup. She must have told him who paid, as when she moved away he raised the cup in my direction.
My soul shivered. Surgery was a nasty, lonesome business at best. Every soldier heard the best ones cut up bodies to learn how we were put together. But a wounded man always kept a friend about to make sure the surgeon didn’t steal his liver or leave a demon sign inside him. And once the wound was sewn, no man wanted to see the surgeon again, lest the fellow had taken a liking to his body and decided to make a study of it. No wonder such a man took refuge in a bit of unsavory pleasure. We all did what we had to do to soothe the pain of living.
I sipped the dregs in my own cup, putting my mind to where I might sleep and what work I might find hereabouts till the king needed his soldiers again. I’d certainly no means to travel elsewhere.
Angry voices rose from the caped man and his partner—clearly male—in the back corner. It seemed their dance had turned unpleasant. Perhaps I should leave. A man in my position could not afford to linger in the neighborhood of a brawl. Those who hunted me were ever alert.
I reached under the bench for my rucksack, only to shove it back again straightaway as the sop-house door flew open. One might have thought my mother, the ever-drunk diviner, had whispered warning in my ear, for a broad-chested man with a thatch of rusty hair and beard near filled the doorway not ten paces from my bench.
“Hold your places and heed my saying!” he bellowed. His thick, hairy hand tapped the worn sword hilt at his hip. “I’m First Constable Bastien, come to make an arrest for violation of the laws of the kingdom of Navronne and the town of Wroling.”
No way to slip past him. If I could have made my excessive height less noticeable, I would have done it years ago. All I could do was keep still and quiet, and beg the gods he’d come for someone else. Surely if he knew what I was, he’d have brought a pureblood sorcerer to deal with me, no matter that I was the least capable spellcaster in Navronne. As for the simpler matter from earlier in the day, I was sure I’d got away clean.
“Everyone here is to empty his pockets.”
The terse command eased my greater fear. But the lesser matter loomed larger, and a glance at the corpse-cutting surgeon sent my spirit plummeting. Constable Bastien had fixed his eye on the man in the shadows and the shaggy head nodded straight at me.
The constable pivoted smartly in my direction. “We’ll begin right here.”
Two annoyingly stalwart henchman in leather jerkins followed him inside.
“What might your name be?” said the constable. “Don’t think I’ve seen you round here.”
“Name is…Valen,” I said. “Man-at-arms to good King Eodward, Sky Lord bless our doughty sovereign.”
Daren’t lie about it; comrades from the legion might have found their way to Wroling. But I certainly didn’t tell him the whole of my name. Aurellian names were sorcerers’ names. Sorcerers masked half their faces and wore wine-colored cloaks and never danced in sop-houses…unless they were recondeurs. Renegades.
“Released from service, I understand,” said Constable Bastien, confirming that he’d spoken to the damnable surgeon. And here I’d used my last coin to buy the corpse-cutter mead. How stupid could a man be to trust a twistmind? No matter I was one, too, I kept my oaths.
“Aye, noble constable, the king—our mutual employer, one might say—has given his legion leave,” I said, calm and comradely, “allowing us to find decent shelter for the winter. Don’t you find it troubling how the weather’s so much worse these last few years? Makes a man wary of offending the gods. Which part do you take in the saying—is it the gods’ anger with our dissipations or is it the bowl of the sky slipped from its moorings that’s caused this demonish winter? I’ve heard—”
“Perhaps you’d best listen instead of babbling, Armsman Valen. I said turn out your pockets. You’ll see the rest here have done so. They know how Magistrate Maslin dislikes it when a suspect disobeys his officers. A felon plies his trade in Wroling at his peril.”
Indeed, every man had emptied his waist pocket and every woman her apron and her bodice. The tables were a litter of luck charms, toothpicks, thread spools, pebbles, bits of string, and a pitiful few coins.
Uneasy, I tu
rned out the pocket I’d emptied for the cursed surgeon. “A suspect, you say? A felon? What have I done but serve my king in the miserable northlands? A man comes home after so long with seeping wounds…grievous sorrows…debts to the gods…boot rot…”
The unmoved constable cocked his head and skewered me with a stare. “Boot rot, eh? Perhaps you should remove those boots.”
“Before a civil company? I’m sure the bath ladies could testify I’ve had them off—”
“Now.” He twitched a finger at his two men.
Frenzied resistance availed naught before such odds.
Thus one henchman yanked off my boots while I lay prostrate with the other cur seated on my backside and the constable’s boot on my neck. And of course, the little pouch tucked in my boot was found to contain nivat seeds—the hard black creations of Magrog the Tormentor that had been my salvation and my devilment since I turned fourteen. The henchmen fetched rope and shackles as Constable Bastien called Bek, the corpse-cutter, to witness that I was indeed the man who’d sought the most out-of-the-way purveyor of nivat in the district.
“Just after dawn this very morning. He even said he’d see to the business straightaway.” Bek’s trembling hands shoved his greasy hair aside. “Didn’t imagine he meant to steal the goods.” Despite his tremors, the surgeon was clear spoken, neither mead nor simpleton’s ignorance blurring his testimony.
The constable admirably restrained his gloating, as he displayed the little mound of seeds to all who were paying attention—by this time that was only the landlord and the horrified bony girl, who was fanning herself in relief that she’d not dragged me to her mam’s byre.
“As it happens, Seedsman Fitch reports that exactly six-and-thirty nivat seeds vanished between dawn and ninth hour. Unfortunately for Seedsman Fitch, no one left payment. Unfortunately for you, Magistrate Maslin sees thieving as a public plague and has vowed to cleanse it from our noble town.”
All my favored stories and pleas died unspoken. This Magistrate Maslin sounded like the obstacle. Perhaps if we could get somewhere more private, I could budge the constable from this public posturing. Sadly, somewhere private looked to be a lockup.
My stomach clamored in revolt. Sweat broke out on brow and back. No enemy swordsman, no archer, no whip or blow could set my spirit gibbering as could a locked room—a relic of a hateful childhood and my own perverse nature. The prospect was almost enough to make me contrive some magic to escape. But if a Registry servitor or any other pureblood lurked in the vicinity, use of magic could spell my doom.
Failing some compromise with Constable Bastien, I could survive a whipping or a tenday in the stocks, even the hateful lockup if worse came to worse. I’d done so plenty of times. But I’d need that nivat soon.
“No need for chains, good constable,” I said, as they bound my hands at my back. It was all I could do to keep still. “I’ll behave. I swear it on my life. I’ll work off the debt, do hard labor willing, whatever’s necessary.”
“Magistrate Maslin will decide. But were I in your place, I’d start practicing my armsman’s skills with my off hand.”
“My off—” Horror choked my throat entire and set the evening’s mead and mutton pie into a maelstrom. “A hand?”
King Eodward had halted the lopping of hands for thieving years ago, saying that destroying a thief’s chance of honest work made no sense. He was right. Fighting, laboring, tending iron smelts, tanning hides, I’d done them all and more—I wasn’t particular how I kept from starving—but no work available to an ignorant lout like me could be managed with but one hand. And what of lovemaking, one of the gods’ dearest graces to humankind? Arrosa’s mercy, I was only twenty!
And then there was magic. I’d given up magic almost completely when I ran away from my family, as pureblood sorcery was easily detectable, especially in the low places I frequented. I’d never been good at spellwork, thus it was no great sacrifice. But from time to time when running or hiding, and most especially when dealing with nivat…
Fingers were the conduit of magic. To take a sorcerer’s hand was unthinkable, forbidden by every law of crown and temple. And yet the very last thing these people could know of me was the truth of my blood. Great gods of Idrium, Heaven, and Hell!
I fought to quiet my belly before I retched on the constable’s boots. No one seemed to be watching us anymore. The patrons had loaded up their coins and combs and crowded about the scuffle grown louder in the back corner. The surgeon had taken his tattler’s fee and slunk back to his seat in the shadows.
“I’ll do whatever you want to make amends, noble constable,” I said as the henchmen locked the shackles and hauled me to my feet. “I’m a loyal servant of the king. I even met him once after a battle and he commended me.” No need to feign desperation. “But my da is dead, my family’s vegetable plot withered. We need nivat seeds for feast bread to lure the holy Danae to heal—”
“Best not waste breath.” His detestably unthreatened finger thumped my chest to silence me. “None of that matters in Wroling. Only the law and punishment. What in Magrog’s hells is going on back there?”
This last he bellowed above the rising din. The sop-house patrons had broken into whistles and drunken cheers as if they watched a dog fight.
The crowd parted and the delicate young man with the tanner’s stink stumbled straight toward the constable and me, one eye a swollen wreck, tunic ripped, and netherstocks flapping at his knees. His hand gripped a bloody knife, and his face reflected a desperation as profound as my own.
“Come back here, you gods-cursed catamite!” A snarling fellow threw an arm around the young man’s neck and dragged him backward.
The bloody dagger dropped to the floor as the smaller man clawed at the choke hold and tore at his assailant’s long cape, exposing garb wholly out of place in a sop-house. Silk brocade, indigo velvet, ruffles of very expensive lace, rings of rubies and sapphires, and, far worse, fresh blood—whether his or his attacker’s it wasn’t clear.
The bigger man wore no mask and his cape was black, not the hue of good wine, thus he was no pureblood, which was a small grace for my part. But he was certainly noble born, which for the delicate young man meant serious trouble.
“Denys.” The name was spoken with such quiet horror, I almost didn’t hear it above my own rattling fear. But it drew my gaze to the man beside me. For one instant was Constable Bastien’s soul laid bare, before he shuttered dismay and anger with unfeeling duty. A servant of the law could not afford to care about anyone but nobles and magistrates.
The constable bowed deeply. “Lord Felix, what’s happened here?”
Blood soaked the lordling’s sleeve, which did not seem to hamper his grip. A gory trickle leaked from his mangled lower lip. The latter looked more like a bite than a stab wound. Any reasonable judge with two eyes would understand clearly what had gone on.
“This scrap of offal tried to steal my dagger,” said the pudding-faced noble, tightening his choke grip. “When I objected and told him that a beggar who stank so vilely could never be a proper sneak thief, he went wild and stabbed me. I need a message taken to my father.”
Three men scrambled forward, bowed heads, and bent their knees. The young lord chose one with his boot.
“Tell the edane I am direly wounded, but have apprehended the murderous fiend. He must send our physician and three men-at-arms. Tell them to bring a gelding knife.”
Denys near fainted. Bastien did not even blanch.
On any other night, I’d feel sorrier for the lively, handsome fellow who’d shared the dance with me. But faced with confinement, my own mutilation, and the sickness that would come upon me in the next hours without enchanted nivat, it was difficult not to envy him a quick death. Coals already smoldered in my belly, ready to take fire and consume my body and soul.
The constable waved at one of his henchmen. “Transfer the shackles from the thief to this sniveling wretch. I’ll alert Magistrate Maslin that we’ve two felons to brin
g before him in the morning.”
Yet again he bowed to the noble. “My Lord Felix, please to take a seat to preserve your strength. Yonder fellow Bek is a decent surgeon and can see to your wound.”
“A sop-house surgeon? Are you mad, constable? My father’s physician is a pureblood.” He shoved the slender Denys to his knees and spat on him. “You will inform Magistrate Maslin that he must deal with this murderous weasel this hour. I intend the wretch to spend a most unpleasant tenday in our dungeon before he dies.”
“Bas,” whispered Denys, fumbling at his clothes to cover his nakedness. “‘Twasn’t my fault. He tried to—”
The constable slapped the bruised young man in the mouth. “Silence, villain,” he snapped. “Thieving from this noble lord. Drawing his blood. Seems you’ve pissed your bed, eh? Now lie in it.”
As the henchman hobbled me with a length of rope, the constable shackled young Denys. His harshness was not feigned. Yet that singular moment unmasked had been unmistakable, so a person might hope Bastien was not so cursed righteous as he seemed. Alas, the world had taught me elsewise.
#
Magistrate Maslin could have been my father all over again. Squat, venom-tongued, and wholly unwilling to listen to argument or reason. Yet I’ll say he was a brave brute, not intimidated in the least by Lord Felix’s bluster, or perhaps he was simply enraged at being dragged out of bed near midnight.
Maslin ruled that Bastien’s two felons would remain confined in the cells until tenth hour of the morning, so that the official verdicts could be posted in Wroling’s square for the ten hours crown law specified. At that time Denys de Verte, tanner’s assistant, clearly guilty of attacking his better, would be turned over to the Edane of Wroling and his son Felix for their choice of punishment. To the young noble’s frothing frustration, that punishment excluded death, as “the young lord’s wounds were nowhere approaching mortal.”