by J. M. Martin
Trying to get a better look, Najdan shifted his weight slightly—and Varilon said, "Stop!"
"Huh?" said the man.
Varilon tore himself from Najdan's grasp and stumbled forward in the dark. Najdan heard the two men collide. Then he heard a gasp, some scuffling, and the Valdan said, "Varilon? What are you doing out—never mind. I'm going back inside."
"No!"
This was the man, all right. And now the toren was directly involved. Oh, well. Nothing to be done about it.
Finish it quickly.
"Varilon, stop. It's over."
"But I love you!"
Najdan withdrew his yahr.
"Quiet!" snapped the Outlooker. "What if someone hears you?"
"I don't care!"
"Let go of me."
Najdan leaped forward, his yahr making a soft whooshing sound as he swung it at the Outlooker's head.
"No!" Varilon cried as the man grunted and fell to his knees. "Stop!"
"Quiet," Najdan ordered. So much for not attracting attention.
He struck the Outlooker again. The man fell to the ground and rolled onto his back, blood gushing from his broken nose as he groaned in disoriented pain.
"Stop!" Varilon flung himself between Najdan and the Outlooker, nearly getting hit by the swinging yahr. "Najdan, no!"
"Var…" The man lay gasping, blood flowing from his scalp. "V…V…"
"No, don't!" Varilon wailed as Najdan struck again. "I was wrong! I was wrong. Don't."
Najdan looked down at the unconscious, bloody young Outlooker, whose handsome face would be ruined even if he were spared now and managed to survive.
"Please, nooo! Stop!" Varilon begged.
But sparing the Valdan was no more Najdan's decision than coming here to kill him had been. With the death of an Outlooker on his head, Toren Varilon of Shevrar would be bound to Kiloran forever. It was what the waterlord wanted, and Najdan served his master—not a spurned lover who'd been too foolish to understand the difference between fantasizing about death and actually causing it.
Najdan struck twice more, finishing the job, then knelt and took the Valdan's purse. They had not yet been discovered, so perhaps the killing would, after all, be taken for a violent robbery.
And he knew now that Varilon would not be suspected, as long as they could get away from here quickly. Because both the toren and the Outlooker would have been very secretive about what was between them. Najdan minded his own business, but there were those in Sileria who'd kill two men over a thing like that—and even a fool like Varilon certainly knew it.
He dragged the weeping toren away from the corpse and into the dark before anyone else from the tavern came outside. He kept his pace fast, hauling the sobbing and disoriented young man with him. They traveled some distance from the body, and were shielded by the night, when Varilon yanked out of his grasp and turned on him.
"I told you to stop! How could you?" he cried. "What did you do?"
"I did what you asked," Najdan said. "This was the favor you purchased with your friendship."
"My friendship?" Varilon spat. "Do you think I'll be friends with—"
"Yes, I do," he said. "This deed was your choice, not ours. That you chose unwisely is your burden, not mine and not my master's. The bargain is made, and we have honored it. So will you. Because even you must know the consequences of betraying Kiloran."
"I don't want friends like you," Varilon said bitterly.
"Nonetheless, you have us now," said Najdan. "And you would do well to remember that in Sileria, a man's friends are always more dangerous than his enemies. Farewell, toren."
Najdan turned and left Varilon alone in the dark. He decided not to return to the cottage on the estate, in case the toren, in a fit of ill-advised vengeance, reported his deed to the Outlookers. With that possibility in mind, he thought it also best to be as far away from here as possible by dawn. This night had not gone smoothly, and there might be some complications ahead; but he thought that, overall, the waterlord would not be displeased with his work, and so Najdan got his bearings and, taking care not to be seen, headed north, in the general direction of home.
The Long Kiss
Clay Sanger
I have a special love for scoundrels.
Where the line between hero and villain gets blurry, anything is possible. That's what makes them such compelling characters. When you root for the bad guy you never know what you're going to get.
"The Long Kiss" is fundamentally a story about choices and consequences. Scoundrels by nature are well-versed in that equation. Staying ahead in that calculation is how they pay the bills, after all.
But sometimes ambition and deceit muddies the waters. Desire and desperation become perfect poisons. Duty and honor turn to guilt and wrath. Rising up and crumbling down, "The Long Kiss" is a tale where all of these collide in gold and blood.
~
Six ships, six months, and two thousand miles. That's how far Raddox Edorian, former Captain and sole survivor of the Blackfish, had to run until he finally felt safe. When he reached the City of Kos, nestled along a stretch of exotic eastern shore he couldn't pronounce, he thought that just maybe it was far enough.
Less than one in ten people here spoke his mother tongue. These people were a mix of Sundish and Pahji and other folk he was largely ignorant about. He couldn't tell them apart anyway. As far as Raddox was concerned, all the strange people that filled this howling city looked alike, and that meant they looked nothing like him. That suited him perfectly.
The aging mercenary stood head and shoulders taller than the average local. Men like him, burly pale-faced Westermen, were rare here which made them easy enough to spot in a crowd. It was those sort of people that held the price on Raddox's head. The people of Kos and all these other folk along the Sundish shores couldn't have cared less about him.
Haj'adann. That was the word he'd heard the locals use to describe men like him, westerners and northerners from Galadyr and beyond. He didn't suppose they meant it politely. It made him laugh.
The City of Kos was good. Loud, busy, full to bursting. Fragrant and exotic. There was music here he'd never heard before. Food he'd never tasted. Women he'd never had. He even saw a great gray beast with a wizened little man on its back and a coiling serpent for a nose. Yphant, the locals called it. It dropped great piles of shit in the streets and boys with wicker baskets would come along to collect the droppings. Raddox found that comical. Little sun-darkened men pulled on the yphant's great flapping ears with hooked sticks to steer the hulking beasts like mules.
Raddox even saw a great fat man in purple robes and a silly hat accompanied by a tiny and hairy man dressed in a set of clothes that were identical in every stitch. The little hairy man climbed all over the huge fat man and sat on his shoulder squawking and clapping like a court jester. The speechless little fool even had a tail like a beast.
The fat man and the little hairy man danced and twirled for coins, singing loud brassy songs as they tottered up and down the streets. Folk here seemed to appreciate their talents. Raddox was not so impressed. The fat man's language sounded like two goats humping.
Kos was perfect. It was the other side of the world in Raddox's estimation.
If he went any further east, he'd be circling the world back home, he thought.
And there, he was a dead man.
#
Raddox made himself at home in Kos and the days turned into weeks. Back home, the world was full of problems. Big problems. War. Namely a war that he himself had been paid to start. Those things were no longer Raddox's concern though. He had small problems. Like a keeping a belly full of wine that outclassed his tastes and getting a regular bathing by beautiful women. That included finding a whorehouse that suited his liking, which he did. Though they didn't call them whore houses here. They called them sunkiri damash, which he understood meant pleasure house, or near enough.
He learned quickly that Kosian pleasure houses weren't like whore hou
ses back home. They weren't dens for drunks and lechers. Here in Kos, visiting the pleasure houses was a classy, respectable pastime. Men of wealth and standing did that, and women too. Business was conducted. Deals were sealed. It was all very civilized. There was etiquette to be observed, or you'd find yourself in the street.
Raddox liked his wine and he liked his women, so he adapted.
On a jasmine-scented evening nine weeks after arriving in Kos, Raddox visited his favorite pleasure house, the Crimson Circle. He was still working on how to say the name in the local tongue, damnable and finicky as it was.
The madam, a smiling and polite hostess, always made him feel at home. She was aging, too old for his tastes if he was paying for it. She no longer worked the baths or the pillow rooms anyway, but she spoke his language. And she had a sense of humor. Raddox liked her.
She greeted Raddox with a kiss on each scruffy cheek and smiled.
"It is my Western Sun," she declared happily, taking him by the hand and leading him beyond the plush curtains into the parlor. "How do you fare this fine evening?"
"Well enough," Raddox replied. "I think I'm seeking Milaeka tonight."
The madam tisked. "Milaeka is not in the house tonight. But…there is a new girl."
Raddox frowned. He liked Milaeka best. She had talents he truly appreciated and was more round and voluptuous than many of these slender eastern girls.
"What's her name?" the expatriated mercenary asked.
The madam smiled. "Whatever you wish it to be."
"And what are her…. Talents?"
"Whatever you desire."
Raddox considered it, pondering the playful light dancing in the madam's eyes.
"I'll take her," he said at last.
"Shall we discuss the terms?"
Raddox laughed. "If she's worth it, she's worth it. And I can pay it." He was proud of that, of his wealth. Gold enough to last five lifetimes, bought by blood and betrayal. Pockets full of gold was the only thing he had left to be proud of, after all. Everything else about him was a disgrace.
"As you will," the madam said with a respectful bow.
Raddox caught something then. A shift in her eyes. A sense of tension, perhaps. Something not entirely warm and welcoming.
"What is it?" he asked plainly.
The madam realized then that he'd spotted her flicker of misgiving. She cleared her throat and composed herself.
"She is…very expensive."
Raddox laughed. "Then she damn well better be worth it!" he declared happily.
If there was a lie in her eyes, the raucous mercenary missed it. The madam took him upstairs and to the bath and the woman he desired.
#
The room was hot and steamy from the bath, rich with the scents of incense burning in nearby braziers and oils wafting up from the marble tub. Raddox promptly disrobed, hanging his clothes and sword belt over the back of a carved wooden bench. He would keep them close. Raddox was at ease, but not foolish.
The door on the opposite side of the chamber opened and the lithe, cat-like silhouette of a young woman came into view. Gliding weightlessly on tiny feet, she breezed into the room and bowed low before him.
She was young, very young. Bronze skinned, raven-haired, with dark, almond shaped eyes. Silk veils draped her shapely form, leaving little to the imagination. The girl was, as the madam had represented, stunning.
"What is your name?" Raddox asked her and hearing his voice, she rose from her low bow. There was non-comprehension in her dark smoldering eyes. "Your name, girl. What is it?"
She offered a small smile and another bow.
Raddox chuckled. "You don't speak a word of the Galatti, do ya?" Doe-eyed silence was her answer. That was good. It meant he could dispense with much of the etiquette and pleasantries. As elegant as Kosian pleasure houses were, they could learn a thing or two from the gritty sex stores that were the brothels back home.
She gave him a brilliant smile and motioned toward the large steaming bath. He nodded and stepped that way, sliding into the hot water with a relaxing sigh. With a few graceful movements, she disrobed and slid into the water beside him.
There she took up a scented sea sponge and rubbed it with a rind of pale pink soap. Once the sponge was rich with lather she began to meticulously bathe him.
Raddox almost liked this part best. It was soothing in a way that even the sex wasn't. She scrubbed and massaged his scarred, muscle-knotted arms and he closed his eyes, basking in the warmth.
"You're a damn sight better at this part than Milaeka," he commented after a bit.
The girl only looked back at him with sheepish, non-comprehending eyes. She said something in her own tongue, as if in apology, and continued to bathe him.
Raddox pondered that for a bit. Then he said, "I suppose…I suppose you can say things to a whore what don't speak your language you can't even say to a father-confessor, can't ya?"
The girl had no reply.
Raddox was quiet for a long while as she finished scrubbing and massaging him down. While he continued to soak his cares away, she left the bath and brought back a silver goblet and round-bellied flagon of wine. He drank without fear. The circle of runes tattooed around his neck had cost him a bloody fortune, but they protected him from poison, just as the little bald-headed Pahji mystic had promised. Raddox had even made him prove it, and sure enough, it was so.
He was a man with a price on his head after all. If he died from some assassin's poison with all that gold in his pockets, the bit he hadn't spent would do him no good. He'd paid it, just for the peace of mind of being able to eat and drink without wondering if every meal or cup was his last. As he filled his belly fearlessly with the little whore's wine, he deemed it, as he usually did, a price well paid.
Yes, if a man wanted Raddox Edorian dead, he'd have to earn it. With steel. And in that, Raddox was no easy kill. No easy kill at all.
He drank and he was in no hurry. He'd seen in the bath that all her parts were where they were supposed to be and he owned her for the night. She wasn't going anywhere and the rest of what he was after would be waiting for him when he was ready for it. So Raddox drank, drank until the wine made his face numb.
As he drank, his mood darkened.
"I'm a murderer," he said to her and a humorless smile twisted his mouth. "A murderer, and a killer, and a raper." Raddox laughed, a joyless sound. "I done worse than that, too."
She refilled his goblet, dutifully pretending to listen even though he knew she didn't understand the words.
"I remember this lad, Turro was his name. When we'd first hired him on, he comes to me back from some brothel one night. And he's covered in blood and he's crying like a babe. He says to me 'I done murder!' Like it was something…special. So I says to him 'Welcome, brother. Ain't we all.'"
At that, Raddox was quiet for a while. When he spoke next, his voice was grave and his eyes stared off into the distance well beyond the walls of the bath chamber.
"Back home, there's killin' and dyin' a plenty going on," he said. "I started a war. And boys is lining up to die in it now." He nodded. "Just like I was paid to do."
The girl refilled his goblet once more.
Raddox drank. He told her about it and she listened.
#
On the distant western edges of Outer Galadyr, there was always tension. Tension between the persistent growth of Imperial Galadyr and the native savages who dwelt there. Chief among them were a fierce and territorial people called the Tarqs. But between two kings reluctant to go to war with each other, there was peace, fragile as it might have been.
There were those, however, who felt the peace an unnatural, and unprofitable, condition. And such men set out to change the course of things in Outer Galadyr. Captain Raddox Edorian and the Blackfish were one such cat's paw thrown secretly into the gears by powerful and ambitious men.
Their mission was clandestine, as was their employer secret, known only to Captain Raddox himself and he kept that kn
owledge close and quiet.
Raddox and the Blackfish were to start a war with the Tarqs.
Making enemies was the sort of job the Blackfish excelled at. Raddox and his boys took to the wilds of Outer Galadyr to see it done and to bathe in the gold that would come with their success.
Not long after arriving in the frontier, with autumn in full flame, Raddox's scouts picked up the trail of one of the Tarq's savage princes. The Captain smelled the opportunity they'd been waiting for. He gathered eighty of his men and set out after the barbarian prince and his dozen riders.
Raddox and his vanguard caught up to the savages at Bitter Ford along the River Toreg.
The Tarqish Prince and his riders were watering their horses and stretching their saddle weary legs when Raddox and his van rode into view across the way. The Tarqs were skittish, seeing so many riders beneath a banner of Galadyr riding up on them in the wild. The savages held their ground and went about the business of watering their mounts and preparing to cross the river. They would yield the ford when they were done, but they would not be run off by outlanders.
"What do you think?" young Turro asked nervously. His horse, smelling the Tarqs across the ford, stamped and whickered.
Raddox smiled. "I think…we're about to get paid." He nodded to the rear of the van to Old Oliver, who took a dozen men and cantered off south down the flank, disappearing through the blazing yellow birches and alders. The remainder of Raddox's van held their ground at the top of the ford.
The Tarqs watched the company across the river with suspicious eyes. A member of their party ran back to his Prince, who was a tall lanky fellow with red hair and beard in long banded braids. He was stripped to the waist and knelt washing beside the stream.
Steering his horse down the bank, Raddox rode out to midstream, slowly and deliberately toward the Tarqs. The Prince and his men withdrew from the water's edge reaching for weapons, the Prince himself throwing a flowing shirt of iron mail back over his head as he moved beside his horse.
"Oy!" Raddox called out across the way. "Do any of you sorry cunts speak my language?" The scroungy mercenary smiled when the Prince himself bristled. "Are you son of the Graymantle King? Prince Vyan?"