Blackguards

by J. M. Martin

  The girl said nothing but he could smell her fear and her grief, not for herself but for her brother who they both knew must be dead.

  The house smelled of fermenting bean paste. Normally it would have made him feel hungry but now it nauseated him.

  “Killed by the guards outside the wall,” the older brother said when he returned. “Better than being captured.” He had changed from his town clothes into a dull-colored jacket and leggings like that of a farmer, but he carried his bow and a quiver of arrows. “I am going into the country for a while.”

  “Is Father safe?”

  “He was discovered and arrested.”

  The two Muto men looked at each other in disbelief.

  “How…?” said one.

  “It is not possible,” murmured the other, his voice petulant. Jiro could see how slow and inflexible they had become. They thought they were invulnerable; they thought they could outwit everyone, but now Otori had appeared like a fox in a flock of ducks, and soon they would all be headless.

  “You are not safe here,” the older Muto master said. “It seems he has been informed about every house and its secrets.”

  “Someone has betrayed us,” said the girl. “Someone from the Tribe.” Her face was contorted with fury. “Wasn’t he close to your family, the Muto, in the Middle Country?”

  “Save the accusations for later,” the older brother said. “I will deal with Otori.” He embraced Jiro, an action so unusual Jiro feared it meant they would never meet again.

  “He has offered to spare anyone under the age of sixteen,” the younger Muto master said, his eyes on his own son.

  “I would sooner kill them myself.” The older brother spoke as if he were already the head of the Kikuta family, but he would die three days later and the following day his father would be hanged.

  The older Muto master took poison, the younger fled with his son to the east.

  “Your brother took a shot at him but Otori heard the bowstring,” the girl said to Jiro. “His horse, who is as cunning as he is, heard it too. I could have told your brother that. Not that he would have listened to a girl. Now he’s dead—he took poison.”

  Better than being captured.

  “I suppose that means you are the last of your family,” she said. “I wonder if I am the last of mine.”

  I am the Kikuta Master, he thought. It brought him not the slightest shred of consolation.

  They had moved from house to house, from wells to lofts, escaping the slaughter that took place in their wake. Even their ruthless upbringing could not inure them to the shock of witnessing the extermination of their kin. He saw in her his own blank eyes, dulled wits, and numbed limbs. On their last night she crawled into his arms. At dawn he traced the Kuroda tattoos of the five poisonous creatures that covered her back; snake, scorpion, centipede, lizard, toad. She took her hands in his and pressed her lips to the line across his palms that marked him as Kikuta.

  “We’ll be married,” he said dreamily. “We’ll start again, a new family of our own, maybe in one of the other islands, free of the Tribe.”

  “No one is ever free of the Tribe,” she replied.

  Even as she spoke they heard Otori’s guards breaking down the doors.

  That was the moment when they should have bitten into the poison capsules, but neither of them did. Jiro waited to see if the girl would, and then he would follow, but she didn’t. Perhaps she was waiting to see if he would. Then it was too late. Their bodies wanted to live and be joined again. Desire betrayed them into hope.

  So they were brought into Otori’s presence alive and forced to their knees, their mouths held open with sticks and cords. He, The Dog, extracted the poison with gentle, Kikuta marked hands.

  He had never been inside the castle before. There were fleeting glimpses of luxury in the cypress wood floors, the woven wall hangings, a smell of sandalwood, but the room they were taken into was unadorned, white walled, like a training hall. He knew instinctively that was what it was, and that Lord Otori, his Kikuta relative, trained here. And that The Dog could take on invisibility and not be perceived by any of them. And that he heard now the same soundscape that Jiro did, the tread of guards on the walls, street cries from the town, horses neighing in the water meadows, the surge of the tide against the rocks in the bay, just as he had heard the chock of the bowstring drawn by Jiro’s older brother.

  Jiro had expected him to be older, more brutal, more like a demon; this man was not much older than his brother, and there was a resemblance. You could see he was from the same family, perhaps a distant cousin. But he had an unexpected lightness to him, a dazzling, multi-faceted quality, very different from the dour single-mindedness that was demanded of the Tribe.

  There were two other men, the senior retainer Sugita Haruki whom he knew by sight, and another man who looked like a monk, though he was dressed like a warrior. But it was Otori himself who loosened the cords that bound their wrists. He studied them both, saying nothing.

  “So you are the last two,” he said finally, with no air of pleasure or triumph, but something more akin to sorrow. “I will give you the choice I gave your relatives. You will renounce the Tribe and serve me, or you can die by poison or the sword.”

  He gestured towards a small table where the wax tablets had been placed in a celadon bowl. Next to the bowl lay a short sword with an unadorned handle and a blade so sharp it was almost transparent.

  When neither of them replied he went on. “You are both young. You will find working for me has many benefits and rewards. Your talents, which I know are considerable, will be respected and put to use.”

  “Against the Tribe?” the girl said, her voice tiny and defiant.

  “If I am to rule the Three Countries, and I intend to, I have to break the Tribe.” He said it calmly, without vindictiveness, and smiled at them.

  How did we misjudge him so? Jiro thought. Why did we take him for a weakling? The gentle demeanor, he saw, masked a complete ruthlessness. This would be a man worth serving. It would not be a betrayal: he was, after all, Kikuta. If he commands me, I must obey.

  He felt desire to live flood through him. Never had the flow of his breath, the surge of his blood, seemed so precious. He looked up and into Otori’s eyes, holding his gaze for a moment, before wrenching his own away, fearing the sleep the Kikuta could deliver. Certainly The Dog would possess that skill as he possessed all the others.

  “They call you Jiro, don’t they?” The Dog leaned towards him.

  “Lord Otori,” Sugita said in warning, taking a step forward.

  The Dog gestured him to stay back.

  “I already have a young man called Jiro in my service,” he said. “He is about the same age as you, but of course not with the same talents. I need young people like you. Swear allegiance to me. I will give you your own name. “His voice was compelling and calm.

  Jiro felt a weight lift from his shoulders as he drew breath to speak. His new life stretched before him. But with a movement of incredible swiftness, taking even Otori by surprise, the girl grasped the knife and stabbed herself in the throat. The blood, shockingly bright, vermilion, sprayed across his face and threw a splashed pattern against the white wall.

  Jiro looked again at The Dog, saw the regret and pity in his eyes and felt tears spring into his own for everything that might have been. The girl reached towards him even as her eyes glazed. The sword fell from her hands into his.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and used the blade before regret could unman him.

  “Believe me, so am I,” said The Dog, the last words Jiro heard before his sharp hearing finally failed, and his spirit fled after hers into the realm of the dead.

  The Lord Collector

  Anthony Ryan

  The following story takes place in the same world as my novel Blood Song, the first volume in the Raven’s Shadow trilogy. I wrote it because I wanted to more fully explore characters who appear in Blood Song and the sequels Tower Lord and Queen of Fire. Rea
ders familiar with my work are sure to recognize a certain pale-eyed, raspy voiced Sword Master of the Sixth Order and those curious as to the origins of the Tower Lord of the Southern Shore will find answers here. The tale takes place at the mid-point of the timeline described in Blood Song, a time when King Janus, with typical ruthlessness, is in the process of further consolidating his grip on the Unified Realm.

  ~

  “Where are they, Varesh?”

  Varesh Baldir was a tall man, somewhere past his fortieth year, thickset with a copious unkempt beard that partly concealed the weathered features common to those who eked a living from the shore. His heavy brows furrowed as he stared at Jehrid, eyes lit mostly with hate and fury, but also betraying a momentary flicker of fear.

  “We counted near two score corpses on the beach after you lured that freighter to its death,” Jehrid continued, sensing a fractional advantage. “I know the code as well as you. Blood pays for blood.”

  Varesh took a deep breath, closing his eyes and turning his face out towards the sea, hate and fear fading as his brow softened under the salted wind. After a moment he opened his eyes and turned back to Jehrid, mouth set in a hard, unyielding line, and his tattooed fists bunched, jangling the manacles on his meaty wrists.

  Silence is the only law, Jehrid thought. First rule of the smuggler’s code, drilled into him over many an unhappy year. This is a waste of time.

  He sighed and moved closer to Nawen’s Maw, an unnatural bore-hole through the rocky overhang on which they stood. Varesh’s chain traced from his manacles to an iron brace set into the top of a stone resembling an upended pear, a wide rounded top narrowing to a flat base. It had been carved from the pale red sandstone that proliferated on the southern Asraelin shore and made the buildings here so distinctive. One of Jehrid’s first acts upon assuming his role had been to hire a mason to fashion the stones, insisting they be at least twice the weight of a man and shaped so as to allow them to be easily tipped into the maw. When complete, he had his men arrange them in a tidy row atop the overhang; a clear statement of intent. He had begun with twenty, now only five remained, soon to become four.

  Jehrid rested a boot on the stone, glancing down at the waves crashing on the rocks far below. The terns had already begun to gather, wings folding back as they plunged into the swell, eager for the fresh pickings below. This shore had ever been kind to scavengers. The diving birds were the only sign of the six men he had already consigned to the Maw, Varesh’s kin: four cousins, a brother, and a nephew. Last of the Stone Teeth, a brotherhood of smugglers and wreckers that had plagued this shore for more than three generations. Before kicking each boulder Jehrid had asked Varesh the same question, and each time the leader of the Stone Teeth had stood silent and watched his kin dragged to their deaths. Varesh’s only child, a daughter of notoriously vicious temper, had fallen to a crossbow bolt when Jehrid led his company into the smuggler’s den, a narrow crack in the maze of cliffs east of South Tower, crammed with sundry spoils looted from the Alpiran freighter they had enticed onto the rocks a month before. One of Varesh’s cousins had allowed wine to loosen his tongue upon visiting a brothel in town the previous night, and Jehrid had always found whores to be excellent informants.

  “My mother once told me a story of how the Maw got its name,” he told Varesh in a reflective tone. “Would you like to hear it?”

  “Your mother was a poxed bitch,” Varesh told him, voice quivering with rage. “Who whelped a traitor.”

  “It’s not natural, you see,” Jehrid went on, his tone unchanged. “Nawen, or Na Wen to give him his correct name, was captain and only survivor of a wrecked ship from the Far West. A lonely old fishwife took him in, though he was quite mad by all accounts. Every day he would come here and chip away at the cliff with hammer and chisel. Every day for twelve years until he had carved a perfect circular hole through this overhang. And when he was done…well, I assume you can guess what he did next.”

  Jehrid stiffened his leg, tilting the stone towards the maw. “No-one knows why he did it, for who can divine the mind of a madman? But my mother was wise, and judged it an act of revenge, a desire to leave the mark of man on the shore that wrecked his ship and killed his crew.”

  He gave Varesh a final questioning glance. “Life in the king’s mines isn’t much,” he said. “But it is life. I know the Stone Teeth allied with the Red Breakers to wreck that ship. Things must have come to a desperate pass to forge an alliance between hated enemies. Settle some old scores, Varesh. Tell me where their den is.”

  Varesh spat on the rocks at Jehrid’s feet and straightened his back. “If I find your mother in the Beyond…”

  Jehrid kicked the stone, sending it tumbling into the maw, the chain rattling over rock as it snapped taught. Varesh had time for only the briefest shout as he was drawn into the hole, bones cracking as he rebounded from the sides, followed by a despairing wail as he plummeted towards the crashing waves.

  “Make a note for the Royal Dispatches,” Jehrid said, turning to his Sergeant of Excise, a squat Nilsaelin recruited as much for his facility with letters as his skill with a crossbow. “Varesh Baldir, leader of the gang known as the Stone Teeth, executed this day with six of his cohorts. Execution carried out under the King’s Word by Jehrid Al Bera, Lord Collector of the King’s Excise. Append a list of the contraband we recovered, and be sure the men know I’ll check it against stores.”

  The sergeant gave a brisk nod, wisely keeping silent. Like most of those recruited to the Lord Collector’s service, he had quickly gained an appreciation for Jehrid’s intolerance of even the most petty theft. “You are paid twice the wage of the Realm Guard for a reason,” he had told their assembled ranks the morning he flogged a former Varinshold City Guard for helping himself to a single vial of redflower. “Greed will not be tolerated.”

  “Rider coming, my lord,” another Excise Man called, pointing to the north. The rider wore the uniform of a South Guard, a youthful recruit as many were these days. The new Tower Lord had been punctilious in enforcing the King’s order that his command be purged of the lazy and corrupt, though it left him in sore need of guardsmen.

  “Tower Lord’s compliments, Lord Al Bera,” the young guardsman said, reining in and bowing low in the saddle. “He requests your presence with all urgency.”

  “Another wreck?” Jehrid asked him.

  “No, my lord.” The guardsman straightened and gave a wary smile. “We have…visitors.”

  #

  Tower Lord Nohrin Al Modral greeted Jehrid with an affable nod as he entered the chamber but failed to rise from his plain, high-backed chair. Although they were technically of equal rank Jehrid took no offense at the absence of an honorary greeting. He had known this man as captain and, later, Lord Marshal throughout his years in the Realm Guard and was well acquainted with his former commander’s disdain for useless ceremony. Also, Al Modral was only two years shy of seventy and his legs not so sturdy these days.

  The plainness of his chair, and the mostly bare audience chamber where he received visitors, were a stark contrast to the previous incumbent. Former Tower Lord Al Serahl had maintained a richly decorated chamber and greeted visitors perched atop a tall, throne-like chair, so tall in fact he required a ladder to ascend it. He had been a small man, narrow of face with a prominent nose, and Jehrid recalled seeing a resemblance to a suspicious parrot the day he and Lord Al Modral had walked in six months before, unannounced and bearing a warrant of arrest adorned with the King’s seal. The full company of Realm Guard at their back had discouraged any unwise intervention from those South Guard present, despite the pleas of the unfortunate Al Serahl who screamed himself quite hoarse before tumbling from his lofty perch in a tangle of robes fashioned from the finest Alpiran silks. When Jehrid led him to the gallows, his clothing had been much more modest.

  “It seems we have occasion to celebrate, Lord Collector,” the Tower Lord said, gesturing at the three figures standing before him. “The Faith sees fit to le
nd aid to our cause.”

  Jehrid went to one knee before the Tower Lord before rising to survey the visitors. The tallest wore a sword on his back and the dark blue cloak of the Sixth Order, returning Jehrid’s scrutiny with impassive pale eyes. His closely cropped hair was flecked with gray at the temples, and his features had the leanness typical of the Faith’s deadly servants. Jehrid knew him from a best forgotten foray into Lonak territory, though he entertained no illusions the brother would remember the boy-soldier who stood staring in blank amazement as he cut down three Lonak warriors in as many seconds.

  “Brother Sollis, is it not?” Jehrid greeted the pale-eyed man with a bow. Deadliest blade in the Sixth Order, he pondered as Sollis inclined his head. Come south to battle smugglers. Does the King think so poorly of our efforts he begs aid from the Order?

  “This is Brother Lucin and Sister Cresia,” Sollis said in a dry rasp, nodding at his two companions, both wearing the dun colored robes of the Second Order. Brother Lucin was a thin, balding man somewhere past his fiftieth year. It seemed to Jehrid that his apparently serene expression was somewhat forced, his features tensed as if holding a mask in place. Sister Cresia seemed to be little more than sixteen years old, honey blonde hair tied back from youthful features, her slight form concealed within robes worn with evident discomfort. Unlike Lucin, she felt no need for a false air of serenity, returning Jehrid’s gaze with a barely suppressed scowl.

  Second Order, Jehrid mused inwardly. What use have we for missionaries here?

  “Our visitors come on a special errand, Lord Al Bera,” the Tower Lord went on. “Regarding the Alpiran vessel wrecked last month. I was explaining you had the matter well in hand. You have finished with the Stone Teeth, have you not?”