by John Tristan
Amon edged forward on his seat, looking into the dark. The false night was quiet as a grave. “There’s nothing out there,” he said again, with a rising note of fear. Were they going to kill him here—or try?
Olem grunted a nasty laugh. “Your dam was a dragonhunter, wasn’t she, halfdead? Or was it your sire? You’d think you of all people would know how to survive when there’s ‘nothing there’.”
“I’m giving you one more chance before we knock your teeth out, Vraja,” Margo said. “Get. Out.”
He stepped down. Margo shoved him forward, into the grass—then, before he could react, launched a kick to the small of his back.
When he hit the ground the breath was knocked out of him. He rolled forward onto the dark grass and lay there a moment, looking up. Whatever burst of anger or pain he might have felt—and there was little; her kick had mostly surprised him—was erased by the feel of grass against his skin. It was cool and silky and wet with dew. It was the first time he had touched living grass.
The constables had clambered back onto the carriage, and with a strangled, “Hup!” Margo set the horsephaunt to a gallop. The metal wheels rattled on the old stones of the road, and then they were gone, vanished into the dark.
Chapter Five
It took Amon a few moments to adjust to the dark. He sat up on the grass, his head tilted toward the Tree. Its lights were blurred and dim above the Verdancy. I can make it back home, he told himself, trying not to think about how long it would take on foot. I can find my way back to the Rim easily enough if I keep walking away from the Tree...
A light was dancing in the dark, some twenty yards ahead of him. He scrambled to his feet, fists balling. “Who’s there?” His voice was hoarse and strangely small in the weird, vast space of the greenery.
The light bounced closer; it was a glowfruit, held in a gloved hand. The hand raised it to a familiar face: dark symmetry, ivory hair. Caedian tilted his head and looked up at Amon. His hair was tied back in a loose tail, and his clothes were plain and modest—mourning clothes, appropriate for Dragonfall.
His nose was still slightly askew, a tilted imperfection on his cuttingly perfect face. The sky had turned near thirty times since the night Amon had punched it out of joint.
Amon blinked at him. “Milord Caedian.”
“Milord Vraja.” The honorific did not sound a mockery, from his mouth. Amon could not tell if it was the light of the glowfruit, but there was something wan and drawn about him, as if he had not slept for too many nights. “I’ll hope you’ll pardon the theatrics with the constables, but the last time I headed into the Rim it didn’t end well for me.”
“Why—w-what—” Amon was furious to find himself stuttering, for the first time in years. He dug his nails into his palms and ran through the first five numbers of his counting song. “Respectfully, my lord,” he said then, with perfect pronunciation, “may I ask what is going on?”
Caedian grimaced and lowered the glowfruit. Its light was already fading; it must have been plucked long hours ago. “I’m sorry for all of this. It wouldn’t have been necessary, if...” He shook his head. “Never mind. The reason you are here is that I want to hire you.”
“To hire me?” Amon shook his head, disbelieving. “You know you don’t have to hire me, my lord. You simply have to command me, and I would be at your disposal.”
“As you will.” He smiled; it was a thin and strange little expression. “Then I am commanding you to work for me, Amon Vraja. How much does Madam Luba pay you, to serve as her guard?”
“Ten kings a night,” Amon answered promptly. “And meals.”
“And meals,” Caedian echoed in a kind of half whisper, and he shook his head. “Come. Follow me.”
He turned in the middle of the dark field and began to walk toward the trees. Amon plodded after him, arms swinging clumsily. It was the last thing he wanted to do, but an elf’s direct order could not be ignored.
He felt all out of place, tromping through living things. Of course, the lightvines that granted their glow to half the buildings of the Rim were alive, but they had been carefully tended by the Gardeners to serve their purpose—in a way, they were living machines. The forests of the Verdancy had been permitted, to a large extent, to grow free; they were the great green lung of the Last City, needed for nothing save air and elvish leisure. There was even a low buzz of insectile life in the air, sending unfamiliar crawling sensations up and down Amon’s spine.
He cleared his throat. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere more comfortable than this,” he said, looking back over his shoulder. His eyes glittered in the light of the glowfruit, purple as amethysts. “My—my family keeps an old place, nearby. It will be unoccupied. It isn’t far.”
Amon followed, silent, keeping his eyes on the fading light. Soon the thick undergrowth of the Verdancy thinned, and the forest opened into a small, well-kept meadow. He could see the Tree again, pressing up against the sky. The moss clinging to the flower-palaces near the apex of its canopy glowed like a star.
Caedian laughed softly. “Long live the light,” he whispered.
“What?”
“An old proverb,” he said. “You know, I asked my mother once if the stars we saw at night were painted on the Tree’s canopy. I was young enough then to think it was the canopy itself that hid us from the dragons, not the living magic that turns their eyes away from it.”
Amon said nothing; he had a sense the elf did not expect an answer. He seemed to be chattering to himself, more than to Amon—was it nerves, he wondered? What could an elf feel nervous of?
“Even if it was, though,” he went on, “I think we’d still have our windows. We cannot seem to live without starlight. We only hide the sun because it reminds us of our failures.” He lifted the glowfruit higher, squeezing the last bits of light from it in a pearly blaze. The meadow glowed gray-green in its light, and Amon saw a stone house on a low hill, like a miniature castle. “Here we are.”
Caedian made his way to the door, thick wood—real¬ wood, Amon saw wonderingly—set in a fairy-tale arch of pale stone. Amon paused a few steps behind him, his heart in his throat. What am I doing here? He heard Zoran’s voice in the back of his head, telling him to never disobey an elf, telling him that he did not need to take disrespect or hard curiosity from anyone...except an elf.
Regardless of what Zoran had told him, some deep instinct told him the safest, sanest thing would be to turn around and run out of the Verdancy—to keep running until he was back home in the Rim and forget the feel of living grass on his skin.
The door was half-open. Lightvines twisted across the ceiling inside, slowly building up a clear, cool glow. The windows were glass; the light shone through them in slanting beams. Caedian stood on the doorstep, the glowfruit discarded at his feet. “Well? Come in.”
Amon resisted the urge to ask him if that was an order and bowed his head a fraction. “As you wish.”
Caedian made a face. “Stop—stop acting as if you’re walking to lay your head down on the block, for the Great Mother’s sake! I told you, I want to hire you, not to put you on tribunal.”
With that, he went inside. Amon couldn’t linger on the doorstep for much longer—he had to make his choice, either way. Some choice, he thought. He forced himself to unclench his hands and stepped into the hall.
Caedian shut the door behind them. Amon was too busy staring. The house was big—as big as the entirety of the House of Dust, which on a busy night could hold forty or fifty patrons. Most of it was given over to a single grand room, its ceiling dripping with lightvines and glowfruit. Below, the floor was ancient stone, half covered with thick carpets.
It took Amon a moment to realize the carpets were made of real wool. Amon had only heard of those in old stories. The rumor was that the elves had a herd of sheep hidden somewhere in
the Verdancy, tended by a sect of Grieving Men whose mourning faith had led them to pluck out their own eyes—but, of course, that was only a rumor. These carpets looked old enough to have been passed from parent to child for generations, the patterns on them long faded into dusty blurs. The sheep that had been sheared for these were most likely all long dead.
Caedian slipped out of his shoes and slid his bare feet onto the carpets. From his look, Amon deduced he was expected to do the same, and he unlaced his boots. The carpet felt as strange on the soles of his feet as the grass had felt on his bare cheek, soft and yielding as old velvet.
Caedian padded ahead of him; the lightvines lit up the hall around him as he went. At the far edge of the room there was a fireplace, a bare semicircle of stone. He took out a small, leaf-wrapped parcel from a high shelf, then bent down and struck a steel against the stone. A small spark flickered, then caught: the parcel unfolded itself into a modest fire, burning with a low white flame.
“Sit down,” the elf said, indicating a wooden chair. Amon sat down gingerly—he was too big to fit in it comfortably and was nervous that it might shatter under his weight. Caedian pulled up a low footrest in front of him. The little fire was giving off heat now as well, and for the first time Amon realized that it had been chill outdoors. The Rim was always warm, with the buildings holding in the heat. Here in the Verdancy the air flowed more freely between the trees.
Caedian rubbed his hands together, warming them. He had taken off his gloves; underneath them, he wore plain golden rings on every finger. Amon couldn’t help but stare; the gleam of the gold in the white firelight was almost hypnotic.
“Amon Vraja.”
He looked up, into Caedian’s eyes. The fire danced in them like the sparklers they sometimes sold at street-corner fairs on some high holydays.
“I’ve gotten quite the reputation thanks to you.” His smile was a thin gleam; he pointed to his slightly off-center nose. “My mother has spread it about that I got into an ‘altercation’ with a real, living halfdead.”
Amon tensed, his mouth twisting. He wasn’t sure what to say to that.
“You really hurt me that night.” His voice was oddly casual, as if he were relating some long-distant anecdote. “You could probably have killed me. All because you thought I hurt one of your courtesans?”
Amon swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
Caedian made a quick, dismissive gesture. “That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?” It came out louder than he’d intended, and Caedian looked at him with a blankly startled kind of expression. The hairs on the back of Amon’s neck were standing up—all his instincts were still expecting some retribution from the elf, as if all this was an elaborate setup that would end with his torture or exile.
Caedian held out his hand and counted out his points on long, elegant fingers. “You are strong,” he said, “you are loyal, and you seem to have some consideration for those in your care.”
“In my care?” He laughed hollowly. “Begging your pardon, my lord, but that is a new one to me. I’m a guard, not some sort of knight. I’m paid to protect whores and drunkards.”
“And you do it well.” He drummed his fingers on his thigh. “Look, I’m trying to pay you a compliment.”
“For breaking your nose?”
Caedian rolled his eyes. “For doing your job. For doing it well enough for me to poach you away from Madam Luba. Great Mother’s sake, man, just say ‘thank you’ and be done with it.”
“Thank you,” Amon said, a sullen automaton.
Caedian hissed between his teeth and looked at the ceiling. For a moment Amon was convinced he was running through his own version of the counting song in his head—he almost smiled at that image.
“Look,” the elf said after a while, not looking at Amon, “I need someone who knows the Rim. I—I need someone to be my guide. And there is no one I know in the Rim except for you.”
“Your guide.” Amon’s voice was flat. Caedian could walk into the Rim and find nothing but people breaking their backs to help him, to show him anything that he might desire—some out of fear of an elf’s power, some simply for the chance to catch a glimpse of his uncanny beauty. He was sure of that. So why the hell would he need me as his guide?
“My guide...and my guard.”
His words on the night Amon had broken his nose came back to him, as he rose from a punch-drunk sleep on his bed in the rose room: I’m looking for someone.
Amon tilted his head. “You’re looking for your brother.”
He said nothing, but gave a fractional nod.
“You can get the constables to drop me in the middle of the Verdancy, without knowing why.” Amon cocked his head. “Why would you need anyone save them to find him?”
“Because...” He sighed. “Because picking one man from the Rim up is one thing, but searching for Seoras would involve my mother. And my mother is convinced this is just one of his ‘stunts’. That he’ll be along soon enough with some wild story, and I am wasting my time worrying about him. Not that it hasn’t happened before, but I have my reasons to believe this is different.”
“Still, why would he be in the Rim? Begging your pardon, but—”
“Stop saying that,” he snapped. “Stop begging my pardon, for the Great Mother’s sake.”
Amon drew back. “That is how I was taught to speak to elves, my lord.”
“Really.” It came out dry and mocking, until he understood Amon was telling the truth. He shook his head. “Who taught you that?”
“Someone who valued my life.”
“Do you truly think that an elf would have you executed for not saying ‘begging your pardon’?”
Amon shook his head. “But showing respect can only help.”
“Well, the best way you may show your respect to me is by stopping that kind of nonsense at once.”
He raised his eyebrows. “As you wish, my lord.”
Caedian growled something under his breath, too low for Amon to catch, then looked him straight in the eyes. Something in his scrutiny made Amon want to squirm—he felt pinned and examined by Caedian’s gaze. “I have reason to believe my brother is in the Rim because there is nowhere else he could hide so well.”
“We’d know an elf though. Even in the darkest parts.”
Caedian was silent for a long while—long enough for Amon to start becoming too aware of his own breath, his heartbeat, filling the room. “Perhaps. Or perhaps not. I can pay you whatever you wish, you know, or provide other incentives. Larger quarters—a house in the Verdancy, perhaps. Care from my personal physician, should you need it...” His voice trailed off, and suddenly his eyes were a touch unsure.
Amon shifted on the chair. Its wooden arms felt as if they were penning him in. “My health is fine.”
“The halfdeath—”
“The halfdeath takes life, not health.” He let out a slow breath. “How old do I look to you?”
His mouth twitched. “I am sure I could find the day of your birth in our archives.”
“That isn’t what I asked, my lord.”
“Fine. But I am no good at estimating the ages of humans.” Caedian leaned back, considering. “Thirty-five, forty, perhaps. Maybe a little older.”
“I am twenty-seven. But my body might as well be forty. By the time I’m forty, I’ll look a dotard. By the time I’m fifty, I’ll be dead. It will be an old man’s disease that kills me. But right now? Except for my ‘age’, I am in fine condition—better, perhaps. Halfdead are stronger, faster than living men. There is nothing wrong with me.”
“Except for the rages.”
He looked down at his hands—his big, gray hands with their black, bitten-down nails. “You know of those.”
“Yes.”
His hands tensed into loose fists
. “And you still want me as your guide and guard?”
“Even taking your...condition into consideration, you are my best option.”
“I thought elves could have anything they wanted. If I’m your best option, you don’t have many good ones.”
“No.” He looked toward the flickering fire. He seemed younger in profile, his cutting beauty softened by the light. “No, I suppose I don’t.”
Chapter Six
On the night after Dragonfall, with the stars showing overhead, Amon found himself standing outside a dingy music hall at the junction of two narrow streets with a gaggle of partyers clustered near the door, waiting for the guard there to let them in.
Here, Rimdwellers mingled easily with greenfolk from the Verdancy. Most of them were young, and all were better dressed than him. Some were slumming farmhands, or craft-apprentices given leave for the night; there might even have been a few apprentice Gardeners among them, privileged and preening. For tonight, though, it didn’t matter if they were beggars or gentry. The music hall was open to all comers...as long as they looked good enough and had some kings to spare.
The crowd was packed tight from end to end, but in the middle—where Amon and Caedian stood—there was a circle of respectful space. Caedian might have been incognito, but Amon couldn’t conceal his own peculiar privilege. People always gave space to a halfdead.
Amon looked down at his unlikely companion, resisting the urge to shake his head. With his pointed ears and cutting beauty hidden underneath his hood, and his face dirtied with the artistic care of an aging whore applying their makeup, Caedian could pass for someone who wasn’t an elf—but he couldn’t quite erase the fact that he was the most beautiful man there by far. If he hadn’t been accompanied by a hulking brute of a halfdead, Amon guessed no few of the people in the line would have already fallen over themselves trying to secure a dance from him once they entered.
Maybe I’ll dance with him. See how they like that.