Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 116

by Neil Clarke

  Music was drifting from somewhere as she ducked beneath a flaking archway. A violinist, either tuning up or of execrable quality. Neither would have surprised her. Papers flapped and rustled upon a wall sprouting with moss, ill-printed bills exhorting the faithful citizenry to rise up against the tyranny of the Snake of Talins. Carcolf snorted. Most of Sipani’s citizens were more interested in falling over than rising up, and the rest were anything but faithful.

  She twisted about to tug at the seat of her trousers, but it was hopeless. How much do you have to pay for a new suit of clothes before you avoid a chafing seam just in the worst place? She hopped along a narrow way beside a stagnant section of canal, long out of use, gloopy with algae and bobbing rubbish, plucking the offending fabric this way and that to no effect. Damn this fashion for tight trousers! Perhaps it was some kind of cosmic punishment for her paying the tailor with forged coins. But then Carcolf was considerably more moved by the concept of local profit than that of cosmic punishment, and therefore strove to avoid paying for anything wherever possible. It was practically a principle with her, and her father always said that a person should stick to their principles—

  Bloody hell, she really was turning into her father.

  “Ha!”

  A ragged figure sprang from an archway, the faintest glimmer of steel showing. With an instinctive whimper, Carcolf stumbled back, fumbling her coat aside and drawing her own blade, sure that death had found her at last. The Quarryman one step ahead? Or was it Deep and Shallow, or Kurrikan’s hirelings. . . but no one else showed themselves. Only this one man, swathed in a stained cloak, unkempt hair stuck to pale skin by the damp, a mildewed scarf masking the bottom part of his face, bloodshot eyes round and scared above.

  “Stand and deliver!” he boomed, somewhat muffled by the scarf.

  Carcolf raised her brows. “Who even says that?”

  A slight pause, while the rotten waters slapped the stones beside them. “You’re a woman?” There was an almost apologetic turn to the would-be robber’s voice.

  “If I am, will you not rob me?”

  “Well . . . er . . . ” The thief seemed to deflate somewhat, then drew himself up again. “Stand and deliver anyway!”

  “Why?” asked Carcolf.

  The point of the robber’s sword drifted uncertainly. “Because I have a considerable debt to . . . that’s none of your business!”

  “No, I mean, why not just stab me and strip my corpse of valuables, rather than giving me the warning?”

  Another pause. “I suppose . . . I hope to avoid violence? But I warn you I am entirely prepared for it!”

  He was a bloody civilian. A mugger who had blundered upon her. A random encounter. Talk about chance being a bastard! For him, at least. “You, sir,” she said, “are a shitty thief.”

  “I, madam, am a gentleman.”

  “You, sir, are a dead gentleman.” Carcolf stepped forward, weighing her blade, a stride length of razor steel leant a ruthless gleam from a lamp in a window somewhere above. She could never be bothered to practice, but nonetheless she was far more than passable with a sword. It would take a great deal more than this stick of gutter trash to get the better of her. “I will carve you like—”

  The man darted forward with astonishing speed, there was a scrape of steel, and before Carcolf even thought of moving, the sword was twitched from her fingers and skittered across the greasy cobbles to plop into the canal.

  “Ah,” she said. That changed things. Plainly her attacker was not the bumpkin he appeared to be, at least when it came to swordplay. She should have known. Nothing in Sipani is ever quite as it appears.

  “Hand over the money,” he said.

  “Delighted.” Carcolf plucked out her purse and tossed it against the wall, hoping to slip past while he was distracted. Alas, he pricked it from the air with impressive dexterity and whisked his sword-point back to prevent her escape. It tapped gently at the lump in her coat.

  “What have you got . . . just there?”

  From bad to much, much worse. “Nothing, nothing at all.” Carcolf attempted to pass it off with a false chuckle, but that ship had sailed and she, sadly, was not aboard, any more than she was aboard the damn ship still rocking at the wharf for the voyage to Thond. She steered the glinting point away with one finger. “Now I have an extremely pressing engagement, so if—” There was a faint hiss as the sword slit her coat open.

  Carcolf blinked. “Ow.” There was a burning pain down her ribs. The sword had slit her open too. “Ow!” She subsided to her knees, deeply aggrieved, blood oozing between her fingers as she clutched them to her side.

  “Oh . . . oh no. Sorry. I really . . . really didn’t mean to cut you. Just wanted, you know . . . ”

  “Ow.” The item, now slightly smeared with Carcolf’s blood, dropped from the gashed pocket and tumbled across the cobbles. A slender package perhaps a foot long, wrapped in stained leather.

  “I need a surgeon,” gasped Carcolf, in her best I-am-a-helpless-woman voice. The Grand Duchess had always accused her of being over-dramatic, but if you can’t be dramatic at a time like that, when can you? It was likely she really did need a surgeon, after all, and there was a chance that the robber would lean down to help her and she could stab the bastard in the face with her knife. “Please, I beg you!”

  He loitered, eyes wide, the whole thing plainly gone further than he had intended. But he edged closer only to reach for the package, the glinting point of his sword still leveled at her.

  A different and even more desperate tack, then. She strove to keep the panic out of her voice. “Look, take the money, I wish you joy of it.” Carcolf did not, in fact, wish him joy, she wished him rotten in his grave. “But we will both be far better off if you leave that package!”

  His hand hovered. “Why, what’s in it?”

  “I don’t know. I’m under orders not to open it!”

  “Orders from who?”

  Carcolf winced. “I don’t know that either, but—”

  Kurtis took the packet. Of course he did. He was an idiot, but not so much of an idiot as that. He snatched up the packet and ran. Of course he ran. When didn’t he?

  He tore down the alleyway, heart in mouth, jumped a burst barrel, caught his foot and went sprawling, almost impaled himself on his own drawn sword, slithered on his face through a slick of rubbish, scooping a mouthful of something faintly sweet and staggering up, spitting and cursing, snatching a scared glance over his shoulder—

  There was no sign of pursuit. Only the mist, the endless mist, whipping and curling like a thing alive.

  He slipped the packet, now somewhat slimy, into his ragged cloak and limped on, clutching at his bruised buttock and still struggling to spit that rotten-sweet taste from his mouth. Not that it was any worse than his breakfast had been. Better, if anything. You know a man by his breakfast, his fencing master always used to tell him.

  He pulled up his damp hood with its faint smell of onions and despair, plucked the purse from his sword and slid blade back into sheath as he slipped from the alley and insinuated himself among the crowds, that faint snap of hilt meeting clasp bringing back so many memories. Of training and tournaments, of bright futures and the adulation of the crowds. Fencing, my boy, that’s the way to advance! Such knowledgeable audiences in Styria, they love their swordsmen there, you’ll make a fortune! Better times, when he had not dressed in rags, or been thankful for the butcher’s leftovers, or robbed people for a living. He grimaced. Robbed women. If you could call it a living. He stole another furtive glance over his shoulder. Could he have killed her? His skin prickled with horror. Just a scratch. Just a scratch, surely? But he had seen blood. Please, let it have been a scratch! He rubbed his face as though he could rub the memory away, but it was stuck fast. One by one, things he had never imagined, then told himself he would never do, then that he would never do again, had become his daily routine.

  He checked once more that he wasn’t followed, then slipped from the
street and across the rotting courtyard, the faded faces of yesterday’s heroes peering down at him from the newsbills. Up the piss-smelling stairway and around the dead plant. Out with his key, and he wrestled with the sticky lock.

  “Damn it, fuck it, shit it—Gah!” The door came suddenly open and he blundered into the room, nearly fell again, turned and pushed it shut, and stood a moment in the smelly darkness, breathing hard.

  Who would now believe he’d once fenced with the king? He’d lost. Of course he had. Lost everything, hadn’t he? He’d lost two touches to nothing and been personally insulted while he lay in the dust but, still, he’d measured steels with his August Majesty. This very steel, he realized, as he set it against the wall beside the door. Notched, and tarnished, and even slightly bent towards the tip. The last twenty years had been almost as unkind to his sword as they had been to him. But perhaps today marked the turn in his fortunes.

  He whipped his cloak off and tossed it into a corner, took out the packet to unwrap it and see what he had come by. He fumbled with the lamp in the darkness and finally produced some light, almost wincing as his miserable rooms came into view. The cracked glazing, the blistering plaster speckled with damp, the burst mattress spilling foul straw where he slept, the few sticks of warped furniture—

  There was a man sitting in the only chair, at the only table. A big man in a big coat, skull shaved to graying stubble. He took a slow breath through his blunt nose, and let a pair of dice tumble from his fist and across the stained table top.

  “Six and two,” he said. “Eight.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Kurtis’ voice was squeaky with shock.

  “The Quarryman sent me.” He let the dice roll again. “Six and five.”

  “Does that mean I lose?” Kurtis glanced over towards his sword, trying and failing to seem nonchalant, wondering how fast he could get to it, draw it, strike—

  “You lost already,” said the big man, gently collecting the dice with the side of his hand. He finally looked up. His eyes were flat as those of a dead fish. Like the fishes on the stalls at the market. Dead and dark and sadly glistening. “Do you want to know what happens if you go for that sword?”

  Kurtis wasn’t a brave man. He never had been. It had taken all his courage to work up to surprising someone else, being surprised himself had knocked the fight right out of him. “No,” he muttered, his shoulders sagging.

  “Toss me that package,” said the big man, and Kurtis did so. “And the purse.”

  It was as if all resistance had drained away. Kurtis had not the strength to attempt a ruse. He scarcely had the strength to stand. He tossed the stolen purse onto the table, and the big man worked it open with his fingertips and peered inside.

  Kurtis gave a helpless, floppy motion of his hands. “I have nothing else worth taking.”

  “I know,” the man said, as he stood. “I have checked.” He stepped around the table and Kurtis cringed away, steadying himself against his cupboard. A cupboard containing nothing but cobwebs, as it went.

  “Is the debt paid?” he asked in a very small voice.

  “Do you think the debt is paid?”

  They stood looking at one another. Kurtis swallowed. “When will the debt be paid?”

  The big man shrugged his shoulders, which were almost one with his head. “When do you think the debt will be paid?”

  Kurtis swallowed again, and he found his lip was trembling. “When the Quarryman says so?”

  The big man raised one heavy brow a fraction, the hairless sliver of a scar through it. “Have you any questions . . . to which you do not know the answers?”

  Kurtis dropped to his knees, his hands clasped, the big man’s face faintly swimming through the tears in his aching eyes. He did not care about the shame of it. The Quarryman had taken the last of his pride many visits before. “Just leave me something,” he whispered. “Just . . . something.”

  The man stared back at him with his dead fish eyes. “Why?”

  Friendly took the sword too, but there was nothing else of value. “I will come back next week,” he said.

  It had not been meant as a threat, merely a statement of fact, and an obvious one at that, since it had always been the arrangement, but Kurtis dan Broya’s head slowly dropped, and he began to shudder with sobs.

  Friendly considered whether to try and comfort him, but decided not to. He was often misinterpreted.

  “You should, perhaps, not have borrowed the money.” Then he left.

  It always surprised him that people did not do the sums when they took a loan. Proportions, and time, and the action of interest, it was not so very difficult to fathom. But perhaps they were prone always to overestimate their income, to poison themselves by looking on the bright side. Happy chances would occur, and things would improve, and everything would turn out well, because they were special. Friendly had no illusions. He knew he was but one unexceptional cog in the elaborate workings of life. To him, facts were facts.

  He walked, counting off the paces to the Quarryman’s place. One hundred and five, one hundred and four, one hundred and three . . .

  Strange how small the city was when you measured it out. All those people, and all their desires, and scores, and debts, packed into this narrow stretch of reclaimed swamp. By Friendly’s reckoning, the swamp was well on the way to taking large sections of it back. He wondered if the world would be better when it did.

  . . . seventy-six, seventy-five, seventy-four . . .

  Friendly had picked up a shadow. Pickpocket, maybe. He took a careless look at a stall by the way and caught her out of the corner of his eye. A girl with dark hair gathered into a cap and a jacket too big for her. Hardly more than a child. Friendly took a few steps down a narrow snicket and turned, blocking the way, pushing back his coat to show the grips of four of his six weapons. His shadow rounded the corner, and he looked at her. Just looked. She first froze, then swallowed, then turned one way, then the other, then backed off and lost herself in the crowds. So that was the end of that episode.

  . . . thirty-one, thirty, twenty-nine . . .

  Sipani, and most especially its moist and fragrant Old Quarter, was full of thieves. They were a constant annoyance, like midges in summer. Also muggers, robbers, burglars, cut-purses, cut-throats, thugs, murderers, strong-arm men, spivs, swindlers, gamblers, bookies, moneylenders, rakes, beggars, tricksters, pimps, pawnshop owners, crooked merchants, not to mention accountants and lawyers. Lawyers were the worst of the crowd, as far as Friendly was concerned. Sometimes it seemed that no one in Sipani made anything, exactly. They all seemed to be working their hardest to rip it from someone else.

  But then, Friendly supposed he was no better.

  . . . four, three, two, one, and down the twelve steps, past the three guards, and through the double doors into the Quarryman’s place.

  It was hazy with smoke inside, confusing with the light of colored lamps, hot with breath and chafing skin, thick with the babble of hushed conversation, of secrets traded, reputations ruined, confidences betrayed. It was as all such places always are.

  Two Northmen were wedged behind a table in the corner. One, with sharp teeth and long, lank hair, had tipped his chair all the way back and was slumped in it, smoking. The other had a bottle in one hand and a tiny book in the other, staring at it with brow well-furrowed.

  Most of the patrons Friendly knew by sight. Regulars. Some come to drink. Some to eat. Most of them fixed on the games of chance. The clatter of dice, the twitch and flap of the playing cards, the eyes of the hopeless glittering as the lucky wheel span.

  The games were not really the Quarryman’s business, but the games made debts, and debts were the Quarryman’s business. Up the twenty-three steps to the raised area, the guard with the tattoo on his face waving Friendly past.

  Three of the other collectors were seated there, sharing a bottle. The smallest grinned at him, and nodded, perhaps trying to plant the seeds of an alliance. The biggest puffed himself up and b
ristled, sensing competition. Friendly ignored them equally. He had long ago given up trying even to understand the unsolvable mathematics of human relationships, let alone to participate. Should that man do more than bristle, Friendly’s cleaver would speak for him. That was a voice that cut short even the most tedious of arguments.

  Mistress Borfero was a fleshy woman with dark curls spilling from beneath a purple cap, small eyeglasses that made her eyes seem large, and a smell about her of lamp oil. She haunted the anteroom before the Quarryman’s office at a low desk stacked with ledgers. On Friendly’s first day, she had gestured towards the ornate door behind her and said, “I am the Quarryman’s right hand. He is never to be disturbed. Never. You speak to me.”

  Friendly, of course, knew as soon as he saw her mastery of the numbers in those books that there was no one in the office, and that Borfero was the Quarryman, but she seemed so pleased with the deception that he was happy to play along. Friendly had never liked to rock boats unnecessarily. That’s how people end up drowned. Besides, it somehow helped to imagine that the orders came from somewhere else, somewhere unknowable and irresistible. It was nice to have an attic in which to stack the blame. Friendly looked at the door of the Quarryman’s office, wondering if there was an office, or if it opened on blank stones.

  “What was today’s take?” she asked, flipping open a ledger and dipping her pen. Straight to business without so much as a how do you do. He greatly liked and admired that about her, though he would never have said so. His compliments had a way of causing offence.

  Friendly slipped the coins out in stacks, then let them drop, one by one, in rattling rows by debtor and denomination. Mostly base metals, leavened with a sprinkling of silver.

  Borfero sat forward, wrinkling her nose and pushing her eyeglasses up onto her forehead, eyes seeming now extra small without them.

  “A sword, as well,” said Friendly, leaning it up against the side of the desk.