Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 116

by Neil Clarke

  “Seems a little luggage for such a lot of fuss,” said Fallow, wrinkling his nose, and he tossed a purse onto the table with that lovely clink of money. Old Green clawed it up and clawed it open and straight off set to counting it.

  “Where’s your girl Kiam?” asked Fallow. “Where’s little Kiam, eh?”

  Old Green’s shoulders stiffened but she kept counting. She could’ve counted through a storm at sea. “Out working.”

  “When’s she getting back? I like her.” Fallow came a bit closer, voice going hushed. “I could get a damn fine price for her.”

  “But she’s my best earner!” said Green. “There’s others you could take off my hands. How’s about that lad Sifkiss?”

  “What, the sour-face brought the luggage?”

  “He’s a good worker. Strong lad. Lots of grit. He’d pull a good oar on a galley, I’d say. Maybe a fighter, even.”

  Fallow snorted. “In a pit? That little shit? I don’t think so. He’d need some whipping to pull an oar, I reckon.”

  “Well? They got whips don’t they?”

  “Suppose they do. I’ll take him if I must. Him and three others. I’m off to the market in Westport tomorrow week. You pick, but don’t give me none o’ your dross.”

  “I don’t keep no dross,” said Old Green.

  “You got nothing but dross, you bloody old swindler. And what’ll you tell the rest o’ your brood, eh?” Fallow put on a silly la-de-da voice. “That they’ve gone off to be servants to gentry, or to live with the horses on a farm, or adopted by the fucking Emperor of Gurkhul or some such, eh?” Fallow chuckled, and Old Green had a sudden urge to make that knife of hers available, but she’d better sense these days, all learned the hard way.

  “I tell ’em what I need to,” she grunted, still working her fingers around the coins. Bloody fingers weren’t half as quick as they once were.

  “You do that, and I’ll come back for Kiam another day, eh?” And Fallow winked at her.

  “Whatever you want,” said Green, “whatever you say.” She was bloody well keeping Kiam, though. She couldn’t save many, she wasn’t fool enough to think that, but maybe she could save one, and on her dying day she could say she done that much. Probably no one would be listening, but she’d know. “It’s all there. Package is yours.”

  Fallow picked up the luggage and was out of that stinking fucking place. Reminded him too much of prison. The smell of it. And the eyes of the children, all big and damp. He didn’t mind buying and selling ’em, but he didn’t want to see their eyes. Does the slaughterman want to look at the sheep’s eyes? Maybe the slaughterman don’t care. Maybe he gets used to it. Fallow cared too much, that’s what it was. Too much heart.

  His guards were lounging by the front door and he waved them over and set off, walking in the middle of the square they made.

  “Successful meeting?” Grenti tossed over his shoulder.

  “Not bad,” grunted Fallow, in such a way as to discourage further conversation. Do you want friends or money? he’d once heard Kurrikan say, and the phrase had stuck with him.

  Sadly, Grenti was by no means discouraged. “Going straight over to Kurrikan’s?”

  “Yes,” said Fallow, sharply as he could.

  But Grenti loved to flap his mouth. Most thugs do, in the end. All that time spent doing nothing, maybe. “Lovely house, though, ain’t it, Kurrikan’s? What do you call those columns on the front of it?”

  “Pilasters,” grunted one of the other thugs.

  “No, no, I know pilasters, no. I mean to say the name given to that particular style of architecture, with the vine-leaves about the head there?”

  “Rusticated?”

  “No, no, that’s the masonry work, all dimpled with the chisel, it’s the overall design I’m discussing—hold up.”

  For a moment, Fallow was mightily relieved at the interruption. Then he was concerned. A figure was occupying the fog just ahead. Occupying the hell out of it. The beggars and revelers and scum scattered round these parts had all slipped out of their way like soil around the plough ’til now. This one didn’t move. He was a tall bastard, tall as Fallow’s tallest guard, with a white coat on, hood up. Well, it weren’t white no more. Nothing stayed white long in Sipani. It was gray with damp and black-spattered about the hem.

  “Get him out of the way,” he snapped.

  “Get out of the fucking way!” roared Grenti.

  “You are Fallow?” The man pulled his hood back.

  “It’s a woman,” said Grenti. And indeed it was, for all her neck was thickly muscled, her jaw angular, and her red hair clipped close to her skull.

  “I am Javre,” she said, raising her chin and smiling at them. “Lioness of Hoskopp.”

  “Maybe she’s a mental,” said Grenti.

  “Escaped from that madhouse up the way.”

  “I did once escape from a madhouse,” said the woman. She had a weird accent, Fallow couldn’t place it. “Well . . . it was a prison for wizards. But some of them had gone mad. A fine distinction, most wizards are at least eccentric. That is beside the point, though. You have something I need.”

  “That so?” said Fallow, starting to grin. He was less worried now. One, she was a woman, two, she obviously was a mental.

  “I know not how to convince you, for I lack the sweet words, it is a long-standing deficiency. But it would be best for us all if you gave it to me willingly.”

  “I’ll give you something willingly,” said Fallow, to sniggers from the others.

  The woman didn’t snigger. “It is a parcel, wrapped in leather, about . . . ” she held up one big hand, thumb and forefinger stretched out. “Five times the length of your cock.”

  If she knew about the luggage, she was trouble. And Fallow had no sense of humor about his cock, to which none of the ointments had made the slightest difference. He stopped grinning. “Kill her.”

  She struck Grenti somewhere around the chest, or maybe she did, it was all a blur. His eyes popped wide and he made a strange whooping sound and stood there frozen, quivering on his tiptoes, sword half-way drawn.

  The second guard—a Union man, big as a house—swung his mace at her, but it just caught her flapping coat. An instant later there was a surprised yelp and he was flying across the street upside down and crashing into the wall, tumbling down in a shower of dust, sheets of broken plaster dropping from the shattered brickwork on top of his limp body.

  The third guard—a nimble-fingered Osprian—whipped out a throwing knife, but before he could loose it, the mace twittered through the air and bounced from his head. He dropped soundlessly, arms outstretched.

  “They are called Anthiric columns.” The woman put her forefinger against Grenti’s forehead and gently pushed him over. He toppled and lay there on his side in the muck, still stiff, still trembling, still with eyes bulgingly focused on nothing.

  “That was with one hand.” She held up the other big fist, and had produced from somewhere a sheathed sword, gold glittering on the hilt. “Next I draw this sword, forged in the Old Time from the metal of a fallen star. Only six living people have seen the blade. You would find it extremely beautiful. Then I would kill you with it.”

  The last of the guards exchanged a brief glance with Fallow, then tossed his axe away and sprinted off.

  “Huh,” said the woman, with a slight wrinkling of disappointment about her red brows. “Just so you know, if you run I will catch you in . . . ” She narrowed her eyes and pushed out her lips, looking Fallow appraisingly up and down. The way he might have appraised the children. He found he didn’t like being looked at that way. “About four strides.”

  He ran.

  She caught him in three, and he was suddenly on his face with a mouthful of dirty cobblestone and his arm twisted sharply behind his back.

  “You’ve no idea who you’re dealing with, you stupid bitch!” He struggled but her grip was iron, and he squealed with pain as his arm was twisted even more sharply.

  “It
is true, I am no high thinker.” Her voice showed not the slightest strain. “I like simple things well done and have no time to philosophize. Would you like to tell me where the parcel is, or shall I beat you until it falls out?”

  “I work for Kurrikan!” he gasped out.

  “I’m new in town. Names work no magic on me.”

  “We’ll find you!”

  She laughed. “Of course. I am no hider. I am Javre, First of the Fifteen. Javre, Knight Templar of the Golden Order. Javre, Breaker of Chains, Breaker of Oaths, Breaker of Faces.” And here she gave him a blinding blow on the back of the head which, he was pretty sure, broke his nose against the cobbles and filled the back of his mouth with the salt taste of blood. “To find me, you need only ask for Javre.” She leaned over him, breath tickling at his ear. “It is once you find me that your difficulties begin. Now, where is that parcel?”

  A pinching sensation began in Fallow’s hand. Mildly painful to begin with, then more, and more, a white hot burning up his arm that made him whimper like a dog. “Ah, ah, ah, inside pocket, inside pocket!”

  “Very good.” He felt hands rifling through his clothes, but could only lie limp, moaning as the jangling of his nerves gradually subsided. He craned his neck around to look up at her and curled back his lips. “I swear on my fucking front teeth—”

  “Do you?” As her fingers found the hidden pocket and slid the package free. “That’s rash.”

  Javre pressed finger against thumb and flicked Fallow’s two front teeth out. A trick she had learned from an old man in Suljuk, and, as with so many things in life, all in the wrist. She left him hunched in the road, struggling to cough them up.

  “The next time we meet, I will have to show you the sword!” she called out as she strode away, wedging the package down behind her belt. Goddess, these Sipanese were weaklings. Was there no one to test her anymore?

  She shook her sore hand out. Probably her fingernail would turn black and drop off, but it would grow back. Unlike Fallow’s teeth. And it was scarcely the first fingernail she had lost. Including that memorable time she had lost the lot and toenails too in the tender care of the Prophet Khalul. Now there had been a test. For a moment, she almost felt nostalgic for her interrogators. Certainly she felt nostalgic for the feeling of shoving their chief’s face into his own brazier when she escaped. What a sizzle he had made!

  But perhaps this Kurrikan would be outraged enough to send a decent class of killer after her. Then she could go after him. Hardly the great battles of yesteryear, but something to while away the evenings.

  Until then, Javre walked, swift and steady with her shoulders back. She loved to walk. With every stride, she felt her own strength. Every muscle utterly relaxed, yet ready to turn the next step in a split instant into mighty spring, sprightly roll, deadly strike. Without needing to look, she felt each person about her, judged their threat, predicted their attack, imagined her response, the air around her alive with calculated possibilities, the surroundings mapped, the distances known, all things of use noted. The sternest tests are those you do not see coming, so Javre was the weapon always sharpened, the weapon never sheathed, the answer to every question.

  But no blade came darting from the dark. No arrow, no flash of fire, no squirt of poison. No pack of assassins burst from the shadows.

  Sadly.

  Only a pair of drunk Northmen wrestling outside Pombrine’s place, one of them snarling something about the bald boss. She paid them no mind as she trotted up the steps, ignoring the several frowning guards, who were of a quality inferior even to Fallow’s men, down the hallway and into the central salon, complete with fake marble, cheap chandelier, and profoundly unarousing mosaic of a lumpy couple fucking horse-style. Evidently the evening rush had yet to begin. Whores of both sexes and one Javre was still not entirely sure about lounged bored upon the overwrought furniture.

  Pombrine was busy admonishing one of his flock for overdressing, but looked up startled when she entered. “You’re back already? What went wrong?”

  Javre laughed full loud. “Everything.” His eyes widened, and she laughed louder yet. “For them.” And she took his wrist and pressed the parcel into his hand.

  Pombrine gazed down at that unassuming lump of animal skin. “You did it?”

  The woman thumped one heavy arm about his shoulders and gave them a squeeze. He gasped as his bones creaked. Without doubt she was of exceptional size, but even so the casual strength of it was hardly to be believed. “You do not know me. Yet. I am Javre, Lioness of Hoskopp.” She looked down at him and he had an unpleasant and unfamiliar sensation of being a naughty child helpless in his mother’s grasp. “When I agree to a challenge, I do not shirk it. But you will learn.”

  “I keenly anticipate my education.” Pombrine wriggled free of the crushing weight of her arm. “You did not . . . open it?”

  “You told me not to.”

  “Good. Good.” He stared down, the smile half-formed on his face, hardly able to believe it could have been this easy.

  “My payment, then.”

  “Of course.” He reached for the purse.

  She held up one calloused hand. “I will take half in flesh.”

  “In flesh?”

  “Isn’t that what you pedal here?”

  He raised his brows. “Half would be a great quantity of flesh.”

  “I get through it. And I mean to stay a while.”

  “Lucky us,” he muttered.

  “I’ll take him.”

  “An excellent choice, I—”

  “And him. And him. And her.” Javre rubbed her rough palms together. “She can get the lads warmed up, I am not paying to wank anyone off myself.”

  “Naturally not.”

  “I am a woman of Thond, and have grand appetites.”

  “So I begin to see.”

  “And for the sun’s sake, someone draw me a bath. I smell like a heated bitch already, I dread to imagine the stink afterward. I will have every tom cat in the city after me!” And she burst out laughing again.

  One of the men swallowed. The other looked at Pombrine with an expression faintly desperate as Javre herded them into the nearest room.

  “. . . you, remove your trousers. You, get the bandages off my tits. You would scarcely credit how tightly I have to strap this lot down to get anything done . . . ”

  The door snapped mercifully shut.

  Pombrine seized Scalacay, his most trusted servant, by the shoulder and drew him close.

  “Go to the Gurkish temple off the third canal with all haste, the one with the green marble pillars. Do you know it?”

  “I do, master.”

  “Tell the priest that chants in the doorway that you have a message for Ishri. That Master Pombrine has the item she was asking after. For Ishri, do you understand?”

  “For Ishri. Master Pombrine has the item.”

  “Then run to it!”

  Scalacay dashed away, leaving Pombrine to hurry to his office with hardly less haste, the package clutched in one sweaty hand. He fumbled the door shut and turned the key, the five locks closing with a reassuring metallic clatter.

  Only then did he allow himself to breathe. He placed the package reverently upon his desk. Now he had it, he felt the need to stretch out the moment of triumph. To weigh it down with the proper gravitas. He went to his drinks cabinet and unlocked it, took his grandfather’s bottle of Shiznadze from the place of honor. That man had lived his whole life waiting for a moment worthy of opening that bottle. Pombrine smiled as he reached for the corkscrew, trimming away the lead from the neck.

  How long had he worked to secure that cursed package? Circulating rumors of his business failings when in fact he had never been so successful. Placing himself in Carcolf’s way again and again until finally they seemed to happen upon each other by chance. Wriggling himself into a position of trust while the idiot courier thought him a brainless stooge, clambering by miniscule degrees to a perch from which he could get his eager hand
s around the package, and then . . . unhappy fate! Carcolf had slipped free, the cursed bitch, leaving Pombrine with nothing but ruined hopes. But now . . . happy fate! The thuggery of that loathsome woman Javre had, by some fumbling miracle, succeeded where his genius had been so unfairly thwarted.

  What did it matter how he had come by it, though? His smile grew wider as he eased the cork free. He had the package. He turned to gaze upon his prize again.

  Pop! An arc of fizzy wine missed his glass and spurted across his Kadiri carpet. He stared open mouthed. The package was hanging in the air by a hook. Attached to the hook was a gossamer thread. The thread disappeared through a hole in the glass roof high above where he now saw a black shape spread-eagled.

  Pombrine made a despairing lunge, bottle and glass tumbling to the floor and spraying wine, but the package slipped through his clutching fingers and was whisked smoothly upwards out of his reach.

  “Guards!” he roared, shaking his fist. “Thief!”

  A moment later he realized, and his rage turned in a flash to withering horror.

  Ishri would soon be on her way.

  With a practiced jerk of her wrist, Shev twitched the parcel up and into her waiting glove.

  “What an angler,” she whispered as she thrust it into her pocket, and was away across the steeply-pitched roof, knee pads sticky with tar doing most of the work. Astride the ridge and she scuttled to the chimney, flicked the rope into the street below, was over the edge in a twinkling and swarming down. Don’t think about the ground, never think about the ground. It’s a nice place to be, but you wouldn’t want to get there too quickly . . .

  “What a climber,” she whispered as she passed a large window, a garishly decorated and gloomily lit salon coming into view, and—

  She gripped tight to the rope and stopped dead, gently swinging.

  She really did have a pressing engagement with not being caught by Pombrine’s guards, but within the room was one of those sights that one could not simply slide past. Four, possibly five, or even six naked bodies had formed, with most impressive athleticism, a kind of human sculpture—a grunting tangle of gently shifting limbs. While she was turning her head sideways on to make sense of it, the lynch-pin of the arrangement, who Shev took at first glance for a red-haired strongman, looked straight at her.