The Folly of the World

by Jesse Bullington

  “And Jo, er, Lady Jolanda, you’re certain she’ll come back?” Poorter said, following the lady out onto his stoop. He knew he had nothing to fear from the feral strumpet, but had still been more comfortable with the idea of her being held for ransom than he was with her running around unaccounted for, with no way of knowing that he hadn’t been actively working against her. Well, that he wasn’t anymore, at least.

  “I certainly hope she turns up promptly,” said Lady Meyl, pulling her raised veil back down over her face. “And if she doesn’t tonight, I’ll go and release her father in the morning myself. In the meantime we’ll let him enjoy his last night as a doomed man—teach him a jolly good lesson regarding the recklessness of trying to handle affairs by himself instead of asking the assistance of his betters. Good evening, Master Primm.”

  “And to you as well, Lady Meyl,” said Poorter with a bow, and by the time he’d straightened, she and her men were half a block away, mingling with the thickening mob of Shrovetide merrymakers. Even still, he whispered when he added, “You horrible, horrible woman.”

  Going back inside and bolting the door, Poorter went to stoke the fire that had burned low during the visit. Although he’d been trying to ration himself, Poorter decided to splurge and dropped two logs onto the coals—it wasn’t Lent yet! He set to rubbing his hands together over the hearth. They were still shaking! What a day, what day, he thought, and hearing his cat bump the loft window farther open, he called, “Beatrix, Beatrix, you’re so fat, go and eat a skinny old rat.”

  Poorter chuckled to himself. Nothing better than chiding a cat, except, perhaps, somehow dodging the gallows despite one’s numerous, blatant crimes. The logs were starting to catch, and he turned to retrieve the bow Lady Meyl had been playing with from the chair. As he did, he saw a living shadow step from the loft above and drop down onto his worktable, landing in a crouch.

  That put the ice in a fellow’s soup, all right, and Poorter raised the bow instinctively to his shoulder. “Another step and you’re dead!”

  It was unloaded, but this rogue didn’t know that, and—

  The intruder flew across the table, a sword in one hand, his face masked. Poorter tried to fire, the way you might in a nightmare, as if prayer was enough to arm an empty bow. It clicked impotently and then was battered out of his hands by the assailant, and the last thing Poorter realized before the sword came down on his chest was the identity of his assassin.

  III.

  The rowboat bumped loudly against the side of the old harbor channel. Jolanda was in the Tieselen dinghy, but that it was her family’s vessel wouldn’t make much difference if she were discovered mooring it against the canal wall instead of at its post in the harbor from whence she’d nicked it. It being Shrovetide, such mischief in of itself wouldn’t land her in exceptional trouble, but the contents of the boat might raise some very awkward questions. She lassoed the cable over a bollard jutting out of the cobbles and tied it on, then hopped up beside it—ever since the flood the waterline was barely half an ell below the city streets.

  Here’s how it would go: She’d hurry down the road to the gatehouse where they were keeping Sander and bang on the door. Seeing she was a woman, they’d open up, and she’d force her way in, hopefully before they saw she was armed. Then she’d put down whatever chump they had manning the gatehouse while the militia patrols were out keeping order, or taking part, at the sundry revels in the downtown market squares—that ancient guard who’d been minding Simon, with any luck. After that, it was as simple as releasing Sander from his cell and getting his help to raise the gate that cut the channel off from the river after dark. The gatehouse was built into the city wall itself, so even if they were seen fleeing the building, it was only half a block back here to the boat, and then the night currents would take them between gatehouse and Great Church, out into the Maas. From there they’d gain the meer before anyone could pursue from either harbor, assuming anyone in the city was sober enough to attempt it.

  A perfect plan.

  “Hoy, you can’t moor there!” came a voice from the direction of the gatehouse, and that was that—she’d thought she was far enough away up the unlit street to avoid detection, but apparently not. The man was walking quickly toward her from the gatehouse, his lantern bobbing. He was alone, which was something.

  “Can you help?” she called, hoping her voice wasn’t as loud as it sounded. With the whole of the city living it up across town and the Great Church yet again shuttered for construction, the gatehouse behind him and his lantern were the only nearby lights save the stars and moon above. “I just need a quick hand.”

  “What’s that?” he said, seeming to relax at the sound of a woman’s voice. “You can’t moor here, I said. Why you leaving the harbor this time of—”

  The militiaman paused, not five feet off—bastard must’ve caught a glimpse of her armor under the cloak. Might’ve been better to go naked under it, freeze them up like the fisherboys with the unexpected sight of some tit instead of a shiny embroidered doublet with gilt buckles, but it was too late for such thoughts. He was stiffening, raising the cudgel in one hand and the lantern in the other, and meaning to raise the alarm besides, no doubt. Brought this on himself, then.

  Jolanda surprised even herself with her speed, so his gasp of shock was certainly warranted as she leapt forward and struck him in the throat with her sword. It had the desired effect of bringing him down, but he let out a howl as he fell, lantern and club flying into the air. Before they landed, she cracked her weapon into the side of his head, which silenced him, but it was a sight too fucking late for that to make much difference. Her last thought before the lantern exploded on the cobbles in an orange fireball was that she should have used her Tongue instead of her Tooth—if someone was going to die, better him than her.

  The street beside them was blazing with spilled oil, which was about as tremendous a fuck-up as she could have managed. Nothing for it but to run. So she ran.

  Straight at the gatehouse. Shouts were rising on both sides of the channel—it seemed that this part of town was not wholly abandoned after all. The gatehouse door opened, and closing the distance, she threw her practice sword at the figure that appeared in the doorway. He fell back with a cry, the sword missing his head by centimeters, and she hurled herself through the entrance, drawing her real sword as she stormed the room.

  The closest militiaman was perhaps sixteen years old, and he dropped his pike with a scream as she fell upon him. She supposed the charcoal she’d rubbed on her face made her resemble some wrathful Black Pete crashing the wrong holy day to the poor kid, and at the last moment she diverted her sword, driving her shoulder into his chest instead of her blade. He fell backward, bashing his tailbone on the edge of a table and pitching to the side as his wail became a gasp. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of the two other men in the room moving toward her, and she spun to face them.

  One was the dried-out old herring who’d been minding Simon, thank all the saints, but the other was a serious hoss, two meters tall with a flat, scarred face like a shield that had proven its worth. Both held pikes, and they stepped forward in tandem, jabbing their weapons at her. She darted forward, battering the ancient guard’s point aside and narrowly avoiding the bigger man’s as she slid between the spears.

  The old man dropped his pike and fumbled with the sword on his belt, but the lummox brought his spear back over his shoulder. It looked like he meant to swat her with it, as if the pike were a broom and she a bold mouse. The room was a small brick box with barely enough room for the table the boy had fallen over, however, and so as the big man swung his pike back around, its tip caught in the shelves lining one wall and stuck fast.

  Jolanda only dimly recognized this as her sword arced down and hacked into the old man’s foot. It split his shoe from the toe halfway to his ankle, and he toppled with a howl even as she was flicking the sword up, underhanded, toward the big man’s knee. Her tutor’s favored style of combat was
the cut-and-run, so called because you cut some ball-washer’s legs and then ran before the rest could catch you. Though this was only her second time drawing real blood with a real weapon, she couldn’t argue with the result.

  And yet. Rather than going down when Jolanda’s sword hacked into the side of his knee, the hoss went berserk. He snapped the head off his pike as he jerked it free from the shelving, then whipped her shoulder with the thick wooden shaft. The shelf his weapon had broken off in came down beside him, jugs of lantern oil shattering and splashing across the floor as Jolanda went tumbling from the blow. She did as Sander had taught her, rolling even farther from the big man than the impact would have taken her and coming up in a squat to launch herself at him.

  Except she’d dropped her sword, and her back was to the wall. Shit.

  Before she could orient herself in the small room, the hoss was on her again, his broken pike discarded in favor of a chair that he wielded in an identically maladroit, clublike fashion. His trouser leg was bloody and he was moving clumsily, but nowhere near so bloody and clumsily as she would have liked or expected from the wound she’d given him. She scuttled away as he smashed the chair against the wall where she’d been moments before, the room a blur of too-bright light after the dark street and canal, a riot of crashing and cursing after her silent boosting of the boat from the harbor.

  Behind the big man someone was up and moving—must be the kid, because there was the old-timer between her and the lummox, still lying on the floor and moaning as his cloven shoe spurted bright red jets. She felt sick to her stomach, and prayed the senior didn’t die.

  The big man lurched at her again, and she danced around him, the ruined chair coming apart even as he swatted her with it. Sharp, stinging lines of pain flared along her already sore shoulder as the seat struck her, and then the boy was beside her, swinging his sword at her neck.

  Fuck that. She ducked low, plowing into him again as she rabbit-punched his side three, four times in quick succession. He was going down, but she caught his arm.

  His young, slightly doughy face tilted up in what might have been a smile as she arrested his fall, but then she had the sword out of his hand and let him topple. A hand as wide as a pancake clamped onto her shoulder and spun her around, straight into the sword the big man now held in his other fist.

  She parried it away from her face, his sword point nicking her cheek and ear and skewering her oversized hood. Better that than her head, and in deflecting his blow her own blade ricocheted straight into his bull neck. Not hard, but then a throat wasn’t too hard, neither.

  The sword bounced off his neck, and with horror she realized the weapon she had taken from the youth was her edgeless practice sword, whereas the big man had retrieved her real blade from the oily floor. The hoss froze, perhaps unsure if he had been killed and definitely unsure what to do with his overextended sword arm, and Jolanda snapped her Tooth back, dull or no, and stabbed him in the throat with its blunted point. His face contorted, his hand slipped off her shoulder, and, ruthless, admitted, she repeated her attack. He collapsed, making horrible gurgling noises as his eyes rolled back in their orbits.

  The boy was up a third time, and his pike with him. Enraged at his idiocy in not staying down, she ruthlessly beat the weapon out of his hands and then set to teaching him the utility of sitting some fights out. She only stopped when he began to cry, his mangled hands covering his face like a broken mat of woven reeds. She would have liked to tie him up or something, but it sounded like the whole city was shouting outside the gatehouse—they were so fucked it was almost unbelievable. This was more like it, a real Sander scheme.

  “Stay where you’re at or I’ll kill you all,” she addressed the weeping boy, the hobbled old man, and the unconscious hoss as she traded her Tooth for the Tongue the big man had taken. “I mean it.”

  None answered, and so she kicked the front door shut and bolted it, noting as she did that a crowd gathered in the street. The lamp oil fire near the boat had been mostly extinguished, but beyond the creek of flame that still licked along the cobbles she saw the silhouettes of fingers pointing in her direction. Let them point, stupid goddamn shitbirds. Dordrecht had never been for her, and she would have liked to see the whole awful place burn down to the water.

  The winch that raised the gate must be up the ladder, on the second floor, but first she had to get Sander. She went down the short passage leading off the main room, surprised he hadn’t talked some shit—he should’ve woken up from the fracas and started heckling her by now. She could see faint light spilling through the small window set in the cell, so what the good goddamn was he doing?

  “Sander!” she said, reasoning it was a little late to worry about raising awkward questions in Dordrecht if the guards heard her calling him such. “Sander, get the fuck up! We’re out!”

  She yanked the bolts open, her shoulder a pulsating reminder that she’d been slapped across the floor by a giant’s pike. If he was too drunk to walk, she’d bloody—

  —Blood. Everywhere, pooling on the floor, dripping off the edge of the bed where he lay, soaking through his shirt—the only thing not bloody was his face, which was the pastel white of fresh cheese. He was stone dead, his dangling, nearly severed right hand only attached to his wrist by maroon threads of sinew and skin. Jolanda felt the strength pour out of her in one rush, like beer from a busted barrel, and she fell into a squat.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered to her bare feet, having left her shoes in the boat so she could move more quietly along the empty street. It was supposed to be empty, anyway, but then, that hardly seemed to be the biggest flaw in her plan now. She was too late, always too late, always thinking she knew better than everyone else and being dead wrong about it, always too late to help—if only she had told Sander straight away that she’d snuck out and seen Simon in this cell, together they could have busted him loose instead of fucking about with Primm that morning. They could have saved Simon, skipped town before Jan revealed himself in the alley, before they had murdered Simon…

  They? Now she really was thinking like Sander, but it seemed like he hadn’t been so mad after all. They had murdered Simon, and made it look a suicide, and now they’d murdered Sander and made it look a suicide. They hadn’t been smart about it, though—if anyone would have hanged himself, it was Sander, not Simon, this was so obviously a murder made up to look like suicide—

  “Uhhhh!” said Sander, jerking upright on the bed and flapping his arms around. The movement detached the hand completely, and it flew from its wrist and slapped onto the ground in front of Jolanda. She fell back with a scream, and Sander vomited all over himself. Scrambling up, she stared in horror as he finished retching and wiped his mouth with what appeared to be a leather belt wrapped ’round his blackened stump. Only then did he take notice of her. “Jo?”

  “Sander!” she said, rushing over to him. “What the neuking hell, why, what, what, Sander, what?! What’s happened?!”

  “I made. Ugh. A Glory Hand,” he said, hunching over and dry-heaving. The belt on his wrist was a tourniquet, there was a blood-covered dagger on the floor between his feet, and beside that lay a flapjack pan caked with a circle of burned flesh where he’d tried to cauterize the stump—that was probably what had knocked him out, the agony of searing his own living flesh and bone. Goddamn madman had done this to himself. She forced herself to breathe, to think, to act.

  “We have to go,” she told herself as much as him, stabbing her sword into his knotted, sweat-moist blankets and tearing a wide swath of linen free. She could do this. She could. “Let me see your hand.”

  Chriiiiist. It made her want to puke, that gory, half-cooked stump with its core of black and yellow bone, like a roast not properly butchered, but she made herself bind it, carefully. He jerked it away the first time she got the cloth on it, but the second time she touched it, he passed out again, which made the task a sight easier. She could do this. She would do this.

  Right. No time, no
time at all, the gatehouse would be surrounded by the roving militia patrols, if it wasn’t already. Time to go. The wound was as bound as it would get, and she slapped him until he shook his head like a confused dog roused from a nap, blinking at her. He let her help him up, and to her relief he seemed able to stand on his own, if only just. The only thing he said as he limped out of the cell was, “Get my hand.”

  “We have to go, Sander,” she said, hating him so much for being so goddamn mad but grabbing the appendage anyway.

  “Even if I die, it’ll getcha out,” he said, giving her the craziest expression yet in a friendship full of crazy, crazy expressions. “Hand of Glory, Jo. Gilles. Yes.”

  “Gotcha, Hand of Glory,” she muttered as they gained the hall, wondering just how the hell she would get the canal gate raised without his help.

  Returning to the main room, she saw the militiaboy unsuccessfully trying to unbolt the door with his broken hands. She scared him off it with a shout and he returned to cowering beside the table. The other two guards were laid out where she had left them, the floor puddled with oil and blood, and she picked up one of the upended chairs and helped Sander into it. Sheathing her Tongue and retrieving her Tooth, she deposited both the dull weapon and Sander’s severed hand into his lap.

  “They try anything, kill ’em,” she said for the whimpering boy’s benefit.

  “Glory’s End!” Sander gasped, reverently touching the pommel of the practice sword. “You found her!”

  “Christ alive,” said Jolanda, realizing she would like as not be dead before the night was out on account of his moony mind and self-mutilation. No way they were getting out of here, she thought as she scrambled up the ladder to the second story, no way she was getting the gate up by herself, no way at all. Because she neglected to bring up the lamp that hung over the table, it should have been too dark for her to see on the second floor, but through the window came light aplenty from the street below.