Liar's Bargain: A Novel

by Tim Pratt

  “It wasn’t much of a talk, really, since you’ve forbidden him to speak to anyone else. How did you do that, by the way? And more importantly, why?”

  “I’ve been curious about that, too.” Bannerman leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, watching them with a half-smile.

  Merihim growled. “There’s no conspiracy here, Eldra. Prinn is very shy. Painfully so. That’s all. We’re old friends, so he’s comfortable with me.”

  Eldra tapped her finger against her lips for a moment. “Funny, he told me he’s only known you for a year, and I don’t think he’d describe you as a friend.”

  “You stay away from him.” Merihim punctuated her demand with another shove—or tried to. Eldra stepped smoothly aside, grabbed Merihim’s arm, and wrenched it up behind her back in a particularly nasty joint-lock. The devilkin started to struggle, then stopped, realizing that any attempt at moving would dislocate her shoulder. “Let me go,” she said.

  “Apologize for your rudeness.” Eldra’s voice was still sweet, but there was steel underneath us.

  “Prinn!” Merihim cried out.

  The sorcerer blurred across the room toward Eldra—and without even thinking about it, Rodrick stepped into his path, bringing Hrym up sideways, the flat of the sword smacking Prinn right in the face. The sorcerer—or whatever—reeled backward, blood spurting from his nose, and Rodrick aimed Hrym’s point in his face before he could recover. Prinn howled, the first real sound he’d heard from the man, a noise of pure anguish, and Merihim shouted, “Prinn, stand down!”

  Prinn slunk back to the corner and sat on a crate, his hands shaking.

  “I apologize for my rudeness.” Merihim’s voice was flat. “Now please release me.”

  “See?” Eldra said. “Everything is so much nicer when people are polite.” She let go of Merihim, who walked with exaggerated dignity to join Prinn.

  “You children had better work out your personal issues,” Bannerman said. “You’ve got most of a year left to spend together. The Specialist and I are going to arrange transport back to the Bastion. Don’t kill each other while I’m gone, if you can help it. Or if you do, leave at least one of you alive to watch Zumani.”

  The Specialist put down his beaker and trailed after Bannerman up the stairs, muttering to himself about unstable compounds and volatile chemical combinations. Rodrick couldn’t tell if it was a commentary on the altercation or just coincidence.

  Zumani started talking the moment the trapdoor shut behind the Specialist. “You should let me go.”

  They ignored him.

  “I fight for a cause greater than myself!” he said. “Can any of you say the same?”

  “Hmm. First I’d have to believe there was a cause greater than myself,” Rodrick said. “Can’t say I’ve ever noticed one.”

  “I fight for gold,” Hrym said.

  “Do you dream of ruling an empire, Zumani?” Merihim said.

  “I dream of a world where every man and woman is free, devilkin.”

  Merihim snorted. “Ha. That’s a wild dream, especially here—no one in this room is even free. Not a single one of us. As long as one person is stronger than another, the weaker will never be free. The key to freedom, then, is to be the strongest. And you … perhaps you’re an excellent poet. I’m not qualified to judge. But you are not strong.”

  “Ah, but the weak can join together to overcome the strong, and good people can cooperate in a way that evil ones cannot.” Zumani was clearly warming to the argument, which was a terrible thing to contemplate—what if he started quoting his own poetry?—so Rodrick lay down on the ground and put his fingers in his ears and hummed to himself.

  * * *

  There were no further outbursts or arguments in the hour that Bannerman was gone, though when Rodrick couldn’t avoid listening he did hear a spirited discussion among Eldra, Merihim, and Zumani about the nature of personal freedom and the responsibilities of government. Rodrick’s preferred method for dealing with governments was to keep as far away from their representatives as possible, so it wasn’t a discussion he wanted to join.

  Bannerman and the Specialist eventually returned. Their liaison said, “There’s a ship heading to Vellumis tonight, and I’ve booked us passage. Zumani, will you be quiet, or do we have to stuff you in a trunk and pretend you’re luggage? The journey takes a few days, so you wouldn’t like it in the trunk.”

  “I can suffer the indignities of your outrageous crimes against my person in silence.”

  Merihim shook her head. “Zumani, we saved you from prison. They were going to hang you soon, and that’s if they didn’t realize how important you are in Nirmathas—if they figured out you were a man of renown, they would have tortured you. How can you still be angry with us?”

  He punched the wall beside him. “I’m tired of being a puppet, devil-woman! Lastwall is useless to me if it won’t help me save my comrades, and they’re taking me away from the battle I need to wage. You aren’t a patriot. You don’t care about anything but yourself. You couldn’t possibly understand. My own life doesn’t matter when the fate of my nation is at stake.” He nodded at Bannerman. “Him, though, he is a patriot, and he does this to me anyway.”

  “True, but I’m a patriot of Lastwall, and we’re much better organized and armed than your lot, so I win. If you’ll be reasonable, Temple might even provide you with the resources you need to achieve your goals.”

  Zumani shook his head. “Temple doesn’t want my people to win. I was desperate for help, and made a deal with a devil. Her only interest is in keeping Nirmathas and Molthune locked in conflict, in chaos, forever.”

  Rodrick couldn’t help but nod. All true, as far as he knew.

  Bannerman sighed. “I’m just a soldier. The philosophical and strategic discussions happen above my rank. Let’s go get on the ship, all right?”

  * * *

  There was only one cabin available on the trading ship for passengers, and Bannerman took it, keeping Zumani confined with him. That left the Volunteers to sleep in hammocks strung belowdecks, or up on the deck of the ship with the sailors. Eldra increased her flirting with Rodrick exponentially on the voyage, which initially delighted Rodrick until he realized she was doing so because there was nothing resembling privacy on the ship, so she could tease without worrying that he’d expect her to follow through. He did get a few very satisfying kisses in the cargo hold, but when he pressed for more she told him she didn’t intend to take their relationship to that level on the floor between forty barrels of salted fish and a hundred sacks of flour; what kind of a woman did he think she was?

  The experience was a bit frustrating, but it helped pass the time.

  Bannerman watched over Zumani, and didn’t do much else. The Volunteers mostly avoided one another, outside their factions: Merihim and Prinn kept to themselves, as did Rodrick, Hrym, and Eldra, with the Specialist spending most of his time with the ship’s navigator, bonding over their shared love for charts and things.

  Merihim did join Eldra and Rodrick one evening, crouching on her heels near them on the deck. She wore her gloves and her deep-hooded cloak, hiding her hands and face. “I hope I’m not interrupting?”

  “Of course you aren’t.” Eldra showed her teeth. “That would be rude, and I know you would never be rude to me.”

  Rodrick knew there were some men who found the prospect of two attractive women getting into a hair-pulling, face-scratching, clothes-ripping fight strangely erotic, but he just found the idea distressing. He was pleased when Merihim chuckled in what seemed a genuine way.

  “Yes, you taught me that much. I keep underestimating you—which, I suppose, is one of your great talents. I’ve been thinking about our … disagreement … and I’d like to make things up to you. I have an idea about how to improve our situation, and if it works, I’ll include you in the plan, all right?” She glanced at Rodrick, and Hrym at his belt. “All of you.”

  “Mmm,” Eldra said. “What plan is that?”


  “I’d rather not say more until I work out how feasible it is, but if my idea works … I could shorten our tenure in the Volunteers considerably.”

  “I’m open to the idea of getting on with my life, and accept the gesture of goodwill,” Eldra said.

  Merihim smiled. “I’ll keep you informed as the situation warrants.” She rose and sauntered off.

  “What do you think she has in mind?” Rodrick said.

  “Who knows? She’s a good planner, though. Maybe she does have a worthwhile scheme. It must be something she needs our help with—or at least our complicity—or she wouldn’t have offered to include us.”

  “I just hope she doesn’t get us all killed.”

  “That’s always a good minimum to hope for, yes.”

  * * *

  Just hours before they were due to reach Vellumis, Zumani hit Bannerman over the head with a heavy ceramic pitcher and escaped the ship, stealing a rowboat and setting out for the nearby shore.

  20

  TAKING INITIATIVE

  Rodrick and Eldra were leaning on the railing, watching the land slide by in the distance, when they saw Zumani in his boat, furiously working the oars. He wasn’t a strong man physically, but he was putting on a decent bit of speed, driven by fear and zeal and haste. “That’s not good,” Rodrick observed. Hrym was resting on a meager bed of gold in their cabin, having pronounced himself disgusted with Rodrick and Eldra’s flirtations, so Rodrick couldn’t freeze the boat in place.

  They rushed to Bannerman’s cabin, where the crusader was just sitting up, groaning and rubbing the back of his head.

  “Your poet has fled,” Eldra said. “Should we go get him?”

  After a great deal of cursing and some unsteady stumbling around, they gathered Prinn and Merihim and the Specialist and paid the captain for one of his other rowboats—Bannerman had to pay for the one Zumani had stolen, too, which put him in an even fouler temper. Their rowboat was made to hold four people comfortably, so five people fit rather uncomfortably, but Prinn worked the oars fiendishly as Merihim scanned the shore with her spyglass. “I see his boat by the shore, but there’s no sign of Zumani. He must be among the trees already.”

  Bannerman cursed again. “He’s a woodsman as well as a poet. If he wants to lose himself in the forest, he probably can.”

  “Good thing I had Prinn pluck a few of his hairs while he was unconscious.” Merihim shook her wrist, rattling the bracelet they’d used to try to track Bannerman on their first mission, and gave a sharp-toothed grin. She reached into her cloak and withdrew a vial that held a few hairs, and put them into the small compartment in the bracelet. The arrows pulsed as they approached the shore, which at least indicated she had the right person’s body parts this time.

  Prinn rowed a lot faster than Zumani had, so they got to the shore in good time. The poet hadn’t bothered to drag his rowboat out of the water, so it was drifting back away into the lake. Merihim led the way through the trees, with Prinn darting ahead and returning periodically to report.

  Rodrick was growing heartily sick of the Fangwood. The trees here were almost all the sort with needles, dense and green, and there was a disturbing stillness. Didn’t a lack of birdsong mean something bad? The presence of predators, or something?

  Merihim’s bracelet began to flash faster, and they hurried, dodging among the trunks. At least there wasn’t much underbrush here, just a carpet of slick needles. They caught sight of Zumani’s back up ahead, and Prinn pushed forward, lips peeled back in a silent snarl, covering the ground in great leaping strides.

  The rest of them stopped hurrying. They strolled easily to the spot where Zumani sprawled, held down by Prinn.

  “Why?” the poet sobbed. “Why did he chase me? He told me to escape—he said I could take a boat and get away, that I could find safety in the forest!”

  Prinn frowned, looked at them, and shook his head. “Prinn doesn’t talk to anyone but me,” Merihim said.

  “Zumani, you were never out of my sight,” Bannerman said. “Prinn didn’t tell you anything—believe me, I would have noticed.” He glanced at the Specialist. “Could the pressure of his situation … affect his mind?”

  “That is one possibility,” the Specialist said. “Perhaps it was a dream he had, or a fantasy.”

  “Get him to his feet.” Bannerman sighed. “It’s back to ropes for you, I’m afraid, Zumani. I’ll have to tell Temple about this. She won’t be pleased. Being an ally of the Bastion is far better than being a prisoner.”

  “Truer words were never said,” Merihim murmured.

  Bannerman looked around the forest. “We’re only about a day’s walk from Vellumis. We can survive another night sleeping rough. This isn’t such a bad patch of the woods, either.”

  “Prinn and I camped in this part of the forest before we were invited to join the Volunteers, I think.” Merihim looked to her—partner? slave?—and he nodded. “Do you think you could find the place where we camped last time, Prinn? It was near that nice stream, against those rocks, out of the wind.”

  Prinn nodded, and Bannerman grunted. “Sounds fine. Let’s get moving.” He slapped Zumani across the back of the head, though not hard. “Really, what were you thinking?”

  “I…” Zumani shook his head, glaring at Prinn, then subsided into sullen silence.

  They trudged through the woods, lugging their packs, with Prinn and Merihim in the lead, Bannerman holding Zumani’s leash, Rodrick and Eldra side by side, and the Specialist walking along behind them, occasionally scribbling in a small notebook and peering at the trees around him as if they exhibited some wondrous novelty or variety, instead of all being boring, green, and needle-ish.

  After a few hours they reached the campsite, which was as good as Merihim had suggested: a pile of boulders provided a natural windbreak, and there was clean, fresh water nearby, and a circle of stones with the remains of a campfire inside. They drew lots to see who would do guard duty. Rodrick, Hrym, and Eldra drew lucky and got the first watch, with the Specialist and Bannerman taking the middle-of-the-night hours, and Prinn and Merihim the last hours before dawn.

  “Do you think Prinn really told Zumani something, somehow?” Eldra asked as they watched the forest, where not so much as a bird stirred.

  “I don’t see how he could have. As Bannerman said, he was always there.”

  “Some wizards can speak to you in your dreams,” Hrym said. “Even if Prinn isn’t a sorcerer, he and Merihim seem to have an array of magical items. Several of her bracelets look like more than jewelry to me.”

  Eldra nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. I’m not sure Zumani is all that good at telling dreams from real life anyway, given how resistant to reality his worldview is, and if Prinn created a particularly convincing dream…”

  “But what’s the point? To get us out here in the woods, for what?”

  “Merihim said she had a plan. Perhaps whatever that plans is requires privacy. And if she knows the area…” Eldra frowned. “I find it all very suspicious. I don’t mind plots—I just prefer to be the one plotting them.”

  Rodrick nodded. “I suppose we’ll find out in good time.”

  “How reassuring. I hate waiting.”

  “Ha! Really. You don’t seem to mind making other people wait.”

  “Oh, well, some things—”

  “—are worth waiting for, yes, I know.” Rodrick sighed. “It’s hard to know for sure if they were worth it until after you’re finished with the waiting, though.”

  “If we were closer to civilization I could provide references. For now, you’ll just have to take my word for it, darling.”

  They woke Bannerman and the Specialist at the appointed time, or their best guess, and went to sleep. Rodrick was exhausted by a day of tramping through the eerily silent forest, and fell into a deep sleep. He kept Hrym close by, sleeping with his hand on the sword’s hilt, just in case Merihim did have something in mind, and that something required fight or flight.

&n
bsp; He woke, yawning, when someone shook him by the shoulder. The Specialist crouched over him, frowning, looking even more lost in thought than usual. “What’s going on?” Rodrick said.

  “Bannerman and Zumani are gone,” he said. “Merihim and Prinn, too. And a vial of my sleeping potion is missing.”

  Rodrick groaned and shook Eldra awake. She stretched fetchingly and smiled up at him until she saw the expression on his face. “What happened?”

  The Specialist repeated his revelation. Rodrick stood up, lifting Hrym. “Did you see anything, Hrym?”

  “Hmm? No. My view was of the trees above and of you and Eldra on either side of me. There were some sounds of movement in the night, but I didn’t think much of it—I just thought it was the guard changing. Nothing that sounded like a fight or a struggle or people being eaten by ravenous forest monsters. I had other things on my mind. Temples full of gold, mostly.”

  “There’s no sign of any violence here,” the Specialist said. “But if someone used my potion to knock them out, there wouldn’t be.”

  Eldra walked around the campsite, poking through bags and packs. “Everyone’s things are still here … except Bannerman’s pack. A lot of the food is missing, and several canteens and water skins, too.”

  “What happened here?” Rodrick said.

  Pine needles crunched, and they turned to see Merihim enter the campsite. She waved jauntily, grinning. “What happened is, I’ve saved us all.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “Oh, Prinn is … around.” She gestured vaguely at the trees. “As for Bannerman and Zumani, they’re in a safe place. I told you I had a plan.”

  Rodrick put his hands over his face. “No. You’re not planning to ransom them?”

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Merihim beamed.

  “Temple is going to kill us all,” Eldra said.

  Merihim waved that away. “Nonsense. I’m very good at reading people. Temple and Bannerman have a bond—I bet she thinks of him like a son. She obviously wants Zumani very badly, to go to all this trouble for him. But the rest of us—what are we to her? Just some unlucky people who wandered into her vicinity and got tangled in her plans. I put Bannerman and Zumani somewhere secluded and secure, with enough food and water to last them a week, if they aren’t greedy. We’ll return to the Bastion and give Temple a choice: remove the gems and set us free, or kill us and let Bannerman and Zumani starve. She’ll have to meet our demands. The Fangwood is vast, and she won’t be able to find them in time without us. We even set up a few wards to disrupt attempts to locate them through magical means—Temple shouldn’t have let me keep so much of my equipment, but I convinced her the charms could be useful in the field if we needed to hide out. My plan is perfect. And, because I am a kindhearted and benevolent leader, and have enjoyed our time together, I’ll make Temple set you free, too.”