by Anthony Ryan
“I was expecting more of a reaction,” the woman mused that night, lying next to him. Her using had been gentler tonight, she had kissed him for the first time, trying to make their intimacy a reality he supposed. The binding forced him to reciprocate, to kiss and caress, hold her close as she shuddered against him. Afterwards she entwined her legs with his, fingers smoothing over the hard muscle of his belly.
“The wife and son of their fallen Hope die in a fiery calamity,” she said. “And not a voice speaks of it.”
Frentis willed the itch to return, to bring back the wonderful liberating agony that had allowed him to move, to be a man who saved rather than killed. He was careful to keep the truth from his thoughts, calling up images likely to provoke guilt and despair in an effort to mask the true outcome of their mission. The farmhand, the innkeeper, the boy staring up from the bed . . .
“Perhaps the Emperor has stifled the news,” she wondered. “Sparing his people the shock of it. First the Hope, now this, just as he’s about to announce a new Choosing. Not that there’s anyone to choose now that bitch is dead.” She giggled a little, sensing his surprise. “I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely honest, darling. It wasn’t the boy’s name on the list, it was his mother. He was just my little lesson for you. No, she was the prize, the one name that had to be struck through, Emeren Nasur Ailers, the Emperor’s choice as the new Hope, future Empress of the Alpiran Empire.” She lay her head on his shoulder, voice fading as sleep took her. “Doesn’t matter who he chooses now, all hope is gone . . .”
◆ ◆ ◆
The voyage to Marbellis took another eight days, all the time playing the loving young couple for the merchantman’s crew. They were a cheerful lot, given to ribald jokes and unsolicited advice concerning Frentis’s husbandly duties, although his meagre Alpiran forced him to limit his responses to embarrassed laughter. In their cabin at night, when she was done, he would use the limited freedom allowed him to explore the scar where the itch had burned. There was a definite change in the texture now, the smoothness more discernible, and he had a sense it might have grown in size. But still no itch, no freeing surge of pain. Grow, he implored continually, trying to keep his frustration in check lest she sense it.
They docked at Marbellis with the morning tide, exchanging farewells and a final bout of raucous banter with the sailors as they descended the gangplank. “Right.” The woman turned to survey the city beyond the quay. “Time to find some scum.”
Like all ports Marbellis had districts where wise feet didn’t tread. In Varinshold it had been the entire western quarter, here it was smaller, a cramped slum of listing terraces clustered around the warehouse district. As they walked the streets evidence of the Realm Guard’s occupation was still plain in the gaps in the terraces and patches of ash-blackened wall. The bustle of the docks and the liveliness of the people told of a city that had healed a great deal in the years since the war, but the poorer recesses still showed the scars of battle.
“They say a thousand women or more were raped when the walls fell,” the woman commented as they passed a hollowed-out shell that had once been a home. “Many of them had their throats cut afterwards. Is that how your people celebrate victory?”
I wasn’t here, he wanted to say but stilled his tongue. Here or not, doesn’t matter. Every soul in the army was stained by Janus’s war.
“Ah, guilt for the crimes of others.” She wagged a finger at him. “Won’t do, my love. Won’t do at all.”
She chose a wineshop in the darkest alley they could find, ordering a bottle of red with a conspicuous display of coin then settling down to wait at a table facing the door. Several patrons, mostly men in various states of dishevelment, got up and left in the few minutes following their arrival, leaving them alone save for a man sitting in an alcove, the smoke from his pipe pluming in the shadow.
“Always go for the one who lingers in a place like this,” the woman advised, lifting her wine cup to the man in the alcove and offering a bright smile. “He’ll have the keenest eye for opportunity.”
The man took another puff on his pipe then rose and sauntered over to their table. He was short, wiry but with a fighter’s face, displaying several gaps in the teeth he bared in a mirthless smile. Although Frentis judged him to be from northern climes he spoke to the woman in Alpiran.
“I speak the Realm’s tongue,” she replied. “And no, I have no need of five-leaf, thank you.”
The man inclined his head. “Ah, so it’s the redflower you’re after.” His accent was thick and familiar, Nilsaelin. He pulled a chair over to sit down at the table, helping himself to wine. “Available, but expensive. Not like the Realm here. The Emperor thinks redflower a great evil.”
“We’re not looking to buy any . . . amusements.” She gave a furtive glance around the shop, dropping her voice. “We need passage to the Realm.”
The wiry man sat back in his chair, grunting in amusement. “Good luck to you. Alpiran ships don’t dock there any more. You may have heard. There was this small matter of a war, y’see.”
The woman leaned closer, voice soft and intent. “I have heard there are . . . other ships for hire. Ships not so bound by the Emperor’s strictures.”
His face lost any vestige of humour, the eyes narrowing. “Dangerous talk, from a stranger.”
“I know.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “We need to be gone from here. My husband . . .” She nodded at Frentis. “He is from the Realm, we met before the war. Things were so much easier then, our union was blessed by my parents, but now.” She put a sorrowful expression on her face. “The years since the war have been hard for us, shunned by family and neighbours alike. In the Realm though, perhaps we’ll find a welcome.”
The wiry man raised his eyebrows, giving Frentis a long look of appraisal. “From the Realm, eh? Whereabouts?”
“Varinshold.”
“Yeh, I can hear that in your voice. What brought you to the empire? You look more a soldier than a merchant.”
“A sailor,” he said. “Started as a cabin boy when things got difficult in the quarter. Needed to leave.”
“Difficult how?”
“One Eye.”
“Ah.” The wiry man drained his wine cup. “A name I know. Y’heard he died years ago now?”
“Yes. I didn’t weep.”
A faint smile twisted his lips. “I might have a name or two for you. But it’ll cost.”
“We can pay,” the woman assured him, displaying the fullness of her purse.
He stroked his chin, giving every impression of careful consideration before nodding. “Wait here. I’ll be back by the ninth bell.”
The woman watched him leave before turning to Frentis with a raised eyebrow. “One Eye?”
He drank some wine, saying nothing until she flared the binding. “My scars,” he hissed through the pain. “He was the one who gave me my scars. My brothers killed him for it.”
“So,” she murmured, letting the binding fade, “you were one of the Messenger’s.” There was a gravity to her voice as she said this, an unwelcome realisation. The look she turned on him was intense in its scrutiny, like the time in the temple, only this time she refrained from torture. After a moment she blinked, shaking her head and patting his hand. “Forgive my doubts, beloved. But the centuries have made me cautious.”
She rose from the table, adjusting the short sword beneath her cloak. “We’d best adjourn to await our benefactor.”
◆ ◆ ◆
They climbed onto the roof of a shed overlooking the alley and waited. The wiry man returned a good deal before the ninth bell, with four rather larger companions. They entered the shop in a rush, re-emerging almost as quickly. The largest of the wiry man’s companions rounded on him, hushed threats accompanied by hard jabs to the chest.
“Don’t kill any,” the woman whispered. “And keep the lingerer conscious.”
It was Frentis’s experience that the larger and more aggressive a man was, the poorer his fighting ability. Large men, especially those employed in criminal pursuits, were more accustomed to intimidation than combat. So it was scant surprise to find the man he dropped behind failed to duck the blow that crunched into the base of his skull, or that his even larger companion simply gaped and failed to react to the spinning kick that caught the side of his head. The third one, the least physically impressive, managed to pull his knife free before the woman’s punch found the nerve centre behind his ear. The fourth was swift enough to swing at her with a cudgel. She ducked under it, delivered a knee-cap-smashing backward kick and finished him with a blow to the temple.
She drew her sword and advanced on the wiry man, now cowering against the alley wall, hands raised and eyes averted. She placed the point of the sword under his chin and forced his face up. “We’ll take those names now.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“This is supposed to impress me?” The smuggler looked down at the wiry man’s beaten and bloody form with a mix of disdain and amusement. He had led them, after some persuasion, to a warehouse seemingly full of nothing but tea chests. The smuggler, plus several crew-mates were playing dice behind a wall that wasn’t a wall. He was a powerfully built man, speaking in a Meldenean accent, with a sabre propped within easy reach. His comrades were all similarly well armed.
“This is a demonstration,” the woman said, tossing the smuggler a bulging purse. “Of the consequences of failing to keep a bargain.”
The smuggler considered the purse a moment then aimed a kick at the wiry man’s huddled back. “This one goes about with four others. Where’re they?”
“They felt sleepy.” The woman held up their remaining purse plus a clutch of the jewelled bracelets Frentis had stolen. “Yours when we reach the Realm. This one says you’re due to make another run past the King’s excisemen. Consider us just a little extra cargo.”
The smuggler pocketed his new earnings then waved a hand at two of his men, nodding at the wiry man. They hauled him upright, dragging him off to the dark recesses of the warehouse. “I’m grateful for the business, but he shouldn’t have told you my name.”
“I’ve already forgotten it,” the woman assured him.
◆ ◆ ◆
The smuggler’s vessel was little larger than the river barges Frentis remembered from childhood, but with a deeper hull and a taller sail. The crew numbered only ten men besides the captain, moving about their tasks with quiet efficiency and none of the ribald chatter of the merchantman’s sailors. They were pointed to a small section of deck near the prow and told not to move from it, meals were brought to them and none of the smugglers attempted to engage them in conversation. It made for a dismal voyage, unleavened by the woman’s unending voice and a thick bank of fog greeting them halfway across the Erinean on the fourth day out.
“I’ve only been to your Realm once,” the woman said. “This must have been, oh, a century and a half ago. The scryers had picked out a minor noble who was likely to scheme his way to Kingship in a few years. It was a fairly easy kill as I recall, the man was a pig, ruled by his appetites, all I had to do was play the harlot. I killed him before he could touch me, of course. A single punch to the centre of the chest, a difficult technique I’d been trying to master for years. It was odd, but when Janus started his rise several decades later, the Ally gave no instruction for his death. Seems your mad king fit his plans perfectly.”
The fog began to lift in the early evening of the seventh day, revealing the dark mass of the Realm’s southern coastline a few miles off the port bow. The captain ordered a change of course, the small ship tacking towards the west. Frentis kept a close watch on the misted shore until a familiar landmark came into view, a free-standing column of rock nestled in a narrow cove.
“Something of interest?” the woman enquired, sensing his recognition.
“The Old Man of Uhlla’s Fall,” he said.
“Meaning?”
“We’re about thirty miles east of South Tower.”
“Can we land here?”
The Wolfrunners had spent the months prior to the mustering at South Tower chasing smugglers along this coast, and he knew the channel surrounding the Old Man was far too narrow for a ship, but an easy prospect for the smuggler’s rowboat. He nodded.
“The captain first,” she said, moving towards the steps leading down into the hold. “I’ll see to the lower deck.”
For all his ruthlessness and impressive physique the captain proved a feeble opponent, barely managing a parry with his sabre before the short sword took him in the chest. The first mate was a tougher prospect, fending him off with a boat hook for several seconds, calling for help in between voicing curses in a language Frentis didn’t know. But curses and courage availed him nothing. He died hard but, like the rest of the crew, he died.
◆ ◆ ◆
“Why is it called Uhlla’s Fall?” the woman asked. They were on the bluffs overlooking the cove, the rowboat abandoned on the shingle beach below. Beyond the Old Man the smugglers’ ship ploughed a steady course towards the rocks beneath the cliffs, the tiller having been lashed in place by the tightest of the woman’s knots.
“Never thought to ask,” Frentis said, not caring that she would sense the lie. Caenis had told him the story, the cove had been named for a woman, lovelorn when her man was called to sea in service to some forgotten king’s war. Every day she would climb the Old Man’s treacherous flanks to stand on the summit and watch for his return. For weeks then months she climbed, through sun and rain, snow and gale. Then one day his ship hove into view, and when she could see him waving from the prow, she cast herself from the Old Man, finding death on the rocks below. For he had been untrue to her before he sailed, and she wished that he witness her end.
They watched the ship carry its lifeless crew onto the rocks, the hull splintering with a booming crack, the flailing sail dragged into the waves by the swaying mast. It was already half-sunk when they turned away. Night was coming in fast and a stiff breeze brought the sea’s chill to sting at their faces.
“Is your face known in South Tower?” the woman asked.
This time his reply was truthful, “I doubt there are any who would recall it.” With Vaelin Al Sorna in attendance when the King’s grand army gathered for invasion, who was likely to remember any other brother of the Sixth Order? He cherished all his memories of Vaelin but to stand beside him in a crowd was to know what it was to be invisible.
The journey to South Tower took the rest of the night, the woman having no desire to linger near the site of a shipwreck sure to attract salvage hunters before long. The sun was rising over the rooftops of the town by they time they paused to rest. South Tower was walled all around, the structure that gave it its name rising above the other buildings, a slender crenellated lance reaching into the morning sky. They entered via the western gate, still man and wife. He noticed she seemed to have forsaken all other guises and wondered if she had come to believe it was true.
The guards on the gate were thorough in searching them, finding them weaponless, their swords having been concealed in a grassy mound a mile away, and possessed of just enough coin to permit entry. One of them questioned the woman’s curious accent but Frentis told him she was from the Northern Reaches which seemed to satisfy him. They were allowed entry with a stern warning that vagrancy was not tolerated within the walls and they had to be gone by the tenth bell if they failed to find a lodging.
The South Tower from which Frentis set sail six years before had possessed all the bustle and noise of a thriving port, the quay crowded with ships waiting to carry the army across the Erinean. This was a quieter place, the streets free of the laden carts and hawkers he remembered, sloping down to a harbour where at most a dozen ships were berthed. No more silk, no more spices, he thought, recalling the colours and scents o
f the market. Janus cost us more than just blood.
They found an inn near the tower precincts and ate a meal served by a plump woman who fussed around them with an energy born of having little else to occupy her time. “The Northern Reaches you say?” she gushed at the woman. “Long way from home, deary.”
The woman clasped Frentis’s hand, caressing the back of it with her thumb. “I’d have travelled the whole world if he’d asked me.”
“Aww, aren’t you the loveliest. It was all I could do to walk across the room for the bugger I was shackled to.” Their heart-warming story earned a free helping of apple pie and a discount on the room.
There was no using that night, she sat on the bed, silent and immobile whilst he stood by the window watching the street. There was a tenseness to her he hadn’t seen before, a wariness to her gaze. She doesn’t know what’s coming, he decided.
The realisation earned him a stern look of rebuke, but she held off on flaring the binding. She rarely hurt him now, and there had been no repeat of the intense scrutiny from the wineshop in Marbellis. She thinks me hers completely, he thought. Like a dog whipped to the perfect pitch of obedience. His hands burned to explore the scar again, feel the smooth, healed flesh that broke the pattern. He kept the imprecation in his mind as quiet as he could, but never let it falter: Grow!
The moon had risen by the time a shadow played across the cobbles on the street outside, its owner unseen and moving with an unhurried fluency. Frentis turned to the door and the woman rose to her feet. For the first time he could remember they were unarmed and wondered if it was by accident or design.
There was a soft knock on the door and the woman nodded at Frentis to open it. The man standing outside was equal in stature to Frentis though at least a decade older, with sharp but handsome features, his black hair swept back from a smooth forehead. He was dressed in plain clothes and sturdy boots, scuffed from many miles of travel. Like them, he was unarmed but Frentis knew a warrior when he saw one. It was plain in the set of his shoulders, the way his green eyes took in every detail of the room in a single glance, lingering first on Frentis then fixing on the woman, instinct finding the greatest threat.