by Janny Wurts
Dace stifled comment and shouldered the sling. Such mean errands let him survey the town and sift through gossip in the market. A servant in livery might tally the numbers of armoured dedicates in their white surcoats unnoticed, or spy upon True Sect diviners and priests.
Buffeted in the raucous midday street, through the hawkers and seamen on shore leave, Dace also took soiled linens daily to be laundered, then packed the sopped load back in baskets to be dried and pressed by the maid. Jostled by tradesmen and chandlers, snubbed by the factors’ lackeys, he lugged wicker cages of hens from the market to slaughter, then collected them, headless and dripping. Homeward bound, stung by pebbles shied by the dock rats who loafed and cut purses, he ducked into shelter behind the customs shed.
His frustration did not signify against the stakes if he failed. By luck or through infighting, he must raise his station before fate’s stacked hand, or The Hatchet, fomented another disaster.
Yet patience cost dearly. His tiresome days began before dawn, first trip to the well made amid the racketing drays hauling cargo downhill to the docks. Toil finished late, the last buckets drawn for the master’s bath lugged under the guttering lamps, through the raucous drunks’ laughter. Shouts pierced the dark as the harbour watch cracked belligerent heads, and the town’s rag and salvage men scurried for patsy’s pence, paid to finger the malcontents ousted from the shoreside taverns.
The lot were tossed in the gaol and fined, or else handed off to an out-bound ship, one silver for the comatose and upwards to ten for the most obstreperous.
While the water-front’s seamy rambunctiousness tried nerves that no one had cause to suspect, Dace continued to black Lysaer’s boots. Even that lowly service inflamed the steward’s ambitious distrust.
Pouched eyes slitted, the cook volunteered, “Mark me, one slip will see you washing the pots alongside my gutter-snipe scullions.”
Dace doused his resentment. As the vindictive bone caught between rivals, he stood his ground, forced to watch the back postern and guard his Lordship’s interests from belowstairs.
Lysaer liked his pressed shirts stored in camphor, with collar and sleeve points unlaced. He eschewed scented candles. His fastidious taste preferred sheets without starch and the luxury of warmed towels. Royal bearing rebuffed intimacy. He received both petitioners and guests upon formal terms, summoning them from the front foyer for audience in the vaulted sitting-room.
Which rigid etiquette exposed the muffled stranger, slipped in through the pre-dawn fog by way of the servants’ door. The house steward stalked like a furtive crow from the unlit pantry. He dismissed the scullion slicing the bacon and chased off the harried maid eating her breakfast. A murmured exchange saw the unannounced visitor ushered upstairs. Yet the fellow bore no parcel sent from the tailor’s; no evident reason for intimate business conducted in the master’s chambers.
Unnoticed behind the loom of the wash-tub, Dace shed his emptied yoke buckets and snatched wax and rub rag from the broom closet. He dodged the cheeky scullion who snitched and nipped up the backstairs on the pretence of buffing his Lordship’s boots.
This hour, the dressing-room should be empty, street-side curtains drawn before sunrise. Yet light flickered through the cracked-open door from a sconce on the marble-topped mantel. Past the master’s stuffed chairs, the wardrobe’s lacquered doors were flung wide, the fine clothing apparently under inspection. Prone to sea-side mildew, the velvets were often brushed out and aired, though usually under the afternoon sun, and never before the mist lifted. The steward himself hovered by his Lordship’s closed study. Dour features pinched into a thunderbolt frown, he eavesdropped, while Quince’s coarse handling set creases into the master’s best jacket.
Dace suppressed Daliana’s madcap grin. Threatened with demotion to the scullery anyway, he lost little by kicking the hornet’s nest. Rag and tinned wax abandoned, he barged in, and grabbed the boy by a jug-handle ear.
Quince squealed in surprise.
The steward gestured with bilious dismay, frantic to forestall a disruption of the private dialogue on-going inside his Lordship’s shut chamber.
“Bumbling fool!” Dace let fly, oblivious. “What do you think you are doing?”
While the idiot boy squirmed, coarse fists wringing the disputed velvet, Dace rebuked, “Have you no care for costly fabric?”
The thwarted steward bristled, “Get out! Straightaway. Await me in the kitchen!”
Dace rebelled, snatched the jacket, and indignantly whisked at the furrowed nap. “A shameful disgrace, to assign an oaf to tend his Lordship’s garments.”
Which noisy effrontery brutalized protocol. The door to the study banged open. Lysaer filled the entry, from brushed-gold hair to fawn breeches radiating mortified affront. “Take your servant’s quarrel elsewhere.”
The steward temporized, “They’ll both go, milord. I’ll just tidy this mess.”
“You’ll all leave as you’re told!” Lysaer snapped, indifferent to his debased clothing.
Discomposed as a vulture chased off a carcass, the steward had no choice but to scuttle along with his chastened underlings.
Dace feared more than the haughty man’s enmity, stoked to avenge the shameful embarrassment. Instinct had not erred. His impetuous glimpse through the study door showed the stranger’s doffed cloak, draped over a chair. Unveiled, the gilt braid and white vestments that had been concealed underneath. Badges differentiated the Sunwheel priests. Lysaer’s secretive visitor likely came as an inside informant, positioned amid the ranked hierarchy of the True Sect Temple.
Disadvantaged, disgraced, Dace jockeyed to outpace the punitive speed of event. He elbowed past the grumbling Quince, reached the kitchen ahead of the irate steward, and reclaimed his discarded yoke buckets. Luck deserted him as the blindsided cook hounded him in reprisal.
“Larking off, were you? D’you think I’m a fool? Mooners who squat over-long in the privy cut no slack with me. I’ve sent Manda after the water. You’ll fetch her dust-bin and shovel, forthwith. On with you, then! Clean out the grate in the sitting-room fire-place.”
Dace tossed the implements into the ash bucket and bolted, before the steward burst in and sacked him on the spot without pay.
The sitting-room’s drawn curtains plunged the room’s marquetry furnishings into airless stillness and gloom. Spared in brief reprieve, Dace crossed the vacant carpet to the mantel and knelt in despair on the marble apron.
Davien had warned that his course would be harsh. A moment’s impatience may have wrecked his best chance to temper Lysaer’s cursed nature. Bent to a scullion’s task, Dace shovelled up cinders and swore. “Ath above, what I’d give to uncover the report delivered by that slinking spy!”
An intrusive movement flickered in the shadow behind. Dace started, head turned, fearful he had been followed. Yet he encountered no flesh-and-blood presence. Only the fugitive impression of Kharadmon, dapper in lace cuffs and velvet, a sardonic finger touched to his lips.
The room still loomed empty. Frowning, returned to the ash in his dust-bin, Dace beheld a perfect red rose, there and gone in an eyeblink. Two such apparitions were not prompted by nerves. Stilled in thought, Dace picked up the faint sound of voices funnelled through the flue from the master suite’s upstairs fire-place.
In hindsight, the cook’s remedial punishment suggested the sly meddling of a Fellowship shade.
Poised, Dace listened in as Lysaer demanded, “You insist you have proof?”
“… beyond question,” the temple informant responded. “Confirmation by direct pigeon, the High Priesthood endorses the cleanse. Most agree that a sweep to root out clan blood-lines is long overdue.”
Lysaer’s murmured answer at tensioned pitch, then, “Oh, yes. The sealed order’s already mustered the war host’s remnant companies. The Hatchet’s busy as the weasel tossed into the hen coop. Defeat by the High King of Havish has badly scorched his towering pride. He’ll enforce the mandate to kill, and damn all to the wave of
red slaughter unleashed upon folk who may never have been in collusion with Shadow.”
The pause hung. Breath stopped, his grip on the dust-bin white-knuckled, Dace strained to fathom the tenor of Lysaer’s suspended opinion.
The mask of the statesman must have prevailed, for after a moment, the Sunwheel agent resumed, “You’re keen for the list?”
Lysaer’s stiff annoyance could almost be felt.
“Here’s the copy, then, with the active roster.” A brief lag, while a document changed hands. “Straight off the pen of my man in the copyist’s chamber at Erdane.”
To a friend, Lysaer’s suave response sounded frayed, “This selection was made by a damned astute eye!”
“You have no idea.” The stranger chuckled. “Diviners selected the most faithful. They picked for strong stomachs and unquestioned zeal to enforce Canon Law without qualms. His Hallowed Eminence, the Light’s Priest Supreme expounded upon needful slaughter. With reason, or hadn’t you heard? The clanblood condemned among Torwent’s crofters escaped from their execution by fire. The captain in charge was stripped of his insignia and flogged a fortnight ago.”
Lysaer’s murmur broke in.
“Guilty? Beyond doubt.” The stranger’s contempt echoed down through the chimney. “His own sergeant attested to his craven weakness. More, the men who failed to secure the Light’s prisoners were put to death under evidence. Trackers with hounds confirmed someone helped the heretics break out of the barn that confined them.”
Lysaer paused in stark disbelief. “I was told that all of the able young men were killed outright on the field.”
“So they were,” verified the temple informant. “Shut in for the pyre were their women and babes. Telling fact, the nailed doors failed to hold them.”
This statement also raised a poisoned silence. Dace could picture Lysaer’s composure, a chipped-stone facade that armoured the gut wrench of horror beneath. The dawning awareness about froze his blood: this exchange must be the covert report garnered from a secret network high in the ranks of the True Sect temple.
Dace dared not presume he was the sole witness to the sensitive meeting upstairs. The flue in the sitting-room also connected to the bread oven’s stove-pipe, a convenient conduit during the summer, when the day’s baking was done before dawn.
Above, a deliberate tread indicated that Lysaer strode to the casement. Not for an innocuous breath of fresh air. Grey daylight would punch-cut his features like sculpture, a trick he often used to harden the appearance of invulnerability. Distance from the hearth obscured his next words.
“But they have dared to extend their reach beyond Tysan,” the temple informant contradicted. “While the whirlwind campaign razes the clan enclave at Orlan, the companies fragmented by casualties will be re-formed and drilled back to fitness. Mid-season, they’ll be dispatched to Rathain for the next course of brisk action.”
“The priesthood’s bid to consolidate True Sect rule at Etarra by force of arms?” Lysaer’s acid surprise framed rebuttal. “There’s an arrogant trespass not to be borne.”
“Temple gold’s been allotted for staging.” Perhaps the priest smiled before he resumed. “You’ll soon hear more than rumours. Galleys are being chartered for the troops’ passage across Instrell Bay. The campaign under The Hatchet will take Rathain’s shore before the autumn storms disrupt his supply.”
Lysaer’s oath inflected sheer disbelief.
“The invasion’s no feint,” the visitor insisted. “Our Lord Highest Examiner claims to hold evidence that Fellowship interests cannot intervene. You’ll have to choose which advance to endorse. Blessed Lord, I suggest that you favour Etarra. Because Erdane’s foray into the Thaldeins confronts the most pernicious of the clan outposts, that thrust will involve the leagues’ finest trackers and the most gifted True Sect diviners.”
Lysaer’s diction bit. “You insist the temple’s sealed orders will target children and babes without quarter?”
“No question,” the visitor snapped, and killed hope. “The command calls for a sweeping extermination, backed up by the resource to route every hidden survivor.”
Lysaer’s venomous stillness this time carried a palpable force that unsettled the sen Evend ancestral instinct. Dace shivered, raked by the visceral certainty his liege’s disastrous sentiment showed. Lysaer was human and fallible. A True Sect devotee beguiled by the dangerous myth he was god-sent perhaps beheld a crack in the immortal facade.
If the avatar’s closing phrase was too low to discern, the brisk rap of his informant’s step in departure suggested an ominous quittance.
Dace bottled his helpless fear and applied himself, shovelling. The reek of carbon seemed chillingly apt. The True Sect High Priesthood would move with alacrity to defend temple interests if today’s visitor played his avatar false. Worse, atop pending calamity, the door-latch clicked open before Dace contrived any plan to amend his gross breach of etiquette. The scullion poked in with a freckle-faced sneer. “Not done, yet? Lazy sod. I’m sent to finish. The cook needed Dolcie to strain the new cheese, and you’re tasked to fetch him more water.”
Dace arose, hoping the steward was preoccupied.
Hag’s luck prevailed: the gaunt stick still lurked by the servant’s stair, engrossed in a whispered discourse with the stranger, who was cloaked and hooded for his anonymous exit. Interrupted untimely again, both parties stiffened.
“You!” barked the steward. “Still slinking about? I’ll have your severance forthwith!”
The turncoat priest coughed. “I’ll be about my business.” He breezed toward the back door on the pretext he had lingered for casual gossip.
No chance to expose the curtailed encounter as a collusion: the steward squared off like a blood-letting weasel for Dace’s immediate quittance.
Except that a sturdy obstruction blocked egress through the kitchen. “If you’re tossing my help out, that’s stinking spite.” The cook’s bull-dog jaws gnashed the carved-ivory shim he kept for picking his teeth. “Manda’s moping in the privy, and I can’t be hauling the water myself. Not with these feet! My bunions would hobble me in a chair with a hot brick for a fortnight.”
The steward sniffed in rapacious disgust. “Send Quince.”
“I would.” The cook smirked. “The brat’s scarpered. I’d waste the morning chasing his hide to no purpose.”
Dace seized the desperate initiative and braved the cross chop of argument. “I’ll finish the errand, if I can get past.”
“Hurry on,” the cook groused. “I’ll be needing eight trips with the buckets at least.”
“Work up a sweat all you like in the street.” The balked steward glared above his starched collar. “Just don’t expect to be let inside if you show the gall to come back.”
Dace barged past. “The master,” he said, “will allow me a hearing before I’m excused.” To the obstreperous cook, he remarked, “You want your filled cauldron? Then appeal to his Lordship for his final word on my case.”
“The master won’t trouble himself!” the supercilious steward insisted. “Or weigh an upstart’s claim above mine.”
“Wouldn’t he?” The cook chomped on his toothpick and grinned, pleased to hackle his rival.
Dace seized the impasse. Slim as a mackerel and quick on his feet, he accepted the corpulent cook as his shield and retreated into the kitchen. Two steps ahead of the thwarted steward, he snatched the buckets and fled.
But his narrow escape only drove his vengeful antagonist to act on the sly. Seven round trips to the well occurred without any counter-move. The eighth and the last forced a detour to duck some carousing sailhands on shore leave. Hawkers with hand-carts and the mobs by the trinket sellers drove Dace the long way around the money-lender’s walled mansion. Collar stuck to his neck and chafed shoulders aching, he gulped air reeking of fish offal and jetsam stranded by the ebb-tide. Shoreside, the overseers barked at their stevedores, while the sun-baked heat off the docks sweltered into the breezeless shimmer of
midday.
Dace pushed on. Braced for the steward’s revenge, and dazzled as he stepped from the shaded lane back into the street, he received no warning as an on-coming body crashed into him. Encumbered by the yoke, he swore murder, while the pails slopped and drenched his shoes.
“Give over the buckets. Right now! To me!” snapped the reckless female who clutched at his jacket.
Irritable, astonished, Dace recognized the plain-faced scullion who snitched. “The steward’s sent you to replace me?”
“No!” The raw-boned girl mopped a forehead plastered with dingy bangs. “Cook’s whim chose to spare you. Hurry! The constable’s sent the armed guard. Under the steward’s sworn accusation, they bear a sealed writ for your arrest.”
Dace floundered to grapple the malicious riposte. “On what charge?”
“Sneak thief. He’s claimed you lifted property.” The scullion rolled her eyes, impatient. “Hand off those buckets! Don’t let the watch catch that evidence on you.”
“They give a rat’s arse for a brace of old pails?” Dace shrugged off the yoke, scared to reeling.
“Are you daft?” The scullion’s lip curled. “Mail shirts would issue a warrant to nab you for carrying fleas at a twopenny bribe.”
Dace scarcely believed the girl routed a strategy aimed to ruin him. “You must hate the steward past measure,” he said.
The drudge muscled his burden, her dish-water eyes bright with hatred. “That devious creep only makes my life miserable. But flouting cook’s orders gets me a beating.” She turned her cheek, already puffed by the weal that drove her compliance. “Go! Run. I’ll hurt worse if the guard sees you with me.”
Spurred by the tramp of hobnailed boots rounding the bend by the harbour-master’s, Dace darted down the noisome alley behind the fishmonger’s. He shucked his jacket, turned the livery lining side out, and shoved back into the hurly-burly press of the main street.
Reprieve would not last, with the house barred against him. East Bransing sold indigents to the galleys, and the thieves’ gangs extorted whoever sought refuge in the warrens beneath the board-walk.