I nodded, not understanding. We rode down narrow dirt streets, the stone and timber keep shouldered against the river to the east, looming behind us, its tall towers stark in the new morning light. Even at that early hour, the city was awake. Odors were everywhere: fish and a heavy mud smell from the river, urine a sharp undernote, excrement sometimes mingling with the mud, bread baking, horses, the poor and unwashed. Shops opening, small wagons of apples and oranges rolled out by sleepy merchants, awnings raised, tables of furs and spices and ceramic pots and bolts of cloth set up. Hammers striking steel in smithies. A courier ran by in a crisp court tunic, a cylindrical pack of summons and missives bouncing on his back. Three feral cats darted between boots and hooves, their fur matted and muddy. Guards leaned lazily against the walls, waiting for their shift to end. A heavy wagon pulled by a team of tired-looking oxen rolled by, creaking with its burden of barreled ale. The last patrons left whorehouses and returned to their work, caravan guards, miners, magistrates.
Once we joined the flow of traffic, I asked, “We are obviously leaving. As you said. But you never said where we were going. Exactly.”
“I didn’t even say vaguely, did I?”
I laughed, mostly forced. “So, where are we headed?”
He pointed straight ahead in exaggerated fashion. “That way.”
Seeing the look on my face, he added, “A destination doesn’t matter until you get there, yes?”
I didn’t understand the need for this secrecy—was there a practical purpose or was he doing it simply to torment me?—but it was clear I wouldn’t accomplish anything by protesting further.
He drank some weak wine or strong water and flicked the reins, and we turned down another street in the city, the dirt turning to cobblestones beneath our wheels. It was obvious we were traveling through a newer section of the city. On our left masons began ascending what looked to be a rickety scaffold on the north facade of a monastery, their heads wrapped with dirty cotton cloth or covered in floppy straw hats to protect them from what promised to be an unrelenting sun. The monastery was several hundred years old, but all the buildings around it—a hospital alongside the monastery, a glassblower’s shop alongside that, a grain silo a little further down, the curtain wall behind the silo—were of newer construction.
We rode only a few more streets, once nearly running over a man leading a mule laden with baskets. I thought I saw Lloi walking her shaggy mount down a street running parallel, but it was only for an instant before the person disappeared from view as we passed the connecting street, so I couldn’t be certain.
We turned down another street, closing in on the gates, and traffic was thickening. Men bent over with bundles and baskets of all manner of things on their backs, small carts and large wagons, most laden with goods, some leaving empty, shoeless dirty children chasing each other or fleeing their mothers, women hawking trays of sweetmeats, beggars begging, guards in quilted jerkins ushering them off and generally looking disinterested in anything else. I looked at Braylar, examined him in the sunlight, and little had changed since the previous night. A new tunic, though of the same cut and ash color as the previous one. The same scarf around his neck, hiding the inked noose. The same tics around the corner of his mouth. I noticed his eyes—gray-green like mossy stones, and about as friendly or revealing. Much like they’d been when he arrived at the Three Casks, they were constantly moving, like a predator’s. Subtly, to be sure, but moving nonetheless, a measured sweep past every face without any noticeable stop, although I’m sure he was registering more than the casual air admitted. Perhaps dreading to see a look of recognition. Perhaps hoping to.
I glanced up to see the city gates growing before us. It struck me with finality that we were leaving a place I’d hoped to settle in for some time, heading to a destination I knew nothing about. Growing up a bastard son in a small inn, I thought I’d live and die as my mother had, never dreaming I’d travel anywhere. Even after attending university, my ambitions were still modest, constrained. Secure a decent patron, live a life of letters, obtain some level of steady comfort.
Rivermost wasn’t the largest city in the world, but bigger than anything I’d ever experienced or expected, and already farther than I envisioned traveling. So even if the limited range of patrons there wasn’t inspiring, I’d already gone farther than I’d ever imagined. I was content. Or at least thought so. Until Captain Killcoin approached me, presenting an enterprise so unlike anything I’d ever conceived of.
And there I was, suddenly on the move again, the scope of my life again growing in completely unfathomable ways. I tried telling myself that this was a good thing, even if I didn’t have much in the way of detail. It was growth. And growth was good. But the company I’d chosen, or that had chosen me, was enough to dampen that enthusiasm.
There was some congestion, one wagon entering, another leaving, neither allowing the other to move, but the guards cursed and threatened and one gave way and then suddenly we rumbled beneath the portcullis and over the open bridge, and I found myself looking back through the wagon, the opening behind us like a window, wondering if I’d ever see this city again.
Journeying with a destination in mind and small distances between was fine. That was all that I’d known since receiving my schooling, moving from one small city to the next, hoping to find a patron who wouldn’t dismiss me. Travel was necessary, and I accepted that, or at least tolerated it with minor grumbling. I knew where I was going, how to get there, and roughly how long it might take.
But this journey was secretive, and even the necessity for that was opaque. If I at least knew why I was kept in the dark, I wouldn’t have minded. As much. But the captain didn’t seem inclined to reveal much of anything. And that left me feeling more than unsettled.
My nerves, already tight, were being ratcheted even tighter. At the outskirts of Rivermost, I felt it across my chest, up my back, through my neck, taut with tension.
“Don’t look so melancholy, Arki. Travel is good for the constitution.”
⊕
We crossed over the dry moat, made our way through the shanties around the outskirts of the city. This was my second summer in Rivermost, and each spring the shanties had appeared almost overnight, like persistent weeds. The hovels and patchwork tents were populated by dirty, thin musicians and street performers, religious zealots, those peasants and low-enders who couldn’t afford the wares or entertainments of the city, and a menagerie of diseased prostitutes who serviced them all. My mother might have been a loose barmaid, and heartless besides, but at least she wasn’t a full-fledged prostitute. Though some might contend that was only a matter of semantics and economics. Why the guildmasters didn’t burn the shanties to the ground or drive off their occupants, I’ll never know, but I was happy there was an armed and somewhat nefarious man in the wagon with me. Those places tended to attract only the worst sort of clientele.
Braylar remained silent as the countryside rolled past, and he was motionless for the most part, only occasionally flexing his right hand or twitching a bit. Farms began to spread out in all directions, and the road became rougher.
We sat in silence for a time when Lloi fell back alongside us. She kept pace next to the wagon bench and Braylar looked down at her, finally asking, “I assume if you spotted any following us, you wouldn’t be waiting for me to ask, no?”
Lloi arched her back and replied, “Go back far enough, plenty of folks following. Don’t call them roads for nothing. Can’t vouch for intent, but if any had harm in them, didn’t seem to be aimed your way none.”
Braylar stopped the wagon and Lloi halted her horse, neither looking at the other. Finally, Braylar said, “You could tether up and ride awhile, if it suits you. Or not. They don’t call it a wagon for nothing.”
Lloi shrugged her shoulders and then did as he suggested; after securing her shaggy horse to the side of the wagon, she climbed in the rear and settled inside.
Braylar flicked the reins and we started forward agai
n. He took a swig of what must have been very warm wine. We had the road largely to ourselves, and so he untied the scarf and used the end to wipe the sweat from his brow.
“There’s no reason for us both to bake. Take a respite beneath the canvas, if you wish, as Lloi has done already. You’ll lose the breeze, but at least you’ll be out of the sun.”
As the sun was high and scouring, I decided to follow his advice and move inside the wagon. Lloi was sitting cross-legged near the back, leaning back against a box, lazily swatting at flies.
The indecision must have been inscribed on my face, but she waved me in with her half-hand, which was surely the most disconcerting invitation I’d ever received.
I found a space against a barrel and, after folding my blanket over and placing it behind me as a cushion, sat down as well, though I shifted and tried again, as nothing I did seemed to make any position remotely comfortable.
Lloi smiled, but had the good grace not to laugh outright. After letting me settle in, she held out a pouch balanced in her palm filled with some sort of seeds.
I’d never eaten seeds before, and assuredly not when offered in a fingerless hand, but uncertain how she’d take a refusal, I reached into the pouch and grabbed a few. She pulled out some with her other hand, popped them in her mouth, and began working them around. A few seconds later, she spit some shells out the back of the wagon.
I did my best to mimic her, but breaking the seeds open in my mouth without swallowing the shells proved more difficult than I imagined. I managed to work a few open with my teeth and then promptly swallowed the shells, choking and sputtering as I did, and this time Lloi did laugh. However, hers seemed less prone to mockery than Braylar’s, and it wasn’t harsh on the ear, so I smiled in return.
I broke a few more open and managed to dislodge the contents without swallowing the shells this time. The meat of the seeds, tiny though they might be, was surprisingly tart, but not unpleasant. Still, not being near the rear of the wagon and not wanting to spit them onto Braylar’s back on the front, I had no idea what to do with the shells. Having no alternative but trying to swallow the tiny husks again, I spit them into my hand and dropped them on my lap.
Lloi spit a few more shells out the back, still smiling. “Bought them in the city. Good?”
I nodded, but when she offered me the pouch again, I said, “Many thanks, but I’m fine.”
Lloi withdrew the pouch, pulled a few more out. “As you like.” She popped them in her mouth and turned to look out the back of the wagon.
Worrying that this would be the full extent of our conversation, and reluctant to return to Braylar’s side until requested, I said, “Forgive me if this is too brusque, but it strikes me as, well, a little odd that you’re with a Syldoon commander. What exactly do you do for him?”
She turned back to me. “I do what needs doing. That’s what I do. Got nothing to do with the Syldoon, except by incident. Captain the only one that got my loyalty, and him only just barely.” She smiled broadly, discovered a shell in her teeth, worked the tip of her tongue around to dislodge it, then spit it out. “Syldoon the same as all men—greedy, crafty devils that use you when they got appetite, spit your husk out when they’re done. A lot like these.” Out came another shell. “No, I’m not tethered to them nor theirs. Just Captain Noose. Him and me, we got some sort of…” she searched for the word and stumbled across the wrong one, “affiliatory thing betwixt us.” The words “Captain Noose” conflated, with the rugged “t” dropping out entirely.
I said, “So, you have some kind of history or bond, is that it?”
“You asking if he mounts me?” She cackled, spitting out shells. “No, none of that. No mounting going on.”
That wasn’t quite where I was going with that. “How is it you came to share each other’s company?”
“Same as any two people, I guess. One day, we were strangers. The next, we weren’t.”
I could see I’d need to be exceptionally specific. “Where did you meet?”
“Captain Noose was right—you got more questions than a leper got sores. Met in a whorehouse.”
I coughed and tried to hide my shock.
She laughed again. “You got a lot of red in the face for not being the one there. Wasn’t you whoring or being whored, was it? Or maybe that’s it, maybe you was wondering which it was I was doing there? Maybe that’s what coloring you up like an apple, eh? Well, I’ll tell you straight, I wasn’t fucking of my own volition, and that’s as factful a thing as ever’s been said. Clear it up some?” Seeing my hot cheeks, she added, “All bookmasters as delicate as you, or you that glass-fragile all on your lonesome? Or maybe you’re just struck dumb because you’re wondering how a beauty like me came to be a whore, that it?” She cawed a rough laugh and continued, “Like I said, wasn’t no choice of mine. Didn’t wake up one day and say, ‘Lloi, I think today’s the day you go whore.’” Another few seeds in, another few shells out. “Sold off before my thirteenth summer.” She said all of this with the complete nonchalance of someone talking about porridge. “That’s right. My tribe gave me a trim first,” she wiggled her nubs, “something nice to remember them by, then they sold me to the first slave company that come by. Turns out, these slavers were on the coin for a silk station, edge of the Green Sea. So that was that. Until it wasn’t.”
“Why… why would they do such a thing?”
“Expect they didn’t want nobody thinking it was on accident. A missing hand, well, that could be just about anything, couldn’t it? Crushed under a wagon wheel, eaten by a ripper, a souvenir of battle. Lots of ways to go getting a hand lopped off. But the fingers, all of them but the little bit by the meaty part of the hand proper? Well, hard to mistake that for much else but a real deliberate chopping, one by one. Not many accidents happen that particular.”
I’m sure I blanched before clarifying, “Why did they mutilate you at all, I mean?”
“On account of what I was, of course. No mistaking that for much else, neither. Some tribes, they send my kind through the Godveil.” Lloi shivered a bit, though I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or done for my benefit. “Ought to count myself lucky they just cut me up some and turned me whore. Silk house would’ve done me in, time enough, weren’t for the captain coming along, but the Veil… well, that would’ve done it straight away, sure as wind is windy. Seen it happen. No kind of way to go at all.”
She looked at me blankly, gauging my reaction, then continued, “Guessing they do something different to my kind where you from, eh? Can’t guess it’s six shades of nicer, though. Might even be worse, though can’t imagine how. Still, people got a whole lot of creativity when it comes to maiming and killing.”
She pulled the drawstring on the pouch shut, tucked it into a sturdier leather pouch hanging from her belt and looked ready to close the conversation off. But she was right about one thing—I did have questions, and I wanted to hear more, so I tried a different tack. “I’m sorry to hear that happened to you. I certainly have nothing in my experience that compares. But we’re not all that different, for that.”
Her hands fell into her lap and she leaned against a barrel, looking me up and down in that quiet, disconcerting way she had. “Do tell.”
“Well,” I tried to frame the words carefully to avoid being disingenuous, “I might not have been a nomad, or a girl, or mutilated and sold off exactly, but I do know what it’s like to have no family to speak of.”
She nodded slowly, still seeming less than convinced. “You do, do you?”
I debated backing away from the statement all together, leaving the conversation where it was. I wasn’t sure how revealing I really wanted to be—but if that’s what it took to keep her talking, I supposed it was worth it. “My mother worked at an inn, a lot like the Three Casks, but it was on a road. I was born there, grew up there. I never knew who my father was, and my mother refused to discuss him at all. Even bringing up his name earned me a wooden spoon across the backside, so I learned to avoi
d the topic.
“When I was young, not eight nor nine, a man showed up at The Noisy Jackal—that was the name of the inn, and he—”
“Good name.”
I stopped and looked at her.
“For a tavern. Good name. Better than the Three Casks. No kind of character at all in a name like that. Might as well call it The Three Boards, or The Three Drunks, be done with it. Come to think of it, though, that wouldn’t be half bad. The Three Drunks, I was meaning. Says there’s some kind of story behind the name, which there ought to be. Otherwise no sense naming a thing at all.”
I waited until I was sure she was done and tried again. “Yes. Well. This man appeared, and—”
“Was it your da?”
“Oddly enough, I was just about to tell you who it was.”
She smiled. “Course you were. Go on.”
“No, he wasn’t my father. But he was his retainer.”
“What’s that, then?”
I felt we were nearing an impasse. “What’s what?”
“Retainer, you said, was it? What’s that?”
I nearly rolled my eyes before remembering that Anjurian wasn’t her first language and she’d had no formal schooling besides. “His man. My father’s man. Like Vendurro and Glesswik are the captain’s men. His retainers.”
She started to nod, accepting that, and then stopped, eyes widening. “Your da was a Syldoon?”
“No. I was giving an example. Explaining the term. Retainer.”
Lloi looked puzzled. “So, not a Syldoon, but a soldier then. Your da was a soldier.”
I tried hard to keep the frustration off my face. “No. Likely a merchant or a noble. Any man with some wealth or power can have a retainer. A retainer is like a servant, or someone in a man’s service anyway.”
“Well, why didn’t you just say as much, then? Got to go confusing things with terms that don’t mean nothing in particular.”
Scourge of the Betrayer Page 7