by Ben Galley
Farden looked confused.
The Duke turned his back on the mage and walked to his window, waving his hand at the door, the paintings, and the grisly trophies. ‘Rats have ears, Farden. Rats have very, very good ears. Now get out of my sight.’
Farden turned around and sauntered over to the little table by the door. He spied a lonely slip of parchment sitting on top of it. But as he reached out for it, it was the shining object sitting just to the right of the little table, the object perching on top of a flat-topped oak chest, the object that gleamed and shone in the light, forcing the flames to play in its facets and polished curves, that caught his attention.
Farden almost tripped when he saw it.
‘Something wrong?’ asked Kiltyrin, watching intently from the windowsill.
Farden could feel his eyes on the back of his head, and his thoughts turned to the vambraces nestled deep and safe in his pack. Farden cleared his throat, and stamped his boot on the floor, as if punishing it for tripping him. He kept his back to Kiltyrin. ‘No,’ he coughed.
Farden approached the table and picked up the folded parchment that held the particulars of his next murder. He pretended to fold it and fiddle with it while his eyes eagerly took in every glistening inch of the armour, barely a foot from him. Forged from the trademark gold and red metal, it was a Scalussen breastplate, and a fine one at that. Its scales were etched with circles and spirals and filigreed runes. No straps could be spied at its edges, no fastenings. No strings. No hinges reared their greased heads, and no rivets dared to show their flat and beaten faces. There was a depiction of an insect on its central plate; a shallow carving of a beetle in flight, with two tiny rubies for eyes. Like every piece of Scalussen work, magick or ordinary, it was a work of art. Farden’s finger itched to touch it, to feel it. To test it.
‘Caught your eye, has it?’ asked the Duke, smiling proudly. He strolled towards the mage.
Farden played innocent. His pack suddenly felt very heavy on his shoulders. ‘What?’
‘That, there, by your elbow. That exquisite piece of armour.’
‘Oh, that,’ replied Farden, trying to sound nonchalant.
‘Yes, that. A present from a friend in the Crumbled Empire. I did a deal with him a few months ago, and seeing as most of the old Skölgard nobles are considerably short of coin these days, he paid me with this. I think I came off the richer of the two, don’t you?’
Farden nodded. He stared at the breastplate, trying to find a fault in it, a scratch, something that screamed fake. If only he could run a finger across it to feel if it had any power, he strained. See if it shivered like his other pieces did.
‘I suppose you’ve seen a few like it, in your time?’ asked Kiltyrin. Farden shook his head and the Duke laughed. Of course he had. ‘Now I doubt that very much. You must have seen Scalussen armour before today?’
Farden tapped his shoulders. ‘Never bothered much with armour. Used to slow the magick.’ It was true. Some metals like lead and bronze slowed the flow of magick, while others, like the Arka blacksmiths made for the Arkathedral and Evernia guard, could deflect it. Steel was usually fine. Iron tended to melt. It depended on whatever spells the blacksmith uttered or carved into the metal during the making. But Scalussen was different. It allowed magick to flow as freely as it did through skin and bone. It had been one of the first reasons for his falling in love with it.
Kiltyrin kept pressing. ‘Well, surely you must have heard of it? Heard the fables of its Smiths? The eddas?’ he asked.
The mage shook his head and shrugged again. ‘A few. Impenetrable stuff.’
Kiltyrin walked forward to admire his prize. Even he didn’t touch it, as if it were deathly fragile. They both knew that was far, far from the truth. ‘All Scalussen armour is extraordinary, but only a precious few, if they even exist at all, are legendary. The eddas say that in the troubled times of the old Scattered Kingdoms, the Scalussen smiths created nine suits of flawless armour, perfect in every way. Impenetrable, as you said. In fact, they even protected their wearers in ways the smiths didn’t originally intend. Not just against swords and spears, but time itself, Farden. Age. This armour protected its wearer from the weapons and wounds of time itself. So it was that the smiths decided that in such war-torn times there should be a set of knights that could wear the Nine, and protect their makers and Emaneska. Of course, like all noble ideals, they failed.
‘The Nine filled every king, queen, duke, and lord with either greed or fear. Army after army marched on Scalussen, and war was declared on the smiths and their Scalussen Knights. In time, they were wiped from the earth, all their secrets and skill lost.’ Kiltyrin paused to smirk. ‘According to the skalds the Knights threw themselves into a volcano to stop the war, to rid the world of the armour, once and for all. But I know better. You don’t just throw away something like that. Stolen and scattered, I think. Like in some of your Arka songs. Pieces of the Nine out there somewhere, I believe it. Not that I think this is one of the Nine, mind you, but even ordinary Scalussen armour is said to have some strange properties to it. Magick or not, it’s mine now. I’d like to see an assassin’s dagger get through that.’
Farden snorted. He felt like braying with laughter. So the Duke’s latest scheme was hunting the Nine. Of course it was. It made perfect sense. There wasn’t a single thread in Emaneska that Kiltyrin wasn’t trying to tug at with his greedy, conniving fingers. Farden knew that better than anyone. If the thread couldn’t be tugged, wrapped around Kiltyrin’s finger, Farden was sent to cut it. That was how it had worked, for fifteen years.
A fear dawned on him then. Was the Duke aware of his vambraces, his gauntlets, or his greaves? Did he know? He had eyes everywhere, after all. But Farden had been more than meticulous. Before, he would have worn them brazenly and smirked in the face of anyone who challenged him for it. These days, anybody who was lucky enough to glimpse his armour found their throat slit soon after. Farden had realised very early on that now, in this life, in this current company, it was far wiser to avoid greedy eyes, his current company especially. Farden would never have admitted it, but hiding under his skin was the fear that he could no longer protect it if he was challenged.
‘What?’ the Duke was eyeing him intensely.
Farden tucked his orders into the pocket of his grey trousers. He felt the urge to leave. ‘There’s always something, Kiltyrin. There’s always a piece of armour that stops you ageing, or a sword that shoots fireballs, or some sort of cheese that makes you bloody invisible. The eddas wouldn’t be eddas without them. When are people going to learn they’re just songs?’ he said with a sigh, trying his best to appear as though he didn’t care If Kiltyrin was hunting the Nine, then Farden would have to redouble his efforts to keep his armour out of sight.
Kiltyrin narrowed his eyes. ‘Probably when they stop being true,’ he said. ‘Didn’t I tell you to get out of my sight? Get out. And remember, I want Wodehallow’s head. I don’t care how. Slink back to whatever hole you hide in, but make sure the job gets done. You have two weeks.’
Farden walked to the door. ‘Clear a space on your wall. And have the coin ready.’
Kiltyrin watched him leave. The door clicked shut behind him and the Duke shook his head. He grabbed the Scalussen breastplate with one hand and lifted it up to shake it viciously back and forth. It wobbled and moaned until something inside it twanged, like the sound of a tense ljot string giving up on life. The Duke threw the flimsy fake onto his bed and went back to his window. It had done its job.
He heard the man let himself in and lock the door behind him, but he ignored him for a moment, waiting for him to announce himself.
‘It’s all arranged,’ said the man.
Kiltyrin nodded.
‘Did it work?’ the man asked.
‘Exactly as we hoped. Couldn’t take his eyes off it. Make sure you congratulate your man in the forge.’
A silence. ‘Do you think he still has them?’
‘You’ve seen h
is face. He hasn’t aged a day. You were right.’
‘Well, we’ll know for sure tonight.’
‘Make sure he doesn’t spot you.’
‘Nobody ever does.’
‘You’d better hope not. If he doesn’t rip your throat out, I will.’
There was a polite chuckle. ‘Without me, Duke, you’d be none the wiser. Just remember our deal.’
Farden left the Duke’s room and scuffed his boots along the limestone floor. A man walked towards him, a tall man in a bear-leather jacket with a shaven head and a broken nose. He had a flat cap in his hands. He nodded to the mage and smiled. Farden just scowled and walked past him. He had no friends in Tayn. He didn’t need to pretend.
A lesser man might have emerged from such a meeting with a tremble on his lip and a down-trodden heart. A better man wouldn’t have entertained the thought of such a meeting at all. Farden thought himself somewhere in the middle. Coin was coin. All his life, he had been trained to kill, so why should he not charge for it now? As a drunk man had once whispered to him in a lonely tavern, if you are good at something, never do it for free. Besides, he had spent a long time learning to ignore, and to justify, the sour taste of his contemptible profession. He was now somewhat of an expert at it. What did he care about the people of Albion?
But it was not his murderous job that was tugging at his mind, it was the Duke himself. Kiltyrin’s vindictive words had stung the mage. The mention of the Nine had prickled him, and the meeting had dug at some old wounds and sore spots that Farden had thought he had buried. A life he had left behind. Mistakes he had made. Fortunately, Farden had learnt exactly how to deal with these sorts of thoughts too. Like little corpses that refused to stay dead, the answer was to bury them once again. Only deeper.
The mage retraced his steps back to the lower levels of the castle, avoiding Kint and Fat Forluss in the process. He traipsed through the corridors and hallways and found his way to one of the smaller banquet halls, near to the north wing of Castle Tayn, where the windows tentatively peered out over the precipitous edge of the limestone spire. The hall was empty for the most part. A few of the castle’s kitchen boys lounged in a corner, laughing and tossing a pair of dice against the wall, betting meals and days off. They stiffened at the sound of boots, but Farden ignored them, and so they went back to their huddled gambling.
Farden wasn’t interested in them. He was interested in the colourful little character that was crouched on a stool in the far corner of the room, squinting at an upside-down book and humming to himself. Farden walked towards him, quickly, eagerly, hand already molesting the warm coins in his pocket.
Bastio was the very definition of a sore thumb. He was an eye-offending splash of colour in the middle of Castle Tayn’s palette of greyscale stone and tired wood. He had the look of a skinny rat that had been doused in paints and left to dry. His attire wasn’t out of choice, no, of course not; a castle’s jester always wore what he was told. Or else. In this case, he had been given a headache-inducing one-piece outfit of lemon yellow, spattered with a sky blue and moss-green diamond pattern. His pointy hat was a dark red, and his shoes the same, only muddier. It was almost as if a rainbow had vomited upon him.
Farden grabbed a stool in passing and sat down next to the man. Bastio was the type of fellow that always moved in quick, jerky increments, like a rodent, always snatching, twitching. It wouldn’t have been a problem had it not been for the fact that his hat and clothing were festooned with tiny bells. Every time he moved they tittered and chimed with him, making every little movement annoyingly musical. To make it worse, the jester also had a habit of humming. No wonder Bastio spent most of his days alone, thought Farden. More than an hour in the man’s company could have driven anybody to a level of madness.
Farden looked at the book, and then back to Bastio. His mouth moved as if trying on the words for size. The mage leant forward. ‘You know it’s upside down, don’t you?’
Bastio stopped humming for a moment. He gave the mage a suspicious glance, and then turned the book around so he could assess the truth of that statement. On seeing that the title of his book was lingering near the bottom of the cover, he huffed and flipped the book the right way up. ‘What d’you want, Four-Hand?’ he asked. ‘Cannae a man read in peace?’
‘That usually depends on whether he can read or not.’
‘I can read.’
Farden reached out and snatched the book out of his hands ‘What’s the book about?’
Bastio crossed his arms with a jingle. ‘What’ll it be then, Farden?’
‘Double what I had last time.’
Bastio winced and rubbed his hands together. ‘Double? Might wanna have a think ‘bout that, Four-Hand. Prices ‘ave gone up.’
Farden scowled. ‘What?’
The jester tried to look as innocent as possible. ‘Taxes, see.’
‘Taxes? What taxes?’
‘My taxes, Four-Hand. For reading lessons.’
‘Don’t test me, clown. I’m not in the mood. I’d hate to see you try to play the lute with a pair of broken hands.’
If Bastio was worried by that threat, he didn’t show it. ‘My prices are what they are. ‘Less of course, if’n you want to try findin’ another like me in this town, one that’ll do business with the likes o’ you.’
Farden stared hard at the skinny man. Bastio stared right back with his beady little eyes. This game was loaded in the jester’s favour and they both knew it. Farden hadn’t ever been clever enough to hide the intensity of his habit. Bastio knew this very well.
Farden stood up. ‘Maybe I’ll do just that.’
Bastio simply chuckled, jingling.
The mage clenched a fist, briefly contemplated beating it out of the man, and then sat down again. ‘How much are we talking?’
‘Two bags. Fifty.’
‘Silver?’
‘Gold.’
‘Gold?! If you think this is funny…’ growled Farden. What else had he expected from a jester? He dug deep into his pocket and let his hand hover there, finger and thumb pinching the coins to count them. Fifty was half what the Duke had paid him. ‘Thirty. I should get a discount. Nobody else buys as much as I do.’
‘You say it like it’s a good thing, Four-Hand. I ain’t ever seen a man like it as much as you. Rot your brain one day, you will.’
‘And that would be my business, not yours.’
Bastio rubbed his chin. ‘Forty-five.’
‘Thirty-five.’
‘Forty.’
‘Fine,’ Farden consented, eager to leave. He could almost smell the scent of the nevermar escaping the jester’s pocket, taunting him. Farden licked his lips.
Bastio reached inside his multicoloured collar. Farden looked around warily. He needn’t have bothered, but old habits died the hardest. Nevermar wasn’t forbidden in Albion like it was to the Arka. In Krauslung, Manesmark, or Essen, the rules had always been that anybody found with it had the nevermar confiscated and burnt, and a black eye or worse to show for it. Mages were lucky if they spent a few months in the Arkathedral cells. Written faced a hanging from the gates. No exceptions. It was a wise approach from the magick council: a completely intolerant approach meant nevermar and its ilk were very hard to come by in Arka lands. Temptation was a foreign thing. It was a fine idea if a mage never left Arka lands, but as Farden had discovered very early on, the rest of Emaneska had never been so strict.
Bastio produced a cloth bag from his pocket. Farden snatched it quickly. He teased apart the neck of the bag and peered inside to assess his spoils. He let the bitter-sweet, oleaginous tentacles of its scent fill his nose and his forehead.
‘Hâlorn’s finest that is,’ said Bastio, proudly. Farden wasn’t listening. His mind was already halfway out the castle and filled with smoke.
‘Mhm,’ the mage hummed. He got to his feet and tucked the cloth bag deep into the inner pocket of his cloak. ‘It better be. Now if you’ll excuse me…’
‘I wager th
at I’ll be seeing you soon enough, Four-Hand,’ Bastio sniggered.
‘Any time would be too soon.’
The little man smiled. ‘Enjoy.’
Farden didn’t reply. Feeling slightly cheated and yet strangely satisfied at the same time, he left Bastio to his book and made for whatever door could lead him out of Castle Tayn. The mage wasn’t in the mood for any more of today. Farden had often contemplated buying a hawk to relay his orders and bags of gold to and from the Duke. That way he wouldn’t have to see anyone at all besides the people he killed, and they wouldn’t bother him. Not for long anyway. Farden could be what he wanted to be, a ghost. Farden shook his head. Gold via a hawk. He hadn’t even touched the nevermar yet.
The mage strode down the halls, barging some of the slower people aside. Their yelps and cries of surprise were music to his ears. Once he had descended to the lowest level of the Castle, he spotted a purple square of torchlit sky sitting in the gap between two open doors, and set a course for it, like a ship escaping a storm.
He was almost free when he heard a high-pitched shout from behind him.
‘Farden!’
Farden stopped inches from the doorway. The guards stared dully at him. Farden knew exactly who was calling him, and that knowledge made him smile just a little.
The mage turned around to find a woman, slightly grey of hair, slim, and somewhat attractive, walking towards him down the corridor. She had a small smile on her lips. There was a small rusty-haired boy by her side, his expression as vile as the little trickle of snot that was slowly making good its escape from his left nostril. It was Kiltyrin’s son, Timeon, and already every inch his father and growing more every day. He had his hands firmly clasped behind his back. He couldn’t have been more than eleven years old, yet he was glaring at the mage as if he held an ancient grudge against him.
‘Farden Four-Hand. Here at my father’s bidding, are you?’ he piped out, voice squeaky in its youth. Farden made a point of snorting at him, and looked to his mother, the Duke’s lonely wife, Moirin.
‘Leaving already?’ she asked him.