Cameron,
I know you have questions about your parents. I am sorry that I have not been honest with you before now, call it an old man’s fear, no more than that. But if you wish to find the answers to those questions, go to an inn called the Drunken King on Cheapside. Go to the proprietor of the establishment and order a drink saying, “A drink for the past, my friend, for I have felt nostalgic of late.” If you do, you will find the answers you seek. But be warned, Cameron. Sometimes, questions are better left unanswered and once found, the truth can never be forgotten. In the end, I leave it to you—I think he would have liked that.
P.S
If you follow these instructions you will come to know people—and things—that you might be better off not knowing. I ask only that you trust me, though I know better than anyone how little I deserve it. For my part, I will trust in your judgment and pray that all will be well.
Your friend.
Cameron’s heart was racing by the time he’d finished the note, and he read it again, slower. Thoughts and possibilities whirled around in his head, so jumbled that he couldn’t have picked one particular one out had he wanted. Then, finally, understanding dawned and, with it, a sour relief. A test. That’s what it is. Marek had decided to test his loyalty, to use the High Priest to do it, and although the thought that his loyalty was in doubt made Cameron almost physically ill, could he really be surprised? He’d given the head of the Harvesters plenty of reasons to doubt him today.
I will not go, he told himself. I will forget all about this strange, late night visit, and I will go to sleep. Anything else would be, if not treason, damned near it.
Decided, Cameron took off his boots and laid on his bed, doing his best to silence the unending questions that arose in his mind. Half an hour passed, then another, and Cameron sat up in bed, growling in frustration. The note was a test, it had to be. And yet … what if it wasn’t? If the answers the High Priest spoke of helped him to know his father a little better, to know the type of man he had been, then that was a good thing, wasn’t it?
Perhaps knowing why his father had turned traitor would help him to avoid a similar fate, would rid him of the sliver of doubt that he felt digging its way further into his mind even now. He sat there for some time, his body weary, but knew that, despite its complaints, sleep would continue to elude him. Finally, he sighed and stuffed the note into the pocket of his pants and put his boots back on. A test or not, he would follow the note’s instructions. In the end, he found he could do nothing else.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I’m a fool, Falen thought as he watched Cameron reappear from his house, barely visible in the flickering lights of the street lanterns. A verifiable fool. And, friend or no friend, if he sees me skulking and lops my fool head off, it’ll be my own fault. Still, despite his reluctance, he followed at a distance as his friend made his purposeful way down the empty streets, telling himself that plenty of fools went on breathing despite their idiocy. Why, all a man had to do was read some of the works of recent scholars to know that.
Sure, he told himself, fools abound but normally you’re not one of them. Or, at least, not one that advertises it so freely. So what are you doing?
He had no answers for himself. He’d meant to apologize at first, he was sure of that. Had waited outside of the Harvester grounds for Cameron to emerge so that he could say sorry and try to uncover whatever it was that was clearly bothering his friend, to help him if he could. He’d even started toward Cameron when he’d emerged onto the streets, started and then stopped once he’d seen the expression on his friend’s face. Something like rage and desperation mixed together.
He’d told himself then that maybe he would give Cameron a chance to walk off some of his obvious anger, to calm himself before making his approach. And when Cameron had finally entered the tavern and began to drink? Well, Falen had walked quietly inside, easing himself into a corner of the room and keeping his eyes hidden as best he could so as to not draw a reaction that would alert the other Harvester. He’d told himself then that he was watching after his friend, for the man seemed to be completely oblivious of the angry mutterings and dangerous looks that his presence caused.
And when Cameron left, Falen had told himself that the least he could do was watch to make sure his drunken friend made it home safely. After all, with the rebellion going on, the streets of the city weren’t exactly safe for Harvesters.
And now? He’d been sitting outside of the man’s house—trying, and failing, he could be honest with himself about that, at least—to gather up the courage to talk to him when he’d been shocked to see High Priest Perdeus emerge. There was something about the older man’s stiff walk, something about the set of his features that made him appear afraid.
But of what? It wasn’t as if Cameron would ever do anything to the High Priest—he damn near worshipped the man, it sometimes seemed to Falen. By his reckoning, the priest was second in his friend’s regard only to the Holy Marek himself who Cameron seemed to think shat rainbows and pissed liquid gold.
Oh, stop stalling you coward, Falen told himself, just go and talk to him. He’s your friend—he’s obviously got something on his mind so help him figure it out. Even if he is angry, so what? It’s what a good friend would do, and you’re a good friend aren’t you? Of course he was. And he was going to go up and talk to him. I most certainly am, he thought as he followed after his partner, hugging the shadows of the street. In just a moment, I most certainly am.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
--All’s I’m sayin’ is, if the fly lost its wings, you couldn’t really call it a fly anymore, could ya? You’d have to call it something else—a walk, maybe.”
Nicks wearily lifted his forehead from his mug of beer and stared at his companion. And just when had the damned room started to spin anyway? “What was that?”
“See,” Blinks said, leaning forward eagerly, his own nearly empty mug clutched in one meaty fist, “they wouldn’t have no wings, right? So they couldn’t fly. Fall maybe but not fly. But you’d still have to call ‘em something, wouldn’t you?”
“Who gives a shit?”
Blinks’s eyebrows drew down in consideration until he finally shook his head. “Nah. Too long, I think. I mean just try usin’ it in conversation. ‘Boy do I hate these damned who gives a shits.’ Naw, you’d never get nothin’ done that way, Nicks.”
It took Nicks several moments to parse through all of that then he sighed and scratched at a recent cut he’d gotten shaving—damned homicidal smiths, making blades so sharp it was all a man could do to get a shave without cuttin’ his own throat. “You can’t be serious. What I mean, Blinks, is who in the whole cussed world gives a flyin’ shit what you’d call it if it had no wings?”
Blinks guffawed loudly enough for a man sitting at one of the nearest tables to turn away from his date (a decent enough looking girl, Nicks supposed, if a man liked his women to wear so much face paint that she had to take it off with a chisel every night. Or one of his damned razors, sure that’d do her fine.) The man opened his mouth, no doubt to object at the noise, before his eyes widened as he registered Blinks’s size, then he whipped his head back around so fast Nicks thought it was even odds the man’d feel it in the morning. “Flying shit. That’s a good one, Nicks,” Blinks said, shaking his head in amazement, “Still, all I’m sayin is it’s good to think about such things. You never know when it’s gonna come up, do ya? My uncle Erwin always said it was important for a man be prepared for any situation on account of he never knows where he might end up.”
“Your uncle Erwin never knows where he’ll end up because he drinks until he blacks out.”
“Sure he does,” Blinks agreed, “but he’s always ready to get on about his business once he comes to.”
“Such business as?”
The big man frowned at that, “Well, honest I can’t rightly recall ever seein’ uncle Erwin go to work as such.”
“I see.”
“Ah!” Blin
ks said, slamming a fist down on the table in satisfaction—Nicks noticed that the man at the next table didn’t so much as turn this time. “Here it is, so you know how uncle Erwin likes him a drink now and again?”
“Your uncle’s a ragin’ drunk who needs his ale like most folk need air. Yeah, I ‘spose I’ve noticed.”
Blinks was shaking his head before Nicks was finished speaking, “See that’s where you’re wrong, Nicks. Uncle Erwin says he only drinks on certain occasions.”
“The occasion being that he’s breathin.”
The big man held up a finger as if to disagree, hesitated, then shrugged. “Right. So anyway, he rigged a jacket with holsters on the inside of it, only these holsters ain’t for blades an’ such but for bottles. See? Prepared.”
Nicks started to speak then decided there wasn’t any point. Instead he leaned back and took a deep swig of his ale, barely fighting back his gag reflex. Alcoholic or not, he thought that a man had to set some kind of standard and the brew filling his mug was a very special sort of torture. The Drunken King, the place was called, and if that was true, he pitied the old bastard’s widow.
Not that a king would be caught—dead, was going to be his thought, but if a king found himself in such a seedy place as this Nicks had no doubt that’s exactly what the man would be before long. Looking around the room at the patrons—men and women with scars and ill-concealed blades and looks that were just as sharp—he figured that such a place was a one stop shop for a man who wanted to get himself beaten, mugged, and murdered all in one go. Saw dust littered the floor, ostensibly to soak up spilled drinks, but he was confident that the dark-stained wooden chips held more blood than beer.
And how long had they been here now? Two hours? Three? Enough for Blinks to be six mugs down and making a solid start to a run at his uncle’s record. Too damned long, that’s for sure. She better damn appreciate it. He glanced up at the barkeep, a grossly overweight man whose beard was grown in in patches like a mongrel with the mange. After a minute or two, the man met his gaze and shook his head before turning away as someone shouted for another beer. Which really just went to show two things: Some men were out to kill themselves and, for reasons he didn’t really understand, the Divines had decided to take a collective shit on Nicks’s head.
“—Is why do they call it quicksand?” Nicks realized Blinks was talking and turned back, “Badsand sure, maybe killyousand, but it ain’t really all that quick, you know?”
“What in the shit are you talking about, Blinks?”
Blinks’s eyes were glazed over from the drink already, but he paused to take a swig from his mug and motioned to the serving girl for another before continuing, “Cause it’s not fast, Nicks. One time, my uncle Erwin got caught in—”
“I’ve got to take a piss.” Nicks rose and walked off, the big man in midspeech. He visited the privy and was coming back around the corner to his seat when he bumped into someone stumbling around the other end. “Sorry, friend,” he said. The man muttered something unintelligible, but Nicks paid it little heed as he walked past and sat down at the table once more.
“And it saved his life, see?” Blinks said, leaning forward to Nicks as if he’d been there the whole time, “so it ain’t really all bad, the drink.”
“Blinks,” Nicks said, pausing to gather his patience, “I just got back. Went to the privy. Remember?”
“Aw,” Blinks said, wiping a thick, hairy arm across his mouth, “That’s too bad, Nicks. Missed a good one, you did.”
There was a brief silence—for which Nicks was so grateful he was near moved to tears—and Blinks was just opening his mouth to say something else when a shadow fell across the table. They both turned, and Nicks realized it was the same man he’d bumped into, only the man was scowling now, cracking his knuckles menacingly. “You bumped me,” he slurred in an accusatory tone that Nicks thought might have been more justified if his opener was something more along the lines of, ‘You killed my dog,” or even the old tried and true favorite, “You been sleepin’ with my wife.” Though, judging by the scars on the man’s face and hands—blade scars, those, Nicks knew well enough how such looked, more’s the pity—and by the anger and wildness in the man’s gaze, Nicks strongly suspected he didn’t have a wife. Not a living one anyway.
“Ah, so I did, and I’m sorry for that, friend,” Nicks said, “I’m not lookin’ for any trouble. How’s about I buy you and your lady a round, how’s that?”
“I ain’t got no lady,” the man spat, leaning close enough that Nicks could smell the whiskey stench and sour rot on his breath.
“No?” Nicks said, noticing out of the corner of his gaze that the bartender was nodding his head so energetically he figured the man was about two more bobs away from the damned thing falling off and rolling around on the floor—good thing about the sawdust. “Well,” Nicks said, his eyes on the bartender, “No lady? Now that’s a real shocker. How about just two for yourself then?”
He followed the bartender’s gesture to a man sitting at the end of the bar and was so distracted by the thought that he’d finally be able to get out of this shithole that he didn’t notice the other man speaking until a rough hand grabbed his shoulder and squeezed hard, the fingers digging into his arm, “—about I fuck you up instead? Don’t give a damn what you want. You bumped me s’now trouble’s what you got.”
Blinks looked up at the two of them, the familiar expression of confusion writ across the large features of his face, “Jes’ a minute there, Nicks,” he said, just now catching up to the conversation, “Is he—”
“No, no, Blinks,” Nicks said hurriedly, “we’re just talking is all.” He turned back to the man, rummaging in his pocket and withdrawing several coins, “Now, look. I didn’t mean to bump you, alright, friend? So how about you take these as way of apology, and we both go on about our night, eh? Ain’t nothin’ hurt so bad another drink won’t cure it.” Not yet anyway, Divines help us.
The man’s face twisted in unreasoning fury, and he slapped Nicks’s hand hard enough to send the coins scattering, knocking over Blinks’s fresh mug of either poison-flavored beer or beer-flavored poison (Nicks had yet to decide which). The amber liquid spilled across the tabletop, and Blinks stared down at it with the hurt expression of a child who has just seen his favorite toy broken.
“Aw, shit,” Nicks said, “Now you’ve done it. I’d get out of here, were I you,” he said, “The man loves his drink. Family tradition, ya know.”
Instead of listening, the man slapped Nicks in the face hard enough to make his ears ring, and Nicks’s head was whipped to the side by the force of the blow. He wiped a hand across his mouth, pausing to spit out blood onto the sawdust floor. Drink it up, ya bastard, he thought, unless I’m far off my mark, that’s just the appetizer. “Look, damnit,” he said, turning back to the man once more, “square’s square, alright? A bump and a slap. Let’s call it even before this gets out of hand. If you’ll just—”
In answer, the man reached into his belt and withdrew a rusted, cruel looking blade, an almost hungry sneer on his face.
“You hurt Nicks,” a familiar voice said, and although it was low in volume, there was a dangerous mixture of hurt and anger in the gravelly tone. “You hurt beer.”
“Well,” Nicks said resignedly, “Too late now.” With that, he quickly grabbed his own mug off the table—awful it might be, but he thought with the way the night was shaping up he’d want it just the same—then he took a few pertinent steps back.
“Nicks is my friend,” Blinks roared and before the stranger could react, he was up and out of his chair, grabbing a tuft of the man’s greasy hair in one thick paw and slamming his forehead into the hard wood of the tabletop. A jagged crack appeared in the table’s surface and the knife the man had been holding fell from his limp hand. Blinks jerked him up by his hair again, staring into his face, and Nicks noticed the man’s eyes wandering aimlessly in their sockets, blood pouring down his face from a deep cut on his forehead, �
��Beer is my friend!” Blinks shouted, spittle flying into the man’s face. He brought the man’s head down again and the abused wood let out a tortured sound as it broke in half, and the stranger fell to the floor amid a shower of blood and splinters.
“Blinks,” Nicks said, knowing it would do no good but because … well, what the fuck? “That’s enough.”
If the big man heard, he gave no sign. Instead, he fell on top of the unconscious man and began to bring his fists down on him again and again, striking his body at random. “Look,” Nicks said, timing each word so that it fell in between each meaty thump, “the one we’ve been waiting for is—” he cut off as a shout came from behind him, sidestepping just in time to dodge the tackle of a man coming at him, apparently a friend of the unfortunate soul lying sprawled on the ground. He stuck out a foot as the man passed, and the new attacker went down, rolling across the floor. Unfortunately for him, he came to a stop within range of Blinks who paused long enough to reach out and pull him beside his friend before continuing his brutal, rhythmic swings, now sharing the blows equally between the two men.
Nicks started to try again then decided it wasn’t worth the effort. “Anyhow,” he said to the still furiously-engaged Blinks, “I’ll be at the bar when you’re finished.”
Blinks’s only answer was a grunt, and Nicks sighed and walked away. A small crowd had gathered to watch the fight—if fight it was—and he was forced to push his way past several people, most smelling equally of piss and beer before he arrived at the bar. The barkeep walked up to him, wringing a filthy hand towel anxiously, “Sir, please, can’t you get him to stop?”
Nicks rubbed at the bridge of his nose, “He gets like that sometimes. Anyway, he’ll tire himself out here directly. A beer for my friend and I,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of the man they’d been waiting for.
The barkeep glanced where the newcomer sat on the far side of the counter then nodded reluctantly as Nicks started in that direction. He couldn’t really blame the man. Messing with Harvesters wasn’t something a man with sense did, if he could avoid it. So what does that make me, seeing as how I’ve waited half of the damn night to talk to one? He decided he’d rather not think about that for long. Black pit, but I hope she knows what she’s doing. Otherwise, there was a good chance he was going to end up being much more familiar than he’d like with the sword the man had sheathed at his side. He glanced back at Blinks and saw that he was still going at it. He looked back at the man at the bar, grabbed the two beers the bartender sat in front of him, and then heaved a heavy sigh.
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