Haubrezer kept his head inclined, though it seemed that he stared at his eyebrows rather than the grim-talking shadows beyond the smoke.
"Ho. No mean Scalpoi, those. They the Veteran's Men. The Skin Eaters."
"The Skin Eaters?"
A sour grin, as though the man had been starved of the facial musculature needed to pull his lips from his teeth. "Geraus was right. You hermit, to be sure. Ask anyone here around"-he gestured wide with a scapular hand-"they will tell you, ya, step aside for the Skin Eaters. Famed. The whole River know. They bring down more bales than rutta-anyone. Ho. Step aside for the Skin Eaters, or they strike you down. Hauza kup. Down but good."
Achamian leaned back to appraise what suddenly seemed more a hostile tribe than another alehouse trestle. Though all the other long-tables were packed, the three men Haubrezer referred to sat alone, neither rigid nor at their ease, yet with a posture that suggested an intense inward focus, a violent disregard for matters not their own. The image of them wavered in the sparked air above the hearth: the first-the bearer of the Chorae-with the squared-and-plaited beard of an Ainoni or a Conriyan; the second with long white hair, a goatee, and a weather-pruned face; and the broad-shouldered third-the sorcerer-cowled in black-beaten leather.
Achamian glanced back up at Haubrezer. "Do I require an introduction?"
"Not from the likes of me."
An acute sensitivity to his surroundings beset Achamian while crossing the common room, which for him amounted to a kind of bodily awareness of some imminent undertaking-some reckless leap. He winced at the odour of sweat festering in leather. The outer thunder of the Long-Braid Falls shivered through air and timber alike, so that the room seemed a motionless bubble in a torrent. And the guttural patois everyone spoke-a kind of mongrel marriage of Gallish and Sheyic-struck him with an ancient and impossible taste: the First Holy War, twenty long years gone by.
He thought of Kellhus and found his resolution rekindled.
The pulse of a fool…
Achamian had no illusions about the men he was about to meet. The New Empire had signalled the end of the once lucrative mercenary trade, but it did not signal the end of those willing to kill for compensation. He had spent the greater part of his life in the proximity of such men-in the company of those who would think him weak. He had long ago learned how to mime the proper postures, how to redress the defects of the heart with the advantages of intellect. He knew how to treat with such men-or so he thought.
His first heartbeat in their presence told him otherwise.
The cowled man, the sorcerer, turned to him, but only far enough to reveal a temple and jawline as white and as smooth as boiled bone. Obdurate black shrouded his eyes. The small, silver-haired man graced him with a nimble, shining look and a smile that seemed to welcome the derision to come. But the square-bearded one, the man Haubrezer had identified as the Captain, continued staring into his wine-bowl as before. Achamian understood instantly he was the kind of man who begrudged others everything.
"Are you the Ainoni they call Kosoter?" he asked. "Ironsoul. The Captain of the Skin Eaters?"
A moment of silence, far too thick to connote shock or surprise.
The Captain took a deliberate drink, then fixed him with his narrow brown eyes. It was a look Achamian recognized from the massacres and privations of the First Holy War. A look that saw only dead things.
"I know you," was all he said in a voice with a hint of a papyrus rasp.
"You will address the Captain as 'Veteran,'" the silver-haired man exclaimed. He was diminutive but with wrists thick enough to promise an iron grip. And he was old, at least as old as Achamian, but it seemed the years had stripped only the fat of weakness from him, leaving spry fire in the leather that remained. He was a man who had been shrivelled strong. "After all," he continued with a slit-eyed laugh, "it's the Law."
Achamian ignored him.
"You know me?" he said to the Captain, who had resumed his study of his inscrutable drink. "From the First Hol-"
"Sir," the small man interrupted. "Please. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Sarl-"
"I need to contract your company," Achamian continued, staring intently at the Captain. Definitely Ainoni. He looked archaic, like something risen from a burial mound.
"Sir," Sarl pressed, this time with a cut-throat gleam in his eye. "Please…"
Achamian turned to him, frowning but attentive.
His grin hooked the ruts of his face into innumerable lines. "I have, shall we say, a certain facility for sums and figures, as well as the finer details of argument. My illustrious Captain, well, let us just say, he has little patience for the perversities of speech."
"So you make the decisions?"
The man burst into a beet-faced cackle, revealing the arc of his gums. "No," he gasped, as though astounded that anyone could ask a question so uproariously thick. "No-no-no! I do the singing. But I assure you, it is the Captain who inks the verse." Sarl bowed to the Ainoni in embellished deference-who now watched Achamian with something poised between curiosity and malice. When Sarl turned back to Achamian, his lips were pursed into a see-I-told-you-so line.
Achamian snorted dismissively. This was one thing he didn't miss about the civilized world: the addiction to all things indirect.
"I need to contract your Captain's company."
"Such a strange request!" Sarl exclaimed, as though waiting to say as much all along. "And daring, very daring. There are no more wars, my friend, save the two that are holy. The one that our Aspect-Emperor wages against wicked Golgotterath, and the more tawdry one we wage against the Sranc. There are no more mercenaries, friend."
Achamian found himself glancing back and forth between the two men. The effect was unnerving, as though the division of attention amounted to a kind of partial blindness.
For all he knew, this was the whole point of this ludicrous exercise.
"It isn't mercenaries I need, it's scalpers. And it isn't war that I intend, it's a journey."
"Ahhh, very interesting," Sarl drawled. His eyes collapsed into fluttering slits every time he smiled, as if blinking at some kind of comical grit. "A journey requiring scalpers is a journey into the wastes, no?"
Achamian paused, disconcerted by the ease of the man's penetration. This Sarl was every bit as nimble as he looked.
"Yes."
"As I thought! Very, very interesting! So tell me, just where in the North do you need to go?"
Achamian had feared this question, as inevitable as it was. Who was he fooling?
"Far…" He swallowed. "To the ruins of Sauglish."
Another spittle-flecked spasm of laughter, this one carving every vein, every web of wrinkles in succinct shades of purple and red. He even yanked his wrists together as though bound, shook up and down, fingers flicking. He looked to the cowled man as though seeking confirmation. "Sauglish!" he howled, rolling his face back. "Oh ho, my friend, my poor, poor lunatic friend!" He reclined back in his chair, sucking air. "May the Gods"-he shook his head in a kind of astonished dismissal-"keep your bowls warm and full and whatever."
Something in his look and tone said, Leave while you still can…
Achamian's fists balled of their own volition. It was all he could do to keep from burning the pissant to cinders. Arrogant monkey-of-a-man! Only the Captain's Chorae and the indigo Mark of his cowled companion stayed his tongue.
A hard moment of fading smiles.
Sarl scratched the pad of his thumb with the nail of his index finger.
Then the Captain said, "What lies in Sauglish?"
The words fairly knocked the blood out of Sarl's ruddy face. Perhaps there were consequences for misreading the Captain's interest. Perhaps the man had simply wandered too far out on a drunken limb. For some reason, Achamian had the impression that Lord Kosoter's voice always had this effect.
"What do you know of it?" Achamian asked. He immediately realized this was a grievous mistake, answering a question with a question when discoursing
with the Captain. Nevertheless, he felt the need to match, flint for flint, the man's unearthly look, to communicate his own ability to see the atrocity at the heart of all things.
He stared into Lord Kosoter's shining eyes. He could hear Sarl breath, a shallow-chested sound, like a dog dreaming. He found himself wondering if the cowled man had moved. A ringing sidled into the room, high-pitched and hazy, and with it came a premonition of lethality, a wheedling apprehension. The stakes of this contest, part of him realized, involved far more than dominance or respect or even identity, but the very possibility of being…
I am the end of you, the eyes in his eyes whispered. And they seemed a thousand years old.
Achamian could feel himself wilt. Wild-limbed imaginings flickered through his soul, hot with screams and blood. He could feel tremors knock through his knees.
"Go easy now, friend," Sarl murmured in what seemed genuine conciliation. "The Captain here can piss halfway cross the world, if need be. Just answer his question."
Achamian swallowed, blinked. "The Coffers," some traitor with his voice said. Glancing at Sarl seemed like breaking the surface of a drowning.
"Coffers," Sarl repeated strangely. "Perhaps"-a quick glance at Lord Kosoter-"you should tell the Captain what you meant by the Coffers."
Achamian could see the man's implacable eyes, like Scrutiny incarnate, leaning against his periphery. He found himself glancing at the cowled figure, then looking away, down to the accursed floor.
It wasn't supposed to be like this!
"No," he said, breathing deep, then glaring at all three in turn. The way to deal with the Captain, he realized, was to make him one of a number. "I shall try my luck elsewhere." He made to leave, feeling faint and sweaty and more than a little nauseous.
"You're the Wizard," Lord Kosoter called out in a growl.
The word hooked Achamian like a wire garrote.
"I remember you," the grave face continued as he turned. "I remember you from the Holy War." He slid his wine-bowl to one side, leaned forward over the table. "You taught him. The Aspect-Emperor."
"What does it matter?" Achamian said, not caring whether he sounded bitter.
The almost black-on-black eyes blinked for what seemed the first time.
"It matters because it means you were a Mandate Schoolman… once." His Sheyic was impeccable, bent more to some inner dialect of anger than to the lilting cadences of his native Ainoni tongue. "Which means you really do know where to find the Coffers."
"So much the worse for you," Achamian said. But all he could think was how… How could a scalper, any scalper, know about the Sohonc Coffers? He found himself glancing at the leather-cowled man to the Captain's left… The sorcerer. What was his School?
"I think not," Lord Kosoter said, leaning back. "There's scalpers aplenty in Marrow, sure. Any number of companies." He hooked his wine-bowl with two calloused fingers. "But none who know who you are…" His grin was curious, frightening. "Which means none who will even entertain your request."
The logic of his claim hung like an iron in the air, indifferent to the swell of background voices. Truth was ever the afterlife of words.
Achamian stood dumbstruck.
"I have this leaf," Sarl said, his eyes bright with just-between-friends mischief. "You place it against your anus-"
The cowled man erupted in faceless laughter. Achamian saw his left eye as he tilted his head back, a glimpse of a pupil set in watery grey. But it was the guttural arrhythmia of his laugh that told him what he was…
"Just twooo," Sarl howled, his purple brows nearly pinched to his apple-red cheeks. "Tw-twooo ensolariis!"
Achamian sneered as much as smiled. The Anus Leaf was an old joke, an expression referring to charlatans who peddled hope in the form of false remedies.
The Captain watched him with imperturbable care.
They were right, he realized. Derision was all he could expect here in Marrow-or even worse. The Skin Eaters were his only hope.
And they had already struck him down.
Achamian took the proffered bowl in both hands just to be sure it didn't shake. He drained it and gasped. Unwatered wine from some bitter Galeoth soil.
"The Coffers!" Sarl crowed. "Captain! He wants to loot the Coffers!"
Achamian smacked his lips about the burning in his gullet, wiped a rasp-woollen sleeve across his beard and mouth. It was strange, the way a single drink could make you part of someone's company. "It was him," Achamian said to the Captain while nodding in the direction of the cowled figure. "Wasn't it? He told you about the Coffers…"
Another mistake. Evidently, the Captain refused to recognize even the most innocent conversational impositions. Hint, innuendo, implication; all of it accused with a glare, then condemned with onerous silence.
"We call him Cleric," Sarl said, tilting his head toward the man-a mock covert gesture.
The black, leather-rimmed oval seemed to stare back at Achamian.
"Cleric," Achamian repeated.
The cowl remained motionless. The Captain resumed staring into his wine.
"You should hear him in the Wilds," Sarl exclaimed. "Such sweet sermons! And to think I once thought myself eloquent."
"And yet," Achamian said carefully, "Nonmen have no priests."
"Not as Men understand them," the black pit replied.
Shock. Its voice had been pleasant, melodious, but marbled with intonations alien to the human vocal range. It was as though the tones of a deformed child had been woven into it.
Achamian sat rigid. "Where are you from?" he asked, his lungs pressed against his backbone. "Ishterebinth?"
The hood bowed to the tabletop. "I can no longer remember. I have known Ishterebinth, I think… But it was not called such then."
"I see your Mark. You wear it fierce and deep."
The hood lifted, as though raising hidden ears to some faraway sound. "As do you."
"Who was your Quya Master? From which Line do you hail?"
"I… I cannot remember."
Achamian licked his lips in hesitation, then asked the question that had to be asked of all Nonmen. "What can you remember?"
An odd hesitation, as though to the syncopation of an inhuman heart.
"Things. Friends. Strangers and lovers. All of them heart-breaking. All of them horrific."
"And the Coffers? You remember them?"
An almost imperceptible nod. "I was at the Library of Sauglish when it fell-I think. I remember that terror all too well… But why it should cause me such sorrow, I do not know."
The words pimpled Achamian's skin. He had dreamed the horrors of Sauglish far too many times-he need only close his eyes to see the burning towers, the fleeing masses, the Sohonc battling iron-scaled Wracu in skies wreathed in smoke and flame. He had tasted the ash on the wind, heard the wailing of multitudes. He had wept at his own cowardice…
This made him unique among Men, to have lived the span of two lives-two eye blinks, Seswatha and Achamian, flung across the millennia. But this Nonman before him, his life straddled a hundred human generations. He had lived the entire breadth of those nation-eating ages. From then to now-and even more. From the twilight of the First Apocalypse to the dawn of the Second.
He was in the presence of a living line, Achamian realized, of eyes that had witnessed all the intervening years between his two selves, between Achamian, the Wizard-Exile, and Seswatha, the Grandmaster of the Sohonc. This Nonman had lived the two-thousand-year sleep between…
It almost made Achamian feel whole.
"And your name?"
Sarl whispered some kind of curse.
"Incariol," the cowled figure said with an air of inward grappling. And then again, "Incariol…" as though testing its sound on his tongue. "Does that sound familiar?"
Achamian had never heard of it, not that he could remember. Even still, it was plain these Scalpoi had no inkling of who or what rode with them. How could any mortal fathom such a cavernous soul?
As old as
the Tusk…
"So you're an Erratic."
"Am I? Is that what I am?"
How did you answer such a question? The creature before him had lived so long his very identity had collapsed beneath him, dropped him into the pit of his own lifetime. His was a running-over soul, where every instance of love or hope or joy drained into the void of forgetfulness, displaced by the more viscous passions of terror, anguish, and hate.
He was an Erratic, addicted to atrocity for memory's sake.
"He's calling you mad," Sarl said, a little too quickly given the gravity of their silence.
The hood turned to him.
"Yes… I am mad."
Sarl waved his hands in affectionate contradiction. "Come now, Cleric. No need to-"
"Memories…" the black pit interrupted. A word struck in wincing tones of woe. "Memories make us sane."
"See!" Sarl exclaimed, whirling to Achamian. "Sermons!" His face was pinched red about a manic smile, as though he were the kind of man who made claims compulsively and so gloated over every instance of their confirmation.
"This one night in the Wilds, one of our number asks Cleric here what's the greatest treasure he's heard tell. Gold, as you might imagine, is quite a popular topic among us Scalpoi, especially when we're hunting on the dark-without campfires, that is. Warms the bones as sure as any flame, talk of peaches and gold."
There was something-the turn of his face, maybe, the aura of antagonism in the way he leaned forward, or the twist of insincerity in his tone-that told Achamian that "sermons" were the least of the man's concerns.
"So Cleric here," Sarl rasps, "obliges us with another sermon. He mentions several glories, for he's seen things we mortals can scarce conceive. But for some reason it was the Coffers that stuck. The hoard hidden beneath the Library of Sauglish, ere it was destroyed in the First Apocalypse. The Coffers, we say. The Coffers-any time we're loath to mention that unluckiest of words, 'hope.' Coffers. Coffers. Coffers. We trek out to run down the skinnies, give them a trim, but we always say we're searching for the Coffers."
The face-wrinkling amiability suddenly dropped from his face, revealing something cold and hateful and implausibly profound.
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