by Adrian Selby
I’m taken to the lower level in the jail, known as the Coffins. One of the floor grates is opened, not much more than a coffin-sized space, carved out of the stone. I’m stripped from the waist down, which gives a few in the coffins nearby a chance to ask me to join them. I’m forced down into a coffin by pressure from the poles on the neck trap. My backside is pushed against a trough carved to take down into the caves whatever I expel, an innovation that made this one of the better prison duties a guard could be put on.
The grate is pushed down over me, heavy, trapping me still as it does the others. After an hour of this weight there’s a savage sharp aching across my body, beyond which I can barely hear the noise of others telling me how they’d like to use me. They are only distracting themselves from the pain they also are undergoing. I let it fill me. It drowns out Mosa.
It makes little difference, I shortly learn, where they put your backside in relation to a channel for whatever you shit, because later that night a couple of the guards come down to the Coffins. They relieve a night’s ale over us, aiming at the faces of those sleeping especially. I guess it’s the newer prisoners that make the most noise about it, for they’re told to get used to it by others.
One of the guards kneels on my grate and starts pulling himself off over my face while the woman that’s with him is cheering him on. The woman laughs hard at this, tells me I shouldn’t feel honoured, he does it to all of them in here. I feel him finish himself on me. I tell him that I feel sorry for his keep if he’s that quick with her. He hits me once on my head with the pole end of his spear before she cusses at him to stop. Turns out they’re eating food and wine they was bribed to give me, and getting food into the Hill, down here in particular, requires some sort of clout. Tarrigsen, it must be. I feel like taunting them, but they’ve been soaking in cups, and guards fit for this sort of duty make all sorts of bad decisions when they’re soaked.
As they leave the others calm down, some muttering, some singing muke-thickened verses of old songs, and there was two kept arguing about the mistakes the other made that got them here. Tarrigsen didn’t look well when I saw him earlier. Thinner. There’s a rot gets in your pipes and eats you up from inside and I fear it’s in him. Might be he’s thinking of some way to get me off the gallows. He runs much of the dock, though these two wouldn’t have eaten what he’d sent down if they thought there was a mosquie’s chance I wasn’t going to hang.
The hours pass, shifts change, measuring the night’s coming and going. I snatch sleep between the men’s agits. One asks me if I really did kill Crogan. I tell him I deserve this, and nothing more.
The door’s bolt is drawn back with a heavy crack and it swings open.
“She’s there. Tell her Kristluk’s going to save up a big shit just for her when he’s in later.”
“Tell Kristluk that if this happens, I will end his rope, for they will no longer be able to work in Hillfast.”
“You’re a cleark, go fuck yourself.”
Thornsen, a voice varnished to a soft shine, my immaculate high cleark. My eyes fill up because he will see me like this. I had not wanted to see him for all that I loved him. That was another and better Teyr Amondsen.
He holds a torch out towards me and squats down to get closer to me. I can barely move my head, my neck seems frozen in iron. He’s typically well groomed, a clean short beard, his cap, tunic and leggings navy and grey, also clean and well sewn, for he apprenticed as a tailor for years before his letters earned him work as a cleark.
He too has tears in his eyes and he comes forward onto his kneecaps and puts his hand to my cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
I had cried enough these last few seasons since I left Mosa’s body and went south to the Mothers, but his sorrow cut me open again. I had taken our friends away and killed them.
“Please go, Thornsen, I can’t bear this.”
“Othbutter won’t return from his hunt until evening. I will petition for your release then.”
“No. No, don’t. I can’t bear to be alive. My interests, my ships, it’s yours, yours and Tarry’s.”
“But Cherry found you, she told me what you said had happened. You didn’t kill Crogan, Seikkerson did.”
“Fucking shut it!” barks the man in the coffin to my right, and he says it again and again.
“We can’t talk, Thornsen, there’s too much to say. The Kelssen children that was with us, with me, Cherry and Leyden, look out for them and prepare for war, for Samma Khiese’s coming. Now go.”
He’s about to protest when the cunt next to me who’s shouting starts a chain of others off that brings the guard.
“You’ll have to leave, your silver in’t going to cover this lot gettin’ the agits, and all the extra work swilling them out when they get angry listening to you.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Master.” He stands up, both knees clicking, something he used to moan about often, and the torchlight fades with his footsteps. With him goes the foul smell of the dipped torch and the fine smell of orange oil that he’s used in his beard since we first met.
“We’ll all see you tomorrow, and watch that old neck of yours snap,” shouts one of the guards back at me.
“It’ll be worth it not to have to listen to your shit any more.”
I can’t help but cry out as they unlock the grate pressed on me the next day. I cannot straighten myself, though they pull me up by my arms and slap me about, as though that will move the cramp and deadness from my limbs. I’m thrown to the ground and a robe is put over me to spare those in the justice the sight of my body, I’m sure. I shake and shiver with the effort of trying to move even slightly. A few kicks are meant to encourage me, but it takes hours for a body to set itself after being in the coffins. There’s many I’ve seen deformed by them when their punishment sent them back there too often.
It’s hard to say how I’m feeling otherwise. The end of a life, the hands of the dying I’ve held down the years, it all goes this way: a shallow mixture of the fondest memories drowned out by the unbearable vivacity of the world around you, a gluey wax of sense, the cold on my bare arms, the scratch of wool hardening my nipples, the thickness of smells: sweat, oil, wounds.
Eventually I am pulled to my feet. The guards put a shoulder under either arm and drag me out. Torches provide miserly pools of light on the worn, slick steps of this dungeon. The light of morning, when the iron-braced door is dragged open, hits me with the grace of a cooper’s mallet. I’m given many names by the guards clustered in the irons room, changing shifts over pipes and bowls of nettle tea. I’m a “bald cratch,” a “spim-drunk drooper.” “Dead cunt walking” is the truest of them. I hope they can get me in the noose before the day’s out.
There’s little fuss at the sight of a prisoner as I’m dragged more briskly out of the Hill and through the market to the chamber. I haven’t been given boots, the earth and dung are cold enough to numb my toes as they scrape the ground. It’s a blue sky; snow-white clouds thick as butter shape Aoig’s light. The black eye softens the edges of the stalls and buildings around me, the notes they sing in concord with the melodies of laughter and prices hollered.
I wonder at the beauty that must fill the days of the Oskoro who have been changed by the Flower of Fates, those who receive the seed. I wonder too if they can pass on how they’ve changed to their children as the rest of us do our noses, eyes and hair. It stops me thinking about the judgement that’s coming as I’m led into the chamber. It takes a moment to realise that the yellow flag isn’t flying. The chamber doors are opened by militiamen, and beyond the beams of sunlight draw hard sharp squares on the dark flagstones of the main floor. I’m dropped to my knees by the guards before they turn and leave. I feel like a child, but I have no choice and I cuss as I lean forward to find a way to hold myself free of the spasms of pain I’m suffering in my spine. Then, for a moment, I could believe I’d woken up from some awful dream, for Othbutter sits in the simple wooden chair, Tobber to his side, a table for a jug and a
cup at Othbutter’s other hand. His hair might be greyer, he might be fatter, his belly filling his lap. His tunic is a rough woollen one, the one he’s always preferred for passing judgement on ending a life, pretending he’s a servant to the law of the land while before the poor.
But it’s not a dream. Aude isn’t standing behind me. I’m no longer full of the future I had for us.
Then I sense another here with us, in the shadows behind the beams of light, but I’m standing in one, shielding them from sight.
“Teyr, of the Jonassen clan,” begins Tobber, giving me Aude’s name since I’d become his keep.
“I’m an Amondsen, Tobber, you streak of shit, and you did me the honour of calling me Amondsen the last time I was stood here. But back then you had an agreement on my wine shipments that you kept off your scrolls, I believe.”
I hear a laugh choke itself off. It sounds familiar. Othbutter raises his eyebrows.
“Othbutter, I didn’t kill your brother, the Seikkersons did. If you won’t believe me put me in the noose and get this fucking thing over with. I’m done.”
I get a dig in my ribs for that, but I keep my eyes on him.
“Amondsen. The Seikkersons are loyal to us. Jeife Seikkerson brought my brother’s body back to his bloodlands to be buried before winter just gone. His tithe was true, generous indeed. He told me you left Crogan to the whims of this warlord Khiese.”
“He’s smoking Khiese and he’s played you. Khiese now knows your strength, or lack of it, and the lie of land from Elder Hill through here. I expect you’re recruiting for war?”
At that Othbutter looks off to his left, to the person standing in the darkened corner. “You are the only reason I’m not having her flayed where she sits.” He turns back to me. He wants to say more, but what I said about Jeife must have made him think.
“What makes you speak of war, Amondsen? What can you tell us of this Khiese?”
“What is there to say? He has the Circle united against you. He’s harder than you, cleverer. He’ll end your rope before taking the rest of the citadel.”
“You seem keen to die, Amondsen. You’ve met Khiese, assessed his numbers, how they’re armed, the way they work? Will you not show your loyalty to the staff? To me? Your knowledge could spare you the noose.”
“I’d rather the noose than a few months in a cell before Khiese takes over this port and finds me. You don’t have the soldiers or the loyalty in enough clans for the army you’ll need.”
Othbutter stares at me for a moment, thinks better of replying and reaches for his jug to fill his cup.
I remember Khiese’s words, his threat to kill Aude, but Aude would be dead now, all this time later. I can’t bear to think of him alive if I’m honest. The sun is warm on my head. I wish I could be left alone. I catch Tobber’s eye. He looks to his feet, hands clasped behind his back, clearly pleased.
“You should smile a bit more, Tobber, give your keep a shock when you go home later. You was right though, wasn’t you? I failed. And I lost Aude and Mosa, Thad, Eirin. I’d like to know if Chalky made it back with his son?”
“No sign of him, his keep or his children at his sheds or the guildhall. I’ve taken on his interests as he had no brother,” says Othbutter.
Poor bastards. Even if Khiese had truly let them go, they just wouldn’t have survived the journey back on their own—no snowcraft. They might have shared the truth about Crogan had they made it.
It occurs to me as I look about me that there can’t be more than four or five people in the room: Othbutter, Tobber, whoever it was that laughed and the guards behind me.
“Brilde, Hamskke, leave us,” says Othbutter.
I hear them turn and walk out, the heavy black larch doors closing.
“No witness to rolls? Are you going to kill me here?”
“No. We should talk about a way out of this for you, Blackeye. Isn’t that what I heard you’ve been called down in Carlessen lands?”
This voice comes from the corner. It takes me as long to place it as the speaker takes to step into the light.
“Nazz?”
Where do I begin with this fucker? I knew him all my life from the day I arrived in Hillfast on a van as a girl looking to change the world, through to the day in Marola he set me and Thad up to die. He’d shared both our beds. I’d loved him as a keep, then as a brother, and we wandered half the world with Ruifsen and Threeboots. He had longknots then, hair the colour of pine, but age has salted it all over as it has mine. He moves like he still does his Forms, but he’s a ganger now, and it doesn’t pay to look weak. Even his colour looks like it’s had a shot recently. I realise as I take him in that his skin, often so bad in the field from a reaction of some kind to guira, was less blotchy, fewer white flakes and crusts of skin mottling him.
“I’m sorry about Aude and your boy. Sorry about Thad too—I loved him. Where you been since before winter?”
“What do you want?” I want to spit on him, scream at him for how false he is in saying all this, but I’m on my knees, leaning forward on an arm, and that wobbling with the effort of keeping me in a position free of pain. It’s all I can do to keep my breathing even.
In the years since I’ve been back at Hillfast I knew he was about of course, saw him from time to time, but he lived in the nights and I the days. He wouldn’t meet my eye when we did pass in the lanes or on the quays, but I shared too many pipes with him before Marola to hold such proper hate in my heart that I’d go after him.
“I’m here to find out if you want to get some revenge on Khiese,” he says.
“Why have we lost my guards?”
I know the answer, I see it in Othbutter’s eyes. I see a flush as well, a shiver of colour of sorts, close to anger from what I’d learned of the way this black eye sees. Khiese may have spies in Hillfast.
“The fewer that know of this the better,” says Nazz.
“How much land has Khiese taken? He’s reached Elder Hill and he’s got whiteboys a few days from Port Carl. Is that about it?”
They share a glance. Their faces, eyes searching for what to say, speak of much that is left out, much they’re not sharing, but I cannot fathom what.
“I’m putting a crew together,” says Nazz. “Khiese threatens us all.”
“I supposedly killed your brother, Chief. Am I a threat to you or not?”
“Not where you’re going, to the noose or elsewhere,” says Othbutter. “I’d have you in the fucking noose, you old cratch, and I’d drag you there myself, but our mutual friend sees a use for you, maybe even recover your honour.”
“You’re right, Teyr. You were always right,” says Nazz before I can reply. “Mercs and soldiers from the north will take time to assemble. They’re being mustered, but a needle in the heart’s as good as a hammer to the head. We can be the needle, and you know all about the heart it needs to find.”
Kill Khiese.
I see him again, dirty yellow colour and copper hair. I hear his flat, calm certainty, his purpose rooted deep and cold as Sillindar’s Eye is fixed above us.
“We had near fifty, including the chief’s best, my own best, Sanger and Yalle, and Sanger and his man Jem did for near forty of them on their own trying to save the lives of my family. It did us no good, all the clans are for him. You’re against all of them, to the last.”
“Sanger was fierce, I’ll grant you, but you took a van in there, Teyr—families. We’re going in there and we’re killing everyone between us and Khiese, just a handful of us, able to ride fast, hide easily. We’ll do it better with you.” He come closer to me, to get a better look. I read all too clearly in the lines of his face and set of his eyes how troubled he was by all the damage I carried.
“What happened to you? Your eye?”
“Infection I picked up.”
He knew that was cow shit but said no more.
“Teyr,” says Othbutter, “you seem ready to die, old girl. I can give you that, out on the gallows. Tobber’d tie the knot himse
lf, wouldn’t you, Tobber? Or you can find death yourself, if what you say about Khiese is true. The second way of dying puts a sword in your hand and gives you the chance to avenge your family. Kill Khiese, then you come back and droop yourself out on the purse you’d have earned, gold of course, fully thirty Hope pure and a stretch of Khiedsen land too for they will be punished for the sins of their son. I can’t hide that I can see the threat Khiese poses me, which is why it makes sense for me to be generous, even to you, if it’ll turn your head towards our common enemy.”
I roll my arms at the shoulders, the pain makes me hiss. I look between Othbutter and Nazz. Something’s not being said. Nazz is making coin by the barrel. There aren’t many sheds or merchants clean of him. It seems like suicide if the point of it is turning some coin. But here he is, with that sure look in his eye, that “One more brandy; what’s the worst can happen?” like we’re soaking it up way past wise in a tavern after beating some poor debtor about for Fat Steppy.
Khiese.
I don’t much give a shit, now I think about it, what it is going on between these two. My belly’s aching for something to eat, like it knows I’m no longer going to the gallows. More than that, the healing the Oskoro have done, the plant inside me that keeps me alive, tingles sharply, making clear its own need perhaps.
I think about putting a sword in Khiese, right up to the hilt. It brings a tear to my eye.
“I’ll join your crew, Nazz. I just hope you remember everything I taught you after all these years frightening poor debtors with what’s left of your colour. Chief, Tobber, I’m going to find some boots and then some wine. I’ll need some coin though.”
“Chief!” began Tobber. Othbutter raises his hand and cuts him off.
“Nazz, she’s your responsibility now. As are the others. We’ll meet once more before you leave.” Othbutter gets out of his chair with a grunt of effort and leads Tobber out to his office at the back of the hall, whispering to him all the way along.
“Yes, Chief,” says Nazz after him. He comes up to me and puts his hand on my shoulder as I kneel. I am both too sore and too shocked to react and push him off so I let it happen, feeling his awkwardness.