by Dave Duncan
He’d just escaped from a real jail and he knew of at least three ways out through the kitchens.
The prisoner had been taken back to Lord Shonsu’s palace by Swordsmen Helbringr and Tilber, and there she had been allowed to bathe and eat. She had indicated that she should wear brown, so a wrap of that color had been provided, and now she was sitting in the cell with them, playing a children’s tile game that did not require speech. So far the boy’s promise had been kept.
Suddenly Lord Shonsu was at the other side of the bars, looming enormous as he always must. The three women rose.
“I am told that your name is Selina,” he rumbled.
Selina nodded, trying desperately not to show fear. She had tried to kill this man, and he could kill her with a word to the swordsmen standing behind him.
“And that you will answer all my questions if I promise to spare your life?”
Nod again.
He backed up two paces and drew his sword. “I swear by my sword that I will keep my side of that bargain if you keep yours. If that wording isn’t good enough for you, I can summon a gaggle of priests to witness.”
She shook her head. No swordsman would perjure himself in front of swordsmen witnesses.
He smiled. “Good. Then let’s get down to business.”
The gate was unlocked. He came into the cell with her and ordered all the others away, so that the two of them were left sitting across the little table from each other. On the table lay a slate, a stick of chalk, and a rag. Only the orange-kilted leader of Shonsu’s bodyguard remained as a witness, sitting in the outer room, holding the key to the gate.
The questions began.
“What is your craft, Selina?”
Dancer, she wrote.
“That helps explain how you managed to reach my balcony. I knew you must be agile. Where are you from?”
Fex.
“That’s near Plo, isn’t it? The Kingdom of Plo and Fex? You weren’t going to cooperate when we first met, and now you are. Why have you changed your mind? You showed extraordinary courage by climbing that wall, so it wasn’t from fear.”
You not torture.
“The Tryst never tortures, and won’t allow civilian rulers to do it either.”
Boy cried for father.
That didn’t help Wallie’s feelings of guilt. “Who brought you to Casr?”
Sorcerers.
“The Honorable Yarrix?”
How did he know that? She nodded. But now she didn’t feel so bad about talking, if the swordsmen already knew that much.
Shonsu smiled as if he could read her thoughts. “Yarrix is still at large. He has other assassins with him, Selina. Can you tell me where to find them?”
You pardon them, too?
“No. I remind you that you swore to answer all my questions.”
She sat for a few moments with her eyes closed, trying to resolve the conflicting oaths she had sworn, and wrestling with her conscience.
Then she nodded. She wrote: In a house above a baker’s store, opposite a butcher’s, on corner, from window could see a statue of man with a bear.
“Ah! Thank you very much. Adept Filurz, let me out. Bring paper and ink so Dancer Selina can write. She is going to be pardoned as soon as I have approved her confession. Meanwhile she must stay here, but otherwise she is an honored guest in my house. Instruct the guards so. I am going back to the lodge.”
I am Selina, dancer of the third rank, she wrote. My father is Ghuri, priest of the Fourth in the temple at Fex, and my mother is Furroa, dancer of the third rank. My mentor was Inpockira of the Fourth. On Slaters’ Day a year ago, we sailed from Fex to Plo to dance before the queen. Her Majesty was much pleased with us, and gave Adept Inpockira a purse of gold. But that night a band of men broke into my room in the palace, gagged me and bound me, and carried me away with them. They took me to a place I did not know and raped me many times. Then they cut out my tongue so I couldn’t tell anyone about them, and they left me naked in a dark alley. I was rescued by some people I later learned were sorcerers. They treated my injuries and cared for me, but I was too badly hurt to rejoin my dance troupe, and they had gone back to Fex without me.
I was told that the rapists were swordsmen. They wore swords and talked like swordsmen, telling me I should be honored to be pleasured by them. When I had mostly recovered from my injuries, my rescuers asked if I would like to strike a blow against the swordsmen and I said I would. They took me up into the mountains, to a town called Kra, and trained me in how I could kill the chief swordsman as revenge for what had been done to me. I consented to do this. They promised they would heal my tongue. This year I was brought to Casr.
What else would Lord Shonsu want to know?
I believed the rapists had been swordsmen until last night, when I was in jail. I heard criminals being brought in, and they were almost all drunk. But the rapists hadn’t been drunk, and they wore hoods so I couldn’t see if they had long hair like swordsmen. The boy you put in the cell with me insisted that swordsmen weren’t allowed to do things like that anymore. I believed what he was saying and knew I had been lied to.
Preparations for a punitive expedition were well underway by mid-afternoon. The Tryst’s bureaucracy was primitive, but so was its style of warfare. Pick out any swordsman in his kilt, boots, and sword harness, tell him to fetch his bedroll, and he would be back in a few minutes, ready to go. The Tryst would need to charter ships and outfit them. Lord Dorinkulu had been posted to Quo to organize that, and a steady stream of couriers rode between the two cities. Wallie was determined to leave before Healers’ Day, so he would not be distracted by the annual celebration. Boariyi would remain at Casr as acting liege. Joraskinta was to be Wallie’s second-in-command.
Nnanji had needed almost twenty weeks to return from the war zone to Casr, although he had not spent all that time in travel. Fortunately Katanji’s jewel-trading friends confirmed that there was an overland route between Soo and Cross Plo, and Soo was a lot closer to Casr in terms of travel time. If Shonsu’s army could match Nnanji’s speed, it ought to reach Soo in early summer. Wallie consoled himself with the thought that Eisenhower had needed years to organize D-Day.
The assassins’ hideout had been easily identified from Selina’s description. As soon as Wallie reached the lodge, he sent for an eager young Fourth he had his eye on, and told him to, “Go get ‘em.” Half an hour later, swordsmen swarmed in through doors and windows, no search warrant required. They found Yarrix and his helpers bottling wine, adding a pinch of some white unidentified white powder to every bottle. The only casualty was the promising young Fourth, who took a bullet in his chest and died instantly.
Three pistols were brought back to the liege, and Wallie was relieved to see that the sorcerers had apparently made little progress in gunnery in the last fifteen years. These handguns, at least, had no rifling, percussion cartridges, or automatic weapons. Of course Kra now had muskets, and might have made other progress too. The loot contained some of the other gimcrackery he had seen before, but one item was new to him and very damning evidence: a box of transfers. He had known sorcerers could change facemarks, but not how they managed it. He ordered everything bundled up for him to take with him on the expedition. For years he had kept many of the sorcerers’ secrets that he had discovered or guessed at, but now, so far as he was concerned, they had forfeited any right to his silence.
The confirmation of poison roused his ire as nothing else could have done. Everyone drank some wine or beer, sometimes even children, because it was used in cooking and was the easiest way to purify drinking water. The plot to kill him might have taken half his household, including Jja, Vixini, Sharon, Jjon, and little Budol.
Later he went to see the wizard. As usual, he was shown into the library room, lit that evening by oil lamps, but he had to wait a long while before the old man came shuffling in. Wallie snooped along some of the bookshelves, but most of the books seemed to be very dull ledgers that meant nothing witho
ut an understanding of the sorcerers’ calendar and cryptic file names.
Woggan had come to the lodge with an escort, here he arrived alone, which likely meant that this room was bugged. The secretive way he had passed the scroll strongly suggested that swordsmen were not the only people who did not trust sorcerers.
Wallie’s main reason for coming was to express thanks for the help, especially the warning about poisoned wine, but he did not say so directly. Instead he brandished one of the confiscated pistols and crowed how his interrogators had broken the assassin Selina and learned from her of the dastardly poison plot. Although Woggan showed no sign of appreciating the message behind the words, he certainly must.
“And did she say where this rape atrocity took place, my lord?”
“In Plo.”
“Then I suggest you direct your complaint to the coven of Kra, not to Vul.”
“I intend to,” Wallie said. “I shall deliver it in person.”
Swordsman Katanji’s residence was a modest, four-bedroom house, but its contents would have bought a small city. It stood within the precincts of the swordsmen’s lodge, so that no burglar could come closer than the wrong side of the perimeter wall. For added security, Katanji stored the Tryst’s bullion in his cellar, forcing Nnanji to keep a permanent guard around the building. Katanji himself could come and go by means of an unlisted tunnel leading to a clothing store he owned on the public plaza, and there he could meet with business associates. Those might be gouty old men trying to buy favors or sweet young ladies selling them, but whichever they were, Katanji regarded their identities as nobody’s business but his, and the tunnel as his personal secret. Only the very favored were invited back that way to his residence.
That evening he had brought home an exciting new friend and was just settling down to enjoy an intimate seven-course snack with her. She was a courtesan of the first rank presently going by the name of Swansdown. Her nipples glowed like pink rosebuds through the uppermost edge of an extremely sheer and skimpy white wrap, and her single facemark was not properly healed. In most professions that meant that it had been applied very recently. In hers, nothing necessarily meant anything.
He raised his goblet in a toast. “May the Goddess bless you with a very long and happy career, my dear.” After Woggan’s warning about wine, Katanji had made sure that tonight’s vintages all came from bottles that had been collecting dust in his cellar for years.
Swansdown simpered professionally. “I’m sure it will be happy if all my future clients are as handsome and charming as the first.”
He let the lie pass without comment. He was at least her sixth customer in the two weeks since she had been sworn, and her real name was Ritorn. He was not supposed to know any of that, but two of his business associates recommended her highly.
“It always puzzles me that your craft follows the same rank system as the others. You ought to start as blues and descend to white in your old age.”
“I expect we get better with practice. I hope I’m not terribly clumsy tonight, this being my first…”
A bell jangled.
Frowning, Katanji set down his goblet. He was certainly not expecting any more visitors that evening, because the days—or nights—when he had entertained more than one such lovely as this were regrettably passed. In any case, it was almost unheard of for anyone to arrive by the tunnel entrance unless he was escorting them himself. Not sure whether he should be more annoyed or alarmed, he muttered an apology, rose, and went through into his study, carefully closing the heavy door behind him. He stepped into a closet and closed that door also before he slid open a panel and looked down to see who had pulled the bell rope. The spy hole gave him a good view of the last ten or so feet of the tunnel, and the visitors could not know that they were being observed from behind.
Surprise, surprise!
Unalarmed now, but annoyed, Katanji headed out to the hall and down a stairway to the secret entrance, a bronze and timber door that would have stopped a charging bull. There was another panel in that. He slid the cover aside .
“Gods’ balls!” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“Hiding.”
“Hiding from whom?”
“My mom of course. I may be officially a hero, Uncle, but I draw the line at battling mad mothers, especially mine.”
Impudent young devil! From there Katanji could see that the rest of the tunnel was empty, so he unbolted the door. “You expect me to stand up to her? I am not a hero, never have been, and never will be.”
“Shonsu said you were,” Addis said, slipping in before the door was properly open. “Want to hear that story again. She’s lined up the high priest to swear me in tomorrow, so I have to lay low until Sailors’ Day.”
Safely bolted in again, Katanji led the way up to the main floor. “Not just your mother, but mossy old Shamoza too? You’re a catch, lad! What craft do you think will dare accept you if the high priest’s after you?”
“Swordsmen, ’course. I promised Dad I would track down the people who sent the assassins. You think they’re sorcerers?”
“Who told you about the back door into my house?”
“I overheard Dad telling Shonsu about it one night. They were laughing because you thought nobody knew about it. Mm, something smells good.” Addis turned aside and strode uninvited into the dining room. “Devilspit! Ritorn? Fancy meeting you here!”
Katanji was at his heels. “You two are acquainted?” She couldn’t know his nephew professionally. Addis was growing up, but he hadn’t reached that stage yet. And Ritorn was blushing scarlet, which no one in her profession should ever do; also looking as if she would burst into tears any minute, a more conventional tactic.
“We used to play in the park together,” Addis said, helping himself to a pickled ptarmigan egg. “And go swimming in the pond. She’s younger than me, aren’t you, Ritorn? I remember how you’d turn to jelly every time Vixi smiled at you.” He glanced at his uncle sadly. “But now I suppose you have to go where the money is?”
The night was no longer young when Wallie got home. He dismissed his guard, accepted salutes from Sevolno and the night watch, and straightaway trudged wearily upstairs towards bed. To his surprise, Jja was still awake, sitting under a blaze of candlelight in the corner, embroidering.
“You’ll ruin your eyes,” he said, bending to kiss her.
“No, I won’t.” She laid her work aside and reached for the candle snuffer. “Do you need food? Wine?”
“Just sleep,” he said. “It’s been quite a day, but it worked out well in the end. We caught them where Selina said we would.”
“She’s a pleasant girl. Not very intelligent, but well-mannered.”
“I don’t remember her asking politely if she could stab me.”
“Are you going to release her, or send her to jail?”
“Release her. She kept her side of the bargain. Can you help her?”
Jja’s smile said that she already had. “She wants to stay here in Casr, and she’ll need a mentor. I’ve arranged for her to meet a couple of Fifths tomorrow.”
“Clever girl.” He kissed her.
Admitting at last that summer was passé, the weather gods had turned down the outside temperature. The shutters were closed and the bed had been made up inside. As Wallie lay down with a sigh of pleasure, he decided he could probably sleep standing up in a cupboard, if he had to. The last candle flame died. Jja slid in beside him.
“How was your day otherwise?” he asked, cuddling.
“Much as usual. Thana arrived in a rage. Addis has disappeared again. I had to swear to her that he wasn’t here.”
Wallie chuckled sleepily. “He isn’t very much younger than Nnanji was when we first met. And even old Honakura said that Nanj had a head like a coconut. Thana has never been indecisive either, never easily swayed.”
“So what is Baby Coconut up to?” Kiss.
“He’s going to turn up at the assembly and demand to be sworn in as a s
wordsman.”
“And will you allow that?” Another kiss.
Of course. That was what the gods wanted, obviously.
And obviously Shonsu was what Jja wanted. Sleep could wait.
Chapter 7
Overnight the weather went from poor to horrible, and Bronze Casters’ Day brought a steady downpour. That did not bother Apprentice Vixini, who spent it sitting on his butt indoors, listening to and memorizing sutras. As Dad had suggested, he concentrated on the real brutes, like Number 311, On Exercise, or 212, On the Treatment of Wounds, although the Thirds tutoring him insisted that those were very rarely called for in examinations, simply because they were unfairly difficult and the examiners themselves would have to bone up on them. But they did warn him not to forget the first eighty-nine, the sutras he had needed for promotion to second rank. By the end of the day he was convinced that he was going to make a total idiot of himself in the exam. He didn’t care much, because he was far too young to be a Third anyway; all his childhood playmates were still Firsts, in a wide assortment of crafts.
But he would also shame Dad, and he would much rather die than do that.
Sailors’ Day dawned cloudy and cold, but not actually raining. By the time the sky was turning from dark to light, Apprentice Vixini had been dragged out of bed, forced fed breakfast like a penned goose—or so it felt—and hauled away to the amphitheater at the lodge.
It was a busy place already. Promotions could be attempted at any time, but assembly promotions were popular because they were so public, and swordsmen, like most athletes, liked to display their prowess before their friends. The downside risk, of course, was that failures were jeered by a thousand throats or more. This time, with rumors of war boiling through the Tryst, scores of men had begged their mentors for the chance to try for higher rank.
“Here they come,” Dad said softly, looking over the throng of heads. “Mean as rat shit, both of them. I blotted one down a rank a couple of years ago, and refused the other one a posting he wanted. Just what you need.”