by Bell, Hilari
Indeed, he’d fallen silent to hear better.
“Have you any way to open the lock?” I nodded toward her basket.
“No. I thought he’d have the key.” She rolled aside a loaf of bread and pulled out a short club, which she’d evidently intended to use on the guard to obtain it. It should have been comical, but something in her expression… That guard had gotten lucky with Fisk and me.
The basket also held a full bottle of liniment. Though I knew at a glance ’twas not magica, I still applauded her forethought. We were rubbing it into Master Ruffo’s back when Fisk came trotting back, carrying a long crowbar.
He cast Mistress Ruffo an appraising glance. If he didn’t immediately realize the whole story, he clearly understood that she was on our side.
We fitted the narrow end of the bar into the padlock’s closed hasp, and pried. It took both Fisk’s and my strength, and in the end it was the smaller loops attached to the stock that gave way, tearing free of the wood with a shriek like a dying rabbit.
I looked around, but all the shutters that faced the square stayed firmly closed. Given the amount of noise we’d made this night, that told me a great deal about how the townsfolk regarded Master Ruffo.
He couldn’t move after we lifted the heavy plank off his neck and wrists. He could barely lower his hands to his lap, wincing with pain as he did. But Mistress Ruffo continued rubbing liniment into his stiff shoulders, and Fisk and I helped the man stumble to his feet and half-carried him away.
I thought about leaving the guard to his deserts, but lying all night in the cold spring rain… I went back and cut the rope that bound his ankles.
“You can stand up,” I told him, not trying to disguise my voice, since he’d been listening to it for some time. “The inn’s gate, on the far side of the square, is still open. You’ll find it eventually.”
He kicked at me, and started shouting through his gag again. I shrugged and returned to Fisk and Mistress Ruffo, who where hurrying the rescued man along at a fair pace now.
“Are we going somewhere?” Fisk asked politely.
“Willy!” Master Ruffo exclaimed. “Where’s Will? Did you get him back?”
“I’ve been too busy getting you back,” his wife snapped. “We’ve some friends in town, sir. They’re at the inn, grumbling about the storm and not wanting to go home just yet, so they’ll have an alibi. But their back door’s unlocked.”
It was, and a fire crackled in the kitchen hearth, with towels and blankets warming beside it. A kettle of hot soup hung near the blaze.
Our clothing steamed as we helped Master Ruffo strip off his wet garments, and warmth finished what the liniment had begun. He still hadn’t straightened, but he was moving more easily as we seated him at the table and clamped his hands around a mug of soup and a spoon.
He didn’t eat. There were tears in his eyes again, and this time the pain wasn’t physical.
“Willy. Gone. And it’s all my fault. My curst, stubborn, self-righteous—”
“Who’s Willy?” I asked.
“Our grandson,” Mistress Ruffo said. “Just turned thirteen. Not old enough to know better.”
Her voice implied that someone else was old enough to know better, and I wasn’t surprised when her husband snapped, “I already said it was my fault. What more do you-”
“What happened to young Will?” I broke in. This was clearly a quarrel that would go on for some time. Years, mayhap.
“The food train…” Master Ruffo pushed his soup away. “I think you’re strangers to these parts, yes?”
“We’ve seen the trains,” Fisk said. He is wary about answering personal questions, even from friends, while committing illegal acts. “You can hardly miss them.”
“Then you’ll know that they take laborers into the city, as well,” Ruffo said. “Draining the countryside of both food and hands. Indeed, it’s the lack of food that costs us the hands!”
“What do you mean?” I asked. We had seen laborers traveling to the city with the food trains, but I’d given it little thought. My father describes the slow migration of country men and women into cities and towns as an unstaunched wound, bleeding the countryside dry. At least, that’s how he describes it when young men and women leave his estate, to look for jobs with better pay and more chance of advancement. The craft guilds in the towns describe it as man’s natural desire to better his lot, and ’twas happening all over the Realm. And no matter how much the landed gentry grumble, no one ends up flogged, or in these new-fangled stocks.
“The markets in Tallowsport pay more for our crops than the local market can,” Mistress Ruffo said. “Particularly now, when there’s no new growth and winter stocks are running low. That means food here becomes expensive. When folks can’t afford to feed themselves and their families, they’ve no choice but to go with the cart trains, to get jobs in the city workshops.”
“It’s getting so bad, we’ll be short of men to plant and harvest soon,” Master Ruffo continued. Clearly this was one thing he and his wife agreed on.
“So why don’t you farmers, who are getting paid so much more, just pay your laborers more?” Fisk asked. “Or hold back part of your crop to sell to the local market, cheaper?”
“This ground may look muddy,” I told him, “but down a few inches ’tis just beginning to thaw. From Oakan to Crocusa, there’s nothing for a farm laborer to do.”
“As for refusing to sell to them, that’s what landed me in the stocks,” Ruffo said bitterly. “I’ve been talking to my neighbors, townsfolk, anyone who’ll listen, pointing out that if we can’t keep local prices down, soon we won’t be able to run our farms. When the train came through, well, it seemed like the time to put my money where my mouth was. I told ’em that our market needed my stores, and I wasn’t going to sell no matter how much they offered. They offered a lot,” he added. “Can’t say I blame most for taking it. They went away. But next day Judicar Makey and a dozen guards, Tallowsport Guards, rode up to the farm and said I’d been accused of mis-weighting my scales.”
“I said how could I do that, since I hadn’t sold ’em anything, and brought out my scales to show him they were true. He said the fact that I had them so ready to hand proved I’d been using them recently, and that if I’d cheated, of course I’d have re-set them. It was a farce.”
His soup was getting cold, but even his wife didn’t press him to eat.
“So that’s what these new stocks are for,” I murmured. “To punish those who owe no debt in blood or coin.”
“How does your grandson come into this?” Fisk asked.
“When I was arrested, and sentenced almost in the same breath, Willy came running out. And you were the one supposed to keep him in the house,” Ruffo told his wife. “He said he’d make my debt good. That the train could take him to the city if they’d let me go.”
“It could have worked.” Mistress Ruffo looked almost as distressed as her husband. “I was trying to pull him back, but…but not that hard. The trains want labor even more than they want food. A lot of people settle with them that way. I thought that after the planting we could go to the city and find him, buy him out of whatever contract he might have signed.”
“How could you think I’d sell our grandson, to get out of—”
“But it didn’t work,” Fisk interrupted. “They took your grandson and then arrested you anyway, right?”
“How did you know?” Mistress Ruffo asked. “They put Willy in chains on the cart. When they made the arrest he started screaming that he’d been cheated. That if they took him, they had to let his grandpa go. But how could you know that?”
“Because ’tis what such bullies would do,” I said. “To increase their power over you and your neighbors.”
“Because ’tis what such bullies would do,” I said. “To increase their power over you and your neighbors.”
Fisk closed his eyes, like a man facing some terrible accident he can’t prevent. “I see it coming. It’s not as if I can
’t see it coming.”
“See what?” Mistress Ruffo looked around, alarmed.
“Don’t worry, Mistress. He’s just grousing from habit, because he knows we’re going to get your grandson back for you.”
Even Master Ruffo straightened his stiff neck to stare.
“You’re…what? But why? You’ve done enough for me this night. Why are you doing this?”
“Because I’m a knight errant,” I told him, “in search of adventure and good deeds. Fisk is my squire.”
Most laugh when I tell them this, for it has been over two centuries since knights errant have roamed the Realm. Indeed, in these modern times I’m probably the only one alive so mad as to take it for my life’s work.
But the Ruffos didn’t laugh.
Fisk sighed, but he didn’t deny it, and a flame of hope wiped the bitter despair from their faces.
“You mean that?” Master Ruffo demanded. “If it wasn’t for what you’ve already done, I’d know you were having us on, but… Do you truly mean that?”
“He does,” said Fisk glumly. “Every word of it.”
The Ruffos were still staring in bewilderment, and time was passing.
“First, we must find some place to leave you, safely out of Judicar Makey’s reach,” I said. “Have you kin or friends in another fief?”
“No need for that.” Mistress Ruffo’s voice was rough with gratitude. “Our friends here will hide us till the Mayor comes back. He went to complain to Baron Benrick about how much of our stock the food trains have been taking, and when he returns… Well, Makey better have gotten a big bribe, because he’ll not be a judicar much longer. Not in Casfell.”
“Are you sure?”
They both nodded.
“Then Fisk and I had better return to the inn. Tomorrow we’ll set out after the train that took your grandson, and add ourselves to it.”
“As laborers?” Fisk asked. “What do you intend to do with the horses? Not to mention the dog. And won’t that bring us closer to Tallowsport?”
The name of Jack Bannister hung unspoken between us, as it so often had when our erratic path took us a step or two closer to the city where Jack and his murderous employer laired. But even Fisk couldn’t blame this turn of events on me.
“We have no choice,” I pointed out. “Not if we’re going to rescue young Will. And not as laborers. Even leaving the livestock aside, we’d not be allowed near a prisoner. We need to get hired on as guards. We shall have to pass ourselves off as ruffians, Fisk.”
For a moment I thought he was going to protest, but then he sighed. “Well, at least we won’t need disguises.”
All Michael needed to do to look like a ruffian, was to pull his sword out of his pack and fasten it to his belt. He did it soon after we left town the next morning.
I decided to wait till we neared our mark to assume my disguise—which would pretty much consist of a few days accumulated grime.
But we could have left Casfell armed to the teeth, and I’m not sure anyone would have noticed. The taproom brimmed with townsfolk, who’d come to hear how the city guardsman had stumbled in last night with a sack over his head and his prisoner gone—and claiming that a little old lady had knocked him out! I saw several surreptitious toasts, but I kept my bruised hand in my pocket, anyway.
Michael, being outside the law already and mad as a hatter to boot, doesn’t pay much attention to this kind of thing. Having spent most of my life breaking it, I have a great respect for the power of the law. And no desire to attract its attention.
“Keep an eye out for a tree,” I told Michael as the town disappeared behind us. “If we’re going to be ruffians, I want to cut myself a cudgel.”
“That may not be easy. Finding a tree, I mean.”
We’d been traveling for almost a month through the flat plains that drained into the Erran River, and it was the most boring countryside I’d ever seen. Not only were there few trees, there were also no real hills, no mountains, and no valleys. Nothing but flat, fallow fields, mile after mile. Muddy fields, as the snows and slush of Crocusa gave way to the rains of Grassan. And muddy roads.
But having listened to the Ruffos, I now saw those fields in a different light.
“This land is incredibly fertile, isn’t it?”
Michael nodded. “When the High Liege—the first High Liege, that is—when he conquered all the other lords and barons, and united the Realm under his rule, most of the battles were fought here, on the river plains. Once he had the heartland under his control, he got fealty from the rest of them more through economic leverage than the sword.”
“I know that. What was it…? ‘The Erran Plains may not be the only land that matters, but ’tis the land that matters most.’”
My father was a scholar, and I’ve read a bit of history. Besides, the first High Liege was an illiterate barbarian—that was the only quotable thing he ever said.
“He built Crown City at the highest navigable point on the Erran, just so he could hold these plains,” Michael went on. “He could boat troops downstream swiftly, but anyone coming against him would have to row upstream or go by land. Which meant he’d get warning they were coming and they’d be tired out, while his troops—”
“I’m sorry I asked. But if it’s so fertile,” I gestured to the sea of rutted mud, “then why is Tallowsport stripping the larder bare? Shouldn’t there be plenty?”
“I don’t know,” Michael admitted. “But labor, food and other raw goods are flowing from the countryside into the towns all over the Realm. Tallowsport is the Realm’s largest city. It makes sense that they’d need more food, more of everything, than other towns.”
“Maybe.” Though I still didn’t see why they were willing to pay such high prices for the crops they bought. Or to put down the money to bribe a judicar. Educated men don’t come cheap.
By the time we’d reached the small village that a groom had told us was the train’s next stop, it had already left. When we reached the town where the villagers told us it went next, we found that another food train had come though two weeks ago, and they hadn’t seen the train we were looking for.
We spent the night there, listening to rain beating on the roof, and cursing whatever clerk had cleverly reorganized the cart routes, then set out the next morning to find where our train had gone. It took us two more days, riding through the mud from village to village, before we found one where our train had stopped, and another two days to catch up with it. Our horses were muddy up to their bellies, and Trouble was coated from the tip of his ropy tail to his flopping ears. He didn’t seem to mind.
By that time I didn’t need my cudgel, or the knife I strapped to my belt, to look as ruffianly as Michael. Or at least, as dirty.
We tied the horses to the post in front of the tavern where the train boss had set up his office, and Michael told the dog to guard them. Trouble, trying to bark at a flock of pigeons circling overhead, paid no attention. I say “trying to bark” because Trouble is mute. Born that way, according to Michael, who persisted in the fantasy that he was a guard dog. A role Trouble never even attempted, as far as I could see.
Leaving the menagerie behind, we climbed two stone steps, knocked as much mud as we could off our boots, and went in.
The train boss’s “office” was a large table covered with invoices, lading bills, ledgers and receipts. But all the piles of paper were tidily arranged, and as we drew near I noticed that a tea sieve sat on a dish beside his mug, which held a liquid darker than beer.
He might look like a bandit captain, but despite the knife scars on his arms he was a businessman, not a thug. Which would probably make this harder.
Michael stepped up to the table. “Excuse me, good sir. My friend and I were wondering if you could use more guards.”
He leaned back in his chair and regarded Michael thoughtfully, taking in the light brown hair, now somewhere between a nobleman’s shoulder length and a peasant crop. The old scars on cheek and chin, the calloused ha
nds, the well-worn sword sheath…and those curst, honest eyes.
“Judging by your boots, you have your own horses?”
“Yes, and both sound. Well, Chant’s leg comes up lame sometimes,” Michael added. His eyes reflect the truth of him—he never thinks to lie, even when he should. “But he’ll do fine with light work.”
“You sound like a noble,” the train boss said. “Younger son?”
“The fourth. Michael Sevenson. My father fancied me as a clerk for my older brother, but I…well, father doesn’t always get his way.”
Talking about his father made Michael’s expression harden so much that his face almost matched the ruffian clothes. The boss looked past him, his gaze running from my brown curls to my muddy boots. Faces having nothing to do with a man’s true nature; I look even less like a thug than Michael.
“Your friend, does he have a name?”
“Fisk,” I said, since there was no reason to give a false one.
“He looks more like a clerk than a guardsman,” the boss went on. “In truth, I could use a man. We lost one idiot back in Casfell.”
“Not dead I hope,” Michael said with genuine concern.
“No, he’s in bed with a sore jaw and a bad cold. He’ll meet us back at the Port. But I don’t need two.”
“We come together, or not at all.” Now Michael sounded almost tough, but the boss shook his head.
“No. I need real guards, not a runaway nobleman and his valet.”
Michael’s lips tightened. We’d known this might be necessary, but he’d dreaded it so much that for a time I’d hoped we could call the whole thing off, and write to the Ruffos to pick up their grandson in Tallowsport.
But Michael has more spine than that. He pushed up his sleeves, coat and shirt together, revealing leather guards laced around his wrists. He had to use his teeth as well as his other hand to untie the knot, but the laces loosened easily, and he slid the leather cuff up…revealing the two broken circles tattooed there.
Master Makejoy had insisted on the wrist guards, claiming that theater troupes had enough trouble convincing folk they were honest without traveling with a man who might be revealed as unredeemed whenever his sleeves slipped. And even after Michael got over Rosamund, and we left the troupe, he kept the leather guards. They’d spared us a lot of aggravation. Unlike Rosamund, who was Michael’s first love. Rosa was a sweet, beautiful ninny…and aggravation was a pale description of the disaster she dumped us into. If you asked me, Michael was lucky she’d chosen someone else. But no one ever asked me.