by Bell, Hilari
Even in winter, the skin beneath the guard was far paler than the rest of Michael’s arm, throwing the black circles into high relief.
The boss’s brows shot up. He looked at Michael again, speculating, and then at my unmarked wrists.
“And here I thought I could judge a man. That’s not how I’d have placed you.”
“I didn’t get bribed out of it,” Michael said stiffly. “At least, I don’t think I did.”
The Realm’s law is based on criminals making things right with their victims. But in cases where reparation can’t be made with coin, and someone is rich and powerful enough to buy their child, spouse or sibling off the gallows, the law uses this tattoo to mark the criminal’s debt to the law and their fellows forever unredeemed. Which in turn means that the law owes them nothing. If someone harms them, the law won’t intervene. If someone cheats them, they have no legal recourse…which is curst inconvenient when you make a living doing odd jobs in strange towns, let me tell you.
Honest people usually won’t hire us, once they’ve seen Michael’s wrists. And those who will hire us frequently don’t bother to pay. I wondered into which category this man would fall.
“And I’m a clerk,” I told him. “I could check those ledgers. Catch your mistakes before your boss ever sees them.”
I half-hoped the subtle insult would tip the scales against us, but a gleam of interest dawned in his eyes.
“So if I sent you out to collect a farm load, you could keep proper tally of the weight? And make sure the price adds up to what we offered, instead of whatever the farmer claims?”
“Of course.” Win some, lose some.
Michael pushed the guard back down, and held out his hand for me to retie it—not something a man can do, one-handed.
“You I could use,” the boss told me. “Master Sevenson here…”
“We come together,” I affirmed. “Or not at all.”
The man looked at Michael again. “How long have you carried those marks? You’re a bit young to be a hardened criminal, aren’t you?”
“I’m twenty-one. As for the marks…” He had to think about it. “I’ve borne them for two and a half years now.”
The train boss’s lips pursed in a silent whistle. “Then you must be pretty tough, after all. I’ve heard that men starve, once they’re marked unredeemed.”
“’Tis not so bad as that,” Michael said. “I do get cheated out of my pay from time to time.”
“I won’t cheat you,” the train boss said. “Not if you don’t cheat me. Or cause trouble in my train. You do that, you’ll be out in a minute, and with nothing to show for whatever work you’ve done. Understand?”
“We do.”
Michael held out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation the train boss shook it.
If we weren’t already plotting to cause trouble on his train, I’d have been hoping we might get paid.
* * *
The food train took to the road next morning. Our job as guards was simply to ride around it, and keep an eye out for trouble. In truth, we were mostly there to convince potential bandits that they wanted to stay “potential.”
However, simple doesn’t always mean easy. My horse Tipple was named for an unfortunate taste for beer. She’s spotted like a jester, and her previous owner made a habit of getting her drunk for the amusement of his friends. Michael considered this iniquitous, and bought her from him…but judging by the determination with which she heads for the nearest keg, I don’t think Tipple objected to it. Several of the carts carried beer, and their drivers scoffed at my warning—until Tipple managed to pull one bung out with her teeth. After that they took care not to park near the place she was tethered.
I’d thought Trouble would present worse difficulties, but after half a day of oxen rolling their eyes as he frisked past, he formed a passionate attachment to the cooks’ wagon. For some strange reason the cooks liked him as well, and he spent most of the trip lolling among the pots—when he wasn’t leaping off the cart to chase a rabbit across the field.
After a few more days the roads began to dry out. Bushes, which were becoming more frequent along the verges of the road, put out leaves and blossoms. New grass sprouted, lush and green, spotted with flowers.
It was still no light task to patrol a train of over two hundred enormous freight wagons, four hundred oxen, and their attendant ox-drivers, farriers and clerks…not to mention several hundred laborers, who rode perched on the loads of squash, potatoes or grain.
I talked to quite a few of them, as time went on. For the most part they were young, and eager to start a new life in the city. The contract they’d signed only required them to work for the train’s owners for two months to pay their transport debt. Then they’d be free to find their own employment, in a town where laborers were needed more than anywhere else in the Realm. So they must be well paid, right?
I told them I’d never been to Tallowsport, so I couldn’t say. But I noticed that their contract said nothing about helping them find that next, well-paying job.
These people had volunteered to go with the train, and they almost never ran off. But when someone had been sold to the train’s owners for coin, or to pay some debt, their labor might be indentured for years. These ingrates sometimes tried to run, so they were regarded as prisoners.
There was only one prisoner at the moment, a thirteen-year-old boy. Willy was chained to a bench in a wagon about two-thirds down the line, but he wasn’t treated too badly. The chain, cuffed to his ankle, was long enough to give him the freedom of the big cart bed—as much of it as held no other cargo. He had a tarp to wrap up in if it rained during the day. He had a pillow and blanket, and he could climb down and sleep under the wagon if it rained at night—and if he got cold, he could ask one of the four guards who watched his wagon at night for another blanket. He ate the same food as the ox-drivers, and was released from the shackle to go off into the fields and relieve himself—also under guard.
It took two more days of circling the train before Michael or I managed to be the guard in his vicinity when he told the driver he needed to go. In fact, I was the one who got lucky.
The breeze was still chilly, but the sun was warm enough that he’d shed his blanket. The driver pulled the cart off the road, set the brake, and climbed over his seat to unlock the shackle while I tied Tipple to the cart.
I hoped someone else had a key, because picking the pocket of a man driving a cart can’t be done.
The driver, a muscular man, picked the boy up and handed him down to me. Will had barely started his growth spurt, still light-boned. I kept my hand on his shoulder as we marched across the grassy verge and into some farmer’s rutted field. He said nothing. His expression was sullen—which I liked better than despair.
“That’s far enough,” I told him, and he stopped obediently and started to open his britches. “Far enough that no one can hear us. Your grandparents sent my friend and me to get you out of this.”
Wide dark eyes flashed up, and a flare of excitement wiped the angry misery from his face. “You…you mean—”
“Yes, I mean it, but it’s not going to be fast or easy. The first problem is that shackle. Does anyone else have a key?”
“The train boss does. He locked me in, gave the driver one key and put the other in a pocket on the inside of his vest.” A small cold hand clutched mine. Are you… And your friends, you said? There’s more of you?”
“Just one friend. He has longish hair…” Michael wasn’t that remarkable. “He’s riding a big gray gelding that looks like a tourney horse.”
“I’ve seen him. But I’m out of my shackle. Can’t we just run? Now?”
The young are cute, but impractical.
“And then what?” I gestured to the open fields around us. “The only cover is beside the road. If you go darting off, how long do you think it will take the train guards to ride you down?”
Some of the hope faded from his face. “Then how can I get away?”
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“Mostly, you leave it to us. We’ll find some way to stop the cart—hopefully when there are thick bushes nearby. You need to start pissing, by the way.”
“Oh.” He fumbled his britches open, and did so. “But won’t the driver, and everyone else, see me climb down? What about the shackle? And even if I hide in the bushes, they’d find me.”
“Not if it looks like you’re still in the cart,” I told him. “That’s your job for the next few days; find a sack of something, about your size. And it has to be light enough that you could lift it quietly, wrap your blanket around it, and prop it up on the bench. You need to start traveling with the blanket wrapped around you all the time, too, so that’s what people are used to seeing. If anyone asks, tell them you’re getting sunburned, and that’s why you’ve got it over your head. Is there a sack like that in the cart now?”
If there wasn’t, we’d have to make up a reason to add one—though off hand, I couldn’t think of any.
“Several,” the good lad said. “A potato sack, maybe.”
“Excellent.” He was refastening his britches. We hadn’t much more time. “As I said, this may take a few days. You’ll know when it’s time because I’ll pass you the key. Your job is to free yourself and get the sack ready. When I give the signal you go out of the cart and into the nearest bush, and hide there till the train’s moved on. Michael and I… Can you make your way home on your own?”
“Of course,” he said, with a thirteen-year-old’s unjustified confidence. But he should be able to make it. “I’d need some money. Though I suppose I could work—”
“I’ll toss a purse into the bushes for you.” I turned him to walk back to the wagon. “Michael and I will stay with the train as long as we can. If they suspect we had anything to do with letting you go—and they may—they’d follow us, so you’ll be on your own once the train is gone. Pass at least two towns before you ask for help, right? And stop looking like that, or even that dull-witted driver will know something’s up. Keep your eyes down and look angry, like you did when we came out here.”
“He’s not really stupid.” Neither was young Will. I couldn’t see much of his face, but his gaze was on the ground once more, and his mouth had turned down. “He gave me the pillow, and extra food sometimes.”
“Well, he’s going to be stupid,” I said firmly. “At just the right moment. Here we are. Back in with you kid.”
I hoisted him up to the driver, who locked the shackle again as I rode on. They’d get back into the line as soon as someone fell behind enough to create a space. We’d already observed that the wagons didn’t travel in any set order.
We had considered the possibility of a night escape, but not only was the prison wagon too well guarded, the whole camp was too well-patrolled. The boss divided the night into three shifts, and every guard had to take one of them. Being the newest members of the troop, Michael and I got the second patrol shift, right in the middle of the night.
This plan was too complex. But considering that we had to get the kid out of a shackle, out of a guarded wagon, and away from the train in the middle of open countryside, it was the best idea we’d been able to come up with. In fact, it was the only idea we’d been able to come up with. I gave it a fifty-fifty chance. If Michael had been willing and able to produce some magic for us, those odds would go up significantly. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.
* * *
“Three months ago, in Rickerston, you calmed that drunk right down,” I told him. We huddled in our bedrolls, out under the stars since sleeping under a wagon was no warmer. “One minute he was going to beat the crap out of you, the next he was calm as…as a cow being milked.”
“I see you’ve never milked a cow,” Michael murmured. Nobleman’s son or not, he was raised on a country estate. “I don’t control this, Fisk. I can’t turn it on and off like a tap!”
“You might, if you’d practice.”
It was an old argument between us. Whether magic comes from nature or from the two gods’ grace is a question scholars have written tomes about. The undisputed fact is that some plants and animals, and even some humans who are so simple as to be close to the gods or nature, have the ability to make real magic. Magic usually enhances a trait that is normal for that species, not just beyond the ordinary, but beyond the possible. When a normal rabbit freezes, its mottled brown coat blends so well with the surroundings that it’s hard to see. When a magica rabbit freezes, it becomes invisible. As in, you can put your hand behind it and still see how many fingers you’re holding up. Magica wood is almost as strong as iron, but still light and flexible. Magica herbs will heal you more quickly than anything else can. A magica horse can jump over an oxcart—not from the side, but lengthwise, from the tail of the cart to the nose of the startled ox.
Yet it’s hard for humans to use magica creatures and plants. If they’re harvested without the proper rites and sacrifice, ill luck will dog, or sometimes destroy, anyone who tries to use the magica item until the sacrifice is paid. A truth that generally weighs on the “gods” side of the argument.
But due to the schemes and potions of one Lady Ceciel—who felt free to use an unredeemed man in her quest to give humans magic, whether that man wanted it or not—Michael, alone of all normal humans, has not just Gifts but the ability to work magic.
And I think that he could learn to use it at will—instead of having it well up out of nowhere and do completely unexpected things—if he wasn’t so scared by its freakishness that he refused to study his strange ability.
“It only worked because the man was drunk,” Michael insisted. “It was…it felt like the magic came forth, and poured itself into my animal handling Gift. And that never works on people unless they’re drunk, or their wits are otherwise disabled. It couldn’t calm someone who was alert and suspicious.”
“He isn’t supposed to be suspicious,” I said. “The whole point is to keep them from associating us with the boy’s escape. You don’t need to convince him to walk off a cliff, just make him sleepy or distracted, so he won’t notice when Will climbs out of the cart.”
It was too dark to see Michael’s expression, but I could feel him resisting.
“Just practice it for a few days, while I practice picking pockets,” I said. “I’m rusty at that, too. And you can’t say this cause is less worthy than the last time you did it.”
There was a long silence, then he sighed.
“I’ll try. But don’t count on it, Fisk.”
“We won’t,” I promised. Though in truth I was, for without that we were going to need a spectacular diversion. I could just imagine what Jack would have said about that… Come to think of it, when we first met he’d been using me for a diversion.
* * *
I’d made my exit from the spicer’s shop I’d just robbed, and been surprised by a guard dog that I swear wasn’t there when I’d scouted the place last night. Unfortunately, the board I’d pried out of the fence let the baying dog out the back, even as I exited, hastily, out the front. At least the dog was following my trail by scent rather than sight, and the spicer and his two apprentices were following the dog. But the bag of spices I carried left plenty of scent for the dog to follow, and they seemed to be gaining.
I had to slow to a rapid walk as I came up on the garbage collector’s cart—the driver would notice someone out and about at this hour, particularly if he was running. But I could hear the distant voices of my pursuers, and they seemed to be drawing near. I was about to start running again, despite the danger of being recognized, when a door opened right beside me and a man stepped out and seized my collar.
“Hey!” I said, as loudly as I dared. “What do you…?”
His free hand rose to his lips, gesturing for silence. He took two long strides forward, dragged the spice bag off my shoulder, and slung it on the back corner of the garbage cart.
“Hey! That’s mi—”
His free hand clamped over my mouth and he hauled me back to the door, though
he let go of my collar as he went through, leaving me standing on the stoop.
“You can come in, or you can stay here and be caught. It’s all one to me.”
The dog and his attendants rounded a corner onto the street. They were about four blocks back, but their presence made the decision for me and I darted in after him.
He closed the door, latched it quietly, and then moved back into the shadows where he could see out the window without being seen. We appeared to be in the entry of a lodging house, with a long hallway, and a staircase climbing into the darkness.
“That was mine,” I said. He might have just saved me a long spell of indebted labor…or he might have cost me several night’s work. I preferred the later theory.
“It’s only yours if you can keep it,” he said. “You wouldn’t have, even if I hadn’t intervened.”
He was probably twice my age, which put him in his late twenties. Medium hair, medium height, a bit slimmer than I was, but every bit as unremarkable. This didn’t necessarily make him a criminal—it was simply convenient, if he happened to be one.
“I might have,” I said.
“You wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Actually, I do. The spicer’s hound is famous for never losing a trail and never giving up.”
They passed the window then and we both fell silent. The dog wasn’t moving fast…but neither was the garbage cart. They’d catch up with it in about five minutes, and I’d lose days of…
“Wait a minute. How do you know about the spicer’s dog?”
“Because I did a better job of scouting his shop than you did. I spotted you doing it, too. You’re curst clumsy, lad.”