Saboteurs

by Ben Peek

  Bueralan raised his empty hands. ‘I’m not involved.’

  ‘Good—’

  Bueralan took two quick steps forward, grabbed the wrist of the young mercenary’s knife-hand and slammed his right hand into his opponent’s face. The young man sagged back and lost his grip on the weapon. Bueralan snatched it from the mercenary and slammed it into the man’s neck. For a moment, the silence in the brothel became stillness – the moves had happened quickly, almost in a blur, and no one was quite sure what had happened – until the mercenary fell dead. The music resumed before the body was dragged away.

  Three quiet hours later, the Captain of Scratch, Rafya Khoury, came to offer Bueralan a job.

  7

  When the first of the slaves began to arrive at the farmhouse, Kana sought out Bueralan. ‘You cannot purchase men and women in my name,’ he said, clearly agitated. ‘I will not own another person. I cannot.’

  ‘You don’t own them.’ Bueralan was seated on an old cloth chair at the side of the house, near the empty kennels. In the shadows, his white tattoos appeared bright and unreal. ‘You paid for them,’ he continued, ‘but you don’t own them. In fact, you set them free before they came here. Or rather, one of mine, Kae, did so in your name. You can see him talking to them out there. You gave them their freedom and you offered them a job. They’re your soldiers now.’

  ‘You cannot believe that these men and women will fight as trained mercenaries for us. They have been slaves. They have not been trained to fight. They have been trained only to accept the cruelty of their lives. That is the most insidious part of slavery.’

  ‘These are not people born to slavery. These are people traded into it. Soldiers who have lost wars, whose ransom hasn’t been paid, who have had debts that they cannot repay.’

  Kana turned to the men and women in the dirty fields. In the middle of them stood Kae, a lean, greying soldier, who was pointing to two rundown barns. He was issuing the ex-slaves with orders and would train them, when the rest of Dark returned. ‘I don’t understand,’ the former Mayor of Zajce said. ‘Do you plan to use these people to fight against the mercenaries in my town? There are no more than thirty of them.’

  ‘There will be more,’ Bueralan said. ‘But no, I don’t plan to have them fight. They’re just going to take the credit for what happens next.’

  ‘I fear I am at even more of a loss now, Captain.’

  ‘You can’t just take Zajce back. You have to take the idea of the town back as well. You said it yourself: you offer sanctuary to slaves, you who are touched by Enaka’s divinity. It doesn’t matter if all that his power has given you is the ability to break a lock and move a chain. It’s the symbolism that matters. And when people hear that you took Zajce back, and that you did it with an army of ex-slaves, you’ll be taking back not just the town, but also the idea of the town. You’ll give any who try to take it again pause.’

  ‘But that means you will receive no credit.’

  ‘The role of a saboteur is not to be seen, Mayor. It is to be obscured and lost. It is to be as if you never existed.’

  8

  Captain Khoury was a lean, brown woman who wore a mix of dark red-stained leather armour and chain mail. ‘You have become quite the story,’ she said, stepping out of the shadows at the back of The Last Courtesy, while Bueralan took his break. ‘Last night it was about an approaching army, but tonight it’s all about an exiled baron-turned-mercenary who stabbed a soldier in the neck with his own knife.’

  ‘An approaching army?’ Behind him, the door to the kitchen was propped open and faint music spilled out. ‘Don’t you have enough in this town?’

  ‘This new army is said to be led by Mayor Kana.’ She smiled lazily, unconcerned. ‘But I think you will find that he is dead and this is something else.’

  Bueralan took a seat on the stairs. In his hand he held a sandwich of brown bread and cheese. ‘A rumour?’

  She shrugged fuzzily in the shadows. ‘I saw Kana fall.’

  ‘To fall isn’t to die,’ he said. ‘Anyway, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Lord Makara wanted me to come and meet you. He pays my bills, so I do what he asks.’ Khoury drew closer. Her hair was cut short and dyed red, but it was her eyes that he noticed. They were brown and he could see the unnatural constriction of the pupil. It was subtle, but enough for Bueralan to notice. ‘I’ll be honest,’ the Captain of Scratch continued, ‘I said he should wait until Syl came back in a few days. She’s out looking for this new army. But the Lord doesn’t want the Lady hiring a good soldier before he does. Especially one with a pedigree.’

  ‘There’s that kind of rush, is there?’

  ‘When Syl gets back, there will be movement, one way or another. The money lined up for those people being kept in the streets is staggering. A good mercenary wouldn’t want to miss out on that.’

  ‘Is that why you have an army approaching – to grab a share of the profit?’ Bueralan took a bite of his sandwich. ‘And let’s not forget the rival mercenary group right here,’ he said around his food. ‘It sounds like a smart mercenary would just keep working for Inen.’

  ‘Until someone comes at him with a sword, not just a knife.’ She dropped to her haunches before him. ‘Did you come in on that little broken dinghy that’s resting on the western peninsula?’

  ‘I was on the Myntalo,’ he said, taking another bite. ‘Until I wasn’t.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘Just another ship on Leviathan’s Blood.’

  ‘Why’d you get thrown off?’

  ‘I didn’t get thrown off,’ he lied. ‘I stole a boat and made for the shore.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ the Captain of Scratch said. ‘Syl won’t like it, either. That should be a concern for you.’

  ‘Aren’t you the captain?’ Behind him, footsteps sounded from the kitchen. ‘If you’re not in charge, you let me know when Syl gets back and I’ll talk to her.’

  ‘Honey!’ An immaculate hand draped over Bueralan’s shoulder and a hard body pressed against his side, as a beautiful young woman appeared next to him. ‘Inen sent me to find you, honey. He says there’s a drunk man who needs to be thrown out.’ Vach Sala’s perfectly made-up face lay against his shoulder. ‘And a good morning to you, Captain Khoury. You’re out early. Has your night not been what it should be? I am sure I can find you some laudanum inside, if you wish?’

  ‘I have myself well cared for, thank you,’ the other woman said. ‘Think about Lord Makala’s offer, Bueralan. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of this, when the fighting begins.’

  ‘I have no interest in fighting,’ he said. ‘No one gets rich in a war.’

  Rafya Khoury did not respond as she walked back into the darkness.

  9

  ‘There are men who get rich in wars,’ Vach Sala said, holding onto his arm as they walked through the kitchen, ‘just as women do.’

  ‘They aren’t the ones who hold a sword,’ Bueralan said. ‘The ones who do just die poor and young, if they’re not smart.’

  The ground floor of The Last Courtesy opened before him. The low light mingled with the music to hide the bloodstains on the floor and the bodies that murmured to each other in booths. One voice could be heard over all that, and it belonged to a large brown man at the bar. Inen stood resolutely before him, listening to the man ask for more wine and for a woman by name, but Inen’s face remained tight-lipped. On either side of him were the two young guards, but they seemed unable to shift the man, and Bueralan wondered if he was in for another fight. Fortunately it was not to be. Once the large man saw him – he wore Echoes’ insignia – he put up his hands and said he didn’t want trouble, none at all, and let Bueralan push him outside. He walked away, with a slump of his meaty shoulders, towards the dark shadows of the water towers.

  Time passed slowly after that. Inen left the bar and returned to the kitchen. The two guards thanked him and went back to their corners. Sabine finished her se
cond set, took a break, and began her third. The flow of customers was sluggish and none of them looked to be trouble.

  Vach Sala was not bothered for the rest of the night. She took one of the booths to Bueralan’s right and entertained a steady stream of men and women until the early morning. She was, he thought, one of the youngest prostitutes in the brothel. No more than sixteen, probably fifteen. Her brown skin was too smooth to be any older. The intricate make-up she wore did its best to add a few years, a lie that both she and her customers allowed. She did her best to hide the bump around her larynx too, but once Bueralan had noticed it, he knew why the lie was so important. A younger woman wouldn’t have her height, or the slight broadening of her shoulders beneath the slim orange dress she wore, and the men and women who paid for her did not do so for the company of what she had been born.

  ‘We all want to be rich, but we can’t start in command,’ Vach Sala said to him later, after the last of the customers had left and the lights were raised. Sala waited until he’d checked the booths and locked the doors before taking his arm and walking up the stairs to Bueralan’s room. ‘Surely you don’t object to working for Captain Khoury’s Scratch because you are not in charge?’

  ‘I may have some privilege, but I know my place.’ He nudged open the door to his room and led them both inside. ‘I just try to be smart, and I’m thinking Lady Jaora might be a good place to start asking for work. Echoes’ll need every bit of help they can get, when Scratch pushes them – and that push is coming soon. You can tell Captain Gertz I said that, when you report to him.’

  ‘Gertz?’ Sala took a step into the room, putting herself an arm’s distance from him. She offered him a smile. ‘Is that a name I am meant to know?’

  ‘You’re just his type. Did he ever tell you about Fia?’

  She laughed, but he could tell he had caught her off-balance. ‘I don’t even know a Gertz!’

  ‘Fia was fourteen when Gertz met her in Tinalan,’ Bueralan said, leaning against the door frame, blocking the exit. ‘From what I heard, Fia had skin like yours, but her hair was longer. Gertz told her he would show her all the secrets of the world. He was true to his word, so long as those secrets were the words of soldiers in tents and the whispers of lords and ladies in rooms they paid for. It was said that he liked that. Liked the idea that she was with others. He was quite loyal to her until she was seventeen. At seventeen, Fia was too old. She started wanting things. She was a mercenary, after all, not a prostitute. She wanted to fight like the others in Echoes. She wanted the respect the others had. But Gertz – well, rumour has it that he buried her up on the northern coast of Gogair somewhere, but I don’t know for sure. One of his crew would know. Kaala probably. He was the drunk downstairs you had me throw out, after all.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know, either.’ Her smile faded. ‘Now, you’re blocking the door, and I have worked hard tonight. I must have my beauty sleep.’

  ‘You don’t need that,’ he said, stepping aside. ‘But when you see Gertz and tell him about me, say I am looking for work.’

  She brushed past Bueralan without a reply.

  10

  The freshly made map of Zajce was a collection of lines and illustrations, stretched across the table inside the farmhouse.

  ‘The water towers are the town’s lifeblood,’ Kana said, pointing to the corresponding marks on the map. Around him stood the remaining five members of Dark. ‘The storms that bedevil the area supply them with all their water. They are fierce but erratic – and it can rain for two weeks, and then not for two months after that. That’s why there are so many towers, and why they’re so big. Leviathan’s Blood is to blame, of course, it’s the sea’s fault. After she drowned, the old goddess’s blood seeped into the underground wells and freshwater rivers throughout the peninsula and turned it black. In very bad years, Zajce is forced to purchase water from cities and towns further inland.’

  ‘The town is well guarded,’ Liaya said to Bueralan. She was a short, olive-skinned women with dark hair and ink-stains along her fingers. The map had been her work. ‘It may take a while to infiltrate it.’

  ‘Zean will have a plan to manage the guards, I’m sure,’ Bueralan said. ‘Just don’t let him convince you to drop character, like he did in Taho.’

  ‘I got a holiday out of that.’ She smiled. ‘We all did.’

  Except for Bueralan. That was how he’d met Syl originally. She had worked for herself then, and by the end he had realized that her reputation for cold-blooded violence was well earned. ‘Let’s just not have a repeat of that,’ he said. Again he wished that Syl hadn’t set herself up as a mercenary here, in Zajce. ‘But we’ll—’

  ‘I have a problem with this,’ Kana said, interrupting him. ‘I feel like I say I’m having a problem with your plan every day, Captain. And every day you convince me that you’ve taken a calculated risk. I look forward to you explaining how sending one of your soldiers to poison Zajce’s water towers makes sense. The whole town relies upon them.’

  If it wasn’t for Syl, Bueralan knew, he could have taken Zean’s place and managed the plan within the town. He wouldn’t have had to listen to Kana and his complaints. ‘Liaya knows what she is doing,’ he said, aware that the rest of Dark shared his impatience. ‘There won’t be dead children in the streets. We’ve no desire to kill all the people in the town. That’s an assassin’s job and it would be an inefficient job too, as any assassin will tell you. First, half a dozen people who drop dead would give you away, and then suddenly all the slaves would become taste-testers for every bit of water and food in the town.’

  After he had finished, after Kana had left, Liaya said, ‘You’ll have to make sure he doesn’t lose his nerve before the end.’

  ‘Zean said the same thing,’ Bueralan replied. The other members of Dark had left as well, leaving the two of them alone. ‘He thinks the job is a bad one.’

  ‘No, he just thinks you’re doing it because of your past,’ she said. ‘He’s probably right.’

  ‘My parents are long dead, Liaya.’

  ‘But the child they purchased is not.’

  11

  When Bueralan woke in Zajce, he dressed in the only clothes he had. They smelt of blood and salt and, after he had pulled them on, he found hard stains of both substances. He was not a fastidious man – he had slept on the ground too often for that – but he was a man who appreciated the rise of bathhouses in the world. He would ask Inen for an advance on the week’s wages, to indulge in a bath, a shave, and paying someone to clean his clothes.

  Bueralan found Inen on the ground floor at the bar. He was in deep conversation with a short woman selling laudanum. She had dark hair and olive skin and wore old, but well-made, brown and yellow clothes. A tiered case filled with green and blue bottles lay stretched across the bar between her and Inen. The two were involved in an exchange of full and empty bottles, a supplier to a market.

  ‘Ah, Bueralan.’ Vach Sala’s long-fingered hands slid around his waist. She had been sitting in one of the booths by the stairs, waiting for him. ‘Just who I wanted to see. Do you remember our topic of conversation earlier this morning?’

  He wrapped his arm around her casually. ‘I thought you didn’t know Gertz?’

  ‘You smell terrible.’ She leant her head against his chest, despite her words. ‘But the Captain of Echoes and Lady Jaora would like to meet you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now, I was told.’

  Instead of leaving with Sala, Bueralan approached Inen and the laudanum seller. He was not sure just what he would get from Gertz or Jaora, but the idea of returning to The Last Courtesy without a bath didn’t appeal. Fortunately, the two had finished talking.

  ‘What would your mother say if she saw you right now?’ Inen asked him. ‘She would be ashamed by the odour that precedes you.’

  ‘I thought you might give me an advance,’ he said. ‘For a bath.’

  ‘Good.’ Inen reached into the folds of his clothes and
pulled out a silver coin. He flipped it to him. ‘Go and get one.’

  Bueralan caught the coin. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Sir,’ the laudanum seller said, ‘allow me to accompany you and the fine lady out.’ She closed her bag and lifted it easily from the bar. The bottles, full and empty, clinked together in an odd tune. ‘Perhaps I might tempt you into buying some of my wares as well? They are one of the few pleasures left in Zajce. They are not made just from opium and alcohol, as in so many towns and cities, but are spiced with saffron and cinnamon and nutmeg – to name but a few. My goal is to make each drink a unique experience.’

  ‘I barely have enough for a bath,’ he said. ‘So, thanks, but no.’

  The laudanum seller held the door open. ‘And you, sister?’

  ‘It’s not to my taste,’ Vach Sala replied politely. ‘I was surprised to see that Inen purchases from you, to be honest. I never see anyone here drinking laudanum.’

  ‘There must be secret vices, even in a den of avarice.’ She let the door close behind them and joined them on the street. ‘Perhaps you are not invited to the right rooms, at the end of the night?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she admitted. ‘I also prefer wine.’

  ‘So long as you are not drinking the water from this town.’ The laudanum seller nodded to the tower ahead of them. Slaves were packed beneath it in a patch of shade. ‘I’ve seen the residents of the town urinating into those tanks.’

  Sala laughed, but covered her mouth. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, after a moment. ‘But this morning I overheard a man complaining about a stomach bug. Perhaps caused by this?’

  ‘If he was a mercenary, then yes, I imagine so. Urine is the least of what goes into the water tanks.’ The seller shrugged. ‘Zajce is an angry town, and now, with the rumour of Mayor Kana returning, people are expressing that anger.’ In the middle of the street she shook Bueralan’s hand and then Sala’s. ‘Now, you must excuse me – another client awaits. She is not as good to me as the manager of The Last Courtesy, but we cannot love just one of our clients, now can we?’