Saboteurs

by Ben Peek

  After the laudanum seller left, Bueralan and Sala continued in silence. They passed the water tower and its mercenary guard. They wore the insignia of Echoes, but it was not until Sala led Bueralan into a three-storey, finely made brick house that he realized why so many soldiers were concentrated around the nearest tower. Inside, two dozen water barrels lined the hallway and the first two rooms. Ladles sat on the three barrels in the hallway. At the sight of them, Bueralan saw Sala smile, but she hid it quickly as she led him up two flights of stairs to a well-guarded door.

  It opened onto a spacious room, revealing three occupants. The first was the large man from the night before, Kaala. The mercenary wore a sword at his waist. The other was a tall, thin white man with greying brown hair. Like Kaala, he wore a sword, but he stood rigid, as if in pain. Gertz, Bueralan assumed. The Captain of Echoes watched him intently, but did not immediately speak. The last person in the room was an overweight black woman who sat between the two mercenaries. She wore an expensive orange and red dress, and her greying hair was neatly arranged on top of her head.

  ‘Baron Bueralan Le,’ Lady Jaora said, but not in greeting. ‘I have heard a lot about you today. You have quite the reputation.’

  There was a seat for him in the middle of the room. ‘Thank you,’ he said, taking it. Behind him, Sala leant against the door. ‘But I lost the title years ago. I’m just a humble mercenary now.’

  ‘How fortunate that you are in Zajce, then.’ She indicated the men on either side of her. ‘Gertz and Kaala believe you arrived by boat.’

  ‘I was on the Myntalo. Have you’ve heard of it?’ When she made no response, Bueralan shrugged. ‘It’s not much of a boat. It’s a small transport that runs up the coast of Gogair. It makes its home in Örd. I caught a ride until I didn’t need a ride.’

  ‘You left in the middle of Leviathan’s Blood?’ Gertz laughed sourly. ‘You aren’t telling us the whole truth.’

  ‘In Örd I met a woman. On Myntalo, I met her partner.’

  ‘As simple as that?’ Lady Jaora asked.

  ‘Does it have to be more complicated? I made a mistake, and I find myself here without much coin. Fortunately, there seems to be some work around.’

  ‘Yes, the boy said that.’ She spoke casually, but no one missed the pointed comment. Bueralan thought Gertz would speak, but instead the mercenary hunched into himself. ‘Why do you think I would hire you?’

  ‘According to Captain Khoury, there’s an army approaching.’

  ‘But I already have an army.’

  ‘One that’s no match for Scratch.’ Bueralan paused to let his comment sink in. He was pleased to see that none of the three seemed surprised by what he said. ‘That’s why you’re holed up in here with a good third of your force outside. You’re halfway to a siege already.’

  ‘The deterioration of the relationship between Makara and myself is unfortunate,’ Lady Jaora said. ‘I saw Zajce as a stepping stone for us. There is no future here on the edge of Gogair. Even that fool Mayor Kana knew that. It was why he had been left alone for so long. I thought Makara believed me, but after we marched Kana off the edge of the peninsula, he changed his mind. The final straw for me was when he began to build that port. He has persisted, despite our differences, and is now building a wall around the town.’

  ‘Two mercenary groups and two leaders. Is it truly a shock to believe you’re in this position?’

  ‘In hindsight, no,’ Lady Jaora said. ‘That is why I may have a job for you, but—’

  ‘Gertz disagrees,’ he finished.

  ‘I do,’ the mercenary said, straightening painfully. ‘A man with a story like yours doesn’t just show up by chance.’

  ‘I’d be suspicious,’ Bueralan admitted. ‘I’d not quite believe the story about leaving a ship in Leviathan’s Blood, either. Then there’s my past.’ He shrugged. ‘But it is what it is. If you don’t want to offer me work, I can go to Khoury and take up her offer. Might be best, really.’ He rose from his chair.

  ‘Such confidence,’ Lady Jaora said. ‘What if I decided to have you killed before you reach that door, instead?’

  ‘By who?’ Bueralan glanced at Gertz and Kaala. Neither had reached for their swords. ‘They are both killers, it’s true, but I’m not a child, and I like my chances in this room. I’d kill Gertz first. He might be faster, but I’ve got size and strength on him, and he’s not well. Kaala doesn’t have enough strength to take me. He doesn’t have the fitness, either. He’d be short work, after Gertz went down. That would leave just me and you – and I don’t fancy your chances, lady.’

  ‘Don’t forget the boy.’

  ‘She’ll not die for you.’

  ‘No?’ Lady Jaora offered a brief smile. ‘No, I suppose he won’t. But please, Bueralan, why don’t you re-take your seat. We can discuss what you think you are worth.’

  12

  The money Bueralan left with was enough to suggest that Lady Jaora knew the issue was coming to a head and wasn’t confident about winning.

  She gave him five golden coins. Each was minted in Gogair, and thus shaped in the regular quadrangles of that country’s currency. She had promised him another five at the end of the week, and another twenty if he was still alive when the fighting was over. It wasn’t bad pay: the ajh was a worthwhile currency. Of course, there were better ones. If Bueralan had his way, he would be paid in Ooilan raqs. He would have to melt three ajh to make just one of the hole-punched pieces from his homeland. But in compensation for that imagined loss, he snagged a clean shirt from a room full of fresh uniforms on his way out. It had an Echoes insignia, but that, Bueralan decided, only made it worth a little more to him. He stepped out into the afternoon’s sun with the shirt tucked beneath his arm.

  Rafya Khoury was waiting for him outside the bathhouse. She leant against the wall with an air of nonchalance, as if the job of playing messenger was not beneath her. ‘I thought I’d have to go back empty-handed,’ she said easily as he approached. ‘Lord Makara has requested your presence at his home.’

  ‘I’d like a bath first,’ he said.

  ‘We all have desires. Yours will just have to remain unfulfilled.’

  He could have pushed it, but didn’t. ‘I guess you heard I met with Lady Jaora?’ he asked as they began to walk down the street, away from both the bathhouse and Jaora’s house.

  ‘The laudanum seller told me.’ When Bueralan made no response, Khoury continued. ‘It sounds like you’ve given some thought to what I said last night, at least. Working this town is an easy job for a mercenary. No battlefields, no letters to write to families after someone dies. It might change in a few days, but after that, I think it’ll go back to being quiet and easy.’

  ‘You think this town will go back to being quiet?’ They passed The Last Courtesy and another water tower. In the alley next to the brothel, Bueralan saw the small cart he’d noticed on his way into town, beside the two white workers who’d offered him water. ‘I’ve seen slave markets before. They’re worse than any battlefield.’

  ‘Maybe in Ooila, but here the two don’t compare.’

  In Ooila, Bueralan did not say, there were more children. That was the primary trade in his home country. Wealthy families would buy young boys and girls to be blood brothers and sisters for their natural-born children. They told themselves that, rather than simply taking a child from his or her natural family, they were bettering the child, giving it an education, an opportunity. It did not matter that those children rarely survived into adulthood.

  In Zajce, the Captain of Scratch opened the door to a three-storey building made from dark brick. Apart from the colour, it was identical to the one Lady Jaora lived in, and Bueralan was not surprised to see barrels of water lining the hallway beyond the door. Outside, soldiers from Scratch milled around, just like their Echoes counterparts. He almost smiled as he was led up to the second floor and into a room that was likewise similar to the one where he’d met Jaora. Makara, a lean white man with greying hair, nee
ded only the two mercenaries at his side to complete the image. He did not disappoint.

  ‘Baron Le,’ the Lord said, his voice deep and calming. ‘You have seen my old partner today. Is she well?’

  ‘She looked fine,’ he said. ‘But as I told her, I haven’t been a baron for a long time.’

  ‘Since the Thousandth Prince’s revolution, from what I understand. You were one of the leaders who were exiled after it failed.’

  ‘It was a difficult time,’ Bueralan said. ‘But I don’t believe you called me here to discuss my past.’

  ‘No.’ Makara smiled. The point, both he and Bueralan knew, was simply to let one man know that he knew about the other. ‘No, what I am here to discuss is the safety of my town. The future of it, if you will. Tell me, did anyone check you at the gate when you entered?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No,’ he repeated. ‘You see my problem. Anyone can enter. Anyone can leave. I control part of the streets, but not the gates. If I controlled them, I would control Zajce.’

  ‘First you have to complete the walls,’ Bueralan said. ‘Then you can put in some gates.’

  ‘I am trying to speak to you as an equal,’ Makara said. ‘I believe you are a man who has seen good governance. You know how important it is to control borders. Do not speak as a man who is no more than a common mercenary. I need a man who can see the future as I do.’

  ‘You don’t have a future, if Jaora remains alive. Whether Mayor Kana’s army makes it here or not. Jaora has you pulling back your soldiers, giving up parts of the town. You’re no better, right now, than that half-built wall around Zajce.’

  Makara’s gaze slipped past Bueralan, to Captain Khoury. Whatever passed between the two must have been positive, because Bueralan did not feel the tip of a sword against his spine. ‘How much has Jaora paid you?’

  ‘Five ajh in the hand, another five next week. Twenty if I’m alive at the end.’

  ‘Are you worth that?’

  ‘Who can say?’

  ‘I can.’ Makara leant back in his chair. ‘But five ajh is a lot of gold. No single mercenary is paid that much here. None would demand it, even Syl.’

  ‘I hear a lot about Syl,’ Bueralan said, ‘but I don’t see her around.’

  ‘She’ll be back tomorrow night,’ Khoury said. ‘That’s when things will start to pick up, one way or another.’

  ‘The captain is right.’ Makara held Bueralan’s gaze. ‘Because of that, I’ll double what Jaora is paying you. Ten ajh. There will be no second week, so you’ll not need another ten. But if you’re alive at the end, I’ll pay you forty ajh.’

  13

  Elar, another of Bueralan’s saboteurs, left Örd the week after Liaya, a set of plans to The Last Courtesy hidden in the bottom of his pack, beneath old work tools. It was one of the few things that Kana had not questioned. He had, Bueralan thought, appeared almost relieved, as if he had expected the saboteur to tell him about another plan that bordered on genocide.

  ‘I never considered what we did to be so monstrous,’ Bueralan said with heavy irony to Aerala, one of the two remaining members of Dark still with him. The tall, olive-skinned woman had a selection of instruments laid out on the floor before her and was considering which ones she would carry, and which ones she would not. ‘For a man who offers sanctuary to slaves, you’d think Kana would be a little more hard-hearted.’

  ‘It has surprised me,’ she said, picking up a guitar. ‘But then I guess the truth is that you become familiar with a life, and you forget how strange it can be – especially ours.’

  ‘He asked me how I didn’t forget who I was with all the lies and name changes, and the roles I played.’

  ‘What’d you tell him?’

  ‘I said the exiled Baron and the Captain of Dark were both just as much roles as the travelling musician, Sabine.’

  Aerala rolled her eyes. ‘He is a nice man. He does important work in Zajce. The town is a beacon of safety in Gogair. You should respect him for that alone.’

  Bueralan shrugged. ‘I just want it done. Next time, someone else can babysit the client. I’d forgotten what an irritation it was.’

  ‘You’ve just made this too personal.’ She laid the guitar over her lap and looked at him seriously. ‘Zean said you would. It was why he didn’t want to take this job. He said there would be no clean lines for you. No room for you to distance yourself. At first I thought he just talking about himself, but now I see that he was right about you. The job has dug under your skin.’

  ‘They all dig into you,’ he said. ‘Name one that we haven’t been invested in, by the end.’

  ‘You were invested on the first day,’ Aerala said. ‘When you came to the inn and told us we had a job. I don’t mean that you picked the wrong job. The job is fine. But the reason Kana rubs you the wrong way is because he makes the job about himself, and not about you.’

  14

  ‘You smell,’ Inen said, after Bueralan entered the kitchen. He left the stove and eyed him critically. ‘You still have blood on your clothes. Tell me you didn’t trade that silver coin for laudanum?’

  ‘No, I still have it.’ He fished the coin out of his pocket, held it up. ‘Has Sala returned?’

  ‘She is upstairs, but I hesitate to let a filthy, bloodstained man like yourself approach her.’ He turned back to his pots, to the aromas that were beginning to rise from his cooking. ‘I am trying to run a respectable establishment here. I want the men and women who work here to know that they are valued. I want them to have standards for themselves. I expect you to have those same standards. How can I do that if you won’t visit a bathhouse, Bueralan?’

  Bueralan laughed as he left the kitchen and mounted the stairs, two at a time. Despite the fact that he was filthy – his hair was becoming an irritating stubble on his usually smooth head – he wanted to catch Vach Sala before the night began. He needed to reach her before Inen decided who would be working downstairs and who would not. When he opened the door to her narrow, private room she was in the middle of applying her make-up, a sign that she planned to work. She didn’t turn from the mirror when he explained that he wanted her to return Jaora’s payment, to tell her that he’d had a better offer.

  ‘Gertz won’t like that.’ She finished her task and turned to him. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Did you ask about Fia, his dead lover?’ he said, instead.

  Sala did not answer. Instead, she swept the coins off the table and held out her empty hand. ‘Carrying messages is not a free service.’

  ‘Consider it a professional courtesy,’ Bueralan said. ‘After all, you’re a mercenary, aren’t you?’

  The Last Courtesy was busy that night, despite the bug that was sweeping through both mercenary camps. From where Bueralan stood, dirty and bloodstained against the walls of the brothel, he heard more than one of the mercenaries complain about being sick with a stomach bug. The cure, it appeared, was to drink. And by the time Sabine finished her second set, the bar was full, and it was clear that it would remain so until the first sun rose.

  ‘Enough,’ Inen shouted from behind the bar, shortly after two in the morning. ‘I can smell you from here. You need a bath!’

  ‘That means I can leave your sight?’ Bueralan called back. The mercenaries around the bar laughed. ‘Don’t tease me, Inen.’

  ‘Go! Go! And don’t come back dirtier, or bloodier,’ he said caustically. ‘I’ll not have you here next to any of my girls or boys, if you can’t be clean.’

  A short time later, Bueralan approached the half-built port, with the Echoes’ shirt tucked into his belt.

  It was a lot closer to Zajce than he expected it to be. The moon’s cold shape had barely moved by the time he reached the unguarded path down to the water. He was surprised by that, but made his way casually, as if he was meant to be there. He expected to run into a roaming patrol at every turn, but the low bits of scrub that dotted the bluff had revealed no one by the time he reached the port. That worried hi
m. He needed to find a guard. But he could only gaze out at the empty skeletons of the two docks, which would soon draw in the ships of slavers.

  As much as it disgusted Bueralan to admit it, the dock was a good business move. It would allow slavers from different parts of the world easier access to Gogair and, if they embraced that, it would turn Zajce into the southern hub of the trade.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Over the low crash of Leviathan’s Blood against the docks, Bueralan heard footsteps. A sword was drawn as the woman spoke again. ‘No one is allowed down here.’

  ‘It’s okay, I work for Makara.’ He let out his breath and raised his hands as he turned. The first of the two guards was the speaker, while behind her stood a man pulling tightly on his belt. ‘I’m his new saboteur.’

  ‘No one said you’d be down here.’ The first mercenary was a thickset black woman in freshly rumpled clothes. ‘What’d you say your name was?’

  ‘Captain Khoury should have sent word.’ Bueralan lowered his hands. ‘But she said it before she’d opened the laudanum for the night. You know how it is, when she starts.’

  The first Scratch mercenary made a disgusted noise. ‘She was never that bad before we got here. She had that shit in control before. She—’

  Bueralan slammed his fist into her face. He followed the blow by rolling his shoulder into her mouth. Then he jammed the heel of his hand down on her sword-arm. The leather she wore shielded her from the worst of the blow, but the suddenness of the attack stunned her, and he easily spun her towards her partner. Bueralan’s elbow shot up into her face and he released her, to take a couple of steps towards the second mercenary and kick him in the groin. Despite his leather armour, this hurt the man enough for Bueralan to grab his head, slam his knee into it and scoop up the mercenary’s fallen sword. He turned quickly back to the first guard – just as she thrust her sword forward.