by Martin Davey
“Ah.” Dorian nodded. “Captain of the Watch, you may be, young Landros, but it seems you still have a lot to learn about women.”
“Landros and women?” Pascal burst into laughter at Dorian’s side; their shoulders pressed together, scrunched as they were on the bench. They had the easy familiarity of a lifetime of friendship; the kind of familiarity Landros himself had had just a short week ago until the Dream had built a wall of tension between them. “You might as well ask him to tell where the Keepers were born as to explain the workings of a woman’s mind. Did you hear what Elian was just saying about him? That’s one pissed off woman you have there, Landros.”
“I’ve other things on my mind without worrying about the feelings of a Daughter, Pascal.” He had to speak loudly over the hubbub of the inn, the jostling of the crowd beginning to grate on his nerves.
“You see, Captain?” It wasn’t to Landros that Pascal was speaking. “There is a man who knows how to treat a woman.” The red-headed man of the Watch looked to Landros’s left with a triumphant smile, his freckles all the starker as his nose wrinkled.
Landros followed those green eyes and his heart lurched. Elian stood there, her dark hair brushed to the side, wearing a white dress that bared her slender shoulders and thin arms, clung ever so slightly to her small breasts. Her eyes, almost as dark as Ricon Lovelin’s own, were bright in the smoke-hazed room.
Torra chose that moment to emerge from the crowd, knocking a burly bearded man’s drink on his way. A few choice words and a friendly smile later and the brute was slapping Torra on the shoulder and laughing along with him. He finally extricated himself from the man’s embrace and handed Dorian and Pascal their drinks. “One for you, and you.” He looked flushed in the cheeks and bright in the eye as he handed Landros his own beer. “One for the Captain.” Trust Torra not to forget the title; somehow it only made Landros resent him all the more. “Ah,” Torra offered Elian a regretful smile that seemed charming and over-familiar at the same time.
Elian, one arm folded across her stomach, had a drink in the other hand which she shook slightly to Torra. “A good Daughter is never without an offer of a drink, Torra.”
“Good, so we all have our drinks.” He held his own up, never in danger of spilling a drop, and looked at them all huddled together so close that those standing almost had their knees brushing those of Dorian and Pascal seated on the bench. “What do we drink to? Absent friends? Fallen comrades?”
“We drink to Feren.” Dorian rose, vacating his much-prized seat with a push off of Pascal’s shoulder. “We drink to Feren,” he repeated, not looking altogether steady on his feet. “A friend to us all. A son and a brother and a friend to everybody he met. A man who loved the myths and the stories and never got to live his own. A man whose smile we will never see again, whose voice we will never hear again, whose laughter is lost to the world forever.” He stumbled as he raised his tankard to his lips, and pressed his calves against the bench to keep his balance as he drank.
Torra had a thoughtful sip of his own beer after the words by Dorian; Pascal had been obliged to follow Dorian to his feet, though he kept his foot on the bench behind him to save his seat even as he downed all his beer in one long drink.
Landros himself had a long swallow of his own ale, his eyes never leaving Elian as he watched her over the rim. Her hair was loosely tied at the back, exposing her long white neck. His breath felt shallow in his throat just looking at her. She hadn’t even so much as glanced at him; her dark eyes fixed on Dorian as she took a delicate sip of her beer to Feren’s memory.
To think he had felt those lips on his neck only the week before, that he had kissed her own long slender neck, that he had felt those willowy arms draped around his shoulders...
“Landros!”
He blinked, startled back into the present.
Laughter among all the men of the Watch. Elian didn’t even smile, only took another delicate sip of her beer. Did she just glance at Torra? He was smiling smugly. But then he always smiled smugly. Landros took another drink of his beer; his mouth already dry and bitter.
No surprise that it was Torra that jumped to Landros’s rescue. “If you could take your eyes from the Daughter for just a moment, Captain, Dorian was just asking if we’ll be taking on a new recruit? The Watch has always been a six, as long as I can remember anyway.”
Elian was beginning to look bored, scanning the crowd for somebody she might know, or maybe a potential customer. Landros had another large drink of the beer, trying not to grimace against the taste. “I think we’ll wait until Feren is laid to rest before we think about replacing him.” Speaking of Feren, Landros couldn’t help glancing around the inn to see if his old friend was watching him. Elian was gliding through the crowd, a spectral figure in white, sliding through the mass of stinking humanity with a grace that seemed alien in the sweaty atmosphere. Landros turned away and drained his beer; bit his lip as he looked from Dorian to Pascal and back again. “About that man Gerard.” He looked down at his empty tankard, wished there was some of the foul beer still there. “He was struggling. I...”
“Landros. Landros.” Still no title as Pascal put his arms around Landros. “You’re the Captain now; you don’t have to explain yourself to the likes of us.”
Pascal smelled of beer and smoke; a musky combination that aggravated the vile beer already settling in his own stomach. Landros disentangled himself from Pascal’s arm as soon as was politely possible and, with a promise of more drinks to come, dived back in to the crowd.
A sea of faces. All bright eyed, talking, shouting, arguing; the noise loud in the confines of the inn. More than once Landros heard his name called out. He ignored them and struggled to the bar. Some of the people smelled like they hadn’t bathed for a week, others smelled of berrywood soap like Feren.
He had been hoping to find Elian, but when he found himself standing next to her, he found he had no words for her and wished he had emerged at the other end of the bar. He looked at her and saw her large dark eyes fixed on him. He looked away.
“Captain of the Watch.” She said. A statement. She didn’t sound happy, angry, congratulatory. She was simply stating a fact.
Landros could only nod. He glanced to Otto, hurrying and sweating behind the bar, a grimy grey vest straining itself about the folds and curves of his body, a dirty rag thrown over one shoulder. It looked like it would be a while before he made it to their end of the bar. Landros nodded to the gold coin Elian held ready in her hand. “I thought a good daughter always had a plentiful supply of beer at the ready?”
Elian turned the coin around in her hand, her fingers long and white, the crest of the Keepers glinting in the torchlight. “And where do you suppose this coin came from, Landros?” She looked over to a far corner of the inn; all Landros saw was a horde of heads. Elian shrugged and smiled a smile that made him ache in his stomach at the memory of their night together. “My benefactor for tonight is a little old to be struggling through the common mass for me.” She smiled again and rested two thin elbows on the bar, sliding the golden coin in spirals on it with one finger. A trail of spilt beer followed the pattern of the coin; the crest of the Keepers, Landros noticed, was face down.
Landros nodded again, fighting against the urge to ask who her aged benefactor was.
“I’m sorry about Feren. I liked him. He was too good to die so young.” She didn’t look at Landros as she spoke, her eyes fixed on the coin, drawing designs in the beer.
Landros looked at the coin, but all he saw was Feren standing in his doorway, blood spilling from the weeping hole in his skull. He needed more of that foul beer. “I feel for his mother too, all alone in the world now.” All alone in her dark room with her rocking chair.
“She has Dorian.” Now Elian did turn to look at Landros, her eyes large as she looked up at him, everything about her looked willowy and fragile. Appearances could be deceiving. “Dorian will always be there for her, he’ll never let her down.”
“I don’t think that’ll be much comfort to the poor woman, judging by what she said to me and those scratches on his face.” A splintering of glass accompanied by a cheer at the far end of the bar. Landros glanced over to see Otto on his knees, dirty rag whipped from his shoulder and slopping about in a pool of spilt beer.
“You don’t know a lot about people, do you, Landros?” A verdict a lot of people seemed to be coming to lately. “She will have beat Dorian, blamed him, screamed at him and he would have accepted it all and then finally, when she was ready, he will have held her, comforted her, been there for her as he will be always.”
Landros looked back to where Dorian and Pascal were sitting, hidden from view on their bench. “And how do you know that? You’ve only known Dorian a few weeks and you’ve never met Feren’s mother.” Not that he knew of, anyway. Elian’s life seemed like an unfathomable web of mystery to him, full of dark figures waiting in dark alleys, of quiet knocks on doors.
The coin returned to spiralling on the bar. “A good Daughter knows people, Landros. Knows the way their minds work. It can be the difference between life and death. If a daughter goes home one night with the wrong person...” a shrug of a delicate shoulder. “But you, Landros,” the coin vanished back into her hand and she leaned on one elbow, looking up at him, her lips a tender red. “You are a difficult one.” For a breathless moment, Landros thought she was going to lift a hand and touch his face. “You’re changeable like the winds; passionate one moment and then the next cold and distant and quiet. And yet always with the hint of violence hidden just below the surface waiting to swell and rise to the fore.” Now she did touch his face, the back of her fingers brushing his cheek for the briefest of moments.
Landros wanted nothing more than to hold that cold white hand, press it against his cheek and engulf himself in those large brown eyes. Instead he stood there, quiet and immobile.
“Kind of makes you wonder why the Keepers chose you to lead our Watch, doesn’t it?” Elian inspected the back of her nails, glanced to see if Otto had seen her waiting. The corpulent innkeeper had finished mopping the floor and was happily trading insults with those at the far end of the bar as he poured more drinks. “Think of it, Landros. Dorian, with his experience and common sense, was already the Captain. A fine Captain, one who commands respect from the entire town, one who has never let the Keepers down as far as we know.” Elian was in full flow now, specks of colour lighting the pale of her cheeks as she warmed to her subject. “But say the Keepers did wish to rid themselves of our esteemed Captain; who did they have to replace him with? Torra who is charming and clever.” Landros had to swallow the bitter anger and jealousy as she spoke of Torra. “And then we have Pascal who is quick and bright.” She was counting off the men of the Watch, finger by finger. “Lykos who is strong in heart and mind.” Elian continued the count, though her arm fell back to rest on the bar “Feren...Feren always had his dreams and his stories. And then we have you. Why did the Keepers choose you over the others? Not to mention all the other men along the Watches of the Sea, not to mention all the other fine men in Katrinamal.”
Landros finally found his voice, though it wasn’t what he had dreamed of saying to Elian. “Do you realize how much you remind me of Clerk Lovelin asking me that question?” It had meant to sound teasing, light hearted even, but it came out as more of an accusation.
Elian held his eyes for a moment before looking away. “I do, do I? Already you’re mixing in honoured company, spending time with the Clerk in his own house. I walked past there myself earlier, admired your little addition to the River on my way. They say he cried and begged like a new born babe when Commander Perun shackled his feet to the bottom.” She smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her dark eyes. “A slow tide as well, nearly a full day before the rising water quietened him, I think.”
The Bonding River. Narrow and just deep enough to submerge a man as it wound past Katrinamal and on towards Harragstown past the Scorched Towns of Dirdrla and beyond. Fitting punishment for those who betrayed the will of the Keepers, to find their feet shackled to the bottom of the Bonding River and watch the tide slowly rise like a lazy predator. Those too tall for the waters to take them at full tide finally collapsed and drowned on their knees, or there had been Lestna Pritir who had unwisely chosen the dead of winter to betray the will of the Five when another man had been chosen to replace him. He hadn’t screamed for long as the waters froze about him and his lips and neck had turned first red and then blue.
So Gerard had been begging for his life in the Bonding River even as Clerk Lovelin had been asking Landros how he should be punished, even as the Clerk had seemed to have been pleading Gerard’s case. Somehow it didn’t surprise Landros. And somehow it didn’t bother him, either. Fitting that the man he had found squirming on top of the screaming woman would end his days squirming at the bottom of the Bonding River. “So his death wasn’t a slow one, I won’t be shedding any tears for the man.” He remembered looking down at Gerard in the mud, begging and gibbering of the Keepers and prophecies and godly promises. He remembered Feren in the Clerk’s house with blood running from the hole in his head and talking in tongues. The cacophony of thoughts running through his mind mingled with the noise of the inn. All he wanted was to take Elian somewhere quiet, sit on the top of Staxton Hill under the stars with spires of Jerusin looming darkly somewhere in the distance.
Elian watched him, the torchlight flickering in her eyes. “Strange how I thought we had become so close that night we shared together, and yet now you seem to build new walls between us, hiding behind them like some jealous King hiding from the truth of the Keepers.”
“It’s not that. It’s just with Feren and the Dream...” Landros held out his hand to her, even now afraid to touch her in case she pulled away. “Come with me, somewhere quiet.”
Elian smiled, something bitter quirking the corner of her mouth as she held up the golden coin between finger and thumb, the crest of the Keepers bright in the gloom of the inn. “I have arrangements for the night. Try not to be so slow in making your own plans, Landros.” Dark eyes glanced over his shoulder, “And it looks as though you might have duties of your own, Captain.”
A heavy gloved hand landed on Landros’s shoulder. “Captain Endrassi?”
Landros turned to see a man in a Town Guard uniform, a good hand taller than himself; thick wiry black whiskers on either cheek, black oily hair brushed, or rather scraped to the side. A man who took too much care in his appearance to be truly intimidating despite his size. “That’s me.” Landros tried to stand taller under Elian’s cool gaze.
The Guardsman’s expression softened a touch, the whiskers even seeming to droop somehow. “Can you come with me please, Captain?”
Landros swallowed, his eyes drawn past the Guard to a dark corner where a spluttering candle hanging from a wall cast a dim flickering light on the faded red of Feren’s jacket and the black stuff leaking from his head and down a cheek white as a berragull feather, lips blue as Lestna Pritir’s as he froze in the Bonding River. His dead friend leaned against a wall as though he had been standing there all night. A drunken woman with wild brown hair staggered and looked as though she was going to fall into the corpse and Landros almost called out a warning; the thought of somebody touching that cold, dead flesh made him feel faint. The woman somehow avoided Feren and spilled out of the doorway into the steaming cold night. With the words of the Guard, Feren pushed himself away from the wall, his eyes once so full of life and emotion now dead and cold fixed on Landros before he too turned to the door and left, his movements quick despite the stiffness of his limbs.
There was something disturbing about seeing the dead finding the need to hurry, and it filled Landros with dread. His mother. The reason he had left his house tonight. The place he had been going before Torra had stopped him in the street. The noise of the inn was a dull roar in his ears as he looked at the Guard. “My mother?” he said, already knowing the answer.
With the nod of the Guard, Landros was shoving his way out through the crowd, drinks spilling on his arms and curses ringing in his ears as he pressed to the door.
After the warmth of the inn, the night was cold. The drunken woman was sitting on the ground, back pressed against the wall and laughing to herself. He jumped over her splayed legs and ran for Regent’s Street. Why hadn’t he ignored Torra and continued on to his mother’s? His breath felt short and cold in his throat, his heart painful in his chest. Four streets to his mother’s house, to where she should be rocking in her chair and swearing to herself and chewing on her tongue. For the first time in his life, Landros hoped and prayed to the Keepers that that is exactly what he would find.
“Captain!” The Guard was hurrying around the corner behind him. Landros didn’t want to hear what the man had to say. He ran on.
Black figures loitered in doorways, people hung out of amber windows, and more strolled down the streets, Landros even passed a high-spirited horse race ending in a painful-looking fall that only caused more laughter. More than once somebody called out some lewd suggestion about where Landros was headed in such a hurry.
Too soon and not soon enough he arrived at his mother’s house. Dark and old and small and alone, surrounded on all sides by bigger, grander, livelier houses. The door was open, a deeper darker shadow in the dark wall of the house; no flowers or any other decoration outside this little home. Once perhaps, when Landros was younger. Landros swallowed as a Town Guard came out of the door, a fluttering candle in his hand. The older man’s face was a mask of shifting shadows and light, his blue jacket almost black in the darkness.