by J. V. Jones
She paused, favoring Marafice with something so hard and joyless he doubted if it could be named a smile.
“My scouts tell me you have injured. Three cartloads.”
Marafice said nothing. Sunlight reflecting off one of the Scarpemen’s swords was bouncing into his good eye. A black rage was simmering within him and he imagined kicking the Scarpe chief in the head and crushing her against the chair. Finally the pressure became too much. “What if we just steal your fucking boats? You can’t match us for numbers—half of your men are at Blackhail.”
“You’ll be stealing burned wood if you try it,” she said back to him, relaxed now that he had stepped into the hole she had dug for him. “The barges have been primed with lamp oil. One word from me and they’re up in flames.”
Marafice felt like a fool. All of it could be bluff and he would never know it. The five rivers, the last crossing, the barges wet with oil. Iss would have never walked into a meeting ignorant of such things. Knowledge was power. And lack of knowledge meant that you could be backed into a corner and made to pay to get out.
“Shall I name my terms?”
He did not know how he managed not to choke on the words: “Go ahead.”
The Scarpe chief made a small satisfied sniff. “I want the war machines, the battering ram. Two hundred horses and their saddles, two hundred suits of armor including leg pieces, and the clansmen you hold as hostage.”
Her scouts were good, he had to give her that. She waited for an answer, her purple tongue flicking out once to wet her lips, her jeweled fingers stroking the weasel heads. How had it got so hot in this damn glade? Marafice glanced at the overhead sun and then wished he hadn’t. Circles of light burned his eye. That moron with the sword was flashing him on purpose as well. He needed to think but all he could see in his mind’s eyes were weasels and blistering light.
With a biting motion of his teeth, Marafice forced himself to weigh the chief’s demands. The war machines? She could have them. They only hit their target one time out of five, as he recalled. And the battering ram would be a pleasure to leave; its wheels got stuck more often than the carts’. Steffan Grimes might kick up a fuss—it was his company’s ram, after all—but in Marafice’s experience professional mercenaries were usually inured to the vagaries of war. People died, possessions were lost, others were gained: such were the norms for professional soldiers.
The horses, though. They were different. Two hundred was a greedy little demand and she knew it. If he met her on this it would cost his army dear. Brothers-in-the-watch would be deprived of their mounts, for Marafice could not see a way to take horses solely from the mercenaries. The cost would have to be borne fairly, else mutiny was risked. As for the armor—well, she could have his riding plate, for a start. Thing chafed like all the hells when you tried to move in it. The other hundred and ninety-nine suits shouldn’t be much of a problem either, though the pieces would not necessarily match.
He said, “A hundred horses and I’m keeping the clansmen.”
“A hundred and fifty and I keep the clansmen.”
She was nothing if not fast. Marafice looked into her small black eyes and told her, “The clansmen are not negotiable.” He barely knew why he did it, for up until that point the clansmen had been negotiable—they were captives, their purpose was to be pumped for information and then sold. It even made sense that she, as a clan chief, would want to buy back members of her liege clan, Blackhail. Yet he did not think her purpose here was a moral one. Anything this woman gave you would end up costing more than its worth.
Just as Yelma Scarpe opened her mouth to speak, Marafice stopped her. He had remembered something about the Scarpe roundhouse and thought, To hell with it, I’ll let it fly. “I heard there was some burn damage to your roundhouse. Must make it hard to defend.”
That closed down her pinched little face. She had just been about to insist on the clansmen, he was certain of it, but now she paused for a moment to rethink. Around the glade, two hundred swordsmen shifted their weight from foot to foot. Some let their sword points dip, others exchanged brief glances.
“A hundred and fifty. Done.” Yelma Scarpe rose to her feet. “I’ll send out a bargeman to run the ropes. Be ready with your tribute within the hour.”
Tribute, that was a nice word for it. Marafice did not bid her farewell, indeed said nothing as he watched her bony rump slip away between the trees. She was a weasel all right. He did not think he had bested her, but at least he had held on to something. Fifty horses and five clansmen to be exact.
The thought gave him some pleasure, and when a lone cloud puffed across the sun he actually smiled at the man who had been trying to blind him with the reflection from his sword. Apparently the Eye smile was not a pleasant sight for the swordsman looked quickly away. Blinded you back with ugliness, Marafice thought with satisfaction.
“Come on, boys,” he said to Tat and the mercenary. “Let’s get out of this weasel’s den and make our way home.”
Spire Vanis was calling his name.
TWENTY-FIVE
Stormbringer
Wet and low, that’s what they were, and Crope didn’t like it one bit. Whoever had said that thing about not appreciating what you had until you lost it was wise enough to be a king.
Or a thief. Crope tried not to think bad things about Quillan Moxley, he really did. Business was business and a deal had been struck and Quill had fulfilled his part of the bargain—moving Crope and his lord out of the Rat’s Nest and into a second location where they were bound to be safe as long as Crope kept his big stupid self out of sight—but it seemed to Crope that the spirit of the agreement had been underserved. With his lord supplying Quill with information leading to profit you might have thought that the thief would have arranged a move up for them. Not down.
Crope frowned at the two tiny and perfectly square windows high above him. He did not like being down. Down meant mines and diamond pipes, groundwater, sludge, mold, gases, dead mice and fear of being trapped. He could tear down a wooden wall—it was dusty and a bit dangerous and it made his back ache—but when you were underground the walls were made of stone, and even if you did knock one down you wouldn’t find freedom on the other side. You’d just find earth instead. It was the kind of thought that could lead a man to panic, and Crope had spent considerable mental energy attempting to set it aside.
In fairness to Quill he had provided several luxuries. Crope’s lord now had a proper horsehair mattress and pillows filled with pigeon down. And the blankets the thief had brought three days back were so soft that when you slept in them it was like taking a warm bath. Stools, candles, clothing, a pine chest, tin bowls, pewter spoons, a flowery blue pitcher for water, chamber pots, an hour glass, dice, sheepskin slippers, a sheepskin rug, a wooden thing with hinges of uncertain purpose that Crope was too shy to ask about and a small pig-shaped stove had all been smuggled down to the cavernous depths beneath the Quartercourts.
“There’s a world of rats down there,” Quill had said that first night as they made their way southeast through the back alleys of the city, fleeing the red blades, “and the very few individuals you’re likely to encounter will have more reason than yourselves to keep their distinguishables hidden.”
Pulling the handcart containing Baralis, Quill had led them toward the center of the city where the legal wranglings and public executions took place. Quill had ordered Crope to walk behind him at “a distance no less than thirty paces.” That way, Crope supposed, passersby would not mistake them for a group. It had been a difficult journey, for Crope had feared losing sight of his lord. Every time Quill rounded a corner, Crope’s five-chambered heart would thump against the inside of his rib cage like a reverse punch. He trusted Quill—nearly, almost, completely—but danger could strike around any bend and wipe both men out. At least he’d had the dogs to calm him.
Town Dog and Big Mox had spent most of the journey quiet as lambs, content to let the slack in their leashes flop against the
ir backs. It was only when Town Dog, with her considerably shorter legs, decided quite suddenly she was done with walking and plonked down her rump in the mud that Big Mox had started acting up. Crope didn’t think Big Mox realized he was just too big to be picked up and slipped inside the space between a man’s tunic and his undershirt like Town Dog. Big Mox was a fierce and oversized match bull who became grouchy when he thought he was losing out. Crope had had to spend the final quarter of the journey yanking on his leash to prevent him pissing against every hitching post and barrow leg they passed.
Crope already knew the Quartercourts by sight, for he had walked around the giant limestone edifice several times in the days before he rescued his lord. It was a place where instinct told him not to dally. A circle of gibbets lay directly across from the courts’ wide and impressive steps, and whenever Crope had passed by, bodies in various states of mutilation had been hauled up like ragged flags. By day the courts teemed with red blades and finely dressed men who were so rich they had no need to hitch their horses. They were either carried there in covered chairs lined with cushions, or had servants stand outside and hold their horses’ reins while the lords went inside to conduct business. A lot of men wore thick chains of office draped across their shoulders. Quill said those men were grangelords dressed for session. Crope wasn’t quite sure what session was but he had a feeling it was something to do with lopping off men’s heads.
It had seemed a strange choice of hideaway, but that night when they had fled Quill’s townhouse Crope had been in no state to ask questions. Besides, at least they weren’t heading north, the direction of all terrible things.
It had been a relief to get off the streets. The area around the Quartercourts was strangely quiet at night; the grand halls and places of learning closed up. There were no street vendors plying their trade on corners or street girls huddling around charcoal braziers for warmth. It wasn’t that sort of place. Business was done by day here, and when darkness fell all the fine men in chains, and the judges, officials, armsman, ushers, scholars and grooms moved elsewhere, out of sight of the gibbets and into those parts of the city where you could sup cool ale and feast on sweetmeats and linger over life. Walking the empty and echoing streets, playing tug-o’-war with Big Mox while trying to keep his lord and Quill in his sights, Crope had felt exposed. Actual paving stones had been laid underfoot and his footsteps retorted like crossbolts. He felt only relief when Quill had executed one of his rakish turns into an arch sunk deep into the shadows of the Quartercourts’ western facade and rapped lightly on a miniature door carved from a single chunk of hickory. After a brief exchange of whispers, Quill and his motley band of misfits and dogs was allowed entry into the limestone halls of Spire Vanis’ public courts.
Quillan Moxley was the sort of man who had friends in all kinds of places. Associates, he called them, men and women who owed him favors, were involved in various illegal activities with him, or were the sort of people whose silence could be bought for a price. Crope did not know which category the night warden of the Quartercourts fell into, but he did know that the man had gone to considerable lengths to ensure he had not seen Crope.
“Self-protection,” Quill had told Crope later, after the thief had led them to the second underlevel beneath the limestone compound. “What a man doesn’t know for certain he can lie about with impunity.”
Crope didn’t know what the word impunity meant but he figured it had something to do with being interrogated by bailiffs. They couldn’t force knowledge from you that you didn’t own. Crope had seen the back of the night warden’s head a few times over the past days and concluded that he had clean hair.
“I used to store fruit and vegetables down here at one time,” Quill had said, walking through the series of dank stone cellars that would become Crope’s home. “It was a good little earner until the Lord of High Granges opened his passes to cheap produce from the south.”
Crope had frowned and nodded, attempting to demonstrate to Quill his understanding of the finer points of business.
“Better off without it, really. Carts loaded with cabbages were getting difficult to smuggle past the watch.” Quill shook his small head with feeling. “And God help you if you made the mistake of taking possession of perishables. They had to be up and out within a day.”
More frowning and nodding was called for, though in truth Crope had got stuck on the word perishables and was no longer quite certain what the thief meant.
Quill had appeared to appreciate the sympathy regardless. “Well. I’ll be off for now. You have the use of all the space right up to the ice-house door. Only time anyone comes down here is to pick ice so when you hear footsteps move sharpish and lock yourselves in the big stockroom at the back. Night warden’s the only one besides yourself who has the key.”
The big stockroom had turned out to be the best room out of the lot of them. It was situated against the Quartercourts’ exterior western wall and although it was low-ceilinged like the other cellars, two window shafts provided light from the ground-level windows in the room overhead. If you stood just underneath the shafts, which Crope was currently doing, you could look up and see the sky through iron bars. Sometimes Crope saw flashes of people’s feet and legs as they hurried down the street. Once he’d looked up and seen a raven tapping against the bars.
It was good to be able to keep Town Dog here. The small room at the top of Quill’s townhouse had not been big enough for master, servant and dog, so Town Dog had had to go and stay with Quill. Crope had missed the busy little creature with her off-white coat and stubby tail. She’d followed him around a town he’d once visited far to the east of here, and when he’d had to leave in a bit of a hurry—owing to an unfortunate incident concerning the removal of a support beam from a tavern—she’d trotted through the gates, right on his heels. Town Dog had been with him ever since. She’d even been with him the night he’d gone to the pointy tower to free his lord.
She hadn’t been allowed in this room at first, of course. His lord slept here, in the best, driest and airiest spot, his mattress raised off the floor by a wooden pallet and separated from the damp wall by a nailed-up sheepskin. Crope had been nervous about how his lord would react to the dog for he had no memory of Baralis treating any animal beside his horse with kindness. Plus, Town Dog was an energetic scrap of dogness, disinclined to sit and with a tendency to smell. Deciding it was best to keep them apart, Crope had made a point of keeping the stockroom door shut so that Town Dog couldn’t gain access to his lord. This had meant that Town Dog spent a lot of time at the door, scratching, digging and mewling suspiciously like a cat. Crope had been mortified. How would his lord ever sleep? Measures had to be taken, and Crope had begun to leash Town Dog to one of the many iron rings that lay rusting against the cellars’ walls. Then a strange thing had happened.
Every night in the darkest and quietest hours before dawn, Crope slipped out of the Quartercourts to walk the streets. He knew what he risked, yet he could not stop himself. For seventeen years he had been chained inside the mines and he had a hardness in him now that would not bow to anyone in matters of his freedom. Going outside each night was his sign to himself that he was a free man and that his comings and goings were his own.
As a precaution against detection he had taken to wearing the special cloak Quill had commissioned from the tailor who created clothing for the Surlord’s secret intelligencers known as darkcloaks. Gray for day. Brown for sundown. Falling all the way to his feet, it was longer than he liked in a cloak, and its wool was unaccountably itchy, but if it could help him steal across the main courtyard in Mask Fortress without raising an alarm it probably wouldn’t do any harm to wear it on his outings around the Quartercourts. Crope had an inkling that it made him more . . . shadowy than he normally was. Not invisible or anything fancy like that, just a tiny bit more difficult to see. Like a brown lizard on a brown wall.
He didn’t like to put the hood up—itchy arms were one thing, itchy ears quite another
—but forced himself to do so during those tricky moments leaving and returning to the Quartercourts. Ingress and egress, that’s what Quill would have called it. The thief knew many fine and impressive-sounding words. To leave the Quartercourts, Crope had to open the door to the ice house where big blue blocks of lake ice were stored between bales of hay and pass through to the other side. Next he had to climb the steps to the servants’ level that was used by the Quartercourts staff in the daytime to service the finely dressed lords. This was the tricky part, for sometimes potboys and scrubbers would hide from the night warden during his rounds so they could stay in the courts overnight.
Crope aimed for stealth when crossing the servants’ level. He aimed, but suspected he fell short. A woman had screamed at him once, and he’d very nearly screamed back. She’d been sleeping on the bench near the door, covered by a scrap of blanket, and had woken when he’d stepped on a creaky board. Crope had hightailed it up the stairs and out of the Quartercourts, and had then spent an anxious hour walking the streets wondering how on earth he was going to get back. As it turned out, the night warden had heard the commotion, informed the woman that she was drunk and had seen a ghost, and turfed her from the building. Crope knew this because Quill had scolded him about it the next day. “Warden gave me a real fishwifing, I can tell you. Next time you ignore my excellent advice make sure no one is around to see you do it.”
Crope felt bad about that, but it didn’t prevent him from going out. Most nights he took Town Dog and it was their great mutual pleasure to walk the streets of Spire Vanis side by side, Town Dog taking eight steps to every one of Crope’s.
The night when the strange thing had happened, Town Dog wasn’t feeling up to going out though. Crope thought she may have eaten a bad rat, for her tummy was swollen and she’d refused food. He left her with some water and a stern warning about being a good girl. When he returned two hours later she wasn’t in her place and the length of string that bound her to an iron ring on the wall had been severed. Crope checked the strange warren of rooms that Quill had secured for them; the peat cellar that still held the moldering remains of ancient bricks of turf, the star-shaped servants’ chapel with its six stone mortars for grinding amber, the cold room for hanging game that still had hoists and brain hooks suspended from its ceiling, the room with the bathing pool sunk into the floor that was filled with crusty black water, and the cavernous space with the iron racks, iron wheels, and iron tables whose purposes Crope had no wish to guess.