by Tom Lloyd
‘The child is well?’
Narin blinked a few moments before a tired smile crept across his face. ‘I, ah, yes, so far as I can tell. Kine too.’
‘What’s your plan about Lord Vanden?’
‘My plan’s to keep as far away from him as possible. I’ve got someone else to negotiate on my behalf, someone he’s got to listen to.’
‘And how will you satisfy his honour?’
‘Still working on that.’ Narin shook his head. ‘All about honour, isn’t it? Not even the right and wrong of what I’ve done, but the perceived slight or shame. Where’s the sense in that?’
‘Honour is a cornerstone of the Empire; you would do well not to underestimate its strength.’
‘Reckon I’m getting a lesson in those respects,’ Narin sighed. ‘In any case, my negotiator understands it well enough and he reckons there’s a way out. I don’t know how much I’ll like it, but beggars can’t be choosers.’
‘And who is this negotiator?’ Rhe asked pointedly. ‘Who have you trusted your secrets to?’
Narin cocked his head at the man before smiling. ‘You think it’s Enchei? Gods no, I don’t want to start a war. I can’t tell you who, but they can do the job.’
‘At what price?’ Rhe’s expression hadn’t changed. ‘Who will you owe this favour to?’
‘Let’s be honest here,’ Narin said with a scowl, ‘it doesn’t look like I’ll have much of a career in the Lawbringers after this is over. Either I’m dead, disgraced or something else that’ll mean I’m not much use to a power-broker. I’m good with that – if I have Kine and Dov at the end of it I’ll gladly say a prayer of thanks at Lawbringer’s shrine as I’m being kicked out.’
‘You say that now. You may feel differently when you are penniless and ostracised.’
‘I know. I’m not so stupid as to deny it’s possible, but Enchei managed it,’ Narin insisted. ‘After all this time I still don’t know what he’s running from, what horrors are in his past – let alone all he’s lost. I do know he’s accepted it, though. That was the price he needed to pay and while his ghosts might follow him, they don’t rule him.’
Rhe looked at him a long while, but at last he inclined his head a shade and, without a further word, turned away to head into Eagle District. Narin watched him head down the street, wondering how Rhe himself would act in the same situation – wondering too whether what he’d said was even the truth.
I’ve wanted to be a Lawbringer my whole life; can I really walk away so easily?
On new-found instinct he checked around him, realising he was now alone in the street and vulnerable. The cold air seemed to gather round him, a sudden sharpening of the chill he’d been trying to ignore in his bones. Even as he looked at the figures walking past and the meagre traffic on the Crescent, one of which he assumed would be Enchei, the answer to his question came easily.
In his mind appeared the warm memory of Kine’s touch, of Dov’s squinting eyes and tiny, jerking fingers.
With them, aye, I reckon I can. The novice-masters always said pride held me back – caring too much what others think of me, how much of a fool I might look. Now’s the time to let all that go. If I have to crawl through shit and kiss Lord Vanden’s feet, I’ll do it with a smile on my face. The high castes can keep their honour; I’ve no use for it and my pride can go with it.
He set off at a brisk pace, heading in the opposite direction to the one Rhe had taken. Honour he had little use for, but the lives of others were worth more. He owed it to Enchei to find this summoner and to the city to save any lives while he still could. If that was his parting gift for the Lawbringers, it’d be enough.
Enchei sat in the front of the small boat as he was rowed across the Crescent by a long-haired, long-limbed boy young enough to be his grandson. Whether the youth had heard his grandfather mutter such a stream of curses before was another matter, but the alarm on his face told a story.
‘Old, I’m getting too damn old,’ Enchei hissed, gaze fixed on the Lawbringers on the far bank as they spoke on the shore. ‘Bastard was right there, should’ve cut his fucking head off and worried about the rest later. Stupid indecisive old fool.’
He’d been following the two Wyverns at a distance, only to discover they weren’t the only ones in the wake of his Lawbringer charges. There had been a third man, one Enchei recognised only too easily.
How in the lower hells did they latch on to Narin so fast? Or was it Rhe somehow? What do these bastards know? Did they get so much out of Serril they were set the next morning?
Narin’s destination that morning had been a kick to the gut, though he’d feared it would happen.
I bet that puffed up cockerel Serril ignored me. I had half a mind to demand he refused to admit anything about me – tempt him into spilling everything out of spite, but I thought they’d go in with threats and he’d realise he was out of his depth.
Enchei lowered his head, wanting to say a prayer for the man who didn’t deserve the horrible death he’d have received. He had despised the man, but it was a petty, mundane unpleasantness Serril had possessed, nothing more. A paper-pushing bully could become a monster, Enchei had seen that before, but Serril hadn’t been one – just a fool living in a sheltered world.
‘Should’ve followed him, tracked him back to his nest,’ Enchei growled, spitting in disgust at himself into the water. ‘Burned them out while I had the chance, even if it meant Narin was left alone.’
But even as he said the words, his stomach clenched and a memory came flooding back to him. It came fractured and disjointed; distorted images and sensations as much as anything else. A flash of grey skin and red eyes, of falling and a blinding pain, of grief and guilt piled high upon his shoulders.
Vague and insubstantial as it was, it stood with the last memories of his daughters in the vanguard of his ghosts and hurt him just as bad. Once before he’d done something similar – left the comrades he’d been shadowing on a calculated risk – and the price haunted him to this very day. Everything traced back to that decision, that failure of judgement that had left two brothers – and a sister-in-arms, dead in a distant field.
A rare luxury, he reflected once the memories had lessened their grip on him. Few men can trace so much of their life all back to one moment, one rash decision. But every turn of the cards for me has come from that single hand. Thirty years and more laid out in the divination of my actions.
‘Never again,’ he whispered to the heedless waters of the Crescent. ‘A failure I’ll not be scarred with twice.’
They reached the other side and Enchei tossed a coin over his shoulder to the boatman. The youth had to juggle to catch it, but the aging warrior’s attention was elsewhere, snagged on a more recent memory. The sight of a man he’d met briefly in a tavern, followed into a secluded corner by two Wyvern warriors. Enchei knew the likely outcome of such an encounter and what he’d do in the same situation.
So will two enemies become one? How’ll that change things? And who’s really in charge? Is this Sorpan a go-between, or something else?
Enchei nodded to himself, a grim look on his face as he began to hurry through the streets to catch up with a sight of Narin.
Looks like I’ll be taking a walk through the home district soon, see if any familiar faces are in town. He grimaced. Hard not to see my ghosts on those streets. This week’s shaping up to be a real barrel of laughs.
CHAPTER 16
The attic of the stone house on the bridge was shuttered and dark when Sorpan made it up there. He paused halfway up the steep steps, looking around for Sharish and her charges before intruding further.
‘You got the other two?’ came Sharish’s voice from behind the brick chimney stack in the centre. ‘Bring them up.’
Sorpan nodded as he looked around at the attic room. It lacked any sort of furnishings, though a pair of small braziers flanked the chimney. Four figures sat toward the sides with their heads tilted uncomfortably forward by the slope of the roof
– two of the House Smoke mercenaries and the Wyverns he’d sent over with Kebrai. All were tightly bound, the mercenaries glaring murderously at him as though he was their betrayer, while the Wyvern warrior castes just stared, dull-eyed and empty.
‘You’ve not started? Good.’
Sorpan ducked down briefly to attract the attention of the two now-docile Wyverns who stood at the foot of the steps. At his command they followed him up into the attic, the taller of the two thumping his head against the sloped ceiling in the dark.
‘Desert’s breath!’ Sharish exclaimed. ‘Keep them from touching anything!’
Sorpan looked up at the ceiling and blinked once, twice. ‘Gods above,’ he said, with the hint of a smile on his face.
Across the entire four panels of roof were symbols and wardings, painted on the wood in something that didn’t show up to normal eyes. Arcane shapes and scripts interspersed by a full set of divine constellations. Even Sorpan, who could see clearly in any light, had not spotted them at first and needed an old invocation woven into his eyes to read them.
‘Crouch down, careful of the roof,’ Sorpan instructed the two as Sharish re-checked the symbols.
‘There are shackles there,’ she said distractedly, running a finger over the surface to ensure there was no dent or damage.
Sorpan was relieved to see the wild shamaness was all business now. What she’d proposed to do sounded, to his informed ear, perilous and complicated, so Sorpan had already resolved to be well clear if she wasn’t taking due care. Reassured, he set about bringing the docile Wyverns to the shackles indicated and securing them alongside their fellows.
‘Now what?’ he said once Sharish had returned to her workings around the chimney stack.
She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Here to learn a new trick?’
‘Would it be safe?’
The tanned woman gave him a lupine grin, all white teeth and intent. ‘Compared to what?’ she laughed. ‘Cinnamon tea and pastries with Priest? Another bottle of Ivytail with your friend the tattooist?’
‘Sure, compared to them.’
She nodded. ‘Long as you don’t do anything stupid, you’ll be fine. This house has so many wardings it’s a surprise any of us can find the damn place!’
Sorpan nodded and sat on the floor, taking a moment to arrange his long coat around him and ensure his personal defences were just as secure. Sharish fetched a tarnished brass bowl from the floor and continued with her work, using her finger to paint an invocation on the side of the square chimney stack above the unlit brazier.
Sorpan checked the other side and realised she’d already done one there; a star of protection with a complex character in the centre that Sorpan guessed was the word for hellhound in some demon script.
‘Sit here, legs under you,’ she instructed as she drew a small brass-bladed knife and went to the first of her bound captives. The mercenary strained at his shackles and tried to kick out at Sharish, but he was securely fastened and a few hefty kicks to his midriff drove the fight from him.
‘I’m not going to kill you,’ she said firmly to the man, ‘just take a little blood for the bowl. The more you fight, the bigger the cut needs to be before I get any in the bowl. I can kick seven shades out o’ you first if you prefer. Unconscious is fine, but dead’s no use.’
If the man gave any sort of response, Sorpan didn’t see it, but Sharish seemed satisfied that her message had got through and bent with her knife. Good to her word, she made a small nick at his throat and held the bowl underneath it until a small trickle had run in. She repeated the job with all their prisoners, calling over her shoulder to Sorpan as she did the last.
‘Light the braziers.’
He obeyed, pinching a few twigs from each until they burst into flame and dropping them back onto the rest. He could smell an oil of some sort on the kindling, faintly infused with lemon grass, so it quickly caught and the light of their orange flames began to dance around the attic.
Sharish fetched the pale twisted-tines staff she used to summon the hounds and set the head on the top of the burning braziers, pouring some of the bloodied mixture from the bowl over it. The liquid spat and crackled over the wire twisted all around the head, sparks flaring up all around it, and this she touched to the invocation sigils above the flames. They burst into life and Sharish hurried around the chimney to do the same on that side before the oil burned out.
Once both were lit she took her place on the far side from Sorpan, where he assumed there was another star of protection, and stuttering bursts of light immediately began to illuminate the room. Sorpan found himself holding his breath both in fascination and alarm as he watched the light flicker around the room, taking on a life of its own. The flashes intensified without warning, a searing staccato flurry that made him flinch as though the light cut right through him.
A second great burst of light came, then another and another – six in all, interspersed with the frantic flames from the braziers and lesser flutters from the summoning staff. Alongside distant thunder Sorpan heard faint, mournful howls that seemed to circle the room, slowly growing in intensity as they came closer, but just as it seemed the monstrous beasts were about to crash through the roof and into the attic room, the braziers gave one final stutter of light and extinguished.
There was a moment of complete darkness that even Sorpan’s eyes couldn’t penetrate before normality reasserted itself and he watched the nearest of the Wyverns – once docile and empty – peer forward at him with predatory intent. A growl of throaty menace cut through the air, not quite human in tone, and Sharish chuckled from the other side of the chimney. Sorpan heard her grunt and push herself up from the ground.
‘Good boys,’ she whispered to the straining sextet as they tested the strength of their bonds and their growls mingled to one unearthly sound. ‘Now let’s see how you hunt.’
*
Narin returned to the Palace of Law with a heavy heart. It had been a morning of murder and Narin was not so old and jaded he didn’t feel the weight of it on his soul. While the death of Administrator Serril hadn’t been quite what he’d expected, the servants murdered in the Fett Warrant matched the tavern exactly. It had happened deep into the night, according to an Investigator who’d been standing guard over the carnage until dawn. The victims were presumed to be a local couple whose home opened on to the alley – their door was ajar and the bloodied footprints of a huge hound led inside, only to vanish in the middle of the room. Actual identification was predictably hard, for if anything the attack had been more frenzied than that in the tavern, but the neighbours were certain – as they were of hearing distant howls echoing around the surrounding streets.
Rumour was already spreading about the crimes, the locals whispering that it was the work of some secret blood cult from House Wolf, for who else would have such monstrous dogs to hand? Narin did his best to dampen down the stories as he interviewed the neighbours, but found it difficult when the most plausible alternative was demons creeping from the river. A search of the property unearthed nothing to suggest any involvement in the supernatural or criminal activities – it was an entirely typical low-caste household of modest size and even more modest possessions.
With the next of kin just one street away, Narin went to pay his respects, though of course they had already been fetched out by the fearful neighbours. Again he could offer no real assurances or explanations and while he had managed to stop himself from being sick at the scene, a sour taste filled his mouth the entire journey back. All the way, his stomach had lurched repeatedly as the scents of the midday trade began to emanate from the many eateries on his route.
Once inside the Palace of Law Narin went to Rhe’s desk and slumped into a chair. Rhe was not back yet from the other murder scene and Narin was glad to have a few minutes of quiet before they compared notes.
‘Why those servants?’ he wondered aloud, all alone in the partitioned section. ‘Were the hounds sent there by design? Did they go on a rampage
or is this some sort of distraction?’
He leaned back and closed his eyes, head throbbing with fatigue. ‘If I were doing this, how would it play out?’ he muttered to himself, forcing himself to stay awake. ‘If I had a reason to kill the tavern owner, no doubt anyone else there is also going to be considered fair prey.
‘That leads me to the tattoo administrator and no doubt he leads me to someone else – but if this is about Enchei, how do the servants and an Eagle merchant figure? He doesn’t know them – I might not know all his friends, but I’d have heard mention of one I’m sure. So why? They follow a clear path and then deviate from it, but why?’
‘To disguise the path,’ Rhe broke in from somewhere ahead.
Narin jumped like he’d been stung, up on his feet and staring blearily for a while until he managed to focus on the Lawbringer standing before him.
‘Sorry, just resting my eyes,’ he muttered guiltily.
‘But thinking clearly,’ Rhe said. ‘You’re following the train of my own thoughts, so the choice of eyes open or closed is your own. With murders so obvious and brutal, our summoner is perhaps attempting to throw us off the scent by committing random killings to muddy the water. It’s the only explanation that satisfies me at present, as distasteful as it might be.’
Distasteful? Narin wondered as he tried to order his thoughts. Tragic and entirely unsurprising, I’d have thought.
‘How long were you standing there?’ he asked.
‘Not long enough to hear anything I did not already know,’ Rhe said, at which Narin remembered the Lawbringer had already guessed Enchei was the likely quarry of these hellhounds.
‘Now what?’
Rhe looked Narin up and down. ‘Now you go home,’ he said without criticism. ‘You are no use to me half-dead and I’m sure it will be a few hours before our reports are gathered, so you might as well sleep.’