Shadowcloaks

by Benjamin Hewett

  I have the vague sense of running in place all night, trying to reach somewhere important, though I can’t remember where. I wake up and hear Yessy’s voice on the wind.” You sing too loudly, , CupofTea. Shh, shh, shh.”

  In the morning Lucinda and I eat some old, cold porridge, and climb back into our bear bags.

  By the late afternoon Brontok’s long loping strides have carried us into the lower foothills. The fallow fields before us are barely dusted with snow. Lucinda manages to urge him another two miles, right down into a fallow field at the edge of the last hill, but when he finally stops, no amount of coaxing will move him forward. He stands and stares at the landscape and chuffs. He surveys left and right and blows more steam.

  Lucinda and I dismount, taking in the snow-capped rooftops and trails of smoke barely visible in the distance.

  Stupid tax collector, I think for the hundredth time, surveying the snowbound mountains behind us. Had I known his definition of an “open pass” I might not have lost a week in the mountains or put so many lives at risk. How had he managed it so easily? Wicker shoes, like Grafnuk’s? A blowgun and a brace of darts?

  Open passes?

  Eight weeks of mild weather in Fortrus must have desensitized me to the risks. The foolishness of it all crashes down on me, now that we’re safely through. It’s my fault we almost died. My fault, over and over.

  Brontok chuffs a few times, nuzzling Lucinda as she unhitches our packs and hands me mine. Bear and woman have bonded over the last two days of slogging. Lucinda opens her pack and pulls out a pile of smoked wolf-meat sausages wrapped in cheesecloth. She cuts off one link and tosses it into the snow in front of him. He growls a bit, and gives her the stink-eye. He doesn’t like wolf meat any more than the rest of us.

  Lucinda stink-eyes him right back, letting out a growl of her own. “Big guy like you needs his meat,” she says. “And if I can eat it, so can you. Eat this first, and I’ll give you something better.”

  After a short staring match, Brontok ducks his head like a chastened child and gulps the sausage link down. She pulls out some dried berries and he eats them straight from her hand, though only from the one with the pale, spider-web scar on her forearm. He licks Lucinda’s hand and forearm, as if hoping for more.

  “Okay! Okay!” she says. “You deserve more!”

  She gives him the last of our two potatoes, and he crunches it contentedly as she scratches him behind the ears.

  “That one was Teacup’s,” she says, “but he hasn’t been eating well, and we’ll get him some food in the next village.”

  In the old days she might have teased me, said something about how little I am and about how the bear deserves it more. But lately she’s been watching me with a pale face and sad eyes. I haven’t been hungry, either. The dark haze of thought keeps my stomach busy.

  Still, I hope she’s right about getting food. While the village of Southpass may be only half a day’s ride away, we aren’t riding, and I’ve got no guarantees that the winter has been any easier on the Eastmarchers than it has been up in the mountains. I doubt they’ve been as frugal as M’ma Ownie’s family.

  Out in the elements, out of my little bear-bag, the wind cuts me like a knife and I bleed with a shiver. It isn’t spring down here, not by a long shot. I stamp my feet and start walking toward the distant, rising chimney smoke. Forward movement seems to keep the depression at bay. It’s a dark feeling, knowing your kids are in the care of men who don’t understand them, and your lover is in the care of men who want to hurt you, and don’t mind using her to achieve that end.

  Lucinda murmurs quietly behind me, letting go of Brontok’s furry head, kissing him on the nose. “Brontok, home,” she barks, matching M’ma Ownie’s authoritarian tone perfectly. She walks around behind him and slaps him on the flank. He wheels immediately and trundles for the hills, head sweeping left and right, stopping occasionally to look back toward Lucinda as if hoping she’ll come along.

  “Home!” she shouts.

  #

  We reach Southpass by sundown, taking a room rather than setting up our tattered tent on the outskirts. The food is meager—bulbous tubers and a bit of beef and gravy—but it isn’t wolf meat, thank Pan. The fire is warm, and the lanterns and candles drive away the darkness with a cheerful glow. I find the darkest corner of the room and wrap myself in my cloak as Lucinda negotiates rates for the night. There aren’t many to choose from, but we take our pick because there aren’t any other travelers this early in the season.

  Once up the stairs we part ways for the night, she with her pack, and me with mine, but she ends up in my room anyway because my cries keep waking her. After the third bout, she drags her straw pallet into my room.

  “Teacup,” she says, placing a cool hand on my forehead. “It’s okay. She’s going to be okay. We’re on our way.”

  “She isn’t,” I say into the blackness. “I can hear her screams.”

  Lucinda’s optimism is grating. She was always so cynical, so level-headed before, and she knows what cold-hearted killers the ‘Shades can be.

  I fall back to sleep anyway, her strong hand trailing from her displaced pallet and onto my shivering forearm. I don’t pull away. It grounds me, helps me sleep the rest of the night.

  For one who struggles so much to sleep, waking up is even harder it seems. We’re on the road, several hours out of Southpass, before my mind clears away the rubble of the night, and I try to shake myself from the dark haze I’ve been walking in: Carmen being cut in ribbons. Carmen vomiting blood. Carmen with a battered face and vacant expression. It’s no use. There are too many shadows crowding my mind and not enough sunlight to drive them away.

  When we stop for a rest, Lucinda hands me a slice of cheese from the parchment wrapping she’s holding. I sprawl out in the soft snow, unsure how she has the strength to stand after our forced march. The snow is cold and soft, and I keep thinking about falling asleep and never waking up. So peaceful.

  But the smell of that cheese . . .

  I open my eyes and my heart nearly breaks.

  Blue Avrigne. Rare, and expensive. Green veins tunnel through the soft, white loaf. The aroma is unmistakable. My kids wouldn’t like it, but I do. It is easily the most artistic and beautiful thing I have seen in months. I can’t help but smile.

  Lucinda’s face is radiant when she understands what my eyes are saying.

  “It’s not so hard to find, this close to Avrigne,” she says, downplaying the effort.

  I revisit the last few hours. The inn. A bakery. Cured meats. A livery, no luck.

  “Lucinda,” I say as my mind catches up, “We didn’t stop at any cheese shops on the way out.”

  “It’s from the innkeeper’s wife. She said she slept better last night than she has in months.”

  “So she gave you some free cheese?”

  Lucinda holds up a parchment. It has my name and likeness on it, family name misspelled, of course. Teamus Steaps. Yor Nightshade Slayer.

  “No,” Lucinda says. “She gave you some, on account of your reputation. I’m just better at protecting your assets.”

  I smile again, this time bitterly. No wonder they’ve taken Carmen. No wonder they hate me so much, have tried so hard to kill me. If my reputation has spread to the town of Southpass, it must be causing them problems. People will think they don’t have to cower and fall in line anymore. Good people will fight them. And die.

  Worst of all, there’s no real chance of saving Carmen. The ‘Shades won’t be taking chances. This is one of their traps, only devious because they know I will spring it willingly. But Carmen will know I tried. She will know because I will make their world bleed like it has never bled before.

  I just don’t want Lucinda to die, too. It’s no good to give her the slip now. She knows where I’m going and will just forge ahead, and with less subtlety.

  I hand the cheese back to Lucinda, appetite gone.

  “You bring light to the world, Teamus Steeps,” she says, begg
ing. She uses my real name, with a tone of pleading.

  “I don’t want to bring light to the world,” I say. “I want to protect my family, and I can’t even do that.”

  The snowy road rolls on, sometimes at a jog, and sometimes at a stumble.

  We don’t stop again until we reach a river town the next evening. There’s no point stopping, really. We pawned our tent for coins and food.

  Vale-and-Baths is a shrouded place, a town cloaked in steam from craggy perforations in the earth where heat from the deep meets snowmelt and brings it to a near boil. The resulting fog on cold nights is what gives the town its name.

  Lucinda passes two good establishments before I ask her what we’re doing, slogging through the fog on foot. The fire in my soul has burned low.

  “Going to the docks,” she says. “I have a feeling.”

  “I have a feeling I need sleep.”

  “Well, you’re not going to get it in an inn,” she snaps back. “Trust me. I know.”

  She’s tired, too. Her sword hangs heavy on her back, in traveling position. Tired, Lucinda is much more like her old self: catty, and likely to bring the barmaid thunder.

  I feel guilty. I’ve been shouting in my sleep more and more. We push ourselves to the limits, covering twice the ground that we should be able to. I’m exhausted whenever we stop to camp, but even exhausted, the closer I get to Ector the less I sleep.

  “Do you have any bread and cheese left?”

  She passes me the food bag, and her scowl softens as she watches me eat from the corner of her eye. “Have it all,” she says encouragingly.

  My body thanks me for the salt, congratulates me on the bread, and praises me for the water from my waterskin. I imagine ripping through Nightshades now, with an army of townspeople at my back, all carrying misspelled posters in one hand and shovels and staves in the other.

  “What’s your plan, Lucinda?”

  “The sun’s been out today. All day. And it was out all yesterday. And this isn’t Deepwinter.”

  “So. What’s that got to do with the docks?”

  “When Loma invaded Southmarch. . .” In four words she’s nailed the exact tone of a boring lecturer.

  “Skip to the interesting part.”

  She tries again, this time sounding like herself. “The Northern Princes brought the Land’s End garrison to Port Black Sand in two days.”

  “My brain is feeble on account of no sleep.”

  “Teacup, think! Ector is only half that distance. The river will be riding high. With the right boat we could be in Ector tomorrow night.”

  That is something interesting. I smile inside to think that Carmen might only be a day away. My heart leaps, though I want it to be calm and reasonable.

  “No stealing horses. No riding hard for seven days,” Lucinda says.

  I make my innocent face.

  “Don’t pretend I don’t know you,” she says, pulling a coin out of my pocket before I can stop her. “I know where you came from.”

  “Wasn’t going to steal any horses,” I say, snatching the coin back. “I was going to borrow them.”

  SIX

  “Downriver,” Lucinda says, “Fast.” She braces both hands against the counter and leans forward. She’s not doing this to take the weight off her feet.

  She doesn’t have the intended effect. Instead, the dockmaster notices her broad shoulders, wrapped fists, and newly minted scars. His review skips over her desirable traits and lingers on a few of the less desirable ones: the sword still strapped to her back and the fading scabs on her face. I can see him calculating, glancing at the packs we’re carrying, our road-bitten appearance, and the meager pile of coins we’ve placed on the counter.

  “Better not be running from something,” he says.

  “Running to something,” she offers.

  He pushes the coins back across the counter. “Fah. You can’t afford any of my ships, and they’re full, anyways.”

  Lucinda starts to protest, but he cuts her off.

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you, ma’am.”

  He waits to see if she’s going to cut him off again.

  When she doesn’t, he looks her up and down one more time. “Take the rower,” he says. “Leaves at midnight. It’s already chartered and you can negotiate a fare directly with the patron. They might take you.”

  “Is it fast?” I ask, scratching the back of my head.

  “Fast?” He squints, noticing me for the first time, lounging in the shadows where a pillar blocks the oil lamp on his counter. “Depends on how much you like to row.” He points to the drilling sleet that can’t decide if it’s rain or not. “But even if you don’t, the river’s riding high and I think you’re going to get some help. Might even be a bit dangerous.”

  He drills us a bit more with his steely stare and smiles. “But that isn’t gonna bother the likes of you, I’d wager.”

  #

  We head to the docks at a quarter to midnight. It’s raining now, and cold water is trickling into all my crevices. We haven’t gotten anything else to eat because neither of us know how much the fare will cost us. None of this seems to bother Lucinda as she clatters down the upper ramp.

  Rows of men are climbing aboard a boat I can’t quite make out. Only one lamp in three along the docks is lit. From the look and sound of it, they’re stowing swords in barrels and passing bundles of clothes and leather armor to those ahead. The packs bounce away and down to the below decks, men grunting and chanting “hup” and “ha” as they toss the packs along.

  The line on the dock shortens as soon as loading is complete. Closer up, I can get a better fix on what’s going on. Men are going below decks or taking their places at the rowing benches. There is raised decking at the front and back of the boat for armed guards and extra cargo, with a double walkway down to upper and lower banks of oars on either side of the ship.

  “A rower,” the dock master said. “Big enough for sixty men.” And twice that if they go in shifts.

  A large man is standing near the gangway watching the rowers board. He has the look of a lieutenant, barking occasional orders and directing traffic. He’s thick, in the way that Cobalt is thick, but tall, in the way that Magnus is tall. He’s a giant of a man with a wide jaw, strong lips, and close-cropped black hair. His face and arms, where exposed, are scarred and weatherworn, and the stubble on his face is just another weapon he can use for grinding down his enemies. The Lieutenant is just one solid brick of armored meat, covered by a cloak.

  We get closer.

  He’s wearing metal and leather armor under his cloak. It’s black, grey, and seasoned with no small assortment of nicks and cuts, but seems well kept. The diminishing rain rolls off his cloak to show it has been oiled to keep out the elements. The axe, shield, and short-sword propped up next to him on the dock wall are no less impressive.

  And he’s wearing the armband.

  “Pan’s beard,” I mutter.

  “What?” Lucinda says, squinting. “I don’t see how you can make anything out in this gloom.”

  “Can you see this?” I ask sarcastically. I hold up Tom’s ring to remind her about my abilities.

  She doesn’t see me because she’s still staring at Meatbrick as he directs traffic on the gangway. Her continued scrutiny is rewarded when the rain slows and a man with a torch brings him some documents to sign.

  He reads them, every page, and points to several places. He does not sign them but tells the man to make some corrections before bringing them back. During this time Lucinda gets a good look at the armband, and I see it even better.

  It’s red, with a grey mule standing in profile, foot cocked as if to kick something. It has a coin branded to its flank, a king’s mark, the largest denomination.

  “Pan’s beard,” I say again.

  Among the Tax Watch there are collectors, and there are Collectors. The Grey Mules make the regulars look like newborn lambs. Regulars collect in cities and towns where the subjects try
to be friendly and always pay in coin. The Grey Mules do the dirty work. Hidden country estates. Coastal privateers. House mercenaries. The Grey Mules don’t take guff. You can pay in sheep, or corn, or coin, depending on your livelihood, but don’t even think about chintzing them on the math ‘cause there’s always a few in the squad who can think, read, and do percentages. If a collection sniffs difficult, the Mules won’t hesitate to double down on the pain, price, and poop. And they’ll torch your barn to boot when they’re done.

  They can count, read, think, and brawl, and they muddle together like a pile of badgers. Brigands lie low when a Tax Watch caravan goes by because collections only go one way in Eastmarch, and the Grey Mules always get the last laugh. Or bray. Whichever.

  I have no desire to close ranks with them. I’ve spent most of my life trying to stay away from even the mildest of street collectors. Lucinda grimaces and then can’t help looking at me. She knows about my past better than I care to admit. Her heels and hips shift toward Dockstreet and away from the dockyard as if to say “Damn, that settles it.”

  What she actually says is just as expressive. “Guess we should’a kept a better handle on Halifax.”

  I stare at the ship. Then I turn and stare at the open road, knowing that I can’t afford the time and money for it. I think about Carmen, about my general practice of bringing in a pair of pants for unneeded hemming just to hear her laugh. About her soft voice being put to rough use. I hate tax collectors, but Carmen needs me.

  I grit my teeth. “Why not dance with the devil?” I croak. “Seems fitting, actually.”

  I grab Lucinda’s arm and pull her toward Lieutenant “Meatbrick.” “I don’t care if they’re collectors. They do their job, and they do it well. I won’t fault them for that. Not today. Not when it’s the fastest way to Ector.”

  “Teamus Steeps, passenger,” I say. “Dockmaster sent us.” I use my manliest voice.