The men walked with the ease and grace of those accustomed to violence.
“We talked to you,” the one with the paper in his belt said. “Asa, you called yourself.”
“Good to be remembered. Please, sit down.”
The men exchanged a glance, then sat, arranging themselves so that no one could approach unobserved.
“Seems I recall you didn’t know anything.”
“No one on the north bank is ever what they seem,” Asa said, pouring cider from the bowl into all three cups. “I wasn’t sure then what made the most sense for me. I know where the chancellor sleeps, you see. And that he’s not a man who’ safe to cross. I spoke with him yesterday.”
The hunters both tensed. Asa gestured at the cups of cider, letting them choose first and then drinking the third dry to allay any fear of poison.
“And what was it you said to him?” the one with the paper asked.
“That you two were here and hunting for him. Oh, please. Don’t look at me like that. As if he didn’t already know! Likely, he had word of it the moment the pair of you came down the wall. I also convinced him not to kill you, and you’re welcome for it. I sold him a scheme to rid himself of the pair of you at essentially no risk to him. He believes that I’m on his side.”
“And yet here you sit with us.”
Asa nodded. “It’s a sad fallen world, filled with bastards and confidence men. I weep for it.”
“What’s your price?” the other hunter said, then coughed and shot an angry glance at the foul little brazier.
“Right to the point,” Asa agreed. “I appreciate that. I want letters of amnesty. Two sets, and signed by the mayor.”
The second hunter laughed once, but the first leaned forward. Neither one had touched the cider.
“You’re asking a lot, friend Asa,” the first hunter said.
“Why are we having this talk?” the second one asked. “This freak of nature knows where Rouse hides. Break a couple fingers, and we’ll know too.”
“But you won’t be able to get him out from his protection,” Asa said. “I’m not only offering information. I’m your partner now. He won’t put himself in a place to be caught unless someone he thinks is his ally draws him out. You can walk the bridges and streets for the rest of your lives and not find him. Or you can do as I say and be home by nightfall.”
Somewhere below them, a man’s voice rose in an angry shout, and another answered it, syllable for screaming syllable. Asa took another sip of cider and waited.
“How would you draw him out?” the first hunter asked.
“Ah. An excellent question. I’ve already made my first contact, so he’s already prone to view a note from me as legitimate. Once we’ve picked the right place, I’ll send to him. And when he comes, I’ll poison him. Nothing that would kill him, of course. But something that will take his strength and his will, at least long enough to put him in chains, yes? No fighting. No violence. Everybody wins.”
The second hunter laughed, coughed, and shook his head.
“You’d poison a poisoner?” the first hunter said, fidgeting in his seat. His face was growing pale.
“I’m not saying it would be easy,” Asa said. “There would have to be some sort of misdirection. A plate of honeyed dates, for instance. Something like that. A suspicious refreshment he could be wary of and avoid. There’s nothing like keeping out of a trap to make a man feel safe. And then, with his guard down …” The second hunter coughed out another laugh, but his eyes were having trouble focusing. Asa smiled and went on. “And, of course, I’d take something to counteract the effects before I sat down.”
“What …” the first hunter slurred. He stood suddenly, trying awkwardly to draw his sword.
“It was the smoke,” Asa said, gesturing toward the brazier. “If you were curious.”
When the hunters had collapsed, Asa brought out the lead-sealed vial Rouse had given him, straddled each sleeping man in turn, and dropped the black oil into their eyes and down their noses. The girl came close, her hands knotted together in anxiety and pleasure.
“Stay back from the fire, dear,” Asa told her. “It’s not good for little girls.”
The hunters lay quiet and still for a long while, and then—as the chancellor and priest had said they would—each man began to tremble and shake. White foam formed at the corners of their mouths, and their eyes rolled back in their heads. Asa stripped the two men quickly to their skins and then doused the herbs in the brazier with the last of the cider. When the air cleared, the girl scuttled forward to collect the swords, belts, and armor.
“Encancú atzien,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” Asa replied, fastening the slave chains around the hunters necks. “Try to get a good price for them.”
The line at the quay was longer. Word had spread that the workhouses had come. The desperate and the expendable came out of the overpacked, stinking buildings like juice from an orange. The hunters squatted at Asa’s side like a pair of dogs. The black oil stained the whites of their eyes a greenish brown and the one that had carried the paper shook his head from time to time as if he were trying to clear it. Their nakedness seemed to cause them no discomfort, nor the black iron collars or the chains with which Asa gently encouraged them on.
The overseer at the purple table scowled when Asa’s turn came, looking over the two hunters with a buyer’s eye.
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Bad batch of cider,” Asa said. “I told them there was something growing in it, but they didn’t listen. Been like this for months, and I can’t take care of them anymore.”
“Why the hell should I, then?”
“They’re strong. Tractable.”
“They’re mindless.”
“Hey,” the second hunter said, and then seemed to lose the thought, sitting on his bare haunches.
“It might take a bit longer to train them,” Asa allowed. “But they won’t get bored and they won’t talk back. Good teeth, good backs, and no complaints. If that’s not what you’re looking for, I’ll find someplace else to sell ’em.”
The workhouse man drummed his fingers on the purple cloth. In the pens behind him, the captives had swelled to four dozen or more. As many again stood in the snaking line behind Asa and the hunters. As the workhouse overseer hemmed and hawed, Asa caught sight of the girl, watched her work her way to the edge of the bars, pressing her body against them. She waved a little, and there was a desperate hope in the gesture.
“Twelve for the pair of them,” the overseer said.
“Fifteen.”
“Twelve, or keep them.”
“Twelve it is, then.”
The overseer counted out two lines of tiny silver coins, six to a line, and Asa scooped them up. Two of the guards came to take the newly sold slaves back to the pen, and Asa made an alarmed noise.
“What?” the overseer said.
“You didn’t buy the chains. These are my chains. I’ll lead them back to your cage if you like, but the metal’ll cost you another four.”
“Keep dreaming.”
Under the watchful eyes of the guards, Asa led the two hunters to the pens. Zelanie followed every motion with ravenous eyes. Her mouth hung half-open with unspoken words. Asa pretended to ignore her. At the gate to the pens, guards and captives alike stood, laughing at the naked men while their collars were removed. The magistrate’s hunters seemed vaguely aware that something distasteful was happening to them, but they made no move to cover themselves and spoke no word of protest. Asa slid back, leaving both chains and men to the guards. No one had any attention to spare, except the woman. She took the black vial without any sign of surprise, hiding it in her sleeve with the practiced flicker of a pickpocket.
“Drink it at sundown, and be free,” Asa said, then stepped away before she could answer or ask. “Hey, those chains are mine. You can buy your own.”
At the edge of the quay, Rouse leaned against a crumbling stone wall, chewing
thoughtfully on a wad of tar. Asa dropped the chains in a pool at the huge priest’s ankles.
“Thank you for the loan,” Asa said.
“Welcome.”
“Any idea how long they’re going to be like that?”
“They will never be the men they were before. What does return to them will come in … four months. Perhaps five.”
“Well, hopefully they’ll enjoy their new positions. The last job they had seemed a little risky.”
Rouse nodded, paused, used the nail of his pinky to dig a bit of blackness from between his teeth, which he then flicked out into the water. “We’re done until tonight.”
“It’s not that I don’t enjoy your company. But I’d best get back to my rooms before my dear friend gets word from some other place. If he thinks she’s really dead, he’ll likely do something dramatic and bloody. Fall on his sword or some such.”
Rouse chuckled as he wrapped the chains around one thick forearm. “And to think, someday he may rule a nation.”
Asa froze, then forced an easy smile. “The world’s an unjust place.”
“So it is,” the chancellor said, rising. “So it is.”
Joy radiated from the prince like heat from a fire. His smile was so wide, it seemed to creak, and he walked with his arm around Asa’s shoulder as they passed through the crowded marketplace. High above them, the sky was white and featureless, and held no hint of the coming twilight. There were hours still before anything had to be done. Asa tried to share in his delight, with little success. Now that the game was almost won, the headiness that had been so rich before seemed thin and unsatisfying. The weight of Steppan’s arm annoyed, and the glances that his gaiety drew held something between dismay and menace. Not everything needs to be so damned loud.
“Wine, my friend,” Steppan half shouted. “Wine and the best food we can find. And smoke if you want it. There is nothing in the world too fine to lay at your feet today.”
“Promises, always promises,” Asa said.
If there was an edge to the words, Steppan missed it. Laughing, he steered them into a narrow alley of planks laid between two buildings and fifty feet above the distant ground. The old woman who claimed the place nodded at them in greeting, just as she had the night Asa had first brought Steppan there. The wine was terrible, but one of the tiny silver coins from the workhouse overseer would pay for a week’s worth. Steppan lifted the clay mug in a toast.
“To Asa!” he declaimed. “Champion of love.”
“God, not that! Pick something else.”
“Why not that?” Steppan asked. The planks beneath their feet left gaps as wide as a thumb. Too narrow to slip through but enough to see how far the fall would be. For a moment, it seemed thick with significance.
“People love their fathers. Their sisters. People love dogs or songs or poems. If I’ve got to be the champion of something, make it something that doesn’t change what it means every time someone says it.”
Steppan laughed as if it had been a joke and drained his cup. His hair was wild and dark and glossy. If his skin had a pock on it, Asa hadn’t seen it. The man was joyful and bright and full of hope. All the prince’s troubles were forgotten because a girl he’d seen once at a distance probably wasn’t going to die or be sent to the workhouse. It was like watching a child getting an unexpected rock of honey, and it weighted Asa’s heart like lead.
“You don’t understand what love is,” Steppan said, wiping the back of his hand across his beard.
“And you do?”
“Love is like recognition. It’s the moment when you catch sight of someone and you think There is someone I have business with in this life. There is someone I was born to know. Has that never happened to you?”
“It has, but I never took much comfort in it.”
Steppan waved the old woman closer and held out his cup for her to refill. At this rate, he’d be snoring asleep before twilight. Which might actually be the best thing. Asa wasn’t looking forward to finding a reason that Steppan couldn’t come to this last part of the plot.
“Love is like a baby sleeping on its mother’s breast,” Steppan said.
“Inchoate and likely to piss itself?”
“Ah, you can play at being a cynic, my friend, but I’ve known you too long. You’re a romantic at heart. You’re in love with the world.”
“I’d say I’m inchoate and likely to piss myself,” Asa said, trying not to smile. Steppan’s pleasure was simple and unfeigned and infectious.
“Fine! Fine, then love isn’t like a baby. Love is like falling from a window and discovering you can fly.”
“Unlikely to happen and dangerous to try.”
Steppan’s laughter was a howl. Asa saw the men passing below them look up, curious, and didn’t feel impatient any longer. The foul mood had passed for the moment. It would come again, but for now it was gone. That was a gift.
“Love is like the burst of sweetness when you bite into a strawberry.”
“Brief for you and painful for the berry.”
“Ach! Love is like beautiful music played in a ruin.”
“Give me a minute. No, just a minute. I’ll think of something.”
And the game went on with the hours and the wine. Asa tried to forget what had come before and what would come next. It was a long pleasant afternoon, just the two of them and the city beneath their feet. A golden moment that could wax and wane. By the time darkness fell, Steppan could barely walk straight. Asa had matched the prince cup for cup and felt sober as a judge. There was still work that needed doing, and a thousand things to go wrong.
Workhouse captives died all the time, of course. Usually, they had the grace to do it after they’d spent months or years behind the high gray walls, but some lucky few would die on the quay, and in those cases, the workhouse men would do the same thing they always did: fling the corpse into the river and forget it. Asa poled the little boat out just beyond the quay, tied it to a rotting stonework wall built by hands a hundred years dead, and waited. The Taunis was a dull river, predictable and deliberate as a plow horse. The children of Sovereign North Bank knew the places where wood and corpses came to rest on its banks the way in other cities they might know which corners had the sweet shops. The river stank and muttered against the side of the boat. The splash of something heavy being dropped from the quay would have been easy to miss if Asa hadn’t been listening for it.
The girl’s body lay facedown in the water. Her shoulders were a dim gray in the moonlight, her head a knot of ropy black. Hauling her in set the little boat tottering, but not dangerously. Her face was mottled ice white and bruise purple, her tongue swollen until it pressed out past her lips, and her eyes, open in slits, were still as stones. Asa had never seen the dead look deader.
At the shore, a little hand truck waited, and Asa was glad to have added it into the plan. Zelanie, daughter of no one any longer, was waterlogged deadweight and felt like she’d been filled with sand and lead. That the hand cart didn’t have a cover was an oversight to keep in mind for next time, but it wasn’t as if hauling a corpse through the lowest streets would attract much attention. Stranger things happened all the time.
Rouse waited in the tiny workshop at the back of the temple. Shelves of salt and dried herbs covered the walls and ate into what little space there was. Together, they lifted her onto the low slate table more usually employed for preparing the dead. Rouse stripped off her river-soaked clothes with a steel knife, washed the filth and river scum from her, and folded a warmed blanket of wool that covered her from toes to neck. He placed heated stones along her body, and then drew a tiny flask from the shelves and carefully placed a single crimson drop on her tongue. The chancellor grunted with satisfaction.
“She’s all right?” Asa asked.
“She is as I expected her to be. After this, she should wake, not as one does from sleep, but from a wound to the head. She may wake sober, or she may be confused. Or possibly violent.”
“And what
do we do about that?”
“I tell you that she may be confused and violent, and you watch over her while I sleep. That is what we do,” Rouse said, putting the flask back in its place.
After Rouse left, Asa leaned against the wall, watching the woman’s face by the light of the single candle. As slowly as the stars turning in the night sky, her skin began to clear, the blackened, monstrous tongue grew smaller and retreated behind her teeth. Asa watched the changes without knowing quite what they meant. Considered for long enough, she went from pretty to plain back to pretty, and then settled into a kind of visually interesting that was in its way more compelling than beauty. It became possible to believe that a man like Steppan might have his heart swept away by glancing at her at a fortunate moment and in the proper light. Her eyes shifted under their lids and she began to tremble like a child left too long in the cold.
When she gasped in her first real breath in hours, Asa started back like she’d shouted. Her eyes opened, bright, and wild and uncomprehending, and, a moment later, she laughed, deep and wild and satisfied. When she stretched, a half dozen stones fell from her blanket to the stone floor. Her gaze found Asa, and she lifted her chin, grinning like she was greeting a dear friend.
“Who are you?” she asked languorously.
“My name’s Asa. We have someone in common.”
“Do we?”
“Well, you don’t know him, but yes.”
She shook her head, blinking, and laughed again. It took a moment for her to bring her focus back, but she didn’t seem fearful or prone to violence so much as drunk and happy. Asa sat at her feet.
“You saved me?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“For love.”
“Of me?”
“No.”
She shifted forward, wrapping herself with the blanket as an afterthought and with only partial success. Her hand found its way into Asa’s, the fingers like frozen sticks. She was still very cold.
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