by Dale Lucas
They found an empty desk and shoved their prisoner onto a stool. Wordlessly and automatically, each of them took his chosen place—Rem bent over the desk with a scrap of parchment to scribble their report, Torval beside the prisoner to tease out his particulars. Torval dropped the idol of Iesta upon the desk before Rem with a thud. Rem didn’t care for the way the blocky, primitive-looking sculpture stared back at him with its unnerving saucerlike eyes.
“Look at the little fish!” someone said.
Rem’s head whipped round toward the voice. The speaker stood just a stone’s throw from him, at the treasurer’s booth, collecting his nightly commissions from old Welkus. It was Djubal, a tall, hard-limbed Maswari watchwarden whose favorite pastime was teasing Rem and Torval about the perceived inferiority or infrequency of their collars. The ebon-skinned watchwarden and his short, pale partner, Klutch, seemed to have decided between them that they’d entered into a contest of sorts with Torval and Rem for the greatest quantity—or at least quality—of arrests.
Klutch pulled a patronizing face—the sort one might wear to remark on a precious baby or adorable kitten. “They’re really taking off, aren’t they? Any day now they’ll be graduating to the city guard, all resplendent in their shiny armor and crimson cloaks—”
“If you knew what we went through to nab this one,” Torval began.
Djubal waved his hands. “No explanation required, my friend—we all know it’s the small ones that often have the most fight in them.”
“Or the smallest of all,” Klutch added. “Lad, have you even sprouted curlies on your sack yet?”
The young thief opened his mouth, but Torval smacked him on the back of his skull. “Keep your gob shut,” he growled.
“There it is!” Djubal said. “The watchwarden’s glare! Or is it the nursemaid’s?”
Djubal and Klutch shared a hearty laugh at that. Normally Rem would have managed to laugh with them, but he was too tired at present. Hang them both. If they weren’t such good backup in hours of need, he wouldn’t let the ongoing cascade of laughs at their expense pass. Still chuckling, Djubal slid aside. Klutch stepped up to Welkus’s pay booth, laying his citation receipts and confiscated offerings before the treasurer in his little barred and reinforced booth.
Rem, noting that Torval still seemed to smolder over the teasing, turned back to the task at hand.
It took more coaxing than Rem had hoped, but they had their answers in short order. The boy’s name was Kyner. He had no coin or valuables on his person to pay his fines, meaning he’d spend the next few days in the dungeons awaiting trial. The theft of the idol was a minor offense, its secret and valuable contents notwithstanding. The more severe charge would be the hijacking and destruction of that city-chartered pisswain, for its stinking contents represented both a considerable investment on the part of the city administration and a rich reward for the filthy men who nightly made those collections.
Only in Yenara, Rem thought as his quill scratched speedily over the parchment, recounting the incident in the simplest language possible. This damned idol before me—stuffed full of the modest riches that mean life or death, comfort or poverty, to Dorma’s orphaned charges—is still worth less than a cartload of piss and shit.
“What were you thinking?” Torval asked the boy—and not rhetorically, Rem knew. Torval did not ask rhetorical questions. If he posed a query to one of their prisoners, he did so in search of a serious answer. Woe betide the fool who responded with sarcasm or mute indifference.
“What do you care?” the boy asked, eyes downcast.
“I don’t,” Torval said. “I’m just curious. You had no idea what you were doing, did you? How much trouble you’d land in?”
Rem paused just long enough to study the boy and await his reply. The young thief raised his eyes to Torval—gaze fierce and completely unrepentant. “It was my buy-in.”
“Buy-in?” Rem asked.
Torval shook his head. “Thieves’ Guild initiation.”
“And they sent you after Iesta here,” Rem asked, “without telling you what she contained? How desperate Dorma would be to recover her?”
“Or what a trial it’d be to move her without transport?” Torval added.
The boy scowled, as though insulted. “The idea was mine. I used to be one of Dorma’s charges, along with my little sister and brother. She threw us out for pickpocketing to supplement the alms we begged for the orphanage.”
Torval and Rem exchanged dark glances.
“And you thought it best to repay her—and the rest of her whelps—by stealing the only savings they had? Leaving them all homeless and subject to pimps and thief-lords and workhouse body snatchers?”
“Why not?” the boy spat back. “She did the same to us when she turned us out. How do you think I ended up seeking a buy-in to a guild, anyway? My little sister—thirteen years old—is a step away from ending up like those filthy mollies you drag in here every night.”
As he offered that last statement, he nodded toward another nearby desk, where two watchwardens—Sempronia and Firimol—were busy trying to keep a trio of face-painted, giggling, half-gassed whores upright while also shaking them down for brass to pay their fines. Rem had to admit, if seeing his own little sister in such a state had been an issue, he, too, might have sought to steal anything of value that he could think of.
Torval, however, wasn’t so moved. He snatched the boy up off his stool and shook him. “Live long enough, boy, and you’ll learn—sometimes trying to beg, borrow, or buy your way out of a dead end is worse than just standing tall with your back to the wall.”
“Save it,” the boy snapped. “If I wanted fatherly advice, I’d go down to the beach and shout at the fishes who ate me drowned da, you half-witted little pickmonkey.”
Thank the Panoply, Djubal and Klutch were still close enough to catch the boy’s bitter invective and know what would follow. Torval drew the boy up and landed one good punch before Rem dove in and dragged him off. Klutch, meanwhile, yanked the boy out of the dwarf’s short reach while Djubal lunged in to help Rem restrain his fierce little partner. To the young thief’s credit, he showed no fear, shouting instead for someone to undo his bindings so he could give the belligerent dwarf a good sound thrashing on equal terms.
The hubris of youth. Rem had to admire it.
“Get him out of here, please,” Rem said to Djubal as he held Torval back. “We need nothing more from him.”
Djubal nodded assent, then released Torval and moved to join his partner. Together the two yanked the struggling young thief to his feet and dragged him toward the stairwell just around the corner in the back corridor that descended to the dungeon levels. The youth bucked and thrashed the whole way.
“Let me at him!” the young man yelled, lip bleeding, eye already starting to swell from the one solid punch Torval landed. “I don’t care if he’s old as the hills, he’s just my size!”
Rem saw Klutch snatch a handful of the boy’s hair. “I wouldn’t,” he hissed at the boy. “I really, truly wouldn’t.”
Then the three of them—Djubal, Klutch, and struggling young thief—were gone, swallowed by the shadowy corridor. Rem heard the squeal of the hinges on the stairwell door and looked to Torval. His partner drew deep, even breaths, struggling mightily to calm himself, even as his nostrils flared and his muscular frame quaked with rage. In the interest of aiding the dwarf in calming himself, Rem picked up his written report and shoved it into Torval’s empty hands.
“There,” he said. “Read it over. Tell me if I missed anything.”
Torval glared at him. “In a moment—”
“Now,” Rem said. To punctuate the command, he drew up a chair and slammed it down before Torval, rudely inviting him to sit. Torval, still glaring, did as Rem bade. He sat, raised the parchment close to his eyes, and slowly began to read, mouth moving as he worked his way through the document.
Rem leaned against the desk, watching. Indilen had been teaching Torval to read for
three or four months, and she constantly hounded Rem about being a good companion and forcing Torval, at least once per shift, to read something. At first Rem had found the role of deputy taskmaster in charge of Torval’s literacy a rather uncomfortable one. He was delighted that his unlettered partner was gaining the long-neglected skill, but he’d thought from the start that Torval would accept Indilen’s kind but firm brand of instruction better than anything Rem could offer. To his great surprise, though, he’d found that after he made it known to Torval that Indilen herself had assigned the dwarf his homework, and that Rem was just the interim authority appointed to oversee it, the dwarf seemed to accept it. He wouldn’t listen to Rem about much of anything else, but when their shifts were done and Rem handed him an arrest report or a Wanted leaflet that included a written description of the outlaw pictured, Torval—with minimal grumbling—almost always acquiesced and got down to it.
He won’t do much for me, Rem thought, but by all the gods, he’ll do just about anything for Indilen. I suppose that’s one thing we have in common.
That thought brought a smile to his face.
Torval held out the parchment. “It’s fine,” he said. “Should we add the bit about the guild buy-in?”
Rem was delighted. Mission accomplished.
“What say you?” Rem asked in response. “Is it worth noting?”
Torval shrugged. “Suppose not.” His eyes were still darting about the room—a gaze in search of focus, still agitated and overwhelmed. Rem felt a strange pang of worry then. He’d seen Torval flustered by mouthy arrestees before, but there seemed to be something else on his mind, something deeper than mere provocation or insult.
“Torval, I thought you had no letters,” a smooth, purring voice suddenly said at Rem’s elbow.
The sudden sound in the midst of his reverie made Rem leap off the desk and onto his feet as surely as if he’d been tapped on the shoulder in what he’d thought was a deserted alleyway. There stood Queydon, the dark-skinned elfmaid who was one of the chief sergeants of the watch and the Fifth’s most capable interrogator. Queydon stared at Rem with her now-familiar ever-implacable gaze, honey-colored eyes large and beautiful but unnervingly deep. She seemed puzzled by his affrighted response.
“You did not see me here?” she asked.
Torval’s preoccupation had fled. The little bastard snickered now. “He never sees you, not ’til you’re right up on him.”
“Haven’t we talked about the skulking?” Rem asked her. “The sudden appearances?”
“I simply approached and spoke,” she said.
“Your approach was silent as death,” Rem said. “Per usual.” He suddenly realized what troubled him about that elvish gaze of hers: she never blinked—at least, he could not remember seeing her do so. To test his theory, he stared intently at her for the next few breaths, waiting for her to blink, even once. She didn’t.
Queydon shrugged, a tiny, economical gesture typical of her penchant for understatement. “Perhaps,” she began, “it is your blunted senses and limited spatial awareness, Remeck, and not my silent approach, wherein the problems lie?” The question was posed clinically, without any sense of blame or insult attached.
Torval’s snicker exploded in a snort, then rolled into unfettered laughter. The dwarf bent double, slapping his knees, his body-rocking guffaws echoing in the spacious administrative chamber. Rem felt all eyes in the room turning toward them—toward him—and knew his pale, freckled skin was quickly reddening.
“Would you stop that?” Rem asked his partner.
“Limited spatial awareness!” Torval snorted. “Gods, lad, she got you there!”
Rem had no idea what was so funny, but he supposed there was nothing for it. He waved the report and cocked his head toward Ondego’s office. “If you’ll excuse me.”
As he strode away he heard Queydon once more query Torval. “As I said before—I thought you had no letters, and yet you were just reading.”
“Blame that lass he fancies,” Torval replied. “She’s teaching me to read some. Makes him spot-check me. A taskmaster, that one.”
Rem smiled at that, but didn’t bother to look back at them. As he approached Ondego’s office doorway, he caught a last comment, spoken so quietly by the elfmaid that he almost didn’t hear it.
“I truly don’t understand,” she said. “Am I really so silent as he claims? My presence so unnerving?”
“Don’t mind him,” Torval replied, and Rem was sure the dwarf was speaking loudly just so Rem would hear him, even at a distance. “He’s only human.”
Rem shook his head, exasperated. He’d been planning to treat Torval to breakfast as soon as their shifts were done. Now he’d do everything in his power to get the dwarf to pay for their morning meal, and a mug or two of ale. It was the least the little bastard owed him after such a tiring night.
CHAPTER THREE
They set out through the cold, sunny streets toward the King’s Ass, their preferred haunt when not walking their beats or enjoying quiet evenings in their separate homes. Aarna, the owner and operator, always treated them like family and served them well when they buffed her barstools, which was frequently. No doubt, on a frosty morning like the present one, she’d have every fireplace in the King’s Ass crackling and stoked and the cauldrons on the fires behind the bar bubbling with warmed, spiced ale, while the smell of fresh-baked bread and panfried meats wafted from the hidden kitchens. Rem was eager—nay, desperate—for all the comforts of that cozy little taproom as they set out across Sygar’s Square, but cursed the fact that it would require a good long walk to get them all the way to the Third Ward, where the King’s Ass waited. Oh well, at least the sun was finally up and slanting down into the streets, its welcome presence warming the crisp winter air slightly.
They talked little at first, then not at all. The air bit too shrewdly, after all, and the winds were too stiff to carry on any kind of meaningful conversation. Soon enough Rem’s tired mind wandered. After once more imagining how good a hot breakfast at the King’s Ass would taste, he summoned images of Indilen in his mind, waiting for him back at his rented room, already undressed and under the covers of his bed. True, he had no reason to expect her there—truth be told, he found her waiting for him so welcomingly on only the rarest of occasions—but a hardworking watchwarden who’d spent his night crisscrossing the city in the wake of pirated pisswains, recovering stolen house gods, and keeping angry dwarves from battering hapless young thieves to bloody jelly could dream, couldn’t he?
They broke from a side street onto a wide boulevard that traversed a raised plaza beside a broad, sunken square. A vast, hulking construction project rose at the center of the wide-open square beneath them. This would, in time, be a temple of the Panoply—and, to judge by the dimensions of the foundation and the spread of the buttressed walls slowly rising behind a perpetual screen of skeletal scaffolding, quite a large one. Rem wanted to be pleased about that, for the present Great Panoply of Yenara, in the First Ward, was awe inspiring and sumptuously appointed—but also bustling, crowded, and too far away for him to justify a special journey with any frequency. However, Rem also knew that temples of this sort took decades—if not centuries—to build. Even if he lived the rest of his life in Yenara, it was unlikely he’d ever see the place truly completed.
He turned to Torval to remark upon these idle thoughts and suddenly realized the dwarf was no longer beside him. He stopped, scanned the broad, bustling street, even stretched up on his tiptoes to try to see Torval’s head low among the press of taller bodies. He found his missing partner some distance behind him, on the broad stone plaza overlooking the grand square below them. What on earth had drawn the old stump’s attention? And why hadn’t he bothered to tell Rem that he was stopping?
“Fine way to treat a mate,” Rem said as he jogged up beside his partner and took in the view of the rising temple from the plaza. “I turned to say something and you were gone.”
Torval looked to Rem, gave
a grunt—an affirmation, an apology, who knew?—then swung his gaze back toward the half-constructed temple complex. Instead of pressing the issue, Rem decided to give it a look of his own. He scanned the site, noting the preponderance of hewn cyclopean stones still awaiting placement, the larger piles of stones mounded here and there like strange old burial cairns on a grassless, rocky tundra, and the many little camps and workstations distributed throughout the site, where workers congregated, bent to their labors, or studied enormous hand-drawn plans of the building they were raising. After a moment’s survey, Rem noted something unusual about the workers.
“All dwarves?” he asked aloud.
Torval grunted again. “Every last one,” his partner confirmed. “The only tall folk I see are a few Panoply priests and administrators, overseeing or approving the work. See there? And over there?”