by Jags, Chris
“I…” Simon cast a glance at the window. “I can’t do what you did, I can’t scale the building.”
“What do you think the disguise is for?”
“If the guards catch me…”
“If they catch you, if will make no difference to your fate. You have offended the princess. She has already made plans to have you eliminated. It will happen in the night. Tonight, most likely.”
Simon nodded soberly. “I knew she would.”
“Then you are a fool, bruising her ego in front of the court. And for dragging me into it.” Niu slung her bag over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“You know this country. I do not. You will lead the way.”
“I’m surprised you trust an idiot like me to help you,” Simon said bitterly, hooking the beard into place. He couldn’t imagine it looked convincing, but without the presence of a mirror in the room there as little he could do to correct it, and he was damned if he was going to ask for Niu’s help.
Thankfully, the handmaiden took initiative. Her sigh deeply condescending, she stepped up and adjusted the beard. Simon held his breath; she was unnervingly close to him, her fingers dancing across his face as she straightened and tidied the disguise. He hadn’t felt so disoriented since… well, since their first meeting… but prior to that, he’d never felt such a confusion of feelings. Attempting to make eye-contact proved impossible, as she was entirely focused on the task at hand, but at least he could admire her.
“You’re beautiful,” he told her stupidly before his brain could catch up with his mouth.
Niu’s brow furrowed. “And you are deeply foolish. That should do, if you do not attract attention to yourself. Walk with confidence. I will walk at your side, but a little behind. It would not do for the guards to see my face or hear my voice. I do not blend with your people. If words are exchanged, it must be you who speaks.”
“The innkeeper will know we’re not one of his guests.”
“The innkeeper has retired for the night. Some woman is entertaining him. He will not disturb us.”
Simon nodded. “Alright,” he managed, “But I don’t know my way around Vingate. We’ll have to be careful.”
“Careful is better than dead,” Niu said. “Which is what we will be if we stay. Lead on, Dragonslayer.”
Simon flinched at the term; the involuntary reaction did not go unnoticed by Niu. Her lips quirked again, as they had while she’d studied him back at the palace. Was it a smile or a sneer that she repressed?
“You really are… what do they say here?... a piece of work,” she said. “Come on. Hurry.”
“I am a Dragonslayer,” Simon mumbled defensively, in response to her attitude rather than her words.
“Of course you are. Concentrate on our escape.”
It was important to Simon that she didn’t think him a fraud. “I can show you my sword.”
Niu burst out laughing, but hushed herself quickly. “Many men have offered the same. Follow me. Look confident or we are lost.”
Uncertain as to how he’d incurred her mirth, Simon followed her out of the room, his own traveling bag slung over one shoulder.
“Make no attempt to be silent,” Niu said, closing the door behind him. “Or we will look suspicious. Lead the way.”
Nodding, Simon thudded downstairs, fighting the urge to tug at his false beard, which stank and scratched his skin with rough bristles. He would have to ask Niu where she’d found it and… oh. I get it. My sword. Simon felt his face color. Lately, his feet seemed to spend more time in his mouth than on the floor.
The common room was largely empty. One old soak snored near the guttered hearth, his feet resting in the ashes. Two lamps burned low, thankfully casting insufficient light to expose Simon’s disguise. He could hear the muffled voices of the King’s guardsmen just beyond the oaken door which opened onto the street.
A light from the kitchens showed that someone on staff was still up and about, but no one presented themselves as Simon and Niu crossed the exit. Simon was very grateful for this fact, as he wasn’t entirely sure he could act out any kind of intricate deception from behind the ridiculous beard. Still, he attempted to exude confidence for the sake of appearances, hoping that Niu might come to see him as the dragonslayer he pretended to be.
As he reached for the handle, he paused. His hand remained frozen in midair long enough for Niu to nudge him with her elbow. The adrenaline which had kept him careening from one crisis to the next was all but spent. Dragons, powerful kings, arrogant princesses, murder plots… it was all becoming too much for him. Had he not wanted to impress the beautiful easterner, he might have fled back up to his rooms. As it was, he took a deep, steadying breath and pushed out into the night.
The two guards who flanked the doorway were not the King’s elite. With a start, Simon recognized them as Brannock and Rowland. Apparently Simon wasn’t considered worthy of the continuing attention of the best trained men in the city. Simon was simultaneously grateful and worried; both of these soldiers knew his face.
Miraculously, neither man spared him more than a glance. Brannock was leaning against the ivy-smothered wall of the inn, a cigar in one hand, the other swishing irritably at a persistent horsefly. Rowland was camped out beside a crate, playing solitaire. His sheathed sword was propped up on a barrel nearby. Simon imagined these men coming to wonder, in later years when they were stationed in some hamlet of less than a hundred people, why they never seemed to rise through the ranks of their profession.
Emboldened by his success, Simon waved at Rowland as he passed.
“’Evening, guardsman,” he said in a croaky voice, and was about to comment on the weather when an exasperated exhalation from Niu caused him to swallow his words. He could almost hear her eyes rolling.
“On your way, citizen,” Rowland responded, with all the curt pomposity as he could muster.
Simon nodded and hurried off. Niu said nothing to him, even when they were safely out of sight of the guards, but her silence spoke volumes. She was wondering what sort of halfwit she’d thrown in her lot with. Cheeks burning, Simon decided he deserved the silent judgement. Attracting attention to that ludicrous beard could have been disastrous.
Vingate seemed to have completely emptied out; for blocks on end Simon saw no one in the streets, neither beggar nor thief nor guardsman. The city was dark, but not country-dark. Torches guttered at each intersection; blazing lamps striped the streets from behind shutters. A single block of buildings was larger than the hamlet Simon had grown up in. Even the most nondescript dwellings rose to three or four stories in height, which would have been unthinkable in Brand where even the headman’s cottage rose no higher than a single story. Street after street, one home resembled the next, some in better or worse repair, but all of them, to Simon’s eyes, depressingly unwelcoming.
“Everything is locked and gated,” he observed as they wound through the streets in the direction of the lake. “Even some of the windows are barred.”
Niu glanced at him strangely from beneath her hood. “There are many unsavory elements in Vingate,” she said in her oddly precise way. “Not only the thieves and the cutthroats. This is including the rulers themselves and the soldiers who guard the city. No one is truly safe here.”
Simon thought about that. “And the people – they’re alright with living like that?”
Niu offered a one-shouldered shrug. “What say do they have in the matter? And there is no one here who is innocent. Many of them would…” She made a throat-cutting motion with her hand. “…for personal gain.”
“That’s horrible.” Simon, contrasting this conduct with the neighborly camaraderie to which he was accustomed, shuddered. “Where I come from, the people care for one another.”
“Don’t be fooled,” Niu warned. “People are much the same anywhere. In the country, they simply find it easier to bury their crimes.”
Simon didn’t think that could possibly be true, but he
didn’t want to argue with the handmaiden. He was, however, eager to learn more about her. “Is it the same where you come from?”
Niu tilted her head, considering. “The people have greater self-respect,” she said at length, “so that there is a pretense at civilized behavior. But the emperor is nearly as cruel as your king.”
“The emperor who sent you to Cannevish.” Simon chose to turn onto a broad stairway which spilled down a dark slope toward the broad ring of slums which encircled Vingate’s more affluent core.
“Yes.” Niu couldn’t disguise the bitterness in her voice. She pointed downhill. “We must be careful. These people can be desperate. Keep your sword at hand.”
“My sword,” Simon repeated blankly, patting his traveling bag. “Where is it?” He unslung the bag and set it down, rummaging through the clothes and foodstuffs he’d brought along on his quest. The dragon-burned sword was not there. “But I swear… I know I put it…”
Niu sighed theatrically. “Fine. Never mind. Just move with confidence and… and remove that foolish thing.” She yanked his false beard off.
Simon blinked as she threw the revolting mat of hair into the bushes which accompanied the stairs in their descent. “But, the guards…”
“The guards are foolish enough to be deceived by such a disguise. The brigands such as those that we will find in lower Vingate are not. If you appear to them as though you are disguised, you will seem valuable, perhaps someone for whom they can collect a reward.”
“But…” Simon repeated.
Niu cut him off impatiently. “These people do not know your face. They are not looking for you. Even the guards will not be looking for you, not yet. The disguise is no longer of value. It is time to be bold, as you were when you slew the dragon.” She left supposedly slew mercifully implied.
Simon said nothing, following her lead as she descended the remaining stairs and began to wind her way through the shanty town. The change in scenery and atmosphere was abrupt and dramatic; Simon felt as though he’d stepped from one painting into another by a totally different artist. Tiny ramshackle residences - some of which were little more than lean-tos - crowded the crooked pathways which passed for streets. Pigs and chickens roamed freely, unhealthily thin and extremely wary. Excrement was a continual hazard. Simon locked gazes with a sad-eyed dog chained outside a heavily-patched tent. It barely had enough lead to turn in a circle. Fleas and lashes had both left their mark on this filthy, whip-thin, deeply depressed creature. Simon felt profoundly sorry for it.
Occasionally cloaked figures slumped outside the dilapidated dwellings, slumbering in the open air. Not all of the residents were asleep, however, and Simon squirmed beneath the coolly appraising gaze of unfriendly eyes, seen and unseen. He glimpsed a hirsute fellow glaring at him from the shallow depths of his tumbledown shack, toying with a cleaver as though deciding whether gutting the two strangers was worth the effort. An unsavory trio of gaunt, pockmarked women hunched over a stewpot exchanged glances which seemed to read: Aha! The missing ingredient! Even the hard-eyed local children seemed likely to carve him up. Simon cursed himself for forgetting his sword.
Niu’s pace was brisk but unhurried; the perfect balance between a woman going purposefully about her business but without fear. Simon attempted to emulate her, and they made good progress. Strangely, they spotted more of the city guard in this den of ill repute than they had in the more affluent quarter of the city, but these soldiers were never about official business. They passed two guardsmen in royal colors gambling by torchlight with several disreputable-looking rogues under a battered old awning; the men speared Simon with a granite stare, and one of their friends whistled at Niu, who cut an impressive figure even beneath her shapeless traveling robes. Simon had the sense to keep his eyes fixed on some imaginary destination and to stride past with purpose.
It was more difficult for him to mind his own business when he and Niu had to edge past a grunting soldier servicing an unresponsive woman whom he’d crushed up against the walls of a protesting shack. Red-faced from his exertions, the jowly guardsman shouted at Simon to move along. The woman, her worn dress hitched up to her waist, was staring into the darkness of the void above, her eyes vacant and unfocused. A cigarette dangled from between two acid-splashed fingers. A strange red mark, a V within an O, discolored her forehead. Niu had to tug at Simon’s arm to stop him staring.
“Come,” she hissed as they picked their way over a jumble of toppled barrels. “Do not attract attention to yourself.”
Simon made no response, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the flat lifelessness of the woman’s expression. He’d heard tell of the prostitutes of Vingate, and how they were marked, but he hadn’t expected the sight to disturb him.
Of course, he hadn’t anticipated much of what had transpired since that fateful moment when he’d shouldered the mantle of hopeful dragonslayer. Less than a week had passed since that moment, yet it might have been a decade. Simon himself couldn’t read the posters which the king’s men had plastered across the common board outside the pub in Brand, but his friend Jeb had translated them for him. Jeb had understandably thought him mad when he’d announced his desire to participate, but Simon could be stubborn; besides which, the rusted sword had bolstered his courage. Little as he knew about the kingdom beyond Brand’s insular bubble, he’d always longed to experience it. How hard, he’d reasoned, could a dragon be to kill? He’d faced down an angry bull on more than one occasion, after all.
As for the princess, he hadn’t foreseen any complications. The village girls fancied him enough; that had been his simplistic rationale. Traveler’s tales spoke of Tiera being a difficult young woman, but in Simon’s imaginings he’d likened her to Bess, Brand’s no-nonsense publican, who would box her customers about the ears if they got out of line. Until he’d set foot on the palace grounds and seen that unnerving pathway of skulls, he hadn’t given much thought to the possibility of any manner of life-threatening unpleasantness.
All in all, Simon was learning that he had a lot to learn about the world.
The nearer they drew to the lake, the sketchier the inhabitants of the slum became; desperate, reckless men and women. As ragged shadows shifted around him, Simon truly began to fear for his skin. Stumbling across several fresh corpses, tossed unceremoniously in a gutter, didn’t bolster his confidence. How could people live like this, in such violent disharmony with their neighbors? Did no one here ever sleep?
A tattered old beggar, reeking of stale urine and sweat, began to paw and clutch at him, demanding alms. Simon pushed the man away as gently as he could, but the toothless old relic grew ever more insistent, pawing at Simon’s pockets, plucking at his bag, his voice rising shrilly as his demands intensified. Moonlight glinted off disturbingly pale, misted eyes.
Horrified by the intensity of the beggar’s insistence – to say nothing of his stench – Simon retreated, hands raised. This proved to be the wrong decision, as the decrepit old creature, sensing weakness, slipped a vulture’s claw beneath his filthy rags and produced a knife. Lunging with surprising swiftness, he pressed against Simon’s throat, hissing epithets while his victim stood paralyzed. Niu kicked the beggar violently in the shins, eliciting a howl of pain and distracting him from his quarry. Her second target was his groin, which dropped him, and finally, as he rolled around moaning and clutching his jewels, her boot connected twice with his face.
“I told you,” she panted as they left the groaning man to nurse his ruined, spurting nose. “Show some spine.” The look she threw him was not flattering. “I had hoped you could help me out of the city to safety. It seems I must continue to help you, instead.”
“Sorry,” Simon muttered inadequately.
“The lake is just ahead,” Niu pointed between two crazily-leaning structures at the stretch of slick darkness beyond. “We will follow the shoreline to the road. Then we will decide where to go before pursuit can begin.”
Pursuit, Simon thought. I’m a fugitive
now. The thought clenched unpleasantly in his gut. What will father say? He imagined how proud Veter would have been if he’d returned home with the new family appellation Dragonslayer and a wave of misery washed over him.
“We will have to be off the road by daylight,” Niu continued, shoving a tottering, hooded drunk to one side as she picked her way down a garbage-choked alley. Simon scrambled after her, stumbling over some unidentifiable refuse, and found himself standing on the shore of Lake Undinell.
Abandoned rowboats and wreckage littered the shoreline. Debris bobbed in the oily water. These city folk, Simon thought, with a spike of distaste, were a careless, filthy lot. They cared nothing for one another or their environs. He couldn’t wait to be away from Vingate.
“There!” a man shouted behind them. “That’s them, there!”
Simon whirled. Niu followed suit. Struggling down the alley they’d just left behind them, puffing madly, the ruddy-faced guard Simon had seen with the prostitute earlier was jabbing one grimy finger in their direction. Two men followed him, torches held aloft. Both were soldiers of the city guard. It took Simon only a moment to identify them: Brannock and Rowland.
Niu spat something in a language Simon did not comprehend, but he understood its message clearly enough.
“Do we run?” he asked.
Niu shook her head. “They will take us if we try. Can you swim?”
Simon stared at the uninviting lake and tried not to imagine what might lurk beneath that dark surface. “Yes. Not well.”
“Not well will have to do.” Niu dropped her bag, kicked off her boots, and waded into the waters.
Shuddering, Simon followed suit. There was no time to hesitate; the guards were almost upon them, running as though demons were nipping at their heels.
“Halt!” Rowland yelled. “Halt in the name of the King!” His sword was drawn. Simon plunged into the icy clutches of the lake. The chill stole his breath, but he struggled after Niu, who was already nearly lost from sight, a faint shadow in black water.