Beneath the Keep

by Erika Johansen

  They were seated in a pub on the Broadwater Road, some ten blocks from Arliss’s office. Despite all of the dealer’s Blue Horizon talk about forgiveness, Christian had thought it best to put some distance between himself and Arliss’s territory. He had not known whether Carroll would come to meet him here, or even whether the skeptical Gate Guard he had shadowed and then accosted would carry his message into the Keep. But the man had, and here Carroll was, clad in a grey cloak that clearly meant something on the streets of this city. Already several men had fallen all over themselves trying to buy Carroll a drink, and no fewer than four whores had cruised the table, displaying their wares with an eagerness that made Christian feel queasy.

  “I am a good fighter,” Christian said, trying to sound humble. “Even in the Creche, they say that your Queen’s Guard has weakened in hand-to-hand combat. You rely too much on swords, on steel.”

  “Do we?” Carroll asked stiffly. “What else do they say?”

  “That you’re no longer a match for the Caden. Not man to man.”

  Carroll colored slightly; there must be some truth to the rumors after all. As a guild of assassins, the Caden were the main concern of the Queen’s Guard, an enemy that the Guard must be able to repel. But the Guard’s skills were on the wane, while the Caden were as sharp as ever. Christian had heard such talk from time to time, mostly around the ring. But he had never expected to care about idle report, and even less to use it to beg for a job.

  “We could use you,” Carroll admitted slowly, though Christian could tell the admission pained him. “Elyssa has ten guards at present, but that will not be enough. She made a speech—”

  “I heard about it.” And Christian had; even now, weeks after the event, it was all they talked of in the Gut. Even the starving peasants who slept near Christian in Bull Alley wouldn’t shut up about her. True Queen this and True Queen that . . . it was enough to drive a man mad. These topside people didn’t seem to understand how easy it was to mouth words, how little they mattered. A real True Queen would have gotten these people some food.

  “She’s picked a fight,” Carroll said flatly. “With the nobility, the Church . . . in short, everyone with enough money to hire the Caden and pay for assassination. My captain says we’re in for a dangerous time, and I think he’s right.”

  Dangerous, Christian thought, restraining a snort. He had been living rough on the streets of New London for only four days, but he already knew that its dangers paled in comparison to those of the tunnels. As if to prove his point, a mob of people moved past the windows of the pub, packed so thick that their skin flattened as they pressed against the windows. But their faces were bright and hopeful, almost transported. Their voices thundered down the street.

  “The True Queen! Elyssa Raleigh! The True Queen! Elyssa Raleigh!”

  “Is she?” Christian asked, for despite his skepticism, the crowd had aroused his curiosity. They seemed so damned certain of the Princess, all of them, even the beggars. “Is she the True Queen?”

  Carroll took a moment before answering, and Christian was intrigued at the change that came over the guard’s face, the softening of eyes and mouth. Carroll looked like a man in love, or like the Blue Horizon fools when they raved about their better world.

  “I don’t know whether she is or not,” Carroll finally replied. “But I know she wants to be. She wants to save us all; she has the will, and that’s more important than any prophecy. She will be a great queen . . . if we can only keep her alive until she takes the throne.”

  “So bring me on. If times are so dire, I can certainly be an asset.”

  “The Princess will need all the guards she can get, no doubt about that. But the Queen’s Guard . . . it’s not all about fighting, you know. There are other things. Honor, and loyalty, and—”

  “Come off it,” Christian snorted. “I’ve seen the grey-cloaks in the tunnels. Not so often as the priests, mind you, but they come down, all the same. Don’t try to sell me on the honorable Guard. That’s not what it is.”

  “It’s what it’s supposed to be!” Carroll snapped. “What good to improve in combat, if we let the rest fall to pieces? I owe you a debt, yes, and I mean to pay it. But bringing you into the Guard, it’s . . . it’s not . . .”

  He trailed off, as though realizing that nothing he could say would improve matters. Christian said nothing, merely watched him. Food was expensive, and the remainder of the ten pounds Arliss had given him would only last another three days at most. Christian supposed he could have caught on with a labor crew of some sort; he certainly had the strength, and he had heard the foremen crying for volunteers in the streets. They would not care where he had come from or what he was, only how much he could lift and tote. But laying brick or cutting stone would not get him into the Keep, where Maura’s client was . . . perhaps Maura herself. Each rung on this ladder required precise steps, but Christian had already observed that topside, like the Creche, operated on favors and debt. The Queen’s Guard was clearly a coveted position in this society, but even the Queen’s Guard could not operate wholly on merit. He believed what he wanted could be bought.

  Floundering, Carroll took another pull of his ale. Christian had bought pints for them both, though the cost had been atrocious, an entire pound. The drought—another popular topic of conversation in the streets—had now killed off the grain supply; soon beer would be nearly as precious as gold. Christian had not touched his own pint, and he was worried that Carroll might take offense, but he did not even seem to notice. In the Creche, it was considered an insult to refuse to share food or drink, but an entirely different code operated up here.

  Wigan used to tell me the sky would make me sick, Christian remembered suddenly. Two days before, the clouds had finally cleared, and he had seen the daytime sky for the first time, its blue so bright that it was almost hard to accept. The brief spate of rain had been important in the city; Christian had picked up that much from talk in the cramped alley where he spent his nights, wrapped in a blanket he had stolen from the back of an unguarded wagon. The entire city had hoped that the rain would last for weeks, and when it stopped, when the sky cleared, there had been an almost collective groan of disappointment over the expanse of the Gut. But Christian could not share in their misery, for what was a drought to him? He could only stare at the sky above, thinking, What would it mean? What might every child in the Creche be, if instead of torchlit stone over his head, he could look up and see that blue expanse?

  This place is changing me, he realized, slightly alarmed. Changing me already. But into what?

  But the novelty of this new world could not last forever. Already Christian found himself looking around, picking out the rot: the starving families who begged in the streets, waiting outside pub doors and holding up cups before the passing carriages of the wealthy. When he walked through the Gut, he could see the brothels, with their complements of girls leaning out the windows and dangling their breasts in the air, and smell the poppy dens burning all night long. Topside might not be another Creche, but it certainly wasn’t the gates of heaven. Even the royals were not impressive, for Christian had heard that the Prince himself had bought a girl and enslaved her in the castle. He was becoming disenchanted with this place, and if he did not get about finding Maura, finding Thorne, he sensed that his diminishing wonder would lead him right back down to the tunnels, the life he knew.

  “You have admitted that you owe me a debt,” he told Carroll. “This is the way you can repay it. There will not be a second opportunity.”

  “They won’t take you!” Carroll protested. “Captain Givens, the Queen, once they find out who you are—”

  “And how are they going to find out? I’m certainly not advertising.”

  “I would be honor bound to tell them,” Carroll replied, clenching his jaw.

  “Your honor is quite the movable banquet, Queen’s Guard.”

  Carroll
looked down, clearly unhappy, and Christian felt a sudden contempt for him, this well-fed topsider who could be twisted by such an amorphous concept as guilt. In the Creche, a man took what he wanted and simply tried to get away clean. Then again, this boy was ready to spend his entire life guarding another person, so he was clearly a fool to begin with. What could he possibly get out of it?

  “How do I know I can trust you?” Carroll asked suddenly. “With the Queen, the Princess? The Queen’s Guard take an oath to lay down their very lives. How do I know you can keep your word?”

  The question startled Christian. Keep his word? He had never given his word to anyone before. He supposed he had known that the Queen’s Guard took some vow or other, but in his eagerness to get into the Keep, he had forgotten.

  “What reason would I have to harm the Queen?” he asked Carroll. “Or the Princess? I have spent my life killing men.”

  “And children,” Carroll said softly.

  Christian felt his temper flare. It was not like the Creche, this place. In the Creche, no one judged a man for what he did to survive. Here, Christian could be called to account at any time, even by a smug little bastard half his size. The idea of having to explain himself, to justify himself, was so repugnant that for a moment Christian considered simply clouting Carroll across the face and storming out. But caution ruled. Christian was trying to pass through the eye of a needle, and he needed every millimeter.

  “I will not apologize for my past,” he said, gritting out each word. “Had you been born into the tunnels, you would know that there is no choice down there. But these are not the tunnels.”

  Carroll absorbed this message quietly, studying Christian with an odd, unreadable gaze. His hands came together on the table: topsider’s hands, tanned and without scars. Christian wondered whether Carroll had ever been in a real fight, anything more than two boys playing silly with toy swords. It was not an empty offer Christian had made; he could teach the Queen’s Guard, teach them how to grapple and close, how to gouge and rend, how to squeeze the life from a man. If Carroll was any indication, they could certainly use the lesson. But now he wondered whether any of them would be capable of learning what he had to teach.

  “My father, God rest his soul, used to say that you do not judge a man by what he does in the breach, with all eyes upon him,” Carroll remarked. “You judge him by what he does in the quiet, when no one is looking.”

  Christian didn’t know what “in the breach” meant, but he was annoyed to find the rest of Carroll’s meaning coming through clear as day, and even more annoyed to find himself in total agreement. He thought of the priests he had seen creeping through Whore’s Alley, of the furred and jeweled nobles outside the ring, screaming for blood. The Creche, after all, was only one big quiet. Nothing a man might do topside, no matter how good or right, could erase the foulness done down there.

  But Christian did not mean to erase it.

  “You have a hidden purpose here,” Carroll continued, holding Christian’s gaze. “I am young for the Guard, and inexperienced; Dyer calls me Little Wide-Eyes, and there’s enough truth in that to make me hate it. But I’m no fool. You did not wake up yesterday with a burning desire to become a Queen’s Guard. You’re playing a long game.”

  Carroll paused, but it was not a demanding pause; he did not expect a response. He turned away, looking out the window, and Christian saw that he had cut himself shaving. His jaw was nicked in several places, and there was not even a hint of beard growth to hide the cuts.

  He told me to run, Christian remembered suddenly. He told me to save myself.

  “You have made a brave show here today,” Carroll continued. “And you would be a glittering addition to the Guard, I have no doubt . . . at least to those who care only for brawn and steel. But make no mistake, this is how you will be judged: on what you do in the quiet.”

  Judged by who? Christian wanted to ask, but did not, for he found himself strangely mute. The boy’s words reminded him of a story Maura had told him once, something of knights and a magic sword. Dignity seemed to enfold Carroll, clothing him even more tightly than his grey cloak, and in the face of that dignity, Christian found himself compelled to speak.

  “I mean no harm to you, or the Princess, or the Queen. My word may be worth shit, but I give it, all the same.”

  Carroll stared at him for another minute, and then extended a hand. The gesture made Christian recoil, and it was not until several seconds had passed that he realized that he had been accepted, that Carroll’s hand was offered in friendship, that taking it signified some sort of accord.

  He shook, and became a Queen’s Guard.

  Chapter 19

  THE SEVEN OF SWORDS

  Truth is always easier than a lie. In fact, truth sells a lie, much better than the lie sells itself. Simple self-interest mandates at least a pinch of honesty in all of our dealings.

  —The Words of the Glynn Queen, as recorded by Father Tyler

  Niya.”

  Niya put down her needle and thread, clearing her throat. She was meant to be sewing up a rip in one of Elyssa’s shifts, but in truth she had been miles away, thinking hard.

  “Highness? What can I do for you?”

  Elyssa didn’t look well. Ever since the heat of August had come, no one in the Keep had been sleeping particularly soundly, but the Princess was pale and wan, as though she were ill as well as tired.

  “I want to talk to you,” Elyssa told her, beckoning from the doorway. “They’re trying a new guard on; will you come?”

  Niya glanced at her watch; only twenty minutes past four. Plenty of time. With some relief, she dropped the ripped shift and got to her feet. She didn’t know what she was doing sewing, anyway; one of the undermaids would surely attend to it. But mundanity often paid dividends in clear thinking, and there was a puzzle to be solved. The last coded message Niya had received from the Fetch had been brief but to the point.

  The witch belongs to Arlen Thorne.

  “My mother’s birthday is coming, the first week in October,” Elyssa told her, as they walked down the corridor toward the arms room, Barty and Cae trailing behind them. “I want to give her a dress for her birthday. Something special.”

  “A nice idea, Highness,” Niya replied. “What sort of dress?”

  “Red. It should be red. She will have a party, an enormous one. The dress should be magnificent, something she can wear that night and astound the world. I could use Mrs. Loys, but I don’t think she would keep a secret from my mother. So I need you to find a new dressmaker for me, one who’s willing to work quickly.”

  “Of course, Highness,” Niya said absently, while her mind reviewed everything the Blue Horizon knew about Arlen Thorne. He was a pimp, one of the most notorious in the Creche. The Blue Horizon was still laying groundwork in the tunnels, but when they were finally ready to move, Arlen Thorne’s infamous stable was one of the first that they meant to close down. Thorne’s origins were hazy; there was some rumor of noble blood, but such romantic rumors floated around the Creche all the time, with rarely any substance.

  Of course, Thorne had been branching beyond the Creche in recent years: delivering specialized whores topside, forging ties with the brothels in the Gut. But that was all par for the course; every Creche pimp aspired to move topside. More disturbing was a recent rumor that they’d picked up from Arliss’s people: Thorne was buying up children, the most physically perfect specimens the Creche had to offer. According to Webb, Arliss’s man, Thorne was paying a particularly steep premium for straight, even teeth. The witch belonged to Arlen Thorne, but Thorne had not brought her to court; he had no entrée there. Lord Tennant had brought her, and while Niya could well believe that a man like Tennant owed Thorne a favor, she could not understand what Thorne meant to gain. Brenna had been in the Keep for months, and though the Guard was uneasy about many things—her witch’s tools, her otherworldly man
ner, her clear fascination with the Queen’s sapphire—nothing dreadful had happened. But all the same, Niya could not escape a sense of urgency, the feeling that something huge and unseen was closing upon them all.

  “What in God’s name is that?” Elyssa asked, as several shouts echoed from the arms room. Barty and Cae drew in closer, slipping in front of her, but they relaxed as the roar came again: men’s voices raised in enthusiasm, not violence.

  “Dyer and Mhurn must be matching for drinks again,” Niya remarked dryly.

  “I wish everyone would forget about that,” Barty muttered. “I censured them both. No, it’ll be the new guard, the one Carroll brought in.”

  Entering the arms room, they found two figures struggling on the practice floor. Niya recognized Elston’s broad shoulders easily, but she didn’t know his opponent: another giant, only slightly less monstrous in frame than Elston himself. As Niya and Elyssa watched, the other man knocked Elston flying, and Elston landed in a heap of armor and curses, rapping his head on the floor. The other man jumped on his back, pinning him, then jammed an arm under Elston’s neck and hauled his head upward, so that his forearm could pressure Elston’s windpipe. The guards circling the ring hooted and catcalled again, but as Elston’s face turned red, and then redder, they fell silent. As Elston’s opponent increased the pressure, Elston began to gag.

  “Hold!” old Vincent, the Queen’s swordmaster, called, limping out onto the practice floor. “Let him go.”