by Graeme Hurry
Kzine Issue 14 © January 2016 by Kimota Publishing
cover © Dave Windett, 2016
It’s A Small World © Ian Whaits, 2016
Like A Charm © Kit Power, 2016
Pennies On The Dollar © Rhodes Brazos, 2016
Royal © Martin Donnelly, 2016
Social Interface © Nestor Delfino, 2016
The Narrow Escape © Betty Rocksteady, 2016
The Blind Room © Goran Sedlar, 2016
Fundraiser © K. McGee, 2016
The Weber Defense © John Sies, 2016
Note: An editorial decision has been taken to retain the spelling and vocabulary from the author’s country. This may reduce consistency but it is felt it helps to maintain authenticity and integrity of the story.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright holder. For editorial content this is Graeme Hurry, for stories it is the individual author, for artwork it is the artist.
CONTENTS
IT’S A SMALL WORLD by Ian Whates (12)
LIKE A CHARM by Kit Power (9)
PENNIES ON THE DOLLAR by Rhoads Brazos (8)
ROYAL by Martin Donnelly (9)
SOCIAL INTERFACE by Nestor Delfino (10)
THIS NARROW ESCAPE by Betty Rocksteady (10)
THE BLIND ROOM by Goran Sedlar (8)
FUNDRAISER by K. McGee (13)
THE WEBER DEFENSE by John Sies (7)
Contributor Notes
The number in brackets indicates the approximate printed page length of the story.
IT’S A SMALL WORLD
by Ian Whates
People will tell you that it’s a big world out there. Ignore them.
Oh, I don’t doubt that if you spend your life on some grubby little farm and venture out only to take the livestock to market the world might seem vast and intimidating, but lift your head up from the horse muck and the milking stool for a moment and you’ll be amazed at how quickly it shrinks. Seems I can’t go anywhere these days without stumbling across a place I was glad to leave or a face I’d prefer to forget.
Sirus had one of those faces.
* * *
Two days of battling through the snows of Ocken Pass had wearied me, otherwise I would have moved on from the Bleating Goat after the first sip. As it was, the prospect of standing up seemed even less palatable than the ale. The Ocken trip had been tedious – gruelling rather than dangerous – and the pay, which had seemed generous at outset, now struck me as considerably less so. Still, coin is coin.
My standard reaction when a bar fight erupts is to move to the back of the room, finish my drink and, if things haven’t quietened down by then, slip away to a different tavern. This time, I wasn’t quick enough.
With no preamble an old man slammed face down onto the table in front of me, sending my half-drunk ale flying. Two figures loomed over us – bulky, mean, and menacing, one with a crooked nose where it had been broken and reset poorly, both with scowls fit to curdle the ale still further.
“No, leave him!” A young woman, a girl, tried to step between the fallen man and his attackers, the nearest of whom back-handed her across the cheek, flicking her away as he might an irritating insect. I had the merest glimpse of her face but at sight of her my breath caught. Afterwards, I couldn’t have said why. She was no classic beauty: too skinny, dark hair hacked crudely short and her admittedly pretty features marred by a vivid scar – an old knife wound most likely – running diagonally from the corner of her left eye to the centre of the top lip. Even so, there was something about her…
My attitude towards chivalry is flexible: it has its uses but should be ignored in the event of overwhelming odds. However, there were only two of them.
I stooped to retrieve my goblet from the floor, straightening and standing in one fluid movement, swinging the vessel to smash into Crooked Nose’s face – a blow hard enough to crack the wooden cup in half. Before he could recover, I gripped him around the back of the neck and slammed his face down into the table. One thing I’ll grant the Bleating Goat: they had solid tables.
The second assailant froze. His gaze met mine and held for a split second before sliding away. He was younger than I first assumed and I read in those eyes alarm, fear, the realisation of being outmatched. I swayed forward. He shuffled a step back, then turned and fled, abandoning both his friend and the fight.
As quickly as that, it was over. Around us conversation resumed, normality sealing over the violent interruption as if nothing had happened. A burley barkeep appeared to give the edge of the table a cursory wipe where blood lingered, before he gripped the unconscious man by the ankles and dragged his prone form across the floor and out into the street.
The girl was back, fussing over the old man as he peeled himself gingerly off the table top. Belatedly I moved to help – empathy can open so many doors.
Only then did I get a proper look at him. “Sirus?”
He smiled – a fissure opening in rutted earth to reveal twin rows of tombstones. His voice issued forth like the sigh of death, that unmistakable nasal twang which had always irritated the hell out of me. “My dear boy, I thought it was you.”
“Gods, aren’t you dead yet?” Sirus had been old when I knew him, and that had been years ago.
“Apparently not, thanks in some small measure to you, it would seem.” He stood shakily, gripping the edge of the table for support, and then slumped into a vacant chair which the waif pushed towards him.
“Have you met my daughter, Julia?” he asked.
“Your daughter?” She regarded me suspiciously, evidently less than enamoured despite my recent heroics. “I never knew you had a daughter.”
He shrugged. “Why should you? We all had our secrets in Gerard’s band, eh?”
“Oh,” Julia spoke for the first time – a deeper, older voice than I expected. She conveyed more contempt with that single syllable than I would have deemed possible. “You were one of Gerard’s mercenaries.”
I glanced around nervously. Despite the passage of years the name Gerard still carried weight. We might have been heroes to many but not to everyone, not by a long shot.
“What brings you here?” I asked, anxious to focus on the present rather than dwell on the past. “And what did you do to upset the local muscle?”
“Ah yes, the two matters are not unrelated,” Sirus said.
“We’re here to get back something stolen from us, from my father, a pendant,” Julia said, “and those two bastards were hired to… dissuade us.”
“When you say ‘get back’…?”
Sirus leant forward conspiratorially and said, “Well, it’s hardly stealing when you already own the object, is it?”
I recalled a fireside conversation long ago, with Sirus doggedly insisting that too many people were prone to confuse possession with ownership, while I argued with equal stubbornness that the two are effectively the same. All I said this time was, “So who currently ‘possesses’ this pendant?”
“A merchant; a man by the name of Malkait… Ah, I see you know of him.”
The world really was getting smaller by the day. “Yes,” though to call Malkait a merchant was akin to calling a pampas lion a lap-cat. Merchant Prince would have been nearer the mark. One of the richest and most influential men in the city, Malkait maintained his own security force, which I had commanded for more than a year
; the closest to a secure job I’d had since… well, forever.
“We need to break into his home and reclaim the pendant before he sells it,” Julia said. She was as focused on the task at hand as a wolf cub with a bone. “Can you help us? We’ll pay, of course.”
It seemed that suddenly I had status in her eyes. That meant more than I cared to admit, which didn’t prevent me hesitating. Malkait had been a fair employer, right up until the day he dismissed me. What really galled was that I had been completely innocent of the charges levelled. Though he refused to listen, I never laid a finger on his precious daughter. Now his wife on the other hand…
“I may know of a way in,” I said at length.
* * *
We met at an inn called the Shivering Eel, her swaddled in a thick brown cloak that effectively masked her figure and boasted a hood so deep she might have been a monk or nun, me skulking in a booth close to the back which afforded a degree of privacy. A stone’s throw from the docks, The Eel was a favoured haunt for dockers, packers, and itinerant ship-hands. It was the last place anyone would expect to find a lady like Rosalind, which was precisely why I’d chosen it.
The air was musty with tobacco smoke, the ale passable, and the conversation raucous enough to prevent any eavesdropping.
“What the hell are you doing here? What am I doing here?” Rosalind said by way of greeting.
Direct as ever. Good. I had no more wish to extend this meeting than she did. Too many memories marred whatever had once existed between us.
She glanced around nervously, but no one was paying us any attention. “I can’t stay long or I’ll be missed.” Her hood remained up as if to emphasise the point.
Rosalind was a creature of habit. I had known where she would be that morning, which bazars she would visit, flitting from stall to stall and buying whatever trinkets caught her eye. She had her regulars, traders who would hunt down or keep back eclectic items they knew might appeal to her. All I needed to do was arrive early, choose my vantage point, and then wait. These shopping trips were no more than a diversion for her, a way of staving off boredom; much like our affair.
Initially I simply watched from the opposite side of the street. Sight of her brought back pleasant memories – the lingering impression being warmth and languid lovemaking. Rosalind possessed a voluptuous figure and had proven to be a tender rather than adventurous lover.
Two people accompanied her to the market: a maid for transporting the purchases, a single bored guard to ensure her safety. Neither was familiar to me, which made it a simple matter to brush past and surreptitiously deliver a note. To her credit, she barely batted an eyelid at sight of me, but then she always had been a consummate actress or we could never have carried on as we had beneath her husband’s nose.
I always wondered if Rosalind, tiring of our relationship, had first put the notion of my dalliance with their daughter into Malkait’s mind. It wasn’t like him to look beyond his books and his profits long enough to notice such a thing, let alone fabricate it. If so, I held no malice; in fact, I rather admired her cunning.
Deeming this not to be the time for small talk, I explained my requirements, bluntly and succinctly, assuring her that I was only interested in a single piece of jewellery and nothing else would be touched, nobody harmed.
“And after this you’ll be gone from my life for good?”
“I swear it.”
“Annette is away at the coast at present…” she said, suggesting that her daughter’s absence somehow made the prospect of a break-in more feasible. Perhaps for her it did.
She held my gaze for a protracted second, as if trying to gauge whether or not to trust me. The truth was that she had little choice and we both knew it. Rosalind risked everything should Malkait so much as suspect her of infidelity, while I had nothing to lose whatsoever.
“Very well. Describe this pendant to me again.”
I did so, as Sirus had described it to me: “A stylised oakleaf wrought in gold, with an emerald at the centre and a trio of small diamonds set in the leaf’s top three points.”
“Yes, I think I know the piece,” she said dismissively, “but you’re too late. Malkait already has a buyer lined up. They’re due to collect tomorrow.”
“Then we shall have to pay a visit tonight.”
* * *
“No, she’s not coming,” I insisted.
“Yes she is,” Sirus replied. “She can handle herself, trust me.”
“Hey,” Julia said, pausing to look up from the bow she was inspecting. “You two argue all you want, but the only person who has any say in what I do or where I go is me.”
To be honest, I would have been hard pressed to explain why I felt so committed to their cause. Sirus was an old comrade, true, Julia strangely beguiling, and at some point there had been a vague promise of payment. These three factors somehow combined to create a whole far greater than their parts, ensuring that instead of drinking away my meagre coin in a comfortable tavern I sat planning a robbery in a squalid room behind a haberdasher’s, where Sirus and his daughter were staying. I’ve no idea how they found this place, nor why anyone would wish to. It was cramped, and too dingy to judge its cleanliness, which was probably a blessing.
At least Julia had dressed appropriately; black from head to toe, with no exposed metal to catch the light. And I had to admire the professionalism with which she examined that bow and the fletching of each accompanying arrow.
I’ve never much cared for the bow. I’m a blades man, always have been and always will be. The bow is a weapon for cowards who lack the courage to get up close and personal or who never mastered sword and knife. I have.
When Sirus offered me a small goblet I accepted without comment.
“That’s owlsight,” Julia informed me.
“I know what it is.” I spoke testily because I realised the argument on whether or not she would accompany me had already been lost. She knew it too, and favoured me with a sour smile.
Owlsight is just one of several potions and tricks that made Sirus invaluable during our time with Gerard. It didn’t give you magical see-in-the-dark vision as such but managed the next best thing, enabling the human eye to maximise whatever light was available, and the result were startling. Once the potion had taken hold, we would be able to move around in anything short of pitch blackness without the need for torches or other giveaway light.
“I see the taste hasn’t improved any,” I commented after knocking back the bitter syrup.
To pass the few minutes necessary for the draught to take effect, I checked my own weapons – throwing blades strapped to my back, handles just below the shoulders for easy access, two daggers at my belt, a stiletto in my right boot strapped to the ankle, and, of course, my sword. I already knew that everything was exactly how I wanted it, but what the hell? If Julia could act the part, so could I.
She fidgeted impatiently, keen to be off. Somehow, seeing her dressed from head to foot in close-fitting black and sporting a bow as if born to it made her all the more desirable; exactly the sort of distraction I didn’t need when breaking into a house patrolled by armed guards.
She caught me looking and scowled, which prompted me to stand and declare, “Right, let’s go.” She might be tagging along but I didn’t want any confusion about who was in charge.
Few people were abroad at this hour, and those that were kept themselves to themselves. Taking care to avoid the popular taverns, we arrived at Malkait’s manse without drawing any unwelcome attention. Only at the last, as we entered more prosperous residential districts, did we encounter street lamps in any number, averting our sensitised eyes for fear of being dazzled.
We headed to the rear of the property, where a courtyard garden lay hidden behind a high brick wall. Despite Rosalind’s assurances I felt a surge of relief when first the gate into the garden and then the side door to the house proper opened without resistance.
I led the way, my hand never far from the hilt of my sword. Acc
ording to Rosalind, the guards’ routine hadn’t changed since my service here, and so far she’d proven true to her word. That meant two men stationed on the ground floor, never venturing into the family’s private domain upstairs. During the night all upper floor windows were protected by iron bars, which would have required more time and planning to circumvent than we could afford. So we braved the guards.
I knew immediately that something was wrong.
The scullery door was shut. That door should never be shut, not at night when the scullery doubled as guard station.
I stopped Julia with a gesture and indicated we should investigate. She shook her head, preferring to simply get on with the job, but I ignored her and headed over to the closed door. She had little choice but to follow. Wan light filtered around the edges but no sound issued from within. Two guards, talking, moving about… there should be something, if only the creak of a chair.
Drawing my sword, I reached out with my left hand and flung the door open.
The smell, that was the first thing: voided bowels and blood, the stench of death. A single lantern sat atop the scullery table, which accounted for the glow around the door frame. Its sudden brightness caused me to squint. Two liveried men lay sprawled on the floor, their throats cut, their bellies ripped open, entrails spilling onto the stone tiles. Blood was still pooling, spreading. This wasn’t assassination, it was butchery, and recently done.
I grabbed Julia by the arm and whispered, “We need to leave, now.”
She shook her head and pulled free of me, turning to dart further into the house.
Despite every fibre of my being screaming that this was folly, I mouthed a silent curse and followed.
I remembered this hallway, had walked its length a hundred times, yet now it was transformed into an unfamiliar and threatening place, harbouring dark recesses and deepest shadow. Julia moved with a degree of stealth I could only envy, hugging the margins and wrapping the shadows around her, making it almost impossible to see her even with Sirus’ potion. I felt a bumbling buffoon in comparison; stark evidence of the difference between a sellsword and a professional thief – which was all I could think she must be.