Blade of dream, p.22
Blade of Dream, page 22
The prisoner turned his head a degree, but didn’t look back. “She’d be fine if it wasn’t for you.”
Old Boar took the rope that bound the man’s arms and yanked back on it like he was stopping a mule. Josie’s feet slipped out from under him and he landed ass-first on the cobblestones and snow.
“Your woman is weeping on another man’s arm because you’re a greedy fuck,” Old Boar said, speaking each word clear and loud enough to carry through the street. The soft clatter of shutters opening came first, and then a dark-haired head looking out of one window, a grey-haired one from another. Josie screamed in grief and humiliation.
“Come on,” Maur said. “I’ll help you up. We’ll get this part done and over with, yeah?”
Garreth went to the man’s other shoulder. Old Boar didn’t stop them, so between them they hoisted the prisoner up. Josie wasn’t wearing a jacket, and his nose was running from the cold. Old Boar flicked the rope like a coachman calling his team to the trot, and Josie stumbled forward.
“How often does he get in trouble like this?” Garreth asked as they walked.
“This one? Year or two, if he’s on a good stretch. He gets a fine or gets hauled up to the magistrate, and he’ll keep himself honest for a while. It don’t last, though.”
“Then why do we do it?” Maur asked.
“Not about him, is it? Josie was born bent and stupid, and there’s no making him smarter or straighter than what the gods picked for him. It’s all these other bastards looking out the windows and passing us in the streets. They see this, and they know that being bent and stupid’s got a price to it.”
“And that keeps them honest,” Garreth said.
“It might, it might not,” Old Boar said. “But imagine how it’d be if they saw there wasn’t a price. And it makes them happy. Everyone likes seeing the other man punished. Makes them feel like, since we don’t have them on a rope, they must be good. Or at least smart enough not to get caught. Public entertainment and moral instruction. That’s what we do.” Old Boar chuckled at his own joke, but Garreth wondered if what he said might not be true. Maur squinted up at the sky. When Old Boar spoke again, his breath was white as steam. “I can work something for you.”
“Work something?”
“I know men on Palace Hill. You want to take a day’s duty under Samal Kint, I can arrange it.”
Maur made a small sound in the back of his throat like a man who’d just found something he’d been looking for.
“I would appreciate that,” Garreth said to the older guard, ignoring his friend’s knowing grin. “If you can.”
“Oh, I can. No trouble for that. But it’s a favor for a favor, and you’ll be going first. It’s just better that way. You can pick. Hand me over your fines for a week, or take my shit cart duty.”
“Whatever you like.”
Old Boar squinted up into the winter sky like he was looking for a sign there. “Shit cart, then. I’ve got four shifts of it this rota. They’re yours. And you’ll need to do your own work too. We’re not trading. That fair?”
“I’ll take it.”
Old Boar grinned and cuffed him on the shoulder. “Damn right you will.”
An older woman came out of a doorway to their right and scowled at the prisoner as they walked past. Her arms were crossed and her chin jutted out like a child spoiling for a fight.
“If you’re the one did this, Mag, I’ll know it,” Josie shouted at her, and Old Boar kicked him in the small of the back. Josie stumbled forward onto the street, dropping to his knees. Old Boar swept down a hand, grabbed the back of the man’s shirt, and pulled him up by it without breaking stride.
“It’s not Mag’s fault you broke the law,” he said mildly. “You shouldn’t blame her for what you done.”
“You kicked me.”
“Wouldn’t have if you hadn’t made threats. That’s an offense, you know. I’d have fined you instead if your coin was worth piss. Trot now, or you’ll get cold before we’re at the gaol.”
Josie tried gamely to trot, and Old Boar goaded him on. Maur leaned in to Garreth, speaking low enough the older man didn’t hear him.
“Whatever it is that family policy’s keeping you from telling, I respect. Just don’t let the captain find out you’re using your duty with the guard to help your family. He’s touchy about that.”
“I didn’t say I was.”
“No, but everyone knows your parents had a bad few years. And you just happened to be on a casual basis with the prince’s daughter. And you were going to be married to someone you couldn’t talk about. All totally unrelated.”
Garreth didn’t answer. The truth was that as long as Maur and Kannish thought Elaine a Sal knew him from some machinations of House Left, Garreth was going to let them. The falsehood was more plausible than the truth.
When Maur saw he wasn’t going to answer, he sighed. “When you can tell us what this all was, I’ll buy the beer to go with it.”
The shit cart wasn’t just for shit. Animals who’d been crushed by carts or frozen in the night or died of some illness in the alleys and cul-de-sacs of the city wound up there too. But between the horses and the dogs and the cats and the people, the bulk of the cart was filled with shit.
Garreth rode on the front of the cart beside the carter, an ancient man called Sooner, though that wasn’t his name, who’d spent a life in the guard and retired to this when his knees went bad. The horse was a wide, patient beast with a wool blanket across her back against the cold.
With a team of four prisoners, Garreth was the only full bluecloak present. If there’d been six, someone would have come with him. The condemned had spades of blunt wood, and Garreth had a short sword and leather whip with a wide thong at the end, meant to sting more than cut. The whip was for encouraging anyone who wasn’t enthusiastic enough about cleaning the street. The sword was to dissuade them from fighting back.
The little scrap of paper, the steel-nibbed pen, and the block of gum ink were peculiar to Garreth and the day.
It’s been a long time since the morning with the birds. I understand better now what that was, and why I haven’t seen you since. But I hope
“Fuck me! What is that?”
Garreth tucked the paper into his pocket and closed the pen in the inkbox. It was too late to be called dawn any longer. Palace Hill was bright with the light, but Riverport was still in shadow. The cart had rolled out from the gaol before first light, and the cold had reddened Garreth’s knuckles and numbed his feet. He had two Inlisc men, one woman, and a Hansch man with a missing front tooth and a limp. That was the one who’d cried out.
“What’s what?” Garreth said, standing in the cart.
The Hansch man gestured to a lump in the darkness where the wall of the tanners’ guild hall met the ground. Garreth swung himself down to the street and walked over. The little animal was dead, a black nose poking out of a knot of ice-hard snow.
“Looks like a fox,” Garreth said.
“What if it’s diseased? I don’t want to pick up a plague fox.”
The three Inlisc prisoners watched with a cultivated neutrality. Garreth grabbed the man’s wood spade, set the point at the bottom of the little corpse, and kicked twice. The fox popped loose from the cobbles, frozen stiff. Garreth swept the spade up, launching the little animal into the cart where it landed with a thump.
“Like that,” he said, handing back the spade. “If you don’t like the job, stop picking fights with your neighbors. Now get to work, or we’ll all still be doing this come nightfall.”
The Hansch man scowled, but turned back to the street, sweeping his eyes over the cobblestones for the next bit of icy filth.
“You’re too soft,” the carter said as Garreth sat back down. “You should have whipped him until he did it himself. You get a reputation for being soft, and they’ll take advantage of you.”
“There’s always next time,” Garreth said, fishing the paper out from his pocket and spreading it open on his knee. The ink had smudged, but only a little. The letters were still clear.
But I hope your interest in my changes of life was sincere. The first time we met, you came to me. This time I will come to you.
He read over what he’d written with a sense of growing uncertainty. He wanted to say that he’d been thinking of her since their night together, that he had wished he were back in those dark, beautiful hours again a thousand times since he’d lived through them. If she’d been a Stonemarket servant girl—even if she’d been the daughter of some minor noble house—he could have. But he was writing to the prince’s daughter, and he didn’t know how to do that. He balled up the paper and tossed it behind him into the shit.
The cart turned slowly to the north, following a narrow street with windows that opened into the servants’ quarters of House Reffon. Little black lumps and spatters of yellow fouled the snow. He’d been to dinners there with his parents back in some other lifetime. Baal Reffon dealt in spices and alum from the north. He was one of the people the winter caravan would ruin if it worked out well.
“Stop here,” Garreth said. “This could take them some time.”
One of the Inlisc men said something. The other laughed.
“Hey!” Garreth barked. “Get moving. This isn’t going to get better when the sunlight warms it up for you.”
“Whatever you say,” the laughing one said. Garreth pulled a new piece of paper out of his pocket, wishing he had access to the little writing desk from his room. Finding the right words would be easier if he could be alone with himself, imagining her there with him. He could just think what he’d say to her, and write that down. Only here, he’d be saying things like I hope we can get this cart full and dumped into the river before it warms up enough to stink and I am going to spend half a day in the baths before I feel clean from this and I’m starting to wonder if a life of beating shit cart prisoners was really the best choice for me.
The sun peeked up over the roofs. Its touch was warming. He closed his eyes, imagining not Elaine a Sal but the girl from his room, from the street, with the smell of the river in her hair. He recalled how she spoke. How she carried herself. The undercurrent of melancholy and amusement that followed her like perfume.
I miss you. I barely know you, and you showed me so much about myself. I would be living a different life if I hadn’t met you. Maybe a better one, maybe worse, but different. You have changed me, and I have missed you, and I want nothing more from gods or time or history than to see you again. I will come to you this time, if I can find my way.
That was better. That was a lot better. He wondered what favors he would have to do to get it delivered.
“Hey,” the Hansch man whined. “These bastards aren’t doing their part. I’m not going to do all this by myself.”
The carter shrugged. “You don’t have to like it, son, but it is the job.”
“Seems like this is going to be a long, unpleasant day.”
“Could be worse,” the old man said. “You could be one of the men who enjoys it.”
“Fair enough,” Garreth said as he picked up the whip. He cracked it once for practice and climbed down from the cart again.
Week after week after week, she’d watched the guards around her father’s private study, waiting for a lapse in their collective vigilance. Samal Kint’s men were disciplined. The passage her father had dug through the stone flesh of the palace was under guard from one dawn to the next, and would be—it seemed—until rain wore away the mountains. According to Haral Moun, Theddan had been caught at something indiscreet at the Temple, and wouldn’t be able to sneak out to speak with Elaine again until her penance was complete. Garreth, who was now apparently a city guard, hadn’t appeared since the night she’d seen him on the bridge, and she wasn’t sure whether she was more disappointed or relieved. Hours stretched into days with no possibility of change, of discovery, of progress.
Then everything happened in the same evening. Afterward, she hadn’t been able to sleep. She rose in the morning of Longest Night with bloodshot eyes and a darkness under them like someone had punched her. The traditions of Clovas called for the day to be spent in contemplation of the year just gone by, and asking the spirits of her ancestors for guidance in the rebirth to come. Instead, she’d spent the first part of the morning trying to cover over the worst of her sleeplessness with cosmetics and tea.
She’d been more than half tempted to cancel her duties for the day: morning meal with Bel a Jimental, ceremonial observance at the Reyos compound with Dakke and Mayaral Reyos, Andomaka Chaalat, and an early evening feast with her father and a dozen or so of the heads of the great families. The decision to go ahead was part an unarticulated fear that changing her schedule would somehow expose her and part the dread of being alone. She didn’t want to be with people, but she wanted to be with herself even less. And so fish and eggs in red sauce in the solarium of a Jimental, prayer and meditation at the private chapel of Reyos, and now lemon tea in a drawing room of the palace.
Of all her obligations, this one was the least odious. Andomaka Chaalat was an easy woman to spend time with, comfortable to talk with. Elaine didn’t know her as well as she did Theddan, but she could imagine being close to her. Andomaka’s almost eerie paleness made her seem like ice and snow in the form of a woman. The warmth of the fire and the brightness of the lemon tea were a kind of reassuring lie about the impotence of winter. Or maybe that was just her exhaustion talking.
She had meant to use the meeting to probe a bit more into Prince Ausai and the Daris Brotherhood. Background that might help her better guess what her father had found and the nature of Ausai’s madness. She wasn’t sure what she meant to do now.
“Thank you for coming,” Elaine said. “I know this is a busy time for everyone.”
“I’m happy for the distraction,” Andomaka said. “And I was sincere before when I promised to be here if you needed me. Is something troubling you, cousin?”
Elaine hesitated. What she wanted to say—what she almost said—was this: Have you ever heard of the thread of Kithamar?
The night before had been windy. All the nights seemed windy on Palace Hill, like the land itself had thrown the palace into an air higher than kites. Shutters rattled, eddies of wind muttered through the halls and passages like the voices of dead men who had forgotten to lie down.
Elaine had been walking the way she always did, finding her way through a home the size of a city’s quarter, discovering niches and secrets that riddled the buildings. A basement by the north wall that was filled with musical instruments—lutes and viols and a great teakwood harp—covered in dust and mildew. A physician’s quarters, abandoned generations before and simply left shut with diagrams of the human form and its lines of energy and vital flow marked in faded green ink. A closet filled with jars of medical curiosities preserved in salt brandy—a fetus with four arms, a lamb’s severed head, a pair of thin-fingered hands. A storage room filled with vast dusty rounds of cheese that smelled ripe and deep and wonderful.
She was slowly coming to love Palace Hill not despite its odd corners and strange history, but because of them. The buildings were like a poem in a language she almost understood.
The new passage to the prince’s private study was near the end of a dark passage. The door that Halev Karsen had ordered installed over the wound in the palace’s stone flesh was simple: bronze and oak with a heavy bar and a lock for which only he and her father had the key. Guards stood by it day and night. She passed by often enough for her presence to seem as normal as mice, always hoping for some accident to open the way to her. It never did.
The old door was still closed fast, a puzzle without a solution. She stopped by it as well, probing the complicated ironwork in hopes of finding some hidden latch or keyhole. She never did. The decorations that covered the door were complex and beautiful and forbidding. She had to think it had been cast sometime in the ancient past of the city. The figures on it seemed to be telling a story.
A warrior with swords in either hand and a wolfskin over his shoulders appeared in several places. In one, he stood over a dead or dying man. In another, he was set in apparent battle against what looked like some kind of gigantic finch. He stood on the prow of a boat, or in the mouth of a cave, or before the altar of some kind of temple, though not one Elaine had ever seen. Dragons and monsters flew up one side of the door, angels and trees and naked men and women fell down the other. As a piece of craft, it was a masterwork. As an artistic work, it was incomprehensible. As a puzzle, unsolvable. Over the weeks, she felt certain that she’d pressed every dragon’s eyes, plucked at every hero’s sword, dug her little finger into the hollows around every figure and filigree.
Tonight, she pressed a flat palm against it, and it shifted. For a moment, she was as disoriented as if the wall had moved instead. It was easier to believe that she was imagining things, but when she pressed again—a little harder this time—the door swung silently in. It was terribly heavy, and opening a crack wide enough to step through took effort, but she managed and slipped into the darkness on the other side.
She moved slowly. The sliver of light that spilled in behind her was only enough to show the barest outlines of a wide table piled with something. A bench. And on the side of the table nearest her, a lantern. Its shape was as unmistakable as the smell of its oil. She fumbled with the flint striker at its base, but only for a few moments. When the flame took, it was steady and strong. Light filled the room.
It was close almost to the point of being cramped. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with shelves. The spines of the books were in sections. Two shelves of ancient, yellowed parchment sewn with thick black thread. A shelf of black folios tied with twine. Half a wall of decaying leather, flaking and falling off the volumes they were meant to cover. Another wall more nearly intact with bindings of brown leather, then of red, then of a glossy black as fresh as if it had been taken from the tanner’s house the week before.
