Master of restless shado.., p.37
Master of Restless Shadows, page 37
part #1 of Master of Restless Shadows Series
No, the best hope for saving Spider and Inissa would be to expose their attackers to immediate, mass scrutiny. Call the sort of attention to the royal bishop’s guardsmen that a mere street brawl never garnered in this part of the city.
“Free wine!” Atreau bellowed. “Free wine for the first folk on the street with me!”
The royal bishop’s men turned and the one fighting Spider lost his grip. Spider leapt back from him and staggered to the support of a nearby building. Atreau prayed that his brother hadn’t been badly injured. Another of the royal bishop’s men dropped his hold on Inissa’s arm and launched himself at Atreau. His fist loomed into Atreau’s sight and Atreau ducked to the left, shouting, “Who’ll have a drink on me?”
The bishop’s man lunged for him again and this time landed a hard blow against Atreau’s side. Sharp pain cracked across his ribs, but didn’t stop Atreau from slamming his knee into the other man’s gut. The royal bishop’s man gasped and collapsed to his knees.
“Free wine!” Atreau bellowed, though now his ribs ached as he drew in a deep breath. He felt the wet heat of blood seeping down his left side.
The door of the Fat Goose swung open, as did several other taverns. Streams of golden lamplight poured across the dark street, lighting the six of them on the street as if they were a tableau on a stage. People spilled out from the Green Door and immediately shouted for others to join them. Crowds hurried out from all around. Most appeared more curious than enticed, but all of them drew others behind them. In a moment the empty street filled with light and witnesses.
The man still holding Inissa’s arm released her as if he’d suddenly realized he gripped a burning poker. Inissa immediately bounded to her feet and raced to the crowd gathered outside the Green Door. Pepylla embraced her and then they both disappeared inside.
“It seems the lady would rather not keep your company, but I daresay her friends here wouldn’t mind having a word with the three of you.” Atreau grinned at the nearest of the royal bishop’s guardsmen as he struggled back up to his feet. The man who’d grappled with Spider started toward Atreau, his hand on the hilt of his sword. Atreau didn’t back away from him, but edged nearer the left side of the street, where he could just make out Spider, swaying on his feet.
Someone in the crowd pelted the soldier with an apple core. A stone followed that, just missing Atreau. Then a brick and more stones sailed through the air. They battered the guards’ armored chests and backs like hammers striking anvils. The royal bishop’s men glowered at the crowd, but as rocks and hunks of horse droppings pelted their faces and helmets, they seemed to quickly surmise that they weren’t in a defensible position. All at once the three of them fled down the street toward the river. The crowd gathered outside the taverns hooted and jeered as they passed.
Atreau hurried to Spider. In the dark, the blood spilled across his face looked black as tar. Spider stepped toward Atreau, but then his knees started to buckle. Atreau caught his brother in his arms and, despite Spider’s protests and the ache of his own ribs, didn’t let him go. Instead he helped Spider walk back into the Fat Goose. A small crowd of regulars from the Fat Goose trailed them inside, congratulating one another on so easily defeating the royal bishop’s men.
“The first round of drinks is on my tab!” Atreau called to the two women behind the bar.
“Have I extended you that much credit?” Spider murmured, but he didn’t object.
Atreau hauled his brother up the stairs to Spider’s office and lowered him down into a battered oak chair. Spider slumped back and Atreau felt a jolt of fear, unable to see the extent of his brother’s injuries in the dark room. He dug his tinderbox from his coat pocket and lit the fat little lamp squatting on Spider’s side table. In the flickering yellow light Spider looked even smaller and paler than usual. His delicate nose appeared scraped but not broken, and a little blood trickled from his nostrils. He’d obviously taken a few hard blows, but aside from a bloody graze in his scalp, he appeared to have fought fast and smart. Armed with his belt knife, he’d kept himself clear of knife edges and sword blades.
“Will you stop gawking at me like a worried mother hen,” Spider muttered. “I’m fine. Or I will be after a drink.”
Atreau glanced around the room for a bottle of Spider’s favorite ruin, a harsh Salt Island liquor that smelled like liniment and tasted like spite.
Thick ledgers covered much of Spider’s desktop, while bundled stacks of papers filled his bookshelf. Several small, new paintings decorated the walls and Atreau recognized Inissa’s hand in the detailed wings of moths and butterflies. He spotted the distinct blue bottle on a shelf and brought it to Spider, who pulled the cork and gulped down a swig. Then he set the bottle aside and wiped at a trickle of blood dribbling down the side of his face.
Atreau drew a kerchief from his coat and wiped the blood from the side of Spider’s nose and the side of his face. He half expected Spider to shove him away, but this once he allowed Atreau to tend to him.
“I didn’t think they’d come after you,” Atreau said. He’d not gone to pains to hide the fact that they were brothers, but as far as anyone knew Spider numbered among dozens of bastards sired by Atreau’s father and held no particular importance to the family.
“They didn’t,” Spider replied. “I was stretching my legs when I saw them grab Inissa.”
Atreau scowled. What had Inissa been thinking going out alone at such a late hour? Jacinto’s favor could only protect her so much. Then another thought occurred to him.
“Tell me she wasn’t meeting you,” Atreau said.
Spider didn’t answer, but his angry expression might as well have been an admission.
“Idiot!” Atreau snapped. “You do realize that Inissa is completely dependent upon Jacinto’s money to keep her out of debtors’ prison, don’t you? And it’s only been his protection that has prevented the royal bishop’s men from attacking her before this. Likely it was fear of his reprisal that sent them running tonight. What do you imagine would become of Inissa and you if Jacinto turned against you?”
“She wants to be with me,” Spider snapped back.
“She has no idea what she really wants! One moment it’s all true love and undying faith, the next it’s gold coins—”
“You don’t know!”
“I do and better than you—” Atreau began, but Spider cut him off again.
“She chose me, not you!” Spider shouted. “And that’s what you’re angry about. Just admit it! You can’t stand that I’m the better man!”
“For fuck’s sake! This isn’t about me or you.” Atreau had to resist the urge to grab his brother and shake him hard. “Inissa is Jacinto’s woman! She likes to pretend that she’s not, that she could leave him anytime, but she’s as much his as his foreskin—”
Spider struck Atreau hard across the jaw and sent him stumbling back several steps. Pain ground through Atreau’s battered ribs. For a furious moment Atreau grappled with the urge to slam Spider’s head down into the hard wood of his desktop and punch a dagger into his chest. He was the stronger of the two of them, and while Spider had scrapped in street brawls, Atreau had trained in dueling rings to kill his opponents. His fingers already curled around the hilt of his belt knife.
But the last thing he wanted was to harm Spider, ever.
Atreau released his knife and stepped back from his brother. Spider glowered at him, his face flushed and his breath coming fast and angry. Blood dribbled from his gashed scalp and formed a scarlet track down the side of his face. He looked half mad and half beaten, a man stripped of civility and dignity by passion. Atreau had seen that expression before and nearly died for inspiring such fury.
“Don’t you dare . . .” Spider’s voice trailed off. Perhaps even he didn’t know what he would do or say. Atreau tossed his kerchief to Spider.
“I imagine you can manage for yourself then.” Atreau turned and started out of the room.
As he reached the door, a sense of utter futility filled him. He wanted to protect his older brother, to help him as he never could have when they’d been young and their father’s abuse had driven Spider out of their home. But the fact was that they’d not been close then and after twenty years apart they hardly knew each other now. The regret and tenderness Atreau felt was for a fantasy of the family that he and Spider should have been to each other. Their brotherhood existed more as a hope than any reality. And yet he treasured that hope.
“Wait, Atreau,” Spider called.
Atreau turned back. The rage in Spider’s expression seemed more like anguish now. He gripped Atreau’s discarded kerchief but didn’t bother to use it to stanch the slow trickle of blood dribbling down from his scalp.
“You don’t understand her,” Spider said. “Not like I do.”
“No, I don’t suppose I do,” Atreau admitted. His relationship with Inissa hadn’t been built on the kind of long conversations and trust that seemed to underpin her romance with Spider.
Atreau and she had shared a bed and a child and had briefly considered marriage, but they had never done so amiably. They’d been too alike in their inconstant hearts—too alike in their need for powerful and indulgent protectors and in their insecurities as well. They’d neither of them remained faithful to the other and, when they’d attempted to temper their infidelities by sharing their bed with a patron, they’d ended up hissing and snapping at each other like alley cats fighting over the remains of a rat.
When their tiny daughter had arrived into the world stillborn, the heartbreak hadn’t brought them closer. It had only made them both feel shamefully relieved to escape each other’s dreary company.
“She’s done what she must to survive,” Spider said. “But deep down, she is strong and caring and loyal. She’s a good woman.”
“I know,” Atreau agreed. Despite their failed romance, he still counted Inissa among his dearest of friends. Now as all his anger drained away he was left with only his fear for the lives of two people whom he dearly loved. “She deserves to be happy. You both do.”
“If you truly believe that, then why are you so set on keeping us apart?” Spider demanded. “Why won’t you help us?”
“I’m hardly in any better position to defy Jacinto than either of you are.” Atreau shook his head. “This entire degenerate little district of the city only thrives because it amuses Jacinto to shelter us. You know that.”
Spider took another gulp from his bottle.
“We could sail back to the Salt Islands. There we could live free from the grasp of this corrupt, bigoted Cadeleonian court.” Spider didn’t meet Atreau’s gaze as he spoke, but instead he continued to fix his stare on the bottle.
“Really?” Atreau didn’t laugh, but it wasn’t easy to suppress his sour amusement. “Has Inissa told you that she’d be willing to give up everything she has here, abandon her friends and patrons to settle down with you in a shack and gut fish for a living?”
Spider glowered, but his silence assured Atreau that he’d gotten it right. The simple ways and grinding labor that made up much of life on the Salt Islands couldn’t hold much allure to so cosmopolitan a woman as Inissa. Atreau hadn’t lasted a month there, himself. And Inissa was an artist who yearned to have her paintings displayed in great halls and palaces. How would she attain that recognition when she was hidden off on some smoldering island?
He pinned Spider with a hard, assessing gaze.
“For that matter, what in the three hells would you do back on the Salt Islands? You returned to Cadeleon for a reason, didn’t you?”
“Well, I didn’t come here just to make sure you were still alive.” Spider stated it almost as if he expected Atreau to accuse him of such a thing. “I came for money. But I’d rather be poor with Inissa at my side than possess a room full of gold.”
How easy it was to say such a thing when a room overflowing with gold wasn’t on offer, Atreau thought. Though studying Spider’s expression, Atreau suddenly feared that his brother might just be willing to sacrifice all he had for Inissa’s sake.
“I’m not sure you have the option of either,” Atreau replied.
“I have connections on the Salt Islands. The temple looks after its own.” Spider dabbed at the side of his face and belatedly pressed Atreau’s kerchief to the gash in his scalp. “If you truly wanted to, I know you could help us.”
This time Spider raised his glare to Atreau’s face.
“Again I ask, what do I possess that could possibly benefit either of you?” Atreau asked.
“You could purchase my share of the Fat Goose.” Spider said it so quickly that Atreau had no doubt he’d been mulling over the idea for a long while. “You would own this place and provide Inissa and me with enough money for us to start fresh on the Salt Islands. I have friends in the temple who are looking for someone to take over their hostel. With their blessing, I could own the only hostel on the entire Flower Road. I just need enough gold to buy it.”
Atreau laughed. Not at Spider’s business plan, but at the idea of the wretched parcel of land his paltry finances would procure. One of those Salt Island fumaroles that was forever belching out black, rancid gas? Or perhaps a little pool of boiling yellow mud and biting flies.
“Are they selling the place for ten pennies?” Atreau asked.
Spider glowered at him.
“You have money, I know it! I’ve seen you handing fat purses of coins over to everyone but me!”
No doubt he had noticed Atreau doling out the payments Fedeles provided, but not a single coin of that had belonged to Atreau.
“You’ve seen me paying off interest on my considerable debts, I’m sure,” Atreau replied. “But have you once noticed a single soul paying me?”
Spider opened his mouth but then caught himself. Atreau could almost see him trying to recall a single occasion when Atreau had received so much as a copper coin from any of his acquaintances.
“I’ve not,” Spider admitted rather begrudgingly.
“I haven’t either, brother of mine. I’m skint!” Atreau pulled the small purse from his coat pocket and tossed it to Spider’s side table. The four copper coins inside made a pathetic clink as they struck the wood. “There. You and your lady love may enjoy the spoils of my fortune with my full blessing!”
Spider scowled at the limp purse.
“You run with dukes and princes, how on earth can you still be so poor?”
“You could ask the same of Inissa, couldn’t you?” Atreau went on before Spider could summon an outraged response. “It costs to keep up appearances in noble company, and the rewards aren’t always monetary. These days, most of us ply our asses just to ensure protection from the royal bishop’s men. It’s only the Duke of Rauma’s favor that kept me from burning along with my books last year. If I weren’t under his protection you can bet I’d already be dead. Money is the last thing I could ask of him or Jacinto at this point.”
Spider picked up the coin purse with a crestfallen expression. He sighed heavily, then he tossed it back to Atreau.
“I’m going to be the one to make a fortune for us all, I suppose.” Spider managed a wan smile.
Atreau tucked the coin purse back into his coat pocket. He considered his brother through the flickering lamplight. Bloodied but still defiant, Spider seemed hardly changed from the delicate, beaten child he’d once been. He’d always been honest and courageous—willing to fight for what was just, even when he knew he’d be thrashed.
He deserved so much better from life and from Atreau.
Atreau considered the bundle of copied letters that Fedeles had turned over to him. Likely his sailor was already waiting in the Green Door, ready to take on the matter. But now Atreau pondered the reward Fedeles had offered. He didn’t want to involve Spider in any of the wreck of his own life. He’d never wanted Spider to number among the anonymous multitude of agents whose entire lives were so often sacrificed for the sake of dukes and princes. At the same time, Spider needed money and Atreau needed someone with connections on the Salt Islands. All Fedeles asked for was information, not an agent.
“If told you that I know of a nobleman willing to pay a large sum to have a physician on the Salt Islands located, what would you say?” Atreau asked at last.
Spider cocked his head and regarded Atreau as if he’d thrown down a truly curious hand in a game of cards.
“What does he want the physician for?” Spider asked.
“He has no idea,” Atreau replied. “He only knows that agents of the Cadeleonian church are hunting for a physician on the Salt Islands and that he needs to find her before they do.”
Again Spider studied Atreau with that assessing gaze. A distant memory of meeting that same expression as Spider knelt beside him to wash the blood from his scraped knees wafted through Atreau’s mind. They’d done their best to care for each other, but they’d both only been children.
“Please tell me that you’re not working as a spy for Count Radulf,” Spider said. “Because that’s treason and you will get yourself hanged if anyone finds out.”
“I’m not working for Count Radulf,” Atreau replied and for a moment he believed it himself. Then he remembered his bargain with Hylanya. He wasn’t primarily working for Count Radulf, he supposed. “I appreciate your concern.”
“Of course I’m concerned. I have read your books, you know.” Spider glanced to his bottle but didn’t bother to drink from it. “Magnificent Elezar and radiant Javier dragging you across all three hells on their vainglorious escapades, then leaving you to bury the dead or ply your way across an ocean full of pirates. You’re always falling for arrogant bastards and their appalling plans.”
