“Rich Balarians come out here for slaves,” Felgor said, following Bershad’s eyes. “The shackle trade is illegal in Balaria, but you can bring in a slave you already own as long as you’re willing to pay a tax the size of this morning’s hangover. Which they all are, rich bastards. So they cruise around and pick up slaves in Taggarstan—concubines mostly—and then they float back.”
“You seem to know a lot about it,” Vera said.
Felgor kept his eye on the largest of the cruisers, as if he was hoping for a glimpse of a half-naked concubine that never came.
“What kind of thief would I be,” he said after a while, “if I didn’t know what those silky bastards were up to on their fancy boats?”
“Ever tried to rob one?” Bershad asked.
Felgor spat into the water and shook his head. “They’re guarded tighter than a mouse’s asshole and there’s nowhere to run if you’re caught. Only morons try to rob the actual boat. Best to wait until they’re unloading and hit them at the docks. Docks are good places to rob people, especially in Balaria. The rich folk all have covered slips—kind of like a miniature house.”
“I’ll remember that,” Bershad said.
They kept rowing until the wall ended against the side of a sheer canyon. The canyon tapered off to a height that Bershad thought would be climbable if they each had a pair of spikes and several lengths of good rope. Vera saw that, too.
“Why not scale the cliffs?” she asked. “Sneak across through the wilderness.”
“There’s a hundred leagues of desert up there,” Felgor said. “Balarian soldiers guard the water and the road to Burz-al-dun. Only things that can cross that desert without getting caught by a patrol are vultures and dragons.”
“That could be,” Vera said. “Or it could be that you just want us in Taggarstan. Seems like a good place for a thief to disappear.”
“You wound me, little spider,” Felgor said. “Truth is, I’m quite looking forward to breaking into the Burz-al-dun palace again. Been a while since I had a good challenge.”
“Just don’t try anything foolish when we get there, Felgor. I will make you pay for it. Clear?”
“Clear,” Felgor muttered. Then he turned away to watch the water.
* * *
They rowed through the night, sleeping in pairs while two others worked the remaining oars. By daybreak they could see the city. Taggarstan was built at the confluence of six mountain rivers. Some of them were barely more than streams, but others were sixty or seventy strides wide, which made the confluence a bloated circle of churning currents. Bershad glanced over the edge of the dory and saw the clear mountain water they’d ridden down from the Razors turn murky and brown as it mixed with the other rivers.
Taggarstan itself was a ragtag mess of planks and shacks and makeshift barges lashed together and anchored to form a semipermanent floating city and trading post. Beyond the city, the rivers combined into a deep, wide expanse called the Murakai River that flowed across a marshy plain until it reached Graziland—the distant realm in the east.
The Murakai’s current was gentle, which meant there were hundreds of outlander merchants and smugglers digging their way out of the eastern lands every day, coming to Taggarstan to trade with the realm of Terra. Bershad shaded his eyes as they approached the city. They steered their dory beneath a wooden bridge with the painted white letters TAGGRST hung unevenly below it on slate squares.
“Seems they could use a new sign,” Rowan said, yawning and rousing himself from the place he’d been sleeping, nestled between Alfonso and the hull.
The innards of the city were a maze of canals formed by interconnected barges that had been anchored in place. The smell of rotting wood and dead fish polluted the air. Flies and mosquitoes had already amassed overhead in a thick cloud even though it was only half an hour after sunrise. In the distance, they could hear the clatter and racket of a fish market.
“We should head to the market,” Felgor said. “Get some breakfast, at least. Maybe some information.”
Bershad had seen plenty of markets in his life. He’d stood outside perfume bazaars that only highborn ladies were allowed to enter, breathing in hard and wondering how such a thing was possible in the same world as Glenlock Canyon, where he had run his horse over so many corpses that the beast’s legs and belly were still dripping blood hours later. He’d seen totem markets in the Gorgon Valley, where priceless gems, dried animal organs, and rare plants were organized by their alleged magical properties.
But Bershad had never seen anything quite like Taggarstan.
Every canal and alley led to the center of the city—a large eye of water where boats crammed themselves together like arrows in a quiver and then went about the business of selling their wares. Buyers ran across rope-and-wood bridges above the water and called down prices, haggled, complained, and then motioned for the boat to toss up whatever they’d bought while they dropped a bag of coins down in exchange.
Some boats were brimming with enormous fish that must have come from the deepest depths of the Great Western Ocean—their eyes were as big as Bershad’s fist. Others carried river trout and tiny hens strung together at the fin or foot with a wire cord. The larger riverboats from Graziland came with hulls that sagged deep into the water because they were packed with as much opium as possible.
“So much trade on Balaria’s doorstep. Why not conquer it?” Vera asked as they got closer.
“Because it’s impossible,” Felgor said. He was picking at his teeth with a splinter of wood from the boat. “There is no Taggarstan. Not really. It’s just a bunch of rotting barges floating in the same place. If Balaria grabbed this spot, the riffraff would just cut the anchor lines and float their way downriver a bit, then start the whole thing over again. It’d be endless.” He threw the splinter into the water.
Bershad steered the dory to an empty space along one of the canals before they entered the market proper. There was an old man with green vomit in his white beard leaning on a railing. He watched them through rheumy eyes.
“You own this spot?” Bershad asked in Balarian.
No response. He tried again in Ghalamarian. That just got the man to drool a little from the corner of his mouth.
“Pargos,” Vera said from behind him while she strapped on her daggers. “That man is from Pargos.”
“Can we tie our boat here?” Bershad tried in broken Pargossian.
The drunk’s eyes slid over to Bershad. Eyed him up and down.
“Fuck if I’m gonna tell a dragonslayer what to do. Best watch yourself, though. Taggarstan don’t have as many laws as other spots in Terra, but we still trim the necks of tattooed faces that linger too long.”
He spat on Bershad’s boot and then wobbled away, uncorking a ceramic jug tied to a string on his hip and taking a large gulp. Bershad figured that was close enough to permission.
“Felgor, do you know where the Seven Anchors is?” Bershad asked when the boat was secured.
“About that,” Felgor said, lowering his voice. “You sure that you want to work out a deal with the vampire? Might be we can find someone else to do it.”
“Why would we bother with that?”
“The vampire has a reputation,” Felgor said. “And it’s not a good one.”
“That doesn’t mean he can’t help us,” Bershad said.
“He’s more likely to eat us than help us, Silas.”
“What?”
Felgor hesitated, looking at each member of the group in turn. “For as long as Taggarstan’s been around, three men have run it. Malakar Roth, Fallon Sicone, and Alto Yakun. Each of ’em have their own turf and operation. They make most of their money sneaking opium into Balaria, and smuggling refined dragon oil out. And it used to be, you couldn’t smoke an opium pipe or throw a pair of dice in Taggarstan that didn’t belong to one of them.”
“Felgor, what does this have to do with eating people?”
“I’m getting there. Two years ago, the vampire show
s up from who-knows-where, and starts stirring shit up. He spent a year recruiting pirates and criminals to his crew until he had his own little army. Then, a few months ago, he took Alto Yakun’s entire operation down in a single night. Rumor is he ate the bastard’s liver and heart, too.”
“How do you know all this?” Vera asked. “You’ve been in an Almiran dungeon for weeks.”
“Trust me, when you’re in my line of work, this kind of news reaches every dungeon in Terra. The vampire is a sadistic bastard who we don’t want to tangle with.” Felgor stepped closer to Bershad. “There are other ways to get seals.”
“Maybe. But this is the shortest way.”
“It’s a bad way.”
“The shortest one usually is,” Bershad said. “Look, I appreciate the history lesson, but we don’t have time to find a nicer criminal forger. We finish the deal Yonmar set up and keep moving. Now where is the Seven Anchors?”
Felgor scanned the faces of the others and saw that he was outnumbered.
“Fine. Follow me.”
* * *
Felgor led them down a series of narrow passages. Floating shacks and decrepit barges were lashed to the walkways. Bershad glanced inside a few windows only to find drunk people sleeping the morning away on thin, dirty mats. The people who were awake and going about their business looked like a criminal sort of fishermen who’d only do an honest day’s work if the chance to rob someone didn’t present itself first. Most people shoved and pushed their way down the alleys with no regard for the people around them, but they passed two men who received an inexplicably wide berth from the jostling crowd. They were shirtless and covered in weblike tattoos—as if a spider had been set free across their flesh. Both carried fishing knives and short swords. They had ceramic jugs of rice wine slung over their shoulders on a fishing line.
“Those two’re with the Drunken Spiders,” Felgor said after they’d passed. “Pirating outfit with their own private island up north. Dangerous bastards. Nobody fucks with them when they come to Taggarstan to do business.”
They passed a tanned, topless woman who had rings through both nipples. She blew Felgor a kiss.
“Damn but I’ve missed this place,” Felgor said.
They traveled through the makeshift city for almost an hour, shoving their way across narrow, planked pathways until reaching a small cove on the south side of town where seven boats were lashed together in the water.
“This is the Seven Anchors,” Felgor said. “Name’s pretty self-explanatory. The vampire doesn’t control much of the city, but he is the fucking king of this setup here.”
“Can we bring Alfonso inside?” Rowan asked.
“This is Taggarstan,” Felgor replied. “We could bring a lion inside if we had one.”
“Good,” Bershad said, pushing past Felgor.
Inside, everything had been gutted and the seven boats were connected by wide, open-air bridges. Instead of individual rooms, the hull of the first ship was littered with colorful tents. Some only had enough space for a single person, but others were seventy strides across and filled with people and music. Felgor guided them through the maze of tents.
Most of the tents were filled with dancing women and dicing tables. Pretty standard as far as pleasure houses went. But the opium tents were something different. Bershad and Vera both glanced into a few that they passed. The first one had hundreds of tiny mirrors hanging from the ceiling by fishing line. Twenty naked men and women were lying on the carpet, staring up at the moving pieces. Another was lined with shelves of candles, and the floor was a huge basin of green paint. Three people were sitting naked in the paint, rubbing each other’s skin and making swirling patterns.
“The vampire doesn’t allow his men any opium,” Felgor said. “Part of the reason nobody fucks with his muscle. But everyone else pays a pretty penny to use the tents. Nothing else like them in the world.”
That wasn’t true. The Morlang clan of the jungle nations kept craftsmen who did nothing but make opium tents. The drug was like a religion for them. Bershad knew about the tents because the Morlangs were also infamous mercenaries. When they hired out to foreign countries, they brought their tents with them. Bershad had trampled dozens of them in Glenlock Canyon.
They exited that ship and stepped onto another crude bridge that forked in two directions. Felgor pointed to the left, where a massive black war frigate sat anchored. It looked like a seaworthy vessel except for the wide and elevated platform that had been built on top of the deck.
“That’s where the vampire’ll be,” Felgor said, then pointed down the right path where there was a tavern-boat with a swollen hull and several levels of jury-rigged rooms above the deck. There was a stone sign with BREAD, EGGS, MEAT scrawled across it. “And that’s where we can get some damn good food before we deal with that crazy asshole. How about it? I’m starving.”
“Not a bad idea,” Rowan said. “Being honest, I’m feeling pretty thin myself.”
Bershad hesitated. He wasn’t exactly in tip-top shape, either. He looked at Vera, who nodded begrudgingly.
“Fine. Breakfast, then we go see the vampire.”
* * *
The tavern-boat was dark and everything smelled like sawdust and seaweed. Almost every seat and table was filled with men who were drinking from ceramic jugs and plowing into plates of bread and eggs and meat. Bershad and the others shuffled through the crowd and found a spot at the end of the stained bar where there was room for Alfonso. Bershad caught the attention of the serving man behind the bar with a nod of his head.
“How much?” he asked in Balarian, motioning to his neighbor’s plate of food and jug of wine.
“Three corals for the food. One for the wine,” the man answered. He had a thick neck and big hands with silver hairs sprouting from his knuckles.
Bershad didn’t have any corals, and he didn’t know how much they were worth. So he removed two of the silvers from Yonmar’s purse and put them on the bar. “Four of everything,” he said.
The barman snatched the coins and walked away. He returned a few minutes later with food and wine and a fistful of corals for change. Bershad looked down at them.
“How badly did I just get ripped off?” he asked Felgor.
“You don’t want to know.”
Bershad shrugged, then dug into his plate of food. They ate in ravenous silence, all of them preparing their next bite of food before swallowing the current one. When his plate was empty, Bershad took a long gulp of his wine, which was warm and clear and tasted like rice. With so many people around, Bershad felt a burning desire to polish the rest of it off in a big gulp and order another one, but he resisted the urge. He motioned for the barman again. When he returned, Bershad pushed another silver forward.
“Do you know who the vampire of Taggarstan is?” Bershad asked.
Felgor opened his mouth, but Vera silenced him with a stare.
The barman frowned. “Where you from, lizard killer?”
“Far away.”
The man grunted. “That’s clear. Because everyone in Taggarstan knows who the vampire is. And they know better than to go around asking for him.”
“Guess I’m the ignorant and reckless type, then.” Bershad smiled, then passed two more silvers across the counter. Leaned in and spoke softly. “Is he on that black ship across the way right now?”
“Aye.”
“What’s it take to see him?”
The man rubbed a greasy hand through his dirty hair. “Seeing the vampire is done on the vampire’s terms, lizard killer. So finish your wine and fuck off.”
Bershad dug out five more silver pieces and laid them on the table. He wanted to know more. “Tell me what he looks like.”
The man glared at the silvers like they were spiders. Then he sighed and scooped them up. “Bone-white skin. Red eyes. Moves like lightning with a blade and kills curious people for fun. Eats them after, some say.”
Bershad felt the hairs on his neck prickle.
; “Vergun,” he said.
“Eh?” The barman squinted at him.
“You are describing a man named Vallen Vergun,” Bershad said.
“Aye, Vergun the vampire. You’re eating his eggs. Drinking his wine.”
Bershad drained the contents of his jug in one long gulp, gripping the side with white knuckles.
“I want to talk to him. Right now.”
The barman laughed. “Only reason you’re gonna talk to the vampire is if you rack up a debt you can’t pay or cause trouble in one of his taverns. And believe me, the conversation won’t go your way.”
“Fair enough.”
Bershad drew the dagger from the small of his back and slammed the butt into the man’s face. His nose snapped and he fell backward into the wall, holding his ruined face and bleeding everywhere.
“Go tell Vallen Vergun the Flawless Bershad is causing trouble in one of his taverns.”
26
ASHLYN
Almira, Floodhaven
As the sun burned low in the west, casting an orange glow over Castle Malgrave and Floodhaven, Ashlyn prepared for her coronation. The voices of hundreds of people echoed up from the courtyard below, along with the smell of the sea. The lords of Almira were waiting for their queen.
She wore a gown of black silk that wrapped around her body five times—weaving across her breasts and arms in an intricate design that dropped down from her torso in a pattern of triangular slashes and precise angles of fabric. Servants had sculpted her long black hair into a series of rigid spires that stabbed upward, forming an onyx crown above her head.
“Did any more western lords arrive today?” Ashlyn asked a steward, who seemed very uncomfortable in Ashlyn’s bedchambers. She had been stuck getting her hair shaped for the last five hours, and was unable to monitor the city walls herself.
“They have, my queen. More than fifty small lords of the Gorgon Valley rode through the gates today—they joined Cedar Wallace in his villa this afternoon and are now awaiting you in the courtyard with the others.”
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