The Executioner's Right (The Executioner's Song Book 1)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Finn looked down at the concoction. He knew that Meyer often offered healing, but was he willing to try his healing?

  It was free. In that way, it was far more useful to him than anything that a physician might be able to offer.

  Finn took the concoction. “Thank you.”

  “Do what you need to do now. This evening, we will continue your training.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Finn sat at the edge of his mother’s bed, the now-empty dropper in hand. Finn had tested it on himself before administering it to his mother. He didn’t know if there was anything that he would be able to learn from it, but at least he wanted to ensure it wouldn’t be poisonous to him. Other than a bitter flavor with a strange lingering taste to it, he didn’t detect anything worrisome from it.

  His mother hadn’t moved since he’d been there. He remained at the bedside, watching her, occasionally standing and wiping the sweat from her forehead, before taking a seat and resting next to her.

  Finn lost track of how long he’d been sitting there. Lena hadn’t returned from her job, though she’d been working with the butcher, so he didn’t necessarily know how long her shifts were. Longer than he would have expected, though. Longer than Lena deserved, especially as she would end up returning home and needing to care for their mother.

  Meyer hadn’t given Finn any idea of how often he was to administer the medicine. Maybe one time was enough. Neither had he given him any idea of how long it would take for the medicine to work. Finn doubted it would be immediate. Considering how long it had taken for the illness to fully take hold, he expected the recovery to be equally long.

  Getting to his feet, he headed to the kitchen, cleaning up the dishes in the basin and putting them away. He might not be bringing as much coin to Lena as he had before, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t contribute in other ways.

  When he had straightened as much as he could, including his mother’s room, Lena still hadn’t returned.

  Where would she be?

  Tucking his mother in and taking the dropper, he left the home. He’d have to check on her in the morning. She’d fed herself in the past but didn’t show any interest in doing so now. She’d worsened. Lena had a technique to ensure she ate what she needed. She’d take care of it when she returned.

  Night had fallen in the time that he’d been helping his mother. Finn looked up at the full moon as one of the nearby church bells tolled. The Berend bells. He listened, counting the bells, and realized that he’d been there longer than he’d expected.

  He was tired.

  Not that he’d done anything all that challenging through the day, but he was still tired. The danger over the last few days had gotten to the point where he now felt the effects. Meyer would expect him back, and Finn didn’t want to be gone too long. Not until he knew all that Meyer expected of him.

  As he headed back toward the executioner’s home, a familiar person made their way toward him.

  “Sneaking out again?” Helda asked.

  “I’m not sneaking,” he said, give her an appraising look. “Look at you—”

  A sharp frown cut him off.

  She was dressed well for the evening, though the cut of her dress hid anything he wanted to see. She had her hair pulled back, and a small blue hat tilted on her head.

  “Say, Helda. Have you seen my sister?”

  Helda’s face clouded. “Not as much lately. Thanks to you.”

  “What do you mean, thanks to me?”

  “You go sneaking off, leaving her to fend for your mother.” Helda stepped toward him. Were those lilacs he smelled on her? “Lena is working for the butcher.” She lowered her voice at the end, whispering it to Finn.

  “I know.”

  She stepped back, hands clasped behind her back. “And you let her?”

  “You know Lena better than anyone.” Helda’s frown deepened. “And it’s not up to me what she does with her time. Lena can work for whoever she wants.”

  “So long as you get to skulk around the city; is that what you mean?” Helda shook her head, meeting his gaze with an expression of irritation. “She deserves more than working at a place like that. She wanted…”

  “Wanted what?”

  Helda shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Just like it doesn’t matter that she worried about how you were going to end up just like your father. It’s already killing your mother, and Lena…”

  Finn frowned. “What about Lena?”

  Helda sniffed. “Even if she has to work for the butcher now, that doesn’t change how Lena would like to find a suitable husband. How can she when she’s working like she is?”

  Was that what had been troubling his sister? He hadn’t considered it before, but he could see how that would bother her.

  “What about you? What kind of husband are you looking for?”

  “One who knows how to treat a woman right.”

  Finn opened his mouth, thinking of what he might say were he in the Wenderwolf, before he caught himself. He liked Helda. He appreciated her loyalty to his sister, a trait not enough people had, and he enjoyed her attitude, even when she directed it at him. “If you see my sister, let her know I gave Mother a different medicine.”

  Helda paused as she pushed past him. Definitely lilacs. “She’ll want to know what kind of medicine.”

  Finn shook his head. “I don’t really know. It was given to me by…”

  He wasn’t about to tell Helda who had given him the medicine. That would mean that he’d have to explain what he’d been doing. That would mean that his sister would learn that he now trained to be an executioner.

  “An apothecary,” he finished.

  “When I see her, I’ll let Lena know you gave your mother something you should not have.” Helda frowned at him another moment before heading off.

  Finn wound toward the butcher shop where his sister worked. He needed to visit with her. If Helda were concerned about her, then Finn needed to be. He reached the Jorven’s butcher shop and looked in the window, but there was no sign of Lena.

  Maybe she wasn’t working this evening.

  Or she was in the back.

  What was he thinking? He didn’t need to distract her during her job and earn the ire of her employer. More than that, he needed to get back to Master Meyer. He started off, glancing over his shoulder and back toward the butcher, before turning his attention back to the road.

  He caught a glimpse of a cloaked figure who reminded him of the King.

  Finn followed on a whim.

  The man ducked into an alley. Finn slowed, moving across the street to get a better view, and saw the figure talking to someone.

  It was definitely the King.

  He almost called out to him before catching himself. The King wouldn’t want Finn drawing attention out here, but who was he talking to? They were on the edge of the Olin section, but near the river, as if he’d been about to cross into the better sections of the city.

  The other man stepped past the King and onto the street, and Finn froze.

  An Archer.

  The Archer headed along the street, and even from a distance, Finn could tell from the stripes on his jacket that he wasn’t just a typical city Archer.

  Somebody of rank.

  Knowing the King, it was probably somebody of considerable rank.

  The Archer held a pouch in hand and stuck it into his pocket.

  The King was paying him off. Another bribe.

  Unless he was the Client.

  Finn considered following the Archer but decided against it as the King headed away from him. Finn stayed in the shadows until the King left the alley, and he followed him again. So far, the King seemed unmindful of Finn’s presence. Oscar can’t make fun of my skill this time. When the King ducked into a general store, Finn waited.

  There were too many people who could be the Client.

  Finn wished that he knew who it was. The jobs were strange, even if they paid well. They’d almost gotten pinche
d taking the damn bowl, then he had gotten caught at the viscount manor. Considering what the king had said about Rock nearly getting pinched, there was a pattern that bothered Finn.

  He waited, and waited longer, and when the King still didn’t come out, he decided he’d been gone long enough. Finally, Finn continued back to Master Meyer’s home.

  It was dark when he reached it.

  Not entirely, though.

  A light near the back of the home caught his attention.

  Finn crept slowly, quietly, and reached a cracked door. Voices drifted out, and he leaned close to listen.

  Who’d be visiting Meyer at this time of the evening?

  “Are you sure this will work?” a soft voice asked.

  Finn looked through the cracked door. A younger woman, probably only a few years older than him, stood across from Master Meyer, holding some small item clutched in her hands. She had a drab brown dress and a gray cloak that hung over her shoulders. He couldn’t really see her face from the angle near the door.

  “Nothing is sure when it comes to this sort of medicinal, but I’ve done what I can. Twice a day. No more than that.”

  The woman nodded and left a stack of coins on the table near her, turning and heading out through a door in the back of the room.

  When she was gone, he heard Meyer clear his throat. “You can come in, Finn.”

  Finn hesitated. He wasn’t sure how Meyer would tolerate him listening to conversations, though Finn hadn’t listened that long.

  Stepping into the room, he looked around. It reminded him something of the apothecary’s shop, though quite a bit more organized. Shelves had various powders and liquids, all arranged neatly, organized so that he suspected Meyer knew precisely where everything was on the shelves. A table near the back of the room held various measuring implements. Powder piled up on a plate seemed out of place compared to everything else.

  “I wasn’t trying to listen in,” Finn said. His gaze continued to drift around the inside of the room before finally settling on the coins the woman had left stacked on the table.

  Three silver drebs.

  Finn stared for a moment. That was a considerable amount of money.

  She had paid that much?

  Seeing the girl, she didn’t appear wealthy. Certainly not someone he would have targeted were he in the streets.

  “I suppose you might as well begin to see how you can supplement your income. At least, when you progress in your training.” Meyer picked up the plate of powder, and he carefully tapped it into another container, sweeping it completely clean before replacing the canister on the shelf near others and putting the plate away.

  “You offer healing,” Finn said. Finn had known that he did, but seeing it firsthand, and realizing just how much Meyer made, was a surprise to him.

  He had no idea how much the city compensated Meyer for his executioner services, but if he were to make this much in additional income, what he made as an executioner wouldn’t matter. He could augment his earnings considerably.

  “To some.”

  “For a considerable compensation,” Finn said. That must be the supplies Beshear had needed.

  “I charge what my services are worth,” Master Meyer said. “Not as much as the physicians would charge, but a bit more than your typical apothecary or surgeon. I have found that very few people mind paying.” Meyer took a book off of the shelf and held it out to Finn. “I warned you that you would be busy and that you needed to begin your studies. Start with this while still working on your knots and the sword.”

  Instead of execution strategies or interrogation techniques, Finn found the book described the human body. He looked up, meeting Master Meyer’s gaze. “What is this?”

  “Part of your training.”

  “Why?”

  “To be successful in all aspects of what you will be asked to do, you need to be prepared.”

  “I need to know as much as a surgeon?”

  As he flipped through the pages of the book, he saw bones and blood vessels and muscles all depicted in careful detail.

  “Not as much as a surgeon. More.”

  Finn continued flipping through the pages. How was he ever supposed to learn all of this?

  “I don’t know that I can do this.”

  “You don’t have much of a choice,” Meyer said.

  Finn started to set the book down before shaking his head. “I didn’t think the job was like this.”

  “What did you think that I did? Did you believe that I acted carelessly? Would the people of the city tolerate an executioner who was careless in his duties?”

  Finn knew that the city wouldn’t tolerate it. The magister and the jurors likely wouldn’t tolerate it either. If Meyer weren’t skilled, he doubted that he would have held the position that he had for as long as he had.

  “You have the rest of the week to make your way through that book. I will assign others as you progress.”

  “Is there a rush?”

  “Only to make you competent.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the king decreed it.”

  Meyer took a seat at his table and moved the coins, sliding them across the table and stacking them away, before leaning back and pulling out a book of his own to read.

  Finn hesitated. He had another question he’d avoided asking but wanted to know. “Did you ever learn what happened to the Lion?” Finn worried it would implicate one of his crew like the King, or worse—Oscar.

  Meyer looked up at him. “Unfortunately, there have been no leads. That happens sometimes. Not all cases are solved. I suppose there’s a lesson in that, frustrating as it might be.”

  Finn stood in place for a few moments, debating what more he might be able to ask, trying to understand if there was anything more Meyer might demand of him, before heading to the small room at the back of the home and closing the door behind him. The table with the lantern made a different sort of sense now.

  Finn took a seat as he opened the book, took the length of rope to practice the knots, and began to read.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The whimpering turned Finn’s stomach, but he made an effort to not look away. He needed to see what Meyer did if this was going to be his profession.

  Meyer rubbed a thick, oily substance on the man’s arm, and the whimpering eased. Finn had watched as Meyer had mixed the salve, though he hadn’t known what was in it. The components of the compound were beyond him. For now.

  “Easy,” Meyer said softly, still rubbing the salve along the man’s arm. “This will feel better in a few moments. The aloe and the honey should soothe the burn.”

  The man nodded.

  Meyer finished applying the burn salve and wiped his hands on a towel, glancing at Finn. “You were telling me about where you were on the night Lorna Vils died.”

  Died. Not murdered, though that was what had happened. Finn didn’t have all the details, but what he’d managed to pick up suggested to him that the woman had been brutally beaten and then slaughtered in her home.

  This man had been found with blood all over him, and the first inquisitors to question him had tested him with fire. So far, the man hadn’t given up much information.

  “I don’t know where I was that night. I’d been at the tavern. Having a few. That’s no crime, regardless of the way the church of Heleth feels about it.”

  Meyer smiled at him, though there was a hint of sadness within it. “The church doesn’t look down upon a man who enjoys a drink now and again,” he said.

  “Maybe not the gods you pray to,” he said.

  Meyer turned back to him. He held the jar of the ointment in hand, and the man’s gaze drifted to it. Finn didn’t know how bad the burns on and underneath his arms were, then neither did he know just how aggressively the inquisitors had worked with him. Meyer didn’t reveal that to him.

  “I’m going to ask you again where you were on that night,” Meyer said.

  “I told you where I was.”

/>   “Were you involved in what happened?”

  “To Lorna? Gods! I liked that woman. I wouldn’t have done anything to hurt her.”

  Finn studied him, listening to the way that he spoke.

  It seemed to him that he told the truth, though the executioner’s words came back to him. Which truth did he speak?

  “Were you involved with her?”

  The man’s gaze lingered on the jar for a moment before looking up at Meyer’s face. He shook his head quickly. Almost too quickly. “She was a married woman. I wasn’t involved with her.”

  That’s a lie.

  Finn could tell that much, which suggested that the other things he said weren’t a lie.

  “Her husband grieves. Her boy and girl don’t have a mother. All they want is the peace that the gods can offer them. If there is anything that you might be able to say that would offer them that peace…”

  The man shook his head again. “I told you I didn’t have anything to do with it. I was at the tavern. Must’ve had too much to drink and blacked out. I don’t remember anything from that night. All I remember is getting dragged down here. Damn Archers throwing me into the cell.” He tried to lift his arms, but the leather straps holding him made it difficult. “My head has been throbbing. Then they burned me, torturing me as if that were going to change anything that I had told them. I wasn’t lying to them,” he said.

  Meyer studied him for a long moment before nodding slowly. “We will see. The gods demand justice.”

  He set the jar of ointment on the table and motioned for Finn to join him as they departed. Meyer glanced at the nearest of the iron masters when they were out of the room and leaned toward him. “You can apply the ointment to his arms three to four times a day. Anything more than that is probably unnecessary. Don’t leave any scars.”

  The iron master, a surly-looking man with a long, hooked nose and a scruff of graying beard, nodded quickly. “We haven’t been questioning him. Warden has been.”