by Heide Goody
Still, they were going to be even more of a surprise to the Ludens city guards.
Merken liked the look of surprise on people’s faces. It was the physical embodiment of the fact he was cleverer than them. He liked his intelligence to be acknowledged.
Would the Ludensians be as surprised as the Abrelians were when he had handed their island home to the Satheans? They were surprised to discover declaring their independence from Carius did not bring instant wealth and fortune. The stupid islanders had neglected to consider Carius had provided Abrelia with all of its military defences; that Carius had for years given Abrelia preferential trade deals; that Carius had made use of Abrelian store houses and mercantile services when they could have easily used those elsewhere. When the Sathean navy sailed into the harbour, come winter (oh, what fresh surprises on the Abrelians’ faces!) they found a former jewel of trade and enterprise reduced to a poxy island of goat-herders and olive-farmers, all of them disappointed to realise their promised twenty gold a year each had magically vanished with the Carians.
Merken put his fingers to his mouth, licked his dry lips and gave a sharp whistle. The dozen warriors by the city wall stood and approached. Standing up, it was obvious which was Cope Threemen. She was a good head taller than any of the others. Gods, the woman was simple in the head but she could have made a fine warrior with the right training. He passed the first pot to her.
General Handzame pulled down the hood of her cloak. She, unlike Cope, was an unremarkable woman. Merken had known great leaders in his youth, but all the great men were dead now. Handzame wasn’t even fit to stand beside what passed for today’s “great” men. She had a famous family name but nothing more. Without it, she was truly anonymous.
“It is time,” said Handzame.
Merken wasn’t sure if that was a question or a statement. Either way it made no sense. It was clearly time. Merken’s plan had been precise. They had rehearsed it until their bones were sore and they could have executed it in their sleep.
“Remember,” Merken said to the soldiers. “It’s all about speed.”
“All about speed, men!” declared Handzame, pulling on her helmet with the ridiculous horse hair crest.
“Speed and fear,” said Merken.
“It’s all about speed and fear, my fine soldiers!” announced Handzame.
Merken stopped and looked at Handzame. “Perhaps you wish to give the orders, ma’am?”
Handzame gave him a benevolent nod of the head. “I’ve delegated that to you, Merken. It’s what you’re here for.”
“Indeed. Cloaks off.”
“Cloaks off!” ordered Handzame.
Merken held back a sigh. He was proficient at holding back sighs. He had a lifetime’s worth of sighs pent-up in his breast – the cost of enduring forty years of marriage. He was sure they’d be the death of him one day. One pent up sigh too many and he’d pop.
He drew his sword, silently waved for the others to follow and headed towards the gate. They walked at first, broke into a speedy jog and then – Merken’s knees creaking like ship’s sails as they neared the gate – charged.
The guard’s expression of dumbfounded surprise, a split second before Cope Threemen smashed her clay pot into his face nearly made Merken laugh. That alone made the whole venture worthwhile. With a half-grin, half-grimace on his face, he led the assault on Ludens to the bloodthirsty roar of a thousand Amanni warriors.
2
Merken put two men on the temple complex walls, another two on the gate itself and sent out four on the first patrol of the city. Ludens would need a constant reminder it was a city under occupation. Happy with the positioning of the troops, he went into the temple to give Handzame his report.
She was in the great audience chamber of the eighth floor. It said a lot about a person who immediately sought out a throne room as her command headquarters, with no regard for the isolated position of those headquarters or the aching knees of her most senior officer.
Merken rubbed some life back into his left leg before entering. Handzame was pacing the floor with a passionate will. Merken had seen military leaders pace the floor. It was, as best as he could fathom, a substitute for actual thinking, which was what intelligent people did. Nonetheless, there was still an art to pacing. A man with the intellect of a pickle but the art of the pace, could give a jolly good impression of a great leader deep in profound thought. Handzame paced like someone in desperate need of the bathroom.
“General?” said Merken.
She looked up sharply. The flames from the open braziers either side of the Hierophant’s throne accentuated the panicked fury on her face. “He’s gone!”
“Has he?” said Merken smoothly.
“Do you know who I’m talking about?”
“The wizard?” said Merken.
She stopped her pacing and stumbled. “You know?”
Merken allowed himself a thin smile. “I do. And I expected it too.”
This did little to alleviate her temper. There was a very real prospect she might start pacing again. “Doesn’t he know we enter Foesen’s tomb in a matter of hours?”
“I should think he does.”
“And you aren’t at all put out by this turn of events?”
“People are predictable,” he said. “They like to think they are free agents, like the gods. But they are simple creatures of habit and patterns. Simple, like dogs. Predictable, like clocks,” he said, pointedly.
Handzame had calmed sufficiently to be able to think straight. She read Merken’s meaning. “We are not done here yet.”
“The city is taken,” he replied. “We agreed.”
Handzame took a dark velvet bag from an arm of the throne and passed it to Merken. He luxuriated in its weight for a while before opening it. Inside was a polished wooden box with a clasp. He opened this too, looking at the clockwork marvel within. One of only two surviving timepieces by the great Hary Greginax. There was nothing in this modern fallen age to compare with it.
“Happy?” said Handzame.
“Very much so,” sighed Merken and snapped the case shut. “Some dogs can never be let off the leash. You beat them when they bite, you reward them when they follow commands; but you can never let them off the leash, or else they turn on each other. Or indeed you. Other dogs can be trained, sent off to round up herds or find game, and they will respond to a single word. And then there are other dogs, little more than damnable wolves, who will hang around the campfire, guard the tribe from enemies and join in with the hunt. They might go off into the wild for a time and pretend to be wolves again, but will always return because the camp is where the fire and the meat can be found.” Merken secured the drawstring of the velvet bag and tied it to his belt. “Abington has gone off to be a wolf for a few hours. We will find him.” He turned to leave.
“And what kind of dog are you?” Handzame asked. There was a sudden attempt at bonhomie in her tone, a sort of We’re both experienced soldiers, leaders of men. Only we can understand the burden of command kind of thing. “You see yourself as a wolf, I bet,” she said.
Merken held her gaze, eye to eye. He hid his utter contempt. Forty years of marriage made him good at it. “A dog which thinks it’s a wolf is a damned fool. And will only realise it when it meets a real wolf.”
3
Merken slipped into the tavern on the corner of Mercer Row and Kidgate and, through force of habit, stepped from nook to shadow to cranny until he had placed himself, entirely unnoticed, in a corner with an excellent view of the tavern crowd.
He watched Abington in conversation with Cope. He watched the smart chap with the ready smile and trimmed beard dismiss the blonde-haired girl he was with and go join their conversation. He watched Lorrika return from the bar with some sort of bard, possibly drunk, in tow. He watched Cope get up to speak to the bard. He watched the smart chap peer inside Lorrika’s mouth and the increasingly heated conversation between Abington and the smart chap. He watched Abington reach for one
of the many pouches at his belt and stuff his pipe. He watched Cope abruptly fell the bard with a single punch. He watched Abington put a lit match to his pipe and blow his own head off.
Merken was pushing through the crowd before most people realised what had just happened. The smart chap got up to run and Cope took him firmly in hand. Lorrika was crawling around on the filthy floor, trying to gather together bits of Abington that had been blasted around and about. It was mad, but Merken had seen men attempt madder things in the shock of combat.
“What are you doing?” Cope was asking Lorrika.
“Picking up bits of wizard,” explained Merken. He glanced at the smart chap firmly held by Cope. “Who’s he?”
Cope shrugged. “I don’t know his part in this. He’s a dentist.”
“Just a dentist!” whimpered the man.
“Is he now? What happened to Abington?” asked Merken.
“I think he might have done something really bad in a past life,” said Cope grimly. She looked at Merken and then pointed towards the stairs. “The artist. I knocked him out cold. We need to take him with us or kill him.”
“Why?”
“Because he knows too much.”
4
Knees aching more than ever, Merken entered the great audience chamber on the eighth floor. Handzame was still pacing the floor. It was a large and imposing room and ideal for those who wished for a large area in which to pace. On a broad table beneath a wall mosaic of the divine eagle Tudu, piles of books, papers, scrolls and charts had been set out. Unrolled charts were held in place by candlesticks and bowls of fruit.
The Mad Empress Kalladia owned a library which, it was claimed, was one of the largest in the world. Kalladia had commissioned its construction but had never read a single book from it. Inspired by some new-fangled philosophical notion called rude particulates, Kalladia took daily walks along its aisles and alleyways in the belief she would simply soak up knowledge by her proximity to so many written words. The pretence of learning without any of the effort.
Handzame might have Abington’s research on Foesen’s tomb in front of her but Merken suspected she had spent more time arranging it than reading it. Handzame tried really hard to create the right appearance of things. Merken would have felt sorry for her if he didn’t despise her for it.
“Well?” she demanded.
“The wizard is dead,” said Merken. There was no point in pouring honey on a cow pat. “His head exploded.”
Handzame’s mouth actually fell open a little. “Is that— Is that something wizard’s heads do?”
“In my limited experience, ma’am, no. We arrested two men: a bard and one who claims to be a dentist and a wizard.”
“What’s a dentist?”
“It’s something to do with teeth, I believe.”
“Did they kill Abington?”
“I do not think so. They’re guilty of something, although I’m not sure what. I’ve given the order for them to be beheaded.”
“And you expect us to now enter the tomb without Abington to guide us?” said Handzame.
“There’s certainly little point taking him with us, ma’am.”
“But how are we to succeed? It was Abington’s research which was going to get us through the labyrinth, the traps…”
Merken had been afforded plenty of time to contemplate this as he had climbed the steps to the eighth floor, cursing his limbs, his burning lungs and the inventor of stairs all the way. “We take his books. We can read, ma’am. We navigate as best we can. We make take a day or so longer, but we will succeed.”
Handzame grabbed a book from the table, seemingly at random but, Merken could tell, it had been specifically chosen, specifically placed. She thrust it towards him. Merken looked at diagrams of some sort of vice-like device: all turning screws and pulley weights. He looked at the text written underneath and in the borders. It was meaningless squiggles to him, like no writing he knew.
“Oh, hell,” swore Merken.
“That’s what I said,” said Handzame. “I’m glad we agree.”
Merken hurried to the balcony and shouted down to the people in the courtyard below, hoping the beheadings had not yet taken place – one headless wizard was as little use as another — but it was eight storeys down and no amount of shouting or waving in the dark was going to draw their attention.
Merken cast about for something to throw.
5
The address was a small house on the corner of Cisterngate with a wyvern’s head (clearly a papier-mâché forgery) mounted above the door. The sight of a half-drawn sword was enough to buy the silence and compliance of the woman at the door. Merken sent Lorrika climbing the outside wall to the window, he taking the stairs to the first floor. The door to the guest room was unlocked. Merken entered, expecting to find a darkened room, maybe the lump of small sleeping body in the bed. Instead, he saw a young girl with white-blonde hair and skin as pale as spider silk sitting at a table, swinging her legs as she scratched at the table top with a small knife; all by the barely sufficient light of a candle. Merken recognised her from the tavern earlier that evening: it was the wizard Pagnell’s girl. The soldier quickly took in the rest of the room. There were some odd-looking implements laid out on another table. They looked somewhat familiar to Merken, who had seen many a well-equipped dungeon. Drills, a variety of sharp probes and a rather sinister crescent-shaped bowl with a handle. However, rather than being encrusted with dried blood from the last victim, these looked shiny and clean and were arranged neatly on a white linen cloth.
The girl looked round at Merken and then at Lorrika climbing through the window. She should have screamed. Merken had sons and daughters (a vaguely indeterminate number; he could count them if he chose but rarely bothered) and also grandsons and granddaughters (a decidedly indeterminate number; he’d dangled a fair few on his knees but never bothered to keep count). He knew children, after a fashion, and the girl should have screamed. But she didn’t.
“Are you ghosts?” she said.
“No, little girl,” said Merken. “Do we look like ghosts?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never seen one.”
“Then why…?”
“She—” the girl pointed her knife at Lorrika “—came in through the window. People don’t come in through the window. That’s what doors are for.”
“Do ghosts come through windows?” asked Merken.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one. I did say,” the girl added very seriously.
“Yes, you did. Your name is Spirry, yes?”
“Windows are stupid,” said Spirry.
“Are they? Well, you are to come with—”
“People decided they wanted to live indoors and then as soon as they did they put holes in the walls so they could see outside.”
“I suppose that’s because—”
“And when they started having fires indoors, they put holes in the ceiling—”
“Chimneys.”
“I do know what they’re called, mister man. To let the smoke outside. And don’t get me started on balconies.”
“I don’t plan to.”
“It’s almost as if people didn’t want to live indoors in the first place.”
“Shall I bag her?” asked Lorrika, holding up a sack she had with her.
Merken held up a liver-spotted hand, a command to be patient. “We have your father prisoner,” he said.
Spirry appeared to give this some thought. “I was told my mother was the earth and my father was the rain, and that I was found in the cup of an acorn.”
Merken wasn’t sure what to do with that damned statement. “Newport Pagnell,” he said.
“Oh, him,” said Spirry. “Sure. Got it.”
Again, Merken would have expected some sort of emotional response. Screams, tears, confusion or stunned silence but, no. Maybe the girl was simple in the head.
“And you need to come with us,” said Merken.
Spirry p
ut the knife down. “I don’t think I want to.”
“I’m not giving you a choice, young lady.”
“I still don’t think I want to.”
Merken gave the nod to Lorrika. The thief pounced on Spirry with the sack. It should have been straightforward. The girl was a little dot of a thing and now unarmed. But she had sharp teeth. Maybe that’s what you got for having a dentist for a father.
And finally there was screaming. Not Spirry’s but Lorrika’s. And there was blood. Again, not Spirry’s but Lorrika’s. Lorrika yelled and kicked as the girl clung to her, teeth buried in the fleshy part of Lorrika’s hand.
They eventually got the girl into the sack, but it was a messy and undignified success which, on honest reflection, was more difficult than invading the city.
6
In the ante-room to the great audience chamber, Merken watched Pagnell pore over the papers the soldier had brought him. Pagnell read them with what looked like genuine scholarly curiosity. The wizard’s hands were still bound with manacles to prevent him casting spells. Merken wasn’t yet convinced this man was a genuine spellcaster – he’d known a fair few mages, even a wizard or two, and this youngster hardly looked like he was cut from the right cloth – but Merken wasn’t going to take any chances.
“Newport Pagnell,” he said.
The man glanced up. He still had smears of exploded wizard on his face.
“I’ve heard of a wizard called Newport Pagnell,” said Merken. “A student of Tibshelf, I recall. Only heard of him because of that damned business with the tower in Aumeria. Last I heard, he went off into the wilderness to consort with fairies and the like.”
Pagnell shook his head. “In my defence, the tower was going to collapse anyway. Shoddy foundations. If anything, I gave it nothing more than the magical equivalent of a nudge. I was wholly exonerated by the guild. And, as for the thing with fairies – seriously? Fairies? Grimlocks, trolls and even a sea serpent or two, yes; but fairies? Magical elfin creatures with gossamer wings? Please, sir. Do not joke.”
