Fugitive Prince

by Janny Wurts

  Oblivious, Arithon loitered to gossip with a laundry girl, rinsing linens on a gallery, while Caolle dodged wind-scattered droplets of runoff, and Dakar fumed in annoyance. His chastised survey of each chance-met acquaintance revealed no other familiar faces.

  The day wore past noon. Arithon jaunted through the sailors’ market, loquaciously intrigued with its glass beads and shell trinkets; its whalebone charms against drowning, and its philters and potions mixed against ague and hangover and whore’s pox. He chaffed the apothecary and acquired a posy of dried catmint. A second talisman maker sold him assorted tin scraps in a sack.

  Jostled by a press of tar-smelling riggers, they withstood the buffeting sea breeze while Arithon purchased a burgundy silk waistcoat trimmed with mother-of-pearl spangles.

  Before suffering another zigzagging course through the market, Dakar balked and dropped all the packs on the cobbles. “No more.”

  Arithon looked at him, eyebrows raised, then unslung the lyranthe from his shoulder. “Hold this,” he bade Caolle, then balanced his sack of tin leavings on top of the load.

  Right there in the street, amid rumbling drays and carters who swore and reined their racketing teams around him, he donned his ridiculous glad rags.

  The maroon-and-gold garment clashed stupendously with moss green hose. Dakar gave way to disgust. “Spare us all, you’re a sight to make a corpse walk.”

  Arithon grinned, an edged flash of teeth. “I agree. After the clothes, who will look at the face?” He asked back his instrument, to Caolle’s relief, then waded undaunted through the rows of shawled women packing salt barrels.

  Dakar’s vociferous frustration cracked echoes off the mews chosen this time for an exit. He sucked in a breath and choked on the miasma of tar and hot wax. His next comment was expelled as a cough. They had entered Chandler’s Alley from the north. The craftshop of the benighted bell founder loomed ahead, every casement boarded up, and its signpost demolished to slivers. The cobbles beneath were sugared in smashed glass and the shards of pulverized roof slates.

  The Mad Prophet gave the warped door, the bent nails, the litter of bashed casements his expert survey, and chuckled. “Ath. The iyats are having themselves a field day.”

  Arithon leaned close, cautious in a realm where mage talents lay under interdict. “They’re still here? You can see them?”

  Dakar nodded. His trained eye picked out the whorled dimples of distressed air which pocked the shop front and the surrounding alley, unmistakable trace of the energy sprites’ presence. “The whole place is riddled. Do you guess this is sport, or plain revenge for the fact the warding bells are out of true?”

  “Likely both,” said Arithon s’Ffalenn in delight, “and for us, a rapturous throw of fortune.” He banged on the door, which swung inward on shrieking, bent hinges.

  A short step into a lanternless dimness, then a violent stir from the shadows: an angular crane of a man scrunched across a piney spill of sawdust, most likely scattered to cushion the impact of tools the rampaging iyats might throw down. “Are you blind?” he howled in calamitous agitation. “Get you out. We’re fiend plagued and closed!”

  Dakar cringed, face masked in his hands; Arithon tucked back an exhalation suspiciously like laughter; while the fiends, busy creatures, rocked into a wakened frenzy of assault.

  A tin cup chained to a fallen washbasin gyrated in crazed circles in the dark. Something else made of wood, a potstand or a close stool, galloped to life on a circling course to smash ankles. Caolle yelled, stamped down on an offending pair of fire tongs which tried to stab holes in his boots, while a row of tin canisters rocked as if to dump themselves over his head.

  “Ath, see what you’ve done!” the bell founder screeched above burgeoning commotion. “The blighted infestation has started all over again!”

  Iyats enjoyed feeding upon human rage. Hand-wringing, dithering hysteria teased them on. Recharged to delight, they obliged, and seized on wild energy to fuel a new round of pranks.

  The cup snapped its tether, shot off into space, and clanged into a hamper of metal scrap. The lot toppled with a deranged, belling crash over the workbench with its crucibles and anvil. Filings and scrolls of shaved iron whirred airborne, a threat to eyesight and flesh. Through that scourging storm, and the craftsman’s imprecations, a sound to drill through quartz: Arithon whistled a shattering threnody.

  Scrap metal dashed to the floor like dropped chaff. The close stool toppled flat and lay with its legs pointed skyward, while from every darkened corner, the artisan’s dropped wares belled in resonant, dissonant sympathy.

  The rampaging fiends ceased their mischief. Under threat of dissolution from those ranging harmonics, they unraveled their energies from purloined items and fled. Their departure, willy-nilly, raised small flurries of ripped air, the ping of popped nails, and a staccato barrage of cracked boards and burst shutters. Inside a handful of heartbeats, the sawdusty gloom subsided to muffling silence.

  “Praise Ath Creator!” The bell founder gaped. His protuberant eyes cast right and left, but saw nothing except blessed stillness. “Here’s a bard!” Nary an iyat remained on his premises, and the impact of rescue sank in. “A bard with a true ear for fiend bane.” He kicked through his muddle of violated belongings, snatched Arithon’s sleeves, then thumped to his knees and gushed out his tearful apologies. “I had no idea. None. Forgive my rude welcome. What amends can I make to beg for a ward on my shop?”

  “A fee.” Arithon slipped his wrists free of moist fingers, amused and cool, but not unkindly. “You’ve no cause to plead. I don’t have the talent to set lasting protections. But to place the pitch to recast your cracked bell, a sum of ten silvers will suffice.”

  “Bless you man!” The craftsman scrambled erect and closed on his find with doggish, backslapping eagerness. “That’s far less than your talent deserves.”

  Caolle scuffed sawdust in stiff-lipped distaste, as much for the disrespect shown to his liege as for the frivolous delay. Arithon’s humor stayed unruffled. For a private man who disliked being touched, he weathered his patron’s unctuous handling with striking equanimity.

  Which anomaly at last snapped Dakar to cold thought. He had accompanied Arithon’s travels too long not to sense another seamless thread of subterfuge. Nor did his hunch prove misplaced. The reputation the bard earned in that one afternoon won them the most sumptuous, private room in the Laughing Captain Tavern for the rest of the week, free of charge.

  Event fell out with natural elegance that, after Arithon’s morning of plying gossip from passersby and his fresh notoriety at the bell founder’s, a nonstop stream of Riverton’s folk should stop to exchange words in the taproom.

  Nor did every admirer wear the face of a stranger. Dakar recognized a ropewalker, a handful of caulkers, and two doxies twined through the arms of a suspiciously familiar sailhand. A street child sidled up, brother to one who had served them before as informant through a forced stay in Jaelot. Ath alone knew how the filthy mite had tracked Arithon the width of the continent.

  Inevitably also came Cattrick, covert conspirator to the Shadow Master’s cause, and paid master of Tysan’s royal shipyard.

  Dakar caught first sight of him, a bluff, square man whose muscular tread rivaled Caolle’s for strength, and whose presence exuded authority. He elbowed his way through the press of galleymen, carousing deckhands, and off-duty royal guards as if he expected due deference, his immense, callused hands broad enough to span the slopping rims of four tankards. The squint to his eye from sighting straight board lengths, or the lines of new keels on their bedlogs, had grown more pronounced through the years since the Khetienn’s first launching in Merior. Lank shocks of brown hair still licked his wide shoulders, a new gleam of silver at the temples.

  The gruff, ram’s horn bellow he used in the sawpits vanquished the taproom’s rank noise. “Beer for you, singer, and for your companions. You’ll need to get drunk to raise any tune through this racket.”

  He b
arged himself a seat on an overcrowded bench. The redolence of pine resin and coal smoke from the boiler sheds laced through the fug, and earned glares from a foppish pair of soap merchants. Cattrick scarcely cared. Braced on his forearms in a loose, sailhand’s shirt, he cut an enormous, rough figure alongside the bard, neatly clean in his flashy silk waistcoat and cap of feathered, pale hair. While the tankards brimmed over, his stilled, intense eyes took in Caolle’s scars and dismissed them. The weapons concealed by the clansman’s caped cloak merited no closer survey. His attention swept over the indolent, small frame of the singer he knew for the Master of Shadow, took note of Dakar’s closemouthed expectation beside him, then flickered back. “Demons take all, minstrel. Ye’ve scarcely the substance to bed a bony-arsed spinster. Are ye man enough, or should I have brought fresh-squeezed cider?”

  Arithon grinned. “Man enough to deplore the childish need for contests involving strong drink.” That opening salvo cheerfully reversed, he stung back. “Best you stay sober for your launching next month. Or did the street gossips malign you for nothing? They say your last brig sailed hull down over the horizon and vanished. Sunk, no doubt, by her ill-fitted seams, if you rate a man’s wits by his bar habits.”

  “Tongue like a viper, you have. Same as every other skinny warbler who can shrill sour notes to banish iyats.” Cattrick downed a vast swallow of beer, his settled bulk like an owl on a branch, his half-lidded gaze still hunting. “Beyond wails for fiend bane, what use is your milk-tongued caterwauling? Lure out my craftsmen to hang moonfaced in their cups, and I’ll have smashed fingers in the yard come the morning. Sprung planking too, if the lads get too muddled to sight north and south on a measurement. Mind your step. Go too bold, you’ll have enemies vying to spike your feckless head atop the gatekeep.”

  A smile from the bard, then a challenge. “Let me play this taproom to a standstill, first. If by then you aren’t flopped beneath the trestle with the rest, let’s find out who’s effete over fine brandy in private.”

  The burly master joiner palmed a belch and gave back a level, hard stare. This game was not new. Arithon chose his associates for excellence; if they came with quirks or unruly character, or balked at being nose led, he must expect to cross wits to extract the service he angled for.

  “Well?” needled the bard.

  Cattrick slammed the trestle with a fist, the same that had once tortured a man whose interests had thoughtlessly crossed him. He held no regret for that incident; nor would he lose sleep if this latest slick bargainer chose to bury the memory. “You want a contest? Said is done and Dharkaron take the hindmost.” The shipwright drained his tankard in cocky salute, shoved erect, and plowed his way back for a refill, while Arithon received an unsettled glower from Caolle.

  “I thought you claimed you had Cattrick in hand,” the Mad Prophet murmured, voice muffled as he peered into the dregs of the beer the ship’s joiner had left him. “Those insults came barbed, or I’m a grandmother goat’s arse.”

  Arithon shot off a sparkling run to retest the pitch of his strings. “It’s all jealousy,” he agreed, eyes alight with innuendo. “Somebody’s welcome was a shade too warm and that clerkish little guardsman behind us returned a bit too pointed an interest.”

  Before Dakar could weigh evidence to tell if the threat was a glib fabrication to divert him, the bard rollicked into the reeling, first measures of a bawdy dockside ballad. His tempered voice cut the noise like struck bronze, suspending discussion and argument. Nearby drinkers erupted to their feet with yells of delight. Wolfish sailhands stayed their dice games, and merchants, their dickering, while barmaids caught the coppers flung onto their trays and bustled to the tap to fetch tankards. By the time the bard closed the last chorus, the common room rocked to the thrill of discovery. He gave his audience no chance to let down, but flowed seamlessly on to the fast, fired lilt of a hornpipe.

  Town ministers started stamping, despite their immaculate velvets. Tar-begrimed deckhands whistled and leaped on the trestles to clog step, then dragged doxies along as the frenzied, wild tempo rocked up one key and took flight. A figure of calm amid heaving pandemonium, Arithon played, head bent and foot briskly tapping. His spirit led the dance, surrendered on demand to the weave of the intricate melody. Precise as stitched gold, each grace note splashed out in ecstatic execution. His was command of a masterbard’s style and to any with mage-sight, the air in his presence became charged into glittering brilliance. His listeners could not help but ignite in conflagration, while the trained snap and flex of his fingers wrought joy from wound metal strings and inspiration.

  Through stamping applause, the landlord shoved in to extend his pledge of free lodging. “Whatever the house has to offer, it’s yours for as long as you’re minded to stay.”

  “A year for one percent from the till, and the coin any well-wishers toss at my feet,” Arithon bargained.

  “On those terms? Bless you, I’d fund your retirement and welcome!” Unable to contain his disbelief and good fortune, the landlord beckoned to his comeliest serving girl. “Give the minstrel and his two servants any damned thing they might ask.”

  While her painted, sloe eyes gauged the way the singer filled his clothes and warmed into frank invitation, the landlord moved off, chuckling.

  “Any damned thing?” Arithon awarded her lush favors the compliment of his smile and snapped a sprightly run from his strings. “Then keep my friend the tinker in beer. That’s work enough for a brigade.”

  The Mad Prophet’s indignant riposte became lost in braw noise as the tap’s salty patrons clanked knives on the boards in demand of a repeat performance. Head tipped aslant, Arithon obliged them, song after song, until evening wore away and his listening crowd roared itself to exhaustion. While the standing survivors reeled their way homeward, the landlord gloated over empty casks and filled strong-boxes, his smile all but nailed in place.

  The bard arose then, stretched, wrapped his lyranthe in no hurry. Caolle knelt unbidden and raked up the abundance of silver tossed down by generous admirers.

  “Do you offer the plate scrapings to the street orphans?” Arithon asked.

  The landlord bobbed up from the gloom behind the bar, a polishing rag in his hand. “I give the ones willing to scrub pots all the leavings. Do you want to save the small coppers for them? You needn’t. That custom’s lapsed since my grandsire’s time.”

  Arithon shrugged. “I keep stubborn habits. Just make sure the girl who sweeps up knows how to count in fair portions.” The instrument slung from his shoulder, he seemed impatient to depart.

  Dakar showed no inclination to move, settled as he was in brosy content with the barmaid cuddled in his lap. “It’s grown desperate late,” he complained in a beery slur. “Can’t you bear to forego the indulgence of sucking down brandy with Cattrick?”

  “I daren’t,” said Arithon. “Caolle can watch my back.” His step ghost light before his liegeman’s solid tread, he picked a path through prone revelers to attend his match with the master of Riverton’s shipyard.

  “Dharkaron wept!” The Mad Prophet groaned in low misery as he peeled off the doxie and apologized. “Before you ask, yes. We’re surely as moon mad as he.”

  Desperate not to care how severely he was weaving, he crossed the puddled taproom in Arithon’s wake, to yelps and grunts from the inebriated bodies he disturbed on his course for the stairway.

  Payment and Bribe

  Autumn 5652

  The Laughing Captain’s best guest suite still wore its origins as a shoreside madam’s boudoir, bed hangings and dagged curtains done in gaudy, flame scarlet, tied back with gold-shot cord. Despite a casement cracked open to catch the sea breeze, an ingrained cloy of patchouli clung to the air and the rugs. The clothes chests were pearl and black lacquer from Vhalzein, new enough that they still smelled of citrus oil. The washstand supported an ewer of gilded enamel flaked with chips at the edges, two rails of embroidered towels, and a pair of pitch-smeared boots just kicked off and crammed
with the wads of shed stockings.

  Their owner had made himself comfortable on the bed, his back to piled pillows, a cut-crystal decanter propped between the knees of his patched canvas trousers. The brandy inside pooled pale amber in the glow shed by beeswax candles on prickets. Not mellow at all in the haze of soft light, Cattrick tracked Arithon’s entrance, slit eyed and primed for contention.

  “Ye’re a master with that,” he opened as the bard tucked his lyranthe away in the wardrobe. “Heard all from here, and it damned well entertained me. Lysaer will be wild when he learns what’s afoot.”

  When and not If; the inference bristled like hurled insult.

  Arithon folded himself into the least-cushioned chair, the deep pleasure instilled by his music yet with him. “Since Avenor’s a scant fifty leagues from this dive, shall we avoid the unpleasantness? If you’re too cowed to pour, I want to be brought up-to-date.”

  “Well, here’s fine impatience.” Cattrick’s lip curled in sarcasm. “Four years is damned long to wait for the asking.”

  When Arithon said nothing, he dug through the pillows and unearthed two enormous glazed tankards. The clink of Falgaire crystal and the trickle of neat spirits did little to soothe a stiff pause.

  Cattrick recapped the decanter and poised the filled tankards on his thighs. “Since we’ve rebuilt and launched a replacement for every galley that burned in Minderl Bay, the crown’s been hiring on riggers like ticks. Two-thirds, and the best, are all yours. The caulkers recruited from Havish were no good.”

  “Too little pay,” Arithon supplied. “King Eldir’s no fool. He funded his craft guilds to keep the well-trained ones at home.”

  “Then that’s old news.” Cattrick shrugged. “Your own crews from Merior have gradually replaced any second-rate labor. Petty infractions did for the rest. The plankers and sawyers all have southshore accents. By Ath, we’re so infested with talent a man wonders why none of it’s local.” He extended an arm in an effortless stretch, passed the most brimming vessel to Arithon, then finished, “Ye ken how I spit on pretty boy hair.”