Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  Inside, the gloom lay thick as black silt.

  The shutters were drawn closed. Fingered by pallid light from the hall sconce, the louvers appeared stuffed with socks, a whore’s lace point chemise, and what seemed a rag that closer inspection revealed for the ripped-up remains of a man’s pair of button-front breeches. The rumpled-up sheets on the bed were quite empty, and streaked scuffs in the floor wax bespoke a galloping rumpus.

  ‘Ath,’ Parrien swore. ‘That whore must’ve fought like a tiger.’ His cast shadow loomed inward, obscuring the view as he thrust his head through the doorway.

  Something large and dark unfurled with a grunt and swooped like a bat from the rafters.

  The knife that Parrien unsheathed to impale it mired to the hilt in a goose-down pillow wrapped in a blanket. On field-trained, fast reflex, Parrien sidestepped. The bundle which plummeted after the pillow missed its broad-shouldered target. It struck the floor with a thud that cracked wood, and a whuff like a challenging walrus. Three mercenaries pounced. They extracted from within its thrashing folds two struggling fists and a pair of larded ankles.

  ‘Hello, Dakar,’ greeted Parrien on the congenial note he saved for interrogating spies.

  The splayed bundle moaned. One bulky end heaved to expose a beet-round, bearded face and two eyes slewed to rolling rings of white. ‘Your men can let up before they dislocate both of my shoulders.’

  ‘Oh?’ Parrien folded his arms, unamused. ‘You want another chance to slit me in two?’

  Annoyance colored Dakar’s face. ‘I thought you were from Jaelot.’ He blanched at a twisting pressure from the captain, and added in patent injury, ‘That wasn’t meant as an insult, and no, before you ask, I’m not in the least bit drunk.’

  Something rustled in the corner and let off a muffled squeal. The two idle mercenaries moved on the sound, found a closet, which they wrenched open. Inside, knees to chin, they found the landlord’s famed Sashka bound and gagged with the ripped-off flounces of her petticoat.

  ‘She wouldn’t stay quiet,’ Dakar explained. ‘You must have gathered, I’m caught in an unpleasant bind.’

  ‘The town guard from Jaelot might snip off your head?’ Parrien’s eyes lit with maniacal delight. ‘I’d do the very same, though maybe for different reasons. Whose wife did you jiggle?’

  ‘If that were all, I wouldn’t be compromised,’ Dakar said with a certain strained dignity. ‘I know you dislike me for that dustup in your armory. Try to imagine how Jaelot’s men feel. I was with Arithon on the night he aroused the Paravian mysteries through song and leveled a third of their city.’

  ‘My memory’s not soft,’ said Parrien, tart; yet he relented enough to signal his men to stand down. His glance met his captain’s. ‘Better take care what the whore overhears.’

  ‘She won’t remember. I gave her spelled wine.’ Lowered back to the floor, Dakar languished. Gasping his misery like a storm-beached whale, he required a wretched minute before he could muster the will to move. The first thing he did when he pushed to his knees was clasp his thick head between shivering fingers.

  ‘You’re a lying, soft wastrel,’ said Parrien, offended.

  His sword captain’s patience snapped also. Hard hands seized the Mad Prophet’s collar and dragged him the rest of the way upright.

  ‘I said I’m not drunk,’ Dakar mewled. He jerked his chin free of somebody’s clamped fist as the mercenary captain brought the sconce candle and spilled the light full in his face. ‘Damn you to the agonies of Sithaer’s black pit! I won’t be handled like one of your recruits picked up on a binge in a tavern.’

  ‘Why not?’ Parrien fished for an ear amid chestnut frizz and hauled until Dakar’s squinting features were brought under his damning scrutiny. ‘I’d ask then, why you haven’t used every resource you have to keep to your assigned schedule? Those aren’t clanblood swordsmen down there, to notice if you slipped past using some simple spell of illusion.’

  ‘Because,’ Dakar gasped with both eyes squeezed shut, ‘I’m too busy wrestling the headache I’m given, courtesy of that rat-faced bastard wearing the white robes of the Alliance.’

  ‘The informer?’ Parrien curled his upper lip, disgusted. ‘You’d better find a more colorful excuse if you want me to think you’re not just piss full of gin.’

  ‘He’s no informer,’ Dakar gasped. Sweat bathed his forehead in sliding drops, until his skin glistened like a burst egg white. ‘Lysaer’s new policy sees talent burned alive. What sits down there is a trained crown examiner. They’re mageborn turned zealot, then unleashed to hunt down anyone born with the gift. Every resource I have has gone into shielding. For three days, I’ve not dared snatch an hour of sleep. Were I to try spellcraft, be very sure, I wouldn’t leave this tavern, except under an Alliance writ of execution, bound hand and foot in steel shackles.’

  Parrien forgot his indoor manners and spat. ‘This is Shand,’ he said, outraged. ‘That upstart in Tysan dares a very long arm if he thinks he can impose his false justice inside Lord Erlien’s sovereign territory.’ As an afterthought, he let go of Dakar’s pinched ear. ‘See the Mad Prophet comfortable.’

  His captain obliged without rancor and lowered the suffering man’s weight onto the crumpled bed.

  Eyes shut, his pudgy hands pressed to his forehead, Dakar murmured, ‘You won’t do your brother’s reputation any good if you sally downstairs and gut his sworn allies in public.’

  ‘Damn them all!’ Parrien spun, kicked the pillow which mired his knife, and snapped up the blade that spun free. Through the whirl of feathers lit like gold filigree in the spill of the candle, he let fly his implacable venom. ‘Our two-step charade with Avenor’s been a downright strain anyway since the royal writ signed Lord Maenol’s captive clansmen into slavery.’

  His enterprising glance raked over the room, then lit on the partridge plump whore, gagged and bound, and running her eyepaint to a flood of imploring tears. He regarded her straits with stony practicality, then sorted ideas in the energetic, fast talk he was accustomed to sling at his brothers. ‘That squad downstairs haven’t got a flea’s hindparts for brains. Oh, they know which end of a girl dips their prick, and which orifice to pour in the beer, but I’d bet coin that’s their living limit. Shouldn’t strain anybody’s imagination overmuch to find some way to sneak you out.’ He eyed Dakar’s limpid posture askance. ‘Don’t you mind. If you’ve missed your rendezvous, I’ve got my brother’s state galley in port, packed to the gunwales with mercenaries. All you need do is say where to row. We’ll take you to your master offshore.’

  Flat with exhaustion, Dakar mumbled through the suffering clasp of his fingers. ‘Just so you make a clean job of the foray. I’ve no wish to revisit Jaelot in chains to burn for the crime of black sorcery.’

  Within the half hour, the Fat Pigeon’s landlord looked up from his polishing, aroused by a pounding commotion on his stair. Amid the grind of hobnailed boots and a falsetto shriek, came the deeper tones of men’s laughter. Next, Parrien s’Brydion arrived on the landing, one thumb cocked in his belt and a smirk on his face. Over his shoulder, clamped by his mailed forearm, a pair of rouged feet thrashed, roped under what looked like the hem of a whore’s lace chemise.

  Behind clomped his mercenaries, whooping and clattering and clutching their ribs against cramping gales of mirth. The trio of conferencing merchants swiveled to watch, stiffened to prim disapproval. The alert crown examiner peered down his sharp nose, while the Fat Pigeon’s landlord slammed down his cleaned tankard with a force that snapped off the handle.

  His pealing howl wrecked the taproom’s last peace, to no purpose. Parrien s’Brydion held to his course of abducting the corpulent Sashka. He dodged a kick masked in a whirl of petticoats and rounded the newel post of the banister, tossing a spate of cheerful instructions to the saturnine captain behind him.

  In response, the mercenary hurled a jingling sack in a flying arc across the taproom. His aim struck the bar dead center. The loose drawstring slipped
and let out a trilling, sweet chime of gold coins.

  ‘Ath!’ Parrien landed a playful swat on the behind which jounced at his shoulder. ‘Your trollop’s got spirit, I’ll give her that. If she’s half as good as you claim in the blankets, she’ll be worth what I’ve paid for her upkeep.’ To his captain he added, ‘Clear a path to the doorway.’

  ‘What of the layabout?’ the landlord yelped back, not entirely reconciled to the receipt of cold coin in exchange for his tavern’s best attraction.

  ‘Left him trussed and locked in the closet, awaiting his trip to the midden.’ Parrien threaded through tables, defending his prize from the questing grasp of the sailors, and with more gleeful force, the two-handed clutch of Jaelot’s more enterprising mercenaries. ‘Quiet, girl!’ His massive forearm swung in alternate rhythm to bludgeon faces, then to quell the heaving mass of skirts, while the gleam of white teeth nipped through a beard split in half by a tigerish grin. ‘I trust my coin also settles the three days he’s cost you a room?’

  Torn, the landlord understood he had only two options: block Parrien’s egress, or rescue the gold spilled over his bar top before his customers starting pilfering.

  ‘You’re a rank clanblood bastard!’ he shrieked in frustration.

  ‘Yes to the first, but my dead mother would argue, legitimate down to the bone.’ Parrien ducked a foot, spat out flying lace, and whooped in triumph as he shouldered his prize through the doorway into the street. His voice filtered back through the oaths of a carter forced to jerk his team short of collision: ‘If your whore wears me out like she did her last client, I’ll send you back double payment!’

  Late Winter, 5654

  Exchanges

  At the Fat Pigeon, a brief interval after Parrien’s departure, the resigned landlord at last finds a moment to attend the wretch left bound in his upstairs closet; except the gagged body he liberates is not the fat layabout, but the opulent Sashka herself, pink and naked and shrieking indignation over the theft of her jewelry and clothing, and queerly unable to recall name or face of the culprit who had first engaged her service …

  In a closeted room in the city of East Bransing, Prince Lysaer seals a letter, then passes the document to a waiting foreign dignitary with the assurance, ‘Avenor has too limited an access during winter, and so cannot remain the operating capital for the armed heart of the Alliance. As my regency of Tysan passes on to my heir, there will be a change. If Etarra would bid to become the permanent seat for the Light, I’ll entertain your mayor’s offer to host an annual muster …’

  In the state mansion at Erdane, a lady’s maid cossets the daughter pledged to wed the Prince of the Light in the month after spring equinox; the house servants pack the trunks of her trousseau for her journey to Avenor when the thaw reopens the passes; and the captain of the city garrison picks his most reliable men to guard the new princess’s dowry …

  Late Winter 5654

  V.

  Dispatches

  The cove, with its wide, protected harbor and barrier islets, was avoided by galleymen because of its entrenched reputation for haunts. A Second Age ruin overlooked the fractured rim of the cliff wall, which reared up in ramparts of basalt and porous gutters of worn lava. The old towers notched the skyline in shattered majesty, brooding and jagged as sheared obsidian against the thin, sheeting clouds which threatened soft drizzle by nightfall. The site was accessed by no inland road. The shifting sands of Sanpashir desert spread like black flint for the waterless leagues lying between Sanshevas and the ports to the west. Yet in the years prior to Desh-thiere’s invasion, high kings’ sons had been born there. The fortress had prospered in the flourishing, brisk trade that linked its deep harbor with the established sea route to Innish.

  Although the ruin still sheltered stone cisterns uncracked by time or weather, the catch water was guarded by wild tribes who hunted outsiders with darts. Captains risked running their store barrels empty rather than suffer the climb, where a Second Age ghost or a shrieking desertman might harry a foraging party to their deaths.

  In late winter of Third Age 5654, the barrier isles guarding the harbor still grew their rank tangles of brush. The thin, raked stands of salt-stunted cedar offered poor screening for a small fleet of ships, unless their captains had the wily enterprise to strike yards and topmasts, and festoon hanging moss from the rigging.

  When the s’Brydion state galley clove through the gap, shot spray from her oars pebbling the cove’s turquoise shallows, her master and captain remained locked in hot argument over the need for a landfall. The steersman’s shout silenced them. Turning, still flushed, both master and captain beheld a scrub forest whose roots were not landbound, but set into the raking, clean lines of three brigantines.

  ‘Damn me to Sithaer!’ the captain exclaimed, through Parrien’s whistled admiration.

  Sharp orders from the bosun set the sweeps back. To his master’s miffed grunt over usurped authority, the captain snapped, ‘Well, why tire good men? The breeze lies astern. Let the ship’s drift lay her up alongside.’

  When the leadsmen called aft that the waters were shoaling, the captain relinquished the details of anchorage to his mate, and only looked sour as Parrien bellowed through the hatch to roust up his laggard purser. ‘There are blighted ships here! Three of them, all painted dull gray and flying nests of moss as thick as my grandmother’s dress wigs. You can release the fifty silvers I’ve lost to the Mad Prophet when he’s sober enough to ask payment.’

  A shout hailed back from a point belowdecks that Dakar was prostrate, courtesy of a cask found broached in the galley. ‘Fatemaster’s own fury won’t wake the sot now. He’s bound to stay snoring until a tight bladder drags him back from oblivion.’

  Bronzed muscles rippled as, shirtless, Parrien snapped the brass bands of his ship’s glass closed. His vexation lifted to raised eyebrows and laughter. ‘Dharkaron’s own Spear! Dakar found the cook’s rotgut brandy? Then we’d better get him bundled back where he belongs before he gets staggering sick.’

  ‘Why not make things easy?’ griped the state galley’s captain. ‘Throw him over the rail and let him recover the senses to swim.’

  There followed an hour of coarse comment and jibes, while the duke’s red-blazoned longboat was swayed out, and Dakar loaded comatose into sailcloth and lowered in by means of a halyard; then the same process began in reverse as Alestron’s tender hailed the brigantine Khetienn and asked for her flying jib’s shackle to be freed and run over the forecastle.

  ‘We’ve got you a sluggard to haul bodily aboard!’ Parrien boomed across the narrowing span of ruffled water.

  An unkempt head nipped over the brigantine’s stern rail, with black wire hair swathed in a sun-faded rag. The scowl underneath was creased like shelled walnut, and jet bead eyes viewed the longboat’s sprawled cargo with animate, darting suspicion. ‘Whoever gave the fat lout the wineskin?’ The imprecations screeched on in the volatile accents of the desertman who served aboard the Khetienn as both cook and cabin steward. ‘I dice his gizzard, that one, for rock-head stupidity!’

  ‘Save the edge on your knives,’ Parrien called back. He had donned a clean shirt and a weathered, old field tunic, and still fussed with the hang of his sword belt. ‘We’ve already had to placate our cook. It’s his missing brandy that caused all the damage. And anyhow, your Mad Prophet had his good reason for seeking oblivion this time.’ The fact the tender’s oarsmen closed the gap to mere yards did nothing to dampen the gusto of s’Brydion enthusiasm as Parrien smoothed the last buckle and looked up. ‘Five burnings on charges of criminal sorcery happened in Southshire, work of some zealot crown examiner from Tysan. If not for a last-ditch masquerade with a whore’s dress, your spellbinder would’ve been sixth.’

  More interested heads appeared at the rail, while someone’s barked order sent sailhands to free the line to salvage a carcass.

  ‘No matter.’ The desertman evinced the peppery shrug that came ingrained with his breeding. ‘We done this bef
ore, two dozens of times. I’ve said, why not end it? Just put the rope round the whale fish’s throat. But nobody listens. Not yet.’

  Since any euphemism that implied a state of immersion was a Sanpashir desertman’s mortal insult, Parrien tactfully changed subject. ‘It’s your prince I’d like to have words with, anyway. Is his Grace of Rathain with the ship?’

  The desertman’s dark visage disappeared like a rat that had just ducked a club, and the request for an audience was taken in turn by the cracking impatience of a man with a Westlands clan accent.

  ‘You’ll find him up the cliffside, inside the ruins.’ The speaker appeared, one of Lord Maenol’s surviving cousins to judge by the mink hair braided at his nape. ‘If you wait, we’ll find you a man whose leathers and boots haven’t molded. Stone’s rotten sharp from salt weathering and storms. You’ll want a guide to lead you topside.’

  ‘Send him on naked, or let him catch up,’ Parrien countered, then ripped out an oath for the blighting detail which restrained him: his oarsmen could scarcely row anyplace else before the Mad Prophet was hoisted out of the stern seat.

  Atop the seacliffs, the air smelled like flint. Hazed sun sweltered down on pitched dunes of black sand like a hammer sparking shards of light off an anvil. The hot ground burned even through leather-soled boots. Breathless from his climb up sheer rock, Parrien shaded his eyes with grazed fingers.

  In Paravian times, when these ruins stood whole, the fortress had commanded the crest like a setting of filigreed ivory. Centaur masons had raised the ringwalls of white granite, with chains of inner courtyards connected by cloistered arches, most made melodious with fountains. Vast gardens threaded like grottos in the fanned shade of tall date palms or arbors of flowering grape.