Assassin's Edge

by Juliet E. McKenna

  Deg’s reply didn’t have the piercing clarity of Catrice’s outrage so I couldn’t make out his words but his blinking eyes and unshaven disorder were eloquent enough.

  “I’ll not sleep in the bed of any man who falls in it half dressed and full drunk,” she shrilled, hysteria sharpening her tone.

  “Do you suppose her mother knows she’s here?” Zigrida came to the fence on her side of the precisely delineated alley separating our two properties. With a whole continent to spread ourselves over, there would be none of the squabbles over boundaries that plague the higgledy-piggledy burgages of Ensaimin’s close-packed towns.

  “She’ll be none too pleased when she finds out,” I commented. Catrice was the only and much cherished daughter of one of the southern Tormalin families come to make a new life in this untamed land the year before. They were still apt to take their consequence rather too seriously for my taste. Zigrida was from the north, close to the Lescari border and, as such, considerably more down to earth.

  Whatever Deg had to say for himself was enough to set Catrice to noisy weeping. She didn’t resist as he pulled her into an awkward hug, clumsily wiping at her tears with the edge of her shawl.

  Zigrida watched the pair disappear inside. “You reckon something’s boiling up?”

  “Could be something, could be nothing,” I shrugged. “But we’d best be ready to stick in a spoon to quell any froth.” In general, colonists and the mercenaries hired to defend them rubbed along easily enough together but there had been a few awkwardnesses. The sons and daughters of sober yeomen occasionally found the free and easy attitudes of the soldiery rather too enticing for their parents’ peace of mind.

  “Are you going to send for the corps commander?” Zigrida asked.

  “Perhaps.” Halice, currently in charge of the mercenaries, had been a friend of mine for years and I served as her unofficial deputy when I had nothing better to do. “Did you see Ryshad this morning?” I’d got used to staying asleep when Ryshad rose with the dawn to pursue one of his myriad projects around Vithrancel.

  “That Werdel came calling first thing. They’ll be out at the clay fields.” Zigrida’s tone was warm with approval. She liked Ryshad.

  I smiled too. I was more than content with a cruck-framed house, it’s how four-fifths of Ensaimin’s towns are built but Ryshad considered wooden buildings as nothing more than temporary. Before the previous autumn’s Equinox had barred the ocean to ships, he’d recruited the son of a brick-maker known to his stone-mason brothers in Zyoutessela and had half the men of the colony digging clay on the promise of a share in the bricks and tiles. As soon as the scarce frosts of Kellarin’s mild winter had passed, Ryshad reminded everyone they’d promised to help build a drying shed while Werdel puddled and shaped the weathered clay for a successful trial of his new kiln. Fired with enthusiasm, my beloved had bored me to sleep these past few nights with explanations of how to turn quicklime into mortar.

  I swung my bucket idly by its rope handle. “You’ve been baking bread this morning?” Zigrida had a smudge of flour by the spray of colourful flowers embroidered around the laces of her sober green bodice.

  “What’s it to you?” She cocked her head on one side.

  I hefted the bucket. “Water for you today in return for a loaf or so?”

  Zigrida laughed. “Fresh bread will cost you more than a few pails.” A frown deepened her wrinkles as she pursed thin lips. “You can give me an afternoon in my garden, helping with the fruit canes.”

  I shook my head in mock consternation. “You drive a hard bargain.”

  “Then do your own baking, my girl.” Her smile lifted a generation from her laughing eyes.

  I waved a hand in capitulation. “I’ll get some water and then I’ll call round for the bread.”

  Zigrida nodded and disappeared within her own doors. I headed for the nearby outcrop of rock offering plentiful clean water from one of Kellarin’s many springs. It was a pleasant walk. Halcarion’s blessing loaded the knot of trees around the wellspring with richly scented blossom as soon as the Winter Hag had quit her watch. Maewelin hadn’t disputed the Moon Maiden’s authority with late frosts or sudden storms and even people who barely paid lip service to either goddess had celebrated all the traditional rites of thanks at the recent Equinox.

  With winter keeping everyone close to home and making improvements, a broad stone basin had been built around the spring so I didn’t have to wait long before I could dip my pail beside busy goodwives and less eager maidens about their mothers’ bidding. I sympathised with the sullen faces; I’d walked out on hearth and home at much the same age, fleeing the drudgery of service to someone else’s whims and malice, buoyed up with all the ignorant confidence of youth. But I hadn’t sulked about my errands when I had been my mother’s least reliable housemaid. I’d taken any chance to get out of the house, to learn more about life and pocket any coin I could win with a smile or a jest.

  “Livak, good morning to you.” One of the bustling women nodded approval at my brimming bucket. “Wash day at last, is it?”

  That immediately raised my hackles. “Not that I know of, Midda. Tell me, you haven’t heard who it is setting up as a laundress, have you?”

  Midda looked puzzled. “No.”

  “Oh well,” I shrugged. “Still, if you come across her, pass the word that I’ll be on her doorstep with a hefty bundle every market day.”

  I smiled but Midda was frowning at the thought that something might be going on that hadn’t reached her ears. With luck, once she set about interrogating her gossips, the spreading word would prompt some woman or other to set up her own wash tubs to steal a march on my mythical would-be laundress.

  Mind, I’d still have to find some way to pay for someone to do my washing. I felt a little mildewed as I walked back, swinging the bucket to see how far I could tilt it before I risked slopping the water. There was a sizeable share of what little coin the colony boasted secure in a coffer beneath our bedroom floorboards but that was precious little use to me. Work was the currency of Kellarin and it was Ryshad’s skills that were putting credit in our ledger to buy me the prettiest plates from the potters or the softest blankets bright from the looms.

  It wasn’t as if I didn’t have talents of my own but there was just precious little scope for them. I could usually find a friendly game of runes or someone happy to play the White Raven against my Forest Birds to while away an evening but these placid craftsmen and farmers weren’t in the habit of laying bets against their luck with the fate sticks and, after the first half season or so, were hardly inclined to wager against my chances of driving their raven clear off the game board.

  I lifted the bucket and cupped myself a drink of water. Halcarion save me but I’d hand over that whole coffer of coin for a decent cask of wine. Mind you, I thought wryly, I wasn’t the only one fed up with water and ale. Whatever fruit Zigrida’s canes might produce after my untutored ministrations wasn’t destined for pies; she’d told me as much. But fruit cordials would never match the velvety seduction of Angovese red or the aromatic coolness of Ferl River whites.

  That idle thought prompted another that stopped me in my tracks. Aft-Spring’s winds would soon bring ships and it was a safe bet they’d carry trifles and trinkets to tempt the colonists as well as the necessities of life we couldn’t yet make for ourselves. Traders from Tormalin would be wanting coin on the barrelhead, not unquantifiable promises of bartered labour. If I found some opportunity to set people like Midda fretting about that, I might get more takers for my money staked against their sweat. Come to that, traders in an anchorage without any of the usual amusements would probably be only too eager for a casual game of runes. It would take more than a winter’s idleness to leave my fingers too stiff to lighten some Zyoutessela merchant’s purse.

  My spirits rose as a new notion occurred to me. Those ships would surely be carrying wine. If I bought up as much as I could, I’d have something better to trade for goods and services th
an the donkey work I’d been taking on, just so I wasn’t sitting on my hands and living off Ryshad’s efforts. I wasn’t about to do that here in Kellarin, any more than I’d have taken his coin to be called his whore back home.

  Those same ships could take letters back to Tormalin for me. I considered how I might have them carried to the more distant trading centres of Relshaz and Peorle. As sworn man to D’Olbriot, Ryshad had had the right to use the Imperial Despatch and I wondered if they ever carried any unofficial correspondence from men who’d left their Prince’s service. In the right places, I had friends who could ship an entire cargo of wines and liquors across the ocean with my name branded on every barrel. If I became the woman the colony turned to for its wine, where might that lead me?

  Feet marching in ragged step behind me interrupted such speculations. Midda and her friends scattered like hens in a farmyard, white aprons fluttering, sweeping skirts aside lest some heedless soldier tread on their hems. Not that Ryshad would have called this rabble soldiers and even Halice would have admitted they were barely worth a mercenary’s hire. I picked up my pace a little as the unshaven mob passed me to halt milling around outside Deglain’s door with the usual unfocused malice of a gang of drunks.

  “Deg! Hey, Deg, we didn’t finish our game!”

  That was a voice I recognised and one I didn’t like. Peyt hadn’t taken the hint when Halice had offered to pay him off the previous autumn, suggesting he head back for more profitable wars, as so many other mercenaries had done once the colony had thrived unmolested for a full year.

  Most of those warriors who’d stayed had taken up old trades like Deglain or turned unskilled hands to hunting and foraging in the woods, stripping bark from felled trees for the tanners, hauling cut lumber to wherever the next house was being built. There was more than enough work to go around, after all. But I couldn’t recall Peyt and his cronies lifting a finger, not beyond grudgingly using cudgels on fleeing rats when the sheaves stooked in the new fields won from the forest had been taken for threshing. For all their supposed skill with blades, they’d shirked Aft-Autumn’s gory cull of the pigs, sheep and cattle we had no fodder to see through the winter. Ryshad had been scathing in his contempt for Peyt more than once, likening him to one of the fat black leeches lurking in the swampy stretch of land to the east. The only work I’d seen the idle bastard do since the turn of the year was drowning the few hound pups too sickly to find takers, once Ryshad had pointed out to Temar that Vithrancel could do without any pack of masterless dogs.

  I reached my own gate and, once inside, latched it carefully, alert to the swelling murmurs, picking out accents from gutters all the way from Toremal clear across to the Great Forest. The door across the way burst open.

  “You shut your mouth before I shut it for you!” Deglain’s bellow rang out before his voice was lost beneath a flurry of voices, some calming, some goading.

  “No one’s looking for trouble here,” said one unlikely optimist.

  “Peyt only says it like he sees it.” That interruption was larded with malicious expectation. “She looks a well-thumbed lass to me.”

  The ragged ring of men spread out to corral two figures now circling each other.

  “I’d carve a slice off her ham,” someone agreed with the misplaced earnestness of the truly drunk.

  I moved to lean against the fence as a growing number of people from nearby houses emerged to do the same.

  “Her thighs open like a gate on a windy day.” The speaker squared up to Deglain, smiling nastily as he made an ostentatious adjustment to his groin. He was a rangy man with a few days’ growth of beard shadowing a hatchet face beneath slicked back, oily black locks. His red, embroidered clothes had once been expensive but rough living and worse table manners had left them bagged and stained. “I’m not the only one who’s combed her quiff.”

  A cackling laugh at the back raised the old mercenaries’ toast. “Here’s to loose women and well-fitting boots!”

  “You’re a lying bastard, Peyt.” Deglain took a step closer and Peyt backed away. Deglain was a few fingers shorter but broader across the shoulder and with plenty of muscle beneath the fat that a winter of leisure had left padding him. He was wearing no more than a shirt and tan breeches and the slight breeze flattened the fine linen to outline his solid bulk. His blunt face was twisted in a scowl, thick brows all but lost in his unruly brown hair.

  “She’s the one carrying the bastard and you’re the fool letting her father it on you,” taunted Peyt. “But you’re welcome to my leavings, if you can stomach them.”

  “I’ll make you eat horseshit for spreading such lies!” One of Catrice’s brothers forced his way through the crowd, face scarlet with rage, all youthful long limbs like a heron on stilts. One of Peyt’s cronies tripped him and the youth went sprawling to unsympathetic laughter. But Glane hadn’t come alone and an angry lad punched the man with a deft fist brutal in his kidneys. Some colonists were picking up mercenary tricks.

  “Saedrin’s stones!” The man buckled at the knees and was surprisingly slow to get up. Seeing Peyt distracted, Deglain stepped in with an uppercut solid enough to rattle the mercenary’s teeth. But it wasn’t enough to fell him. Clean living among the colonists had made Deglain forget how hard and fast a mercenary fights and he was a breath too slow in stepping back. Peyt drove a swift, instinctive punch into his belly and with a noise half groan, half curse, Deglain doubled over.

  “Go back to your little hammers,” Peyt sneered. “You fight like a cat with gloves on.”

  He looked for the adulation of his hangers-on but he was celebrating too soon. Deglain rammed a shoulder like a bullock’s rump into Peyt’s skinny ribs, dumping him on his arse.

  “If I had a dog as worthless as you, I’d hang him.” He pinned his tormentor long enough for a few good blows then two others dragged him off, their boots and fists going in brutally.

  “I’ll kick your arse so hard your gums’ll bleed!” Peyt was back on his feet, resilience being one mercenary quality he did possess. Blood pouring from a gashed eyebrow, he swore foully as he headed for Deglain.

  The big man was holding his own against Peyt’s hangers-on with a man at either shoulder to help him, each dressed in the sombre breeches and old-fashioned jerkins of colonists. As more mercenaries stepped up to back Peyt, so men who’d just come to watch found themselves taking a stand to stop Deglain and the others being outflanked. Mild blows to ward off attack were taken as outright assault by the mercenaries for whom fighting came as naturally as breathing. Finding their attempts to defend themselves provoking vicious retaliation, the colonists rapidly abandoned restraint.

  “Are you fetching Halice?” Zigrida was by her door, scowling disapproval at the spreading melee.

  “Let’s see how this plays out.” I leaned against the fence that would protect the burgeoning nettles in our plot from these trampling boots well enough. My neighbours’ smug turnips were similarly defended with hurdles and hedges set to foil browsers sneaking down from the woods.

  “Mercenaries.” Zigrida’s contempt was withering. “Fighting for no more reason than cats in a gutter.”

  I held my tongue. Brawls were hardly uncommon in the mercenary camps I’d traversed over the years, especially at the end of a long and boring winter as the men geared themselves up for the perils and profits of a new season’s battles. Halice wouldn’t be that concerned, as long as no one suffered any real hurt. There was plenty of blood staining shirts and jerkins but no one was on the ground where boots might splinter ribs to gut a man from the inside out. Some had paired off in wrestling holds, feet digging into the dirt before sweeping forward to try and cut the foe’s legs out from under him. I saw two men falling all of a piece as neither would let go the grip they had under each other’s armpits. Scrambling apart in the dust, one offered his hand to the other, pulling him clear of Glane who was fighting his own little battle. From what I could see, he wasn’t the only colonist glad of a chance to let rip, paying b
ack slights imagined and intentional stored up over the last few seasons.

  As the swirling fight swept the pair in my direction, I recognised the mercenary Glane was punishing with lightning fast blows, heedless of the damage to his own fists. The lad would learn that lesson the hard way. His victim was a burly bruiser called Tavie, blood staining his grimy shirt as it dripped from a split lower lip. A winter’s laziness had left a belly on him like a woman scant days from childbed and he was paying a heavy price for such sloth. Then I saw Tavie decide to level the odds and reach for a dagger at his belt.

  “No you don’t!” I snapped my fingers in Zigrida’s direction but didn’t take my eyes off the fat mercenary. Knife poised, he was advancing on the hapless Glane who at least had the sense to retreat as fast as the scuffles all around him allowed, chance sending him scuttling towards me. I scooped up a stone from a pile I’d dug from our supposed vegetable patch in an uncharacteristic fit of enthusiasm the previous autumn. I weighed the stone in my hand, hard and heavy with one jagged edge raw against my palm. Halice is the one with the height and heft to take up a sword alongside the men and make them eat their mockery. I’ve neither the skills nor the inclination so I’ve cultivated an accurate throwing arm. What I needed now was the chance to hit Tavie without braining some other fool who got in the way, and preferably before he caught up with Glane.

  I saw my moment and took it. The rock hit Tavie hard in the meat of his knife arm. The distraction gave Glane an instant to gather his flagging strength and fraying nerve. The smack of his fist into the side of the mercenary’s head was clearly audible over the uproar all around and I winced.

  It was Glane’s bad luck he knocked Tavie into Peyt. The fortunes of the fight had temporarily driven the tall mercenary away from Deglain. Furious, he turned to find out who had just dropped his man at his feet.

  “Fighting for your sister’s honour?” A predatory smile curved Peyt’s lip as he leered at Glane. “What a waste of effort!”