The Black Star (Book 3)

by Edward W. Robertson

  He kicked the sheets off his legs to cool down while he attempted to remember the precise course of the previous night's wine-soaked conversation. Not that he particularly cared what Duke Dilliger had to say about much of anything. Besides, perhaps, "Here is your wagon-train of silver."

  But Pendelles was here on business, and as he had learned, there was a very particular art to business—or anyway, to the business that involved lords, ladies, and those few commoners rich enough to buy such titles. While a few of these people of means were no-nonsense types who preferred to throw out proposals and hammer down details before you had the chance to sit down, most were far more leisurely about it. Perhaps because while commerce was the chief occupation of merchants and the like, the chief occupation of the upper crust was, in fact, leisure.

  Such as stretching your legs and curling your toes beneath silk sheets that someone else would have to wash.

  So he relived the conversation, or anyway the parts he could remember, and soon determined he'd made no major gaffes. Had been quite content to pass the night exchanging rude jokes and court gossip. For Duke Dilliger was the nephew of King Moddegan himself, and young enough to believe the crown would someday leave lines across his own scalp.

  There had been no mention of business at all until near the end of what Pendelles could recall. Dilliger had brought it up, promising breezily they'd get down to the wheels of the thing on the morrow. Meaning what was now today. At last, Pendelles would have his answers.

  With this settled in his mind, he pulled the lever tied to the string attached to the bells in the kitchen. A servant arrived in seconds. Pendelles requested a mixture of rum, tea, and spices he'd discovered years ago which served as an admirably potent waker-upper/hangover cure. The servant returned with the drink and a spread of cheeses. Pendelles accepted these dressed in nothing but his sheet, then took them to the balcony, letting the sheet fall from him as he walked. Outside, he sat—carefully—on a lacquered chair, sipped his rum, and contemplated the pastoral grounds.

  After an hour, nothing had come his way that was more exciting than a cool breeze, so he went inside, dressed (a procedure that took a quarter of an hour, and was perhaps the single most galling element of this life), and went downstairs to let his presence announce that The Day and its Events could now be introduced to him.

  In the sitting room, the majordomo informed him that the Duke was still attending to his rest, but was expected to be down shortly. The man sent another servant around to bring Pendelles a proper breakfast of eggs, cream, blueberries, roasted hen, and more tea, which he consumed in the sitting room overlooking the pines dotting the lawn.

  This too was quite nice. There was no denying it. Yet Pendelles was struck, sometimes, by the colossal waste all this downtime represented. This hadn't always been his life. Once, he'd been a roamer. He'd been known to get into a fight or two. At times like these, enfolded in a chair so plush it was like being hugged, he knew what he was doing was highly important—perhaps the most important thing he'd done in his life—yet that wasn't easy to remember when you were wiping cream from your mouth a few minutes before noon and you had yet to see the day's first hint of the man you were supposed to be conducing crucial business with.

  Enough whining. He would make his proposal today. Whether the duke said yes or no, Pendelles would be free to move forward.

  Dilliger showed up dressed and fed at one o'clock. His dark hair was wavy in the way of so much Gaskan royalty; he wore a simple blue doublet with white piping, and a heavy-lidded smile that suggested he'd started the day with the same bottle he'd ended the night.

  "Lord Pendelles," he said scratchily. "How's your morning?"

  "Over!" Pendelles grinned. "And I trust you're glad to see it gone."

  Dilliger waved one hand. "If mornings want us to enjoy them, then they shouldn't be so bright. But yes, I'm up. Ambulatory. And of the belief the best way to stir my sluggish blood is a game of Run."

  "Run?"

  "A game—a sport—invented by my dear departed brother Yonnevan. Would you do me the honor of a match?"

  "Naturally," Pendelles said.

  Dilliger smiled. "Know the rules?"

  "How would I? But that's my favorite sort of game. I find that having no clue what I'm doing relieves the awful pressure of having to do well."

  "That's the spirit."

  Dilliger turned from the window. Without another word, the servants vanished into the house, scurrying to make preparations.

  "Shall I change into sporting gear?" Pendelles said.

  The duke shook his head. "The help will bring the hats."

  He led the way to the base of a long, high hill. Down its center, the grass had been clipped in a forty-foot-wide swath. Fine mesh fences bordered it on both sides. A canal ringed the finish of the trimmed trail. Dilliger sat at a table shaded by a pagoda. A servant materialized with a tray of strong drinks. Dilliger winked at Pendelles. The staff dragged out a straw-stuffed cart that smelled like a barn. Other servants retrieved curious vehicles: broad planks with four high wheels and a rib-high, T-shaped steering column.

  Lastly, a rack of long-handled mallets was rolled beneath the pagoda. Dilliger nodded cursorily and the servants began to drag the diverse equipment up to the top of the hill.

  Pendelles leaned back and sipped his drink. "Why do I have the suspicion Run was fathered by a heavy dose of wine?"

  "Because you are wise in the ways of sport," Dilliger laughed. "Now where are our hats?"

  He had no more spoken the words than a servant arrived bearing two hats, their brims as broad as platters. Pheasant feathers jutted from the crowns, iridescent green.

  Dilliger screwed one onto his head, smoothed the felt brim, and frowned, face creased with gravitas. "They may strike you as silly, but the first rule of Run is if you lose your hat, you lose your bet."

  "Wagers?" Pendelles said. "Now I know we're playing my kind of game." He smiled, sly. "What are the stakes?"

  "Since it's your first round, I'll take it easy on you. I'd thought to send you home with a couple bottles of my finest. Bottled right here on these grounds by my brewmeister. But should you lose..."

  "Then you get first pick of the cabinet in my carriage." He cocked a brow. "Challenge accepted."

  Dilliger clapped his thighs, stood, and headed up the hill. "Have you deduced the premise?"

  "Attempt to ride to the bottom without breaking my neck?"

  "Oh, that would be far too easy." Dilliger pointed to the crown of the hill, where four servants had wheeled the planked vehicles. "There's our starting line. You'll be given a few moments to get your legs under you." He pointed to the gamey-smelling hutch positioned a third of the way down the slope. "Then, the rabbits are released. We shall be equipped with one of the fine mallets you saw earlier. Your task? To prevent the rabbit from reaching the ditch."

  Which they were crossing via a board bridge at that moment. Pendelles shaped his face into amusement. "Delightful."

  "I had the feeling you'd approve. And that your physical skills would be up to the challenge. I don't invite just anyone to play a round of Run."

  "I can imagine," Pendelles said. "Considering the guts some of our lords lug around, you'd need more than a plank to bear them down the hill. You'd need a mule team."

  Dilliger chortled. Pendelles kept the rest of his thoughts to himself. The duke was presenting this as a bit of frivolous entertainment, one more idle to get them through the dreary days of aristocratic life, yet Pendelles suspected it was a not-so-subtle test of his mettle. His success or failure at bashing some bunny's terrified brains out would hold deep sway over Dilliger's choice to enter a business arrangement with him.

  Pendelles tugged the brim of his floppy hat, pulling it rakishly off-center. If the duke wanted a show, then a show was what he would get.

  The autumn afternoon was barely warm. A hesitant breeze wove through the tall grass outside the mesh fence. They walked past the hutch; the servants there nodded
in salute. At the top of the hill, the two conveyances were chocked in place with wooden blocks. Just behind the vehicles stood the rack of mallets, each a different color, the heads a variety of shapes and weights. All were flecked with rusty stains.

  Dilliger gestured. "As the guest, you have your choice of sword—and steed."

  Pendelles approached the rack, hefted a black lacquered mallet, frowned, then replaced it and took a red one instead. "Red makes it go faster."

  The top of the steering column on one of the plank-carts was carved into the head of a dragon. Pendelles shook his head. "Too common. It's the tiger for me."

  He touched the figurehead of the second, a snarling cat, and stepped atop the planks. The platform was springy and better balanced than he'd anticipated.

  Dilliger took a bright white mallet with flared striking surfaces and mounted the dragon. "Are you ready, sir?"

  "Born to it." Pendelles smiled. The expression was his most sincere since arriving at the manor. Dangerous as this game appeared, it was good to be back in the saddle, so to speak.

  Anyway, even if he suffered a broken bone or two, Run was far less dangerous than the game he'd been playing for the past year.

  It had been three years since he'd dashed from Narashtovik. Initially, he'd installed himself in a border town on the river between Gask and the newly independent norren territories. For weeks, he plotted revenge against Dante for the death of Lira. Then, fearing he might actually take it, he sailed away.

  Across the north coast of Gask. The heaving white seas of Umbur. South past the metropolis of Voss and the black bluffs of Pocket Cove. It felt good to be alone. Anonymous. For the first time in a long time, he had no responsibilities at all; he'd hired on as a mercenary, but the vessel encountered no strife besides a couple of storms.

  He spent a long time on the deck watching the water. He tried to forget and failed badly. But the waves numbed him. Endless, gray, and empty.

  After the fragmented Middle Kingdoms, the ship hooked east past the rocky Carlon Islands—Lira's homeland—and all the way to his homeland of Bressel, capital of Mallon. There, he made port for good. He intended to stick around a while. To kick back and catch up with old friends. But it had been better than seven years since he'd last lived in Mallon, and he hadn't had many friends to begin with. The few who remained knew nothing about him except that he'd once been a kid named Blays. The awkward talk made him keenly aware how little Mallon meant to him; he'd been born and raised in that place, but the city had since become something else, and so had he. Within days, he hopped a barge upstream to Whetton.

  There, he fell in with Robert Hobble, who had retired from the city guard to pursue a life of leisure. Robert was overjoyed to see Blays and didn't press for news of Dante. They passed the next year as drunkards. Tossed out of a new tavern every night. Sometimes they passed out in their chairs. Other nights, they swapped stories and rambled about life until dawn showed up to expose them. It was so easy to do; he promised himself it was temporary, but each morning brought him a new hangover, and each hangover demanded another evening of drinking. Within two months, he was getting his start in the afternoons instead. Soon enough, he was waiting for the toll of the midday bells. The drink brought relief from the curse of memory. It punished him, too, and when he allowed himself to dwell on this, he discovered he wanted that as well.

  Blays could feel himself falling apart, but the hole in his chest welcomed it.

  Thirteen months after debarking in Whetton, Blays woke in an inn with bloody hands. After a few minutes, he remembered he'd killed a man in a duel, but couldn't recall what the dispute had been about. Afraid of a hanging—and of what he'd become—he retreated into the woods. Wandered north, living off the land, dimly aware he was retracing old steps. After a couple weeks, he stumbled upon the town of Shay. He strolled about, vaguely happy to see no sign of Samarand's rebellion that had burned whole sections of the town, and found himself in the yard of a monastery.

  It was Gabe's. Gabe, the norren monk who'd helped Cally retake his place at the head of the Council of Narashtovik. For that aid, Cally had rewarded him with the Chainbreakers' War. It had freed the norren. And taken the lives of thousands.

  When Blays announced himself to the acolyte, he wasn't certain what he intended to do. Kill Gabe on sight, maybe. Harangue him, at the very least, to wound him with guilt and leave him festering. Instead, when Gabe ducked through the doorway, seven feet tall and as hairy as a bear, Blays found himself too weary to do more than wave.

  He grunted his way through the conversation, but Gabe sussed him out easily enough. He led Blays to his cell, sat down, and asked what was wrong.

  "What isn't?" Blays said. Not very witty, but he hadn't felt light enough for wit since leaving Whetton bloody-handed.

  Gabe's voice rumbled through the close space. "Did you come here for counsel?"

  "You churchboys have it all figured out, don't you? That's why you live your lives in a room smaller than a water closet. Very easy to be wise when you never step out to face the world."

  Gabe clasped his hands, leaned forward, and frowned at the floor of his cell. "The soul is a piece of paper. It starts life blank and pure. In time, it gets dark with age, especially if it is left to face the elements. With care and correct process, however, you may wash it clean again. And even if it's crushed—crumpled in a cruel fist—once that fist finally lets go, what does the paper do?"

  "Gets thrown away?"

  "It unfolds. All by itself."

  "Time," Blays muttered. "That's everyone's answer to everything."

  He left two minutes later. The gods' highest wisdom was no different than what peasants told each other after a house fire or the loss of a child. It wasn't true, though. Time didn't build a thing up. It eroded it. Eventually, it killed it. This "advice" wasn't even meant for the recipient. A man with an arrow through his leg doesn't want to hear that it won't hurt that much after he's had a year to heal. That information is worthless to him. It's insulting. Cruel. And impossible to know. The wound might never heal, leaving him with a limp for the rest of his life. It could become infected, killing him in days. That was what pain meant: something is very wrong and you had better do something to fix it. If you're standing in a fire, you don't wait for time to put it out.

  He wintered in a cave in the woods near Shay. Sometimes he slept in the open, as if daring the wolves or the elements. Hunting and fire-building occupied most of his time, but when he had open hours, he walked aimlessly through the snows, enjoying the silence and stillness, the sensation of being so close to the edge.

  The snows disappeared and he was still there. He knew that he could live like that that for decades, if he chose. Like a one-man norren clan. Aside from the romanticism of being a forest hermit, however, it held no meaningful appeal. What was he supposed to do, contemplate the leaves for thirty years? They were leaves. That was it.

  Yet having lived like a norren, and recently spoken with one, he was inspired to learn how the rest of them had fared in the two years since the war. Had all that strife done them any real good? Or were they back in King Moddegan's chains, despairing all the more after their brief taste of freedom? He struck north for the Dundens and made his way through the pass.

  He exited from the mountains into the foothills and discovered the norren's independence had endured. That was surprising and welcome news. Still, a part of him resented their happy travels. That part had hoped they'd be just as miserable as he was.

  His little quest had returned him within spitting distance of Narashtovik. That wouldn't do; he'd already had to take pains to avoid the Clan of the Golden Field and the other norren who might recognize him. Yet he had no desire to return to the forests outside Shay. It was time, then, to decide what to do with the rest of his life.

  Working for someone else was out of the question. That ruled out guard and mercenary jobs. He didn't want to become a highwayman, preying on the innocent. He could probably make it as a Nulladoon g
ambler—mixing it up in norren taverns could be a hell of a lot of fun—but in the end, Nulladoon was just a game. He could take a different form of inspiration from the norren, and find a nulla to hone into a living, but all he'd ever been good at was fighting. Scheming. Escaping.

  Lira.

  There were others besides Dante to blame for her death. Cassinder, of course. But he'd already paid, dropping into the rift with all his men. Moddegan and his supporters, then. Ambitious, destroying a king and his court single-handed. But Blays had his whole life to dedicate to the task.

  And he didn't have to do it alone.

  From the norren hills, he struck west to Gallador, which, after a vicious two-year campaign, had last fall struck an uneasy truce with the shrinking state of Gask. The terms redefined Gallador as a protectorate. Semi-autonomous. No one on either side was happy with the arrangement.

  One spring night, with the wash of the waves the lake city's only sound, Blays rowed to Lolligan's island manor and, once Lolligan recovered from his shock—which he got over as soon as he learned Blays was there to discuss his two favorite things: money, and destroying Moddegan—the two of them pieced a plan together. Backed by Lolligan's tea/salt fortune, along with funds smuggled from the Tradesman's Association of the Greater Valley of Gallador, Blays would don the guise of a wealthy merchant and travel to Setteven. There, he'd use his vast wealth to embed himself in the aristocracy and systematically ruin, disgrace, bankrupt, and/or murder every vizier, duchess, lord, and king who'd been involved in the Chainbreakers' War and ensuing Lakeland Rebellion.

  Obviously, it wasn't without risks. Not least of which was the fact Blays Buckler was infamous across Greater Gask. But he had reason to believe he could pass as a stranger. In the tradition of all heartbroken men, he'd let himself grow shaggy and bearded. Trimmed to befit his fake station, and dyed from blond to rich brown, he looked like a new man. His nose, meanwhile, had been crooked in a fight in Whetton. His skin was tan from travel and his face was aged beyond its years.