Dangerous Games

by Clayton Emery

  In all the nervous preparations, Sunbright was mostly ignored, and had tramped halfway across the marketplace when he felt the first hint of danger. It was a whiff, a scent, a prickling along his neck that warned him he was being watched. Something was lurking like wolves in the bush, or a panther braced to spring from a tree. The feeling was all around. Yet turning a circle, he saw only stalls and pennants and slit-eyed guards with ready maces.

  Then the sun topped a mountain peak, the bright yellow splintered by a thousand distant trees. A dome upon Karsus’s mansions burned golden as if ignited by the rays.

  And a roar went up from the shadows around the marketplace.

  Instinctively Sunbright drew his sword, which he’d paused to hone by the light of a street globe, and surveyed his surroundings for shelter and escape routes. Behind him lay a long line of wide-eyed frozen fish. Opposite were bushels of wheat and corn, and fresh loaves of bread like fat swords. The marketplace floor was square tan cobblestones. The stalls were flimsy, mere poles and canvas, with the occasional small wagon, a maze of sticks and canvas. It was hard to pinpoint the roar—whatever it was—as it came from all around.

  Then he saw the threat, ragged and dirty and howling, surging in from all sides like a storm tide. It was the starving poor of Karsus, and there were hundreds of them.

  Women, men, children flooded the marketplace and snatched at anything resembling food. Clad in cast-off nobles’ clothes or the scantiest, most colorless rags, they outraced one another and the city guards and the market sellers, who swept their goods into sacks or wagons while grabbing for short swords, meat cleavers, or long, weighted clubs. Sunbright saw that the poor had planned this raid well, for each wore one or two sacks strapped to his chest or back, so their hands might be free to grab and stuff and grab again. Grimy hands scrabbled like flailing octopuses, like demented weasels in a henhouse, in a frenzy of bloodlust.

  Yet for all their mad rush, they were marvelously organized. One woman with an eye patch and queerly gold-glittering hands even stood in one spot to shout orders and encouragement. She caught Sunbright’s attention, though he wasn’t sure why. Something about her eyes—had he dreamt of a woman with one starry eye? Her hair was dark, like Greenwillow’s. She took nothing, only watched over the others. And something familiar and white winked at her throat—but in one glance he couldn’t identify what.

  A man stiff-armed a fishmonger and scooped three whiskered catfish into the sack hanging about his neck. A barefoot boy leaped upon a table, avoided the clumsy slashing of a short whip from a baker’s girl, and popped round loaves of bread into twin sacks hanging at either hip. A crone threw sand into a merchant woman’s face and slapped red cheeses into her own sacks, then jammed three more into the backpack of a rawboned girl alongside. A huge man, a giant, but blindfolded, was led by a elfin girl to a stall of hams and sausages. As the giant flailed blindly with a staff that made butchers jump out of the way, the girl filled pouches on his legs and back with stolen meats. A yellow-haired scoundrel whirled a weighted chain overhead, making corn merchants duck, so he could snare, one-handed, fat sacks of yellow meal that he stuffed down his shirt. Another man hurled jars full of something that, when the jars broke, stank so abominably that food sellers retreated retching. A pair of girls, twins with stiff topknots like Sunbright’s, upended a table onto an old woman so they could snatch up flitches of bacon in a scrap of canvas.

  There were more attacks and distractions, some of them magical, and Sunbright remembered that anyone born in the empire could enchant. A crone, obviously a hedge wizard, fanned her fingers to hurl what looked like water into the path of two carters, except they slipped as if on oil and couldn’t rise. A girl with red pigtails held on to a fallen banner so the other end rose like a snake and enwrapped a burly butcher from behind. Elsewhere Sunbright saw clouds of purple and blue smoke, a spinning lightning bolt, a brace of phantom horses charging.

  All this happened within seconds, hundreds of poor battling scores of merchants and robbing till their sacks were filled, while Sunbright stood stupefied at the spectacle.

  Then the city guards rushed in, and the killing began. While the poor had just upset and driven back the merchants, the guards had no such qualms. The burly men and a few women charged into the ragged folk with silver clubs swinging. A club smacked the side of one man’s head and caved it in, dropping him like a shot goose. Another club broke the wrist of a woman clutching a ham. As she dropped it, and bent to grab it with her good hand, a blow landed on her neck, driving her facedown onto the cobblestones, dead. A boy running down tables had his legs swept out from under him, was brutally kicked as he toppled to the ground in a tangle of skinny arms and legs. The guards could ply magic too. A crackling hand shocked a raider senseless, an indrawn breath sucked another off her feet, a glob of spittle darted unerringly to smack a thief in the eyes. Guards worked in pairs, two or four or six, watching each other’s sides and backs, driving hard with heavy boots, shouldering the poor aside and down, smashing and breaking bones at will.

  A gaggle of raiders stormed by Sunbright, who hadn’t budged an inch in all this hurly-burly. They swept past like a wave around his waist, for he towered above most Neth. The twin girls flitting past flicked his elbows with their topknots. The lone barbarian was left to face six stampeding guards with bloody clubs, who would bull over anyone in their way.

  That suited Sunbright.

  It was gut reaction, not reason. If the poor needed food so desperately they must steal it, they deserved it. And the guards had no right to kill them for so necessary a crime. And these brutes enjoyed their work.

  So Sunbright welcomed combat, a chance to strike back at the callous rulers of this city.

  A barbarian shriek split the morning air to rise above the roar and stampede. Planting his big iron-ringed boots, Sunbright swept Harvester behind him with two hands, shouted again, “Raaa-vens of Rennn-garth!”

  Too late the guards realized this big man wouldn’t flee. Two of them braked, almost falling. Two sheared to the side. Two, angrier than their comrades, drew their short swords to match their clubs.

  They died first.

  Harvester of Blood sliced the air, hissing as its glistening blade sheared through an ironwood club, slammed into the first guard’s neck, and carried on to bat the club of the next man, who reeled in shock from the gout of blood that erupted into the sky, and from the thud of his partner’s head at his feet. The sword edge cut the club deep enough that Sunbright’s tug ripped it from the guard’s hand. The soldier ducked and stabbed with his short sword, aiming for the barbarian’s gut. But Sunbright had whipped his sword straight back, pommel high against his shoulder, and stabbed back. Longer arms and a longer blade scored. The guard was skewered above the breastbone by the terrible, hooked tip of razor steel. His own fetched-up club battered his chin, though by then he was already dead.

  Chanting an ancient battle air, Sunbright hauled back his sword and whirled in a fast circle, though he shuffled without picking up his feet lest he trip or slip in blood. It was a good thing he instinctively guarded his back. A female guard was chopping at his kidneys.

  Tilting Harvester down, he caught her sword on his steel with a frightful clang and screech. Dishing her thrust to one side, he flicked a quick chop at her chin. She hollered and flipped her head back, but not fast enough. Harvester cleft her chin from underneath, laid open her lips so bloody teeth gleamed, and knocked her onto her back.

  Her partner, a square-jawed brute, tried an attack that almost worked. Reaching over his shoulder, he jerked loose his lobster-tail helmet and flung it at Sunbright’s face, followed with a quick killing thrust to the groin. But the barbarian had fought too many battles to flinch. Still gripping Harvester in two hands, he snapped his wrists up to deflect the polished bowl with a clonk. At the same time, he leveled Harvester only slightly. The lunging guard ran his own belly onto Harvester’s keen tip. As Sunbright spun to his right, the sword’s barb ripped a furrow aeross t
he man’s guts and liver.

  Sunbright was still turning, still guarding his back, but four guards were dead and the other two gone. He was alone, temporarily, in a pile of bloody dead. Cowering merchants hunkered behind spilt tables while distant guards clubbed the wounded to death, for most of the poor had fled to the shadows whence they’d come. The food riot was over, and soon Sunbright would be the only one standing with a bloody sword amidst a hundred angry guards.

  But not everyone had fled. The one-eyed woman—again Sunbright glimpsed that tantalizing white bauble at her throat—struggled to drag a yellow-haired man who’d fallen and broken his leg. The blind giant, hampered by his bulky loads of food, jabbered at the tiny girl, and groped for the fallen man. Guards spotting the quartet saw them and shouted to close in.

  Instantly Sunbright was among them, sheathing Harvester, butting the giant aside, grabbing up the broken-legged man, and pitching him over his shoulder. By the time he’d balanced the man, the one-eyed woman was waving a glittering gold hand at them from yards away. “Run, slue-foot!”

  Heavy boots sounded behind him. Hunkering forward under his burden and grabbing the giant’s elbow, Sunbright dashed through a maze of upset stalls, rolling vegetables, and slippery fish. The one-eyed leader paused at a narrow alley between two brick walls and slapped her comrades inside while watching the onrushing guards. She spanked Sunbright through into semidarkness, then shoved his hams from behind to keep him moving.

  But as he’d zipped past her, grappling to keep the injured man on his shoulder, Sunbright had glimpsed the white shininess at her throat and finally recognized it.

  It was a knucklebone.

  * * * * *

  When Candlemas trudged back to his suite of rooms, thoroughly distraught by he knew not what, he found yet another calling card lying on a silver tray next to his canopied bed. This bore an A, a letter for once not so ornate as to be misread. The simple, neat monogram made him already like the bearer. But who “A” was he didn’t know.

  A maid finally told him that the monogram belonged to one Lady Aquesita, and that her footmen had requested Candlemas visit, when he had the time. Now he had only exhaustion from a day of reading, and his nerve-racking interview with Lady Polaris. Kicking off his sandals, he climbed into bed and tried to forget everything.

  But the morning was bright, a hot bath and splendid breakfast brought him alive, and wearing yet another new robe, this one red with brown trim, he summoned a page girl to lead him to Lady Aquesita, whoever she might be.

  It turned out she lived in one of Karsus’s mansions. He had many, for he was the most important man in the empire, no matter what the other nobles might want to believe. It was a good mile walk down stairs and up ramps, out one door and across expanses of flagstones and gardens and lofty balconies until he arrived at Lady Aquesita’s “chambers”, which were, in fact, a whole separate mansion. Along the way Candlemas wondered what she wanted. Everyone in this city, he’d concluded, wanted something. Already he’d been approached by many folk currying favor with “Karsus’s special friend.” Aquesita, he supposed, would prove no different.

  Yet when the page led him down a gravel path to the lady’s mansion, Candlemas was impressed by its neat severity. Painted a lovely rose color, it lacked the usual overdone bric-a-brac and garish paint. Coming from the overly ornate realms of Karsus, this refreshingly plain house was like a breath of fresh air.

  His admiration grew when they passed through the main doors—with no guards barring assassins—to a large, open room painted a plain white and decorated mostly with green plants and flowers. At the far end, sitting at a small glass topped table, sat his hostess, who rose to meet him.

  “Good day, Master Candlemas. I am Lady Aquesita. So kind of you to come.”

  Never good at court manners, Candlemas bowed awkwardly, briefly kissed her hand, and accepted a seat in a delicate ironwork chair. Shrewdly, he studied his hostess, wondering what she wanted of him, while she fussed with tea and raspberry tarts.

  She was no beauty. Plain, round face, dimpled mouth, with brown hair piled on her head, she had a figure blocky as a barrel, and pudgy hands. But her smile seemed genuine, and she was not slathered in makeup as were most women and men in this place, nor were her eyes two different colors; the latest fashion, he’d been told. And her clothes were rich but severe. She plied her sunny smile so much Candlemas began to worry. She must want a powerful lot. Candlemas accepted herbal tea and a tart, and tried to guess what.

  A person’s chambers told much about the occupant, he knew, so he put his keen scientist’s eye to observing. What he found was a pleasant surprise. This and adjoining rooms were light and airy, and faced out on a long stone balcony overlooking gardens that ran out of sight to hedges and rose bushes, outbuildings and gazebos. The high doors were wide open, admitting sunlight and breeze and the breath of flowers. There were almost as many plants inside the room as outside, and the effect was to surround one with natural beauty. Scattered about the room too were many gorgeous artifacts such as Candlemas himself collected (had collected) back in Castle Delia. A graceful muse arched grapes over her head. An illuminated book lay open on a rosewood stand. Carved lions flanked the doorways. Glowing tapestries covered the walls. A crystalline dragon spun in the breeze, a goat between its front claws was a tiny clapper giving off bell-like tones.

  Stunned by this quiet beauty, Candlemas kept turning, making new discoveries. A faint giggle. “You admire my trinkets?”

  Flushing like a country bumpkin, Candlemas jerked upright in his seat, slopped rose hip tea on his robe. “Oh, yes, yes. Very much. I, uh, collected things like this, uh, long ago.”

  She was pleased by his admiration. “The cream of the empire, I hope. Most folks follow the latest fad, discarding what was new last year for newer trash this year. I pick and choose, seek out the Neth’s finest works, and keep them here, safe. Years from now, I like to think, people will know what was beautiful and appreciate my efforts.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” he agreed. She made Candlemas nervous, though he couldn’t think why. “That’s, uh, noble of you.”

  “Or selfish?” she countered. “Trying to buy my way to fame? But someone needs to tout the empire’s better side. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes, of course.” Candlemas agreed again, nodding like a dog begging a treat. “Uh …”

  “Why have I requested you visit?”

  Embarrassed by her directness, he fumbled with his cup. Even it was exquisite in a simple way, paper thin, painted with a single songbird so real it looked alive. She laughed, and he liked the sound. Looking up, he studied her more closely. It was then that he really noticed her eyes: a soft golden brown.

  “You’ve found me out,” she teased. “I’m cousin to Karsus. His only living relation.”

  Ah, thought Candlemas, but then, what could she want? Surely she could have anything in the city with a snap of her fingers.

  “I know you’re Karry’s special friend, at least for now. Gossip travels faster than hummingbirds through this castle. But I won’t ask much. It’s just that, as his only family, I like to keep abreast of what he’s doing.”

  “You want me to, uh …” Candlemas fumbled for a polite word.

  “Spy? No. No secret knowledge between us, no sneaking around. No, all I ask is that, while you’re his friend, I might ask his progress. What he’s thinking, what he’s up to. I’m responsible for him, in a way, because he’s not really responsible for himself.”

  That Candlemas knew. Karsus was a lunatic, albeit a genius.

  “If it’s a bother,” she went on, “please forget I asked. It’s just that, with no other family, and servants being deferential, and seekers currying favor, it’s hard for me to get the truth about my own cousin sometimes. An honest opinion would be so helpful. And you seem forthright—”

  “I’ll do it,” Candlemas blurted, though he wasn’t sure why. For some reason he wanted to help while she, unmarried and childless, looked afte
r the mad genius like an older sister. “I’d be glad to come see you—no, I mean—”

  “Thank you,” she interrupted. A soft hand touched his wrist. Cool, it sent tingles down his spine like an enchantment. “I would be very grateful.”

  “It’s no trouble. You’re welcome. I’ll come, uh, soon. As often as you wish.”

  Something sparkled in her eyes. Amusement? Mirth? Was she laughing at him? He couldn’t tell. He finished his tarts, wishing there were more so he might linger, but finally excused himself.

  The page girl had to take his hand to lead the way back. Candlemas couldn’t understand why he was befuddled. Had she potioned his tea? Cast a spell on him? Clouded his mind with some illusion?

  “What a remarkable woman!” he told the page girl as they walked, really speaking more to himself than to the servant. “Keenly intelligent, conscientious, noble, sacrificing, handsome in an unadorned way, with not a speck of decadence! It’s like finding a flower growing in a rubbish heap! Imagine …”

  The page girl was only ten, and said nothing, but she hid a woman’s smile as they passed up the gravel path.

  * * * * *

  Grunting, shifting his groaning burden while his shoulders were rubbed raw, Sunbright followed the ragtag thieves deeper and deeper. To where, he had no idea.

  Trotting down an alley, they’d taken an abrupt right through a broken wall into blackness, dropped into a cellar beneath what smelled like a disused tannery, scurried behind a mound of dirt and dropped to their knees—the blind giant barely fit, and Sunbright had to push the injured man before him—to clamber through another broken wall, then turn tightly and drop beneath even the cellar. Stooping, Sunbright tripped down a sloping tunnel until they reached a natural cavern.