The Black Wolves

by Kate Elliott

  Gil smiled down on him, leg tensed, ready to kick. “I’ll take fifty leya. Still a bargain for you.”

  “You’ve got cheek, I’ll give you that. But there are six of us and two of you. You should have known better than to drive into Wolf Quarter this time of night with a dead Silver on your hands. Run away, little man. But leave the stinking outlander with us.”

  “The hells I will! I need coin—”

  Gil felt the moment the man made his move, the pinch of his fingers against Gil’s skin, the tug of weight as he went to drag him off the driver’s bench. With a twist, Gil punched him square on the nose and kicked his heel into the man’s chest.

  “Go!” he snapped to Ty as he ripped the attacker’s steel-tipped stave out of his hand.

  Tyras knew when to stop whining and start moving. The horse did not like the armed men any better than they did. Its surge forward had real power.

  Gil thrust at the men with the stave, poking one in the shoulder and another in the thigh so they fell back. One fellow leaped up on the runner. Gil swung the haft in a move that slammed the man’s head into the shuttered window.

  “Open the door, Kas!” he shouted.

  From inside Kasad opened out the door so hard that the intruder lost his grip and tumbled to the cobblestones. The leader clambered up the back, barely holding on as Tyras swung the coach around a corner. Gil climbed up onto the roof of the coach as it lurched along and, clinging to the top, pummeled the man in the chin and forehead with his heels. The thug thudded heavily onto the street as the coach rolled on.

  “What in the hells is going on?” Kasad shouted.

  Tyras swore.

  “Who in the hells thought that was a good idea?” Gil could not stop laughing as he hauled himself back down to the driver’s bench. He had lost the stave. His right hand was bleeding, and one of his sandal straps had gotten cut so the toe flapped.

  “Can we just abandon this cursed vehicle and walk home now?” said Tyras.

  “No! Leave this noble horse to any common ruffian? The beast saved us with uncommon loyalty and steadfast courage. We must take him to a fine stable in thanks.”

  “To what fine stable? We can’t leave the city at night because all the gates are closed.”

  “You sad man, we’re in Wolf Quarter. We go to the House of the Dagger.”

  “Oh no, Gil. No. You’re not to bother the Incomparable again. Your family ordered you to stop going there.”

  “How will they know if you don’t tell them?” The reckless urge had a grip on his heart that would not let go. “Take us there, Ty, or give me the reins.”

  Tyras never defied him. But he groused as he drove the coach through the quiet streets, his face woven on and off with shadows as they passed lantern posts.

  “Do you know what, Gil? I hope you get married off to a woman richer than you so you have to bow and scrape to the tune she commands. You’ll just be another one of her gallery of musicians, fiddling with your pipe when she wants music!”

  “You wound me, Ty. How you must hate me!” Gil pounded on the roof. “Kas? How are you doing in there? Has the Silver woke up yet?”

  “That’s not funny.” Kasad’s voice was muffled, as though he had cloth over his mouth, but at least he had stopped that horking retch. “What in the hells happened? Let me out!”

  “No, no, you have to stay there to keep our friend warm and tidy.”

  “My feet are all over blood, Gil! Have pity!”

  “Kas! Shut up! If I do not win a kiss from the Incomparable Melisayda, then you can both kiss my ass for a month.”

  “And you’ll kiss ours if you do get a kiss?” retorted Kasad.

  Gil cackled. “Rare wit from the prince! Hush, now, here we are.”

  They rolled up to the House of the Dagger. Four burning lamps hung from the wooden lintel set above the closed gate. Through thick latticework shutters set into the gate they could hear music playing, a woman singing, and the complex rhythm of dancing sticks plied together in accompaniment. Just the thought of the most beautiful woman in Toskala aroused Gil, and he had to shift on the driver’s bench and force himself to consider the dead Silver hidden in the coach to stop himself from getting hard.

  A woman walked a balcony set alongside the gate, wearing a body-hugging taloos, the cloth tightly wrapped around her shapely form. The lamplight made its metallic embroidery threads shimmer as if she were garbed in a web of spun gold. She leaned over the railing to study them more closely. Her face was pretty but she was not the Incomparable Melisayda, only some lesser hierodule. Yet Gil saw how she noted and dismissed him and Tyras before closely studying the distinctive sigils carved into the coach’s doors. Her dour frown made a dark night darker.

  He stood on the bench, which made him tall enough to reach the lower span of the balcony. “We are here to pay our respects to the Incomparable Melisayda.”

  She set a hand on a hip. “Are you, now? She can’t be expecting you. Nor can I invite you in if you have no invitation.”

  “Tell her that Gilaras Herelian is here to see her. I have brought a noble horse, a sturdy coach, and a dead Silver as offerings to lay at her feet—”

  The coach door burst open and Kasad stumbled out, cloth pressed over his face and mostly concealing his features. His gagging completely ruined the drama of Gil’s speech. With a wince of distaste, the woman vanished through a curtained doorway.

  “I’m going home,” said Kasad in an altered and unusually decisive tone. “I’ve had enough.”

  Tyras tossed down the reins. “I’ll go with you! Gil, I’m not staying one breath longer with you when you’re in one of these careening moods. You’re just asking for it.”

  “Go on home,” he said, not even looking their way because he already had a new idea.

  When Tyras jumped down, the coach rocked, and Gil leaped, grabbed the bottom of the railing, and hooked himself up. By the time he swung onto the balcony, Tyras and Kasad had raced away into the gloom of the night streets, leaving him with the damning evidence. It was certainly for the best that they’d left. Anyway he had more pressing interests. He blew on his left hand, which was stinging, and wiped the blood on the curtain. Then he pushed inside.

  Bells tinkled all around him, their chime the sound light would make as it glistened, if light had noise. Golden netting spilled over him. A weight slammed him atop the head, and all the lights went out.

  The next thing he knew, he was lying on his side on dirt and throwing up all the cheap rice beer he had drunk earlier.

  When he stopped heaving, he pushed up to his hands and knees for a few breaths until he judged he could raise his head without passing out.

  His brother Shevad was standing over him, dressed in a linen kilt and nothing else, as if he had only wrapped the kilt around his nakedness to deal with an intruder. His expression was one Gil had seen a hundred times or more over the years.

  “What in the hells are you doing, Gil? You have been expressly forbidden from coming here.”

  “Can I have something to drink?” Gil croaked as he staggered to his feet. His head ached and his legs quivered, but cursed if he would kneel in front of either of his brothers with their sanctimonious sneers and beardless faces.

  “You’ve already had enough to drink. As you might have noticed while you were puking it all up.”

  Gil had no memory of how he had gotten from the balcony to this small interior courtyard adjacent to a lavatory. His spew made a stain on the ground but fortunately he hadn’t eaten anything recently so it was only sour wine. Music floated over the wall. In an open gate a woman stood in shadow, half seen, watching them, but he would know her anywhere by the sly tilt of her shoulders and her scent blended of musk vine and heady stardrops.

  “I brought you a present, verea,” he called to her. “A secret no other Hundred man can possibly tell you.”

  Her low laugh teased him but she did not step into the light.

  Shevad slapped him so hard that Gil stumbled and w
ould have fallen if he hadn’t hit a wall.

  He steadied himself as he rubbed his cheek. “What was that for?”

  “So many people have seen the coach and heard news of a dead Silver that the city watch was called. Don’t you understand, you ass? They are coming to arrest you for murder.”

  “I didn’t kill him! But I’ll tell you this: You ever wonder if Silver men really have horns?” He glanced toward the gate to make sure she was listening, but she had gone.

  His brother grabbed him roughly by the shoulder. “Do not fuck with me, Gil, you stupid shit. Now sit down.”

  Shevad was a general in the army who had proven himself the hard way and earned an impressively crude nickname despite his inability to sire children. Right now he was so tremendously pissed off that Gil decided to wait a bit before pissing him off even more. But he did not sit down. As his brother paced, Gil passed the time by practicing the story-talk his grandmother had taught him, the hand gestures used to accompany the tales everyone in the Hundred used to know: a hand moving open and shut for the barking dog; fingers bending at the knuckles as the hand recoils at the wrist for the man who walks in on his friends making love; the stumbling merchant disguised as a beggar, the impatient reeve, the dragonling’s laughter, the merling’s bubbling sigh.

  Thus he was taken by surprise when the supreme captain of the King’s Spears walked into the courtyard’s lamplight. “General Shevad? Even I am shocked to hear your reckless young brother has been accused of murdering a Ri Amarah man.”

  Gil’s legs gave way and he sat down hard on a bench.

  Even General Shevad had to bow, fist-to-chest, before the man who commanded the elite Spears as well as a rumored secret cohort of spies and assassins called Knives. “Supreme Captain Ulyar. I did not … I expected the watch captain.”

  For all his ordinary appearance, Ulyar was the second most dreaded man in the Hundred. His word alone could condemn a man to servitude in the naphtha fields or salt panning in the Barrens, or he might offer a more merciful impaling. In fact he was the man who had ordered all five of the young sons of Lord Seras be castrated on the day King Atani’s corpse had arrived back at the palace.

  “Stand up, Gilaras Herelian,” he said.

  Gil stood.

  Supreme Captain Ulyar studied Gil as if deciding which testicle to cut off first. “This exceeds all the rest of the tiresome mischief and lazy troublemaking perpetrated by you and your useless friends. Did you kill him?”

  “No, Supreme Captain, I did not kill the Silver. I hired a coach and driver for the night, and found him dead after he’d been waiting on the street while I was inside an establishment.”

  “What of the two who were with you? Might one of them have done it?”

  Gil cursed himself inwardly for giving the man a possible hook to make serious trouble for Kasad inside the palace. “No one was with me, Captain. I was alone.”

  Shevad sighed.

  Ulyar had an excitable eyebrow. It leaped now. “Strange. I’ve heard numerous reports that you were accompanied by two men on your sad little escapade.”

  Gil shrugged. “Trick of the light maybe. I’m the only one here.”

  “Might we take care of this at home, Supreme Captain?” asked Shevad. “I have served the king well and honorably—”

  “I don’t like you and your traitorous family, General Shevad. Even if I did like you, it wouldn’t matter. Palace lads can get away with a lot but not with this. By itself murder is a grave charge punishable by a public lashing and seven years on a work gang. But the old covenant sealed between King Anjihosh and the Ri Amarah means I have to attend to any death of a Ri Amarah personally and treat it as a much more severe charge. Which if you ask me is a courtesy Silvers don’t deserve, but I am a man who follows the law.”

  Gil curled his lip to a careful sneer. “The rumor I hear is that you follow the coin to wherever it smells sweetest.”

  “Gil!” snapped Shevad.

  Ulyar had a whip with three knotted lashes. He laid the whip across Gil’s chest so the knots dug painfully into his flesh. They were of a height, but although Gil was twenty years younger, Ulyar had the strength and authority of a man used to getting his way. “You don’t want to make me angrier than I already am. Tell me what happened.”

  Gil did not wilt. Give them enough truth and no specific lies. “Just as I said. I hired the coach because I wanted to visit a flower girl over in Bell Quarter. I went into the establishment for several hours, drank and sang although I must say none of the flowers convinced me to pluck them. When I came out the Silver was dead inside the coach. So I thought I could sell the coach and the dead man in exchange for enough coin to pay for a single night with the Incomparable Melisayda to slake my other thirst. But no one was buying, more’s the pity.”

  “Is that the story you’ll tell when I have you publicly whipped to get your confession?”

  Shevad broke in, which was far more than Gil expected. “Supreme Captain, I and my brother Yofar have served honorably in the army since we were younger than Gil here. Yofar died in the service of the king. Out of consideration for our loyalty—”

  “What is it worth to you not to disgrace this fool in public?” Ulyar took a step back, lowering the whip. Gil sucked in a painful breath and with every grain of will he possessed he managed not to rub his aching chest. “I imagine the disgrace added to the household’s destitution and reputation will ruin you permanently, will it not, General? Unless you convince me otherwise.”

  A fist of suspicion clenched in Gil’s belly. What if Ulyar had had Gil and his friends followed, had the Silver killed, and then waited like a spider to eat up the hapless creatures now caught in his web?

  “How much?” asked Shevad.

  Ulyar laughed in a way that made Gil’s skin crawl. “Let me see. If I tell you five hundred cheyt to see the young man left alone, what would you say to that?”

  “You’re mocking us!” cried Gil. “We’d have to sell our compound to raise that much gold.”

  Ulyar scratched an ear. “What a pity that would be. A clan without a house is no clan.”

  “Done,” agreed Shevad with a curt laugh. “Five hundred cheyt, as I have just heard you speak with your own mouth now, and Gilaras is free and clear of all suspicion in the matter. Nor will he and any supposed associates ever be blamed or accused again of this crime.”

  Ulyar blinked, so taken aback that Gil had to admire Shevad’s gloating smile. The captain opened his mouth and then closed it.

  Shevad dusted off his hands. “In fact, Gilaras shall become the hero of the piece. He will deliver the poor dead man, whom he discovered murdered on the street, back to his grieving family as a mark of respect to a distant cousin of the woman he is about to marry.”

  “What?” demanded Gil, sure Shevad had begun babbling in a foreign language.

  Ulyar’s calm anger was legendary; the way he stared at Shevad would have turned a lesser man to stone, but Shevad had, after all, survived worse than an ugly glare. “Now, that’s something I thought could never be done. Convincing the Ri Amarah to give up one of their women in marriage. I’m impressed, General. I’ve heard not even a whisper of the negotiations.”

  Shevad nodded. “My thanks,” he replied with a slim edge of mockery. “I just heard at dusk today that the alliance can go forward, which is why I came here to celebrate. They give us a fortune, and we give them entry into the palace. A fair trade, don’t you think?”

  Ulyar fingered his whip. “Deliver the coin to my office personally, General Shevad. I want you to bring it with your own hands.”

  Gil looked Shevad over one more time. Shevad’s bare torso gleamed in the lamplight with a thin skin of oil, as if he had been interrupted in the midst of being rubbed. No doubt by the Incomparable Melisayda.

  Without another word Supreme Captain Ulyar left, walking out through the gate in which the Incomparable had, so briefly, waited and watched.

  “I would not be one bit surprised to
discover Ulyar had the Silver murdered to get at Kas,” Gil murmured.

  “What do you mean?” Shevad strode to the gate to make sure the man had truly left.

  “It seems suspicious that it happened so conveniently on a deserted street.”

  “It was a Silver, Gil. One of their clan houses was attacked and burned in High Haldia last month. People resent them. They are rich, and they hoard powerful magic in their households.”

  “Maybe. But if I had a means to slip a warning to King Jehosh that his youngest son is in danger, I would. I can’t keep an eye on Kas all the time. Even I have to sleep.” He yawned as the events of the night caught up to him.

  “Is someone paying you to befriend Prince Kasad? Is that how you get your drinking money?”

  “Gods, you are such an ass, Shev. Is it so strange that I might have friends? By the way, you can be cursed sure I’m not marrying to fill the clan coffers. I may be the only bull you have but I won’t be put out to stud.”

  The look Shevad turned on him bore a hostility as ugly as that Gil had seen in the Wolf Quarter tavern—but it was made all the worse because his brother was usually at pains to hide his dislike, whereas the strangers at the tavern meant nothing to him.

  “Either we pay the bribe to Ulyar, or you get whipped until you faint. Then if you don’t die of pus and inflammation you’ll be sent into indentured servitude at hard labor for seven years. The point is, Gil, we don’t have the coin to pay the bribe unless you marry.”

  “Oh the hells, you’re right,” said Gil, and there was nothing he could do but laugh.

  12

  The Ri Amarah were a practical people above all else. When Uncle Makel called Aunt Rua out of the jubilee and explained the situation to her, she accepted his accounting of how the alliance would benefit the clan. Garna gladly welcomed Sarai into the center of the celebration, for among the Ri Amarah everything was deemed better if it was shared.

  “Isn’t your brother in Nessumara? Isn’t he one of the heirs to the household of the First Branch of the Tree of Heaven?” Garna blurted out. “Maybe you can travel downriver from Toskala to Nessumara to visit me at my new home in the Seventh Branch. Then you can finally meet him, now that you will be respectable.”