The boardinghouse was close enough to the Red Boar for Michael to slip out through the inn’s back door and down three connecting alleys to reach it. He went the long way, this time, not wanting to set foot inside the Red Boar until he had to later that night, but he still reached the boardinghouse quickly and ran down the area steps and through the scullery door.
Senna MaGlen seemed to gather the ambitious wretched to her, employing disgraced servant girls and former streeters to help her run her surprisingly respectable establishment. Only the servants knew about Michael, though. Senna MaGlen had thought it just as well the others not know she’d rented to a heretic.
Though his tiny, slant-roofed dormer was probably considered too small even for the tweeny maid, the room was considered by Michael to be a paradise. It was the one place where he could go and be completely alone, and, aside from the room he’d stayed in at Robyn’s house, Michael had never before had any place all to himself.
When he dashed into the scullery, he was greeted by the housekeeper, Ma Fitz, who seemed the very template for all motherly housekeepers he’d encountered in novels. She offered him a cookie which he paused to accept. The scullery maid sat on a low stool peeling potatoes, and she stared at him, mouth half-open and her cheeks stained red. When he winked at her, the blush blazed brighter, and he grinned before turning away and heading up the several-flights of steps to his room, Cyra skimming by and ahead of him in order to meet him at their door.
He undressed, used a rag and some cold water poured into a chipped basin to wash the chalk off of his arms and face, and ran waxed thread between his teeth before polishing them with mint paste using a little brush, just as Risa had taught him. He then dressed again, this time in his Red Boar “uniform” of white shirt, black side-buttoning knickers, and tall, black leather boots. On colder evenings—and this promised to be one of those—it was all pulled together by a fancily-tailored men’s frock coat, also black and with the Red Boar’s symbol stitched onto the sleeve as warning to any who might otherwise bother him. On warmer nights and for everyday, he had a red-embroidered-on-black armband to wear instead. And when he was completely undressed, there was the tattoo.
Completing the look, he wore a thin, black scarf knotted loosely around his shirt collar. The boots were exceptionally well-made, extraordinarily expensive, and so tall they came up over his knees, reaching to mid-thigh. And they were warm, a fact that made him like them even if everyone else liked them for very different reasons. That he could still wear them, even though moons and moons had passed since Prince Leovar had gifted them to him, attested to how little he’d grown. He was small, and it seemed he would remain small. Though it saved him money to not have to constantly replace his clothing, and his small frame made him seem younger than his years, he didn’t much care for being so little.
He didn’t much care for his “uniform,” either. But the knickers were an accommodation, allowing his patrons to undress him without having to remove the much-admired boots. Another aspect to his look which he didn’t much care for—but which was, without a doubt, its most striking feature—was his long, black hair. “SanClare Black.” I wish they wouldn’t call me that.
While on the streets, he’d learned to hate how his hair tangled and snagged on things and enabled those he should have been able to escape to catch him and hurt him, but Risa had forbidden him to cut it. She’d even threatened to fine him if he dared, something which, as his mentor, she had the authority to do on her own and the Red Boar’s behalf. So now he stood before his tiny bit of mirror and painstakingly combed out the few snags it had managed to get since he’d freed it in the park and just as painstakingly re-braided it.
Braid or no braid, Jon and Dann would have had no problem recognizing me looking like this. Michael the streeter looked quite different from Michael the chalk-painter. It was not just his hair which had been so striking in Wil’s painting. His bearing had been different, too, and the expression captured by Wil’s painting had been that of someone who knew everyone was looking at him, admiring and desiring. Wil claimed he’d looked regal, but Michael knew better: I looked like a whore.
He made a face at the mirror to check his teeth one last time then gave his reflection a fake smile, caught up his pack, and headed out once more.
The sun was beginning to hide behind the buildings when he emerged from the alley and out onto the main street. A couple of the boys from the One-Eyed Sailor were kicking their heels, waiting for their next clients—the Sailor was a more traditional brothel and operated almost around the clock—and they waved to him.
He waved back but turned away, not wanting to get into any conversations at this point in his evening. Michael knew he was envied by the Sailor’s streeters, and he never stopped being thankful he hadn’t ended up there.
“Oh, and it’s taxes today.” He remembered. So he’d have less time to waste than he’d thought.
He crossed to the stables and sneaked inside. Visiting the stables after particularly trying nights was a habit he’d fallen into when he’d discovered how restful being around horses was for his overcrowded brain. And not just after work. He sometimes visited before work, too, to insulate himself from the looming stresses.
He climbed up into the rafters above the stalls, and moved as quietly as he could until he’d found a good spot. There, he positioned himself so that he was seated comfortably, one boot-clad leg crossed casually in front of him while he leaned back against the support beam running down from the roof.
The horses never seemed bothered by Michael’s invasions into their territory and rarely gave him away to the grooms and apprentices. Now he sat perched in the rafters above the stall where Pol, all unaware of his friend’s presence, worked on grooming a particularly pretty young mare whose master had either spent the night before or was planning to spend the night ahead at the Red Boar.
Pol’s thoughts were loud this evening, however, and Michael listened, amused, then almost laughed when his friend’s roiling thoughts turned into muttering in mid-stream. “And they’re all filthy-rich highborns and merchants and sea captains. Show up like kings and leave hours later, dragging like nothings. Losing all their money for what?”
His words faded back into thoughts, as he grappled with what was to him unimaginable: That sometimes these men, gamblers desperate to believe their cards would win, wagered away anything that came to mind. “Even their horses!” Pol exclaimed aloud, and Michael nearly did laugh this time. It was so like Pol to care most of all about this outrage.
A system existed at the Red Boar to ensure that the exchange from one owner to another of horses, jewels, property, and other personal goods took place without any fuss or confusion. Michael had always felt sorry for the horses this happened to, but Pol saw it as practically criminal.
“Do they miss their old stables and grooms?” he wondered softly. He gave the mare an extra caress, shaking his head. “It would be like gambling away your children.”
Michael couldn’t stand it any longer. “They do that, too,” he said. Pol started badly, but his training kept him from crying out. He looked up at Michael, glaring. “Or they try to, sometimes.” Michael quirked a half-smile down at his friend. “But it’s against the rules.”
“Don’t do that!” Pol snapped. “If I startle, the horses startle.”
“But she knew I was here.”
Pol recovered his composure, though a blush still reddened his burnished cheeks. “You’re up early. What’s the occasion?”
“I went to Carillon today.”
Pol nodded, knowing what that meant. “Make any money?” A grin took over from the embarrassment.
Michael grinned, too. “Almost twenty coppers! There were two highborn girls who kept ‘happening by.’”
Pol laughed at that and flashed a smile up at his friend. “Flirt,” he accused.
“How dare you doubt their dedication to Art Herself!” Michael retorted. “I’m sure it was my smudgy chalk drawings that earned their
favor.”
They talked on for awhile, discussing everything and nothing, all the while keeping very carefully away from anything that might touch on Michael’s real life and work. By an unspoken agreement, they never discussed what Michael did nor how he’d ended up at the Red Boar. They never discussed the brand on Michael’s hand. They never discussed the scars on his wrists.
But it was inevitable that something would come too close. “Daren said he wants to help you practice fighting,” Pol ventured.
Michael felt his ease fade, and his hand flipped out in a dismissive gesture. He watched Pol’s eyes follow the arc of his fingers through the air, and he knew his friend wondered what it meant. But Michael didn’t have the energy to explain the secret language of the Red Boar streeters to his innocent friend.
Someday I’ll work up the nerve to ask him. Pol’s thought sounded clearly across the space, but he only nodded and said, “He thinks you must be pretty good, so he wants to see for himself. See if he can help you get even better.”
Michael smiled a little at Pol’s attempt at diplomacy and said, “Must’ve asked Telyr,” an old joke. But this fell flat.
Pol had learned some time back that their erstwhile nemesis had been caught up by a press gang at about the same time that Michael had been tossed into the streets. And then, a few moons ago, Michael had read his name on a casualty list he’d only been perusing out of idle curiosity.
Michael coughed to fill the silence. He doubted he was all that good a fighter, even so. But perhaps he was good “for a tiny little weakling streeter,” which is what Daren had said of him when they’d first met. Maybe he actually believes I boxed Lorel Burk’s ears.
Daren was a cipher. He was one of Harly’s partner-owners and didn’t need to work as the Red Boar’s strong-arm, but he chose to do so anyway. Michael had tried to read his mind once or twice, but Daren had turned out to be one of those people whose thoughts weren’t noisily obvious to Michael at the merest touch.
All he learned from Daren’s mind were unimportant things. No details or desires or personal history ever seemed to leak out, and Michael didn’t want to push too hard against whatever protections Daren’s mind had.
But Daren always seemed to notice things others didn’t. His interventions with troublesome patrons in the central salon usually began before even the streeter or server involved realized things had gone sour. If Daren thought Michael needed better fighting skills, it would probably be a good idea for Michael to accept his help.
Michael was about to change the subject back to something safer when Pol’s thoughts shouted into the silence. You did this to him!
Michael almost thought Pol had said this out loud, it was so very clear, but he hadn’t. Pol thought it. He thought it every time he saw Michael. Which was one of the main reasons Michael avoided Pol most of the time.
He knew his friend had acted out of fear and horror on that festival night so many moons ago, but those feelings had never entirely gone away. When he looked at Michael now, Pol couldn’t forget what he’d seen—what Michael had looked like.
A rag doll...a bloody, torn-up rag doll.
He sees me as a helpless, hapless, ruined toy. Which was what he had been treated as, Michael knew. It wasn’t that Pol was wrong; it was that Michael didn’t want to be reminded that horrible, merciless highborn men had chased him down and played with him until they’d broken him.
Once he’d started remembering, Pol rarely stopped before the whole arc of that night had run through his brain. And then they just left him there in pieces...no wonder Michael wanted to finish the job.
Pol understood to a point, though not well enough. After all, Pol was the reason he was here at the Red Boar. Pol’s inability to let him go was the reason.
I know he’s going to be with some slobbering, nasty man in just a little while, but he always seems so innocent. It’s hard to believe we aren’t back at JhaPel, cheating a few tics from our chores to talk.
Pol’s thoughts faded into silence, but Michael’s mind followed the thread to its logical conclusion: When both of us were happily ignorant of the things grown men did in their spare time.
“Well, I just thought I’d say hello,” Michael said into the silence. He felt bruised by Pol’s thoughts, but Pol thought he’d been hurt by the long, awkward silence.
“I’m sorry.” Pol blushed again. “I’m kind of tired today, myself. And...well, I have some news.”
Michael had moved as if to climb down from the rafters, but he stopped and frowned at his friend. “What news?”
Pol stopped brushing and looked up at Michael, keeping a hand on the mare’s back as if to steady himself. He hesitated, as if afraid, but finally just said it. “I saw Nanna Tierna. She came here yesterday morning, but you’d left already.”
And I missed her! But, aloud, Michael only said, “And?”
“She isn’t a nanna anymore. She hasn’t been for a long time. It sounded a little strange, like maybe she quit but Mabbina threw her out, too. Like it was both things. But what it means is that she went back to her family, and the only way they’d take her back was if she promised to marry, and now she’s getting married, so this was her last chance to try to see you. I guess it was sort of a scandal, everything that happened—Mabbina throwing her out or her quitting or whatever—”
Michael looked stricken, and Pol rushed on. “She said to say it wasn’t you! She said that Mabbina hated her, too, and this would have happened sooner or later, and she would rather have fought for you and been branded, too, than to have stayed a nanna. She said she wished she had been branded, too.”
“No, she doesn’t.” Michael’s right hand moved reflexively to touch the brand scarring his left.
“I know, but she meant well to say so. She thinks she means it.”
Michael looked down at his hands but didn’t see anything at all. “I waited for her to come see me when I was at Landsend,” he admitted. “When she never did, I knew she was gone, because she would’ve come to see me if she’d been there. No matter what they said, she would’ve.”
Pol nodded. “She said to tell you she was sorry. She said to tell you that she wishes—”
“—everything was different,” Michael finished, his voice still soft. “She wishes she’d never met Magister Vaznel. She wishes she’d never convinced me to go to see Sirra Avram. She wishes she’d never taken me to JhaPel.”
Pol bit his lip and looked away. “Yes.”
Michael had always forgiven Nanna Tierna because she had tried so hard to help him and to care for him, and she truly loved him. But so much of what she set in motion ended in disaster. There were times when Michael felt sorrier for her than he did for himself, and he sensed Pol agreed with him.
“She brought this for you.” Pol held out a thin, worn booklet.
“My drawings,” Michael whispered. He couldn’t say anything more. The sight of that booklet brought everything back from his first sight of Whiltierna to...
Michael slipped gracefully from his precarious perch and dropped down to stand on the mare’s back, careful and sure. She barely seemed to notice.
He might have been raised since birth around horses—which would support the Reinra theory, Michael thought. But it did seem his body knew all about horses even if his memory didn’t.
He knew Pol envied his ease, but he watched affectionately as Michael slipped down to sit astride the mare’s broad back.
Michael took the notebook from Pol’s outstretched hand and held it to his chest. Overwhelmed, he crumpled over the mare’s neck and buried his face in her beautiful, cream-colored mane.
He took a long, deep breath and blew it out as he sat up again, then slipped off the mare’s back and dropped to the ground, graceful as a cat.
“She’s the sweetest one here.” Michael offered Pol one of his almost-convincing half-smiles. “Give her an extra treat or two for me, all right?” And he slipped out the stall door.
The temperature had dropped prec
ipitously since he’d first gone into the stables—reminding Michael that it was only the very beginning of spring and still as likely to snow as to rain—and he hurried back toward the inn to escape the chill, the notebook still clutched to his chest.
He arrived at the main entrance just as the inevitable rain began to fall—There go my chalk drawings—and was waved in automatically by one of the several burly men who stood guard there day and night.
The building housing the Red Boar seemed dropped into the middle of Fensgate from Court Row—a parish that included the castle and Prince Leovar’s mansion—and was massive even by that fine area’s standards. In Fensgate, it dominated everything around it. Impossible to miss, and yet I managed to do it.
He wondered, as he often had, if any of the people he’d asked for help that long-ago night had given him the right directions. Or had they all been playing games with me, knowing I’d come to no good end. Knowing what he now did about Fensgate and its inhabitants, he’d come to suspect that this theory was the truth.
Michael crossed the wide, elegant entrance hall and pushed through the ornately etched, plate glass doors into the glittering central salon.
The girls, most of whom lived at the Red Boar, were lounging around the vast room, none of them yet ready for the night, some sipping tea or coffee, some eating an early supper. Varian, the house musician, was playing the sort of quiet, thoughtful tune on the pianoforte that no one ever wanted to hear during open hours.
Michael shivered at the abrupt rise in temperature from the brisk outdoor air and sniffed as his nose began to run.
“Catching a chill, dear?” Risa swept up beside him as if she’d been waiting for him to arrive. “Can’t have that tonight of all nights!”
Michael sighed inwardly. Another thing I forgot, he scolded himself. Though the stated rules for being a Red Boar streeter were that you were able to pick and choose whom you liked and say yes or no as you wished, there were times when that rule was more true than others. Harly appreciated the assistance of certain streeters in entertaining special guests. Tonight, it was Michael’s turn. Again.
SanClare Black (The Prince of Sorrows) Page 23
