by Brent Weeks
It was either courtesy or bait. Solon chuckled. “That’s the first time I’ve been asked that question.” He gestured to himself as if to say, Just look at my skin.
The count said, “I don’t see any clan rings, or any scars where they’ve been removed.”
“Well, not all Sethi wear the rings.”
“I was under the distinct impression that they did,” Count Drake said.
“What is this? What are you after?”
“I’m curious about who you really are, Master Tofusin. Logan Gyre is not only a fine young man whom I regard almost as a son, he’s also suddenly the lord of one of the most powerful houses in the land. I’ve never seen you or heard of you, and suddenly you’re his adviser? That strikes me as peculiar. I don’t care that you’re Sethi—if you are—but I’ve spent some time on Hokkai and Tawgathu, and the only Sethi who don’t pierce their cheeks are the exiles stripped of clan and family. But if you are an exile, you should have scars from your rings being torn out, and you have none.”
“Your knowledge of our culture is admirable, but incomplete. I am of House Tofusin, Windseekers of the Royal House. My father’s appointment was to Sho’cendi.”
“An ambassador to the red mages?”
“Yes. Sho’cendi accepts students from all over the world. As I had no magical talent, I received my education among the merchants and nobles, who are not as tolerant. Not having the rings made life a little easier. There’s more to it than that, but I don’t think the rest of my story is any of your business.”
“Fair enough.”
“What took you to Seth?” Solon asked.
“Slavery,” the count said. “Before I became fully part of the movement that finally ended slavery here seven years ago, I thought a more moderate path might work. I went to Hokkai to see if I could learn ways to make slaves’ lives better.”
From the small size of his house—which was very small for a noble, even one as low as a count—Solon knew that Count Drake hadn’t been one of the slavers who felt guilty about his newfound wealth. He must have been a real crusader all along.
“It’s totally different in Seth,” Solon said. “The Year of Joy changes everything.”
“Yes, I advanced the idea here, even got the law passed, but the Sa’kagé immediately suborned it. Instead of every slave being freed on the seventh year, slaves were to be freed seven years from the beginning of their indenture. The Sa’kagé claimed it was simpler, that it would be ridiculous to buy a slave in the sixth year and own them for only a month or a week. Of course, in practice, the Sa’kagé’s people kept the records, so where in your country, the seventh year is full of celebration as every slave is freed, here the years passed and slaves were never freed. Slaves became slaves for life. They were beaten, scourged, given to the Death Games, their children sent to the baby farms.”
“I’ve heard those became truly awful,” Solon said.
“The Sa’kagé set them up, saying that they would be places where the children of prostitutes might be redeemed. Slaves, true, but redeemed. It sounded good, but it gave us places like the House of Mercy. Sorry, I shouldn’t go on. It was a dark time. Is that boy ever coming down?”
“Maybe we should get started,” Solon said. “I don’t think this will wait, and from the way Logan was looking at your daughter, they might be talking a while.”
The count chuckled. “Are you testing me now?”
“Does Duke Gyre know?”
“Yes. He and I are friends. Regnus is loath to demand control of Logan’s flirtations, given the circumstances of his own marriage.”
“I’m not familiar with those. Can you enlighten me?” Solon asked.
“It’s not my place. Anyway, Logan and Serah will grow out of it. What appears to be the problem?”
“Catrinna Gyre.”
“Careful,” the count said.
“Did the duke give you letters that declared his son Lord Gyre in his absence?”
“He spoke of it, but he had to leave quickly. He said his steward would bring them.”
“Lady Gyre has stolen the letters and destroyed them. Then she went to the queen.”
“She went to whom?” The count was astonished.
“Is that unusual?”
“They have no love for each other. What happened?” Count Drake asked.
“Lady Gyre asked to be made Logan’s guardian. The king overheard them. He came in and said he would take it under advisement. What does that mean?”
Count Drake removed his pince nez and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It means that if he acts quickly, he can appoint a guardian for Logan.”
“Will Catrinna Gyre do such a poor job?” Solon asked.
Count Drake sighed. “Legally, the king can put anyone in Logan’s place that he wants so long as they’re related to him, which means almost anyone in the nobility. And once he’s got a guardian in place, even Regnus won’t be able to rescind the appointment. Catrinna has just delivered House Gyre to the king.”
“But you’re Duke Gyre’s solicitor—and he told you his wishes. Doesn’t that carry any weight?” Solon asked.
“If the king were interested in the truth, yes. As is, to save the Gyres, we’d need the Gyre family parchment, the duke’s Great Seal, and a reckless willingness to forge a state document. The king holds court in half an hour. I’d guess this will be the first item on the agenda. There’s just no time.”
Solon cleared his throat and produced a roll of heavy parchment and a large seal.
Count Drake grinned and snatched the parchment. “I think I suddenly like you, Master Tofusin.”
“Wendel North helped me with the wording,” Solon said. “I thought I’d leave the signature and the seal to you.”
Count Drake rummaged through his desk, found a letter from the duke, and laid it on top of the writ of guardianship. With quick, sure strokes, he forged the duke’s signature flawlessly. Count Drake looked up guiltily and said, “Let’s just call it an artifact of a misspent youth.”
Solon dribbled sealing wax on the parchment. “Then here’s to misspent youth.”
“Next time you’ll move,” Blint said as Azoth groaned his way back into consciousness.
“I don’t think I’ll ever move again. My head feels like someone threw it against a wall.”
Blint laughed, the second time Azoth had heard him do that recently. He was sitting on the edge of Azoth’s bed. “You did well. They thought you were embarrassed because you got knocked down in front of Drake’s daughter, so they decided it was all harmless kid stuff. The young lord Gyre was mortified that he hit you—apparently he’s a real big friendly giant, never loses his temper. The fact you’re about a quarter his size and Serah was furious with him also helps. They were all quite impressed.”
“Impressed? That’s stupid.”
“In their world fighting has rules, so fighting means risking embarrassment and pain and at worst risking your looks if you get a broken nose or an unfortunate scar. It doesn’t mean dying or killing. In their world, you can fight a man and then become his friend. In fact, you’re going to play it so Logan does become your friend, because with a man like him, you can only come out of this as a great friend or a terrible enemy. Do you understand that, Kylar? We’ll work together on your new identity soon.”
“Yes, sir. Sir, why didn’t you want Master Tofusin to see you? That’s why you made me fight Logan, isn’t it? To be a distraction?”
“Solon Tofusin is a magus. Most magi—that’s male mages—can’t tell if you’re Talented just by looking at you. On the other hand, most magae—female mages—can. There are disguises against their sight that I’ll teach you later, but I didn’t have the time to do it and I didn’t feel like going upstairs and jumping out a window.”
Azoth was confused. “But he doesn’t act like a mage.”
“And how would you know?” Durzo asked.
“Uh …” Azoth didn’t think saying, “He isn’t like the mages in stories” was
going to please Durzo.
“The truth is,” Durzo said, “Solon hasn’t told Logan or anyone else that he’s a mage, and you won’t tell anyone either. When you know a man’s secrets, you have power over him. A man’s secret is his weakness. Every man has a weakness, no matter …” Master Blint’s voice dropped to nothing, his eyes suddenly distant, lifeless. He stood and left without a word.
Azoth closed his eyes, confused. He wondered about his new master. He wondered about the guild. He wondered if Ja’laliel had bought review. He wondered how Jarl was doing. Most of all, he wondered about Doll Girl.
“Hey-ho, Azo.”
“Hey-ho, Jay-Oh,” Azoth said. Even as he gave the words the same stress he always had, Azoth felt part of himself die. This was supposed to be one of his last outings as Azoth. Soon, he would have to become Kylar. He would walk differently, talk differently. He wouldn’t ever visit his old neighborhoods in the Warrens. But now he saw that Azoth’s world was already dying, that he would never connect with Jarl again. It had nothing to do with the lies Kylar would tell, and everything to do with Rat. It was different now. It always would be.
Azoth and Jarl looked at each other for a long moment in the common room of Momma K’s house. It was almost midnight, and the guild rats would soon be shooed out of the house. They were welcome in the common room all day, but they were allowed to sleep here only in the winter, and then only if they obeyed her rules: no fighting, no stealing, no going anywhere but the kitchen and the common room, and no bothering the adults who visited. Any guild rat who broke the rules got his entire guild banned from Momma K’s for the winter. Usually, it was a death sentence for the offender, because it meant the whole guild would have to sleep in the sewers to stay warm, and they would kill him for that.
Still, the place was always crowded. There was a fireplace and a floor covered with soft rugs good for sleeping on. Those rugs had once been clean, but were now stained from their filthy bodies. Despite the damage, Momma K never got mad at them—and every few months, new rugs showed up. There were durable chairs the guild rats were allowed to sit on, toys, dolls, and piles of games they could play. Sometimes Momma K even brought them treats. Here they gambled and bragged and gossiped freely with anyone who was here, even children outside their own guild. It was the only place the guild rats were allowed to resemble children. It was the only safe place they knew.
Coming back, it looked different. What had seemed so recently the very lap of luxury now was just a plain room, with plain furnishings and simple toys because the guild rats would ruin anything better. They would stain everything and break anything delicate, not from malice but from ignorance. The place was the same; it was Azoth who had changed. Azoth—or Kylar, whichever he was—marveled at the stench of the guild rats. Didn’t they smell themselves? Weren’t they ashamed, or was it just him, ashamed to see what he had been?
As he always did after his reading lesson with Momma K, Azoth had looked for Jarl. But now that they were face to face, neither could find anything to say.
“I need your help,” Azoth said finally. There was no way to cover what he wanted. He wasn’t here to visit a friend. He was here to do a job.
“My help?”
“I need to know what’s happened to Doll Girl. Where is she? And I need to know what’s happening with the guilds.”
“I guess you wouldn’t know.”
“No.” Guilds weren’t part of his life now. Nothing was like it used to be.
“Your master hit you?” Jarl asked, looking at Azoth’s black eyes.
“I got this in a fight. He does hit me, but not like—” Azoth cut off.
“Not like Rat?”
“How is he?” Azoth said, trying to cover.
“Why don’t you tell me? You’re the one who killed him.”
Azoth opened his mouth, but seeing two littles in Momma K’s front room, stopped.
“Blint made you kill Rat to see if you could do it, didn’t he?” Jarl asked, his voice low.
“No. Are you crazy?” In his head, he could hear the echoes of Master Blint’s voice from their training: “Word gets out. Word always gets out.”
Hurt filled Jarl’s eyes, and he said nothing for a long time. “I shouldn’t push, Azoth. I’m sorry. I should just thank you. Rat …he messed me up bad. I’m so confused all the time. I hated him, but sometimes…. When Rat disappeared and I saw you walking away with Blint …” Jarl blinked rapidly and stared away. “Sometimes I hate you. You left me with no one. But that’s not right. You didn’t do anything wrong. Just Rat …and me.”
Azoth didn’t know what to say.
Jarl blinked furiously again. “Shut up, Jarl. Shut up.” He dashed the tears from his eyes with fists. “What do you need?”
There was something Azoth should say, he knew it. Some assurance he should give, but he didn’t know what it was. Jarl had been his friend—was his friend, wasn’t he?—but he’d changed. Azoth had changed. He was supposed to be Kylar now, but instead, he was just a fraud straddling two worlds and trying to hold on as they tore apart. Whatever the cataclysm named Rat had left Azoth holding onto, one thing was certain. A chasm had opened between him and Jarl, and Azoth was afraid to even approach it, didn’t understand what it was, didn’t know anything except that it made him feel dirty and scared. Jarl was letting him put the walls back up by asking his simple question—a simple question that could be answered simply, a problem that they could actually resolve.
“Doll Girl,” Azoth said. He felt relieved to back away from his once-friend and guilty that he felt relieved.
“Oh,” Jarl said. “You know she got …?”
“Is she all right now?”
“She’s alive. But I don’t know if she’s going to make it. They make fun of her. Without you around, she isn’t like she used to be. I’ve been sharing my food with her, but the guild’s falling apart. Things are too bad. We don’t have enough food.”
The guild, not our guild. Azoth kept his face blank, refused to show how much that hurt. It shouldn’t have hurt. He was the one who’d wanted out, he was the one who left, but it still made him feel empty.
You will be alone. You will be different. Always.
“Ja’laliel’s almost dead; turns out Rat stole his review money. And now they lost the waterfront to Burning Man, and others are closing in.”
“They?”
Jarl’s face twisted. “If you’ve got to know, they threw me out of Black Dragon. Threw us all out. Didn’t want buggers and Rat-lovers, they said.”
“You don’t have a guild?” Azoth asked. It was a disaster. Guild rats without a guild were fair game for anyone. That Jarl had stayed alive since being expelled was surprising, that he’d had food to share with Doll Girl was amazing, and that he was willing to was humbling.
“Some of us have banded together for a little while. They call us the Buggers. I’m going to try to join Two Fist on the north side. Rumor is they might get the market on Durdun soon,” Jarl said.
That was Jarl. Always had a plan.
“They’re willing to take Doll Girl, too?”
He was answered with guilty silence.
“I asked. I did, Azoth. They just won’t do it. If you—” Jarl’s mouth opened to say more, then closed.
“I’m not going to make you ask, Jarl. I’ve been looking for you to give it back.” Azoth lifted his tunic and unwrapped the sash full of coins. He handed it to Jarl.
“Azoth, this—this is twice as heavy as it was.”
“I’ll take care of Doll Girl. Give me a couple weeks. Can you take care of her for that long?”
Jarl’s eyes were filling with tears, and Azoth was afraid his would too. They called each other Jarl and Azoth now, not Jay-Oh and Azo.
Azoth said, “I’m going to tell Momma K how smart you are and see if she has work for you. You know, if things don’t work out with Two Fist.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Sure, Jay-Oh.”
“Azo?”
Jarl said.
“Yeah?”
Jarl hesitated, swallowed. “I just wish …”
“Me too, Jarl. Me too.”
15
T he price of disobedience is death. The words kept running through his head every day as Azoth planned his disobedience.
Azoth’s training was brutally hard, but it wasn’t brutal. In the guilds, a Fist might beat you to make a point and make a mistake that left you permanently maimed. Master Blint never made mistakes. Azoth hurt exactly as much as Blint wanted him to. Usually, that was a lot.
But so what? Azoth had two meals a day. He could eat as much as he wanted, and Blint worked the soreness out of his muscles every day as they trained.
At first everything was curses and beatings. Azoth couldn’t do anything right. But curses were just air, and beatings were just momentary pain. Blint would never maim Azoth, and if he chose to kill him, there was nothing Azoth could do to stop him anyway.
It was the closest thing to safety he’d ever known.
Within weeks, he realized he liked the training. The sparring, the blunted practice weapons, the obstacle courses, even the herb lore. Learning reading with Momma K was hard. But so what? Two hours of frustration a day was nothing. Azoth’s life was good.
Within a month, he realized that he was talented. It wasn’t obvious, and if he hadn’t been so keyed in to Master Blint’s every mood and reaction, he would never have noticed, but now and then, he’d see a faint look of surprise as he mastered some new skill more quickly than Master Blint had expected.
It made him work all the harder, hoping to see that look not once a week, but once a day. For her part, Momma K made him decipher squiggles for longer than he could imagine. She had a way of smiling and saying just the right thing that it pulled him along through the hours. Words were power, she said. Words were another sword for the man who wielded them well. And he would need them if the world was to believe that he was Kylar Stern, so Momma K worked with him on his alternate identity, quizzing him with likely questions other nobles would ask, helping him come up with harmless stories about growing up in eastern Cenaria, and teaching him the rudiments of etiquette. She told him Count Drake would teach him the rest once he went to live with the Drakes. When Azoth walked in the Drakes’ door, she said, he would be Kylar forever after. Blint would train him in a safe house on the east side. Momma K would meet with him in one of her homes on the east side. Only when he started accompanying Blint on jobs would he return to the Warrens.
