The Court of Broken Knives

by Anna Smith Spark

  After a while, the spectators began to lose interest. The mage gestured with his other hand. The lights changed direction, moving together, spinning faster and faster, the colours flashing and pulsing until they seemed all colours at once like the wings of a dragonfly. They came together above the faceless statue, one great dance of light that hung in the air and then exploded in a shower of sparks. When the sparks landed they froze, so that the audience was dusted with tiny, glittering coloured stars.

  Cheers. A smattering of applause. The mage twisted his staff and pointed towards the statue. Blue flames leapt up around it. They burned with a hissing noise, but gave off no heat. The radius of the flames expanded, covering the two women and the child. Fire licked their hair, blazed in their eyes and over their hands. The child shrieked in delight, waving his thin arms to see the flames dance. The young woman cried out in fear, then sat staring at the child, her veil a crown of fire. The old woman wept.

  The fire retreated, licking the eaten stone of the statue’s misshapen head. The flames grew darker, no longer blue but black. Hungry. For a moment they were almost frightening. Then they too died away. More applause. The mage smiled. He made a gesture with his hand and a thousand silver lights bloomed in the air like blossom on a tree. These, too, fell into the crowd, disappearing as they hit the ground. More lights, green and blue and gold, began to dance and race in the air, chasing around the statue, swooping and diving. They rushed together and shot up into the air before bursting with a great golden flash. A clap of brilliant white light filled the square. When Marith could see again, the mage had disappeared.

  There was a short pause, then laughter and cheers.

  Tobias grunted in satisfaction.

  ‘Pretty good, that,’ said Alxine. ‘I assume he’ll be passing a hat round later.’

  Rate seemed for once entirely lost for words. His mouth hung open, a dazed, shocked expression on his face. ‘That was … That was … I don’t know what that was.’

  ‘It was a conjuring trick,’ said Tobias. ‘An illusion. A con. You ever see a mage fight in battle, then you’ll see the real thing. It was quite good for what it was, though, I’ll grant you.’

  Street sellers appeared in the square, capitalizing on the milling crowd to offer sweets, drinks and hot food. Alxine bought a bag of preserved lemons. They were tough and chewy, salt and sweet and sour all rolled into one. Marith found them rather enjoyable, though Tobias spat his out.

  Tobias was looking around at the lengthening shadows. Already halfway through the afternoon. ‘I’m due to meet Skie,’ said Tobias. ‘So you lot need to go back to the house. I should be picking up some money, then we can get down to business.’

  Marith walked back slowly, trailing behind Rate, Emit and Alxine. Felt more vulnerable, without Tobias to accompany him. Adrift. It had been nice, following Tobias. No choices. No possibilities. Quietened his mind and took some of the fear away. Didn’t have to be what he was. He thought of the statue burning, black flames licking its face. What must it have felt like, to have been bathed in the mage’s fire? Transcendent? A world of light and flame? Or perhaps it had felt like nothing at all. Perhaps those who had stood in the fire would not have known anything was happening, had they closed their eyes. An illusion, Tobias had called it. A trick. A con.

  I used to dream of this city, he thought. I used to dream of beautiful things. And I’m here now and none of this is real. None of it has ever been real.

  I killed a dragon, he thought. I’ve seen the rain fall and the desert bloom. I’m staying in a house full of sunlight and women’s smiles. But in the end it’s all just darkness. A trick. Not real. Black fire, burning. Coloured lights. A lie.

  ‘Fuck,’ Alxine said suddenly.

  They were walking down a narrow street, and Rate had just pointed out that they were lost, and that Tobias had taken the map.

  Marith had seen and studied maps of Sorlost, but they were old in fact and old in his memory. Rate had never been anywhere even half as big before and found the city’s sheer size baffling. Alxine had a poor sense of direction at the best of times. Emit looked almost satisfied that they’d got themselves into a mess. It was beginning to come on towards evening. There were four of them, but only lightly armed.

  ‘We stick to the larger streets,’ Rate decided. ‘Safer, that way. The house is a good one, people should know it if we ask around.’

  But the first person they asked, a well-dressed man with a servant following him, did not know it. Nor did the next, a pair of stout middle-aged women on their way home from a market. Nor a messenger boy dawdling on his errand to make eyes at the women as they passed. Nor a beggar, who spoke neither Immish nor Pernish and simply grinned at them. The streets began to get more dilapidated and uncomfortable, the people harsher faced and tiredeyed. They tried to get back onto wider streets, but whichever way they went their surroundings seemed ever poorer and more threatening. A rich city. A very rich city. But even very rich cities have places it is dangerous to go. No, thought Marith, not even. It is because it is a very rich city that it has places it is dangerous to go. Here in this city built on dying, where life and death are sacred to their god. If they stop killing, the sun will cease to rise.

  Three men came towards them. They outnumbered them. There were other people about, it was still almost daylight. But the men were large, and armed with swords. Rate drew a sharp breath, his hand going to his knife. The street seemed to empty. The men looked at each other, then at the four of them. Angry, hungry eyes.

  The largest of the three went straight for Marith. He had a short, fat sword, ugly and ill-made. Swung it fiercely, not with any skill but with strength and need behind it. Marith stepped backwards. Almost knocked into Rate. He drew his knife, which looked stupid beside the sword. Left their swords at the Five Corners. Only murderers carried swords, in Sorlost. Those of them that even had swords, after the dragon. They were supposed to be buying replacements tomorrow. The man sliced at him so that he had to jerk away and found himself up against a wall. There was a chance he might actually die. The absurdity of it struck him as almost funny.

  The big man lashed out again. Marith couldn’t get in close enough to use his knife for anything more than parrying the worst of the sword thrusts. One solid strike and it would be knocked from his hand. The sword came dangerously close to his face and he couldn’t parry it, twisted sideways, kicked out hard. A gratifying grunt of pain. He felt the sword crash into the stone beside him. Pain blossoming in his shoulder. Swung his arm up to block the sword’s next stroke, the blade clashing on his knife with a force that made his body jolt. Kicked again, catching his opponent on the right kneecap. The man’s leg buckled and he was momentarily unbalanced. Marith managed to get his knife in close and draw blood from a flesh wound to the left arm before the sword was against him again and he had to move back. More pain, sharp and sweet at his hip, the sound of cloth ripping.

  He’d killed a dragon. He’d killed … But he’d never fought another man to the death before. Not like this. Not his life against another’s, hacking away at each other, everything stripped down to this one thing between them, absolutely certain, dry and solid as boiled bone. The one thing that wasn’t an illusion. The one thing that was real. Warm pleasure spread through him deliciously. Bright as stars. Why hadn’t they told him? He’d spent so long running from things. Help me. Help me, Carin. Help me blot it out … What a fool! He’d kill this man, and kill him slowly, and feel his life leaving him. He must have been happy, sometimes, this man who would die before him under his knife. Must have looked at something once and thought ‘this is a good thing’. Must have loved and wanted and desired and hoped. And all of that he’d take from him, like it had never been.

  There was a howl from somewhere to his right, then a horrible choking, roaring sound. His opponent kicked him back and his head spun with pain. The sword swung at him. Ducked under it, the blade missing him by a breath, threw himself forwards, inside the reach of it, lashing with his
knife and his fist. His opponent’s breath stank, sweet and rotten. Their faces so close Marith could see the network of red blood vessels in the man’s staring eyes, the sluggish blink of his pupils as the knife blade bit home. Die. Just die. Just die. Kicked again and stabbed again, brought his left hand up and struck the heavy, sweaty face. Not a hard blow, but enough with the wound to the gut to send the man stumbling back. The sword clattered to the ground. Hollow sound as it hit the flagstones, like a new-shod horse. His opponent bent over, clutching his stomach, bleeding. Crying. Marith drove his knife into the man’s neck, aiming for the great artery where the heart blood came. The blade slipped down, sticky with blood, leaving a gaping slash like the opened belly of a fish.

  Break him. Crush him. Kill him. Kill! Kill! The man crashed to the ground. Marith kicked him in the wound in his stomach. Blood and air bubbled from the wound in his neck. His scream sounded as though it was underwater. Marith kicked him again. The body convulsed, alcohol vomit oozing from between its lips. Some of it seemed to be leaking out of the wound in its neck. Break it! Kill it! Kill! Kill! Marith kicked it a third time in the gut, then in the face, grinding his heel down where the bloodshot eyes stared up blind and frantic, suffocating in the warm afternoon air. A crunch of bone and blood as he pressed down. Break it! Kill it! Shatter its skull! Harder. Oh, harder! Break it beyond death! Kill! Kill! Kill!

  ‘That’s enough! Marith!’

  He spun round, knife out. Rate, Alxine and Emit standing staring at him.

  ‘He’s dead! He’s dead, Marith! Stop!’ Alxine put his hand on Marith’s shoulder. ‘Stop.’

  Rate’s arm was bleeding and Alxine had nasty red marks on his cheeks. The two men they’d been fighting had disappeared.

  ‘You killed them?’ Marith asked slowly.

  ‘They ran off once Emit stabbed one in the shoulder. They were just louts looking for money, Marith. You probably didn’t need to do … that.’

  Looked down at the body on the ground before him, spilling guts and blood and puke and piss. One hand frozen reaching for the sword. So near it, only a few finger widths away. It looked much smaller, now, almost like a child. Shrunk down.

  He’d done that. He’d taken something alive and made it dead.

  Bright as stars. Sweet as sunlight.

  Oh gods, Carin, help me …

  ‘He was trying to kill me,’ he said.

  ‘Well, yeah, seeing as you were trying to kill him. I think he realized pretty quick it wasn’t a good idea to just stop and apologize.’

  Marith bent and wiped his knife on the dead man’s shirt. Shaking. His boots were covered in blood and vomit. He wiped them as well as he could on the dead man’s trousers. His hands were sticky with blood. Looking at them, smelling the blood on them, he had a sudden desperate urge to lick it off. The stink of it was maddening, from his hands and from the dead man, lying face up in the dust with the tread of his boot crushed into its ruined flesh. Mouth sort of open, one eye visible looking up at the sky. Dead. Dead and empty. Nothing. Marith rubbed his eyes, trying not to scratch at his face. Such power a man had, to take something living and turn it into that. So easy. He almost wanted to weep. The scabs on his burnt hand had opened up again, oozing and bleeding, pain spreading like water up his arm.

  ‘I …’ He closed his eyes, opened them to the warm golden dusty light. ‘I thought he was going to kill me.’

  They trudged back the way they had come, and found a wide street leading straight back to the Court of the Broken Knife. It took them a half-hour at most after that to find the Street of the South and the Five Corners. A couple of people looked at them curiously, but they attracted surprisingly little attention.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tobias was to meet Skie in a wine shop called the Star in the Morning, nestled up near the Gate of Laughter. Like their lodgings it was certainly not poor but not especially rich either, neat and tidy, busy and noisy with cheerful drinkers and the smell of good hot food. Skie sat in a small alcove in the far corner, carefully positioned a little way away from the other tables with the walls and the droning of a lyre-player providing cover.

  Seated with Skie was the other squad captain, Geth, and a man Tobias had never seen before, in his early thirties with a face the colour of dark bronze.

  ‘Good, good.’ Skie gestured to Tobias to sit. He spoke in Immish, less likely to be understood than Pernish, for all the Immish were Sorlost’s nearest neighbours. ‘You had no trouble getting here?’

  ‘No. Remarkably easy. We’re in need of some cash, though.’

  The other man smiled at him. ‘This is an expensive city, I’m afraid.’

  Tobias nodded. Didn’t particularly like the other man. He was cheaply dressed but everything about him was shouting that he was more important than he was trying to seem. His voice was smooth, his Immish faultless. Even better than Marith’s Literan. Though to be fair to the boy, it was a rather less complex language. Shorter words. Not so many weird sudden changes of tense. Tobias flicked Skie a questioning look from the corner of his eyes. They’d worked together a long time, Geth and Skie and him. He trusted Skie with his life, near as. Had to, in their line of work. He’d like to think Skie had a similar trust in him. So not good, being kept in the dark.

  Skie gave no indication he’d noticed, but Geth drummed his fingers on the table tip tap tip tap tip tap. Ah. It wasn’t a code exactly, no real meaning in it, nothing worked out, just a thing that had arisen between them over the years in situations like this. Don’t ask questions. This man is important, more than just a go-between. Good, thought Tobias. Probably. Safer, in many ways, though not without risks in itself. Go-betweens talked, or demanded gold not to talk, or got scared and confided in someone stupid like their but-I-thought-he-loved-me-like-the-proverbial-how-was-I-to-know-he-had-a-major-league-gambling-habit brother or their it-was-just-unfortunate-she-turned-out-to-be-shagging-the-garrison-commander wife.

  Though the important person knowing your face wasn’t a great feeling either, when you were busy killing someone for them and they’d kind of prefer someone else not to know.

  ‘I have money for you,’ Mr Important said importantly. He looked at Skie for a moment, then turned to Tobias and Geth. ‘I can see you are beside yourselves wondering who I am.’

  ‘Maybe not beside myself, but interested, yeah.’

  ‘And I assume your commander will tell if I don’t. So.’ The man smiled and pitched his voice lower. ‘I am Lord Darath Vorley, Dweller in the House of Flowers, the Emperor’s True Counsellor and Friend, Suzerain of the South Reaches and the Desert Sea. Wherever that was. And now you have the advantage of me, gentlemen.’

  Ah. Well. Yes. Indeed. There were several old ballads about the Vorleys, usually emphasizing how rich and indolent they were. This one looked to be no different from the way Tobias had imagined: handsome, oh so charming, naïve in that odd way the extremely rich and high-born tended to be. He’d assumed their employers were both very rich and very powerful, but it was good to be able to put a name to the enterprise.

  Really didn’t like giving the man his name in exchange, though. All kinds of danger in a man like this knowing his name. ‘Tobias,’ he said reluctantly. ‘And this is Gethen.’

  ‘Gethen. Tobias.’ Lord Vorley nodded his head elegantly at both of them. Pompous git. ‘How much money do you need, then?’ He took advantage of a general stirring in the room as the lyre-player struck a few chords and rearranged himself on his stool to discreetly pass them both fat leather purses. ‘I trust this will be sufficient for now. You’ll need, what, suitable attire, equipment, living expenses? We seem to have promised you a good deal, I find. The amount of planning all this took! A great many people have written about this kind of enterprise, and several have even managed it halfway successfully, but it seems a true labour of love to get the detail right.’

  His tone was mocking, world-weary. Gambling and whoring lost their appeal for you? Tobias thought. Or competitive poetry writing or flower ar
ranging or child torture, or whatever else the big nobs do around here to pass the time? Decided you’d try a little light regicide to relieve the tedium of having more money than most gods? Geth nudged his foot meaningfully and drummed on the table again.

  They all fell silent a moment as the lyre-player addressed the room. ‘My friends, listen and hear a story of great wrongs and great passions, the most powerful of all men laid low by love and a sweet face. The tale of Amrath and Eltheia, fairest of women, and of those that died that Amrath might possess her.’

  Oh, wonderful. Another story about birthday-boy. Two in two nights, and this one even more cheerful than the last. The bit about Amrath having His new in-laws boiled alive was always particularly pleasant as an accompaniment to a pint and a hot pie. Too much to hope the man would switch from Pernish to Literan and let them ignore it completely, of course. Every gory detail doubtless about to be described in glowing detail. Possibly even in rhyme.

  The lyre-player struck a note and began to sing:

  ‘Now Amrath’s Empire reached from sunrise to sunset,

  Mightier than life, than death, than birth or dying.

  Every city in Irlast trembled beneath His power.

  Two lands only stood unconquered:

  Sorlost, the Golden, great city of the God, Lord Tanis,

  Ith, land of silver, seat of Godkings, proud and unbowing.

  Thus Amrath journeyed to Ith, war seeking, war bringing,

  And thence came the ruin of Ith, the sorrow of her maidens.’

  Oh gods. Not even in rhyme. Tobias tried not to snigger, though the audience looked enraptured. Good thing Rate wasn’t here, they’d have been listening to scatological ditties intoned in blank verse for days otherwise.