Marith charged towards them, riding down another bandit who turned too late to avoid the horse crashing into him. His horse pulled up at the impact, putting its left foreleg into a hole and jerking so hard Marith was nearly thrown off. He half fell, half slid from the saddle, shoving his way through the chaos of bodies, stumbling towards her. Everything was roaring in his ears and his eyes.
Thalia was already pulling herself to her feet when he reached her. ‘Get behind me,’ he shouted to her, though there was no in front or behind, just men and horses turning and turning at each other. Jaerl’s horse almost struck them. Thalia had to pull him backwards as a sword stroke came down at him. The sword came again and he tried to strike it away with his hand. Mandle plunged towards them, smashing into the man’s arm with his own sword. The bandit reeled backwards, his arm hanging limp and useless, stumbled and crashed down into Marith. The feel of the blood on his skin, beautiful as water. Like the rain in the desert. Like the sea on a hot summer day. Another bandit came at them, Landra seemed to be shouting something, Thalia dragged at his arm.
Then suddenly the road was empty. Five bandits dead in the fallen leaves and dirt. Marith sank down exhaustedly. His head rang like fire.
‘Gods and demons.’ Mandle was staring around at the ruins. Two dead horses. Two dead servants. One dead guardsman. ‘Were they bloody demented?’
‘Starving,’ said Jaerl. ‘They were bloody starving. Poor country, round here.’ He gestured at the dark trees. ‘Can’t really grow much.’
‘Could have just waited a while longer and died of hunger, then.’
‘Really?’ Jaerl spat at one of corpses. ‘That what you’d do, is it? You’ll see Skerneheh later, you’ll understand.’
Mandle shrugged. ‘Get the bodies covered over and we’ll be out of here. Quickly, mind.’
Jaerl looked over at the body of his fellow guardsman, and for a moment Marith wondered if he was going to object, demand a proper burial for the man. That sort of thing seemed to matter to these hardened killing types. Got so misty-eyed and miserable over a bloody corpse. Although, if it was about the only thing one had to look forward to …
Not entirely fair. He’d felt moved himself, by Alxine’s death. Burying him had seemed necessary. It was hardly this man’s fault, if the only thing he’d had in the world to live by had been a good sword arm. Now he was going to end up dumped behind a tree with a handful of leaf mould over him until foxes and wildcats ripped him apart. Nobody would know he’d lived at all.
The best way to avoid dying, he thought then, is not to live.
‘You can help move the bodies, Prince Ruin,’ Mandle said gruffly at him. Marith almost jumped, his hands shaking again. Scratched painfully at his face.
‘I—’
‘You nothing. Get moving and drag them. That tree there’ll do.’
Marith bent and pulled awkwardly at one of the bandit’s ankles. Hard, heavy work, pulling the corpse over the rough road and into the undergrowth. Dead eyes looked up at him. Was this the one who had died almost in his arms? His whole body was shaking by the time he returned.
‘Clearing up the mess is harder than making it, you see, Prince Ruin?’
I see, he thought dully. His shirt was filthy with blood. The feel of it. The look in the eyes as men died.
It was dusk when they arrived in Skerneheh. A small city or a large town, hugging the mouth of the River Skaer, set within a steep valley so that it seemed hemmed in with dank hills, black cliffs rising sharply from either side of the harbour. A poor city, as Reneneth had been a poor town. Left behind by Immish’s growing power and glory. The men traded in salt fish and ambergris, bred with the things living in the cold waters, seemed half fish themselves with bulging eyes and thick mouths that closed on their words.
He’d spent several months here, dead drunk and tearing himself apart with hatha, Carin’s blood still ground in under his nails. He wondered if he could find the inn. Very near the harbour wall: he’d been just about able to make it that far, when they threw him off the ship. It had stunk of dog shit. The innkeep had let him sleep in the doorway, when he ran out of coin for a room.
At the gates, the same questions, the same answers, the same bored soldiers, three days’ stubble, breath reeking of stale food. Marith had wondered if there might be trouble, questioning, eyebrows raised at him and at Thalia, so obviously prisoners. I could shout, he thought. Protest that they’re holding me captive. Beg them to help me … Landra smiled her cold smile at them, rich and plain, shining with gold, and they waved them through untroubled, into narrow cobbled streets leading down towards the sea. The air smelled of salt and fish and seaweed; Marith sighed as he breathed it in. The water was a thin dark line, white crests just visible, a few boats tiny on the horizon. It came to him suddenly that Thalia had never before seen the sea, that he’d told her he’d show it to her, show her how beautiful it was, how terrible, ever changing yet ever the same. After the empty pain of the last few days, he felt a brilliant, glittering joy at the thought of it.
They rode through the gates down narrow streets. Turned away from the sea.
Back again up to a room in an inn, a locked door, the smell of alcohol maddening as it drifted up. Seagulls began to scream outside their window, fighting over something. Thalia jumped at the sound. He’d always liked it, painful and harsh and lonely. Lonely things, seagulls. Vicious. And then to see them fly … Almost like dragons, they were, soaring out over the sea.
The next morning broke damp and sluggish. A mist rolling in. Tiny droplets of water beaded Thalia’s hair. Her eyes radiantly blue against a grey world. She looked around her curiously, shivering. She’d never seen drizzle and mist and damp before, Marith realized. Her face frowned like a wet cat. Perhaps she wouldn’t like the sea, after all. It occurred to him that she might get seasick.
They rode slowly down to the harbour in the pale dawn light, the streets still largely silent. The gulls wheeled and screamed overhead. Towards the harbour, the streets became busier, night fishing boats coming in with their catch, trades being made. A whaling ship had arrived in the night, the vast carcass floating alongside it, belly-up. Blood still eddied from the wounds hacked in its sides. Ambergris and oil and blubber and baleen and flesh and bone. A fortune in its hulking corpse.
A man was waiting on the quayside, well-dressed but weatherstained. Their ship’s captain. Dark red hair, a red beard grizzled with damp, his leather jerkin bright red and yellow, the flashy colours such men seemed to like. Landra drew forwards, Mandle a few paces behind her. They dismounted and walked up to him. He bowed his head.
‘My Lady. The ship’s ready, set to sail.’ The captain spoke in Pernish, with the Islands accent. From Third. One of Lord Relast’s ships, probably, abandoning whatever had been its business at Landra’s command.
‘Her name?’
‘Brightwatch, My Lady. Yonder.’ He gestured at the small ship bobbing out beyond the breakwater, yellow sails gleaming.
‘A good name,’ Landra said. Marith, craning his head, saw that the figurehead was a woman holding a sunburst, golden hair and golden rays. He frowned.
The captain shifted, looked at Marith. ‘That him, then, is it? The one who—’ He broke off. ‘Him? But— That’s— He’s—’’ His face went white and puffy, grub-like. ‘Gods and demons, my lady. I’m not taking him, like that. He’s dead … And the king …’ He drew himself up a little, trying to look anything less than terrified. ‘Whatever is going on here, My Lady, I want no part in it.’
‘The king will never know,’ Landra said savagely. ‘And you do not serve the king. You serve me. And whoever he might resemble, he is a nameless peasant boy you never saw before and will never see again. Understand?’
‘I don’t serve you, My Lady, I serve your Lord father. And he serves the king.’ The captain bowed his head weakly. ‘If you’re sure and certain, My Lady …’
‘Sure and certain,’ Landra said in a bitter voice. ‘Now get him on board.’
The seagulls screamed overhead, circling the boat.
Chapter Forty-Six
That fucking poisonous bastard Marith. That sick, vile, diseased, degenerate fucking bastard shit. Gods and demons, he should have knifed him when he had the chance. Gods and demons and piss, he should have stuck with him and held out for the money the boy had offered him.
In an inn near the harbour where the air stank of rotten fish and whale’s blood, Tobias sat at a table in the furthest corner and watched from the window as the Brightwatch set sail.
The inn wasn’t a bad one, as such places went. The bedding wasn’t too filthy, the food was passably edible and the beer was watered down but not actually rancid. He’d stayed in worse, just about. Could have stayed in a lot better, talents and thalers burning a hole in the leather pouch at his waist. It was greasy from where he kept grasping it to check it was still there.
A lot of gold. An awful lot of gold. You could buy a village with that much gold. He felt almost too frightened to spend it.
The serving girl brought him barley flatcakes and some smoked fish. Not bad, actually. When he had finished, he walked out to the quayside, stood for a while watching the ships on the water. The sun was beginning to break through the clouds, burning off the sea mist, making the sea sparkle far out beyond the harbour wall. White caps on the waves. Tobias walked down among the men busy and groaning on the wet stones, hauling great boxes of silver-green fish.
‘I’m looking for a ship going to the Whites,’ he said.
One of the men blinked at him with bulbous eyes, silver-green like the fish. ‘The Whites? You missed one.’ He shrugged in the direction of the open sea. ‘Gone.’ The man’s voice was hoarse, harsh as the sea grating on pebbles. Echoing underneath. His hands were crabbed and too dry-looking. Soaked too long in the water. Thick yellow nails split and softened like wet wood.
‘Another likely?’
‘Always another likely.’
‘Soon?’
‘Soon enough, I should think.’
Bet you’re a barrel of laughs after a few drinks. ‘Where,’ Tobias said carefully, ‘is the next ship that’s going to the Whites?’
‘That one.’ The man pointed slowly to a low, dark-coloured ship lying out in the water, its mast hung with a brilliant green sail. ‘Glasswater, she’s called. Come from Morr Town. Going back to Morr Town. Brought tin and brightstone. Bringing back gods know what.’
Tobias nodded. Odd things, Illyn Altrersyr was said to like. Well, but the last ship to have left here for the White bore as its cargo a dead man. Couldn’t be any stranger. He thanked the man, gave him a copper penny and walked back down the quayside towards his inn.
‘Glasswater,’ he said to the serving girl. ‘Know any of her crew?’
The girl looked thoughtful. ‘No. Can’t say I do.’
Tobias wandered out again onto the quay, watched men hauling boxes and coiling great twists of pitch-stained rope. An utter mystery to him, the ways of sailors and seafarers. The whaling ship was a mass of activity, figures crawling over the vast corpse, comically tiny in comparison, stained and greasy with blood and fat. A lovely image of human frailty and deathlust: it’s fucking huge, so let’s fucking kill it. They used long-hooked poles to drag the body towards a slipway, grunting and gasping, a chorus of curses as the tail slipped sideways in a great spray of bloody water, a howl of pain and panic as a pole jerked and knocked one of the men off balance. He teetered for a moment, then fell heavily, thrashing in the water between the dead whale and the wall of the quay. One of his colleagues hauled him out, swearing. The rest ignored him, straining at their work, inching the corpse painfully up the smooth stone. Tobias stared at it amazed as it emerged. Bigger than a house. Bigger than a bloody dragon. The blank dead eyes glossy, like dark polished bronze. The vast mouth slightly open. Scar tissue whorled on its flanks. Stranger than a bloody dragon too, he thought. The whalers set at it with saws, hacking and cleaving. Like it was nothing unusual. The whole harbour stank of blood and flesh. Men taking a city. Men storming a fortress. The head section came away to cheers. They were crawling inside it, cutting it to pieces from the inside out. The smell of its body, innards and fat. What the fuck do you do with several miles of whale intestine? A drill for the head, to get at the oil inside. Something that might be the liver, dark red, velvety, a sheen on it like a woman’s lips.
Enough watching. Mesmerizing though the spectacle was, he needed to get on.
Tobias moved up the quay, eyeing the men milling around. The whale had attracted quite a crowd of onlookers. He stopped next to a tall man with a ragged black beard.
‘Quite a sight.’ The man nodded. ‘Know any of the crew from the Glasswater?’ The direct approach.
‘The Glasswater?’ Another thoughtful pause. You’re going to say no, aren’t you? Tobias thought gloomily. ‘From her meself, as it happens. Looking for passage to the Whites, are you?’
‘Could be.’
‘The captain’s over yonder, seeing to supplies. Out of the stink. It’ll cost you, mind.’
‘Assumed as much.’ He probably had enough money to buy the bloody boat. Tobias followed the sailor towards a more expensive inn, set back from the seafront, looking away from the sea up towards the town. Houses. Shops. Taverns. Dogs and horses and pigeons and even the odd woman. Last thing a rich sailor wants is a sea view. Probably breathed in the smell of horse shit from the stables and felt jubilation that it wasn’t fish and salt.
Two hours later, Tobias was packing up his gear in preparation to sail. He’d not been on a ship in a long time. Several years. Really didn’t trust boats, there being nowhere to run to if and when things went to shit.
He carefully touched the purse of money secured inside his shirt. Talents and thalers clinked. You don’t need to do this, he thought. The amount of money he had, he could just head off to Alborn, live a quiet life with a couple of rooms and a girl to clean them. Eat fried pig every morning and drink beer in the afternoon with the sun setting warm on his face. Never do anything again, apart from get fat and lazy and pleasantly weak in the arms and legs. Wear soft cloth and sandals. Buy the girl a pretty dress and a necklace to match.
Marith had made that decision, for about five heartbeats, a thousand years ago and more by a riverbank. He’d seen it in the boy’s face, that one moment. Just be alive. Just live, and feel contented in it. Sunshine. Trees. Birdsong. The lovely way a woman’s hips moved as she walked. Not much else one needed in life. A lot more than most people had.
’Cause that had all worked out so bloody well, hadn’t it?
He paid the innkeep and went to meet his ship. The tide had come in: they’d brought the Glasswater into the harbour, moored up on the quay as far as possible from the collapsing bulk of the whale, now a ruined mass like the skeleton of a burnt building. The water and the air churned with gulls and fish come to glut themselves.
The dark-bearded sailor was standing on the quay beside the walkway – plank, wasn’t it? – onto the ship. ‘Astonishing, don’t you think?’ he said conversationally, watching Tobias’s eyes on the butchery.
‘It’s … impressive, I’ll grant you.’
The sailor grinned. ‘But lucrative. Whale’s our return cargo, tasty delicacies for the rich folk of Morr Town. Cost what we brought and more besides, and weighs less. Stinks worse, though. You’ll be Tobias, then?’
Tobias nodded.
‘Yartek.’ The man nodded in turn. ‘Set? We sail as soon as the tide turns. Get away from this.’
He had the soft, f
eathery Pernish of the Whites. Tobias could almost imagine him reciting poetry alongside Prince Fucking Bastard and Corruption and Ruin. Mustn’t tar a whole kingdom with assumptions though. Just because their ruling family were all sick in the head. The ship looked clean and well-kept, probably fast from her shape and large sail, funny smell hanging about her from the cargo but the last sea journey he’d made had been far worse. Felt almost hopeful as they sailed out into the light and the water, leaving the dead and betrayed and backstabbed behind.
Paying through the nose for passage turned out to mean almost getting his throat cut the first night. Two of them, big men with short ragged beards like Yartek’s. One clamped his hand over Tobias’s mouth, the other stuck a knife blade over his windpipe. Tobias, awake and half expecting it, slapped his arms up and got the knife wielder in the chest. Clearly could tar a whole kingdom. His assailant jerked and whacked his head on the ceiling of the tiny cubbyhole thing serving as Tobias’s berth. What did they take him for, an idiot?
The thump and Tobias’s enraged roar must have woken half the ship. Which could be either very good or very, very bad. Tobias followed up by punching knifeman hard in the face before sliding hurriedly out of the bunk. Extremely fortuitously, he landed on knifeman’s bare foot. Handclamper seemed to be trying to retreat in a hurry. In the light of a rancid lantern, it appeared to be Yartek. Tobias contemplated going after him too, but settled on punching knifeman in the face again. There was a satisfying crunch of nose. A warm, sticky feeling on Tobias’s hand.
The Court of Broken Knives Page 35
