by Tim Lebbon
After the beating they strapped him down in the open and left him there for three days, remaining encamped nearby to observe his slow death. They watched with mild interest as wild animals took bites from his arms and legs. One of the women stripped him off and forced a dribble of rhellim down his throat, laughing as he grew hard in the blazing sun, not following through on her implied offer. And then, feigning benevolence, the rovers had freed him.
They made him an offer: they would kill him quickly and painlessly; or he could brand himself a thief.
Kosar had done the cutting himself, sprinkling dried powdered Wilmott’s Root into the wounds to prevent them from ever healing properly.
It had been harder for him to travel since then, more difficult to make friends. Even though he wore gloves they grew bloody. Everyone knew what he was. Honest folk shunned him because he was a thief, and thieves shunned him because he had been caught. So he had travelled down the western side of Noreela, looking for a place to settle, realising the further he went that his life must now change.
He had stayed in Pavisse for several moons. His wounds had betrayed him there as well, yet in Pavisse that had seemed not to matter so much. The mining town had more than its fair share of criminals, and they formed something of an underclass, a society within a society. It was the last town he visited before finding and settling in Trengborne.
And now he was back, seeking to renew an old acquaintance.
Since leaving the boy Rafe with his uncle, Kosar had wandered the bustling streets of Pavisse. Trengborne had sometimes numbed his senses with its blandness—the smell of dirt, the taste of cooked sheebok, the sounds of farming and families going about their mundane lives—but here they were opened up once again. The odours, the sounds, the sights of the streets amazed him for a while, worn traveller though he was, and he realised that his history had been gradually smothered by the constant glare of the Trengborne sun, and the idea that he had found his niche. The realisation did not please him. He had been enjoying the life he had made for himself. There had even been a sense of reparation there, the idea that in a way he was making up for the damaged life he had been living. Not redemption, never redemption. Simply repair.
Now he was back in the world. He mourned Trengborne and its people, he was terrified and shocked by what he had witnessed, and he needed to talk to someone friendly. This very fact proved just how far he had drifted from the life of a wandering thief.
He had spent only a few moons here but he had made friends, fellow rogues and vagrants who were happy spending their lives in taverns and food halls, exaggerating their exploits and commanding respect from like-minded exaggerators. Kosar had never embellished his past, nor glamorised it. Sometimes he had done his best to downplay what he had been, what he had done. Already, back then, he had been changing.
One of the friends he had made had been very special. He sought her now. He thought that she may know something about what he had seen back in Trengborne, the Red Monk that had slaughtered the village, what it all meant. She was a true traveller, a descendant of the Shantasi race that had been brought to Noreela in slavery thousands years before. Their original home was long forgotten; some said it was an island to the east of Noreela, thousands of miles away across an uncrossable ocean. Others believed that the Shantasi had actually been brought into being by errant shades in the mountains of Kang Kang, their pale skins camouflage against the snow, their purpose to provide those incorporeal souls with premature flesh and blood homes. The Shantasi themselves were perpetually silent about their origins, but they could not hide one of their greatest gifts: knowledge.
A’Meer Pott had also been Kosar’s last lover.
The Broken Arm looked exactly the same as when he had last been there. The sign above the door showed a massive machine, its use or purpose clouded by the passage of time, its metal and flesh arm ripped and bent at one of its elbows. Blood-red wine flowed from the arm, or wine-red blood, it was not quite clear which. It continued to amaze Kosar that such an establishment had paid an artist a good amount for this piece of work. Inside, the absence of wealth was almost a theme.
Kosar nudged the door shut behind him and smiled slightly as the noise lessened, commotion slowed. He held his arms by his sides so that the patrons would see his bloodied gloves, glanced around with feigned disinterest as if looking for the bar. He had hoped that A’Meer would call out from the darkness, but perhaps it was unreasonable to expect her to still be here.
As he took his first step the atmosphere in the tavern quickly returned to normal. He leaned on the bar and ordered a beer. The barman did not seem to recognise him from all those moons ago; there was a generous flow of travellers and criminals passing through all the time, and Kosar’s was just another face.
“Which one?” the barman asked gruffly.
Kosar raised his eyebrows. “You have more than one brew? You have gone up in the world.”
“Sarcasm will get you a face full of fist, thief. We have Port Brew, or Old Bastard.”
Kosar smiled and was pleased to see a brief response on the barman’s face. “Then a pint of Old Bastard, please.” As he poured, the barman—Kosar had never asked his name—launched into the endless stream of chat that Kosar remembered from his previous time here.
“So you been here before, then? I don’t remember your face, but then I wouldn’t, I’ve long since stopped seeing faces. I see tellans passed across the bar and that keeps me happy, that’s what I’m here for. I see the faces of pretty women, sometimes, but by the time they leave here they’re usually ugly. Always ugly inside, they have to be to come here, that’s what I’m told anyway. I don’t listen to a word. I like my customers, always have. No pretence amongst the downtrodden, no play at being civilised or rightful or law abiding. Honest, that’s what these folks are. They know the way the world’s going and they don’t mind admitting it. And they get what they can out of it while they can, enjoy what they will. Like this.” He thumped down the jug of Old Bastard and stepped back, sighed, as if viewing a recently completed work of art. “That’s half a tellan for that. A lot, I’ll grant you, but wait ‘til you taste it.”
Kosar handed over a coin. “One for yourself,” he said, and he enjoyed the flash of gratitude in the barman’s eyes.
There was a sudden burst of laughter from a corner of the tavern, and Kosar spun around. How can they laugh? he thought, when Trengborne lies dead, massacred? How can they laugh like that? But of course they did not know, nobody knew other than himself and the boy Rafe Baburn. Kosar looked at the group with envy. Three men, three women, comfortable in each others’ company, casual with their affections, their conversation easy and light. If only he had so few concerns, and so many friends.
“I don’t suppose you know A’Meer Pott?” he asked the barman. “She’s a Shantasi, used to come here three years ago.”
“Still does,” the barman said. “In fact she works for me now and then.”
Kosar frowned, trying not to imagine what that work entailed.
“Don’t worry, thief,” the big man said. “Not that sort of work. I leave that side of things to the Twitching Twat down the road. The Broken Arm is a place to rest the mind, not exercise the body. No, she collects glasses, works the bar, makes food sometimes if there’re those here who’ll buy it.”
“Will she be in today?”
“She should be, come sun fall. Nice one, A’Meer. Very knowledgeable. A real traveller, so she keeps telling us. Though the fact that she’s stayed here so long seems to mar that image a little.”
“She is a real traveller,” Kosar said, smiling at the memory of her telling those stories, the disbelief of people when she openly proved them as true. “But for a Shantasi, a few years is nothing. They live a long time.”
The barman leant over the bar and motioned Kosar closer. “She once told me,” he whispered conspiratorially, “that she’s been right to the end of The Spine.”
Kosar nodded. “She told me that too.”
>
The barman frowned and stood back up, picking a jug from a hook to serve another customer. “The Spine has no end,” he said.
“That’s what we’re supposed to believe.” Kosar hefted his jug in a toast and then left the bar, searching for a free table, finding one beneath the wooden staircase that led up to another level of tables above. He sat there alone, looking around, blending in with little effort. He caught a few patrons’ eyes, but there was neither threat nor any real interest in their gaze. Most of them were here to forget old trouble, not make new.
The wood of the tabletop was scored with graffiti, some of it recent, much of it old, all of it telling a story. There were many names mentioned, most of them with some reference to the impressive or pitiable size or function of their sexual organs. Places were named too, often in childish bravado, like I went to Kang Kang and it stank of shit. And here and there were messages. Xel—meet me at Friar’s Bridge, sun fall, noonday—Yel. Kosar wondered if Xel and Yel had made the meeting, and why, and what had come of it. He wondered whether they were both still alive, and if not whether they had died happy. Death was free nowadays, handed out on a whim by militia or murderers alike. And Red Monks, too. A Red Monk slaughtering a whole village …
He looked around the tavern and shivered. He had heard what the Red Monk asked the children on the bridge before he killed them: Where is Rafe Baburn? The only villager that madman had not killed was the one he was seeking. There was a message in that, more hidden than those carved into the oak of this tavern table, and yet far more important. For a Red Monk to be abroad it meant only one thing: that magic was back in the land. And for the Monk to be seeking the boy Rafe …
He shook his head and took a huge swig of his ale. It truly was an Old Bastard, coursing into his stomach and blurring his vision within minutes. It had been a long time since he’d taken a drink like this—back in Trengborne he was lucky to be given a bottle of rancid rotwine—so he would have to be careful. He had no wish to greet A’Meer by sicking all over her.
Yet strong ale would not purge the fear that had been seeded in his mind. Kosar had never felt a terror like this. He had been afraid many times in his life—fearful for himself, and those he sometimes had cause to call his friends—but never terrified. Even when the rovers had tied him down and watched as a weasel nibbled at his thigh, he had been certain that he would survive. Perhaps it had been the cocky conviction of a younger man, someone who almost always got what he wanted by stealing it, but it had seen him through. This was different. Earlier fears had been based on knowable threats, the knife in this man’s hand, the whip in another, a herd of tumblers chasing him for a day and a night across the foothills of Kang Kang. Those threats were tactile, understandable. What he felt now was a terror of something transmuted into myth and legend. Second-hand, yes, but no less heartfelt for that.
During his travels Kosar had come to learn a little about magic, how it had once fused with the land, and the fact that it had stopped working when the two Mages misused it to their own ends. They had been expelled from Noreela at the end of the Cataclysmic War, driven north out of the land and into the unknown. Watching stations had been set up along The Spine—the series of islands extending into the seas north of Noreela—to warn of their approach, should they survive and seek revenge. But here rumour truly took control, because there were even more legends about the Spine than the deadly mountains of Kang Kang. The Spine is endless, and the Mages are still travelling its length. The Spine moves, shifting over centuries like Noreela’s giant tail, and should its tip ever touch wherever the Mages ended up, they and their armies will swarm back into Noreela, sporting fury nurtured over three centuries of banishment.
A’Meer truly had been along The Spine, and she had told Kosar the truth: it was far from endless. And the warning stations and islands, though most were still inhabited and functioning to some degree, were all but worthless.
Therein lay Kosar’s terror. Magic was back in the land. It had once served humanity well, maintaining the balance of nature and making known the language of the land. But the Mages, were they still alive, would have their ways and means to hear of it. The Red Monk—part of an order sworn to keep magic from the Mages, should it arise again—had been looking for Rafe Baburn.
Kosar the Thief, whether he liked it or not, was involved.
A’Meer Pott held her age well. She had told Kosar that she was almost one hundred Noreelan years old, yet she still looked younger than him. She was short, her body lithe instead of thin, her long black hair locked into twin braids that fell either side of her snow-white face. Such paleness emphasised everything about her features, from the deep, dark eyes to her pale red lips. As usual, she was dressed in black. He had heard the Shantasi described variously as walking corpses, living shades and angel messengers to the land, but Kosar had formed the opinion that they were a mixture of all three. Like Noreelans, the Shantasi trod a narrow path between jubilation and damnation.
He watched her enter The Broken Arm and smile at some of the patrons, exchange greetings with one or two. She drifted to the bar, and Kosar was pleased to see that she and the barman were friends. They seemed to talk trivialities for a few minutes as A’Meer slipped off her cloak and took a drink. The barman glanced across the tavern into Kosar’s shaded nook beneath the stairs once or twice, but Kosar shook his head, held a finger to his lip. Eventually A’Meer went about her business, and as he watched her move between tables collecting mugs, wiping down spilled beer and nattering with the customers, Kosar felt a deepening nostalgia for their time together.
Their relationship had been short, and ruled more by lust than anything else. He had met her in this very place, and their mutual delight at each others’ tales of travel drew them close very quickly. Of course, Kosar’s tales were pale and lacklustre compared to the accounts she told him over the following moons. That first night had ended with them falling drunk into each other’s arms, and before they knew it they were back in Kosar’s rooms screwing like old lovers. The sight of those cherry-red nipples against her pure white skin, the black hair between her legs like a hole in virgin snow, her long dark hair loosened so that it drifted across the landscape of her shoulders and breasts, had driven Kosar mad. They eventually left his room two days later, but only to eat and drink.
The sex had been central to their relationship, but they had also developed a deep and lasting trust which both admitted felt new and fresh. Kosar was a marked thief, and few people trusted him now or ever would again. A’Meer was a Shantasi, a race which even after all this time was held at a distance by Noreelans, their distinct features and ambiguous history setting them too much apart. Both loners, they revelled in the companionship. He had told her much about himself, some of which he was surprised at even remembering. She had told him of her travels, the things she had seen, dreams of places yet to see.
Leaving A’Meer and Pavisse had been the final penitent act of this wandering thief looking for a home.
Kosar had finished three mugs of Old Bastard waiting for A’Meer’s arrival, and he felt more than a little light-headed. He needed some food, he needed sleep, he needed escape from the horrors he had witnessed the previous day. He watched her as she approached, moving from table to table, collecting mugs, sometimes chatting with the drinkers and sometimes not. She wiped at his table where he had purposely spilled some ale. He leaned back on his chair, his face in shadow beneath the staircase.
“Another mug of Old Bastard, please,” he said in a low voice.
“I’ll wipe up your mess, but I’ll not serve for you. Get your ale at the bar, friend, and try not to spill it next time. Old Bastard is too expensive and too good to waste.”
Kosar grabbed his mug before she could reach for it, lifted it and offered it to her.
“Thief,” A’Meer said mildly upon seeing his bandaged hands. She bent down then, peered beneath the staircase, and her face broke into a delighted smile. “Kosar! You treacherous old bastard, what in the nam
e of the Mages brings you back to this stinking shit pit?”
“You,” he said, pleased by her smile. He had left her rather quickly after all, and with little real explanation.
“Liar! It’s the ale, isn’t it? And the bustling centre of art and culture that is Pavisse.” She pulled up a chair, hesitated, leaned forward and hugged him warmly, then sat down.
“A’Meer, it’s great to see you.” He meant it. He felt panic pressing in, a potent combination of terror and alcohol driving him to distraction, and her familiar face was welcome.
“You too! I haven’t had a fuck as good as you for years.”
Kosar laughed despite himself. “I haven’t at all since you,” he said.
Her eyes widened fractionally, but she did not comment. It had been a long time, and although they both seemed pleased to see each other there was an awkwardness here. He hoped it would dissipate soon.
“So what urges you to leave your little village, eh? Wanderer’s life bleeding back into your system now that you’re used to the brands?” She held his hands gently and unwrapped the bandages, grimacing at the bloody wounds in his fingertips. “Fuck, Kosar, all for a few furbats. I remember what used to soothe the hurt. You remember?” She arched her eyebrows mischievously, and yes, he remembered.
“A’Meer, it’s something bad,” he said quietly, his tone killing the moment. Suddenly it was as if they had never parted and here they were in The Broken Arm, swapping stories, drinking, sinking into solemn discussions about how things might be turned around, how the long-ago loss of magic might just be weathered and survived. Everything was falling apart, they would say, and A’Meer would tell him about the plains south of Kang Kang where things fell into the sky and the air was turned to glass.
