Lisha stirred but I cut her off before she could say anything.
“No,” I said quickly, with a look in her direction, “it doesn’t matter anymore, so I’ll say what I like. Now, Your Royal Immensity, judging from your speech to the ignorant masses earlier, you either have no grasp on reality or choose to ignore it when it suits your political career.”
I couldn’t stop. I was enjoying myself, and he wasn’t the only one who needed someone to blame. I pointed my finger squarely at him and went on. “You spoke of their dignified deaths. What do you know about death? I was there and there was no dignity. Not that you care. I’ll bet the armed escort that brought you home from Seaholme was a sight better trained than the boy soldiers you left with us. But then, what’s a hundred boys compared to a duke? You probably eat close to that at a sitting.”
I sat down.
“Are you finished?” he murmured, with the kind of cold reserve that you know is going to explode any second.
“For the moment,” I said cheerily.
“Did you know that throughout Greycoast, treachery is punishable by death, the traitors being hanged, drawn, and quartered?”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“And do you know how we define treachery here?” asked the duke.
I thought for a moment and said, “Calling you a fat, self-important bastard would probably do it.”
“Guards!” he called, lashing out with one heavily braceleted fist. They came at me with their pikes and rapiers. His knuckles caught me just under the chin, and I felt my head lurch up and back so that the room spun for a second. I whirled away from him, barely retaining consciousness as my teeth slammed together. The guards descended on me like hawks. They pinned my arms behind my back and, at the duke’s cursory command of “Get him out of my sight,” they marched me out. One guard gestured to Garnet in a way that suggested the misguided nature of any intervention on his part. They had to virtually carry me out of the room.
SCENE XXXI More Consequences
I came to my senses (if you can call them that) as I was pitched headlong into mud, total darkness, and appalling stench. I was lying facedown in the slime of a dungeon floor, my legs chained together. The dampness and cold suggested that I was underground, in the palace basement, perhaps: the lowest point of the citadel in more ways than one. I rolled over and tried to spit the filth from my mouth. I tried to sit up, but the mud squirmed beneath me and I fell back into it. The odor of excrement and decay was overpowering. A thin line of pale light showed under the door. Sliding up to it, hands sunk to the wrists in the ooze, I began to kick and shout.
My face was right up against the door when the jailer on the other side kicked it and sent me sprawling on my back.
“Shut up,” he shouted without looking in, “or I’ll come in and break your legs. Both. Several times.” Someone laughed, impressed with this display of wit.
Miserably I floundered across to the far wall-the cell was only about ten feet square-and sat against it trying to believe that they couldn’t keep me here long. Such thoughts led rather inevitably to the question of what would happen to me when they brought me out.
I went over the incident with the duke and replayed the scene in my mind a dozen times with a few more incisive remarks assigned to yours truly. I soon had a tidy little plot in which straight-from-the-shoulder Will scared the cruel despot into gross abuse of his power, but even as I was reflecting on how it would bring the house down, I knew it was false. Here was no honor, only misery and shame. But why should a lack of honor bother me, of all people? What was really bothering me was how stupidly pointless my outburst had been. It could never have gotten me anywhere other than here, something I had known before I started talking, but I started anyway. I enjoyed making speeches, but I had a sneaking suspicion that there had been something righteous in my motivation, something distressingly principled. Or, at the very least, something like guilt for the pretty shameful circumstances that had the people of Ironwall thinking of me as a hero. It was an alarming notion.
The time passed slowly. I called out for water, suspecting that beer wasn’t on the menu, but only got more abuse and distant laughter from the less hopeful inmates of other cells. I had to go to the bathroom and did so in a corner, then sat as far away from it as possible with my back against the scummy wall. Thick, foul-smelling liquid coursed down the mossy rock. It soaked my back and made me shudder with cold and a sense of contamination.
In another part of the subterranean jail someone was being whipped. Long, slow lashes rang out and cracked into agonized gasps. I thought I saw a rat slide in under the door but I never saw it leave. I wanted to block off the crack with my soiled shirt to keep them out, but if they were already in with me, then that would make the problem worse. I listened and heard their thin voices. One time I put my hand down on warm, matted fur and pulled myself away screaming as the creature’s thin, fibrous tail slipped through my fingers. I got to my feet and stood quite still. Hours passed.
When the door was abruptly kicked open, I leapt through it and sprawled into the relative light of a circular stone chamber. The jailer kicked me once with a heavy leather boot and then put his weight on the small of my back, making me gasp and splutter through the muddy straw in my face. Seizing me by the hair, he wrenched my head up into the light of a torch, and I caught its pitchy scent with something like relief.
“This one?” he said brusquely. I heard a murmur of assent from close by but could see nothing but the blinding flare of the torch. “Get out,” said the jailer. He kicked me squarely in the rear and added, “And get a wash.” The guard laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d heard for days.
The irons were stripped roughly from my legs, and a sack was tied over my head. I was dragged up a flight of steps by two men. A third followed, a spear point pressed against my spine. We passed through long, echoing corridors of cold stone and then, as I was steeling myself for whatever verbal reprimand I was about to get, we stepped out into the open air. I was flung hard onto a wooden platform of some kind and then, with sudden and terrified panic, I heard it: the familiar bustle of an expectant crowd. As the bag was dragged from my head I saw a sea of upturned faces and the chill shadow of a gallows.
You have got to be kidding, I thought.
They weren’t.
There was Duke Raymon, large and impassive, flanked by his counterparts from Shale and Verneytha, watching me from a throne ten yards away. He met my gaze and then bade the shirtless, hooded executioner begin. Two guards dragged me forward and forced my head through the noose as I struggled and kicked, tying my hands behind me as they did so. Arlest, the only one I could see showing any kind of concern, was muttering earnestly to Raymon, who ignored him, then said something to Treylen, who just smiled thinly and shrugged. When the count of Shale continued to talk, the duke turned and shook his head once, glaring and final. Whatever Arlest had been trying to do to stop this brutal farce, the duke was having none of it.
Arlest looked across the crowd and shook his head fractionally. I followed his gaze and saw Mithos watching. He looked down, then straightened up and began pressing his way through the people, making for where the duke was sitting. I wanted to see what happened, but there was a man in a black hood who had other plans.
The executioner took the slack out of the rope and stood before me, a viciously curved and jagged knife in his hands. I should have known that a simple hanging was too much to hope for. The brazier for my intestines was brought forward and, as the executioner began to unfasten my filthy shirt, a great hush descended on the crowd. Whatever Mithos was doing, it didn’t seem to be slowing things down.
I stood on my toes as they began to hoist me up, but in a second I felt all my weight on the rope which cut into my throat. My feet flailed for some purchase on the ground, but it was too late. I hung there for a long, sickening moment, and then dropped, gasping and retching on the floor. The executioner gave me a few seconds, and then hitched me up agai
n. I looked up as the rope started to tighten and saw Duke Raymon.
He had left his throne and now stood next to me, center stage, as it were, switching his eyes from me to the crowd and back. Mithos-unarmed-was hovering behind him. Then he held up his hand and the world fell silent.
“Perhaps you would like to say something, Mr. Hawthorne?” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. I thought quickly, and for a split second Mithos’s eyes met mine. This was one of those key performances when you had to get the lines just right.
“I throw myself upon your gracious mercy, Lord Duke,” I managed.
A ripple went through the crowd and the duke’s lip twitched fractionally. This was what he had wanted. “Is that all?” he said indulgently, his voice louder. I gasped for breath and swallowed.
“I humbly beg pardon for offending your royal personage and can only plead unfamiliarity with the customs of your land and the great authority you so rightly hold. I throw myself upon your merciful generosity and-”
“Enough!” he shouted, and it was a call to the executioner and to the crowd. As the one cut me free, the other cheered rapturously, lauding the duke’s spontaneous and benign wisdom. He gestured expansively as they carried me away, and the audience-for that was what it was-applauded wildly.
But if he had emerged as the benevolent and omnipotent ruler, I had at least emerged, and that was more than I had hoped for. It took some time for the horror of it all to subside. I would never know how much of the outcome had been planned in advance or whether my apology had made any difference. Well, I thought, as I scrubbed myself down and chose a clean shirt, I had lost nothing by making it. After all, they were only words.
The only real catch was that my decision to leave the party had been temporarily stymied. The duke had cut off our expenses after my little outburst, and though he had forgiven me for my “treason,” he hadn’t renewed our funds. Mithos came to see me and made things clear: The party figured I owed them. I told him that I was the one who had talked my neck out of the noose, but he said he had been trying to talk Raymon round since the moment I was arrested, and that he had also got Count Arlest to petition on my behalf. Without his intercession, he said, I would not have been allowed to “talk my neck out of the noose.”
I wanted to argue because I didn’t want to feel dependent on him or the party, but he clearly had a point. So I shrugged and muttered a thank-you, and said I would stick around, help out, and so on. However, Mithos, who was apparently prepared for me to make conciliatory noises, was not to be fobbed off with platitudes. He announced that I could start by earning some money. How was up to me.
I grinned. War, honor, political decorum: these things were beyond me. But sing for my supper? That, I could do. And I knew just the song.
SCENE XXXII The Elixir of Sensenon
It was midmorning. The sun was warm as I passed out of the palace gates and wandered down towards the market, strolling along the fortifications whose towers bore the decomposing heads of traitors and murderers. It was good to be free and breathe the clear air again. I whistled as I went about my business, stowing the flasks I had prepared in a leather satchel.
The Ironwall market was a delight. I glanced around and got an idea where the guards were, assessed the general affluence of the townsfolk, borrowed a box from a copper worker, and set it up in the middle of the square. Getting onto it, I took a deep breath and began the show. “Gather round, ladies and gentleman. Yes, madam, you too. Gather round to hear of something that will change your life. No sir, I am no priest, prophet, or preacher. I am an apprentice to the sage priests of the Ottorian dragon herders who has seen marvels now told only in the tales of children.”
A couple going though a selection of pots and pans at a nearby stall stopped to listen, shading their eyes against the sun. A cluster of merchants beside them turned my way as well. It was starting.
“I have ridden the northwinds astride the ice wyverns,” I announced, in a full hit-the-back-wall voice. “I have crossed the Southern Ocean with Arrulf the pirate, who paints his toes with the blood of virgins and eats gold at every meal. I passed a year with the lizard-men in caves east of the Grey Forest, and dined with trolls in the fiery chasms of the western volcanoes. I resided four winters in the Library of Lore (ancient and modern) under the tutelage of Erelthor, high mage of the Council of Light. And after these my wanderings, I have come to your humble market, and I bring you life.”
There was quite a crowd gathering now. I could see the skeptics on the outside smiling and nudging their friends, but that was no matter. There are always enough fools, and besides, I was good at this. If the skeptics wound up paying out with the rest of them, it wouldn’t be the first time.
“Good people of Greycoast! Worthy residents of Ironwall! I bring you the elixir of Sensenon! After years of study and penitent worship, the council has permitted me to sell a small amount of the elixir to the world, the place commanded by divination and the drawing of numbers. You, proud Ironwall in the land of Greycoast, have been selected!
“Oh, Sensenon, after these long centuries your people will finally be satisfied! No more will they suffer the chills of winter or the fevers of summer. No more will their skin age and their eyes fail! Lo, it says in the book of Onthrast: ‘Their cheeks shall be as babes and they shall see ants on the horizon and count their legs.’
“It will build your muscle and lose your fat. See the results in less than a week! It will make you potent and fertile, witty and intelligent. Yes, madam, it cures piles. Certainly, it straightens bones, enlarges the brain, strengthens nails, gives sheen and body to hair, beautifies complexion, and richens eye color. Ladies, apply it your skin and body hair falls away. Gentlemen, do likewise for a full and lusty beard. Can you afford to turn away?
“Across continents I have searched for the ingredients and measured them out as Sensenon prescribed. For each vial, a blend of badger bile and seven hairs from the snout of a grizzly bear are added to the ground beak of a Hrof ostrich, a sliver of the bamboo found only in the rain forest of the Xeltark, and a pinch of the moss that grows above the snow line on Mount Valten. These are simmered for three years in a special distillation of Thrusian brandy and Stavissian hemlock, and into them are stirred powdered pearls and emeralds. The whole is seasoned with bee urine and shaken in a cup of purest gold lined with leaves of the screaming mandrake. It is brought to a boil for exactly thirty-seven seconds in the dragon-breath furnace of Salhayazim, and stirred with the fibula of a ruby-throated leaping wombat as the secret words of completion are breathed into it. At last, it is ready and I present it to you, Sensenon’s all-natural elixir-yours, for a limited time only, for just two gold pieces.”
That last part was true, at least, for I always drop the price by half after five minutes, once the real morons have gone home satisfied. Ten minutes after that I’d drop it by half again. In a country village I might go lower, but in a worldly-wise hub of commerce like this place, they won’t buy if you go too cheap. They figure that expensive means good.
The party arrived halfway through. I ignored them and sold my wares, figuring their speeches about truth and virtue and how naughty it was to tell fibs would be shorter and easier to ignore if I’d made them a potful of money. This turned out to be right.
But as I was packing up, having made a tidy twenty-eight gold pieces and a handful of change, Garnet said, “Have you got any left?”
“Any what?”
“Any of the elixir.”
I gave him an odd look. “Why?”
“Well,” he said, “if it does only half the things you said it does, then-”
“It doesn’t,” I said quickly, with something like shock. “Why should it?”
“Well,” he said guilelessly, “your learning, and the special ingredients. ”
“Learning have I none,” I said, smiling. “As for the ingredients, well, it’s mainly puddle water, clay, and something a little special of my own that you don’t want to hear about. Ther
e are a few flower petals in there, but not enough to make it palatable.”
Garnet looked at me in silence. I’d just sold the last bottle to one of the guards, who now leaned against a gibbet holding a corpse labeled cutpurse. I shrugged and slid the gold through my fingers into Lisha’s bag.
“Well done, Will,” she said.
“My pleasure,” I replied honestly.
SCENE XXXIII Romance
In the Eagle, tales of adventuring had always been stuffed full of colossal dragons, all insatiable greed, murderous fury, and breath that would singe your eyebrows at four hundred yards: absolute evil in physical form. I’d never believed that rubbish, of course-nobody did-but even a hard-line realist like me would like to be proved wrong from time to time. Not too often, mind. I don’t know what I’d do if I met some hulking troll in a dark alley. A smallish goblin would be all right, I suppose: something I could kill without too much effort or qualms of conscience. That had always seemed the core attraction of life wearing a sword in stories: You could hack and slay all day and then put the pile of corpses down to honor, the triumph of goodness, the protection of puppies, and so on.
It didn’t seem to work like that in reality, though I wasn’t sure Garnet and Renthrette had figured that out yet. For them, there was always a line drawn, and they were on the side of truth, justice, and sunshine. There were a lot of people on the other side of the line, and once you were over there you could very easily became ax meat. This was disturbing for someone like me, who frequently wandered from one side of the line to the other without even realizing it.
Lately I’d been on fractionally better terms with Renthrette, though that wasn’t saying much, and even that limited progress had less to do with her feeling more comfortable with me and more to do with feeling less comfortable with the mission, if you see what I mean. She had made her disdain for my moral status clear after my conciliatory words to the duke (the fact that he had been ready to execute me did not strike her as relevant) and had referred to my money-raising methods as “snakish and deceitful,” so we weren’t exactly ready for candlelit dinners, but she called me stupid less often and always seemed to be weighing the things in my character that nauseated her (most of them) against my undeniable, if erratic, usefulness to the party. Whenever I did something right she would give me a long look of muted surprise, as if she were watching a camel say the alphabet at high speed: unexpectedly praiseworthy but somehow suspect. I’d bought her a drink a few nights before and she gave me that very look when I didn’t try to weasel my way into her affections and/or underwear. Even I wasn’t certain what I was doing, since I’d pretty much given up hope of progress in that direction. Pretty much.
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