“Oh, yes,” the man said. “I have heard that. Good air, Oram; very good. Indeed.”
The thick-armed, musclebound Zaldian at Francisco’s left nodded, his dark eyes belying some amusement.
The bald man smiled, displaying a gold front tooth amid its natural, jagged fellows. At that moment, Francisco placed the accent: that of the vagabonds, who lived off the Dragon’s Head Peninsula of Zal Ricio ’el Nria. Some called them thieves; others, pirates. They wandered through most countries and over most seas, leading suspicious lives and deceiving unsuspecting victims.
“Ah,” Francisco said, unsure of anything else to say.
“Get the boy some ale,” the man said. “He looks thirsty, Oram.”
Oram rose, and Francisco felt like an ant. The Zaldian moved to the counter where the girl presented him with two free tankards of frothing ale. No one charged customers like that.
“What is your name, boy?” the man asked. He sipped some ale from his tankard.
Francisco hesitated. “Charles,” he said, wishing he had said it faster. Rafen had given him a Sianian name to tell inquisitive strangers, but he kept forgetting it.
A roar of laughter rose from the table nearest the door. Sherwin was getting along with the farmers.
“Charles,” the man said, pursing his lips. “Very Tarhian. Heard it… fifteen times at least when I was there last.”
The Zaldian set the ale before Francisco, who drank some and narrowly avoided retching. It was cheap and acrid, a form of liquid dirt.
“Ah.” Francisco cleared his throat. “And what is your name?”
“My name,” the man said, leaning back with his arms behind his head, “is Death.”
Francisco’s forehead furrowed.
“If you put an ‘r’ in, Dearth is also as accurate,” the man continued. “Subtract the ‘a’ and the ‘h’ and put in a ‘b’ – Debt does just as well. Rubbish most of the letters, and we have your favorite word, Charles – ‘ah’.”
The man leered.
“I do not think that is your name,” Francisco said coldly.
“My mother named me ‘Red’,” the man said, “because that was the color I was when I was born. Eh, Oram? And that’s Charlie’s color now.”
“Thank you for the ale,” Francisco said, flushing and rising from his rickety chair.
The Zaldian’s hand fell on his shoulder, and Francisco’s knees buckled. He fell back in his chair.
“Wait a moment,” the man said quietly, “and I’ll show you something worth seeing.”
Francisco stared up at the Zaldian nervously.
The man set something down on the table with a smart rap. Francisco started. He was staring at a yellowed skull the size of his own, and if it had had eyes in its sockets, it would have been staring at him. It was missing the lower jawbone, but where the upper lip once was, three crooked teeth were fixed. One of them was gold.
“Guess who it is,” the man said.
He stood and leaned over the table, so that his shadow drowned Francisco. Francisco wished Rafen would do something.
“I do not know,” he said. “All skulls look the same, do they not?”
“Ah, no, not this, friend,” the man said. “This here is a skull as once held some fine brains. Look at him.”
Francisco couldn’t drag his eyes off it.
“His name is Wilkins,” the man said. “Charles Wilkins – once a famous advisor to King Albert. This is his pate. I had the honor of receiving it from King Albert’s cabinet. Worth a Sianian fortune, likely as not. He’s quite handsome still, is Wilkins.”
“Charles Wilkins?” Francisco clarified.
“Charles, Charles,” the man said, in the tone of someone humoring a child. He stroked the skull with a heavily-knuckled finger.
“It is… very, ah, educational,” Francisco said. “Ah, my father had some business for me I must attend. I have to excuse—”
When he began standing, the Zaldian’s hand tightened on his shoulder. Francisco felt like his bone would be squeezed to powder.
“If you have a moment, Charles,” the man said lazily, “perhaps you’ll suffer an interview with me.”
“I do not think—” Francisco started. Oram clapped his free hand over his mouth, smothering him.
Francisco gave a muffled shriek and writhed, but the Zaldian dragged him around the table and threw him into a side room. When Francisco sprang up and whirled around to shoot back through the door, it slammed in his face. An odd click sounded, so that no matter how hard Francisco rattled the old, curved handle, it wouldn’t give.
He turned around with dread, remembering his “interview” in a locked room with the Lashki. The man in the coffee-colored robe stood behind him, eyeing Francisco interestedly. He held a long, thin dagger with a plain black hilt.
Chapter Six
The
Pirate King
Dropping out of the air near the river running through the Cursed Woods, the Lashki had met one of his many puppets, who had gibbered his fearful delight to see him, bowing low.
“Master, Master, I have news that I think will please you.”
The Lashki now stood outside a demolished portion of the dilapidated wall of Smitton, the long copper rod in hand. He moved through the gap in the wall calmly, his excitement conquering the pain in his leg. At last, the torture of the past year would be over. He would kill Rafen. He would break him; he would put him in as much pain as possible, and gain thorough revenge before consigning him to nothingness. Not even his soul would survive.
As the Lashki moved through the darkened alley, a Tarhian stirred to his left, noticing the pale glitter of the amethyst set in the gold circlet that passed across the Lashki’s forehead. It was the crown of the Sianian king, and Alakil had snatched it from Robert Selson’s foolish head some time ago. Shaking, the long-limbed man fell to his knees and shuffled forward hurriedly to kiss the hem of the Lashki’s robe, speaking fevered Tarhian. Like many of his fellows, he had never seen the Lashki, but had heard much about him.
The Lashki seized the man’s face in an iron grip, and the Tarhian shrieked.
“Who came through the wall?” the Lashki hissed.
“Boys, three boys, Your Grace, and a girl… children—”
“Fool. Did they use sorcery?”
His grip tightened, and the Tarhian jabbered through a squashed face, “Yes, yes. Two were like him, Raf—”
“Which way?”
All the Tarhians had received descriptions of Rafen by now, so that the boy couldn’t pass anywhere without being known. Rafen wasn’t yet aware of this fact.
“Down the street—” The Tarhian pointed.
The Lashki threw him back against the wall of a house and lunged forward, unable to run like he usually could. His movements were painfully slow. If only he could hold Rafen in one place until he reached him…
*
The tavern was becoming uproarious. One farmer had poured his ale over another’s head for a joke, and in response the offended man had pulled out a Tarhian pistol and shot a hole in the roof by mistake. A cloud of dust and two roof tiles fell down with a clatter, exploding into fragments that shot across the floor. Many of the tables’ occupants recoiled.
Sherwin had been having what Rafen hoped was an intimate conversation with a man beneath a weathered, broad-brimmed hat. The sudden noise startled them both. Etana gripped Rafen’s arm, stirring the large coats they stood behind.
“This is getting dangerous,” she mouthed.
Rafen’s stomach clenched suddenly. “I have to go,” he said, a little too loudly. “Francisco is in trouble.”
Everyone was shouting. The innkeeper had appeared, gesticulating angrily with a broom. Sherwin saluted the farmer he’d been talking with and turned to leave.
Rafen stepped out from behind the coats. Etana hissed with horror and grabbed a handful of his hair.
“Owww,” Rafen said, his abdominals tightening as he tried not to yell. “Let me go, Et
ana; Francisco’s gone—”
“Where?” Etana said.
Rafen writhed out of her grasp and slipped between the tables and the seething, sweating men, whose action had blocked his brother from his sight for some time. However, now Francisco was not even in the room.
The innkeeper was finally gaining some semblance of order – largely because the buxom girl in the green dress had bellowed, “You oughta be ashamed of yourselves!”
No one noticed Rafen as he reached the table nearest the bar, where Francisco had been sitting. The giant Zaldian Rafen had observed earlier was leaning over the counter, pouring himself another tankard and helping himself to coins from the small tin coffer there. He had broken the lock with his bare hands.
A skull sat on the center of the table, and Rafen seized it with both hands as a muffled cry sounded from the side door to his right.
Rafen raced toward the door, tried the handle once, and found it locked with kesmal. Inside, he was screaming. He couldn’t do this again – allow someone to hurt his brother while he felt the pain from a distance. He snatched for the Phoenix’s strength, and warmth trickled down his arm. Grasping the handle again, Rafen threw open the door, rushed in, and slammed it behind him.
The bald man in the coffee-colored robe had Francisco against the dingy gray wall, holding him one-handed by his lapel. A green, iron sheaf of kesmal strapped Francisco’s arms to his side. In his free hand, the bald man gripped a long, gleaming dagger.
“I am not—” Francisco was crying shrilly, but Rafen didn’t wait for the rest. He hurled the skull at the man’s shiny head.
Smack. The man crumpled to his knees, the dagger falling from his hand as he clutched the bleeding side of his head. The kesmal binding Francisco vanished.
The man moved to retrieve his dagger; Rafen was already there on fleet paws, having transformed. Another rapid transformation and Rafen was on hands and knees, reaching for the weapon first. The man was fast, despite his injury. His fingers closed around the dagger’s handle, and before Rafen could rise, the tip was at his throat, warm with the force of kesmal.
Francisco had fallen to the floor when the bald man had dropped him; he now leapt to his feet again, swaying slightly.
“Let him go!” he shouted.
On his knees, the bald man stared at Rafen with intrigue in his watering eyes. Rafen glared at him, thinking fast.
“I will get help,” Francisco said. It was a ridiculous thing to say.
When he spun around to go, the man said, “Stop. I’ll kill him, boy. I will.”
Francisco froze, not even daring to turn.
The man laughed a cracked laugh, revealing a gold tooth.
“Well, it is the first time Wilkins and I have knocked heads together,” he said. “Thank you, for returning him… Rafen.”
Rafen met the bald man’s eyes, realizing that Francisco had once again been mistaken for him.
The door flew open, the Lashki filling its frame. Panic stabbed through Rafen when he glimpsed the copper rod. Sudden emerald light obscured his vision, and ultimate eclipse followed.
*
Rafen’s head pounded, and his body felt heavy and stiff. He was lying on some kind of pelt, the wind whispering in his hair. He opened his eyes a crack, trying to remember where he was.
The sky above him was a perfect blue, wreathed with lacy clouds. He turned his head with painful effort, becoming aware of noises around him: dishes clinking, people swallowing, chewing, sucking, gulping. Nearby, someone twanged a lute. A dog panted, and something warm and wet licked his hand.
Alarmed, Rafen sat up and reeled. He closed his eyes, recovering.
“Wilkins and I knew it wouldn’t last long,” someone said. “Isn’t that right Wilkins? The boy has kesmal in his blood. I could hear it boiling when he returned you.”
Rafen’s eyes flew open. He looked around himself frantically. The Lashki was nowhere in sight; perhaps he was invisible. The bald man was still here, though.
The pelt Rafen occupied – which he discovered was a tiger’s – was flung over a long crate in the middle of a camp throughout which various barrels, crates, and chests were scattered. Three wagons stood nearby – two covered, and one uncovered. A strange assortment of companions filled the camp: a man in vivid blue and yellow leggings (perhaps a Sartian jester) strummed a lute; a one-eyed man with a grizzled beard stirred a foul-smelling concoction hanging over a crackling pile of twigs; and the huge, square-jawed Zaldian held a long, slender dragon by the jaw and picked its teeth clean with a stick. There were as many as twenty others: one, obviously a farmer; another, a former soldier of the Sartian army, judging by his old regimental jacket; a skinny seventeen-year-old boy dressed in the bright colors of a pipes player; and so on.
The leader was obviously the bald man, who sat opposite Rafen on a barrel. He smoked from a curved Zaldian pipe and stroked the yellowed skull, his finger caressing its gold tooth with care.
“Where is the Lashki?” Rafen said. Clutching his aching head with one hand, he leapt up and reached for the sword at his belt. He was relieved – and surprised – to find it still there.
A stirring around him told him at least six people had decided to stop him from going anywhere. The Zaldian froze, clutching his smooth, gray-blue dragon by the neck and watching Rafen with unforgiving eyes.
“We gave the Lashki the slip, old Wilkins and I,” the man said, inhaling luxuriantly. “We won’t be seeing him again in a hurry.”
“What about my brother?” Rafen growled.
“Who knows where pretty Charlie is?” the man said. “He ran off with your other little friends.”
“Where is Francisco?” Rafen said through clenched teeth.
“Francisco, yesss,” the man said slowly, gently exhaling smoke through long lips. “He gave me the name Charlie.”
“Is he in Smitton?” Rafen demanded, loosening his sword in its sheath subtly.
“Or thereabouts,” the man said lazily, gazing down at the skull.
Rafen made a rapid move and reeled. The Zaldian stepped closer to him.
“I’m gratified,” the man said through his pipe, dropping his consonants as he too rose, “that you’ve got a headache as well, Rafen. You see, I’ve got one, and Wilkins has one too, likely as not.”
Rafen stared at the ragged bystanders surrounding him. Two steps from Rafen, the jester had raised his lute, preparing to smash Rafen’s head with it.
“Let him go,” the bald man said, waving the skull. “Your friends are in that direction, Rafen.”
He stretched out his arm, so that Wilkins the skull faced the southern horizon. “Or that way.”
Wilkins faced the east. “Or perhaps over that way.”
Wilkins faced the north. “Or—”
“Did they escape the Lashki?” Rafen yelled.
“Perhaps they did. Or perhaps they didn’t,” the bald man said softly. “Who knows when death will come?”
Rafen clenched his teeth, his blood burning. He whirled around, shoving past the jester, who lowered his lute with disappointment. Once clear of the camp, Rafen planned to transform. He could find his way across the grasslands much easier as a wolf. Somehow he would find the others. He stared wildly ahead at the purple needlegrass, blotched black in the distance by a group of bison.
“I pity you,” the bald man said, and Rafen paused, unsure of whom he spoke to. “Such a weight lies on a leader’s shoulders… yes. And how much more…” He turned to Rafen, his face indeed crumpled with pity. “How much more the Fledgling must have to bear. Hemmed in on every side by Tarhians and Ashurites, and of course, with one Ashurite pursuing his very soul. There mustn’t be a day in his life,” the bald man went on, addressing everyone now, “that Rafen does not think of the copper rod, and remember its touch. It will not be long before he fights the Lashki again, and then, who knows who will win? The final confrontation! No matter how many men the Fledgling recruits in the end, he knows he must always face the Lashki Mirah. Onl
y Rafen has the power to harm him.”
The bald man now sat on the tiger’s pelt, a long trail of smoke wending away from his pipe. Rafen remained frozen at the edge of the group of twenty men.
“And who does the Fledgling do it for?” the man said softly between his teeth, and Rafen was forced to step closer to hear him. “For a king who has lost all will to fight, for a man he loves as father, loves so dearly he wouldn’t see him die in a hole. For… all must die.”
The bald man breathed deeply, a single tear trickling down his cheek. Rafen stared, rooted to the ground.
“How do you know all this?” he hissed.
“I have known you for a long time, Rafen,” the bald man said, caressing Wilkins, “but you have not known me.”
“Who told you all this?” Rafen spat.
“What does it matter?” the bald man said, rising and walking to Rafen on bare feet, his eyes disconcertingly fixed on him. “What matters but that we’re so alike, you and I? Both of low bloodlines; both reluctant leaders; both men of kesmal. Both you and I…” the bald man stooped so that he looked right into Rafen’s eyes and breathed intoxicating smoke into his face “…have been wronged and have some claims in this land, don’t we, Rafen?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Rafen said.
The man straightened. “Then I’ll talk plain,” he said, tossing Wilkins and catching him. “Sirius Jones.” He stuck out his hand for Rafen to grasp. Rafen froze. The name was ominously familiar. He remembered King Robert telling him about the Pirate King when they were sailing to Siana for the first time.
“You don’t have to kiss it, boy,” Sirius said, chuckling abruptly. The laugh had a percussive husk in it from frequent smoking.
The one-eyed man guffawed by his cauldron.
Rafen let the hand hang there and wondered what Sirius would do about it.
“Now, Rafen,” Sirius said, drawing his hand back like nothing had happened, “I have men, and you have the kesmal the Lashki fears. You and I could do each other powerful good, don’t you think?”
The smoke trail from his pipe was dwindling. Sirius removed it from his mouth, discovered it lacked tobacco, and threw it at the Zaldian with the gray-blue dragon.
Servant of the King (The Fledgling Account Book 3) Page 6
