The River King's Road

by Merciel, Liane

  “Good,” he said, shouldering past. Halfway through the door, he paused and glanced back. “If anyone comes looking for me, come in and get me. Don’t let them in. Wouldn’t want to ruin her nice carpets with blood.”

  The young guard blinked and nodded again, plainly startled, but Brys was already inside.

  Half a dozen young women in diaphanous silks and sparkling glass jewels lolled around Merrygold’s parlor. Two of them were teasing a pair of young knights wearing medallions marked with Lord Ossaric’s black bull. Another played a card game with a plump man old enough to be her father, while a fourth strummed lazy, rippling chords from a silver harp in the corner and cast dreamy glances at a dour Seawatch merchant covered from head to toe in drab black wool. The merchant never cracked a smile, despite the girl’s lovely dishabille, but he was scarlet to the ears.

  Merrygold watched over her domain from her informal throne: an exotic chair that resembled a shallow, cushioned bowl perched atop a circular wicker frame. Its cushion was burgundy velvet with gold silk tassels dangling from its seams; the wicker frame was covered in gilt, and a great fan of iridescent peacock feathers rose up from its back. The chair, too, was supposed to have come from Amrali. It was one of the strangest pieces of furniture Brys had ever seen, but Merrygold managed to make it seem alluring rather than absurd.

  “Jadhavi Merrygold,” he said, striding toward her with both hands open. “You’re lovelier than ever.”

  “Brys Tarnell,” she replied, standing with sensuous, liquid grace. Her black hair tumbled behind her, falling in a mass of dark curls to the small of her back. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “You never disappoint.” She smiled, taking his hands in a semi-formal clasp. Jadhavi Merrygold was tall for a woman; her head came up past his chin. Her eyes were green as new leaves, paler than his, and flecked with gold. She’d lined them with kohl to accentuate their slight slant and dusted mica on her eyelids to draw out the sparkle. A dagger-shaped pendant of peridot on a golden chain gleamed between her breasts.

  “Glad to hear it. Then you won’t mind coming upstairs with me for a bit.” He saw her hesitate. “I have money. I’m sure your girls can handle themselves for half an hour.”

  “Half an hour might be flattering yourself,” Merrygold murmured, but she led him up the stairs.

  Screens of pierced sandalwood covered the doors on the second floor, lending an undercurrent of eastern spice to the mingled fragrances of women’s perfume that filled the brothel. The woodworking was very good, and very expensive.

  “These are new,” Brys observed as they passed.

  “Fortune has been good to us.” She slipped a silver key into a small, discreet lock concealed behind the sandalwood screen of a door at the end of the hall, opened it, and gestured for him to enter. After he did, she followed him in and locked the door again behind them.

  It was an Ardasi tea room, not a bedroom. A lacquered parquetry table stood in the center, surrounded by colorful silk cushions. An alcove in one wall held a tea set in the deep sea-green shades of the finest Khartoli porcelain.

  That porcelain was worth more than its weight in gold. Brys let out a low whistle. “Fortune has been good to you.”

  Merrygold followed his glance to the tea set and shrugged. “It is a safer place to put my money. Any thief knows to take gold or jewels, but none here recognizes the worth of selas amat. All these barbarians see is a set of training tools for my girls.”

  “Are you training them in selas dun?” His eyes crinkled in amusement.

  “Of course. Most of these girls are poor and unlettered. They will never make true courtesans, I fear, but that is no reason to keep from teaching them a few graces. It gives them dignity and stokes men’s desire … so I can raise my prices and do honor to my art at once.”

  “Ever the romantic, that’s my Merrygold. Speaking of romance, I have something for you.” Brys held out the bag that contained most of his winnings for the night.

  Merrygold took the bag deftly, weighed it in her palm, and slipped it into a hidden fold of her dress. She dropped the velvety allure from her voice, sounding simply tired and a little afraid. “What do you want? I don’t have any news about Veladi.”

  “This isn’t about her. Did you have any odd clients these past weeks? You or any of the tavern girls?” There were three ways a mercenary could be counted on to waste his money: dicing, drinking, and whores. Neither dicing nor drinking had turned up any useful information, so that left Mistress Merrygold and her kind. If she hadn’t seen anything, then either Willowfield’s killers hadn’t come this way at all, or they weren’t mercenaries.

  Brys didn’t like to think about that possibility. If it hadn’t been hireswords who carried out that massacre, but Ang’arta’s regular soldiers acting under their Lord Commander’s orders …

  “Odd how?” Merrygold made a little laugh that didn’t touch her eyes. “They’re all odd. Some of the things those Seawatch men like …”

  “Odd in a way I’d care about.”

  She bit her lip, and for a moment Brys thought she would deny knowing anything, but after a long hesitation she nodded. “A full company of freeswords stopped here about ten days ago. They paid in good silver. Took all my girls for the entire night. Some of them … some were a little rough, but no lasting damage.”

  “Nothing odd in any of that,” Brys said. “Right time of year for it. Can’t think of any better way to spend silver between Craghail and Blackbough.”

  “You’re too kind,” Merrygold replied with just a hint of acerbity. “The peculiar thing is that none of them was injured. They barely had a scratch to share among the whole company.”

  “Silver wasn’t from Swordsday winnings, then.” An individual fighter, if he was skilled, well armored, and lucky, might come out of a Swordsday melee unscathed … but a company, no matter how good, never escaped without half its men bruised and at least one of them hurt badly.

  “No.” She hesitated again, longer this time. “They were branded too.”

  A weight that Brys hadn’t known was on his shoulders seemed to lift. In its place settled something colder, more familiar: an urge to kill. “Iron Crown?”

  “Iron Crown.”

  “Did you see their Thorn?”

  “They had a Thorn?” Merrygold’s artfully painted eyes widened. At his nod, she cursed vehemently and at length. “No. No Thorn. Only the men came here. Just for a night; they left the next day.”

  “Do you know where they went?”

  “No. I thought you said this wasn’t about Veladi.”

  “It isn’t.” Mostly true. He’d hated Baozites long before he met her. Veladi was just one more pebble on their mountain of sins. “It’s about Willowfield.”

  “Willowfield?” She didn’t bother to hide her scornful disbelief. “Do you mean to tell me that Brys Tarnell cares about some dead lord’s son?”

  Brys shrugged. “Galefrid was a good employer. He made me a knight.”

  “Oh, he made you a knight. Of course. Naturally you should want to avenge his death on account of that.”

  “They tried to kill me too. Didn’t take. Doesn’t mean I’m inclined to forgive the try.”

  “I’m sure their being Baozites has nothing to do with that.” Merrygold grimaced. Somehow even that was beautiful on her. “No, don’t try to deny it. I hear enough lies from men already.” She ran a hand through her hair, careless of breaking the painstakingly arranged waves. “One of them … one of their friends stayed behind.”

  Brys tensed. “Where? Here?”

  “He doesn’t stay here. He visits from time to time.” She glanced at his face and winced. “I don’t want any killing near my house. No blood, no link to me. It’s bad for business. Promise me that, and I’ll point him out next time he comes.”

  “Merrygold, I could kiss you.”

  “You didn’t pay enough for that.” She unlocked the door and waved him out. “Go, go. Do
n’t get yourself killed. Veladi has become fond of you, for reasons I shall never fathom, and I’d hate to have to tell her how I let you come to harm.”

  “No need to worry about that,” Brys told her, grinning wolfishly. “It’s not me I intend to see dead.”

  His mood was vastly improved by the time he reached the street. Baozites had killed Willowfield and they’d been paid to do it. He still knew nothing about their Thorn, which was a problem, but one of the soldiers might soon fall into his grasp and then he’d learn more.

  Even more pleasing than the prospect of blood was the knowledge that Veladi was well. Merrygold had quite sensibly refused to let anything else slip, but she’d given him that much. Veladi was alive and well and remembered him.

  When last they’d talked, she had mentioned going to Cailan. Perhaps she was out there under the same starry sky, hunting her marks under the shimmering spire of Heaven’s Needle and wearing her own face at last. Free.

  He might go to Cailan himself, Brys thought. Once he was finished here. There wasn’t much call for hireswords in Calantyr, but he could find something else to do.

  He was so absorbed in the thought that he failed to notice the soft skitter of footsteps behind him until it was almost too late. Evidently one of his would-be cheaters had decided to confront him after all; the steps sounded too tentative and jerky to belong to an experienced footpad. Brys adjusted his course to pass by a rich man’s shopfront, one that had glass in the windows, and glanced at the reflection as he walked past.

  The glass was lumpy and pitted, and the reflection was too small to show much, but Brys got a glimpse of a skinny figure with bad posture as his pursuer passed one of the town’s night torches. Renshil.

  Flexing his fists, he walked into an alley, turned toward the wall as if taking a piss, and waited for Renshil to catch up.

  The smaller man paused outside the alley, just behind the corner of the nearest house. Just out of view. Brys heard him hesitate, could almost see the doubts dancing through Renshil’s head. Was it worth it? Was it really worth going into a dark alley to confront a bigger man, alone, over a dice game?

  Evidently it was. Renshil crept around the last building, saw Brys standing against the wall, and lunged.

  He was as bad at fighting as he was at cheating. He came straight forward with the knife in his right hand, locking his elbow as he thrust. No subtlety, no finesse. His feet told Brys where he was going even before his arm moved. Brys grabbed Renshil’s forearm with his left hand, shoving the blow wide and sidestepping in toward him. At the same time he swung his right fist into the smaller man’s gut, pivoting to add force to the punch. Renshil’s breath left him in a rush and he folded neatly in half.

  Still holding Renshil’s knife arm fully extended, Brys brought his right elbow down hard on the gambler’s forearm. Bones cracked. He dropped the man’s broken arm and let him slump to the ground, then stomped his knife hand under a boot. Renshil’s fingers shattered like twigs. He wouldn’t be short-rolling any more dice for a while.

  The whole thing was over in the space of two breaths. Brys stooped to pick up the fallen knife. It was cheap and dull, and he’d bent the blade a little when he crushed Renshil’s hand, but it would do.

  He grabbed Renshil’s greasy collar and shoved the man against the nearest wall, tickling the underside of his chin with the knife’s point. “Scream and I’ll pin your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Answer me nicely and you might get out alive. With all your limbs still attached, even. Understand?”

  Renshil nodded jerkily. His eyes flickered to something behind Brys.

  That was the only warning he had. It was barely enough. A whisper brushed past Brys’ ear but he was already hurling himself away, pulling Renshil into the space he had occupied an instant earlier. An iron-capped cudgel swung through the air where the back of Brys’ head had been an instant before and slammed into Renshil’s face. His nose vanished in a spray of blood; a tooth ricocheted off a muddy stone.

  The attacker didn’t pause to glance down. He stepped around Renshil, who was scrabbling blindly across the alley and making high-pitched little noises somewhere between gasps and screams, and came after Brys.

  “Not much of a friend, I see,” Brys muttered as he pushed himself backward on hands and knees. The dodge had thrown him off balance, and Renshil’s knife was useless against that cudgel. He understood why the gambler had paused outside the alley, and chuckled grimly at his own overconfidence. It wasn’t fear that made Renshil delay after all. He’d been waiting for his help.

  His help wasn’t waiting for him. Keeping the cudgel slanted across his body and ready to lash out in a bone-cracking blow, the new man closed steadily on Brys. He was bigger than Renshil was, and considerably better with his weapon. The alley walls limited the stick’s range, which helped a little. That was one of the reasons Brys had chosen it for his ambush.

  Brys crab-crawled back another pace and flattened his hand against the muddy earth, pushing himself up and twisting swiftly back to his feet. At once the iron-capped cudgel came whistling at him, and despite his quick step to the side it landed a bruising blow on his thigh, dangerously close to the knee. It didn’t knock him down, though, and it hadn’t broken anything. Yet.

  There wasn’t much room to manuever. The alley was too tight to squeeze past his assailant, even if he’d been inclined to flee, and Brys Tarnell was not. Instead he rushed the man, trying to get inside the cudgel’s reach.

  His attacker saw him coming and took a step back, swinging hard. Brys sidestepped the brunt of the blow, bringing his forearm up fast to deflect what he couldn’t dodge. The cudgel landed hard, eliciting a meaty smack and a grunt of pain, but he’d lived through worse and now he was close enough to grab the man.

  The cudgel-wielder tried to block him with the iron-capped stick, but Brys slipped an arm past it and around the man’s neck. His opponent jabbed clumsily at him with the end of the stick, but he was too close to inflict any real damage. Keeping his arm locked around the stick-wielder’s neck, Brys drove his right fist into the man’s abdomen again and again, pounding him with short sharp hooks. Soon the man was sagging in his grip, gasping for breath. One last strike to the small ribs sent him to the ground.

  At the same instant a searing pain scraped along his flank. Brys swore, glanced back, and saw that Renshil had gotten up. A second knife shook in his off hand, wet with blood; the gambler swiped it in wild, drunken arcs, too unsteady to follow up on his momentary advantage.

  Brys was briefly impressed. He hadn’t expected Renshil to be so tenacious. Not that it’d help him. Dodging the gambler’s wild flailings was comically easy. A solid punch to the chin, and he was back down again. A couple of kicks kept him there. The first blow was enough, really, but Brys felt he owed the man a little more in return for the shallow cut Renshil had laid open on his flank.

  Wiping sweat and mud from his brow, Brys took stock of the situation. He’d been careless twice, and would be dead if these two weren’t such amateurs, but it hadn’t gone badly despite that. Renshil slumped against the wall, groping at the gaps of his missing teeth with bloody fingers and sobbing. The other man was unconscious, but likely not for long.

  He couldn’t manage two captives, especially not while wounded. The man with the cudgel hadn’t flinched from nearly killing Renshil, and Brys saw no reason to second-guess his judgment. If a man’s own friends couldn’t be bothered to keep him alive, who was he to contradict them?

  “Should’ve taken your losses.” He grabbed Renshil’s hair, yanked his head back, and cut the man’s throat with the knife Brys had taken from him earlier. The blade was duller than he’d thought, but it got the job done in the end.

  Brys picked up the cudgel and tucked it into his belt, then hoisted the semiconscious man back to his feet and marched him out of the alley. The fight had been fairly noisy, and Tarne Crossing was law-abiding enough that the guard might take an interest in disturbances. He could probably talk his way out
of serious trouble, if he had to—being a knight carried all sorts of privileges when it came to abusing lowborn scum—but it was better not to be noticed. His immediate plans weren’t terribly chivalrous.

  Limping from the blow to his leg, Brys half-led and half-dragged his prisoner to a cluster of dilapidated houses leaning against each other near the town wall. Once he felt reasonably secluded, he used the knife to rip open the seams of his captive’s shirt.

  His shoulders were scarred and hairy but bore no brands. Not a Baozite. Brys felt a flicker of disappointment but no surprise; he was never that lucky.

  All the ironlords were branded with the Iron Crown if they survived the breaking pits to become soldiers. It sealed their allegiance to their savage god, and it marked them as among the finest warriors in Ithelas: men to be feared.

  Hated, too. No one wanted to face them massed on the battlefield, but a single soldier, far from Ang’arta, could expect a swift demise—if he was lucky. The ironlords seldom deserted; marked as they were, they had nowhere else to go. There was no mercy for a Baozite caught out alone, least of all from Brys Tarnell.

  This man, however, was just a common footpad. Brys slapped the would-be robber’s cheeks. “Wake up.”

  “Whu—?”

  Brys held the dented knife up, letting the blade gleam in the moonlight. He brought it so close to his captive’s nose that the man went cross-eyed watching it. “Bad move trying to ambush me back there. Not smart. I can only imagine what lies Renshil must have told to lure you into that stupidity. Luckily, I’m in a generous mood today. I’m giving you the chance to repent your sins, pay penance for your misdeeds, and go off into the night older if not wiser. All you have to do is hand over the proceeds of your past crimes.”

  “’m not a thief,” the man mumbled sullenly.