Quillifer

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Because of its origin in the Nocturnal Lodge and its use in ritual sacrifice by depraved and murderous sorcerers, this dirk lusts for blood.” Sir Basil laughed out loud as his dark eyes sought out each of the captives, one by one. “It is all I can do to keep a firm grip and prevent my knife plunging into your livers! And so”—with another flash of the knife—“I will need your help in restraining my dagger. You must help me to help you to survive! And the best way to help me”—again that sharklike grin—“is to urge your kin to pay me a generous ransom! That is the best and only way to impel me to restrain my weapon’s appetite for blood.”

  The grin remained, though the dagger was returned to its hidden scabbard. “I shall first speak with Lord Doubleback, or whatever your name is. Come this way, young sir.”

  Utterback declined to move. “I should like my hands untied,” he said. “You need not fear me, as your men have seen I’m unarmed.”

  The bandit affected surprise and amazement, then took off his hat and offered a sweeping bow. “I fear my courage may not be up to the task of facing such a foe as an Unarmed Crumpleback, or whatever you claim as your title.” He rose, smiling. “Yet I shall summon up what little valor still attaches to my debased knighthood, and dare to meet with you, tremble though I may!” He made a sweeping gesture. “Cut him free. Cut free them all!”

  Utterback’s lashings were cut, and he stood swaying for a moment as he contemplated his crabbed, swollen, empurpled hands. Then, his useless hands at his sides, he walked up the stair to the ground floor of the gaping keep, where a table and a number of chairs waited before the keep’s ancient carved fireplace. The bandit and his captive sat, and for all appearances began what seemed to be a civil conversation.

  In the meantime, my bonds were cut, and I looked down at hands as swollen and useless as those of Lord Utterback. For the first few moments they were numb, but as soon as the blood began to beat through my veins, the numbness was replaced by piercing pain. I was determined not to be an object of mockery to my captors, and I tried not to cry out, and attempted not to hunch protectively over my tortured hands—I stood with my hands clasped in front of me, and clenched my teeth, and blinked back the sudden sharp tears that filled my eyes.

  My eyes cleared, and before me I saw one of the outlaws, a young man in a slouch hat, with a scarred face and a contemptuous sneer. I straightened, and returned a defiant look. The outlaw laughed at my pretensions, and walked away. I busied myself with brushing away mud and gravel from my skinned knees.

  Utterback and Sir Basil concluded their conversation, and both stepped out onto the stair. The outlaw grinned broadly and addressed the crowd. “I am pleased to record that Lord Smotherback has agreed to pay us a generous sum in return for our hospitality!” The bandits raised a cheer, followed by a moment of polite applause for Utterback’s magnanimity. Sir Basil paused to join in the applause, then turned back to his audience. “So generous was he that my lord shall be quartered in the Oak House, where he shall enjoy all the rude comforts the Toppings can provide, and where he shall be given writing materials so that he can write to his father, the Count of Shylock.”

  A stoic, ironical expression lay on Utterback’s dark face as he listened to the mangling of his father’s title, and he was then led away by a pair of bandits through one of the gaps in the fort’s curtain wall. Sir Basil surveyed his remaining captives.

  “Perhaps I shall have one of the magistrates now?” he said. He pointed at Gribbins. “That one, then, who crawls like a dog. He and I had best make an arrangement before he succumbs to his honorable wounds.”

  Gribbins, who had been wheezing on all fours since being hit by the robber, was picked up by a pair of bandits, rushed up the stair, and dropped into a chair. Sir Basil jauntily swung a leg over another chair, and the two began to speak.

  I watched the conversation while I massaged warmth and feeling into my hands and arms. The outlaw spoke, and Gribbins replied, and then the outlaw spoke again. Gribbins’s high, peevish voice answered. “Sirrah, I am an ambassador! An ambassador to the royal court! You shall release me at once, or the King shall hear of this!” He gaped a moment as he realized his error. “The Queen, I mean!” He waved an admonishing finger. “The Queen shall hear!”

  I winced. Everyone but Gribbins could see where this was bound.

  Sir Basil, for his part, affected surprise. “You call upon royal protection?”

  Gribbins seemed very pleased with himself. He folded his arms. “Ay! In the Queen’s name, you must release me at once.”

  Sir Basil rose from his chair and turned to his audience. “The gentleman calls upon the Queen!” he said. “And well must he be situated between her fine white thighs, to call upon her instead of his royal majesty!”

  There was a laugh from Sir Basil’s claque. The toothless old bandit in the big boots raised quivering hands. “Nay!” he cried. He quaked in mock terror. “Not the Queen! Call not upon the Queen!”

  “Not the Queen!” cried the bandits. And they all began to moan and wail, and stagger about as if in bewilderment and terror. Their pleas echoed from the fort’s mossy stone walls as they beat their breasts and begged Gribbins for mercy.

  I could imagine the sequel all too well. I tried to think of something that might alter the course of events, but my inspiration failed me. I clenched my teeth and tried to resign myself to Lord Utterback’s god of Necessity.

  Gribbins reddened, but maintained his attitude of defiance. Sir Basil watched his men with a leer of approval, and then made a gesture, and they fell silent. He cocked an eye at the apothecary, and put a hand to his ear.

  “Sir Ambassador, I hear not the Queen. Nor the King. Nor their armies. Perhaps Their Majesties have abandoned you? Or should you call louder?”

  Gribbins’s answer was firm. “I will not bandy words with you, sirrah. I am an ambassador and you must release me.”

  Sir Basil turned back to his audience. “Despite his ambassadorship, this gentleman is by profession an apothecary, which is to say a mountebank. What fine have we established for a self-confessed mountebank?”

  “Ten royals!” came the answer.

  “Ay, ten royals. And the gentleman is also an alderman, which is to say a man who lives well on money he has taxed out of the people. What is the fine for a self-confessed tax collector?”

  “Twenty-five royals!” shouted the bandits.

  I winced at the numbers. A skilled workman might earn twenty royals in a year, and Gribbins doubtless earned more, but he would not earn it all at once, and I guessed that it would be rare for an apothecary to have thirty-five royals lying about in cash, even if his home hadn’t been looted. And if he didn’t have the money, then whoever raised it on his behalf—wife? brother? son?—would go to a moneylender and agree to an interest of a hundred or hundred fifty percent, perhaps more, considering how scarce cash would be in Ethlebight at the present.

  Sir Basil spun and threw out an arm toward Gribbins. “And the gentleman is also an ambassador!” he said. “No ambassador has ever enjoyed our hospitality before, so I know not what fine to ask. But I understand that the task of an ambassador is to lie to the King, and then to send the King’s lies back home, and to carry such lies back and forth, and to otherwise be a procurer for lies. So, what should be the fine for pimping lies?”

  “Twenty royals!” said one bandit.

  “Thirty!”

  “Fifty!”

  “Fifty!” Sir Basil laughed. “Ay, make it fifty!” He stepped toward his audience and leered at them knowingly. “And the gentleman ambassador has called upon royal protection.” He spread his hands. “What, my friends, is the penalty for calling on royal protection?”

  “Double the fine!” they all shouted in joy.

  “Ay! Double the fine!” Sir Basil swung toward Gribbins, who only now was beginning to show comprehension of his situation. Sir Basil held out a cupped hand, as if asking for a tip. “That is a hundred seventy royals, master apothecary. How do you inten
d to pay?”

  Gribbins’s face was a mask of horror. “I cannot pay,” he said.

  “Have you no friends?” Sir Basil said. “No wife? No sons?”

  I knew that Gribbins owned a house, with his shop on the ground floor, but it couldn’t be worth more than fifty royals. And even if he mortgaged it, it would pay only a fraction of his ransom, and leave his family in debt. He probably invested in merchant ventures, but these would only pay off at the end of a voyage, and very possibly had gone up in smoke during the corsairs’ attack.

  Doubtless these same calculations were whirling through Gribbins’s mind. His mouth opened and closed, as if he were trying various arguments and rejecting them before they quite got out of his mouth. If only, I thought, he’d tried that approach earlier.

  Again I tried to think of a way to intervene, something clever that would save Gribbins from the consequences of his own vainglorious folly. But I could not imagine anything that could stop the onrush of events, not unless I was willing to rush onto the bandits’ swords, run myself through, and hope my death provided enough entertainment to satiate Sir Basil and the other outlaws.

  “I do not have the money,” Gribbins said. “Though if the ransom remained at thirty-five, I could raise it.”

  Sir Basil snarled. “Do you bargain with us, sir?” He stepped to Gribbins’s chair, took his arm, and pulled him to his feet. He dragged Gribbins to the top of the stair, where he could view the bandits growling up at him, shaking weapons and fists. “Do you bargain with them?” he demanded.

  Gribbins made an effort to control himself. “Sir,” he said, “I am heartily sorry if I impugned your—”

  “Do you bargain with this?” Sir Basil asked.

  I tried to turn away, but I was too late. The dirk was swift as a striking serpent, and flashed from beneath the outlaw’s cloak and into Gribbins’s side before I could so much as blink. And then, unable to turn away, I saw Gribbins’s look of shock, saw his knees begin to give way, and then saw Sir Basil withdraw the dagger and kick Gribbins down the stair, where the apothecary disappeared behind a wall of robbers.

  The bandits bayed their approval, their weapons brandished overhead.

  Sir Basil flicked the dirk several times to shake off the blood, then re-sheathed. His restless eyes prowled over the courtyard, then lighted on me. He made a gesture.

  “You are next, Goodman. Come.”

  I slowly walked through the mob of bandits, which parted only reluctantly. There I saw Gribbins dying at the bottom of the stair, his watery blue eyes blinking as they stared into onrushing darkness.

  My stomach turned over. Many were the times in the last two weeks when I had cordially wished the apothecary dead, but now that it was happening, I found no pleasure in the sight.

  To mount the stair, I would have to step over the dying man. I contemplated this action and found myself unable to do it, so I stepped to the side of the stair, reached up to the crumbling floor of the keep, and pulled myself up.

  Sir Basil of the Heugh looked at me with mild surprise as I popped up in front of him, and stepped back to invite me to sit in the chair that Gribbins had just occupied. I seated myself cautiously, but Sir Basil threw himself carelessly into his own seat, the skirts of his overcoat flying. He crossed one booted foot over his knee, and looked at me with bright black eyes.

  “You’re a lawyer, I see,” he said.

  I was surprised to realize that my apprentice cap had stayed on my head through the whole adventure.

  Sir Basil narrowed his eyes. “I don’t like lawyers,” he said.

  “I don’t care for them myself,” I said. I had decided to agree with the outlaw whenever I could.

  “My own advocate was no use at all,” said Sir Basil. “He thought I was guilty. He served me up to the jury like a mincemeat pie.”

  Apparently, Sir Basil felt his fame was such that I would know this detail. I thought it impolitic to correct him.

  I donned my learnèd-lawyer face. “The advocate must have been unfit.”

  “I unfitted him,” said the outlaw. “I slit his nose and burnt his house.”

  I nodded what I hoped Sir Basil would view as approval. “A resolute action, Sir Basil.”

  “I failed to catch the judge,” the outlaw added, “but I robbed his wife.”

  A flush burned in Sir Basil’s cheeks, and his black eyes flashed. The murder had stimulated him, and he shifted restlessly in his chair and spoke with restless, rapid animation.

  “I was innocent of that theft,” he said. “I was a devoted priest of the goddess Sylvia, and ’tis true I had a key to the treasury under the podium of the temple. But it was another who opened the lock and took the money and the temple offerings!” He snarled. “I will admit to any deed I have committed—I will own to killing that blockhead a few moments ago—but I will not admit to a crime of which I am innocent!” He jabbed an angry finger onto the table. “They found not a single stolen article in my house—they had no evidence at all—and yet I was convicted!”

  “It sounds like a monstrous injustice,” I said.

  “I prayed to the goddess,” said the outlaw. “But she was as useless as my lawyer.” He snarled, and brandished a fist to the sky. “Damn all lawyers! Damn all gods! Damn the Pilgrim, and the King with him!”

  I nodded, and began to think it a good idea to change the topic. “One item of your program is complete. King Stilwell is dead.”

  Sir Basil raised an eyebrow. “So, that is why that imbecile called upon the Queen?”

  “Yes. We have Queen Berlauda now.”

  The outlaw made a noise of disgust. “She won’t last. Women can’t rule. Some ambitious knave will chuck her off her throne, or marry her and keep her so stuffed full of children she won’t think to say ‘boo’ to him.” He ran his fingers along his jawline, thoughtfully smoothing his beard. “And yet women are sentimental and foolish—would she be inclined to offer pardons, d’ye think?”

  “Many pardons are issued after coronations.” I considered for a moment, then decided to seize the slight opportunity this seemed to open. I put on my respectful-apprentice face. “I could be your advocate in the capital, if you like.”

  Sir Basil gaped at me, then laughed. “My advocate!” he scorned. “That is precisely what I need, another advocate! And further, one who reads his Mallio in the Rawlings translation, hah!” He pointed a finger at me. “Look you—how would you translate the following: ‘Quatenus permittit aurum prodit lex’?”

  I was a little surprised to find myself at school again, but rose to the challenge. “ ‘Laws goeth where gold pleaseth.’ ” Though there was no way to translate “prodit” in all its subtlety, with its hint of betrayal, and of keeping the subject on a short leash, and bound by strict Necessity.

  “Ay, plain but serviceable enough,” Sir Basil judged. “Yet Rawlings has it, ‘Howsoever gold and laws goeth ever in company.’ He understands not even that prodit, which is plain as—” He made a fist. “As the corruption of the common law by the judiciary!”

  “I have the Delward translation at home,” I said. “But I preferred not to risk it on the journey.”

  “That is the first wise thing you have said.” The outlaw laughed again, and shook his head. “My advocate!” His glittering black eyes regarded me for a long, unsettling moment. “So, you are not an ambassador, I take it?”

  “I am a drudge,” I said, “a mere secretary. Nor am I an alderman, nor a magistrate. Nor will I call upon the Queen of Duisland when I am in the power of the King of the Toppings.”

  The outlaw gave a thin smile. “Flattery may win the favor of royalty, but not Sir Basil of the Heugh. We have yet to determine your fine, Goodman . . .” He reached for a word and failed to find it. “Goodman,” he said, “I know not your name.”

  “Quillifer, Sir Basil.”

  “Is that a forename or a surname?”

  “It is my only name,” said I. “It is one of the ways in which I am singular.”


  The outlaw laughed. “And the gold chain?”

  “A keepsake in memory of my father. He was an alderman, and was murdered with the rest of my family two weeks ago in an attack on Ethlebight by Aekoi corsairs.”

  Sir Basil was not moved by this story, but entertained. “So, you plead that you are an orphan? A penniless orphan?”

  “I was not penniless until this last hour, Sir Basil.”

  “The fine for penniless orphans, Goodman Quillifer, is five royals.”

  I had expected worse, though five royals was bad enough. Perhaps my drolleries had encouraged Sir Basil to lighten my ransom.

  “I will write to my friend,” I said. I knew Kevin had no money, but could probably raise five royals if he needed, especially as his ship Meteor had come into Amberstone.

  The thought of Meteor brought to mind the galleon Irresistible, and suddenly I realized how I might save myself the debt, and perhaps do the new Queen a good turn. I leaned back in my chair and looked at the outlaw.

  “Sir Basil, I wonder if I could beg a pardon from you on condition.”

  The outlaw’s eyes turned cold. “On condition? Condition? When I hear the word condition, I hear also my dirk crying for blood.”

  “I can put you in the way of a ransom larger than any you have collected,” I said. “If my information is correct, will you let me go free?”

  “You wish to turn informer?” The outlaw was darkly amused. “Certainly I can foresee for you a glorious and successful career before the bar.”

  The man was probably a traitor anyway, I thought. In any case, he owned an estate and a high-charged galleon, which he could afford better than I could afford five royals.

  “The Marquess of Stayne will be riding south on Mavors’ Road in the next few days,” I said. “He will be joining his galleon Irresistible in Amberstone for a voyage abroad.”