by Toby Frost
“Damn right!” the old man beside him wheezed. Dravaignac – he was half-senile twenty years ago. God knows how old he is now. “It was good back then! We had the best food, the best wine, women from all over – hell, we had fey women too—” He broke off into a wheezy laugh as the others muttered their agreement.
The old days, Azul thought, always the damned old days. He felt a sudden jolt of contempt for his comrades. So what if they’d once lived like kings? Years of being hunted had turned them into neurotics and voluptuaries. He stood there and listened to them joke about the revolting dryad women, and wondered what had happened to the legion of fierce young gods with whom he had once had the privilege to march.
“Gentlemen!” he barked. “Gentlemen!”
They turned to him, surprised to hear him shout. He looked down the table and thought: At least one of us can still give an order properly.
“We shouldn’t dwell on the old days to the detriment of today. Twenty years ago, the New World was just a dream – a novelty, if you will. Nations boasted of having put a man on New World soil; sailors considered themselves lucky to reach there alive. As I say, times change. In the last few years, Albion has established a colony on the north island of the New World, which they call Maidenland. They’ve struck trade deals with Paratan, the witch-king of the north. Meanwhile, various explorers have set up a line of garrison towns on the south island. Brave men have already made expeditions into the jungle and returned with considerable rewards.
“However, nobody has fully exploited the opportunity that the New World presents. In order to properly investigate the region, and to make the greatest profit, a large-scale privateer expedition is needed, using mercenary soldiers and experienced captains. I am part of a consortium that has sponsored such an expedition for the last three years. We have been very successful, but now it’s time to enlarge our operation.”
He met Brother Praxis’ eyes for a moment. The little man looked mildly interested, as if this was diverting but would never be of any relevance to him.
“The inhabitants of the area where my consortium operates are primitive savages, ignorant of both horses and gunpowder. The only thing worth noting about these people is that they honour their pagan gods with gold. Their jewellery is golden. So is their armour, their dinner-plates, even their temple walls. Captain Arrighetti, our chief operative in the New World, informs me that their entire cities are made of the stuff. It’s that gold which I intend to bring back here.
“My men have made significant inroads so far, but we are far from realising the potential of the area. And that’s where you’d come in. With increased funding, we can hire more ships and more mercenaries. With that kind of military force, we will be able to take a thorough and methodical approach to the native population. In short, there will be almost no limit to the amount of treasure we can take from these savages.”
He gave them three seconds to take it in, then resumed before they could start chattering.
“You’ll want proof, of course. Our expeditions so far have been fairly small-scale, but they have yielded impressive results. Let me show you some samples.”
Azul turned to a little trolley at the rear of the room. On it sat a polished wooden strong-box, banded with iron. He hauled the trolley forward, opened the box with a key on his belt, and lifted the lid. Around the room he heard a noise as gratifying as any lover’s voice: the sound of the delegates drawing in breath.
“The merest taste of what we expect to achieve,” Azul said. He held up a necklace: six fat rubies hanging from a golden chain. Azul lifted it to his neck, smiling, then tossed it onto Torvald’s lap.
“Keep it. There’ll be plenty more. Consider it a Lexmas present for your wife.” Azul reached into the box, scooped out a handful of coins and dumped them on the tabletop. “These are solid gold.”
A hand rose. It was the fat man, the ex-captain of cannon. Azul said, “Question?”
“This consortium of yours. How do I buy in?”
Someone knocked on the door, four quick, loud bangs.
Cortaag. What’s this?
The joviality dropped off Azul’s face. “Excuse me one moment, gentlemen. Do talk amongst yourselves. I’m sure there’s plenty to discuss.” He nodded to Alicia, and she stood up.
“Perhaps I can show you some more of the treasure,” she began. “Look, everyone: here are earrings, made of emeralds set in gold…”
Azul stepped up to the door and opened it. Cortaag stood outside with an Inquis man, one of the younger ones. The man was panting, his eyes wide.
“Sir,” Cortaag said, “could we have a brief word, perhaps?”
As Azul closed the door the youth cried, “We’re under attack, sir! We’ve been raided!”
“Idiot!” Azul rasped. “Keep your voice down!” He scowled. “How many?”
“Loads,” said the man. “Must be a whole squad of them—”
“How many did you see?”
“Well, one, sir. But the men at the gatehouse are all dead. He broke in downstairs while we were having dinner. Sir, we managed to knock him out. They’re taking him to the cellars right now.” The man shook his head. “He was crazy, sir, berserk. He must have killed a dozen people—”
“What? One? You let one man frighten you? Pathetic!” Azul’s mouth set itself. His eyes glittered behind his spectacles. “You are a soldier of the Inquisition. Do you even understand what that means?”
The young man nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Azul leaned forward and said quietly, “It is your purpose and your privilege to fight and die for your betters. If you don’t go down there and do that, if I hear any bad reports about you or any other of you gutless young bastards, I’ll have Cortaag here rip off your ears. And you can tell that to your friends as well. Got that?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Now get back downstairs and kill the prisoner and anyone else who got in with him. Go!”
The man turned and ran back down the hall. Azul turned to Cortaag, who had been waiting silently with his mace in his hands.
“Send all the guards downstairs and close off the lower floors,” Azul said. “Lock the doors. Have the men on the shore get to their positions. Keep the back staircase open, just in case. Understand?”
“Absolutely,” Cortaag said.
“If the old man’s here, so is the woman with the scars. Listen to me, Felsten – she’ll be out for blood, so watch yourself. Now get going.”
Cortaag gave him the blessing-salute. Azul opened the doors and returned to the delegates. They had been muttering, he realised, finding new things to worry about. He made himself smile as Alicia stepped aside. “Now, gentlemen, I do apologise for that interruption. If I might continue…”
***
A sudden bang from above, and Giulia stopped and looked up. Beside her, Sethis watched the ceiling as if it was about to collapse.
They stood in a warren of service passages, a maze of narrow, dirty corridors designed to keep the servants out of sight of their masters. They’d encountered nobody so far.
Two seconds of quiet passed, then someone screamed. Voices called out, beasts yelped and barked, the shouts of men twisted into the snarling of animals and back again.
Giulia looked at Sethis. She had never seen someone look so afraid and yet so resolute. He swallowed hard, as if it hurt. “Hugh,” he said.
“Follow me,” Giulia replied, and she started to run. The dryad kept close behind her, his sword drawn. Screams and yells rang through the narrow corridors like fire through a slum. Giulia turned left and they scurried into a passage tight enough to force them into single file. At the end of the passage was a door.
The noise stopped. Someone groaned. A man called out, “Oh, fuck, I’m bleeding!” and Giulia could see him in her mind, the sense of horror as he realised how badly hurt he was. She couldn’t hear Hugh.
Sethis looked plaster-white. His mouth was a tight scar above his pointed chin. “Wait,” he said. “I’ll go first.”
“No, I’ll do it. Open the door on three.”
“Right.” Sethis stepped to the narrow door and wrapped his long fingers around the handle. He whispered, “One.”
Giulia tightened her grip on the crossbow.
“Two.”
She stared at the wooden door, as if to see straight through it.
“Three!” and he pulled the door open. Giulia saw a dining hall strewn with bodies. She stepped in, checked left and right, and advanced. The room was in chaos: a dozen corpses lay surrounded by smashed plates and broken furniture. A soldier in a red cloak held another down on the table, trying to bandage him.
“Raise your hands and turn around,” she said. “Try anything and I’ll kill you.”
The man in the red cloak turned and raised his hands. He did not look afraid. He hardly seemed surprised that she was there.
“Where’s Hugh?” Giulia demanded.
“The old man is with us,” the soldier replied. He spoke slowly, cautiously, but there was a kind of confidence in his voice, as if he relished the words. “He’ll be dead soon.”
The man on the table cried out. His hand reached out blindly, caught his friend’s cloak and clenched in it.
“I hope you’re proud of him,” the soldier said. “Your friend’s a murderer.”
“I’ve met worse,” Sethis replied, “Inquisitor.” He stooped and rooted about on the floor: he was taking something off the belt of one of the dead men.
The soldier ignored Sethis. “You want to watch him,” he told Giulia. He teased his cloak out of the injured man’s grip, and held the bloody hand instead. “Some of these pixies get a taste for our women. I’ve seen it happen. He’ll be on you before you know.”
A bang, and a spike of blood burst from the side of the soldier’s head. He fell as Giulia flinched – a second bang, and the injured man jolted and was still. Sethis held two pistols, smoke rising from the barrels.
“He was buying time for his friends,” Sethis said. “We ought to get going.” He pushed the guns into his belt. “These should come in handy.”
Giulia nodded, shocked. “I thought you people preferred bows,” she said. She’d meant to sound nonchalant: she sounded numb.
“Well,” he replied, “I’m unusual.”
***
The world became clear, then faded away. Trying to think straight was like reading words written on a swinging pendulum. And then, all at once, Hugh was back. He was alive once more, being dragged down a corridor by his feet. There were three of them around him, maybe more, young voices.
“What a stupid bastard, coming in alone like that. Shouldn’t try it if you can’t pull it off.”
“He won’t be alone. There’ll be more.”
“That’s fucking crazy. Don’t they know who they’re messing with?”
“What? Have you been asleep or something? The mess-hall’s full of corpses, son. Same goes for those poor bastards in the gatehouse. This old piece of shit good as butchered them.”
I shall hit them like lightning, Hugh thought.
“Hey, he’s awake!” the soldier said. “Wakey, wakey, old fart!” Hugh was suddenly aware of a face close to him. The man was bending down. Hugh felt water drop onto his face. No, too thick for water: spit. “Not long now, you old prick.”
Hugh’s left boot jolted out of the soldier’s hand and swung downwards heel-first. The spur punched into the soldier’s knee. He screamed.
Men reached for weapons, frantic and clumsy. Hugh scrambled upright and drew a knife.
His leg was bleeding, but he didn’t need to run. They were already close enough for what he had in mind.
***
For every staircase designed for visitors, there was a smaller one for staff. The staff passages were poky and damp-smelling, the walls the colour of parchment beginning to rot. A row of wicker bins stood along the wall, stuffed with leaves and peelings.
“We must be near the kitchens,” Giulia whispered. She pointed to a little staircase, lit by a lantern surrounded by a fan of grubby mirrors. “Up there.”
She led the way. Knees bent, they crept up the narrow stairs. She halted at the top. To the left there was a doorway, and from inside it came voices and candlelight.
Giulia crouched down, leaned out and peered around the doorframe.
Half a dozen men sat at a small table, eating and talking. The low ceiling made them look like ogres. She drew back and turned to Sethis. “Six of them, having dinner,” Giulia whispered.
“Servants?”
“Soldiers. There’s a bell-rope at the corner. If they see us they’ll ring it.”
“Can you get past?”
“I think so. Look, if you want to go back—”
The dryad shook his head. His curly hair bobbed. “No. I’ve run from these people before – hid from them, too. I didn’t know much about fighting then. I do now.”
She thought of him dispatching the two men downstairs, as sharp and cold as a knife. Yes, he knew his stuff, when pushed to it. “All right.”
Giulia drove off and rolled past the door in a quick whirl of cloth. She came up on the other side and pressed herself against the wall. Sethis dropped into a crouch and drove off like a jumping frog. He landed on his shoulder, rolled silently and stood up. The soldiers kept on eating.
They crept down the corridor. Alcoves on either side led into little storerooms. A row of white aprons hung from pegs in the wall, like ghosts on parade.
Further up, the corridor widened into a kitchen. There was no meat here, but vegetables lay on long racks, beside pots of spice. Knives lay on a chopping block; a bucket on the floor held dozens of apple cores. The tables and implements looked evil in the moonlight.
Sethis whispered, “Can we stop a moment? I need to load my guns.”
Giulia stopped. “Be quick about it.” She laid her bow down and rubbed her eyes, listening to Sethis work. Come on, come on, she thought. Two loaded pistols would be useful, but she had to get to Hugh – and then Azul, and Elayne.
A bell rang – a harsh, sudden jangle. Giulia’s skin tightened with fear. Sethis froze, the little ramrod still in his hand.
Boots and voices sounded from behind them. Giulia glanced at the entrance. “Close the doors!”
Men ran into the far end of the corridor. Giulia caught a glimpse of three people, the first still wearing a handkerchief as a bib, and she ran to the kitchen doors.
Sethis grabbed one door, Giulia the other. “There they are!” the first guard yelled. “Get ’em!”
Sethis knocked away the doorstops and they hauled the doors closed. A gun banged. Then the doors slammed against each other, and Giulia slid the bolts. Someone barged against the other side, then pounded uselessly on the wood with his fists. Giulia stepped away, watching the doors shake as they were struck, knowing that the bolts would hold for now.
“They’re just too damn slow,” she said, unable to avoid smiling. She turned. “Eh, Sethis?”
He collapsed against the wall.
“Shit!” She ran to him. The dryad slid onto the floor, his hand pressed to his side. He lifted his hand away, and his palm was red and slick with fresh blood.
“Oh, fuck,” Giulia said.
Sethis raised his head. His eyes were gentle. “Sorry.”
Something heavy shook the doors. The impact was sharp and close.
“Come on,” Giulia said. “They’ll break in.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can. Come on. Get up.”
“Bullet wound,” the dryad said. He looked down almost thoughtfully, as if it were someone else’s body he was studying. “You’d best go on.”
The doors crashed and shook agai
n. The guards were swinging something between them as a battering ram. They said nothing, but she could hear them grunting as it swung.
“Up,” Giulia said. “I’m not letting them have you. Hand!”
He smiled weakly and raised his hand. She grabbed and hauled in one motion, and Sethis cried out as he lurched upright. He stood there, holding his side, a little taller than her but terribly fragile.
His weakness made her angry. This is all I fucking need.
Giulia picked up his sword and put it in his hand. It was an elegant, wicked-looking thing, slightly curved like a cavalryman’s blade. He gripped it tightly.
“Can you walk?” she asked.
Sethis nodded. He looked as if he was about to puke.
They headed deeper into the kitchen, and Giulia closed and bolted a second set of doors behind them. Light glinted on knives. The tables were long and empty as if waiting to be filled. The air smelled of spice and old vegetables.
Sethis dragged a stool out, the legs scraping on the tiles. He dropped onto it, grimacing. Giulia thought, I should have done this on my own. I let him come along because I wanted someone to watch my back. I should have left him at the docks.
On the far side of the kitchen was a pair of wide doors. Giulia crossed the room and checked them: they wouldn’t move. She dropped down and put her eye to the keyhole. The key was still in the other side of the lock. “They must lead upstairs,” she said, standing back. “The bastards have locked them.”
“They know we’re here,” Sethis said between his teeth. “Trapped us.”
She looked at him. “How bad is it?”
“Not sure,” he said. “Hurts—” He hissed and clutched himself. Giulia hurried over, not sure what to do. Was he even made like a man, inside? “Don’t worry,” he said. Water ran from the edges of his huge eyes. “It’s all right now.”
He did not sound all right. A sudden, deep admiration came over Giulia, a sense of real respect. Sethis had not just helped her, but taken the fight to the citadel of his enemies. He might not be built for combat, but there was no denying that he was fierce and brave as hell.
