Snakewood

by Adrian Selby

  He had been a big man before the betony took hold, after Tharos. His and Milu’s drilling of the cavalries of the Ahmstad were instrumental in cementing our reputation. But it is the past. We earned and spent the purses and with his he has destroyed himself, a shuffling skeleton.

  Soon enough he was sitting upright. He seemed to be re-familiarising himself with the room and my presence in it. For a moment I suspected he was playing up a little more than he was letting on, but dismissed it. In hindsight I shouldn’t have.

  “Stixie said he saw you, Bense; he came here on his way to the Hillfast tourney. You look dreadful. Where did you get that betony mix you’re on?”

  “Kailen? What are you doing here? I saw Stixie. He comes through Jua, stops in, shares a few pipes. Getting fat and all.”

  “The betony, Bense, where did you get it? You’re on a fierce mix, Fesden is thinking of letting you go.”

  “It’s fine, it’s fine. He knows I’m good. I, well, it’s just Stixie give me a few coins, he wasn’t short, and give me some raw betony, a three point block.”

  “He didn’t look that rich to me to be giving out three points of raw b.”

  “Ask him.”

  He was full of shit. He seemed gone within himself for a time. The cavalryman who had more dirty stories than a docks brothel drudha and who could spin the dice like they were loaded was gone altogether.

  “It’s good to see you, Kailen, you’re looking well, must be making a proper purse still eh? Not like the rest of us just making ends meet and we…” He trailed off, had become fascinated with the window. He kneeled up on his bunk and looked out.

  “There’s a girl, seventeen summers I reckon, bitties out here and comes into the estate from the farm that’s, um, down there, the road, been down there, well, I like to watch out for her, they bring milk up, cheese as well. She always gives me a nice big smile, asks where I got my colour and I tell her it was with you. She never heard of you. Can you imagine that? Kailen’s Twenty? No idea. I tell her how good a horseman I am, how I could pull her up on the saddle behind me mid-gallop and then ask her where I could take her, and she blushes and I know I will have to go there and meet her da, talk about a marriage.”

  He went quiet. A point of raw betony goes no lower than three silver at an emporium or from an Academy; I can get it for two going to the farm. Something wasn’t right.

  “Have you got more of this mix?”

  He didn’t turn around. “Buy your own. I’m joking, no, no more. Back to the tea, back to the bullshit.”

  “It’s not bullshit, Bense; betony any purer than an eighth to the standard is going to kill you within months.”

  He shrugged. “Is that why you come to see me? You see Stixie and hear I’m a bit soaked and you get a heart and start caring for one of your old crew? Hey, do you need me back? I can come with you, I just need to get back on the Forms. Fesden pays nothing, not like when, how long is it?”

  “You’re fucked, Bense, you had barely the strength to shake my hand. I’m not taking a purse any more. I came because I think someone wants us all dead. I thought you should get warning.”

  “Can I get some soup?” I couldn’t tell if he had heard me. He got to his feet. There was a small patch of piss soaked into his bedshirt. The blankets he was lying on were stained similarly.

  “Have you seen any others of the Twenty?” I asked.

  He sat back down, glanced at me again in the way that made me think he had only just recognised who I was.

  “Have you seen any of us, besides Stixie?” I repeated.

  “Not really. If you’re going can you leave me something, not that shit you just give me, something to smooth me out. Tell Fesden I just need a day, put in a good word, eh? You owe me that.”

  I stood to leave.

  “I’m going to find some soup soon, then I’ll, I think I’ll try some Forms. They come back quick enough.” To him I was no longer there.

  I heard him grunting and counting, warming up, as I walked down the stone steps, past the heavy-breasted girl from the farm with her arms around a stablehand, and over to Fesden’s villa.

  A crooked, greasy-haired grandfather led me at his own pace through to a courtyard of whitewashed stone and euca saplings. On an incongruously ornate marble bench Lord Fesden watched a child, his boy, struggle with a sheaf of papers. He was teaching him his letters.

  The crooked man found a lower notch in his back and waited, bowing, until Fesden’s son finished and smiled at his father, awaiting some recognition.

  Fesden hadn’t been listening, picking his substantial nose and staring at his silk slippers. The silence after the recital was what brought him to.

  “Pri amota, pri. Excellent. Come the Elevens you will honour us all.”

  The boy left as a servant dismissed.

  “You should bow when introducing guests, Haster, even mercenaries.” He winked at me, while Haster, who rose a few inches more upright, turned and left without introducing me. I was long over the attempted indignities by which those who paid our purses aimed to disassociate us from them.

  “My lord. As a mercenary I have no awareness or skill enough of words to speak cleverly in praise of you as a greeting. You will know I was once Bense’s captain. I came because I happened upon an old friend of mine and Bense’s, Stixie, the archer that I think entertains you occasionally, a blue feather in his cap and a white bow. He told me Bense was unwell, in some distress.”

  “Stixie, yes, remarkable bow, the arrows he shoots are only barely outdone by a javelin for size and weight. But Bense has been a problem, worse than most with the colour that we get here after the armies have spat them out. He had been a few days off duty complaining of some ailment that our drudha knew full well was betony. He is apparently mending well.”

  “That’s good to hear. I see, however, that such betony, according to your drudha, was expensively bought, unless you reward your servants with silver pieces. I fear that he may have been subdued this way as a means of someone getting better access to you, that he has been bought, not to put it kindly, and would betray you for whoever it is has given him this plant. Do you have those who hate you, my lord?”

  “My gains are another’s loss, are they not? At least that would be the word in the fields and taverns where the peasants play.”

  I nodded, lowering my head to help him settle into the notion that he was in control of this conversation.

  “I believe there is a way we can help Bense to recover himself and become once more the fearsome guard that fought at Tharos, as well as protect you. I can take him to the jailhouse in Cusston, I’m owed favours by the militia’s captain. He can sweat out the betony there and recover himself, at which point your mercy will bind him to you while at his lowest ebb. He will reveal everything, if there is a plot of which he is a part.”

  “You speak well and wisely for a mercenary. You desire the purse to remove him to Cusston?”

  “I will not take a purse for helping him. I would take a horse for him, however, and supplies, and will send the horse back with the Post.”

  “It’s done. I would gladly take you on as a guard in his place until that time. What is your fee?”

  “I no longer have need of purses. Thank you for your kind offer.”

  He stood up to face me. “How long will it take?”

  “Six weeks perhaps, it’s hard to say, but he’ll be a different man, the betony’s hold broken, and ready to serve once more. It would be wise to ensure that one of the guards at Cusston is willing to share Bense’s progress with you. I will ensure the guards pay attention to anything he says while sleeping, no matter how unusual. I will try to make it this way again soon and would be most interested in seeing him well again.”

  I excused myself and over the journey to Cusston met a surprising resistance from Bense to leaving, under the pretence it was an errand for Fesden. His howling when they locked him up earned him a beating before I had left the jailhouse and I doubt his mood would have im
proved as the weeks became months. I hoped I had saved his life until I could return.

  Now I’m at the Crag, Scapo Ostler stood before me, as capable as all of them of kissing his son with love as pure as rain and then slicing a man to red pieces in front of his own.

  Scapo Ostler has offered his life and that of his crew for our bond of debt and I will take it, without telling him of the awful power that has found me, that may be a match for me. He has offered the lives also of those in the Indra Quarter who would not leave their homes.

  The Indra Quarter had been a useful place from which to conduct my search for those of the Twenty who may yet be alive, away from scrutiny, with people who would recognise any stranger. Up until a few nights ago I had little fear for my own life, even when, a few weeks ago, a poster was brought to me, put up by the Post, from a guildmaster looking for information about the Twenty. I replied to it, and have prepared the slum for a meet with this guildmaster who I fully expect to be hostile, sure that he was the source of the killing of the Twenty. But now another killer has appeared, and I already have no doubt in my mind as to their being responsible for the assassinations. Yet this killer doesn’t seem to share allegiance with the guildmaster. There is an interesting puzzle here that his actions have caused and yet denied me the chance to examine. I have indicated to the guildmaster that I can be found in the Indra Quarter, yet the killer does not appear to know this. The killings he’s performing seem indiscriminate but he is searching for information. They may well have concluded his actions are of my conception. It may explain the haste with which the militia and the other scapos have turned their backs on the Indra Quarter Crew.

  Horns sounded to the west. The Post and Crag militia, I predict near a hundred, will close on us from the Linney Lanes. These murders will have been too tempting an opportunity for the Crag’s Master not to clean out a scapo and divvy up his quarter for the servitude of, and in accordance with the favour he bestows on, the other scapos. The act will be seen favourably by those who bother voting for him.

  Meanwhile I had correctly anticipated that a force would attempt to arrive by stealth from the dockside, eastward in the opposite direction. The calls from the roofs that way counted fifteen or so, with Agents. I turned to Ostler, pasting his knife with a wax block impregnated with poison that I’d given him to pass around his boys in The Riddle.

  “It begins. Tell your men to take their brews. The militia will force their way into the Linney, expecting most resistance on Blenner. It’s too obvious. You will wait until the first of their men are smashing through the tavern and houses at the end before setting them on fire. Then they will come round to Blenner where you’ve got your bowmen. Your cap and his men will put down smokebags on Back Lane. They will shoot any coming through, nice and close. You’ve spiked the end of that lane anyway, a killing zone. Get yourself to Blenner. You’ll be King Scapo by morning.” I smiled reassuringly until he left.

  I cannot fathom why the Twenty are hunted and killed now, after so many years; why so many in this slum are about to die in my name. Why would the enemies we’d have had back then have waited so long to exact a revenge?

  I knew Scapo Ostler would help, would try to keep me safe while I guided my men to seek those of my brothers I had not yet found, while I determined who it is seeks to kill us all. I had hoped Achi would have brought Shale and Gant. Perhaps they will not come.

  I told Ostler the other scapos would desert him and he would not believe me. How could he not see it? He introduced me to the other scapos the night I arrived; Darin, Reed and Andarin, organising a dinner for us. He believed it would increase his prestige with them, a mercenary of my renown looking to go dark with his help. Fifteen winters on, however, my name is on the lips only of soldiers now mostly retired or dead. As the song goes, “No song shall long their deeds proclaim”. The other scapos were polite but ignorant of me.

  Darin drank the most of the wine I had brought, but left our gathering without having thanked me for it, let alone recognised it as a Juan vintage. I gave them a keg each as an offering, but he left his, a snub in these parts all the more ridiculous for its value. Ostler baited Darin over his relationship with the Crag’s Reeve of the Post and Andarin said nothing despite having contracts with the Post himself. Ostler is thus ignorant and arrogant, Darin seething with antipathy, while Andarin despises Ostler and Darin. Reed remained above it throughout, the strongest of them all, but unwilling to help Ostler out of the mess I was creating for him. Three goblets of wine into the evening and I knew I would need to engage Ostler’s captains if I was to get adequate notice of, or protection from, whoever might be killing the Twenty. Ostler was not running his crew, his captains were. The other scapos would carve up his quarter more readily than the hog on the table before us.

  Ostler’s sister waits on my wife, Araliah, and tells me she walks the orange groves and vines while I’m away, singing with the children and taking water to those that work our estate. My wife has the habit those born from the very wealthiest families all have, a grace gently forged from the lack of want, a guileless expectation of decency and a curiosity and compassion for those people’s lives the hotter and more intimately joyous and cruel for the want that shapes their suffering and ambition. I miss her.

  Ostler’s family, and Ostler himself, were slaves of the family that founded my estate. When that family fell into ruin I took on its slaves and made them tenants. Ostler was a bully and a thief as a child, his mother a widow of a father that died at sea. He left the farmer’s life to return to the Crag, where he had cousins. He was fifteen summers old and had no idea what the slums would be like. Perhaps the stories of whores and cheap plant he could get wasted on appealed more than the summers of Harudan. It’s easy to overestimate a fool. Nevertheless he grew strong in the slums, a born fighter it would seem. At some point he discovered the notion of honour, and remembered how I gave his family back their own.

  He has a family here now, his crew. Four days previously he lost two of them, one of them a captain. So did Darin’s crew. The following night all the scapos lost men, and came to see us at The Riddle.

  Each had five or six with him, mostly greenskins, only one with anything like the reds and blues that spoke of fightbrews. They wore their belts and leathers as though they were going to war, though the leather on all of them was too clean to have been used much. The scapos, for a gathering like this, came bare-chested, displaying their inks. Only Reed’s inks spoke of children and his kills, none of his wealth. Here was the strongest scapo.

  “What trouble are you in, Kailen?” asked Andarin.

  “What trouble are you having?”

  “One of my good boys, Elsin, was killed in front of his girl. She’s told that more gonna die if Kailen isn’t given up,” said Reed.

  “Debt of honour,” said Ostler, “he gets me last breath if it protects him.”

  “Get him outside the Crag and protect him there, he’s getting good people killed.”

  “Can’t you protect your people?” I asked.

  Andarin jumped up, jabbing his finger at me. “If you’re supposed to be this great warrior, perhaps you get out there and show this Agent or whoever he is just that.”

  They all jumped up with him, except Ostler, hands on hilts, fingers in pouches on their belts.

  “It isn’t an Agent.” I wanted to say it was worse. “I’ve put measures in place, with Ostler, which should help us show the militia, and this killer, what they’re dealing with. I don’t take unnecessary risks.”

  “And why should you?” said Reed. “When the likes of us take them for you. Darin’s lost a captain, we all lost someone, including some Reds, so now Reeve Kulam’s got a poker up the ass of the Master that runs the Crag and the militia are breaking bones.”

  Reed sat back down, the others followed.

  Andarin spoke. “I had merchants from the Beney district and my people in the Ruvvies come see me today, along with militia and some Agents. They was asking about my agreemen
ts with the militia that was meant to favour them, and turns out the officer I had tucked up has himself a promotion to the Selvens, and they’ve got someone in looking to make a name, nobody to squeeze behind him. He’s ignoring our agreements now and my people are losing their faith in me.” By “nobody to squeeze” he meant no family he could threaten. Love compromises people.

  “Did you say Agents are here in the Crag?” said Reed. He looked at Ostler and me an unspoken challenge. There wouldn’t be a man among them could give himself good odds against an Agent.

  “They want you to force me to give him up,” said Ostler. “And I reckon any of you that was hiding someone would want me to protect your secret? Or sell you out? I lost men too.”

  The silence was telling. Ostler didn’t have the respect necessary to win their favour, an opinion almost immediately bolstered by his misreading it.

  “Exactly,” he said. “I wouldn’t sell you out. The quarters are running well, we got arrangements, peace for a few summers with each other’s crews. Let’s keep it.”

  “I’m done,” said Darin, getting back up, nodding to his men.

  “I have your word?” asked Ostler.

  “Of course.” He looked him in the eye as he said it, but blinked twice, rapidly, a clear enough tell. Darin was going to sell Ostler out, the kidnap of his woman and children by the Master Cleark the following day would merely expedite it. They would offer no resistance to the militia, allowing them to gather outside the Linneys, edge of his own quarter, with no dispute. This was the outcome I prepared for.

  The scapos said their farewells and left The Riddle. Locals now started wandering in after being given the nod.

  “That went well,” said Ostler. One of his captains glanced to the floor, the other two staring into their cups.