~TWO~
As agreed, Yendor was the first to enter The Fretful Porpentine, a full two days ahead of his colleagues. His was a role best-suited to his special talents: he was to pose as a drunk, making himself at home in the inn’s main room and, if need be, on its floors, the ever-annoying barfly that could not, would not be shooed away through persistence or force. Paid handsomely to drink and pass out? Yendor crept ever closer towards faith.
The first day, of course, he drew many sideways glances – some furtive, others aggressive – but even those petered out by the middle of his second day. He was, indeed, a very convincing inebriate, and the authentic and powerful stench he gave off compelled the inn’s other patrons to give him a wide birth, in serendipitous accordance with his private wishes. This made it a little more difficult to secure future drinks, as none of the barmaids would come anywhere near him, but even a man like Yendor had ways of getting what he wanted when he wanted it badly enough. And he always wanted drink badly enough. Yet, what was the point in brow-beating himself? He was as Mahnus had made him. Or maybe he was as the End-of-All-Things had made him, and he’d never recovered. It was all one, to him.
Operatives or functionaries of three of Lunessfor’s Great Eight regularly appeared in The Fretful Porpentine, so it seemed to Yendor as excellent a starting point as advertised. He had only to keep his ears open (even if he could not reliably do the same with his eyes), and vital, valuable information would surely be his.
The problem was that he kept nodding off. Drink did that. Sometimes, he’d find himself immersed in the middle of someone else’s conversation, only to awaken and see a whole new group of customers spread about the room. A thought came to him, something he feared even to entertain, lest it become reality, but perhaps…perhaps he should drink a bit less. Heresy! Heresy, surely. Still…he needed to piece together the frayed threads of conversation and gossip he’d heard – or thought he’d heard – over the past two days. It simply wouldn’t do to have nothing to share with Long when he arrived. Sometimes, it was all he could do to remember the names of the Great Eight: Radcliffe, Hawsey, Thornton, Blackbyrne, Amberly, D’Escurzy, Gault and Hawsey. No, that weren’t right: he’d named Hawsey twice and forgotten one. Amberly, Gault…? He fell asleep.
“Fyne, you old bastard!” someone yelled jovially across the inn. “’S been a while since you’ve been by!”
Yendor fought through the haze besieging his brain. Fyne! That was it. That was the eighth family. He peered over at this Fyne with eyes set at two in the morning. The man seemed a fop, decked out in the latest fashion and frippery. A festive fop, festooned with frippery, Yendor thought, and giggled to himself. I’m a poet! He passed out again.
Later, someone banged loudly into a chair not two feet from Yendor’s head. It took all the man’s strength and willpower to raise his eyes to identify his latest assailant, who turned out to be none other than Long Pete.
“Can somebody move this corpse away from my table?” Long growled in his damaged voice. “’S enough to make a man retch!”
Corpse, Yendor thought. I smell like a corpse? I’m a better actor than Rem, that’s certain! He figured Long was just piling on the cover, making out like he and Yendor had never met. Good move. Next to Long, Yendor noticed, sat Spirk, absently fiddling with a piece of knotted rope. Yendor battled his way into a sitting position.
“Buy a man a drink?” he asked Long.
The old captain scrunched up his face as if struggling to avoid inhaling. “I’ll stand ya to a bath, i’ faith. You take a bath, we c’n talk about a drink.”
Long was overplaying his part, clearly. A bath? It weren’t even Midsummer’s, yet. Still, his friend didn’t appear ready to back down, so Yendor agreed. “A bath it is, then.” He stood and accepted the handful of shims Long extended his way.
“Not in my inn,” the innkeeper warned from a distance. “You c’n use the tub outback, the one we use for our horses and such.”
Surprisingly, Yendor found this a better, more appealing notion than bathing indoors in hot, clean water. “If it’s good enough for the ponies, it’s good enough for Maltos Stack,” he proclaimed, pulling an assumed name out of thin air. Or out of his ass, as Long would later assert.
Twenty minutes later and sixty percent cleaner – as much as a man could gauge these things – Maltos Stack returned to the alleged stranger who’d insisted he bathe. “And now, that drink you promised.”
“Seems like you’ve had more’n enough already,” Long said.
“More than enough!” Spirk added, not wanting to be left out. Fact was, Spirk was here because none of the others wanted to take on the added burden. Kittins and Rem had been given separate missions, and neither felt comfortable with Spirk in tow.
“Oh, no,” Yendor warned, “you’re not going to back out on Maltos Stack! A deal’s a deal!”
Long muttered something under his breath – or perhaps he said it aloud, it was hard to tell anymore – and motioned for Yendor to sit. “No need to get all hot-headed; I’ll buy yer damned drink. Innkeeper!” he called out. “A round o’ your best ale for this table. Ah, hells,” he added, “it’s only coin: a round for the house!”
Thus, Long, Yendor and Spirk established themselves as more or less welcome regulars at The Fretful Porpentine in a mere three days’ time. Such is the power of money and public drunkenness.
*****
He’d been excited to leave his sickbed, excited to leave his room, excited to leave the castle and excited to leave the city. With all of that behind him, his excitement naturally waned, allowing the pain he lived with constantly to return to the forefront of his thoughts. Granted, Aoife and Cindor had achieved miracles in lessening the intensity of his pain, but they hadn’t dispelled it completely. He doubted anyone in the world had such power, which left him irritable and despondent much of the time. Too much of the time.
And travelling with Her Majesty’s windbag didn’t help. The Fool jabbered incessantly, often in the most inane and incomprehensible manner. Vykers couldn’t believe there was anyone, anywhere, who found that kind of prattle amusing. Perhaps he’d overestimated the old bitch. Or perhaps she’d begun to go senile at last. Either way, Hoosh, or Bindy, or whatever he called himself was a secondary kind of pain the Reaper could barely tolerate. He spent hours upon hours fantasizing about different ways to kill the fellow. Whenever he found himself close to acting on those ideas, however, Arune would inevitably intrude and attempt to disarm or distract him.
I still can’t work out how Her Majesty was taken from her chambers without setting off the countless spell traps surrounding her.
Maybe they shrank her down to the size of a bedbug’s turd and she flew out the window on the breeze, Vykers replied sardonically.
They? Why do you say ‘they?’
No reason. You think it mighta been just one person?
We don’t even know if her abductor is human, Arune replied.
This gave Vykers an idea. “Say, healer…” (He had a hard time addressing Aoife by name). “What’s the chance yer fey folk had a hand in this?”
She pulled up, stared at him. “None whatsoever. What makes you think otherwise?”
Arune loved it when Vykers antagonized Aoife. She couldn’t say why; that was simply the way of things.
“Just tryin’ to figure if her captors were human or…something else.”
“Trust me,” the A’Shea said, “there’s nothing alive more treacherous than humans.”
“Belike it’s something dead took Her Majesty, then,” Hoosh interjected.
That shut everyone up for a good while. Something dead? The End-of-All-Things again, or something worse? What could possibly be worse?
“Master,” Three began, before an arrow whooshed out of the roadside trees and took the Fool right out of his saddle and into the dirt.
Arune! Vykers roared in his mind.
Sorry! She roared back. I was preoccupied with that last comment.
“
We are beset!” Three yelled, as if anyone was still unaware of that fact.
Out of the trees on either side of the Queen’s Highway rode more than twenty raiders, laden with weapons of every sort and expressions of open hostility.
“Finally!” Vykers exulted. “Some fuckin’ action!”
The raiders sneered at his approach, until some of them recognized his face. Arrogance was quickly replaced with desperate humility. They would never have moved against him had they known, they mumbled. Vykers didn’t give two shits for their excuses; they’d given him the chance to do what he enjoyed most in the world: killing. Yet, these men were not cowards. As Vykers charged into their midst, his sword singing from its scabbard, the raiders encircled him, hoping to land an easy blow from whatever direction he wasn’t facing. Arcane energies shot from the Reaper’s chest, dazing anyone within ten feet. On the far side of the throng, Vykers heard the familiar sound of his chimera friend tearing into one or more of his enemies. It was good to be back in a brawl again!
This was the first time the Reaper had used his sword since the battle with the End-of-All-Things, the first time since it had somehow absorbed or merged with the other man’s weapon. It had once appeared to be a rather mundane long sword. Now, it was an ugly and menacing thing almost five feet in length, studded up and down its hilt and the base of its blade with odd thorn-like spurs. Vykers swung it two-handed, but that was more out of habit than need; in combat, it seemed to weigh nothing and, indeed, leapt with a will of its own towards the nearest target. Vykers cut through the raiders with addictive ease, almost as if he were fighting paper dolls instead of men. Then, too, they faced the problem of Vykers’ preternatural battle sense, his ability to predict when and where their blows would come and put himself somewhere else altogether. In the end, it was a short-lived conflict, with the raiders dying to a man, whilst Vykers and his chimera friend sustained not a scratch.
Gradually, the world intruded upon the Reaper’s consciousness again, and his pain returned. Huh. If fighting was the only antidote, he’d have to do more of it. Gradually, too, Vykers became aware of Aoife’s voice, as she conversed softly with someone off to his left. Hoosh must not be dead, after all. Aoife had saved the Fool, the fool. Nervous horses lingered throughout the area. They were well-trained, and Vykers supposed they could use extra horses. The rest they could sell somewhere or…He searched the area for Three and found him standing a few feet away, cleaning himself.
“You…want…one of these horses?” He asked. “I mean for, uh…”
Three nodded, guiltily.
The Reaper returned the nod. “You’ll have to go off a bit,” he said. “I’m not sure the A’Shea’s ready for your eatin’ habits.” He then dismounted and searched the remains of his adversaries. From the odds and ends he found, he determined this group to have been a mix of former thralls and mercenaries. They’d received no welcome in the midlands and been forced to choose between long travel to uncertain destinations or staying put and eking out an existence as highwaymen. And now they were carrion, as they perhaps ought to have been three winters past. Wiping the blood off his face as best he could, Vykers turned and walked over to the A’Shea and her patient.
“He gonna live?” he asked Aoife, more than half hoping she’d say no.
“You can’t kill good Master Merriment!” Hoosh piped up.
“More’s the pity,” Vykers growled.
Aoife looked up from her position at Hoosh’s side. “Who were they?”
“The dregs of the End’s army. Men without a home or a cause.”
“Was it necessary to kill them all?” the A’Shea asked.
That got Vykers’ dander up. “The Fool wearing off on you, milady? Those men attacked us in full daylight on the Queen’s Highway. They couldn’t a’ been more brazen or desperate. Dogs like that need to be put down.”
Aoife could not hold Vykers’ glare and looked away, helping the Fool to his feet.
“I think I broke me arse!” the man cried. “Look,” he said, dropping his pantaloons and baring his backside, “there’s a big crack in it!”
At last, Vykers laughed, but only because Aoife flushed with embarrassment and averted her eyes as quickly as possible.
Oh, of course! Arune protested. You’d think she’d never seen a man’s ass before.
Now, now, Vykers chided. She is an A’Shea, after all. They’re s’posed to be more, uh, virtuous or some such.
More virtuous doesn’t mean better, Arune retorted.
Vykers was curious. “How come that arrow didn’t kill him?” He asked, tilting his jaw in Hoosh’s direction.
Aoife sighed. “I’m…uncertain. It hit him, but he seems to have…recovered.”
Will I never see anyone normal again? The Reaper lamented to himself.
Never one to pass up a dig at Vykers’ expense, Arune said, Would you even recognize him if you did?
*****
Kittins, House Gault
Kittins lifted a big, mailed fist and smashed it into the door: thunk, thunk, thunk! It was a sound not unlike that made by a battering ram. He waited. Counted to thirty-something, lost interest and pounded again. Thunk, thunk, thunk! This time, he could hear deadbolts being thrown aside with urgency. The left-hand door swung open a foot or two, and a sword appeared at Kittins’ throat. He chuckled and slapped it aside. Another appeared at his midriff.
“What’s your business?” a voice asked gruffly.
“Looking for steady work,” Kittins replied in grim monotone.
The door swung open further and two heavily armed guards stepped into the gap. Both were near Kittins in age, but smaller in stature. The bolder of the two spoke up, “That a fact? And who says we’re hiring?”
With startling speed, Kittins grabbed both men by the front of their collars and swung them into each other as violently as possible. In the brief moment both men were stunned, Kittins slammed them into the thick oaken doors and booted them out into the street. Without rushing, he pushed the door closed behind them and threw the deadbolts.
As expected, a new voice commented from the shadows. “Of course we’re always looking for men of talent, and you’re a definite improvement over those two cretins.”
Kittins waited, and the new man stepped into the sunlight. He was tall and sinewy, a bit older than Kittins, but still boasted a thick shock of black hair atop his head and equally bushy eyebrows. Cold blue eyes sparkled on either side of his hooked nose, underneath which was a very well-kept mustache. A powerful jaw completed the image of a man both sardonic and imperious, but above all dangerously competent.
“You’ve demonstrated your skill, to a degree. But what sort of references can you provide? What is your history?” the man inquired.
“I’ve been wandering since our man Vykers took down the End-of-All-Things.”
“Have you?” The man’s eyes blazed with curiosity. “And upon whose side did you fight?”
“Her Majesty’s o’ course,” Kittins replied almost contemptuously. He didn’t want to seem too eager, too ready to please.
“Of course,” the stranger said cynically. “And whom did you serve in that battle, if I may be so bold?”
“Captain Grundig, and the Darwood Auxiliary.”
The stranger tilted his head skeptically. “Indeed. Which conveniently makes you the only survivor…”
“Ain’t nothing convenient about it. You weren’t there; you wouldn’t know,” Kittins growled ominously. “And if you ain’t got work for me, just say so. I’ll be on my way to one o’ the other Eight.”
“That won’t be necessary,” the other man said hastily. In response to a timid knocking on the door, he added, “Just get rid those two buffoons and meet me inside the main hall hard by. You’ll have your work.”
“Yes, sir,” Kittins nodded. “Thank you, sir.” Shame to further abuse the two fools outside, but if he wanted to keep his cover, well…He yanked the deadbolts back again and shoved the door into the two hapless guards as
hard as he could, sending them tumbling across the cobblestones. Before they could even climb to their knees, Kittins kicked one in the face and the second in the gut. “Go away and don’t ever come back or I’ll carve you both up like suckling pigs.”
When they were able, the former guards slunk away.
*****
Rem, House Hunting
Rem had a hard time convincing his company members that it was suddenly acceptable to pursue patronage, particularly since their previous refusal to do so was the one thing that made them unique amongst the realm’s myriad acting troupes. The men (and boys) of Wratch & Company were concerned they’d be accused of selling out, of pandering to the rich and powerful. And more than a few were worried that serving any of Lunessfor’s Great Eight would mean new limits and restraints on what the company could and could not perform, that inevitably they’d lose creative control of their own work to the ignorant and fickle impositions of their new masters.
As Flies to Wanton Boys (Immortal Treachery Book 2) Page 5
