by Steven Poore
Marko staggered back with a shout of pain. Before he could recover Cassia kicked out at his knee and he toppled sideways into the nearest rickety table. She dashed back to the door and heaved it open, the hinges squealing in protest. Light struggled down the stairwell, motes of dust swirling in the air around her.
“Try telling that one to an audience!” she shouted back at them.
As she scrambled up the treacherous steps, Marko’s fury erupting behind her lent fresh impetus to her flight. She flung herself into the alley beyond the narrow lane that sheltered the tavern and soon lost herself in the crowded market.
At last, when her heart stopped pounding and her breathing slowed to a normal level, she paused inside an off-kilter doorway and gathered her thoughts.
That was stupid. He won’t forget me. And he’ll tell other people about me. They won’t let me into their damned guild now. If there really was a guild. She still wasn’t certain about that. It was equally possible Marko and his tame barkeep had been trying to con her.
In any case, the experience had put her off trying any other taverns. She circled back around to the square in front of Pyraete’s temple, threading her way between the clusters of labourers and flapping her robes ostentatiously to make sure people saw her and paid attention to the symbols that lined the hems and sleeves. Back in the North her father would have drawn an audience almost instantly, but to her dismay nobody seemed bothered by the storyteller passing through their midst. After two passes through the crowd, feeling more ridiculous and frustrated by the minute, she gave in and slumped onto the temple’s steps.
I’ll never be a storyteller.
Hellea carried on regardless all around her and, for a while, she chose to ignore it in turn. She could not understand how the city could relegate the telling of its history into the care of horrible men in damp, seedy cellars. How could they express the noble traits of honesty and bravery in such surroundings? Hellea, she decided, had lost its way. And perhaps she was not the one to lead it back.
She hoped Baum was having better luck in his search to uncover the warlock’s traces. How did one search for a warlock anyway? Where would you begin? Excuse me, have you seen a warlock in this city? You may have recognised him by the magic spitting from his fingertips and the cold shadow that engulfs everybody in the immediate vicinity. No? What about a trail of reanimated corpses or murderous statues?
It could be told as a farce, she thought, shuffling through stock scenes that her father used to pad out some of his shorter stories; a thin narrative that might be twisted to contain some of the hoarier, well-used jokes Norrow relied on with certain audiences. She was sure she could fashion such a tale and make it a success in Hellea’s taverns. The trick, of course – and a daunting barrier to be sure – was to gain access to the closed ranks of the city’s storytellers.
With the stone of the temple steps numbing her rear, she decided to move on again. Maybe it was time to try another tavern. Marko must have been lying about the guild.
This time she picked her target more carefully: a larger tavern, not far from the Emperor’s Square. A few minutes spent watching the entrance satisfied her that the customers actually had money to spend and were not just crawling in from the gutters. The place even had a small yard, though the high walls surrounding it were topped with vicious metal spikes to discourage climbers. If there was a yard, there had to be a stable. And that in turn suggested this tavern hoped to attract travellers as well as the more moneyed locals. Even if they did not need a storyteller here, at least they should be more polite than the denizens of that horrible dive a few streets away.
This time she held her head high and flourished the cuffs of her robes so the tavern’s customers could not mistake who she was. It made little difference; the large main room was busy and filled with chatter, and her pace was checked by the men clustered in groups all across the floor. She was forced to skip aside at least twice to avoid being barrelled over by other customers.
She paused, in the lee of one of the thick posts that supported the beams of the floor above, to catch her breath and orient herself. The upper part of the post was decorated with small bronze plates representing the Hellean gods and myths, hung to bring good fortune to the tavern and all who came under its roof. She reached up to touch the lowest plate with one finger and hoped that luck would rub off on her.
It took a few minutes to gain the attention of the harried barkeep, and even then he barely looked up from his casks and tankards. “Make it quick, boy. Time is money.”
“Sir, if I might introduce myself—”
He shook his head, pulling loose strands from his greying queue. “Cut the flowery horseshit.”
She did. “I’m the best storyteller in Hellea. Or I will be, if you let me tell my tales here.”
Now the man glanced up. Once, and then again, more appraisingly. “You’re not guilded. If I take you on and the guild men find out, I might as well throw every coin I own from the windows. Where are you from?”
Cassia felt her shoulders drop. “Keskor, in the North.”
The barkeep grunted. “Thought so. I can hear the accent. And you ain’t the first to run up against the guilds either, boy.” He stared for a moment longer, and the harsh lines around his eyes softened. Cassia wondered if she truly looked as miserable as she felt. “Go and sit down. That corner – out of the way.” He pointed. “But don’t try telling any stories, or I’ll throw you out so hard you’ll bounce off the palace temple itself.”
She hesitated, then nodded. She wished she could loosen the band around her chest. Perhaps if the corner he indicated was secluded enough she could make some delicate adjustments . . .
A rickety bench was wedged between two posts at the far end of the room, furthest away from the fireplace. From the letters scratched into the old seat, it looked as though this was where visiting merchants or other rich travellers might deposit their servants. At the moment it held two small errand boys, their bare feet swinging above the ground as they placed wagers with each other, using nutshells for coins. The boys clammed up, staring at her with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion as she took a seat at the other end of the bench. Cassia glared back at them until they scooped up their nutshells and disappeared into the tavern’s crowds.
She sighed, leaning against the post. How could the world be so cruel? All she wanted to do was be a better storyteller than her father, but it seemed at every turn there was a new obstacle in her path. In her experience guilds only meant trouble – though mostly for her father – but the very idea of a guild of storytellers sounded wrong to her. Would the guild decide which stories could be told and which were seditious? Would they lay claim to her earnings? And would they be enlightened enough to believe a girl could be just as good a storyteller as any man? Cassia knew she still had much to learn, but she thought she already knew the answer to that last question. And there was no way she could fool a whole guild into believing she was a boy. Not for very long.
The barkeep loomed over her, a dripping tankard held out in one hand. Cassia looked up, blinking. “Sir, I have no money,” she started.
The barkeep thrust the tankard at her. “At least you’re honest. I can’t take what you haven’t got. Call this hospitality.”
She took the tankard with both hands, and ale slopped over the rim to splash down her wrists. “Thank you, sir.”
The barkeep paused. “If I’m right, you’re the boy who caused an almighty clamour over at the Gallows Cellar earlier. Well?”
Cassia wasn’t sure if she should own up to that, in case this man turned out to be Marko’s friend, but the barkeep stared down intently at her and seemed reluctant to leave without an answer. “A man said he would sponsor me into the guild,” she explained, “but I didn’t believe him. And then he didn’t want to let me go.”
The barkeep’s face twisted into a scowl. “I hope you never paid him. You’ll not see that coin again.”
She shook her head. “But why is there
a guild anyway?”
“Too many storytellers. Or so the Emperor said.” The barkeep grunted and spat on the floor to show his disdain for that law. “Every one of them had to apply for a licence. It took days for the heads of the new guild to hear the auditions. At the same time the Emperor decreed no tavern could employ more than one storyteller.”
The barkeep glanced round and then crouched lower, his voice dropping to a whisper. “This bit’s only hearsay, but apparently there was a man who told stories that openly criticised the Emperor and his father. Haroam, I think his name was. I heard people used to come away fired up and angry, and a few times there were fights and stonings. Fires of retribution lit on the streets. The legions used to bloody their pikearms after those stories were told. The guild was instituted not long after that.”
Cassia nodded her understanding. “The guild stops those stories from being told again?”
“Those, and others besides.” The barkeep’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m the Emperor’s man through and through. It may not be just, but it’s the way it is. If you go plying your trade, unlicensed or on the streets out there, you’ll soon be parted from your tongue.”
“How do I find the guild?”
“You walk around dressed like that a while longer, they’ll find you. And they won’t let go of you until you’ve paid your dues.”
Cassia sipped the warm ale. “Thank you, sir,” she said quietly. “I don’t know how I can repay you for all of this.”
“By not getting caught,” the barkeep said. He indicated with a jerk of his head in the direction of the main square. “They make a public show of pulling out tongues. It’s bad for business, boy.”
As the barkeep hurried back to his work, she drew up her feet and huddled into the corner between the bench and the post, making the ale last as long as she could. She did not want to hurry back onto the streets, not if word had got around and Marko was still looking for her.
She could not think what to do next. Her dreams of success had been founded upon Hellea. The warlock Malessar was here, Baum had come to throw him down, and Cassia was here to record the tale. But if she was not a member of the city’s guild, nobody would hear the story. At least, not here. Perhaps Baum would know how she should proceed. He had to know.
It’s that or I go back home. And that was unthinkable.
There were more charms and tokens fastened to the posts at this end of the tavern, she noticed when she looked up again. The ones nearest the top, out of reach, were sculpted bronze, but most were crudely fashioned from iron or even stone. She squinted to make out the scenes on some of the older charms, worn down by the passage of time and the touch of countless customers hoping that good fortune would rub off on them.
One of the charms, close to her eye level, looked familiar to her. An oval stone plate, fastened by a fraying leather cord nailed to the post, appeared to be one of the oldest charms in the tavern. The figure of a man stood in relief, his arms outstretched and braced against the mountainsides that formed the sides of the plate. If the figure had ever been carved in detail, his features were long gone, and the script that ran around the plate’s rim was barely legible. Cassia traced the letters with one finger, wary of the charm’s fragility.
. . . steel to their enemies . . .
“All true Northerners should bare steel to their enemies,” she muttered under her breath. “The Call To The North.”
Then it was Pyraete, and he was raising the mountains, not holding them up or forcing them apart. How strange to find this here, and how old was this piece? How did it get here, of all places?
The leather cord chose that moment to give way and Cassia caught the plate only because she had kept her hand close underneath it. She looked around quickly, but her nerves were unfounded. It appeared that nobody had seen it fall. She closed her hands tight around the plate, feeling the rough edges cut into her fingers, and her thoughts whirred. In the tales this was a sign from the gods, but what were they trying to tell her? Can it mean I have Pyraete’s favour? Should I take this with me for Baum to see?
For a long moment she sat frozen on the bench, caught in a dilemma. The barkeep would not appreciate it if she repaid his kindness by stealing his ornaments, but the more she thought about it the more she believed this had to be a message from Pyraete.
All true Northerners should bare steel to their enemies . . . and stand true to the course they have chosen, for when the heart is divided by fear then the battle is already lost. Cassia snaked the stone into her robes as unobtrusively as she could. Stand true to the course, she told herself.
She gulped down the remaining ale and slipped through the crowd while the barkeep attended a party of ship’s officers who had just entered the tavern. The stone plate weighed heavy inside her robe, and she feared it might fall and crack on the floor as much as she feared the sudden weight of the barkeep’s fist, but she made it through the doors unscathed. She realised she had been holding her breath, and she drew the city’s air gratefully into her lungs.
She decided against spending the remainder of the afternoon scouting through the city. There seemed little point since she would not be able to try out her storytelling skills, and Marko was probably still looking for her, so instead she retraced her steps wearily back towards the Old Soak.
q
Baum and Meredith had already returned. Their travelling cloaks hung behind the door, and Baum sat at one of the tables with his eyes closed. Cassia heard the familiar sound of steel being whetted to a sharp edge and guessed Meredith was in the back yard. The potboy was in his usual place by the fire, sullenly tending the evening’s meal.
“Your day went well?” Baum asked, without opening his eyes. Cassia started at the sound of his voice. She had intended to go up to her room and examine the stone plate, but now she made her way over to the soldier’s table instead.
“Not especially well, sir,” she said, drawing up a stool. “The Helleans don’t like storytellers much. Perhaps that’s why my father never bothered to travel this far south.”
Baum’s shoulders rolled in a dismissive shrug. “Perhaps. I was told the last Emperor was not keen on the effects of what he called slanderous gossip and fairy-folk fancies. It would seem his successor shares those opinions. I hear there is a guild now?”
Ultess clumped past behind her, on his way to the stairs. “There’s a bloody guild for everything,” Cassia heard him mutter.
Baum leaned forward, lowering his voice. “And the man we seek? Have you any news?”
She had thought Baum and Meredith were working on that themselves, and she shook her head. The slight narrowing of Baum’s eyes reminded her that although he had saved her from a life of slavery at the hands of Hetch and Tarves Almoul, he still owned her. She had to pay her way and prove her worth. And I’ve been pulled off-course by Hellea itself, she thought. The city has blinded me.
“I didn’t know what to ask,” she said. “Or how. Surely people would think me mad if I asked after a nine-hundred year old man?”
Baum’s gaze did not move from her for a long moment, and then he shrugged again. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Think about it for yourself. How much do you know of our man?”
Cassia was familiar enough with Baum’s manner now to know that he would only ask that question if he thought she already knew the answer. She tried to dredge up from the depths of her memory any instances where Malessar had been described as a major character in any of the stories she had learned. The warlock passed only lightly through history and folklore, and where he did enter into a scene – like the Fall of Stromondor, for instance – his presence was peripheral, usually overshadowed by the nominal hero or heroine of the tale. So while there were physical descriptions of the noble Jathar Leon Learth and cunning Verros the Younger, Malessar was an intangible, looming threat. Every storyteller she had ever heard used that lack of description to their advantage, giving Malessar features and qualities that matched the needs of the story they had
chosen to tell. In one he might be tall, skeletal and ravaged by the effects of his own cursed sorcery; in another he might appear as a cutting reflection of the local nobility, dignified and aloof, but reeking of corruption. One ribald tavern song painted him as a capering, twisted fool, dancing to a tune nobody else could hear. If any of these tales gave him one common feature, aside from the fact that he was a terrifying and evil warlock, she had yet to uncover it.
But Baum clearly believed otherwise. And she could not see where he was trying to lead her. “In all the tales I know, he is always a different man,” she said. “That is all I think I know – but how can I begin to look for a man who always changes?”
Baum appeared disappointed by this, but to Cassia’s frustration he did not hurry to correct her. Instead he turned his stare upon the beams above them as though there might be some absolute truth hidden in the pattern of the boards. “Think on this a while longer,” he told her. “Perhaps what you should look for is not so close to the surface of your tales?”
That confused her even further and she excused herself and made her way out to the yard where Meredith sat on a stool, sharpening the blade of his greatsword. His shirt lay discarded on the ground next to him and she could make out the traces in the dirt where he had stepped and twisted through the patterns of his daily practice.
His head was lowered as he concentrated on the blade, and he did not appear to have noticed her. Cassia paused to watch him. The movement of the sculpted contours of his arms was fascinating, almost hypnotic, and of late it had even imprinted itself into her dreams. Even the thought caused the heat to rise in her cheeks.
I should not be thinking these things. He is a prince. The Heir to the North. But the images – and the faintly nauseous sensation that accompanied them – refused to be banished easily. She had a vague memory of a dream in which those arms had been wrapped around her . . .
