Beguiler

by Maxx Whittaker

  “What stops a witch, then?”

  “Age, madness, and death. The first two make her more vulnerable to the last. But they can take millennia to reach a place where she’s weak enough to be prey to anything.”

  “The powers of a witch and the long life of a Bloodsworn...”

  “And I know how to find Argus, who knows all about the necromancer.”

  “If the Inquisition catch you, they’ll make you tell.”

  “Didn’t work the last time. They tortured and exiled me to a special hell. I nearly lose my mind when I think of going back, but I would, if I had to. If it meant depriving them of Argus and the necromancer.”

  Bannock could feel Witt blinking at him without looking at the boy. “How did you survive?”

  “When I was twelve my father joined in the Uprisings. Our castle was besieged. They locked me and my mother in one cell. In the next they tortured my father. They wanted us to hear it; my mother was heir to her father’s lands, and they hoped she’d break and sign away her men and treasury. She used to hold my head in her lap and hum an Uplands tune. She kept her hand over my ear, and I learned to hear her voice through the echo in her chest when she told a story of Avonlea, a great green isle where they wait for the return of their king.”

  Witt sat up. “We should go there! That’s our adventure!”

  Bannock chuckled. “It’s not a real place, Witt. It’s an idea. It’s meant to make the Albian strong in dark times.”

  “Does it work?”

  “I escaped. I took up my father’s banner and took back his duchy.”

  For a moment I took his murderer’s throne. Bannock tried not to dwell on this thought; it could still stoke his bloodlust beyond taming.

  “And I moved my mother’s remains to the Queen’s Chapel garden where she belonged.”

  “Whoa whoa wait. She died?”

  “It was winter, and our prison was... a prison. She got sick and never...never got well.” Bannock couldn’t admit she’d died while he was on campaign, that he’d left her in Tournay believing she’d get well. He couldn’t admit, not even to himself, that she’d died alone. “Anyway, Avonlea is an ideal, not magic. That’s the whole point. It keeps us going in the darkness; it doesn’t stop darkness.”

  “I still think we should go.”

  Bannock sighed. Had Witt listened at all? “I don’t think you’re understanding the point.”

  Witt flopped down and wriggled beneath the quilts. “And I don’t think you’re understanding the point.”

  Bannock punched down his pillow and settled himself with a lot of huffing and angled limbs. He stared up at the ceiling’s black space and regretted having spilled his guts for the first time in years.

  But somewhere under all his weariness and turmoil, Bannock had the distinct fear that maybe Witt was right.

  -Thirteen-

  Morning came the earliest for Bannock it had in a long time.

  Witt, on the other hand, was up, dressed, and half wrapped around a faded linen curtain while he peered outside.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking.”

  “At what?”

  “At...everything.”

  It occurred to Bannock hadn’t seen Madainn in more than a hundred years, since before the goblins. He laughed, wriggling back into his cassock. “Dwarven construction and goblin mechanics. I imagine it’s something to see.”

  “It really is.”

  A shaft of light fell in through the window and spilled across the floorboards at whatever speed light came from the sun. “Did you know Madainn means morning?” he asked Witt. Legend is, Madainn is the very first place the sun rises in all the world.”

  “Is that true?” breathed Witt, still staring out at the world.

  “It’s a legend.” Bannock rolled from the sagging mattress. “Not true or untrue.”

  “Why is a city like this all by itself out here?”

  “Well…” Bannock didn’t want to give a lengthy history lesson, and he doubted Witt wanted to hear one. He certainly hadn’t at that age, to the perpetual annoyance of his tutors.

  “Goblins aren’t welcome in the Nordlands. Useful to some, but not welcome. If you were them and determined to wedge in, how would you go about it?”

  Witt shrugged.

  “Run into every great city and make instant trouble – mostly for yourself?” Bannock shook his head. “Tactically, that’s an awful scheme. You’d plant yourself in the hinterlands and build the greatest city you could, preferably stealing as much of it as possible. Attract farmers, merchants, laborers. When your walls are straining, build another and move some of your loyal ministers there, and on, and on. With a large and accessible port, doesn’t matter if you have a land route for trade at first. You just build one and own the infrastructure, the towns and villages…”

  “Cutthroat.” Witt turned from the window, grinning. “It’s great.”

  “No! Well, from an economic standpoint, but not from a moral standpoint.”

  “People with moral standpoints seem to get dumped in swamps a lot. Maybe my experience with economy is thin, but I also spent a lot of time in a swamp.”

  “You worry me,” said Bannock. “Our fiendslayer friend is due to meet me here any minute. What do you intend to do with yourself while I’m gone?”

  Why did he care? Bannock still had no intention of dragging Witt to Hastings.

  “Make that coin I told you I’d get.”

  “How do you plan to do that?”

  “Not a chance!” Witt hopped away from the wall, grin widening. “If I told you, you’d go make it yourself.”

  “Probably not.” Bannock shook his bracelet. “Don’t get into trouble while I’m gone.” Not that he much cared about Witt’s fate; Bannock couldn’t afford anyone else’s trouble rubbing off on him just now. “Keep low; you don’t have papers.”

  “There’s you being wrong for the first time today.” Witt pulled a folded edge from beneath his jerkin. “Went and got some this morning.”

  “From where?”

  “From whom.”

  “That also.”

  “Can’t tell.” Witt crossed his arms. “It’d be a bad idea – from an economic standpoint.”

  “Throttling you here and now would be a great idea. From a moral and an economic standpoint.” Bannock shook his head. “Just don’t lead the guards back here when you get caught.”

  -Fourteen-

  “Where’s your squire?” Kenna slouched in the inn’s small dooryard, waiting. She reminded Bannock of a bird of prey, sleek and dangerous, armor like talon points, wool and leather like supple feathers. She was taller than he’s appreciated last night; nearly everyone passing behind her was a head shorter. Maybe part of it was the way Kenna held herself, with confidence and a touch of dangerous spine. If he was interested in admiring anyone, he could admire her.

  And that was it.

  “He’s not my squire, and that’ll go double when they hang him shortly.”

  She snorted and stood from the wall. “No one’s going to hang him.”

  “Where does someone in Madainn get counterfeit papers?”

  Kenna stilled. “They’re definitely going to hang him.”

  “Mmhm.”

  She stepped into him, sniffing the air, and pulled a small thatch of his beard. “You smell horrid, even by low quarter standards.”

  “Well, I did crawl from the grave two days ago...”

  “And you’re wearing a dirty dress. We have to do something about you.”

  He swatted her hand away. “I don’t need to be done about.”

  Kenna cocked her head. “Truly?”

  “I’ve done plenty well for a cen – for a long time without anyone, especially a woman, nattering after me.”

  “I believe you. The way you look and smell, no woman has been after you any time recently.”

  “I’ve got my smell and you’ve got your tongue.”

  “Fair.” Kenna laughed and waved hi
m along behind her.

  The great stone fingers of Madainn stretched out before them in all directions from the high street, and Bannock realized how long it’d been since he’d seen the city. White cob houses with their black-beam skeletons were a novelty now, not the standard. Buildings of grey glacier stone stood shoulder to shoulder along cobblestone lanes. A thin, ashy cloud hung above the low quarter, and as far south and east as Bannock could see, the mist of goblin industry spit up into the heavens by chimneys that bordered the docklands.

  A clock’s arms thunked and its chime rang out from some far-off square. Lamps turned off in unison as sun broke the horizon and the clock’s gates opened and closed to a mechanical tune. Despite civil gridlock, despite unrest, despite perhaps even the very will of the gods, Madainn ran on time.

  When Kenna nudged him, Bannock thought he knew how Witt must have felt looking out from their window. There was no city to equal this, and soon it wouldn’t stand alone. And that worried him. Maybe more worrying was its being nowhere near the top of his worry list at the moment. He missed mundane problems.

  “Have you eaten?” asked Kenna as they walked, dropping something into his palm before he’d answered.

  Bannock shuffled the tough yellow things with their shriveled red stripes. “Are these… ears?”

  “Apples. I save up all my ears for black sabbath, actually.”

  “Oh,” he muffled around a bite. “See. that’s forethought. I like that…” He chewed a long stretch. “I should plan my dark rituals better.”

  She grinned. “What’s your favorite sin?”

  “You first.”

  “Easy. Pride.”

  He nodded, unsurprised. “Wrath, unquestionably.”

  “Ohh. The manliest of transgressions.”

  “I thought that was lust…”

  “The manliest?” Kenna stopped at the alley mouth and turned back. “Then you’ve never been a woman.”

  Bannock wished he could see her face when she said this.

  “Did you bring a weapon besides your wit?” she asked. “We’re traveling overland by daylight, but that guarantees nothing.”

  “I have a sword, if I need it.”

  “This is the Marches; you always need it.” She slipped into a chimney alcove along the alleyway, raised a slab of stone, and dropped from sight before Bannock could answer.

  “Nice trick,” he groaned, folding his body into the tunnel and fighting with his cassock.

  “It pays to know the dwarf half of the city as well as the goblin half. And I can see up your dress.”

  “Good thing I wore my fancies today.”

  “Gross.”

  “I’m jesting; I don’t wear smallclothes.”

  “Stop.” Kenna snapped and a white light danced at her fingertip, illuminating a passageway barely wide enough for Bannock to fit.

  “Another neat trick.” Not that there was much to see. Old sturdy brick, oily grit, and the occasional trickle of gutter runoff from above.

  “I could find my way by sense down here, now. That used to be a point of pride, but there’s hardly any of these tunnels left.”

  “What are they?”

  “When the duwende first began work on the city, the High Wilds were much… wilder. Danger aside, it was too time consuming to stop construction countless times day and night to fight something off. The Two Houses invested nearly everything they had into Madainn; they needed it built and built quick.”

  “Return on their investment.”

  “Just so. They built the exterior walls first; well, one crew did. The other crew burrowed tunnels to bring supplies and materials down from the pass, in from the sea, and so on.”

  “And construct from within, undisturbed. Brilliant.”

  “Not entirely free from danger, but much better off than before. After the goblin coup, the tunnels were used for smuggling, escape and the like. Then the Guild began laying pipe for the ether mains. No goblin is going to dig a trench or pay to have a trench dug when one already exists.”

  Cartwheels above filled the tunnel with long continuous rumbling, steady footsteps a bass note to a murmur of voices. Bannock realized how close they were to the street above, and how separate.

  “After the ether was tapped, the goblins filled all the tunnels around the vent house; some tunnels they joined to create semi-subterranean holding tanks for the gas. Smuggler’s lines only exist now between the mains and on the very corners of the city.”

  “They don’t patrol these remaining tunnels?”

  “For what? What passes through here comes up eventually. Goblin efficiency rules everything. Why pay a guard or a spy network down here when you already have them above? The Guild probably makes more off snaring smugglers than off their own trade.”

  “You know a lot about the city. And the dwarves. Were you born here?”

  “No.” Suddenly Kenna’s voice didn’t reach the walls around them. “I lived here for a long time. Then… I was away for a time.”

  “How long?”

  “I’ve been back a short time.”

  Vague and not an answer. Bannock started to challenge her.

  Kenna spun around, eyes glittering beneath her hood. “I know you just thought, I can’t trust her. You’re not wrong; it’s how everyone should probably feel about everyone else in Madainn just now.” She paused. “You were right when you said I can’t fight the Guild alone.”

  They weren’t true allies, and Bannock felt a twinge of guilt at letting her go on thinking they were. “I’m not invested in fighting the Guild. I’m not here for a goblin war.” He raised his arm, silver glinting in the light Kenna had cast. “I’m here for whatever it takes to get this off in the next fortnight.”

  She watched him a long moment without blinking. “I think you’ll feel differently, once you’ve spoken to the duwende.”

  “I won’t.”

  “It must make life hard, being this stubborn.”

  “Actually, it makes life easy. Ninety percent of the time I get my way, and one-hundred percent of the time no one likes me.”

  “I believe it.” Kenna crouched and slid into narrow stairway on their left. Bannock had to turn sideways and suck in to reach the landing.

  The next run of steps opened into a natural cave. Bannock recognized two odors at once. “Sewage and low tide.”

  “You have a good nose; those are hard to distinguish from each other.”

  They came to an iron gate set into the cave walls, bars thick with the slimy fronds of some sea plant. Kenna drew her silver blade as they approached.

  The fronds shot out like wings and the plant launched from its perch. Kenna sliced it in half with one pass.

  Both pieces fell to the stone and painted the steady outflow in a luminescent blue sheen.

  “Nothing down here is friendly,” she warned, sheathing again.

  “So, like everywhere else I’ve been lately.”

  Light flickered in from a hole above the gate’s opposite side. Kenna pointed to it and scaled the bars.

  The first thing that struck Bannock was the screaming. Blinded by full daylight, he squinted and covered his ears. It took a moment to regain his vision enough to see why the light flickered: Sea birds. Clouds of them swept Madainn’s vast harbor like an army of cyclones, screeching and diving with a rabidity that slammed one into a mast, a hull, a cliff face.

  Along a vast quay, ships bobbed at anchor, sails hung down from the yards like shirts on dead men. Not a single living person moved along the harbor that Bannock could see. No sound or smoke traveled from the storehouses or shanty taverns along the wharf front. Winter air cut in from the ocean in long gusts, but it couldn’t clear out the green manure stink of birdshite atop a persistent odor of rot.

  A cloud of gulls rounded, cut a swath and dove for them.

  “Quick,” said Kenna, grabbing his sleeve, “before they peck. When one gets a taste of blood –” She didn’t finish her thought, running down the craggy, wet slope. Bannock fo
llowed at her heels, head low.

  They scurried along the quay to a clifftop path worn between seagrass. The trail ran up an almost flat face; Bannock struggled for solid handholds in the silty soil. But the angle made it hard for the birds to swoop. The cacophony winged back out over the harbor, screaming louder than ever.

  Kenna reached the bluff and shuddered, out of breath. “Birds. Who knew they could be so terrifying?”

  Bannock looked down at the harbor, watching grey and white whorls blanket ships as far as the sea haze revealed. “Why?”

  “Those ships are laden. Some with luxuries and most with perishables. It’s ruin for nearly every one of those captains if he doesn’t get payment on cargo. With the Guild in turmoil, trade’s locked up. And Lido’s feeling spiteful towards his brothers-in-profit, so he’s shut down the harbor.”

  “One guild master can shut down the entire thing?”

  “It’s his quarter of the city. Ships clog the quay, fishing boats can’t go out. Or dock. So, what you see is a big, rotting, stinking, floating compost heap. Dead fish. Dead clams. Rotting produce. Spoiling cheese. Moldering tea. On and on.”

  They started along the clifftop. “Why not sail away and sell elsewhere?”

  “A hundred reasons. Guild contracts are deeply lucrative. And usually binding. Because the captains have waited too long; they can’t reach the next potential port before full spoilage. And at least one captain has killed himself; I don’t think his crew knows what the hell to do now.”

  “What a heap of shite.”

  “Couldn’t happen to a nicer foursome. I just wish they’d keep to buggering each other and not the rest of world.”

  “I would have said the duwende were mad to hold out, but now they might have a chance.” An idiot would have a chance under the circumstances.

  “They didn’t. Only half stayed to fight, living in the northern barrows. Gorath’s people. Gloran took his kin south, to smith for the Midlanders.” Kenna slowed her pace up the ridge. “All the centuries they were the Two Kingdoms, they were truly one kingdom. Now that they’re two… they’re nothing.”

  “You take a heavy interest in the duwende.”