by Dave Gross
I choked back the wisecrack that would have put me at ease. “Rise,” I told them, and then I couldn’t think of two Varisian words to put together. “Malena will repeat my words.”
She stepped forward, not quite concealing a proud smile at being singled out. I spoke in Taldane.
“As many of you have heard, I made a bargain that requires me to leave our country,” I said. “If our enemy is honorable, this bargain keeps all my people safe. Including Azra and all the villages she protects.”
Malena frowned at me, but she translated my words.
“You will continue to honor your territorial agreements with Azra,” I said. “And if she calls to you, you will go to her. Obey her as you would me.”
A man whose muscular arms writhed with snake tattoos scoffed. “How will she call to us?” he said. “Will she learn to sing to the moon?”
His laughter infected those nearby. Before it could spread around the circle, I stepped forward. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “But if her wagon should fall from the road, if she should slip in the river and catch a fever, if a bolt of lightning should fall from the sky and strike her dead, then I will hold you responsible.”
“What then?” said the man. He had a pair on him, which I’d have admired in other circumstances.
“Then I will break my bargain with my enemy,” I said. “I will return to Ustalav. And I will find you.”
The man grinned as if he were about to laugh again, but one look from Cezar’s family silenced him. He shut his mouth and stepped back.
“Go now,” I said. I’d thought about commanding them not to eat people, but there was no point. If I asked them for only one thing, I figured I was more likely to get it.
A few paused to get a closer look at me as they left gifts at my feet. A couple of old women kissed my hand, and one half-blind crone rubbed her garlicky fingers over my face before grunting her approval. Mostly they drifted away before the mists cleared, and I pitied the early morning drunks who hadn’t made it indoors before crossing their paths.
I stopped Cezar before he left and gave him a big leather sack. He grunted with surprise at its weight. I said, “Your share.”
I’d gotten a pretty price for Virholt’s scepter-key, which I figured was now little more than an art object since we’d cleared out the vault. I’d kept enough to kit myself out in style, and this was the rest.
Milosh crept up to peer inside, his eyes widening as he saw how many coins the bag held, all of them of gold. He looked up at me, astonished, and I grinned back big enough to make him drop my purse, on which I’d felt his hand a moment earlier. “Nice try, kid,” I said. “You need to practice.”
Malena lingered after Cezar and Milosh ran to catch up with their kin. She sidled up to me and made pointed glances at Azra’s starknife. If she could claim to be my consort in my absence, she’d carry as much weight as Cezar or Baba, maybe more. Azra was halfway to Ulcazar by now, and she’d never know the difference if I finished what Malena and I had started back in Amaans. I remembered the scent in the hollow of her neck, and the floral softness of her lips.
“Do you have to leave right now?” asked Malena. She slipped a finger inside my new jacket. Her finger left a warm trail on my chest.
“No,” I told her. “I don’t have to.” She lifted my arm around her waist, but I slipped away and put my hands on her shoulders. I looked into her deep green eyes, and said, “But I will.”
For the next couple of days, between visits to various merchants and the best saddler I could find, I caught myself cursing aloud. Why the hell had I turned down Malena? I hadn’t made any promises, except of retribution if the Sczarni broke my lone command. By the time I realized my mistake, there was no sign of them anywhere in the market. Somewhere, Malena was complaining that I’d rejected her. If this got out, I was going to lose the reputation I’d spent so many years developing among the ladies and trollops of Egorian.
My new clothes provided meager consolation. The jacket, trousers, and boots were all soft tooled leather, just the way I liked it, but I had to settle for dark colors instead of the red I preferred. It was probably for the best, if I planned to continue working as Jeggare’s bodyguard. I’d been far too conspicuous lately.
As I approached the docks, the boss descended from an ivory-paneled coach drawn by six snowy horses. Arnisant ran up behind the vehicle and sat obediently about six feet behind his master. The boss had done a much better job training that dog than he had me.
I leaned against a dock piling to light my new pipe—a gift from Baba, its bowl carved with linden leaves—while I watched the boss say farewell to the Countess. Her footmen’s velvet coats were bursting with enough lace to marry off a princess and all her cousins. One of the men fetched the luggage while the boss bowed and murmured some courtesy to the occupant of the cab. All I could see of her was a slender arm nestled in dark muslin, a hand finer than porcelain emerging from the frilled cuff. The boss’s eyes were fixed on the fan that hung from her wrist as he kissed her hand.
The lady’s voice flowed like liquid silver, cool as the first rain of spring. “I am inexpressibly pleased that you escaped permanent injury from your ordeal.”
“No less pleased than I to learn that your reputation remains unblemished by the unspeakable abuse of your trust in Miss Tara,” the boss replied.
“How could I have known that she was an imposter?” she said.
“How could you?”
She hesitated, perhaps wondering whether his question was rhetorical or accusatory. I could have told her the answer. I’d heard she was plenty slippery, but so was the boss when he hadn’t been tippling.
They exchanged a few more farewells the way nobles do, never using one word when they could string together a hundred. I could have had a nap before they were done.
At last the boss bowed and the carriage drove away, but his eyes didn’t appear wistful. He looked like a clerk adding figures in his head. I gave him a couple of minutes to work it out, then emptied my pipe and stuck it in my pocket before joining him.
He stood beside two bags, his old travel satchel and a new leather case almost as big as Arnisant. I sent a silent prayer to Desna that he had not loaded it with new books, but I didn’t like the tiered shape of its contents pressed against the leather.
Arnisant rose to greet me, pushing my hand with his big snout. The hound had filled out even in the short time I’d known him, and he wasn’t done yet. I figured it was a good idea to reinforce our friendship, so I gave him the last of the sausage I’d bought for breakfast. I expected a reproving look from the boss, but he was lost in thought.
“What did you learn?” I prompted him.
“Not a thing, of course,” he sighed. “My friend the Countess was naturally shocked to learn of Tara’s ruse. If the creature were not already dead, she says, she would demand satisfaction.”
“What?” I said. “Something like a duel?”
“Oh, no,” said the boss. “Carmilla is a distinguished lady, far above the common brawls favored by the brutal sex. No doubt her retribution would be far more subtle and terrible.”
“You believe her?” I asked.
He gave me that look that told me he couldn’t believe I’d asked such a ridiculous question. He turned to admire the ship on which he’d secured us passage. It was a trade caravel out of Druma, The Diamond Sea emblazoned on its prow and bordered by what looked like enormous gems cemented into the wood. Under a canvas tarpaulin on the ship deck, I recognized the outlines of the red carriage, or what was left of it.
“Where to, boss?”
“All things considered, perhaps you should no longer address me that way.”
“If you want me to say ‘master’ or ‘my lord,’ it’s going to be tough.” It was hard not to gag on those words. I wasn’t going to last a day.
“No, those are forms I would expect from a proper servant. You will agree, I think, in light of recent events, that you are not well suited to the role.”<
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There wasn’t much I could say to that. If I’d treated any other count of Cheliax the way I’d treated the boss in front of the Sczarni, I’d be without a job and likely without my skin. And that was a trifle compared with the more serious matter of my bringing the Sczarni into the boss’s expedition.
“Yeah,” I said, trying not to sound too glum about it. “Agreed.”
“While I can no longer retain you as a servant,” he said, offering his hand, “I would be happy to think of you as my friend.”
I stared at his hand, finding it hard to believe he was making the gesture to a hellspawn, to a thief, to a killer. To me.
He added, “I hope that from this point forward you will consider yourself not my servant but my partner.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “I nearly got you killed by dragging the Sczarni into your expedition.”
“True,” he replied. “In fact, I expect you to accompany me when I deliver the sorrowful news of Nicola’s death to his family.”
“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t look forward to that day, but I knew I’d carry the guilt until I’d faced his widow and taken whatever she had to say to me.
“On the other hand,” he said, “if not for the attack from the Sczarni, we would have arrived later at the bridge and suffered the full effects of the trap laid for us.”
“Maybe,” I allowed. We both reckoned it was Count Senir who had his monks plant the explosives at the bridge, hoping to stop the boss even before his investigation got underway.
“And if you had not tamed the Sczarni, as it were, would we have presented sufficient strength to negotiate with the assassins at the tomb?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably not.”
“What is important is not that you made a mistake,” he said. “Rather, it is that you demonstrated your true character in how you dealt with it afterward. The way in which you dealt with Dragos—”
“I know,” I said. “It was too harsh.”
“No,” he said. “It was wise, the justice of a prince.”
It took me a moment to find my voice. “Boss,” I said.
“No.” He offered his hand again. “Partner. Or, if you prefer, friend.”
I felt my grin slipping, and a passing stevedore let out a little shriek and shied away when he saw it.
I took Jeggare’s hand. “You’ve got a deal, Excellency.”
“Then we are agreed, Highness.”
That sounded like the sort of thing that was funny once, and only in private. “I’m going to stick with ‘boss,’ if you don’t mind.”
He nodded. “Perhaps that would be best.”
I reached for his luggage, but he grabbed his bags and strained to lift them. I offered to trade him the big one for mine and almost instantly regretted it. We walked toward the ship, he carrying my bag and I his.
“Tell me how things fell between you and Azra,” he said. “Or did you choose Malena?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.
“Really? I would have expected a gambler like you to be proud of such a good luck charm as Azra.”
“I don’t think of her that way.”
“Of course,” he said. “Desna is also the goddess of dreams. Is Azra the woman of your dreams?”
“You go on like that,” I said, “and I am going to puke. On you.”
“Of course, Azra also serves Pharasma,” he said. “Perhaps your problem is that she’s the woman you’d die for?”
“If we’ve learned nothing else, it’s that I’ve got more than a little devil in me,” I said. “My vomit might burn your leg off. You don’t know.”
“I was simply speculating.”
“Me, too. Ssss.”
As we climbed the boarding plank, I realized I’d forgotten one important detail of our changed relationship. If being his friend meant I was going to put up with this much of his so-called humor, it could be a deal breaker, so I had to make sure.
“I still get paid, right?”
About the Author
Dave Gross has been a technical writer, a teacher, a magazine and book editor, and a novelist. He is an American expatriate currently enjoying the summers and enduring the winters of Alberta, Canada with his fabulous wife, their clever Portuguese, and two clumsy cats. His previous novels include Black Wolf and Lord of Stormweather.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to James Sutter for keen suggestions and encouragement; to Erik Mona for putting the bug in my ear in Calgary; to Don Bassingthwaite, Eileen Bell, Elaine Cunningham, Thomas M. Reid, Amber Scott, Jason Scott, Gareth-Michael Skarka, and Barb Galler-Smith for early eyes. Most of all, thanks to Lindy Smith for her relentless love and support.
Glossary
All Pathfinder Tales novels are set in the rich and vibrant world of the Pathfinder campaign setting. Below are explanations of several key terms used in this book. For more information on the world of Golarion and the strange monsters, people, and deities that make it their home, see the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook or any of the books in the Pathfinder Campaign Setting series, or visit paizo.com.
Absalom: Largest city in the Inner-Sea region; current location of the Starstone, which allows mortals to ascend to godhood.
Abyss: A plane of evil and chaos ruled by demons.
Aroden: Last hero of the Azlanti and God of Humanity, who raised the Starstone from the depths of the Inner Sea and founded the city of Absalom, becoming a living god in the process. Died mysteriously a hundred years ago, causing widespread chaos, particularly in Cheliax (which viewed him as its patron deity).
Asmodeus: Devil-god of tyranny, slavery, pride, and contracts; lord of Hell and current patron deity of Cheliax.
Avistan: The northern continent bordering the Inner Sea.
Belkzen: A region populated primarily by savage orc tribes.
Caliphas: Port city located in the southernmost county (also called Caliphas) in Ustalav.
Cayden Cailean: God of freedom, ale, wine, and bravery. Ascended to godhood by passing the Test of the Starstone.
Chelaxian: A citizen of Cheliax.
Cheliax: Devil-worshiping nation in southwest Avistan.
Chelish: Of or relating to the nation of Cheliax.
Decemvirate: The mysterious and masked ruling council of the Pathfinder Society.
Desna: Good-natured goddess of dreams, stars, travelers, and luck.
Dwarves: Short, stocky humanoids who excel at physical labor, mining, and craftsmanship. Stalwart enemies of the orcs and other evil subterranean monsters.
Elf: Long-lived, beautiful humanoids who abandoned Golarion before the fall of the Starstone and have only recently returned.
Egorian: The capital of Cheliax.
Gallowspire: The unhallowed former stronghold of the Whispering Tyrant, now turned into his prison.
Garund: Southern continent of the Inner Sea region.
General Arnisant: Taldan general who sacrificed himself to imprison the Whispering Tyrant beneath his tower in Gallowspire.
Gnome: Race of fey humanoids known for their small size, quick wit, and bizarre obsessions.
Golarion: The planet containing the Inner Sea region and the primary focus of the Pathfinder campaign setting.
Half-elf: Of human and elven descent, half-elves are often regarded as having the best qualities of both races, yet still see a certain amount of prejudice, particularly from their pure elven relations.
Halfling: Race of humanoids known for their tiny stature, deft hands, and mischievous personalities.
Half-orc: Bred from a human and an orc, members of this race are known for their green-to-gray skin tone, brutish appearance, and short tempers. Highly marginalized by most civilized societies.
Hell: A plane of absolute law and evil, where evil souls go after they die to be tormented by the native devils.
Hellknights: Organization of hardened law enforcers whose tactics are often seen as harsh and intimidating, and who bind devils t
o their will. Based in Cheliax.
Hellspawn: A human whose family line includes a fiendish taint, often displayed by horns, hooves, or other devilish features. Rarely popular in civilized society.
House of Thrune: Current ruling house of Cheliax, which took power following Aroden’s death by making compacts with the devils of Hell.
Inner Sea Region: Consisting primarily of the continents of Avistan to the north and Garund to the south, this region is the focus of the Pathfinder campaign setting.
Iomedae: Goddess of valor, rulership, justice, and honor, who in life helped lead the Shining Crusade against the Whispering Tyrant before passing the Test of the Starstone and attaining godhood.
Isle of Terror: Island on which Aroden mortally wounded the wizard-king Tar-Baphon, prompting the wizard-king’s later return as the undead lich known as the Whispering Tyrant.
Kyonin: Elven forest-kingdom located in eastern Avistan.
Lastwall: Nation dedicated to keeping the Whispering Tyrant locked away beneath Gallowspire, as well as keeping the orcs of Belkzen and the monsters of Ustalav in check.
Lich: A spellcaster who manages to extend his existence by magically transforming himself into a powerful undead creature.
Linnorm King: One of the rulers of the Viking-like Lands of the Linnorm Kings.
Mwangi Expanse: The massive jungle region spanning a huge portion of Garund.
Palatinates: Three counties in Ustalav that have thrown off noble rule in favor of democratic government.
Pathfinder Society: Organization of traveling scholars and adventurers who seek to document the world’s wonders. Based out of Absalom and run by a mysterious and masked group call the Decemvirate.
Pharasma: Goddess of fate, death, prophecy, and birth. Ruler of the Boneyard, where mortal souls go to be judged after death.
Prince of Lies: Asmodeus.
Orc: A bestial, warlike race of humanoids from deep underground, who now roam the surface in barbaric bands. Universally hated by more civilized races.
