by Rod Duncan
When she pulled back the door-bolts, it began to swing inwards immediately. As soon as the gap was big enough, the first guard was shouldering through. His eyes widened when he saw her.
“I’m not dressed!” she shouted.
“But…”
“I’m changing my clothes!”
“I… you…”
The second guard was in the room now. The three maids crowded just behind, squabbling to peer through the gap.
Elizabeth pointed at them. “They’re always watching me.”
“I’m sorry,” said the guard. “But you mustn’t lock the door again.”
Waiting had been difficult before, but the discovery of the immobile chest made it almost unbearable. The guards must have spoken harshly to the three maids, because they scowled whenever they looked at her. When she asked for a comb and hairpins, one was left to loiter in the outer apartment, watching through the door. If Elizabeth tried to close it again, she’d surely be stopped.
They brought leek and potato soup for her evening meal. This she pushed aside, certain they’d all have spat into her bowl. But the bread and butter was easier to trust.
She wore her hair up for the daily audience in the hall, sitting straight and still at Jago’s feet while he worked through the business of the day. An unaligned boy wanted to take the oath. It couldn’t be done until the oath-wright returned. But the positioning of the mark could be discussed. One of the councillors suggested that it should be marked on the boy’s foot. The boy’s father begged for a finger or an ear instead. Jago pronounced that it should be tattooed onto his tongue.
Afterwards Jago went through the nightly ritual: sliding the bolts, retreating to the bedchamber, pushing the metal door, the dull reverberations as it closed.
“He’s a spy,” Jago said.
It was so unlike the Patron to volunteer information that Elizabeth at first thought she’d misheard.
“He?”
“The boy. They bring him to me now, when the wheels are turning. Oh, but they’re longing to know my secrets.”
“His tongue…” Elizabeth said, as the thought hit her.
“Yes,” said Jago. He seemed dangerously pleased with himself. “A mark there doesn’t last long. A couple of years, perhaps. But he’ll be planning to betray me before that. When he does, we’ll cut the tongue from his mouth. Then everyone will know that I saw the truth of it from the start. Let him try to tell my secrets after that. His father sees my reason already. Did you mark how he sweated?”
He stretched, seeming to enjoy the pull of tendons and muscles across his arms and back. Then he began to strip, casting off his clothes. Elizabeth hurriedly turned away. He laughed.
“Soon I’ll be king,” he said. “My vow will be complete.”
He dropped himself onto the furs, limbs loose and spread wide so that once she’d done her duty and snuffed out the lights, she was obliged to lie at the very edge of the bed for fear of touching him. His change of mood was startling. She’d seen enough to know that relaxed he might be more dangerous than when wrestling with his thoughts.
His breathing slowed as if in sleep. But tonight she felt more uncertain of it. So she waited, counting to five hundred in her head before feeling on the floor for the hairpins and sliding out from under the covers.
Her bare feet made no sound on the flagstones. But when she turned a pin within the lock of the chest, it made a metallic click. Jago’s breathing caught for a second. She probed inside the lock again, finding the levers, putting a twist on them and feeling a slight movement. Only when she’d put her free hand over the metal to muffle the sound did she give it a final push. The click sounded loud even then.
Jago turned onto his side. When his breath had gone back to its slow rhythm, she lifted the lid of the chest and felt within. Her hand went down into nothingness, continuing below the level of the floor. She had found his secret escape route.
There were rungs inside the chest: a ladder leading down a narrow shaft. Descending, she reckoned herself to be within the outer wall. After ten steps down she found a floor. All light had gone. From the echoes, she knew she’d entered a small chamber. Following the wall, she came to the mouth of a low passage and began feeling her way along it, expecting it to end at any moment. After one hundred paces she stopped counting. She’d surely passed beyond the apartments and the hall. Beyond the space outside over which she’d watched Jago stride every morning.
The door at the end was studded metal. She slid the bolts and swung it inwards, leaning all her weight into the task until there was a gap big enough to slip through.
She’d arrived inside the storehouse. There was no other building large enough within the fortress to encompass such a room. The smells of produce hung in the air. A single lamp illuminated the space in front of her, and a structure which seemed to be an elevated platform or a stage.
Only when she reached it and placed a hand on the edge did understanding spark. It was a wooden table of great length, rounded at each end. She could smell the fresh sawdust. It had to be the thing that Jago was working on.
“Elizabeth?”
She spun on her heel, ready to sprint back towards the door. But it was a voice she knew. Elias was sitting on the floor at the edge of the room. A collar circled his neck, fixed by a chain to the storehouse wall.
“What is the meaning of this thing?” she asked. “What have you helped him build?”
Part Five
Chapter 32
Dice rattled in the cup of the gatherer’s hand. He closed his eyes, blew on them three times then let them fly. They tumbled over the flat rock and came to rest. Everyone leaned forwards.
“Seven!” he shouted, raising his arms to heaven as if born anew.
“That one’s not level! Throw again.” This from the supplies man, who’d wagered a clipping from a silver coin.
“It’s no less level than yours was.”
“The two don’t compare!”
It was true that one of the bones had fallen at a tilt. But only because the rock there tilted also. That meant, Elias supposed, that the throw should stand. But when the two men looked to him, he shrugged.
“I can’t call it,” he said, not falling into the trap of taking sides. For once, being the fool was a help. It put him so far beneath them that neither would have taken his say in any case.
They called over one of the other camp followers, and when he pronounced that it should be thrown again, a second opinion was demanded, which then became a new quarrel. Others from the caravan began to gather around them, everyone with an opinion, but no two the same. Elias sat back and watched the magic flow. Gambling was its own advertisement.
By the time the two men agreed to each take back their own stake and play no more, there were half a dozen others, all eager to have a go. Such was life in the train of a Patron’s progress towards the Reckoning.
They’d made camp for the night at the side of the road. Fires burned here and there, marking out the length of the train of wagons and tents. Jago had been riding near the front all day, as befits a leader, but would sleep somewhere in the middle of it all, surrounded by his most trusted men. It was the custom and practice of Newfoundland that clans not wage war on the journey to the Reckoning. But it was also the time when every Patron knew the whereabouts of every other. Before crossing to the Island, the oath-wrights would take their weapons and all chance of war would be gone. Until then, the odds of each choice had to be weighed. They were living in strange times.
The bones rattled and spun. Foreign coins went down on the rock, and silver scrap and a spoon and a decorated pewter mug. One of the camp followers tried to gamble with a poem written on a length of parchment. The others wouldn’t have it so she put down a boiled egg instead. But when the numbers turned up, they were a pair of ones and thus Elias got to claim his reward, being the man who set up the game. He scooped the bric-á-brac of his winnings into a pocket and wrapped the egg in a cloth, which he slipped into his tote
. His belly grumbled. But to eat it there and then would have been an insult to the losers.
That was the end of the game, as it turned out. Seeing the house take its cut, and in any case being spent out, the gamblers got up and wandered off. Elias walked away from them and found a dark hollow in which to lie. There was no telling whether one of the losers might feel bitter enough to seek him out.
None of them had seen the trick, though. He was pleased with that. He’d swapped out one of the true-cut die for the weighted one he’d been carrying in his sleeve. It was good work for a thumbless man. He’d palmed it, trapping it in the crease of his hand. The life line, a fortune teller might have said. The move was smooth enough in any case. But as the firelight danced, so had the shadows, giving better cover still. That had tipped the odds towards him. The egg had been too much to resist.
Lying on his side in the hollow, he bashed it on a stone until the shell came away clean. There was a tang of sulphur about it. Not enough to stop a hungry man. A chicken’s egg in the wilderness was a feast. A pinch of salt would have made it heaven. Later he’d trade the pewter mug for some bread. It was a baker who’d gambled it. The man would get his treasure back. That was the way of things at the shoddy end of the line. A currency of trinkets.
They’d be gambling towards the front as well, those grand men. The stakes would be higher. Gold instead of pewter. They might use cards. Dice were a poor man’s game. But the need was no different. A stallion in the vanguard shits no different to a mule in the train.
All day, he’d been able to see Elizabeth riding up there behind the Patron. The huge pink dress drew stares from peasants by the roadside. It matched her character not a bit.
The ill-smelling and ill-dressed were not welcomed towards the front of the line. He’d had no chance to speak with her since leaving Jago’s fortress. He still didn’t know how she’d managed to find her way into the storehouse that night. She’d stepped into the lamplight and seen his low state. They’d left him facing the great table they’d been building. All the glycer-fortis he’d have needed to last for a hundred years lay just beyond his reach, hidden behind panels in the sections of the table.
She’d rushed to him. “I don’t have long,” she’d said, then lifted the padlock, as if about to pick it. But there could have been no way out of the fortress. Least of all carrying a hundredweight of explosive bricks. So he put his hand over hers and told her what she needed to know. The table was a bomb. It would kill all who stood within thirty yards. Beyond that, the flying metal and splinters would maim to fifty yards or so.
Two questions remained: how Jago planned to get all the Patrons within the circle of death, and how he would ignite the thing without himself also being killed.
“How would you do it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. But I’m thinking that he hasn’t built it big enough for all the Patrons to sit. It might be they’ll squabble to be close enough to grab a seat.”
“Like a game of musical chairs?” she asked.
He’d never heard of the game. But when she explained it he nodded. “Yes. Just like that.”
It had seemed so clear before, thinking it through. But reasoning the idea out loud made it seem fantastical. Elizabeth smiled anyway.
She’d been searching the table when a noise brought their time to an end: footsteps at the storehouse door, the clanking of the lock. She’d met his eyes one more time before running back into the shadows and away.
The next day, the six sections of the great table were brought out of the storehouse and loaded onto wagons, wedged in with straw and covered over with canvases.
“Gentle” was the watchword. And the lash for any who scratched or bumped its precious surface. Only four people knew the true reason for the care and they stood far back. Five, counting Elizabeth, though the others didn’t know she knew.
When all was done, Jago had walked along the line, testing each rope and knot. In each wagon he placed a framed mirror. The carters were brought together. He drew his sword and showed them its edge.
“Break one mirror on the journey,” he said, “and I will sever all your oaths myself.”
Lying in a hollow away from the camp, Elias tried to make his meal last. But there are only so many bites one can take from a chicken’s egg. When it was eaten, he worked his tongue around his teeth to get every last smear of it, then sat up from the hollow. Men and women clustered around the campfires, warming themselves, passing the time, smoking and drinking. A man was picking his way from one group to the next, searching it seemed. Logan. He stood aloof, one hand hovering near the hilt of his sword.
Slinging the tote over one shoulder Elias climbed out of his hollow and started towards the gatherer, stepping on the larger rocks to approach in silence.
“Boo,” he whispered.
Logan spun, the sword already half-drawn.
“What brings you to the back of the train?” Elias asked.
“You… You!” Logan couldn’t seem to find a word strong enough for his loathing.
“Looking for dirty pleasures?”
The sword slid back. “You’re to come with me. The Patron will see you.”
Three tents had been set in the middle of the camp, each tall enough for a standing man, each facing a central fire. There was nothing to choose between them. That was the point. An attacker wouldn’t know in which the Patron slept. Logan knew though. He gave another sharp shove, so that Elias stumbled in through the mouth of the tent.
Jago lay on his side on a pile of furs, eating what looked to be a turkey leg. A map of Newfoundland had been unrolled on the ground in front of him, the corners held down with stones. Lanterns hung from the four corner posts. The air smelled of tobacco.
Elias lowered his head, keeping it down until at last Jago spoke.
“Tomorrow we’ll see the Island.” He waved the turkey leg towards the map. “You’ve given me what I want, Elias. My side of the bargain was to bring you to the Reckoning. And to set you up in a game of chance against those who ruined you. I’m going to do that. Because I want to see it. You’ll be there under my protection. That means you’ll obey me to the letter. At all times. I’ll be the one to set the time and place of the game. Those are my terms. Do you accept?”
“Yes, Patron.”
Jago took another bite. As he chewed he said, “You know why you’re such fine entertainment, Mr No-Thumbs? I could have you beaten for the pleasure of my men. I could have you pulled apart by horses. No one would complain. But I’ve no need. You torture yourself in ways more inventive than anything I could devise. Your wounds are always raw. You cut them fresh each day. Even in your dreams.”
Elias tried to swallow the spit pooling in his mouth, but it stuck halfway.
The camp was long but narrow. Elias picked his way a distance off to the side and, finding a rock to serve as a backrest, sat himself facing the three large tents around the central fire. After a time in which the moon shifted across the sky, Jago emerged and strode around, seeming to say a few words to some of the gatherers on guard duty before stepping away from the road. For a moment, it seemed that he’d somehow pierced the darkness, for he was heading directly towards Elias. But then he stopped, unbuttoned his trousers and pissed onto the ground. When he turned back to the tents, one of his men was there to pour water over his hands. Another passed him a cloth to dry them. The tent he stepped into would be his sleeping quarters.
Elias thought that the job of assassin might not be so hard after all. Except for the killing part. Killing in battle was different. Facing armed men on the beach, fear had driven his arm. But to cut a throat in cold blood would take a store of malice. He considered Aaron Weaverbright, the man who’d demanded his thumbs be cut away. He imagined himself slipping a knife under the ribs, in the same way that Jago had slaughtered the mercenary. But even if he could do it, the act would not be enough. His enemies must know that they had lost because he was the better man.
When Elizabeth emerged from J
ago’s sleeping tent, Elias found himself leaning forwards from the rock. If she set off in the other direction, he’d have to run in the dark, circling the entire camp to reach her. He tensed in readiness, only relaxing when she left the road on his side. One of the guards followed her, but only for a few paces. She picked her way over the uneven ground, coming further than the Patron had done. Twice as far and then some more. She stopped and was looking around for a place to squat when he whistled: a small sound that wouldn’t carry, yet loud enough to make her freeze.
“Elias?” She whispered his name.
“Over here.”
He whistled again, guiding her approach. He couldn’t see her expression as she crouched next to him. But then she threw her arms around his shoulders and held him tight. He found himself hugging her back, though he didn’t understand what she meant by it. The image of Charity’s blunt features flashed in his mind. Then he felt Elizabeth shaking. She was sobbing. Knowing it came as a relief.
Pulling away, he tried to see her face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Everything. I don’t know.”
“Has he hurt you?”
“No.”
“Are you ill?”
“No.”
“Then, are you… pregnant?”
He felt a fool for saying it and doubly so when her sob turned into something that was akin to a laugh, though more desperate.
“No,” she said. “It’s just, I’ve had too much to carry: secrets, other things. And for too long. I’ve had no one to confide in. And now… finding you here. I just didn’t expect it. I thought I’d never get it back. But you… You can help.”
Wrapped in darkness, Elias found himself frowning. “Get what back?”
The fabric of her skirts rustled. Dimly he made out her exposed leg. Something had been strapped to her thigh. Then she was covered again and a heavy object rested in his hands, still warm from her skin. A pistol. He touched the single barrel, the hammer and pan, the wooden stock. He could feel an inlaid design where the hand would grip. He didn’t need his eyes to know it for a work of quality.
