The Land You Never Leave

by Angus Watson

  And so, for the sake of them and the Revolution she served, she nodded. And the Vagrant leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

  “It started,” she said softly, “with the last rain.”

  TWO

  Rin’s Sump

  You ever want to know what a man is made of, you do three things.

  First, you see what he does when the weather turns nasty.

  When it rains in Cathama, the pampered Imperials crowd beneath the awnings in their cafés and wait for their mages to change the skies. When it snows in Haven, they file right into church and thank their lord for it. And when it gets hot in Weiless, as you know, they ascribe the sun to an Imperial plot and vow to redouble their revolutionary efforts.

  But in the Scar? When it pours down rain and thunder so hard that you swim through the streets and can’t hear yourself drown? Well, they just pull their cloaks tighter and keep going.

  And that’s just what I was doing that night when I got into this whole mess.

  Rin’s Sump, as you can guess by the name, was the sort of town where rain didn’t bother people much. Even when lightning flashed so bright you’d swear it was day, life in the Scar was hard enough that a little apocalyptic weather wouldn’t hinder anyone. And as the streets turned to mud underfoot and the roofs shook beneath the weight of the downpour, the people of the township just tucked their chins into their coats, pulled their hats down low, and kept going about their business.

  Just like I was doing. One more shapeless, sexless figure in the streets, hidden beneath a cloak and a scarf pulled around her head. No one raised a brow at my white hair, looked at me like they were guessing what I had under my cloak, or even so much as glanced at me. They had their own shit to deal with that night.

  Which was fine by me. So did I. And the kind of shit I got into, I could always use fewer eyes on me.

  Every other house in Rin’s Sump was dark as night, but the tavern—a dingy little two-story shack at the center of town—was lit up. Light shone bright enough to illuminate the dirt on the windows, the stripped paint on the front, and the ugly sign swinging on squeaky hinges: Ralp’s Last Resort.

  Apt name.

  And it proved even more apt when I pushed the door open and took a glance inside.

  Standing there, sopping wet, water dripping off me to form a small ocean around my boots, I imagined I looked a little like a dead cat hauled out of an outhouse. And I still looked a damn sight better than the inside of that bar.

  A fine layer of dust tried nobly to obscure a much-less-fine layer of splinters over the ill-tended-to chairs and tables lining the common hall. A stage that probably once had hosted a variety of bad acts now stood dark; a single voccaphone stood in their place, playing a tune that was popular back when the guy who wrote it was still alive. Rooms upstairs had probably once held a few prostitutes, if there ever were prostitutes luckless enough to work a township like this. I’d have called the place a mausoleum if it weren’t for the people, but they looked like they might have found a crypt a little cozier.

  There were a few kids—two boys, a girl—in the back, sipping on whatever bottle of swill they could afford and staring at the table. Laborers, I wagered; some young punks the locals used for cheap jobs with cheap pay to buy cheap liquor. And behind the bar was a large man in dirty clothes, idly rubbing a glass with a cloth.

  He set that glass down as I approached. The cloth he had been using had likely been used to polish something else, if the grime around the glass were any evidence.

  No matter. I wouldn’t need to be here long.

  Ralp—I assumed—didn’t bother asking me what I wanted. In the Scar, you’re lucky if they give you a choice between two drinks. And if you had any luck at all, you didn’t wind up in a place called Rin’s Sump.

  He reached for a cask behind the bar, but stopped as I cleared my throat and shot him a warning glare. With a nod, he held up a bottle of whiskey—Avonin & Sons, by the look of the black label—and looked at me for approval. I nodded, tossed a silver knuckle on the counter. He didn’t start pouring until he picked it up, made sure it was real, and pocketed it.

  “Passing through?” he asked with the kind of tone that suggested habit more than interest.

  “Does anyone ever stay?” I asked back, taking a sip of bitter brown.

  “Only if they make enough mistakes.” Ralp shot a glance to the youths drinking in the corner. “Your first was stopping in here instead of moving on. Roads are going to be mud for days after this. No one’s getting out without a bird.”

  “I’ve got a mount,” I said, grinning over my glass. “And here I thought you’d be happy for a little extra money.”

  “Won’t turn down metal,” Ralp said. He eyed me over, raised a brow as it seemed to suddenly dawn on him that I was a woman under all that wet, stinking leather. “But if you really want to make me happy—”

  “I’ll tell you what.” I held up a finger. “Finishing that thought might make you happy in the short-term, but keeping it to yourself will make you not get punched in the mouth in the long-term.” I smiled sweetly as a woman with my kinds of scars could. “A simple pleasure, sir, but a lasting one.”

  Ralp glanced me over again, rubbed his mouth thoughtfully, and bobbed his head. “Yeah, I’d say you’re right about that.”

  “But I do have something just as good.” I tossed another three knuckles onto the bar. As he reached for them, I slammed something else in front of him. “That is, assuming you can make me happy.”

  I unfolded the paper, slid it over. Scrawled in ink across its yellow was a leering mask of an opera actor upon a headful of wild hair, tastefully framed in a black box with a very large sum written beneath it and the words DEATH WARRANT above it.

  “Son of a bitch!” Ralp’s eyebrows rose, along with his voice. “You’re looking for that son of a bitch?”

  I held a finger to my lips, glanced out the corner of my eye. The youths hadn’t seemed to notice that particular outburst, their eyes still on their bottle.

  “He has a name,” I said. “Daiga the Phantom. What do you know about him?”

  When you’re in my line of work, you start to read faces pretty well. You can tell who the liars are just by looking at them. And I could tell by the wrinkles around Ralp’s eyes and mouth that he was used to smiling big and wide. Which meant he had to have told a few lies in his day, probably most of them to himself.

  That didn’t make him good at it.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’ve heard the name, but nothing else.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “I know whatever they’re offering for his death can’t be worth him coming for me.” Ralp looked at me, pointedly.

  I looked back. And I, just as pointedly, pulled my cloak aside to reveal the hilt of the sword at my hip.

  “He has something I want,” I replied.

  “Hope you find someone else who can give it to you.” He searched for something to busy his hands, eventually settling on one of the many dirty glasses and began to polish it. “I don’t know anything of mages, let alone Vagrants like that … man. They’re funny stories you tell around the bar. I haven’t had enough customers for that in a long time.” He sniffed. “Truth is, madame, I don’t know that I’d even notice if someone like that showed up around here.”

  “Birdshit.” I leaned in even closer, hissed through my teeth. “I’ve been here three days and the most exciting thing I saw was an old man accusing his ox of lechery.”

  “He has a condition—”

  “And before I came in here, I glanced around back and saw your shipment.” I narrowed my eyes. “Lot of crates of wine for a man with no customers. Where are you sending them?”

  Ralp stared at the bar. “I don’t know. But if you don’t get out, I’ll call the peacekeepers and—”

  “Ralp,” I said, frowning, “I’m going to be sad if you make me hurt you over lies this pathetic.”

  “I said I don’t know,” he muttered. �
��Someone else picks them up.”

  “Who? What’s Daiga using them for?”

  “I don’t know any of that, either. I try to know as little as fucking possible about that freak or any other freak like him.” All pretenses gone, there was real fear in his eyes. “I don’t make it my business to know anything about no mage, Vagrant or otherwise. It’s not healthy.”

  “But you’ll take his metal all the same, I see.”

  “I took your metal, too. The rest of the Scar might be flush with gold, but Rin’s Sump is dry as six-day birdshit. If a Vagrant gives me money for not asking questions, I’m all too fucking happy to do it.”

  “Yeah?”

  I pulled the other side of my cloak back, revealing another hilt of a very different weapon. Carved wood, black and shiny as sin, not so much as a splinter out of place. Polished brass glimmered like it just wanted me to take it out and show it off.

  At my hip, I could feel the gun burning, begging to be unleashed.

  “As it turns out, asking questions makes me unhappy, too, Ralp. What do you suppose we do about that?”

  Sweat appeared on Ralp’s brow. He licked his lips, looked wild-eyed at my piece before he looked right back into the ugliest grin I could manage.

  Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t feel particularly great about doing something as pedestrian as flashing a gun. It feels so terribly dramatic, and not in the good way. But you must believe me: I was expecting this to go smoothly. I hadn’t prepared anything cleverer at the time. And, if I’m honest, this particular gun makes one hell of a statement.

  I certainly wasn’t going to feel bad about this.

  if you enjoyed

  THE LAND YOU NEVER LEAVE

  look out for

  AGE OF ASSASSINS

  The Wounded Kingdom: Book One

  by

  RJ Barker

  The first in a new epic fantasy trilogy set in a world ravaged by magic, featuring a cast of assassins, knights, and ambitious noblemen.

  Girton Club-Foot has no family, a crippled leg, and is apprenticed to the best assassin in the land.

  He’s learning the art of taking lives, but his latest mission tasks him with a far more difficult challenge: save a life. Someone is trying to kill the heir to the throne, and it is up to Girton to uncover the traitor and prevent the prince’s murder—and his own.

  It’s a game of assassin versus assassin.

  Chapter 1

  We were attempting to enter Castle Maniyadoc through the night soil gate and my master was in the sort of foul mood only an assassin forced to wade through a week’s worth of shit can be. I was far more sanguine about our situation. As an assassin’s apprentice you become inured to foulness. It is your lot.

  “Girton,” said Merela Karn. That is my master’s true name, though if I were to refer to her as anything other than “Master” I would be swiftly and painfully reprimanded. “Girton,” she said, “if one more king, queen or any other member of the blessed classes thinks a night soil gate is the best way to make an unseen entrance to their castle, you are to run them through.”

  “Really, Master?”

  “No, not really,” she whispered into the night, her breath a cloud in the cold air. “Of course not really. You are to politely suggest that walking in the main gate dressed as masked priests of the dead gods is less conspicuous. Show me a blessed who doesn’t know that the night soil gate is an easy way in for an enemy and I will show you a corpse.”

  “You have shown me many corpses, Master.”

  “Be quiet, Girton.”

  My master is not a lover of humour. Not many assassins are; it is a profession that attracts the miserable and the melancholic. I would never put myself into either of those categories, but I was bought into the profession and did not join by choice.

  “Dead gods in their watery graves!” hissed my master into the night. “They have not even opened the grate for us.” She swung herself aside whispering, “Move, Girton!” I slipped and slid crabwise on the filthy grass of the slope running from the river below us up to the base of the towering castle walls. Foulness farted out of the grating to join the oozing stream that ran down the motte and joined the river.

  A silvery smudge marred the riverbank in the distance; it looked like a giant paint-covered thumb had been placed over it. In the moonlight it was quite beautiful, but we had passed near as we sneaked in, and I knew it was the same livid yellow as the other sourings which scarred the Tired Lands. There was no telling how old this souring was, and I wondered how big it had been originally and how much blood had been spilled to shrink it to its present size. I glanced up at the keep. This side had few windows and I thought the small souring could be new, but that was a silly, childish thought. The blades of the Landsmen kept us safe from sorcerers and the magic which sucked the life from the land. There had been no significant magic used in the Tired Lands since the Black Sorcerer had risen, and he had died before I had been born. No, what I saw was simply one of many sores on the land—a place as dead as the ancient sorcerer who made it. I turned from the souring and did my best to imagine it wasn’t there, though I was sure I could smell it, even over the high stink of the night soil drain.

  “Someone will pay for arranging this, Girton, I swear,” said my master. Her head vanished into the darkness as she bobbed down to examine the grate once more. “This is sealed with a simple five-lever lock.” She did not even breathe heavily despite holding her entire weight on one arm and one leg jammed into stonework the black of old wounds. “You can open this, Girton. You need as much practice with locks as you can get.”

  “Thank you, Master,” I said. I did not mean it. It was cold, and a lock is far harder to manipulate when it is cold.

  And when it is covered in shit.

  Unlike my master, I am no great acrobat. I am hampered by a clubbed foot, so I used my weight to hold me tight against the grating even though it meant getting covered in filth. On the stone columns either side of the grate the forlorn remains of minor gods had been almost chipped away. On my right only a pair of intricately carved antlers remained, and on my left a pair of horns and one solemn eye stared out at me. I turned from the eye and brought out my picks, sliding them into the lock with shaking fingers and feeling within using the slim metal rods.

  “What if there are dogs, Master?”

  “We kill them, Girton.”

  There is something rewarding in picking a lock. Something very satisfying about the click of the barrels and the pressure vanishing as the lock gives way to skill. It is not quite as rewarding done while a castle’s toilets empty themselves over your body, but a happy life is one where you take your pleasures where you can.

  “It is open, Master.”

  “Good. You took too long.”

  “Thank you, Master.” It was difficult to tell in the darkness, but I was sure she smiled before she nodded me forward. I hesitated at the edge of the pitch-dark drain.

  “It looks like the sort of place you’d find Dark Ungar, Master.”

  “The hedgings are just like the gods, Girton—stories to scare the weak-minded. There’s nothing in there but stink and filth. You’ve been through worse. Go.”

  I slithered through the gate, managing to make sure no part of my skin or clothing remained clean, and into the tunnel that led through the keep’s curtain wall. Somewhere beyond I could hear the lumpy splashes of night soil being shovelled into the stream that ran over my feet. The living classes in the villages keep their piss and night soil and sell it to the tanneries and dye makers, but the blessed classes are far too grand for that, and their castles shovel their filth out into the rivers—as if to gift it to the populace. I have crawled through plenty of filth in my fifteen years, from the thankful, the living and the blessed; it all smells equally bad.

  Once we had squeezed through the opening we were able to stand, and my master lit a glow-worm lamp, a small wick that burns with a dim light that can be amplified or shut off by a cleverly interlocking
set of mirrors. Then she lifted a gloved hand and pointed at her ear.

  I listened.

  Above the happy gurgle of the stream running down the channel—water cares nothing for the medium it travels through—I heard the voices of men as they worked. We would have to wait for them to move before we could proceed into the castle proper, and whenever we have to wait I count out the seconds the way my master taught me—one, my master. Two, my master. Three, my master—ticking away in my mind like the balls of a water clock as I stand idle, filth swirling round my ankles and my heart beating out a nervous tattoo.

  You get used to the smell. That is what people say.

  It is not true.

  Eight minutes and nineteen seconds passed before we finally heard the men laugh and move on. Another signal from my master and I started to count again. Five minutes this time. Human nature being the way it is you cannot guarantee someone will not leave something and come back for it.

  When the five minutes had passed we made our way up the night soil passage until we could see dim light dancing on walls caked with centuries of filth. My own height plus a half above us was the shovelling room. Above us the door creaked and then we heard footsteps, followed by voices.

  “… so now we’re done and Alsa’s in the heir’s guard. Fancy armour and more pay.”

  “It’s a hedging’s deal. I’d sooner poke out my own eyes and find magic in my hand than serve the fat bear, he’s a right yellower.”

  “Service is mother though, aye?”

  Laughter followed. My master glanced up through the hole, chewing on her lip. She held up two fingers before speaking in the Whisper-That-Flies-to-the-Ear so only I could hear her.

  “Guards. You will have to take care of them,” she said. I nodded and started to move. “Don’t kill them unless you absolutely have to.”