by Julia Knight
“Sorry, m’m.” His lips twisted and he shuffled his feet like a five-year-old caught stealing sweets before he whacked the gawping potboy next to him into pulling Berrie out from under the table while another propped Flashy up in a chair.
Berrie resisted half-heartedly as they made him face the woman. Whatever she’d been after him for–and given the general lawlessness of the region coupled with Berrie’s habit of flashing his money about, it wasn’t hard to guess–he wasn’t looking a very nice prospect, what with all the blood and tears and torn clothes, not to mention the empty purse.
The woman tutted under her breath and a small shower of coins that had, presumably, recently belonged to Berrie cascaded onto the floor at her feet.
“Better,” she said and two men who’d been lurking, unseen by Petri, behind her went to pick up the money while delivering menacing looks to all and sundry. “And don’t forget, you and this miserable inn are here under my sufferance. We have an agreement and I expect you to stick to it.”
She turned away from the barman and his muttered “Yes, m’m, sorry, m’m,” and back to Petri. He gripped the knife and tried to figure his best way out. The door was on his blindside though, and any chance of being subtle had been lost with that eye.
“And who is this wretched little shit?” she asked the crowd.
They fell over themselves to tell her he was Petri Egimont, you know, that bloke what poisoned the prelate, it was in the papers from Reyes.
Her interest perked up. “Really? Isn’t he supposed to be dead? Doesn’t seem to have worked out so well for him anyway.” Then to him, “Is it true? Are you this Petri? A man trained in the duellist’s guild, if I recall. Did you poison the prelate?”
He screwed his courage into the knife in his hand, screwed all that pent up rage and fear too. If he failed here, there was nowhere else to go. If he failed here… he was sick of failing, sick of being a coward, of people looking at him like a freak. “Maybe,” he said and she raised another eyebrow at the accent. “Who the hells are you and why should I care?”
Unexpectedly she laughed at that. “I am what you might call lady of this manor. In a manner of speaking. Valentian, at your service. And why should you care? You look like you need a job, someone to feed you, clothe you. I might be that person. In return, I get a duellist in my pay, someone with a guild education. My lads and lasses,” she indicated the men collecting Berrie’s money, “they’re good boys and girls, and we do well enough in our own small way. But with a duellist to teach them we could be so much more. We could live, rather than merely exist.”
“Highwaymen?”
“Oh, not so high class as all that. More sort of freebooters. My boys and girls need feeding is all. We don’t take too much, and nothing that’ll be much missed. A sheep here, some coin there. A couple of places, like here, we have a little arrangement that keeps these fine upstanding if drunken gentlemen from being dragged to the Shrive, in return for letting us know about likely-looking donors to our cause. We keep our heads down and don’t cause enough trouble for the guards to bother with as a rule. Safer that way.” She looked him up and down again, and nodded to herself. “You look like shit, your sword hand is useless and your left is weak, but there’s something under that layer of crap. I can see by how you hold that knife, the way you stand, that you know what you’re about. We’d never get someone guild-trained else, not without kidnap, and how would we manage to kidnap a duellist without the guild coming down on our heads? Now here you are, guild-trained, supposedly dead, and in dire need of a job, and a bath. Barman! Quick as you can, or quicker. Give this man a good meal and as much beer as he wants.”
Petri shook his head. “I can’t pay.”
The calculated smile that answered brought his stomach into his mouth. “Oh, but you will. One way or another. Sit down, unless you have somewhere else to be?”
A bowl of thick beef soup landed on the table next to him, with a plate of hot bread swimming in butter, a pint of foaming ale. His mind was dizzy with hunger and his stomach told him to agree to any damned thing just to eat. His pride tried to say something but his bloody pride had got him into this mess in the first place.
He sat and shovelled in the soup as fast as he could with his left hand before anyone could take it away, only half listening to what she said. His priorities had changed somewhat over the last months. He’d wanted to be free, but not free to starve to death, to be run out of every town and village and inn for the way his face looked, the way his voice sounded. Not free to be hated everywhere.
“So, Petri,” she said as he mopped up the last of the soup. “What would you rather? A job with me, or freezing to death out there, if this lot don’t kill you first?”
He watched her face, the stillness of it, the intensity–and the seeming honesty in the offer.
“Come with me and they’ll never dare touch you,” she said as he hesitated. “Teach my lads and lasses how to fight properly. All the soup you can eat, and no one will ever dare lay a hand on you again. Because I bet they have, with that face, haven’t they?”
Heat rushed to what was left of his face, shame for it, that he’d let them too, not fought back. “Yes,” was all he said.
“Of course they did. I know, you see, because they used to for the scar on my face–people fear it, I find, fear disfigurement and those that show it, and people attack what they fear. But I found my place, and a use for that fear, how to make it work for me. Maybe you can find your place, a use for their fear of you. You could have a chance to get back at all those pathetic peasants who wouldn’t take you in, who ran you out, who hated you, abandoned you. A place among my little band of outcasts.”
He stopped shovelling and stared at the soup. Oh, he was going to pay for this, one way or another, as she said. But there was nowhere else, no one else and a chance to get some semblance of a life back, maybe even get his revenge, yes, that was tempting. Eneko was dead, but others weren’t. Kass–the word came unbidden, boiled up on the top of a fountain of rage. She’d abandoned him to this, this face, this hand, this fate, of being feared wherever he went, of being tolerated at best, beaten more often. The old Petri had been weak and soft. Maybe the new one could be strong, given half a chance.
He gave Valentian–Scar she said later, call me Scar–a terse nod that seemed all he could manage, and set to the soup again, trying not to think about how he’d fallen so low a bowl of it was the price of his soul.
introducing
If you enjoyed
SWORDS AND SCOUNDRELS,
look out for
THE LEGEND OF ELI MONPRESS
by Rachel Aaron
Eli Monpress is talented. He’s charming. And he’s a thief.
But not just any thief. He’s the greatest thief of the age—and he’s also a wizard. And with the help of his partners—a swordsman with the most powerful magic sword in the world but no magical ability of his own, and a demonseed who can step through shadows and punch through walls—he’s going to put his plan into effect.
The first step is to increase the size of the bounty on his head, so he’ll need to steal some big things. But he’ll start small for now. He’ll just steal something that no one will miss—at least for a while.
Like a king.
CHAPTER 1
In the prison under the castle Allaze, in the dark, moldy cells where the greatest criminals in Mellinor spent the remainder of their lives counting rocks to stave off madness, Eli Monpress was trying to wake up a door.
It was a heavy oak door with an iron frame, created centuries ago by an overzealous carpenter to have, perhaps, more corners than it should. The edges were carefully fitted to lie flush against the stained, stone walls, and the heavy boards were nailed together so tightly that not even the flickering torch light could wedge between them. In all, the effect was so overdone, the construction so inhumanly strong, that the whole black affair had transcended simple confinement and become a monument to the absolute hopelessness of
the prisoner’s situation. Eli decided to focus on the wood; the iron would have taken forever.
He ran his hands over it, long fingers gently tapping in a way living trees find desperately annoying, but dead wood finds soothing, like a scratch behind the ears. At last, the boards gave a little shudder and said, in a dusty, splintery voice, “What do you want?”
“My dear friend,” Eli said, never letting up on his tapping, “the real question here is, what do you want?”
“Pardon?” the door rattled, thoroughly confused. It wasn’t used to having questions asked of it.
“Well, doesn’t it strike you as unfair?” Eli said. “From your grain, anyone can see you were once a great tree. Yet, here you are, locked up through no fault of your own, shut off from the sun by cruel stones with no concern at all for your comfort or continued health.”
The door rattled again, knocking the dust from its hinges. Something about the man’s voice was off. It was too clear for a normal human’s, and the certainty in his words stirred up strange memories that made the door decidedly uncomfortable.
“Wait,” it grumbled suspiciously. “You’re not a wizard, are you?”
“Me?” Eli clutched his chest. “I, one of those confidence tricksters, manipulators of spirits? Why, the very thought offends me! I am but a wanderer, moving from place to place, listening to the spirits’ sorrows and doing what little I can to make them more comfortable.” He resumed the pleasant tapping, and the door relaxed against his fingers.
“Well”—it leaned forward a fraction, lowering its creak conspiratorially—“if that’s the case, then I don’t mind telling you the nails do poke a bit.” It rattled, and the nails stood out for a second before returning to their position flush against the wood. The door sighed. “I don’t mind the dark so much, or the damp. It’s just that people are always slamming me, and that just drives the sharp ends deeper. It hurts something awful, but no one seems to care.”
“Let me have a look,” Eli said, his voice soft with concern. He made a great show of poring over the door and running his fingers along the joints. The door waited impatiently, creaking every time Eli’s hands brushed over a spot where the nails rubbed. Finally, when he had finished his inspection, Eli leaned back and tucked his fist under his chin, obviously deep in thought. When he didn’t say anything for a few minutes, the door began to grow impatient, which is a very uncomfortable feeling for a door.
“Well?” it croaked.
“I’ve found the answer,” Eli said, crouching down on the doorstep. “Those nails, which give you so much trouble, are there to pin you to the iron frame. However”—Eli held up one finger in a sage gesture—“they don’t stay in of their own accord. They’re not glued in; there’s no hook. In fact, they seem to be held in place only by the pressure of the wood around them. So”—he arched an eyebrow—“the reason they stay in at all, the only reason, is because you’re holding on to them.”
“Of course!” the door rumbled. “How else would I stay upright?”
“Who said you had to stay upright?” Eli said, throwing out his arms in a grand gesture. “You’re your own spirit, aren’t you? If those nails hurt you, why, there’s no law that you have to put up with it. If you stay in this situation, you’re making yourself a victim.”
“But…” The door shuddered uncertainly.
“The first step is admitting you have a problem.” Eli gave the wood a reassuring pat. “And that’s enough for now. However”—his voice dropped to a whisper—“if you’re ever going to live your life, really live it, then you need to let go of the roles others have forced on you. You need to let go of those nails.”
“But, I don’t know…” The door shifted back and forth.
“Indecision is the bane of all hardwoods.” Eli shook his head. “Come on, it doesn’t have to be forever. Just give it a try.”
The door clanged softly against its frame, gathering its resolve as Eli made encouraging gestures. Then, with a loud bang, the nails popped like corks, and the boards clattered to the ground with a long, relieved sigh.
Eli stepped over the planks and through the now-empty iron doorframe. The narrow hall outside was dark and empty. Eli looked one way, then the other, and shook his head.
“First rule of dungeons,” he said with a wry grin, “don’t pin all your hopes on a gullible door.”
With that, he stepped over the sprawled boards, now mumbling happily in peaceful, nail-free slumber, and jogged off down the hall toward the rendezvous point.
In the sun-drenched rose garden of the castle Allaze, King Henrith of Mellinor was spending money he hadn’t received yet.
“Twenty thousand gold standards!” He shook his teacup at his Master of the Exchequer. “What does that come out to in mellinos?”
The exchequer, who had answered this question five times already, responded immediately. “Thirty-one thousand five hundred at the current rate, my lord, or approximately half Mellinor’s yearly tax income.”
“Not bad for a windfall, eh?” The king punched him in the shoulder good-naturedly. “And the Council of Thrones is actually going to pay all that for one thief? What did the bastard do?”
The Master of the Exchequer smiled tightly and rubbed his shoulder. “Eli Monpress”—he picked up the wanted poster that was lying on the table, where the roughly sketched face of a handsome man with dark, shaggy hair grinned boyishly up at them—“bounty, paid dead or alive, twenty thousand Council Gold Standard Weights. Wanted on a hundred and fifty-seven counts of grand larceny against a noble person, three counts of fraud, one charge of counterfeiting, and treason against the Rector Spiritualis.” He squinted at the small print along the bottom of the page. “There’s a separate bounty of five thousand gold standards from the Spiritualists for that last count, which has to be claimed independently.”
“Figures.” The king slurped his tea. “The Council can’t even ink a wanted poster without the wizards butting their noses in. But”—he grinned broadly—“money’s money, eh? Someone get the Master Builder up here. It looks like we’ll have that new arena after all.”
The order, however, was never given, for at that moment, the Master Jailer came running through the garden gate, his plumed helmet gripped between his white-knuckled hands.
“Your Majesty.” He bowed.
“Ah, Master Jailer.” The king nodded. “How is our money bag liking his cell?”
The jailer’s face, already pale from a job that required him to spend his daylight hours deep underground, turned ghostly. “Well, you see, sir, the prisoner, that is to say”—he looked around for help, but the other officials were already backing away—“he’s not in his cell.”
“What?” The king leaped out of his seat, face scarlet. “If he’s not in his cell, then where is he?”
“We’re working on that right now, Majesty!” the jailer said in a rush. “I have the whole guard out looking for him. He won’t get out of the palace!”
“See that he doesn’t,” the king growled. “Because if he’s not back in his cell within the hour…”
He didn’t need to finish the threat. The jailer saluted and ran out of the garden as fast as his boots would carry him. The officials stayed frozen where they were, each waiting for the others to move first as the king began to stalk around the garden, sipping his tea with murderous intent.
“Your Majesty,” squeaked a minor official, who was safely hidden behind the crowd. “This Eli seems a dangerous character. Shouldn’t you move to safer quarters?”
“Yes!” The Master of Security grabbed the idea and ran with it. “If that thief could get out of his cell, he can certainly get into the castle!” He seized the king’s arm. “We must get you to a safer location, Your Majesty!”
This was followed by a chorus of cries from the other officials.
“Of course!”
“His majesty’s safety is of utmost importance!”
“We must preserve the monarchy at all costs!”
Any
objections the king may have had were overridden as a surge of officials swept down and half carried, half dragged him into the castle.
“Put me down, you idiots!” the king bellowed, but the officials were good and scared now. Each saw only the precipitous fall that awaited him personally if there were a regime change, and fear gave them courage as they pushed their protesting monarch into the castle, down the arching hallways, and into the throne room.
“Don’t worry, Your Majesty,” the Master of Security said, organizing two teams to shut the great, golden doors. “That thief won’t get in.”
The king, who had given up fighting somewhere during the last hundred feet, just harrumphed and stomped up the dais stairs to his throne to wait it out. Meanwhile, the officials dashed back and forth across the marble—locking the parlor doors, overturning the elegant end tables, peeking behind the busts of former kings—checking for every possible, or impossible, security vulnerability. Henrith did his best to ignore the nonsense. Being royalty meant enduring people’s endless fussing over your safety, but when the councilors started talking about boarding over the stained-glass windows, the king decided that enough was enough. He stood from his throne and took a breath in preparation for a good bellow when a tug on his robes stopped him short. The king looked down incredulously to see who would dare, and found two royal guards in full armor standing at attention beside the royal dais.
“Sir!” The shorter guard saluted. “The Master of Security has assigned us to move you to a safer location.”
“I thought this was a safer location.” The king sighed.
“Sir!” The soldier saluted again. “With all due respect, the throne room is the first place the enemy would look, and with this ruckus, he could easily get through.”
“You’re right about that,” the king said, glowering at the seething mass of panicked officials. “Let’s get out of here.”
