Liar's Bargain: A Novel

by Tim Pratt

  “You tried to break in?” Rodrick said.

  The Specialist nodded. “I did. The former guard told me about a back entrance, accessible through an old tunnel, forgotten and never guarded.” He sighed. “At some point since the blind librarian’s exile, they started guarding it. I wonder what other security measures they might have put in place, after his accident. I didn’t get far enough to find out.”

  Rodrick whistled. “What were you hoping to get your hands on?”

  “Oh, there are a few volumes I’ve heard about. I’d like to cart off the whole place, of course, but I’d settle for an hour to peruse the stacks and choose a few indispensable items.”

  Rodrick nodded. “All right. We’ll do it tonight.”

  “Why does he get to go first?” Eldra objected.

  “He doesn’t,” Rodrick said. “We’re going to do yours today.”

  She smiled, dipped her toast in her egg yolk, and offered Rodrick a bite.

  * * *

  “Why do you want this ring anyway?” Rodrick said.

  “Would you believe it’s a family heirloom?”

  They were lounging on the grass in a shady park, with a good view of a parade ground where a group of infantry crusaders were drilling marching maneuvers, moving in matched step with their pikes held at the ready, periodically dropping to their knees to create a wall of spikes in a maneuver designed to impale charging enemy cavalry. What did orc cavalry even ride? Dire wolves? Carnivorous horses? Big lizards? He hoped he never had to find out.

  “I might believe it’s a valuable family heirloom,” he said.

  She chuckled. “It’s not, particularly. A signet ring that belonged to my husband’s grandfather, and was passed down through the generations, son to son. It features the family crest, a sort of stylized blackbird. I always thought it looked like a bird with its head bent to pick lice out of its own armpit, or wingpit, but that wasn’t an observation I ever shared.”

  “So one of those, ah, fine young men of Lastwall over there is, what, your grandson?”

  “Close. I’m almost ninety years old, Rodrick. True, I started having children a bit late, but my progeny didn’t. My oldest grandchild is nearly forty now, and his son, my great-grandson, is an idealistic youth of eighteen. Firstborn, too. Renounced all claim on his family titles in order to fight for righteousness and glory. The only reason he’s not already a corpse being eaten by demons at the Worldwound is because the family convinced him there was more honor in joining the crusaders of Lastwall. Since the demons began erupting from the ground up north, Lastwall’s had trouble getting as many recruits, you see. The really war-crazed zealots with dreams of glory all go to Mendev to die in the killing fields there. The family convinced young Tobern there that it would be more meaningful to come here, where the help is more desperately needed. Also, of course, it’s a bit safer in Lastwall, though they didn’t mention that part. Tobern has the signet ring. I doubt anyone else in the family even remembers it. Why would they? No one’s used it for anything but putting a mark on blobs of wax on parchment in generations.”

  “Are we going to have to pluck it off his finger?” Rodrick said. “We’ve already stolen one piece of jewelry off a crusader, so I don’t see why we can’t do it again.”

  “Ha. No, he doesn’t wear the ring, and that ploy wouldn’t work on him anyway. Tobern isn’t as susceptible to the distractions of the flesh and adulterated wine as Andraste was. He’s celibate by choice—though I suppose he might make an exception if Iomedae herself appeared before him and loosened the straps on her armor—and has never touched a drop of alcohol. He came into Lastwall with a great deal of money—his personal inheritance—and he donated all of it to the cause. As a result he was given a commission as a junior officer, and gained his very own tiny room adjoining the barracks where some of the regular soldiers are housed. I have reason to believe the ring is in the chest at the foot of his bed, in a small box of keepsakes and souvenirs—a few letters, a cameo that belonged to his mother, that sort of thing. He’s just a tiny bit sentimental—it’s an occasional weakness in warriors for the cause of good.”

  “You think the ring is there? You don’t know for sure?”

  “I didn’t get close enough to confirm, I’m afraid. I was caught just before I could break into his room. I got unlucky, and was noticed by a crusader who couldn’t be charmed. Warrior ascetics can be so unreasonable. But I was told about the box of keepsakes by a reliable source, and there’s hardly anywhere else in that tiny room where he could keep the ring.”

  “What source? You left your family ages ago.”

  “Oh, some of the maids are still paid to send me letters, though they think they’re sending the notes to business rivals looking for some advantage to exploit. I’ve remained curious about the family fortunes, though less so than I used to be, since most of my relatives are strangers to me now.”

  Rodrick sighed. “Then why do you want the ring? You don’t have much of a sentimental streak.”

  “Nonsense. If I weren’t a little bit sentimental, I wouldn’t be here with you. Let’s just say the ring is the key to something more.”

  “Let’s just say you tell me what the ring is the key to. Surely we’re close enough for that?”

  She chuckled. “Fine. The founder of my husband’s family, the one who made it into a force to be reckoned with, was something of a scoundrel. Indeed, his line of work wasn’t that different from ours, though he plied his trade with less finesse. He was a pirate, with the good sense to take his ill-gotten gains and move them into legitimate businesses once he’d amassed enough of a fortune. He didn’t have any great romanticized love for the outlaw life, you see, unlike some of us: he just knew thieving was the fastest way to gather a great deal of capital. He started as a homeless wharf rat who learned to sail, gathered a group of black-hearted villains who also learned how to sail … and then stole a ship. They were one of many scourges of the sea for a few years, and then he retired. Whether he paid off the rest of his crew, or passed the business to them, or left them all to drown, no one seemed to know. The family didn’t like to talk about their origins.”

  “If I ever have descendants, I’m sure they’ll be similarly ashamed of me,” Rodrick said. “What does this have to do with the ring?”

  “It was our founder’s ring, of course. There was a story in the family, only it was more of a joke, that the old pirate had hidden away a great treasure of gold and jewels in a safe place, in a vault sealed by magic and guarded by monsters, just in case he ever needed to abandon his new, respectable life and start over again. No one really believed it—those who spoke of the treasure said it was a story the old man liked to tell when reliving his glory days, and by all accounts the size of the hoard and its location changed from telling to telling.”

  “Aha,” Rodrick said. “But you have reason to think differently?”

  “I started thinking about it after I took the sun orchid elixir and became young again—because when you become young after being old, Rodrick, you immediately start thinking about how you can stay young. As I’ve said, stealing the elixir again would probably be a bad idea, but if you can amass a nice big fortune … So I became curious about those stories about the vault. It seemed improbable, but worth investigating. In my newly young form, I went to the family estate and claimed to be my own cousin. I was incredibly sad to hear of my own recent death. I had letters—from myself—to prove my identity, and so they welcomed me and let me stay at the estate for a few months. I claimed to be a student of the history of the Inner Sea, and was given free run of the family library and archives by my not-very-bookish descendants. I burrowed through the dust and found ledgers and journals no one had looked at in a century, if not longer, including the personal writings of our piratical family founder. They were in a cipher, but you learn to break codes at the Conservatory right along with how to play the harp and snap necks and make men and women go weak in the knees with a look, so it was the work of only a few d
ays to unravel his mysteries.”

  “And the stories were true.” Rodrick shook his head. “Remarkable. Was there a map with a big X drawn on it, leading you to the treasure?”

  “Nothing so traditional, but in between the lists of grudges and vendettas—and the horrible truth about what he’d done to the rest of his crew—the old man did talk about building a vault, and hiring a wizard to secure it, and then killing the wizard so no one would know how he’d secured it, and keeping the key with him always, and so forth. He was a bit coy about the location of the vault—or else, he just didn’t bother to mention it, because he didn’t expect anyone else to read his journals, and he knew—but I pieced together the details of his journey and figured out where it must be, under a hill near a remote farm we own where the people grow spelt.”

  “I don’t even know what spelt is.”

  “A sort of wheat, I gather. You can eat it or make beer from it. At any rate, I took a trip to the farm … and it turned out to be all hills. Hills upon hills. Why anyone would farm at all in such hilly country is beyond me. I spent the next year poking around hills, trying not to be noticed, looking for traces of magic, or for places where digging had been done, but the vault had been built many years earlier, and all the traces were gone. I’m nothing if not persistent, though, and eventually I found what looked like an old dry well, descended into it, knocked down a crumbling stone wall, and there it was: a little round door, just like the one our great-pirate-father had written about. I crawled down a short hallway, and the passage opened up into a corridor high enough to stand in.” She spread her hands. “There was the vault door, etched with mystic symbols. And utterly indestructible and immovable.”

  “Because you didn’t have the key.”

  “I didn’t. I hadn’t worried about it. I just thought, if there’s a key, there’s a lock, and a lock can be picked … but it wasn’t that kind of lock.”

  “Aha. A magical lock. Which is where the ring comes in.”

  “In the center of the door, right at my eye level, there was a little circle, and inside it, indentations shaped like a blackbird pecking at its own lice. I recognized the design instantly.”

  “So the signet ring is the key. Lovely.”

  “Exactly. I filled the well with rocks to keep anyone else from stumbling upon it, and set out for Lastwall to find my great-grandson Tobern, and here we are.”

  “You know, after we rescue Hrym, if you need help retrieving that treasure…”

  “You sweet, sweet boy.” Eldra patted him on the cheek.

  “Your mistake was trying to break into Tobern’s quarters,” Rodrick said. “When, after all, you could have been invited.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it, then frowned, and then smiled.

  25

  A FAMILY REUNION

  “Cousin Ashima?” Tobern said, bewildered. “Is that really you?” He was young, earnest-looking, and handsome, apart from his jug ears and terrible haircut. He was also large, heavily armed, and standing on the edge of a parade ground with many other large and heavily armed men, so Rodrick decided to keep any observations about ears and grooming to himself.

  Eldra leaned forward and kissed the young crusader on both cheeks, then stepped back, beaming at him. “Tobern! What a fine figure of a man you’ve become! You were, what, a boy of fourteen when I saw you last?”

  “Thirteen.” He stared at her, a smile that wavered between bewilderment and delight on his face. “I—I’m sorry, I just wasn’t expecting … What are you doing here?”

  Rodrick tried to imagine what it would have been like to have Eldra wandering the halls of his house when he’d been thirteen, and knew immediately what sort of impression she’d probably made on Tobern.

  She twirled her parasol prettily and laughed. “Oh, I know, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to accost you in public this way, and when you’re busy training besides. I’ve just had the hardest time getting in touch with you!” She wrinkled her nose. “I know you must be terribly busy, but I thought you’d at least visit the inn where I’m staying. I know I arrived a few days early, but I thought by now—”

  Tobern frowned. “Cousin, I had no idea you were staying anywhere! I haven’t heard from you in years.”

  Rodrick snorted a laugh and tried to look like a crass hireling. “Told you, ma’am.”

  Tobern gave him a speculative look, and Rodrick ducked his chin and knuckled his forehead. Perhaps that was a bit much, but the boy was an aristocrat by breeding, and if you bowed and scraped the way they expected, they tended to stop looking at you closely.

  Eldra frowned. “You mean didn’t get my letter?”

  Tobern shook his head, the very picture of bafflement. Rodrick thought rather unkindly of the confused way puppies looked if you hid their toys under a blanket. “No, I didn’t, but sending messages can be unreliable. What did your letter say?”

  “Oh.” She pouted. “Many things, of course—but mainly that I was visiting Lastwall, and hoped I’d be able to see you.”

  He shook his head. “This is an odd place to come for a holiday, Cousin. I thought you’d returned to Jalmeray?”

  “I did indeed, to write papers on what I’d learned about the history of our family in the Inner Sea. Even on my faraway island I received the occasional tidbit of news, though, and when I heard you’d joined the crusaders of Lastwall I realized how little I knew about the place. I began doing research, and, well.” She beamed. “It’s fascinating. Such a grand and glorious tradition you’ve joined, protecting the world from the restless spirit of that monstrous conqueror!”

  Tobern blinked at her. “Ah. Yes. It’s—yes. Mostly these days we’re concerned with the orc threat, of course, but many of us spend at least some time watching over the Whispering Tyrant’s tomb.”

  “Oh, I’m sure there are all sorts of nuances that escape me—there’s only so much that books can tell you, which is why I’m here. I want to bring word of the glory of Lastwall’s crusaders back to Jalmeray.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “There are those among the Vudrani who think the denizens of the Inner Sea are barbarous, devoid of fine feeling, nobility, and virtue. I want to show them how wrong they are. If I write an account of the crusaders of Lastwall, the most noble and honorable people on the entire continent, I think I could change their minds. It could create a new atmosphere of warmth between the nations, and perhaps even inspire Vudrani fighters to join your cause here! What a coup! And you, Tobern—you could be the key to the whole thing.” She squinted at the sky, or rather, at the underside of her parasol. “It’s terribly hot in the sun—could we go to your rooms and discuss this further?”

  Rodrick suppressed a chuckle at her wilting-flower routine. Jalmeray was orders of magnitude hotter than this for most of the year, but her credulous “cousin” didn’t seem to realize that.

  Tobern glanced at the parade field, where the crusaders were packing up their gear and departing, with much gruff rumbling and manly camaraderie. “I—I have a bit of free time, yes.” He glanced at me. “Who’s your, ah…”

  “Hmm? Oh, that’s just Rodrick. He’s very reliable, and he’s kept me out of trouble more than once.”

  The crusader looked relieved. “That’s good. I’m glad you have someone looking out for you. Vellumis is very safe, but some of the countryside hereabouts is … less secure.”

  “Oh, you must tell me all about it, back in your room…”

  * * *

  They’d discussed what to do once they were within reach of the signet ring. A normal happy reunion would have involved drinking, and they could have slipped the last precious drops of the Specialist’s sleeping potion into a glass of wine and stolen the ring once Tobern passed out, but of course he never touched the stuff. For much the same reason, seduction was out, even though it was easy to steal from a man sleeping naked beside you. Tobern might certainly think impure thoughts about her—“I’d be insulted if he didn’t,” Eldra noted—but he was sufficiently yo
ung and idealistic and iron-willed that she didn’t think he’d give in. She also vetoed Rodrick’s second-best idea, hitting him over the head with something heavy and stealing lots of things. “He is family, you know.”

  They finally settled on a more straightforward approach, with the bashing-over-the-head idea as a fallback.

  Tobern’s rank was high enough that he had a small stove in his quarters, and so they were able to drink tea, which Rodrick had always considered a foul concoction. Eldra loved it, but only proper Vudrani tea, not the “vile piss-water” they served on this continent. The two of them both made appreciative noises as they sipped what Tobern gave them anyway.

  Eldra chattered away about her imaginary experiences as a scholar in Jalmeray, and Tobern gradually opened up and talked about his motives for coming to Lastwall, which was all the usual idealistic twaddle about giving something back to society and the importance of leading a life with real meaning and so on. If he’d said, “I’m bloodthirsty and want to lop off orc heads by the score,” Rodrick would have found it equally distasteful, but at least that would have been comprehensible.

  Eldra and Tobern sat together on the bed—as the hired help, Rodrick made do with a stool in the corner—and she reached over and touched his face. “Do you know,” she said softly, “I hope my son grows up to be a man as noble as you.”

  Tobern blinked. “You have a son?”

  She sighed. “Not yet, but soon, I hope. I have been promised to a fine young man—a distant relation of the thakur, in fact—and we’re to be married in the fall. This is likely my last trip to the Inner Sea for some time. I am eager to start a family, of course, but I’ll miss the opportunity to travel.” Eldra twisted a ring on her finger; it was a nice touch, Rodrick had to admit, and he saw Tobern glance down at her hand and notice. “I’d hoped to stop by your family’s estates to see if perhaps there was some little keepsake or heirloom they’d be willing to part with, that I could give to my son someday, to let him know he has a connection to your people. I know it’s silly, but I just love this land so much, and I’m afraid he’ll grow up without that fondness. I wouldn’t ask for anything valuable, of course—something of purely sentimental value, perhaps one of those little silver figurines your great-grandmother collected, or one of the books I so enjoyed when I stayed that summer, or a piece of jewelry—”