Cold Iron (Masters & Mages)

by Miles Cameron

  Aranthur kept going down the stairs. As they climbed the stone steps above the canal, he said, ‘The duel was because of the rebellion.’

  ‘Of course.’ Drako paused. ‘It was still stupid.’

  ‘Really? Better in the salle than in a back alley with his bravos.’

  ‘That may still happen,’ Drako said. ‘We’re being followed.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  It was late evening; the sky was just barely pink somewhere off to the west over Volta and the Iron Circle. The narrow streets seemed to be full of people, most of them armed.

  ‘I really need to spend some time on you. How did it go with Dahlia?’ he asked.

  ‘Badly,’ Aranthur said. ‘I wrote her a poem and made her a belt-purse. She … suggested I was treating her as a whore.’

  ‘Darkness Falling!’ Drako cursed. ‘I had forgotten how exciting youth is. She asked me … Never mind.’ The aristocrat passed Aranthur, moving quickly, and turned to cross the canal on a very narrow bridge. ‘Listen, you know that aristocrats are … forbidden …’ He shrugged and looked back. ‘This is going to sound asinine. Forbidden to fornicate with other aristocrats. Casually, if you take my meaning. We can only marry each other. It prevents unwanted alliances and babies.’

  Aranthur walked along, mulling this over.

  ‘So you … What?’ he asked, suddenly angry and confused.

  ‘Don’t look back. So, the way you spot people following you is more a lifestyle than a technique,’ he said. Their shoes made the wooden slats of the bridge sound hollowly beneath them, like a bass drum in a taverna act. ‘But the simplest principle is this: look for people to appear multiple times, in areas well spread apart, so that it can’t be logically explained. Then assume they are following you.’

  Drako was a little breathless because he was moving fast. Now he turned along the richer side of the canal, led Aranthur through an alley so narrow that they could touch the walls on either side, and which smelt of cat urine, and they emerged into one of the smaller temple squares: the Lady of the Law. There stood the Lady, with offerings around her feet – some to her as the Lady and some as Sophia.

  ‘Dahlia …’ Drako began, and then he paused. ‘Later. Now we go to the temple.’

  The two of them went in through the open main doors. Aranthur was not, particularly, a devotee of the Lady and hadn’t been to many chapels, but this one was superb. It was in a wealthy neighbourhood full of judges and lawyers from the Great Hall, the main law court, and the hangings and incense burners and hanging lamps were beautiful.

  Drako bought them both sacrificial cakes from a table by the portico and they offered them at a station in the nave. Aranthur knelt and made a prayer, which turned out to be about Dahlia.

  Drako was smiling. ‘You really are a country boy. Nobody comes here to pray. Good place to make love, though. The Lady never seems to mind. Come on.’

  He led the way and Aranthur followed, and they walked up into the sacred area. Aranthur felt vaguely blasphemous.

  Drako clearly had no hesitation at all. He passed the rail and led the way through a low door into a room that smelled of incense. He walked to a side door and opened it.

  ‘No noise, now,’ he said, and they were back out in the darkness.

  They were at a back corner of the temple, and Aranthur could see the square and alley outside as a blur of light. And indeed, two men passed the end of the street, and paused. They were almost close enough to touch.

  ‘They went inside,’ said a deep voice.

  ‘I don’t work in temples,’ said another. ‘Bad luck.’

  ‘No shit.’

  There was the sound of further footsteps, and then silence.

  ‘We could follow them,’ Aranthur said.

  ‘No,’ Drako said. ‘Too risky. Come.’

  They went up the street of tall stone houses. They were close to Master Sparthos’ salle, a very good neighbourhood. The buildings became shorter, more wood than stone, and the smell of the canal vanished to be replaced with the smell of rotting garbage and human waste.

  ‘Ah, the beauties of the Aqueduct,’ Drako said.

  ‘It is very late for the Easterners,’ Aranthur said. ‘Sasan might be asleep, or full of bhang or ghat or thuryx.’ He shrugged. ‘Let’s try his corner. And I know another man who might help us.’

  ‘In the Pinnacle, after dark.’ Drako whistled. ‘Well, I wanted a life of adventure.’

  The two of them went up the spine of the city until they were at the edge of the Pinnacle. Aranthur went from pillar to pillar, and asked the children about Sasan, but none of them had ever heard of him. Drako offered money, and suddenly they had dozens of people who all claimed to know where to find him.

  ‘Fuck,’ muttered the officer. ‘I know better, too.’

  It took time, and some Armean, to extricate them. Two boys wouldn’t leave them; they were small, and both had big eyes that seemed to glitter in the weird torchlight under the great aqueduct.

  ‘Please, syr, syr,’ they said, holding out long, narrow hands. ‘Please, please. My mother has bone plague, my father is dead. Please, please.’

  Aranthur had no money, but he convinced Drako to hand over some obols.

  ‘More, more,’ chanted the two boys.

  Drako nodded. ‘How about I cut off your hands?’

  They ran.

  Aranthur looked at him by torchlight.

  ‘You’re too soft,’ Drako said.

  ‘Am I?’ Aranthur said. ‘I’m really just a farm boy, and an Arnaut. I’m not sophisticated enough for you or Dahlia. And I don’t threaten children.’

  Drako didn’t reply. They had no guides, and it was absolutely dark except where a woman had a small lantern or a man had an open flame. Four men were gambling for bronze obols. A woman was trying to get her children to sleep on the packed dirt with no shelter. Aranthur spoke enough Armean to know that she was telling them that it was all right, an adventure, they were brave little warriors and they would be great men someday.

  ‘We’re lost,’ Drako muttered.

  ‘Again,’ said a voice.

  Ulgul, the priest of Apoul, appeared out of the darkness under the arches.

  Aranthur embraced him, surprised at his own feeling of affection.

  ‘We’re trying to find Sasan,’ he said.

  Ulgul sounded odd. ‘Sasan? Ah, the poet. You know it is the most common name in Safi, eh? Yes, he’s back. He tells stories to melt the heart and then takes his fee to buy thuryx.’

  ‘I want to take him away to live with me,’ Aranthur said.

  ‘You’ll have to give him a reason to live first,’ Ulgul said. ‘Come.’

  They walked downhill, to the edge of the Aqueduct. There were huddles of carts and wagons – richer refugees had them, and most had already sold their animals. The carts became homes – better than the gravel and mud under the arches.

  ‘We’re being followed again,’ Drako said.

  Ulgul passed under a torch used by a pimp to display his wares. His slurred voice was explained; his jaw was obviously broken, his face fat with tissue damage, and one eye was closed from swelling.

  ‘Famuz?’ Aranthur spat.

  ‘And others. The vermin who prey on these poor souls dislike me. And I revel in it. My god will protect me, though.’

  ‘He’s not doing such a very good job so far,’ Drako muttered. ‘So the two thugs on us are al Ghugha soldiers?’

  ‘You know a great deal if you know al Ghugha,’ Ulgul said. ‘Maybe. Maybe just a couple of broken men serving for pay.’

  ‘Or maybe something worse. Aranthur here is always the centre of every fucking discontent. It’s his special talent. Here they come.’

  Two men emerged into the light of the pimp’s torch. They crossed their arms, and one sent a small boy running off.

  ‘Darkness and Light. Well, let’s not wait to see who comes, eh?’

  Drako walked forward to the two big men. They had strong, harsh faces; on
e had tattoos up his neck and across his forehead.

  Aranthur drew his sword three fingers and followed Drako, painfully aware of the Master of Arts and her order.

  ‘They are just men, like you,’ Ulgul said.

  Drako’s expression was unreadable.

  ‘You wait here,’ said one of the men.

  Drako nodded. ‘I don’t think so. And if you try, in any way, to interfere with my business, I’ll kill you and your friend and maybe come back and kill a lot more of your type. That would be bad for business.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re fucking with, foreigner,’ the tattooed man said. He half drew a cutlass from his belt.

  Drako killed him from the scabbard, a draw to a rising cut that caught his jaw; the wrist roll put the point through the back of his head. Drako pivoted on his hips, withdrawing the weapon.

  ‘That was unnecessary,’ Ulgul said with pleading in his voice.

  ‘Shut up,’ Drako said. The second man was backing away.

  ‘You killed one of my people,’ Famuz said from the torchlight.

  Drako shrugged. ‘You need better people.’

  Famuz spread his hands. ‘I try not to mix in the Byzas world. But you crossed the line, and I will make an example of you.’

  There were other men moving.

  Drako shrugged. ‘I am an Imperial officer, and your threats are wind.’

  ‘The Pinnacle is mine,’ Famuz said.

  Drako shook his head. ‘You live here on the Emperor’s sufferance. You are a petty criminal who bathes in the blood of his own people.’

  Aranthur caught the move – in the crowd rapidly forming, a skinny young man was moving closer, closer …

  Aranthur moved, his sword coming from his scabbard.

  The skinny man had a pair of daggers.

  It was too dark for finesse, and Aranthur cut, a simple, overhand cut.

  The daggers rose to guard the man’s head. Aranthur kicked him between the legs with all his might – a boyhood trick – and the would-be assassin rolled.

  Aranthur’s blade caught the man’s ear and severed it.

  Aranthur heard a puffer’s flat crack. The skinny assassin rose, daggers flashing in a butterfly of steel.

  Aranthur cut, not very hard, for the man’s left elbow, which stuck out at an unnatural angle. The daggers moved, both together, and having deceived both weapons, Aranthur thrust. Skill, and the darkness, and Tyche, put his point in under the man’s throat.

  The man took a moment to fall. He voided his bowels, and his eyes, full of some drug, were locked on Aranthur in the fickle torchlight as his throat slid off Aranthur’s point. It seemed to happen very slowly.

  Aranthur’s mind closed. It was like a door slamming shut; he was aware of his surroundings, but he wasn’t thinking.

  The man lay, his heels drumming the packed dirt, and then he gurgled something and stopped moving.

  ‘Any more flunkies?’ Drako said, behind Aranthur. He had a smoking puffer in his hand, the smoke lit by the pimp’s torch.

  Famuz lay on his back, his face ruined by the puffer ball.

  Ulgul knelt by the skinny assassin, praying. Then he looked up.

  ‘You bastards,’ he said. ‘Now I must start trying to earn their trust all over again.’

  Aranthur didn’t have a thought in his head. He was cold, and empty.

  Drako turned to the surviving al Ghugha soldier.

  ‘I told you I’d be bad for business,’ he said. ‘Don’t make me come back here.’

  He turned to Aranthur. ‘Let’s find Sasan,’ he said wearily. ‘I’ll have to write a report.’ He grabbed Aranthur’s arm. ‘Come on, lad. Breathe for me. That’s right.’ He shook his head. ‘Bad business.’

  He took a short red stick from his belt pouch and broke it in two, and Aranthur felt the burst of power. And then a series of pulses – very weak, but persistent.

  ‘Clean-up crew,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  He grabbed Ulgul by the hood of his robe.

  ‘They were going to kill you,’ Drako spat at him.

  ‘Martyrdom is not so terrible,’ Ulgul said. ‘Killing them …’

  ‘They were vermin,’ Drako spat.

  ‘They were men like you,’ Ulgul said.

  Drako sagged. ‘Whatever. Find me Sasan.’

  Ulgul led them sullenly along the wagons. No one followed them; the crowd had vanished while Aranthur was unable to function. He kept remembering the dead man’s eyes and he shook it off, literally shaking his head, and followed the priest into the huddle of tents beyond the wagon park. A few were lit; most were dark, but in the centre of the tent city was another agora and there was light and even music, a very different feel from the area under the Aqueduct. This had once been a temple garden, and the Temple had granted it to the refugees. The smell was better and there was a tang of orange blossom rather than a whiff of faeces.

  Aranthur saw the beet seller’s cart immediately. And there, sitting on the man’s little cart and telling stories, was Sasan. He was high. His hands moved frantically, but his story rolled on, in Armean, and there were a dozen men, a few women, and some children sitting on the dry gravel and listening. Drako and Aranthur joined the little crowd, and when the story drew to a close, some of the people put small coins or glass beads into a cup. One woman, whose hands had no nails, simply bowed deeply, her veil fluttering, before going off.

  ‘You ran away,’ Drako said to the storyteller when all his audience was gone. The labou seller busied himself with his beets.

  Sasan shrugged. ‘You don’t have anything I want. You want to save the world. I want thuryx.’ His hands fluttered like moths.

  ‘I have money. And you made a promise,’ Drako said.

  ‘My promises are worth less than my shit, which is, itself, good fertiliser, and also has so much smack in it that some people could resell it.’

  The addict laughed. His eyes were deeply sunken. His fluttering hands were incredibly frail.

  ‘Sasan,’ Aranthur said, ‘come and live with me.’

  The addict looked at him for a moment. He tilted his head to one side like a very intelligent dog.

  ‘You mean this?’ he asked.

  Aranthur shrugged. ‘Why not?’ He found his decision was made. ‘I want to save something.’

  Sasan bowed from the waist. ‘Maybe tomorrow. And maybe I don’t want to be saved.’

  ‘Now,’ Drako said.

  ‘I don’t really want to right now, attractive as a bed might be,’ Sasan said. Up close, he smelled of thuryx and old sweat.

  Drako leant down and lifted the addict on his shoulder.

  ‘I don’t really want to carry you five stades,’ he said darkly. ‘But by the Lady, I’m going to.’

  Later that night, when Sasan was cleaner and lying peacefully in the bed that had once been Daud’s, Drako sat in the second-best chair with a pipe of stock.

  ‘I don’t like all those armed toffs in the street,’ he said. ‘It is years since we had a House fight.’

  ‘House fight?’ Aranthur asked. ‘Damn it, Drako, I know nothing. Nothing.’ He looked at Drako. ‘What is al Ghugha?’

  ‘A criminal gang. They pretend to have politics, but all they do is sell their girls as whores and run the thuryx trade with Armea.’ Drako sighed.

  ‘Why don’t you do something about them, you being an Imperial officer and everything?’ Aranthur was angry, and drained.

  ‘What do you suggest? Some more judicial killings like tonight? Maybe we’ll just wander the streets and kill people who look bad?’

  ‘Someone must know who they are,’ Aranthur insisted.

  Drako looked at Sasan. ‘Someone might. But I’m not …’ He paused. ‘This isn’t my fight. Or my turf. I …’ He looked away. ‘I can’t save everyone and neither can you. And what I’m fighting makes al Ghugha look like the fucking amateur thugs that they are.’

  ‘What are you fighting, then?’

  Drako was back at the window, looki
ng down at the street, where a dozen bravos in House colours were shouting slogans.

  ‘I’m fighting something that wants to bring about the end of the world,’ he said.

  ‘And is al Ghugha part of it?’

  ‘Al Ghugha is a run-of-the-mill criminal organisation.’ He watched. ‘I’m more worried by the sudden appearance of all these House colours. And the attempt on the General.’

  ‘Do Houses fight?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘Not in a generation. You know what the Blacks and Whites are, right?’

  Aranthur nodded.

  ‘Well. Like that. A House fight is when two of our noble institutions, that is, families, become entangled and the law can’t solve it. They fight. They even have the legal right to do so. But the result is somewhere between a riot and a battle, and it’s ugly.’ Drako shrugged. ‘Ugly, but not my problem unless it’s connected to the real problem. There’s people who watch for such things.’

  ‘That was refreshing,’ Aranthur said, taking the pipe. ‘You told me something.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you much,’ Drako admitted. ‘I don’t really like telling people anything, to be honest. And I’m not honest.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Everything you say is a lie?’ Aranthur said.

  ‘Pretty much. Now – your report. You saw the armour I was looking for on the backs of a bunch of rebels out west, made the right call, and fetched the General. Is that correct?’

  Aranthur took the pipe. ‘Yes.’

  Drako nodded. ‘Well, as best we can tell, now, the Duke of Volta was planning a military coup, much like the one that toppled him. He hired Malconti, who is pretty much the best sell-sword available, and they were to have inside help—’

  ‘What does any of this have to do with the Pure and the Disciples and the Eastern refugees?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘Oho. You do listen when I speak,’ Drako said.

  ‘A sending tried to kill me in this room.’ Aranthur’s voice rose when he said it. He hadn’t realised how much of that he carried with him until that moment. ‘Kati left and never came back. Arnaud died. For something in my travelling case.’ He looked at Drako. ‘Can I guess? You are looking for a shipment of uncustomed kuria crystals.’

  Drako looked at him for a long time. ‘How did you guess that?’