Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series)

by Ben Galley

  ‘Hello,’ replied a deep voice. She could hear the little scratch of a fingernail on a stubbled chin. ‘Can I help you?’ the man asked. Straight to the point.

  ‘Why yes, I believe you can,’ Jeasin smiled again, making sure to pronounce her words as best she could, as she had been told. She held her hand out to the man, palm down.

  A few seconds passed before the shoes took a few more steps forward, and Jeasin found her hand in the surprisingly gentle grip of a rough hand. A pair of lips brushed her skin. Jeasin beamed. She flicked her long hair and bobbed a little courtesy. ‘Jeasin,’ she said.

  ‘A pleasure, I’m sure. Now what was it I can help you with? I’m in a rush you s…’

  ‘I understand you’re a man of means and pleasures, or so they say.’

  Another pause. The voice spoke again, lower this time. ‘I don’t know what you mean…?’

  ‘Well, sir, they say you like your pleasures, and that you have no shortage of means to pay for them,’ she replied. She made sure to comb her fingers through her hair again, making sure it was all in place and tidy. He liked his girls tidy, she had been told, expensive-looking. Expensive sounding.

  ‘And who are they, might I ask?’

  Jeasin looked to the left, towards the canals. ‘The girls from the other side of town. On Gossamer Street. I believe you know the place. They tell many a tale of you, sir.’

  A brusque cough. ‘Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t know what you’re talking about. Look, what is this about?’

  ‘Well, I’m not one of those girls. I’m from this side of town. There are girls here too you know, at a certain house not a dozen streets from here,’ she said. She took a step forward. ‘And we’re just as good.’

  ‘I think you’ve got the wrong pers…’

  Jeasin chuckled, almost letting her accent slip. ‘Serfesson, if I heard right? All the girls in Kiltyrin know about you.’ She smoothed her dress. ‘I am here to show you that the girls on this side of the canal are just as good as the girls,’ she waved a hand at the water, ‘on that side.’

  Serfesson cleared his throat. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m sure they are, but I don’t have the time. Maybe next time I’ll come to see you instead, alright? Now, it was nice meeting you…’ the voice moved past her, the sound of footsteps moving from gravel to the hollow wood of the doorstep. Jeasin turned around to follow.

  ‘But this offer expires,’ she whispered to Serfesson, pulling what she could imagine was her most coy look.

  A key hovered in the mouth of a lock. ‘What offer?’

  ‘No charge. A teaser, you might say. Of what me and my lot can offer.’

  ‘Your lot?’ Serfesson queried. ‘As in…’

  Jeasin inwardly chided herself for letting her act slip. Expensive, she reminded herself. ‘My girls, I mean. My girls and I.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I do hope so.’

  ‘And this offer expires?’

  ‘The moment you close that door with me on this side of it.’

  Another pause. She could hear him looking around, hear his stubble moving against the collar of his tunic. Jeasin took another step forward. ‘I can tell you’re interested. I don’t need my sight to see that.’ She heard Serfesson’s mouth break into a guilty smile; a tiny click of saliva and lips moving across teeth. She smiled back. She held out her hand again, this time palm up.

  ‘I take it you and your girls are discreet? If you know me and my business then you know about my wife.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘So I can take your word?’

  ‘We are most discreet, sir.’

  The rough hand grabbed hers, not so gentle any more. ‘Then come inside. I have a little while.’

  Just before she was ushered inside, Jeasin turned her head slightly and looked to the city, knowing she was hiding somewhere, in the buildings on the other side of the canal, watching the whole thing. Jeasin walked inside, and heard the door lock behind her. Serfesson rubbed his hands together. Jeasin turned, and smiled, and waited.

  ‘Lead the way,’ she said, when Serfesson didn’t move. The air in the house was cold. She could smell the smoke of a log fire, and the sweet aroma of dried lavidern, hanging somewhere above her head.

  ‘Upstairs,’ said a deep voice, and Serfesson grabbed her firmly by the wrist and lead her quickly down a corridor and around a corner. ‘Mind the steps,’ he said, waiting for her to find them with her feet. Jeasin did her best to keep up with him.

  They reached the top of the stairs and he pulled her along another corridor and then another, until they came to a door. A handle rattled and hinges creaked, and she was led inside a room that seemed to be slightly warmer than the rest. Jeasin was manoeuvred to a bed and told to sit, which she did. Her smile was now a permanent fixture of her face. It took years of practice to hold a smile like that. She heard a rustling as Serfesson undid the buttons of his coat. She heard it fall in a heap on the floor nearby.

  ‘Lie down.’

  She did.

  The jangling of a belt buckle now.

  A quiet, muffled thud as the door downstairs quietly slid shut. A sound that only a person that lived half the world through her ears could have possibly heard. Serfesson was not one of these people. Jeasin kept smiling.

  The sound of shoes being kicked off and tossed under the bed.

  Footsteps creeping along the corridor and around a corner.

  More clothes landing in a heap on the floor.

  Serfesson approaching the bed, his hands resting on her knees.

  Jeasin pulled up the edges of her dress, feeling how soft the borrowed fabric felt.

  The creak of an old floorboard down the hall.

  The creak of the slats under the bed as Serfesson leant over her. She could feel his cold, rough hands on her hips.

  The rhythmic stamp of footsteps coming down the corridor, confident now they knew they had their target trapped.

  Now this, Serfesson did hear. Sadly, it was just a moment or two too late.

  The door swung open and the doorhandle bounced off the wall with a bang. Serfesson, an unbuttoned shirt away from stark-naked, looked up in alarm to find a buxom woman and a muscular man in a formal-looking black tunic standing in the doorway. The woman was pointing and jabbing her finger at Serfesson. Her face was beetroot red. ‘See! In the very act! I told you!’

  Serfesson jumped off of Jeasin and grabbed his clothes. ‘Karleah!’

  ‘Husband,’ replied the plump woman. She turned to the man in the black tunic, who was staring at the whole debacle with the most disapproving expression on his face. Karleah put her shaking hands on her rather buxom hips. ‘And do you believe me now?’

  ‘I do,’ said the man, in a dry and monotone voice. Jeasin could feel his eyes on her. She shuffled into a sitting position and smoothed her dress. A calm smile still sat on her face.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Karleah, ‘what are you and the Reever going to do about it?’

  The man in black tore himself away from Jeasin and looked Serfesson up and down. ‘Well, m’lady, you’re absolutely right. An unfaithful husband ‘e truly is. Law dictates a compensation, as you pointed out. I doubt the Reever will ‘ave any objection to it, not after this,’ he said.

  Serfesson turned a shade of red that rivalled his wife’s, crimson thunder. ‘You scheming harlot!’ he shouted. Jeasin was pretty sure he had aimed that at her. She didn’t move. ‘You set me up, didn’t you?!’

  The man in the tunic gingerly tried to grab the half-naked Serfesson and usher him out of the room. ‘Come along you!’ he ordered.

  ‘You won’t get a single coin, Karleah!’ bellowed Serfesson, but it was all useless. After much pushing and yelling and threatening, Serfesson was finally manhandled out of the room and was escorted down the corridor. Karleah hovered in the doorway until she heard the bang of the door below and the faint sound of laughter drifting up from the people in the street. Karleah reached inside her coat and tugged a fat purse from a pocket. She
weighed it in her palm, looking at Jeasin out of the corner of her eyes. The purse jangled.

  ‘As we agreed?’

  ‘As we agreed. Fifty. Gold.’

  Jeasin stood up and smoothed out her rumpled clothes. ‘An’ I can keep the dress?’

  There was a snort. ‘Fine.’

  Jeasin walked over to where she knew the woman was standing and held out her hand. A heavy purse dropped into it and she quickly tucked it between her breasts.

  ‘I don’t want to see you again, hear me? Otherwise this won’t work.’

  Jeasin shrugged and tapped the corner of her right eye with her long, painted fingernail. ‘Can’t promise that. But at least only one of us ‘as to worry ‘bout it.’ She didn’t need her sight to know that Karleah was scowling.

  ‘Time to throw you out, then,’ she said.

  Jeasin was marched out of the room, down the stairs, and to the front door, where Karleah made a great show of pushing the harlot down the steps and into the street. She stumbled, but stayed upright, and listened to the whispering of the crowd that had gathered. They already knew who she was. What she was. It was no secret. Just another little slice of gossip for the streets. Jeasin smirked as she heard her name shiver through the crowd like autumn leaves, skittering across the flagstones.

  Karleah played her part well. She sauntered onto the doorstep with her hands on her big hips and waved her fist at the young woman. ‘And stay out, whore!’ she yelled, slamming the door. Jeasin combed her hair behind her ears and shrugged, leaving the crowd to mutter as she walked away.

  Jeasin felt for the wall of the house, the touch of the sanded oak beneath her sensitive fingers, and followed it to the street. Somebody brushed past her and hissed, ‘Harlot,’ in her ear, but she barely even flinched. Insults fade after years of use, becoming blunt like battle-weary blades. Insults rely on probing the open wounds of shame and guilt. She had neither. Their opinions affected her as much as the passing of night and day. What was another insult thrown about by strangers in the darkness? After all, what is an insult, when it is true?

  Jeasin traced the face of the wall to the next building, and then to the next, her arms out in front of her like the waving branches of a tree in the wind. Her fingers read the wall like the features of a map. A drainpipe here, a boarded window there. She knew them all.

  She paused at a crack in a wall to flick an offending shard of gravel from her sandal, and when she reached up to balance herself, she put her hand on leather and firm flesh rather than wall, and she jumped.

  ‘You ought to be ‘shamed, sneakin’ up on a blind girl,’ she challenged.

  ‘There was no sneaking involved,’ said the stranger, a man with a deep, yet quiet voice, the fringes of which were frayed with tiredness and travel.

  ‘Farden,’ she breathed.

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘An’ what could you want, I wonder?’ said Jeasin, with a dry smile. She crossed her arms. His ability to sneak up on her, her of all people, was infuriating. She could never sense him until he was right under her nose. And now there he was, and suddenly Jeasin was wishing he was anywhere but under her nose. She could smell him now, taste him almost; the copper smell of blood still under his fingernails; the scent of mud and leather fighting for air. Metal. Week-old sweat.

  ‘You tell me, Jeasin,’ mumbled the mage. Leather shoulders creaked.

  ‘Bath, by the smell of you.’

  A shrug. ‘That too.’

  ‘Same old Farden. You’d better be careful. The Duke’s dog is becomin’ predictable.’

  The mage grunted. ‘Watch your mouth, and keep your voice low.’

  Jeasin lifted her chin. ‘Would you ‘ave me dumb, as well as blind?’

  There was a silence. Farden smirked. The sun was hot on his stubbled face. He examined a muddy stain on the back of his hand. ‘I’d call you many things. Dumb isn’t one of them.’

  ‘I meant…’

  ‘I know what you meant. That was quite the little scam you just pulled. Almost had me fooled. Especially the wife. We should find her a stage,’ said the mage. He reached out and flicked the bulging coin purse hiding under the embroidered neckline of her borrowed dress. It clinked. ‘Quite a bit of coin for a day’s work,’ he said, his voice low, quiet, dangerous if she didn’t know him any better. Luckily, she did. She slapped his hand away.

  ‘Nothin’ wrong with a bit of work on the side. Anyways, women have to keep together.’ She waited for the nearby footsteps to recede. ‘I was doin’ Karleah a favour. Serfesson’s been tourin’ the brothels like they’re goin’ out of business. Now she can finally be free of him and get what’s ‘ers as well. Reevers don’t pay no heed to us girls or to the city gossip. Those law men need to see proper proof,’ she asserted in a hushed voice. ‘So we gave ‘em some.’

  The mage leant forward. ‘Jeasin,’ he said. ‘It’s not a favour if you charge for it.’

  The woman shrugged, wondering why she was trying to justify her actions. The mage was right; she couldn’t have cared less about Karleah or her husband. There was no use trying to paint her life with a varnish of virtue and morality; it would have flaked off in an hour. Most of the people in her town were just purses with legs, open hands holding gold, waiting to be taken. That’s how she saw them in the murky darkness, and she didn’t care to be proven wrong.

  Farden though, now here was one of the precious few with qualities other than his coin, although Jeasin grumbled to admit it. She poked the coin purse deeper into her dress and reached for Farden’s hand. He let her find it. ‘If anyone’s the authority on morals ‘round here, Farden, it ain’t you. Not by a bloody long shot,’ she said to him, gesturing towards the street. ‘Come on then.’

  A few hours later, a bathed Farden stood in front of a grimy window, drying his tangled black hair in the sun. In a mixture of apathy and forgetfulness, he had let it grow down to his shoulders, and now it spent most of its day trying to annoy him, trying to escape. Farden gave up trying to unravel it with his fingers. He turned around, casting about for some sort of brush or comb. Jeasin was dozing on the bed, wrapped loosely in a blanket. A nearby window was propped ajar. Sounds of the canals and waterways floated up and rested on the windowsill like the grey pigeons that roosted there. They burbled and cooed sleepily, mumbling to themselves. A cold breeze ruffled their feathers, prickled the mage’s skin. Farden walked to the window, hands ready to shut it. He lingered there for a moment, looking out over the confused little city.

  Tayn was the sister city of Kiltyrin’s capital, imaginatively named Kiltyrin, and what a strange little place it was. Built straight in the path of a river, the city had bent it to its will, dissecting it into a hundred little waterways and canals, wrapping them up in brick and stone. It made the city looked like a bursting capillary. It was a jumbled place, full of dark stone and slate roofs, gravel and spindly bridges.

  The breeze was turning colder now that afternoon was dying, making way for evening. He stared out of the window, half at his grizzled reflection, half at the city, with its veins of dubiously-coloured water. A lone and brave star hovered in the eastern sky, just to the left of a chimney-pot across the street. Farden scowled at it, and shut the window with a thud.

  The mage walked to the other side of the room, where a thin sliver of polished bronze had been propped up in the corner. Farden confronted his metallic reflection. It had been so long since he had seen it. Now he curled his lip at it, like an unwelcome guest.

  His hair was even longer than his fingers had suggested. It was a tangled, black mop, the ends of which had clumped together in places to form long knots. Even the bath hadn’t helped them. Farden pulled at one and frowned.

  Next he looked to his shoulders and chest, probing them with his rough fingers and feeling knots of a different sort, hiding under his dry skin and in between his tired muscles. Every few inches of so, his fingers would come across a gnarled lump, or a puckered indent, or a twisted line. Scars, young and old. Some were ca
mouflaged by the black hair on his chest, others were in plain sight, like the missing finger on his left hand, Vice’s parting gift. He ran his palm across his chest and felt them all, bloody memories, every single one. Farden reached down and lifted his towel up over his shins and knees to look at the scars there too, a tapestry of bloody blades and daggers and sharp, evil things.

  Farden turned to the side, slowly, and looked at the tendrils of black script that curved around his ribs. He turned some more, craning his stiff neck so he could see his whole Book, splayed across his back. He noticed that not a single scar dared interrupt the lines of black script. Selfish magick, he thought. There was a patchwork of scars across his shoulders and spine, silvery, wandering trails like snail-grease, but wherever they met the obsidian ink of his tattoo, they faded and gave way, reappearing in between the lines and runes for brief moments until they died completely. The same could be said of the key-shaped tattoos on his forearms. Farden looked down at them and scowled.

  On the bed, Jeasin rolled over in her sleep. Two coin purses sat on the side of her bed; one large and stuffed, the other smaller and lighter, with a few flecks of clay-coloured mud on it for good measure. Farden tiptoed over to the end of the bed, where his clothes lay folded over the curved spine of a chest. His pack and haversack lay on the floor to the side of it, crumpled and tired. New equipment was needed, he thought. That meant the market. Farden had grown to hate them with a passion that bordered on violence. Markets meant magick, and Farden had already had enough of that in his life.

  With a snort, he rubbed his forehead. The dull headache had returned to pester him. Farden lifted up his clothes and reached for something gold and red and shiny underneath. He sat on the bed, garnering a sleepy groan from Jeasin in the process, and put the two vambraces on his lap. They clinked as they rolled together.

  ‘What’s that?’ muttered Jeasin, head entrenched in a pillow. Farden turned to look at her. Her hair covered most of her neck and her chest. Gold, curly hair. Even though her eyes were blind, they looked as perfect as could be. They were not misted, nor scarred, and had her eyelids been opened, she would have stared out of eyes the colour of an empty winter sky. Blue and cold. Farden reached out to move the hair from her face, thought better of it, and cleared his throat with a deep cough instead.