The Sable City

by M. Edward McNally

It was hours before anything was explained to Tilda.

  She and Captain Block had only stared as Dugan announced the dwarf’s identity to the Trellane guards at the bridge, who in turn had looked deeply befuddled. It was not until the Captain drew back his hood and let his braid hang forward over his shoulder that the guards whispered between themselves before one led the three travelers across the bridge and to the cluster of buildings around the flagpole. The guard took Block and Dugan into the barracks to speak with someone of more authority, while Tilda was left outside with the horses. Some men leading a pair of ox-drawn wagons from the docks down the road toward the town eyed her curiously and one whistled, but Tilda ignored them.

  After only a few minutes another guard left the barracks, hurried to the adjoining stable for a horse, and galloped down the road toward Trellaneville. A few minutes more and Block and Dugan emerged with an officer of some kind, who bowed politely to the Captain. Block had reversed his Guild cloak so that the satiny green lining flashed in the sun, but his face was set in a scowl and his brow was so furrowed it nearly shaded his dark eyes. While he and Tilda had not exactly been traveling through the Empire incognito, announcing real names and House affiliations to all and sundry was not something Guilders did when they were abroad.

  Four more guards trooped out of the barracks and their officer gave them a quick inspection while Block and Dugan crossed the square to where Tilda waited. They started speaking to each other quietly when they were halfway across, and Dugan kept talking as he boosted the dwarf up onto the pony.

  “No, you don’t need to make up anything. Just tell the baron your business is only with the King, and he will send us on our way. I’ve thought this through, Cap’n. Trust me.”

  “Trust you?” Block growled, his eyes fairly burning into Dugan’s skull. “That is a laugh.”

  “Yes, I can see you are amused.”

  With Block in his saddle, Dugan nodded at the Trellane men, who marched over. Tilda climbed up on her own horse and Dugan led the two animals onto the road and toward the town. The four guards walked around them in a square formation, which Tilda hoped was meant as some sort of honor guard.

  It was not far to the town, which was surrounded by a tall wall with towers and battlements of gray stone surely quarried from the nearby mountains. The portage road passed flush against the wall on one side, with warehouses and inns lining the other. Only about half of them seemed to be doing business at this time of year. The group was passed through an open gate onto the streets of the town after a few words were exchanged between the escorts and the gate guards. The latter drew to attention and saluted Captain Block as the Miilarkian Guilder rode by, his back straight and face frozen in a deep frown. Tilda returned the salutes, as it seemed like somebody should.

  Inside the wall, Trellaneville was revealed as an old settlement of obvious affluence. The other villages and small towns Tilda had seen in Orstaf were not unpleasant but they had all shared a certain haphazard look, with low, circular houses usually made out of mud-brick. Most were rather randomly arranged, as though houses had been built on spots where the Orstavians’ ancestors had once erected hide tents in a time when they still lived as roving tribes of Kantan horsemen.

  Trellaneville however was a town of ruler-straight streets and stone houses, many with paned glass in the windows of multiple floors. The roofs were all sharply peaked, making Tilda think it must snow heavily here in winter, and each house had narrow side and front yards divided from both their neighbors and the streets by stout wooden fences. The businesses that Tilda saw near the gate were housed in longer single-story buildings, also of stone. Judging by the hanging signs most specialized either in local produce or in finished goods imported from beyond Orstaf.

  The group did not linger to window-shop for the escorts led them swiftly through the streets, barking at pedestrians to clear the way. The townspeople did not look any more Orstavian than did their surroundings to Tilda’s eyes. They wore a higher class of dresses, breeches, jackets, and coats that looked tailored rather than homespun, and the material was far more colorful than the practical wear of the steppe. The men mostly had mustaches but not full beards, and the women wore their hair down rather then up in bushkas. Several people stopped and looked curiously at the Islanders for a few moments, but then they were back on their way as if they had little time to gawk.

  The group soon reached a modest hill near the center of town upon which another stone wall enclosed a high keep with many towers. The place looked very old, though different colored stones and the brightness of the mortar between them showed where there had been multiple refurbishments. The group was passed through another open gate into the courtyard of the keep, with the inner walls ringed by stables and outbuildings. A great wooden door giving into the citadel proper was open, and two men stood in the doorway.

  The fellow on the right looked like a knight despite wearing no armor. He was a big man of middling years dressed simply in cloak and tunic but with tall riding boots and the hilt of a great sword visible over his shoulder. His hair was cut short but he had the long, brown beard of a native Orstavian, and his face was weathered by years out on the steppe, leaving his eyes in a permanent squint. His companion, judging by the shining boots, creased trousers, silk doublet and matching smart jacket, not to mention the silver chain of chunky links hanging from his neck, was none other than the Baron, Mediwether de Trellane. He was of an age with the knight, or perhaps a bit older as he had more gray at the temples of his dark hair. He wore a mustache waxed to points that Tilda supposed was intended to give him a dashing look, though to her it looked a bit silly.

  The Captain halted his horse in the middle of the courtyard so Tilda stopped hers as well. Dugan moved quickly to help Block dismount before Tilda was out of her own saddle, then the two of them stayed with the horses while Block strode on to the nobles. Bows were exchanged, and the baron spoke the phrase, “Bol Aloha,” the traditional greeting of the Trade Tongue.

  The dwarf returned the greeting and introduced himself simply as Captain Block of Miilark. Trellane gave his own name and title, and introduced his companion as Sir Yeveny Procost of the Roaring Boar Order, which made Tilda raise an eyebrow until she realized he had not said Roaring Bore. Procost was the Imperial liaison to Trellane’s household guards, and the Baron emphasized Imperial as he said it, though as yet Tilda was unclear why. She did however notice that the knight seemed less interested in the barony’s exotic visitor from the Islands than he was in frowning at Dugan.

  Eventually Block and the nobles entered the keep by the great doors, while Tilda and Dugan were first taken to the stables by servants wearing less militant versions of the griffin insignia on their clean tunics. Luggage was unloaded, the horses were seen to, and after a few servants ran off to talk to others, Tilda, Dugan, and all the bags were taken into the keep via a side door, up into a tower where three open rooms waited, and deposited in what were to be their quarters. Tilda had all the baggage placed for now in her own room, as the chamber was large and comfortably furnished. A pair of double doors paned with glass gave onto a balcony.

  Dugan was given a room directly across the hall from Tilda. Before she could call him over and demand to know exactly what was going on a series of servants arrived, first bearing wash basins, then thankfully lunch which turned out to be an excellent stew of thinly-sliced potatoes, carrots and some sort of onion, with diced chunks of two kinds of poultry. Chicken and something that was not chicken, but was still good. The empty bowls were taken away shortly thereafter, and after another ten minutes had gone by without more servants appearing, Tilda finally whistled sharply across the hall. Dugan appeared in his doorway, still wearing his hat indoors over his cropped hair, and Tilda motioned him over. He came, but held up a finger before she could speak. He looked around at the walls hung with tapestries, then opened the balcony doors and stepped outside. Tilda joined him and he shut the doors behind her.

  “I always assume someone is
spying on me whenever I am in a castle,” he said.

  “When have you ever been in a castle?” Tilda asked crossly, and Dugan nodded that she had a point.

  “What is going on here?” Tilda finally asked after hours of waiting.

  Dugan sighed, turned to the south, and pointed beyond the front range of the Girding Mountains. The whole view from the balcony was actually quite lovely, though Tilda was in no mood to enjoy it.

  “You see the tall, yellowish peak?” Dugan asked. “With the high faces too sharp for snow to cling on them?”

  “What am I, blind?” Tilda asked.

  “That is Yagnorak. There used to be a dwarf city inside, but that has been in ruins for centuries. However, it is well known in this part of the country that the Trellane family has been keeping open a secret passage beneath the mountain for generations. A secret passage that leads through to Daul.”

  Tilda stared at him. “There is known to be a secret passage?”

  Dugan sighed. “That is exactly what your Master said.”

  “Captain Block is not my Master,” Tilda said, surprising herself with her own vehemence. It did not help that Dugan smirked at her.

  “Right. Anyway, your Captain is now telling the Baron that the House of Deskata has business with the King of Daul, and that he needs to get to the kingdom right away. The fact that he comes knowing about the passage will convince Trellane that he is legit, for who else but the King would have told a Miilarkian about it? Trellane gives us a guide, or whatever, and off we go through the tunnels, arriving in Daul that much closer to our boy, the Centurion.”

  Dugan held his hands out from his sides and looked very proud of himself and his scheme. Tilda kept staring at him.

  “That is the worst plan I have ever heard. Just awful.”

  Dugan lowered his hands. “Block said that, too,” he muttered. Tilda was not finished.

  “Seriously. You are starting with at least three premises that would all have to be true for the plan to work, and you don’t know that any of them are. First, there might not even be a secret passage. Second…”

  “Matilda, stop. I know it is risky, but the fact is we do not have another option. If there was a better way, don’t you think I would take it? Think about it. Neither Trellane nor any other Codian noble is seriously going to cross a Miilarkian. If something goes wrong here the worst that happens to the two of you is maybe you have to wait a bit longer to kill John Deskata. But I get hung. For desertion and treason and whatever else they want to charge. I’ll thank you not to think I would stick my neck in a noose on a whim. I am not stupid, either.”

  Tilda blinked, mostly because of what Dugan had said about she and Block killing John Deskata. It struck her now that of course that was what Dugan would assume, for he had recognized the Miilarkian Guilders for what they were, and Guilders had a certain reputation abroad. In any tavern in any port town on the four continents washed by the Interminable Ocean, whispered stories could be heard about some terrible thing the Guilders had done to someone who had crossed a Miilarkian. Yet somehow, it had always happened in the next town up the coast.

  Tilda could have told Dugan that he was wrong, and that these two Guilders were not here to assassinate anyone. She could have told him that their mission was more important than he could fathom, more important than his life, or Captain Block’s, or certainly her own. But there was no reason for Dugan to know any of that, and even if there had been, it was not Tilda’s place to tell him.

  She stayed quiet, and Dugan took her silence as acquiescence. He let out a breath, and looked down from the balcony on the surrounding keep and courtyard.

  “You saw that knight Procost give me the stink-eye?” he asked. Tilda raised an eyebrow.

  “I did, but I did not know it was called the stink-eye.”

  Dugan smirked. “Works though, right? That is an Imperial Knight, swearing allegiance to the Code rather than to any one Codian noble. He may be serving here but he is not a servant of the Trellanes, and I doubt he is privy to the family secrets. I hope your Captain is speaking wisely.”

  “Captain Block does not speak otherwise,” Tilda said, and Dugan gave her a look.

  “Sure he does, Tilda. Everybody gets worried, or angry, and they say things they don’t mean.”

  “Not Captain Block.”

  Dugan took a last look down on the town, and toward the great yellow mountain looming among the Girdings. He turned to go back to his own room, but said one more thing before opening the balcony doors.

  “Well, then he is just wrong.”

  Tilda watched Dugan leave, exiting her room for the hall to his own. She stayed out on the balcony for a while.