“No!” Grant cried, now only a stride away.
The man’s blade tore out Mikel’s throat. The lad’s eyes showed awful surprise at his own death, followed fast by a look that longed for home.
Then the boy fell, his head striking the edge of the wagon bed before he landed on the hard road.
In a fury, Grant laid into the killer. With a single raging stroke, he took the man’s head from his body. He followed the momentum of his sword, doing a complete turn, and brought it around on the second man, ripping his throat out as the other had Mikel’s.
The challengers fell simultaneously, their heavy bodies thudding against the road and bleeding out. Grant dropped to his knees beside Mikel. He had a few precious seconds to hold the boy and look some comfort into his eyes before the light there went out forever.
It was once again quiet, terribly still, as he sat alone on the road of Solencia, holding a child he had been entrusted to protect. Mikel was dead because prideful men had sought Grant’s death to build their own esteem.
No matter where he went, he never escaped his condemnation. He frowned. That condemnation would spread further now as word of Mikel’s death passed like rumor. The poor boy, dead so young. His heart ached at the sight of him. But his heart also grew harder. Stonier.
Something had to change.
Such pettiness. Such selfishness. These things had banished him into his desert to begin with. And now they threatened him and those he watched over, even when buying a bag of godsdamned oats.
He had his own set of sins. But they were long in the past, and more than atoned for.
Grant picked Mikel up and gently placed him in the wagon, covering him with one of the blankets he’d just purchased. I shouldn’t have brought the boy, he thought. Alone, he could have killed all three and been done.
He hung his head over the boy’s body. “I’m sorry.”
Then he went back into the mercantile. He stepped up to the counter and looked across at the shopkeep. The thought in his mind was heresy. But he’d reached a final outpost in the land of his heart. And he might be the only one, given his vantage, to consider such impossibilities.
For what he contemplated might well be impossible.
But the act alone would ease his troubled mind.
“Parchment,” the weathered man said.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Emblems
The victim of cruelty often loses some primary ability to feel. To empathize. One without empathy is given to greater cruelty toward others. It should not be viewed as an excuse for deviant behavior. But it naturally leads us to the conclusion that, once begun, cruelty escalates indefinitely.
—From The Syllogism of Resentment, first used as a resource to identify valuable recruits to Mal ranks; later adopted by reformists
Wendra was given her own horse to ride as Jastail led her and his two men east along the same river she’d been following. For two days they rode through several valleys, fording rills that joined the main waterway. Toward nightfall of the second day they came to a great wide river. Two hundred strides across at its narrow point. They followed it south for several hours before coming in sight of a sizeable dock awash in moonlight. Jastail smiled as if seeing an old friend. He sent a man to the dock’s end where a lantern fastened to a piling was lit.
Jastail then moved them into the cover of nearby trees, where they waited and watched. The river shone with a thousand ripples of shimmering moonlight. And it carried a low musical hum, hypnotic in its passage.
Not an hour later, another sound joined the river music. A sound like geese honking floated across the water. Jastail looked north. Soon a large riverboat, multiple lamps flaming from its runners, rounded a bend in the river. The sound of laughter came more clearly now, still sounding like geese.
The riverboat angled toward the dock, the maneuver a slow one—the boat was immense.
Several stories rose from the main deck, an entire second building clearly a stable for livestock. At the rear of the craft, a team of oxen had been yoked to a thick crossbar fastened to a revolving post. As the animals walked a never-ending circle, they turned a set of large wooden gears that powered the rear paddlewheel.
Men appeared on deck with ropes in hand, and guided the vessel to a deft stop beside the dock. The sailors, six men in all, brandished long knives. One extinguished the lantern. Jastail seemed to take this as a signal. He spurred his horse from the cover of the trees and led them all to the pier’s end.
The clop of hooves on the wooden planks drowned out the sound of the river, but not the jollity streaming from the brightly lit decks of the boat. The incessant chatter reminded Wendra of the Northsun festival back home. Animated laughter, punctuated shouts, and constant bickering.
Jastail brought them to a stop before the sailors. He lifted his hand in greeting, folding one finger down.
“Name it,” said the deckhand who had doused the lantern.
“Defiera,” Jastail said, and the men relaxed the angle of their daggers.
“What is wanted?” the other asked.
“Passage downriver to Pelan,” Jastail said. “We’ve business there.” His head turned slightly, and Wendra had the impression Jastail was indicating her.
The sailor, his face lost behind a protuberant nose, shifted and peered around Jastail at Wendra. He nodded appreciatively, then sized up the two men who bore them company.
“And these?” the sailor added.
“Hirelings,” Jastail replied. “Honest enough if they’re paid. Sullen enough on an empty gullet.”
At that the sailor laughed, joined by a number of the other deckhands.
“Three horses, three men, one woman,” the sailor leered at Wendra, “a handcoin, no less, and a stem for each man here so that their lips are occupied when asked about the business our new fares have in a place such as Pelan. Putting in there is hazard enough. You’ll not want the captain poking into your merchandise.”
Raucous laughter fell hard upon the wood dock.
Jastail didn’t join them, but reached inside his cloak and pulled out a handful of coins. The sailor came forward and greedily reached for them. Jastail pulled back his fistful of money. “I’ve ridden your vessel before, fish, and find that I tend to … lose things. I’ll pay you for boarding, but the rest will I give when we’re safely on the dock near Pelan. If I’m complete at that time, twice your price will you have. If I’m not, then all the money will I give to but one of you and say nothing to the others. You may then share the money as you see fit.”
The sailor glowered at Jastail, who dropped a single silver coin. The man snatched it from the air with a quick hand and walked away, muttering under his breath.
“Why do you spar with them?” Wendra asked. “They outnumber you, and you’ve no place to hide on the boat.”
“Ah, my lady, it’s good that we paired together in this enterprise,” Jastail said as the other sailors stood aside to let them pass. “It’s unwise to pay in advance. And with rivermen there are precautions to be taken. They’ll think three times before stealing what is ours, because I would then give all the tongue-money to just one man. The distrust and danger created when each believes the other is holding money that belongs to him will insure us against pilfering while we travel.”
Wendra surveyed the sailors. “I think you’re too confident.”
Jastail smiled. “Rivermen are as greedy as the river is cold. The one I would pay would never share it with the others. The result would be that each of them becomes a target for the daggers of the others while he sleeps. Do you see my point?”
She had to concede his ingenuity.
They boarded the great ship and passed into the building used for stabling horses. There they dismounted, unsaddled their horses, and climbed a stair into the glare of the middle deck.
She followed Jastail around odd tables that held sunken pits bottomed with slate. Between gamblers standing around the tables, she caught glimpses of grids drawn across the
slate with different numbers marked in soapstone. Men and women moved colored markers in a flurry of hands until a man in a bright yellow shirt cast several triangular rods into the recessed area of the table. He then quickly counted the numbers scrawled on the stained surfaces of the rods.
Jastail pulled Wendra along. The two hirelings they’d been traveling with quickly found room at tables and tossed coin onto the slate to enter the games. On the left, a handful of large men stood stoically overlooking the whole of the room. They wore swords menacingly on their backs, the handles protruding in bold advertisement of their function. A black-and-white patch had been sewn to the left breast of their tunics. Next to them, a very small man, perhaps only three and a half feet tall, stood on a raised platform serving bitter and wine. He waddled in a strained gait, having to throw his left shoulder up to lift his right leg, and his right shoulder up to move the other. His pants were held in place with strange belts looped over his shoulders and fastened to both the front and back of his trousers. He looked terribly uncomfortable, but he smiled constantly.
They wound past several more games Wendra had never seen. And around them all, general hilarity swirled. Many of those gambling were dressed in unrefined wool. A few even wore pelts. Beside them were players adorned in silk and twilled cotton, linens of extravagant color and design. Their wagers often flashed of gold, sometimes several coins high. And their cups were just as full as the rest.
The participants seemed to share a familiarity. It was common for a man here to put his hand on a woman’s breast, or she to cup another man’s loins. Even men and women who appeared to be here together laid hands on others. The gestures fetched bouts of laughter and calls for more bitter. Sweet-leaf tobacco stems flared and puffed like small cloudmakers, filling the room with a pungent haze. The revelry never abated, but fed upon itself as the boat moved down the river.
Jastail took hold of Wendra’s hand to guide her more surely through the throng. Toward the back of the great room, a few round tables sat partitioned off from the rest by a low wall. One of the swordsmen stood at the passageway into the area. Upon seeing Jastail, he stood aside and let them pass.
Only a few men sat at these tables, most of the seats empty. Jastail led Wendra to the last table, where just one man sat with a stack of thin wooden placards. He wore a smartly tailored russet tunic, with golden piping and a double column of silvery buttons down the front. Rings on each forefinger bore weight, elegant gems. And his beard had been frosted to match his buttons. The fellow didn’t rise, didn’t take note, but sat shuffling the plaques over and over. Jastail’s tall shadow fell across the table. The man surely knew they were there. But he refused to immediately acknowledge them. Jastail waited, holding Wendra by the wrist.
The seated man took a tobacco pipe from the lining of his jacket and tamped fresh weed into its bowl. He pulled a straw from a wooden canister beside the table lamp and lit one end in the lamp’s flame. With deliberation, he applied the flame to his bowl and puffed his pipe to life. With his head wreathed in the sweet smell of perfumed tobacco, he looked up with smiling eyes and greeted Jastail.
“Hello, my friend,” he cooed. “Come again to test your luck, have you?”
Jastail flashed his standard smile. “You’re a temptation to me, Gynedo. How can I resist the game?”
“And you play well for such a young man,” Gynedo said. “But young men should not be so willing to pay the price of the game, I think. Old men like me haven’t the … concern for reputation or consequence that young men should. How say you to that?” One brow rose in expectation of a response.
Jastail motioned to the chair opposite Gynedo.
“Please,” the older man said, puffing at his pipe.
Jastail sat, pulling Wendra to the tableside where he could see her, and let go of her wrist. “In any other time, Gynedo, I would say you’re right. But the days we live in are filled with rumor. This isn’t a time for a man to lay stores by in the hope of surviving the winter. I—”
The old man pointed his crooked finger at Jastail, arresting his answer midword.
“You’re a philosopher, my young man,” Gynedo said, his eyes narrowing. “But leave the rhymes and riddles for those you intend to betray. Tell me why you come tonight.” The old man tapped the table with his finger, seeming to indicate not the boat, or even the room, but the very table at which he sat.
Jastail’s smile failed him. Wendra liked the look of his face plain, absent the attempt to distract or deceive. He appeared to earnestly consider the question. His eyes looked thoughtful and directed despite the confusion throughout the room.
“Because it thrills me,” he said finally. “It’s a base logic, I’ll grant you. Fah, no logic at all. I play because it’s the only game that speeds my heart.”
Gynedo sat appraising Jastail, seeming to consider his answer. Finally, he nodded. “A pity for you, I think. Your trade in human flesh has dulled your senses.” The old man looked at Wendra.
Jastail said nothing.
Wendra leaned forward. “I’m not his to sell. I’m here because I choose to be.”
Gynedo’s brows went up in pleasant surprise. “She’s got fire.”
The highwayman nodded agreement.
“But it is a thrill.” The old man turned excited eyes back to Jastail. “None greater that I know; no paltry game as what the herds come to play.” He motioned in disgust at the outer room. “With their pittance on the slate, their heads dulled with watered bitter, their wanton hands all over the damn place … I need my wall.” He gave a wan smile and tapped the low wall separating them from the rest of the chancers.
Jastail seemed eager to begin. “Let’s make our accountings.”
Gynedo clapped his hands together and stood up, leading Jastail into a small anteroom.
“Stay here,” Jastail told Wendra. She sat, glad to finally rest.
But she watched through the open doorway as the old man, Jastail, and a woman she couldn’t see too well took turns holding up various items. They pointed and touched the objects as they seemed to describe to one another what they were. Wendra couldn’t hear what was said, but solemn faces and appreciative nods followed the presentation of each item. Assessing value, she imagined. It seemed clear that the various articles would be what the players wagered in their game.
What Gynedo called “the accounting” took an hour, and Wendra had nearly nodded off when the group came out of the anteroom.
Gynedo sat, as did Jastail. The two men stared at each other for some time before the young woman sat between them. She made a show of sitting in her beautiful satin dress. Her hair had been tied up above her head, exposing the delicate, white flesh of a neck that had never been exposed to the workday sun. Gold earrings dangled delicately against her skin, and on each thumb she wore a gold ring with a large white stone.
“Set three ways,” she said, speaking to Gynedo, but looking at Wendra as if with some private knowledge.
“Just so, Ariana,” the old man said. “Take a chair and three will play.” He looked up at the other men who’d followed them out of the accounting room. “But no more.”
Gynedo divided the placards and pushed one pile toward Jastail, another to Ariana. “Pick them up, my young friends, and let us see where the chances take us this night.”
Jastail picked up the thin wooden plaques and fanned them out, studying each with great interest. Wendra could see a number of designs on the plaques, but couldn’t understand what they meant or what game they might be used for.
As the game began three other men gathered around. All were elderly like Gynedo, and all puffing pipes as though in imitation of the man. But it was Ariana who made Wendra uncomfortable. She leered at Wendra, appraising her hair, her lips, her bosom.
Over her shoulder there were more gamers and gamblers watching the development of the contest.
None of this was getting her any closer to Penit, or to Tahn, and her frustration mounted. A stirring of song came darkly to
her mind and fought for release. But she held herself still and thought of Balatin and his words concerning patience: Luck serves a patient woman. She turned her attention to the game, trying to understand how it was played.
After several minutes of consideration, Gynedo put a plaque down on the table in front of him. Both Jastail and Ariana betrayed a look of surprise at the play. The plaque held the image, rendered in red, of a serpent with great wings.
“To you, then, Jastail,” the old man said, taking pleasure in his pipe and smiling around its stem.
Jastail spared a look at Ariana, touched one plaque, then quickly removed the leftmost wood in his hand and set it before him. It was Gynedo’s turn to show surprise, but only in the raising of one brow. The old man nodded, then shook his head, still smiling around his pipe.
Ariana’s face showed nothing, and she didn’t hesitate in making her play, immediately putting down a wood bearing the same symbol as Jastail’s.
“One round,” Gynedo said. “What have you to carry you to the next?”
Jastail removed an earring from his belt that bore the likeness of a tall woman.
“Most impressive,” the old man said. “It was you that did it, then.” He nodded appreciatively.
Ariana turned baleful eyes on him. Jastail didn’t favor her with a return look. The woman’s composure failed for only a moment, though, before she removed a glove from a small silken bag tied to her wrist. Woven of metal shavings, the warrior’s glove shimmered in the light.
“He went to battle for you, dear Ariana,” Gynedo said. “How better suited to play the game is a woman, don’t you agree, Jastail?”
Wendra’s captor looked at Ariana, whose obvious hatred now burned through cold, inscrutable eyes.
“We shall see,” Jastail commented.
The old man laid a small drawing on the table, rendered in an unpracticed hand. As a child might. A hush fell over all who saw the wager. “That gets me to round two. Does anyone disagree?” No one spoke. “I will accept that as an invitation to continue.”
The Unremembered Page 16
