A Conversation in Blood

by Paul S. Kemp

  “Concluded your business, have you?” the potbellied one asked.

  “Mostly,” Egil said. He walked up to the guard and added, “I have need of your truncheon.”

  The man looked baffled. “What’s that now?”

  Egil did not wait for permission and snatched the surprised guard’s wooden truncheon from its loop.

  “Hey now!” the guard said, and one of his fellows looking on advanced a step. Nix was not sure of Egil’s play, but positioned himself in the path of the other guard. He held up a finger, leaving unspoken the “Be smart, now.”

  Egil took the short, thick club in his hands and snapped it in half while staring into the potbellied guard’s face.

  “Oaken truncheons ain’t as tough as once supposed,” Egil said, loud enough for all of them to hear. “Nor are mouthy Orangies at the Slum Gate supposed tough at any time. You in agreement?”

  He dropped the pieces at the wide-eyed guard’s feet and took a step forward. The guard, of course, faced with the bulwark of Egil’s form, took a step back. His fellow behind him stood frozen. Before matters could progress further, the sergeant’s voice carried from the shack.

  “All right. You made your point. Move on, now, before this goes another way and I have to arrest you.”

  “Try to arrest us,” Egil said.

  “My try is awful persuasive,” the sergeant said, stepping out into the street. The sergeant was taller than Nix, short gray hair and beard trimmed neatly, hands scarred. He scratched his beard indifferently.

  “He really dislikes truncheons,” Nix said of Egil.

  The sergeant smiled. He was missing an eyetooth. “And mouthy watchmen, it would seem.”

  “So it would,” Nix said, and nodded at the gate. “We’d like to walk through that gate now. Done?”

  The sergeant walked past the potbellied guard and up to Egil, into Egil’s space. Nix prepared for the worst. The other Orangies took heart and closed around, put hands on blades, wolves circling.

  “I guess that depends,” the sergeant said. “We done?”

  “I guess that depends,” Egil said, his voice tight, his body coiled.

  “That one there,” the sergeant said, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the potbellied guard. “He didn’t mean no insult before. At least not one that needed answer.”

  “Disagree,” Egil said. “I think he did. And I think it did.”

  “Well,” the sergeant said, “maybe you’ve given answer enough already?”

  “Maybe,” Egil said.

  “See, boys,” the sergeant said to the rest of the watchmen, “this is Egil and Nix, and by all accounts they’ve seen some scrums. And men that have seen some scrums, they don’t like to be called slubbers, even by implication. And when they are so named, that needs answering more often than not. Make sense?”

  Assent around, even from the potbellied one, who made eye contact with no one.

  “Maybe you’ve seen your share of scrums, too?” Egil said.

  “Maybe I have.”

  Egil took a step back, his body visibly uncoiling. “Then to answer your question, I’d say that we’re done. And my apologies for the ruckus.”

  “And my apologies for the thoughtless words of my man.” He turned and walked back toward the gatehouse. “Open the gates, boys, and wish these citizens a good day.”

  The guards did as instructed, even insofar as offering grudging “Good days.”

  With that, Egil and Nix left the Warrens behind.

  After they got out of earshot of the guards, Nix said, “No doubt after that demonstration truncheons all over the city will now speak our name in fearful whispers. Well done, priest.”

  Egil laughed. “Sergeant showed some steel, though, didn’t he?”

  “Aye,” Nix said, and tapped his temple. “Noted for future use. That one’s not the usual type of slubber banished to duty on the Slum Gate. He’s got balls. Probably got sideways of someone with rank.”

  “Sounds like our kind,” Egil said.

  “Aye, that.”

  They reached Shoddy Way just as Ool’s clock rang the seventh hour. Up the street they could see Gadd sweeping the porch of the Tunnel. A few donkey-pulled wagons made their way along the road. A pair of heavyset laborers in smocks and tool belts walked along, chatting, one of them smoking a pipe. Nix caught a whiff of something exotic cooking in the Low Bazaar, which was not far from the brothel.

  Gadd saw them coming, raised a hand in greeting, and watched them approach.

  “Gadd holds his broom the same way he does his tulwar,” Egil said.

  Nix chuckled. “I’d be unsurprised to learn he’s killed a man or two with that broom, too.”

  When they drew near, Gadd studied their faces, nodded, said, “Good to see you’re both well.”

  “ ‘Well’ is maybe a bit much,” Nix said, suddenly feeling very tired. “But better.”

  “Aye, that,” Egil said, running a hand over his head. “Better, indeed.”

  “And walking, at least,” Gadd said.

  “Walking,” Egil agreed, and thumped Gadd on the shoulder.

  “Our priest has had a vision,” Nix said to Gadd, by way of explanation as they walked inside.

  The Tunnel had not yet opened for business because Tesha had given everyone an extra hour of sleep, but inside the working men and women sat at the tables eating a breakfast of eggs and sausage. There’d be a line for the washbasins out back.

  Everyone at the tables nodded or smiled or greeted Egil and Nix and they returned the gestures. Nix saw Kiir seated with Lis and they went to her.

  “You’re feeling better, I see?” Nix said.

  She smiled, still looking a little pale, and brushed her hair from her face. “Much. You should get some breakfast. Tesha’s bread is so good. The Watch never came. Last night, I mean.”

  “That’s good,” Nix said.

  “Good until we actually need them to come,” Egil said.

  “When would we ever need them to come?” Nix asked.

  Egil shrugged. “Eh, fair point.”

  The smell of cooking eggs, sausage, and Tesha’s beloved warm flatbread carried through the open door behind Gadd’s bar. Tesha hawked over the workers’ food intake, always making sure everyone ate well. She’d be out in the fenced area behind the brothel cooking over the fires.

  “I need sleep more than food,” Nix said.

  “Likewise,” Egil said. He cleared his throat. “And maybe it’s best she not see us just yet.”

  “Maybe it is,” Lis said with a laugh.

  “Too late,” Kiir said, nodding at the door behind Gadd’s bar.

  “Shite,” Nix said.

  Tesha walked through, holding a board piled high with flatbread. Her dark hair was pulled up and she wore no makeup. One of Gadd’s aprons, much too big on her, covered her day dress. She set the bread down and caught sight of Egil and Nix.

  Nix gave her a crooked smile and half wave. Her expression was unreadable.

  “She doesn’t look angry,” Egil said out of the corner of his mouth.

  Nix nodded. “That’s worrisome.”

  Tesha crossed the common room to stand before them. “No more bodies, I trust? Nothing I need to worry about that will come back here?”

  “No, nothing,” Nix said.

  She waited. “That’s it?”

  “For now,” Nix said. “I’m honestly too tired for conversation. Egil can give details.”

  Tesha turned to the priest. “Well?”

  “Ask Nix,” Egil said, and yawned. “I need to sleep.”

  “You also need to reconsider the recent course of your life,” Nix added.

  Egil nodded. “And that, too.”

  “Though maybe that happened already,” Nix said, and winked at Tesha. “That’s what happened to us. Our priest found religion at last.”

  “And now I’ll find a bed,” Egil said.

  Tesha did not budge from before them, halting Egil’s attempt to head
to his room. An angry line formed between her dark eyes.

  “To be clear: I’m not a fakkin’ prop in your banter. I asked a question. Kindly answer it.”

  They looked at each other, eyebrows raised, then back at her.

  “What’s the question again?” Nix ventured.

  “What is going on with you two? I don’t mean last night. I mean generally.”

  Egil sighed. “Ah. Well enough. I’m drinking too much and fighting too little. Been going on awhile now, as you suggested. Nix tried to shake me up by picking a fight, knowing I wouldn’t stand by and watch someone else I care about get hurt.”

  “Someone else?” Tesha interrupted. “You mean Rose and Mere?”

  Egil nodded. “That’s who I mean.”

  Tesha’s expression softened. “I see. So, is it fixed? Or is Nix going to keep moping around here bothering customers while you spend every night drinking or stumbling or both?”

  “Fixed, I think,” Egil said.

  “Moping?” Nix asked. “Me?”

  “Listen,” Tesha said to Egil, her voice still soft. “I don’t know what happened with Rose and Mere after the four of you left here and I don’t need to, but I doubt either of you stood by and let them get hurt. You want some advice?”

  “Not especially,” Egil said.

  “Give it to him,” Nix said. “I want to hear it.”

  She glared at Nix. “It’s not just for him. So drop the smug tone. It’s for you, too.”

  Nix frowned. “I don’t want to hear it as much now.”

  Her face darkened. “You are difficult to talk to, Nix. Anyway, here it is. Find something to do, somewhere to go, something worth fighting over, or for. Sitting in brothels or taverns or whatever, that’s not the two of you. And you know that. That’s why you hired me to run this place. But lately the two of you spend more time here than ever. You bother the patrons, distract the workers, and do yourselves no good. Go do whatever it is you do, yeah?”

  “That’s what I was just saying earlier,” Nix said.

  “Then you were right,” she said. “And that’s a first.”

  Nix made as though she’d stabbed him through the chest.

  Egil put his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “I hear your words and I agree with them. But I’d like to go sleep now, yeah? I think I may actually sleep well for once.”

  She almost smiled. “Yes. Go. And I’m glad you’re all right.”

  “Both of us, you mean,” Nix added.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Gillem, one of Tesha’s working men, who was sitting at a nearby table and who’d overheard the conversation, said, “I’m thinking maybe you two boys belong in a bed together, what with all the caring and understanding and watching over each other and whatnot. I could even join you. We’d make a party of it.”

  “You’d like that,” Nix said.

  Some of the girls tittered. Even Tesha smiled.

  “I would,” Gillem said with a grin. “You game?”

  Egil harrumphed and Nix shook his head. “I credit you’re a handsome man, Gillem, but as a rule the only depths I care to plumb are found on women.”

  “Likewise,” Egil said.

  “Well, that’s a shame,” Gillem said, and gave an exaggerated sigh. “Maybe another time.”

  “Maybe you should just have some sausage and say no more,” Lis called to Gillem.

  He took a forkful and said, “I was trying to do just that.”

  Nix faced Egil. “You see?”

  Egil’s face twisted into a question.

  “This is a nice place now,” Nix explained. “A home for them. And that’s good we’ve done. Remember that. Go get some sleep and then shave and clean yourself up. I’ll have something for us when you awaken.”

  —

  Nix went to his quarters but did not bother sleeping. He was tired but too fidgety. He felt like he’d gotten things sorted with Egil, with Tesha somewhat, with the world even. Things were back as they should be. He hadn’t realized how much he’d needed to move, to act, to do anything, really. Recognizing that fact was freeing. He and Egil had thought they could retire to a quiet life as property owners. They’d tried it, but neither of them was meant for a life of leisure and contemplation, nor one of sitting about. The stillness would ruin both of them. Egil would die of drink and Nix would die of boredom. They needed adventure, challenge, action.

  Of course, that meant they would both probably die in a tomb somewhere, unremarked by anyone.

  Nix shrugged. He supposed there were worse ways to die.

  His room in the Tunnel was away from the working rooms, in what had once probably been the servants’ quarters in the basement. Long ago the Tunnel had been a noble family’s manse, before the wealthy had built new homes across the Meander and sold their old ones off to guilds and well-to-do merchants, who then sold them to less savory sorts. The building had changed hands many times before Egil and Nix, who were, perhaps, the least savory of all the building’s owners.

  His small room held his bed, a night table, and a curio cabinet that had taken his fancy a few months earlier. In it he kept trinkets from his and Egil’s adventures. It held a few ancient coins, frayed books written in languages long forgotten, rolled scrolls, small serpent statuettes from Afirion, a knife crafted of an unidentifiable metal but which seemed to never lose its edge, a handful of ivory chessmen from Jafari, a necklace of pointed teeth he’d taken from a brutish half giant in the hills north of Dur Follin, the talking, ever-hungry key he hadn’t fed in so long that it had gone quiescent. Properly fed, the key could open almost any lock, though negotiating with the thing over what it wanted to eat often proved tedious. In some ways the cabinet was not unlike his satchel of needful things, the bag he always carried and in which he secreted essential gear and his magical gewgaws. Both cabinet and bag held the mementos that defined his journey through life, those in the cabinet a link to his past, those in the satchel a connection to the present.

  What was not in the cabinet or the satchel were the golden plates he’d taken out of the sunken ruins in the Deadmire. Those he’d placed in a locked, lead-lined chest he kept at the foot of his bed. In hindsight, he didn’t know why he hadn’t put them in the cabinet. Maybe he’d always known they were too valuable for mere display. Maybe he’d always assumed, at least before today, that they were connected to his future, not to his past or present. Maybe he’d wanted them out of sight because they reminded him too much of Rose and Mere.

  “Gods,” he swore, shaking his head. He was becoming Egil, sitting alone in his room, turning maudlin and waxing philosophical. All he needed was a bald head and a dead god to worship. If he didn’t take care, soon he’d be melancholy all the time and grunt replies to questions.

  He scooted to the end of the bed, found the chest’s key on the ring he kept in his satchel, and opened it. To the eye it appeared empty, but he knew better. He reached in, felt for the enchanted wrap, almost as large as a blanket, that blocked enchantments and could be seen only with peripheral vision, and lifted it out. As an extra precaution he’d placed the plates in the wrap. He unpeeled it to reveal them.

  The thin metal plates shimmered like liquid in a shaft of morning light that stabbed through a slit in a window. The plates were golden in color, though Nix knew the metal wasn’t actually gold. It was too hard, impossible to mar, unbendable despite being as thin as parchment. He had no idea how someone had carved the tiny characters on them, each delicately engraved, written in a spiral pattern from the inside out, the alphabet one that Nix didn’t know, the script covering the entirety of the plates.

  He avoided staring at the characters for more than a few moments because when he did they lost their separation and bled into one dizzying, blurry spiral that made him feel like he was falling, slipping into some maelstrom.

  He had only the two plates. He’d left several behind in the ruins and wished now that he hadn’t. Of course, at the time he and Egil had been pursued by a bi
zarre monstrosity, so he considered the urgency justified.

  He ran his fingertips over the characters, feeling the grooves and whorls. His fingers tingled; the hairs on his arms stood on end. For a brief, rash moment he was tempted to speak a word in the Language of Creation to activate the plates but he resisted the impulse. He should get some idea of what they did first. And for that, he needed to engage the services of Kerfallen the Grey Mage.

  He bound the plates back in the enchanted wrap and it was as though they’d disappeared from the world. He placed them inside his satchel and just like that, they moved from his future to his present.

  As he stood to go, he considered grabbing the talking key out of his cabinet, but he decided to leave it, at least for the moment. It was part of an old adventure, and he was interested in a new one.

  He headed out for the Low Bazaar.

  —

  The Afterbirth leaned against the earthen wall of a damp cave in the bank of a river, rocking, muttering from his mouths. He’d sheltered in a cave, as he often did, to avoid being seen. He could not be harmed but he could be held and the fear of an unending life living alone in a cage sometimes paralyzed him, tempted him to live his perpetual existence alone underground, but something in him still longed to walk the world and so he did.

  He could smell the dankness of the cave, the pungency of the fungi sprouting from the walls, but mostly he could smell himself, the blood of others still on him, the filth of years and leagues and unending existence.

  Dawn lit the cave mouth in dull gray, coating the forest outside in morning light. He smelled the promise of rain in the air. Perhaps he would remain in the cave another day or perhaps he would walk the world or perhaps he would dig into the world and dig and dig until he revealed the treasure of another world, lost worlds, his world, anything but this one. He groaned and moaned and rocked and was alone and the morning gave way to the brighter light of afternoon and still he sat.

  He smelled the bear long before he saw it, but eventually the huge shadow of its form lumbered into view and darkened the cave entrance. The Afterbirth ceased muttering and looked up and the bear stopped, not entering the cave, nose raised, chuffing. The Afterbirth stared at it, waiting, knowing it could not see him but that it could smell him, sense the danger of him.