And the Sword of Faith swept down one last time and ended it.
When Michael picked me up from the hospital in his old white pickup late that night, I was exhausted.
He handed me my spare pair of glasses first thing and I put them on gratefully.
“Have to do something about that,” I said. “Maybe sports goggles.”
“Seems like a good idea,” he said. “How’s Stan?”
“He’ll be fine,” I said. “So will the kids.”
“What was hurting them?”
“Something that should have been protecting them,” I said quietly. I squinted out the window as he pulled away. “Just dissolved into nothing when I took it down.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked me, his deep voice gentle.
“I’m not sure I succeeded at this quest,” I said. “I kept trying to reach out to the creature. To give it a chance to turn away.”
“Sometimes they do,” Michael said. “Mostly, they don’t.”
“It’s just . . .” I said. “Killing is such a waste. What I did was necessary. But I’m not sure it was good.”
“Killing rarely is,” he said, “at least in my experience. Could you have done any differently?”
“Maybe?” I said. “I don’t know. With what I knew at the time . . . I don’t know.”
“Would they all be alive if you had done differently? The children? Stan?”
I thought about it for a moment, and then shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Then be content, Sir Knight,” he said.
“Didn’t even have to get my hand cut off to get there,” I said, and leaned my head against the truck’s window.
I never knew it when I fell asleep, relaxed and unafraid.
Bradley P. Beaulieu
* * *
When I wrote Twelve Kings in Sharakhai, I became entranced by the main character Çeda, who, as it turns out, had a rather rough childhood. Her mother was killed under strange circumstances by the Kings who rule Sharakhai, and Çeda never learned why.
A mere day before that fateful event, Çeda’s mother gives her over to a rather prickly apothecary named Dardzada, a man who may be difficult to live with but who can protect Çeda better than most. Çeda thinks Dardzada hates her, but in truth he loves her very much. Or rather, he loved Çeda’s mother, and now wants to honor her by protecting her daughter. Those two things are not the same, and it shows. Dardzada desperately wants Çeda to avoid the things that got her mother killed, and so raises her strictly, perhaps too strictly, because eventually Çeda runs away.
In this story, I wanted to learn more about this complex man: where he comes from, what made him into the sort of man he is, what he values most. This story hopes to answer some of those questions while also exploring the mystery of a murdered boy that falls squarely and unexpectedly into his lap.
Bradley P. Beaulieu
Brightwine in the Garden of Tsitsian Village
Bradley P. Beaulieu
Dardzada finished wrapping a package in burlap and twine, tying it for his patron, a kindly old woman from the Hill who came to him every month for a set of vials—kyphi for her labored breathing, and ginger tonic for her gout.
“Very well,” the old woman said, handing four sylval over to Dardzada with a hand shaking from palsy. “Very well.”
Dardzada took it with a quick smile. “Twice daily for your gout now. More and you’re wasting it.”
She turned and walked out as if she hadn’t heard him.
A dozen others milled about, looking at the tonics, or the balms and unguents, or the charms he made himself to hang over babies’ cribs to protect against the night demons that wandered in from the desert from time to time, or a hundred other materia medica they might choose from. It was uncommon for so many to come at once—most made appointments, or came at certain times of the week—but there was a festival on in Sharakhai, Beht Revahl, a day that brought visitors from all the five Kingdoms, even desert tribesmen.
“Who might I help next?” Dardzada asked.
The bell above the door rang—the old woman leaving and two more patrons entering—but Dardzada was busying himself with a middle-aged man and his young wife, who had just placed three vials onto the high table for Dardzada to tally. The man looked mortified, while the woman smiled like the cat who’d eaten the mouse, though whether this was due to her husband’s discomfort or anticipation of the effects from the intense aphrodisiac they were purchasing, Dardzada couldn’t tell.
“Two sylval, five khet, if you please.”
“Out!”
Dardzada stood, ready to shout down the man who’d dared to order his patrons about, but his barking reply died on his tongue when he saw who had entered his shop. The two men were no patrons, but Silver Spears, and the elder was none other than Layth, a captain in the Spears and Dardzada’s half brother.
Layth stared about him in wonder. No one had moved a muscle. “Everyone!” Layth bellowed. “By order of the Kings of Sharakhai, you will clear this place!”
Most of Dardzada’s patrons began filing out, but the husband and wife standing at his desk hesitated. The man held out a hand filled with coins, but before he could drop them into Dardzada’s palm, Layth grabbed him about the shoulders and swept him toward the entrance like a swift river bearing a rudderless ship. The bell jingled as they left, the sound of lost wages.
When the door had closed at last, Layth turned to Dardzada, his arms crossed over his broad chest. An old bull of a man, he wore a conical helm with the bone-white horse tail flowing back from the crest, a mark of his rank as a captain. His white tunic, with the sign of the Silver Spears on the chest and trousers made from supple cloth, showed a man more accustomed to the shaded halls of the Spears, whereas the young Spear next to him, wearing the full, bright hauberk and tall leather boots associated with the rank and file, had a more weatherworn look about him, a man used to the dusty streets of the Amber City.
Dardzada leaned back, his tall chair creaking from his not-inconsiderable weight. “Don’t you ever get sick of yourself, Layth?”
Layth put on a frown. “Now is that any way to greet the agents of your Kings?”
Dardzada took a deep breath before answering. “What brings you to Floret Row, Captain?”
“Captain, is it?” Layth took two steps forward, his bad left knee giving him a noticeable limp. “So formal . . .”
“Make up your mind, Layth. Do you come as brother or Captain?”
Layth hefted himself onto the stool on the far side of the desk. “Didn’t you have some girl working for you? That skinny little thing, what was her name? Çeda? What happened to her?”
Dardzada said nothing.
Scratching the white stubble along his chin and neck, Layth chuckled and looked about the shop as if he cared one whit about Dardzada’s affairs. “Doing well for yourself, I see. Paying all your taxes, are you?”
Dardzada gave him a flat stare. “If you’re looking to line your purse, Layth, just come out and say it. No doubt I could spare a copper or two for the finest the Silver Spears have to offer.”
Layth laughed, little more than a deep rumble. “Did I tell you, Ezren? Prickly as a fucking cactus.”
The Spear, a handsome young man half Dardzada’s age, watched the exchange with a look that landed somewhere between confusion and embarrassment. He didn’t seem put off, exactly, just unsure what to expect. Layth had kept him in the dark then. He was going to reveal something to the both of them here.
Layth raised his hand magnanimously, as if he were granting Dardzada some great favor. “No need for coin, Zada, no need for coin. But I might use your nose for sussing things out. That I might do.” Layth winked. “By order of the Kings.”
“By your order, Layth.”
“No! Not this time, Brother. Official King’s business. Tell him, Ezren.”
Ezren clasped his hands behind his back, as if standing for inspection. “My Lord Captain?”
“Tell the go
od citizen what you were called to investigate.”
Ezren nodded, then turned incrementally so that he faced Dardzada squarely. “Three days ago, I was summoned to investigate a boy found dead on his parents’ estate. He was found lying near a pump house behind their paddock. His name is Gazi, the son of a horse breeder—”
“A man you’ve apparently impressed,” Layth cut in.
“Wait,” Dardzada said, “this is the son of Amir Jandal’ava?”
“The very one,” Layth replied.
Amir wasn’t merely a horse breeder, but the owner of some of the finest thoroughbred akhalas the desert had ever seen. He raised them for racing, though this attracted many other takers. The highborn who had a fancy for the hippodrome. Rich merchantmen and caravan owners. Even the Kings of Sharakhai had been known to buy his horses from time to time. Any who saw the very owning of one of the kings of horses as a symbol of high status.
Layth crossed meaty arms over a broad chest. “Amir asked that I treat this as if my own son had been lost.” Dardzada couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of Layth with a son—what a travesty that would be. Layth went on as if he’d heard nothing. “So like a good captain, I set my best man on it.”
“And?”
“Amir didn’t believe what Ezren found, that the boy had died from a beating.”
Dardzada didn’t at all like where this was headed. “Why not?”
Layth looked to Ezren.
“Gazi was found near his home,” the young Spear began, “but with clothes his mother says were not his. And she claims he looked different.”
“Different how?”
“She had difficulty telling us.”
“Tell him,” Layth cut in.
Ezren shrugged. “She claims he looked older.”
“How long had the boy been missing?” Dardzada asked.
“Six weeks,” Ezren replied.
“A boy could have a growth spurt, could he not? Or look so harrowed in death that he might seem older?”
Ezren nodded. “All things I told the mother plainly, facts she chose to ignore, and in so doing convinced the father to press.”
Dardzada shook his head. “Forgive me, but what does any of this have to do with me?”
“Well if you haven’t guessed, dear brother, Amir asked for you. He asked for you specifically.”
Like an east end dandy down a west end alley, this was heading in the completely wrong direction, and Dardzada was struggling to find a way out before things got really bad. “I’m not a Spear,” he sputtered.
“One of your wealthiest patrons has lost a son, Dardzada.”
“Well what do you want me to do about it?” Dardzada knew Amir, but it wasn’t as though they were fast friends. They’d met by chance at a tasting party years ago, Amir had taken a liking to Dardzada—gods only knew why; they’d had a terrible row over the state of imported Qaimiri caviar that night, Dardzada claiming it had gone steadily downhill, Amir defending it until his face had gone red and he’d stormed off. Yet a week later, without ever mentioning their argument again, Amir had begun ordering his house’s medicinals from Dardzada. He’d even summoned Dardzada from time to time to consult on conditions of illness where he felt their usual physic was leading him astray, especially where his wife or any of his three sons were involved.
“Go!” Layth said. “Investigate! Put your mind to it. Isn’t that what the scholars in the collegia say?”
As if it were the simplest thing in all the world.
“Well you may as well put their minds to it, Layth. I’ve no time for this.”
Layth waggled his head. “Amir won’t have it. He knows as well as I that you know about these things.” He stood from the stool and swept his arms about the small apothecary as if he were taking in the grand mosaic on the underside of Tulathan’s temple dome, a thing that felt as demeaning as Layth surely meant it. “You live them.”
“I’ll make more over the next day than I will in the following four weeks combined! Who’s going to pay me for what I’ll lose?”
Layth stared at Dardzada as if he were disappointed in him. “This is Kings’ business, payment in kind for all the Kings do for you.”
The Kings can rot. “I won’t do it, Layth. This has nothing to do with me.”
Like a bucket of water had been poured over him, Layth’s expression of annoyance vanished; replacing it was a calm look that gave some small insight into how truly angry he was. He stepped up to the counter and stabbed one meaty finger into Dardzada’s chest. “Make no mistake, Dardzada, this is King’s business.”
The implication was clear: give Layth what he wanted or suffer not only his wrath, but the fury of the Silver Spears as well. Dardzada loathed the idea of helping his half brother, especially on orders, but the last thing he needed, lost business or not, were for the Silver Spears, or worse, the Kings themselves, to become aware of him and his other business dealings.
Seeing he’d made his point, Layth spun and strode to the door, the bell jingling as it swung wide. “Take Ezren. He’s a sharp eye for these things. Report to me what you’ve found by tomorrow morning.”
With that the door crashed shut, leaving Dardzada alone with the young Spear. They stared at one another for a moment, Ezren looking uncomfortable, Dardzada trying and failing to hide his annoyance at his brother. “Well don’t just stand there with your cock in your hand,” he said to Ezren. “Lead the way.”
Within Lord Amir’s impressive estate, Amir himself led Dardzada and Ezren down a winding set of stairs. Dardzada hated stairs—they reminded him how much weight he’d put on since his younger days—but as they circled lower and lower, the heat of the city was slowly replaced by the chill interior of the cellar, which was a welcome relief indeed. They eventually came to a passageway and finally to a room where expensive casks of wine and wheels of cheese and various dry goods were stored in shelves along the wall. In the center of the room was Gazi, a boy of ten, lying on a wide wooden table. He was naked, his black hair mussed, his eyes half lidded and glazed. Dardzada remembered him running around his shop more than once. He was a precocious boy, always getting into things.
“How was it he was missing from your household?” Dardzada asked while mopping his brow with a kerchief. He stepped to the table’s opposite side and motioned Ezren to shine the lantern higher.
Amir, dressed darkly, stared down at Gazi with a long face made all the more haunting by the lantern’s shadows. “I’d brought him to a race six weeks ago. I saw him talking with a few older boys at the edge of the track, but by the time the race finished, I couldn’t find him, nor the boys.”
“The boys, we believe,” Ezren broke in, “are part of a black lotus gang that run the west end streets.”
“And they were at a horse race?”
Ezren shrugged. “The hippodrome draws all sorts.”
“Have they been found, these boys?”
“We have men looking, but so far, no.”
Dardzada leaned in close. Along Gazi’s face and arms were bruises and cuts and scrapes. One was particularly nasty, along his forehead, mottled patches of brown, yellow, and green surrounding it like fallen butterflies. Likely that wound had killed him. “When was he found?”
“Three nights ago.”
Dardzada moved along the table, examining Gazi’s skin, which had bruising, but . . . “He’s very clean.”
Amir looked embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have let them, I know. But his mother . . . I couldn’t stand to let her see him so filthy.”
Dardzada looked up. He could see the pain in the man’s eyes. “It’s been three days. You were right to clean him.” Dardzada checked his toenails. The little dirt collected there had a brown tinge to it, which would follow from a boy found among the streets of Sharakhai. His fingernails were short and strangely immaculate. “Help me roll him over.”
Ezren did, and Dardzada examined his back. There were faint lines across his skin. He leaned in closer and ran his fingers over them�
��welt marks, nearly healed. “These are from a lashing,” Dardzada said, then he stood and looked Amir in the eye. “What do you know of them?”
Amir’s gaze flicked between Dardzada and Gazi’s back. “Are you suggesting we whipped him?”
“I’m merely asking a question.”
Amir turned to Ezren, puffing himself up. “I will not stand for this in my own home!”
“Lord Amir,” Dardzada said, “you requested my presence here for a reason. It’s because I’m thorough. I imply nothing with my questions. I ask because I need to know. Now please, if you would be so kind, do you know anything about the whip marks on his back?”
“Of course I don’t! That was done by the ones who took him!”
Dardzada nodded, granting him the point. “It’s conceivable. They’re old enough to have healed but fresh enough to have been given shortly after his abduction, if that’s what it was.” Dardzada returned to his inspection. “But why would he have received lashes?”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know,” Amir said. “I can only imagine the sort of men he ended up with.”
“As you say,” Dardzada said, carefully inspecting Gazi’s skin. “Had Gazi been known to smoke lotus?” The boy was young, but he’d seen younger succumb to the draw of that vicious narcotic.
Amir’s anger seemed to drain. “Not that we were aware of, but he might have been lured in by the older ones. They talk sweetly to boys like him. Even those from the richer quarters of the city can become mesmerized by it, thinking it exotic to be near, even if they haven’t yet tasted it on their tongue.”
Dardzada couldn’t argue there. Black lotus had drawn many into its dark embrace, and the many deaths around Sharakhai seemed to do little to dull the attraction. If anything, that made it more seductive, not less. It seemed romantic, this drug, whose smoke gave such intensely euphoric dreams. He opened Gazi’s mouth. The boy’s teeth were not yellowed, though if he’d been smoking it only a while it wouldn’t have had a chance to discolor his teeth yet. The smell of his mouth was rank, but that was to be expected. There was no scent of black lotus, though, and Dardzada would have been able to smell it, even on a boy three days dead.
Unfettered II: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy Page 11
