by J. V. Jones
Abruptly, Crope stood. Some things he could not bear thinking about. Like when the slavers had cornered him on a slope like this one, how they had driven him hard against the rocks and cast a rope net over him, and how his feet had tangled in the lines and the slavers had laughed as he stumbled and fell. His ankles still bore the marks of their ropes. They had driven him east in their wagon train, getting drunk on pure grain alcohol and congratulating themselves over their catch. He’s as big as three men, they had said of him. He’ll fetch a fine price in the mines.
Crope’s chest began to heave. You entered the mine, the mine entered you. He spat out the black phlegm, and felt better after a while.
Town Dog had returned with the mouse and now sat patiently at Crope’s feet. Crope bent slowly at the waist and pocketed the limp brown rodent. Town Dog nosed his hand, and Crope scratched her ears and tussled with her until he was ready to carry on.
After the incident at the alehouse, Crope had kept far away from settled land. When he spied a village he walked leagues out of his path to avoid it, and when he smelled the woodsmoke of mountain men he quietly altered his course. The journey went easier, having Town Dog. Longer, but easier. Worrying about Town Dog stopped him worrying about himself. Town Dog wasn’t a very accomplished hunter. The one time she’d flushed something worthwhile from the brush, she’d been so startled that she’d let the raccoon hotfoot up a tree and get away. Crope tried to be fair about it—it was an unusually big coon—but visions of sweet roasted meat made him eye Town Dog accusingly for several days.
The storms were the worst. The mountains bred them, whipping up winds and clouds, sending sleet driving into Crope’s face and blinding him with swirling snow. He’d lost some days to fever, holed up in a depression banked with snow south of Hound’s Mire. The only way he knew later that time had passed was by the number and assortment of small rodents that Town Dog had brought to him while he slept.
Things were bad for a while after that. His chest was weak—Bitterbean said that diggers had lungs like sea sponges soaked in tar—and the going was slow for many days. He and Town Dog had descended from the mountains into the foothills. It was riskier here—bad men and slavers might find you—but at least it was easier to breathe. One morning he’d walked past a birch sapling as straight as a spear and cut himself a staff. It was good having something to lean on, and even when he regained his health and strength he decided not to lay it aside. Travelers in illustrated books carried staffs. He knew this because his lord had once possessed many tomes. A staff gave a man something to do, Crope discovered; good for prodding snow to test its depth and ice to test its fastness. And he had never learned to love blades. It was comforting to have a weapon on hand that relied on strength instead of edge.
Crope felt his heartbeat quicken as he and Town Dog wound down the slope. Part of him wished that he and his dog could just carry on walking, watching the season warm into spring and listening to the mayflies buzz around his face. Back in the diamond pipe, he’d dreamed of owning the perfect length of land. Just enough for a man to cross on foot in the hours between sunrise and sunset on a summer day. He’d grow wheat and radishes, and seed a meadow for sheep, and perhaps later lay a hard standing for milch cows. Sometimes the details changed . . . but the length of land never did. Long enough for a man to walk in a day.
But that was a dream for another life. In this one he belonged to his lord.
Crope could no longer count how many years he’d known Baralis, but he’d never forgotten that first meeting, a continent away in the Far South. It was burned in his memory the way his slave brand was burned into his flesh.
Baralis had spied him on Green Spinster Street in Silbur, being stick-whipped by a gang of youths. A stallholder had accused him of stealing a bolt of wool, and had raised a hue and cry. A mob formed quickly, as mobs did when he was about, and he was chased through the market and into the street. He was hurting badly when Baralis approached, his nose broken and bleeding and his right eye swollen shut. Jail was a certainty, for he could never find the words to defend himself. Baralis was walking along the street, dressed in scholar’s black, a tall young man with an arrogant face. Crope called out to him, though he could not say why, and instead of passing by Baralis stopped. And that was when the miracle happened. Somehow the man who would become Crope’s lord brought an end to the beating—with nothing more than words. He never raised his voice, never drew a weapon, yet he turned Crope’s attackers cold.
All his life, until that very point, Crope had never known anyone to defend him. He’d been attacked and jailed, hunted down and tormented, made scapegoat for a dozen different crimes. He’d been thrown into the baiting pits of Lynch Town and made to fight bears. He’d been used as a pack animal to carry baskets of damp salt from the Dead Shores. He’d dug graves, logged forests, performed as a curiosity with a troop of black-skinned mummers, and laid down on surgeons’ mats whilst physicians tapped his blood. He’d slept in holes, caves and locked cells, lived on rats and chicken bones and the ticks off his own skin.
When Baralis turned to him on Green Spinster Street and murmured, Come, follow me home, the black-clad young man became Crope’s savior, his protector—his lord.
Baralis was owed Crope’s soul.
Crope dug his staff into the earth and rested his weight a moment. Town Dog was ranging far ahead, and her skinny tail was the only part of her visible above the scrub.
The city was mere leagues away now. Crope could see the gray haze of smoke and mist it created, and the way it sprang from the base of the mountain like a newborn peak. To the north lay rolling grassy plains, dotted with villages and crossed with roads. Close to the city’s north wall he could just make out the flapping brown edges of a camp town. Here in the east, entire hillsides had been clearcut for timber. Somewhere not far below him, Crope could hear the whir of pit saws, and he remembered how it was to be the man standing below in the pit, how the sawdust rained on your face and shoulders every time you pulled down the saw.
Bitterbean said a man’s past was like a ghost, and it would haunt you if you let it. Crope had thought about that a lot on his journey, and sometimes he thought Bitterbean was right, yet mostly he hoped he was wrong. Once, one summer when the pumps had failed, Crope had been hauled up from the pipe to unclog them. As he disassembled the crank on the lakeshore, a bass fisherman nearby launched his boat. Crope remembered glancing at the boat as he went about his work, watching as it slowly pulled away. That was what he hoped the past was like . . . a boat sailing away as you stood upon the shore.
Suddenly anxious to be moving, Crope called Town Dog to him, and together they headed down toward the land of men.
They passed the logging camp at midday, and by late afternoon they had joined the road leading west to the city’s walls. Farmers, drovers and wagon trains jostled for space on the road. Occasionally, horns would ring out and everyone would clear the center while troops of men-at-arms rode through. Crope fell in behind a high-sided wagon ricked with hay, content to let the height and breadth of the load conceal him. Bits of straw and hayseeds floating down from the bales made him sneeze from time to time, but he didn’t really mind it. Town Dog grew tired as they neared the gate, so he picked her up and tucked her under his cloak.
The gate seemed a very fine thing to Crope, tall enough for five men standing on each others’ shoulders to pass through. It was carved from giant blocks of granite, the kind that Scurvy Pine said he’d quarried before they set him to tin.
There was a great stirring in the city, Crope learned, as he waited in the crush of people petitioning for entry. Someone high and mighty had been wed that very day, and now there was to be a feast and dancing in some important fortress. The driver of the hay wagon was made much of, for his load was due to be delivered to the stables of that very place. Crope listened for a while, but he couldn’t keep up with all the unfamiliar accents and long names.
So far no one had challenged him or even stared too hard, b
ut that didn’t stop him from feeling anxious. In his mind he rehearsed what he would say to the gatekeep. It was only a few words, but he worried he’d get in a muddle and they’d come out wrong. As the line shortened he experimented with his staff, trying for a pose that seemed unthreatening. Tucked under his belt or slung on his back it seemed too much like a weapon ready to be drawn, and in the end he settled on holding it in his hand as if it were a flagpole.
Just as he was about to reconsider the flagpole hold, the hay wagon trundled under the gate, and a voice called out, “Next.”
Crope moved forward into the shadow of the gate tower, glad of Town Dog’s warmth near his heart. A man-at-arms cloaked in red leather with a bird broach at his throat presented his spear.
“Name?”
“Crope of Drowned Lake.”
The man had to tilt his head to look at Crope’s face. The guard’s gray eyes glanced over the ragged beard that had grown on Crope’s face since he’d left the pipe, and the thick scars on his ears and neck. He said tersely, “Trade?”
Crope could no longer stand the scrutiny. “Free miner,” he replied, looking down.
“You’re too late for sapping. Army’s moving out within the week.”
Crope didn’t understand what he meant. Slowly the panic began to rise.
The guard was losing patience. He lowered his spear. “On your way, big man. The Spire’s been closed to freebooters and mercenaries since yesterday at noon, under order from the surlord himself.”
Knew you had suet for brains. Crope struggled to make sense of the guard’s words, but it was difficult with the bad voice speaking in his head.
Someone in the queue behind him shouted, “Stop holding up the line.”
The guard turned toward the sentry post to summon more men. As he took a breath to make the call, Crope mumbled, “Not mercenary. Not here to fight.”
The guard hesitated. “What you here for, then?”
This was the question Crope had practiced for. Although he didn’t much want to, he raised his head. “Here to visit with the priests in the Bone Temple.”
Something behind the guard’s gray eyes changed. He raised the spear. “Best get going, then,” he said quietly, stepping aside.
Relief made Crope’s ears glow with heat. Half a century later and the words taught to him by the black-skinned mummers of the Ivory Plains still worked like magic. Learn them, long-limbed Swalhabi had commanded. There is not a city in the Known World that does not possess a Bone Temple. And when we travel north to new places and pale men bar our way, we speak these words and watch the pale men step aside. Bone Temples house powerful magic, and no man, pale or dark, will risk that magic being turned against him.
Every night for thirty days Swalhabi had made Crope repeat the words until they soaked into the fabric of his brain. Swalhabi had sold him half a year later to the salt mines, but Crope had never blamed him for it. Once the giant-slaying masque had grown old there were no more parts for him to play.
Mumbling his thanks to Swalhabi and the other mummers, Crope entered the city of Spire Vanis.
It vibrated with the presence of his lord. Hundreds of miles west, over mountains, frozen lakes and tilled fields, and somehow the journey had overshadowed what he sought. He hadn’t meant to let it, but the world above the diamond pipe was unknown to him, terrible and fraught with danger, and during his travels he’d drop to the ground exhausted at night and spare barely a thought for his lord. Tears of shame filled Crope’s eyes.
Come to me, his lord had commanded. And now, at last, he had.
An early dusk was setting in behind the walls. Candles were being lit within buildings, filling the blank squares of windows with golden light. Ahead, the driver of the hay wagon had stopped to light his driver’s lamp. Crope watched the careful precautions the man took before striking his flint, using his body to shield the load from stray sparks. By the time the job was done and the horn guard was secured over the flame, Crope had caught up with the rear of the wagon, deciding to follow in its wake for a while.
The city was very large and grand. It seemed more orderly than most he’d known, and the ways traveled by the hay wagon were wide and open. Mounds of slush were melting along the roadsides, sending little streams of water spiraling down drains. The air was still between the high buildings, and mist was beginning to form.
Town Dog grew restless and wriggled against Crope’s chest until he set her down. As they followed the wagon west and then south, he was overcome with the conviction that he was drawing closer to his lord. It had been the same with Mannie Dun, who always knew the best place to dig for diamonds. Crope had asked him once how he did it, and Mannie had tapped the bridge of his nose and said he felt them in his bones. That was how it was for Crope: Baralis was in his bones.
The wagon seemed to be heading toward the massive, high-walled structure that dominated the south of the city. The fortress. Torches burned from the ramparts and the wailing of horns blasted from the walls. The streets grew busier, and it seemed to Crope that everyone was moving in the same direction as the wagon. The bad voice began to whisper to him, telling him that he’d better be careful or he’d make some thick-headed mistake and fail. Crope curved his neck and shrank his shoulders, praying for something he’d never known in his life: obscurity in a crowd.
He was so close to his lord now—he could shut his eyes and see him. His lord was in the dark place . . . and he hurt. Crope could not bear to think about how he hurt.
“Make way! Delivery for the stable!” The driver of the hay wagon stood on the running board and cracked his whip. He’d arrived at a gate in the fortress wall, but couldn’t approach it due to the press of revelers who were standing in front of the lowered portcullis.
One of the men-at-arms manning the wall shouted a reply. Six heavily armed red cloaks emerged from the gate station and began moving back the crowd.
Come to me.
Crope suddenly knew he had to be inside the fortress. While everyone else was moving back, he moved forward. Grabbing hold of the wagon’s ring hook, he hoisted himself onto the tailgate that ran along the rear.
The wagon lurched forward, traveled a few paces, and then halted. Booted footsteps sounded. Someone called, “Check the hay,” and a series of sharp crunching noises followed as one of the red cloaks stabbed the bales. Crope kept very still, but he knew it was only seconds before he was spotted.
A spear blade passed close to his knee. Town Dog growled.
A man’s voice called, “Driver! Is this your man?”
Crope heard the rider shout, “Ain’t no one pitching hay but me”—and then a spear tip jabbed the back of Crope’s neck.
“You’d best step down, hay man. And while you’re at it you can tell me what business you intended in the fortress.”
Knew you wouldn’t get it right. Crope raised his arms and turned slowly to face the red cloak. His ears were hot, and he couldn’t think of any words.
Two other red cloaks joined the one with the spear, and all three men kept their weapons raised as Crope jumped from the step. The revelers were quiet now, sensing entertainment. The driver of the wagon peered around the back wheel to get a look.
The red cloak with the spear said, “Do you want to spend the night in jail?”
Crope shook his head.
Someone in the crowd piped up, “He came to try his chances with the bride!”
Laughter spread in an ugly wave. A woman shouted, “He’s almost as handsome as the Knife.”
Crope felt the color rise up his neck.
“Enough!” shouted one of red cloaks. And then, to Crope, “Speak up for yourself, man.”
“Wedding. Come to see the wedding.”
The red cloak rolled his eyes. “You’re too late for that. Wedding took place this morning. It’s the feasting tonight.”
As the red cloak finished speaking, horns blared within the fortress, sounding a call to attention. Crope looked up along with everyone else, and saw t
he heralds in all their finery atop the wall. Torches blazed around the flat-sided tower closest to the gate, throwing light and shadows across the stonework. At the halfway point of the tower an embrasured balcony had been draped with a silk cloth that showed a fearsome red bird on a silver ground. As Crope watched, two heralds stepped onto the balcony and sounded a fanfare before stepping aside. A moment passed and then a man and a woman came into view, and the crowd began cheering and stamping their feet.
The woman was dressed in stiff red silk that glittered with diamonds—even from a distance Crope knew them for real. She was black-haired and pale, and she did not smile. The man standing at her side was large and broad, and when he took her hand in his it was like watching a wolf eat a chick. One of his eyes was gone, and he wore no device to conceal it.
The pair stood uncomfortably, and suffered the attention of the crowd. After perhaps a minute had passed, another man stepped into the light . . . and robbed the very breath from Crope’s throat.
It was the pale-eyed man, the one who had taken his lord. Eighteen years later and Crope knew him as surely as if he’d looked into the man’s face every night. His lord’s captor. His enemy. The man who had left him to die.
The pale-eyed man drew renewed cheers from the crowd. He was dressed in quiet finery of subtle hues; butter-soft suedes in gray and maroon, all edged with bands of gold. He was carrying something heavy in a small cloth-of-gold sack, and when he shifted it to ease the weight the crowd cheered. The pale-eyed man smiled but did not show his teeth. His gaze swept down to the gate, taking in the great crush of revelers. Instinctively, Crope stepped into the shadow of the wagon. He saw the pale-eyed man’s gaze track the movement, saw him peer into the shadow, and then look away.
The pale-eyed man appeared to lose a beat of concentration before leaning forward to lay a kiss on the bride’s lips. The cloth-of-gold sack had passed into the bride’s keeping, and she seemed to gain some color now that her hand was no longer in her husband’s grip. As she untied the sack’s drawstring and reached inside, the crowd began a singsong chant.
