“A thief?” Roberto asked innocently.
The crowd roared in laughter. The man blushed. Some of the faces had turned back to the clowning on the stage.
Roberto, seeing this, raised his voice, with an indignation true enough. What actor isn’t offended by an unappreciative audience. “And yet you accuse me. And yet you smear my good name.” A name Roberto didn’t mention. Some of the faces turned back. Roberto slapped the man and drew his rapier. The tears were now replaced with blazing anger. “You steal from me and accuse me. You doubt my word. You slander my forefathers, sir. Defend yourself.”
The man’s blush faded. He turned white. He dropped the purse and backed away. “But…but…but….”
“I’ll teach you to defame my father,” Roberto said, “to call my mother a whore…”
“I never…”
“To assign me the name of bastard…”
“I didn’t…”
“Oh, cunning cruelty. Such is the shame of the gods. Such is the way of the world. To come to this. To this!”
Corin and Sandy could hardly keep their seats for laughing. Indeed this was the way of this world. And Roberto was the face of it. Roberto waggled the tip of his rapier under his victim’s nose. “Villain. Slanderer. Thief!” Roberto waited theatrically, as if this was just a part in another revenge tragedy, then added, “thief of my good name. Thief of my sweet mother’s good name. Thief of my father’s good name. Thief. Thief. Thief!”
Sheepishly the man dropped Roberto’s purse and scuttled down the stairs into The Yard to hide his face among the nameless groundlings.
As Roberto sat down in the row in front of Corin and Sandy, Corin said, “I’m pretty sure your mother actually was a whore.”
Sandy giggled. “She was, and a damn good whore too.”
The other whore who Sandy, via the quick fingers of Corin, had handed the purse to now sat down behind her. She counted the takings and shared them with Sandy and Roberto.
Rob was a tall, slim, freckled, man in his late twenties, with straight sandy hair tied back in a short ponytail, and grey eyes which always seemed to be laughing. He was immensely talented, if truth be told, as well as in his own entertaining lies. As a contortionist he liked to title himself Rubbery Roberto, but his knife throwing skills were legendary and Corin always thought of him as Rob Smart, because that was precisely what he did. He was not a member of the Courts of Law but of the Guild of Misrule, which was mostly entertainers: sword swallowers, fire breathers, contortionists, acrobats, jugglers, knife throwers, actors and poets. Then there were the multitalented: writers of blank verse drama with the occasional sideline in forgery, actors convincing enough to pass for a missing heir to a great fortune, jugglers with hands quick enough for pickpocketing or cutting purses, knife throwers who dabbled in assassination, acrobats agile enough to cat burgle, contortionists lithe enough to squeeze through any space if there was treasure at the other end. Rob was most of these, though he didn’t write blank verse. The thieves’ guild wouldn’t touch him though, since performances like his drew the large distracted crowds a pickpocket craves, especially in the crowded great market across the bridge. More importantly, in the lucrative galleries of the baiting pit and theatre the thieves of the Courts of Law only operated by leave of the Guild of Misrule.
“So,” Roberto said to Corin, “what did you think?”
The tall man next to Corin stood momentarily, stretching his long legs, and said, “A bit overacted.” At six and a half feet tall, Agmar made even the tall Roberto seem short. Long auburn hair flowed down over his wide, leanly muscled shoulders. He raised a hand with long elegant fingers to his freckled face, rubbing the stubble on his chin as his deep blue eyes, speckled with silver motes, literally sparkled, then sat down again, picking up the small harp between his feet which he carried everywhere and strumming a few chords. Agmar was a bard from Seltica. Next to the column rested his great two handed sword, for the bards of that island in the west were renowned as much for their martial vigour as their poetic and musical gifts.
Roberto huffed at Agmar’s description of his performance. “Overacted!”
“But effective,” Agmar placated him.
“I am a professional,” Roberto said, straightening his spine and putting on his most patrician expression. “Such plebeians as yourself could not possibly understand.” Corin was reduced to fits of laughter again. Roberto slouched in his seat, and grinned. “Ah, the crowds are so jaded nothing else will work anymore. It really is a sign of our times.”
“So why are you here, Corin?” Agmar asked.
“Can’t a man seek out the company of friends?”
“A thief usually finds his friends when he needs them.”
“So cynical.” Corin acted wounded. “But you’re right.”
Agmar watched him expectantly.
“I’m looking for an evil sorcerer.” The moment he said it he knew it sounded silly.
Agmar raised an eyebrow. “What kind of lunatic seeks out death?”
Corin wondered how much he should tell Agmar, and how much Agmar would believe. “Would you believe if I said a goddess wanted me to?”
“She must be a pretty special girl for you to be suicidal. Tell me, what girl has put you up to this. I’ll go and spank her, maybe something more if she likes the treatment.”
“No, seriously. A goddess.”
Agmar smiled indulgently, the motes in his eyes literally glittering.
Corin ignored the condescension, “I don’t mean it poetically. You know I’m not the romantic type.”
“Rose might disagree,” Sandy said, smiling at the young whore who now sat down behind Corin.
“That’s not love.”
“Not love?” Rose said with mock offence as she leaned forward and rested her chin on his shoulder, brushing her exposed nipples against his back. “I’ll never sell myself to you again.”
Rose’s long, wavy, honey blonde hair which, even when dry and curling up reached all the way down her back, now fell over his shoulder into his lap. He found the perfumed smell of it irresistible and wondered for a moment whether she too was a goddess, disguised as a Thedran whore. She was slim but shapely, with narrow shoulders and waist, firm, not overlarge breasts, exposed in the usual fashion of Thedran whores, with light coloured, large nipples, becoming erect from rubbing against his back, wide hips, and a flawless, milky complexion. She smiled, not only with her mouth, but also with her eyes. Those eyes were large and hazel hued, tending more towards green than brown, though the balance of hues changed from day to day and, she believed, with her moods. They were intelligent eyes, aware and quick and ready with laughter, but in unguarded moments deeply sad. They were overhung by artificially long lashes, which when lowered seemed like tiny lacquered fans behind which she hid a shyness none of her customers could imagine, let alone understand; and lengthened by eyeliner at their edges. Her brows were carefully plucked and their outlines made precise with a touch of charcoal. Her small, sensual lips, lightly glossed with a rosy food dye, were slightly drawn back by her smile from small, unusually straight, perfectly white teeth, and her breath, like her hair, was scented. Corin didn’t believe any other Thedran could possibly have such perfect teeth, or smell, or complexion. She suffered from none of the pock-marks that most North Bank whores had to carefully conceal beneath layers of foundation and powder. Altogether, her face had the quickness of an experienced actress’s, though her eyes could not always hide a hard earned stoicism, which in turn overlay the desperate, ineradicable sadness of a girl sold as a child into sexual slavery by her widowed mother.
He took her chin and gently kissed her lips. “I’ll always love…” He paused with a lovelorn look on his face. “…what you have to sell.” The tiny fans of her eyelashes closed for a moment, but she betrayed no emotion. He turned back to Agmar. He spoke more insistently now, “You’re the one always telling the old tales of heroes and gods. You do think they’re real, don’t you?”
�
�I think I don’t know. I’ve seen some strange things in my time, but never a god…or goddess, more’s the pity.”
“Well, take my word for it.” Then Corin told him everything that had happened, from when he had been dumped in the lake to the nymph’s request.
Agmar strummed his harp:
“Quick-fingers one night took a swim
In the lake under Thedra Bridge,
Saved by the kiss of a pretty nymph
He died thirsting for her sweet wet lips.”
“So you don’t believe me?”
Agmar put down his harp. “I didn’t say that. But if this nymph was more than just a wet dream you had while you were washed up by the grove, she’s asked a lot for the price of a kiss. Better to stick to whores Corin. Give them what they want and they’ll always show you your heart’s desire.” As if to prove Agmar’s point, Rose nibbled Corin’s ear. Agmar continued, “This sounds like a fool’s errand. If you can find what this nymph wants you’ll die as likely as not. So you end up in a hole. There are much nicer holes to end up in.”
“Like Rose’s,” Sandy chipped in.
“Like mine,” Rose agreed, “and the price of admission is only a single golden sovereign.” A price that only aristocrats, merchants and extraordinarily skilful thieves could afford.
“You said you loved me,” Corin acted affronted.
Rose’s eyes hardened, whether in calculation or irritation he couldn’t tell, and she said harshly. “I only love gold. I’m only a whore.” He reached back and rubbed one of her nipples. She nibbled his ear again, but this time bit harder, drawing blood. When he exclaimed in pain she merely glared at him.
To escape her hazel eyed glare he returned his eyes to Agmar, and said, “Well, assume for a moment that I’m not making this up….”
Agmar said, “And if you are you should become a bard. You definitely have talent.”
“…and assume I’m not mad….”
“Certainly a possibility. Or at least you might have dreamed it and then taken the dream for waking.”
“…then the fact remains, I have to find a sorcerer. Preferably an evil sorcerer.” Corin realised the last comment really did sound mad.
“Well, I’ve never had anything much to do with evil sorcerers. It’s said they can be killed, but as likely as not they’ll disintegrate you or turn you into an overcooked roast, or use you in some evil experiment. They are evil, after all. Good sorcerers, though…”
Corin’s ears pricked up. “Yes?”
“Well those two wouldn’t call themselves that. They’d say they’re scholars, or scientists. But their knowledge is certainly arcane. I know a thing or two about what some call magic. I’ve dabbled. It’s necessary to my art. I can affect the minds of men with song in ways that’d surprise you. But Jared and Javid have much deeper knowledge than that. And they’ve been in and around this city their whole lives. I’ve only been here a short while. If anyone knows where an evil sorcerer would be it’s the twins. If you’re crazy enough to want to take on an evil sorcerer, they might just be wise enough to not tell you where you might find him. More likely they’ll point the way to your death just to prove how smart they are. Then you can have as much fun as you like getting yourself killed.”
“So where are they?”
“You already know.”
“What do you mean?”
“You see their handiwork, or at least Javid’s handiwork, every day. That crazy staircase in the air. I’ll introduce you. You’ll need me to get up there.”
“I’m a thief, remember. I can climb a wall.”
“If you want to take all night you might. And then you’ll have to get the twins to talk. Then again, the archers of The Duke might pick you off on the way up. He’s their patron.”
Chapter 5: Men of Science
“Then she kissed me, again,” Corin said. He had drifted from his story several times, fascinated by the scene inside the observatory. Agmar understood; it had had the same effect on him the first time he had seen it.
“An interesting tale,” Javid Pentafax said, “it would explain much.”
His brother, Jared, only showed them his snow white tonsure, matched by the one Javid had retained, though neither was any longer a Brother of the Leaves. His eye was pressed against the lens. The matters of this earth seemed to matter less to him than the swirling spectra and coronae of the moon. It was a world which obsessed both twins, though Javid had said they sought it in different ways.
Corin still gaped at the observatory. It was littered with half completed experiments: an armillary sphere with a delicate clockwork; retorts and alembics, spirals of glass, flasks and trays. There were tiny mechanical birds with clockwork innards in various stages of construction. But what captured the young thief’s imagination most were the crystals and precious gems everywhere about the observatory; sapphires and diamonds and rubies and emeralds, quarts and amber and jade. They were all suspended in the air, Corin supposed by magic, and all marked with runes that pulsed with their own light – dividing further or recombining the rays emanating from the giant crystal embedded in the mechanisms of the dome above. They reminded him of the gem in the cellar of the thieves’ guild, and as he thought that the fiery pain returned for the first time since the nymph had kissed him. It was less intense than before, but he guessed it would get worse over time.
“What’s it for?” Corin asked.
“Ah,” said Jared, lifting his eye from the lens now, “All these rays of light, by my skilful calculations,” He gestured to the rays extending along lines that ran back and forth, through and beyond the stones, passing through sequences of inscribed runes, “pass through runes which spell out, in the first language, the names of clarity.”
“As the gods might write them,” Javid added.
“They converge again at the centre of the observatory, in this polished silver dish.”
Jared now lowered his eye to another crystal, a lens no larger than his eye, balanced over the centre of the dish on a tripod, though not directly above it, since dish and tripod were rotated to face the astronomer.
“The great crystal above,” he continued, pointing, though still looking into his lens, at the huge gem set in the semi-spherical surface of the observatory’s dome, “is set to run along rails in the dome, and made to face, through my beautiful clockwork…”
“…our…,” Javid corrected.
“…our mechanism, the moon.”
“It is a work of genius,” Javid said, “which we designed and built together.”
Impelled to a sense of urgency by the returning pain, Corin asked Javid, “What did you mean by, ‘it would explain much.’?”
“Follow me.”
Agmar and Corin followed Javid out and across the top of the giant tower to the battlements where they overlooked the lake.
“Notice the stink?”
“The city always stinks,” Agmar said.
“Not like this,” Corin said. He knew the city better than the bard, being a native, and he knew it had never been as bad as this.
“No,” Javid agreed, “it’s not the usual stench of city life, of piss and shit emptied lazily into streets from chamber pots when the refuse carts are late, or of rotting food and human waste on the carts or near the collection points. It’s a stagnant smell. No mountain breeze will lift it, of that I’m sure, since I feel the breezes clearly up here, and they’ve been frequent enough recently. I doubt a summer rain would wash it away either. I went down to the lake a few days ago, and it smells putrescent. It’s as if the river is punishing the city for some terrible sacrilege. The power of cleansing is gone from his waters. Look.” He pointed to the aqueducts which brought water back to the lake and city from the streams diverted around Mount Thedra. Some extended all the way to the city, while others filled the lake. The waters flowed out of them sluggishly, oozing from their edges like molasses poured from a barrel. “There is no joy in their movement. I couldn’t understand why. I tried scrying,
descending to the caldera lake and drawing many runes of showing, but the waters resisted. The usually placid surface rose in waves, as if angry at my meddling. I asked the Sisters of the Labyrinth what they knew, but for all their prophetic skills they couldn’t find the cause either. The abbess only told me, ‘The river laments, but will not speak his loss.’ Now the cause is clear. You must follow the nymph’s quest. The fate of the city may depend upon it.”
“But where do I find this evil sorcerer?”
Javid pointed to a tower in the distance. “The air and the waters are not the only things to concern me recently. There is the tower of Phisphul.”
“Phisphul?” Corin asked.
“I’ve heard of him,” Agmar nodded, “and none of it good.”
Javid said, “An almost legendary necromancer. I thought him long dead, until recently, when that began.”
The tower was taller than even the huge gatehouse towers that divided the city into its four quarters, but was much thinner. It rose crookedly from the rooftops of the south east quarter, like an arthritic finger scratching the sky, and was topped by a misshapen conical roof. Even now a strange light emanated from a lone window near the roof. The light wasn’t bright and joyful, like the fireworks calling back the goddess Dawn to chase away the longest, darkest night at midwinter. It pulsed like a sick heart, bleeding crimson streams into the darkness. A light that would pollute healthy shadows. Corin shuddered now despite the summer warmth.
“I’m supposed to fight someone who can do that?” Corin looked doubtful.
“Maybe not fight,” Agmar said.
“What then?”
“Steal. Perhaps your special skills are more important than anything a warrior like me could bring to bear against such a sorcerer.”
“Or a mage like me.”
“But you’re a powerful mage. You can fight him.”
Javid shook his head. “Though my knowledge only grasps at the faintest traces of divine wisdom I like to flatter myself that I know more than many mortal men, but…”
Agmar nodded, “But Phisphul, if he lives is no mere mortal.”
Bloodspate Page 5
