Drakenfeld

by Mark Charan Newton

  The flames became more ferocious and burned consistently, and for a long time. The painted faces of the priests and priestesses standing behind were soon blurred by the shimmering heat.

  The sun banked higher in the sky and my father could no longer be seen. Later his ashes would be gathered into an urn, which the pontiff would then secure in the family mausoleum outside Tryum, his final resting place. Though that would not happen until the priests had conducted further rituals.

  The blue-faced pontiff slowly gathered up the remains, and his priestesses came forth with brushes to cleanse the courtyard of evil spirits. People began to drift away, a few old friends lingering till the very end. One or two of them nodded to me, though I could not recall their faces – evidently, they knew who I was. Everything seemed strangely quiet, now, but that was how funerals were done in Tryum. No celebrations of life like the Atrewens; just a simple acknowledgement of death and a show of respect to the gods.

  And that was that. Well, apart from the fact that Leana was right about the fact that we were being watched.

  ‘Where next?’ Leana asked. ‘Are you to continue to contemplate your father’s passing at a temple?’

  ‘No, we’ve not got the time,’ I said. ‘We should head down into Plutum, but before that I want to find out why there was an attempt on our lives last night.’

  We headed to Constable Farrum’s house.

  Cutting through a small plaza, we passed where vendors in wine-coloured tunics were selling cinnamon sticks and hot chickpeas. Either side of them, two stores specialized in theatre equipment, masks and the like. A wood yard stood at the far end, its operations spread over three precarious floors, and next to it was a large stonemason’s building, with various examples of craftsmanship on display out the front. Several stone busts glowed in the morning sunlight.

  ‘Let us not be slow,’ Leana said. ‘I cannot see who it is, but we are now being followed.’

  We continued towards the stonemason’s, slipping down an adjacent alleyway.

  I heard their steps closing in behind us while, up ahead, two men jumped down from an open window, blocking our path.

  We were surrounded by six individuals. Each of them wore a mud-coloured tunic, and only one was rich enough to sport boots. At least one face had been at the funeral. Judging by the curved blade in his left hand, he wasn’t about to pay his respects.

  ‘Lucan Drakenfeld, son of Calludian, officer of the Sun Chamber.’ One lanky man spoke slowly and stepped towards us with an arrogant swagger. With more than thirty summers behind him, his beard still appeared like that of an adolescent. ‘You owe us money.’

  I withdrew my short sword a moment after Leana had drawn hers. ‘If you feel you’re owed something, why not come closer to collect it?’ I called back. For good measure, I let him know what I thought of his beard.

  ‘Let’s not spill blood,’ he spat, having momentarily lost his calm. ‘Hand over what we’re owed and we’ll leave you in peace.’

  They weren’t going to kill us: it would be tough getting money out of a corpse. ‘How about this for a deal: leave now and still keep your life. Or stay and be butchered.’ Sweat trickled down my back and I longed to ditch my cloak.

  The man shook his head. ‘See, this is no way to talk. You’re from a family of good standing. Should be showing us an example of pretty manners, right?’

  ‘Who’s your employer?’ I asked. ‘If I have debts, tell me who they’re owed to – otherwise I remain ignorant of what you claim.’

  ‘You don’t know about your debts?’ The man laughed, as did the others. ‘What family is this that don’t talk?’

  They came closer still, two in front, four at the back.

  ‘I’ve only been in the city for a few days,’ I called out. ‘I know nothing of a family debt.’

  ‘The money is owed by a Drakenfeld,’ the lead figure said. ‘We do not care who pays it, only that the account is settled. Or we spill blood, which I don’t wanna do.’

  ‘You’re not going to kill me,’ I replied.

  ‘Who said anything about killing? You can still pay with only one hand.’

  Leana threw a dagger into one man’s neck; he dropped his sword and collapsed, but by the time he’d hit the ground she’d already sliced the arm of the ringleader and then opened his throat before any of us knew what was going on.

  On seeing this display, the four men behind us ran back into the plaza.

  I stared at Leana, who set about retrieving her dagger.

  ‘What?’ She freed it from the body and wiped off the blood on his clothing. ‘You spend so much time talking. At least this business is over with now.’

  ‘We’ll have to report this,’ I replied. ‘We can’t just go about killing people and walking away without letting the authorities know.’

  ‘They are scum. No one cares.’

  ‘I care.’

  ‘Why are you so annoyed?’ she asked, sheathing her blades.

  ‘I was hoping to get answers.’

  ‘You got a few. Your father owed money. These people were not going to tell you who the money was owed to, they just wanted you to hand over coin. With only one hand, if they had it their way.’

  ‘I do not pay you to kill people needlessly. A life is not ours to take away unless absolutely necessary.’

  She regarded me with an anger that made me question if I’d gone too far. Our understanding of the topic differed greatly – I had not seen the atrocities she had witnessed growing up. I had not seen all my friends and relatives butchered, my entire community left to rot in blood.

  ‘OK,’ she said, seemingly more relaxed. ‘But you should know that people from your culture do exactly the same when they go abroad. It is only you who thinks in such a soft way.’

  I couldn’t fault her on that.

  Sometimes it felt as though I was the only person in the whole of Vispasia, irrespective of culture, to abhor killing. Perhaps my seizures, too, made me sensitive to the well-being of others, though truthfully anyone who took to heart Polla’s teachings would also share the view that life is precious, not something to be taken away so easily. Other cultures long before our time had given edicts on the fair treatment of others, and sought to preserve life wherever possible, so to the discriminating it seemed we now lived in more barbarous times, where a man casually being hacked down in the street had become the way of things. I even struggled in my work for the Sun Chamber, when skilled torturers would walk someone close to the Underworld before bringing them back to consciousness. How could we defend civilization without dignity?

  No, removing a life is the business of the gods only, and I could live by no other code on the subject.

  The visit to Constable Farrum’s house was humbling. It was situated in the relatively safe region of Tradum, a zone of Tryum that had been commandeered by the merchant guilds and their thousands of members. Over the years Tradum had swelled into tenement blocks extending upwards from some of the more industrious smiths and grain merchants. There was little art or finesse to be found in the architecture, only simple columns and bland facades, little in the way of colours, and the suggestion that two or three streets away a stranger might find themselves in a very rough part of the city.

  Along the fringes of the district, facing Plutum and Barrantum, more esoteric cliques and entrepreneurs could be found. There were soothsayers, curse-dealers and moneylenders; a few prostitutes, male and female, paced under the arch of an aqueduct. Grubby, vacant faces regarded me from the cool shade of doorways.

  From my youth I remembered the practice of illegal and – so my friends always claimed – ancient magic carried on in some of these back alleys. Curses were traded on tablets, and dubious, non-approved gods were worshipped by those seeking to profit over the vulnerable. It was a dirty trade but one that Tryum seemed to thrive on.

  I had clearly grown accustomed to the fineries of Tryum, even after just a few days here. Stepping into Farrum’s simple home was disarming. His wife
, a wiry, dark-haired lady in her forties, greeted us with such grace it seemed as though we were royalty. Politely I asked her to stop bowing. There were four barefoot children standing sheepishly in the corner, dressed in grey tunics that seemed a size too small, and I wondered if they should have been attending school at this hour – Farrum should surely have been able to afford it.

  Farrum came to meet us and led us through to a back room.

  ‘There was a fifth and sixth, but they both died of fever in the spring,’ Farrum said. ‘Still, losing only two, that’s a good record for the city, especially when there’s so little food. Some people go without for days.’ I was shocked by his calm manner when explaining the loss of his children.

  Were things really so bad in Tryum?

  The downstairs living quarter was a kitchen, hall and dining area all combined into one reasonably large room. The only natural light came in through the open door, while lanterns hung unlit from meat hooks on the ceiling. The walls were cracked and herbs had been wedged in the gaps for either storage or an offering. A small shrine to Festonia, the female co-founder goddess of Tryum, stood in one corner, decorated with beads, trinkets and a bowl filled with scented water. There were probably just one or two rooms upstairs.

  Farrum shoved a heavy oak table to one side and gestured to a trapdoor; he had kept the three offenders in a pit underneath the floor.

  ‘Shouldn’t you have some safer quarters,’ I asked, watching him unlock the door, ‘away from your children?’

  ‘Costs money,’ he said, scratching his beard. ‘The Civil Cohorts get a decent wage, but it doesn’t pay for things like that. Besides, this lot are not going to cause me no harm here, sir.’

  ‘Before you open that up, we’ve some information.’ I registered the killings earlier, and informed him where we had left the bodies. I apologized for their deaths.

  ‘Why? You’re an official, they are thugs – it’s the way of things.’

  I gave him an accurate impression of the earlier scene. ‘Do you know who they might be?’

  ‘Possibly. I got a hunch they were related to the buggers below.’ He stamped one foot to indicate the captives.

  ‘Do they talk much?’ Leana asked.

  Farrum shook his head.

  In the dusty half-light, Leana moved over to the trapdoor as Farrum unlocked it. After he flipped it open, Leana reached in and grabbed one of the offenders by his bound wrist, and then hauled him up and onto the floor. She kicked him in the ribs, sending him sprawling, then she grabbed him by the hair and yanked him upright.

  ‘Enough,’ he spluttered. ‘No more. Get this witch off.’

  ‘Hear that, Leana,’ I laughed, ‘he thinks you’re a witch.’ I leaned over his squinting face. ‘She’s far worse than that, my friend.’

  Leana unsheathed her short sword and crouched down on one side of him.

  I followed suit and pointed to the blade. ‘See the small markings near the hilt? Venyn metal, this blade. I’m afraid Leana here left her sharpest sword at home. Venyn steel, it isn’t so good. It’s not as sharp as some blades. This won’t do a good job cutting through your flesh – it will mess you up quite a bit. If it doesn’t kill you, you’ll likely get gangrene, and you probably don’t want any of those things to happen. Am I wrong?’

  ‘N-no,’ he spluttered.

  ‘Now, if you would be so kind as to tell me what we want to know, we’ll not harm you at all. We’ll even let you go scurrying through the streets back to whatever hole you crawled from.’

  He locked eyes with mine.

  ‘You don’t have to talk,’ I continued, thinking of some of the well-used lines I’d relied upon before. ‘But I should inform you that Leana here has killed two men this morning already and, in her tribe, the number three has great significance. Your dying would have meaning to me, too, as I’m almost certain throwing your corpse into that pit would encourage your accomplices to talk instead. Answers will come, soon enough, and I am a patient man.’

  ‘What . . . you wanna know?’ he spluttered.

  ‘The name of your employer,’ I urged. ‘The person who sent you three to the gates of my house last night.’

  He looked from me, to the blade, to Leana, and then back to me again.

  ‘You’d be doing me a favour,’ I continued. ‘Farrum here has a good house, a good family, and they don’t need to see me clean away so much blood just after breakfast.’

  He nodded. ‘Don’t get paid enough for that,’ he said. ‘Top boss, his name is Veldrum Hecater.’

  ‘Excellent, and what does Veldrum Hecater want?’

  ‘Money. Money that he’s owed. That’s all.’

  ‘From whom?’ I asked.

  ‘Calludian Drakenfeld.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Where can we find Veldrum Hecater?’

  ‘He’s got a large house. Along the border of Vellyum and Plutum. Near to the Seventh Temple of Malax.’

  I stood up and Farrum nodded to me. ‘All right. You’ve been very helpful.’ I nodded to Leana who threw him back into the pit, and he landed in the darkness with a grunt.

  Veldrum Hecater? Who in Polla’s name was Veldrum Hecater?

  Constable Farrum locked the door and gave me a look of admiration. ‘What shall I do with them, sir? Do you wish to bring about a private prosecution? It’d be a pleasure to arrange that with the courts in your honour.’

  More figures would come after me if these were brought to the courts. The only way to stop them would be to get to the source of the debts. ‘No, not this time. I’m happy for you to let them go, one by one, but don’t cut their restraints. They’re not a threat to us, but they need to leave here thoroughly humbled.’

  ‘Right you are,’ Farrum replied.

  ‘I’m interested in this Veldrum Hecater – what can you tell me about him?’

  ‘I’ve not come across him personally, I’ll admit, but I’ve heard tell his legitimate trade is as a moneylender. Course, that don’t necessarily mean he’s not got an illegitimate trade on the go as well.’

  A moneylender? As I knew him, it was improbable that my father would have needed the services of a moneylender. But even in death he had already started to surprise me.

  Heading Down-City

  I knew better than to let personal matters interfere with my professional schedule, but even so, on the way back from exploring the addresses of the Skull and Jasmine troupe in Plutum, my destination was Veldrum Hecater’s residence.

  The frustration of this case was starting to burn me up inside – there were too few clues, too many potential suspects, though little reliable motive. And from my dealings with royals and well-to-do folk, they tended to want things to be resolved as quickly as possible. Given that no one had anything significant to say about Lacanta’s death that night, it really was time to start eliminating some of the many possibilities and to narrow down my focus.

  Unfortunately, that was easier said than done.

  Since it remained difficult to discern just how the murder was carried out, all I had to go on were the suspicions and suppositions of others.

  But perhaps the actors had seen something.

  ‘You know the way, I take it?’ Leana asked.

  ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘Well, nearly.’

  ‘Not one bit.’ Leana smiled.

  ‘Roughly. Finding one’s way around Tryum is not always easy, even having grown up in the city.’

  When Tryum was a dominant player in the city states of the Detratan Empire, two hundred years ago, it not only expanded through architectural ingenuity, but the military pillaged other nations, bringing back their structures, their essence and, most of all, their treasures.

  As a result, parts of the city were a mishmash of stolen cultures, thrown up in quick succession during the years of expansion – and, it has to be said, without much consideration for city planning. Over several decades, Tryum became a mess of streets. The city’s royals, in th
e more logical districts of Regallum, Polyum and Tradum – and to an extent Vellyum – tended to demolish anything that didn’t please their eye, and permitted architects and businessmen to step in to fill the gap with something altogether more satisfactory. The problems became more apparent when it was realized that different rulers had radically differing tastes – so schemes were cancelled and new designs requested. It also meant that these days tourists never understood the nuances of the streets, and could often be found stumbling down an alleyway in a dangerous neighbourhood, never to be seen again.

  With more luck than judgement on my part, we managed to find our way quickly into Plutum, one of the two poorest regions of Tryum.

  The buildings here were taller, closer together, and constructed with little care for safety. It was often said that people should walk in the middle of the street in case crumbling masonry or decaying roof tiles fell down on top of them. It had been known to happen.

  Streets became narrower, more illogical in their direction and filled with even more people. Those caught up within the traffic were noticeably poorer, their clothes more austere: ripped trousers, no shoes or boots in some cases, grubby tunics, and there was not a single piece of metallic jewellery on display.

  Carts rolled by carrying meagre supplies of grain; amphorae were being filled with water at a fountain; prostitutes stood chewing tree gum in open doorways, idly regarding the street beyond. The graffiti above the head of one lady – featuring the addition of a large phallus, I should add – suggested that one could indulge in all sorts of activities within the room behind her.

  Here were merchants, coppersmiths, blacksmiths, a vegetable store, which couldn’t have been doing much trade situated right in the middle of the pervading stench from the sewers. Beggars drifted towards us with outstretched hands, pleading in a variety of dialects. Leana unsheathed her blade in a display that made them step away.