The Barbed Coil

by J. V. Jones

  Ravis chewed his scar. If he was to do what was agreed in Marcel’s wine cellar, then he would need good men around him. And judging from the lackluster performance of Camron’s guard, he was going to have to train them himself.

  Increasing his pace, Ravis walked along the quay. The northern harbor was smaller and less important than the western one. No large merchant ships anchored here, no spice boats or silk boats or pleasure crafts. No huge merchant vessels were built in the dry docks, and no tariff keepers could be spotted on the wharf, busy with their pens and scrolls. Fishermen, their boats, their lines, their nets, and their women, were what made the north harbor what it was. If you didn’t look back at Bay’Zell, you could almost believe that the harbor belonged to a small fishing town, not the foremost port city in the west.

  Picking a path between thick coils of rope, crates of fish—some still skipping—and fishermen mending their nets, Ravis made his way along the wooden wharf. The north harbor was busy without being bustling. Fishermen who spent their lives sailing their two-masters in search of sole and turbot, and their three-masters in search of cod, had little time for show. They worked long hours with little fuss, drank hard before sunset, and rose before dawn, and as long as their nets were sturdy and their hulls were sound, they counted themselves lucky and set sail for the horizon each day.

  The north harbor wasn’t a place to come in search of clever conversation, fine scenery, or fancy food, but Ravis liked it all the same. It was a useful place to know and be known in. The most up-to-date information to be had in Bay’Zell could be garnered from fishermen landing their catch.

  The world was full of organizations—brotherhoods, knighthoods, leagues, and guilds—yet none of them spanned borders and countries with such regularity and unsung freedom as fishermen. Merchant sailors swapped positions and berths too often to build up relationships with crews of matching vessels. A merchant crew could change literally by the day. But fishermen spent their lives at their work, sailing the same run, on the same boat year in, year out—their small crew never changing, their friends made and kept for life. Even though fishermen from Rhaize, Balgedis, Istania, and Maribane were rivals, they depended on each other for their lives. Storm warnings, changing information on dangerous undertows and shallows, pirate sightings, and dire prophecies were exchanged in the no-man’s-land of the sea. When a fishing boat ran aground, no fisherman ever asked what flag the boat sailed under. They simply sailed as close as good sense would allow and did whatever they could.

  Of course, not all exchanges were a matter of life and death. As much idle rumor passed from boat to boat as stories about the sea. Fishermen were notorious gossips. Fishwives lived to hear the tales their husbands brought home with the catch.

  Ravis made it his business to befriend fishermen in every seafaring city he passed through. You never could tell when a salty old seadog might bring back a gem of a bone.

  Spying a familiar dark-haired figure tying his line to the far bulwark, Ravis cut a path to the end of the wharf. Soon he would return to Marcel’s town house and meet with Camron of Thorn, but he wanted to gather whatever information he could before he set things in motion that could not be reversed.

  “Pegruff!” Ravis called, lifting a hand in greeting. “How has the sea been treating you lately?”

  “A good sight better than my wife,” came the reply. Pegruff finished looping a knot around the bulwark and then waited for Ravis to approach. Bay’Zell fishermen never walked any more than they had to.

  The two men clasped hands and exchanged a brief, searching glance. Pegruff’s face was a tribute to the scouring effects of sea salt. His skin was red, his lips were flaking, and what was left of his eyebrows was not sufficient to form a frown.

  “Where’s Jemi?” Ravis asked as they pulled apart.

  “I’ve sent him to the market for wax.”

  Ravis nodded. Jemi was Pegruff’s only son, and the first time Ravis met him was on a small street leading off the east harbor when Jemi had begged to be recruited into the life of a mercenary. He was tired of mending nets and waxing timbers. Ravis had talked the gentle and sweet-natured boy out of it. Some men weren’t cut out to be soldiers. Some were made for the sea. Ravis sent Jemi back to his father—not with harsh words, but with the simple truth that a mercenary’s life was neither glamorous nor rewarding, and he would only be swapping one form of hard labor for another. It wasn’t kindness that made Ravis speak—he only recruited men he knew he could teach to kill—but Pegruff had chosen to think it was, and Ravis never wasted breath on denials.

  “He’s got a girl now, you know,” Pegruff said, pulling out a flask of arlo and offering it to Ravis. “Sturdy thing, she is. Just the sort to settle him down.”

  Ravis took the offered drink. Pegruff might not have a fortune to match Marcel’s, but he always managed to have the best arlo to be found in the entire city of Bay’Zell in his flask. Wiping his lips, Ravis said, “What’s the word from the sea, my friend?”

  Pegruff took back his flask, pausing to polish the pewter against his sleeve before he took a drink. Magpies and sailors: neither could resist anything shiny. “There’s a Maribane brig anchored off Balinoc. Gillif, friend o’ mine who keeps lobster nets near there, swears he saw a scull full of Garizons row out to it last week in the middle of the night.”

  “How did he know they were Garizons?”

  “You mean besides ’em rowing badly?” The fisherman’s smile was not as wide as it might have been. As a country that had no sea to call its own, Garizon was eyed with open suspicion by old seahands like Pegruff. They believed that every country that didn’t have a coastline would do anything in their power to get one. And in Garizon’s case they weren’t far wrong. “Gillif says they were carrying ’em new-style pikes and not one man among ’em had a beard.”

  Ravis nodded. He had introduced the new, broader pike blade to Izgard’s harras. “Anything else?”

  Pegruff looked a little disgruntled that such a juicy tidbit had been so quickly set aside. He handled this by taking a decent swig of arlo and moving on. “Troubles brewing between Medran and Istania over the eastern passage. Why, this month alone a dozen Medrani barks have been pirated. Medran swears it’s the work of Istanians, and there’s been talk of sending galleons into the Gulf.”

  “There hasn’t been a warship in the Gulf for . . .” Ravis paused to think.

  “Fifty years,” Pegruff finished for him. “I tell you, Lord Ravis, things don’t look that rosy from out at sea. All I ever hear about these days is trouble. Ever since Bay’Zell doubled its port tolls last week, the bay has been rife with pirates, warships, skirmishes, and secret dealings. Drokho is about as snappish as a crab in a bucket. Taken to sending armed sloops into the bay, they have. ’Course, Maribane’s madder than anyone. The Bay’Zell tolls are crippling their exports, and they’re worried that Istania and Drokho will follow suit. Maribane’s even moved its two largest galleons down from Port Shrift to Hayle. Officially they say it’s to protect their hulls from northern storms, but every fool knows those storms won’t hit for another month.”

  Pegruff took a swig from his flask. “I’ve been fishing these waters for thirty years now, give or take a few catches, and I can’t remember the last time I felt less like setting sail in the morning than I have done these past couple o’ months. There’s trouble coming for sure—the sea knows it.”

  With a shake of his head, Pegruff breathed on his flask, polished the moist bit, then finished off the last of the arlo. After slipping the flask in his tunic, he turned back to his lines and began running them through his fist. In his typical fisherman’s fashion, he was indicating the conversation was done.

  Ravis thanked him and made his way back to the quay.

  T E N

  T he harras who killed your father, did you notice anything unnatural about them?” Ravis turned away from Camron of Thorn as he waited upon his answer.

  They were sitting in Marcel’s study. Beech logs crackl
ed in the hearth, vintage berriac smoked in deep glasses, and an easterly breeze rattled the very shutters that Marcel had taken great pains to close. Despite the fire burning away, the room was not brightly lit. A bronze fireguard prevented any rogue sparks from falling on the nearby silk rug, and all the silver lanterns were capped with colored glass.

  Marcel had a deep fear of fire. He didn’t want any of his precious paperwork going up in smoke. Although he had lost no gold in the Great Banking Fire twenty years earlier, he had lost a fortune in bills—codicils, payment orders, promissory notes, deeds, bills of exchange, and leases—and he was obsessed with the possibility that it might happen again.

  Briefly Ravis toyed with the idea of nudging over a lantern and watching as lamp oil and flames spilled onto Marcel’s desk. After what the banker had done to him yesterday, it would give him a certain satisfaction to see the man scrambling to put out a fire. He didn’t act, though. Ravis had learned many years ago that there was no real pleasure to be gained from revenge: just a brief, breathtaking stab of spite that hurt oneself just as much in the end.

  Instead he turned his gaze back to Camron and forced his mind to the question at hand. He needed to be sure of certain things before he said his piece.

  Camron was speaking. “When I first set eyes on the harras in my father’s study, there was a moment when I thought they were monsters.” He shrugged, but not at all lightly. “It all happened so fast. My heart was pumping, my hands were shaking. I wasn’t thinking properly. And then I saw . . .” He shook his head, ran his hand through his hair. “Then I saw my father, and nothing else mattered after that.”

  Camron of Thorn looked worse than when Ravis had seen him last. His hair was lank, dark circles ringed his eyes, and his clothes hung loose on his frame. Ravis could see the man was in pain, but he could muster little pity for him. The world they lived in was a hard one: people died, friends lied, and family was quick to betray you. Camron’s father may have been savagely murdered in the sanctity of his own home, but in many ways the death was a clean one. Camron was the only son of an only son. He had no brothers, half-brothers, uncles, or stepmothers to bicker with him over his wealth. What he inherited was his and his alone. And in that regard Camron of Thorn was more fortunate than he would ever know.

  Ravis gnawed at his scar. It suddenly felt like gristle in his mouth. Deliberately he made his voice hard. “I need you to remember all you can about the harras. What they looked like, acted like, smelled like.”

  Hearing the word smell, Camron looked up.

  “Really!” exclaimed Marcel from behind his satiny desk. “I don’t see the need to bring up such an indelicate subject. Lord Camron is distressed quite enough as it is.”

  Ravis made his leather gloves crackle as he curled a fist. “Go back to your counting, Marcel.”

  Marcel was about to protest when Camron stopped him by saying, “It’s all right, Marcel. While I’m sure our friend here is capable of idle curiosity, I don’t think this is one of those instances.” He looked at Ravis. “Is it?”

  Ravis didn’t care for Camron’s tone, but he let it pass. “Yesterday you said the harras were like animals. What did you mean?”

  Rubbing a hand over his face, Camron said, “I saw teeth, gums . . .” He struggled for details. Not finding any, he shook his head. “They were shadowy figures. It was hard to see them clearly . . . but there was a smell.”

  “Of what?”

  “Animals. Like the stench in the stables when a mare is foaling: blood, sweat, damp horsehair. That sharp tang that comes off beasts when they’re agitated or excited.” Camron looked at Ravis. His gray eyes were dull and flinty. “Why is it important?”

  Ravis glanced at Marcel. The banker was busy pretending to be busy: shuffling papers, dipping his quill, furrowing his brow as if unhappy about some discrepancy showing up in his figures. He really could have made a half-decent actor.

  Leaning forward in his chair, Ravis spoke as softly as he knew how. “Last night after we took our leave of Emith, Tessa and I were attacked on Parso Bridge. Two men came at us, and there was at least another pair flanking both ends. If we hadn’t jumped in the river to escape, I don’t think you and I would be sitting here, talking, today.”

  Camron nodded. He didn’t look surprised.

  Marcel had stopped all pretense of counting but quickly resumed when he caught Ravis looking at him.

  “I’ve never encountered men with such raw strength,” Ravis continued. “It took all I had to finish them. They kept coming and coming and wouldn’t stop. I had to stab the first man a dozen times in the chest before he fell. As I looked at his face, his features changed. Receded. He began to look more like a man. Both of them smelled exactly like you described—like animals.”

  “You trained them,” Camron said, mouth curling to a sneer. “They’re your men.”

  Ravis bit his scar as other people bit their lips: to stop himself from speaking rashly. After a second to control his anger, he said, “Yes, I trained them. And they set the ambush up exactly as I would have done myself—two lying in wait, more closing in to block off escape routes—but they weren’t my men. I train men to kill quickly and with little ado, to back off as soon as they’re injured, and to remain detached at all times. These men wanted blood, and they weren’t going to stop until they got it.” Despite his detached tone, Ravis couldn’t stop a shiver from working its way down his spine.

  “What’s your point?” Camron was concealing his interest under a layer of contempt.

  “My point is that these men have been altered in some way. Probably by sorcery.”

  Marcel choked on his berriac.

  Camron merely nodded.

  A moment passed while Marcel of Vailing coughed and spluttered and spat up his wine, and Ravis of Burano and Camron of Thorn stared at each other across the room. One of the lanterns went out. Dark smoke filled the amber glass, then escaped in a black thread toward the ceiling. Marcel’s mercury-filled clock reached the hour, and its hammer hit the cast-iron bell, producing a note that was neither mellow nor bright.

  Finally Camron spoke. “Let me tell you about what I found after I took care of my father’s body, when I went down to the barracks to take a head count of those who were left.” His gaze did not leave Ravis for a moment, and though his eyes were hard, his voice was rough and uneven. “I ended up counting bodies instead. Two dozen men had been butchered. Good men, whom I counted as friends. Some were like brothers to me. One man first taught me how to sit and handle my horse. And all of them, each and every one of them, had put up the fight of their lives. Blood didn’t lie in neat pools, bodies weren’t downed by a single blow. Guts and fingers and hair and teeth were smeared across the walls. I’ve been on battlefields, I know what death looks like, but this . . .” Camron finally looked away. “This was carnage.”

  Ravis closed his eyes. At some point while Camron was speaking, he’d actually begun to feel pity for him. He knew what it was like to lose good men. When he spoke, however, he made sure his sympathy didn’t show. Experience told him Camron would want none of it. “Last night I saw a similar sight myself. The people who owned the house I was staying at were slaughtered by the harras.”

  “It doesn’t mean that it’s sorcery, though,” Marcel said. “Everyone knows Garizons are as good as animals.”

  “It didn’t stop you from taking their money, though,” Camron said, stealing the words right from Ravis’ lips.

  Marcel stood. “Gentlemen,” he said with bankerly dignity, “I see emotions are running high and imaginations are running wild. I think it best if I leave you two alone for a while. Perhaps when I return we can all sit down and talk about this rationally, like the educated men we are.” With that he bowed, first to Camron and then to Ravis, gathered up his papers, and stalked out of the room, head held high.

  As soon as the door was shut, Ravis turned to Camron and said, “How much commission is he getting on this deal?”

  “Forty percent.�
��

  “Forty?” Ravis threw back his head and laughed. “Izgard paid him ten.”

  Camron looked stricken for a moment, but then gave way and smiled.

  Leaning over Marcel’s desk, Ravis grabbed the decanter of berriac and filled both their glasses to the brim. “Look,” he said, handing Camron his glass, “I don’t know what we’re dealing with here, and that scares me. I trained Izgard’s men and recruited mercenaries for him, but I had nothing to do with what has happened these past few days. While I was in Veizach, I saw some things that I didn’t understand, and right now I’m doing my best to piece everything together.”

  Camron nodded. “How soon do you think Izgard will move against Rhaize?”

  “As soon as he possibly can.” Ravis took a deep draft from his glass. He felt more relaxed now that Marcel was gone—even though there was a distinct possibility that the Bay’Zell banker was still listening at the door. “He can’t afford to wait. The land barons and warlords will be expecting him to move quickly. He needs to conquer and be seen to be conquering: that’s the way a Garizon king keeps his crown.”

  Camron no longer bothered to feign disinterest or contempt. He leaned forward in his chair. “How can you be so sure he won’t move against Balgedis first? If it’s a saltwater port Izgard’s after, they’ve got a dozen to spare.”

  “Two things,” Ravis said. “First, no port in Balgedis can give him access to the Bay of Plenty and the Gulf. If he seizes Bay’Zell, then he secures passage not only to the north, but also to the warm-water ports of the lower south and far east. Second, I think Izgard and the duke of Balgedis have already come to some arrangement, where Izgard won’t invade Balgedis as long as it remains neutral.”