Ink Mage

by Victor Gischler

  He blinked. Why is there a bed down here?

  Tenni stood with Darshia, watching and clapping as Emmon jumped. The little girl suddenly saw Tosh and pointed. “There he is!”

  “Does it take so much out of you when we train that you need a bed down here?” Tosh said.

  “It’s for you.”

  “What?”

  Tosh approached the bed and Emmon launched herself at him. He had barely enough time to drop the wooden practice swords and catch her in both arms. She hugged him tight, and then he set her down.

  Emmon beamed at him. “It’s your place to sleep now.”

  Tosh pushed down on the mattress with one hand. Soft. “I don’t understand.”

  “Are you saying you want to stay in the pantry?” Darshia asked.

  When Tosh had agreed to stay on as cook, they told him they would figure out a room for him eventually. So after the kitchen was cleaned every night, he’d spread a bedroll on the pantry floor. He was generally so tired at the end of the day he could have slept on a pile of rocks. Somehow nobody had ever got around to finding him his own quarters, and all the rooms were used by the girls anyway. Tosh was so happy to have a safe, warm place that he never brought it up.

  Evidently the girls had taken the matter into their own hands.

  “Bune and Lubin brought it down for us,” Tenni said.

  Tosh realized he was grinning like an idiot. Something as simple as the fact that he was going to sleep in a real bed again was about to make him mist up. “Thanks. It means—” He cleared his throat. “It means a lot.

  “You’re spending so much of your free time teaching us swordplay,” Darshia said. “It’s the least we can do.”

  “Speaking of which …” He looked around. “Where is everyone?”

  “The place is almost deserted,” Tenni said, meaning upstairs in the brothel.

  Tosh nodded, scratching his chin. Two weeks ago, General Chen had completed the Perranese barracks outside of the city walls, and the result was that business at the Wounded Bird had slowed to a trickle.

  Darshia said, “Frankly, I’m glad for the rest. Freen has squirreled away a jug of the good stuff, so we’re giving ourselves a girls’ night. And this little girl needs a bath before bed.” She tousled Emmon’s hair.

  “I took a bath two days ago,” she whined. “I’m still clean.”

  Darshia took Emmon by the hand. “Say goodbye to Uncle Tosh.”

  She waved. “Bye, Toshi-tosh!”

  “Bye, sweetie.”

  He turned back to the bed, pushed down on it again. Very soft. Girls’ night. Good idea. Tosh welcomed a night without sword practice. The girls were getting better, and those damn practice swords left bruises.

  Tosh sensed somebody behind him and turned. Tenni still stood there, hands clasped behind her back.

  “No girls’ night for you?”

  She shook her head, reached for the laces of her blouse and tugged them loose. She lifted the blouse over her head, dropped it on the floor.

  Tosh froze. “You don’t … I mean, I don’t want you to feel you have to—”

  “It’s not like that.” Tenni hooked her thumbs into her skirt, pushed it down over her hips and let that drop to the floor too. “I want to. I want you.”

  She was slender and delicate and Tosh ached for her.

  She walked lightly to the oil lamp hanging on the wall, blew it out.

  A second later he felt her press against him in the pitch darkness. His hands went instinctively to her bare backside. He grew hard immediately, and she felt him pressing against her belly.

  They kissed.

  He felt her hot breath on his ear as she whispered, “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  Her arms went around his neck, pulled him down. They kissed again, tongues finding each other.

  “And anyway,” she said. “You didn’t think I’d give you a bed and then not test it, did you?”

  * * *

  Hours later he awoke, felt for her in the bed, but she wasn’t there. Perhaps Tenni had gone for girls’ night after all. More likely she needed to check on Emmon.

  Tosh smiled, thinking of her. How had his life gotten so good in just a few short months? He’d fallen in love with Tenni, never thinking she might feel the same way. He reminded himself sternly that Tenni was one of the working girls upstairs. It would be difficult thinking of her with other men while they—

  No. He’d allow himself at least one night to enjoy it. Damn the complications until later.

  His internal clock told him it was almost time to go upstairs and fire the kitchen stove anyway. All those damn years in the army, getting up early and keeping schedules.

  He dressed and went upstairs.

  In the kitchen, he fed logs into the belly of the stove and lit the fire. Then he began taking inventory. It had been hard to get a handle on breakfast recently. Some clients stayed with their girl overnight and wanted to eat in the morning. But business had been so slow recently, Tosh couldn’t say whether or not there was even a single client in residence. The girls would need to be fed, of course, but they were generally not early risers.

  He decided to dice just enough potatoes for the girls. He could whip up some more or fudge on the servings if it turned out they had a few surprise clients.

  Tosh daydreamed as he diced, finding a rhythm with the big kitchen knife. He was a good cook and felt he could run a kitchen now. What if he and Tenni and Emmon went away, opened a little tavern somewhere? The Perranese wouldn’t miss a cook and a prostitute. Why would they? Eventually the roads would open again. Things would get back to normal and—

  A commotion in the common room startled him—the sound of a door slamming open, furniture being overturned.

  Tosh grabbed the biggest meat cleaver from the rack and rushed from the kitchen and into the common room, bracing himself for intruders.

  Four of them stood in the open doorway of the brothel, their dark travel cloaks flapping in the cold wind gusting from outside. One held an unsheathed sword, blood dripping from the blade. Their hoods were up, and at first Tosh couldn’t see who they were in the dim light of the common room’s single oil lamp. He gripped the cleaver tightly, readied himself.

  Two of them carried a third between them. She sagged in their arms, head lolling and limp.

  She?

  The one with the sword pushed hard to close the door against the wind. When it was shut, she turned back to Tosh, pulled back the cloak’s hood. Tenni looked at him with large, panicked eyes.

  Oh no.

  “Get her on the table,” Darshia said. “Hurry.”

  Darshia and Prinn carried Freen to the closest table, swept aside the iron candle holders which clattered loudly on the floor. They spread Freen out on the table, pulled back her hood. Darshia dabbed at sweat on the girl’s chubby face with a rag. Freen was ashen, wept weeping softly between groans.

  Tosh shifted his gaze to Freen’s belly. Blood gushed. Freen tried to hold it in with both hands, fingers sticky with blood.

  Freen’s body writhed with a sudden stab of pain, a spasm, her back arching and legs kicking as she cried out. Darshia and Prinn rushed to hold her down.

  Tenni looked at Tosh with desperate, frightened eyes, silently pleading for him to do something.

  “Dumo, save us,” Tosh whispered. “What have you stupid whores done?”

  EPISODE FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Tosh’s hands were slick and hot with blood. He held them against Freen’s belly. She writhed and bucked beneath him, pain lancing through her guts. Darshia held her shoulders to the table and Prinn her legs, but Freen was dying and knew it and was going out kicking and moaning through clenched teeth.

  “Give me your cloak,” he told Tenni.

  She did.

  The material was light for a winter cloak, and with some effort Tosh ripped a wide strip from it. He lifted Freen’s hips, and she howled. Tosh slipped the ripped length of c
loak under her then tied it tight across the gaping rent in her belly.

  This time, Freen’s screams brought the other girls out of their rooms, all wearing loose shifts or nightgowns. They stood in the hall, craning their necks and gaping, not daring to step into the common room.

  “Get back to your rooms!” Tosh bellowed.

  They turned as one, scampered away. There was the sound of doors slamming shut.

  Tosh had never spoken to any of them like that before and would feel bad about it later. At the moment, all he could think was that he needed to stop the bleeding. Freen was already ghostly pale, her lips blue.

  Tosh grabbed Tenni’s slender hands, placed them on Freen’s bloody belly. “Press down. Hard.”

  Immediately, blood oozed between Tenni’s fingers.

  Tosh ripped the rest of the cloak into strips. He wadded one of the strips, pushed Tenni’s hands out of the way and pressed the material hard against the wound. It was sopping with blood in seconds.

  “We’ve got to stop this bleeding or—”

  At the edge of his vision, he sensed the girls backing away. There was only the sound of his own heartbeat hammering wildly in his ears and Prinn’s soft weeping. No screams, not anymore. He looked at each of them. They returned blank stares. He looked at Freen.

  She didn’t seem real, skin bone white and waxen, blood bright on her lips. Her glassy eyes stared up and far away, looking at something in another realm.

  Tosh stood back from the table, wiped his bloody hands on his breeches. He looked at each of them again, but none dared speak. He turned his back and walked, slow and leaden, into the kitchen.

  The soapy water in the wash tub was still warm. He took out the cups he’d been soaking and plunged his hands into the water. He scrubbed them with a brush, took them out again for examination. Blood under his nails, caked in the creases around his knuckles. He plunged them back in the water, scrubbed slowly.

  He felt somebody come up behind him but didn’t turn. The feel of soft, tentative fingertips on his back told him it was Tenni.

  “What happened?” Tosh asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Tenni said. “We never thought that—”

  “Please.” His voice was quiet but with an edge. “Just tell me how it happened. The basics. No need to make it a fireside story.”

  “Prinn is friends with a woman in Market Town. Her husband is a baker. This big Perranese sergeant comes around once a week and makes them pay. He asks for more each time. Last time they didn’t have enough and he hurt her. I thought Darshia, Prin, Freen and I could … take care of it.”

  “You mean kill him.”

  Tenni cleared her throat. “Yes.”

  “Go on.”

  “We waited for him,” Tenni said. “We thought with just him against the four of us—”

  “They’re trained soldiers,” Tosh said flatly, like he was correcting a small child. “And anyone with sergeant’s rank would be a blooded veteran.”

  “He had another soldier with him,” Tenni said.

  Tosh sighed.

  “You taught us well,” Tenni insisted. “We surprised them and our swordplay was good. If Freen hadn’t … If we hadn’t been crowded in the alley—”

  “If!” Tosh slammed his fist on the counter, shattered a ceramic mug and cut his hand. Tenni flinched.

  “It’s always IF,” he shouted. “Every battle, every skirmish, every ugly knife fight in a dank alley. Always the ifs are waiting around the corner to fuck you up. The most seasoned veteran can still slip in dog shit and fall on a sword.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, voice barely above a whisper.

  He grabbed her roughly by the shoulders. “What if it’d been you instead of Freen? You think I want to see your belly spilling out on the table? Do you think I could stand that? I can’t lose you just when we’ve found each other!”

  She cried instantly, great wracking sobs as she gulped for breath, eyes streaming, snot running from her nose. She’d been holding it back, but now the emotion all heaved out of her at once. She tried to talk, mouth working, eyes pleading, but could only cry and sniff.

  He pulled her in tight, wrapped her up in his arms. She trembled against him, still sobbing. “Shhh. Never mind,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  They held each other for long seconds. Finally, Tosh heard somebody shuffling across the room, a throat clearing.

  He looked up, saw Darshia, hesitant in the kitchen doorway.

  “Forgive me. I didn’t want to interrupt,” she said. “But Mother wants to see you, Tosh.”

  * * *

  Mother stood with her back to Tosh, looking out the frosted window at the snow-crusted roofs of Backgate. Winter’s gray light made the lines on her face look troubled, the lines on her face deeper. She fidgeted with something in her hands, but from Tosh’s vantage point, standing just inside the door of her private office, he couldn’t see it.

  Tosh shifted his weight from foot to foot as he told her what had happened to Freen, starting with Tenni’s ill-advised attempt to take on the Perranese extortionist and ending with Freen’s bloody death in the common room downstairs. He related the facts without emotion as if he were reporting to one of his old army captains, but his guts churned and he felt cold sweat on the back of his neck.

  She’s going to throw me out. I was supposed to cook, not give fencing lessons. Women like her don’t put up with trouble like this.

  “Were any of the other girls hurt?” Mother asked.

  “No, ma’am.”

  A pause.

  “Are they any good?”

  Tosh blinked. “Ma’am?”

  “The girls,” Mother said. “With the weapons.”

  Tosh hadn’t been expecting the question, hadn’t even thought about the girls’ swordsmanship in those terms. It had become an activity to pass the time, exercise, nothing more. He had to think about it for an extra moment.

  “They’re not bad, I suppose,” Tosh said. “Not like regular soldiers, mind you, but they’re coming along faster than I’d expected.”

  “Why is that, do you think?”

  Tosh wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. More dampened his armpits. “They’re better listeners, for one thing. Also, a lot of the men who join the army have already handled a weapon a little bit maybe, but they’ve learned wrong and picked up bad habits. So they need to be cured of that before they can learn the right way … which is to say the army way.”

  “The girls are blank slates.”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s a good way to put it.”

  “And you’ve taught just those four?”

  “Mostly them, but a couple of others too. But I don’t encourage it,” he added hastily. “Most of the girls don’t even know.”

  She turned back to him, and Tosh saw that she fidgeted with a gold ring. It was thick and set with the seal of Klaar. A man’s ring. Mother rubbed it idly between a thumb and forefinger like some good luck charm.

  Mother’s brow was knit, her face pulled down by a frown. “So they can be taught? They can get better?”

  Tosh hesitated. “I … suppose. It’s not traditional in Klaar, but I’ve heard of plenty of places where women fight.”

  Mother nodded, thoughts flickering behind her eyes. “Good.”

  “Uh, ma’am?”

  “What is it, Tosh?”

  “Are you, uh, are you saying you want me to keep on teaching Tenni, Prinn and Darshia? After what happened to Freen, they might not be up for it anymore.”

  “What I’m saying is that I want you to teach them all,” Mother said. “Every girl at the Wounded Bird. I want you to put swords in their hands and make them killers.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Dawn bloomed on the horizon, washing the wide-open grasslands in pale orange light. Lonely and crooked trees a mile apart dotted the landscape like bent old men, their shadows stretching away from them in the burgeoning sun.

  It was their third sunrise together since leaving the hi
dden gypsy valley. They were headed west and had camped the previous night in the waning tree line of the forest where it turned the landscape over to the rolling prairie ahead.

  Alem squinted at the dawn as he looked back east. He stood with hands on hips, frowning back into the dark forest.

  “Stop that.” Brasley slung his saddle onto his horse’s back, cinched it tight. “She says they aren’t following.”

  Alem grunted, didn’t turn around.

  “Tell him, Rina,” Brasley said.

  Rina paused at her own horse where she’d been checking her saddlebags. She closed her eyes.

  Alem turned his head slightly to look at her. He always watched her when she did the trick with the falcon, her face blank like she’d somehow frozen herself in time, existing apart from the rest of the world.

  When Alem had first seen the tattoos around Rina’s eyes, he’d been mesmerized, had barely even heard Brasley’s jokes about Rina going native. He recalled the vision of her in the barn in Hammish, the tight lines of runes down her lithe back. Thinking about her this way made him light-headed. It was already too much and too ridiculous to find himself in love with a duchess. That she was also … what? A sorceress? It made the notion that she might ever return his feelings that much more farfetched.

  Thicko. Idiot. Fool. Put it out of your mind. It’ll never happen.

  And yet, she didn’t treat him like a servant. It was clear she appreciated him, and more important, she trusted him. Two nights ago, when Brasley had gone to fetch water from the stream, she’d sat close to him by the fire, tilted her head toward his to speak in hushed tones.

  “You saw the tattoo on my back,” she’d whispered. “In the barn back in Hammish. Didn’t you?”

  He’d only nodded, afraid to speak, afraid that he’d seen something he shouldn’t have, that he possessed knowledge of which he wasn’t worthy. He felt oddly that he was being accused of something, but the feeling passed and was replaced with the peculiar honor one feels when trusted with a secret. Strange how honors and burdens are so often confused.

  “The tattoos are magic,” she’d said simply. “Tell no one.”