The Book of Swords

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  He had a smile that melted women and when he used it now she leaned closer, and even closer still, gaze alight with interest. Over her shoulder he noticed the Honeyed Voice moving toward the exit, then pulled his gaze back to the seamstress.

  Her lips parted as if in delight at his advances. In a low, husky, sensuous voice, she said, “She’s well guarded, Mr. Crow. Don’t believe otherwise. It’s best if you leave us alone.”

  She rose and cut her way smoothly through the crowded common room and out the door to the courtyard, through which the Honeyed Voice had departed.

  His new friends laughed. “Well, well, you’ve been put in your place and lost your coin besides!”

  “I shall need a drink to drown my sorrow!” He gestured to the server. “Fill my friends’ cups again.”

  As the youth moved forward, Apollo Crow surreptitiously tipped the bench so as to knock the server in the legs and send him sprawling. A great splash from the pitcher, and a mighty shout from everyone around as they got wet, distracted his male companions. In the ensuing commotion he slipped the chain into the server’s pocket, then left as quickly as possible, elbowing through the crowd to get out the door in his haste. Outside he had to pause and set an elderly man to rights who had lost hold of his cane and stumbled in the crush. Then he strode on the path of his target, who was even now slipping out the gate.

  As he hurried past the reeking smokehouses a slender young man fell into step beside him. He had hair as long and black as the seamstress’s and indeed there were other signs of a family resemblance in coloring and the shape of their eyes.

  “A word of advice,” said the young fellow with a smile that was more a baring of teeth. “If the Honeyed Voice has rejected your offer, as she has, then do not press your suit.”

  “My thanks,” replied Apollo Crow with the sardonic eyebrow lift he had perfected as a means to intimidate people who thought to spar with him. “What business is it of yours?”

  “I am her kinsman. Therefore her well-being is my responsibility.” His new companion eyed him as a cat would a bird. “Just a warning, Maester. Personally I find the Honeyed Voice bossy and impatient but I understand that for men of your type she presents an irresistible attraction. The need to prove that her beauty and her fierce confidence will yield to you, and you alone, where lesser men have failed.”

  “My type? What type do you believe that to be?”

  The young man braced himself in the narrow opening of the gate so no one—and particularly not Apollo Crow—could pass. He sniffed the air, then frowned just as if he could sift through the fug of the courtyard’s air and tease out threads of information.

  “Now I’m not so sure. Where did you say you come from?”

  “I didn’t say. What was your name?”

  “I didn’t say,” said the young man with another of those smiles filled with charm and menace. “If you have family, you’ll understand we look out for each other.”

  “I understand the sentiment very well. I am in every possible way a family man.”

  The fellow kept standing there, meaning to block the gate until it was too late to follow. While Apollo Crow was never averse to a headlong attack he judged the other man too much of a puzzle to assay with so little to go on. There was a coiled energy about him that reminded him of…himself, that sense of a body lodged in this world and a spirit anchored in the world beyond. But he had learned the hard way not to speak to strangers and ordinary people about mortal worlds and spirit worlds because no one believed him. He had learned to turn truth into tales that people accepted as entertainment.

  He bowed as if in gracious retreat, acknowledging the right of family to protect its own. But upon stepping away from the gate he at once sought out the darkest and most isolated corner of the courtyard. Behind a smokehouse amid the crunch of ashy scales and discarded refuse he paused, looking around one last time to make sure he was entirely alone. The night was not kind to his eyesight, and he could never rely on his sense of smell. Cocking his head to one side, he listened. Fiddles and stamping feet adrift in the air made it hard to pick out any softer noise but then the young man spoke over by the gate, addressing the guards.

  “Where did he go? I didn’t see him go back into the tavern.”

  With a sigh he sloughed the self he wore. In a flurry of one hundred and thirty-four pairs of wings—because it takes many crows to make a man—they flew out over the night-drenched streets in search of a woman.

  —

  The flock followed the woman and the two feathered ones to a respectable inn on the waterfront in a well-lit and prosperous district of the town. In a dense cloud they descended onto the rooftop of the inn as if coming to roost for the night. Individuals flapped down to spy. One even got into the common room and perched watchfully in a smoky corner as the Honeyed Voice sat down to supper, as drinks were sent to her table by hopeful suitors and shy admirers. A crow flew to every windowsill looking into every room, awaiting her arrival in one of them. But it was the crow stationed at the kitchen yard who saw her leave by a back door and slip away into the night, joined by the seamstress and the young man while the two much more conspicuous feathered ones remained behind to make it seem she hadn’t left yet. A cunning scheme, indeed, to throw off the scent of people who would be following her. Cawing in excitement at this simple ruse, some of the younger crows had to be hushed lest they draw attention.

  Her route took her into the humbler streets along the riverbank where lived folk of modest circumstance and law-abiding habit. She came to rest at last in a small two-story inn with a ramshackle windowless exterior. Despite their unprepossessing appearance the gate and walls presented a formidable challenge for a person on the street who wanted to get a look inside without being noticed. The crows merely settled all around the roof overlooking an interior courtyard. No fire burned in the courtyard’s hearth, ashes as cold as if they hadn’t been lit in days.

  Even this late at night a solitary soul sat at a table intent on reading by the illumination of a floating sphere of cool white light. Several crows hopped forward to get a better look. He was a well-dressed and well-preened man who might be said to be as handsome as a crow, not that that was possible. When the others hurried in through the gate he rose to greet them. By the intimate kiss he gave the seamstress, it was evident that a plan to seduce her in order to instigate the envious attention of the Honeyed Voice would probably not work. Indeed, by the way the four conversed with casual remarks and overlapping interruptions, they themselves had the manners of a flock.

  After a short wait the two feathered ones appeared. Once they were inside and the gate closed the target crossed the courtyard and entered a gated stairwell, alone.

  The inn was really two old buildings stitched together: a set of rooms facing inward around the courtyard and a separate wing stuck on at right angles. This extra wing protruded over the water, a relic from a now-derelict ancient bridge that no longer reached the opposite shore. The repurposed bridge had no lower story, only the arched foundation, so the rooms atop were unreachable except by the guarded stairwell and an interior passage.

  The windows of these rooms overlooked the river. Soon enough a pair of shutters were opened from inside. The woman leaned out and took in a deep breath of night air, then winced at the smell of refuse and smoke. The moment she retreated into the room two crows landed on the windowsill to watch. She lit a candle and, by its light, locked the door from the inside and tucked the key into her sleeve. Then she set the candle into a brass holder on a dressing table. Flame glimmered in the mirror as she opened a sketchbook and sat down to draw.

  One crow flew to a perch atop the wardrobe.

  Although flight and landing made no discernible noise, her hand paused.

  “Was there something more you needed to tell me?” she said to the air.

  The air offered no reply.

  Both the crow on the windowsill and the one on the wardrobe hopped out of sight as she closed the book and rose. Afte
r a puzzled glance around the chamber, she opened the door into the passage and went out. As soon as she shut the door, crows mobbed into the chamber.

  He quickly stitched himself into a single shape, all but for three parts. First he tested the door to the passage but she had locked it from outside. No chance escaping with the sketchbook out that way, not without the key. Taking a seat at the dressing table, he weighed the sketchbook in a hand. Too heavy to fly with even if he created a net for crows to carry.

  Therefore he reluctantly had to accept the third option although he liked it least and would have to play for time. He tore a scrap of blank page out of the back of the book and filled it with exceedingly precise and tiny writing. This scrap he slipped into a message tube, which he fixed to the leg of one crow. Thus dismissed, it flew, and the other two parts took up watch outside.

  At last he opened the sketchbook. With the greatest interest and delight he examined the first drawing, which depicted a crowned young woman riding a bull—clearly meant to be the Phoenician queen Europa—and a lion sneaking up behind them dragging a length of chain. As a metaphor for the shrunken empire of Rome wishing to recapture the lands it had lost hundreds of years ago it was, if anything, a little obvious.

  A key tumbled the lock. He shut the book, set his elbows on the dressing table, and in the mirror examined his lean face, his glossy black hair, his nimble fingers. Was there anything wrong with him? Something he could shape better? Why, was there a man in this world handsomer than he was?

  The hinges creaked. A figure loomed up behind him like a stain expanding in the mirror. Candlelight glinted on the edge of a slim sword, but it wasn’t as sharp as the pique of her smile. He met the reflection of her gaze and smiled in lazy reply.

  She had an interrogative eyebrow not unlike his own, and she used it now. “You are sitting in my chair.”

  “It is hard to resist admiring myself when I have the chance, for I am certainly a sleek and shiny fellow.”

  Her gaze had a measuring look. “Indeed, it is hard to resist wondering how such a sleek and shiny fellow as you could have gotten into this locked chamber.”

  “You are irresistible. Therefore, no barrier can keep me from you.”

  “Really?” Her posture had the angles and muscle of someone who knew how to fight. “The passage to these rooms is guarded day and night which, as you may imagine, is why people who have enemies like to sleep here. The door from this chamber into the passage can be locked both from the inside and from the outside, and I have the key. So common sense suggests you came in through the window. Yet the roof is too steep to negotiate and the wall too steep to climb. Even if you could climb it, you aren’t wet as you would have to be if you’d come up from the river.”

  “I might have arrived in a boat.”

  She went to the window and looked down, then turned back to him. “There’s nowhere to tie it up. Do you care to explain this mystery?”

  He rose carefully, held his hands palms out to show himself unarmed, and offered a courteous bow, hand to heart. “I am not the only mystery in this chamber. The greatest mystery is your allure.”

  “You should have tried that line earlier, before your back was to the wall. Why are you here?”

  “Perhaps you and I may trade secrets. Why has the emperor of Rome hired me? That your revolutionary agitation troubles the Roman regime is one answer but I sense it is not the only one. I fear I am afflicted with an implacable curiosity.”

  “I could placate your curiosity by running you through with my sword.”

  “Ah, but what about your own curiosity? Do you not wish to know by what cunning and skill I appeared in your chamber? Imagine those same attributes turned solely to the task of…pleasing you.”

  “Pleasing me?” She considered the whole of him, a twist of amusement playing about her lips. He took the opportunity to turn his head so she would see his best profile. With a rueful laugh, she shook her head. “Before or after you turn me over to the emperor of Rome?”

  He considered this question with the seriousness it deserved. “Before would be a sure thing. After would be determined by his whim.”

  “I can see you are a strategist,” she said, a scrape like swallowed laughter in her tone that annoyed him. Was she mocking him? “But what if I don’t want to be kidnapped and taken to the emperor of Rome?”

  “Perhaps you could match his price and thus dissuade me.”

  “I do not have access to the same sort of funds. Or were you offering a different sort of trade?” Her gaze measured him from top to toe.

  “Naturally you like what you see, and I certainly am formed in all ways to please you, if you like how I am formed. But I fear money is the only coin I trade in.”

  “Naturally! Anyway, you don’t want to make an enemy of the emperor of Rome, not if you are, as I am coming to suspect, some form of hired ruffian who makes his living doing dirty work so the rich and powerful can keep their hands clean.”

  “Your peaceable acquiescence will make this all go so much more easily. I’ll wait while you gather a cloak and such traveling niceties as you desire.” He carefully did not pat the sketchbook although it rested alongside his left hand. “I have a ship waiting to leave within the hour.”

  “You do not. We are an hour away from low tide. No ships will be departing for some time. So that, my mysterious miscreant, was your first lie.”

  “My first lie?”

  “You’ve cleverly avoided a second lie, I note. I gave you several opportunities to agree that the emperor wants to kidnap me, and you never quite did. So I think he wants something else, and I know what it is.”

  Faster than he expected, she snatched the sketchbook from the table, leaped backward, and tapped the point of her sword to his chest.

  “You may fight, or you may retire gracefully from the field. I’m not in a mood to hand over my sketchbook.”

  He leaned away from the point but thereby found himself backed up against the dressing table. This was proving much more exciting than he had hoped. So he crossed his arms and relaxed. Fearlessness in the face of blades always impressed people.

  “Why does the emperor of Rome want your sketchbook? What have you drawn that he feels such a desperate need to possess?”

  “Ah. That would be telling.” She fished a key from her sleeve. “Because I am merciful and you have entertained me, however briefly, you may unlock the door and leave.”

  When she tossed the key, he allowed it to strike his thigh and fall with a quiet clunk to the floor. She cocked her head with corvid-like grace, a question without words.

  “Just one,” he said, because he still had to stall for time.

  “Just one what?”

  “Show me just one page from the sketchbook. If you would be so kind. He told me what treasures it holds and why he wants it.”

  “No, he didn’t tell you. Why do you keep lying?”

  “It’s a curse.” His insouciant smile was one of his great gifts, a little higher on one side than the other so that it promised both pleasure and mischief. “I always lie about something.”

  “And if your lie is found out? What then?”

  “Curses fall in threes. Three lies caught out, or three lies uncaught.”

  “And then?”

  He shrugged.

  “How interesting. Two lies caught so far. You’d best be careful.”

  He was a little disturbed that she probed no further but rather retreated to the bed, just far enough that if he lunged, she could sidestep and attempt to skewer him. She set down the sketchbook and flipped through it. He could see that the first half of the book was filled in while the latter remained blank, pages as yet unfilled. From this angle he could not discern what exactly she liked to draw except dense shadows and crisp lines. At one point she studied a two-page spread, lifted her keen gaze to him, then back down to the page.

  “Oh!” She smiled in an assessing way that puzzled him as greatly as it excited his inquisitive nature. “That expla
ins it.”

  A crow landed on the windowsill and cawed thrice.

  “Among the Hellenes, crows are considered divine messengers,” she remarked as she slapped shut the sketchbook, slid it into a pouch, and slung it over her back with every appearance of making ready to depart.

  Politeness had taken him as far as he could go. He expected her to grab for the key but instead she flung open the door of the wardrobe, jumped inside, and slammed it shut. With a leap he grabbed the wardrobe door and tugged. It was like dragging on weighted chains. With a croak of frustration he yanked with all his strength. The door gave way as if she had let go. He fell back, thumping into the bed, then spun a full circle to unsheathe his sword out of the adamant shadows that weave together the world he was in and the spirit world he came from.

  Besides a set of shelves on which traveling gear was neatly folded and stacked, the wardrobe had a false back that formed a passage into the adjoining bedchamber. This chamber’s door stood wide open. Her footsteps slapped as she raced down the passage. He pursued on foot although the dim light and the low ceiling hampered his speed, and he tripped once on a loose plank.

  She halted at the top of the stairwell just as the sound of clashing weapons broke out in the courtyard below. A voice shouted, “You are all under arrest by order of the emperor of Rome.”

  Her frown fell like a sledge blow upon him. “You led them to us. I do not call that a kindness.”

  She lunged, driving him back with a series of fierce, tight thrusts that he scarcely had time to turn aside. Just as he got his bearings and turned the force of his greater height and skill against her, he bumped the back of his head on the ceiling. As he flinched, she attacked, and he skipped back to gather himself and again hit his head on a low beam. She suffered no such vicissitudes, being short and, more importantly, knowing her ground. Her blade flashed but it was the force behind it that dismayed him, the relentless press he parried once twice and thrice as his head pounded in time to the slap of her feet on the floor.