The Jack of Souls

by Merlino, Stephen

  Harric felt a surge of admiration for the old knight. What gall he had to steal a Phyros! It was a deed itself worthy of a ballad. The ballad of the Jack-Knight and the Sapphire.

  The old thief clamped the ragleaf between square, smoke-stained teeth, and dug a purse from his saddle. He grimaced, sending a web of wrinkles from his eyes. “Looks like the market’s closed down for me, but I have a great need, at present, for a pair of feed sacks.”

  From across the market, the Sapphire locked gaze with Harric. The nobleman moved his head just perceptibly to the side, as if to remind Harric of his order. To Harric it seemed not a nobleman, but his mother, who glared imperiously from the blue enameled armor. A hanging, Mother? he asked her memory. Was my sin so great you doomed your only son to hang?

  The old anger burned, and his lip curled involuntarily.

  “Where do you want the sacks?” he said, shifting his eyes to the Phyros thief.

  “In the saddle packs, son. On the second pony.”

  Harric slipped off the cart and hefted a sack of oats to his shoulder, nodding to Caris. She shouldered another sack of oats, and he followed her to the pony. As she passed the Phyros, the rider hauled the beast’s head to the other side and held it there, snorting and champing its bit, as if it might otherwise lash out in fury. Caris never flinched. She seemed oblivious to her danger, scanning the beast greedily, perhaps with horse-touched senses Harric could only imagine, eyes wide, nostrils flaring to scoop every particle of information from the legendary creature. For someone more attuned to horses than fellow humans, he guessed it was a dream for her to be so near. She’d probably sensed its approach all the way from the stables, and come running.

  Once past the Phyros, they approached the two mortal ponies that followed on tethers. The first was a gangly spare mount draped from nose to crupper in a tournament caparison made from the same faded green as the half-cover draping the hindquarters of the Phyros. The last was a stocky pony with saddle packs and a rider who appeared to be hiding under a blanket. A captive? Drugged and bound to the saddle?

  Harric quelled an urge to peek under the blanket, and dumped the oat sack in the saddle pack.

  This was his time to flee. Rudy and his men were paralyzed. The Sapphire was still at the south end of the market. The deserted north road beckoned, but he couldn’t run; curiosity and ambition held him thrall. What if the old knight would help him? How much better to ride out with a Phyros as escort?

  Harric clambered back onto his cart and met the old man’s gaze. “I helped you. Now I need your help. Take me with you. Just far enough to get me out of Gallows Ferry. I could ride your spare mount till we gain the next valley.”

  The old man gave a sad smile. “No one rides her, son. She’d throw anyone who tried. But you’ll find your way. You don’t look like a marked man to me.”

  “Funny you should say that—” Harric began, but the old knight cut him off with an impatient wave, and the Phyros started walking.

  “There’s my thanks, son,” he said, tossing a purse to Harric. “Go north one day. And when you do, ask for me, Sir Willard.”

  A drunk on the porch guffawed at the joke. “Sir Willard! The Champion!”

  As the old knight rode north from the market and through the north gate, Harric sprang from the cart to sprint after, but Rudy’s cronies had snapped back into position and stood ready for him. He slid to a halt and spun to run south for the servant entrance beside the porch, only to see the Sapphire’s squire had spurred his horse from the south gate to meet him.

  “Pox!” Harric veered for the crowd on the porch stairs, which began to part for him.

  “You let him pass, and you’ll all hang!” Rudy bellowed from above.

  The crowd panicked. Hard hands repelled Harric, who whirled to face the squire as he reined in behind. The squire’s horse danced sideways amidst the tinker’s ironware, blocking Rudy’s cronies from the north side, but also blocking the road for the Sapphire, who left the south gate in pursuit of the Phyros.

  To Harric’s astonishment, the squire seemed interested not in Harric, but in someone on the stairs—Lyla, it seemed, whom Harric had not noticed among the others on the lower stairs.

  “Pursue!” the Sapphire commanded his squire, pointing after the Phyros.

  The squire showed no more awareness of his master than of Harric. With a wild look in his eye, he planted his lance in the crotch of his armor and beckoned to Lyla, grinning. When she turned to flee up the stairs, he swept the lance in her wake, caught her skirts from behind, and lifted them high.

  At that moment the Sapphire drove his horse into the squire’s, making a grab for his reins. The squire maneuvered aside, but the jostling of his horse thrust his lance with more force than he’d probably intended. The spear lifted Lyla’s skirts past her ears and over her shoulder, pitching her face-first into the stairs, where the spear bit deep in the planks and pinned her. The squire burst into laughter, even as his master swore. Had the Sapphire simply forced his way past his squire through the cluttered bottleneck, he’d have been well on his way to the north gate, but he clearly hadn’t anticipated his squire’s rebellious behavior.

  Just as astonishing was Caris, who leapt from the top of the stairs to land with both boots on the lance, snapping it with a loud report.

  The squire blinked in surprise as she slapped the stub aside and seized his reins.

  “Was that noble?” she spat. “Was that knightly? You cob! You runt!”

  Harric had never seen her speak so many words in public. But even as he marveled at the change, his own spirits buoyed with a sudden sense of gleeful invulnerability. His heart swelled, muting his thinking and compelling him into motion like a leaf on a stream. He turned and marched up the now emptied stairs to Lyla’s side, where he wrenched the broken spear from the planking and freed her dress. The moment she gained her feet, she rushed weeping into the lodge.

  Caris stared, eyes unfocused, in a horse-touched trance clearly directed at the squire’s horse, which began to kick out at the Sapphire’s stallion, forcing him to retreat. When the squire reached to draw his sword, Harric leapt to prevent him. He’d been standing at the same height on the stairs as the squire in his saddle, so his leap brought him near enough to grab the hilts of the weapon with one hand. Holding tight, he crashed against the horse and hung against the stirrup, one foot flailing for balance as the other just skimming the mud.

  The horse bucked, nearly unhorsing Harric and the squire together, and drawing a string of curses from what Harric assumed was the Sapphire.

  The squire beat at Harric’s arm and tried to pry his fingers from the hilt.

  All but a tiny corner of Harric’s mind rejoiced, lifted by an invading glee. Only that tiny corner was his own, and that corner was horrified. It watched helplessly, unable to affect his will. Then the euphoria abandoned him as quickly as it had come, and the spectating corner snapped back to the fore.

  He let go of the squire and stumbled backward into the stairs.

  The squire looked just as bewildered as Harric felt. The youth stared about, hands trembling, eyes wide. When his sapphire master finally grabbed the squire’s reins and hauled him toward the north gate, the squire stammered apologies. With one hand he groped absently for the spear cup, as if he couldn’t recall where he’d put his lance; the other felt for the purse no longer hanging at his side.

  A stab of panic hit Harric. Gods leave me…did I lift his purse?

  Harric passed a hand across the cargo slip in his sleeve, and found the familiar weight of a coin purse against his skin. In front of all those eyes! How could I do that? His mother’s most basic lessons as a child screamed against such a lift. Even if no one saw the act itself, the squire would surely guess who took it, which would be as good as proof to the lord.

  Caris uttered a low cry beside him. He turned in time to see her crash to her knees on the stairs and ball up like someone had slammed her in the gut. Her eyes clamped shut, hands pressed to her ea
rs. He’d seen her react this way before, when something brought her abruptly from the world of horses to the world of people, or when the world of people confused or overwhelmed her. His hand went out to comfort her, but then pulled back, as he recalled a similar occasion when she’d rewarded his attentions with a boot to the shin.

  The crowd around them muttered and pointed. Rudy emerged at the top of the stairs, poised to fall upon Harric, but the stableman held off when he saw Caris. Horse-touched as she was, she was bigger and stronger than he, and she wore a very large sword at her side. Rudy bit a lip, unwilling to approach even when she was clearly incapacitated. Harric crouched beside her, his eye on Rudy. When she finally lowered her hands and opened her eyes, she stared at Harric without recognition.

  “You all right?” he asked, chancing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  She nodded, just perceptibly. Then she climbed ponderously to her feet, pale as plague, and pushed past Rudy to stagger into the lodge.

  Rudy grinned like a dog. Harric bolted.

  He leapt over the porch rail and fled south down the market for a servant door in the side of the inn. A horseman blocked his path, and Harric skidded to a halt, nearly slipping beneath its hooves. Three others closed behind him, hard eyes and Sapphire liveries surrounding him. He’d been too panicked to notice the nobleman had left his grooms behind.

  Harric darted for a gap between them, but a spear butt jammed his cheek, and he spun to his knees in an explosion of pain.

  “Why’d you do it, boy?”

  “Forget your bastard colors?”

  “I was witched!” Harric choked. “It wasn’t me!”

  The circle of horses widened and stopped. A half-dozen spear points angled in at him.

  When three of the grooms dismounted, Rudy stepped forward to take their reins. “I been waiting nineteen year for this bastard to get what he deserves.” He crammed a podgy fist into Harric’s gut, doubling Harric to his knees. “No fancy words, lord-boy? What a shame.”

  The grooms hauled Harric to his feet. Harric felt the eyes of friends and acquaintances on the porch as they pushed and dragged him into the stable yard. Once out of view from the porch, the largest groom slammed him against the side of the inn and stripped his purse from his belt. He opened the purse and peered inside. “Gods leave us! Look at the coin he’s got!” He showed the others, who gaped. A sly look entered his eye. “I’ll wager there’s more where that came from.”

  A second groom flashed teeth that had gone orange at the roots with little jackets of tartar. He swung a fist at Harric’s head, delivering a knuckle punch to his temple. White fire shot through Harric’s skull. “Where’s your room, Bastard? Where do you keep your things?” The groom started a game of jabbing him in the ribs with pointed knuckles, which the others quickly joined, asking, “Where?” with every jab.

  “Up there!” Harric said, gesturing to the garret.

  “Tie his hands,” said the biggest groom, apparently the leader of the three. The third groom bound Harric’s wrists behind his back.

  Harric knew what they planned. When they got to his room, they’d rob him blind. But in that indignity he also saw a glimmer of hope, for he knew more than one way in and out of the place. If they were going to imprison him somewhere, there could be no better place.

  When the third groom tied Harric’s hands, the leader knuckled him in the ribs. “Show us.”

  Harric limped across the yard toward the back entrance to the south wing. His eye felt like it was full of mud. His head throbbed, and his jaw ached when he clamped his teeth. With his tongue he felt a chipped tooth.

  Out of habit, his eyes lit upon his mother’s solitary grave cairn where it stood at the edge of the cliff above the river. He’d piled it himself, a tower of stones as tall as he could reach. Now it seemed an accusing finger against the dying orange of the sky. Old anger burned beneath his breastbone, giving him new strength in anger. Don’t celebrate, Mother. I haven’t joined you yet.

  They entered the lodge and climbed four flights of narrow stairs to his room. Leader opened the door with the key from Harric’s purse and went in. The groom with tartared teeth grinned and shoved Harric after. When they were all inside, the third groom closed the door and leaned against it, arms crossed, as the others ransacked the place. They pushed aside dishes in the cabinets, cracking them to pieces on the floor. They dumped drawers, stripped his weather cloak from its peg, tore sketches from the walls.

  Harric kept his eyes on the floor, and studiously away from the corner of his mattress, in which his saddle knife hid, and away from the wainscot behind which the secret closet lay. His mind raced for a way to get them to leave him in there, alone, but his head throbbed, and his ribs ached with every breath.

  Tartar knocked Harric on his back and wrestled the riding boots from his feet. He flashed Harric his orange grin. “I don’t see why the hangman should get this fine pair of striders.”

  The third groom stepped away from the door to rifle Harric’s desk, which the others had somehow ignored. He threw Harric’s drawings on the floor. When he found Harric’s quill knife, he glanced at the others to be sure no one noticed, and quickly pocketed it. He picked up the bottle of harts-horn spirits, and lifted the stopper to give it a greedy sniff. The ammoniac stench rebuffed him like a kick in the face.

  He staggered back. “Moons!” Spontaneous tears blinded him, so he nearly toppled the bottle when he stoppered it and returned it to the desk.

  Harts-horn. That’s it, Harric thought. He’d find a way to spill it, and the reek of it would drive them from the room. Getting them to lock him in with the tortuous fumes would be comparatively easy.

  Harric took a furtive step toward the unguarded door. As he expected, the third groom’s head snapped toward him. Third’s eyes narrowed as if contemplating a sadistic kick to Harric’s crotch. Harric jerked away from the anticipated blow, making sure to stumble toward the desk.

  Third resumed his post at the door, while Leader and Tartar dumped their loot on Harric’s bed.

  “Fair shares,” Third said to his mates, who sat on the bed, sorting loot.

  Leader nodded. “Only I get first pick, since this was my idea.”

  “It was my idea!” said Tartar. He knuckle-punched Leader in the thigh as if to better remind him. Leader flushed and delivered a counterstroke to Tartar’s shoulder of such disproportionate force that Tartar toppled from the bed and cut his hand on a broken dish. “Moons take you!” Tartar shouted. “It was my idea!”

  “My idea,” said Leader. “You get second choice.”

  Tartar glared, rubbing his shoulder with his uninjured hand. Apparently he thought better of escalating the battle. He shifted his glare instead to Harric, who was careful not to meet his gaze or indicate he’d even noticed their transaction. Tartar nevertheless rose and knuckled Harric’s shoulder so hard Harric bumped his head against the wall beside the desk.

  The other grooms laughed, and their tension evaporated.

  “Second choice, then,” Tartar conceded. “But I keep the boots on top of it all.”

  “Wouldn’t fit us anyhow,” said Leader.

  They took great joy then in holding up Harric’s possessions one at a time, as if at an auction. A new shirt. A pair of ivory dice he’d won from a hunter that summer. Tartar flipped through the set of painted playing cards he’d willed to Wallop. “What you suppose these are worth?” he asked Harric. “Fifty queens? They’re beauties!”

  Much less, fool. The Jack of Souls is gone. The best of all. The wild card in the deck.

  Harric could still picture the dashing figure on the missing card: a half spirit, half carnal rogue, dressed for courtly revels, his masquer’s visage lowered enough to reveal the look of wit and mischief in his eye. Harric had pinned the card to the wall when he was young. He fancied the Jack a sort of hero for his trade. Mysterious, wonderful, wild. But his mother had visions about it, and threw the card away. “You are a courtiste, not a ballad knight,” she’d
hissed.

  Leave it to you, Mother, to take the romance from a thing.

  “I’ll bet it’s worth fifty if it’s worth two,” Tartar said. “I’m glad we made your acquaintance, Master Bastard.”

  Trumpets sounded and rebounded off the cliffs outside. It sounded like a royal heralding, so Harric doubted he’d heard it correctly. Perhaps another nobleman?

  “Prince Jamus,” said Third, a hint of fear in his voice.

  Leader looked up. He crossed to the east window with Tartar, where they poked their heads out and peered up the road. “Prince Jamus!” Leader hissed. The trumpets sounded again, louder. From the sound of it, Harric gauged they were yet a half-mile up the Hanging Road. Surprised voices echoed between cliff and lodge from the porch below. Someone shouted for the stable master and the hostess.

  Third fidgeted. “Think it’s wrong we took the bastard’s truck for ourselves?”

  A shadow of guilt or fear darkened Leader’s face as he hurried back to the bed. “Get over here,” he snapped at Tartar. “We have to divide it up before they get here. Choose it or lose it.”

  They set to sharing with quiet efficiency then, each of them hiding their loot in boots or in shirtsleeves.

  Harric backed to the desk while they were distracted. His hands were bound at the wrists, but he easily found and unstoppered the bottle of harts-horn and laid it on its side to drain. By the time the stench of it hit the grooms, Harric had sidled away. He waited for the first twitch of nostrils among the grooms, then shouted, “Stupid cobs! You spilled the harts-horn!”

  The face-collapsing stench hit him then, and he choked in earnest. He staggered to the door, eyes watering, gasping for fresh air. “Get me out of here!” he demanded. “Open the door!”

  Third slugged him in the stomach. “Shut up.” Then Third’s hand went to his nose, and he recoiled, momentarily unable to inhale. “Moons!” he gasped. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Let me out, you idiots!” Harric said. “Don’t leave me here!”