by Max Keith
“However,” she added, her lovely face transfigured by an evil smile, “we must not let the Regent’s discomfiture stop us from seizing any opportunities that may arise.” Raxillene did a lot of things in order, as she put it, to avoid further instability in the kingdom, translated as to put me on the throne. Her younger brother, the Regent, was a drunken sot; their father was loose of wit, and she was certain she was the Queen the Realm needed.
The warrior looked speculatively from mage to Princess. “Huh,” he mused. He glanced back at the mage. “And if we do have to kill him, you can handle these… repercussions?”
Franx shrugged. “Who can say? When senior mages are killed, they die. But some of them die harder than others. There are stories of Kingsmages, Archmages, even Shadowmages spending their last moments casting extremely interesting and violent spells.”
“Difficult to cast a spell,” Alorin rasped gravely, “with your head removed.”
“Difficult,” Franx agreed, “but for a strong enough mage, not impossible.”
Cashel was interested. “Could you do it, Poildrin? Cast a spell with your head off, I mean?”
The mage glanced unreadably back. “How should I know? It’s not something I practice routinely.”
Industrious chewing dominated the next few silent moments. “So, Franx,” Drinn finally asked, “do you ever just answer a fucking question, or what?”
The mage smiled thinly, the firelight shadowing his gaunt face. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no,” he murmured helpfully. Drinn snorted and poured more wine.
Two
Next morning found Cashel back by the docks in front of the Fane, waiting now for two different kinds of quarry: the odd religious pair he was now supposed to follow, and the fabulously built woman with the strange crowd in tow, her jeweled finger scattering rainbows across the morning. He was certain she’d appear, and he shook his coin cup impatiently as he waited for the sun to clear the Cockles; Gallant Wanderer was at last untying, putting out to sea on the last of the land breeze. She’d be due presently.
This time was a bit different, though, the crowd thicker on account of a fruit seller who’d set up his wares in the space left by the departed Wanderer, the open space on the quay gaping like a missing tooth. He was selling oranges, it seemed, for the extortionate price of two roights. Two fucking roights! For an orange! Down south, Cashel knew, you could get two cups of beer for two roights, or a man could get his dick sucked for about the same.
Fruit was hard to come by now, though, the War raising the prices more and more by the year. People were used to it, really; by this time, prices had been rising so steadily that nobody really even noticed anymore, simply accepting it as yet another example of the Prince’s mismanagement. In fact, it made them suspicious when prices actually fell for a change. Cashel recalled a soupseller in Holling that had deliberately tried to undersell his competitor; the people had ignored the lower price, assuming something must be wrong with the soup. So the fellow had simply moved one street over, doubled his price, and sold out in an hour.
Cashel sighed and brooded out toward the water. He’d been squatting so long with that stupid coin cup that it almost seemed to him that he really did belong there. He wrapped his arms around his drawn-up legs, trying to look pitiful, and concentrated on not looking to his left, to where the lady and her friends would be coming… along… soon…
Ah. There, and the difference was immediate: the lady’s warrior was out front this time. His scowl certainly looked genuine, the big hammer held in his mutton fist with an air of casual menace, his bushy beard nearly bristling in a state of constant wrath. He wore a leather jerkin shiny with long use, the left side of it rubbed in a fanlike pattern where a swordhilt would normally ride. Cashel could see out of the corner of his eye that a long, jagged scar ran right along his face, from his sunburned forehead down past his eye and into his beard, lending a false twist of a smirk to his lips.
Behind, like birdsong after a storm, came the lady, and for once she was not turned away to talk to the pig-eyed man, relegated now to a position back with the mage. This gave Cashel his first look at her face, and it was a sweet one indeed once one got past her nose. Truly it was a magnificent nose, sail-shaped and sharp, but it was really a great deal larger than it needed to be. But, Cashel was pleased to see, its dimensions didn’t really detract from the rest of her face: she was that beautiful. Full, sensuous lips curled now into a faint, detached smile, with lively blue eyes sparkling at the top of a gently rounded face. The bard had to work hard to keep from staring directly, but the crowd had driven the lady’s party farther from the water than they normally walked, and Cashel realized with a shivering tightness in his groin that she was about to pass just a foot away from him.
The warrior’s footsteps came first, his heavy boots and rock-chunk calves filling Cashel’s carefully lowered vision. The bard had no doubt the man was studying him as he passed, but then he stopped worrying about it: the sumptuous, full skirt, today in a glorious shade of green, was suddenly and most compellingly there, within even a lazy man’s reach, swirling past in a musky cloud of woman-smell that nearly left him faint in the puddles.
He blinked hard to clear his senses, but that did nothing for his erection, sudden and swift like a snake’s tongue, jabbing painfully into his inner thigh; he gasped, unused to such lack of control. But she was gone then, Cashel’s ringing ears picking up a faint tone of merriment from the woman, and then the muddy blue robes of the mage had stopped before him.
“Lady Winnowes’ command,” came the mage’s voice, lofty and diffident, and then the coin cup chinked as, with a look of wonder, Cashel beheld the bright sunlike circle of a full golden merganser.
Cashel gaped up at the mage, not even needing to feign his shock. He’d been a bard for fifteen years, playing and singing all up and down the Realm, and never once had his musical efforts earned a golden merganser. He felt his eyes go wide as he looked full upon the woman’s majestically retreating backside, and he barely remembered to put on a Northlands accent as he called, “My thanks to your ladyship! Gods bless you on this most auspicious day!”
She did not stop, but she did deign to extend a sharp-fingered hand in a languid wave to acknowledge his gratitude. As well she might: a merganser could buy a houseless drunk a full night’s bed and board in a clean, reputable establishment, or a bed and a wench in a dirtier one. Or full service, upper and lower plus rear, from the classier type of whore, the kind Alorin Kaye was pretending to be.
With reflexes honed by years with a harp, Cashel sent his hand darting out into the cup; the merganser disappeared before anyone but he and the mage had spotted it, for this was not the sort of neighborhood where gold bought anything but trouble. He caught a faint smile from the mage, a disinterested look from the short pig-eyed man, and then the entire party was swallowed by the crowd of deranged orange-buyers.
At once Cashel’s threadbare cloak billowed across his knees, hiding the hand he drove insistently into his trousers. He hauled his dick impatiently upward, gasping with relief, then left his fingers there to toy with himself; gods, but the woman had been gorgeous. Simply gorgeous.
He could see now that a single barrel-tying fantasy could never come close to exhausting the sexual possibilities of a woman like her. At once his mind fled far away, ignoring the sea and the reek and the morning sun, not even noticing the rainbows still flashing across the front of the Fane as her ring moved. He had a name now, and a face, and he was already imagining the way that bewitching nose would flare in orgasm as she rose and fell over his naked, dirty body, the two of them grappling in the filth of a sail loft, perhaps, or down on the faded cobbles surrounded by baskets of shellfish.
In his mind he reached up to tear the laces from her quivering green bodice, gasping as her two incredible breasts bobbed forth like a pair of eager puppies, ready to play. No matter what he did to them, she’d enjoy it; she’d laugh if he kissed them, sigh if he sucked them, growl if he twist
ed their extended nipples. And through it all, he knew somehow, she’d never once stop riding him. He just knew she had the muscular legs, the patient energy, to drive herself up and down, up and down, in unfailing rhythm for hours if need be; she’d have made a worthy whore, as his practiced eye could tell.
She’d lean back, bracing herself on her shuddering arms, her tits trembling high and proud above as he’d watch the root of his penis disappear into her grasping pink twat again and again, the two of them shining with sweat and sliding against each other with urgent passion, their bodies colliding with the urgent slapping noise of a good, hard fuck.
It was fortunate, Cashel reflected, that his clothing was already so stained. Otherwise, he understood ruefully, the stain his cock left spattering the front of his soiled breeches would be plain to see if he had to stand up. It took his breath away; never had he cum from such a light touch, from the flutter of his harpers’ fingers across his head, added to the power of the vision the mysterious Lady Wennowes had left on his mind.
Slowly, blinking, Cashel came back to himself, the fuzzy dockside world swimming back into focus: the crowds still heaved over near the fruit man, and the Fane still towered behind him, and the old monk and his boy were already nearly out of sight as they disappeared into the crowd.
He’d missed them entirely.
“Fuck,” he grated, and then he was up; a moment’s hesitation over the bowl, but a lifetime of avarice overcame Franx’ injunction and he scooped the bowl hastily up, clanking with brass pennies. And then he was off, scampering into the crowd, looking keenly ahead for the distinctive silver hat of the priest, the spiky awkward hair of his apprentice.
At once Cashel knew he’d made a terrible error. The men who worked the docks every morning were all the same people day after day, and after he’d been squatting in the sludge for the better part of a week they were accustomed to the smelly beggar huddling listlessly on the edge of the street. They were none of them expecting a lithe, fit man dashing along in that smelly beggar’s tattered clothing, dodging through the crowds as nimbly as any thief, and as he swept past the startled denizens of the Crownport waterfront he started hearing strangled exclamations, urgent whispers, and outraged accusations.
The dung-stained cloak whipped around his shoulders as he moved, eyes straining, still holding the jingling bowl of coins. At one point Cashel thought he glimpsed the blue-robed mage, his mouth an indignant O of surprise that the crippled derelict his employer had just gifted with an incredible golden merganser was apparently quite healthy after all.
A flash of silver up ahead, hard beneath the spars of a waiting ship, drew Cashel like a magnet; he sidled desperately that way, his hand going instinctively down for the rapier that wasn’t there, and then at last he had them: both the hatted priest and his boy, drifting along in complete ignorance of the ruffled drama behind them, and Cashel took a deep breath as he settled down to follow them.
He could never go back to his post by the empty berth, he realized, and there could be no doubt that Poildrin Franx would seethe when Cashel confessed how badly he’d bungled such a simple operation. His pants stuck accusingly to his groin, pulling at his pubic hair as he moved, and he shook his head in disgust. Still, there was nothing for it now: the hunt was on, and he settled quickly into the role he’d played so long and so well for Princess Raxillene.
Cashel was a man they used as a spy, a man who could infiltrate castle or temple or hut, who felt comfortable making friends with dukes or peasants, for in the end everyone liked a bard. His harp was a safe-conduct into every corner of the realm, and by the time his customers realized he wasn’t much of a singer, he’d already be on his way toward his next target. He could sit and listen for hours, dropping eaves and silently remembering what people said, and eventually he could piece together the thoughts and behaviors of the people around him. Jobs like this meant no harp, but a man who could blend in anywhere was a man who could understand the people around him.
Like the priest. Immediately Cashel guessed Franx was on to something; the priest was no priest. He spoke to no one, offered no blessings, and made none of the casual ritual movements so common to his ilk. Instead he seemed content to follow his boy, a veined hand resting on the supple young shoulder as the apprentice moved through the knots of people with the practiced ease of an eel. They were plainly going someplace, striding fast and with purpose, the priest moving like a much younger man.
By this time they were well away from the harbor, moving up through the metalsmiths’ district, and for a few minutes the smoking forges and clanging hammers disoriented him. And it was while peering about, trying to make sure he had the right silver hat among the flashes of metal all around, that he caught a glimpse of a blue robe away down the hill behind, and then he knew he might be in some trouble.
A blue hood meant a Guildmage, as any child knew; very junior, the Guildmage, able to do little more than read and write and mix a tincture or two, maybe do a few simple spells that even a normal fellow like Cashel would probably be able to master. But even a lowly mage was still a mage: the robe meant brains salted with a decent mixture of guile, and at any time a mage was an unfortunate man to cross. And an unfortunate man to give his attention to a false bard by a seafront, Cashel reflected, but of course there was nothing for it now; he had no choice but to keep on after the priest and his boy.
At one point Cashel thought he just might have lost the blue mage, and at another he was nearly certain he rushed past Alorin, all long legs and long fingers and long fiery hair, but she seemed to be busy with a group of men. And in any case the priest and his boy didn’t seem interested in the attentions of a whore, no matter how high class; instead, they simply continued onto a quiet street with trees lining the edges, a place of comfortable low-walled houses set well back from the road.
And it was into one of those houses, through a green gate, that the pair passed.
Cashel wasted no time. He took note of which house it was, the poplar outside the gate, and then he was off. He crossed the street swiftly, but once he arrived on the other side he was already slowing down, even staggering, dragging himself in drunken exhaustion to a narrow passage between two of the walls.
So it was a tattered beggar once more, his bowl already at his feet, that gazed boldly back down the street at the blue robe that came hurrying around a corner. For a moment the two of them stared, both with narrowed eyes; then, with an ironic wave and a flourish of his robes, the Guildmage turned and slowly walked back toward the metalsmiths’ district.
* * *
“Fucking mages,” Drinn spat with a venomous glance at Franx. “How many of you are there?”
“Our numbers are great,” the Shadowmage replied loftily. “And you saw nothing else, Cash? Nobody else came to the house, I mean?”
“Nobody.” He frowned, digging furiously at his ear; two baths still hadn’t removed all the filth. “Though in fairness I was pretty exhausted, so I might not have been quite as attentive as I ought. And once night fell…” He shrugged. Franx was kicking delicately at Cashel’s discarded pants, his nose wrinkled in distaste. “What’s the matter?”
“Your pants smell like my pillow, for some reason,” the mage mused. “Disgusting town.”
“Disgusting,” Cashel agreed. Even through his fatigue, he had to suppress a grin. “We should burn the pants, the pillow, and the town.”
From the little table in the corner, the valkyrie sighed. Franx had brought them all together tonight, given Cashel’s discoveries. “This apprentice boy,” she began gravely, “how did he move?”
“Like an apprentice boy.” The bard continued gouging irritably at his ear. “He was guiding the priest. I was more impressed by the old man’s movement, to be honest. He was quick, like a younger man.” He was still embarrassed at his fumbled afternoon, spent waiting anxiously outside the green gate, waiting for something to happen and wondering how he could get word to Franx. At some length, indeed after the sun had set, a fl
ashing ruffle of wings above told him the mage had sent his familiar along to hunt for the vanished Cashel. The bard had been too relieved to take offense at the owl’s accusing glare, the condescension in the way he held his beak. He’d nodded at the bird, then slunk off toward the garret to make his report while the bird, composing itself with grave dignity, settled into the poplar tree to watch.
“I’m sure he was a younger man,” Franx said for the third time. “I’m certain you saw Aslo Farrick in disguise.” He turned his attention to Alorin. “Why do you ask about the boy?”
She looked evenly back. “You are not the only one here who can make interesting guesses,” she pointed out.
“I never claimed I was,” he snapped back. “So what is your guess?” Drinn was watching the exchange with a broad grin.
The valkyrie’s reply was a long, steady grey-eyed glance at Cashel. “I wonder,” she said quietly, “whether our bard here would agree that the apprentice boy might have moved less like a boy,” she explained slowly, “and more like a woman.”
Drinn chuckled. “Cash doesn’t know how a woman moves,” he snorted.
“Fuck off.” The bard frowned, looking out the garret’s heavily leaded window. The room was thick with the sudden silence. “There may have been a… well, a certain lightness of foot,” he admitted. The apprentice had drawn almost no notice at all from the bard, truth to tell; his short black robe and the spiky hair were the only real impressions. “I mean, he really did simply look like a fairly normal boy.”
“Assassins,” Alorin reminded them, “can look many different ways.”
“Sure,” Cashel replied lamely. He shrugged. “I just didn't see anything that screamed ‘woman.’”
