by Cam Banks
“Well, I don’t really need any more retired Solamnic soldiers. Can you do anything else?”
“Well, I …”
“How about cooking?”
The man coughed. “Cooking? Why, yes, sir.”
“Really? You don’t sound so sure.”
“No, no. It takes me by surprise is all. Cook? Absolutely, sir.”
Theo looked over at Cletus and back again to the Solamnic. “Do you handle poultry, pork, lamb, venison, beef, other meats?”
“Yes, sir. Of course.”
“How about lizard?”
The man puffed his chest out. “If I can put it into a skillet or hold it over a fire, I can cook it, sir.”
Theo grinned. “Perfect! You’re hired. I assume you know your way around a sword and spear too?”
The Solamnic nodded. “You can’t serve three tours with the Solamnic Army without knowing how to defend yourself, sir.”
“Quite right. Now.” Theodenes lifted his quill and turned to the first empty space in the ledger on the desk. “What is your name?”
There was a brief pause. The cook looked as if he hadn’t been expecting that question. “Etharion, sir. Etharion Cordaric.”
Theo thought the name sounded a little Ergothian, but then again the Solamnics were all descended from Ergothians anyway. “Welcome to the Monkey’s Ear Company, Etharion. The kitchen’s out back.”
After the Solamnic had left, Theo sent Cletus out of the room and sat alone in his cigar smoke. With a cook on board, he had a full complement. All he needed was a job that paid, and things would really get moving.
It was dangerous work, he thought. But he’d seen the best in action before, the kind of man who left a lasting impression, the kind of man who inspired imitators in the profession, the kind of man who owed a gnome several hundred steel pieces and a new saber-toothed kitten.
“Vanderjack,” said Theodenes to no one in particular.
CHAPTER FOUR
Vanderjack watched the sun going down over the Turbidus Ocean and thought of his mother.
There were hundreds of pirate kings in the Saifhumi shanty tales, but there had never been a pirate queen like her. Ireni Erj-Ackal was born on a ship and set foot on dry land only after she had first learned to climb rigging and walk along a spar. The Saifhumi made her their queen on the morning of her twentieth birthday, in the tradition of the sea nomads; she reigned for twenty more years before Mandracore the Reaver, a half-ogre, sank four of her ships and claimed her throne.
Ireni Erj-Ackal lived out the last three years of her life in forced retirement in Sea Reach, the capital of Saifhum, watching the minotaurs slowly take over the privateering around the island and hearing about rising stars such as Melas Kar-Thon and his daughter. Her own son watched her die, leaving thirty Ergothian brass coins on the side table where her sword once lay.
Vanderjack had never been back to Saifhum, nor spent another day on a sea nomad ship. The ubiquitous smells of patchai-ellai and curried fish sauces still made him sick to his stomach. He was no son of the sea. But he couldn’t stop gazing at it, and that meant thinking of her.
“Well?”
The sellsword’s thoughts came back to the present. Gredchen was standing there before him, and over her shoulder were the north gates of Pentar.
“Not until dark,” he said.
The baron’s aide exhaled and sat down next to him on the salt-worn rock. “Do you always walk into towns at night? They close the gates, you know.”
Vanderjack scratched his chin. “It’s the best time of the day to show up anywhere,” he said. “And besides, closing the gates in Pentar doesn’t mean anything. We’ll go down along the wharves. You can walk around there”-he pointed at the westernmost end of the fifteen-foot stone wall surrounding the port town-“into the Temple District, where the Seaguard don’t spend a lot of time, and these new priests are eager to be hospitable.”
Gredchen frowned. “Waiting here means Annaud’s men are going to catch up to us. You realize that, don’t you?”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I certainly hope you do, for the baron’s sake. He’s paying you a lot of steel to sit around and wait until the sun goes down.”
Vanderjack and Gredchen did just that for another hour until the sellsword was sure there wasn’t any more light other than the slivers of the red and silver moons hanging above. Only then did he get up, stretch his legs, pick up his pack, and head toward the waterfront.
Pentar made its living as a trade port. During the war, it had been occupied by the red dragonarmy, liberated by the Whitestone forces from Kalaman, then abandoned to its fate. That suited the Pentari folk just fine. It wasn’t the melting pot that Palanthas or even Kalaman were. It wasn’t a haven for pirates or wealthy merchants either. What it was, and had been for more than a hundred and fifty years, was home to a thriving import business. The red dragonarmy made heavy use of that business, even four years after they had been kicked out.
Such constant trade meant that the town was full of hired help or those who wanted to be hired. If you weren’t a vendor or a sailor or a priest, you were a hireling, and that was exactly what Vanderjack wanted.
Vanderjack and Gredchen picked their way through a thicket of lobster pots and fishing huts before clambering up onto the Temple District wharf. Some of the locals were still perched on the edge of the wharf, muttering invocations to the gods-Habbakuk and Chislev and furious Zeboim. In the new age of godly reverence, the people of Pentar were keen to make as much use of the divine powers as they could to improve their lives … or their fishing.
Pentar had two small harbors, little more than niches in the coastline, which flanked a promontory that thrust out into the Turbidus Ocean between them. Upon that promontory rose the governor’s palace, and between the palace and the town itself was a walled orchard whose redolent smells of citrus wafted across the water to the temple district. Vanderjack considered walking around to the orchard, if only to reacquaint himself with tangerines. Maybe later, he thought. No need to get too close to the governor.
The streets were dark; only the main thoroughfare and the waterfront had lanterns. Gredchen walked close to Vanderjack; too close it seemed to him. Indeed she was always poking her bulbous nose into Vanderjack’s face when talking to him. He wondered absently whether her sheer ugliness made her abandon most people’s concept of personal space for lack of needing to concern herself with proprieties.
“Lots of temples,” he said to break the silence as they walked. “Half of them don’t even look open.”
“Missionaries came here soon after the war,” Gredchen said. “The baron had a priest of Paladine show up in person at his manor to welcome him into the faith if he so chose. He didn’t. A lot of the locals, however, were really pleased with the idea.”
Vanderjack stopped to look at one of the large, chunky idols set in front of a temple. It was a stylized striped and scaled cat of some kind, fashioned from brass and stacked on top of urns or amphorae or some kind of jug. It looked vaguely familiar.
“Isn’t there one of these statues in Glayward’s manor house?” he asked.
Gredchen nodded. “Very similar, yes. A big brass tiger icon given to Lord Gilbert’s grandfather by the natives many years ago. I wasn’t aware it had any religious association.”
Vanderjack indicated the temple’s dedication plaque. “Says this place is dedicated to a god of luck and the disenfranchised.”
“Branchala,” Gredchen said. “Usually a minstrel god, from what I’ve heard. But local religion always puts a new face on the gods. Supernatural mysticism and so on. It’s been common in Nordmaar ever since the land rose out of the sea; the only difference now is that the gods are real.”
Vanderjack snorted. “They’re real, all right. They were behind all of that mess in the war too. I don’t hold much store in that, although this luck god does sound interesting.”
The baron’s aide looked away, skimming the st
reet with her eyes. “Are we done here, then?”
“Yeah, we’re done. Next stop-an inn of some kind. We need sleep. Big day ahead of us, shopping around for henchmen.” He patted the brass tiger statue on the head. “Good kitty.”
As they walked away, Gredchen swore she heard a growl from the direction of the temple. Looking over her shoulder, she saw nothing but the brass tiger totem, grinning back at her. She reminded herself to cover the statue in Lord Gilbert’s manor with a throw rug when she got back.
Rivven Cairn flew northwest with the sunset to her left and the jungle on her right, over the grasslands, toward the sea. Her red dragon, Cear, flew lazily, watching the grasses below for something edible.
“We don’t have the time to hunt,” the highmaster said, leaning a little forward in the ornate saddle so the dragon could hear her above the whipping wind.
“Why not?” replied the dragon. “I can do it easily from the air.”
“Later,” she said. Rivven wanted to be at the baron’s manor before it grew too dark. The half-elf didn’t like showing up when her hosts were sleeping. She preferred them to be awake, especially Lord Gilbert. She had a lot to talk to him about, and humans needed their sleep more than she did.
Above her, positioned between the thin crescents of Lunitari and Solinari, the red and the silver moons, she could see the gibbous black orb of Nuitari shining its dark light upon the world. Nobody but wizards who had turned to black magic and creatures of ineffable evil could see Nuitari’s moon. It was a beacon of wickedness, a constant reminder to her that her choices had opened a window into a sinister world few dared to glimpse.
Ariakas had tested her magical skills several years before, during the war. Curious of her talent, he had constructed a vivid yet entirely illusory proving ground on the borders of dream, a mindscape of meditation he himself used when calling upon the darkest of forces. She’d shown him all she knew, and he’d responded, and she realized how far along the path the emperor of Ansalon had already gone. Despite the fact that he had abandoned the black robes many years earlier in favor of the weapons of war, he had lost none of his arcane edge. Compared to him, she was a novice.
Rivven had used that experience to motivate herself into deeper study. Rather than embrace necromancy or the shadowy magic of guile and betrayal, as other evil wizards had, Rivven focused on fire. The constant flames of the outer dark flickered within her, just as they did within red dragons and fiery fiends and elementals. Her soul was a black candle, eternally lit. It drew her closer to Cear, who recognized within her a kindred spirit, and it fueled her magic as Ariakas’s path of conquest fueled his.
In their last exchange, a week before the Whitestone Armies broke the defenses of Neraka and the Temple of Darkness was destroyed, Ariakas had asked Rivven of her progress in the magical arts. He said, “Have you found the thorn?” and she had understood what he meant. Ariakas did not draw upon Nuitari’s power. He had found another path, under the guidance of his Dark Queen, a barb that bit deep within and pierced the heart of magic.
“I have,” she had responded. Her thorn was blackened by fire, sterilized in the flames of ambition and evil, but it was there.
Ariakas was most pleased with her. He had arranged a place for her in his new Dragon Empire, at his side, once his mistress stepped through the portal and into the world.
So much for that, she thought. Ariakas’s death almost put out those fires in her soul. Upon reflection, so much of it might just have been his charismatic personality, the same one he used to attract hundreds of other female conquests. She vowed not to let another man step so far within her boundaries again. He had shown her the Left Hand Path, away from that hungry black moon she was still capable of seeing, staring down upon her. There was nothing for it but to keep walking it … alone.
Cear flew a lazy arc over Lord Gilbert Glayward’s estate, settling finally in the large open forecourt where perhaps a half dozen dragonarmy soldiers stood about, smoking and sharing a jug of ale. At the sight of Rivven’s enormous dragon and the highmaster herself, they quickly stashed away the alcohol and dropped their still-smoldering cheroots to the gravel, grinding them out with their heels.
Rivven dismounted and strode over to the soldiers, furious. “What in the name of the Queen of Darkness are you idiots doing? Where is your captain? Wasn’t there a full detachment sent here?”
One of the soldiers, a man with the rank of sergeant, going by his poorly kept uniform, stepped forward. “Your Excellency, please accept our apologies, we-”
She slapped the man so hard, he almost fell over.
“Don’t apologize! Just tell me where he is!”
Clutching his jaw, the sergeant continued. “We were told to stay here, Your Excellency. Captain Annaud took the rest of the unit south, to Pentar.”
Rivven looked from the sergeant to the others, who were standing rigid with fear and shock. She knew it wasn’t the dragon behind her that was responsible-it wasn’t just the dragonfear. She’d made every effort to make her reputation as a fearsome governor as widespread as she could in the Red Wing. The soldiers were terrified of her.
“For what possible reason would Annaud have left you here to go to Pentar?”
“If it please, Your Excellency, he was pursuing the sellsword, who was here at the manor and killed two draconians on his way out.”
Two more? The Ergothian was costing her a fortune in draconians, she thought. The ones she’d had Annaud take with him were bozaks. The man clearly had no problem dealing with spellcasters. Interesting.
“Is Cazuvel here? Or did he leave with Captain Annaud?” she asked, hoping to speak with the Black Robe before she sat down with the baron.
“The wizard would not say where he was going, Your Excellency,” the sergeant said, flinching. She didn’t strike him again, however. She just strode past him.
“Get your things together,” she commanded, heading for the front doors. “I want all of you back at the outpost by morning. Anybody still here when I come back out gets fed to my dragon.”
Cear showed an impressive set of teeth the size of daggers. The soldiers scattered, running to pack their things and leave; Rivven left them to it and entered the manor. It was time to have another conversation with the baron.
CHAPTER FIVE
Vanderjack sat across the square from the Monkey’s Ear Tavern, watching the front door and sipping a cup of tarbean tea.
The early-morning crowd was noisy, smelly, and constantly blocking his view, but he fixed his eyes on the doorway. Gredchen negotiated with a fish vendor somewhere in the throng, and the sellsword could hear her trying to take a forceful approach. She might be there all day if she didn’t back off.
The Monkey’s Ear was infamous for being a place to pick up paid help. He’d been there before, some years earlier, when the fires of war were still hot. He’d earned a purse full of steel from only a handful of jobs. With the sheer number of mercenaries in business nowadays, a man could barely squeeze in for a meeting with a patron. One had to get there first thing in the morning, as he and the baron’s aide had.
That was more than an hour previous. Vanderjack tapped his fingers on the edge of his mug and watched as a trio of disgruntled axemen, probably Nerakans, left the Monkey’s Ear and jostled their way out of the square toward the harbor. A gaunt face appeared in the doorway, called out “Thirteen!” and was gone again.
Vanderjack looked at the small wooden counter in his hand, the one with 13 carved into it, and got to his feet. Gredchen must have heard the announcement as well because she threw a handful of coins into the vendor’s cup, picked up a wrapped bundle of salmon, and said a few choice words to the man.
“That’s us?” Gredchen asked, stowing the fish in her satchel.
“Yeah,” he said. “The three guys who had number twelve didn’t leave happy. Could be a tough sell this morning.”
“We’re only looking to hire, correct?” she asked. “You’re not signing on, so you don’t have
to be all that convincing.”
Vanderjack shrugged, finishing off his tarbean tea and dropping the mug into a trough outside the Monkey’s Ear. “You never know. Sometimes the patron’s the one that needs to make the best impression.”
The sellsword rapped on the front door. When a narrow window beside the door slid open and a pair of rheumy eyes looked out, Vanderjack waved the little wooden counter in front of them. Moments later the deadbolt slid back, and the door opened wide. The gaunt-faced man let Vanderjack and Gredchen in, impassive. Vanderjack wondered if the doorman was actually among the living. Maybe the Monkey’s Ear was hiring on undead too.
Vanderjack had keen senses, and his eyes usually adjusted to bad light quickly, but in a place such as that he didn’t want to take too many chances. As he passed under the eaves and inside the Monkey’s Ear, he laid his hand on the hilt of Lifecleaver, summoning the Sword Chorus.
“Another bar!” exclaimed the Aristocrat.
“Here we are again,” agreed the Apothecary.
“They all look the same to me,” said the Conjurer.
The Hunter said nothing as he stepped through a wall and out of sight. Truth be told, the Hunter was the main reason Vanderjack put up with the ghosts recently. Too many ambushes, which meant the laconic ghost was supernatural insurance.
Gredchen noticed his hand, following him inside. “If they see you getting ready to use that …”
“Relax!” he said. “It’s just a comfort tactic.”
“The woman is right,” said the Philosopher.
“As ugly as she is,” added the Balladeer.
“We should be prepared for an ambush,” said the Cavalier.
Vanderjack pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation. He didn’t want to actually respond to the ghosts, not there in the middle of a tavern, not with Gredchen. The patrons wouldn’t notice his hand; they were probably all drunk or asleep. With any luck, the Hunter would come back and report on what was happening in the rooms he couldn’t see.
