Swords and Scoundrels

by Julia Knight

  Vocho thought back to the magician’s hands with their weird moving pictures, and the paper with the bloody patterns on it. That’s what the magician had been doing before Vocho got in the carriage, just in case. Probably he’d meant to take the chest with him when he went, but a sword in the throat will change a man’s priorities somewhat.

  “So, just the locks then?” Vocho asked.

  Dom’s watery smile broadened. “Yes, should be. Did I help?”

  Kacha caught Vocho’s eye with an implied promise of violence later, smiled sweetly and took Dom by the arm. “You did, very much. Now if you’d—”

  “I, I was wondering,” Dom said before he cast a glance Vocho’s way. “Um, Kassinda, I was wondering if you’d do me the honour of coming to the spring dance with me? That’s why I said I’d come today, you see. An ulterior motive.”

  “Well I’m not sure…” Kacha sighed at the sudden crestfallen look. “I’ll consider it, Dom, definitely.”

  That perked him up. “Excellent! Oh, and one other thing. You might want to be a bit careful. I brought you these.”

  He patted himself down, muttering under his breath for a minute or two, brought out a box of snuff, two more handkerchiefs and a small exquisitely decorated box before he found what he wanted. “Actually, these brownies are for you as well. I baked them myself. My speciality. Real fudge pieces. But here. A lot of trouble out in Fusta Wood. Cut-throat robbers on the road. So, please be careful.”

  He pulled out two sheets of paper and put them on the table, smiled his watery smile, bowed low to Kacha and left with a spring in his step and a flutter in his handkerchief.

  The newspaper wasn’t much of a thing – in the capital they ran to a dozen sheets or more and often had pictures for those that couldn’t read – but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the headline: ex-lord and prelate’s man egimont robbed in fusta wood! Followed by a report that included: “these robbers are now fast becoming notorious for their audacity, cunning and banter”.

  “I knew I should have told them the names we wanted to use.”

  “But we’re notorious anyway,” Kacha said. “And look, they’ve given us names.”

  Vocho scanned down further. So they had, and better ones than he’d thought of as well: the Dread Swordsmen of Fusta Wood.

  And under that a bit of a shock. “Ten thousand bulls reward? Ten thousand?”

  “Only if they get back what we stole.”

  The pair of them looked at the chest. It seemed so innocuous. Plain wood stained a deep blue, brass bound. A chest like a hundred others. Except for those locks, that reward and knowing who had previously either been guarding it or owned it.

  Vocho was now even more desperate to find out what was in it. If they were offering ten thousand, it was probably worth ten times that. Never mind getting their names back, he could buy half of Reyes with that much money.

  “Right, I say we open it and see why they want it back so much.”

  Chapter Three

  Petri Egimont made his way through the tiny little town dressed in borrowed breeches likely to fall down if he didn’t hold them up with one hand, and a shirt that was two sizes too small and ten years out of date. Over it all a cloak that was more a loose collection of patches and what looked like mould.

  Stares and whispers followed him, but he ignored them. There had never been a time when he hadn’t been whispered about. He did what he usually did, and sank into the background. Berie and Flashy were making enough noise for ten men anyway, and soon all eyes were on them as they made raucous demands for ale and food and women and some decent clothes, right now, damn it. Petri slid down a small side alley and found the curtained carriage at the other end, ready and waiting. No one saw him get in or saw him leave the little town. Just as it should be. What wasn’t as it should be was the lack of chest.

  Past the square with its new clock tower, its shrine to the reborn Clockwork God. Past the temple, where the worshippers weren’t certain whether they believed in the reborn Clockwork God or were hanging on to the gods that had replaced him when he fell. A punishment, men had called it when Castan empire fell to pieces. A punishment for turning away from the Clockwork God and leaving him to rust as they concentrated on their work, on making clockwork in his image. Blasphemy and heresy had brought down the empire and killed their god, leaving the good people to turn away from both him and what engineering the Castans had left. Until Bakar had brought the Clockwork God back to life.

  Out here in the country though, people didn’t trust this reborn god yet, so were hedging their bets by displaying icons of all of them, interim and reborn. Back in the city of Reyes the prelate would have had a fit if he’d known. At last something made Petri smile. Out of the city changes took a lot longer to take root, and here the other gods, even the old way of looking to the Clockwork God, were still in people’s minds and superstitions.

  It didn’t take long to get out of town, and then the carriage took a broad unpaved road up into the twisting mountains. Mud clogged the wheels, but the way was smooth enough. Before long his destination came into view, white towers against the black bare stone of the mountains, all wreathed in cloud and rain today so the buildings looked insubstantial, as though they might blow away at any moment.

  Petri had never been to the king’s palace before. Once it had been his summer residence, a retreat from the heat and fug of summer Reyes, a place to lie cool and comfortable by the waterfalls that glittered in every available tree-swagged nook. Now it was the king’s only palace, and Petri came not in triumph or summer, but in rags and in a cold and blustery spring with snow still on the upper slopes of the mountains.

  The road narrowed as they climbed, and the palace played hide and seek among the crags and clouds until a last turn and the carriage rumbled to a stop before the main gates.

  “Can’t take the carriage through, sir,” the driver said as he opened the door. “Sets off the clockwork, see?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t see,” Petri said as he got down from the coach. The palace lay on a break in the slope of the mountains, white stone walls and black slate roofs arching far above him, little turrets that looked back down over the road at every corner. Behind the high wall, more white towers, seeming almost as tall as the mountains. It didn’t seem like a palace as much as a town.

  A man ran up, whispered into the driver’s ear and ran off again.

  “Looks like you’ll be getting the full treatment, sir. If you’ll just get back in? It’s a marvel and no mistake.”

  The clockwork, of course. Since the rebirth of the Clockwork God, anyone who had a scrap of clockwork on their property was proud of it, and the king’s summer palace was renowned, second only to Reyes in the complexity of its mechanisms. It was all the Castans had left behind in Reyes when their empire fell – clockwork everywhere, a few names and a tendency for children in the northern areas to be born with springy black hair and burned-copper skin. That and a dead god.

  The carriage rattled through the now open main gates, and a warning bell followed by a series of clacking thuds had Petri looking out of the window. They’d entered a wide courtyard paved in black stone. At each corner a turret wound upwards – the clockwork sent them slowly spinning, growing taller with every turn. Each turn also brought arrow slits into view, along with strange markings and pictures burned into the stone. Below them, other things turned and moved, some hidden, some plain. Windows slid away or came into view. Alleys disappeared and reappeared, paving slabs slipped up and over to the other side of the palace, making the courtyard treacherous in many places and the horses snort and prance and roll their eyes.

  No one knew why, or how exactly, most of the old clockwork worked in the province. No one knew anything except it was all old, from the time of the Castans and part of their glory. People had forgotten the hows and whys, and just accepted it, tried to ignore it. But things had changed since Bakar brought the dead god back to life, and people’s curiosity had grown with his
rise. Most of the clockwork was hidden, or dangerous to play about with without risking the buildings that moved along on it, so no one knew much about the really old mechanisms, the huge ones that twisted palace and city into new shapes. No one except prelate Bakar, and that rankled the king no end because, after all, knowledge was power.

  The king had been trying to find his own power in knowledge by the looks of it. Most of Reyes’s clockwork ran on water power, they knew that – waterwheels lined the banks of the river for miles after it entered the city, and those powered the lesser, newer clockworks. Rumour was strong that it was something similar that drove the greater mechanisms like the changing o’ the clock, when all Reyes moved along hidden rails and twisted itself into new combinations. Yet the palace here had barely a stream across the valley and a well in the courtyard for water. But something powered the clockwork, and piles of crumbling earth and shattered stones lay at intervals around the courtyard by the walls.

  Three mud-covered men stood by a new hole, looking into it uncertainly with spades at the ready. Petri wondered if the king had found out how it worked yet, and thought not – if he had, no doubt he’d have made use of that knowledge the first chance he got.

  A footman trotted out to greet Petri and turned not a single wigged hair at how he was dressed. Instead he inclined his head and led Petri inside.

  The inside was no less a wonder than outside. A great atrium fronted the palace, filled with clockwork that had been dismantled – automatons in a hundred pieces, a clock set into the floor that had been carefully pulled up, all the cogs numbered and set in sequence along one wall. An orrery, a mechanical model of the sun and planets and stars, twin to one the prelate kept in splendour, lay in a different kind of pieces. Cogs lay bent and broken, gears scattered carelessly across the floor like petals. The model sun winked from within the leaves of a glossy plant; planets lurked together in corners. Petri grinned savagely and went on with a renewed vigour in his step. He had to show the king he was worthy, despite this setback. He had to. Had to know too that the orreries and what they represented under Bakar could be broken.

  He stood as tall as he could while the king paced his anger away before he flopped into his chair, and Petri wondered if he’d get the chance to show anyone anything.

  “How the hells did they know? If anyone was going to rob a coach, you’d have thought it would have been the one leaving Reyes, carrying my quarterly allowance.” King Licio spat that last word. An allowance, like a wayward teen not a grown descendant of kings. “I made sure it had fewer guards than usual. Your coach would seem slim pickings by comparison, low key, just a group of ex-nobles on a little spree. So how did they know that was the coach we didn’t want robbed? That the chest was what I can’t afford to lose? How did they know? Petri, how did they beat you? You were trained by the duelling guild; you should be able to beat off some bloody peasant thieves. And really, Petri, almost naked?”

  Egimont gritted his teeth – it would take a long time to live that down. He could be sure the tale would have reached Reyes by the next available coach. A source of endless amusement for his supervisor in his pathetic job at the prelate’s office. Intentional too, he thought. Kacha knew, none better, how to hurt him by wounding his pride. He just didn’t know why.

  “Not just common robbers, your highness. These were highly skilled swordsmen.” And one a woman, though he kept that part to himself for now. He’d recognised Kacha instantly. How could he not? Kacha had never gone for Ruffelo’s techniques and instead preferred her own, at least when not officially duelling at the guild. He almost smiled at the thought of their duel, of watching her fence like she was born to it, and then squashed the smile. That part of his life was over.

  “Highly skilled?” The king leaped back up from his ornate chair at the head of the room. The hall was a whitewashed affair with rich hangings, plush carpets, bright windows and no clockwork – it had all been ripped out, and recently by the look of things, leaving odd gaping holes that seemed to make the rest of the room look even finer. A glazed case ran the length of one wall, filled with more precious things than Egimont had ever seen anywhere together. A hall far fairer than almost any other in both the city and country of Reyes. And that was the trouble. It was the almost that rubbed King Licio raw. He was no longer king in anything but name, and the only other palace finer than this used to be his, but now, nearly two decades after the revolution against the old king when Licio was a baby, belonged to the prelate and his departments. All Licio had was a useless and meaningless title, a seat on the council, a few concessions which meant little in practice, and the second-finest hall in the country. And now a magician, a fact which unnerved Egimont.

  It’d been a long time, but he’d had as much cause as any to celebrate when the prelate got rid of them after the revolt. If bringing the king back meant a magician… No, he’d sworn loyalty to his king for good or ill, and that was everything. His father had been a faithless man, and Egimont had no intention of following in his footsteps. In any regard.

  Licio stalked over to Egimont. Even in anger – especially in anger – he looked like a king. Tall, golden-haired, loose limbed, with the sort of face that could charm angels into sin. He smiled easily, his eyes shining with courage and honesty. All he needed was a crown and a fanfare to complete the image. He looked the part and Egimont had begun to wonder whether it was that which had seduced him into this plot, or his own greed and pride. Yet he sounded the part too, and Petri sympathised with his frustrations with the prelate, with the reborn Clockwork God he said they must pray to now, the notion that all their lives were laid out ahead of them on rails, and they couldn’t turn from what the clockwork had planned for them. Each of their frustrations was nearly the same as the other’s.

  “You’re highly skilled, or so you claim, and yet you ended up with no clothes. I need that chest back.” Licio blew out his cheeks and relented as quickly as he’d exploded, as usual, his temper like a brief summer storm that’s soon spent. “That chest is vital, do you see? Contracts, agreements, negotiations. Not to mention a lot of gold. A lot. The whole treaty with Ikaras depends on those papers. They were our guarantee that Ikaras would help with armed might when the time came, in return for a few concessions about the mines on the border. Without that treaty and their army we’ve no chance of toppling the prelate; without the gold, no chance of getting a few councillors on side before we strike. Without that chest, I have nothing to offer anyone, and a new treaty might take months – those Ikaran weasels will take every opportunity to get more from us in return for their help. And if that chest falls into the wrong hands…”

  Egimont kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t much of a man of words to start with, but the presence of the magician, Sabates, over the last weeks had kept him even quieter. Months ago now Egimont had sworn to Licio he would help restore him to the throne in return for his father’s old duchy and revenge on the guild that had given him up so easily. Also, there had been plans for true justice. Plans to rid the kingdom of wastrels while helping the deserving find work. Many plans to undo what had been done in the prelate’s name and under his supposed ideals of democracy, which had ended up more a brawl for power, more corrupt than any of the worst brutalities the previous kings and nobles had managed.

  When Petri had joined him a few months ago, it had been Licio’s high ideals that Egimont had supported, especially the plan about reinstating all the nobles, giving them back their land, titles, and most particularly the part where he was made guild master. No more scribbling away in that dank little box in the prelate’s office for Egimont, drafting increasingly ludicrous edicts. No more believing all the prelate’s lies of a new and brighter future at Egimont’s expense. No more being tied to the predetermined fate that the prelate, or rather the clockwork, had outlined for him.

  Licio’s loose ideals had changed with Sabates, had become firm plans. The magician sat there now, though the Clockwork God alone knew how he’d survived the stab in the thro
at. Magic, Petri supposed. Even before the magicians were massacred or run off after the revolution they’d been secretive so no one knew much of what they were capable of, or how they did it, bar a few gruesome details and stories that had twisted in the telling over time.

  Yet Sabates had survived, and had been there in the shadows with his sneer and his scarred face as Egimont and the rest had staggered out of the carriage, numb from being tied up for hours, and stinking from being too close to Berie and his stained underwear. Egimont had been livid too, but one look at the crawling bloody patterns across the man’s hands, and he’d kept quiet and done as he was told. It was all he did since the magician came. And when Sabates had come to Reyes, that’s when Licio had changed from a young man of even temper and high ideals, wanting only the best for the country, into a man possessed by the need to right the wrongs he’d been dealt before he was old enough to walk.

  Sabates smiled at Egimont now, cold and impersonal, like he was inspecting an insect before he squashed it.

  Licio put an arm around Egimont’s shoulder. “So, how are we going to get that chest back? I’m sure you’ll think of something, Petri. Won’t you?” A squeeze of the shoulder, a glance to Sabates and back. An implied “or else”. Oh, he looked like a king, all right, but it was only now that he was starting to act all too much like the last king. That hadn’t ended well for both the king and many of his nobles, whose blood now haunted the square outside the Shrive.