Swords and Scoundrels

by Julia Knight

  “Of course, your highness. Upon my honour.” Egimont risked a look at Sabates and got a smirk in return.

  “Ah yes,” Sabates said in a grating whisper. “Honour above all, isn’t that your family motto?” Yet it wasn’t honour that stung Egimont to action, but the cool look on Sabates’ face as he stared down his nose and the soft words, spoken past the miraculously healed wound in the man’s throat. “See that it’s so, Egimont.”

  Something about that cool voice, the dark eyes, chilled Egimont to the bone and yet drew him in. Licio may have been a young idealistic fool, but he was a fool with money, the only realistic claim to any resurrected throne and some vestige of honour. Sabates wasn’t a fool of any sort, of that Egimont was sure. Maybe he was the only hope Egimont had now that he’d sworn.

  He bowed to his king, nodded to the magician and took his leave. They’d given him his orders, and no one could say he wasn’t an obedient man. His footsteps sounded loud on the tiles as he left in silence. He made his way to the stables and wasn’t unduly surprised to see Sabates there before him. The man had a propensity for appearing just where and when you thought he couldn’t be.

  Sabates didn’t look his way at first, but stroked the nose of the nearest horse. “Strange things, horses,” he said. “Seemingly intelligent, full of blind courage, a good sense of self-preservation but ultimately brainless, if easily trainable. It makes them the perfect beasts to put to our own uses, don’t you think?”

  Egimont said nothing. There didn’t seem much to say. Sabates took his hand from the horse – the beast seemed grateful the touch was brief – and turned to Egimont.

  “Your king is like this horse. I think, with training, he’ll become the perfect beast. Let me be frank, Egimont. The country needs us. The clockers are worse than the nobles ever were. They need to go, and you know it. Reinstate the better nobles – like yourself – and leave the idiots to it. The prelate’s dream was equality for all, for positions to be given on merit. But that hasn’t happened, has it? Instead of idiot nobles, we get clockers whose only virtue is making money. And the more money they get, the more they want. They’re more corrupt than the nobles, maybe even more grasping because they don’t have the titles and history to fall back on, to guide them. Some are more equal than others, and those with power use it only to squabble. That’s why you swore to Licio, wasn’t it, because you saw it needed to change? Because you saw the good in him?”

  Egimont stared at him. Was the man reading his mind? Egimont couldn’t take his eyes from the swirling patterns on the magician’s hands. They seemed… There, yes. A ducal crest, the one his father had proudly worn until the day the king was stripped of power. Two stags rutting on a blue field. A crest his father had soiled, but Egimont could clean it, given the chance. The crest dissolved and changed into a sigil of two crossed swords – the guild, and didn’t that burn in him more? The guild that had let him down, cast him adrift, and for what? For nothing. More than anything else he wanted Eneko the guild master’s head on a pike and himself to lead the guild, to mould it as he wanted. The guild had only barely scraped by in the last revolution, spared because nominally it wasn’t controlled by anyone but its guildmaster, though in practice it had mostly served the nobles. This time it would not be spared, would be brought under the wing of the monarchy, and Egimont would lead it after the fires had cooled. Only Licio would, or could, give him that.

  “Perhaps,” he said at last. No perhaps about it. He’d done what was asked of him for a long time, believed what the prelate had told him. And then he and Kacha – she’d opened his eyes. Even as an ex-noble, he still had privilege, money, a position that paid even while it demeaned. He’d thought the prelate had done a fine job with Reyes, had been brainwashed to think it perhaps, and then Kacha had shown him. Shown him poverty, hopelessness, the deep grinding apathy that only the end of hope can bring. It hadn’t been deliberate on her part; she’d just taken him to where she’d come from, shown him who she was or had been. And open his eyes it had. He’d sworn to himself he’d do something about it, convinced that a few ex-nobles like himself could do it better. He’d been undecided until her and the truth of what she’d shown him. He’d sworn in order to make things better, for her and those like her, and then… They needed someone to gather behind, and Licio was perfect. Young, idealistic, impressionable.

  “To do all you want, we need Licio,” Sabates said. “But he needs help. I can’t be everywhere. I need a helping hand, one who’s good with a sword and yet doesn’t hold outdated notions about guns either. Someone with a shred of honour and some brains. And you know who stole that chest, don’t you?”

  Egimont’s head was whirling. Sabates was a magician, and even now Egimont was sure that the ban on magicians had been the right thing to do. They’d run the country before – Licio’s father had been ruled by them whether he’d admitted it or not. They’d run it, and look how that turned out. But Sabates seemed to know what Egimont wanted and to want the same himself. Egimont wanted to trust him, but trust hadn’t worked out so well lately.

  “Perhaps,” he allowed.

  “Perhaps.” A smile from Sabates. “Very well. And perhaps you already have two masters, the prelate and your king. One open, one secret. How about a third? A third who can actually make what you want happen rather than just talk about it. One who will give you what you want most. Tell me, why did you swear to the king?”

  The patterns flowed across the magician’s hands, now two-headed snakes, now a noose, now a duelling sword, now two armies battling and neither winning. They flowed and swam and brought strange thoughts to mind.

  Egimont couldn’t have not answered if his life depended on it. “The prelate… I believed in him. I believed in what he set out to do, in a way. He made me believe it. And then I saw. She showed me. What he’d really done. But if – when – he falls, his council will turn on each other like starving wolves, all trying to own the whole carcass. The only one of that council with enough support to take over without a full-scale civil war is Licio, but he needs money to do it. He was, is, the king. Enough royalists still keep the faith, enough only pay lip service to Bakar’s new Clockwork God. Enough of the rest will support Licio when it’s clear he’ll win. He was never tested; the revolt was against his father. There are whispers that he isn’t his father’s child, that a sane king is better than an insane prelate. Many don’t agree with the prelate’s new laws, the taxes, the unending dispute with Ikaras. I can’t blame them.”

  Egimont managed to drag his gaze away from Sabates’ hands, frowned and shook his head. He hadn’t meant to say that much. And yet none of it was untrue.

  “And now that you know the king better?”

  “We’d replace a madman with a young fool.” The words seemed ripped out of him and wrong somehow – Licio hadn’t seemed foolish, not until Sabates had come. Before that he’d seemed full of ideas, and ideals, naïve perhaps but no fool.

  “Unless the man who truly rules isn’t Licio.” Sabates moved his hands, and the patterns faded to nothing as he stroked the horse again. “And that man will need a reliable lieutenant. One who will be amply rewarded for his trouble. With, say, a duchy? And a duchess to go with it?”

  Egimont glanced up sharply. Did he mean…? No.

  Still, Egimont was tempted. For all his misgivings about the magician, Egimont had begun to despair. A fool who was perhaps a touch mad or a different fool? Neither appealed; either would destroy this country given half a chance. The prelate had already started. Yet Egimont wavered. Working for a magician wasn’t an honourable position.

  “Unless that’s the only way to save a country,” Sabates murmured. “A duellist serves their country first, isn’t that what they say? What you were taught at the guild before you were so rudely ripped from it? Over and above the prelate or any temporary hiring, they serve their country, their guild, ultimately their own conscience. They do what seems good to them. You’re no longer a duellist in name, but you are one by train
ing and heart, aren’t you? Why not do both? Work for me, and the king and prelate too. Do my bidding when it seems good to you, for your country. I will not fail to reward you.”

  What did he have to lose? Nothing, not any more, not since Kacha… Enough of that. It was done and gone, and it was all he’d had left to lose. Other than a pathetic job he’d taken because the prelate had convinced him, he had nothing but some money, and not enough to do him any good if the country fell to war. Instead perhaps he had a chance to avert that. Sabates wanted the king on the throne again, and with sound men to advise him, men like himself, perhaps the country might not fall. Perhaps Egimont might even get to be the hero he’d always dreamed about being.

  His head felt foggy and his thoughts indistinct, except one – that denying a magician wasn’t a good idea. Whispers at the back of his head telling him what would happen if he refused. The pictures on Sabates’ hands seemed to dance in front of his eyes.

  “All right,” he said at last. “When it seems good to me.”

  “A wise choice,” Sabates said. “Licio wants the chest back, and so do I for more reasons than he knows. But not just that – I want the people who stole it. You know who they are, as do I.”

  “Kacha and Vocho.” The words seemed yanked out of him.

  “Indeed. Find the chest but inform me before you do anything. I think I may have plans for those two. A suitable revenge for you, I think? As the prelate’s fall will be for me. I have a very personal grudge against him. I believe you saw some of the magicians die during the revolt. Too many died, too many, and one in particular. My son, killed by the prelate’s own hand. Oh, I have as much or more reason for revenge than you do. Let us exact it together and for the good of your country.”

  Revenge. On Vocho for being an insufferable pumped-up little tit, for always beating Egimont in duels no matter what he did, what tricks he tried. For being such a bastard to Kacha. On the guild for abandoning him to his present miserable fate. On Kacha, yes maybe even a little on Kacha, for cruelly leaving him for no reason that he could see, for humiliating him.

  Egimont found he was smiling.

  Interlude

  Nineteen years earlier

  Vocho couldn’t recall being quite as excited about anything. Not even the sword swallower at the fair in the summer, or the fire breather, or even when his da said he was old enough to go out with Kacha onto the jetties, docks and wharves that surrounded the one broken-down room they called home. He could barely contain himself as he, Kacha and her friend sneaked past the dead statue of the Clockwork God and into one of the smithies that overlooked the big square.

  The vast rooms inside echoed with the sound of hammering, of water hissing as metal was cooled, the huff-puff of giant bellows it took three men to work.

  Up a rickety set of stairs rife with cobwebs and rat droppings and out into the air. The roof wasn’t empty – far from it. Vocho’s da said it was all because the city was growing, finally recovering from the Great Fall, when the old Castan empire had cracked apart like an egg into all the city states and petty kingdoms, taking knowledge with it. A long time ago, Da had said, people had known more than they did – known how to make a city click and clank every three days as it turned on its axis, how to make the city spin and turn and change, how to make great clocks that were the symbol of Reyes and rang out every quarter in a helter-skelter of bells that echoed along different streets depending on what change o’ the clock it was. How to make a whole clockwork city that was the envy of all the other provinces, even though the Castans had left different marvels elsewhere. They must have been dead smart, Vocho thought, to do all that.

  The old empire had died because the Castans got too arrogant, Da said, tried to make clockwork to rival the god himself, tried to make their own gods. Now Reyes was moving ahead, relearning smithing tricks, making better swords, better ploughshares, remembering old things or inventing new things, like metal crossbows with winches on to pull the string bit. Not much clockwork though, only little bits, because otherwise the priests got all fussy about heresy and burning in the hells, in case Reyes fell prey again to what had destroyed the Castans.

  As the city got back to its feet, more and more people looking for work had arrived till it was nearly bursting. No one wanted to live outside the walls – bears, wolves and lions and such lived out there, he’d heard, and he’d been disappointed when Da had strictly forbidden him to hunt them, and given him a smack around the ear for being stupid to boot. Then there was the row with the neighbouring kingdom of Ikaras – all the sailors talked about it – and the water meadows that swallowed huge bits of land for months at a time this end of the Reyes river. Inside was safer, easier. So they’d built shacks wherever they could, taking over cellars, cramming in as many as could fit into a house. Vocho lived in one room in a falling-down house and had more neighbours in that house than he could count. Lots, anyway; you could always hear someone moving about. The nobles who owned all the property were… what had Da called them? Vocho couldn’t remember, because his da had whispered it and still earned himself a sharp look from Ma for saying such words. Vocho had got the gist anyway. They’d had to move three times in the last three months as the rents got higher and the work got scarcer.

  Maybe soon they’d be living in one of these places. Not even a room, just a shack on a roof, cobbled together from rotting planks of wood and string. A gaunt man in a flapping rag of grease-stained tunic lurched out of the nearest, making Vocho jump. He snarled at the three of them until Kacha’s friend Andoni threw a few pennies his way “to rent the parapet for an hour”. The way the man scrabbled for them turned Vocho’s stomach, though he wasn’t quite sure why. Because the man was beyond pride, perhaps. Vocho’s family were poor, more than poor, but Ma and Da had their pride. Their clothes were ragged but scrubbed to within an inch of their lives, and Ma would rather die than have a flick of mud on the doorstep of whatever room they were renting. He couldn’t imagine Da ever scrabbling in a pile of stinking rubbish for a few pennies, no matter how poor they got. Pride and dignity. Not even the nobles can take those from us. If it’s all you have, you hold on to it with everything you got, Da was fond of saying when he was in his cups.

  Kacha pulled Vocho on, and he let her, glad not to watch the man any more.

  The day was golden like apples and seemed full of sunlight, as though he could squeeze it and light would fall out, drip down his hands. A breeze from the sea drifted across, ruffled hair and took the worst of the heat, blew away the clouds of smoke over Soot Town and beyond. A crowd had gathered in the square below them, shoving for position near the big clock left over from the empire before it fell, which chimed out the warning for the midnight change o’ the clock so everyone could get ready. A funny-looking contraption sat next to it that Vocho couldn’t figure out, so he ignored it. Instead he looked at the crowd, watched them gossip and elbow and laugh. An old lady who’d got a prime position near the contraption had even brought a rickety chair and a picnic. Something was going on, something exciting or something dreadful, he couldn’t tell which – it fizzed through the crowd so even Vocho could feel it from up here. He didn’t know what was exciting though, only that Kacha was jittery and kept laughing and twisting her hair around her finger like she did when she was nervous. All he knew was it was some kind of dare that her friend had said she didn’t have the guts to do. Even at his age Vocho thought the friend was an idiot. Kacha always took the dare.

  They settled down near the edge of the roof. Kacha gave him a funny look and said, “You got to promise not to tell Da. He let you come cos I told him we was playing duellists down on the jetty and he and Ma had to work. If he’d a known where we was going, he wouldn’t a let you come with me.”

  Vocho scrunched a glare onto his face, like he saw Da do whenever he did something wrong, which was all the time. Kacha never got the glare, so maybe that was why she ignored it.

  “You’re only a baby, really, but we got to let Ma and Da work when
they can, so I’m in charge. And if you cry, I’ll push you over the edge meself.”

  Andoni laughed, a sticky sound because he’d been stuffing himself with sweets all the way here – his da had a steady job and no gimp knee that kept him out of work for days at a time. His da could afford to buy him sweets, and toys, proper good new ones with clockwork innards so the soldiers marched all on their own, which the priests said would make him burn in any one of the hells. Not like all the old toys, the boring ones the priests didn’t mind, which just stood there. Whenever they went to temple, that’s what Vocho prayed for – a little clockwork duellist with a waving sword and everything, which would cost his da three months’ wages. Maybe he was praying to the wrong one, or maybe he’d burn in hells for wanting clockwork. There were lots of gods and goddesses, one for every little thing, it seemed like, and Vocho could never get them all straight in his head. They all seemed to believe in his burning in hells for wanting a clockwork toy though.

  “I bet,” Andoni said. “I bet you one of my toys that he doesn’t just cry, he widdles himself.”

  “I bet you he won’t,” Kacha said hotly, and Vocho kind of loved her at that moment, even if she was annoying as hells most of the time. “Bet you anything you like.”

  Andoni curled a lip. “You haven’t got anything I want.”

  “I bet you…” Kacha screwed up her eyes. “I bet you half a bull.”

  “You haven’t got half a bull. Your da doesn’t make half a bull in a month!”

  “Half a bull,” Kacha repeated firmly. “You want a bet or not?”

  Andoni laughed again. “Your money you’re throwing away. Bet.” With that he spat on his hand, Kacha spat on hers, and they shook on it.

  Andoni went back to stuffing sweets in his mouth – too stingy to share, of course – and Vocho whispered to Kacha, “Half a bull? Where are you—”