by Julia Knight
The main bar was packed to bursting – Third Threeday, last day of the working week and payday, so all the smiths and tanners and night-soil carters were busy spending what they’d earned before the city reset itself at the change o’ the clock. She scanned the room, fended off a casual grope from some drunken artisan with a cheery elbow to the face but couldn’t see Vocho or Dom anywhere. Maybe that meant he was being careful, but it seemed unlikely. Careful wasn’t in his vocabulary, not when he could be boasting.
Or maybe that racket coming from the end of the bar, the one that sounded very much like a brawl about to spark off, was Vocho putting his large foot into it, again. She made her way through the press of bodies, past grimy chunk-armed smiths, tanners with their whiff of ammonia and the boys who pumped the bellows and looked after the clock hammers, their faces slick and shiny from the constant heat of fires. It didn’t take long to find the pair of them, but to her surprise it wasn’t Vocho arguing – it was Dom. He was pink cheeked with indignation, his twittering voice almost a stammer as peevishness took hold. Kacha couldn’t make out much against the background of a couple of hundred drunks enjoying themselves, but she could see the way Dom was jabbing his finger at someone, his handkerchief wilting in the fuggy atmosphere. This wasn’t going to go well.
Worse, Vocho looked like he was doing nothing to stop it. He seemed a bit bemused, if truth were told, and the empty jug in his hand might have had something to do with that. Vocho sober was impulsive, reckless in a way that mostly had her grinning even when she was grinding her teeth; Vocho drunk was…
She used her elbows to force her way through the crowd, all eagerly pressing to see what the fuss was about. The usual Third Threeday fight, only there was something more to it perhaps. Some extra undercurrent that seemed to swirl through the room like blood in water, luring in the sharks. A few men at the edges seemed apart from the rest – hard-eyed, sober, watching. One or two looked… odd. Their arms were as rope-muscled as the rest, they were dressed as smiths or clockworkers, but there was something about them. The way they held themselves, as though used to favouring the weight of a sword or gun at one hip, as though just waiting for something to happen. They were wound tight as any spring.
Nothing very unusual about them even so, except that, like her and Vocho and Dom, the grime of Soot Town hadn’t ground its way into every line and wrinkle on their faces yet. What was more unusual was the way they were looking at the other hard-eyed watchful men. The ones with the prelate’s badge and the gold flash on their tunics.
Something about the whole room felt like a gun about to go off, and who knew what it would shoot? Kacha loosened Egimont’s sword in its scabbard at her waist and pushed forward just as Vocho put out a hand to stop Dom and said into a sudden silence, “What did you just say about the duellists’ guild?”
“I said,” the burly man across from Dom replied in the careful tones of a drunk trying not to slur, “I said that they’re all a bunch of arselicks and sellouts.”
Oh, shit on a stick. Any hope of saving the situation had just flown out of the window. Vocho had his sword out before the man had finished speaking, the point of it making a delicate tracery of cuts in the man’s shirt without spilling a drop of blood – Vocho’s favourite party trick and threat.
He grinned brightly at the drunk. “I’m a generous man. Want to try that again?”
The drunk eyed Vocho’s sword, and Kacha suddenly realised that apart from the prelate’s men in the corner, this was the only sword out in the open. Of course the rest of the crowd had plenty of weapons, but the swords were a bit of a giveaway down in Soot Town, where they made them for their clocker employers but couldn’t afford to own one, not when a sword could feed and house a family for a week or more, and a good sword for a month.
“Arselicks, sellouts… and murderers,” the drunk sneered. “You one?”
The silence that followed the word echoed around Kacha’s skull. Vocho, please don’t. Just this once? Be sensible just this one time?
Fat chance. Vocho leaned forward, his eyes on the drunk’s face as he reached around him and yanked the man’s long knife out of the sheath where he kept it at his back. He handed it, haft first, to the drunk. A challenge and a get-out. A duel wasn’t murder, even if someone ended up dead. Just as long as the challenge was accepted in front of witnesses, and there were about a hundred, more pushing into the back bar all the time as word raced around the inn. There were plenty on Vocho’s side from the murmurs – the guild was an institution and no man not ten sheets to the wind would say a word against it, not openly. But this man was that drunk, and besides it wasn’t a proper Third Threeday in Soot Town without at least one bar fight. Half the crowd were probably looking for an excuse to punch someone; the rest, well, a bar fight was a gold mine for a decent pickpocket.
Kacha stepped forward in a last-ditch attempt to keep a bit of sanity in the evening. “Hey, now, I don’t think—”
Too late. The drunk grabbed the knife and in the same movement lunged at Vocho, narrowly missing Kacha as his swing went wild.
As if this was the cue, the room erupted. Kacha, mainly by dint of being the soberest one there, ducked away from a wobbling punch and came up behind Dom, who looked more confused than ever.
Out of the corner of her eye she spotted the odd-looking “smiths” drawing together into one knot, drawing hidden swords from beneath their cloaks too. Not just cheapjack swords either; these were good ones, she could see that from here. Nothing fancy, but workmanlike, sharp and well used. These men ignored the brawl that had broken out with Vocho, atop a table and grinning like an idiot, at its centre. Instead they made straight for the prelate’s men, who were waiting for them, their own swords out.
The brawl was one thing – normal, expected, banal even. Her da had always said that brawls were what inns were for, a bit of roughhousing to let out pent-up tension, nothing worse than a few bruises, maybe a broken bone to show at the end of it usually. This was something else, something that made the hairs on the back of Kacha’s neck prickle. The prelate’s men should be trying to break up the brawl, not squaring up to a bunch who looked intent on murdering them. This wasn’t an ordinary fight. This looked planned.
She was briefly distracted by a scar-faced sweating lump of a man and his fist aiming for her face. She sidestepped, waited for him to stagger past as the resistance he was expecting disappeared, and smacked him on the back of the head with a random mug. Dom had joined in the brawl, his sword still in his scabbard. Instead he deftly avoided being wherever his attackers expected him to be, luring them into other knots of men, who would then take over where he’d left off. He seemed to be hampered by the need to apologise to everyone, and she could track him through the crowd by following the trail of “I’m so dreadfully sorry,” “Excuse me,” “Pardon, I’m sure,” “Could I just cut through here…” The ever-enterprising Cospel, aware that he’d only get bawled out for trying to help either Kacha or Vocho, was instead making himself useful by grabbing a tray and whacking anyone who looked like they were getting too close to Dom.
When she looked back, it wasn’t just the nape of her neck that prickled – every hair on her body stood up. Two of the prelate’s men were down, and they didn’t look like they were getting back up again, ever. The remaining two wouldn’t last long. They were hard pressed, their backs against a wall as three “smiths” toyed with them. Only no smith or clockworker would be stupid enough to take on prelate’s men, or councillors’ men, not unless they wanted a one-way trip to the Shrive. The prelate didn’t chop off so many heads as the king had done, but he wasn’t shy about imposing law and order. Blood didn’t splatter the square very often, but the Shrive was still full enough. The only difference was, the prelate let some out again after they’d done their time.
She didn’t know what was going on here, only that it shouldn’t be this, and two prelate’s men were dead already. An attack on the prelate or his men was an attack on the city that the guild
was sworn to protect, that she was sworn to protect. She didn’t even think before she launched herself at the back of the nearest swordsman – she’d been brought up a duellist, and this was all part of that, part of what it meant. That the guild no longer wanted her made no difference at all.
She kicked at the back of the man’s knee. He staggered forward and turned as he did so. His eyebrows shot up as he noted she wasn’t wearing anyone’s colours, nor a duellist’s tabard, but that didn’t stop him defending himself when she leaped to the attack.
He wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t that good either – no duellist, that was for certain, and she was hard put not to just get to it and beat him soundly, but no sense giving herself away. It didn’t take long before she had his sword out of his hand, and he’d have a nice new scar to show off along one arm in a few days. She had him cornered just about the time his friends joined in.
They didn’t join in for long – one did his best to hold her off while the other two made for the door. She let them. All she wanted was to stop this, stop them killing men in this inn. Because sure as shit was shit, the lowly city guards would be down here before long, blaming it on the poor sods who lived in Soot Town. More prelate’s men would come too, maybe other councillors’ men with them, and then people would be hauled off to the Shrive, like as not. So she let them go and turned to the prelate’s men.
The two on the floor were as dead as you could get. The ones standing up didn’t seem much better. One had blood pouring out of a gash across his stomach – the waft of a midden told her this was a killing wound, if not now then later when it got infected, and it would. The other’s eyes were screwy, like he’d taken a good blow to the head. He’d have had a good chance of surviving if not for the dagger thrust into his ribs that made blood bubble out of his mouth in a macabre fountain.
She made sure her hood was still firmly up – these were men who might recognise her, even if not for long.
“What the hells is going on?” she asked the one with the gash.
“King’s men,” he gasped.
“What?” Surely Licio wouldn’t be so stupid? If the prelate discovered this, Licio would go the way of his father. Had things changed so much since she’d left? Then again they hadn’t been dressed as anyone’s men. “Are you cert—”
“King’s men.”
There was a possibility they were in more shit than she’d thought.
Interlude
Seventeen years earlier
Petri Egimont held his breath as the mob came down the street past the guild. It had been bad enough when the king’s men had ridden the other way towards the docks, intent on stamping out the insurrection. Bad enough when men and women had started running back this way, past the narrow bridge that led to the guild. Panicked, some of them bloody and silent, others screaming. Worse when the sounds of the screaming down by the docks had stopped.
He waited with the rest of the duellists, those who’d passed at least the journeyman’s tests. He’d passed his last week, at thirteen one of the youngest ever to do so. Now he stood with older men, and wiser, better with their swords, and took a bit of comfort from their stoical faces. Though not everyone was so steady, especially when the horses of the king’s men started coming back riderless, or with dead men dragging from stirrups, their heads thumping rhythmically on the cobbles.
Egimont gripped his sword. A duellist is constant and neutral. No favouritism to anyone, except towards those who’ve paid for their services. Even then, a duellist had to believe in his client, in the job. Do what seems good to you. But Egimont wasn’t the only one there with a noble father. At least three full master duellists were second sons of nobles, and two should have been barons, even if they no longer had the lands and money to go with the titles, had given them up along with everything else to pass the final test and take the oath. Some others, the journeymen, were earls’ children, or like Egimont dukes’ children. Sent to the guild to become better men, to learn honour and duty, to get some legitimacy – all nobles’ children came to the guild. Some left early, spending just enough time to say they’d been there. Firstborns would leave before the final test, before the last duel that would cement their place as a permanent member of the duelling family. Most would anyway.
Egimont had wanted to take that last test, swear everything away. His father would have let him too – he bore no love for his second son. Egimont would have done it and been happy had his brother not died, leaving him sole heir. Now his father had forbidden it, would send men to drag him away when the time came if need be. Egimont was no minor noble, but would be the Duke of Elona in time, second only in rank to the king. His father admired the duellists for their code, for what they could teach his son, admired the free-minded guildsmen because it was expedient to keep them happy, but not enough to lose his last heir to them. The guild and the nobles were locked in a constant, if subtle, jostling for power and popularity, and the heir to Elona joining the guild as a master would shift that power too far one way for his father’s liking.
Enough of the men, women and youths here had plenty to worry on when the king’s captain came back minus his head. Egimont tried not to listen to the murmurs around him, and not just from the nobles’ sons. Plenty here were born into poverty and they’d lost none of their hatred of those who’d beaten their families down.
Revolt. Revolution. Had to happen. Long time coming. The king would put it down; the streets would run with insubordinate blood. Or they’d drag the king kicking and screaming from his throne to his own guillotine, and good riddance. Eneko, standing right behind the open gates at the head of the narrow strip of rock and grass that joined the guild to the city as though daring anyone to come through, turned a baleful eye on them, and the murmurs stopped. He conferred a moment with his sergeant-at-arms, an older woman, stocky and as grey as Eneko and as wily, who’d seen more duels than probably half the guildsmen put together.
“All sword masters, shut your traps. No loyalty but to the family, right? You fought for it, you swore it, now live it. The rest of you –” Petri couldn’t be sure whether Eneko’s eye sought him out or not, whether it was just the man’s usual unfathomable disdain for him “– you’ve sworn little as yet. For the nobles, if the king’s men win through, you’re safe enough. If they don’t… if they don’t, even I can’t keep you safe if it comes to it. Not once you go outside these wa—”
A noise interrupted him. Petri had never heard anything like it, except perhaps the sea when it crashed against the cliffs. A swelling sound, rising and falling like waves, only the noise wasn’t made of water on rock, but voices. Shouting, screaming bloody murder. Through the noise Petri was sure he heard someone singing an old song, one he remembered his nurse singing to him when he was very small, before he’d been shipped off to the guild. He couldn’t make out the words now, but he remembered them – a song they used to sing on the battlefields of long ago, to stir the men up, give them courage for the fight.
Eneko licked his lips. “Maybe too late for anything,” he said and turned back to the open gates, to the short narrow walk with nothing but a sheer drop to either side. They wouldn’t come, surely? Madness if they did. Madness… But Petri couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t. The air over the city had been thick with anger these last months, and what was anger but another form of insanity?
Half the docks had to be striding up the streets towards the dead Clockwork God, which stood at the end of the strip and reminded everyone how the Castans had fallen in their arrogance and had killed a god when they did. Maybe half of Soot Town was coming the other way. Heading for the statue and the broad avenue that currently wound away up to the palace. Down the avenue were more of the king’s men. But not enough. Nowhere near enough. Not for this.
The dockers turned at the god and reached the guild first. The smell of the sea came with them, of fish and seaweed and a poverty so deep Petri thought he could taste it – a solid wall of people bearing fishing gaffs and billhooks and long wicked kn
ives. They were led by a man a head taller than all the rest, his blond hair bound back but coming free now, smears of blood on his ragged shirt, on his hands, on his trousers where he’d wiped those hands on them. His face was paler than a fish belly – the Shrive, that pallor said, the colour of all the men and women dragged out to the block after maybe years inside, but that was stupid because no one ever got out of the Shrive. All the flesh seemed to have melted away from his bones, along with any mercy. The billhook in his hand dripped with gore as he cast a hard eye towards the guild and signalled the dockers to stop.
For long moments Petri thought they’d ignore him and the guild, that no one led this mob, that perhaps it would all fizzle out and he’d be safe, they all would. The first men from Soot Town reached the god, armed with hammers and the swords they’d forged themselves. Behind came younger men, poorer men, armed with nothing but stones, though the gleam of a knuckleduster here, a half-hidden blade there, made him wonder.
The tall man at the head of the dockers stepped forward, and everyone else stopped as if by unspoken agreement. Whoever this was, he was in charge. It was in the way he stood, the way he stared around as though the guild was already his, his gaze ending on the open gates and Eneko.
Eneko walked to meet them, drew his sword and rested it point down in the dirt on the bridge. The tall docker towered over him, billhook dripping.
“And where does the guild stand, old man? With us or with them?” He raised his voice so all could hear.
Eneko stared straight back up at him, easy and loose limbed. Petri wished he could be as nonchalant, but his hand was shaking so badly he had to take it off the hilt of his sword in case the jangling gave him away.
“Same place as always, Bakar. With ourselves and whoever has money and morals enough to pay for us. I have no quarrel with you, you know that. Not yet anyway. That can change.”
