Swords and Scoundrels

by Julia Knight

  “But there’s always been taxes—”

  “Not like this, miss. It’s hard to get enough to eat, never mind pay them. Bread’s hard to come by, and sugar? Can’t get sugar for love nor money, which is why that drink’s so sour, miss. Bloody Ikarans, sanctions they call it; blackmail I call it, trying to get us to hand over them mines and no trade with them until we do and where else can we get sugar that ain’t from half the world away an’ more expensive than gold and silks and all? But there, lots of things we can’t get now, or we can if we want to pay a week’s wages in tax, so lots of people are going hungry, see.”

  “Well yes, but I don’t see why the prelate—”

  “No, well, he’s loopy ain’t he, miss? Or so everyone says. Funny the things my old da used to do. So anyway, the priest dies, may the Clockwork God judge his soul for truth, and then, well, then it all sort of kicked off. You know how it does. Most of them don’t know what they’re fighting about or who to blame, they’s just pissed off and hungry and ready to fight anyone. Same every spring when it starts getting warm. They’ll stop come summer when it’s too hot to move. Or maybe it’s all a load of tosh and the real reason’ll come out later. But you can’t believe half what you hear, can you? Can I have me cup back now?”

  Kacha handed back the empty clay cup and moved on. Everything came back to the sodding priest – and Vocho. There were days, and this was one, when she wished she didn’t have a brother.

  An hour later in the Hammer and Tongs, when the fighting had finished, everyone had gone back to serious drinking and the guards had left after a small bribe, Vocho sat with a smug grin in his room. Honour defended, fun had, unnoticed escape achieved. Most importantly, life kept. There was a magician about, but he wasn’t here right now, so Vocho relegated him to things to worry about some other time, along with pretty much everything else. Dom chirruped quietly in the corner, apparently as pleased with the evening as Vocho. They’d managed to find him some suitable clothes, but damned if the man didn’t look like a clocker playing dress-up. Vocho had come to the galling conclusion Dom would look good in sackcloth and fish guts. Even that couldn’t still the pleasure of an evening well spent, with some jugs of wine to follow.

  “Cospel! Mugs, please, and the wine.”

  Cospel was sporting a black eye and a pleased grin. “Like old times,” he murmured as he poured.

  Vocho eyed him. “How much did you make?”

  “I don’t like to brag.” Maybe he didn’t, but the way his tunic bulged at the hem told Vocho that he’d made enough.

  Once Vocho had thought himself above all that, had rebuked Cospel every time he’d done his dipping trick during a fight. Conduct unbecoming a duellist, he’d called it. Once upon a time he’d cared about that, to a certain extent anyway. But that had been before he’d had to resort to thievery himself. Now his disregard for rules stretched beyond duelling and into everything.

  “Did you see where Kass went?” he asked Cospel and Dom. Vocho had seen she was all right, seen her bent over a man with a gash to his stomach, and then things had got a bit frantic and hadn’t let up till he and Dom had made the roof. He wasn’t unduly worried because Kacha could take care of herself in usual circumstances. But being wanted for murder and with a magician after them wasn’t what he classed as usual circumstances, and despite his outward nonchalance he was feeling a little twitchy.

  “Someone attacked some prelate’s men,” Dom said. “I think she went to find out who.”

  That definitely didn’t sound like usual circumstances.

  “Maybe we should… Oh, there you are, Kass.”

  She came in looking thoughtful, plonked herself in a chair and took the mug Cospel gave her without a word. Vocho knew that look. Kacha had always been more of a thinker than he was, and this look meant she was thinking hard. About what would usually come after a glass or two of wine, so he let her be for now, though he couldn’t resist a little dig. “I see you didn’t stay around for the fight. Too much for you? Just as well. I’d have shown you up anyway. I was magnificent. Naturally.”

  “You haven’t forgotten why we’re here then, Voch?” She gave him an arch look over the rim of her mug. “Saving our skins, finding out what it is they want so badly. All that.”

  “Of course not! Only there was fighting going on anyway and… and…” He gave up in the face of her glare. Now was not the time to admit he’d got a bit carried away.

  “Heard some funny things, you know. While you were off doing whatever it was,” Dom said into the following silence.

  “Yes?” Vocho answered, but he kept watching Kacha and the way she was staring into her mug like maybe it held all the answers.

  “Well, the prelate, don’t you know? I mean, man’s always been a bit of a pill, no class to him, but, well, it sounds to me like he’s gone a bit odd.”

  “Odd?” Kacha sat forward at that. “What do you mean by ‘odd’?”

  “Oh, well.” Dom’s ears turned pink, as they had a habit of doing whenever Kacha talked to him. “Um, he’s just been doing some strange things. Funny edicts – something about taxes, spices and squid and… What was it?” His face cleared. “Oh yes. An edict about flags. They should be purple.”

  “Squid? Flags? What the hells?” Vocho said.

  “I don’t know. Even heard one about his cats, but I don’t believe it for a minute. I mean the man’s an oik, or so my father says, but even I couldn’t believe that about him.”

  Vocho suppressed a smile at the thought of Dom’s father – who before the prelate came to power had been as low class as they came, even if he had made some money – describing the prelate as an oik.

  “His cats?” Kacha asked.

  “Something about him wanting everyone to call them sir, or something, though it wasn’t actually passed. Talked out of it, they say. He doesn’t even hold with calling people sir, or he never did anyway – everyone’s equal, isn’t that right? But the last couple of months apparently he’s gone a bit strange. Or very strange. Lady told me that’s what’s behind all the ruckus on the streets, well that and taxes.”

  “Did she now? A lady told me much the same. You’d think he’d be more careful seeing as it was taxes that finally did for the old king, and Bakar never struck me as stupid, whatever else he is.” Kacha looked more thoughtful than ever and motioned to Vocho to get the papers out.

  He took them out from the packet he’d taken to keeping inside the back of his shirt. Once again they tried to make sense of them. Vocho kept thinking there was something familiar about them, something he should notice. And something, perhaps, that would interest a magician or give a clue as to why the prelate suddenly wanted people to call his cats sir.

  Kacha was the one who saw it in the end. She sat forward, spilling her wine as she spotted it, and jabbed a finger at one of the perhaps-crests, perhaps-something-elses, which was somewhat charred from the paper’s hasty escape from the chest.

  “What does that look like to you?”

  “Huh?” Vocho twisted the paper to and fro. “I don’t know. Perhaps a stag? Or a horse?”

  “A big dog?” Dom chimed in. “Maybe an elephant?”

  Kacha rolled her eyes. “What about those bits there? What do they look like?”

  They looked like bits of charring to Vocho, but he knew better than to say that. “It’s not very clear.”

  “No, it isn’t, unless you know what you’re looking at.”

  “And I suppose you do?” he said. Did she have to always know best?

  “A dragon!” Dom said.

  Vocho would have ignored him except Kacha nodded. “A dragon. And yes, I knew what I was looking for. Did you see those prelate’s men in the bar?”

  “I was busy,” Vocho said with a sniff. “You know, upholding the honour of the guild, fighting like a god, looking dashing while I did it, not skulking about or disappearing like some people I could mention.”

  Despite his tone, Kacha laughed. “You, uphold their honour? I’m
sure they’re very grateful, Voch; they’ll probably build a statue to your integrity and bravery. So, you didn’t see them get murdered? By men pretending to be smiths?”

  “Murdered? Well it was a fight, and these things—”

  She ignored him. “Murder, Voch. With intent, not just some brawl. Not just them being odd either. All very weird out on the street, didn’t you notice? Clockworkers wearing purple badges, or gold. Others wearing blue and green and red. All just going for each other. King’s supporters versus prelate’s, a few other councillors mixed in, though it was mostly those two. But they were all working men and women, like Dom said, maybe upset about the prelate and what he’s doing. I suggest we move quick as we can. I spoke to one of the prelate’s men before he died and then I followed those ‘smiths’. Because of what that prelate’s man told me. The men disguised as smiths were councillors’ men too.”

  Vocho had a sudden prickly feeling on the back of his head. Councillors’ men, dragon crests, dragons being the symbol of the old monarchy, of their gods-given right to rule…

  “King’s men?”

  “I followed two of them, like I said. Took me round the houses, but we ended up in Nob Hill. Which seemed a bit strange for smiths, don’t you think, especially ones who managed to change into guards’ uniform on the way?”

  “More than bloody strange.”

  “Even stranger when finally they got to the king’s house there. Let in, sweet as you please. By Egimont.”

  “Holy hen’s teeth. What does Licio think he can gain from murdering a couple of prelate’s men in a bar brawl?” Vocho asked. “The prelate’s going to be pissed as hells no matter how odd he’s getting, and that’s good for no one, especially Licio.”

  “Currently all the prelate is going to know is some smiths murdered his men. The people he’ll be pissed with are Soot Town. Not the king. But with all the unrest, it looks like a golden opportunity for someone, right?”

  Vocho looked back down at the papers. Once you knew what it had to be, it was clear as the nose on Cospel’s very plain face. A dragon rampant, the king’s crest, the symbol of all that had been wrong with the monarchy: gods-blessed, only the gods had turned out to be fake, pretty much like dragons had turned out to be mythical.

  “A bit of fighting in the streets isn’t going to do much,” he said. “He’s got something else. Some new thing that might tip the balance in his favour.”

  “Like a magician?” Kacha said.

  “That would do for a start, exactly like the one I saw heading into Nob Hill earlier,” Vocho managed weakly. “But it can’t be all. Can it?”

  “Petri, the magician and the king. I think that’s enough to know there’s something going on here. We need this translated as soon as we can. And we need to be doubly careful. If this has anything to do with what went on tonight, and it looks like it might, then we’re in big shit if he finds us or these papers. So no more bar brawls, fist fights or calling people out for duels. All right?”

  “You spoil all my fun.”

  Interlude

  Seventeen years earlier

  Petri was bowled along with the mob. Not only was he hemmed in on every side, but Bakar had a tight grip on his arm. Without that he wouldn’t have known where to go. Eneko had thrown him out of the guild – to save the guild or to save himself, Petri wasn’t sure which – and shut the gates. There was his father’s townhouse in King’s Row, but his father… Petri wanted to deny everything that Bakar had said about him but found he believed it, believed that maybe there was more, worse, that Bakar hadn’t told him. If nothing else, he was where he needed to be to find out, or soon would be. He stopped lagging, and Bakar no longer needed to pull on his arm, just gave Petri an appraising look and a cryptic smile, but said nothing as they approached the palace.

  King’s guards ran to and fro. A company of cavalry stood to one side, the horses snorting and stamping at the approach of what seemed like half the docks and Soot Town. Straight ahead the bulk of the men and women who made up the king’s guard were drawn up in ranks, swordsmen at the front, crossbowmen to the rear. Petri squinted up at the roof and saw archers lurking there among the fancy fretwork.

  So did everyone else, and all of a sudden the crowd slowed its pace to a crawl. In places it might have gone backwards, if not for the press of people behind. Bakar never faltered though. There seemed to be some kind of power radiating from him – Petri could feel the burn of it where Bakar’s hand held his arm – but what it was, Petri couldn’t say. Only that people looked at him and seemed to gain resolve. Bakar was so very single-minded, so intense, so sure, it was hard not to be pulled along, not to feel a bit of it yourself.

  He strode forward, Petri in his wake, straight up to the young captain at the head of the guard looking very bright and brave in his smart uniform. The captain was trying – and failing – to keep his face blank. He’d do all right for a minute, and then he’d see another clump of men and women with impromptu weapons that looked every bit as lethal as his sword, and his lip would twitch or his eyebrows would try to escape into his hair. Bakar coming straight for him seemed to unnerve him even further.

  Bakar pulled his hand out from where he’d hidden it inside his shirt and aimed his contraption at the captain’s head.

  “Someone to treat with us, now. Someone with authority.”

  The captain flapped his mouth open. Behind Petri a muffled clattering probably meant Bakar wasn’t the only one with a weapon like this, and a quick glance confirmed it. The captain fought to compose himself, but Bakar’s voice slid smoothly over all that.

  “Really. I don’t want to have to kill you. But I will. So why not turn this over to someone else? Then all this can end as peaceably as possible. What if I told you the Clockwork God lives again, and he knows who to trust and who not to?”

  Petri could see it in the captain’s face. He wanted to do as Bakar said, that was clear – he was outnumbered, and even if he wasn’t aware of what Bakar’s contraption could do, he’d noticed the blood on his face and the billhooks in the hands of the men behind him. Add to that a certain flabbergasted look – a flash of what? hope? relief? at the mention of the Clockwork God, at the thought he lived again. But Petri knew too that if the captain disobeyed whatever order he’d been given, he was as good as dead anyway. The king would have him sent down to the Shrive and his head bouncing across the cobbles by morning.

  The captain wavered, and then something caught his eye and stiffened his spine at the same time as his mouth loosened its tight white line.

  Bakar smiled at the captain’s brief indecision. He lowered the gun and cocked his head. “I understand. I really do. And thank you.”

  “I…” the captain began, but Bakar wasn’t looking at him any more. His attention was fixed on a dark figure off to one side. The gun came up, and Bakar did something complicated to it that Petri couldn’t make out nor understand even if he had.

  The dark figure stepped forward, and Petri realised that the woman wasn’t dark, not really. Her skin was a shade more golden than her hair, and the loose robes she wore were of blue silk shot with silver, but still, when he looked at her, darkness was what he thought of. It hovered around her like a shroud.

  The captain let out a breath, the men behind him seemed to relax, while at the same time the dockers, smiths and the rest behind Bakar shifted uncomfortably. One or two muttered curses under their breaths, and one fisherman with a dripping gaff hook made a sign as though to ward her off. Petri began to understand when he saw the woman’s hands and what she carried. A scalpel in one hand, a small brush in the other. Blood dripped from her hands, but he couldn’t tell if it was hers or not, and it didn’t matter. All that mattered were the snaking black patterns that began on her hands and moved, crossed, twined before they dripped off her fingers along with the blood.

  Petri had never seen a magician before, but he’d heard of them – hadn’t they all? Stories of dark magic and hot coppery blood in the basement of the p
alace, of bodies discarded when they were done. Men made to move like puppets or mesmerised by the patterns on their hands, in the tattoos and wards they wove, into acting against their will. Worse things too, the older students had whispered to the younger in the guild dorms, trying to scare them, Petri had thought and not believed the half of them. Now, when all the king’s guard stood taller at her approach, when the dockers who had seemed so aggressive, so certain, shrank back and muttered curses and entreaties to the Clockwork God, he wasn’t so sure.

  “Steady, young Petri,” Bakar murmured. “They’re dangerous and abhorrent, but they need time to prepare and a lot of blood to do all the things you’ve heard. You stay steady because clockwork has the measure of them and so do I.”

  Bakar and the magician stared at each other for a moment that seemed like an eternity to Petri. Bakar’s finger tightened on a lever on his contraption, and the magician dripped blood and raised her brush.

  A voice, familiar and cold, interrupted them: “I suppose you told the boy?”

  His father was walking through the ranks of the king’s guard. Petri felt a surge of wild hope – that Bakar had been lying, that Eneko throwing him out of the guild had been a mistake, that his father would now realise that Petri existed. That perhaps his father was a good man. He would save Petri from this madness, save the kingdom because he was noble, and didn’t that mean good and just? No docker, not even if he was Bakar, could have more nobility in him than the Duke of Elona.

  His father reached Bakar in a few easy strides. He strode the halls of his estates like one of the storks of the southern plains, black cloak flapping like wings, pale head only barely covered in wisps of grey hair, his nose long and beak-like, prying into everything and picking it apart. They called him the King’s Vulture, Petri had heard, but not to his face.

  Bakar spared the duke a glance but kept one eye on the magician. Petri almost couldn’t breathe. His father had come for him, come to save him from this madman, come to bark out an order and have everyone obey, as always.