Blade of Dream, page 38
“But,” the captain said.
“When I took Elaine a Sal to Aunt Thorn, I had to strike a bargain. I owe Aunt Thorn a favor. And… I don’t think I can do that and still be in the guard.”
Captain Senit sighed and looked out over the eastern half of the city. The shadow of Palace Hill and Oldgate was clear from here, stretching out across the river, Newmarket, Longhill. The Temple and Riverport were still bathed in the light of the falling sun, and to the south, a strip of Seepwater glowed gold. Kithamar the way a bird might see it. The tall air made the city beautiful and alien and vast.
The captain swung his arm around Garreth, massaging his shoulder like a baker kneading stiff dough. When he spoke, his voice was genial and warm.
“Son, I know boys your age don’t always listen, but I want you to try now, yeah? You gave the daughter of the prince of Kithamar over to the worst Inlisc crime boss there is. You betrayed me and mine as deeply as it’s possible to do. Hush, hush, hush. This is listening time. Don’t talk. The idea that you still have a place in my barracks to give up is the most sweetly naïve thing I’ve heard all day. You aren’t guard. You were never guard. You were a spoiled merchant brat throwing a fit because he didn’t like what his family wanted from him. You joined because your friends had done before you, and you didn’t have a thought of your own.”
“I don’t think that’s—”
“I don’t give half a shit what you think, Left. I’m older than you, I’m smarter than you, and I’ve seen better than you come and go. You put a knife in Chaalat, so you’re the hero of the hour, but that hour’s ending. The only reason you’re not swimming in a sack full of bricks tonight is that you’ve spilled a little salt with likely the most powerful woman in the city. But once we cross that bridge down there, you’re just another turd on the street to me. Your life’s work now is staying out of my sight. If our paths cross again, I’ll see to it no one finds your corpse. Clear?”
“Clear.”
Captain Senit clapped him twice on the back and turned away, rolling back toward the palace and the cart and the guards in the blue or else red, humming a cheerful tune. Garreth stood quietly. He tried to feel shame, and he did, a little. But also relief. He picked up a bit of gravel and tossed it down the steep face of the hill where it wouldn’t hit the road. The tick, tick, tick sound as it bounced away was beautiful in its fashion. Part of him wanted to walk away now, to vanish down into the city and not have to face his friends, knowing that his time with them was over. But it would have been rude to Kannish and Maur, and he’d done enough of that for one lifetime. He tossed one last little stone, and when it was silent, turned back.
He knew as soon as he passed into the courtyard that something had happened. The laughter was gone, the smiles vanished. The cups of beer were still in people’s fists, but no one was drinking. He went to the cart where Kannish still sat, his face ashen.
“Hey. What’s the matter?” Garreth asked.
“The prince is dead.”
There’s a stairway that runs along the outside of the house, so you can come and go as you like, even when the shop’s closed,” Yan said. “The only other thing on the hall is a storeroom, but sometimes my cousin will sleep there. I’ll let you know when he does, but it’s not often. Eight coppers at the start of the week. One silver if you want breakfasts and dinners with it, but I just make a little more of whatever I’m having. I don’t take orders.”
“I don’t give them,” Garreth said.
The room above the tailor’s shop was smaller than the bedroom he’d grown up in, more than his bunk in the barracks had been. He didn’t know where to put it in his mind. The wood had been neglected at some point, and grey streaks showed the damage of time even though the walls had been oiled. A small window with a better view than he’d expected of the rooftops to the east. A bed with a mattress that was worn, but clean. A table with two stools and a little earthenware vase with a sprig of rosemary in it. Yan looked around it with him, nodding as if her approval might be contagious.
Garreth had expected to feel shame being here, to feel lessened by the loss of his place with the guard. With his family before that. It was a surprise that he loved the room, and he didn’t understand why his affection for it was so sudden or so profound until he realized it was the first bed that would be entirely his. Not his father’s, not his captain’s. As long as he kept the payments, the little room with its tainted walls and warped floor was his. He hadn’t known he was so hungry for that.
He sat at the table and counted eight coins from his wallet. They all had the likeness of Prince Ausai on them. Byrn a Sal hadn’t lived a full year on the throne. If there were any coins with his face on them, they were very new, and Garreth hadn’t seen them.
“Frijjan Reed says you’re good people, or I wouldn’t be doing this,” Yan said as she took the coins. “You know my husband is out of the city for a time. The door at the end of the hall…”
“Leave it barred. That’s fine. There’s water at the fountain down by that one wool shop? With the purple doors.”
“I’d go a little farther. There’s a cistern two streets farther north. It’s a longer walk, but the fountain water tastes funny.”
“I’ll be fine,” Garreth said. “After my last year, I just want to spend a little time being where I am.”
Yan weighed the coins in her hand, then tucked them clinking in a pocket. “Going to watch the funeral procession?”
“No,” Garreth said. “I saw the last one. It was enough for a lifetime.”
Yan nodded, gestured to the room, relinquishing it, and went out through the inner door. After it closed, the bar scraped into place, keeping him from the rest of Yan’s home, and her footsteps receded. Garreth closed the bar on his side too, awkwardly with his left hand.
His bag had everything he owned now. Two changes of clothes, a nicked dagger that Maur had given him “for protection,” a little yellow bag with the money he’d saved up during his time as a guard, a leather flask, and a length of boiled cotton. These last two, he took out and placed on the table, then the night pot. Carefully, slowly, he unwrapped his wounded hand.
It was swollen badly at the knuckle of his index finger, and three wide, deep cuts marked where Andomaka Chaalat had gouged him with her nails. One of the wounds had started to scab over, but the others were still bright and raw. The bandages had less blood on them now than the last time he’d changed his dressing, though. When he opened the flask, the smell of alcohol and herbs filled the room. When he poured it over the open cuts, it stung. He let it dry before he bound his hand in fresh cloth. With only his off hand to work with, the wrap looked messy and terrible, and before he could manage to tie it off with his teeth, he heard footsteps ascending his stairs. It couldn’t be Elaine, but his heart leapt anyway. A tentative knocking came at the outer door, and then a voice he hadn’t expected.
“Hello?” Uncle Robbson said. “Is anyone there? We’re looking for Garreth Left.”
“Here,” Garreth called out. “The door’s not locked. You can come in.”
The door from the stairs scraped, and the floorboards in the hall creaked. Mother came in first, with Uncle Robbson behind her. Her hair was free, wild and wiry, and she wore a wide skirt and linen blouse like they were armor. She looked around the room once, then settled on the edge of the bed, one leg tucked up beneath her. Robbson’s angry scowl was like an old friend come for an unexpected visit. Garreth pointed toward the one empty stool in invitation.
“The man at the barracks said you were living here,” Robbson said as he sat.
“That’s only been true for a few minutes, but yes.”
“It’s… Well. We have something to discuss with you. A proposal.”
“It’s good to see you too,” Garreth said. “I’m glad you’re healthy.”
Robbson grunted, but his mother smiled. “Kannish told us you’d split with the guard,” she said. “Whatever the details are, the timing of it might work to all our advantages. Vasch is leaving.”
“Leaving?”
“His new wife is hauling him out to the wilds.”
“Yrith thinks it would be best if he went to the north and met her family in person,” Mother said. “The caravan was a strong move. It cleared our obligations. But it could also be a path toward a very lucrative future.”
“Plus which, it gets them out of the house for a few months,” Robbson said.
“Seems wise,” Garreth said. “But I don’t see what it has to do with me.”
“We need a supervisor for the warehouse,” Mother said. “Your father and I think there would be some advantage to having it be someone that the carters already know.”
Garreth leaned back on his stool, resting his back against the wall. He needed money, and so a part of him jumped toward the thought of working. A warehouse man could make more than enough to keep a room like his and live decently. But another part of him cringed back from the idea.
Robbson took a thin leather wallet from his belt and put it on the table. “It wouldn’t be coming back to the house, and you wouldn’t want that anyway. Things have been tense with your father, but you won’t have to deal with him directly. Just send the daily records to me.”
Garreth considered the wallet, thought of the thin pile of coins in his bag and how few weeks they’d last him. “I don’t think so.” Uncle Robbson’s face flushed and his jaw went tight as Garreth pushed the wallet back across the table. “No offense meant, but I think I need to find a path. Being given one…”
“Your brother misses you,” Mother said. “I do too.”
“Is he happy?”
Her eyes softened. “He is.”
“Take a day,” Uncle Robbson said. “If you come to your senses, you can send word. After that, I’ll have to find someone else.”
“I understand,” Garreth said. “Thank you for thinking of me. Really.”
Robbson stood, straightened his jacket, and held a hand out to Mother.
“Why don’t you go ahead, Robb,” she said. “I have a little more business here.”
“Genna—”
“Please,” she said, but she said it like a command. Uncle Robbson took the wallet, fitted it back over his belt, and turned toward the door. The floor creaked under his weight, and then the slow, steady tramp of his feet going down the stairs. Mother waited in silence until he was gone, then unfolded herself, took two steps to cross the room, and sat on the stool her brother had left. Her time in the north had darkened and roughened her skin. The white in her hair made Garreth think of drawings of lions. She gestured to his injured hand, and he passed it to her.
“I meant to talk with you when I got back,” she said as she began unwrapping his awkward bandages. “Your father told you about our compromise, mine and his.”
“That was a long time ago,” Garreth said. “I’m not the same person I was then.”
“I didn’t see any reason to tell you or your brother about that part of our lives, but since your father did, I think you should have some perspective about it.” She looped the cloth around her arm, considering it as she did. “I did love Mannon when we started. The worst years were when I was trying to get past that. I had an image of what a man and a woman were to each other—a husband and a wife—and it hurt me that we weren’t that. Your father is a terrible husband. From what I’ve seen, I think he’s probably too cruel to make a good lover either.”
“Serria doesn’t seem happy.”
“She isn’t,” Mother said, and the last of the bandage fell away, leaving his hand exposed. She made a little sound of sympathy and turned his wrist one way and then the other as she examined the wounds. “But he’s the best business partner I could have wished for. He respects me. Yes, you can laugh. It’s all right. But I can travel for months, and he doesn’t complain. I don’t need his permission to sign a contract in the name of the family. Whatever choices I make, he supports. He knows how I think, and when it comes to money, he trusts my judgment. When it comes to money, I trust his. I’ve taken risks that didn’t pay out, and he never used it as a weapon against me. If I do something he disagrees with, we have our quarrel in private, and he defends me before the magistrates and guilds and the other families as passionately as if he’d made the decision himself. He is the most important person in my life outside you and your brother, and he has given me the space to create a life of my own that I actually quite enjoy. We aren’t two true hearts beating together, and we don’t have to be.”
She pressed the swollen knuckle, and looked up at Garreth, a question in her eyes. He shook his head. It ached, but the pain wasn’t unbearable. She began to carefully rewrap the cloth, a little tighter than he’d had it since she had both hands to work with.
“Vasch has it,” Garreth said. “Doesn’t he?”
“Which it?”
“The thing you wanted.”
Mother’s chuckle was low and short, but also warm. “Maybe. I think so. Those two seem to genuinely enjoy each other. I’m a little envious sometimes, but not so much I can’t be happy for them. Is this too tight?”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s the dream of it that cuts. You start off with an idea of how it’s supposed to be, and then when it isn’t that, it hurts. That’s not the world’s fault. That’s yours. Ours. Mine. But when you let go of the dream and look to what’s actually possible… there’s a way to be honest with your life that the stories and expectations and wedding oaths don’t tell you. Ways of being with someone that people outside the two of you won’t understand even if you try to tell them, and that’s all right. They don’t need to. We’re deeper than the dreams they give us, if we let ourselves be. We can be faithful to something different.”
She tucked the last bit of cloth into place. The bandage was firm and tight without turning his fingers dark. When he tried to ball his fist, the knuckles were stiff and painful, but stable in a way they hadn’t been. “That’s better. Thank you,” he said.
“You’re my son. I’m glad you let me help.”
“I’m not going to take the warehouse job.”
“I know.”
She touched his cheek, smiled, and then left. Garreth sat alone at his table for a while, looking out at the street.
The funeral carried the body of Byrn a Sal to the Temple unseen by Garreth. He knew it had passed when people started appearing in the streets again. He made his way down the stairs. Newmarket was mostly closed for the day, but here and there, a few enterprising stalls had their signs out. He spent a few of his remaining coins on a bowl of chicken and barley mash that he ate sitting on a stone bench, then half a loaf of apple bread for the morning. Then he spent another hiring a boy to carry a message to Haral Moun at the Temple.
As the sun fell behind Palace Hill, he thought about going to a taproom or baths, but found himself watching a magician on the street corner as she conjured little orbs of light and made them dance on her fingertips. He put one coin in her beggar’s box because it would be rude not to, and then another one for luck.
The Inlisc had a name for the night between the funeral of one prince and the coronation of the next. Gautanna. It was supposed to be the moment when the partition between the normal world of bricks and stones and trees and water and the stranger one of gods and spirits was easiest to cross. He didn’t remember the night after Prince Ausai’s funeral being much different than any other. As twilight fell, though, the sense that there were gods in the streets grew. The breeze that passed through Newmarket rattling the shutters and whistling past the eaves seemed to have words in it. The whole city seemed balanced between fear and a kind of wildness that forgot consequences. Or, Garreth supposed, that might just have been him.
The darkness came more slowly than he expected. Voices rose from the street. Two dogs argued or played until a man’s voice shouted at them, and they faded into the distance. It only seemed silent because he’d grown used to the press of the barracks. The presence of family and servants before that. Yan might be in the shop below him or she might have gone out into the city on business of her own. Either way, it was the first night in his life he was genuinely alone.
He hadn’t thought to buy a candle or a lantern, so nightfall was simply itself. He undressed in darkness and lay on the mattress though he wasn’t sleepy. His injured hand throbbed under its wraps. The building creaked and muttered to itself, every sound seeming louder because it was new to him. A carriage drove by, horses clopping and wheels rattling, and didn’t slow down. He wondered where Elaine was, and what she was doing. If, caught up as she must have been in the business of the city, she would think of him. He let himself imagine her footsteps on the floorboards of the hall. It was an empty wish, selfish and unlikely, but it brought his heart to his throat all the same.
The moon rose over the rooftops framed by his little window. The pale, milky light gave his room a softness. Garreth’s mind wandered, shifting from one thought to the next like bubbles rising in still water. What work might he be able to find, how would Vasch get along with Yrith’s people, were Maur and Kannish and Old Boar and Frijjan Reed patrolling or keeping to the barracks during the eerie night between one prince and another, how had Byrn a Sal died and could they have saved him if they’d made some different decision. Each interrupted the one before it until he wasn’t thinking at all so much as being carried along by his untethered mind. The image of Andomaka Chaalat with her evil, hungry, flat eyes rose up before him, and he pushed it away with the memory of the thin red thread between him and Elaine.
Dreams began to form, shifting his daylight thoughts into stranger places and memories of things that he knew hadn’t happened. He drifted down the soft river of his own sleep. The world faded.
The knock at his door brought him awake with a start, his heart tapping fast as a drummer against his ribs. He reached for the little dagger with his bandaged hand, only managing to knock it clattering to the floor.
