Blade of Dream, page 7
“Where tonight?” Theddan asked as Burr slung himself up and in.
“Ummon has the keys to a boatmaker’s shed and enough silver to keep the caretaker at a taproom until dawn.”
“Seepwater?” Theddan asked, and Elaine felt a little bite of concern. Seepwater was a rougher quarter than she’d have picked, even if they were staying off the streets.
“Riverport,” Burr said, pushing them out into the flow. The northernmost bridge of Kithamar appeared and slid quickly closer. In the falling light, Elaine could make out the rings where the chains would go to gate off traffic into the city in time of war. There were no chains now.
Theddan pressed something soft into her hand. A leather wineskin.
“If it seems a little murky, it’s fortified with some herbs,” Theddan said, and winked elaborately.
Well, Elaine thought as she undid the stopper, this was what she’d come for.
Night fell, but slowly. The sunset lingered behind Oldgate so that the lanterns and candles marking the switchback road up to the palace were like a brighter kind of star and the city a deeper darkness than the moon-greyed sky. The four of them walked in the gloom. Maur and the new one were a little ahead, Kannish and Garreth a little behind, but none of them so far removed that they weren’t clearly one group. The other three wore their blue cloaks and short, brutish swords. The badges of office hung from their belts along with the whistles that would summon more of their new tribe. Garreth had a little knife in his boot, and the only thing hanging from his belt was his wallet.
“I’m not supposed to know about it,” Kannish said. “No one’s supposed to know about it, and nobody who does know is supposed to talk about it.”
“But we’re talking about it?” Garreth said.
“It’s all anyone’s talking about. The whole barracks is gossiping like my sisters having their friends over all night. They come to me because Uncle Marsen brought him in, and they think since we’re family I know something.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah, I do. But it’s worth more than my job to tell it,” Kannish said with a lift of his chin that meant he was exaggerating. Maybe even lying. Garreth felt a little rush of affection for the man, and for a moment he forgot the weight of his future, living a moment longer in his boyhood and the past.
“I’d hate to cost you your place. I won’t pry.”
They passed the ropemakers’ guild hall and turned southwest, toward the river. Maur and Tannen were talking to each other, but with their backs turned to him, Garreth couldn’t make it out. The scent of the river—rich and deep and clean compared to the streets—came on a cool breeze. A shooting star dashed across heaven, split in two, and vanished. An omen of something, but Garreth didn’t know what. Before they reached the next corner, the silence grew too heavy for Kannish.
“Well, I can say a little about it.”
“All right,” Garreth agreed.
“In general terms, I mean. It doesn’t take knowing secrets to see that it’s a desperation play, coming to us.”
“It does seem like a strange plan.”
“There’s a certain low cunning to it,” Kannish said in inflections that echoed his uncle. “The one thing he can be sure of is that we aren’t going to side with Aunt Thorn.”
“Is she really that bad?”
“I think if Captain Senit had the choice of breaking her and dying in the same moment or else living a full, happy life knowing she was free, he’d open a vein. Aunt Thorn’s behind half the crime coming out of Longhill. The crew that burned down Amman Pettit’s shop when he didn’t pay them? They were Aunt Thorn. That time three years ago that ten men with swords raided the Temple was her too. Captain Senit thinks she’s trying to take over the slavers’ trade. Force them out, and own it for herself.”
“There aren’t any slavers in Kithamar,” Garreth said.
“There are,” Kannish said, and he didn’t lift his chin this time. The moonlight left pools of shadow around his eyes, and Garreth shuddered in a way that didn’t come from the breeze. “I didn’t think there were either, but there are. There are things that happen in this city at night that make me want to nail my sisters indoors at sunset. If people knew what the guard knows, they’d never leave their houses.”
Maur and Tannen turned left, heading south along the water. If they went far enough, they’d find themselves in Seepwater. A prisoners’ cart clattered past them, still stinking of shit and dead animals that the condemned had already thrown in the river. The men in the back of the cart were vacant as corpses, their eyes dull with exhaustion. The carter had a man beside him wearing the same blue as the others and a leather goad like a fist at the end of a rope that bounced against his side. He called out to Tannen and Maur as he passed on his way to the gaol, and they called back merrily.
“This city would eat itself, if it weren’t for us,” Kannish said. “Uncle Marsen always said that, but I see it now.”
They came to an open square where two roads met by the water. A cistern squatted beside a low stone wall, and the buildings rose up like the shoulders of strange men. Maur stopped short, and Tannen took two more steps before he looked back. Garreth felt a little thrill of fear in his belly. He told himself it was only that Kannish’s talk had spooked him, but he felt the night growing a little clearer, a little brighter, a little sharper at the edge.
Kannish grunted as they came to Maur. The smaller man had his head tilted like a dog hearing an odd noise, and he answered like Kannish had asked a question. “That’s Ognan Grimn’s boathouse.”
Kannish looked toward the water. The boathouse was tall and wide, with one face to the street and the other in the dark water. Across the river, Oldgate rose like the city itself looking down at them. Like a god.
“Think so,” Kannish said. “Why?”
“I heard a voice,” Maur said. “And look at that window. There’s a cloth over it, but…”
“There’s a light,” Tannen said, and drew his sword. The metal caught the moonlight. “Someone’s in there.”
Kannish put a hand on Garreth’s arm. “You wait here.”
Half against his will and half in relief, Garreth sat on the low stone wall, his back toward the darkness and his eyes toward the boathouse. In daylight, stevedores and carters and servants with baskets full of bread and vegetables from the market would sit on these same stones and feel no dread at all. In darkness, it was different.
“It’s all right, Maur,” Kannish said. “We can do this.”
“I’ll come with you,” Garreth said.
Tannen turned with a sneer. “You want to help, keep out of the way.”
“It’s better if you stay,” Maur said. His voice was trembling.
Garreth put his palms to the stone and watched with his heart in his throat as the three junior guards spread out and walked toward the boathouse and whatever was inside.
The boathouse was wide and tall as a ballroom, but there the similarities ended. A water-filled lock took up more than half of what would have been the dancing floor space. The river doors—wider than a warehouse—would have looked out across the Khahon toward Oldgate and Palace Hill at its crown if they’d been open, but instead they were just an expanse of well-sealed wood with the river flowing a few inches below the bottom. The roof, half hidden in gloom, was a webwork of pulleys, rope, and chain with catwalks and old iron tracks mottled with rust. A flat-bottomed boat hung in the darkness, its hull part open like a great dead fish halfway through being cleaned. The air stank of tar and varnish, and the fumes mixed with the fortified wine in ways that left Elaine lightheaded and a little nauseated.
Burr and his friends had tacked cloth up over the windows to hide the light of a half dozen lanterns. There were perhaps twenty people sitting on benches or dangling their feet into the river water. Most were young men of Burr’s age who wore rough canvas work pants like costumes. Few of them had physiques that spoke of physical labor. Of the other women, one was masked and three weren’t. The men milled around, slapping each other on shoulders and laughing and pretending not to stare at the women. The women stayed in a group, mostly, with one or two looping out and away from their coterie and then coming back. Except for Elaine. She’d taken up a perch on a thin wooden stairway that clung to the wall and led up into the darkness. She was neither in the group nor apart from it, but comfortably at its edge. Her mask hid a polite smile.
Theddan, talking to a very tall, very thickly built man, glanced over toward her. Elaine waved back to her cousin. She meant it as I’m fine, don’t mind me, but Theddan squeezed the big man’s arm and stepped away from him. The look of disappointment on his face would have been visible from across the river. Theddan twirled as she walked, showing her dress to its best effect, and plucked a bottle of wine from one of the other men as she passed. He didn’t object.
When she reached the stairs, Theddan poured herself down beside Elaine, draping her arms around her and leaning her head on Elaine’s shoulder. “You’re bored.”
“I’m not,” Elaine said.
“I made it sound too good, and now you’re disappointed.”
Elaine kissed her cousin’s head. “I’m fine. I wanted to come and see. I have come. I am seeing.”
“It’s better if you’re drunk?” Theddan said, and held up the bottle. It was black glass and clinked with liquid.
Elaine shook her head. “I’m queasy from what I had on the way here.”
“But you’re sober.”
“If I get too sober, I promise I’ll drink. I don’t see how getting sick will make the evening better,” she said, and heard how harsh the words sounded from her mouth. When she spoke again, she was gentler. “I’m hungry for something, and I don’t know what it is. I want. I want badly, and I don’t know what I want.”
“But not this?”
Elaine shrugged. It wasn’t this. It would never be this. She saw the joy, and she understood it. Breaking rules. Tasting freedom. But part of it was a loosening of self-control, and that sleeve would never fit her arm. Theddan could throw herself into the world and trust the gods to catch her. Elaine had no such faith.
But it seemed rude to say it, so she pretended instead. “Who knows? Daylight is a long way from now.”
Theddan shifted down a step and laid her head in Elaine’s lap. “I wish you were happy.”
“I wish I were happy too,” she said. And then, “Oh my… what is going on there?”
A half circle of revelers had formed at the side of the lock. The big man who Theddan had stepped away from stood with his back to the water and tugged at his pants.
“That’s Eddik,” Theddan said. “When he feels ignored, he likes to wrestle.”
Eddik managed to solve whatever knot had been frustrating him, and stepped out of his pants. Elaine felt a blush rising in her cheeks, and laughter with it. The naked man raised his fists above him and gave a roar.
“I love it when he does that,” Theddan said. “He’s a beautiful man.”
“He looks like a shaved bear.”
Another of the young men started pulling off his own clothes, and Elaine shifted a degree to get a better look. The second man was thinner and softer, but made up in bravado where brute nature had failed him. The others in the half circle shifted, making a space for the coming violence. Eddik apparently found the whole proceeding exciting in more ways than one.
“Oh my God,” Elaine said. “I take everything back. This is hilarious.”
“Don’t let him hear you. It’ll hurt his feelings,” Theddan said around a chuckle.
Elaine had seen nude men before, but always in the context of a celebration or a performance. A ritual with expectations and rules. This was something else. The two began to circle each other, arms wide, mouths set in grins. Elaine tried not to look at them too closely, then noticed herself doing it, and let go of her restraint. She stared at the bare bodies, the way their legs shuddered at each step. The violence and the vulnerability and the strangeness of the moment made them hard to look away from. She found herself leaning forward.
Something happened, some failure of technique invisible to her, and the two men leapt at each other. Arms flailed as they tried to find purchase on each other’s skin. Eddik groaned and shifted his weight. His opponent leaned down and—back and legs and buttocks straining—tried to drive the big man back into the lock and the dark water. It almost worked too. The crowd cheered.
“Someone’s going to hear us,” Theddan said, and like she’d called it forth with her words, a whistle sounded. And after it, a voice.
This is the city guard! The first one that fights gets a blade in their gut!
Theddan spat an obscenity and turned. On the boathouse floor, the revelers became a mob, surging first for one door and then another. Theddan pushed Elaine, and together they went up the stairs, away from the chaos and into the dark.
More whistles. Elaine couldn’t guess how many, but more than two. At the top of the stairs, a little platform of planks gave access to the chains and ropes. Below, two bluecloak city guards were shouting, blades drawn. The whistles were down to one, but it would call others if they were close enough to hear it.
“Be still. Be quiet,” Theddan said. “They won’t see us.”
Elaine was fairly sure that wasn’t true. She inched along the bare wood boards, looking down on the stones below her. The stink of dust and grease filled the air. Someone shouted. Someone screamed. She took a long, slow breath, letting it out between her teeth. The distance between her and the floor of the boathouse seemed much larger than it had when she’d been looking up. Below her some of the others were dropping to the ground and spreading their arms like they were hugging the earth. She moved forward slowly, half certain that every shift of her weight would tip her over and down. She’d come far enough that the lock was beneath her. The water shimmered with lantern light, black and silver.
“What are you doing?” Theddan asked, a little too loudly. One of the bluecloaks looked up.
“Hey! You two! Get the hell down from there!”
Elaine looked back. Theddan’s eyes were wide above her mask. “Follow me.”
Elaine jumped, or tried to. She slipped a little at the end and tumbled in the air. The river water rose up to meet her. The cold was like a slap, but she’d anticipated it. She forced her eyes open, found where the dancing shadows showed the stone side of the lock. And where they vanished under the river doors. She kicked and pushed the water, swimming out toward the wild flow and freedom. The wide wooden doors passed above her, and she was outside, in the river itself. She was elated for a moment.
Then the current caught her.
Even in the heat of summer, deep threads of the Khahon ran cold and cruel. They grabbed her, pulled her down. Something bumped against her face—eel or fish or water plant. She spun once, nearly losing her bearing, and kicked for the surface. Her head reached air, but the sodden mask choked her. She ripped it off, sank, kicked again for the open air, and started swimming as hard as she could for the bank. The river toyed with her, catching her in a wide eddy, tugging her down and letting her go again, like a cat deciding whether it was hungry enough for mouse.
Her lungs were burning and her feet and hands were growing numb. Her arms and legs ached with effort. A small, still part of her mind thought This is going to kill me. I’m about to die.
The bank seemed farther away than when she’d started swimming toward it. The impulse to rest, to give herself time to think, to reason some way out was tempting, and it was death. She pushed past pain, past planning. It was a raw animal fear, and she let it drive her. Slowly, tentatively, always ready to change its mind, the river relented.
A public quay appeared, and she caught its edge. Her fingers slipped on the algae-slimed stone, but she was out of the cruelest part of the current. The water chose not to yank her back. She paddled to the rough steps, dragged herself up over the worn, slick stone, and only then turned and looked back at the river. If Theddan had done as Elaine had told her, she was in there now. She might be drowning. She might die. She would die. The fear was like a vise around her heart. Elaine lifted the hem of her dress and ran.
The river had carried her several streets from the boathouse, but the moon and Oldgate oriented her. Her bare feet slapped against cobblestones. She didn’t know where she’d lost her sandals. There would be bluecloaks at the boathouse. She’d get them to help. Yes, she’d be caught. Yes, she’d be humiliated. But it was the only aid that might reach Theddan in time.
Her dress felt like it was made from ice. It clung to her skin and chafed her as she ran. She felt her breath catching and didn’t know if she was crying from pain or fear. She rounded the last corner.
An open square with a cistern and a low wall. A man was sitting on the wall, his legs out before him. Not a bluecloak. She followed his gaze to the street outside the boathouse. Three bluecloaks with weapons drawn had the revelers on their knees. The smallest of the guards was going to each of the new prisoners in turn, knotting their wrists together and putting them on a lead. Every one of them would be marched to the magistrate. Every one of them would pay the price of justice.
And at the corner of the group, head bowed and face streaked with tears, was Theddan. Relief and horror warred in Elaine’s heart. Theddan was safe. Theddan was caught. Theddan was going to live long enough to be dragged before her father in disgrace and wish she hadn’t lived.
One of the two larger bluecloaks looked toward Elaine and raised his sword, pointing it at her like an accusing finger. “Hey! You! Stop where you are! In the name of the prince!”
He started toward her, distracted from his arrayed prisoners. It was apparently the chance Eddik had been waiting for. With a roar, the large man jumped to his feet, barreled into the smallest guard, and sprinted to the north, still magnificently naked. His pale limbs pumped away into the moon-bright streets like some unlikely god, and his receding shout was joyous and animal. Other prisoners started to rise, and pandemonium threatened. The guard coming for Elaine turned back, and she saw her own chance. She sprinted, jumping the low wall and pressing herself against it like she was a little girl again, playing hiding games with her nurse.
