Beneath Ceaseless Skies #27 (10 page)

       
And Imre Balgas found himself charging forward, plowing bodies, lifting the bundle from his shoulder. He found himself shouting, “Hold!” and breaking away from the safety of the mob. It was a splash into a pond of silence, and the ripples spread quickly. Mouths that a moment ago had been jetting spittle, blaring cries with vigor, now snapped closed, their voices hushed until only the gulls gliding above were free enough to caw. The people nearby all but trampled each other to make way, but aside from their grunts and scuffles none made a sound. He had just crossed a line that was likely never spit across in Craggerman’s Maw.

       
But he couldn’t turn back.

       
The jilted suitor shot Imre a poison look. “
Tum podem extulli horriduloso, peregrin!
”

       
Imre had no idea what the bastard was spouting, but he knew a challenge in any tongue. The woman was standing then, scowling over a bloody mouth. When Dewberry returned his attention to her, Imre filled his own mouth with phlegm and gobbed it at the cragger’s foot. “You shouldn’t mistreat ladies, you sow-thumping ass,” he said as he wiped his lips. “Even mongrel wenches like her.” Then Imre Balgas drew his father’s musket.

       
The grimwade was a classic design, water-cooled and fueled by a glossy green ore contrarily named camellia. This one had a ten-blast capacity, but eight had been spent in his and Naldo’s escape from the city. Imre charged the remaining two. He set his finger lightly over the triggers. He took aim for Dewberry’s heart.

       
“
Porcus foeda!
” the craggerman snarled, before tilting his sword and shifting his weight. And that was all the warning Imre had. In one instant his space was clear; in the next the bastard was bearing down on him, full tilt. Imre grit his teeth and squeezed both triggers, releasing a double blast of emerald energy into Dewberry’s gangly form. The kickback punched hard against Imre’s shoulder, steam billowing in clouds in all directions, but he hardly noticed, for in dazzled shock he watched as Dewberry swung
just so
and caught the musket blast square. Crackles and light and a rush of ozone, and the shot fizzled harmlessly across Dewberry’s stone arm. He never broke stride.

       
You can’t succeed in this world, little cub, until you’ve learned to embrace pain
. It was Bapa’s favorite lesson, and even now it was stuck in Imre’s mind like a thorn.

       
As Dewberry slashed with his demon sword, Imre tossed his father’s musket and dove without pause into the arc of the blade. The enormous hunk of stone bit his side with a
thud
and a splash of hot gritty agony, but Imre took it all, jamming the swing short. Dewberry lurched off balance, giving Imre the extra seconds he needed. He wrapped his arm round the stone blade, hugged it close, grasped underhanded the worn leather grip of his own short sword, and slashed across Dewberry’s chest. A startlingly red ribbon opened from hip to nipple, but the cut stayed shallow as the cragger’s very ribs, impossibly hard, turned the slash so that it rode high and sliced cleanly across his eye.

       
The cragger never so much as flinched.

       
“
Stars be damned!
” Imre swore, even as Dewberry, half-blind, came round with a crushing stone fist that knocked him into the dark. The world tipped. He stumbled. With all the focus he could muster he held fast to the hilt of his sword, yet still he reeled. The fight was lost. He knew it. Cursed himself for it. But where was Dewberry? He stumbled on legs that felt sutured. Dewberry should have been killing him.

       
He tilted about for what felt like hours until with a great effort he caught his balance, forced his legs steady. A few breaths cleared his vision, and with a queasy sense of vertigo he realized he’d been spun around. The crowd was on the wrong side. The cragger woman was now standing before him, still bloody in the mouth and staring intently to Imre’s rear. Imre blinked against the motes in his eyes and followed her gaze to where Naldo Randal was saluting with his saber the very angry Dewberry.

       
“Stand down!” Imre shouted. But his tongue was too thick and his tutor too eager. The old man shot forward on nimble feet. Dewberry rushed to meet him. They crossed once, twice with the clangor and clash of angry blades, shards of Dewberry’s stone sword flying from Naldo’s blows. On the third, the cragger bruised him with a shoulder charge then slashed him across the back as he spun.

       
Imre grit his teeth and moved to stop Naldo, to stop him
and
to gut that brutish cragger bastard.

       
The coppery woman was faster. She stepped in his path, her freakish arm raised, palm out. “
Nit
,” she said, before laying her flesh hand on the hilt of her sword.

       
Imre didn’t have time for this and opened his mouth to tell her so, but a blow with the force of a two-ton ram plowed into his stomach and squeezed nothing but hollow wind out of him. He staggered back, retching, before crashing to his knees with his insides sloshing like porridge.

       
The moldy wench had hit him! One inch of distance and barely any movement and she’d knocked him to the dirt. When at last his guts unclenched to allow him some air, Imre fixed her with his best evil eye. “Move,” he said between breaths.

       
The wench only stared.

       
A loud
crack
and grunts of pain from Naldo and Dewberry. Imre rose to his feet.

       
“Move,” he said again, stepping forward, the pain in his belly easing by the moment.

       
The woman narrowed her eyes. “
Nit
.”

       
Imre unsheathed his longblade and held it parallel to his short. He’d never used steel on a woman, but he was not beyond slapping this one senseless with the flats.

       
She pulled her tortoise shell blade from its sling and eased into a stance.

       
Still fighting dizziness, Imre shifted his balance and lunged.

       
It was then that a scream rent the air. The cragger woman startled from the cry, and the crowd of onlookers finally broke their silence with one collective but short-lived gasp. Imre stumbled to a halt, squeezed his eyes shut as the scream continued on, rising high in the wind, scorching his nerves with the echo of pure animal suffering, until it fell to a gurgle. And silence.

       
Imre’s heart felt squeezed. His city was in ruins, his family... ashes. He and Naldo were all that were left. It took time for him to build his courage, but when he did, he opened his eyes and pushed past the startled cragger woman, just in time to see Naldo, bleeding and haggard, yank his saber free of his opponent’s belly. Dewberry let slip his splintered blade before falling like a plank to the paved road, pouring the last of his life out in the dust.

       
Over the quiet stretched the distant shouts of men on the quays, the cries of gulls overhead, the sun pouring heat into the stench of sweat and fresh death. And there was Naldo, as he turned to Imre and
smiled
.

       
“The honorable thing,” he said flatly, before collapsing over the body of the man he’d slain.

* * *

Chorus

       
For every important event, the Baremescre sang. And singing, as with all things about these people, was a violent affair. Imre had no reason to expect a wedding to be any different.

       
The peerage continued down to the amphitheater floor, queuing now four deep, while Cantiléna and her parents conferred intently upon the dais.

       
Eroico, though, hopped down with his usual vigor. “What a grand gesture to start the morning,” he said, grinning.

       
To that Imre could only shrug. “Let us call it a gesture. If I am still breathing by dinnertime, then perhaps we can name it grand.”

       
“Still,” said Eroico, “a wedding song with my clan, and for the hand of Cantiléna of all people. You must be mad, peregrin. Or thunderstruck.”

       
They rambled together from the dais toward the center of the field, their breaths mingling in the crisp morning air. Thunderstruck was the Silici way of describing a fall into love; a man could be forgiven much in such a state, for the Silici considered those passions a matter of nature, not of will. But Imre was not a man to the Baremescre. He was a
quasi
, a near-man, a mute, stoneless and songless and weak, and Imre had no illusions as to how his choice was being received. Already the Baremescre descending from the gallery were pointing at him and, he guessed, discussing the apparent flaws in his physique. “They still come.”

       
It was Eroico’s turn to shrug. “Most will,” he said lightly. “
Thalamos pugna
is a matter of grave honor. Any who are healthy and able will face you, especially because of your...” here he paused before politely concluding, “foreign disposition. If a man or woman from another clan challenges one of ours to a wedding, my family is very careful to try that outsider thoroughly. But for a peregrin, I suspect we truly will see your dinnertime goal before the songs are done.

       
“My mother and father will be last to sing before Cantiléna, so there is a fair chance you will die without an opportunity to face her,” he said. “Still, you are hearty, peregrin, and not altogether hopeless. Think on it: just two kisses each and you will be a married man!”

       
Imre rounded on him sharply.
Kisses?
There was too damned much he was ignorant of here. He’d heard of
thalamos pugna
on the war campaign and knew it to be a duel for the hand of a Baremescre woman. If any man, even a near-man, could prove his strength, he could count himself a worthy member of the family. That alone seemed enough when he’d set out for this assembly. Now it seemed an obscenely scant bit of information.

       
His concern went unnoticed.

       
Bellico was calling the assembly to order, and Eroico inclined his gaze, gleeful and expectant, to attend his father’s words.

       
“Cantiléna of the Baremescre has accepted the challenge from peregrin Imre the Balgas. The law opens this right to any man who bears a hymn.” From the gallery came scoffs and grumbles of “mute.” Imre kept his peace—teeth clenched and hymn gripped tightly—even as Bellico caught his gaze with mismatched eyes and held it firm. The stare made Imre feel as though his soul had been split by that wicked white horn, the truth of his fear spread and pinned for all to see.

       
He caught the fear and wrestled it down. So he had miscalculated. Who in all hells cared? It was just like his first performances under Tayuya, only now it was
his
story he was conducting.
Don’t force the tale. Accept it. Invite it. Then direct it out through the strings.
But in the stead of strings, he had his blade. Imre wiped the sweat from his palms and hefted the black and copper sword.

       
“You are versed in our traditions for
thalamos pugna
,” said Bellico.

       
“I am,” Imre lied.

       
There was a long moment between them as each man tried to understand what the other was thinking. At last, Bellico nodded.

       
Ariosa stepped forward, Theca to the Maestro, carrying an air of both wisdom and quiet dignity that made her appearance timeless. She was a good deal older than Bellico, had wedded late in life for want of a man to suit her fancy. But Imre had never seen on her a wrinkle or spot. Her hymn curved as a sickle and, like her stone arm, was deeply indigo. The amphitheater fell quiet as she invoked the Voce for strength and sport and good songs. “Invest our hymns,” she said at the finish, “with the strength to kiss well.”

       
“Now we sing!” Bellico shouted.