City Of Ruin (20 page)

‘Drekka,’ Randur muttered through his smile of recognition. ‘Gets its name from the old word for
drink
. Used to be considered a bit of a party town. I’ve been there once or twice, though not from this route.’

‘Can we stay somewhere here for the night?’ Eir asked.

‘I would’ve thought so,’ Randur replied. ‘Agricultural town, mainly, but does a bit of trade doubling as a port. A few travellers pass through, but I’m not sure how things are with the Freeze.’

*

It was a town where dreams lay down to die. Places like this didn’t much like change, their nature going against the fundamental laws of development or decay. The further you went from the largest towns, notably Ule, the further you moved from anything approaching cosmopolitan. In Randur’s memory he’d only been there a few times, all during his late teens; there had been super-strength local vodka, and local women who were not shy in the least. Each time he had visited he’d sworn never to return. But there was always a girl, wasn’t there, some reason to make that extra effort, to ride across the island in search of sensual fulfilment.

The cultural centre lay just where two straight thoroughfares met. Here, the taverns conducted a roaring trade, serving up equal measures of gambling and debauchery. A haven for card sharps to work their route around the various settlements. He wondered vaguely if rooms would be available at the Bitches Brew inn, one of the quieter places in the town, just off the main street.

An iren to one side sold mainly farming equipment, where a few men shambled around checking out the wares. The former dust road running between the buildings was now muddied snow. The buildings themselves were a mix of dark stone and even darker wood, at the most three floors high, but always well spaced out because there was plenty of room. Smoke dribbled upwards from most of the chimneys and, amid a sea of thatched and slate roofing, the wooden spire of a Jorsalir church poked tentatively above the townscape.

They rode into town, tied up their horses, and started hunting for accommodation.

*

Cheap lunches were being served at the Bitches Brew, a dreary place with four solid woodstoves and walls littered with old farming equipment now relegated to the status of decoration: sieves, forks, bushels, crooks, potato dibbers. Three men sat in companionable silence over to one side, while two old women played cards right next to the bar. Randur approached the landlord, a slender man in his fifties with a scar across the top of his head. He regarded Randur with startlingly blue eyes.

‘Afternoon,’ Randur greeted him, while Rika and Eir remained motionless by the door. ‘Me and the girls are passing through and need a room for the night. You got any?’

‘Might have. You got coin?’

‘Enough.’

‘You got a room then, lad. So what you lot drinking?’

Half-turning to Eir and Rika, he said, ‘I’ll have half an ale and the girls—’

‘Kapp Brimir!’ It was a high-pitched voice, and certainly not a happy one. Randur shot the room a furtive glance. Who knew his real name?

‘Kapp! I know it’s you.’ A girl burst out from the kitchen, a brunette with big eyes and a big scowl. She marched right up to him then slapped him across the face.

‘Ow!’ he spluttered.

‘You think you can just walk off and leave me after that one night we had? You promised you’d take me with you to Villjamur. You and all your lines – it was just to get into bed with me, wasn’t it? You boys just want to have your fun and vanish into the night. Ha! Well I’m not having any of that.’

Randur backed off slightly, palmed the air to calm her down. This performance wasn’t exactly
not
attracting too much attention. ‘I . . . I—’

Another slap, this time on the other cheek, nearly knocking him over, a cloud of flour following the arc of her hand.

‘I bet you can’t even remember my name.’

This was true.

And just how the hell was he supposed to recall every girl he’d slept with?
No, concentrate
. He glanced back towards Eir, who stood glaring at him with her arms folded, before looking away.

Bugger . . . Randur, this is not looking good.

Back to face the girl – what
was
her name? ‘I meant to tell you . . . I was called off on an emergency. My sword skills were urgently required.’

‘And yet still the lies pour forth from his rancid mouth!’ She reached out again towards him.

As Randur flinched, closing his eyes, she tipped the ale he had ordered over his head before marching off to the kitchen. He peered sheepishly around the bar, the liquid dripping off his face.

‘Hope you’re going to pay for that drink, lad,’ the landlord grunted. ‘Isn’t a charity I’m running here. That’ll be a hundred Drakar.’

*

The room contained four small beds, two on either side of the room. A dreary brown carpet was peeling away from the floor, and save for half a dozen unlit candles, there wasn’t much else. A far cry from the glamour of the Imperial Residence that he was used to, but he reminded himself that this was better than camping outdoors.

While he stared out of the window, across a back garden filled with barrels, Rika remarked, ‘She called you Kapp?’

‘You what?’ he replied.

‘Kapp? I thought your name was Randur Estevu. So which one is it?’

‘My name is not really Randur.’ He glanced to Eir, who already knew the story. With a thin smile, she nodded, a gesture that said,
Go on
.

‘You’ve been rather coy about your past so far,’ Rika said. ‘With good reason, it seems.’

He’d been careful not to show himself as more than a simple island boy who came fresh to the city. There was no need for Rika to have known, no need to make things complicated, but now was the time to relieve himself of his lies.

‘I came into Villjamur with papers stolen from a dead man. The real Randur was a young man the same age as me, and when he was found murdered at the docks my dodgy uncle from Y’iren managed to get hold of the documents allowing this Randur into Villjamur. Kapp was my true name, but I took his identity, became Randur. I had plans to fulfil. I wanted to speak to the great cultists of the city – I needed their help in saving my mother’s life. But that’s another story, one I’m not going to repeat now. Was this deception such a bad thing?’

Details about his sleeping with dozens of rich women then stealing their jewellery to fund these great cultists would, perhaps, be better left unsaid right now.

‘So, there you have it. I’m really called Kapp,’ he declared, resignedly. ‘But Randur or Kapp, I still saved your arse.’

Rika was looking out of the window, as snow began to fill the grey afternoon skies. ‘That is true, and your motives were pure – even if your actions weren’t quite what I would approve of. Kapp, you say? A better name, I think. Randur does sound a little
sleazy
.’

‘What, that’s it?’ Randur asked. ‘No big lectures on morality, on what a fool I’ve been and that my sorry rear is going to burn in some hell realm for a thousand years?’

Rika laughed then, for the first time, and he couldn’t decide if he had been thoroughly stupid in something he’d said. ‘That’s just it, Kapp. My religion isn’t all that complicated at times. Your motivation was a positive one. How else can we judge someone?’

‘I thought you had, like, a million rules about what we’re not supposed to do.’

‘There are some in place, admittedly, but they’re to aid our spiritual practice, not pass judgement. Yes, there are some priests who have interpreted aspects of our belief in what I consider a negative way, but really all we are – any of us – is the sum of our actions. Do I really come across as so . . . condemnatory?’

‘Just a little . . . you know, preachy,’ he muttered. Then, ‘No offence, lady.’

‘I suppose I’ve been through a lot, returning to Villjamur and then . . . leaving again so abruptly. We have all been through quite an ordeal.’

‘Whatever,’ Randur said, forgetting, as he often did, the importance of the woman before him. In truth Rika couldn’t have had it easy – she’d been torn from her spiritual retreat to be thrust into the seat of power controlling millions of lives across the Jamur Empire, only to be manipulated by councillors close to her and falsely charged with plotting the destruction of thousands of her own citizens.

‘Look, we can either sit and be miserable, or cheer up,’ he continued. ‘I’m going downstairs to get some food. Who’s with me?’

Both girls stood up immediately.

*

They took precaution with their disguises, Rika and Eir slouching affectively as girls of royal birth could manage, in the rear of tharkened tavern. Randur’s narrow sword was always ready by his side. Cards flipping, a glass being settled back on a table, a ticking clock: these were the only sounds for much of the afternoon. Things pickep a little come the evening, they way they always did, people witittle money coming to spend it, wasting their daily wage on socianvestments that could barely show useful returns.

Young women came in now and then, displaying different looks and levels of attractiveness. They would sit at the bar waiting to be bought drinks, and men inevitably approached, older, rough agricultural types, some like the cliché he’d imagined, yet some surprisingly well spoken. And he wondered, again and again
: Is this all there is for
these people?

His life had changed so completely. Doing
something
now seemed to matter.

The three of them made relaxed and innocent conversation, the kind that could occur anywhere at all, anywhere in time. Eir had found a niche for herself in teasing Randur lightly, while Rika asked him about his upbringing here on Folke. For one of the most loftily placed people he had ever known, she certainly showed a deep interest in other people.

In that dark corner they all became closer.

Then under the light of the lanterns throughout the rest of the tavern, a man came shambling inside, wrapped in a wax-covered cape and wearing ridiculously colourful breeches. He even had a frilly black shirt that would have been at home in Randur’s own wardrobe. Although naturally slender, he carried the paunch of a man whose drinking habit had finally caught up with him, protruding under a grubby complexion, with a broad jaw smothered in greying stubble.

It couldn’t be
.

‘Drink, by thunder, sir!’ the man called out across the bar, before wiping his nose on his sleeve. ‘How’s a man to quench his thirst in such a Bohr-forsaken hellhole.’

This much was obvious: it wouldn’t be this man’s first drink of the day. He swayed as he reached hesitantly in his pockets for some coins, then slapped them on the counter. He leaned forwards, slowly counted three, then shoved them over. ‘Lager – a pint thereof, barman.’

‘You’re back, then,’ the landlord grunted. ‘Didn’t think this place was good enough for you, after all that crap you warbled last night. What was it you said? As welcoming as a nun’s cunt, I believe.’

‘I spout such rubbish most nights, sir, unless you’d forgotten.’

Noticing his reaction, Eir nudged Randur in the ribs. ‘What is it?’

‘I think I know him,’ Randur mumbled. He stood up, brushing his hair back behind his ears. Randur called out a name across the bar room.

‘Munio Porthamis.’

The man was about to take his first sip, then paused. An expression slid across his face, something that suggested he was not at ease being known as anything other than the drunken stranger. Was there comfort to be found in the anonymous role he had carved for himself?

He continued with his drink, choosing to ignore the interruption.

Randur strutted over to the man’s side, ignoring any glances from others in the room. To hell with keeping a low profile. ‘Munio Porthamis. So, this is the glory you aspired to, is it? This what all the money was intended for?’

‘Don’t know who you mean, stranger.’ The man resolutely faced the bar.

Randur could see the old rapier carried by his side still, beneath the man’s thick cloak. ‘Rule one of
Vitassi
,’ Randur said. ‘“One perceives everything and nothing, and that way one can identify everyone and everything in the world.” ’

A deep intake of breath and the figure glanced sideways at Randur. His thick, dirty thumbs rubbed the tankard. Munio’s eyes could not belie his identity. The old man’s soul was still in there, still as sharp as ever. ‘I know you, kid?’

Randur drew his sword slowly, in a non-threatening manner, aware of the numerous sets of eyes fixed on him now that the metal caught the light of the lanterns. A hush descended. Randur used the tip of his sword to tap on Munio’s old rapier, still resting in its sheath, the ornate gold trimmings on the hilt looking more degraded than he remembered. ‘I think we should talk with these.’

‘I speak a fine language with it,’ Munio muttered. ‘Too fine a tongue for anyone to barter with.’

‘I suspect I can correct your grammar, these days,’ Randur replied.

Munio slid back his stool, flipped his cloak to the ground, and in a heartbeat his sword was in his hand. There was nothing about his manner that betrayed his earlier lack of coordination.

‘Randur!’ Eir cried, and he turned back to her briefly: ‘It’s all right, really.’