Jimmy the Hand (44 page)

The boy paused
at the sight of the two strangers; Jimmy gave him a smile and snicked
the dagger home in its sheath at his belt; the firelight caught the
fretwork on the guard of his rapier.

‘Travellers,’
the cottager said. ‘Now, Davy-boy, why’d you come calling
for Meg? Someone ill, or come to their time?’

Aside to Jarvis
and the young thief: ‘This un’s Davy, son to Tael at the
Holly Bush. Not the first time Meg’s been called out on a
filthy night.’

‘Two of
the Baron’s armsmen,’ Davy said, sipping at the herbal
drink and calming. ‘Beaten! Naked and beaten in the stable.’

‘Serves
them right,’ his host growled. ‘Let ‘em fester, I
say.’

‘Your
mother could handle bruises, or setting a bone broken in a brawl,’
Meg said. As she spoke she went to the bed and hauled out another
box, this one of boards covered in rawhide. ‘What else is wrong
with them?’

Davy looked at
the men, shuffled from one foot to the other, and then blurted, ‘They
walked out of the door and claimed that a . . . a whore lured them to
the stables, and her pimp beat them!’

The cottager
scowled more deeply. ‘A likely story. There aren’t no
loose women at the Holly Bush.’

‘That’s
what they say,’ Davy claimed. His pimply face looked more
hideous as he blushed. ‘And . . . well, their clothes and
weapons and all were gone, and they had their hair and beards cut
off, and they were all rolled and slobbered with dung, and . . .
and—’

‘Out with
it, boy!’

‘And
someone shoved a pinecone up their arses! Both of them!’

Meg began to
cackle with laughter as she sorted through her herbs and simples and
tools. After a moment of blank incredulity, so did her husband,
howling until he had to bend nearly double and hug his ribs,
staggering across the cottage and bumping into the walls.

‘Ah,
many’s the time I’ve wanted to do that to one of the
toplofty cut-throat bastards myself,’ the old man wheezed.
‘Hee, hee, hee! They’ll be sittin’ down careful for
months, they will—and squatting cautious-like at the jakes.
Hee, hee!’

Davy gave an
uneasy grin, but by the way he was standing he was also tightening
his buttocks.

Jimmy chuckled,
too.
Probably funnier to hear about than to see,
he thought.
Still, I wouldn’t mind hearing the same news about Jocko
Radburn, or del Garza, or their master either.

‘And them
girls is gone,’ Davy went on.

‘Girls?’
Jimmy said sharply.

‘Them
girls that came in the dog-cart from Land’s End yesterday ‘bout
suppertime,’ he said. ‘Pretty as pictures, they was.’
He gave an enthusiastic description.

‘Flora!’
Jimmy and Jarvis said at the same time.

‘—for
all one had a limp,’ the boy finished.

‘Lorrie!’
Jimmy said.

The bottom
dropped out of Jimmy’s stomach, and Jarvis Coe cursed quietly
in a language Jimmy didn’t recognize. They looked at each
other.

‘That’s
torn it,’ Jarvis said grimly.

Jimmy nodded,
pulling on his oil-treated wool cloak. He yanked the hood forward,
reflecting bitterly that this was what came of Flora’s newfound
sense of responsibility. She’d got him poking his head into a
sewer rats’ den again.

‘No time
for subtlety,’ he said.

‘No time
at all,’ Coe replied.

The rain blew
cold into their faces as they left the cosy, smoky warmth of the
cottage.

The skin
wrinkled on the back of Jimmy’s neck, and he didn’t think
it was down to the trickle of cold water; rather it was due to the
thought of Flora and Lorrie in that place.

Bram looked up
sharply, startled out of an uneasy doze. Thunder crashed, and
lightning glared through the high small window—far too small
for a man to squeeze through, and barred with iron, even if he hadn’t
been chained.

It wasn’t
time for the meagre ration of bread he got; he’d be weak with
hunger by now, if it weren’t for the food the children brought
him. It wasn’t time to empty the slop bucket either. But he
could hear the rasp of a key in the lock. A moment later, he was
squinting against the yellow light of a lantern held high in the
turnkey’s fist, a tin cylinder pierced to let the candle-shine
out.

Then it went
out, a freak gust turning it into a wisp of bitter-smelling smoke
gusting out through the metal. The turnkey cursed, and so did the
mercenaries crowding behind him.

‘Well, get
another’n lit: we need light for this,’ one of them said
to a man behind him.

Bram grinned. He
didn’t feel the cold fear that sometimes blew through this
chamber. Instead he felt something that radiated anger—but it
wasn’t aimed at him, and somehow it made him feel warm and
safer, however mad that was. It reminded him of his mother.

Another lamp
came, and went out; the third guttered wildly but didn’t
extinguish, since the holder shielded the flame with his hand. With
the light, the armed men advanced on Bram. One carried a singlejack,
a light blacksmith’s hammer, and a chisel.

‘No
games,’ a big mercenary said; Bram recognized him from the
fight at the ford, and scowled. The big man grinned at him, and went
on: ‘Lord Bernarr says we can’t kill you. But we can mess
you up, eh? Nothin’ says you have to have sound legs or
unbroken arms, right?’

He shoved
another burlap bag over Bram’s head, and drew the drawstring
painfully tight. The young man gasped, drawing in the sweetish scent
of the oats that had filled the bag not long ago, and sneezed
helplessly.

‘Foolishness,’
someone said—Bram couldn’t see a thing now, just feel the
rough hands pushing and shoving him. ‘Why not leave the chains
on?’

‘Sump’n
about cold iron, the magicker said,’ another voice replied—the
weasel-like skinny man’s.

The hammer
peened musically on the back of a cold chisel, and the manacles fell
away so that Bram gave a grunt of relief. Then he bit his lips
against a yell, as rough rope bit into his wrists where the iron had
rubbed them raw. His feet were still free, though, and he was direly
tempted to kick out.

Better not.
Just get a beating,
he thought.
Wait for the moment. Wherever
they’re taking me, it can’t be worse than being chained
in this room with invisible spirits running loose through it.

As the men
hustled him out, he heard an incongruous sound: the whistle of a
poorwit, one of the little birds that haunted hedgerows back at home
in the valley.

Beneath the
rough cloth, Bram grinned. He’d taught young Rip how to whistle
that way just last summer. He had more friends here than his captors
suspected.

>Lorrie
looked around, restraining the impulse to rub at her leg. It was
itching and hurting; the itching indicated that it was healing, but
it was a long way from healed, and if she pushed it too far she could
rip it open again.

Bram,
she
thought.
Rip.
She could do anything she had to do.

‘I wish
Jimmy were here,’ Flora said nervously.

‘Nobody’s
seen hide nor hair of him,’ Lorrie said.

‘They
wouldn’t, if he didn’t want them to,’ Flora said.
‘But
we’ve
got to do something now.’

Lightning rolled
again, showing the grim bulk of the manor ahead, outlined against the
night sky; rain hissed down unceasingly. She squinted. ‘That’s
a light!’ she said. ‘Look, there, in the tower at the
corner.’

A wavering
yellow glow came from the narrow windows there; narrow enough to
double as arrow-slits.

‘Maybe
they won’t notice us, then,’ Flora said.

As they
approached the grounds, a vague uneasy feeling visited them. It
seemed to get stronger with every second as they neared the entrance.
‘Something’s wrong,’ whispered Flora.

Lorrie said,
‘Maybe we should go look for Jimmy?’

Flora said, ‘I
think you’re right.’ She was verging on turning around
the dog cart, when she said, ‘Wait a minute!’

‘What?’

‘Do you
really want to abandon looking for Bram?’ Flora asked.

‘Well, we
wouldn’t be really abandoning him, but we’d be . . .’

‘Putting
it off just a little?’

‘Yes, that
would be exactly what we’d be doing,’ Lorrie agreed.
‘And, besides, maybe the weather will be nicer tomorrow and I
think we’d do better looking . . .’ She stopped when she
saw Flora get a strange expression on her face.

Flora’s
forehead was lined in concentration, and she set her jaw as if she
were trying not to yell out. She narrowed her gaze and said, ‘Damn
it!’ and flicked the reins. Flora urged the horse forward until
they came to the wrought-iron gates; there was a small room beside
them, built into the wall that circled the garden. It was only six
feet tall, although topped with spikes; built long after the manor,
and to keep out game and livestock rather than enemies. As if willing
the words out, Flora asked, ‘What is it you’d rather be
doing than going in there right now?’

Lorrie pressed
herself back into the leather of the seat as if trying to put as much
distance as she could between herself and the gate. ‘Anything,
actually. Just about anything you could name.’

Flora nodded
emphatically. ‘Yup. I’m thinking we just ran into one of
those wards rich people sometimes pay old Alban for.’

‘Who’s
Alban?’

‘Magician
I knew once,’ was all Flora said. ‘You put this thing
called a ward around something you don’t want people to bother,
and they come up with reasons why they don’t want to bother
with it, just like they thought it up all on their own.’

‘I think I
understand,’ said Lorrie, ‘but wouldn’t this be
better if we found Jimmy first?’

‘It
would,’ said Flora as handed the reins to Lorrie. She got down
from the dog-cart, one hand in the pocket under her cloak which held
more of the powder that hit men like a fist, and walked over to the
gatekeeper’s room. Over her shoulder she said, ‘But if we
did find him, we’d find other reasons not to come here. Right
now I want to be anywhere else more than I want to be here, so that
tells me that this is where I need to be.’

Lorrie didn’t
fully understand, but she said, ‘So we go anyway?’

‘Having
Jimmy here would be better, but we go anyway.’ She stuck her
head into the window that was the only opening on this side and
looked around. ‘Nobody here,’ she said, pulling her head
out. ‘But it stinks: someone’s been living here.’

‘How do we
get through?’ Lorrie asked, looking at the tall iron gates with
a worried look. I
might be able to climb that with both legs
working proper,
she thought unhappily.
With this, I’d
have trouble getting on a horse again, once I’m down on the
ground. Maybe we should wait until my leg is better . . .

‘Not a
problem,’ Flora said, interrupting Lorrie’s next reason
for not going inside.

She took off her
cloak and pushed it through the gate’s grille, then unbuckled
her borrowed—stolen—swordbelt and did likewise with that,
fitting it through carefully.

Then she backed
up half a dozen steps, ran forward lightly, and jumped like a cat.
That put her nearly head-high on the iron; she swarmed up the rest of
the slippery metal as if it were a ladder, and flipped herself neatly
over the top before clambering down on the other side. She jumped
free when still higher than her own height, and landed lightly,
perfectly in control as she took the force with bent knees.

Lorrie goggled.
What was it she did for a living in Krondor? she wondered. Set up for
a mountebank and tumbler?

Flora was
grinning as she heaved at the long bolt that kept the gates fastened
from the inside. ‘No lock!’ she said. ‘Just this
bolt, and a chain looped through it.’

The chain
clattered free, and Flora retrieved her cloak and weapons before they
rode up toward the gates of the manor.

‘I’m
coming, Bram, Rip!’ Lorrie said grimly. Once spoken, those
words seem to vanquish the terrible feeling she had that they should
do more before attempting to enter the grounds.

‘Who are
you?’ Bram said.

‘Silence,’
the oily voice replied, and a brief stabbing pain came from
everywhere and nowhere.

Breath hissed
out between his teeth. The room smelled wrong, like a sickroom: old
rotten blood and malevolence. There was cold stone under his back,
and the mercenaries were fastening him down with leather ties. Oddly,
they went around his knees and elbows, not his wrists and ankles.

Oh, gods,
he thought sickly.
It’s sized for children! This is where
they sacrificed the children they stole.
Even then, his belly
twisted with nausea.

The mercenaries
went about their business as briskly as if they’d been trussing
a hog for slaughter. It left him stretched out like a starfish,
painfully so since the ties were at a slightly lower level than the
ridged surface on which he rested. Cold air flowed across his skin as
his breeches and shirt were cut away and pulled off. Then fingers
fumbled at the drawstring of the bag that covered his head. He could
already see a diffuse glow of light through the coarse weave of the
cloth. When it was pulled away, he had a brief glimpse of a large
richly-furnished room with windows, two doors, and through one a bed
on which rested a beautiful, pale-faced woman, apparently asleep.

‘Cover his
face!’ a man barked. The voice sounded old and weary, but the
command carried authority.

Of him, Bram
could only see the back and his clasped hands; there were jewelled
rings on the fingers, and his jacket was of rich dark velvet.

‘It is
done, my lord,’ the nondescript middle-aged man standing by
Bram’s head said.

Nondescript,
that is, until you saw his eyes. They were like windows into . . .
not emptiness, but a void where even darkness would be snuffed out.
Like nothing Bram had seen in his life, they caused fear to visit the
pit of his stomach, ice to run up his back, and his arm hair to stand
on end. The man’s eyes were windows into less-than-nothing.