Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1) (4 page)

Heden knew as soon as he closed the door to Vanora's room that someone was downstairs. The air changed. Something was downstairs absorbing small sounds that were usually present and making small sounds that were usually absent. These were the instincts you built up in the forest or under the ground that never left you.

Pausing only for the moment it took to take stock of the situation, he proceeded downstairs. He made no attempt at stealth; he was terrible at it anyway.

As he descended he first caught sight of his guests' shoes. The expensive red-dyed suede and silk hose told him who his guest was before he ever saw his face. Gwiddon. The bishop's adjutant. The man responsible for representing the bishop to the heads of the city.

He was sitting, striking a pose, in a chair at a table near a window, the wan grey light from outside spilling into the room. Doing little to chase the shadows away. Gwiddon rested his prominent cheekbone on a thin finger and smiled through the window at the people walking by outside. Occasionally someone would see him inside and press their faces, hands cupped near their eyes to block out the light, and look in.
There’s a person in there! Is the place open? No. No I guess not. Just one man inside, nothing else.

Gwiddon didn’t look at Heden, he just kept smiling with little humor and looking out the window.

“Let me get you a drink,” Heden said. 

Gwiddon gave no introduction and seemed to expect none. If Heden was being rude by not saying “good day to you,” Gwiddon didn't appear to notice.

“I try to tell them,” Gwiddon said, waggled his fingers at the people walking by. “Roughly once a month someone mentions you and this place and they always ask the same thing.”

“I have some wine, imported from Rhone,” Heden said as he rummaged around behind the bar. “Not even noon yet. Brandy, port. Ale will have to do.” Heden dusted off two thick glasses.

“'Why doesn't he open that place? Why did he waste his money?'“

Heden came over with the ale and sat down. He took a long drink from his. It was only a few hours after dawn, but it had already been a long day.

Gwiddon picked up his glass without looking at it and toasted the passersby. He spoke in a slow, measured cadence, each phrase following the next like a steady machine.

“I love the look in their eyes so I make a point to ask them to guess how much you paid for this place. They never guess high enough, they've never been inside of course, and when I tell them...well, the look alone is worth it. Then I smile and explain that the reason you don't try to recoup your investment is that for you, it was such an insultingly small amount of money.” This last was said while chuckling. 

“You tell them that?” Heden asked.

“Yes,” Gwiddon said, absently, still looking outside. “We had the Castellan over to dinner once; he choked when I said it. Poor man.”

Gwiddon took a drink from his glass and frowned at it. Turning to face Heden across the oak table, he said; “This is terrible.”

Heden shrugged and had some more. “It was fine when I bought it.”

Gwiddon’s face was thin and fine boned, his straw hair curling with a natural wave. His lips were thin and bright red against a complexion that matched his hair, light without seeming pale or unhealthy. His eyes transmitted intelligence to anyone who might receive.

Gwiddon tried more ale. It wasn't to his liking, but he was getting used to it. His lips turned down in a small frown. “What do you do, buy new stock every six months?”

“Yes,” Heden said.

Gwiddon coughed into his drink. “Honestly?”

“Honestly,” Heden said, leaning back in his chair. “I have deals with the Fool and the Vine. I sell them my unused stuff. Stupid to let it go to waste.”

Gwiddon looked into his ale as though expecting to make some discovery about its contents. “Now I know why I keep away from the Vine, the place serves the stuff you've had sitting here rotting.” He placed special emphasis on ‘rotting,’ letting the word roll off his tongue. His sentences always came out like a performance. He was a natural. Heden always felt like a thug next to him.

“Another story for you to tell at dinner,” Heden said with a sigh, feeling tired.

“You jest,” Gwiddon said, flashing a wide smile, “but I
will
tell it. If they had any idea how much you came back with, they'd not turn their nose up at what you did.”

“Yes they would,” Heden said.

Gwiddon was among the most cultured, well-educated, well-read, well-written and expensively outfitted men in the city, and he knew it. He made sure other people knew it. He was Heden’s height, but slim. Heden envied him for having the kind of build tailors made all their clothes for. The two of them could not have been more different. But they shared one thing in common.

“What does the bishop want?” Heden asked.

“Really, Heden, why don't you hire someone to run this place?”

Heden took a deep breath. “You offering?”

Gwiddon chuckled. “In two days I could find you a man you could trust, who knew bartending and innkeeping, and this place would produce five hundred crowns a month in profit.”

Heden shrugged. “I don't need the money.”

Gwiddon's loud smile was somewhat muted by this. “No, I suppose you don't. You're the only person I know who had nostalgia for a future instead of a past. And when you built it, you found you didn't want it. Now you think: better not to have built it, eh? At least then you'd still have the nostalgia, which you loved, as opposed to this, which you don't.”

“You've been talking to the abbot,” Heden said.

“Please,” Gwiddon seemed affronted. “It is possible for mere mortals to possess insight into the human condition. Especially concerning someone I've known for…” he waved his hand, “…however many years.”

Heden didn't say anything. What was there to say?

“How was your visit to the jail?”

Heden shrugged again. Some people found the gesture annoying but Gwiddon didn’t even see it anymore.

“Bunch of boys swearing and spitting and playing at being men. I don’t imagine it’s time for the Captain’s yearly bath yet, so I can guess how the place smelled.” Heden didn’t like it when Gwiddon talked like this. He didn’t believe Gwiddon cared that much about class or rank in the first place, and was just doing it for show, which somehow made it more offensive to Heden.

“The bishop imagines you fit in down there, imagines everyone loves you. He has some romantic idea of what life outside the church is like. It’s why he likes you.”

“I know,” Heden said.

“He thinks you’re one of the rank and file. It gives him some kind of thrill to talk to you. I think he forgets you can read and write,” this amused Gwiddon.

“I know,” Heden repeated with emphasis. Gwiddon didn’t have a point, he was talking to avoid something.

Gwiddon smiled. “I don’t tell him how absurd that all is.” He took another drink. “He likes you, so he doesn’t see that nothing could be further from the truth.”

Heden’s face softened a little. Everything visible, everything on the surface about Gwiddon was tailor-made to annoy and upset Heden. But then he’d say something that reminded Heden why they were friends.

“How did things go with the girl?” Gwiddon asked, no smile on his face, not looking at Heden.

“Fine,” Heden lied.

“The bishop didn’t think you would, ah…”

“Is that why he sent you?”

“I volunteered. First I volunteered
you
, then I volunteered to tell you.”

Heden didn’t say anything.

“He was surprised,” Gwiddon said, meaning the bishop. “I think he’d written you off.”

“Understandable.”

“So now, of course, he thinks you’re ready for something else.”

Heden shook his head. It wasn’t clear what he was rejecting.

“I told him the girl was a special case. I don’t think he remembered the boy last year.”

“No reason for him to,” Heden said, drinking. Only someone who’d known Heden for a long time would hear the implied criticism.

“I didn’t think the girl meant anything was different.”

“But you didn’t tell the bishop that.”

“I couldn’t think of how to explain it to him. Besides, I don’t mind coming here.” Gwiddon smiled again. “I’m used to rejection.”

Gwiddon glanced at Heden for a moment, gauging his mood. Afraid to study him too closely for fear of scaring him off.

“How long has it been since, ah,” Gwiddon began, and then paused and started over. Heden noticed it. “When was the last time you left the city?”

Heden leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.

“Why?” he asked. “Where do you want me to go?”

A sad smile, pity, flashed across Gwiddon’s face. “You can’t stay in here forever,” he said.

Heden shrugged. “It’s not so bad.”

“It’s not much of a life, Heden,” Gwiddon said.

“Well,” Heden thought about this as he leaned forward to pick at a splinter of wood sticking out of the surface of the table, “maybe life’s overrated.”

Gwiddon ignored this. “Have you left Celkirk in the last year?”

Heden took a deep breath.

“Three years ago,” he said. “I went and saw my father.”

Gwiddon nodded. “When you,” he waved a hand, encompassing the tavern and everything it represented, “retired. I remember.”

Heden shrugged against any possible accusation.

Gwiddon placed both his hands on his knees, and sat up straight. Preparing.

“We need someone to go into the Wode,” he said. As with ‘the church,’ everyone knew which of the elf-haunted forests people meant when they referred to ‘the Wode.’

Heden stared across the table, and waited until he recovered a little from Gwiddon’s statement.

“And you have some reason to think I might say yes.” The sentence came out slow and ragged, like Heden was emerging from a deep sleep.

Now it was Gwiddon’s turn to shrug.

“You went in with your team eight years ago. You came out unscathed.”

“That’s debatable,” Heden said. “And there were six of us. I’m alone now.” Heden restrained himself and didn’t spit out the word ‘alone.’ But he was getting angrier. “And we went in a year before that and lost half our company, so you coming in here,” Heden gestured to the door, “sitting down and saying ‘wode’ like it’s just a fucking word people say, like that thing doesn’t grow old on the bones of people like me, you need to have a good reason.”

Gwiddon’s face pinched a little in response to Heden’s minor onslaught.

Heden shook his head, didn’t give Gwiddon a chance to respond. “That’s not it. You didn’t come here because I’ve been up there before. You’re just trying to flatter me. Which is…I don’t even know why you bother. Give me the real reason.”

“Heden, what is it you want?” Gwiddon asked, ignoring him. “And don’t say ‘to be left alone.’ You tell me what you want, and I’ll help you. Lots of people will help you. And then you can help me. You’ve got this idea of what everyone out there thinks of you, but you’re wrong. It’s been three years man. I want to help you.”

“Horseshit,” Heden said. He wasn’t disputing what Gwiddon was saying, he was rejecting Gwiddon’s presence entirely.

Gwiddon leaned back and the two of them stared at each other. Impasse.

“So I’m going to keep coming down here and giving you whatever I think you can handle until sooner or later you react in some way, any way, and come back to life.”

Heden thought about the girl upstairs. Sleeping. Not a whore in that moment, not in jail, not having a seizure. Just a little girl asleep. The way the world was supposed to be. He didn’t know why Gwiddon’s words made him think of her.

Heden didn’t reject what he said and Gwiddon took it as permission to continue. He extracted what looked like a small sprig of holly from his vest. It had nine berries on it. Eight a pale green, one a milky white.

“You know the procession hall?”

Heden nodded.

“This is one of the knightly crests that hang on the walls.”

Heden frowned and reached out for the holly. It wasn’t any kind of crest.

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do either,” Gwiddon confessed. “You’ll have to talk to the bishop. It’s hung above the door to the audience hall since the church was built. We all thought it was a decoration. An acolyte brought it to us when he noticed that one of the berries had turned white. That’s when we started looking into it. It’s magic, obviously.”

“What else?” Heden asked, thinking.

“Each berry represents a knight. A member of the Green Order.”

“Never heard of them.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. We hoped that you having been in the Iron Forest…”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“That’s where the knights are. Their order lives in the forest, all along the border with Corwell, and protects…well, we don’t know what they protect. Something important.”

“They live in the wode?” Heden said, half to himself. He had a hard time imagining how any man could do that.